Remarks for Friday, January 16, 2008

It's Friday, but Sunday's Coming
I'm starting a new series this Sunday morning on stewardship. I have no idea where this image came from, but I thought about bungee jumping. When I see the children of Israel walking around in the wilderness and receiving word from God through Moses calling for a special offering for the tabernacle, I cannot help but think about the emotions that I would feel were I in their place. Hopefully, I would have some plunder from the Egyptians like many other Hebrews had. So here I am with this block of gold, or silver, and I've been thinking that I could use it for seed money to begin a new business or start up a new farm in this risky Promise Land that we will be entering. Now I find out that God could definitely use it. Argh! I have no doubt that God would be honored by the offering, yet that seed money would sure come in handy.
In Scripture, taking a leap of faith is often like bungee jumping. You'll see people diving headfirst and initially, the action is exhilarating. Then the people start seeing the pavement rushed quickly toward their faces. And right when their faces are going to hit the pavement, God picks them back up and rescues them from certain disaster. The experience is incredible, yet God's people have to think about it before investing in the adventure again.
I believe it is still like this today. God calls us to take leaps of faith with our time, our resources, and our talents and gifts. That is why I'm calling this series, "Spiritual Bungee Jumping."

A Profound thought from Another Source
In what seems like a weekly event, I want to draw attention to something I read this week in Donald Miller's Searching for God Knows What. Miller writes that were an alien to visit our planet, he would report back to his planet and tell the authorities, the thing that defines human beings is, they are constantly comparing themselves to one another. This drives then to become obsessed with the kind of clothes other people wear, and the kind of cars other people drive, the kind of ways other people speak, the kind of neighborhood other people live in.
The more we remove God from our lives, the more we allow other people's view of these things to determine our view. Our lifestyle, attitudes, and behavior are basically determined by a jury of our peers.
Miller says that without a doubt, we are people who are wired so that someone outside of us tells us who we are. The challenge is accepting by faith that this someone best be God. And the way he tells us primarily is through his Word.

Popular Science
Francis S. Collins wrote a book a couple of months ago called The Language of God. You may remember Collins as the head of the Human Genome Project. This book is Collin's apologetic where he seeks to harmonize faith in God and science. Collins talks about his conversion to Christianity and his walk with God. However, what interested me was the fact Collins believes God created the world through a process of evolution. Careful. Collins is not a proponent of a godless universe, but he does believe strongly in evolution as used by God and explains his reasons. I do not believe in making one's interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2 a test for fellowship. I know there are plenty of people who are Christians who believe God created the world through an evolutionary process. Collins' book helps me understand how they think.
As for me, I am somewhat in the middle. Not being a scientist, I am not forced to align myself with a scientific theory. As a student of Scripture, I definitely believe that the Bible is open for interpretation, especially regarding this subject. For those who consider East Texas to be the backwoods of education, you might be surprised to know that I was raised in an environment and a church that was open-minded when it comes to the creation of the world.
Instinctively, the members did not want to box themselves into either extreme. On the one hand, I remember a Sunday school teacher quoting to us from Second Peter 3:8, "But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day." She said who knew how long God took to create the world or what process he used to do so.
On the other hand, I remember a different teacher in Bible class questioning how much we can know about the formation of the world based upon simple observation, especially when all parties agreed that we were many years removed from the process. I think Copernicus affirmed this a few hundred years ago, when he noted that all previous observations of the world were incorrect-- the Earth revolved around the sun rather than the sun revolved around the Earth. The teacher's point was science is an evolving process (no pun intended.) Who knows what the scientists of tomorrow will discover?
So, today, I find myself being careful about marrying a position. Science is not God; science can be wrong. Medical science killed more presidents than assassins. (Examples include the case of the doctors, who bled Washington to death after he caught a cold. Garfield was killed by well-intentioned doctors, who thought they had to remove a bullet from his body. In attempting to capture the projectile, they gave Garfield an infection that killed him.)
Religion can also be wrong. Who can forget that Galileo was condemned by the Church for his discoveries?
We have become comfortable in the church with sophisticated biblical interpretation. No one in Christianity accuses a meteorologist of being atheist because he describes the arrival of snow via a storm system. Even those of us in Christianity who believe that God sends snow do not believe he did so by reaching into his storehouse and sprinkling it on the world (Job 38:22). We know that Job expressed truth about God in chapter 38 using poetry. All of us are comfortable with the unromantic realities of meteorological science.
What Collins is doing is something I would like to see more people attempted to do: find the intersection between science and religion. If we can achieve this, not only will our minds benefit, but our souls will as well.

Movie Review
I had a chance to see the movie Flywheel during the Christmas holidays. It's made by the same people in the Baptist Church in Georgia who made Facing the Giants. I actually liked Flywheel better. It was made for $20,000, so the quality of the production is not high. Still, I think the story is much more realistic than Facing the Giants.
In Flywheel, you have a used car salesman who is not living a life of integrity. What is worse, he's portraying himself as a faithful Christian. But his coworkers and family can see the disparity in his life. Many people are hurt by this supposedly Christian businessman.
An old Triumph that needs a new flywheel serves as the metaphor in the movie. A wise mechanic tells the car-lot owner that people are like cars. They need flywheels that are stable and function well. Of course, what the mechanic means is that everyone needs to have Jesus at the center of his or her life.
Ultimately, the used car salesman rededicates his life to Jesus. God rescues him in many ways, including allowing him to face consequences for his actions. The movie does not end with the main character becoming a millionaire, but his life is definitely better, a product of his "flywheel."
I am showing this movie on Wednesday nights in my Bible class on Proverbs. I show it in 10 to 15 minute increments to allow us to have time for Bible study and then illustration through the movie. I think the filmmakers have done a good job illustrating the themes of Proverbs. I would highly recommend this movie.