The Only Way to Remove Darkness from Your Life

Anton Darius

Did you know I write a monthly article for my email subscribers?

This month we talked about the principle, first credited to Aristotle, that nature abhors a vacuum. But rather than looking at the axiom through the lens of physics, we turn it sideways and use it to view our spiritual lives.

Here's how it starts:

The older I get, the more I recognize the universality of the axiom, nature abhors a vacuum. 

Want to know where to find my children? Go to whichever room is the tidiest. Once they've wrecked it, they move on to the next. They never play in their bedrooms unless the area is clean. Once it is sufficiently cluttered, they'll search for a neater space. 

But this isn't just true of children and play areas: 

-The newly retired quickly find their calendars fuller than when they had a job.
-In weather systems, high pressure always flows to low pressure.
-Adding more lanes to the freeway should alleviate traffic, right? Well, maybe not. Research shows that increasing throughput might actually promote congestion. 

It seems in many areas of life vacuums--which we'll loosely define as empty spaces or the lack of something--are unnatural and unstable. They don't last. 

We give the Greek philosopher Aristotle credit for first coming up with this principle even though he never stated the axiom as nature abhors a vacuum. The current phrasing seems to have originated with the French writer François Rabelais in the sixteenth century. 

Where am I going with this? 

While we're not as concerned with physics in this space, nevertheless I think the principle applies to our spiritual lives too.

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See you next month!

Are You Afraid of the Holy Ghost?

When I hear of modern day “prophets” or faith healers, I cringe. When I read about the spiritual gift of healing or speaking in tongues, I scoff.

I tend to reject these things outright.

Toa Heftiba

And yet, the Bible—a collection of books I hold to be authentic, reliable, and authoritative—speaks of prophecy, spiritual gifts, tongues. God granted the disciples power to heal others.

Am I a hypocrite?

How Jesus Frustrates the Scientist in Us All

How would you weigh your own head?

That’s one of the many bizarre questions interviewers at Google have asked potential job candidates over the years. Drawing a blank? That’s what the questioner wants: to see how you respond when the answer isn't obvious.

Seattle Municipal Archives (CC)

But while weighing your own head might sound difficult, it is doable. (In fact William Poundstone wrote a book answering alleged Google interview questions in his work, Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google?). Your head, after all, is composed of matter and therefore has mass. But what if you were trying to measure something less, well, measurable?

In 1 Chronicles, King David decided to do just that.

2 Things You Should Ask for This Christmas

Did you ever really really want something, only to be left wanting when you actually got it?

One Christmas my brother and I begged my mom to get us a Nintendo Gamecube. She kept telling us no, but we kept persisting. Finally she said she would buy it, but she wouldn’t have any Christmas money leftover to buy us any games. We agreed, counting on Christmas money from grandparents. 

Kate Ter Haar (CC)

Christmas morning we unwrapped the cube in ecstatic joy. We hooked it up to a television in my brother’s room and set the system clock and fiddled with other settings. We had managed to scrape together enough money to purchase a game for the system, but it would have to wait until stores opened the next day. So we sat on the bed, marveling at every detail of the console.

On December 26, Mom carted us to Walmart where we victoriously slapped down the $60 plus 8.25% sales tax for Luigi’s Mansion, one of the Gamecube’s launch titles. Mom wouldn’t drive home fast enough. We burst the doors open, furiously tearing through the cellophane packaging of the video game. We carefully clicked the mini disc in its spindle, fired up the system, and off we went. Our video game dreams had come true.

Sixty dollars was quite a bit of money for us jobless kids. But we thought it was well worth it to buy the game. The graphics, sound, and controllers were unlike those of any Nintendo system we’d seen before. We played the game all day, morning until night, making major headway in our efforts to rescue Mario from the ghosts. The next morning though, something awful happened.

How to Prove to the World That God Is Good

Have you ever been to Sam’s Club or Costco on a Saturday?

If you have, you already know where I’m going with this. If not, you gotta go.

threelayercake (CC)

If you can brave the herd of people meandering the oversized aisles buying their oversized goods, it’s worth the trip.

Why?

The Best Bible I Ever Read

Sitting in that dark sanctuary four years ago, I felt a fire rising in my belly. On any other Sunday, I might have attributed it to bad pizza. But not that day.

Did Jesus Contradict Himself?

You may have heard your preacher quote Matthew 11:30 in which Jesus said, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” The verse brings comfort to us who are weighed down by the realities of life. Anyone who has trusted in Jesus has no doubt felt a huge burden lifted from his or her life.

James Lee (CC)

But if you were to go back to the previous chapter in Matthew's gospel, you would find a statement that seems at odds with light burdens and easy yokes:

Whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Matthew 10:38 (ESV)

Last you checked, a cross isn’t very light. How can we reconcile these two statements? Did Jesus contradict Himself?

This Is the Reason You Have Nothing to Show for All of Your Hard Work

You work hard, right?

Of course you do. You work forty, fifty, maybe sixty hours per week. Then you come home and do housework. You wrestle the kids. You do homework. You bathe and feed them. But when you actually have a moment to step back and just breathe it’s easy to get frustrated.

Vinoth Chandar (CC)

You feel like you're swimming against the current, and no matter how hard you try you can’t gain any ground.

Sound familiar?

There’s a good reason for this feeling. Something that, even if understood intellectually, is hard to follow in practice thanks to our fickle, demanding, needy flesh.

How to Be a Part of Something That Matters

Quick question: What does the Tower of Babel have to do with Pentecost?

The Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel

You know the Babel story well. We humans got together to try to build a tower that would reach heaven. So God mixed up our languages making it difficult to work together. In the process, He says something interesting:

The 9-Step Guide to Finding the Church God Wants You to Attend

It's hard to find the right church.

Looking for one can feel like attending a timeshare seminar, a blind date, or a multi-level marketing "party."

Jim Sorbie (CC)

But perseverance pays off. Katie and I went through the process a year ago, and we learned some valuable lessons along the way. Here are nine steps to finding the church God wants you to attend:

A Good Spirit

Recently, a man who needed some computer assistance introduced himself to me. Shortly after shaking hands and looking me in the eye, he said:

You have a good spirit. I can tell you have a good spirit.

I was completely flattered and, of course, thought he was right. It made may entire day. A week or so later I was contemplating the event and I came to a realization. I was told what I should have said. The spirit this man was detecting, was not my own, but rather that of the Holy Spirit. I wished I could go back in time and tell him instead of a mere thank you, say to him, That is not my spirit you see. That is the Holy Spirit. Not only do I believe this absolutely to be true, but what a testimony! Who knows where the conversation would have led at that point. This was a man of eastern philosophy who teaches Tai Chi and martial arts. I am not sure what country he comes from, but he is not from the USA. Saying that to him would have made an impact because he prides himself on being in touch with the metaphysical, and if he doubted my statement that the spirit he was detecting was the Holy Spirit, then he would have to question his own abilities. Therefore he would have had to believe what I said. His only other recourse would be to think that I am absolutely nuts and misguided. But, were i misguided, would he still have detected that spirit within me?

I still remain flattered by his words but for a different reason: that the Spirit is alive in me and someone else was able to detect it. Only someone close to God would exhibit this characteristic. I was ashamed that I did not give credit to God at our initial meeting, but it is a valuable lesson that I will carry into the future so that hopefully I will not forget to give God the credit.


Currently Listening to:

Say Goodbye
Dave Matthews Band
Crash