Jesus Saves: 101

By Pastor Vinnie MacIsaac

Related Podcast: 

Jesus Saves. Let’s Talk Process.

Christians of all types and shapes generally agree: Jesus saves. I understood that at baptism when I joined the church. However, a little bit tragically, it took me until I was a theology student, formally studying for the ministry, to fully understand how He saved me. It is great to know you are saved, but misunderstanding the process of saving often leads to theological confusion and unbalance.

The Bible declares;

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.  For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:8-10

Here are the three stages of this process:

Justification:

Justification is a one-time event that occurs when a lost sinner asks for God’s forgiveness and God imputes the merits of Jesus Christ on the sinner declaring the sinner to be righteous.

Generally, most Christian traditions (especially evangelical traditions) refer to this step in the process as “being saved.”

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 5:1

“So that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”  Titus 3:7

“For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” Romans 3:28

Justification, therefore, is a free gift of God’s grace and cannot be earned by being good, by keeping the Law, or by doing kind deeds for God or man.  It is literally God freeing us from the penalty of sin. It occurs only because a sinner, under the prevenient grace[i] of the Holy Spirit, comes to understand they are woefully lost, heading for destruction, and cannot change their fate no matter how hard they try – unless God Himself intervenes in their life. It is a cry in the darkness for a God of the light, to reach down and save us from our own sinful nature. It is an act of faith, in believing that God will save us because Jesus died in our place on the cross. When we are justified, we are surrendered to God in a willful repentance of sin and the ability to cure ourselves. It is as the classic hymn says, “to wholly lean on Jesus’ name.”[ii] It is literally God freeing us from the penalty of sin.

Sanctification:

Sanctification can be summed up as God’s continual freeing us from the power of sin in our lives. Sin, as a power, seeks to drag us back into the darkness that justification saved us from. God, through the indwelling power of His Holy Spirit, seeks to grow us up more daily. We are saved in a moment (justification) but we grow for a lifetime (sanctification).

“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Thessalonians 5:23

“According to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you.” 1 Peter 1:2

“Moreover, I gave them my Sabbaths, as a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD who sanctifies them.” Ezekiel 20:12

Sanctification is often called holiness because it is the growth process into holiness. However, it is key to understand, just as Ezekiel says, it is “the LORD who sanctifies.” Some Christians mistakenly think that Justification (being saved) is what God does and that Sanctification (being made holy) is what we do. But the truth is, both Justification and Sanctification are both works that God does in you as you yield yourself to Him. We are saved by grace through faith, both in justification and sanctification. The Bible promises us that the same God who began a good work in us will also finish it (Philippians 1:6).

Glorification:

Glorification is the final development stage in the process, when God transforms our nature forever – taking away the “power of sin” forever. This happens at the second coming of Christ when our sinful natures are taken away and the struggle is finally over. We are no longer being declared holy, or made holy; we are holy, and therefore glorified with God, in Christ.

“It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed.” 1 Corinthians 15:52

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.” Philippians 3:20-21

“And inasmuch as it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment, so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.” Hebrews 9:27-28

Finally, we will be free from the power of sin and this corrupted mortal body and be forever transformed by the very presence of God to forever live in the Kingdom with him. Gone will be sin, suffering, and best of all, temptation. We will have seen sin, struggled with sin, and have been delivered from sin, and will never go down that road again!

John Newton summed it up nicely for us when he put the salvation process this way,

“I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.”[iii]

God’s Amazing Grace takes us for eternity into glorification that is beyond what our human minds can even yet understand. We are saved in a moment, grow for a lifetime, and give glory forever, all because Jesus made atonement at the cross for us. We were sinners, deserving death. He was perfect, deserving eternity; yet he traded places with us in our death, to give us His life. “Christ was treated as we deserve, that we might be treated as He deserves.”[iv]  The theological term for this is subsidiary atonement (also in some traditions called vicarious atonement) and it is the idea that the perfect life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ replaces our broken, sinful life and needful death, for all of eternity, when we accept it at justification.

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

And that is the point of all three stages of the salvation process as outlined in the Bible. God is making us, who accept the atonement of Jesus in faith,  to be restored into the very Glory of the righteousness of God, for which fallen humankind will take on learning and embracing into eternity.

“When we’ve been there ten thousand years

Bright shining as the sun,

We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise

Than when we’ve first begun.”[v]

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Footnotes:

[i] Prevenient Grace: https://youtu.be/nG-AUaFgFbM

[ii] My Hope Is Built On Nothing Less

[iii] John Newton was an English Anglican clergyman and abolitionist. He wrote the famed hymn Amazing Grace.

[iv] Desire Of Ages; Ellen G. White, Pg 25

[v] “Amazing Grace” written by John Newton

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Let’s Talk Anxiety!

Pastor Vinnie MacIsaac

Feeling Anxious?

You’re not alone. More than 40 million adults in the USA, close to one in five people overall, have a clinical level of Anxiety.[i]

Anxiety and the understanding of where it comes from and how to manage it is perhaps one of the most under talked about conversations out there. And it is often worse in faith communities because we spiritualize it away or discredit it as being a lack of faith or somehow a sinful emotion.

First, as a Pastor and former mental health advocate, let me tell say this: Anxiety is normal! Let me say it again; say it with me, anxiety is normal! If you have anxiety sometimes, it means you’re a human with a pulse. If you don’t ever have anxiety then something is very atypical about your emotional makeup (and you should see someone about that). When I say anxiety is normal, I am not downplaying it either. I say it so that, if you’re living with it, you won’t have to feel alone; you’re not, you’re just human.

Understanding what Anxiety Is:

So, where does anxiety come from? Our brain, of course! Anxiety is the body’s natural response to acute stress, fear, or worry. Look, it is our brain’s job to keep us safe. And in case you missed the memo, in Genesis 3 we got exiled out of our safe, comfy, plush garden into a perilous, deadly, world where things want to eat us! God, being that awesome loving God that He is, planned for us and gave us some cool tools to take with us on our massive Time Out. God designed you to use your head and to sense when danger, or impending doom, may be coming your way.  Our limbic system was designed by God to be that part of our brain that organizes the cross-sections of emotions, motivation, and long term memories, and basically, it tells the rest of our executive brain what to do about its conclusions. Harvard Professor of Psychology, Daniel Schacter, summed it up this way, “The limbic system is where the subcortical structures meet the cerebral cortex”[ii]. So, when it comes to anxiety, it plays out like this:  you see the danger, you experience danger, you feel danger, you remember danger, and you, of course, know danger is real. So, not to be on the lookout for it either makes you stupid or somebody’s lunch! Do you see, now, why I say anxiety is normal? Smart people who don’t want to be someone’s lunch, listen to it.

Interestingly, the Hebrew scriptures paint the heart and mind as that same thing[iii] and the New Testament concurs[iv]. They refer to what is in your heart and mind as one, and state that what God says to one is spoken to both. It turns out they were right! As your brain is continually taking in all the data around you, one of the cool things your limbic system is doing is being the emotional powerhouse for you; and part of that is working in the background to make sure you stay safe! The limbic system is made up of the hippocampus, amygdala, thalamus, and hypothalamus. While you don’t need to understand them in deep detail, the big take away here is that they are your brain’s emotional dream team that informs your executive functions about the “matters of the heart,” including fear and “fight or flight” responses.
Maybe you grew up watching Spiderman cartoons or reading comics. If you did, you are aware that one of Spiderman’s powers is what he calls his “Spidey-sense.” It is his ability to sense when he is in trouble. I guess Stan Lee[v] when he was inventing superpowers figured spiders had advanced limbic systems (grin)[vi]. Normal levels of anxiety are one of our superpowers! And since it is a superpower, we need not be ashamed of it! Healthy people learn to hear it and figure out what triggered it so that they can do an assessment of the danger. Sometimes, anxiety can be a miscalculation of the limbic system, and we can choose to let it go once our executive functions kick in. Other times, it may be a healthy stressor that moves us to safe actions.  That said, I remember in one comic I read, something happened to Spiderman’s brain, and his spider-sense got turned all the way up to level ten and would not shut down! Not only did that make it impossible to tell whether the danger was real or not, but it was constant pain and shock to be stuck in a hyper-aware sense of fear that was not real, but rather vastly exaggerated by his own brain! When that happened, it would overwhelm him and would totally shut him down! His powers sabotaged him! In psychology, we call that, by the clinical name of General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and in possible advance or related stages, Social Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD).

Coming To Terms With Anxiety:

We live in a fallen world. All we have ever known, since leaving the womb, is the brokenness of this world. Not only is it fallen and broken, but there are eons of accumulative damage to our social structures, environment, and biology. If you have an unmanageable level of anxiety, or General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) or another version of anxiety, it is not your fault. Your spider-senses are stuck on overdrive, and without professional intervention, we can’t even assess if it a biological issue, trauma response, or learned response.  It makes sense that to me that 40 million adults in the USA have Anxiety Disorder; have you looked out the window lately?! There is no shame in getting help, taking treatment, and learning to manage your anxiety to the best of your ability. The shame is in not taking care of your emotional and mental health.

When Paul says, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own”[vii] that includes your brain. Your brain is the most executive organ of your whole body, and it is the literal place in the body that the Holy Spirit dwells and communicates with us! It is high time Christians woke up and smelled the coffee; we are mandated by scripture to care for our brains. To neglect to do so is to damage property that belongs to God! Stop making excuses. Because the Apostle Paul tells us there are no excuses when he says,  “By the mercies of God, … present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.”[viii] Sure, Sure, some of you are reading this and saying, Pastor needs to practice what he preaches and lose some weight, then. That is fair, and my reply to you is, I know what my plan is for weight loss; do you even have an idea for mental and emotional care? If not, get one!

Reasonable Action Steps:

(c)Marvel Comics

Where do you go when you get sick? To your doctor! Where do you go when your brain needs help? You also go to your doctor. Why? Because your brain is part of your body and so you take it to the same place, you take the rest of your body when it is sick. Only a qualified doctor, not your pastor, friends, family, or the internet, can determine if you need medical testing for biological factors, or a referral for a clinical psychologist, or counselor.[ix]

If you have already taken the step to get professional help, or your anxiety is not acute and is generally manageable (not clinical) here is a spiritual action-step process I use for keeping balance.[x]

1. Every Day Starts With Prayer And Meditation. You might think this is a given; you already do that. Again, as a pastor, I know people have much less prayer and meditation than they report. Prayer, even silent, quiet time just listening to God, calms the soul, grounds us, and takes us out of “rush rush” and “fight or flight” modes and puts us into ‘trusting someone more powerful is watching over us’ mode.

2. Notice Your Stress Level. Ask yourself if you’re a little on the edge today? Before you go into work or a social setting that may be chaotic (especially if you are an introvert), take 5-10 seconds and ask yourself how you are feeling. Sometimes it helps to identify a number, 1-10, as to where you think you are.

3. Recognize Anxiety. When it is there, it is there; denying it won’t help. Ironically, it can even give us one more thing to worry about. You can only press it down so long before it eats you. Remember, it is only a Super Villain when it is out of control.

4. Assess & Accept It. Is there any danger here? Is this old, emotional residue leaking back in? Before it steamrolls you, put the right labels on it. Anxiety is acute stress and fear, and sometimes it leaks in from old baggage we can’t do anything about. Sometimes, if we slap the right label on the fear quick enough, it reminds us of action items around that fear that will make life better. The point is, if you don’t label it right away, you can’t know if that fear has grounds or is leakage. Healthy anxiety is a superpower. When you feel it coming on in your chest or breathing, or fidgeting, recognize it in your head, ask yourself, “What is my Spidey-sense trying to tell me?”

5. Take A Deep Breath. Yep. It is basic, and we all know we need to breathe. But when we stop and take a deep breath or several, we feed our brain with large, fresh intakes of ‘fog-clearing’ oxygen. Exhaling has a therapeutic value to it. It is both a physical and psychological release, which lowers your pulse rate. Also, it gives you a chance to “catch up with your thoughts.” Some people have racing thoughts with anxiety. Breathing gives them a few minutes to stop, slow down, and let the executive function part of your brain catch up with the limbic system of your brain and get on the same page! The lag between the limbic and executive function sometimes just needs a few minutes to resolve.

6. Give It To God. You need to move on if it just leakage, or a real point of anxiety, either way. Give whatever to God because it is time to go full-on “1 Peter 5:7” on it! Oh yeah, you heard me right, kick it to, “Cast all your anxiety on Him because he cares for you.” God really does care for you! Stop. Let that sink in! And repeat 1 Peter 5:7, or Isaiah 35:4, Isaiah 40:31, John 14:1, Psalm 94:19, Philippians 4:6-7, Colossians 3:15, etc. Close your eyes. Breathe. Seek God. Pray. Ask Him to show you how much He cares for you! Ask him to show up and take this from you, so you don’t have to carry it. Trust that he is telling the truth in 1 Peter 5:7!

7. Get Help. Sometimes all the above steps don’t take the anxiety away at a rate fast enough to be able to function well. When that happens, it is time to see the doctor and get treatment right away. Some people at this stage insist I am wrong, and that people just need to have more faith. Some get upset with God for not answering them when they have cried out to him. Such thinking is mistaken. When you have a migraine that won’t go away or a cyst that keeps growing larger, or terrible back pain that will not end despite many faithful prayers, you go see the doctor! Why can’t God heal back pain, cysts, or migraines? Sure, but he is Sovereign. We don’t get to dictate the terms of our healing to God. Sometimes he heals through prayer and faith, and somethings he heals through prayer and faith but allows a doctor to be involved. Respect God’s sovereignty;  that, too, brings order to your life.

Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers. 3 John 2

APPENDIX

Some music to meditate with:

He Is Able / Give Me God Mix

Neuroscience of Anxiety:

Psychology of Anxiety:

Related Blogs:

Criticism: Cuts Like A Knife

The Reserve Of Courage

The Joy Of Despair

The Exhaustion Gridlock

Lessons From The Edge Of The Skateboard

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Footnotes:

[i] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322877.php#6

[ii] Schacter, Daniel L. 2012. Psychology.sec. 3.20

[iii] Jeremiah 31:31-34, Ezekiel 36:26-32,

[iv]  Hebrews 8:6–13

[v] Spiderman was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko with heavy influence from Jack Kirby.

[vi] And he might have been on to something. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/04/science/mapping-the-tiny-brain-of-the-aristocrat-of-arachnids.html

[vii] 1 Corinthians 6:19

[viii] Romans 12:1 NKJV

[ix] Treatment for Anxiety Disorders often includes both medicine and cognitive therapy (counseling). As always, your doctor is the best person to weigh out the pros and cons of any medication prescribed. That said, there is no sound theological reason to avoid medical treatment or counseling. If you feel more comfortable with a Christian counselor, that is fine, just make sure that the person is clinically certified and takes your insurance plan. Many people of faith fear secular counselors will sway their faith, but in my experience, such fears are unfounded with any licensed, certified counselor. It would be unethical for a professional to disrespect your faith. I have never seen it happen, but if it did, you can always change providers.

[x] This is not a replacement for treatment. This is for low-level anxiety or in addition to treatment.

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Lessons From The Edge Of The Skateboard

By Pastor Vinnie

I bought my seven-year-old a skateboard for Christmas. At first, his Mom was not really a big fan of the idea. Still, I noticed he needed a fun sport that would be all his own. Sure, he has a bike and even roller skates, but they just never seemed to sync with him or have enough personality for him;  he is all about personality.

So there we were on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas for all you Americans), fully suited up with helmet, knee and elbow pads, and all the right gear. We headed over to his school parking lot, knowing it would be empty. We sat the board down while I explained the basics behind it; needing to find balance, needing to get the proper footing, and needing to learn to push and coast at the same time.

He looked up, all excited,  yet frozen.

“What if I fall?” He said with serious seven-year-old concern.

My answer was without pause, “You will fall. Don’t doubt it.”

“But I don’t want to fall! It will hurt. And if I get hurt, Mommy will take my skateboard away!” He protested.

“It will hurt,” I assured him. “But I think your worry is more about you than your Mommy.”

“But can’t I get really hurt bad doing this?” His protest continued.

“Look,” I said, “Let me explain this to you.  You are going to fall, more than once. It is going to hurt. Falling off a moving board is a very serious business. But if you want to skateboard that is what it is going to take. If you don’t want to fall, if you don’t want to hurt, we can go home. The skateboard can just be a cool toy in your room that you never really use, and that is totally ok. But if we stay, expect to fall and to fall hard; just know, I’ll be here to pick you up and if need be carry you home.”

I watched him climb on, just one foot at a time. He wobbled all over. He tripped and caught himself quickly using one foot on the ground to steady himself. Finally finding some balance, he was ready. He was scared but pushed off, and of course, fell right off! That is what happens when you’re seven and leap on a moving board with wheels! Having been spared by his knee pads he got back up and more cautiously tried again. He tripped, stumbled, fell off,  but not down, and finally starting to understand how balance worked on a rolling board and where his feet go.

Soon he was gliding through the parking lot. Then he was just practicing balancing, wiggling all over the board to test its limits and his ability to stay on it. Before long he was actually learning to turn by leaning into the turn with the board and having a blast. He was King of the Parking Lot!

Then he fell. He fell hard. He fell facedown. The board came right out from underneath him and this time he did not catch himself. He hit the hard, cold payment and did not get up. I ran over and asked him if he was ok, but he could not answer. The wind had been knocked right out of him and he laid there stunned, still not sure how it happened. It took him a moment to catch his breath and to stand on his own. But when he did, he realized something, and that was that falling off a board hard, and in fast motion, really hurts; but not nearly as much as he expected! He could get up. He could get back on. So he did! And he once again, with even more confidence and with less fear, was the King of the Parking Lot!

That is sort of how faith works. Belief in God on any level at all works like this:   You are excited. You think it is the greatest thing in the world. You trip. You stumble. You get scared. Sometimes you want to give up and go home. But, at the end of the day, it is always all about needing to find balance, needing to get the proper footing, and needing to learn to push and coast at the same time. The irony of faith is you can’t move if you don’t push forward, but once in motion you need to trust that motion and glide with it and resist the temptation to put your foot down and control everything. Faith is about getting yourself balanced with your feet in the right position to keep you rolling forward, trusting that God is there to steady you when needed.

Will you fall?  You will fall. Don’t doubt it. It will hurt; I promise!  Yet, if we stay, rolling in faith, and expect to fall and to fall hard; just know, God will be there to pick you up; and if need be carry you home.

Rolling with God is like being seven and leaping on a board with wheels. Falling off is as much the lesson as gliding around thinking you’re the King of the Lot. Falling makes us learn to trust in the only One who brings balance to our life.

“Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.” (Jude 24-25)

 

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Criticism: Cuts Like A Knife

By Pastor Vinnie MacIsaac[i]

This blog is dedicated to all who have been hurt by criticism and felt it’s cut yet did not understand how it could actually be a good thing. Let’s rethink criticism together.

So Forth

Yada, Yada, Yada

You have heard the expression, ”and so forth and so forth,” It is a fill-in or shorthand for something we mean to say without wanting to spell it all out. It is like the Yiddish saying, “Yada yada yada,” that Jerry Seinfeld made so in big again in the 90’s.

“I can’t wait to get to the beach and go swimming, have a picnic and so and so forth…”

Recently, someone sent an indirect message to me suggesting that if I did not do, “so forth and so forth,” I’d, in essence, be lost. The “so forth and so forth” in this case was a long list of flaws and weakness the person saw in me that they felt had to be corrected asap. The list is not really important except to say that much of what was on it was is deed real flaws I have and real areas of work that need to be overcome. I say this because often when people are critical of us the things they say about us are groundless. In this case, it was not. It was real to some degree or another.

Flakey Flaws

Criticism damages self-worth.

Do real flaws keep anyone out of heaven? Is that really the Gospel? Are people won or lost to salvation based on human performance of any kind? And if it is based on human performance then how much do we need to achieve in order to be saved? I mean, after all, nothing short of perfection will be accepted by God. After all Jesus himself, spelled it out on the Sermon on the mount, “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48 ESV)

If you are a Christian, people will criticize you, they will attack you, and they will seek to persecute you, they will cling to real imperfections in you and turn your molehills in public mountains.  And if that is never happening to you then something is wrong! No one likes to be criticized, put down, or called a phony. But I am here to tell you being put down for being a work in progress is no reason to “Flake out on faith.”

Cuts Like a Knife

Bryan Adam’s hit album cover. Cuts Like A Knife.

Growing up in Canada you become a Bryan Adams fan. Along with Corey Hart, RUSH, The Guess Who, Neil Young, and The Tragically Hip, they are all part of the national soundtrack. One of Bryan Adam’s biggest hits was a song called, Cuts Like A Knife, in which Adam’s claims,”

Now it cuts like a knife

But it feels so right

Yeah, it cuts like a knife

Oh, but it feels so right”[ii]

Well, as much as I love that song as a national treasure and pop anthem, I can’t say I agree with Adam’s on this issue. Being “cut” by people you love does not feel good, it hurts.

I was not angry, but I will admit, I was very sad, and let down, and even disturbed to have had this person judge me with such harsh criticism. For this sort of criticism only proved that the brother who lodged it simply did not understand the Gospel and to me, that is heartbreaking. To me it cut like a knife to my heart, not for my sake, but because it showed my brothers disconnect from God’s character.

So let’s be clear, how is it that we are made perfect, and how is it that we get into the Kingdom? How is that that God sees me as perfect, even as perfect as he is? I think Jesus made the standard pretty clear in Matt 5:48 right? — The standard is the perfection of the Father. Anything short of that will not stand, and will not gain us entrance into the Kingdom of God. So then, how do I reach such a standard? —hmmm, let say today, I Vince MacIsaac, gave my whole life and heart more deeply to God than ever before, and let’s assume the result is that I never ever sinned again.  Would I then be as perfect as my Father in Heaven? Nope! Not even close, I have a 48-year track record of past sin, yet he has no past record of sin. How then can I a sinner get his track record? By what means? Or am I hopelessly doomed?

Look here;

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

(2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV)

It is called the Substitutionary Atonement. Jesus took our place that we might take his. What does that mean? It means exactly what it says, he became SIN (my place) that I may become THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD (His place).

My works did not cut like a knife, they cut like nails, pounded through His flesh that I might be found Righteous by His actions.

The Good News

The Good News is found in JESUS!

The Word Gospel in Greek simply means “Good News.” The good news of criticisms is it comes to us and reminds us we are not perfect. When it cuts like a knife to our hearts it reminds us our sin cut like nails through his flesh.

The truth about criticism is this, and criticism about you that actually sticks and hurts has a little bit of truth in it. The good news is that when criticism cuts you, he drives you back to Jesus to be healed and in that process, He has the chance to heal you from more than the cut. He gets to heal you of the pinch of truth that caused the infection in the first place.

Don’t resist attacks. Take them. Take them to Jesus. Those who attack you will be baffled as to why you don’t respond from the flesh. The reason is simple your imperfections are healed by the holes in His hands.

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Footnotes.

[i] This blog first appeared as a guest entry titled “The Gospel of Criticism” on https://heinspiredme.com  This version of the article is slightly different and longer than the version that first appeared at https://heinspiredme.com/guest-post-the-gospel-of-criticism/ on November 28, 2018.

[ii] Songwriters: Bryan Adams / James Douglas Vallance. Cuts Like a Knife lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

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Every Good Gift.

By Pastor Vinnie MacIsaac

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” James 1:17[i]

Gifts, gifts, gifts! Who does not like to get a present? I’ll tell you who… many people! Buying the right gift for the right person is not easy! And the prospect of getting it wrong can be the highest of all social dilemmas. What if they don’t like it? What if they take it back? What if they re-gift it?

I remember my wife and I had just gotten married around the same time as a co-worker, at a group home I was working in.[ii] Someone had the idea that because we were both newlyweds, we should get together and celebrate. I recall they brought us a gift, and we felt awkward right away because we had not done the same! Ugh. Is there anything more awkward than not having a gift to give to someone at a social engagement when they give you a gift? Yes, there is… hold on! We will get there! As we unwrapped that gift, feeling ever so guilty, even though the gifts were, in every practical sense, just the run of the mill, minor kitchen appliance token wedding gift. We could have quietly suffered the social embarrassment of the one-sided exchange when suddenly everything in the room shifted as my wife pulled the card from the bottom of the box.

“Ryan[iii], did you put a card in there?” nervously his new wife asked. But much too late as my wife opened the card, on which was written ‘To Ryan and his wife,’ from someone we did not know. His wife flew into panic mode, helplessly and hopelessly, tripping frantically over her own words, trying to suggest one of their cards must have fallen into our gift. Then suddenly much to her horror, Ryan just upped and admitted it, they had, “re-gifted.” I thought his wife was going to utterly die on our couch of sheer humiliation. I am pretty certain the drive home was not quite newly wedded bliss.

The point is, gifting is hard. Do you get people something old or new? Do you get people what they want or need? Giving gifts can get stressful! Yet, nothing can be more affirming that you are understood, loved, and valued than getting just the right gift that shows that the giver “gets” you!

James, the brother of Jesus, writes in his epistle to the church, that we can be certain that in this broken and fallen world that there will be trials, struggles, problems that we will need the perseverance to finish. He urges us in the first chapter of the book to stop letting the obstacles of life blow us around like the wind. And he somehow hints that, sometimes, our struggles tempt us so much because we are double-minded and still too immature to even understand what we want![iv] Yet, God, in gifting, does not just slide a gift card into an envelope and trust us to get what we want with it. Why? God knows what we often do not, which is, rarely does fallen mankind know, nor want, what it is that they really need, nor what will really make them happy!

Think about it. I know I have! I have spent most of my life chasing shiny objects, and I was certain that if I just had them, they’d somehow make me complete. They have not quenched the thirst. They have not hit the spot. They have not stifled my hunger, my yearning, nor even began to make known to me my own hidden heart desires. How about you? Have you found anything in this world that truly completed you? Oh, I love my wife, but despite what the movie Jerry Maguire[v] claims, completeness is not in romance. Oh, I love my child, but completeness is not even in a family; for life must go on even if romance and family leave us. Furthermore, nothing will kill and destroy both love and family more than putting the unrealistic expectation on them that they can fix all the brokenness of your life; your problems, struggles, and perplexities. Money is grand, and yet empty; just ask Hollywood. Taste, intoxication, and sensuality . . . fleeting. Thought, poetry, philosophy, and music are all exhilarating, yet still somewhat like vapors that we never can ever quite hold onto; hence their attraction and dis-attraction to us! What, what, what, is it, then, that will really make me happy, no matter the tribulations and trials of this world that I must face?!

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” James 1:17

Jesus is that gift. He is the perfect gift, the full deal, that one and only thing that finally fully satisfies the core of your soul! Jesus is that perfect gift, that brings the fullness of meaning to our romantic love, family love, and earthly pursuits. Jesus brings virtual reality level connectivity to the pathos of poetry, song, and intellectual escapades. Jesus ignites the mind in ways that can entertain you for hours on end, alone with your thoughts, just contemplating, dreaming, and wondering, even about the joys found amidst all the struggles no one escapes in a darkened world!

I tried to find meaning outside of Jesus! I tried to get lost in intellectual pursuits, artistic endeavors, the materialism of greed, not to mention the gluttony of self and others idolatry. Not only do they leave the soul lacking, empty, and after a time, dull; but I found in them no power whatsoever to even maintain the joys of even the aesthetic life, much less grasp an ethical existence for more than a cursory fading moment. Life has no beauty outside of Christ! Life has no rules worth perpetrating that do not lead to moral futility, outside our Lord. All religion is but philosophy, without the spark of divinity that is the perfect gift from above. It is dead, dull and futile if it is not bathed in the eternal existence of purpose expressed in the God-Man Incarnate.

What good is a passion if it burns brightly but is doomed to become mere embers that fade into the night? What good is a moral code if it can only be upheld by monastic compulsion, which leaves you gritting your very teeth during the act of forced adherence. And what good is even worship, yes worship, if you cannot hear the very “Father of all time and space,” leaning in to speak His will into your own existence, worth, purpose, and execution of deeds?

I am reminded of a quote I read in my younger years of Faith that still holds true to this day;

“Education, culture, the exercise of the will, human effort, all have their proper sphere, but here they are powerless. They may produce an outward correctness of behavior, but they cannot change the heart; they cannot purify the springs of life. There must be a power working from within, a new life from above, before men can be changed from sin to holiness. That power is Christ. His grace alone can quicken the lifeless faculties of the soul, and attract it to God, to holiness.”[vi]

“Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.” James 1:16-18

I am alive. Oh, I am so much more than alive! I am a pulse! Oh, so much more than the pulse of my heart! I am a pulse of His heart! I am the recipient of the “Gift.” I have been birthed, a second time, into this more than dead world, by the perfect gift of the Word of Truth, that came down, from Heaven to Bethlehem[vii], that I may be fed with the Hidden Manna of Life that is an absurdity to all who have yet to taste and see that it is good!

How can I exclaim the certainty of the eternal, never-ending Joy of this perfect gift from above, to those who have yet to leap?[viii] This is one gift, unlike any kitchen appliance wedding gift, that is best given as a re-gifting! Come examine my gift to you! Look long enough at its complex wrappings and perfect ribbons. Glare into the name on its tag, and you, too, will soon have unwrapped it, like me, into the certainty of eternity. It will become your very reason to exist, now and forever, into the never-ending Kingdom that has come down from the Father of the heavenly lights into you to dwell.

Endnotes:

[i] This was the engagement verse of Søren Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen. And I’d like to dedicate this blog to Kierkegaardians everywhere.

[ii] Prior to Pastoring I was a Mental Health Worker and a Community Developer.

[iii] Not his real name.

[iv] See James 1:2-8

[v] Jerry’s famous line in that movie to his romantic interest is, “You complete me!” Despite some inappropriate nudity, it is a great movie with a great message and I am not making light of romantic love, nor the function of romantic love in life. Romance is the pathos of poets. It gives intensity to life, and bonds families. It unites together in ways that give belonging and purpose, and deepest levels of human connection and loyalty. Yet, divorce still happen, some people never marry, and spouses pass away, and we still need meaning. In fact, to define self, by your spouse or lover, is by definition, an unhealthy co-dependent existence.

[vi] Steps to Christ, Ellen White, 1892, Pg. 18.

[vii] Who’s name means House of Bread.

[viii] Kierkegaard’s famous phrase is, “Leap of faith – yes, but only after reflection”

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Kierkegaard: A Single Life

A Reflective Book Review

Book by Stephen Backhouse

Reflection by Vinnie MacIsaac

To philosophers, and a certain breed of theologians, Kierkegaard is foundational to thinking about the very merits of faith and even just “being,” or existing, with an individual purpose. Yet to the average person in my pews or readers of my blogs, they likely have never read him, and all but a few likely have ever heard of him. For me, as a Pastor, this is a tragedy! However, it is a tragedy beautifully rectified by Stephen Backhouse and his brilliant Biography of Søren Kierkegaard entitled “Kierkegaard: A Single Life.”

Backhouse’s stated reason for writing this book is that most works on Kierkegaard are too “dense, distant, and unappealing,”[i] for people looking to break into Kierkegaard for the first time. He speaks of his friend Lincoln, who is clergy and a trained theologian, who still struggled. Backhouse delivers extremely well in rectifying that problem with a warm, insightful, page-turner, that grips the reader, throws them into 19^th Danish Culture and quickly attaches readers to the quirky, controversial Kierkegaard. From Preface to Notes, he creates a fascinating characterization that steals your soul and makes it impossible to turn your head away. I read all 291 pages in two sittings, I just could not put it down!

I realize this will not be a widely read blog, but true to Kierkegaard, I write it because life is not about being accepted by the masses but about being called out from them to “A Single Life,” lived for Christ and the truth in Him. Kierkegaard is one of the best minds, in western thought, and the rightful father of whole schools of philosophies[1], worldviews, and ways to consider psychology.  Yet more importantly, to me, his fingerprints are all over the way I choose to live a life of Faith in the public square of pastoral work. I must not fold into the crowd, go with the flow, be synchronized and sanitized by the populace, or swept away into blind denominationalism. Rather  I must stand as a single life, and lead by the truth of Christ in me, forever upholding my faith and denomination to God’s ideals, not the “System’s.” Secondly, I hope this blog, while likely less popular than most of my works, still leads some honest minds out there to both Kierkegaard and Backhouse.

There is so much that I would want to tell you about Kierkegaard, but I will start with saying if you are a first-time reader, or an attempted and failed reader, Backhouse’s “A Single Life” is the ideal place to start so that you will be able to properly piece together key intersections of Kierkegaard’s life, philosophy, and theology. For me the beauty of this book is its simple and practical layout:

Preface/ Acknowledgements

Biography

1. A Controversial Life

2. School Life

3. Family Life

4. Public/Private Life

5. Love Life

6. Writing Life

7. Pirate Life

8. An Armed and Neutral Life

9. A Life Concluded

10. A Life Continued

Afterword

Overviews of the Works of Søren Kierkegaard

The overviews of his works, in my opinion, is worth the price the book itself. It provides the titles, dates, pseudonyms used, and a brief summary of all the key points made in that publication. It, literally, is an in brief literary roadmap to Kierkegaard that helps the reader jump right into the work without feeling lost in the stream of his work. However, when you combine that overview with a compelling, page-turner biography that bleeds context into to those books and their overviews, you have the perfect Kierkegaard kit at your fingertips.

I found Backhouse’s book, at times, had me laughing out loud, other times cheering or shouting aloud in agreement at presumptions now proven, and sadly with pity moved for Søren and Regine and even Peter. Søren and Peter, his brother, had a near classic, real-life prodigal son vs elder son relationship going on; Søren playing the wasteful, floundering son off living it up, while Peter was the dutiful, hardworking elder son who achieved his academics as expected of his Father. Tensions are wound ever tighter when Peter goes to work for the Danish National Church as an Ordained Minister which was also the expectation of Søren, which he stalls out on and eventually rejects. Ultimately, Peter’s vocation and the Danish Church will become Kierkegaard’s target in his war on the faithless faith of the masses defined by the cultural “Christendom” of the era. Added to the drama is a real-life Romeo and Juliet relationship of Søren Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen and now you have all the makings of a what could one day be a whole Netflix/Amazon Soapy Drama series in the making (they seriously should make his life into a Drama series).

In my own opinion, If ever two people were in true love their whole life long it would be first Adam and Eve and secondly Søren Kierkegaard and Regine Olsen. Their love is a tragedy worth the combined creative power of every Greek poet that ever lived! Søren, is the lost, brooding melancholy under-achiever of a wealthy family, steeped in a life of bitter loss and strife, repeated sibling death, and the inability to find himself like Peter his achieving elder brother. And suddenly he becomes hopelessly and utterly smitten by the calm, quiet, soft, gentle love of his beautiful Regine. A chance meeting, a super painfully awkward suitorship by a fumbling Søren, and a mutual infatuation that would last a lifetime of separation from each other makes her the perfect muse that calms the beast and sets his mind afire for a life of existing with purpose. Having now felt the power of love in the world Kierkegaard feels the pull of the love giver from above on his life ever more strongly. The shadows are lifted by the light flooding into his life as James 1:17 becomes his and Regine’s shared engagement verse as they see each other as “Every good and perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of lights.”  Alas, Søren sacrifices human love for a higher calling to be, “a single life,” free from the control of the masses, seeking to restore true faith to a faithless charade of cultural Christianity. He knows, he loves her enough to release her from the pain and despair of his higher calling. He knows he must hurt her a little now to save her from a life of shame and ridicule of the cross he must now start to bear. And yet, their love, despite his rejection and abandonment, still lasts their full lifetimes; through Regine’s happy, healthy and love-filled marriage to another, and Søren’s one-man war against the church. A nod on the street here, a glance across the pews at a chance sermon on the couple’s favorite bible verse there, and the hidden coded messages in the works of Søren; all seem to be enough to remain in love for life, and yet for both still to move on with life without the other. Tragically, attached and dis-attached throughout eternity, it is a love not bound to need of presence. It is love that sets each other free!

For me, the core of life of Kierkegaard comes down to this: through a painful upbringing, a life of romantic love he could never give into without self-defined sin, the rise to celebrity status as an author, the object of political and public shaming as a mere caricature of himself in the media,[ii] to his failed attempts to reform Bishop Mynster through unreturned friendship, and never having fully been understood by his brother Peter or his own father Michael; there emerges a single clear and clarified Søren with one lone wish in his war on the church: that his People would come to know Christ, and not just the shadow of Christ, in the culturally acceptable Dutch Reform Church.

People can and will, and should, wax on about the Philosophy and intellectualism of Søren Kierkegaard, for being the father of Existentialism and for the brilliancy of his Philosophical contributions of to the world. But they all miss the point if they do not see him, first and foremost, as a theologian with one, and only one, singular purpose in this matured life; namely to call the masses of his country back to an individual, personal relationship with the Christ of the New Testament. His war on the state-sanctioned Danish Lutheran Church was to simply seek to lead it to repentance for becoming the Papacy it had once escaped from. All Philosophical merit in Kierkegaard is simply abstracted from this central concept Jesus and the Cross. The philosophy of Kierkegaard is but a mere shadow of the Theology of Søren.

As for me, what might I say of his impact on my work? Oddly, I have chosen a career path of Peter Kierkegaard[iii], not Søren Kierkegaard.[iv] May God ever permit me to practice the career of Peter with the heart, mind, and soul of Søren. May I always call people, first, to an individual relationship with the Christ of the New Testament[v] and secondly to real, authentic community and not of the mass control of the crowd. May I forever lead people to be true individuals in Christ, making up the community of faith at large, rather than mere puppets without hearts, souls, and minds connected to the Divine. May those I minister to be submitted first and foremost to the Trinity, via Christ, and then to the community as partners, never settling for being mere drones of the “Bishop” at hand.

   Meet Stephen Blackhouse

Footnotes

[1] Postmodernism (likely a grandfather figure), Existentialism, and in my humble opinion finding your of Faith in the community, but not enslaved by the community.

[i] Blackstone pg 15

[ii] See the The Corsair Affair

[iii] An ordained pastor

[iv] The philosophical theologian

[v] And of course full scripture

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Prayer: Why Even Bother?

By Pastor Vinnie MacIsaac

I approached a church member who was in the late stages of a life-threatening illness. Quoting the Apostle James, “If anyone is sick let them call for the Elders,”[i] I asked my member if I could call the elders together and have them pray for her and anoint her for healing.

I’ll never forget her response. “Why Bother? What good is it going to do, anyway? God is going to do what God is going to do!”

After getting over my shock and talking to her a bit longer about it, I came to understand she was not talking from a position of lack of faith, at all, but rather of deep personal conviction. Her view may have been a little too Calvinistic for my liking, but she was, in fact, upholding a high sovereignty of God outlook.

The more I thought about it, the more I was deeply troubled, in a good way, by the implications of what she was saying. Do we really think our words will change God’s mind?

Isn’t God going to do what is best for us because he loves us and not because we figured out the magic words to get our genie out of the bottle? Is that really how it works? If I get just the right words and say them, Poof! My spell is cast, and God has to do what I want him to do. Right? Or maybe it’s if I pray long enough, kneel sincerely enough, or beg, plead, cry, fast, beat myself, then God will finally give me my wish that I just can’t live without… But I thought it was supposed to be God I could not live without? And if God does not answer my prayers, maybe I just did it wrong? Maybe I was not pure enough, or I just did not pray hard enough? Maybe my faith just wasn’t strong enough. After all, doesn’t James make it clear, “ But he must ask in faith, without doubting, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.…”[ii]

The more I thought about the ways we approach prayer, I became more perplexed.

So many people believe they failed because they did not get what they prayed for. But maybe, maybe prayer is not like writing a letter to Santa Clause and promising you will not be naughty and only nice if you can avoid the coal of life and just reap the presents from Heaven. Maybe, prayer is not at all about what you get.

After all, Jesus said, “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.”[iii]

Ha! I am sure most of my prayers are babble to God. I babble on to poor God subjecting Him to endless “baby-talk” about what I think is the right thing for Him, the God of the Universe, to do, or get me. I incessantly go on about how good I have been or how better I promise to be if only he grants me my fantastical fancies. Seriously, do I think God needs my advice on what is good for me? What a joke! Ha! My ways always turn out as train wrecks! Yet I spend ninety percent of my prayer time listing out my wants, desires, and demands to God rather than seeking His will for me!

My favorite Christian Philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard offered me a profound sobering truth that rebuilt my faith in prayer in ways which I needed it most:

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”

Why must I pray? To change God’s mind. No! God is perfect. He doesn’t need to be changed, nor should the likes of me, ever move the unmovable, he is the perfect  “primum movens”[iv] (unmovable mover) and it is I who must be moved by Him; never He by me! And that is why I must pray! God knows there is so much about me that needs to be changed, so much about me, that needs to be moved by Him!

He tells me; “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”[v] The door that needs to be opened is not the door of God’s kindness, pity, or compassion, that has been wide open from the start! The door that needs to be opened, unlocked, loosened is the door of my heart that wants “My will,” not “Thy will to be done.”

God gives me the ministry of prayer and tells me to seek, find, and knock because my will is rarely His by default. I am rebellious, and I am demanding, and above all I am impatient. So He says, pray, seek, that I might find His ways. Knock, because the longer I knock, and plead for Him to open up the door to me I start to notice I am actually not knocking alone. He stands by me knocking with me and crying, and pleading to me, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”[vi]

Oh joy, oh the surprise, oh the honor; the Unmovable Mover does not need me to move Him, because He already desires all good for me! He wants into my heart to move me! Now, when I talk to God I ask that He may tell me something, I seek that he may show me something, I knock that I may find him already at the doorstep of my Heart longing to come in with me to find levels of joy, peace, and love that I did not even know enough about to imagine for myself! He is not the genie in the bottle, He is my best friend, He is my comfort, He is my security, He is the unmovable rock that I must tether my heart too and never let my will separate us again! When I pray, this is God leading me into the Narrow Gate.[vii] It is the prayer-gate that only He can lead me through. It is the door I knocked at. The door is buried deep, deep in my own heart underneath all those other selfish wants. It is the door that leads to His will! It is the door that leads to the Narrow Way, that few choose to enter. It is the door that leads me away from destruction and to the road that leads to life!

I choose life! I choose Jesus. I choose to reject my wants. My ideas. My will. I choose to get forever lost, for all eternity, to dreams, desires, and perfection that in my fallen human nature I just simply would not have known to ask for the “greater” that He desires to give.

Yes, call for the Elders. Let us pray. Let us anoint. Let us be redirected to the Narrow gate, put back on the path of life, let us be moved by the Unmovable Mover! “I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time – waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God- it changes me.”[viii]

“Prayer does not change God, but it changes the one who offers it” –Soren Kierkegaard (1847)

Footnotes:

[i] James 5:14

[ii] James 1:6-7

[iii] Matthew 6:7

[iv] Latin: primum movens for ‘that which moves without being moved’ because it is the prime mover. It originates from Metaphysics, Book Λ, by Aristotle. It became a key Christian way of seeing God’s prime sovereignty by its adoption by Thomas Aquinas into the church.

[v] Matthew 7:7-12

[vi] Revelation 3:20

[vii] Matthew 7:13-14 – “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

[viii] A quote attributed to CS Lewis in the 1993 Movie Shadowlands. While it gels with Kierkegaard there is no known writing of Lewis that contains it. It is used here because regardless of authorship it is true.

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What If There Is Nothing To Be Thankful For?

By Pastor Vinnie MacIsaac 

How are you feeling this year?

We teach our people, after all, to say, “God is good, all the time, and all the time God is good!”

We call on people in churches to raise their hands in praise, to clap, to rejoice.
Even our most conservative churches can at least get a hearty “Amen!” on, right?

We read Bible verses publicly in worship that can leave no doubt regarding how good we have it;

Praise the Lord, all nations!

Extol him, all peoples!

For great is his steadfast love toward us,

and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.

Praise the Lord![i]

Do you have that tradition during the holidays where you go around the table and each person states what they are thankful for this year? I love that time! I love that time because I actually have things to be thankful about in my life and I love to share the joys of that experience with others!

But I wonder how people who, legitimately, don’t have anything to be thankful for, feel in those moments?

Is it ok, to be in a place where you can’t be thankful at this moment? Holidays with depression is hard. I know what you are saying, “Come on, Pastor, that is not true. We can always thank God for life, health, and strength.”[ii] Except some people are grieving the loss of the life of someone they love this year. Except some people don’t have health this year but, rather, recently received the worst of news. Except some people are not strong at all; they are tired, beaten, and exhausted, and may even be one breath closer to giving up.

I remember when my young wife was lying, near death, in a hospital bed from multiple strokes with no sign of a diagnosis, much less a cure, in sight. I remember being by her bedside days on end with nothing changing. I remember when blood flow got so critically low in her brain she had aphasia; she could not remember her words, forgot my name, and eventually forgot who I was, and reverted to being like a mere confused child, whom I could not help. Was God any less good then? I know, theologically, no, God is “the same yesterday and today and forever.”[iii] However, I assure you, had you come waltzing into the hospital room and belted out, “God is good all the time.” And expected me to reply, “And all the time God is Good!” You might have gotten a rather shocking reply from a Pastor.

It is ok, to be too hurt, too broken, too beaten, to not “feel the cheer of this time of year!” Just in case you skimmed it, King David was not just full of cheers, praises, and Psalms of Thanks, David hit such emotional lows as I should hope never in my life to hit. But the point is, both ends of the spectrum are legitimate placements of the spectrum for Christians.

This year, no matter the holiday in question, why not stop trying to force people to come up to where you think they ought to be, and you go down to where they are. That is what Jesus does. He does not call us up to His level.  He meets us at our hurts, our struggles, and our needs. He is incarnate with our pain and he walks that path with us.

This morning in my devotion time I was struck deeply but a line in Psalms 91:15 that I have missed over and over again,

“I (the LORD) will be with him in trouble,”

Yes, yes, yes! There it is! There is that one thing to be thankful for even if all other gratitudes have run out!

• When you lose that job.

• When the doctor gives you bad news.

• When you miss that loved one.

• When the love of your life walks out the door.

• When your addiction threatens to rise up and take you over.

• When that last breath seems so hard to come.

“I, the LORD, will be with you in that trouble,” call on me.

“I, Yahweh, will be with you in that trouble,” Seek me.

When the righteous cry out, and the LORD Yahweh hears them;

    he delivers them from all their troubles.

 The LORD Yahweh is close to the brokenhearted

    and saves those who are crushed in spirit.[iv]

Stop trying to get the brokenhearted to shout out praises, and spread cheer when what they need is to shed their tears. Take them to the foot of the cross to the God of the crushed spirits, broken hearts, and dashed dreams. Take them to the God who, on the cross, cried out, feeling utterly forsaken. Take them to the expressed compassion of the Savior who put your broken self back together again, and keeps doing it, even now, when you ought to know better.

It is like Leonard Cohen sang,

“And love is not a victory march

It’s a cold and it’s a broken “Hallelujah”[v]

The path to a Hallelujah may have to start with a cold broken whisper.

Even in my most broken moments, days, and years, what I clung to was, knowing in the deepest part of the body, heart and core, that Jesus had died for me and that if he decided not to do another thing for me as long as I was on this globe, no one could take away my cold, broken “Hallelujah” of knowing God was still there, and would never stop being there, even if nothing ever got better again. He’d save me eternally in the end … this broken praise, leads to the joy that comes in the morning.

It’s ok, hold tight. Don’t let go. Yahweh will be with you in this trouble. And that is enough for you to be thankful. If that is all you’ve got, you have everything! Hold on to the cold, broken praise. You might be crushed, bruised, and weeping, but God dwells in the midst of your pain, and He holds you up and in the end, leads you to the whispered, “Hallelujah.”

Leonard Cohen – Hallelujah (live at the Montreal Jazz Festival 2008)

Related Articles:

Prayer: Why Even Bother?

The Reserve Of Courage

Breaking Up With Nostalgia

It’s A Beautiful Day

Footnotes:

[i] Ps 117:1-2

[ii] The usual token standbys. Holidays with Depression is hard.

[iii] Hebrews 13:8

[iv] Ps 34:17-18

[v] Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah Song

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Answering The Angry Atheist

Pastor Vinnie MacIsaac, SSW, AA, BA, MA 

What I am not saying:

The first thing you need to read in this article is this: Not all atheists are angry, militant, or out to get you. Many are just trying to be intellectually honest people living the best they can within the constructs of their own moral systems. This article is not a hit piece on them (or anyone else). This article is exploring, those angry, in-your-face, critical, mean-spirited types who can never be happy as long as you have faith. They are the Zing to the militant Christian’s Zang. I make no excuses to justify militant Christians, who are bigots, homophobes, anti-Semitic, or Islamophobic, and, in this article, I make no excuse for the equally rancorous, angry atheist.

Defining terms:

You don’t need a God to have a religion. Atheism is the lack of belief in the existence of deities or that such things could even exist[i]. The etymology of the word is from the Greek word atheos (ἄθεος) meaning “without gods.” Religion is not a deity-dependent concept.

“Religion may be defined as a cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, worldviews, texts, sanctified places…that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements. However, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion.”[ii]

George Holyoake coined the terms Non-Theist and Secularist in the 1850’s. After he had been arrested and imprisoned for blasphemy. (Picture Source: The National Secular Society )

Hence, the debate, for example, over if Buddhism is a religion or not since it is transcendental, and spiritual but is not deity dependent.[iii]  It is also for this reason many atheists would rather be known more elementary as Non-Theists. George Holyoake, way back in 1852, first coined the term as means to soften the concept of Atheism among critics. Holyoake wanted a word that would convey, particularly to Christians, that he was not against religion but simply did not believe in God and so they should not see him as a direct threat to their way of life. Today the concepts tend to get fused.[iv]

Religion, however, put into the most unpretentious traditional terms, is just a system of understanding you come to about God or gods. Atheism is just that, a system of understanding come to about gods; namely that understanding is: “They don’t exist.” What’s the point? The point is Atheism can be intellectual, thought out, non-combative, stemming from deep conviction, or it can be emotional, reactive, and jihadist, stemming from unprocessed incognizant godless-religiosity; ergo it’s duality is just like all systems of belief minus the Deity.

Getting to the heart of the matter:

I don’t believe in the Tooth-Fairy. So, it has been relatively easy for me to avoid the temptation of running out and buying the URL www.toothfairytruthexposed.com[v] and blasting all those who keep that Tooth-Fairy myth going as evildoers, fathers of deception, and robbers of children’s teeth.

Oh, but you could say, the Tooth-Fairy is harmless, it is developmental, a part of childhood, and indeed does not create all the problems religion has in the world. But, what about other forms of beliefs like capitalism, socialism, Freudian beliefs, existentialism, or any other belief system a vast majority holds that actually impacts the world? Here is a newsflash for you, all belief impacts someone’s behavior and that is not a sound nor a rational excuse to seek to eradicate it! Ethical people don’t go around attacking all beliefs, other than their own, just because they disagree with them; that is unless you have seriously way too much free time on your hands and no purposeful direction in life![vi] Even when judicious, justified people go after a system of belief, they deem dangerous or malicious, they don’t target innocent, non-combative types in their path. If you oppose abortion, it is idiotic to blow up a clinic in order to stop it. Because you can’t stop murder with murder, hate with hate, nor theist religion with your own religious belief that there is no Theos (God)!

As a Protestant Christian, I don’t believe in the tenants of Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witness, Papal Catholicism, or a whole list of other semi-Christian sects and faiths, but I don’t go around building a ministry on teaching why they are wrong. Nor do I have any desire to tear them down, or harm either their systems or the people in them. I teach what I believe IS right! The best response to stopping ignorance is not aggressive attempts to tear down opposing thinking but rather the spreading of systems you think are correct. Just as I am often struck by the futility of people of faith who think they are justified in acting sinful to stop sin; I likewise am at a loss for the intellectual honestness of those who say they follow empirical processes of belief but use an unsophisticated piteous pragmatic when it comes sharing “the truth”  they think right.

Reasonable people, who don’t believe in deities don’t attack the invisible God behind your behavior. They address your behavior that they think is problematic. In my previous career as a mental health worker, I was once in a situation where a Paranoid Schizophrenic was trying to jump out of a moving car doing 65 mph because he saw Satan in the back seat with him. That was no time to try and explain his current belief system was wrong, because 1) It would not work, 2) It was not the issue and 3) I cared more about changing his negative behavior, so he did not get killed then I did about proving his delusions wrong. We call that ethical, moral reasoning instead of soft secular sabotage.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton the English writer, poet, and philosopher.

The English writer, poet, philosopher, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, reportedly once said, “If I did not believe in God, I should still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so.” And while I in no way expect the atheist to have to see faith in others as a virtue, I must point out there is no real reason to hate the existence of faith either. Unlike the “intellectual atheist,” who is making decisions based on the best empirical reason they can find, albeit limited in understanding and reason, the “Angry Atheist” is an emotional responder who has a deep-seated fear inside that provokes them into jihadist mindsets against their own will and even awareness.

C.S. Lewis brings us closer to the heart of the issue and gives us a true HD focus when he says,

“Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks improbable: but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.”[viii] 

The Angry Atheist must destroy faith where they find it, for they live in terror that if another reasonable human has faith, then there may be reasonable arguments, and virtues, still left in theism that could drag them back into “The Light.” In, Surprised By Joy, Lewis speaks candidly about his own fears as a young atheist. Thus he presents us with an insider’s view of such mindsets about God, “A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere–‘ Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,’ as Herbert says, ‘fine nets and stratagems.’ God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.”[ix]

The agnostic American journalist, Heywood Broun, makes an apt point when he says, “Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God.”[x] But this is where we must tread softly. There are many good reasons for people to have a beef with God. A fallen universe is a cruel place to reside, and it does a poor job of presenting the true nature of the Divine. Secondly, religion and “religious” people have not always been pure, noble, kind, or passive. We cannot ignore the truth that much cruelty, war, and all kinds of abuse, and evil, have been done in the name of God by sick people and sick systems masquerading in place of Divinity. People have been hurt, so people have a corrupted view of God and his nature, and often the Angry Atheist is rightfully fighting hell, but mistakenly calling it God.

Mahatma Gandhi2 1869 – 31948) Indian activist.

I must have compassion, even a sad compassion because much evil has been done, to the innocent, weak, and dismally even helpless children trusting those claiming to represent the Divine. And some Angry Atheists, or their loved ones, may have been the victim and so at this junction, I find myself agreeing with their rage. In fact, in such cases, I find no fault in their emotive force and I find it easy to join in. I seek to empathize with it, and if I can I want help to provide evidence in my own life, that the degenerate miscreant masquerade that waltzed through their life or awareness, was a fraud, and not what lives in me.

Despite all of this, I cannot deny, the very heart of the matter that Mohandas Gandhi brings to certain clarity with merely irrefutable logic,

“It amazes me to find an intelligent person who fights against something which he does not at all believe exists.”

And I am truly and sorry to tell them, that really is the bottom line, it is the end of the barrel, it is the last thread on the spool; regardless of the cause of anger if a person fights against a being they claim does not exist, if a person insults, cusses out, and blasphemes a deity they say does not exist if a person hates something they say is a delusion, then the Good News is that they are not beyond reach. Someplace deep inside, is a scared, hidden theist, who refuses to look possibility in the eye. This is a person we can work with!

Steps To Answering The Atheist:

(Please note this method will work for both angry and intellectual atheists as well as agnostics).

• Get rid of ego. You have nothing to prove. So if you’re in this to win an argument you’re not spiritually ethical, you won’t bring glory to God, and you can’t be effectively used to reach an atheist. God doesn’t want, nor need your cleverly disguised ‘foolishness’ of being smart or right. People with all the answers need not apply; so stop and to check yourself!

• Don’t let your Flesh get hooked. Understand you will be tested. The angry atheist will regularly check your limits to see if you are what you say you are. They will provoke you, seek to offend you, on purpose, and do their best to prove you a fraud by dragging you into sinful responses. This is spiritual warfare, and we fight not flesh and blood. Consequently, we can’t respond with flesh. Be as humble as Moses, as long-suffering as Job, and as gentle as John the Beloved.

• Don’t commit proxy- blasphemy. What I mean by that is, don’t step on God’s toes. Don’t think this is about you or even something you have to do. God doesn’t need to get offended for Him if he is insulted. He is well able to defend Himself and His own; you are not. Check your self-God complex at the door.

• Be a friend. It is that simple. Find common interests. Be nice, build a relationship, and move past just trying to prove who is wrong and who is right. Break new ground and learn to really care about this person. If you really believe Jesus died for this person, then you need to really see, in them, what Jesus saw and gave so much for. Jesus is calling you to love, truly love, those who hate you, that is His calling. If you can’t deal with that honestly, then go spend time with Jesus and get out of the way until you can.

• Be a long-term friend. These people are not won easily. You’re not going to win a soul like this in a revival meeting. Seriously, you’re not adding a baptism to your spiritual belt, you are adding a real friend to your real life long-term or forever, regardless of the ending. Be there in the good times, be there in times of need. Be there when it is about much more than winning someone to yourself, or even to Jesus. Just be there.

• Be an intelligent and authentic friend. Yes, be yourself. You are interesting and as they get to see you the real you, they need to see a real person, warts and all. However, no atheist (that I ever met) likes a dummy. Seriously, being yourself goes a long way, being an “intelligent you,” goes further. Please, if you are serious about this kind of ministry, know and understand the basics of the History of World Civilization, Scientific Method, Scientific view of Evolution, the ABC’s of Philosophy, the factual history of the Church throughout the ages and have the ability to hold in tension more than your own worldview.

• Look for God- openings. Late in the relationship, once a real friendship has bonded and trust on both sides is open, God will create openings that are much different than the early days of bickering the finer point of theism. Real questions will come from them. Or real problems that need spiritual advice. Tread softly, but if there is trust, also push back when needed. In real relationships, there is a liberty to be free to say, without offending, what you really think. Give and take that liberty, and constantly ask God to open those doors slowly, but widely, and for you not to miss them when he does. You will be shocked at this stage of a relationship, I have professed atheists say things like, “I’d ask you to pray for me if I was sure I believed it,” or “Sometimes I just long for a community connection like you have with your church,” or even, ” I know my life don’t work, it is exhausting hiding that I am empty in want rest, I am thinking about mediation because it is sort of like praying.” These are real things I have heard at this stage in the process. They are what I call God openings, God is opening the door to awareness of their need for him. Don’t hesitate, to make open appeals to come to Jesus, if the Spirit urges in this stage.

Lastly, you are not anyone’s last chance. God will keep calling new points of contact, new experiences, and new intersections with His Divinity as long as there is any hope at all. I shudder to think how poorly I did when I was first learning to reach and love this population. But I can tell you this, now these people are truly the highlights of ministry for me, and building forever friendship that I hope to last into eternity is among the top joys in my life. Join the party! It is out of this world, and it doesn’t ever have to end.

Footnotes:

[i] Harvey, Van A. Agnosticism and Atheism, in Flynn 2007, p. 35

[ii] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion#cite_ref-1

[iii] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/nicholas-liusuwan/is-buddhism-a-philosophy-_b_10176992.html also https://www.buddhanet.net/nutshell03.htm

[iv] https://www.thoughtco.com/whats-the-difference-between-nontheism-and-atheism-247996

[v] I’ll know my blog is famous when someone buys up that url! <j/k>

[vi] Seriously, I mean no disrespect, but speaking as a former mental health counseling (of ten years) if your whole existence is tied up in tearing down others, what others believe, or those who disagree with you, you likely need some professional mental or emotional help. This is not a snarky footnote it is a sincere observation about self-identity which is more than what you are “against.” To have a self-ego or a self-identity you have to be “for” or about something.

[vii] Virtuous Leadership: An Agenda for Personal Excellence By Alexandre Havard, https://goo.gl/DMyUFQ

[viii] CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, Pg77

[ix] CS Lewis, Surprised by Joy, Kindle Location 2547

[x] https://quotes.yourdictionary.com/author/heywood-broun/31519

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SIMPLY FAITH

–not SIMPLE FAITH

By Pastor Vinnie

The screech of his overused marker on the well-worn surface of the college classroom dry-erase board demanded my instant attention. He was red in the face, frustrated with me, from our long one on one debate. He was full of mindful intensity, as he looked me in the eye, slammed down his dry marker on the desk and shouted, “Vinnie, what is a matter with you? Why do you have the gall to think you can prove the existence, God? God can’t be proved! Furthermore, why would you want to? I thought you were the Christian here, not me! Isn’t your whole religion thing about faith, after all? Well, I have got news for you, if you have to prove something; you don’t have faith in it! Faith is all about believing in things not yet proved!

Wham! My Professor of “The History of Philosophy” just totally schooled me on the meaning of faith. The greatest lesson I ever learned about faith, was not in the religion department, but in the secular Philosophy department, and was not taught to me by a believer but by a boldly, self-professed atheist professor[1][2]. He was completely right. To this day I am in his debt for awakening my mind to the fallacy of seeking to prove the improvable; faith.

The dictionary patently describes faith as;

A belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.[3]

The validity of the matter is that, on a purely logical and judicious level, the nature of the relationship between faith and proof is when a hypothesis becomes proven, it is no longer a hypothesis but rather, it is a proven fact. A proven fact is no longer a matter of faith, but simply a matter of fact. The way to end faith in anything is just to prove it. Then, it stops being about faith and instantly becomes about just facts. And that is exactly, what will happen; I believe by faith,[4] when Christ parts the sky and returns in all His glory, every knee will bow[5], because there will no longer be room for disbelief in the sight of absolute fulfillment. That will be the very moment faith becomes fact!

However, our faith[6] is not blind faith. Blind faith, is faith that exists without any external points of reference. A textbook definition of blind faith might be along the lines of belief without true understanding or discrimination based on concepts that can’t exist outside of your own mindset. It is an ill-informed or ignorant faith, that is vacant of any level of critical thinking skills.

The Christian faith is not blind faith, as the Apostle Paul would have said, “Heaven forbid!” We have not put our faith in, as we are often accused of, a fictitious, “flying spaghetti monster”[7] of gods. Rather our faith is based in an evolving system of Abrahamic religious teachings of many millennia; spanning from the ancient polytheistic tribal origins of Abraham in Ur, the birthplace of all monotheism, to becoming the driving force in the forging Western society, as we now know it. As American philosopher Dallas Willard once pondered; if we ripped every reference of the Bible (or Abrahamic faith traditions) from the infrastructure of the history of Western Civilization would there even be anything but vague debris left to read?[8]

The Bible has over forty authors who wrote over a period of 1,600 years. Its authors were large of different education, occupations, and worldviews. They wrote under differing circumstances and on three different continents and one island[9]. There are whole schools of academic accredited fields of study that endow the biblical perspective in history, philosophy, linguistics, and archeology. While they don’t, unqualifiedly, prove our Faith, they indeed give well-textured evidence that more than neutralizes the accusation that it is “blind faith” to the sincere mind.

The book of Hebrews, sums up, precisely, the point my philosophy professor made to me;

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1

Faith is not blind. Faith is not a vapor. Faith is not a dream world. Faith is not a “Flying Spaghetti Monster.” Faith is a substance! And substance has matter with uniform properties; it has a degree of tangibility. That substance (ὑπόστασις) is linguistically from the Greek compound of ὑπό and ἵστημι. The preposition, ὑπό, means “under” and the word ἵστημι means “to stand, or “cause to stand.” The word ὑπόστασις reveals to us that faith is the “understanding” of things hoped for. In other words, it is the foundational element that causes our hope to “stand” as opposed to falling down. A good mental picture in your mind of what the word means would be a “pillar.” Although the pillar sits underneath the building, without it, the building would not stand. Similarly, faith is the pillar upon which our hope stands.[10] Many translations often put it more simply as “confidence.” Faith is an established pillar of confidence in things hoped for, even though they have not yet happened. We believe not blindly, but rather by looking at the evidence that God has planted throughout our lives. As Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and that grandfather of Existentialism put it, “Leap of faith – yes, but only after reflection.”[11]

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” And it is reasonable to make that “Leap of faith” when we have built your case after reasonable reflection of the evidence of things still unfolding! This is the point Jesus makes when he says, “For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?”[12] It is ok for faith to always be under construction and long as you count the evidence. It is not about proof; rather it is about hope in things that there is evidence of when you sit to count your cost.

Yes, we have academics, history, archeology, linguistics, ancient manuscript documents, and so forth, but the greatest evidence of the substance of faith is the life you and I choose to live! How is the invisible made visible in my life? How are my humility and meekness a living testimony of the Love of God for all peoples? How will I respond to a non-believer, whether a skeptic, a secular, agnostic, or atheist, or just a different breed of theist, when they openly disagree with me or accuse me of being a fool? If I profess the love of the living Savior who died for the world, rather than see it perish, then I, too, must have a spirit of love that meets the spirit of antagonism in those who, unreasonably, negate my reflective Leap of Faith. To put it another way, God can’t be alive in dead things like history, manuscripts, and archeological relics if He is not alive and kicking in the love and compassion of Believers.

There is more substance of evidence in the life of an addict who finds sobriety in Christ, than in finding the foundation of an ancient wall in Jericho. There is more substance of evidence in the life of bigot or misogynist who, in Christ, learns to love all people as equals, than there are in five thousand New Testament manuscripts. There is more substance of evidence in the life a bully who becomes a defender of the weak, a protector of the innocent, and advocate of justice than there is in all the linguistic understanding of a biblical language scholar. And above all, there is more substance of evidence in the life for a Christian who firmly, yet still patiently, lovingly, and tolerantly shows deference to a mean-spirited or even malicious skeptic, than there is in the combined weight of all academia.

What mattered even more than being willing and able to learn lessons of Faith from my atheist professor, was my genuine reception of his correct assertion when he boldly called me out, when I was wrong. What I did, in the moments after the dry-erase marker got slammed into the desk may be the only “substance of faith” my professor ever sees, and is certainly the reason we remain friends to this day. How I live, how I struggle, my willingness to repent, admit wrong, grow, and treat those with respect and reasonable honor, while at the same time remaining firm and convicted of the confidence of my faith in the presence of those who have no respect or even  dignity for me at all, maybe the only “substance” of faith that they ever see.

May we be the “the evidence of things not seen,” to the millions in this world who have not yet seen what we now see.

Footnotes:

[1] The Professor in question remains a great friend to this day. So much so that my first book will include a dedication to him in the forward. We don’t agree about Religion but grew to respect each other as ethical and academic thinkers all the same. I owe most of my critical thinking skills to this man.

[2] He often vacillated between seeing himself as an Atheist or an Agnostic depending upon the nature of the conversation.

[3] www.dictionary.com/browse/faith second usage of the word.

[4] Yes, I added the phrase “by faith” to be both ironic and provocative.

[5] Philippians 2:10

[6] Namely, Christian faith.

[7] The flying spaghetti monster is often a favorite expression used to discredit Christians as unreasonable, ignorant, fairytale peddlers. It is a derogatory term that is served up with malice rather than intellectual discussion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

[8] I am paraphrasing his thought from his classic; The Divine Conspiracy.

[9] In His Word; Seminars Unlimited. Keen TX.

[10] Special thanks to Pastor Jonathan Martin, of Markham Woods Church in Longwood, FL and current Doctor of Ministry student, for helping me come up with a concise break down of the Greek word ὑπόστασις.

[11] https://goo.gl/bdVEWL

[12] Luke 14:28

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