How to Ban Science from Science

A sensuous person is one who is ruled by their senses. Because this term has a negative connotation, however, modern thought substitutes “sensuality” to “empirical science.” This is merely a mask for the rulership of the senses–complete reliance upon that which can be seen, felt, tasted, heard, and smelled to whatever degree of scientific “repeatability” you desire. And yet, it is largely believed that if something is not observable, then it does not exist. This was true of cells, molecules, and atoms at one time. Did they suddenly exist when we sensed them? How about dark matter and energy (the majority of the universe)–did these, too, suddenly exist when formulas necessitated it? How about the supernatural?
 
Check out how TED is trying to ban real scientific discussion from scientific discussion…


Legal Makes Right?

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In a world where Democracy serves as the assumed moral compass of a socially evolving humanity, why wouldn’t we assume that if the Supreme Court concludes that something is legal, that it is right? “Democracy! Democracy!” we chant. “Whatever the people have chosen is right and just and moral!” Or is it?

Since when are the masses of people the definition of what is True? Is Truth found in numbers? Is justice? Is morality?

As social mores ebb and flow, God Is.

Preventing Gun Violence

zombie

Well let’s be honest–it’s people violence. The news is inundated with people exhibiting hatred toward one another. Parents kill babies. Adults abuse children. People bully, shoot, stab, ignore, shout at, dismiss, and fail other people. We’re so quick to recognize the ills of another yet do we really understand the disease within ourselves?

See, it’s not about more bureaucracy. Adjustments to the legal codes. Rallying for freedoms or invasions of privacy. No, it’s about something much, much deeper.

Reconciliation. There is a ministry and a message of reconciliation–with which God’s people have been entrusted. It is this reconciliation, available only in and through the Way, the Truth, and the Life that God is and brings, which can bring healing to a hurting world. To a hurting people. To a hurting you and me.

Our battle is not against flesh and blood. We’re not out to kill zombies. The zombies are us, and the reconciliation that God has initiated is the only element which can turn a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. The real zombie battle is a battle for the hearts of men and women across this land. Engage!

16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:[a] The old has gone, the new is here!18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin[b] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

–II Cor. 5:16-21

Answer a Fool or Not?

Proverbs 26: answer a fool…don’t answer a fool…what? The Nelson Study Bible summarizes this apparent contradiction: “The phrase according to his folly appears twice as a play on words with two shades of meaning. On the one hand, it means ‘avoid the temptation to stoop to his level’; that is, don’t use his methods, lest you also be like him. On the other hand, it means, ‘avoid the temptation to ignore him altogether’; that is, respond in some way, or else he will become wise in his own eyes and his folly will get worse.”

Forgiving the Inexcusable

To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life – to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son – How can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night “Forgive our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.” We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says.

– excerpt from Essay on Forgiveness by C. S. Lewis

Resource Bank for Further Study:

The Forgiving Nature of our King:

  • Nehemiah 9:16-17
  • Psalm 86:5
  • Isaiah 43:22-25
  • Romans 5:6-8

Empowerment to Forgive Others:

  • Ephesians 4:32
  • Colossians 3:13
  • Mark 11:25

Obligation to Forgive Others:

  • Matthew 6:9-15
  • Mark 11:25-26

Confronting & Reacting to Sins in Others:

  • Galatians 6:1-5
  • Matthew 18:15-17
  • Matthew 7:1-5
  • I Corinthians 5:9-13
  • II Corinthians 2:6-8

Questions for Consideration:

  1. Where does unforgiveness find its root based on James 3:14-16?
  2. What kind of person is justified before God based on Luke 18:9-14?
  3. According to God’s Word, how is my brain to be trained in order to live by the Spirit?
  4. How may I be forgiven?
  5. Do I really believe? Am I forfeiting forgiveness? On what evidence do I base my claim?
  6. What are the expectations of me? (Romans 8:12-13)
  7. What is my motivation for forgiving?
  8. How does my vertical relationship (with God) affect my horizontal relationships (marriage, kids, co-workers, etc.)?
  9. What is the key to actually forgiving the next chance I get?
  10. What changes are you going to make to live by the Spirit now?

Believe – to trust, rely upon, live by (far surpasses mere acknowledgement)

This Water

This water (see the story below) will leave you thirsty. Wanting. Seeking any kind of release will soon turn to a need to return to the release. We’re enslaved to releases.

The Samaritan woman knew only the kind of fulfillment which would soon leave her empty. She knew how to find the well, but to the well she must return. She knew water, but thirst would return. She knew men, but she would need new ones. To what wells do you continually visit to draw something to quench your desires?

The Physical Wells:

  • sexual (people, pornography, self-indulgence)
  • chemical (food, drink, drugs, alcohol)
  • adventure (thrill, experiences, entertainment)
  • toys (ownership, technology, brands)

The Emotional Wells:

  • validation
  • anger
  • power
  • selfishness
  • humor

The Social Wells:

  • gossip
  • maneuvering/power struggles
  • acceptance
  • fame

After reading the passage below, after all the diversion the Samaritan woman tries to throw in to get attention away from Jesus’ exposure of her own sinful tendencies, what was Jesus’ message to her? What is Jesus’ message to you?

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.a )

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

“I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.” (John 4:7-26)

The Point of Our Lives

“The point of our lives is not to get smart or to get rich or even to get happy. The point is to discover God’s purposes for us and to make them our own.”
Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be : A Breviary of Sin

The American dream is to find happiness. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are scrawled across our history books–but let’s be honest: the only real thing most people care about is pursuing happiness. Whatever that is.

But what if there was more to life than this American dream? What if the happiest thing of all didn’t seem all that happy at the time? What if life’s meaning went beyond pursuing happiness? What if it were to find ultimate fulfillment in seeing God’s glory? Participating in His glorification? In reveling within his infinite creativity? His staggering eternal power? In yielding my personal reasoning, feelings, and desires to His truth, His purpose, His Life?

Tough Times

It’s not always how we act, but how we react, that tattles on what controls us.

You don’t always find out exactly what’s in toothpaste tube until you squeeze it.

Your character is often revealed in dealing with challenging situations.

It takes a crucible to separate the dross from the gold.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. – James 1:2-4

 

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. – 1 Peter 1:3-9

The Natural Order of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

life_liberty_and-happiness

The order of the unalienable Rights in the Declaration of Independence is significant: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Each element’s value surpasses any subsequent. Life is granted above Liberties granted. And Liberty is greater than rights which guarantee a pursuit of Happiness. So when, in the course of an evolving government, these rights begin to become redefined and reordered, so too must the government itself.

The history of this era of government is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of a series of Tyrannies over this people. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world:
It has intentionally expanded and become more centrally powerful by the establishment of a preference to the right of the pursuit of Happiness over that of Liberty and, ultimately, Life:

by failing to grant an unalienable right to Life to people who are among the weakest and frailest in the Nation: preborn people

by allowing, promoting, and pursuing an unrecognized holocaust of people who have no voice to give speeches or lobby their government before they are stripped of their right to Life before they are born in order to promote the subservient right of “choice” (clearly falling under pursuit of happiness)

by failing to recognize that a person’s dependence on another does not strip them of their right to Life, since all mankind is dependent upon someone or something to live

Information Mutation

A mutation is a deviation. It’s not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to adaptations within biological systems, but it can be. Skin cancer is, from what I understand, caused by UV damaging skin cells, causing mutations in DNA.

In the Christian worldview, damage was done early on. There was a malignment of information. A corrupting mutation took place on the gift of flawless information imparted by God into the universe. Why God allowed such a mutation to occur which would exacerbate sin, toil, fear, and death–I cannot say I know fully. But it’s clear in the news around us that there are things that are “wrong.”

We mutated from imago dei to a zombie. Still, perhaps, reflective, but spiritually dead. Enemies of God. Usurpers of His throne. Backstabbers of our Maker. Rapists of His creation. Emotional and sensuous whoremongers and pleasure hoarders. Traitors. Sinners. Mutated humans hopelessly separated…

…from God, who is pure holiness. Wholly set apart. Uncreaturelike. All-powerful. Whose thoughts and ways are nothing like ours. How can we even imagine what His motives are? How can we pretend to know His reasons for allowing the freedom to corrupt His creation? Who are we to open our mouths to explain Him? Defend Him? As someone once said, “You don’t need to defend a lion. You set him loose.” Not that God needs to be set loose–he’s already wilder than we can possibly imagine.

A lion has roared! Who will not fear? The Lord GOD has spoken! Who can but prophesy?

-Amos 3:8

Flawless Information Injection

When we consider God, then, who, according to the Biblical text, injected perfect information into the universe, we can be amazed:

1 ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

2 οὖτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν.
He was with God in the beginning.

3 πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὃ γέγονεν
Through him all things were made; without him, nothing was made that has been made.

4 ἐν αὐτῶ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων·
In him was life, and that life was the light of men.

5 καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει, καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν.
The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

Did you catch that? This parallel of Genesis asserts that Jesus the Christ is the Word who is somehow concurrently with–and in being–God. A perfect word is perfect information set forth. It is flawless in nature, containing in itself patterns and rhythms which can be observed, studied, and known if revealed. Therefore, it is our duty and our pleasure to learn this Word, the information contained therein, and put it to use in our lives that we might live to the fullest intended for us.

The quest for knowledge is a great one, but it is largely misunderstood and corrupted…

Information Extraction and Impartation

Information: what is it?

It’s all around us. The leaves on trees contain it. The sky above. The soil beneath. Your body is full of it. It leaks out into and from words, actions, thoughts, and existence. It’s colors, smells, tastes, shapes, textures, patterns, sounds. It’s detectable and undetectable. Unavoidable yet so often missed…

If we were to consider the set of all information in the world, we could subdivide it into two categories: extracted and imparted. This, then, is how we interact with the world around us: we extract information from it, and impart information to it. This can be done in a variety of ways. Consider the following chart which features each with its opposite:

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The last is my very favorite because it combines all of the above into a masterful means through which we might extract information through experience and impart information through discipling, or guiding, others.

Child Sacrifice Survivor

Cultures today, such as in Guyana, and in the past, such as are recorded in history, have practiced child sacrifice–the giving of a child’s life to appease a deity. Scripture records children being offered to Molech. Today, our god is the god of happiness. The insanity of our culture is that we laud life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, yet this order has no reality. Since when does a pursuit of happiness inherently strip others’ right to liberty and/or life? We offer our children to the god of happiness under the guise of “women’s rights” just as the propaganda videos of the early to mid 20th century operated under the guise of German rights. To subject a people group to a category that is less than human is ultimate hatred. So we pick on the weakest, frailest, most trusting members of our society–those without a voice. Their cries muffled in fluid. Well one cry has made it through:

Bigger Man

The bigger man
is the man
who can rise above it
and see it
from the perspective
that brings it
back to reality.

This reality
of which I speak
is the one
in which God gave His own Son
to the earth
so that they could be free.

He died on a tree
just for you and for me

How dare you reject;
how dare you neglect
the past that you left
and the Life that you know?

Man, don’t you know?
man, put down that dough…

 

Zombies Continued

Like zombies, we pursue some twisted love (forbidden; defined by emotion). Like zombies, we pursue some twisted wealth (dishonestly or obsessively gained to the neglect of all else). Like zombies, we pursue some twisted fame (self-deity). Like zombies, we pursue some twisted happiness (idolatry). And we, in more democratic societies, go around patting each other on the backs, granting each other overly broadly-defined “rights” like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness–like zombies, ever twisting and perverting our universe–a violence beyond comprehension (for “life” can mean we value ours over theirs, “liberty” can mean the ability to do whatever we want, and “happiness” can mean whatever we choose to satisfy ourselves). But also, like zombies, we’re perfectly blind to the fact that we are zombies.

We murdered ourselves when we ate the fruit. And we all did. It wasn’t just Adam and Eve. They ate fruit and tried to be gods. We lie. We pervert. We seek our own pleasure and happiness–idol: ourselves. We fantasize ourselves to be gods. Gnawing on the extremities of others–even our own–as they also chew ours. All the while–committing high treason against the ruler and creator of our universe.

Zombie You

Even if we consider ourselves part of a more refined segment of civilization, the pleasure we supposedly seek for others (as we desperately try to appease our consciences) is really to please ourselves as we fancy ourselves as “selfless”– in the hopes of somehow pushing along a sort of human social evolution – all the while seeking our own smug satisfaction. If we don’t take pride in our individual self, we take it in our kind.

Sexual arousal, for instance, presumably evolved because of its connection to making babies; but of course we can get aroused in all sorts of situations in which baby-making just isn’t an option — for instance, while looking at pornography. Similarly, our impulse to help others has likely evolved because of the reproductive benefit that it gives us in certain contexts — and it’s not a problem for this argument that some acts of niceness that people perform don’t provide this sort of benefit. (And for what it’s worth, giving up a bus seat for an old lady, although the motives might be psychologically pure, turns out to be a coldbloodedly smart move from a Darwinian standpoint, an easy way to show off yourself as an attractively good person.)

-http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

We Zombies

The horror of it is that you are dead. Alive biologically, yes. Your heart pumps blood, the synapses of your brain fire, but you’re dead in every way that matters. Unlike zombies, you look physically normal. But just like zombies, you are dead while you live. Worse yet, you’re headed for a second death–beyond the destiny of your current deterioration.

Here we are–dragging our carcasses across the surface of this globe – seeking our own comfort and happiness, chasing money, self-promotion, the latest technology, self-fulfilling relationships, procreating, and starting the whole process over again. On and on, like zombies, we drag along to feed on creation in a twisted, destructive manner in order to derive our own ungodly momentary pleasure.


We rape the planet for our benefit, living well beyond our means. Whether our effects are understood or not, it doesn’t excuse our behavior. If I back over a person in a parking lot, does it really matter if I did it on purpose or by accident? Either way, someone is dead, and I’ll be on trial for manslaughter at least. Purposeful or ignorant negligence is still negligence. Negligence like rerouting rivers by building dams, causing landslides, destroying people’s homes, ecosystems, and the like. Negligence like overfishing at a rate of 2-3 plus times the world’s total sustainability, causing massive population depletion, ecosystem imbalance, etc. Negligence like transporting plants and animals to alien locations, causing extinction of native species. Negligence like spreading viruses between human groups, causing widespread sickness and death (Native American holocaust by germs). Negligence like coal mining which spikes pollution and carbon emissions to record levels, thereby destroying ecosystems and contaminating the atmosphere. Negligence like commercial accidents like the Exxon oil spill of ‘89 and, more recently, BP’s spill which has damaged wildlife far beyond our understanding. Negligence like driving cars to the tune of 12,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per year plus a host of other by-products which are harmful not only to humans, but the planet at large, let alone the fossil fuels mined and processed to supply the fuel for combustion. Negligence like agricultural poisons and mismanagement of animal by-products resulting in a host of known harmful waste products, not to mention the endless unresearched effects on the environment. These examples say nothing of the dramatic and growing effects of deforestation (stripping the earth’s ability to process carbon emissions and supply oxygen, other contributions to global warming/atmospheric deterioration, food distribution, poverty, child slavery, corruption, plastic islands (as high as 5+ million square miles total), trash productions, immunization tragedies, etc.

Monster

There stands the monster. The beast. That hideous, unimaginable nightmare. It’s gangly figure lingers, watching. Watching me. Mouth abnormally wide—swallowing my attention. Then I notice: hanging still—perfectly limp—the pajama-clad skin of a man, much smaller than the creature itself, eyes vacant.  My heart jumps to the base of my throat as, all in one motion, gnarled fingers slip into a hole somewhere in the back of that lifeless skin, separate the folds and the creature climbs, slithering, inside. The body tosses. Zips. Turns. Wakes.

Good Morning to You. Ready for another day? Another game? Another act on this stage—this façade of a personality you put on which hardly resembles what you know lies beneath? Stand backed against the wall, aghast, lost in the mirror. Is this who you are too? Is that what lives inside this—this—body? This shell in which You dwell? Then it hits you. What you see is not who you are. It’s not that simple. You wish it were. To God, you wish…but you’re more than physical. You know that now. This fearful image staring back into your own eyes, now steadily trembling with revelation, does not define You. The realization terrorizes you, reducing your worst fears to moot, as you are faced with not what is portrayed to those around you each passing day, but You—what you Are. The spirit that dwells within—the real You.

Who—what—are we?

 

Worldview Evaluation

How is a worldview to be tested? Three ways are logical consistency (as we discussed), empirical adequacy (does it match what we sense), and existential relevance (does it actually affect how we live?). To study the worldview adequately, we must employ several disciplines: theology, metaphysics (ontology, cosmology/cosmogony, epistemology), ethics, and anthropology.


What follows in the next several posts is not a systematic breakdown of any one of these disciplines alone. It is merely a presentation of reality as I understand it after inductively weighing the evidence in its support. You may ask, “What–are you an expert in all the worldviews across our planet?” My answer is no, I cannot hope to learn all the information available, but if I can break them down into categories, and evaluate them from there I can, through process of elimination, find those worth building inductive cases for. These categories are: 1) only the supernatural exists, 2) only the natural exists, and 3) both the supernatural and natural exist. (Much of the categorical terminology here I’ve derived from Ravi Zacharias, whose ministries (RZIM) can provide further counsel.)

Evaluating Supernatural Claims

If a claim exists beyond the bounds of the senses, one cannot use the lack of senses to refute the claim; however we may derive skepticism from a lack of evidence. People may be skeptical, for example, of molecules until more evidence is given, though the existence of molecules remained unchanged all along. The claim can be rejected if the senses can definitively prove otherwise–just as the senses can serve as inductive evidence that a particular claim stands.


If there is such an intersection between the natural and supernatural, a true scientist ought to ask questions (second step of the scientific method) of the supernatural claim to determine if it is supported by the natural world. If the claim fails the test of coherence among such categories as origin, meaning, morality, or destiny, or if natural observation definitively negates the claim, then the scientist can rightly deem the claim as invalid. Further tests may include considerations like logical consistency (it cannot both affirm and deny a component). Short of this thorough investigation, however, no valid conclusion may be reached.

A Sensuous Society

If you hear someone described as “sensuous,” you might assume they are sexually provocative. Although that may play a part, let’s get down to the root: a sensuous person is one who is ruled by their senses. Because this term has a negative connotation, however, modern thought substitutes the term “sensuality” with “empirical science.” This is merely a mask for the rulership of the senses–complete reliance upon that which can be seen, felt, tasted, heard, and smelled to whatever degree of scientific “repeatability” you desire. And yet, it is largely believed that if something is not observable, then it does not exist. This was true of cells, molecules, and atoms at one time. Did they suddenly exist when we “sensed” them? How about dark matter and dark energy (the majority of the universe)–did it, too, suddenly exist when formulas necessitated it? How about the supernatural?

Grand Ironies

The grand ironies are that we humans seek:

  • perfect law though crime, for it is law that stands in the way of perceived justice
  • peace through war, for it is peace which both sides believe worth fighting for
  • economic stability through poverty, for the idea of stability in middle- to upper-classes that is borne on the backs of the poor
  • filled appetite through hunger, for a perceived “filled appetite” inevitably prevents another from being filled in our economies
  • moderation through obsession, for it is eventual moderation which is believed possible through current obsession
  • freedom through bondage, for it is our pursuit of freedom which inevitably enslaves others in a variety of forms
  • health through sickness, for it is health or the illusion thereof which is provided by the diseased (or “less healthy”)
  • logic through illogic, for “logical” outcomes are pursued through illogical means
  • human triumph through tragedy, for it is the hope of human triumph which spurs on the tragedy
  • environmental conservation through decimation of nature, for it is conservation which is seen as attainable through temporary decimation
  • social evolution through social devolution, for it is often the unleashing of baser instincts which is promoted as progress

Love Languages?

image

Inside-Out Love

How should you love your spouse? By fulfilling their love language? Depositing into an emotional bank account? Or how about filling up an air tank, complete with hoses which you try not to step on? This session will turn these and other popular ideas inside-out as we explore what Jesus calls us to in our relationships. Not for the faint of heart. Prepare your marriage to be turned inside-out. Better yet…prepare to die.

You may have heard of these:

his needs her needs
crazy cycle
emotional air tank
emotional bank account
love languages

But according to God’s Word, he requires a dying love not founded on feelings or manipulation of others to get what I really want as so much of psychology teaches. Consider truth:

God demonstrated his love (Rom. 5:6-11)
We love b/c He first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19)
Love is… (1 Cor. 13)
Love your neighbor… (Matthew 22:37-40)
Restore gently when in sin (Gal. 6:1)
Bear each other’s burdens (Gal. 6:2)
Build others up for benefit (Eph. 4:29)
Effective/Productive circle (2 Peter 1:3-11)
Husbands love, wives respect (Eph. 5:33)
Husbands respect, wives submit (1 Peter 3:1-7)

“The saving love of God, expressed in the death of Christ, does not speak anyone’s natural love language. And yet it is the greatest love and our most desperate need. In this way Christ fails the love language test!

“… As Powlison says, “I’ve found that one acid test of my heart is how I handle being misunderstood, caricatured, reviled, dissed—not how I handle being accurately known and loved! It’s when someone doesn’t speak my ‘love language’ that I find out what I’m made of, and by God’s grace begin to change what I live for.”

“It turns out that it was not that she wasn’t loving me, but that she was loving me in her own language. This had closed my ears (or heart—metaphors are getting mangled!) to those expressions of love. But once I understood her better, then I was prepared to receive love in different and unexpected ways. Now I am learning to understand new languages and to respond to them.

“Part of considering the interests of others is to do them tangible good. But then to really love them, you usually need to help them see their itch as idolatrous, and to awaken in them a far more serious itch! That’s basic Christianity. 5LL will never teach you to love at this deeper, more life-and-death level.

“It sounds more like opiates for the masses than The Revolution needed to bring in the kingdom of solid joys and lasting treasures”

-http://www.challies.com/christian-living/speaking-loves-languages

“Redemption is not less than what Chapman tells people to do. But it is so much more. And it does everything for such different reasons. Jesus’ couples do lots of other things in addition to seeking to love accurately. They seek forgiveness and forgive. They call things what they are. They aim to redemptively remake what others live for, even as God is remaking them. They live for God, not for getting what they want. Jesus offered Himself as the bread of life, when all that the hungry crowd wanted was more pita bread to fill their empty bread tank!

“The love of Christ speaks a “love language”—mercy to hellishly self-centered people—that no person can hear or understand unless God gives ears to hear. It is a language we cannot speak to others unless God makes us fluent in an essentially foreign language. We might say that the itch itself (an ear for God’s language) has to be created, because we live in such a stupor of self-centered itchiness. The love language model does not highlight those exquisite forms of love that do not “speak your language.” You and I need to learn a new language if we are to become fit to live with each other and with God.”

-http://mattadair.typepad.com/communitas/files/five_love_languages_critique.pdf

Picture courtesy of https://shetalkswithgod.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/love-cross-upside-down1.jpg