The Experiment with Sovereignty

          - Daniela Oakley    

           Good Character is essential to a life well-lived. Character is our make-up or "ethos”—it’s proof of our vitality. Character is the chemical compound made up of our ability to discern right from wrong and the projection of our moral in the physical form of action.
What we do, how we live, the pattern of our life: this is what defines us, this is what demonstrates to the world all that "I" value.
If this is true, then it follows that man must determine how good character is come by. Is there one ultimate source, or is it a thing each man chooses for himself depending on disposition and personal taste? And why the emphasis on good character?
It is my experience that defining "good" is nearly as impossible as trying to define "love." Let us instead, consider its source- perhaps that will speak of its essence more than our vain attempts of shooting at it.
Consider Jesus' admonition to His disciples that they might "know a tree by its fruit." He wasn't asking them  to try and figure the dimensions of the fruit and whether it could be improved, repeated or bettered; He invites us to observe the fruit and trust that the source of this good is itself good.
So the question is not why do we call good fruit good (Indeed, is this not an over complication?), but what or who is the good tree? Who was the first to name things as good? Was it not the Creator of all Himself?
At the last of God’s creation He knew all was as He determined it should be. The writer of Genesis tells us that “God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good." (Genesis 1:31, KJV)
I submit that if God is the Author of all that is good, then He must not merely share that attribute of goodness; rather, He must be the ultimate reality of good. He must be Goodness itself. He is the tree which makes the good fruit come forth.
And now we come to the point of no return: for if God is not good, but rather, good is God, then to reject the importance of good character in my personal life is to reject not only goodness, but God. It is to say that what God has created is not how I define good and that God Himself is not the extent of good. When goodness becomes subjective, God's goodness is called into question.
Again, let us take this point back to the very beginning and ask ourselves, “What happened the first time God's credibility was put into question and His command weighed in the tribunal of Man?”
I can picture it. The woman standing near the tree, not making eye contact with the serpent, but only thinking of the object of her desire. And then, "Did God really say...?" The serpent crawls closer to the woman as he says this, but she does not notice. He thinks on the luscious taste of blasphemy, it roles from his tongue with a mood of playfulness...
And here is the really scary part: when questioned, Eve repeated exactly what God said.
Her lust for power and independence from God was stronger than her love and commitment to the God of all good. And independence from perfection can mean nothing less than dependence on evil.
Eating the fruit was Eve's only way to determine whether she could create good apart from God.
But Eve missed something: good is not a definition, it is a being. It is God. To undermine the authority of goodness in one area is to rip away God's authority all together. And the result was that her experiment with Sovereignty, her decision to bite the bait, ended in death for all.

Earn It

Yesterday, I finally got around to watching "Saving Private Ryan." The film is deeply moving, and the ending is especially memorable.
"Earn it," are the final words of John Hamilton to Private Ryan as he lay dying.

The movie later shows Ryan in his old age, tormented by this final demand. He turns to his wife, "Am I a good man? Have I lived well? Did I earn it?"

And it struck me that the very thing that Hamilton had wanted was corrupted by his own demand.
He wanted the lives of several men who had died to save Ryan to be consummated in one life.
Ryan's life.
He wanted Private Ryan to earn something which he could not earn and made him, instead of a man who gave back to society with no restraint, a man eternally tormented by his inability to do so...

Thank the Lord that He has not asked us to earn His love or even His physical sacrifice.
He hasn't asked us to earn one another's lives either but to, with gladness and of our own choice, relinquish our lives unto each other and ultimately unto Him.
And this is not just a demand for the dying, but even more for the living. Sacrificial deaths are always preceded by sacrificial lives.

But really, there is nothing so opposite of the world's mandate to "earn" our place than God's call to die; this is even more far reaching than the aforementioned point describes.

In the course of man's life, the world's sacred song tells us to find our greatest personal happiness, survive and thrive as long as we can and our health allows and to pursue our passions for which we lust with reckless abandon.
God says, "Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me."
Read the last two sentences again until you can see the direct contradictions (which I did not even attempt to articulate in my first draft). Let their implications sink in...

...But all of this is hopeful rather than despairing, because it means all we have to do is relinquish that which is so greatly over-esteemed but which is truly worthless for that which nobody desires but is actually beyond price...

Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge illustrates this far better than I:

How can I ever explain to those who insist that we must believe in the world to love it that it is because I disbelieve in the world that I love every breath I take, look forward with ever greater delight to the coming of each spring, rejoice evermore in the companionship of my fellow-humans, to no single one of whom, searching my heart, do I wish ill, and of no single one of whom do I wish to separate myself, in word or thought or deed, or in some prospect of some other existence beyond the ticking of the clocks, the vista of the hills, the bounds and dimensions of our earthly hopes and distress? To accept the world as a destination rather than a staging-post, and the experience of living in it as life's full significance, would seem to me to reduce life to something far to banal and trivial to be taken seriously or held in esteem... In other words, the Christian proposition that he who lives his life in this world shall lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will see it projected unto eternity, is for living, not dying.

-Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time, Chronicle 1: The Green Stick

I love pondering this quote because it is full of the life, worth and wealth of the gospel of which the New Testament implodes and of which modern apologetics is notoriously lacking. It is time that we stopped talking with such lengthy despondency about all we have had to sell or burn in order to pave the road for Christ and began talking of the precious jewel that is eternally ours.

Do It for You

As someone who loves to write, I've often heard the advise from fellow enthusiasts, "You have to write as if you were the only one ever going to see your work; if you keep thinking about how other people will feel about what you're writing, you are never going to love it and neither will anyone else" or some variation of this.

I think this statement is true- but it's only partially true. I've wrestled with this a whole lot because it's a statement I've always felt my gut react too; I've always felt that it wasn't fully true, but I could never say why...

The only way I can think to communicate this is with the example of physical art: It's widely accepted for an artist to feel that "it's just them and their piece, nothing else matters." This is the equivalent to an author thinking only about how she feels about her story. But here's the issue: the world is bigger than you and I. Our message, whether communicated through art or words, should be bigger than ourselves too, shouldn't it?

We must think of those receiving our work. We must consider if it will move them to action or only entertain them; we must ask ourselves if our stories are ringing true to life or if they are our own fabricated fairytale endings; we must be bold with the truth.

If our stories or art pieces are so hovered over and coddled by our personal feelings and intuition, then all we have accomplished is a work which is for us a reminder of our intrinsic flaws and for others, we've only confused or misled.

Our lives are not, in fact, individual. Neither is God's plan for us. We are unique, yes, but God doesn't have a specific plan for my life because I'm so different and talented and "shaped from a different mold." His specific plan is to bring the Gospel into every corner of the world and He will use my unique personality because He is gracious and not because I am the answer to the world's crisis.

If I am so caught up in my uniqueness that I refuse to let the Lord mold and shape me into a new being, I will never be useful to my Master. I will never be a brick who fits into His spiritual house of which Christ is the Cornerstone. My story will stay a story about self and will say nothing to the world of redemption.

So by all means, write. Write a story, even your own! But don't make it about you. Don't shield yourself from your own criticism or cleanse yourself of flaws. Don't refuse to be a Christian who confesses their sin before others: believe me, it's already known.  Every Christian's story, if truthfully told, begins with the awful, gut-wrenching reality of sin and is somewhere intercepted by the unbelievable, life-changing, reality of a Babe born in a stable.

If you don't spell out your life in terms of reality no one will ever stick with you until you reach the part about redemption...

Let the lowly brother glory in his exaltation

-James 1:9-

This verse contains a provoking disparity. How can a "lowly" positioned man glory in his "exaltation"(high rank, dignity)?

   One thing we can immediately see from the context is that James is not talking about earthly riches or rank. He is talking to physically impoverished, ill-treated Christians. He is talking to a people far from home and recognition.

  Yet still, he says "glory" (rejoice)!

This is amazing and has great implications for the Church.

Do you see?

He is telling the Church to rejoice in her fixed inheritance: eternal glory with Christ. And actually, James commands the church to actively rejoice about this always.

I love that James places this command towards the beginning of His letter. This is a beautiful (and as we will see as we go further into the letter), needed reminder.

"God has established you in heavenly places, Church! Do not let the circumstances of life cause you to despair or neglect the realities of heaven!" (paraphrase)

But I'd like to point out a second application. Just as "exaltation" doesn't solely refer to earthly riches or rank, so "lowly" doesn't solely refer to earthly destitution.

It's easy to look through the Bible and think that Jesus has something against rich people. This is simply not true. There are people (though yes, few and far between) who have great riches and become His disciples. There are still more who have steady homes and jobs and who can be considered the "middle-class" of Bible times.

God isn't opposed to a man with earthly wealth; He is opposed to pride. Pride is all about self: preserving self, propagating self, indulging self. And the reason earthly riches and a heart polluted with pride are so often linked in the Bible is not because God hates the abundance of money but rather because pride loves it.  Pride breeds all kinds of excess.

Another translation for this word "lowly" is "humble." We are always to come humbly before the Lord regardless of whether He is asking us, in a specific moment, to physically depart with our riches. But we are always to be spiritually separated from our wealth. Often this means physical separation from our wealth as well, not so much for God's benefit as for ours.

This is a command of love as much as it is a warning against corruption. We should always have so much more joy in being identified with Christ in His lowly state of suffering than in any sort of earthly prominence. The moment this is not the reality of our souls is also the moment we ought to evaluate where it is that our souls have drifted.

The Bride's Joy

-Isaiah 61:10-

He has clothed me with promises, numerous

And set His seal upon mine arm

The Son asked my hand on His Father's behalf

He made no enticement, nor used any charm

His promises simple, for a babe to comprehend

Life and Breath; His Father's love

To His Bride was promised also death

Division from the world until summoned to worlds above

She signed her name and the union was announced

No devil could trample the signet ring

They tried enticing her with charms and brought her strings of bead

"Add something more beautiful to your covenant with the King

"The King never said you could not add to your beauty

The 'Most High' would not expect you to limit your reach

"After all, you are the Queen," said one, drawing near

"And the Queen has equal rights; none would name it a breach

"Sure your heart has been stolen, your strong arm, also sealed

Perhaps than grant us your mind we will help you to wield

"The power you've come into as you're too common to know

The wisdom of the serpent and the triviality of a shield

"Daughter o' the worlds, Produce o' earth

Remember who was present at the time of your birth

"Why commit treason against your mother's own hands?

And deafen the sound of your father's mirth?

Then the Bride, if she remembers the extent of her vow

Will decry that to mind & heart & soul she has no claim

And altogether the words of the devil she will curse

He has no right to recount her birth and discredit her name

And suddenly her voice will take on angelic joy

She will recount her Lover's promise, to grant her a new birthright: His own

No more bound by sin or sorrow or despair

But seated in the heavenlies on an everlasting throne

A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

-James 1:8

       Again we are warned of the seriousness of doubt.
Outwardly, this passage is disheartening; it seems to human eyes that God has no mercy on people who struggle with doubt. But hold on, because their are different ways to deal with doubt, and God forgives those who repent of it. The point is that doubt cannot reign in your life, not that if it ever pokes its head, you are immediately condemned.
One of the Hebraic meanings of this word denotes a "two-spirited" person. How can someone who is after the world and then after God and then again back to chasing the world, how can this kind of man lay hold of any sort of truth?
We completely understand this concept when it comes to other sins, and yet when talking of doubt, we don't seem to grasp that the damage done by unchecked doubt is equivalent to unchecked adultery, hatred, or addiction.
Doubt, like all sin, becomes addictive and Master if left unchallenged.

Consider again James metaphor of the waves...
If a man is driven by winds and waves, he is incapable of reaching the shore even if someone were to come out to sea and rescue him; unless his addiction is dealt with, he will return to the sea. Every man is the author and finisher of his own destruction.
The promise of a husband that he will remain faithful to his wife does not make the wife faithful; it takes two to make a marriage pure. Yet this is exactly what God did! He was and is a faithful husband to an adulterous bride. (Read Hosea for an amazing illustration of this truth.)
We must reckon with the reality that devotion and division cannot cohabitate.

Eternity Before Me

The Secret Place of the Most High

The only way to endure

The mortality of this mortal life

And reach that blessed shore

He bids all Christians, "Come and die

Meet me at the cross."

And to our shock we find great joy

In counting all things loss

Because in our death we see our Jesus

Standing at His throne

Fleshly pain overwhelmed by eternity

Though eternity as yet unknown

What little He has called us to bear

But a moment our burdens hard-press

Never without eternity before us

Even now by our Savior's love blessed

Think on Christ's cross, O child of God

Think of sufferings greater than thine

No shadow covered over the Son, Beloved

Crushed by His Father's wrath that was mine