New Thoughts (9/25/05-9/30/05)
Five Husbands
We have all, one supposes, heard the teaching that the life of Jesus is in many ways a recapitulation of the history of Israel. Said in the reverse, the whole history of Israel was set out to display the Messiah who was to come. I have also been taught that this woman who came to the well is in her way the recapitulation of Samaritan history. This holds especially true as regards the thing Jesus reveals of her personal life. She had had five husbands – all of them in the past tense, one notes. It is not said directly what has happened to these five, whether she merely outlived them, or whether more sinful explanations were extent. However, it is noted that she how has this sixth man in her company, and he is not married to her. Again, whether he is married to another or just a stray man is not made known. We are given only the most basic facts of the case and must leave the rest to our imagination if we would know further. The point has been made, as far as the woman is concerned. Unlikely as it seemed in her estimation, indeed, impossible as it seemed, this man knows her history.
This is certainly true. However, more to the point is that this Man knows His history. In this regard, I recall a book that Michael Card wrote years ago entitled “The Parable of Joy”. This book was a walk through John’s Gospel with the benefit of an artist’s eye, as well as solid understanding of the text. One thing he pointed out in this passage was the relationship between these five husbands and the religious history of Samaria. In going through this passage these last few days, I find that message borne out. Consider, for instance, the figure of the husband, the cultural understanding of the husband’s role. From the days of Abraham and even before that, the husband had been held up as head of the house. In our day, that idea may not mean so very much, but look at the size of Abraham’s family, as it traveled with him! It was much more a matter of being head of the tribe, indeed, father of the nation.
There was the added significance that to the husband fell the role and the duties of the high priest for this same family or tribe. I am struck by the way family and community were so related in that sense, and just how much of a loss that is for our present day, when our sense of community can barely reach the walls of our own house. We have had politicians tell us how it takes a village to raise a child, and have understood that as nice as that sounded, there was something inherently wrong with the mindset that delivered the message. I tell you that the problem is not in the village involvement in family life, it’s that the village is no longer a function of family life. See, it takes a family to make a village. This is what we see in Abraham. His family was a city unto itself. I am quite certain that it had quite as much trial, strife, and internal conflict as one would find in any sizeable town today. But, they had this advantage: they were family, and they understood themselves as family. They needed no courts and lawyers to resolve their problems, for they had a clearly defined leader in the head of the family.
One might also note that the Biblical model thus provided is in no wise a democracy. Indeed, I can see no Biblical support for the idea of democracy. Certainly, I shall be pointed to those passages in Paul’s writing where he speaks of the equality of man. Yet, I would note that nowhere does Paul advise abandoning the political and social structures of his own day. While he declares master and slave equals in God’s sight, he does not actually insist that the social order that allowed for slaves and masters be put to an end. He merely required that the structure be renewed, regenerated in the image of God, wherein masters treated slaves well and slaves served their masters well. Likewise, there is no advocacy in Scripture for any other government than that which existed. Indeed, one might consider the Bible as supporting the older models, wherein the king’s word was absolute, far more than ever it supports the democracy we have today. Where is there a single example in Scripture of this polity of one man one vote? It certainly didn’t hold in Abraham’s household. Neither is it to be found in the Exodus from Egypt. No, and throughout the years of Jewish Dynasty, there remained only the one vote that mattered – that of the king. Others could counsel and advise, but the final decision remained the provenance of the king.
With all this in mind, return now to Samaria. Jesus looks at this woman with whom He has been talking and tells her that she has had five husbands, and furthermore, is now with a man who is not her husband. Well! Quite evidently He spoke the absolute and literal truth about this woman’s life. Her reaction upon hearing this revealed by Him is ample confirmation of the accuracy of His statement. Yet, there is more to what He says, just as there was more to the offer of living water than simply fetching a drink from a spring-fed stream. I think we can begin to see this greater sense in considering the summary we are given in 2Kings 17:28-41.
There came a priest to Samaria, who settled at Beth-El, that place where Jacob (who dug this well) had seen the ladder ascending to heaven. This priest, we are told, taught the Samaritans about the fear of the LORD, how to worship Him properly. Apparently, though, he didn’t make it clear enough that God wasn’t willing to share His glory, for the author records that all those nations whose exiles were in the land continued making their own gods and serving them. Now, the list that follows speaks of seven gods as it lists out the abominations in the land, which will not fit the figure Jesus has provided. It identifies these seven gods as representing the beliefs of five nations, though, and here, perhaps we find an answer to the five husbands. It is noted, as that passage continues that these people added the LORD to their list of gods to worship, and appointed priests “from among themselves” to honor him on their high-places (2Ki 17:32). How wrong is that! They would honor God, but not according to His own commands. Having been taught that He is worthy of their reverence, they offer not their reverence, but their idolatrous imitations. They make of their whole effort an offering of strange fire on strange altars by strange hands. There remains nothing to their act of ‘worship’ which can be deemed pleasing to God. Nothing.
Here is the final summation of their estate: They feared the LORD, but they also served their idols. This, they taught their children, and this sorry situation persists in their family to this day (2Ki 17:41). See, the nation had, in effect, six heads. Imagine the confusion in that land! Six masters, each with their own conflicting demands. How could they serve? Here, on the one hand was this god of the Sepharvaim that demanded the sacrifice of their own children on his altar, and on the other hand the God of Israel who would not condone any such unjust destruction of human life, who declared “thou shalt not kill thy brothers.” This had become a nation suffering from multiple-personality disorder.
Well, now. Jesus spoke of five of these husbands being in the past, and one remaining who was not truly a husband. Surely, by the time Jesus was upon the earth, the worship of these cultic idols had ceased. The testimony this woman gives serves, I think, to make this plain. “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain,” she says. Of course, that passage from Jewish history says the same thing. The problem was not so much where they were worshiping – it was after all the mount of blessing. The problem was that their worship had not been reserved for God alone. They had defiled those high places long before they sought to give God a place there. Now, what had been passed down through generations had never been wholly cleansed of that defilement. It continued to be a perversion of true worship. Here was the one who was not her husband.
See, the Samaritans would tell you that they worshiped God, the God of Jacob. One wonders if they would still be willing to acknowledge Him the God of Israel, but they could certainly accept the God of Jacob as title to this One they worshiped. The problem was that He was not given headship over their family. He was a man, but just a man. He had not the authority in the lives of this people that was His due. He was not their husband, just their lover.
Herein lies the problem. See, we will idealize our lover. When we are enticed by romance, when we meet that partner of our dreams, we see no defect in them, whatever their reality may be. We don’t notice those odd habits of theirs, the things we would perhaps change if it were possible. No, we see in that one everything we want to see and nothing that we don’t. This is rather the way Samaria had taken to God. They weren’t looking at the reality of God. They had an image of Him in mind that suited their eyes of romance. Oh, they were in love with Him, but they were in love with a Him who was not Him. They were in love with their own romantic misconceptions of Him, and were they to see Him as He really is, it is questionable whether they would consent to the wedding.
Once again, I am drawn to the parallel with our own time. We have our own collection of idols imported from foreign parts. We have those who idolize the learned arts of science, and lift them up as that to which we owe greatest allegiance. We have before us the idol of democracy, to which many will bow at the cost of real faith in a real God. The nation is not sacred, nor can one really suppose it to be. Neither was Israel sacred, though declared God’s people. No! It is that God who declares His people’s condition who is sacred and nothing other. We have in our midst in this day the cult of pluralism. This cult, having no god to call its own, has made one up, and insisted that it must be honored above all other gods. This new god in their pantheon, though they will not acknowledge him such, is Tolerance. You can put your altars up on their high places, but you must do your obeisance at the altar of Tolerance as you approach, and do nothing to disturb those others on the hilltop.
Neither can we limit the problem to the relationship of the Church to the world around it. In many churches, you will discover a body of believers who have no idea and little interest in what the beliefs of that church are. We have come to a time when many believers don’t have an understanding of why they believe. There remains a thin majority in America who would still agree that there is a God in heaven, and that He is the God described in the Bible. Yet, out of that majority, very few could give reason for the hope that is in them. I’m not even certain that I could, were it to become necessary. Of far greater concern, in my view, is whether we can even justify faith to ourselves.
The fact of the dumbing down of American thought is stated repeatedly, in many venues and in support of many different arguments. Sadly, the Church, which was once the very foundation of sound education, has turned course, and leads the way in this erosion of the brain. When the Church insists on an absolutely dichotomous relationship between faith and reason, it does nobody any favors. When the Church promotes an excitement of the emotions, but will do nothing to stimulate the powers of thought, it destroys its own best defenders. Certainly, there are great crowds of people who can be reached by these methods, who can be cajoled and emotionally moved to come forward and “accept Christ.” I wonder how many, though, will be found to be like the seed that fell by the side of the road, or in rocky places. They believe so long as that emotional high can be fed, but when once it wears off, they have no reality of faith to hold them through the hard places.
Meanwhile, there’s this whole other class of people that the Church, by and large, appears to have decided isn’t worth their effort to save. If you have an active intellectual life, if you reject the idea that religion requires a shutting down of your brain in favor of simply “feeling the Presence,” many a church right now has nothing at all to offer you. They no longer know how to help you because they’ve not fed their own powers of reason and logic. Rather than accept the renewing of the mind which the Holy Spirit promises, they have opted for the abandonment of the mind. Rather than think through the hard things of Christian faith, they choose to look past them, and stick with the simpler matters. Rather than show any concern for sound doctrine, they opt instead to function ‘only as the Spirit leads.’ Don’t you see? They’ve set aside every power by which to discern Spirit from Lie! How shall we worship in truth, if we no longer have any capacity for recognizing Truth? How shall we worship in all those capacities of our spirit if we have starved most of them to the point of atrophy?
Real Worship
What does it mean to worship in spirit? This is a question that we need to be desperately concerned with, for it is one of the core requirements Jesus gives us for being a worshiper that God seeks out for company. In the last few days, I have scanned an occasional website offering the answer to what it means to worship in spirit and in truth, but most of these have proven to be little more than using the Scriptures poorly to prove a personal point. One, for example, laid out the definitions of the Greek words ever so carefully to build up a case for supposing that worshiping in the spirit is all about body service. The author, I suspect, did not realize the implications of his conclusions, but he was essentially returning to salvation by works. Why? Well, because he wasn’t careful in his studies. He had looked up the definition of ‘worship’ but the underlying Greek for which he hunted down his definition was not the same word that Jesus uses here.
The article pointed one off to Romans 12:1, to make the connection it wished to apply to this passage. There, Paul speaks of the living sacrifice we are to be in life. Why? Because it is our reasonable (logical) service to God. Now, even the NASB, which is my usual choice for study, expands that to plays that out as being your “spiritual service of worship”. Yet, how this translation is supported by logikeen latreian I don’t know. How does logical service become spiritual act of worship, the NIV choice of phrase here? The only possible connection lies in the fact that the faculties responsible for logic, and its cohort reason, lie in the spirit.
Quite apart from this, latreian is a matter of service, or of ministering unto God, if you like. I rather like this bit from Thayer’s: “the service or worship of God according to the requirements of Levitical law.” This is exactly what Jesus is telling us the worship He is speaking of is particularly not about! Paul labors at length in the letter to the Romans to distinguish the real relationship of Christian and Jew, and to distinguish the real differences between this new covenant of grace and the old covenant of works. Putting this into the perspective of the passage presently under consideration, we could say Paul was distinguishing between the latreia of the Old Covenant system, whereby all manner of works were required to preserve one’s place in God’s kingdom, and the proskuneo of the New, where earnest adoration of the God who saved you is the reflection of that Salvation which has already come from the Jews. What Paul is telling us is that, given what God has already done on our behalf, and given our deep and abiding love for Him who loved us first, it is only logical that we would do everything in our power to serve Him well. The offering of our whole selves in sacrificial service to Him is not a legal demand. It is not a requirement if we would know salvation. It is a necessary response – necessary in the rhetorical sense, in other words it is logically impossible that it should be otherwise – to the salvation that is already ours. It is the obvious and eminently reasonable reaction of a man to the assurance of God’s love for him.
Worship, on the other hand, is something altogether different from this service, though the service of a life of living sacrifice flows quite naturally from a heart of genuine worship. Now, notice that leading up to this most powerful statement, Jesus makes it a point to say that “we worship what we know.” It is not an awed bowing down to something vaguely understood, if understood at all. It is not a crouching in fear before the great unknown. Many try to reduce religion to this: to an attempt by ignorant men to appease the unknown forces of life around them. Jesus denies that possibility. We know that which we worship. It is this other, idolatrous sort of worship that honors the unknown.
Real worship knows. It has perceived the object of its actions, obtained knowledge of Him, and understands Him. It has learned how to pay proper respect to this One it knows. It is no longer interested in outward ceremony. It no longer concerns itself with detailed lists of proper gesticulations and incantations to protect itself from this God it worships, for it knows that no protection is needed from Him. It is not an act of fear and warding. It is an act of love adoring. Allow me to substitute some of the definitions back into that key point Jesus is making, to present, as it were, Jeff’s Amplified Version.
Real and genuine worshipers, who do not pretend, but who are worshipers in the truest sense of the word, unadulterated adorers, fall upon their knees, kneeling in homage. They reverence and adore God with every rational power of the soul – with perception, reflection, emotion and desire, by their character and by their moral quality, by every thought. Thus is the inward state of the worshiper unveiled in the outward act. Nothing is pretended, nothing in what they do is invented. Nothing of superstition is to be found in their actions or in their thoughts. All that is done in their worship is in harmony with divine Truth.
So, what does real and genuine worship look like? I don’t know for certain. What I do know is that it is wholly submitted to God’s direction, and it is far more than a simple emotional outpouring. It is not exclusively different from that emotional outpouring. It encompasses that, but doesn’t stop there. Real worship rejoices in the renewed mind that is able to understand things in a godly fashion. Real worshipers do not find a need to divorce faith and reason. They need not set their minds aside to come and worship, because their minds are so wholly informed by God that reason can only worship right alongside faith.
Faith is, to be sure, the evidence of things not seen (Heb 11:1), right? Ah! But is that what the Scriptures say? Let’s be careful here. Faith is the hupostasis of things hoped for. It is the firm foundation of hope, the very thing that gives us confidence that such hope is not in vain. Yes, and it is the elengchos of that which is not seen. It is the proof, the evidence which convinces us of the true existence of that thing we have yet to see. I have not personally seen Europe, or the vast expanses of China, yet due to the evidence provided by pictures and reports of those who have been there, I have sufficient cause to believe that those places exist. Faith is sufficient cause. It provides enough evidence for us to build up a certainty that the things we believe, though as yet unseen in our present life, are real and true.
How can the evidence be deemed sufficient which does not convince our minds that our conclusions are reasonable? In the court of law, we require that the evidence presented be sufficient to leave no reasonable doubt as to the guilt of the one being tried. If the evidence does not satisfy our power of reason, then we acquit that one under trial of guilt. If, then, we are going to worship in spirit, worship with every faculty of the mind, as we would deem it today, our reason must be convinced of the Truth of God. Our logic must find that truth acceptable. Emotions aren’t enough. Emotions may feel one way today and another tomorrow for little or no reason. Excitement isn’t enough. Joy isn’t enough. These are but highs that produce a pleasant chemical reaction within our bodies, but those reactions pass with time, and the highs become lows. If all we’ve had is the emotion, then our worship of God will cease in the low spots. If, on the other hand, we logically understand that His claims are true, if we have come to Him for a reason, and reasoned out why we remain with Him, then remain with Him we shall. Whatever may come, our love for Him will remain unabated. The real worship is that which can say with Job, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him!” It can face the fires with those three boys in Babylon and say, “My God will save, and even should He not, still it is Him alone I will adore and serve.”
Real worship may very well require of me that I bow down, head to the floor in humility before His great goodness. It might, on occasion, require that I jump up and down with the excitement of knowing His love for me. It may even require sitting ever so still, just abiding in His presence, as we say. It will require that I spend time in study of His revelation. It will require that I spend time simply talking to Him. It will require that I spend time simply listening to Him. It will require every faculty I have at my disposal being set at His disposal, simply because the whole of my life is involved in adoring Him. If I sing, it is to His glory. If I speak, it is to His glory. If I work all the day long, that work can and should be an act of adoration to Him. Why? Simply because if I truly adore Him, and I adore Him in Truth, then the outward acts of this man cannot help but reflect that inward adoration. It suffuses every aspect of life. How could it be otherwise?
Real worship cannot but require real knowledge of Him whom we worship. Without intimate and thoroughgoing knowledge of Him, how can worship be real? “You worship what you do not know,” Jesus says to this woman. Because the one (or many, the worshiper doesn’t know) so worshiped in this fashion is an unknown, the worship cannot be such as wholly involves the worshiper in the act. Who will give themselves so completely to something they don’t understand?
Interestingly, I was reading something from Augustine last night, and he makes quite a point of the fact that faith must precede understanding. This seems odd, at first, for it seems we must at least know that in which we would believe and thereby have faith in. The understanding of which he writes, though, is a more complete knowing that that which identified the object of our faith. We may have faith in that which we do not fully understand, but we will not so much as seek to fully understand that in which we have no faith.
By way of example, we know that the sun will rise each morning and set each night, even on such days as we cannot see direct evidence of that motion. We have faith that it will continue to be so however long we may live. Yet very few of us have what might be deemed a complete understanding of why that is. We no doubt realize that the apparent motion of the sun is in actuality a matter of the earth revolving. How has this understanding come, though, for it was not always understood thus? Understanding came because men who had faith that this occurrence would indeed continue to occur resolved to learn why this was so. Having faith in the regular course of the things of nature, they sought to learn not only what that course was, but why it was that particular course, how that course was maintained, and what motivated things along that course. They sought to come to a deep and intimate knowledge of the motion of the sun, and thereby came upon the motion of the earth, the motions of other celestial objects, and onward into that science which has taken the artifacts of humanity out beyond the edge of the solar system. Yet, the whole of that science would never have begun without the foundational faith in the simple knowledge that the sun would continue rising each morning.
This analogy is wholly applicable to our relationship to God. Faith cannot come in a vacuum, I suppose. There must be that which we can recognize that indicates the fact of a God to our senses. Over the course of long observation, that which declares an existent god to us is also found to have established that this god, whoever he is, is still extent in our day. Eventually, these observations might, I suppose, lead us to a faith that this same god will continue to be extent however many our days may grow to be. Yet, in this we have not found saving faith, but only an intellectual satisfaction as regards the evidence before us. Saving faith will require that added ingredient of God’s gracious impartation into the soul of us. For, though faith comes by hearing – by the senses, if you will – it comes solely at God’s word (Ro 10:17).
Consider it in this way. The senses will receive the stimulus presented to their observation, be it sound to the ears, vision to the eyes, or what have you, but apart from that impartation from God, the significance of what has been observed will be at best incomplete. I can take the matter of planetary motion as my example once more. The early scientists pursued the ways of the planets and stars because they had faith in those ways. In part, they accepted and expected order in the universe because they accepted the presence of a Creator who took charge of that universe He had created. The modern scientist knows far more about the motions and forces of the universe around us, and yet understands far less. He no longer recognizes the evidence given to him as pointing to the Creator of the evidence. Indeed, he largely rejects any such notion. He has followed his reasoning all the way back to the Big Bang that started off the universe, has even found images that his theories tell him reveal events close (at least relatively) to that event. Yet, he will stop short of explaining why that Bang occurred, or where the material that burst forth out of that Bang might have come from. He is not only blind to the significance of the evidence before his eyes, he willfully shuts his eyes and refuses to look any longer lest he be forced to see the God of all Creation. Unless faith beyond the faith in natural order comes to such a one, he will learn and learn, yet never fully know. He will know many things, but not understand the most foundational of facts.
Many are no better for their religion than is the poor scientist before us. They have learned all manner of rites and prayers and customs. They have been trained in the habits of their religion so well that they could perform them in their sleep. Indeed, I have known those that do just that! Yet, faith in God is not in them, only the comfort of constant habit. They will continue in their ways, quite likely, so long as they have breath, yet never really come to faith in the One True God. They worship what they do not know, even as the woman at the well. As such, their worship is a hollow thing, an outward act with no inward reality. They do not know God or have the least understanding of His nature and His ways, so their worship is at best an honoring of their own opinions and imaginations.
We must move beyond such things if we would give God the worship that is His desire and His due. Our worship must be about more than gestures and habit. Our worship is not, in fairness, a matter that can be commanded by some leader or other. To suggest that adoration is something that can be forced to display itself is to suggest that adoration is something other than adoration. We’ve fallen into a trap of thinking the acts and rituals of our worship services are real and proper expressions of this adoration we ought to have for God. If we dance simply because the guy at the microphone says ‘dance,’ if we shout on demand, indeed if we are simply singing the songs because the words are there before us and every one around us is doing it, we are not worshiping, we are performing. Too much of worship has become performance, and too little of it is simply the expression of a soul wholly convinced of God’s Truth, and in love with Him. Such love, such complete devotion to the God who has so loved us, does not have to be noisy. It doesn’t have to include shouting and clapping and dancing and what not. This is not worshiping in spirit, it’s worshiping in emotions.
Emotions are only a part. They are one facet of the spirit that is to encompass our worship. There remain faculties of thought and reason, powers of logic and deduction. These, too, are wrapped up in worship, for we worship what we know. We have studied this God who is our God, and found Him in every way satisfying to our mind’s eye. He is far more than that emotional crutch so many seek to write Him off as. He is far more than an imagined friend, or some hallucination of a desperate person. He is exceeding real and exceeding logical in His nature. How could He fail to satisfy every exploration of the minds He created in His own image?
If our worship does not move beyond the actions of the flesh, if it does not involve us completely, it is not yet worship. Worship cannot involve us completely unless we know Him we would worship. The mind cannot be wholly involved in what it does not know, and if the mind is not wholly involved, then we are not wholly involved. We are not honoring Him, we are simply pleasing ourselves. The Jews fell into the error of thinking the circumcision they bore in their body was sufficient, that this marked them out as God’s people, and they could pretty much just go through the motions after that. For many Christians, the same error is repeated in the rite of baptism. They figure that having been baptized into the Church, they’re pretty much free and clear to do as they please. An occasional church visit on those most special occasions should suffice to renew their license for another year. Some come more frequently, maybe even weekly, yet are no more involved in a life of worshiping God. They’re pretty sure they’ve dealt with that worship part of the contract once the music stops on Sunday morning. They’re here in the house, they’re surrounded by God’s message, but they don’t understand it. They may perceive a prophet, but they don’t grasp the prophetic message. Their hearing is too caught up in the flesh, even as their worship of God is too caught up in the flesh, having nothing of adoration to it.
“In spirit and in truth.” That is the call to worship for us. Be wholly and completely involved in loving God. Don’t bother faking it, because a feigned adoration is no adoration at all. It will not be found pleasing to God, and it will do your own soul no good. Emotional over stimulation will not satisfy the bill. Emotions will gladly take us to places that reason fears to tread. Far better to listen to the voice of reason in those occasions, for reason was given to have reign in the mind. Worship in reason and in reality. Don’t say you love Him when you don’t. Don’t shout for joy when you are clearly in a time of mourning. God hasn’t asked us to worship Him in feigned richness of blessing, He has asked us – no, commanded us – to worship Him in TRUTH. How shall we lie about our condition as we talk to our God and Savior and call that truthful?
If my situation at present is non-optimal, if there are trials – or as my dear wife has preferred to consider them, learning experiences – through which I am going at present, can I really think that God asks me to deny that reality and tell Him everything is fine? If I am sick, what benefit is there in saying to one and all that I am healthy? At best, it serves to convince those who hear you often enough that when you say healthy, you obviously mean you’re feeling sick. What, then, will you be able to tell them when you are truly well? We have gotten this crazy idea that this kind of behavior is real faith. I tell you, we have traded in real faith for the notion that goes by the name of positive thinking.
It’s a new age trend that has invited itself to church, and we’ve cheerfully accepted it because it sounds so nice. I tell you, I saw this years before I heard the call of Christ. I heard it in the writings of some spiritist group or other that I had been reading. Oh, they would explain, if the road seems longer one day than the next it is because you have created it longer on that day. It’s so important, they will explain to you, that you think good thoughts of things to come, because you are creating those things as you think them. It’s all about thought life. The physical ‘reality’ is reduced to nothing more than a manifestation of that thought life. I don’t recall them reaching the point of explaining what occurs when two people with conflicting views of the moment come together in that physical reality.
Now, understand that there is a grain of truth to the idea of thinking positively. An unnecessarily negative attitude towards oneself can be horribly destructive. We can become convinced of giving up on things simply because we have no confidence in ourselves. Now, this is a distinctly different matter than that of having confidence in our flesh. See, the opposite can be equally true. If our self image is exaggerated in the positive direction, if we think more highly of ourselves than we ought, we are in as much if not more danger. We will find ourselves rejecting sound counsel because it conflicts with our own, obviously correct, viewpoints. There, at the end of the day, is the power of positive thinking. We will become so positive that our own thinking is right that we will reject the very counsel of the Holy Spirit should it conflict with our own ideas.
No, I tell you! God is not interested in having us lie to Him or to ourselves when we are, as we like to say, in the valley. There’s no use claiming it’s a mountaintop. Our saying it is will not make it so. Truth is not something that can be changed by our declarations of what we’d prefer Truth to be. So, what is a man of faith to do? He is to recall that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the certainty that what is not seen at present will yet come to pass where it is founded on God’s promises. The man of faith does not claim that his trial is a wonderful experience, but he does know that whatever the present trial, God will work it for his good. He doesn’t shout for joy when all that is inside him is boiling with frustration and anger. Neither does he simply accept that frustration and anger are the right things for his spirit. He cries out to God to bring change, to help him address whatever lies at the root of that anger, that he may return to the joy of his salvation.
Cast me not away, Lord! Restore me! Show me the place where I have wandered from my love for You. Show me the place where I have willfully rejected Your commands and Your directions. Let it be that Your Holy Spirit remain upon me and in me, as You have promised. Yes, for You have declared for all time that You shall never leave or forsake me. You have promised that the Holy Spirit that abides in me even when I think it impossible that He could stay in such unpleasant realms will bring to my mind all that is needful for righteousness. Teach me then, sweet Spirit, to cast aside every false imagination for the pure Truth of heaven’s God. Guard me, sweet Spirit, from accepting error into my conceptions of You. Guide me into a place of real, earnest, and wholly involved worship, that my love for You might pour out of this life You have made in me.
Holy God, keep me mindful of the absolute difference that exists between the gift of tongues, by which we utter what is incomprehensible even to ourselves, and the worship and prayer that are in spirit and truth. Let my prayers be such as I know to reflect Your real nature and Your real concerns. Let my prayers and my love for You be found to involve not just my emotions, not just my voice and my hands, but also this mind You have blessed me with. Let my thoughts reflect that love. Let my thinking, even about the trials and challenges of work today, reflect the great wonder of Your reality in my life.
Yes, and if there be anything false in my understanding of who You are, Lord, make me aware of that error, that I may purge it from me in favor of Your Truth. Guide me into all Truth, according to Your own Word, Holy Jesus, that every false conception, every foolish act of pride may be cast away from me as I come to more fully express my love for You. If I have in any way fashioned my idea of You after my own image or imagination, break off that foolishness from my thinking! I would know You and love You as You truly are, though I know I shall not see You so completely until I am home with You. Yet, as I travel towards that reunion, my Husband, make my vision clearer, that I may love the You that Is.
Face to face with Truth
Right up to that moment when Jesus says, “I am He,” the woman at the well was doing well at maintaining her fictions. She was enjoying this conversation, enjoying a sense of superiority that had not been hers for many a year. She was managing to pretty well ignore the spiritual matter of everything Jesus was saying. He speaks of living waters, she thinks only of streams. He speaks of eternal life, she can only imagine the joy of not having to make that daily trek to this lonely well. Even when He has revealed a better knowledge of her circumstance than she imagined possible – how could He have known she was living with a man, or that she had been married so often – even then, she tries to keep the exchange on her own terms. OK, so he’s a prophet, well let me put this Jewish prophet in His place. Let’s hear this wise one explain how the same God is worshiped in two places, and in both places the insistence is that this place is the only proper place. Yes, and when He explains the incredible answer to her challenge, she cannot bring herself to accept what He says. Ah well, I’ll just have to wait for Messiah to come. He can explain it when He gets here.
It is only when Jesus speaks plainly, “He has come. I AM He,” that she is forced to face the situation she has come into. She is face to face with Truth, He who alone could honestly claim, “I AM the Truth” (Jn 14:6). She is face to face with the Truth, and in the moment she realizes that everything about her is undone. All the clever pretense that she had been weaving has fallen to her feet. Suddenly, she must face her reality more fully than ever she has before. Not only does she find that she has not been fooling this One to whom she was speaking, she is now required to stop fooling herself as well.
When we are face to face with Truth, the option of self-deception is at an end. When we stand fully in the pure light of heaven, we must finally acknowledge who and what we have been and continue to be. All of the vaunted pride of life must flee with the shadows in the light of “I AM He.” We are faced with the Absolute, the Unchanging and Unchangeable. HE Who was and is and is to come is present with us, talking with us, speaking His Truth to us. We have been liars from the day we were born, and we dwell in a world that lies constantly both to others and to itself. We have been so comfortable in this make-believe life that we tell ourselves is good being as we have no real alternative to it. We have told ourselves this present life is acceptable so many times that we no longer hear how nonsensical that statement must be. This is acceptable? A world plagued by wars, disease, death and misery, where men have raised preying on each other to a fine art; this is acceptable? Who could honestly believe such a thing? Who could honestly appraise the present day and think we have come such a very long way since Rome ruled the nations? What have we got on the Greeks who dominated in their time? For all our technological advance and such like, we have lost most of our humanity along the course of chasing humanism. We declare ourselves civilized, and any civilization not like our own clearly uncivilized, yet we barely know what civilization really entails.
We have abandoned wisdom completely, and truth along with it. We no longer believe in truth, which was once held the utmost possession of man. We have decided to believe that truth is unknowable, that truth changes at the whim of its observers, and is therefore irrelevant. If my truth is mine alone, and yours, while still called truth by both of us, is something utterly opposed to my truth, we must set aside logic and reason to accept that proposition. Yet, this is exactly what we are asked to do, it is what we have come to almost insist that we do. You must accept, we are told, that this thing that you consider an absolute abomination, the bane of all that is decent in man, is perfectly acceptable and even praiseworthy in your neighbor, if he so views it. You can, perhaps, still claim that the God you worship is the one and only God, but you cannot deny that your neighbor’s god, though not the same, is likewise the one and only god. It cannot possibly make the least bit of sense, yet we are told to abide by this nonsense rule. And we like it! It does away with so much conflict, if we simply accept every least claim as true without bothering to think about it. If we don’t like that truth, we can let it be your truth, and I’ll just continue along with mine, thank you. And wisdom lies abandoned in the streets.
Yet, even in this disaster zone of post-modern thought, the God of creation enters in. In spite of a world almost wholly devoid of wisdom, Wisdom continues to uphold life. In Him we live, though we deny Him as even a possibility. Though the atheists amongst us shake their fist in rage at the very idea of God, requiring that we who believe His Truth be silent about our beliefs, as they shout loudly about their unbeliefs, they have not changed God. How many times have I had to explain to my child that when I have told her the truth, it really doesn’t matter any more whether she chooses to believe me or to cling to an opposite opinion. The truth remains unchanged by our opinions. The sound doctrines of faith remain unchanged by our acceptance or rejection of them. Righteousness is not redefined by our rather stupid conceptions of right and wrong. They are established and permanent, being founded on and found in the One Eternal God.
We, who have been created in His image, may be able to hide away from Truth for a time, even as Adam and Eve sought to hide from Truth in the garden. But, Truth will find us out. There will come a moment in every life when Truth must be faced, and accepted as Truth. It is appointed to every man to die once, and the judgment of that man must surely follow (Heb 9:27). Whether we opt to face Truth in this life or not, we will surely face Him thereafter, in that place of judgment. There will come to each one of us a moment of crisis, in which Truth stands revealed, and our deceptions and hedging of bets and denial no longer matter one whit. When we’re face to face with Truth, what option can there really be but to believe? It’s not a crisis of choice that awaits us in that moment, it’s the much greater crisis of no longer having a choice. Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess, whether for love of the God who is True, or simply for lack of options. We are created in the image of Truth, and shall all eventually be forced to recognize Truth. The image of Truth within us, the powers of thought that our God has endowed us with, while we may twist them off course for a time will eventually acknowledge the Truth whose image it bears.
All skepticism must necessarily come to an end when it stands before the One who declares, “I AM.” In that moment, the most fallen of men must stand and see Salvation. Oh! That every last one of us would so stand while still there is the offer of salvation held out to man! Oh! That the eyes of every man might be opened to the Truth, to see Him standing there, arms open, speaking His invitation to them. Every soul must seek after Truth, as a moth seeks the light. It is the sorrow of life that so many are drawn aside to dim light bulbs of ideas, and never move on to seek out the Light that has been calling them to Himself. So many choose the road that is easier at the moment, and thereby miss the joy of coming home at last to the house of Wisdom that is God’s throne room.
“I AM He. I AM that One who can and will declare all things to you. There is no question, no doubt that you might ever harbor that I cannot answer. There is no matter of Truth and Wisdom that I cannot make known to you.” The Truth that men have sought throughout long ages is found! He stands, yet, before those to whom He chooses to make Himself known. Hear His declaration. Test His words and see if they be not Truth. Try Him and find Him steadfast and unchanging. Come, and know your Lord God, your Creator, and find in Him the one thing that can ever be worthy of your praise. Come, worship and adore Him who loves you so greatly. Let Him speak Truth to you, that you might be free.
