Who Would Have Known?

I wonder sometimes how the angels must have marveled at God, when Satan and his allies rebelled and were cast out of heaven. They’d known that God was glorious; they’d witnessed His splendor and majesty and greatness ever since their creation. But this was something new, wasn’t it? They’d never before seen sin and rebellion…which means they’d never before seen God’s anger…never seen His holiness and His might expressed in this way. They must have been awed at this new display of His glory.

I’d never really thought about this until I started reading John Milton’s Paradise Lost. The poem opens with the fallen angels talking amongst themselves after they’ve been cast out of heaven. Here are some snippets of what they say about God—and their surprise at His might (which they now have experienced):

…so much the stronger proved[God] with His thunder.
And till then who knew
The force of those dire arms? (p. 14)

But He who reigns
Monarch in heaven, till then as one secure
Sat on His throne, upheld by old repute,
Consent or custom, and His regal state
Put forth at full, but still His strength concealed,
Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall.
Henceforth His might we know, and know our own… (p. 33)

I’m not recommending Paradise Lost as a systematic theology or anything; Milton takes a lot of literary/poetic license, and some of his theology (and Scriptural interpretation) is off. But this definitely is food for thought!

Think about it: God, through the angels’ rebellion, revealed an aspect of Himself that otherwise would have been unknown (or at least known only theoretically). This was His plan from the beginning.

The same thing is true of man’s rebellion and fall. The holy angels were observers of this, too, and they must have been astounded yet again. They’d sang for joy at the world’s creation; they’d seen the beauty of God’s perfect created order, the purity and dignity of the earth and heavens—and man, the pinnacle of creation and the bearer of the image of the Creator. But with the fall, and the entrance of sin into the world, God’s image in man was debased and disfigured. His perfect creation was cursed, tainted. Maybe the angels wondered how good possibly could result from this.

It’s hard for us to grasp, too. After I started writing this blog post, ironically enough, I turned on the Christian radio station to hear Randy Alcorn being interviewed and answering questions from callers. One woman called in to ask Randy how he possibly could say that God ordained sin. Why would God do that?

I liked Randy’s answer, which was, in summary: I don’t know…but God’s wisdom is far, far greater than ours, and His own glory is His highest priority. And through ordaining sin, God has ordained to bring Himself the greatest glory. In a God-centered universe, this is exactly as it should be.

Human wisdom is limited. Angels’ wisdom is great, but likewise limited. But God’s wisdom is manifold—infinite. And His own glory is His highest priority. He ordains everything—evil included—so as to reveal the most about His glory.

Just as with Satan’s rebellion, God ordained/allowed man’s rebellion very deliberately. He ordained it in order to bring Himself exponentially greater glory by showcasing aspects of Himself that otherwise never would have been know. And what we see of God’s glory through means of mankind’s fall is absolutely astounding. Without sin, there would be no need for redemption…and without redemption, we would never know God’s compassion, lovingkindness, mercy, and grace. He wouldn’t be any less compassionate, gracious, merciful, etc. (since He is those things by very nature of being who He is)—but we (both humans and angels) would have no way of really knowing it…or praising Him for it.

Yes, this is manifold wisdom.

Who would have thought that God would ordain and orchestrate the universe so that the very thing that most dishonors Him and destroys His creatures would, in the end, bring Him even greater honor…and mankind even greater good? The angels never could have foreseen it, and Scripture says that they marvel, and long to look into these things—no wonder! How much should we, too, marvel—we, who don’t just observe but actually get to experience redemption?

John Owen says some great things along these lines in his book Communion with the Triune God (p. 208; italics mine):

There is a glorious end whereunto sin is appointed and ordained, and discovered in Christ, that others are unacquainted with. Sin in its own nature tends merely to the dishonor of God, the debasement of his majesty, and the ruin of the creature in whom it is; hell itself is but the filling of wretched creatures with the fruit of their own devices. The comminations and threats of God in the law do manifest one other end of it, even the demonstration of the vindictive justice of God, in measuring gout unto it a meet recompense of reward (2 Thess. 1:6). But here the law stays (and with it all other light) and discovers no other use or end of it at all. In the Lord Jesus there is the manifestation of another and more glorious end; to wit, the praise of God’s glorious grace (Eph. 1:6) in the pardon and forgiveness of it—God having taken order in Christ that that thing which tended merely to his dishonor should be managed to his infinite glory, and that which of all things he desires to exalt (Heb. 8:6-13)—even that he may be known and believed to be a “God pardoning iniquity, transgression and sin” [Mic. 7:18].

Owen’s a little hard to follow sometimes, but what he’s getting at is this: Since the beginning, creation has told of the glory of God—His glory in His wisdom, His power, His goodness—but it can only tell so much. The law, when it was given, revealed a bit more; through it, God’s glory in His righteousness, His holiness, and His hatred of sin were shown. But, still, even this couldn’t reveal everything God intended to reveal about Himself. It was only in the coming of Christ to accomplish redemption that we—and the angels in heaven—can see God’s glory in His grace­—and that is the very thing in which He most desires to be glorified.

One of my absolute favorite Bible passages is in Exodus 34, where Moses has asked God to show him His glory. God hides Moses in the cleft of the rock and passes by, and the statement He makes, the way in which He chooses to definitively proclaim His glory to Moses is by saying that He is “the Lord, the Lord God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth.”

What a God we have!

I think our response has to be like that of the angels—to just marvel at this wisdom that so supersedes our own. At the end of Paradise Lost, the angel Michael reveals to Adam God’s plan for future redemption through Christ. Adam responds in awe, saying (Paradise, p. 377):

O Goodness infinite, Goodness immense!
That all this good of evil shall produce,
And evil turn to good; more wonderfulT
han that which by creation first brought forth
Light out of darkness!
... rejoice much more, that much more good thereof shall spring;
To God more glory, more good-will to men
From God, and over wrath grace shall abound.

Indeed.

Out of the Dream

“In your light we see light.”–Psalm 36:9

I walked out of the theater impressed after seeing the movie Inception recently. It was highly entertaining, with good effects, and cleverly written, I thought. (Really, who thinks this stuff up?) But what I liked most is that it left me thinking. I love it when movies do that.

Remember the final scene? Everyone has resurfaced from the crazy dream-within-a-dream world. It’s sort of a sigh-of-relief moment—a comfort to have regained reality. But then the final shot is Cobb’s little weighted top spinning, wobbling like it’s about to fall (which it will do in reality but not within dreams)…and then the screen goes black before you see whether it does fall.

Well done, Movie! Way to keep us guessing. The characters have been grappling with this question of “How do you know your ‘reality’ actually is reality?” And then at the very end, just when you feel you’ve regained your footing, that final scene leaves you with a grain of doubt. Is reality real? How do you know?

I came away from the movie, like I said, thinking—and with one main lingering thought: What does a person do without a sure reference point for determining reality?

It’s disturbing, isn’t it? The answer seems to be “fall apart.” Come unhinged. That’s what the movie portrayed, at least; the idea of losing a reference point really messed with the characters’ minds. And Cobb’s wife was the extreme example. Losing the ability to know the real from the dream made her come unraveled; in the end, she took her own life.

Mere movie drama? I don’t think so. Even off the big screen, it’s a haunting question: What does a person do without a sure reference point for reality?

Because God Himself is the Ultimate Reality—everything else having existence and meaning only in relation to Him—He is the only reference point. “In Him we live and move and have our being.” We’re His creatures, and without Him, we have no way to truly understand or delineate reality. To try to do so is…well, absurd. But sin makes us prefer the absurd over submission to God, doesn’t it? We’re born rejecting and rebelling against Him, and so we try to understand reality (or define our own) apart from Him.

But do we realize what we’re doing? Do we realize that in rejecting God, we’re rejecting the only sure reference we have for reality?

Some do. Some people recognize the absurdity and meaninglessness of reality without God…and actually embrace it. Do you call that crazy? Philosophers call it nihilism. I call it at least consistent. Because if you cast off God, the only really viable alternative is meaninglessness and absurdity. No Creator means no purpose, no order, no point to it all. Existence is haphazard and irrational; there is no way to gauge “truth” or, in the end, to even know whether what we observe and experience by our senses is legitimate or illusion. To nihilistic thinking, it could be, as Poe wrote (and Inception presented), that “all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”

Can’t imagine any “normal” person-next-door embracing that kind of philosophy? Well, let me tell you a story. It’s something that happened during my sophomore year of college:

It was the spring of 2003, a gray afternoon in downtown Chicago. Janet, a sleek-suited businesswoman whom I’d met moments before, sat with me on the rough carpet of Borders, sandwiched between shelves of glossy children’s paperbacks. I remember the fluorescent lighting casting an unnatural tinge on her brown hair; I also remember feeling that the entire scene was slightly unnatural—me, the jeans-clad Bible college student and Janet, the middle-aged urban executive, complete strangers, discussing philosophy in between copies of The Velveteen Rabbit and Where the Sidewalk Ends.

My interview with Janet was part of a “worldview project” for Christian Life & Ethics class. The assignment was to find someone I’d never met and interview that person about his or her worldview. The interview questions were significant: “What do you think is ultimate reality, the ‘really real’?” “What is a human being?” “What happens at death?” “How is it possible to know things, to have consciousness?”

We’d been studying these questions in class, along with various worldviews: pantheism, panentheism, finite godism, deism, etc. Honestly, I saw most of these as just esoteric labels for theories that only philosophy professors (and, of course, their students) would ever deliberately muck around in. (Really, who even knew what the heck panentheism was?) But Janet was the third person I had interviewed in the bookstore that afternoon, and like the two interviewees before her, she was giving me shocking answers.

When I asked, “What is reality? How is it possible to know?” she sighed and said, “I don’t know… I really don’t believe that we can know.” I was incredulous. “Not anything?” She shook her head, “No, nothing at all. Who’s to say it isn’t all just an illusion?”

I was astounded. Janet was no philosopher, and she used no polished, academic language. She was overwhelmingly normal—and an atheist and nihilist (though I don’t know whether she would have know/used that terminology).

It saddens me to remember this. But Janet is just one of so very many, and it reminds me that the question spawned by Inception—what do you do without a sure reference point for determining reality?—is overwhelmingly practical. People without Christ are without that reference point. They are lost in the truest sense of the word.

You can acknowledge/embrace meaninglessness, like Janet, or (like most people), you can futilely grasp for meaning outside of God, latching on to any number of empty philosophies. But in the end it’s all the same, isn’t it? Without God, all is “vanity,” as Ecclesiastes says.

Oh, how people need rescue.

But the beautiful thing is that there is hope for rescue, isn’t there?

The same night that I saw Inception, I came home and was reading in Hebrews (which I’d been studying that week). The author says, “This hope [in Christ] we have as an anchor for the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast” (6:19). It’s just such a contrast—this firm confidence, as opposed to the despair of uncertainty and never knowing. The words brought such a wave of assurance and gratitude. Jesus Christ is our certainty, our anchor. Without Him defining reality for us—without Him as our Reality, our reference point—we’re hopeless. But with Him everything makes sense, and we have hope that is sure and certain because He Himself is our hope. I am SO glad.

What incredible compassion we should have for those around us—a lost world without a reference point, without an anchor, without hope. Because we once were there, too. Every one of us was born in sin, alienated from God. But He graciously shone in our hearts, regenerating us, granting us repentance and faith, opening our blind eyes and enlivening our dead hearts.

I’m just reminded all over again of what a miraculous salvation we’ve been given. Have we forgotten the meaninglessness from which we were rescued? Forgotten what a hope we’ve been given? Our Savior truly is the Solid Rock we stand on.

And this also spurs me on to more fervent prayer for God to work in the hearts of the unbelievers I know and meet, and to renewed compassion for them. My prayer is that I—that we—will be motivated to intercede passionately for the lost, and to take every opportunity to proclaim to them the unfathomable riches of Christ.

I’m so thankful for reality, so thankful not just that I have a grasp on reality, but that Reality graciously took hold of me.