Shutting the Gate
This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark to tie it all together.
Today's devotional is taken from: Zacharias, Ravi. The
Logic of God: 52 Christian Essentials for the Heart and Mind. Grand Rapids,
MI: Zondervan, 2019. [E-Book] Chapter 8: Shutting the Gate
Opening Thought: Recently I have taken on some fascination with controversial
author Jordan B. Peterson. He is controversial due to his objection to speech
laws in Canada, around the issues of force langue with gender pronouns. I will
not get into that debate, though it is fascinating itself. What I find so
fascinating about Peterson is that one of his major focuses of his work has
been trying to understand how people can come to inflict true evils upon each
other. How can one person, as normal as you or I, grow up to become a soldier
in a concentration camp or pull the triggers in the extermination and genocide of
people. Zacharias’ chapter today opens with a similar wondering, as he reflects
of his meeting of a young boy, who father, every day took the boy high up onto
a hill which look upon a border between to lands. The father reminded the child
that the child’s purpose was to grow up and kill as many of the people on the
other side of the border as he could. This chapter of Zacharias’s book may seem
like a break from the standard apologetics of worldviews and truth seeking, but
it really is not. I personally believe that one of the main point of
apologetics is not only to defend the faith but also to say why the faith is so
vital to all of existence. It is also my belief that the Judeo-Christian world
view is unique as it gives us an ultimate reason that the evils in our reality
must be resisted against by all means necessary.
The devotional begins with: Ephesians 4:22-24
You were taught, with regard to your former way of
life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its
deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your
minds; and to put on the new
self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
Second Thought: There are two concepts that repeat biblically 1) our image, and
2) our death. Both these concepts relate to sin. As we are created in God’s
image, it makes poetic sense why the author says in Ephesians that we take off
our old self and put on the new self, created to be like God. When you put those
words together what we see is that we were once created in the image of God,
but that image was damaged by sin, and therefore Christ has come to restore us to
the image once held. Our death comes into play because we must die to our old
ways to be able to be born in a new way. That is why so much birth, death and
rebirth language is held in the church, because it speaks to our restoration. Sin
becomes such an important topic, because sin is anything that keeps us from accepting
that renewal, anything that speaks to us and says that the broken nature is our
final destiny, rather than God.
What does this have to do with genocide. Well, a humble person will
never become a murderer. One of my favorite quotes from Jordan Peterson is, “I
don't think that you have any insight whatsoever into your capacity for good
until you have some well-developed insight into your capacity for evil.” It takes
humility and a level of courage to recognize that evil is within you and then
not fall to it. The humility is born when you realize the value in yourself and
others, and that value can only be ‘truth’ if that value is determined by an
ultimate source, i.e., God. When a Christian makes the claim that we are
created in the image of God (pulling from the scriptures) what we are also saying
is that when you kill, you are defacing the image of God, you are murdering the
creation of God, you are violating what is sacred and special in all of reality.
This idea of imago Dei is not only central to the Christian faith, but philosophically
it is a monument to all the liberty, respect, compassion, and generosity we
will ever come across, (and it is also an anthesis of relativism, in my
opinion).
Continual Work: Think about how each person you will ever come across is like a
little mirror containing the image of God, how does that change how you treat
people? Make it more intense, if God was sitting on the shoulder of every
person you interacted with, watching how you treated people, would you be
different?
What Rev. Jacob is Working On: I see so many people right now saying they
are the defending line for those who need protecting. This I witness more in
politics than anything. But the efforts to protect one group often seems at the
expense of another. This methodology of sacrificing the self or other to serve a
minority or and majority is antithetical to Christ’s message; as we are to love
God, neighbor, and the self. I will spend so time this week thinking about this
tension in our world, but I have the feeling the peacekeepers often walk in
with swords drawn out more than they realize.
Rev. Jacob’s Scripture time: Luke 14:26
If anyone comes to Me and hate not his father and mother, and wife
and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot
be My disciple.
I am bringing in one of the passages that most confused me
growing up. I could not understand the use of the word hate here. But I am
beginning to understand with age. A part of the problem is that we in the
post-modern era are very literal and extreme in our thinking. Hatred here is
more complex than just outward rage, anger, and disgust. Hatred here, is comparison,
between what the world has to offer and what God has to offer.
The father that was raising his son to want to kill others is almost
a hyperbole of the human condition. We still, as the child, love the human parents,
but we need to love them in the way God love them, love them for the image of
God they contain, and law which in upon their hearts. But if we love them in a
worldly sense only, any love that is routed in a purely worldly manor is bound to finitude,
and death. If it is not of God, it cannot be for God. Zacharias’ anecdote of
the violent-breeding father was telling us that the man had become so polluted
by the world that he could no longer see the image of God in others. That is what
needs to be rejected but also simultaneously that father needs to be loved because
under his anger and hatred, an image of God has been buried away, it is our duty
as Christians to do what we can to bring that image out and let God’s love heal.
Closing Words: I hope you enjoyed and were lifted by this devotional time; it
is truly important to take time for God each day. By doing so, you welcome God
into your life, and in turn you will be able to better see the world through
the eyes of God, rather than God through the world's eyes.
Prayer for your day: God of the Bible, come to us this day. Be
in our feelings, thoughts, and instincts. Guide us to a new definition, one of
humility and courage, let us stand up straight with our shoulders back, and
face the day as those renewed by Your image and power. In Christ’s name, Amen.
Artistic Close: Just needed something simple but powerful today!
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