Stupendous Change Leadership Series: Better news
21/February/2007 16:27 Filed in: Weekly Column
21 February 2007; Volume 9, Issue 8
PDF copy
As we move forward in this series we all need to have some better news. To paraphrase the old saying so far, “If it were not for bad news, I would have no news at all.”
Hopefully, now we can begin to build a positive base to develop a leadership structure to help others as we live through the storms of this life. That of course can be either natural storms or the storms of just living in a world in which death and dying are true constants, and Christianity proclaims itself as the one hope for a true peaceful eternal future.
Probably the first principle in stupendous change or survival situations is the fact that you can’t use what you don’t have with you. This is usually thought of as gear, but since this series is about leadership, there are a lot of things you will hopefully commit to memory, to call upon if needed. A book “Stupendous Change Leadership for Dummies” is probably not something you want to have on top of your survival kit, even though it might be used as a good fire starter.
To develop some of that internalized knowledge, let us start with a little science history. From the middle ages, if not before, creation has been formally considered a Natural Revelation of God. Science as we know it today really is an outgrowth or development of what was called Natural Philosophy of the 17th - 18th centuries. Mix in a little man centered enlightenment and eventually you end up with a uniform evolutionary science stretching back millions and billions of years. Simply in a world we created without God, there can be no other way for mankind to define our eternal nature, if through choice we decide to forego the hope of an eternal future through Jesus Christ.
These early scientific observations noted that creation is both beautiful and gentle, but also harsh and cruel. Mankind does very well with the understanding of law, natural, common, and legislative. Mankind doesn’t handle grace very well. Probably because grace at man’s created beginning was not needed, because he was by his nature in perfect peace with God and with nature. However, because man was created as good in a very good creation, that desire for goodness is part of his given nature and can not be completely eliminated as the result of sin.
In the Declaration of Independence, America’s revolutionary fathers speak about “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” giving supremacy to these Laws over the politics of man. The concept of common grace was not naturally understood by America’s founders. Formalized common grace, while it developed basically through Protestant Calvinism, still is clouded by it’s interaction with saving or redeeming grace. Saving grace, especially up through the development of modern observable descriptive science, works well in discussions of Natural Philosophy and Natural Law as well as the Bible’s specific revelations.
However, part of the reason that evolution became the natural world’s religion of choice is that it was made understandable to the normal population, while common grace was kept cloistered within the halls of cemeteries, and seminaries of the Christian elite. As we will use the term Common Grace, we will use it to describe all goodness in the world, without a prescribed or required linkage to specific Christian doctrine.
So to put it in some type of natural context, Common Grace and Specific Grace are related like apples and pears, rather than apples and oranges. All people are capable of performing acts of good or common grace, as well as common grace is present in a beautiful sunrise, a warm summer afternoon, flowers in a field, a bird singing, the list is infinite as is the nature of God. Specific Saving Grace is not present outside the revelation of the Bible, which points only to the propitiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross for the sins of mankind and His subsequent resurrection for our justification.
To say that God can not and does not use natural law and common grace to draw people to Him and to the Bible cannot be supported either through scripture or from natural evidence.
In the beginning God created the world through His spoken word. The Bible is God’s written word, a specific revelation of Jesus Christ given to the world, as an outline between the common reality of terminal death and dying, and a future reality in which death has been conquered. That reality is based upon creation, for only in that real world context does the Bible make sense.
What that means in our modern world of science, is looking back through the specific revelation of the Bible to creation as a visual revelation of God’s word, we find an opening to a specific revelation of God’s nature not contained within the pages of the Bible itself. Through that Bible lens alone, both become part of man’s canon of the total revelation of God.
What that means is not that just Christians can see God’s grace in creation, they also have access through the observable descriptive study of science, to universal laws, paradigms and insights not available through just a common revelation of nature to others. That is pretty heavy stuff, something that can be further developed at another time. However, all you need to do is to understand that western science is based upon the scientific discoveries of devout Christians and that science as we know it has not developed in any other culture.
For those looking for some Biblical context for this please read the following references: Romans 1: 18-32, with special emphasis on verses 20--22; Colossians 1:9-21, emphasis 16-20; 2 Peter 3:1-9, emphasis 3-4.
So if we are to look at creation science through the lens of the Bible what are we looking for? We are looking for complex information that can not happen by chance, or are information rich well beyond what casual observation can tell you. This Bible lens works like a microscope focusing in on minute order which might be seen, but can not be understood by atheistic evolution or even enlightenment deism.
So what has this to do with stupendous change and leadership, carrying what you need with you at all times? The NKJV of the Bible states the concept “all things” 179 times in 160 verses. The defining statement of all things is found in the familiar Romans 8:28: And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. Stupendous change events, no matter their source lie completely within the all things Bible paradigm.
Back in January, I published on the website a “1, 2, 3, D; A Deductive Bible Study Paradigm.” For most evangelicals in formal Bible study, those concepts described within, need to have developed much more descriptive materials. The concept behind the formation of the Bible study however, is to have a Bible study context you can carry with you all the time. Something that is easy to remember.
If we were to combine both the natural revelation of creation with the specific revelation of the Bible into God’s revelation to mankind, would the same study still work?
So to review this deductive paradigm, instead of One Bible, we substitute one Special Revelation of God present in the world, one spoken, one written. Instead of the Old and New Testaments, these spoken and written revelations point to the centrality of the cross within the canon of scripture. This of course only works within Christianity and no other religion. This is the first way of the “2 parts, 3 ways” of the deductive paradigm. The other two parts of the three ways still apply as written. For review those are Law & Gospel, and Indicative and Imperative.
Let us look at stupendous change in that light. By it’s very nature the outcome of a stupendous change event is beyond your control. That is manifest in two distinct ways, and in certain people may alternate between the two depending upon your previous training by God in stupendous change occurrences. Those who have seen God provide in the tough going know and expect the peace of God, which surpasses even the reality of the event, to guard not only their lives but also there emotions. This peace arrives even before you remember to pray.
Those who have not this assurance, come at it from the more Old Testament way, but if they are to survive they join everyone else at the cross central position. “Oh, God if you are real, get me out of this and I will serve you the rest of my life.” That first step is to confirm that commitment by accepting Christ’s holy sacrifice for your sins. If that does not take place immediately, generally speaking you have more life to live, more stupendous change to endure, God is not through with you yet. Even if you should pass without accepting God’s free gift, you no longer have an excuse.
Just as the Bible divides into Law & Gospel so does the Stupendous Change event. “Don’t try to walk to the grocery store during a hurricane,” is an obvious example of stupendous change natural law. Taking refuge from the storm in a well prepared shelter is an understanding of stupendous change common grace.
This brings us to the Indicative & Imperative. The indicative tells you that there is a hurricane blowing outside. The imperative tells you what to do about it. Simply seek shelter, pray, and wait for the storm to pass, comforting those around you that this shall pass.
However, before the stupendous change storm comes, and in the aftermath is where these two parts, three ways methods bear their fruit in the midst of the stupendous change happening.
Stupendous change events happen in this world, some of them are what we could call the disaster - catastrophe community type. Some are of the individual type, such as stroke, disease, or other problem with yourself or your family. As we have said from the beginning of this series Seattle, as the potential disaster center of the world, has a wealth of available materials from local agencies on the internet. While these are designed for cataclysm, the same principles of preparedness still apply to individual applications.
Those outside the Puget Sound region would be wise to consult Seattle, King County, and Washington State websites for this information. In following some links for this article, I just found another layer of planning information that I was unaware.
What this means is that you could spend your whole life worrying and preparing for something that may never happen in the way you prepared. That is why mental preparedness goes hand in hand with physical preparedness. No matter where you may find yourself, no matter how little you are prepared with stuff you have on hand, you can still make it through and help others also by just remembering stupendous change is only one aspect of the Bible’s all things.
In that context remember first and foremost to bring God to the center of the circumstance. That occurs naturally in all surviving human beings as part of our God given nature. This either comes from what we would call the Condemnation side of wearing your CAP or the Praise side of wearing your cap. Both trails lead to the fact that there is a provision of each and every human being to become an Adopted child of God. That “A” is always in the center of your CAP (Wear your cap!, 15 November 2006).
Next when you look at Law and Gospel, instead of looking to the Bible you are looking to creation. In any such circumstances, there are both the “thou shalt not” like pick up a live downed power line. The gospel presents itself in the will to live. As difficult as it may be in this situation, I still have my life and this I can do to prolong it. It might not be obvious, but that gift will always be there as well, as long as it is not your appointed time to die.
If it is your time, if you understand the nature of God’s adoption of you as a child of God through the death of Christ, you have already handled your CAP. If you are trying to relate this to others, instead of trying to convince them that all you need is Jesus, try to explain the gospel within the CAP provisions that centers on what Jesus Christ has already done, not what you need to do. One is to accept what has already been done for you by Christ, the other is something in which you must carry at least part of the load. The good news gospel of peace with God flows through Christ alone.
In every situation you must understand the difference of the Indicative and the Imperative. The indicative is the reality of the situation which you cannot change, live with it, and adapt your methods to that reality. The imperative is what you really do within your situation. Do not venture into the area of wishful thinking. The all things work for God’s glory. Created in God’s image you have a role to play, but it is not to be God. Most of the time, whether we like it or not it is to be a truly transparent human being. That is one thing God has chosen to do through your humanity, because we all share the same dual nature in some degree, both saint and sinner.
So the good news is that you can be prepared for all things, by understanding and accepting God’s free gift of specific grace offered through Jesus Christ. Through that gift you can begin to develop an eternal personality that grows in knowledge, wisdom, and true observable science. That wealth of insight you will always have with you, no matter where you may find yourself, in a sunny day in a field of flowers, or hunkered down in a stupendous change storm of life. They both can be stupendous building aspects of your eternal nature. The first step is simply to accept your adoption as a child of God through Jesus Christ and then the continuum of all things lose their fear and become temporal building blocks of your eternal life.
PDF copy
As we move forward in this series we all need to have some better news. To paraphrase the old saying so far, “If it were not for bad news, I would have no news at all.”
Hopefully, now we can begin to build a positive base to develop a leadership structure to help others as we live through the storms of this life. That of course can be either natural storms or the storms of just living in a world in which death and dying are true constants, and Christianity proclaims itself as the one hope for a true peaceful eternal future.
Probably the first principle in stupendous change or survival situations is the fact that you can’t use what you don’t have with you. This is usually thought of as gear, but since this series is about leadership, there are a lot of things you will hopefully commit to memory, to call upon if needed. A book “Stupendous Change Leadership for Dummies” is probably not something you want to have on top of your survival kit, even though it might be used as a good fire starter.
To develop some of that internalized knowledge, let us start with a little science history. From the middle ages, if not before, creation has been formally considered a Natural Revelation of God. Science as we know it today really is an outgrowth or development of what was called Natural Philosophy of the 17th - 18th centuries. Mix in a little man centered enlightenment and eventually you end up with a uniform evolutionary science stretching back millions and billions of years. Simply in a world we created without God, there can be no other way for mankind to define our eternal nature, if through choice we decide to forego the hope of an eternal future through Jesus Christ.
These early scientific observations noted that creation is both beautiful and gentle, but also harsh and cruel. Mankind does very well with the understanding of law, natural, common, and legislative. Mankind doesn’t handle grace very well. Probably because grace at man’s created beginning was not needed, because he was by his nature in perfect peace with God and with nature. However, because man was created as good in a very good creation, that desire for goodness is part of his given nature and can not be completely eliminated as the result of sin.
In the Declaration of Independence, America’s revolutionary fathers speak about “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” giving supremacy to these Laws over the politics of man. The concept of common grace was not naturally understood by America’s founders. Formalized common grace, while it developed basically through Protestant Calvinism, still is clouded by it’s interaction with saving or redeeming grace. Saving grace, especially up through the development of modern observable descriptive science, works well in discussions of Natural Philosophy and Natural Law as well as the Bible’s specific revelations.
However, part of the reason that evolution became the natural world’s religion of choice is that it was made understandable to the normal population, while common grace was kept cloistered within the halls of cemeteries, and seminaries of the Christian elite. As we will use the term Common Grace, we will use it to describe all goodness in the world, without a prescribed or required linkage to specific Christian doctrine.
So to put it in some type of natural context, Common Grace and Specific Grace are related like apples and pears, rather than apples and oranges. All people are capable of performing acts of good or common grace, as well as common grace is present in a beautiful sunrise, a warm summer afternoon, flowers in a field, a bird singing, the list is infinite as is the nature of God. Specific Saving Grace is not present outside the revelation of the Bible, which points only to the propitiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross for the sins of mankind and His subsequent resurrection for our justification.
To say that God can not and does not use natural law and common grace to draw people to Him and to the Bible cannot be supported either through scripture or from natural evidence.
In the beginning God created the world through His spoken word. The Bible is God’s written word, a specific revelation of Jesus Christ given to the world, as an outline between the common reality of terminal death and dying, and a future reality in which death has been conquered. That reality is based upon creation, for only in that real world context does the Bible make sense.
What that means in our modern world of science, is looking back through the specific revelation of the Bible to creation as a visual revelation of God’s word, we find an opening to a specific revelation of God’s nature not contained within the pages of the Bible itself. Through that Bible lens alone, both become part of man’s canon of the total revelation of God.
What that means is not that just Christians can see God’s grace in creation, they also have access through the observable descriptive study of science, to universal laws, paradigms and insights not available through just a common revelation of nature to others. That is pretty heavy stuff, something that can be further developed at another time. However, all you need to do is to understand that western science is based upon the scientific discoveries of devout Christians and that science as we know it has not developed in any other culture.
For those looking for some Biblical context for this please read the following references: Romans 1: 18-32, with special emphasis on verses 20--22; Colossians 1:9-21, emphasis 16-20; 2 Peter 3:1-9, emphasis 3-4.
So if we are to look at creation science through the lens of the Bible what are we looking for? We are looking for complex information that can not happen by chance, or are information rich well beyond what casual observation can tell you. This Bible lens works like a microscope focusing in on minute order which might be seen, but can not be understood by atheistic evolution or even enlightenment deism.
So what has this to do with stupendous change and leadership, carrying what you need with you at all times? The NKJV of the Bible states the concept “all things” 179 times in 160 verses. The defining statement of all things is found in the familiar Romans 8:28: And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. Stupendous change events, no matter their source lie completely within the all things Bible paradigm.
Back in January, I published on the website a “1, 2, 3, D; A Deductive Bible Study Paradigm.” For most evangelicals in formal Bible study, those concepts described within, need to have developed much more descriptive materials. The concept behind the formation of the Bible study however, is to have a Bible study context you can carry with you all the time. Something that is easy to remember.
If we were to combine both the natural revelation of creation with the specific revelation of the Bible into God’s revelation to mankind, would the same study still work?
So to review this deductive paradigm, instead of One Bible, we substitute one Special Revelation of God present in the world, one spoken, one written. Instead of the Old and New Testaments, these spoken and written revelations point to the centrality of the cross within the canon of scripture. This of course only works within Christianity and no other religion. This is the first way of the “2 parts, 3 ways” of the deductive paradigm. The other two parts of the three ways still apply as written. For review those are Law & Gospel, and Indicative and Imperative.
Let us look at stupendous change in that light. By it’s very nature the outcome of a stupendous change event is beyond your control. That is manifest in two distinct ways, and in certain people may alternate between the two depending upon your previous training by God in stupendous change occurrences. Those who have seen God provide in the tough going know and expect the peace of God, which surpasses even the reality of the event, to guard not only their lives but also there emotions. This peace arrives even before you remember to pray.
Those who have not this assurance, come at it from the more Old Testament way, but if they are to survive they join everyone else at the cross central position. “Oh, God if you are real, get me out of this and I will serve you the rest of my life.” That first step is to confirm that commitment by accepting Christ’s holy sacrifice for your sins. If that does not take place immediately, generally speaking you have more life to live, more stupendous change to endure, God is not through with you yet. Even if you should pass without accepting God’s free gift, you no longer have an excuse.
Just as the Bible divides into Law & Gospel so does the Stupendous Change event. “Don’t try to walk to the grocery store during a hurricane,” is an obvious example of stupendous change natural law. Taking refuge from the storm in a well prepared shelter is an understanding of stupendous change common grace.
This brings us to the Indicative & Imperative. The indicative tells you that there is a hurricane blowing outside. The imperative tells you what to do about it. Simply seek shelter, pray, and wait for the storm to pass, comforting those around you that this shall pass.
However, before the stupendous change storm comes, and in the aftermath is where these two parts, three ways methods bear their fruit in the midst of the stupendous change happening.
Stupendous change events happen in this world, some of them are what we could call the disaster - catastrophe community type. Some are of the individual type, such as stroke, disease, or other problem with yourself or your family. As we have said from the beginning of this series Seattle, as the potential disaster center of the world, has a wealth of available materials from local agencies on the internet. While these are designed for cataclysm, the same principles of preparedness still apply to individual applications.
Those outside the Puget Sound region would be wise to consult Seattle, King County, and Washington State websites for this information. In following some links for this article, I just found another layer of planning information that I was unaware.
What this means is that you could spend your whole life worrying and preparing for something that may never happen in the way you prepared. That is why mental preparedness goes hand in hand with physical preparedness. No matter where you may find yourself, no matter how little you are prepared with stuff you have on hand, you can still make it through and help others also by just remembering stupendous change is only one aspect of the Bible’s all things.
In that context remember first and foremost to bring God to the center of the circumstance. That occurs naturally in all surviving human beings as part of our God given nature. This either comes from what we would call the Condemnation side of wearing your CAP or the Praise side of wearing your cap. Both trails lead to the fact that there is a provision of each and every human being to become an Adopted child of God. That “A” is always in the center of your CAP (Wear your cap!, 15 November 2006).
Next when you look at Law and Gospel, instead of looking to the Bible you are looking to creation. In any such circumstances, there are both the “thou shalt not” like pick up a live downed power line. The gospel presents itself in the will to live. As difficult as it may be in this situation, I still have my life and this I can do to prolong it. It might not be obvious, but that gift will always be there as well, as long as it is not your appointed time to die.
If it is your time, if you understand the nature of God’s adoption of you as a child of God through the death of Christ, you have already handled your CAP. If you are trying to relate this to others, instead of trying to convince them that all you need is Jesus, try to explain the gospel within the CAP provisions that centers on what Jesus Christ has already done, not what you need to do. One is to accept what has already been done for you by Christ, the other is something in which you must carry at least part of the load. The good news gospel of peace with God flows through Christ alone.
In every situation you must understand the difference of the Indicative and the Imperative. The indicative is the reality of the situation which you cannot change, live with it, and adapt your methods to that reality. The imperative is what you really do within your situation. Do not venture into the area of wishful thinking. The all things work for God’s glory. Created in God’s image you have a role to play, but it is not to be God. Most of the time, whether we like it or not it is to be a truly transparent human being. That is one thing God has chosen to do through your humanity, because we all share the same dual nature in some degree, both saint and sinner.
So the good news is that you can be prepared for all things, by understanding and accepting God’s free gift of specific grace offered through Jesus Christ. Through that gift you can begin to develop an eternal personality that grows in knowledge, wisdom, and true observable science. That wealth of insight you will always have with you, no matter where you may find yourself, in a sunny day in a field of flowers, or hunkered down in a stupendous change storm of life. They both can be stupendous building aspects of your eternal nature. The first step is simply to accept your adoption as a child of God through Jesus Christ and then the continuum of all things lose their fear and become temporal building blocks of your eternal life.