Surviving An Insane World

Our world seems increasingly insane.  We are entering a Presidential election year with two aged candidates.  Each one accuses the other of senility! One is in court on trial for criminal acts. Neither party has met to nominate a candidate, but there are no other options in sight.

 All wars are insane, but the wars in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza seem especially so.  Islamic terrorists have turned to attacks on Russia with the U.S. and the West still in their sights. 

Transgender women are wanting to compete in women’s sports. Caitlin Jenner, who won the Olympic decathlon when she was Bruce, has come out against trans women competing in women’s sports while Dawn Staley, coach of NCAA women’s champion basketball team, defends it.

We live our lives under a canopy of satellite communications that determine much of our daily lives.  Artificial Intelligence is at the door, threatening to distort perceptions of reality and, perhaps, take over!

Of course, the world has always had its insanity. Wars with their atrocities that leave innocent victims in their wake have always been with us.  Ancient Greece and Rome were no less conflicted about gender identity and sexuality than we are.  One needs only read the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to document the insanity of that day. While the digital world is new, efforts to confuse and distort perceptions of the truth are not. Pilate, while judging Jesus, asked the same question that is being asked today, “What is truth?”

 Interestingly, the Apostle Paul was accused of being insane when he was imprisoned at Caesarea.  After Paul told Festus and King Agrippa that he was a persecutor of Christians until Jesus himself appeared to him, Festus interrupted and said, “You are out of your mind Paul! Your great learning has driven you insane!"  To which Paul responded, “I am not insane. What I am saying is true and reasonable,” (Acts 26).

If we wish to preserve our sanity in an insane world, we need to choose Paul’s “insanity.” Faith in Jesus Christ leads to the discovery that God loves us.  “This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins,” (1 John 4:10).

`Having experienced God’s love, we are free to love one another, as Jesus said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another,” (John 13:34). And again, “I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,  …  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?” (Matthew 5:43-48).

Paul defined love in this way. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  Love never fails,” (1 Corinthians 13:4-8).

 However insane the world may seem, this always remains true and reasonable, to know God’s love and to love others, especially those who differ from us in appearance and opinion. 

Words

 When we were children we had a saying: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”  We usually quoted this little jingle when words had hurt us, and it was usually followed by sticking out our tongue for emphasis.  Somehow this ditty has been passed down through the generations, even though it is not true. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can destroy us.

It is not the well thought out words that give us trouble, words that we wrestle with before writing them down, words that we edit a dozen times before finally putting them in print.  The words that trouble us and cause our difficulty are the careless words, the thoughtless words, the words that escape our lips without thinking.  These words cannot be called back.  Unlike animals escaped from the cage, words cannot be hunted down and returned to captivity.

 Sometimes the careless words run rampant, causing unknown damage without our knowledge.  We don’t even remember what we said, or when we said it. But the damage is done, nonetheless. 

 We try to bury our careless words beneath repeated apologies.  “I’m sorry.”  Or “I didn’t mean it.”  Sometimes we are forgiven.  Sometimes others claim to overlook them. But words are rarely forgotten.  They lodge in the memory and cast a shadow on everything else. 

 Jesus said, “I tell you that men will have to give account on the Day of Judgment for every careless word they have spoken.” (Matt. 12:36) Jesus was referring to our final judgment before God.  Ultimately, when we stand before Him we will be required to give account for every careless word.  Perhaps he had something else in mind.  Perhaps He was drawing our attention to the reality of human relations.  Careless words destroy relationships. 

 We have seen prominent careers come to an abrupt end due to careless words spoken in the public arena.  Like the classic movie, A Face In the Crowd, few are able to overcome racial slurs and arrogant expletives caught on an open microphone.  But more damaging to us all are the careless words spoken in the privacy of our homes. Careless words chip away at relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children.  They leave families fractured and psyches shattered.

 On the other hand, an encouraging word, the right word spoken at the right time, can make an enormous difference.  The opposite of careless words is not careful words, words that are guarded and self-serving, but caring words, words that are spoken in the interest of others.

 Nothing is more important than learning the discipline of our speech.  James compared the tongue to the small rudder that turns a huge ship, or the bit placed in the mouth of a horse, able to harness the animal's great strength.  Careless words, he said, are like sparks that ignite an uncontrollable fire that consumes everything in its path.  “If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.” (James 3:2).

Order Tinsley's book The Jesus Encounter available for the first time as an eBook on Amazon, FREE one day only, Saturday, April 20.

Young Messiah

 We don’t know much about Jesus’ childhood. For the most part, the Bible is silent regarding these years.  We do know that Joseph took his family to Egypt following Jesus’ birth in order to protect the child from King Herod’s paranoid wrath.  After their departure from Bethlehem, Herod’s soldiers attacked the small village slaughtering all the male children under the age of two. The event was consistent with Herod’s brutal rule. We can only imagine the grief and sorrow suffered by the Bethlehemites.

 Joseph made a home for the family in Egypt and waited.  When Herod died, Joseph and Mary returned with their young family to their home in Nazareth.   Matthew points out that this was a fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy, “Out of Egypt I called My Son.”  (Matthew 2:15). 

 Anne Rice wrote a book that was later made into a movie based on this time in Jesus’ life, Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt.  The book and the movie try to imagine what Jesus would have been like as a child, how He and His family would have wrestled with the growing awareness of His identity.  The Bible only tells us that “He grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.” 

 Almost as interesting as the movie’s plot is the journey of the author who wrote the book upon which it is based.  Anne Rice grew to fame writing the Vampire Chronicles while professing to be an atheist. She shocked the secular world when, in 2002, she announced she was done with vampires. After thirty-eight years as a professed atheist, she said she had found faith in Christ and returned to the Catholic Church.

 Eight years later, she rocked the Christian world by proclaiming she was renouncing Christianity. She stated, "For those who care, and I understand if you don’t: Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being “Christian” or to being part of Christianity.” She went on to say, “My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me.”  Rice died December 11, 2021 at the age of 80.

 Anne represents many who continue to believe in Christ but have left organized Christian churches. George Barna, the leading researcher on faith in America, reported in 2008 that “a majority of adults now believe that there are various biblically legitimate alternatives to participation in a conventional church.” It appears that there is a growing number of people who claim faith in Jesus but want little or nothing to do with the institutional church.

 Worldwide, we are witnessing the largest growth in the number of Jesus followers in history. The number of believers in Africa grew from 9 million to 360 million in the last century. More Muslims have come to faith in Christ in the last two decades than at any other time in history.  Churches, what they look like and how they function, are changing while the number of Jesus followers is growing.

Season of Doubt

 This is the week after Easter.  The week of doubting. 

 On that first day of the week, the day we celebrate as Easter, Jesus appeared early to the women at the tomb.  That same day, he also appeared to two sojourners on their way to Emmaus, a village about 7 miles distant from Jerusalem. The women and those who saw him at Emmaus returned and  reported what they saw to the disciples who were in hiding. 

According to Mark’s account. Mary Magdalene was the first to report to his disciples. “When they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they refused to believe it.  After that, He appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking along on their way to the country. They went away and reported it to the others, but they did not believe them either,” (Mark 16:11-13).

That evening, Jesus appeared to his disciples, ten of them, at least.  According to John, Thomas was not there. They told Thomas about what they had seen. But Thomas would not accept it. He said, “ ‘Unless I see in His hands the imprint of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.’ “(John 20:25).   For a full week Thomas continued in his doubt and his refusal until the following Sunday when Jesus appeared to them again with Thomas present.  He fell on his knees and said, “ ‘“My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.’ ”(John 20:28-29). 

 Later, when Jesus met with them in Galilee and issued his great commission, Matthew states, “When they saw Him, they worshipped him, but some were doubtful,” (Matthew 28:17).

 I am glad the Scripture included these references.  I am glad that God is greater than our doubts.  We don’t have to have all the answers.  All of our knowledge is partial. None is perfect. None is complete.  But, we can believe.  Often, we are like the father who cried to Jesus, “I believe, help my unbelief.”

 Sometimes we doubt because we are disillusioned or disappointed by those in whom we placed our trust.  People will fail us. Sometimes we doubt because life doesn’t turn out the way we expected.  Sometimes we doubt because the innocent suffer and die.  A loved one dies, and we struggle with grief and loss. Sometimes we doubt because of the violence and war that continues unabated.

 And yet, there is something deep within that speaks to us. A voice that will not be silent, even though it may be nothing more than a whisper.  For me, it is the voice of the Savior speaking to Jairus after his servant has told him that his daughter is dead.  “Stop fearing, only believe.”  There is someone greater, someone higher, there is something better and beyond our best imagination.  We were given a glimpse when Jesus was raised from the dead.

Intelligent Design

 It has been 10 years since  Eric Hedin, an Assistant Professor of Physics at Ball State, promoted the idea to his students that the complex and intricate balance in nature reflects an intelligent design as opposed to a random series of accidental events.  The president of the University ruled that such teaching was not a scientific discipline and had no place in academia, an opinion widely shared in the academic community. Dr. Hedin once taught a course entitled The Boundaries of Science that was later cancelled.

 Baylor University was embroiled in the controversy when Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering set up a website and lab on the Baylor server to investigate intelligent design in 2007. Marks used the term “Evolutionary Informatics Lab.” Both the website and the lab were shut down within months and removed from the Baylor server. The lab continues on a third-party server at evoinfo.org.

 This month a bill permitting discussion of Intelligent Design in the classroom was passed by the House in West Virginia and sent to the Senate for approval.  The ACLU claims the bill violates the “establishment clause” separating church and state. 

 Regardless of academic positions on the subject, reflections on creation, purpose and intelligence beyond our own are important to all of us. We must ask the questions, “Are we alone?”  “Is there anyone else out there?” “Is the human race simply the result of eons of random chance on this third planet from the sun?”  “Have millions of years of random chance and survival of the fittest resulted in, well, ‘us?’” Or are we created in the divine image of the Creator? 

 We consider ourselves intelligent.  We can solve problems. We can manipulate the natural laws of physics to make them work for us resulting in mechanical and electronic machines that magnify our strength and accelerate our speed.  We can ponder ourselves and our own existence. We can imagine things as they could be.

 We are quickly making strides in our own creation of artificial intelligence, the design of robotic machinery that perform complex tasks. We already have cars that can drive themselves.  Information technology is taking us into realms reserved for the writers of science fiction. “Data,” the popular android on Star Trek, may not be so far-fetched after all.

 So, whenever we finally create “Data” and others like him, what will the androids think?  Will they sit around and discuss whether they were the result of random coincidence, concluding that they have no accountability or connection to the humans that created them?

 The Bible is quite clear regarding our own origin.  The Psalmist says, “For You formed my inward parts;

You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret.” (Psalm 139:13-15).

 Something beyond science resonates within us when we stand in awe on the rim of the Grand Canyon; when we behold the beauty of a sunset splashing the sky with crimson, purple and gold; when we walk by the sea listening to the waves crashing on the shore. When we watch a bird take flight, singing in the branches of a tree.  Only worship will satisfy the emptiness within. The realization that we are part of a grand design in the mind of God calls us to accountability and fills us with meaning, purpose and peace.

The Art of Aging

 I have discovered another principle of physics.  As the body grows older gravity increases. When the body is young, its parts stay in place, firm and fit. But as age sets in the parts start to slide -- downward. And the energy expended to lift the body from a sedentary position increases.

 I love to watch children skipping and dancing down the sidewalk.  My grandchildren, 8, 6 and 2, run wherever they go, and climb anything they can find.  I enjoy the grace of teenagers gliding effortlessly on skateboards, sprinting after a fly ball, leaping to make the catch.  And I think to myself, once upon a time, that was me!

 There are different perspectives about growing old.  “Grow old along with me” wrote Robert Browning, “ the best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made:  our times are in His hand.”

 Thomas Jefferson was not so kind. “First one faculty withdrawn and then another, sight, hearing, memory, affection and friends, filched one by one, till we are left among strangers, the mere monuments of time, facts, and specimens of antiquity for the observation of the curious.”

I have heard others say, “There is nothing good about growing old.”  And, “growing old isn’t for wimps.”  I met with some of my childhood friends last week.  Four of us were together in Mrs. Pritchett’s first grade class.  That was seventy years ago! We know a little bit about aging. 

 When Billy Graham was in his nineties he wrote, “I can’t truthfully say that I have liked growing older. At times I wish I could still do everything I once did – but I can’t. I wish I didn’t have to face the infirmities and uncertainties that seem to be part of this stage of life – but I do.” He asks the important question, “Is old age only a cruel burden that grows heavier and heavier as the years go by, with nothing to look forward to but death? Or can it be something more?”

 In his book, Nearing Home, Graham wrote, “Growing old has been the greatest surprise of my life. … When granted many years of life, growing old in age is natural, but growing old in grace is a choice. Growing older with grace is possible to all who set their hearts and minds on the Giver of grace, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

 My wife and I celebrated our fiftieth anniversary five years ago .  I wrote a book about our journey and published it on Amazon, Our Story.  It highlights our life together for more than half a century with joy, laughter, celebration, sorrow, loss and disappointment.  The longer we live, the deeper we discover life’s textures. The colors become more vibrant, and the blessings and goodness of God, more clear.

 Along with David, I can say, “I will utter dark sayings of old which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.  We will not conceal them from their children, but tell to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and His strength and His wondrous works which He has done!” (Psalm 78:2-4).

Something About That Name

 When my daughter was little, I rocked her to sleep every night and sang the same song:  Jesus, There Is Something About That Name.  One line in song says, “Kings and kingdoms shall all pass away, but there is something about that name.”  My daughter is now the mother of three. When her children were little, she sang the same song to them.   

 A few years ago, my wife and I chose to launch our 50^th year of marriage with a trip to Israel. We spent several days in Jerusalem, walking through the Garden of Gethsemane, looking on the Holy City from the Mount of Olives, visiting the Pool of Siloam and the Western Wall.  We sat on the Southern steps to the temple and walked the Via Dolorosa. 

 Everywhere we went we were shoulder to shoulder with people from all over the world, tourists who had come to walk where Jesus walked.  We met a young man from New Zealand, another from Colombia, entire groups from Indonesia, China and Korea. They came from Africa, South America and Europe.  They were Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Non-denominational.  They came from everywhere.  Tour buses lined up on the streets of the city, in spite of the political tensions reported in the news. They came because “there is something about that Name.”

 We visited the Trans-Jordan site, just above the Dead Sea, the most likely place where Jesus was baptized by John.  A barbed wire fence runs down the middle of the Jordan River separating Israel from Jordan.  Armed guards are visible.  On the other side of the river, beyond the barbed-wire fence, a group of Orthodox believers were baptizing, joyfully and with passion. Separated by politics and boundaries, we could not speak to them or touch them, but, like us, they were drawn to that site because Jesus was there.

 In Jerusalem most of the actual places where Jesus walked are buried, beneath many layers.  The temple of His day, built by Herod, was destroyed in 70 AD.  Only the supporting walls remained, including the western wall where hundreds gather to pray every day.

 In the 2^nd century the Roman Emperor Hadrian rebuilt Jerusalem as a pagan city with a temple to Jupiter. After 325, Emperor Constantine rebuilt the city as a Christian center. Islamic rulers conquered the city in 638, the Crusaders in 1099. It was conquered by Saladin in 1187. Its walls were destroyed in 1219 then repaired in 1243. It was taken over by the Ottoman Empire in 1517.  Jerusalem has been conquered, destroyed and rebuilt numerous times.

 According to Thomas L. Friedman in his book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, Neil Armstrong visited Israel and stood on the steps to the Temple entrance.  He asked his guide, archeologist Meir Ben Dov, if these were the same steps Jesus walked on.  Ben Dov confirmed that they were. “I have to tell you,” Armstrong said, “I am more excited stepping on these stones than I was stepping on the moon.” 

 The very stones of the city, with the numerous archeological digs, bear witness to history.  Kings and kingdoms have come and gone. But the name of Jesus remains.  2000 years after Jesus first walked the streets of Jerusalem, His name continues to transform people of every language, culture and nation who trust in Him.