The Humility of the Incarnation

"Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

As many of my close friends know, I am attending a church in Guildford, UK called Chertsey Street Baptist. Chertsey Street is very much involved with students from the University of Surrey, and last semester I took part in a Bible study there for the students every Wednesday night. We were taking an in-depth look at the book of Philippians, and one week I was very much struck at the significance of this passage. I don't know how anyone with a half understanding of the depravity of man and the glory of God can look at the plain reading of this passage without being completely blown away. It is a peak into the heart of God and His attitude towards His people.

Paul's primary motivation for writing this is to give us an example of true humility. Lewis' idea of humility in The Screwtape letters is very helpful: "The great thing is to make him value an opinion for some quality other than truth, thus introducing an element of dishonesty and make-believe into the heart of what otherwise threatens to become a virtue. By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools." (Spoken from the Devil's perspective.) Humility is not lying to yourself. Christ knew He was the holy and only Son of God, and thus "did not consider it robbery to be equal with God." Humility is sacrificing all your own glory at the altar of love.

The funny thing about all of that is that this analogy doesn't even really apply to us at all. For He really was the Son of God. We are greedy, lusting, self-absorbed, glutinous animals and baby-killers who like to act as if we were God. The truth is that we have no glory in the first place. How much more atrocious it is that we should ever be arrogant! To think that the Holy God became human flesh, and that we love few things more than flattery and praise from other men. If, by some miracle of God, we ever actually do anything good and as a result receive some misplaced praise from man, then we need to apply this passage and put on the mindset of Christ. But most of the time, we should simply be on our knees.

That speaks to our sin. But this passage isn't just bad news for us, for it speaks to our only hope of redemption as well. Christ is humbling Himself and putting on the likeness of sinful human flesh in order to be our substitute. This speaks volumes about what exactly happened on the cross. There is a reason why Christ had to become human before suffering for our atonement. He couldn't have just suffered some cosmic-scale punishment afar off without becoming human first, for one simple reason. As much as when God looks at us He sees the Son of Man on the cross paying the price for our sins, when He looked at the Son of Man on the cross, He saw us. That is a terrible thought if we are honest about what we really are like. He saw you, your sin, all of your darkest moments and motives. He saw Cain, He saw Hitler, He saw Sodom and Gamorrah. And thus, the Son of Man came into the likeness of human flesh in order to represent mankind and all of our fallenness on the cross.

This appears to me to be one reason why our catechism teaches us that Jesus must have been both fully man and fully God. He must be fully man in order to take on our sin and judgement, and fully God in order to be completely blameless and defeat death. Of course, when we say "fully man," we clearly cannot mean that He was Himself sinful. This would clearly contradict the notion that He was blameless and thus able to atone for our sins. Instead, He "made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men." He came in the likeness of human flesh, and yet lived a perfect life. He came in the likeness of fallen (not pre-fall) man.* Thus, humility is not clever men actually becoming fools, or pretty women actually trying to become ugly. How would that ever bring glory to God? Instead, it is clever men abandoning every attempt to be viewed by others as clever and simply using their intelligence to love God and their fellow man.

The love of Christ demonstrated in the incarnation doesn't even begin to stop there. The story continues on to the resurrection of Christ. Christ rose bodily from the grave, and He ascended bodily. The angels then tell the disciples that just as Christ departed, so will He return. All of this means that Christ has forever physically committed Himself to humanity because of His resurrection. It is not as though we may be one of many species of creatures that God has created and we are all equal in His sight. No, the Bible never speaks of atonement for angels and demons, only of God's just judgement. Even more than that, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us! And since the church is to be the Bride of Christ, isn't it fair to say that He will always dwell among us? How blessed are we that the very Son of God has become ours forever, just as we are forever His?

Sometimes, strangely, it is the small actions that can speak just as loudly to our hearts as the epic. It is the gift of flowers, the note slipped under the door, the word fitly spoken. One of these small actions that is too rarely remembered is to be found in Matthew 26:27. "Then He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom." When I first read this, I could hardly believe it, and thought for sure that I must have misunderstood. But Christ is really saying that He will not drink of wine until He can drink it with us at the wedding feast of the Lamb. He cannot mean that He is waiting for some kind of religious communion ceremony, first because He says He will not taste the "fruit of the vine" at all, and second because Christ taking communion doesn't really make sense at all. (It would kind of be like… self-cannibalism) He really means that He has promised to fast from the pleasure of wine until that great feast, when He will drink in joy over His redeemed people.** Are there any words that can be said in response at all?

*Skeptic side note: Fully God and fully man does sound like a contradiction at a first glance. But then again, so does wave-particle duality to the physicist, so does a derivative to the mathematician (division by zero), and so does the sovereignty of God and human responsibility to the theologian. Sometimes, reality holds things that are too far separated from our human experience for us to imagine. As long as there is still good reason to believe it, then we should be okay with believing things that we cannot always wrap our minds around. For this one, some of the reasons for believing it are found in John 1 (granted, if you believe the Bible is true), and perhaps the discussion above.

**This is one more reason to believe that Christ will remain forever in His physical body, committed to us. Wine, food, and pleasure are all physical things. One of the most comic scenes in the Bible is when Christ is proving to His disciples that He is not a ghost but has physically risen from the dead. He says, "Have you any food here?" And then the disciples give him a piece of broiled fish and honeycomb, and I can just imagine that He says, "Now…. watch." The food was to prove that He really was risen "in the flesh." Since Christ will drink of the fruit of the vine at the wedding feast, we can be sure that He will be "in the flesh" with us then.

Is God Vain?

"The Scotch catechism says that man's chief end is 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him." -C S Lewis

For years, I have struggled with scriptures and people who speak of God commanding us to praise Him, specifically because I thought they portrayed God as vain. Hopefully, none of you have had the same struggles, and I know that the answer is obvious for some. But for me, I don't think I fully understood these passages until I read C S Lewis' book, Notes on the Psalms.

"Whoever offers praise glorifies Me", Psalm 50:23. As lewis says, "it was hideously like God wanted to be told that He was good and great." For me, it seemed like God's only reason for having anything to do with humanity was so that He would be told that He is good and great. Even worse, the Psalmists bargain with Him worship in exchange for favors. He seemed to punish those who did not worship Him, and reward those who did. In Psalm 31:9, the author is begging God to save his life, but only for the reason that there would be no one to praise Him if he dies. "What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise You? Will it declare Your truth?"

Just to be clear, I don't think the issue is a lack of love for God. It is a fair question to look at what we are reading and ask if it is portraying God as vain, frivolous, and manipulative towards humans. That is both a distressing thought and inconsistent with the loving Father who would sacrifice His Son for us. If we love God, then we should be appalled by any accusation against His character and goodness.

Most people respond to this question by saying that God has a "right" to be praised. Since He alone is worthy, He has the right to demand worship. Lewis points out that this is correct, but a horrible way of putting it. I think it still gives the impression that His only reason for having anything to do with man is to fill up His praise tank, or to have all His right praise buttons pushed.

The response is twofold. First, God clearly is not vain. He is a God who is jealous of our worship, just as any husband is jealous of his wife's love. But if God wanted to be praised, then do you really think that He would come to US, sinful, tone-deaf, and squeaking human beings, to fill His praise tank? "I will not take a bull from your house, nor goats out of your fields. For every beast of the forest is Mine, And the cattle on a thousand hills.... If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the world is Mine, and all its fullness." (Psalm 50). The greater the being who is praising, the greater the praise. If some small boy off the street told you that you were a nice person, it wouldn't mean much to you. But if the president of the US came, knocked on your door, and broke into song about how amazing you are, then you would be completely floored. Similarly, if God wanted great and fantastic praise, then He would create some beautifully magnificent and powerful archangel to worship Him. But as Lewis says, "I don't want my dog to bark in approval of my books."

Secondly, why does God command humans to praise Him? Lewis starts with the analogy of a painting. What do we mean when we say that a picture is admirable? We do not mean that it deserves something in the sense that you (hopefully) deserve the wages you earn at your job. Instead, we mean that praise is the appropriate and natural response to a beautiful painting. I hadn't ever fully appreciated this until I moved to the UK. In August, I moved into a smaller English Medieval town called Guildford to take courses at the University of Surrey. Guildford is beautiful, quaint, and full of history. During my first week, I took some time to explore the town, visit the castle, and "appreciate" the beauty of the place where God has brought me. As I stood there under the shadow of a 13th century Norman castle next to a river with beautiful gardens, I wanted so desperately to exclaim to the person next to me how amazing it is. But I was alone. There was no one with me to hear my praise of the castle, or the quant town, or the old-fashioned pubs. Living in Europe is incredible for an American, and yet the worst thing about it is not being able to rejoice in it's beauty and history with other people. The pleasure involved with simply observing something beautiful on your own is nothing compared with the pleasure of praising it to others. "I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment."

Praising true beauty is pleasant because it is the natural (or designed) response. As I pointed out in the last post, we are happiest when we follow the natural design of the human heart. We are designed to praise things that are beautiful, and as a result, "The world rings with praise: lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside... I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious minds praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least."

Now think how great and glorious Our Lord is, who created all these things that we enjoy. Lewis takes the limit as God's greatness goes to infinity: "If it were possible for a created soul fully (I mean, up to the full measure conceivable in a finite being) to appreciate, that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beautitude." This is our final destination, our end to which Christ is guiding us. Until then, we are just tuning ourselves as the Body and Bride of Christ in preparation for the Great Praise.

The Pursuit of Happiness

In theology, I have often been told that people cannot seek God on their own, and He has to interfere in order to stop us from our own best efforts to go straight to hell. But I had never before seen what it is inside us that makes it impossible for us to truly love Him without Him first loving us. Ever since I came to the UK, God's been showing me several of these mechanisms within our hearts that make it impossible for depraved man to find Him on his own. The most striking one is The Problem of The Pursuit of Happiness. There are two rival ideas concerning happiness (which I will go over very briefly), one of which is correct and the other isn't, but neither are effective without Christ. I apologize for this background information which I am sure most of you are well aware of already, but I think the background information is worthwhile on its own merits for those who have not heard it.

"All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However different the means they may employ, they all strive towards this goal. The reason why some go to war and some do not is the same desire in both, but interpreted in different ways. The will never takes the least step except to that end. This is the motive of every act of every man, including those who go and hang themselves." - Blaise Pascal, Penses

There is nothing which anyone desires more than happiness, nothing else which any man can help but to desire. There is nothing that we do that is not ultimately motivated by our own pursuit of happiness, and that is how we decide what kind of person we are going to be. But what we ultimately decide depends on what we think happiness is, and what we think will make us happy. That is why it is extremely important to understand The Pursuit of Happiness.

Happiness is not easy to define, because the definition has recently changed in the West. Today, most people believe that happiness is being satisfied with pleasures. They believe that it is a feeling that depends on outside circumstances. People become gluttons for entertainment, food, houses, and other temporary things of this world. It is a theory called hedonism, where the goal of life is to increase pleasure as much as possible with as little pain as possible. For the mathematicians out there, a hedonistically happy life is defined as one where the integral of the pleasure versus time curve is large. The result is that we will use anything in life to serve our own appetites, including their friends, family, or even God. (There is a psychologist named Martin Seligman who has written some good papers on the topic, and he argues that this increasingly popular mindset is partially the result of today’s age of consumerism and general prosperity. He also says that the loss of faith in God and family has left individuals with nothing else to live for other than themselves. If you would like to read some papers on the subject, then feel free to send me an email.)

There is a second way of thinking about happiness that Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Christ, and other ancient philosophers held in common, and is therefore called the "classical definition of happiness." Aristotle argued that true happiness comes from living out the purpose of life for human beings. Aristotle believed that this purpose, or function of humans, was reason in accordance with virtue. He referred to this kind of life as eudaimonia, which literally means, “to be living in a way that is well-favored by a god”. As Christians, we know that our ultimate purpose and function is to love and glorify God through a relationship with Him. Hence, true happiness is a life lived for something outside one’s self, namely God and His glory. It is not dependent on external circumstances, nor is it short lived like pleasurable satisfaction. Christ says in Matthew 16:25, “For whoever will save his life shall lose it: and whoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Assuming that God exists and has created us with a specific purpose and intended us to be happy in that purpose, then it would be folly for us to think we will find happiness outside of His plan. It would be like putting water in your gas tank and still expecting your car to run properly. Our hearts were designed to not be at rest until we rest in Him. If you live entirely for yourself, then your life will have no meaning, purpose or significance outside of your own little existence. Essentially, you will have no reason to live, and you will ultimately decide to “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” Suicide is now among the highest causes of death among young people today.

This is what I had understood from the time when I was in high school, and I was quite proud of my "higher understanding" of happiness. But throughout high school, and my first year at NCSU, I still found myself dry and depressed. I had all the right ideas about happiness, and yet I found that I could not apply them. I wanted to be happy, and that is why I wanted to live for God and others. It took over two years for me to discover (or as I realized later, for God to show me) what was wrong with all my grand and proud theories about classical happiness.

Eventually, God made me realize that even though happiness does come from living for something greater than yourself and from living the way I was designed to live, I was powerless to put it into effect. It is true that living for something greater than ourselves is the only way that we can be happy, yet we are powerless to do that. And the reason is actually quite simple. Anytime you choose based on your own will and out of your own strength to live for something greater than yourself, you are doing it for the only reason you ever do anything: for the sake of your own happiness. It becomes self defeating. If you are trying to be happy by living for something greater than yourself, then you will never succeed because your own happiness is your only motive. I was trying my hardest to live for Christ, but my only motivation was my own happiness, so I was ultimately living for myself. I was powerless to defeat the cycle. There is nothing that anyone can do to seek happiness on their own, because any attempt to become non-narcissistic is going to be inherently narcissistic.

The only hope for us is for some other power outside of ourselves to lovingly step in and change our hearts. It must be natural, in the sense that it cannot be a conscious decision we make for ourselves. If the we did it ourselves, it would be an inherently selfish decision and therefore powerless. Furthermore, no being weaker than us would be able change us, and no being that did not love us already would choose to rescue us from our own misery. Fortunately for us, there is One who knows and has power over the most inner-workings of our hearts, and loves us with a depth and intensity that makes the most passionate marriage seem trifling. There is also a mechanism that God uses to change a man's mind, motives, and heart in a natural way. That mechanism is His love manifested to us in action: the cross. God woos our hearts with His love and thereby transforms us. When we realize God's love and simultaneous justice and strength, it changes our hearts naturally so that we love Him in return and love Him before all things. "We love Him because He first loved Us. And by this we know love: that He laid down his Life for us." The choice isn't even ours to make for our own happiness, and it cannot be. All we do is fall in love with Him as He steps in and rescues us from our helpless state of The Pursuit of Happiness.

For skeptics, I am not offering this as an argument for God's existence. I assume that the readers of this particular post believe in Him already. I am not a pragmatist, and I don't believe that you should ever choose to believe in God just because you think it will make you happy. Pragmatism fails for the same reason that classical happiness fails: if God doesn't actually exist, but you seek happiness through religion anyway, then it will fail because you ultimately have selfish motives. Nothing can make a person happy unless there is some being greater than themselves that will change their inescapably selfish hearts, and therefore we will all be miserable unless God exists in objective reality. And hence, religion can only ultimately succeed in satisfying us if God actually exists. Unless of course you believe that you can find happiness in fleeting earthly pleasures and inevitable death.

See then that ye walk circumspectly

Welcome to Circumspectful Physics, the blog of an evangelical christian physics major. This blog is driven by two ideas. The first idea is that God has revealed Himself in the physical and spiritual world that He created, and there is no higher pursuit than knowing God. Few people recognize it, but this is the proper end of physics. The original physicists were called "natural philosophers", or lovers of wisdom about nature. If nature itself ultimately points to God, then physics points to God as well. This is a blog that centers around who God is and how we can know Him.

The second idea is, as J I Packer discusses in his book Knowing God, having knowledge about God is very different from knowing God. Knowing God entails not only knowing about the twists and turns of the path of walking the christian life, but also the actual walking of the path. It is atrocious and hypocritical to simply have a theoretical knowledge about God without applying the knowledge to our lives. That is why Paul says in Ephesians, "Wherefore he saith, 'Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.' See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is."

Shalom,

Patrick