A Little Guessing Game

The founders of one of most well-known institutions of higher learning wrote this as their mission statement:

"Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed, to consider well that the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom, as the only foundation of all sounds knowledge and learning."

Anyone have a guess as to which college this is?

Do you want blessing?

Yesterday one of our pastors preached on Acts 20:17-38. In the sermon, Stan referred to Ephesians 1:3-14, which unpacks in some detail the "whole counsel of God" which Paul told the Ephesian elders he had made known to them (Acts 20:27).

As I read through Ephesians 1, I was struck by these words:

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace...

What particularly hit me was that in unpacking the extraordinary spiritual blessings that are ours in Christ, the very first things that Paul mentions are election ("Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world..."; the word "chose" is the Greek word for elect) and predestination.

A lot of Christians regard the doctrines of election and predestination as troublesome. To be sure, they are weighty matters. But they are often seen as divisive and more harmful than helpful. As a result, a lot of Christians avoid these doctrines when they come upon them in the Bible.

I found it interesting, then, that as Paul wanted to unpack the spiritual blessings that believers have in Christ, the first things he mentions are the doctrines of election and predestination. It doesn't seem that Paul regarded these doctrines as troublesome or harmful. He saw them as a wonderful part of the good that is ours in Christ.

So if you answered the question in the title of this post, "Yes!", then it might be a worthwhile use of time to explore these doctrines. For Paul sees them as great blessings that God is to be praised for, not as irrelevant, troublesome doctrines to avoid.

If you want to know where to get started in exploring these doctrines, I'd be happy to give some recommendations.

Re-Learning God's Way

A few weeks ago I shared this quote from Neal Plantinga:

"Thoughtful Christians know that if we obey the Bible's great commandment to love God with our whole mind, as well as with everything else, then we will study the splendor of God's creation in the hope of grasping part of the ingenuity and grace that form it. One way to love God is to know and love God's work.

Learning is therefore a spiritual calling: properly done, it attaches us to God. In addition, the learned person has, so to speak, more to be Christian with. The person who studies chemistry, for example, can enter into God's enthusiasm for the dynamic possibilities of material reality."

On the Seeking Him blog, this led to a prolonged discussion of the merits of different forms of educating our children (ie. home-school, public-school, private school.). But the quote is more focused on learning about all subjects (no matter where that learning is done) through a God-centered vision of all things.

So, readers, here is what I want to know from you: if you could go back to school and re-learn a subject given what you now know about God, what subject would it be? Leave a comment and let me know.

My answer is anthropology.

Enjoying God Everywhere

In Mark Noll's book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Noll calls attention to the regrettable absence of Christian scholars and thinkers in various fields of study like art and science. This is regrettable, according to Noll, because in failing to learn diligently about nature, society and humanity, among other areas of study, we fail to learn about the Creator of all. As Noll says, When we study something, we are of course learning about that thing. But even more, we are learning about the One who made that thing.

Noll draws attention to the famous American theologian Jonathan Edwards. Here is a man who had an insatiable thirst for learning about both God and God's world. When he was still in his teens, Edwards wrote an extensive description of the shape, construction and purpose of a spider's web.

There are many true things we can say about the spider's web, but according to Edwards, the ultimate thing shown by the spider in its spinning is "the exuberant goodness of the Creator, who hath provided for all the necessities, but also for the pleasure and recreation of all sorts of creatures, even the insects." Edwards understood that the final reason for exercising our intelligence is to know more of God and his loving ways with the world.

Clearly Edwards was a man who did more than read his Bible and preach on heaven and hell (which he did extraordinarily well!). He was zealous to know all that he could about God, by studying carefully both His Word and His world.

May God raise up many such intellectuals who will zealously pursue a greater enjoyment of God through all that He has made.

Knowing God Through His Works

Currently I am re-reading Engaging God's World, a book by Cornelius Plantinga that I read last year. In the Preface, Plantinga writes:

"Thoughtful Christians know that if we obey the Bible's great commandment to love God with our whole mind, as well as with everything else, then we will study the splendor of God's creation in the hope of grasping part of the ingenuity and grace that form it. One way to love God is to know and love God's work.

Learning is therefore a spiritual calling: properly done, it attaches us to God. In addition, the learned person has, so to speak, more to be Christian with. The person who studies chemistry, for example, can enter into God's enthusiasm for the dynamic possibilities of material reality."

Of all people, Christians ought to have the greatest thirst for learning about the world we live in. For as we study the creation, we are bound to learn more about the Creator.