The Proper and Necessary Desire

"Teach me Thy way, O Lord; I will walk in Thy truth. Unite my heart to fear Thy name." Ps. 86:11

Herein lies two things that are proper and necessary for us to desire: the truth of God and the fear of God, i.e., the realities that God reveals and the reverence towards God for who He is. It is for these two things the psalmist request, and it is these two things that are sorely lacking today.
"A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself" (Pro. 18:2). We care very little for the truth that only God can reveal. The only truth that we desire is the "truth" that we invent for ourselves so that we can shape our identity and world as we see fit. If a certain truth is inconvenient, it can be dropped. Reality is unnecessary, and even lies can become "truth" if they make us feel better about ourselves and confirm our congenial preferences. In short, we would much rather shape our subjectivity by our subjectivity rather than the objectivity of God.
"An oracle in my heart says, 'The Transgression of the wicked is that there is no fear of God before their eyes'" (Ps. 36:1, Rev. marg.). We reverence God very little, but reverence ourselves very much, especially our preferences for God. Like truth, we would much rather shape God by our own subjectivity rather than accept the objective reality of Himself that he has revealed to us. Thus, today's modern "worship" is little more than idolatry, a ceremony of self-worship.
Herein, therefore, is the proper and necessary desire: to desire, not the God we want, but rather the God who is.

-Jon Vowell

Real Presence

"...my heart and flesh crieth out for the living God." Ps. 84:2b

The main ignorance both inside and outside the church is that Christianity is about dead principles rather than a living person. Apparently, we are all about rite and ritual and ceremony with empty prayers and readings rather than communion with a living, personal being who is there. In addition, our churches are merely buildings of stone and wood rather than the house of the Holy One. Even holiness itself is nothing more than dead piety rather than an active principle emanating from a living and present presence that dwells within us. We must set this ignorance straight: Christianity is no more about dead formalism or stringent legalism than Christ Himself was; rather, Christianity is about actual fellowship with the living God who is there.
Perhaps the world can be excused for this ignorance, for how are they to know unless we tell them? Thus, we are the more guilty ones. Our lives, our deeds as well as our words, reveal nothing living or present, nothing active or personal. If we are not dead formalists orlegalists (or both), then we are at least pasty-faced moralists, our lives no different from the average pagan or heathen. Christianity, however, is not about dead religion; it is about the living God who walks with us and dwells within us. That reality should be reflective of a difference in our lives, a difference that cannot be simply explained away as mere religion and/or morality. To be "Christ-like" means that, like Christ, people must not know what to do with us because they have been in the presence of the living God, whether they knew it or not.

-Jon Vowell

Reminders on the Basics of Reality

"Fill their faces with shame that they may seek Thy name, O Lord." Ps. 83:16

The purpose of punishment is remembrance. It is a (paradoxically) friendly reminder of the may things really are, a reality check courtesy call. To the punished (and unpunished; vs. 17-18), it reasserts the immutability of what is true and real, for all evil is ultimately a denial of the true and real. When God laid down His laws, He was not making arbitrary assignments; He was laying down the basics of reality. You really shouldn't steal, or murder, or dishonor your parents, or worship any other god if you want to be happy and well. All acts against such laws are merely denials of their status as truths, an action that clearly reveals the supreme idiocy of evil: it actually claims, with a straight face and sober disposition, that lies, theft, murder, dishonor, idolatry, etc., are good for the soul.
It is at this point that punishment comes to wake the sleepers from the dead, out of dreams and into daylight. Punishment reaffirms the truthfulness of the law: you can only succeed and be happy when you obey what is real. Therefore, God does not punish out of egotistical sadism, but rather out of benevolent mercy to shake us to our senses. Should not this be obvious, though? Our own parents (if they were proper) punished us, if not to save us from some immediate physical threat, then to teach us that in the real world, negative actions necessarily entail negative consequences. That is how our parents taught us, and our Heavenly Father is no different.

-Jon Vowell

"What goes up..."

"I have said, 'Ye are gods,' and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes." Ps. 82:6, 7

"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer,...for thou hast said in thine heart, 'I will ascend into heaven'...yet thou shalt be brought down to hell...." Is. 14:12-15

"Thine heart was lifted up.... I will cast thee to the ground...." Ez. 28:17

"God resisteth the proud...." Js 4:6

Pride is quite literally a state of fighting against God, because it is (at bottom) a claim on His throne. Pride is when an individual claims the place of God in their life. Such an act can take various forms: it can be an overt and obvious malice, or it can hide itself under a veneer of innocence; it can consume the whole life or be sequestered to one besetting sin. Regardless of its form, it only has one result, for fighting against God can only have one result: to be cast down, i.e., humiliation.
Older Christianity was right when it labelled Pride (superbia) as the foundation of all sins, for sin always starts with some sort of attempted rebellion against God, both His character and His commands. When we aren't breaking His laws, we are making Him into something that He is not, whether it be a sentimental grandfather or a non-existent fantasy. All are attempts by prideful man to stand where God alone can stand (Ps. 82:1).

-Jon Vowell

On Darkness (and a word on Light)

"...Thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth. [...] Turn us again, O God, and cause Thy face to shine; and we shall be saved." Ps. 80:1b, 3, 7, 19

"In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." John 1:4

Jesus spoke of the "light of life" (John 8:12), a characteristic obviously belong to Jesus (the light of the world; John 8:12) and God (who is Light; I John 1:5). According to Scripture, being outside of God is properly understood as being in darkness, for what is darkness? Firstly, it is a confusion and deception, for it hides and distorts all things, so that our perception is clouded and unreliable. We follow every shadow and shade, our blinded eyes unable to see what is real. So also, those outside of God are blind (II Cor. 4:3-4), and they cannot see what they stumble over (Prov. 4:19).
Darkness is also a terror, a terror because of its deception. To be lost without sight or clear perception is to be trapped in the utter unknown, as if the unknown were dark ocean depths that one drowns in. We see no paths, we cannot identify any sound or face, whether they be real or of our own imagination. We cannot discern between friend and foe, threat and comfort. We cannot even identify ourselves, for every mirror merely reflects the darkness. So also, those outside of God know only fear and dread, for the world is dark and pitiless (I John 5:19), and they cannot find a place of safety and rest; neither can their hearts comfort them, for they are dark as well (Jer. 17:9).
This is the proper state of man outside of God: deceived and afraid. Thus, being redeemed by God is properly understood as being in the light; not just a single flash, but a continuous burning that illumines the darkness without and the darkness within, serving as guide and revealer not only for the pathways of the world but also the depths of the soul. It is this light that man desires, this light that Christ reveals: God is that light.

-Jon Vowell

Holiness (or, The Harmony of Fullness)

"[Moses said,] 'Show me now Thy way, that I may know Thee, that I may find grace in Thy sight...." Ex. 33:13

"Thy way, O God, is in holiness...." Ps. 77:13a (rev. marg.)

"Be ye holy, for I am holy." I Peter 1:16

Holiness is not mere morality; to"be holy" does not mean simply to "do good." Good action arises from holiness, but it is not the definition of holiness. Holiness, properly understood, means perfection in the sense of absolute completion, without lack or defect. All things that are of their nature lacking or defective cannot partake in such completion (for then it would no longer be completion), and thus holiness is also understood as sanctification, i.e., being "set apart." Subsequently, God alone can be properly called "holy," since in Him is the fullness of all good and true things, and thus He lacks nothing; meanwhile, we who are sinners, fallen and frail, are not holy because as sinners we fall short of God's fullness (Rom. 3:23). In addition, holiness has been understood to be beautiful in that it is the fullness of all good things working and standing in harmony with each other. Thus, older (more medieval) Christians often worshipped what scripture calls, "the beauty of holiness" (Ps. 29:2; 96:9; 110:3; II Chr. 20:21). It is this clockwork perfection, this harmony of fullness, that God has made us for and called us to.
We are not called to good-doing; we are called to God-likeness. We are not here to be moral people; we are here to be encores of the Incarnation (I Cor. 3:16). Christ did not come and die just to simply teach us the Sermon on the Mount, but rather to give us a "righteousness [that would] exceed the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees" (Matt. 5:20). That kind of righteousness is the holy righteousness of God (the righteousness that the law was a portrait of), which is given to us in Christ (I Cor. 1:30; II Cor. 5:21). If we do not reconcile our worldview with (1) our high calling (i.e., the holiness of God), and (2) our amazing gift (i.e., the righteousness of God in Christ), then we will bumble about half awake and living lesser lives.

-Jon Vowell

Love and Righteousness

"Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Thy name; and deliver us and purge away our sins, for Thy name's sake...and render unto our neighbors sevenfold into their bosom their reproach, wherewith they have reproached Thee, O Lord." Ps. 79:9, 12

Redemption and damnation, salvation and judgment, love and righteousness; whichever way that you put it, these are the two arms of God's government, two of the most essential qualities of His character. It is these two qualities that are the most sorely attacked today by the religious and secular alike.
We hate the love of God as Scripture presents it, i.e., a holy love that desires to make lovable and lovely the hateful and ugly beloved. It is less like Romeo and Juliet and more like The Taming of the Shrew. It is a love that will not tolerate any stain or blemish, not matter how much we tolerate or even cherish it. We despise such a heavy-handed and true love, so we boil God's love down into either a fluffy sentimentalism that means absolutely nothing or a cruel toleration that winks at the damnation of a soul out of fear of being labelled "mean," "insensitive," or other useless buzz words of contemporary society. The love of God is a consuming fire: all that is imperfect will burn away.
Likewise, we hate the righteousness of God because it directly conflicts with our damnable version of the love of God. If our supreme deity is to be sentimental and tolerant, then He must necessarily not be moral. The sentimental and tolerant man suffuses all things into an incomprehensible whole; the moral man sets everything in rigid distinctions, distinctions like right and wrong, good and evil. Such distinctions are inherent in true righteousness, and thus righteousness is an insufferable eye-sore to the modern world (esp. Modern Christendom). Consequently, they choose not to talk about it; it is too much of a landmine. The righteousness of God is a consuming fire: all that is imperfect will burn away.
If we are to remain loyal to God and His revelations of Himself, then we must maintain the reality of His holy character, i.e., the fullness and harmony of His qualities, viz., love and righteousness. The world does not need sentimental toleration, a fluffy cruelty that "loves" it by amassing it into a pile of indistinguishable nothingness that it can safely ignore; what the world needs is a holy and true love and righteousness that burns away our impurities and makes us fit for itself.

-Jon Vowell

Sovereignty and Evil (or, God and Julian)

"Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee...." Ps. 76:10a

This is perhaps the hardest part of sovereignty to swallow, viz., that the evil of man (and nature) have their place in the tapestry of God. Often it is very little comfort to tell people that what seems senseless now will make sense in the end. Even if such a statement is true (and it is), it is hardly encouraging to those caught in the midst of the real consequences of real evil. That evil makes sense somewhere else, a place that we will get to one day, does not make the pain go away. Indeed, the element of mystery can be a joyous surprise, but also a frustrating agony. Darkness and silence are cold comforts, at least that's what the post-WW II twentieth century concluded.
Then again, perhaps the sovereignty of God in regards to evil is cold comfort because it is not considered fully. The truest pain (and subsequent anger) of any evil (both moral and natural) is the apparent senselessness of it all. A great hope burned into the psyche of all humanity is the hope that evil will not triumph, and part of that hope means that even if evil makes and initiates its plans on us, there is something behind it all that undermines their schemes and fits it into the ultimate victory. We could bear the wrath of man (and nature) if that wrath were fundamentally and ultimately supplanted by and in the service of grace and redemption. The mere existence of evil is no true weapon for an atheist or skeptic; the truest weapon is its apparent senselessness. It is that point that we must deal with.
We deal with it incorrectly, though, when we feel like we have to state the exact purpose in detail. God does not give the details of His purpose behind things. The only thing we know is that it will be glory to Him and goodness to us. It is not the details of the fact, however, that matter. Rather, it is the fact itself, i.e., God's sovereignty does have a point, and though it is temporarily hidden from view, a hidden point is a far, far better thing than no point at all. Actually, that every incident, no matter how indecent, is (in truth) all a part a grand purpose, a purpose whose goodness vastly exceeds the summation of the evil allowed in it, has been (and should continue to be) the sole Christian apologetic on the subject. I am not sure when, where, or how the sovereignty of God got turned against us (as though biblical truth could undermine the truth of the Bible), but it should not be so. The sovereignty of God does not mean that "God is in control"; it means what Lady Julian said that it means: "All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." That is the hope of the Christian faith, and it is time that we spread that hope around.

-Jon Vowell

Sovereignty and Wine (or, God as MC)

"For exaltation cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south; God is the judge. He pulleth down one and setteth up another; for in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, whose wine is red and fully mixed, and He poureth it out, and the wicked of the earth shall drain and drink the dregs thereof." Ps. 75: 6-8

"See now that I, even I, am He, and there is no god with me. I kill and make alive. I wound, and I heal; neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand." Deut. 32:39

"Shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not receive evil?" Job 2:10

The image mentioned in this psalm is a master of a feast doling out the wine to His guests, with everyone receiving from His hand alone. The wicked receive justly delivered wrath and calamity ("the dregs") while the rest receive their own circumstances from God, whether they be good or evil, the point being that it all flows from God and no one else.
Now, the dance of sovereignty and freewill is a complicated spectacle, and those who too quickly and flippantly disregard one over the other cheat themselves out of the full beauty and wonder of that spectacle. If we require that the truth be simple, we had better find another universe. As it is, the truth is mysterious, not only in that it is hidden but also in that, when it is uncovered, it is a spectacle, and a spectacular one at that. Christianity has long affirmed this: life through death, strength through weakness, glory through desolation, God made flesh, etc. Reality is an endless procession of apparent opposites standing side by side and working in collusion; thus, a "dance" is a proper analogy. Until we begin to think of truth in these terms, we will always be confused and at each other's throats.
For the purposes of this entry, we shall assert sovereignty. Of course, we must assert the reality and importance of man's freewill (as it relates to his value and dignity as an image of God-bearer), as well as the reality and importance of the consequences of their freewill actions; but we must also assert (without fear or pause) the absolute control of God over every instance and incident of our lives. If God's absolute control were not true, then He would not be God.
We must not, however, deceive ourselves on this issue like the world does. Sovereignty does not mean mere control. It means control towards an end, an end that is good (Rom. 8:28). Too many people talk of God's sovereignty in terms of a mere control or manipulation devoid of purpose of plan. It is no wonder then that they get so angry; God's "mysterious ways" come across as arbitrary and pointless. Such a view is tragic precisely because it is unbiblical. The scriptures assert that God's ways are headed to a certain and purposeful end. To put it in other ways: God doles out the wine as He pleases because He is making the greatest feast ever known. He uses what colors He pleases because He is making the greatest painting ever known. He writes notes where He pleases because He is making the greatest symphony ever known. He chisels where He pleases because He is making the greatest sculpture ever known. He plays where He pleases because He is making the greatest game ever known. He moves where He pleases because He is making the greatest dance ever known. He directs where He pleases because He is making the greatest production ever known. He woos as He pleases because He is undertaking the greatest romance ever known. He cuts where He pleases because He is undertaking the greatest operation ever known. He fights how He pleases because He is fighting the greatest war ever known. He reveals as He pleases because He is teaching the greatest lesson ever known. He hides as He pleases because He is preparing the greatest surprise ever known. Anyway you put it, our God's sovereignty is no mere tyranny; it is activity, the production of certain events in order to acquire a certain result, a result whose value far out-weighs and out-shines the whole of the events that made it possible. That is not just the fact of sovereignty, but also the hope of sovereignty, the reason why we rejoice to know that God is in control.

-Jon Vowell

"We are on the wrong side of the tapestry. The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else." -G.K. Chesterton

A Different Kind of Empiricism

"I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked [...] until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I understood their end." Ps. 73:3, 17

"Then Jesus said unto him, 'Except ye see..., ye will not believe.' The nobleman said unto Him, 'Sir, come down before my child dies.' Jesus said unto him, 'Go thy way; thy son liveth.' And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way." John 4:48-50

Faith is a different kind of empiricism: it is about trusting a person rather than observing things. We trust the testimony of the biblical writers because it is the testimony of God (II Peter 1:20-21), His declaration and revelation of Himself. It is often true that our sight experiences will openly conflict with what God says is true. "I was envious of the foolish...until I went into the sanctuary of God," i.e., only when we take our focus off of the temporal and subjective circumstances around us and place it on the eternal and objective God who is there, only then do we know that what He says is true. Only then do we understand because our hearts and minds are centered on a person and not things.
"Except ye see...ye will not believe" echoes the stance of Thomas (John 20:25) and it echoes most of us today. God does not expect us to see and then believe His word; he expects us to believe His word and no more, to trust that He is who He says He is and that He will do what He said He would do. In addition, if we take the book of Job into account, it seems that God actually favors stacking the deck against Himself. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him" (Job 13:15), i.e., though my outward circumstances tell me something different, I will trust the word of the Lord. That is the essence of faith.

-Jon Vowell