I have a friend who has cancer. He has a brain tumour, and it was removed but has been growing back again. He is in the midst of all the potential cures: radiation, hormone therapy, chemotherapy, dietary changes, and prayer, lots of prayer. People across the country are praying for – oh let’s call him Adam to protect his privacy. I have had other friends with brain tumours. Some have been successfully treated and are living healthy lives to the fullest. Other friends went through all the medical processes and still the cancer grew, the medical therapies did good and did harm, and in the end the damages could not be reversed, and the rest of the body shut down and they drifted into the great beyond. I do not yet know the outcome for Adam. I continue to pray that he will be healed by supernatural or natural means, or both.
Many years ago, a friend of mine died from complications related to his multiple myeloma, a different but equally brutal cancer. As the days of his departure from this world crept upon him, there were signs that this was the last chapter. He began to dream of all the things he had yet to do in life. He had plans to write a book and he was busy doing the research. It was work that most of us knew would never be finished. He began to have long chats with people in his backyard; but these were people that none of the rest of us could see. It was as if the space between heaven and earth was shrinking for Jason, and perhaps if we had looked and listened closely, the veil between the two might have also become a little more transparent for us. We just found it intriguing and a bit amusing.
Perhaps God was preparing Jason for the rarified air of the next life and was training him in the art of breathing that heavenly air. Authors and spiritual thinkers often speak of such things. C.S. Lewis had multiple metaphors for this. In his work, The Great Divorce,[1] about a journey from earth to heaven, Lewis imagined the grass of heaven to be much harder, sharper, and more real, than the grass of earth. Visitors to heaven had to toughen up their feet before they were able to walk upon it. Lewis also spoke of how humans are both physical and spiritual and that just as an amphibian such as a frog starts out in the environment of a pond and ends up living on land, our lives must adapt, and our lungs must grow from these physical ones into spiritual lungs fit for heaven.[2]
As I said, I know not yet the outcome of Adam’s journey, but I know of his commitment to the spiritual life. I know that he is a follower of Jesus and has the hope of eternal life beyond this one. Every one of us must be prepared for the journey from this life to the one beyond and whether our time here is short or long, we all need to prepare our lungs and the soles of our feet. Adam, I wish for you, strong lungs, and tough feet.
[1] Lewis, C.S. The Great Divorce. HarperOne, 2015.
[2] Lewis, C.S. The Screwtape Letters. New York: MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc, 1980, p. 38, 39.
How did we get to the point where one political leader chooses to take over another country against the will of the people of that country and the rest of the world must look on? We have seen this before and it has led to war on a large scale. We have seen it in Europe, we have seen it in Vietnam, we have seen it in Afghanistan. We have seen it is Syria. We have seen it again in Europe. As military conflict rages in Ukraine, perhaps it is time to once again listen to the words of one wiser than ourselves.
I am not speaking of the wisdom of Wendell Berry, although he is wise, but one who is wiser still. In one of Berry’s novels, we read of Troy Chatham, no he is not the wise one either, but he is the primary antagonist of the novel entitled Jayber Crow, published in 2000. The novel recounts the entire life of the barber, Jayber Crow, who spent much of his life in the small fictional town of Port William, Kentucky. The barber shop, like most real-life barber shops of the world, is the place where local news, exaggerated stories, and town gossip is disseminated. It reminds me of the barber shop in Delburne, Alberta where most of the farmers of the surrounding district got their haircut, played pool, and talked at length, near the farm where I grew up. None in that shop was very wise either, but that did not prevent them from sharing much information. It was the equivalent of contemporary social media, and the veracity of the stories were just as unpredictable. One of the stories told within Jayber Crow is that of the day that Troy Chatham spouted his opinions about the Vietnam conflict. Troy, supporting those who supported war and opposed to the war protesters who were beginning to make a stir, is waiting his turn for a haircut in Jayber’s waiting area when Berry gives us an insight into the conversation and the thoughts of Jayber. Troy speaks of the war protestors and says,
“‘They ought to round up every one of them sons of bitches and put them right in front of the damned communists, and then whoever killed who, it would be all to the good.’
There was a little pause after that. Nobody wanted to try to top it. . . .
It was hard to do, but I quit cutting hair and looked at Troy. I said, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you.”
Troy jerked his head up and widened his eyes at me. “Where did you get that crap?”
I said, “Jesus Christ.”
And Troy said, “Oh.”
It would have been a great moment in the history of Christianity, except that I did not love Troy.”
There is the challenge. Can we love like Jesus? Can we love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and do good to those that hate us? Those are wise words and strong challenges to those of us who follow Jesus. What do those words mean amid a global conflict? What do those words mean as we consider the Ukrainian people? As we consider the Russian people? As we consider Vladimir Putin? What do they mean as we consider a neighbour like Troy Chatham?
Christianity only works if we do what the Christ called us to do. But how do we put aside our broken, sinful desires, our hatred, our pain for those suffering from the evil that others do? These are not easy questions to answer, but they must be asked. The answers will not be the immediate gut-reactions we so desire to give. The answers will be in keeping with the answers of the Christ. Jesus showed us how to love those who hurt us. He showed us the way of great love. He also showed us the way of great suffering. In fact, it is because he loved people so much that he was willing to show great suffering. Do we desire to see Putin’s armies lined up in front of the Ukrainian people and see what will happen? Do we desire to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and do good to those who hate us? Can we follow Christ even if everyone else around us does not? I was taught a song in Sunday School called “I have Decided.” Some of the words went like this,
The world behind me, the cross before me,
The world behind me, the cross before me,
The world behind me, the cross before me,
No turning back, no turning back.
Though none go with me, still I will follow,
Though none go with me, still I will follow,
Though none go with me, still I will follow,
No turning back, no turning back.
I have decided to follow Jesus,
I have decided to follow Jesus,
I have decided to follow Jesus,
No turning back, no turning back.
It sounded so simple then. Yes, though none go with me, still I will follow, no turning back, I have decided to follow Jesus. Where to now Lord? I have nowhere else to go. What is my next step oh Lord? No turning back now. No turning back.
This week, I watched a movie I had not seen in 54 years. I first saw Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner in 1967 when my mother took me to see it in a small theatre in Stettler, Alberta. Even at the young age of seven, I was able to understand the movie at some level. It is one of my early memories because I cried tears of relief at the end of it. I think I understood the conflict of the story and perhaps even understood a bit about love. I was sad that there were people in the world who were considered different and less significant because of the colour of their skin. I sensed the triumph of changed attitudes as the story unfolded and I was likely influenced by the emotions of others in the theatre as I let my teardrops fall.
Growing up in rural Alberta I don’t recall having much understanding of racial tension, not because there was no racism, but rather because we had few interactions with anyone of a different skin colour. I also don’t remember any indigenous people in our small rural community. Of course, the land we worked had once been the hunting, trapping, and community lands of the indigenous people before us. But by the time I lived there, they were far away in other places, and sadly we did not see them or concern ourselves with them. We were a vanilla white community with the major differences being the distinction between poor farmers and even poorer farmers. Often, the slightly more well-off farmers would look with disdain upon the poorest farmers in the community and believe that the poorest farmers were somehow to blame for the situation in which they found themselves. The well-off farmers would discount the privilege and opportunities into which they had been born. So, we had a parallel to class distinctions that divided along lines other than skin colour. It was not until I moved to Calgary in the late 1970s that I had any friends who were black. Only then did I begin to understand the difficulties these friends faced.
What prompted me to watch the movie this week was of course, the death of Sidney Poitier on January 6, 2022, at 94 years of age. His stunning performance and the performances of the whole cast and crew earned the movie several Academy nominations and awards. The film itself is recognised as an historical treasure that helped to change race relations in that era.
Watching it 54 years later, one might critique it too harshly by the standards of today, but the reality is that the movie holds up well. I found myself once again emotional as I considered how little has changed in 54 years. Some of the same attitudes are still evident in our human culture today. With as wide an audience as this film had, one might rightly ask how anyone could deny equal rights to people regardless of skin colour after seeing this film; and yet, political, sociological, and economic factors are never solved by a single movie. The arts are a powerful tool in changing minds, but minds must of course be willing to change.
As for the class distinctions of my own childhood, I suppose they were a lesson to me about seeing both prejudice and privilege and they ultimately contributed to my own sense of understanding of the world. Though protected from some of the sociological upheaval of the 60s and 70s, I learned to appreciate my privilege and express gratitude for it. It made me more humble and less prejudiced toward those who did not look like me or have the same privileges I had. It is a lesson I am continuing to learn through all the days of my life and so I am grateful for writers, moviemakers, and actors who help me to learn these valuable lessons. May we celebrate the amazing work of Sidney Poitier as we mourn his passing.
The latest edition of Science News has a review of the book, Feeling and Knowing by Antonio Damasio. I have not yet read the book, but the review offers several interesting quotes and concepts that intrigue me, and I expect will intrigue many others. There are a few hints at a definition of a concept that is very hard to define. “Consciousness is what gives an individual a sense of self; it helps one stay in the present, remember the past and plan for the future.”[1] That is certainly part of what we call consciousness: a “sense of self,” memory, and the ability to “plan for the future.” Of course, some animals have memory and the ability to plan for the future. It is a little harder to tell if they have a sense of self, but they do have an instinct for self-preservation. And when it comes to planning for the future, there is a certain coconut octopus in the Pacific that has shown the ability to plan. These octopi will take two halves of a coconut shell with them to a barren part of the ocean floor (where there are no coconut shells to be had) to use as a shelter against the elements and predators. Some researchers believe that they are aware of the lack of shells in that location and plan for their time of rest in that environment.[2] If planning is part of consciousness, then these and many other animals have a degree of consciousness that is less than that of humans yet still significant.
In his book, Damasio further explains consciousness as something that is
“generated by a variety of structures within an organism, some neural, some not. What’s more, feelings — mental experiences of body states — help connect the brain to the rest of the body. ‘The feelings that we have of, say, hunger or thirst, or pain, or well-being, or desire, etc. — these are the foundation of our mind,’ Damasio says. In his view, feelings have played a central role in the life-regulating processes of animals throughout the history of life.”[3]
Does this capture the essence of consciousness? Is it truly a combination of the effects of bodily structures, some neural and some not? If we add in feelings of hunger, thirst, pain, well-being, and desire, does that capture it completely? Most of us would say there is something more and yet may not have an explanation of the something more.
Is it possible that this is one of those circumstances where we reach a boundary beyond which our physical sciences cannot pass? Do we need to look to the philosophers and theologians to bridge the gap? Perhaps, like the coconut octopus, we need to take along something more for the journey into the unknown desert. We don’t have to force biology to answer all the questions of life. What of philosophical and theological concepts such as the soul? Might these have a place in the discussion?
I look forward to learning more about the latest research into consciousness and intelligence as they relate to humans, pre-homo sapien hominids, and animals. As I do, I may plan ahead and pack a small bag in which to carry a few other concepts from the philosophers and theologians just in case they might prove helpful.
[1] “‘Feeling & Knowing’ explores the origin and evolution of consciousness,” Science News, JP O’Malley, 2022-01-05.
[2] “Are Octopuses Smart?”, By Sarah B. Puschmann, LiveScience.com, August 18, 2017, accessed 2022-01-06. “Jennifer Mather, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada… defines intelligences as using information from the environment to alter behavior, although she also thinks this information can be used to make decisions. Mather’s assumption that octopuses plan ahead is based on observations other researchers have made in the western Pacific on the coconut octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus), which is known for its ability to carry around coconut halves and opened coconut shells before clamping the two sides closed around their bodies for protection. To Mather, it’s key that these octopuses carry the coconut halves or shells and don’t just scrunch into their new shelter at the site where they found the shells….”That’s using the environment but it’s much more important, [it’s] predicting what you’re going to need for the future and taking the actions now, planning for what you’re going to have to do later….””
[3] “‘Feeling & Knowing’ explores the origin and evolution of consciousness,” Science News, JP O’Malley, 2022-01-05.
This morning as my car crunched and squeaked over a bank of snow at the edge of our garage, my mind considered the implications of the temperature at -24°C with a small wind chill making it feel like -36°C. There was an uneven layer of crushed snow on the hill that I had to navigate to get to my 6:00 am swim time. I turned on the radio just in time to hear the CBC announcer say, “Lane definition is an issue this morning in Calgary. In some places, if you can find your rut, just stay in it.”
As I drove and watched for glimpses of yellow lines indicating the middle of the road and other indicators for the edge of my lane, I marvelled that the engineers at Tesla were working even now on solving such difficult issues in a lab or on a street somewhere in the world. They have my admiration and humble esteem for what they have accomplished and will continue to accomplish as they seek safe and efficient methods of transportation for all people. It made me want to be a better problem solver. It made me want to contribute to the greater good for all people. It made me want to help others in the few fields in which I can hope to make a difference.
The Tesla car company is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence-guided (AI-guided) autonomous driving. The Full Self-Driving Beta 10.8 (FSD-Beta) is described on the Tesla website.
“Autopilot is an advanced driver assistance system that enhances safety and convenience behind the wheel. When used properly, Autopilot reduces your overall workload as a driver. Each new Tesla vehicle is equipped with 8 external cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors and a powerful onboard computer (sic) provide an additional layer of safety to guide you on your journey. Model 3 and Model Y built for the North American market have transitioned to camera-based Tesla Vision, which are not equipped with radar and instead rely on Tesla’s advanced suite of cameras and neural net processing to deliver Autopilot and related features. Model S and Model X continue to be equipped with radar.”[1]
That short paragraph on their website communicates a lot but leaves out much of the engineering that has gone into FSD-Beta. The system uses eight cameras and twelve ultrasonic sensors, but the key to it all working is the “powerful onboard computer.” Another way of describing the computer is that it is an AI neural net that seeks to function much like a human brain. The neural net takes information from the cameras and microphones and predicts what the various images and sounds represent. In an interview with Lex Fridman on December 28, 2021,[2] Elon Musk speaks of how the images sent from the cameras are designed to feed raw, photon data to the neural net. There is no need to “pretty up” the images which only wastes time and increases latency and jitter in the system, two things which are the bane of autopilot systems. By going to first principles of engineering, Tesla is seeking to create an autopilot that replicates and exceeds the capabilities of the thinking processes of a human driver.
The next time you are out for a drive, think about all the things your own neural net (brain) is doing as you navigate down the roadways. Your brain is analysing data from your eyes: looking through the windshield as it subtracts the dirt and pock-marks on the windshield, filling in what might be behind an occlusion you are not able to see through (the bus stopped at the side of the road may be hiding pedestrians that could walk around the bus and appear in front of your car), seeing the silhouette of a person in a parked car indicating that the car door might open or the car might pull out into traffic, looking at the dash and seeing which radio station is tuned in and the volume at which it is being played, watching the signs for your next turn as you think about how to get from point A to point B, seeing that cyclist in your right peripheral view while noticing the other car overtaking your position in your left peripheral view, and many more pieces of data mediated by the photons flowing into the retina.
Now, while your neural net is analysing the data coming in from your eyes, it is also dealing with the information provided by your ears: simultaneously listening to the radio, traffic noise, horns honking, emergency sirens, rattles and bumps of the car, that airplane flying overhead, the sound of children squealing in a nearby playground, and several other sounds. Some of these are rightly ignored while others are an important part of the driving process. And that is only two of our five senses that might rightly or deceptively be involved in our trip to the local store. “Do I need to pay attention to that skunk smell? Is a small mammal likely to run out in front of my car?” What about memories from other trips? Do I need to pay attention to those? I remember travelling at dusk through the mountains when deer gathered on the side of snowy roads to lick salt sprinkled there by snowplows. “Do I need to take that into account as I drive here today?” What neural processes in my brain contribute to lane identification on a snowy day in Calgary?
One can readily see that Tesla has their work cut out for them. As they build this massive neural net, with a lot of lines of code, to serve the FSD system, what are the implications of such an AI brain? Could this brain be used in humanoid robots? What about using such systems to predict traffic flows, or on a wider basis predict climate change? What might be possible?
Tesla’s approach has been praised and criticised. Praised for thinking in ways that disrupts the normal engineering processes. Criticised for not using radar as well as cameras. Other institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have followed Tesla’s progress and have done their own independent tests of the technology to see how well it performs. The world will be watching to see if Tesla can indeed make autonomous driving safer than human mediated driving in the coming years.
[1]Tesla Support; https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot; accessed 2022-01-01.
[2] Elon Musk: SpaceX, Mars, Tesla Autopilot, Self-Driving, Robotics, and AI, Lex Fridman Podcast #252, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxREm3s1scA, accessed 2022-01-01.
When Valdy sang about coming up to Winnipeg and sleeping out in the Zoo, it wasn’t in December. And when Burton Cummings told us to “stand tall,” he didn’t mean we should stand on the corner of Portage and Main in the dead of winter. But here we are in the bleak mid-winter when the sun rises late in the morning and sets early in the afternoon; when the wind howls down Portage and the mercury continues to drop. It is good that we celebrate Advent and Christmas at this time of year to help take our minds off the cold and the dark. For now, we wait, we prepare, and we look forward to the coming of light, warmth, and a baby King who takes away the sins of the world. Enjoy the words of this old carol, once again.
In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind may moan
Earth stood hard as iron
Water like a stone
Snow had fallen
Snow on snow on snow
In the bleak midwinter
Long, long ago
Angels and Arc Angels
May have traveled there
Cherubim and Seraphim
Thronged the air
But only his Mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshiped the beloved
With a kiss
What can I give him?
Poor as I am
If I were a shepherd
I would give a lamb
If I were a wise man
I would do my part
But what I can I give him
Give him my heart
Give him my heart
Songwriters: Christina Rossetti and H. Darke
An Excerpt from Supernatural by Keith Allan Shields – Purchase it here.
Today, is the 1500th anniversary of my favourite missionary/monk, Columba. Also known as Saint Columba and Columcille, he was a great hero of the Celtic Christian faith, an Irish Abbot, and missionary evangelist who trained at the Clonard monastic school and established the Durrow Abbey in Ireland before spending much of his life establishing churches, abbeys, and monasteries in Scotland. My wife and I were fortunate to visit the ruins of the Durrow Abbey in October of 2018.
Columba, who was born on December 7, 521, travelled to Kintyre Peninsula in Scotland in 563 with 12 companions (an intentional number) before settling at Iona and establishing a centre of literacy. He and his companions went on to found many more abbeys, chapels, monasteries, and churches all over Scotland. What is most fascinating about the work of Saint Columba is that, like Patrick, and according to his biographers, everywhere he went his work was accompanied by signs and wonders. Now of course, events that happened in the 6th century with accounts written years later are naturally hard to confirm and the writing style of authors who told the stories at that time were more concerned with confirming that the saint was a great leader than they were with historical accuracy. Still, if we look at how quickly the gospel spread among the ancient people that lived in Scotland at the time, it suggests that something unusual was happening. At the time, the people of Scotland consisted of the Picts, the Scots of Dál Riata, the Britons of Alt Clut, and the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia.[1] If we take the Picts as an example, we will readily see that these people were fierce and not easily swayed to a new way of life. Yet Columba and other Celtic missionaries evangelised these people and did so in a relatively short period of time.
The Pict people were so named due to their body paints which they wore into battle. In fact, they wore nothing else into battle. Their nakedness was a form of psychological warfare to intimidate their enemies. Furthermore, warriors who had decapitated an enemy in combat wore a torq (a stiff metal necklace) around their necks to indicate their warrior prowess to their enemies. As they went into battle, they screamed with great ferocity and contorted their faces to the extent that their enemies readily thought that they were demon possessed. These were the people to whom Columba went. He went without weapons or shields, to speak to them of the gospel of Jesus. Columba not only survived his interactions with these people, he and his companions were able to make a radical change in their culture in just a few years. What was behind this rapid transformation of culture?
One story, recounted in Adamnan’s Life of St. Columba, shows the boldness with which Columba entered into his mission and the confidence he had in God to protect him. Columba and his companions had come into a new region under the rule of the Pict king, Bridei (also sometimes written as Brude), who had a fortress at Fortriu. We are told that Bridei, full of pride and self-confidence, would not open the gates of his fortress to Columba’s group. Columba, seeing that the gate was not open to him, appealed to God to open it by making the sign of the cross on the door. Immediately the bolt was driven back with great force and the gate opened by itself. Columba and his companions entered the fortress and began to make their way to the king. King Bridei, hearing what had happened, was filled with fear and showed Columba great respect, allowing him to present the gospel in Bridei’s kingdom. What might this encounter have looked like if God had not intervened on behalf of Columba? How much does a simple miracle of this nature enhance the progress of the mission of God in this new territory for the gospel? If miracles like this were happening, it would certainly explain why these fierce warriors took notice of these strange missionaries in their midst.
Adamnan relates many more such supernatural events in the life of Columba. There are miracles in which people are rescued from storms and dangerous animals, poisoned water is made safe, and even an incident where a dead person is brought back to life. Stories such as these, although difficult to confirm, do make sense of the rapid spread of the gospel throughout Scotland. If there is some truth to the many miracles attributed to Saint Columba, then the gospel spread, at least in part, as a result of supernatural events.
Thomas Cahill, in his book How the Irish Saved Civilization, puts less emphasis upon the miraculous events in the life of Columcille but still sees the rapid spread of the Gospel in Scotland as the providence of God. He relates that while Columcille was in Iona, he:
“…began to dream of opening new monasteries. Among the rugged Scots and the scary Picts especially, Columcille’s reputation spread like wildfire. (There wasn’t after all, that much going on up that way.) He made one hundred fifty monks the cutoff number for the Iona community, and after they had exceeded that, twelve and one monks would set off to establish another foundation in a new setting. Fresh applicants kept arriving in droves. By the time of Columcille’s death in the last days of the sixth century, sixty monastic communities had been founded in his name along the jagged inlets and mountain heights of windswept Scotland.”[2]
Every one of these sixty monastic communities made it a point to study and copy the great written works of the church. “Wherever they went they brought their love of learning and their skills in bookmaking. In the bays and valleys of their exile, they reestablished literacy and breathed new life into the exhausted culture of Europe.”[3] As Rome and much of Europe burned or had been burned, and as the great libraries of the European world were destroyed by the Visgoths, Vandals, and other peoples, by God’s grace and by God’s supernatural, historical intervention, the Irish monks faithfully copied every parchment, manuscript, and letter they could find. In the great monastic community at Iona and in smaller communities like the Durrow Abbey, the monks worked to preserve the great documents of their faith and the intellectual parchments of learning. Ireland’s most famous manuscript, the beautiful Book of Kells is believed to have been stored at Durrow to protect it from destruction. In Cahill’s opinion, such protection actually saved civilization.
So today, we celebrate the life and work of Columba. We remember him fondly on this his 1500th birthday.[4]
[1] (Wikipedia 2018)
[2] Cahill. How The Irish Saved Civilization. 184, 185.
[3] Cahill, Thomas. How The Irish Saved Civilization. 196.
[4] This blog post is a retelling of a section of the book Supernatural, by Keith Allan Shields, Beacon Publishing Group, 2020. You can purchase the book here https://amzn.to/3lFWbk4
The Artist
I have been begging, “Oh people, please see the art in me.”
When I should be pleading, “See the art of our Creator.”
I needed to say, “Let your people see You in this world.”
Now I cry out to our God, “I stand here in awe of you.”
There is no artist like you!
There is no artist like you.
Our art does not reach the beauty of the image of God.
Every work of God is perfect from the first chord struck.
Brushes on canvas, notes in air, artful protests, fall short.
You pluck a photon or two and reflect them off a wave.
Perfection in the brilliance!
Perfection in the brilliance.
Oh God, may every artist reach for the furthest stars.
May every skilled musician play their songs from the heart.
May every painter reflect your perfect images.
May every focussed writer bow in humility.
There is no artist like you!
There is no artist like you.
“Now the Lord said to Samuel, ‘You have mourned long enough for Saul. I have rejected him as king of Israel, so fill your flask with olive oil and go to Bethlehem. Find a man named Jesse who lives there, for I have selected one of his sons to be my king.’” – 1 Samuel 16:1 (NLT)
Throughout history, there have been times when God seemingly gives up on a human, multiple humans, or even upon all of humanity. Genesis 6:5, 6 says that “The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart.” In Genesis 18 and 19 we read of God’s disappointment with the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and the destruction of these two cities.
Of course, in each case, God offers a way of escape, a rescue for those who choose to be rescued. Noah’s family and Lot’s family represent the ultimate faithful remnant and God’s providence and grace toward them.
How do we understand such passages of Scripture for our lives today? What are the lessons embedded in the language of the time?
Let’s look at some incidents recounted in the Bible as a model for our understanding of God’s dealings with his people. In 1 Samuel 10 and 11 we see that the Spirit of God comes powerfully upon the chosen king, Saul. He prophesies and works with great power. But, by the time we get to 1 Samuel 16, we see a different story. Because of Saul’s rebellion against God, the Holy Spirit is taken away from Saul and comes powerfully upon the next anointed one, David (in particular, see 1 Samuel 16:13, 14). In fact, God allows a different spirit (we might call it a spirit of madness) to come upon Saul. The Spirit of God in David can soothe Saul and remove the influence of the tormenting spirit, yet it seems that Saul gives himself over to other influences as he continues to rebel against God.
Throughout this time Saul is still a man and still can choose for himself which influences he will allow, and which influences he will resist. David too has times when he allows God’s Spirit to hold sway and other times when he is driven by his own bad choices and the sins of his soul. God’s love for each leader is constant and either one can return to the power of the Holy Spirit at any time. These incidents occur at a time when God had chosen to interact with humans by bestowing his Spirit upon specific individuals: kings, prophets, and leaders such as Moses, Joshua, and Abraham. But since the day of Pentecost in the first century of the church, God has poured out his Spirit upon all of humanity (see Acts 2:17 and following). This same power that was available to Saul, David, and other leaders of Israel, is now available to average human beings.
So, what can be said regarding the removal of the Holy Spirit from the life of the individual? The Bible speaks clearly to those who have given their lives to following Jesus and tells us that God’s Spirit will never leave his people (Hebrews 13:5; John 14:15-21). The Bible also makes it clear that those who do not follow Jesus cannot receive those benefits (also John 14:15-21). It does not speak directly to those who once followed Jesus and then chose not to follow Jesus, but we can see what happened in Saul’s life when he rebelled against God; and so, we would do well to remain humble and agnostic[1] on what would be the outcome, regarding the Holy Spirit, for those who cease to follow the Lord.
It is important to notice that in all these circumstances it breaks God’s heart to be alienated from individual humans or from humanity (see 1 Samuel 16, Genesis 6, and the whole of Genesis 3). God’s love for humanity always overcomes his disappointment with the behaviour of humans, but we can break his heart by our actions.
What does this mean for us today? Like David at his best, like Saul in his early life of commitment to God, and like humanity at its best, you and I can choose this day whether we will be a person after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14) or if we will exist as people who “cannot receive him, because [we don’t] …recognize him.” (John 14:17). We may not understand whether God could or would remove his Spirit and his power from our lives. We may not understand how God might withhold his power in certain circumstances of our lives or certain configurations of world powers. What we can do is seek to do all that is in our power to follow the one person who followed God completely.
[1] The use of the word “agnostic” in this context indicates undecided, non-committal, or unsure. It is not a reference to a general agnostic philosophy of life.