"Here, see? A pen. The law of gravity. If I were to drop this pen, what would happen?"*
It would hit the ground.
"Right, it would hit the ground. Why?"
Gravity.
"Right, but why? Who's to say it won't go up?"
Well...gravity...
"How does that work?"
Uhh...
"Truth is, God likes it going down. God likes gravity. That's why it works. All reality is miracles. Why was the universe made in six days instead of six seconds? The sunset takes a little longer than the sunrise. God likes that. The sun moves smoothly across the sky. It could do loop-de-loops instead. God likes it that way. All reality is miracles."
Tonight at
IVCF, we had an awesome guest speaker. He is the pastor at a local church and his lesson was on the the fact that we are becoming too deistic. We're taking things for granted. We know that there is a future, a promise, but we're confused about what to do in the present. He said that since we were made in God's image, we are meant for glory. ("Not a big 'G', like God's Glory, but a little 'g'.") We should be helping other people and spreading His word, all the while being aware that we have the things we have because that is the way Heavenly Father wants them, and we should be grateful for them. The speaker said we need to learn to see the future and the promise with our Spirit-inspired imagination...we need to communicate with Him, and have a relationship with Him so we can learn how to see, and what is coming ahead. Otherwise it's just the blind trying to lead the blind.
He also taught that the Bible should be
so interesting to us. ("You have to admit that in North America, we're boring. [Church is boring.]") He asked us what something similar to the following passage made us think of (books, movies, anything):
This work set the benchmark for it's genre in its creation of an entirely new and thrillingly vital universe. It introduced an unforgettable hero, caught up in a war of mythic proportions, defining for many the archetypal struggle between good and evil.
Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and the Matrix were all mentioned. As it turns out, it was pieces of a statement made about
LotR. He then asked us if we thought it could also apply to the Bible. "This book has a flood that covers all of the known Earth, and the only survivors are a man who is not that righteous to begin with, and a floating zoo. This book has a man swallowed by a fish and spit back on land, lepers, people coming back from the dead, a man that walks on water, exorcisms, fish with coins in their mouths...how much more exciting can you get?" He pointed out that the poetry in Job, the Song of Songs, and the Psalms is amazingly structured. The poetry is more complex than anything that old
Billy ever wrote.
Anyway, it was basically an amazing lesson, and the whole time I was on the edge of my seat,
willing more to come. More of the lesson. It felt wonderful.
*All "quotes" are loosely quoted, not direct.
