April 2nd, 1969 at 1:00a.m., just after midnight my life was changed. That 18 year old kid is now 59 and it is true that the change 40 years ago was not his doing. If it were, he would have messed it up long before now. So let me clarify the nature of that change. I will try to explain what the change was, what caused it, and why it is not changeable back (or rather, why it is lasting?). Those who knew me back then may perhaps find an explanation for what must have seemed to them strange at the time. Odd it was to me as well, but not irrational.
A successful presidential campaign has just been run on the back of this word change. And in fact things are changing. But the bare idea of change is too vague to express what happened 40 years ago. If I had lived my care-free teen years as a parasite off parents, friends, and hippies, and then left these ways to sell drugs, run women, and clout houses in the strength of my youth, later moving into a legitimate business in my majority years: then all of this would be change in its bare sense. Even if one leaves off evil ways and knuckles down to do good, this too is but bare change. Pun intended: all of us can barely change, men as well as states. But bare change without a game changing direction falls short. Even with direction, change without external authority and objective power is only barely more than bare. In such a way a lad may be changed, for sure, but given the nature of such lads, such change is in no way sufficient. Though laurels, applauds, and trumpet line the path, the apple, not far from the tree, will land in embarrassment where it falls.
A man may float high in a balloon; he may soar in a glider; blast his way to the edge of space and beyond. But this is bare change. Were men to sprout wings, grow an avian lung, and hollow out their bones? This would be more than bare change. His nature having undergone a substantial metamorphosis, it would be a game changer directional change. And its lasting effects would be the result of the outside-of-man powers that were capable of the transformation in the first place. Well, as far as I have been able to see, the latter is the kind of change that would be necessary to change a sinner into a saint. The former is not sufficient. The power is not in man, the world, nor religion. If there is a God and he works in such an objective way, then the latter change is reasonably possible. And if not: who cares? Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
In today’s world objective truth, especially true truth, truth outside of subjective man, is not supposed to exist. My point is that the change was worked on me, not by me. It was substantial and not bare change. And, moreover, it was worked by an all powerful God in the exact way he objectively wrote down in words and letters that will never change in a book called the Bible. Not at all a politically correct way of thinking, it’s true, but then it never was. The Creator of the space-matter-time universe, the designer of physics and biology, is powerful enough and wise enough to do these kinds of works: saving sinners, judging the world, and raising the dead. No one would side with an infallible Bible, in the face of such obstinate pretentious objection the world gives off today concerning this kind of a revelation, not having been changed by a power outside of their weak miserable little selves; at least doing so, and not also being verifiably nuts.
The change was salvation, unpopular as it sounds a change in nature, a metamorphosis from dead in trespasses and sins unto alive in Christ, from under the earned wrath of a just God into His favor and grace through the offering of His Son. It is called a new creation in the book for a good reason. And if it is at all so, it must be just so. Faith, if it is a work of men is only of the bare change variety. Faith, as the Bible uses it, is a gift of God given in salvation; it has an objective omnipotent source and it is grounded as much in true truth as it is in the saving work of God who can not lie. If it is so, then it is not unreasonable that it would last. More than this: it lasts, not in this life only, but also in the one to come.
If Christ did not die for our sins and rise on the third day for our justification, then all this talk of faith is gibberish. We will not rise in the end of time and be held to account, and Christians are of all men most miserable. And, I may add, if the Bible is not an infallible unchangeable legal record of the forensic testimony of almighty God from the first book unto the last, then you have reason to doubt the veracity of the resurrection. Who in their right mind could then side with the Bible?
God bless you all, and with sound minds may you side with the Bible...DGB
A successful presidential campaign has just been run on the back of this word change. And in fact things are changing. But the bare idea of change is too vague to express what happened 40 years ago. If I had lived my care-free teen years as a parasite off parents, friends, and hippies, and then left these ways to sell drugs, run women, and clout houses in the strength of my youth, later moving into a legitimate business in my majority years: then all of this would be change in its bare sense. Even if one leaves off evil ways and knuckles down to do good, this too is but bare change. Pun intended: all of us can barely change, men as well as states. But bare change without a game changing direction falls short. Even with direction, change without external authority and objective power is only barely more than bare. In such a way a lad may be changed, for sure, but given the nature of such lads, such change is in no way sufficient. Though laurels, applauds, and trumpet line the path, the apple, not far from the tree, will land in embarrassment where it falls.
A man may float high in a balloon; he may soar in a glider; blast his way to the edge of space and beyond. But this is bare change. Were men to sprout wings, grow an avian lung, and hollow out their bones? This would be more than bare change. His nature having undergone a substantial metamorphosis, it would be a game changer directional change. And its lasting effects would be the result of the outside-of-man powers that were capable of the transformation in the first place. Well, as far as I have been able to see, the latter is the kind of change that would be necessary to change a sinner into a saint. The former is not sufficient. The power is not in man, the world, nor religion. If there is a God and he works in such an objective way, then the latter change is reasonably possible. And if not: who cares? Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
In today’s world objective truth, especially true truth, truth outside of subjective man, is not supposed to exist. My point is that the change was worked on me, not by me. It was substantial and not bare change. And, moreover, it was worked by an all powerful God in the exact way he objectively wrote down in words and letters that will never change in a book called the Bible. Not at all a politically correct way of thinking, it’s true, but then it never was. The Creator of the space-matter-time universe, the designer of physics and biology, is powerful enough and wise enough to do these kinds of works: saving sinners, judging the world, and raising the dead. No one would side with an infallible Bible, in the face of such obstinate pretentious objection the world gives off today concerning this kind of a revelation, not having been changed by a power outside of their weak miserable little selves; at least doing so, and not also being verifiably nuts.
The change was salvation, unpopular as it sounds a change in nature, a metamorphosis from dead in trespasses and sins unto alive in Christ, from under the earned wrath of a just God into His favor and grace through the offering of His Son. It is called a new creation in the book for a good reason. And if it is at all so, it must be just so. Faith, if it is a work of men is only of the bare change variety. Faith, as the Bible uses it, is a gift of God given in salvation; it has an objective omnipotent source and it is grounded as much in true truth as it is in the saving work of God who can not lie. If it is so, then it is not unreasonable that it would last. More than this: it lasts, not in this life only, but also in the one to come.
If Christ did not die for our sins and rise on the third day for our justification, then all this talk of faith is gibberish. We will not rise in the end of time and be held to account, and Christians are of all men most miserable. And, I may add, if the Bible is not an infallible unchangeable legal record of the forensic testimony of almighty God from the first book unto the last, then you have reason to doubt the veracity of the resurrection. Who in their right mind could then side with the Bible?
God bless you all, and with sound minds may you side with the Bible...DGB
