From Jim McGuiggan... GOD, GUNS & BIBLE STUDIES

GOD, GUNS & BIBLE STUDIES

Whoever first said it spoke the truth: “To every complex question there’s a simple answer and it’s always wrong!” We acknowledge the truth of that every time we shake our heads when we hear someone say about some critical social problem, “All we have to do is…” .
David Hume, the 18^th century Empiricist (died 1776) said what looks like complete nonsense until you give him a hearing on his empiricist terms. He said something to this effect, “We say sugar is sweet and water is wet only because we are too lazy to pursue the matter.” He insisted that we experience what we call sweetness and wetness but we don’t experience the substances themselves—what we experience is our body’s response to water and sugar. Physicist and mathematician, Bertrand Russell, said: “John Locke made Empiricism credible but inconsistent; Hume made it consistent but incredible.” Scientists continue to ignore him but they never deal with him and his work on “causation” though their entire work is built on empiricism (the witness of the physical senses).
All right, so you’ve had enough of that. Hume himself got fed up with it every now and then and, he said, he went and played backgammon with his friends. But the questions are not without interest and importance—at least some of them are important.
What’s a wooden chair made of? Wood! What’s wood made of?  Atoms! And what are atoms made of? Nucleons! And what are they made of? And on we go (beyond alleged “dark matter” and “dark energy”) until we have “string theory” as the alleged “explanation of everything.” Keep on breaking these down until there is nothing there to break down—until the ultimate form of matter no form at all—it no longer exists. It’s then that the biblical claim comes into its own—matter/energy exists as nothing other than the will of God ¹.
The biblical doctrine of creation is more than that God created everything at some point called “the beginning”; its claim is that it continues to exist because he continues to will it to exist. Furthermore, he didn’t make it out of pre-existing material; he willed the material into existence and continues to will it to continue to exist. Matter doesn’t have a material basis—its existence is the result of someone willing it to exist! It’s what physicist James Jeans is said many years ago to have likened it to, the expression of a mind.
If science came up with the ultimate microscope they’d turn and look at each other and say, “There’s nothing material there to see or measure or describe.” At that point those shaped by the Hebrew—Christian Scriptures (without a sneer or a jeer, we hope) would say, “That’s because matter is the expression of God’s mind and will. He simply wills it to be and that you can’t measure with microscopes or mathematical formulations.”
I mention the above only to make the point that everything, no exceptions, ends in mystery and there’s nothing more mysterious than the God who has revealed himself ultimately in the one Christians call the Lord Jesus Christ.
And why did God want there to be something (including humans) other than himself? Psalm 136 would offer the direction we should go but let me move on from there and take that for granted.
God chose to create humans. In creating humans he created them to image him. ² It doesn’t matter that we as a human family chose not to and choose not to—as a human family that is the destiny and commission God created us with. Once more, the fact that we—as a human family—have not chosen and do not choose to live as his image does not obliterate the truth of why he created us and the commission imbedded in that creation purpose. He made us to image him whether we will do it or not!
But what kind of creature did he create when he created us? To what kind of creature did he give the destiny and commission to image him? Out of joy-filled love and fellowship in the Land of the Trinity God chose to share that quality of life with beings he would create; he would look at the earth and see humans live in joy and righteousness and unity—in that he would see himself imaged. He chose to create beings with the capacity to freely choose and why he chose to do that precisely (rather than another kind of being) is an interesting question but it’s not a question he chose to answer. In light of the biblical witness the one thing we’re certain of is this: his motivation is love and his purpose was to be worked out in the long term (see Colossians 1:15-16, where all things were created for Christ as well as in and by him).
God wasn’t ignorant of what his free-choosing human family would choose.
If he knew that the human family would refuse to image him why did he create them? This is another interesting question but it’s not a question he chose to answer. Being a Creator Father he chose to do so. It’s vitally important that we keep in mind that the Holy Father is not revealed as a tyrant! Nor is he revealed in the Bible as one whose single and ultimate center, behind and shaping everything else about him, is raw will; he is not a God of hyper-Calvinism whose final and all-encompassing word is: “I am God and because I am God I will do as I choose—that is what being God means.” ³
God has chosen to work among and with free-choosing humans. His purposes prior to creating humans are geared to work with the creatures he has created. He didn’t create free-choosing humans and then make decrees as if they were puppets nor has he chosen to allow them to be free-choosing humans but to cleverly “work around” their freedom so that in fact they have no God-given freedom.
As long as God chooses humans to be humans (which is what he created and means to bring to glory through Jesus Christ) his eternal decrees work within that purpose; they take into account humans as truly human; he did not and does not work with humans as if they were not humans. When he came in and as Jesus to redeem humans and bring his creation purpose to a glorious finale he came as one “made in the likeness of sinful flesh.” ⁴
So when we hear God’s truths in texts like Daniel 4:32 & 7:2 that God gives authority to whoever he chooses we’re not to suppose he cancels the humanity of humans—he superintends the movements of humans and gains his purpose through their purposes. ⁵
Governments and structures that shape the communal life of people were God’s gifts to the human family ⁶ and they function within and are experienced through the exercise of human freedom. ⁷ When a psalmist says, “God is good” he often has in mind the blessings of life and peace and prosperity but doesn’t stop to explain that God’s goodness is expressed through wise and God-fearing leadership, wise farming methods ⁸ and so forth. You understand that these realities are also expressions of God’s goodness but he doesn’t open skulls and pours in information—he works with humans as the creatures he made.
When a psalmist groans under oppression (as multiplied millions even now groan) and wonders where God is there’s nothing mysterious about his agony but in his pain he forgets that God works with humans as humans—of course the psalmist at that moment isn’t interested in philosophy or theology! Where oppression, in all its many forms, exists we have the distortion of human freedom, we have powerful humans rejecting their destiny and commission—they refuse to live in the image of God.
This kind of talk settles nothing but that’s not surprising—it didn’t settle matters for prophets and psalmists who were devoted servants of God; they too wanted to know why God wasn’t doing something about oppressive evil. But even prophets are humans and they feel pain.
It’s a mistake to think that that military tyrants or political villains were born that way. In the beginning they were innocent babies like everyone else and then the world they grew up in shaped them, their DNA and their nurture and their environment pushed and pulled and persuaded them and when the moment arrived they acted as another member of the sinful family—and they exercised their moral freedom to choose in a way that rejected why they were created. They rejected their destiny and commission to be the image of that God, the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. To be the image of God wasn’t enough—like the rest of the human family they chose to be a god ⁹ only they gained power beyond what the rank and file of us ever had reason to imagine for ourselves.
A young man walks into a Bible study and takes the lives of his fellow-humans. He is responsible for his action and must be held accountable for it but such an action could not have happened in a world where the human family lived as the image of God. The killer didn’t grow up out of the ground like a toadstool in some dark cave and then stumble into the light like a vicious terminator.
There was a time when the parents rejoiced at his arrival, smiled over him and cared for him, then as he grew he heard and saw things in school, at work, in literature, online, movies, from friends, video-games, politics, government, shrewd banking, militia in foreign lands and war—war, where killing violence was felt to be the “final solution” (and good arguments were made to support that view). These and more (name them) and we have the makings of a murderer; these and more and we have another currently interesting case where human moral freedom is corrupted and corrupting; another event that will be forgotten by the media in a month or so.
 Now we’re hearing (yes!) of believers who are talking about the “heat” they're packing while in their Bible classes; ¹⁰ now we have believers with weapons holstered under their jackets while in the presence of Christ they worship his Father. To hell with the next stranger who carrying a gun walks into an assembly gathered for worship. The days of Christians walking into arenas singing are long gone. The cross-carrying business is confined to God's unique Son; it has nothing to do with his sons and daughters now. Long before the South Carolina wickedness believers were "packing heat" to worship places and eating the bread and drinking the wine of God's self-giving. I'm well aware that killers can walk into assemblies--it happened more than once when the "troubles" were at their height at home in Ireland. But what are the odds of it happening? I know policemen who leave their "heat" in a safe and secure place when they enter to Supper with the uplifted Christ. They simply can't pack heat (on the off-chance that...) while they hear the Eucharistic word of Christ who "ON THE NIGHT WHEN HE WAS BETRAYED" took bread...and said, This is my body which is given for you." I'm not attempting to "settle" anything here; I'm not even offering an opinion at this point. But is there not something incongruous about eating and drinking that bread and wine in that setting and having a weapon prepared and a heart willing to kill. I have in mind the societal ethos that enables us to even joke about putting the would-be killer down (as I read on a blog very recently). AND THEN the South Carolina city leads the nation in an entirely different direction.
(Is it easy to draw a distinction between what a soldier is doing in Afghanistan with his/her weapon and what a man/woman at home will do with his/hers? Sure, some differences are obvious enough but is the underlying and basic philosophy different?)
Then there’s this. Some of those who suffered the murderous loss of loved ones have spoken forgiveness to the murderer. And I heard more than once from readers, asking if the forgiving ones had the moral right to offer forgiveness to someone who has yet to express even the slightest remorse. I understand the generalized theological question but isn’t it marvelous that the ones who suffer the agony of the loss offer forgiveness and those who suffer no such agony are questioning the morality of the offer?
(To be continued perhaps, God enabling)

1.    John1:1-2; Colossians 1:15-16, 17; Revelation 4:11

2.    Genesis 1:26-27; James 3:9

3.    There are those who quote Romans 9:20-22 claiming that the text supports that view of God . Read for yourself Isaiah 29:13-16 and then Romans 3:3-8 and get the sense of Paul’s point. Paul speaks (as does Isaiah whom he quotes) of people bent on evil and God making use of them in their evil to gain his holy and loving purpose. John Piper, following his hero, Johnathan Edwards, insists that the essence of God—what makes God God is his sovereign will; God’s choosing/willing must be isolated from all else as the definition of “Godness”. Islam shares a similar viewpoint. God’s essence, Piper holds, is a single and solitary thing—he wills! Nothing else makes God to be God. Other things can be said about God but they are beside the point if we want to know what God's essence is. If you stripped away everything else (his love, compassion, mercy, grace, righteousness and so forth) you would discover the center of God, the thing that makes God God—he wills. This isn't based on texts, of course; it's philosophy and logic. You don't read the Bible and learn about God as God. You go to it with a philosophy and logic and rad the Bible in light of that. That might not be a bad thing unless your philosophy is false and that philosophy and that form of hyper-Calvinism are false.

4.    Romans 8:3 

5.    Genesis 37:11-36; 45:5-8 illustrates this well and see Acts 2:23

6.    Colossians 1:16-17; Romans 13:1-7

7.    The question of “free will” is another complex question. The idea that free will is an absolute is clearly untrue. There are things we will not will because being humans it makes no sense to will but beyond that there are limits to our freedom. Our make-up, our nurture and environment shape us and either diminish or enrich our thought and feeling and behavior so that what we will think or want to choose is shaped. People living in abject poverty and with children starving will be driven to sell a child to feed the others, or sell a child’s kidney to keep the others alive (after the mother has sold one of her own perhaps). We use the word “choice” in such circumstances—“she chose to sell the child’s organ” but the word “choice” doesn’t mean the same thing as it means in other settings. I need to leave the discussion here but write me if you wish to further pursue the matter.

8.    See Isaiah 28:23-39 that tells us that even the wisdom of a farmer comes from God.

9. Genesis 3:4-5

10.     Think of Peter “packing his heat” (a sword) during or after the Supper and Jesus telling him, “Get rid of that thing!” And Jesus telling Pilate, “My kingdom isn’t established (or sustained) with weapons as yours is.” John 18:36

©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.