Darryl's Blog
February 2008 Archives
It's a leap day, although to be honest I feel a bit ripped off. If we get an extra day, why is tomorrow still Saturday? I could use two Fridays. And if you're salaried, think of this: your employer gets an extra day out of you this month, and you don't get paid for it. Every silver lining has a cloud.
Fortunately for me, Friday is my day off. I'm going to find a book and a pillow, and maybe later I'll take my wife out on a date. That's why I wish tomorrow was Friday again. And just think: maybe Spring will come one day earlier in March or April because we had this day in February. Or something like that.
I attended a conference this week - more on that in a few weeks. One of the speakers was Earl Creps, author and pastor. Creps led the conference in a liturgy of confession: "I am not cool. I don't get it. I'm not relevant."
Confession is good for the soul. I looked around the room and had to admit that it's true. I didn't see too many cool or relevant people. I'm certainly not one of them.
It's tempting to want to fix this. I get a magazine for pastors - I won't mention names but it's probably not the one you're thinking of - that is all about chasing what's cool and relevant. We scour magazines and books and attend conferences in pursuit of the cool factor. It doesn't work. People trying to be cool just aren't cool.
There's another group of people I find myself increasingly drawn towards. They don't even try to be cool, and they're not. The trends they follow are centuries old. They read old stuff by dead guys and talk about concepts from dusty theology books. The funny thing is that they end up being more relevant than the next new thing.
Henri Nouwen wrote:
Too often I looked at being relevant, popular, and powerful as ingredients of an effective ministry. The truth, however, is that these are not vocations but temptations. Jesus asks, "Do you love me?" Jesus sends us out to be shepherds, and Jesus promises a life in which we increasingly have to stretch out our hands and be led to places where we would rather not go. He asks us to move from a concern for relevance to a life of prayer, from worries about popularity to communal and mutual ministry, and from a leadership built on power to a leadership in which we critically discern where God is leading us and our people. (In the Name of Jesus)
It may be that I'm just getting crusty, but it's time to stop chasing what's coming next and to rediscover the relevance of what's not seen as relevant. It's time to make room for the uncool in our lives and ministries.
Apparently I got a bit ahead of myself the other day, but it's OK. Now The Reason for God is on the NY Times Bestseller list. From Keller's son:
As some of you might know, the book technically is not a "NY Times Bestseller" unless it is printed in the newspaper and makes it in the Top 16 - anything below is considered to be on the NY Times Extended List. Who knew?! Anyway, after its first full week of sales (Feb 17th-23rd) the book made it to #11 - officially making it on the list for the first time. I guess the book is doing well so far. Congratulations Dad - you wrote a bestseller.
I'm a certified member of the Tim Keller fan club. I listen to his sermons. I read everything he writes. I even belong to the Facebook fan club. Few thinkers or practitioners have influenced me more than he has. I am not the biggest fan out there, but I'm certainly a member of the club. This is dangerous, because nobody can live up to all that.
But Keller isn't the first to face the challenges of a growing profile and unrealistic expectations, and thankfully, he continues to use his influence wisely. The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, now on the New York Times bestseller list, is likely to multiply his influence even more, not only within the church but also within a culture with serious doubts about Christianity.
My friend Bryan Galloway has started a blog on preaching and Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
I stated a couple of days ago that this blog was created to introduce six areas of impact that Lutheran pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer can have on twenty-first century preachers and preaching...
Looking forward to following this blog. Bryan is a good guy and Bonhoeffer is an important voice for today's church.
Just finished a busy work week (Friday is my day off) shortened due to a long weekend yet full of meetings and a column due tomorrow, as well as the regular stuff.
One of the things that has sustained me has been reading The Reason for God. A review is coming next week. For now I'll say that it's profound, not only as a work of apologetics and theology but as a doxological book. Near the end I started to marvel at Keller. A short time later I found myself marveling at God. That's not a cliché. Chapter 14, "The Dance of God," is one of the finest chapters I've ever read. If you haven't got it yet, the book (or audiobook) is a must read.
I may be able to catch Keller in Philadelphia in a few weeks - looking forward to it if it happens.
I hope to edit and post a podcast of my interview with the authors of Why We're Not Emergent soon, as well as catch a little bit of a break. Next week looks to be incredibly busy too, so I'm going to enjoy the break while I still have it.
In December I wrote about wanting a group that was open but orthodox, and that wanted to discuss theology and engage in mission, and would gather together in kind of a theology pub. About ten or eleven of us met last night. It was a fascinating and sometimes frustrating meeting - but I think we may be on to something.
Our first topic was on the divide that often exists between theology and mission. I don't think we solved that one, but a theme that came out is that our theology is often too abstract and removed from everyday life.
Some reflections:
- I like these people. I really would like to continue to engage with them.
- First meetings are a little awkward. It takes time to find out what works.
- The pub was okay, but it was way too loud and the table was too long. We need a round table and we probably need our own room in the back of a pub.
One issue that came up was a post-foundational, non-propositional approach to theology versus a more classic approach to theology that embraces propositions but doesn't stop there.
If you were one of the people who came out last night, thanks! I think this group has potential. If you want to join us in the future, let me know.
From Why We're Not Emergent, a book that I reviewed yesterday:
I'm convinced there are just as many of us - Christian and not - in our postmodern world who are tired of endless uncertainties and doctrinal repaintings. We are tired of indecision and inconsistency reheated and served to us as paradox and mystery. Some of us long for teaching that has authority, ethics rooted in dogma, and something unique in this world of banal diversity. We long for Jesus - not a shapeless, formless, goodhearted ethical teacher Jesus, but the Jesus of the New Testament, the Jesus of the church, the Jesus of faith, the Jesus of two millennia of Christian witness with all of its unchanging and edgy doctrinal propositions.
Remember when Buddy was stolen last year? We got him back after a drive down to New York State. I thought we were crazy, but now I realize crazy is a relative term. Check out this story:
TORONTO/AM 640 TORONTO - How much would you pay to get your missing dog back? A Toronto man has been re-united with his chocolate lab, after offering up a 15-thousand dollar reward for the pooch.
"Huckleberry" was taken from outside a Yonge Street cafe on Saturday morning. He had been left there by a dog walker.
Owner Bert Clark spent the entire weekend blanketing the city with flyers in the hopes of finding the lost dog. He tells AM 640 Toronto News, he may even consider some sort of anti-theft device to make sure it does not happen again.
"Right now I'm thinking about all those sorts of things," says Clark. "I certainly would never leave him outside unattended ever again."
The dog was returned late Sunday night after police received a tip. Clark admits 15-thousand dollars is a lot of money, but says you can't put a price on a member of your family.
Anti-theft devices for a dog? $15,000 reward for a dog? The world has gone mad!
A couple of years ago, I found myself disappointed with many of the critiques of the emerging church. Some were nasty, and some did a poor job of capturing the movement (or whatever you call it).
But something's changed. For one thing, I have. I can relate to what Trevin Wax has said: "Many who initially intrigued by the Emerging conversation are now distancing themselves from Emerging theology." (See Trevin's entire post.) Something else has changed as well: the quality of the critique. A case in point is Why We're Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Should Be.
What do I like about this book?
It's popular to say that we need to forgive ourselves, but is that a valid concept?
I'd suggest that the desire for ourselves to be forgiven is a valid one, but we don't have the power to forgive ourselves. Telling someone that they have to forgive themselves before they forgive others doesn't make sense, just like forgiving myself for a debt I owe to the bank is silly. Forgiveness has to come from outside of myself.
This quote says it all:
The next time an individual says, "I just can't forgive myself," the first thought that should come to mind is, "That's right, you can't!" Then patiently and lovingly instruct him from the word of God so that his focus is on the only One Who can. A proper view of God's forgiveness sensitively taught from the word of God is what a person needs to bridge the gap between knowing he is forgiven and feeling he is forgiven. The facts should precede and supersede the feelings. Self-forgiveness is not biblical terminology. It should not be used in biblical counseling. When someone cannot forgive himself, he is not accepting the forgiveness of God. When God has forgiven, one must accept it and move on, serving Him and others as he goes. (Baptist Bible College and Seminary. (2001; 2003). Journal of Ministry and Theology Volume 5 (vnp.5.1.98). Baptist Bible College and Seminary)
Yesterday I suggested that there are elements of forgiveness that are conditional, and there are elements that are unconditional. I suggested that the offended party must unconditionally move toward forgiveness, but forgiveness can only be fully completed once repentance has taken place. Or, as David put it in the comments, "Forgiveness is our nonnegotiable move toward a reconciliation that, intrinsic to it, can only be brought to completion in the wake of repentance."
Today I want to focus on the first part of the sentence - the nonnegotiable, unconditional move toward forgiveness. It seems clear from Scripture that no matter how the other person reacts, we are called to, in the words of an old saint:
- resist thoughts of revenge (Romans 12:19)
- not seek to do them mischief (1 Thessalonians 5:15)
- wish well to them (Luke 6:28)
- grieve at their calamities (Proverbs 24:17)
- pray for them (Matthew 5:44)
- seek reconciliation with them (Romans 12:18)
See this post for more on this topic.
So it seems that no matter how the other party responds, we are called to unconditionally move toward forgiveness. If the other party repents, full forgiveness can take place. If the other party never repents, at least we will have obeyed this command: "If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone" (Romans 12:18).
An example of this is Jesus, who on the cross said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). If forgiveness was unconditional, then all who killed Jesus would be forgiven without repenting of what they did. I'm going to suggest that Jesus was not forgiving those who did not repent; instead, he was doing his part to make forgiveness available even to those who were killing him. The Father and Son offer forgiveness to anyone who wants to receive it from them, but that forgiveness must be received through repentance.
I think it is important for us to talk about both forgiveness and readiness to forgive. There may be circumstances where a reconciliation is impossible, but a readiness to reconcile can still be present with a believer. Consequently, I would want to make that distinction when I was counseling a believer who was in a circumstance where there was not a present possibility of reconciliation of the relationship. Instead of telling them that they need to forgive or they will become bitter, I think I would rather say that you need to be ready to forgive and not to be captured by your bitterness.
I'm going to post one more time on this topic, this time about the idea of self-forgiveness.
The website for the book The Reason for God is now live.
How does one not retaliate in the middle of brutal violence? How does one embrace non-retalitation when we're talking about something like genocide rather than only an unkind word? Miroslav Volf, a witness to violence in the Balkans, argues that non-retaliation is only possible when we leave vengeance to God:
If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end to violence - that God would not be worthy of worship...The only means of prohibiting all recourse to violence by ourselves is to insist that violence is legitimate only when it comes from God...My thesis that the practice of non-violence requires a belief in divine vengeance will be unpopular with many...in the West...[But] it takes the quiet of a suburban home for the birth of the thesis that human non-violence [results from the belief in] God's refusal to judge. In a sun-schorched land, soaked in the blood of the innocent, it will invariably die...[with] other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind. (Exclusion and Embrace)
Thinking about forgiveness over the past few weeks has been really good for me. I began this series wanting to examine my belief that forgiveness is unconditional. I think I'm prepared to change my position. I'd like to suggest that forgiveness is both conditional and unconditional. Since that's hardly clear, let me try to put it differently: The offended party must unconditionally move toward forgiveness, but forgiveness can only be fully completed once repentance has taken place.
Clear as mud?
For today let me unpack the last part of this sentence: forgiveness can only be fully completed once repentance has taken place.
Jesus said:
Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him, and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him. (Luke 17:3-4)
Other passages emphasize the importance of forgiveness, but don't include the conditional clause "if he repents." But perhaps it's assumed there. Is it possible that complete forgiveness cannot take place if the offender doesn't repent? This would create a parallel between our being forgiven by God, which happens after repentance, and our forgiving others.
I believe that forgiveness always has in view reconciliation, and reconciliation is always two-sided. So if there is not a repentance corresponding to a forgiveness, then very often there is an impossibility of reconciliation. I think that whatever we think about forgiveness, forgiveness is a component to what is a larger picture, and the larger picture is reconciliation. And reconciliation is necessarily two-sided.
John Piper also hits the same note:
When a person who wronged us does not repent with contrition and confession and conversion (turning from sin to righteousness), he cuts off the full work of forgiveness. We can still lay down our ill will; we can hand over our anger to God; we can seek to do him good; but we cannot carry through reconciliation or intimacy.
Tomorrow: I'll talk about the ways that forgiveness is unconditional. In short, I'll argue that even if the other party does not repent, we must move toward forgiveness, even if it won't be completed. In other words, there must be a readiness to forgive.
Westminster Books has a funny post about Keller's new book The Reason for God:
WTS student Art Boulet actually stood outside our doors in freezing rain to be the first customer to get a copy. After making sure he understood that this was not an eighth Harry Potter book, we gladly sold Art four copies. He says one is for his room, one for his car, one to give to his girlfriend…and even one for his bathroom!
Totally ridiculous. It's just a book. Almost as ridiculous as me finding out last night that Indigo has some copies in stock a few days early and actually dreaming about the book in my sleep last night. Not that it happened. I'm denying everything. I'm just saying.
In any case, I picked up a copy today and I'm loving it. It got me thinking: Keller is an effective apologist not only in the traditional sense. It seems that he has succeeded in showing many who belong to a skeptical Christian generation that the questions that led to the rise of the emerging church can be answered by a robust faith that blends humble, solid orthodoxy with social action and praxis.
In other words, I wonder if Keller has been as much of an apologist within the church as he has outside of it.
Why should we forgive?
- One: because we understand how much we have been forgiven
- Two: because we see ourselves as just as sinful, or more, as the one who has hurt us
- Three: because we trust God's justice
The last reason comes from passages like Romans 12:19: "Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' says the Lord."
When we forgive, we are turning the offense and the offender over to God for him to deal with it, rather than taking matters into our own hands. In the words of Miroslav Volf, "When one knows that the torturer will not eternally triumph over the victim, one is free to rediscover that person's humanity and imitate God's love for him."
This is hard enough to do in ordinary life. Volf, however, doesn't write only from the perspective of the ordinary. He writes in light of genocide and other atrocities. How does one move toward forgiveness of evils like this? It's only possible as one trusts God to bring about justice.
Tomorrow: the ways in which forgiveness seems to be conditional.
Discerning Reader has a positive review of Tim Keller's book The Reason for God, coming out this week.
The Reason for God is, at least to my knowledge, unique. The reader will soon see that Keller follows closely behind C.S. Lewis whom, along with his wife and Jonathan Edwards, he counts as his primary theological influences. Yet he sets Lewis and Edwards in a new context. And really, much of the book only makes sense within our contemporary cultural context. The arguments that matter here and now are different from those of days past and, I’m sure, different than ones in days to come. But the arguments Keller makes are compelling and reasonable and targeted pointedly at today’s skeptics. If you have read our day’s leading skeptics you owe it to yourself to read this as well.
I'm taking way too long to finish blogging about forgiveness, so here's what I'll do. Today I'll cover the second basis for forgiveness and tomorrow I'll cover the third. On Thursday I'll talk about the ways that forgiveness is conditional; on Friday I'll wrap up with the ways that forgiveness is not conditional.
A while ago I talked about the first basis for forgiveness: that God has forgiven us. The second basis is closely related. It's to see ourselves in the same category as the person who has wronged us. So much of our struggle to forgive involves a sense of superiority, rather than an acknowledgement that we are sinners in need of grace as much as anyone else.
It's much easier to forgive when we see ourselves as we really are.
Nobody brings this out better than Miroslov Volf:
Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans even as I exclude myself from the community of sinners. But no one can be in the presence of the God of the crucified Messiah for long without overcoming this double exclusion - without transposing the enemy from the sphere of monstrous inhumanity into the sphere of shared humanity and herself from the sphere of proud innocence into the sphere of common sinfulness. When one knows that the torturer will not eternally triumph over the victim, one is free to rediscover that person's humanity and imitate God's love for him. And when one knows that God's love is greater than all sin, one is free to see onself in the light of God's justice and so rediscover one's own sinfulness. (Exclusion and Embrace)
(Volf also touches on the third basis for forgiveness in this quote, which we'll get to tomorrow.)
A lot of self-help literature talks about the importance of knowing oneself. This is incredibly valuable - although the knowing oneself leads to something much different than what is usually meant by the self-help approach. We come to know ourselves as sinners in desperate need of grace.
Becky Pippert puts it this way:
The biggest surprise of all has been about myself. I have had to face up to what I am sure has been clear to everyone else all along: I am deeply flawed. Mind you, I always knew theoretically that to be human was to be flawed - as in, "Hey, nobody's perfect." But as the years have gone by, I have had to face up to more dramatic, specific, and undeniable evidence that I was my own worst case...
We want to believe that the essential "us" is who we are in our best moments, when everything is going our way, when nothing is thwarting or threatening us. We want to believe that we are what we project to the world: nice, respectable, competent people who have it all together. Fortunately or unfortunately, life doesn't let us get away with our charade. Sooner or later, whether through a difficult relationship with a berating boss, a demanding spouse, a difficult child, or simply through overwhelming or infuriating circumstances, we are confronted with our darker side. (Hope Has Its Reasons)
When we see ourselves as we really are, and believe that we are the worst of sinners, we'll be much ready to forgive others when they wrong us.
When everyone seemed to be blogging their favorite books at the end of 2007, I noticed an old book making a few of the lists: George Whitefield Volumes 1 and 2 by Arnold Dallimore. Dallimore was a pastor in my denomination who pastored a church just a few hours west of here. I've read his biography of Spurgeon before, and had always meant to get around to this one. Michael Haykin's recommendation was all the prompting I needed to finally put this volume at the top of my list.
One night in Honduras, the wives in our group sent us out for chocolate bars. We went downstairs and asked a member of the hotel staff for directions. Jared spoke on our behalf, because he's a little more adventurous with his Spanish.
He asked for a putería, which he thought meant convenience store. The word he should have used was pulpería. Inadvertently, Jared had asked for a whorehouse!
The hotel staff looked at us funny, and offered to get us a taxi. We said no, we wanted one within walking distance. We gave up and went upstairs to our room. Who knows where we would have ended up if we had taken that taxi!
You should have seen the look on our translator's face the next day when he found out. For some reason they didn't let us too far out of their sight the rest of the week.
For some reason, eschatology (the doctrine concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind) has not always been well understood. Some ignore it; some major in it but seem to completely misunderstand it; mostly, we seem to ignore it, except occasionally when it trips us up.
As a result we have all kinds of strange ideas and questions. Will we become angels when we die? What's with floating on clouds and playing harps? Could the pilot of the airplane I'm in really be raptured? Then we have our struggles and questions about issues like hell.
It would be okay if we were not clear on something that doesn't matter, but as you read Scripture you get the clear sense that what we believe about the future does really make a difference for today. A good example is David Hansen, who writes of what happened when he flirted with universalism:
All I could see and all I could preach was what we should be doing. We should love one another. We should free one another from dysfunctional entanglements. We should be less prejudiced. We should feed the poor. But all I could say was "We should." I lost the ability to say "You must." Since in the end it didn't really make much difference how people lived, it didn't make much difference what I preached, or if I even preached at all.
My thinking had become frivolous, my theology one of wishful thinking. My words became inconsequential. My religion was reduced to a self-help methodology, a happy way to cope with life. I became a moralist, a counselor, a two-bit pop psychologist. (The Art of Pastoring)
What we believe in this area really does affect how we live.
That's why I'm glad to see some new resources come out on this subject. One is N.T. Wright's new book Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. I picked up a copy the other day and I'm really looking forward to reading it. What I've read so far looks good. You can read an interview with Wright in Time Magazine (ht). Wright challenges our traditional thinking on heaven. I remember the first time Stan Fowler, my theology prof, did this. It was at first disorienting but also very biblical and freeing.
Then there's Tim Keller's new book The Reason for God. It's out in a few days and I can't wait to read it. Sets 'n' Service has a good quote from this book:
When we look at the whole scope of this story line, we see clearly that Christianity is not only about getting one's individual sins forgiven so we can go to heaven. That is an important means of God's salvation, but not the final end or purpose of it. The purpose of Jesus' coming is to put the whole world right, to renew and restore the creation, not to escape it. It is not just to bring personal forgiveness and peace, but also justice and shalom to the world. God created both body and soul, and the resurrection of Jesus shows that he is going to redeem both body and soul. The work of the Spirit of God is not only to save souls but also to care and cultivate the face of the earth, the material world.
Some similar themes are developed in both materials.
I also listened to the sermon on hell that formed the basis for part of this book, and it's excellent . If you have struggled with this doctrine (most of us have), Keller's sermon is an important one. It's a free download here.
This area of doctrine is incredibly important. It's good to see it getting some good attention.
This post is dedicated to Bill Kinnon who can't stomach the idea of franchised churches. I hope that Bill doesn't read the latest issue of Leadership Journal which has a short article on this idea.
Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon are helpful voices when it comes to thinking about church - franchised and otherwise - in a consumer market:
...our church lives in a buyer's market. The customer is king. What the customer wants, the customer should get. Pastors with half a notion of the gospel who get caught up in this web of buying and selling in a self-fulfillment economy one day wake up and hate themselves for it. We will lose some of our (potentially) best pastors to an early grave of cynicism and self-hate. What a pastor needs is a means of keeping at it, a perspective that enables the pastor to understand his or her ministry as nothing less than the participation in the story of God. (Resident Aliens)
Yesterday's storm brought in 30 cm of snow (about a foot) in two waves, along with a winter thunder snowstorm (but no tornados). Here's to very little snow in the forecast for today.
I attended an Ash Wednesday service as planned, but made the mistake of stopping at Crux Books on the way back. Managed to pick up seven new books. Might have gotten a little carried away.
Trevin Wax has a good post on Lent today. I picked up one of the books he mentions: Eastertide, Prayers for Lent Through Easter from The Divine Hours. Trevin writes:
Whether or not you “give up something,” at least use these few weeks to prepare for Easter, giving thought to the price paid for your ransom and the extraordinary love of God manifested on Calvary.
Also a good post by Tod Bolsinger:
The focus of Ash Wednesday and Lent is repentance...And it all begins with this: Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. You are not an angel. You are not a mere soul or disembodied spirit. You are human, you are mortal, you are deeply dependent on the God who formed your body from the humus of the earth and breathed life into you with his kiss. God has come to you, in Jesus, O Creature, and called you to have life eternal with him.
And so, with ash on our foreheads and the taste of bread and grape on our tongues, we begin a holy lent.
Someone asked me today if I was celebrating Lent. Lent is a funny thing for some evangelicals, although not for two evangelical Anglican friends I met with the other day. This 2006 post from Confessing Evangelical captures some of the reservations evangelicals have had with Lent, and lands in a good place:
Ash Wednesday and Lent are matters of "evangelical freedom", but they "serve the edification of believers", not least since they provide a particular opportunity to focus our minds on "the forgiveness of sins for the sake of Christ’s atonement", the heart of our evangelical faith.
So tomorrow I'll be going to St. Paul's, an evangelical Anglican church in downtown Toronto, for the noon Ash Wednesday service. I'm also taking a few other steps to make more time to focus on Lenten themes:
- I've temporarily reduced the blogs I follow from over 100 to about 25.
- I'm giving up email in the mornings. I may try to get to once a day.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Here is another definition of forgiveness from Thomas Watson's old book A Body of Divinity:
Question: When do we forgive others?
Answer: When we strive against all thoughts of revenge; when we will not do our enemies mischief, but wish well to them, grieve at their calamities, pray for them, seek reconciliation with them, and show ourselves ready on all occasions to relieve them.
I think this is a very biblical definition of forgiveness. Each of its parts comes from a passage of Scripture.
- Resist thoughts of revenge: Romans 12:19, "Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,' says the Lord."
- Don't seek to do them mischief: 1 Thessalonians 5:15, "See that no one repays another with evil for evil.
- Wish well to them: Luke 6:28, "Bless those who curse you."
- Grieve at their calamities: Proverbs 24:17, "Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart be glad when he stumbles."
- Pray for them: Matthew 5:44, "But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you."
- Seek reconciliation with them: Romans 12:18, "If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men."
- Be always willing to come to their relief: Exodus 23:4, "If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey wandering away, you shall surely return it to him."
Note: none of these commands in Piper's list seems to be conditional.
One of the challenges of reading older books is that sometimes the typeface is so hard to read. Maybe it's my advancing age talking. I'm always excited when a classic book is published and made accessible to a new generation in the way it's presented, while retaining the content of the original.
That's why I'm happy to now own a copy of this edition of Calvin's Institutes, hot off the press.
Hendrickson offers a one-volume hardcover edition of one of Western Christianity's foundational works. Re-typeset into a clean and modern typeface, this edition is easy to read for the modern eye. This book will appeal to libraries, seminarians, pastors, and laypeople. Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin is an introduction to the Bible and a vindication of Reformation principles by one of the Reformation's finest scholars.
If you've never tackled this theological classic, you may be interested in this edition.
It's happening at Citizenship and Immigration Canada:
It may be wishful thinking, but a Canadian government ministry has sent out a directive to its employees urging them to relax and not to use their BlackBerry smartphones at night or on weekends and holidays.
It's also happening Intel, according to Macleans:
When Sir Isaac Newton discovered the law of gravity, he wasn't fiddling with a BlackBerry; he was reclined against an apple tree in quiet contemplation, or so the story goes. For today's scientist, as for any office worker, with colleagues, endless meetings and an overflowing inbox, such uninterrupted moments are rare. What does the lost time mean for creative thought? Computer giant Intel is studying this question: in a six-month pilot project dubbed "Quiet Time," workers shut out all distractions and wait for the proverbial apple to fall.
Quiet Time, which began in September, happens each Tuesday at two of Intel's U.S. sites (they won't reveal exactly where). From 8 a.m. to noon, the 300 engineers and managers in the test group set email and instant messaging to off-line mode, forward all calls to voice mail, and hang "do not disturb" signs at their cubicle entrances.
Is it time to unplug, at least part of the time?
Fax machines, emails, telephones, beepers, an over-committed schedule, the press of people's needs...these are the tools of mass destruction for spiritual leaders. Their development and deployment often proceed without inspection. They threaten to shut down the spiritual leader's communion with God. Once that happens, the leader's effectiveness is destroyed. The leader becomes a casualty of a struggle that is as old as humanity – the drowning out of eternity by the screams of temporal concerns. (Reggie McNeal, A Work of Heart)
Lent starts tomorrow - maybe it's time to unplug?
Trevin Wax gives five reasons why the emerging church has begun to recede:
- The Emerging Church does little evangelism.
- Some Emerging leaders have embraced a disturbing lack of clarity on key doctrinal and social issues.
- Many who initially intrigued by the Emerging conversation are now distancing themselves from Emerging theology.
- Some aspects of the Emerging Church look faddish and fleeting.
- Evangelicalism is beginning to address the good questions raised by the Emerging movement.
Trevin concludes:
Has it accomplished anything good? Yes. Perhaps that’s the best news of all. We’re seeing the receding of a movement that has served its purpose - reawakening evangelicals to the necessity of the Church and the importance of being the Church to the world.
more - Trevin's blog is one that's worth reading, by the way.
You may remember that Kester Brewin predicted the collapse of the emerging church as a popular project in 2008.
My latest column at Christian Week:
David Hansen, a pastor and author, says that his predecessor's library haunts him. When his predecessor left the church, he left the ministry and his library. "His library told the story of his ministry," Hansen writes. Every trend of the decade of his ministry was represented. "The movements he followed actually had little if any effect on his ministry, except in a fatal way: ultimately he confused Christian movements with following Christ."
I've been in ministry long enough to see the trends reflected in my library too. I've also witnessed the look in people's eyes when they feel another trend coming. Weekly, sometimes daily, I get mailings and read articles about the next new thing.
I've recently sensed less of an appetite for the latest trend. Many are experiencing the disruption that comes as they experience tension with church as we've always known it. Instead of reacting with quick fixes, though, some are moving toward real change.
It's often argued that we should forgive because we will feel better. "Not forgiving is like eating rat poison and waiting for the rat to die," said Anne Lamott. Forgiving is good for us; not forgiving is toxic to the soul. Some call this the therapeutic argument for forgiveness.
It's true that forgiveness is good for you, but that is certainly not the biblical basis for forgiveness. The biblical basis for forgiveness is gospel: that God has forgiven us. "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." (Ephesians 4:32)
The most powerful example of this is the parable of the unmerciful servant told by Jesus in Matthew 18:21-35. A servant is forgiven a debt of ten thousand talents by a king. That servant, however, refuses to forgive a debt of a hundred denarii - 1/600,000th of what he had been forgiven. It boggles the mind that one could be forgiven for such an astronomical debt, and then refuse to forgive a relatively small debt.
Jesus reports how the king responded: "You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?" The unmerciful servant was then thrown in jail. Jesus concludes, "So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart."
The biblical basis for forgiving others is gospel. It's remembering how much God has forgiven us. A failure to forgive indicates a failure to grasp the gospel, which is why Jesus says such harsh things about those who refuse to forgive. "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matthew 6:14-15)
Earlier next week I'd like to look at the differences between God's forgiveness and ours.
"The truth of the Gospel is the principle article of all Christian doctrine," said Martin Luther. "Most necessary is it that we know this article well, teach it to others, and beat it into their heads continually." Luther did have a way with words. I find that I need to beat it into my own head and heart continually.
A good example of this is with a topic like busyness. A therapeutic or self-help approach to busyness gives techniques and strategies. Some strategies get to heart issues of what's driving us, but few approaches apply the Gospel to the issue.
What does busyness have to do with the Gospel? Tim Chester has written a good book on the topic. It's called The Busy Christian's Guide to Busyness.
Chester has posted a talk on busyness that echoes some of the themes of this book. Chester says that most of our busyness is self-induced. "Many of us are busy," he says, "because we feel the need to prove ourselves." That's where the Gospel comes in:
There’s nothing wrong with being busy. Most of us enjoy being busy. What creates stress is the feeling that we cannot meet the expectations of others or of God. But Jesus offers rest from the burden of self-justification. We are accepted by God. This is how we find meaning and value. At the most fundamental level, Tim Chester is a justified sinner. I’m not fundamentally a writer, or preacher, or even a husband and father. I am a sinner saved by grace and all I contribute to that identity is the sin bit. I don’t need to prove myself as a sinner saved by grace. Instead I praise the gracious embrace of the Father, the complete atonement of the Son and the Spirit’s enabling presence. This is who I am. And it’s a gift. I don’t need to earn it.
It's a good talk, and the whole thing is worth reading. It's also a good example of how to relate the Gospel to every area of our lives.