Life / Religion / Philosophy / Science / Polictics

Tag: Dr. Ravi Zacharias

  • WHAT CAN GOD DO?

    One of the more interesting debates within the philosophies asks the question “Can God make a rock that God cannot lift?” and thus in one fell swoop claims to shatter peoples belief in God, a god, or any supreme being.

    My answer to this rather childish and ridiculous question is “He already has.”.  You see, in the person of God the Father, as described by the Bible, God has created all the rocks, not only on planet earth, but in the entire universe.  And he holds them in the palm of his hand (singular).  God, being God, holds all of creation together at once in the palm of his great hand.  However, God, in the person of Jesus Christ, also as described in the Bible, chose to limit himself to the form of a man and as a man, chose to limit himself to that human form which could not, and did not, lift the great mountains and hills that He created.

    The rather childish question that the philosophers ask fails to recognize and understand the very nature and being of God.

    But it does raise an interesting line of reasoning, that of “What can God do?”  You see, God, being God, is supreme in everything He does.  And He is limitless, and nothing is beyond his reach or his capability.  Whether or not he would (or could) chose to violate his very nature is another matter all together.

    A much more interesting question the philosophers might ask (if they were actually serious about theology that is) is “Can God tell a lie?”  I would contend that the answer to that question is “No” (rather emphatically).  You see, God as the very embodiment of truth is incapable of misrepresenting that truth.  Because anything that proceeds out of God is truth by its very definition.  He is, after all, God.  And who can disprove God?  No one can, ergo, God is truth.

    However, God can (and as a matter of fact did) create the father of all lies, Satan.  God, knowing full well that lies and mistruths would enter His creation (both spiritual and physical) still chose to create the angel Satan and thus allowed lies to come into being.

    Why would God do this?  Why would the very embodiment of truth allow that which is not true to come into being?  You have read many times on this blog my references to Dr. Ravi Zacharias.  I had the great pleasure of hearing Dr. Zacharias speak on one occasion where he told a story of a lady in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. who suffered from a rare disorder that resulted in all of her nerve endings being dead.  She literally felt no pain.  At all.  Of any type.  And he told of the extremely careful and protected life she had to live.  She had to be careful in sports because she had no mechanism of distinguishing an injury.  She had to be careful when she cooked a meal because if she got close to a stove or a hot cooking utensil she had no warning mechanism to alert her if she was about to be burned (or if she had accidently burned herself).  When most people get to close to a hot flame, they have a tendency to pull away before they are burned.  Not so with this young lady.  Dr. Zacharias told of speaking with her mother and how she had told him that she prayed to God that her daughter would experience even one day of pain.  A very strange prayer for any mother.

    Think about all the mothers in the world who pray that their sons and daughters would have their pain taken away.  And yet here was a mother whose daughter had no pain and still she prayed that God would give her pain.

    I believe that God knows he could create any utopia he wanted to.  But without pain, how would we ever appreciate joy?  Without lies, how would we ever strive for the truth?  Without death, how would we ever appreciate life?

    The fact that God did choose to create things that are the antithesis  of his very nature allows us to explore and learn his true nature like would never be possible without it.

    Another more interesting question philosophers might ask is “Can God create another God greater than himself?”  And once again I would say “No” rather emphatically.  However, Jesus Christ himself said “Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?” (John 10:34-36).  Indeed, scripture tells us that one day the elect of the Lord will rule with him, alongside him.  We will be like him, but we will not be him.  God, by his very nature is God, how can he then go back and undo himself by creating something greater than himself?  He cannot.  Yet, God is infinite in all that he does.  He has created an infinite universe (something the evolutionists struggle with), and he has created family, us, mankind, and would allow us to take our place alongside him created in his own image.

    Philosophers who ask silly questions about what God can and cannot do are not in pursuit of a Holy, Supreme, All Knowing, all Present, All Powerful, God.  Rather they are playing games within the very creation itself that God made and holds in the palm of his hand.  The true theologian will seek out God on terms that bring meaning and understanding to the very nature of God and to understand our relationship to him.

    The next time you consider what God can or cannot do, may I suggest you ask yourself two questions in light of God’s capabilities (or lack thereof)?

    The first would be “What can God do for me?”  That is a much more reasonable and personable question to ask.  I hope you find that God can love you as only God can love and that God can save you and keep you for all of eternity in his precious hand.

    The second question would be “What can I do for God?”  And that is a very pointed and personal question that may very well lead to your own personal understanding of God.  Because I hope that you find you can seek after him, learn of him, know him, and give yourself to him.  For all of eternity.  Worship him.  Love him.  Allow him to sustain you.  Believe in him in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ of Nazareth.  Those are the pursuits that bring understanding to the question the philosophers ask and seek to mock the very existence of God with.

    WHAT CAN GOD DO?  Anything God wants to do for His Honor, and for His Glory, and for His Praise, forever, and ever, and ever, amen.

  • Where do YOUR rights come from?

    First, let me say thankyou for your patience and understanding while I undertook a move one quarter of the way around the world.  While not completely settled yet, we are starting to get back some of the things we have been without (my computer is just about back to the state it was in when I last shut it down in Hawaii).  It has been a challenging time and there are many challenges ahead, but at least I may now return to LRPSP.COM while facing those challenges.

    But enough of boring you with my personal life, I am anxious to get back on track with discussing the more interesting things in life.  And one of the things that interests me (and I believe a lot of people) is Human Rights – specifically Our Rights as inhabitants of planet Earth.

    I just read Glenn Greenwald’s book “No Place To Hide” where civil rights are referenced no less than 21 separate times and in every chapter.  He quotes Supreme Court Justices (Justice Louis Brandeis – page 187) and hammers the rights of a free people.

    The building I work in has some writing on the wall when you first enter the main doors, the writing says: “We hold these truths to be self-evident …“, which, of course comes from the United States Declaration of Independence.  The phrase is: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

    There are those amongst us that want to argue the rights of the people of the Earth.  But they never want to stop and consider where those rights came from, who bestowed the right?  What gives individuals the right to even claim rights?  And what happens when your rights are contradictory to my own rights?  What gives any of us the right to express what is right and what is wrong?

    There are the foolish amongst us that try and make some feeble attempt of rights being derived from our own consciousness or from Mother Earth/Gaia.

    So let me get this straight.  All of us can agree that we all have the right to life, to live, to continue to exist, to not die (at least unjustly)?  And thus we know it is wrong to kill, to murder, to take a life?  And we gained this ground truth when?  At the point of “consciousness” of human-kind?

    This is rather amazing to me because, without even realizing it, these folks have stumbled into the one common denominator for all human life.  Our DNA is different, our world-views are different, our finger-prints are different, our retinas are different, we are all the most unique set of creatures ever encountered, but the one thing we all managed to get exactly the same comes down to basic human rights.

    Which is an amazingly structured piece of code.  It tells me, and it tells you, that we each have a right to life.  And there is little to no ambiguity there.  And where do our religious dissenters find this code?  Is it in the DNA?  Is it part of a blood type?  Is it structured in some social engineering?  Why no, it seems to be innate within each and every one of us from birth, embedded as it were, within our very beings, and readily grasped and expressed by our consciousness.

    In other words it is embedded in our spirits.  That part of our being that is Spiritual in nature.  That part of our being that is explored and understood through our Theology.  Or at least I have yet to have an atheistic friend try and explain spiritual matters via a non-Theistic line of reasoning.  How else would one argue the finer points of a human nature that is expressed by more than what we can tangibly see, taste, smell, touch, hear, or mentally visualize of the physical world around us?

    In the words of an atheistic friend of mine, it is a gift … this great consciousness that we all share.  This awareness that allows us to propagate the notion that we are somehow all entitled to rights.  Which is the greatest irony of all time, that the Universe would explode into existence at the point of the big bang, that matter would bump around through 13 billion years of time until life were sparked into existence, and then poof!  That matter bumping around against itself would bestow a gift upon the life it accidently created.

    All right, lets say I accept your model for the sake of argument.  I then assert that my rights have not been fulfilled.  My rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (as understood and expressed by my consciousness) have been taken away and trampled upon.  To whom do I turn?  To whom do I take up my grievances with?  Where is Justice?  As Dr. Ravi Zacharias has said on a number of occasions (and I paraphrase), Atheism makes a mockery of justice.  And the only logical conclusion from there is that it doesn’t really matter anyway.  After all, there is no meaning, can be no meaning, since everything is merely a result of physical laws set into motion so long, long ago.

    So today I ask the question: Where do YOUR rights come from?  The emphasis on the individual nature is important here.  Because if your rights are just some cosmic accident, some whimsical fluke of natural laws, then I say “So what?”  What makes your rights any more or any less valuable or important or necessary of enforcement or protection than any others on this Earth?

    However, for those that join me and the framers of the U.S. Declaration of Independence in understanding and believing that my rights are endowed by my Creator (God), then you, like I, have a champion, a defender, a Judge, and an arbitrator of those rights.  The same God that bestowed them on me, that gave them to me as a gift, is the same God that is going to ensure that Justice is served.  My rights did not come from some cosmic consciousness (which doesn’t make sense or match any model its defenders purport to begin with) or by some accident of physical nature.  My rights are fabricated into my very being by God himself and he will, one day, hold me accountable for them.

    Fortunately, I have an understanding, and an answer for him.

  • LRPSP

    LRPSP. com has been up for over a week now and I thought I’d step back and provide some foundation for the categories, my biases, and the general discussions.  The About page provides an overview of the Blog, however I thought that over time a little more detail might be provided.  This is a short introduction.

    The pillars of the site – Life / Religion / Politics / Science / Philosophy are the foundations we exist upon.  I have collapsed some of the categories for the sake of a short, catchy URL (at least I hope it is catchy), but for the most part the things that make up our world and make us who we are fit into these categories.  They are also the categories where the most passionate debates come from.  These are the discussions about who we are, how did we get here, why are we here, where are we going, what are we supposed to be doing, and what does it all mean?

    if you were to look at an apologetics course such as The Truth Project – hosted at Focus On The Family you will find pretty much the same core of pillars.  These pillars are also where apologists such as Dr. Ravi Zacharias, Dr. Del Tackett, or Josh McDowell might build their cases on.

    I am nowhere near as talented as either one of these three individuals, or others like them, but I do have an understanding of the basics, and I enjoy a heart-to-heart conversation.  And I’d like to invite anyone and everyone to join in the conversations.  Especially those that are dissenters, such as these folks that obviously take issue with Josh McDowell’s book Evidence That Demands A Verdict.

    Of course this is a family oriented site so the rules are somewhat strict.  Of course that doesn’t mean we cannot have adult discussions from time-to-time, but it does mean that a certain level of civility and a language code will be insisted upon.

    The pillars cover the following:

    Life– Everything that animates us that we experience, know, and deal with on a day-to-day basis.  Life covers the physical, our bodies, our world and our interactions with it, our souls, our emotions, thoughts, and what makes us laugh, what makes us cry.  Life covers all the unique characteristics that make you – you and me – me.  These could be hobbies, sports, interests, studies, jobs, interactions, or anything else that makes us the unique creations we are.

    Religion– Everything within the Spiritual world and our connection with God.  Religion may encompass Theology, our innermost selves, Heaven, Hell, Angels, Demons, and all things of a Devine nature.

    Politics– Would cover our Governments, our laws, things that govern our social interactions, or even the application, adjudication, or interpretation of those laws.  Governments (and thus politics) do not necessarily exist at the Capitol buildings and no where else.  They generally permeate our entire lives.  Homeowners Associations are a form of Governance (and are generally found to be the bottom rung of government).  However, Politics may even extend into the home and the family structure.

    Science– Is all the sciences.  Biology, Sociology, Anthropology, Archaeology, Geography, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, etc.  the Sciences are important because they facilitate our discovery and our understanding of the world around us.

    Philosophy– Our Philosophies are what define and establish our World Views.  They help shape how we see things and through what colored lenses we interpret things.

    Obviously by now, if you have followed any of my timeline, or read my blog posts from the beginning, you might surmise that my World View encompasses a God.  I believe Theology (I just grouped this under Religion) is the foundational study of all.  It is the foundation upon which everything else is built.

    It should be clear by now that my Theological Foundation is the ground floor that all other pillars sit upon.

    And I would like to point out that all great minds start out here (not that I am saying that I am a great mind, but rather that I am a good student and have learned from them).

    Even amongst our high level contemporary thinkers, Dr. Richard Dawkins, Dr. Richard Carrier, Dr. Stephen Hawking, and (of course) Dr. Ravi Zacharias, and Dr. Del Tackett, all of these start with Theology.

    What is it that consumes Dr. Dawkins completely?  Why it is to disprove the existence of God.  Dr. Stephen Hawking’s latest book, The Grand Design, states “It is reasonable to ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then the question has merely been deflected to that of who created God.” (The Grand Design, pg. 165, 1st paragraph).  Dr. Carrier is certainly consumed by Christians (if not God), see part of his talk at Skepticon 3 (or just search YouTube for him).  All of these individuals are consumed with Theology, the study of God.  Granted, their study intends to disprove the existence of God, but you cannot disprove that which you do not study.

    Clearly all great minds agree that Theology is foundational to any other study we may pursue.  It provides us insight into other studies and (as Dr. Hawking points out in his book on pg. 164), it is a necessary study to answer the questions: “Why is there something rather than nothing?  Why do we exist?  Why this particular set of law and not some other?” just before he launches into a Theological discussion of God.

    But I hope you don’t think all of my Blog discussions will be some boring, unintelligible diatribe about Religion, or Politics, or Philosophy, or Science.  No, I’d like to discuss the fun parts, the sad parts, and the parts of life that interest you as well.

    It is sincerely my hope you will see the importance and value of these pillars, and that they will help  guide your input, but if not, don’t worry about it.  Either read for fun, or join in to share you opinion.

    But let’s have a conversation about: Life/Religion/Politics/Science/Philosophy!