The Law of Sin and Death

Are you a spiritual outlaw? An outlaw is someone who chooses to live outside
of the rules and protections of a system of law.

The law of sin and death is this: if I become an agent of entropy, my resources will be stripped and my ability to affect the world entropically will be removed through death, and after death by prevention of me entering the gates of Heaven to spread entropy there.

I had judged myself the one who decides that my purposes are more important than the wants and needs of others. I chose chaos as my god instead of following the laws of the Creator of existence (1. love God, 2. love others), so God is within His right to keep me from affecting those who choose Him as their god.

The grace of mercy is this: someone with the ability to remove entropy from my nature and/or to keep me from putting chaos into the world takes responsibility for my choices by adopting me, purchasing my entropic debt, serving my penalty, changing my heart to fit His laws, and working all things (including my future choices) toward good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

By accepting the offer of being added to His household, I am among those who count Heaven as their home when I die.

(Declaration of 100% non-AI content: not consulted, not written, and not edited by AI.)

Communion Insights - The Price Paid

A friend's mentor in the faith told him to ask God for a new insight on the Communion every time.  Since my friend told me this, I've done so.

Today, Jesus told me that the bread is the price of my purchase from my master.

Satan wanted Jesus to worship him, and in exchange Jesus would receive a gift: the entire world.  Jesus did not dispute that the world was Satan's to give!  He would rather die than worship Satan.  So instead of giving Satan worship, He allowed His body to be taken away.

A body is strength.  A body has the ability to change the world.  Jesus, adopted son of a house-builder, certainly had a strong body, but that wasn't how He changed the world.  With His muscles, He could probably have been a great warrior, if so trained, but that wasn't how He changed the world.  Instead, He changed the world by allowing His body to be publicly drained of strength and suffocated by fatigue and killed in the place of a murderer and insurrectionist against Israel's submission to Rome.

But the trick is that He died once to free all who chose freedom.

I was born into the slavery of sin.  My heritage was weakness, my lineage was fallibility, and my master was Satan.

The price for me, one body traded for another, was paid by Jesus.  He came into the place I was enslaved, this cruel world, and asked me if I wanted to be free.  I said yes.  The eldest son traded Himself for my slave-price, and I was washed clean by the blood of the Anointed One and adopted as a son of the house of Heaven.

I am ever grateful.

Thoughts on the Cross

Thoughts inspired by my church's reading of the Good Friday account in John 18 and 19:

• Jesus' death sentence was for blasphemy. It was a false accusation, but He accepted the sentence for His friends, who each in their own sins had committed that blasphemy, had declared themselves to be more intelligent than infinite God through their defiance of His laws.  Our pride is our death sentence, and Jesus has taken it for us, if we choose to be His friend.
• “Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate asked. “We have no king but Caesar,” the chief priests answered.  In doing so, they, the highest religious authorities of Jacob's line, broke the covenant and ended the Levite priesthood. Then, upon Jesus' death, the inner veil of the Temple was torn, showing that God had accepted His sacrifice, that the age of the priesthood of Melchizedek had come, to offer forgiveness to all the Jews and gentiles.
• Pilate crucified Jesus with the sign "King of the Jews" in the languages of the people (Aramaic), of the Empire (Latin), and of the world (Greek). He was the appointed authority of the Empire of Rome, the hand of the Emperor of mankind, and he recognized what the priests refused to. In doing so, he declared who the world system would forever oppose: the King of the next world.

God Is Good, Always

This question, posted by Charles Glenn on a Christian philosophy email list, caught my attention:

Hi Everyone,

I was up almost all night thinking about this question Darrin asked: is God significantly free?

May I ask a question in response to this question?

According to Hume, free will belongs to every person who is not in chains. So is it possible that God possesses perfect free will in an eternal sense, but has willingly placed himself "in chains" as a part of his act of creation, specifically in his creation of the human race? In one sense, he would still possess free will, right? Willingly limiting yourself to "Good" is, after all, a choice that a perfect being could make if that being possessed free will - that choice would have been made freely.

I suppose that also means He could change his mind and break his "chains" any time he chooses too, doesn't it? That would imply God possesses the CAPACITY for evil, right?

I'm pretty sure that's not part of mainstream Christian theology though...

In any case, wouldn't we have to resolve this question in order to coherently discuss God's "goodness?"

-Charles

This is a question of literally eternal significance. It is also the question that has turned many from God who have seen and experienced the suffering in this world.

When I seek entertainment, I most enjoy works that focus on moral choices, not in terms of law or instinct, but in terms of free will. The factor that feeds the God-shaped void in my human heart is when a character makes a difficult decision out of love for another, not out of need. When a character chooses to be good, even when compromise is far easier and has greater benefits.

I believe that for God to be truly sovereign, He must be prior to (and/or the foundation of) everything that exists. That means He is not driven by anything out of His control. And that means He must be ultimately free, perfectly free, because what could chain Him but Himself?

When the serpent told Eve that if they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil she would become like God, I think he was telling the truth deceptively. She became aware of what it felt like to do evil, and her eyes were opened to morality, the vast gulf between following laws by necessity, and making free choices that coincide with the laws because the laws were written by someone good and wise. Then Adam damned us all to a lifetime of making moral decisions in a fallen world, where death was let loose to ravage us all, some slowly, others swiftly, and where sacrifice became necessary.

God knows how to do evil, and could if He chose. He could be infinitely cruel, taking pleasure in the pain of others. He could ignore us, let the sun explode, and go on to make less rebellious puppets on a planet in the Andromeda Galaxy. He could lie. But He never does; He has "chained" Himself to love as He chained Himself to logic: He will never create a rock so big He can't lift it, because that would be a paradox.

As C.S. Lewis wrote in The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe:

"If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than me or else just silly."

"Then he isn't safe?" asked Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr. Beaver. "Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

His capacity for evil is as infinite as His capacity for good, but He has never and will never use it. And that is what makes the storyteller in me love Him so much. And that is why I praise Him: because He Is who He chose to be, and has promised His steadfast love to us eternally.

What Would Aslan Do?

C.S. Lewis specifically said himself that Aslan was not an allegory. I will try to explain my own understanding of what he meant.

I'll start with an example. I once read a science fiction story where Elvis was taken from the planet (and his death faked) by aliens, to be their king. (It involved swordplay, karate, and other elements.)

I would not call this character an allegory of Elvis; rather, I would call this character a fictional parallel-universe counterpart. He is not an allegory because his characteristics are not analogous to our Elvis; instead, they are identical (except for their level of reality), up to the point where our Elvis and the fictional Elvis diverged, ie, being take by aliens. Thus this specific fictional Elvis is a fictional parallel-universe DIVERGENT counterpart.

Following so far?

Let's approach the Narnia books as any other work of fantasy / science fiction.

Throughout the Narnia books, but most concretely in Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis sets up a fictional Earth. This Earth is in a specific fictional universe, which is part of a multiverse that also includes Narnia, Charn, and possibly infinite other worlds.

(Note that Narnia and Earth are not merely different planets in the same universe. The "planet" of Narnia is the center of its universe, a flat disc, surrounded by the Emperor's Country, and the stars overhead are quasi-angelic beings.)

That (fictional) multiverse was created by a (fictional) monotheistic God, a self-existing being of infinite wisdom, innovation, and leadership. That God is a fictional counterpart to the One of this universe (whether real or not), as described by Lewis' faith, Trinitarian Christianity.

In that multiverse's Earth, the Logos (the Living Word of God) was incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth, died on the cross for all mankind's sins, and rose from the dead as proof of the end of the curse of death for all the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve that choose to accept it.

About 1910 years after that event, in that universe, Lucy entered the wardrobe, and was transported to Narnia.

Narnia was a younger world, and one in which (according to The Magician's Nephew) there was no Fall. Evil entered the world by the hand of a son of Adam, but not willingly. Instead of being applied to everyone, only traitors were subject to judgement.

Becuase of this, the Logos (in the form of Aslan) did not have to incarnate from a specific line of ancestry as He did in that Earth's history. Instead, He could remain in a perfected body. However, for the sake of Edmund, and also for all Narnian traitors who sought forgiveness, He allowed Himself to be slaughtered in that universe as well.

Thus, Aslan is Jesus is The Logos, eternally the Son of the Father, "very God of very God"... in that multiverse. They are the same being, able to move between universes at will, and take different shapes in each. (See the end of Voyage of the Dawn Treader.)

We can further postulate that some great Fall occured to Charn before its death, or such things as the Word of Power would not exist. We can therefore assume the God of that multiverse had a plan of salvation for those Charnians willing to accept it, and that Jadis (Empress of Charn and White Witch of Narnia) was an unbeliever who brought the Apocalypse by uttering the forbidden word that ended her world.

And now that I have set the stage, here is the breakdown.

The C.S. Lewis multiverse includes a fictional parallel of our universe, just as the Marvel and DC multiverses each include at least one Earth that is recognizable parallel to our own. Aslan and Jesus are co-manifestations of the same being (the Logos) in that multiverse; there, Aslan IS Jesus IS Aslan.

Thus, Aslan is a fictional parallel-universe co-manifestation of the Logos; Christ Himself, not a Christ figure.