Some time ago I tried to write my statement of faith as a narrative rather than a list of statements. I did this because most of the Bible is in narrative form and so I thought I’d give it a shot. I reviewed it today and fixed some typos. I kind of like this.

In the beginning was God (Genesis 1:1, John 1:1), eternally existing in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; The one true God (Deuteronomy 6:4, Isaiah 45:21) existing in an eternal, glorious communion of three. He lacks nothing (Acts 17:25). As a trinity, he has fellowship and perfect love. His knowledge and power is limitless (Matthew 19:26, Jeremiah 32:27, Psalm 147:5, Acts 15:18). He is timeless and since he is perfect, he is unchanging (Malachi 3:6, James 1:17) for any change would only be decrease. God created everything there is out of nothing (Hebrews 11:3). He made the spiritual beings called ‘angels’ and he created the heavens and the earth (Nehemiah 9:6) not because he was lonely but in order to demonstrate more fully his glory and in order that others might also enjoy it.

Some of his angels decided to rebel against him and became his enemies (Ezekiel 28:11-19). They were not more powerful than God or even his equal, but they work to frustrate his purposes in creation. In order to one day deal with these rebels God created hell, a place where his anger will be on them forever (Matthew 25:41). They haven’t been locked there yet, but a day is coming when they will be.

God created all there is in the universe: light, darkness, plants, animals, air, water, sun, moon and stars. He did this through Jesus, his Son, and for Jesus (Colossians 1:16). The greatest part of his creation was man and women, created to represent him in creation and so he give them charge over the earth (Genesis 1:26-30). When God had created man and women, he announced that everything was very good and then he rested from his work (Genesis 1:31, 2:1-3). One day the greatest of the rebel angels deceived the woman (Genesis 3:1-5, 1 Timothy 2:13-14) and she broke the one rule that God had given to her husband: she ate from the only tree they were forbidden to eat from. To make matters worse she gave some of the fruit to her husband who was there and he ate it too even though he wasn’t confused by Satan’s lies. Through the first man’s rebellion against God, sin and death and decay entered God’s beautiful creation and it spread to all people (Romans 5:12). Everybody since that first couple are now born rebels against God (Romans 3:9-18). Every aspect of us is affected by sin; our emotions, our wills, our reasoning, our desires, all of us.

Read On…

The Scottish philosopher David Hume’s argument against God was the problem of evil. If God is good and all-powerful there wouldn’t be evil therefore either he isn’t powerful, isn’t just or just isn’t.

Well, who says God isn’t defeating evil? He isn’t doing it on a timetable Hume and others would like. This argument against God is more aligned with how Rob Moll put it in a recent article in Christianity Today. Moll argues that what the New Atheists are doing is not arguing against God but rejecting how it is that he runs the world. They are, in a sense, more moral that God himself. Moll lays the blame at the feet of the church:

The church’s inability to answer the problem of suffering is still atheists’ most common complaint against God, and it teaches us how we may be setting people up for spiritual disappointment and failure. Maybe the modern church puts too much emphasis on better living through God. Or perhaps we don’t adequately explain that God suffers with us and redeems our suffering without eliminating it. Whatever the cause, atheism remains an attractive worldview for those who have witnessed suffering or been in pain and can’t reconcile the idea of a good and powerful God with the reality of life on earth.

Provided that when he says that “God suffers with us” he isn’t implying Open Theism ¹The idea that because of human freedom God does not know the future and cannot control what happens in the world for that would restrict human freedom. but instead is referring to Jesus being born, suffering and dying, then I think he has a point. We need to discuss the problem of evil in a better fashion than what comes across as fatalistic or in terms of Open Theism.

Nate Wilson, in his clever book Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl, begins to draw out an way for the Church to discuss pain and suffering in the world that doesn’t make God impotent or non-existent. The chapter title is “The Problem of Evil and the Nonexistance of Shakespeare” and here’s what I think is the nub of his argument:

In a world with evil, God is either not all powerful or not all good. Are these the only options?

Or is he Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Botticelli, Dostoevsky, Van Gogh (with both ears), Michelangelo, Vivaldi, Robert Johnson, N. C. Wyeth, and Gary Larson rolled into one.

Our art is tiny compared to His. And yet He says that we are in His image. He is infinite (what can that really mean to our minds?) and the narrative of the universe, the song of the universe, the epic of the universe, the still-frames of the universe on every level–from quarks to galaxies–reveal His self, His character, His loves, His hates, His mercies, His judgments, His kindnesses, His wraths.

The universe is a portrait in motion, a compressed portrait in motion, a miniature, inevitably stylized, for it is trying to capture the Infinite. The galaxies are each one fraction of a syllable in a haiku of the Ultimate. On the human level, art is all recompression, attempts at taking a sunset from the small frame of the horizon and putting it on a postcard; taking a blues riff, the rhythmic vibration of strings, and capturing a sense of loss; marble, chiseled and shaped until it shows nobility; a cartoonist’s frame, simple ink, grabbing at six-year-old boyness, grabbing at laughter.

Perhaps evil is a problem for us because we’ve accepted a mechanical universe from our Modernist forefathers. What Wilson is pressing for here is the fact that God spoke the universe in to being. He authored it. It wasn’t a pocket watch wound and left to run; it is a poem read aloud, a painting in progress, a play only part way through Act I, a movie that is still unspooling. There are bright spots in that poem as well as dark moments. In a watch, there is only the movement of gear against gear with mathematical predictability. In the machine evil is a problem,it is a lack of periodic maintenance by the Owner, and unattended malfunction that makes the machine less efficient. In a play, however, we understand that it is part of the plot and an issue that will be dealt with (set up, confrontation, resolution). If the New Atheists are operating off the mechanical vision of the universe, no wonder they have a problem with evil!

But wait, the universe is mechanical. If I drop my toast it will fall to the ground at 32 feet per second per second every time (and land, more often than not, butter side down). That’s why we refer to gravity as a law and not just a neat idea. The Modernists weren’t idiots, they explained the universe as they found it. But do you remember that scene near the beginning of Dead Poets Society? When Robin Williams has them read the introduction to the poetry book and then has them rip it out? To me, that’s what we should do with a mechanistic understanding of the universe. Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D. was right to an degree, you can measure a poem’s “greatness” but is an X/Y graph the best way to get the full understanding of it? Or will problems like violence, bigotry, poverty, tsunamis, athlete’s foot, marital infidelity or marital fidelity, and bratty kids at the movie theater, will these things cause the poem to be rated farther down on the “Perfection” scale?

Why is the universe orderly and predictable? Why shouldn’t it be merely chaotic? Does gravity have to be constant? Perhaps it is because the universe is a poem, a play, a movie, a sculpture, a painting and not a watch. In this way Christianity is different form other creation stories. The universe didn’t come about because two gods were wrestling, it wasn’t torn form a god’s thigh, it isn’t blood spilled from some slaughtered cosmic bull, it isn’t a lie someone told us and it wasn’t nothing that exploded into everything on a late Thursday afternoon in the fall. God is distinct from creation, it didn’t fall out of him.  He spoke and it was. It was orderly because God doesn’t mumble or stutter. The orderliness of the universe speaks too.

So what about evil? Did God speak evil into existence too? Not exactly, not according to our creation story. Evil came about through the agency of fallen creatures. But that doesn’t mean that God didn’t write that into the script too. Doesn’t that make God the source of evil? According to Wilson’s argument, if it does then every crime novel author should be arrested for murder. I think Jonathan Edwards’ reflection on this question is helpful. Basically it is “God can decree an action that is sinful for a human to perform, because he decrees it for non-sinful reasons.” That is, God may decree a sinful action but a) he never performs them and b) he never decrees them for sinful final purposes, only for good. You can’t watch the first act of a television show and determine that the writer is a psychopathic murderer because someone committed murder and then killed again to cover his/her tracks. You haven’t seen the end of the story to find out that they didn’t get away with it. That DCS Christopher Foyle uncovered all the complexities of the murder and the story taught us something about love or anger along the way.

Back to Moll’s article. I think he summed up the problem rather nicely:

Though atheists may argue that the existence of a supreme being is impossible, their arguments often reveal a belief that God just doesn’t behave as they think he should…None of these are arguments against God’s existence, but rather arguments against how God and especially his followers act. That is why traditional atheism is a highly moral philosophy, and one worthy of respect, even while we strongly disagree with it.

Yet, we have to remember that we’re still in the middle of the story.We haven’t gotten to the resolution or the denouement yet. We’re still outraged by the injustice that set up the confrontation. The murderer is still loose. The painting has not been recovered. There is no “Book ’em, Danno” yet. Sin and death and Satan are still on the stage. But one day Jesus will return and vanquish his enemies and put Satan and sin and death and hell into the lake of fire. God isn’t impotent or callous; he is working according to his storyline and when the story is through he will establish his kingdom and remove evil and evil doers. Till then we have to put up with people in the theater complaining loudly about the implausibility of the story. In the end they’ll gasp too.

The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture – Westminster Confession of Faith 1.6

Is it legitimate to make inferences in theology? Covenant theology both Baptistic and Presbyterian makes it a confessional matter. That’s a pretty strong belief in the legitimacy of the practice to include it in your confession of faith. Even more than that, the covenantal theological system has some inferences that are fundamental to it. There is a lot riding on the legitimacy of inferring in your theology for Reformed folks. The million dollar question is, is it legitimate?

To answer that question I have often pointed to the doctrine of the Trinity. It is nowhere stated in Scripture in one succinct passage, it must be understood by putting passages together and inferring the meaning. That’s not a bad argument but I came across another one today. Actually, it is an example of inference being practiced in the Bible.

Abraham was told that the blessings of his covenant would not come through Ishmael, the child of the flesh, but through Isaac, the child of promise. God goes so far as to call Isaac Abraham’s only son. And then God tells Abraham to take this son and kill him. How did Abraham reconcile these two contrary things? He didn’t spiritualize the sacrifice of Isaac, he took a knife in his hand and raised it over his son’s chest with the intent of plunging it in. And yet he’d told his servant “Wait here and the boy and I will return” before taking Isaac up to the place of sacrifice. Abraham inferred that since he must kill Isaac and yet nations would come through Isaac that God could and would raise the dead. God didn’t tell him that, he inferred it. And to double up that inference, the book of Genesis doesn’t tell us that, the author of the Book of Hebrews infers that Abraham believed it.

So if someone wants to deny the practice of inferring by saying that the author of Hebrews was inspired and therefore able to accurately make that inference, fine. But what are we to say about Abraham’s inference? Just because the act is accurately recorded and interpreted in the Bible doesn’t mean that the act itself was inspired. Abraham inferred resurrection based on the fact that God doesn’t lie and that he doesn’t break his promises. And this act of Abraham’s obedience is lauded as a good thing. It wasn’t blind faith or “pan-sacrifice-alism” as in “I’ll sacrifice Isaac and it’ll all pan out in the end.” It was an act of obedience and faith and inference.

There are few things that the Bible explicitly says the angels rejoice over. One is when God created the earth (Job 38:6-7). The other is a sinner repenting (Luke 15:10). There are other places in the Bible where the angels say things (usually with loud voices) that would seem to indicate that they’re rejoicing such as Luke 2 at the announcement of Jesus’ birth and a few places in Revelation. These seem to be fairly disconnected events that cause the angels joy but I think they are all for basically the same thing and that one thing is pretty incredible.

“Through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” (Eph 3:10)

Lisa and I were talking about this verse the other day and as we unpacked it, it blew our minds. There are some important implications here. Paul says that God’s work in and through the Church is to show the angels his wisdom. Don’t let that pass by too quickly. Consider a few other things in conjunction with this: Man is a little lower than the angels (Psalm 8:4-5). Some of the angels fell but God didn’t redeem them even though he did redeem fallen man (1 Peter 1:12). God’s strength is shown in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

So now put that  all together under the umbrella of Ephesians 3:10. God chose to not redeem fallen angels but he did redeem fallen man and he did that to show the angels his magnificence. God demonstrates his strength and power in weakness. This is why Jesus didn’t become a human king or ruler, but a carpenter from Nazareth who was executed on a cross. God exalts the humble and humbles the proud. God saves people for his own glory to show the angels, fallen and not, His power. They never experience his mercy and grace.

So when the angels rejoice over one saved sinner it isn’t because people are so precious, it is because the angels are once again blown away by God’s wisdom and power and grace. They don’t celebrate so much over us as they do over God. Our salvation is God showing the angels how he exalts the humble because we’re lower than they are but we experience the grace and mercy they don’t receive.

A young man once fancied a woman. She was beautiful and wise and strong and made a comfortable living. She owned a coffee shop that the young man went to. A friend of his introduced him to her and he fell in love at once and she loved him too.

He began to frequent the coffee shop every morning. He bought t-shirts with the logo, he bought coffee mugs with the logo, he drank many of the different blends of coffee from the shop. And every morning the lovely woman would greet him when he entered the shop and they would spend a delightful morning together.

But after months of this he came in the shop one morning and she wasn’t there. He saw that it was still her shop and recognized that it was still her style and taste in the decor. He saw her handwriting on the blackboards and on notes at the register, but he didn’t see her. His heart was heavy. Yet he thought to himself, “Surely she’ll see that I continue to return to her shop! I know that she’ll see my love for her coffee and she’ll come and meet me again. I will spend more time and money in her shop. That will please her!”

And he did. He started coming in the evenings after work. He bought t-shirts and mugs for his family. His cubicle at work was covered with trinkets from the shop. But every time he entered and she wasn’t there, the coffee didn’t taste as good. The decor seemed nice but not as lovely. For a week or two he stopped coming all together. His heart was heavy and he missed the lovely woman but the coffee shop didn’t hold the same appeal without her.

After two weeks, he returned to the shop and his heart warmed when he saw her behind the register. He got his coffee and sat at their favorite table by a window near the sidewalk. After a moment, she joined him.

“Where have you been?”, he asked. “I came here twice a day for a while. I bought books about coffee. I did all of the things I know you love in order to make you happy but you didn’t come.”

“But my dear, I don’t love you because of your devotion to coffee.” She laid a soft hand on his cheek as she spoke.  “And though we will meet here often, this isn’t the only way you can be with me. It is a very good place for us to meet, for it is my shop. But you could call me and we could talk. Or we could meet for a walk in the forest. Or at a concert. There are other places for us.”

“But where did you go?” his sad eyes begged an answer.

“I withdrew from this place to draw you out to love me more than my shop.” She had tears as she spoke. “It was hard for me to pull back but it was the only way to draw your heart closer to me. I love that you love my shop but it is more important to me that you love me.” She wiped a tear from her cheek, “It was hard for both of us but it was the best way to strengthen our relationship. I love you.”

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.'” – Jeremiah 7:1-4

The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, Thus says the Lord,

“I remember the devotion of your youth,
your love as a bride,
how you followed me in the wilderness,
in a land not sown.
Israel was holy to the Lord,
the firstfruits of his harvest.
All who ate of it incurred guilt;
disaster came upon them,
declares the Lord.”- Jeremiah 2:1-3

Their faithfulness in the wilderness? God is calling them to remember the wilderness? But in the wilderness God hated them:

For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known my ways.” – Ps 95:10

So why would God, through Jeremiah hold up the wilderness wandering as an example Judah should return to? A few answers come to mind.

First, the situation in Jeremiah’s time was so bad that the grumbling and complaining in the wilderness look good by comparison! And that surely was the case. In the wilderness they complained but their flirtations with idolatry didn’t last long. Judah in Jeremiah’s time was a real mess so perhaps returning to that would have been a real improvement.

Second, there were two generations wandering in the wilderness. The older generation is the one God hated and the one he swore would die in the desert. Their children were the more faithful generation who entered the Promised Land. Perhaps Jeremiah is pointing to that generation and calling Judah to return to that.

Third, perhaps Jeremiah isn’t thinking of just one generation or just one time period but is calling Judah back to a time when, in general, Israel was faithful. There were times in the wilderness when Israel did follow the Lord. Maybe the overall faithfulness (though imperfect) of the entire exodus period is what God has in mind here.

I’m sure that the Lord had all of these issues in mind when He said what He said. So why is it a head scratcher for us? Because we love in a truncated manner and God’s love is more lively and complex than ours. He can love and hate at the same time. And not the “love the sinner but hate the sin” kind of thing but I think that’s a pretty good way for us to get our heads around what he’s saying. God hated the generation that fell in the wilderness. They refused to believe him when He took them to the edge of the Promised Land. They were more afraid of the giants in the land than they were of their God. But God loved them and cared for them. The shoes didn’t wear out, they had manna and quail enough for every day of the journey. He poured water out of a rock for them twice. And these things were written for our instruction (1 Cor 10:6).

It is a good thing God loves like this. It is good news for us that he loves and forgives so that we’re not condemned when we sin. But it is also good that he remembers sin or our enemies, those who consume and ravage and abuse humanity would die and simply blink out existence and there would be no justice.

In case you haven’t heard, Bruce Waltke, an eminent Old Testament scholar, has resigned from teaching at Reformed Theological Seminary because of some comments he made at a BioLogo conference. Waltke believes in theistic evolution and made some comments that were perhaps stronger than he’d intended. He also wasn’t clear that he was only speaking for himself and not representing RTS. He tendered his resignation and at first it was rejected but he and the school came to agree that his resignation was for the best. They didn’t fire him for holding to theistic evolution but that took a few days to come out. Waltke for his part has been an example of Christian care and protecting others. He refused an ABC interview because he was sure they’d edit his comments to make RTS look like a wigged out bunch of fundamentalists or something. What a gentleman!

What I want to comment on is not theistic evolution though. Instead I want to comment on the hermenutics that are at stake in this discussion. This morning I read these comments by Rick Phillips at the Reformation21 blog:

[O]ur supposedly eminent Bible scholars are now going on record to say that we must subordinate the authority of Scripture to the higher and more objective standard of secular science.

If Phillips is referring to Waltke, he couldn’t be more wrong. Waltke has publish a list of things he affirms and the authority and inerrancy of scriptures is part of that: “My first commitment is to the infallibility (as to its authority) and inerrancy (as to its Source) of Scripture.”

Phillips goes on:

Some will respond that the Bible does not make scientific claims and therefore we should not be biblically dogmatic when it comes to this topic.  But what about history?  Isn’t the creation account a record of history?  Is the question of the historicity of Adam and Eve a matter of science, but not of history?  Further, is it not true that evolution makes not merely scientific but also historical demands?  And can the Bible’s theology be true if the historical events on which the theology is based are false?

And here’s where the issue gets dicey. What is the relationship between general revelation (what God shows about himself in nature) and special revelation (the Bible)? Obviously the Bible has priority but in interpreting both humans can and have erred. Those errors don’t mean the Bible is/was wrong or that by recanting of those errors we are denying the Bible’s authority. It just means that we were wrong.

Sometimes we learn things from general revelation that correct our errors in interpreting special revelation. The prime example of this is Copernicus. Up till the 16th century the prevailing opinion among scientists and the Church was that the earth was at the center of the universe and everything swung around it. After all, the Bible speaks of the sun moving across the sky in Psalm 19 and the fact that the earth is unmovable in Psalm 104. The problem that bothered Copernicus was that Mercury seems to move backward across the sky. This illustration shows the problem with Mercury’s orbit and a geocentric universe:

The problem was that if Mercury was circling in its orbit they should have seen it retrograde more often then it did. Copernicus tried a heliocentric model and Mercury’s obit made a lot more sense:

But surely Copernicus was subordinating the authority of Scripture to more objective standard of secular science, right? Of course not. What he did do was allow general revelation to correct a mistaken understanding of the Bible.

If God created the universe and inspired the Bible (and He did) then creation and Scripture don’t disagree. We might make a mistake in interpreting one or both. Phillips is correct when he notes that Waltke isn’t a scientist and is relying on what scientists are telling him. He’s asking questions not about the authority of Scripture but about the correctness of our interpretation of it. To me, that’s a fair question.

What we have to do is make sure that we don’t equate our interpretation of the Bible with the Bible itself. We can and have made mistakes. We’re currently making mistakes.

Now let me be clear, I’m not advocating theistic evolution. However, I have to point out that some significant Protestant theologians held to it before Waltke did. The author of the Protestant articulation of the inerrancy of Scripture B.B Warfield advocated theistic evolution while blasting the idea of naturalistic evolution. This is well documented in Mark Noll’s book Evolution, Science, and Scripture: Selected Writings. In volume VI of The Fundamentals, books written at the turn of last century to defend Christianity against modernism (i.e. Liberalism) and where the term “Fundamentalist” came from, James Orr wrote on the book of Genesis:

I am convinced, and have elsewhere sought to show, that genuine science teaches no such doctrine. Evolution is not to be identified offhand with Darwinianism. Later evolutionary theory may rather be described as a revolt against Darwinianism, and leaves the story open to a conception of man quite in harmony with that of the Bible… Man’s origin can only be explained through an exercise of direct creative activity, whatever subordinate factors evolution may have contributed.

Conservative evangelical scholars embracing a form of evolution is nothing new and not necessarily to be feared. The debate should be about the genre of Genesis 1:1-2:4 and not whether acknowledging some form of evolution is automatically a denial of Biblical authority, or as Phillips put it, a Trojan horse. We should proceed with caution. We don’t want to let science, which these days is skewed with materialistic, atheistic thought run rough shod over the Bible and we don’t want to let our interpretation of the Bible lead us to reject accurate scientific investigation when it could help our interpretation improve otherwise we could be making the same pre-Copernican mistake the Church earlier made. If we equate our interpretation of the Bible with the authority and inerrancy of the Bible and our interpretation is proven wrong we are making a great mistake.

Having said all of this, I believe that there are some very important doctrines from the early chapters of Genesis that must be maintain however you understand them. Adam and Eve are historical figures or issues such as Jesus’ teaching on divorce (Matt 19:3-9) and Paul’s teaching on federal headship and the fall (Romans 5:12-21, 1 Cor 15:42-49) and authority (1 Tim 2:11-15) are based on myth. If they’re based on myth then they are not reliable. Start tugging on that loose string and soon you’re no longer wearing a sweater.

It seems to me that the most natural reading of Genesis 1 and 2 is six literal days of creation and the spontaneous creation of man. I’m inclined in that direction but I have to admin that that is my interpretation and may be wrong. So I’m opened to the idea of an old universe and gradual creation because that’s what we appear to see in general revelation. I will not abandon the doctrine of Biblical authority and inerrancy so I have to be willing to hold my interpretation of some things carefully. I believe that’s all Dr. Waltke trying to do.

On Sunday there were two very important votes taken. One you’ve heard of and one you probably didn’t. Both were significant to me. I think the way Doug Wilson began his post on the one you’ve heard of kind of summed up my feels about both:

As I have already noted, God is still in His Heaven, and things are still all right in the world. Our God in in the heavens, and He does whatever He pleases. God draws straight with crooked lines, and the sun will still come up tomorrow.

God rules in the affairs of man. The proverb “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will” (Prov 21:1) is even in a democratic process where there is no king. That was the lesson I learned on Sunday. Well, one of the lessons. The sermon tilled my rocky heart and reading chapter 4 of Tim Teller’s The Prodigal God trimmed out the corners the sermons missed.

So what are the two votes? Obviously the first is the health care reform bill in Congress. This was huge. Fortunately, they didn’t play any games to get it through like reconciliation but they did play a game to get pro-life Democrats on board with President Obama promising an executive order to ensure that federal money isn’t used to pay for abortions.  This is a pretty weak assurance and I’m surprised anyone bought it. Such is politics I guess.

Upon hearing about the passage of the bill I apologized to my daughters for what this will mean to them in 20 or 30 years. Bernadette asked me what was wrong with the bill. I guess my biggest problem is that it forces all Americans into a broken system. They didn’t do anything to address the fact that health care in America is hugely overpriced. Instead they made it a requirement that everyone be part of it. From what I can see, the government has shackled us to an insurance system that is shackled to a bloated health care system. So as the system continues to get worse and more expensive (since more people are part of it) what is likely to happen in the future is that as insurance companies begin leaving the market, the government will step in and take up more of the slack. That means an even bigger deficit and most likely a worse health care system.

The end result of this, I think, is that the electorate will march up to the Democrats, grab them firmly by the ear and walk them to the curb. Unfortunately, the only ones to take their place are the equally confused Republicans who currently lack a clear voice and leader. They’ll get in and decide to “fix” a fatally flawed system thereby making it worse. Sigh.

And yet Jesus rules the nations.

The other vote was much happier. Eight years ago when my family joined Lakeland Evangelical Free Church the church was about 400 people. That felt strange and huge to me. Since then we’ve doubled in numbers but the building remains the same size. So about 4 years ago our elders started looking into property options. We’re pretty much maxed out on our current 5 acres so eventually a move will be required. So after years of looking the plan has come down to two phases. First, we’re going to renovate the existing building to maximize the space we have. Second, we need to be looking to an eventual move. Since the real estate market is so soft now it seemed wise to try to purchase land now so when it is time to move we’ll do a capital stewardship campaign for the new building.

Free Churches are congregational and so while we elders did all this research and planning and praying and seeking advice, it is the congregation who must approve large expenditures, major facility upgrades and real estate purchases and sales. Three weeks ago we had a congregational business meeting where we presented a motion to the congregation to these ends. We didn’t take a vote on it at that time, we simply wanted the congregation to see what we were looking at. Two weeks ago we did a town hall Q&A with the congregation about the motion. Based on that discussion we split the motion into two pieces, one for the upgrade and one for the land purchase. Sunday while Congress was voting on the healtcare bill,our congregation voted on these two motions.

What the elders have said throughout this process is that we don’t want it to be our plan unless it is also Jesus’ plan for our church. One of the ways we would expect to hear His voice in this would be to hear it from His body, the congregation.

In order to pass these measures we needed a quorum which we well exceeded and a super-majority (75%) voting affirmative. The first measure, the renovation, passed with just a few no votes. The land purchased passed the super-majority but only by a few extra votes. It was closer but it passed. So we move ahead.

At the same time, that was my last official act as an elder at Lakeland. I’ve now been released so that I can focus on LifeSpring, Lakeland’s church plant.

God is sovereign over both votes.