The Nine Veils: The Reputation of God & Our Struggle for Identity

By Nicholas Matthews

Nicholas Matthews is a British Christian missionary in Australia.  In “The Nine Veils,” he examines questions and misconceptions concerning God, our relationship with Him, and our own identities.  Join him in this journey of discovery.

Learn more about the book here: http://nineveils.com

From the Au

• Language: English
• Publisher: St. Polycarp Publishing House
• Release date: Sep 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781947707276

Nicholas Matthews

Nicholas Matthews is a full-time worker with Youth With A Mission, currently living in Melbourne, Australia. Originally from England, he has lived and worked throughout Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the Pacific. He is the author of The Nine Veils: The Reputation of God & Our Struggle for Identity (2018).

Book preview

cover-image, The Nine Veils

The

Nine Veils

The Reputation of God &

Our Struggle for Identity

Nicholas Matthews

Foreword by Billy Hallowell

The Nine Veils

The Reputation of God & Our Struggle for Identity

By Nicholas Matthews

Copyright © 2018 Nicholas Matthews

Cover Image: Licensed from Shutterstock / La Gorda

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 1-947707-27-2

ISBN-13: 978-1-947707-27-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937651

Published by St. Polycarp Publishing House

www.stpolycarppublishinghouse.com

[e-mail]

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

To the curious.

The student and the accomplished.

To the hurting and the healed.

For who that ponder the riddle of life and all who seek the answer.

Those interested in identity and God’s reputation.

To Sarah, Daniel, and Joseph. Liz and John.

To the teachers, lecturers, and companions who have taught me shaped me and journeyed with me on this amazing adventure we call life.

For the students who have shared the experience. Thank you.

With special gratitude to Aaron Simms, St. Polycarp Publishing House, and Billy Hallowell.

The Lord bless you

and keep you;

the Lord make his face shine on you

and be gracious to you;

the Lord turn his face toward you

and give you peace.

Foreword

By Billy Hallowell

Who are you? What is your identity? These are just two of the many questions at the heart of the human experience — questions that have become increasingly difficult to answer in the modern era, especially as culture pedals us a slew of mixed messages that collectively do anything but set us on course to live out our best, most fruitful and God-aligned lives.

Each day we are up against a ferocious array of messages in media, Hollywood and through our educational venues that run counter to truth and reality. Meanwhile, there’s an enemy intent on authoring a confusion that slowly erodes our confidence in God and His unending love.

Due to an amalgam of misfired cultural signals and the pitfalls of our human hearts, too many of us buy into a multitude of lies that push us toward relativism — mistruths that tell us that morals have no fixed or central base and that our emotional whims should guide our thoughts, actions and worldviews.

At the same time, much of culture is being dominated by incivility, anger and infighting. These dynamics have left us hardened due to their overwhelmingly frigid and unfortunate chill. Too many of us have forgotten Jesus’ commands: love God and love others.

Meanwhile, various veils are clouding not only our vision of God, but our understanding of His plans for our lives and, more broadly, the natural order that He set into motion. It is precisely this subject that Nik Matthews masterfully tackles in The Nine Veils: The Reputation of God and Our Struggle for Identity — a must-read book for any Christian looking for confidence in his or her spiritual walk.

One of the most convicting elements of the book is the much-needed focus on the potential veils that could be harming our understanding of the Almighty. This focus on the individual is essential, especially as we each exist, live and interact in a confused and dilapidated culture.

As Matthews so beautifully summarized: bad habits and malleable judgement on the individual level can eventually transform society. In The Nine Veils he writes, When we let bad habits rule our lives we leave ourselves open for the enemy. If done in isolation, a bad habit impacts the individual; when the individual is a part of a family the family is impacted. When the family is part of a community, then society is impacted. When communities form bad habits, whole nations can be impacted.

Again: who are you? Where is your identity rooted? Many of us are rightfully concerned about the state of our world, but perhaps too few of us are willing to look deeper at our own spiritual condition, allowing apathy to reign.

Many of us assume we will be around eternally, shuffling the subject of death to the back of our minds while living as though our lives will carry on without incident. While it’s true that we will each experience an estimated 30,000 sunrises during our lifetimes, there are no guarantees that we will each make it to age 80.

Life is short, and we serve a God who created us, loves us, and who wishes us to be relational with Him, getting to know the Almighty in an intimate and transformational way.

God is good, as Matthews notes, but are we truly living in a veil-free way — one that allows us to experience and comprehend the fullness of his goodness? Are doubt, fear or the inability to answer tough questions about God preventing us from experiencing him in the way he wants? These are honest questions that beg truthful responses from us all.

God isn’t afraid of our questions, as Matthews explains throughout The Nine Veils. The best antidote to doubt and confusion is knowledge and understanding. Matthews provides you with that — and plenty more.

- Billy Hallowell

Director of communications and content, PureFlix.com

Author, The Armageddon Code, Fault Line and Left Standing

Preface

A Personal Journey of Discovering the Broken Heart of God

This is a book I needed to write. It’s an area where I needed to find satisfaction. My God is kind, compassionate, merciful, and he loves me. I hold a simple faith, and this simplicity has held true for close on three decades. Yet, there are questions that remain unanswered; there are accounts of God that seem contradictory to my simplicity, and there are accusations against God that can leave me struggling for an explanation. At times, I’ve been confused by the concept of God’s love and the reality of life, and there often existed a dichotomy between the two.

I also write this book after numerous conversations with friends who, regardless of their spiritual journey have experienced similar thoughts, or have simply ignored some of the hard questions of life and faith.

Common societal thinking in many areas is moving towards a position where people regard God as an outdated fairy-tale with a sinister undertone leading to apathy or resentment towards God. This is far removed from my notion of a living and a loving God who is kind, compassionate and merciful.

Embarking on my personal journey of discovering God’s reputation, I have a hunch that I’m not alone. I need to explore God and find comfort with the answer.

Would you join me on this journey of discovery? Maybe all the dots haven’t been joined, and some of the joined dots remain open to interpretation, yet the line I’ve used to join the dots is what I know of the underlying nature and character of God.

Chapter 1

30,000 Sunrises

At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.

- Norman Maclean ¹

Demographers tell me I’ll live till I’m 80. That’s fewer than 30,000 sunrises.

Under each sunrise I offer a simple belief. God is love.

I attest this belief to be true, and it’s a principle that builds a foundation of confidence. It’s not a romanticised notion and it’s not a position reached void of the hard questions and challenges of life.

Reputation and identity are key factors impacting each of my sunrises. They either impede my walk or they assist my walk. My personal identity is woven within God’s reputation, and this is true for all of us. Each of us will hold an opinion on God, and this opinion becomes our personal reputation of God:

• We love God

• We reject God

• We don’t believe in God

• We find fulfilment in God

• We’re sceptical and confused by God

• We’re hurt by God

• We find meaning and purpose in God

Because my personal identity is woven within God’s reputation it’s paramount that my view of God is clear and without any hurdles or obstacles. The agitator of our lives, the devil, has one aim and purpose: to destroy God’s reputation and to crush our identity.

There are several tactics the devil will use to achieve this outcome, and this book focuses on three:

1. Our ability to doubt God

2. Our ability to fear God

3. Our personal sense of entitlement from God

We live unique lives and we encounter individual challenges as we develop our identity based on an understanding of God’s reputation. Our challenges are as numerous as the stars in the night sky, and for this reason we’ll identify nine spiritual veils that distort God’s reputation and weaken our identities; these veils, explored later, are grouped into Doubt-Based veils, Fear-Based veils and Entitlement-Based veils.

The way in which we view God is the single biggest contributing factor to our ability to live fulfilling lives and to realise the full potential of our identity.

The more I consider God the simpler the message has become. There are two forces at work in this world, the forces of good and the forces of evil. Each force has a kingdom. One kingdom is built on the concept of life; the other on the concept of death. When reviewing life, history and all that occurs in the present, we associate situations through the filters of these two kingdoms.

When there’s suffering, we know this is not from God. Yet, life can remain confusing. Many people hold the concept that God brings suffering as a way to mould us, shape us, teach us and punish us. This is not consistent with the values of life, however. God always positions himself at the centre of human suffering, and because he places himself there, it’s sometimes easy to associate suffering with God.

This book aims to equip people desiring to progress their faith whilst engaging in societies whose experiences run contrary to this notion. For the believer, it empowers us when we grapple with levels of doubt on our ability to say God is love in each and every circumstance within our personal lives, and the lives of others.

This book discusses pain and suffering and offers a level of understanding void of any step-by-step guide. Yet this book is not primarily about suffering. It’s about God’s reputation and how our identities are linked to God’s reputation. When God’s reputation is poor our identities suffer. God is the giver of identity, and if we doubt the source of our identity we struggle to build and achieve confidence. Many people associate God with judgement and it becomes hard for anyone to achieve a good reputation based on fear and anger.

Pain and suffering run through the entirety of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation; starting with the strange abnormal feeling of guilt, separation and shame felt by Adam and Eve at the fall, through to the disturbing imagery of eternal anguish found in Revelation. Adam and Eve were expelled to the land outside of Eden and through this expulsion our history of suffering commenced, becoming intertwined with the human existence:

"To the woman he said, I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. To Adam he said, Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food" ²

We all suffer. Sometimes we choose the suffering, most times the suffering chooses us, and sometimes it’s a mix of the two. No-one is exempt, and for this reason suffering becomes an area we need understanding and confidence.

The Bible doesn’t shy away from the struggle of humanity, and the suffering we experience has already been experienced by God. In many ways, God loves us through the scars of a broken heart. In the Genesis verse, God is not just pronouncing consequences for humanity, he was prophesying his own experience of suffering. John captures this profound contract in the simplest of narratives

"He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world". ³

Whatever we suffer, God suffers.

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.⁴

My hypothesis remains simple. God is love. But what of the questions that challenge the simplicity of this statement?

• How to explain suffering?

• How to answer people who argue that God does not love?

• Can it bring comfort for those angered by God?

• Does it bring peace for others feeling let down by God?

• Is God a God of war?

These questions are real and these questions are hard. Against the backdrop of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, the destruction of Jericho and the taking of the Promised Land⁵, which is amongst the most contentious of Bible narratives fuelling antagonism and despondency towards God, we will investigate God’s love.

Canaan encapsulates a myriad of questions, concerns and accusations against God. Canaan happened 3,500 years ago, but what of you and me in the 21st Century; the areas of your life, the areas of your friends’ and families’ lives, the areas where you have a question against God or a question for God? Situations you find hard to fathom and situations where you doubt the existence or the appropriateness of God’s love. Perhaps it’s sickness, perhaps it’s economic hardship, perhaps you’ve been let down by those you trusted. Perhaps you have a heart full of compassion and struggle with the never-ending tirade of 24-hour suffering viewed on news streams. Perhaps you’ve lost faith in a society that’s turned its back on values you hold true. In an age of angry-politics and increasing global threat, how does love respond?

The sad truth is we all suffer. If we don’t look for suffering it will find us. No one is immune. Some suffer through association. At the start of this book several thousand Yazidis had taken refuge on a mountain to escape persecution; oppressors seek them through association with the Yazidis nation.

Some suffer through poor life choices. Perhaps through a downward spiral of drug or alcohol dependency, perhaps through a history of turning relationships toxic, or perhaps through missed opportunities and the choices of others.

Many suffer through the sin of others; the pharmaceutical company putting profit ahead of research; the chemical company operating in locations where environmental regulations are not as enforceable. This list could go on for a very long time.

What causes your questions and perhaps your accusations?

We’re invited to ask questions, and this book invites you to ask God your questions. Yet, it’s important how we ask questions; as a student or as an accuser. It’s important to develop our faith based on confidence and to see our relationship with Father as one of an open, ongoing and genuine dialogue. As we progress through this book consider your faith; would you describe your faith as Enquiry-Based, Question-Based, or Accusation-Based.

If you’re not suffering, how can you help those who are? If you are suffering, how can you empower your suffering to become testimony?

We’ll discuss the fundamental question ‘why does God allow suffering’, and ask if this question is even valid. Does God facilitate suffering? Does God tolerate suffering? Or does suffering simply exist? These are fundamental when looking at suffering through the filter of God’s broken heart.

We’ll look at God’s love through the life of Jesus. We’ll explore the lengths and depths God took to demonstrate beyond any shadow of a doubt that he is love. This will not be accomplished through exploring graphic details of pain and suffering, rather looking at the underlying principles of God, and evidence showing he remains relentless in his love and pursuit of us.

My approach in writing this book can be seen as three intertwined streams:

1. Confidence

2. Questions

3. Testimony

I’m no musician, but I do love music. I love songs that carry a story, that rise and fall in tempo, allowing the rhythm to achieve high density one moment before descending to low density the next; crafting subtle textures developed through several melodies.

The streams of this book can be seen in a similar light; confidence, questions, and testimony. Sometimes my questions overtake my confidence,