consumed

Blog Address Has Changed: owenstrachan.com

2008-08-25T12:20:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for content from Owen Strachan (the writer of consumed) , please visit the following site: http://owenstrachan.com

Also, please bookmark the site or change your feed address, as I'm no longer blogging here.

See you at http://owenstrachan.com

Many thanks!

--Owen Strachan

The Week-est Link, August 22, 2008: Final Link

2008-08-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

1. Ligonier Ministries, the ministry outfit of R. C. Sproul, is offering extra copies of its current issue which covers what is commonly called the "New Atheism". Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and others have popularized this brand of thought. See if you can get a hold of this magazine issue, and equip yourself (and your small group, or your church) to meet the worldview challenge of the day. (HT: Challies)

2. It came out recently that Barack Obama had make a mistake in recalling his voting record on abortion. In fact, he said that those who in fact had the record straight were liars. Rich Lowry details the sad truth about Obama's record on abortion, showing that he is not a moderate at all on this issue but an extremist who worked to defeat a bill that would have saved babies accidentally born during abortion procedures. An Illinois hospital was leaving these babies to die; thankfully, most of the Illinois legislature supported the bill that would have made such action illegal. As an abortion extremist, however, Barack Obama sought the defeat of that bill (even after a clause was inserted that made the bill neutral in terms of Roe v. Wade and the larger issue), and succeeded. Such action is utterly inexcusable, morally reprehensible, and leaves little doubt about Obama's past stance on abortion.

3. Bookmark this blog on biblical theology. It's led by Jim Hamilton, an exciting young theologian, and should prove very insightful. The trend toward biblical theology is very exciting and will be helpful for preachers who want to understand the full scope of scriptural theology when preaching a given passage. (HT: Justin Taylor)

4. Signing off for consumed. Thanks for reading. It's been a great run. I'll pick up on Monday at http://owenstrachan.com.

--Have a great weekend, all!

Moving Day: Last Call for Consumed

2008-08-21T15:20:00.000-07:00

It's been a great three years here at consumed, but it's time for a change. Starting next week, I'll be posting at this address: http://owenstrachan.com/. If you read this blog and wish to keep reading it, you'll want to change your blog links, bookmarks, or feed subscription. Again, just so it's very clear, here's the address at which I will be blogging from now on:

http://owenstrachan.com/

Please update your links in whatever way you read this blog.

I suppose there's not really any major change to the actual content of the blog, but this all feels a bit like a move. I'm just changing platforms and blog addresses, but in a funny way, I'm feeling like I'm actually leaving comfortable physical space that I've called home. This blog and its address have in a way been home to me and my thoughts for the last three years, and I'm a little sad about leaving little consumed.

Here's hoping, though, for progress and growth on the new blog. It's less tied to a certain platform, and thus I've been told by knowledgeable bloggers that it will make the blog easier to find. I think that's true--there's not exactly a lot of competition on the web for "owen strachan", two words that are rather scarce and especially so in combination. On the other hand, when you type in "consumed" you find a whole ton of other sites, and mine is buried in there somewhere (a just fate, one could say).

But there's no shift in philosophy here. owenstrachan.com, despite being a rather narcissistic title, will be devoted to God and thoughts about the world and the church He has made. It's that simple--no change.

I have thoroughly enjoyed blogging at this address and I am profoundly thankful for lots of faithful readers and commenters--KC, Al (not that Al), BC, JA, my mother, Brian from KY, Bradley, and many others. I hope that I won't lose any of you, but that we'll continue the thinking together and the conversation at the new address.

Tomorrow's the last post over here; again, please make the switch:

http://owenstrachan.com/

Yours in Christ, OS.

The Thoughtful Pastorate: Resources to Strengthen Ministry and Christian Life, Pt. 3

2008-08-20T08:11:00.000-07:00

I've tried to give the evangelical pastor (and interested layperson) some good resources by which to stay up on current trends in theology and culture. Day one covered explicitly Christian resources; day two provided a mix of blogs and magazines; today I offer up another scattered mix of outlets that you might check once in a while to see what's going on.

1. Relevant Magazine email list (click the link and look to the lower right of the page for a sign-up box) has some good links and gives you a little snapshot of what young, hip, "cool" evangelicals are thinking. Some of it will make you scratch your head, but if your goal is staying in touch with what various groups of people are thinking, this email will help.
2. The 9Marks blog provides lots of good thinking on the church. It asks great questions, questions that most people leading the church won't ask, such as "How does the Bible teach us to structure our churches?" Also, check out Mike McKinley's writing--he can be hilarious (he's the cool 9Marks guy).
3. For that matter, let me recommend the 9Marks site. Have you checked it out? I talk about it pretty often on this blog, but if you've never bookmarked, you really should. The site has a ton of good content--interviews, book reviews, and articles, all of which center around the church and its life. The bimonthly newsletter is nothing less than exceptional and will acquaint with current conversations on the church.
4. The Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood has a great blog called GenderBlog. Because gender issues are so important and contested right now, you should avail yourself of the content on this blog. Some pieces are brief, but you'll be able to stay up with current trends on this hugely important subject. Also, go to GirlTalk for helpful writing on Christian womanhood (and check out Carolyn McCulley's blog on womanhood from a single's perspective--excellent).
5. Once in a while, take a spin through some cutting-edge cultural reference points--sites like The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, People, Conde Nast, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, and so on. You'll want to be careful on some of these sites about what content you view, but if you are, you'll gain a healthy perspective on what people in various pockets of culture are thinking, coveting, and struggling with.

One of the most helpful things you can do as a pastor and a thoughtful Christian person is to acquaint yourself with local media. For example, now that I'm in Chicago, I pick up the free RedEye magazine and read Sheridan Road magazine (also free) when it's sent to me. RedEye keeps me up to date on what hipsters and edgy twentysomethings are thinking, while Sheridan Road lets me know what the ultra-rich of the North Shore are into.

This is one of the most helpful ways you can think culturally as a Christian, and therefore minister more effectively in your setting (like Paul at Mars Hill in Acts 17). Identify the leading thought media of your area and browse it to learn what people are thinking and talking about. I learned to do this from my former boss, Dr. Al Mohler, and also from Seattle pastor Mark Driscoll, each of whom excels at reading, understanding, and speaking to the culture. I followed their example in DC, in Louisville, and I plan to do it wherever I go in order to connect with people better and minister to them.

I hope that this brief series has been helpful to you. There is an avalanche of resources I could recommend and there are many that readers will identify as personally helpful that I have not listed here. However, I'm confident that the fifteen to twenty resources listed here will greatly assist pastors across the nation (and perhaps the world) to stay up to date on both Christian and secular culture. You and I need to know the Word, preeminently, before anything else; but beyond this, it will really help us to know what people are thinking. The world is constantly changing, and we should not fall behind as we engage it.

Ministering as if we're in a vacuum may not prevent us from faithful ministry, but it won't do much to help us. Bookmark some of these links, get in touch with the world, and get passionate to reach all corners of your world for Christ.

The Thoughtful Pastorate: Resources to Strengthen Ministry and Christian Life, Pt. 2

2008-08-19T14:22:00.000-07:00

The resources I shared yesterday were mostly blogs. They're all free, and they will, if you check them regularly, keep you very much up to speed on the basic thought trends and events of evangelicalism. Even if you don't have time to scan them every day, taking an hour or two each week to scan the listed blogs will help a great deal to keep you aware of challenges to the faith and positive developments.

Here are some other miscellaneous resources that you could check if you have a little extra time beyond the five cornerstone outlets. These are sites to visit on, perhaps, a bi-weekly basis.

1. The Kairos Journal. As a pastor, you have to sign up for this and have someone recommend you for the site. It's geared for pastors who want to think in a Christian way about culture. It's a great preaching resource. The "Daily News" feature compiles important news stories from around the world.
2. The Al Mohler Radio Show link list is a compendium of top news stories and feature pieces from the leading print media. It's a fantastic resource that you should have to pay for, but don't. Subscribe to it by email and it will be delivered daily. Separate from Dr. Mohler's writing.
3. Time or Newsweek. Both of these popular print magazines have their biases, but they do a pretty good job of capturing the latest cultural trends. If you don't want to subscribe to the print versions, you could always scan their websites for the latest headlines. That would be helpful.
4. World Magazine is a solid counterpart to the secular print magazines. It provides Christian perspectives on current events and key trends. I enjoy and benefit from World and find its subscription price worth it.
5. National Review is also a current events-and-trends print magazine, but it's explicitly conservative, often helpful, and sometimes quite funny.

No one wants to pay for news anymore, but if you have a little extra in your church budget, pay for a few of the above magazines. You can of course visit the websites of these outlets, but I personally think it's worth supporting a magazine that you find helpful if you can. It ensures that you'll keep getting what you want: the news. Most magazines don't cost much, either. With that said, it may not be worth getting many magazines due to cost and time concerns.

More resources tomorrow, the final day of this series. Hope it's helpful--please share any useful ones I'm missing in the comments.

The Thoughtful Pastorate: Resources to Strengthen Ministry and Christian Life, Pt. 1

2008-08-18T16:07:00.000-07:00

Once in a while, someone asks me what I would recommend for pastors who want to stay up on cultural happenings and thought trends. I in no way claim to have some kind of mystic insight into what pastors should read for cultural knowledge, but I do have a few quick thoughts that could possibly be of help to the pastor (and the layperson) who wants to stay up on a Christian perspective of what's happening in American life and thought. I have structured this list with the busy pastor in mind, the kind who only has a few minutes to keep current but who nonetheless is (admirably) committed to doing so.

Without further ado, here are a few resources I would personally commend (in no particular order):

1. Collin Hansen's online bi-weekly Christianity Today column. "Theology in the News" is a very perceptive, contemporarily engaged column.
2. Justin Taylor's blog, Between Two Worlds. This is the bulletin board for reformed evangelicalism (and maybe just evangelicalism).
3. Tim Challies's blog, which offers lots of helpful book reviews and links. The reviews are often very current, which is nice for those who want to know what's big in the Christian publishing world.
4. Al Mohler's blog, which is the premier analytical evangelical thought resource. With book reviews, radio shows, links to important sources, and much more. One-stop shop for thoughtful Christianity, and the best place to begin worldview thinking on the Web.
5. The Reformation 21 blog. It's got a Presbyterian slant and boasts some of the most pungent evangelical writers out there, including Carl Trueman of Westminster Seminary.

This is just a start. I'll have more in the next few days, with the hope that I can help pastors and laypeople to think well about life, faith, and the world in the brief amounts of time that come to us all.

The Week-est Link, August 16, 2008: The Death of Death

2008-08-16T15:25:00.000-07:00

1. Have you read J. I. Packer's classic introduction to John Owen's The Death of Death in the Death of Christ? If not, you should. It's illuminating and expanding. (HT: Monergism)

2. The Southern Seminary fall chapel calendar is up. Note the Darrell Bock Gheens Lectures in early November. (HT: Blake White)

3. Interesting Mark Driscoll video on the Bible's use of harsh language. This is a tough issue, particularly on matters of personal application.

4. McCain and Obama are at Saddleback Church, the church that Rick Warren pastors, for a discussion of issues of faith and humanitarian concern. The New York Times has noticed.

--Have a refreshing weekend, all.

Incredible Resource: the Jonathan Edwards Center

2008-08-14T15:41:00.000-07:00

Have you ever visited this blog? It's the Jonathan Edwards Center blog, located in the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University. The Center is a tremendous resource for scholars, pastors, and all who are interested in some way in Jonathan Edwards.

Currently, the Center is beta-testing its new site, which features all of the works of Edwards online. It sounds a little grandiose, but it's actually true. If you are interested in looking into these resources, check out the following announcement. Even if you're not interested in being a beta-tester, I would encourage you to look over the Center's online offerings, both for personal benefit and the benefit of your ministry.

The announcement:

"The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online 2.0 (WJE Online 2.0) is available for Registered User’s Beta phase. We invite you to participate in a month-long testing of our new release: a fully searchable digital interface through which anyone can explore Edwards' written thoughts:

Volume 1: Freedom of the Will
Volume 2: Religious Affections
Volume 3: Original Sin
Volume 4: The Great Awakening
Volume 5: Apocalyptic Writings
Volume 6: Scientific and Philosophical Writings
Volume 7: The Life of David Brainerd
Volume 8: Ethical Writings
Volume 9: A History of the Work of Redemption
Volume 10: Sermons and Discourses, 1720-1723
Volume 11: Typological Writings
Volume 12: Ecclesiastical Writings
Volume 13: The "Miscellanies", Entry Nos. a-z, aa-zz, 1-500
Volume 14: Sermons and Discourses, 1723-1729
Volume 15: Notes on Scripture
Volume 16: Letters and Personal Writings
Volume 17: Sermons and Discourses, 1730-1733
Volume 18: The "Miscellanies," 501-832
Volume 19: Sermons and Discourses, 1734-1738
Volume 20: The "Miscellanies," 833-1152
Volume 21: Writings on the Trinity, Grace, and Faith
Volume 22: Sermons and Discourses, 1739-1742
Volume 23: The "Miscellanies," 1153–1360
Volume 24: The Blank Bible
Volume 25: Sermons and Discourses, 1743-1758

Register on Tuesday August 19, 2008 or later to participate in the Beta testing! The participant with the highest number of suggestions, bug reporting and or user-navigation comments WILL RECEIVE A PRIZE in the form of a book."

Happy searching, all.

Ways to Witness in Suburbia

2008-08-13T17:20:00.000-07:00

Here are selected quotations from a thoughtful and helpful post from Illinois pastor Joe Thorn, who has a burden to evangelize and wisdom by which to discharge this burden (and to help the rest of us do so as well). (HT: Steve McCoy)

"I do not have the gift of evangelism, though I do share the gospel. Once a person decides the evangescript is not the best way to approach evangelism in their community the question then becomes, “How can I take a natural conversation about common things and connect it to the gospel without it coming off like an abrupt topic change?”
Any time we take the initiative to share the gospel with someone there is always a leap that has to be made to the gospel. Sometimes the leap is short and easy. Suppose you’re discussing the difference between Catholics and Protestants — getting to the gospel is easy. Sometimes the leap is long - very long, like when you try to move from your favorite Starbucks drink (Grande Americano) to the cross of Christ. The longer the jump, the more unnatural the transition, and the more awkward the conversation. So the key is having natural conversations that transition more smoothly to the gospel (smaller leaps).

To state it simply, the better you understand the gospel the easier the transitions become. If you are trying to share the gospel you will still sometimes make huge leaps that do not work. Sometimes the conversation will only connect to the Christian faith in part, without getting directly to the gospel. Sometimes it will all come together the way you imagine. The more you know the gospel (its essence and effects) and the more you practice this discipline the easier making comfortable transitions to the gospel will become. I have been asked a few times what this would look like practically, so here are 8 examples of topics that make for shorter leaps to the gospel or Christian faith.

1. Corruption, evil and sin. Conversations about corruption and evil are pretty common in my experience. Murderer’s go unpunished, children are exploited, racism continues on in more polite forms, mayors are busted smoking crack, etc. These conversations can naturally connect to the biblical issues of justice, judgment, forgiveness and redemption.

Transitions examples: “Even when the unrighteous escape justice in the courts, God says he will not let sin go unpunished…”
“My personal desire for vengeance is often quited by God’s assurance of justice…”
“In the end, I find that though I am guilty of different sins, I am just as guilty as…”

2. Community. This is a great conversation to have in the suburbs. Everyone wants it, but many are at a loss how to build it. Zoning laws have essentially destroyed the development of real, workable, walkable, communities. Conversations about community naturally lend themselves to the reality that we are made for community, that God himself dwells in eternal community (Father, Son and Holy Spirit), and that a central component of God’s saving work is the establishment of a community, a family, made up of every tribe, tongue and nation.

Transition example: “Part of why I am so passionate about the development of authentic community is because of how the Bible portrays the need for it. We are created by God to live in real community…”

Great post to read and reflect on. It's hard to share the gospel, which Joe acknowledges, but it hugely helps to have an approach to use in initially engaging people.

Resources for Women Who Want to Live a Faithful Life

2008-08-12T15:54:00.000-07:00

From the Titus2Talk blog (HT: Vitamin Z):

"My husband has being doing a bit of home-work recently, listening to a few talks that focus on family life. He's listed a few good resources for guys, but here's a list of some of my home-work assignments, some completed, others I'm keen to give due attention.

Loving My Husband by Carolyn Mahaney
Loving My Children by Carolyn Mahaney
Celebrating Marital Love by Carolyn Mahaney
Wisdom for Women from Titus 2 by Susan Hunt
A Fresh Look at Titus 2 by Carolyn Mahaney
Sarah Edwards: Jonathan's Home & Haven by Noel Piper
Marriage: Forgiving & Forbearing by John Piper
Honouring the Biblical Call of Motherhood by John Piper
To Be A Mother is a Call to Suffer by John Piper
The Centrality of the Home by Voddie Baucham
Shepherding Your Child's Heart 0-5 by Tedd Tripp
A Wife's Responsibility to Help Her Husband by Barbara Hughes"

Christian women seeking faithful advice on living as a godly woman in a fallen world would do well to invest in a few of these resources. Voddie Baucham has much wisdom on the role the home is to play in the Christian life and also on the way the roles of husband and wife break down within this essential unit. Carolyn Mahaney is a great resource too, particularly because she has raised four children in a very busy home and has done so with considerable blessing from the Lord. John Piper, of course, needs no commendation, and should be listened to whenever possible.

The Week-est Link, August 8, 2008

2008-08-08T13:39:00.000-07:00

1. Check out this really interesting-looking discussion on the pastor-theologian.

2. An oldie but a goodie: ten questions on preaching for Tim Keller. Must-read. Keller on preaching = does not get much better.

3. The Henry Center gets some love. Thanks, Unashamed Workman (and great blog, by the way). Check out those Scripture and Ministry lectures: there are some dynamite talks.

4. A rap about Martin Luther? Believe it!

5. More love for the Henry Center. We're grateful for such kind exposure.

6. A nice read on "renewing the culinary culture". Thanks, Salvo blog (bookmark this one!).

--Have a great weekend, all.

Salvo Magazine Fires Off Against Academic Bias

2008-08-07T14:48:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of Salvo Magazine? I'm guessing you haven't. It's a good, provocative read. It's a missile in the culture wars from the theistic side (culprits include Robbie George, Dinesh D'Souza, Russell Moore, and others associated with Touchstone magazine and other conservative outposts). Sometimes it's a bit punchy, but it includes a lot of non-PC, thought-provoking content written in blog-style, though with a solid amount of research and citation. Bookmark it and check it every few months.

The latest issue has a fun piece called "Mind Control: Now Occurring at a University Near You" that is worth highlighting. The author of the essay, Herb London, lets off steam about the biased American academy in a way that's illuminating and amusing. Here are some juicy sections:

The current drive to indoctrinate, not educate: "For middle-class parents who spend a king’s ransom to send their children off to college, there is the expectation that their offspring will receive an education in science, math, the humanities, and the social sciences. This rite of passage is not merely an expensive dalliance; it is regarded as a union card for success. After all, the education pundits are always saying that a college degree pays for itself in increased earnings. What these parents don’t know, however, is that universities have become reeducation centers on the model of the old communist institutions that manipulated opinion for “higher” purposes.

Professor Richard Rorty, the much acclaimed philosopher who shuffled off this mortal coil last June, argued that professors in the university ought “to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own.” Rorty noted further that students would be fortunate to find themselves under the control “of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents.” Indeed, parents who send their children to college should recognize that professors “are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable.”"

The essence of postmodern education: "At one point in the history of the university, “educate” was a reflexive verb. You educated yourself through exposure to great books, scientific analysis, and logical exegesis. In the Rorty age, students do not have this privilege. Now they are obliged to be browbeaten into submission, mere clay in the hands of ambitious professors who are bent upon shaping students’ beliefs."

Northwestern teaches a one-sided view of the Cold War (shocking): "In order to fulfill a requirement for a major in history at Northwestern University, my daughter took a course called “The Cold War at Home.” As one might imagine, left-wing views predominated. The students read Ellen Shrecker rather than Ronald Radosh; Joseph McCarthy was transmogrified into Adolf Hitler; and victimology stood as the overarching theme of the course.

Despite the recent scholarship on the period, such as Alan Weinstein’s well-researched book on Alger Hiss or Stanton Evans’s biography of Senator McCarthy, views that did not fit the prevailing orthodoxy weren’t entertained. Pounded into students instead was the notion that America engaged in “totalitarian practices” not unlike the Soviet enemy we decried.

Class session after class session was devoted to the drumbeat of criticism. I asked my daughter if she had read anything about Gus Hall and the American Communist Party, if she had ever heard of I. F. Stone, or if any class time was devoted to the Venona tapes. She looked at me perplexed. There was only one theme in that course: The US government was wrong. There wasn’t any justification for harassing communists, and Edward R. Murrow and Victor Navasky were the real heroes of the period."

To sacrifice grades, or not sacrifice them--this is the current question: "When I suggested that she write her final paper on the role of anti-communist liberals such as Sidney Hook, Irving Kristol, Stephen Spender, and Midge Decter, among others, my daughter said, “My instructor doesn’t admire these people, and I don’t want to jeopardize a good grade by writing about them.” So much for open discussion.

Such bias is not atypical, unfortunately. Courses in the soft disciplines have largely become propagandistic exercises, as instructors have increasingly arrogated to themselves the role of moral arbiter. Invariably, the United States is wrong; our historical role in the Cold War was malevolent; and our civil liberties are still being put at risk by demagogic politicians."

*****

Herb London's brief essay hits home. I remember being very careful in college about the paper topics I chose in certain classes. In fact, I'm guessing that most conservative (or even just open-minded, genuinely inquisitive) students have had the same experience. More than that, we've all talked about it, and we've all read articles like the one cited in this blog. What a shock, then, that so little seems to be changing in American education. You'd think that the academic "emperor", so to speak, would begin to clothe himself upon discovering his lack of garmentry.

I know people who are afraid to accurately report their past academic activity on their resumes due to the biased American academy. Their fears are likely well-grounded. Parents today need to take such realities into account when helping their children select a college. I'm a big champion of a challenging, stretching education, but one has to ask whether the costs of top-tier education are worth it. Instead of Harvard, Williams, and Stanford, I'd almost rather my children go to Hillsdale, Notre Dame, or Boston College. These places are not immune from unfair bias, of course, but their religious orientation does at least provide a standard of education, a basis for learning, that transcends the academic curiosities of the moment.

Christian schools need to make sure that they do not perform their own brand of indoctrination. It is good and right to have a foundational worldview, but we need to encourage honest inquiry in our schools. Ironically, I think that schools that are anchored in a certain doctrinal grid are in the best place to offer this kind of education. Schools that seek a "middle ground" orientation seem to end up swinging to the left. The drive to conserve seems less of a force at such institutions than is the drive to be progressive, open, and unbiased. Perhaps, then, we're all biased, and it's simply better to admit our biases and then work from them to a position of helpful academic investigation.

One thing's for sure, though--that thesis won't fly with any of the thinkers that Mr. London quotes!

Announcement of an Exciting and Important Theological Debate

2008-08-06T10:13:00.000-07:00

I'm excited to pass on word of an October 2008 debate between four excellent theologians on the Trinity. Below is the announcement of the debate, originally posted on the blog of the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding (bookmark this link if you haven't already!). I added the bit at the end about the Henry Center, which is the academic center that I manage at TEDS. Hope to see you at the free debate in October--should be very stimulating and worthwhile as four theologians tackle the matter of how the persons of the Godhead relate to one another.

Here's the formal announcement (feel free to spread word of this as you can):

"The Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School is excited to announce that on October 9^th, 2008 at 6:30pm, it will host a Trinity Debate at the TEDS Chapel in Deerfield, IL featuring Drs. Bruce Ware (Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) and Wayne Grudem (Phoenix Seminary) versus Drs. Tom McCall (TEDS) and Keith Yandell (University of Wisconsin-Madison) on the question:

“Do relations of authority and submission exist eternally among the Persons of the Godhead?”

This debate follows current argumentation in the academic sphere between the two sides. Though a theological exchange between expert scholars, this event will prove beneficial for Christians of all backgrounds. The doctrine of the Trinity is at the heart of the Christian faith and takes into account questions of scriptural interpretation, theological synthesis, and philosophical reasoning. Determining the identities and roles of the persons of the Godhead is thus of great importance not only to the academician, but to the pastor, the layperson, the student and all who would seek to probe and comprehend the beautiful complexity of orthodox Christianity.

The Center anticipates that the debate will be lively, informative, charitable, enjoyable, and, we trust, helpful to a wide variety of Christians and even non-Christians who wish to better understand one of the central realities of the faith. This event is not intended to be intramural, but rather to stimulate discussion that clarifies the Word of God in the life of Christ’s church. All should consider themselves invited and welcome to this free evening of debate and dialogue over theological issues that matter.

***

About the Henry Center: Led by Director Doug Sweeney, professor of Church History and the History of Christian Thought at TEDS, the Center seeks in the spirit of its namesake, theologian Carl F. H. Henry, to bridge the gap between the evangelical academy and the Christian church through conferences, lectures, and events. The Center focuses on the concerns not only of the Western church but of the international Christian movement. It is committed to the exchange of biblical wisdom, the authority of Scripture, and the advancement of kingdom work among diverse groups and peoples for the greater glory of God."

Prestige and its Unimportance in the Christian Life

2008-08-05T13:26:00.000-07:00

I've been reading the autobiography of theologian Carl F. H. Henry recently. It's entitled Confessions of a Theologian and it is engrossing reading, particularly for those who enjoy study of twentieth-century Christianity. If you want an in-depth, personal look at this slice of history, you could do little better than to tackle this text.

In the course of the tale's telling, the matter of cultural and intellectual prestige comes up a number of times. The "new evangelicals", as they were called, wrestled throughout their existence as a movement with the matter of cultural prestige. Were they, in fact, to seek it? If so, how could get they it? If they got it, what would they do with it? These and other questions related to the matter of academic and cultural respectability constantly confronted and were raised by the neo-evangelical leaders--Graham, Henry, Ockenga, and others.

It struck me in reading this important and insightful book that we Christians care far more for strategy than we do for prestige. What do I mean by this? Only that a major factor for us in our decision-making must be, is this option strategic? What kind of kingdom-building strategic value does it have? This, and not, "Will this be prestigious? Will it gain cultural acclaim?" is the kind of question we must constantly be asking ourselves.

The point I am making here is basic, and for many of us, is not a matter of major struggle. But it seems to me that we can easily lose focus here. This is especially true if we find ourselves in social situations in which prestige is highly valued. Those of us in such places must constantly refer back to the apostle Paul's words: "Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" (1 Cor. 1:20) The world's wisdom, and the acclaim that comes from aligning with the world's wisdom, is not our end. Of course, we need not fear cultural respectability, and it is no bad thing to use the culture's systems (of intellectual development, for example) for kingdom purposes. In addition, I don't think that we should intellectually bury our heads in the sand and studiously avoid engagement with cultural and intellectual thought. One need not be consumed by prestige to occupy prestigious positions in society or to use the world's standards for the purposes of kingdom advancement.

But with that said, we've got to be careful, don't we? If we allow our main criteria for our churches and organizations to be grounded in the desire for cultural prestige, we place such institutions in direct conflict with a biblical worldview. Far better to ask the question of strategic value than the question of prestige. "How can I use my mind to advance the kingdom in the realm of science?" "How can I use these literary abilities for the glory of God?" "What is the most strategic college in which I may educate young minds?" "As a future pastor, how can I train myself for strategic service to the church in my education?" "Who can I study under for the purpose of strategic positioning in terms of the academy?" These are all valid and helpful questions to ask of one's life choices. They reflect not an interest in self and self-promotion, but in Christ and kingdom-promotion. I would argue that they should be asked by any and all Christians, regardless of vocation, no matter the calling.

The drive for prestige will cripple us. Indeed, you can search your whole life for fulfillment in this area, it seems, and never truly find it. We don't have to shy away from culture and cultural systems to avoid this pitfall. We can educate ourselves, make good, strategic educational choices, make connections in life and business and ministry, and generally be wise as serpents in all that we do. But we should always do so out of the desire not to be prestigious, but to be strategic.

In this way, I think, we emulate in our callings our Savior, who cared nothing for fame and power, and who gave everything He had to strategically advance His kingdom for the glory of the Father.

How Box Office Superheroes Reveal American Spiritual Beliefs

2008-08-04T09:14:00.000-07:00

All those box office superheroes wouldn't seem to have a strong connection to American spirituality, would they? Aren't those silly movies simply the big-screen realization of the adolescent fantasies of adult men?

Well, maybe they are. But as a Vanity Fair blog (not linked due to content) recently suggested, perhaps there's more of a spiritual edge to this cultural trend than one might think. Here's what a couple of hugely influential figures, writer Frank Miller and director Guillermo Del Toro, had to say about this trend:

“Every great civilization has its superheroes,” says Miller. “America is just a much, much younger civilization… You couldn’t find a better version, in America, of the Pantheon of ancient Greece [than superheroes],” which could be why they’re such an enduring draw.

Del Toro seconds the point: “There is still a longing for mythos, for a spiritual Pantheon. And in an era where we have enshrined materialism to such a degree and we have killed off every conceit that seems to be weak and based on religion—New Age, all those types of things—the only sort of acceptable mythology, I think, is superhero mythology.”

That may sound like comic-book-nerd hyperbole, but the comparison with Greek mythology is actually relevant, to a point. For one thing, to the ancients, preposterous tales of heroic feats were not to be taken literally. “It’s not that they were ‘believed,’” says Harvard Classics Professor Gregory Nagy. “That is a Christian concept. Rather, myths about heroes were accepted as valid narratives about moral truths that helped explain life.”

There's something here, I think. There's a certain slice of American society that wants little part of traditional religion. The idea of God as a sovereign being is less attractive than a picture of divinity that emphasizes humanness. Aside from the massive explosions, cool graphics, and technological gadgetry, one reason that so many people may be flocking to superhero films is that they tap into a current of American spirituality. People want heroes who are unlike them--heroes who can vanquish their enemies--and yet they also want heroes who are like them, who have real flaws and weaknesses and battles. The Greek gods fit this mold millenia ago, and the American comic book superheroes fit it today.

What does this mean for the Christian church? It's fairly obvious, I suppose. While teaching unbelievers about our sovereign God, we need to keep in mind that people are looking for a person who is both like them and not like them. In other words, Jesus Christ fits well with this current of spirituality. This is not to say that Christ had flaws or sins--He did not. However, He did take on human flesh, embrace the difficulties of an authentic human existence, and face terrible temptation, suffering, and pain, just as we all do, even as He was powerful to an extent that confounds the imagination (another point to raise with the lost). The doctrine of Christ's humanity is not a theological afterthought, a footnote to the more majestic stuff. It is a strange, mysterious and quite moving aspect of the faith we claim. As the little poster says on the door of TEDS professor John Woodbridge's door, "History is filled with men who would be gods...but only one God who would be man."

In your conversations with unbelievers, particularly those who might be drawn to superheroes (and that's a pretty sizeable populace, given current box office numbers), make sure that you share about both the divine and human aspects of our Lord. Though we may not fully comprehend the wonder of it all, Jesus became like us in order to save us (see Hebrews 2, 4). He is a majestic Lord, and He will return to this world in flaming majesty to judge it in a level of spectacle no movie can present. Yet He was also a human being, one who wept and hurt and bled. He knows the sorrows of this earth, having become intimately acquainted with them in His incarnation.

The people around us do not need an Iron-man, or a Batman, or any other superhero--they need a Christ, a Messiah, and the good news is that He has come, and died, and He waits to receive the broken, the weak, the lost, and to give them His life, His strength, His love.

The Week-est Link, August 1, 2008

2008-08-01T14:05:00.000-07:00

1. Have you heard about the Henry Center's CCI essay series for college students? If not, you should check it out, and pass on a few essays to some thoughtful students that you know.

2. As one who loves studying urban churches, and who loves to see urban churches with a vision for the city, I found Desiring God's plans for their new facilities interesting.

3. Readers of this blog know that I'm trying to think through how it is that all of Scripture testifies to Christ. I found this Reformation 21 article on how Proverbs speaks to Christ helpful.

4. Speaking of innovative urban churches, I've enjoyed checking out the website of Park Community Church. They've got vision, and they're making things happen in downtown Chicago.

5. You should check out this music video from Christian musician Brooke Fraser's video "Shadowfeet". She's got a cool style. Couldn't hurt to pick up her cd.

6. Do you want really cute headgear for your little girl? Yes? Check out Brilliant Bows. My friend Stephanie Rogers (wife of fellow TEDS church history student Mark Rogers) has a great home business going. I encourage you to support it.

--Have a great weekend, everyone.

Obama's Youthful Flip-Flopping Tendencies

2008-07-31T17:44:00.000-07:00

Over at Justin Taylor's blog, James Grant posted this terrific Dick Morris piece on Barack Obama's tendency to flip-flop on issues. I'm not one to criticize young talent, but this piece does reveal something, I think, about Obama's youth. Put simply, he can't seem to make up his mind.

"Dick Morris has a recent article examining the current presidential race and why Obama has lost some ground. While some of the gain is due to McCain, Morris says that part of the slippage is Obama's fault. In the words of Dick Morris:

"Obama has carried flip-flopping to new heights. In the space of a month and a half, this candidate -- who we don't really yet know very well -- reversed or sharply modified his positions on at least eight key issues:

After vowing to eschew private fundraising and take public financing, he has now refused public money.
Once he threatened to filibuster a bill to protect telephone companies from liability for their cooperation with national security wiretaps; now he has voted for the legislation.
Turning his back on a lifetime of support for gun control, he now recognizes a Second Amendment right to bear arms in the wake of the Supreme Court decision.
Formerly, he told the Israeli lobby that he favored an undivided Jerusalem. Now he says he didn't mean it.
From a 100 percent pro-choice position, he now has migrated to expressing doubts about allowing partial-birth abortions.
For the first time, he now speaks highly of using church-based institutions to deliver public services to the poor.
Having based his entire campaign on withdrawal from Iraq, he now pledges to consult with the military first.
During the primary, he backed merit pay for teachers -- but before the union a few weeks ago, he opposed it.
After specifically saying in the primaries that he disagreed with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) proposal to impose Social Security taxes on income over $200,000 and wanted to tax all income, he has now adopted the Clinton position."

Even a Madman Can Glimpse the Truth: Friedrich Nietzsche on the Death of God

2008-07-30T14:17:00.001-07:00

Some of you out there have seen this famous quotation, but it is worth reading again. One of my friends passed it on to me for a lecture I'm doing on truth, and I thought it so fascinating and so insightful, so breathless and beautifully written with such vivid, dramatic language, that I needed to pass it on to you. Read the whole thing.

The madman.— Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!"— As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated?— Thus they yelled and laughed. The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried. "I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I! All of us are his murderers! But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? And backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition?—Gods, too, decompose! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives,—who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed,—and whoever is born after us, for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto!"

Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners: they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering—it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves!"— It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?"

--The Gay Science

I of course disagree entirely that God is dead (the thought itself makes me chuckle), and there are other major flaws in Nietzsche's comments (and his philosophy more broadly), but I think that Nietzsche did provide a sound critique of the Enlightenment philosophes and their haughty attempts to refashion the modern mind and its worldview beliefs through autonomous human reason. If one could say that the philosophes announced the death of God relative to the formulation of theological and philosophical thought, one could say that Nietzsche, an atheist German philosopher who struggled with insanity, announced the ramifications of this passing. If God is dead, then man can (no, must) fashion his world around himself. This is exactly what happened in influential corners of twentieth-century philosophical thought, and this line of thinking exerts influence in the current day in manifold ways.

Wisdom from the atheist. Nietzsche's words, though fatally flawed, show us that even a madman can catch glimpses of the truth, if only from a distance and without saving knowledge of it.

Pictures of the Queen

2008-07-29T16:05:00.000-07:00

It has been quite a week. Starting last Tuesday and continuing into today, the Strachan family has had the joy of welcoming little Ella Rose into the world. After considerable conference with the Committee on Post-Natal Pictography (names are not available to the public due to the threat of swift retribution), I've included in this blog a few pictures of my little girl. Regular blogging will resume soon and will follow (I promise) my commitment to sharing my thoughts, not my life. Some things need to remain private.

With all that said, the pictures are of our return home from the hospital, our time in the hospital, her Ware grandparents, and a great shot of her at home. On a serious note, we're thankful to the Lord for a safe delivery, a growing little girl, a family that loves and cares for us so well, and the opportunity to raise this girl to know the Lord and participate with us in the great work of glorifying Him.

Ella Rose Strachan

2008-07-24T11:54:00.000-07:00

She's here.

Ella Rose Strachan--
4 pounds, 15 ounces,
18 inches long,
5 weeks early,
The sweetest thing I've ever laid eyes on.

Bethany went into labor Wednesday morning at 1:30am. After a rather quick trip to the hospital, she was admitted. About seven hours later, little Ella Rose was born without complication. Though five weeks early, she's quite healthy. We are overwhelmed with joy and grateful to God for the safe delivery, the health of the baby, and the privilege of raising this child.

Pictures to follow; blogging may be a bit spotty (I'm guessing you understand).

--Owen for the girls

What the Mall Does to the Marketplace of Ideas

2008-07-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

According to Douglas Groothius in the very helpful Truth Decay,

“The public space of settled communities is replaced by the giant, impersonal strip mall, which serves as a surrogate for the older ideal of a marketplace of ideas. But no ideas are present, because truth repeatedly succumbs to “the evil genius of advertising,” in Baudrillard’s phrase. The mall simulates everything—with high-tech glamour and promotion—and represents nothing, outside of consumerism and commodity.” (55)

We can easily demonize various aspects of our commercial economy and miss their benefits. Strip malls, for example, may not look very nice, but they do provide us with a variety of services in one location. Where else, for example, can you do your laundry for cheap, get some takeout, and schedule a flight to the Bahamas? With this said, though, it is useful to consider what strip malls and malls in general represent in our culture. Raw, unfettered, uninhibited consumption. This does not mean that everyone who visits the mall falls into such a pattern of thought, but the mall environment does make it easy to do so.

I can see a point in my own life when I realized that I shopped for fun. I saw then and believe today that such a posture was not helpful economically or healthy spiritually. Beyond this, those who buy into consumer culture on a wholesale level often seem to trade in their mind in the transaction. That is, people who focus on things--on clothes and digital gadgets and hairstyles and cell phones--often seem to lose an interest in the life of the mind. Think about it--how many techsters do you know who genuinely enjoy reading philosophy? Not many, I'm guessing.

This is not to say that everyone who enjoys tech stuff necessarily becomes thoughtless. Some of my friends love gadgets and also love theology. But in the broader culture, where many people are separated from intellectual disciplines, materialism has taken the place of study and contemplation. To have a full life today in the eyes of many is not to read widely and think deeply but to possess fully. The person whose life is full is not the "renaissance man", but the expert consumer who has what everyone else wants. The people we look up to are increasingly not known for their mind or mental talents, but for their physical and social exploits. These cannot be good developments, especially when considering that Christianity is a decidedly mental faith.

We need to stand for truth, to be careful about technology and how it threatens to transform us, and to reverse the mass cultural exchange in which one trades in one's mind for material goods. We can be a counter-cultural witness by trading in material goods for the life of the mind, for study of what matters, for devotion not to goods but to God.

Does Politics Have Something to Teach Us About Evangelism?

2008-07-21T11:03:00.000-07:00

I found this quote from the New Yorker piece on Obama very interesting from an evangelistic standpoint:

"Gradually, Chicago caught up with the rest of the country and media-driven politics eclipsed machine-driven politics. “It became increasingly difficult to get into homes and apartments to talk about candidates,” Rose said. “High-rises were tough if not impossible to crack, and other parts of the city had become too dangerous to walk around in for hours at a time. And people didn’t want to answer their doors. Thus the increasing dependence on TV, radio, direct mail, phone-banking, robocalls, et cetera—all things that cost a hell of a lot more money than patronage workers, who were themselves in decline, anyway, because of anti-patronage court rulings.” Instead of a large army of ward heelers dragging people to the polls, candidates needed a small army of donors to pay for commercials. Money replaced bodies as the currency of Chicago politics. This new system became known as “pinstripe patronage,” because the key to winning was not rewarding voters with jobs but rewarding donors with government contracts."

I'm not concerned with the broader point of this article. I'm interested in what this brief quotation on the public dynamics of inner-city Chicago might suggest about the currents of American society. People, it seems, don't want to be bothered when at home. They want to be left alone. They don't want strangers coming around, knocking on their doors, interrupting their daily routine (or lack of it). They want to be anonymous.

Why am I bothering to work through this? Because it might shed light on how to do evangelism in the current day. I am not one to say that evangelism must be done in a particular way in order to evangelize a particular group of people. While I do acknowledge that wisdom and strategy are a part of witness (see Paul in Mars Hill in Acts 17), I would also say that God's gospel can penetrate human hearts in a variety of ways. People get saved in predictable and unpredictable ways. Street preachers, tracts, door-to-door witnessing, music, friendship--in these and many other ways, the gospel goes out, the Spirit of God moves, and people get saved.

So I would not consign door-to-door evangelism to the woodpile. I think it can be useful and good. However, I think that this quotation instructs we who are the church to reach out in creative ways in a closed-off society. In many places, people don't sit on their front porches (they don't have front porches to sit on), they don't engage with strangers in their homes, they put up signs to discourage solicitors, and they generally want to be left alone when at home. Many of these same people, though, do go to coffee shops and other "third places" to relax in a social environment.

It is my suggestion, then, that we not necessarily jettison door-to-door witnessing, but that we refine our model of evangelism, and try to reach people in natural settings in which they are comfortable being approached by strangers. Joining leagues, playing sports, attending book discussions, going to coffee shops--these are the kinds of things that I think Christians should do, and do evangelistically. Though people like anonymity and privacy at home, they also crave community, particularly because many of them have lost ties to traditional institutions like the church. Men's and women's clubs, mainline denominations, political organizations--all have seen numerical decline in recent decades (see Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone for more on this). And yet as people migrate away from established socializing, they migrate toward unstructured interaction in places like Starbucks. We should see this cultural shift and move into it.

I'm not seeking an evangelistic revolution here (good thing!), but am rather trying to pick up cultural cues for the purpose of effective witness in our age. I wouldn't jettison older methods of evangelism, but I would seek to add newer methods, all for the purpose of glorifying God through the salvation of lost, lonely, isolated, unhappy sinners just like I once was.

The Week-est Link, July 18, 2008

2008-07-18T13:31:00.000-07:00

1. You thought your tryouts for your high school teams were tough? Trying living in California and trying out with the sons of Joe Namath, Wayne Gretzky, and Will Smith.

2. Ever wonder how an album gets recorded? Here's a peek into the recording of the "Looked Upon" album I mentioned last week.

3. How was Barack Obama shaped by his time in Chicago? The New Yorker answers the question in no less than fifteen "pages" of online content. I can't believe that they give this stuff away for free.

4. Future historian of note Matthew Hall surveys a number of important works on the history of religion in the South. A rich field of study, for sure.

--Have a great weekend, all.

Homemaking Is Not Drudgery (Just ask G. K. Chesterton)

2008-07-17T13:07:00.001-07:00

I came across these words from G. K. Chesterton while (briefly) visiting the Girltalk blog (impressive sources, ladies!). For those who have not heard of this blog, I highly recommend it. It's probably the best resource out there today for women who want to learn about homemaking from a Christian perspective. Best of all, it's infused with the joy and God-saturated nature characteristic of resources from the world of Sovereign Grace. If you're a woman wondering what Christian homemaking looks like, you could not do better for a blog-based resource than Girltalk.

Chesterton's excellent commentary on the dignity and importance of homemaking, the vocation Christians believe stems from the apostle Paul's comment referring to young women "working at home" (Titus 2:5) :

"[Woman is surrounded] with very young children, who require to be taught not so much anything as everything. Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't...."

"[W]hen people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge [at his work]. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean…. I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children [arithmetic], and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.""

************

Over against cultural derision toward homemaking, a mammoth literary figure affirms the vocation as hugely important. People can speak as they wish, but in my home, the domestic work of motherhood and homemaking will never, ever be spoken of in derogatory terms. How, after all, can I or my family call unholy what the Bible teaches is sacred? My wife does not despise this calling, and neither, I pray, will my daughter.

Of course, when you consider Chesterton's words and the actual responsibilities of a homemaker, you'll struggle not to underemphasize the importance of mothering and work around the house but to avoid overemphasizing it! Those who deride this work, in the end, seem to have less information about what it actually entails than do so many of the women I know. As I said recently in a sermon on 1 Timothy 2:11-15, I am called on a daily level to nurture my email account. My wife, on the other hand, is called to nurture a life, a soul, a person with an eternal existence.

Over against what the culture teaches us, does a Christian woman's work seem weightless and frivolous? You tell me.

The Storm and Thunder of Hollywood Adolescence: Or, Why Many Movies Bore Me

2008-07-16T14:16:00.000-07:00

Over the last month I've watched several movies that have suffered from a common flaw. It is this: their directors build their stories around adult characters who behave like adolescents. They then stylize their films with all kinds of jump cuts, colorful photos, eye-catching clothing, use of music and sound, and so on. In general, there seems to be a new breed of director in Hollywood, one who expects his audience to be endlessly fascinated by adolescent emotions and experiences and to be tricked by cinematic bells and whistles into thinking that style is substance.

In watching "Atonement" and "The Darjeeling Limited" (okay, give me hipster points for that one), and in reading reviews of "The Wackness" (just out), it became clear to me that the current generation of filmmaker seems personally trapped in adolescence. Why else would so many directors pour their lives into films that chronicle the ups and downs of the pre-adult years? Yet there's the catch--these films, while capturing the struggles of pre-adult life, are actually about adults. Furthermore, our moviemakers seem to think that it will be meaningful for audiences to watch their creations which attempt to ennoble adolescence, to baptize its rather small concerns and focuses as substantive and engrossing.

Here's the thing, though: while it can be fun to watch an occasional chronicle of adolescence (think "The Wonder Years" before it went off the rails), the stuff of true drama and comedy is found in the adult world, where people tackle real struggle and hardship. Heavy questions confront the adult. Difficult decisions besiege the adult. No such struggle exists for most adolescents. Beyond this, it is simply far more interesting to watch adults acting like adults attempt to handle the pathos of life. Think quickly: what would you rather watch--Russell Crowe trying to escape gladiator life to save his wife and son (in Gladiator), or Owen Wilson annoyingly bossing his brothers around on an Indian train (in The Darjeeling Limited)? It is amusing to watch Wilson, for sure (I think he can be hilarious), but it is far more meaningful to watch an adult acting like an adult try to handle the challenges of life.

"Atonement" suffered from the same problem. It presented us with two rather shallow characters living rather vacuous lives, threw a bunch of style into the mix, and then cooked everything in the surefire dramatic oven of World War Two. What was the result? Profound rumination on the sadness of life? Well, there was some of that, to be sure. But there was also a strong lack of concern on the viewer's part for the protagonists (played by James McAvoy and Keira Knightley). Put simply, they didn't do much except sit around on an English manor. Their drama was the drama of adolescents--will he ask her out? I don't know!!--of the sort that is whispered in high school hallways. Yes, the second half of the picture was poetic, but as a whole, the movie's adolescent characters, with their adolescent attitudes, failed to convey any real weight.

What does this all suggest? It suggests that the culture of the adolescent is no great thing for art. I've found the same is true in music. I don't know about you, but as one who sometimes listens to secular music, I find most of it simply boring. Not horrifyingly debauched (though much of it, particularly rap and r&b, is), not scarily nihilistic, but boring. Much of what's avant-garde and much of what's popular today centers thematically around things like breaking up and setting out in life and handling a cheating lover. Boooorrrriiiinnnngg. These are the concerns of adolescents. This is high school stuff. The true power of art is in its depiction of the deeper realities of life, the stuff that you can't plumb in a text message or a conversation on the bus. It's in showing what it looks like for a man to love his Alzheimer's-afflicted wife, or a lost soul to grapple with question of God's existence, or a father to ruminate on his legacy, or a woman to reflect on her empty nest, or a poet to delve into the causes of war. I could go on. This is the sort of thing that compels the artist to make great art.

Don't get me wrong. I found parts of the above movies engrossing and enjoyable. But both of them--and so many others--suffer from characters who are boys in men's bodies and girls in woman's bodies. They are immature, narcissistic, foolish, impetuous, and shallow. They possess little of the depth of an adult, and they are consumed by small things. They avoid the great matters of life and trivialize them when they cannot avoid them. Here is hoping for Christians to seize the day and to make a bunch of art that is meaningful and populated with mature people and mature, compelling existences.

In a culture that is making art that is both secular and boring, we have a chance to be neither.

Books of Note: Ajith Fernando's "The Call to Joy and Pain"

2008-07-15T12:10:00.000-07:00

Recently published by Crossway, Ajith Fernando's "The Call to Joy and Pain" (2007) transcends expectations for such a small, devotionally oriented book. There is considerable food for thought in this 180-page text, including many helpful stories, personal reminisces, and exegetical points to ponder. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and would enthusiastically recommend it to readers, particularly those who would like to read more about the book's subject in smaller doses. This is no overwhelming manuscript; Fernando writes with grace and gentleness in a style that is fluid and easy to understand. Seminarians, laypeople, pastors, professors, all will find much to chew on in a book that is small but profound.

It's a bit ironic to read a book on suffering for fun. But one should. Suffering, as most adults know, is not an abstract idea. It is a reality for each of us. Suffering does not come in a one-size-fits-all package. It comes particularized to us. God sends us packages of suffering that challenge our greatest weaknesses and aim directly at our spiritual tension points. Fernando advances this basic theme in The Call to Joy and Pain and returns to it again and again, all the while encouraging the reader on a practical, day-to-day level to fight for joy in Christ in the midst of our personal sufferings. Whether you are fighting cancer, helping someone else through a season of great pain, attempting to grow in patience and love, or simply working through the difficulties of ordinary life, you will benefit from this meditation on suffering.

Most of us seek out meditations--in the broadest sense--on the opposite, of course. That's no bad thing in moderation. But when one considers that pop culture (and even Christian culture) often focuses relentlessly on what is sunny, happy, airy, and light, a gentle but realistic consideration of suffering has much to offer. This is not to say that Fernando's text necessarily involves a descent into the morbid. It does not. Rather, it functions as a wizened fellow traveler on a journey through the wild terrain of this world. For the duration of the text, Fernando comes alongside his readers and guides us with grace through the suffering that surrounds us and the joy that beckons us from the sky above. "Do not avoid this crossing," Fernando's text seems to say, "walk through it. Walk with Christ, and you will make it, and you will be stronger for it."

The text is helpful for countering what one could call a "materialistic ministry" mindset defined by Western ideals of success and productivity. If you are involved in the work of ministry and sense some discontinuity between the biblical picture of ministry and that practiced by many pastors today, you will benefit from this text. It will encourage you (gently) to lay aside your thirst for "success" and will help you to focus your eyes on that which is truly important: imaging the Savior in a fallen world in desperate need of the very One they hate the most.

"[T]he happiest people in the world are not those who have no suffering--they are those who are not afraid of suffering." (55) Powerful words from an excellent text.

Also, please note that Christianity Today named this book one of it's year's best. See here for more (it's under "The Church/Pastoral Ministry").

Maureen Dowd, a Catholic Priest, and Marriage: It's Actually Pretty Helpful

2008-07-14T14:22:00.000-07:00

This post is, I mean. It's entitled "An Ideal Husband" and it's written by notable (and single) columnist Maureen Dowd and published in today's New York Times. In the piece, Dowd cites at length the wisdom of a 79-year-old celibate Catholic priest who speaks annually to groups of schoolgirls on the subject of the ideal husband. If this all sounds a bit strange and irony-laden, it is: a Catholic priest who's never been married giving advice on marriage in a column written by a single (and very untraditional) columnist. Somehow, though, it works.

Here are some thoughts to chew on from Father Pat Connor:

“Never marry a man who has no friends,” he starts. “This usually means that he will be incapable of the intimacy that marriage demands. I am always amazed at the number of men I have counseled who have no friends. Since, as the Hebrew Scriptures say, ‘Iron shapes iron and friend shapes friend,’ what are his friends like? What do your friends and family members think of him? Sometimes, your friends can’t render an impartial judgment because they are envious that you are beating them in the race to the altar. Envy beclouds judgment."

“Steer clear of someone whose life you can run, who never makes demands counter to yours. It’s good to have a doormat in the home, but not if it’s your husband.

“Does he have a sense of humor? That covers a multitude of sins. My mother was once asked how she managed to live harmoniously with three men — my father, brother and me. Her answer, delivered with awesome arrogance, was: ‘You simply operate on the assumption that no man matures after the age of 11.’ My father fell about laughing.

“A therapist friend insists that ‘more marriages are killed by silence than by violence.’ The strong, silent type can be charming but ultimately destructive. That world-class misogynist, Paul of Tarsus, got it right when he said, ‘In all your dealings with one another, speak the truth to one another in love that you may grow up.’

In sum, I think that Father Pat has a number of things right. He blasphemes (and undermines his religion's teaching) when he calls the apostle Paul a "misogynist", but it's clear that he has keenly observed marriage over the course of his life. It is indeed difficult to trust a man, or a person, who has no friends. Some people are shy, but after a while, you have to wonder if there's something deeper going on. Either the person is too picky to actually befriend anyone, or they don't want to be known on a close level that will invite helpful scrutiny. That's not a good trait, and Christians of all people should be known as those who open up their lives to others for analysis and examination.

When the priest mentions that a man who can be dominated is no good, well, that's also common-sense, itself derived from "biblical-sense", to invent a phrase. I'm guessing that for some women, it sounds good to marry a guy you can control. Sooner or later, though, you realize that this is not such a good thing, particularly when some sort of character is required in life (as it is once or twice in the course of life).

Having a sense of humor seems very helpful for navigation of the ups and downs of life. There are times in a marriage, I would contend, when nothing but laughter will help. Husbands and wives who take themselves too seriously end up crashing and burning on a relational level. The ability to laugh at oneself--and the situations one ends up in--signals the presence of humility. If you want to marry a certain guy, and he can never laugh at himself, think hard before you marry him.

Even more important than humor is communication, and specifically, communication that comes out of a desire to create a marriage that fits into the Creator's cosmic plan for this world and reflects the love of Christ for the church. It's good, after all, to talk things through, but it's way better to talk things through from the perspective of a redeemed heart. When God has saved us, we are freed up by the power of the Spirit to not simply say what's on our mind, and get communication going (which is much better than silence on the part of either or both husband or wife), but to communicate lovingly, carefully, helpfully. I don't know about you, but I often laugh--not unkindly--at the way cultural media often depicts marriage. It defines marital love almost exclusively in terms of sex and marital communication almost entirely in terms of total honesty. This is simply not realistic on either front. Communication has to be a careful blend of honesty, thoughtfulness, desire to edify and build up, and love. Leaving one of these aspects out will result in a blend that, like a poorly mixed cake, means well but tastes bad.

Father Pat has some good insights, and I'm glad when anyone out there wants to strengthen and ennoble the institution of marriage. But for a truly strong marriage, one has to turn to the Bible, not out of religious arrogance, but out of genuine desire to know the mind of God for the betterment of one's life, one's home, one's marriage.

The Week-est Link, July 11, 2008

2008-07-11T15:34:00.000-07:00

1. Over at the CBMW blog, Brent Nelson has some helpful thoughts on what Paul's comment on women being saved through childbearing in 1 Timothy 2:15 means. I'm preaching on this passage this weekend, so I found his comments particularly apropo!

2. Sovereign Grace has another leadership podcast up, this one on "The Pastor and His Joy". Sounds terrific (and it will in your headphones, I'm sure).

3. Have you bought the New Attitude Band's new cd "Looked Upon"? No? Do you want to be encouraged? Yes? Then buy the cd, and look out especially for number eleven, "All I Have Is Christ". Extremely powerful and uplifting.

4. An interesting look in on China's upcoming hosting of the Olympic Games from the Washington Post.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Extremely Helpful Thoughts on Whether or Not You Should Do a PhD as a Christian

2008-07-09T13:29:00.001-07:00

Following a link from Justin Taylor, I found this blog post by Regent's John Stackhouse extremely helpful in evaluating the often confounding question of whether one should do a PhD. The article targets evangelical students who are (primarily) considering a PhD as preparation for academic ministry, but it is so broad and trenchant that it will be of great help to young Christians considering the PhD as a means of preparation for ecclesial ministry.

I will be blogging on this in the future, when my thoughts are more developed on the subject, but right now, let me quote a section of the piece that will be of particular interest to consumed readers (all should read this, including pastors, so that even if one is not personally considering this matter, one can give good counsel on it):

• "Do I feel I have gifts in scholarship and teaching? Do I feel inwardly moved by the Holy Spirit to pursue the Ph.D. as part of a calling to study and teach? How do I know this is the Holy Spirit?

• How has this calling been confirmed by others and by experience? What does my Christian community think? Would this decision have the enthusiastic endorsement of those closest to me, who know me best?

• How might I serve the Church and the Kingdom of God better with a Ph.D. than without one?

• The Ph.D. is the requirement for most postsecondary teaching positions, but have I considered whether God has gifted and called to teach and research in some other sphere? Have I fully explored my motives, and am I satisfied that I am not interested in a Ph.D. simply to prove something to somebody or to myself, to flee some other situation, or for other unsound reasons? None of our motives is ever entirely pure or unmixed with other motives, but how deep is my self-knowledge about my desire to do a Ph.D.?"

This is tremendously good fruit for thought. Again, read the whole piece, particularly if you are mulling this question over in your mind. I'm encouraged to see a theologian like Stackhouse (and historical theologian Sean Lucas) tackling in a meaningful, practical way hard questions like this which confront students in a highly professionalized (meant in a neutral way) era.

I'll close with this (which I have said before): we need more scholarly pastors. This is the model of ministry that I'm really focused on in my life, and I hope to see many more catch the same vision and invest their time and energy in excellent, thorough, mentally stimulating preparation for ministry such that God's pastors would lead their churches not simply with evangelistic zeal, personal warmth, and administrative wisdom, but exceptional intellectual ability sufficient to function in the truest sense as theologian-pastors leading people into the glories of biblical teaching.

The Importance of Bible Memorization, or, the Miracle of the Bible Applied to the Mind

2008-07-08T13:09:00.000-07:00

Dr. Andy Davis of the First Baptist Church of Durham, North Carolina recently spoke at the 2008 National Founder's Conference on "The Importance of Filling Your Life with Scripture." Dr. Davis is a very faithful pastor who emphasizes the theme of Scripture memorization for spiritual growth. I did not attend the conference but enjoyed reading through Timmy Brister's live-blog of the message (which is essentially a word-by-word reproduction of the talk itself). Here are some parts of the message that I found convicting and helpful:

The Bible is a miracle--"I hold in my hand a miracle. The Bible is a miracle, and I challenge you to give me any definition of a miracle that our Bible does not qualify. It was the Word God sent, for faith comes by hearing so that we might be saved. James 1:17 - God chose to give us birth by the word of truth. The Scriptures are able to make us wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 3:15)."

Feeding on Christ--"You need to meditate on Scripture, not as water through a pipe, but pause and let the words sink into your life. Feed and give food to your inner man. The first and greatest duty is to get your own soul happy in the Lord first by study and second by prayer. Let God speak to you first and speak back to Him in prayer. The goal is personal feeding on Christ."

The Word is like Microsoft (vice versa, maybe)--"I say to you that memorization is the most efficient way to do all of this. Why should you memorize Scripture? God is commending Scripture memory to you, but He is not commanding it. If I was in 1985 offering you a million shares of stock in Microsoft, you would buy it. Memorizing Scripture will make you rich."

Answers to objections to memorization--

"1. I don’t have a good memory. You have a better memory than you think you do. Think of all the numbers and names you know.

2. It will take up too much time; I am too busy. This is the most efficient use of your time. It will bless you in everything you do. Invest your life in the Word of God.

3. I am too lazy, and it’s hard work. The secret to memorization is repetition over time. Repeat, and repeat, and repeat over months. It is hard work, but it is worth doing.

4. I am not very interested; it seems boring. Could the word of God really be boring to you if you are justified by faith? You haven’t seen the glories of the word of God."

There is much more to read at Timmy Brister's blog. Go over there and read the whole thing. You may not immediately begin to memorize massive chunks of Scripture, but Dr. Davis's message will encourage you to think hard about incorporating such a practice into your life. He certainly has challenged me on this matter.

Books of Note: Bob Kauflin's "Worship Matters"

2008-07-07T13:26:00.000-07:00

I have recently come into possession of a number of new Crossway titles, several of which are well worth reading. The first is pastor and musician Bob Kauflin's book on worship, Worship Matters (Crossway, 2008). Here's a synopsis of the book from the foreword: "In Worship Matters, Bob leads us skillfully through the Scriptures and through his experiences to better understand the why and how of biblical worship, regardless of the style or form." (11) The point, then, is not to cover the exact shape that biblically informed worship will take, but the reasons for its existence.

The book breaks down into four main parts: the leader, the task, healthy tensions, and right relationships. There are all kinds of helpful points to be found in these sections, as one would expect from a book written by a former professional musician who has a great passion for God-exalting congregational musicality. On one page Kauflin gives suggestions for chord progressions; on another he writes about the proper balance between tradition and innovation. On relevance, for example, he writes that "we need to ask whether the songs, words, arrangements, visuals, expressions, and traditions we're using are saying the things we want them to say--and whether people actually understand what we're saying." (191) After all, Kauflin notes, "we want to proclaim the unchanging gospel in ways our culture can comprehend, ways that will make it easy for people to perceive who Jesus Christ is and how he has changed us." (191) This is an excellent point to highlight, for it shows how Kauflin combines freshness--which we desperately need--with faithfulness, which is obviously our greatest concern as worshippers of the living God.

I think that you should buy the book. Read it and get a better taste of what biblical worship stems from and looks like in the life of the local church. Learn from a man who has sung in the popular Christian a capella group GLAD, who leads thousands of worshippers each week at Covenant Life Church, one of my favorite churches, and who blends humble piety with wise reflection. If you're in a church, give it to your staff. Wayne Grudem, for his part, notes that "The next time I teach on worship, I plan to make this the required text." Bruce Ware says that "Kauflin provides an array of insights and instruction...all of which are wrapped in an overarching theology of the triune God, the gospel of grace, and the centrality of the cross."

Read it for the edification of your own spiritual life, and for the edification of the body whose central task is nothing other than worship of our majestic God.

The Week-est Link, July 4, 2008

2008-07-04T14:45:00.001-07:00

1. The New York Times is chronicling the changes on American college campuses as professors whose careers began in the '60s retire. Perhaps we'll see more of an openness to conservatives in the future. One can hope so.

2. It's Nadal-Federer in the Wimbledon final. How shocking.

3. Historical theologian (the best kind, natch) Carl Trueman of Westminster Seminary (a witty critical thinker) muses in a slightly edgy but perhaps needed fashion on the young, restless, reformed movement. By the way, have you bought the book? Weren't you supposed to? Didn't someone (ahem) recommend it?

4. It's President Bush's last fourth of July as president. I'm not sure why that's especially significant for any of us, but I would wish everyone out there a happy fourth. Given that I missed my town's parade earlier, I may just have to pop in a "Band of Brothers" episode here to honor those who secured our national security and happiness. Yes, this is rather postmodern; I do very much hope in the future to take my children to parades and to instill in them a proper love for country and appreciation--a deep appreciation--for veterans and soldiers. If you're a veteran or a soldier and you're reading this, please accept my heartfelt thanks.

On that note, enjoy the weekend, all.

Southern Baptists and Hip Hop: No, I'm Not Making This Up

2008-07-03T13:37:00.000-07:00

Just go here and see what I'm talking about. Russ Moore, dean of the 4400-student Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the flagship Southern Baptist seminary, interviews the Christian rapper Flame while guest-hosting the Albert Mohler radio program. For those of you who know little about either of these worlds, let me be your trusty guide and say that they do not often intersect--especially on a nationally syndicated radio program with thousands of daily listeners!

The conversation is fun and informative. Flame shares a good deal of his background, including the tidbit that he was once a "gangsta" rapper (think the sort of stuff that celebrates extreme violence and that sort of thing). Now, however, Flame raps about such diverse topics as hermeneutics and the Trinity. His stuff is not lightweight--trust me on that one. If you have a nice little stereotype fashioned in your mind about hip-hop, check out his music, and see if isn't challenged.

The interview raises the issue of Christians and their identification with secular music. Flame points out that many rappers, though fallen, accurately portray the realities of life in hard places, namely, the inner city. It struck me as I listened to this conversation that there is a real need for Christian art that doesn't simply speak the gospel in familiar musical forms. We need artists who produce music--and all kinds of art--that honestly depicts life in a fallen world, such that non-Christians naturally connect with our music (as much as this is possible, of course--I have no triumphalist social intentions).

How does the fall affect the world? What does brokenness look like in various places? I'm not just asking for "testimony" songs ("I was blind in these ways," and that sort of thing), but excellent storytelling and realistic exploration of themes of a fallen creation. Furthermore, we need stories that don't skip to the answer--the gospel--and leave things there, but that celebrate in majestic songship the reality of life with Christ. I'm thankful that Flame (and others) have begun to make headway in these areas. Here's hoping for many more artists like him, and much broader acceptance within the evangelical community of beautiful, honest, God-glorifying (though not necessarily stereotype-conforming) art.

Applying What We Know About Our Internet Usage to Our Spiritual Lives

2008-07-02T13:27:00.000-07:00

Just had a few thoughts from yesterday's piece that covered the Atlantic Monthly article, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" The article is, I think, a good wake-up call for those of us who frequently browse the Internet. In particular, I think that it encourages us not to compartmentalize our lives. By this I mean that we should not think that our Internet usage is cordoned off from our spiritual lives. What does this mean on a practical level? Let me share.

Yesterday's post touched on a number of other concerns that I have regarding constant Web use by Christians. Today, though, I want to zero in on the problematic question of how our devotional life is affected by the Internet. Put simply, if in our usage of the Web we are training ourselves to concentrate in ten-second bursts, we're going to struggle, I think, to sustain a meaningful devotional life. Devotions are not essential to being a Christian. That is, you don't have to have a thirty-minute time set aside each day for prayer and Bible study to be a Christian. However, most Christians throughout the ages have found that in order to walk closely with God on a daily basis, it is quite helpful to set aside time for these things. In our devotional time, we seek to focus for a period of time on God and His influence on our spiritual lives. Contemplation and thoughtfulness are thus at a premium when it comes to devotions.

Every Christian who has ever tried to do devotions knows that it's hard to do them. Your attention wanders, your concentration drifts, and sooner than you can know it, you're miles away from your church's weekly prayer requests, or Jeremiah's lamentations. How important, then, that in all of our lives, we cultivate mental habits that train us to focus, and not to flit. If you are constantly surfing the web, nibbling on content, I am guessing that you will find it challenging to dig into the Word. If you check email every ten minutes, I would venture that your concentration will easily shift from prayer to distracted thought. Why should it be otherwise? You're training yourself to do just that--to shift.

In seeking to be wise, discerning, disciplined Christians, then, we've got to think hard not just about what we take in, but how we take it in. Most Christians are quite aware of the need to avoid bad Internet content. Few of us, I would guess, are aware of the need to avoid a bad approach to the Internet. As in many areas of life, we simply consume it like the masses around us, thinking little about its effect on our lives.

We should not allow the Internet to shred our devotional lives. If we do surf the Web and check email, we should do so carefully, such that we are capable of deep reflection and sustained attention. Our devotional lives can only be rich if we develop such abilities. Also, though, how can we expect ourselves and others to pay attention to sermons and hymns if we're constantly trafficking in information? If our personal devotional life will suffer from overexposure to the Internet, so too will our congregational participation as members of churches. We'll check in and out of sermons, tune out of the very songs we're singing, and generally regard church with a glazed-over boredom, all the while unaware that it is not church and its offerings that are the problem--it is us and the attention spans we have trained to flit and flicker and fade in and out that are the problem. Shame on us for so often blaming the church and the pastor when it is almost solely we who are to blame.

Do you exhibit these symptoms? I know I do at times. If so, train your senses. Re-think your Internet consumption. Carve out within yourself the ability to focus and think deeply. Your spiritual life--and your church life--can only benefit as a result, and God can only be glorified as another area of one's life opens up to the transforming power of God's Word.

The Mind-Transforming Power of the Internet, and Other Slightly Disturbing Thoughts

2008-07-01T13:10:00.000-07:00

Nicholas Carr of the Atlantic Monthly has recently written a must-read piece on the suspected effect of Internet usage on one's mind. "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" includes a number of provocative selections, including the following, each of which I'll comment on.

The author's current struggle to concentrate--"Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."

I have seen this happen in my own life, though I have to read consistently and am thus able (forced?) to counteract this tendency. Without a constant diet of reading, though, I'm guessing that most people who don't naturally love reading will drift away from the practice. We're all becoming skimmers, some of us professional, some of us not. As a race, we seem to be morphing into people incapable of sustained attention.

The effect of surfing on the mind--"As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski."

This is the way many people seem to operate. My blog posts (including this one) are generally long, relatively speaking. But what is long? Most of them take about two-three minutes to read. The average time people spend on my site, however, is far less than two-three minutes. Part of this is because I do very little to try and hook visitors. Part of it is because people are so technologically restless nowadays that they can't sit still long enough to read a few lousy paragraphs. What does it say about one's ability to concentrate and discipline oneself when attention cannot be sustained for sixty seconds? (Alternate (discomfiting) theory: site is not worthy of much attention. Needfully discarded.)

Testimony from a University of Michigan prof: “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”

Okay, I give up. If a professor at one of America's elite universities, a school that requires students to read thousands of pages of material before they graduate, cannot read for a minute, how can we really expect anyone to do so? We may not all be in the same boat as this person, but we should take note here. What, exactly, does continual web-browsing and email-checking do to one's ability to concentrate? Does it, perhaps, shred it?

Fascinating story about Nietzsche and the typewriter--"One of Nietzsche’s friends, a composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his “‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”

“You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts.”

You know, this is a sterling point in an excellent article. I've noticed that writing a letter on nice paper--something I rarely do--tends to draw the best out of me, literarily. I slow down and concentrate. I muse over my words. I don't drop in the chair and bang something out. I measure what I say and attempt to make it excellent. Though I try to do the same thing when I write on the computer (papers, sermons), it's just not the same. I suppose that when convenience and contemplation square off, convenience wins just about every time. The motto of the age?

A sober closing assessment--"Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction."

We need to think about this one. When we surf the web, we're not participating in a passive forum. We're swerving into the Autobahn. It's not a passive medium. It is the definition of active. It has a pace to it, a feel, that encourages us to blitz through page after page, entry after entry, blog after blog. It doesn't every really urge to slow down and think. It explodes our senses with content. Honestly, how does even the best book stand a chance?

I personally think that we who want to think and use our minds for God's glory should preserve the careful reading of books. We should not buy into a culture that encourages us to prey on information and art. We should instead buy books, read them contemplatively, and pattern our mind to think hard and well about things. We should buy books not simply to take material out of them--a worthy act, one I've been paid to do--but to read them, to sit with them, and let them teach us. We should consider good books like wise, delightful grandparents, who require concentration, patience, and investment to benefit from. If we want to learn and to be able to concentrate on myriad tasks, we should not treat our "grandparents" with insolence by beginning a conversation with them, extracting what information we want, and then quickly and rudely leaving them. No, we should sit with them, talk with them, argue with them (it's an analogy, not a reality), and learn from them. Book-reading that abuses books should be avoided; book-reading that ingests information, mulls over it, should be encouraged.

Two final notes. We should be careful about the Web. No, not just in terms of sex and time drain, though we must handle these things carefully. We should be careful about how much time we give to the web and to email. Are we a slave to our inboxes? Do we constantly surf the web, skimming page after page with a dull-eyed gloss? Are we letting the web shape us and the way we think as it robs us of our ability to concentrate and discipline ourselves? We've got to think about these things, and discipline our lives such that we, not the web, have mastery.

Finally, we should think about these matters in light of our churches. What kind of culture do we create in our church through the use of technology? How is an average church service going to seem to the constant web-surfer and email-answerer? Furthermore, if we structure the service to be palatable to such people, what damage do we do to our people? Do we slowly ease out of them the ability to think hard and focus well? There are few easy answers here, but these are questions that churches and pastors and laypeople should think about.

Is Google making us stupid? I'd answer that, but I've got some emails to write, a few blogs to read, a book to gut--would you excuse me?

Where Have All the (European) Babies Gone?

2008-06-30T13:38:00.001-07:00

This past weekend, the New York Times magazine featured a startling piece called, simply, "No Babies?" by writer Russell Shorto. The very long and engrossing article spans ten pages (in a web sense) and includes the following notable quotations and ideas.

The plummeting global birthrate--

"[A]round the world, even in developing countries, birthrates have plummeted — from 6.0 globally in 1972 to 2.9 today — as populations have shifted from rural areas to cities and people have adopted urban lifestyles, and the drop has perhaps lessened the urgency of the overpopulation cry."

Some said in the 1980s that the world was vastly and dangerously overpopulated. What the above comment notes, in typical understated highbrow fasion, is that this thesis was wrong on a massive scale. In fact, it would be fascinating to study this thesis to see if it had a discernable effect on the desiccated global birthrate. I would guess that it might have. I would further guess that it was used to enfranchise the selfish lifestyles of (perhaps) millions of people around the world in encouraging them, for the first time in trans-cultural history, to see children as a curse, not a blessing. If this is so, what bitter fruit this ideology has reaped.

The scale of this disastrous trend--

"To many, “lowest low” is hard evidence of imminent disaster of unprecedented proportions. “The ability to plan the decision to have a child is of course a big success for society, and for women in particular,” Letizia Mencarini, a professor of demography at the University of Turin, told me. “But if you would read the documents of demographers 20 years ago, you would see that nobody foresaw that the fertility rate would go so low. In the 1960s, the overall fertility rate in Italy was around two children per couple. Now it is about 1.3, and for some towns in Italy it is less than 1. This is considered pathological.”"

Again, in layman's terms, this translates to "cultural cataclysm." In other words, Europe is dying before our eyes. We are literally watching the slow, agonizing death of much of the Western world.

The dangers this trend poses--

The spiritual concerns aside, though, the main threats to Europe are economic. Alongside birthrate, the other operative factor in the economic equation is lifespan. People everywhere are living longer than ever, and lifespan is continuing to increase beyond what was once considered a natural limit.

Here the writer, Shorto, shows his worldview undergarments, so to speak. The chief cause and effect here involves economic rather than spiritual concerns. This is a classic move of leftist thought--to briefly acknowledge the spiritual dimension of life and then move hurriedly on to the really important stuff, the financial matters that truly drive life. Well, this is in reality a pretty bad idea, in the end. Why do people make economic decisions? Shorto makes much of the changing workplace in his article, and he attempts to argue that two-income families actually help birthrates to rise in many countries, over against the traditional logic that one-income families produce relatively more children. Why, though, do people choose to make the decisions they do? Do not spiritual concerns factor in heavily on this question? What good does it do Shorto and the rest of us to ignore the philosophical tides of nihilism and epicureanism that swept over Europe in the second half of the twentieth century? He ends up looking a bit silly for his refusal to take spirituality seriously, given the massive cultural shifts in twentieth-century European philosophical and religious thought.

On this quirky matter that two-income homes are actually better for birthrates, Shorto asserts that "even conservatives like Willetts acknowledge that societies that support working couples have higher birthrates than those in which mothers are housewives." He goes on to conclude rather triumphantly that "The old conservative argument — that a traditional, working-husband-and-stay-at-home-wife family structure produces a healthy, growing population — doesn’t apply, either in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world today." Hold your horses. It may well be that in certain countries that feature more two-income families, more children are birthed. But this does not answer all questions. For example, women in more egalitarian countries may have more babies than women in other societies merely because they are paid to do so. It may also be true that they have more babies because their husbands invest more in childcare, as Shorto suggests. But this discussion masks a larger point--women in Europe are not having babies, regardless of the structure of the home. There clearly is no major birthrate increase in more egalitarian countries. Furthermore, when the traditional model is itself suffused with selfishness in many quarters, as we can see, women do not want to have children, though they may be at home in the traditional manner.

Beyond this, much of the U. S., which Shorto cites as a "sparkling exception" to this trend, adheres to a decidedly traditional worldview. It's conservatives, in many cases, not liberals, who are having babies. This would seem to directly contradict one of the central assertions of this article.

The final word on the matter--

"When European women age 18 to 34 were asked in another study to state their ideal number of children, 16.6 percent of those in Germany and 12.6 percent in Austria answered “none.”"

This is a frightening situation, indicative of a wider, world-spanning movement that sees children as a curse. Though Shorto strongly concludes that America has fallen under no such spell, one wonders whether his research is accurate. All around us, people want to live for themselves, and not for their families, or on a much broader level, their societies. They want to do what they wish to do, not what is right and good to do as defined by tradition and, I would argue, biblically informed tradition. So many young people want nothing more than to chase their dreams and live narcissistic lives of self-indulgence. Of course, there are some out there who desperately want to have children but cannot for a variety of reasons (illness, singleness, etc.), but these people are more generally the exception, it seems.

Having a child is almost the fundamental good of the family (which is itself nearly the fundamental good of existence!). It is not, in the Bible, a mere option, one of a number of fun things to do if one wants. It is what married people do (when they can). Children are a blessing from the Lord (Psalm 127). Our culture and many others across the world believe the opposite, giving Christians the opportunity to demonstrate that we do not live for ourselves, first and foremost. We do not live to gratify our passing fancies. We live to do something much larger than this, to build something far greater than ourselves, to involve ourselves in the awesome task of physically and spiritually shaping the destiny of a living being we create, and of doing this not only for ourselves, but for our societies, and far, far beyond this, for our God. Having children, in the end, is not a box to check on a laundry list of entertainments; it is an act of worship that enters us into a work almost too great to comprehend and too awesome to carry out.

The Week-est Link, June 28, 2008

2008-06-28T11:53:00.000-07:00

1. Here's a PDF copy of the 9Marks eJournal I mentioned yesterday. It's on marriage and pastoral families. A terrific issue, as I said. Thanks, Z, for the note.

2. Did you miss the audio download from the 2008 Band of Bloggers session? If so, here it is. Some of the best commentary from Christians on blogging that I've heard.

3. A Nashville church recently hosted a conference on the church and theology. Speakers included D. A. Carson, Tim Challies, and Steve Lawson. The audio material looks tremendous. Download it and see your vision for the church expand before your eyes. So exciting to see churches, not seminaries, do this kind of thing!

4. If you are in the market for faith-building music that just happens to be elegantly played and beauitfully sung, check out Red Mountain Church's cd "Help My Unbelief." I recently downloaded it and love it.

--Have a great weekend, all.

New 9Marks eJournal on Marriage Is Online

2008-06-26T08:49:00.000-07:00

The new issue of 9Marks looks very helpful. It covers a variety of topics including marriage, being a pastor's wife, and books on marriage. I have a brief review of Danny Akin's book God on Sex in this issue. Here are a few highlighted resources from the latest journal.

This is a long list of evangelical books reviewed by a wide variety of contributors, including Tom Schreiner, David Powlison, Justin Taylor, and Jim Hamilton. This will be one of the best resources out there on the multiplicity of books on marriage. It's difficult to know what to buy and what to skip--read through the brief reviews for help (they're all less than 500 words).
A compilation by several pastors on "30 Practical Ways for Pastors to Love Their Wives and Families."
A thoughtful piece by CJ Mahaney on how the gospel influences masculine headship of families. Great selection from the piece: Gentlemen, here is a gift you can give to your wife this week. Set aside a few hours of uninterrupted time, and ask her to honestly evaluate your personal example of godliness and your leadership in the home. I dare you to ask her this question: Where do I need to grow in serving and leading you? For bonus points, ask this question: Where do I need to grow in serving and leading the children? This one conversation could initiate dramatic changes in your life.
A Schreiner review of N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope, which has made many theological waves.
A pastor's wives forum filled with helpful answers to honest questions about pastoral ministry. Not to be missed, especially for women preparing for this role.

There's much more to peruse and benefit from. Yet another excellent journal by 9Marks.

New Trends in Education That Really Aren't New

2008-06-25T16:01:00.000-07:00

Everything new is old again. So is the case in certain American schools, which are overturning sacred modern educational ideology by re-instituting special classes for below-average students. In "Holding Back Young Students: Is Program a Gift or a Stigma?", Winnie Hu briefly reports on this trend and shows how it is igniting a firestorm among educators who have long rejected the traditional idea that students should be, in some cases and in certain subjects, educated according to their intellectual level. Here's the current scene:

With the increasing emphasis on standardized testing over the past decade, large urban school systems have famously declared an end to so-called social promotion among youngsters lacking basic skills. Last year, New York flunked 6 percent of its first graders, and Chicago 7.7 percent.

Now the 8,400-student East Ramapo school district in this verdant stretch west of the Palisades is going further, having revived a controversial retention practice widely denounced in the 1980s to not only hold back nearly 12 percent of its first graders this spring but to segregate them in a separate classroom come fall.

Predictably, Hu blames this situation on the Left Behind Act, favorite whipping boy of many education professionals:

[W]ith the federal No Child Left Behind law and a battery of state mandates increasing pressure on schools to raise test scores, efforts to end the longtime practice of promoting children based on age rather than achievement have taken on new urgency. Districts in Milford, Del., and Lakeland, Fla., are among a handful nationwide that have been experimenting with transition classes in recent years, though both dropped them in the face of parental resistance and, in Florida, concerns among teachers.

Hu provides a very telling quote that reveals why so many contemporary teachers and educators buck against the more traditional system:

“I had a hard time putting just the low-achieving kids together,” said Betty Fitzgerald, principal of Lakeland’s Churchwell Elementary, which ran a separate class for repeating third graders for two years in response to tougher state standards. “It’s like saying, ‘You all are low kids, and you all didn’t pass.’ ”

Here's the central problem, then: self-esteem. It's not so much the bottom line--in this case, what students actually learn--but what students feel that drives the ideology of many contemporary educators and teachers. Now, I'm by no means in a hurry to put students in situations where they feel bad, but my first concern for students is not that they feel good, but that they learn. Funny how our system sometimes loses sight of this aim, which I believe it is intended, funded, and tasked to fulfill.

In the process of education, one often feels bad. I've always felt bad when I didn't do well in school. To this day, I hate getting bad grades. It's unpleasant, furthermore, to have to work hard on difficult subjects. I've currently got a ton of books to read for a PhD class. Is that pleasant in the same way that, say, a basketball game is? No sir. Definitely not. But is the process of reading multiple books on an academic topic hugely helpful to me? Absolutely. Were other self-esteem challenging, character-building educational exercises of similar help to my mind and heart? They certainly were. If difficult educational tasks are navigated with care and support from parents and teachers, great rewards will be reaped by many students (though in today's massive schools, one can understand how teachers and educators would struggle to provide the help many challenged students need--are many of our public schools, perhaps, far too large for their own good?)

Will today's students reap similar benefits, or will they suffer from a system that often seems to care more about their feelings than their minds?

You tell me.

A Feminist's Daughter Curses the Movement

2008-06-24T14:05:00.000-07:00

The daughter of feminist poet and writer Alice Walker, Rebecca Walker, penned a revealing piece in London's Daily Mail today (HT: Challies). The following quotations from the piece shed much light on the practical effects of feminist ideology. They are, in sum, quite tragic. Walker is not a Christian, and she lives with her child's father, but "How My Mother's Fanatical Views Tore Us Apart" is nonetheless worth reading.

How Walker's mother saw her--

I was 16 when I found a now-famous poem she wrote comparing me to various calamities that struck and impeded the lives of other women writers. Virginia Woolf was mentally ill and the Brontes died prematurely. My mother had me - a 'delightful distraction', but a calamity nevertheless. I found that a huge shock and very upsetting.

How sex was tied to empowerment in feminist ideology (and still is today)--

But the truth was I was very lonely and, with my mother's knowledge, started having sex at 13. I guess it was a relief for my mother as it meant I was less demanding. And she felt that being sexually active was empowering for me because it meant I was in control of my body.

Although I was on the Pill - something I had arranged at 13, visiting the doctor with my best friend - I fell pregnant at 14. I organised an abortion myself. Now I shudder at the memory. I was only a little girl. I don't remember my mother being shocked or upset. She tried to be supportive, accompanying me with her boyfriend.

Although I believe that an abortion was the right decision for me then, the aftermath haunted me for decades. It ate away at my self-confidence and, until I had Tenzin, I was terrified that I'd never be able to have a baby because of what I had done to the child I had destroyed. For feminists to say that abortion carries no consequences is simply wrong.

How Alice Walker mothered her child (or didn't)--

My mother was the polar opposite. She never came to a single school event, she didn't buy me any clothes, she didn't even help me buy my first bra - a friend was paid to go shopping with me. If I needed help with homework I asked my boyfriend's mother.

Rebecca Walker's assessment of the leaders of the feminist movement--

Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating.

But far from taking responsibility for any of this, the leaders of the women's movement close ranks against anyone who dares to question them - as I have learned to my cost. I don't want to hurt my mother, but I cannot stay silent. I believe feminism is an experiment, and all experiments need to be assessed on their results. Then, when you see huge mistakes have been paid, you need to make alterations.

I hope that my mother and I will be reconciled one day. Tenzin deserves to have a grandmother. But I am just so relieved that my viewpoint is no longer so utterly coloured by my mother's.

I am my own woman and I have discovered what really matters - a happy family.

Courtney Tarter, a student at Southern Seminary, reflects eloquently on the piece at GenderBlog: "When women completely deny their God-given right and ability to bear children we are seeing a complete giving over to the desires of the flesh (Romans 1). To see children as a burden to be thrown off is a reversal of the created order and a sinful repression of the desire that probably once burned bright. It should make us weep for them." Amen to that.

Comments on God Delighting in Small (New England) Churches

2008-06-23T14:38:00.000-07:00

From Paul Buckley in Methuen, MA (check out his excellent, Christ-exalting blog)--

"I pastor a Sovereign Grace Ministries Church in New England, King of Grace Church. Thanks for your encouraging post! Pastoring in New England has been a wonderful adventure of learning to glory in Christ and the precious folks he does give us and not in our relative church size. It is one thing to say I am pastoring for God's glory, it is another to be tested with small success yet still labor. There are many here as Josh said who have labored faithfully for years (far beyond mine). They are my heroes.

I trust their faithful prayers and labors will indeed be answered in time with new converts, new church plants and a region full of disciples who will surpass them in zeal, knowledge and faithfulness. We intend to labor for Christ and His glory regardless of outcome yet we continue to ask for a greater harvest."

From Mike Freeman in Ohio (formerly of Maine)--

"Having grown up in a Maine small church, I agree with Owen. Additionally, I have labored as a lay youth leader for the past six years at at a church in southwest Ohio. I can say with certainty that the folks in Maine, by and large, "get it." In Ohio, the bible belt, many people go to church because that's what you are supposed to do- even fundamental evangelical churches. In Maine, most people don't go to church; the ones that do come actually seem to want to be there."

Are there other pastors out there who want to comment on the original blog I wrote? I would love more testimony on what it is like to pastor a small church and how you handle it.

To my knowledge, this subject is not often talked about. Small churches are something of the elephant in the room in many evangelical circles. We all know they're there (in large numbers), but as our environment is suffused with notions of success and grandiosity, we don't want to talk about them much or really even acknowledge they're around. We'd much rather talk about the "success stories" than the churches who are, in their quest for faithfulness, achieving a certain numerical mediocrity.

This (extended) blog is no attempt to demonize large churches. Far, far from it. I give thanks to God for large churches that are faithful to the gospel. God often uses them in special ways. God blesses many, many people through them. For Bethlehem and Covenant Life and other churches of similar size and gospel focus, I am thankful to God. But we must not think that these churches alone are faithful and glorifying to God. If our definition of God's glory is measured along metric lines, we are surely off. If faithfulness must in some way equal numerical prosperity, we are certainly wrong. The very message of the Bible is that God takes pleasure in the few. God, unlike men, does not need recognizable size and prosperity--in terms of His followers--to be delighted. The message of the Bible is that God loves His people. He loves the few. He loves the remnant. He delights in the faithful, self-sacrificial lives of His people. It is not massive size that He searches the earth for. He searches it for faithfulness.

The Bible is rife with stories that support this basic idea. Try it out--test this theme out. Read through your Bible, and see how often God delights in a people who are small in number but great in devotion. See how little emphasis there is on the mere size of things. Tiny Israel, puny David, Gideon's 300, the faithful remnant, the mustard seed, the scattered disciples, the overmatched apostles, the slain martyrs--this is just a tiny selection of biblical matters that show with clarity the joy God takes in the few. In so many of these things, in fact, it is God's explicit design for His numbers to be small.

When a church is small, then, we must not rush to feel bad for it, or wonder what has gone wrong, or contrive many ways to fix it. Perhaps change is needed. But it may well be that God is delighting in the small size of the congregation, taking joy in their gathered worship, smiling as they evangelize and celebrate His supper and struggle to fill an oversized room. Knowing God's character from the Bible, wouldn't it be just like Him to do so?

The Week-est Link, June 20, 2008: New England Pastors

2008-06-20T08:45:00.001-07:00

1. I don't know if you saw this from a few days back, but a New England pastor named Josh left a moving comment on my blog about small churches. Here it is in its entirety:

"I am a New England pastor, and I would wholeheartedly agree with your assessment. The pastors in my association are good men who devote a lot of time to their people. Most of us are bi-vocational, because our churches are too small to pay us full-time. Were any of us to go to other parts of the U.S., we would probably see more tangible results because of the myriad differences in culture. However, we are doing what we can up here to fulfill the commissions given to us. To say that results are the measure of success, instead of fidelity to the Gospel, is probably well-meant but really quite wrong. Results cannot be the be-all end-all for churchmen if our ministries are to be cruciform."

An elegant testimony, and a true one. Thank you, Josh (I don't know him to my knowledge) for commenting. Are there any other New Englanders who want to chip in? Or, is there anyone else out there who labors in a small church as a layman or pastor who would like to comment? I'd love to get your thoughts.

2. My buddy Jed Coppenger, a PhD student in Systematic Theology at Southern Seminary, wrote a stirring tribute to his dad about ten days ago. Read it both to enjoy Jed's reflections and to shape a little bit of your vision for your own family and the families in your churches.

3. An interesting piece from a New Yorker blog about how Barack Obama failed to act with chivalry toward Hillary Clinton during their debates.

4. Get Coldplay's "Parachutes" album for a stunning $1.99. Thanks, Vitamin Z, for the link.

5. Are you weary in your faith? Do you need some music to lift you up? Then pick up Sovereign Grace Music's new cd "Come Weary Saints". You will find several tunes that encourage you and direct you to the promises of God. The first song, "Hide Away in the Love of Jesus", is alone worth the price of the album. It is literally one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. Click the link to hear lengthy samples of the songs.

Have a great weekend, all.

Dever and Packer on the Importance of Penal Substitution

2008-06-19T13:49:00.000-07:00

The following quotations are from the latest Crossway "Book Report" (HT: JT). They include very helpful statements. Of course, these statements only scratch the surface of the topics covered. If you want to read more about the current state of atonement theory and the biblical case for penal substitution as the central motif of New Testament atonement theory, I would heartily recommend both In My Condemned He Stood by Packer and Dever and Pierced for Our Transgressions by Brits Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach. Both were published very recently by Crossway, and both will prove very helpful in understanding contemporary debates and a robust biblical conception of atonement.

Here are the questions and answers from the "Book Report".

Crossway Books: What are some current objections to the doctrine of substitionary atonement?

J. I. Packer (JIP): One stream of thought claims that God’s holy, just nature does not require any form of propitiation at all. Another claims that for God to expose, and indeed direct, his Son to suffer as a substitute for sinners would be divine child abuse.

MD: Many critics have even suggested that we proponents of penal substitution are trashing all other views, or at least ignoring them. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book on the atonement which does that. Their argument is, I think, theological caricature. The truth is that there’s a soundly biblical and logically compelling case for considering various biblical images of the atonement, and that the image of penal substitution is legitimately considered central. That is a more subtle argument, and Jim Packer makes it superbly in this book.

Crossway Books: You coin the term “anti-redemptionism” as that which the church is up against today. What exactly is anti-redemptionism?

JIP: It’s the view that God forgives or ignores our sins without requiring their punishment. It was the Father’s wisdom to make his incarnate Son our representative substitute who endured the punishment due to us. Liberal Christianity regularly denies this.

MD: One simple way to understand it is the view that people are basically okay, and that we don’t have to have anything quite as dramatic as redemption to fix what needs fixing. Because no name exists for the unorthodoxy we have in view in this book, we labeled it anti-redemptionism. Its essence is sidelining—and in some cases actually denying—the work of Jesus Christ as our Redeemer, who did all that had to be done to save us from hell, in favor of the idea of Jesus as teacher, model, and pioneer of godliness.

If these quotations pique your interest, and I hope they do, consider purchasing these books, and enhancing your own view of the atonement vis a vis the attacks on penal substitution. You might not know it, but many professing evangelicals today question strongly the idea that penal substitution is the central atonement motif in the New Testament. In such times, we need good resources like those Crossway is providing, both to teach us and to keep the church centered on this most central of scriptural teachings.

Does God, Perhaps, Delight in the Small?

2008-06-18T14:04:00.000-07:00

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

--Matthew 7:13-14

I think that God delights in the small.

--Mark Dever, June 2008

Ministry in New England is notoriously difficult. I was recently talking with my father about this. In a place where faithful Christians often see very little fruit produced from their evangelistic and ecclesial efforts, discouragement can come easily. I've been challenged to pray hard for the pastors and churches of New England, knowing that they face a hard road of ministry.

Most churches in New England are very small. Many see very few people come to Christ, even over the span of decades. There's little triumphalism in this region, little sense that if things shift just a little bit, the culture wars will be won. The church is not about to win the culture wars in New England. It is a city on a hill, but it is a city that few choose to visit, and most choose to ignore. It is not that the majority of pastors and churches of the area are strategically challenged, or lacking in passion, or outdated in methodology. Many Christians pour themselves into their churches and give sacrificially of their time and energy to advance the kingdom and preach the gospel. Many Christians pray ardently for their towns and cities and yearn for their families and friends to come to Christ. Most of these Christians see little visible fruit from their efforts, few desired answers to their prayers. To be a Christian in New England is, in short and in general, to live a life of frustration. One must continually go back to the promises of God for encouragement. Otherwise, one will grow discouraged and lose faith and confidence in the power and goodness of God. In New England Christianity, discouragement comes easily.

Some of this discouragement is natural. Some of it, though, comes from a culture within American Christianity in which it is assumed that large congregational size is an unquestionably sure sign of God's blessing. In the same way that many Americans seek grandiose riches and oversized homes as a symbol of fundamental life achievement, many Christian Americans seek massive churches and oversized congregations as a symbol of fundamental providential achievement. Put more simply, we don't want to be small. No one in America wants to be small. We want to be large. Large equals blessing, achievement, status, respect, validation that cannot be taken away. Once our business--or church, or college, or denomination, or home, or wallet, or car, or whatever--gets large, then we'll never have to look stupid and insignificant. We'll never be a nobody again. We'll be someone, and no one will be able to take that away from us. We will win our significance, and we will never lose it.

There's a fundamental biblical problem with such thinking: it's not what God tells us will be the case with Christianity in its cultural forms. There is certainly room for exceptions in passages like Matthew 7:13-14, but the general rule is that Christianity will be marked throughout history as a religion of the few. Now, someone out there is saying that Christianity has had the most adherents of any religion throughout history. That's likely true. But with a few exceptions, the number of truly converted, biblically concerned and faithful Christians in any given culture has been small. Yes, Europe existed in a state of Christendom for hundreds of years, and yes, America was founded in part by Christians, and sure, some countries today have large populations of evangelical Christians, but by and large, Christians are and have been the decided minority in the countries and civilizations of the world. The remnant, not the reigning, has been the rule.

Christ's words in Matthew seven, then, ring very, very true. Though we should believe passionately and actionably in God's desire to save many, yet the fundamental reality of Christianity is that few will believe in it. Few, in the end, will be saved. This idea rubs harshly against our success-obsessed American culture in which size is legitimacy, no, size is existence. So many evangelicals want so desperately to see people saved, a desire that is genuine, but they also want to be culturally significant. We don't want to be weird and small and cultish, like the kid on the playground nobody wants to talk to. We want to see people saved--we earnestly and passionately do--but we also want to be a cool kid. For too many of us, it's not enough that we are accepted by God. We want also to be accepted by man. Our thinking, our methodology, even our understanding of the Bible itself is regularly driven by such a concern.

When a Christian lives in a largely pagan culture, though, such notions--which all of us fall prey to in some form, myself included--are easily scrubbed away. The focus becomes not getting people saved and glorifying God through the life of the church and attaining impressive size and cultural legitimacy, but getting people saved and glorifying God through the life of the church. This is not to idealize the church in New England or any other paganized region. Christians in these places certainly have their struggles and weaknesses, lack of vision and passion sometimes among them. It is to say, though, that in such places the temptation to work hard for cultural legitimacy is strongly diminished. It does not disappear, but it is by necessity diminished. When you labor faithfully in gospel ministry for 25 years and see five people come to Christ, you acquire a different economy of scale in your faith. Of course, it is no bad thing at all to pray for growth and work for growth and think strategically and act with great faith and vision. These are the right things to do. But they must not become ends in themselves. If they do, they will fail in places where God's Spirit is not granting new life to the lost.

This certainly sounds morose and sad. But here's the thing: what if God does not merely tolerate the small, or put up with it while other ecclesial investments flourish? What if God--in a way that is very difficult for our American senses to comprehend--actually delights in the small? What if the thirty-person church in New Hampshire (or South Carolina, or Oregon, or Zaire, or Siberia) actually brings Him great joy? What if, unlike so many of our American peers, God isn't ashamed by the little church, but is delighted by it? Maybe He doesn't look sternly at the pastor of the little church, wondering when he's going to get his act together and grow his church. Maybe He looks lovingly on Him, joyful that he is obeying His Word, evangelizing his area, building up his people in the faith week by week, year by year. I don't claim to speak for God, and I certainly cannot comprehend His mind. But as I search the Scripture, it seems to me that perhaps it is true that God delights in the small.

My mind was led to this track by a comment I heard pastor Mark Dever make a little while back. As I've reflected on Mark's offhand comment, I've considered it in light of my future pastoral ministry, if the Lord does indeed give it. Will I be happy if my church is small and my baptisms are low? Will I grow depressed and angry? Will I snap at my wife and ignore my children and work strenuously to drive up my church's numbers? I pray that I won't. But because I'm a sinner, and an American sinner, I see the potential for such behavior. At this juncture in my life, though, I want to avoid it.

I want to embrace the biblical reality that Christianity will often be small, often marginalized, often ignored, often hated. In spots, it will win huge acceptance. In most, it will not. Some churches will legitimately and by God's grace become very large in number and use this size for God's glory. Most will not. Most New England churches will not, I would guess (though I cannot know). Most New England pastors will labor for year upon year and see few people come to Christ. Most New England congregations will survive budgetarily but rarely flourish. If this is indeed true, is this a sign of failure? It could be, I suppose. But it also could be a reflection of biblical teaching. The hearts of men are hard, and in God's providence and mysterious plan, they are harder in some places than others. New England is such a place at this time.

Yet though our consciences and minds tell us otherwise, perhaps this situation is no stain on God's robe, no embarrassment to His reputation. Perhaps it is, in a way quite inscrutable to us, a joy to Him. Perhaps He loves the little and delights in the small. If so (and I think it is so), what an encouragement to the church of any region and country that is small and struggling. Christians in such places need to work hard and not lose faith. They need to pray for great things and attempt great works for God. But in the midst of difficult and even "unsuccessful" ministry, they need to remember the great love of God, and to find their identity not in their numbers, but in the delight of God which graces their ministries and stamps their lives.

Preaching Christ from All of Scripture? Bryan Chappell Shows the Way

2008-06-17T16:01:00.001-07:00

I came across a great link at a site I love, Monergism.com, which has just about anything and everything you could ever want related to reformed theology. Turns out that Dr. Bryan Chapell has had Covenant Seminary post all of his lectures (with PDFs!) on Christ-centered preaching. Here's the blurb on the lectures, which are free (!):

"Dr. Bryan Chapell explores the unifying principle of grace that binds all Scripture together. He outlines and demonstrates the principles and practice of sermon crafting and delivery to illuminate the message of grace in each passage, and to submit it to God's Spirit for the transformation of lives through preaching."

It sounds like this is Covenant's preaching class; I could be wrong on this. If there's a Covenant Seminary student out there who has chanced upon this blog, please feel free to comment and let us know. Whatever the case, I think that you'll find this a manifestly helpful resource in figuring out how to preach the Bible per the conditions Christ gave in Luke 24:44-47. This is not an easy subject to figure out, and one can easily go overboard in one's typology (identifying shadow images of Christ in the people, ideas, institutions, and things of the Old Testament), and so it is great to have a gifted, godly expositor like Dr. Chapell dig deeply into this matter. I hope that these links help you to preach Christ from the Word.

Also, Chappell has authored a very fine text on preaching. Click here to order Christ-Centered Preaching. I've worked through it and found it quite helpful on this subject. There are lots of drawbacks to the Internets, but there are also many clear strengths. Having great resources like this out there for free is most definitely one of the strengths.

An Eloquent and Inspiring Call for Mercy by Kay Warren

2008-06-16T15:07:00.000-07:00

I recently came across a piece by Kay Warren, wife of megachurch pastor Rick Warren, in Christianity Today. Though I would not agree with all that Warren stands for, I was quite moved by her accounts of recent visits to people in desperate situations in the Ukraine. Here are some moving selections from her article "Talk and Walk":

"People newly diagnosed with HIV come to this hospital for further tests. In one room, a man sat aloof, barely acknowledging our presence. Another man angrily denounced his government's weak response to people with HIV. Anatoly, a local pastor, invited me to this hospital and we listened as the angry man talked about his two-year-old boy with HIV. (This means the mother in the family is almost certainly HIV-positive.) In silence, we grieved together over the uncertain future of this family.
In the next room, two young women sat on neatly made metal beds, apprehensive at our unannounced arrival. One pretty blonde, 23, told us she had been diagnosed for a month. To look at her, you would never know she was ill."

The writing is dramatic, but so is the experience. Here's more:

"Pastor Gennady resembles a swashbuckling movie hero—tall and handsome, with energetic hands he distributes bear hugs and high fives to children passing in the hallways. These precious children once lived on the streets; their arms are scarred by needle tracks from drug addiction. Twenty percent are HIV-positive. Pastor Gennady is known for blatantly grabbing street kids from their hideouts. He offers them safety, detox, and nourishment for soul and body.

Late that day, I joined him in a surprise visit to a basement under a large apartment complex. He had heard that a street boy there was about to die. The entryway into the basement was a hazardous crawl, down a metal ladder hanging onto the wall by a few screws, into inky darkness. As I climbed down slowly, my eyes adjusted. I could see the exposed electrical wires, pipes dripping waste, empty syringes, discarded foil cards that held tramadol (their drug of choice), and dead rats.

The glimpse of wretchedness was enough to smash my heart yet again. In the middle of this, I caught a glimpse of another reality—a local church pastor being the hands and feet of Jesus to someone who perhaps had never personally experienced the love of Christ."

I cannot say that I have easy answers for the questions that revolve around "mercy ministry" to unbelievers. Should local churches invest significant amounts of time and money in it? Should they leave it to individuals to do it? What does the New Testament direct us to do on this question? Should we consider "mercy ministry" to be a form of evangelism? Is this the best way to reach out to the lost in our era? Or is it a distraction from evangelism? These are difficult questions to answer, particularly in light of the fact that the New Testament has to be carefully handled on this matter (as on so many others).

I can say this, though: I am profoundly impacted and challenged by work like that of the Ukrainian pastors. As a person who loves the ministry of words, I am challenged by those who selflessly and sacrificially give themselves to a ministry of deeds. I do not have the answers for the above questions at this time, and I do not endorse all that Rick or Kay Warren teach and practice, but I can say that I am challenged by their example and the example of many other faithful Christians whose names I do not know to be a merciful presence in a world of sin and sickness. Somehow, in some way, I know that I need to have such a heart, and that I need to have such a ministry, however much it causes me to shrink back from its call and claims.

The Week-est Link, June 13, 2008

2008-06-14T07:07:00.000-07:00

1. Desiring God has a nice blog post from rapper Trip Lee that is worth reading.

2. Very interesting biography on late twentieth-century evangelicalism. I cannot wait to read this one.

3. Some great music from Sovereign Grace that you may not have heard about. Buy and be encouraged in your walk with the Lord.

Have a great weekend!

The Spirituality of Sin: Greed

2008-06-11T12:18:00.000-07:00

A greedy man stirs up strife, but the one who trusts in the LORD will be enriched.

--Proverbs 28:25

If the root of flattery is a lack of trust in God, I think that the root of greed is also a lack of trust in God. Why do we hoard our possessions and store them up selfishly? Greed. Why would we act in such a way? Because we don't trust God to provide for us in the future. We somehow convince ourselves that God is not going to bless us in the future, and so we hoard what we have. Greed produces parsimony, or a lack of generosity. At the root of stinginess, then, is greed; at the root of greed is a lack of trust in God.

You can tell whether you trust God by measuring how generous you are. No one would define generosity by foolishness, of course, that is, by a level of giving that is heedless of the future. It's biblically wise to invest what you have, to save for a rainy day, as the saying goes (or to save for a rainy day in which your children go to college). However, there's wise saving, and there's parsimonious saving. Those who give very little show that they don't fundamentally trust God to provide. The combination of inherent sin and Satan's temptation causes them to come to the illogical conclusion that though God has richly provided in the past, for some inexplicable and sudden reason, His provision has now dried up, and there is subsequently no reason to trust Him for the future. This is a sad and unbiblical way to live.

The center of our lives is God, and trust in Him. If we remember that faith in God is the great gift of this life, then we will avoid idolizing the blessings He has given us. By this I mean that if our understanding of God is small, the things we have will grow large, and we'll try to hang onto them by whatever means we can. If, however, our picture of God is large, and if Christ is our chief treasure in life, and we define happiness by the gift of faith in Christ given us by the Holy Spirit, then we'll hold our possessions and our finances lightly. We won't do so, as I said above, by foolishly pious, thinking that we have no need of planning or saving. But we will balance our wise living with a robust faith in God that trusts Him to provide for us in the future. Armed with such a robust trust, we'll free ourselves from the clutches of greed and allow ourselves to give generously to our churches, our families, our missionaries, our parachurch ministries, and others who can benefit from the blessings God has given us.

How much do you and I trust God? Well, how much do we give? We say that we have strong faith in God. But what shape does that faith take? Does it purport to be faith but end up looking and smelling like anxiety and, in the end, greed? To what ends does the sin of our hearts drive us? These are hard questions, and we will all see sin in how we answer them, but we can all work toward a position of trusting faith that frees us from greed to give generously. If God is our chief prize, and not the things of this earth, how can we not find great joy in generosity, knowing that whatever may come, we have a gift we cannot lose?

The Spirituality of Sin: Flattery

2008-06-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

Save, O LORD, for the godly one is gone; for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man. Everyone utters lies to his neighbor; with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.

--Psalms 12:1-2

Recent days have prompted thought on the nature of sin. What is it, exactly, that induces us to obey our sin nature and to commit transgression against the Lord? I've attempted to think about this in relation to sins that plague my own heart.

Before I go any further, let me first say this: I am a flatterer. The language we choose to describe our sin shapes the way we understand that sin. Instead of saying, "Sometimes I flatter" or "I can sometimes be a flatterer", I have found that I best target the sin of my heart by identifying myself by my sin. Sometimes I commit the sin of flattery; therefore, I am a flatterer. That's it. That's all there is to it. Labeling myself in this way helps me to avoid compartmentalizing my sin (though I still fall prey to compartmentalizing--ergo, I'm a compartmentalizer, too!). I'm not this pristine person who occasionally slips into flattery. I'm a sinner through and through whose sin takes shape in the form of flattery.

I find that admitting this to myself is helpful in turning away from my sin. I can't simply jump to consideration of the wonder of Christ's atoning work when I am justly shamed for my sin. No, I need to allow myself to feel the weight of my sin, to offer confession whenever possible to the Lord. In seeking humility and restoration, it is of course best to give the fullest, most heartfelt confession possible. This necessarily involves me calling myself what I am--a sinner whose sin takes definitive shapes and forms. I'm not merely a sinner, after all; I'm a sinner with certain predilections and weaknesses. If all we ever own up to is "being a sinner", then we're not going to get very far in the way of honesty and humility and true confession and gospel restoration.

With all that said, let me say that I think that I flatter people because I don't trust God's providential power. In other words, I flatter people because I think that in order for good things to happen in my life, I've got to make them happen. One of the best ways to make things happen and to get ahead in the world is to heap praise on people who are in positions to help you. It's not a real complicated matter, and it's as old as stone. Smooth things out with the tongue so you walk an easy path. This is a common practice among sinful man, to disingenuously push himself forward by the power of his "flattering lips" and "double tongue" as the Psalmist so evocatively puts it in the above quotation. Sadly, even when people become Christians, they still sin against God by heaping unnecessary praise on others for the purpose of saving their own skin and beating others at their own game.

This is especially true in today's Christian celebrity culture, replete with famous authors and speakers and professors and presidents. For the smooth-tongued among us, it's easy to lie--however gently--to get ahead, to cozy up to people in order to jump off of their backs. Instead of trusting God to direct our paths and bestow what blessings he would give us, many of us talking types drop praise every chance we can get in order to make good and get ahead. It's sad to see others do this, and I have seen a good bit of it in my young years. It's even sadder to catch oneself doing it, and to realize, "I am a flatterer." Those are harsh words. Harsh because they're true.

So what do you do if you're a flatterer? Well, it's pretty simple. You trust God. You live a godly, assertive life but you live it without constantly keeping an eye on yourself and your peers. You try to discern as best you can from Scripture, prayer, counsel, and your intuition what it is that you should do in life for God's glory, and then you do it. But you do so without fretting over all the blessings your friends and fellow workers are getting. You do so without constantly taking stock of your life and then allowing yourself to slip into anxiety because you're not where your ambition tells you you should be. You live assertively and wisely, attempting to take what dominion you can in the world, but you do so with your foot on the brake, staying ready to stop yourself if you sense anxiety and a lack of trust in God to take you where He wants you to go.

The funny thing about all this is that it seems to me that God often lets us flatter and sin to get what we want. Just because you don't do things the right way doesn't mean God doesn't still bless your life. But this kind of achievement pales in comparison to that which is had through trust and faith. If you live aggressively, with sinful ambition fueling your flattery and other trustless acts, you may still get a lot. You might "win" in the game of life, and you might do so as a Christian. But you'll do it in your own strength, on your own time, and at the end, you'll celebrate with your own self. In your planning, God was left behind a while ago. The rewards of the works of your hands didn't come through steady trust and persevering, patient faith. They came through flattery and ambition, the same tools the faithless man of Psalm 12 uses to get ahead in this alien world.

I'm not writing to get anyone specifically, except myself. I know by the grace of God that I'm a flatterer. I know that I often don't trust God to bless and lead me and my family. I can see these things, and increasingly, I can see their ugliness. I'm not backing away a hair from godly assertiveness and kingdom ambition, but I want to distance myself by a thousand miles from my double tongue and the double-minded heart that engineers it. Perhaps you're like me. Perhaps you can see this sin in yourself and the lack of trust that propels it. If you are, pray for yourself and your fellow Christian flatterers. At every chance you get, trust God to lead you. We'll all struggle sometimes to balance godly assertiveness and ungodly ambition, and that's okay. That's how life is--decisions don't come gift-wrapped with five-step directions.

Be accountable to your church, pray for growth, and wherever you can, flex the muscle of faith. Let that double tongue go limp. Maybe then you and I will bring back the faithful to the land--the faithful, of course, being not someone else, some other sinner, but ourselves.

The Housing Preferences of "Gen Y", and What They Tell Us

2008-06-09T13:55:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about having a blog that your family and friends know about is having good links sent to you. My eagle-eyed mother-in-law directed me to a great story in the Charleston Post and Courier by Stacy Downs called "Gen Y in a Rush for Change in New Home Style". It can be pretty difficult to track an entire generation of people, but there are definite trends and themes one can pick up if one looks hard (or has one's mother-in-law looking hard for one!).

Here's the key quotation from the article, which includes an interview with three members of "Gen Y" (the second answer is the most interesting):

Q: Many Gen Y'ers grew up in McMansions. Is your parents' big house your dream house?

Colin: No. I want a smaller space so it's easier to take off and go. A house that's low-maintenance is good. Generation Y traveled a lot in college and will continue to do so through life, so a big yard isn't a plus, either.

Townsend: No. I think that seeing so many of our generation's parents divorce makes us understand that family togetherness is important. So as we start having kids you will see us avoid homes with a living room, family room and finished basement rec room in favor of open-plan homes where the family can share space.

The matter of note in this second response by "Townsend" is the shift in desired architectural style. This young man, Ryan Townsend, wants a home in which the entire family is compelled to be together by the very shape of the house. The style of home of recent decades in which various rooms draw various family members holds little pull for Townsend and at least some of his peers. Many of us have seen and grown up in homes in which the family was separated according to the function of rooms. The kids' play area is in the basement, and so the kids go down there, away from the influence and presence of their parents. The parents stay upstairs, dad watching the big tv in his living room, mom bustling around, perhaps in the kitchen. It is this kind of social segmentation that Townsend and others are rebelling against. These young people see a direct link between architecture and family cohesiveness, and they want to restore this link, believing it to have been broken in recent modes of the family.

I don't know if you're tracking here, but this sidenote, buried in a short article in the Home & Garden section of a Charleston newspaper, is revealing. It shows us the deficiency of the modern mindset. Where once families were (forced) together by the small size of their homes, many modern parents intentionally structured their dwellings to separate the different members of the family. How interesting that this architectural decision mirrored and shaped the larger social patterns regarding the family. It is clear from the rise of the divorce culture and the fracturing of the traditional family in the last forty years that life has mirrored architecture. Where the family once lived together, played together, and slept together--literally in the same room, an unthinkable notion for most Americans--now we do our daily business in isolation. As with so many social trends, it is not clear how much this architectural trend drove the dissolution of the American family, and how much of it was merely a reflection of the dissolution. These chicken-and-egg questions are tough to sleuth. I'm guessing that the two worked hand-in-hand to fundamentally reshape the traditional model of the family.

Whatever the answer, it is clear that "Generation Y" is not bereft of common grace, as it sometimes seems to be in the portraits painted by social commentators. Many of this generation have seen the marriages of their parents crumble. They do not want the same. This reality has so shaped them that they will alter their lives in the most basic ways in order to give their own families the best chance of unity and cohesiveness. All is not lost with the current generation of youngsters (my peers). As with every generation, there are signs of darkness, and signs of common grace. Though their parents might have the cars, the homes, the nice jobs, and all the trappings of conspicuous consumerism that signal high status in our land, the twentysomethings of today know the reality behind these trappings. Many of the "McMansions" that so many of us so easily covet have none of the heart that one finds in the humbler domiciles of the land. This is a lesson for us to read and learn from. The exterior, however eye catching it may be, does not tell the full story. In a world in which riches so easily ensnare, it often covers over a multitude of sins.

The other major lesson here is, interestingly enough, architectural. Simply put, how you structure your home matters. You might not think that, but Mr. Townsend has a point, a great one in fact. He's seen something very basic, so basic, in fact, that most of us would overlook it altogether. The home's structure will naturally shape the life of the family living inside of it. If you lay out your home in such a way as to cordon off family members from one another, that is likely what you will get. Your kids may well grow distant from you. Dad and mom may pursue their own interests and spend less time together. It seems that one of the very best things a family can do to grow close and glorify God together is to, well, be together. Not real complex, is it?

There is something profound that happens when people occupy the same space. They learn to love one another, to quickly resolve conflict, to work together, to talk to one another, to share stories, to work out life's difficulties, to fashion character by quickly and unselfishly forgiving one another, to pitch in and help with household duties, to listen and subordinate one's narcissistic urges to dominate the conversation, all under the watchful eye and direction of dad and mom. Isn't this what the "experts" are always telling us about family meals--that simply eating together is incredibly helpful for healthy rearing of children and cultivation of togetherness? How shocking. It's not therapy and individuality and fanatical devotion to outside pursuits that strengthens the family--it's simply being together, spending time with one another, allowing dad and mom to shepherd their children and the children to interact and grow in a safe and loving environment. It seems that the traditional family structure, however outdated and simplistic it may appear to our twenty-first century eyes, had a great deal of its theory right.

A final note of application concerns our church buildings and how we structure them. Are they set up to encourage fellowship? Or are they split into a thousand sundry classrooms and boardrooms? Is there a large chunk of common area for people to get together and talk? Or have we so segmented our buildings that people find it impossible to get together? One of the best things about my alma mater was that it had a massive quad that drew students like flies and that encouraged the entire campus community to gather in a common place. Many of our church buildings would benefit from a similar design, I think.

Who would have thought that the way we structure our homes will radically direct the quality of our families? On this matter, the "Ys" clearly have it--if we would seek a healthy home, we've got to structure it accordingly. The structure of the building will shape the quality of the home--and we're not talking about the shutters and stairways, but the relationships and experiences.

The Week-est Link, June 6, 2008: 9Marks Video and the Coldplay Record

2008-06-06T09:32:00.000-07:00

1. Go here to watch the new 9Marks promotional video. Everything 9Marks puts out is provocative, and even their promo videos fit the bill.

2. Speaking of provocative 9Marks material, here's an interesting blog post by Mark Dever on the use of video in worship. Some will disagree, some will agree, all should find some stuff to chew on.

3. Vitamin Z has a link to the new Coldplay album. If you click on it, you can hear the record in its entirety. I've heard a couple of songs, and it sounds unique and inventive.

That's about it for now. The Link is slowing down a bit in the summer, but I'm still here for you, trying to find gems for your summer consumption.

Have a great weekend!

The Celtics, the Lakers, and Some Thoughts on the State of the NBA and its Narcissistic Stars

2008-06-05T16:33:00.000-07:00

Tonight at 9:30pm, the Celtics and Lakers begin competition for the NBA championship. For those who don't know, this is a renaissance of basketball, one that hearkens back some two decades to the glory days of the NBA, when Larry Bird worked his Hoosier magic and Magic Johnson (an overrated player--but then again, I am from Maine, and thus a diehard Celtics fan) roamed the court.

(Side note: one of the funniest things about sports is the ridiculous concept of "history." History, for sports and the sports marketing machine, extends about fifty years back. That which is truly ancient, occurring in realms almost inconceivable to the modern mind, happened between 60-100 years ago. Much of what drives this truncated view of history is the fact that modern sports are closely linked with television. Television is notorious for developing an undernourished version of history--History Channel excluded, of course--in which events barely two decades old are seen as almost comically passe. History, friends, is the realm of things that stretch back centuries, millenia, not merely decades! But alas, I am a wannabe historian, and these things irk me.

Side note continued: If you think I'm on a jag here, just consider my words after you've watched the hundredth commercial or halftime spot recalling the "glory days" of twenty years past, replete with slow motion footage and mystical voiceover. This little side note won't change anything, of course. However, it may free one watcher, one lonely viewer, from the absolutely hilarious conception of history common to television, marketers, and those for the twain meets. Histrionics concluded.)

Okay, with all that said, if you're interested in the game, read this hilarious Bill Simmons column on it. Bill Simmons writes for ESPN, he's not a Christian to my knowledge, he can be irreverent, but he's quite insightful on the game and frequently witty in the extreme. If you're going to follow the series, he'll give you a good briefing on the match-up.

For my part, I am ready for the NBA finals. Really--I've been preparing. Meditation, balancing exercises, that sort of thing. Why? Because the NBA finals offer a level of over-heated, self-serving entertainment of the kind rarely glimpsed in the mortal realm. NBA athletes are far and away the best in the world. They possess a collection of skill, dexterity, strength, size, and grace that is unmatched by any other class of sportsmen. However, with this burden of talent comes a burden of ego. There is no one like the NBA superstar. The world exists to drool over him, throw money at him, applaud him til all palms are red, all while he preens and pouts and whines and machinates and ruminates before television commercials about his barely comprehensible greatness. There are a (very) few exceptions to this rule, but most of the NBA superstars and stars and even normal role players one watches are highly skilled not only in the art of basketball, but the discipline of relentless, unimpedable narcissistic self-obsession.

However, they are extremely fun to watch, if you can just ignore the histrionics, attention-grabbing disorders, and general interest in self-promotion.

When overseas recently, I watched some rugby, which was quite fun. Rugby players are talented athletes, and they play before thousands, and they have their own brand of machinations, but theirs come nowhere near those of NBA players. Rugby players work hard, work together, and when they succeed, they briefly celebrate with their teammates and then move on. As one who admittedly loves the grace and skill of the NBA, it was a pleasure to watch the character and team-oriented play of the rugby players. There was no Lebron James out there, no player who seemed to have become a demigod in his eyes and the eyes of those who follow him. The rugby game was sport as it should be: competitive, fun, skillful, and team-oriented, not individual-exalting.

With all of this bluster, I confess that I still love to watch the NBA. I can't help myself. At its best, played at its highest level by its best players, it is a forceful ballet, an athletic drama. Its top stars, most of them outfitted with extraordinary coordination, 36-inch verticals, and fine-tuned ability, lead their teams in coordinated attack and defense. The best teams exist together in a kind of physical harmony, the players sharing a common mind and will. For these reasons, I try hard to overlook the lack of character displayed by many players and to enjoy the gift of graceful competition. Reminds one that Christians really have an opportunity to shine in the realm of sports. When one plays hard but fairly, skillfully but not self-servingly, one can really stand out. We should not abandon sports, but should season them. That includes the NBA and other levels of basketball and even local gyms and rec leagues. The world is sin-infested, and we can't just turn our backs on it--we need to be salt in places that smell, leaven in realms of dullness and decay.

Of course, if the Celtics win this series, that would be just fine with this New Englander. If some team full of narcissistic athletes has to win, I'll take the New England team every time.

Piper on Fundamentalists, and What it Means for the Church

2008-06-04T17:23:00.000-07:00

20 Reasons I Don't Take Potshots at Fundamentalists by: John Piper

1. They are humble and respectful and courteous and even funny (the ones I've met).
2. They believe in truth.
3. They believe that truth really matters.
4. They believe that the Bible is true, all of it.
5. They know that the Bible calls for some kind of separation from the world.
6. They have backbone and are not prone to compromise principle.
7. They put obedience to Jesus above the approval of man (even though they fall short, like others).
8. They believe in hell and are loving enough to warn people about it.
9. They believe in heaven and sing about how good it will be to go there.
10. Their "social action" is helping the person next door (like Jesus), which doesn't usually get written up in the newspaper.
11. They tend to raise law-abiding, chaste children, in spite of the fact that Barna says evangelical kids in general don't have any better track record than non-Christians.
12. They resist trendiness.
13. They don’t think too much is gained by sounding hip.
14. They may not be hip, but they don’t go so far as to drive buggies or insist on typewriters.
15. They still sing hymns.
16. They are not breathless about being accepted in the scholarly guild.
17. They give some contemporary plausibility to New Testament claim that the church is the “pillar and bulwark of the truth.”
18. They are good for the rest of evangelicals because of all this.
19. My dad was one.
20. Everybody to my left thinks I am one. And there are a lot of people to my left.

--from Desiring God

This post is worthy of a good deal more attention than I can give it right now. It's not that it's overly developed, because it's not. Rather, I'm thankful that someone has taken the time to stand up for Christian fundamentalists, who are regularly and relentlessly bashed in the media and even in Christian circles. Many Christians adopt the world's position toward fundamentalists--a term that can function as a catch-all for non-Christians, and can also refer to the actual category of separatist Christians--and think that it is appropriate to lambaste fellow believers who hold to fundamentist tenets. This is entirely inappropriate. Christians are not to slam one another, to bash one another, to publicly insult one another, and to use the same derogatory labels that the world uses against people who, while holding to some different beliefs, nevertheless share saving faith in Christ.

I've seen this happen numerous times in recent days in major evangelical media outlets, and I've heard prominent Christian leaders do the same. Christians sometimes conflate Christian fundamentalism with other forms of supposedly fundamentalist religion--like Islamic fundamentalism, for example--and thus speak of the two as if they are theologically similar. This is egregious! Though the two groups may both approach their faith with high levels of devotion, Islam is a false religion, and Christian fundamentalism is a faith born of God and faithfulness to His Word. Do not make this mistake. It is incredibly uncharitable and hugely insulting to people who, whatever differences one may have with them in their praxis of the Christian faith, are brothers and sisters.

This is not to say that I think that there are necessarily huge differences between "evangelical" Christianity and "fundamentalist" Christianity. There are some, but I do not think that they are huge, and like Dr. Piper, I find many wonderful things in Christian fundamentalist circles. Some of my favorite people and best teachers are and have been fundamentalists. Some of the most faithful and fruitful Christians I know are fundamentalists. They are the farthest thing from extremism, and they are terribly injured when uncareful and uncharitable people label them derogatorily.

Next time you're about to use the word "fundamentalist", think about what you are intending it to mean. Consider it carefully, and opt for the most charitable conception possible. In that way, you will honor your brother--and the Lord who unites you.

Henry Center Travelogue, Day Five: Final Thoughts

2008-06-03T07:52:00.000-07:00

Here's the recap from day five, the final day of the conference, May 31.

I’m not going to recap the last few talks, though I will tell you that this morning featured a stimulating session with Drs. Robert Priest of TEDS and David Lee of Evangel Seminary. In their papers, the speakers considered the topic of contextualization on theological grounds. Priest, an anthropologist, encouraged the audience to theologically contextualize–that is, adapt–their message to foreign contexts. Lee gave several examples of how this might be done, noting that in China, Christians can accommodate the biblical idea of wisdom to the lives of those to whom they witness with little trouble.

All this provoked reflection on the ways in which we as Christians fit the timeless truths of the Bible to the situations in which we find ourselves. We never simply teach the Bible in a new place–and that’s that. We’re always adapting what we’re teaching, choosing the right words, picking out certain clothes, deciding what we need to focus on doctrinally in this particular place with these particular people. All of us, then, do contextualization on a theological level, whether we realize it or not.
At the same time, though, the Bible is the norm that norms all other norms, as the Reformers put it. Though it comes to us in specifically Jewish and Greek clothing (with some other cultures in the mix as well), the truths of the Bible transform our reality and dictate to us the terms of our existence in the particular cultural situations in which we find ourselves. We don’t pick and choose which biblical ideals fit our situation best, and implement them as we see fit.

Becoming a Christian is at the most fundamental level a matter of submission. We as sinful rebels submit ourselves to the God who, with Spirit-opened eyes, we now see to be not a tyrant, not a deity we can manage, not a shadow, but a majestic being whose very existence threatens to destroy our own. From this posture, we run–we do not walk–to follow the will of this holy God, allowing Him to shape us and the cultural outlook we possess.

As one can see, there are significant issues to work out here. In some sense, this is the task of theology–to apply timeless truth to contemporary life.

Our conference is ended. We have had a very fruitful week in Hong Kong. We have heard from expert scholars and learned from global saints. We have broken bread–lots of it–with Chinese Christians, and we are all the richer for it. As we have considered the nature of evangelical identity through academic work, we have in some sense altered our own personal conception of evangelical identity. The act of international fellowship, after all, is no mere passing of the time, but is itself a transformational act. How thankful we at the Henry Center are for opportunities like this. We bear a huge debt to our generous supporters who, like Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, care deeply about the global church of Christ, and have taken tangible steps to nurture and support it. We look forward to our Nairobi conference in August 2008 and our Tokyo conference in 2010, endeavors that we trust will accomplish further advancement of God’s kingdom in our own lives and in our world.

On behalf of Center director Doug Sweeney, thank you for reading this series. All our best to you in your work to advance the gospel in a world that so desperately needs it.

Excellent Material from the reThink Conference on Family Ministry

2008-06-02T15:02:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the states, and recently received word on an important and helpful conference on family ministry:

"A couple of weeks ago Providence Baptist Church the reThink Conference 08 in Raleigh, NC. The conference came about as a result of Steve Wright’s book on family equipping entitled reThink. What started small has gained tremendous momentum. reThink has already picked up endorsements from Dr. Randy Stinson of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and C.J. Mahaney of Sovereign Grace Ministries, just to name a few.

Alex Chediak flew in from California to live blog the conference and did a tremendous job."

Here are the links to the live-blogs:

Session I: Leon Tucker

Session II: David Horner

Session III: Dave Owen

Session IV: Steve Wright

Session V: Dr. Randy Stinson

I would encourage you to read these blogs, and then to buy the book. I recently got it and am really looking forward to reading it and reaping fruit for my own family ministry.

Henry Center Travelogue, Day Four: Holy War and Theological Education (Separately Considered)

2008-05-30T02:02:00.000-07:00

I'm in Hong Kong with the Henry Center, my employer, as we're hosting an international conference on evangelical identity. I'm blogging about the conference on the Henry Center blog and will cross-post here.

Day Four in Hong Kong, and we are right in the thick of our conference. It is going quite nicely. Last night, we held a session at an Evangelical Free church that meets in a shopping mall in the city, Tsim Fook church. Well over 200 people turned out to hear Drs. Tremper Longman and David Pao consider the topic of holy war.

Longman's presentation was entitled "Holy War" and the Universal God: Reading the Old Testament Holy War Texts in a Biblical-Theological and Post-Colonial Setting". I have certainly heard of Tremper Longman, and I have used his commentaries, but I always find that my understanding of an author is altogether altered after I meet them in person or hear them speak in public. Longman's talk exemplified the best of evangelical scholarship as it traced the idea of holy war through the canon. It brimmed with passion, pulsed with theological insight, and made a clear and indelible mark on its hearers. I would heartily commend Longman's works to readers. He clearly has a passion to help the church know its Bible. After his talk, which was given through an interpreter, David Pao of TEDS spoke. Pao considered the idea of holy war in the New Testament and noted that when obeying the Lord, Christians are actually engaging in spiritual warfare of the kind discussed in Ephesians 6. He noted that such action was fundamentally subversive to the spiritual powers of darkness and marched through the NT material with vigor and wisdom. It has been enjoyable to see Dr. Pao in his home territory. He is a hugely respected figure here, and his presentation demonstrated why.

This morning, Drs. Tite Tienou of TEDS, Paul Lai of CES, and Carver Yu of CGST covered theological education. Each of the presentations by these key administrators raised valuable questions on this topic, and each provided interesting guidance for the Christian academy in the days ahead. Theological contextualization was a common focus, as was missional theologizing. Oxford-educated Carver Yu's talk, "Forging Evangelical Identity: Integration of Models of Theological Education in the Global Context", gave an excellent survey of the market forces that imperil Christian witness. Yu challenged the audience to adapt a theological model of education in which theology, according to theologian Karl Barth, critiques the preaching and witness of the church. As can be expected, the lecture was challenging and provocative.

The morning session prompted thought on my part about the nature of theological education. In general, the academy was assumed as a necessary presence in all of the lectures. It is interesting, though, that the New Testament, while recognizing and ennobling the office of teachers, nowhere posits the need for an academy. By mentioning this I do not wish to be read as casting aspersions on the academy. Indeed, I am at TEDS as a PhD student, and earning my bread by working for the Henry Center at TEDS. With that said, it does seem to me that there is helpful ground to be covered on the topic of church-based theological education. How can the church and the academy better work together such that professionalization and insufficient preparation are together overcome? Going too far one way at this point in the church's history seems to me to deprive us either of ministerial depth or ecclesial connection. I hope that in future days we can think more about this matter.

We have just one more day to go in Hong Kong (one full day, that is). The week has been intensive but profitable. I had hopes of playing the greatest game in the world (basketball, for those who didn't immediately know) with some people from the city, but it seems that time is short and this wish may go ungranted. This is inconsequential, though, because we are having such a rich time interacting with fellow Christians, learning from them, and fellowshipping together that the days are passing quickly and enjoyably.

What a privilege it has been to be with believers of other lands in a foreign place. I am thankful for the Henry Center and its supporters. One can write sparkling copy about the importance of theological partnership, and that's one thing. But when one experiences it, one finds that the copy, however polished, speaks truly. The reality of united Christianity sinks in, and the heart yearns even more for a day when division and distance are overcome, and the body of Christ is freed to worship its Lord and Savior together in the splendor of holiness.

Henry Center Travelogue, Day Three: Evangelical Identity and Ringo Starr

2008-05-29T02:00:00.000-07:00

I'm in Hong Kong with the Henry Center, my employer, as we're hosting an international conference on evangelical identity. I'll be blogging about the conference on the Henry Center blog and will cross-post here.

The conference has now started in earnest. We're at the YMCA International House on Waterloo Street, right in the middle of bustling Hong Kong. Come join us if you're up for the fifteen-hour flight.

This morning, historians Doug Sweeney of TEDS and Kevin Yao of China Graduate School of Theology discussed the nature of evangelical identity as related to history. Sweeney's talk, "Modern Evangelicalism and Global Christian Identity: Promise and Peril as Seen Through the Eyes of a North American Church Historian", surveyed definitions of evangelicalism, suggested one that emphasized the fact that evangelicalism is founded upon an eighteenth century "twist", and then encouraged Christians of all stripes to simultaneously preserve the indigenous nature of the faith as expressed in their culture and to link arms with the global and historical church.

This was an important message for Christians of both East and West to hear. No group of Christians is immune to the danger of narrowed vision. Indeed, in America, we saw time and time again efforts and organizations pop up with great motives but no confessional and ecclesiastical connection. What great need, then, for Christians to simultaneously take the faith to their culture while connecting themselves, however awkwardly, to the church of all ages and cultures. Our faith must be both horizontal, linked to those who claim Christ across the world, and vertical, linked to the church of ages past and, God willing, of ages to come.

Yao gave a strong talk titled "Chinese Evangelicals and Social Concerns: A Historical and Comparative Review" on the nature of Chinese approach to government and society. Surveying the Christian heritage of China, he noted that in the past, believers took an apolitical position. Now, however, they are rethinking this position, and it seems best to Yao for the church to " to witness to Christian faith through teaching basic Christian values, charity and dialogue with the authority." I found this a provocative insight.

Following a panel discussion between Sweeney, Yao, and moderator Andrew Lam of Evangel Seminary, Old Testament scholars K. Lawson Younger of TEDS and Timothy Wu of China Evangelical Seminary spoke. Younger's talk, "The Old Testament in its Cultural Context: Implications of "Contextual Criticism" for Chinese and North American Christian Identity", propounded a forceful case for the need to analyze three primary environments in teaching and preaching the Scripture: literary (textual) environment, material cultural (archaeological) environment, and geographic (topological) environment. Younger gave examples of ways in which these methods buttressed and enhanced study of Scripture. Though the talk performed few exegetical feats, it gave a stirring call for close, careful study of the Bible. It is easy for students of God's Word to get distracted by various disciplines and endeavors. Ideally, we should use philosophy, theology, history, and so on to enrich our study of the Word, but all our preaching and teaching should be founded upon an attempt to get to the very heart of the text.

I remember well a great lesson from a class on Isaiah at Southern Seminary. I wrote a long paper on chapter 55, attempting to get to the marrow of every clause, every word, but I missed a crucial point (the background for the "dogs" that Isaiah condemns) and my professor excoriated me for not doing so. At the time, that stung a little bit. Ever since then, however, I've remembered my professor's point, and I've agreed with it completely. Bringing out the importance of that term would not have revolutionized my preaching of that text, but it surely would have enriched it, and fed the saints a richer meal. Younger's talk corroborated that experience and encouraged me to work very hard to understand the text, and feed the saints the fullness of God's Word.

Timothy Wu then spoke on "The Renewal of Culture: The De-Focus and Re-Focus After "Paradise Lost". Wu surveyed Genesis 1-11 from a canonical standpoint and sought to show how these chapters provide a model for the pattern of human history. After declension (fall) comes renewal and transformation (Abraham). It was very interesting to synthesize the two OT talks, as they together made the case for careful exegesis and biblical theology.

There are more talks to go in the day. I'm on my dinner break and have to go, although I must say that I'm not that hungry because our hosts are feeding us constantly and deliciously. On one of our "coffee breaks", which also provide us with little cheesecakes and scrumptious noodles (I can't tell you how well this strange mix works), I bumped into a waiter named "Ringo". I asked him if he was named after the Beatle. What ensued was an utterly hilarious conversation in which, I'm pretty sure, he thought that I was asking him if he played bass guitar. I'm sure I was explaining myself with a complete and utter lack of clarity, despite numerous gesticulations, re-clarifications, and, at one point, a citation of Yoko Ono. Oh well. Such is life in a foreign environment. It's a good thing our speakers are a great deal clearer than my attempts at connection!

By the way, all of the conference talks will be published in a forthcoming volume. The Center Blog will have more about that in the future. Speaking of the future, I'll be back tomorrow for more reportage and stories of self-humiliation.

Hong Kong Travelogue, Day Two: The Resort Seminary and Chow Yun-Fat’s House

2008-05-28T02:57:00.000-07:00

I'm in Hong Kong with the Henry Center, my employer, as we're hosting an international conference on evangelical identity. I'll be blogging about the conference on the Henry Center blog and will cross-post here.

Today was a day of sightseeing as the gracious staff of Evangel Seminary hosted the conference speakers from TEDS and elsewhere on a tour of Hong Kong. Have you ever had a day in which your whole view of the world was expanded, stretched like a rubber band until it was irrevocably changed? I had that kind of day today. Let me tell you about it.

There is so much that happens to us simply by seeing new things. It's interesting. You don't need to interact with things; you don't need to handle them; you can be a complete stranger to an area, and yet, simply by seeing them one's perspective is shaped. This came home to me as our group toured an island village about thirty minutes by boat from Hong Kong. We left the city harbor on a big ferry, were buffeted by strong waves, and then passed through big stone walls to the port of Cheng Chau. Once afoot, we walked the island, gazing into the little shops and nooks. To those who have not been to such a place, let me say that the closeness of the quarters is stunning. There is not an inch of wasted space. In the West, we take space for granted. Even poor people (in rural areas, granted) have massive land holdings compared to those in Hong Kong and its outlying territories. Yet I am sure that the people whose homes I glimpsed do not share my conception of space, and thus are comfortable in their homes. My brief time in Hong Kong has altered my understanding of real estate and the privilege of landholding. What one takes for granted in the West is a virtual fiefdom in parts of the East.

While on Cheng Chau, the group visited Alliance Bible Seminary. We took a tour of the campus and ate a very nice lunch that our hosts provided us. Alliance could be termed a "resort seminary" as it is porched on a gorgeous hill of the island's coast. Tropical plants abound, and the campus, though small, is quite appealing. Though located in a corner distant in my eyes from the mainland, Alliance has 180 full-time MDiv students and 900 students including part-timers. For those who don't know, those are impressive numbers. The school has just started a PhD program and clearly believes in a brand of scholarship that is propelled by faith and intellect. It has a library of roughly 50,000 volumes, an impressive total for a school in its situation. Made me think of the almost unbelievable wealth of the Western church and the need to share that wealth with the East. It would be no small thing for a church or parachurch organization to set up a book distribution system such that Christians could share resources with the global household of faith. Many of us will end up having larger personal libraries than sister institutions worldwide. Perhaps we can think about this situation, and perhaps we can ameliorate it in time to come.

After our visit to Cheng Chau, we visited a Lutheran retreat center in Tao Fong Shan started by Areopagus in the hills of what are called the "new territories," regions just opened for business, so to speak. We visited a fascinating church/temple (yes, I've got that right) started by a missionary in the early twentieth century who believed that one could combine the best of Christianity with the best of Buddhism. Interesting proposition. He fashioned a statue with a cross emerging from a lotus. Following our trip to the retreat center, which was peaceful and made one want to stay and take a nap, we drove to Evangel Seminary and enjoyed a kind reception from our hosts. During the reception, I heard that the home of Chinese movie star Chow Yun-Fat was down the street a little ways. I ran down the street (departure time was drawing nigh) and easily located the house. It was the one with the barbed wire coils three feet high! I took a picture of the house (that I may post on this blog at a later date, check back) and saw that a window on the second floor was open. Perhaps I just missed my brush with Hollywood greatness. Oh well. Mentioning this house takes me back to my above comment on the preciousness of real estate. The fact that Yun-Fat has a two-story house speaks of astonishing wealth. His home, which was nice but entirely unremarkable, was worth the GDP of a small country.

Following that, we returned to our hotel. The day in sum brought reflection on the great responsibility of missionaries to steward the faith delivered to us in the Word. It has occurred to me numerous times over the last few days that the church unreached countries (of which China was once one) are so very dependent on the teaching of missionaries and scholars who take up residence in these places. The awesome responsibility of gospel stewardship becomes very real when one sees effects of theological waves that ripple on farther shores. The point is an obvious one, but Christians taking the gospel to unreached places have a huge burden upon their backs. They must tell the truth about God and His Word. They cannot avoid hard questions or fall back on ignorance. They have to know the truth, for what they know and teach becomes in a very direct sense what the reached peoples will know and teach.

Perhaps this sounds obvious. When one is in a foreign land, though, it gains fresh meaning and import. Suddenly, innovation and experimentation seem less captivating. Fidelity and seriousness seem of the utmost importance. If we may say this of missionary work, of course, we may say it of all teaching done in Christ's name and for His glory.

That concludes our recap of day two. Tomorrow, the conference begins. Some of the papers to be given sound absolutely engrossing. The nature of how Chinese identity shapes and is shaped by evangelical identity is very complex. I'm looking forward to hearing how world-class scholars comprehend the question and answer it, and I would invite you to join me in this great task of learning.

Hong Kong Travelogue, Day One: Discovery and Jetlag

2008-05-27T03:06:00.000-07:00

I'm in Hong Kong with the Henry Center, my employer, as we're hosting an international conference on evangelical identity. I'll be blogging about the conference on the Henry Center blog and will cross-post here.

The Henry Center has gone international. Director Doug Sweeney and Managing Director Owen Strachan (the author) are hosting an international conference in Hong Kong, China this week that covers the topic of Christian identity in diverse situations. A number of faculty from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, IL are joining, as are scholars from Westmont College, Beeson Divinity School, Christar in India, Alliance Bible Seminary of China, Evangel Seminary in Hong Kong, and China Graduate School of Theology. Students from TEDS and local seminaries will attend, as will area pastors and interested laypeople. The conference will be on May 29-31 (see here for more details), but most of the conference speakers are here.

It is my privilege to give you just a little taste of this exciting event through a blog series. I don't have a lot of time, and there's a great deal going on, but my posts should give you a window into what we're doing. We are really excited by this conference, as it's not common for Christians from East and West to gather together for such meaningful and productive fellowship. This is a very unique part of the privilege it is to labor for Christ in a world of increasing connection.
Without further ado, my humble little travelogue.

Day One (and Two): Discovery and Jetlag

(Sunday) 9:00am--Say goodbye to wife. Brave the wilds of O'Hare Airport. Check-in goes surprisingly well.
9:30am--11:35am--Wander O'Hare in search of vitals. Debate on which magazine to buy when confronted with 13,000 choices.
11:35am--Board plane for flight to Hong Kong. Sit for an hour. Am aware of what it is like to be a distinct ethnic minority. Think to myself that this experience is going to be very good for me.
12:35pm--Fifteen hour flight to Hong Kong commences. Ponder the fact that I've only once been on a flight longer than eight hours. Begin reading book (one).
1:15pm--First movie (of five!) begins screening.
3:45pm--Start reading book (two).
6:45pm--Lunch is served. A little plate of noodles and chicken with a microwaved roll never tasted so good.
1:15am--Both seatmates are asleep, as is most of the plane. I'm staying up so that I can sleep once we arrive in Hong Kong (we will arrive at 4:30pm their time--HK is 13 hours ahead of Chicago time (CT)). Realize that this means I have to stop reading. Commence watching of "27 Dresses."
1:25am--End watching of "27 Dresses."
2:30am Chicago Time, 4:30pm HK time--Arrive at HK. Connect with fellow TEDS folks. Find our escort. Drive into Hong Kong.

I'm going to break in here and talk for a bit about my first impressions of the city. For those who don't know, it's a port city. In addition, though the city stretches over many miles, the terrain is quite hilly, even mountainous. There is not a great deal of actual real estate in the city. Thus, there are skyscrapers everywhere. The roads are narrow. The city is very clean. It is utterly baffling to be in such a tightly constructed area. Not a spare inch is wasted. After we arrived at our hotel, we went out for a bite to eat. Along the way, we entered a mall whose ceilings could not have been higher than 7.5 feet. Little tiny shops proliferated, and people were almost back to back. I noticed a number of real estate shops--places advertising apartment housing. The rooms in these apartments boggle the mind, as they're nothing less than tiny. Yet if one wants to live in the city, it appears that this is standard--less than 800 square feet for whole families is quite normal. For many Americans (outside of New York), such an apartment would be quaint. Here, it is standard.

The city is crawling with red taxis. At one stoplight, roughly thirty cars were stopped. Over half were taxis. Big rectangular buses swoop in from out of nowhere and park on a dime. It's interesting to ponder what it would be like to live in a city like this all of one's life. One gets used to simple things like seeing thousands of people per day. In general, people seem to move in their own isolated trajectories with little sense of the larger flow of others. Chinese pop music is everywhere. It throws me off, because I expect to hear American voices. In just a few blocks, we pass five banks. The market here seems to be exploding. Little noodle shops are also everywhere. Some smell good to my American nose, others hint of strange foods I've never encountered and couldn't imagine.

I have never felt like more of an outsider in this world than these moments. I don't say this in a negative sense, as if I think that people are excluding me. No, I mean more what is cold, hard fact: I am an outsider. All around me are people speaking words I can't understand. Language appears now more of a unifier than ever before. Walking along, I yearn to be able to connect with others through language. It is perhaps the simplest means of communication, one we take for granted, and I have no access to it, and am thus something of a shadow in the city, a passing presence who might as well not be there.

Back at the hotel, we ready for rest. We're all flagging, and jetlag is working its stupor-inducing magic. Before I fall asleep, I look out my window. A place like this reminds one of the bigness of God. He oversees all of this, all of the madness, the controlled chaos, the billions of people who live and walk and buy noodles in places just like this. I am overwhelmed by this city--though I've seen probably 1/50th of it--and discover that it is in places like this, places that overwhelm the senses and boggle the mind, that God's sovereignty and presence becomes very real. In a natural sense, there seems to be no center, no common point around which this all coheres and takes shape. Life is anonymous, moving at light-speed, insignificant. With God, though, there is a center. Better than this, there is a personal center. God is here. He is ruling. He is caring for His people and His world. To eyes struggling to take it all in, His transcendence emerges clearest. It is not simply in the pastures and meadows that we find God, and our need for Him. It is in the city, walking on sidewalks, surrounded by ten thousand people who do not know my name, do not speak my language, and do not even know I exist.

That concludes day one (and two). I put this all under day one because our flight and arrival was of a piece, though it stretched over two days. The value of this experience will, I know, be immense, and I am thankful for the opportunity to be here, to go outside of myself, to fellowship with fellow Christians of foreign background, and to learn lessons of faith in a new land. Tomorrow, I'll give you a snapshot of our sightseeing, and the next few days, I'll take you into the conference, and give you some highlights.

Pray for the Family of Steven Curtis Chapman

2008-05-22T08:50:00.000-07:00

I don't normally write my blog this early, and I don't seek to track current events too closely. But I checked Justin Taylor's blog this morning and read about a tragic event in the family of Christian singer Steven Curtis Chapman. It seems that Chapman's son was driving into the family's driveway and struck his little sister, Maria. Though efforts were made to save her (she was airlifted to a Nashville hospital), she passed away yesterday, a five-year-old life now ended.

My heart grieves for the Chapman family and for others of the household of faith who experience loss on this level of tragedy. I have not experienced this sort of tragedy. However, it is immediately clear to me that an event like this is a watershed moment for an individual, a family, and the church to which that family is connected. The fact that the loss of life came as the result of a family member adds a depth of sadness that is difficult to fathom.

If you can, pray for the Chapman family. They are a vibrantly Christian family led by a man of strong character and deep love for the Lord, and they need prayer for recovery and the grasping of hope in a terrible season. Also, consider supporting the family's fund to support adoptions. Apparently, Chapman and his wife have a great heart for adoption; Maria was adopted, in fact, and Chapman helpfully encourages local churches to support the cause of adoption because of our spiritual adoption by Christ which has made us the sons and daughters of God. It seems a fitting tribute to this family and its biblically driven concern to consider making a donation to a fund that supports other families who are seeking to adopt. It would be just like the Lord to use an event of unspeakable tragedy to bring hope to many people. Perhaps this death will result in the extension of blessing, both physical and spiritual, to many hundreds of orphans, unwanted children, and others who currently have little hope in the world.

Here are links to check out for more information about Maria and the adoption fund started by Chapman:

In Memory of Maria, a blog in Maria's honor.
A sweet video of Chapman with his daughter.
The adoption fund, Shaohannah's Hope, that funds couples who want to adopt and need financial aid.

May the Lord bring hope, and healing, and blessing through this sad time.

Spike Lee on Death and Dignity

2008-05-21T14:22:00.000-07:00

I've watched some of Spike Lee's films, and usually find them interesting, and sometimes revealing about the realities of life in a fallen world. When I came across a Lee comment spoken at the Cannes film festival from a piece in the Washington Post, I had to comment on it:

"I always treat life and death with respect, but most people don't," Lee said at a news conference Tuesday. "Look, I love the Coen brothers; we all studied at NYU. But they treat life like a joke. Ha ha ha. A joke. It's like, 'Look how they killed that guy! Look how blood squirts out the side of his head!' I see things different than that."

This comment reveals something about the way Lee sees the world. He believes that human life has inherent dignity. Accordingly, he believes that films that depict the processes of life, including death, should treat the matter with dignity. The filmmakers to whom Lee refers, the Coen brothers, just won the Academy Award for Best Picture with their film No Country for Old Men. This picture, like others in the Coen corpus, approaches life and death as macabre realities. Fargo, also directed by the Coens, had a notoriously dark sense of humor. The brothers make films that invite viewers to view the nastiest aspects of life from a lightly comedic viewpoint. It is this cinematic tendency to which Lee refers. People do not simply die in Coen films, as they do in those of many other directors; they die in particularly twisted ways at the hands of gleefully strange characters. Though I don't know the exact worldview of the Coens, I can say from a limited engagement with their films that Lee is to some extent correct in his analysis of the brothers' filmmaking. For them, death is one part of a twisted comic tragedy.

Lee, for his part, declares a desire to treat death in a more respectful light in his films. Though he certainly is no role model for overly moral filmmaking, Spike Lee is onto something here. He recognizes the biblical reality that life is fashioned by God to an inherently dignified enterprise. The fact that humanity en masse carries the image of God reveals that we are naturally "little gods", made with care, invested with worth and meaning. Though it does some have dark moments, and some textual details that seem darkly comic, the Bible does not present life as an exercise in comedic tragedy. Ecclesiastes does portray life as purposeless outside of God, and Job's questions do reveal the desperateness of a life lived in opposition to God, but the biblical authors nowhere encourage us to view life as darkly comedic and God as a twisted puppeteer in the sense that the Coen films certainly do not. As far as I can tell, the brothers seem exceptionally gifted at portraying a world where God does not exist. Watch No Country for Old Men. You'll see a world where evil is stronger than good, where desperation and folly reigns, where providence runs in favor of the darkness, not the light. If this is not a world without God, and without the dignity of humanity, show me what is.

Spike Lee is not a Christian to my knowledge. But he has lighted on a Christian concept in his Cannes speech. God has given dignity to the lives and deaths of his creatures. He has a special place in His economy for His children, whose lives and deaths are precious to Him. He superintends our lives with care and love. He has given us souls, and He teaches us in His word that the souls of men are the most precious of all things in the created realm. Spike Lee has unwittingly wandered into territory that Scripture has staked out as its own. We commend him for not wanting to present death in an undignified light, for wanting to preserve a sense of beauty and worth even in the moment when a person's life is taken from him. Yet we as Christians note that there is a ground for this impulse. There is a reason for this desire as expressed in Lee's comment. It is not simply that it "makes sense", or "follows naturally" from living. It does not. No, it proceeds directly from the Christian worldview as delineated by the Bible. We who have a reason for faith also have a foundation for dignity. It is the image of God given us to by our Creator.

We ought not to think that there is some kind of massive principle to be implemented here which will then revolutionize society. We do need filmmakers who will show a watching world that life is precious. But humanity will likely always struggle with the question of inherent dignity. Why is it, people will ask, that though I do not like the idea of God, or the biblical God, that I nonetheless want to treat life and people as precious? Why do I care when I hear of a child being murdered, when I read of a terrible civil war, when I learn of massive social injustice at the hands of totalitarian governments? Where does this instinct come from? Why do I tenaciously protect the life of my child when I am pro-choice? Why do I think it is wrong for people to treat death in undignified ways? Why do I dress up at funerals, and talk softly, and sometimes cry?

People will ask these questions. We can see from the Coen brothers' films and Spike Lee's comments that this is a live issue for the unbelieving among us. How great is the need for local churches that stand as lighthouses in their communities that provide on a week-by-week basis the true ground for dignity and hope. How much do we need Christians not to bury their light by avoiding unbelievers, but to be among them, salting their speech, telling the truth about dignity and hope and salvation in Christ. Will we speak truth to the lost? Or will we leave it to honest but lost folk like Spike Lee to accomplish this task?

Theologian Russ Moore on the Story of Scripture

2008-05-20T14:20:00.000-07:00

Today, I found a great link from Tim Challies's website. Dr. Russ Moore has just published a lengthy and incisive essay on the story of Scripture. It relates heavily to the development of Christocentric theology, a topic I've discussed at times on this blog and one which I'm working through in seeking to develop my own theological system.

In hopes of advancing this discussion, here are three sections from Moore's essay, "Beyond a Veggie Tales Gospel: Why We Must Preach Christ from Every Text."

1. What Scripture is fundamentally about--

"Every text of Scripture--Old or New Testaments--is thus about Jesus, precisely because, at the end of the day, everything in reality is about Jesus. Why is there something instead of nothing? Why are human beings religious? Why do people want food and water and sex and community? Why are there galaxies and quasars and blue whales and local churches? God is creating all that is for His heir, for the glory of Jesus Christ. When you see through Jesus, you see the interpretive grid through which all of reality makes sense.

With this in mind, the Scripture tells us that all of Scripture tells us the story of Jesus. The Gospel writers show us how Jesus fulfills the Scripture, but, interestingly enough, He doesn't simply fulfill direct and obvious messianic prophecies. He also relives the story of Israel itself--exiled in Egypt, crossing the Jordan, being tempted with food and power in the wilderness during a forty-day sojourn there. Jesus applies to Himself language previously applied to Israel and its story--He is the vine of God, the temple, the tabernacle, the Spirit-anointed kingship, the wisdom of God Himself."

2. How the story of Scripture can be missed, and corrupted--

"There's plenty of Veggie Tales preaching out there, and it's not all for children. As a matter of fact, the way we teach children the Bible grows from what we believe the Bible is about--what's really important in the Christian life. There's also such a thing as Veggie Tales discipleship, Veggie Tales evangelism, even erudite and complicated Veggie Tales theology and biblical scholarship. Whenever we approach the Bible without focusing in on what the Bible is about--Christ Jesus and His Gospel--we are going to wind up with a kind of golden-rule Christianity that doesn't last a generation, indeed rarely lasts an hour after it is delivered.

Preaching Christ doesn't simply mean giving a gospel invitation at the end of a sermon--although it certainly does entail that. It means seeing all of reality as being summed up in Christ, and showing believers how to find themselves in the story of Jesus, a story that is Alpha and Omega, from the spoken Word that calls the universe together to the Last Man who governs the universe as its heir and King."

3. How Christ's centrality in Scripture and life relates to our lives as Christians--

"It is only when I see what God is doing with the world through Christ, and for the glory of Christ, that I am able to see where I fit in the big storyline of the universe or in the little storyline of my own life. The Apostle Paul's words to the Romans are familiar passages of comfort for believers. "And we know that fro those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose" (Rom 8:28). This verse does not mean, however, simply a cheery "What doesn't kill you'll make you stronger; hang in there." Instead, Paul says that the believer's little story ultimately is a glorious one because it is part of a larger story, that I may be "conformed to the image of His Son, that He may be the firstborn among many brothers" (Rom 8:29). How do I know that my story ends happily? I only know this if I am found in Christ.

But, if I am, then like all my forefathers and foremothers before me, I am free from condemnation, liberated from the curse, triumphant over death, the heir of the universe, the child of God in whom He is well pleased. How do I know this? I know it because I know the story of Jesus. I know that David may be dead and buried--but Jesus was raised. I know that Moses may never have walked in the Land of Promise--but Jesus has received it. I know that Abraham never saw with his eyes his descendants outnumber the stars--but Jesus stands before His Father, "Behold, I and the children God has given me" (Heb 2:13). I know that when the Accuser indicts me of sin, that I am worthy of sharing a lake of fire with him and his minions, I point to Jesus Christ, and announce, "I have already been to hell--and, in Christ, there is therefore now no condemnation."

This is beautiful, rich, weighty writing. Whether you agree with every point or not, I would encourage you to read the entire piece. It would be great for a Bible study or group of Christians to think through together. Or, it would be great simply to think through on your own as you attempt to piece out the story of Scripture, the story of your life, and the way the two fit together.

If Jesus Spent Lots of Time with Unbelievers, Why Do Most of Us Hang Out Only with Christians?

2008-05-19T14:37:00.000-07:00

Surfing Vitamin Z's excellent blog, I came across a thoughtful post on evangelism by Joe Carter this morning that prompted some thinking on my part. Entitled rather provocatively "How Do You Love a Porn Star?", the piece tackles the following simple but tough question: why don't many Christians regularly interact with the lost people who make up 99% of the surrounding populace?

In asking this question, Carter offers a story of a Marine friend who was nice, fatherly, and happened to be involved in pornography. The piece chronicles Carter's struggle to handle his friendship with a man for whom he felt both revulsion and love. This section nicely encapsulates the central theme and problem of the post:

"Because of his peculiar vocation, Dave Connors may seem like an unrepresentative example. But we all have people like him in our lives--acquaintances, coworkers, family members--who have no intention of giving up their sinful ways. How do we make a friend of someone who chooses to remain an enemy of God?

Normally this would be the point in the post where I would insert a homiletic bromide that would point the way toward a resolution. On this one, though, I not only don't have an answer; I don't have a clue. Somehow I've managed to spend thirty years as a Christian without learning something so basic as how to truly love an impenitent sinner."

I first Joe Carter for his candor. The simplicity and honesty of that last sentence blew over me like a spring breeze when I first read it. I've been a Christian for three decades, Carter says, and have heard countless sermons about Christ's love for fallen mankind. Reading between the lines, he's telling fellow Christians that, like them, he has heard Sunday School lessons, read Christian books, and attended countless church gatherings that have instructed him (theoretically) in approaching lost people with the gospel. Yet with all of this teaching, he struggles mightily to take even the shortest gospel step: to get to know lost people and befriend them for the sake of Christian love and witness.

I don't have anything particularly profound to add to this comment. It seems to me to encapsulate the central struggle of many--most, maybe--Christians regarding evangelism. The new man inside of us loves the things of God, and detests naturally the things that are not of God. This is a biblical disposition and reality--see Colossians 3:9-11, for example. Yet though this is a God-given disposition, we acquire a simultaneous impulse when regenerated and renewed by the Spirit. We acquire the impulse to spread and share the gospel with fellow sinners (Rom 10:9-17). So revulsion with sin sits alongside love for sinners as expressed in evangelism. We have these twin instincts, then. Knowing this, we note a third key biblical teaching. This one is a teaching handed down by way of example. Christ, who had no sin nature, did have the gospel imperative within Him, and He went to the lost--five incredibly important words--and hung out with them for the purpose of love-driven gospel witness. Here's what Mark 2:15-17 tells us about Christ and His example:

While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the "sinners" and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: "Why does he eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"

On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

Christ's example is to be emulated by His disciples, a number that includes all born-again believers today. The above instance was not a strange evangelistic strategy, a guerilla campaign carried out by the spiritual Rambo in the enemy's lair. It was fundamentally what Christians are to do in carrying out the Great Commission.

Sometimes we get into evangelical catfights about tracts, door-knocking, and gospel proclamation. Paul taught that wherever the gospel was proclaimed, he rejoiced: "In every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice." (Phil. 1:17) While we may find wisdom in pursuing certain evangelistic strategies over others, we should not--definitively--debase preaching of the gospel, no matter how much it conflicts with our cultural sensibilities. We may not adopt a certain method, but the preaching of the gospel is a strange and mysterious thing, and God uses all kinds of methods to bring people to Himself. With this all said, one model of evangelism that we can clearly derive from Scripture is that we are to go to unbelievers, befriend them, spend time with them, and witness to them. We are not only to go to them and witness to them. Jesus spent time with them. He got to know them. He talked with them. We should do the same. The Scripture is clear.

We should not do so without carefulness, though. Christians who shrink from contact with unbelievers are getting something right. We are influenced by those we spend time with. If we are to hang out with lost people, then, we've got to be very careful. We've all seen Christians who hang out with lost people for the purpose of evangelism and end up drifting away from the faith and adopting the lifestyle of those around them. It is not silly or foolish to seek in a studious manner to avoid this result. Nothing less than our souls are at stake, after all! However, with care and principle and accountability and connection to our local church, we must venture forth from the community of faith to the community of unbelief. We've got to get to know those around us, and that means joining bowling leagues, hanging out at the local coffee shop, inviting neighbors over for dinner, going to a library reading group, attending neighborhood association meetings, and so on. As we join in these activities, we do so looking to build up friendships, to listen and help others, and above all, to witness to the reality of Christ's death and resurrection to those who reject this life-saving work.

I do not hold myself as an exemplar of the model of evangelism laid out by Christ in Mark 2. I don't have it all figured out. I would struggle just like Joe Carter to be a friend and witness to someone who is desperately lost. I have similar feelings to most Christians in my approach to sexual profligates, oft-drunk coeds, loopy hippys, materialistic bankers, narcissistic teens, snobby old people, homeless street-walkers, arrogant athletes, ideological demagogues, and hostile ruralites. Put simply, I don't really want to be around these people. I don't want to be in bad places where these type of people congregate. I don't want to go through the messy work of friendship. I want to be around nice Christian people in nice Christian environments where people encourage me, don't swear, don't have premarital sex, and don't look down on me. This means on a practical, day-to-day level that I spend most of my time around Christians in expressly Christian environments doing explicitly Christian things.

This way of life is so far from Christ's example that one could almost say that it is an unChristian life. This lifestyle gets right, as mentioned above, the need to pursue holiness, and that is commendable. That's a big deal in the Bible! But it gets hugely wrong the need to take one's faith to the lost. The Christians of the Bible do anything but lock their faith in evangelical ghettos--they crash the gates of the secular city. They make themselves unavoidable presences in the lives of unbelievers. They come together for rich, sweet, God-drenched fellowship and then they scatter to the winds to evangelize like crazy anyone they can (I'll just refer you to the entire book of Acts here). What do many of us do, though? The opposite. We take a look at the world, analyze its thought through rigorous analysis (a great thing to do, and a focus of this blog), identify its proponents and cultural effect, and then run the opposite direction, seeking out Christians as we go to join up with us and avoid the lost around us, save for scattered forays in which we briefly ambush the lost and then scamper away.

Joe Carter's piece is great, because it calls us to realize that most of us are very far away from the biblical model of evangelism. We love the lost, but only in our prayers; we don't want to be around lost people, unlike our Savior; we allow a combination of fear and apathy to drive our lives, not a sense of God's magnificent love and transcendent power. We should change this situation. We should emerge from our ghettos. We should emulate the Savior. We should talk to fellow members of our local churches, strategize about evangelistic friendships, and then go out. We should construct churches by God's Spirit that are richly biblical and God-glorifying, but that do not make it intensely difficult for good Christian people to free up their calendar to evangelize the lost. We should train our people in biblical evangelism, saturate them in a sense of God's power, and fill them with love and concern that takes shape not in separation, but in witness--clear, compassionate, gospel-driven, friend-making, witness.

The Week-est Link, May 16, 2008: FreeRange Kids, Adorare Mente, & the White Board Sessions

2008-05-16T12:31:00.000-07:00

1. Spotted a terrific article in the LA Times the other day about a parent who rebelled against overparenting and let her nine-year-old find his way home on the New York subway. The author, Rosa Brooks, makes the case for letting kids be kids, and play as such. Also, check out a great site called FreeRangeKids that advocates a more hands-off model of parenting.

2. The first edition of the Southern Seminary student journal Adorare Mente is now online. It looks like a really helpful issue. I edited the church history section and selected an excellent paper by SBTS MDiv student Trevin Wax on the Marburg Colloquy, which featured debate between Luther and his follower, Zwingli, on the Lord's Supper. Check out the whole journal.

3. Tremendously helpful and insightful piece by Presbyterian historian Sean Lucas on the pastorate and PhD studies. (HT: JT) If you are an MDiv student and are struggling to figure out what to do on this issue, join the club. Don't be discouraged--this is a tough area. I want to blog about this more in the future (and have in the past), and hope to offer my own little bit of advice on the matter. Fundamentally, know this: it is a great thing to get lots of training before entering the pastorate. We need a small, select group of academic theologians; we need a huge, gifted, well-trained, gospel-driven group of pastor-theologians. Young, gifted seminarian: think hard about this last sentence.

4. Have you heard about the White Board Sessions? Neither had I til I saw a fleeting notice of them at the 9Marks blog. Sounds like a really interesting time. Dever paired up with some emergingish guys will make for some fun, I predict...

5. New Death Cab for Cutie album is out. My buddy Doug Hankins is currently letting me listen to it, and it sounds amazing eight minutes in. If you don't know about Death Cab, give them a listen--thoughtful, evocative music.

Have a great, God-saturated weekend, all.

How Technology Relates to Permanence, and What That Means for Christianity

2008-05-15T13:49:00.000-07:00

In Canada, the Guardian reports today, people are using their Global Positioning Systems (GPS) for all sorts of things--estimating travel times, for example. Nowadays, it seems, you don't need a directional sense, really, and maps are becoming obsolete. Instead, you just turn on your handheld device and go from there.

Have you thought deeply about the changes the technological impetus has wrought? Many of us are so technologically linked that we could scarcely imagine life without our cell phone, our PDA, our GPS, our laptop, our television. The technology-driven society has changed the way we think about many things. We conceive of time in an entirely different way than did our grandparents. Our grandparents knew much slower, well-paced styles of life. When you can chop up every minute, and squeeze a conversation out of every idle stop, though, your conception of time changes. We also think of convenience in a new way. Our grandparents were not conditioned to think of every error, every malfunction, as an inconceivable imposition, but rather as a way of life. They did not have customer service, to put it bluntly.

In 2008, we are so used to constantly improving products, to around-the-clock gadget help, that when the Internet signal drops for even a couple of minutes, we throw up our hands, as if the world had just ended. What little connection we have with the American agricultural past, where a chink in the farm equipment could easily deprive even the most industrious farmer of hours of his workday. Though we are thankful for technological advances that do improve certain aspects of day-to-day life, we are also reminded with even the quickest comparison of the past that changing standards in technological production have changed not only our capabilities, but our attitudes.

There is so much more that we could say on this matter, so many more comparisons we could offer that reveal that the technology revolution is not one-sided, with only positive results, but is multifaceted, presenting our society with significant weaknesses as well as great strengths. One wonders in a more serious way about the relation between technology and faith. Reading David Wells's stunning new book The Courage to Be Protestant stimulated some of these thoughts, I think, though this is a subject that previous texts like Neil Postman's Technopoly and some of Wells's earlier writings caused to bubble up in my mind. The love of technology is fundamentally a love for a market, a realm, that is constantly shifting and reinventing itself. In this realm, new is the new new. That is to say, the technological sphere is obsessed and driven by lust for newness, new creations, new gadgets, new ideas. This mentality is good at stimulating thought and creativity, two gifts of the Creator to mankind. Everyone who likes and benefits from their cell phone, who finds email a useful means of communication, who enjoys a good movie once in a while, derives satisfaction from the technological drive.

But in yielding to the lust for newness, or even dabbling it, we expose ourselves to the negative edge of this blade. We also acquire an innate love for what is new and a subsequent disaffection for that which is outmoded. Sure, we balance these emotions; after all, aren't we constantly observing society celebrate that which is now "retro"? Yes, we do. But note that the window for "retro" items and personalities extends only about thirty-forty years back of where we currently reside. Things older than this span can qualify for "quaint" status, yes, but they are often simply passed over and forgotten. Other than a quick clip or two, most people have no interest in watching "The Ed Sullivan Show", for example. No, if we're in the mood for something "ancient", we'd rather watch a Beatles concert, or a seventies film, or music videos from the eighties. The technological drive, then, seems to sap us of a love for the past.

More significantly, the technological drive seems to push us away from appreciation of what is permanent. Because our current interest is constantly shifting and transferring itself to whatever is new, and hot, and sleek, and better, we gradually lose our appreciation for permanent things. We come to esteem not that which is tried and true but that which is novel and new. Faced with the choice between the hot idea, the cool trend, and the permanent principle, we're very much tempted by the technological drive to choose the former. This can have deleterious effects on one's approach to life, broadly, and one's theology, specifically. Though we might never intend for this to happen, we can transfer our love of impermanence and newness from the technological realm to the theological realm. Though we're scarcely aware of this transfer, though we had no explicit wish to make this so, we can make it with ease, and end up transforming our whole approach to theology, and life, and--dare one say it?--God.

In saying this I don't intend to say that anyone who likes cool gadgets is automatically paganized. Far from that. Rather, I'm saying that we should think about technology and how it relates to the Christian faith. We shouldn't simply think about which movies have swears in them or which video games our children should avoid. We should think about the very nature of technology itself. We may well remain engaged with it, and use it, and even enjoy it, but we should do these things while remaining aware of not only what we are doing to it, to the gadget or program itself, but to what it is doing to us.

Beyond this, we can say at ground-level that where we can discern a restlessness within our souls that conflicts with love for the ancient, permanent, unchanging principles of God's Word and the faith that flows from it, we must check ourselves, and take action against technological lust. If we find ourselves gravitating to theological trends simply because they're new and cutting-edge, we need to watch out. Some trends are helpful, but many are not. If we find ourselves bored with the Bible, and bored with theology, we need to watch out. If we yearn for something fresher and more glamorous than the local church, we should take care. In such instances, we may well be allowing instincts cultivated in an impermanent, impatient, restless culture to be directing our theology and our spiritual decisions. Our theology, despite what we might think (or what we might not realize, alternatively) is not cordoned off from the factors and influences of this world. It is connected to them--sometimes far too much for our spiritual health.

Enjoy your gadgets, then; use the incredible medical care available to many of us in this age; benefit from the advances that sprout up every day in our world. Use your GPS to find that elusive movie theater, your iPhone to order subs, your computer to find the Bible verse for your sermon, the email list to urge prayer for foreign missionaries. But do all of these things aware that you must shape your approach to technology, and that you must let permanent things, things originating beyond the age of the earth, to direct your life. Otherwise, it will not only be our gadgets that are impermanent. It will be, perhaps, our faith.

A Reflection On What It Is Like to Live in the Stream of God's Blessing (To Live as a Christian)

2008-05-14T13:25:00.000-07:00

I don't count myself especially sentimental, and I don't like it when preachers or others let poignancy substitute for exegesis and application. Once in a while, though, you come across a story that hits you at your core. I love writing original content for this blog, but in doing a review I came across a particularly powerful story of gospel-driven character that I had to share with my readers: "Berry Mauve or Muted Wine" by T. Suzanne Eller.

Readers who take the five to ten minutes to read the whole thing will come away freshly encouraged to live self-sacrificially for those they love. As one reads, one marvels at the awesome power of the gospel, the message that has clearly shaped this husband's approach to his wife.

"He found me weeping bitterly in the hospital room.

“What’s wrong?” Richard asked, knowing that we both had reason to cry.

In the past forty-eight hours, I learned that I had a cancerous lump in my breast that had spread to my lymph nodes, and there was a possible spot on my brain. We were both thirty-two with three young children.

Richard pulled me tight and tried to comfort me. Our friends and family had been amazed at the peace that had overwhelmed us. Jesus was our Savior and comfort before I found out I had cancer, and he remained the same after my diagnosis. But it seemed to Richard that the terrifying reality of my situation had finally crashed in on me in the few moments he was out of the room.

As he held me tight, Richard tried to comfort me. “It’s all been too much, hasn’t it, Suz?” he said.

“That’s not it,” I cried and held up the hand mirror I had just found in the drawer. Richard looked puzzled.

“I didn’t know it would be like this,” I cried, as I stared in shock at my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t recognize myself. I was horribly swollen. After the surgery, I had groaned as I lay asleep and well-meaning friends had freely pushed the self-dispensing medication to ease what they thought was pain. Unfortunately I was allergic to morphine and had swelled like a sausage. Betadine from the surgery stained my neck, shoulder and chest and it was too soon for a bath. A tube hung out of my side draining the fluid from the surgical site. My left shoulder and chest were wrapped tightly in gauze where I had lost a portion of my breast. My long, curly hair was matted into one big wad. More than one hundred people had come to see me over the past forty-eight hours, and they had all seen this brown-and-white, swollen, makeup-less, matted-haired, gray-gowned woman who used to be me.

Where had I gone?

Richard laid me back on the pillow and left the room. Within moments he came back, his arms laden with small bottles of shampoo and conditioner that he confiscated from the cart in the hall. He pulled pillows out of the closet and dragged a chair over to the sink. Unraveling my IV, he tucked the long tube from my side in his shirt pocket. Then he reached down, picked me up and carried me - IV stand and all - over to the chair. He sat me down gently on his lap, cradled my head in his arms over the sink and began to run warm water through my hair. He poured the bottles over my hair, washing and conditioning my long curls. He wrapped my hair in a towel and carried me, the tube, and the IV stand back over to the bed. He did this so gently that not one stitch was disturbed.

Next came the mascara, blush, and lipstick…

My husband, who had never blow-dried his hair in his life, took out a blow-dryer and dried my hair, the whole while entertaining me as he pretended to give beauty tips. He then proceeded, based on the experience of watching me for the past twelve years, to fix my hair. I laughed as he bit his lip, more serious than any beauty-school student. He bathed my shoulder and neck with a warm washcloth, careful to not disturb the area around the surgery, and rubbed lotion into my skin.

Then he opened my makeup bag and began to apply makeup. I will never forget our laughter as he tried to apply my mascara and blush. I opened my eyes wide and held my breath as he brushed the mascara on my lashes with shaking hands. He rubbed my cheeks with tissue to blend in the blush. With the last touch, he held up two lipsticks.

”Which one? Berry mauve or muted wine?” he asked. He applied the lipstick like an artist painting on a canvas and then held the little mirror in front of me.

I was human again. A little swollen, but I smelled clean, my hair hung softly over my

shoulders and I recognized myself.

“What do you think?” he asked. I began to cry again, this time because I was grateful.

“No, baby. You’ll mess up my makeup job,” he said and I burst into laughter.

During that difficult time in our lives, I was given only a 40 percent chance of survival over five years. That was sixteen years ago. I made it through those years with laughter, God’s comfort and the help of my wonderful husband. We will celebrate our nineteenth anniversary this year, and our children are now in their teens. Richard understood what must have seemed like vanity and silliness in the midst of tragedy.

Everything I had ever taken for granted had been shaken in those hours - the fact that I would watch my children grow, my health, my future. With one small act of kindness, Richard gave me normalcy.

I will always see that moment as one of the most loving gestures of our marriage." (From Danny Akin's God on Sex, 111-14)

On today, my twenty-seventh birthday, I am so thankful for those close to me who have loved me in self-sacrificial, gospel-driven ways. For my parents and the happy, healthy childhood they gave me, the regular sacrifices and uninterrupted love, I give thanks; for my wife, whose beautiful face is exceeded only by her beautiful character, I give thanks; for my Lord and Savior, who has saved me and is in the process of transforming me from a selfish, narcissistic, vain, disobedient, jealous, hell-bound man to a vessel fitted to praise Him, I give thanks. Though I can see great work to be done in my heart, I hope to glorify Jesus Christ by a life marked over and over again by expressions of love like that presented above, acts that capture in snapshot form, in momentary display, the great reality of Christ's cruciform love.

What It's Like to Play in the NBA D-League (or at Least the D-League Tryouts)

2008-05-13T13:15:00.000-07:00

Just read a pretty funny article about one writer's bid to make the NBA's Developmental League. "Me Got Game", by Davy Rothbart, is a funny and revealing look about what it's actually like to try and make a high-level professional basketball team. You'll want to watch for bad language in the piece, but if you can get past it, you'll likely be entertained by Rothbart's experience.

Rothbart recounts his initial moments as a D-League would-be.

"When we get to the arena, we run our pregame warm-up. I feel good, and every shot I fling up is going down. Marcus whistles. “Dang,” he says. “If I get the rebound down low, look for me to kick it out to you. I want to rack up some assists.”

Once the game starts, its pace is relentless, a nonstop sprint. When I sub in, I’m matched against a six-foot-two guard who played at Southern Oregon. I decide to drape myself on him on the perimeter so he can’t get off a shot, even if it means surrendering the drive. My lungs are on fire; my vision feels fogged. Then the ball rotates to me on -offense, and I let loose a long-range jumper, six feet behind the three-point line. Swish!"

Rothbart has a good first game, but things go downhill from there. As he writes, one gets a sense of the speed and force of professional basketball. Here's a snapshot from his next game.

"Right out of the gate, I know I’m in trouble. Yesterday’s games have sapped me of my juice, and the guy I’m D’ing up scores twice in a row. At the other end, I throw up an off-balance shot that barely glances the front rim. Coach Walsh yanks me. “Don’t force it, Davy,” he shouts. “Find your rhythm.” I nod, but when I sub back in, I can’t find it. Walsh pulls me out again, and I take a seat at the end of the bench, sucking breaths, close to tears."

After several games, the tryout for the D-League is over, and Rothbart reflects on his effort.

"Yeah, I found out the hard way—I couldn’t hang. I was good enough only to keep from embarrassing myself. (I’d totaled fourteen points and fifteen assists.) Anthony, who scored three points in our final game, also came up short. But that’s kind of all right. There’s something about laying it all on the line that feels gutsy and noble."

I enjoyed the writing, though it's not particularly noteworthy. What did stand out to me from the piece was the level of difficulty that former athletes often face in walking away from their sport. Some can hang up their shoes without much sadness, but others continue to chase a dream that retreats with each year that passes, like a shadow from a descending sun. It seems to me a difficult thing to be a marquee athlete. One day, you're playing on ESPN and in front of 20,000 screaming fans. The next, you're in a gym in the middle of nowhere, desperate to keep your dreams alive, unaware that they may well have already passed you by.

There's something about sports that makes it hard to keep in balance--perhaps the rush of testerone that becomes a regular part of life for athletes. When you're used to a cycle of highs and lows, you struggle, perhaps, to keep your life in balance, to adjust to the normal rhythms of life. This is especially true when you've been told at summer camps and motivational meetings that you can be anything you want to be. Sometimes, despite what the speaker may say, you can't. Most of us will be forced at numerous points in our lives to stop, drop what we're doing, and evaluate our lives. Is our current pursuit in the stream of God's blessing? Are we hacking away at dreams and hopes that should have died long ago? Are we, like Jonah, fighting God's will, no matter how much sea water and disappointment we swallow?

There is great humility in admitting one's limitations and in accepting the inevitable. This is no easy thing to do, but in doing so, we exhibit commendable self-awareness and realism. We also acknowledge that despite what our mind or heart may tell us, reality tells us to give up, to redirect ourselves, to lay down even the most cultivated of passions. For some of us, that's a sport; for others, it's a person we've long pursued; for others, it's a vocational dream. No matter what it may be, whether the D-League or a doctorate or even marriage, it's a fundamentally humble and healthy thing to stop fighting the circumstances around us--and the God who, we regularly discover, is behind them.

Women, Contact Sports, and the Mix of the Two in a Gender-Confused Age

2008-05-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

In response to my blog from Thursday on the New York Times piece covering the extreme risks many girls face in playing high-contact sports, I drew some strong responses, and wanted to comment on them in today's post.

Let me first encourage you to check out the article by Michael Sokolove that appeared in this past weekend's NYT magazine. In addition, surf the comments related to the article. There are now 285 (as of this posting), so this piece, "The Uneven Playing Field", has clearly touched on a hot-button cultural issue of critical importance. The paper is to be commended for publishing a piece this controversial precisely because its central assertion works so strenuously and compellingly against gender-neutral myths.

I won't rehash much from Thursday's blog, but I will give you one snapshot quotation that sums up the general drift of Sokolove's writing:

"If girls and young women ruptured their A.C.L.’s at just twice the rate of boys and young men, it would be notable. Three times the rate would be astounding. But some researchers believe that in sports that both sexes play, and with similar rules — soccer, basketball, volleyball — female athletes rupture their A.C.L.’s at rates as high as five times that of males."

This is clearly a situation of grave importance to those who have athletically minded daughters and, beyond this, to those who are raising daughters in an age of supposed physical parity between the sexes. When Gatorade, for example, tells viewers that Michael Jordan and Mia Hamm are athletically and physically of equal gifting, strength, and agility, it is no surprise that the culture at large would begin to accept this notion and put it into practice in the form of their own familial decisions. This mindset has led many parents in our era to plunge their daughters headlong into high-contact sports, oblivious to the dangers (the word is carefully chosen) their daughters face from this decision.

This is not to say, though, that girls are weak, or that every girl will get injured. Sometimes people read the former statement into the biblical principle that women are to be treated as the weaker vessel. Nowhere did I say that women are weak. I noted instead that compared to men, women are weaker in a physical sense. There are of course exceptions to this principle; one can find weak men and very strong women. But these exceptions do not overturn the principle that men are generally stronger than women. I should say that in my life, I have been surrounded by women of considerable agency and ability. My mother was and is a dynamo, always working, always redeeming the time, even when relaxing. She couldn't even watch a television show without knitting! My own wife is in the same mold. She is a very capable woman, and I married her in part because I saw biblical industry and agency in her. She never ceases to amaze me in what she accomplishes around our home. Though she is a good deal less strong than me, I would not characterize her as weak, and I am continually stunned by what she accomplishes. I should not be read to be saying, then, that women are weak. That is an uncharitable and inaccurate reading, one that I cannot affirm based on the Word and my own life experience.

Neither will every girl who competes in a high-contact sport get injured. There are probably many girls who compete in a contact sport who, for a variety of reasons, evade injury. As the NYT article shows, there are also exercises that women can perform that lower the risk of serious injury. With this caution noted, though, we return to the above research finding. Some who study women's athletics very closely think that women tear their ACL's at five times the rate that men do. This statistic--and others--must be reckoned with. The personal angle of the magazine piece add a dreadful personal dimension to this statistic. Girls--and they are girls--playing with two blown knees, all for the "love of the game". This is a horrific reality.

Our sports-obsessed, gender-neutral society exhorts many girls to do nothing less than to sacrifice their bodies for games. No one will remember these contests in the years to come. The women who go on to the activities and responsibilities of adulthood will find that their athletic experience, however large it loomed in their teenage minds, suddenly has precious little importance compared to the duties of the family, the home, and for those who feel compelled to enter it, the workforce. Think of the reality of childbearing and raising. These are tremendously engrossing callings, challenging for the most physically strong and capable woman. They will be many times more challenging, however, with a blown knee and the other results of a career--that's what it is, a career--in youth sports. In women's sports, and in some that boys play, namely, football, the parents of our country are allowing or even leading their children to a path of physical disability and even destruction. This is not simply sad--it is sick.

As Christians, we need to seriously question the sports culture. We need to make sure that if our boys play sports that we watch their hearts and their bodies very carefully to make sure that they are not idolizing athletics and, in doing so, causing great harm to their bodies. There is nothing smart or biblical or romantic in a boy suffering considerable physical damage in youth sports, no matter what the sports legends or the television shows or the Nike commercials tell us. We need to make sure that if our girls play sports that they avoid the dangerous idea that they need to do what boys do. In some cases, they cannot, and to try to do so will be to bring lasting harm to themselves. We should steer them away from sports that threaten to compromise their bodies and their femininity. Unlike modern culture, the Bible celebrates a dignified, distinct womanhood that is quite different from many masculine qualities. In our homes and our churches, we must work to celebrate this femininity, to embrace it, and to train our daughters that it is absolutely beautiful and biblically right for a woman to be just that: a woman, distinct from a man.

To summarize, then, we must stop buying into the myths that the feminist-influenced society feeds us as Christians. Women and men are different. They have been given different gifts and bodies. A woman's body is not less muscled and differently shaped from a man's by accident; God did not make men and women with the exact same physical capabilities but with different shapes, as if He simply got aesthetically creative with the bodies of Adam and Eve. He made men to be strong because he wanted them to be those who led, protected, and provided for women and children. He made women to be able to nurture children not simply in a figurative sense through their instincts, but in a literal sense, through hips that can stand childbirth and breasts that can feed children. To speak frankly, though a husband justly delights in it, this part of a woman's body was not made for fashion, for the fetishes of unmarried men or the interest of boys, but for function, despite what our sex-obsessed, female-fixated culture says by way of advertising and entertainment. If a man's body is attuned to the tasks of provision and protection, a woman's is geared for physical nurturing. We do not have to derive our understanding of gender roles by some mystical divination of the Creator's will, but through the plain testimony of Scripture and, indeed, the anatomical realities in which we find ourselves.

This sounds to postmodern ears like caveman talk. The funny part is, it's actually older than that. The roles of men and women proceed from the mind of God, who made men and women to carry out fundamentally different roles through fundamentally different physical realities. This is not to say that there is never overlap between the duties of the sexes; there often is. Yet as men live at home with their parents, and treat women well only for the purpose of seducing them, and leave them to fight their wars, and do substantive work, and assume positions of leadership due to a shortage of available (and capable) men, a suspicion might just creep its way into their minds. As fathers watch their daughters brutalize their bodies in order that these dads might live out their athletic dreams through them, a thought may come quietly to mind. As another girl falls in agony on the soccer field, or the basketball court, as a researcher crunches statistic after frightening statistic, a realization dawns. Perhaps the gender-neutral experiment is flawed. Perhaps our whole program is awry. Maybe, just maybe, in seeking our daughter's "liberation", we are watching nothing less than their downfall, right before our eyes, with our permission, under our watch.

The Week-est Link, May 9, 2008: The Dark Knight, a Theology of Rap, and More

2008-05-09T16:51:00.000-07:00

1. Westminster professor Bill Edgar gave a lecture on the theology of rap music a few years back. My friend Andy Naselli tipped me to the lecture, and I think that you will find it positively engrossing and illuminating. Dr. Edgar, simply put, is one of the neatest theologians out there--he tackles topics that other theologians won't touch, and he does so with generosity, clarity, and a bit of appreciation that makes him really interesting to listen to. I've learned a good deal from him, and I think you'll enjoy his material.

2. The preview for the upcoming Batman movie, 'The Dark Knight," is out. This movie looks incredibly dark and cool and enjoyable. Pardon the language on the webpage where the link is found--I don't endorse it, but I do endorse the watching of really cool Batman movies...

3. CJ Mahaney has been publishing helpful words on women and modesty on the Sovereign Grace blog. Read his words--he has some of the most helpful, practical counsel you'll find on matters like this, and he anchors it in stout theology. This is an incredibly thorny issue nowadays, what with the proliferation of tight women's clothing and plunging necklines, and CJ wants to help. Let him.

4. Have you heard about the New Attitude conference? It sounds tremendous. It's evolved into a mini-Together for the Gospel deal. If you're single or a young married couple, truck over to Louisville in a few weeks for the conference, and be prepared to come away knowing a great deal more about how to live a holy life in a darkened world. Speakers include Josh Harris, Mark Dever, John Piper, and Al Mohler.

Have a grace-filled weekend.

A Fascinating Piece from the New York Times Detailing the Injuries of Female Athletes

2008-05-08T14:22:00.000-07:00

Michael Sokolove has published what will be a national conversation-starter in the New York Times magazine that will come out this weekend. In "The Uneven Playing Field," Sokolove details at tremendous length the high injury risks girls and women face in playing contact sports. I found the piece compelling, frightening, and reflective of common sense: girls are not built like guys, and thus when they play contact sports with tenacity and abandon, they will often face very serious injury.

I've blogged about this before. My blogs on the subject were met with a strong reaction from some readers. Some did not like my suggestion that contact sports are inherently unfeminine and incongruent with robust, biblically informed femininity. It is fine for people to disagree with my viewpoints, but I would encourage all readers of this blog who have a stake in girl's sports--or who may one day have such a stake--to read this piece this weekend and to consider the highlighted quotations I've pasted below. In Sokolove's piece (which you will need to register on the NYT site to read before Sunday), you will find frightening testimony to the claim that women simply are not designed for heavy contact in the way that men are.

Here's what Sokolove has found as a recurring trend in women's sport--

"This casualty rate was not due to some random spike in South Florida. It is part of a national trend in the wake of Title IX and the explosion of sports participation among girls and young women. From travel teams up through some of the signature programs in women’s college sports, women are suffering injuries that take them off the field for weeks or seasons at a time, or sometimes forever.

Girls and boys diverge in their physical abilities as they enter puberty and move through adolescence. Higher levels of testosterone allow boys to add muscle and, even without much effort on their part, get stronger. In turn, they become less flexible. Girls, as their estrogen levels increase, tend to add fat rather than muscle. They must train rigorously to get significantly stronger. The influence of estrogen makes girls’ ligaments lax, and they outperform boys in tests of overall body flexibility — a performance advantage in many sports, but also an injury risk when not accompanied by sufficient muscle to keep joints in stable, safe positions. Girls tend to run differently than boys — in a less-flexed, more-upright posture — which may put them at greater risk when changing directions and landing from jumps. Because of their wider hips, they are more likely to be knock-kneed — yet another suspected risk factor.

This divergence between the sexes occurs just at the moment when we increasingly ask more of young athletes, especially if they show talent: play longer, play harder, play faster, play for higher stakes. And we ask this of boys and girls equally — unmindful of physical differences. The pressure to concentrate on a “best” sport before even entering middle school — and to play it year-round — is bad for all kids. They wear down the same muscle groups day after day. They have no time to rejuvenate, let alone get stronger. By playing constantly, they multiply their risks and simply give themselves too many opportunities to get hurt."

Here are the rates at which girls seriously (very seriously) injure themselves compared to boys--

"If girls and young women ruptured their A.C.L.’s at just twice the rate of boys and young men, it would be notable. Three times the rate would be astounding. But some researchers believe that in sports that both sexes play, and with similar rules — soccer, basketball, volleyball — female athletes rupture their A.C.L.’s at rates as high as five times that of males.

The N.C.A.A.’s Injury Surveillance System tracks injuries suffered by athletes at its member schools, calculating the frequency of certain injuries by the number of occurrences per 1,000 “athletic exposures” — practices and games. The rate for women’s soccer is 0.25 per 1,000, or 1 in 4,000, compared with 0.10 for male soccer players. The rate for women’s basketball is 0.24, more than three times the rate of 0.07 for the men. The A.C.L. injury rate for girls may be higher — perhaps much higher — than it is for college-age women because of a spike that seems to occur as girls hit puberty."

Here are the inherent genetic differences between men and women--

“Women tend to be more erect and upright when they land, and they land harder,” he said. “They bend less through the knees and hips and the rest of their bodies, and they don’t absorb the impact of the landing in the same way that males do. I don’t want to sound horrible about it, but we can make a woman athlete run and jump more like a man.”

Here are the ideals that get in the way of common sense wisdom, not to mention biblical principles--

"The bigger barrier, though, may be political. Advocates for women’s sports have had to keep a laser focus on one thing: making sure they have equal access to high-school and college sports. It’s hard to fight for equal rights while also broadcasting alarm about injuries that might suggest women are too delicate to play certain games or to play them at a high level of intensity. There are parallels in the workplace, where sex differences can easily be perceived as weakness. A woman must have maternity leave. She may ask for a quiet room to nurse her baby or pump breast milk and is the one more likely to press for on-site child care. In high-powered settings like law firms, she may be less likely, over time, to be willing to work 80 hours a week. She does not always conform to the model of the default employee: a man."

This article, as is clear, is nothing less than an earthquake in the field of gender studies. It is part of Warrior Girls: Protecting Our Daughters Against the Injury Epidemic in Women’s Sports, which will be published in June. I would encourage all readers to order the book and read it. I am guessing that, while one may not agree with every point made in it, it will offer eloquent testimony to the simple principles of common sense and biblical wisdom. Common sense tells us that, despite what our egalitarian society may tell us on many levels, men and women are intrinsically, inherently, unalterably different. This is not in any way to say that one sex is better than the other. The two sexes are equipped for different tasks, and their bodies reflect this reality, whether postmoderns--or anyone else, for that matter--accept it or not. It is readily apparent that women's bodies are not made to withstand the same physical challenges that men's bodies can tolerate.

Furthermore, the Scripture tells us just this. Women, we learn in the Bible, are the weaker vessel (1 Peter 3:7). Though many men, even strong Christian men, stutter when they come across this text, the Bible's teaching could not be clearer. It is for this reason that biblical men, when they are godly, take on the hard physical tasks of life, which includes provision, protection, and cultivation of one's domain. The culture does not believe the Bible on this matter. We see evident proof of this disbelief in the sports culture that has exploded in America, in which it is heresy to challenge the idea that men and women are physically different and might have different roles in life. Yet from unexpected sources such as that quoted above comes strong proof that, shockingly, the Bible's truth is true. Indeed, when men and women follow this truth, they are blessed, not cursed; when women do not seek the physical roles of men, they are blessed, not broken, as they so frequently appear to be in this frightening article.

What Kids Are Reading Nowadays, and How it Relates to the Greatest Commandment

2008-05-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

Ninth-12th Grade

1. "To Kill a Mockingbird," Harper Lee
2. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows"
3. "Of Mice and Men," John Steinbeck
4. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone"
5. "A Child Called 'It,' " Dave Pelzer

--Source, Seattle Times

This selection is part of a larger list that you can read at the link above. Here are some reflections found in the article:

"I find it reassuring ... that students are still reading the classics I read as a child," said Roy Truby, a senior vice president for Wisconsin-based Renaissance Learning. But Truby said he would have preferred to see more meaty and varied fare, such as "historical novels and biographical works so integral to understanding our past and contemporary books that help us understand our world."

Michelle Bayuk, marketing director for the New York-based Children's Book Council, agreed. "What's missing from the list are all the wonderful nonfiction, informational, humorous and novelty books as well as graphic novels that kids read and enjoy both inside and outside the classroom."

I would second (or third, maybe) these thoughts. My initial thought about the 9-12 grade list was that it shows that this age group has not lost its taste for fantasy and also for poignant, morally reflective writing. Contrary to what some may say, youth in our age still do have an appetite for study of the deeper realities and questions of life. Though many in the current day saturate themselves with ephemeral entertainments, yet it should be clear that a yearning for instruction in moral living and engagement with transcendent experience have not disappeared from our culture. For the youth who read (admittedly, a decreasing number), wisdom and transcendence are main targets.

I like Roy Truby's comment most. He sounds like a guy I would have some common ground with. American youth seem to have lost sight of the country's past. As technology and entertainment drive us further away from the instinct to prize us what is past, I am sure that this trend will only continue, and the lessons and events of history will disappear from national consciousness. How important, then, that Christians root their children in the treasures of national and religious history. One of the most damaging things a Christian can do to their understanding of Christianity is to rob it of historical connection. Wisdom is not found only in the Scriptures, but is found also in the story of the Scriptures played out across the ages. To pretend that we have no past, and therefore that we have nothing to learn from history, is to make the most egotistical and egregious of mistakes.

It is also true that one cannot examine the ideas and doctrines of the Christian past without rooting them in their cultural situation. We are not meant to encounter ideas outside of their age, but should instead study those ideas in connection to their day. Doctrines, theologies, and innovations do not rise out of a vacuum, but proceed from a definite course of events that require study to flesh out the idea being considered. History, then, is no mere footnote to philosophy or theology, but is the brother of these disciplines. The best history examines the great theological and philosophical questions of the past; the best philosophy and theology comprehends the historical circumstances that gave birth to these questions, and studies how these questions were applied in the ages of human existence.

What are kids reading, then? Well, it's clear that not many of them are reading any of three aforementioned disciplines. If we're glad that kids are reading, period, we should also avoid the dumbing down of our children's educations. We should bring before our children the great treasures of past ages and train their minds from a young age to study the higher and deeper things of life. Christians who impoverish the minds of their children and allow them to feast on entertainment and pop culture should not be surprised when their children develop an appetite for the same. When, however, we give our children a steady diet of meaty intellectual fare, their minds, like their bodies, will strengthen and grow, and we will have accomplished in some form the God-given responsibility to train them in loving the Lord our God with all of our mind, an oft-overlooked aspect of the first and greatest commandment.

We write all this not because we think that we'll take over America on an intellectual level if we accomplish this task, or because America as a society will radically change if we do so. No, we do so to honor God. It seems that is in such simple choices as what we give our children to read that their character and minds will be profoundly shaped. In heaven, we will not worship God only in the affective dimension, as contemporary songship seems often to imply, but with our minds. A mighty torrent of wisdom will flow into our souls, and we will be awestruck by what we then know and comprehend. Perhaps we can train our children for the next realm, and give them a glimpse of things to come, by feeding them the full riches of literature while we have time in this one.

A Gripping and Sobering Tale: Ron Chernow's Biography of Rockefeller and the Lessons it Holds

2008-05-06T12:47:00.000-07:00

About four years ago, economic historian Ron Chernow completed his multi-year work, Titan (Vintage, 2004). The book's title mirrors its heft. This is nothing short of a titanic feat. In his capstone text, Chernow has delivered a rich, engrossing, exhaustively detailed portrait of one of history's most fascinating economic figures, the oilman, John D. Rockefeller, Sr. A lifelong Baptist, Rockefeller represents a complex figure of contrasting qualities. Driven to bend the rules by his need to dominate the oil market, Rockefeller gave hundreds of millions of dollars to philanthropic causes. His biography, though daunting in size, thus contains important lessons for Christians and thinkers alike.

I won't attempt to cover Rockefeller's life here. If you would like such a summary, check out Wikipedia or some such source. I will say that one sees in Chernow's portrait of Rockefeller a man who made it his life business to master his market and bring his competitors to submission. Beginning life under an undependable father and a doting mother, it seems that Rockefeller's life was an exercise in exorcising the ghost of his untrustworthy father and the poverty into which his father's vagrancy plunged the family. As Chernow describes him, Rockefeller acquired a fixation with the balance sheet of his companies and used the hard data of his businesses to fuel all of his decisions. With a scale of calculation seldom seen in economic history, Rockefeller cleared his way through the Cleveland oil trade in the second half of the nineteenth century, buying up refinery after refinery, amassing a fortune in the process.

Unfortunately, Chernow makes clear that as time wore on, Rockefeller and his associates engaged in questionable practices to advance the company now known to history as the Standard Oil Company (Rockefeller always called it this, even years after his retirement). By colluding with the railroad industry and paying off politicians, Standard Oil was able to able to achieve the status of a trust for decades before Teddy Roosevelt's men brought it to heel in the early twentieth century. By then, of course, it was far too late. Rockefeller and his fellow leaders were multi-millionaires, Standard Oil was the world's largest kerosene producer, and even when broken up, Standard Oil subsidiaries formed three of the twentieth century's largest global companies--Texaco, Shell, Amoco among them.

Rockefeller's life teaches us many important lessons, as all good biographies do. Though Chernow is far too psychological in his read of Rockefeller, his chronicle reveals the importance of choosing one's associates carefully. This is a biblical truth--the Proverbs emphasize it--but sometimes we Christians gloss over it. Because Rockefeller allowed liberal-minded Christians to disperse the riches of his fortune, an appraisal of his legacy reveals that it accomplished good, but often not necessarily Christian, ends. The Cleveland native's millions endowed, for example, the Rockefeller Institute, a medical think-tank responsible for many twentieth-century advances in science that benefited humanity writ large--the virtual elimination of hookworm comes to mind.

Yet while it is surely good for Christians to contribute to the common good--biblical, in fact--we may also say that it seems best for the money of wealthy Christians to go toward primarily Christian causes, in order that it might leave a legacy that stretches past this age into the next. Because Rockefeller's money was given out by men like Frederick Gates, a lapsed Baptist, it clearly did not accomplish the kingdom work it might have, though it did benefit millions of people in the end.

In addition, though Rockefeller was a devout Christian, it seems that very few of his children and descendants adhered to any form of evangelical Christianity. Rockefeller was no theologian, and would never have claimed to be, but one wonders about the reasons behind this sad family history. He instructed the children in the things of the Lord, as did his wife, but little of it seemed to stick with them. Indeed, his beloved son, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., took his stand besides combatively liberal Christians, Harry Emerson Fosdick the most prominent of them. It is of course true that there is no one-to-one correspondence between the faith of parents and their children, but the paucity of biblically minded Christians among the Rockefeller dynasty leaves one puzzled, sadly puzzled, as to how this came to be. Surely Rockefeller's story serves as a reminder to parents that biblical faith must be lived on every level. It is not enough to teach, for one must live what one teaches. Also, it is not enough to live, for one must teach what one lives. We cannot err on one side or the other, but must combine both in a vital embrace of the gospel that radiates before the watching eyes of our children.

The final note one would make on the titan's life involves his business ethics. We cannot speculate as to whether Rockefeller's children fell out of favor with Christianity because of their discovery of the nature of the ill-gotten gains of his fortune, but we can say that it is clear that Rockefeller repeatedly bent the rules to make his millions. His fiscal empire was not rapacious, and it was often fair, and he himself was routinely generous to those whose firms he bought, but there are still blights on his economic record. As a leader, Rockefeller often distanced himself from the directly questionable (or outright wrong) decisions that secured his company's wealth, but the record shows that he led all the way, whether he signed the note or not. His example calls us to merge our faith with our day-to-day work. Faith and work are not mutually exclusive, and do not occupy self-contained realms. No, faith is to be poured into work, and biblical teachings and ethics are to shape how we live. How sad to see one example of a clear Christian who compromised his ethics in order to serve his ambition. Leadership is leadership, whether it is exercised from a distance or in the heat of the decision.

Titan teaches the Christian a familiar lesson. As much as the world calls to us to sample its delights, we must seek to be great not in earthly things but in God's kingdom. We may never achieve what some around us do, but in the end, we will have our character. On the last day, that will be a legacy that will not blow away with the wind. Rockefeller was a great man, a man who accomplished incredible things, and we will see him on the other side, where ambition for self and for glory has died and only righteousness lives on.

How Long Will it Be Until Parents Force Children to Undergo Plastic Surgery?

2008-05-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

You may have heard of the recent hubbub surrounding the release of a new children's book that is intended to help the offspring of those who have had plastic surgery cope with the surgery's transformative effect on their parents. Written by a plastic surgeon, My Beautiful Mommy represents an interesting first in the plastic surgery world--it introduces the process to children.

Which got me wondering--how long until parents subject their children to plastic surgery? We already know that many parents subject their embryos to genetic screening in order that they might avoid having to parent a disabled child (see Dr. Al Mohler for more on this). We also know that many parents subject their children to relentless pressure to fit in and exceed throughout their young lives. See Alexandra Robbins's recent The Overachievers for some background on this phenomenon. In addition, modern America is obsessed with physical beauty. Alex Kucynzki's Beauty Junkies makes just this point. One wonders, then, when these cultural trends will coalesce into a perfect storm and form an impetus for parents to pay for plastic surgery to correct the imperfect features of their children? How far away can such destructively narcissistic practices be?

The line to be crossed here is the direct exhortation of parents to their children to have plastic surgery for supposed defections. Currently, plastic surgery forms a popular and expensive graduation gift for teenage girls in wealthy areas of America. Yet we not our language carefully here--this surgery is not an order but a gift. The comments made by one mother in a story two years old about plastic surgery among teens confirmed my worst fears--parents are increasingly encouraging and exhorting their children to undergo plastic surgery. See this:

Take the case of Katie Underdown of Georgia. Last year, the 17-year-old had a nose job and a chin implant by the same surgeon who did multiple surgeries on her mother, Jan, and several of her mom's friends. Although the teen had a deviated septum, a medical condition that makes it harder to breath, she initially balked at surgery. Her mother urged her on, though.

"I told her, 'It doesn't bother you right now but it may later. Let's just get it fixed.' I had a great surgeon, I was able to pay for it and nurse her back," explains Jan Underdown. "Katie had a recessed chin like me and I said, 'Put the chin implant in.' She did it. It turned out great. I think of it like her braces. You fix what you know is an issue and then you go on and live your life."

Did you catch the verbal nuance here? "Let's just get it fixed." That's what Jan Underdown said to her daughter, a seventeen year-old girl. One can understand surgery for a nasal condition, but the mother in the case also urged her to daughter to get a "chin implant," whatever that is. I'm guessing that we're going to see many more such cases of parental pressure on topics like this. I live in an incredibly posh town in Illinois, and I constantly see middle-aged women attempting to look like teenagers, dressing in the same clothes, bleaching their hair the same color, adopting the same "haughty cool" attitude that one expects to find in teenagers. For these women, beauty is not merely a virtue, it's an obsession. As many of these women turn to cosmetic surgery to keep up in the race to stay young as long as possible, how many of them will encourage their impressionable daughters to do the same? In a society that increasingly turns its back on things that really matter, on traditional principles and virtues, how hard will it really be for parents to push their bucktoothed daughter or large-nosed child to go under the knife in order to look "right"? I don't have any statistics, and I haven't seen any stories on this, but I would cautiously and nervously predict that it will not be long before narcissism, parental pressure, and the beauty culture collide and form a society in which regular children are pressured to be surgically transformed into something they are not.

Some might say that this is nothing new, that beauty has always been an issue for kids and that little will change in this regard. I would respond that this is true, but in our age, we have the means to change our appearances, an ability that prior generations did not. As plastic surgery becomes increasingly inexpensive, and as the culture continues to slide away from a biblical definition of life and of beauty, it only makes sense that parents would desire to correct and shape their children to be that which they believe to be truly important. Our media-saturated culture, after all, drives such an obsession with physical appearance. When your average person watches multiple hours of television and films each week, and takes in the appearance-frenzied environment that television puts forth (the medium is the message, in this case), this person cannot help but end up appearance-crazy. The result, I would predict, will be that those with money will increasingly turn to perfect not simply themselves but their children. Children do, after all, reflect their parents. Whatever their parents prize, then, children will come to look like in a most literal way.

If all this is true, what can Christians do in today's appearance-obsessed culture? Christian parents can teach their children what really matters, and avoid forming a conception of identity in their children that centers around looks. Parents can consciously work against a culture that is obsessed with appearance by themselves avoiding vanity and concentration on physical beauty. Parents should, in my opinion, be very careful about complimenting their children based on beauty and in explicitly delineating amongst attractive and unattractive children. Beyond this, each Christian person in a decadent culture should consider what they can do on a personal level to resist sinful focus on their appearance. We can't singlehandedly turn back the tide of our world, but we can all resist its influence and claim kingdom ground in the war against it. Most importantly, by exalting the gospel in our homes, our churches, and our daily lives, we can teach ourselves and those around us what truly matters and show a watching world that in Christ, we have found true beauty. It is not first and foremost physical attractiveness, but is self-sacrificial love such that the guilty go free and the sinfully ugly become pure. This is beauty. Even as those around us sacrifice their children on an altar of obsession, we can work to train them in believing the message that alone can liberate us, that alone can make us beautiful in the eyes of the only One who matters--God.

The Week-est Link, May 2, 2008: Band of Bloggers Info

2008-05-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

1. I don't know why I overlooked this in past "Week-est Links," but here it is: the link to the Band of Bloggers website. If you are a gospel-oriented blogger, go there and sign up to be added to the the network of bloggers. It's a great way to link up with like-minded writers and to be involved in a wider movement. You do not need to have gone to the Band of Bloggers event in Louisville in April 2008 to be a part of this exciting network. My friend Timmy Brister has started this all up, and it's going to be exciting to see what the Lord does to use his vision.

2. While we're on the topic of Band of Bloggers, make sure that you take 45 minutes or so to listen to the moderated panel discussion on "Christ-Centered Blogging." As those entrusted with the gospel, the panel sought to think through how one stewards this responsibility in the unique context of blogging. I moderated the panel and found the answers of the bloggers (Tim Challies, Thabiti Anyabwile, Abraham Piper, and Phil Johnson) to be provocative and instructive. Also, my friend Tony Kummer was in charge of the sound and did a great job, a fact I forgot to mention at the panel (sorry, Tony!).

3. Blog Gem: "Matthew Hall.Net" It would be difficult to find a more thoughtful Christian blog than Matt's. Matt, working toward a PhD in American Religious History, offers exceptional commentary on historical and cultural trends on his blog. He's not the most consistent blogger (being the producer of Dr. Mohler's radio show and the head of a rapidly growing home has something to do with it--not to mention his studies!), but when he blogs, you should note what he says. I love Matt's writing and look forward to seeing what the Lord does through him in the future.

4. Desiring God has a unique blog series unfolding right now on photography. It's nice to see a very popular blog expand to the realm of the arts. Check out the series.

5. A funny Salon piece on how online "booklists" allow us to construct false images of ourselves. I've noticed this before and attempt to point out, personally, where I'm an actual authority and where I'm an armchair authority. So far, it's a big zero in the first column and too many to name in the second...

...Have a richly relaxing weekend, everyone.

Contemplate Heaven with Me for a Minute: Edward's "Heaven Is a World of Love", Pt. 3

2008-05-01T14:09:00.000-07:00

I'm glad that some of you are enjoying these quotations from "Heaven Is a World of Love." Here's the final one you'll see on this blog. It encapsulates the themes seen in the previous quotations and paints a beautiful metaphysical, emotional, and spiritual picture of the realm to come. Wherever you are, take just four minutes to read it. Then give yourself just a moment to consider what you've read.

The reason Edwards could write jewels like this was, in part, that he cultivated the habit--and it is a habit--of theological meditation. He did not simply read and then rush away. He read and then took a long horse-ride through the lush New England countryside to think on what he had read. As his horse canted softly through a fall forest scene, Edwards was mulling over the doctrine of original sin. As he rode past a lively stream, Edwards was transporting himself to the heavenly realm, pondering the relationships found there between God and God, God and man, man and man. Life for Edwards was not merely an exercise in study, then. It was also an exercise in meditation, in the refinement of thought, the cultivation of expression, such that when he wrote to instruct the saints, the riches flowed liberally, as they still do.

A Closing Picture of Heaven’s Beauty--And they shall know that they themselves shall ever live to love God, and love the saints, and to enjoy their love in all its fulness and sweetness forever. They shall be in no fear of any end to this happiness, or of any abatement from its fulness and blessedness, or that they shall ever be weary of its exercises and expressions, or cloyed with its enjoyments, or that the beloved objects shall ever grow old or disagreeable, so that their love shall at last die away. All in heaven shall flourish in immortal youth and freshness. Age will not there diminish anyone's beauty or vigor; and their love shall abide in everyone's heart, as a living spring perpetually springing up in the soul, or as a flame that never dies away. And the holy pleasure of this love shall be as a river that is forever flowing clear and full, and increasing continually. The heavenly paradise of love shall always be kept as in a perpetual spring, without autumn or winter, where no frosts shall blight, or leaves decay and fall, but where every plant shall be in perpetual freshness, and bloom, and fragrance, and beauty, always springing forth, and always blossoming, and always bearing fruit. The leaf of the righteous shall not wither (Psa. 1:3). And in the midst of the streets of heaven, and on either side of the river, grows the tree of life, which bears twelve manner of fruits, and yields her fruit every month (Rev. 22:2). Everything in the heavenly world shall contribute to the joy of the saints, and every joy of heaven shall be eternal. No night shall settle down with its darkness upon the brightness of their everlasting day.

Read more in The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Wilson Kimnach, Kenneth Minkema, and Doug Sweeney (Yale, 1999). You'll find in it this sermon and several other treasures that will, if you commit to reading them, transform your understanding of Edwards and, I'm confident, the Christian faith. The book is not long and is an inexpensive paperback. Wonderful reference tool, as well, for pastors and those looking to mine Edwards for their ministry.

Also, see the following accessible works related to Edwards:

A Jonathan Edwards Reader, ed. John Smith, Harry Stout, and Kenneth Minkema. Another very useful Edwards work--a paperback collection of some of the key texts of the Edwards corpus, with readable sections from some of Edwards's most important philosophical-theological writings.
Jonathan Edwards: A Guided Tour of His Life and Thought. By Stephen Nichols. A very quick little paperback introducing readers to the ideas and events of Edwards's life. Excellent resource, though if you want a really substantive, enriching read, get Marsden's magisterial biography (Jonathan Edwards: A Life).

Contemplate Heaven with Me for a Minute: Edward's "Heaven Is a World of Love", Pt. 2

2008-04-30T19:13:00.000-07:00

Here, from the pen of Jonathan Edwards, are several ways for the Christian to cultivate a love for heaven and a holy piety that fits us for that realm. These are manifestly helpful to the Christian seeking to learn how to become more heavenly-minded, in the best sense of the term.

"First, let not your heart go after the things of this world, as your chief good. Indulge not yourself in the possession of earthly things as though they were to satisfy your soul. This is the reverse of seeking heaven; it is to go in a way contrary to that which leads to the world of love. If you would seek heaven, your affections must be taken off from the pleasures of the world. You must not allow yourself in sensuality, or worldliness, or the pursuit of the enjoyments or honors of the world, or occupy your thoughts or time in heaping up the dust of the earth. You must mortify the desires of vain-glory, and become poor in spirit and lowly in heart.

Second, you must, in your meditations and holy exercises, be much engaged in conversing with heavenly persons, and objects, and enjoyments.

Third, be content to pass through all difficulties in the way to heaven.

Fourth, In all your way let your eye be fixed on Jesus, who has gone to heaven as your forerunner. Look to him. Behold his glory in heaven, that a sight of it may stir you up the more earnestly to desire to be there.

Fifth, If you would be in the way to the world of love, see that you live a life of love-of love to God, and love to men. All of us hope to have part in the world of love hereafter, and therefore we should cherish the spirit of love, and live a life of holy love here on earth. This is the way to be like the inhabitants of heaven, who are now confirmed in love forever. Only in this way can you be like them in excellence and loveliness, and like them, too, in happiness, and rest, and joy. By living in love in this world you may be like them, too, in sweet and holy peace, and thus have, on earth, the foretastes of heavenly pleasures and delights. Thus, also, you may have a sense of the glory of heavenly things, as of God, and Christ, and holiness; and your heart be disposed and opened by holy love to God, and by the spirit of peace and love to men, to a sense of the excellence and sweetness of all that is to be found in heaven. Thus shall the windows of heaven be as it weere opened, so that its glorious light shall shine in upon your soul. Thus you may have the evidence of your fitness for that blessed world, and that you are actually on the way to its possession. And being this made meet, through grace, for the inheritance of the saints in light, when a few more days shall have passed away, you shall be with them in their blessedness forever. Happy, thrice happy those, who shall thus be found faithful to the end, and then shall be welcomed to the joy of their Lord! There "they shall hunger no more, neither thrist anymore; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and lead them to living fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."

Contemplate Heaven with Me for a Minute: Edward's "Heaven Is a World of Love", Pt. 1

2008-04-29T17:33:00.000-07:00

This sermon is an absolute masterpiece. Unfortunately, most Christians have not and never will encounter it. I encourage you to read this section and to check out the sermon. You'll see why if you read it.

The Reality of God’s Unending Love for His People--"As the saints will love God with an inconceivable ardency of heart, and to the utmost of their capacity, so they will know that he has loved them from all eternity, and still loves them, and will continue to love them forever. And God will then gloriously manifest himself to them, and they shall know that all that happiness and glory which they are possessed of, are the fruits of his love. And with the same ardor and fervency will the saints love the Lord Jesus Christ; and their love will be accepted; and they shall know that he has loved them with a faithful, yea, even with a dying love. They shall then be more sensible than now they are, what great love it manifested in Christ that he should lay down his life for them; and then will Christ open to their view the great fountain of love in his heart for them, beyond all that they ever saw before. Hereby the love of the saints to God and Christ is seen to he reciprocated, and that declaration fulfilled, "I love them that love me;" and though the love of God to them cannot properly be called the return of love, because he loved them first, yet the sight of his love will, on that very account, the more fill them with joy and admiration, and love to him."

--From "Heaven Is a World of Love," The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards

I recently taught on this at a local church in the Chicago area and was absolutely transported by Edwards's words. The central point of this passage is that God's love in heaven is something like a rushing force that unstoppably flows into the hearts and souls of His people. Like a sea churning with fury, God's love pours into the hearts of His people such that they are so full, so satiated with God's love, that there is no room for any other emotion or feeling. I do not know, of course, is this is the way heaven is, exactly, but I do commend Edwards for taking a stab at comprehending the reality of an uninhibited divine love. How often do you and I honestly stop to consider what it is like to experience the rushing, surging, overwhelming force of God's love as mediated through Christ in heaven? How much do we struggle to sense flickers of Christ's love while on earth, so cold and sinful are our hearts? Heaven, I am confident, will be very different, and whether it is just like Edwards pictures it in this sermon or not, it is clear from the biblical text that Christians have a great rushing sea of love in which to swim in the next life. Edwards lifts our gazes to think about this coming reality, and it will be worth reflecting on these next few days in order that we might train ourselves to allow our doctrine of heaven to transcend mere abstraction, mere intellectual exercise, and to warm our hearts as the Bible so clearly intends it to.