The Paradox of Man

"God looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God. Every one of them turned aside; they are altogether become corrupt. There is none that doeth good; no, not one." Ps. 53:2-3

The scriptures give some positive views of man that we must not lose in these new dark ages. One view is that man is made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27) and thus has intrinsic value (Gen. 9:6). Another is that possibility of man's future glorification (Rom. 8:18, 19). As important as these positive views are, the negative view is just as important (if not more so). Mankind is fundamentally valuable, but is also fundamentally lost. Too many modern creeds (both the religious and secular) account for only one reality or the other. Man is either a purposeless worm or a would-be god. Only the Christian doctrine captures all of the facts into one truth: man has the capacity to do good and the incapacity to be holy.
Truth is essential paradoxical, and the truth about mankind is that we are a paradox: the totally depraved image-bearer of God, an intrinsically valuable damned sinner. The modern world would rather make us a god or an animal; in either case, a dehumanization occurs, for man as man is ultimately abolished. God came to seek and to save man, because it is man who is lost and in desperate need of God's holiness and love.

-Jon Vowell

Humor for the Angels

"The righteous also shall see [the judgment of God], and fear; but they shall laugh at [the judged]: 'Lo, this is the man that made not God his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches and strengthened himself in his wickedness." Ps. 52:6, 7

Trusting in anything other than God (whether it be material possessions or our own finite wits and reason) is hysterical precisely because it is so ludicrous. We have often laughed at a child attempting to do something quite out of its league (such as moving a heavy object or handling a complex machine), and the more they refuse (as they often do) the help of an able grown-up, the funnier it gets. Their self-delusion is hilarious; they cannot see themselves for who they are: weak, unable, and in need of help. In the spiritual realm it is the same. Without God, we are all those weak, incapable children, and our every attempt to control things is a joke to those who know better.
It is a pathetic picture, but pride is pathetic. It will not embrace humility at the start, but rather puts itself higher and higher, so that their inevitable humiliation (for every knee shall bow; Phil. 2:9-11) will be far more painful than those who submitted from the start. The end of pride is humiliation, and to not trust God is to be the joke of all the angels.

-Jon Vowell

"I'm so sorry I've
Been so down, I
Started thinking things
Could never turn around,
And I begin to believe
That all we are is
Material.
It's non-sensical."
(Switchfoot)

Living Truth

"Behold, Thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part Thou shalt make me to know wisdom." Ps. 51:6

"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." I John 1:8

For God, truth is ultimately about the soul and not the head. Mere knowledge of the truth and the ability to give it lip service is not enough; the truth must be a part of our very being, our very person. If we have utter head knowledge, but it has not ingrained itself into our hearts, so that that which was once abstract concepts now become concrete realities in our lives, we deceive ourselves. We think because we can spout the truth that the truth is with us, but the opposite is true; in our heads, on our lips, but absent from our hearts and lives.
There is nothing wrong with head knowledge per se. Truth must start in your head before it can get to your heart; it must be comprehensible before it can be real. That being said, God is no more interested in spiritual scholars than He is spiritual simpletons. What He wants are spiritual people, those whose very lives reflect their awareness of and participation in a deeper reality, viz., the reality of God. The truth must get to your head, but it must not stay there. It is not meant for itself. It is meant to guide you to the One who is Truth. Well-meaning fools say, "Follow your heart." Your heart can only lead properly when the truth is in it, truth given by God: "In the hidden parts Thou shalt make me to know wisdom."

-Jon Vowell

The Object of Worship

"Will I [i.e., God] eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer unto God thanksgiving, and pay thy vows unto the most High; and call unto Me in the day of trouble. I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me. [...] Whose offereth praise glorifieth me...." Ps. 50:13-15, 23

Worship is to be centered around the actions and character of God and not our own actions and character. This is elementary, but the present state of worship makes such truth sound positively foreign. Modern worship is a self-centered affair, centered around our tastes, our feelings, our performance. Worship has become a kind-of self-actualization or self-aggrandizement, with "God" being a mere empty connotation word that serves to make us feel good about ourselves. God says that true worship is a glorifying of Him as a response to who He is and what He has done (and will do). It is not the great and fancy sacrifice(s) brought to the temple that mattered (vs. 8-12); what mattered was a spirit that recognized and focused on God and God alone. That fact has not changed, and any "worship" that takes your eyes off of God is idolatry, no matter how pious it presents itself.
In older churches (e.g., Medieval churches), the choir loft was often hidden from view so that you could not see the singers. Today, however, it is assumed that the singer (or performer, or whatever) is to be center stage, complete with a state-of-the-art sound system and lighting show. The spatial location of choir lofts is not the issue here. What is the issue is the apparent difference in spirit between these two methods: the former removes all distracts that it possibly can, while the former seems content with piling them on. How often we make worship about us! We raise our subjectivity above God's objectivity, making our subjectivity the central aspect, and thus make our praise idolatrous self-worship. Our subjectivity must be bound to His objectivity, not vice versa; let our glorying be in response to God and God alone, who He is and the great works He has done.

-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

Legacy

"Beautiful in elevation...is mount Zion...the city of the great King. [...] Walk about Zion, and go round about her; count the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces, that ye may tell it to the generation following. For this God is our God for ever and ever; He will be our guide even unto death." Ps. 48:2, 12-14

Mount Zion was where the temple was located, a building with far more significance than being a mere museum piece of Judaism. It represented two very important realities. The first was the spiritual legacy of the Jews. From the first tabernacle in the wilderness to the subsequent temples that were destroyed and rebuilt, the Jewish house of worship stood as a sure testimony to God's dealings in Israel's history. The second reality that the temple represented was the presence of God. God was not a mere past memory but a living fact of the present. The temple reminded the Jews not only that Heaven had touched earth, but also that it still touched earth; and those were the two things that they were to pass on to "the generation following."
We do a lousy job of passing on our spiritual legacy. Sometimes we divorce the immediate presence of God from the facts of church/Christian history and tradition, and our faith becomes cold and academic, with the scriptures becoming a mere textbook of knowledge. More often, however, we divorce the facts of history and tradition from the immediate presence, and our faith becomes hollow and weak, void of grounding and depth, and the scriptures a fluid subjectivity handbook for our own private eisegesis. We are to give to our children the richest heritage possible, teaching them the things of yesterday to enrich their own experiences today.

-Jon Vowell

The Objectivity of Worship

"God is the king of all the earth; sing ye praises with understanding." Ps. 47:7

"...they that worship [God] must worship Him in spirit and in truth." John 4:24

Worship is for the whole man, not just a part of him. It is no mere emotional experience any more than it is a mere intellectual exercise, though it seems that the intellectual side of things needs to be re-stressed today. We treat worship like a wholly subjective experience, which it is not. It is subjective, in that it is highly personal; but it is also equally objective, in that it is directed towards a definite object with definite realities. Our subjective praise of God must be bound to the objective truths of God that He has revealed to us. Binding your subjective experiences to objective realities is an essential paradox for many things, and worship is one of them.
We have very few who "praise with understanding" these days. Most worship is bound to utter subjectivity, which can cause one to wonder who it is exactly that everyone is worshipping. In order to avoid deceptive self-worship (which most modern worship is) or "God" becoming an empty connotative word with no definite substance, our spirits must be bound to the truth. We must not forget the individual man (for then or worship becomes mechanistic), but we must also not forget the God who is (for then our worship becomes a lie). Only when we account for both can we worship subjectively and objectively; only then can we have "praises with understanding."

-Jon Vowell

The Stillness of God

"Be still, and know that I am God." Ps. 46:10

"Fear ye not; stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord...." Ex. 14:13

"Peace, be still...." Mark 4:39

We often view peace as a self-conscious psychological state, whereas scripture reveals a deeper reality: true peace is a state of inward stillness caused by the knowledge of God. There is a stillness that God creates in us: not lethargy, but peace. It is the world that infects us with the chaos and noise of restlessness, while God commands us to be still and think on Him. Indeed, you cannot be still unless you think on Him who is unmoved and unmovable by the winds and waves of the world. The peace of God is the stillness of God, a stillness that He gives to us when our minds stay on Him. We would do well to capitalize on the still and quiet moments, whether or not our circumstances are in equilibrium to them.
The book of Revelation has Christ defeating His enemies with a "sharp sword" that comes "out of His mouth" (Rev. 19:15). The common understanding of this image is that His words are His weapons. The same voice that inaugurated history at the beginning will be the one to consummate it at the end. Some wonder what exactly His words will be, and I cannot help but wonder if it will not be "Be Still." The chaos of this world is stilled once and for all by the voice of God. That is a future happening, however; that same stillness can be ours in this very moment. "Where is your faith?" (Luke 8:25). The stillness is contingent upon faith, on knowing that God is God, that salvation is of the Lord, and that Jesus is in the boat with you in the midst of the storm.

-Jon Vowell

Imago Dei (or, The Artistic Conceit of Man)

"My heart is overflowing with a good matter (I speak of my works to the king); my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer." Ps. 45:1

Man's capacity for artistic creativity is the surest proof of him being the image-bearer of God. As the Creator is, so is the creation, especially those who are made to be like Him. The human ability to reflect and reveal the deeper realities of the world and themselves will always set humanity apart. There are, of course, additional capacities that make up our "mannishness" (e.g., moral motions, rationality, etc.), but the creative imagination is perhaps the most fascinating. There are some fools who try to argue that other (and lesser) creatures have an ethical code of sorts as well as reasoning capabilities, but which of the animals ever wrote a psalm for their king (or their god)? Which sparrow painted the portrait of the eagle, or which antelope wrote a poem in the night about the lion on the hunt? Let all the fools be silent before the abundant creativity of man. Whether we reflect the glories of God or the depravities of our own fallenness, we are able to see the world different from other creatures; we can (in a sense) see them like God sees them, viz., their hidden quality and character that is (at the moment of perception) beyond words and expression and yet is capable of being spoken or expressed.
I wonder if God, existing before all finite things in the eternal dance of love that is the Trinity, said to His fellow Persons concerning the coming Creation, "My heart is overflowing with a good matter; my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer," and then His tongue wrote those first words on the fabric of reality: "Let there be light." God has given us (on a smaller scale) the same ability and power, an ability that reasserts the dignity of humanity in all its variety, i.e., we are the image-bearers of Almighty God.

-Jon Vowell

"Art is the signature of man." -G.K. Chesterton

Thine is the Power

"They did not possess the land by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them; but Thy right hand, and Thine arm, and the light of Thy countenance, because Thou delighted in them. [...] I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me. [...] In God we boast all the day long...." Ps. 44:3, 6, 8a

"Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen." Matt. 6:13b

Would to God that this attitude was fully ours now and forever! Alas, our lot is to fight for it, and fight by the Spirit of God. This world and the enemy will give us constant occasion to fumble for our own bow and sword, but the child of God knows no strength save that which belongs to their Father. "Thine is the...power." We dare not forget such truth. When we say the Lord's prayer, we are not willing these things to be; we are stating our acknowledgment that these things are. It is an act of submission to the reality of Almighty God.
Do you boast in God? I am not speaking of prideful self-depreciation, but rather of having a constant acknowledgment of where the power really comes from, where the light comes from, where the truth comes from. God is not teaching us to sit down and trash ourselves (as is the custom of some). He is teaching us to live within the constant awareness of Him as the abiding reality. Those who possessed the Promised Land and those who understand the Lord's prayer are those who know (and constantly live in the light of the knowledge of) the necessity of God in their lives. Of all the knowledge we can possess, let us grasp to that one with both hands.

-Jon Vowell