Where does it end?

I appreciate the motivation (kill disease), but not only are they aborting babies, they are transplanting them into COW EGGS?? This is no joke.

Check out this disturbing report. Even more troublesome are the comments at the end...

The fact is that animals are fundamentally different from human beings in that
we are made in the image of Almighty God (Gen 1:26). Mixing them up is not an option!!

I mean... am I out of my mind here? This is ridiculous.

California Christian Apologetics Conference (III)

We had to wait for Saturday to roll around (and cough up 40 big ones!) to enjoy the third session of the Apologetics Conference. There were significantly less people there on Saturday unfortunately, but hopefully many were ministered to and challenged by the first two sessions on Friday.

For the third session, we had the privilege of hearing once more as a group from Sean McDowell, who titled his talk “Equipping Youth With a Biblical Worldview.” To start off, he started with some statistics about how many believers reportedly leave the faith due to “intellectual skepticism” (32%!!!). Now, I have my suspicions as to whether or not that’s truly the reason they left; however, the point remains at least that we should be able to take that excuse away as a legitimate one. He then made the observation that most couples, after experiencing the loss of a child, struggle to even stay together. Most relationships cannot make it. Yet some do. He said that his research led him to the conclusion that those couples who have a worldview that can make sense of pain and tragedy beforehand make it. That, of course, would be the Biblical worldview, which only 9% of evangelical adults and 2% of evangelical youth have. It is worth noting that “evangelical” is defined in this poll far more narrowly than simply self-identification. There are 9 questions asked of which all have to be answered correctly in order to consider someone evangelical. What exactly they are evades me, but it was quite surprising when I heard them.

We then got quizzed about what we felt were the beliefs of Protestant Youth on the following topics. My guesses are in white and the correct answers are in red.

Deistic God - 10% 10%
Impersonal (Energy Force) - 10% 8%
Reincarnation - 15% 33%
Psychics or fortune-tellers - 25% 21%
Miracles - 35% 23%
No Evil Spirits - 30% 42%
Many Religions true - 35% 48%
Buffet Religion - 40% 36%
Jesus Sinned - 5% 46%
No Resurrection - 25% 51%

Can you believe that? I mean, on every turn, I was either spot on (that is, within 4%) or over estimated the number of people with orthodox beliefs. The majority of protestant youth today do not believe in the resurrection! This historic event is absolutely central to the Christian faith. Without it, we are damned (1 Cor 15). It’s no wonder we’ve got a crisis in our country. The next statistic was absolutely shocking.

Young people without a Biblical worldview are 600% more likely to commit suicide. Amazing!! There were tons of other statistics like that showing that having a Biblical worldview does affect the way you act. Of course, with indwelling sin everyone will fall at some point or another. The point is not that with the “perfect” worldview, we will be perfect. That will only happen at death. But it sure does help to have the right perspective, because then your desires won’t be able to justify themselves as easily with lies about reality. I’m also going to assume that the percentage of people who are actually Christians is greater among those with a biblical worldview than among those deemed “evangelicals” by this poll.

Karl Marx believed he could change the world with only 26 soldiers. But why 26? That’s the number of letters in the alphabet. He knew all about the power that ideas and words could have on people. This is why the Bible says in 2 Cor 10:3-5, “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war like the world does…we demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." Our job is to teach people that they can know the truth. And furthermore, that we can know that we know the truth. 81% of youth (not necessarily religious youth) believe that religious truth is relative. It belongs in the upper, private sphere of opinion and faith, whereas scientific knowledge belongs in the lower, public sphere of common knowledge.

Faith is very or extremely important in the lives of 67% percent of conservative protestant youth. Most youth pastors might rejoice over this and conclude that we’re making progress; however, on open-ended lists of important things, Christian Smith says that religion rarely ever shows up! So what this statistic tells us is that in the religious sector of their lives, religion and faith are very important to them. However, when it comes to having an effect on everyday life, religion and faith have little or no effect. This is what’s commonly known as the Christmas-Easter Christianity, or the Sunday Christian. You’re religious in the religion part of your life. Everywhere else, though, you leave religion out of it. For example, a 14-year-old boy said, “Church makes me learn about God and Jesus but has no effect on my life.” Or take this quote from a 17-year-old: “Religion influences me in the things I choose not to do, um, like bad things, like murder or something…” (!!!). Well… great! I’m so glad that you’ve found the motivation to not kill anybody! There is clearly some sort of disconnect in people’s minds about what role Christ is supposed to play in the life of the Christian. In all the interviews conducted, never did teens express that religion summons people to embrace an obedience to truth regardless of the personal consequences or rewards. When hundreds of Christian teens were asked what Christianity was all about, the following number of people mentioned the following subjects:

13 obeying God or the church
12 repentance
7 resurrection of Jesus
2 Kingdom of God (These both Mormons)

Versus…

112 Being made happy
99 Feeling Good about oneself
92 Feeling better about oneself and life

There is only one way to begin tackling this problem. Nancy Pearcy said, “We must begin by being utterly convinced that there is a biblical perspective on everything – not just on ‘spiritual’ matters.” And to support that, Sean gave us Col 2:3 – All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” are in Christ. All truth is God’s truth. If something is Biblical, it is true; and if something is true, it is Biblical, whether implicitly or explicitly. After this short ::cough:: overview, Sean gave us 3 main practical ways that will help us think like a Christian.

First, realize that there is a Biblical worldview for everything. Whether it be health, science, or government, there is a Biblical worldview on everything! For example, communism failed because it misdiagnosed the nature of man, which a Biblical worldview could not have missed. Man is wicked above all, his heart is deceitfully wicked (Jer 17:9).

Second, realize that all of creation comes from God’s hand, and most of what we might consider bad or dangerous is only that way because it is a good thing that has been twisted. Rather than sleeping with our spouses we sleep with anyone, or rather than working for the Lord we work for ourselves, or rather than playing music for the Lord, we fill our head will wholly unedifying lyrics and ambiance.

Third, ask great questions. This not only helps you increase your knowledge base, but also ensures that you understand people better. Rather than asserting wrong facts, you can make progress in a discussion and only be discovering truths about the person you’re speaking with.

To finish off, Sean ended with a final exhortation. “We have to insist on presenting Christianity as a comprehensive unified worldview that addresses all of life and reality.”

Otherwise, you’re just emoting.

California Christian Apologetics Conference (II)

Lee Strobel (author of The Case for series, the newest of which is The Case for the Real Jesus) kicked off the second session of Friday night by telling us how much he loves evangelism. (And you know what that means – I love him!) He loves evangelism because he finds it simply amazing that God can use us to draw His own to Himself, and he gets to use apologetics too! Lee let us know about a time he was invited to come to a young lady’s house to talk to her entire family over dinner about Jesus. He was ecstatic about an opportunity to share his (new found) faith with some people. However, as soon as he walked in, he noticed sizable stacks of books piled up all around the house which all aimed to refute the claims of Jesus and Christianity. He began to worry, and as he sat down to dinner his fears were confirmed. As he took his place and began the conversation about Jesus, the father of the young girl who had invited him began firing as many of the toughest questions as he could muster. And they were difficult. So difficult that Lee had no answer for them… So he had to tell the man: “You’re questions are tough, and I don’t have an answer for them. But I suspect that in 2000 years, you won’t be the one to bring Christianity to its knees. Give me some time, and I’ll get you some answers.”

At this point, he introduced the concept of “Spiritual Vertigo” that we apologists are especially prone to. Spiritual Vertigo is when someone asks you questions that you can't answer and your head begins to spin and you begin to doubt your faith. He warned: “If you don't feel this, you will soon. If you never feel this, your kids will.” Why? Because there are 3x as many atheist/agnostics professors in the universities as there are in the general public. He told us about an email he got once from a young man where it was especially evident that he was experiencing spiritual vertigo: "Please help me… I was raised in the church and I'm now 26 years old. This book has devastated my faith. I don’t want to be kept in the dark: I want to know what really is going on in the Bible and what I should believe, even if it goes against what I've believed since I was a little boy."

It’s no wonder, then, that 1 Peter 3:15 commands us to “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect…" – 1 Pet 3:15 (NIV). Lee also encouraged us with this verse: "The first to speak in court sounds right - until the cross-examination begins." - Pr 18:17. This is why we should "Test everything. Hold on to the good." - 1 Thess 5:21. Because someone may sound right when they get up and give testimony, but once the cross-examination begins, they don’t look so good. That is why the title of Lee’s talk was “Cross Examination.” And I’m sure there was some sort of pun intended, given that it’s about Jesus!

For this one, Lee stepped through 3 rising theories about who Jesus was and then cross-examined them. I’m pretty sure I got some flavor of all of these at Stanford this past year, so I know how closely Lee is hitting it on the head, and he does it quite well.

First, Lee addressed the mythological theory of Jesus. The story goes that the disciples borrowed beliefs about Jesus from earlier “mystery” religions, especially that of Mithraism (the worship of Mithras). The battle cry here is that “Nothing in Christianity is original” (The DaVinci Code). The story goes that Mithras was born of a virgin in a cave on December 25, that he was a travelling teacher with 12 disciples, and that he was sacrificed for world peace, buried in a tomb, and raised 3 days later. Does this sound like anyone you know? Of course it does! That’s Jesus! But no… it’s actually the god Mithras. All this information is from a god who came before Jesus, so obviously the Christians plagiarized other religions to make theirs more palatable!

Enter the cross examination. When one goes back to the sources of information that you can gather about Mithras, we find that he was born fully grown out of a rock wearing a hat. There is no virgin involved, and the only cave to be spoken of would be the hole he left in the side of the rock from being born out of it. Not that it would matter anyways; Jesus wasn’t born in a cave after all! The claim that Mithras was born Dec 25 is irrelevant, because no one who knows any better would claim that this is the actual date of birth for Jesus of Nazareth. We don’t know when He was born, so touting Dec 25 as a similarity is simply… irrelevant. The idea that he was a teacher with 12 disciples is completely false as well. He was thought of as a god, but in the Roman story he has only one follower and in the Iranian version, he has two in total. He was neither sacrificed for world peace; all he’s known for is killing a bull. By the way, Jesus wasn’t sacrificed for “world peace” either, so that “similarity” is also irrelevant. Lastly, his touted burial and resurrection is simply false. There is in fact no record of Mithras ever having died, let alone buried in a tomb and risen on the third day.

Furthermore, when we research Mithraism, we find that it didn’t even exist in the west until after Christianity. The “resurrection” myths entered the scene after Christianity started gaining ground, so if anyone is plagiarizing anyone else, it is Mithraism doing that to Christianity. There is simply no “mystery religion” that serves as a parallel to Christianity whatsoever! So when push comes to shove, the Mithras theory simply doesn’t hold up.

At this point, Lee moved on to tackle the Gnostic theory of Jesus. He started by comparing classical orthodox Christianity and Gnosticism. In the historic Christian faith, believers have claimed that Jesus is a Redeemer. In Gnosticism, Jesus is treated as a Revealer. The world and physical things are inherently evil, created by an evil (!) creator. All of these ideas come from one of the Gnostic gospels called the Gospel of Thomas, which the Jesus Seminar scholars accepted as just as accurate as the 4 standard works! It teaches that we each have a little divine spark in us. Furthermore, as opposed to salvation being forgiveness of sin for all who would believe, it teaches that salvation is for an elite few who are smart and cunning enough to figure out the secret information necessary to gain salvation and escape the evil world.

However, upon cross examination, we find that assuming this gospel to be totally on par with the 4 standard works is an unwarranted assumption. One rule of thumb when deciding which text to trust to give you facts about history is to figure out how close to the actual events the text was written. Now, even liberal scholars will admit that all 4 gospels were written in the first century. On the other hand, the gospel of Thomas was written late second century (AD 175) at the earliest. We know this based on various internal evidences such as word patterns, familiarity with the other gospels, and similarities between it and the Diatessaron – an AD 175 “harmony” of the 4 gospels written by Tatian. Furthermore, there are some outright ridiculous statements attributed to Jesus found within its pages, a few of which I’ll give you right here:

"Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human."

Does this make any sense to you? Me neither.

"If you fast, you will bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will (hurt yourselves)."

Sounds like a good Jewish Rabbi to me! Oh wait…

"Simon Peter said to them, ‘Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life.’ Jesus said, ‘Look I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the domain of heaven.’"

This does not sound like the Jesus we know, or ANY of his followers! Considering all these evidences, there’s no reason to worry that Jesus actually subscribed to the Gnostic view of Christianity.

Lastly, Lee addressed the misquoted theory of Jesus. This view has been popularized by the likes of Bart Ehrman, whose book I reviewed a while ago. You might be interested to know that this book is the one that caused the young man to doubt so harshly. The idea here is that no one has any idea what Jesus was really like, because the records we have are so damaged by unavoidable changes, whether accidental or intentional, changes introduced in the process of copying and passing down the texts. Furthermore, we do not have access to the originals, so it’s impossible to check how accurate the copies are. To make matters worse, there are an estimated 200,000 – 400,000 discrepancies between the available New Testament manuscripts, surely a number that absolutely destroys the perceived reliability of the New Testament. The New Testament texts are simply unreliable, certainly too unlike the originals to bank your eternity on their message.

Or are they? There is a side of the story that hasn’t been mentioned, so let’s begin the cross-examination. One pertinent fact to keep in mind is that the New Testament has far more partial or whole manuscripts than any other ancient document. And even if we had lost all copies of the New Testament, we have millions of quotations from early church fathers. Furthermore, many of the copies we do have are centuries closer to the original writings than other comparable ancient manuscripts. For example, we have 9 copies of the writings of Josephus, and the earliest copy is dated approximately 1000 years after the original writing! The next most reliable text next to the New Testament is the Iliad, which we have 2000 copies of (part or whole). I’m blanking on how close to the original they were. By comparison, of the New Testament we have 30,000 manuscripts in part or in whole, with the earliest copies dating to within, if I remember correctly, 1-2 centuries from the original. Furthermore, 99% of the “discrepancies” between New Testament manuscripts are completely irrelevant. Many of them don’t even come out in translation. Also, the reason 200 – 400,000 is a reasonable estimate is because we have so many fragments. Where one is different, the discrepancy is multiplied by however many manuscripts contain that passage or section, hardly much to worry about.

Lee then told us about an experiment that was done (I have yet to verify this) where groups of lay “scribes” and lay “textual critics” were gathered and there was an attempt to replicate the process of documents changing due to copying errors and then the process of textual criticism by which you attempt to reproduce the original (without having the originals on hand of course!). This experiment was performed a substantial number of times (50 is the number that comes to my mind) to check for consistency. These copies had far higher error to word count ratio in them than the copies of the New Testament. The results were that the “critics” always had outstanding success. The reconstruction was never off by more than three words, and that only happened once! Keep in mind that these people are completely untrained in the art of textual criticism. If amateurs untrained in textual criticism can reconstruct so quickly a text so terribly corrupt, can trained textual critics slaving over these issues for life not figure out with sufficient accuracy the original text of the New Testament which is far less riddled with errors?

I think so. And this is the same conclusion that Bruce Metzger, the leading expert of New Testament textual criticism came to during his lifetime. When Lee asked him whether it had damaged his faith, he responded: "On the contrary, it has built [my faith]. I've asked questions all my life, I have dug into the text, I've studied this thoroughly, and today I know with confidence that my trust in Jesus has been well placed… Very well placed."

In conclusion, the Mythological Jesus is just that, mythological. The Gnostic Jesus fails the test of history. And the Misquoted Jesus is much ado about nothing.

To finish the story of the man who asked all the tough questions of Lee - questions that made him doubt, questions that apparently had no conceivable answer – after doing some research, Lee found that there were answers for every single one of the man’s questions. “You’re just going to have to deal it!” Lee told him. Soon after, that man became a Christian.

The moral of the story? When you get Spiritual Vertigo, don’t freak out; check it out! The research you do will deepen your faith and prepare you to answer objections later on. I hope this post has been encouraging to you, to know that we serve and know Christ in truth. Go and proclaim him all the more boldly!

California Christian Apologetics Conference (I)

For the first group session on Friday night we heard from Sean McDowell. Sean is the head of the Bible department at Capastrano Valley Christian high and has two master’s degrees from Talbot. I remember him as the really smart guy who won’t talk over your head like the other really smart guys! Josh McDowell is his father, for those who are wondering.

The title of his talk was Truth or Tragedy, in which he sought to show us why truth is important, because truth itself is under attack in our culture. Not just true statements, but the idea that we can have knowledge. His opening verse was 2 Thess 2:8-10: “and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.” Clearly truth is important; salvation depends on it! From another angle, he pointed out that when people even ask the question “Why does truth matter? What’s the big deal?” They are looking for an answer. That is why Sean responds “Do you want the true answer or the false one?” Even asking about the truth assumes the value of truth!

For his main arguments, he pointed out three reasons that truth is important.

First, Truth has consequences. For example (and this hit home with me), if you show up late for a midterm, there are consequences. It doesn’t matter how sincere you were in thinking that it was today rather than yesterday, because you missed it! Sean also pointed out that “know” or “knowledge” is mentioned far more in the Bible than “faith.” He again underscored the importance of this by directing us to Hosea 4:6: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”

Second, Truth is a compass for life. To illustrate the “compass” aspect of these, we were instructed to close our eyes and point North. Naturally, we had people pointing every which direction, and once again, sincerity makes no difference, because we could have 2 equally sincere people pointing completely opposite directions. I had no idea which way to point, so I just pointed straight up. He saw this and announced to the whole sanctuary that North is NOT straight up!

He then told us a few hilarious computer stories that I just have to tell you. He had an installation guy at his house to help him set up and he asked him what the 3 strangest questions were that he’d ever gotten calls about. “I got my computer all set up, but the foot pedal doesn’t work!” Apparently the woman had been stomping the mouse to death… “My cup holder is not big enough to fit my mug! Can I get a bigger computer?” That’s right; the dude was trying to store his coffee in the CD-ROM Drive!!

And last but not least… “The computer told me to close all the windows so I did, but it won’t let me continue; can you fix it?” She closed all the windows in her house!

The problem here was that the people were using the computer parts totally wrong! They didn’t know the truth about the purpose for each piece. Every part of life has a true purpose to it. This is why, Sean says, “the truth will set you free;” because once we know how everything is supposed to work, we are able to live rightly and fully! Sort of like when you use your CD-ROM drive for CD’s rather than coffee. You could get along with using your CD drive for a coffee holder, but why not use your computer to its full potential and use the drive for what it was meant for?

The third reason Sean gave truth being important is because simply believing in something is not enough. He told a story that I’ve heard from his dad before about a time that he asked a few students why they think the Bible is true. The answer he ended up getting was “It’s true because I believe it.” Upon asking this student whether the Koran is true for the Muslim who believes it, the student answered “yes!” Naturally the whole room was in shock. How can the top Christian students be saying that the Koran is true??? That, he noted, is the state of evangelicalism today. “The difference between you and me,” Josh remarked, “is that you think the Bible is true because you believe it. I believe the Bible because it is true!” That is where the power lies. It is not controlled by us in some mystical fashion, as if we formed our own reality in our minds based on what we believed and what we deny, as if Christ is risen when we believe Him risen and not risen when we deny His resurrection. No, as Sean said, “reality is disgustingly indifferent to what we believe about it.”

In order to move on, Sean decided to define what truth actually means. What are we saying when we claim that something is true? The definition he gave was the Corrsepondence theory of truth, which basically says that a statement or proposition is true if it matches up with reality. Truth is simply telling it like it is. Truth is a relationship between ideal or statement and reality itself. This is nothing new of course. We think of truth this way all the time in our daily lives. The rub comes when we enter the realms of morality and religion. Then people starting pulling fast ones with the definition of truth!

Ultimately, there are two types of truth. There is subjective truth which is personal, private, and changeable. For example, what is the best flavor of ice cream? This is a personal question to which there is no right answer, only your answer. The question as it is happens to be unanswerable. Its intended meaning is, which flavor of ice cream do you like most? So there is “subjective truth.” Then there is “objective truth.” Objective truths are facts of the external world that we discover, such as the fact that insulin controls diabetes.

Next he threw up some slides of statements, both controversial and otherwise. He warned us that he was asking whether or not the statements were true or false, but just that he wanted to know which kind of truth they were addressing. What kind of claim or statement were they? The statements ranged from “Lee Strobel can bench press 250 lbs.” to “Abortion is wrong.” It was a good exercise to make sure that people understood this dichotomy between subjective and objective truth, which Sean codenamed ice cream and insulin respectively.

Sean then challenged us with a question: “What if all morality was like ice cream?” If this were the case, you would have to right to judge anyone else. Or rather, if you did choose to judge someone, it would be totally meaningless, and have no authority over the person you're judging. However, we know morality isn’t like ice cream, and we know each and every person has a moral code within them. We know this not by their statements or actions, but by their reactions, by how they want to be treated. People might say they don't believe in objective morality, but don’t believe them!

At this point Sean moved to what I believe is the heart of the issue. Nobody dies and spends an eternity separated from God in hell simply for not believing in Jesus. People die and spend eternity in hell because they have a sickness called sin. To say that Buddha Krishna or Mohammed can forgive my sins, is like saying chocolate peanut butter ice cream controls diabetes. Christianity makes claims about reality that are objective. The question is: “Will we accept it or will we reject it?” Paul said in 1 Cor 15:17: "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins."

Now, as is typical with philosophy papers, he had to address certain objections to his thesis that truth is knowable and important. Some will tout, "There is no truth!" But this is a self-refuting statement. Is the statement true or false? Well… the only option is false, because it can’t be true. If it were true, it would be false… the statement is about paper thin. It’s like saying "I cannot say a single word in English" or "Meet my brother, an only child" or when Winnie the Pooh says "Nobody's home!"

The next one was my personal favorite. A student walked up to her philosophy teacher and asked him "How do I know I exist?" To this the philosophy teacher responded "Whom may I say is inquiring?" Brilliant! Of course, you can’t question your own existence if you don’t exist. Things that don’t exist can’t perform any actions.

Another objection is: "But doesn't truth change? After all, it used to be true to people that the earth was flat!” At this point you would be completely dumbfounded should you be on the receiving end of this statement. It used to be true that the earth was flat? Really? Of course not! The world has always been round! Beliefs change, but objective truths don't.

There were many more such examples that he gave us, which I won’t cover here, but one point he did make before moving on was that having the truth can make us arrogant. Rather than puffing us up, it should humble us.

One of his last points I thought was very accurate, and I’ll make it my last point as well. If Jesus were walking around here physically today, it would not take 3 years to crucify Him. He loved people, but He unequivocally stood up for the truth. “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me” – John 14:6

Truth Matters!

On Hate

This was a question presented to me by my friend based on concerns about some of the verses we had been memorizing. The latter part is my response. I hope this helps anyone struggling with these verses. If you have anything to add (or correct!) please do.

So, I have some questions.

How do these verses make sense together?

“I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.” Psalm 139:22

“You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Matthew 5:43-44

Are we supposed to love and hate them at the same time? They seem to contradict, but how is that possible? I don’t get it. I know we kind of already talked about this, but it just doesn’t make sense.

I’ve got a quote from John Piper that may or may not help. This quote is from an article that is rather philosophical in its language, but let’s see if it makes sense to you:

“God's emotional life is infinitely complex beyond our ability to fully comprehend. For example, who can comprehend that the Lord hears in one moment of time the prayers of ten million Christians around the world, and sympathizes with each one personally and individually like a caring Father (as Hebrews 4:15 says he will), even though among those ten million prayers some are broken-hearted and some are bursting with joy? How can God weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice when they are both coming to him at the same time—in fact are always coming to him with no break at all?

Or who can comprehend that God is angry at the sin of the world every day (Psalm 7:11), and yet every day, every moment, he is rejoicing with tremendous joy because somewhere in the world a sinner is repenting (Luke 15:7,10,23)? Who can comprehend that God continually burns with hot anger at the rebellion of the wicked, grieves over the unholy speech of his people (Ephesians 4:29-30), yet takes pleasure in them daily (Psalm 149:4), and ceaselessly makes merry over penitent prodigals who come home?”

How does this relate to our discussion? Well… the point is that God is far more complex than we can imagine. We think of being in certain moods at certain times, but it seems that just from the way things go on earth put together with what has been revealed in Scripture, it is the case that God is in every mood all the time! That’s mind boggling! As Piper points out, God “grieves over the unholy speech of His people” yet “takes pleasure in them daily.” This is even more confusing than loving something you hate. Take pleasure in someone who grieves you? Our God is an awesome God!

We should not think that God has a schizophrenic nature. He has a perfect nature. He has the ability to consistently and totally feel the right way all the time!

And what are we supposed to do with this? The best I can come up with is that we are indeed to feel two seemingly opposing ways toward the wicked. We hate them. What does that mean? It means we count them our enemies (Psalm 139:22). What do we do with our enemies? We love them (Matthew 5:43-44). What does that mean? We seek their best. We pray for them, etc. We do NOT take revenge into our own hands! Remember David says “O that You would slay the wicked, O God” (v. 19). And the Lord says, “Vengeance is mine” (Rom 12:19). Furthermore, David wants the wicked to leave him, not be around him, not affect him in a spiritually negative way. So we are not going to be spending time with the lost in such a way that we approve of what they do (Psalm 50:16-18), because doing so will affect our character toward something God hates (1 Cor 15:33).