Year: 2014

Copyright by Shea Oakley
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Romantic love often seems to be this age’s cure-all for loneliness and lack of fulfillment. It has become almost an article of faith in Western society that the answer to many of the chronic problems of human existence is to be found in a man and a women (or these days any combination of genders) coming together. Whether it takes the form of a long term “friendship with benefits”, co-habitation or a potentially lifelong marital bond we are told that we find our all in all when we become one with another human being physically and emotionally.

While the Bible has an opinion on the subject of sexual activity outside of marriage I’ll spare you the moralistic scolding that many of you have no doubt heard Christians are famous (or infamous) for. My intention is to propose that the regular carnage we see today in romantic relationships that function as the be-all and end-all of life happens for a reason. It happens because the greatest relationship a human being can be in is not one with another human being at all; it is one with the Creator of human beings. Our troubled romantic lives are a direct consequence of “putting the cart before the horse” in a fundamental way. We seek in other people that which only God can provide us.

The great French scientist and theologian Blaise Pascal put it succinctly when he spoke of a “God-shaped hole” in every human heart. This is the hole that exists because we are not born in a real relationship with God. Again, I will not focus on why that is true. This is not an article about sin and the fall of our race. It is enough to say that if we have any self-awareness at all we have a sense that something is missing from our lives. This void exists and we try to fill it with any number of things, some good in their proper context and some bad in every context. One of the things we often try to fill it with is another person.

When we are head over heels in love with someone, and they with us, we do not feel that void for a period of time. In fact we may well feel absolutely contented, full of all we want and could ever imagine wanting. Such is the false transcendence of human love in and of itself. It does not last. At some point the intoxication of “being in love” wears off. We begin to see the other person’s flaws where once we saw perfection. The relationship that once seemed like the “happily ever after” answer we had been hoping for shows its inability to keep us in a state of perpetual bliss. Many romances (and, for that matter, marriages) do not make it far past this point.

The problem is not with men and woman falling in love. The problem is with expecting another person to fill the void that only the divine can fill. Christians fall in love too. Such love can be a great blessing, but only if it is secondary to being in a deeper love relationship with God. It is in seeking that deeper bond with Him that romantic love can be put in its proper place in our lives and fully enjoyed for what it is, a gift from God; not a god itself.

Seek first the Maker of Heaven and Earth (and also the Maker, by the way, of human love) and you will fill a hole in your heart that no one else ever can. Seek a man or women to do that and all you will know in the end is a heart with a hole in it that is now a broken heart as well.

Copyright by Shea Oakley
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There is much talk today about father’s and their impact on the lives of sons and daughters. Some of us were fortunate enough to have had wonderful men as dads; men who, by and large, were healthily loving towards us and present for us during the times it counted most. But, in this day and age, the sad fact of the matter is that fewer and fewer of us can testify to having such a father. For many of us our childhood and early adult memories are stained by dads who either physically or emotionally abandoned us or, worse, were present but abusive.

Today an entire therapeutic culture has grown up around helping people cope with the results of bad parenting. Some of these psychological support systems are good but some are not, because the flip side of the coin is that many individuals have built their entire lives on bitterness and un-forgiveness towards fathers who were themselves abused and perhaps did the best they could under their own circumstances. Any therapeutic system that perpetuates blame does neither the victim nor the victimizer any good.

The purpose of this piece, however, is not primarily to examine how to deal psychologically with the pain and sense of loss involved with having a bad father. Instead I’d like to use this widely experienced reality to point out another reason for those who have written off Christianity to give it another look.

The Bible speaks to those who have been abandoned and abused by the men who helped bring them into the world when it tells us that God “is a Father to the fatherless”. No other global belief-system calls God “Father”, but the Judeo-Christian faith. The Deity revealed in scripture is one who clearly longs to be a father to those he created in his image. In fact the New Testament tells us that for those who receive God through his son the right is given to call their new Lord “Abba”, a Hebrew word used by Jewish children that roughly translates as “Daddy”.

One of the attributes of true deity, even from a purely logical perspective, is perfection. What that means for the sons and daughters of God is that their perhaps deeply flawed earthly fathers have been replaced by a perfect Father. It is on this basis that real healing can begin from the wounds so many of us received as children, healing that the best secular psychology cannot work within us. When a bad dad gets replaced by an “Abba” the love we so needed, and did not have, becomes available to us right now.

So if you live with the insecurity, pain and relational devastation that is the terrible legacy of abandonment or abuse by one of those “bad dads” here is one more reason to consider the Christian faith. What you may need is to be re-parented by the best parent that ever was, is, or will be and that parent is the Father of Jesus Christ.

Copyright by Shea Oakley
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Some people are attracted to Christianity, but have been saddled with a misconception that has caused them to hesitate to draw closer to the God Christians talk so glowingly about. The specific misconception I speak of is the idea that they must “clean up” their lives prior to embracing Christ. In actuality nothing is further from the truth.

Many who become Christians only do so after a lifetime of bad moral decisions have left them in a desperate condition. One thing people in this position often come to realize is that they are so at the proverbial “end of their rope” that self-improvement is quite beyond their grasp. By this I mean they have no strength to reform themselves and they know it. This is especially true with people who are in the death-grip of some addiction.

When we find ourselves in such a condition, and are honest about it, we come to understand deep-down that the idea of pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps is patently absurd. In our desperation the only thing we can do is seek help outside of ourselves. This is actually exactly where God does His best work, so to speak, and is often the point of conversion for many a Christian.

Numerous times I have heard testimonies from people who came to this place of exhaustion of self and desperation and then called out to Christ for help. Sometimes their testimony includes an amazing experience in which they are delivered from some addiction or other life-threatening situation in an immediate and miraculous way. While this does not always happen in such a manner I mention it to make a point about what it means to become a believer.

These recipients of miraculous relief will tell you one thing is for sure: they did not and could not have accomplished this on their own. They were helpless to change what was wrong with their lives, and that was the whole point. They did not change and then come to God. They came to God and He made the changes.

Christ does not expect us to do on our own what we are incapable of doing. It is a basic fact of human nature that
“Self-help” is no help at all. We cannot in any way reform ourselves to become acceptable to God. Our reformation comes through surrendering our lives to Him and trusting him for the power to change once that surrender happens. This is part and parcel of becoming a Christian.

Never let anyone tell you that you must clean yourself up to come to God. He is the one that lovingly enables us to become different and better people. If you want to come to him come just as you are and He will give you the strength to become a new creation in Jesus Christ

Copyright by Shea Oakley
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In a pluralistic world in which numerous belief systems, specifically religious or otherwise, vie for our attention why should we give heed to only one? A particular faith or philosophy may contain teachings that seem true as true to our experience as the next one. Further, in a world in which electronically conveyed information is more accessible to more people than at any other time in human history, why not choose the best from each philosophy and eclectically mix and match our way into “custom” belief system that works best for us?

Sounds good doesn’t it? In a world in which the only absolute truth has become the belief that there is no such thing as absolute truth there seems to be no good reason to hold to one “Truth-claim” over any other. In fact the religions that persist in making such claims, beyond seeming terribly passé these days, may actually be dangerous as far as our freedom to live as we want to live. They often appear to attack the very foundation of our hard-won individualism, telling us that we are somehow beholden to a Being that created us rather than to ourselves.

The problem, though, with this objection to belief systems with exclusive truth-claims is actually found in the above mentioned statement about absolute truth. When we claim that absolute truth cannot possibly exist we effectively contradict ourselves. We find ourselves making a statement that destroys the validity of the very point we seek to make. It is impossible for absolute truth to be absolutely impossible. Natural reason and common sense makes it obvious that this statement is self-canceling. It is non-sensical. The honest spiritual seeker has to eventually butt up against the logically incontrovertible fact that no one can prove that absolute truth does not exist.

Once this happens that seeker must become intellectually open to the possibility that there is such a thing as “Ultimate Reality” and now they are forced to face a further daunting realization; if such capital “R” reality exists then, by its very nature, it must preclude the validity of any competing philosophy that contradicts it. Follow this line of thought to its reasonable conclusion and we can no longer claim that all religions basically say the same thing. At the very least “smorgasbord” spirituality must divest itself of the claim that all world religions can be added to the mix.

What does all this mean for the truly sincere seeker? Among other things it means this: do not think that one religion in particular, Christianity, a religion whose founder claimed that he is “The Way, the Truth and the Life” can be casually added to the spiritual mixing bowl.

Because of its unique truth claims Christianity must stand alone and be accepted, or not accepted, as such.

Copyright by Shea Oakley
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One of the most strongly held tenants of those who disdain religion is that Secularism is the true promoter and guardian of human progress and happiness. An example of this deeply entrenched assumption is the idea that the historical advancement of human rights is based on the shedding of religious dogma in favor of a man-centered world-view. While it is true that some belief systems have and continue to mitigate against human dignity it is difficult to prove that Christianity has often been one of them.

In fact Christians have been in the forefront of many movements in the Western world to improve the condition of human beings. This has been self-evident since the early days of the faith and continues to be self-evident today for those who are willing to study history with some objectivity.

Things first began to happen when the numbers of those who gave there lives to Jesus Christ rapidly grew during the time of the late Roman Empire. When, by sheer numbers, Christians started to have influence in Rome and the provinces a movement began to end the practice of blood sports involving the killing of human beings as mass-entertainment in the arena. Thus the days of persons being literally thrown to the lions came to an end. While we may today have our own form of “bread and circuses” in popular media the deliberate murder of human beings as part of a culturally sanctioned spectator event is no longer present.

The slow eradication of slavery in Western Europe and the United States was a direct function of agitation against the practice by Christians of many denominations. In England believers like William Wilberforce led the fight against the slave trade. In America the Abolitionist’s of the Civil War era were largely motivated by religious conviction. A century after physical emancipation was secured the civil rights movement of the 1960’s sought to bring about true equality and integration for blacks. The effort found its moral compass in its Christian leaders, most notably the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

During our own time followers of Christ continue to work to end injustice and suffering. In the early 21st Century among the most vocal supporters of the battle to eliminate the international sex-trafficking of children are the churches. In the aftermath of natural disasters around the world some of the most effective relief provided for its victims comes not from governments but from Christian relief agencies.

The basis for Christianity’s ongoing emphasis on human rights and relief has always been grounded in the Bible’s consistent message that people have tremendous intrinsic value based on there having been made in the image of God. Beyond this Christians believe that the creator of the universe so loved his human creation that he was willing to actually become one of us through his son. For this reason those who claim the name of Christ have a continuing mandate, grounded in God’s love for human beings, to work to relieve human oppression and suffering.

That this is part of the outworking of the Christian faith is not religious propaganda. It is a fact of history.

Copyright by Shea Oakley
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One of the more currently fashionable criticisms of Christianity is that countless human beings have been slaughtered in the name of the Christian God during the last thousand years of human history. It is no doubt true that in the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Salem Witch Trials people who called themselves Christians took part in the deaths of those who they considered to be heretics, or believers of other faiths. That such abominations actually occurred I will not take issue with, but I would like to point out a troika of salient facts that often do not see the light of day when accusing conversations on this subject are underway.

First of all, all three of the above mentioned atrocities were committed by people who lived in a time when civil government and religion were, so to speak, “in bed together.” Every time the church and the state become so deeply blended the result is a corruption of the church. As a 21st Century Christian my biggest point of agreement with those who are today in favor of a separation of church and state has far more to do with my concern for the church’s purity than the state’s wellbeing. When Christ and Caesar, the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of man, are forced to intertwine the result is always people in government who are Christian in name only and who wear the cross only to gain raw political power. Such was the case in the days of the Crusades, Inquisition and the witch trials. Political and ecclesial power were in a truly unholy union, and great evil resulted.

The second point I’d like to make is that I have never met a follow Christian deeply in love with Jesus Christ and in intimate spiritual union with Him who would ever consider murdering anyone in His Name. The very idea is repulsive. Why? Because the very core of the faith He brought to us two-thousand years ago is one of love. Every true believer knows that the only way we have been commanded to appeal to others to believe what we believe is by loving them, even if they make themselves our enemies. In fact if they harm us we are called to literally “turn the other cheek” and then pray for their souls. Telling the truth about who Jesus is and doing so in love are the only weapons a true child of God has in his or her arsenal. Anyone in history who tried to convert through threat of physical harm does not belong to Jesus Christ and, in fact, does not know Him at all.

Finally I want to point out a profound fact of history. The number of people killed in the three horrors perpetrated in the name of the fatally compromised “Christianity” of those times numbered, at most, in the tens of thousands. That is altogether too many, but please compare those numbers with the monstrous slaughters carried out by three of the worst despots of the 20th Century, Hitler, Stalin and Mao, all in the name of two socio-political philosophies, Nazism and Communism. It has been estimated that over 100 million human beings lost their lives at the hands of these men and the systems they propagated. The stark fact is that what I call the “Atheistic Religions” (or in the case of Nazism one that was nominally Pagan) of the last hundred years ended the lives of such a vast number of men, women and children as to make those lost to a perverted version of Christianity pale by comparison.

The ultimate point I’m making here is that true Christianity is a religion of life, not death. In my next segment I’ll take this conviction one step further and seek to illuminate what the faith I call my own has done to bless Western Civilization throughout its history, another fact that has been ignored by those who reject, out of hand, the way of Jesus Christ.

Copyright by Shea Oakley

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Once we have tasted of Heaven continuing to live voluntarily in a hell of our own making is no longer an option for most of us. The sins that once captivated us are progressively exposed for what they are every time we are visited by the reality of God’s loving touch in our lives.

Before we crossed the threshold of salvation we thought the sins we committed actually gave us some kind of life. Then we realized that they were killing us and many of us had come close enough to the final spiritual death they engendered to deeply understand, perhaps better than most that drinking the poison of transgression had to stop.

Soon, however, most new Christians realize that some sins are more easily shed than others. Often the initial transformative power of conversion allows us to put down one or more of the sins that were present in our lives. Others are not given up so easily. This is most often true with habitual transgressions that resulted from lifestyle choices we made as non-believers. Habits are not easily broken. Some Christian still struggle with saying no to certain actions even years after Christ entered their lives.

I will not presume to judge how long someone can fail to have full victory over habitual sin without that failure doing irreparable damage to their relationship with God. The process of sanctification is just that, a process, and the purification of a soul is measured over a span of years, not days or weeks. The key, it seems to me, is attitude. There is a world of difference between one who continues to vigorously resist whatever the particular temptation is, confessing when he or she falls, and someone who most of the time gives in to that temptation and is decreasingly concerned about it.

For many of us taking the second path is not one we could easily consider. I often tell people I am witnessing to that the first ten seconds of the compassionate presence of God, which I experienced at my time of conversion from Atheism, surpassed every experience the world had offered me prior to that time. Since then I have been blessed by other moments of unspeakable joy in communion with Him. Even when such moments are widely dispersed in the midst of long periods of great trial they never fail to profoundly encourage me. I think of them as “postcards from Heaven”.

All Christians receive such moments of blessing at various times to varying degrees. When we are caught up in these moments committing sin is the last thing on our minds and hearts. When our eyes are filled with the surpassing goodness and beauty of God nothing else matters. As the hymn writer tells us “the things of this world grow strangely dim”.

After such experiences end what does not end is the deep heart-awareness that nothing is better than this. The believer is haunted by the memory of times of intimacy with God. Sadly the old temptations return as we descend into the valley after our time on the mountain-top. But the knowledge that the pleasure of sin does not come close to what we were lifted into during that blessed time does not completely leave us. It is that much harder to return to the sin-induced hells of our own making afterwards. We have known something (or, more accurately, Someone) surpassingly greater than whatever pleasure the sin has given us in our life and this stays with us.

We do well to call to our memory what it was like to dwell in “the light of His countenance” whenever the struggles of the Christian life tempt us to give up and give in. We also do well to look forward with the eyes of faith to the next time Our Lord will touch us with His love. These times, both remembered and looked forward to, are powerful motivators in our ongoing battle with temptation as they speak to us of the final victory over sin which is God’s will for every one of His children.

Copyright 2014 by Shea Oakley
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We live in the era of the term “coping mechanism.” By this we mean the thoughts and behaviors that we have adopted to deal with the struggles and pressures of life. Such mechanisms often began to be formed within us at an early age, perhaps during childhood, adolescence or young adulthood. Once a part of our lives they may remain with us for a long while. Sometimes our coping mechanisms are with us to the day we die. This is unfortunate because they are often emotionally or physically harmful to both ourselves and those who are nearest and dearest to us. As such it might be said that they are almost always part of an understandable, but destructive, way in which we respond badly to real pain. As Christians hopefully we also come to realize that coping and healing are two very different responses to that pain because one is man-centered and the other God centered.

A coping mechanism may be a seemingly innocuous “nervous habit” such as nail biting. At the other extreme it might reveal itself in a full blown addiction to something like alcohol. Another manifestation is found in various forms of psychopathology. For instance people who struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorders often began to exhibit symptoms at a time of great stress in early life. Truthfully there are quite a wide range of unhealthy human behaviors that come about because of initial mishandling of our responses to abuse of one kind or another.

For many years coping mechanisms may seem to be an effective way of dealing with early trauma and/or abuse. It is only when they begin to interfere with our lives more than did the original cause that we may realize that we have “created a monster.” By that time, often in later adulthood, our coping mechanisms can have become so entrenched in our personality that ridding ourselves of them may seem impossible.

For the believer, however, this need never be the case. The power of Christ working in us is more than able to remove old and destructive ways of coping. Many times God allows us to come to a place of despair in which we realize at a deep level that our unconscious ways of dealing with past hurts are damaging us and those close to us. Sometimes a major life crisis like the loss of a major relationship or a job is enough to cause us to cry out to God for deliverance from coping mechanisms that now threaten to destroy us.

It is at this point that we can be introduced to His prescription for finally dealing with our past. This often involves asking the Spirit to help us face and work through memories of what we have lost by entering into  a time of conscious grieving. In the midst of such grieving we may come to understand that we desperately need to forgive those who wronged us so many years before. In grieving memories, and forgiving those who caused us harm, the child of God will begin to heal. Part of this healing is the shedding of destructive coping mechanisms no longer needed to deal with issues in life that are being resolved God’s way. Real healing of our hearts and minds makes coping mechanisms unnecessary.

As with almost every aspect of our sanctification the replacement of coping with healing is often a process that takes some time, but its results are entirely worth it. Coping mechanisms are ultimately a form of bondage. Healing brings true freedom and new life. It also greatly pleases the God who sent His Son to die to secure us that healing and life, not only for our time on this world but for all eternity.

Copyright  by Shea Oakley

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All things in Heaven and Earth, even ostensibly good things, are valueless if they are perceived as proceeding from anything or anyone other than God. Ultimately no blessings are good apart from Him. It is in the recognition that they are from God that such gifts gain any meaning or worth and, even then, is must be recognized that having the Giver is always greater than having the gifts. Any other attitude can turn even the most wholesome thing into an idol.

Our Lord is not utilitarian. He does not provide human beings the minimum that they need to live and nothing more. Our God is a God of abundance and He richly blesses all people with good things, even those living outside His will. As the Irish rock group U2 sings, “Blessings are not just for the ones who kneel”. We call this blessing of those who do not know or love God “common grace” and we see it everyday in the pleasures, large and small, that he grants to us all. It is in God’s nature to give and to give generously. That said, while God’s gifts can bless all temporally they will only bless some eternally. The ones who will end up eternally blessed are those who both recognized and thanked the Giver and ultimately made the leap to accepting the greatest gift of all, His Son.

The built-in danger of any good thing is that, rather than reminding us of God’s generosity, the thing will become an end in itself. The deification of an object occurs when we look to it to fulfill the deep needs in us that can only be met by God Himself. The French Scientist and philosopher Pascal talked of a “God-shaped Hole”, a space in our hearts that only the shape of our Creator can fill, and a place only He should be allowed to fill. Anytime something other than Him is placed in that hole it becomes an idol. This is because the object in question has usurped the role of God and He cannot and will not share the space in our hearts that He designed for Himself.

We Post-Moderns, of course, do not worship idols of wood, clay and iron anymore. Our contemporary idols tend to be things like money, sex, drugs, power and possessions. Today all these things, and more, are frequently being forced into Pascal’s hole. But while some of these substitutes for God are inherently sinful not all are. Possessions, for example, are not evil in and of themselves, but they become evil when we attempt to find existential meaning in our lives, and/or a sense of personal worth, from owning ever more of them. Both of these basic human needs can only find their answer in God. Materialism, a misplaced faith in things, is a form of idolatry and it is one that affluent Westerners can easily fall into.

The truth is that common grace provides many morally neutral gifts. The ability to achieve is one such gift. Others include, but are not limited to, the capability to enjoy simple things like relationships, beauty, good food and laughter. All humankind potentially shares in these blessings that God has ordained for the entire race. Ultimately, though, they are all meaningless outside of a relationship with the One who gives them. The Teacher in Ecclesiastes learned this when he tried to find complete happiness solely through these and other pleasures. He came to realize that all were meaningless vanities when sought only for themselves. They were bankrupt when it came to meeting the real needs of his heart.

There is, however, a solution to the dilemma of how to find true joy in our lives. We must realize that the God of Jesus Christ is our answer and seek Him above all else. When this happens, when knowing God through Christ is recognized as the real solution for our deepest longings and we seek Him for Himself and not just for His gifts, two wonderful changes occur in us. First we come to enjoy God in a deeply fulfilling way with the result being that our existence itself becomes better than we could “ever ask or imagine.” At the same time we find that the good things our Lord continues to give us become much more satisfying now that they are no longer usurping His rightful place in our lives. The result of these two things happening is a deep and abiding joy. Going forward we can begin to enjoy both God and His gifts in an eternal sense because the gifts we enjoy in our time on Earth become rightly related to the One with Whom we will spend our eternity.

Copyright by Shea Oakley
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The world we dwell in is sublime. It is beautiful. As C.S. Lewis wrote there is a “deep magic” to the works of God manifested through the material landscape. Even in its fallenness the creation acts as a conduit through which He calls forth both joy and longing in the human heart. This is a truth too often unknown or ignored by 21st century conservative Christians. Some of us hear the word “mystical” and we automatically think ‘occult” and “demonic” and shut the doors of our hearts to what Lewis called the “Numinous”, the sheer reality of divine transcendence in everyday life. In this often fearful renunciation of every aspect of the supernatural world present in the natural one we are profoundly impoverished, for we ourselves are supernatural beings as well as natural ones.

It seems apparent that among the healthiest people are those who live with a regularly recurring sense of wonder at what they encounter in the physical world each day. Perhap the healthiest Christians are those who identify that wonder with something that goes profoundly beyond the physical and specifically points us towards the one true God. If we are fortunate we have all experienced moments when some vision of nature, or even of man’s creative output, has transported us towards “that other place” spoken of in the U2 song. We suddenly, and usually surprisingly, experience a sublime longing for something near us, but just out of full grasp. It is as if the Far Country of Heaven has reached into our present existence for a short time and this can inspire a deep joy that points towards the eternal and clears our hearts of every other lesser desire.

What we want at such moments goes beyond nature, beyond the purely physical realm at all. It is true that the physical is not, as some religions teach, somehow evil or even inferior to the spiritual but it is incomplete in and of itself apart from the spiritual. We still live in an era of materialism, particularly where science still restrains the imaginations of human beings to the merely imminent. Scientific Naturalism tells us that the material world is all there is and that should be enough, but we intrinsically know that isn’t enough because we are intrinsically spiritual as well as natural beings. The natural and material worlds are not ends in themselves. They are, rather, pathways beyond themselves.

More than one philosopher has said that the entire created world is a metaphor for ultimate reality, that beyond what we can presently see, hear and touch is the true world where every one of those things is made real in some ultimately meaningful way. This is not necessarily to say that the present Earth we inhabit is an illusion, but rather that it is, for now, imperfect and fallen and can best serve as a fragrant reminder of what our existence will be when Heaven and Earth are finally joined at the culmination of history.

Beyond this the achingly sublime moments we now sometimes know are made possible by the actuality that even our presently imperfect world is still vitally linked to the perfect one where our God dwells. The divine is still present in nature as well as beyond it and His Spirit is the link between the two.

As Christians we need not be afraid of the mystic depth of our future existence manifesting itself by spiritual light that shines through the material world we live in today. This is a blessedly recurring gift from Heaven that keeps our hearts burning for the final consummation of our relationship with our Lord and Savior. It is designed to be experienced without fear and is best received with thanksgiving to Him who gave it.