"Guest" blog

Trading Up – from Cosmetics to Christ – Men, Expect More! | Faith Church Blog

This is great stuff. I encourage all the men to read this.

Today we continue our three part series about the God’s personality “flaws.” At Fully Man we believe that God is perfect. God doesn't really have personality flaws. What we are going to talk about are the most unpopular of God’s characteristics. They are unpopular, I think because they are misunderstood. In the coming weeks we’ll discuss God’s Wrath, God’s Judgment, and God’s Holiness. As we work our way through these attributes we’ll see that they are different but related.

The idea that God is sitting on His throne and he gets to decide whether we spend an eternity in Hell or Heaven can be kind of scary. It is a major contributor to the rise of the universal salvation heresy. It might be comforting to think that God will send everyone to Heaven. But can a God who doesn’t punish anyone really be just? The position that God doesn’t punish is not only un-Biblical but, the truth is, that it is a good thing that God judges humanity.

The Just Judge 

God is a perfectly just judge who is thirsty for justice (Ps. 7:11). We must start with this position or else we cannot make a case for the judgment of God being good. God always gives out the punishments that people deserve, no more and no less. What that means is that while it may seem there is no justice in the world God is working tirelessly to but the world to right and judge the wicked for their misdeeds. Isaiah tells us that “I, the LORD, love justice” (Ish. 61:8). The wicked will be judged at the end of their lives for the evil that they perpetrated in their life time and just will be rewarded (Ish. 61:8).

Knowing that God is a just judge we can rest assured that the wicked will be rightly punished and the righteous will be rightly rewarded.

The Two Justices 

There are two kinds of justice and therefore two kinds of judgment that God exhibits. There is distributive justice and retributive justice. Briefly, distributive justice means that everyone is treated equally (Example Ish.47:17) Retributive justice means that God gives people their “just deserts.” (Example Deut. 1:17).

God will judge (or bring justice to) the world and wicked. On one hand, God will eventually “put the world to right.” On the other hand, God will eventually punish the wicked and reward the righteous.

The best example of the two aspects of God’s justice working together is to imagine you are caught in huge riot. You are in the middle of the riot with your wife and all around you the world is falling apart. Looting, fire, violence, rape, and murder are all occurring. At every moment your life is in jeopardy. The only thing you pray for is that the police would come to restore order and punish those committing crimes. The type of prayer is prayer of God’s judgement.

When we pray for God’s judgment we are asking him to restore order to the world and judge those who are making the world bad. We live in a fallen world. All around us sin is growing more rampant and widespread every day. But we can rest assured knowing that one day God will come back and make the world perfect again.

Judgment is a Good thing 

If you are a Christian God’s judgment compels us to action since His judgment stems from His desire for justice. If God cares about the poor and defenseless why don’t we? God’s always seeking justice. Like I mentioned earlier, God’s wrath burns against those who would oppress the weak or exploit the poor. So, men, what are you doing about it? Do you have a heart for the poor? Do you get angry when the weak are oppressed? If you not you need to more carefully consider God’s justice.

However, the Bible is clear that if we aren’t saved were heading for Hell. Paul tells that “no one is righteous, no not one.” (Rom. 3:10) If we are not saved in the sense that the Bible talks about God judgment is VERY scary. As it should be, God’s judgment is supposed to deter the wicked. This should be a perfectly comforting thought for the Christian. Jesus Christ took our deserved judgment when he died on the cross for our sins. Paul tells us that “there is no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 8:1-2)

So here’s the question, do you believe that your sin puts you under God’s judgment? If you do you need to repent of your sin and accept Christ as Savior. It’s as simple as that.

The wicked will get punished and the good will get rewarded. That is a good thing. This is what human society has strived for through the centuries. But due to the inherently sinful nature of humanity a totally just society has been unattainable. But God will ultimately judge the living and the dead. We can rest easy knowing that we have a perfectly just judge in heaven that offers us a way out of condemnation for our sins.



Part 2 down only 1 to go! This one was tough to write if you have any questions or comment I’d REALLY appreciate them.
If you have questions or comments leave them below. Or send them here.

The Grand Weaver: Book Review

The Grand Weaver by Ravi Zacharias is a book about where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going.

God has a plan.

We may not always understand the plan but the plan is always there. Ultimately, Zacharias is showing us that God has a plan and we are all part of it. This book does an excellent job of explaining that God has a plan but I think that it didn’t do a great job explaining what we must do about it. 

What was good?

Zacharias does a great job showing that God has a plan and we can always see the plan if given the opportunity to do so. At the beginning of Grand Weaver Zacharias gives an awesome analogy about a dress weaver and his apprentice. The apprentice, seemingly, just moves around the weaver’s shuttle and loads the thread. While the weaver has a beautiful picture in his mind the apprentice will never see it until the dress is done. This, argues Zacharias, is how we, as humans, fit into God’s plan. We never seem to know what God is doing through the high points and low points of our lives. But if we take a minute to look back on all of the work He has done in our lives we will recognize that God is the Grand Weaver and his thread is the lives of human beings.

The remainder of the book is a look through the various aspects our lives followed by explanations and example of how these things fit into God’s grand scheme. Zacharias expounds on this subject with his usually charm and intelligence. The book, despite being heavy on content matter, is a breezy read. I found that this book was a real page turner. Not something I can usually say about Christian living book. Also, Zacharias provides some great biblical explanations that prove that God has plan.

What was bad?

I’m a HUGE fan of drawn out, in-depth, and probing studies of the bible and theology. So this book appealed to that side of my nature. However, I also think that if a doctrine doesn’t affect the way that I live then it ultimately isn’t of use. Grand Weaver fails to provide any really good application. That’s not to say there is no application but Zacharias doesn’t really get to explaining how the fact that God’s has a plan affects my life every day.

Rating 
If you’re not sure that God has a plan or if you wonder how bad things can be part of God’s plan then this is the book for you. But if you already believe that God has a plan for your life then you can probably skip this book.

Why we need Boring Christians

I know that I've resorted to the laziest of all blog posts. The dreaded "put up links."

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/deeper-walk/features/26398-we-need-boring-christians

It's been crazy at work this week but I've made some headway and, I promise, I'll have some real posts for you next week.

In the mean time enjoy this awesome article from relevantmagazine.com

Today we open up our three part series about the God’s personality “flaws.” At Fully Man we believe that God is perfect. God doesn't really have personality flaws. What we are going to talk about are the most unpopular of God’s characteristics. They are unpopular, I think because they are misunderstood. In the coming weeks we’ll discuss God’s Wrath, God’s Judgment, and God’s Holiness. As we work our way through these attributes we’ll see that they are different but related.

The wrath of God is very unpopular and hard to even think about. What is God’s wrath? Generally speaking in the Bible God’s wrath is vengeance or punishment as the result of His righteous anger. This aspect is hard think about because we like to think that a loving God doesn’t get angry or punish. Also, if God is infinitely loving and infinitely mercifully why does he get angry in the first place? The answer is that a God without wrath is a God without love.

Important Note: Occasionally you will see references to Scriptures throughout this blog. If you hover over the link the scripture text will pop up in a small window. Please read the scriptures. They are very important to understanding God and His attributes.

Anger Management

There are two things we need to understand about God’s wrath, anger and punishment. God gets angry. There are several places in the scripture that backs this up (Deut. 9:20, Ex. 32:9-11, Rom. 1:18, an many more) In the bible there are a variety of things that make God angry, worshiping false gods (Ex. 20:3), defying his created order (Eph. 5:6), and disobeying his commands (Gen 3:17-18.) There are, I’m sure others, but these are the most ordinary. They have a common denominator and that is they all assume we can do better than by following God. God, being our creator knows what is best for us (Matt. 6:31-33) so naturally God gets angry when we try to deviate from His will. Some think that this makes God sound like an omnipotent baby. He seemingly says, “You’re not doing what I want, I’ll show you!” But this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Tim Keller often says that, “the opposite of love isn’t anger it’s indifference.” For example, a father gets angery with his son when the son disrespects his wife. The father is angry. Not because he hates the child but with the child’s sinful behavior is leading him towards wrong. What would become of the child if the father did nothing when he misbehaved? It is precisely because God loves us that he gets angry with our sinful behavior. Next comes the punishment.

Punishing us is one of the primary ways that God show his love (Heb. 12:7-11). That sounds strange doesn’t it? I’ll go one step further and say that if God doesn’t punish us then he doesn’t love us. Think about it, why did your parents punish you? So that you would eventually be good! This is a simplistic example but I think that it is correct. God punishes us so that we can realize our errors and turn back to following Him. Ultimately God’s wrath is for our good. But God wrath isn’t good for everyone.

In church we love to sing songs about how great it is going to be when we eventually meet God after our death. And, for the Christian, it will be great to meet God. But for the non-Christian meeting God isn’t going to be all that great. God pours His wrath out on those who disobey his will (Ex. 22:21-24, Rev. 6:15-17). If God wasn’t wrathful we could all look forward to an eternity in heaven with Josef Stalin, Charles Manson, and Adolf Hitler. Is it loving to give everyone entrance to heaven even if they disobey God’s will? The answer is no.

God’s Wrath and the Man of God

A question that we are fond of asking on Fully Man is what can this teach us as men? As it turns out, a lot! We can see that God loves us when he punishes us. He only punishes us because he wants us to be more like him. The practical advice is that when you feel like life is tough man up and ask yourself, “what is God trying to teach me?” The other, less obvious, application is that it is okay to be angry. Just like when we talked about zeal, anger can be a good or a bad thing. Men show their anger more frequently than women. I think the reason is because God created us to be leaders (more on that in a later post). So we naturally need to get angry but only in the righteous sense. That means, we only get angry when others offend God not when they offend us. Finally, it’s a good thing that God punishes evil. So when people ask you, “why would a good God send people to Hell?” You can explain to them that if He didn’t He wouldn’t be good because he wouldn’t be punishing evil.

Part 1 down only 2 to go! I hope you enjoyed this post, I know I enjoyed writing it. If you have questions or comments leave them below. Or send them here.

Predestination is one of the most difficult parts of theology to comprehend. In a nut shell predestination is the idea that our life is set out on rails and our free will matters little. The major debate through the centuries has always been about how much free will we actually have.

Do we have no free will? John Calvin thought this.

Do we have some free will? I don’t have a good philosopher for this one. Sorry.

Is everything governed by freewill? Jean Paul Sartre thought this.

It’s not just philosophers who have attacked this problem but entertainers as well. For example, Shakespeare, Sartre (again), and a plethora of movies.

Two of the better movies to come out in recent years tackling this messy subject are Minority Report and The Adjustment Bureau. Today we’ll look at these two movies, what they say about predestination, and I’ll tell you which one is better.

Minority Report

Minority Report follows the exploits of Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise) as he seeks to clear a wrongful accusation with the help of a Pre-Cog. In the world of Minority Report Pre-Cogs can see the future and they are used to solve murders.

Predestination in the world of Minority Report is hard to pin down. But this isn’t a bad thing. It make it much more interesting in fact. John, in the move, persuasively argues for predestination in a compelling scene with Internal Affairs agent Danny Witwer (Collin Ferrell) by rolling a ball off of a table.

John “Why’d you catch that?”

Danny “It was going to fall.”

John “So if it was going to fall no matter what, why did you catch it?”

Good stuff. But as the film progress we see John taking actions that defy the Pre-Cogs. Only to lapse back into doing what they predict. Is there predestination? I guess we’ll never know.

The Adjustment Bureau

The Adjustment Bureau focuses on lives of David Norris (Matt Damon) and Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt). David, on the eve of his defeat in the political realm, meets Elise. Soon after David accidentally discovers that the mysterious Adjustment Bureau is trying to fix his destiny so that he never sees Elise again. The Adjustment Bureau has been overseeing humanity since the beginning of time. David, however, persists and by the finale the Chairman (aka God) changes the plan so that he and Elise can be together.

Predestination, and God, in The Adjustment Bureau is apparently not a very strong force. David, through sheer power of will is able to defy the Chairman and all his agents and get the girl in the end. The message, it seems is the free will and love are most powerful forces on Earth. It doesn’t really cast God as all that powerful. This is all too bad because this movie had some real snazzy effects and some pretty good performances

The Verdict

We all knew that I was going to recommend Minority Report (a predestination joke, get it?) Overall, this movie just was better written, better directed (Steven Spielberg), and looks better. All this and it turns 10 years old next year! On top of that this movie will give you and your friends a lot of good talks about predestination.

Whew! Glad that post is up. I hope you enjoyed it. I’ve been writing a break neck pace to try and get caught up. Got questions? Got Comments? Leave them below.

Everyone likes Batman. It’s easy to see why he’s dark, mysterious, and he’s recently had a string of wildly successful movies. I like Batman just us much as the next guy but when is come to Christ metaphors give me Superman any day of the week.

Superman and Jesus, it’s an odd combination to be sure. But after we examine it a little more we’ll see a lot of similarities. More importantly we’ll look and the differences and see why Jesus is better than Superman, aside from the fact that Superman is fictional.

Strangers come to Earth
Superman and Jesus are strangers who come to Earth, possess fantastic powers, and want to help humanity. Superman comes from Krypton and due to the influence of his parents wants to use his power of help and protect humanity. Jesus is born of a virgin, begotten of God, and comes to bring salt and light to mankind. Superman and Jesus, in terms of altruism, represent the very best in humanity. Superman, like Jesus, is always sacrificial and always willing to help. On top of that his power is so much greater than our own. It’s hard, at times, for us to like Superman because he always does what’s right. We can’t say that of ourselves. We resent a fictional character that always does the right thing all the time. But despite being a big blue boy scout Superman brings one more thing to the table. Hope.

Imagine if Superman were real. You are strolling down the streets of Metropolis and suddenly you’re confronted by a monster of unimaginable horror. Fearing for your life you scream “help me Superman!” and as your life flashes before you suddenly, out of nowhere, is a heroic figure outlined in blue and red. Your emotions go from horror and despair to hope. That is what Superman brings to the table.

All the best Superman comics touch on the idea that when all seems lost you look up and see the big red “S” and everything is going to be all right. Superman exists to fight the monsters that are bent on destroying humanity but are just too powerful. Jesus also came to fight a monster bent on destroying humanity. Jesus came to fight sin but, unlike Superman, Jesus achieved a victory once and for all over man’s greatest foe.

Jesus: The real Superman
In terms of characteristics we see the many similarities between Jesus and Superman. But Jesus was real and defeated sin. Sin and death had plagued humanity for millennia (Gen. 3:19) by the time the Jesus arrived. Jesus in his life and work waged constant battle again the effects of a sin cursed world. Jesus held the sick, helped the poor, and struck down the unjust. But the greatest enemies of man, sin and death, still remained. Finally, Jesus sacrificed himself on the Cross so that man need not fear sin and death anymore (Eph 1:7-8, 1 Tim. 1:15).

So we can now see the main difference between Jesus and Superman. When you call for Superman he only saves you from your present danger. Jesus redeems us past, present, and future when we call for his help against sin. Superman is a band aid and Jesus is the cure.

Using Christ to become a Superman
As men accepting Christ’s help against sin and following his example helps us to be more like Superman. Superman is bulletproof. The Christian has something better. Once you accept Christ and understand that death isn’t the end you have no reason to fear it. We can go out and do great things because death has no power over you. The Christian can be “fear of death” proof (2 Cor. 4:8-12).

Also, you needn’t fear other people anymore. Superman runs around in blue spandex and red underwear. But who’s gonna make fun of a guy who has devoted his life to saving the Earth? Only the biggest of jerk would go that far. The same is true for the Christian man. Once he devotes his life to Christ and follow his commandments people will see the light of Christ in your works (Matt. 5:14-16). Christians will still get mocked but it’s hard to mock a guy who helps the poor and is nice to everyone.

Hopefully this look at Superman and Jesus was interesting to you. I know it was interesting to me. This site is all about ideas so be sure to leave me some comments and questions.