Faith Well Grounded

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.

We had communion at church this morning and, being in the Christmas spirit, it had a profound effect on me. The long and short of it is that Jesus was born to die-- just like the rest of us. We seem to lose that in the Christmas season. Jesus is the baby, away in a manger, and He rests there eternally in the Christmas mindset for some people, just like He does in the mind of Ricky Bobby the racecar driver.

"In the beginning, God…” Genesis 1:1, excerpt.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God…” John 1:1

I love these verses, great beginnings to the stories of beginnings. Both start with the utmost central subject of our existence: God. Both begin the Creation story, in which God creates with Word as deed. By Word alone, He creates from nothing. In Him is existence with such perfection that He can give existence as gift.

I’m thinking lately on the problem of pain-- that of evil, that of misery, that of the overarching “wrongness” of the human condition. I’m tending to agree with C.S. Lewis that the problem of pain is a problem strictly for the Christian (in the philosophical sense, anyway).

“Pain” is not a problem for the naturalist/atheist, since it could not be expected that a random, self-created, amoral Universe would be mindful of its product. It shouldn’t be expected to care for its creation, or provide comfort as such. It can’t be expected to be mindful of us at all.

Part two in the e-dogg questions:

What follows is a second response to honest inquiries into the gospel. It has been "built" more than written- hopefully "led" more than built. Unfortunately, I fear that the heady subject and the "building" of the response may make it seem a bit choppy and disjointed, since I've gone from point to point to point within the overall subject. There is a lot to fit in here, and much more left out for the sake of brevity.

e-dogg raised two very good and important questions in one of the Miracles threads. I'll summarize them in this and the next blog. (e-dogg, if I have missed your points please chime in and clarify).

I'll try to provide the theology based on sound scripture. Since this is such a deep and profound doctrine, please don't expect my initial responses to be all-encompassing. I'm looking at this as an overview that should act as the springboard into a discussion that will hopefully get us to the sweet center of the gospel and God's immense love for us.

First, I need to apologize for my absence into everyday life for the past month or so. I was sick for a while. More recently, I have had tremendous opportunities to both teach and be taught. So, my blogging presence has been almost nonexistent. I hope to remedy this.

Now, onto part two of the discussion on “miracles”.

LaffingBoy asked the thunder-stealing question as to exactly what a miracle is. I will agree with Thomas Huxley, in that we are merely “beating the air” until we can agree on this. Let me offer a working definition:

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. Albert Einstein

I was dealing with a supposed Biblical contradiction recently. It turned out not to be so much a contradiction as a misunderstanding, but I think it's actually more an intro into the beauty of our Creator.

Genesis 1:31 says that God called His creation good. By Genesis 6:6, He was grieved by sinful man on Earth. Now, it's obvious that these are descriptions of God's feelings at different times. But if God is eternal, infinite and not bound by time, then how can this be explained.

I saw the below article at cyberkitten's blog. I decided to form a brief response to each point of the article, as originally seen:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-harris24dec24,0,3994298.story?...

10 myths—and 10 Truths—About Atheism

By Sam Harris for The Los Angeles Times

December 24, 2006

A word about directionality: Evolution does not have a direction. Organisms can go towards complexity or simplicity. It's all determined by the environment and selection pressures. Just because humans are complex multi-cellular animals doesn't mean we've had the most evolution. Every living creature today is the result of the same amount of evolutionary time.