Neurotheology, Part I: Christian Brains are Defective

Okay folks, time to strap on your thinking caps (pun intended). This post is more along the lines of philosophy and logic and will require patience to absorb. It is not light reading but should probably be understood by Christians-at-large for their own good. The reason it should be understood is because the "uber-intelligent" and "highly educated academic" cliche think their intellect is vastly superior to yours. Why does this matter? It matters because they are demeaning you by assuming you will stay ignorant to the tripe that some of them are espousing in the halls of elitist academia. They will then try and pass off their tripe as science to institutions like the government and medical establishment thereby getting taxpayer funding. They will then also get the chance to pass some of their tripe into law (think abortion) and manage to institutionalize illogical nonsense through legal means like I am about to explain to you. 

They will have the audacity to do this while categorizing you as mentally deficient as a religious person and making religions like Christianity into a clinical neurological/psychological disorder. All the while they give a green light to horrid sins like abortion and deviant sexual behavior. Remember folks, many "educated" people will tell you that a child in-utero isn't even human. If they can get your tax money to fund abortions, it will just be a matter of time before they will use your own tax money to find you incompetent or mentally deficient for what you believe.

I guess I should start this article by asking the reader if they have ever heard of Neurotheology?  My guess is that outside of a few Christians in the medical field, not many will have heard of it. The only reason I showed even a passing interest in it is because the prefix neuro- was followed by the word theology. So, I sharpened my pencil and did some homework to educate myself. I guess the next questions that should be asked are: Why should I care what Neurotheology is? –and- How does Neurotheology affect me? Read on folks and be surprised, slightly filled with dread and unease as we slide down the rabbit hole.

Neurotheology was a term coined/used by Dr. Andrew Newberg, Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies and an Associate Professor of Radiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. It is a term used by Dr. Andrew Newberg to describe the relationship between the brain and religious experience. The scientific community is claiming that certain areas of our brain are responsible for having posited the idea that a god could exist. I imagine then that if this portion of the brain could be killed off, the concept of a god could be too. Interesting in a novel kind of way but nothing really nutty going on here. Just a man that might have a religious background and possible belief in God trying to bridge the gap between his belief and his work. No biggie I guess.

Doing a little bit more internet searching I go to the bastion of academic credibility Wikipedia (*gag*) Wiki defines Neurotheology (also known as spiritual neuroscience) as an attempt to explain religious experience and behavior in neuro-scientific terms. It is the study of correlations of physical neural phenomena with subjective experiences of spirituality and hypotheses to explain these phenomena. In other words spiritual experiences unique to each individual person. Furthermore, it says that these experiences are the sum product of neurological and evolutionary actions. In layman's terms, your belief in God is nothing more than atoms zipping around, electrons jumping orbits and chemical reactions (yawn). This means that not only are they subjective to each individual, our religious experiences are the product of our imaginations, which being the product of our brains…are the sum product of evolutionary science. 

In short, it is predominantly godless scientists attempting to explain away God as an evolutionary figment of human imagination…nothing more. The science geeks even have a name for the God specific portion of the brain. Scientists refer to the portion of the mind that conjures up God from nothing as the (drum roll please....) “God Center”. How breathtakingly original of them. Geneticists have a genetic variation on this theme that attempt to convince us that this “God Center” goes down to the genetic level and have affectionately named the associated gene the (second drum roll and high hat please...) “God Gene”. Not much room for originality after all that boring scientific method, is there?

Frankly, I don’t view anything wrong with this avenue of inquiry. Obviously there are portions of the brain engaged when dealing with God. God made us to think and have a relationship with Him. It should not surprise anyone that studies of a person's brain that is praying would show that it is the same brain center that is engaged when a person speaks or talks with another person. The only people this seemed to surprise were godless researchers. The truth is…if scientists wish to foolishly search for the reason mankind has fabricated the existence of God…have at it. Their entire presupposition is flawed so their end results can only be flawed too. That’s fine, people are allowed to study and question things. Whatever. I honestly believe questions and doubts from skeptics inevitably strengthen the Christian faith in the end because God is indeed real and will not be mocked. Under the microscope of academic inquiry, Scriptures and God generally have fared quite well as opposed to other worldviews contrary to what a militant or rabid atheist will tout.

My problem is not in the honest inquiry but rather in the misuse and misinterpretation of the retrieved data. The same evidence that can often be used to show God’s existence such as a genetic fingerprint in man that points to intentional or intellectual design can also be used to show a direct correlation to demonic evolutionary theory to show just the opposite. Often these atheistic “proofs” can be used to assume more than the prima facie evidence warrants. Enter militant atheism. Specifically militant atheist Daniel Dennett in his book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. It is a book in which he discusses the “probability” that a gene called VMAT2 may fully account for religious belief...therefore the existence of God (or lack thereof). What’s more is Dean Hamer a neurobiologist, speculated in his book The God Gene that he had found this exact type of gene that would be responsible for such a role.

Ironically, the VMAT2 gene is polymorphic in human beings, meaning that there are different mutations of it in different people. The VMAT2 gene variants are ideally positioned therefore (in atheistic scientist’s eyes) to account for differences in people's cognitive responses to the same religious stimuli. Obviously, this would account for why some are so "weak-minded” and easily duped by "superstitious nonsense” and why some "more evolved" intelligent types like our beloved scientists are too smart (or too evolved) for all of these god fairy tales.

You should already see where this is going folks...and it should bother you.

It therefore can then be deduced that those with this gene variant could conceivably be deemed “deficient” if they have this variant. Considering we live in a godless society run by an institutionalized godless government and society is manipulated/coerced by many godless education centers…well…figure it out people. Does eugenics ring any bells with people? Think Adolf Hitler and Margaret Sanger. In the next post I will explain why the entire “science” involved in this argument becomes irrelevant because of horribly flawed logic and reasoning. 

Proverbs 21:30 ~ There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the Lord.

1 Corinthians 3:19 ~ "For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their craftiness,”

God will not be mocked and I will show why in the next post.

[Concluded in Part II]

Spiritual Neutral, Part III: It's About Time

To complete my thoughts on waiting I present the following. When it comes to waiting I will state that I am not sitting here dwelling on the mistakes of yesterday. This is nostalgia and nostalgia is human rust and ruinous to the life of a Christian. It locks me in the past and I cannot mature nor grow in future relationships when tied to old sins. In this way nostalgia or longing for the past to me are forms of spiritual distortion. Nostalgia is a spiritual dead end because at best it leaves us locked in place, at worst it drags us back into the past...into sin.

A longing for what once was when God wants me to move forward to grasp what he holds for me at the end is self-serving and exposes the sinful heart within me. What is potentially more dangerous is that I might go back and revisit sins and if they are in my mind or thoughts again it is as if I am recommitting the same sins over and over. To even think of a woman lustfully is to have committed adultery. To have had malice in my heart towards another is to have murdered. As the old saying goes: There is no use in crying over spilled milk. I need to move on.

If I view everything that happens as a negative while I'm waiting, my entire outlook on life becomes a drudgery and cursed and this is just not the Spirit of a Christian. Of course I will gladly welcome the end of my waiting but I will not sit and dwell on it because this becomes a cyclical mental trap. The Devil loves when I chase my tail. It saves Him from tormenting me...because I do it to myself. It forces me to focus and dwell solely on myself and this is not biblical. Waiting constructively on the other hand is biblical. It is painful, but biblical. The waiting has been put in place for a reason and pessimism and miserableness are not those reasons. The waiting is preparation. More specifically it is preliminary construction. Groundwork is being laid for a future creation that will bring glory to God and will bring me to my final destination which is salvation as a sanctified and then glorified believer.

If I live locked in the past, I miss what today holds for me. This is one of the reasons why I am forgiven as a believer of Jesus Christ.  I can learn from the past but also divest myself of the past's sin and burden. If I don't they have a tendency to hang around like yesterday’s garbage and stink everything up. If I live for the past I get sucked into the immediacy of the pain and miss what God has for me now. I get stuck in the stagnant air of my own myopic world. I should see my periods of waiting primarily as building my faith regardless of how painful they might be. It forces me to begin to trust in the unseen and often unknowable plans of sovereign God. If I allow the sufferings and waiting periods to build my faith they will be preparing my faith for something greater that I cannot even grasp now. Each successive act of faith builds on the last until my faith is impervious and unwavering to much of what this world and the Devil can throw at it.

I need to hold on in faith until God deems it time for me to move again. I need to redeem the time in a manner which aligned with God's word (Ephesians 5:16) because the word of God lasts forever (Isaiah 40:8, 1 Peter 1:25). In other words, even in the waiting periods I need to use my time wisely. I should dig into Scripture, pray and worship. The Bible tells me that the fear of god is the beginning of wisdom. So I will follow God's lead on this one and attempt to do His will with His guidance thereby using my time constructively. This seems like the wisest way to store up treasure for eternity (Matthew 6:19-20). I do not wish to fritter the time away.

I must learn to accept that today is the day for my joy. I cannot live for tomorrow or the day after that. Tomorrow might never come. The Lord may take me home before the sun rises tomorrow. Too often my joy has been based on what I hope tomorrow's world brings because I don’t like what today holds. The first problem with this outlook is that it takes my eyes off of what I've been called to do today. The second thing it does is makes me believe that I do not have to rejoice in what the Lord has in store for me today. This means I do not trust God. This means I am in rebellion against Him. God tells me I am to trust Him. He has told me that worry will not add a single hour to my life (Matthew 6:25-34). God knows I am waiting (and has allowed or caused it), this should give me rest and pause.

For me it stands to reason that to be able to understand and know true joy, true freedom, and beauty, I first have to know how to be broken, how to be sorrowful, how to grieve. The problem comes when I focus too intently on the problems and get buried in them rather than focusing on God and the source of our possible solution that lies in Him. Looking at the problem too long distorts reality. Even though it is completely contrary to the way my brain is wired I don’t have to orbit around every detail in a desperate attempt to solve problems. I have needed to learn that when no biblical solution lies before me, I must simply cling to God in the midst of my pain, discontent and disorientation and I have to trust him to handle the issues in the way he chooses.

I guess in the end its all about time and seasons in life. As a creature of the Creation I am locked into timetables and plans and therefore definitive waiting periods. Ironically (or should I say chronologically), I am loved and embraced by a timeless God that is the originator of these times and plans. By thinking this way it makes my temporary waiting pale in comparison to the eternal well-being I am being offered by a ageless God. It took me having to go through this waiting period to fully see and grasp this concept to the level that I now have. The waiting is indeed the hardest part but I figure it this way. If that is all I have learned from this, then the waiting has been worth it. It has been a painful time...but time well spent. God in fact has assured me of this, I need only trust Him in faith and wait. It is better to have extra time on my hands here when I can repent and seek God than when it is too late and I have plenty of time to be tormented in Hell.

Spiritual Neutral, Part II: The Action In My Inaction

As I said in the previous post, waiting in spiritual neutral is does not mean motionlessness and stagnation. There will be action or things going on in what appears to be God’s inaction. It's just that my senses are not sensitive enough to pick out God’s acts from the background static of the world. It could be that He is doing something so vast that I am standing too close to the mountain to see it moving. Just like I view myself as motionless when lying in my bed but the truth is I'm hurdling through space on a radial arm of the Milky Way galaxy.

I have learned that change can happen in the waiting.

God’s actions can often seem the same. Without the sensation of movement I can often be fooled into believing nothing is actually happening when in reality I am closer and closer to the place God wants me every day. Again, this requires trust in God that what He is doing is to my benefit and I must believe in true faith that all will work out in the end. The pain may be physical but the gain is nearly always spiritual with God.

What I should do in this season of waiting is view my painful task of waiting as a form of obedience which should further be seen as a form of worship to God. Yes, I know, I never saw it that way until now either. If we look at how most people worship God ...it would appear that worship really is a form of waiting or at least a pause for reflection. We often stop everything, sit or stand in one place and attempt to quiet our souls and minds and focus solely on God. So in truth I am not really being passive about what appears to be a lousy situation but instead I am turning control over to God and in doing so I am offering a form of worship through obedience in waiting. 

It is an active passivity though. I am not going totally limp here and becoming an evangelical jellyfish. Instead I am making my will passive or subservient to God. In doing so it makes total sense that this would literally effect me at the physical and psychological level. This passivity means waiting until a clear indicator is given to do otherwise. Again, the wait may require superhuman endurance...and that is the point. What I find though is that instead of waiting and being a builder of faith I digress. Instead of seeing what I have in Christ, I end up letting the wait be a disappointment or letdown. I focus on the tangible things that I don’t have or have not been able to acquire because I am in a divinely ordained neutral. I then reach for substance but grasp nothing but straws. My focus has been in the exact wrong direction if I do this. I do the same in my worship at times. I get distracted by the anxieties and worries of the world.

Scripture is replete with exhortations to wait on God. Sometimes we are even told of the benefit for doing so. Isaiah tells us our strength will be renewed and bolstered with strength and endurance. Hopefully this will be for further service to the Lord. 

Isaiah 40:31 ~ “But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.”

James speaks to us of waiting in our suffering.

James 5:7-8 ~ “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.”

James' thoughts are paralleled and elaborated on by Paul in Romans. The idea that suffering might pervade our wait is then reinforced. 

Romans 5:3-4 ~ “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope…”

The idea that the waiting and suffering is to serve a positive "God purpose" then gets shown to us by Peter. Peter shows us that the waiting is clearly not a punishment but may actually be a plan by God to assist us in avoiding eternal punishment. This is just the opposite of what many believe they are going through when being forced to wait. 

2 Peter 3:9 ~ “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

If the wait is actually an attempt to avoid eternally perishing, this premise assumes that either one is not saved or this waiting is a merciful act of sanctification to make the believer more holy in their act of repentance. So you see, waiting even for extended periods is indeed Biblical and it does indeed serve a purpose even though you might not be able to see it from your vantage point.

So, in passive acts of obedience or in patient waiting, it makes sense that I should be praying constantly just as I would in worship whether it be individual or communal. I might be physically torpid or appear stationary but I am not spiritually immobile by any means. This misunderstanding is the path to apathy and apostasy. Instead, I should be attentive and attuned to God’s Spirit in a way I never have before in the past and this is exactly where I find myself right now. Just because I am waiting does not mean I am not worshiping and searching out God’s will through His word. I am currently buried in Scripture like a squirrel trying to find last year’s acorn. Things are anything but parked or immobile right now. Movement is just taking on different form that I have not seen before and ironically, can't really see right now either. Come to think of it, grace has taken on a few new forms in all of this also. The bottom-line: There is action in my inaction, there is worship in my waiting and God lies behind all of it...

[Concluded In Part III]

Spiritual Neutral, Part I: Waiting Is the Hardest Part

And now for a brutally honest blog
introduction.

I hate waiting. 

Yup, its true. This fruit of the Spirit usually called long-suffering or patience is sorely lacking at times in my Christian walk. In my writing I am becoming more and more honest about myself and open to others about my flaws because the Holy Spirit has been convicting me to do so. I guess this is for others to find comfort in the fact that they are not alone in this sometimes arduous journey to glory. It should not not make us complacent though. 

And now I am going to call you to do something that is completely counter-intuitive. The next two posts should be a call to action in our inaction. I can hear the groans already...what are ya talking about Andy? Have you lost you marbles? Let me clearly state the following: In what appears to be spiritual neutral, I quite possibly might be in spiritual overdrive.

Follow my train of thought folks.

I am not a very patient man and never have been either. You can ask family members or 
friends... I'm all about getting things done in the quickest, most accurate and efficient way possible. Perhaps this is why God led me to a Quality Engineering vocation along with ministry. God is all about getting things done too but God is sovereign and in control and I am not. I do things in His time, not mine. That is the enormous difference between He and I (besides divinity).

God is extremely patient and often uses this patience to affect ends in my life. The infinite and finite operate on different timescales. It took 2000 years from the time of David until the arrival of the promised Messiah Jesus. It took 400 years of slavery for the Egyptians to release the Hebrew slaves. It took an additional 40 years of desert wilderness wandering until God’s people were permitted to enter the Promised Land. It took 120 years for Noah to build the ark before it started raining…he did it in a desert that had never seen rain.

The divine timepiece is set to God’s reckoning and I need to synchronize my clock to God’s. I have needed to learn to wait…and often I need to wait to learn. Patience has been a learning experience and yes, it can be taught. I have needed to learn to take pause and realize that there is nearly always going be a delay between when I think things should take place and when God will allow them to take place. There is clearly an asynchronous element to my relationship with God and it is caused by my sin.

God will nearly always opt to postpone what I think could be done now. How well I wait is a very good indicator of my heart’s condition. What does it look like for you? Do you want that promotion now? Do you want the ills of your relationships to be forgiven and forgotten yesterday? Sorry, it will not work out that way. Healing takes time and even then, scars from serious trauma can remain. It is not an instantaneous process as I have learned. Time is of the essence. As Pink Floyd sang in their song Time from Dark Side of the Moon, time or waiting is living in light of circumstances and can be the, “…ticking away of moments that make up a dull day.” Conversely, it can also be incremental changes of healing that take a much longer duration. Perhaps longer than you ever imagined. You must remember something though. God is sovereign and if you’re waiting, you are waiting every second because God has ordained it. What you might see as Pink Floyd’s, “…fritter[ing] and waste[ing] the hours in an offhand way,” God sees as serving His divine purpose. I personally have found the grace and discipline of waiting on God’s timing to be the most difficult part of my Christian walk.

The discipline of Christian waiting is to live for a long sustained period of time when I don’t understand what God is doing behind the scenes. God has plans so I can rest assured in the fact that something is indeed transpiring out of my view. What’s worse is during these times I will not have any control over my circumstance. If I do try to control things I make them even worse. It is at this point I need to just go passive and allow God to act in my life either directly through me or through others. The end result is to effect a change. In this waiting, on the surface in real-time it looks as if He is doing absolutely nothing in my life or is purposely doing things to make life go down the tubes or go backwards. In these waiting periods it looks as if He is specifically sabotaging my life and messing with me. So much for looks. Looks are deceiving.

The nature of this type of waiting is excruciating. It takes me beyond my faith and my intelligence into the realm of the Holy Spirit and what God can do for me. Therefore, I am often out of my element as a sinful man. It is not about my ability at this point. It is about grace and faith since my physical ability will not do anything to move the situation forward. When I have a modicum of control over simple things in life I am comfortable. These waiting periods are not about control or comfort. It is all about discomfort and not having control. If I had control I would move things forward and I wouldn’t be uncomfortable, would I? 

Welcome to God’s world of grace. If I thought I could make sense of it, this would at least allow me mental control to rationalize the situation (and this would be a much shorter blog post). This isn’t about being rational or reasoning through something either. It is about faith, which sometimes…cannot be reasoned through or rationalized since it is of the Spirit. It (faith) can only be relied upon. These are places where my ability to logically think through something is utterly useless. God will not allow me to wrap my arms or mind around the situation and I am left with only the instrument of faith through grace to deal with it.

People have asked me in the past, “How will I know I am in one of these periods?” Trust me folks, you’ll know when you’re in them and you won’t need to ask. Once you are in this spiritual neutral position it will become unbearable and unrelenting. You will push to get somewhere or anywhere but will only succeed in getting to nowhere. It will push you to places you did not know you could enter and not let you enter places you were used to going. You will have entered a spiritual place that most will never arrive at and few know how to deal with. It will be totally foreign to the modern evangelical experience. I have not encountered many that have been there and few will be able to assist you. Why? Because most have not gotten there and if they did…they never made it back. If they didn’t make it back it is because they got lost in the middle of the barren landscape or lost in neutral. It will be a place marked by having no strongly marked characteristics or features. Its main characteristic is that it will have no notable characteristics. There are no roads signs out there. As I have said, it is barren and devoid of meaningful directions. God seems either conspicuously absent or deafeningly silent.

You will oscillate between not caring and senses of desperation that God is not acting on your behalf the way you think He should. The worst thing to do though is to assume that your gearshift is in Park. You must understand that you are capable of moving in Neutral but it will be in a mostly passive manner. Someone will need to push and steer. You will be moving but you will be in the back seat as an observer to your own life at times. You won’t be allowed in the driver’s seat nor will you be the fuel for movement. Something outside of you will be moving you forward and steering your vehicle/life. You will be in Neutral but you might still be moving somewhere. You will be somewhere in-between. It is a place where you will really know what it is to be still and know God is God.

Psalm 46:10 ~ “He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

The wordage here in Hebrew is precise. This passage is telling us to submit to the kingdom in faith. The command to “be still” הַרְפּ֣וּ is from the Hiphil stem of the verb raphe which means to “let go” or “let oneself become weak”. In other words surrender your will to God. We are to be still and know what? That God is God. That means God is all of God’s attributes including sovereign (i.e.: large and in charge). We are to give up trusting in ourselves / others and trust the only trustworthy One: God. If we surrender to the truth that God is indeed in control, we then can find peace in even the worst and most trying circumstance of waiting because the wait is being caused by Him for His purpose. Once we understand this, the knowing offers us at least the piece of mind that the wait will not be in vain for a negative purpose.

It is in this "spiritual neutral" that I am learning to truly trust God in true faith that only this waiting period can teach me. Is it easy? No, nor was it meant to be. It is there to test my faith and the condition of my heart. Why? Because God is not interested in what I want here and now. He is interested in what I have coming in the hereafter. 

Here is another instance where the rubber meets the road of life. This is where theology meets practice. It is the junction point of faith and substance in a true believer’s life. This is the fuel that fires the engine that drives the tires that moves us down the road of the Christian journey. The question then becomes: Will I leave a burnout or will I just stall the engine when it comes time to jam it in gear? It must be understood that God will not keep me in neutral forever. He has a purpose for me in this life and because He does, it precludes the fact that I would stay in neutral indefinitely.

God forces me through these periods to show me that I should not try to find my securities in the physical worldly circumstances or myself. My hope is to be found in Him, in Christ. In the One that has the ability to give life in the face of death. God puts me through these periods to show that there isn’t even deliverance from petty earthly problems through my own means or own works. Only through Him and His work is there gain in painful waiting periods.

So what is another reason for needing to go through the wait? Perhaps it is to do what I am doing now? I am writing to you. Perhaps it is the same reason people need to suffer at times. I am learning to wait on God so when the next person goes through a similar event, I will be there for them to walk them through this passive spiritual no-man’s-land. It is a vast empty plain that makes little sense to the one standing in the middle of it. It requires someone that has already walked through it and is anchored at the outer edges to makes sense of it. It is sometimes hard to find one’s way out of a blinding desert sandstorm without assistance. Knowing this to be true I am writing this to not only find catharsis in my situation, I am also trying to draw up a map for the next person to find their way out of this barren wilderness once they get out of neutral. Perhaps God is working through me to help you out of your waiting or at least help you understand it?

We all must understand that waiting is pivotal in the lives of Christians that serve others. Ministry involves the need to interact with other people. We can only do things at the speeds that the other people can handle or process situations. If we try to move them along faster than God wants or they can handle, we might be walking outside of God’s plan for them. Waiting also requires a sensitive self-awareness and others-awareness. This ability comes with patience and time. It requires waiting. Ministry is, at its heart, a waiting game that waits on God to act (or not).

As with everything else in the Christian life, there is a God-relationship aspect to this which will be explored in the next post. 

[ Continued in Part II ]

The Choke Hold On My Life, Part II: The Struggle For Control

So over the last few years I have witnessed what has amounted to a reordering of control in my life and it has been spiritual warfare between my own flesh and God. Until I began to give up control to God, I was fighting a losing battle. By fighting God I ended up fighting against my own flesh and also the powers and principalities of this world. By allowing God greater control in my life through the Holy Spirit, I was essentially letting Him wage war in my flesh and the spirits around me. By simply stopping the war of control with God I got a win-win situation. He took control over something I couldn’t control anyway and the battle is therefore already won on the eternal scale. I may still struggle day-to-day but the battle is tolerable at times now.

Furthermore, the dissatisfaction and disappointment over not having control then disappear or at least become minimized. These feelings were all reactions that flowed out from my unholy struggle with accepting what God has allowed to come into our lives. Again…a product of me not willing to relinquish control to God over all matter in my life…even suffering and chastisement.

This is the most powerful and important war in all of Creation. God is sovereign whether I believe in Him or not. He is sovereign whether I believe He is sovereign or not. God’s kingdom will come…like it or not. God’s will therefore rules. Since many will not obey God and will not always wish to do what I would like them to do…there will be a lack of control over my surroundings. The world does not belong to me, nor do I really belong in it (Philippians 3:20). I in my own person actually belong to another because I have been bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:20). If I have actually died to self as a Christian should, I will give over control to God like a slave to His Master.

Because I was made by God for God in His image, I should find the greatest contentment and least need to control anything when in the center of His will. I should be quieted even if His will currently has me in the midst of suffering or disorientation at midlife. The truth is that the discontents that I feel and disappointments are in reality struggles or deeper disappointment with God since God knows what is best for me. Here again is the struggle for sovereignty over my life. The more I fight, the more profound and debilitating the struggle with God becomes.

If on the other hand I am allowing God control there will be less cynicism in my life. Why? Because if I believe God is indeed in the driver’s seat things will have to become more positive, not cynical. Why? Because God knows everything I don’t. He knows how to avoid future dilemmas that I should’ve never encountered had I actually stayed on course within His will. God orders everything and ordains everything and obedience in the Bible begets blessing, not curses (Deuteronomy 28). God knows all the mysteries of this life and the life to come. Why shouldn’t I trust Him and give control of my life over to Him? I rise each day from a darkness of sleep but God is ever vigilant for the well-being of His people. I should be able to bank my trust in a God like this.

I had grown impatient with many things in my life. I was a person with an extremely short fuse or no fuse at all. I was quickly irritated reacting poorly to even good gestures. It was clear not only to me but to others something deeper down was affecting my moods. No, my anger was coming from the fact that I was no longer able to control my life. The façade had been pulled up and my new self-awareness made this truth hard to bear so I was lashing out. I should’ve been submitting control to God all along and now it was coming back to torment me with a vengeance.

So why did I find myself so angry all of a sudden? I found that anger expressed to others was actual anger that was direct at God but then redirected to people around me. The anger is really redirected anger from God to the most current person preventing me from getting what I think I need or want. I am really angry at God for not allowing things to go my way. Again, I find myself placing myself in the place of God. This anger of course is a symptom of a much deeper anger that was sucking the life out of my relationships and therefore my ministry.

I had begun to abandon godly habits in favor or embracing the world. I was giving up to pursue godless things. In my disappointment with God I had reached a point in my entire life where I was essentially thinking that if this is as good as it gets, what’s the point in even trying. I had cut back drastically on prayer time until it was virtually non-existent. I began cutting church attendance occasionally too. Everything I had done didn’t seem to matter….so I stopped. These action upon closer examination exposed a festering wound that need to be seen for what it was. Misguided motivation. I had done things for myself. I did things to improve my status. I did things to improve my position in life. If others benefited from my success (like wife and family) all the better. If God got glory because of what I was doing, great! But I was living for myself. My motivation was not to serve and help my family. I was not motivated to bring glory to God. I was doing things form myself and occasionally those things brought the center of attention in my life to God. The problem is that God was not at the center of my life.

The more the need for control is strangling off my heart, the more difficult my life will be. The more my own map of life is wrong…the more disappointment I will encounter. As failures of plans mount (which they will), self-worth will continue to diminish. This in turn will make me want to more adamantly control things leading to a faster the slide. Instead of seeing my fault in the failures, I then resort to blaming others. By blaming others I again attempt a small modicum of control and defer accountability of my own failure. It is in reality an evil illusion. All of this is a vicious dizzying death spiral like a plane going down. It just spins around in circles until it crashes and burns.

Compound my bad motives with a growing attachment to worldly things that was spawned because of a disenchantment with things that were spiritual…and life’s trajectory was aimed at destruction. I had exchanged God for things and ideas. I had made the creation the center of my focus, not the Creator. The system of my life wasn’t meant to work this way and now life was becoming dysfunctional. God and the world were competing for my attention and the world was winning. God therefore steps in and intervenes. I was no longer amazed by God’s glory because I wasn’t really seeing God for who He was. So the world which I could see every day was taking hold of me and affecting my motives and desires. God wasn’t giving me the pleasure and happiness I thought I deserved so I was trying to find it in the world. I was trying to find my identity in the world instead of Him. In trying to control others people including my wife I was not loving them I was loving me in a parasitic relationship. I was trying to find happiness where it would never be found…in other fallen people. I idealized other people and when they couldn’t live up to my expectations they had essentially failed me. I should’ve been looking to God the whole time. I became blind to God because of the immediate fallen human emotions and sensation I was currently feeling. Our feelings are subject to the fall and should never be trusted until matched against Scripture.

In truth I will never completely understand what God is doing. Knowing probably won’t help me much anyway because I wouldn’t want things to go the way God wants them to anyway. My mind is enmity against God even in its best condition. I will probably never be able to figure it all out. The desire to not control will only be found when I actually trust God. The fact I still battle with this condition exposes the wicked disposition of my heart. The fact is that when I continue to try and control, I don’t trust God. If I don’t trust God than I do not believe in the sovereign God I say I believe in, do I? If I complain that God should’ve taught me this lesson about control sooner or earlier in my life, then I am questioning God’s timing. Again, another issue of distrust. I am substituting the physical for the spiritual. Whether I succeed in life or fail is not dependent on whether or not I was in control (because I’m not). I really do need to be still and know God is God (Psalm 46:10). When God is God than I can rest in all the truths of His other attributes. This should bring the happiness that I believe I can only get through my control of my life. The failed control that makes me miserable.

I should see that my perceived struggles are actually signposts of God’s faithfulness, not His curse. I should be reassured that when these acts of grace are unfolding in my life it is God’s hand actively shaping my life through His control. For a long time I did not recognize what was happening to me was grace. I didn't recognize it because it didn't look like any type of grace I had seen before. It was painful grace. I was on the lookout for something else altogether. I wanted pleasant grace, God wanted difficult grace. I wanted it to end quickly. God wanted it to last for a while. So I didn't see it as grace. It was a grace of failure and mistakes not successes and smooth sailing. God took things rather than giving. His grace turned out to be a grace of discomfort and heartbreak. All I wanted was safety and predictability but instead I got risk and unpredictability. In place of strength he gave weakness and defeat. I just didn't like this grace.

I realized God was slowly delivering me from my own sins: anger, impatience, rage, ambition, etc (Galatians 5:19-21). The answer to my control issues was as simple as a proper active relationship with God through the Spirit. Through His unsettling and disquieting grace He was making that relationship happen because it was Him I needed to turn to in my discomfort to alleviate it. The truth is that this world and its fallen nature distracts me from the purpose of having this relationship with Jesus Christ at every turn. I must actively fight the urge to give into the world and cling to God. It is a daily war that will last indefinably in this life and will give no quarter. I must be ever vigilant and prepared to fight in this war by giving control to God. The same control that I push hard for everyday but it always manages to stay one step ahead of my grasp...and always will…because it’s not mine.

The Choke Hold On My Life, Part I: Who's In Control Here?

In an ongoing examination of sin in my life I keep coming back to anger and frustration. I find most often that the source of my anger is that my life or my plans are not working out. They are not going the way I wanted or intended them to go. This assumes I am sovereign over my own life. I of course, would be totally wrong. I am merely a steward over the things God has given me and put at my disposal. I am even a steward over my own body and life. How you ask? It is because my body and life are a temple of the Holy Spirit and I am a living sacrifice or testament to God as a Christian (1 Corinthians 6, Romans 12). Even non-believers serve God purposes as the Bible showed with Nebuchadnezzar and King Ahasuerus/Xerxes. I will be held accountable for my actions not only to others but even to my own person, body or soul. The bottom-line is I want to have control of things and think sometimes I might…but really I do not.

Why is it, that men like me have an issue with control? It is an issue I have struggled with trying to overcome since forever. It is another issue my wife has patiently tolerated for way too long. The idea of relinquishing control to me is frightening but I have had to learn to humble myself and when needed, be meek. I need to loosen my choke hold on my life. The tighter my death grip was on my life and others, the more I choked the life out of my relationships. Most importantly I was choking off my relationship with God and my wife in my marriage.

Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

The verse above says I cannot serve God and money but the truth of the passage (and its intent) is that we cannot serve anything of the creation in lieu of God or we make what we serve our god in God's place. We make it our idol. Making myself my own master made me my own idol. I became a golden calf. 

I am no longer to live for myself and I am certainly not to make myself an idol.

Romans 14:7-8 ~ “For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone.  If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.”

2 Corinthians 5:15 ~ “And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”

Exodus 20:3-4 ~ "You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below."

I am therefore at war with God over sovereignty and control over my life. Even if say I am trying to control my circumstances to produce a better outcome or I attempt to control other people with their own freewill, I am in reality trying to outmaneuver God. If God is truly sovereign and acting in providence, this has to be true. No matter how this shakes out in the end, I lose. God either gains mastery over me in holiness because I have submitted to Him or He gains mastery over me in eternal punishment because I’ve not repented and have been condemned to Hell. Either way, it is clear to me that God will always be in control. Fighting from this perspective then seems pointless. By trying to usurp control I choke off the blessing in my own life.

It should not surprise us men then that we are in this battle when our culture and society has taught us to be self-sufficient. The quintessential American cowboy and rugged individualist. Men (and women) have been questioning God’s sovereignty, authority and right to rule over us since Genesis 3 and today is no different. I believe the exact words from the Devil were, “Did God really say?” Then the further temptation, “You will be like God.” I first try to question God’s wisdom and then I think I can replace Him. Typical idolatry. Typical sin. 

When I sit here and say that my plans have not gone the way I want them to, what I am really saying is that my plans were indeed better then God’s because mine were better quality and better suited to me. I guess what I'm saying is that I know what's best for me, don’t I? How could God possibly know me better than I do? Well, the fact is, He does. He has carefully planned my days long in advance (Ephesians 1:4-6, Romans 8:28-30). I can only approach each day one at a time. I can only live them like the minute hand ticking of time on a clock. God on the other hand knew the plans He has for me (Jeremiah 29:11).

Where is the proof of this in the Bible. We see that Peter would one day serve the purposes of God in ways that not even he intended nor wanted to and he is told this by Jesus Himself.

John 21: 18-19 ~ “Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”  Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!”

Peter will not be in control of his own life when he grows old but knowing this in advance shows the Jesus is in control ahead of time. Knowing this, what does Jesus tell Peter to do? Follow Him. The question is: Why should Peter follow Jesus if it leads to death? Simple. Even dying for Christ, while being in Christ is gain and loss of this world is actually gain of eternal life. The best thing I can do by dying to self and giving my life for and to God...is to die. I will then be dying for God’s cause in glory and I will get my ultimate reward by entrance into glory with Jesus. Of course this is not a pretty scenario from this side of Heaven but I am not to live for what this life gives but rather what God gives in eternity on the other side.

Philippians 1:21 ~ “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”

The root of the problem with me is the flesh.

Romans 8:6-8 ~ “The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.

In the midst of what seems like a huge loss and debilitating dissatisfaction with life I have tended to fall back into survival mode that casts off moral restraints in favor of what I want. This was not Peter’s course and it most likely won’t be mine. I try to control everything in sight to try and steer what I view as an errant life back on course but to no avail. It is like fighting the tide when in reality I am fighting something even more powerful: God. When life throws fiery darts my way it is so hard to look toward the heavens and see the positive purpose of giving up one’s life even more than I already am to God. The sin in the flesh doesn’t want to and ops to fight for control anyway. Furthermore, in the middle of pain I am prone to question the validity and wisdom in God’s decisions for my life. I withdrawal into myself to protect myself from further disorientation and pain.

I have also tried to control (or manipulate) others around me which is an attempt to control my environment that had also gone awry. In an attempt to control my environment I end up manipulating others. Usually this is not intentional but rather an attempt to maintain what I believe is proper structure in life. Again, I am imposing myself in God’s roll and I am imposing myself on others and both are wrong. The manipulation of others is the end byproduct of trying to control my surroundings. What makes matters worse is I will then often take offense when people don't do what I believe they should have done which further deteriorates my relationship with them. I get frustrated and the people I am unintentionally trying to control end up feeling like objects. In particular they feel like puppets. I don't ever remember God making me feel this way so I should not be doing it to others either.

The Bible tells me that I am to do the opposite. I am to open my arms to God in faith and relinquish control over to Him, even if it means another punch in the teeth. I am not to treat others unfairly or manipulatively but to love and to serve them. This requires that I release control over my life to others to find out what they need done in theirs. This also requires that I allow them to tell me what to do. To allow God control over my life is to obey Him and let Him control. To love and to serve others means I have to give up my freedom to do what I want in my life so that I can do for them. I must actually turn control over to them too at least temporarily. Everything in my flesh screams at me to do the opposite. To run and hide. If I do not want to do for others I am being selfish, nothing more. It sort of ends up being a paradox.

So…when I feel impelled to control like many men (and women) are prone to do, I am being idolatrous, selfish and unloving…and so are you if you do the same. Sin compounded by layers of sin. Not such a great place to be in one’s walk with God. Come to think of it, if I had continued to do this there was a good chance I was not walking with God at all. If you are doing the same…neither are you. If I add anger (I did) to this because people are not doing what I want when I am trying to control them, I am just adding more sin to the mix. My sin then becomes manifold until it takes me over completely and spirals life totally out of control. I try to justify my anger by calling it frustration but it is still anger. This of course is the very opposite effect that I intended by attempting to control things. Instead of water on a fire, I toss on more gasoline which accelerates sin's destructive effects. God really does give me over to my sin at this point. What’s worse is the modern culture tells me that this is acceptable behavior (just like it does with anger, greed, sexual immorality, etc). You be in control of life! You have your best life now! Blah-blah-blah.

So what am I to do with this entrenched sin in my life? Guess we will need to unpack more in the next post…

[Continued in Next Post]

Deeds In The Weeds

I have to admit that I am disorientated at midlife. At 45 years old I’ve come to powerful personal and spiritual awareness and it is really messing with my interpretation of the world and myself. In the last five years I have begun to see myself having developed into a person I don’t always recognize. In some cases I have become stuck in certain ways and in others I have changed to be unrecognizable. Most of these changes have taken place unnoticed until now. Others have been purposely shaped and formed by sanctification through prayer, biblical study and spiritual persuasion.

In the past I had instinctively organized things into the little boxes that I carried around in my brain. Call it OCD, call it a need to control my life and surroundings. Whatever.  What I have found is that I have very little or no control over much of anything…especially my life’s circumstances. I have even less over other’s lives. This is where true awareness became evident to me about 6 years ago. These facts have pretty much rendered my categorizations and mental organizations useless. I guess my brain is too small. I had been so busy trying to keep up, pay bills to raise a family and do what I thought was required of me, I lost track of life. All of a sudden I was middle-aged and I realized I barely knew my wife, children or worst of all…Jesus Christ. I had depleted the secular fuel tank and I began to crash against the an invisible wall. I realize I had not correctly prioritized my life and the root of this disorder was that my moral core had been left to spin in a void without the guidance of the Bible or a relationship with God. Where I had been able to organize things I had found that the premise for my organization was flawed.

At some point I began to wise up and to see that my boxes or categorization were too little or too few in quantity. I had tried to make life simple and in doing so I had made my life chaos. I tried to squeeze my life and my family’s life into whatever box I felt like carrying at any given moment. Life doesn't fit in a box. I had misinterpreted actions by not only my friends but even my family. I wasn't driven and motivated I was selfish and narcissistic. I did things for me and not with the well-being of others. I was not biblical and that was my ultimate downfall. My life spiraled farther and farther into confusion and disorder until it all broke.

In doing these things I failed to see how important and influential my interpretive view and perception of life was. Life will always look like the groups and classifications that you bring to it. If I was too myopic in my outlook, my conclusions would be myopic and small too. How I act and what I do in any given situation would be determined by how I have organized my understanding of not only my surroundings but myself also. If I believe I am self-sufficient and am inherently a good person, I will not seek outside myself for help or fellowship with others. This of course is a recipe for disaster. In other words, in my old state, I would not have admitted I was a sinner in need of saving. Midlife forced me to take stock of my life and realize much of life just wasn’t adding up.

I had skipped like a stone over the top of my life without ever diving in more than a few inches. I had packed too much into my life to have spent any quality time on anything in particular. I had lived for just about everything and gain nothing but a depleted bank account and dysfunctional or damaged relationships. What made things worse was the culture told me I was right to pursue selfish desires even when I was dead wrong. Society tells us everyone’s opinions are truth even when they clearly cannot be. Therefore, not only are my measurements and categorizations for life inadequate…so are society’s. They are painfully insufficient and I learned this the hard way.

Crisis in midlife therefore is not only about our true identity is but it seems to expose weaknesses that have been there all along. I allowed them to tag along like a third wheel because they didn’t really hurt anything. The problem with this is that eventually, these problems did become exacerbated or come into sharper focus. Then they have to be dealt with and they are much larger than they should be. Compound this with a new acute awareness of one’s surroundings and BOOM, I had a monster in my life that could crush an 800lb gorilla to death. All these circumstances push towards dissatisfaction with life in general because things didn’t work out the way I had planned. Therein lies the problem. As a Christian, I am under the will of God, not my own.

So how do I turn this lumbering beast around?

The answer has already been hit upon in this post. God needed to be at the center of my life and decision-making. Not just in platitudes, but in the real deal. In my weaknesses that I have exposed or become aware of at midlife, I was strong. How? My weakness is where God can begin to shine through into my life. We see the same thing in Paul’s thorn in the flesh. In Paul’s inadequacies (and ours), we gain the most spiritual strength because this is where God’s grace is the most profound.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10 ~ “…there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

It was as if I suddenly begin to look around and I didn’t like my life. More specifically, I looked around and I didn’t recognize my life. There are the ever-present and possible job problems, stress or frictions in relationships or marriage. The new acute awareness made me see things in ways that I never had before. At times I looked at my life and it seemed purposeless, routine, and dull. In the haste of chasing everyday chores and duties…things got lost. Once held values lost importance. Things became devalued…even important relationships. Had the Bible and a relationship with Christ been the highest priority, these things probably wouldn’t have happened. Even now with Christ and Scriptures at the center of my life I still struggle.

Why?

It is because even though I tell you now that they are at center, the truth is my sinful fallen state assures that they won’t be. This is why I pray and meditate constantly and always attempt to keep God at center. I realize that right now I am extremely vulnerable. If I do not keep a clear intense focus on Jesus at this point in my life… I will miss the mark completely and probably permanently. This ironically…is the exact definition of sin. The word ἁμαρτία/hamartia or sin in the Bible literally means: “To miss the mark”. It is loss of reward for not hitting the target.

What target? The target is God’s standards which I have clearly mentioned above. Holiness. What reward? The reward is an eternal relationship with Jesus Christ. The reward is Christ Himself, heaven is secondary believe it or not. The Kingdom is a by-product of our relationship with The King not vice-versa. I will not find contentment in Heaven, I find contentment in Jesus/God Himself. Why? Because I was created by Him for that exact purpose and it brings glory to the Godhead. He doesn’t need me, I need Him and when I am in Him…I am complete…I will be content. This is one of the reasons people (including myself) are so adept at creating idols. We are made to be in relationship with God. When we don’t have a relationship with the real God or cannot because our sin interferes, we end up making one that can adapt to our sin. Our sin therefore makes our god and because it is rooted in sin…we die in it and because of it. Fake gods cannot save, they kill and condemn. Only the Living God can give life.

In the throes of godless dissatisfaction I experienced one of many symptoms like consistent boredom, restlessness, discontent, or disillusionment. The bottom line is that I was not happy with my life's narrative. The lives of others around me seemed much more interesting and attractive in ways that they have not before. This dissatisfaction was not necessarily about a particular thing but a general feeling of discontent.

My midlife struggles had very powerfully revealed the things of my heart like nothing ever had before. My interpretation of events in my life had shown me a failed theology and a theology that had not been applied. My theology was still abstract and subjective. I now had to apply what I actually believed to real life. In other words: I had to walk the walk and talk the talk, not just give lips service. I needed an applicable and functional theology, not an inapplicable and dysfunctional theology. I needed to match up what was in my heart to my actions. They were two completely different things and until I got them together and both aligned to God…it was like having two different personalities (imagine Romans 7 on adrenaline). I had found the discontinuity in life and needed to bridge the gap.

The things I said I had been living for had to become the things I said I had been living for. I had to really live a life for Jesus. I had to really become humble. I had to become meek. I had to allow myself to be wronged without retaliation. I had to be willing to truly die to self. I had to read my Bible every day. I had to pray as much as I said I was praying. I needed to sacrifice. I had to participate in discipleship, teaching, rebuking and do it all in love. Life was about to get serious and seriously hard. What I was to do and live out in my life had to reign in my heart.

I had to stop being bitter about the things I had perceived has having been taken away from me: Jobs, love, money, junk. I also had to not be angry about the unwanted things that had been given to me: Deaths in my family, debt, poor health, pain. I had to get over the fact that things had been forcefully been taken out of my hands right at the time I believed I should be hitting my stride in career, marriage and parenthood. God unraveled it all to show me that He was in charge and until I relinquished any possible ownership of it…a life would not be given back to me. I had found that if I was faithful in the small things I would be given larger things to handle for His Kingdom. Having taken everything that was my life from me at middle-age, God was showing me I was not even capable of handling the things common to most all middle-age men. Humbling and educational at the same time.

When I did things not empowered of by God, my actions were based in my will, not his. I therefore shot a quiver full of arrows in the form of deeds into the weeds that had overgrown my life. I missed God’s intent for me completely. This led ultimately to my discontent and dissatisfaction at midlife. I reached a point where I had swung wide of the mark for half of my life and as a creature of God, I innately sensed that I was not doing what I had been created for. This then triggered a series of events that steered me back to target. Had this not happened I would’ve spiraled off into oblivion and death. It was time to take a mower to the weeds to make things easier to see and to clear the debris from life that didn’t need to be there. God in, junk out.

So now God has begun the rebuilding process and it is slow and in His time. This is a painful process too since I am impatient. This is probably because He is trying to adapt His education process to His student: me. I’m a little slow on the uptake. What else could you say of a man that has been drummed over the head for four decades for the relational basics to begin to take hold in my mind and behavior?

I have now found my lost identity and a little bit of meaning and purpose. It begins with the fact that I am a child of God. What I can no longer afford to do is react without thinking. Reflexive and knee-jerk reactions are what got me into the mess I spoke of. Reactive responses may seem logical, but they were only the twisted logic of hidden sinful desire. I was actually trapped in the turnaround of the thoughts and motives of his heart that were devoid of God. I need to be reflective now, not reactive. I had to think before speaking. I had to mediate on God before action. So this is what I chose to do and most times it works. Sometimes, but not always. It is an ongoing process. It is sanctification in Christ.

The Bible can no longer be functionally sidelined in my life when I struggle. It is a recipe for doom. I must cling to God in times of loss and failure. Sometimes, that is the only way through the destruction of what life can become. If Scripture is functionally sidelined, I begin to lose my identity, ethics, mission, and values. At that point…I am the devil’s plaything. This is just not acceptable for me as a Christian.