Knowledge and Belief

I contemplated titling this "Knowledge versus Belief," but I don't think that the two ideas are opposing, but rather complementary. In particular, I would like to examine this statement, which evangelical Christians know: God lives in me (Galatians 2:19-20, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20). What do we believe about this statement?

The divide between knowledge and belief is great, and yet the two correlate directly. Scripture repeatedly warns against those who know the law, know the message of Christ, know His redemptive nature, and yet do not believe. Knowledge of salvation is not belief of salvation.

According to Paul, our bodies are indwelled by Christ and the Holy Spirit. If you're reading this, you probably already know this. I'm challenging you to believe it. The God of the universe, the Creator, the Almighty, the Head of the Church, the Spirit of healing, the Spirit of a faith that moves mountains lives inside of you, me, His people.

When we make the leap from knowledge to belief about this particular idea, we begin to live our lives in a way that boldly proclaims Christ for we have received grace and apostleship to bring obedience of faith for the sake of His name to all nations (Romans 1). We also portray our lives literally being the hands and feet of Christ. We are not consumed on our needs, wants, and even desires. We live by faith.

Perhaps of greatest consequence of believing this statement is that we can love. Without the presence of evil within, Christ can dwell within (Psalm 5:4) and He may love through us so that when others see us, they see the fruits of the spirit, with the building block of love (Galatians 5:22-25). When we know Christ lives in us, we easily talk about it. When we believe Christ lives in us, people easily see it.

Christ lives in you. Believe and live that truth.

The Waiter: Tyler

My great-aunt and I had lunch at a lakeside restaurant early this afternoon. It was a beautiful scene with delectable food. Our waiter, Tyler, was a college student studying business and psychology, as we would learn throughout the course of the meal. What we struck me as odd was not the fact that he was a waiter, for indeed this job was likely contributing to his continuing education. It was odd however how slowly and hesitantly he answered my aunt’s inquiries about his life. There are a few plausible explanations.

Tyler may have been a paranoid man worried about privacy and the fear of an 80-year-old woman stalking him. Let’s face it, this clearly is not a viable explanation. He may have had a bad morning and did not want to answer any questions about himself, which is possible, but unlikely since he had a clear smile and disposition about the beautiful day. The most likely explanation is this: Tyler compartmentalizes his life. When he’s at work, he’s at work. When he’s not at work, he’s living. Life and work don’t mix. There also may be a hint of the American way of keeping to oneself without vulnerability to only halfheartedly invest in people, but that’s for another discussion.

Tyler is not the only one to live this way. All too often, when we are working, we are working for the monetary gain, experience, or the like. We fail to include our job as a part of our life; either that or to the other extreme, we make our job our life. Perhaps this is due to the mentality while on the job: I am just an employee doing my job. However, this is an illogical way to work. No matter what setting, work, play, or school, I must live as an integrated person: a Christian, Hoosier, college student, employee, brother, son, friend, and on and on. To separate any part of who I am from the other would be to lessen my creation and worth.

Tomorrow morning, I will start a new job for the summer. Many college students will work the summer months only to return to “life” in the evenings or in the fall. I hope that I can work this summer realizing that wherever I am, whatever I am doing, that is the life that God has called me to live and I must utilize all of who I am at every moment, not solely for monetary gain or experience. My life is that which has been graciously given to me by the Father and whatever seed I’ve received, I must sow in the present, for the thought of tomorrow is a transient and earthly gain, not one set on things above.

Calculus, By Grace Alone

This semester, God blessed me, and/or tested my faith, with a class devoted to studying Calculus (a branch in mathematics focused on limits, functions, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series). Quite frankly, studying mathematics has never been a problem for me. I took a college Calculus class in high school. I only am taking Calculus again because, honestly, my Christian liberal arts college of choice does not recognize Calculus when aced from a secular university. All semester I saw this denial of transfer credit situation most negatively. However, my thinking changed today when I received my first C+ on any written work I have ever done, in my lifetime thus far. Quite a shocker to me since "I know Calculus," but what I realized is much more valuable to me than a perfected grade point average.

Our professor, a friendly, simplistic, introverted man nearing sixty, assigned the task to determine the source of mathematics. Two questions were posed: 1) Does God create mathematics and humankind merely discovers it? and 2) Does humankind create mathematics? If so, what is God's role (if any)?

At first when posed with these questions, I thought I had my answer: God created all things so mankind discovered Calculus. Well, that's a simplistic answer. This principle holds true to mathematical realism, which argues that humans do not invent mathematics, but merely discover it without attributing the original invention thereof to any deity, power, or source, which leaves a lot of doors open. While I still hold true to the principle of mathematical realism with the understanding of God as the creator, I believe that there is more. Mathematics, like all fields, holds truth to the wisdom and logic of God, so our discovery is imperfect and not comprehensive of the totality of mathematics since we cannot fully grasp the knowledge of God. In other words, as we grow in His likeness, we discover more and more about His infinite logic, but our understanding is limited.

I love mathematics because there is always an objective answer, procedure, and testable theorem, but today I realized that this is only a glimpse of the nature of God's creation of mathematics. Our continual discovery of His nature is never perfected in this life, so to believe that mathematics is discovered by man's own doing is quite false, for it is only by grace that He extends His hand to share just a drop of His understanding. I believe this holds true for all of our learning: it is not our discovery, but His grace extended to us that as we grow in His likeness He imparts bits and bits of His creation, logic, reasoning, art, and more.

And so, my Christian liberal arts college of choice does not recognize Calculus when aced from a secular university when the course is required for my major. Now, I do not despise the registrar for this decision. Instead, I am grateful for I realize that the same course I took last year means so much more to me when I took it this year through His eyes. No matter how much "I know Calculus," He created Calculus and it is infinitely beautiful to see just a glimpse of His logic, reasoning, and power through the study of this branch of mathematics. As I pursue lifelong learning, my prayer is that I would recognize that it is only by His grace that He shares these wonders with me and I praise Him for entrusting me with just a small fraction of His knowledge.

The Fallacious Nature of Love

As a young adult and college student, I have begun to notice many things from the past and the present with a new perspective. Recently it has come to my attention that it is hard for me to love the people who love me the most. Maybe this is not a revolutionary concept, but let's seriously consider it for a few minutes.

First and foremost, love was perfected (1 John 4) when Christ gave Himself as a sacrifice for me. He, above all others, loves me. He knows what it means to love me. He has loved me and continues to love me. Let's be honest though, it is hard for me to love Him. It does not come naturally, due to our fallen nature, to love and serve the Creator. Our flesh wages war against us so it is not easy to love Him. It takes energy, commitment, and diligence to devote love and service to Him. There's no room for complaint here, I'm simply making the observation that it is, at times, hard to love Christ, especially when we are faced with uncertainty and heartache.

Next in line to take the blunt of my inability to love perfectly are my family members. Quite frankly, I have never seriously doubted that I was loved by my family. However, I constantly am faced with failure to love them. My parents and sister never deserved the way I treated them in the past. Why is it hard to love them? I don't know that I have an answer.

Admittedly, sometimes I "make up" for my inadequate love for Christ and my family by easily loving, serving, and giving to close friends and even acquaintances. Maybe I do this so I can selfishly feel that more people love me; to fulfill a desire to feel more and more love from those around me. Should I not feel sufficiently loved by Christ? That should be my sole contender for love, and yet why do I so badly "need" to feel loved by those around me?

Noticeably, there is no tangible solution. Maybe our solution is to consider the other side of the perspective: why is it hard for the people who I love the most to love me? I think we'll find that the answer to that question is rooted in how we love Christ and how we see the world and those around us; because I love imperfectly.

It's a perspective change that must take place. I delight to know that the transformation of the renewal of my mind is opening my mind to change how I view the simple nature of loving and serving others. It is hard to love those who love us the most.

Inadequacy

Yesterday I was blessed by six one-on-one fellowship times with three brothers and three sisters in Christ. Each one was innately unique, special, and encouraging. Although such a social day can be wearisome, I finished the day with a great smile on my face for I had heard six accounts of what God is doing, six accounts of lives being transformed, and six accounts of inadequacies.

By the conclusion of the evening, I came to understand the common theme of our stories, which are complexly interwoven on various points: we are inadequate, we have failed, but we have hope.

In the words of one, "...my self-focus limited by ability to love myself and consequently love others."
In the words of another, "...I was ashamed that I had not stood up for what I knew to be true..."
And yet the words of another, "...I am inadequate, but may my inadequacies be found in Christ."

Our stories are not all that different. Sometimes we forget that when we have our "self-focus" perspective. We tend to think we are the only one's struggling with this or that, or that no one understands, or that somehow our perspective is inherently unique. While there are aspects of each of those statements that are true, our stories still are not all that different. We each struggle with failure, we each have inadequacies, and we all know these truths, but do we believe them for ourselves?

On a practical level, nothing changes except our perspective. We still have regrets, we still have inadequacies, and we still fail. Perhaps we need to be reminded of the most complex aspect of our faith: Jesus Christ died for our inadequacies because He loves us. Even better, those inadequacies died when He died and we are now adequately alive in Him.

Hearing the stories of our friends, our families, and even strangers should entice us to examine how our stories are intertwined in the story of Christ. What an encouragement that we share that story so that we may fellowship, rejoice, mourn, grieve, laugh, and celebrate our lives together as brothers and sisters!

As one of my dear friends told me yesterday, "...my heart is heavy with the weight of inadequacy and failures...thankfully I am not alone."

One Cat, One Liver

Friday evenings tend to be either exhilarating or mundanely indicative of a weekend of homework. Nonetheless, tonight would classify as exhilarating.

One of my friends is a biology major. She is highly intuitive and deliberately thoughtful in her continual quest for knowledge. Tonight, she superseded the realm of normal by enticing myself and another cohort to accomplish a dangerous, smelly mission in order to obtain one thing: a liver.

Our options were as follows: recent roadkill that was preserved enough for dissection, a live animal from a pet store to be sacrificed for science (ethical questionability was noted), or human biopsy (most likely living). The most cost-efficient and practical method was to find roadkill, which is seemingly not a complicated issue in Midwest America.

So, tonight, we embarked via vehicle onto the freeways and byways of central Indiana in search of recent roadkill. Within five minutes of our travel, we saw several options. However, it was my keen sense of sight which ultimately led us to the perfect specimen: a deceased cat, later named Mocha, preserved outside a home along a state highway, wet from previous day's rain, but in great condition for dissection and extraction of a liver.

As is custom in America, the man, myself, allowed my two fellow female colleagues to have the pleasure and opportunity to retrieve Mocha from the ditch with trash bags and latex gloves. Quick retrieval and a steady foot to the pedal led us back to the science facilities available to us for the dissection of Mocha.

Upon the arrival of said biology major's lab partner, we (they) proceeded to remove the cat from the trash bags only to discover a plethora of maggots, roaches, lice, and various other infectious creatures. At this point, I was safely on the other side of the room with an abundant amount of paper towel in my nostrils as not to smell the rotting carcass.

A quick decision making process led us to move the laboratory surgery outside of the facilities with fresh evening air and a perfect sidewalk for infectious insects to run away. Within ten minutes, surgery was underway; scalpel to skin, scissors to ribs, and tweezers to greater omentum. The liver was found beneath the diaphragm (where it normally is) and all four lobes were successfully excised with a small presence of maggot inhabitation.

After cleaning up the surgery "room" and equipment, the liver biopsy was placed in a protective tupperware container and placed in freezing conditions for later analysis.

Friday evenings tend to surprise you in many ways. Mocha surprised me tonight. I'm sure we surprised her too. There is great joy in surprises. God continues to surprise me everyday by what He's teaching me and those around me. "Be still and know that I am God." Perhaps we just need to be still before Him, trust Him, and take time to see what He's doing. I think that doing so will surprise us. And that will bring us joy, which we will hold onto until our faith is sight.

Whether you dissect a cat (RIP Mocha) or study organic chemistry, Friday nights will surprise you. Be willing to cherish those surprises.

The Beauty of Grief

Last night, there was a full moon amidst ominous clouds and a slight breeze. It was just another night like so many before it. However, my perspective was different than most nights. Like in all things, one's perspective worldview determines the values, attitudes, and beliefs about the simplicity of life.

And so, after time reading the word, praying, and singing hymns, I simply sat outside. Alone. Very alone. My perspective enabled me to see that in the scheme of this life, I was alone and will be alone. Family, friends, strangers, and those gone before me, cannot be with me in a value that permits me to be not alone. In other words, no matter what, I will be alone because people will fail me and the walk of life ends alone.

At face value, this sounds like a downer, but it's not. To me, this is joy: that I recognize that I am alone so that I must be dependent on the One who loved me and provides grace and mercy to love me still for eternity being humble before His throne. I am very alone and by being alone I have a great sense of belonging.

The past week of my life has been grievous with much reflection, sharing, mourning, and laughter. I have realized that I am alone throughout this week - no one else can know what or how I feel, no one can offer assurance of hope, and no one can comfort me completely.

The beauty of grief is that because I recognize that I am alone, I have been dependent on God for comfort, assurance, and hope. Revealed through nature, through loved ones, and through His word, God provides avenues for the beauty of grief to be realized. Our dependence on Him alone brings strength, hope, and joy amidst sorrow, grief, and pain.

Before the throne, in a state of grief, there is joy in being humble enough to be completely dependent and have a perspective that encourages growth. When we are at our lowest, is that not when Christ is glorified the most and our weaknesses become our strength?

There is beauty in grief - there is joy, hope, assurance, and ultimately salvation in dependence on Christ. I pray that I may delight in my grief and that my joy may be found in my lonely dependence on Christ.