What is Our mental Environment & Why Does it Matter? Part 2

As Christians we must not confuse making our faith credible to the world with seeking its approval. Craving the world's approval is a sure road to perdition. Notwithstanding, Christianity refuses to abandon the world to itself but seeks instead to restore it to God. Now, such restoration, minimally, means changing the way people think. And changing the way people think means entering and reshaping their mental environment. We must start somewhere. Not everything in the most corrupt mental environment is wrong. We must look for points of entry, which are often the points of greatest need or doubt in a culture. At such points, by contending for the truth and relevance of the Christian faith, we can demonstrate its credibility. Moreover, we must do this without watering down the faith or selling it out to preserve a vain shine of respectability.

A modern theodicy will need to combine credibility in the current mental environment with faithfulness to Christian orthodoxy. As such, it will need to be fairly elaborate. This elaborateness, however, raises a potential worry: what do we make of people who in times past got by without elaborate theodices, even though they faced many more evident sufferings than we do today? In the 14th century, for instance, plaque killed a third of Europe's population. Infant mortality in times past was far higher than it is today, touching virtually every family. Yet despite such afflictions and hardships, there was no call then for elaborate theodices. Why, then, do we need them now? Is it because Western intellectuals simply have too much time on their hands and fret about little things our ancestors would have ridiculed?

Perhaps, but just because people didn't feel the need to construct elaborate theodicies in times past doesn't mean that they didn't feel the weight of the problem of evil. More likely, it just means that they thought they had an adequate theodicy. For instance, Augustine's theodicy, in which evil is mitigated by the ultimate good that God brings out of it, has satisfied believers for centuries. But the real need to construct a more elaborate theodicy has arisen because science has raised a new set of issues about the goodness of God in creation. Simply put, we need a more elaborate theodicy because people are asking harder questions about divine benevolence. Answers that may have worked for past mental environments don't seem to work very well any longer. What's needed are answers that make the goodness of God credible in the current mental environment.

Theodicy is fundamentally about the benevolence of ultimate reality -- whether what ultimately underlies the world is benevolent or not. A successful theodicy demonstrates that, despite evil, ultimate reality is benevolent. Many contemporary thinkers have abandoned the task of theodicy. Materialists, who regard ultimate reality as consisting of material entities governed by unbroken natural laws, are a case in point. Take Richard Dawkins: "In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference." Clearly, for Dawkins and his fellow atheistic materialists, rock-bottom reality is not benevolent.

For Christians, however, God is the ultimate reality; and God's benevolence toward His creation is typically taken for granted. But on what basis are Christians entitled to believe that God is benevolent? For centuries men have asserted the concept of Divine Providence as the argument to justify the ways of God to men. Yet some consider that argument as hollow amidst the world's evil and cruelty. This is the challenge ever before us. Life's circumstances do not always go our way. When they go against us, sometimes violently, our confidence in divine benevolence depends less on an argument than on an attitude.

Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher, summarized this attitude as follows: "For everything that happens in the world it is easy to give thanks to Providence if a person has but these two qualities in himself: a habit of viewing broadly what happens to each individual and a grateful temper. Without the first he will not perceive the usefulness of things which happen; and without the second he will not be thankful for them. The apostle Paul displayed this same attitude by noting that God works all things out for the good [Romans 8:28] and that we are to thank God for all things [Ephesians 5:20]. Such an attitude, however, is warranted only if what ultimately underlies the world is benevolent. And how do we know that? It would seem, then, that we would need some argument for divine benevolence after all, if only to justify this attitude. Augustine was one of the first to answer this question when he wrote, "God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist." For Augustine, like Epictetus, theodicy required a broad perspective. The triumph of good over evil cannot be seen from a narrow vantage. Instead, the infinitely broad vantage of God's ultimate purposes for the world is needed.

All of this is sound Christian theodicy as far as it goes. But a Christian theodicy needs to go further. Plus it needs to make peace with three claims: 1) God by wisdom created the world out of nothing. 2) God exercises particular providence in the world. 3) All evil in the world ultimately traces back to human sin. Mainstream academic theology regards the first two of these as problematic and the third as, frankly, preposterous. But I will argue that all three claims are true and can be situated within a coherent Christian theodicy.

Claim 1, creation out of nothing by an all-wise God, has of late fallen on hard times. In the interest of theodicy, many mainline theologians now increasingly adopt a pared-down view of divine wisdom, knowledge and power. We thus get a god who means well but can't quite overcome the evil in the world, a god who is good but in other ways deficient. The goodness of God is preserved, but at the cost of His other attributes. Process theology, in which the world is autonomous and God changes with the world, is a case in point. Evolving gods constrained by natural laws are much the rage these days. Because creation out of nothing suggests a God to whom everything is subject, the diminished gods of these theologies then not to be ultimate but rather depend on still deeper aspects of reality.

Claim 2, concerning particular providence, refers to God's willingness and ability to act for the good of creation at particular places and times. Accordingly, God acts not just on the creation as a whole but on particular parts of it, the most important part being us -- people. God's particular providence includes miracles, answers to prayer, predictive prophecy, and, most significantly for the Christian faith, the redemption of humanity through Christ and His Cross. Particular providence contrasts with general providence, whereby God guides the course of the world as a whole. A god of general but not particular providence may thus ordain a pattern of weather, but he takes no responsibility for the tornado that blew down your barn and pays no attention to your prayers for protection from such tornadoes. A god of particular providence knows your name and the number of hairs on your head; not so a god of general providence.

Claim 3, which ascribes to human sin the entrance of evil into the world, is the most difficult to square with our current mental environment. It is also the key to resolving the problem of a specifically Christian theodicy. If you are going to blame evil on something besides God, you have two choices: conscious rebellion of creatures [as in humans and/or angels disobeying God] or autonomy of the world [as in the world doing its thing and God, though wringing His hands, unable to make a difference]. The current mental environment prefers an autonomous world. It seeks to contract the power of God at every point where God might do something to cast doubt on His goodness. Indeed, contemporary theology's resistance to claims 1 and 2 reflects its desperate need to preserve God's goodness even if that means contracting God's power. But if evil is not a consequence of the world's autonomy, then there is no need to contract God's power. It follows that once claim 3 is shown to be plausible, claims 1 and 2 become plausible as well.

Christian orthodoxy assets that human sin is the immediate or proximate cause of evil in the world. In Genesis 3, humans are tempted by a serpent, who is traditionally understood as Satan, a fallen angel, and thus a creature that is not embodied in the material stuff out of which humans are made. Consequently, the fall of humanity presupposes the fall of angelic beings. And the fall of angelic beings may presuppose some still deeper features of reality that bring about evil.

In any case, the crucial question is not the ultimate origin of evil but whether all evil in world traces back to humanity and its sin. According to this view, humanity is the gatekeeper through which evil passes into the world. In this metaphor, the Fall becomes the failure of the gatekeeper to maintain proper control of the gate. This metaphor works regardless of the ultimate source of evil that lies outside the gate [be it something that crashes the gate or suborns the gatekeeper or both]. At the heart of this type of theodicy is the idea that the effects of the Fall can be both retroactive as well as proactive [much as the saving effects of the Cross stretch not only forward in time but also backward, saving the Old Testament saints].

The view that all evil in the world traces back to human sin used to be part and parcel of a Christian worldview -- standard equipment in our mental environment. We need to reformulate its expression in a way that makes sense to the modern intellectual mind without sacrificing either the power or goodness of God. According to 1 John 5:4, the victory that overcomes the world is our faith. Christian faith -- a living faith whose author and finisher is Christ [Hebrews 12:2] -- is thus described as the essential element for bringing about Christ's ultimate triumph. Thus, we need a new and better understanding of what our faith must become -- in the here and now -- to bring about this ultimate triumph.

The key mark of a faith that overcomes the world is the ability to discern God's goodness in the face of evil. Indeed, faith's role in bringing about Christ's ultimate triumph presupposes faith's ability to discern God's goodness. Just as humanity's Fall and the consequent rise of evil resulted from the faulty belief that divine goodness is imperfect [witness Eve in the Garden of Eden, where she rejected God's will and asserts her own], so humanity's restoration and Christ's ultimate triumph over evil results from the sound belief that divine goodness is perfect [witness Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, where He surrenders His will to His Father's]. In other words, what is needed from our new theodicy is a radical realignment in our thinking so that we can again see God's goodness in creation despite the distorting effects of sin in our hearts and evil in the world. Stay tuned as we try to flesh this out over the coming few weeks.

What Is Our Mental Environment & Why Does it Matter? Part 1

We inhabit not just a physical environment but also a moral environment. Cambridge philosopher Simon Blackburn defined our moral environment as "the surrounding climate of ideas about how to live." Though we cannot help but be aware of our physical environment, we are often oblivious to our moral environment. Yet our moral environment is always deeply influential. Blackburn continued by noting,

"It determines what we find acceptable or unacceptable, admirable or contemptible. It determines our conception of when things are going well and when they are going badly. It determines our conception of what is due to us, and what is due from us, as we relate to others. It shapes our emotional responses, determining what is a cause of pride or shame, or anger or gratitude, or what can be forgiven and what cannot."

Yet Blackburn's moral environment belongs to a still larger environment -- our mental environment. Our mental environment is the surrounding climate of ideas by which we make sense of the world. It includes our moral environment since our ideas about how to live are a prime way way that we make sense of the world. But our mental environment is broader still. It includes our ideas about what exists, what can be known, and what counts as evidence for our beliefs. It assigns value to our lives and work. Above all, it determines our plausibility structures -- what we find reasonable or unreasonable, credible or incredible, thinkable or unthinkable.

Much has happened in our culture over the past 20 years. Notably, the intelligent design movement has grown internationally and pressed Western intellectuals to take seriously the claim that life and the cosmos are the product of intelligence. To be sure, many of them emphatically reject this claim. But their need to confront and refute it suggests that our mental environment is no longer stagnating in the atheistic materialism that for so long dominated Western intellectual life. This is not to say that the discussion is friendly or that Christianity is about to find widespread acceptance at places like Harvard and MIT. But instead of routinely ignoring Christianity as they did 2o years ago, many Western intellectuals now treat it with open contempt, expending a great many words to denounce it. But this is progress. The dead are ignored and forgotten. The living are scorned and reviled. Thus it can be seen as perhaps gratifying the recent rash of books by the "neo-atheists" such as Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchens' god Is Not Great, and Sam Harris' The End of Faith. These books would be unnecessary if Christianity, and theism in general, were not again a live issue.

The neo-atheists' first line of attack in challenging religious belief, and Christianity in particular, is to invoke science as the principal debunker of religion. Science is supposed to show that any God or intelligence or purpose behind the universe is not merely superfluous but an impediment to reason. Yet evidence from science shows the opposite. The case for a designing intelligence producing life and the cosmos is now on solid ground, as can be seen from such books as The Design of Life and The Privileged Planet. Indeed, the neo-atheists are not having a good time of it when they attempt to disprove Christian faith simply by appealing to science. True, their denunciations of Christianity contain many references to "science." But the denunciations are ritualistic, with "science" used as a conjuring word [like "abracadabra"]. One finds very little actual science in their denunciations.

Instead of presenting scientific evidence that shows atheism to be true [or even probable], the neo-atheists moralize about how much better the world would be if only atheism were true. Far from demonstrating that God does not exist, the neo-atheists merely demonstrate how earnestly they desire that God not exist. The God of Christianity is, in their view, the worst thing that could befall reality. According to Richard Dawkins, for instance, the Judeo-Christian God "is arguably the most unpleasant character in all of fiction. Jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic-cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

Dawkins' obsession with the Christian God borders on the pathological. Yet he underscores what has always been the main reason people reject God: the cannot believe that God is good. Eve, in the Garden of Eden, rejected God because she though He had denied her some benefit that she should have, namely, the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Clearly, a God who denies creatures benefits that they think they deserve cannot be good. Indeed, a mark of our fallenness is that we fail to see the irony in thus faulting God. Should we not rather trust that the things God denies us are denied precisely for our benefit? Likewise, the neo-atheists find lots of faults with God, their list of denied benefits being much longer than Eve's -- no surprise really, since they've had a lot longer to compile such a list!

In an interview several years back, Princeton philosopher Cornel West was asked, "What is your overall philosophical project?" He responded: "I think fundamentally it has to do with wrestling with the problem of evil." Wrestling with the problem of evil is a branch of philosophical theology known as theodicy. Theodicy attempts to resolve how a good God and an evil world can coexist. Like Cornel West, the neo-atheists are wrestling with the problem of evil. Unlike him, however, they demand a simplistic solution. For them, God does not exist, so belief in God is a delusion. But it is not just any old delusion. It is the worst of all possible delusions -- one that, unchecked, will destroy humanity.

Dawkins, for instance, regards belief in a God who does not exist as the root of all evil. He even narrated a 2006 BBC documentary with that very title -- The Root of All Evil? Demonizing religious faith is nothing new for Dawkins. A decade earlier he remarked, "I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox but harder to eradicate." Dawkins might be surprised to learn that he was here echoing none other than Adolf Hitler who said, "The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity." Given that belief in God is humanity's greatest scourge, the only legitimate business of theodicy would be to eradicate it.

By contrast, the challenge for us is to formulate a theodicy that is at once faithful to Christian orthodoxy [thereby underscoring the existence, power, and goodness of God] and credible to our mental environment [thereby challenging the neo-atheists at their own game]. But is developing such a theodicy worthwhile? Should we, as believers, even care whether such a theodicy is credible? And credible to whom? Is not credibility vastly overrated? After all, Scripture teaches that the human heart is corrupt, that expedience rather than principle dictates many of our actions, and that too often we use our minds not to seek truth but to justify falsehoods that we wish were true [see Jeremiah 17:9]. It would follow that our mental environment is itself corrupt and that credible ideas may well be false. In fact, given a sufficiently corrupt mental environment, what would be the point of appearing credible? A proposition's credibility in that case might even constitute a positive reason for rejecting it!

Thy Kingdom Come: Present

When Jesus came to earth, He brought the kingdom of God in His own person. When He began His public ministry, the very first words from His mouth after reading from Isaiah were, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near" [Matthew 4:17]. Later He said of Himself, "The kingdom of God is in your midst" [Luke 17:21, NASB]. We can say that Jesus was the kingdom because He was the only person who ever fully accepted and fully executed the will of the Father.

Jesus' passion was the kingdom. It was the major theme of His preaching. The word kingdom occurs 49 times in Matthew, 16 in Mark and 38 in Luke -- 103 times in just those three Gospels. Before He went to the cross Jesus said, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent" [Luke 4:43]. After the Resurrection the kingdom remained His driving force as He appeared to his disciples "over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God" [Acts 1:3]. Preaching the kingdom was Jesus' consuming passion.

How did Jesus Christ bring the kingdom? Primarily by bringing men and women into obedient conformity to the Father's will. This is the meaning of "your kingdom come" in its context because the immediately following and parallel words are, "your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Those who are in God's kingdom strive to do God's will. In fact, they do it.

That the kingdom of God is continuing to break out all around us is clear for all to see if we would but look around us with spiritual eyes. Yesterday, Janna and I attended church at Alli's home church in Caracas, Venezuela and while the service might as well have been in Greek for all that we were able to understand with our natural minds [it was totally in Spanish and very fast Spanish at that]. Yet, we could see a congregation of people [probably 130 +/-] totally in love with God and His Son. We watched four recent converts be baptized and learned that there were also four baptisms the previous Sunday ... this is as many or perhaps more believers' baptisms than many mainline denominational churches will have in a single year. I experienced the same thing in my previous medical missions to both Nicaragua and Cameroon. Everywhere I've gone, God has beaten me there! And His kingdom was taking root. Obviously, this has now [since Pentecost] become the overriding passion of the Holy Spirit.

When we see this though, it becomes very personal for several reasons. First, my will wants to go its own way, but being in the kingdom means my will is bent to God's will. It means repentance. Jesus often said, "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news" [see Mark 1:14; Matthew 4:17]. Being a believer, a member of the kingdom, means that we do not seek to do what we want but rather what God wants. To pray "your kingdom come" is to repent.

Secondly, this prayer demands commitment. Jesus was very direct when He said, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God" [Luke 9:62]. The kingdom of God is for those have decided to follow the Lord Jesus Christ and do not keep longingly looking back. To pray "your kingdom come" is to commit ourselves to Him above all other things.

Thirdly, the kingdom is to be pursued above all else. Jesus again gave us the authoritative word regarding this matter when He said, "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" [Matthew 6:33]. Before all else we are to seek the kingdom in obedience to Him. We cannot pray the Lord's prayer with folded hands. To pray "your kingdom come" is to actively pursue it.

Lastly, the kingdom of God is for those who have a profound dependence upon God. We cannot over-quote Jesus' words, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" [Matthew 5:3]. No one has the kingdom except those who have come to the end of themselves and have turned to God.

Praying "your kingdom come" demands a depth of commitment from us, and such a commitment produces a life that makes a difference in our society and world. Kingdom power impacts our most intimate relationships. Lives are influenced for Christ, and some are changed. We can make a difference in our schools, in our work places and even our cities. Sometimes whole societies are elevated. Our vision for society should be the kingdom of God, and that is what we are to strive for. To be sure, we will never succeed in establishing a perfect kingdom as was supposed by some of our forebears. However, kingdom living has made and does make a difference in the world. Virtually all the great social reforms in history had their roots in kingdom living. The abolition of slavery came about through the kingdom living of Christians such as William Wilberforce and Abraham Lincoln. Prison reform came from the kingdom living of Elizabeth Fry. Great advances in compassion and medical care came through Florence Nightingale. Equal rights for blacks and other minorities came about through the Rev. Martin Luther King and other great black pastors and believers. We do make a difference when we pray "your kingdom come." This is a big prayer that depends on a big God. And when truly prayed, it makes for a big life. Is your life, is my life, big enough to pray, "your kingdom come"?

Thy Kingdom Come: Past & Future

As mentioned in my previous blog, anyone who begins his or her prayer with the foundational petition of "Hallowed be Your Name as Abba-Father" will pray in a manner that is pleasing to the Father. With this in mind, the second petition, "your kingdom come" [Matthew 6:10] quickly extends the upward rush of the prayer. R. Kent Hughes notes that "the Hebrew thought structure here demands that we understand both 'your kingdom come' and 'your will be done' as enlargements on 'hallowed be your name.'" Thus the proper hallowing of God's Name as Father includes praying that His kingdom will come and His will be done. Prayer for the kingdom is to be part of the pattern of our prayer life.

Over the years conflicting interpretations have been given to the meaning of "your kingdom come." Some have argued this is a prayer for the Second Coming of Christ and that is all -- it has nothing to do with present life. Others have seen "your kingdom come" as a call to social action and nothing else -- a mandate to bring in the kingdom now through good works. And then there are those who have seen "your kingdom come" as spiritually fulfilled in the salvation of souls. And in actuality, my view is the correct interpretation and application contains elements of all these views.

Praying "your kingdom come" does not suggest in any way that God has not been or is not presently sovereign King, that His reign is only future. "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it" [Psalm 24:1]. God is already King, and His kingdom spans the entire universe. "Your kingdom come" is a call for a new and unique manifestation of His kingdom in the future.

Yet though God is already King, His reign is also future. According to Ernst Lohmeyer, the verb "come" refers here to a decisive time in the future when the kingdom will come once and for all -- an event that will happen only once. This event is, of course, the second advent of Christ when He will return, judge the world, and set up His eternal kingdom. And this prayer is at its root a cry from the heart for the final kingdom when, under Christ's rule, our evil hearts will be finally pure, our lying and deceit, distrust and shame banished, our asylums and penitentiaries gone, and all our words and actions done to the glory of God.

In truth, men and women have longed for this since the Fall. We yearn for the time when there will be "righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" as Paul describes the kingdom [Romans 14:17]. Someone on the outside may say that such thinking is utopian, and in the general sense of the word they may be right. But it is not utopian in the strictest sense because the word utopia comes from the Greek ou [not] and topos [place], signifying an impossible dream. Yet the coming advent of the kingdom of God is as sure as any established fact of history, and in it our greatest dreams will come true!

The ultimate perfection of the kingdom can happen universally only in the eternal state, not in this world. In the nineteenth century, many Christians ignored this truth amidst the characteristic optimism of that age, when it was commonly taught that the gospel would keep spreading until the kingdom would be ushered in. But those who taught this neglected the teaching of the Mystery Parables of Matthew 13, including "the Sower" and "the Tares." Those parables demonstrate that the church and its rule will be neither universal nor perfect. But what really put an end to such un-Biblical dreams were the two World Wars and the sins of the so-called "Christian nations." All of which has led many to extreme pessimism. But in actuality, as Helmut Thielicke, the great theologian and preacher at the University of Hamburg cried out in 1945 before his church that had been reduced to ruins by the many Allied air raids, "In the world of death, in this empire of ruins and shell-torn fields we pray: 'Thy kingdom come!' We pray it more fervently than ever!" That is our ultimate hope. The kingdom is coming.

"Your kingdom come" is to be part of the ground and foundation of our prayers. We are to pray for the kingdom and eagerly await it with the same passion as Pastor Thielicke did as he stood in his worn boots amidst the rubble of 1945. The next to last verse in the book of Revelation, the final book of Scripture, says, "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus" [22:20]. This is an incredible prayer if we fully understand its ramifications. Are we bold enough to pray it?

Hallowed Be Thy Name

Those who move to the islands of Hawai'i from the mainland, and perhaps even those who have occasion to visit, quickly learn a new word, if they don't already know it. The word is haole, the Hawaiian word for for white foreigners. Though often used without any malice, it can be used with withering disdain [similar to the no longer spoken "N-word" here in the states]. Alice Kaholuoluna described the origin of this term:

"Before the missionaries came, my people used to sit outside their temples [heiaus] for a long time meditating and preparing themselves before entering. Then they would virtually creep to the altar to offer their petition and afterward would again sit a long time outside, this time to 'breathe life' into their prayers. The Christians, when they came, just got up, uttered a few sentences, said Amen and were done. For that reason my people call them haoles, 'without breath,' or those who fail to breathe life into their prayers."

Thus in its original sense, haole was a term of biting religious reproach. Just how deserved it was is subject to question because missionaries often get a bum rap from their would-be converts and from unsympathetic historians. However that may be, haole well describes the condition of multitudes of today's Christians who live life in the fast lane -- dashing into God's presence, uttering some empty conventionalities, pausing to make a few requests, then jumping back into the mad rush of our lives. This problem is extensive, and is undoubtedly one of the great sins of modern Christianity. We are spiritual haoles if we do not take time to breathe life into our prayers.

The remedy for this is found in Christ's pattern for prayer as He gave it to the disciples in what we call "The Lord's Prayer." The foundational awareness that the opening words -- "Our Father in heaven" -- impose on us demands that we take time to breathe life into our prayers. We are praying to "our Father," an ascription that was only made possible by the Lord Jesus, who broke with all tradition and called God His Father. Moreover, the word He used was Abba, the Aramaic word for "dearest father" -- a term of deepest intimacy. Perhaps even more cause for amazement is that He enjoined His followers to pray in the same way -- "our Father." To the traditional Jew, this was absolutely incomprehensible. How could any mortal address deity in such a way? But that was the foundational awareness that Jesus advocated.

The other part of that basic awareness is the rest of the balancing clause, "who is in heaven." Though God is our Father, He is also transcendent and sovereign. He is both our Father and our King and is to be approached intimately, but with deepest awe and respect. Such an awareness is the remedy for the breathless impiety of so many post-modern Christians. We would do well to prepare ourselves before we pray by reflecting on the One to whom we are going to speak.

Having considered the foundational awareness contained in the words, "Our Father in heaven," we are now ready to move on to the foundational petition, "Hallowed be your Name." It is easy to divide the Lord's Prayer into six petitions. Three are for God -- "your name," "your kingdom," and "your will." And three are for us -- "Give us," "forgive us," and "lead us not ... but deliver us." God intends for this foundational petition -- "Hallowed be your Name" -- to both interpret and control what follows.

It is highly significant that this first, foundational petition is upward -- "Hallowed be your Name." The God-given order for prayer is to have regard for God first. To be sure, there will be times when prayer in regards to our own needs is all we can muster, as when Peter cried out, "Lord, save me!" [Matthew 14:30] as he was sinking below the waves. That was not really the time for worship. But worship came soon afterward! To insist that all prayers must begin with the pattern of the Lord's Prayer is in fact a denial of what "Our Father" means to us. We can come to Him at any time and with any need. Nevertheless, prayer normally begins with a loving upward rush of our hearts to God.

The meaning of "hallowed be your Name" rests on two words -- "hallowed" and "Name." While names today don't carry much inherent meaning, in biblical times names were considered indicative of one's character. This is especially true when applied to the name of God. The psalmist said, "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name [the character] of the Lord our God" [Psalm 20:7]. God's names revealed aspects of His being. For instance, Jehovah Shalom -- "The Lord Our Peace" -- was a name that Gideon hallowed by raising an altar to God by that name. Jehovah Jireh -- "the Lord will provide" -- was the name by which Abraham came to know God on Mt. Moriah when God provided a ram in place of Isaac. Jehovah Tsidkenu -- "the Lord our Righteousness" -- is the name by which God revealed Himself to Jeremiah during the Captivity. The list of God's names in the Old Testament is quite long, including Jehovah-nissi, El Shaddai, El Elyon, Adonai, are but a few and all reflect His character. So what is the name that is preeminent in the Lord's Prayer? Very simply but quite profoundly it is "Father" -- "Abba Father" -- "Dearest Father."

So what does it mean to hallow God's Name? R. Kent Hughes describes the root word to mean "to set apart as holy," "to consider holy," "to treat as holy." The best alternate term would be reverence. This petition that God's Name as "Dearest Father" be made holy or be reverenced has two distinct times in mind. First, eternity when in a final event his Fatherhood will be fully revealed before all creation. Second, the Father's name is to be hallowed in the present fallen age. This is exactly what Jesus did as He told the Father about His own ministry in John 17:25, 26, "O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me, and I have made Your Name known to them, and will make it known" [NASB]. Jesus literally manifested the Abba-Fatherhood of God to us.

So the divinely given pattern for prayer is first upward to God, not outward to mankind or inward to our needs. The modern mind, which never truly thinks of God first, cannot make anything out of these words, for they sweep the soul upward past what we can touch and taste to the adoration of God. "Abba, Father, may your Name as Father be reverenced among men now and at the end of time -- for all eternity!" Does this petition simply focus upward, leaving our faces pointing toward the sky? Does it have nothing to do with our life and walk now? Indeed it does.

In one of the questions of his Greater Catechism Martin Luther asked: "How is it [God's name] hallowed amongst us?" Answer: "When our life and doctrine are truly Christian." God's Name as Father is reverenced when we lead lives that reflect His Fatherhood. We cannot truly pray "Hallowed be your name" without dedicating ourselves to Him. Jesus Himself is our best example. As the cross grew near, He prayed, "Father, glorify your Name" [John 12:28], but He also knew what that meant in terms of His own commitment. He gave His own life so the Father's Name would be glorified.

How then do we, God's children, hallow His Name in our own lives? There are at least four ways: First, negatively, we are careful not to profane God's Name with our tongues. We avoid swearing or taking His Name in vain. We speak of Him with great reverence. This is perhaps the least demanding aspect of hallowing His Name [not that its always that easy]. Secondly, we begin with the positives: We reverence Him as Father with acts of public and private worship ... yes, we greatly hallow His Name when we worship Him.

There is a third way: We reverence God or hallow His Name when our beliefs concerning Him are worthy of Him. We cannot possibly hallow His Name if we do not understand it. Specifically, in the Lord's Prayer we must understand His Abba-Fatherhood. The deeper our understanding, the more depth there will be to our reverence. This is all the work of the Holy Spirit, of course, but we must yield to that work. Is God our Dearest Father?

And lastly, we hallow His Name by living a life that displays that He is our Father! It was none other than Gregory who said, "For a man can glorify God in no other way save by his virtue which bears witness that the Divine Power is the cause of his goodness." For us too this demands that our lives show that we really do have a heavenly Father. It demands that we display security and confidence in our Father when those who do not know Christ are overcome with fear and despair. It demands that we radiate the self-esteem that comes from knowing that we are loved by our Abba-Father. It demands that we manifest the beautiful loyalty of a child toward his Father in our devotion to God the Father. But there is even more. We are not only to model that we have a Father in heaven -- we must also model His fatherliness toward others. "Dearest Father" must become the refrain of our hearts.

Luther was right. We best hallow God's Name when our life and our doctrine are truly Christian. When we pray, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your Name," we are dedicating ourselves to lead lives that reverence all that He is. Holy Spirit of God please help that become the abiding reality of our lives.

When We Say "Our Father" We Have Said It All

I remember the old Budweiser commercials of my youth ... "When you say Budweiser, you've said it all." The inherent inferred meaning being ... you can't top this. How shallow to contemplate that being said of any beer ... even of the self-proclaimed "King of Beers." But how else would they compete with Schlitz and "You only go around once in life, go for all the gusto you can" unless they're the King of Beers? Speaking of Schlitz, is it even brewed any longer? And the "Great American Beer" ... Budweiser ... is now owned by InBev of Belgium. Oh, the irony of that. [A quick Google search shows Schlitz was just resurrected essentially from the dead in 2009 after its original recipe had been rediscovered ... it had long since been changed into something else after being swallowed up by Stroh's in the early 1980s following a dreadful strike and then changed to a can-only product with a hurried up fermentation process such that for almost 30 years it existed as Schlitz in name only, having been essentially ignored out of existence ... so much for the "Beer That Made Milwaukee Great"]. All this serving as an interesting and quite ironic prelude to something that is truly beyond remarkable.

In Luke 11:1, Jesus' disciples asked Him "to teach us how to pray, just as John taught his disciples." What followed was nothing short of amazing. He said [and this parallels the same prayer given in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6] "Our Father in heaven ... " When He spoke these words just about every jaw in the place dropped to the ground. No one in the entire history of Israel had ever prayed like this. No one!

That God should be personally addressed as "Father" may not seem out of the ordinary to those of us who frequently attend church and regularly repeat the Lord's Prayer, but it was absolutely revolutionary in Jesus' day. The writers of the Old Testament certainly believed in the Fatherhood of God, but they saw it mainly in terms of a sovereign Creator-Father. In fact, God is only referred to as Father fourteen times in the Old Testament's 39 books, and even then rather impersonally. In those fourteen occurrences of Father the term was always used with reference to the nation, not to individuals. You can search from Genesis to Malachi, and you will not find one individual speaking of God as Father. Moreover, in Jesus' day, His contemporaries had so focused on the sovereignty and transcendence of God that they were careful never to repeat His covenant name -- Yahweh. So they invented the word Jehovah, a combination of two separate names of God. Thus ther distance from God was well guarded.

But when Jesus came on the scene, He addressed God only as Father. He never used any other word! All His prayers address God as Father. The Gospels [just four books] record His using Father more than sixty times in reference to God. So striking is this that there are scholars who maintain that this word Father dramatically summarizes the difference between the Old and New Testaments. But this amazing fact is only part of the story, for the word Jesus used for Father was not a formal word, but the common Aramaic word with which a child would address his father -- the word Abba.

The German New Testament scholar Joachim Jeremias, perhaps the most respected New Testament scholar of his generation, has argued quite convincingly that Abba was the original word on Jesus' lips here in the Lord's Prayer and indeed in all of His prayers in the New Testament, with the exception of Matthew 27:46 when He cried out from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" But there, Jeremias explains, Jesus was quoting Psalm 22:1. Of course, Jesus reverted back to Abba with His final words as He died: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" [Luke 23:45, quoting Psalm 31:5]. The word Abba was the word Jesus regularly used to address His father Joseph from the time He was a baby until Joseph's death. Everyone used the word. But as a careful examination of the literature of that day shows, it was never used of God -- under any circumstances. Abba meant something like Daddy -- but with a more reverent touch than when we use it. The best modern rendering would probably be "Dearest Father."

To the traditional Jew, Jesus' prayer was revolutionary. Think of it! God was referred to only fourteen times in the Old Testament as Father, and then it was always as the corporate Father of Israel -- never individually or personally. And now as His disciples ask Him for instruction on how to pray, Jesus tells them to begin by calling God their Father, their Abba! In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus essentially authorizes His disciples to repeat the word Abba after Him. He gives them a share in His Sonship and empowers them, as His disciples, to speak with their heavenly Father in just such a familiar, trusting way as a child would with his father. So functionally, Jesus transferred the Fatherhood of God from a theological doctrine into an intense, practical experience, and He taught His disciples to pray with the same intimacy as He did with His Father. And that is what He does for us. "Our Father" -- "Our Abba" -- "Our dearest Father" -- this is to be the foundational awareness of all our prayers.

Lastly, I want to conclude by considering the idea that addressing God as Abba [Dearest Father] as being not only an indicator of our spiritual health but also as a mark of the authenticity of our faith. Paul tells us in Galatians 4:6, "Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, 'Abba, Father!'" The impulse to call on God in this way as being a sign of actually being God's child. Romans 8:15, 16 says the same thing: "you received the spirit of sonship. And by Him we cry, 'Abba, Father!' The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children." True believers are virtually compelled to say this.

Dr. J. I. Packer considers one's grasp of God's Fatherhood and one's adoption as a son or daughter as of essential importance to one's spiritual life. He writes: "If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. 'Father' is the Christian name for God."

That God is our Abba-Father is a truth we must cultivate for the very sake of our soul's health!!!

Four Oaks Gospel Conference Introduction--February 25, 2011

Back in August 2010, as I watched my daughter, Alli, first prepare for and then depart for a two year mission to Caracas, Venezuela I recalled some lessons the Lord had shown me over the past twelve years from two overseas medical mission trips that I was privileged served on, from helping Larry Shingler establish a missions board at our church, then the very week Alli left we learned of eight medical missionaries and two of their translators being martyred by the Taliban in Afghanistan. It was with all those thoughts racing through my mind that I watched God call one of my precious girls to serve Him on a foreign field, especially one where the country’s leader, Hugh Chavez, absolutely despises America. It all came to a head the day she left when I received an e-mail from my dad [Alli’s grandfather] which stated, “I'm frankly worried about Alli being in Venezuela. While I'm very proud of her answering this very noble calling, I do know they don't much like Americans in that country. Just what protection do they provide for those Americans who teach there?” I’ll share with you a portion of what I shared with my daughter Alli and our family on the night before her departure.

First of all, I reminded her that those of us who have had the privilege of living as a citizen in this country have, in many ways, lived in a unreal world. Our ordinary experience would appropriately be described as surreal by most of the 7 billion people who live on our planet. Though most of us have lived out “the American Dream” it has also been accompanied by a bit of delusion. Most of us have begun to feel that life comes with certain guarantees. We have even created a false theology that validates our false sense of security. Peace and prosperity have become expectations … and many have been dumbstruck over the last three years in America to see that this isn’t always the case. Concepts such as sacrifice and suffering were left to describe only those who were living outside the blessings of God.

We live in an era of peace and stability though even the edges of that have become progressively more frayed … recalling the two wars in which we are now engaged and the brutal attacks of 9/11 that precipitated them. But even still, we hire others to fight for us so that we can largely be left unaffected. And even now this month as we see the Arab world seemingly coming apart at the seems, I think now even more this has led us to come to wrong conclusions regarding what the human spirit needs. You would think that what we need is certainty, the promise that everything is going to be all right, the guarantee that we’ll be safe. While I, like everyone else, would love to know that this is the life that God would choose to give my family and me, the security that we often seek is not necessary to living life to the fullest. And sometimes it can actually be the great deterrent to seizing our God-ordained moments.

In I Samuel 14 we read about Jonathan moving with God in a situation where his father, King Saul and his army was paralyzed by fear in a standoff with the Philistine army. Jonathan was certain about some things, and at the same time he was able to operate in the realm of uncertainty. He called out to his armor-bearer and said, “Come, let’s go over to the outpost of those uncircumcised fellows. Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf.” You’ve gotta love that. In today’s vernacular he basically said, “Let’s go pick a fight. Maybe God will help.” Jonathan understood that not everything was guaranteed, that you don’t wait till all the money is in the bank. There are some things that you can know and some things that you will not know. He went on to say, “Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few.”

God had promised Israel deliverance from the oppressive hand of the Philistines, and the way He would do it was by raising up an army of men who would trust in God and go to war against them. Jonathan was clear about one thing: he knew for certain that nothing could stop the Lord from saving, and God could use a lot of people or only a few people. The odds are always irrelevant to God.

Jonathan had an unwavering confidence in God’s capacity. He had absolute trust in God’s character. He seemed resolute about whether God could be trusted. That was all settled for him. His focus was not, What is God’s will for my life? but How can I give my life to fulfill God’s will? He had no certainty concerning his personal well-being. That he was moving in line with God’s purpose was the only certainty that he needed. He understood that to move with God is to accept a life full of uncertainties.

Our wealth and abundance of human resources have positioned us to accept a paradigm that provision precedes vision. This has been the foundation of our building a no-risk faith. This is a tragedy because part of the adventure is the discovery that vision always precedes provision. It may seem like a stretch to many, but it is always right to do what’s right, even if it turns out wrong. Jesus did the right thing when He left Gethsemane where He struggled to embrace the Father’s will and began a journey that would lead Him to the Cross. The consequence to Him was severe. Our response to His coming was to crucify Him. We should not be surprised, then, that a lifelong journey with God might bring us suffering and hardship. If the Cross teaches us anything, it teaches us that sometimes God comes through after we’ve been killed!

If we are going to seize divine moments, we must accept the reality that we have no control over many things. We have no control over when we die or even how we die. We must instead take responsibility for what we do have control over – how we choose to live.

Jonathan wasn’t choosing to die, but he was choosing how he would live. He left the consequence of his actions in the hands of God. He chose to do something that he knew was right. Again, God was doing something in history, and Jonathan gave his life to it. This realm of uncertainty is also the place of miracles. Sometimes the miracle is wrapped around the person we become, the courage and nobility expressed through a life well-lived.

When you move with God, He always shows up. It’s just difficult to predict what He will do or how He will do it. If you wait for guarantees, the only thing that will be guaranteed is that you will miss endless divine opportunities – that you can know for certain.

Lastly, I want to tell you the last thing I told Alli …the difference between Jonathan and us is though Jonathan had no idea whether or not God would act on his behalf, in that particular engagement, he knew who God was. He knew if he would seek God, he would live, even though he died in the trying. It is ironic then, that we run to God to keep us safe when He calls us to a dangerous faith. He will shake loose everything in which we place our trust outside of Him and teach us how to thrive in a future that is unknown. There is only One who is certain; everything else exists in the realm of uncertainty. To place our trust in anything other than God is nothing less than superstition.

And lastly before we pray I just want to publicly thank God for making Larry’s dream, my dream, Scott’s dream, Mike Sloderbeck’s dream a reality at Four Oaks. Nine years ago my family attended a worship service at John Piper’s church, Bethlehem Baptist, in Minneapolis and I was most struck by the back page of the church bulletin listing their homegrown missionaries and where they served all over the world. The entire page was full. I begged God to make that true of Four Oaks … amazingly, we are now almost there … so I am going to pray for two pages! Someone asked me a few years ago about how we are able to mobilize so many people to overseas missions at Four Oaks. My answer was if your church is full of members, you will get an occasional missionary. But if your church is full of missionaries [people on mission for God], well then, the rest is just about geography!