Thinking about God, Jesus and The Big Questions

This past autumn, I was cutting down annual plants which had finished producing and placing them on top of the soil to eventually decompose.  I was rejoicing that this decomposition process would improve the soil. I thought to myself "Decomposition into existing soil improves it so that it is much better than soil that has never been used."  This struck a memory for me of a quote from C.S. Lewis: "For God is not merely mending, not simply restoring a status quo. Redeemed humanity is to be something more glorious than unfallen humanity would have been..." - C.S. Lewis, Miracles 1947, in Chapter 14 "The Grand Miracle". In other words, C.S. Lewis believed that man who is redeemed through the death of Jesus is somehow intrinsically better than unfallen man. I found it a bit easier to see this viewpoint using the gardening analogy. It's not a great analogy, but it was concrete enough to help me. Soil that has never been used is never going to be as good ...

Christians believe that this earth (and outer space) are created by God.  In addition to this universe we have managed to detect using physical measurements, there is another Universe, which contains basically everything else that isn't here, such as angels and Heaven.  Our universe is nested within the other Universe. We are a universe within a Universe.  This is not a surprise to Christians, but some atheists find it hard to believe. The difference between the universes: Our universe is enemy-occupied territory (Satan has considerable, but still limited, power on Earth).  Our universe is ephemeral and will not last forever (a really long time, but not forever).  In contrast, the outer Universe is permanent and out there somewhere in it there is a big battle between various heavenly beings over each of our souls (yes, a battle is being fought over us, strange as it may seem).   Some secular themed examples of the concept: This concept of a univ...

The issue of God intervening by miracles is a big point of contention between Christians and atheists.  Are miracles the bound between the natural and the supernatural? And if so, why even have a 'supernatural'? Is it because God has to 'jump in' occasionally and 'save the day' to prevent things form getting out of hand?  Or maybe (as other atheists might suggest) miracles are simply Christians conveniently attributing to God mysterious phenomena which we can't yet explain? C.S. Lewis had pondered this question and written an entire book on it called 'Miracles'.  In this book, he argues that what we call miracles (which some would call the 'supernatural') are 'not exceptions nor irrelevancies'.  Instead, miracles are simply God's usual powers used in accordance with the 'rules behind the rules' (C.S. Lewis, Miracles 1947, Chapter 12 'The Propriety of Miracles').  C.S. Lewis likens God's use of miracles to art...

Here we'll find out what miracles mean for the big picture of God's work.  In Miracles Part 1 , we studied the argument put forward by C.S. Lewis in his book 'Miracles' that miracles are a form of artistic license used by God (and not a device to rescue out-of-control situations), and they are not exceptions to nature, although they occur infrequently.  C.S. Lewis puts forward the notion that if God is using artistic license for miracles and it is an infrequent event, then this evidence should tell us that these are the parts of his work that he wants to emphasize, which in turn lets us know that these parts of the story are hugely important.  In his book 'Miracles', C.S. Lewis goes on to have us question what we think of the big picture.  In Chapter 12 "The Propriety of Miracles", he states: "If you have hitherto disbelieved in miracles, it is worth pausing a moment to consider whether this is not chiefly because you thought you had discover...

I'll preface this post by saying that this is not something I discovered during my Bible reading, rather it is an idea that I first saw put forward by C.S. Lewis.  In his book 'Miracles', C.S. Lewis says that one problem we can run into when reading the Bible is the preconceived notion that because we can't physically grasp or touch spirituality, that all things spiritual can seem ghost-like to us .  This is a grave error for us to make, because there is nothing in the Bible that would indicate God is ghost-like.  It is hard for us to remember that it is in fact our physical bodies which are tenuous, shadowy and ghost-like .  We are here for such a short time relative to the timeframe of the universe.  Our physical bodies of today are made of ashes and dust (atoms) and will return to the ground (atoms again) when we die.  Of course, those who know Christ will get to have union with God after we die - but it's made clear in the Bible that this won't...