Godless Christianity

"Hear, ye deaf, and look, ye blind, that ye may see. Who is blind, but my servant; or as deaf as my messenger that I sent? Who is as blind as he that is perfect, and as blind as the Lord's servant? Seeing many things, but thou observest not; opening the ears, but he heareth not." Isaiah 42:18-20

There is a difference between the mechanics of a thing and the function of the thing, between its practical operation and its teleological significance. The mechanics of the eyes is to see, while the mechanics of the ears is to listen. However, the function of the eyes is to observe, and the function of the ears is to hear. In other words, both of their practical operations are that of receptors of information, while their teleological significance is a comprehension and understanding gathered from that reception. In addition, you can see things without observing anything, and you can listen without hearing anything. Though the function necessarily includes the mechanics, the mechanics do not necessarily include the function.
"Who is as blind as he that is perfect...?" This paradox is a sad statement on the (perhaps unconscious) hypocrisy that was plaguing Israel. Their "perfectness," their status as a separated people, the people of God, was merely nominal, mere formalism, a form of godliness that denies that godliness's power, a dead godliness, works without faith, whitewashed tombs, etc. This is the same exact state that Jesus would find Israel in when He came: all of the mechanics of the covenant people were there (ceremony, ritual, temple worship, Torah observance, festival days, etc.), but its function was absent (i.e., God's presence was not there). The Pharisees exemplified this (and hence made good literary villains): seeing many things, they could not observe God, even as He walked amongst them; listening to much, they could not hear Him, even when He spoke right to them. "He that is of God heareth God's words; ye therefore hear them not because ye are not of God." (John 8:47) Israel was the spitting image of a lifeless religion: lots of motion, yet going nowhere.
Much of Christianity today is a lifeless religion. This lifelessness is very deceptive because it comes with all of the mechanics (even the most pious ones) of Christianity; it just lacks (and, oh, what a lack!) the function, the teleological significance, the vital thing, i.e., the presence of God. Lifeless Christianity is an atheistic religion because it is a Godless Christianity. I say "Godless" as opposed to "godless" because lifeless religions all have the same god: the form of religion. We do all of the things (songs, ritual, sermons, invitations, revivals, tent-meetings, mass, etc.) for the things themselves and not for the God that they are to lead us to. All Christendom has fallen prey to this, from the most liturgical to the most emergent, from the most ardent congregationalist to the most open ecumenicist. We some times describe their plight with different words (from "stuffy," "dull," and "dead," to "fluffy," "shallow," and "hollow"), but we all are talking about the same thing: they are all lifeless. The presence of God is not amongst them, and when He is lost from the faith, then the mechanics must lead to something else, typically either us or the religious form, and it usually stops with both: songs we like for song's sake, sermons we like for sermon's sake, liturgy we like for liturgy's sake because that's how we like it.
Godless Christianity is yet another blight of Modern Christendom. It is a wasting away of ourselves with the mechanics of religion while completely ignoring the object of our faith. It is perhaps Modern Christendom's greatest crime (and tragedy). God lays Himself open before us as a vast ocean to be explored forever, but we are quite content (and even prefer!) to play with our mud pies.

Lord have mercy on us,
Christ have mercy on us,
Lord have mercy on us. Amen

"O make me Thine, forever,
And should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never
Outlive my love for Thee..."
(from "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded")
-Jon Vowell

Reason and Faith

"I will bring the blind by a way that they know not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known; I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them. However, they that trust in graven images, that say to the molten images, 'Ye are our gods,' they shall be turned back, they shall be greatly ashamed." Isaiah 42:16-17
"We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called..., Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God s stronger than men." I Corinthians 1:23-25

There is a difference between making the gospel clear and dumbing it down. It is better that men find the gospel hard than underwhelming, better for them to be confounded at its paradoxes ("God as a man?") and its implications ("God was killed?") than to lose the power of those paradoxes and implications. It is cliché to say that the gospel is simple but not necessarily easy. Human pride and intellect roar against it: their pride because it wounds to the quick ("Are you calling me a sinner?"), and their intellect because of the necessity of faith ("I must figure it out first!"). To paraphrase Mr. Card, they are offend that they must surrender the hunger that says they must know, and have the courage to say, "I believe."
The powerful veil of the mysterious that shrouds God's truths are there for a purpose: it opens the eyes of the believer, and blinds those who say they can see. Read Hebrews 11 and see the beginning of the believer's intellectual life: "Through faith, we know..." Those who step out into the dark with God (which is key), they will always find their paths straightened, and that the darkness shines as the noonday. However, those who park their carcase on the banks of reasoned understanding have damned themselves to conundrums forever forever. In the effort to know, they can never know; claiming to be wise, they become fools.
The shores of reasoned understanding and believed understanding, of Reason and Faith, are two different, but in no way oppositional, places. The shores of Faith are not in antagonism against the shores of Reason (no matter what some knuckleheads out there try to say); they are not enemies. Faith is the completion of Reason, taking us to where Reason alone can never reach (i.e., God). Reason can only take us so far; Faith takes us the rest of the way. The two are not mutually exclusive: Reason needs Faith in order to fulfill its purpose, i.e., to know. We can never truly know until we believe, for in Reason we get to the truth of the matter, but in Faith we get to the Truth behind the matter. We can never fully know anything until we know the One who fully knows everything.

"I can never know
Until I am known.
By a leap in the dark,
Through the veil of mystery,
I find You..."
-Jon Vowell

When He Comes Again

"I have for a long time held my peace; I have be still, and restrained myself. Now will I cry like a woman travailing in birth; I will destroy and devour at once." Isaiah 42:14

An oft cited "air-tight" attack against God (either His character or His very existence) is that if He really was there, and really was good, then He would step in and fix this mess of a world right now. That He does not proves that he is either weak, callous, or both (or simply not there at all). Perhaps the problem of evil would not be such a problem if there was a clear example of God solving it in the here and now.
People who makes such claims are nonsensical, however, and here's why: they ave no idea what it is that they are really asking for. God stepping in is not a deus ex machina, a one shot fix-all-that-ails-you; it is the end of the world (we Christians like to call it the "apocalypse"). As Lewis put it, when the director steps onto the stage, it is not the end of the play's problems; it is the end of the play. When God "steps onto the stage," it is not merely the undoing of evil; it is the undoing of everything, the complete recreation of all things by the unleashing of His presence through all things that are of Him; and anyone or anything not found in Him (through being in Christ) will wither away into outer darkness. God's literal return to earth will literally when Heaven on earth, which means that all that cannot abide in Heaven (i.e., Sin, and everything bound up in it) will not abide in the end either. Therefore, clamoring for God's return so as to fix all evils is nonsensical because His return does not mean Heaven for all; it will mean Hell for some. There will be redemption; there will also be damnation.
That God is holding His peace and restraining Himself in the face of Sin (the only true pollutant in this world) is not proof of weakness, callousness, or nonexistence; it is proof of His love and patience. He is (oh, the very thought of it!) allowing us more time, more time to become one with Him in Christ. If God wanted to (if He was the atheist's desired "practical" God), He could usher in the end right now, and have every right to do so. Instead, however, He allows days, months, and years to go by. We would be wise to realize that such a stalling is in favor of our salvation. If He did as you wished and finally returned, with you outside His fold, then it would be the end of you as well as the evil world.
"Now will I cry..." There is a "payday someday," a day of reckoning, a day when all that men have done will be answered for. The only question is, are you one of those men? Are your sins covered by the blood, or are they wide open before the eyes of God? When our Lord steps on the mountain again, will He find you innocent, or will you be one of the guilty that He claws out of the earth and holds up against a ruby sky? When He comes to "fix all," will you be something that He "fixes"? In asking God to solve all our problems, are you blissfully unaware that you may be one of the "problems" that He solves"?

"When You come
To Balance all things,
How many will be weighed
And found wanting..."
-Jon Vowell

Ever New

"Sing unto the Lord a new song..." Isaiah 42:10a

It is interesting that it is always a "new" song that we are asked to sing. How many possible songs are there to sing to God? Apparently, they can be new every morning.
It is wondrous to consider that there never really is a dull moment with God. True, there are moments of silence and stillness, full of the drudgery of this monotonous world. Even more true, however, is that the child of God is so penetrated by the joy of the Lord, so saturated by His Spirit in every inch of their being, that the darkness shines as the noon-day, and everything (even the drudgery) is still, so to speak, magical. No thunderclouds, no lightning, no shining crowns of glory; perhaps just a fried penny on the sidewalk, or a smile from a stranger, or a random act of kindness (or thoughtfulness) to you or from you. Anywhere, everywhere, everyday, in every way, there is always something new to sing about, always some facet of God's presence bursting through the very seams of this world, some part of His character coming through our circumstances that deserves a song, and a new one to boot.
Do not misunderstand. Let us not get hung up on the "good" things, however (most Christians park there and never leave). Days can be good or dull, but they can also be bad, and thank God that a lament is just as much a song as a psalm is (most of the Psalms are laments). The point is that we should always remembers that whether we praise or petition, there is always a reason to sing, and sing a new song.
It is to be exciting news that every song is a "new" song, wonderful to know that our life is poetry in motion and not gibberish in neutral. Our lives are bound to God, a singular being with three persons and infinite facets. There is no end to understanding the full depth of even one element of His character, i.e., there will always be a new song to sing. Old songs are sweet memories, and will not be forgotten; but there will always be new songs, new reasons and occasions to sing, fresh moments when nothing will do for us except to sing forth what we mean, even if no one else understands it except you and God.
Again, do not misunderstand (how often we do on issues like this). This "freshness" is not a care-free fluffiness. Too often we mistake genuine knuckleheaded naiveté for overabundant joy. This "freshness" is not naiveté. If anything, it is the exact opposite: it is a deep, hardy grasping of the reality of God in your life. Deadness does not come because you took a moment to stop acting "so gosh-darn happy because everything is so gosh-darn great!" Deadness occurs when you lose your grasp in the reality of God; everything in life then becomes merely "material," random, nonsensical. The penny, the smile, the kindness--it was all just coincidence; our tragedies--just bad luck. It all signifies nothing and means nothing without God. This "freshness" is not naiveté, but a vigorous existence of clear-headedness, the life of faith, a life full of life (i.e., God's life), and life more abundant. Indeed, this "freshness," this perspective of "all things new," is a hallmark of Christian character, and therefore another facet of the character of God. Deadness is not to have any part in the life of a child of God; not because you (by some willful exercise) keep yourself from deadness, but because you, as a child of God, are not dead. It is a matter of inner disposition, not desperate effort, and your inner disposition is that of the Spirit of God. He who has that Spirit is not dead, nor is deadness in him (for deadness is not in Him). The "freshness" of the child of God is produced solely by the presence of God within them; and what God has "worked in," we can "work out" into practical experience. Get into the habit of finding reasons to sing a new song.

"Forever are all things new:
Winter into Spring, no two the same.
Every sunrise and sunset
Is a new reason to sing..."
-Jon Vowell

"He is Lord..."

"I am the Lord; that is my name, and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images." Isaiah 42:8

It is perhaps safe to say that the vast majority of people (if they believe in a God at all) are quite ready and willing to accept Him as the Creator; they may even be open to accepting Him as a miracle-worker (there is nothing cooler than God going out of His way to fix your problems, right?). Very few, however, (even amongst the Church) are will to accept Him as Lord, the penetrating, overruling, passionate motive, focus, and ideal of our lives. We are more often offend at the idea: "God made me, and is involved in my life, but I will decide where and when and how I shall be used and shall serve." In Acts 17, I'm pretty sure that Paul's audience at Mar's Hill was right with him when he said that God "made the world and all things therein," but got he lost them when he said God was "Lord of heaven and earth." In the end, while some believed, others mocked (vs. 32, 34).
We must not be fooled into thinking that any ideal or focus other than God will be "bad." Some of the greatest wrong ideas in the world were really wonderful ideas. Many false gospels all ring of beauty and wonderfulness: feeding and educating the poor and hungry is noble; making more money is logical; being freed from oppressors is beautiful. They are all good things in and of themselves. However, they cannot become the thing; God alone is to be the thing in our lives. Anything that becomes our focus, no matter how noble, logical, or beautiful it is, no matter how good (from our perspective) it is, if it is not God (not merely of Him, but Him Himself), then it is a graven image, and will lead us to perdition. God will have absolutely no competition; even that which is good must fall before He who is the Good.
That, of course, is the key to responding to those who claim that God is selfish and egocentric for demanding some much attention. First of all, God cannot be "selfish" because He lacks nothing (including glory or self-esteem). Second of all, God's very nature (i.e., the Trinity) is not one of egocentrism, but of love, a continual giving over of the self to and for another. Finally, God is the Good in the universe, the one and only thing we need in order to be happy, healthy, and whole. God smacking us on the head so that we look unto Him is anything but selfish or egocentric; it is a great act of love, for instead of leaving us to flounder about in a million side eddys, He draws us unto Himself for the good of our souls (because He is the Good of our souls).
God is not lord and master in the way we commonly associate the word, i.e., a tyrannical, self-consuming egocentrist, who benefits by every person that subjects to him. God (being all-sufficient), cannot be "benefited" by anything; therefore, our (willful) subjection to Him is wholly beneficial to us. That is the difference between God and tyrants, between the lords of earth and the Lord of heaven and earth.

"Take my life and let it be,
Only, ever lost in Thee.
Let Thy Glory, and Thy Goodness,
And Thy Love lead me only to You..."
-Jon Vowell

On Meekness

"Behold my servant [i.e., Christ, the Messiah]...He shall not cry out, nor raise His voice, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He not quench..." Isaiah 42:1-3a

There is something to be said for the gentleness of Christ, for His absolute, divine meekness. It was indeed the greatest of all foolishnesses to save the world through such a man. At least the Greeks mythologized the descent and death of a god to and on earth with much heroism and grandeur; the Jews at least saw the Messiah as a king who would conquer and kill. What they all got, however, was the poor carpenter from Galilee, Who raise no rebellions, and healed the broken, and was very God of very God. A bruised reed is an easy thing to break, and a smoking candlewick is an easy thing to put out; yet His gentle meekness would leave them all unscathed whilst He saved the world.
We must rescue the words "meek" and "meekness" from the secular trash-talkers and slogan makers. Anyone with a knucklehead's understanding of English vocabulary would know that "meek" is not a synonym for "weak," nor is "meekness" one for "weakness" (no matter how well they alliterate). To have "meekness," to be "meek," is to have power and strength under control. The image is that of an elephant: the perfect combination of bone-crushing power and strength with a gentle disposition. That is what it means to be meek, and since Christ was God in the flesh, then His meekness was absolute power and strength under absolute control.
The opposite of meekness is most certainly not strength. The opposite of meekness is recklessness, or better yet, savagery, a complete and utter loss of self-control that results in abominable cruelty. Those who despise meekness as weakness have no idea what they are doing. There is no greater weakness than a total inability to control yourself, to suffer a complete breakdown of self-control, a spiraling out into chaotic animal volatility. Our Lord did not have this problem. His temptation in the wilderness proved He could have taken over the world whenever He wanted. His own words proved that He could have, with a mere command, summed countless angels to wipe out the world. His own actions, such as in the temple or with the Pharisees, proved that He had power and strength, and that He knew when and where to use them, i.e., He had absolute control over them. These, however, are not the greatest proof of His meekness.
If there is one symbol that will forever tower above all others as the banner of absolute meekness, it is the cross of Christ. Never before has there been such outlandish example of divine power and strength under absolute control. That God condescended for us, and took on flesh, that He went through the kenosis and the Incarnation, is grand enough meekness, but He did not stop there. Let all the nay-sayers be silent before the cross, before the monument of meekness, before the moment in time when the Creator of all allowed His feeble creation to overpower Him (what a thought!) and kill Him (what a thought!). There is no greater meekness, no greater strength, then almighty divinity hanging from the cross. No greater control than the holy Uncreated allowing Himself to be killed by the fallen and defiled created. There is no greater strength to be found than for Heaven, of its own volition, to submit to earth, for the Son of Heaven to freely submit to the sons of earth. How can one call this weakness? Our fallen minds cannot fathom the depths of such strength, the power of such control, and the reality of the truth that on the cross the Meek did indeed inherit the earth. Amen.

"To fathom the strength that is the Cross,
Salvation won through suffering shame.
Can my mind come near to grasping the whole of it?"
-Jon Vowell

"Like a tree..."

"Who hath declared from the beginning, that we may know?...there is none that declareth...For I beheld, and there was no man, even among them; and there was no counselor that, when I asked of them, could answer a word. Behold, they are all vanity; there works are nothing: their molten images are wind and confusion." Isaiah 41:26-29
"Blessed is the man...[whose] delight is in the law of the Lord...He shall be like a tree planted by the river of waters, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season...The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff that the wind driveth away." Psalm 1:1-4

There are plenty of smooth-talking, ear-pleasing candymen out there just waiting to ensnare people in a tangled web of pretty yet empty words. They make their living (whether they know it or not) on sucking all the substance of real life conversations out of the room and replacing it with words that are all flash and no dash. The idols that they erect before your eyes look solid and weighty; then the hammer of Truth smashes upon them and reveals them to be hollow, full of "wind and confusion."
When someone is in the Truth, walking in the light as God is in the light, it is amazing how puerile and idiotic the things of this world become. You find yourself unable to be swept away by the ever changing winds of fancy words and speeches, as though your feet were chained to the ground. At least, it feels as strong as chains, but it is not chains; you are unmovable because your feet are firmly rooted in something, solidly anchored underneath. Like a grand old tree, your find yourself firmly entrenched, but never frozen. In a wondrous paradox, you are unmovable and yet always moving: your roots and tap are digging deeper and deeper into solid, warm earth, while your trunk and branches are growing higher and higher into the open, burning sky. Everyone in the world, however, is like chaff in a windstorm, blown about by this or that doctrine, this or that fad or fashion. Only Christians, the truly Christ-like, are like trees, planted firmly in the earth by rivers of water, reaching higher and higher towards the heavens as we bring forth fruit in our due season.
Too many people see this "grounding," this "planting" of one's self somewhere into something as a kind of slavery, that it really is chains that are holding you down; meanwhile, they are fortunate enough to pursue what they want as they will. In reality, however, the reverse is the truth: there is no worse slavery than a fractured perspective, of being blown this way and that, never satisfied, never grounded, never home, always lost, twisting in the wind. There is nothing more liberating then landing in the Truth and growing therein, nothing more freeing than a perspective that is whole and singular, able to encompass all through a single lens, the lens of Truth. There is a stable, solid feeling that envelopes you, as well as a burning, bright clarity that penetrates you. Try as you might, you can never hear or see things the same way again, you can never be swept away again. You have finally found a starting place (the solid, warm earth) and a goal (the open, burning sky). What more could you want? What more is there? There is nothing, nothing outside the Truth, save the wind and confusion that is being chaff in the wind, to be lost in nothingness forever.
"How do I know that what you are saying is true?" My friend, there is no way for you to know whether or not what I am telling you is true unless you know what the Truth is; and there is no way for you to know what the Truth is unless there is a Truth that you can know. "Well then, there is no Truth." Then, my friend, that very statement is untrue. "Okay then, I have to find my own Truth." If you have to find it, then it was not yours to begin with; and if it is the Truth, then it does not belong to you, you belong to it. "Well, I have to find the Truth inside of me in order to solve my problems." How can there be any Truth in you if you're the one who is confused by your problems? Unless what you find is separate from yourself (for it is no help to you if it is not), and that which conforms you to it (and not the other way around), it is not anything worth following. It is merely a reflection of yourself, and any adherence to it will merely be confusion stacked upon confusion, wind upon wind. Then when you come up against real, solid Truth, you will smash to pieces and be found hollow.
There is only one Truth, and His name is God. There is no Truth beside Him or besides Him. If you have found something solid and grounding, they are not that way in spite of Him, but because of Him; you have found Him whether you knew it or not. The Truth is not limited in Him, for all that is true is of Him and leads to Him. Outside of Him are not other Truths, other perspectives, but only wind and confusion, errors and falsehoods, which lead many astray into darkness. You can either be lost in them, or lost and found in Him. It is your choice, but know that in Him alone is the only solid ground, the only place to take root. On Him are trees that have stood the storms of time, and they shall stand forever, though the world burns away.

"Grow, grow where you are.
Anchor your roots underneath.
Doubt your doubts,
And believe your beliefs."
-Switchfoot

"My life is built
On nothing less,
Than God, the Truth
In all this mess..."
-Jon Vowell

Sarcasm, and the End of Pride

"Produce your cause, saith the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth, and show us what will happen. Let them show the former things, what they be, that we may consider them; or declare for us things to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together. Behold, ye are nothing, and your work is nothing; an abomination is he that chooseth you." Isaiah 41:21-24

This passage is said to idolaters in regards to their idols, and you do not have to be a literary critic to hear the sarcasm dripping off of every word. "Oh, please! Please! Show me the future, so I can know that you are a god! Oh, oh, oh! Do good or evil, so that I will not know what to do with myself!" I wonder if God's sense of humor comes as a reaction to our idiotic pride.
That is the trick, though. It is one thing to be punished for your pride, but it is quite another thing to be humiliated for it. When faced with all-consuming pride, God does not only says, "I will punish you for your defiance," but adds, "Your defiance makes me laugh." For the proud, punishment can be endured; indeed, it may even be welcomed, as long as you never bow, for as Satan said in Paradise Lost, "All is not lost; the unconquerable Will, and study of revenge, immortal hate, and courage never to submit or yield: and what is else not to be overcome?"
Humiliation, on the other hand, is pure terror to the proud soul. At least when you are punished there is a recognition that you were able to go higher than should, an affirmative nod that you actually did something to ruffle the feathers of divinity. God, however, makes no such allowances. His punishments are humiliations as well so that the punished will know that not only did they do wrong, but also their wrong accomplished no goal whatsoever. Read Isaiah 14:15-16 and see the end of the proud soul: not only brought to Hell, but also made a laughingstock.

"How sad it must be
To be Your enemy:
No hope of victory,
No dignity in defeat,
Only failure and humility..."
-Jon Vowell

God of Miracles II: The God Who is There

"I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, the acacia tree, and the myrtle, and the oil tree; I will set in the desert the fir tree, and the pine, and the box tree together: that they may see, and know, and consider, and understand together, that the hand of the Lord hath done this, and the Holy One of Israel hath created it." Isaiah 41:19, 20

Miracles do not need to be, or remain, mysteries in order to be miraculous. When scientist discover that the events found in Exodus could very well have happened, and happened through natural causes, we need not be disturbed. The Lord of Creation can use His creation as He wills. There are miracles that are miraculous simply because they were the answering of a desperate hope, and not necessarily an unnatural or unexplained occurrence. We have just as much right (and obligation) to glory in these as we do for textbook miracles.
There are still plenty of mysteries, though: the Trinity and the Incarnation, as well as the inner workings of the atonement (will we ever know the depths of horror that encompassed "My God, my God! My hast thou forsaken me!"?). However, what kind of miracle is happening is not nearly as fascinating (or vital) as the fact that they do happen. Why, exactly, do they happen? Why does God bother to invoke the miraculous in our lives, from the healing of deadly diseases to finding a dollar on the sidewalk? What is the purpose of such an involvement? In short: Why do we not have the God of the Deists? Answer: "That they may see, and know, and consider, and understand," i.e., that we might be aware of the reality of God, aware of a Reality beyond our own.
The very nature of God (in that He is triune) reveals an inner disposition of intimate communion. Seeing as how a creation reflects its creator, we were built for that same intimate communion (1) with each other, and (2) with God. We were not designed to walk this world in unblissful ignorance of the God behind and within it. God "made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth." Why? "That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him..." (Acts 17:26, 27). Our Creator is bound up in intimate communion, and He makes that communion know to us in our lives.
The miraculous are safeguards against practical agnosticism; they are sharp reminders of the reality of the God we are to know if we are to live (Note: Suffering does the same thing. What was Job's reward for going through his afflictions? "I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye seeth thee." Job 42:5). Even if a miracle can be explained as a result of natural causes (as though natural causes are separate from the God of Nature), even if we somehow figure out how it happened, we are still left with why it happened. Lewis said something similar in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: just because you know what something is made of does not mean that you know what it is. Just because you worked out the mechanics of a thing does not mean you have even come close to scratching the surface of that thing's anteriority or teleology. Always remember: the basis behind every miracle, and the end to which it takes us, is the God who is there.

"God above,
Invade my little universe.
Let me behold You,
And know You more..."
-Jon Vowell

God of Miracles

"When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of valleys. I will makes the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water." Isaiah 41:17, 18

Perhaps it is the plague of the Western mind to no longer be presenced with miracles. I can only laugh at the skeptic who demands to see a miracle right now in order to believe. Even if God was some how on our leash and danced when we played music, they would not believe if a miracle came, nor even if one came back from the dead, for two reasons: (1) we have the Scriptures to reveal God, and (2) we have "debunked" miracles outright with an unhealthy (and unnatural) dose of Naturalism. We can disprove anything these days (including history, or existence itself). There is a reason "uncivilized" countries in Africa and the Middle East, as well as "barbaric" peoples in China, still tell of miracles these days, whilst we "enlightened" few never see any. We are willfully ignorant; we ripped out our own eyes in an effort to see.
The church is infected with this plague too. We have gotten a serious case of practical agnosticism; we do not live like our God is a God of miracles. He is powerful (an awesome God!), or lovely, or amiable, or cruel, or even holy, but not miraculous. Yet the scriptures seem to stress the miraculous as God's calling card. Look at our verse here. It was not enough that God merely gave them water. Just look at how He would give it: rivers in hills? fountains in valleys? water in the wilderness? springs in the desert? Impossible! Ridiculous! I.e., miraculous. God seems to revel in showing that He can when we say He cannot, and we seem to revel in saying that He cannot all the time. "God is nice for Sunday, but what about the rest of the week? A man must eat, and dress, and wash, and live. I'll take care of God on Sunday and myself the rest of the time." We are the only creatures on this planet that do not see God as God. We do not see Him as the same miracle worker He was and always is.
Have you seen angels? visions? blinding lights? parted waters? plagues upon enemies? No. Has the money come in? the test(s) passed? the love one saved? disaster averted? the question answered? the guidance given? found a penny on the side walk? Yes. We are always surrounded by the miraculous, for the miraculous is merely God's activity in this world. As such, every moment of our lives is a miracle. Every amazing incident and circumstance of our lives is a miracle. Every breath and heartbeat is a miracle. As the Church, the body of Christ, we are a miracle, meant to be a miracle to the world. To live in a miraculous world again is to simply realize the reality of God's intimate connection and involvement with our lives. If only we had eyes to see such things.

"God of Miracles,
Come and be with us.
We will trust in You,
To deliver us.
Kind and noble King,
Kneeling in the dust.
So predictable,
So Mysterious.
God of Miracles."
(by Twila Paris)
-Jon Vowell

Christian Nihilism, and Some Wrestlings

"Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the Lord, the first and the last; I am He...
"Thou, Israel, art my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham my friend...I have chosen thee..." Isaiah 41:4, 8-9

Before I begin, I would like to apologize to my brothers and sisters who hold Calvinistic views of predestination (or anything else). I am not trying to be biting are mean, but merely state what I believe on the subject. I in no way seek to dishonor John Calvin or what he has done in Protestantism specifically and Christianity as a whole. I do not in any way wish to cause any alienation between my fellow Christians and I. I just want you to know where I stand and take it as you will.
The place Calvinism (generally speaking) gives to God's sovereignty, though quite pious, is actually quite despairing in the end. We are no longer awed or enraptured; we are terrified and confounded. We feel immutable destiny closing in around us, and freedom is lost in a darkened swirl of faceless tyranny,. Our lives mean nothing anymore: eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die as God says so. There is no motive or point to action or initiative anymore; we are mere puppets on a string, and even our defiance of the puppetry is merely more puppetry. Life means nothing now; we may as well be machines to be programmed, animals to be controlled, but not persons to be known. Do not be surprised if this all sounds like Nietchize. Calvinism and Calvinistic ideas on God's sovereignty end, at the end of the day, in Christian Nihilism.
The fact is that Calvinistic and Hyper-Calvinistic ideas about predestination and election are, in reality, too simple. Instead of trying to cover all the facts in regards to understanding the relationship between God's sovereignty and man's freewill, they take an easy road: "What is the relationship between sovereignty and freewill? Why, there is no relationship between the two! There is merely sovereignty, and that's it! Freewill is an illusion (Nietchize anyone?)! That should solve all the debates." Such "pick-and-choose" logic hardy solves any debate, but instead creates new ones (ex: What purpose is Christ? Is John 3:16 a lie? What about Ezekiel 33:11?) and gives atheist enough firepower to level the whole of Christendom (the absence of freewill means that God is a egocentric sadist as He mercilessly and arbitrarily destroys and exalts, damns and saves His creation, as He wills, for no other reason than for more glory to Himself). My friends, the relationship, the dance (if you will) between sovereignty and freewill needs to be wrestled with, not dismissed. What follows is my own personal (and incomplete) wrestlings with two choices of God: of Israel, and of the Church. Take them for what they are, as you will.
Why did God choose Israel? In truth, no one knows why God picked them (i.e., those specific people) other than He wanted to. Why does an author make one character the hero and another the villain, one more vital to the plot and another not? Because: he is trying to tell a story. The same is true with God. He is trying to tell us a story, and that story is not about His glory, per se, i.e., God's story is not Him saying, "Look at Me!" His story is about redemption, i.e., God's story is Him saying, "Look at Me, and be saved." There is a difference between a story's end and its content. The end is His glory; the content is redemption. Jesus was God's glory (as I John says), but Him coming to earth was not about God's glory; He was about redemption (which is to and for God's glory). The same is true with Israel. Why did God choose them? We do not know. Why did God choose anybody at all? To serve as His witnesses (Isaiah 43:7-10; 44:1-2, 8), to testify of His truth, to be a light to the nations, to let all know that there is only one God and in Him alone is salvation (Isaiah 43:11). God does not choose us because of us, but because He has a story to tell (see Daniel 2:27-30).
Why did God chose us for salvation? For the same reason He chose Israel: He has a story to tell. He did not, however, predestine us as the elect. He predestined Christ as the Elect, and all who are of Him are the elect, are "accepted in the beloved," the beloved who is Christ (Romans 8:29; Galatians 3: 16, 26-29; Ephesians 1:3-14). Christ is the Elect, and neither is there salvation in any other whereby men might be saved. In order to be elect, you must choose to be of the Elect; in order to be "accepted," you must choose to be "in the beloved." Thus is the paradox, thus is the dance of sovereignty and free will. God chose Christ; we cannot change that immutable fact. We can either get with it or not, as we choose. The will of God is unchanging, His sovereignty immutable; but our attendance in it is not required. We can be swept up in it or run over by it, as we will.

"To You or to nothing,
We have the choice.
Condemned to be free,
We have no right not to choose..."
-Jon Vowell