Unfailing Love

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Faith, God, Gospel, Hope, Jesus Christ, Life, Light, Salvation, Truth

A beautiful counterpoint to the gloomy tragedy of the news cycle is Psalm 33:5, “The LORD loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love” (NIV).

Men advance wickedness and corrupt justice, but God is good and true.  God is holy, God is love.  And God’s love reaches down to us.

God’s love is superabundant.  The world is full of His love.  He pours out His mercy on us every day in myriad ways; He showed His mercy decisively on the cross, where the Son of God bore upon Himself the sin of the world.

God’s love is invincible.  The world abounds with His unfailing love.  His mercy reaches down to us again and again, to the worst of sinners, to the fallen faithful, to the undeserving and the lost.  This is the grounds of the glorious gospel message: the love of God reaches even to you, even to me.

This world is lost in darkness, but it is also full of God’s unfailing love.  And God’s love is stronger than sin, God’s light cuts through the darkness.  His kingdom will come in fullness, and all who recieve His love in Jesus Christ will live forever.

Amen.

The Yearning of the Soul

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Astrology, Atonement, Christianity, Culture, Gospel, Hope, Humanity, Jesus Christ, Life, Media, Nonsense, Paganism, Society, Truth

G.K. Chesterton has been frequently quoted as having said something like, “The first effect of not believing in God is that you believe in anything.”  Apparently Chesterton did not write that phrase, though the idea is true enough to what he elsewhere communicated.

In any case, it is a startling idea, and one that helps explain the resurgence of paganism, witchcraft, and astrology in the (post)modern era.

For astrology is all too alive and well in America today.  Our civilization, that prides itself on its technology and scientific advancement, has, to a startling degree, returned to the most nonsensical spiritual practices.  But the reason for this is obvious–pagan spirituality tells us just what we want to hear.  Paganism is amorphous, obsequious, relativistic, and self-indulgent in all the ways that true Christianity is not.

Consider this telling interview at Vox.com, The existential lure of astrology (sic–we shall pass over their abhorrent lack of title capitalization with no more than the wagging of a disapproving finger).  Chani Nicholas, “head astrologer at O Magazine” (?!) makes the self-indulgent appeal of astrology quite transparent.

For the (post)modern gospel is that you’re great just the way you are, and accepting yourself in all your goodness is the first step towards building a better world.  Or:

As Nicholas sees it, the more we accept ourselves for who we are, the more we can show up and effect positive social change, both in our immediate relationships and our communities. Astrology is one tool, she argues, for getting to know ourselves, what drives us, and how we can be of use in the world.

For all its mushy sentimentality, that is much easier to deal with that the gospel of Jesus Christ, which tells us that we are corrupt, condemned, and need to be redeemed by faith in the Son of God who gave Himself for us; that we need to repent and follow Him, being transformed by the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit, both to be useful for God’s redeeming mission in this world and to attain eternal life in the world to come–rather than suffering the wrath of God.

You see, mushy and sentimental self-acceptance is just easier and less offensive.

Astrology, Nicholas admits, appeals to our basic narcissism.  Having put it so bluntly, she tries to add a positive spin:

But also, there’s a deep need for self-actualization, and a deep need to know that we’re worthy of that.

Which is really just an embrace of our narcissism.  The sad news is, there’s no hope to be found in that direction.  Self-acceptance is only the determined satisfaction with what is obviously false and illusory–the idea that I’m alright just how I am, and don’t need God to fix me.

But Nicholas understands that there are deep matters at stake in the pursuit of spirituality, even if she misses the truth:

When we self-actualize, we’re much less interested in all the outer things and we’re much more interested in the quality of the moments of our life. That’s actually where the soul is yearning to go.

No, the soul is yearning for God, and will never be satisfied with the self.  She completely misses the solution, but she has something of a handle on the problem:

I think we’re really lonely. I think we are really afraid. I think that we live in a world that feels increasingly less stable and less known. And I think we need to know ourselves as a counter to being in this place. We need to deepen our relationship to knowing who we are, and astrology is one way to do that.

We are lonely, and afraid.   The world is unstable and filled with darkness.  But knowing ourselves can never bring joy, security, stability and light, because we’re part of the darkness of the world.  Sin has darkened the human heart.  We cannot find light in our own hearts, because the light of the world comes to us from outside ourselves.

Jesus is the light of the world.  Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12, NIV).

We have a yearning of the soul, a deep yearning, because we were made by God to be in a right and loving relationship with Him, to be holy and to love the God of holy-love.  But sin has plunged our hearts and our world into darkness.  So we yearn and grope for what our souls long after, but which we can no longer see.

But false hopes will never satisfy our souls.  The stars can’t guide us through the darkness of sin.  There is no inner light to be gained by self-acceptance.  These things only lead to death.

Jesus is the light of the world.  He has brought light into our darkness, and life to the dying.  He came to show us the way home, so that we could have fulfilled the great longing of our souls.

In His life He showed the light.  In His death He made atonement for our sins, satisfied the wrath of God, and bridged the gulf that separated us from our maker.  In His resurrection He offers us the hope of life, if we are united by Him with faith.  In Christ, we are made whole and brought home to God.

In Christ is fulfilled the yearning of the soul.

 

Lord’s Day Praise

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Faith, God, Gospel, Grace, Jesus Christ, Life, Praise, Prayer, Resurrection, Salvation

On this day of resurrection, be glorified God in the rising of the sun and in the rising of this worshipper. Thank you for the treasures of the gospel: forgiveness, life, peace, joy—and most of all Yourself. You are forgiving and good. Turn my heart from temptations and distractions, and give me a passion to proclaim your glory today. Be glorified in the church, and in this heart of mine—Amen.

Christmas Vigil

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Advent, Christmas, Christmas Eve, God, Gospel, Incarnation, Jesus Christ, Joy, Peace, Prayer

Bless this vigil of advent, God Most High, and look upon us with love. While we wake, let our hearts rejoice in the greatness of your gift, the joy of Christmas, the incarnation of God the Son. While we rest, let us rest in you, the giver of true and eternal rest. Bless our night with the peace of the gospel of Jesus Christ; be blessed in our amazed thoughts and grateful praises—Amen.

God Reaches Down

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Advent, Annunciation, Christmas, God, Gospel, Grace, Jesus Christ, Joy, Light, Mary

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David.  The virgin’s name was Mary.  (Luke 1:26-27, NIV)

Thus begins the story of the Annunciation.  This follows on the story of the angel Gabriel’s visit to Zechariah to announce that his wife, Elizabeth, would give birth to John–the forerunner of the Messiah.  But what a powerful contrast is formed between that scene and the one that follows.

The wonderful work of God is unexpected.

Gabriel announced the birth of the forerunner to Zechariah, a priest of good standing, in the temple of God, in Jerusalem the political and religious center of Israel.  But Gabriel was sent to announce the birth of the Messiah Himself to an ordinary peasant girl in a backwater village.

Thus God shows that His purposes do not unfold in the ways of the world.

Galilee is far from Jerusalem, and a region of some suspicion to other Israelites; Nazareth is a town of some suspicion to other Galileans (see Jn. 1:46)!  But here in an insignificant and inauspicious setting, God chooses the mother who will bear the Savior.

What do we know of Mary?  Very little.  She is twice described as a virgin, and in the context of her engagement we may infer that she was in her young teens–the normal age for marriage in that place and time.  As the narrative unfolds, we see her courage, character, and faithful submission to God.  But she is no one the world would regard as powerful or important.

Joseph, though a descendant of David, is nowhere close to the throne.  He is, we may say, a good blue-collar Jewish man.

Through such ordinary faithful people, God sent His Son into the world.  The very setting of the Annunciation prompts us to reflect on the wonderful grace of God, who reaches down to us in our sin and darkness.

Light has come into our darkened world; and it has come through and come to ordinary men and women who follow God in faith.

A List of Acceptable Sins

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Christianity, Church, Cultural Engagement, Evangelicalism, Faith, Gospel, Homosexuality, Jesus Christ, Repentance, Sin, Society, Truth

I have recently encountered a couple of incidents where a selectively ‘inclusive’ welcome was offered to people, and thought they might be worth reflecting on for a minute, because of who was welcomed and who was not.

The first comes from an event held back in October, the second annual “Evolving Faith” conference–which, it appears to me, would probably be more accurately named something like the “Rejecting God” conference.  As reported by Religion News Service:

During the opening session, Christian author and journalist Jeff Chu…welcomed a long list of groups ranging from introverts to the disabled, from the “frozen chosen” to the pansexual, from “you who do sex work to pay the bills,” Chu said, “and (to you) who are clutching your pearls because I just said ‘sex work.’”

“You who doubt, you who struggle, you who feel lost, you are loved.” Chu continued. “Atheists, agnostics, seekers, you are loved.”

Now, I want to make the significant caveat that this is not a full list of who Chu welcomed to the conference, which the report calls “a long list of groups”.  So it may be that they were far more inclusive than the RNS report gives them credit for in what groups it mentions.

But, as far as the RNS report goes, the list of who is welcomed is as significant for who is unmentioned as for who is mentioned.  Perfectly innocuous personality traits, such as introverts, are acknowledged, together with sins such as atheism and sexual immorality–not that the people at Evolving Faith would see these as sins.

And, indeed, even people with a more conservative worldview receive a welcome (of a sort): those who don’t approve of prostitution are given the backhanded welcome of being classified as elitist prudes.  Already the ‘inclusivity’ seems a little thin.

But what about all the sins that the Evolving Faith people would actually consider sinful–apart from the fairly banal ‘sin’ of prudery?  Perhaps they were included, but not mentioned by RNS.  Or perhaps the Evolving Faith welcome didn’t mean to include anything they regarded as sin; given their openness to atheism, the category can hardly apply in any strong sense.

These observations are really only prelude to the more interesting ‘inclusive’ welcome I encountered recently.  The more interesting welcome was found outside the doors of an evangelical church.  A large placard posted on either side of the door welcomed all sorts of people to the church, expressing delight to have them there.

Now, a placard welcoming people to the church is a wonderful thing.  All kinds of people should be welcome in the church.  All kinds of sinners should be welcome to come and be loved and hear the gospel.  But when you begin to list who is welcome, it raises certain difficulties: who do you list, and who do you not list, and what message is being sent?

This church’s placard included numerous innocuous personality characteristics, such as liking lattes or NASCAR.  But it also included a smattering of sins: divorce, homosexuality, gambling, and substance abuse.  Nothing on the placard suggested that they regarded these things as sins, but knowing the church’s institutional affiliation, I think they probably do.

But this is a very interesting selection of sins to include, and it is very interesting to think of some of the sins that aren’t included.  The sins mentioned are all ones you can safely put on a placard without a hint of disapproval, because our culture’s disapproval for them is tenuous at best.  Our culture outright celebrates homosexuality, sees divorce as perfectly permissible, is overall favorable towards gambling, and substantially regards substance abuse as something to be pitied as much as to be condemned.  In short, this is basically a list of socially acceptable sins.

So we may ask, why didn’t the church include more unsavory sins in their ‘inclusive’ welcome?  Why are not white supremacists, child abusers, and rapists welcomed?  Where is the greeting for human traffickers and pedophiles?  Are these not also sinners who need Jesus?

I don’t think that if I sat down with the elders and asked why these groups weren’t on the list, that the honest answer would be “we certainly would have included them if we’d thought of it.”  I think the honest answer would have to be something more like “that would make people uneasy about coming to our church” or “listing those things together with a bunch of innocuous characteristics in a welcome message might suggest that we don’t strongly disapprove of such acts.”  Precisely.

A list of acceptable sins may be good PR, but as far as the message of the church, it either says too little or too much.  As far as the actual radical welcome of the gospel, it says far too little: it is not only socially acceptable sinners, but also radically unacceptable ones, who need Jesus.  But as far as the church’s social stance goes, it says far too much: lumping sins together with neutral differences of preference and personality weakens the prophetic stance of the church in calling sinners to repentance.

The church has a different standard than the world.  We can’t give a list of acceptable sins, because there are no acceptable sins.  Welcoming select sinners sends the wrong message.

The gospel is utterly inclusive of all sins and all sinners, and utterly exclusive, that all who would be saved must come to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith.  Paul says to the church in Corinth:

“Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.  And that is what some of you were.  But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:9-11).

There the gospel declaration and the prophetic witness of the church meet.

No, Do Think About It

Tags

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.

Wrong Tree

Tags

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.

 

On Silvery Wing of Holiest Song

Tags

Gospel, Jesus Christ, Poem, Praise

“Hush! while on silvery wing of holiest song

Floats forth the old, dear story of our peace,

His coming, the Desire of Ages long,

To wear our chains and win our glad release.

Our wondering joy, to hear such tidings blest,

Is crowned with ‘Come to Him, and He will give you rest.’

Rest, by His sorrow!  Bruised for our sin,

Behold the Lamb of God!  His death our life.

Now lift your heads, ye gates!  He entereth in,

Christ risen, indeed, and Conqueror in the strife.

Thanks, thanks to Him who won, and Him who gave

Such victory of love, such triumph o’er the grave.”

–from “Threefold Praise,” by Frances Ridley Havergal

Love Indescribable

Tags

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.