Mart De Haan asks, “If God is good, but good isn’t God, how do we avoid making our worst mistakes with some of the best things in life?”

Chattanooga Matters (formerly the Chattanooga Resource Foundation) has a seminar from earlier this year with John Stonestreet of Bryan College on YouTube. It’s a nine part video series, and in this part, John makes a great statement. “In my view the worst thing about contemporary entertainment . . . [is that] it makes us think about things that aren’t important and keeps us from thinking about things that are. It distracts us from the real world. We are a distracted generation.”

Tonight, another insight from the bottomless, fetid pit of my wisdom.

I think of this insight as my own, but that’s probably just the result of ignorance. Likely thousands of real theologians said it before I did.

But I never read it in their books. I worked it out with my own tiny, smooth-surfaced brain.

So I think of it as my own.

Is there any saying that’s brought more comfort to sinners than this: “If you had been the only sinner in the world, Jesus would have died to save you”?

I suppose it’s a cliché, but I like it. It speaks to me.

And yet it always bothered me. Because it didn’t seem to actually rise from any biblical text. And I don’t take anything as absolute truth that isn’t either found in Scripture or plainly derived from a clear reading of Scripture.

And then I figured it out. Luke 15:3-7: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?”

And just down the page, Luke 15:8-10: “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it?”

The point of these parables is not (I believe), as some will think, that everyone will be saved. The point is the concern of the Searcher for each individual who is lost.

In other words, if I had been the only sinner in the world, Jesus would have died to save me.

My apologies to everybody who came up with this first (probably in preaching on Luke 15).

But it’s a comfort to me.

Have a good weekend.

So Senator Harry Reid thinks the Federal Income Tax is a voluntary contribution.

This isn’t really surprising, when you think about it. The Left has its own definition of voluntarism. The Left’s vision of society has always looked a lot like a Soviet propaganda movie. The call goes out for the proletariat to make some sacrifice for the common good, and the people happily drop their individual concerns and march off to do whatever job the Politburo says they should do. And if the authorities have to use guns to get some of them to fall in line, well, it’s for their own good, and therefore voluntary in the deepest, truest sense.

Even prisoners in the gulag were officially described as volunteers.

I got a new computer at work recently, and I just updated the screen saver.

I opted to use that “3D Text” saver that displays some words specified by you, in shiny metallic 3-D form, rotating in the dark. I typed in Norwegian words—“Ordet Blev Kjød,” which comes from John 1:14: “The Word became flesh.” I can understand that it might seem questionable to some if I say that this verse is the center of my theology (happily, it’s also the motto of the school I work for), but I think this doctrine—the Incarnation—is kind of the foundation on which all the rest of Christian theology rests. If you don’t get this one right, you’ll probably wander into all kinds of heresies.

I was looking at that phrase, spinning on my screen yesterday, and it just struck me how wonderful it is.

Every human being (as far as I can tell) experiences (at least at some point) transcendent longings. We yearn for a greater meaning, a higher beauty, a purer love than this world can offer.

And yet we generally find ourselves mired in lower things. Our aspiration for meaning turns into just making a living. Our dream of beauty becomes fashion and affluence. Our hope of love becomes either mere sex or one or more disappointing, unsatisfying relationships.

Humans have traditionally dealt with this problem by either denying the spiritual (materialism) or denying the physical (eastern spirituality).

Christianity deals with it by boldly proclaiming that in Christ, the two things become one. In Christ, because of His incarnation and the things He did in His incarnation, we can have our cake and eat it too, so to speak. We can have spiritual meaning in the physical world, and physical satisfaction in spiritual things.

I think that’s really good news.

I think I’ve written about this before, but it’s something I’ve come to believe.

I don’t know if there’s an official, ecclesiastical name for the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. But I call it Bad Saturday.

It doesn’t have a name (or not a well-known one, anyway) because it’s a kind of a nothing. The bad thing happened yesterday. The good thing hasn’t happened yet. It’s the day of disappointment, of shock, of depression. The day when the scattered disciples hole up and try to figure out the safest way out of the province. The day when everything has fallen apart, and you don’t know what’s coming next.

The day when all you’ve got to go on is a promise. And that promise that doesn’t look very promising, in the wake of what happened yesterday.

In other words, it’s the day in which we live most of our lives. True, Easter has happened, but Easter isn’t finished yet. We seem to be in the third act of God’s great drama, and we can’t see the climax from here. So we wait, and we say our lines, and we follow our stage directions, but the Happy Ending is still waiting in the wings, behind a curtain.

We’re trying to get through Bad Saturday as well as we can.

Easter is our hope. It’s a thing that has already happened, and has not yet happened, for us as individuals.

It’s a question of perseverance. Today might be called the Day of Perseverance. Hang on. The Feast comes tomorrow.

The Lord grieved in the garden, as depicted by Robert Walter Weir

Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

For this day, a special St. Patrick’s Day because it falls between Palm Sunday and Easter, here is a part of Patrick’s confession (also found here). The real man behind the day is here:

I, Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful and most contemptible to many, had for father the deacon Calpurnius, son of the late Potitus, a presbyter, of the settlement of Bannaven Taburniae; he had a small villa nearby where I was taken captive. I was at that time about sixteen years of age. I did not, indeed, know the true God; and I was taken into captivity in Ireland with many thousands of people, according to our deserts, for quite drawn away from God, we did not keep his precepts, nor were we obedient to our presbyters who used to remind us of our salvation. And the Lord brought down on us the fury of his being and scattered us among many nations, even to the ends of the earth, where I, in my smallness, am now to be found among foreigners.

And there the Lord opened my mind to an awareness of my unbelief, in order that, even so late, I might remember my transgressions and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my insignificance and pitied my youth and ignorance. And he watched over me before I knew him, and before I learned sense or even distinguished between good and evil, and he protected me, and consoled me as a father would his son.

Therefore, indeed, I cannot keep silent, nor would it be proper, so many favours and graces has the Lord deigned to bestow on me in the land of my captivity. For after chastisement from God, and recognizing him, our way to repay him is to exalt him and confess his wonders before every nation under heaven:

For there is no other God, nor ever was before, nor shall be hereafter, but God the Father, unbegotten and without beginning, in whom all things began, whose are all things, as we have been taught; and his son Jesus Christ, who manifestly always existed with the Father, before the beginning of time in the spirit with the Father, indescribably begotten before all things, and all things visible and invisible were made by him. He was made man, conquered death and was received into Heaven, to the Father who gave him all power over every name in Heaven and on Earth and in Hell, so that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and God, in whom we believe. And we look to his imminent coming again, the judge of the living and the dead, who will render to each according to his deeds. And he poured out his Holy Spirit on us in abundance, the gift and pledge of immortality, which makes the believers and the obedient into sons of God and co-heirs of Christ who is revealed, and we worship one God in the Trinity of holy name.

He himself said through the prophet: “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me [Psalm 50:15].” And again: “It is right to reveal and publish abroad the works of God.”

I am imperfect in many things, nevertheless I want my brethren and kinsfolk to know my nature so that they may be able to perceive my soul’s desire.

Read on

I saw in the night visions,

and behold, with the clouds of heaven

there came one like a son of man,

and he came to the Ancient of Days

and was presented before him.

And to him was given dominion

and glory and a kingdom,

that all peoples, nations, and languages

should serve him;

his dominion is an everlasting dominion,

which shall not pass away,

and his kingdom one

that shall not be destroyed. (Daniel 7:13-14 ESV)

We celebrate the Lord’s coming with His kingdom this Easter, and isn’t it remarkable how his triumphful entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday was nothing like the description above. While on earth, Jesus was more humble than we tend to be, but in the spiritual background, he was the one would be praised by all creation, even the rocks. “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Luke 19:38 ESV).

His kingdom is here now (Luke 17:20-21), like a pitch of leaven worked throughout the dough, and it will not pass away. So what earthly agenda should we put aside in humility? What preceive right should we forfeit in deference to the Lord’s authority? How could we have the mind of Christ knowing His kingdom is near?

Man in himself had ever lack’d the means

Of satisfaction, for he could not stoop

Obeying, in humility so low,

As high, he, disobeying, thought to soar:

And, for this reason, he had vainly tried,

Out of his own sufficiency to pay

The rigid satisfaction. Then behoved

That God should by His own ways lead him back

Unto the life, from whence he fell, restored;

By both His ways, I mean, or one alone.

But since the deed is ever prized the more,

The more the doer’s good intent appears;

Goodness celestial, whose broad signature

Is on the universe, of all its ways

To raise ye up, was fain to leave out none.

Nor aught so vast or so magnificent,

Either for Him who gave or who received,

Between the last night and the primal day,

Was or can be. For God more bounty show’d,

Giving Himself to make man capable

Of his return to life, than had the terms

Been mere and unconditional release.

And for His justice, every method else

Were all too scant, had not the Son of God

Humbled Himself to put on mortal flesh. (from Dante’s Paradise)