Tag: love

Tuning In To God’s Frequency

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(c) Can Stock Photo
(c) Can Stock Photo

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.

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God Doesn’t Send People to Hell

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Sun by Me

Imagine a survivor of the Holocaust, living life out quietly, suffering the residual emotional, mental and spiritual pain of the atrocities she witnessed and experienced. She harmed no one and was a decent mother, grandmother wife and citizen. Someone preaches the Gospel to her on her death bed, and she rejects it. Will God send her to heaven or hell?

This question is compelling, suggesting that no God would send anyone who suffered so much to hell. But, the question really isn’t a good one. Not that the circumstance isn’t compelling. The question is loaded, and it’s intended to negate the the Christian idea that the only way to God is through faith and belief in him.

Jesus said that he is the way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father but through Him.[1] Peter, who walked with Jesus, ate meals with Him and sat at His feet as he was mentored by Jesus, proclaimed that there is salvation in no one else.[2]

If Jesus is God’s Son, sent to bring the world to the Father, and there is no other name by which men must be saved, then a person who rejects rejects Jesus is not going to heaven. according to these words that Jesus spoke. So, doesn’t that mean God sends people  who don’t believe to hell, like the good citizen who suffered in Auschwitz?

God is love.[3] Right? Many people believe, based on that proposition, that God would not send people to hell, especially people who suffered in this life. I think they are right, but for different reasons. I believe that love is the reason God will not send someone to heaven!

Continue reading “God Doesn’t Send People to Hell” →

Evidence, Love and Faith

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Pat, Don & Mulligan 4 - Copy

The 2010 debate between Richard Dawkins, and John Lennox, both professors at Oxford University in England, is interesting to consider if you have the time and inclination. Dawkins is famous for his books supporting atheism and opposing religion. Lennox is a mathematician and philosopher of science who is an outspoken Christian.

The debate uses The God Delusion, a book by Richard Dawkins, as the backdrop. The outline consists of six points (theses) from the book to frame the debate whether science and faith are compatible. Richard Dawkins famously maintains that science and faith are not compatible, and Lennox takes the opposite position.

At one point in the debate, Dawkins attempts to define faith to exclude evidence or reason. Faith is commonly defined as “strong belief or trust in someone or something”. The dictionary definition does not make any reference to evidence. Faith could mean strong belief or trust, with or without evidence. The definition of faith does not necessarily include or exclude evidence or reason.

Dawkins’ definition of faith is loaded – his definition of faith is belief without evidence, or “belief in the teeth of the evidence”. Lennox defines faith as belief supported by strong evidence, and robust faith supported by robust evidence.

In this context, Lennox asked Dawkins a question: he asked, “I assume you have faith in your wife. Is there any evidence for that?” Grinning nervously at the personal nature of the question, Dawkins responded that he had “plenty of evidence” regarding his wife,  and proceeded to give evidence for how he knows his wife loves him.

Dawkins clearly misunderstood what Lennox meant. Lennox was only asking about faith that Dawkins’ wife existed. Dawkins assumed,  however, that Lennox meant whether Dawkins’ wife loved him. This assumption made for an interesting twist to the debate. Continue reading “Evidence, Love and Faith” →

An Open Apology to the LGBT Community

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(c) Can Stock Photo

(c) Can Stock Photo

Dear LGBT friends and family, please accept my apology for my Christian friends and family. I am sorry that you have felt unloved, unwelcomed and unworthy.

You have been my friends, my family, my roommate, my cousin, my niece, fellow members of my church. I love you. I welcome you. I believe you are as worthy as I or any of my “Christian” friends and family.

Some of you have blamed me, and my Christian friends and family for the Orlando shooting so let me put this on the record: the Orlando shooting was evil, pure and simple. I am sorry for the confusion that you feel about me and the Christian world.

It is confusing. While we would like things to be simple, black and white, they rarely ever are like that. The shooter, for example, was Muslim and attributed radical Islam to the shooting. Some people would like to blame Islam, but the shooter was probably as gay as he was Muslim. The only thing we know for sure is that he was not Christian. Continue reading “An Open Apology to the LGBT Community” →

The Secret to a Happy Healthy Life

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IMG_20130825_060248

I recently read this entry in a local paper that allows readers to call in and leave anonymous messages of current and political import. Excuse the length of the following entry that I am reproducing here. I think it is important enough to reproduce in its entirety, because it bears some comment:

My parents had four daughters. We are all in our 60s now. Three of us earned master’s degrees. The happiest daughter is the daughter who spent a short time in college and married young. She has a wonderful husband and children and grandchildren. The other three are without husbands and can be very crabby. I know because I am one of them…. The three single sisters are all working because we have to work. Our married sister has a job, by choice, and loves her life. To all the 20-something girls out there… You cannot hug a diploma. A wall of degrees will not fill your heart with love. You will be alone night after night wondering what it would be like to have a nice guy at your side. Marriage is far better than a life of degrees.

Before commenting, I need to preface what I am going to say. Marriage is no guarantee of a happy life. Plenty of married people are unhappy. If that weren’t the case, the divorce rate would not perennially hover around the 50% mark. Marriage is no magic pill.

Gaining a college education is also nothing to snub. The reasons people go to college, however, are many: to get an education (duh!), because it is expected of them, to get a good job, because they don’t know what else to do, to find a spouse….

Looking back 40 years later with the kind of clarity that hindsight reveals puts those reasons into perspective, apparently. If only we could gain that perspective looking forward! But then, looking back may not really be 20/20 – unless you are looking back at a 75 year Harvard study. Continue reading “The Secret to a Happy Healthy Life” →