HOW SHOULD WE RESPOND TO DIFFERING OPINIONS ABOUT NAVIGATING COVID-19?

Now that we've been dealing with the coronavirus for almost two months, one thing is clear—there are numerous opinions about how to handle this situation. Some are personally very cautious, seldom going out in public. Others are less concerned, desiring to see a quick return to normal. Some have a strong opinion against continued isolation, while others would prefer to see isolation orders remain in place. And, of course, there are many views about when and how churches should re-open.

As Christians, how do we respond to differing opinions about how and when we should return to normal life? This is a critical question for us now, because, if we're not careful, we can find ourselves frustrated with other believers. Hurt feelings could easily occur, and Satan would love to see believers at odds with one another because of COVID-19. Here are a few ways to help you consider how to respond when others have a different viewpoint than you regarding the coronavirus and how we re-open as a society. 

First, recognize that there is no clearly correct answer, and no one has the perfect solution. We're all wading in uncharted waters, and no one is able to see into the future to know what will happen next—only God has that knowledge. 

Second, respect differing convictions. As believers, we know that we see in a glass dimly (1 Corinthians 13:12), and none of us, therefore, has a perfect answer to such a complex situation as we're now facing. If another believer comes to a different conclusion than you do about when churches should re-open, how states should allow businesses to re-emerge, or other circumstances that aren't clearly guided by Scripture, then we should respectfully understand that different convictions are ok.

Third, be patient, gracious, and loving. Everyone is walking through a situation that they've never experienced before, so, perhaps more than ever, our interaction and consideration for one another should be governed by love. Does your brother or sister in Christ view this situation differently than you? Whatever the conviction you have, view others with love and patience. After all, Paul tells us how to relate to one another: "Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

     Pastor Scott

Clues to the Existence of God

In his book Mere Apologetics, Alister McGrath argues that the Christian faith is eminently reasonable and makes more sense of what we see in the world, discern in history, and experience in our lives than its alternatives. The cumulative evidence, he argues, is suggestive of God.

C.S. Lewis spoke of right and wrong as “clues to the meaning of the universe”. A clue is something that suggests but does not prove. Clues have cumulative significance. The following (in two parts, for purposes of this blog) are 8 clues that form a pattern. “They are like threads in the tapestry of faith. Christian theology is the loom that allows them to be woven together so their true significance can be appreciated individually, and their greater significance when they are woven together to form a coherent and beautiful pattern.”

Clue 1 – Creation – The Origins of the Universe

A central theme of the Christian faith is that God created all things from nothing. Christian theology affirms that the universe has not existed from all eternity, but came into being in an instant. Modern cosmology is at least resonant with the Christian view of origins in that the universe is not eternal, but came into being at a certain time in the past. The question is, ‘What caused the universe?’ For something cannot come from nothing. Whatever begins to exist has a cause. This can be reasoned out in the following line of argument:

Premise 1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause

Premise 2: The universe began to exist
Conclusion: Therefore, the universe has a cause

All things considered, divine causation is a plausible explanation for the origins of the universe. While ‘chance’ as an explanation, seems far less compelling.

Clue 2: Fine-Tuning – A Universe Designed for Life

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the phenomenon of “fine-tuning” in nature. The term “fine-tuning” is often used to refer to the scientific realization that the values of certain fundamental cosmological constants (speed of light, the gravitational constant, electromagnetic coupling, the masses of the elementary particles, etc.) appear to be necessary for life to have come into existence. The values of these constants, even if varied slightly, would have rendered the possibility of intelligent life, null.

Atheist cosmologist Fred Hoyle wrote, “It is as if a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and there remain no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.” Even though he was unsympathetic to the idea that God created the universe, he acknowledged the contemporary evidence is better explained by the idea of divine creation rather than by happenstance.

Clue 3 – Order – The Structure of the Physical World

One, we take it for granted that there is an ordered cosmos. Without which the scientific enterprise would be impossible. Regularity and intelligibility are necessary pre-conditions for modern science. Two, we take it for granted that our minds to give as factual data about what’s “out there.” We assume that there is congruence between our minds and the universe and the question is: ‘Why is this so?’ Asked differently, ‘why can we explain things at all?’

Theoretical physicist John Polkinghorne points out: “We are so familiar with the fact that we can understand the world that most of the time we take it for granted. It is what makes science possible. Yet it could have been otherwise. The universe might have been a disorderly chaos rather than an orderly cosmos. Or it might have had a rationality which was inaccessible to us...There is a congruence between our minds and the universe, between the rationality experienced within and the rationality observed without.”

The Christian answer is the same God who brought the world into being also created the human mind, with a God-given analogy and congruence between both of these aspects of his creation.

Clue 4 - Morality- A Longing for Truth and Justice

Human beings do have an instinct and intuition that certain objective moral values exist (Nazi’ killings were objectively wrong – I have yet to find someone willing to argue otherwise). The question is: Are there transcendent grounds for concepts of morality and justice that are not merely the product of human convention (socially constructed)?

The belief in God seems to offer the best explanation for the existence, nature and our knowledge of objective moral truths. Atheist philosopher Iris Murdoch argued that a transcendent notion of goodness was essential if defensible human notions of “rights” and “justice” were to be maintained. If she is right,   our desire for rights and justice in the world is a further “clue to the meaning of universe.”

Clue 5 – Desire – A Homing Instinct for God

Another argument for the existence of God is the “argument from desire”.  Christian apologists argue that there exists a deep sense of yearning for something transcendent that is ultimately grounded in the fact that we are created to fellowship with God, and will not be fulfilled until we do so.

C.S. Lewis develops his argument from desire this way:

1. Every natural desire has a corresponding object, and is satisfied only when this is attained or experienced.

2. There is a natural desire for transcendent fulfillment, which cannot be attained or experienced by or through anything in the present world.

3. This natural desire for transcendent fulfillment can therefore only be fulfilled beyond the present world, in a world toward which the present order of things points.

Now our longing don’t prove anything – I could long for a chicken that lays golden eggs, but that does not mean one exists. But Lewis’ point is that Christianity teaches that our sense of longing for God is exactly what we should expect, since we are created to know God. Our deeply felt longings ultimately point to something that only God can satisfy. As Augustine prayed, “you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

Clue 6 – Beauty

Many find themselves deeply moved by a scene of natural beauty – a great sunset, mountain range, ocean view, or a wooded valley. Unlike a rational argument, beauty is something we appreciate immediately.

Listen to the soring language Leonard Bernstein uses when commenting about the effect of Beethoven on him: “Beethoven turned out pieces of breath-taking rightness. Rightness – that’s the word! When you get the feeling that whatever note succeeds the last is the only possible note that can rightly happen at that instant, in that context, then chances are you’re listening to Beethoven.  It’s the stuff of heaven. It makes you feel like there is something right in the world. Something we can trust that will never let us down.”

Is beauty nothing but a neurological hardwired response to particular data? When we experience beauty or love we get the sense that there is real meaning in life. In his sermon “The Weight of Glory”, C.S. Lewis argued that we have poses an instinct for transcendence, stimulated by beauty.

The human quest for beauty is a quest for the source of that beauty. Beauty points beyond the creation… that is transcendence. We all find some things beautiful and it resonates at the heart of our existence. “It was when I was happiest that I longed most, and because it was beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else, there must be more of it.” –C.S. Lewis, Till We have faces.

Clue 7 – Relationality – God as a Person

The Genesis account emphasizes the goodness of God’s creation. Yet there is one point at which God judges that a change needs to be made. It is not good that Adam is alone (Gen. 2:18). We were created to exist in relationship – with one another, and with God. To be authentically human is to exist in relationship – as we are meant to.

Christianity is fundamentally a relational faith. The core biblical idea of faith is fundamentally about trusting a God who shows himself to be worthy of that trust, in word and deed. The ideas of faith, hope, and love are deeply interconnected. We trust in a God who loves us and gives us hope for the future.

Throughout Scripture, God is understood as a person – not an impersonal force – who loves us and desires relationship with us. We have a God-given capacity to relate to our creator and redeemer. God is someone who we can know, not just know about.

Many fans of Dorothy Sayer’s detective stories and mystery novels point out that Sayers was one of the first women to attend Oxford University. The main character in her stories – Lord Peter Wimsey – is an aristocratic sleuth and a single man. At one point in the novels, though, a new character appears, Harriet Vane. She is described as one of the first women who graduated from Oxford – and as a writer of mystery novels. Eventually she and Peter fall in love and marry. Who was she? Many believe Sayers looked into the world she had created, fell in love with her lonely hero (Lord Peter Wimsey), and wrote herself into the story to save him. Very much like the incarnation (John 1:14), where Jesus came to his own.

The desire for relationship hard-wired into us is a clue that we were made to know and to be known by a personal God.

Clue 8 – Eternity – Hope

Ecclesiastes 3:11 has been translated, “that God has set eternity into our hearts.” We do possess a sense of the brevity of human life and an intuition that there is more to reality than this brief time on earth. Journalist Lisa Miller noted individuals and societies seemed to be hardwired to believe in “a place that embodies the best of everything – but beyond the best…what’s most beautiful, most loving, most just, and most true.”

In his biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson recounts a conversation with Jobs: I remember sitting in his backyard in his garden one day and he started talking about God. He said, “Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50-50 maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of– maybe it’s ’cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear. The wisdom you’ve accumulated. Somehow it lives on.”

Why this desire for ongoing existence and significance? The desire and intuition is hardwired into us, just as Ecclesiastes 3:11 says. As the poet Matthew Arnold puts it:

But often, in the world’s most crowded streets

But often, in the din of strife
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life.

For the Good of Our Students (by Casey Conrad)

Church, right now youth need a lot of prayer. From the events involving their schooling (seniors not able to graduate being a major one) or to the impact of social media and the draw to be popular, students are experiencing new and daunting challenges.

Every Christian is implored to have influence in their culture. This seems like a daunting task for youth - to do something “big” for God. As a church, we need to help youth understand that influencing our culture can simply be having spiritual conversations with another student at their lunch table, soccer practice, while riding bikes with the kid down the street, or through posts on social media. Teaching youth to live with wisdom in their culture makes them shine as a city on a hill as Jesus describes in Matthew 5:

"You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 5:14-16

Church, how are we being the light just as our mission statement says to make disciples? This has a major impact on teens in influencing this culture. Parents are you doing this at home? You can help your youth by teaching through wisdom from scripture, sharing about a spiritual conversation at work or at the store, or going out and having spiritual conversations together.

Right now we at home and majority of the activities we are normally demanding our attention have changed to the events around the house. Can we take this time to reset, step away from the cultural distractions, and do something “big” for God?

Children are a Gift (by Chris Ellis)

Matthew 19:4 “but Jesus said, Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”

Children are a gift from the Lord. Whether you are a parent or not, you most likely have children in your life.  Maybe you are a Sunday school teacher, school teacher, nursery worker, coach, aunt, uncle, the list goes on and on.  We are truly blessed when children come into our lives, no matter what avenue they arrive.  Children are very loving, forgiving, accepting, impressionable and vulnerable.

The current situation our world is in right now, is sure to be at the very least, quite confusing for our children.  Many have transitioned into remote learning, and the relationships with their teachers and classmates halted, some without any warning.  There was no end of year field trips, parties, celebration of achievements, or “closure” which the last few weeks of school provides. Even though we are no strangers to disappointment, our children are experiencing a type of disappointment most of us have not experienced. How do they begin to process this? Where are they looking for answers?

Just because children are small, does not mean their feelings are small, or they are any less justified.  Their information, and how they perceive what is going on in this crazy world is dictated by the adults around them.  We need to do our best to reflect an attitude of faith.  Our children do not need long drawn out explanations of what is going on. They need to be reassured by our faith, and encouraged to lean on theirs!  “Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen.” Hebrews 11:1

There is a fine line between acknowledging a child’s fears and reassuring them God is in control.  We need to address it carefully and thoughtfully.  It is normal to have fears, questions and anxiety, but what we do with it, is the important part.  We need to acknowledge it exists, and ask the Lord to help us in this time of need.  Children are not looking for deep theological answers, so don’t be intimidated to talk to them!  Reassure them by responding in faith, showing them love, and pointing them to His promises!  “The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble.  He cares for those who trust in Him” Nahum 1:7. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and he shall direct your paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6

It isn’t any coincidence Jesus references childlike faith as in Matthew 18:1-6 “…calling to Him a child, He put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven...” Children are important to Jesus, and they are important to us, and our church!  Children are a gift!  Let’s join together to pray for our children, their growing faith, and that our response to them would be nothing short of Christ’s love, and His expectations. 

The Heart of Worship (by Chad Crooks)

It’s just about the greatest job in the world!  Not only do I get to do what I love, I get paid for it.  Leading God’s people in worship is one of the most exciting, enjoyable, fulfilling, life-changing jobs in the world. We get to help people do what they were designed to do – glorify the living God. We get to point hearts toward One who is greater than we can imagine. We get to put in view the Savior of the world who died, was buried, rose again, and now sits at the right hand of the Father bidding on our behalf.

We have to deal with our own heart.You haven’t spent more than 5 minutes in God’s Word or praying in weeks. There is never enough time to get everything done. You feel unworthy to even stand in front of the very people you serve. Despite the pain and difficulties, the joys outweigh the issues. There is no way you could stop doing this. The key is your heart.

Whether a worship leader or a worshiper, what you bring as an offering of worship is your greatest challenge. We each have a battle going on within us over what we love the most – God or something else.  Anytime it is something else, we are guilty of idolatry.

Idols are all around us – material comforts, financial security, sensual pleasures, newest song, electronic gadgets, reputation, power, control.  We are often just like the people described in 2 Kings 17:33, fearing the Lord, yet serving their own Gods. We fear the Lord externally, doing the right things on Sunday morning, yet actively serving false gods throughout the week.

Exodus 20:3 says, “You shall have no other gods before Me."

Mark 12:30 says, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”

These verses do not mean we can’t love anything else, but they do mean that we cannot love anything else rightly, unless we love God first and foremost. How do I know what I love most? Bob Kauflin answers this way, “By looking at my life outside of Sunday morning. What do I enjoy the most? What do I spend most of my time doing? Where does my mind drift to when I don’t have anything to do? What am I passionate about? What do I spend my money on? What makes me angry when I don’t get my way? What do I feel depressed about? What do I fear losing the most?  Our answers to these questions will lead us straight to the God or gods we love and worship.”

The state of our hearts must be our primary concern as we live the life of a worshiper.

The Heart of Worship (Matt Redman)

When the music fades all is stripped away, And I simply come

Longing just to bring something that's of worth, That will bless Your heart

I'll bring You more than a song, For a song in itself is not what You have required

You search much deeper within, Through the way things appear, You're looking into my heart

I'm coming back to the heart of worship, And it's all about You all about You Jesus

I'm sorry Lord for the thing I've made it, When it's all about You all about You Jesus

Biblical Perspectives on Suffering

Pastor William Willimon tells a story about visiting a woman in his church who had just given birth. When he got there, the husband and wife were waiting forth doctor because they had received the ominous news that “there were problems with the birth.” When the doctor arrived, he told the couple that the child had been born with Down syndrome, but he also had a minor and correctible respiratory condition. He said, “My recommendation is for you to consider just letting nature take its course, and then in a few days there shouldn’t be a problem.” The child would die “naturally” if they just left things as they were. The couple was confused and asked why they shouldn’t fix the problem. The doctor looked at them and said that raising a Down syndrome child would create enormous amounts of stress in the marriage, and that studies showed that many parents of Down syndrome children separated or divorced. He then said, “Is it fair of you to bring this sort of suffering upon your other two children?”

At the word suffering, the wife suddenly seemed to understand. She countered that her children had lived a safe and comfortable life with every advantage in the world. They had known, if anything, too little of suffering and the difficulty of life in the world. She spoke of “God’s hand” and said, “I could certainly see why it would make sense for a child like this to be born into a family like ours. Our children will do just fine. When you think about it, it could be a great opportunity.”

The doctor was dumbfounded and turned to the pastor, urging him to “talk some reason into them.” Willimon of course knew that the couple needed to be given good instruction as to what lay ahead so that they did not take up their parenting of this new child without some notion of what to expect. But, he wrote, the couple was using reasoning, though it was reasoning foreign to the doctor. It was the reasoning that suffering is not to be avoided at all costs.

The Bible does not give us all the answers we would like when it comes to all the particulars of suffering, but it does take it seriously, it provides a perspective from which to face it, and it does tell us what will finally become of suffering.

The book of Job tells us that though we may not understand from our limited perspectives, there is greater purposes at play even in the midst of suffering. Like Job, the New Testament book of Romans tells us that God is in control and does have a plan (Romans 8:28; see also Ephesians 1:11), and Revelation tells us that one day suffering will be no more (Revelation 21:3-4).

In the meantime, the Bible assures us that suffering can be used by God to instruct us, humble us, and teach us not to set our ultimate hopes on transitory things (Romans 5:3-4). Pastor Tim Keller sums this up well, “One of the main teachings of the Bible is that almost no one grows into greatness or finds God without suffering, without pain coming into our lives like smelling salts to wake us up to all sorts of facts about life and our own hearts to which we were blind.”

Christians may understand many doctrinal truths, but those truths seldom make the journey down into the heart except through enduring times of disappointment, hardship, and loss. As C.S. Lewis famously put it, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain.”

Biblical Counseling 101

Though biblical counseling as a subject and practice is both complex and broad, Jeremy Pierre and Deepak Reju, in their book The Pastor and Counseling, do us a great service by helping us grasp some of the basics of biblical counseling. It’s most necessary elements can be boiled down to moving from listening to considering to speaking:

• You listen to the problem – to understand the context of the person’s life and troubles (Prov. 18:2, 13; James 1:19).
• You consider heart responses – how the person’s heart is responding to God, to self, to others, and to circumstances (Prov. 20:5).
• You speak truth in love – in order to teach, comfort, warn, encourage, advise, and admonish as appropriate (2 Cor. 2; Col. 3:16; 1 Thess. 5:14).

These three actions – listening, considering, speaking – are key:

1. Listen to the problem. You want to know what is going on, but people often share their troubles haphazardly, piling up details in an unorganized lump. You can sort things into smaller piles and help a person organize what he is saying. Here are some diagnostic questions:

• Circumstances. First, what is going on? What circumstances seem most important to the person?
• Other people. Who are the most prominent people in their story? How are they treating him? How is he treating them?
• Self. What is his posture toward his troubles? Does he see himself as a victim, perpetrator, inferior, superior, ignorant, insightful, confused, clear-headed, guilty, innocent?
• God. How is the person factoring (or not factoring) God into his troubles? What is his perspective of the Lord’s involvement with his predicament?

2. Consider heart responses. After you’ve found out the basics of what’s going on, you want to consider how the person’s heart is responding in each of these areas. His responses will be characterized either by faith or by a number of other things – fear, anger, discouragement, lust, indulgence, escape, ignorance, sadness, disappointment, discontentment, suspicion.

• Circumstances. Does the person recognize the difference between his circumstances and his response to his circumstances? Is his response characterized by faith or by something else?
• Other people. Is this person loving others? Is he being influenced by others in unbiblical ways?
• Self. What is this person’s functional identity – the beliefs or values about himself that shape his conduct? How does this identity align with what God says about him in the gospel?
• God. Does this person trust God to be who he says he is and to do what he says he will do? Or is there some preferred version of God he’s quietly holding?

3. Speak the truth in love. Speaking accurately to the need of the heart comes only after listening and considering. The goal is to call people to faith in a way that specifically addresses their heart responses, since faith alone is the means by which a person responds rightly (Heb. 11:6, 13-16; 12:1-2). And faith comes through hearing the word of Christ (Rom. 10:17). This is why counseling must be biblical. Here are some appropriate ways you can speak to a person’s need:

• Circumstances. We are to give biblical guidance appropriate to the situation. Fro those grieving, we comfort them by pointing to the hope found in God (Rom. 8:18-25). For the abused, we protect them from the abuser with the law (Rom. 13:1-4) and call them to forgive (Luke 6:27-36). For the anxious, we help them understand that fear reveals desires that must be actively entrusted to a loving God (Phil. 4:4-13).
• Other people. Active faith means loving others instead of fearing or using them (Rom. 13:8-10). You help people see what it means to believe the best about others while being realistic about their faults and sins (Rom. 12:17-21). You help them know how to lay down personal interests for the sake of others (Phil. 2:1-8).
• Self. We are to call people out of rival identities and into Christ as the source of identity. These identities are where people try to find life – as a successful businessman, a capable mother – so finding confidence in these is a direct competitor to confidence in Christ alone (Phil. 3:3-16).
• God. Most importantly, we are to help people have a more accurate view of God from his Word. You help them to know and trust God as the only way for human life to be meaningful and to yield lasting change in the soul (Jer. 9:23-24; Col. 1:9-10).