Two dimensional time and God's Glory

According to basic physics, time is a linear dimension whose passage is directed by the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy always increases. Metric time is defined by standards such as  the time that elapses during 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation produced by the transition between two levels of the cesium-133 atom. The special and general theories of relativity allow for time dilation under the influence of extreme velocity or exceptionally strong gravitation. In all of these cases, time is still a single dimension of existence. Modern physics (string theory) attempts to use 10 or 11 dimensions to describe modern physics’ understanding of the interaction of space-time with various dimensions, but the additional dimensions are ‘compact’, meaning their extent is subfemtoscopic. But the phenomena of all of these modern physics theories describe are only accessible by extremely sophisticated scientific instruments, well outside the experience of daily life.

It is not uncommon for us to reference both ideas and experiences which are tangible in which time does not flow uniformly. “Time stood still” refers to experiences that are so focused and intense that the passage of outside events and time seem to be put on pause, yet seem to elapse for the individual uttering these words. (see, for example, Joshua 10:13) Time travel is the stuff of science fiction, but Bible prophecy indicates that select individuals were enabled to see events of the future. In near death experiences, some will say that their life flashed before their eyes. We might say that all of these experiences are mental, or perhaps spiritual, but my point is that tying time to a physical phenomenon such as the frequency of radiation from an atom may not be the only means to perceive time. 

The concept here is that from a human perspective of  body, soul, and spirit, space an time may have one (or more) additional dimension(s). Not just compact dimensions, but unlimited in extent. When we read in the Bible of eternity, a new heaven and a new earth, how can this be reconciled with the “heat death of the universe”? Perhaps when time seems to stand still, we are traveling (briefly) in that other time dimension, which is orthogonal to the one we normally live in. Where is heaven anyway? Above us in physical space, we have mapped out the atmosphere and the nearer parts of outer space to varying degrees -  heaven has not been found in this solar system. Perhaps it is on some distant planet circling another star that astronomers are slowly detecting?

Jesus indicated that heaven is at hand. This suggests to me that it is in a dimension or dimensions that are perpendicular (both in space and time) to ours. Not far away in those dimensions, but inaccessible in our current state most of the time. Perhaps our physical bodies are tied to the dimensions of space and time we experience, and when they die our soul and spirit are freed to travel in those additional dimensions, where spiritual realities are manifest. 

Turning now to a seemingly unrelated topic, what is glory? We have human understanding of it being fame and good report of heroic actions for good causes. But there are Biblical descriptions of God’s glory that indicate it is visible, transcendent, and terrifying. (Exodus 33:18-23, 40:35, Numbers 16:42-49, 1 Kings 8:10-11, 2 Chronicles  5:15, Isaiah 6:1-5) What is God’s glory? I believe it is the result of the combination of His eternal love and perfect holiness, manifested in the eternal dimensions, but only occasionally seen on earth. Jesus’ hidden qualities were thus manifested on the Mount of Transfiguration. (Luke 9:29-36) When Ezekiel and John saw the throne of God in heaven, this glory was visible. (Ezekiel 1:26-28,  Revelation 1:13-17)

How do love and holiness become visible (apart from the actions they produce)? This is pure speculation on my part, but perhaps they are so intrinsically tied to the dimensions of eternity that they yield emanations, in a vague way similar to the way gravity warps space and time as described by the general theory of relativity. Maybe it is like Cherenkov radiation manifesting light as bright as the sun when the nature and character of the Son of God are unveiled in our space-time continuum. 

The final challenge is this. Jesus invites us to become like Him, to receive His nature and character of agape love and unblemished holiness. [Achieving this is a separate topic.] But perhaps  this means when we arrive at that state of eternal identification with Him, we will share His glory, just as Moses and Elijah did when Jesus spoke with them just before His passion. (Luke 9:31) This goes beyond merely receiving God’s approval, as C. S. Lewis described in his essay on the Weight of Glory. God’s glory goes beyond His approval, to Him causing us to actually receive and live out His nature and character. Let us humbly engage on responding to this challenge.

Book Review - Ten Philosophical Mistakes by Mortimer J. Adler.

At first I was puzzled by Peter Kreeft’s inclusion of this philosophical treatise in his list of must-read books. The first four chapters deal with metaphysics and epistemology - the foundation of philosophy that deals with existence, knowledge, language: how it is possible to know anything, what it means to know something, and how we derive knowledge from our senses and reasoning and communicate with each other about such things. These topics seem esoteric and not readily digestible by the Everyman that Adler wrote for. 

However, having laid the foundation, the author proceeds into areas of human existence and behavior. This includes moral values, happiness, freedom of choice, human nature, society, and ultimately what being human means. 

A foundational question: what is the basis for moral values? Is there any way to establish objective and absolute values, or must they be (are they) subjective and relative? Adler summarizes several philosophers’ attempts to define ‘good’ and their approaches to trying to establish a basis for such judgments. And he points out the error of each. It is these subtle but foundational errors that have led to such disaster in modern thought and hence in society. (This was published in 1985, before modern political correctness had become the norm.) The fundamental prescriptive statement depends on the definition of ‘good’. We ought to desire what is truly good. What is the basis for final ends? We must not confuse means with ends, but we must also not confuse moral virtue with a happy life.  Striving to eliminate social or political evil depends on your definition of evil. Working to bring the greatest good for the greatest number still begs the question of what is ‘good’.

What is not addressed in this book (being a philosophy treatise and not a theology textbook), is discussion of divine revelation, of absolute truths as ordained by God and given to man. The Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, do not define good based on an appeal to our conscience, but because God who created all things says so, and because He knows and reveals what is best for us. While the external evidence of creation cries out God’s glory, linking that to prescriptive judgments for human behavior requires a separate revelation. We have that revelation both in Scripture and in God speaking directly to us in our conscience. (Romans 1) Intellectual sparring with unbelievers who call themselves philosophers will not convince them because of the Fall, and the sin nature of man. Much less will intellectuals in rebellion against God believe that the atoning death of Jesus Christ on the cross can redeem individuals from the power and consequences of sin. This theological reality is absent from philosophy. That, in my view, is the overarching philosophical mistake. But this book makes you think about these questions.

Love and Tithing

What does love have to do with tithing? For decades, reconciling God’s love with His holiness puzzled me. In raising children, we love them but we also must discipline them, sometimes sternly, in order to teach them right living. (Proverbs 13:24, among 35 total references in Proverbs; Hebrews 12:4-11) It pains us to inflict pain on the children we love. But God is perfect in His love and holiness. How is that possible?

As I came to understand love, it occurred to me (probably with a nudge from the Holy Spirit), that the focus of love being on the best possible outcome for the beloved means that I will forego any action (thought, word, or deed) that would in any way harm or result in less than that outcome. Cause and effect being what define the universe we live in, teaching the beloved by whatever means necessary is doing everything within our power to bring about their best outcome, even when it causes us pain. And since God loves every person, He foregoes anything and everything to bring about that result. Hence Christ laid down His life to atone for their (our) sin. The prohibitions and rules laid down in the Pentateuch define how to live that kind of life, with God’s kind of love for our family, our friends, our neighbors, and everyone else we encounter.

God’s power rests in part on His holiness and love. That is, His power to create and sustain a community of love depends on Him getting His people to voluntarily take on His nature and character. His authority over nature, time and space, human events is simply a tool for this greater outcome. 

What does this have to do with tithing? The command of the Mosaic law for tithing must be interpreted in the context of His love for His people. Simply that we learn and practice trust in God’s heart; that He can take care of the small stuff. He commanded tithing of the first fruits as an act of faith by obedience. Not that we are saved by tithing any more than by keeping other parts of the Mosaic law, but only by faith in the blood of Jesus to forgive our sin. Moving forward, to live for Jesus, in the New Testament we have giving: the story of the widow’s mite (Mark 12:43, Luke 21:3), various collections taken up in one city for relief in another city, and Paul’s words about a pleasing sacrifice (Philippians 4:18). It is not that God needs our money, or that we buy His favor by giving. The underlying principle is that God, in His love and holiness, can take care of the small stuff if we demonstrate that we truly trust Him. (Malachi 3:10) He withheld nothing in His love for us. We can trust His nature  and character, and our goal should be, in all the dimensions of life, to receive this essence of His being into our own lives.

Psalm 128:1 allows two interpretations

How blessed is everyone who fears Yahweh,
Who walks in His ways. (Legacy Standard Bible)

•      One blessing of fearing the Lord enough to heed His teachings and walk in His ways is that we will be far more successful in our earthly life. It is obvious that God places great importance on giving us wisdom in His written word. The Mosaic law, the Proverbs of Solomon, the gospels, and the epistles all contain God’s explanation of how the world works. This is because He understands cause and effect far better than us, because He created the universe. He shares this understanding with His children.

•      God’s blessing takes another form, when we walk in His ways. We take on parts of His nature and character, becoming more like Him, when we do the things He calls us to. Hungering for righteousness, being pure in heart, receiving persecution for His names’ sake, loving with a pure heart, giving freely to those in need, practicing goodness in secret, forgiving others, loving our enemies, focusing our life on God’s kingdom are all examples. This goes beyond the growth in faith that comes from seeing Him fulfill His promises. Malachi 3:10 is the only place that I know of where God invites us to test Him. Once we have seen His faithfulness in blessing our finances after we have given a full ten percent, our faith and trust in Him is established. But He invites to a deeper blessing: being co-participants in His activity to establish the reign of agape love in the lives of those around us.   If we settle for the material blessings He pours out when we tithe, we stop on the first step of that walk with Him, which He invites us to continue.

The Wisdom of Mixing Oil and Water

 With thousands of years of accumulated wisdom in Chinese culture, why does the current government of mainland China implement foolish and self-destructive policies? In one sentence, it is because although this ancient tradition of wisdom points put the folly of sin, it does not have the power to address the root cause of sin; only Jesus can do that. Missionary work of the last two centuries led to the conversion of millions in China, but the current government rejects Christianity, believing instead that the rule of man can bring utopia on earth, in a tradition traced back to Karl Marx. 

It is a maxim of ancient origin that oil and water do not mix. We can observe this physically in the kitchen when we make salad dressing, or when we see an oil slick in the ocean. The reason for this physical non-mixing has been described in multiple ways:

• Water molecules are polar but oils are not; there is no attraction between dissimilar molecule types. Oil molecules do not have a polar part they would need to dissolve in water.
• Water molecules have stronger attraction to each other than to other types of molecules, ditto for oils.
• Water molecules pack differently, much more densely than oil molecules.

Water and oil are both used as metaphors in Scripture for the work of God. We are washed in baptism, sacramentally and symbolically, for the regeneration and new birth of salvation. We are washed by the water of the Word, Scripture being God’s message to us to give us knowledge of Him and His ways, which includes law, prophecy, and wisdom. (Ephesians 5:26) God also gifts us the Holy Spirit, represented by anointing with oil, which denotes His very presence within us, empowering us with both gifts and fruit, to do what He calls us to. (1 Samuel 16:13) We often see  difficulty between believers who follow one or the other of these threads of faith exclusively, either totally devoted to study of Scripture or completely focused on the activity of the Holy Spirit. The reconciliation of these can only be found in the blood of Christ which, when we receive Him, breaks down the barrier between the law and our lives. There is wisdom in the written word, and wisdom is one of the gifts of the Spirit, but its pedagogical and life-experience dimensions are only reconciled through Jesus’ presence in our lives. The right-wrong polarity of the Law mixes with the daily activities of life producing a practical holiness born of God’s love and empowerment when the Holy Spirit uses the word in our immediate situation. 

Returning to the failure of worldly wisdom, the shortcoming of wisdom apart from Jesus is that it lacks power to overcome sin. The nature of man, and the universe that we live in, is that sin is the result of yielding to temptation; temptation is the lure of selfish fulfillment at the expense of true love (seeking the good of the other); temptation is the tool of Satan to destroy us by luring us away from God and His ways. Only Jesus paid the price for our sin and then empowers those who receive Him to live in His power. All worldly traditions of wisdom (not just Chinese culture) lack this power, and ultimately fail to bring about the rule of good. Wisdom and life fail to mix like water and oil, unless the Lord Jesus reconciles them through redemption. We need to personally receive this mixing of wisdom and life through the blood of Christ in order to avoid disaster ourselves.

The moral debt ceiling of modern politics

As the Congress struggles to resolve the ‘debt limit crisis’ and avoid default, politicians and pundits will argue about responsibility, expediency, near- and long-term consequences, living beyond one’s means, etc. Some consequences of either default or yet another giant upward step in total national debt might include higher risk resulting in higher interest rates, a self-fueling inflationary spiral, the loss of world leadership in economics, perhaps even being replaced by some other nation or group of nations in setting the policy and agenda of world economic matters, due to the U.S, government’s fiscal irresponsibility. Or perhaps when combined with other factors such as war, climate change, famine, epidemics, and migration there will be international chaos. World chaos.

The massive deficits (estimated by some at $1.5-$2 trillion for FY 23) are driven by growth in expenditures on the needy. Scripture says a few things about this:  

• Proverbs 22:9, Matthew 6:3-4, 19:21 God rewards those who give to the poor.
• 2 Thessalonians 3:10 If  anyone is not willing to work, neither let him eat.
• Genesis 41:35-36 In times of plenty, we should store up for times of want.
• Proverbs 22:7 The borrower is the lender’s slave.
• Proverbs 16:11, 20:23 The Lord delights in honesty and integrity in business dealings.
• Matthew 6:25-33 God takes care of the birds and plants, do not fret, He will take care of His own.
• 1 Peter 2:13-14, Romans 13:1-7 Submit to government, which rules to punish evil and is a minister for good

It is important to understand that the Bible primarily speaks to believers. However, there are universal principles that spring from the eternity in which God created our universe and world. That is a topic for another time (but read Proverbs for a preview).

What matters to politicians? Leadership? Power? Ego? To these ends, they maneuver and manipulate and posture. Nothing new about that. (A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt, set in 1525-1535.)  But the economic and political chaos that may result from fiscal irresponsibility could open the door for an authoritarian figure to rise to power by demonstrating that he can restore order, peace, and stability. Perhaps, as a means to prevent fraud and identity theft, he will require a numbered microchip to be implanted in everyone’s right hand or forehead to buy or sell. (Revelation 13:16-17). 

Is the underlying motive for what politicians do personal integrity? Accountability before God? I don’t for a femtosecond believe this is to deliberately take us down a path that prepares the way for the antichrist to usher in the great tribulation, because that would be followed by the physical return of Jesus Christ to rule and reign on the earth. Well, maybe I believe the first part - that their goal is to create such chaos that people will choose an authoritarian despot. Besides, Jesus gave a different condition for the End - that the gospel must be preached to every nation. (Matthew 24:14, Mark 13:10) 

The national debt our politicians run up is dwarfed by the moral and spiritual debt they incur by maneuvering, manipulating and posturing to maintain their own position and power, in defiance of Scripture. This is not just a simple error, a misunderstanding, but a deliberate choice to reject God’s ways in order to maintain their authority. They have missed the entire meaning and purpose of life. This debt will be paid in eternity if they do not repent. There is no ceiling on eternal judgment.

Book Review: A Man For All Seasons, by Robert Bolt

First published in 1960 and produced as a play that same year, this script provides insight into the life and death of Sir Robert More. Initially a well-respected leader holding multiple responsible positions in the government of Henry VIII, More was executed at his direction in 1535. This was the result of his refusal to take an oath that he supported the act of Parliament making the king of England the head of the church in England, in addition to sanctioning his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. 

The emphasis of the play is that More refused to compromise on his convictions.  This boiled down to his belief that church and state were separate and Parliament had no authority to subject the church to the state. Henry’s divorce was a secondary factor that brought Spain to pressure the Pope to refuse to approve it, but that is what gets the most publicity. Henry had married his brother Arthur’s widow. The English cited Leviticus 18:16 and 20:21 as reasons for annulling the marriage, but conveniently ignored Deuteronomy 25:5-6 regarding the duty to a brother’s widow. Nor was there discussion of whether Christians are bound by Old Testament law, or mention of New Testament teachings. In any event, Henry’s marriages (six total), expropriation of property, and string of politically motivated executions provide evidence to the  condition of his soul. But this was not More’s primary issue. He simply had the conviction that the King should not control the church, and refused to take an oath to the contrary. It was not that More was innocent of  persecuting people, as his career included prosecution of Protestants and reformers.

What is the difference between a politician and a statesman, a ruler and a leader? Regardless of titles or epithets, this book vividly illustrates the outworking of character. The one who fears and honors God, looking towards the final outcome of his life, versus the ones who choose expediency to attain worldly success in this life. We have few of the former and an abundance of the latter - this has been the case throughout history. Politics is, after all, the process by which people with differing views negotiate to find common ground by which to make group decisions. What modern discourse lacks, illustrated so well in Bolt’s depiction of More, is a clear statement of ultimate values. 

Book Review: Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams

First published in 1937, written by one of C. S. Lewis’ fellow Inklings, this book is hard to get into, and hard to finish. It is so completely different from modern fiction that it likely would not be publishable today. The author elaborates in great detail on the thoughts and feelings of the half dozen or so characters. Each one interacts with other dimensions of existence, such as the dead, spirits of the underworld, and themselves in other circumstances. This is all overlaid on a straightforward story about the premiere of a new play in a small town in the suburbs of London.  

The heroine wrestles with fear of meeting her doppelgänger, which she has seen from a distance. There is substitutionary love, both theoretical and practiced. There is unrequited lust, and its fruit of self-pity. There are appearances by a nameless dead man who wanders through an empty afterlife looking for what he does not know, and Lilith (legendary Jewish first wife of Adam) masquerading as a widow. There is the death of a saintly grandmother. 

To illuminate interior development, the reader is given a sense of the characters’ confusion. The characters confront and confuse elements from the spiritual domain, from history, from their present acquaintances, and from their imagination, and have trouble keeping them straight. Their response to these elements is often cast in Biblical terms, but not always, and it is their response that results in character development. Through this process, we see some characters grow into godly saints, exhibiting virtue and divine character suited for heaven, which they practice while still on earth. Others become ever more self-centered, unable to distinguish reality from desire and ultimately descending into the nothingness that results from rejecting God and the world He created. This is the title theme. Every thought, word, and deed in this life moves us either towards heaven or hell. 

There are some aspects of this tale that are unbiblical, but most follow the general tenants of Scripture. The theme of substitutionary love follows the author’s understanding of how Christ’s atoning sacrifice is to be played out in everyday human life. The confusion of hell with Gomorrah is not necessarily Biblical, but seeing its destruction by fire as a metaphor is vivid. Interaction with the dead runs counter to Deuteronomy 18:11, but the nature of the interactions is consistent with the narrative of 1 Samuel 28. 

There is a short speech by the playwright, Peter Stanhope, near the end of chapter 9, that describes the nature of Gomorrah and its residents.  “They beget themselves on their adoration of themselves, and they live and feed and starve on themselves, and by themselves too… They won’t have the facts of creation.”  This description is then personified in the closing pages of the book, a vivid description of a man going through the process of losing all contact with the world. How he got there is the descent into hell.

What is sadly missing is a clear presentation of the Good News. Jesus does not appear in the lives of any of the characters as they struggle with spiritual realities and choices. The atonement is alluded to in the discussion of substituted love, but there is no clear presentation of the gospel. In a novel dealing with the ultimate outcome of human souls, it seems to me necessary to include the death of Christ on the cross to pay for our sins, and the offer of God of forgiveness and reconciliation being contingent only on our decision to believe in and receive that offer. Our ultimate destination depends on this!