smokescreen or spotlight?

It's no wonder that when the prayer modeled in church services is only to provide a screen for the band to sneak back on stage, we learn to pray in order to distract - to recite our catchy phrases and display our knowledge so that others don't see our innate and utter weakness. 

I have been blessed to finally get to experience bold, real, corporate prayer.  Thank you Lord.  Thank you Immanuel Church.  Thank you to the guys that force me to do it personally - it spotlights my weakness and finds holes in theology as we pray for revival.  I am looking forward to that breath of reality in my week tomorrow morning - 6 a.m., Ugly Muggs.  Come see..

why Christianity is different

"Jesus himself was the temple to end all temples, the priest to end all priests, and the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.  No one had ever heard of anything like this.  So the Romans called them athiests because what the Christians were saying about spiritual reality could not be classified with the other religions of the world.  The irony of this should not be lost on us - to most people in our society, Christianity is religion and moralism.

Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day ... if the preaching of our ministers and practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did." 

Tim Keller, Prodigal God, p. 13-14; 16



Christianity is not supposed to be about "good-and-bad," "right-and-wrong," "them-and-us" moralism.  This is an unusual expectation in religions. 

Originality, pt. II

HT: Jared Wilson

The safest & soundest reflection consists in "what you have received, not what you have thought up; a matter not of ingenuity but of doctrine; not of private acquisition, but of public tradition; a matter brought to you, not put forth by you, in which you must not be the author but the guardian, not the founder but the sharer, not the leader but the follower."

~ Vincent of Lerins

how we fall short of the Savior we could have

In his account of the gospel, John records a story where Jesus talked with a woman getting water.  We know she led a busy life and had experienced broken marriages.  She lived in a city whose the culture did not esteem women and which was peppered with the rules & relics of religion.  In fact, she sounds like a lot of Americans today - especially in our (and her) response(s) to the person of Christ: 

1)  We want it selfishly for our best life now.  (v. 15, "The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water") Note that her "best life" included avoiding suffering, particularly the social reprecussions of "having to come here to draw water," where she was probably judged for her litany of husbands. 

2)  We try to lessen our shortcomings in fear of disqualification, when it is in fact those shortcomings that qualify us.  (v. 17-18, "The woman answered him, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.")

3)  We test Him - particularly his Sovereignty.  We ask, "Does He really understand all the intricacies? Does he have all the answers?"  (v. 19-20, "The woman said to him, 'Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.'")

4)  We let what we hear remain a concept, put it in a box labelled 'psychological foreclosure,' and refuse to let it interact with our experience.  Even after Jesus had addressed her every contention, "The woman said to him, 'I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.'" (v. 25) 

"Being right with God is not a matter of debate but a matter of life and death.  I've got to get right with God and that is why I need Christ.  Having a church whose focus is being right with God is a matter of heaven's touch coming down.  All this happens when sin is not viewed as being heinous."           Jared Wilson, 22 Feb 2011

why I love God's righteousness

It was not cold blood about the heart but a single word in Chapter 1 [of Romans] that stood in my way [of feeling freedom from guilt]: "In it the righteousness of God is revealed."  For I hated that word, "righteousness of God," which I had been taught to understand philosophically regarding the "formal" or "active" righteousness, with which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner ... I did not love - yes, I hated - the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously - certainly murmuring greatly - I was angry with God ... I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience.  I beat importunately upon Paul at that place.  At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night ... I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous lives by a gift of God - namely by faith.  An this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith ... And I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated the word "righteousness of God." Thus that place in Paul was for me truly the gate to paradise. Later I read Augustine's The Spirit and the Letter, where contrary to hope I found that he, too, interpreted God's righteousness in a similar way.  ("Righteousness of God, however, is without the law, which God by the Spirit of grace bestows on the believer without the help of the law" ~ Augustine)

Martin Luther's own account of his conversion in the Preface to Luther's Latin Writings, 1545

Thanks to Dan Orr for turning me on to this ... great stuff!

the Ann Coulter paradigm

Disclaimer:  I don't normally read Ann Coulter ...

... which is why it's taken me a week to discover her reaction to the tragedy in Japan: "With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami that have devastated Japan, the only good news is that anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer." 

This response is troubling, but not surprising.  In an odd way, it is the logical extension/extremitization of the view that people are naturally good, progress is defined by our innovations, and the things we create are designed for societal good, not harm.  With this worldview comes the imperative to explain away any possible fallout (pun intended, sorry) from man's inventions as unrealized benefit or progress.  If we fail in this explanation, we face the possibility that we cannot produce good - and in fact may not be good.  Ann Coulter offers the archetypal response of this worldview: find an option - however extreme - that still leaves hope for man's goodness. 

The alternative - that man is naturally evil and the things we create are designed to destroy each other - seems no more reasonable.  If this is true, where is our hope?  Here is where many turn to faith, but what kind of God would allow such wrongdoing and violence to go on in the world?  Well ...  a loving God would, if he knew that in destroying evil he might also have to destroy humanity. 

"This world exists not as a spectacle of evil and violence but as a platform purposed by God to show his love for His enemies, that he might win their hearts."  (Ray Ortlund)

Silly & Small

"God gives you what you would have prayed for if you knew everything He knows.  He is quite generous, both in omission of our silly requests and provision of His perfect will" ~ Tim Keller (25.02.11)

I am so glad I get to pray.  I am humbled that Someone who is asked to provide a Way in the midst of political unrest, acute suffering, and natural disaster takes time to listen - and not to great prayers, but to requests that He knows are silly!  And whether or not my petitioning has any more effect on a given outcome than tossing a penny in a fountain, it makes me more aware of God's work; as Keller also said that night, "the more attractive I understand Christ to be, the more things line up in my life in a good way." 

Ray Orlund echoed recently:

 "Matthew 16:23 tells us 'You are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.' It is not Satanic thoughts that pull us away from the cross - it is the thoughts of men.  We are naturally focused on self-preservation rather than kingdom-advancement." 

Prayer reminds me of God's work, His attractiveness, and kingdom advancement.  Thanks to the guys who help with this on Friday mornings.  Join if you like - Ugly Mugs, East Nashville, 6 a.m.

Originality

"We are only at the beginning of an era of unbelief & fanaticism; the hurricane is coming.  Men have ceased to be guided by the word & claim to be themselves prophets."   (Spurgeon)

I really like ideas - especially my own.  Which is why I decided to start writing a blog. 

You see, if I don't force myself to write on a topic I know nothing about, I let my mind stay on my ideas.  I think that's called narcissism.  It's my favorite cult. 

Instead, I'm going to share the ideas that are challenging my own - that help my unbelief.  I hope there are a lot more quotes than commentary ... more like editing an encyclopedia than writing a treatise.  After all, the one who was Logos himself:

"never claimed [originality]; He says 'The words I speak are not mine, but His that sends me.'  And the Holy Spirit never claimed it, for it's written, "He shall not speak of himself, but whatever he hears, he shall speak."  (Spurgeon, quoting the Gospel of John) 

If you liked the Spurgeon quotes, check out Iain Murray's Spurgeon v. the Hyper-Calvinists.  Just don't leave a copy behind on the airplane, like I did - the flight attendant that retrieves it for you will think you're a complete nerd.