Better than Eden?

In describing the future state of heaven, the prophet Isaiah teaches in Isaiah 25:8 that "he [God] will swallow up death forever." This prophecy suggests a situation superior to that of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In their original state, the possibility of sin existed. God provided a forbidden tree. However, the book of Revelation only mentions a tree of life (Rev. 2:7; 22:2, 14, 19). Since death will be swallowed up forever, there will no longer be a path to destruction.

Why did God choose to offer an option to sin in the original Creation, and why does He not do the same in heaven? I think the difference is grounded in love. God loves man, and He wants man to love him. The Bible teaches that we love God by our obedience: "If you love me, you will obey what I command." (John 14:15) In the original creation, God needed to give man a choice that that man could love God. Without a choice, man could not love God because obedience would not be possible. Sadly, man chose himself over God. However, this was part of God's bigger plan to love man in spite of man's rejection of God. Although man rejected God, God responded by giving up His Son. This is the ultimate act of love: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13)

In the new heavens and earth, the only people that will live with Christ for eternity will be those who have made the choice, by God's grace, to obey Him. Having already chosen to love God, they do not need to be offered yet another choice. Rather, their love will be complete. Death will be swallowed up forever. There will be no more tears.

The Sacrifice of Service

The following is an article from our family's annual Christmas newsletter. If you would like to read more articles like this and are not a current subscriber, post a comment or send an email with your request, and we'll send you one!

The Hickman family has been making a real effort to give time in service to others. Sometimes, they end up giving more than they planned. This past summer, Sarah, Dan, Luke, and Leah all worked in their church’s 3-year-old Sunday school class. One Sunday, three of them failed in body fluid management. During story time, one of the children sat on Dan’s lap for assistance and guidance in paying attention and sitting still. This student still wore Pull-Ups as a precaution, although Dan quickly realized that this safety net was being used as more than a precaution. This child had pushed his superabsorbent polymer to beyond its saturation point. The result? A soggy patch on Dan’s pants, just above his right knee. Later, Sarah was comforting a weeping little girl, holding her as she cried on her shoulder. Later, in the church service, Dan noticed that the tears on Sarah’s solid navy blouse had dried, depositing a dried film of snot. That same morning, Luke was proud to show off his medal of honor: smears of blood on his khaki shorts. Undaunted by their mutual contamination, Sarah continued in her role into the fall. She was the storytelling teacher, occasionally misunderstood by the wide-eyed toddlers. For example, a teacher in the second hour recently informed Sarah that, following Sarah’s lesson on John the Baptist, complete with visual aids that included desert flora, the children continued during the playtime to recount the adventures of the prophet in the wilderness known as “John the Cactus.” Note to be outdone, but absent from the body fluid super-Sunday because she was on a summer youth trip, Leah took her turn later that week. As a helper at the American Red Cross Safety Town for pre-kindergartners, Leah missed the announcement of the recent unplanned release and subsequent clean-up. Apparently, a child had sprung a wee-wee leak, which was cleaned and followed with a puddle of sanitizing fluid. Later, Leah entered the area and sat squarely in the puddle of sanitizer.

Vitamin D for Back Pain

For about 9 months in 2009, from April to the end of the year, I suffered from a continuous, nagging lower back pain. It was as if I awoke one day with a new condition, a chronic problem that would continue for the rest of my life. I could no longer sit for more than a few minutes on our soft, cushy couches in our family room. The task chairs at our computer desk were suddenly awful.

I immediately ramped up my physical exercise routine, adding an entire stretching regimen. Surprisingly, that made little difference. Suddenly, I was unable to do certain activities without significant consequences. Raking or shoveling would set me back several days with a very stiff lower back. Running, even jogging, a short distance led to significant pain and limitation of mobility and flexibility. I was exasperated. Months of effort to resolve my problem had passed, with no solution. Was I destined to suffer this way for the rest of my life?

When December arrived, I noticed that we still had a supply of multivitamins that was not being used. With the winter before me, I decided to strengthen my immune system by taking a multivitamin daily. Within a few days to a couple weeks, my back pain magically disappeared. Then, I stumbled upon an article that claimed that declared vitamin D to be the "new supervitamin."

Apparently, more than one study has shown a correlation between low vitamin D levels and back pain. A simple Internet search makes this case. My experience agrees.

Our "Faith" Story

This post will be a lot longer than usual. Today, Sarah and I gave a five-minute "testimony" in church about the priorities in our home over the past 17 years. The text of that speech is below in its entirety.

Recently, during a dinner table conversation, we were reflecting on our transition from the innocence of youth to a more complete awareness of the responsibilities of adulthood. For us, this happened around the age of thirty, coincidentally with the arrival of our second child. In many ways, this eye-opening transition was a realization of our personal call to make our entire lives an act of worship of our Creator. Today, we would like to share our passion for a lifestyle of worship in our home.

We have attended this church since 1994. We have two high schoolers, Luke and Leah. Our story is one of God’s faithfulness and our human, imperfect efforts to be obedient to His Word.

You may recognize me as the guy who sometimes plays the piano or keyboard on Sunday mornings. You may be thinking, “We can’t ‘do’ worship in the home – I don’t have the musical skills.” Before you tune out (pun intended), we want to be clear: worship is not just singing songs of praise. While we certainly can and should worship God using His wonderful gift of music, this is only one element among many facets of a lifestyle of worship.

Jesus commands us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30) He labeled this as the most important commandment. How do we do this? In our experience, parenthood confronted us with the practical challenge of creating an environment where worship of God is more than an ideal, where we truly love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

A key component of our worship at home during the preschool years was turning off the TV and memorizing scripture instead. You might be thinking, “Wait a minute! I thought you were talking about passionate worship in the home, not teaching and training children. Instead, you speak of turning off the TV and memorizing scripture.” Remember the most important commandment? Jesus was quoting the writings of Moses, inspired by God. In Deuteronomy, where God commands us to love Him with all our heart, soul, and strength, the very next verse commands us to keep His commandments in our hearts. We are to impress them on our children, to talk about them when we sit at home and when we walk along the road, when we lie down and when we get up. We are to write them on the door frames of our houses and on our gates. So, our worship is expressed in our keeping and memorizing of His commandments.

One thing we learned is that you cannot start too soon. When Luke was four and Leah was two, we thought we were drilling him on a particular verse when she chimed in with her cute two-year-old voice. We soon discovered that, if we fill a child’s mind with scripture early, he will be better equipped to filter the trash that this world will try to dump into his mind. Then, as he matures, he will be able worship God with all of his thoughts.

In our home, worship included a lot of planned family time focused on teaching our kids some scriptural principle. Over the years, the how and what have varied as our kids have grown, but the purpose has been the same: fulfilling our commission as parents to talk about these things when we sit at home, when we lie down, and when we rise up. We pray together, we read the Bible together, we read good books aloud together, and we sing together. Two very important decisions we made along the way included observing the Sabbath in our home and teaching the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

Dads, my commitment to this was important. I remember realizing as a young father that I needed to figure out how to switch gears from my current R&D project to my family worship leader responsibility during my 10-minute drive home. But, how and when was I going to choose the right devotional, plan the scripture memory program, or decide on the next family worship activity? In our case, this is where the power of teamwork between husband and wife plays a big role.

Moms, I worked hard to become my husband’s helper. I was careful not to usurp his role. I didn’t do his job, but I made it easy for him to succeed. I left that devotional book on his chair at the dinner table. I took care of the laminating for those shower verses. I worked with the kids to memorize and review their scripture verses and their catechism answers.

If you feel challenged but ill equipped, rest assured that we did not start this process with a host of programs and activities in place. Rather than being overwhelmed with the concept of making our home a place of worship 24/7, we took one step at a time. Every 6 to 12 months, we would merely add one new worshipful practice to our family’s schedule. In some cases, we would eliminate one activity or commitment to make room for another one. Once we established a pattern of obedience in that one small thing, we would take the next step.

We are thankful that God has chosen to reveal His will to us through His Word and through godly counsel in the form of mentors and good books. Looking back, our lives are pointed in a very different direction than where we started. Yet, there was no single event, no single decision, that led to a drastic change. Rather, God worked in our lives through the successive accumulation of small but important choices and decisions. Soon, our kids will be on their own. It is our prayer that God will continue to build on the foundation of His Word in their families so that their children will teach their children to live a life of worship to our God.

In closing, we want to encourage you to be purposeful in choosing an attitude and lifestyle of worship in your home, regardless of your family situation and personal giftedness. We can safely say that it is never too late to start choosing to worship God every day.

Theological Existentialism

I’ve been reading some of Francis Schaeffer’s writings lately, as well as a few chapters in Sire’s The Universe Next Door. These authors have helped me better understand the views of a variety of people in our culture. As I understand it, the theological existentialist builds an impenetrable barrier between the rational world, which includes science and history, and faith. The secular existentialists like Sartre, Camus, Jaspers, and Heidegger recognized that a system based solely on a naturalist worldview (i.e., the supernatural does not exist) leads to pessimism and ultimately nihilism. Unwilling to live with the depression and hopelessness of this worldview, each of these men sought optimism and hope in something removed from the rational world of logic and reason. However, because we are rational beings, none of their irrational sources of hope has proven to be effective for the masses.

Unfortunately, rather than discard the existential system, many theologians (like Karl Barth) tacked on faith as the source of optimism and hope for modern man. Consistent with the existential approach, these theologians rejected the traditional view that the Christian faith is a rational, reasonable faith. Instead, they chose to keep faith in a separate box, sheltered from the world of logic and reason. Thus, one could believe in the "Christian" God while claiming that the Holy Bible is filled with scientific and historical errors. The result is an irrational faith, one that is not based on revealed truth. In fact, such a faith denies truth as something that can be known. Rather, faith is defined at the personal level and is not founded on a set of propositions and historical events and figures. As I understand theological existentialism, Jesus Christ may have been a real person, but he was not really supernaturally raised from the dead. Miracles never happened. Rather, faith is some ill-defined hope in a God who cannot really be known other than through subjective, personal experience. I see no way to harmonize this view of God with the words of Jesus in John 14:6 (NIV): “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Exercise - Ugh!

At the age of 30, I was proud to boldly state my lack of interest in exercise if it didn't involve chasing a ball. In other words, I abhorred exercise for the sake of exercise, but I was always interested in a good game of hoops, golf, touch football, and many other ball-games. Fast forward to today, and my former office and music studio has been transformed into a 10x11 room with four carefully arranged exercise machines and a television with VHS and DVD player mounted on the wall. To what do I owe this change of priorities? The combination of knee surgery a few years ago, a history of finger injuries, the sudden onset of hypertension, and the cumulative effects of aging. The injuries discourage me from playing my favorite game, and the latter two items are often best battled by regular exercise. I know firsthand why professional athletes retire in their mid-30s.

I still do not enjoy the daily routine of exercise, but I recognize it is a part of my responsibility to be a good steward of all of my God-given resources, including my weakening and decaying body. So, I guess I should get to bed since I need to rise at 6 A.M. in order to squeeze a workout into my morning schedule!

Hickman One

This week, I read B. F. Skinner's Walden Two, his fictional description of a utopian community based on the power and principles of experimental behavioral psychology. The author clearly holds in high esteem the power of the scientific method as applied to the study of human behavior. He sees humans as purely physical beings, complex machines that can be controlled to generate the desired behavior given the proper stimuli. His hypothesis is that a community based on these principles would lead to an overall higher overall sense of happiness and security among the total population. One example of the practical implications of his idea is the method of child-rearing that he advocates. Children would be raised by specialized community workers in age-segregated nurseries or living areas, with only occasional contact with their biological parents.

Admittedly, we have been engaged in our own little social experiment based on very different assumptions. Our presupposition has been that our family environment based on Christian principles is the best place for rearing our children, to the point that we abandoned the government school system in favor of directly providing our children's academic education at home, in addition to spiritual, physical, and social training. Skinner had his Walden Two; we have our Hickman One. The difference is that he apparently never had the opportunity to test his presuppositions fully, either because he wasn't really serious or because he didn't have a thousand friends willing to join his multi-generation experiment, although others apparently have tried. In our case, the experiment is being conducted even as I write. We're well into the second half of our experiment. While our sample size is too small to generalize for the entire population, we certainly have no major regrets and would advocate that others conduct the same experiment based on the same presuppositions and guiding principles.

Seasons

Today marks the end of the Hickman family summer break. The term "break" is a bit of a misnomer, especially for this coach of a first-time triathlete. (If I thought I had much to do with it, I might brag about my successful stint as a first-time triathlon coach and training partner.) Seasons are an interesting idea. They provide life with regular, somewhat predictable change. I agree with C.S. Lewis that we were created with a need for a break from monotony yet a need for regularity and predictability [Screwtape Letters]:

"He [God] has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them seasons, each season different yet every year the same, so that spring is always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme."

Tomorrow, the coming academic season starts at the Hickman household. This will be our eleventh season for the Hickman Institute. This will also be the last for our eldest child. That means that one aspect of regularity and predictability will never again be like the coming year. Change is a-comin'! This will be the last year I am frantically reading and listening to keep up with Luke's studies in humanities, history, economics, and literature. Looking ahead, here's my required reading list:

• Darwin on Trial
• The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict
• The Old Man and the Sea
• The Plague
• Walden Two
• That Hideous Strength
• Pollution and the Death of Man
• The Second American Revolution
• Sophie's World
• The New Tolerance
• True Spirituality
• Of Pandas and People
• Economics in One Lesson
  

If I can keep up, this list should provide good material for this weekly forum for sharing my thoughts.

A Calamitous Communion

Communion, the Holy Eucharist, the Lord's Supper: all of these are names for one of the two holy sacraments in the reformed church. This practice, modeled by Jesus at the Last Supper and described by the Apostle Paul in his epistles, is a solemn occasion where Christians remember Christ's death on the cross. Christ, the God-man, willingly suffered cruel and unjust torment to atone for the sins of all who repent and believe. This action on the part of our Savior is the core event of history. God's chosen people before Christ looked forward to the Messiah's deliverance, and God's chosen people after Christ look back to his work on the cross. Thus, observing the sacrament that some call communion is a serious endeavor worthy of an attitude of reverence and humility.

Switching gears to my morning at church, we celebrated communion during the morning worship service today. To minimize the time and effort in distributing the elements (juice and wafer, in our case), our local church recently switched to a prepackaged combination of juice and wafer. The juice is in a plastic cup, sealed by a layer of plastic across the top. Above that layer of plastic is a thin wafer, above which lies another layer of practice. After removing and eating the wafer this morning, I encountered a challenge I had not previously encountered with these conveniently packaged elements: I was unable to remove the layer of plastic that sealed the juice! Suddenly, my solemn, reflective experience morphed into a battle with out-of-spec adhesive. Eventually, I separated the plastic into two layers, with the lower thin layer still sealing the grape juice in the container. Unfortunately, I was not aware that I had failed to break the seal. To make a long story short, as I squeezed the plastic cup with expectations of transferring every last drop into my mouth, I instead produced a high pressure stream of the juice focused directly on my lovely wife's favorite white and pink polka dot sweater.

My questions: Why did God mandate this distraction? Why did He choose to direct that stream at her sweater rather than my clothes? Was this God's sense of humor or a test for us?

Our Family Trip to Colorado (Part 2)

We returned from Colorado last Monday, but the daily demands of life after a 12-day vacation prevented me from giving an update regarding our trip until now. On Wednesday (July 28), we left Estes Park and drove to Cripple Creek, which is now primarily a gambling town. I was personally pleased to see at least one or two casinos out of business. We had planned two activities for that afternoon and evening in Cripple Creek. First, we toured the Mollie Kathleen gold mine; at least the chemical engineer found that interesting. Then, after dinner in the car (prepared by Sarah), we went to the Butte Theater for a production of Gunslinger: The Legend of Billy the Kid. This was a small theater, with about 50 in the audience. The musical was written in the early 1900s. The cast did a good job, and we enjoyed the experience of an Old West melodrama. The show was followed by a "summer olio," which was hilarious, the highlight of the day. We would definitely recommend seeing this show.

On Thursday, we drove to the top of Pike's Peak. We encountered sleet (3 mm white balls of ice) just short of the peak, which resulted in an hour delay when they temporarily closed the road. That afternoon, we intended to visit the Garden of the Gods, but rain resulted in the postponement of that outing.

On Friday, we visited Focus on the Family's soda shoppe and bookstore. (Unfortunately, KYDS Radio was closed.) We then tried again to visit Garden of the Gods, with partial success. A torrential downpour terminated that visit prematurely. In the evening, we enjoyed a Chuckwagon Dinner at the Flying W Ranch.

Our last day before heading home was Saturday. We visited the Olympic Training Center, taking a brief but interesting tour and visiting the gift shop. We also visited the "living history" site at Rock Ledge Ranch.

On Sunday, we visited a good friend in Louisville, dropped off a distance runner at CSU in Fort Collins for the Jim Ryun Running Camp, and headed east.

Our Family Trip to Colorado (Part 1)

Yesterday marked the midpoint of our family trip to the Rockies in Colorado. We were in Estes Park for 5 nights. Thus far, this trip has been a wonderful opportunity to experience different topography than we Michiganders typically enjoy. We arrived Friday night, picking up Luke from this week at a Freedom Academy I, sponsored by the Foundation Economic Education. Saturday through Monday, we spent our sightseeing hours in the Rocky Mountain National Park. Before lunch on Saturday, we enjoyed a pleasant walk around Sprague Lake.

After lunch, we drove through the park on Trail Ridge Road, learning about the three different ecosystems in the park: montane, subalpine, and alpine tundra. Entering from near Estes Park, we turned around after reaching the Alpine Visitor Center.

On Sunday, we hiked to Emerald Lake via Dream Lake and Nymph Lake. What a beautiful hike!

On Monday, we drove to a different park entrance and hiked from the Wild Basin Trailhead to Ouzel Falls. At the Ouzel Falls, the kids and I extended the hike by climbing to the top of the falls. We would highly recommend each of these outings for others. The drive and the two hikes were each a 4-hour outing, including lots of stops for snacks, drinks, and photographs.

On Tuesday, we went on a whitewater rafting trip. The bus ride was long, about 80 minutes each way, but the rafting was fun. Luke came the closest to flying out of the boat, but the other three family members immediately grabbed him when he was first launched outward from his position on the front right of the raft. Leah was sore on Wednesday morning; she paddled hard.

Heart, Soul, Mind, and Strength

Encouraged by my son to start a blog while he does the same, I decided to take his challenge. In his 17 years and his sister's 15 years of boot camp at the Hickman Institute (that's the serious name for our home), we (that's my wife and I) have challenged them to pay attention to four different aspects of their personal growth: spiritual, physical, social, and intellectual. This pattern was first suggested to me explicitly by my college Fraternity. While not a perfect parallel, these four areas are quite similar to those suggested twenty centuries earlier by the greatest teacher who ever lived. When asked to identify the most important commandment, he replied, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." (Mark 12:29b-30) The heart (καρδία) can be translated as the "inner self," which sounds like one's spiritual being. The soul (ψυχή) refers to that "breath of life" within humans and animals that sets them apart from the rest of creation. While not a direct reference to the social nature of our being, I find that connection useful. The mind (διάνοια) refers to our way of thinking, our faculty of understanding, which is clearly aligned with intellectual pursuits. Finally, the word strength (ἰσχύς) means power and might, implying a physical force.

As we have raised our kids (or, better, discipled our kids), we have used these four categories to strive for balance and completeness in their personal development. As I record my thoughts in this forum in the future, I will likewise strive to address aspects of life in these four categories.