davidherin.org

Connecting the lost dots

Manuscript – my book blogged one article at a time

LIE: Worship is an experience of God’s presence, part 1

Lie: Worship is
an experience of God’s presence.
Truth: Worship is
a response to God that results in the arrangement of our lives around God.
I can’t think of any more important subject to get right
than the subject of worship. As Christians we all would agree that worshiping
God – whatever it is – is supremely important. And most would also agree that
getting this right is the one prerequisite to getting most everything else right. But the real disagreement
enters around what worship fundamentally is.
Too often we assume that we know this but the truth is that we’re confused.
Worship is such a broad and profound subject that there are simply too many
ways to get this wrong or woefully incomplete. Until we can better understand
the nature of worship it won’t really matter to talk about how we worship, which is precisely where most of the disagreement
normally occurs.

LIE: My life is meaningless

Lie: My life is meaningless
Truth: Your life is full of meaning and purpose.

This lie is told (most often subliminally) in different ways with different words, but all the ways and words are equally devastating:
 Life is meaningless
 What’s the use?
 It’s just not worth it
 What difference does it make?
 I have no purpose
 I’m bored
 I don’t know what to do.
 I give up
 What’s the point of it all?  or simply: ‘why . . Why . . WHY?!’
Nearly all of us struggle to some degree with this lie and no one is exempt from the assault. Some try to . . .

LIE: I will be satisfied if I learn the secret knowledge of the world

The philosophy of ancient Gnosticism perpetually reinvents itself. It’s the false religion that will not go away and that has come in many forms over the centuries. But it’s main tenant has not fundamentally changed. That tenant is this

LIE: We should keep quiet and not entertain conspiracy theories

Lie: We should keep quiet about conspiracy theories.
Truth: We should seek the truth and not be afraid to speak about anything, even so-called ‘conspiracy theories.’

To sin by silence, when we should protest / Makes cowards out of men. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from the first lines of her poem, Protest

LIE: I’m responsible for my health

Lie: I’m
responsible for my health.

Truth: What is
commonly called ‘our health’ is actually inseparable from our soul, which is integrally
dependent on God’s own life. So to be responsible for a health that is independent
of God, ignores the divine life intended to fill and power it.

LIE: My body belongs to me

It’s a common-enough assumption: ‘Hey, this is my body!’ After all, you may say, who else would it belong to? And furthermore, who else could do anything with it anyway? Yes, these are the bodies that we’ve been given, but that doesn’t mean they belong to us. We will one day leave this body — then whose body will it be?

LIE: We overcome boredom with entertainment

We’ve all experienced it — that vague feeling of aimlessness, restlessness, perhaps in the late afternoon; in a word, the doldrums. We experience it as background noise, but don’t really know what it is. It’s an unpleasant feeling that we seek to either eliminate or mask with external stimuli. And the stimulus could be anything as long as it’s colorful, animated, rhythmic, funny or engrossing: TV, YouTube, mischief, porn, movies, games, books, food or all of the above. We’ll do anything to get rid of it.

LIE: I can safely ignore God

Lie: I can safely ignore God.
Truth: I can ignore God, but not safely.

We’ve become good ignorers – those who’ve learned to ignore things extraordinarily well. It seems we’ve been forced to become so as a matter of survival, especially those of us crammed into cities, stacked in apartments, employed in corporate parks where 95% of the faces that continually pass us in the halls pass as strangers – we assiduously look down or away and without a drop of conscience.
And think of all the ads, the background music/Mazak, the SMS texts, the Instagram feeds to which we’ve frivolously subscribed, the robo-calls, the signs, the spam, the junk mail, the news and information – it never stops coming. To have any chance . . .

LIE: Christians shouldn’t get discouraged

We usually think that joy and sorrow are mutually exclusive – you can’t have both at the same time. But that’s simply not true. In his second letter to the Corinthian church, which most regard as his most autobiographical, Paul says:
” . . as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing . . .”

LIE: Sleep is a waste

Lie: Sleep is a waste.
Truth: Sleep is a rehearsal for death and resurrection.

It’s one of life’s most familiar daily routines but at the same time one of its greatest mysteries. It’s something we all do each night but something we could not avoid even if we tried. What am I talking about? It’s that phenomenon where we go involuntarily unconscious for hours, commonly known as: sleep.