We don’t always think about the courage necessary to be a follower of Christ. Sure, we know the words that Jesus spoke: If you deny me before men, I will deny you before the Father.[1] But we tend to view those words through the fear of being found wanting.
Fear is a bad motivator. I don’t think our tendency to be afraid of losing our salvation serves us very well. Perfect love casts out all fear. God is looking for the courageous, not the fearful.
Our freedoms in this country may just be the one thing that most undermines the Christian faith in the United States of America. This election cycle has had me doing lots of soul searching. In the process of that soul-searching, it dawns on me that our freedom to choose which person we will vote for in November puts us squarely in a position where we have to compromise our faith.
People have been talking about Donald Trump as if he were the Nebuchadnezzar of the present day, but he isn’t. The people in the days of Nebuchadnezzar had no choice. In the present day, we do have a choice. When Daniel was faced with compromising his faith or being a loyal servant of Nebuchadnezzar, he chose not to compromise his faith, in spite of the consequences.
When two tuning forks are tuned to the same frequency, they harmonize with each other. More than that, when one is vibrating, the other will begin to vibrate. This phenomenon is called “sympathetic vibration”.
This is the phenomenon to which Ted Dekker alludes in this short passage from The Forgotten Way:
“When you have two tuning forks in a room and one begins to vibrate the other will also begin to vibrate if it’s tuned to the same frequency. They resonate. They abide in each other’s frequency.”
Even if the two tuning forks are at the same frequency, however, sympathetic resonance does not happen unless two additional factors are present: the tuning forks are close to each other, and one of the tuning forks is quiet (not already vibrating).
The tuning fork illustration is very apt for understanding our relationship to God. If we are tuned to God’s frequency, we will resonate with Him and abide in Him. When we are tuned to God’s frequency, “the Spirit Himself bears witness[1] with our spirit that we are children of God.”[2]
God’s Spirit and our spirit are like the tuning forks. When we are on the same frequency with God, we resonate with God, but only if we are close enough to Him, and only of we have quieted ourselves. (“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10))
Such a simple truth, but we struggle so mightily with tuning to God’s frequency, getting close enough to be affected by Him and quieting ourselves.
Thoughtful and thought-provoking articles are a source for many articles I write. When those two characteristics are exemplified in the same single article, I often use it as a springboard. An article by Trent Horn, Neil DeGrasse Tyson Shows Why Science Can’t Build a Utopia[1], is my springboard for this article.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson, of course, is the outspoken agnostic ambassador of science. The Horn article was precipitated by Tyson’s tweet: “Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence”[2] and Horn’s counter-tweet: “@neiltyson ‘Rationalia’ is as useless as ‘Correctistan,’ or a country whose constitution says, ‘Always make the correct decisions.'”
To illustrate what he means by his counter-tweet, the author used the example of a driverless car. Fatalities have already happened with them and will undoubtedly happen again. That isn’t the point, though. The point is this: how should they be programmed when confronted with two options – to run over pedestrians or run into an object that may kill the passengers?
“Culture tells us two great lies about success: you can be whatever you want to be, and you can be the best in the world.”
This was a statement in a newsletter I received. It couldn’t be truer. Not that we want to hear that sort of thing. We want to be told we “can do it”! And, we like believing the lie.
The truth is that we can’t all be the best. We can’t be whatever we want to be.
Just being real here.
I don’t want to buy into the lies. I want the truth, and I think most people (many people anyway) really want the truth. We get tired of the lies. Give me something I can stand on. I don’t want a pipe dream. Continue reading “Equality in the Economy of God”→
Navigating by Faith 