Roy Ames was born, bred, educated, and
ordained Assemblies of God. I was not. It was amazing to me how even though we
came from entirely different backgrounds how we agreed on so many issues. And
how we could disagree on many others and not get angry about the whole process.
I suppose it was because that what we agreed on was so much more important than
those other issues. The discussion of those other issues was more fun than
critical. Many times at pot-lucks and such, these discussions would sometime
dominate the whole conversation at times for many hours.
One of the things that Roy and I agreed upon
was that God, in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, works actively in
the lives of mankind, believers and non believers. We also agreed that there
was a personal devil who also did the same. While I haven't talked with Roy for
years I'm sure we would also agree that one of the greatest sins the church
committed in the 20th century was that she sought to substitute, a paper Jesus
and a paper devil for the real things.
We did and may still do, disagree on some of
the methods on how to proclaim the gospel, but we both new that the answer to
life's questions was Jesus. Our differences came from what were the questions
and how to get from there to the answer. Roy's method was just to tell them
about Jesus. My thoughts led somewhat along the line, that when for decades now
our society is educating its youth to believe that there is no God and sin is
really just bad personal choices, you must go back to more fundamental
teachings before the context of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ makes
sense. With out that understanding, Christianity just becomes another path, of
many that leads to God, you have yours, I have mine.
Therefore if by chance you were wondering,
"Why doesn't he just tell them about Jesus?" You now have some idea
where this is coming from, and bear with me as we continue.
I called Jim just to make sure I had that trifecta thing right, for betting
on the ponies is one of the things of this world I have never done, nor have I
ever really had that desire. "So the trifecta is one bet on three
horses in the same race?"
"That's correct you must pick the right
horse in the right order to win, place and show, or first, second and third.
You can either bet it as a straight bet or in a box, which covers all the six
different possibilities for one bet. I hit a box one time that paid $2800. If I
would have bet it straight that $2 bet would have paid $5600. That one trifecta
jackpot was one of the greatest highs of my life. It was too bad it was so
misplaced."
Quercus trifecta, the Betting Oak. On the tree of mankind's history you
climb out on a limb and bet your life that when you die, you will win the grand
prize of going to heaven. With so much as stake, eternity, is it any wonder
virtually all of us at one time or another want to hedge our bets. "If betting on one branch is good, picking the
right three out of all those branches should give us a bigger prize, or at
least hitting one branch correct should give you some type of pay out. It
couldn't be that if I bet the trifecta on my eternal future I could come up
with just a worthless ticket."
I've been amazed recently how many of life's decisions are based on threes.
We could do this, we could do that, or we could do nothing and see what
happens. Most of us would like to do all three, today, but many times when we
try we see that just making one choice and following through until the end,
would have been the most rewarding thing to do.
As we begin our investigation of the Betting Oak we only need two
assumptions to begin with. Those things that separate man from the animals are,
one his religious nature and, two his complex language and thought processes
which includes the ability to write and store this vast encyclopedia of
understanding. If our observations of reality are true we must marvel at just
how much more advanced are these processes in mankind than the rest of life.
For sake of this discussion of Oak trees, let us call these "acorns of
truth." The fruit of man's unique genius, the seeds of our knowledge,
wisdom and culture.
Observing the Betting Oak from a distance, the first thing we see is that it
seems ancient. Many of the branches are large, perhaps centuries old, some are
broken and exposed to the elements. The many parts that seem to be actively
propagating are growing in all directions, without any pruning by a forester or
a gardener. It sure is a big old tree and when you look to the top through the
maze of crossed and dead and dying branches you see some shoots that seem more
fruitful than others. But it is so far away, perhaps we should see if we can
climb the tree, or get a cherry picker, to see if we can discover the nature of
the most vigorous growth that seems to be taking place high up in the middle of
the tree. For sake of our discussion of Enterprise Symbiosis, we will use this
area of active growth as one of the places we need to visit and perhaps, if it
seems appropriate make our final destination. That growth may have tapped into
the higher power we need to really make symbiosis work.
As we approach the trunk to begin our climb, we notice that there seems to
be three main shoots. We will call those shoots the religions of man. While we
have a general direction for each of these main limbs off the trunk they
quickly are lost in the canopy. One trunk heads off to the west, in order to be
a religion, it must need a God, so for sake of definition we will call man his
own god, and we will call "nature",
the nature of his understanding of the cosmos. One trunk seems to head straight
up through the middle of the tree. The God of this religious branch is God
Almighty, the Creator of "creation,"
the Father of the three major religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity. The
final branch heads off towards the east and its god is really gods, as all are
truly god, deriving godliness from unification with the cosmos of "Mother Earth".
Before we begin our climb we needs some yardsticks to measure results. Our
goal is to find which if any of these three branches is causing the growth that
seems to be occurring high in the top of the tree, and see if we can discover
the symbiotic relationships in the rest of the growing branches and even see if
we can determine the cause of death of some of the dead branches.
Since nature, Mother Earth and creation are all descriptive terms for our
planet, biosphere or ecosphere, let us use what we can learn from descriptive
study of this same source of life, letting each individual interpret the data
from his own specific religious paradigm.
Since as we have learned, man is a literary being and developed a higher
written language, let us also take a book as a reference to see what it might
have to say about the branches and growth we are encountering. The Bible, in
many forms, is recognized by the three major world religions leading off the
central trunk, as one of their holy books, if not the only source of eternal
truth. Both the eastern and western branches of the tree might not ascribe to
Divine inspiration, but both would agree that its stories and myths are
interesting and contain a depository of the great store of human wisdom.
Now to form the thoughts we want to contemplate this week as we eagerly
await the next installment of our attempt to climb Quercus trifecta. Our most popular renditions of all three religious
cultures, of all three main trunks, now seem to confess that all roads lead to
God. If we define this in the terms of adding some exponential higher power to
our enterprises of life bringing about the synthesis of symbiosis, there can be
no doubt. For all life is really symbiotic. However, if that is so why is there
death and so much suffering. It doesn't make any sense. In the words of a Tom
Paxton song, the sure bet in this life is to "Bet on the
Blues." Perhaps all roads literally
leading to God really isn't true at all. The truth could be, that all roads
lead from God. The importance of the blues, is to cause us to look for another
direction than the one that makes sense to us. To know where we came from,
perhaps is the first step in knowing truly where we are heading. Could that
journey have begun with the beauty of fellowship with God and proceeded to the
fringes of wilderness and death. Our forward looking vision is toward God in
the all path theory this, is in reality, being turned around and we are looking
back from whence we came.
Next week we will look to see if Quercus
Trifecta is really the tree of eternal life, where if we pick the
right three branches out of the jungle of choices, we receive an eternal reward
with a much greater high than just money. Or is it just the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil and only one branch is the right one. That is the
decision each of us has to make. As long as you decide to do nothing is not
really an option, except in the context of reflection. From within the context
of your current religious paradigms, using just the descriptive yardsticks
described above, we will try to understand the way to receive the most
rewarding "higher power" both in this life and the possibilities of
life to come. Enterprise Symbiosis is really a means to determine if life is a
trifecta of choices or does it really come down to just one simple bet, up or
down. Can we have that assurance that life really is not a bet at all? Could it
be described as a wilderness journey to a branch less traveled, as we climb up
the Betting Oak of life, and not all that begin the trip make the right
choices?
First of all I would like to thank those of
you who prayed last week for my stress. I have heard many people say, "I
felt your prayers." But I have never really been privileged to have
received that sense of asking and receiving in this special way. We are still
far from out of the financial wilderness so I would ask you to please
thoughtfully continue to pray or think of this situation. In a way, many times
it is one of those gut things that our spoken or thought words really do not
sometimes convey.
Late last week I received some information on a property that makes perfect
sense in the light of being able to demonstrate the power of the higher power
in the Enterprise Symbiosis equation. It would also be an excellent teaching
laboratory for missions and others not privileged with the benefit of our easy
and sometime gross North American life-style. In other words it would make no
sense if you were just going to serve a natural domestic business world and if
nature and fate were the only forces for good. To say it in a Biblical way, it
is sort of a Gideon model, or a walls of Jericho model. The scary thing
however, is that I can see from the get-go how it could pay for itself (in a
number of ways) including by servicing even its own debt, should that be God's
plan. Since I can't go out and borrow the money on my own to get there from
here or along any other path I would ask that you pray for wisdom and God's
provision.