Do you know this experience? You say or do something. Someone talks about your motives or purposes and you hear of their views. As you see it, they are wide of the mark, but then they and others go ahead to act and react on the basis of their mistaken ideas. Or, perhaps you are the one doing the talking about other’s motives and purposes.
It’s common to make attributions about the motives and purposes of others based on our ‘reading’ of their actions. However, do we test our attributions by with the person concerned? It’s surely their right to first tell us what their motives etc were. An untested attribution may be wide of the mark and quite dangerous when we act on it.
How do we feel when people make untested and wrong attributions about us? Most of us are annoyed – and rightly so. We wish the person had come to ask questions and listen to us before making their attributions.
Now let’s apply this to God. We sometimes use phrases like this: I can’t believe in a God who …. ; or, I know what the Bible says, but I think... . Do you see what we are doing? We are taking our ideas of God and attributing them back to him. Ultimately this is the idolatry of us making God after our own image instead of him making us after his own image (Gen 1:26-27).
Like all misattributions, this is insulting to the one of whom it is made and dangerous to the one making it. It also misreads God’s nature. God revealed himself to Moses by a Hebrew name YHWH which we render as ‘Yahweh’; ‘LORD’ or even ‘Jehovah’. It means ‘I am what I am’ (Ex 3:14). We don’t define God with our attributions, but he defines himself in his works and his words.
Do you notice something else about the attributions we make to God? We generally emphasise one aspect or another of God’s character and omit others. By contrast, God defines himself with multiple aspects that complement each other. For example, consider these words:
The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but i who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Ex 34:6-7)
Let’s stop making untested attributions about other people and especially about God. Let’s instead listen as God tells us who he is and relate to him on his terms.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
A prayer
Ascribe to me glory and strength.
Ascribe to me the glory due to God’s name;
Worship the splendor of my achievements, look at my face in the mirror – it is the face of beauty, success and self rule! I am in charge!
Forgive us, O Lord, for trying to usurp your throne, everyday. In words we say you are God, but in deeds, we prove we are God, until trouble comes.
You are Lord over all creation and life. Forgive us for inverting it all: Forgetting your power and authority, we seek to bend your will to ours.
You are our King. We exist for your glory and pleasure. But, we treat you as our subject. We call you when we need you. But have little time for your word, your presence and your voice otherwise. Forgive us.
You are the righteous judge. But we take it upon ourselves to judge others. Forgive us. Remind us that You will judge, and all will be called to account.
Thank you Father, for tempering your righteousness and power with mercy and love, so we are not destroyed for our impertinence.
Thank you that Jesus made amends for our sins once and for all, and now continues to intercede for us at your right hand.
Soften our hearts O God.
We know that nothing can be hidden from you, and your word discern the thoughts and intentions of our hearts.
Teach us to give you the honour and glory due to your name.
Remind us that man made idols are destroyed at your whim. Help us to treat you with proper reverence as our only God, and to fear your wrath.
Humble us to bow daily before you with contrite hearts and spirits.
Teach us to worship you by reading your word often, confessing our sins, and showing genuine repentance. Convict our hearts to see the hidden sins that grieve you. Strengthen us to move beyond lip service, to make a willed decision to change and obey you.
Help us to make time to rest in you. Satisfy us with holiness and joy. Quell our restlessness that we may hear your voice and receive your blessings.
Keep our eyes on the cross of Jesus and help us to number our days a right, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Show us how to love what you love, that our lives may be a fragrant offering to you.
Grant us strength and peace as we live in confidence of your salvation promise. Help us to persevere in faith and fruitfulness that we may make our place in heaven sure.
(Prayed at ORPC on 21 Feb 2010 - based on Ps 96)
Ascribe to me the glory due to God’s name;
Worship the splendor of my achievements, look at my face in the mirror – it is the face of beauty, success and self rule! I am in charge!
Forgive us, O Lord, for trying to usurp your throne, everyday. In words we say you are God, but in deeds, we prove we are God, until trouble comes.
You are Lord over all creation and life. Forgive us for inverting it all: Forgetting your power and authority, we seek to bend your will to ours.
You are our King. We exist for your glory and pleasure. But, we treat you as our subject. We call you when we need you. But have little time for your word, your presence and your voice otherwise. Forgive us.
You are the righteous judge. But we take it upon ourselves to judge others. Forgive us. Remind us that You will judge, and all will be called to account.
Thank you Father, for tempering your righteousness and power with mercy and love, so we are not destroyed for our impertinence.
Thank you that Jesus made amends for our sins once and for all, and now continues to intercede for us at your right hand.
Soften our hearts O God.
We know that nothing can be hidden from you, and your word discern the thoughts and intentions of our hearts.
Teach us to give you the honour and glory due to your name.
Remind us that man made idols are destroyed at your whim. Help us to treat you with proper reverence as our only God, and to fear your wrath.
Humble us to bow daily before you with contrite hearts and spirits.
Teach us to worship you by reading your word often, confessing our sins, and showing genuine repentance. Convict our hearts to see the hidden sins that grieve you. Strengthen us to move beyond lip service, to make a willed decision to change and obey you.
Help us to make time to rest in you. Satisfy us with holiness and joy. Quell our restlessness that we may hear your voice and receive your blessings.
Keep our eyes on the cross of Jesus and help us to number our days a right, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Show us how to love what you love, that our lives may be a fragrant offering to you.
Grant us strength and peace as we live in confidence of your salvation promise. Help us to persevere in faith and fruitfulness that we may make our place in heaven sure.
(Prayed at ORPC on 21 Feb 2010 - based on Ps 96)
Thursday, February 18, 2010
The Gambling Game
It is common for people to gamble and Singapore has plenty of opportunities. Offshore gambling cruises, Genting bus tours, card games, lucky draws, and now casinos are all available.
The nation’s churches, with other local religious and community groups, have been vocal in opposing further gambling facilities. Why? After all gambling creates employment, attracts foreign exchange, stimulates expenditure and swells tax revenue.
Christian opposition is not because we are killjoys who take pleasure in denying others their pleasure. Rather, it is based on love of neighbour and of God.
Firstly, love of neighbour.
• Profit without honour. Gambling is not a charity but a highly profitable business. The operators win and gamblers lose. Unlike other providers of goods and services, there’s no real benefit to most gamblers.
• Individuals suffer. Gambling is addictive to some whose lives slip into a downward spiral of desperate measure to get yet more money to play, hoping against hope that the next roll of the dice is their big win. Further, gambling fosters irresponsibility, with it’s promise of wealth without work.
• Families suffer. Many a mother and children sit at home in relative poverty while dad goes out yet again to gamble. Then they feel dad’s rage when he comes home; again a loser and again looking to vent anger.
• Social sleaze. Gambling attracts prostitution, drugs, loan sharks etc. Sophisticated gambling attracts sophisticated sleaze, but its still sleaze.
It’s good to see local measures to head off some of these ill-effects by regulative controls. However, the regular arrests for gambling-related vices reinforce the problem. Gambling fosters social harms from which we need protection. Why allow it in the first place?
Secondly, love of God.
• Gambling treats life as random or subject to superstitious fate. The Bible teaches that the world is ordered under the hand of its creator-Lord (eg Eph 1:11). Gambling insults God’s providence.
• Gambling is a false and cruel god. The adrenalin rush of high expectations and the ‘buzz’ that go with gambling can be an empty ‘hebel’ that distracts us from seeing our need of God. (Eccles 2:10-11).
Let’s stay away from gambling ourselves and encourage others to do the same. Love of God and neighbour bids us say ‘no thanks’.
The nation’s churches, with other local religious and community groups, have been vocal in opposing further gambling facilities. Why? After all gambling creates employment, attracts foreign exchange, stimulates expenditure and swells tax revenue.
Christian opposition is not because we are killjoys who take pleasure in denying others their pleasure. Rather, it is based on love of neighbour and of God.
Firstly, love of neighbour.
• Profit without honour. Gambling is not a charity but a highly profitable business. The operators win and gamblers lose. Unlike other providers of goods and services, there’s no real benefit to most gamblers.
• Individuals suffer. Gambling is addictive to some whose lives slip into a downward spiral of desperate measure to get yet more money to play, hoping against hope that the next roll of the dice is their big win. Further, gambling fosters irresponsibility, with it’s promise of wealth without work.
• Families suffer. Many a mother and children sit at home in relative poverty while dad goes out yet again to gamble. Then they feel dad’s rage when he comes home; again a loser and again looking to vent anger.
• Social sleaze. Gambling attracts prostitution, drugs, loan sharks etc. Sophisticated gambling attracts sophisticated sleaze, but its still sleaze.
It’s good to see local measures to head off some of these ill-effects by regulative controls. However, the regular arrests for gambling-related vices reinforce the problem. Gambling fosters social harms from which we need protection. Why allow it in the first place?
Secondly, love of God.
• Gambling treats life as random or subject to superstitious fate. The Bible teaches that the world is ordered under the hand of its creator-Lord (eg Eph 1:11). Gambling insults God’s providence.
• Gambling is a false and cruel god. The adrenalin rush of high expectations and the ‘buzz’ that go with gambling can be an empty ‘hebel’ that distracts us from seeing our need of God. (Eccles 2:10-11).
Let’s stay away from gambling ourselves and encourage others to do the same. Love of God and neighbour bids us say ‘no thanks’.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
New Year, Old Person
A quick search shows more than 12 different start dates for the new year among different groups of people. Think of that – 12 plus annual chances for a fresh start with new resolutions, new hopes and new plans.
However, it’s not that easy. We may spruce up our homes, buy new clothes, start a new diary but one thing remains the same. That’s us. And there’s the problem. It’s the same old person under the new clothes.
My recent reading includes a book called The Consolations of Philosophy. It’s a well-written book that harvests the thoughts of some ancient and modern western philosophers as they offer wisdom on various life issues. There’s much that makes sense in this advice. It also fits well with the tao that we find in eastern thought and with the wisdom literature of Biblical books like Ecclesiastes and Proverbs.
However, all this wisdom literature has the same problem of our new year clothes. It lacks power to effect change within and to enable people to do the things that the way of wisdom commends.
The apostle Paul ran up against this problem. In Colossae there were people who sought to harness ancient and modern wisdom to produce rules that would enable people to be lifted up to a higher plane. But the rules were impotent, for they could give the direction of change but not the power for change (Col 2:23).
The power for change lies in reconnecting to God through faith in Jesus. That produces so dramatic a change that it can be described as death and resurrection (Col 2:13; 3:1). There’s now scope for a new focus on things from the realm of God rather than grovelling in the lower and worst elements of fallen humanity (Col 3:1-2).
Paul uses the imagery of new clothes to explain what this change means.
Christian believers can be told to take off a range of old behaviours because their old self has been discarded and we are being renewed in our creational likeness to God (Col 3:9,10). This results in the ‘new clothing’ of changed behaviours such as compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience (Col 3:12). Not surprisingly, this also opens up whole new possibilities for relationships across the normal lines of human division (Col 3:11).
It really doesn’t matter when we celebrate the new year or how often. However, it really does matter that we become new people by connecting to God through faith in his Son Jesus.
However, it’s not that easy. We may spruce up our homes, buy new clothes, start a new diary but one thing remains the same. That’s us. And there’s the problem. It’s the same old person under the new clothes.
My recent reading includes a book called The Consolations of Philosophy. It’s a well-written book that harvests the thoughts of some ancient and modern western philosophers as they offer wisdom on various life issues. There’s much that makes sense in this advice. It also fits well with the tao that we find in eastern thought and with the wisdom literature of Biblical books like Ecclesiastes and Proverbs.
However, all this wisdom literature has the same problem of our new year clothes. It lacks power to effect change within and to enable people to do the things that the way of wisdom commends.
The apostle Paul ran up against this problem. In Colossae there were people who sought to harness ancient and modern wisdom to produce rules that would enable people to be lifted up to a higher plane. But the rules were impotent, for they could give the direction of change but not the power for change (Col 2:23).
The power for change lies in reconnecting to God through faith in Jesus. That produces so dramatic a change that it can be described as death and resurrection (Col 2:13; 3:1). There’s now scope for a new focus on things from the realm of God rather than grovelling in the lower and worst elements of fallen humanity (Col 3:1-2).
Paul uses the imagery of new clothes to explain what this change means.
Christian believers can be told to take off a range of old behaviours because their old self has been discarded and we are being renewed in our creational likeness to God (Col 3:9,10). This results in the ‘new clothing’ of changed behaviours such as compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience (Col 3:12). Not surprisingly, this also opens up whole new possibilities for relationships across the normal lines of human division (Col 3:11).
It really doesn’t matter when we celebrate the new year or how often. However, it really does matter that we become new people by connecting to God through faith in his Son Jesus.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
SON-LIGHT OR LUNAR-SHADOW?
Lunar calendars have been used in the past and are now still used. For some, a lunar calendar is merely a different way of measuring time.
For others, a lunar calendar has deeper significance. This is found in pre-Christian Celtic religion, in some traditional societies and in some forms of contemporary paganism. This sometimes has a very dark side, with the moon’s shadows contrasted with the sun’s brightness and the moon’s hours seen as the time when evil reigns. We catch a glimpse of this in Ps 121: the sun will not harm you by day nor the moon by night (v6). The sun’s harm is through heat, but the moon’s harm is that of spiritual evil. The old word ‘lunatic’ (for a person with a mental illness) also reflects the idea of the moon as a source of dark forces.
For others again, the motion of the heavenly bodies is seen to rule affairs on earth. Hence the fortune tellers who consult almanacs based on planetary positions at our birth or people who rely on the zodiac-based horoscopes for day-to-day predictions. It’s a fun exercise to compare several horoscopes for ourselves on the same day and laugh at the ‘gaps’. I did that when writing this minister’s message and wait for the various and contradictory predictions to be fulfilled.
The Christian Scriptures point us in elsewhere. Our individual lives and the world’s history are not ruled by bad lunar forces or by the mechanical motions of heavenly bodies. The heavenly bodies do not make history, but were made in history by the creator-God (Gen 2:14-19). This creator-God is also the Lord-God who moves all things according to his purposes (Eph 1:11). John Calvin summarises these Bible truths in his quip that it is not the stars that rule, but God who made them.
God’s world is not planetary and mechanical. Instead it is personal and relational, just like the Lord himself. As Paul reminds us, God’s fullness is seen in the person of God’s Son, Jesus Christ (Col 2:9). He is the person where all wisdom and knowledge is found (Col 2:3). Not only that, but he is the personal reality against which all human religious traditions are but fleeting shadows (Col 2:17). He is the power of God for life and the one in whom the body of God’s people grows (Col 2:11-12,19).
Let us therefore not submit to the rule of the moon, the stars or other planetary bodies. Nor let us be fearful of their influence as determinative of our fate and thus approach the new lunar year with uncertainty. Let us instead leave the lunar shadow for the Son-light of Jesus. Our help is above the hills, sun, moon and stars – it is in the Lord who is the maker of heaven and earth (Ps 121:2).
For others, a lunar calendar has deeper significance. This is found in pre-Christian Celtic religion, in some traditional societies and in some forms of contemporary paganism. This sometimes has a very dark side, with the moon’s shadows contrasted with the sun’s brightness and the moon’s hours seen as the time when evil reigns. We catch a glimpse of this in Ps 121: the sun will not harm you by day nor the moon by night (v6). The sun’s harm is through heat, but the moon’s harm is that of spiritual evil. The old word ‘lunatic’ (for a person with a mental illness) also reflects the idea of the moon as a source of dark forces.
For others again, the motion of the heavenly bodies is seen to rule affairs on earth. Hence the fortune tellers who consult almanacs based on planetary positions at our birth or people who rely on the zodiac-based horoscopes for day-to-day predictions. It’s a fun exercise to compare several horoscopes for ourselves on the same day and laugh at the ‘gaps’. I did that when writing this minister’s message and wait for the various and contradictory predictions to be fulfilled.
The Christian Scriptures point us in elsewhere. Our individual lives and the world’s history are not ruled by bad lunar forces or by the mechanical motions of heavenly bodies. The heavenly bodies do not make history, but were made in history by the creator-God (Gen 2:14-19). This creator-God is also the Lord-God who moves all things according to his purposes (Eph 1:11). John Calvin summarises these Bible truths in his quip that it is not the stars that rule, but God who made them.
God’s world is not planetary and mechanical. Instead it is personal and relational, just like the Lord himself. As Paul reminds us, God’s fullness is seen in the person of God’s Son, Jesus Christ (Col 2:9). He is the person where all wisdom and knowledge is found (Col 2:3). Not only that, but he is the personal reality against which all human religious traditions are but fleeting shadows (Col 2:17). He is the power of God for life and the one in whom the body of God’s people grows (Col 2:11-12,19).
Let us therefore not submit to the rule of the moon, the stars or other planetary bodies. Nor let us be fearful of their influence as determinative of our fate and thus approach the new lunar year with uncertainty. Let us instead leave the lunar shadow for the Son-light of Jesus. Our help is above the hills, sun, moon and stars – it is in the Lord who is the maker of heaven and earth (Ps 121:2).
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