31 Wednesday Jul 2019
Posted in Quotes
“Almighty God, who hast caused the light of eternal life to shine upon the world, we beseech Thee that our hearts may be so kindled with heavenly desires, and Thy Holy Spirit, that we may continually seek the things which are above; and, abiding in purity of heart and mind, may at length attain unto Thine everlasting kingdom, there to dwell in the glorious light of Thy presence, world without end–Amen.”
-Book of Prayers, 1851, quoted in Great Souls at Prayer, 262
29 Monday Jul 2019
Posted in Contra Mundum
Joshua Harris has been in the news recently. He’s an author who became famous in the late ’90s for his book I Kissed Dating Goodbye–which he renounced not long ago (I never read the book, and can’t speak to its teachings). Apparently Harris also served as pastor of a megachurch for some years.
But the more recent news is his announcements that he’s separating from his wife, embracing LGBTQ+ ideology, and departing the Christian faith.
There’s a coherence in all this. Morality, ideology, and religion go together. God shapes the worldview of His people, teaching us the truth about Himself and ourselves. When we attend humbly and faithfully to God’s Word, we receive from Him a theology and an anthropology that put the world in order; we also receive His gracious help in ordering our lives after His plan.
From God we learn about God, we learn the gospel of Jesus Christ, and embrace God’s life-giving gift. We also learn that God created mankind male and female, and designed that man and woman may join together in the covenant of marriage. Morality, ideology, and religion are all gifted to us by God, and received in faith.
But when we reject God, we have to seek the truth elsewhere. We get the ideologies of the world, where things become so muddled that even the plain facts of nature are explained away. Without God, the world becomes a much less sensible place.
22 Monday Jul 2019
18 Thursday Jul 2019
Posted in Contra Mundum, Musings
Tags
Christianity, Communism, Eternity, Ethics, Heaven, Humanity, Hymn, Karl Marx, Morality, Socialism, Theology, Truth
I am sometimes fascinated by juxtapositions. For instance, on page 593 of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (13th edition), this quote from a hymn by John Mason Neale:
Brief life is here our portion.
…is followed by the quotations from Karl Marx, beginning with:
Religion…is the opium of the people.
Two worldviews providentially arranged for our comparison.
The first worldview sets this life in the context of eternity. Our days in this world are few–but there is another life to come, in the heavenly city, for those who belong to Christ. The hymn is actually a translation of a 12th century work by Bernard of Morlas, and the entire hymn can be found here. It connects, in turn, with Hebrews 13:14, “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (ESV). So an acknowledgement of the ephemeral quality of this present life serves actually to prompt us to faithfulness and to ground morality in this present world. Relativizing this life undergirds living it well.
Marx, on the other hand, may agree that this life is short–but, in any case, it’s all we’ve got. The grand religious narrative that calls us to think of the world to come is a stupefying fable. Therefore we must focus on this life, and on the equitable distribution of resources for human flourishing.
But that last point does not follow. If this life is all, why should we pursue equality and flourishing for everyone? Why shouldn’t the strong take advantage of the weak for their own gain? And that, of course, is how Marx’s ideas actually played out in human history. Absolutizing this life is how we make it best approximate hell.
So the merry juxtaposition of Bartlett has set before us something like the two ways of biblical wisdom literature. Live for this life, and you make this life a misery. Live for God, in light of His eternal kingdom, and you fill this life with meaning. This is true for cultures, but it is fundamentally true for individuals–cultures are, after all, aggregates of individuals. Two ways are set before us; “Therefore, choose life” (Deut. 30:19).
16 Tuesday Jul 2019
Posted in Contra Mundum, Musings, Pro Ecclesia
Tags
Bible, Books, Celebrity Culture, Christianity, Evangelicalism, Media, Scripture, Truth, Word of God
I was confronted this morning once more with the vexatious reality of evangelical commercialization and celebrity culture. Christianbook.com had kindly sent the church a catalogue, labeled “Pastor’s Resources Fall 2019.” Among the four books featured on the cover was The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible, which I was exhorted to pursue on page 7.
Sigh.
Dutifully turning to page 7, I find that Charles Stanley, and his publisher Thomas Nelson, are not alone in carrying out this travesty. On pages 5-7, we discover also the Jeremiah Study Bible (that’s David Jeremiah, not the OT prophet), the MacArthur Study Bible, the Ryrie Study Bible, the Scofield Study Bible, the Maxwell Leadership Bible, and others.
Now, I know that in a sense these are just 1-volume Bible commentaries. And I think Bible commentaries are tremendously valuable. And I think it is fine, even desirable, for Bible commentaries to print the text of Scripture along with their commentary.
Nonetheless, it strikes me as irreverent towards the Word of God to print a Bible labeled with a popular teacher. This is one of many ways in which the evangelical publishing industry has been unduly influenced by celebrity culture and commercialization; but it is probably the worst.
As for me, I’ll take my Scripture plain, please.
13 Saturday Jul 2019
Posted in Musings
A fellow named Brad East has recently written a little essay “Against Pop Culture.” Despite the title, he is not denouncing pop culture as totally sinful or exhorting Christians to have nothing to do with it. He admits, either in this essay or in further clarifications, that he has at least one TV show he is looking forward to following in its new season. His point is to challenge the claim by many Christians today that engaging with pop culture is really important and valuable. To quote:
The boring fact is that Christians like pop culture for the same reasons everyone else does—it’s convenient, undemanding, diverting, entertaining, and socially rewarded—and Christians with an audience either (1) rationalize that fact with high-minded justifications, (2) invest that activity with meaning it lacks (but “must” have to warrant the time Christians give to it), or (3) instrumentalize it toward other, non-trivial ends.
Options 1 and 2 are dead ends. Option 3 is well-intended but, nine times out of ten, also a dead end.
and…
Reading, cooking, gardening, playing a board game, building something with your hands, chatting with a neighbor, grabbing coffee with a friend, serving in a food pantry, learning a language, cleaning, sleeping, journaling, praying, sitting on your porch, resting, catching up with your spouse or housemate: every one of these things would be a qualitative improvement on streaming a show or movie (much less scrolling infinitely on Instagram or Twitter).
I think he is correct. Movies and TV shows are occasionally formative in character, instructive, or useful for connecting with people. But I suspect that, on the balance, their good is far outweighed by their corrupting influence and consistent use for normalizing immorality. They are more stupefying than educational, more desensitizing than morally formative.
This doesn’t mean there’s not a place for them–some of them, that is. But they’re not important. There’s almost always a better use for our time.
11 Thursday Jul 2019
Posted in Poetical
Sublime divine mystery
see how my small mind grasps
and leaps, and lapses numb
struck dumb to fit describe what I cannot
circumscribe in thought, my
lot the merest inkling that
I cling to, hints you’ve bidden
hidden wondrously,
O mystery divine.
10 Wednesday Jul 2019
Posted in Contra Mundum, Musings
Tags
America, Freedom, God, Patriotism, Truth
It doesn’t take much reflection to observe that America today is home to many people for whom the nation’s founding principles must appear odious, even scandalous. Consider how this early line from the Declaration of Independence must read to many in our culture:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Scandal upon scandal! One offense unfolds upon another. First is the assertion that anything should be certain and universal, much less “self-evident”, a defiance of the basic relativism of the postmodern mind. Second is the generic use of the masculine pronoun, a capital offense in contemporary academia. Related (Second, Part Second?) is this concept of a ‘man’, which a fair number of our legislators and academics, and the majority of our celebrities, seem no longer very clear on.
But third–and here I wish to dwell a moment–is the real scandal. The worldview and claim of freedom in this document seems to be explicitly based in theism. And, though this sentence does not specify, I think the historical background is sufficient to assert that this theism is a monotheism of at least vaguely Christian contours.
Doctrines of God, creation, and providence are foundational to the American experiment in freedom. Upon such foundations was built a republican (small r) government that most people no longer understand, and which the Democrats (big D) are trying to dismantle because it has proven a nuisance to them lately. But those who like freedom may usefully contemplate its Christian theistic basis, and the implied danger of our growing trends towards secularism (soft atheism?), atheism, paganism, and religious pluralism.
What sort of society do we want? One where schools outlaw prayer and promote sexual immorality and an atheistic evolutionary worldview (the last two are surely related)? One where Antifa thugs beat journalists in the streets? One with increasing government control and technocratic paternalism? Or one where a responsibly free people inculcate in their children a Christian character, and live out that Christian character in love of neighbor, caring for the needy, and pursuing virtue?
If what we want is the last one, then we have to see that secularism as currently understood is not how our nation was put together, has ushered in the other isms aforementioned with their destructive tendencies, and will never produce a just and good society. The American experiment has had massive failures and hypocrisies (e.g. slavery), but it has also had measured successes. Its best hope for getting back on track is to affirm once again the foundation of responsible freedom: the one true God.
“For the LORD Most High is awesome, the great King over all the earth” (Psalm 47:2, NIV)
09 Tuesday Jul 2019
Posted in Meditations
Tags
1 Peter, America, Authority, Christianity, Citizenship, Patriotism, Society
Independence Day is a time to celebrate the many blessings we have as a nation, especially the great amount of freedom we really do enjoy. In some countries you can be punished for criticizing the government, or for your religious beliefs. But times of patriotic celebration also invite us to consider the relationship between our citizenship in this world and our citizenship in the kingdom of heaven.
Of course, loyalty to Christ comes first. The apostle Peter is quite pronounced in his declaration that heavenly citizenship makes believers “foreigners and exiles” in the world (1 Peter 2:11, NIV). Yet, interestingly–perhaps surprisingly for some revolutionary-minded Christians–this does not mean that Christians are disruptive to the earthly societies in which we still live. On the contrary, having our citizenship in heaven makes us very good citizens on earth, in every way that would not compromise our fundamental loyalty to Christ.
So the apostle says, “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right” (vv.13-14). Loyalty to Christ, so far from leading to social revolution, implies that we should be respectful and obedient to earthly authorities. And we should remind ourselves that the Roman emperors if the first century were not good or godly men; they were pagans, with pagan morals and vices. When we take this into our own context, it suggests that disrespecting the president and other government officials is not Christian behavior–even when those officials are immoral.
This doesn’t make Christians government stooges. When the powers go against God, we must respectfully disobey (see Acts 4:19). But the general rule is that citizenship in the kingdom of heaven means good citizenship in the earthly lands where we presently sojourn as strangers. This will help our witness (1 Peter 2:15), as we live out our loyalty to God (v.16).
08 Monday Jul 2019
“O Lord, who art as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, who beholdest Thy weak creatures, weary of labor, weary of pleasure, weary of hope deferred, weary of self, in Thine abundant compassion and unutterable tenderness, bring us, we pray Thee, unto Thy rest–Amen.”
-Christian Rosetti, quoted in Great Souls at Prayer, 240
