A Christian Perspective on the ISIS Crisis

21 Coptic Christians beheaded.
Over 100 Assyrian Christians captured.
Oppression.
Violence.

Christianity began facing oppression and violence. I mean, hey, we worship the Guy Who was betrayed by a best friend and publicly executed to scare the populace out of both following Him and resisting demanded public order. So that Christians would continue to face oppression and violence is obviously not that weird, let alone unexpected.

I could talk about how Jesus told us that persecution would come to us just as it came to Him. I could talk about the demonic spiritual realities that Christians know are at work and against which we fight. But I want us to look above and beyond those frames. Let's look for a moment at God's promise and plan at work when we see oppression and violence in the world, and when, like now, that oppression and violence is targeted forcefully against Christians.

Peter, one of first leaders of the Church, wrote in the years following Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension:

And if any of you suffers as a Christian, don't be ashamed, glorify God for this opportunity, because the time for judgment to begin starts with God's Household. And if it starts with us first, what is the fate of those who refuse to believe the God's Good News?! And if the good person is barely saved, where will the ungodly and sinful person be found?! (1 Peter 4.16-18)

As far as we Christians are concerned, God's plan in human history reveals a startling paradigm, and a brilliant hope:

# 1, Christians suffer first, then God brings His righteous indignation to bear against those who refuse to submit to the the One and Only True and Living God, the Holy Trinity: Yahweh of Armies! (ironically, ISIS, a group obsessed with forcing others to submit to them, will soon be forced to submit to the True and Living Holy Triune God. Their false god will not save them.)

# 2, Christians will be saved through the oppression and violence, while the evil of ISIS will be wiped out. Ironically, no matter how much ISIS tries to destroy Christians, and even those Christians they manage to enslave and kill, Christians who trust in Christ for eternal life will always be ultimately saved. Meanwhile, ISIS is doomed to die, to fade from the meaningful strands of human history. The judgment of God ISIS thinks they are bringing will ultimately only bring the judgment of the True and Living God upon their own head, so much so that we will one day ask, "Where are those ISIS killers? They disappeared from the land of the living."

# 3, Christians, despite being tortured, executed, hated, mocked, raped, and enslaved, still carry a compassion and framework that hopes and prays that our God would change the hearts of ISIS. As Peter speaks, almost 2000 years ago, he makes clear that it is only those who refuse to believe in the Good News God has given who face eternal judgment from God. And that is significant, because he didn't say, "our persecutors" or "whoever hated us" or "whoever killed a Christian." We as Christians still hope that a member of ISIS will turn away from his rebellion against God and come to follow Christ and thus escape eternal destruction in hell. So, if by the gracious sovereignty of Jesus the Messiah, the Person who is fully God and fully human, a person who has not turned to put their faith in Christ, even if you're a member or sympathizer of ISIS, consider the love we Christians and our God has for you, and turn to Christ.

Can God Make a Rock to Big for Him to Lift?

from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/
c/c6/Moro_Rock-View_from_Potwisha.jpg

So many people ask "Can God make a rock so big that He can't lift it?" Now, there is the long answer and the short answer.

The Short Answer is: No. God can't make a rock too big for Him to lift.

But before I give the long answer, I want to point out that many people who ask this question are not really asking it out of a sincere desire to know the answer of the question, rather many people ask it out of a deep sense of pain, and the pre-rendered understanding that God cannot be all powerful, truly unlimited in power. And that position often has more to do with a time or even many times where the person feels that God has failed him or her, and that if He was all powerful, He would have used Him power to protect them from some loss, pain, or violation. Other times it is asked because there is something present in the person's life that God would obviously be responsible for in some way, but the person doesn't see God doing anything about it. This makes the person come to the conclusion that God can't do anything about it. And other times people are trying to come up with some clever intellectual argument to disprove the idea of an all powerful God. So, before I explain the more intellectual response, I want those of you who are hurting and reading this to know that I understand and God Himself understands, and wants you to have an honest conversation with Him about what you have suffered. You  can trust Him and He can do something about what you have experienced. He has a plan and purpose for it, and if you have an authentic and meaning relationship with Him by trusting in Jesus for eternal life, that plan and purpose will most certainly result in your good and God's glory. Trust Him with the loss, pain, violation, or struggle. He can handle it, but you'll have to trust Him with it.

Now, as far the intellectual explanation of the question's "NO" answer is concerned, the answer is "NO" for a lot of reasons, but we will start with the most obvious reason. It is a bad question. If by the word "God" we mean the One Being who has truly limitless, infinite power over anything and everything, then self-evidently there is nothing that can be created that will exceed His power. If we also understand the word "God" as signifying the One Being that exists outside of space-time, then obviously again no rock can be created by God that exceeds space-time and exceeds God, because space-time is not one of the qualities that God exists in, rather space-time exists within His existence and all created rocks would exist within space-time. Or if you cede that space-time might not be the only meaningful dimension of existence (i.e. the spiritual realm), where at least space would not be a relevant component of existence, then the fact that all created entities would have contingent and even dependent existence would likewise bar any and every created entity from exceeding the power and presence of God. Even an entity without the quality of spatiality or an entity that was infinite in some sense could never be infinite in the same way that God was, because all infinite entities would still have contingent/dependent or limited infiniteness, whereas God has non-contingent and non-dependent and non-limited infiniteness. In other words, God has infinite existence where as all created entities by virtue of their being created could not have infinite existence.

Hence the answer is NO, God can't create anything that exceeds Him in any way. The problem with the question misunderstands the nature of the entities involved or the qualities attributed to them. And thus, it also doesn't mean that God is not truly all-powerful, because all-powerfulness by definition excludes the possibility of not maintaining itself, otherwise the definition changes, and you are not really talking about all-powerfulness. That is all-powerfulness means not "can actualize non-contingent/dependent/finite entities" but "can actualize any kind of contingent/dependent/finite entities." Otherwise you are going to end up violating the very meaning of the word all-powerful.

The even more abbreviated long answer is "NO, because that's a bad question" in other words "your syllogism is in error." If anyone has any questions, please comment.

Much Love by the Spirit to all

Signing Bibles is Kinda Creepy...

So on Feb. 3, I was at Moody Bible Institute's Founder's Week, which was pretty cool. Chip Ingram was the speaker for the evening session. In a very generous move, he and his ministry decided to give away one of Chip's books to every student at Moody. So I of course went to get myself a free book, it is free after all. Now, as I waited in line to get one of these free books, I was told that Pastor Ingram was signing the books. So, I was with my friend Adam, and we said, "Hey, what else do we have to do, let's wait in line to get it signed." So we waited for a while, but as we neared the signing table my eyes caught of glimpse of something I saw as terribly peculiar and creepy! Did my eyes really see what I thought they saw? O-hoh, yes indeed! Some people (equipped with a copy of the free book mind you) were whipping out their Bibles and having Chip sign them. I mean there they were with a perfectly good book that was intended even to be signed, but people instead got this man to sign their Bible--a BIBLE! Who signs a Bible? Sure, you might give a gift Bible and write a little note, but who signs a Bible like they would sign their own book? That just strikes me as creepy and wrong. Really creepy. I mean, what kind of view to people have of both their Bible and Chip Ingram that they think that having him sign it like a autograph diary is a good and legitimate use? It is a Bible, why would you have him sign a Bible? It is just creepy. I could explain how creepy this is to me and why, but suffice it to say that when I saw such actions I was disturbed in my soul at the profound not-rightness of it all. It just seems that a line was crossed somewhere in there--it just seems wrong, creepy wrong.