© 2006, Lionel Thompson

I took a walk tonight under a heaven full of stars and past the cherry trees in bloom.  Looking at all this beauty the question struck me, “Is God really going to destroy all this?”

It’s the people who believe that this same world will be our children’s children’s world who are committed to taking care of it (the Green Peace, environmental liberals).  In contrast, it’s the Christian ‘Right’ who believe that Jesus is coming back any day now to take us Godly folk up into heaven who aren’t as committed to taking care of it. 

Some of the fruit of this ‘End Times’ perspective is as follows:   People have gone into seclusion over the centuries to wait for Christ’s return abdicating their responsibility to the community.  Christians have pulled back from being the ones spearheading a long term care policy on the environment.  Why invest so much energy into a place God’s going to annihilate.  Rightly so, I agree.

God is clearly not in the business of annihilation but rather redemption.  He’s redeemed us.  Looking at the Bible there is evidence pointing to this earth being our home for eternity.

When Paul the Apostle writes to the church in Rome about the ‘Future Glory’ (Romans 8:18-25) He writes of a creation waiting ‘in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed’ and ‘that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.’

Oh yes …, and after that lovely liberation from bondage God will incinerate it??  I don’t think so.

What if the ‘new heaven and new earth’ (Revelations 21:1) was our present world redeemed, just like we’ve been redeemed.  Rev 21 goes on to say that ‘the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them’. 

It’s very possible that I’m wrong, however, the fruit of changing our End Time’s theology from incineration to liberation and redemption of the earth itself is wonderful…  We’d take better care of it.

© 2006, Lionel Thompson

I read a bumper sticker that read, “I’m pro choice before conception and pro life after”.

A good question to ask is whether gold / diamonds / oil are valuable even while they are still in the ground or only after they’ve been extracted. People have fought wars for oil still in the ground. I think everyone would agree that gold, diamonds or oil are simply valuable in or out of the ground.

But many folks say a human life, unlike gold, has no value until it’s been extracted. Before that point humans have no value. This logic however is skewed. What people are really saying is that ‘they’ve decided’ that their life is more valuable than someone else’s life and because that someone else is unwanted it’s ok to terminate / abort that person.

I think it also stems from a worldview that does not acknowledge God but rather believes we are all the product of a giant accident. Our value as humans then goes only so far as to how useful / convenient we are to the other accidents walking around. And when a truck hits a pretty girl all we’ve lost is a bag of attractive chemicals. Only, please don’t say that to her husband or children.

Some might argue in this day and age that just because your child is valuable to you doesn’t mean that my child is valuable to me. And they have a point. Is there any person alive who has the authority to say, “Life is valuable for everyone” and for it to at that instant be the truth? Can the new Pope? No he can’t, nor can any government, nation, dictator or culture make that statement. All we have the authority to say is that so and so has value because so and so is useful or because so and so is loved by someone and therefore is valuable to that person. Other than that we cannot call ourselves valuable and all of a sudden be valuable. We don’t have that authority.

We do, however, have the authority to call gold, diamonds or oil valuable. As long as everyone up above the ground declares them so then they all of a sudden are. So it is with us as humans – we need someone up above to call us valuable for us to be valuable.

Well, I’ve got some great news. Someone with authority did say we are valuable and therefore we are. He is God our Creator and he said so in his letter ‘The Bible’ and also through sending us his son Jesus who valued us so much that he thought our lives were worth his very own.

Because of this, Mildred can’t say that her unwanted unborn child has no value. God has already said that every child does, in fact God’s the one putting that child together in her womb.

In summary, the questions of pro life / pro choice or euthanasia cannot be decided by human beings. We don’t have the authority to value ourselves any more than oil can value itself.

© 2006, by Lionel Thompson

I have always felt a tinge of "something sounds off" when I pray for God to prosper me. Yesterday walking in the rain it occurred to me that if you are going to play the lottery with God you at least need to buy a ticket.

God has really blessed us this past year with a good job and a home of our own. It caused me to think - what if we had just helped our daughter get a home and she soon afterwards comes to us explaining that she needs more money cause her bills are higher, and Oh yes, she needs another car. My wife and I would be a tad bit reluctant to dish out. And yet, if she came to us and explained, yes she needed another car and income to pay bills, but had this entrepreneural plan that she’d been working hard on to cover these added costs - could we help her get it up and running. Boy, we’d be excited.

The analogy of standing in a field praying for apple trees to miraculously grow out of the ground has embarrasingly been how I’ve at times approached provision from God.   And God’s response…  "plant the dang seed, you lazy bastard (said a bit nicer), and then I’ll make it grow". 

© 2006, by Lionel Thompson

One of my best friends is a mortgage broker and has many people in his office with struggling credit.  He made a comment to me on the phone about how rarely any one of these people takes full responsibility for the state of their financial mishap; it’s always someone else / something else’s fault.

I myself have often struggled with this attitude having gone through my own difficulties both financially and in other ways. One little example is blaming my kids for the fact that I’m always so tired.

The thing that happens to me with casting blame on other people or other things is that I start feeling hopeless. I start feeling like a victim. I’m a victim of my kids being kids, I’m a victim of this capitalistic society that hands out credit cards and is the cause of my debt.

Everyone can attest to the fact that life is hard and often really sucks. There’s a lot of pain, a lot of suffering and a lot of bad things that happen even to good people. And we are never going rid this world of suffering and pain. I believe our response can lean towards one of two poles, victims or victors. If we are victors we take responsibility for our lives and own our decisions. If we are victims we blame others.

I’m a finance manager for a company and yet embarrassingly enough I have overdrawn my personal checking account to the point where the overdraft charges should be a budget item. My first response upon overdrawing has almost always been this trapped, panicky, victimized feeling expressed in profanity against the damn merciless bank. But when I came across this revelation of, don’t laugh, TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR MY ACTIONS, and applied it to my life, I stopped feeling like a victimized failure and began to feel in control of my life.

There’s a letter in the Bible that Paul the Apostle wrote to the Christians in Rome. They were persecuted, literally hunted down and thrown into arenas with hungry lions that ate them.  Just think of your husband / father being taken away and thrown to the lions.  In my mind getting eaten by lions would be an appropriate time to consider myself a victim.  But in contrast Paul is telling these very people that they are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:37).  Even when we are being slaughtered by life we don’t have to live like victims. Now that’s great news!