Can You Ever Be Good Enough for God?

   A preview of March's email-only article.

Patrick Schneider

What do you think?

Can a mortal man be right before God? Can a person be pure before his maker?

These are the questions posed not by Job, but by his friend Eliphaz in response to Job.

Every month I publish an exclusive article for my email subscribers, and this month we're asking the question: can one ever be good enough for God?

If the question sounds loaded, it is. But I think it's a critical query each of us must resolve in our own minds if we're ever to make sense of the Scriptures and of our lives.

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Here's a snippet:

Job's friend here intends to juxtapose our finite and humble existences to that of God almighty who is everlasting, pure, and perfect.

He first posed the rhetorical, "Who that was innocent ever perished?" as if insinuating Job deserved the suffering in his life.

Then he circled back and reported the words of a voice he heard, asking, "Can mortal man be in the right before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker?" (4:17).

Connecting the dots here, Eliphaz argues that the innocent will not perish, but that no one is innocent.

Fair enough.

We've all sinned, as the apostle Paul wrote in the book of Romans.

 
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Life's Not as Fair as We Think It Should Be

Yes, the innocent do perish.

Rendy Novantino

 

DATA SCIENTISTS WORRY about underfitting, a phenomenon in which a formula predicts outcomes using limited inputs.

As you can imagine, this results in output errors because the underfit model fails to account for a wide enough variety of possibilities.

Underfitting, then, is essentially an oversimplification of a causal relationship based on insufficient data points. One example, spelled out by the AI wizards at DataRobot, is the correlation between sales and advertising:

An underfitted model may suggest that you can always make better sales by spending more on marketing when in fact the model fails to capture a saturation effect (at some point, sales will flatten out no matter how much more you spend on marketing).

So while it's generally true that spending more money on advertising will yield increased sales, at some point marketers will see diminishing returns on investment. The underfit model might suggest a straight line when, in reality, the model should look something more like a logarithmic function, curving upwards until flattening out at a certain point.

In a similar way we see Eliphaz, in the fourth chapter of Job, underfitting one of his proverbs; he attempts to derive a universal truth from a generally true axiom.

Whether You Realize It or Not, Nothing Can Prepare You for Tragedy

  A preview of February's email-only article.

Mitch Gaff

Can you ever really prepare for tragedy?

Should you even try?

Every month I publish an exclusive article for my email subscribers, and this month we're wrestling with these very questions. If you'd like instant, free access, fill out the form below.

Here's a snippet:

The same counsel we give others in times of stress or grief we should abide by when such situations befall us. If we advise others to trust in God's provision, but feel slighted by God in the face of loss, doesn't that make us hypocrites?

But you see, everything Job taught and counseled those countless others to do could have been 100% correct in theory. Job was obviously wise, resourceful, and devout so I'm sure he had a lot of good advice to hand out.

But no amount of reading, studying, prayer, counsel, or anything else can prepare you for tragedy and the grief that follows. It is impossible to get in that headspace until you yourself undergo it.

 
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The Nature of True Blessings

 Enrichment is more important than riches.

Jon Tyson

 

THE TRICKY THING about discussing blessings is that the word means so many different things to different people.

Many consider the word only in financial terms.

Some pastors, because of ignorance or deliberate misinterpretation of the Scriptures, teach that mountains of cash is a birthright for the child of God. Are you a believer, but are not rich? Then you do not have enough faith.

So the thinking goes.

Setting aside the charlatans for a moment, those who honestly come by their interpretation of the promises of Proverbs—that blessings are all about the material world—could be forgiven for such a shallow interpretation.

The Polarity of Money and Its Ruinous Effects

 A preview of January's email-only article.

Adam Nir

Are wealthy people greedy scumbags? Are the poor virtuous? After all, Jesus did say, "Blessed are you who are poor" (Luke 6:20).

But if these things are true, what do we do with Bible verses that seem to indicate otherwise?

Every month I publish an exclusive article for my email subscribers, and this month we're wrestling with these very questions. If you'd like instant, free access, fill out the form below.

Here's how the article starts:

I've always said money is amoral—neither virtuous nor vulgar. 

No doubt I stole this from someone wiser than myself, and when I recall from where I'll be sure to give credit.

Nevertheless, the fact that such a notion need be uttered or is controversial at all is a testament to the backward thinking on the subject of currency. Opinions are all over the place among the masses, Christian and heathen alike. Where some see wealth as a badge for hard work and a sign of favor from God, others see the wealthy as corrupt, selfish, greedy beings.

On the other pole we get the same range of sentiments: it is morally superior to be poor. Or the counterpoint—an opinion which cannot be uttered in the public sphere today, but for sure resides in the back of the minds of some: poverty is morally reprehensible because it represents a lack of discipline, hard work, and contribution to society. 

So which judgment is correct? 

 
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