Death to Life

Greetings Warriors and Scholars.

Found at the IMDB page.

Last week Agents of SHIELD shocked the world when they killed Agent May. "What!" Yep, they killed her. Then, they brought her back. She had been affected by the ghosts who have been walking around. A piece of her brain was processing non-stop and it's failure to stop would kill her. The only thing that Simmons and Radcliffe could come up with was to kill her...and revive her again.

This idea is not entirely new. I have seen other movies and shows do something like this before. They make it very dramatic and we when the person is revived, the organism or virus or tech has simply ended or left the body.

Death and resurrection are not a new thought to Christianity either. Jesus himself was killed and resurrected. Before that he brought back Lazurus from the dead. Yet He also expects us to deal with death. In Matthew 16:24 Jesus tells us that if we want to follow Him we must take up our own crosses in the process.

Romans 6:11 tells us: "In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus." But read on. Verse twelve says, "Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires."

Agent May was under the influence of whatever this ghost touch does. She could not control it. She was deceived by it into thinking that everyone was against her. She was under it's control. That is what sin does to us. It deceives us and confuses us. 

Killing May seemed so extreme to Simmons. When asked if she was okay, she said: "Of course not!! We're about to kill May!" She could not imagine doing that to a friend. Often we feel like that. If I cut this out, will I be the same person? This is so extreme, do I really need to stop this? Can't I keep this sin for a bit? In the end, Simmons got her friend back as herself because of that crazy idea. Jesus assured us that he came that we might have life more abundantly (John 10:10). We do not have to earn our salvation from sin, but we will have to give up the sin itself in order to have life to the full. 

Hook and Gray

Greetings Warriors and Scholars!

Last night I watched a few shows with my Mom, including The Librarians and Once Upon a Time. Interestingly, both of these shows focused on darkness or sin in our lives in some form. Some spoilers ahead.

Found on the "Once Upon a Time" FB page.

In Once Upon a Time, we find a town panicking as multiple Dark Ones approach townspeople for what you might call tagging them. They are all given a mark targeting them to be pulled down into the Underworld. You see, the Dark Ones can only stay if they are replaced by someone in the Underworld. Somehow, Emma gets through to Killian, who is now one of the Dark Ones. He pulls all of the darkness, from all of them, into himself in an attempt to gather it into one place to be destroyed. I won't tell you here if it worked or not.

Found on "The Librarians" FB page.

We see a different take on sin in The Librarians. They come across a club where people are stricken with consequences of actions they did not commit or experience. A girl who is walking with her friends is thrown several yards and injured as if being hit by a car. A boy almost dies from a drug overdose without taking any drugs. As they investigate this club they meet Dorian Gray. Dorian has taken his ability to pass his consequences on to others and digitized it, using pictures taken of people in the club. He used his own vanity to gain immortality. This way he can live as long as he wants and do whatever he wants with no consequences. There were some other antics to enjoy in this episode, but I won't ruin them for you.

Darkness does exist in real life. You know that, right? We call it other things. We call it "mistakes" or "poor decisions" and once in a while we are honest and call it "sin". The good news for us is that we don't have to worry about beating the darkness. Jesus already did that.

"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:6-8

Jesus chose to be more like Killian (aka Captain Hook). He accepted a painful death on the cross. Killian deserved the punishment. He had spent years pirating and killing. Jesus had not. Jesus didn't kill anyone or steal from anyone. He chose to come to Earth, give us some instructions about love and respect and responsibility, and then he accepted death to take our spiritual consequences and give us what we don't deserve: access to God the Father and an infilling of the Holy Spirit.

God is not going to settle for us living a life of sin with no consequences. Jesus did not die to turn you into Dorian Gray, but to enable you to repent. Later in Romans, Paul says: 

"What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning to increase grace? BY NO MEANS! We are those who have died to sin, how can we live in it any longer?" Romans 6:1,2

I do think there is a difference between spiritual consequences and natural consequences and I do think we still have to face the natural ones. The Book of James is quite honest about natural consequences of our actions. This repentance thing isn't easy, but reliance upon God helps a lot.

I encourage you to read all of Romans 5 and 6 as it pulls together our faith with Christ's work on the cross to show how we can receive cleansing from Him to live in righteousness.

The Sage is Real

Greetings Warriors and Scholars!

How are you doing today? Here, it is rainy. I have done some cleaning, watched an episode of the X-Files, an episode of the Guardians of the Galaxy cartoon, and last night's "The Flash".

Today, I want to discuss last weeks episode of "Arrow." This is a little odd as the story-line I want to consider is very much unresolved. Thea and Laurel went to Nanda Parbat to find out why she is having trouble after being in the Lazarus Pit. She is overly vicious in combat and has come way to close to killing people.

When she meets her father, Thea is told some grim advice: give in to it. Kill someone and you'll feel better for a while. After she argues with Malcolm about it for a minute he makes up a story about a sage on the mountain who can help her. Later that night, she is awoken by attackers: Malcolm's own men. She manages to defeat them, but only by killing them. He had arranged the whole thing and she realizes his story is fake. He honestly thought and told her to just kill every now and then. Just do it to fill the urge of sin and it will leave you alone for a while. She did not find the help she was looking for.

I look forward to seeing what they come up with, but for now let us look at real life and dealing with sin.

But here is the deal: in real life, Malcolm's idea of a sage with mystical help and special wisdom is not wrong. We have this awesome guy named Jesus. He is fully man and fully God and He does want to help you. He states:

"Come to me all you who are weary, and I will give you rest" Matthew 11:28

We often thing God wants us to be perfect before coming to Him, but that is not so. In Romans 7 Paul admits his own issues with sin. He admits to doing things he doesn't want to do. Immediately after that, in Romans 8, he recognizes Jesus as the source of victory over sin.

I read an article today about dealing with sin entitled "The Dead End of Sexual Sin." I fully recommend reading this. It was written by a woman who read a book written in three parts (now combined) by John Owen in the 17th century. It doesn't matter what your issue of sin is, I think this article will be good no matter the issue.

If you are in West Michigan, there is a Nerd Chapel game night coming up in Spring Lake on November 14 at All Shores Wesleyan Church at 6:30pm. Please join us.

Jurassic Dualism

Found at imdb.com

Sunday I finally got to see Jurassic World. I very much enjoyed watching the dinosaurs chase everyone. I did not like the lack of characters from the original but I do think that they paid homage to it and it was nice to see a another Jurassic movie back at the main island instead of the backup site.

What struck me was how many characters showed the true polarism of humanity. We have such a huge tendency for both good and evil. For our purposes we will look at one of those characters: Zach.

Zach comes to the island with his brother and is not exactly doing great at it. He pulls his brother away from their escort to go see things without her, is sometimes very mean to his brother, and then even takes his brother through a crashed gate into a restricted area and ends up putting them both in danger. This along with checking out girls while he does have a girlfriend back home.

As the movie progresses, he starts protecting his brother. Not with the action soldier ways, but in significant ways. He never leaves his brother's side in all he craziness and does keep him from harm in a couple of occasions.

This is just like us humans, right? We have so many low points as well as high points. Every religion and many other philosophies recognize that we have such a great capacity for both sin and goodness. Paul talks about this fight within us in Romans 7. He mentions that he himself has to constantly fight because he finds himself doing what he doesn't want to do. In all the Bible, only Jesus and Daniel are never reported of in a bad light by the Bible itself. All our heroes like David, Abraham, Peter make some really bad choices as well as really good ones.

In Romans 8 Paul comes out and admits that only Jesus can help him with his sin issues. He later talks about being "more than a conqueror" through Jesus. You see, the thing that separates Christianity from other religions is not our view of man. That tends to stay the same because we have a pretty realistic view of ourselves because we have to put up with each other every day. What is different is our view of God.

In religion life is all about working really hard in hopes of impressing a deity or earning some sort of rewards. Jesus called Himself the "way the truth and the life" and Paul speaks of salvation as a gift:

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast." Ephesians 2:8-9

Some preachers have focused so much on our depravity as human beings that they have missed out on the uniqueness and amazing qualities of what God created in us. We do have great propensity for kindness, grace and love. You may feel like you have way more bad than good, but Jesus can help you with that; both in how you see yourself and in your habits and choices.  You see Jesus would rather get in the dirt with you and help you to move in faith toward your better qualities than leave you to try to change alone. If you want to get more into dealing with sin on a daily basis, go see my video "Changing Lanterns". 

Tuvok's Help or Jesus' Help?

Greetings Scholars and Warriors.

A few days ago my Mom and I were watching some Star Trek Voyager. We are slowly going through the series and currently in season 2. One of the episodes we watched was regarding a murder on the ship.

Found at tomdurham.com

As Tuvok was investigating it, he quickly found the evidence and got a confession from the murderer, a man who had been part of the Maquis crew. With all of this completed, something still bugged Tuvok. He could not understand why the man had done this atrocity. All the guy said was that the crewman had looked at him wrong. This troubled Tuvok so much that he actually chose to mind meld with the murderer. As a result of this, the murderer received more ability to control his impulses, but Tuvok was left rather off. Soon, the doctor had to get involved and complete a series of treatments on Tuvoks brain. These treatments left him with none of his mental shields around his emotions. At one point, he almost killed a man.

I found this to be an interesting view of sin. Ever since Adam we have struggled to make sense of a world filled with horrible atrocities. We often find ourselves asking "Why?" just like Tuvok was asking. And just like the Maquis man, we often get caught in sins we are not proud of and need some sort of repression help to deal with them.

Jesus came and spent time with people just like this Maquis man. People who were caught up in sins like drunkenness and non-marital sex. Unlike Tuvok, as Jesus helped them, He didn't fall prey to their sins. Hebrews 4:15 tells us:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin.

We can get our help from Jesus with no worries. He has experienced temptation and won against it so He is able to lead us. When He was praying in the Gethsemane, He fought against temptation so hard he was sweating blood. To contrast that, his disciples were busy sleeping and not praying. Even after he had encouraged them to "pray so that you will not fall into temptation" (Matthew 26:41). Simply put, we were not there for Him when He both needed us and wanted to help us. We should be there for each other.

Acts quotes Proverbs 27:17 in this:

As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

We saw the principal of cooperation and support throughout this episode. The Doctor did all he could to help Tuvok. Captain Janeway was more interested in seeing the murderer be reformed than in seeing him be punished (not that she ignored punishment). The next time you see someone struggling with a sin, be patient with them. If someone comes to you, just pray for them or with them.

No on should be afraid to ask for help dealing with sin. Often our strange Christian/American culture is good at shaming people over sins. Jesus isn't.  He is good at helping. We should follow in His steps. Maybe you need someone to pray for you. Maybe you need someone to bug you from time to time to get you on track.

Flash and Power

Hey guys. Sorry I haven’t gotten a new blog up in a while. We have been busy with moving into a new house and I have had some problems connecting with wifi at our new house.

So I’ve been thinking about a recent episode of “The Flash”. No, this is not the cross over episode, although that is a great episode. Yes there are SPOILERS in this post. A meta-human that feeds on electricity starts causing massive trouble around town. In an encounter with them Barry loses his powers. You see this guy drained so much energy out of him that they paused. As they went on to explore the issue with his problems, he came and attacked Star Labs, sucking power from the city and allowing the Clock King to cause a terrible situation at the police station, putting several lives in significant danger, including Iris.

Back to the Flash, they decided to try to charge him with electricity on the bar of the treadmill. You see a slight little vibration in Barry, but he still can’t run. As the night goes on, the situation gets more dangerous. Eventually, Caitlin Snow checks him and finds that he should indeed have his speed. His cells are all operating at the normal “Flash” efficiency. She challenges him to believe it. Then, Doctor Wells calls out the meta-human and gets into trouble, of course. 

Right at the point in which Doctor Wells would be killed, Barry gets his speed back. He didn’t receive back his belief until someone was in absolute danger. He had his power all along, but he lost his trust in himself. Barry has a lot of pressure on him. The pressures of the department for his job, his desire to have Iris in a deeper relationship. His desire to help people and save lives as the Flash. As soon as he lost his powers he doubted himself. When his body was physically recharged, he still doubted. 

As followers of Christ, we are the same way. We fall into a sinful pattern such as lust or an angry attitude and we feel like we can’t get out of it. 2 Peter 1:3 &4 tell us:

“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.”

God has already give us the ability to rise above these sins. We just need to trust Him for the power. We need to believe it. Now, this power does come “through our knowledge of Him who called us”. God doesn’t give us rules He won’t empower us to follow. We often fail to use this power. Often we simply don’t think it is available. We think God is so sick of our sin, why would He give us any power? But, the reason He makes His power available to is to get away from that sin. God loves redemption. To come and die for our sins but NOT provide the power to overcome the patterns they lead to would not fit with His agenda.

There is one more side to this: the more we sin, the more likely it will negatively affect those around us. Sometimes we don’t wake up to the need to change until someone around us is really hurt by it. When it comes to lust and a single person, we often don’t even realize that lust now will affect our spouse later as it affects our expectations and desires. Flash didn’t get working again until someone’s life was in danger. Don’t let things get that far.

Clark Kent and Christians

Found at cinefantastique.com. 

 
"It's another way of saying it's not from this world, and neither are you.  You are the answer to are we alone in the universe. ... You were sent here for a reason. ....When that day comes you're gonna have to make a choice.  A choice whether to stand proud in front of the human race or not."

"Can't I just pretend I'm your son?"

"You are my son.  But somewhere out there you have another father who gave you another name. And he sent you here for a reason Clark.  And even if it takes you the rest of your life you owe it to yourself to find out what that reason is."

A conversation between a young Clark Kent and Jonathon Kent in "Man of Steel."

As Christians we have a many similarities to Clark in this conversation.

1. We are not from this world. "But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await our savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ."  Phil. 3:20  We are simply passing through, hopefully bringing others into the Kingdom as we do so.

2. We often to want to pretend that we are someone other than we are.  Think about it.  Read Paul's words in Romans 7:14-17.  We have this pull toward sin that we must fight regularly.  Yet sin is not our real identity.  "What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?  BY NO MEANS! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?"  Romans 6:1 (emphases added).

3. We have a father who gave us another name.  Revelation 2:17 talks about a stone with a new name that will be given to those who follow Christ fully.  God actually has a special name just for you...and it will be just for you and Him to know!  That is how much He loves each of us.

4. We are sent here for a reason. Now, we don't owe it to ourselves to find that reason, but we owe it to our redeemer.  Romans 12 says we should be living sacrifices. 2 Timothy 3:17 states that we have the Bible to be prepared for every good work.  2 Corinthians 5:20 says we are "Christ's ambassadors as though God was making his appeal through us."