Deception as a way of life

Sir Walter Scott wrote the famous words, "Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!" When Eve made her defense in Genesis 3 she says that the serpent deceived her. The rest of the book of Genesis tells how well we learned from the serpent. Cain wasn't very good at deception, he couldn't hide his reaction to God favoring Abel's sacrifice, and He certainly wasn't able to deceive the Lord about what had become of his brother. Beginning with the deception of Abraham concerning Sarai's true identity, we hit our stride, continuing on through Joseph's deception of his brothers in Egypt.

We had become so accustomed to deception that when the real thing, Jesus, appeared, we no longer perceived truth. Today, we try and find ways to get around His claim to be "The Way, The Truth and The Life" by saying He is "a" way by questioning as the serpent did, "Did he really say..." It is the same deception as the garden yet we keep falling for it so why should satan change his tactics?

In the beginning, he had to take on the form of a serpent to pull it off. It worked so well that we have taken it up ourselves. When the truth came, it was in the form of a man, truth incarnate, a real man, true to His call as image-bearer of God. The deception is still the same, that God is keeping something from us and there is another way to get it outside of Him. Jesus says we will lack nothing and that if we ask our Father, He will give it to us, why don't we believe Him?

The Limits of Materialism

I want to say that to be Christian isn't to check your brain at the door and deny the principles of scientific materialism and it doesn't mean to be gullible to all the claims that are made for miracles. The laws of science are important to life, otherwise we would never be able to know any real security for simply living day to day. I need the law of gravity to be securely true for instance.

Christianity doesn't deny the science behind materialism, it does, however, challenge the claim of ultimacy in materialism. We believe that there is a higher law and that the universe has infinitely more possibilities than materialism would indicate. Ordinarily, everything works according to those laws but occasionally, God does things that can't be accounted for by them. Predictability and order are indeed evidence of God, He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, but they aren't the full definition of God's being.

Creation is evidence that something new happened in time and space, the universe came into being and nothing before that could have predicted it. Why do we have a problem with Him doing new things after that time?

Apprehending and Comprehending

I preached on materialism yesterday, both philosophical and economic materialism. I believe economic materialism, desiring more stuff in the belief that there is something in me that will be fulfilled by the possession of more stuff and directing all my effort to getting that stuff, is based on the philosophical belief that there is only matter (stuff) and there are no realities other than matter. If matter is all there is and there ain't no more, then it makes sense to desire to get as much of it as you can, only matter matters.

It isn't an unavoidable conclusion, but it logically follows, at least economic materialism is a sensible response to philosophical materialism. You could also decide that we should all share all matter in common or some other variation of that decision. What you have to consider though is that if matter is the ultimate reality, what brings about my ability to apprehend and comprehend that truth and why should I have confidence in my comprehension. If everything is geared for survival and propagation, why should I believe my comprehension is true?