One Question (Homily 56)

Priorities, son.

"...who is lord over us?" Ps. 12:4b

The question of lordship is still the most practical question you can ask anyone. For every person, the buck ultimately stops somewhere, and wherever it stops can tell you a lot about that person: what they believe, what they care about, and what they're willing to put up with.

Now, Psalm 12 mentions two kinds of people: the godly and the proud (vs. 1-4). The former are failing and fading while the latter are flourishing. The dichotomy is simple enough---there are those to whom God is their ultimate authority and those who are their own ultimate authority. That dichotomy is pretty well maintained throughout Scripture. There are those who "fear the Lord" and those who say "there is no God." Every human being can be boiled down to one of those two categories.

This is not merely a matter of God's existence. There are plenty of people who believe in God's existence that still live like atheists in day-to-day practical life. Rather, it is a matter of relevance, i.e., what is His relation to you and your life? Is he everything or nothing? That sounds like a false choice fallacy, but remember the dichotomy: if God is not everything to you, then He really is nothing to you, no matter how much you patronize Him. The greatest commandment is to love God with all that you are and got (Matt. 22:36-38), and he who transgresses one law is guilty of them all (James 2:10), and we all have transgressed the greatest law: we have not loved God (Ps. 14:2-3; Rom. 1:21-25, 3:10-11).

All sin and righteousness comes down to the one question Jesus asked his disciples: "Who do you say that I am?" (Matt. 16:13-16; c.f. Mark 8:27-29; Luke 9:18-20). The answer to that means everything, affects everything: what you live for and are willing to die for. Where the buck stops. Where the final line in the sand is drawn. Christian living, the life of faith, is the fight to recognize the lordship of God both in Christ and over your life. "You are not your own. You are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God" (I Cor. 6:19-20)---that is the way of life, and life more abundant.

The center is still the center.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Further Up, Further In (Homily 55)

What hath God wrought?

"I have trusted in Thy mercy. My heart shall rejoice in Thy salvation. I will sing unto the Lord, because He has dealt bountifully with me." Ps. 13:5-6

The foundations of the past are hope and strength for today; light and guidance come from what has already been established. "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path" (Ps. 119:105), a word written long before I was born and spoken long before the foundations of the earth were laid. In fact, the Christian life is all about foundations, about seeing them laid thick and solid. It is all about God setting precedent, of watching Him build His case in your life like a man builds a tower, or better yet, a cathedral. Watch each brick be laid and ornamentation carved, and slowly but surely the monstrous edifice takes shape before your eyes, and what was once an amorphous rubble becomes a sublime work of art.

"I support which candidate?"

It is all art with God. All beauty. All true beauty and beautiful truth. It is not about machinery or efficiency. God is not reducible to a system. We are not here to deduce and define some divine algebra. We are not here to "figure it out," not because there is nothing to figure out but because the figure is too great for us, a figure shaped in the Person of God. We do not comprehend Him; we stand in awe, in overwhelming humility and wonder. We stand still and know that He is God and that we will never reach the end of Him. We can never reduce Him to our myriad manias, to our legalistic claptrap or liberal corrosion, to our efforts to explain or obscure Him. Thank God that He is greater than all our rabid reductionism, or innate and insane desire to make everything smaller than us.

God has revealed Himself, not that we may "figure" Him "out," but that we may begin to know Him (John 17:3), not as a principle or some cosmic machinery, but as a person, as a friend would a friend or a lover a lover. To this end He is building His presence into your life, brick by brick, moment by moment, until He is the most real thing you know, the one true thing, the Fact above all other facts. The point of Christian living, of the life of faith, is to know that God is real: vividly, intimately, personally real. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something: an ideology, a gimmick, or another reductionism. They cannot give you God, the reality of God spreading over and through every inch of your life like waves to the sand of the shore.

Nope. Still haven't arrived.

Like a good marriage, God is known over time, not grasped in an instant. You must never fall into the snare that says, "I have arrived" when it comes to your relationship with God, that you have discovered all there is to know about Him and now the adventure is over. That can only lead to boredom and despair (and perhaps an abandoning of God for something more "exciting"). The truth is that we never arrive, even throughout eternity, not because there is nothing to arrive at, but because God is incomprehensible, beyond our full comprehension, which means it will take all eternity to know Him fully, and therein lies hope and peace and joy.

Further up. Further in.

Hope because even if we cannot see far ahead, we can see for miles behind us, and all of God's bountiful goodness and love trumps our doubts. Peace because all things are working together for our good (Rom. 8:28), working towards are knowing of God, until we finally see what life was meant for: all knowing, all intimacy, all a drawing further up and in to divine love. And joy because identity and purpose and meaning are found at last, not by an arbitrary fiat of our own but by the God who created us for Himself. So see your life for the divine art that it is. Look and see God building His presence into your days, becoming more and more real. See all that you've been through, even the hard and horrible (II Cor. 4:16-18), as the foundations of a yet greater structure, one that will stretch on into eternity, deeper and deeper into the heart of God.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Love (Isaiah's Doxology, Part IV)

"He has clothed me...He has covered me...like a bridegroom...like a bride...." Is. 61:10-11

Love is the key. (Get it?)

Isaiah's metaphor for our new identity and function point us to something in addition to that purpose and function: our purpose and function are not simply a matter of duty. Remember, he could have used any metaphor he wanted. His word choices prove that: "decks" means "to meditate" and carries the image of church service as well as a wedding, and "jewels" means any prearranged thing, even the garb and tools of a worker going to work. Yet he did not use those images, images of duty and work. He chose instead the images of a bride and groom, images of love.

You missed a spot.

Now, it is true that a bride and groom have a duty to give, both in the wedding and in the marriage. But that exception only proves the rule: we expect them to fulfill their duty because we assume that they love each other and will gladly give their best to each other. If they failed or deliberately faltered in their duty towards each other, we would feel a sense of disappointment. However, if they did their duty only out of duty and nothing more, then we would feel the same thing. We would feel as if something had been missed, left out. The situation suggested and called for more than mere dutifulness or efficiency. It called for love, a much deeper and solid thing. Love is the only sure foundation for dutiful action, because it alone can keep the fires burning for years to come.

As we adore...

Just as a bride and groom have an identity and function out of love, so too do those whom God has redeemed. Their purpose and function is done out of love, because it came from love. It was Love that redeemed totally and absolutely (John 3:16; Rom. 5:6-11; I John 4:7-10). He wrapped His people in salvation and righteousness just like a groom is decked out for his bride (and vice versa). The groom decks himself (or is decked) out of love for the bride, and because of that love he is decked in his finest, in all that makes the bride happy. Likewise the bride adorns (or is adorned) out of love for the groom, and because of that love she adorns herself with beauty, with all that makes the groom happy. Every action belongs to love. It is a mutual reception of joy, each giving to and receiving from each other out of love for each other. That is the image Isaiah is going for, that God is going for through him. God has decked His people out in the best that He has: a salvation and righteousness all-encompassing and overwhelming. And as He has given His best out of love, so too His people give back their best out of love. To do it for any lesser or other reason would be a corruption of the whole relationship.

...so too we adore.

This is where all the "relational" language comes from in Christianity. Having a "relationship" with God may be an overused and abused idea, but it is still the closest to the truth. We were made to love God, saved to love God, and we can only love Him the same way we come to love anyone else: we must begin to know Him. Such knowledge is only possible through His self-disclosed revelations: Nature (Ps. 19:1-4; Rom. 1:19-20) and Natural Law (Rom. 2:12-15), as well as His word (II Tim. 3:16; Heb. 4:12) and Word (Heb. 1:1-4). We must learn who He is and what He loves. We must learn to listen to Him, talk to Him, and spend time with Him. If we are to love God, then we must know God, and if we are to know God, then we must immerse ourselves in His revelations. Spend your time amongst Nature and its beauty. Spend your time studying virtue and truth. Above all, spend your time in His word, learning from His Spirit (I Cor. 2:6-12) and His Son. From that soil your knowledge will grow, and from that your love will grow, and from that and that alone will your activity grow, for truth is the foundation of love, and love is the foundation of life.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Deliberate (Isaiah's Doxology, Part III)

"He has clothed me...He has covered me...as a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels." Is. 61:10-11

The source of Isaiah's joy is not just that God's deliverance is absolute and total but also that it is neither arbitrary nor random. This is the meaning behind the next set of metaphors. Isaiah says that God has completely covered His people in deliverance and justification just like "a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments" and "a bride adorns herself with her jewels." The Hebrew words here are very interesting. "Decks" does mean "to dress," but it has specific religious connotations. The word literally means "to meditate," and thus is often used to mean "to dress as a priest for a religious service." The image is of purpose and function: you do not dress this way for just any reason or any day. There is a specific reason: it's your wedding day, or it's your turn to fulfill the priestly office. This is why the word means "to meditate": you do not meditate on the air or nothingness or anything that you want. Rather, you become focused, amassing all of your concentration on one thing. There is a purpose and function to what you're doing. Likewise, there is a purpose and function to God's deliverance and justification.

It's a Jared.

A bride adorns herself with "jewels," which in Hebrew means "something prepared or prearranged." The idea is not just of jewels but jewelry, i.e., not separate gemstones placed anywhere in any which way, but rather arranged in a pattern that matches and sequences color and size and shape into a single item whose parts enhance the whole. It is rich with purpose. Finding a lone jewel on the ground somewhere suggest no purpose, but finding them prearranged into jewelry does. There is a purpose and function; the thing is meant for a specific reason. In fact, the Hebrew word for "jewels" literally means any prepared or prearranged thing---the armor and weapons of a soldier or the luggage and bags of a traveler. The idea is the same: the prearrangement is all part of a larger plan and purpose (whether to make the bride more beautiful, the soldier more dangerous, or the traveler more prepared). So too is the deliverance and justification of God's people.

"That was deliberate!"

God does not cloth His people in salvation and righteousness, does not envelope them and hide them in deliverance and justification, just because. Redemption is not random. The Messiah did not set captives free on a whim, abandoning them right after the rescue. It is all deliberate, with a two-fold reason given at the beginning of the chapter: (1) "that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He might be glorified," and (2) "they shall build the wastes of old, they shall raise up the former desolations, and they shall repair the waste cities" (vs. 3-4). Herein is the double-barreled purpose for those who belong to God: that God would be glorified in their redemption and that they would continue the work started by the Messiah. The first speaks to their identity and ultimate purpose. The second speaks to their activity and immediate purpose. Both are interconnected, one leading to the other.

The identity of one who belongs to God is one who has been swallowed up in deliverance and justification. Where once they were captives to sin, they now belong to God, and the transaction itself is glorious to God who wrought it. Now, our identity is the foundation of our activity. Who we are determines what we do. This is why identity is so vital to people (especially today when identity is a nebulous beast at best). Until we know who we are, our meaning is lost to us: we don't know why we're here or what we're meant to do. For most people, the best they can do is make a half-educated, half-guessed approximation and hope for the best. The identity of God's people, however, is not a guess on their part but a calling on His (Rom. 8:28-30). They are "called" the "trees" and "planting" of God, called to be absolutely God's---planted, watered, tended.

This identity is not something we make for ourselves. It is something we are made by God, and there is the ground for glorifying God: we are the work of His hands, not our own. Any strength we have, any good we do, any purpose we find all comes from the life we've been given by Him. That is our ultimate purpose, viz., to let all that we do be an act if worship to the one who made us His own. Worship is to be our life, because we are God's and God is ours.

What that life of worship looks like leads us to the activity of those who belong to God: praise is to be the permanent pulse of their existence. But there is more to praise than singing and music. It is not less than that, but it is more. The way they worship is to continue on the work of the Messiah, the work of redemption, the "ministry of reconciliation" begun by Him (II Cor. 5:18-19). It is what Jesus meant when He called His own "salt" and "light" (Matt. 5:13-16): they savor and preserve all things with goodness and beauty and truth, and bear bright witness to God's goodness and beauty and truth. Men will see their works and glorify their Father who is in heaven.

"It's simple, really."

This is the place of "good works" in the Christian Faith, and it is the solution to James' paradox (James 2:14-26). To say that "faith without works is dead" is to assume that activity springs from identity, and if your identity is one who belongs to God then your activity will necessarily be good works that glorify Him before men. If there is no activity, then there is no identity. If there are no works in any shape or form, then your faith is not real, i.e., it is "dead". Paul is saying the exact same thing when talks of the "fruits if the Spirit" (Gal. 5:16-25): if we belong to God, if we are now the people of the living God (II Cor. 6:16) wherein His Spirit dwells (I Cor. 6:19-20), then there will necessarily be certain results, certain quantifiable ways of worship. If there are none, then you do not belong to God. It is that simple, that practical.

Only star-gazers change the world.

Everybody seems to miss the practical side of our doctrines, which is not how it should be. Christianity is practical mysticism, i.e., its divine realities are meant to be practical realities. Its word is to be made flesh. To belong to God, to be wrapped up safe and snug inside of His deliverance and justification, is not to become some airy abstraction. On the contrary, it has purpose and function, identity and activity, just as a bride and groom prepare for their wedding day, or as a priest prepares for his duties. You would not see a groom in his glory, dressed in his finest and surrounded by his "best men," and accuse him of impractical abstractionism. You would not look upon the bride in her beauty, in shining white and sparkling jewels arranged in perfect accentuation, and dismiss her as a hopeless day-dreamer whose actions have no function. You would not (though some might dare) consider a priest, dressed in his robes and rushing towards the church with bible and books in hand and glasses tilted down his nose, and say that his garb and gestures served no purpose. There is a purpose, whether you like it or not.

It is the same with those who belong to God, who have been buried deep into salvation and righteousness. They have been bought with a price and decked out for a purpose so that they might glorify God in their body and in their spirit, which our God's.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Joy (Isaiah's Doxology, Part I)

"I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall be joyful in my God...." Is. 61:10-11

The book of Isaiah is a fascinating work. It's also a large work, containing 66 chapters and covering a myriad of incidents, prophecies, blessings, and denouncements. Amidst it all, however, you can discover a singular reoccurring theme: the inevitable fall and corruption of God's people, the inevitable and preplanned judgment against them, and their inevitable and preplanned redemption. Their redemption usually centered around a messianic figure, whether it be Cyrus the Great (Is. 45:1-6, et. al.) or some future person unidentified in Isaiah's time (i.e., the main figure of the "Servant Songs").

Chapter 61 begins with a declaration made by the "Servant" (vs.1-3), a declaration Jesus would later claim He fulfilled (Luke 4:16-21). The declaration states what the "Servant" will do and how it will affect God's people. It then ends with a doxology by Isaiah speaking for those people (vs. 10-11), and in the process he provides some peculiar commentary on the exact nature of the work that God has wrought through His "Servant".

It just keeps spinning and spinning...

Isaiah (speaking for God's people) says he will "rejoice" and be "joyful" in God and what He has done. In the original language, the first word literally meant "to be bright" while the second literally meant "to spin," like a top or dancer. Now, we should all understand such notions. We have all experienced or seen someone's face "light up" over someone or something, creating a "glow" that affects everyone around them. We have also all experienced or seen moments when words fail and yet something must be done, so you shout or pump your fist or clap your hands or even spin about. You have been filled from top to bottom with ecstatic energy and you just have to release it. This is the idea Isaiah is trying to express: God has made the faces of His people light up by filling them with such immense joy that they can't sit still.

"Why so serious?"

Before I end this post (but continue the series), let me note something: joy is to be a form of evangelism (one of many). Who God actually is and what He has actually done should create an ecstatic delight in us towards Him, and that delight should be one of the things that leads people to ask for an answer to the hope that is within us. I am not referring to faked happiness. I have seen---we all have seen---and been around too many Christians to whom the "joy of the Lord" is merely trumped-up enthusiasm to be maintained at all costs. Let it be said here (if it is said nowhere else) that true Christian joy is not found in plastic smiles and voices worn like masks over dull and despairing souls. It is not found in common courtesy, naturally cheerfulness, a "sunny disposition," or even Southern hospitality. We like to think that's where joy comes from or what it looks like, but we are mistaken. Real joy, Christian joy, is something far different.

Joy comes from loving God, which comes by knowing God, which comes by trusting God. In other words, the life of faith is our channel of joy in God. We learn of His promises and truths (about Himself, ourselves, and all manner of things), we trust and believe in His promises and truths, and then we act on that trust and belief. Then, upon the moment of action or sometime thereafter, God delivers, and the reality of His presence is revealed (however briefly) to us; perhaps not in the way we expected, but still in a way impossible to misidentify. It is there, at the intersection where faith leads to action and action leads to sight, that is where God becomes real, becomes closer than a brother and more intimate than a lover; and in that knowing of Him we grow to love Him truer and deeper, and trust and believe Him more and more, and act again, and see again, and know and love again, and trust and believe again, and act once more, and see once more, and know and love once more, again and again, throughout all time and into eternity. That's where the joy comes from: "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You."

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Rob Bell and the Kinetic Force of Truth

"...the truth shall set you free." John 8:32

In his book Velvet Elvis, Rob Bell uses an interesting metaphor to describe the Christian life (or "journey," if you prefer). He said it is like jumping on a trampoline. The jumping is your life experiences, propelling you closer and closer to God. The springs on the trampoline represent the various Christian doctrines, giving support and strength to your jumping. They keep it working, but (says Bell) they are not the point. The point of the trampoline is to jump. If we focus on the springs rather than on jumping, then we will never jump (or won't jump well). Likewise, if we spend all our time focusing on doctrine rather than knowing God, then we will never know God (or won't know Him well). If we lose a spring or swap it for a different one, it doesn't matter as long as we keep jumping. Thus, if we lose belief in a particular doctrine (i.e., the Trinity or the Virgin birth) or swap it for a different one, it doesn't matter as long as we continue knowing God, because that's primary. All else is secondary.

I sympathize with the image. Knowing God, drawing deeper in and closer to the Godhead in all His Beauty, is the fundamental purpose of our lives. To know God more is to love Him more, and to love Him more and more is how we glorify Him and enjoy Him forever. Furthermore, we shouldn't let secondary (or even tertiary) issues bog us down. Some things are better left to preference; others to silence. God is primary, and all else is indeed secondary.

I agree with the image so much, in fact, that I believe it reveals two flaws in Bell's idea that doctrines, central doctrines like the Trinity and the Virgin Birth, are "secondary" things that can be easily discarded when we find them inconvenient.

You're doing it wrong.

The first flaw is that, while springs are secondary to the act of jumping, they are no less necessary, for without them you couldn't even begin to jump. Bell incorrectly assumes that "secondary" is equivalent to disposable, which is not always the case, and his trampoline image proves it. No one buys a trampoline for its springs; they buy it to jump. However, no one would buy a trampoline without springs, because that would defeat the purpose of jumping. No springs, no jumping. Likewise, no doctrine, no knowing God. God is not known in the abstract or ethereal, in secret or dark places (Is. 45:19). He is only known in some kind of concrete tangible, whether it be a word or a person. "No man has seen God at any time...[but] he who sees Me has seen the Father" (John 1:18; 14:8-9), i.e., God must be enfleshed if we are to know Him; the trampoline must be enspringed if we are to jump upon it.

The second flaw is that, while you may continue to jump even if you lose springs, you will necessarily jump lower. Bell also incorrectly assumes that losing (or even swapping) springs will somehow have either no effect or a negligible effect on your jumping, which is not true. To lose a spring is to lose part of the kinetic energy to jump. Lose enough of them and you lose jumping all together. If you want to keep jumping (and jumping well), then you need all the springs, working together. Likewise, to lose a doctrine (especially a central doctrine) is to lose part of the concrete tangibles that bring God into your life. Lose enough of them, and you lose God all together, disappearing into a cloud of vagaries and guesswork. If you want to know God, to have Him be real in your life, then you don't just need doctrines; you need a creed, a coalition of doctrines working together in a solid orthodoxy that will propel you deeper and deeper into God.

Dig deeper, son.

Furthermore, if you want to jump higher (which is part of Bell's overall image), it will certainly do you no good to lose springs, but it also won't do you any good to simply swap them out for different springs (or even not-springs). What you need is stronger springs, not different ones or none at all. You need springs that are thicker, tighter, capable of producing even more kinetic force. Likewise, if you want to know God more, then don't lose your doctrines or continually swap them out for different ones. Make them stronger, deeper, thicker, truer. Don't abandon them because them seem confusing or overwhelming; dive into them. Study and study them, find their logic, purpose, and application(s), and then make them your own. You will not get closer to God by simply abandoning your truths or swapping them around like a never-ending shell-game. You need to drill down into them, thickening them up, for truth has its own kinetic force. It alone has the power to launch you further into the heavens. It alone can set you free to fly.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Spider-Man and the Moral Force of Beauty

"Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us and establish the work of our hands...." Ps. 90:17 (KJV)

Our God is beautiful. In an abstract sense, He is Beauty: the source, summation, and perfection of all that is beautiful. In a practical sense, however, He is beautiful to us: our senses, our hearts, and our sentiments. The Hebrew word used for "beauty" in this verse is "no'am," which means (amongst other things) someone or something that creates delight to the beholder. It is not beauty in the void but rather beauty beheld, gazed upon, contemplated, and desired (Ps. 27:4). It is not a static thing but a dynamic thing, because it drives us to do something. Something to please it. Something to make it proud. Thus, our delight in God's "delightfulness" is what establishes the work of our hands.

The parallels to romantic love are impossible to ignore. Naturally, I'm not referring to mere lust or affectionate infatuation (i.e., a "crush"), but a true and deep soul-stirring and -shattering reaction caused by one who can only be described as "beloved," the one who is loved. For the beauty of the beloved, the young man will make a fool of himself with sappy poems or silly treats or stupid feats; he will exhaust himself in charming idiocy. For the beauty of the beloved, the older man will not leave her for any other; who she is makes him whole. It's like that great American philosopher and film icon Peter Parker said in Spider-man about Mary Jane: "You know what kind of man you wanna be." Of course, I can only speak for men, since I am one by the accident of birth. However, I am sure that women can think of their own parallels to the theme: the beauty of the beloved establishes the work of your hands.

Remember, this is not about outward appearance; this is about delightfulness, which is something more all-encompassing. God is a Spirit and has no outer form, and yet He creates beauty in those who behold Him. The mystery of that paradox is deep, but the point here is that beauty is far greater than outward show; it is about finding deep, abiding joy in someone because of who they are. Everyone who's ever been and is still in love knows what I'm talking about: it's as if the other person fills up the whole room. Not necessarily because of their personality or their physical shape, but because it's them.  They are beautiful; you cannot reduce it to one thing, for to reduce it is to lose it and make an idol out of one of their many facets.

This is what makes beauty, true delightfulness, so important. Beauty has moral force, for good or ill. In the best case, it will create true love, which will drive you towards acts of true goodness. So in Paradise Lost, Satan himself is struck "stupidly good" when he sees the unfallen beauty of Eve (IX.455-66). In the worst case, false beauty (evil and error disguised as beauty) will create perverted love, which will drive you towards destructive ends. So in "Book I" of The Faerie Queene, Redcross is turned from the journey of holiness by the false beauty of Duessa. In either case, beauty has great moral power: it shapes our sentiments, which in turn shapes our actions, which in turn shapes our culture (esp. our arts and entertainment), which in turn shapes us further. It is an inevitable and valuable as well as perilous cycle, especially if it falls into the wrong hands: moral milksops with shallow views of everything, or moral perverts who have exchanged beauty for ugliness.

For the Christian, the beauty of God is our moral force. The beauty of who He is and what He has done creates delight and desire and love, which in turn constrains us to do (II Cor. 5:14-15; John 14:15). We do not "do" out of duty or fear but love, love for our beloved, the Beloved, who has called us His children and brothers and sisters and friends and lovers and every affectionate and intimate name and category that we have. In the name and for the love of our Beloved, let us go and do. Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and let it establish the work of our hands. Let our works be acts of goodness and compassion to the outcast and suffering. Let our works be acts of truth and reason against the skeptic and the madman. And (perhaps above all) let our works be acts of beauty and wonder and glory in our culture, filling it with songs and books and works of light. Let it season like salt our goodness and truth. They too must be acts of beauty, for the way to a man or woman's mind, soul, and body is through their heart.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

"...and all the day long." (In His Hands, Part II)

"[God] caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them. He cleaved the rock, and the waters gushed out." Isaiah 48:21

We all assume that God is arbitrary, that He is shooting from the hip and working off the cuff. It is natural for us to think so, for we are arbitrary, and we make God in our own image. Like pagans of old, we presuppose that the world and the universe are both fundamentally chaotic, and why wouldn't we? It is larger than us, and its laws (if it has any) are hidden from us. Men are mad with their violence and corruptions, and the earth is mad with its disasters and calamities. And there we stand, small and infinitesimal before it all, overwhelmed by constant floods of mixed messages, random actions, and indifferent nature.

Standing where we are, it is easy to shrink all souls to our own size, to think that if we're overwhelmed then everyone's overwhelmed, including God. He tries His best, of course, and His all-power and all-wisdom come in handy for cleaning up messes (when He gets around to them). But from our point of view, we cannot help but think that He to gets frustrated and can only make decisions on the fly. Perhaps we're being reverent when we think this, trying to "excuse" God; but we still think He's a bit out of His league.

The key, however, is "from our point of view". It is one of the greatest faults of humanity that we always reduce everything down to our size, to our position and place. It is understandable. We want sympathy with others; it helps us feel like we're not alone in our situation. But here's the thing: God already sees from our point of view, both as God (Ps. 103:13-14) and Man (Heb. 4:14-15). Thus, He is not in need of seeing from our position. On the contrary, we need to learn to see from His. If we do, then we will learn this startling, offensive truth: there is no arbitration in God; it is all plan.

Look at Israel. God knew beforehand that they would sin (Is. 48:3-8) and had already planned the purging, perfecting punishment (vs. 9-11). But he had also preplanned Cyrus to be their salvation from that punishment (Is. 45:1-7; 48:12-16), a salvation coming in spite of all their sins (Is. 48:17-21). He had already planned out the whole thing. The exile was not an accident, and Cyrus was not "Plan B". It was all "Plan A". God knows there is a snake in the garden, and He already has a Seed fit to crush its head. He is never surprised.

We are frequently surprised, however, because we only see from our finite position. One of the marks of growing in holiness and sanctification and spiritual maturity is being torn from your agoraphobic bubble and led into the big country of our big God. True, there are many layers to our bubbles, but if you belong to God He will pop every one of them to finally let in some air and light, clean like an ocean breeze and clear like the noonday sky. Even then we will have only just begun to comprehend the height and depth and length and breadth of the love of God, which covers all angles as well as a multitude of sins.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

"In the night season..." (In His Hands, Part I)

"Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have tried and chosen thee in the furnace of affliction." Is. 48:10

In the Divine Comedy, Dante discovers an odd rule of Mount Purgatory. Every soul there may ascend the mountain as they will except at night, where a great and horrible darkness falls over everything. At times like that, the only thing to do is to sit and wait in the dark. Throughout the poem (and in typical Medieval symbolism), light is representative of God. Those in Hell, being separated from God, have no light. Those in Paradise, being in God's presence, have all-light (or all the light that they desire). Purgatory, however, goes through times of light and dark, of ascension and stillness. It alone bears that dichotomy.

In the Comedy, Purgatory is not just a Roman Catholic image of the afterlife. It is also an image of the human soul as it lives in the here and now, going through the birth-pangs of sanctification. What Dante (good Christian that he was) was trying to point out is that sanctification is necessarily a halting affair. You cannot move onward without the gracious light of God's truth, and the times that light is hidden are part of the proceedings. If you are to love God, then you must not only know God but also have the humility to trust His goodness, especially in the dark.

The idea of being purged through dark times is biblical to the core. Sometimes it is a direct result of living in sin, such as Israel in both their wilderness wanderings and (in the case of Isaiah) their Babylonian exile. Other times, it is a means to prove your reliance on God alone, such as Jesus' temptation in the wilderness or Paul's "thorn in the flesh." In either case, the end result is to be the same: God is your all in all, and His grace is sufficient for you. This principle is vividly apparent in Isaiah, where God wages a ceaseless war against hubris, the hubris that sees itself as God and its own salvation (Is. 47:8-14). God will smash all of our false hopes and counsels, smash them with a furious, unrelenting love that will not leave you in the rot of your idolatry and ignorance.

We must understand: too often we view "the furnace of affliction," those dark nights of the soul, as a bad thing, as a hindrance and a failure. It is true (as said before) that those times can be a result of sin in your life, but we will know those times because we will know our sin, even though we have refused to deal with it. But there are other times where there is no conscious sin that has beset us, and you do yourself no favors by racking your brain to think of one. This is because in either case (whether by sin or not), the purging is not a failure. On the contrary: it is all a part of the plan.

Look at the Babylonian exile. Though it was a result of Israel's longstanding and sinful obstinacy, it was still under God's purview. He knew from the beginning that Israel would be obstinate, and thus He planned accordingly (Is. 48:3-11). The "thus" is always present, always paramount. What happened did not surprise God at all, and the subsequent purging was not 'Plan B". It was always Plan A, for everything is all plan. God knew, and thus He planned. Whom He foreknew, He predestined to justification and glory. The days of purging are not about God's displeasure (as we so often think). Rather, it is about the sovereign grace of God. Remember Mount Purgatory: the Sun's shinings were not arbitrary, nor was the darkness an accident. It is all plan, all within the scope and scheme of redemption. If God has called you and set you on the path, then you will make it home.

To be sure, your journey will not be a straight line. God does not work in a straight line, because He is not a straight line. He is not the prime principle of some system working out its logical conclusion, nor is He a cosmological administrator working out kinks, cleaning up messes, and keeping everything within protocol. He is not mindless or helpless. He is the loving Creator, and all His movements are artful, purposeful, and loving. Always loving, for the Great and Glad Creator is your Great and Glad Father, and He will lead you home on a path wrought for you, wrought by His own hands, intentionally infused with sunlight and tears. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Homily 47: For the Love of God (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"I have formed this people for Myself; they shall show forth my praise." Is. 43:21

The universe dances for the love of God, and by the love of God, for by the love of God were all things created, flying forth from the bounteous, rapturous joy of His Being like light from the sun, like sparks from the furnace, like foam from the sea. We were built from love and for love: from the love of God most glorious so that we may love God most glorious and all His glorious creatures. This is the true way of worship: not in words or song or dance but love, love that is not less than and yet is greater than all expression. True, our halting metaphors are ever-inadequate to pronounce our great purpose, yet we cannot help ourselves. We must sing, we must say, we must do, for the aching desire will not leave us be. Our bones burn until we prophesy the love of God to us, to all, to every one and thing.

Herein is love: not that we created ourselves, but that God created us, and recreated us. He is in the old things and the new things, and newer and newer things still, renewed in deeper and starker shades of glory and grace. There is no bottom to Him, and yet there is no bottom without Him. The dark is endless, the void deep where His love is not, where all things are not. Outside of His love is No-thing, and those who turn to its noths will feel the burn of endless exile, rejection by and of the summit of all light and desire. Who are we to neglect so great a salvation?  If we would be perfect as God is perfect, holy as He is holy, then we should abide by the summation of his commandments and law: love God, and necessarily love others (Matt. 22:37-40; Gal. 5:14).

But we are evil creatures indeed, for no one seeks after holiness, after righteousness, after God. No one seeks the way of worship, no not one. We have all of us turned astray, to our own way. Falling deeper and deeper into the abyss of our own isolation, our terrible loneliness, hard-won by our own spite and hell-born ignorance. God above, most brilliant and profoundest Being of the Deep Light, cleave our minds with Your truth, our selves with Your Selves. Strike us with Your love, your wild and reckless love; like a flash and crash of lightning against a dead tree, make your mark against our bark and spark the fire that burns towards Heaven once again. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013