Contemplations #1

Here I will put out some of my unfinished writings, which contain ideas that I never fully developed, but have been sitting in my blog as drafts forever. These might seem very cryptic and very wordy, so... be warned, I guess.

Hopefully I'll do this more in the future . For some reason, I haven't been committing my mind to the art of thinking for quite a while...


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AN ATTEMPT TO PHILOSOPHICALLY INTEGRATE, WITH BIBLICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS, THE CONCEPTS OF GLORY, LIFE, AND LOVE

1. Glory is the substance of life.
2. Life is the substance of love.
3. Love is the multiplying and increasing of life, and thus, of glory.

To prove Proposition #1:
1) Clarification of "glory" as a term—(a) "Glory", in Scripture, contains the idea of intrinsic value/worth, which means having a real value regardless of whether or not anyone thinks it has value. (b) "Glory", in Scripture, also refers to the idea of honor, which is essentially a quality of attracting persons to see it as having value/worth.
2) Clarification of "life" as a term—(a) God is the source of all life. (b) God is essentially spirit, having no physical body. (c) Therefore, the term "life" must be taken in the sense of its spiritual reality, not in the sense of its earthly shadows (i.e. physical growth, breathing, a beating heart, etc.).
3) Human life is differentiated from the lives of other conscious creatures in terms of value, i.e. after the global flood, God prohibited the killing of mankind on the grounds that man is the image of God, but allowed for the killing of animals for food.
4) Man is the image of God. Man is the glory of God. The image of God = the glory of God.
5) Therefore, the greater value of human life, in contrast to nonhuman life, is based on God's glory.
6) Therefore, glory is the true substance and measure of life.

Implications of Proposition #1:
1) An attack on God's glory is also an assault on God's life. In essence, to dishonor God is to "murder" Him. Of course, God's life is immortal, His glory eternal, and He will not really be harmed. But the crime is real, the intention is truly evil, and God, by His nature, must judge such evil.
2) By this, we can also understand why humans are not only limited to physical pain. Any kind of emotional pain finds its root in the event that a person's existence is devalued and is thus dishonored. Emotional pain felt on behalf of others can also be explained thus; people feel for others whom they perceive share the same glory, and thus the same life.


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SEVEN TOOLS FOR EDUCATION

All of these are used in Scripture. They frequently overlap.

- Comparison: defining something by what it is similar to
- Contrast: defining something by what it is NOT
- Repetition: emphasizing importance, ensuring that it's remembered
- Illustration: using imagery or real-life situations to help clarify an abstract idea
- Reasoning: analyzing, giving logical conclusions, and applying the law of non-contradiction
- Literary structure: setting the ideas and details in a recognizable order where they are all linked
- Emotional appeal: excite the sentiments of readers/hearers in order to grasp their attention


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A STUDY OF PERSONAL DIALOGUE

- Different levels of topics of conversations
- Different categories of topics of conversations
- Seeing how all the levels and categories link together

I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some.
1 Corinthians 9:22b

Different levels of topics of conversation (not clear-cut):
- Core beliefs
- Strong desires
- Mild interests
- Impressions

Different categories of topics of conversation (they overlap):
- What is true (logical thinking/science/philosophy)
- What is right (moral conscience/ethics/politics)
- What is beautiful (feelings/art/food)


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A STUDY OF SPORTS

Competitive sports appears to be beneficial in helping to understand the following concepts:
- Energy and movement (life)
- Endurance (inner strength)
- Rules and regulations (justice)
- Boundaries (truth)
- Mastery (precision x hamartia)
- Alertness (focus, attentiveness)
- Teamwork (unity)
- Practice (discipline, growth)
- Victory (glory)
- Conflict (enemies)
- Strategy (cunning, wisdom)
- Failure (humiliation, peace, reexamination)

Sports in the Bible:
- No sports in Israel?
- Paul's references to physical exercise in general, running, and boxing.
- Conclusion: sports are not held very high in regard as a means to understanding spiritual truths.

Probably a good means of teaching children and youngsters to grasp certain important concepts (as mentioned above), but a child must move beyond the concrete to the abstract as he grows; otherwise, he will become obsessed with earthly images instead of the spiritual realities they represent (like the Jews who rejected Christ).

Objection: are there no other alternatives to sports as a method of education?
- Before children learn words, they learn sensations. Repeated exposure to contemporaneous sensations allows children to gradually make logical connections. Slowly, a system of thought is built from the ground up. But to ensure that a good thought system is developed, attention and focus must be guided, and this is accomplished via excitation. Sports are a good way to excite a child, because of the profound simplicity of the different elements involved (kick the ball and it will roll, cross the line and you're out, etc.), and the very interactive nature of the game, allowing the child to learn through trial-and-error.
- Additionally, God-given natural reason teaches us that we are to work our bodies in order to earn something; living in an age of machinery, we probably do not understand the value of physical exertion to the ancients, but it only takes a bit of imagination to understand. Before a child has any idea of money, or that food requires work, it is a very effective way to teach him the idea of work by putting him in a system where he is to exert energy for a certain goal.


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THE GOD WHOSE NAME IS JEALOUS

The central idea here is that God cares for the worship of His creatures, and burns with passionate desire for them to worship Him.

The word "jealous" highlights the passionate nature of God's love very well, because it is something all humans can easily relate to.

Also, it gives a very strong quality to the imagery of God as a lover. Jealousy is not a positive feeling, and thus in the Old Testament it is revealed to us that God is a God who is willing to suffer this burning feeling in loving us. Christ's sacrifice is the ultimate act and manifestation of that divine jealousy.

New Bible Dictionary:
- Hebrew "qanah", root meaning "become dark red".
- "Both Heb. and Gk. words refer to an exclusive single-mindedness of emotion which may be morally blameworthy or praiseworthy depending on whether the object of the jealousy is the self or some cause beyond the self."
- "...positive usage is frequently associated with the marriage relationship where a jealousy for the exclusiveness of the relationship is the necessary condition of its permanence."
- "Scripture... witnesses to a positive application of jealousy and finds in this idea a highly relevant term to denote God's holy zeal for the honour of his name and the good of his people who are bound to him in the marriage of the covenant. In this sense the jealousy of God is of the essence of his moral character, a major cause for worship and confidence on the part of his people and a ground for fear on the part of his enemies."

God's Jealousy
Exodus 20:5; 34:14; Nahum 1:2

Man's (rightful) jealousy
Numbers 5:14, 29, 30; 2 Corinthians 2:11


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ARGUMENTS FOR THE BIBLE BASED ON CHRIST

Response to the "wholly other" argument of neo-orthodoxy ("God is so transcendent that He simply cannot be expressed in human language, thus the Bible 'mystically' contains God's word, but it isn't really God's word"):
- If Christ can be God and man without compromising His divinity, why cannot human language conspicuously express God's will? Why cannot the Bible be both a divine and a human document without error?

Applying Lewis's trilemma to the Bible:
- Firstly, the proposition is that the Bible is God's Word primarily because it says that it is.
- A rebuttal would be that "any other religion in the world could use the same argument that their sacred writings are inerrant. How do we know yours is true?"
- Response: there are only three possible causes that could've led the author(s) of the Bible to write such a work: madness, deceptiveness, or truthfulness.
- Madness: considering the widely recognized literary genius of the books of the Bible, this is definitely not a viable option.
- Deceptiveness: a certain motive underlies every deception. Those who use religion as a means of deception only do it for power, pleasure, or pride. Anyone who looks into the Bible's contents can easily see that the author is focused on beseeching people to repent and glorify God, which is void of any political agenda. Furthermore, to deceive anyone, one must entice him with something attractive. Certainly, there are many things in Scripture that are attractive to most people (food, love, immortality), but the way Scripture is written and structured makes these things dependent upon ideas that people are congenitally opposed to, namely, penitence, selflessness, forgiveness, reliance, gratitude, etc. One but has to see for himself to conclude that Scripture is not intended to deceive, because then it would be quite terrible at it.
- Truthfulness: the only option left. Thus, if the Bible is truthful, and it says that it is God's Word, it is therefore God's Word.


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ARE MEN VILE OR PITIFUL?

Q: Do we present sinners as morally vile or as in a pitiful condition?
A: Both, because moral vileness is essentially a pitiful condition, and also produces pitiful conditions.

To be sure, not all persons or creatures in pitiful conditions are morally vile (Jesus was not morally vile, but was in a pitiful condition while he was on earth, afflicted with many external evils). Despite this, however, the idea of the pitiful condition is inseparable from moral vileness, because only moral vileness produces pitiful conditions, and pitiful conditions only come from moral vileness. In other words, suffering exists because of sin.

In preaching/evangelizing, a Christian can (1) use a person's pitiful condition to point to his moral vileness, or (2) he can present the person's moral vileness as a cause of his pitiful condition. It is advisable that both perspectives are used, so not to present the question without an answer, or present the answer without a question. (Man's pitiful condition is the "question", man's moral vileness is the "answer".)

The greatest support for this biperspectival method of viewing sinners is Scripture, as it uses both perspectives.

Afflictions of the body, for example, are not morally vile in themselves, but are regarded as direct or indirect consequences of sin. Jesus used the tower that fell and killed a number of people to call men to repentance.

On the other hand, Scripture presents sinfulness as the worst condition one can be in. Paul describes unconverted sinners as slaves. In other places, they are regarded as blind or even dead, though not physically.

Thus, perhaps I might conclude that at the heart of the Gospel is the cross, the message of justification and sanctification, with the former solving our pitiful condition and the latter solving to moral vileness (they overlap, of course). Preaching one without the other might lead to misunderstanding; acceptance without requiring change is antinomianism, while requiring change without acceptance is legalism.


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PSYCHOLOGICAL TEMPERAMENTS AND SPIRITUAL GIFTS

This study is done for the purposes of:
1) Truly understanding each other, preventing jealousy and bias
2) Being effective and coordinated as the body of Christ

Firstly, this study is based on the propositions that (1) spiritual gifts are given to ALL true believers so that they could serve the church, (2) spiritual gifts are not entirely "mystical" abilities, in the sense that whatever supernatural empowerment is involved, it blends with the natural faculties of human beings (to God, all things are supernatural and natural), and (3) what are called "spiritual gifts" in the Bible actually refers more to the intention of the Spirit rather than a moment of supernatural empowerment, thus the "seed" of a spiritual gift could be implanted in a believer since the beginning of his existence in the form of a psychological temperament.

Division of psychological temperaments:
(Rational, Sentimental, Strong-Willed) x (Extroverted, Introverted)

Extroverted: Attention directed outside of self, sees what God is doing in the world, the needs of man, etc. Sociable, concrete, positive, confident.
Introverted: Attention directed toward self, reflective of one's own spiritual state, the standards of God, etc. Reserved, abstract, sober, submissive.

Rational: Information, ideas, reason
Sentimental: Experience, emotions, feelings
Strong-Willed: Endurance, discipline, action

- The faculties of humans are divided into these three (mind, emotions, will) based upon traditional observation. It is useful as it corresponds to the offices of prophet, priest, and king.
- In a person, it's not a matter of which faculty is stronger, it's about which is more obvious. The faculties never work apart from each other, and an involvement of the mind always means an involvement of the emotions and will. Yet, different kinds of actions bring especially one of the three faculties to an obvious, observable level. For example, weeping seems to emphasize strong emotion, but it also means strong reasons are involved (though probably logically fallacious) and a strong decision is made (to stop holding back tears, to accept a terrible fact, etc.), though the involvement of the mind and will is "hidden".
- Thus, this division is helpful in this study because it's easier to handle, as it deals more with what people do instead of what people are (which is a tough, tough philosophical question).
- I believe it is possible to have a change of temperament intentionally or unintentionally, so, again, this is not to nail down some unchangeable, inner personality of a person that will persist until he dies. I also believe that it is possible to, more or less, transcend these divisions (Jesus, for example), but I also believe that the sinful flesh that every saint has will prevent him from becoming completely balanced and whole like Jesus.

Extroverted Rational: Apologist, bold and intelligent
Introverted Rational: Teacher, independent and astute
Extroverted Sentimental: Evangelist, candid and gracious
Introverted Sentimental: Shepherd, perceptive and gentle
Extroverted Strong-Willed: Leader, zealous and firm
Introverted Strong-Willed: Deacon, humble and faithful

Caution: this is not to encourage settling in our personal, sinful comfort zones. Rather, it is to help us utilize what we already have most effectively, for the benefit of others. In other words, no one should feel inferior because he isn't preaching to hundreds of people at an evangelistic meeting; he must commit himself to what he does best, according to the gift that the Spirit has granted him.
When a multitude of believers use their gifts from a sincere, godly heart, that local church flourishes.