by Robert Brow (www.brow.on.ca) Kingston, Ontario, April 2006
Models are not a proof, only a means of picturing something we want to understand. From computer science we can distinguish between a computer operating system (mine is Windows XP) and the many kinds of software that it can use. In a previous article I suggested that the hominids roaming our world for two million years had the operating system needed to enable them to walk, run, hunt, digest food, use tools, make statues and cave paintings, propagate themselves, produce the 900 ingredients of mother’s milk, nurture their offspring.
Comparatively recently, say about 4000 BC, Genesis Man was given the totally new software needed for communicating with God. It included prayer and worship, self-knowledge, the ability to make moral judgments, the gift of supernatural wisdom, the freedom to choose among hundreds of different life styles. It is hard to see how any of these capacities could evolve gradually by natural selection. They were apparently given suddenly in one astonishing download from God. "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness . . . so God created human kind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them (Genesis 1:26, 27).
It may be helpful to picture this bundle of spiritual skills as the power of the Holy Spirit. They are all found in the Old Testament Psalms and Prophets. Here are some New Testament texts that take this power for granted :
"It had been revealed to Simeon by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death till before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit he came into the temple" (Luke 2:26,27).
"Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Holy Spirit in the wilderness . . . Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee . . . All in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him . . . Someone touched me; for I noticed that power had gone out from me" (Luke 4:1, 14; 6:19).
"Then Jesus called the twelve together and gave them power and authority over all demons . . . If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him . . . The Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say" (Luke 9:1; 11:13; 12:12).
"The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything" (14:26).
Paul said "I am not ashamed of the good news; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith . . . God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us . . . By the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, from Jerusalem and as far around as Illyricum (present day Croatia) I have fully proclaimed the good news of the Messiah" (Romans 1:16; 15:19).
"My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God . . . The kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power . . . God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power" (1 Corinthians 2:4-5; 5:20; 6:14, as in Romans 8:11).
And Paul prayed that "you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit . . . Now to him by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask or imagine" (Ephesians 3:16, 20).
The disciples had experienced some of the power of the Holy Spirit as individuals. After the Day of Pentecost there was a huge multiplication of power as communities of the Spirit began working together. "All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:4). And Paul explained their interconnectedness in a spiritual body. "Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body; so it is with the Messiah" (1 Corinthians 12:12).
He then lists some of the functions offered by this spiritual software. "There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses" (1 Corinthians 12:4-11).
In the New Testament Paul has carefully given us a description of the power of the spiritual software that is available to a community of Christians. We wonder why is this immense power of the Holy Spirit so often neglected?
Jesus suggested that little children have the software needed to know God from birth. "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent, and have revealed them to infants" (Matthew 11:25). "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs" (Matthew 19:18; Mark 10:14-15). The problem is that in many cases (often in their teens), this software is deleted as an incumbrance. "I don’t need this any more. I have other priorities." This is why Jesus told the great Rabbi Nicodemus that he must be born again to recover his original childlike faith. "No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and of Spirit" (John 3:3-6).
Others have a great experience of the power of the Holy Spirit and rejoice as they function for a time as children of God. But "as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature" (Luke 8:14).
We also know many who have been hurt by traumas and disappointments in a Christian fellowship. They still use the software of the Holy Spirit in their individual experience, but they now prefer to keep away from the powerful work of the Spirit in a community.
For those who find this model derived from computers unpalatable, there are no doubt other models and explanations that suit them better. This is offered for the new generation of young people who delight in the operating system of their new computers and the many kinds of software that they can download. No model is perfect, and it is not to be taken literally. But if the model helps them in any way to understand the power of the Holy Spirit, it will serve its purpose in our day.