The Father.2

"No one knows who the Son of God is, except the Father in heaven; 

and no one can know who the Father is, except the Son; 
and those to whom the Son will reveal him. 

Until now you have not known him as I do; but I have come, sent from him to you." 

-Jesus

A Duty To Know

There is a nearly perfect icebreaker for small group discussions called "The Quaker Questions" that really help people get to know one another. The questions go like this:

1. Between the ages of 7-12 where did you live and how many siblings do you have?
2. During that same time period, what transportation did your family use?
3. Who were you personally closest to during that time period?
4. At what point in your life did God become more than a name for you?

The answer to the last question reveals the many ways God makes Himself known to people. Whether its a magnificent mountain view, an inspirational speaker, a brush with death, a terror in the night, an enlightened moment when the Word of God came alive, the vast majority have some point in life when an event happened that the only way to account for it was in seeing some aspect of God made real.

Jesus reproached people, especially those who considered themselves spiritual guides, for not perceiving the character and calling of God revealed in the Son of God.

Do people have, in fact, a duty to see God in Jesus? Could we see Him were He to visit this planet in physical form today? Would we be such that He would care to reveal himself? Who are those He would and could reveal Himself to?

Now, as then, it would of course be the childlike in heart, the truest, the least selfish. 

It would not be:

• the highest in the estimation of man or church
• those intent on knowing Jesus' history rather than knowing Jesus' heart 
• neither necessarily denominational or non-denominational churchman
• no one with so little of the mind of Christ as to imagine Him caring about stupid outside matters
• not the man who holds fast to his 'plans of salvation', systematic theology, or legalistic rules of righteousness
• not the one who refuses the leading of God's Spirit to take him to unfamiliar places
• those barren of soul who cannot receive the meaning and will of the Master because they will not do what the Master tells them

But it would be:

• those who are most like the Master in helping, healing and saving
• that do the Will of the Father
• that build their house on the Rock by daily putting His words into practice

The question today as then: "Are there enough like Him to know Him at once by the sound of His voice, by the look of His face?"

There are multitudes who would at once be taken by a false Christ fashioned after their fancy, and would at once reject the Lord as a poor impostor. One thing is certain: they who first recognized Him would be those that most loved righteousness and hated iniquity!

Let us be those people!

(adapted from The Knowing Of The Son, Unspoken Sermons III, George MacDonald)

The Father.1

"What do you think of Jesus Christ? Whose Son is he?"

--Jesus

I recently did what every modern American is relentlessly badgered to do: find out whether 15 minutes could save me 15% on car insurance!

Lo and behold I actually saved over 50%! And my new auto insurance provider said I could save EVEN MORE!!! All I need to do is put a little "tracking device" in my car so they can "monitor" my driving habits for 90 days! They assured me they would only be watching four items: braking, acceleration, miles driven and night time driving. Not where I stop for lunch, who I flip off in the lane next to me, or how I react when I spill coffee on myself!  


The device is now discretely attached inside my car.  The smiley faces on my phone app tell me I'm doing a good job and proudly shows me trip by trip the wonderful savings I'm going to enjoy when this exercise is over. (Don't tell my wife but I'm already thinking about the fun things I'm going to do with all this extra money!)

It occurred to me after listening to a recent podcast featuring host Ben Shapiro and his guest Scott Adams, author of the comic strip Dilbert, that even though, presumably, a human being set up the computer algorithm to track my driving habits, no human will ever see this data unless requested. The reality is that a machine is going to assess my driver skills and bequeath the savings I've "earned".

The reason I referenced the Shapiro podcast is that the day's conversation centered on modern politics and specifically the communication skills of the current president.  Adams made a rather chilling prediction: (paraphrased) whenever Donald Trump's presidential term comes to an end, it will be the last of free elections.  Just as computer algorithms dramatically influence the public's buying decisions (like saving more money on car insurance by allowing yourself to be monitored by a machine), so they will dramatically influence political candidate choices."

The question philosophers are aggressively grappling with in today's internet connected world is: do people really have "free will?"  It is an age old question but the information age has added a whole new layer of complexity to the debate.

Why? Because our perception of what we think we do is usually woefully skewed from the reality of what we actually do. That is not new, but how we spend our life's resources -time, talent and treasures- has a brand new way of being measured! For example, in the past if you really wanted an accurate understanding of how you spend your money you could tally your purchases from your checkbook/bank/credit card statement over the past six months!  (NO WAY I spent that much money on Starbucks!)

But in today's world all that activity is being recorded on The Web! When called into question on some or other activity, such as browsing Facebook while on the timeclock at work, we would vehemently dispute how much time we actually take vs what we perceive (especially if we were being docked pay!)  But Facebook knows and Google knows.  And people who engineer our growing addiction to all things technological know.  

Now we are discovering that they are not only engineering our buying habits but our social values. Organizations like Dennis Prager's PragerU are suing YouTube for pulling conservative commentary. Twitter has admitted to "shadow banning" certain speech. Facebook is working overtime to make censoring "hate speech" a moral imperative.

Something else that is not new: man's desire to be the savior of other people!

I think a better question regarding free will, then, is this: "Do individuals really know themselves?" For as the prophet Jeremiah laments: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" True freedom is acknowledging that we really don't know ourselves and truly need a Savior.  Just not the man-made kind!

So the question Jesus posed to his disciples millennia ago is ever more relevant today: 
"What do you think of Jesus Christ?"
By walking with Him, trusting in Him and obeying His word we can truly know and save ourselves from engineered manipulation of both the well intentioned and nefarious.