Swimming Without God

Help me out God
I need a little something
Turn the brights on
I can't see where we're going cause I don't know
when things'll work out just fine
Or if this road we're on leads us up
Or is leading me on down to my wishing well
Where I might drown
Oh I might drown
'Cause I can't swim without you God
I can't swim without you God

from "Help Me Out God" from the album Karaoke Superstars by Superchick

I was listening to this song the other day and it got me thinking. You know, there are millions of people who live out their lives without God. Some of them actively reject God, some maybe never hear of God, but many of them do "just fine" and, to all outward appearances, lead happy, healthy lives. So it struck me that if this song is literal, that means the songwriter is someone who desperately needs a crutch to lean on... someone who is at best a weakling, and at worst, codependent. No matter if God is real or not; if you "can't make it without God" then all of those millions of atheists and heathens are of stronger mind and character than you.

There are lots of songs like this one out there in Christian music. I think maybe some of them owe a lot to a legacy of similarly codependent "love songs" in the nonreligious realm... "Tell me how am I supposed to live without you, now that I've been lovin' you so long? How am I supposed to live without you? How am I supposed to carry on when all that I've been livin' for is gone?" (thank you, Michael Bolton!) I could probably come up with more examples, but you get the picture. We want to apply those strong, inspiring words to Jesus because we feel like Jesus deserves strong, inspiring words. And He does. But...

A few months ago my father-in-law lost his wife to death. He is in his sixties, and they got married as teenagers. He loves her very, very much. He misses her every day. In fact, he still feels unable to do certain things... drive very far, concentrate for long periods of time, things like that. But you know... as much as he loves her and needs her, he is carrying on. And I think he has a really good shot at living a long life even though she is gone. Some who lose spouses that they are devoted to even go on to remarry and have equally loving relationships with another spouse... I was talking to a friend just a few weeks ago who lost his much-loved first wife to death, but then eventually he met and married a wonderful woman who he is also devoted to. Fact is, well-adjusted human beings are very resilient, and at the risk of sounding callous, I'll state the obvious fact that often we can recover from things we think we can never recover from.

So if songs like "Help Me Out God" have a possible heritage in faulty pop love songs, is there validity in songs like that applied to Christ? That depends on whether those sentiments are Scriptural. I spent an afternoon racking my brain, trying to think of a place in the Gospels, Paul's letters, the Psalms for goodness sake... ANYWHERE that says that once you become a believer in God, after that point your physical survival depends on maintaining your relationship with God. I don't see it. The best I could do was this:

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. -John 15:5 ESV

But the fact is, that doesn't really prove our point. That's Jesus talking, and Jesus isn't interested in any good deeds we perform in our own strength:

We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. -Isaiah 64:6 ESV

In other words, from God's point of view, if He did not initiate your activities, whatever you are doing counts as nothing. Jesus wasn't saying that you would stop breathing if you turned away from God. Although I guess it could be argued that if Jesus turned His back on us, the fabric of the universe might disintegrate:

And he [Christ Jesus] is before all things, and in him all things hold together. - Colossians 1:17 ESV

But now we're going places that the Superchick song isn't going. Clearly we can physically survive without God. We cannot accomplish anything for His Kingdom without His help, but I don't find it in Scripture that we must stay in fellowship with God for our physical or emotional survival. God's people are not weaklings; we are human beings like everyone else, but if we say stuff like "I can't live without God!" we present a picture to the unsaved that we do not want to present... basically, we are saying that we are weaker than they, because they are likely doing just fine without God where we would emotionally fall to pieces without Him holding things together. No wonder atheists often say that Christians are weak-minded. We basically say it ourselves.

Don't get me wrong; I enjoy that Superchick song. And you know, sometimes I feel like I would crack up without God helping me out. And I know that my life has meaning and purpose to it that it would not have if I didn't have Jesus giving me direction and empowering me to do what He has instructed me to do. But from a purely human standpoint, I am as stable physically and emotionally as the next guy. I'm not too weak to function in life without some spiritual "crutch," but I do know a good thing when I see it. If I have the choice to walk five miles to the store or drive in my car, I'd be stupid to walk, especially if I had a load to carry home. I have the option of leading a life without God or living a life with God. It's possible without God; it's better with God.

I choose God.

!Hero, The Musical

I discovered today that !Hero: The Rock Opera is now being licensed for local theater groups to perform! See HeroTheMusical.com for more details.

The Wrath Of God

Romans 1:18 (ESV) says:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Did you notice that "the wrath of God" is not focused on the "men"? God's wrath is not against people. God's wrath is aimed squarely at sin... unrighteousness, ungodliness. It's only when we hang on to our sin that we potentially can wind up in the crosshairs. I'm so glad that Jesus made it possible for us to divorce ourselves from our sin once and for all and experience HIS righteousness!

Brick Friday

For those of us who would like to think about what we are celebrating this weekend but who maybe fall asleep actually reading a Bible, here's one with pictures:

the last few days of Jesus' life on Earth, told in Legos

Give away the ESV!

Last week when I was at a Christian bookstore in our town picking up the new Veggie Tales DVD for my little boy, I picked up ten copies of the ESV Outreach New Testament. I've had a link to information about them up on ScriptureMenu.com ever since I first found out about them, but I hadn't been to a Christian bookstore to pick up some copies. I really like the ESV, and wanted a chance to share it with others. And at fifty cents per copy, you can't beat the value! I plopped down a fiver and was able to give a copy of the ESV New Testament to everyone in my Sunday School class. The print is kind of small, but it's a great introduction to the ESV for people who maybe haven't heard of it or haven't had occasion to try it out.

What destroys the yoke?

The KJV of Isaiah 10:27 says:

And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing.

This week I was listening to a message where this passage was used as evidence that the anointing of the Holy Spirit (I guess roughly analogous to the Holy Spirit's power working in our lives) is what "destroys" the yoke of slavery. Problem is, I was reading the passage out of my ESV:

And in that day his burden will depart from your shoulder, and his yoke from your neck; and the yoke will be broken because of the fat.

A footnote on the word "fat" says "The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain." The NIV and the NAS both go with "fat" as the proper interpretation. The RSV text, from which both the ESV and the NAS were adapted, seems to go with something totally different:

And in that day his burden will depart from your shoulder, and his yoke will be destroyed from your neck." He has gone up from Rimmon...

The Strong's definition of the word lists the meanings of the word as both "fat" and "oil" (as in anointing oil), with the KJV translating it most often as "oil." What I'm curious to find out is why, since "anointing" seems to be a translation that makes sense (at least to a layman) because of the association with olive oil, and "fat" makes no apparent sense at all... why would so many of the mainstream translations have gone with "fat"?

Flesh or Spirit?

Yesterday I finished a book called Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp. As I read it I kept tripping over things that I didn't particularly agree with, and sometimes I think Pastor Tripp contradicts himself in trivial ways, but by the end of the book I think I understood what he was driving at. Basically, by "shepherding" your children, you train them, over the course of their childhood, not just to "do what is right" but to do it the right way... to do it from their hearts, by the power of the Holy Spirit, not by willpower or whatever. Children are fallen beings, the book reminds us, like we all are, and cannot obey "the law" (Moses' law or Mommy & Daddy's law, it doesn't matter) by works of the flesh.

It's that "like we all are" part that sort of stuck with me. What about me? How often do I do the right thing because of my own willpower, or the knowledge that I'll get in trouble or get arrested or get fired if I do the wrong things, or because someone will get mad and yell at me, or...? Do we forgive others because God's nature rises up in us, or so that the fight will be over and we can go back to normal life? Do we resist chewing out that rude stranger in the grocery store because God helps us to have self-control, or because we don't want to make a scene or because we are afraid of reprisals by that stranger? I've begun to think that most well-adjusted, law-abiding adults act that way because they know that they have to or else there will be unwanted consequences. I want to train both my children and myself to live and act by the Spirit of God inside us as often as possible, and to do the right thing by fleshly means as seldom as possible.