Based on Jesus' calling of Nathanael
Many people today view Christianity much like Nathanael viewed Nazareth. Christianity was from Nazareth then, and it is still from Nazareth today.On encouraging people to look into Christianity, even though they think they 'know' about it:
A more concrete example is one where you have misplaced your keys. Once you've looked for them in all the places where they 'can' be and haven't found them, you'll have to start looking in places where they 'can't be. And of course, that's where you'll find them.Referencing the boy Samuel and others as evidence of God choosing the unlikely:
God always works through the men or the boys nobody wanted, through the women or girls nobody wanted.W. H. Auden. A famous poet who abandoned his childhood faith in the Church of England but after WWII he changed his mind. What happened to change his mind?
In his account of his spiritual renewal he observed that the novelty and shock of the Nazis in the 1940s was that they made no pretence of believing in justice and liberty for all - they attacked Christianity on the grounds that 'to love one's neighbour as oneself was a command fit only for the effeminate weaklings.' Moreover, 'the utter denial of everything liberalism had ever stood for was arousing wild enthusiasm not in some barbaric land, but in one of the most highly educated countries in Europe.'Auden believed in human rights however, in liberty and freedom. But why did he?
The operational principle of the natural world is that the strong eat the weak. So if it's natural for the strong to eat the weak, and if we just go here only through the natural, unguided process of evolution, why do we suddenly turn around when the strong nations start to eat the weak nations and say, that is wrong?Going further:
The same principle should apply to humanity. How can you say that someone is a good person or a bad person unless you know what they are designed for, what their purpose is?On why to believe in Christianity:
Christianity is not a consumer good. You should turn to it only if it is true.Chapter 2: The Insider and the Outcast
Based on John 4.
Meaning and drive:
As long as you think there is a pretty good chance that you will achieve some of your dreams, as long as you think you have a shot at success, you experience your inner emptiness as 'drive' and your anxiety as 'hope'.
The great tennis champion Boris Becker said:
I had won Wimbledon twice, once as the youngest player. I was rich. ... I had all the material possessions I needed. ... It is the old song of movie stars and pop stars who commit suicide. They have everything, and yet they are so unhappy. But I had no inner peace.Keller then comments:
We might say 'I'd rather have his problem than mine.' But his point is that he has the same problem as ours, and like us, he though money, sex, accomplishment, and fame would solve it. The difference is, he got all those things, and in the end they didn't satisfy his thirst in the slightest.Or another one:
Sophia Loren once said in an interview that she had everything - awards, marriage - but that 'in my life there is an emptiness that is impossible to fulfil.'Isn't it enough to just live a good life? Some might say:
I'm a morally good person who is not religious. There may be a God, I don't know for sure. But either way I'm a good person and that's all that should matter.Is that really all that should matter:
Imagine a widow has a son she raises and puts through good schools and a good university at great sacrifice to herself, for she is a woman of slender means. And as she's raising him she says, 'Son, I want you to live a good life. I want you to always tell the truth, always work hard, and care for the poor.' And after the young man graduates from college he goes off into his career and life - and never speaks to his mother or spends time with her. Oh, he may send her a card on her birthday, but he never phones or visits. What if you asked him about his relationship with his mother, and he responded: 'No, I don't have anything to do with her personally. But I always tell the truth, work hard, and care for the poor. I've lived a good life - that's all that matters, isn't it?'Applied to us:
And if there is a God, you owe him literally everything. If there is a God, you owe him far more than a morally decent life. He deserves to be at the centre of your life.Chapter 3: The Grieving Sisters
About Jesus' love for Lazarus and us:
Jesus knew what it would cost him to save us from death. Maybe he was able to feel the jaws of death closing in on him. And yet knowing and experiencing all that, he cried, 'Lazarus, come out.' The witnesses said about Jesus, 'See how loved Lazarus'; but really we must behold how he loves us.No God in space?
In 1961 the Russians put a man in orbit, and afterward Russian premier Nikita Khrushchev said something bold. I remember it very well; I was eleven years old when it happened. He said something like 'We have sent a man into space and we didn't see God, so we have proved there is no God.'Chapter 4: The Wedding Party
On doing what we were made for, and appreciating the meaning and purpose in life. Chariots of Fire runner Harold Abrahams. Just before the final race he says:
'I'll raise my eyes and look down that corridor... with ten lonely seconds to justify my whole existence.'Fig leaves to hide our shame. Perishable, flimsy things we build our lives around:
Consider the possibility that your success in life is just a big fig leaf.Adolf Eichmann. An architect of the death camps in Nazi Germany. Amazing illustration of evil in the human heart:
Adolf Eichmann was one of the Nazi architects of the Holocaust who escaped after WWII to South America, where he was caught in 1960 and taken back to Israel for a trial. He was tried, found guilty, and executed. But there was a very interesting incident during the trial. They had to find witnesses who saw him commit terrible crimes against humanity he was charged with. They needed to find people who saw him participate in atrocities at the death camps. One of the material witnesses was a man name Yehiel De-Nu, and when he came in to testify, he saw Eichmann in the glass booth and immediately broke down, falling to the ground and sobbing. There was pandemonium. The judge was hammering to get order. It was very dramatic.
Sometime later De-Nur was interviewed by Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes. Wallace showed De-Nur the tape of him falling down and asked him why it happened. Was he overwhelmed by painful memories? Or with hatred? Is that why he collapsed? De-Nur said no - and then said something that probably shocked Wallace and should shock almost all secular Western people. He said that he was overcome by the realisations that Eichmann was not some demon but was an ordinary human being. 'I was afraid about myself... I saw that I am capable to do this... exactly like he.
You can choose to say the Nazis were subhuman, that they were nothing like us, and that we are not capable of doing what they did. But there are serious problems with that view. The scariest thing about that whole chapter of history is not the few individual evil architects of it but the complicity of vast numbers of people across a society that was producing so much of the world's best scholarship, science, and culture.Jesus's response to Mary was blunt. Keller points out that Jesus wasn't just having a bad day:
Even when he is being tortured he never speaks a harsh or angry word, so this is not just a bad mood. Something is weighing heavily on him. And then he lets us know what it is. He says, 'My hour has not yet come.'The wedding as a metaphor of where history is headed:
And this is how history ends; this is what Jesus came to accomplish. We, the bride, the people Jesus has loved, will finally be united with him. The most rapturous love of a wedded couple on earth is just the dimmest hint and echo of that cosmic future reality.Jesus as example:
He did not come primarily to be a good example. And I'm glad he didn't. Do you know why? He's too good! He's so perfect that as an example he just crushes you into the ground.Jesus' life and death:
He doesn't make us pay; he pays the debt. Some have called this 'the self-substitution of God.'Chapter 6: The Great Enemy
outside the crucifixion itself, the baptism is the only event of Jesus' life mentioned in all four gospels. It is crucial. (The temptation mentioned in detail in Matthew and Luke, referred to in Mark but not at all in John)
The baptism and temptation are connected tightly by the single word, then... Then is almost therefore. After great blessing and success came trial and temptation.
No one can ever seem to secure a life of sustained success, joy and blessing. As hard as we try, no matter what precautions we take, no matter how well things are going, something comes in to ruin it. Even the most talented, diligent, and savvy people can't escape the undulations of life.'Ah but wait' What if I/we lived a perfectly good, wise and good life. Surely then God would protect us and our life would always go well. Wrong. Look at Jesus. God has just announced 'he is my perfectly loved son who thrills my heart,' and then... he is ushered into the clutches of the devil.
If we are not suffering at the moment, there is a tendency for us to take credit for it in our minds. It's not luck of grace - it's because we are living good and smart lives. Right?We in the west have largely rejected the Bible's view of evil, that there is a singular supernatural intelligence behind it all. Deep down, we cling to the simplistic idea that if we are good, life will go well.
Yet if there are demonic forces, it stands to reason that true goodness and godliness would actually attract and stir up those powers to attack.When the Bible speaks about our encounters with supernatural evil in life, it uses battle language. And if you don't know where the attack is going to come from, or if you underestimate or mischaracterise the enemy, you're likely to lose the battle.
Modern secular attitudes toward evil are an unusual blend of dualistic paganism and eastern pantheism. Dualism sees the struggles between good and evil as being eternal, chaotic, destructive and inevitable. The world is violent and always will be as various power centres of good and evil battle it out. Pantheism says that God is in everything and everything is God. Therefore evil doesn't really exist since understood from the right perspective we can see God in it.
Secular though says on the one hand: violence and destruction is just the way things are. There isn't one single artist behind it all but the world is a product of, indeed we ourselves are products of, blind destructive forces, survival of the fittest. Or it says, on the other hand 'it's all a matter of perspective. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.' Evil doesn't really exist then.
Silence of the lamb quote: 'I am evil, don't give up good and evil for behaviourism'
Delabanco says: 'these words are the epitome of modern horror, we cannot answer the monster's question.'
J.K. Rowling has a form of Voldermort say 'there is no good and evil, there is only power.' In other words; there may be few things more evil than denying that there is such a thing as evil.That's what Satan wants.
What is the battle front? Hear Satan's words 'if you are the Son of God...'
That's Satan's main military goal - he wants Jesus (and us?) to lose the certainty, the assurance of God's full acceptance, of his unconditional fatherly love.The heart:
If you think of your heart's identity as an engine, you could say there is a kind of fuel that powers it cleanly and efficiently - and a kind of fuel that is not only polluting but also destroys the engine. The dirty fuel is the fuel of fear and the need to prove yourself. Or the need to be needed by someone else. Or the need to express yourself fully and without restraint. There are many 'fuels' that motivate us to live for a time - but only one fuel is clean and will not lead to weariness and disappointment. And that is God's love for you.How to fight?
Jesus doesn't behave magically or superstitiously: In general, Satan doesn't control us with fang marks on the flesh, but with lies in the heart.
Satan wants to affect the beliefs of our heart. The heart is the seat of the emotions and source of our core commitments, hopes and trusts. From the heart flow our thinking, feelings and actions:
What the heart trusts, the mind justifies, the emotions desire, and the will carries out. If Satan can get you to consent with your mind to a God of loving grace but get your heart to believe that you must do X, Y, and Z in order to be a worthy, loveable and valuable person, he will be most satisfied.Hide the scripture in your heart since when you are in moments of pain or shock, the things that come out of your mind and mouth are the most primal things in your being.
Jesus knew the Bible: Around 10% of all he said is quotations or allusions to scripture.
If Jesus didn't presume to be able to face the forces of evil without a thorough grasp of scripture, why would we? It is true that this can be and is a fight but it is precisely when we are tempted to sin, or to be discouraged or to just give up, it is then that we must wrestle the words and promises of the Bible deep into the centre of our being: Col. 3:16 'let the message of Christ dwell among you richly.' It will feel very much like a fight. J.C. Ryle wrote:
True Christianity is a fight. ...There is a vast quantity of religion current in the world which is not true, genuine Christianity. It passes muster; it satisfies sleepy consciences; but it is not good money. ...There are thousands of men and women who go to churches every Sunday ... but your never see any 'fight' about their religion! Of spiritual strife, and exertion, and conflict, and self-denial, and watching, and warring they know literally nothing at all.C.S. Lewis:
Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, 'If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realise that this also is God.' The Christian replies, 'Don't talk damned nonsense.' For Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world - that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God 'made up our of his head' as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again.Jesus is our Great High Priest who can 'empathise with our weaknesses' and can give us 'mercy and grace to help us in our time of need.'
As we fight Satan's lies in our hearts, and his works in our world, let's rely not only on the Word of the Lord but on the Lord of the Word. We don't simply have a book, as perfect as it is - we have Jesus himself, who has been through fiery trials so intense that we can't imagine them.
