The Invisible God

I just watched a movie called “Henry Poole Is Here.” There is a little bit of rough language in it, but, other than that, it was a pretty decent movie. Some of the theology in it may be defective, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing—we shouldn’t be getting our theology from movies anyway, but theological references in movies can be thought provoking. There are an awful lot of us that don’t question what we believe nearly enough. Faith is one thing, unquestioning, blind faith, is something else altogether.

Anyway, in this movie, the title character, Henry Poole, has learned that he has a terminal illness. We are not told what illness, only that it is inoperable, and untreatable. His plan is to buy the house he grew up in, buy a whole bunch of booze, retire from the human race, and just stay drunk until his inevitable demise. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the house is not for sale. There is another house in the same neighborhood that is available, but the house needs some work. He doesn’t care about that, he just wants to die in his old neighborhood. The realtor arranges for the work to be done anyway, and he moves in. Soon, a neighbor notices that there is an image in the new stucco; she thinks it resembles Christ. She tells some other people about it, and soon people are coming to Henry Poole’s house to pray, and to seek healing. At least a few of them actually do get healed, but Henry stubbornly refuses to believe, and even makes fun of people praying to “a wall.”

The movie kind of reminded me of a passage in Numbers, where the children of Israel were plagued by serpents, and God told Moses to make a “fiery serpent” and set it where people could see it. Moses made a serpent out of brass, and elevated it above the congregation. Whenever anyone got bit by a serpent, then all that person had to do was to look at the brazen serpent, and they would live. The Scriptures don’t specifically say it, but I have to believe that some of the Israelites probably got stubborn and refused to look at the serpent after getting bit, and so died. I just know enough about human nature to know that some people would dismiss the brazen serpent as stupid.

Don’t misunderstand me, I tend to go along with Henry Poole as far as images healing people, at least, in this day and age. I have noticed that whenever there is a stain, or a deformity in some concrete somewhere, or even a cloud formation that resembles a face, if that face has a beard, then some people will say that it looks like Jesus, and if it doesn’t have a beard, then it looks like mother Mary. Of course, our understanding of what Jesus and Mary actually looked like is mostly based on Renaissance paintings by artists who had never seen Jesus or Mary either. John 4:24 says that God is a Spirit—his face is something that we wouldn’t even be able to register with our fleshly eyes. Does He heal? Absolutely, but if you need something that you can see to pray to just to ask for a healing, then you really don’t have the kind of faith that you should have. When we get to Heaven, then we will see Him as He is.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Interesting thing: In Genesis chapter 2:6, we are told that there was no rain, but that a mist came up from the earth and watered the plants. If I’m reading that right, that is basically saying that there was a humidity that you could feel; it would have had to have been absolutely palpable. Hopefully it wasn’t overly hot, that would have been pretty much unbearable.

Now, several generations later, in Genesis chapter 7, it finally rained. When it did rain, it rained for forty days and forty nights, and it took almost a year for the water to drain. Apparently God changed something in the earth’s environment, such that the atmosphere is now considerably more limited as to how much water vapor it can hold. Today, we have a condition that occurs occasionally that is called 100% relative humidity. This is when the air is holding as much vapor as the scientists figure it possible can at whatever temperature the air happens to be. 100% humidity usually means that it is raining. Every once in a while, we can have 100% humidity and it still isn’t raining, but the meteorologists know that it will start pouring down soon.

I have to wonder what it would have been like to have lived on the earth before there was rain, when the air was supersaturated. I have to believe that the sky was always overcast; imagine the most overcast day you have ever experienced, only many times worse. The good part about that is that, although one could never see the sunshine, at least the sun never caused one to break a sweat, because that sweat wouldn’t evaporate, so it wouldn’t do anything to cool off the individual doing the sweating (man or beast). Of course, if one was working, I would think that one could break a sweat, and then just feel sweaty and sticky… Considering the way our bodies are designed, it would seem that God never intended for the condition of the earth before Noah to be permanent (or else, he intended for us to live out our lives in leisure, eating fruit from plants that were watered by the air, and never needed to be planted or cultivated).

The heavy cloud cover would also help to block some forms of radiation. From what I understand, clouds don’t stop UV radiation, which is the type of radiation associated with skin cancer, but we aren’t talking about the sort of clouds that are in the sky now. Those clouds would have been much thicker, and possibly would have blocked some (or all) of the UV. On the other hand, water evaporates much easier when it absorbs UV radiation, so it may have been necessary for the UV to pass through the water vapor in order to facilitate the evaporation to keep the atmosphere supersaturated.

I guess what it really comes down to is that there may have been some advantages to living in the time between Adam and Noah, but I really don’t see too much; you didn’t ever have to water your plants, or build irrigation canals, but you also never saw the sun and if you did something to break a sweat, you just stayed sweaty. I’m glad that I am living in this time and not that time (not that I ever had any choice in the matter, of course).

David Danced

David danced before the Lord.

It was a very emotional time. The Ark of the Covenant had been out of place for a long time. The Israelites had taken it into battle, thinking that God would bless their efforts against the Philistines if the Ark, which represented God’s presence, were there in the battle with them. Even the Philistines understood what the Ark meant, and were badly shaken at its presence. The Israelites, though, were outside of the will of God, and God allowed the Ark to be captured by the Philistines, but then He punished the Philistines for having it. So, the Philistines made an offering to the God of Israel, and returned the Ark.

When the Israelites first tried to return the Ark to Jerusalem, though, they did everything wrong. The Law of Moses dictated that the Ark should be carried by the Levites; King David had them build a new cart for the Ark, and have the people surround the cart, as the oxen pulled the cart back to Jerusalem. Apparently God was willing to let that slide, judging them by their intentions rather than their results, but, in the middle of this, a man named Uzzah felt the need to touch the Ark and God struck him dead on the spot.

David realized at that moment that they were messing up. We could speculate on what was going on inside Uzzah’s head that God felt it necessary to strike him down, but David understood that all of Israel was in the wrong. I don’t think that he really understood all that they were doing wrong, but he was not willing to continue any farther towards Jerusalem and put more of his subjects’ lives at risk. He ordered that the Ark be left there at the place that became known as Perez-Uzzah because of the death of Uzzah.

After a considerable amount of time, there was considerable prayer, and much study of the law concerning things, but David had the Levites carry the Ark back to Jerusalem. When the Ark was back in its proper place, it was as though Israel had once again accepted God’s proper place, and that they were again accepted by God. As I mentioned earlier, it was a very emotional time. David danced with all his might before the Lord.

David’s wife Michal saw him dancing and became upset. We aren’t really told why it upset her, but it did. I think it’s pretty safe to say that at least part of the reason was that she was not, herself, right with God. Do you suppose that David was a terrible dancer, and she was embarrassed? Yet everyone else who watched David dancing, if he did dance badly, at least understood why he was dancing, and were willing to overlook any lack of grace in his movements. Perhaps she was upset simply because he wasn’t dancing with her, but, I seriously doubt that he would not have been happy to dance with her if she had simply gone to him and joined in the dance. Perhaps she was jealous of the God that David had for God, but, surely she realized that quality was one of the things that attracted her to David in the first place.

In any case, sometimes we feel moved to do things, and maybe we are afraid of embarrassing ourselves if we do them badly, so we beg off. Of course, if God is truly in whatever it is that we feel moved to do, then He will bless our efforts, and He will bring forth fruit from what we are doing. It’s even conceivable that God wants us to embarrass ourselves to make us seem more approachable to those around us; to encourage people to think, “Well, you know, if that klutz can be a Christian, then maybe I can, too.” We Christians have a bad tendency to think that we aren’t supposed to let anyone see our shortcomings, that God took those things from us when He took us in, but sometimes it’s important that people see the things that we aren’t good at, and realize that Christians are still human, and we still make mistakes; the difference is in the forgiveness.

Superstition

Many years ago, when I was dating, I didn’t have a lot of cash flow (and, of course, a lot of my cash kept flowing for dates), and so I used to keep an eye out for money that people had left lying on the ground (even with the economy in the state it’s in now, I’m surprised out how many people don’t think it’s worth the trouble to bend over to pick up a dropped penny). My soon-to-be mother-in-law told me I shouldn’t keep the pennies unless they were heads up. She said that finding a heads up penny is good luck, but if you find one that has the tail’s side up, then you should pick it up and throw it over your shoulder, and maybe the next person will find it heads up, and then they will get good luck. I just laughed and told her, “Any time I find money, that’s good luck.”

There have been a lot of interesting superstitions that have developed over the years. Of course, America, being the “great melting pot,” has absorbed superstitions from almost everywhere else on earth. Some superstitions are even traced back to Scripture, for example, the fear of the number thirteen (triskaidekaphobia) supposedly dates back to the Last Supper, when Jesus had dinner with His twelve disciples (no explanation that I am aware of explains why He traveled with these men for three years before the “bad luck” set in). Still, we have had people carry rabbit’s feet, or nail horse shoes over doors, throw salt over their shoulders… I try not to make fun of people’s superstitions, and I am occasionally surprised to find out that people doing these things know that they are being superstitious, but they just feel the need to act on their beliefs, anyway.

Recently, a group of atheists bought advertizing on 800 buses in the United Kingdom. /span>Part of the reason that they did that is because they kept seeing buses with religious advertising on them. The atheists’ message? “There probably is no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” The word probably has been attacked as being wishy-washy, but they wanted to avoid any legal trouble based on claims of false advertising (in other words, if someone made trouble for them, and they wound up in a court that was less than sympathetic to their goals, they might be asked to provide proof of the claim that they made in their advertisement). There are a couple of points of interest here: 1) Statistically speaking, people who are devoutly religious generally worry less and are happier than those who are not. This has been pointed out to the atheists time and time again, but there standard response is something to the effect of, that’s not a good enough reason to continue to believe in superstition. Personally, I think I would worry more if I didn’t believe in a God who has ultimate control and has my best interests at heart. I certainly don’t have very much control over my own life… 2) I would hope that these ads will get people to at least stop and think about what it is they believe and why. If I go to church because my parents went to church and their parents went to church, that’s not a very good reason. I should put some thought and study and prayer into what I believe. Mom and Dad might have had some very confused ideas—whether they called themselves Christians, or Hindus, or atheists; but I’m responsible for my own actions and beliefs.

I Give Up

Some time ago, I was listening to the radio, and a song came on that I just could not abide, so I switched stations. There are really only a few Christian stations in my area, and only one of them plays music all the time. There is another one that plays music sometimes, and the others are Christian talk stations. The station that I switched to was the station that plays music sometimes, but they weren’t playing music right then. There was a guy on the radio talking about becoming aware that there was something in his life that he needed to give up. He wasn’t sure what it was, or why he was so reluctant to give it up—whenever he considered it, he felt a sense of loss, as though giving this up would cost him something—but he was sure that he would be better off without this mysterious something. He said that, in prayer, he felt Jesus come to him, and that he and Jesus took a tour of his heart. During this tour, his heart was characterized as a home (which makes sense), and eventually, Jesus told him that there was something in the closet on the second floor that needed to go. He cried out to Jesus that he understood that it had to go, but that he just didn’t have the strength to get rid of it himself. Jesus told him that was okay, He would take care of it, He just needed his permission. This man agreed immediately, but asked only that he not have to look at whatever it was when Jesus took it away. Jesus nodded, and, a few minutes later, opened the closet door, to show that there was no longer anything in it. This man said he felt a tremendous relief. By the way, some of preceding may sound outright crazy to some of you, let me assure you that it is not; a lot of the terms used are normally considered to be physical objects, but spoken language doesn’t always lend itself to the spiritual realm.

I gave that a lot of thought. I’m not sure that my imagination is active enough to go through all of that, but it occurred to me that there were probably things in my life that were holding me back, but that I would never be able to bring myself to part with, at least, not if I had to consider what it was and what it might cost me to give it up. I will admit it, there have been times that I have hung onto things that I knew I didn’t need just because I didn’t want to miss out. Rich Mullins wrote a song lyric once a long time ago that said, “I’d rather fight you for something I don’t really want than to take what you give that I need.” I think that line resonates with a lot of people because we’ve all been there, even if we don’t realize that’s what we’re doing at the time.

That night, I spent some time in prayer, asking Jesus to take from my life anything that I was hoarding (even things that I wasn’t aware of), that I wouldn’t be able to surrender on my own. I asked Him to just take it, clean it up, and to not let me see it; that I didn’t even want to know what it was. In retrospect, I kind of wish now that I knew what it was that He took from me (although I would probably feel a tremendous sense of loss), so that maybe I could help somebody else understand why they shouldn’t be carrying that around, either. In any case, I know that there are temptations that I have spent hours fighting (and not necessarily successfully) that just don’t bother me anymore. I’m not going to go into what sort of temptations I’m talking about, because, quite frankly, I’m embarrassed about it. I know this, though, the temptations that have taken me are common to man.

Manna

It occurs to me that there is a lesson to be learned from Manna.

I think most of us are familiar with the story: When the Children of Israel came up out of Egypt through the wilderness, God gave them Manna to eat. God told them that, Sunday through Thursday, they should only gather enough for one day, but on Friday, they should gather enough for two days. The Bible tells us that some of the Israelites tried to gather more than one days worth on the days that they were only supposed to gather one days worth, and some people went out on the Sabbath day and tried to gather manna (they may have even been the same people). The Bible tells us that the people that listened to God had no lack, nor any extra. Sort of like Goldilocks with Baby Bear’s stuff: It was just right.

I don’t claim to know if the people that tried to bring in extra were greedy, or lazy, or just
had a hard time figuring out what they really needed. I can remember as a kid, my mother watching me serve my own plate and warning me that my eyes were bigger than my stomach. She was usually right; it took me a while to be able to gauge how much food would actually fill my belly, especially when I felt unusually hungry. I know some people will try to pack more food into their stomachs than what they can reasonably hold. I also know that some people are so afraid of running out of something that they will hoard it. Some people are also just plain lazy. It’s easy for me to imagine some poor Israelite thinking that life is just so rough: “Here I am, stuck in this desert with millions of other people, not a stick of antiperspirant amongst all of us, and now I have to go out and gather this manna stuff six days a week. You know, if I just gather a little extra, then I may be able to work it so that I only have to go out three days a week…” In any case, it didn’t work. Anybody that tried to put some of it away overnight found that had gone bad in the morning, except on Friday night. I would imagine that was probably confusing to a lot of people. “If I save some on Monday night, then on Tuesday morning it has gone bad, but if I save some on Friday night, then on Saturday morning it’s just as fresh as it was Friday morning.” Of course, the proper way to look at it is, “Gee, as long as I do what God said to do, then He takes care of me.”

I guess that’s why Jesus told us to take no thought for tomorrow. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t think He meant that we don’t have to do laundry (although my sister has an interesting story about some laundry and a jigsaw puzzle), but more the fact that things will happen tomorrow that we have no control over. If we spend today worrying about the things that might happen tomorrow, we won’t get done today the things that we need to get done today, which will really only make tomorrow that much worse. Solomon once wrote about a man that wouldn’t leave his house, using the excuse that there might be a lion in the street. Most of the things that we worry about are at least more realistic than that, but we need to trust God to get us through those things, rather than work ourselves up over things that we can’t change anyway. Yes, you should pray about those things, and if you don’t feel that the issue is resolved, then pray some more, but let God handle those things. Don’t be the child that asks its father to fix something that it has broken, and then refuse to let go so that the Father can fix it.

Mount Moriah

Something was pointed out to me this week-end that I had never seen before.

In Genesis 22, very early on in the forming of the foundation of the Judeo-Christian faith, God told Abraham to take his son Isaac to Mount Moriah, and offer him up as a sacrifice to God. Now, of course, after Abraham went through all the motions, up to trussing Isaac up and placing him on the altar, and raising the knife to end Isaac’s life, then God told him, essentially, never mind, you have proven your faith, that’s all that was necessary.

Now, in First Chronicles 21, David sent Joab out to number Israel. Joab tried to talk David out of it, but David insisted, and he was the king, so all the men of Israel were numbered (except Benjamin and Levi, because Joab saw the folly in actually numbering Israel). God decided to punish Israel for David’s sin, but David saw an angel (the death angel?) by the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite. David, and the elders that were with him, cried out to God for mercy, and God stayed the angel. God then commanded David to build an altar at the threshingfloor of Ornan. For some reason, 1 chronicles doesn’t really tell us where Ornan’s threshingfloor was, but, in Second Chronicles 3, we are told that Solomon began to build the temple at the site where his father had seen the angel. In other words, the temple was built on the same mountain where Abraham built the altar for Isaac. So Abraham built an altar there, David built as altar there, and Solomon built an altar there. That’s not a coincidence.

By the way, the term Moriah means, chosen by God. Apparently, this was the spot chosen by God for building altars. In Genesis 22, there is a messianic prophecy, as Abraham and Isaac are headed to the mountain, Isaac asks his father why they didn’t bring anything to sacrifice, and Abraham tells him that God would provide Himself a lamb. Of course, in the New Testament, when the Lamb of God is sacrificed for our sins, the veil of the temple (used to separate the common people from the Holiest of Holies) was torn in half. It is through that sacrifice that we have access to God Himself.