Weird to think of all the things
That have not been keeping up with the times
It's ten o'clock the sun has now
Just begun to set the western hills on fire
I've heard you don't change
How do you expect to keep up with the trends?
You won't survive the information age
Unless you plan to change the truth
To accomodate the brilliance of men,
Yeah the brilliance of men
Some folks say we're better now
Social evolution's new synthetic lives
Will keep us on a straiter path
As better men use brand new math with no wrong answers
I'm just a little bit worried,
Do you have some sort of plan
Have you been finally defeated
By the cunning of these fully evolved men?
I've heard you don't change
How do you expect to keep up with the trends?
You won't survive the information age
Unless you plan to change the truth
To accomodate the brilliance of men,
Yeah the brilliance of men
-Pedro the Lion
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5 comments:
There's a worship chorus that goes "How I love you, great and mighty King, through the ages you never change." and I always get a little weirded out singing it. I catch myself thinking "Wait! Isn't that a bad thing?!"
There's a bit in the Bible where God wants to give up on the Israelites, destroy them, and begin his plan again with a new people. But Moses begs with God, and GOD CHANGES HIS MIND. So, if God changes his mind, certainly that means God can change, period. I don't believe God is fickle or anything, I just believe that he can change just as any living being might change. That way, he's more than just a supercomputer that runs the world on algorithms.
Yeah, I agree with you. Mostly.
Hebrews 13:8, James 1:17, Psalm 102:25-27, Malachi 3:6 (to name a few) seem to speak fairly straightforwardly about God's steadfastness. Many theologians have interpreted this as an assertion of immutibililty, which I, like you, think is a little silly.
On the other hand, G.K. Chesterton puts it this way: When we change our plan, it is usually because we lose energy or something beyond our ability stands in our way. God's energy is boundless. He is full of life. A child can kick the back of a car seat for hours, but a grown-up can only do it for minutes before they get tired of it. But it is the child's life that keeps them from changing, and the grown-up's lack of life that forces change. The sun rises every day, and I do not. But when I do not rise, it is from a deficiency of life, not an excess.
God CAN change (and there are clear examples in the Bible of when he does). But God is steadfast. We can depend on God God's nature does not change, God's plan does not change, and God's truth does not change.
I like this song because it pokes fun so beautifully at what is really at the heart of so many people's objection to God as changeless. When God DOES change, it isn't to keep up with the trends. But somehow we expect him to. Especially intellectual and social trends. The whole concept of ethics changing over time is silly to me, and I like the way this song makes fun of it.
And yet Clark Pinnock and the 'open theology' evangelicals had an academic lynch mob (led by Norman Geisler) come after them when they suggested that God changes!
How do you proof-text so effortlessly?! I can never remember chapter and verse. I say things like: "Wasn't it Isaiah who said...?"
Or,
"I think it's found at Mezekiah 12:7-9..."
Well, when it's in writing like this I have the advantage of looking it up to make sure that it is where I think it is.
Off the cuff I would say "I think it's somewhere in Malachi", or even more likely "In one of Paul's letters..."
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