Freedom Through The Lens of Time

I just reread this awesome snippet from The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, and I needed to share it and comment on it. It was really helpful to me in contemplating the justice and the seeming absurdity of predestination and man’s freedom of will. Check it out!:

[Answering a question the main character asked concerning man's freedom of will, one of the divine beings answers him thus]:

“If ye put the question from within Time and are asking about possibilities, the answer is certain. The choice of ways is before you. Neither is closed. Any man may choose eternal death. Those who choose it will have it. But if ye are trying to leap on into [comprehend] Eternity, if ye are trying to see the final state of all things as it will be (for so ye must speak) when there are no more possibilities left but only the Real, then ye ask what cannot be answered to mortal ears.

. . .But ye can see [Freedom] only through the lens of Time, in a little clear picture, through the inverted telescope. It is a picture of moments following one another and yourself in each moment making some choice that might have been otherwise. Neither the temporal succession nor the phantom of what ye might have chosen and didn’t is itself Freedom. They are a lens.

. . .For every attempt to see the shape of eternity except through the lens of Time destroys your knowledge of Freedom. Witness the doctrine of Predestination which shows (truly enough) that eternal reality is not waiting for a future in which to be real; but at the price of removing Freedom which is the deeper truth of the two. …Ye cannot know eternal reality by a definition. Time itself, and all acts and events that fill Time, are the definition, and it must be lived. The Lord said we were gods. How long could ye bear to look (without Time’s lens) on the greatness of your own soul and the eternal reality of her choice?”

So for those who tear their hair out like I upon meditation of God’s sovereignty, I hope this was helpful. We cannot, as finite beings who live within the constraints of time, even begin to think on eternal realities. Only a being which transcends time is capable of doing so. Otherwise we put ourselves (as I do every day) in the danger of perceiving the way God sovereignly governs all of reality as unjust. Thus, God can say to me, being absolutely true, “I ultimately and freely determine, according to my good pleasure, all of whom I shall save. And you, Jordan, are still a completely free moral agent.” How will we respond to God’s awesome in incomprehensible sovereignty? With doubt and discouragement, or trust and awe? I fight and pray for the latter.

Post-modern Christmas Heresy

A friend posted this ‘picture-comic’ on her wall and already exposed the theological flaws of its portrayal and understanding of Christianity, but I wanted to elaborate and share my thoughts on it as well. The reason in my doing so is because I see so many people with the same blatant disregard for the actual message of Christianity—that obedience earns favor with God.

What you’ll find however, if you actually study the bible for yourself, is that this message is taught nowhere within it. If you have to ask whats wrong with the above bolded statement, then your probably not a Christian. I think I can say that with confidence. Because its not only false, but its the exact opposite of the truth. It is the people who believe we need to earn salvation—God’s favor—that think “if you don’t be good, you’ll go to hell forever” (which is evidently what the author of the comic above believes).

Now it is true that disobedience leads to punishment, or eternal separation from the Father. But where in the Bible does it say that perfect obedience to God is something we human beings are capable of doing? Show me someone who says they have always loved God and their neighbor with all their heart, has never been angry, lustful, envious, greedy, or selfish, and I’ll show you a liar (or a heretic). The only man who has ever perfectly obeyed the Father his whole life and in every way is Jesus Christ, the son of God. Only HE is good enough to stand blamelessly before God in heaven, and only HE is able to mend our broken relationship with Him.

When we disobey part of God’s law, we have fallen short of the whole thing. James 2:8-10 says this:

If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality [as all of us have], you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.
(James 2:8-10)

We are therefore all guilty before God, deserving of separation from Him. God would be an unjust judge if he did not punish our sin. How then are we punished? This is the message of Christianity. We are either punished for our sin eternally in separation from God (known as hall), or we are punished through Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice for sin on the cross. We either die in our sin getting what we deserve, or we live eternally in heaven through Christ’s resurrection. Christ died the death that we deserve. God punished his wrath on HIM instead of us, eternally filling the righteous requirement of the law. How can this be? How can God justly punish what is finite (sin) forever, while Christ is able to put a COMPLETE END to sin’s demands? Pastor John Piper puts it better than I ever could:

The way to think about it is that we commit a greater indignity against God, not just in accord with how many sins we commit or how bad they are, but in accord with how great he is. Therefore our sins are infinitely great because they’re against an infinite person and deserve an infinite punishment.

Christ, being an infinite person, became so low that that drop in suffering, that drop in indignity was such a huge drop—it was an infinite drop—that it suffices to cover the sins of millions and to cover the entire length of eternity that we deserve to be in hell.

America has gotten Christianity so wrong; distorted it beyond recognition, to where the common person sees no flaws in anti-Christian theology like the kind depicted in the comic. I hope that if the argument I have laid out here is foreign to you, or you think I am saying something unbiblical, you would send me a message. See for yourself—the Christianity most people reject, isn’t true Christianity. This makes it all the more important for us believers to preach the true gospel to everyone we know. Most have never heard it.

SCF Volleyball (beta) Release!

What initially started off as a dream has now become reality. Ladies and gentlemen, lo, I present to you a fully functional version of SCF Volleyball! Though just the BETA version, SCF Volleyball will provide hours of play and competitive fun between you and your friends! Stressed for exams? Take a load off on the courts, and smash a volleyball–or even a bowling ball if you dare–into the face of Meredith Saunders!

[DOWNLOAD HERE (PC)]

***Please read this entire post before you ask any questions!***(I’m looking at you, Hannah Kuperas)

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Features:

• Choose between 25 different characters
• Matches divided into three sets of 7, to a total of 21 points to win.
• Play with a friend using the same (or an external) keyboard. Currently no computer AI to play against (I never realized how hard AI are to code well!)
• Choose between playing with a Beach Ball, Volleyball, or Bowling Ball — all of which have different weights
• Change the speed and/or size of the ball
• Three (well, technically two fully functional) secret characters, each with unique special abilities
• Temporarily increase your speed and jump height by powerup charging (breifly holding “down” on the keyboard)

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Planned for Full Release:

• More natural feeling ball physics
• A more sensible and smooth flowing interface, including the ability to exit your current game, pause, go back to the main menu, etc.
• Add most of the SCF juniors and seniors as characters
• More secret characters
• Music and sound effects (aside from the 2 or 3 effects that are currently in)
• Item powerups, and an option to turn them on or off
• Different stages (maybe stage sizes?) and stage selection
• Different game modes, including Timed, Infinite, Bomball, Sudden Death, No Jumping, Powerless, and more!
• Different power, speed, and accuracy stat attributes for all characters. The stats will range from 1-3 in each area, limited to a total of 6 distributed points.
• Higher SPD will allow the character to move faster and jump higher.
• Higher PWR will allow the character to hit the ball with greater force and speed.
• Higher ACU will make the character’s size and hit frame larger.
• Characters with 3 points in SPD with have the “speed powerup” that is in the current version
• Characters with 3 points in PWR can slam strike the ball faster than its maximum speed and gravity.
• Characters with 3 points in ACU can snap to the ball when within a short range, allowing them to spike very easily.
• …and much more!

*most of these features I have finished already, but require fine tuning and debugging — so it shouldn’t take too long to finish it all.

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Controls:

Move left:
A (P1); arrow left (P2).

Move right:
D (P1); arrow right (P2).

Jump:
W (P1); arrow up (P2).

Charge Power-up:
S (P1); arrow down (P2).

Drop ball (serve):
E (P1); End (P2).

Select character:
E (P1); End (P2).

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Frequently Asked Questions:

>Why am I not a character in the game? Do you hate me?
No I don’t hate you, but I will if you ask me this question. First of all, the size of the screen only allows for a certain number of characters. There are ways around this, but I don’t have infinite time or energy to do this right now. Second, I simply went by priority of (1) SCF Staff, (2) my roommates, (3) their significant others, (4) people who have helped me test the game in its alpha stages, (5) people who asked me directly to put them in, (6) juniors and seniors on the SCF Facebook page starting from the top down. I will eventually get to all the SCF leaders if I decide to work on this more; but until then, quit worrying about it and play as someone else!

>Can I play this on a Mac?
First of all, you should stop supporting Apple in their Jihad to take over perfectly competent technology. But nevertheless, my answer is “not easily, and not yet.” I coded the game on a Windows PC, thus the program is in EXE format (which is what a PC uses to run stand-alone applications). Mac and Windows operating systems are based on different codes, so it wouldn’t be easy to convert. But there is still hope. I plan to do all my future coding in Javascript, which means one day it may be compatible in HTML (you’d be able to play it online, regardless of your operating system).

>The game’s not working, it won’t let me move!
Read the section labeled “controls” (I’m looking at you, Hannah Kuperas)

[DOWNLOAD HERE (PC)]

More Than A Mortal – [Divine Schizophrenia, Part 2]

More Than A Mortal
[Human Limitations We Impose On God]
Series: Divine Schizophrenia (Part 2)

When I was younger, I thought my dad was an utter fool. I treated him worse than any father deserves to be treated by his own son; especially considering his love and kindness and patience towards me. Just like any other functional household, my dad had erected rules we were expected to follow. My least favorite was the “hour-and-a-half-a-day-time-limit-on-playing-video-games, and-only-after-you-finish-your-homework” rule. My dad didn’t make this rule because he enjoyed my sadness. He made it because he knew it would be best for me. He understood that school held a higher priority over video games, and that I struggled with an unhealthy obsession with video games.

But I couldn’t have cared less about priority, and I wouldn’t have agreed that I had an obsession. To me, my dad was only an obstacle between me and “fun.” And because I knew better than he what was best (sarcastic), I lied, cheated, and did whatever it took for me to have my own way. A few times, he would figure out I lied about my homework to play video games. When this happened, I would run away from home, and stay in the woods until he called me and revoked the punishment. I was a punk, and I could not at all see or understand his reasoning for doing these things.

I think a similar thing happens between us and the Lord. We are the stubborn teenagers, and God is the good and wise dad. But God is not like our earthly parents — He is incomparably more wise, holy, just, gentle, loving and compassionate than we can ever try to perceive him. Why are we so arrogant to assume we should be able to comprehend everything about such a being? We use tainted and finite means to try and grasp a perfect and infinite God.

Suppose we lived in an alternate reality, where God were more than a mere mortal. He was instead, infinite in knowledge, perfect in goodness and wisdom, and could actually understand certain concepts that we could not? Lets also say, perhaps, that our minds were finite and we could only make observations based on our interpretations of the world around us, limiting the extent of our knowledge?

Surprise: The situation I described above actually depicts the present reality of how we think, not an alternate one. We are not the objective thinkers we think we are, although we make what seems to us to be unbiased observations. As we come to accept a certain worldview, we need to understand that there is no possible way for us to separate our emotionally charged intuitions from judgments we make. This is why I cringe when people use the term “freethinker” to describe themselves… as if its possible to FREE your mind from it’s slavery to the heart, and into a state of impartial judgment.

Lets say for example, you despise authority and submission. You don’t let anyone tell you what to do because you so strongly want to believe your destiny is in your own hands. In this situation, would it be unlikely for your heart to skew your mind to get you to believe God does not exist? Because if he doesn’t, then YOU are the god of your life; and you don’t have to feel accountable to anyone. This is exactly what your heart wanted in the first place. And without realizing it, you will start to interpret evidence in such a way that keeps this God out of your life so you don’t have to feel accountable to anyone. If it were not for Christ, ALL of us would choose sinful pleasure over truth. It is so true what Jeremiah 17:9 says of our heart’s condition, that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” I sure can’t.

Its no different in our feeble attempts to fully understand how God can be good and just in spite of ordaining sin. Why should we expect to? Our hearts have an agenda — and its not to seek out and obey what is right and true about God. Its to dethrone Him and establish our own rule of authority so we can be God, the center of worship.

I don’t think that the issue many of us have with God’s sovereignty is an intellectual one. I think it’s an issue of TRUST — Something I do not by any means claim to have reached a satisfactory level of. So please do not be fooled by me writing extensively on God’s sovereignty, that I have this whole thing figured out. I’m probably further off than most of you reading this. The other week in fact, I doubted so severely God’s goodness in spite of the suffering of loved ones. This resulted in what I can honestly say was one of the hardest and most discouraging days of my life. The pain and confusion and bitterness I felt was so immense, my tears and discouragement prevented me from even going to class.

Next week I would like to share with you guys a journal entry I wrote on that day, as well as what the Lord led me through to trust him again. I want to try to clear up some misconceptions about Christians and faith, that we must have everything together and never doubt that God is who he says he is.

Next Section –> [Part 3 - "False Faith and Pasted Smiles"]
Series: Divine Schizophrenia
(Part 3 postponed until further notice. Taking a much needed
look at my motivations before continuing)

“You don’t need God to hope”?

A friend of my roommate’s posted this picture to Facebook, and I couldn’t sum up what I wanted to say in a status update… so here is! Sorry if I sound blunt in this post, just trying to be real.

Hope!???!? How you can find hope on a meaningless earth is beyond me. Finite existence in and of itself is completely useless. If there is no God, no eternal life, no life after death, and no way of getting there, then it absolutely means that there is no hope, no purpose, no reason, and no meaning to life. Your life would be void of meaning and significance in the eventuality of it’s nonexistence. Consider James 4:14 –

“What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”

Do not ‘vanish’ from earth apart from faith in Christ who forgives our sins which separate us from God. God’s wrath remains on us and we remain condemned into eternal separation. It is foolish beyond words to wait until you are on your death bed. It might seem so distant now, but you WILL die. You WILL wish you had more time to consider ’life’ after death by then. Hope doesn’t exist in “Livingwithoutreligion.org’s” theoretical universe, and I remain perplexed as to what they have hope in…

“I AM WHO I AM” – [Divine Schizophrenia, Part 1]

“I AM WHO I AM” – The Essence of God’s Glory
Series: Divine Schizophrenia (Part 1)

I want to tell you a story that has no beginning nor does it have an end. Once upon an ever present eternity past and future, there is a being who IS. The essence of His glory, is that he IS absolutely and without cause or constraint from outside himself. ‘I AM’ was He — that is, nothing more can be said about Him, but that he just IS who he IS. ‘I AM’ is absolutely self-existent and absolutely self-determining in willing what He wills. He exists freely, without cause or control from any other. At the deepest decision of His mercy, there was no cause or control or constraint by anything outside of His own will. Out of His self determined will and through an unfathomable love for His Son (who also IS), He created a plane called ‘existence’ and made beings in His own image to occupy it. These beings knew him only as “God”, and His name is the essence of His glory.

If you want to ask questions like, “Who created God?” or “Why is God the way he is?”, you need to understand what it means to be GOD. He has no beginning because he is the beginning. You may be better off asking me, “When are you going to stop beating your wife?” I cannot answer because you are assuming a state of affairs that does not exist. I do not have a wife nor am I beating her and so I cannot stop. In the same way, God has always existed and is the way he is because he just IS and always WAS. He is “the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13). When we refuse to accept that we can’t know everything about a being who is infinitely greater and wiser than us, we take the first step into the realm of irrational logic. We cannot ask why he is a certain way because he is not governed by any forces outside himself. There is much we cannot comprehend, because our minds our finite.

If its true that God is infinitely wise and can do anything he pleases without cause or constraint, then it means God is not subject to change like we are. The reason we change our minds is because we make weak resolutions in hindsight or are confronted with unforeseen circumstances. But God is different in that he foresees all circumstances and has no weaknesses. This should give us great hope and encouragement, as it means that all of God’s promises in Scripture are still true now, and will be forever more. All God has to do is SPEAK to accomplish what he wills. It is just as God said to Isaiah,

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”
(Isaiah 55:10-11)

We rationalize that God cannot be the way He says he is with statements like, “My God wouldn’t send people to hell.” It may make sense in our own minds, but we must understand that what we feel or what we desire does not make God who he is. When God says “I AM WHO I AM”, he summons us to humble objectivity. He puts an end to the notion that everybody’s view of God is as good as everybody else’s. God IS who he IS and nobody’s opinion of him makes any difference. Our calling therefore as his creatures, is to strive to know him for who he is, and not for who we would like him to be.

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This will be the focus of the next section: the danger of our subjective accusations of God as unjust, based on our mortal perception of an eternal God. Because as long as we continue to lean on our own understanding, we will forget that God is not limited in any essence of his being as we are. He is much more than a mere mortal.

Next Section –> [Part 2 - "More Than A Mortal"]
Series: Divine Schizophrenia

Preface and Intro – [Divine Schizophrenia]

-Divine Schizophrenia-
A pursuit for a deeper trust in the Lord by upholding
the truth of His sovereignty over the existence of evil.
By: Jordan Zurek

_______________________________________________________________________________ 

Preface & Greetings

Its been what, five months since my last post? I have no idea where all the time went! I do intend on posting more frequently now, as it is helpful for me in my walk with the Lord to meditate through and process my thoughts. But more than that, I know that some of you have followed and supported me this past year through some of the hardest times in my life, making it known to me how the Lord has blessed you also. I couldn’t ask for anything else to come from a blog, and I still can’t thank God enough for all your prayers during those difficult times.

But now that I’m back, I have decided I’m going to begin a blog series, “Divine Schizophrenia.” My reason for doing this is in hope that the Lord might transform any doubt or confusion people may have, into awe and worship, to deepen our trust and joy in Him. I pray this may be happen as I address the alleged contradictions between God’s Sovereignty and Human Responsibility, which have troubled me for quite some time. I am aware that entire books have been written on the subject matter by theologians who are much smarter and better looking than I — But I don’t aim to delve into a new school of theological ideology. My aim is rather to share with you the successes and failures in my journey through likely the most frustrating doctrine I’ve ever tried to understand.

Now if all your looking for is a systematic flow of facts to understand God’s sovereignty, then you’re probably not going to enjoy my posts! Because I cannot and do not claim to comprehend how God can be sovereign over, yet not responsible for sin. For the bible doesn’t explain exactly how, but why. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t expect to understand a holy and infinite God by brute-forcing our way up with finite and fallen human knowledge. And we shouldn’t expect to know everything about Him, as He is GOD, and we need to be okay with that (or be prepared to fight pride issues).

But as I went back to the brute force approach time and time again, I have been unable find any satisfying answers. All its done is reduce me to tears, anger, sadness, doubt, and often severed my trust in God. But the Lord has shown me much grace, as to help me come to terms with the issue. He has transformed it into a vice that used to hold me back from trusting Him, to an instrument of awe and worship. And that’s exactly what I wan’t for everyone who is reading this.

It may seem strange to kick off with daunting and controversial theology instead of an update on my past 5 months, but I do intend on getting there soon. The Lord has just put this issue on my heart, and I believe and pray that He will work through whatever I can offer. I want to begin by explaining the issue first, as some may not know what it is, or that there even is an issue. Even if this isn’t you, I would still encourage you to read it anyways so that you may see the Scriptural support for the doctrine. Because what I am writing about are not just mine or John Calvin’s opinions. I am rather testifying to the truth about the very nature of the Living God.

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Intro – The Heart of the “Paradox”

Schizophrenia:
“A long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation.” (Google dictionary)

When I first began investigating Reformed Presbyterian theology, I was introduced to a seemingly contradictory theological issue known as the doctrine of Concurrence. It essentially stated that “all actions (including human intentions of evil) are in some sense directed by God, causing all things to act as they do.” As a new believer at the time, I was agitated for quite some time by this statement. The problem was that it was all over Scripture, so I couldn’t deny it without leaving behind the whole book. It wasn’t long before my view of God became so out of line, I even went as far as pegging him schizophrenic, thinking he must be there must be some aspect of delusion to God’s reasoning or moral character in being Sovereign.

My objection went something like this: ”For God to ordain sin to pass would be for God Himself to sin, since man essentially had no choice in the matter. It is therefore contradictory to assert that God has sinned, as we know that God cannot be both righteous and sinful.” Yet as Calvinists, we hold that the doctrine’s claims are both true and without contradiction.

Below I have compiled a short list of seemingly contradictory truths in scripture that I want to deal with throughout this series. They are built off of the following premise: that God sovereignly ordains sin, - ”I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things” - and yet all the statements below remain true.

1) God is very objectively holy and righteous – “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5)

2) God hates sin and grieves over those who reject Him. ”For [God is] not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you” (Psalm 5:4), and “Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, declares the Lord GOD, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live?” (Ezekiel 18:23)

3)  We sin by our own accord - “They have chosen their own ways, and their soul delights in their abominations;. . .” (Isaiah 66:3b)

4) We are held morally responsible and guilty before God for our sins. - “I also will choose harsh treatment for them and bring their fears upon them, because when I called, no one answered, when I spoke, they did not listen; but they did what was evil in my eyes and chose that in which I did not delight.” (Isaiah 66:3b-4)

The only way to come to terms with sovereignty and sin in spite of these gospel truths is to get to the point where we confess that we do not understand how it is that God can ordain that we carry out evil deeds and yet hold us accountable for them and not be blamed Himself. This is the key to the whole debacle. Whenever I heard this answer, it made me feel sick to my stomach every time. Because to me, it sounded more like, “I’m covering up the inconsistencies in the Bible by giving you vague and unclear answers, lest Christianity be exposed for the fake that it is.” But it wasn’t as if God was some sort of “Divine Schizophrenic.” In fact, I came to learn it was quite the opposite. Reread the definition at the top of the page, and tell me this isn’t an amazingly accurate description of our current fallen condition as we attempt to understand God by our own standards.

As a result of this mental disorder human beings suffer from, it is not uncommon for me to become so blind by my own sin, that I am completely unable to tell the difference between pure and impure motives. This tendency frightens me as I think through these next few months, as I know that I’m very prone to the possibility of being consumed in the miseries of self-glorification and pride. So if I feel like my posts are becoming predominately motivated by anything other than a true desire to see Christ’s glory revealed for the sake of our joy, then I regrettably must cease posting. I will continue to pray that this doesn’t happen, and I hope to God that He will find a way to use all of this.

Next Section –> [Part 1 - "I AM WHO I AM"]
Series: Divine Schizophrenia