God Seeks Fellowship

Many critics of Christianity make it seem that God is standoffish and does not wish for the good of mankind. The bible shows that the Christian God far from being standoffish is constantly active in pursuing fallen mankind with the offer of reconciliation.

God is not disinterested in the problems of mankind. God has constant and active interest bringing people into true joy. The true joy of mankind can only be found in right relation to God.

God actively offers salvation to all. He is active with the offer. It is we who are standoffish.

The charges of ill will that mankind often levels against God are baseless. The only base of the charges is that it is true that there is ill will, but the ill will comes from the accusers who do not wish to see the true nature of God.

The gospel shows that the son of God laid down his life for his enemies. That is the nature of God.

Why Experts get No Listeners

I was recently reading a really excellent article by an economist lately which was far better than most economic articles I've read. I was struck as a realized the article was probably far less read than most of the prevalent economic drivel on the Internet.

I realized that the issue was that the article was too instructive. We want quick fixes. We want to know is the market going up tomorrow or not. We want to know how to make money.

We aren't really interested as a group in underlying economic currents and really understanding. All human action is motivated action.

And as humans our shortsightedness draws us away from a acquisition of knowledge and wisdom. Often we need to slow down in life.

The path to true knowledge in most fields is long and hard. The short cut to "easy answers" in life often gives us know answers.

Often we never learn because we do not have the humility to admit that learning takes time. We imagine we may sit down in and afternoon and master a topic.

True learning takes time, humility, and patience. There are no short cuts. No quick solutions.

We meet ourselves when we seek to learn. Our impatience, our shortsightedness, and our pride.

The great failure of mankind is learners is because the bible is right about the nature of man. The bible does not paint a pleasant picture of the nature of mankind, but it paints an honest picture.

And to that honest picture the bible gives a glorious solution of a the free offer of grace for all who will come to Jesus.

The Past

It is common for people to look to the past as better than today. They feel that in the past people behaved better and were more civil and more Christian.

You see we often see the problems of our day but fail to see the problems of other days. It is not as if past ages don't have problems. Their problems are simply different than ours.

You see it is very common to miss remember the past. Or to glorify the good times which were not so glorious.

As our memories of things fade we often forget many of the hard things about the past and remember the good. It is not always the case.

If you look at politics, history, our past, and even theological history you see a trend where the past often gets placed in a rosier light than it was.

Nothing is new under the sun. Mankind is mankind under sin in every age.

He expresses his sin similarly in each age with particular vices he favors. But man is the same. He is born with a bad heart in every age.

It is only when he looks to Jesus in faith that his heart of stone is turned to a heart of flesh.

Parable as Plainness

It is interesting the concept of parable. In a sense a parable is a riddle about oneself or mankind.

In another sense a parable is the plainest form of communication about oneself possible at times.

It is always because there are some things which we must learn for ourselves. Sometimes we can only be guided to learn for ourselves because we will not accept plain speech.

Parables are plain speech because they seek to bring the truth into the light often in the most open form that could have any effect.