Hobby Lobby Revisited

Hobby Lobby Revisited

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Dear ______,

We Don’t Understand Why God Abandoned Us.

We can and should pray for miracles.  We will win this fight, but not on earth.  All the evidence points to the idea that we are well on our way down the drain.  God has been patient with us since 1776 and before, but His patience is growing thin.  On September 11, 1993, God could have sent His holy angels, our guardians, to stop the World Trade Center bombing.  He didn’t.  Why not?  We are so very concerned with the evil perpetrators of such an outrage.  We should be concerned with the fact that the problem is our own sin.  God withdrew His mighty hand of protection from us.

Painful Lessons from Church History.

Shortly after my birth on September 11, 1937, I was baptized in the Swedish Lutheran Church in America (better known as the Augustana Synod).  By that time, the Swedish Lutheran Church had already been seriously undermined from within, and real faith in God totally lost to some, who only attended Church out of a dull sense of duty.  This growing cancer, this rottenness, this lack of faith in God, had already grown for centuries (certainly before 1855).  If we take Christ seriously, as we must, we see that this rottenness was always with us: for Christ teaches that Satan would sow tares in the field of God’s wheat.  By 1855, most of European Christianity had lost confidence that anything in the Bible was true.  Pseudo-science had seemingly disproved miracles, the virgin birth, and pretty much anything else of importance.

Existentialism is on the Wrong Track.

It is difficult to understand if the Dane, Søren Kierkegaard was a villain or a hero in such a mess.  Kierkegaard (d. November 11, 1855) is the father of Existentialism.  Existentialism, greatly over-generalized, is the idea that even though something is not true, or it can’t be prove true, that it should be believed anyway.  Existentialism, greatly over-generalized, is that now famous “Faith is a leap in the dark.”  It is hard to tell in this mess if Kierkegaard is adding foment to this unbelief in God, or if he is a concerned pastor throwing a life preserver to his dying flock with his last ounce of strength.  Nevertheless, such pseudo-science, Existentialism, and Kierkegaard are all wrong.

Science is Inadequate.

We, as engineers and scientists, know that this sort of pseudo-science does nothing to disprove the miracles of the Bible.  Having given our lives to the study of science, we have learned the painful lesson that science just isn’t that powerful; man just isn’t that smart.  This sounds a whole lot like something Paul said around 48-50 AD (1 Corinthians 1:26).  Evidently, Paul had a sense of humor.  Today, he would write, “The Gospel for Dummies,” and bind it into a black and yellow paperback.  So, we conclude that we, as honest engineers and scientists, must put a stop to the destruction of the evidence.  Yes, the Bible must be opened again, and we must learn from the beginning the most fundamental rudiments of reality.  Duh, reality check.

Christianity Stands on Objective Truth.

Nevertheless, Christianity stands on objective truth, and we must struggle to recapture and relearn that objective truth.  Christian faith is not a leap in the dark; it is rather, a walk in the light.  It is not difficult to prove objectively that God exists.  Measured statistically, the odds of doubt are on the order of 1 in billions or trillions: statistically too small to measure, and for all purposes, zero.  The problem is not that the existence of God is not provable; the problem is that most observers want to suppress or throw out the evidence.  Such blindness can only bring about death.  Consequently, the response most often voiced is, “I don’t want to hear it.”  At which point we have to walk away, we can’t breathe life into a rock: only God can do that.

Israel-Judah Fell from Within, not from Without.

In 722 BC, Israel was conquered by the Assyrians.  In 586 BC, Judah was conquered by the Babylonians.  Neither of these nations was defeated because of enemies outside their boarders; both of them failed from within.  They rotted from the inside out because of their sin.  Finally, God got so disgusted that He abandoned them: that is why they failed.  In the entire period from 1446 to 586 BC, Israel-Judah was never a great and powerful nation, not as measured in terms of armies and weaponry.  They were a military mouse sandwiched between gigantic military lions.  If the survival of Israel-Judah was ever dependent on military might these lions would have crushed them with a single swipe of the paw.  Even Solomon could not muster the might to resist such crushing defeat.  However, God’s Glory lived in the middle of Israel-Judah; and as long as God’s Glory lived there, Israel-Judah was untouchable.  As soon as God’s Glory abandoned them, they were crushed.

The Widow for Rescue was Shut.

Then in 4 BC, God’s Glory returned.  He came to His own, and we did not receive Him (John 1:11).

America is Dying from Within, Too.

What I’m trying to say is simply this.  America is dying from the inside out because of a fundamental lack of faith in God.  Our churches are dying from the inside out because of a fundamental lack of faith in God.  Many of our churches are already so dead that they should no longer be called churches.  In 1776, America was a weak nation that prevailed because of great faith.  In 2013, America is a great nation that is writing her own epitaph because of zero faith.

Regaining Real Faith is the Solution.

It is not that there is a breed of Christian, who is “better than the average bear,” Holier than thou, more pious than most.  Christianity is not the religion of a collection of pious asses.  Christianity is the religion of the circumcised in heart, a very painful surgery.  Christianity is the religion of broken failures, who know full well that their only hope rests in the Blood of Jesus Christ and in His Resurrection from the dead.  The Lord Jesus Christ is coming to get us.  That is an objective hope, made confident by a many thousand-year history of God’s objective faithfulness among us.  Christians simply give their life, living in that very objective and certain reality.

The Disease is Spiritual, not Political.

The political problem cannot be fixed, until after the spiritual problem gets fixed.  After the spiritual problem gets fixed, the political problem will take care of itself.  If the spiritual problem is never fixed, America will be destroyed.

Yours in Christ,

Augie-Herb