Thy Will

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God, God's Will, Life, Peace, Righteousness, Truth

“Most gracious God, to know and love whose will is righteousness, enlighten our souls with the brightness of Thy presence, that we may both know Thy will, and be enabled to perform it–Amen.”

-Roman Breviary, quoted in Great Souls at Prayer, 346.

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No, Do Think About It

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1 Peter, Celebrities, Eternity, God, Gospel, Jesus Christ, Life, Truth

The Christian Post had a little piece about actor Brad Pitt no longer ‘identifying’ as an atheist, which contained a couple of interesting lines.

Towards the beginning, Pitt reflects on his prior claims to atheism, saying, “I called myself an atheist for awhile, just kind of being rebellious.”

Well, yeah.  I mean, that’s the heart of the matter, isn’t it?  Atheism is the staunchest sort of rebellion, the aggressive denial that there is no God: no one made us, we aren’t here for anything, we’re not going anywhere, and the only laws that mean anything are the laws of nature–all the rest we just made up.

After a little bit, the article refers back to an earlier interview from 2009, apparently during Pitt’s atheist-agnostic phase, where he said, “I don’t think anyone really knows.  You’ll either find out or not when you get there, until then there’s no point thinking about it.”

Au contraire.

That kind of logic only applies if the issue is already decided in favor of atheism.  If there is no God, then there is, indeed, no point in thinking about it.  There’s no point in anything, and thinking about God would be one of the things in which there is no point.  There’s also no point in being kind or helping others; everything on our planet will die with the sun (if not sooner), and if by some unlikely chance humanity has developed sufficiently to escape that fate, ultimate dissolution still follows eventually.

But…

If there is a God, then there is a future, an eternity, worth thinking about.  If there is a God, there may well be a point in doing and thinking a whole lot of things.  Kindness may actually count.  If there is a God, then we ought to think about sin and righteousness and judgment.  If there is a God, we just might need Him to save us.

The Christian faith is profoundly transcendent.  This life isn’t everything, so it means something.  The gospel message matters, and so we proclaim it even to people who must face death–because death is not the end.  “For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit” (1 Pet. 4:6, NIV).  From an atheist perspective, true Christianity looks like a bad deal: you give up a lot of what you might have squeezed out of this life.  But from the perspective of eternity, it means true life, spiritual life by the power of the Holy Spirit, and resurrected life when Christ returns.

God sent His Son to bear our sins upon the cross, and rise so that by faith in Him we may be forgiven and receive eternal life.

It bears thinking about.

Illumination of Glory

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God, Illumination, Jesus Christ, Life, Light, Truth

“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6, NIV).

Wonderful is the mystery of divine illumination, the light of God sent unto our minds and hearts.  Without His light we remain in darkness.  In sin, we have a terrible capacity to suppress the truth, to turn away from the light and cling to the darkness.  Yet God has given us light; He sent His Son into our darkness–Jesus Christ, the light of the world.  Whoever receives Him receives light, and beholds a taste of the glory of God.

God is able to make light shine in the darkness.  He is able to illumine shadowed hearts, to drive ignorance from darkened minds, and to instill the grace of understanding, the grace of faith in the light of the Son.

Lord, give us light ever brighter, ever new, that we may behold your glory.

A Father for Us

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Christianity, Depression, Faith, Father, God, Hope, Life, Media

It is easy to become overwhelmed by the tragedy of life.  Every day the news tells us about losses, griefs, horrors and inhumanities.  We have each our pains, and if our hearts are not hardened we have others’ pains to bear as well.  How can we face this world of sadness and separation?

We need a Father who can make everything all right.  Those who have had good fathers know something of this: he seems able to do anything and knows everything, he can pick you up and make you feel safe, he’s your protector and provider.  Those who have tried to be good fathers know that this is what you give to your children: you make for them a world within the world, a world of love and safety and joy, a world where they are protected and provided for and loved.

But we outgrow our fathers, even the best of fathers.  We discover the world outside the world they made for us, and we make our way in that world and come to know its darkness and danger and despair.  We come to see that our fathers were pointing us towards someone bigger than themselves, that fatherhood is a picture of the ultimate human need, natural for creatures and tragic because of sin.

We need a King who can put things right.  We need a Savior who can forgive us.  We need a Father, who can enfold us in His embrace and wipe the tears from our eyes, who can make things okay.

We need God.

And God has reached down to us.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16, NIV).

There is a King; He has come, and He is coming again.  His kingdom is among us, and it will be complete.  He is going to fix things.  “‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev. 21:4).

There is a Father for us.

Lord of Light

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Eternity, God, Light, Poem, Truth

Lord of light, invincible,

the light by which we see,

the light beyond that lights our eyes

and lights the way to thee,

Lord of light, unfading,

enlighten us to see

only in your consuming radiance

burns bliss eternally.

Wrong Tree

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Christianity, God, Gospel, Idolatry, Liberalism, Nature, Nonsense, Panentheism, Theism, Theology, Truth, Union Theological Seminary, World

Union Theological Seminary is back in the news, with another display of the theological deterioration that liberalism brings.

I trace the progression something like this: the failure to hold to the truth about God as revealed in Scripture leads to an over-emphasis on the immanent, on the matters of this world; accordingly, the Divine transcendence collapses into immanence–aided by the feminist impulse, which takes umbrage at the masculine personalism of God in the Bible, and pushes either in the direction of goddess-worship or a loss of God’s personalism (or, paradoxically, both); the result is a slide from theism into panentheism, the conflation of Creator with creation.  I’ve read that Paul Tillich, possibly the most renowned 20th-century American liberal theologian, came to the point where he couldn’t really pray, but only meditate in or upon nature; God had ceased to be personal in his conception.

What I’m saying is that when your gospel becomes too this-worldly, so does your picture of God.

I am not saying that Union has arrived at panentheism yet, only that they are perhaps on the road there.  They have certainly arrived upon a place of absurdity; what else can you call a worship service involving confession to plants of mankind’s sin against creation?

To quote Union’s widely-circulated tweet:

Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor.

What do you confess to the plants in your life?

It is not entirely clear whether they prayed to plants (i.e., regarded them as divine) or simply whether they prayed about their misdeeds towards plants or prayed with plants to God, so I give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn’t actually worship the plants.  But they did confess to them, regarding them as “beings who sustain us.”

It is one thing to poetically address plants as a sort of metaphor, or to speak about how they reveal God, as in Psalm 19 or my own poor poem from yesterday.  It is quite another to confess our sins to plants, as though they were personal beings and as though it were them, not their Creator, who we have offended by our wasteful destruction of the environment.  It insinuates devotion to Gaia, rather than to God.

Faced with criticism over this debacle, Union has defended their decision by pointing out that they weren’t exactly committed to wholehearted devotion to the one true God anyway.  As their statement is reported in the Washington Examiner article linked above, in their chapels:

“One day, you may come in to find a traditional Anglican communion, another day you may enter into a service of Buddhist meditation or Muslim prayer,” the spokesperson continued. “Another, you may find a Pentecostal praise service or a silent Quaker meeting. We create a home where people can worship side by side, in traditions similar to and very different to their own. Through this process, we learn from our neighbors and discern our own faith more deeply.”

That does fill in the picture, but its hardly comforting for anyone concerned about the students’ souls.

There is a God, a righteous and holy God, a jealous God–the God who says, “I am the LORD; that is my name!  I will not yield my glory to another or my praise to idols” (Isa. 42:8, NIV).

You must know Him; that is the single most important thing in this life.

There’s no absolution from confessing your sins to a fern.  It can’t forgive you.  It’s not the tree of life.  You have to bring your sins, instead, to Christ who bore them on the cross.  “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.  By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pet. 2:24, ESV).

But when you turn away from the cross, you can get so lost you find yourself talking to trees.

 

The Price of an Immoral Society

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Censorship, Christianity, Culture, Education, God, Government, Gun Control, Humanity, Law, Liberalism, Liberty, Media, Security, Society, Truth

Gun control has been in the news a lot lately.  Partially this is due to recent tragedies, and partially due to the season of political campaigning–gun control being a highly politicized issue.

The politicization of it suggests a certain disingenuous flavor to much of the conversation.  On a roundup of today’s liberal opinions, I observed both the contention that because of the Trump presidency we are on the verge of becoming a fascist totalitarian state, and various calls to disarm the American populace–both of these ideas being promoted from the same side politically.  Surely this is an odd juxtaposition?  When reality imitates parody, how can we take such people seriously?

I would like very much to live in a safer world.  I see the suffering, and the violence that continues to unfold.  But I am concerned that the way all of this is being discussed points not to safety but to slavery.

So Beto O’Rourke said, with damnation-invoking enthusiasm, “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”  I don’t have either of those, but I do wonder what might be taken from me a little bit down the line.  Freedom of speech, conscience, assembly, religion, perhaps?

‘Nonsense,’ you say.  ‘Conservative fear-mongering.  Slippery-slope fallacy.  All the liberals want is a reasonable assault-weapons ban, nothing more.  Pinky-swear.’

Maybe; but I doubt it.

For one thing, conservative fear-mongering is a difficult charge to make in light of recent history.  Ten years ago, saying ‘if we legalize gay marriage, Christian bakers and photographers and others will find themselves being prosecuted for not wanting to participate’ would have been called ridiculous fear-mongering.  Five years ago, ‘teachers will be fired for refusing to call boys girls’ would have been called fear-mongering.  Radical social shifts happen awfully fast these days, and the unthinkable can become the standard before you know it.

But back to the point at hand.  If the gun control debate were really just about some background check laws, or banning AR-15s, we could have that conversation.  But I really don’t think it is.  I think the debate we are seeing in America is not about controlling guns but controlling people.

There are two reasons I think this.

The first is simply my observation that the defining feature of the left is centralized control.  You wouldn’t think that, given the fact that we call the political left “liberals” and “Democrats,” but it’s true.  Their center is big government, and a substantial amount of their power comes from big business, big media, etc.  Increasing government control over various areas of life is at the heart of a lot of their policies.  Their radical wing is socialism.  So the left’s position on gun control must be seen in the big picture of their general approach to society.

The second is that, by contrast, the constitutional freedoms of American society have a sort of coherence, and those who attack one are likely to attack others.  I am not fear-mongering, just observing.  In a recent interview, UCLA professor Douglas Kellner underlined this, saying, “I don’t see the Second Amendment as absolute, just like I don’t see the First Amendment as absolute.  In both cases, there need to be qualifications in certain contexts.”  The first amendment, just like the second one, may be subject to “qualifications” for the purpose of addressing gun violence; we should further regulate what people are allowed to say.  Given the rather broad scope of what the left is willing to label as hateful, harmful, or extremism, the implications of this kind of thinking are considerable.

Ultimately, I think that what we’re seeing from the left in the gun control debate is the offer to trade freedom for safety.  An unhappy trade, but I understand why people would be interested in making it.  It should be noted, of course, that when societies give up freedom in pursuit of slavery, they sometimes end up both enslaved and unsafe.  But, however we go forward, we should go forward with open eyes.  Safety, as being dangled before us, has slavery attached down the line.

Yet there is a third option.  I’ve said this before, so I hope I don’t sound like too much of a broken record.  Instead of chaos or control, we could choose Christ.  It is possible to have both a great deal of freedom and a great deal of safety–if you add to the mix a great deal of virtue.  Instead of giving up the right to keep and bear arms–and the right to free speech, and freedom of conscience, and probably a few other things–we could give up paganism.

Give up paganism?  I know, it’s a big ask to a lot of people, but we could do it.  We could put the Bible and prayer back in the schools, and the Ten Commandments in prominent public displays.  We could stop watching movies and TV shows filled with violence and vulgarity and nudity, thus compelling Hollywood to produce edifying entertainment instead.  We could stop listening to musicians whose music, apparel, or conduct are indecent.  We could stop letting the rich rob the poor with cigarettes and slot machines.  We could stop killing babies, and show that we actually value human life.  We could teach children–in the public schools–that life has a transcendent meaning, that God their Creator is holy and loving, and that they, too, should do good and love one another.

With a culture-wide embrace of virtue, grounded in God, we could be able to be both safe and free.

Or we could keep our paganism, and choose between anarchy and slavery.

Immorality comes with a high price tag.

Love Indescribable

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Christ, Christianity, Cross, Culture, God, Gospel, Jesus Christ, Life, Love

So many things are advanced under the banner of ‘love’ these days, and such a variety of things are condemned as hate.  As a culture, we are deeply confused about love.

But there is a transcendent standard, if we will look to it: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

Love is a self-giving for the other, and there has never been such a marvelous demonstration of love as when God the Father sent His Son to die in our place, the Savior of the world.

We were not good and worthy of saving.  We were His enemies, not His friends.  He wasn’t in our debt; we already owed Him everything, and had reneged on our obligations towards Him.  Any attempt to see us as deserving of salvation cheapens God’s grace and undercuts the matchless mystery of His redeeming love.

Christ died for us because God is love.  God is so consummately loving, that He gave His only beloved Son for our redemption.  God’s love was demonstrated, enacted, incomparably displayed, upon the cross where Jesus died for us.

Love indescribable, wonderful and wild, extravagant and incomprehensible.  This is the majesty of divine love.  This is love that shakes the world.

A Brighter Light

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Beauty, Celebrities, Celebrity Culture, Culture, Faith, Glory, God, Life, Meaning, Truth

So small the glitterings that satisfy

our little minds, the fading glamor

which captivates our child-eyes,

the sparks we take for stars eternal,

entrancing flickers in the night.

We are too satisfied,

too soon bewitched

by shadows vague and fading fast.

How brighter, fuller, shines celestial

the fiery pillar everlasting;

how brighter burns that majestic

Light of all light,

Light unending,

which alone can satisfy.

The Path of the Prodigal

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Adoption, Christianity, Father, God, Gospel, Grace, Liberalism, Progressive Christianity, Truth

In yesterday’s Briefing, Al Mohler was describing an excessively liberal church that had been featured in The New York Times, and among the interesting elements in that congregation’s worship was the removal of masculine names for God.  They still wish to call on God, but not to call Him Father.

This is not an isolated or surprising feature for a liberal church.  Masculine language for God is increasingly regarded by the left as an artifact of oppressive patriarchy.  For a more direct example, near the beginning of last year the Washington D.C. Episcopal diocese decided to remove such masculine references to God when they update their Book of Common Prayer.

There’s a lot that could be said about this move: the basic irreverence towards God, the self-reflective idolatry, the studied disregard for Scripture, and so on.  But I want to draw attention to the tragic way in which this undermines one of the most precious blessings of salvation–adoption as a child of God.

We have a strange capacity for regarding blessings as curses.  A comparatively trivial example is our ability to twist the gift of freedom and leisure into boredom.  But the present case is far more serious.  God’s Fatherhood is not a curse, a relic of oppression to be thrown off by those sufficiently enlightened through feminist theory.  Fatherhood is a facet of the divine identity, and it marks a relationship into which we are wondrously invited.

For Jesus Christ, the one and only son of the Father, has given Himself for us; united with Him by faith, we are offered adoption as children of God.  “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 Jn. 3:1).  We may call on God as our Father, as Jesus instructed His disciples to do (Matt. 6:9).  God the Father becomes our Father.  We come to know His Fatherly love and care, we come to have that priceless privilege of adoptive sonship in the Son.

The desire to be free of the Fatherhood of God leads, like the way of the prodigal son (Lk. 15), into the far country of disappointment and loss.  Freedom from God is slavery to sin.  But the gospel remains; for those prodigals who wish to come home, the loving welcome of the heavenly Father waits.