Friday, May 25, 2007

The Books Of The Bible

It is best to begin reading the Bible with the New Testament first. The Old Testament was written before Jesus came and the New Testament after. The New Testament revolves around the life of Jesus, the theology and meaning of his life and, the spread of the new church.

The first four books of the New Testament are the gospels. This is a term that means "good news". The news being that the messiah, Jesus, has come and the sacrifice of his life on the cross, as well-foretold in the Old Testament, paid the price for sin for anyone that accepts Jesus as his savior (saviour).

The first three gospels, Matthew, Mark and, Luke are known as the "synoptic gospels" for their similarity to each other. The fourth, John, is more spiritual and theological and concentrates more on what Jesus was than what he did. The Gospel written by John is different from the other three and includes some things not mentioned by the others and vice versa. Matthew is the most topical of the gospels and tends to group material by topic rather than chronology. Mark was the first written and Matthew and Luke add onto it. All four are versions of Jesus' life and the best way to get an understanding of it is to study all four.

The next book is the Acts of the Apostles. This is a continuation of the Gospel of Luke and is an adventure-packed story about the spread of the church. The first part of the book revolves around the apostle Peter and the second part around Paul. St. Paul was a great enemy of the new church until Jesus encountered him in spirit when he was heading to Damascus. He was suddenly converted and spent the rest of his life spreading the gospel.

The Epistle (letter) to the Romans by Paul is an exquisite theological treatise. Paul never met Jesus in the flesh but this could be called "The Gospel of Paul". This book explains Christianity from a spiritually legal point of view. Romans 3:28 (chapter 3, verse 28) is what really inspired Martin Luther and set off the Reformation.

The two Books of Corinthians are Paul"s advice to the believers at Corinth, a city near Athens. The Book of Galatians is one of the favorite (favourite) books of just about all Christians, certainly including me. It explains the legal foundation of Chritianity and is more concise than the Book of Romans. The next book, the Book of Ephesians, is also one of the best and is a general epistle (letter), meant to be circulated around all the churches because it does not discuss the local issues of any church. This book and the next two, Phillipians and Colossians, Paul wrote from prison.

Next are two double books, to the Thessalonians and to Timothy. All four are short and well-liked books containing various encouragements, warnings and explanations of the spiritual purpose of Jesus' life. The Book of Titus is directed to the new church on the island of Crete and the single chapter Book of Philemon is about a runaway slave named Onesimus. The Book of Hebrews is a classic and explains the life of Jesus in terms of Jewish, Old Testament religious rituals and sacrifices.

The Book of James is known as kind of a counterbalance to those of Romans and Galatians because it focuses on works rather than grace. The following Books of Peter and John are exhortations, advice and explanations for believers in the new churches. The Book of Revelation is highly supernatural and prophetic. It is similar in form to the Old Testament Book of Daniel and concerns the Last Days of the world.

Alternatives To God

Human beings were designed by God to build their lives around him. It is easy to see that when people as a whole fall away from God, they inevitably replace him with something else. The past Hundred and thirty tears or so have been an time of secularism in western society. We have simply replaced God as the primary focus of life with nationalism and ideology, often with very destructive results.

It may not seem like it today, but intense, large-scale nationalism is a relatively recent development. In times past, people tended to think as their nation as merely a collective earthly servant of their god or gods. When nations and empires fought, warriors more often thought of themselves as fighting for their god against heretics or unbelievers than for their nation against another nation. In the Nineteenth Century, borders between nations were often poorly defined and many people in outlying areas were not even sure which nation they belonged to. Even today, if you asked a person in much of the world "what are you?", their answer would be their religion and not their nation or ethnic group.

The same is true with secular ideology. There have always been politics in the world but through most of human history, it was far less important than religion. To people in times past, the great ideological clashes of the past hundred years would be nonsensical. The ideology would be scarcely worth going to war for if no religion was involved.

All that we have done during this time is to replace God with secular ideology and nationalism. We are designed with this space for him and if we do not follow him, we replace him with something else. It is true that there have been wars and other destruction done in the name of religion. But what about the same done in the name of ideology and nationalism over the past hundred years? Nationalism or ideology is no replacement for the one true God and we can be sure that when we face God that our ideological beliefs and the nation we were a part of on earth will mean absolutely nothing to him.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Religion And Philosophy

Let's briefly discuss the difference between a religion and a philosophy. I have thought of a simple way to differentiate the two. I like to think that there are two different types of "realm of thought", a simple realm and a complex realm.

The simple realm is where a statement must be either true or false. Religion is a simple realm. If we say that Jesus is the Son of God, then that statement must be either true or false. There is no middle ground. Whenever you are thinking in terms of yes or no, of true or false, you are in the simple realm of thought.

The complex realm is where two opposing statements can be made and both can be true. Philosophy belongs in the complex realm because a philosophy, as opposed to a religion or a fact, cannot really be "true" or "false" in the same way that a simple fact is. Politics is also in the complex realm. One political position can be described as better than another but not as true or false.

The Symbol Of The Cross

The cross is the symbol of Christianity because it is how Jesus was killed to pay the penalty for sin. I find the cross to be a profound symbol of man seeking salvation with God in a literal way.

If we reach for God in an upward direction, at least symbolically, then the vertical piece of the cross represents the way to God. The transom, or cross-piece, of the cross represents the ways of the world. This is because the transom runs parallel, in the same direction, as the ground (or the world).

No matter how far a person walks on the flat ground, he will not get one iota closer to God. This is because God is upward, in a completely different direction. The ground represents the things that the world values. But no matter how much wealth, status, looks, power or, intelligence a person has, it cannot bring him any closer to God. The only way to God is in a completely different direction, upward.

The vertical piece of the cross represents the way to God. It takes the transom, the cross-piece, upon itself and points in the right direction, which is upward in the direction of God. The transom without the vertical piece could never point to God because it is pointing in a perpendicular direction.

The perpendicular direction in which the transom points is not the opposite of the direction to God, it is just a completely different direction. The opposite to the direction to God is to follow the vertical piece downward instead of upward. That is, symbolically, the direction to hell.

Secular Patterns

Just by looking at the world, we can see that religion was the most important thing to human beings for a long time. The patterns in the Bible and the history of Christianity were with us for so long that they have become ingrained in our ways of thinking and show up in secular manifestations.

The movement of millions of Europeans a century and more ago from the "old world" to the "new world" in search of opportunity and freedom very much resembles the transition from the Old Testament to the New Testament in the Bible. From the old order in which a person could not hope to attain salvation by his own merits to the new order where grace had given him a new life. Today's Europe is greatly changed and is itself the destination of millions of immigrants and the same pattern is evident.

Church history also leaves it's patterns. Tony Blair's New Labour Party and it's "third way" path between capitalism and socialism followed exactly the same pattern route as the Anglican Church (called Episcopal in the U.S.), which was formed as a compromise following the Reformation between Catholicism and Protestantism. In another example, Margaret Thatcher's political reformation, beginning in 1979, followed the same pattern of the Methodist Revival in England over a century earlier.

One of the easiest similarities to notice is the pattern resemblance between the Reformation in northern Europe in the Sixteenth Century and that of the Nazis in the Twentieth Century. The first was the breaking away from the old order to a new era of religious purity. The second was the same except it was for racial purity.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

World Peace

I know all about the prophecies of the End of the World as foretold in the Bible. But even so, since I have so much attention, I have got to try to do something to make the world more peaceful.

You probably heard this in elementary school or maybe during the Sixties but clearly, it is time to hear it again. For us to be wasting our resources on destroying or preparing to destroy each other when the world has so many troubles that we must work together on is just plain crazy. What kind of world would this have been if we had put all the effort and wealth that has been spent on all of the wars since the beginning of civilization into productive ends? There would be a world that would be so glorious that we would not even recognize it.

What can we do to bring about world peace? The answer is not to just kill everybody that we do not get along with. We have all got to find a way to live together on this planet. I am certain that a major part of the problem is over-simplification in dealing with other people. When some incident happens, such as an act of terrorism, we tend to lump people together who had nothing to do with it. In our world of global news, what could be an isolated incident instead becomes a worldwide conflict.

Our world is like a million rainbows that intersect and produce an infinity of hues. When we insist on looking at this field of color in stark black and white terms, not only will problems occur that did not need to occur but they will be of greater magnitude than need be. Seeing the world as a set of simple pigeon holes and expecting everyone and every situation to fit neatly into one or another of the holes is an invitation to a very non-peaceful world.

We are much more a world of individuals than a world of nations. When an individual or a small group does something, it should be seen in that context and not to lump an entire part of the world together. This applies whether it is an act of terrorism or the publication of an offensive cartoon. It is just so easy to generalize and to lump everybody together but we have created a world in which that is not practical.

Another part of the problem is simply people that think they are special. The rules are for other people but not for us because we are special. All of the people in this world are special. But that means that, as a whole, no one is special. Anyone who thinks themselves or their people to be innately above other people is a part of the world's troubles.

One thing we all have to realize is that the Age of Ideology is over. In this global village of instant news and communications, there is absolutely no reason for any nation or group to force it's ideology on anyone else. We can all see what life and conditions are like in other countries.

Whenever a better way of doing things emerges, it will be obvious to the entire world. In place of the Age of Ideology in the last century, we are now in the Age of Example. The way to show other to a better life or a better way of doing things is by example. The end of the days of spreading ideology by force should be a reason for the drastic curtailment of warfare.

The World That We Wanted

The really incredible thing about the world today is that it is, in just about every way, the world that we wanted for so long. The global ideological conflicts of the past century are over. The major nations of the world such as Russia, India and, China do not really stand for any ideology that they are trying to push on the world.

Perhaps the most incredible development of all is Europe. The scene of the two worst wars in history not so long ago has actually formed a union that speaks with virtually one voice. To a very great extent, we have been extremely successful in bringing about the world that we wanted in the past century.

Yet, things are just not right. America is the country that has gotten the world the way it wanted only to become possibly the least popular country in that world. As technology was making the world ever more of a global village our culture, at least as presented by the media, was getting more and more crude and it seemed that there was no one anticipating the coming global culture clash.

Even as we were shaping the world the way we wanted it, we were getting ourselves into a position where we were dependent on Middle East oil and causing global warming at the same time. We were pushing this car-based way of life on the world without a thought as to where all the required gasoline was going to come from or what it was going to do to the planet.

This goes to show that no matter how carefully we craft an ideology, there will always be holes in it that were unforeseen. Some ideologies are certainly better than others but even when we get the world we want, it will not turn out like we thought it would. There will always be something that no one thought of or a long-term problem that eluded our short-term thinking.

This is inevitably true for any man-made ideology. Suppose, for example, that the Nazis had achieved their goals. What would have happened then? Would they have had the world that they wanted? I believe that the death of Adolph Hitler would have been a critical point. Hitler had carefully stoked rivalry among his underlings to prevent any possibility of getting together and overthrowing him. The top leaders were all suspicious of each other and the Waffen SS was created as a virtual parallel army that was generally despised by the regular army. I am certain that this would have resulted in a fragmentation of the empire following Hitler's death, in much the same way as the empire of Alexander the Great.

As another example, Communism was well on it's way to taking over the world. But one of the things that no one had considered is that Communism can be interpreted in so many different ways. It can be seen as meaning a wide variety of things.

As Communism spread across the world, the inevitable fragmentation occurred. The result is that different Communist countries never did get along well with each other. There was intense rivalry between Communist factions and countries. In the Cold War the two Communist giants, China and the Soviet Union, never could see eye to eye long enough to gain victory and ended up with as much rivalry between themselves as with the United States. If the Communists had gotten the world they wanted, we can be sure that it would be a world with endless rivalry over interpretation of doctrine.

In the 1920s, American capitalists seemed on their way to building the world as they wanted it. The assembly line process had revolutionized manufacturing. Factories were turning out all kinds of products from cars to radios with blinding speed. Communism had begun as a rival system in the Soviet Union but it was a backwater that few people outside that country understood. The day belonged to Capitalism.

But as always, there were holes in the plans. The pay of workers barely increased while factories turned out millions of manufactured products. Goods began to pile up in warehouses because people did not have the money to buy them. Factories began cutting back production, meaning that workers had even less money to buy the products produced by the factories. It all spiralled into the devastating 1929 crash. Rival Communism was propelled on it's way to a global ideology and a leader named Adolph Hitler emerged from the economic devastation in Germany resulting from the crash.

No matter how well human beings plan things, no matter which ideology is the dominant one at the moment, when we get the world we wanted, it just does not turn out as we wanted it to. This shows us that it is only God, and not men, that has the ultimate answers needed by the world.

In contrast to the man-made ideologies that come and go in the revolving door of history, the Bible has all of the authority that it did centuries ago. God is only allowing us this period of dominion over the world to show us that we can never have the ultimate answers without him. Someday in the not-to-distant future after the apocalypse, Jesus will actually reign over the earth from Jerusalem. Only then will the world be the paradise that God intended it to be.