versus a Voltairian critique

"Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world." (Voltaire)

Voltaire sums up an age-old critique of Christianity, evidenced as far back as the Crusades, and echoing forward in such writers as Mark Twain and presently Charles Kimball.  And it's not an entirely unfair critique - there is certainly evidence that Christ's name has been slapped on violent, selfish advancement with an eye to temporal power or gain.


Recognizing this critique, I wanted to extend from yesterday's post that though Christianity requires a "wartime lifestyle," Ephesians 6:12 clarifies that, "we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but ... against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places."  In fact, I think one of the unique aspects of Christianity when compared with other world religions is that greater faith should actually make a person less violent: 

"One criticism of Christianity is that it’s intolerant, socially harmful, even violent ... People can pervert Christianity into something violent.  But you don’t have to pervert Islam, for example, to make it violent.  Just be true to Islam, and you will be violent.  And the purer your Islam, the more violent you will be.  The great message of Islam is not God dying for us, God suffering at our violent hands for our guilt to remove every barrier to his love pouring out upon his enemies.   

Secularism too has violence built into it.  Humanism looks to human potential for heaven on earth.  But it creates hell on earth.  Secularism absolutizes the human will.  There is nothing above to judge human power.  That led to the guillotine of the French Revolution.  It led to Vladimir Lenin, whose motto was “Who?  Whom?”  Who will dominate whom?  It’s the law of the jungle. 

Obviously, Islam and humanism could not be more opposite to each other in some ways.  One is religious, the other secular.  One is medieval, the other modern.  But they both unleash the fallen human heart.  

The gospel is the only alternative to human violence: “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example” (1 Peter 2:21).  We Americans need to stop beating each other up, humble ourselves, and follow Christ."  

~ Ray Ortlund, 5.june.11, commenting on 1 Peter 3:17-4:6

spiritually spartan, part ii

"Spartan" spirituality is more than "simple" or "minimalistic":

"Simplicity may have a romantic ring and a certain aesthetic appeal that is foreign to the dirty business of mercy in the dangerous places of the world.  Simplicity may also overlook the fact that in wartime, major expenses for complex weapons and troop training are needed ... Simplicity may be inwardly directed and may benefit no one else.  A wartime lifestyle implies that there is a great and worthy cause."
~ John Piper, Don't Waster Your Life (p. 113-114)

Simplicity focuses on the self, even if it is self-sacrifice; the very word "Spartan" originated from men who sacrificed for their community.  Simple living makes us monks; Spartan living makes us warriors.

HT: "tell me who you are"

"Tell me who you are." The first question I faced in an job interview recently, the question that looms over a first date, the obsession of our society: getting to know other people, and trying to know ourselves.  My friend Tim introduced me earlier this week to the idea that "psychology, as a field, has been centered on helping us in this search to answer, 'Who am I?' ... and 'What's wrong with me?'"  (David Jones, The Psychology of Jesus, p. 4)

I love this answer: 

HT: Ray Ortlund

A friend of Eric Clapton’s asked him a good question:

“Chris’s first question to me, at our very first session, was, ‘Tell me who you are,’ a very simple question you would think, but I felt the blood rush up to my face and wanted to yell at her, ‘How dare you!  Don’t you know who I am?’  Of course, I had no idea who I was, and I was ashamed to admit it.”
Eric Clapton, Clapton: The Autobiography (New York, 2007), page 257.

Who am I?  I am a man in Christ.  I am who I most truly am not by force of anything intrinsic to myself but by force of God’s mercy to me.  God has breathed into me the breath of life, and I have thus become a living being, in both creation and redemption.  I have no other reality.  I need no other.  I desire no other.

However I proudly depart from this reality, I am diminished.  As I humbly rejoice in this reality, I am vibrant with life.

running with cicadas

"We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the projects because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea." 

~ C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

About a week ago, I rolled (...er, leaped ...) out of bed to a cross between Will Smith's futuristic I Am Legend and Ancient Egypt's ten plagues.  An early morning storm had strewn trees and power lines across my neighborhood and produced hail that massacred about a quarter of the insipient cicada population, leaving juicy booby traps everywhere!

After administrators discovered that it was difficult to teach without power, students and teachers were released early, and I decided that conditions were perfect for a run.  I took off on my standard three-mile loop in awe of the damage that my mind was surveying.  I was making ridiculous time until I hit the lake, where my nose alerted me to the fact that the geese on the lake had been scared literally shitless by the same storm that found me taking part of my sleep in our bathtub.  My focus shifted to the ground and I began being a little more strategic about which angle I took on the running trail.  I became increasingly aware of the cicadas I was crushing underfoot, and began trying to avoid those too.  Eventually, I found myself not running at all but tipoeing through the cicada graveyard formerly known as Shelby Park. 

It's funny: the conditions did not change much from the first mile to the second, but my perception of them did.  As I focused down on the details, my perspective changed; an exhilirating run became a gross gauntlet. I've noticed that I do the same thing with my faith; I become focused on where I fail rather than on Christ's glory.  I'm too distracted by my own "mud pies" as Lewis says - my own "dirt."  It is impossible to keep pace this way; in fact, it becomes impossible to run.  I have to recognize that I'm not going to avoid every mess, but the faster I run towards my destination the fewer I hit.  Christianity isn't self-disciplined sin management, it's simply a shift of focus, as Hebrews 12:2 says, to "look away to Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith." 

soundbytes: success

"Success is becoming in middle adulthood what we dreamed of in late childhood.  Everything else is simply evidence of loss of control." 

~ Nassim Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

"Men who really change are the ones who have failed enough that they are broken beyond self-remedy."

~ Ray Ortlund, "How Men Change" (10.may.11)

"Don't waste your life on fatal success." 

~ John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life, p 46

how revival goes viral

"So the chief priests made plans to put Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him, many of the Jews were going away and believing in Jesus."  ~ John 12:10-11

"Bet you can't do it twice." The taunt rings in my ears whenever I drain a three-point shot while playing a student in basketball.  I laugh every time I read this passage because it's so much like what the priests said to Lazarus: "So you rose from the dead? Bet you can't do it twice!"

But more interesting is why the priests felt the need to kill Lazarus; simply put, it was because so many people were following Jesus because of him.  What was his secret? 

I don't think it was his ability to lead, or "gather," men.  I seriously doubt that Lazarus was following any sort of growth model - pass 200 people, now do this!  He didn't have Facebook and Twitter to send his cool ideas viral.  I doubt he had laid out a five-year-plan and I doubt that he had a personal mission statement. 

And I don't think he was an exceptionally motivating and moving speaker.  I doubt that he even felt the need to "sell" people on Christ - I can't picture Lazarus laying out the illogical reasoning of atheism or providing a rational defense of eternal life or publishing an existential-experiential account of "two days in heaven."  I've won a lot of arguments, but I've never won a single soul through those arguments. 

I bet Lazarus simply told people he was alive.  Maybe told them his story. He was probably pretty excited.  Most importantly, he knew he what didn't need to do.  He realized the power of what he was saying rather than how it was said.  He knew how dead he had been; he wasn't sharing because he felt he should - the gospel defined him.  Revivals go viral when a man realizes how dead he was, and can't stop sharing it. 

"Our first business is neither to gather men nor to move them, but to preach in the speech of our time the universal and moving Gospel.  Let it gather them, and let it stir them. The first condition of a true revival is a sound gospel."

~ Forsyth, The Church, The Gospel & Society (p. 91)

Thanks to Sean Brown introducing me to this perspective on the text as I walk through the book of John. 

no levels of hell, only levels of hypocrisy

What is the difference between someone who willfully ignores the Bible on moral purity and someone who willfully ignores the Bible on caring for the poor?  The difference is that one involves a social taboo in the church and one involves a social norm in the church. 

~  David Platt, Radical (p. 111)