What Do I Give The One Who Has Nothing?

But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their robes and rushed out into the crowd, crying out and saying, "Men, why are you doing these things? We are also men of the same nature as you, and preach the gospel to you that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, WHO MADE THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH AND THE SEA AND ALL THAT IS IN THEM.  In the generations gone by He permitted all the nations to go their own ways; and yet He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness."  Even saying these things, with difficulty they restrained the crowds from offering sacrifice to them. (Acts 14:14-18 NASB)

What do I tell someone who has absolutely no knowledge of any religion but some hogwash they've been fed since infancy?  How do I somehow convey the wonders of the One True God, Master of all the universe, and His love for them?  Left to ourselves, such sacrifice as my Master made on our behalf seems completely unbelievable.  Who, having such power, would do such a thing for powerless people such as us?  Logically, it works in no culture's paradigm.

I could go back to the Tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil, and start there with what is wrong with the world, and how my Master fixes it through Jesus.  I could relate how futile it feels to work to serve without any sort of recompense, no knowledge of a master.  It's easy to relate that since that's how we, as humans, manage others.  Everyone would get that part; it's the solution of my Master that strikes sideways, a round idea ill-fitting our square brains.

Paul and Barnabas took this task on, head on.  When in Lystra, after healing the crippled man, they tried to restrain the crowds from offering sacrifice to them.  The argument they used was essentially three parts: who we are, what we do, and Who we serve.  They said they were people like them, that they came to proclaim good news, and that this news came from the One True God.  As they describe this new Deity to those with so many for so many centuries, they make some claims:  1) Living God, 2) Creator of heaven and earth and sea, 3) previously permitted error, 4) has tried using seasons and good things to woo people back.

Such a portrait of deity is vastly different from what the people worshiped.  That region was the path between continents, and was fought over for centuries, by Babylonians, Assyrians, and Persians.  Yet even before these empires, the Hittites ruled there, almost as ancient as the Egyptians, the first to unify these dispersed mountainous rebellious regions.  These have always been a harsh people in a harsh region, and they stubbornly held to their religious culture.  No empire could do more than change deity names, because their idols, symbols and practices stayed much the same regardless of who sat on which throne.

The approach of Paul and Barnabas was interesting.  They couldn't just "change names" as other had done since there is no pantheon.  They had to somehow use one deity as a bridge to the One True God.  This is not easy since it was very common in pantheon lists to have the primary deity worshiped be one of the secondary deities in the myth rather than the one responsible for all the others (father deity).  This forms a dangerous place for preaching Jesus, the Son of God, and yet maintaining One True God.  This very neatly fits the erroneous theological structure of "father-creator" and worshiping a "son" who interacts more with humans (but typically does not "play nice" with them). 

Instead, Paul and Barnabas choose (I think by divine inspiration) to form the bridge by claiming that the theological framework of the people was their attempt to understand the One True God, "In generations gone by He permitted all the nations to go their own ways..."  So, the idea was not to form a bridge, but rather a launch pad.  There could be no connection between their pantheon and true theology, there wasn't room for both.  They would need to leave their old framework behind.  And this is a rough crowd with whom to attempt this tactic.  It seems to have had some success.  At least the sacrifice stopped.

What can I use to achieve such a connection with those around me with such dispersed "theological frameworks"?  Most are more apt to believing in "Bob the beer-guzzling god" than Jesus.  I have spoken with very intelligent "agnostics" who prefer a "cafeteria style" of theology rather than acceptance of some cohesive existing belief system.  The illusion of control and power to form their own view of deity isn't that different from what Paul and Barnabas faced.  "Change what you want, conquer us if you can, but we will still believe what we want."

While the One True God has permitted this in the past, He does so no longer.  Jesus is His answer to the problem we refuse to face, sin.  All things He defines from the foundation of a relationship with Himself.  Life, death, sin, and redemption are all formed from the perspective of whether He knows us or not.  What began as the knowledge of good and evil was the deviation from the knowledge of our Master.  The very origins of humanity stem from this foundation, "does our Master know us?"  This not a question of facts, because He knows all facts about us, even the ones we don't know.  This is a question of friendship, of camaraderie, of relating with our Master.  Does He know us?  Will that be the claim on the day all humanity stands before His throne of judgement?  It will be my claim, based on the work of Jesus to make it so.  It will be by Jesus alone, or I will stand apart, rejected by my Master.  I have nothing to offer One forming stars.

Well, that's it.  Have a great day!

The Fickle Foolishness of Popularity

Even saying these things, with difficulty they restrained the crowds from offering sacrifice to them.  But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having won over the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing him to be dead. (Acts 14:18-19 NASB)

If Paul measured success in the same ways we do today, he would have been very depressed most of the time in his mission work.  He did experience lots of people responding to his preaching, but not always like he wanted.  Some believed, and that was great!  Some didn't and persecuted him and the other believers.  Some believed something completely wrong, and responded in very wrong ways.  That last option is the one the people in Lystra chose.

Paul sees a man lame from birth who is believing the message and has faith, so he speaks to him calling him to get up and walk.  When he does, the people of Lystra think Paul and Barnabas are Hermes and Zeus.  So, of course, they want to offer sacrifices to them, and the priest of Zeus comes out with a garland and bull for the party.  Paul and Barnabas tear their clothes, run out, and attempt to prevent what is going on by explaining that they are men with a message from the True God.

The people of Lystra at least realize that what happened was divine, but they are not able to see beyond the divinity their normal paradigm.  They love that they see this miraculous sign, but they are not ready to read it.  They still want their own brand of religion; the brand where capricious gods are more like them than the God revealed through the Hebrew Scripture.  They were struggling to look any higher than the world around them. When Paul and Barnabas were finally able to keep them from their act, instead of making the shift to the One True God, they were ripe to turn against the apostles, keeping their paradigm of limited vision.

There is a frightening paradigm shift required for belief in and acceptance of the One True God.  It requires a belief in something much like a "fairy tale".  There is a "Good Guy", a palace or powerful magical kingdom, there is an enemy, there is death, and there is life.  Santa Claus has the North Pole, but El Shaddai has Heaven.  El Elyon rules heaven and earth.  He is the Maker and Sustainer of all matter in the universe.  But, in some ways, like Santa Claus and so many other "mythical legends", God has an interest in us yet chooses to be in the realm of "faith" rather than "fact" (at least from our perspective).  The difference is that this One is true.

Perhaps, it is my adult mind, my belief in myself and my own abilities, coupled together with my desire to be approved by others that makes such faith difficult.  Jesus says in more than one gospel, that without the faith of a child it is not possible to enter the kingdom of heaven.  Like the North Pole, Heaven is reserved for those with faith without sight.  The difference is that heaven is real.  The similarity is that we can't see either one.  The danger is that, without the faith in what I cannot see, and the willingness to adjust my paradigm or accept a new one, I will not only die apart from my Maker, but will actively try to destroy His message.

I have to have the faith of a child in order to believe in what I can't see.  But in this faith is peace and joy.  Outside is stress and frustration.  I believe I am made with a capacity to believe in such things as Santa, the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, precisely because that same capacity is what is supposed to be filled by the One Who made me.  When I relegate that capacity to childishness, reject it as foolishness, and seek instead for knowledge and reason of my culture and race, I miss a world with color and texture and savory smells and song.  I trade that world for a colorless and tasteless world the size of my vision.  At least I'm with everyone else, we're all together using the same language, seeing the same things, and sharing the same limited knowledge.  But it's real, tangible, and able to be reproduced in a lab under controlled circumstances.  How comforting...a lab, glass, stainless steal, and blinking red lights.  Sounds...festive.

The only other option offered by my culture is to create an alternative where Santa is real, the Easter Bunny is real, and any god is of my own design, nice, kind, and does what I want.  I choose the colors, textures, spices, and write the songs.  The extent of the vision remains the same though, my horizon.  The colors are limited by my imagination, the smells and tastes are limited by my tastes, the textures are limited to what I have at hand, the songs...well, let's just agree that will never work.  I don't want to offer bulls and wreaths to men in the city gate of my own paradigm, calling them "gods".  Someone else looks for me.

Now, I have, as a child, accepted and embraced this One.  I didn't understand, and I still don't.  I have tried to grapple with my faith, my understanding, my abilities to reason, and so on, but I always fail.  It has always come down to faith.  It has always come down to my inability to understand my Master.  He has always remained immaterial, yet responsible for all matter.  At least that was true until Jesus.  Then He was material for 33 years or so.  Now He's back to His throne, heaven, and He calls me there.  There is somewhere real that I cannot see where I will one day live eternally.  Let me just say that I willingly believe this tale regardless of what is conjured in a lab to the contrary.  I believe I can safely say that because where I'm going doesn't fit in a lab, and the One calling me there is the One being studied in the lab (the scientists just way too often don't know it).  Happy New Year!