Masters of Imagination

In light if our recent conversations on New Creation, I offer this extended quote from Eugene Peterson's Subversive Spirituality as he reflects on the importance of imagination in the Christian experience:

Thirteen four-year-old children sat on carpet of the sanctuary at the chancel steps on a Thursday morning in late February. I sat with them, holding cupped in my hands a last season's birdnest. We talked about the birds on their way back to build nests liike this one and the spring that was about to burst in on us. The children were rapt their attention.

I love doing this, meeting with the children, telling them stories, singing songs with them, telling them that God lives them, praying with them. I do it frequently. They attend our church's nursery school and come into the sanctuary with their teachers every couple of weeks to meet with me. They are so alive, their capacity for wonder endless, their imaginations lithe and limber.

Winter was receding and spring was arriving, although not quite arrived. But there were signs. It was the signs that I was talking about. The birdnest to begin with. It was visibly weedy and grey and dirty, but as we looked at it we saw the invisible - warblers on their way north from wintering grounds in South America, pastel and spotted eggs in the nest. We counted the birds in the sky over Florida, over North Carolina, over Virginia.

We looked through the walls of the church to the warming ground. We looked beneath the surface and saw the earthworms turning somersaults. We began to see shoots of color break through the ground, crocus and tulip and grape hyacinth. The buds on the trees and shrubs were swelling and about to burst into flower and we were remembering and anticipating and counting the colors.

I never get used to these Maryland springs and every time am taken by surprise all over again. I grew up in northern Montana where the trees are the same color all year long and spring is mostly mud. The riotous color in blossom and bloom in Maryland's dogwood and forsythia, redbud and shadbush, catches me unprepared. But this year I was getting prepared and getting the children prepared for all the glorious gifts that were going to be showering in on us in a week or so. We were looking at the bare birdnest and seeing the colors, hearing the songs, smelling the blossoms.

There are moments in this kind of work when you know you are doing it right. This was one of those moments. The children's faces were absolutely concentrated. We had slipped through a time warp and were experiencing the full sensuality of the Maryland spring.

They were no longer looking at the birdnest, they were seeing migrating birds and hatching chicks, garlanded trees and dewy blossoms. Then, abruptly, at the center of this moment of high holiness, Bruce said, "Why don't you have any hair on your head?"

Why didn't Bruce see what the rest of us were seeing - the exuberance, the fecundity? Why hadn't he made the transition to "seeing the invisible" that were were engrossed in? All he saw was the visible patch of baldness on my head, a rather uninteresting fact, while the rest of us were seeing multi-dimensioned thruths. Only four years old and already Bruce's imagination was crippled.

Imagination is the capacity to make connections between the visible and the invisible, between heaven and earth, between present and past, between present and future. For Christians, whose largest investment is in the invisible, the imagination is indispensable, for it is only by means of the imagination that we can see reality whole, in context. "What imagination does with reality is the reality we live by," writes David Ignatow in Open Between Us.

When I look at a tree, most of what I "see" I do not see at all. I see a root system beneath the surface, sending tendrils through the soil, sucking up nutrients out of the loam. I see the light pouring energy into the leaves. I see the fruit that will appear in a few months. I stare and stare and see the bare branches austere in next winter's snow and wind. I see all that, I really do-I am not making it up. But I could not photograph it. I see it by means of imagination. If my imagination is stunned or inactive, I will only see what I can use, or something that is in my way.

Czeslaw Milosz, the Nobel prize-winning poet, with a passion for Christ supported and deepened by his imagination, said in an interview in The New York Times Review of Books that the minds of Americans have been dangerously diluted by the rationalism of explanation. He is convinced that our imagination-deficient educational process has left us with a naive picture of the world. In this naive view, the universe has space and time - and nothing else. No values. No God. "Functionally speaking, men and women are not that different from a virus or bacteria, a speck in the universe."

Milosz sees the imagination, and especially the religious imagination which is the developed capacity to be in reverence before whatever confronts us, to be the shaping force of the world we really live in. "Imagination" he said, "can fashion the world into a homeland as well as into a prison or a place of battle. Nobody lives in the 'objective' world, only in a world filtered through the imagination."

The imagination is among the chief glories of the human. When it is healthy and energetic, it ushers us into adoration and wonder, into the mysteries of God. When it is neurotic and sluggish, it turns people, millions of them, into parasites, copycats, and couch potatoes. The American imagination today is distressingly sluggish. Most of what is served up to us as the fruits of imagination is, in fact, the debasing of it into soap opera and pornography.

Right now, one of the essential Christian ministries in and to our ruined world is the recovery and exercise of the imagination. Ages of faith have always been ages rich in imagination. It is easy to see why: the materiality of the gospel (the seen, heard, and touched Jesus) is no less impressive than its spirituality (faith, hope, and love). Imagination is the mental tool we have for connecting material and spiritual, visible and invisible, earth and heaven.

We have a pair of mental operations, imagination and explanation, designed to work in tandem. When the gospel is given robust and healthy expression, the two work in graceful synchronicity. Explanation pins things down so that we can handle and use them - obey and teach, help and guide. Imagination opens things up so that we can grown into maturity - worship and adore, exclaim and honor, follow and trust. Explanation restricts and defines and holds down; imagination expands and lets loose. Explanation keeps our feet on the ground; imagination lifts our heads into the clouds. Explanation puts us in harness; imagination catapults us into mystery. Explanation reduces life to what can be used; imagination enlarges life into what can be adored.

But our technological and information-obsessed age has cut imagination from the team. In the life of the gospel, where everything originates and depends upon what we cannot see and is worked out in what we can see, imagination and explanation cannot get along without each other. Is it time to get aggressive? Is it time for the Christian community to recognize and honor and commission masters of the imagination - our poets and singers and storytellers-as partners in evangelical witness?

How else is Bruce going to hear the gospel when he grows up? How will he hear Isaiah's poetry, Jesus' parables, John's visions? It will be sad if, when he is 40 years old and enters a congreagation of worshipping Christians and ministering angels, all he sees is a preacher's bald head.

As Paul Tripp summarized this section in class: "Imagination is not the ability to conjure up what is unreal - rather, it is the ability to see what is real but unseen."

We need to remind ourselves that new creation is spiritual, and what is spiritual is unseen, only apprehended by faith - that doesn't make it less real; it does mean that we need to learn how to see it. We need to be masters of imagination, not of our own making, but of God's. We need to learn to imagine reality as he describes it for us.

More New Creation

So in response to Ryan's post on New Creation, Brian asked a really good question (I'm paraphrasing):

Since Adam and Eve sinned, there are physical consequences in the earth which a person could point to and could say, "That is there because of the Fall" So then, are there also things we can point to today and say, "That is there because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ"? And, wouldn't these be visible to both believers and unbelievers alike?

That's a great question. And we could actually push it a bit further - if this "new creation" thing really is for real, Where do we really see this the new creation shining through? And why do we have such a hard time seeing it?

I think we need to start by realizing that even in observing fallenness, our ability to "see the effects" is limited and deficient. Sure we can point to things like tsunamis, hurricanes, drought, plagues, etc and attribute them (rightly) to the Fall, but most unbelievers are not going to agree with that conclusion - they would argue and attribute these things to "nature" (that's just the way this world is).

Why such disagreement? Because at a very fundamental level, we often tend to limit "see" and "know" to things we can observe and prove "scientifically," without any reference to God. And this tendency doesn't just affect non-Christians. Consider what else God tells us about creation:

The heavens declare the glory of God, the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard.

- Psalm 19:1-3 (ESV)

Look at all those verbs - Scripture is making some very strong claims about the nature and function of creation (fallen even!) - specifically, that it actually communicates something to us. And yet how many of us read those verses and think "How come I don't hear it?" Our ability to perceive is dull, even for the best of us.

In his Instruments in the Redeemers Hands, Paul Tripp summarizes the situation well: "The bottom line is this: The problem is not that God is not here or that he is inactive; the problem is that we don't see him. Our perspective on life is often tragically godless" (98).

So why is it so hard to see? Because our perspective is godless - we are trying to see life on our own. Once again, Scripture sheds some light on the difficulty: "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor 2:14). Paul's point here is that we shouldn't be surprised by people's blindness - they cannot see the significance of either fallen or redeemed creation because that sight is actually a spiritual gift.

So in one sense, then, I wouldn't ever expect to be able to point to something in this creation that either a believer of unbeliever is going to admit as a result of their own observation or logic - "oh yeah, that's a result of the Fall" or "that's a result of Christ's death and ressurrection." It's not going to happen, because our ability to see is itself a spiritual gift. On our own, every fiber of being is busy trying to deny that very thing.

At the same time, it's important to remember that even though unbelievers don't see, at the same time they do see too. Psalm 19 emphasizes the fact that what creation is saying IS in fact heard. Romans 1:19-20 says something similar - that what can be known about God is plain to all men, and it has been since the creation of the world. So here we have another one of these mystery moments where Scripture seems to suggest two competing realities are both true at the same time - they do see, they don't see. Calvin liked to describe it as "enough knowledge to render us guilty" (we all know THAT God exists), "but not enough knowledge to actually save us" (or we wouldn't need faith would we?).

So where does all this leave us? How DO we explain this "new creation" thing to unbelievers? Once again, Paul Tripp is helpful:

The revelation of God in his awesome glory is the only thing that exposes the utter emptiness of all the other glories we crave. If you understand the incarnation this way, you have already learned much about your calling. Personal ministry is not just about confronting people with principles, theology, or solutions. It confronts people with the God who is active and glorious in his grace and truth, and who has a rightful claim on our lives. Only as our hearts are transformed by this glory will the principles of Scripture make any sense to us.

-Instruments (99)

Tripp's point here is profound. What attracted people to Christ in the first place? People saw something - many of them couldn't put their finger on WHAT it was, but they could certainly tell that there was SOMETHING about him, about his ministry. Jesus himself claims to be the definitive revelation of God - after all, Jesus tells his disciples: "If you have seen me, you have seen the Father."

What this tells me is that I need to show people Christ. And I need to show them the effects that Christ is having in me. Rather than trying to logically show their system empty and meaningless, and then logically trying to prove our system meaningful and consistent - I am much better off simply trying to incarnate Christ to them.

Christ incarnates God to the world, and then he turns around and commissions us to incarnate himself to the world - "You are my witnesses" (Lk 24:48), "Go and make disciples of all the nations..." (Mt 28:19). We will reveal this new creation kingdom most clearly when the character of Christ is most clearly manifested in our lives. And in the New Testament, that character is most clearly summarized in two words: "grace" and "truth" (Jn 1:14).

In terms of truth, this will mean a willingness to speak hard truth to people who may not want to hear it - they are sinners (just like me). We cannot waffle on the fundamental problems. At the same time, we must also offer grace - we can never mete out our acceptance of others on the basis of how "good" they are, how much the "agree" with us. We offer the grace of Christ, we accept on the basis of that same grace. And that combination really gets to the heart of the gospel - we call sin, sin; but we accept not on the basis of performance or sinlessness, but rather on the basis of relationship to Christ. We accept others even as God accepts us - on the basis of a relationship to Christ.

If we do that well, we will offer the clearest possible picture of a new creation kingdom. It's new creation in us; it's new creation available for sinners like us. And the reality of that kind of relationship is deeply attractive to a world of unbelief. It makes the system of the world look vain and shallow in comparison. To me, that is how we reveal this new creation.

kaine ktisis ("new creation")

i've been reading geerhardus vos's the pauline eschatology for a class. for those who don't know of vos, he was a theologian at the turn of the 1900's at princeton theological seminary. he basically wrote the book on eschatology and biblical theology (in fact, his book biblical theology is a great book) and how both of those topics relate to systematic theology and classical reformed theology.

what i want to comment on, however, stems back to christian's post on "cruciform community." brian had asked me to comment on paul's use of the "new creation" language in 2 corinthians 5. my basic point is that we are new creatures in christ because of the fact that christ has ushered in a new world order which we are transferred into when we participate in his resurrection by faith.

1 cor 5.17, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

the normal interpretation of this passage is merely a transformation of the individual who is "in christ." paul certainly has this in view, but that is not all that is in view. Vos states on page 47,

There has been created a totally new environment, or, more accurately speaking, a totally new world, in which the person spoken of is an inhabitant and participator. It is not in the first place the interiority of the subject that has undergone the change, although that, of course, is not to be excluded. The whole surrounding world has assumed a new aspect and complexion."

this is especially apparent when we see how paul uses the word translated "creation" (ktisis) elsewhere, such as romans 8.19-20 or colossians 1.15 where paul has the whole creation in view and not just individual people.

what vos is really trying to get it is the climactic change that has been wrought by the resurrection of christ. this event changed the world. people who are united to christ by faith certainly undergo a change, but the change they undergo allows them to see the world as it really is. they then continue to change as the holy spirit continues to illumine to them the truth about the resurrection. for me, this is why we can expect whole communities to change as the gospel penetrates every facet of society.

i can't think of a better illustration for this than the movie, the matrix. when neo takes the blue pill he is immediately transformed out of the world of bondage-where he is finally able to see the false reality of the matrix-and has his eyes opened to the reality of the world as it really is.

i could illustrate this with other scriptures from the new testament (see 2 peter 3.5-7 where peter speaks in terms of two world orders with reference to the time leading up to the flood and the time after and correlates that to the before and after of the cross. or look at 1 cor 15.42ff where adam and christ are compared as the representative heads of two distinct epochs-one physical and one spiritual.) but i don't have the time to expound on them.

basically what vos is trying to get at is that a major change in the world happened at the resurrection. it is not a complete change, as there is a future element, as we all know (already/not yet). what we need to realize is that the christian is living right in the middle of this transition, yet the future aspects of christ's kingdom are present now in the holy spirit, acting almost like a tractor beam, pulling us into the future.

paul puts it frankly, we are new creations. the blinders are off. we can see the world as it really is. so wake up and start living like a new creation. there's so much more i could say on this, but i have to end this. i'd love to see some discussion on this idea. one last point to make is that this in no way diminishes my view of sin. in fact, part of seeing the world as it really is, means i see myself and others truly as well and we still struggle. life is still hard and there is a still future aspect to be expected and anticipated.

Thinking Critically about Bono and The Poor

Great comments by Mars Hill pastor Mark Driscoll, thinking critically (in the best sense) about some of the things Bono has been saying lately. Here's a snippet:

When it comes to the issue of rich and poor there is a great theological debate. On one side is Prosperity Theology which essentially says that if you are a holy person with enough faith you will drive an Escalade with rims in Jesus’ name.

But what appears to be even more popular among younger missionally minded Christians is an overreaction to Prosperity Theology, called Poverty Theology, where if you really love Jesus you will live very minimally because, like Bono, you believe that Jesus loves the poor, likely more than the rich.

Now, do yourself a favor and go read the whole thing...

This Moment

Sitting here in the sunlight of the Westminster Cafe, looking at a depressingly large stack of theology books I have to have read (and digested) by next week, I am struck by this thought:

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. This moment, right now, in all its stress, bustle, and busyness, or even in its boredom, routine, humdrumness - this is a dramatic moment in redemptive history, in God's eternal plan. This is a climactic point for you to glorify God.

Saints and angels alike watch with bated breath as we surf this swell of daily life into the rising sun of life everlasting.

This is not some moment just to "be endured," to "get through" while we grit our teeth and wait for "future glory." This is It, the divine Now, the Today of our salvation - a moment to be reveled in, celebrated, dared, enjoyed, relished, LIVED! This moment is God's great gift to you in the here and now.

It is precisely what you need, precisely when you need it. The only real question is how you will respond with this moment God has given you.

And with that, I'll head back to my books...

Cruciform Community

We've been talking about something called 'Cruciform Community' in class lately. The basic premise runs something like this - we are blind to our own sin; we have a fundamental inability to see our own weaknesses and deficiencies. The reason for this is because we are sinners.

In other words, my "sin" runs much deeper than occasional lapses in judgment or behavior - it really flows from the core of my being. I sin because I am a sinner; everything I do is fundamentally bent in a certain direction, against God, in my own favor. And I am completely blind to it. I constantly do things to make myself, my actions, look better - when I speak, when I act, even when I pray. I do things for my glory, to make me look better, to justify my actions, to get you to do what I want.

I think most of us have experienced this to some extent - if not in ourselves, then we've certainly seen it in others (sometimes to the point where we wonder "How on earth can they be such an idiot?!? Don't they see what they are doing???").

And that's actually the second part of the equation - we may be blind to our own sin, but we are surprisingly good at seeing the sin of others. I see this in my kids all the time - as soon as one of them so much as thinks about doing something wrong, the Society for the Betterment of Siblings Patrol comes swooping in with sirens blazing:

"Mom!!!! He hit me!!!" [translation: your son, this brother you gave me, just sinned most egriously by daring to touch my delicate personage...]

"Oh yeah, well she was bugging me" [rebuttal: look, I had a good reason - this creepy little wench is sitting here nagging me like a leaky faucet, trying to be a boss and exert her authority over me...]

"Well he wasn't cleaning up his room like you told him to" [ooh, the trump card: mom, I'm just trying to enforce the policy you yourself laid down; I am actually helping by my bossing...]

See how easily we see the sin in one another? And yet isn't it amazing how we see ourselves as perfect and pristine - I mean, every time I look in the mirror, I simply cannot fathom how women in this world keep from flinging themselves at my feet. After all, who wouldn't want to be married to someone like me? Clearly, all the problems in my marriage must be located squarely in my wife, who just doesn't realize how good she's got it.

Yeah, right. What's scary here, is that 99.9% of you reading this post know exactly what I'm talking about here. You can identify with these comments because you have experienced them yourself. Sure, the particulars may vary, but underneath, we are all singing this same old song.

We are blind to our own flaws. And yet we actually have a capacity to see the blindness of others, we can see their shortcomings quite well (and guess what, as we begin to study Scripture you will actually get better at identifying problems in others - which can be extremely dangerous if used wrongly).

So how does all this connect to community? The bottom line is that we all need one another to help correct our blindness. Hebrews 10:24-25 says "Don't give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encourage one another..." This is talking about much more than attending church on Sundays. We gather as community in order to encourage one another to be more like Christ.

But there's more to it than that. Hebrews 10:26-31 goes on to say, "BUT, if we go on sinning..." and then it launches into this really scary warning about falling away from God, a warning which concludes with these ominous words: "We know who said 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay'... It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."

Cruciform community is brothers and sisters who are blind to their own sin, but who can nevertheless see the sin in the lives of one another. And so we are called as brothers and sisters in this family of God to help each other see our own blindness.

This means we need to be willing to point out problems. And the better we know God, Scripture, Christ, and the gospel, the better we will get at seeing blindness - both in our lives and in the lives of others. But we point out that blindness in others not just because we see it, but because we also see the living God who redeemed us, we see him. And we invite them to do the same thing for us.

So we have a great responsibility, because we have been called by God to speak into one another's lives - we are authorized, even expected, to do so. And yet at the same time, we are called to great humility, because we know that we ourselves are blind in many areas ourselves. But that's the whole point - we need one another to deal with our own blindness. We need fellow believers to point us to the cross; we need them to show us where we still need to die to ourselves. That's the essence of Cruciform Community.

Questioning the Conscious Mind

New Scientist has an interesting article questioning the reliability of our conscious decision making processes:

Complex decisions are best left to your unconscious mind... research suggests the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions, such as selecting a brand of oven glove. Sleeping on a big decision, such as buying a car or house, is more likely to produce a result people remain happy with than consciously weighing up the pros and cons of the problem, the researchers say.

Thinking hard about a complex decision that rests on multiple factors appears to bamboozle the conscious mind so that people only consider a subset of information, which they weight inappropriately, resulting in an unsatisfactory choice. In contrast, the unconscious mind appears able to ponder over all the information and produce a decision that most people remain satisfied with.

The basic gist of the article is simple: for all our claims of objectivity, our rational decision making processes aren't actually all that, well, rational or objective. In other words, when humans try hard to make a rational, well informed decision that simply takes into account all the facts, they don't actually succeed very well.

This may be news to scientists, but Scripture's been saying this type of thing for ages. We are selective in determining which "facts" we favor. We are not neutral - we are actually biased in our own favor, so much so that even in our best efforts at rational objectivity, we still end up drawing conclusions that are influenced by our presuppositions and desires. When it comes to making decisions, we have a bad case of selective hearing combined with vested interests.

In practice, however, this lack of objectivity doesn't really hinder us all that much - after all, very few people actually chart a course of action or embrace a system of belief by trying objectively analyze all the data. We are much too lazy for that. Besides, we already know what we want the answer to be anyway. So most of us start at the other end - we have a "gut feeling" what we want the conclusion to be, and only as our premise is challenged to we try and "rationally" interpret the "facts" to support our decisions.

For most of us, the "illusion of objectivity" is all that matters. As long as it looks like I'm being objective, then I can justify my decisions to others. And for most of us, that's good enough. Think of it as massive codependency. You don't challenge my decisions, and I won't challenge yours. This system is "objective" as long as everyone agrees and no one rocks the boat.

The scientist who conducted this research were looking primarily at "ordinary" decisions - should I buy this brand or that? A minivan or a sports car? But what about really important matters - matters of ethics (what should I do)? or religion (what must I believe)?

If our conscious reason is unreliable for the simple things, how on earth can we trust it for weightier matters. If my mind can barely be selected to choose an oven mitt, what on earth leads me to believe I can reason my way to eternal things?

It sounds like what we really need is someone with a little better capacity and a lot less bias to tell us how to get there. We need someone who can see all the data clearly, someone who is fair and just and absolutely unbiased one way or the other. It sounds like what we really need is for God to come speak to us.

Hmm, I think Scripture has something to say about that too...

John Piper, "Don't Waste Your Cancer."

Since suffering has been a topic of conversation here lately, I thought I'd add this recent article by John Piper to the discussion: "Don't Waste Your Cancer." He will soon be undergoing surgery for prostate cancer and, as always, he is unceasingly looking for ways to glorify God in his life, including his present suffering.

Although Piper is facing literal cancer, you could really substitute any form of suffering for "cancer" and personalize this list. Each of these points has a helpful explanation following them, but here are his 10 points that will lead someone to waste their cancer:

1. You will waste your cancer if you do not believe it is designed for you by God.
2. You will waste your cancer if you believe it is a curse and not a gift.
3. You will waste your cancer if you seek comfort from your odds rather than from God.
4. You will waste your cancer if you refuse to think about death.
5. You will waste your cancer if you think that "beating" cancer means staying alive rather than cherishing Christ.
6. You will waste your cancer if you spend too much time reading about cancer and not enough time reading about God.
7. You will waste your cancer if you let it drive you into solitude rather than deepen your relationships with manifest affection.
8. You will waste your cancer if you grieve as those who have no hope.
9. You will waste your cancer if you treat sin as casually as before.
10. You will waste your cancer if you fail to use it as a means of witness to the truth and glory of Christ.

Suffering Anyone?

I'm taking a class this semester called Problems and Procedures. The last 2 weeks have focused on the problem of suffering. We've had to read a book by Joni Eareckson Tada and Steve Estes called When God Weeps. If you haven't read it, whether you are going through tough times or not, you should read it. Here's some thoughts I've had on this subject.

I was deeply impacted by something Joni said on pages 156-57. It doesn't so much have to do with suffering except that it is a great comfort to me. In fact I found it quite profound. Joni speaks of Jesus being forsaken on the cross so that he could confidently proclaim to the disciples a few chapters later that he would "never leave or forsake" them. This is a profound aspect of Christ's redemptive program. We were the ones who deserved to be forsaken by God. Yet He intervened and experienced this on our behalf on the cross when he cried out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"

It was not random that Christ used the same word in that great promise to the disciples (when he called them to spread the Gospel) as he spoke to God on the cross. "We may feel forsaken in the midst of our suffering, but the fact remains, we're not" (157). The profundity of this truth comes when we consider that it is one side of a two-sided coin. Those who do not place their faith solely in Christ, the one who experienced God's separation to the fullest as his/her substitute, will experience it to its fullest on their own. They will cry out different words than Jesus because they won't even be able to call God, "my God." If anyone had the right to use such a possessive along with God, it was Jesus. Yet he courageously chose to die in our stead and experience the tearing away of his most prized possession…his Father.

The bottom line is that we all experience a sense of being forsaken by God at some point or other. Unbelievers actually experience it their whole lives if they never believe. Suffering is not something just for Christians. All people experience aspects of the Fall and therefore suffer. It's a shame that unbelievers suffer for no reason. The suffering they experience in this life is mere foreshadow of what they will suffer forever. As the book reminds us in chapter twelve, hell is a very real place and has always been maintained by the Christian Church.

The worst aspect of hell is the fact that it isn't Satan who's running things…it's God.

In hell, God won't be the baby Jesus, meek and mild; he will be the hulking male warrior come to do battle. He will be patience exhausted. What could be more horrifying than having as your prosecutor, judge, jury, and jailer a Father whose son you murdered? Someone you've ignored and offended all your days? Some whose mercies you have ungratefully inhaled over a lifetime-like the spoiled kid on Christmas morning tearing through his gifts with no thought about who gave them? Someone whose interests and reputation you have only cared about when it served your purposes? (190)

At first blush, it would seem that God delights in sending people to hell. Scripture paints a different picture. Hell wasn’t even created for people. It was created for the devil and his cohorts. In fact, Adam was destined for eternal life with God, but he failed the probationary test in the Garden of Eden. Had he obeyed, all men could have avoided this whole Fall thing and enjoyed eternal life. But the Fall happened and God’s justice must prevail. “God takes no joy in sending anyone to eternal misery; his Son was a lifeguard urgently warning swimmers of treacherous waters” (191).

Hell is the only option for those who don’t repent and place their trust solely in Christ. It is sad that instead so many people place their trust in themselves and their own abilities to achieve life. People who suffer desperately want to make sense of their sufferings, but they look to themselves rather than to the one whose sufferings make sense of theirs.

Christian suffering, on the other hand, has profound purpose. We can't always pinpoint the purpose, but we know it is there. One thing suffering has produced in my life is a dependence on God and a mistrust of my circumstances, especially when they seem to be going well. I am skeptical when things are going good. Suffering has caused me to enjoy the good times a lot more. It has caused me to weep a lot more when times aren't so good for others. It has caused me to pray and cry out for full redemption to happen.

Suffering has instilled in me the truth about the seriousness of the Fall and the reality that Christ has come to make all things new. I long for newness. I now look for ways that newness shows itself in this life. Seeing redemption brings comfort like nothing else can in the midst of difficulty.

What about the sufferings of unbelievers? The chapter on hell ends with a hopeful note,

But there’s a hidden mercy here. By tasting hell in this life we are driven to ponder what may face us in the next. In this way, our trials may be our greatest mercies. For some of us, they become God’s roadblocks on our headlong rush to hell. The depressed young homemaker reaches for an answer. The cancer-ridden patient makes peace with his Creator. The ladder-climber executive slips and falls into the arms of God. (196)

The question, then, is where our sufferings take us. Do they cause us to ponder what comes in the next life for us? Or do they cause us to become more self-reliant and embittered towards the merciful God who desires that none of us should perish?

The Power of the Word

I am reading through Paul Tripp's Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands for one of my classes this spring semester. It's an excellent book, and something he said in the second chapter really struck a chord with me:

Scripture declares that personal transformation takes place as our hearts are changed by God's grace and our minds are renewed by the Holy Spirit. We don't change anyone; it is the work of the Redeemer. We are simply his instruments.
...
The overall biblical model is this: God transforms people's lives as people bring his Word to others. (p18-19)

This resonates with me for several reasons. First, I have a tendency to think that my capacity to help people change depends on me - on my ability, my training, my knowledge of what to say or do in a given situation. I naturally tend to think that my effectiveness as a Christian hinges on my level of skill, and so I end up viewing myself as a practioner. The problem with this is that a) I'm never going to be prepared for every situation, and b) I'm always going to make mistakes, even where I think I've got it covered. This attitude tends to produce fear and paralysis on my part - I know I'm not up to the task, and so I'm afraid to even try.

Second, what Tripp is pointing out here is that we are not the ones who change people. Christ is. And the way God works - the way he "applies Christ" to create meaningful change in people's lives - is through his Word. This resonates with me because I've been seeing this in my own interaction with others lately. Here's an example.

The other evening an unbelieving friend was over for dinner - I'll call him Brandon. Now, every night after we finish eating, we read a chapter or two of Scripture and talk about it with the kids. And since we had recently finished the book of Job (yes, my kids wanted to read it), now were about four chapters into the next book they were interested in - Revelation.

You can see where this is going. Revelation is fairly straightforward for the first several chapters. But then it starts getting weird. And this particular night we're reading chapter five, about the Lamb being worthy to take the scroll, with its seven seals. So as we are turning to the passage, I just keep thinking, "What on earth is Brandon going to think of this? I mean, he's probably going to ask if I have an autographed copy of Left Behind or something. He's going to think we're whacked, that Christianity is just goofy..."

In reality, however, he didn't think that at all. He was fascinated. He asked tons of questions. And that's when it really hit me - there is something about God's Word that goes where my own words cannot.

Now this is not to say that we don't need to explain the Word to people. But Brandon and I have had many conversations about Christianity - we have talked about doctrine, about salvation, about the church, about my personal experiences with God, all of that. But none of those things move him the way God's word does. I can tell him about God's Word all I want - at the end of the day, though, it seems to be the actual hearing of God's Word that makes the most difference. And I think that's how God intends it.

In his book, Tripp goes on to quote Eph 4:11-16, which starts with this:

It was he [Christ] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up...

Isn't it interesting that each of those roles - apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers - all have a Word related dimension to them?

Now, Tripp goes on to talk about the way we should use the Word - it's not an encyclopedia or self-help manual. It's really more of a story, where Christ is the center of attention - we find ourselves in the story, but it's not primarily about us, about meeting our felt needs.

How we use and apply the Word is certainly important, but I don't really want to tackle that aspect of things right now. Instead, I find myself wanting to think about how to increase the role of the Word in our lives. How do we make the Word play a bigger role than just church on Sundays? How do we go about integrating it into our lives so that as people rub shoulders with us it just naturally oozes out?

Obviously, spending daily personal time in the Word is probably a good place to start. And family time reading around the table wouldn't hurt either. I wonder what else we could do though? I know that when we tend to get together with other believers for fellowship, the Word rarely plays a direct role. Could we think of ways to change that? What ways could we make our lives (particularly as we interact with others) more 'Word centric'?

I'm afraid I don't have a lot of answers here, just questions. But it seems to me that the more we can make the Word a part of our lives, the more it is going to impact us and those around us. I'm not really talking about carting our Bibles around with us every time we run to Starbucks (although that's not necessarily bad). I'm just wondering what we can do in our personal, family, and community spheres of existence to give a greater priority and visibility to God's Word. Anyone have any suggestions?

One of Those Days?

"Sitting in a 3.8 meter sea kayak and watching a four meter
great white approach you is a fairly tense experience."

Having 'one of those days'? Be thankful you're not this guy. Then again, some days, this picture seems to be the story of my life. Thought I'd pass it along for your enjoyment this Friday... :-)
(HT: 'lil brudder Nicholas)

UPDATE: It is legit, and here's the article it came from! (HT: Sam 'the man' Graham)

Something to think about on Feb. 14th

One of the joys of working where I do is that we stop everything we are doing once a week in order to hear God's Word be shared by one of our colleagues. This morning one of our out-of-town staff members shared about Valentines Day. Like only a lawyer can do, the flow of the devotion was structured to create an airtight argument...

She started by telling us about the history of St. Valentine. Apparently the Roman government in the 3rd century outlawed marriage, because the desire of men to be at home with their sweethearts was getting in the way of their military campaigns. One brave bishop named Valentine continued to meet couples in secret in order to honor their desire to obey God in entering the sacrament of matrimony. He was eventually arrested and executed because he refused to renounce his faith.

Then she asked us if we knew what Roman god was affiliated with this holiday as it is currently celebrated. Of course, the answer is Eros, aka Cupid. She pointed out that Cupid's modus operandi is by shooting people in the heart, and when their heart is pierced, they fall in love with whatever they behold. Not exactly the epitome of romance, and not particularly conducive to real faithfulness in one's relationships. "When I'm not near the one I love, I love the one I'm near."

We absolutely cannot rely on this "pierced heart" syndrome to foster true love. She referred to this article by Chuck Colson, who cites author Sheldon Vanauken in debunking this idolatry of feelings. It's a great article; I'd recommend that you read the whole piece (it's short). Here's a little excerpt:

When Christian couples marry, they often say, "till death us do part." But what many unconsciously mean is, "till failing love do us part."

In reality, many people love their spouse, not as a person but as someone who evokes certain feelings. Their wedding vow was not so much to the person as to that feeling.

So when such people fall in love with someone else, they transfer that vow to the other person. And why not? says Vanauken, "If vows are nothing but feelings?"
Vanauken dubs these thrilling emotions "The Sanction of Eros." When John and Diana spoke of the goodness of their love, they were appealing to something higher than judgment, higher even than their own desires. But as Vanauken points out, "the sacred approval they felt could not possibly have come from [God,] whose disapproval of divorce is explicit in Scripture. It is Eros, the pagan god of lovers, who confers this sanction upon the worshippers at his altar."

In conclusion, however, we learned that there IS a pierced heart that we can - and indeed must - trust as the source of our love. "But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed." This heart was not pierced by Cupid's arrow, but by a spear. His love was not the result of being pierced, as is the "love" incited by Cupid's arrows; rather, it resulted in this piercing.

So now when you see the red and white doily hearts of Valentines day, you can think of St. Valentine, who gave his life for the One who taught us to truly love. When you see the arrow shooting through a heart, you can remember that this often speaks of a "love" that does not last, but the spear that pierced Christ's heart teaches us what true love is.

Isn't that profound? I can say that because I didn't come up with it. :) But it sure struck a cord with me -- I have frequently been frustrated by the superficial nature of attraction in our culture, most recently when I watched the movie Alex & Emma. In the movie, Emma scoffs at what Alex considers to be true love, "love at first sight;" he spends most of the movie chasing it, while missing the more substantial - but less flashy - relationship open to him.

For this Valentines Day, my prayer is that we all -- marrieds and singles alike - can keep our eyes on the true source and reason for love.

who do you say that i am?

And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" [28] And they told him, "John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets." [29] And he asked them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Christ." [30] And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.

this passage is mark 8.27-30. i am convinced these days that everyone has an opinion about who jesus is just like they did in the first century a.d. "who do people say that i am?" in today's day and age, we might answer jesus by saying,

some say you were a moral upstanding guy. you were a great religious leader, on par with muhammed, ghandi and buddha. others say you never existed, that the historical data just doesn't stack up.

but you know, the thing with jesus, is that it never matters what others say about him. he confronts us with the real issue, "who do you say that i am?" that's the question we must all be confronted with today. not who is jesus to everyone else so i can jump on the popular band-wagon, but who is jesus to you. the bible doesn't allow us to choose our jesus.

i don't know about you, but i get pretty pissed off when people put labels on me. when people try to classify me according to some stereotype. i want to define who i am and express myself the way i want to express myself. i don't want others telling me who i am. but when it comes to jesus, we all think we can decide for ourselves who he is. what about who he said he was.

interestingly, it wasn't until the very end of his life that jesus actually admitted publicly to being the son of god. but he didn't have to. his life spoke for itself. when peter made the declaration about jesus being the christ, he did so based on what he had been seeing jesus doing. this is why jesus' question is so relevant for us today.

this guy is mysterious. he turned water into wine. he said that he would destroy the temple and raise it up again in three days. he healed sick people. he cast out demons. he walked on water. he calmed the stormy sea. he spoke with authority. he didn't just talk the talk, but he walked the walk. this is the jesus we are confronted with. "who do you say that i am?" we can only answer this in one of two ways:

1. we either have to confess with peter that he is the christ; or
2. we have to say he was a lunatic and liar, but by answering this way, we have to seriously reject the data available.

so, today, think about how you'd answer the question if jesus were to pose it to you, "who do you say that i am?" there's never been a more pivotal question in all of history.

Bono on The Poor

I've posted in the past on what Bono thinks about Grace vs Karma. I recently ran across some of his comments at at the National Prayer Breakfast (HT: Addison Road):

A number of years ago, I met a wise man who changed my life. In countless ways, large and small, I was always seeking the Lord’s blessing. I was saying, you know, I have a new song, look after it… I have a family, please look after them… I have this crazy idea…

And this wise man said: stop. He said, stop asking God to bless what you’re doing. Get involved in what God is doing—because it’s already blessed. Well, God, as I said, is with the poor. That, I believe, is what God is doing. And that is what He’s calling us to do.

I think Bono is on to something here. The Christian calling is not primarily one where we come up with our agenda (to help God out), and then ask him to bless it. Rather, it first and foremost involves looking around us to see where God is already working, and going there with him.

In other words, it means reorienting our lives around his redemptive work.

Now in Bono's case, I'd probably disagree slightly over his application - not that we shouldn't help the poor, but rather on the nature of what that help looks like. I don't think God's work precludes humanitarian aid - rather, it goes far beyond it.

Jesus did not come simply to solve peoples' hunger issues. Instead, he cames to us in our hunger and thirst (and make no mistake, we all hunger and thirst for something) and he tells us that these things point to something greater - a hunger and thirst which can only be satisfied in him. But Jesus doesn't stop there - he meets our physical needs as a sign and token that he will also meet our spiritual appetites as well.

So as Christians, we should agree with Bono in his call to address global poverty and sickness. At the same time, we must go further, to remind people that simply meeting the physical issues is not enough. We can only find true satisfaction and fulfillment in life when we deal with our spiritual hunger.

This is how God designed it. And this is where God is working. He is working to redeem impovereished people, and the primary context of that redemptive work is the church living missionally in society.

So Bono's method (do what God is doing, because that work is already blessed) is spot on. But his application falls a little short, because he hasn't looked closely enough at how God is meeting the needs of the poor (by using his church to build the church, through missional, redemptive, gospel-driven life in the midst of an unbelieving society).

This method is at the heart of how we think about church planting - we see God coming missionally and redemptively to a world of unbelief, and so we see the role of the church to live missionally and redemptively in our own local worlds of unbelief.

Like I said at the beginning - I think Bono's on to something here. After all, unbelief is the deepest form of poverty.

Wine for Communion

Jeremy Huggins has tickled my fancy once again. If you're going to use wine for communion (which we will), you might want to take his advice... (which is both timely and hilarious).

Gospel Interruptions

So tonight I am sitting here trying to finish up a couple of papers which are due tomorrow, when Sundance Sally walks into my room and says, "Dad, I'm not sure I know how to share the gospel..."

Note to self: when your 10 year old daughter says something like this, it's generally a good idea to drop whatever you're doing and talk for a little while.

And that's what we did. We talked about the gospel, about what it means to be a Christian (to be a follower of Christ), about how the only way God will accept us is if we are connected to Christ, as his adopted brother or sister, and how the only way that will happen is if we acknowledge we're screwed up (repent) and put all our trust and confidence in him (believe).

Repent and believe the good news (Mk 1:15) - that's the heart of the gospel, really.

And then we talked about how so many people are really putting their trust in something else - in their own goodness, or in some universal benevolence of God. But that's not the picture Scripture paints of God, nor is it the picture Scripture paints of us. Good news isn't good if we won't acknowledge the badness of our sin.

What a privilege to have your daughter asking you how you to share her faith. Somehow, it kind of puts everything in perspective. And frankly, I need that. I need the perspective that comes from the Gospel, from relationships. I need my daughter to stir my faith even as I strive to stir hers.

Her closing words were great: "I think I'm going to like being a church planter's daughter... I'm going to get lot's of opportunities to share the gospel..." Preach it, sister, you preach it.

And then as she headed to her bedroom for the night, she piped up with one last question: "Can I share the gospel even with adults?" Yeah sweetie, even with adults.

Thank you Jesus for touching my daughter's heart. Please continue to touch mine also...