Should I Double Down…or Go All In?

Michael has asked me to be a guest writer on his blog. I have never considered myself a writer, but perhaps you can gain something from my effort.

In case you don’t know me, my name is Justin Springer. I am an evangelist with the church of Christ. I have known and worked with Michael for nearly 30 years. On Christmas Day, 2010 I found out that I had stage four pancreatic cancer which has spread to my liver. I have undergone two chemo protocols which have not worked. I am currently on my third regimen and pray this one will work.

I was recently reading the book Decision Points by George W. Bush. In deciding to go forth with the unpopular surge of troops in Iraq, President Bush commented to one of his aides that he guessed they were going to “double down”. His aide said that it was closer to being “all in”. There is a big difference between “doubling down” and being “all in”. When you double down you are taking a risk by doubling your original bet. When you go all in, however, you are in a sense betting it all. It is all or nothing.

When I found out that I had cancer I, of course, immediately began to think about end of life scenarios. What will it be like when I breathe my last breath? Am I ready to meet God? Is my faith strong enough? Have I done enough?

My initial reaction was to examine my past life. I would go back to try and justify my sins. That I had made mistakes in my life was obvious. I at first tried to minimize my transgressions and then I tried to figure out a way to change the effect of those mistakes. I decided to “double down”. I was going to live such an exemplary life that I could overcome any mistakes I made in the past.

As a preacher I know this is not the biblical method. God wants us to strive for a high calling. God asks us to attempt to reach His glory, perfection. He knows that we are incapable of attaining that perfection so He sent Jesus to die for us so that through Him we could become righteous when we fail to attain His glory. We must live by faith, meaning that we must trust God to resolve the gap between His perfection and our inadequacies.

But when you are the one facing the dilemma it seems different somehow. When I was a child I would often have to get up and go to the bathroom. Unfortunately my brother liked to close our bedroom door. I would get up in the middle of the night and stand at the door. My brother and mother would both tell me that there was nothing beyond the door. I knew this was probably the case, but I was the one having to open the door. My need to go to the bathroom would eventually overcome my fears and I would open the door. Guess what? Nothing but a hallway was on the other side.

When I think about death I liken it to a door. What is on the other side? None of us have ever been there. Jesus, who has been on both sides, so to speak, has tried to comfort us. He told us that there is nothing to fear. He stated that in His Father’s house are mansions of glory, a heavenly home not made with hands, a place with no tears and no death, and a home with Him for all eternity. Who would not want to go to that place? Why would we not want to fling open the door?

And yet, here I stood facing the door and not wanting to open it. What was wrong with me? I was trying to “double down”. It takes faith to do that, but not enough. It takes tremendous faith to be “all in”. You see, if you are not all in then you really aren’t in at all. It is all or nothing. Doubling, tripling, or for that matter, quadrupling down is not enough. You can’t change the past and you won’t be perfect in the future. You need to depend on Him. You must be all in. That is the faith I want to live by.

Please pray for me that as I stand at the door, be that in the near or distant future, I have the courage to be all in. In fact, since we don’t know when we cross that threshold let us all be ready to take that walk. We need to have enough faith to be ready to go all or nothing. May we be ALL IN for Him.


ADDENDUM: September 26th, 2011: My friend, Justin Springer, no longer stands looking at the door. He now knows what is on the other side as he has passed from this life. And here I stand, missing my friend, looking at the door...knowing more than ever what "all in" means. Thank you Justin.

Nonsense is Nonsense

If God can do anything, can he make a rock so big that he can't move it?

"...nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God" - C.S. Lewis

Isn't it amazing when otherwise intelligent people become self-contradicting lunatics when we talk religion? Why does that happen? I've got a couple of thoughts.
First, often in religion, what I say/believe is tainted by what I want to be true. Now that's not the case in Mathematics. In Math, I'm not tempted to believe 2+2 is 5 because I want it to be 5. It simply doesn't matter to me what 2+2 is as long as I can learn the answer. But with religion we're different. I may believe the man is to be 'head of the house' because I read that in the Bible, but it just simply isn't true that I have no vested interest in the outcome of that study. I want it to be true. "Ah-ha! See, it must not be true that the man is the head of the house then", says my wife, "You just think that because you want to believe it!" Do you see the complication here? She doesn't want to believe it, and I do want to believe it. So is it true or not? "Well", someone says, "it is true for you, and not true for her". This is nonsense . Truth does not change from one person to another, unless it is truth about opinion. Either God says the man is the head of the house, or he doesn't. [To see His answer, read Ephesians 5:22-32]
Recently my daughter was writing a persuasive paper for a college class. Her thesis was that "Blue is a better color than red". Oh really? That may be true for me, and not true for you, because that is just a matter of opinion, or context, but it is not true in the greater sense of the word truth. The complexity comes when we forget that something isn't true or untrue "just because I want to believe it is true". Truth is Objective and External, not Subjective and Internal. One foot is 12 inches long, not just because I wish it to be 12 inches long, but because it is 12 inches long, my likes or dislikes aside.
Now, in matters of religion, most of us are influenced by what we know the Bible says, but we are also influence by what we want to believe, what we have a vested interest in believing. If I believe something different than my parents, it will offend them and make the holidays unpleasant, or If someone believes that God forbids divorce for 'irreconcilable differences', they're stuck in an unhappy marriage, etc.
Secondly, consider what is wrong with the opening line of this post. It is self-contradictory. There is no answer to it because it is nonsense. You might not be tricked or deceived by such a 

silly question as that, but don't people do that kind of thing all the time? God cannot at the same time give us free will to accept or reject Him and at the same time predestine, apart from our own will, who does and doesn't accept Him. Either we have free will or we don't, and this nonsense doesn't become sensible because we are talking about God. God cannot want "all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (1 Timothy 2:4) and at the same time predestine some for eternal damnation. Either he wants all men to be saved or he doesn't. God cannot require us to be baptized to be saved, and at the same time not require us to be baptized to be saved. Either God has told us that he requires baptism, or he doesn't. Not both.
So how do we know? We could spend hours discussing what C.S. Lewis believed about free will, or what Jonathan Edwards believed about it [they were diametrically opposed by the way], but really, the only thing that determines truth, is what the Bible says about it, right? This leads to a final fallacy that I want to mention here. The "my verse trumps your verse" mentality. As a believer that the Bible is God's word, I don't believe it contradicts itself. I don't believe that you'll find verses that genuinely teach we have free will and others that genuinely teach we don't. This shows up frequently when discussing what God requires of man in salvation. Some teach that we are saved by "faith alone" and quote verses like John 3:16 which only mention belief. Others say, "no, we must repent of our sins" and they will quote verses like Acts 17:30 which require repentance but don't mention anything else. Then others say "you must be baptized to be saved". They quote verses like Acts 2:38, or 22:16 which don't mention belief. In a discussion, often these combatants will argue "my verse trumps your verse". So who is right? "Well my verse says..." Then along comes someone who, desiring to keep peace, says "We're all just taking different paths to the same destination. You believe your verse, I'll believe mine." or in other words, there is no Truth, just opinion. In actuality, the verses are all true. You must believe, repent, and be baptized.My final witness in this post is John 14:6 where Jesus claimed "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the father except through me". Either that is true or it is not true. Is there any other way to the Father except through Jesus? To say yes is to call Jesus a liar. Contradictory, mutually exclusive things can only be true simultaneously if they are opinion. In Christianity, many things are left to our opinion, (ie. celebrating religious holidays - Romans 14), but many things are not, and the things that are not...are not.
Pay special attention that you don't try to keep peace by spouting nonsense, and that you never, ever excuse your own nonsense by charging God with it!

Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. - 1 Corinthians 1:25