Thinking This Week

LIFELONG LEARNING

We often hear about the importance of being a lifelong learner. As young people graduate they are reminded in commencement messages that their learning has not come to an end, but to a new beginning.

What about you? What are you learning? Do you have a good book going? Do you have an avocation that keeps you stimulated?

Remember, our God is a God of wisdom and knowledge. Part of being renewed in his image is continued growth and development of our intellect.

WHAT’S A CHRISTIAN?

Lots of people call themselves Christian. Lots of organizations promote themselves as Christian organizations.

What does it mean to be a Christian? How do you know if something is Christian or not?

For centuries Christians of all denominations have been defined as Christian by holding to the following Big Three.

Christians believe in: 

• The Triune God: There is one God, but he has revealed himself in three “persons.” The Father is the Creator and Preserver. The Son, Jesus, is the Savior. The Holy Spirit is the Sanctifier; he brings us to and keeps us in faith. The three persons are one God.

• The Two Natures of Jesus: Jesus is both truly God and truly man. He had to be a man because a man had to straighten out what a man (Adam) had messed up. He had to be God so that his work could extend to all.

• The Vicarious Atonement: Jesus suffered in our place so that we might live in his place (heaven). He did it for us. We benefit from his action by looking on him with the eyes of faith and believing.

NOTE: The Apostles’, The Nicene and the Athanasian Creeds all teach these Big Three.

STICK WITH ME ON THIS

I like C.S. Lewis’ Perelandra. The story is about a new “Adam and Eve” and a temptation story. The main character, Ransom, is to travel to Perelandra (Venus), a new Garden of Eden, with a new Adam and Eve to oppose the diabolically inspired human physicist Professor Weston who has been sent to tempt the Eve figure. The planet is characterized by “floating islands.”  “Adam and Eve” are to go from island to island as the islands rise and fall throughout the sea. While there is one stable land mass known as the “Fixed Land,” the new Adam and Eve are forbidden from inhabiting it. They must live their lives on the floating islands.

Near the end of the book the Perelandrian Eve reaches a conclusion on why God (Maleldil) did not want her to inhabit the Fixed Land.

The reason for not yet living on the Fixed Land is now so plain. How could I wish to live there except because it was Fixed? And why should I desire Fixed except to make sure—to be able on one day to command where I should be the next and what should happen to me? It was to reject the wave—to draw my hands out of Maleldil’s (God’s), to say to Him, “Not thus, but thus”—to put in our own power what times should roll towards us… as if you gathered fruits together today for tomorrow’s eating instead of taking what came. That would have been cold love and feeble trust. And out of it how could we ever have climbed back into love and trust again?”

I thought that was an interesting statement about what living by faith is all about. Do we want everything in our lives solid and sure, or are we willing to trust a loving God to provide for us no matter what wind and the waves come our way?

Made me think. Hope you are reading something to help you think. (Feel free to share it with me.)