IMPROVING YOUR VISION
Talking and Listening to God -- Part 3
Isaac Butterworth
December 12, 2010
Matthew 7:24-27 (NIV)
24 ‘Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”’
I’m afraid I’ve never been very good about writing letters. When I was in college, I hardly ever wrote home. It was a reciprocal arrangement, I guess, because my folks never wrote to me. They were busy; I was busy. And I was only an hour-and-a-half away, so we didn’t write. One holiday -- I think maybe it was Thanksgiving -- I drove the ninety miles to spend some quality time at home. Only, when I got there -- it was about ten o’clock at night -- home wasn’t home. The house was dark, and the car wasn’t in the driveway. So, I thought my family might be out. But when my key didn’t work, I began to worry. I knocked on the door, only to have a stranger answer. He was annoyed, to say the least, and I was perplexed. ‘Do you live here?’ I asked. I couldn’t believe what was happening. It was surreal. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘I’m, uh, I’m.... This is my house,’ I said. ‘Who are you? And where is my family?’ When the stranger saw my desperation, he pointed me to the house next door. He said the people who used to live in his house -- his house, he called it! -- had moved next door. Sure enough, when I knocked on the door of that house, my mother answered. My parents had moved to the house next door -- and they did it without telling me! ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked. Her answer? ‘Well, son, if you would write or call once in a while, you would know these things!’ When I was finally able to forgive my parents for moving without telling me -- What if they had moved across town? I thought! -- I asked my mother why they moved. ‘This house has a better view,’ she said. A better view? It didn’t make sense to me, but, then, I didn’t have the right to say much, did I? I was just glad I found them.
I am relatively sure that both of those houses -- the one my family had lived in and the one they now lived in -- I’m sure that they were both built on a solid foundation. So far as I know, neither one of them ever blew away. They were built to withstand the weather.
But not every house, I suppose, is. Nor is every life. Jesus talks about us building our lives the way someone would build a house. And whatever we build, of course, we hope it will survive the elements. Some houses don’t, Jesus said. And what he meant was: Some lives don’t. He talks about ‘a foolish man who built his house on sand’ -- hardly a durable foundation. ‘The rain came down,’ Jesus said, and ‘the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.’ The foolish man now had no view at all, or, depending on how you look at it, he had a great view! There was nothing to block his view! Although I’m sure he wouldn’t have seen it that way!
The past several Sundays, we’ve been thinking about talking and listening to God. We’ve said that communication with God is not a one-way street, that we’ve got to listen as well as talk. Today I want to suggest that, as we listen to God, we’ll learn that he wants to show us some things. And he wants us to see things a certain way -- the way they really are. He wants to improve our vision.
The trouble is, the house we live in, so to speak, may not have a very good view. We might need to move to another house in order to have that. We might need to move, as my parents did, to the house next door. Or, to put it another way: In order to be in communion with God, in order to be in communication with God, we need to see our world the way God sees it. We need a better view. We need to improve our vision. Jesus’ parable about the two houses talks about how we build, but it also talks about where we build. We need to build on a solid foundation. We need to be like the ‘wise man [in Jesus’ story] who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house [just as they did against the other house]; yet it did not fall,’ Jesus said, ‘because it had its foundation on the rock.’
No matter where you build your house -- understand me to say here: no matter what the foundation on which you build your life! -- you’re going to look out at the world through the windows of your house -- that is, your life. And here’s what you’re going to see: (1) You’re going to see your humanity in a certain way. (2) You’re going to see the world in a certain way. (3) You’re going to see the basic problem of life in a certain way. (4) You’re going to see the solution to that problem in a certain way. (5) And you’re going to see the outcome of life in a certain way. And what you see will determine what you do. Your view of things will shape your choices and ultimately the kind of life you lead. It will form your character.
Brian Walsh and Richard Middleton have called this our ‘vision’ of life, or our world view. And they claim that a world view answers four questions: (1) Who are we? That is, what is the nature, task, and purpose of human beings? (2) Where are we? That is, what is the nature of the world and universe we live in? (3) What’s wrong? Or, again, what is the basic problem that keeps us from attaining fulfillment? (4) What is the remedy? Or, how is it possible to overcome this hindrance to our fulfillment? And I have added a fifth question: (5) Where is it all going? That is, what is the outcome of the historical process? Whether we realize it or not, we all have answers to these questions, and -- listen to this -- our answers are not always informed by God’s revealed truth. Sometimes we get our answers from other sources.
Some of us, for example, live in houses, so to speak, where the view out the window is shaped by what is called naturalism. Naturalism explains everything that exists in terms of observable, measurable, physical elements, forces, and processes. (1) So, who am I? Naturalism says I am a rational being in control of my own destiny and with no limits to my achievements . I am not responsible to any god or to any external law. (2) Where am I? What is the nature of the universe? Naturalism says the world is governed by natural forces and controlled by scientific technique. It has no ‘spiritual’ side and there is no god in control. (3) What is humanity’s basic problem? Naturalism says: Our problem is: We have given in to irrational beliefs -- to the teachings of religion, or to superstition -- and we don’t live according to decisions made using human reason. (4) What is our salvation? We must save ourselves, naturalism says, dealing with our problems through education, science and technology, and ordering our lives according to rational behavior.
That’s the house that naturalism built. Others live in houses where the view out the window is illumined by what is called pantheism. What pantheism does is, it identifies ‘god’ with the forces and workings of nature. Everything that exists partakes of the divine essence. This perspective blurs the distinction between Creator and creation and between good and evil. (1) So, who are we according to pantheism? Since all is one, all is god, and we are god. (2) And what is the nature of the world we live in? According to pantheism, there are no ultimate distinctions between us and the rest of creation. (3) So, what’s the problem? It is this: We have forgotten that we are god. We suffer from a form of collective metaphysical amnesia. (4) What can we do to correct this? Pantheism tells us that we must discover our own divinity by experiencing a change in consciousness. We must wake up! (5) And where are we headed? According to pantheism, we’re not headed anywhere! We’re just going in circles! We travel through indefinite cycles of birth, death, and reincarnation in order to work off what is called ‘bad karma.’
So, there are these two houses: naturalism and pantheism. And we abide in them more than we may know. But next door to these houses, there is another house, built, as Jesus would say, on a firm foundation, on a rock. The view out the window of that house is illumined by what is called theism. Theism is the view the Bible takes on things, and it affirms the existence of a personal God who is the Creator, Sustainer, and Sovereign of the entire universe. What is more, he is the source of justice and love. Listen to how theism answers the five world view questions: (1) Who am I? I am created by God in his image, called to serve as his steward with charge over the rest of creation. And I am accountable to God for how I do that. (2) Where am I? What is this place I call the universe? It is God’s creation. It is governed by the laws God has established, and it has been prepared as the home of all living things. (3) What’s the problem that besets us? It is this: We have rebelled against God and rejected his law for our lives. And what is more, evil and sin have entered the world through our rebellion. (4) What can be done? What needs doing has been done by God. God has acted in history primarily through Jesus Christ to redeem humanity and to restore the created order. (5) And where is it all going? History, according to theism, is a linear and meaningful sequence of events leading to the fulfillment of God's purposes for the created order.
If we hear God’s voice amid all the other voices in our world, and if we listen, we will begin to see things the way they are, as God has revealed them to us. But the issue is not just what we see. It’s also how we see and why we see it the way we do. Every view of the world carries with it a hope for the future -- or in some instances a sense of hopelessness. When we see the world through the window of the house that is built on the foundation of Jesus Christ, we are not content with simply seeing the world as it is. We have the audacity to imagine the world as it could become. That’s what distinguishes the Christian world view from that of naturalism or pantheism. We look forward to the arrival of God’s kingdom.
Why is our world view so important? Because what you see and how you see it will determine what you do. It will give shape to how you live in this world. Our world view forms our character. To quote Brian Walsh, when we see the world through the clear window of Scripture, ‘we become certain kinds of people. We are characterized by certain kinds of virtues.”
Charles Drew, a Presbyterian minister in New York, organizes his book, A Journey Worth Taking, around four great ideas, all of which are drawn from the Bible. Listen to these affirmations, and hear in them the Bible’s answer to the great questions we have been posing. (1) To the first question, Who am I?, Mr. Drew affirms: Human life comes with built-in purpose. So, who am I? I am a creature with a God-given mission. (2) To the question, What’s wrong?, Drew offers his second affirmation: Something goes wrong with how we express our purpose. In other words: The problem is sin. (3) What about the remedy? How is what’s wrong to be made right? To this question, Drew offers his third affirmation: What gets ugly and destructive can be remade beautiful and right. That’s the Bible’s solution, isn’t it? God’s great mission of restoring everything in and through Christ? And, finally, (4) Where is it all headed? That’s the last of the great world view questions. And so, we have Mr. Drew’s final affirmation: What we do matters, because we are going somewhere. In other words, as the Bible tells it: There is a plan; it is God’s plan to bring all things under the banner of his shalom, to make our world a world that is ordered the way he wants it to be.
If you’re looking out on the world through a window that’s clouded by the skepticism of naturalism or the naiveté of pantheism, maybe it would be a good idea to move to the house next door. The house that is built upon the foundation of ‘the truth that is in Jesus’ (Eph. 4:21) -- it’s windows are clear. And, when you look through them, you can see forever.
