Aug7

God’s Definition of Good

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What is God’s definition of good?

Someone asked that question on the radio recently, and it really made me think, mostly because I’m just about positive God’s definition is different than man’s.

The Bible says,

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” ~ Isaiah 55:8-9, ESV.

What that tells me is that God sees things differently than we do. In addition, God is completely good, and we are the antithesis of good. The Bible says our righteousness is as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). All of which makes sense, because we’re separated from God as a result of our sin ~ and as a result of Adam and Eve’s original sin ~ thus necessitating the need for a savior. Which is why Jesus Christ came and died on the cross ~ to atone once for all for our rebellion, and pay the ransom to remove the wall of separation between us and God.

Humans may have good parts; we may do good deeds. But bottom line, we are an evil lot, and without Jesus Christ’s saving work on the cross we would have no hope of anything other than eternity in Hell.

So God, and of course Christ, are wholly other than humanity, completely separate.

With all of that said, good from God’s point of view might be seen as that which is morally pure, just, and right, and also truthful ~ in the way that Jesus is the Truth (John 14:6, Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” ~ NKJV). I capitalized Truth because it’s not the kind of truth you see in today’s culture, with moral relativism and relative truth. It’s the absolute Truth that’s found in God’s Word, and that’s embodied in Jesus Christ.

I think the concept of good is also seen in everything that’s beautiful. The Bible says,

Oh, worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness! Tremble before Him, all the earth. ~ Psalm 96:8, NKJV.

Give unto the LORD the glory due to His name; Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness. ~ Psalm 29:2, NKJV.

Not only are God and His holiness beautiful, but His creation is beautiful as well, and the world He created is chock-full of examples. In fact, His Word says that evidence of His existence can be clearly seen in His creation. It says in the book of Romans,

For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made they can clearly see His invisible qualities ~ His eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. ~ Romans 1:20, NLT.

I also think God sees suffering as good, even beautiful, as paradoxical as that may sound. Jesus’ work of salvation on the cross was the best possible good that any person could have done for humanity throughout all of eternity, and yet the agony He suffered ~ physically, emotionally, and spiritually ~ was probably as much suffering as any person has ever had to go through.

He bore the sin of the whole world in His body, and worst of all, He had to endure God’s abandonment, because God cannot look on sin, so while Jesus hung on the cross God had to turn His back on Jesus. That must have been the most agonizingly painful suffering of all for Him, and He showed it with His words,

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means,” My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” ~ Mark 15:34, ESV.

When Jesus uttered that anguished cry He was actually quoting Psalm 22:1,

My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? ~ Psalm 22:1, NIV.

Another detail of Christi’s suffering that I remembered as I was writing this post is that He actually benefitted from it as well, as everyone else did, something that I’ve never understood very well. It says in Hebrews,

While Jesus was here on earth, He offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the One who could rescue Him from death. And God heard His prayers because of His deep reverence for God. Even though Jesus was God’s Son, He learned obedience from the things He suffered. ~ Hebrews 5:7-8, NLT.

That idea has always puzzled me. Why would Jesus Christ, the Son of God, have to learn to be obedient before He could go to the cross? Maybe it was because He was human as well as divine, and the human part had to learn obedience. That makes sense to me. That I can understand.

Curiouser and more wonderful too!

His humanity taught His divinity what it meant to suffer, and how hard it was for humans to be obedient in the process.

Maybe that’s why He makes such a good High Priest!

I like to think so…

Jul30

Jesus Is the Only Way to God Because He Is God.

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Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” ~ John 14:6, NKJV.

I’ve heard many people object that Christians have no right to say that Jesus is the only way to God. I’ve also heard people say that Jesus never said He was God (not true, He said it many times in a number of different contexts). Seems to me, if people would recognize that He said He was God, then they would realize that, of course He was the only way to God, because He was God. He was the only way to reach Himself.

In addition, Jesus was the only figure representing a religion who called Himself God. Mohammed said he was Allah/God’s messenger, Buddhism has no gods, and Hinduism has 33 million gods.

“I and My Father are one.” ~ John 10:30, NKJV.

Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know Me, Philip? Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father. How can you say ‘Show us the Father’?” ~ John 14:8-9, ESV.

It would be true that Jesus couldn’t say that He’s the only way to access God if He weren’t God but He is. He said He was God on many different occasions, as illustrated by the two instances above.

Additionally, when He was on the cross, one of the last things Jesus said was, “It is finished.” ~ John 19:30, NKJV. Then He died, after which the veil in the temple that separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place was torn in two from top to bottom. This was no mean feat, because the veil was reported to be sixty feet high and fifteen feet wide, and four inches thick. (some sources say it was thirty feet high and fifteen feet wide). Plus it was torn from top to bottom, sixty feet in the air, something no human being could have accomplished.

The veil was significant because it separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place in the temple, and originally in the tabernacle, and God was thought to have resided in the Most Holy Place. So if the veil separating the two was gone, then the wall closing off humanity from relationship with God was now removed, giving man access to God for the very first time since Adam’s sin way back in the beginning.

The upshot of all this is that if Jesus said He’s the way to reach God, and He speaks only the truth, then He must be the way to reach God because He was the only human to ever walk the earth who lived a perfect, sinless life. So He’s the only one who could be a bridge between us and a Holy God.

And He is exactly that!

Jul3

God Is God, So He Doesn’t Have to Play God.

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I had an interesting insight on the sovereignty of God recently.

I used to have big problems with God’s sovereignty in my life, because it seemed like it was God’s sovereignty that allowed me to be abused. And it used to make me SOOO ANGRY, because it felt like God wanted me to be abused, and it felt like cosmic child abuse.

I went through a whole seven-year period where I was enraged at God because of that, until I finally realized I was barking up the wrong tree ~ I was asking the wrong questions. I should have been asking who, what, and where questions instead of why questions. And once I started asking the right questions I actually got answers. God showed me where He was while I was being abused ~ which was all I really wanted to know in the first place.

But I realized recently that when someone is demanding that God explain Himself about something He’s done in that person’s life, what they’re really saying is, “How dare You play god with my life!” That made me laugh when I thought about it. How dare God play god with someone’s life? He IS God! He isn’t playing god, He’s BEING God! There’s a significant difference. The Apostle Paul says in Romans,

But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? ~ Romans 9: 20-21, ESV.

It seems to me Paul is saying here that God, because He is the Creator, has the right to do whatever He wants with the people He creates, and while those people can ask questions of Him, and pray for answers, they don’t have the right to demand explanations for His decisions.

You wouldn’t like it if your son demanded to know why you were taking him to the doctor’s office if his ear hurt, and then refused to go because he didn’t like the prick of needle from the shot. You would know why you were doing it ~ because the kid has an ear infection that needs to be healed, and if the doctor doesn’t give him an injection he could go deaf, or even die if it gets bad enough. You can see the big picture. You can see the end result, whereas the child can’t. The same holds true for God. The Bible says,

Only I can tell you the future before it even happens. Everything I plan will come to pass, for I do whatever I wish. ~ Isaiah 46:10, NLT.

I like the way the NIV says it as well,

I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.’ ~ Isaiah 46:10, NIV.

What that says to me is that God knew everything that would ever happen to me before I was ever a thought in anyone’s mind. He knew every decision I would make, and every thought I would think. He also knew every decision He would make about me. The Bible also says He knows the day I’m going to die, something I find quite comforting.

Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. ~ Psalm 139:16, NIV.

The reason I find that comforting is because now that I know that, it’s something I don’t have to worry about anymore. It’s God’s problem, not mine. All I have to do is go through my days doing my best to glorify God in all I do, basing my life on His Word, and God will take care of the rest.

Such a deal!

Jun19

Working Hard at Doing Absolutely Nothing, or Maybe I’m NOT Such a Lazy Bum.

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I’ve been wanting to write about the fact that I don’t have a job, which makes me feel like a I’m not much more than a big, lazy bum.

I’ve tried a number of times to get a job, to no avail. Everytime I apply for a job some place, something always happens that makes it not work out. Either I’m under-qualified, or I’m over-qualified, or I’m too old (I’m 65), or I’m too highly educated, or I’m too religious (I’m an evangelical Christian), or I’m too opinionated, or I’m not opinionated enough, or…, or…, or ad nauseam, ad infinitum. And the few times I’ve had a job, that didn’t work out either, with one exception: my job working for ADS (Airport Delivery Service). I really like that job, and I was good at it.

My job with ADS was the best job I ever had. It was a job where I returned people’s lost luggage out of John Wayne Airport in Orange County, California, and I got to drive to interesting hotels and ritzy houses all over southern California, plus I got to meet a lot of fascinating people. In addition, I could listen to my favorite stations on the radio, without regard to anyone else’s listening preferences. It felt a little selfish, but I was the only one riding in my car, so it didn’t really make any difference.

But if I were to think about it logically ~ hard to do, but I can manage it ~ as well as listen to what my friends tell me, I would realize that I probably do more than I’m aware of. I have three friends, all of whom depend on me for moral support. Both Karens are taking care of their significant others. Karen C. is the primary caregiver for her mom, who is in end-stage Alzheimer’s Disease, and has been for awhile. Karen G-N. is the primary caregiver for her husband, David, and her newborn baby. David is on dialysis three times a week because he needs a kidney transplant, and Karen has been doing the dialysis at home ~ imagine that ~ kidney dialysis at home; what will they think of next. Pretty soon they’ll be doing heart transplants at home without benefit of doctors or nurses.

So David has been in the hospital for three or four months, and he hasn’t even met his baby son for the first time yet. Jonathan (the baby) has been on this earth since May 21, and David has yet to meet him. That’s just wrong! And Karen has needed friends to transport her and the baby to the hospital so she could visit David. I’ve provided the transportation, and then watched Jonathan out in the waiting room while Karen and David visited, and then drove Karen and Jonathan home again.

And then there’s the other Karen, Karen C. She doesn’t need me to drive her anywhere, but she needs lots of encouragement because she has to take care of her mom all by herself, so she’s always sleep-deprived. She has a professional caregiver (some kind of nurse) come in from the outside for six hours on Thursdays, and someone comes in to give her mom a bed-bath once a week, and someone comes in to clear her catheter and change her bladder bag once a week. So anytime something happens with her mom that worries her, Karen calls me and asks me to pray for her.

Amazingly, God always answers those prayers. I say amazingly because there hasn’t been a prayer that I’ve prayed for Karen’s mom that God hasn’t answered ~ with healing, with wisdom for whatever problem with her mom Karen’s been having that she hasn’t been able to figure out. God has always answered every prayer I’ve prayed for Karen’s mom, usually within the hour. There may have been one time where I prayed that her mom wouldn’t have to go to the ER, and she ended up having to go anyway, but that time they discovered that the problem was much deeper and more complicated than either Karen or I were aware of, so it was actually a good thing she went to the hospital.

And then there’s my friend, Helen, who lives in Australia. She had a stroke on May 29th, and while I can’t do anything to encourage her in person, I can support, inspire, and motivate her via email. Rachel and Kim are certainly doing that, and I can do the same. I can send her scripture verses, and cheerful letters, and prayers as well. It turns out you can do all kinds of things in an email letter! And her son is keeping Rachel, Kim, and me up to date on her condition and progress with daily letters.

So the upshot of all of this is that maybe I’m not quite as lazy as I think I am. Even though I don’t do much more than sit around in my apartment all day, while I’m sitting, I do a lot of encouraging and supporting and motivating of my friends. And when I go out, it’s to do the same thing ~ encourage, inspire, and motivate the friend I’m going to visit.

I guess I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.

Cool.

Jun4

Technical Issues Notwithstanding, Writing About the Cool Stuff Again.

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I hate it when I’m trying to write a blog post, but regardless of what I do, the website won’t save. I’ve prayed ~ bound the devil ~ prayed again ~ repented ~ prayed some more ~ yelled at God ~ repented for yelling at God ~ yelled at the devil ~ repented just in case ~ prayed yet again ~ bound the devil again in case the first time didn’t work ~ and prayed again for the umpteenth time. I’ve been at this for over two days, all to no avail. It’s become an exercise in futility.

This is SOOO FRUSTRATING!!! 

Here’s an update. I finally sent an email complaint to what WordPress.com calls their “Happiness Engineers” (seriously? Happiness Engineers?), and then came back here, at which point I decided to try saving what I’d written thus far. And of course it saved immediately. I hate when that happens. Now, when their lovely Happiness Engineers come and check out my complaint, it’ll look like I was making it up. SOOO frustrating!! It’s the same principle as when your car is making some kind of horrendous noise, so you take it to the mechanic, but once you get there, the noise is gone, and the mechanic looks at you like you’ve lost your mind.

It looks like the problem is solved. I did get a response from the Happiness Engineers, however, and they said that, based on past cases, this usually means there’s a problem with the connection between my browser and the wordpress servers, and I should try clearing my browser’s cache, and I should also unplug my modem/router for a few seconds to flush its DNS cache. The problem seems to have resolved itself without doing those things; however, I’m going to do them anyway.

So now I’m back to blather and whatever, what with the problem that motivated this post getting resolved. Plus, now I can get back to writing about the stuff I REALLY want to write about.

Cool.

A further update, over a year later: it turns out that WordPress has a desktop app, which I downloaded. And if I do my blogging on the desktop app, all the problems I had on the internet version of WordPress with saving, etc., just go away.

What a relief!

May27

Beauty Shouts of God’s Existence…

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Give unto the LORD the glory due to His name; worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness. ~ Psalm 29:2, NKJV.

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork. ~ Psalm 19:1, NKJV.

I’ve been fascinated by all aspects of beauty for a long time, especially with regard to Christian apologetics and the existence of God.

God’s creation is awash with examples of beauty that He’s created to give us reasons to worship Him, from the microscopic to the hugely macroscopic in outer space. There’s even a nebula that’s shaped like a horsehead! How cool is that?

Horsehead

And then there are diatoms. Diatoms are tiny, microscopic, one-celled organisms that have a glass (silica) shell, and there are about 250,000 different species, each with a different shell. They’re kind of like snowflakes, because no two are alike, and they’re all amazingly beautiful. Here are some examples:

Different Kinds of Diatoms

And there are things like the beautiful symmetry of the hemoglobin molecule, and the almost identical symmetry of the chlorophyll molecule, and considering the roles those two molecules play in the biochemistry of plants and animals, it just shows how wonderful and amazing God is.

The hemoglobin molecule:

Heme b of the Hemoglobin Molecule

The chlorophyll molecule:

Chlorophyll_f.svg

And then there are fractals, and the many fractal designs that can be found in nature.

An aloe plant:

Aloe Spiral Fractal

Mathematics is another example, with the Fibonacci sequence being a good illustration of the beauty to be found therein. The Fibonacci sequence is a series of integers characterized by the fact that every number after the first two is the sum of the two preceding ones: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, . . . A gorgeous example in nature of the Fibonacci sequence is the chambered Nautilus:

Nautilus With Connections Between Chambers

And aside from all the other examples that can be found in nature, God created human beings with the ability to perceive and appreciate beauty, as well as create beautiful things. He constructed our bodies with five senses, each of which can perceive a different kind of beauty.

Our ears can hear beautiful music, as well as a baby’s first words. Our taste buds can taste the most amazing desserts. Our noses can smell the scent of the sweetest flower, and the most fragrant perfume. Our hands can feel the softness of a baby’s skin. And with our eyes we can see the richness of color in a beautiful Van Gogh painting, or a vivid Hawaiian sunset.

All of that is to say that God has given us clear evidence of His existence through His creation, and, I believe, specifically through the beauty in His creation. It says as much in the book of Romans:

For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. ~ Romans 1:20, NLT.

 

May22

Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment…

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I’ve been thinking about a phrase from James, Chapter Two, “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” ~ James 2:12-13,

So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. ~ ESV.

And I especially like the way the New Living Translation says it, because it explains what’s meant by the phrase, “Mercy triumphs over judgment.” I’ve long thought that mercy and judgment were inextricably intertwined, and the way the New Living Translation phrases it, it seems that I’m understanding it correctly:

There will be no mercy for those who have not shown mercy to others. But if you have been merciful, God will be merciful when he judges you. ~ James 2:13, NLT.

I found a good illustration of this concept in Matthew 18:23-35, the parable that Jesus told of the unforgiving servant, and the New Living Translation tells it quite well:

Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his accounts up to date with servants who had borrowed money from him. In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him millions of dollars. He couldn’t pay, so his master ordered that he be sold ~ along with his wife, his children, and everything he owned ~ to pay the debt. But the man fell down before his master and begged him, “Please, be patient with me, and I will pay it all.”

Then his master was filled with pity for him, and he released him and forgave his debt. But when the man left the king, he went to a fellow servant who owed him a few thousand dollars. He grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment. His fellow servant fell down before him and begged for a little more time. “Be patient with me, and I will pay it,” he pleaded. But his creditor wouldn’t wait. He had the man arrested and put in prison until the debt could be paid in full.

When some of the other servants saw this, they were very upset. They went to the king and told him everything that had happened. Then the king called the man he had forgiven and said, “You evil servant! I forgave you that tremendous debt because you pleaded with me. Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?” Then the angry king sent the man to prison to be tortured until he had paid his entire debt. That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.

This says to me that for mercy to triumph over judgment, forgiveness must be offered by the wronged party to the person who wronged them. So, while God certainly plays a part in the matter, if we want God to judge us mercifully come judgment day, we must act with mercy towards others in our dealings with them in this life. We must forgive when we are wronged rather than holding a grudge or seeking revenge. Jesus told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (see Matthew 5:44), and that’s certainly what He did when He forgave those who crucified Him as He was on the cross (see Luke 23:34), which is all the more remarkable considering the agony and excruciating pain He was in at the time.

So Christ is our example, and He’s the best example we have. If I need to know what to do in any situation, all I have to do is figure out what Jesus would do, and if there’s no specific precedent to follow, then follow the path of Love.

May22

Bad Days and New Mercies

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Some days are amazing and wonderful, they’re so good. And then there are those days where you wish you’d never opened your eyes, never gotten out of bed.

Yesterday was one of those days.

Even though God’s mercy was evident in many ways (Lamentations 3:21-23), I spent the day feeling frustrated at myself and wanting to scratch my eyes out at every turn. I felt fragmented, to use multiplistic terminology, and like every cell of my body was fighting a battle with every other cell, and with every molecule outside my body. It’s irritating, exasperating, infuriating, disheartening, and aggravating to see that in hindsight. Why couldn’t I have seen it as I was going through it? If I had, I could have prayed and asked God to do something about it!

Hindsight is 20/20. Yeah, yeah. Not helpful!

Thankfully, when I woke up this morning, I felt much calmer inside. I think a lot of what was going on might have been due to exhaustion. I had gotten very little sleep in several days, and I was so tired I could barely think straight. I’m so very grateful that God’s mercies are new every morning:

This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. ~ Lamentations 3:21-23, NKJV.

I am so grateful that God forgets my past and starts fresh every morning! I need to learn to do the same, and I also need to learn to be merciful to myself, because God is certainly merciful to me.

 

May17

Hodgepodge and Potpourri

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My goodness, but it’s been a very long time since I’ve written anything here! Just under a year, in fact. A lot has happened. Mom has been gone a year and a couple of months. I had no problem dealing with it at all until Christmas, and then her birthday, and then the one-year anniversary of her death. Those days were a little hard, but I have the most wonderful friends, and the most amazing God, and between my friends and God, even those days were much easier than they would have otherwise been.

I’m teaching myself to  crochet, and amazingly enough, I’m going to learn how to weave. My Peanuteer friends got me a small rigid heddle loom for my birthday. And one of the cool things about it is that it arrived one week to the day after my birthday, on the day of the one-year anniversary of Mom’s death, so that I had this cool new loom to distract me, instead of having to ruminate on Mom not being around for her birthday, or my birthday, or Christmas, or…, or…, or…, ad nauseam, ad infinitum. I got to assemble it and everything, which was a special treat.

Riverside-Karen is pregnant and is due on June 9th, and it’s a boy. Karen and her husband are naming him Jonathan David. Isn’t that a beautiful name? I’ve already been to one baby shower, and Karen has invited me to another one this coming Saturday. The last one was for family and friends, and Karen says this one is for people from work. So I have to go and get a shower gift. I’ll probably get some 12-month outfits at Carters. I got Newborn, 3-month, 6-month, and 9-month outfits for the last shower, and afterwards Karen told me that she now had enough clothes for every age up to 12 months.

Here’s an update: I ended up not going to the shower because I was exhausted, and couldn’t stay awake. I felt like I was sleepwalking. So I called Karen and told her I couldn’t make it, and she said she understood perfectly. What a relief! She’s fighting exhaustion herself because David is in the hospital and she has to go and visit him all the time. I’m very grateful for understanding friends! She wants me to be there when the baby is born. How cool is that!

I’ve been reading in the book of Romans for my Bible reading. I love the book of Romans because it’s so logical. It’s just chock-full of rich spiritual food. I think Chapter 4 is probably my favorite. I’ve been focusing in particular on Abraham, and the phrase, “the righteousness of faith”. The Bible calls Abraham the friend of God, something I’ve always wanted to be to God, but always felt was impossible.

But maybe the reason I feel that way is because I’m still seeing God through the lens of my father, instead of who He really is, something I don’t want to do anymore.

Anyway, back to the righteousness of faith. The Bible says in Genesis 15:6, (as well as Romans 4:3, 9 and 22, Galatians 3:6, and James 2:22-23) that Abraham believed the LORD and He counted to him as righteousness. For me the passage in James encapsulates it best,

And so it happened just as the Scriptures say: ‘Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.’ He was even called the friend of God. ~ James 2:23, NLT.

And Isaiah 41:8-10 says,

But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob, whom I have chosen, descendant of Abraham, my friend — I brought you from the ends of the earth and called you from its farthest corners. I said to you: You are my servant; I have chosen you; I haven’t rejected you. Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; I will hold on to you with my righteous right hand. ~ CSB.

There’s a lot to think about in those two passages. God is speaking through Isaiah, and calls Abraham His friend. How wonderful to have God Himself call you His friend! Jesus called the disciples His friends in the book of John. In John 15:15 He said, “No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends…” ~ NKJV.

Also, there’s that phrase again, the righteousness of faith. What that says to me is that God regards our faith in Him as more important than what we do for Him ~ our works, at least in the beginning. Once we’ve become a Christian, what we do becomes more important. At that point, our faith is still important, but works become an outgrowth of our faith. The way I look at it, I’m so grateful to God for saving me that I want to do things for Him out of gratitude. So faith in God is what makes me righteous, and then works follow because I’m grateful to God for His righteousness that He’s given to me as an incredible free gift.

I hope that makes sense…

Jul31

“You feared neither Cod nor man, and now you shall die.”

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Source: “You feared neither Cod nor man, and now you shall die.”

This is a repost from another blog, called You Knew What I Meant: Errors and Intentions. It’s a WordPress blog, though I think the author, R. A. Baumgartner, hasn’t posted in a while.

Of all the blogs I follow, this one has always been my favorite. The author is an English literature professor at a university in Connecticutt, as well as a playwrite. Her blog is comprised of posts taken from assignments her students have written that contain errors in spelling, grammar, and/or word choice. The results are always hilarious. The title, “You feared neither Cod nor man, and now you shall die” was from a post she published back in 2012, and of all her blog posts, this one was the funniest.

I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I do everytime I go back and read it again!