Author: japfth

Spiritual Resumes

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Some hard looks. That’s what I received recently as I began teaching through the New Testament book of Galatians. The theme of Galatians goes to the heart of the gospel message: there is only one way to please God; sinners are justified only when they repent of their works and cast themselves through faith alone upon the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. But when I worked my way verse by verse through chapter one recently, I got a taste of what Paul (and scores of other biblical messengers) invariably received—some hard looks.

I began as I usually do—by asking a question. My question was simple: What is our biggest problem before God? As the small group mulled that over, I asked some related questions: how is anyone justified, and secondly, what does God require of us? These questions go to the heart of the gospel. Several in the group answered, “God requires obedience.” Others said, “We are to trust God.” Still others said, “We are to love.”

All of those answers certainly touch upon the heart of the matter. But what Paul labors in his letter is the necessity of faith alone in the person and finished work of Christ. But that goes against our nature. We are wired for law. We are wired to assume we can do enough to somehow infuse righteousness or merit rewards through doing certain things or not doing certain other things.

All worldviews except Christianity teach works-based systems of justification. Some teach you must uphold dietary laws and obey litanies of laws. Except for Christianity, all other worldviews teach your good works must outweigh your bad works in order to merit justification. If we’re baptized in a particular worldview, do missions work, observe certain ordinances, tithe, etc., will that suffice? Must you face certain directions when you pray, give alms, make a pilgrimage, recite creeds, and make converts? Are those sufficient? If people deny themselves, renounce desire, and follow the Four Noble Truths, will those works suffice? Others teach their followers that their works follow them via reincarnations. The pattern is simple: our works can somehow merit righteousness. But not in Christianity, and that is what Galatians is all about.

The bad news is this: our spiritual resumes will damn us. No work we do suffices to forgive our just punishment for our sin. No diet, no law, no work, no pilgrimage, no tithe, no holy day, no spiritual one-upmanship, etc. will do. Why? Because they all smack of human pride, and that’s our problem.

However, in Christianity alone, there is redemption. And it comes one way—by faith in the person and finished work of Christ: “yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified” (Galatians 2:16 ESV).

If we do not repent and cast our faith completely in the person and finished work of Christ, we’re believing “a different gospel” (Galatians 1). The Bible teaches that if anyone believes or preaches any other gospel besides the atoning substitution death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, he/she is accursed. Anathema. Under God’s wrath. That’s how important it is to get the gospel right. Why? Because any human work smacks of works righteousness and our works are polluted garments/filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6).

Our spiritual resumes or Christ? Yes, I got some hard looks, but truth is worth it.

What Does it Take?

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What does it take to be right with God? More good deeds than bad? To have been a good person, whatever that is? To not have done horrendous things, whatever those are? I know, I know; skepticths may say, “First, you have to prove God’s existence.” Perhaps there’s a time to engage in that discussion. For now, however, I want to ask this straightforward question: What does it take to be right with God?

I will show my theological cards up front. I now write as one who believes that the height of folly is to deny God’s existence. “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1a, ESV). Scripture indicates that mankind’s root problem is sin, and the root of sin is willful suppression of the truth. Perhaps the clearest indictment of our universal sin was penned by Paul in the first chapter of his letter to the Romans: “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:21-23, ESV). In short, all of us know God exists, but we suppress that knowledge because we want to evade God’s holy judgment.

When I was an undergraduate studying philosophy, I remember a conversation I had with one of the closest friends I have ever had. The conversation was about epistemology (how we know things), and about God’s existence. My friend was always a levelheaded guy, and he was patient with my moods as I battled waves of doubt. I’d been reading Locke, Berkeley, and Hume; I’d been reading Kant. I’d read Heidegger and Nietzsche. I read more Descartes than was probably healthy. Then Whitehead and the logical positivists nearly drove me to despair because I couldn’t explain my own thoughts. Were my thoughts only material accretions? What about language? What about any moral category? Was justice just a figment of my thinking? Was truth a chimera? Why write? Why be honest? It seemed solipsism was the only option if materialism were true.

All that is context for the conversation I had with my friend. I asked him, in utter seriousness, “I cannot even prove that I exist, so what hope is there?” He looked at me and said, “Some things are just obvious, Jon. You know we’re here, by these tennis courts; you know we’re friends. You know these things.” To some readers, you may scoff at this, but I promise it’s true. I longed to understand how we come to know things for sure. What is the basis for knowledge? Is knowledge just a sensation, or do we have innate ideas/categories for understanding? After all, if all knowledge is sensory, how does one explain love, or language, or beauty, or friendship, or sacrifice, or honor? These ideas make no sense in a materialistic worldview. But my friend reassured me, “You know certain things.”

I was in my twenties then; now I’m in my forties . . . and I’ve learned a few things. You might say, I know some things now. First, I now recognize (literally, to re-know something) that much of my questioning then was an intellectual cloak. I wanted there not to be a straightforward answer to my longings in order that I might indulge my flesh. If I couldn’t prove God’s existence, I reasoned then, I could live as I wanted. I thought it would get me off the God-hook. But what I didn’t want to admit then is that I was proving Paul’s thesis: I was suppressing the truth. I did know certain things. I knew my friend was there; I knew we were having that conversation; I knew what lifestyle I was living. But I didn’t want to admit the moral nature of the God-ruled world. If I could exclude God from the equation, if you will, I’d not be culpable. In short, I was living out the Psalm 14:1 and Romans 1 indictment—suppression of the truth. This suppression of the truth is the root sin. This is man’s nature prior to regeneration. We cloak our questions in the garb of sophistication; we adorn ourselves with degrees and titles, but at heart, we’re suppressors of the truth.

Recently I was in a chapel service listening to a peer preach from 1 Corinthians 1. If you’re unfamiliar with that text, the thesis is simple: man’s wisdom is folly; God’s wisdom is Christ and him (Christ) crucified. Paul writes: “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29, ESV). And earlier in the passage, Paul made this profound indictment: “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:22-25, ESV). In other words, Paul teaches us this: before God, we creatures are humbled. There’s no way around it. “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6, ESV).

And it hit me—again. What does it take to be right with God? A recognition (a re-knowing) that God is holy and I am not. And humility. None of us, when we have a right understanding of God’s holiness and our depravity, should boast. Job learned it; Solomon learned it; I learn it (oftentimes, the hard way).

Perhaps my favorite book of Scripture is Ecclesiastes. Solomon learned of his own suppression of the truth, but he did, eventually, learn what it takes to be right with God (see Ecclesiastes 12:13-14). During that process, however, he penned this wisdom: “Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few” (Ecclesiastes 5:2, ESV). The idea here is to guard against ornamentation of speech, to guard against pride in our speech and in our lives. Why? Because the end of the matter leads us and the whole of creation to this: humility before the wisdom of God. And that wisdom of God is not a thing. It’s not a what; it’s a who, and his name is Jesus.

 

 

 

 

 

Medal or Mettle: A Mark of Resilience

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Ever noticed how many civilians look at Soldiers when we’re in dress blues? They look at the medals and decorations. They ask us what our ribbons and medals symbolize. They ask us, “What does that stand for?” They often thank us for serving. Understandably, they admire the appearance of us as Soldiers. They admire the external accoutrements that adorn the uniform. Many Soldiers have combat patches and/or combat action badges that serve to demarcate they’ve served in combat zones and/or been in direct combat with the enemy. And what do we see oftentimes? We see other folks stare at those medals, and mentally assess what the Soldier wearing them must be like. However, there’s a big difference between medals and mettle. Medals are external; medals commemorate. Mettle, on the other hand, is internal; mettle undergirds. Medals are visible ornaments; mettle is inherent character. Medals decorate but mettle strengthens.

In 1 Samuel 16, Scripture records where God ordered Samuel to find the king of Israel that God himself had chosen. When Samuel went to survey the lot of young men from whom he thought God would choose, Samuel thought God would choose Eliab, one who appeared to fit the bill. Samuel thought, “Surely the LORD’s anointed is before him.” (1 Samuel 16:6, ESV) However, God did not judge Eliab’s appearance. The very next line draws the discerning reader up short. “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7, ESV).

Many readers know whom God had chosen; he’d chosen David. The New Testament calls David “a man after [God’s] heart” (Acts 13:22, ESV). The principle? Eliab lacked godly character; Eliab was unequipped with mettle. Eliab may’ve had medals, if you will, but lacked mettle. He lacked the quality of resilience, of godly character, of fortitude that would stand David in good stead as Israel’s greatest king during the monarchy. David had mettle.

Subsequently, David’s monarchy waxed and waned. He was far from a perfect king. He, too, was a man with feet of clay. He was, in short, a man much like we—prone to wander. Yet he had mettle. He had that inherent quality of character that God grants and grows. That mettle is more important than any external medals we wear on the outside.

I’m a country boy at heart, and I remember a phrase from a conversation my mother and I had when I was a child. I’d been talking with my mom about someone in our family whom we both loved. I’d asked Mom about how and why this person seemed so much deeper than most folks. My mom said, “Still waters run deep.” She was right. Depth of character, a person’s mettle, is what matters.

 

Words with Granddaddy

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th    “Granddaddy, may I ask you a question?” I asked, looking at him.

“Of course. What is it?” he said.

“Can you explain to me whether you’re a leftist or a conservative, and why?”

Looking back now, it appears I asked him more than one question. However, as a Baptist pastor of decades, he was accustomed to people’s questions. I never once knew my grandfather to be anything but an earnest man. What’s more, he was never one for small talk. When he spoke, discerning people knew to listen.

This conversation took place many decades ago, and my grandfather has long since died. However, I remember what he said. What he told me decades ago abides with me still—namely, the importance of discernment. In short, I was to prize wisdom. The converse, he said, was also true—namely, to distance yourself from folly. I realize now that he was echoing Solomon’s words in Proverbs. He did tell me, eventually, whether he was a leftist or a conservative, by the way.

With very few exceptions, I’ve unplugged a lot from contemporary culture. Disillusioned especially by the coarseness of politics and television/movie entertainment, I prefer to read, fish, and enjoy my family. In coming days, the word trump will have more definitions after its place in the dictionary. Perhaps it’ll mean “to engage in vitriolic ad hominem attacks, especially as an evasive strategy.” Who knows? It seems that we cannot escape the deluge of worldviews in conflict. What’s better—leftism (big government; higher taxation; fewer liberties; entitlements, etc.) or conservatism (smaller government; lower taxes; individual liberty; an ethos of hard work, etc.)?

In teaching some of my students last week, I was searching for an apt illustration when explaining postmodernism in literature. I could tell, by observing their faces, that some of the language I had been using was too technical. “Think of it like this,” I said. “All is up for grabs. There’s no metanarrative, no overarching story to unite your life, or to unite anything. It’s a random universe. God is rejected; Christ is rejected; the Bible is rejected; history is rejected; distinctions between male and female are rejected. Kardashian culture and MTV paganism are the religions of the land. What used to be deemed folly and coarseness doesn’t shock us as much as it used to, and that is tragic. Wisdom is vanquished and vileness is crowned.” Then, it seemed, my students began to understand. Their facial expressions changed. They began to connect the intellectual dots.

What does my question to my grandfather, many decades ago now, have to do with why I wanted to know if my grandfather was a leftist or a conservative? What does my question have to do with postmodernism and the differences between a leftist worldview vs. a conservative worldview? The ideas are related. Solomon’s wisdom, like my grandfather’s echo of it, gets to the heart of the matter: “Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil” (Proverbs 3:7, ESV). What my grandfather was teaching me was that wisdom and folly are deeper issues of character than politics. “If you are wise, you are wise for yourself; if you scoff, you alone will bear it” (Proverbs 9:12, ESV). We’re in a day when scoffing is cool; we’re in a day when mocking is hip; we’re in a day when wisdom is maligned and manners are largely in graveyards.

The contrast to wisdom is folly. Folly is characterized in Scripture as loud, ignorant, and in love with death (Proverbs 9:13-18). Postmodernism is just this: loud, ignorant, and in love with death. Postmodernism lacks heroes because it’s impossible to be a hero when you’re given over to solipsism and despair. When all is relative, nothing is worth fighting for. There are only power plays by victimized groups. All is up for grabs, but nothing is inherently valuable, since the author of life has been killed. “If God is dead, all is permitted,” wrote Dostoyevsky in The Brothers Karamazov, a warning to the discerning about the depths to which civilizations descend when they reject God as revealed in Scripture.

The New Testament echoes the same principle: “Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature” (1 Corinthians 14:20, ESV). The contrast between a biblical worldview regarding wisdom vs. folly is crystal clear. Discernment is inextricable from wisdom and maturity; growing up involves growing deep. This means self-discipline. When shaped by the biblical worldview, people cultivate self-discipline, and big government is unnecessary, because the people’s morality is rooted in a biblical teaching regarding the preciousness of wisdom.

But what does leftism do? It teaches that man needs government to do what unrestrained pagans will not do—namely, be self-disciplined. Instead of working hard, leftists want to take wealth from producers and redistribute it to those who won’t work. Instead of admitting that all lives matter, leftists divide people by gender, skin color, and sexual preference. For some leftists, only some lives matter.

Granddaddy taught me through his words and through his life many truths. However, what he taught me about why he was politically conservative paled in comparison to what he taught me about wisdom. Wisdom or folly; big government leftism or small government conservatism; fluid “gender identification” or men and women created in the image of God.

Paul wrote that Israel had “a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness” (Romans 10:2-3, ESV). “Not according to knowledge” could be the epithet for today’s culture. I, for one, would rather learn from my grandfather.

 

 

He Didn’t Know but Everyone Else Did

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th-2Ever felt like you understood some people better than they understood themselves? What do you know of Moses? That he was a stutterer or slow of speech (Ex 4:10)? That he received the Ten Commandments from the finger of God (Ex 20; 34)? That he led a rebellious people during their exodus from Egypt (Ex 32, etc.)?

Recently, I was teaching from Exodus 32. This is where Aaron, Moses’ brother, conspired with rebellious unbelieving Israel, and fashioned the idol, the golden calf, of gold collected from the people (Ex 32:2-4). While Moses was removed from the people’s sight for forty days to be with God on the mountain, the people fell away. Moses had departed to be with the Lord of light and the mass of Israel departed to frolic in the darkness with a golden calf. And when Moses spent time with God, it showed. Moses’ face shone. God’s light was manifest upon the darkness of idolatrous Israel, but Moses didn’t even know how much he shone, how much he stood out.

It’s important to remember what God had already done for stubborn Israel at this point. He’d raised up a delivering leader, Moses (Ex 1-7); He’d sent ten plagues upon unbelieving Egypt (Ex 7-15); He’d provided water, bread, and other provisions in the desert for a stiff-necked people (Ex 32:9; 15-18); He’d given the Decalogue (Ex 20). And yet Israel disbelieved God. Even though they’d promised to follow the Lord, their words didn’t endure; their words were cheap. As recently as Sinai, the people swore, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do” (Ex 19:8a). Reason for optimism, right?

While Moses ascended the mountain again, Israel fell away. They didn’t see their deliverer, Moses, visibly, as he’d ascended to meet with God. So, they fell captive to another leader, Aaron, and said, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us. As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him” (Ex 32:1b). A golden calf was fashioned from their own jewels and they bowed to it; they worshiped it.

When God seems hidden, we are like Israel: we tend to fall away from God and fashion gods. The capital “G” God gets replaced with the lower case “g” gods.

And yet God used the mediator Moses, the temporary nexus between holy God and sinful Israel, to petition the Lord for mercy: “So Moses returned to the LORD and said, ‘Alas, this people has sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if you will forgive their sin—but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.’ But the LORD said to Moses, ‘Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you; behold, my angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them.’” (Ex 32:32-34)

Exodus 34 is yet another historical example of God reaching to redeem sinful rebels. Though He would have been perfectly just to damn idolatrous Israel, He chose to show mercy by using a man of His own choosing to reclaim rebels. The Lord summons Moses to the mountain again and says of Himself: “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the father on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Ex 34:6-8)

And for forty days, Moses abides with the Lord on the mountain (EX 34:28). New tablets are written (Ex 34:28). Moses is to return to sinful Israel with the message from God.

And what do you think happened when Moses descended the mountain? How do you think we would’ve reacted, especially given our proclivity to fashion our own idols? The Scripture reads: “When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. Aaron and all the people of Israel saw Moses, and behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him.” (Ex 34:29-30)

They were afraid. They feared what the holiness of God meant. If God’s holiness means anything, it means that we’re undone. Isaiah knew it (Is 6:5). Adam and Eve knew it (Gen 3:10). We know it (Rom 1:23; 2:15).

Ever noticed the description of Moses’ face in Exodus 34? His face shone (34:29). God is light and His light transforms the darkness. He puts it to flight. When God manifests Himself in the Son, He (Jesus) came into the world (Jn 1:9). He didn’t remain on the mountain. He humbled himself to be as we are (Phil 2:8), yet without sin—the crucial difference.

The result is the same now as it was then. Some seek to cover themselves and others seek to be covered by His atoning work. Because I love the particulars of narrative, I often wonder what the people on Egyptian sands looked like that day, as families stood or knelt or laid at the foot of Sinai, and Moses descended, and his face shone, and they knew he’d been with God. Why? Because his face shone. They knew they were naked before holy God. All their wickedness was exposed before holy God (Heb 4:13). And yet, God condescended to them by way of a mediator.

Moses didn’t know, at least for a while, that his face shone (Ex 34:29). But everyone else did. Might it be so with the Christian church today.

 

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and the Problem of Evil

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Certain passages haunt. Some books are remembered for first lines or opening paragraphs. You’ve invariably heard many people quote the first line of Melville’s Moby Dick. A perennial quotable is the first paragraph of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Others often sample soliloquies from some of Shakespeare’s plays. But some novels are filled with certain passages that haunt. One cannot shake them. Why? It’s because they make the universal concrete and particular. They capture the soul’s longings. Faulkner said the best writers write about “the human heart in conflict with itself.” One of my professors from many years ago taught us that the best writers of literature dealt with the “imaginative concretization of universal themes.” Sound too sophisticated? It’s not. The bottom line is that the best writers capture what it is to be human and to wrestle with God, with one another, with death, with love and heartbreak, with friendship and loneliness, with ourselves. For me, McCarthy’s The Road exemplifies many passages that I’d rate alongside certain works of Shakespeare, Milton, and T.S. Eliot. Soth-1 much has been written about McCarthy’s fiction, and about The Road in particular, that I’m almost loath to comment further, but as I wrote above, certain passages haunt. The question that concerns me is this: Have we followed the logic of how we answer the questions the passage raises? It’s a passage dealing with ultimate issues of God, evil, and meaning.

Here is the context: A father and son are laboring to survive. The adjective used so often to describe The Road is “postapocalyptic.” There has been some kind of catastrophe or series of catastrophes. The sky is gray. The normal means of technology are gone. The few survivors are reduced to primitive scavenging and foraging. A father and son speak cryptically about their ominous and precarious state. The son begins the conversation:

 

Can I ask you something?

Yes. Of course you can.

What would you do if I died?

If you died I would want to die too.

So you could be with me?

Yes. So I could be with you.

Okay.

He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone.

He woke before dawn and watched the gray day break. Slow and half opaque. He rose while the boy slept and pulled on his shoes and wrapped in his blanket he walked out through the trees. He descended into a gryke in the stone and there he crouched coughing and he coughed for a long time. Then he just knelt in the ashes. He raised his face to the paling day. Are you there? He whispered. Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God. (11-12)

 

No quotation marks. Just naked emotion in staccato questions and answers between a boy and his father. Do we sense the love, the sacrifice the father has for the son, and vice versa? If there were separation, it’d be better to die.

Then the father is apart from the son in the next narrative paragraph and he (the father) petitions God. I don’t see how the context could read otherwise. Observe the imagery and language. Ashes, cold, silence, opaqueness, a cycle of tragedy (Eccl. 1). Their tragic life is a breath (Job 7:7: Ps 144:4). The father almost curses and yet petitions the God he’s not sure exists. This is sublimity.

Who does this remind us of? Job. He endured unimaginable suffering (deaths of his entire family; loss of his wealth and property; flawed counsel from his friends; boils on his skin; and apparent abandonment by God). And yet.

I have read The Road several times and yet I’m reading it again. Why? Because I think McCarthy puts his finger on the problem of evil, but does not preach the answer. He leaves it to astute readers to follow the logical outflow of their worldview.

Evil is unexplainable in a naturalistic worldview (where all that exists is material). Simply put, there is no answer in a secular/naturalistic worldview to the problem of evil. In fact, evil is not (for the materialist) a real thing.

In the biblical worldview, evil is real but explainable. Suffering is real, but explainable. Man’s tragic state is real, but explainable. The Fall was real, but so is God. The father in McCarthy’s The Road sacrifices himself, as it were, for his son. The son is left on his own to seek whomever else might be “good.”

In the biblical worldview, however, the triune God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) sent the Son for the world. Rather than a father who petitions a (silent?) heaven for answers, history records that God sent forth his Son to seek and save the lost. Tragedy is not the necessary endgame. Tragedy can lead us to look up and see that Jacob’s ladder has been extended (Gen 28:12; Jn 1:51) and trod upon by the Son. And rather than tragedy, redemption. The road ends, in the biblical worldview, in restoration.

 

 

Five Books and a Question

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“There are two types of books,” my professor said, “those of the hour and those for all time.” Thus said one of my favorite professors of literature as we met in his office one afternoon and discussed what we were reading and what we wanted to read. That conversation happenth-2ed over twenty years ago. I doubt Dr. N. even remembers it, but I have kept his words in mind.

He gave me a copy of Donleavy’s The Ginger Man and told me that I might enjoy it (I’d been trying to get through Joyce’s Ulysses at the time—a sort of literary rite of passage). I still have the copy of Donleavy’s novel and have not gotten to it. But I will. There’s just so much to read and it can be difficult to know how to divide one’s time wisely.

It’s common to make resolutions for the upcoming year. However, there is at least as much value (perhaps more value) in looking back—especially upon one’s reading. Reflecting upon history (one’s own, as well as the larger context and flow of worldviews) enables perspective that prognosticating may occlude. For fellow readers, you understand the joy of revisiting your books. In 2015, I did not read as many as is my custom. However, below are five volumes I particularly enjoyed and have wrestled with. I revisit each and ask myself what idea(s) remain after having gone through them. I welcome your reflections and recommendations of books you have found worthy of the effort. The titles listed are not in any particular order or preference.

  • Parables: The Mysteries of God’s Kingdom Revealed through the Stories Jesus Told by John MacArthur. This was the most recent book I completed. MacArthur is of course a Greek scholar, prolific writer and longtime pastor of Grace Community Church. True to MacArthur’s style, he deals relentlessly with the text of Scripture and focuses on the single meaning of each of Jesus’ parables. The book is an excellent return to the authority of the Bible amidst the melee that is endemic in literary criticism. MacArthur writes: “Jesus’ parables had a clear twofold purpose: They hid the truth from self-righteous or self-satisfied people who fancied themselves too sophisticated to learn from Him, while the same parables revealed truth to eager souls with childlike faith—those who were hungering and thirsting for righteousness.” Near the end of the book, MacArthur concludes with a restatement of his thesis:

Because truth itself is critically important, and the church today is in imminent danger of selling her birthright in exchange for a postmodern philosophy that in effect would do away with the very idea of truth.

That is ground we cannot yield. We must be willing to submit our minds to the truth of Scripture, and we must refuse to subject Scripture to whatever theories or speculations happen to be currently popular in the realm of secular philosophy.

  • Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. The author relies heavily upon surveys of corporate America and academia, and fills much of the book with historical accounts of the value many introverts have brought to civilization. At other times, she puts her finger on cultural trends:

 America had shifted from what the influential cultural historian Warren Susman Called a Culture of Character to a Culture of Personality—and opened up a Pandora’s Box of personal anxieties from which we would never quite recover.

In the Culture of Character, the ideal self was serious, disciplined, and honorable. What counted was not so much the impression one made in public as how one behaved in private. The word personality didn’t exist in English until the eighteenth century, and the idea of “having a good personality” was not widespread until the twentieth.

Cain delineates between extroverted buzz and introverted depth. She helpfully encourages introverts throughout. Consider the following:

If you like to do things in a slow and steady way, don’t let others make you feel as if you have to race. If you enjoy depth, don’t force yourself to seek breadth. If you prefer single-tasking to multitasking, stick to your guns. Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way. It’s up to you to use that independence to good effect.

  • Pagans in the Pews: How the New Spirituality is Invading Your Home, Church and Community by Peter Jones. Like MacArthur, Jones is a Greek and New Testament scholar. His thesis in the book is that paganism has invaded not just the Western culture, but the church itself. Feminism, liberalism, and monism have invaded many churches. The results are seen in the breakdown of binary distinctions (male and female; Creator and creatures; heterosexuality vs. homosexuality/lesbianism, etc.). Rather than worshiping God alone, man has descended into self-worship and godless humanism:

Today atheistic humanism is on the run. The new enemy is a spiritualized view of man. He is no longer simply the measure of all things, as rationalism maintained: Man is now also the measure of God, for man is God. This new spirituality is the final expression of idolatry because it is not just disobedience of God’s laws: It replaces the divine with the human.

Dr. Jones’ terms of One-ism (all is one/pantheism/monism) and Two-ism (God and His creation are separate; Creator and His creatures/creation; binary; dualism) help to illustrate Paul’s words in Romans 1—namely, that the essence of human sin is evidenced in our behavior. We “[exchange] the truth about God for a lie and [worship] and [serve] the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” (Rom 1:25 ESV)

  • Still the Best Hope by Dennis Prager. I heard Prager on talk radio one day a few years back. He referred to his belief in “ethical monotheism.” I could tell from that phrase that he was someone I needed to research. I bought some of his books, but this one is (in my view) his best. The thesis in his books, this one in particular, is straightforward: Leftism demonstrably fails because it starts with the wrong assumptions about human nature and about God.

 

One of the most helpful things Prager illustrates in the book comes in the addendum, wherein he lays out the differences between Leftism vs. Conservative values. Below is just a small sampling of his charts:

  Conservative Values Liberal/Left Values
The State Small Large
Source of Moral Standards American & Judeo-Christian values Individual consciences, the heart, science
Attitude toward Wealth Create more Redistribute
Morality Universal Relative (to individual/and/or Society
Primary Sources of Evil The individual and the state Socioeconomic forces
Humanity’s Primary Division Good/evil Rich/poor; strong/weak

 

  • Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion by Os Guinness. I’m unashamedly an admirer of Guinness’ work, but I especially enjoyed this volume because I think he’s quite sober and winsome when dealing with the issue of how to deal with skeptics of the Christian worldview, especially if detractors are steeped in postmodernism, multiculturalism, pluralism, relativism, etc. Consider the following from Guinness:

What it means is that Christian advocacy must always be independent. It must always be consistent to itself and shaped decisively by the great truths of the Scriptures, and in particular by five central truths of the faith—creation, the fall, the incarnation, the cross, and the Spirit of God.

I did not even comment on my favorite non-fiction books I read in 2015, Nancy Pearcey’s Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes and Michael Walsh’s The Devil’s Pleasure Palace: The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West. In my view, those books are so important, they deserve their own articles.

So, did I learn from my former professor’s counsel, about books being divisible between those of the hour and those of all time? Did I make wise reading choices? Admittedly, I did not include the fiction, drama, poetry, or biographies I read in 2015, but these were some volumes I particularly appreciated.

Peace? Yes, but Not on Man’s Terms

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“There is no peace,” says the LORD,  “for the wicked” (Isaiah 48:22 ESV) What… no peace? But why? In recent years, Americans were promised hope and change. We even heard of a “fundamental transformation of America.” How are you enjoying the changes and fundamental transformations? Do you hope for more of the same? Is it working out?

Do we have “peace in our time”? Do websites blaze headlines of peace? Racism has ended. All lives matter (even babies’ lives still in the womb), right? All worldviews are equal, right? We can, as the sentimental bumper stickers tout, coexist, right? No peace for the wicked.

In the 19th century, liberal heterodox theologian Adolf von Harnack wrote of the universal fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. He died in 1930. I wonder how he’d rate the 85 years of man’s brotherhood since he died. By every history book I’ve read on the last 3,000 years, the 20th century was the bloodiest since the genesis of written history. No peace for the wicked.

And yet Christ came for the ungodly.  “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom 5:6). He came for those with ears to hear the gospel of…peace. th-1

I was reading through lyrics to Longfellow’s “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” which read:

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day/Their old familiar carols play,/And wild and sweet the words repeat/Of peace on earth, good will to men.

I grew up amidst the singing of this song each Christmas season but never thought through the words. Introverted as I was, especially as an adolescent, I loved my family deeply but saw through the rubber band smiles we all flashed during the holiday gatherings. We acted as if we were this joyful all the time. But we all knew otherwise. I didn’t want to state the obvious because it might shatter the facades.

My mother had a beautiful voice and we were never far from a song. Each year, we gathered at my grandparents’ home in middle GA Christmas afternoons, Granddaddy would have Mom lead us all in singing Christmas carols before opening some gifts we’d placed under the Christmas tree in the living room. The refrain that ran through yuletide carols? Peace. For a brief moment of time, we sang and fellowshipped with one another, and we broke bread around the table, and it seemed as if there were peace outside. But there wasn’t. And there isn’t.

Longfellow’s poem acknowledges the same truth:

And in despair I bowed my head:/”There is no peace on earth,” I said,/“For hate is strong and mocks the song/Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

Do we dare to be honest? There never will be true peace until we wicked are reconciled to God and each other through Christ. Because our sin justly merits God’s wrath, we’re naturally at enmity with God. But for those who are redeemed via repentance and faith in Christ alone, their status is forever changed. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph 2:5). The result? Peace. Supernatural, not natural, peace. “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1).

If we celebrate Christmas this year, will we have the intellectual integrity to acknowledge the historical record of Jesus–the Christ? Secularists want to rename Christmas trees “holiday trees.” Secularists have renamed Christmas holidays “Winter break.” Secularists have renamed Easter holidays “Spring break.” These are symptoms of humanistic efforts to establish peace on earth. And they fail—always.

Secular and humanistic worldviews want the redeemed to be quiet and to go away nicely. Wouldn’t it be nicer for the redeemed to be like tasteless salt—harmless, ineffective, irrelevant, and good to trample underfoot? That poses no threat to secularists’ political power. Yet Christ calls those who are His to something very different—namely, to proclaim this message: “For our sake he [God the Father] made him [God the Son/Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him [Jesus] we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). The result? Peace.

It’s not Christians who are renaming history in efforts to erase people’s history. Secularists are doing that…with vitriol and through gritted teeth. What does that tell you about the “peace” they talk about?

What if, instead, some people had ears receptive to the good news of Christ the Lord, about God incarnate in Jesus? That would be cause for celebration, such that even the stones might be made to shout, would it not?

“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction” (Pr 1:7). Instead of trying to remove any vestiges of Christ, the gospel, Christianity, or holy days (now holidays), might we dare to recognize and even proclaim truth?

Peace is possible, but not through any means except Christ’s work. Secularism won’t do it; manmade treaties won’t do it; acquiescence won’t do it; pietism won’t do it.

Longfellow’s poem ends with these lines:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Till, ringing singing, on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

Cowards abound and fair-weather prophets have larger crowds, but truth is worth it.

Merry Christmas.

If Only

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If only. If only we had different political leaders. If only we had a conservative. Ith-1f only we had godly leaders. If only our side was in power. If only we had leaders who followed the Constitution. If only. Are you tempted to think and/or mutter thoughts like these? I am, but I hope that I’m learning better—and not from earning more degrees or anything like that. I’m learning that leadership begins at home. We are quick to expect more of our leaders than we do of ourselves. In 62-63 A.D. the apostle Peter wrote to Christians enduring persecution in the 1st century, encouraging them with this truth: a godly life is the best example to an ungodly world, but that is only possible if God changes our hearts/wills from the inside. External political systems cannot reform the idolatrous heart. “For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.” (1 Peter 2:15-17, ESV)

If only was not the argument Peter wrote Christians should embrace about the culture that was persecuting, and sometimes murdering, them. Peter was to be martyred under Nero’s reign for his Christian witness. His letters were not platitudes. He knew what he and other believers were up against.

In sum, 1st century Christians were up against what many Christians are up against today: anger, bellicosity, and vitriol. We’re living in a day of spiritual road rage. One writer has even written an entire book (A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Today) on the subject of how acrimony and bitterness characterize much of public discourse.

Classrooms now are characterized by sound bites instead of reasoned argument. Depth has been evicted. In most colleges and universities, neither students nor teachers read the classics. Shakespeare, Milton, and Chaucer are now branded misogynists and bigots. When I went by my alma mater a few years ago to see some of my former graduate school professors of literature, I discovered that English majors could now earn degrees in literature and writing without taking courses in Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, or even Greek and Roman literature. English majors are now schooled in multiculturalism, women’s studies, gender studies, and black studies. My temptation? To mutter to myself, if only.

Earlier this week, I was able to sit down with one of our children. We were reading one of his books together entitled Farmer Boy. It’s a wonderful narrative of 19th century America on a farm in rural New York. The protagonist is named Almanzo, and he’s a typical 9-year-old boy. He likes candies more than vegetables. He likes to play in the barn loft more than to shock wheat. He enjoys irritating his older sister more than he does listening to her counsel.

As we read together, my son asked me, “Dad, why did Almanzo’s sister get him out of trouble like that? I mean, Almanzo threw a paint brush and made a mess in their mom’s favorite room.” I said, “I know. It’s because she loved him. She knew he’d done wrong, but their family was more important than for her to seek justice by telling on him.” My son looked at me and I could see the genesis of understanding in his eyes. He began to see how “love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). I almost thought for a minute that he was going to say, “If only we were more like that.”

It’s fashionable and “progressive” nowadays to scoff at old ways. Even modern parlance reflects how patronizing today’s culture is when talking about previous ideas. Phrases like “old school” and “Back in the day” abound. However, Scripture admonishes us to remember those who came before us and to reflect on why boundaries were erected in the first place: “Do not move the ancient landmark that your fathers have set” (Proverbs 22:28). If only we had a more humble and accurate assessment of our places in the world.

In politics, blood boils. Ratings go to the person with the brashest insults. If you shock the audience by virtue of your acerbic tongue, you win the poll. However, might we not be better served if cool heads prevailed? If only.

An acquaintance of mine wrote me some time back something to this effect: he does not have hope for leadership on the macro level. If there is to be any moral and spiritual resuscitation, it will be from the micro level. I think he is mostly correct. However, I would add this caveat: a godly life is the best example to an ungodly world, but that is only possible if God changes our hearts/wills from the inside. External political systems cannot reform the idolatrous heart. The if only that we’re all tempted to think, if not say, must begin in our homes, made possible through divine regeneration and sanctification.

 

It’s the Climate of Ideas, Not of Weather

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Strange bedfellows? China’s president, Xi Jinping, will meet with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Barack Hussein Obama and England’s Prince Charles, another disciple in the religion of global warming, will meet with India’s leadership, as well as with Nigerian, Indonesian, and Pakistani leadership. How can you get government leaders of countries who are, in many other ways, ideological adversaries, together? China and the U.S. are at the same table. Syria and the U.S. are at the same table. Russia and the U.S. are at the same table. You might think that they are addressing how to end religious persecution, but you’d be wrong. You might think they are assembling to solve Muslim persecution of fellow Muslims, thereby causing tens of thousands of refugees to flood Europe and the U.S. but you’d be wrong. You might think that they are in Paris to condemn Muslim terror in groups like Boko Haram, Hezbollah, ISIS, al Qaeda, the Taliban, etc. but you’d still be wrong. These government talking heads are gathered to talk about means of reducing fossil fuel emissions. The goal? That the wealthiest nations will allocate billions of dollars to other countries who promise to reduce fossil fuel emissions. We are witnessing a culture given over to idolatry; by abandoning the Judeo-Christian worldview, the culture has largely imbibed paganism. The earth and the creature are worshiped and the Creator is rejected.a culture given over to idolatry...

The fact that American law enforcement is currently besieged by thugs is less important to the current U.S. government leadership than their zealous commitment to the religion of manmade global warming. Well, it’s not global warming now. Their spin doctors have renamed it “climate change.” Even one of the self-described socialists running for America’s presidency, Bernie Sanders, says he fears climate change more than ISIS. How does one try to reason with people like this? And guess which countries will be on the hook to pay the “under-developed” countries billions of dollars to install solar panels and windmills? You guessed it, the wealthy countries that thrive on the use of fossil fuels. Are you awake yet? The heretofore wealthy West, built largely on fossil fuels, has the resources to fund poor countries. Where did that wealth creation come from—solar panels and windmills? Even Don Quixote would not charge these windmills!

Barack Hussein Obama claims that this meeting of political leaders is a “powerful rebuke” to terrorists. Folks, are you listening to this drivel? We are living in a time where committed Leftists advocate for abortion on demand, but oppose your fueling up your car, because it produces carbon dioxide. We are living in a time where committed Leftists can “gender-identify” as one sex on Monday and another on Thursday, but at the same time claim discrimination if non-Leftists posit that gender is not a fluid category. We’re living in a culture where Bruce Jenner (he now calls himself Caitlyn) is named Woman of the Year by Glamour magazine. We’re living in a world where legislators are vying for pedophilia to be inculcated as normal and healthy (http://www.jewsnews.co.il/2015/11/28/germany-and-eu-to-legalize-pedophilia-and-with-it-child-pornography-as-well/). We are witnessing a culture given over to idolatry; by abandoning the Judeo-Christian worldview, the culture has largely imbibed paganism. The earth and the creature are worshiped and the Creator is rejected.

In the biblical worldview, creation is to be cared for but not to be worshiped: “And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:28b, ESV). In the biblical worldview, creation (the earth, the heavens, etc.) is designed to manifest the glory of the Creator (God), not to be worshiped as an idol: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1, ESV).

But what we are witnessing in our day is a world that largely exchanges the truth of what God reveals and replaces it via idolatry. And what we are witnessing is the natural outworkings of a pagan worldview. Again, the biblical worldview speaks to this: “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us” (Psalm 2, ESV).

We are witnessing a culture given over to idolatry; by abandoning the Judeo-Christian worldview, the culture has largely imbibed paganism. The earth and the creature are worshiped and the Creator is rejected.

Lest I be misunderstood, please understand. The earth is to be cared for; we should seek to tend the garden God has provided. However, we are not to worship anything or anyone but the Lord. If the pagan were consistent in his logic, he would admit that in a materialist universe, he is substantially no different from the very material he seeks to protect, but he cannot provide objective reasons for morals, only preferences. And whose preferences should prevail? In the biblical worldview, however, we are told why we should tend the earth—namely, because it was created by God for our good and His glory. Moreover, we are told that we are not to worship the creation, only the Creator.

The biblical worldview tells us that this is what we fallen creatures do (we exchange God for an idol). We worship the creation instead of the Creator: “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:21-23, ESV).

We are witnessing a culture given over to idolatry; by abandoning the Judeo-Christian worldview, the culture has largely imbibed paganism. The earth and the creature are worshiped and the Creator is rejected.

Socialism, Leftism, the redistribution of wealth, paganism, and all the other isms will not remedy culture, folks. The nations will continue to rage until we acknowledge the truth we suppress in unrighteousness—namely, that (as Francis Schaeffer penned years ago now) God is there and He is not silent.