Change

Ben Franklin once said that, in this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.  Death's inevitably is obvious, and on April 15 no one questions the inevitability of taxes.

However, I think Franklin failed to mention another certainty:  we will resist change unless the status quo becomes intolerable.

Churches aptly illustrate this truth (although it is obvious in many other areas of life).  In a world where change swirls around us, we long for stability, and we hope to find that at church. After all, churches are formed around certain ideas and unchanging truths, so why should we change anything?  

The problem, of course, is that this confuses the substance with the form--the "payload" with the delivery system.  The essence of the gospel--who God is in Christ and what He has done for us--must not change.  However, the way in which we communicate that essence should be constantly changing.

Allow me one illustration.  Prior to the invention of the printing press, copies of the Bible were printed by hand.  Consequently, very few people ever had the opportunity to read the scriptures for themselves, but it didn't matter that much, since so few people were able to read at all (including the priests).  When Bibles began rolling off the printing presses of Europe, the Roman Catholic Church tried to keep them out of the hands of ordinary people.  The Church tried to resist this change, but, of course, it was unsuccessful -- praise God!

The same was true of hymn-singing, musical instruments, and Sunday School.  These were all resisted because they were "modern" innovations!

Our church has changed a lot during its 50+ years.  But, we must continue to embrace change or we will become irrelevant.  I know that not every change is a change for the better, and I'm not in favor of "change for the sake of change."  But meaningful changes--changes that make us more effective in reaching our community with the gospel and in leading people to deeper levels of discipleship--are worthy of our prayers and time and energy.  

And . . . aren't you glad for Easter?  Because Easter changes everything!   

"Knowing"

Many different things may cause us to question our faith -- spiritual lethargy, challenging situations at home or work, but, especially, those times when we feel that God is not doing enough to take care of us or our loved ones.

That is the situation in the new Nicholas Cage film, "Knowing." Cage plays the part of an MIT professor and single father, whose wife tragically died the previous year. He also is a pastor's son, but, following his wife's death, he decided that there is no purpose to anything, that life is just a series of random events. In his class one day, he juxtaposes two worldviews for his students: Determinism or Randomness. He tells them that they ultimately must choose one or the other.

Ironically, the story's events force him to change his own viewpoint. However, the movie's ending was unsatisfactory for me because it left me feeling helpless. Although it revealed that the world is not random, there was nothing the professor could do to alter the outcome of things -- that already was determined.

My problem with all of this is that the movie presented a false choice--determinism versus randomness. The Bible's viewpoint is more nuanced. There is an overarching plan--"to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ" (Eph. 1:10b)--but within that plan we have enormous freedom, and the choices we make have significant consequences. So, using the movie's categories, the Bible says that the end result already has been determined, but that God gives us the power to affect the route that is taken in the process of reaching that pre-determined goal. So, rather than "randomness," I would simply call this freedom.

"Knowing" is an interesting movie, but, if you really want to "know," see what I John 5:13 says.