Category: Uncategorized

SHOCKING THE WORLD…WITH OUR THANKS

This was taken from Covenant Seminary’s EConnect Newsletter.  I think it sums up just how hard, but important Thanksgiving is – not just for the Christian but for all who are made in God’s image. 

Commercials hum the addictive tunes, refraining “more and more.” It’s a ditty we’ve all come to love, drummed out on the counter while thoughts drift to what we’ll have when the sun goes down, tomorrow. But the key turns quickly flat when grace—or holiday traditions—invite us to give thanks. A moment of serious reflection brings forth such a wealth of gratitude that “more” becomes trite, and empty. It can’t be allowed—and so the Black Friday hours grow into Thursday night, asking us to stop being thankful: “For God’s sake…well, at least for the sake of the economy, stop being thankful!” But gratitude can’t be bought off or sold out. And as long as we break—from the frenetic rush of competing tunes—to give thanks, we remember something more human than all the songs of consumption can promise. It shocks the watching world; yes, it shocks them into reflection. It shocks them that we celebrate the song of thanksgiving.

“Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations” (Psalm 100:4-5).

 

Scriptural Blind Spots

Pastedgraphic

As a pastor I desire more than anything to handle the Word of God with sober judgment and a humble attitude.  While this is my aim, I know myself well enough that I have interpretative blind spots because of my cultural biases that often conflict with Scripture.  It pains me to think that this is so, but I know it is true.  This quote from John Stott serves to confirm my fears and drives me to a greater dependence on the Holy Spirit’s work of applying the work of Christ to my life.

Throughout its long and variegated career, the church has seldom cultivated a humble, sensitive attitude of listening to God’s Word.  Instead, it has frequently done what it has been forbidden to do, namely, become conformist.  It has accommodated itself to the prevailing culture, leaped on board all the trendiest bandwagons and hummed all the popular tunes.  Whenever the church does this, it reads Scripture through the world’s eyes and rationalizes its own unfaithfulness.  Church history is replete with tragic examples.  How was it that the Christian conscience not only approved but actually glamourized those terrible Crusades to recover the holy places from Islam – an unholy blunder which Muslims have never forgotten and which continues to obstruct the evangelization of the Muslim world?  How is it that torture could ever have been employed in the name of Jesus Christ to combat heresy and promote orthodoxy?  How is it that for centuries Protestant churches were so inward-looking and so disobedient to Christ’s Great Commission that William Carey’s proposal of a mission to India was greeted with that patronizing retort, ‘Sit down, young man.  When God wants to convert the heathen, he’ll do it without your help’?  How is it that the cruel degradations of slavery and of the slave trade were not abolished in the so-called Christian West until eighteen hundred years after Christ?  How is it that racial discrimination and environmental pollution have become widely recognized as the evils they are only since World War II? Such is a catalogue of some of the worst blind spots which have marred the church’s testimony down the ages.  None of them can be defended from Scripture.  All are due to a misreading of Scripture, or to an unwillingness to sit under its authority.

Scriptural Blind Spots

As a pastor I desire more than anything to handle the Word of God with sober judgment and a humble attitude.  While this is my aim, I know myself well enough that I have interpretative blind spots because of my cultural biases that often conflict with Scripture.  It pains me to think that this is so, but I know it is true.  This quote from John Stott serves to confirm my fears and drives me to a greater dependence on the Holy Spirit’s work of applying the work of Christ to my life.

Throughout its long and variegated career, the church has seldom cultivated a humble, sensitive attitude of listening to God’s Word.  Instead, it has frequently done what it has been forbidden to do, namely, become conformist.  It has accommodated itself to the prevailing culture, leaped on board all the trendiest bandwagons and hummed all the popular tunes.  Whenever the church does this, it reads Scripture through the world’s eyes and rationalizes its own unfaithfulness.  Church history is replete with tragic examples.  How was it that the Christian conscience not only approved but actually glamourized those terrible Crusades to recover the holy places from Islam – an unholy blunder which Muslims have never forgotten and which continues to obstruct the evangelization of the Muslim world?  How is it that torture could ever have been employed in the name of Jesus Christ to combat heresy and promote orthodoxy?  How is it that for centuries Protestant churches were so inward-looking and so disobedient to Christ’s Great Commission that William Carey’s proposal of a mission to India was greeted with that patronizing retort, ‘Sit down, young man.  When God wants to convert the heathen, he’ll do it without your help’?  How is it that the cruel degradations of slavery and of the slave trade were not abolished in the so-called Christian West until eighteen hundred years after Christ?  How is it that racial discrimination and environmental pollution have become widely recognized as the evils they are only since World War II? Such is a catalogue of some of the worst blind spots which have marred the church’s testimony down the ages.  None of them can be defended from Scripture.  All are due to a misreading of Scripture, or to an unwillingness to sit under its authority.

death spoils everything

On Friday I will perform a funeral for a 23 week old in utero baby and the thought that keeps running through my mind is that “death spoils everything.” Death spoils the hopes and dreams, innocence and trust of families and communities, and it produces grief and misery, loss and separation. There is nothing good about death, nor is there anything “natural” about death, not in the world that God created. It is a part of this world but it is in this world as an unwelcome visitor…an alien. What is most troubling to me is that death was “welcomed” into our world because of sin, most notably Adam and Eve’s sin. It came as a consequence of rebelling against God’s life-fulfilling instruction of not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Death could have and should have had the last word for God’s greatest creation, but by his good pleasure, he did not let death have the last word. He let his Son have the last Word, which began on the cross with his words, “It is finished,” and ended with the angel’s words, “He is risen.” Sin and death are defeated, though present, enemies and our sure hope as followers of Christ is that the resurrection of Jesus will be our resurrection and we will have glorified bodies that will not be subject to death or disease, sin or temptation. All of the sad things and sad stories of this world will become untrue and unwritten.

Death spoils everything…for now.

death spoils everything

On Friday I will perform a funeral for a 23 week old in utero baby and the thought that keeps running through my mind is that “death spoils everything.” Death spoils the hopes and dreams, innocence and trust of families and communities, and it produces grief and misery, loss and separation. There is nothing good about death, nor is there anything “natural” about death, not in the world that God created. It is a part of this world but it is in this world as an unwelcome visitor…an alien. What is most troubling to me is that death was “welcomed” into our world because of sin, most notably Adam and Eve’s sin. It came as a consequence of rebelling against God’s life-fulfilling instruction of not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Death could have and should have had the last word for God’s greatest creation, but by his good pleasure, he did not let death have the last word. He let his Son have the last Word, which began on the cross with his words, “It is finished,” and ended with the angel’s words, “He is risen.” Sin and death are defeated, though present, enemies and our sure hope as followers of Christ is that the resurrection of Jesus will be our resurrection and we will have glorified bodies that will not be subject to death or disease, sin or temptation. All of the sad things and sad stories of this world will become untrue and unwritten.

Death spoils everything…for now.

Justice and Generosity

I’ve been having some excellent conversations with one of our members who is grappling with what it means to live as a Christ-follower in our day and age.  It is a good struggle and is one in which all Christ-followers should engage in.  One area that is particularly challenging to those of us who call America “home” is in our generosity to others.  As the most prosperous country in the world, being generous is not easy.  C.S. Lewis comments on the role that prosperity has on that in his book Screwtape Letters.  He writes “Prosperity knits a man to the world.  He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.'”  Tim Keller has written a new book entitled, Generous Justice, that explores the radical nature and relationship of justice and generosity.  Here is an article he wrote describing his purpose for writing his book.

JUSTICE AND GENEROSITY
BY TIM KELLER

I’ve written a book that will  be coming out this month called Generous Justice. A number of people have asked me why I wrote it, and others have asked about the title itself. My answers to these two questions go together. 

One group of people I hope will read the book is the young adults who express a passionate interest in social justice. Volunteerism is the distinguishing mark of an entire generation of current American college students and recent graduates. The NonProfit Times reported that teens and young adults are creating enormous spikes in applications to volunteer programs. As a Baby Boomer it is interesting to me that volunteering rates were high in the 1970s but had fallen off until the last half of the last decade when they began to rise again. Of course I consider this an excellent trend. 

However, many people have imbibed not only an emotional resonance for rights and justice from our culture, but also a consumerism that undermines self-denial and delayed gratification. While they may give some of their time, they spend large amounts of money on entertainment, their appearance, electronics, and travel. For a great number, then, volunteering is part of their portfolio of life-enriching activities, but it is not a feature of a whole life shaped by a commitment to doing justice, including radical generosity with one’s finances.

One of the things that struck me as I was studying the Bible’s teaching on justice was how often financial generosity is considered part of doing justice. Job says, “If I have kept my bread to myself, not sharing it with the fatherless…if I have seen…a needy man without a garment, and his heart did not bless me for warming him with the fleece from my sheep…these also would be sins to be judged, for I would have been unfaithful to God on high. (Job 31:13-28) 

Many people believe that “justice” is strictly the punishment of wrongdoing, period. They don’t think we should be indifferent to the poor, but when we help them they would call such aid charity, not justice. But Job says that if he had failed to share his food or his fleece—his assets—with the needy, that would have been a sin against God and by definition a violation of God’s justice. Of course, we can call such aid mercy or charity because it should be motivated by compassion, but a failure to live a lifestyle of radical generosity is considered injustice in the Bible. 

Our culture gives us a mixed message. It says: make lots of money and spend it on yourself; get an identity by the kind of clothes you wear and the places you travel to and live. But also do some volunteer work, care about social justice, because you don’t want to be just a selfish pig. However, Christians’ attitudes toward our time and our money should not be shaped by our society; they should be shaped by the gospel of Christ, who became poor so that we could become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). 

The main theme of my book is that the gospel of grace will turn anyone who truly believes it into a person who does justice for those in need. Doing justice includes not only the righting of wrongs, but also generosity and social concern, and a willingness to live a more modest lifestyle in order to be generous to the church and to the poor. This kind of life reflects the character of God (Deuteronomy 10:17-18; Psalm 146:7-9.) We have the Biblical and spiritual resources to overcome the superficiality of our culture and become what the spiritual descendents of Abraham should be—a true blessing to our city and to the poor. (Genesis 12:1-3; Galatians 3:7)

Justice and Generosity

I’ve been having some excellent conversations with one of our members who is grappling with what it means to live as a Christ-follower in our day and age.  It is a good struggle and is one in which all Christ-followers should engage in.  One area that is particularly challenging to those of us who call America “home” is in our generosity to others.  As the most prosperous country in the world, being generous is not easy.  C.S. Lewis comments on the role that prosperity has on that in his book Screwtape Letters.  He writes “Prosperity knits a man to the world.  He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.'”  Tim Keller has written a new book entitled, Generous Justice, that explores the radical nature and relationship of justice and generosity.  Here is an article he wrote describing his purpose for writing his book.

JUSTICE AND GENEROSITY
BY TIM KELLER

I’ve written a book that will  be coming out this month called Generous Justice. A number of people have asked me why I wrote it, and others have asked about the title itself. My answers to these two questions go together. 

One group of people I hope will read the book is the young adults who express a passionate interest in social justice. Volunteerism is the distinguishing mark of an entire generation of current American college students and recent graduates. The NonProfit Times reported that teens and young adults are creating enormous spikes in applications to volunteer programs. As a Baby Boomer it is interesting to me that volunteering rates were high in the 1970s but had fallen off until the last half of the last decade when they began to rise again. Of course I consider this an excellent trend. 

However, many people have imbibed not only an emotional resonance for rights and justice from our culture, but also a consumerism that undermines self-denial and delayed gratification. While they may give some of their time, they spend large amounts of money on entertainment, their appearance, electronics, and travel. For a great number, then, volunteering is part of their portfolio of life-enriching activities, but it is not a feature of a whole life shaped by a commitment to doing justice, including radical generosity with one’s finances.

One of the things that struck me as I was studying the Bible’s teaching on justice was how often financial generosity is considered part of doing justice. Job says, “If I have kept my bread to myself, not sharing it with the fatherless…if I have seen…a needy man without a garment, and his heart did not bless me for warming him with the fleece from my sheep…these also would be sins to be judged, for I would have been unfaithful to God on high. (Job 31:13-28) 

Many people believe that “justice” is strictly the punishment of wrongdoing, period. They don’t think we should be indifferent to the poor, but when we help them they would call such aid charity, not justice. But Job says that if he had failed to share his food or his fleece—his assets—with the needy, that would have been a sin against God and by definition a violation of God’s justice. Of course, we can call such aid mercy or charity because it should be motivated by compassion, but a failure to live a lifestyle of radical generosity is considered injustice in the Bible. 

Our culture gives us a mixed message. It says: make lots of money and spend it on yourself; get an identity by the kind of clothes you wear and the places you travel to and live. But also do some volunteer work, care about social justice, because you don’t want to be just a selfish pig. However, Christians’ attitudes toward our time and our money should not be shaped by our society; they should be shaped by the gospel of Christ, who became poor so that we could become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). 

The main theme of my book is that the gospel of grace will turn anyone who truly believes it into a person who does justice for those in need. Doing justice includes not only the righting of wrongs, but also generosity and social concern, and a willingness to live a more modest lifestyle in order to be generous to the church and to the poor. This kind of life reflects the character of God (Deuteronomy 10:17-18; Psalm 146:7-9.) We have the Biblical and spiritual resources to overcome the superficiality of our culture and become what the spiritual descendents of Abraham should be—a true blessing to our city and to the poor. (Genesis 12:1-3; Galatians 3:7)