Dispatches from the Asylum

     "For therefore we both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe." I Timothy 4:10

     Lewis once called the world "enemy occupied territory." Such a term greatly resonated with his then World War II weary audience. Perhaps a term for the world that would greatly resonate with our current generation is an asylum, and the inmates are running it. The mind of the majority of mankind is gripped in the dumbing and numbing dark of the Devil; their eyes are blind and their hearts veiled. They are the ones bound in the cave, making substance out of shadows, and those of us who try to tell them of the sun will suffer shame and pain; but tell them we must.

     It would help our efforts if we remembered this insanity afflicted upon men by the god of this world. They are indeed the blind men groping at the elephant, mistaking its parts for various wholes. The Man of Galilee has not yet put the mud to their eyes that, when once washed off, allows them to see the elephant in the room. To them, God is indeed trapped in an impenetrable black box: His presence, purpose, and nature are unknown and unknowable. They have not grasped (or do not wish to grasp) the knowledge of His communication and visitation amongst us, that He is there and He is not silent. We who have heard him are not the special keepers of secret knowledge. We are merely the men and women who once were blind, but now we see; we were mad, but now we are sane. All we want is to spread the sanity around.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2009

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

The Riddles of God

"My mouth shall speak wisdom; the meditation of my heart shall be understanding. I will incline my ear to a proverb; I will solve my riddle to the music of the lyre." Ps. 49:3-4

There are real riddles to be solved out there, and they contain three essential realities: (1) they are meant to be solved, (2) their solution will most likely be a paradox, and (3) man will never reach the end of them (though that is no excuse for not striving to solve them). The riddles of God are infinite, and they are to be our everlasting joy. To spend eternity knowing God through His infinite mysteries (and subsequently being known by Him) is the joy of Heaven. This joy is not an intellectual exercise; God is not an infinite algorithm to be infinitely studied. He is an infinite person to be infinitely known. The riddles of God will satisfy us even after time is no more.
Modern man hates riddles because he wants his reason to be supreme; nothing is to be outside of his comprehension. Such a sentiment is a delusional farce, but good luck getting them to believe it. The hunger to know absolutely is the ultimate arrogance and tragedy of modern man. Arrogant because they exalt fallen, finite human reason above everything (including God); tragic because so much has been lost by this hunger to absolutely know: the loss of God, the loss of meaning, the loss of love, the loss of man. There is nothing wrong with knowing, with striving for certainty; but the assertion that man's mind and reasoning can encompass the whole of all things (including God) is wrong, wrong because of its aforementioned arrogance and tragedy. We thought we had run out of mysteries, with the final answer being the dark despair of nothingness and meaninglessness. The reality, however, is that the riddles of God (i.e., Truth) springs eternal. God is still there, and He can be known; not exhaustively, but truly.

-Jon Vowell

"The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man." -G.K. Chesterton

True Knowing and Its Perversion

"Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, 'What makest thou?' Shall the work say, 'He hath no hands'? Woe unto him that saith unto his father, 'What begettest thou?' Or to their mother, 'What hast thou brought forth?'" Isaiah 45:9, 10

God designed us with the drive and capacity to know: to know each other, ourselves, creation, and (most importantly) Himself. Where knowing goes bad is when the motive for knowing degrades from true understanding and communion into a method of control and manipulation. Instead of knowing something/someone for the mere sake and pleasure of knowing, we know in order to bend to our will.
God is firmly against this perverted kind of knowing; we were never meant to control outside of Him, because we cannot control outside of Him, and even then we are only meant to control creation (for we have dominion) and ourselves (which is a fruit of the spirit), and even then we are not to control those things in order to bend them to our will but towards God's will. We were never meant to control and manipulate others, and we especially were never meant to control God, which we can never do anyway.
Unfortunately, we still try and control God, despite the futility of it. Sadly, this is the motive factor behind most attempts at "knowing" God, attempts to fully analyze Him in order to fit Him nicely into definable, controllable categories. God rejects all boxes, because He is self-defining and He does not need your definition to say what He is; He has already revealed Who He is in His Word, and even then, the depths of His self-definition have only been half-fancied this side of the grave. All that He is will be perpetually explored as our ever-growing knowledge of Him will be the joy of Heaven.

"If the very universe cannot contain You,
How then can the beaker bottle...?"
-Jon Vowell

Come Unto Him

"And Hezekiah received the letter from [the Assyrians], and read it: and Hezekiah went up unto the house of the Lord, and spread it before the Lord." Isaiah 37:14

We are the worst when it comes to prayer; we make it more complicated than it needs to be. We fill it with useless pomp and circumstance, acting like we have to say this or that, or else God will go all humbug on us. That is not the God we serve, the One to whom we cry, "Abba, Abba" unto. So many of us get caught up in the tangled web of our preconceived notions when it comes to our relationship with our heavenly Father. How many of us have experienced the joy of simply bringing our burdens to Him and spreading them before Him?
"And Hezekiah went up unto the house of the Lord, and spread the letter before the Lord." How simple and grand! No ceremony; no juggling; no performance; no hoop-jumping. He just came and brought. What more is required of God's children? Absolutely nothing, except to come unto Him all ye that are heavy-laden, and He will give you rest. Too often we make our giving of burdens to God a burden in and of itself. We have to learn: God's grace is poured out in abundance to us, and we can do nothing to make Him deal with us any more or less than that abundant grace.
There is a difference between bringing burdens and bringing petty problems. We often easily bring the latter while over complicating the former. This should not be! Bring your Father your pains, spread them before Him, and know the joy of watching Him fix them.

Unending Love,
Amazing Grace,
Poured out to us.
May I revel in it always...
-Jon Vowell

Curve Balls II: The Fearless Lion

"For thus hath the Lord spoken unto me, 'Like as the lion and the young lion roaring on his prey, when a multitude of shepherds is called forth against him, he will not be afraid of their voice, nor abase himself for the noise of them: so shall the Lord of hosts come down to fight for mount Zion, and for the hill thereof." Isaiah 31:4

The purpose of a shepherd, besides leading the flock, was to protect the flock by driving away all things that could cause harm, which included lions. A shepherd is supposed to be used against a lion. It's not a good idea, it's the only idea. There is nothing else you're supposed to do. Here we learn that Israel's enemies will not merely send their best against them, but what is supposed to work. God, however, will make what is supposed to work null and void. He will come at them as something that should be easily crushed, but he will be doing the crushing.
Read again I Corinthians 1:18-31. That passage applies to all of God's dealings in this world, including with you. Remember: His favorite pitch is a curve ball. Your best laid plans are meaningless to Him. He will hit you with what you did not expect, where you did not expect. Your wishes, wants, desires, dreams, preferences, opinions, and plans may be noble, logical, practical, and very spiritual, i.e., they may be what is supposed to work, what is supposed to be approved of by God. However, if they are not from Him and do not lead you back to Him, He will smash them to the ground for your own good. Anything that does not come from or lead you to Him is to your detriment.

"Let all the dreams
That abide in me
Lead me to the Reality
That abides in You,
Or else let them fall to the ground..."
-Jon Vowell

God-in-a-Box III: Sovereignty and Freewill

"When the Lord hath performed His whole work upon mount Zion...I will punish the fruit of the stout heart...of Assyria...For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom...Shall the ax boast itself against Him that heweth therewith?" Isaiah 10:12-15

What we see here is the incredible dance of sovereignty an freewill. God's sovereignty is found in that Assyria's role as Israel's punisher was all part of God's "whole work." Assyria was as an ax or saw in God's hands. On the flip side, Assyria's freewill is found in its pride, a pride that was their own choice. This is a classic example of the old saying, "God chooses what you go through, but you choose how you go through it."

Sovereignty and freewill are not at odds with each other: they go hand in hand. Anyone who says otherwise has either too small a view of God or too big a view of man. God's sovereignty is not that He planned everything, but that He planned everything through our choices.

"For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate..." (Romans 8:29a). To "foreknow" means to "know beforehand." To "predestinate" means (in a nutshell) to "plan beforehand." Foreknow is the cause to which predestinate is the effect: God can plan before hand because He knew beforehand. In other words, when God set down to create the universe, He could see in His mind (before the universe was created) the whole scope of the universe, from its beginning to its end and all that was in between. He knew beforehand what would happen, and therefore He could plan His work within that knowledge.

Look at it this way: some view God's sovereignty like He was an author or an architect, i.e., the reason He knows how it will be is because He planned it that way. The truth is more complicated. God's sovereignty is more like God was planning to set up a line of dominoes, but before He set them up He imagined them in His mind. If He set this one line that way, it would do "A". If He set it the other way, it would do "B". He knew that if He set it a certain way that it would go a certain way. Therefore, God set up the universe so that our freewill choices (and their consequences) would and will still bring about His will in the end.

If you knew how the dominoes would fall, given any specific situation or variable, then you could set up the dominoes so they could fall in such a way so as to exactly go the way you want it to go without manipulating the dominoes while they fall and allowing them to fall as they will. It is the same way with God: He planned it such-and-such a way because He knew it would be such-and-such a way.

God's sovereignty does not negate man's freewill. Likewise, man's freewill does not negate God's sovereignty. They work hand in hand, united in a singular dance. To separate them in order to understand their workings is an error. "He who breaks something to see how it works has left the path of wisdom," said Tolkien. To divorce sovereignty and freewill from each other's arms is to lose much of the depth and riches of the wisdom of God.

God-in-a-Box II

"O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation." Isaiah 10:5

For God to use evil is not an issue of contradiction, but of His sovereignty. Remember: God is the only one who can use and punish evil and still remain true to His nature. God does not enjoy punishing (Lamentations 3:32, 33; Ezekiel 18:23, 32; Ezekiel 33:11), and of course He does not enjoy evil. The fact that He can use such things for good is a testimony to His sovereignty, and not to any flaw in His character.

We stagger so much at the problems of this world because our view of God is telescopic instead of panoramic. We need to drag out the REAL character of God (as revealed in Scripture) from underneath all of our preconceived human notions, limitations, and ideas. Let us, with fear and trembling, get back to understanding and believing Who the Bible says God is. Let us set this image before the world so that they may be shocked and awed, not bored out of their skulls or driven to ridiculous subterfuge. If Who God really is destroys some pet belief of yours, then let it be destroyed. You were better off without it. All chaff will be burned away before the consuming fire that is the Holy Lord of the Universe.

If we want to understand anything about creation, we must first know the Creator. Dust off the imago dei and set it on center stage. You may be surprised and frightened by what you find, but you will also fall on you knees and worship. May the glorious image of our Holy Father never be lost beneath our vague humanity.

God-in-a-Box

"Turn thou us into thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old." Lamentations 5:21

The source of Jerusalem's destruction (Lam. 1:5) is now (or perhaps has always been) its source of restoration. God is both in one: destroyer and restorer:

"See now that I, even I, am He, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand." (Deuteronomy 32:39)
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things." (Isaiah 45:7) Such is the paradox and poetry of God (as Michael Card would put it).
Honestly, though, if we would just stop looking at God as merely a super-powerful, moral being, and see Him as the Sovereign, Moral Creator and Savior of the Universe, the whole of life would become more understandable (though not necessarily easier).
Like any good poet or storyteller, God's epic that is the story of this world is FULL of peace and prosperity, crescendos and climaxes, and yes, even despair and desolation. "I the Lord do all these things." You mean the moral being? NO; for a moral being to tolerate and even use sin and evil is a contradiction. It is not the powerful "goodman" of the universe, but the Righteous and Loving, Sovereign Creator/Savior of the universe Who can use evil, punish evil, and save those who are evil and still remain true to His nature.
Our human minds seem hell-bent (pun intended) on putting God in a box, of setting our own preconceived limitations to His character that are completely divorced from all that Scripture tells us about Him. Maybe it's not a small box; it may be quite large comparatively. But it is STILL a box, i.e., our own created limits and boundaries. It is this "God-in-a-box" thinking that makes God ways seem contradictory (I seriously believe that the "problem of evil" wouldn't be a problem if we wouldn't look at ONLY God's power and goodness; in "The Problem of Pain," C.S. Lewis defeats the problem of evil by demonstrating how small our conception of God really is). If we would let our image of God out of the box and let Him be true to His nature (Let God be GOD), we will find His ways not contradictory, but higher (Isaiah 55:8-9), which is where they are supposed to be.
We MUST win back the image of God from the world and from nominal (i.e., in name only) Christianity. It all MUST GO: the booming voice, far in the clouds, with no personage or form; it must go! The indistinguishable figure, set in unapproachable light (which is true), and remains unapproachable (which is false); it must go! The flat talking deity, who is all brain and cold calculating precision with no personality; it must go! The wussy grandfather who just wants our happiness (and not our good); it must go! The harsh taskmaster (Lord, save us from this one!), whose Son died for our sins, so we had better spend every waking moment being spent to physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion so that we can keep in God's favor because of His sacrifice; it must go! The selfish praise-hoarder, who wants only our shallow affections (but not our true hearts); it must go! EVERY image of God that does not stand true to what the Bible confirms about Him must be cast into outer darkness where it belongs, for they are visions from Hell, devilish attempts to confuse us about and draw us away from the true character of God, and the true reality of life (like an answer to the problem of evil) that His character reveals.
"...I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me." (Isaiah 1:2b) Where is the Father (see also Galatians 4:6-7)? "How is the faithful city become an harlot!" (Isaiah 1:21a) Where is the Lover? WHY do we pick and choose who God is? Why is He ONLY a judge, or sovereign, or loving, or good, or awesome, or higher, or father, or worthy of praise, and on and on? It is all "God-in-a-box" nonsense. If we would stop trying to categorize Him and let Him be God in our lives, we will be amazed at how small our world had been.