Is It Any Wonder?

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I’m wondering about wonder and why so many Christians seem to be down on it and its sibling, mystery. Go just about anywhere in the Christian blogosphere and you’ll hear oodles about the emerging church (hereafter “EC”), and one of the primary components of the EC that sets some people’s teeth on edge is that the EC loves to talk about wonder and mystery. Some Christians in their rush to condemn the EC turn to the EC’s repeated allusions to wonder and mystery and point like the crazed man in Poe’s “The Tell-tale Heart” to the pulsating blob of wonder/mystery under the floorboards that throbs in their ears and drives them to insanity.

I find this bizarre.

(Just the other day I wrote about Christians who are compelled to have an answer for everything, even those topics that go beyond merely addressing our need to give others a good reason for the hope of Christ we have within us. This topic piggybacks that one and extends it.)

Wonder is at the heart of whom God made us as Mankind. It is as natural to wonder and to be overwhelmed with mystery as it is to breathe. Not a single advancement we men have made on this blue orb would have come about if not for wonder and mystery.The Cat's Eye Nebula

At some point someone sat down and looked up at the sky and tried to understand its secrets. Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, and Hawking have all gazed up and wondered. That wonder led to the space program and mankind setting foot on the moon.

Our fascination with anything we do not understand drives us to master its hidden truths. There can be no learning without a catalyst of wonder. There can be no advancements without mysteries to unlock. I believe this is an extension of the original call of God in the Garden to subdue the planet. Only the curious, the dreamers, the wonderers, and those who wish to pick the lock of mystery will drive us as men to greater accomplishments. This pleases God.

It pleases us, too. Because someone wondered about moving objects from one place to another did we develop the wheel. A group of wonderers developed the computer we are reading this on. From the clothes we wear, to the houses we live in, to the medical instruments that have prolonged our lives, all the things that daily benefit us came from the desire of wonderers to delve into mysteries.

The only time that wonder is bad is when it is “vain imagining.” Such types of wonder take men’s minds away from God. Science is good and blessed of God, but when it becomes an end to itself it has lost its mooring. However, anything that takes our view off God is devilish, not merely vain imaginings and the means by which they play out.

Part of our problem with wonder is that we make the mistake of concentrating on what it is not rather than on what it is. Trying to frame the positive characteristics of a thing by only considering what that thing is not is no way to find truth. As much as wonder can lead men away from God if it is directed in the wrong way, it must also drive us to God when correctly used. Consider this:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
—Psalms 8:3-9 ESV

Clearly this is wonder and mystery driving man’s praise back to a God who is wonderful. God is filled with wonders and He has built within us the capacity to wonder at the things He has done and the wonder that He is. It is a gift aimed at summoning men back to God. A newborn child in one’s hands, the pastel colors of a sunset, or a miraculous healing are all ways in which wonder returns us to God.

Also, consider God’s monologue to Job in which He overwhelms the broken man with His created wonder:

Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
—Job 38:1-7 ESV

What is Job’s response to all these wonders that God lays out in express detail in the following chapters? Repentance and awe. He clasps his hands over his mouth and regrets uttering a single word in all his trials. The tsunami of wonders of God and His mysteries therein have washed Job away. He is at a loss for words. But it could have been worse for Job; he could have remained unmoved. The man who never wonders at the mysteries of life is a man cut off from God entirely.

To denigrate wonders or to abolish mystery is foolish. Worse, it is the foundation for thanklessness. For if we are in command of all mysteries, if we have eliminated wonder, then we have taken the place of God Himself or made God so small that He is easily contained in our epistemology. A man so sure of his surety is one who has no reason to adore God or marvel at anything outside himself. He is the true ingrate. Unlike Job, wonder and mystery cannot put him in his rightful place bowed down before the awesome King of Glory. He is a man lost in his conceit.

For this reason, I don’t understand why wonder and mystery send some Christians into fits of apoplexy. I suspect that too many of them are the hybrid children of reasoned theology and the Enlightenment. To simply say that something is mysterious does not mean that absolute truth no longer exists, nor that it can’t be known to some extent. Mystery and wonder do not obliterate absolute truth any more than nightfall destroys the sun. The folly in both the EC and those that castigate it is in this mistaken notion. The EC needs to understand that the absolute and inviolable truths of the Gospel are not suddenly cloaked in impervious fog that necessitates us redefining how they appear. Nor should the EC-hunters recoil at the thought that some things in life are mysteries and God has made them that way for His good purpose.

With so many Christians at each other’s throats about wonder and mystery, it’s a wonder that the Church is still standing!

Or should I not have said anything about wonder?

{Image: The Cat’s Eye Nebula as seen through the Hubble Space Telescope}

The Little Things: Illegal Worship

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Magnifying GlassA new randomly posted series that I hope to birth here today is "The Little Things." The devil may be in the details, but the Bible says this:

One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.
—Luke 16:10 ESV

"The Little Things" will discuss those issues in the Christian life, both individually and corporately, that mark the difference between the way of the world and the way of Christ. Do the right little things and you'll be immensely blessed, but do the wrong and—well, you get the picture.

The lead for this is a testy issue: illegal worship. Now I'm not talking about unregistered Chinese house churches, but about a crime that goes on every day across the world.

Most people don't realize that when lyrics for songs are projected in public, those lyrics are subject to copyright laws. Be it a slide of handwritten words on an overhead projector or the latest top 40 Christian worship song on a Powerpoint presentation, if your church doesn't have a license to project those words to the worship song you are singing, it's against the law. Now we can debate whether music intended for praising God should be copyrighted or not if you wish, but the fact remains that almost all of it is. Christian Copyright Licensing International can give you more details.

I can almost hear the collective "So what?" ringing from the masses on this one, but what if God is displeased because we're willfully waving our hand at the whole issue? I for one don't want to think that Christians don't care about this point, but the collective shrug is unnerving. I know some people will say that control of this issue is in the hands of the U.N., the Illuminati, the Tri-lateral Commission, and (for you more liberal readers), good old Yale University's Skull and Bones, but the fact remains. If your church hasn't paid for the license to use the copyrighted songs you are singing in worship, then you are breaking the law.

Zacchaeus, noted Palestine tax hustler, on this issue:

And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold."

The Lord's response was

And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham."
—Luke 19:8-9 ESV

How interesting that Jesus absolved this diminutive defrauder and declared him righteous. Zacchaeus uttered no pronouncement of faith in Christ at that point other than to offer to pay restitution. How then can we who have declared our faith in Christ publicly going on flaunting this requirement of our laws regarding paying for licensing for worship music use?

Is your church not doing so well? Maybe this is the reason why. Just another hindrance we should be laying aside. Because in the end, little things matter.

The Always Answer

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…in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.
—1 Peter 3:15-16 ESV

Peter writes that the answer we must always have ready is our reason for our hope in Christ.

I emphasize that point because too often I see that our defense comes down to answering more than we should. We open our mouths and wax poetic over any and all subjects as if the world’s wisdom rested solely between our ears.Stumped by the Question? For some, it is a life’s calling squeezing an infinite God into a diminutive box that can be attached to a keychain and whipped out when the need to go somewhere important calls.

In November, I will be 43. I’ve been a Christian for 29 years. On most doctrinal issues I’ve crafted a bullet-proof answer for anyone who asks. But I have less of them than I once did. What I desire to have instead of an answer for everything is the reason for my hope in Christ. I need to ensure that answer is always buffed and ready for the asking.

I think too many Christians suffer from a need to have not just their reason ready for their hope in Christ, but their reason for all that is, both seen and unseen. Ensuring that no one ever finds a chink in the spiritual edifice they’ve constructed drives them. They must possess an answer to everything.

But even the Bible leaves some questions unanswered. We don’t know exactly what heaven looks like, for instance. We know that Enoch and Elijah were taken up into heaven without dying, but how exactly does that work? And are they really the two witnesses returned to earth as described in Revelation? What are all the things that Jesus did that aren’t written down in the Bible, as the last verse in the Gospel of John says at its end? And those are only a few mysteries; I’m sure you could come up with plenty more.

When did “I don’t know” become the hardest thing for Christians to say? Why do some Christians feel compelled to answer life’s every question? Some of the men through whom God spoke, men who wrote the very words of the Bible, weren’t so bold as to provide a running discourse on every subject imaginable. Some had the nerve to say

Three things are too wonderful for me; four I do not understand: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship on the high seas, and the way of a man with a virgin.
—Proverbs 30:18-19 ESV

The writer of Proverbs here didn’t try to erect an entire epistemology to explain these wonderful things. Why do so many Christians today think they can do better? Has God left us no enigmas at all?

I think it comes down to pride and fear. Pride in our ability to answer. Fear that if we cannot, the chink in our doctrinal armor will have been exposed. If only more Christians left enigmas alone rather than answer the way they do.

The one answer we should always be ready to give is based off the question, “Why do you hope in Jesus?” Our answer ultimately matters more than all others. Go back to the Bible and reason from it, but don’t forget that the answer always contains an element of the personal. Something of you has to be in there, something that no one else on the planet shares in common. Your story of faith in Christ matters. It is my hope that you know it well enough for it to be your “always answer.”