Another Funny Sign

I saw this amusing sign, and I thought it was a creative way to make an important point. I would definitely stay out of that yard!

Hard Work

There is value in hard work. The Bible states it, and so do a lot of others. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book, Outliers, has a chapter titled, "10,000 hours." In this chapter he highlights, very well, that 10,000 hour mark seems to be the line of success. Those who practice their craft to the point of this mark tend to be successful and the best in their business.

Gladwell references the Beatles and Bill Gates, two giants in their respective industries, as prime examples of the idea that hard work pays off. Both exceeded the 10,000 hour mark prior to their enormous successes. And, both attribute their success to hard work and long hours of practice.

Hard work tends to instill the trait of perseverance and diligence, two traits also present in most successful people. This idea of falling into success is wrong. The idea that those who are successful have somehow stolen their way to the top is also wrong. Granted, there are those who may have risen to the top in this manner, but they are the very few and not the many. Those who are successful are successful for many reasons, but one the main reasons is the idea of hard work.

I am starting to see this idea of hard work losing popularity. I am seeing and hearing that if you have to work hard there is something wrong with you or someone else. Nothing comes to us easily, and nothing will. We, as a country, need to instill this idea that hard work has value and is worthy of emulation for many reasons, but none more important than it is what we are called to do. It is what God did in the first six days of creation. It is what God created Adam to do, and it is what He creates us to do. We are to work hard and to do it all for His glory! Blessings!

Existentialism

Existentialism is really hard to define. If you don't believe me, just go ask your philosophy professor in college. He or she will claim to believe in existentialism, but then, will pause, and give a definition that contains more questions than answers. Why examine it here? There is really only one reason to examine it... it is the perfect example of the current dominant worldview in Christ as well as outside of Christ.

Gordon Marino edits the book, Basic Writings of Existentialism, and he writes in his introduction this:

"While there is a long tradition in philosophy of believing that knowledge must be grounded in experience, existentialism tries to get at experience from the inside out."

This whole idea of existence is part of existentialism. Before the name came into vogue, the movement was referred to as "existence philosophy." Jean-Paul Sartre was the first to write anything significant on defining the term. Sartre is clear in his own beliefs, there is no god, but in his definition of existentialism he can not escape the idea as he claims that there is still,

"at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concepts, and that this being is man, or, as Heidegger [Martin] says, human reality. What is meant here by saying that existence precedes essence? It means that, first of all, man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and only, afterwords, defines himself... Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence."

What Sartre is saying here is that humans have no preexisting essence and must define themselves. He believes we define ourselves through our choices in life as we exist. Freedom, choice, alienation and rebellion are but a few of the common themes shared by those who dwell in existentialism. This is a thrust back to concrete experience and the question of whether there is actually anything beyond our experience. This idea should be one that we Christians flee as fast as we can, but my fear is this: too many of us, yes, even those of us in Christ, embrace this notion without even knowing it?

Soren Kierkegaard is often considered the author of existentialism, which is a bit odd due to the fact that Kierkegaard was a Lutheran and strongly influenced by Martin Luther. Kierkegaard provides the best example of what is currently our issue in his thoughts on faith. He writes,

"Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, is justified before it, not as inferior to it but as superior - yet in such a way, please note, that it is the single individual who, after being subordinate as the single individual to the universal, now by means of the universal becomes the single individual who as the single individual is superior, that the single individual as the single individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute."

I think my mind just exploded; how about yours?

Certainly Kierkegaard has other things in his mind that my feeble mind can not break down adequately to fit into this space, but he does provide support for one thought. Faith is not rooted in our existence, yet, that is what we do... we root it in our own existence. And, when we do Kierkegaard believes faith will forever be a paradox because defined according to our existence means "faith has never existed because it has always existed or else Abraham is lost." In other words, faith in Christ is not; faith is in us and has always been in us.

What does faith rooted in us look like? Well, we tend to take the truth of the gospel and use it as if it was ours. We begin with this "faith" which is really more about trust and less about truth, but we turn it around to mean truth. Then, we take this truth, that is really this "faith" rooted in our own existence, and we use it to begin to define the other existences we touch. Those of us with this "faith" believe that our existence is right and true so every time we run into an existence that differs with our own we tend to think it is wrong because ours "just has to be right." We define reality according to our own terms, but when we do this we miss one of the most fundamental truths spoken by our Lord... the idea that He is with us when we gather in His name. He alone defines reality and truth, and our lives are daily struggles to continue to let Him define it despite our sin nature fighting us all the way.

Faith is a belief and trust in our King, the Lord Jesus. It is He who defines reality. Our faith is a growing trust and belief that we can live by His words, His promises and His commands. This side of heaven we struggle to believe that daily as doubt creeps into our minds. We push the doubt out with different things, much of which is good, but some is not. Existentialism is something we can use to push that doubt out of our mind if we are not carefully. It will push that doubt out, yes, and replace it with something much worse... pride, arrogance, individualism, rebellion and alienation to name just few.

There are so many things to be wary of these days. I can not fathom living life without daily guidance from the Lord. May He be your guidance one day too. Blessings!



"

The End of Christian America?

A while back Newsweek came out with a very interesting article on Christian culture. The article was full of statistics pointing to an apparent solid fact that the Christian influence in our general culture is in decline. The story quote R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and his concern over one sentence out of the whole report.

"But as R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the largest on earth—read over the document after its release in March, he was struck by a single sentence. For a believer like Mohler—a starched, unflinchingly conservative Christian, steeped in the theology of his particular province of the faith, devoted to producing ministers who will preach the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life—the central news of the survey was troubling enough: the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent. Then came the point he could not get out of his mind: while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the report said, "this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified." As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America's religious culture was cracking."

The historic foundation of religious culture in our country has been cracking for a long time, but the crack is not just limited to our country. When sin came into the world in the garden, the crack began and continues until the Lord returns. There is a shift taking place away from order and structure, but that shift has been taking place since the beginning of time. As I read this article, my sense is that our country is struggling with the same things it has always struggled with, but with one exception... we now know about it. There is so much information available about every topic that we can now know trends and shifts while they are taking place. This article gives us almost too much information. For example,

"According to the American Religious Identification Survey that got Mohler's attention, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent. The Jewish population is 1.2 percent; the Muslim, 0.6 percent. A separate Pew Forum poll echoed the ARIS finding, reporting that the percentage of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent; in terms of voting, this group grew from 5 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008—roughly the same percentage of the electorate as African-Americans."

I am currently engaged in doctoral studies at the University of Alabama and have also done work at Georgia State University in Atlanta, and I will tell you, if I learned one thing it was this: you can make numbers dance. You can make numbers say exactly what you want them to say, if you choose. Now, I am not saying that this article does that, but there is a risk of that anytime you take a survey and promote it as a representation of the general population. And, this article does take surveys and apply them to the general culture and population.

So, a word of caution, don't always believe what you read. This article contains the following statement, "Meanwhile, the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009, from 1 million to about 3.6 million. (That is about double the number of, say, Episcopalians in the United States.)" But, I will tell you this: even though the statement reflects a tone of absolute... it is not. It is a general statement. God is still on His throne and in control.

I am reading Nehemiah these days and, to be totally honest, it reads a lot like today. And, we all know how that ends! God is still the same yesterday and today. May we glorify Him! Blessings!