Tag Archives: bible

Biblically Speaking

Success, Wisdom, Tiger, and the Bible

2 Comments

Tiger is fresh on my mind because we talked about him as we looked at the Bible.  When I say ‘we’ I mean my wife and my three at-home sons.  As we talked I described to them that  success can get us to a place of ‘believing’ our own press reports; specifically, that the rules don’t apply to us.  I was encouraged to later see that Tiger had used these same words about himself.  He knows he did wrong and we know he did wrong—but standards these days (amorality) really doesn’t have much of a reason as to why.  The wrongness is ethical…but the stupidity is practical.  It can be avoided.

So, what happens and how do we avoid falling into such a pit ourselves.  Three verses come to mind (the two in proverbs we all discussed around the kitchen table).

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” (Proverbs 3:5-6, ESV)


“Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.” (Proverbs 3:7-8, ESV)


“Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.” (2 Corinthians 10:12, ESV)


All of these verses hit at the same thing…I kind of arrogance that contains its own death-wish, so to speak.  Leaning on your own understanding, being wise in your own eyes, and using yourself as the standard of measurement…all of these are deadly.

The verses surely aren’t saying that thinking of someone as wise is a problem, rather it is when we stand back and look at our own selves with awe and wonder at our greatness (wisdom, smarts, looks, money, success, etc.).  I remember a speaker one time saying that he would get up in the morning, look himself in the mirror, and declare to his own reflection, “You good lookin’ thing—don’t you ever die.”  I can’t recall if it was a tip or a joke, but we all laughed.

The problem with us humans is that we lose perspective, especially when we don’t have a ‘god’ to whom we are accountable.  All that is left is oneself, so we measure us by us.  Soon phrases like, “I could be wrong” disappear altogether and we drift in to rank subjectivity; if we think it, it must be true.

There is a better way, including a turning away from evil.  But, according to the passage above, the turn from evil is preceded by not looking at ourselves with awe.  Tiger is a helpful example here, which is already redemptive if we take it to heart.

The final promise is that there is HEALTH in the future…if humility and a flight from evil are taken to heart.  Acknowledging God surely begins with admitting “I am not God”— but there’s the rub.  We succeed, we believe our press reports, we decided the rules don’t apply—then all that is left is collapse.  This is how it goes with wisdom, this world, and a very interested God who is listening for our humble acknowledgment of Him over us.

God bless Tiger and all of us who would learn from his stumble and recovery.

Grace,

Fred Lybrand

Biblically Speaking

What makes someone an Agnostic and not an Atheist?

4 Comments

All,

I received this comment in a previous post, and thought it might lead to clarifying a distinction about atheists and agnostics.

Here’s the note:

If you want to talk to atheists in Texas, go to Austin. Specifically the Atheist Community of Austin, and their cable access show “The Atheist Experience” or their podcast “The Non-Prophets”. (And no, they aren’t paying me to advertise.)

All I can say, and someone may already have said it, is that your definition of ‘atheist’ is wrong. All an atheist is is someone who doesn’t believe in a god or gods.

Certainly someone who asserted that there absolutely was no god would fit the definition of an atheist. But the definition of atheist isn’t so specific as to apply only to those people.

Here’s my response:

morsecOde,

You are sort of making my point – it is about ‘belief’.

I think I’ve been fair in my postings [see My Favorite Conversation (ever) With an Atheist] about the distinctions in language on the term, but I’ll ponder the following critique:

There is, unfortunately, some disagreement about the definition of atheism. It is interesting to note that most of that disagreement comes from theists — atheists themselves tend to agree on what atheism means. Christians in particular dispute the definition used by atheists and insist that atheism means something very different.

The broader, and more common, understanding of atheism among atheists is quite simply “not believing in any gods.” No claims or denials are made — an atheist is just a person who does not happen to be a theist. Sometimes this broader understanding is called “weak” or “implicit” atheism. Most good, complete dictionaries readily support this.

There also exists a narrower sort of atheism, sometimes called “strong” or “explicit” atheism. With this type, the atheist explicitly denies the existence of any gods — making a strong claim which will deserve support at some point. Some atheists do this and others may do this with regards to certain specific gods but not with others. Thus, a person may lack belief in one god, but deny the existence of another god.

Below are links to a variety of references pages to help understand how atheism is defined and why atheists define it the way they do.

Now, with all that in mind, I suppose the question is what is the difference between an atheist and an agnostic? [http://atheism.about.com/od/definitionofatheism/a/definition.htm]

I’m thinking:

atheist = I don’t believe there is a god or gods [i.e. there is no God.]

agnostic = I don’t know if there is a god or gods [i.e. is there a God?]

My point is that, though many atheists believe they are atheists (which is fine, believe you are whatever you think you are), they are in fact agnostics.

So, what makes someone an agnostic and not an atheist?

Thanks,


Fred Lybrand

Biblically Speaking

Did you know the Bible mentions Luck?

10 Comments

Well of course we all know God is sovereign, which means He is clearly in charge and He does as He pleases.  But you know, this is only one side of the story.  I’ve noticed that people tend to get theologically ‘lopsided’ from time to time.  By being lopsided I mean that we can drift into forcing the rest of the Bible to fit our own view.

I mean, is it all about sovereignty or all about free will?  I prefer the term ‘responsiblity’ over the term ‘free will’— but in any case issues such as these turn out to be about mystery.  It may seem like a cop-out, but the mysteries are best held as such.  Jesus…God or man?  Yes!  But I say this by way of admitting a mystery that I can’t (yet in this life) explain.  I affirm both elements without having to RESOLVE THE TENSION.

The Bible does this in many spots, and in this sense reminds us of Art and not Philosophy.  Art holds tension (such as in the use of irony), while Philosophy mostly does not (it must fit well as a system / answer objections).  In Art, the Mona Lisa can smile.  In Philosophy, we have to define smile and explain her motives (which means we guess)!

So what about luck?

Well, here’s the verse—

“But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by CHANCE a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.” (Luke 10:29-31, ESV)

I emphasized the word CHANCE so it would be easy to see.  Yes, here is Jesus Christ telling the famous story of the Good Samaritan and sticking luck right in the middle of it!  Is this really a word that means luck?

Well, here’s what an online Greek-word-tool  called Perseus which says (and I’ve verified it with TDNT, etc., if you care)—

συγκυρέω 1 2

I. to come together by chance, Il., Hdt.: to meet with an accident, συγκύρσαι τύχῃ Soph.; εἰς ἓν μοίρας ξυνέκυρσας art involved in one and the same fate, Eur.

Basically, it just means what we think it means; by happenstance, a priest came upon a man after he was attacked, beaten, and left for dead.  Things really do ‘just happen’, though I’m sure this happening is not without the permission of God in how He ordained the universe.  Personally, I don’t like it because this world doesn’t seem to work right.  And yet, I hold out that this isn’t the best world God can make (the next world will be the best world); but that in the meantime, we can give folks a taste of the world to come as the Samaritan did.

Jesus talked in truthful and plan language.  Clearly God is not obsessed with over-controlling every detail.  Surely we have free will responsibility…how else can we explain what we wear on most days!

Good luck…stuff happens…but the Lord is still above it all,

Fred Lybrand

Biblically Speaking

If you grasp the insights in this book, you’ll understand FAITH ALONE IN CHRIST ALONE in such a way that you’ll never be tempted to judge anyone’s eternal destiny again.

2 Comments

OK…so, I want to shamelessly tell you about the power of sorting out the Faith/Works issue in keeping the Gospel clear, assurance solid, and judgmentalness banished.  It is all in Back to Faith (see www.backtofaith.com)

Here’s the beginning of Chapter 5 from the book to consider:

CHAPTER 5
The Cliché Is Pragmatically Invalid
If the arguments presented have been unpersuasive to this
point, consider that this one great weakness of the cliché is the
only real challenge needed to justifiably abandon it: The cliché is
pragmatically invalid. Pragmatic invalidity simply means that, in
any practical sense, the theology behind the cliché is useless, even
if it is true. Assume the cliché, “It is therefore faith alone which
justifies, and yet the faith which justifies is not alone,” is true. In
other words, with the assumption that the cliché is valid, it is held
that one can indeed look at works (or the lack of works) and
determine something about the true nature of an individual’s
eternal salvation. Said otherwise, works prove faith. But can one
truly know if the works are authentic? Or, can the works be
hidden? Here a great problem appears, practically speaking,
because the true works arising from a true salvation are
indeterminable, and so the cliché is pragmatically useless. How
can one know for sure that the works seen in another are “because
of salvation,” rather than “in order to get saved?” To appreciate
this argument, one need only consider the distinction between fact
and theory.
A fact, in the simplest sense, is something that corresponds
to the actual state of affairs. Facts are those things which are
knowable and demonstrable and correspond with how things really
are. A theory, on the other hand, as used in this context, is an
unproved assumption. It parallels words like conjecture and
speculation when one speaks of theory in this sense. Obviously the
[This argument admittedly matches the correspondence theory of truth.
Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy [book on-line]

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, accessed 4 October 2006), 267;

available from Questia, http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d= 74362715;Internet.

Defined 6b: an unproved assumption: conjecture, c: a body of
theorems presenting a concise systematic view of a subject. Merriam-Webster’s
Collegiate Dictionary, 11 ed. (2003), s.v. “theory.”]

word of God does not contain theory, as such, but the factual
explanations from God concerning His will and revelation to
mankind. Whether or not one can demonstrate the validity of the
cliché as a biblical concept is not at issue. At issue is the
distinction between that which is provable and factual, in contrast
with that which is theoretical and based on conjecture.
If the cliché’s theory is true, then it is apparent that one can
look at works or lack of works to point to the genuine nature of
another’s saving faith. So the puritan Matthew Henry asserts,
Faith is the root, good works are the fruits, and we
must see to it that we have both. We must not think
that either, without the other, will justify and save
us.
The truth, however, is that scripturally speaking, believing
individuals can indeed lack works, while unbelievers can indeed
have good, albeit dead, works. Judas serves as a glaring example
of one whose works never betrayed him. When Jesus predicted
that one of the disciples would betray him, all were perplexed, and
no disciple stated, “Well, it is obviously Judas.”

Woe!

Fred Lybrand