Saturday, January 19, 2013

C.S. LEWIS on Hell


C.S. Lewis, on hearing of the epitaph on a man's grave which read: "Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and with nowhere to go" replied: "I bet he wishes that were so" (Preface to Lewis's "The Seeing Eye" by Walter Hooper.)

Friday, January 18, 2013

For His Arm Is Not So Short That It Cannot Save

For an awesome testimony of a former drug addict and self admitted hopeless case watch this, I particularly wish to point out his scriptural emphasis on the reality that no-one is out of God's reach:



I particularly like his timely word-
John Joseph: 
"Had you seen me three years ago you would have likely thought I was unreachable, there's... seriously there's no reason, no reason for me to be standing here, I still can't believe I'm standing here- outside of Gods power; but I stand by Gods grace as a testament to the power of the Gospel. There is not a soul in this world who is too lost or too dead or too far from God's reach. You need to tell everyone this Gospel. Do not underestimate the power of this Gospel"

Don't let bad theology teach you that people are too far from God's reach. By his own will, Joseph became an addict but the Hound of Heaven was on his trail...! The author Francis Thompson was also an addict, a derelict living on the streets of London.

Monday, January 14, 2013

The Hound of Heaven- Francis Thompson



I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbéd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat—and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet—
“All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.”

I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside.)
But, if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of His approach would clash it to:
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars:
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o’ the moon.
I said to Dawn: Be sudden—to Eve: Be soon;
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover—
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!
I tempted all His servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue;
Or whether, Thunder-driven,
They clanged his chariot ’thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o’ their feet:—
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbéd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat—
“Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.”

I sought no more that after which I strayed
In face of man or maid;
But still within the little children’s eyes
Seems something, something that replies,
They at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
“Come then, ye other children, Nature’s—share
With me” (said I) “your delicate fellowship;
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine you with caresses,
Wantoning
With our Lady-Mother’s vagrant tresses,
Banqueting
With her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured dais,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.”
So it was done:
I in their delicate fellowship was one—
Drew the bolt of Nature’s secrecies.
I knew all the swift importings
On the wilful face of skies;
I knew how the clouds arise
Spuméd of the wild sea-snortings;
All that’s born or dies
Rose and drooped with; made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the day’s dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning’s eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
I laid my own to beat,
And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven’s grey cheek.
For ah! we know not what each other says,
These things and I; in sound I speak—
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;
Let her, if she would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
The breasts o’ her tenderness:
Never did any milk of hers once bless
My thirsting mouth.
Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;
And past those noised Feet
A voice comes yet more fleet—
“Lo! naught contents thee, who content’st not Me.”

Naked I wait Thy love’s uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee;
I am defenceless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o’ the mounded years—
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist.
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
Ah! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must—
Designer infinite!—
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou can’st limn with it?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i’ the dust;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is; what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpséd turrets slowly wash again.
But not ere him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man’s heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields
Be dunged with rotten death?

Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
“And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
Strange, piteous, futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught” (He said),
“And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited—
Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child’s mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!”
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
“Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.”

Francis Thompson (1859-1907)
Listen now to this testimony  -In this video clip we hear the story of former addict and cocaine dealer John Joseph  and how he came to Christ.






I particularly rejoice in his timely word- John Joseph: 
"Had you seen me three years ago you would have likely thought I was unreachable, there's... seriously there's no reason, no reason for me to be standing here, I still can't believe I'm standing here- outside of Gods power; but I stand by Gods grace as a testament to the power of the Gospel. There is not a soul in this world who is too lost or too dead or too far from God's reach. You need to tell everyone this Gospel. Do not underestimate the power of this Gospel"

Don't let bad theology teach you that people are too far from God's reach. By his own will, Joseph became an addict but the hound of Heaven was on his trail...! The author Francis Thompson was also an addict, a derelict living on the streets of London.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

The Fearful Implications of Absolute Human Freewill

The very real and frightening consequence of thinking of human will in absolutist terms that I have been speaking of involves multiple implications-  not the least of which, is the fact that if "free-will" in the absolute sense usually attributed to it- if it is true- then NONE of God's promises in the scriptures can have any certainty attached to them whatsoever. Those ramifications are huge and beyond the scope of this work but let us consider three.
  • Is it possible to maintain certainty here, in the fulfillment of this promise? :  "Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:" Philippians 1:6 
No, and why not, you ask? Because you, being supposedly absolutely free, do not have to remain on the operating table of God's sanctifying grace in Jesus Christ, you- being perfectly conscious and free throughout the operation of the Holy Spirit in your life to conform you to Christ- can remove yourself completely from the conforming work of God on your character at any time, at your pleasure and at your will.

  • What about this promise?: "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Matthew 16:18
No- God cannot guarantee this either, He cannot guarantee that He will build his church, and why not? Because what is the church but a collection of individuals that make up the body of Christ, but each individual- according to the absolutist view of freewill- may cut ones self free from the body at any time for any reason and return to the pathway that leads to destruction and thereby "foil" this promise to build the church and prevail against hell. And this is necessarily true of each individual if a libertarian view of freewill is assumed. Of great interest here is that Peters faith was demonstrated as such an uncertain and fickle thing up until this time. What then, came over Jesus to portray Peters' faith as Cephas- which means rock- as a rock-steady and faithful servant certain to build and serve the church? Surely and certainly Christ's confidence in Peter, was not built on anything to do with his track record or anything native to Peter but was due to the rock-steady certainty of Christs confidence in his own God-given ability to infallibly conform Peter's will to the will of God. As it is written: "As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him." (John 17:2 ) (emphasis mine)

  • What about the certainty of prophecy?: "For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet." Psalms 22:16 
No, not even prophecy is certain, and why not you ask? It is one thing to say that God by omniscience sees the future but another thing entirely to guarantee that particular future. Omniscience on its own -without the certainty of God's predestination- can only really guarantee any number of alternative scenarios dependent on the alleged perfectly free and sovereign will of mankind. It begs another question, does he foresee things simply by a perfection of vision such that humans might enjoy if our vision was superlatively advanced? We see quite clearly in the present, somewhat less clearly in the past and the future more dimly still if at all.  Seeing the future is one thing, bringing it to pass is quite another. Is it not unalterably true that the future, and therefore all his promises, are guaranteed not only by his certainty of vision but also by the certainty of his purpose? How can the future crucifixion of Christ be vouchsafed for if humans are not subject to the immutable will of God?

Perhaps those called "dogs" might have "of their own absolute free will" realized and seen that it was indeed Christ the Son of God whom they were about to pierce and done an about turn and refused to do that wicked deed? But doesn't the word "dog" invoke the sense of a creature free only to do what its nature demands of it to do? Don't we agree that God has both the power and the sovereign right to either give the revelation or withhold the revelation of just who Christ is? In just the same way as the eyes of those disciples on the road to Emmaus  "...were prevented from recognizing Him." (Luke 24:16) and then later after Jesus had instructed them in the scriptures regarding himself- "Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him," (Luke 24:31 ) Why didn't God do for those that were about to pierce him what he did for those who later mourned him? Was it not because the certainty of his vision, his foreknowledge was also guaranteed by the certainty of his plan? "This man"[Jesus]"was handed over to you by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross." (Acts 2:23) There could be no certainty of prophetic utterances coming to pass if there existed absolute certainty for human freedom to do otherwise. In fact the scriptures go further, telling us "None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory."  (1 Corinthians 2:8) So God kept the revelation of just who Jesus really was, in order that the crucifixion of Christ was guaranteed, through their wicked plans.


Well now I have to back up somewhat and provoke some thought in you dear reader...I have just been listening to an audio book by Francis Collins for the first time. He is an outstanding scientist, leader of the Human Genome project and... a Christian. I am intrigued by his recollection of his conversion to Christ in his twenties. In his narration there is a particularly poignant moment where he describes with growing fear (somewhat akin to C.S. Lewis's own conversion) the conviction that theism has a sound basis in reality. He in fact had been reading C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity and is struck by the logical coherence of his arguments for Christianity.  Collins' intellectual honesty is such that he has begun to realize the grounds for his (by his own admission-) casual agnosticism are disappearing fast, seemingly leaving him nowhere to hide. It is at this point he relates to a part of a sonnet, which I reproduce here, that mirrored his state of mind at the time :

“Between the probable and proved there yawns
A gap. Afraid to jump, we stand absurd,
Then see behind us sink the ground and, worse,
Our very standpoint crumbling. Desperate dawns
Our only hope: to leap into the Word That opens up the shuttered universe.”
 ― Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy

This is not a leap into the dark but rather a leap into the assurance of the Word. True it is a leap, and no leaps are without some sense of risk otherwise why call it a leap at all? But of course it is the Word of truth itself that has caused the ever-widening gap. We see here perhaps the instant in which in our minds eye the gap between a life lived so far, and a future life with the Word is on a par. Is this not the same that C.S. Lewis expressed when he said in his account of conversion in "Surprised by Joy"? 

'Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. "Rum thing," he went on. "All that stuff of Frazer's about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once." To understand the shattering impact of it, you would need to know the man (who has certainly never since shown any interest in Christianity). If he, the cynic of cynics, the toughest of the toughs, were not—as I would still have put it—"safe," where could I turn? Was there then no escape?

The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears a moment of wholly free choice. In a sense. I was going up Headington Hill on the top of a bus. Without words and (1 think) almost without images, a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay, or shutting something out. Or, if you like, that I was wearing some stiff clothing, like corsets, or even a suit of armor, as if I were a lobster. I felt myself being, there and then, given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut; I could unbuckle the armor or keep it on. Neither choice was presented as a duty; no threat or promise was attached to either, though I knew that to open the door or to take off the corslet meant the incalculable. The choice appeared to be momentous but it was also strangely unemotional. I was moved by no desires or fears. In a sense I was not moved by anything. I chose to open, to unbuckle, to loosen the rein. I say, "I chose," yet it did not really seem possible to do the opposite. On the other hand I was aware of no motives. You could argue that I was not a free agent, but I am more inclined to think that this came nearer to being a perfectly free act than most that I have ever done. Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom, and perhaps a man is most free when instead of producing motives, he could only say, "I am what I do." Then came the repercussion on the imaginative level. I felt as if I were a man of snow at long last beginning to melt. The melting was starting in my back—drip-drip and presently trickle-trickle. I rather disliked the feeling.

The fox had been dislodged from Hegelian Wood and was now running in the open, "with all the wo in the world," bedraggled and weary, hounds barely a field behind. And nearly everyone was now (one way or another) in the pack; Plato, Dante, MacDonald, Herbert, Barfield, Tolkien, Dyson, Joy itself. Everyone and everything had joined the other side.'
(emphasis mine)
In both the "Severe Mercy" of Sheldon Vanauken,  and this fleeting moment of "wholly free choice" of Lewis the scene can be imagined as a set of scales, and the scales had been heavily weighted towards atheism and very light on the side of Christianity. With increasing momentum the sands of unbelief had been draining -at first imperceptibly from the heavy cup of unbelief-  and conversely, the escalating pressure of ideas confirming theism continued to fill the highest cup of the scales -without any visible effect at first- but shifting inexorably towards the point of balance. At precisely the point at which Lewis felt the weightlessness of perfect balance where he teetered "wholly free" the two cups of the scales are in equal but opposite force in the soul but then quickly reverse their position and the cup of faith comes down firmly to rest on the "Rock". I particularly draw attention to these words of Lewis:
                                  "Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom"
This in turn triggered a response in my own memory of my conversion. The feeling is something between the fear and dread of turning your back on so many things that you had believed in the past, and based your life upon and the powerful thought that you really don't know what your getting into! The older you are the harder it is, there is a lot invested in those years. Between fear and confusion, add the ingredient of desperation- you see- when the light comes on in your heart then there is no place of escape. What you had built your life upon is fast disappearing- there is no going back and yet to actually go forward into the largely unknown..? And of course your mind immediately conjures up all the negative connotations that you could possibly think of about being religious...and yet there is only one thing left to do! Oh how I delight in Lewis's turn of phrase:
    "The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation"

 The nearest I can come to of that same feeling before my own "leap of faith" is when I learnt to swim. I was a late starter, the nerd who always hung on to the edge of the pool coughing and spluttering fearful of getting out of my depth, resentful of having to be there and ashamed of not having the fun that all my friends were obviously enjoying, splashing about and being silly.

I was with my cousin on their farm for Summer holidays and we were down at the creek. I knew the moment of truth had come. There was no way I was going to go back to school and suffer the humiliation of being the only one still using a flutter-board while everyone else were swimming unaided and getting their breathing technique ironed out. Even with all the encouragement of my cousin who was really at that moment my best friend cheering me on telling me there was actually nothing to it and that I wasn't really made of lead while everyone else had built in flotation chambers, there I was at the edge of the deep pool wondering if the next few moments were going to be my last...

There really is a place where you are alone, nobody can do it for you- it is something only you can do. Yes, having people pray for you, stand with you, encourage you, offer ongoing support, friendship mentoring, but this you must do...alone. What convinced me in the end was an internal dialogue that went something along the lines of: "Are you really all that different? you can always hold your breath long enough to regain your footing and I'm sure 'Roo' (my cousin) will pull me out before I drown". I took a deep breath and purposely, deliberately launched my self into the pool and into the unknown, lifting my feet clear of terra-firma and in so doing abandoning all that had come prior to that moment and immediately I knew the joy, the reality and the freedom of floating on my own. Thank you for bearing with me on this nostalgic trip down memory lane but now to business.
The point of all this is, in every decision involving change and in proportion to the magnitude of it: fear, doubt and misgivings will be present, and what overcomes these things is trust and confidence. There is certainty in faith, it cannot be groundless, but the only way to test and to know the assurance of the new ground is to relinquish the old. To stand on the Rock of Ages.
What are the nagging uncertainties and doubts that undermine faith? What are the subtle whispering, conniving voices that herd us into passivity and inoculate us from living an authentic Christian life?
"The heart cannot delight in what the mind rejects as false." Clark Pinnock
 “You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.”-Abraham Lincoln

What do these two sayings have in common? You can fool yourself completely some of the time, you can fool yourself partly all of the time- but eventually the pigeons come home to roost. You become an ambivalent person, that is a person who cannot reconcile with his heart what he knows in his head and the result is a lack of whole heartedness.

Is this not the issue of our time? Is this not the major concern, the bane of every pastor in the affluent West, the complacency, the worldly-mindedness and timidity not only in the congregation out there but too often in personal reflection?

Christianity, it has been said, is primarily a language of the heart. Out of the heart come the issues of life. The heart is wicked and deceitful above all things and who can know it? Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

If we hold in our heads ideas that are in conflict with each other, that do not comport with reality, that do not harmonize with He from whom and in whom all reality exists- our heartlife suffers, our spiritual life suffers our mental life suffers and finally it works out into a life that does not reflect either the reality or the glory of Christ.
Our confidence in God suffers, our faith suffers, our prayer life suffers our joy suffers.

It is an old joke (and it really is no joke) that every Arminian is a Calvinist when she prays.

What does that mean?

In the history of this division, those Christians that believed in human autonomy to the extent that an individual could resist God's saving grace so far as to be out of the reach of God- were first known as the Remonstrants. These beliefs were articulated by the teachings of Jacob Arminius and were presented at the Synod of Dordrecht which presided from 1618-1619. Hence: Arminians. The Dutch Reformed Church which followed the teaching of John Calvin in the protestant tradition, rejected the teachings of Arminius on each of the five points that the Remonstrants had cited. These five points (which are not a complete theology) were later known by the acronym TULIP. In very broad strokes these are the basic principles:
T -- total depravity. This doesn't mean people are as bad as they can be. It means that sin is in every part of one's being, including the mind and will, so that a man cannot save himself.
U -- unconditional election. God chooses to save people unconditionally; that is, they are not chosen on the basis of their own merit.
L -- limited atonement. The sacrifice of Christ on the cross was for the purpose of saving the elect.
I -- irresistible grace. When God has chosen to save someone, He will.
P -- perseverence of the saints. Those people God chooses cannot lose their salvation; they will continue to believe. If they fall away, it will be only for a time.
Those who concur with John Calvin that limit the creaturely will to the demands of a fallen nature are known as Calvinists.

The joke is really pointed at the inconsistency of the Arminian system of belief.

Suppose that Arminian was praying for a lost soul (Joe).

If human freewill is truly absolute (as an Arminian believes, professes and advocates) and she desires God to save some individual, then by her own admission how can He do more? God has already done all He can do. What then is the point of prayer? But the faithful Arminian prays anyway belying an internal conflict which he or she may not even be aware of, at least on a conscious level, but the heart is not fooled by this. The heart cannot rejoice in this internal contradiction. Consequently the prayer is often no longer one of prevailing faith because of a faith system which denies the ability of God to reach infallibly. It cannot inspire that sort of faith which would otherwise have availed much; because the prayers are contradictory to a theology which robs God in the heart of the follower.

At the back of their minds is the nagging doubt: "What if Joe just wont have it, just won't listen?" Even if this is not a conscious thought, it will be a mood, a feeling or sense of pervading doubt overshadowing the prayer life.  People lose faith in prayer, they lose confidence in God, they lose the joy of a life consecrated to God- they lose the very thing that is meant to distinguish them from the rest of humanity. All at the cost of bad theology.
For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Mark 11:23 (emphasis mine)    
How can people pray confidently without heart felt doubt for the salvation of a soul, when- on the one hand in their heart they are taught and believe that an individual soul has utter control (according to libertarian freewill), and on the other we are told God is in control? This mixed message is the cause of unnecessary doubt and confusion of heart, on a deep level, while on the surface- everything passes unquestioned, and people try to live the Christian life- all the while living with this internal contradiction which is destructive of faith.

 The unbelief of the unrepentant sinner is indeed an immovable mountain from the human perspective. We cannot make someone see the truth of the Gospel, we cannot make ourselves see it either.
For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. And they that heard it said, Who then can be saved? And he said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God. Luke 18:26-27 (emphasis mine)
If a rich man with his money, power and influence cannot enter then what hope for the poor? Of course God is the answer.
 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.              2 Corinthians 4:6 (emphasis mine)
God still saves people- not because of bad theology but in spite of it.

Francis Thompson (16 December 1859 – 13 November 1907) was an English poet and ascetic. After attending college, he moved to London to become a writer, but in menial work, became addicted to opium, and was a street vagrant for years. His most famous poem The Hound of Heaven, describes the pursuit of the human soul by God.
One of the most loved and possibly one of the more difficult Christian poems to read and appreciate, "The Hound of Heaven" has been loved for over a century. It is not, however, a poem that most people cannot read without some background. ... Do not be dissuaded from reading it.
The following explanation is offered below:

The name is strange. It startles one at first. It is so bold, so new, so fearless. It does not attract, rather the reverse. But when one reads the poem this strangeness disappears. The meaning is understood. As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and imperturbed pace, so does God follow the fleeing soul by His Divine grace. And though in sin or in human love, away from God it seeks to hide itself, Divine grace follows after, unwearyingly follows ever after, till the soul feels its pressure forcing it to turn to Him alone in that never ending pursuit.
The Neumann Press Book of Verse, 1988

When people are asked to look at something, like the gospel- to give it consideration- it remains fully in their power to shut their eyes, to refuse. And this is what happens every time this invitation is offered by the human voice and is refused.  But- when God shines in the heart he has in a sense bypassed the ability to shut your eyes- to refuse. Once the light has come on, on the inside- shutting ones eyes is too late! I once was blind but now I see...

He lives badly who believes poorly of God.

Beliefs have consequences...



If you are interested in humankinds journey both through time and through the development of his worldview, you will note the irony of intellectual progress, it will not be lost on you...

Since the work of philosopher Immanual Kant and others, humankind (especially in the West) has continued along a path making the human mind to be its own supreme authority, its own criterion of truth and right. Consistent with this worldview, absolute human autonomy (now endemic to all levels of society), is the criterion by which all notions of freedom are measured.* Man is indeed the measure of all things. The supreme irony is that the more his science (and his adulation of it) has made him independent of nature and affirmed his autonomy, the more he has succumbed to a sense of being a fully determined creature, of being actually less than human. Is the Newtown School Massacre symptomatic of this worldview? Sadly there is little that still shocks us in todays world, as the photo above of the Hindu festival "Thaipusam" shows- we have an immense history and predilection for believing destructive things. Did you know that right now in the name of human autonomy learned philosophers are in all seriousness promulgating the "justice" of "post-birth" abortions? 

Go here for further implications regarding human will.


*If you have read:The Perspecuity of Freewill and God's Sovereignty  do you have recollection of being somewhat surprised at my references to the freedom of God? This may give you dear reader some measure of how much your own worldview is influenced by this question of absolute human autonomy.