Muddle Choice Test

Someone once said something to the effect that “For the believer in Christ, this world is the most of Hell they’ll ever see. For the unbeliever, this world is the most of Heaven they will ever see.”

That sounds like a pretty easy T/F question, A or B. Simple. However, to us educators, test making is an art. A ‘well-designed’ multiple choice question will have a variety of plausible answers. If you make this common mistake, you will get “A,” this other mistake will be “C,” and so on, such that only the student who really understands the material will pick the right answer. Neither guessing nor partial understanding will help. Students tend to hate this kind of question because they feel like they are being tricked, when really the instructor wants to see how well you really understand the material. On the occasion when I’ve done this technique and had the time, I would set up the key so that these partial answers would receive partial credit, and the closer you got to the right answer, the more points received. However, few take the time to go to this extra step because it does take a LOT more effort, and I only did either occasionally.

Some people perceive this is how God has stacked the deck against them.

Universalism?

Yesterday, I suggested that God gives some information to some folks and not the complete story, then gives other, but equally incomplete information to others, with the idea that we pool our knowledge to find more complete understanding and thus bring glory to God. It is an understandable step, then, from that to ‘all roads to God are one,’ so that the exclusivity of the Gospel is weakened.

I do not take that step.

Rather, I see the revelation of God (the Scriptures) to the people of Israel as the linchpin or key to the general revelations that the rest of the world’s cultures have been given. Without something to use as an anchor or framework to hold human knowledge and understanding together, we face the certainty of getting things put together incorrectly, and increasing conflict when the pieces don’t fit together.

I do not believe it is an accident that God placed Israel in the Middle East, near the cradle of civilization, at the crossroads of three continents, so that every culture, whether through trade or war, had to go through that area to reach elsewhere. Israel is at the heart of information exchange for the vast majority of human history, leaving the opportunity for the Jews to witness to the special revelation of God, and in turn apply it to the wisdom and understanding of the nations, and re-disseminate it back to them.

Did they take advantage of the opportunity? Not so well, but not so incompletely either, as their influence has been so much larger than one postage stamp sized country has ever had a right to.

Not only are they placed strategically, but God chose that place for His incarnation, and at a time when the dominance of the Romans lead to an overall peace like the world had never seen, the Pax Romana, with good roads to facilitate a quick spread of the message. There was relative peace, which left people with the luxury of time to consider higher things than mere survival, and the freedom to travel relatively unobstructedly throughout the known world to share it.

Finally, God in the Scriptures repeatedly declares His intent to redeem nations, tribes and tongues; in short, cultures, wisdom, knowledge and understanding. Perhaps, then, we as Christians need to do more listening to others, and filter what we hear through the Scriptures and the indwelt Spirit. Perhaps God is less concerned with conversion and more with redemption. Perhaps if we trusted God’s leading more, and feared going astray less, the power of the Gospel would be more evident, and we would see what real transformation looks like.

Perhaps.

SDG

Like a Perfectly Thrown Football

It’s New Year’s Day 2011, and I should be saying something pithy about that, but I already have, sort of, yesterday, and today want to continue my thoughts on time.

Time has fascinated us, well, since we were first aware of the concept. So many stories in our literature dream of moving at will, back and forth through time. The oldest I can recall are how some of the Arthurian legends describe Merlin moving backward through time, becoming younger, and his memory moved backwards, which is how he knew others’ future, because it was his past. Even the idea of prophecy has exhilarated us because of the glimpses of another time it offers.

Most of physics and even chemistry is heavily dependent on time in their fundamental theorems and formulas. Yet, while most of science views time as something in constant motion, Einstein peskily showed it doesn’t. This of course is not a surprise to most humans, who have long been aware of time’s apparent inconstancy. Einstein even quipped about it, “When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.”

It is further interesting that the West as a whole views time as linear (Creation to Apocalypse), whereas the East tends to think of it as cyclical (the Yin and Yang, death and rebirth). As I pondered these ideas in high school or college, I remembered the story of the blind men and the elephant. Five blind men were brought to a zoo and allowed to explore an elephant. The first, feeling the ears, perceived the animal as a large fan. The second, feeling the leg, believed it to be a tree trunk. And so on. Afterward, they fell to arguing about the nature of the elephant because each only had a limited experience with an elephant and not with the whole critter. Was time similar?

It occurred to me that perhaps time in a sense moves in a spiral—some cyclical aspects, but not truly repeating, and that we do move linearly through time, but not in a straight line—like we are traveling along a coil of spring or a football in a perfect spiral.

Do I have proof? No. But isn’t it just like God to give some of the information to some folks, and a different set to other folks, with the idea that we should bring our knowledge together and mutually encourage and edify each other, thus bringing greater glory to Himself? And, isn’t it just like us to start bashing each other over the head because we believe we have complete understanding and therefore, anyone who thinks differently is automatically wrong?

There is his story, her story, and, somewhere in between, the truth.

PS—Is this a subtle form of universalism? Stay tuned true believers…

SDG