Frightfully Pleased

More classic Machen

2012-01-24T16:50:00.005-05:00

The stirring conclusion to the chapter simply titled "Christ" from Christianity and Liberalism:

The liberal Jesus, despite all the efforts of modern psychological reconstruction to galvanize Him into life, remains a manufactured figure of the stage. Very different is the Jesus of the New Testament and of the great Scriptural creeds. That Jesus is indeed mysterious. Who can fathom the mystery of His Person? But the mystery is a mystery in which a man can rest. The Jesus of the New Testament has at least one advantage over the Jesus of modern reconstruction—He is real. He is not a manufactured figure suitable as a point of support for ethical maxims, but a genuine Person whom a man can love. Men have loved Him through all the Christian centuries. And the strange thing is that despite all the efforts to remove Him from the pages of history, there are those who love Him still. (p. 116)

Parenting in the Pew

2012-01-20T17:04:00.005-05:00

If you're a Christian parent of young kids I highly recommend Parenting in the Pew by mother and pastor's wife Robbie Castleman. As with any book on parenting there are a few things I have reservations about, but I wholeheartedly endorse the main thrust, which is that training our children how to worship is a Christian parent's most important job. Worship is the one thing we get to do for all eternity.

Our oldest son is almost three, and at the point where my wife and I want to begin exposing him to what goes on in "big church." We want to begin exposing him to the rhythm of worship as expressed in the songs, creeds, and prayers of God's people. It's amazing how much he picks up! Needless to say to those who have experience with the Pre-K years, there are some big challenges to this. Honestly, it's much easier to drop him off at the nursery with his baby brother instead of struggling to keep him quiet and reasonably contained in a pew. Not only that our "worship experience" is much better without the distraction. But, and here we get to one of Castleman's best insights, that attitude betrays a typical contemporary mindset that worship is primarily for my benefit.

Here is how she explains it:

There is a big difference between worship B.C. and worship A.D.—worship "before children" and worship "after diapers"! I have heard more than a few parents confess, "I used to get more out of church before I had kids."

But the bigger issue is, what does God get out of worship? Worship is good for God. Worship concerns itself with his pleasure, his benefit, his good. Worship is the exercise of our souls in blessing God. In the Psalms we read or sing, "Bless the Lord, O my soul!" However, our chief concern is usually "Bless my soul, O Lord!" (p. 23)

Children can infringe on our worship experience. I know more than a few parents who have resented the distractions ushered into the pew by the presence of their children. Many just give up. However, children do not have to interfere with God's experience of worship! Worship is first a blessing to God, and he values the presence and praise of children (Matthew 18:14; Mark 10:14; Luke 18:16). (p. 24)

Castleman suggests that often our reluctance to include children in worship is because we're worried about how their behavior will reflect on us as parents. While not minimizing the importance of teaching our kids how to be quiet in church, the highest priority is teaching them how to worship in church. Many adults learned how to be quiet in church, but they never learned to worship. No wonder so many of our worship services are cold and lifeless!

I really appreciated this book's focus on keeping children, even young ones, with their parents as much as possible during Lord's Day worship. This goes for the teenage years too, when your kids might rather sit with their friends than with you. Castleman isn't totally against children's church, but I think she calls it like it is when she writes: "Too many children's churches are cut-and-paste times to keep children occupied until the adult service is over." Instead, Sunday School and children's church should be "designed to train children in worship." (p. 60)

Sprinkled throughout this warmly written book are anecdotes from Castleman's own experience of parenting her two sons in the pew. Reading this book has inspired me to try and do the same with my two sons, despite the potential for frustration it could bring. Here's one more quote. . .

Parenting in the pew can be a hassle. Or it can be holy. It depends on who we are and how we see ourselves. Do we sit with our children "in church" or "in worship"? (p. 30)

Soccer is boring (and I love it)

2012-01-18T15:25:00.002-05:00

Brian Phillips gives one of the best descriptions of soccer you'll ever read. . .

There are two reasons, basically, why soccer lends itself to spectatorial boredom. One is that the game is mercilessly hard to play at a high level. (You know, what with the whole "maneuver a small ball via precisely coordinated spontaneous group movement with 10 other people on a huge field while 11 guys try to knock it away from you, and oh, by the way, you can't use your arms and hands" element.) The other is that the gameplay almost never stops — it's a near-continuous flow for 45-plus minutes at a stretch, with only very occasional resets. Combine those two factors and you have a game that's uniquely adapted for long periods of play where, say, the first team's winger goes airborne to bring down a goal kick, but he jumps a little too soon, so the ball kind of kachunks off one side of his face, then the second team's fullback gets control of it, and he sees his attacking midfielder lurking unmarked in the center of the pitch, so he kludges the ball 20 yards upfield, but by the time it gets there the first team's holding midfielder has already closed him down and gone in for a rough tackle, and while the first team's attacking midfielder is rolling around on the ground the second team's right back runs onto the loose ball, only he's being harassed by two defenders, so he tries to knock it ahead and slip through them, but one of them gets a foot to it, so the ball sproings up in the air … etc., etc., etc. Both teams have carefully worked-out tactical plans that influence everything they're trying to do. But the gameplay is so relentless that it can't help but go through these periodic bouts of semi-decomposition.

But — and here's the obvious answer to the "Why are we doing this?" question — those same two qualities, difficulty and fluidity, also mean that soccer is uniquely adapted to produce moments of awesome visual beauty. Variables converge. Players discover solutions to problems it would be impossible to summarize without math. . . . In sports, pure chaos is boring. Soccer gives players more chaos to contend with than any other major sport. So there's something uniquely thrilling about the moments when they manage to impose their own order on it.

Phillips notes that the Big 3 of American team sports have rules that limit the amount of chaos players have to contend with ("baseball constantly resets to the same starting position, football does the same while adding 29,384 rules about who can and can't do what on which plays, basketball breaks itself into discrete timed segments, etc."). I'm a fan of all three -- and all three have their own unique charms and potential to amaze -- but speaking as a fairly recent soccer-loving convert those sports don't get inside your head like soccer does. Which is why the only football I'll be sitting down to watch this weekend is played on a pitch with a spherical ball. Bring on the boredom!

Two views on Jesus vs. religion

2012-01-16T10:58:00.001-05:00

You may have heard about the "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus" video making the rounds. In it Jefferson Bethke, a young Christian from Seattle, gives a terrific spoken word presentation contrasting Jesus' message of love and grace with religion. The video has been viewed over 12 million times and generated an amazing amount of discussion on Christian websites and blogs.

The distinction between the gospel and religion is one I've written about more than once (see here and here). Properly understood it's helpful in understanding how the Christian gospel is utterly unique from other major religions. Some of the push-back to Bethke's video argues that he overplays the Jesus vs. religion theme and betrays his generation's anti-institutional church bias. Interestingly, criticism has come from the evangelical right and the evangelical left.

The most interesting response that I've seen is "Why I Love Jesus But Hate Religion - A Catholic Response" by someone going under the name Makeafriar. This guy makes some great points. Both videos are below. If you haven't seen the original video, watch it first, then watch the Catholic response. This is a worthwhile dialogue to be having.

CT on the dying art of pulpit prayer

2012-01-12T13:43:00.005-05:00

Here's an excerpt from a post by Carl Trueman on the importance of pastoral prayer from the pulpit.

Often Protestants concentrate so much on the sermon or the singing as the contact point between God and the congregation that we forget the importance of prayer. Yet corporate prayer is surely a means of grace (Shorter Catechism 88) and it thus requires that those leading worship pay as much attention to what they say in their prayers as they do to their sermons. The congregation should come away from the service believing that they have met with a holy and gracious God; and public prayer is a key element of that.

To listen to a lot of public prayer in churches is too often like listening in to a private quiet time -- and that is not meant as a compliment. The erosion of the boundary between public and private and the relentless march of the aesthetics of casualness have taken their toll here. It seems that unless somebody prays in public precisely as we think they might do in private, we all fear that this might be a form of affectation which prevents the prayer from being `authentic' -- whatever that might mean. Yet oftentimes there are people in the congregation on Sunday who have come from a week of pain, worry and confusion; they may be spiritually shattered; they might barely be able to string two words of a prayer together; and at this moment a good pastor can through a well-thought out and carefully expressed prayer draw their eyes heavenwards, lead them to the throne of grace and give them the words of adoration, confession, thanksgiving and intercession which they cannot find for themselves.

As an antidote to this lack, ministers should spend some time each week reading the prayers of others. The Valley of Vision is a great little collection of Puritan examples. Spurgeon's The Pastor in Prayer is simply amazing -- that he could pray spontaneously like that speaks volumes of his private devotions. Matthew Henry's A Method of Prayer is also invaluable as providing guidelines on public prayer. And not one of them contains or recommends ever having a sentence in a public prayer which contains the phrase `we just want to....'

I'm thankful that my pastors put an emphasis on this, and that our church's liturgy gives a prominent place to the pastoral prayer. Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit helps us when we don't know how to pray. Some times that help comes in the form of listening to the prayers of others.

That other (Christian, Heisman-winning) Gator Quarterback

2012-01-12T12:38:00.002-05:00

Here's a good CNN story on former Gator and NFL quarterback Danny Wuerffel. In his way Danny is just as much of a positive Christian role model as Tim Tebow. He reminds us that God is as much there in the losses of life as he is in the victories.

Douthat: "Return of the Repressed"

2012-01-10T14:19:00.006-05:00

Once again Ross Douthat proves to be one of the few conservative pundits who gets it re the economy. Granted, he writes for The New York Times which gives those living in the Fox News/Rush Limbaugh alternate universe an excuse to dismiss him as a RINO.

In the course of the 2000s, under a tax-cutting, business-friendly Republican administration, middle class paychecks grew much more slowly than the economy as a whole, upward mobility for the poor continued to lag behind parts of Western Europe, and the combination of unfunded tax cuts and deficit spending worsened the country’s fiscal picture just as the Baby Boomers were poised to retire. Then came the financial crisis, touched off in part by gross recklessness on Wall Street. Then came the Great Recession, which threw millions of Americans out of work, hit downscale workers much harder than it did the college-educated, and sent the deficit spiraling upward to unprecedented heights.

It was a sequence of events that seemed to call into question certain commonplace Republican assumptions — that what’s good for Wall Street is good for America, that marginal tax cuts are a sufficient method of generating broadly shared prosperity, and that supply-side economics usually pays for itself. And many of the candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination have made halting, tentative attempts to respond to these developments. . .

Read the rest

In defense of doctrine (Machen)

2012-01-10T12:57:00.002-05:00

I'm re-reading Christianity and Liberalism and finding it astonishingly relevant to the church today -- especially the Presbyterian branch. Some of the secondary issues and nuances have changed, but the fundamental conflict continues to revolve around differing views of Christ, the authority of Scripture, and the nature of salvation. The sickness of theological liberalism that Machen saw as diametrically opposed to Christianity results in a variety of symptoms.

Part of what Machen was responding to was an attempt to "rescue" Christianity from so much emphasis on doctrine, and to rehabilitate Jesus as the founder of a non-doctrinal religion that was later hijacked by the apostles and church fathers with their creeds and councils. The battle cry of the modernists was "Christianity is a life not a doctrine." Read Machen for yourself, but I think he succeeded in demonstrating that any such effort doesn't fly, and that the pitting of deeds against creeds results in something other than the New Testament gospel. In a sad irony it removes the fuel for changed lives.

Even if you get rid of John, that most doctrinal of the Gospels, and limit yourself to only those statements of Jesus that even the most critical scholars accept as authentic, one is forced to conclude that Jesus was more than a teacher of timeless moral truths. His Messianic consciousness is everywhere apparent. He proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God and began to explain to his disciples what that meant. It was left to the Apostles, guided by the Holy Spirit, to explain the full meaning of Christ's life, death and resurrection.

Here's Machen in his own words from Chapter 2 of Christianity and Liberalism:

From the beginning, the Christian gospel, as indeed the name "gospel" or "good news" implies, consisted in an account of something that had happened. And from the beginning, the meaning of the happening was set forth; and when the meaning of the happening was set forth then there was Christian doctrine. "Christ died"—that is history; "Christ died for our sins"—that is doctrine. Without these two elements, joined in an absolutely indissoluble union, there is no Christianity. (p. 27)

"Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried"—that is history. "He loved me and gave Himself for me"—that is doctrine. Such was the Christianity of the primitive Church. (p. 29)

Jesus was certainly not a mere enunciator of permanent truths, like the modern liberal preacher; on the contrary He was conscious of standing at the turning-point of the ages, when what had never been was now to come to be. (pp. 31-2)

Tarkovsky's Return of the Prodigal Son

2012-01-09T12:15:00.004-05:00

Solaris (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)

Have you begun to follow?

2012-01-06T15:36:00.004-05:00

More than once Christians have been scoffed at as "poor, ignorant, and easily led." Christianity, indeed all religion -- so the argument goes -- is for weak-minded folks who don't want to think for themselves. It creates followers not independent thinkers and doers. My Dylanesque rejoinder to the man who prides himself on his autonomy and independent thought is. . . you gotta serve somebody.

The critics are partly right. The essence of being a Christian is to be led. It's to be a follower. That's what a disciple of Jesus Christ does. He follows his master. One of the most common biblical pictures of this is that of a sheep following a shepherd. Not very flattering is it?

Jesus: "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." (John 10:27)

Douglas MacMillan (The Lord Our Shepherd) unpacks some of the implications that "hearing" and "following" have for the Lord's sheep -- those who can say with David: "The LORD is MY shepherd." In this post I shared some of MacMillan's insights on hearing. Now here is Scotsman MacMillan on following.

I suppose if you asked everyone here what a Christian is, they could give you a different definition and still be within the framework of Scripture. But here is a very simple definition. A Christian is a person who follows Jesus. Do you remember the story of blind Bartimaeus? He was healed, and the last thing that we read of him is this: 'he . . . followed Jesus in the way' (Mark 10:52). This phrase 'following Jesus' is so descriptive of what a Christian really is that on the west coast of Scotland, the Gaelic-speaking regions, we use it to denominate a Christian. If you were on the Isle of Lewis, for example, and somebody was gloriously converted, you would say, 'So and so has begun to follow', and nobody in Lewis would misunderstand you. . . . Often when we are asked to say what a Christian is we do so in completely unbiblical terms. 'A Christian is someone who goes to chapel or church; or they are Baptists or Presbyterians; or they wear certain clothes or do their hair a certain way; or they don't smoke or drink; or they don't dress like this or listen to that kind of music.' You know, an awful lot of it is sheer rubbish! A Christian is a follower of Jesus. . .

If you are following it means that you are being led. It's like a rowboat being pulled by a large yacht. Suddenly, the tow-rope goes taut, and you're moving out of the harbour. This "simple definition" of what a Christian is assuages our doubts and strengthens our assurance that we are indeed a child of God.

No matter how you feel or what else is true of you, if God in His grace has brought your life under direction and made you follow Christ, then that is one of the best signs you can have. If that is true of you, then you have nothing to be afraid of.

That's great stuff, and this is a great book!

Quotes from J. Douglas MacMillan, The Lord Our Shepherd (pp. 39-41)

A look at Santorum

2012-01-05T10:42:00.004-05:00

My wife grew up in a Catholic working-class family in Pennsylvania so I know something about the environment that produced Rick Santorum. I always liked him as a senator and I'm happy to see him emerge as an alternative to Romney -- though I think his chances of beating Romney are slim to none. Santorum is the closest to my own political ideology which if I had to label it would be "social conservative" and "economic populist", or, if you insist, economic liberal.

On the one hand Santorum is a principled defender of the sanctity of life and the traditional definition of marriage -- stands which are grounded in his Roman Catholic faith. And by all accounts as a faithful husband and father of seven children he practices what he preaches. In the Senate he was a leader in the fight against AIDS in the two-thirds world and supported funding for community health centers here at home. He has a concern for "the least of these" that isn't evident in a lot of conservative politicians.

On the other hand Santorum isn't a cheerleader for Randian trickle-down economics that has become Republican orthodoxy, and he's not afraid to bring up issues the rest of the field won't -- issues like stagnant social mobility and growing inequality. Unlike the buffoonish Herman Cain and his 9-9-9 plan (admit it some of you took him seriously), Santorum offers a tax policy that would benefit struggling families -- a tripling of the child tax credit. He understands that you can't have limited government without strong families.

Here's more from Rich Lowry writing at National Review Online:

Santorum’s calling card is his social conservatism, and he’s competing for Iowa’s evangelical voters with Texas governor Rick Perry and Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann. Santorum is more knowledgeable than Perry and more careful than Bachmann, and he has demonstrated more swing-state appeal than both by winning two statewide races in heavily Democratic Pennsylvania. His 18-point reelection shellacking in 2006 is his albatross, although Ronald Reagan himself might have lost in Pennsylvania in that GOP annus horribilis.

It didn’t help that Santorum’s outspokenness on social issues — especially those related to homosexuality — made him a figure of hatred and vulgar mockery on the left. But he’s not a thoughtless culture warrior, in it for the bombast. Santorum links his social conservatism to the struggles of the working class in one of the few thematic departures in a Republican primary that has been more about personalities and past heterodoxies than substantive differences.

In the debates, Santorum has constantly talked about increasing economic mobility. In a heresy for a Republican, he’s acknowledged that some countries in Europe are more mobile than we are, and he has noted the disparity between the unemployment rates of college-educated and non-college-educated Americans. Santorum proposes zeroing out the corporate tax rate for manufacturers to provide them a boost as a source of blue-collar jobs. “We need to talk about people at the bottom of the income scale being able to get necessary skills and rise so they can support themselves and a family,” Santorum said at the CNBC economy debate. He’s right, although he is one of the few Republicans who seem determined to have the conversation.

He’s always clear that the breakdown of the family is an inescapable factor in limiting economic aspiration. He cites the widely divergent poverty rates of two-parent and single-parent families. “You can’t have limited government,” he says, “if the family breaks down.” He speaks powerfully of how, when he was growing up in a very modest home, a mother and father were “the most important gift I was given.” He wants to triple the personal deduction for each child, making his tax-reform proposal the most pro-family of any on offer from the GOP candidates.

I'm sure there are many flaws one could find in Santorum as a candidate and individual -- and he'll be getting a lot more scrutiny now -- but that's the case for all of them. He deserves a serious look.

Comfort for a New Year

2012-01-02T08:30:00.004-05:00

Since New Year's Day fell on Sunday this year it was beautifully appropriate to be reminded of Heidelberg Catechism, Lord's Day 1. This isn't exactly a New Year's resolution, but living one's life in light of these truths is transformative.

Q. 1. What is thy only comfort in life and death?

A. That I with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto him.

Q. 2. How many things are necessary for thee to know, that thou, enjoying this comfort, mayest live and die happily?

A. Three; the first, how great my sins and miseries are; the second, how I may be delivered from all my sins and miseries; the third, how I shall express my gratitude to God for such deliverance.

I'm not one to make resolutions, but if I was Psalm 34:1 would be a good one.

I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.

In other words: I'll bless God even when I'm not feeling "blessed" -- which in American Christian parlance often means "my life is going so great right now." The Psalms turn the language of blessing upside down, where it's more about God's people blessing him by loving and fearing him, than about God blessing us.

Happy New Year, dear readers!

CSL on "using" and "receiving" art

2011-12-30T11:51:00.008-05:00

The following excerpts are from one of C.S. Lewis's lesser known books An Experiment in Criticism, and are as quoted by Ken Myers in All God's Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians & Popular Culture, a book I'll be returning to. This is Lewis at his provocative best.

The sure mark of an unliterary man is that he considers "I've read it already" to be a conclusive argument against reading a work. . . . Those who read great works, on the other hand, will read the same work ten, twenty or thirty times during the course of their life." (p. 2)

On the difference between using and receiving art.

A work of (whatever) art can be either "received" or "used." When we "receive" it we exert our senses and imagination and various other powers according to a pattern invented by the artist. When we "use" it we treat it as assistance for our own activities. The one, to use an old-fashioned image, is like being taken for a bicycle ride by a man who may know roads we have never yet explored. The other is like adding one of those little motor attachments to our own bicycle and then going for one of our familiar rides. These rides may in themselves be good, bad, or indifferent. The "uses" which the many make of the arts may or may not be intrinsically vulgar, depraved, or morbid. That's as it may be. "Using" is inferior to "reception" because art, if used rather than received, merely facilitates, brightens, relieves or palliates our life, and does not add to it. (p. 88)

Are we receiving art when it's reduced to instantly-downloadable "content" to be used and then thrown away (or stored on a hard drive)? What happens to us when we begin to see books, music, and movies as mere commodities?

Receiving art is not the same thing as agreeing with it. Here Lewis argues for the value of surrendering to works of art that may contain opinions, attitudes and feelings that we don't agree with.

In good reading there ought to be no "problem of belief." I read Lucretius and Dante at a time when (by and large) I agreed with Lucretius. I have read them since I came (by and large) to agree with Dante. I cannot find that this has much altered my experience, or at all altered my evaluation, of either. A true lover of literature should be in one way like a honest examiner, who is prepared to give the highest marks to the telling, felicitous and well-documented exposition of views he dissents from or even abominates. (p. 85)

Lewis could say those things because he believed that "good" was more than a moral category when it comes to literature. Which raises the question whether that's true of other mediums as well. I'm still thinking through that one.

Which of these was a neighbor to the stranger in need?

2011-12-29T12:52:00.002-05:00

Embedded within Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors Trilogy: Blue/White/Red (1994) is a parable involving an infirm pensioner trying to deposit a bottle into a recycling station -- the opening of which is just out of reach. These brief scenes (one in each film) are a thread that connect what are otherwise disparate films. What do they mean?

In each scene the main protagonist sees, or in the first case fails to see, a stranger struggling to carry out a simple task. Their reactions say a lot about each character's inner state. You could even say it opens a window into their spiritual health (many critics and viewers have seen Kieślowski's cinema as an attempt to visibly represent invisible spiritual and metaphysical realities -- he himself was reticent to talk about his aims). Watching these clips together makes for a visual parable. Watch them in order and you'll see an interesting progression.

In Blue Julie (Juliette Binoche) is so wrapped up in her grief and solipsism that she doesn't even see the old woman.

In White down-on-his-luck Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) sees the old man, but only watches and smiles, as if to say "at least I'm better off than that guy."

In Red the breakthrough occurs when Valentine (Iréne Jacob) sees what is happening, and is moved to take action. Her small act of kindness is writ large against the background of these three masterful films from one of the greats.

UPDATED 12/30: In response to a thoughtful correspondent I've amended the sentence in parenthesis (see italics). Though I would note that Kieślowski's screenwriting partner Krzysztof Piesiewicz says as much in an interview on the Criterion Blu-ray of White.

The Lord's sheep hear his voice (MacMillan)

2011-12-28T11:16:00.001-05:00

Jesus said that hearing him and following him were distinguishing marks of his sheep. Commenting on John 10:27 -- "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" -- Charles Spurgeon said that Christians "have a mark in their ear and a mark in their foot." Douglas MacMillan, who spent years tending sheep before he became a minister, explains that hearing the Good Shepherd's voice is more than an aural experience.

With every sheep that I brought home to take into the flock, the first thing I had to do was to take a big, long, sharp, killing knife. I was not going to cut their throats, but I was going to mark their ears. In Scotland we call it a 'lug mark'. It was my particular mark and it marked that sheep out as mine. Now that is not the kind of mark that Spurgeon meant when he said that the Christian has a mark in his ear. The kind of thing he was talking about was what Jesus had in mind here—'they hear my voice'. There are two words in Greek for hearing, and it is interesting to note that the one that is used here means not simply 'to hear a sound' but 'to hear and to understand'—hearing with understanding. (Gaelic has two words for hearing, as well, and makes exactly the same distinction.)

Now that is a perfect illustration of what happens when God's Spirit begins to work in the life of a sinner. They begin to hear. . . .

Often it's hard to distinguish the voice of Jesus from the other voices competing for our attention. How can one know that the Holy Spirit is at work calling us to repentance and faith? In short, when the gospel begins to have meaning and validity you are hearing the Shepherd's voice. When your thoughts and desires bend toward righteousness and holiness you are hearing the voice of Christ.

MacMillan tells how this happened in his own life. He grew up in a Christian home hearing the gospel from parents and pastors, but for 21 years he didn't have a clue what it was about. Then one day something changed.

The gospel was just jargon to me, and words like 'Come to Christ—trust in Christ—be born again' didn't mean a thing. Then all of a sudden the gospel began to have meaning for me. When a preacher said 'Come to Christ,' I knew exactly what he meant. When he said 'Trust your soul to the Lord Jesus,' I knew what he meant. When he said 'Christ died for your sins,' I thought that was wonderful. What was happening? I was not only hearing with the ear, I was understanding and I was listening, and I was drawing life into my soul. What had happened? I had become a sheep, and I understood the Shepherd's language and I knew the Shepherd's voice.

In theological terms what MacMillan experienced was regeneration, or the new birth. What was dead had been raised to life by the power of the Spirit. Spiritual blindness was replaced by spiritual sight. Of course, hearing the voice of Jesus necessarily leads to following him. More on that later.

Quotes from J. Douglas MacMillan, The Lord Our Shepherd (pp. 35-7)

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

"So, brothers and sisters, let us keep this day as a festival; not, like the unbelievers, because of that sun up there in the sky, but because of the One who made that sun."

- Augustine of Hippo (Sermon 190)

Helena Ekdahl and the spirit of Christmas

2011-12-24T13:58:00.009-05:00

When I think of Christmas celebrations I remember the opening scenes of Bergman's semi-autobiographical opus Fanny and Alexander (1982). Here the imperious Ekdahl family matriarch Helena -- played by veteran Swedish actress Gun Wållgren -- prepares to welcome her guests for the Christmas Eve feast. Wållgren's face registers the complicated mix of emotions that this time of year often conjures up.

The reason for the Trinity (Keller)

2011-12-20T17:30:00.001-05:00

Appropriately, Tim Keller ends The Reason for God with a chapter on the Trinity. If I was investigating Christianity as a skeptic I'm pretty sure the doctrine I would have the most trouble with would be the doctrine of the Trinity. One God in three persons. Really?! All that business about essences and substances just seems like splitting hairs, right? On the face of it the doctrine seems like a logical impossibility. Aren't our Jewish and Muslim neighbors right when they accuse Christians of being polytheists? After all, the main thrust of the Old Testament seems to be monotheism. Nothing about the Trinity there.

As you probably guessed I'm playing a bit of devil's advocate. No, I don't believe Christians are polytheists, and one can make out the beginnings of trinitarian theology even in the OT. Nevertheless we must acknowledge that we're in the presence of a mystery we can't fully explain. Keller writes: "The doctrine of the Trinity overloads our mental circuits." We may never wrap our minds around it, but the Trinity is essential to Christianity. So much flows from it, not least the Incarnation of the Son of God that we celebrate in a few days.

Unique to the Christian understanding of God is that he is love. It's not only that he is loving (which he is!), but that he IS love. From eternity past self-giving love has been part of the essence of the Godhead -- Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This would not be possible if God wasn't triune, Keller explains.

If God is unipersonal, then until God created other beings there was no love, since love is something that one person has for another. This means that a unipersonal God was power, sovereignty, and greatness from all eternity, but not love. Love then is the essence of God, nor is it at the heart of the universe. Power is primary.

However, if God is triune, then loving relationships in community are the "great fountain . . . at the center of reality." When people say, "God is love," I think they mean that love is extremely important, or that God really wants us to love. But in the Christian conception, God really has love as his essence. If he was just one person he couldn't have been loving for all eternity. If he was only the impersonal all-soul of Eastern thought, he couldn't have been loving, for love is something persons do. . . . Ultimate reality is a community of persons who know and love one another.

If Keller is right, and the Trinitarian nature of God is the key to ultimate reality, then this has massive implications for the way we live. For one thing it shows us that relationships are key to human flourishing, and selfishness is ultimately a destructive dead end. Jesus put it most succinctly: "For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it" (Mark 8:35 NIV). In sum: "You were made for mutually self-giving, other-directed love. Self-centeredness destroys the fabric of what God has made."

The Reason for God is terrific. Even better than I expected. One of the author's heroes is C.S. Lewis, so it's not surprising that his fingerprints are all over the book. I think Keller has written a Mere Christianity-type book for our day -- one that will strengthen the faith of believers, respectfully challenge skeptics, and reward sincere seekers of truth.

Quotes from The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (pp. 225-7)

The One Percent's "honest" graft

2011-12-20T11:30:00.000-05:00

The Atlantic Wire summarizes a story in today's Wall Street Journal detailing another way the One Percent rig our political and economic system for their benefit. And it's all perfectly legal . . . if not exactly ethical.

Proving that insider trading in Congress can work both ways, The Wall Street Journal reports on a disturbing trend of hedge funds gaining valuable tips from lawmakers voting on and making multi-million dollar decisions. Sure, it doesn't seem like Congress can agree on much at the moment, but when decisions like the 2009 healthcare compromise was reached, it was the hedge funds that knew first--hours before the public announcement. "The news was potentially worth millions of dollars to the investors, though none would publicly divulge how they used the information," report The Wall Street Journal's Brody Mullins and Susan Pulliam. "They belong to a select group who pay for early, firsthand reports on Capitol Hill" who are, as one lawyer puts it, "buying information from members of Congress in a perfectly legal way."

Click through to continue reading.

Reminds me of this clip from the documentary Inside Job, which I reviewed earlier this year.

Vaclav Havel (1936 - 2011)

2011-12-18T16:21:00.006-05:00

Farewell to an inspiring figure who represented the best of what the often cynical art of politics should be. This quote from Havel has stuck with me.

"Genuine politics—even politics worthy of the name—the only politics I am willing to devote myself to—is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole." (Summer Meditations, 1992)

Christopher Hitchens (1949 - 2011)

2011-12-16T10:25:00.006-05:00

I could hardly believe my eyes this morning when I opened up my homepage and saw the headline: "Christopher Hitchens Dead at 62". I knew he was gravely ill, but only yesterday I read this just-published indomitable and chilling essay on the hellish experience of pain and cancer, in which Hitchens detailed his resolve to stay combative in the face of radiation and the like. Reading it made me physically uncomfortable (hospitals and needles make me cringe in the best of circumstances). I got the impression that Hitchens had a few more rounds left to go in his battle, but as it turns out it was quite possibly the last piece from this magnificent writer and courageous man. Yes, courageous. To unblinkingly face suffering and death in the way that he did, without the hope found in Christ, takes a better man than I.

Here are his concluding paragraphs.

I am typing this having just had an injection to try to reduce the pain in my arms, hands, and fingers. The chief side effect of this pain is numbness in the extremities, filling me with the not irrational fear that I shall lose the ability to write. Without that ability, I feel sure in advance, my “will to live” would be hugely attenuated. I often grandly say that writing is not just my living and my livelihood but my very life, and it’s true. Almost like the threatened loss of my voice, which is currently being alleviated by some temporary injections into my vocal folds, I feel my personality and identity dissolving as I contemplate dead hands and the loss of the transmission belts that connect me to writing and thinking.

These are progressive weaknesses that in a more “normal” life might have taken decades to catch up with me. But, as with the normal life, one finds that every passing day represents more and more relentlessly subtracted from less and less. In other words, the process both etiolates you and moves you nearer toward death. How could it be otherwise? Just as I was beginning to reflect along these lines, I came across an article on the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. We now know, from dearly bought experience, much more about this malady than we used to. Apparently, one of the symptoms by which it is made known is that a tough veteran will say, seeking to make light of his experience, that “what didn’t kill me made me stronger.” This is one of the manifestations that “denial” takes.

I am attracted to the German etymology of the word “stark,” and its relative used by Nietzsche, stärker, which means “stronger.” In Yiddish, to call someone a shtarker is to credit him with being a militant, a tough guy, a hard worker. So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our common fate. In either case, though, one can dispense with facile maxims that don’t live up to their apparent billing.

Hitchens spent much of his prodigious intellectual and literary capacity mocking the beliefs of people such as I. Nevertheless, I mourn his passing. The words of John Donne come to mind: "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee." (Meditation XVII)

The gateway to Psalm 23

2011-12-15T17:20:00.002-05:00

There are many wonderful things in The Lord our Shepherd: an exposition of Psalm 23 by Free Church of Scotland minister J. Douglas MacMillan (1933 - 1991). The book is taken from a series of talks MacMillan gave in 1979, which gives it a warm conversational tone. According to those who sat under his ministry MacMillan was a giant in the pulpit. Before becoming a minister of the gospel he tended sheep in the hills of Scotland. Yes. He was a shepherd. Throughout the talks are stories from MacMillan's personal experience, and insights that those with no experience of sheep or shepherding would never see. I'll share some of those in later posts.

MacMillan begins by drawing out the shepherd theme from the Old Testament and then identifying the Shepherd of Psalm 23. Of course, to David, the Shepherd is Jehovah, the covenant God of Israel. Moving to the New Testament we see Jesus identifying himself as "the Good Shepherd" (John 10), which to a Jewish listener meant nothing less than calling himself God. They knew very well that the only Good Shepherd was the one revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures as the Shepherd of Israel. No wonder then that this affirmation is quickly followed by charges of blasphemy!

Later, the apostles call the risen Christ "the Great Shepherd" (Heb. 13:20) and "the Chief Shepherd" (1 Peter 5:4). In these NT uses of the shepherd theme the shepherd is linked to the atoning work of Jesus on the cross and the promise of his second coming in judgment.

By training the light of the New Testament on this most familiar of Psalms (so familiar that we miss its full import?) the author is able to draw out some amazing connections. Here is one.

What is the setting of Psalm 23? What do I mean by that? Well, where in your Bible do you find Psalm 23? You say, ‘Well, preacher, that's very easy. Psalm 23 comes after Psalm 22.’ That is absolutely right. But now I want to ask you another question: What is Psalm 22? Well, listen to it! Listen to its opening words: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ Where are we when we enter into Psalm 22? We are at a place called Calvary. Go through this psalm, and you are closer to Calvary than any of the Gospels can take you, because you are not merely looking at the One who is offering His life, but you are in His mind and you are in His heart. You are sharing and seeing His suffering, in a way that the history of the Gospels cannot allow you to see and share His suffering. You are listening to His heartbeat as He says, ‘They laugh me to scorn . . . saying, He trusted in the Lord . . . let him deliver him . . . strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round [Bashan was famous for its breeding bulls—strong terrifying animals] . . . I am poured out like water . . . they pierced my hands and feet.’

Where are we? We are at a place called Calvary, and we are seeing the Good Shepherd laying down His life for the sheep. We are seeing what it cost for Jesus to suffer and to offer. We are seeing what it cost this Shepherd (if I can put it like that) to get into Psalm 23. There was only one gateway for the Son of God to become the Shepherd of the sheep, and that was by the gateway of Psalm 22 and His suffering on the cross. . . . Much more so, my friend, before you and I can get into Psalm 23, we have to go by the pathway of Psalm 22 as well.

Quote from The Lord our Shepherd (p. 19)

Hopperesque

2011-12-13T16:59:00.001-05:00

In the Morning (dir. Krishna Shenoi, 2011)

via Roger Ebert

The gospel according to Handel

2011-12-12T14:13:00.000-05:00

My pastor has been preaching a series of Advent sermons on texts used by G.F. Handel and Charles Jennens in the magnificent oratorio Messiah. You probably know that the words are all straight from the Bible, and arranged in such a masterful way to help us see afresh the grand scope of God's unfolding plan of salvation culminating in Christ. One critic has rightly called it "the revelation of Jesus Christ set to music." And what glorious music it is!

Another great work of art associated with this time of year is Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Like Handel, Dickens was a believer in Jesus and one can see a Christian ethic throughout his much-loved tale of Scrooge, Tiny Tim and the rest. Blogger Tony Reinke has written an interesting comparison of Messiah and A Christmas Carol. While appreciating the Christmas message of A Christmas Carol, Reinke concludes that Handel's version of Christmas gospel hope is superior. I agree.

Here's an excerpt.

I don’t know much about the life of Dickens, but clearly he was no mere deist. He pressed his children to see the importance of Christ’s incarnation, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, and even the persecution of the early church. He seems to have a high regard for Scripture, and for this I am thankful. But it also seems that he boils down the meaning of Christmas to say little more than that Christ is our moral pattern to help us live Christianly.

By contrast, for Handel, the birth of the Savior marks the beginning of the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies. As that eternal plan begins to unfold on earth, Christ must be born, he must die a bloody death, and he must defeat the grave because we are desperate and helpless sinners. The entire salvific purposes of God begin to unfold in the Incarnation, in the birth of Christ.

For Dickens, Christmas is a reminder that we are all Scrooges, self-centered ungrateful nobs who yet have some hope of appeasing God through our personal reform.

For Handel, Christmas reminds us that we are all sinners, we are “in Adam,” and for that we are helpless to stop God’s righteous judgment towards our sin. Yet there is One who has paid the price to quench God’s wrath on our behalf.

In both A Christmas Carol and Messiah, all our warm and tranquil Hallmark Christmas sentimentality gets blasted by cold reality. Death is coming for us all, and the grave is approaching quickly.

Dickens wants people to die in peace.

Handel wants people raised from the dead.

Dickens’ hope is rooted in the future — in the finished work of moral reform necessary in our lives.

Handel’s hope is rooted in the past — the full and complete work of Christ on our behalf.

Dickens’ message is “do.”

Handel’s message is “done.”

Click through to read the whole thing.

Sarah said it

2011-12-09T11:25:00.002-05:00

On Tuesday I threw out a "who said it?" challenge re the quote below. The readers of this blog got together in a telephone booth and couldn't come up with the answer. Well, as you can see the speaker was none other than Sarah Palin. The quote comes from a speech she gave in Iowa recently. I have to admit, I was surprised when I read it. This sounds like something you would hear from an Occupy Wall Street-type or liberal rabble-rouser like Paul Krugman.

Here Palin articulates one of the reasons many Americans are angry, disillusioned, and ready to take to the streets in protest. It also illustrates why I wouldn't vote for the current GOP front runner Newt Gingrich in a million years. He's the epitome of the nest-feathering Washington insider that Palin describes.

". . . the permanent political class – they’re doing just fine. Ever notice how so many of them arrive in Washington, D.C. of modest means and then miraculously throughout the years they end up becoming very, very wealthy? Well, it’s because they derive power and their wealth from their access to our money – to taxpayer dollars. They use it to bail out their friends on Wall Street and their corporate cronies, and to reward campaign contributors, and to buy votes via earmarks. There is so much waste. And there is a name for this: It’s called corporate crony capitalism. This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk. No, this is the capitalism of connections and government bailouts and handouts, of waste and influence peddling and corporate welfare. This is the crony capitalism that destroyed Europe’s economies. It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest – to the little guys."

Go Sarah go!