Brian was a mathematician. He loved to pontificate on all kinds of nonsense like how many infinities can dance on the head of a pin. When George, an astronomer, asked him for advice Brian was confident he could dial up more elegant advice than George’s empirical predisposition could handle.
What George wanted to know, however, was why were the research schedules of the space and terrestrial telescopes suddenly put on hold to gather data on specific dense regions within three parsecs of Sagittarius A*? Before Brian’s speculations found words, reports came in of the appearance of unrecognized stars whose light had just passed through the gravitational potential near the Milky Way’s center of mass.
Brian thought to himself that this ominously felt like the beginning of the end, and he was right, but his worldview blinded him from seeing just what was ending.
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Denise offers the prompt word “dial” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Story.
There is no such thing as a Christian worldview that rejects the miraculous. Daniel Kolenda (video 9 in his series on cessationism at 1:05:19)
Most Christians would agree with Kolenda until one gets specific about what counts as a miraculous event. There are two forms of Christian unbelief which sometimes act as polar opposites.
Unbelief in the Bible as history The events reported in Genesis 1-11—the Creation, the Fall, the genealogies, the Global Flood and the the Babel Dispersion—really happened. When you hear a Christian try to allegorize these events away because they are embarrassed by them, you are witnessing unbelief no matter how committed that Christian is to the miraculous gifts of the Spirit.
Unbelief in the ongoing miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit When you hear Christians argue that the gifts of the Spirit no longer occur today you are witnessing unbelief no matter how committed that Christian is to the events in Genesis 1-11. Such unbelief should not be confused with an appropriate discernment when testimonies are given: each reported claim of a miracle, whether a healing or a prophecy or whatever, must be tested. The unbelief that is a problem here is the total rejection, in advance, of all modern miraculous testimonies.
A Pentecostal or Catholic Charismatic can not get by with mere belief in the continuation of the miraculous gifts without also accepting Genesis 1-11 as history that really happened. A Reformed Protestant can not get by with mere belief in Genesis 1-11 without also believing in Acts and Paul’s presentation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in his letters as ongoing today.
They go together. They are both biblical. Reject any of this and the Christian who does so undermines belief for himself and for others in the New Testament.
The rejection of the miraculous, either as unbelief in Biblical history or as unbelief in the ongoing miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, is grounded in an atheistic worldview that gullibly trusts in its own rationalized construction of the so-called natural world. Modern unbelief pits a depersonalized and dying natural world against a wondrous reality given to us through its miraculous Creation.
One way to counter this is to reject the construct of the natural world except as a convenient, useful fiction, a crude approximation to reality that allows one to build deterministic, human technology. That is its only value. Then we can look at reality with continual childlike wonder. It really is all miraculous. It is all wonderful.
At the same time we need to be wary of the serpent, that lover of death and deception, even though, thanks to the Resurrection of Jesus, it has been defeated. There are liars still desiring to manipulate or fool others as Ananias and Saphira tried to do. One of the wonderful, miraculous gifts of the Spirit that is still with us today is our ability to discern the truth as Peter did long ago should we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us.
Matthew 6:25-34 KJV 25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? 26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? 27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? 28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: 29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? 31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? 32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. 33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. 34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Seemingly unprovoked and coming from who-knows-where, certainly not from him, George heard the words enunciate through his mind: Don’t let the devil run your mouth.
“How do I know you’re not the devil giving me that advice?” George countered in self-defense.
Why would the devil give you such advice?
A swirl of confusion funneled through George’s mind reaching down to his heart where it came to rest like soft vanilla ice cream filling a generous cone. When he saw the topping dipped in melted chocolate and offered to him, he didn’t know how to respond to this unexpected kindness, indeed uncalled-for kindness given everything he had done, except to regret pretty much—no—he regretted every wacky thing he ever said.
“Ok,” George cried through tears of joy, “I’ll keep my mouth shut unless it be in praise of You.”
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Denise offers the prompt word “swirl” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Story.
Job 42:1-9 KJV 1 Then Job answered the LORD, and said, 2 I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee. 3 Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. 4 Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. 5 I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. 6 Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. 7 And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words unto Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath. 8 Therefore take unto you now seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you: for him will I accept: lest I deal with you after your folly, in that ye have not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant Job. 9 So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went, and did according as the LORD commanded them: the LORD also accepted Job.
Numbers 20:8-12 KJV 8 Take the rod, and gather thou the assembly together, thou, and Aaron thy brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes; and it shall give forth his water, and thou shalt bring forth to them water out of the rock: so thou shalt give the congregation and their beasts drink. 9 And Moses took the rod from before the LORD, as he commanded him. 10 And Moses and Aaron gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock? 11 And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also. 12 And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.
Ezekiel 36:26 … I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.
From the platform provided by the Kaibab Plateau George looked down into the Grand Canyon. He saw the water-deposited sedimentation layers on the canyon’s opposite side. He looked deep into the canyon where he saw the Colorado River flowing at the base of a relatively tiny channel it had eroded away.
George realized that no mere river could have eroded such a gorge in the earth after smoothing the huge planation region upon which he stood. Initially he thought some lake or sea must have burst its dam over 50 million years ago, but given erosion rates nothing that old would still be here for him to see.
Then he wondered: maybe, just maybe, some kid in his basement, with nothing better to do, instantiated a simulation of him, his memories and his sensations of this whole canyon riddled plateau, because in George’s stony heart that nonsense would be more tolerable than acknowledging what actually happened.
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Denise offers the prompt word “platform” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Genesis 8:1-3 KJV 1 And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters asswaged; 2 The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained; 3 And the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 