The Lies of the Enemy, in a Poem

In my opinion, there is no greater evidence for the truth of the Bible in the world around us than the evidence of the spiritual war. As a believer, it's easy to see how human beings are continually led down paths to their own destruction when they buy the lies of the world and reject God's Word. Nearly two years ago, I read a disturbing news article about an abortion doctor in Philadelphia who made a practice of killing newborns with scissors and saving their body parts in jars. I began to meditate on evil, and try to understand how someone could do such horrible things. I had also recently read C.S. Lewis' "The Screwtape Letters," and had wondered just how much darker it would have been if the human subject had not been a believer. In the days following, I began composing the following poem, and after all this time, I finally feel satisfied enough to go public with it. I realize this is only scratching the surface of the litany of lies the Devil uses to bring us to our own destruction, but it should suffice to get the point across. Please don't mistake the voice of the "writer" as my own, as he boasts and mocks his victims. It pained me to write many of these lines, but I felt it necessary to approach authenticity. I pray it will disturb you in all the right ways.

Tricks
(From the desk of The Great Deceiver)

I'll tell you the tricks of my trade, if you please,
The ones that have brought every man to his knees,
The tricks that have led to much death and despair,
As they grasp for some meaning and someone to care.

It began in a garden, a most glorious day,
When I asked of the woman, "Did He really say?"
The lie to this date my most clever of all,
For she took of the bait and Mankind took the fall.

Amazing the things you can do with that doubt,
So clueless they are on what life is about.
Just do what you feel like, follow your heart.
So desperately wicked, it was mine from the start.

So easy it is, yes, so easy my dear,
Just tell them whatever their ears want to hear.
Tell them there's nothing above or below,
Imagine that, John! Isn't that how it goes?

And Charles, old buddy, you're in my Hall of Fame.
You taught them that all living things are the same.
You didn't believe it would be such a crime,
But I guess it just kind of evolved over time.

You teach them they're animals, that's how they'll behave,
Just masses of tissue with no soul to save.
A fetus, like fingernails, tossed in the bin.
Don't worry, my lady. They grow back again.

Without any motive to do otherwise,
Their flesh will take over, and feed on these lies.
And then I sit back and just watch it unfold.
Oh, death and destruction, it never gets old!

I'm a master of language, I use it so well,
To slander His faithful, and lure you to hell.
Tolerance, progress, equality and choice,
American idols have such a sweet voice!

See, I've got the best marketing team in this town,
They'll sell you a compass that only points down.
You ask them for bread and they'll give you a stone,
Then laugh as you shrivel and die all alone.

An angel of light, how I come to deceive,
Ain't it funny the things that some people believe?
Oh the look on their faces, I wish I could see,
When they find out the one that they lived for was me!

The image of Him that I seek to destroy,
I'll bring you to judgment by the tricks I employ.
Beloved of your Maker, His favored design,
You have His affection. It should've been mine.

So if I've been fated to go down in flames,
I'm taking you with me, you'll share in the blame.
All mine by default, you're a part of my club.
Sincerely your friend, Beelzebub.

What We Endorse

Something that's been on my mind of late is how I represent Christ in the things in which I show respect, admiration, or approval. As someone who has grown up watching a lot of TV and movies and listening to a lot of secular music, I often want to share my appreciation for such things. However, sometimes those things aren't entirely endorsement-worthy in content, and could send the wrong message to my friends or other observers. I Corinthians 8:9-10 says, "But beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak. For if anyone sees you who have knowledge eating in an idol’s temple, will not the conscience of him who is weak be emboldened to eat those things offered to idols?" In other words, as Christians we are responsible to promote the right things to encourage others to walk in righteousness, whether they are fellow believers or not. Likewise, we should stand in opposition to sin, and be careful not to be perceived as endorsing sin. But where do we draw the line in a secular world?

One of the best summaries of the fallen world we live in is found in Romans 1:18-32. The Apostle Paul describes a world where the truth of God is rejected, and men and women are given over to the whole range of evil pursuits. As a believer, the final verse can be quite convicting. Verse 32 reads, "who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them." I have to ask myself, am I lending my approval to sin? The truth is, if we live in this fallen world, it is practically impossible to not contribute in some way to the work of evil. I'll admit, I like to get myself a frappuccino at Starbucks. Now it's a well-known fact that Starbucks gives money to gay-rights causes. Am I approving of their choices when I give them my money? I don't see it that way. I'm giving my approval to their product. If we were to apply that standard to boycott any business that promotes sin in some way not related to their actual product, we'd be left with Chick-fil-A and not a whole lot else. That being said, there may be extreme situations when a boycott is appropriate. If Starbucks were to announce that they will be donating $1 of each purchase to Al Qaeda, I'd guess that most of us would probably take our business elsewhere, regardless of how tasty their drinks may be. The same standard could be applied to movies. Do we avoid a movie that may be perfectly acceptable on its own merit, but one of the actors lives and promotes a sinful lifestyle? Or what if that movie has an overall positive message, but contains a few profanities sprinkled here and there? If I know this ahead of time and still see the movie, am I lending approval to sin? Some of these things are blurry, others are clear. I imagine we all have slightly differing standards. Sometimes I find myself disappointed by fellow Christians who don't have the same standards I do. But then again, others may be disappointed by me. My dad often says, "someday everyone will give an account..." That begs the question: when you stand before the Lord on the day of judgment, will you be able to defend your standards?

Sometimes we give direct approval or disapproval with our actions. As November 6 approaches, most of us are probably thinking a lot about politics. If ever there were a case of us giving a clear endorsement, how we vote is it. I would like to remind my fellow Christians of the Romans 1:32 standard. As I look back on history, I often wonder how people in certain situations of great injustice were complacent. The most obvious example is Nazi Germany. How did the people of Germany vote the Nazis into power when they clearly held such hatred for the Jews, and desired to rid them from their society? Or how did so many Americans support and even die for the cause of slavery in the Civil War days? Couldn't they clearly see how they were giving approval to evil? The truth is, it's easy to judge from a distance, but in the moment, people are easily confused. The German people were prospering under the Nazis after having gone through enormous economic hardship following the first World War. The American South was also benefiting greatly from the system of slavery that was the cultural norm at the time. Long story short, in both cases, people were taking the easy path and looking out for their own self interests at the cost of others.

Forgive me if I come across as preachy, but I feel that our culture is just as guilty today. There are many ways we have given approval to sin, but none more egregious than the legalization and acceptance of abortion. To date, the lives of over 50 million children have been taken. That's roughly five times as many lives as the Holocaust. I believe, just as in the cases above, morality has been blinded by self-interest. In his hit song, "What it's Like," the rapper/singer Everlast describes a woman facing abusive (straw man) protesters at an abortion clinic: "God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in her shoes, 'cause then you really might know what it's like to have to choose." Abortion thrives on fear, and fear is an emotion that blurs clear thinking on issues of morality. I wonder how Americans at the time of slavery would view us and our cultural acceptance of abortion if they could see into the future? They, being distanced from the emotions of it, would no doubt recognize it for the evil it is, just as we easily recognize the evil of slavery. It sickens me to see opposition to abortion painted as evil by the other side, as if it is hatred of women. Statistically, at least half of the victims of abortion are female. Those women born since 1973 should consider themselves fortunate.

As Christians in a secular society, we may feel powerless to do anything about abortion. Not being personally threatened, survivors that we are, we may silently condemn it, but still become complacent about it, accepting it as a matter of fact and here to stay. But that doesn't have to be the case. We, like all other American citizens 18 years and older, have the right to vote. Every time we vote, we give approval or disapproval to someone or something, depending on the issues at stake. What standard are we using to make our decisions? Do we vote what is best for our pocketbooks, our employer, our culture, our race, our friends, or those in our immediate surroundings? As followers of Christ, we are to identify ourselves first and foremost with Him. What this means in application is that we do not look for any interest but for what is beneficial to the growth of the knowledge and acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord, which re-directs us away from the characteristics of the fallen world. We should love what He loves, and hate what He hates. We know He hates sin, and we should never give our approval of it. While there may not be any perfect candidates, we are morally responsible to vote for the ones who will do more to promote good and less to promote evil. I happen to think that one political party is routinely on the side of approving and enabling the sinful and destructive behaviors described in Romans 1. Others may disagree, and if they can stand confidently before the Lord and defend their choices in good conscience, then who am I to tell them otherwise.

(Recommended link: "180" movie)

We are representatives of Christ. The secular world will put us under the spotlight to expose any hypocrisy. While we won't always demonstrate love the way we should, and we will continue to struggle with sin, we can make choices to promote good and oppose evil. Let us not compromise, as many have. Remember Romans 1:32. My name is Steve, and I approve this message.

Steve's Five Logical Arguments for a Creator

Well, I thought with my first official blog post here, I'd go for broke and deal with "The Big Question." Having recently read C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, I was impressed with the opening section of the book which dealt with his rational argument for a Creator. He described in great detail how an inborn sense of basic morality that is common to all mankind points to a morality giver, or "God," if you will. It's a very nicely laid out argument, and one I'd recommend for all to check out on your own. I'm not going to go any further with that, as it makes a strong case, but the five concepts I'm going to attempt to describe are ones that I've contemplated in my own mind throughout the years, and are the most compelling to me. These arguments are not tied to the creationism vs. evolutionism debate, but specifically dealing with the beginning of all things in this universe and how life was able to continue from that point forward. The point of this is to lay out a positive case for a created universe. More often than not, it seems that believers in God are asked to debunk those questions of atheists that supposedly disprove God's existence. We're asked to negate the negative. Well, the five arguments I'm presenting are positive proofs of a Creator. I use the word "proof" loosely since it's impossible to scientifically prove the existence of God, but these arguments are based purely on my own logic, and I find it would take incredible faith to believe in a godless world when taking all of these together. And just to note, I don't expect this to change anyone's mind on this subject but I hope it will at least be a thought-provoking read.

1. Life from Life Alone

Flies do not come from meat. That was the result of a famous science experiment in the 17th century, which I remember replicating in my high school biology class. This experiment, and many others that followed, concluding with Louis Pasteur's similar test for microscopic organisms in the 19th century, proved that life does not arrive spontaneously, but is always born from life. This is what is called the "law of biogenesis." Regardless of how big or small a life form is, it has parents (well, at least one). Most modern scientists believe very strongly in evolution, yet they also believe that life was born of random processes from lifeless matter. Could that very first cell have been given life from what was never living? Somehow that seems like a giant leap of faith, especially for those who live and die by the belief in the scientific method. Besides, the same people mock the idea of the resurrection of Jesus Christ based on the view that it is impossible for one who was dead to come back to life. I would rather suggest that the first life in our universe was born from a life outside of it. That creator of life is, by definition, God. Now I know how the atheist will respond to this. "Well, if all life comes from life, then who/what created God?" For that, I'll move on to argument #2.

2. Time and Infinity

Now this is the hardest concept to grasp, but I'll try my best to explain. The universe is built on a timeline. In order to get to where we are today, there had to be a past, and a chain of events starting from one definable point. That point would be the moment when the very first "thing" existed. The only way around this is to believe that the universe has always existed, and everything within it is born from what has always been here from eternity past. That, by definition, makes the universe "God." The problem with this idea is that you would then have to accept the idea that we've gotten to the present state through an indeterminable number of events in history past that have no set parameters of when they happened. The past would go as far as you can imagine it. And then when you've imagined that, you could just as well imagine a past 10,000 years before that. As you keep going further back, the present gets further from reality. OK, my brain hurts just thinking about this. So it seems the only logical explanation is to believe that there had to be a concrete starting point of history, the birth of the universe. But how could the universe be born if nothing was here before it? That's where God comes in. God is infinite. He has no beginning and no end. He exists at all times in all places at once. He knows the future just the same as He knows the past because He exists in the eternal state. This is why the question of "who created God?" is irrelevant. God, by definition is the Eternal One, responsible for the existence of all things. Time itself is an invention of His, and we exist in a sort of "alternate dimension" from the reality of eternity. How does that work? I have no idea. If I did, I'd be God. That might seem like a cop-out on a difficult question, but there are concepts which the human brain is incapable of grasping, just as there are human concepts that a rabbit's brain could never imagine. But this is for sure, infinity is not an imaginary concept. Just try to imagine the edge of the universe. Does it exist? If you imagine that, then imagine what must lie 10 feet to the other side of that edge. There must be something there (even if it's empty space), therefore there is no edge at all. Space is limitless. Whether or not there are planets or stars stretching out infinitely I don't know, but I do imagine that you could theoretically travel endlessly through space and never reach the end. So to wrap this one up, I believe in God because I believe in infinity, but I also believe in time. Time is not infinite, but is born of the infinite.

3. Intelligence

Supposing this world came about accidentally, and life somehow came to exist at a microscopic level. At what point in the chain of evolution required to get from there to where we are now did the first thought come about? Intelligence is something you either have or you don't. Life can exist without it, as it does in plants or bacteria, but all animals have it to some degree. So how did we make the jump from non-intelligent life to intelligent life? Intelligence itself is an intangible thing. Obviously it requires a brain. But the brain itself is not intelligence. It is the house in which all thoughts reside, but those thoughts can't be seen or touched. The concept of natural selection implies that living things make choices on who/what to procreate with, which requires some level of comprehension. Remove that comprehension and the decision would then have to be made for them. So in that scenario, a guiding intelligence source would be required to make the selection for them. The whole basis for evolution seems to depend on either the decision-making of a species, or some kind of guiding force that controls what actions it takes to exist and carry on the chain of life. Either you have intelligence in the species which cannot have evolved from non-intelligence (what would half-formed intelligence be?), or the outside force of intelligence. Either scenario seems impossible without an intelligence-giver. Isn't it ironic that some of the most intelligent people in this world are atheists? It reminds me of the movie "9," where the robots that humans created turned against them and annihilated them. Atheists take credit for their own intelligence and seek to destroy God, the one who gave them the brilliant minds they have.

4. Provision

Imagine a world in which the universe came about and a single life form was born. What would that life need to survive beyond that moment? What if conditions changed and as soon as the life was born, it was snuffed out? Fortunately for us, we have everything we need to live here on Earth. Our climate is moderate and we are at a safe distance from the sun, gravity holds us to the ground so we don't float away, we have air to breathe, water, plants and animals that provide us the nutrients we need to keep our bodies sustained, the means to move our bodies, and among other things, the ability to create new life to carry on after we die (more on that later). I'm sure I could list thousands of other examples of the provision for life that we have. Now hypothetically, imagine we humans had everything we needed to survive except for food. We could eat plants or animals, but they did nothing to provide nourishment for us. Though every other condition is right, the failure in that one area would mean the death of us all. These provisions we have are not accidental. To believe so is to believe in something so incalculably improbable that it goes so far beyond reason to a point of faith that I simply do not have. I find it much more logical to believe that such things are as they are for a purpose. Of course, having a purpose requires a purpose-giver. I like to call him "God."

5. Sexual Reproduction

The simplest forms of life are single-celled organisms which replicate themselves by splitting in half. If life began at such a level and evolved from there, at what point did male and female come into being and why? It seems as though self-replication is the easiest method. Therefore, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? However, at some point in the chain of living things, organisms must have had a reason why it was advantageous to reproduce sexually, which of course required the evolution of male and female versions of their previously asexual selves. One of the ideas that seems prevalent in evolution is that organisms evolve the traits they need to survive. In practice, this implies that there is either a conscious decision to start evolving the necessary trait, or a guiding force insuring that what is needed will result from a series of mutations. If it is a conscious decision, then theoretically humans could all conclude that it would be helpful for us to be able to see in the dark, and in time some of us might succeed in producing children with mutated eyes that improve their night-vision. If it is a conscious decision, you then have a problem at the pre-intelligence level as discussed earlier. They would not be able to evolve because they couldn't choose to. They would be reliant on a guiding force, which must be intelligent. Applying this to reproduction, a species must have then began developing male and female traits simultaneously, which would have been worthless to them during the transitional stages of evolution. Those traits would only have purpose when they finally reached the functional stage, an undefined number of generations later, and possibly far removed from each other in each gender. In the meantime, their metamorphosis would likely have removed their ability to self-replicate. If this weren't so, the ability to reproduce either way would have been advantageous and unlikely to have disappeared. Logically, this just doesn't add up. Male and female must have arrived on Earth simultaneously, fully-formed. The odds that this happened accidentally are way beyond improbable. It must have been by design.

Now looking at humans, regardless of sexual function, men and women are by nature different in numerous other ways. Yet with the exception of a small minority of people, we're physically attracted to the opposite sex. Nobody has to be taught this. My personal belief is that sex education is for the most part unnecessary (at least the "how to" part). Sexual attraction is inborn, and operates outside of pure function. At least from a male point-of-view, the drive for sex has no basis in the need to procreate. But somehow even those who've never experienced sex before know internally that it's pleasurable. And more than that, they understand that just by interacting with those attractive members of the opposite sex. Where does this knowledge come from, and how is this pleasure naturally understood? This kind of knowledge may be what we understand as "instinct" in animals. But instinct is simply implanted instructions within our bodies on how to live as we were designed to live. It's a guiding force, directing us for a purpose. Sexual attraction is God's way of motivating us (well, at least men) to procreate. And through sex, we create individuals who are different from ourselves, unlike those self-duplicating organisms. God designed us each to be unique individuals with unique purposes for our lives. He doesn't want us to be clones of each other, but to be the individuals He created us to be. Sex is a picture of God's design, and that design points us back to God.

Conclusion

Bertrand Russell once made an analogy comparing the belief in God to the belief in a floating teapot in space that is too small to be seen by any telescope. The idea was that to believe in either is equally ridiculous since there is no reason to, other than the fact that we are told by others that it is so. But to reduce belief in God to that level is a poor analogy, since none of the arguments I've presented above could be applied to that teapot. There is no reason to believe in it, and its existence would fail to explain anything about this universe we live in. Belief in God is a logical conclusion when you open up your eyes to see this place for what it is. Romans 1:20 (NIV) says, "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." Of course, to believe there is a God is only the beginning. We then must decide what that means for us. If God is real, how should that affect my life? And how do I know who He really is when there are so many concepts of God out there? My short answer would be to read the Bible, but to explain why would require more words than I could write here. Perhaps another time I will tackle my arguments for Christianity specifically, but this essay is long enough for now. Good night and thanks for reading.

-Steve F.