Theology – Page 2 – sethlewis.ie

Appreciation Grows With Knowledge

The car windows were open, and Carlos Santana was making his guitar sing out of our stereo in ways that few can imitate. With the wind in her hair, my wife commented from the passenger seat that she reckoned people who play guitar probably appreciate his solos more than she could. She’s an experienced musician herself, but her instrument is piano. I play guitar—but I wouldn’t claim such a thing in front of Carlos. Still, even my amateur knowledge makes me see the truth in what my wife said. I’ve tried to learn my scales and unlock the hidden order of the fretboard and train my fingers to move freely along it—and I have not succeeded. When I hear someone whose mastery of the instrument is as complete as Santana’s, I think my own attempts—as small as they are—really do make me appreciate his abilities in a different way. My limited experience with the instrument gives me the beginnings of a context for the kind of work he must have put in day after day and year after year to develop his seemingly effortless (yet in reality hard won) talent. I’d imagine if I was more accomplished at guitar myself, I would appreciate the skill of masters like Santana even more. As my knowledge of music grows, my appreciation grows along with it.

Three Castle Head

On a sunny day in the Spring, we pulled the car into a gravel parking area at the end of a remote peninsula in Ireland. The sea shimmered in the light beyond the deep green fields lined and dotted with grey rock walls and white sheep. We opened the gate and crossed a field, and then another, and another, carefully following the faint paths worn by the feet of those who had come here before us. Sometimes we had to make a choice—it seems not all of our predecessors had gone the same way. Or did hooves make one trail, and feet another? Eventually the grassy fields gave way to rocky hills, and we scrambled up one side and down the other where the grass and mud and boulders and the sound of the sea all blend together into a kind of otherworldly magic and I had to remind myself that I wasn’t looking at an illustration of the Wild Lands of Narnia—I was in the real, tangible, wild of the actual world.

I Don’t Know Where The Streams Are

One warm Monday evening, I found myself with half an hour to fill as I waited for one of my children to have a music lesson. Across the street was a new greenway, quietly inviting me to spend the time strolling instead of scrolling. The path passed along roads I’d travelled many times in the car, so I didn’t expect to see anything new, just to stretch my legs. I was wrong.

Things look different when you’re walking. You have time to notice the individual wildflowers, and the meadow behind the wall with the horses in it that you just couldn’t see from the driver’s seat of the car. The discovery that surprised me most, though, was the stream running right beside the road. Through the crowded trees and bushes it babbles away constantly as it splashes its way over rocks and under roots and how did I travel this road so many times and never even know this was here?

What The Mysteries Of The Universe Teach Us About God

Every so often I run across a news article about new discoveries that could reshape our understanding of the universe, or how some scientists are proposing new ways of thinking about the questions that continue to confound our best efforts of explanation. As our knowledge grows and our scientific theories continually shift in response, it’s obvious that our experts are still out of their depth in the mysteries of creation. It often seems that the more we find out about the universe, the more questions we end up having about it. For all we’ve discovered, we still don’t know some of the fundamental basics about how it works. Yes, we have theories like dark matter to explain anomalies we don’t understand, but we’ve never observed dark matter and we may very well be wrong about it. We theorise about black holes, and postulate about the meaning of ripples in the space-time continuum. At the heart of the physical universe that supports our lives, there are mysteries that still boggle our minds. We know this, and accept it, even as we work to understand more. But while people have learned to live with this tension in our knowledge of the fundamental realities of the universe, they often reject the exact same dynamic when it comes to the One who created the universe. If you think about this, it doesn’t make sense.

Why should we expect the Creator to be easier to understand than his creation? Wouldn’t we rather expect him to be even deeper, even broader and more expansive than anything he made? Wouldn’t he, of all things, be the most mind-blowing reality of all?

The Language of Rivers and Stars

While the children were off school this Easter our family took a trip to explore Mizen Head, the southernmost tip of Ireland. It’s a remote peninsula where the rocky, wild terrain is dotted with cottages of white or pale yellow and the land is a patchwork of squares and rectangles divided by low stone walls. Clusters of sheep and cows surround tiny villages with steeples in the middle and strings of houses and pubs and shops that might be out of eggs if you get there too late. At the southern point where the land runs out there’s an old signal station that’s become a tourist attraction, reached by a footbridge that stretches between impassable sea cliffs. When we walked across and looked down we saw three seals far below us, relaxing in a rocky inlet surrounded by towering, jagged rocks while the seagulls soared above our heads. In the far distance, we could just make out the shape of Fastnet Rock, a tiny island of stone where people managed—somehow—to build a lighthouse to warn those at sea of the ship-shattering dangers around them. At our feet the just-blooming sea-pinks waved in the breeze and I wondered again how these flowers manage—and even seem to prefer—to grow in places where there is so little soil and so much violent wind from the ever-turbulent ocean.

Easter Isn’t Over

Easter Sunday was a few days ago now, but that doesn’t mean it’s over. The effects of what we celebrated last Sunday continue to grow, slowly, like the buds of spring continue to open all around us and the fresh green continues to deepen into maturity and the apple blossoms transform themselves, somehow, into delicious fruit. Jesus said, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). Then he died—for us. Now, 2,000 years later, his resurrection is still bearing fruit—transforming the cold, dead hearts of sinful, proud, selfish people who trust in his forgiveness and salvation into living, loving, new creations—a transformation that is every bit as glorious and surprising as the growth of a tiny, dull little sunflower seed into a towering, thriving wonder of nature. This is how God works. He does nothing by half-measures. He doesn’t ease off once he’s done enough to get by. He goes on, and on, and on—working wonders far beyond anything we could ask or imagine, and glories no mind has conceived (1 Corinthians 2:9). That’s why, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul uses seeds as an illustration of the resurrection of God’s people:

Changing The Question

Under the cover of darkness, a prominent religious leader sought out the controversial Nazarene that was dividing opinion across the nation. Nicodemus was intrigued by the miracles that Jesus was performing, and wanted to hear more of his teaching. Jesus received him but immediately redirected him, showing Nicodemus that more teaching was not what he needed. What he needed was new life—new birth by God’s Spirit, into life that lasts forever. Nicodemus did not come to Jesus looking for new birth. Jesus did not answer the questions Nicodemus came to ask—he answered the question Nicodemus should have asked. All through the gospels Jesus redirects people’s questions in surprising ways, not only changing the answer from what they expected, but changing the question itself. For example:

Unthinkable (a poem)

If there was ever a doubt that God can take the evil of this world and turn it into good greater than we can imagine, that doubt was laid to rest when Jesus walked out of the tomb where he had been laid to rest. Humanity killed him for spite, and he died willingly—and rose again to save us. Now he promises that the troubles of his children who trust and follow him will also “work together for good” (Romans 8:28)—but of course that’s not how it feels in the moment when we face the unthinkable.

Unthinkable

Sometimes God allows
The unthinkable
Unbelievable
Thing
To happen

Realism And Resurrection

Perhaps it’s a product of growing up, but I do feel that the passing years have tarnished the old optimism I remember from the world of my childhood. There were always deep problems in the world—even I knew this growing up—but there was also a general sense of progress in the air, at least as I remember it. There was a hopeful feeling back then that our problems were not insurmountable, and better days were ahead. Science was supposed to solve some of our challenges, politics would solve others, and culture and civilisation would inevitably advance, even if the process was slow and bumpy. Those were the days when the unified, peaceful vision of a harmonious humanity depicted in shows like Star Trek felt like it could be a real possibility someday—minus the teleporters, of course.

Now we’re not so sure. The world feels different. Maybe our new technologies haven’t been all that we hoped they would be. Maybe our political leaders have burned us too many times and left us disillusioned with the system. Wars have continued relentlessly, as have human trafficking and slavery and corruption. Selfishness, injustice, and cruelty still plague our cultures and institutions, and they can pop up unexpectedly in our own hearts, too. Things are still moving quickly, but it’s become clear that movement isn’t necessarily progress. The old optimism of my memory has given way to a tired realism that doesn’t expect as much, hope as much, or feel as disappointed when everything goes sideways—isn’t the whole world constantly spinning sideways anyway?

The Indispensable Inefficiency of Prayer

The to-do list is long—it’s always long—and the day only has so many hours. If we want to maximise our time on this planet, we have to prioritise. We can’t do everything, and it’s important to “make the most of every opportunity”, as the apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:16. But what does this mean? How does it look?

For a Christian, one of the most effective uses of our time is an activity that looks to most people—and maybe quite often to ourselves—like one of the most inefficient. And yet, if we really believe what we say we believe, and if we really trust our Saviour to guide us, then it is indispensable:

Prayer.