“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2, NASB95)
Never been to the Holy Land? Well, Google’s Satellite maps can give you a bird’s eye view of just about anywhere in the world. Check out the following link that has a very good tour of Passion Week. The days from Palm Sunday through his resurrection. Zoom in to see the street level view and also click on each day on the left hand navigation area. It will take you through each day and give you a little summary of those locations and days.
Downtown San Jose has a fun park with lots of rope structures to climb on. It’s been there for a few years, but Matthew was still too young to try it. We decided to give it another try. He mostly liked playing in the toddler area with the other smaller kids.
Here’s Matthew and I attempting to climb the rope dome structure. We sorta got stuck at the top and needed a few more hands to help get Matthew back down. I guess Matthew’s still not quite old enough.
Of course, Claire was looking cute as usual and able to hold onto the ropes.
I’ve been making attempts at latte art lately on our new espresso machine. It’s now much easier to make latte art in the steamed milk and espresso with the new machine. Here’s an attempt at creating the traditional rosetta design in the milk. The design is made by swaying the milk stream from side to side as it pours into the mug. This causes waves of brown espresso and white milk foam to form the leaves of the rosetta pattern and then at the very end, the stem is formed by dragging the milk stream right through the middle of the leaves.
Jenn’s friend Amy has a younger son named Kai. They are approximately the same age and had some fun playing together at our local park. Amy used to be just down the street, a few houses away, but now she’s living in Clovis. Amy told us that Kai does miss us.
Kai asks about you guys a lot. He says he wants to see Matthew, or he wants to hold baby Claire. He was talking about them yesterday, in fact. Too cute.
Here’s a photo of the two of them playing at the local park.
Click Here to see the entire gallery of Matthew, Kai and friends.
Oprah has started a new series of shows on spirituality. One of the shows I had a chance to watch was going behind the scenes with “the secret” and other positive thinking authors. These teachers teach about the power of positive thinking to transform our lives and our reality. Jenn and I watched this and throughout the show, paused and reflected on a number of their teachings in light of what we understand as truth. Of course, we consider Scripture to be the truth revealed from God. Some of you may agree and find our notes interesting and helpful. Others may disagree, but I hope you can notice that the biblical truths do sounds much better, and there is good reason to prefer the biblical truths over the truths presented by positive thinkers.
They talked about putting out our positive thoughts into the universe as if the universe was listening to our thoughts. As a result it can returned to you double what you put out. This sounds spiritual at first, and especially in the way they deliver it. They’ll tell you, give it a try and see if it works. This is their way of confirming it. If you put out positive thoughts about something and it eventually happens, then they must be describing reality truthfully and it must be real. One of the teachers said it also has to do with quantum physics and the mysterious forms of energy which we have power to control. This has huge problems in a universe made by an all powerful God. First of all, the universe was created by God and the only intelligence it exhibits and displays is the intelligent design that God gave it. The universe does not think on it’s own or interact with us in intelligent ways. There are certainly natural responses to our human behaviors, and global warming is definitely a large scale example of that. However, the universe does not have the power to orchestrate events and coordinate the actions of a multitude of people to satisfy our positive thoughts. Only God has the power to make such amazing calculations and coordinations of events to plan and foresee all possible alternative outcomes and insure that one predetermined outcome occurs. This is only in the hands of a supreme being who is able to perceive all things and effect all things in a single instance and in every place at any time. It is a mistake to attribute this power to the universe and fail to acknowledge God. If people do indeed experience blessings from their positive thoughts, it is only because of God’s common grace, that he gives to believers and unbelievers freely and graciously.
“In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.”” (Acts 14:16-17, ESV)
God is gracious to us that we should recognize this grace and give proper recognition, respect and adoration to him. However, these positive thinkers give the credit, adoration and respect to themselves, attributing the power to be all from within them, and praising themselves for their positive thoughts.
They teach positive thinking is a power that we can all harness to change our lives. This idea of using positive thinking completely ignores the ultimate authority and controller of the entire universe, God. It attempts to make us the people who are in control of our lives. We become the authority over what should happen in our lives. God no longer has his right place of authority to tell us what we should be doing. It also ignores the fact that bad things do happen to good people. For example, starving people in Africa continue to suffer. This is not because they have failed to think positive. On the hand, consider rich people do make lots of money. Greedy and evil people continue to exploit others and live in luxury with the money they make. Although they may think evil and negative continually, they still manage to make lots of money. The secret does not adequately address this reality. However, the Bible addresses this properly and explains why this all happens. Jesus is the perfect example of someone who was a man of hope, love and forgiveness, however, he did not live for the purpose of transforming his own life. He lived for God’s greater purpose and it was a plan that involved the salvation of our souls. The positive thinkers will teach you to make a vision board and put your visions there to make it a reality. I would challenge these positive thinkers to come up with the plan of salvation on their vision board! Who would ever dream of making a life like Jesus? Yet, there was no better life lived, than that of Jesus. And each one of us should not look to a vision board for guidance, but look to following Jesus and learning what God wants us to do. This is found in the Scriptures, not on a vision board.
Positive thinkers recast everything as a means of benefit the self. What is it that you want for yourself? Even forgiveness is for the purpose of letting something go in order for the benefit of yourself. Their idea of forgiveness is meant to have a benefit for yourself rather than a benefit of the person being forgiven. This is not true forgiveness. True forgiveness is meant to benefit the person being forgiven. The person being forgiven no longer has the weight of their sin as a burden that causes separation in their relationship with the person who forgave them. Sure, when we forgive others, there is a benefit in that we avoid bitterness that can harden and bitter our hearts. But it is more importantly meant to restore the relationship with the person being forgiven so that we no longer count those sins against them. The ultimate act of forgiveness is the forgiveness of sins which Jesus earned by his death on the cross. Jesus went even one step further by not only earning forgiveness for us and but also bearing the penalty of our sins upon himself. And let’s be reminded that this was not any small penalty but it was the wrath of God against all the sins of those who he saves. Although many of us know that he suffered crucifixion, which is the most horrible and painful way to die, we may never truly understand the immensity of the wrath of God that he bore for us. He welcomes us to receive the benefits of forgiveness in our lives today and into an eternity by escaping the wrath of God on ourselves. If God acted in the way these positive thinkers describe forgiveness, he would have forgot about our sins, went away on some other business and left us to die, followed by an eternity of separation from Himself and eternal punishment for ourselves. Now that sounds horrible compared to the Bible’s description of God’s forgiveness? I think the Bible’s description of forgiveness and especially the forgiveness exemplified in Christ is far superior to anything you will find in the world.
They claim the purpose of us being here is to evolve our consciousness as spiritual beings. Although this sounds deeper than the shallow thinking of materialistic living, it still falls far short of finding truth. Where do they find the confirmation of this statement of our reason for existence. How can we humans, being the thing made, truly understand the reason for existing apart from the the Creator telling us. All our attempts at understanding the reason for our existence are going to amount to speculation. What could be better than God, our Creator explicitly telling us the purpose for our existence. And furthermore, he confirmed it over and over again through Scripture by performing miracles. However, what confirmation do these people on Oprah have? None of them have split the Red Sea, caused fire to come from heaven, raise the dead, resurrect from the dead, or heal leprous diseases. These are all examples of incredible miracles that confirmed the messages from God that we find in the Bible.
They don’t give credit to God as the person who has all things under his control. They think that they have power to better the planet with their positive thinking, however this grossly overestimates the influence they have on the world around them and the control they have of the world events that are far beyond their control. However, Christians have the benefit of knowing there is an all powerful ruler of the universe who has power infinitely stronger than all our positive thoughts put together. He tells us where history is going. One day, Jesus, His Son will return, judge the earth and redeem those who believe in him. I would much rather put my faith in a God with this sort of power than having faith that the sum total of a bunch of positive thoughts have some positive effect that is yet to even be determined. Christians should be thankful that God has determined what will happen, it is good for us and it is under his ability to carry it out. God has been faithful in the past, he has been faithful for us today, and we can trust in his faithfulness to continue into the future. And we can also be thankful that he does not depend on our thoughts to carry them out.
I would hope that no one takes this positive thinking seriously and that everyone seriously considers the message of the Bible. Christians have no business dabbling in this positive thinking. The Bible is sufficient to explain every rule of faith and practice. God provided all that we need in His Word and we should look no further. For non Christians, I hope that you can see the superiority of the Bible and if my notes here did not give you a glimpse of it’s superiority, I hope that you could spend some serious time evaluating it for yourself. Please feel free to send me any questions and open discussion in any way you like. I would love to hear form you.
