Sevier Heights Baptist Church

4 November 2007

God, Faith and Robots

A couple of weeks ago, as I tutored some local children one afternoon, another tutor talked to them about God being the Creator of all things. When he finished one little girl looked at me and asked, “Who made God?”

I smiled and replied, “No one.”

“But someone had to make Him.”

I shook my head, “He’s always been here…always.”

One little boy piped up, “Maybe it was the robots.”

“Robots?” I asked.

“Yeah, maybe the robots made Him, and then He made us—“

“Who made the robots then?” I asked.

“Oh…yeah…hmm…I don’t know.”

We like to have answers. Not just answers, but clear answers. Sometimes we create mechanical ways of thinking to help us avoid dealing with the difficulties of not knowing certain things by empirical evidence. We want answers that make sense to us in our immediate situation that clarify all cloudiness and tie up all loose ends neatly and quickly. Sometimes the uncertainty pushes us to the point where we realize that, with our limited human minds, we don’t have all the answers, and our trust in God will be tested. As a close friend of mine says, “God likes this faith business.” The writer of Hebrews gives what most Christians quote as the definition of faith: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 1:1,2). In other words, faith is the very realization of and the confidence in that which we can not fully explain by our human senses and experimentation. Sometimes we place great value upon our faith, or our trust, in God. It is valuable (“more precious than silver” according to the bible) and will be tested, but our faith can not become the object upon which we depend. Our faith, at its core, really isn’t about what we do or do not understand; true faith is about who God is. We place our faith in Him and His ability, wisdom and power. Our faith is not in our faith; it’s in Him.

No matter how hard we may try to figure everything out and continually come up short, we must trust that He holds complete knowledge of all things…no robots required.

DCG

9 November 2007

New View

I was in fifth grade when I first got glasses. I remember sitting in the optometrist’s chair with the phoropter (the big swing arm device with all the lenses and focus wheels on it) against my face. “Which is better? One, two or three?” the doctor would ask as he flipped through the lens options. He said that my eyesight was such (read: bad) that they were going to make some “special glasses” just for me. Later I found out that “special glasses” meant powerful enough to see craters on Mars with the all the added bulkiness of welding goggles. When I finally put them on, I was astonished: trees had leaves, the writing on the blackboard made sense, and movies were more than talking blobs. All this time I had blamed the forest, the teacher and the projector when the real problem was my lack of focus.

Sometimes I feel like I’m still sitting in that chair, except instead of looking at a chart topped with a big “E,” I’m looking at life. And God is clicking the lenses through, and asking, “Which is better? One or two?”

“Two,” I say.

“One is better,” He replies.

“I like two,” I retort.

“But two is fuzzy, you know that,” He says.

“One hurts too much. It lets in too much light.”

“Two makes you miss things because they’re blurred.”

“Maybe, but two doesn’t hurt. Two is comfortable; two lets me see things how I’ve always seen them.”

“But one is the way I see things…and that’s how I want you to see too.”

I’ve found that I spend far too much time viewing life and others through a lens of my own shaping. Because of the sacrifice of Christ and His life-changing work, Paul writes, “Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh” (II Cor. 5:16). Paul experienced a permanent change of perspective; he received the right prescription. Life, and those in it, looked different to him. At times the truth was blinding for him, literally (Acts 9). And, at times, his stand for truth brought him pain (II Cor. 11). But despite it all, he saw more clearly than ever before.

People don’t look the same through number one, neither does life, but then, God doesn’t see things as we do. I’m glad He doesn’t see everyone else like I do, and I’m really glad that He doesn’t see me as I often see myself…yet He loves me anyway.

DCG

15 November 2007

Big Things in Small Packages

My friend Jesse came by the other day after work cackling uncontrollably. “You’ve got to see this,” he said smiling broadly. Following him outside, he stood beside a little, motorized two-wheeler. “It’s called a ‘pocket bike,’” he said.

This…thing looked like someone had ridden a motorcycle in the rain and it shrank underneath him. It’s small, no, tiny in size, but the weird thing is that it’s comparable in proportion to the size of a larger bike.Jesse cranked the motor (with a pull cord), and the engine whined to life with all the fury of a standard, gas-powered weed trimmer. The shocking moment came when he sat down on this pint-sized wonder, revved it up, and shot across the parking lot with a speed that seemed impossible for something barely one foot tall. After the onlookers present had a chance to ride, my turn came.

The first thing that someone my height notices when sitting on this thing is that your knees are nearly at the level of your shoulders; you are practically in the fetal position. Gunning the throttle, I took it for a couple of laps. At some point in this surreal experience, I thought I would see what it would do in the straightaway. This thing, which I later discovered has a maximum rider capacity of 300 lbs. and a top speed of 35 mph, easily sped along the pavement. It was right about then that I thought, “The pavement is really close to me right now. And if I crash on this thing and get visibly injured, or worse, have to be taken to the hospital it is going to be super-embarrassing explaining this to people…”

“So, what happened to you Dustin?”

“Motorcycle accident.”

“What kind?”

“Oh, you know, just a motorcycle…two wheels and all.”

“What, was it a Harley or something like that?”

“No, uh, it was…a little smaller than that.”

“So what exactly caused the accident?”

“It was either the little piece of gravel I hit, or I ran over my own shoestring...maybe both.”

The size of the bike didn’t match what you would think its power, speed and overall performance would be. It was a small package, but was a “big” thing. Thinking about it later, it seemed to me that it is a lot like faith. Jesus told His disciples, “I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you” (Matt. 17:20). A tiny amount of faith, even faith the size of a mustard seed, has enormous power. Why? Because that small sliver of sold-out, resolute belief is in an infinite, all-powerful, all-knowing God. Again, God is the focus of faith, not our faith itself.

There’s an old saying that goes like this: “Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.”

Maybe it’s time to say something similar, yet positive, for faith: “Faith will take you places you didn’t plan to go, to do things you wouldn’t plan to do, for results that could come only from God.”

Like that little pocket bike, when you fully invest even a small amount of faith in Almighty God, you had better hang on for the ride.

DCG