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.

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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.

 

On Silvery Wing of Holiest Song

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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

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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.

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.

Resurrection Hope

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Bible, Christ, Christianity, Easter, Eternity, God, Gospel, Hope, Jesus Christ, Life, Paul, Resurrection

When the apostle Paul was dragged before the Sanhedrin to give an account of his teaching, he expressed the core of the Christian faith with profound simplicity: “My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees.  I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead” (Acts 23:6, NIV).

Now, in the context we are shown that this was a very savvy move given his situation.  He observed that the assembly included both members of the party of the Pharisees (who affirmed the resurrection) and of the Sadducees (who did not) (v.6).  Declaring that he was on trial over this contested doctrine was a cunning way to turn the united opposition against him into a body divided against itself–as immediately followed (vv.7-9).

Nonetheless, it was not only a rhetorical technique; it was also a fair statement of the Christian hope.  When Paul was later brought before Governor Felix, he spoke of his faith in terms of the Scriptures, God, and “a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked” (24:15).  Then, presenting his faith before King Agrippa, Paul quickly puts the resurrection at the center (26:6-8).  Indeed, his faith is the story of his encounter with the risen Christ (vv.12-23).  The centrality of the resurrection is further evident at various places in Paul’s letters, as well as other New Testament writings.

The Christian faith is a resurrection faith, a resurrection hope.  We believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and in the coming resurrection to eternal life of all who belong to Him.  Indeed, these two are inseparable: for salvation is union by faith with the Son of God, such that His death is our death to sin, and His resurrection our new life.  The resurrection is inaugurated in the resurrection of Christ; death has been dealt a mortal blow; our sins were paid for on the cross, and we were declared justified in the resurrection.  This is the faith of the Christian church.

And this means that watered-down Christianity can be no more acceptable to us than it would have been to the apostle Paul.  “Faith” has no value unless it is faith in the risen Son.  Vague theism offers no hope.  Liberal theology that sees the resurrection as a poignant myth is utterly bankrupt.  Only the boisterous supernaturalism, the potent scandal of orthodoxy, holds the secret of hope–resurrection hope.

And resurrection hope is stronger than all the tempests of life.  The terror of death itself is overwhelmed in the mystery of resurrection life.  The apostle’s confession is the perennial and world-shaking witness of the Christian faith: “I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.”

That you may believe

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Christianity, Doubt, Faith, Gospel, Jesus Christ, Life, Thomas

Poor apostle Thomas.  Though he was empowered at Pentecost with the rest and carried forth the gospel, we remember him mostly for his skepticism about the resurrection.  Doubting Thomas we remember–but he became Believing Thomas.

For after Thomas so famously vowed not to believe Jesus was risen from the dead until he could verify this personally, Christ appeared and invited him to verify it (John 20:24-27).  At that, Thomas testified not only to Christ’s resurrection but to His divinity: “My Lord and my God!” (v.28, NIV).

“Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed'” (v.29).  Thomas believed, as must all who wish to enter the kingdom of God.  And for those who believe, not on the basis of a visible and tangible experience, like Thomas, but on the basis of the testimony recorded in Scripture and illuminated to us by the work of the Holy Spirit, the blessing of Jesus is given.  The gospel is proclaimed to us, a free gift of forgiveness and eternal life.  We are called to believe this word.

For, as John goes on to say, his gospel is not a complete biography of Jesus, and leaves many of Christ’s works and words out (v.30).  “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (v.31).

Life comes by faith in Jesus Christ.  Such faith is reasonable, but it is still faith.  It is not given us to feel the wounds of Christ with our hands, but to read the words of testimony.  This is by God’s design; Christ could personally appear to each and every person.  But He calls us to receive Him by faith.  Blessed are those who believe, and receive the gift of life everlasting.

Among the Pagans

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1 Peter, Christianity, Faith, Goodness, Gospel, Paganism, Truth, Witness

“Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (1 Peter 2:12, NIV)

Even Christian ethics has a missional aspect.  We do not live for ourselves, but for God; and so, the mission of God should be in focus when we think about our behavior.  Doing good, usually, is regarded positively by most people.  Goodness is winsome, and love is powerful.

Of course, faithful Christian living in a pagan society will get you accused of wrongdoing.  Every Christian in America today needs to understand this, because we want to be thought well of, we want to be considered good people, and that desire is being used against us.  That normal human desire for respectability has been used to get a whole lot of people on board with a whole lot of wicked nonsense.  But as the month of June has so forcefully reminded us, if the celebrities wouldn’t call you a hate-filled bigot, you’ve probably compromised on a biblical understanding of human sexuality.  If you don’t fall within the UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights’ definition of a hateful extremist, you’ve probably let the world corrupt your view of the sanctity of human life.

The price of a good reputation in a pagan society is too high.

But reputation in a distant, abstract, sense is one thing; how the people who know you feel about you is another.  Supposing some neighbor, in lock-step with the spirit of the age, found out you belong to a church that holds a biblical stance on moral matters.  They might think of you as a hater.  But what if you’re the one who visited them in the hospital, and mowed their lawn while they were recovering?  What if you’re the one who had them over for bbq, and gave them a ride to work when their car was in the shop?

Though they accuse you of evil, they see your good deeds.  And this may make them open to hearing the gospel, and to the possibility that on the day of the Lord they will be among those gladly bending the knee, rather than those bending the knee in terrified conviction.  Make no mistake, doing good isn’t sharing the gospel; but it is consistent with sharing the gospel, and it may pave the way for the message of God’s love.

Imperishable

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1 Peter, God, Gospel, Truth

The gospel message may seem small compared to the powers of this world.  American culture loves the display of grandiose wealth and extravagance by the elite figures of the entertainment industry, the wonders of technology, the allure of power.  When we look with the eyes of the world, the church (or at least the average church) may seem insignificant and out of touch, a relic of the past.

But appearance does not always equal reality.  Peter reminds Christians that their spiritual new birth is the mighty work of God, which grows from the seed of His word: “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God” (1 Pet. 1:23, NIV).

This stands in start contrast to the pomp and prestige of the world: “For, ‘All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever.’  And this is the word that was preached to you” (vv.24-25).

The splendor of the world passes away, but the word of God does not.  The glitz of Hollywood and the power of technocrats is dust, but the word of God endures.  God is eternal, and the gospel of God imparts everlasting life.

The church has a treasure the world cannot buy and cannot compete with–the gift of the word of God.

Elect Exiles

Tags

Gospel, Identity, Jesus Christ, Kingdom of God

The book of 1 Peter is a letter, and so it quite naturally begins with a greeting.  It says who it’s from (the apostle Peter), who it’s to (the scattered churches of Asia Minor), and offers a blessing.  But summarizing it like that misses the profoundly theological statement about identity that Peter communicates even in his opening lines.

For Peter introduces himself in a way that draws attention to Jesus Christ.  He uses the nickname Jesus gave him (Peter), and identifies himself as an apostle of Christ–that is, someone who speaks not for himself, but for Christ Jesus his Lord.  Peter’s identity is found in Jesus.

Then, when he turns to his addressees, he puts their identity in theological perspective too.  They are ‘elect exiles’ or ‘chosen foreigners’, strangers in the world because they are citizens of God’s kingdom.  And this chosen identity is elaborated in a trinitarian description of salvation, that “have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with his blood” (1 Pet. 1:2, NIV).  Their identity is formed by God’s saving work for and in them.

In a world so confused about identity, in a culture that wears a thousand masks to hide its face, Christians must be firmly rooted in their God-defined identity.  We are ‘elect exiles,’ strangers in the world, sent to proclaim the kingdom of He who has overcome the world.