Catching Fog

Even God has faced temptation. God became a human being, and as a human being, he faced all the sorts of temptations that each of us experience (see Matthew 4:1-11 or Luke 4:1-13). Satan approached him once, after Jesus had spent a long time in the wilderness fasting a praying, The first temptation, therefore related to food: “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

The second temptation related to pride. If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'”

Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'”

And the final temptation related to laziness: he was offered the world if he’d only bow down and worship Satan. That would have saved the trouble of dying on the cross to get it. Jesus told him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” And so Satan went away, at least for a little while.

In all the temptations described, Jesus resisted giving in. With each temptation, he quoted the Bible, demonstrating why it was necessary for him to resist the temptation.

Later, the author of Hebrews states that Jesus was tempted “in every way just like us” (Hebrews 4:15). We shouldn’t understand this to mean that every temptation ever faced by everyone who lived–say the temptations faced by Jack the Ripper, or the temptations faced by the current Pope or, or even my temptations to each too much pizza or sleep with someone I’m not married to were precisely the temptations that Jesus faced.

Jesus lived a long time before my fantasy woman or the existence of pizza and so he didn’t face those precise temptations. But being human, he would have faced the same sorts of temptations we all face: whether of lust, hunger, avarice, or anger. Jesus was God, but he was also completely and fully human, subject to the same needs and desires as all of us. That is the point the author of Hebrews wants us to understand.

Atheism’s Little Idea

Up Close With Apollo 11: A LIFE Photographer’s Story

Send to Kindle

God really is a genius. The Bible describes God as the source of all wisdom and knowledge. This makes sense, since God is described as the author of the universe; thus, everything that exists, even the world of ideas, would have to have God as its ultimate source.

Paul writes,

Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.

(Romans 12:19)

Why is it that God’s justice is best? Because he knows everything about the situation; when human beings look at a situation, a conflict, a crime, we see it only partially, through a glass darkly. We see it through our own prejudices and experiences. We do not know all the details, we do not know what was going on in the minds of those involved. There is more we don’t know than we do, and what we do is filtered rather than objective. Our justice system has many checks and balances in place to try to arrive at justice, but it is not perfect. It never can be perfect, because people are not perfect.

But God is not so limited. The Psalmist writes,

You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.

(Psalm 139:2-4)

Jeremiah, the prophet tells us,

“I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.”

(Jeremiah 17:10)

Unlike pundits and Monday morning quarterbacks, God actually knows the reason someone says or does what they do; he understands it, and he can and will react accordingly and appropriately where we will often fail.

The whole context now of the “do not take revenge” passage quoted above:

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

(Romans 12:17-21)

As Christians, it is not our job to seek revenge or to get even. We are human and we will do it wrong. Leave it in God’s hands. What we can do, as human beings, is to be kind and loving. That’s harder for us to screw up.

Eye receptor transplant promises therapy for blindness

Hyperloop and Friends: Why Don’t We Have Super-High-Speed Rail Already?

Self-replicating Alien Probes Could Already Be Here

Send to Kindle

Elijah finds God where he least expected. After winning the God contest on Mount Carmel and slaughtering 450 prophets of Baal, Elijah had run in terror from Jezebel, the queen of Israel, after she threatened to kill him. Hiding in the wilderness, exhausted and discouraged, God took care of him and saw to his needs for food and shelter. Finally, one day while Elijah was hiding in a cave, God told him, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.” (2 Kings 19:11)

A powerful wind tore at the mountains, shattering rocks, but “the LORD was not in the wind.” After that, there was an earthquake, but “the LORD was not in the earthquake.” Then a fire roared around him, but “the LORD was not in the fire”

Then, after the fire was gone, there was a gentle whisper.

God had come at last. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave. Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Elijah explained that he was alone, everyone had rejected God and everything that Elihah had preached. What was the point of going on? God told him not to be so gloomy: there were seven thousand people in Israel who remained faithful to Yahweh. Then God gave him his next job that he wanted him to do.

Where we expect to find God, how we expect God to behave, what we expect to see him accomplish, are often far removed from reality.

Creating a New Kind of Night Light: Glow-in-the-Dark Trees

Top Ten Ways to Perfect Your Daily Routine With Science

Collect Accomplishments, Not Stuff

Send to Kindle

When you read the story of Jonah in the Bible, if all you do is focus on the whale and wonder whether that’s even possible, then you’re missing the whole point of the story.

The point? That you’re not going to outwit God.

During the prophet Jonah’s day, Assyria was on the rise as a world power. It was a cruel, oppressive, blood-thirsty and imperialist empire, bent on world conquest—an existential threat to Israel’s existence.

One day God asked Jonah to warn Nineveh, the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, that God planned to destroy it for its wickedness. To get a sense of how such an order would bother Jonah, imagine it is 1938 and God told him to go to Berlin. So Jonah refused. He feared that if he went and delivered a prophecy from God, then the Assyrians would repent and then God would forgive them. And Jonah most certainly did not want the enemies of Israel and all that was good to be forgiven. He wanted them to be destroyed. He wanted to see God obliterate them.

So Jonah ran away. He was convinced that God would kill him for his disobedience. And with Jonah dead, there would be no one to prophecy to the Ninevites. And thus, deprived of Jonah’s warning, Nineveh would suffer its just fate and be destroyed. Jonah would get his way.

But Jonah soon learned that there were worse things than dying, and that God’s will could not be so easily thwarted.

Boarding a ship at Jaffa (modern Tel Aviv) he sailed west. A storm blew up. Jonah told the sailors that the storm was doubtless on his account. To make it stop, all they needed to do was toss him overboard.

At first they refused, but the storm grew worse and so they finally tossed him into the water. Immediately the storm ceased and a great fish swallowed him up. For the next three days Jonah sat angrily inside the fish. Unable to take it any longer, he at last cried out to God for rescue.

The fish made its way back to Jaffa and spat him up on the shore. Once again, God asked Jonah to make the trip to Nineveh. Deciding that he didn’t want to be eaten again—or worse—he finally obeyed God, went to Nineveh, and told the Assyrians that they were doomed. He did not happily obey God; he was angry the whole time, and just went through the motions. He said the bare minimum.

And was incredibly successful, unlike most prophets in the Bible. The Ninevites believed him and repented.

And things turned out just as Jonah feared: God forgave them. God then criticized Jonah for his lack of love and compassion.

The report that could have made our world an alternate timeline

Creationists are Wrong. Science is actually concerned with the truth

Send to Kindle

Underestimating God is always a mistake. In Exodus 15 we see why.

The Israelites were a bunch of slaves trying to run away from their owner, which happened to be Egypt–at the time, the world’s most powerful nation. It wasn’t long after they left that they found themselves in the middle of the desert, facing the Red Sea, with no way across and the massive army of Egypt bearing down on them.

Nowhere to turn, no where to run, no way out. They were trapped, certain to face capture and a return to captivity–ot to mention whatever punishments the Egyptians might care to mete out for their attempt at running away.

But then a strange thing happened. The God who had made it possible for them to run away in the first place parted the waters and gave them a way out of the trap. Their pursuers, following them into the sea, soon drowned when the waters came tumbling down upon them. In surprise, the Israelites, standing upon that far shore, separated forever from their captors and now completely, finally realized that it was not a just a dream: the deepest longings of generations had been fulfilled.

For that brief shining moment, they realized that God hadn’t abandoned them, that he wasn’t toying with them, and that he did not intend to bring them disappointment and make them miserable. At that instant, they responded with a song of praise, thanking God for their deliverance. Of course, come the next crisis, they fell back into the place of doubting where they’ve lived their whole lives. It’s the same land of doubting where most of have made our homes. Very rarely do we even make it to the border fence and peer at the grass on the other side. Even more rarely do we open the one of the gates and leave. And we never leave for good.

Brittany was nearly eleven years old; a hyperactive, blue eyed blonde, she took in the news that the elderly woman, Miss Aileen, that her parents picked up and drove to church each Sunday was desperately ill with equanimity.

“She most likely had a heart attack,” her mother told her softly.

“So is she going to get better?”

“Probably not. She’s 83 years old and she’s in the hospital now.”

“We should pray for her.”

“Okay.” Her mother shrugged.

Brittany bowed her head. “Dear God, please help Miss Aileen to get well soon and come home from the hospital. Amen.”

Brittany’s mother frowned. She tried to tell Brittany that that was extremely unlikely that Miss Aileen would get better, but Brittany went out happily to play in the front yard, convinced that Miss Aileen would be just fine now.

“She’s going to be dead by morning,” Brittany’s mom told her husband. The husband nodded in agreement.

But come the next morning, Miss Aileen was not dead. And it turned out that it wasn’t a heart attack after all: it was her gall bladder. After surgery to take it out, Miss Aileen recovered and was moved to a nursing care facility. “No one gets out of places like that,” commented Brittany’s dad to her mom. “Those are just heaven’s waiting rooms.”

But another month later Miss Aileen left the nursing home and moved in with her son, as spry as ever.

“God answered my prayer, didn’t he mommy?” said Brittany. Her very surprised parents couldn’t help but agree.

God’s plans for us are good. He’s not trying to make us miserable. And he hasn’t lost his touch since he rescued the Israelites.

5 Reminders We Could All Use Right Now

Newly discovered “Pandoravirus” could redefine life as we know it

Send to Kindle

Not getting what you deserve can be a good thing. Paul makes clear in his many letters that became part of the New Testament that the Christian’s relationship to God—his salvation—are the consequence of Jesus’ death on the cross alone. There is nothing that anyone can do, or not do, good or bad, that will contribute to salvation. You can not earn your way to God, according to Paul. Jesus was punished in your place, and so there is no punishment left to endure. The price was paid, and so there’s nothing more that you need to pay. It’s all free and clear. It is a difficult concept for most people to accept, for two reasons.

First, it is unfair and unjust. Those who are guilty are let off. Second, it runs counter to our life experience. We get paid our wages on the basis of our performance. We earn grades in school on the basis of our performance. We continue to have relationships with our friends and family because of our performance. We win games on account of our performance. And now, against all that, God tells us that our performance doesn’t matter at all: we get everything just because God loves us, because Jesus died in our place.

It is hard to overcome the sense of guilt, the sense that surely there must be something I have to do or not do in order to earn God’s favor. Counter-intuitively, Paul argues no.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain? So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?

(Galatians 2:20-3:5)

Being good, doing the right thing, not making bad choices: that’s the smart way to live, like balancing your checkbook is a good idea. But behaving properly won’t make you more holy or closer to God, anymore than you’ll actually change the contents of your checking account by balancing your checkbook.

Where the Future Came From: A Trip Through the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair

The Not-As-Dark-As-Advertised Ages

Send to Kindle

One day Peter and the apostles had to practice civil disobedience. Peter and John had healed a man who had been unable to walk for years; he was a well-known beggar at the temple, and so the healing gained quick notoriety. Soon, the priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came and seized Peter and John and put them in jail. Admittedly an odd reaction on the part of the authorities, until you consider that they were frustrated with the fact that the followers of Christ had not gone away when Jesus died. Instead, they claimed he came back to life; and now the miracles that had created such a problem for them with Jesus were continuing. They saw the rise of Christianity as a threat to the continued existence of the Jewish nation: they feared Christianity would create a rebellion or some other problem with Rome and that Rome would then destroy everything. Their motivation was to preserve their people–and incidentally, their comfortable positions of leadership.

The following day, the rulers, elders and teachers of the law met in Jerusalem; Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John, Alexander and the other men of the high priest’s family were present and had Peter and John brought before them for questioning. Peter and John took the opportunity to tell them about Jesus, his resurrection, and the salvation from sin offered by him. Since the man whom they had healed was standing there with them, there was little they could say. So they ordered them to withdraw from the Sanhedrin and began discussing the matter. “What are we going to do with these men?” they asked. “Everybody living in Jerusalem knows they have done an outstanding miracle, and we cannot deny it. But to stop this thing from spreading any further among the people, we must warn these men to speak no longer to anyone in this name.” (Acts 4:16-17)

Then they called Peter and John back in again and commanded them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.

But Peter and John replied, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19-20)

The principle of civil disobedience that the apostles here institute is this: they will act as they believe God wants them to act and if that involves violating the commands of human beings and human governments, so be it. But, as the events that followed demonstrate, they were willing to then accept the punishments, whatever they might be, that would be meted out by those people or governments.

The important principle that became the norm in the early Christian community was to obey God, even if that meant breaking the law. Unjust laws simply could not, in good conscious, be obeyed. Over the centuries that followed, many Christians, both individually and in groups, operated according to this basic principle, whether it was continuing to worship God in the face of persecution or even at the risk of execution, or if it meant disobeying what the law said was right, because they believed that it was, in fact, wrong. Thus, in the United States, opposition to the practice of slavery led many believers to work tirelessly to help slaves escape from their enslavement, even though the law said that what they were doing was wrong and was, in fact, theft.

Is Spirituality Really the Opposite of Science?

Elon Musk Thinks He Can Get You From NY to LA in 45 Minutes

Send to Kindle

What it’s all about is neither the hokey-pokey nor 42. One day while Jesus was teaching, a religious leader approached Jesus and asked him which law he thought was the most important of all.

Jesus quickly answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Then he added, “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire Bible is built on those two laws.” (Matthew 22:36-40) Later, the Apostle Paul would point out that “love your neighbor as yourself” sums up the entire law. After all, he said, love does no harm to its neighbor: if you love someone, you’re not going to kill him, or steal from him, or do anything else but what would help him. (Romans 13:8-10, Galatians 5:14).

So what is it all about? It is all about love.

Why aliens might understand the universe very differently than we do

The Six Most Certifiably Insane Acts of Writing

Send to Kindle

Saul went to the High Priest in Jerusalem and got letter to the synagogues in Damascus so that if he found any Christians, he could take them as prisoners and haul them back to Jerusalem for trial.
On his way to Jerusalem, a light from heaven flashed around him and he fell to the ground. He heard a voice ask him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
Saul responded by inquiring about the identity of the voice. The voice identified itself as belonging to Jesus and that Saul was persecuting him. Then the voice told him, “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

The men traveling with Saul stood around speechless, hearing the noise but not seeing anyone. When Saul got up from the ground, he opened his eyes and discovered that he was blind. They led him by the hand on into Damascus, where he remained blind for the next three days.

Meanwhile, a Christian by the name of Ananias had a vision. “Ananias!”

“Yes, Lord,” he answered.

“Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”
“Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”

But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”
So, Ananias went and found Saul just where God told him he’d be. Once there, he put his hands on Saul, and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”

Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized, and after taking some food, he regained his strength. Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus. At once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the Son of God. All those who heard him were astonished and asked, “Isn’t he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name? And hasn’t he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priests?”

Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled everyone who knew him: the man who had persecuted Christians, had suddenly become one.

And it wasn’t just his former colleagues who had a hard time accepting that he had changed. Those who had been persecuted by him were even slower to accept the transformation.

Without exception, we find it hard to accept that people can change, that “old dogs” can learn “new tricks.” And yet, it does happen. In the Bible, Saul is the prize example of the unexpected metamorphosis: of a bad man becoming good. Charles Colson had served Nixon during his presidency, and had been heavily involved in the Watergate cover-up. He was notorious for all the bad things he had done. Many people remained skeptical of the change that he underwent when he became a Christian, even after he devoted the remaining decades of his life to Christian ministry, specifically working with the incarcerated and their families. There were many of his political opponents that never accepted the change and even to this day, refuse to accept that anything good could have actually come out of him.

Paul doubtless faced similar doubts his whole life, both from former colleagues, as well as those who had become his new colleagues.

We marvel at changed lives; we applaud those who turn their lives around. And yet, unlike God, many of us will continue to doubt–or will watch carefully, waiting for them to fail, so we can chortle and tell people, “see, I told you so.”

How do we walk the line between not being fooled or conned–of being too naive and trusting–and refusing to accept genuine repentance? How do we tell the difference between the con and the real thing? And how many people don’t believe that real change is possible, that redemption can happen?

As a Christian, we should recognize the transformative power of the Holy Spirit–and we should accept it when it is real, even if the person transformed is not a person we like or entirely agree with.

Abraham Lincoln is quoted as saying that the best way to destroy your enemy is to change him into your friend. We need to learn to recognize when that happens.

Send to Kindle