Anticipating the forest

Tomorrow I go into the woods with two friends, hunting elk.

There’s a strange desire curve that goes with hunting. In the time before I go, it fills my whole mind and makes it hard to think of anything else. I picture the fleeting glimpse of an elk, not even the whole animal. In my minds eye I simply see the rippling muscle behind his shoulder, and try to pick out one specific hair on which to put my sight. I see it over and over, in a hundred different ways. I lay awake thinking of how hard it will be to pack him out after I get him. I worry about how much it will cost to get him stuffed and mounted if I accidentally take a trophy animal. I worry about how to make room in my freezer for the meat.

All of this, of course, before the animal is even seen, let along arrowed, let alone dead.

Once I get to the camp, though, everything changes. Get a fire going, get a bit of red wine in a tin camping cup… and I think, “The elk can wait. It would be so hard to dress him, and cost so much to have him mounted…”

But then I push through, I walk out into the setting sun to scout, I wake up the next morning while it’s still black outside. And everything I fantasized about fades away. The reality of forest and mountain wipes out all the daydreams about trophy bulls. The delight of moving through the forest soundlessly fills me. The sounds of forest creatures going about their lives pulse with power and mystery.

I cannot explain it. I cannot point to anything in scripture that would tell me why it’s true. But in the mountains, much more than in the city, I can feel the closeness of an omnipotent being who speaks universes into existence. Forest mornings, it’s possible to get a sense of the raw, mind-numbing POWER of God.

This weekend, I know I will be content to sit in the presence of the Father and enjoy the fact that he permits me to watch him work. If he lets me take part, and help steward his creation by taking game, so much the better.

Pope Frances

Pope Francis says a lot of things that make the left happy. Which is good. I want the followers of Jesus to reach out to the left. I want the left to know how much he loves them.

What’s hard for me is the “getting out ahead of God” that immediately seems to follow. Take, for example, an article that appeared today. I’m not going to link to it yet — not until after I’ve quoted their work. This is the complete quote that they printed from Pope Frances:

You ask me if the God of the Christians forgives those who don’t believe and who don’t seek the faith. I start by saying – and this is the fundamental thing – that God’s mercy has no limits if you go to him with a sincere and contrite heart. The issue for those who do not believe in God is to obey their conscience.

 

Sin, even for those who have no faith, exists when people disobey their conscience.

Now, here is the headline that a newspaper editor wrote after reading that quote:

Pope Francis assures sceptics: You don’t have to believe in God to go to heaven —The Independent.

God loves people who don’t believe. God cherishes them, and forgives them. Jesus died for them — specifically out of his love for people who did not believe. Jesus, in fact, chose to lay down his life because of his love for people who were not born at the time, but who, when they were born, would not believe.

None of that is the same as saying “you don’t have to believe to go to heaven.”

I am glad that Pope Francis speaks out to the secular community. I love that he is opening whole new communities to hear about the love of Jesus.

I just wish people would hear what he says, instead of what they want to hear.

Freedom is good

It is good when Americans may make their own choices about purchasing firearms. It is a moral good when individuals can use technology to make themselves better able to defend themselves. It is good when free citizens can make economic choices privately, without a file being kept on it.

Any law that attempts to alter those situations, inherently, removes something that is morally good from the people.

Anything that removes a good is, by definition, a harm.

Gun control harms people.

Those who vote for it rightly should be voted out of office.

That happened in Colorado last night. It’s proof that our republican form of government is still valid, despite everything the world might tell us.

It’s about love.

A perfect response to most things that television and the internet say about Christianity. I didn’t write it, but I know the guy who did.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. 16 And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

Never forget who God says you are

God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. — Genesis 1:3

This is the reason that the bible says God cannot lie: when he speaks, what he spoke becomes true. He defines truth by his words. It is impossible for something the Lord puts into voice to not come into existence.

So let me tell you some of what God says:

You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you. –Song 4:7

You are strong. The word of God lives in you. You have overcome the evil one. — 1 John 2:14

You are precious. You are honored and I love you. –Isaiah 43:4

Never forget it. Never forget that God defines truth. God makes truth. When a word comes out from God, reality bends and reshapes until that word is a settled fact.

We can believe some depressing things about ourselves. But God doesn’t.

Syria

It’s hard to know what to hope for in the Syria situation. Like most of America, I’m not convinced military intervention there is a good idea. But on the other hand, I feel like the nation I love will be humiliated if we do nothing. Our President has been out there promising the world that we’re going to take action. If that threat comes to zero, what will our enemies in the world think? Will they then believe it’s OK to attack America however they want?

Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. — 1 Timothy 2:1-2

Lord, please help President Obama, and Harry Reid, and John Boehner, and all the members of Congress. Please strengthen them to bear the burden of this decision. Please make it clear to all of them how much you love them.

Lord, I pray that the knowledge of your love will give our leaders a hunger to know you, and that when they go seeking more knowledge of you that you will in return draw near to them. Please make it easy for them to know your will about Syria Lord. Please make your will so clear that no one has any doubt what you want.

Please take care of America, and do good things for us Lord.

Farewell to antelope

Tonight I took my antelope blind down. I need it to take into the mountains, in hopes it will help me catch an elk or deer. But it was sad to take it down. I never so much as saw an antelope while sitting in it. But I enjoyed many a fine morning watching the sunrise, drinking ice cold water, and talking to God.

The march of a dawn line across a wheat field is beautiful. You think you’ve seen how golden it is, and then suddenly the full light of the sun touches it, and a new richness of color is revealed.

The time before sunrise, when there’s enough light to see the nose in front of your face but not much farther, is beautiful too. I spend it straining my eyeballs, trying to stare harder and harder out the window of the blind, wondering if there might be a white and tan head out there.

Even the sound of a distant highway is beautiful. Manmade though it is, on a dark predawn morning the sound of cars hurrying by becomes a part of the voice of God.

The creation is beautiful beyond description, and sitting out in it for hours at a time is a great blessing.

Have a good fall, Antelope. Hopefully I’ll see you next year!

It’s almost here…

Archery season for deer and elk opens in Montana this weekend. It’s pushing out everything else in my head, making it hard to think about subjects that don’t have antlers.

A day or two ago I went scouting after work. Far up into the mountains, with the wind howling around my friend’s pickup as we drove back down the narrow forest service road, I found myself contemplating the elemental joy of hunting.

We saw a big cow elk when we got out of the truck and went up the trail. The wind was carrying our scent right towards her, and she startled when she caught wind of us. That’s what allowed us to see her. We were so near the trailhead we weren’t expecting it.

We spent a few moments crouching behind cover, calling and trying to get her back. I caught a second glimpse of her as she hung around for a while before bolting completely.

It was a beautiful moment, but as we drove back, one thought kept coming back: It wasn’t the same as if I’d had a bow in my hand.

Seeing wildlife in its natural habitat is thrilling, but the knowledge that life or death hangs in the balance is more thrilling still. It’s far more thrilling.

The very same experience, if I had had an arrow nocked, would have been sublime. Even if I never got the shot, even knowing it was a boring old cow and not a fantastic trophy bull, it would still have been sublime.

Hunting takes a person to the edge of life or death. The hunter’s purpose, his whole focus, is on ending the life of that animal. The animal is trained by a lifetime, programmed by the instincts of generations, to exploit any tiny error the hunter makes to stay alive.

I love to hike. I love to see wildlife. But the difference between catching a fleeting glimpse of an elk four days before it’s legal to arrow her, and catching a glimpse of the tiniest little whitey doe when I’m free to pull the trigger, is like the difference between the frozen reaches of space and the molten core of the planet.

Was Jesus an absolute pacifist?

I think almost everyone in Western culture knows verses like Matthew 5:39.

But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.

Less well known, but equally relevant, are verses like Matthew 26:52

“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.”

From verses like that, modern American culture has created a picture of Jesus in which he abhors violence of any kind. But what are we to make of these other verses?

Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business. When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables..  –John 2:13-15 (NKJV)

 

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’”–Matthew 10:34-36

 

Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”

“Nothing,” they answered.

He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”

The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”

“That’s enough!” he replied. — Luke 22:35-38

None of those is a passage from the old Testament, so “Oh, it was different before the New Testament” won’t work here. Each one is a scriptural example of Jesus either advocating violence, carrying out violence, or advocating possession of the tools of violence.

I don’t know all the answers, but I know this: It’s way better to invest time in getting to know him than to just assume we know him.