#YOLO

If you’ve been on facebook much or on Twitter at all this summer, you’ve probably become familiar with the #YOLO trend. YOLO stands for You Only Live Once, and it’s usually tacked onto the end of a statement about the poster doing something unusual, risky, or just plain silly.

While staying fun and casual, #YOLO is quite a metaphysical claim. Several worldviews have something to say about that.

#YOLOATSE: You Only Live Once And Then Stop Existing

If there is no God and no supernatural, humans are stuck in a world void of purpose and moral obligations. This gives us two options: either we’re basically animals subject to an impersonal universe and our own biology, or we’re capable of creating our own meaning, destiny, and identity.

The first option is naturalism. If it’s true, “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,” and we might as well find sensual pleasure in the material world before we plunge into oblivion. Our desires and choices come from our DNA and our environment; we don’t really have control over our lives.

The second option is secular existentialism. Existentialism means that you exist before you know who you are and what life is really all about. In SE, you have no inherent purpose or destiny, so you make them up. You authenticate your existence by acts of the will, choices that make you who you are. If there is no God, you take the place of God in your own life.

If SE is true, #YOLO is the perfect response. The more choices and experiences you create, the more meaningful your existence is.

#YOLOAOAO: You Only Live Over And Over And Over

Eastern religions hold to pantheism, a belief system in which reality is primarily spiritual and everything is part of a divine Universal. Hinduism and Buddhism teach that human souls are reborn many times into different bodies as they progress towards unification with the Universal. This way of thinking was resurrected (reincarnated?) in 19^th-century Romanticism and the recent New Age movement.

To become one with the Universal, which in modern versions often includes discovering that you are Divine yourself, pantheism encourages meditation, becoming more “in touch” with nature, treating animals and humans with kindness (Hinduism makes an exception for "untouchables", sadly), and various spiritual rituals.

#YOLOF: You Only Live Once—Forever

Theism teaches that human souls live on after death and are either rewarded or punished based on actions done in the body. The only way to avoid a sucky eternity is to find favor with God or the gods.

Notice that I’m not to Christianity just yet. Theism has been dominant for most of human history. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Norsemen tried to please their gods with sacrifice, displays of courage, and good works; Muslims try to keep the Five Pillars to please Allah; and Jews have tried to please God by keeping the Mosaic Law and traditional regulations and by celebrating holy days. Theists tend to take #YOLOF pretty seriously.

As Christians, we believe that we find favor with God by faith; believing God means taking on His righteousness. This is possible because God’s Son, Jesus, found favor with His Father while taking on a human nature. In Jesus’ substitutionary death, God attributed human sin to Jesus and attributed Jesus’ righteousness and favor to anyone who believes.

While faith determines where you spend eternity, God has commanded us to spread the good news and to do good works in the short mortal lives we have now. Believers will not face condemnation, but we will be judged nonetheless.

#YOLOF, but for now, #YOLO. Make it count! 

Keep the 10 Commandments? In Your Dreams!

Over spring break my freshman year, I went with my youth group on a missions trip to the Dominican Republic. Many Dominicans hold to a form of Catholicism centered on ritual, religious tradition, and family heritage. There we met a woman who insisted she didn’t need salvation because she had kept the 10 Commandments. She told us that Jesus had appeared to her in a dream and revealed that this was why she would be welcomed into Heaven.

When a leader told her that no one can keep the 10 Commandments, she pointed to Mark 10:17-21—

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

But was Jesus really saying that this man had kept all the commandments? Was the implication that he had gained all the righteousness he needed except for one little thing?

This conversation in the DR  prompted me to research the topics on becoming right with God by keeping the 10 Commandments and why man needs salvation. I realized that although I knew the answers, I wasn’t prepared to explain them to someone who disagreed.

The Bible makes it clear that salvation is impossible except by faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Galatians 2:16 & 22 reads,

“yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified… I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.”

Other relevant scripture (horribly overused in NCFCA apol) includes Romans 3:23, Isaiah 64:6 and Ephesians 2:8-9, though Romans 3:20-28 as a whole (long!) passage could work in competition. No one can be justified (made right with God) by keeping commandments, and even if they could, no one can keep the commandments anyway. 

The real Jesus, the God of the Bible, might speak tongue-in-cheek to a self-righteous snob, but He would never tell someone that they had earned Heaven. Breaking any law set by an infinitely holy God means an infinite debt. No finite good works can make it up. Instead, we need a transfer of infinite righteousness. The only one who can give that is God Himself. Aren’t you thankful He offers it? 

World War 0: Resentment and Reconciliation

We Christians seem ready to acknowledge that when we were saved, we became part of a spiritual war. But did you know that we were part of a spiritual war before we were justified? The Bible teaches that before salvation we were enemies of God (Romans 5:10)  and that we were not only alienated but also hostile (Colossians 1:21-22).

Despite the persistent myth that everyone has a longing for God deep down inside, fallen humanity hates God and is at war with Him. In the context of the holiness and wrath of God, modern theologian R.C. Sproul observes:

“By nature, our attitude towards God is… a posture of malice… God is our mortal enemy. He represents the highest possible threat to our sinful desires. His repugnance to us is absolute, knowing no lesser degrees. No amount of persuasion from philosophers or theologians can induce us to love God.” (R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God, 180-1; Emphasis in original.)

As evidence, he points to the way that humanity did treat God when He appeared in the person of Jesus, whom he calls “the supreme curve buster.” (Sproul 61). Imperfect people tend to resent those who are perfect, like the lonely student who gets the only A on the impossibly hard exam that the rest of the class failed, and God is the ultimate target of morally flawed humanity’s resentment.

Still, don’t all cultures reveal an innate impulse to worship something? God is indeed the One who “satisfies [the soul’s] desires with good things” (Psalm 103:5),but what we really long for are the benefits He gives. We want to have our guilt taken away, to feel accepted by someone greater than ourselves, to somehow escape death, etc. Yet we want those desires met without having to stand before the Judge of All the Earth whom we have offended and in whose presence we are undone.

If none desire God, how are we saved? The good news is that even though people do not desire God, God has desired people. Ephesians says of Jesus,

“For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility… that he might… reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.” (Ephesians 2:14-16)

Jesus Christ made it possible for humanity to be reconciled to His Father, and the Father draws us to His Son. A.W. Tozer wrote,

“We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit. ‘No man can come to me,’ said our Lord, ‘except the Father which hath sent me draw him,’ and it is by this prevenient drawing that God takes from us every vestige of credit for the act of coming. The impulse to pursue God originates with God.” (A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, 11-2. Emphasis in original.)

God is winning the war by making peace with His enemies. Someday He will come in full force to end the war, but in the meantime, “let us draw near” to God “by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us,” “all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (Hebrews 10:19-25) 

Big Beliefs Mean Bold Action: What Is Faith? Pt. 3

[Continued from Part 2]

I: Involves Action

In the last two articles in this series, we’ve established that faith isn't a feeling or a sense of optimism. The Bible clearly teaches justification by faith and not works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Still, we all know that ideas have consequences. Beliefs determine behavior. If you believe that you can please God with your own righteousness, you’ll try to get into heaven by doing good works. If you truly believe that Jesus is Lord, God’s promised Messiah raised from the dead, you will begin to act in accordance with His lordship over your life.

This principle is how Scripture can say both that “one is justified by faith apart from works” and that “faith apart from works is dead.” (Romans3:28, James 2:26) One version of the law of non-contradiction states that “It is impossible for the same thing to belong and not to belong at the same time to the same thing and in the same respect.” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, emphasis mine) Since Paul and James are talking about different kinds of works, there is no contradiction.

The passage in James mentions Rahab, the prostitute who helped the Israelite spies when they came to Jericho. (Read the story in Joshua 2!) She told the men that the entire city had heard about the Lord’s miracles and was afraid. So why was she saved when the rest of the city was destroyed? Her actions proved that she believed that God would follow through with His promise to give the Israelites the land. Her faith was not an abstract fantasy; it involved taking bold action.

T: Takes Courage

Not only does faith require action; it sometimes requires bold, risky action. Hebrews 10 pits fear and faith as opposites: “But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.” (Hebrews 10:39) 

The next chapter tells of saints who did outrageous and even impossible things through faith. For some, God came through with impossible miracles in their lifetime, such as Noah, Moses’ parents, and Rahab. Yet many of them, as both verses 13-6 and 35-40 point out, actually suffered for their courageous faith and weren’t rewarded—at least not yet.

It takes courage to give everything for an unseen future. Martyred missionary Jim Eliot is often quoted as saying, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” When God makes promises, He keeps them. God does reward those who seek Him, and He has prepared a much better city for us. Yet that doesn't exempt believers from suffering in the meantime.

So believer, don’t be afraid to take action based on God's truth and promises. Whether you see people raised from death or you face death yourself, know that you were created for an eternal country of glory, and keep “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.” (Hebrews 12:2)

And the plot thickens... take a shortcut to the conclusion in Part Four!

A Leap into the Light: What is Faith, Pt. 2

[Continued from Part 1] 

Anything is possible if you believe it, even if it makes no sense! Right?

Wrong. That idea is repeated throughout our culture, but a biblical understanding of faith is different. There are several notable truths about faith, illustrated with an acronym FAITH:

F: Focused on God.

In the Bible, it isn’t enough to just believe in anything. Nor is it enough to “believe” in nothing in particular; “faith” without an object (or faith in faith itself) is just optimism, a useless fuzzy feeling. Effective faith is belief in truth about God: “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” (Hebrews 11:6, ESV) I notice that it’s easy to confuse believing that with just believing in. There is no believing in God without believing that—that He exists, a good place to start; that He is faithful; that His promises are true; and so on. Otherwise, you may have positive feelings about the idea of God, but you have no faith.

The simplest description of faith comes from God’s covenant with Abraham: “And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6) Having faith meant taking God at His word. This is a good idea only if God is true to His word. Otherwise it would have been deception, not faith. The only reason Abraham’s faith was effective in justifying him was because God was able to justify him, not because Abraham “just believed” hard enough. Faith must have God as its object to be effective.

A: Always Reasonable.

God may call us to believe something hard to accept, but it will always be reasonable—in the sense that it fits with what we already know about Him. For instance, the virgin birth is a miracle that is humanly impossible, but considering that God made a whole man at creation, it was perfectly reasonable for Mary to believe that God could conceive within her the human body of her Lord. Faith is never a leap into the dark; how can that be when God is light? On the contrary, “The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple.” (Psalm 119:130) 

In one of the Old Testament’s greatest examples of faith, Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac in obedience to God, even though God had promised to make a nation of his descendants. When I've heard this story taught, the emphasis is usually on the unreasonableness of God’s initial command, and I admit that it would have been hard to obey. However, the Bible teaches that Abraham was logical to obey, in that “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead”. (Hebrews 11:19, NIV1984; emphasis mine) Abraham knew that God would keep His promise, and from the Genesis story, he seemed confident that both he and Isaac would come back alive. (Genesis 22:5) He acted based on what he knew about God, an act of both faith and reason.

My suspicion is that faith is so hard for us because we would rather figure life out on our own. It’s more comfortable (at first) to go with what we think makes sense. The idea of trusting God, Someone Whom we can’t figure out, is scary and means giving up control. Yet consider this: is it more reasonable to go through life making decisions based on our own limited understanding and limited experience, or to leave ourselves in the hands of the God Who knows everything, can do anything He wants to do, and passionately loves us?

So believer, don’t let this world redefine your confidence as an illogical fuzzy feeling. Focus on God and truth about Him, and believe in accordance with that truth. Know that the word of the Lord is true, and everything He does is worthy of your trust (See Psalms 33:4). 

What is faith? is continued in Part Three!