It’s not you, it’s me…

If a blog is written on the internet and no one is around to read it, did it ever really get written at all?

That’s a quirky way of stating a pointed-fact about my blog: no one is reading. My visitor stats have declined in recent months and I like to tell myself it has something to do with the Summer vacationing-season. Wishful thinking, I suppose…

I know that some of my recent posts haven’t been the type of material people like to casually read on the internet. Aside from my family who lovingly read everything I write and reply at times with encouraging comments, I think that most of my readership has lost interest.

It’s times like these that most bloggers decide to put down the laptop and find other means for self-expression. Unfortunately, I just love writing too much and know that getting a writing-based ministry off the ground probably requires a bunch of perseverance and multiple encounters with failure.

So….

The next stage in my evolution of internet writing is hopefully going to unfold sometime in August. The 19th of August, 2011 will actually mark the two-year point of when I first started “at the trailhead,” so it’s as good a time as any to move on and try something new. What I’m planning is the start of a new website to host at least two different blogs as well as other elements (videos, book reviews, etc) to engage new readers.

One blog is going to be dedicated to devotional writing. There is a strong subset of my readership that likes reading some of my devotional thoughts from Scripture. I plan to write small, frequent posts where I teach “a little something” from the Bible and make it applicable to everyday life. Hopefully these will be short, thoughtful and engaging enough where you will feel encouraged to pass it along to other friends in your social network.

Another blog is going to be fixated around my desire to explore the critical issues of the faith. This is where I find my passion for writing and teaching. I plan to get things started by illustrating why I believe that churches today need to be equipping their members in areas such as:

1. the reliability of the Scriptures
2. the methods of study which help the Bible make sense
3. the Christian and secular philosophy
4. the difference between Christian and non-Christian beliefs and values

This second blog, if nothing else, is going to serve as a trial run for a future ministry engaging with critical questions and teaching others how to think well. With the website hosting both blogs, visitors will have the option of whether they wish to view this blog or simply stick to the other, more application-based writings.

I’m still considering keeping “at the trailhead” open as a place to post updates on where I’m at spiritually and where I’m going with ministry. I know plenty of people have appreciated posts where I simply give some updated details on my life situation, so this site may continue to serve that purpose well.

Thank you to my readership – Mom, Dad, Tim, facebook friends, email-subscribers back at Calvary Church I plan to set up the new website sometime in August when I have a break from school and will post the link first to this website here and offer the opportunity to subscribe.

Best,

Tony

Betting on God

In the last post, I referenced a “fine-tuning” argument for God’s existence and talked a lot about the role that “probabilities” end up playing in a defense both for and against the assertion that God must exist.  Probabilities, for the scientist, are part-and-parcel to the discussion of anything that is uncertain since they help lead to conclusions on what is “most-likely true”. For people, such as myself, who find God’s existence compelling, the uncertainty of a science-driven conclusion isn’t much of a concern. Science isn’t the gold-standard for how I choose to trust the things I think that I know. But for the person who struggles with the level of scientific uncertainty and is unable to assert a set of beliefs about God (aka the “agnostic” view ), the question stands of what they ought to do given their predicament. After all, just because a person determines that God is unknowable, that doesn’t have any real bearing on whether He is actually there or not, correct? All they’ve determined in agnosticism is that a human being is incapable of being able to prove something to the truest sense of the term. Being that one doesn’t know for sure, might the smartest plan moving forward be to begin living in such a way that assumes God does exist as opposed to assuming He doesn’t?

A guy named Blaise Pascal wished for some friends of his to ask themselves that same question about three hundred and fifty years ago. Pascal, before his conversion experience, was a carouser who lived a fast life – women, drinking and lots of gambling. He was also known to be an incredibly brilliant mathematician who was famous for his intellectual ability and mastery of a variety of disciplines including physics, philosophy and others. Pascal’s contribution to this question of God’s existence comes in the way he analyzed what he felt his friends ought to do given their reluctance to believe what he did about a supreme being. When it came to uncertainty, he saw the answer for how to respond in what he and his friends knew best: gambling.

See, when it comes to gambling, one’s best course of action is always to choose the bet which has the highest level of value compared to all the other options one has. For a mathematician like Pascal, the question can be framed in a simple formula.

The value of a bet = ([the probability of being correct] x [the expected payout]) – [the cost of the bet]

All games have probabilities and a known payout (e.g. Texas Hold ‘em poker where the probability of making a certain ‘hand’ changes as the community cards are revealed and the payout is sitting right in front of you — the jackpot!). The cost to you is whatever you have to give up in order to make the bet.

In the case of a question like “does God exist?” to the agnostic, the value of placing your bet for God’s existence far outweighs the value of placing your bet against it – this is what Pascal wished to demonstrate to his friends and so I now share with you.

If the truth of God’s existence is a toss-up, then there is a 50/50 chance for both options.

Let’s consider the value of both bets:

1. When the probability of God existing is 50% and the payout of the bet for God is infinite in value (eternal life should you believe in Christ), the product is a value which is also infinite in measure. Should the cost to you to live under that belief be significant, it is still only a finite amount. Therefore the final value of placing a bet for God is infinite.
2. When the probability of God not existing is also 50% and the payout of the bet against God is significant, but finite (earthly bliss – free of morals and absolute truth), the product may be of significant value, but it is still finite. While the cost to you for choosing this option is nothing, the payout is finite and the value to you of betting against God is also only some finite amount…

Pascal was hoping that his friends would see the value in “betting on God” when compared to the lesser value of betting against Him. The question still remains, “what does it mean to ‘bet on God’?” Like I said earlier, Pascal wanted his friends to pursue a life where they would take the chance on God being there and would actively seek to know more about Him.

Will the path eventually lead to a full-fledged belief in Jesus Christ? That again is uncertain and not the point of this demonstration. Unfortunately, I can’t give you faith through a mathematical formula on how to bet. That question is in God’s hands and because of that I pray for you often. “Pascal’s Wager,” as it is called, serves only to be a reminder that your uncertainty doesn’t leave you with reason to assume that you’re not making a bet of some sort regardless of what you do. If you choose a scientific approach to truth, the uncertainty you’re left with forces a bet to be made. Given that situation, Pascal shows that your bet for God is always the better choice.

I’m looking forward to future posts where I hope to step past a scientific approach to truth and discuss the reasonable nature of belief in light of what God has revealed to us both in creation and through His Son Jesus Christ.

If you want to talk more about what it means to “bet on God,” email me at salvationassurance@gmail.com. I’ll be glad to continue the discussion.

Does God Exist?

Today, people all over the world went outside to look at the moon. The reason was because the moon fell into the shadow of the earth for an extended period of time and changed colors from a light orange to a blood red. The 2011 lunar eclipse was one of the longest eclipses in more than a decade.

So a lot of people went outside tonight to marvel at the moon and have their thoughts captured by a “natural” phenomenon, something that breaks the monotony of their typical crazed and routine lives. Is this a starting point for a discussion about God’s existence? People’s attention was turned for an extended period of time away from themselves and toward something they don’t quite understand. Sure, our scientists tells us all about the specifics of what took place and they can even answer the question “why?” by explaining something about orbital paths in our solar system and the effect of one planet casting a shadow on a natural satellite. But where the answers cease is in the follow-up question: where did this structure, this finely-tuned structure of the universe come from?

The question looms. And it is never answered because science has no way of telling us.

It the wake of the deafening silence, distraction thankfully returns and people get to ignore the question marks that cause an uneasiness about their existence. Its an uneasiness that stems from the “lack of purpose” that is so clearly staring them in the face when they don’t have an answer for one question: “why?”

I should just say, I’m a firm believer in God’s existence. And not just God in the sense of an unknown creator that acted some time millenniums ago. I, um, believe in a God that scientists and philosophers argue about in terms of probabilities. In case you’re wondering where our greatest minds are at on the question “why?” – let me tell you: they discuss God’s existence (for and against) in terms of probabilities.

The God proponents work and study and craft logically mountainous arguments for the purpose of coming to a podium and telling their audience that because of the Universes’ fine-tuning, they see a “really, really, really high probability” of a God existing. The God opponents do a similar presentation, but they use their data in different ways to create different stories and to paint a different picture about the seemingly “smaller” probability of His existence.

This should make you feel a little uneasy about our situation. Our best scientists and philosophers cannot tell you with a 100% degree of certainty whether or not God exists. None of us can prove God’s existence. But this makes sense as, by definition, God is TOO great for any of us to logically deduce or prove by the way of futile reason and our observable evidences. He’s God for crying out loud!!!

Is the fine-tuning of the Universe there for us to point to our friends and say “see, God exists!” or is it there for us to stare in amazement and be brought to humility as we acknowledge that the question “WHY?” doesn’t have an answer that is provable in a laboratory? Perhaps we as people should trod a little more respectfully on this earth just in case the God who exists DID choose to speak through Israelite prophets and DID choose to come in the form of a man named Jesus of Nazareth and DID rise from the dead after being crucified in AD 33 and will return to judge all of mankind. Just saying, it’s worth thinking about…

After all the evidence is looked at, the probabilities for God may or may be not enough to convince you. Despite that, I think the greater question is whether or not it is smart to take a chance on the idea that all of what we see happened by accident. Consider those probabilities for a minute and tell me if that is where you’d like to place your bet.

Personally, I just don’t have that kind of faith

New Year

I’ve been itching all day to write a blog post and re-engage with the people who happen to still be reading this thing. Tomorrow’s my birthday (yes, that was a shameless plug for birthday wishes) and I keep thinking that I need to figure out exactly what I’m doing with this thing (the blog). It started as a project to document my journey through seminary and keep in touch with friends and family. Unfortunately, it has really been anything but that since it began. Still, before I turn the page and start a new chapter tomorrow (no pun intended), I thought I’d recap what’s been happening recently and give some insights to everyone about what this “journey” has entailed.

For one, I’m on the back end of my time at DTS. I’ve been working pretty hard since I got here, so I’ve completed 72 of the 120 credits I need to graduate. It’s a four-year program, but I should be done in 3 and 1/2. I could be done sooner, but my intent is to slow down in the last year, focus on doing quality work in my concentration and take next Summer off before I write my thesis and prepare for graduation. The goal post-graduation is still unclear, but my hopes is that an internship with my church back in Lancaster, PA will help me decipher whether applying for a position in the realm of church leadership/pastorate is the best option for me. I’d be completely open as to where I’d start this leg of the journey, just as long as it was somewhere that is closer to home and hopefully away from the big-city atmosphere. Another option might be to teach biblical studies or theology and the best way to start pursuing that career path I think might be to volunteer my time overseas in a missionary capacity where a Master’s degree can realistically find work. After that, an advanced degree in a specialized field would be a reasonable option once I had field experience and figured out what focus would be worth the time a dissertation and PhD coursework requires.

Frankly, I’m a bit nervous and unsure of myself. I wish someone in my life would say, “Tony, you have gifts in _____, I think you’d be really good doing _____ when you graduate.” Unfortunately, finding mentoring here has been ridiculously difficult – almost to the point that seeking it out feels desperate and unattractive. But I do praise God for how He may be providing in this area soon, since I’m due to move-in with a former DTS prof and his wife come June 30. And that leads me to the next tidbit to share.

Like I said, the Lord has provided for me again, and this time it is in the area of housing and (hopefully) mentorship. A few months ago, I was searching desperately for a new roommate and hoping to renew my lease here once my current roommate moved out at the end of June. I had a few leads, but nothing solid and it appeared that I might need to move into a single apartment on my own, which would cost considerably more than what I currently am paying. Soon after getting the word out about my situation, a friend here mentioned that he’d be moving out of a rent-free situation that I should consider. So I went out to meet the couple that he lives with and they offered to let me move in with them and stay on their second-floor for free. Its a beautiful house and its owned by a former DTS prof who currently travels world-wide with his wife to train pastors. They need someone to watch the place when they are gone, so they offer the place to DTS students with no charge for rent, utilities or internet. So, praise God, huh?!? I’m still working part-time as an economics tutor, so the savings is going to help me dramatically with my goal of getting debt free. Pretty cool stuff.

So, about blogging…

Well, one of the reasons I haven’t blogged much recently is because I literally don’t know what to talk about. I miss home and wish I had more close friends here. I’m sort of depressed with everyday life and am starting to see the futility with writing little stories and lessons for people to read and say “hmm..I like that.” I sometimes ask myself, “what is really worth saying?” People say so much and between all of the electronic mediums we have for communication, more and more of it passes in front of us everyday. It makes us cold to all of those ideas, facts and stories as the shear volume strips each one of its force, value and importance. We forget so easily the thing we read that impacted us a couple days ago because today there’s something new, something popular that begs our attention and tomorrow there’ll be another. So, it’s left me thinking about what is worth sharing and I have to say that “my opinion” is probably not it. Unfortunately, that is much of what blogging is about.

Just think about it – in your everyday life, aren’t you sick of the relentless onslaught of information and ideas that are thrown at you? It’s as if there is such a desperate lack of any bit or piece of truth to speak, that the only way to fill the void is to turn on the fire hose and let anything we find come gushing out. But we do it because it wets the taste-buds of everyone who is still clamoring for meaning and purpose in their lives and don’t know what to think for themselves.

So again, seriously, what is worth saying? I think that if my opportunity to “blog” is going to become anything in my 30th year on this earth, it should be a scratch-pad for discussing life and deciphering ‘what is truth’ from basic folly, so that we can figure out exactly what is worth believing in and then share it with others. Its a daunting task (and could even be seen as philosophically naive and arrogant), but I’m pretty confident that the truth is there and that we can humbly begin to seek it out together. We may not ever completely rise above the every day humdrum of current events and popular ideas, but we can at least gain some insight into what matters for the purpose of learning how to think well and growing toward some sort of spiritual and intellectual maturity. I hope this next year will be good for both of us and I hope you will keep reading and sharing your thoughts as we discuss. More to come soon.

Shalom!

Hell is…

This is just a 4-minute clip from Pastor Mark Driscoll discussing the reality of what Hell really is.  He sums this up just about as well as any person could, in my opinion.  Driscoll has really become a role model of mine recently for developing the ability to communicate Biblical truth to others.

The Fruit of Their Labor

This video is really incredible.  It’s a ten-minute segment documenting the arrival of the Bible’s New Testament to a people group in Indonesia who have never seen God’s Word put into their language.  Very moving and powerful.  Watching this has certainly renewed my interest in being involved with translation work overseas.  It’s refreshing to see such joy and emotion over receiving God’s Word.

Carrying Your Cross

This is a very short clip from a sermon by Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA.  He accurately communicates a true-to-the-text perspective of what it means to “take up your cross and follow Jesus.”

If you have the time (the sermon is about 46 minutes), I’d highly recommend you watch and listen to Mark’s entire sermon from Luke’s Gospel, chapter 14.  To find the sermon, follow this link.

Carried Away

The thoughts of Oswald Chambers for February 21st.

HAVE YOU EVER BEEN CARRIED AWAY FOR HIM?

“She hath wrought a good work on Me.” Mark xiv. 6.

If human love does not carry a man beyond himself, it is not love.  If love is always discreet, always wise, always sensible and calculating, never carried beyond itself, it is not love at all.  It may be affection, it may be warmth of feeling, but it has not the true nature of love in it.

Have I ever been carried away to do something for God not because it was my duty, nor because it was useful, nor because there was anything in it at all beyond the fact that I love Him?  Have I ever realized that I can bring to God things which are of value to Him, or am I mooning round the magnitude of His Redemption whilst there are any number of things which could be recorded as marvelous, but ordinary, simple human things which will give evidence to God that I am abandoned to Him?  Have I ever produced in the heart of the Lord Jesus what Mary of Bethany produced?

There are times when it seems as if God watches to see if we will give Him the abandoned tokens of how genuinely we do love Him.  Abandon to God is of more value than personal holiness.  Personal holiness focuses the eye on our own whiteness; we are greatly concerned about the way we walk and talk and look, fearful lest we offend Him.  Perfect love casts out all that when once we are abandoned to God.  We have to get rid of this notion – “Am I of any use?” and make up our minds that we are not, and we may be near the truth.  It is never a question of being of use, but of being of value to God Himself.  When we are abandoned to God, He works through us all the time.

May Valentine’s Night Feel Familiar

This post is being written to all of my single friends (both male and female) at DTS.  It is Valentine’s night and I know many of you are probably hating the feeling of being alone.  I do too.  The only thing I hate more is the feeling of contentment without actually being in love.  So I stay single.  Its the burden of an idealist, a closet-romantic I suppose.  Still, I want to encourage you, if you’ll allow it, to remember this feeling of loneliness and imprint it deep upon your heart and mind.  I want to encourage you to do this for two reasons:

1) It’s remembering moments like this one that will allow you to understand and sympathize with many of the hurting people you may or may not come across later on in your future ministry.  The essence of the ‘human condition’ I feel is the acknowledgment of being lost and alone in this world.  Without the relationship that God meant for us to have with Him, we are empty souls looking for something to satisfy or fulfill us.  We’ve all heard about the “God-shaped-hole” before, but I want to look at it for a moment from a different angle.  Consider the men and women you read about in the news who do horrific things to others.  Think about the men you’ll counsel one day that will sit in your office and confess the affairs they’ve recently had.  Think about the women who will tell you about the abortions they’ve had and how they are pregnant again out of wedlock.  Think of the most terrible thing that we humans can do and consider that maybe the people who commit those things are just people who spent one too many nights feeling the way we do tonight and finally just lost it, doing whatever they could to find some relief.  Offering the witness of the Gospel and the love of Jesus Christ to the lonely and broken-hearted will be our business one day – we might as well get familiar with our target market.

2) Get used to the feeling of being alone.  A good friend once reminded me that leadership is always lonely.  And holding to an uncompromised version of the Gospel of Jesus Christ will increasingly become more and more difficult as our culture drifts further and further from God.  I’m not going to spend this post laying out the reasons why I think that is the case, but I’ll just say again that much of what Jesus explained about following Him had to do with the difficulty of being committed to Him when it involves taking up our cross each day and sacrificing ourselves like He did.  He also talked a little about being disowned and abandoned by even some of the closest friends and family we have.  Just saying…

Leading others in ministry may be incredibly difficult because it may mean stepping out in front to lead, which means initially beginning the journey completely alone until someone starts following you.  Your relationship with God and the intimacy you enjoy with your Savior may become the only thing you’ll be able to count on once it is no longer ‘cool’ to be a Christian around here.  Being alone and learning to appreciate that truth now will only strengthen you for when things get tough down the road.

Anyway, those are my thoughts for tonight.  Loneliness isn’t easy, but in many ways it makes you feel more alive than just about anything else.  There are no security blankets or coping methods.  Just you and God and a little awkward silence to help get a conversation going.

Ready 2 b offered?

This was the devotional for February 6th in Oswald Chamber’s My Utmost for His Highest:

“I am already being poured out as a drink offering.” 2 Tim. iv. 6

“I am ready to be offered.”  It is a transaction of will, not of sentiment.  Tell God you are ready to be offered; then let the consequences be what they may, there is no strand of complaint now, no matter what God chooses.  God puts you through the crisis in private, no one person can help another.  Externally the life may be the same; the difference is in will.  Go through the crisis in will, then when it comes externally there will be no thought of the cost.  If you do not transact in will with God along this line, you will end in awakening sympathy for yourself.

“Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.”  The altar means fire – burning and purification and insulation for one purpose only, the destruction of every affinity that God has not started and of every attachment that is not an attachment in God.  You do not destroy it, God does; you bind the sacrifice to the horns of the altar; and see that you do not give way to self-pity when the fire begins.  After this way of fire, there is nothing that oppresses or depresses.  When the crisis arises, you realize that things cannot touch you as they used to do.   What is your way of fire?

Tell God you are ready to be offered, and God will prove Himself to be all you ever dreamed He would be.

When I got done reading this today, I knew that the writer had really called me out.  What he was suggesting, or a least the way I interpreted it, was something much more serious and real than 95% of the rest of what I hear or read on any given day here.  I can’t tell you how old the moralistic behavior-modification stuff gets that makes it sound as if the Bible’s message to us all is to curb our latest sinful desire and be more holy.  Like anything else you eat over and over again, I’ve gotten sick of it and have started trusting my intuition on the idea that striving for moralistic perfection HAS to be missing the mark in some way.  What Chambers is saying here is that God is the one who makes us Holy and He does it by fire. I think he’s right.

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” – Mark 8:34

One of the things they teach you at Seminary is how we see the foreshadowing in the Old Testament of who Jesus was meant to become when He came to the earth to do His Father’s work.  When studying the old Jewish law, known as the Torah (which is also the first 5 books of the Bible), you see a very detailed sacrificial system that was used for making amends with God for your sins.  The nation of Israel had a covenant with God and breaking that covenant meant blood having to be shed.  Animals were brought to a priest who slaughtered them upon an altar.  Fire from heaven would come and consume the sacrifice.  When Jesus Christ came and died on Calvary, He became the ‘sacrifice to end all sacrifices,’ if you will.  Because He was fully human and fully God, He was deemed worthy to be a final payment for all sins and was led to the slaughter, carrying His cross.  Because of that, the whole sacrificial system is now obsolete and all sins before and after are covered by Christ’s sacrifice.

Anyway, what Oswald Chambers is suggesting here is the truest example of what a believer can do (with the will of their heart) to really follow Christ in their life.  It is to place ourselves on the altar and obediently wait for God’s consuming fire.  In order words, it is to ‘take up your cross’ and follow Jesus, as He suggested.   This makes me smile because Chambers is not pulling any punches when he suggests this.  He’s capturing the essence of God’s demand upon our lives as seen in the Scriptures.  Focusing on ‘being a better person’ misses the idea and, in terms of our will, keeps us in charge of our spiritual development (if such a thing is possible).  Putting ourselves on the altar to be burned with God’s all-consuming fire is very different and involves our trust in His work to mold and shape us into what He desires.  This is very serious and I believe that mouthing the words or telling yourself you’re ready shouldn’t be taken lightly.

I got done reading this today and knew it was the very best thing for me, but I knew I couldn’t do it yet.  I put the words “Ready 2 b offered?” on the banner for my cell phone so that I’m reminded each time I look at the screen.  Maybe I’ll look at it sometime when I’m more ready than I am now.  God’s breaking me in His time and I have to be cool with that.  I just want to share it because I encourage you to read over the devotional above and ask yourself the same question.  It was really convicting to me today and I hope it spurs you to a moment of honesty and authenticity between you and God.  If you want to write and share your thoughts, I can be reached at salvationassured@hotmail.com.  Thanks for reading.