Worldview, Being Thankful

This week I have been thinking about....World views, cubbyholes, computer colors. Topically this email will cover advancing God's Kingdom, how it is all interconnected, the different parts of it and who it was that helped to prepare the soil of my rocky heart so it could recieve the rest of the good news.

I have a lot of Rushdoony books, compared to other authors, not compared to how many he wrote, but I think overall his influence on how I now think, is huge. What is amazing is you can read his stuff from 20-30-40yr ago and it will just nail our culture on how it is. That is a testimony, that in so many ways, he was correctly applying God's truth to the human condition. Any correct application of God's truth will stand forever, because it is only repeating back what God has already said. There is no new truth that God didn't know about It's all his truth and a reflection of who he is. Jesus Christ is the truth and the light, even if it isn't specifically spelled out in the Bible. Its foundational starting point will be found in the word. But God has made us in his image, and one of the ways he is glorified is when his children seek out and identify truth and bring it back to the foot of the cross and say "this belongs to you too, doesn't it, Jesus."

A world view is a net work of presuppositions that are not testable by natural science, in terms of which, all experience is related and interpreted...the most basic convictions make up our world view, and it is what we use to measure and test all we know and experience... Greg Bahnsen

Francis Schaeffer likened it to having cubbyholes in our minds. The cubbyholes are all connected, everything we input into our minds must find a place to fit into so our minds can make sense of it and relate it to everything else. Without a cubbyhole to put some new piece of info, you will either be unable to see it correctly, or if you see it, you might not understand it in its fullness or even we will find ourselves opposing God himself. See Paul in Acts.

If you are taught some basic math you will then have a place to work and understand and apply arithmetic and then geometry, etc, etc.
Isaiah 28:9,10 whom will he teach knowledge? And whom will he make to understand the message? Those just weaned from milk? Those just drawn from the breast? For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, a little here a little there.

In both Matt. and Luke towards the start of Jesus' ministry it is recorded about not pouring new wine into old wineskins cause they might burst. Constantly Jesus kept saying let those who have ears to hear, hear.

Think computer colors. I think of God making creation/life in 32bit color. If you were to see it in all of its facets and dimensions. When you are lost, life looks black and white. When I got saved it seemed like life changed to 256 colors and in many ways it kind of stayed that way until recently. I can see now that no matter how much I would pour over the word, I was still, what seems like only able to see his creation/life and reality at around 256 colors, sometimes a more here or there in different areas. I had a stunted view of what Jesus had done for me on the cross. Because I was so controlled with worldly wisdom and truths that I had filled my mind with. It kept me from interpreting so much of the word correctly.

What I am finding out is as I yeild my mind to God's order and definitions for every area of life is that, then I am able to see so much wider and with deeper understanding. "Hey, is this what 16 bit color looks like?". But first I had to be willing to accept that God really does give direction over all and any area of life and that through his word Christ speaks to it. Once I accepted that, his word just seems so alive to me. Rushdoony was huge in helping me to see it. Also the idea of accepting the whole counsel of God, all of the word. I started to see I had a warped understanding Of Jesus because it was without the context of the Old Testament.

I do feel like in the last couple of years I am starting to see God's creation and his Word as it really is. As he has been wanting me to see it, but I needed some help tieing up the strong man so we could rob his house.

Like it or not, God made us to be inter-connected as people, like the Old and New Testament, which goes so against Americana. Example of inter-connected: how many others beside Achen died because of his sin with the gold. inter-connected...But that's Old Testament you say...We have the jailer in Acts 16:30,32 believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved you and your household. Inter-connected. The word says... Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. In Leviticus we read that ..chpt 10 Nabad and Abihu, brought strange fire and God killed them. But that's Old Testament... so we look at
Acts chpt5 and we have Ananias and Sapphira and God killed them. It is foreign to us but not at all foreign to God's word, Pop quiz: which ones right? Will we insist that it should be just us, Jesus and our Bibles. But if God has ordained that he wants his sons and daughters to be discipled, and his method for bringing his sons and daughters to maturity is for them to be instructed. The older women instructing the younger ladies and to appoint teachers, pastors, elders, etc, etc. that we might come to a more Christ like humanity. A big picture of this is from God's design for families, the inter-connectedness ,multi-generational view, that we continue to try and grasp the enormity of it all.

None of our pastor/elders get up on Sunday and just reads the scriptures and then sits down. They help us see application and more understanding. We expect that. But many will get nervous when some in the body start reading what other men of God are imparting, what they have recieved from Christ. "Shouldn't we just stick with the Bible?" As the foundational source for all truth and knowledge? Amen! But all of what Jesus did, could not be contained in all the books of the world says the Gospel. Do we treat it, other writings like it is holy writ, of course not, but other writings may reveal the application of the holy writ. If once you were blind, and now you see how much you have been missing, because of what godly men have helped you to grasp, that which had been hidden from you. You will want others to read it too.

World view Example: from "Missionary Herosim" , Joseph Neesimas raised in a land of idols, Japan. Got an abridged Bible and read it, rejected the whittled idols and started praying " oh, if you have eyes, look upon me, if you have ears listen to me". Then he purchased a New Testament and read it day and night, was on an 8 month voyage to the US. In boston, he picks up a second hand copy of Robinson Crusoe for a few pennies and while reading it makes the discovery....while reading of a fictitous character that is praying to God...that we have a God who does see and hear us!

His world view was that gods don't have eyes or real ears, even after months of studying the Bible he had to read Robinson Crusoe to learn that "he must cry to God as a present, personal friend. And so day by day, in the full belief that God was listening, he uttered this prayer: "please please, don't cast me way into miserable conditions ..." his basic world view had held him captive.
Rushdoony was part of a multi-generational family of pastors that stretched for 600 yrs, I do think the word shows you can get the generational blessing multiplying from generation to generation through obedience, and in Rushdoony it paid off big.

To my joy and blessing, and not just to me but to hundreds yea, thousands in the future of not only my children's children, but also others they will bring to the cross. I do not look to "add" to His Kingdom but to let God "multiply" his Kingdom through my obedience. Because our God is a Multiplying God, 30,60, hundred fold!

Rushdoony and others were able to correct my vision and now I see God's truth start to spill over into so many areas, in a manner that cut through the lies that were scattered through out my cubbyhole system. I am going from a disjointed, fragmented view, IE secular/sacred, individualism, egalitarianism, or that each generation should just go and do what it wants to, or that God's word really doesn't speak to (fill in the blank).

In brief, I now see how the first commandment touchs everything, how everything is either God centered or man centered, no neutral ground, how even as a Christian I can be so man centered all over the place, I probably still am but I am thankful for what God has straightened out. That it is worship, to agree with what God says. How we are constantly back in the garden all over again, how everything in life can be boiled down to, who decides? who's will? what's the standard? and from whom does it come? Back In the garden again, will we let God decide, or will we be as God and decide for ourselves that which is good and that which is evil?

It was Rushdoony who lead Doug Phillip's father to the Lord and has been a big influence on Doug. The Bible shows the pattern of remembering men, those who God uses in special ways. Abraham, Issac, Jacob, David, Solomon, We appreciate Paul, Martin Luther, Calvin, CS Lewis, etc etc....I think it might be generations before the full impact of God's hand through Rushdoony is seen.

God directs us to give honor to whom honor is due. And it is biblical to deflect praise to others away from yourself and that is why when you read those who see that they are now really alive with God's truth from Rushdoony's faithfulness to God. That it will take you aback. I am hoping to get used to having 16bit vision, (for all I know from God's perspective I might be at 780 colors and not really 16bit.) but there are other men who as I read them, I think, wow, that must be 32bit. As someone who has been gifted to teach I try to be careful to ascribe back to others what I have gleaned from them. I honor God by acknowledging those whom he has used to influence me.

Now I don't think anyone who Rushdoony has helped, worships Rushdoony, he has been dead for a few years, there are no plans to build a museum or special memorial to him, (think Billy Grahm) but his son continues what his father began and continues to publish his father's works and to compile what he hadn't gotten too, into more books, so from the grave he continues to witness to the Glory of God. But for others like me who as we look back and see how naked and bare and shallow our thinking was, and how God allowed this man to see it, and then gave him the ability to relate it back out to others. We are very grateful and hopeful that others too may be blessed.

Because of what God did through this man, and his faithfulness to the word given him, means he will have a very special place in my heart. And one more reason for me to be thankful to God.