Jesus and Culture Well thank you very much. It's very gracious
words, and I'm just thrilled to be here, and to be a part of your walk with Jesus. Some people kind of find it a little odd that
a philosophy professor should do all the things I do - in particular, that I should be such
an explicit advocate and follower of Jesus Christ. But that's because of a peculiar past
that we have in our culture. The truth of the matter is, when the Christian
gospel came into the Greco-Roman world, it was understood to be answering the questions
that the philosophers were asking. And especially in the second and third century of Western
history, the intellectuals converted en masse precisely because (and they said because)
the gospel of Jesus Christ, with the background from the people of Israel and the Old Testament,
answered the questions that, at that point, philosophers had been trying to answer for
five hundred years or so. Today we live in a situation where the culture
has more or less taken Jesus and put him aside. You don't think of Jesus as being particularly
intellectual, or intelligent. You think he's nice, but not smart. And if you ask a group
of unsuspecting people who's the smartest person in the world, they won't think of Christ.
They'll think of Bill Gates, and Einstein maybe, or some of the others that now are
on the horizon of the intellectual life. But they don't think of Jesus. Christ and Kingdom And so, when we come with the message of Christ
into our world, we get recategorized. And what one of the main things that I want to
do, this morning especially, is try to shift that back and help us see Jesus Christ in
a different kind of way. The theme that we're following here is the divine conspiracy, and
we're going to be talking about dimensions of that as we go along. I've put up on the screen - and I wonder if
someone wants to do something about this message that's being sent to me - how about don't
display this message again? Let's do that! I've put up here a couple of passages from
Paul's letters, because Paul was the one who really came to understand the place of Christ
in world history. And if you just look at Colossians chapter 1,
verse 13, speaking of Christ, "For he delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred
us into the kingdom of his beloved Son." You'll want to note the occurrence of the
word "kingdom" there. Paul understood how the Kingdom worked, and what the Kingdom was,
and where Christ stood in relationship to it. Authority "In his beloved Son we have redemption, the
forgiveness of sins, and he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all Creation."
Watch how Christ is being pushed out to be inclusive of everything. "For by him all things
were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or
dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created by him and for him." (Colossians
1:13-14) That's pretty inclusive, isn't it. All things
have been created by him and for him. And he is before all things. He is prior to all
things. And in him everything holds together. That is to say, the order that is in the chair
you're seated on, is Christ in action. And then he goes on to say, "He is also the
head of the body, the church, and he's the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so
that he himself might come to have first place in everything." See, that is the picture of
Christ that impressed these people who made up the first century Christian body. This
is how they thought about him. And this is how we must think about him today, if we're
going to understand reality. Reality. Because that's what this is all about. It's about
reality. Humility And he goes on to spell that out, just a word
or two from Philippians, because this puts the drama in a little different way. Philippians
2:5, "Have this attitude in yourselves which is also in Christ Jesus, who although he existed
in the form of God..." and we have to talk about that at some length later on, the form
of God, "did not regard equality with God a thing to be held on to..." Now this is one of the most amazing things
in all of the cosmos, what he did. "He emptied himself, taking the form of a bondservant,
and being made in the likeness of men..." This mind that was in Christ Jesus was one
that arose out of a community which we call the Trinity. And the absolute stunning quality
of love and trust in that community was that one who had it all could it turn it all loose
in confidence that he'd lost nothing. He emptied himself, took the form of a slave.
Took the shape, the condition of human beings, and being found in appearances a man, he humbled
himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. Death I see the meaning of the cross is it is the
ultimate point of emptying out of one who was equal with God. Laying that down, turning
it loose in death on the cross. And now, that cross became the center point of the divine
conspiracy. Someone asked me a few days ago, why did Jesus
die on the cross? I said, so Mel Gibson can make that movie. And that's true; it's profoundly
true. Jesus planned it. And brought it off, and all through the ages that has stood there
as a high point in human history. The cross! Think about that. See. What is
God doing? Does it that way... Who would have chosen to do it that way? No one. And of course
that's for our benefit, because that's where we are in union with God, and in union with
Christ, and where we walk forward in what he's doing now, as we join him on the cross. The cross See the reality of Christ and the cross in
human history is what brings us into the flow of the single greatest force in human life,
which is the cross. And believing that totally flips everything upside down. It affirms a
kingdom which is eternal, and different from anything that human... Therefore God is highly
exalted in verse 9 of Philippians 2: "And bestowed on him the name that is above every
other name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, those that are in heaven
and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ
is Lord to the glory of God the Father." When I was younger and a great deal meaner
than I am now, I used to believe that this was a picture of Christ standing with his
foot on the neck of every resisting person, and making them say - You're Lord! I don't
think that's the picture at all. I think the picture here, one, is going to be one of great
relief, where even the people who had not accepted him will thank God that he is who
he is, and that the world is a reflection of that kind of God. So now, when we think of the divine conspiracy,
we're thinking of God in action in history. And this is a description of the central personality
of God in action in history, and that is Jesus Christ. Images of the Kingdom Now Jesus himself taught mainly about the
Kingdom of God. It was on the assumption, of course, that he and his Father and his
Spirit were the King. But in Matthew 13 you have these wonderful parables of the Kingdom
of God. You know that Jesus mainly spoke about the Kingdom of God; that's what he talked
about. Or in the Matthew version, the Kingdom of Heaven. That was his gospel. We'll talk
more about that later. One of the ways that he taught, was by means
of parables. And figures of speech. So what's the Kingdom of God like? Well the
Kingdom of God is like a kind of life. Mustard seed And here he says in Matthew 13:31, "The Kingdom
of Heaven is like a mustard seed." Little bitty seed. "A man sows it in his field."
It's smaller than all other seeds. See, that's Christ pouring himself out. That's Christ
dying on the cross. It's hard to get more insignificant than that. But that's the way the Kingdom is. The Kingdom
from the human point of view looks like nothin'. Very small, very insignificant. "It is smaller
than all other seeds, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants
and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches." The little
bitty seed, it grows. Leaven And then another parallel he draws is in verse
33. "The Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven." Leaven is yeast. It's a kind of thing that
grows and takes over. It's very like a virus. But it grows and it penetrates. "The Kingdom
of Heaven is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three pecks of meal," or about
a bushel. "And she hid it there until every part of the meal," or dough, "was leavened."
Leaven works quietly. Just keeps growing, just like that mustard seed. So now, that's
what we want to think about - the divine conspiracy. When I was in the process of publishing the
book, The Divine Conspiracy, I had intended to entitle it "The Kingdom Among Us," because
that's what it's really about, the Kingdom among us. But editors and publishers have
ideas about titles. And they didn't like that. For one thing, they were worried about queendoms,
and not just kingdoms. And other things that came up; they didn't like it. So there was
discussion about it. And then one day after another discussion
by telephone which led nowhere, as I walked back to my study, the Lord said to me, "The
Divine Conspiracy." Now I had never thought of that, had never occurred to me. I wasn't
trying to think about it. But that's the way it comes sometimes. The Lord does talk to
people. And so I turned around in mid course, and went back to the telephone and called
them and said, "The Divine Conspiracy." They said, "The Divine Conspiracy," and that was
the end of the discussion. But I do think it is a wonderful concept,
to cover the Kingdom of God. The divine conspiracy is God's plan and process of overcoming evil
with good in human history. And that is what he's doing. And that is why the cross and
that is why the resurrection. Understanding Knowledge Now, we need to talk about knowledge, because
that's what we bring, is knowledge. And we need to understand what knowledge is, because
that's the battle we're in, when we bring the message of the divine conspiracy. And
if you don't understand what knowledge is you really, I think, won't know how you stand
in the battle. The constant problem for human life is to
find an adequate basis for life in knowledge. In other words, we need to know what we're
doing. And by and large, we suffer from a lack of knowledge. And most of all, from a
lack of knowledge of God. What is God, and what is God doing? Now of course we have to know things like
where food comes from, and what's likely to harm us or help us, and how to get about in
the world and deal with the issues of life. That's certainly important. And the story
of human progress has been a story of progressive knowledge, so that we can do more and more
and more things. The things we can do now that even that a
person has almost no means at all, the things they can do now, compared to what people could
do in the days of Alexander the Great; it's just transformed beyond recognition. We're
used to it of course. And we know more and more what to do. But we also on the side of research are constantly
researching more and more what to do. We know, for example, we're not exactly the head of
the food chain. Perhaps something in the order of a virus or a bacteria are at the head of
the food chain, and they'd like to eat us. And we're in a constant battle trying to head
them off and get something that will stop them, and then they're fighting back by adapting
and adjusting - so the stuff we learned to use to stop them won't stop them much anymore.
And so it's a constant battle. Food, armaments. Terrorism for example exists
today because of the increase of knowledge. For most of human history you could not blow
up a bunch of people at the same time. And if you were going to hurt people you had to
get close to them. Now you can blow up a lot of people at the same time, and you don't
even have to be in the area to do it. And all of that is knowledge, you see. And so, knowledge is absolutely central and
what we bring when we talk about Jesus Christ and what he's doing, is knowledge of reality. Knowledge defined Now bear with me, and let's work this through.
We know something when we're able to represent it as it is. That's knowledge. We know something
when we're able to represent it as it is on an adequate basis of thought and experience.
So we don't just bring things that happen to be true guesses - but it is based in experience
and thought. And in the case of the teachings that we bring as Christians to the world - or
as followers of Christ to the world - in the case of those, it involves a tradition that
involves the Bible, and involves the church and church history. It involves the community
of thought and experience that now exists, and so knowledge is a communal kind of thing.
Now there are traps in that that we'll talk about later, but that's important to understand. So when we come with the message of Christ,
we come out of the context of Bible, church and history and of course the overarching
presence of the Spirit and our best experience and thought ourselves as we go along. Knowledge and truth Now, knowledge involves truth. And that's
why it's so important. Because you can have a true belief but not know. Right. You could
guess and be right. You might think in terms of an investment, and you might invest your
money in it. And you might be lucky, and be right, and get rich. But it wasn't because
you knew; it was because you just happened to be right. So, you can't guide life by what happens to
be true. We can't grow by guessing, because the thing about guessing is you never know
whether or not it's true until it's all over. And guessing about God of course is something
that extremely hazardous for your health. Because if you're wrong in that case, you're
in real trouble. But that's true of everything that's important in life. We need knowledge
and not just truth. But truth is why knowledge is so important. It...it is what enables us
to deal with reality in a way that is good for us, shall we say. An idea or belief is
true if what it is about is as that idea or belief represents it. Truth and God So for example take John 3:16, "God so loved
the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him, puts their confidence
in him, will not perish, but have everlasting life." Now that's a big idea. And often when we're
sitting around talking about all religions being the same, I will raise the question
if it seems appropriate - Is there another religion that says that God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten Son. And suddenly there's a silence in the room. See, that's a watershed issue on the nature
of God. Is God really like that? Does God really love the world? And does God really
act in the world in that way? Now, is that true? Now, you see, if that is true, everything
is changed. If that's true everything is changed. If that's true, then I can trust God. And
I can trust him with everything. So that means that I don't have to run my life. And fight
with others over the bones of life like two dogs in an alley. You see, that means that
I can release my life into God's hands. I can trust him. That means I can do what he
says in confidence it's a good thing, and not just something designed to make me miserable. And so the idea here turns out to be extremely
important towards truth. Cultural Metanarratives So going along with that now, why do people
perish for lack of knowledge? Well, they perish - to make it very short
and sweet - because, if you don't have knowledge, reality will run over you, or desert you,
or leave you out. Whereas if we act with knowledge and truth,
our actions harmonize with reality. Otherwise not, or they do it just by chance. So this
now is why it is so important for us to get the right take on what God is doing. On there
being a God. On the nature of the world that we live in. There are really three background stories
in our culture today. Naturalism One is the idea that the natural world or
the visible world is all there is. We can't see all of it, but that's all there is. That's
called naturalism. It is the guiding philosophy of a major segment of our culture, and mostly
of our universities, is naturalism. That's why, for example, in no area of competence
today is knowledge of God required. You won't get a question about God in any PhD examination
in any field. Possibly not even in religion. And, that's naturalism. Naturalism basically
says the visible world is the only world. Nothing more to it than what is physical. Nirvana And the other popular idea is what I call
the nirvana view. And the nirvana view is also what we call New Age [See New Age Spirituality].
It's the idea that the world that we see is an illusion, and that the real world is a
world of non-differentiation, where, for example, you and I are not distinct. We are actually
the same. And I've had students at USC that'll come
in and present this line to me. And I'll say, Do you mean that you are identical with the
wastebasket? And they will say yes. See, they're committed to that idea of non-differentiation.
And then the third view...You have the naturalist view, the nirvana view. Theism The third view is the theistic view. That's
the one our culture came out of, and of course there's a very strong representation of that
now. Those views dominate the discussions. The theistic view now is generally pushed
to one side, or treated...treated as some odd cultural artifact. But the very idea that
the ultimate reality is a god, and that this God is a God who is all-powerful and all-loving
- see, that is not thought of as knowledge. Now, whether or not we're right or wrong about
that is the great question. One of the things that sticks in the throat of many people is
that Christians talk as if there is an ultimate difference in where you wind up. That, if
you believe certain kinds of things, you will not be OK. You understand what I'm saying? See, that's one of the things that really
sticks in the craw of many people in our culture today. And we're not going to be able to go
into all of that and why that's true in these times we have together; though when we come
to question period, you may actually want to raise those questions, and if you do that's
fine. Truth and Reality But the fact is now is that reality is totally
unyielding to false belief. Truth is unforgiving. It does not change if you have certain opinions.
No one has ever made a belief true by believing it. Beliefs are true or not in terms of the
reality which they represent. So if we get it wrong, we're in trouble. And I often define reality as what you run
into when you're wrong. Because the university has a real problem coming to grips with reality
and truth, and our culture does also. But if you believe there is gas in your tank,
and there's no gas, you will run into reality. Probably in the form of your car stopping
on the freeway or somewhere, and then you will have to have help. Now truth on the other hand, frees you from
reality you disagree with. If you are true in your belief, then you will sail down the
highway; you will not need any help; you will get where you want to go; you will be able
to turn around and come home. You will experience wonderful freedom because you - the truth
of your belief that you have gas in your tank will facilitate your operation, and you will
not wind up in disagreement with reality. So now it's important for us to understand
that, because when we come talking about Christ and his Kingdom, and the divine conspiracy,
the primary issue is truth. Is it truth? Or is it falsehood? Human Efforts and Babel Now, Babel represents human efforts to succeed
by human abilities. And...the human beings want to run their world and be in charge,
and we want to do that corporately, and we go back to the old story in Genesis 11. What
you see here is people who on the basis of the quite mistaken knowledge that they had,
decided on a policy. They were going to build a tower that would give them an identity first
of all. And allow them to know who they were: well, we're the people with the tower. But that tower also, they thought, would also
take them into a different realm. The realm of the gods. They actually believed this,
but it represents the human efforts to succeed without God. The human effort to find the
knowledge that we need, and carry on in a way that we will be successful leaving God
out. They had no idea of what they were doing, and it is of course pathetic. Contemporary Babel But then we have to recognize that today,
the Babel of today is the secular knowledge system of the universities and professions.
And that operates in our culture on this idea that often comes up in terms of separation
of church and state. That's a very confused idea, and I don't want
to try to analyze it here, but just to say this. That if it was assumed that the church
had essential knowledge of life, without which human beings could not live well, or live
at all, there would be no question of separation of church and state. The idea of separating
church from state, which means separating religion from political processes, that whole
idea is predicated on the idea that religion has nothing to say about reality. And if it were thought that for example, if
you practiced a certain kind of religion, that would substantially transform the human
situation, there would be no issue about separation of church and state any more than there is
an issue - would be an issue about - separating physics from state. All right. There wouldn't
be a question. The key question And, some of you... I know you couldn't possibly
remember, but several years ago, the Maharishi wanted to bring in transcendental meditation
as a way of transforming society. And practicing this in government buildings, and schools
and all of that and so on. And there was actually quite a buzz about it, because the truth of
the matter is, if you practice the things he was talking about, it will make a difference
in your state of mind. But of course it didn't make enough difference
to impress anyone in the end. All right, then. Once the Beatles had had a round with it,
and a few other leading people had had a round of it, then they gave it up. The same thing
is true of many other areas, and I don't mean to be pugnacious about this, because being
pugnacious about it is just the stupidest thing you can possibly do. But you want to
be realistic. What can transcendental meditation actually do? Or here, we have Ron L. Hubbard Way right
down here, and the whole operation. So the whole question is what it can actually
do. Can it do what Jesus Christ can do? Is there anything that Jesus Christ can do that
it can't do? See, those are factual questions, and now, people who follow Ron Hubbard, or
the Maharishi, they want to say that they have knowledge that is not in the possession
of the universities and the professions. And the greatest single issue facing the Christian
church today is: do they have knowledge that is essential to human life. Or is it just
another wild faith project? Where you launch yourself into something and maybe pretend
that you're being delivered and so on. Human limitations Now the human limitations of knowledge are
very great. And when we're realistic about it, we have to come to terms with that question.
Can human beings on their own achieve the knowledge they need in order to live? And
the answer is no. So when we think about the Bible, what we're
actually talking about here is this issue. Suppose that the Bible, in a way that needs
to discussed of course, that the Bible contains the most important information about the most
important issues in human life. Suppose that were true. Suppose there is a God of love,
who actually speaks to human beings. So now, if you are - if you have certain credentials
in our culture, you may try to write a book about the cosmos. Since I'm growing older, I never know what
young people know, but are you familiar with the old Cosmos on television, Carl Sagan?
If not, it's a kind of a nice thing to know about, because here you have an individual
who's actually taking that first story that I mentioned - the naturalist story - and trying
to blow it into a total knowledge of human life. Well. The truth of the matter is, he has almost
nothing to say about the things that matter most for human life. Simple things like, what
am I going to do? See, that's the knowledge that is central to human life. What am I going
to do? Well, you've told me a wonderful story now about the cosmos, but I need to decide
what I'm going to trust in my actions to determine basic moral and vocational choices. What am
I going to do? See, that's the kind of information that one
needs and the biblical tradition offers some information about that, shall we say, and
introduces you to a God who just might speak to you, and give you guidance in your life
by walking with you and talking with you, and guiding and helping you. And so you see
that's a different source of knowledge. Knowledge and Self Will Now, it's a good thing that we're limited
in our knowledge, because our will, our self will, is really unlimited. And Descartes,
in a marvelously dry and philosophical fashion, brings this out, the philosopher Descartes,
because he says that all evil in human life comes from will running beyond knowledge.
That we are willing things that are not based on knowledge, and that's where all evil comes
from. And he built a whole theodicy on that. But the truth of the matter is, knowledge
is very limited, and it grows very slowly. And I believe that if we say why that is,
we'd have to say that God allows knowledge to grow slowly in order that we might have
opportunity to grow morally, if you wish. Knowledge brings power In other words, very simply, knowledge brings
power. Power brings responsibility. If you're not going to misuse it and hurt yourself and
others, you're going to have to be the kind of person who wouldn't do that, you see. And now that's our problem, isn't it. So at
least for two centuries, there's been a constant moan going up from the scholarly world that
we - our moral growth has not kept up with our technological development. I mean, just imagine if they had atomic bombs
in the day of Genghis Khan. Well, imagine if we had them in our day. Well
very interestingly, when we got them, though they were used with horrible results, still
we entered into a period where there was a moral restraint. Used to be called MAD - Mutually
Assured Destruction. Now then we're dealing with people who don't
care if you do destroy them. So that's a new stage. Right. Now how are we going to deal
with that. See, the great issue today on the human stage,
is how will the civilization that is still - whether it knows it or not - basically Christian,
deal with a culture that has a totally different take on God, and on who they are, and what
they should do. Right. What are we going - how are we going to deal with that? Just bomb
them into oblivion? Probably not. But who is going to answer that question?
See that's where we have to understand that Jesus is still working on the stage, and that
the divine conspiracy continues to grow. Knowledge sets limits on desire Our self-will is set against truth and knowledge
because truth and knowledge always limit what you can desire. Our desires always exceed
reality, and if you don't know that just watch how credit cards are used. We will what is
not. Right. Credit is one way of willing what is not. And sometimes it's good, and sometimes
it's not. So, it's true of individuals and groups, and
Paul has this wonderful verse, so analytic. Romans 1 is the most important part of social
analysis in the whole Bible. And Romans 1:18 talks about how people turn away from God
and then they suppress the truth in unrighteousness. And that is true of individuals and groups
and institutions. And it comes out of that basic conflict between will and knowledge. You have a wonderful illustration of this
in the case of Simon Magnus in Acts 8. Remember Simon Magnus was a person who had certain
abilities at least to fool people, and to make them think he was great. That's why he
came to be known as Magnus. And in chapter 8 of the book of Acts you remember
Philip is in Samaria, and Peter and John come down; and the manifestations of the Spirit
in power are such that Simon Magnus, who had lined himself up as a believer under Philip
- the preaching of Philip - Simon Magnus offered money to John and Peter if they would give
him the power to do the things that he saw them doing. Simon Magnus was interested in power, but
he was not interested in truth. And the story on Simon Magnus is that he eventually killed
himself in Rome by announcing that he was going to fly from the top of a tower. And
he jumped but he didn't fly. And that's the problem. God and the Human Will Now God looks at the heart, and in thinking
about knowledge, he's concerned with the heart, and that's the will. God is trying to perfect
the will in human history. And I like to put this just by saying about us individually,
that God's intent for each of us is that we should become the kind of person whom he can
empower to do whatever we want. You see the real issue here is - what kind of a person
am I? The character of Christ Now go back to the statement from Philippians
2 for just a moment. God, Jesus, the third member of the Trinity in his eternal condition,
turned it all loose. He didn't have power any longer. He subjected himself even to the
death of the cross. Well, what does that show? That shows a will, a character. You see, it's
in our heart that we decide what we're really about. And in particular whether what we want
will govern us. Will it be God, or will it be us? And that abandonment that you see in Jesus,
is the abandonment that we ourselves can live in joyfully and with delight and also with
power and with knowledge; and all of that comes together as God grows the human being
into the kind of character that Christ has. Now suppose that everyone had that character.
Or suppose that a significant percentage of the human race had that character. And you
can see that life would be very different. And that is the intention of the divine conspiracy
in human history. So what God looks for is the heart, always
the heart. The heart is where we decide what we're really going to be. What is going to
govern us. And of course the central issue is the surrendering of the will, abandoned
to God, delighted in him, and his will. And then as that grows, then it's perfectly safe
for us to have knowledge and power and so on. The hiddenness of God But this current situation is one in which
God is not obvious. And that is because he is interested in the will. And this theme
- deus absconditus, to use the Latin; everyone needs a little Latin - is an old one in the
history of the church. Because God doesn't overwhelm you. God comes in ways that are
gentle. And the reason for that is because, if we - if God didn't hide from us, we couldn't
hide from him. You see, my knowledge of this thing is not
up to where my will is. So we have a illustration here. So the basic idea here is that God hides to
permit us to hide from him, if we want to. See he's so big, that if he didn't hide, we
couldn't hide. So that you may need to think about that some. Now that's why there is a
divine conspiracy. A conspiracy is something that is hidden. God does not overwhelm us.
He does not jump down our throats. He remains hidden and available to those who seek him. The parables of Jesus Now there is something in Matthew 13 that
you want to think about here, because Jesus explains why he uses parables. He taught in
parables, and today, because there's such a deal about telling stories, people like
often suggest - well Jesus was just a good storyteller. But he explains in this passage,
Matthew 13:13-17 why he used parables. And he said, "So those who see can not see. And
that those who hear can not hear." You may recall that he often used the phrase in his
teaching: "He that hath ears to hear let him hear." That's an interesting phrase, don't you think.
What it says is not everyone has ears for the purpose of hearing. Not everyone has eyes
for the purpose of seeing. What do they have ears for? And eyes for? Well, they have eyes
and ears for the purpose of sorting and arranging things. Now this goes back to what we were
talking about earlier, about the need to adjust what we take reality to be, the need to adjust
that so that it will suit our will. And what Jesus is talking about here, is he
speaks in parables, so that those who have eyes not for seeing will not see what he's
talking about. See that is God's provision for the will that doesn't want him. If you
don't want him, you don't have to have him. At least not now.
So, I hope you'll think about this because it's fundamental to Jesus' way of teaching,
and to Jesus, and to the Bible. A provision for human desire That teaching about the parables, ties in
with something here that you see in C.S. Lewis. Lewis has this wonderful passage in Letter
8 of Screwtape Letters, where he's talking about how God does not override people's will.
The devil will do that. And this language here: "Merely to override
a human will, as his [God's] felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated
degree would certainly do would be for him [that is for God] useless. He cannot ravish.
He can only woo. For his ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it. The creatures are
to be one with him, and yet themselves." Now, if you have a copy of Screwtape Letters,
I really urge you to read on this theme of the divine conspiracy, and the hiddenness
of God, what Lewis says in that letter. Because it is important for us to understand why God
is not obvious. I mean he could have been obvious. But he is not obvious because of
the need to allow human desire and will to go its way, because that's what defines human
character. The Presence of God Now, when I said God's intent for each of
us is that we should grow to the point to where he can empower us to do what we want,
you see you realize immediately, well, there's a lot of work to do on the wanter. And that
is what both individual life and human history is about. Is God calling forth the human will,
and allowing the human being to have an identity. So God is present, but in ways that anyone
who wishes to deny can deny. The long series of individuals in the Old
Testament. I mean, for that matter, beginning with, with Adam and Eve. The experience in
the Garden. But then Noah, Abraham, Isaac, David - now what characterizes these people
is they're very different. But that difference is not a visible one. You can see it in its
effects, if you want to see it. But if you want to deny it, you can deny it. The Nature of Christ Same way with Jesus. We often ask ourselves,
perhaps, how could people be in the presence of Jesus and deny him? Remember what we're
talking about here, and you'll understand that. See. If you see how Jesus comes, born
in the manger, lives a simple life out in the boondocks, comes in as an outsider, essentially.
And is regarded as such, so people are like, where did you get your authority? You didn't
go to school with Rabbi So and So. And of course John the Baptist was there as
a sort of sticking out like a sore thumb, an Old Testament prophet that people could
not deny as such. And he identified Jesus, and that gave Jesus a place to stand, humanly
speaking, to do his work. But still he was rejected. And Paul you remember says in 1 Corinthians
that if the rulers of this world had understood and recognized the lord of glory they would
not have crucified him. (1 Corinthians 2:6-8) I mean, imagine if the rulers of this world
had understood what we read about in Colossians 1 a few moments ago. Would they have crucified...
Well actually, they almost didn't crucify him, and this is a story in itself. But if Jesus had just said three more words
to Pilate, he wouldn't have crucified him. (Mark 15:1-5) That's why he was silent. See,
Jesus was working that whole process to his ends; he was the one who was in control. And
he told Pilate that, didn't he. (John 18:33-38) It really was true. He was controlling that
process. He was not a victim. And yet he looked like a victim. The post-resurrection presence is most interesting.
You know, if it had been me, rising from the dead, probably the first place I would have
gone was I would go back to Pilate and say, "Now can we have that discussion about truth
and power one more time?" All right. That's perhaps the way I would think about it. God's hidden ways Perhaps that's the way Peter would have thought
about it. You remember Peter when he, after he'd made his great confession, and Jesus
said, I'm going to die on the cross - Peter said, that's not for you, and Jesus actually
called Peter Satan. (Matthew 16:21-23) And he said, "You do not savor the things of God,
but the things that be of man. " See those - there are two ways. The two ways.
The things of God and the things of man. The Kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. I think I would have come into Pilate's palace
on a big Huey helicopter, something like that, you know, and then maybe after that I would
have gone by to visit a session of the Sanhedrin in process. Say, gentlemen, would you like
to think again about your choice? Now, what's interesting is he didn't do...
He did not appear to a single one of those. And Acts 10 tells us that he became visible
only to those who had been prepared beforehand. Don't you find that interesting? You see, that fits the picture. God is present
but present in the Bible. But just think of how the Bible can be disregarded, or twisted.
People say you can proved anything out of the Bible. That's only because they don't
know what proof is, but the fact is, that you can allege proof of almost anything out
of the Bible. Well, why is that? God's conspiratorial nature You have to understand, it's because of the
conspiratorial nature of God in human history, and that is there because of the need to allow
human beings to make their choices, both individually, and in groups, in nations. We make our choices;
we're going to have an election here, in this country. And I'm not running on either side, but I'll
just say - see, what happens is people make a choice. They will make a choice, and it
will be a manifestation. I mean, imagine a choice. It's the economy, stupid. Is it really?
See. Suppose we make the choice in the basis of the economy. Well that says something about
our character. What would be the other...See individuals and groups make their choices. Now, the church itself can be looked at in
all kinds of ways. And of course it is, isn't it. And it's a great battleground, that people
interpret and reinterpret. And someone was saying on the radio the other day the thing
about the Marxists was that you can...you can't be...you can be sure about the future. What you can't be sure about was the past,
because they were in such in such a frenzy of interpretation and reinterpretation of
the past to make their theories stand up. And we look at the past in the church, and
we try to make it come out to where we want it to be today. Whether it's a political or
a moral issue, or whatever it may be. But the church can be twisted. The Spirit's invisible presence Now listen to the words you see in Colossians
3:1 through 4. Let's do 1 through 4. "If you then be risen with Christ, seek those things
that are above where Christ is seated on the right hand of God. Set your affections on
things above, not on things on the earth. For you are dead and your life is hid with
Christ in God." Your life is hid. What your life is, as Christian, is hid. Now this is the same lesson that Jesus was
teaching Nicodemus in John 3. Those who are born of the Spirit are moved by something
that is not visible. It's like the wind, you can't see the wind, but you can see the effects
of the wind. But you see if you are set to interpret that
hidden part in other ways, you can do that. It's up to you. You don't have to accept the
reality of Christ in the church. You don't have to accept that. You can try to treat
it in other ways. You are - your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our
life, will appear, then you will also appear. You get to know and see who you are for the
first time. God is present, but... The Divine Conspiracy So then here's what the divine conspiracy
is. The divine conspiracy is God's plan to overcome evil with good in the grinding processes
of human nature. The Kingdom works that way. You are tied into that reality of the Kingdom
of God that is going to bring to pass this condition where the earth shall be filled
with the knowledge of - the Habakkuk version of this - it's a prophetic theme. But if you read Isaiah 6, you will read that
the earth is filled with the glory of God. But it is not filled with the knowledge of
the glory of God, because Isaiah you'll remember, in that passage in Isaiah 6, he's faced with
God in the Temple. And God is saying, "Who shall I send, and who will go with me?" And
that's where Isaiah says, "Here am I. Send me." Saying... Why? Because the knowledge of God is painfully
absent. But the future is where the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory
of God as the waters cover the sea. The crucifixion is the centerpoint So now the crucifixion then is the centerpoint
of it all. Where crucifixion is the high point of the revelation of the hidden Kingdom. Colossians
says, "And through him we reckon to reconcile all things to himself." (Colossians 1:20)
All things to himself. "Having made peace through the blood of his cross, through him
I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven." That is where the conspiracy comes
out. That is what when you walk around here in
Hollywood, and you look at all the things that are here, and the people, and you say,
What's this all about? It's about this. It's about a process through which individuals
and groups move toward the reconciliation of all things in Christ. And I, if I be lifted
up, Jesus said, I will draw all men unto me. One way or another they will all come to him.
Being lifted up, he was referring to the cross. And he did this very consciously with back
reference to the Old - to the stories in the Law, about the poisonous serpents that were
lifted up; and there was a time when Israel had sinned, and the poisonous serpents came
into there and were killing people. (Numbers 21:2-9) And when these poisonous serpents
bit someone, if - Moses was instructed by God to put a symbol of a serpent up on a post
where they could look at that serpent. And what did that serpent represent? It represents
the poison of human self-will. That is what killed Jesus, and what is seen on the cross. The cross is opposed to self-will Now, if you don't know the Kingdom of God,
then the human self-will is all that's left. But the cross is designed to help people see
what self-will does. What living as one's own king does. And it is by looking at that
and recognizing it, and turning to God, in Christ, and giving up one's self-will and
saying I want to live in the invisible Kingdom of God which is now available, that we come
to... So, what... What we need, what we must have, what the
people of Christ bring into the world is truth in a community of crucifixion. You see, human
beings really can't deal with truth on their own. So that's why, for example, instead of
saying that truth will make you free, you might more aptly say the truth will make you
flee. This is a little change there. The truth will make you flee. It's an important change, because the truth
that human beings get apart from God is always, or nearly always, destructive. And it will
be used for our purposes. And those purposes, not subjugated to God, will be harmful. Community of Crucifixion So now think of...think of how the community
of crucifixion handles this. Paul speaks in 1 Timothy of the household of God. He's saying
to Timothy, I'm coming, and I want to instruct you. But now I'm writing you some things you
will know how to conduct yourself in the household of God. Which is the church of the living
God. The pillar and support of truth. (1 Timothy 3:1-7) This is very interesting. The church supports
truth. How can that be? Didn't we want to say the truth supports the church? Well, truth
can only be endured and promoted in a community of grace, where self-will does not rule, but
where love rules. And so that's why you want to understand that Jesus did not say the truth
will make you free. And the elevator in the Humanities building
at USC, it just says, "The truth will make you free." Apparently you don't even have
to know it any longer. It's just has this wonderful mystical capacity. And this is where
Babel winds up. Babel as I earlier explained it, with a blind confidence in human research.
And that the problems will be solved. Now here's what Jesus said. Jesus said, "If
you continue in my word," and that means that you're living in it. "If you continue in my
word, then you are my disciples indeed. And you will know the truth, and the truth will
set you free." (John 8:31-33) See that's the whole sentence. Jesus did not say the truth
will make you free. It won't. But, confidence in him, and living with him, and being his
disciple, will enable you to know the truth in a way that it sets you free. So it's very
important to understand that. Social Authority Now just finally for this session, the issue
of social authority is the issue of who has knowledge. And that's what I in this first
session want to try to drive home as we conclude. That is the issue underlying all the battles
of our day. Who has knowledge. And for reasons which, historical - and we could go into if
we had time - the message of Christ through its institutions in the church and the schools,
that message has been set aside as a basis of life, truth, and knowledge. The secular mind has redefined knowledge so
that it alone has it. Christians do not. And Christians often have conceded this. The single
greatest terrible mistake in the last two centuries, has been the willingness of the
Christian church to walk away from knowledge. And to try to substitute for various reasons
something called faith. The knowledge of reality And the result of that is that determining
policy for life, which is not the only issue by any means here, but determining policy
for life, is left to the secular mind. So the greatest challenge of the people of Jesus
Christ today, is to stand in our world as representing knowledge of reality. And with
love and with intelligence to show that we have that knowledge by the lives that we lead.
And that is the pressure point of the work that we do today. Now you are going... You're in your churches,
and your various situations in life. And what I'm saying is, for me where I am, for you
where you are, the great challenge is to stand where we are and say we have knowledge of
reality, and this is shown by the lives that we lead. The Conspiracy and Character But the basic idea now, in the first session,
is this: there is a divine conspiracy and it will win. And it is a conspiracy because
God must be hidden in order that humanity may take the alternatives that presents itself
to self will, and character grows out of that. Now you know, I think we all really know that
with reference to raising children, because at a certain point if you do not let the child
do what they want to do they will never learn what's wrong with it, and they'll never learn
what is right. Character only develops with freedom. Character
only develops - and this is not just a little psychological thing. This is a profound spiritual
truth about the meaning of human history and what God is doing in the cosmos. OK. And so
it's almost like there are a certain number of dead hymns that you have to work through
before you see what is good and what is right. And that's true of individual life. And it
is true of corporate life of humanity as a whole. God at work So now, when you look at the contemporary
scene at any level - whether it's business, military, communications, popular culture,
music - remember that. That's what's really going on. Is that God is at work far beyond
what we would call the church, because God is just as much involved in business and in
science and in the arts. He's just as much involved there as he is in the church. Now, that may go down hard with you. And by
the way I'll just admit - you know I'm probably going to say a few things that are wrong,
so I ... assume that since everyone else has been wrong about something, I must be wrong
about something. Couldn't be that I'm right about everything. Now, if I knew what I was
wrong, I wouldn't say it, but I don't. So when I say something like that I really believe
that, and I believe that because of my understanding of the Kingdom of God and what God is doing. And the kingdom of the church is not the Kingdom
of God. That may be one we'll have to work through later. The church is not the Kingdom
of God. It is a peculiar manifestation of the Kingdom of God. And Jesus has taught in
his parables about these kinds of things. You remember the parable of the tares, the
wheat and the tares, the parable of the net and the fish and so on. And so there are deep
lessons. I love to teach the parables but here in this series we just more or less can
use them a little bit and try and get their point. So then, that's what we want to understand
about the divine conspiracy and what God is doing in it.
