Tag Archives: Christianity

Religion

Believing in Christmas

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Kirsten Powers describes her history with Christmas and how the Lord brought her to himself in Christianity Today.

Ironically, after all of this, Christmas lost its luster for me. The rank materialism became too much to bear, and the Christmas season morphed from being a time I savored into something I tried to survive each year. Santa Claus, Christmas trees, the holiday jingles—they all felt like pagan oppression. When people complained about a war on Christmas I often smirked and thought to myself, Where do I sign up? Honestly: When a sale at Crate & Barrel gets entangled with the birth of Jesus Christ, something has gone horribly wrong.

She doesn’t leave it there. It’s a marvelous story.

Also out of New York City today, columnist Nicholas Kristof asks pastor Tim Keller whether one can be a Christian while rejecting the virgin birth and resurrection. Keller says many good things, and on this question the main point is that Christ Jesus was not a good teacher whose ideas could be taken out of the context of his life. He came to give us life through his resurrection. It was on this basis that he taught what he did.

Non-fiction, Religion

The Night You Were My Enemy

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Buried in this twenty-minute podcast of stories of Christian faith is a moving story of two soldiers and what the Lord did to spare their lives. One of the men was Ira Sankey, a singer who would go on to prepare spaces for Dwight L. Moody to preach.

Non-fiction, Religion

Fred Sanders Can’t Dance the Flow

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In his review of Richard Rohr’s new book, Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation, Fred Sanders explains how it isn’t about the Trinity at all. It’s about the divine flow, a dance within the Godhead that ends up being more important than the Godhead.

The flow is a self-giving exchange of love and life. If you were to ask Rohr whether the flow is primarily something about God, the world, or the human person, he would no doubt answer with an enthusiastic “Yes!” and his twinkling Franciscan eyes would twinkle Franciscanly. The flow overflows the distinction between the Creator and the creature. It flows from God as God empties Godself; it circulates among creatures and binds them together with each other and the absolute; it flows back to God, enriching and delighting that Holy Source who loves to see finite spirits awaken to their true, divine selves. The flow sounds like a noun, but it’s really a verb. Flow verbs all nouns as they flow with its flowing.

That looks like some good verbal dancing on Sanders’ part, but it isn’t the flow. It’s more like keeping his footing solid while the room shakes, which makes for entertaining reading.

Authors, Religion

No One Believes in Self-Fulfillment

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Among the things that could be said to be rocking the American church in 2016 are writers and teachers who have claimed a Christian mantle to teach decidedly unchristian things. Jen Pollock Michel writes for Christianity Today about Glennon Doyle Melton’s recent announcement that she was dating another woman.

Melton is as modern as she boasts—even if her effusive references to “love” and “joy” are reassuringly offered to confirm that her choices are in everyone’s best interest. From the public announcements both of her divorce and her new dating relationship, she wants us to understand this: The greatest gift any of us gives to the world is our true self. Let’s not look to anyone else for permission or feel any obligation for explanation. Humans flourish as they obey their desires.

She goes on to contrast this with the marvelous story Augustine tells of his conversion, but I want to jot down a thought on this idea of being our true selves.

“Humans flourish as they obey their desires.” No one really believes this. They only believe it for themselves, that they will flourish if they are allowed to do their own thing. Follow your dream, kid; just don’t let your dream interfere with mine.

Politicians live high on public money by obeying their desires. Thieves follow UPS trucks to pick up their deliveries before the owners do. Rioters destroy their neighbors’ businesses. Poachers kill off animal life. This is the flourishing we can expect when humans obey their desires.

Lars said this earlier this year:

It is Christians, after all, who (almost alone in our present age) recognize that “there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” Our confessions declare that we are not good people but evil people, saved not by our golden deeds and noble aspirations, but by the work of Someone Else.

Human beings will only flourish when they recognize themselves as servants and stewards on the vast estate of the Governor of the Universe. Our kindness, love, hope, and courage are defined by him, not our own desires, so yes, humanism can do a lot of good when it runs parallel to the goodness Christ has taught us, but that’s the only time.

We weren’t made for self-fulfillment. We were made to be filled by Christ.

Religion

God at Work in Our Universities

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We may have read about some of the nutty things happening at colleges these days, things that rival The Babylon Bee for loony satire, and we’ve seen student ministries oppressed by acolytes of the spirit of the age. But Owen Strachan talks about some of the inspiring work God is still doing in American schools.

I read Adira’s testimony with lightning running down my back. At my alma mater, a college I warmly remember, God is at work. Through diverse means, including the heroic efforts of Rob Gregory and the McKeen Study Center, he’s moving. I can scarcely say how encouraging this is. We sometimes approach secular schools as if they are fortresses, but they are not. They are filled with people–flesh-and-blood people made in God’s image. The university is filled with humanity, teeming with purpose, loaded with promise. No person on campus is without worth. No resident is without value. And it must be said: no one is beyond the reach of God.

Religion

Your Other Brothers

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“When I started to realize that I was attracted to Yoko as more than just a friend, I freaked out. Seriously.”

This is how Kevin Frye begins his frank story of the first year or two of his marriage on a new website focused on helping and connecting Christians who resist the pull into same-sex attraction. The founders of Your Other Brothers say:

Beyond our fellow same-sex attracted believers, we also share our stories for our heterosexual brothers and sisters. We are here to say that this “issue” of homosexuality exists as people here in your midst, and like anyone else in your pews, we are yearning to be heard, known, and loved.

We never chose our sexuality, but we aren’t content to pursue it either. We are locking arms with each other in the belief that our Father has something better intended for His children.

Frye’s story is a hopeful one, but not one that spells out how all of the pain is behind him. It’s the kind of raw testimony I hope every church family has provided a place for, stories of current addiction, recent failure, and dimming hope for recovery. In present-day America, this feels radical, but our society has been sex-crazed for years now. We can’t wish away ugly subjects like pervasive racism, the idolatry of wealth, and homosexuality. We must face them in the beautiful light of the gospel.

Religion

If My People… Will Humble Themselves

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I have often chafed at appeals to 2 Chronicles 7:14 for American health, but I have wanted to believe them too.

The context is Solomon’s dedication of the temple. The Lord comes to him at night, saying, “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:13-14).

Many Evangelical voices tell us that if we, the church, will humble ourselves and pray, then our Lord will heal, bless, rebuke, correct the American people, but as Dr. Moore explains, interpretation like that is corrupt.

When God said to [the original readers], “If my people who are called by name,” he was specifically pointing them back to the covenant that he made with their forefather Abraham. At a specific point in their history, God had told Abraham about his descendants, saying “I will be their God” and “They will be my people.” That’s what “My people” means. God reminded a people who had been exiled, enslaved, and defeated that a rebuilt temple or a displaced nation cannot change who they were. They were God’s people, and would see the future God has for them.

We can’t blur the line on who God is talking about here and attempt to claim divine blessing that isn’t offered. The straightest line to draw from this verse to us will not lead to America, but to Christ.

Religion

Spurgeon on the Force of Faith

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Faith is a root from which may grow all that can adorn the human character. So far from being opposed to good works, it is the ever-flowing fountain from where they proceed. Take faith away from the professed Christian and you have cut the sinew of his strength. Like Samson, you have shorn him of his locks and left him with no power either to defend himself or to conquer his foes. “The just shall live by faith”—FAITH is essential to the vitality of Christianity and anything which weakens that faith weakens the very mainspring of spiritual power!

Image from page 73 of "Farm implements, and the principles of their construction and use" (1854)

Brothers and Sisters, not only does our own experience teach us this, and the Word of God declare it, but the whole of human history goes to show the same Truth of God. Faith is force! Why, even when men have been mistaken, if they have believed the mistake, they have displayed more power than men who have known the truth, but have not heartily believed it. The force that a man has in dealing with his fellow men lies very much in the force of conviction which his beliefs have over his own soul. Teach a man the Truth of God so that his whole heart believes in it and you have given him both the fulcrum and the lever with which he may move the world.

To this very moment the whole earth is tremulous like a mass of jelly beneath the tread of Luther, and why? Because he was strong in faith! Luther was a believer in the Word of God and the schoolmen with whom he had to contend were mere disputers. The priests, cardinals and popes with whom Luther came into contact were mere traders in dead traditions! Therefore he smote them hip and thigh, with great slaughter. His whole manhood believed in what he had learned of God—and as an iron rod among potters’ vessels, so was he among the pretenders of his age! What has been true in history all along is most certainly true now. It is by believing that we become strong—that is clear enough.

Whatever supposed excellencies there may be in the much vaunted receptive condition of the mind, the equilibrium of a cultured intellect and the unsettled judgment of “honest” disbelief, I am unable to discern them. And I see no reference to them in Scripture. Holy Writ neither offers commendations of unbelief, nor presents motives nor reasons for its cultivation. Experience does not prove it to be strength in life’s battle, or wisdom for life’s labyrinth. It is near akin to credulity and, unlike true faith, it is prone to be led by the nose by any falsehood.

From this sermon on Hebrews 6:17-20, delivered May 21, 1876.

Non-fiction

The Anchor as a Christian Symbol

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Anchored“In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil.”

What is the origin of the anchor as a Christian symbol, and why do we no longer use it? Apparently, it relied on a play on Greek words, so as Greek lost its hold as a language among Christians, so did the symbol.

Also,  a few questions answered by Jonathan Edwards’s A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, a highly recommended book.

Religion

Black Preaching Transformed America

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“The genius of African American preaching, I have learned, can transform not only individual believers but our entire country.”

I’m sure Frank Thomas could makes many good points on how “African American preaching, in all of its beauty, depth and history, can once again change the perspective of this nation,” but I fear we may have fundamental disagreements–particularly how it isn’t the style but the Word of God itself that transforms. Still, I don’t doubt that if the Lord would lift up many Black pastors to proclaim the gospel to our nation, we would be renewed.

Perhaps, this message from Pastor H.B. Charles Jr. would be a good example of the style Thomas is talking about.