Tag Archives: Christianity

Normal Christian Living, Giving Cover Credit to Translators, and Blogroll

When people give detailed definitions of the normal Christian life, I feel something like bumping into a soapbox. Not standing on it yet, but kicking it as if accidentally, not knowing it was next to my foot. When we say all Christians should be doing something, like Bible reading and prayer, we should consider how our recommendations would be applied by different people past and present.

If you take a verse like Psalm 5:3, “O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch,” and recommend a morning routine to all believers, consider how the field hand and the factory worker would be able to apply it. How would it work for the tired, young mother or the single mother with a couple jobs?

If our view of the normal Christian life fits mainly a middle class, white-collar lifestyle, we need to broaden our scope, so that our intended encouragement comes through and we don’t drive away those believers who aren’t like us. This goes for our definitions of manhood, womanhood, and modesty, to name a few hot topics.

Let me scurry on to other things.

Translation: There’s a move to add the names of translators to the covers of the books they brought into another language.

Ordinary Life: Matt Rhoades writes about the Holy Spirit working in ordinary life. “We live day to day, not miracle to miracle. And there’s something wonderful about these ordinary days and years spent between the high points. “

Kindness: Jared Wilson says kindness promotes the Gospel. “When was the last time you classified preaching as kind? Do you think, by and large, preaching today could be characterized by kindness?”

Generations: Min Jin Lee talks about many things in this New Yorker interview, including generational differences particularly among immigrants. “The real disconnect is between the first and second or third generation, especially if the second or third generation has done sufficiently well. We’re not interested in just survival anymore. We’re interested in meaning, and that quest for meaning has just as many difficulties, if not more intangible difficulties, than just survival.”

Photo: Post Office, New Ulm, Minnesota. 1981. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Parents are Important; so is Charles Lamb

I’m still in a holiday frame of mind, so instead of pushing to get this post together for Saturday morning, I slept super late, tried to jump start the oldest of our cars, took the trash to the landfill (which I have done most Saturdays), and played around the whole afternoon. Taking trash and recycling to the county landfill is a chore I picked up years ago when our pickup service was increasing in price and my income was, if I remember right, nothing. I’ve been telling myself I can afford a service again, but we haven’t signed up yet. Even with trash pickup, we’d still have to take our own recycling to one of the area collection points, because that additional service is a bit much.

So many fans have asked me about this, I felt I could no longer put them off. A heart of kindness, that’s what I have. Here are a few links to better reading.

Faith: “Parents define for their children the role that religious faith and practice ought to play in life, whether important or not, which most children roughly adopt.” Of course, there are huge exceptions.

Reading through Bibliotheca, “an elegant, meticulously crafted edition of the Bible designed to invite the reader to a pure, literary experience of its vast and varied contents.”

Beauty in nature and art: “Fragrant grass, who knows who planted you,/ Already spread in several clumps there by the terrace?”

Charles Lamb: “‘[Y]ou never know exactly when [Charles] Lamb is speaking seriously.’ … The same applies to such Lambian literary cousins as Laurence Sterne, Max Beerbohm and P.G. Wodehouse – writers many readers will never get.

“Cleanliness” by Charles Lamb:

Come my little Robert near—
Fie! what filthy hands are here!
Who that e’er could understand
The rare structure of a hand,
With its branching fingers fine,
Work itself of hands divine,
Strong, yet delicately knit,
For ten thousand uses fit …

Photo: Look Sharp Barber Shop sign (painted 1969 Volkswagen), Yuma, Arizona. 2003. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

If We Win the Leaders, Will We Win the Nation?

I gather family devotions is a challenge for everyone. I remember my parents pulling us together a couple times for what resembled the semblance of something like a worship service. It was awkward. I didn’t like it. My father-in-law regularly read from the Bible after supper, so that’s the pattern that drew me in.

Since we have homeschooled our kids from the beginning, my wife read through the Bible with them during the morning routine. That and my desire to read something that applied the Word, if not strictly devotional, is what steered me toward reading through Christian books instead of the Bible. We read a few of Jared C. Wilson’s books, at least a couple of Jerry Bridges’s. After using the Advent readings from our church, I was at a loss for what to start next. My wife suggested a few of the small books from our shelf, and that’s what got us into Richard Wurmbrand’s Tortured for Christ.

This ain’t light reading. Wurmbrand is a Romanian minister from Bucharest who grew up atheist and came to faith through reading the Bible. He became an leader of the Underground Church after Communism began to strangle all of its citizens. What he and other believers suffered was demonic.

He writes like a missionary, as you would expect, and one of his principles provoked us to push back. He advocates winning people of influence first.

How was Norway won for Christ? By winning King Olaf. Russia first had the Gospel when its king, Vladimir, was won. Hungary was won by winning St. Stephen, its king. The same with Poland. In Africa, wehre the chief of the tribe has been won, the tribe follows. We setup missions to rank-and-life men who may become very fine Christians, but who have little influence and cannot change the state of things.

We must win rulers: political, economic, scientific, artistic personalities. They are the engineers of souls. They mold the souls of men. Winning them, you win the people they lead and influence.

Wurmbrand might have looked to the book of Daniel and asked whether Nebuchadnezzar’s repent and apparent faith did anything to turn Babylon around or the sympathy King Darius had for Daniel bore any fruit. Who was saved when Jonah preached to Ninevah? That nation was blessed by avoiding God’s wrath for a few generations, but when Nahum returned 150 years later, he said, “And all who look at you will shrink from you and say, ‘Wasted is Nineveh; who will grieve for her?'”

Certainly a people are blessed by Christian leaders. A society organized on biblical values is better overall than any other society, but it would not usher in faith for anyone by mere leadership. When civil leaders turn a country to Christ, it isn’t often by Christian means. The faithless see opportunity and take it by declaring themselves faithful.

God uses society and influence in ways we don’t often foresee. Remember how he has told us to care for widows and orphans. They aren’t the influential ones today, but they could be tomorrow. A common result would be that they seek Christ wherever they go and repeat the truth to a family or congregation, thereby keeping a few more people on the straight and narrow. Who can say this is an unambitious plan?

The Word Was Made Flesh, Merry Christmas

This is the real meaning of Christmas: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14 ESV).

This does not mean God posed as a man for a few years, casting an illusion on everyone in order to influence them with well-spoken sermons.

It does not mean God sent his spirit into a man for a time, having found someone who was sufficiently humble to indwell for divine purposes.

It does not mean that God actually is a man who lives eternally on another plane but for a season he came to Earth to do things.

It also does not mean that Jesus was only a man who connected dots like no one before him and introduced some darn good principles to Western civilization.

It does not mean that a uniquely spiritual man called on divine power to perform marvelous works and speak with wisdom beyond the scope of mortal reason.

Those ideas are a bit easier to understand. The truth is beyond us. Christ Jesus, born as a child to a poor, virgin woman, was the Word of God from the beginning, both with God and actually God. The invisible, eternal God became a mortal man. That doesn’t make complete sense to us, but it is the only hope for ourselves and all the world.

Merry Christmas.

‘Intolerance’

Still from D. W. Griffith’s “Intolerance,” (1916)

I posted this on Visage Volume yesterday, and though I garnered some quibbles, I still think it holds up.

The issue of Christianity’s “intolerance” has come up. I often hear the contention that the “old gods” were tolerant, while Christianity introduced intolerance. This is based on an uninformed assumption that the old days were just like ours. In fact, the “old gods” were not tolerant, and certainly not universal. They were parochial. They cared about their own people (when it suited them), and no others. Zeus cared nothing for the Parthians. Thor couldn’t care less about the Irish. Christianity brought in a new idea (anticipated by the Jewish prophets) that one God had created all, loved all, and redeemed all. If that’s true, then His message is applicable to all. The moment you make the statement, “God loves everyone,” or “everyone matters,” you are appropriating Christian theology.

Do Evangelicals Love Doctrine over People?

What’s your initial reaction to suggestion that evangelicals love doctrine over people? It’s a common claim in come circles, perhaps most common among those who feel rejected.

The other day on Twitter, a believer with a successful academic career (judging from a distance) retweeted this claim, noting its truthfulness, and another believer with a successful publishing career pushed back, saying anyone who has taught Sunday School should know how little doctrine most evangelicals understand.

This second point rings true to me and seems to be supported by surveys like Ligonier’s State of Theology, conducted again this year. If members of evangelical churches love doctrine so much, why are so many unsure of certain basic facts every Christian should know? But why is the charge of being unloving to their neighbors assumed by so many, even within the church?

Perhaps evangelicals are one of the many groups of people who claim to hold to doctrinal standards but in reality hold only to a comfort zone. I mean they love people about as much as everyone else does, but they talk up the doctrine side of things. They claim loyalty to a creed or church, but the truth is they only know what the creed sort of looks like, because what they really hold to is the comfort of the group and place. They like the habits they do all together, the people who hang out here, the tone the pastor sets in each service. They call that comfort zone the Christian faith.

If that’s true, their comfort zone won’t stay Christian long.

Of course, only some evangelicals do this; the fear is that most do it. Cultural observers frequently ask why the church isn’t known for loving our neighbors above anything else. It isn’t only due to the reporters who only report on a public figure’s faith when he or she is using it to beat down others.

8 Lies about God that Sound Like the Truth

  1. God just wants you to be happy.
  2. You only live once.
  3. You need to live your truth.
  4. Your feelings are reality.
cover of Gospel According to Satan

Sound familiar? That’s four of the eight statements that sound true enough but are actually lies that author Jared C. Wilson lays out in his latest book, The Gospel According to Satan: Eight Lies about God that Sound Like the Truth. The gospel-saturated author of many books explains the intent of each lie and how they undermine God’s will in our lives.

Kudos on the cover design that pushes me to turn the book on its face whenever I have it out. You could call that a drawback, but wouldn’t this be a great book to leave on top of the Gideon Bible in hotel room drawers?

Some of the points touched in the book:

  • Does God just want you to be happy or is your unhappiness a symptom of misplaced priorities or even a difficult calling? Could your happiness be the main thing drawing you away from him?
  • What do you justify with #YOLO? Is it godly living or self-indulgence?
  • What you call your truth may be relative, but the truth is not. Unfashionable? Sometimes. Reliable? Definitely.
  • Your feelings may not mean what you think they mean. They need biblical interpretation

Jared writes with light-hearted quips from our culture, quotes from contemporary and classic authors, and vulnerable illustrations from his own life.

When I’m not priding myself on being more whatever than others, I hate myself for not being whatever enough. The weird thing about humility is that the more you think about it, the more it goes away. That’s me.

The other lies he tackles:

  1. Your life is what you make it.
  2. You need to let go and let God.
  3. The Cross is not about wrath.
  4. God helps those who help themselves.

I found his exploration of problems with the cliché “let go and let God” eye-opening, and the next chapter on substitutionary atonement should be understood by everyone. Heartily recommended.

Common Temptations, Demonic Influence at College

This is a timely word from Dr. Hans Madueme, Associate Professor of Theological Studies at Covenant College, delivered in chapel last November. He says some leaders are worried their college (perhaps all Christian colleges) are helping students speak Christianly while continuing to think and act in a worldly manner. The devil has been working his craft for a very long time; he knows how to leverage his influence over us.

Sub-creators

A snippet from Tolkien: A Biography, by Humphrey Carpenter.

This is from his account of the long night’s conversation among Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Hugo Dyson at Oxford in 1931, which bore fruit a few days later in Lewis’s conversion. It’s tremendously important.

We have come from God (continued Tolkien), and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God. Indeed only by myth-making, only by becoming a ‘sub-creator’ and inventing stories, can Man aspire to the state of perfection that he knew before the Fall. Our myths may be misguided, but they steer however shakily towards the true harbour, while materialistic ‘progress’ leads only to a yawning abyss and the Iron Crown of the power of evil….

Lewis listened as Dyson affirmed in his own way what Tolkien had said. You mean, asked Lewis, that the story of Christ is simply a true myth, a myth that works on us in the same way as the others, but a myth that really happened? In that case, he said, I begin to understand.

He Made the World by His Word; Why is Salvation by Suffering?

From the sixth century bishop of southern France, Caesarius of Arles, comes this important meditation on the salvific work of our Lord Jesus Christ: “Why the Lord Jesus Christ freed the human race through harsh suffering, not through power.”

He says this is a common question. “Why did he who is proclaimed to have given life in the beginning by his word not destroy death by his word?  What reason was there that lost men should not be brought back by the same majesty which was able to create things not yet existing?”

He would have been able, yes; but reason resisted, justice did not give its permission: and these are more important to God than all power and might.  . . . This then had to be kept in mind: compassion must not destroy justice, love must not destroy equity.  For if He had finished off the Devil and rescued man from his jaws by His majesty and power, there would indeed have been power, but there would not have been justice.

It’s a marvelous sermon, worthy of the week, and brought to us by Ben Wheaton, Ph.D., medieval studies, University of Toronto.

Photo by Robert Nyman on Unsplash