Helter-Skelter

Image source: Victorian Funfair

And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
~ Genesis 1:2 (ASV)

"Waste and void" (or "formless and void") translate the Hebrew tohu v' bohu. Tohu (TO-hoo) denotes chaos, confusion, and disorder. (Think of the ruins left in the wake of a disaster so destructive that the rubble leaves no distinguishable form of what it once was.) Bohu (BO-hoo) denotes the void of utter emptiness, not unlike a vacuum.

If Genesis 1:1 describes God creating the raw ingredients with which He is about to form something good, Genesis 1:2 gives us an idea of what those ingredients look like before He speaks life into them. One might surmise that God’s Word uses "tohu bohu" in a manner similar to English reduplication, when a wordplay is coined for a singsong and often disparaging effect.

Consider the low class, even trashy nature that "riff-raff" conveys about a person. "Mumbo-jumbo" devalues words as gibberish, while "boob tube" rightly describes a proliferation of nonsense. And when the character of our actions is less than intelligent and careful, we use the phrases "pell-mell," "willy-nilly," "topsy-turvy,"—or perhaps the more sinister "helter-skelter."

Whatever the expression's pre-1600 origin, or its use to name the British spiraling slide, "Helter Skelter" is best known as the raucous, violent Beatles song produced in Paul McCartney's deliberate effort to create a sound as dirty and raw as possible. Little wonder that mass-murderer Charles Manson saw in the song a prophecy of an apocalyptic racial war which he attempted to trigger—that he and his followers might emerge as rulers of a postwar world.

Interestingly, the Bible also uses the "tohu bohu" wordplay to describe a postwar landscape. If waste and emptiness precede God's creative intervention, they likewise trail the His retributory intervention.

For the LORD has a day of vengeance,
a year of recompense …
He shall stretch the line of confusion over it,
and the plumb line of emptiness.
~ Isaiah 34:8,11 (ESV; also see Jeremiah 4:23-26)

Except for the intervention of God, each of us is riff-raff, our words are mumbo-jumbo, and our lives are "topsy-turvy" at best or "helter-skelter" at worst.

This is particularly true of that confused void before Christ, before we received His words of life. If we become distracted by this world, and find ourselves on another helter-skelter, downward-spiral slide, we can trust that He longs to once again speak life into the empty chaos.

Gracious Father, apart from You, we are worse than nothing. In You, we have all that is good. Please draw us, every day, to abide more closely with You.

Comments are welcome (including respectful disagreement) and will receive a reply.
You may also contact author via Twitter – @anne4JC
or e-mail – use @gmail.com *after* buildingHisbody
Copyright 2012, Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.

Mathematics and the God Factor

Homeschooling means I get review of simple arithmetic principles on a regular basis. There is, in mathematics, a beauty in the blend of infinite variety with measured reliability that testifies to God as its Author (a fact of which I am anxious to remind my students, should they dare speak ill of the subject).

Addition and subtraction seem to be principles of this world. We humans understand from an early age what it is to add or take away. But we are slow to grasp negative numbers, thinking we can continually take away without giving back and keep things positive. Too late we realize that how easy it is to slip into the red, how hard it is to climb out.

Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
~ Genesis 1:28 (NKJV)

Multiplication and division hint of the spiritual. God is Creator of life and desires to multiply it. This is first of all His commands to us, to cooperate with Him as co-creators of life, to multiply blessing as He does. Division is likewise His work in creation, whether dividing light from darkness, dividing waters above and below or seas, dividing the earth and her seas of peoples.

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
~ Romans 12:21 (NKJV)

We have an enemy who works in death as his medium. He speaks in negatives and would have us believe that evil is overcome by evil—that a negative times a negative equals a positive. But he is of this world, where a negative plus a negative will always equal a greater negative. Evil can only take away, and never add anything.

"Comfort, yes, comfort My people!"
Says your God.
"Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her,
That her warfare is ended,
That her iniquity is pardoned;
For she has received from the LORD's hand
Double for all her sins."
~ Isaiah 40:1-2 (NKJV)

As the Author of mathematics, God also stands outside of its principles. If a negative times a positive equals a negative in our world, God is the positive Who cancels out all negatives, working all things for His good will. Who but our God could bring comfort via weighing out retribution in the measure of sin times two?

By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
~ Hebrews 11:3 (NKJV)

My very favorite math principle? The God factor defies the zero factor.

Look, child. Here are some containers. Each one has zero. What is three times zero? Ten times zero? No matter how many times you multiply nothing, you still have nothing.

Now calculate this.

0 x Δ = ∞
(Nothing times God equals infinity.)

Think about it.

"Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do … He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing."
~ John 14:12; 15:5 (NKJV)

I love You, God! You're WAY cool. :D

Comments are welcome (including respectful disagreement) and will receive a reply.
You may also contact author via Twitter – @anne4JC
or e-mail – use @gmail.com *after* buildingHisbody
Copyright 2012, Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.

Light, Part I: Choose Life

My current Bible study on light is certainly the proverbial drink from a fire hydrant. If just one thing stands out, it is God's use of light for separation.

Whenever I teach or speak, working in threes has consistently proven to make things more manageable. Posts for today, Wednesday, and Friday will cover the three most prominent separations evident to me between light and darkness:

Life & Death
Good & Evil
Understanding of Truth & Spiritual Blindness

☼ ~ ☼ ~ ☼

Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.
~ Genesis 1:3-4 (NKJV)

Genesis tells of God first creating the heavens and the earth as waters, and then describes six days of giving them separation, definition, and life by the power of His Word. Days one and two separate light from darkness and heavens from the earth. Day three defines the earth with terrestrial land (and botanical life) before the heavens are defined by their celestial bodies on day four. Day five fills the waters of sky and sea with animal life, while God's last workday is spent filling the land with creatures. God finally presents to creation His magnum opus—humans made in His image.

If Genesis gives a creation account from Earth's perspective, perhaps John's Gospel provides the creation account from Heaven's perspective.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend [apprehend, seize, take] it... That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.
~ John 1:1-5; 9-10 (NKJV)

God is Spirit (see Genesis 1:2; John 1:18; John 4:24). Note that John says of Jesus, God's Word:
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

Also note that before God separated light from darkness, He first created light. It seems to me that light didn't originally coexist with God, until God's Word (Jesus) spoke light into existence.

John's Gospel makes clear that life is inherent to God, and his words equate that life to light.

If—(HUGE "if" here)—God was invisible as Spirit and Word, perhaps He chose to make Himself visible as light as the means to impart life.

I'm no biologist, but my understanding is that in the physical world, there is no life apart from light. Even those life forms which exist in darkness are dependent upon light for the photosynthesis and other chemical reactions which provide their food. In simpler terms, mold might be growing in the utter darkness of my refrigerator, but it was the light of the sun that first enabled the food to grow that feeds the mold.

This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
~ 1 John 1:5 (NKJV)

In the spiritual world, there is no life apart from God's light.

Wherever God is absent, our souls are either dead or dying in the spiritual darkness. If we would choose life for our souls, we must cling to God and turn our faces toward His light.

"I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the LORD your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life ..."
~ Deuteronomy 30:19-20 (NKJV)

Comments are welcome and will receive a reply.
You may also contact author via Twitter – @anne4JC
or e-mail – buildingHisbody [plus] @gmail.com
Copyright 2011, Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.

Fatality of Darkness

The Bible calls God "Light," and we often consider it a metaphor without taking into account the fatality of darkness.

Without physical light, photosynthesis would not occur, plants would not grow, and we would starve.

Light is an necessity for us to function in life for any length of time. (Visually-impaired people who see no light rely on people with sight to perform many vital tasks, as I've observed during a lifetime of personal experience.)

When the Lord sent ten progressively worse plagues upon Egypt (Exodus 7-12), the second worst plague of utter darkness, which immobilized the Egyptians, was exceeded only by death.

Moses' Tabernacle in the Desert

by Norbert McNulty

Then the cloud covered the tabernacle of meeting,
and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle ...
the cloud by day, and fire was over it by night,
in the sight of all the house of Israel.
~ Exodus 40:34,38

God provided their necessities to the children of Israel during forty years in the desert: water, bread, meat, clothing, and light. The light provided in pillar of cloud and pillar of fire not only guided them on their way, but assured them of God's presence and continued provision—exactly as He does for us today.


More on the Necessity of Light is planned for Wednesday.

Comments, questions, and respectful disagreement are welcome. Reply to BuildingHisBody.com comments, or e-mail buildingHisbody [plus] @gmail.com
Copyright 2011, Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.

Seven Day Creation, More

This week's Question of the Week is about the Bible's account of a seven-day creation.

For further information on the Creation and Science vs. Evolution debate, I offer the following highlights from a section of the Biblical History and Culture course I occasionally teach to elementary home school students.

If I could choose a single biblical point to show Scripture's irreconcilable conflict with evolution, it is the emphatic assertion (recorded in both Old and New Testaments) that death did not exist anywhere in creation until after humans sinned. Evolution demands that life evolved from billions of years of death before man and sin existed.

: : :

CREATION VS. EVOLUTION

WORKING DEFINITIONS:

SCIENCE = ("what is"—facts)
can be proven by observing and experimenting with
structure and behavior of the physical and natural world
(examples are biology, chemistry, astronomy)

HISTORY ("what was"—facts)
a record of past events
passed on by people who observed them,
or as shown by other physical evidence
(examples are artifacts, archeology, preserved records)

GEOLOGY
science of the earth’s structure and substance,
which is also a record of our planet’s history.

THEORY = AN IDEA (opinion)
looks at science and history and offers
an uncertain explanation for missing details
(if it’s proven by facts, it’s not a theory anymore)


WHY NOAH’S FLOOD IS IMPORTANT
TO UNDERSTAND GEOLOGICAL FACTS:

The Bible and collected evidence explain geology
by the catastrophic disturbance of the global flood
+ erosion, deposition, fossilization
("a short time and a lot of water")

Evolution says geology is a slow process
of erosion, deposition, fossilization
+ occasional local catastrophes
("a long time and a little water")

Berlingame Canyon and Mount St. Helens
are two examples of major geological formations
observed to take shape in a matter of days
and of the unreliability in rock dating methods


SOME CONFLICTS OF EVOLUTION
WITH THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE:

BIBLE VS. EVOLUTION
• Bible says all kinds of life came before any death (not death before some kinds of life)
• Bible says creation began with God’s spoken Word (not "Big Bang")
• Bible says creation took six days (not billions of years)
• Bible says the earth is about six thousand (6,000) years old
• Bible says perfection became disorder (not disorder became order)
• Bible gives a seven-day week not present in Astronomy
• Bible says man has knowledge of good and evil from the Creator

SCIENCE VS. EVOLUTION
• Science cannot explain the origin of non-biological matter
• Science shows life comes only from existing life; life cannot emerge from a sterile environment under any condition
• Science does not see life cells gain new information leading to more complex life forms (1)
• Science cannot find links necessary for evolution
• Science shows interdependent biological systems could have neither evolved independently, nor reasonably evolved in tandem
• Science measures changes which could not take billions of years (2)
• Science shows not all planets rotate in the same direction (3)

(1) Science only observes mutant life forms produced by dysfunctional cells with either defective or missing information
(2) Numerous measurable processes (earth’s magnetic field decay, ocean salt and sediment accumulation, gravitational collapse of the sun, continent erosion, and atmospheric helium accumulation from radioactive decay are a few examples) are either far too slow or too fast to have possibly occurred for millions or billions of years.
(3) Retrograde rotation of the planet Venus and horizontal rotation of Uranus are inconsistent with theories of explosive debris from a "Big Bang."

Facts that can be explained only by the Bible’s version of creation:
• Days, months, and years are all measured by astronomical functions of the earth and moon, while the seven-day week—used across the globe—is a measurement which originates only in Scripture.
• Moral laws written on the conscience ("common law") exist in civilized and isolated tribal cultures alike because they originate with the Creator.
• The enormous power which both originated matter and set creation in motion is the might of God’s spoken Word; the same radical power of God’s Word explains other miraculous events of the Bible and is contained in the Bible itself.

Compilation by Anne Lang Bundy, © 2007, 2010, all rights reserved.

Kindness Says ...

This is a late entry in the blog carnival hosted by Bridget Chumbley.
For more about it, click here on "Kindness."

"The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed.
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes."
~ Portia, from William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice

Kindness Says ...

No task is beneath me, for that would place the one who performs it beneath me.

No one is unworthy of my attention, and therefore everyone is worthy of notice.

Every person is a masterpiece—highly valued by the Creator and therefore valuable to me.

Whatever someone's need, I'm willing to ask the Lord if I should do anything about it.

Those who cross my path should leave me in a better condition than they were before I found them.

There can be no presumption that any person walks an easier path through life than me, for poverty can be of health, love, or soul.

Everyone has something they might teach me if given the opportunity.

Everyone has a valid need to be validated.

For the person who bothers me by what they are, may I remember who they are.

Whatever I do or fail to do to those I consider the least, I do to the One Who breathed life into them.

Lord, I understand the language of kindness. Please help me speak it fluently.

Contrasting points-of-view, questions and feedback are invited. Post to BuildingHisBody.com "Comments" or e-mail to BuildingHisBody@gmail.com. Copyright 2009, Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.
#discipleship
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Without Excuse

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
~ Romans 1:18-21 (NKJV)

Oh come, let us worship and bow down; Let us kneel before the LORD our Maker.
~ Psalms 95:6 (NKJV)

God doesn't believe in atheists.

He says that they are among those who knew Him, but suppressed the truth, became futile in thought, and their foolish hearts became dark. They may deny His existence, but God's Word says they in fact know otherwise.

Whatever argument a person may use to dispute that a Creator owns the world and has a right to judge it as He wishes, God Himself says men are without excuse for whatever point they have turned away from their Creator.

Countering the assertion that a loving God wouldn't send anyone to hell is the logic that a loving God does not allow sin into heaven and make it the same hell that earth has become; a loving God does not ignore justice for those who have been wronged; a loving God does not allow men to slip into hell in ignorance, but exhibits Himself in creation so that He may be known before He is rejected.

It is far less amazing that a loving God would allow men who have chosen hell to go into hell than it is that a righteous God would allow an innocent Man to die so that unrighteous men might avoid condemnation.

Oh Lord, our Creator, You have manifested Yourself in the stars, the mighty mountains, and the universe contained in the DNA of a single cell. We ourselves are fearfully and wonderfully made. You own all creation and You own us. Please give us hearts to yield to Your continuing work of creation in making us new.

Feedback appreciated! Post to BuildingHisBody.com "Comments" or e-mail to BuildingHisBody@gmail.com. Copyright 2009, Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.

El Shaddai / God Almighty

For July, each post examines an Old Testament name of God.

El Shaddai / God Almighty
(pronounced: "ale shad-DAI")


By the God of your father who will help you,
And by the Almighty who will bless you
With blessings of heaven above,
Blessings of the deep that lies beneath,
Blessings of the breasts and of the womb.
~ Genesis 49:24-25 (NKJV)

The Spirit of God has made me,
And the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
~ Job 33:4 (NKJV)

The name El Shaddai is generally found in poetic passages which declare God's promise or ability to grant abundance and fertility (of children, animals or land). It is the name God uses of Himself when He changes the name of His servant Abram to Abraham ("father of a multitude") and promises to give Abraham abundance of land and descendants (Genesis 17). It is a name used by non-Israelites to acknowledge the highest (Creator) God.

El Shaddai captures God's power both as raw strength, and in the ability to give and sustain life. Two related words are shadad, a verb meaning to be burly or too devastatingly powerful to be moved, and the noun shad, for the female breast or an animal teat.

The Bible is not shy in depicting the female breast as a source of not only nourishment and nurture which give life to a child, but of satisfaction and comfort to both husband and child. The male chest is likewise a source of security, as when a shepherd holds a lamb in his bosom or when a man offers protection by his strength.

The definition in Zodhiates' Hebrew Dictionary describes that this name indicates the ability of the Almighty to fulfill His promises. The translation "Almighty" (or "All Powerful, Omnipotent") evokes not the might of God's arm so often spoken of in Scripture, but the power in the chest to protect and give life.

The name El Shaddai also evokes a picture of one drawing close to God—into His very bosom.

Feedback appreciated! Post to BuildingHisBody.com "Comments" or e-mail to BuildingHisBody@gmail.com. Copyright 2009, Anne Lang Bundy, all rights reserved.