Monthly Archives: January 2008

Can we disagree with God?

The reason I ask this question is because of a conversation I had with my mom last week before I returned to Fargo. The Bold and the Beautiful was on while I was coming in and out, packing up my mini van. Eric and Stephanie are married, but separated. Eric has been seeing Donna, even though Stephanie hasn’t signed divorce papers. Stephanie still loves Eric and is blackmailing Donna and her sister Brooke, to get Donna to leave Eric and let him come back to her (confused and tangled, I know). I decided to strike up a conversation with my mom about it. I asked her what she thinks Donna should do. Her thought is that Eric and Stephanie should get a divorce and then Eric should marry Donna since he has already proposed to her. I said that I thought that Eric should reconcile with Stephanie and that divorce is a sin. I knew that we would be locked in a spiritual conversation for the next while before I left.

My mom did not believe that the Bible explicitly condemned divorce anywhere. I told her it did, she challenged me, and so I pulled up four or five passages in the New and Old Testaments. We then bantered back and forth about it, she defending divorce and remarrying (divorce is condemned in the Bible, but remarrrying after divorce is worse because it is considered adultery, probably because of the promise of “until death do us part,” and because marriage is a lifelong committment). I defended the standpoint of remaining single after divorce or reconciliation with your spouse. The conversation came to the point where she said that she disagreed with the viewpoint. I asked her how she could do that when it came directly from the word of God. She said that she didn’t doubt that God said it, but that she disagreed. I asked her how one can disagree with God. She asked me if I agreed with everything that God did. I said ‘yes’ and she than listed off a list of tragedies in the news like a two year old boy who had wandered out of his home and froze to death in a snowbank, september 11th, and the 35W bridge collapse. It was hard at first to argue that it was good that these things happened and that it was God because it would have diverted into a talk about free will and such. I said that if it was God that made the boy freeze to death, it was right and good, etc.

So my question is this: can we disagree with God? Is it possible? Is it blasphemy? By disagreeing aren’t we saying that God is wrong? Aren’t we calling him a liar? Wouldn’t we be making him out to be a perverter of justice? Maybe we don’t like the standards that God imposes, but can we call ourselves Christians, read in clarity what the Bible has to say on any topic and then disagree with it, saying God is wrong? Are our ideas more right than God’s? Were we there when God set the foundations of the earth into place and made the sun start to shine, guiding him along in the process? My opinion is that there is no justification in disagreeing with God. Maybe we don’t understand why something is the way it is, but we need to trust God that it is right simply becuase of the fact that he is holy, righteous, and just.

What are your thoughts?

Trust the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

-Proverbs 3:5-

Today was my first day of classes for the spring semester and I was sitting in my couples, marriages and families class when my professor was talking about different teaching approaches. One of them was called “Six blind sages and the elephant.” I had heard of this approach before, only it was in relation to God and here is how it goes.

Baby Jesus?

There are five blind sages wandering around the African plains (don’t ask me why) and they stumble upon an elephant, but none of them know what it is. The first one feels the side of the elephant and says, “This animal is a wall.” The second one, holding the tail, says, “No, no, this animal is a vine.” Still, the third says, “No, it is a large snake,” as he grasps the trunk. The fourth one says, “No way, it is the trunk of a strong tree” while he wraps his arms around a leg. Yet, the fifth says, “You all have it wrong, it is a sword!” as he grips an ivory tusk.

Supposedly the story tries to convince us that all religions fall short of fully describing God and while they are all radically different, they are all describing the same thing and therefore, must be right.

However, that is simply not the case. You see, each of the sages was describing the elephant, however, each sage was way off base when they came to actually identifying what they were touching. The elephant was not a wall or a sword or a snake. And in the case of Christianity we have been given Jesus Christ. God came to earth and revealed himself to us. He un-blinded us. Jesus came and was able to see the elephant and tell the sages the true identity of this mystery. So, no, God is not like an elephant. The truth has been revealed to us, so we no longer have to be like the blind sages.

This past weekend I stayed at the Minneapolis Hilton where the TCX (Twin Cities Xperience) 2007 Conference was taking place. The conference is the winter gathering of the Upper Midwestern region of Campus Crusade for Christ. I have to say that it was maybe one of the most life-changing weekends of my life thus far. For months people have been telling me that it would be, but I was still a bit skeptical, but from the minute the doors opened for our first main meeting, I could sense God’s presence. All weekend long we went to seminars and large group meetings where we heard speakers like Shane Dieke, Candice Siewert, and Rick James. It was also a time to strengthen relationships with the people I know from my own school and I learned a lot about what God wants of me and what I was doing to hold back from giving 100% of myself.

Now as great as all of the speakers were, the thing that really grabbed my heart was our day of outreach. On Sunday, all 1,400 of us (yes, there were 1,400 Christian college students there) went out to Twin Cities churches and took “boxes of love” filled with food to residents in need in the cities. My group of five went to Pilgrim Rest Baptist church on the north side of Minneapolis at 51st and James (those who are familiar with the area know the conditions of that neighborhood). We took six boxes of food to addresses the church gave us. We told the residents that we were representing the church and that we were taking food out and then asked them if they were in need. Almost all accepted it except for one woman who said she didn’t need any, but the family across the street had children and might need some. We then asked them if there was anything that the church could be praying about for them. Most of them had financial needs, some of them were without jobs and one family was on the verge of losing their home. God opened my eyes to how much need there is right here in my own area. He also crushed every negative stereotype I had of African American Churches and the poor neighborhoods of Minneapolis. The next step was to ask if anyone had ever shared God’s love with them and then share the gospel with them if they wanted us to. All of our stops knew the story of the gospel, so we didn’t get to do that, but it was still very exciting.

God has laid it upon my heart to share the gospel and share my faith with others. On New Year’s Eve, Rick James spoke and if we felt so moved we could sign a contract surrendering our lives fully to Jesus Christ. You better believe that I signed that. There was also another spot to sign to promise a full twelve months of full-time ministry. I already knew that I would sign it, but I prayed for a minute or two and then signed that as well.

Again, this weekend God just relit my flame, one that was wavering in the face of stress with money, my job, school, and family. But now that the flame has been relit, I am very excited to leave behind all my sins, and personal inhibitions that were keeping me from doing God’s will. I do not know where my little flame is going to spread to, but I know that God will spread it and I am very excited and anxious to see where that goes.

h with others. On New Year’s Eve, Rick James spoke and if we felt so moved we could sign a contract surrendering our lives fully to Jesus Christ. You better believe that I signed that. There was also another spot to sign to promise a full twelve months of full-time ministry. I already knew that I would sign it, but I prayed for a minute or two and then signed that as well.

Again, this weekend God just relit my flame, one that was wavering in the face of stress with money, my job, school, and family. But now that the flame has been relit, I am very excited to leave behind all my sins, and personal inhibitions that were keeping me from doing God’s will. I do not know where my little flame is going to spread to, but I know that God will spread it and I am very excited and anxious to see where that goes.