Aside from the occasional extra tornado, of course

Apparently, “watering the lawn” in California has had a huge effect on the weather of the eastern side of the Rockies, creating a good chunk of the climate change that is usually attributed to global warming. I’m pretty sure it’s a net positive for folks in the western US. (HT: pseudopolymath)

Like model chemicals, maybe.

In a book review, Tim Challies says “God Performs Miracles Today!” And I’m still not satisfied.

There’s a bit of a feeling of bait and switch in the post, but that’s not really it. Here’s my problem with his review: technically I agree with everything that it says. God still does miracles. The greatest miracle is regeneration, even though it’s harder to discern. Compared to healing miracles, regeneration doesn’t get nearly enough fanfare. All true. But stated wrong.

It’s not as though there were some competition between miracles and regeneration. They aren’t rivals. They’re buddies. God intended them to work together. And if the wrong one gets all the attention, we should be used to that, and be ready for it. Healing writes large, and plain to see, what regeneration does on a tiny, more fundamental scale. So the naysayers deny healing, and ignore salvation, and having been denied, people go off to prove it, without teaching anybody what healing is a sign of.

Biblically, there’s a solid connection between miracles, specifically healing miracles, and regeneration. A touchstone verse would be Isaiah 53:5:

But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.

There have been all kinds of doctrines built on this connection between healing and salvation, and these have only been complicated by generations of unbelief, who were willing to let slide an invisible salvation, but not a healing that could be verified or disproved.

Here’s the whole connection that I see between regeneration and miracles: Salvation is “by grace… through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Similarly, healing is by grace, through faith, the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Healing miracles are a visible demonstration of what invisible salvation looks like.

Just as healing is a miraculous gift from God, salvation is a miraculous gift from God. Just as no amount of effort to drum up the appropriate amount of faith for healing will guarantee healing, no amount of effort to drum up the appropriate amount of faith for salvation will grant salvation. And just as some people mysteriously don’t get healed, some people mysteriously don’t get saved. They both come as gifts, so that no one can boast. And yet both come through the mechanism of faith. Sometimes God heals people who never get saved. Sometimes God saves people who never get healed.

There shouldn’t be any rivalry between the healing party and the salvation party. We should pray for both, and thank God for both, and use every occasion of the lesser miracle, healing, to teach about the greater miracle, salvation. And the first step is demonstrating that regeneration is the greater miracle.

Everyone sees the wonder of a miracle. Broken limb to whole limb. Got it. Blind to seeing; deaf to hearing; dumb to singing. Everyone agrees on what the problem is, and everyone can identify when a person is well. Not so with sin, and so we underrate the value of salvation.

Repentance is not turning over a new leaf. Regeneration is not a decision. You were dead in your trespasses. Lazarus didn’t decide to stand up and walk. When a person is born again, the first thing they do is to truly see their sin for the first time and be horrified by the very thing they used to love. And repenting, they repent.

That doesn’t just… happen. I know – we see something like it in raising children: My 10 month old likes dropping things in the toilet and fishing them out again. I’m pretty sure my 4 year old would never (but then again, he might). There is a process of learning right from wrong that children go through, but it’s a mistake to think that regeneration is nothing more than a part of this, like the hit man who just wasn’t raised right.

The fact that it goes deeper is what makes it so difficult to discern. It’s also what makes regeneration in fact a greater miracle than any healing. It’s more subtle than “the kind of change that would make an Eskimo renounce fur, that would make a vegetarian barbecue hamster.” It’s the sort of thing that can fundamentally change a person’s character without budging their personality. It’s so difficult to discern that some people can fake it for years, with no one the wiser. At the same time, it’s the sort of thing that can make a person drop their entire system of right and wrong on a single proof from scripture, or a single word from Jesus’ mouth. In other words, it’s unnoticeable, impossible, undeniable, and extreme.

It’s a lot easier to talk about removing cancer.

I’m going to go with the majority on this one: the greatest miracle still happens in the human heart. But I’m not sure I’ve ever been a witness to that transformation. Not right there, on the spot. I can see evidences, when I hear about a life that’s been renewed. I think of my wife’s cousin, who is showing every sign of a complete transformation, and for whom I have a great deal of hope. I think of my oldest son, who displays a rebellious nature nearly every chance he gets, and prays un-prompted for a new heart most mornings at breakfast. Sometimes I’m not sure I can see all that much evidence of a new heart in myself, so I’m a little jealous of David, who dropped everything last night to pray that the dog would get a new heart and stop biting.

The trick, I think is to take regeneration as seriously as healing, even though it’s hard to discern. Taking regeneration seriously means taking fallen nature seriously, which is harder than it sounds. We want so badly to hack at the symptoms. But that is why God gave us miracles: so that we could see our spiritual problems, in reverse scale.

Not that it’s ever happened

Here’s a fellow that says Christians are being persecuted by capitalism, though I’m afraid I miss the argument. It has something to do with the idea that being well off makes it hard to believe in sin, righteousness, and judgement. Or, the prospect of providing for your family makes it impossible to proclaim the gospel. As I said, I don’t quite follow.

I like the idea of soft persecution, and I think that’s certainly in existence. As the author of Hebrews says, “You have not resisted… to the point of shedding your blood.” But soft persecution in a wealthy industrialized society is not the same as being persecuted by the free market. Surely the free market, to such extent as there is one, is a protection from persecution. If a guy won’t hire you because you’re a christian, there’s likely to be another one around the corner who will. In a free market, a Christian might even start his own business, and run it according to his religious convictions.

You might even say that a country that won’t allow a fellow to run his business according to his religious convictions isn’t participating in a free market at all.

(Hat Tip: The Schooley Files. I almost forgot!)

Sounds Familiar

Their own distress… they called the distress of the country; and this distress of the country, they said, was altogether owing to the ignorance, pusillanimity, and bad conduct of the banks, which did not give a sufficiently liberal aid to the spirited undertakings of those who exerted themselves in order to beautify, improve, and enrich the country. It was the duty of the banks, they seemed to think, to lend for as long a time, and to as great an extent, as they might wish to borrow.

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (p 216)

good quote

We must categorically reject, at the outset, the notion of contract as flypaper, the idea that to offer one’s goods and services to others is to entrap them in an attractive nuisance, like a disused coal pit that entices children to danger. Whatever lawyers may tell us, we each do have it in our power to say no to the cigarette…. By dismissing the consumer as one with the intelligence and free will of a fly, the modern law ultimately leaves her with no greater freedom to shape her own environment. Flies do not help themselves very wisely, nor each other very often, but people can and will, if they are only allowed to.

From Cafe Hayek

Three in one

glamour-198x300Three favorites in one: David Maliki quoting Howard Tayler, talking about Mary Robinette Kowall’s book Glamour in Glass. Valerie’s reading the first book in the series right now (Shades of Milk and Honey), which I liked, but I thought it gave the plot away too quickly. One of these days I’ll get around Glamour, which is supposed to be much better.