Sin & Grace Series
2015-2016 (transcript only)
Striking at the Root of Evil
July 28, 2016 • Don Willeman
It was Henry David Thoreau who said, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” What a true and profound observation! Our problem as a human race is deep and serious. It cannot be overcome by a mere resolution to do better for God. No, our problem goes to the root of who we are, our heart. Listen to the prophet Jeremiah: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it” (Jeremiah 17:9)? Worse yet Jeremiah goes on to say that the Lord searches the heart and tests the mind. In other words, our sick and deceitful hearts cannot be hidden from God. We can’t pull the proverbial wool over God’s eyes, fooling Him as to our real problem. So what are we to do? Well, if we are the problem and that problem goes to our core, then there is nothing we can do. What we need is intervention. What we need is for the divine surgeon to perform a heart transplant on us. And this is exactly what the prophet suggests. Listen to verse 14: “Heal me, O LORD, and I shall be healed; save me and I will be saved” (Jeremiah 17:14). God doesn’t just demand that we do better. No, He performs a one-sided rescue. He sends Jesus the savior/surgeon to single-handedly strike at the root of our problem giving us by His grace a new heart. Has He done this for you? Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “And He was saying, ‘That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man.’” ~ Mark 7: 20-23
Fine Line Between Normal and Monster
July 26, 2016 • Don Willeman
An article that I read recently in The New York Times asked the question, “Where’s the line between ‘normal’ and ‘monster?’” It cited the infamous study that had been done at Stanford University back in 1971 in which researchers simulated a prison, randomly assigning 24 students to be either guards or prisoners for two weeks. Shockingly, “Within days the ‘guards’ had become swaggering and sadistic …placing bags over the prisoners’ heads, forcing them to strip naked” and perform humiliating acts. Why did this happen? How could these otherwise “normal” people so quickly become such “abnormal” monsters? Maybe the reason is that our normally “acceptable” behavior is generally, only a thin veil of socially-engineered “goodness.” In other words, our behavior is often only as deep as our social setting. Change the setting and the socially acceptable people suddenly become socially deviant. This, of course, means that the line between the good people and the evil people is thinner than we would like to admit. Interestingly, the article went on to quote Hannah Arendt’s phrase the “banality of evil,” which she used to describe the very averageness of the Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann. You see, it is easy to put ourselves in a different moral category from the worst of the Nazis. If all that separates me from Eichmann is socialization, however, then before God we’re all in the same boat. Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” ~ Jeremiah 17:9
The Worst Imprisonment
July 21, 2016 • Don Willeman
The worst thing that God could do to a person in this life is to withdraw His gracious presence and give one over to the corruption of his own heart. In Romans 1 when St. Paul explains the judgment of God upon those that reject the communication of God in nature, he repeats three times the nature of that judgment. And what is it? Three times the phrase is repeated: God gave them over. And to what did God give them over? To the lust of their own heart, to their own dishonorable passions, and to their own corrupt mind. According to the Bible, God judges us in this life by giving our corrupt desires free reign to run their course and eat us alive. It was the late, great preacher Jonathan Edwards who said that there is enough “hell” in the human heart to consume a man if only God would cease to restrain it. If we reject the gracious instruction of God, we are destined to become who we choose to be. We are destined to become those divorced from the beauty and gracious protection of God. We mustn’t think that we are escaping God’s judgment when it appears that we get away with our sin. God may be allowing us to become our own trap. In the haunting words of John Milton: “Thou art become (O worst imprisonment!) the dungeon of thyself.” Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “Why do You stand afar off, O Lord? Why do You hide Yourself in times of trouble?In pride the wicked hotly pursue the afflicted; let them be caught in the plots which they have http://devised.for the wicked boasts of his heart’s desire, and the greedy man curses and spurns the http://lord.the wicked, in the haughtiness of his countenance, does not seek Him. All his thoughts are, ‘There is no God.’” ~ Psalm 10: 1-4
Edwards On Our Thoughts of God
July 19, 2016 • Don Willeman
In order to restore any relationship we must first identify what is the real problem. So it is with our relationship with God. So let me ask you a question: What would you say is mankind’s basic problem with God? Allow me to state it more directly: What would you say is your basic problem with God? Jonathan Edwards, an American thinker from the 1700’s, suggests the following: “The thing at bottom is, that men have low thoughts of God, and high thoughts of themselves; and therefore it is that they look upon God as having so little right, and they so much.” I think Edwards is right. I have noticed that in any relational rift the first effect on our minds is to lower the value of the other person and thus become incredibly confused as to who we are and what we deserve. How true this is in our relationship with God! We become so confused that we actually put ourselves in God’s place, demanding to determine the rules for the world that He has made. For example, we tend to insist that He has no right to judge, or if He has a right to judge it must be on our terms, by the standard that seems right to us. By such demands we assume ourselves to be the owner of the universe and God our employee. Imagine that! Us telling God what He must do! If the matter were not so serious, it would be absolutely comical. Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” ~ Proverbs 1: 7
Positioning the Lamp of Light
July 1, 2016 • Don Willeman
Are you an active listener? One time, while explaining the importance of internalizing his message, Jesus said: “No one after lighting a lamp covers it over with a container, or puts it under a bed; but he puts it on a lampstand, in order that those who come in may see the light” (Luke 8:16). A little later he says: “Therefore, take care how you listen; for whoever has, to him shall more be given and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has shall be taken away” (Luke 8:18). So what’s Jesus’ point in this somewhat familiar but perhaps puzzling passage of Scripture? Well, in the context the lamp or light is the message of Jesus. And the one positioning that lamp is the hearer of that message. As with any message, the one hearing it is responding in some way, shape, or form. He is either actively listening, passively dismissing, or actively rejecting the message. The very sobering thing that Jesus teaches here is that those that do not actively listen will eventually be denied the message completely. In keeping with the word picture the lights will go completely dark. Why? Well, as the saying goes, “Truth received brings light, truth refused brings night.” What about you – are you actively listening? Are you internalizing the message of Jesus and letting it illuminate the nooks and crannies of your life? Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “‘Now no one after lighting a lamp covers it over with a container, or puts it under a bed; but he puts it on a lampstand, so that those who come in may see the light. For nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light. So take care how you listen; for whoever has, to him more shall be given; and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has shall be taken away from him.’” ~ Luke 8: 16-18
Augustine’s Definition of Sin
July 12, 2016 • Don Willeman
I find that there is much confusion and ignorance about sin nowadays. When we speak the word “sin” into our culture, we cannot assume that everyone hearing will reference a biblical notion of it in their heads. So what is the nature of sin? I think that perhaps the simplest and most helpful definition for our pleasure-indulged generation is one offered by the ancient theologian Augustine. Listen to what he says: “My sin was this: That I looked for beauty, pleasure and truth, not in Him, but in myself and in His other creatures.” Augustine is saying that the essence of sin is seeking to find your ultimate pleasure in the things that God has made as opposed to in God Himself. In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul calls this maneuver, “worshipping and serving the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). Nothing could be more foolish, and nothing could deserve greater judgment: Using the very things that God has given us to enjoy as a means by which to snub God personally. Augustine testifies that doing this only leads to misery. Listen to his words: it led “me…to pain, confusion and error.” Sure it did. We were made for the eternal, infinite pleasure of God. Settling for anything less is not only dangerous but dumb. Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.” ~ Romans 1: 20-23
Peter Berger and Transcendant Beauty
July 7, 2016 • Don Willeman
Nothing provides us with greater meaning in our lives than relationship with others. This is infinitely true as it relates to our relationship with God. We were made to find our ultimate pleasure, our ultimate satisfaction, our ultimate meaning in the very Person of God. But our sin causes us to pridefully rebel, saying, “I can make my life work without Him.” As Peter Berger points out, all beautiful things are to be “signals of transcendence;” that is, they are to point us to God. But instead we take the beautiful things and make them our god. The problem is that they can’t bear the weight of our God-given desires. Eventually the structures of meaning, pleasure, and happiness that we have constructed, and we ourselves, crumble to the ground. And there we sit in our pile of rubble, still stubbornly resistant to turn to the source of true pleasure, meaning, and happiness. Have you ever considered that the fact that you can’t make your life work the way you want, far from being evidence of the judgment of God is actually evidence of His mercy? That He is actually wooing you to Himself, to a place where your desires will no longer be disappointed? Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “Then I looked again at vanity under the sun. There was a certain man without a dependent, having neither a son nor a brother, yet there was no end to all his labor. Indeed, his eyes were not satisfied with riches and he never asked, ‘And for whom am I laboring and depriving myself of pleasure?’ This too is vanity and it is a grievous task.” ~ Ecclesiastes 4: 7-8
The Human Race Has a Past
July 5, 2016 • Don Willeman
What is the origin of evil? What explanation do you give for the front page of the morning news? The Bible teaches that as humans we have collectively rebelled against the God who made us. This means that there is a crime that we all share, that because of our human ancestry we don’t come into the world as neutral arbiters between good and evil or innocence and guilt but as those who are already guilty and corrupt. As John Henry Newman put it, human experience seems to force the conclusion that mankind was implicated in some “primordial catastrophe.” As a race we have a shared past. The theologians call this “original sin,” for it explains the origins of our joint corruption. The apostle Paul in Romans 5 puts it this way: “Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” Listen to author Gary Wills: “We are hostages to each other in a deadly interrelatedness. There is no ‘clean slate’ of nature unsubscribbled on by…one’s forebears…. At one time a woman of unsavory…experience was delicately but cruelly referred to as ‘having a past.’ The doctrine of original sin states that humankind, in exactly that sense, ‘has a past.’” Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” ~ Romans 5:12
Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Reality of Judgement
June 1, 2020 • Don Willeman
Some wanting to soften the more unseemly edges of Christianity have sought to downplay the reality of final judgment. These folks argue that the notion that we will be held accountable, as the Bible plainly teaches, for every thought, word and deed, is an impossible road block for people seeking to come to faith in Christ. However, I would beg to differ. Not only is downplaying the reality of final judgment a distortion of the teaching of Jesus Himself—Jesus spoke of the reality of final judgment more than anyone else in the Bible; and not only is it patently unfaithful to the teaching of the apostles—Paul, for example, preached that God has “set a day in which he will judge the world with justice” (Acts 17:31). All these things are true and are reason enough to reject the notion of downplaying the reality of judgment. However, perhaps most interestingly such a soft-peddled message is ultimately dehumanizing. It leaves its hearers with the notion that in the end their lives really don’t matter—that their choices and actions account for nothing at all. Listen to the words of the non-Christian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: “If what we do now is to make no difference in the end, then all the seriousness of life is done away with.” Do you think your thoughts, beliefs, words and actions are going to count in the end? Then, it makes all the difference how you live now. Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective”. “The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.” ~Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
The Necessity of Man’s Spiritual Being
June 28, 2016 • Don Willeman
Let me ask you a question: Are you happy? What would make you happy? Maybe a deeper question would get more to the heart of the matter: What do you think you were made for? It seems to me that everything about us as human beings screams that we were made for something more than just material existence—something more than the mere accumulation of things and more things—for something more than the pleasures of this life. Listen to Russian writer and thinker Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as he critiques our American culture and the politics of plenty: “If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot [be] unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty…. It is not possible that assessment of the President’s performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary…self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.” Things and more things, creature comforts and more creature comforts, cannot satisfy you because you were made for something much greater than temporal pleasures. You were made for God. Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “All a man’s labor is for his mouth and yet the appetite is not satisfied.” ~ Ecclesiastes 6:7
Does Self-Denial Mean That We Are Losers?
June 23, 2016 • Don Willeman
A central demand for Jesus’ disciples is self-denial. “If anyone wishes to come after me,” said Jesus at the height of his popularity, “he must deny himself” (Matthew 16:24; by the way, making statements like this hardly seems a prudent way to build or keep a crowd. Maybe Jesus knows something we modern purveyors of His message have forgotten.) But here’s a question: Does this denying of the self mean that we should look at ourselves as “zeros,” as insignificant creatures? Certainly not, there is a biblical balance here. We are to deny ourselves precisely because we are not “zeros.” We are made in God’s likeness and therefore like God are capable of significant choices and actions. It would be silly to tell your dog to deny himself. But because we as humans are something great, we are called to descend, just as Jesus did. Greatness used for itself is no longer great but self-centered. We are to be good, not just great. And if we are not good as well as great we will held accountable for it. Listen to the words of the French believer Pascal: “True religion that teaches about man’s greatness and misery inspires self-esteem as well as self-contempt, love and yet also hate. Philosophers, however, tend to take sides.” You are great. Therefore, you must be good. Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “ And He was saying to them all, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.’” ~ Luke 9: 23
Descending to Ascend
June 21, 2016 • Don Willeman
We live in a culture in which a love and celebration of self is well established. Walt Whitman, well over a century ago, modeled this for us. “I celebrate myself,” he wrote, “and sing myself. I loaf and invite my soul….” A little later Oscar Wilde encouraged a similar sentiment: “To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.” And you can hear echoes of this in Whitney Houston’s popular version of the song “The Greatest Love of All.” The essential teaching of the ballad is this: “Learning to love your self is the greatest love of all.” Such romanticized notions of the inner self have left us with very little room for the biblical notion of self-denial. No longer is it kosher to warn against the dangers of thinking more highly of yourself than you ought. Such statements have all been building blocks in what has become known as “The Culture of Narcissism.” In the 70’s we called it “The Me Generation.” This celebration of the self, however, is quite different than the Bible’s prescription for happiness. According to the gospel, self-denial is exactly what is required if we really want to find true and lasting happiness. In the words of St. Augustine, we must “descend in order to ascend.” In the words of Jesus: “He who wishes to save his life must lose it” (Matthew 16:25). Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, ‘If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?’” ~ Mark 8: 34-37
Woody Allen and the Despair of Modern Man
June 16, 2016 • Don Willeman
The thinkers of our time understand well the predicament that the philosophy of human autonomy has created for us. If we are our own god and there is really nothing outside of the self, then there is no purpose outside of our frail choices, nothing to sustain us or hope in beyond the precarious perch of our personal preferences. One of my favorite popular philosophers is the filmmaker Woody Allen. He understands the nature of this predicament well and articulates it with his characteristic wit. Listen to how he describes our situation: “More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. I speak, by the way, not with any sense of futility, but with a panicky conviction of the absolute meaninglessness of existence that could easily be misinterpreted as pessimism. It is not. It is merely a healthy concern for the predicament of modern man.” If there nothing outside of our choices, there is nothing to hope in outside of ourselves. This just doesn’t work for us. Such despair makes us less than rational, less than human. We were made for something bigger than ourselves. Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. ‘Vanity of vanities,’ says the Preacher, ‘vanity of vanities! All is vanity.’” ~ Ecclesiastes 1: 1-2
Going Who-Knows-Where Fast
June 14, 2016 • Don Willeman
One of the things that characterizes the fallenness of our intellect is our willingness to be heading “who-knows-where” fast. We live in an age in which we are wowed by all the technology that makes our life move faster and faster, but at the same time we are less and less concerned with the ultimate end to which we are heading. It reminds me of one of my favorite lines in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, popularized through the Disney movie Alice in Wonderland. The scene is where the Cheshire Cat meets Alice. Alice asks: “‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ `That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat. `I don’t much care where,’ said Alice. `Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.” When you go on a trip, the first order of business is to know where you’re going. It is only then that you decide which way to get there. We were made for God; He is our ultimate destination. Are you heading in the right direction, finding your ultimate meaning—your destiny—in Him? Or are you foolishly content with fast-lane living on the road to nowhere? Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor. Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun.” ~ Ecclesiastes 2: 10-11
Greatness Disappointed
June 9, 2016 • Don Willeman
Human beings have a unique capacity to be unhappy. It’s not that other creatures don’t experience unpleasantness; of course, they do. Nonetheless, the human capacity for this seems to be of a different quality. I’d suppose that the reason for this has to do with expectations. You’ve probably noticed that there is a correlation between expectations and the experience of happiness. The higher your expectations, the higher your level of disappointment when those expectations are not met. This same principle exists on a cosmic scale. Do you live with a constant murmur of disappointment toward yourself, others, and your circumstances? It very well may be the “cosmic background noise” of a cataclysmic event the Bible calls “sin.” Mankind was created to be great beyond description, made in the very image of God to rule and care for God’s creation. Yet instead of fulfilling that role, as a species we have rebelled, leaving us cut off not only from God but also from our reason for living. Talk about unmet expectations! We were meant to be kings and queens and yet are forced to live as paupers in prisons of our own design. It is helpful here to listen to the words of Pascal: “…[H]uman misery prove[s] [our] greatness. It is the misery of a great lord, the wretchedness of a dispossessed king … The most despicable feature of man is his lust for glory, and yet it is just this that most clearly demonstrates his grandeur.” Something to think about from “The Kingdom Perspective.” “For He did not subject to angels the world to come, concerning which we are speaking. But one has testified somewhere, saying, ‘What is man, that You remember him? Or the son of man, that You are concerned about him? You have made him for a little while lower than the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honor,and have appointed him over the works of Your hands; you have put all things in subjection under his feet.’ For in subjecting all things to him, He left nothing that is not subject to him. But now we do not yet see all things subjected to him.” ~ Hebrews 2: 5-8