Blogotional

Justin Taylor quotes Oz Guiness and David Wells:

For the Christian faith is unashamedly world-affirming, and has a peerless record in contributing to education, to philanthropy, to social reforms, to medicine, to the rise of science, to the emergence of democracy and human rights, as well as to building schools, hospitals, universities, orphanages, and other beneficial institutions.

Yet at the same time, the Christian faith is also world-denying, insisting on the place of prophets as well as priests, on sacrifice as well fulfillment, on the importance of fasts as well as feasts, and on the place for exposing and opposing the world when its attitudes and actions are against the commands of God and the interests of humanity.

They are right about the tension they describe here, and they are right about this:

Not surprisingly, the church’s constant temptation has been to relax this tension from one side or the other, so that the Christians in different ages have sometimes been so much in the world that they are of it, or so much not of the world that they were “no earthly use.” Either way, such unfaithfulness means that the church grows weak, but unfaithfulness in the direction of worldliness is worse than weak, for it puts the church, like Israel in the Old Testament, under the shadow of the judgment of God.

But here is what I wonder. For every "too worldly" church there seems to be a monastery or convent. In other words, maybe God is resolving the tension even if we, in our individual or congregational settings, are not.

It is possible to be worldly to the point of sin and that is a problem, but just being more worldly than someone else thinks is the right point in the tension may just be how God has created you, in order to balance the tension of the other that would withdraw so.

My point is we need to be very careful in making judgements about the other in a tension like this. We do not have a "God's eye view" on things. Too often the Baptists go off and declare the Catholics heretics or vice versa. I wonder if they are not counterbalancing weights in some spiritual tension like this one.

MAybe something to think about the next time you look at something that seems "wrong" to you.

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Mark Roberts looks at the cost of discileship:

Luke 14 consistently emphasizes the cost of discipleship. If we’re going to follow Jesus, if we’re going to be citizens of the kingdom of God, then we are to humble ourselves (14:11), “hate” our family (14:26), and carry our cross (14:27). To make matters even more uncomfortable, Jesus says, “So you cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own” (14:33). As Bonhoeffer recognizes, the first disciples had to do this literally in the sense that they left home, work, and family in order to follow Jesus. While they hung on to a few possessions, like their clothing, the original disciples paid a high price to follow Jesus.

Throughout the centuries, Christians have wrestled with how Luke 14:33 is to be interpreted and obeyed by those who are not called to follow Jesus literally. Should we sell everything we own or give it all away? Is this what Jesus wants from us? Given the broader teachings and actions of Jesus, it does not seem that he requires literal abandonment of all possessions. Once again, we see that Jesus is speaking hyperbolically in Luke 14:33. But, in a sense, when we decide to follow Jesus, we do give up everything to him: our lives, our ambitions, our relationships, our talents, and our stuff. We recognize that God is the true owner of all that we consider to be ours, and we commit it all to him and his purposes.

"In a sense"?! I think the problem is that we use qualifiers like "in a sense" - we may remain in physical possession of our stuff, but we no longer own it in any sense. That's were I think we run into trouble.

We think people are afraid of the stark reality of Christianity - that we sacrifice all to Jesus - ALL! We think that they will balk at that and never come on board. I understand why - it does not sound appetizing in the least. The question is "why not?"

The answer, to my mind is simple. We are unable to demonstrate that things really are better when we truly lay all before the Throne of Grace, mostly becasue we have yet to do so ourselves. We cannot say to people, "this is better - look to my life as evidence." But can we ever create such an example if we continue to use qualifiers like "in a sense?"

Maybe we should concentrate on being better evidence and worry about the argument later.

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Adrian Warnock writes about what it means to be a Christian at work:

Act 2 of Esther makes this point: Esther, we have already seen is working hard, beginning to do everything that needed to be done. But now we see her involvement in the king’s life being spared. Mordecai uncovers conspiracy, he tells Esther and Esther informs the king. Now that wasn’t part of her job description, or Mordecai’s to be part of the king’s security detail. Have you ever worked with people like that? ‘Oh I can’t do that, it’s not on my job description’. But here God’s people thought they could do something, they could make a difference, so they decided ‘well, why not? Why would we not do that?’ For us it might mean thinking the best, serving in the best way in your situation – helping the boss out.

You might have thought that this is a sure way to get promoted. But it doesn’t always work as automatically as that. And it didn’t in this case. They were overlooked. Mordecai was overlooked. But all this came to be very important in the story later on, as we will see. Someone once said that ‘No good turn goes unpunished.’ I don’t know if that’s true.

[...]

So it’s an interesting thing that actually in the long term, godly values work, even in the workplace. Godly values in the mid-to-long term work. Sometimes in the short to mid-term you can take a hit, if I’m honest. You can take a hit. For example in sales, it’s very easy to lie about your product to get this quarter’s sales better but especially in the media-age, if you sell a whole load of products this quarter to people who don’t really need it and your product is no good and they all start writing on Twitter about how rubbish it is, you won’t make your sales next quarter. Do you see what I’m saying?

So in the short-term, for sure, dodgy ethics can sometimes beat godly ethics. There’s no question about that. But I would argue that in the mid to long-term, in almost every business, in almost every company, in almost every situation it just works. That’s not why we do it, mind you. I don’t think Mordecai thought, “I know, I’ll let the king know that he’s about to be killed because that way I’ll get promoted and become prime minister.” I don’t think he thought that way – he just did what he knew was right.

That's a remarkably pragmatic approach, and I am not at all sure about its validity. In general, yes, things do tend to work out in the long term. My own life is evidence of that fact. (I once walked out of a job due to ethical issues with no place to land, but God did take care of me. - story for another time.) But for many it does not work out in the end.

I was recently on Patmos where John the Apostle was imprisoned - the only one of the 12 to die a natural death. Not sure you could pragmatically claim it worked out for those guys in the end.

Not to mention the fact that at the heart of Christianity is a selflessness. Adrian makes vague reference to it:

One of the interesting things is that recent work suggests that one of the main qualities of leading CEOs of companies that are doing remarkably well is a surprising form of humility.

Christ served us and we serve others - our motivation is not service to get ahead, but service for it's own sake - service becasue we were created to serve - service because it is a model of who we are in front of God the King. We do not serve becasue of what it means for us, but becasue of what it means for God.

If we strive for excellence, morally or in simple performance for our own sake, we miss the point. We strive for excellence becasue it brings Glory to God.

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HEROES AND ARTISTS - ROBOTMAN

Matthew Clark

Jesus Saiz

Josue "Justiniano" Rivera

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Al Mohler opined about Anthony Weiner:

Sadly, many Christians have accepted this worldview as their own, believing that their own deepest problems are therapeutic rather than theological in nature.

While I agree with the idea Mohler posits here, I have to disagree with the way he gets there. Our problems are NOT "theological" in nature. They are spiritual, they have to do not with what we believe about ourselves and God but with who we are standing in front of God.

Theology is about thinking - spirituality is about me. It is one thing to know that I am a sinner, even believe that I am a sinner. It is another thing altogether to REALIZE, on a spiritual level, that I am corrupt, sinful, ugly man - to feel in the deepest part of me my sin and the ramifications thereof.

For decades I knew and could recite the story of Christ in Gethsemane - His fervent prayer, His sweating blood, the confrontation with Judas and the officials - but this past summer when I stood there, amongst trees grown from the roots of the trees Christ stood amongst, it became more than story. Tears flowed without ceasing - somewhere in those moments, the story became real and I felt, on some small scale, the pain and anguish that Jesus felt. It was overwhelming.

We must do more than know and and believe we are sinners, we mist be overwhelmed by that reality.

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Chaplain Mike puts up a really long post about the Bible, science and creation:

Despite the passion many feel regarding this matter, apparently younger generations are yawning. Matt Rossano’s article, “The (Lack of) Conflict between Science and Religion in College Students” cites a Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion study that surveyed 10,000 students from 200 colleges and universities across America and yielded some surprising results.

Of course they are "yawning!" The entire beef is artificial - the only way there is a serious problem is if you are an absolute Biblical literalist and there just are not that many of those.

Problems in this area arise only when people use science or religion in a proof-text sort of fashion to argue for a specific point of view they have already adopted. There has been and always will be arguments about deism and atheism, creation and happenstance. There were such arguments before science and there will be long after we think we know everything. It's become boring because everybody has figured out what I have contended for a long time - people adopt these view points for reasons of the than...reason.

So why do we complicate all this so? Because it keeps us from the real issue - what is deep in our hearts, our very essence. It allows us to hold at arms length something that intends to cut us deeper than we ever dreamed imaginable. IF we create question we cannot resolve it keeps us from ever getting to the questions that really matter.

God, please save us from ourselves.

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