Tag: God

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How Do You Use Your Time?

John Clayton asks, "How Do You Use Your Time?"God has given you 168 hours of time every week that you live. The question that each one of us must answer is, “What to do with that 168 hours?” How do you use your time?

If you consider the average essentials, they might look like this:
Eight hours a day for sleeping is 56 hours a week.
Work might be 40 hours per week.
If you take an hour to eat each meal, that would add up to 21 hours a week.
Personal hygiene, including exercise, might be 20 hours a week.

That adds up to 137 hours a week, giving us 31 hours or more than 4 hours a day left. How do you use your time that is left? The chances are that the numbers quoted here not accurate with what you do. I never get eight hours of sleep in a day, but I work far more than 40 hours a week. Realize that these numbers are just a starting point for what we do with the time we have been given.

Suppose we took the Old Testament tithe of 10%. A tithe of 168 is 16.8 hours. Let’s round that down to 16 hours a week to give back to God. Assume you go to worship and Bible class every time the door is open at the Church meeting place. That would be four hours a week spent in worship and Bible study with other Christians. We still have 12 hours to give back to God every week. Let me point out that these numbers allow 14.2 hours a week for you to watch TV, go fishing, go to a movie, etc.

Sixty years ago, I decided that I was going to give God 12 hours a week, not counting “going to Church,” to equal 10% of what He had given me. I found it very hard to do. The way I did it included:
Visiting people in the hospital.
Writing and sending cards.
Setting up and conducting Bible studies in my home or in other people’s homes.
Getting involved in a prison ministry.
Working with disturbed teens.
Taking youth groups to rallies and workshops.
Shoveling widow’s sidewalks.
Preparing the Church bulletin.
I did those and other things and kept a record to get to 12 hours a week.

Do you know what happened? I found contentment and peace and strength that I had never known as an atheist. Life was full of joy and surprises. The hard knocks in my personal and professional life became less destructive to me personally. When the Bible said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” it wasn’t just talking about money. Imagine what would happen if every Christian gave back to God 16.8 hours of the time God has given them! How do you use your time?
— John N. Clayton © 2019

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Time Crystals

Time Crystals Compared to a Quartz CrystalOne of the most difficult things for anyone to understand is that time and space are created things. Many biblical passages present the concept that time had a start and will have an end. (See Genesis 1:1, Proverbs 8:22, Hebrews 1:10, 2 Peter 3:10-13, etc.) That concept of time is difficult to understand because it is outside of our experience. Scientific American (November 2019, page 28 ff) published a report on a new state of matter called time crystals.

We are all familiar with crystals that show symmetry in their shape. When we look at a quartz crystal with extreme magnification, we see that layers repeat over and over, giving the crystal its shape. Scientists theorize that a similar process operates in time. Time crystals show symmetry, but they do it in time rather than in space. This means that the repeating pattern is seen in time and is not visible to the naked eye directly but rather governs the way materials behave on a quantum level.

All of this is highly complex, and the Scientific American article “The Exquisite Precision of Time Crystals” is very technical. The bottom line is that it has a lot to do with how matter behaves. Time crystals have the potential to expand our understanding of cosmology and black holes. God has used some sophisticated methods to create a universe in which there is stability. Just as ordinary crystals are the building blocks of rocks and minerals, time crystals are the building blocks of charge, mass, and time. Science is just beginning to understand them.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

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Genes and Addiction

Genes and Addiction Ozzy OsbourneSince the first sequencing of the human genome in 2003, there have been exhaustive studies of links between the human gene structure and addiction. Discover Magazine published a report on genes and addiction (November 2019 issue) with a summary of the current findings.

The magazine focuses on Ozzy Osbourne, the singer/songwriter and reality TV star who is sometimes called “The Godfather of Heavy Metal.” He is famous for going on binges of alcohol, Vicodin, cocaine, and other drugs that would kill most humans. He has survived to be 70 years old. The question is why Osbourne was able to survive all of this abuse for such a long time. One major factor seems to be a mutation in the ADH4 gene. The ADH4 makes a protein called alcohol dehydrogenase 4, which breaks down alcohol. The researchers have concluded that Osbourne is six times more likely to have an alcohol dependency than the average person because alcohol has a minimal effect on him.

The question arises of what are the links between genes and addiction to alcohol and other substances. The Food and Drug Administration says that one in every 12 adults in the United States suffers from alcohol abuse or dependence. Americans spend $200 million a day on alcohol, and 100,000 people die each year from accidents linked to alcohol. People of East Asian descent have an increase in heart rate when consuming alcohol. That effect is called “Asian Flush” or “alcohol flush reaction.” Researches have also found genetic links to anandamide, which is a brain chemical that affects mood and anxiety. Marijuana doesn’t affect people with mutations that alter the amount of anandamide in the brain.

This newfound information tells us a lot about how mutations have shaped how we behave in our consumption of different chemicals. Obviously, if a person doesn’t consume the chemical, the mutations are not an issue. For some people, this information enables them to justify blaming God for their addiction. There are drugs like disulfiram, which cause people to have an unpleasant reaction to the consumption of alcohol. However, using a drug to counteract a destructive drug is a poor solution to the overall problem.

The mutations that have caused all of this are man-made. The mutations are linked to a variety of human enterprises, including the distillation of alcohol. In the distant past, addition was not much of an issue, because the chemical effect of undistilled alcohol is minimal. Alcohol is a drug, and it needs to be identified as such. God has not caused the mutations, and humans are responsible for virtually all of the drugs that are causing so much pain and destruction.

So there is a connection between genes and addiction, and science is looking for ways to change the human genome to exclude the mutations. The biblical solution is to form a relationship with God that leads us away from the destructive forces around us. At the same time, we need to reach out to those who are struggling with their addictions and help them find a way out of their lifestyle of abuse. Walking in the light (1 John 1) involves a conscious change that leads to a new life (Romans 6). God did not lead us to destructive lifestyles, but He will help us build a newness in our lives if we are willing to turn things over to Him.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

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Ancient Torah Scroll in Library of Congress

Ancient Torah Scroll in Library of Congress
Library of Congress

Skeptics often challenge the accuracy of the Bible manuscripts. The idea is that copies have been made of copies, causing errors to creep in as each copier makes mistakes and repeats the errors of previous copyists. Also, words change their meaning. An obvious modern example is the word “gay,” which does not have the same meaning now that it had 50 years ago. It is true that the original documents written in the first century do not exist. However, the Dead Sea Scrolls contain Old Testament documents from before the time of Christ. In January of 2018, the Library of Congress announced that it had obtained the oldest complete ancient Torah scroll sheet totally legible to the naked eye.

So how do we determine the accuracy of Bible manuscripts? We use copies of the biblical manuscripts that are very old and compare them to the documents that were used to produce a particular translation of the Bible. Gary Rendsburg writing in Biblical Archaeology Review (November/December 2019, page 51), said this about the Torah scroll in the Library of Congress: “The document is nothing short of outstanding! Compared to the other old Torah scroll sheets and fragments surveyed, this sheet, composed of five columns of text, is perfectly legible. Every single letter can be read easily.”

So how does this ancient copy of the Torah line up with the five books of Moses found in your Bible? The answer is “very well.” There is nothing in this oldest Torah manuscript that changes anything stated in the Bible you have. The copyists were very careful not to make mistakes. While some paraphrase Bibles might inject modern human bias or error, that is generally not true of the academic translations of the Bible. This ancient Torah scroll validates the Pentateuch, but similar techniques confirm other passages in the Old and New Testaments. We can trust what we read in modern translations of the Bible.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

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Deserts, Oceans, and Life

Deserts, Oceans, and LifeHave you ever been in a desert for an extended time? Have you ever taken the sand of a desert and looked at it under a microscope? Have you visited the Great Salt Lake or the Dead Sea? Do you feel that deserts are a wasteland? Science has come to understand something about deserts, oceans, and life that shows wisdom and planning that is beyond our wildest dreams.

We now know that deserts, in general, are dried up lakes. The vast Death Valley desert in the United States (pictured) was a lake at one time. So was the Atacama Desert in Chile, which is now called “the driest place on Earth.” The African Sahara was once the largest lake on Earth called the Mega Chad. Fossil hunting in these deserts reveals the remains of fish and plankton called diatomite. Diatomite is the skeletal remains of microscopic forms of life called diatoms. The skeletons are composed of silicon dioxide, which is a very durable substance and is highly porous and lightweight. These factors make it ideal for the wind to carry. Diatomite also contains phosphorous, which is essential for life to exist. Every living cell needs water and phosphorous, which is the second most abundant mineral in our bodies.

To have rain on the Earth requires water vapor, cool temperatures, and condensation nuclei on which the water can condense. When bodies of water become deserts, the dust contains phosphorus. Wind currents of our planet take the dust from deserts which once were lakes and carry it vast distances. Dust particles become the nuclei for condensation of raindrops that carry water and nutrients to the ground. The deserts of the Sahara maintain life in the Amazon basin. Lightning in the storms produces nitrogen to add to the nutrients. This pattern is repeated in every life-filled system on Earth. The Great Plains of the United States are sustained by the dust and minerals of the Mojave Desert, an old inland sea.

The Bible refers to all of this in passages like Isaiah 50:2 and Job 38:37-38. It is not the purpose of these passages to reveal the complex system that produces the water and nutrients for life to exist. However, the references to the dust and the drying of the sea make it clear that the ultimate Author of the scriptures knew the processes used to supply a planet uniquely designed to harbor life. Deserts, oceans, and life speak to the design built into the Earth. They also show us that God has given us what we need for life and the scriptures to provide a reliable guide for living.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

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Tool Use Is Not What Makes Humans Unique

Tool Use Is Not What Makes Humans UniqueWhen I took my first anthropology course at Indiana University in 1958, the professors said that humans are the only animals that fashion and use tools. Later, scientists discovered that chimpanzees could smash rocks until they get one that has a sharp edge. Then they use that sharp edge as a tool to cut open fruit or dig for ants. Louis Leakey, the anthropology guru of that time, stated, “We are either going to have to change our definition of man, or invite the chimps to send a representative to the United Nations.” Tool use is not what makes humans unique.

Since that time, other animals have been observed using tools and some even manufacturing tools. Nuthatches can find a stick that they can slide under the bark of a tree to get at a bug. Crows can fashion a stick and use it to get into a milk bottle. The picture shows a macaque using a stone to smash a crab shell for food. Science now says that less than one percent of all animals use tools, but that number keeps growing. Discover Magazine for November 2019 (page 22), contained an article about skunks picking up a rock and pounding on the ice in a pond to make a hole for drinking.

The Bible does not identify humans according to tool use or any technological accomplishment. Mentally challenged humans might not make tools or use them, but they are still humans, no matter what their abilities. What defines humans is our spiritual makeup, which the Bible describes as being in the image of God. This image gives us the capacity to express ourselves in worship, in artistic expression, and in the ability to feel guilt and be sympathetic. Tool use is just one of many designed characteristics built into the DNA of many forms of life. But tool use is not what makes humans unique.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

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Nature is the Unknown God

Temple of Zeus - Today Nature is the Unknown God Atheists and skeptics attack belief in God. They say that if God were real, He would show Himself in the method of their choice. They also charge that believers in God are merely worshiping a “god-of-the-gaps.” basis – meaning that when they don’t understand something, they simply say, “God did it!” We have repeatedly pointed out that we do not use gap arguments. We look at what the choices are and what the evidence supports using scientific methods and applying mathematics to test the alternatives. That is not inventing a god to explain what we don’t understand, unlike the Egyptian sun god (Ra) or the Greek god of the sky (Zeus). The picture shows the ruins of the temple of Zeus in Athens, the city where Paul saw an altar to the “unknown god.” Today Nature is the unknown god.

Most atheists and skeptics in their writings will assert that Nature established the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. You see statements like, “it is nature’s way of doing things” to explain why things are the way they are. Nature is invisible, omnipotent, and omniscient. Why is it that atheists will say that believers in the God of the Bible are unintelligent, and those who believe in Nature are the thinkers? No one can tell us where Nature came from. Nature is the unknown god and the atheist’s “god-of-the-gaps.”

It is easy to attribute everything we know and don’t know to the great god “Nature.” Our world today is making the same mistake as Stoic and Epicurean philosophers in biblical times. Today’s philosophers do what their ancestors did when they attribute all unknown phenomena like dark matter and superstrings to Nature. They explain even what they do understand by using that same Nature god.

Paul, in Athens speaking to the educated philosophers of his day, said: “For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription ‘To the Unknown God.’ Whom therefore you ignorantly worship…” (Acts 17:23). Is Nature your god and chance his only tool? The God we discuss is a God in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28) both now and in eternity. Nature is a false god and an invention of humans with no promise for anything beyond this life.
—- John N. Clayton © 2019

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Curse of Sin – What Is It?

The Garden and the Curse of SinMany Christians don’t have a clear understanding of the curses described in Genesis 3. God told Eve in verse 16, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.” To Adam He said, “…cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground…” What exactly is the curse of sin?

We struggle with this account because of our assumptions about what life was like in the Garden of Eden and how it changed. Some have assumed that the environment changed and that humans were no longer gatherers, but that they had to develop agriculture to survive. Some have suggested that Eve underwent a physiological change so that the pelvic opening was reduced, causing increased pain in the birthing process. Some have felt that the Garden of Eden was essentially heaven, with no pain and no problems or work of any kind. That is not only a poor understanding of what heaven is about; it also raises more questions than it answers.

The Garden of Eden was a physical existence. Genesis 2:10-14 identifies a physical location with known rivers. Being physical means that the laws of physics and biology were in place. Adam and Eve were not in heaven, and they had work to do. In Genesis 2:15, God told Adam to take care of the Garden. The fact that thorns and thistles are mentioned in the curse tells us that they were in existence. The law of entropy was in existence, so things did age and die. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 4:3-4 that God created every creature “to be received with thanksgiving … for every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving.” Pitcher plants ate bugs, and bats and lions were not vegetarians.

The message of the curse of sin is not primarily physical. Thorns, thistles, and sweat are more than just a complication to those involved in agriculture. They are symbols of pain and the difficulty of life away from God. It has been said that the least amount of pain a woman has is the birth process. The struggle and pain of raising a child to adulthood can far exceed the pains of labor and birthing. Eating the forbidden fruit was not just a physical action but disobedience to God. The separation that it produced between humans and God also caused separation in human relationships. Cain killing Abel was a part of the curse of sin. The adage known as Murphy’s Law, “if something can go wrong, it will,” applies to far more than the failure of mechanical things.

Revelation 22:3 gives some pictures of our heavenly existence. Notice the simple statement, “No longer will there be any curse.” In 2 Peter 3:11-13, we read that the physical world with its thorns, thistles, pain, and sweat will be dissolved. There will be a New Heaven and a New Earth. We will be free from the curse of sin and enjoy the blessings of being back in the presence of our Creator. That existence will truly be Heaven.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

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Curtain Opening on the Cosmos

Curtain Opening on the CosmosYesterday we discussed the Hebrew word “natah” meaning to stretch out in an accelerative motion. We pointed out that it is used repeatedly in the Old Testament to describe the action of the cosmos. We emphasized that the Bible does not use that word to reveal a scientific fact, but it does show an accurate knowledge of the nature of the cosmos. It is knowledge that science has only verified in the past few years. The same verses that use “natah” also imply a curtain opening on the cosmos.

The verses we mentioned yesterday (Psalms 104:2, Isaiah 40:22, and Isaiah 45:12) describe the nature of the cosmos in a way that shows an understanding of what people often call the “big bang.” When people think about the “big bang,” they seem to have in mind some kind of explosion that created the cosmos. Science has learned that it is not the correct concept. The “big bang” was a great expansion but not an explosion. There is a uniformity of temperature across the cosmos of one part in one-hundred-thousandth of a degree. That fact indicates a smoothness in what took place at the creation event. An explosion doesn’t do that. The creation process started with a fine-tuned balance for a geometrically flat universe (not elliptical or hyperbolic). Instead of an explosion, it is more like a curtain opening on the cosmos.

Passages like Psalms 104:2 and Isaiah 40:22 describe the cosmos as being like a curtain. In Psalms 104:2, the Hebrew word used is “heyry,” which means a hanging drape. In Isaiah 40:22, the word used is “doq.” That word is used only once in the entire Bible and refers to a unique veil or curtain. The picture we get is that God stretches the cosmos pulling the fabric of space as we might open a curtain.

Science is now in agreement with the Bible that space and time began at a singularity. In that event, the material in space was moved, creating the fabric of space itself. Objects in the cosmos did not move through eternally existing space, but rather time began, and space was created as the objects moved. As space was pulled open like a curtain, the material embedded in space moved with it.

This scientific understanding is new, and it comes from the most recent observations available. This curtain opening on the cosmos is not some religious hodgepodge, but a discovery of modern science. The amazing thing is that the Bible writers stated it thousands of years ago. Science is beginning to show us a fuller understanding of the meaning of statements in God’s Word.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

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Stretching Out the Cosmos

Stretching Out the Cosmos is Like Starting a ChainsawAs a person trained in the sciences and a student of the Bible, I find it interesting how many times a Bible statement demonstrates an understanding of something only learned by modern science. Only recently has science proven that the cosmos is accelerating in its expansion. We can refer to it as stretching out the cosmos. This is no longer debatable but a fact confirmed by various experiments using different techniques and measurements.

The Bible repeatedly refers to the fact that the cosmos is “stretched.” For some examples of this, take a look at Psalms 104:2, Isaiah 40:22, and Isaiah 45:12. None of these passages are attempting to reveal any scientific fact, but all of them refer to God stretching out the cosmos.

The Hebrew word used in those passages is “natah,” meaning to stretch out. The most common use of this word in other places in the Old Testament is to indicate a person’s hand stretched out to point or show motion. In Exodus 8, for example, “natah” is used to describe Moses’ moving his hand or rod (See verses 5,6,16,17). Perhaps many of us would remember starting a lawnmower or chain saw by pulling the starting cord. The Bible tells us that accelerative is the force that moves the cosmos as a whole.

We want to emphasize that it is not the purpose of those passages to reveal any scientific information. However, they are a clear reference to the nature of the force that operates by stretching out the cosmos.

Tomorrow we will see that another word in these passages indicates the nature of the fabric of space itself.
— John N. Clayton © 2019