"Before the Throne of God Above"

Before the throne of God above,

I have a strong and perfect plea. (Heb 4:15-16)
A great High Priest whose Name is Love (Heb 4:14)
Who ever lives and pleads for me. (Heb 7:25)
My name is graven on His hands, (Isa 49:16)
My name is written on His heart.
I know that while in Heaven He stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart. (Rom 8:34)

When Satan tempts me to despair (Luke 22:31-32)
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look and see Him there (Acts 7:55-56)
Who made an end of all my sin. (Col 2:13-14)
Because the sinless Savior died
My sinful soul is counted free.
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me. (Rom 3:24-26)

Behold Him there the risen Lamb, (Rev 5:6)
My perfect spotless righteousness, (1 Cor 1:30; 1 Peter 1:18-19)
The great unchangeable I AM, (Heb 13:8; John 8:58)
The King of glory and of grace,
One in Himself I cannot die.
My soul is purchased by His blood, (Acts 20:28)
My life is hid with Christ on high, (Col 3:3)
With Christ my Savior and my God! (Tit 2:13)

The hymn written by Charitie Lees Bancroft is so beautifully moving, and as Chuck Bumgardener points out in his blog, there is soooo much scriptural truth woven through the poem (I've pasted his references above).

Christ's substitution for us on the cross is an awe-full truth that never will cease to move me, and the beauty of His love and grace leaves this purchased sinner speechless, except praise and glory be to God!

Grace Abounds

This is a link to a 12-minute sermonette by my brother Asher, titled "Grace Abounds," a very liberating analysis of Romans 5:20-21, where Paul displays the wonderful and necessary balance of God's Law to humble the proud and God's Gospel to lift the humble! If the embedded link doesn't work, you may listen to his powerful message here.

This Chick Digs Scars

2 Corinthians 5: 1-10 - 1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. 2 Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, 3 because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. 4 For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.

6 Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. 7 For we live by faith, not by sight. 8 We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

This past year the Lord has taught me a lot. Not as much in means of intellect or theology as application and practice. Being an athlete, I’ve experienced episodes of pain, from broken bones to shin splints to muscle spasms, but it was ironically after my athletic career that I had a bout with real chronic pain. This past calendar year I had chronic fatigue that doctors couldn’t figure out, ovarian cysts that are still causing me pain, Morton’s Neuroma in my foot and undefined pain in my hip. that halted my running, and, of course, two shoulder surgeries. Prior to 2010, my health insurance liked me. Now, not so much.

Through what has seemed like wave after wave of “what else could go wrong with this stinking body?” the Lord has been faithful, and all this has driven me to Him as my sole comforter and hope. Some positive aspects of these trials include:

1. Recognition of the frailty of this earthly tent. At the ripe old age of 25, I’m reminded that this ain’t no heavenly body, and aches and pains make me even more grateful that this isn’t all I have to look forward to. In a weird way I’m simultaneously more cognizant about my body (multiple issues does that) and yet less focused on it superficially (which is a big struggle for me).
2. Empathy for others in pain. I had never understood how much pain consumes you and changes your personality. When so much is going wrong and you’re scheduling a multitude of doctor visits and various tests and no one seems to believe that you’re really feeling what you know you are, it’s hard to stay sane, positive, and unselfish. Before all this, my heart was pretty callous toward people plagued with these kinds of trials. Now, hopefully, I can be more help to others in need.
3. Choosing joy and hope over worry. I can’t really put a check in this box yet, but I know this is something God is still working in me. To me, the unknown is the worst part of health issues, and like I stated above, it’s hard to take your mind off it. Indefinite MRIs, doctors who misread ultrasounds and then tell you “Eh, it’s probably no big deal,” and multiple blood tests that show no reason why you feel this way are all frustrating. This makes me feel terrible for people who have nothing else to live for but the here and now, for I don’t have to read far into the scriptures to return to the joy of my salvation.
4. Rejoicing in the drudgery. And by drudgery here I mean the slow and steady road of recovery. Right now I’m thankful that I’m not trying to get back to a sport, because shoulder surgery (especially mine where they redid everything except the bones) is the most difficult surgery to rehabilitate (because it has the most range of motion and is a smallish joint). I can see why many people become depressed in Physical Therapy (it’s been three months and I can only lift three pounds… are you kidding me?!), but I’m so thankful that I have a great PT and that self-discipline is my middle name – or OCD, whatever. Needless to say, PT is fun for me, even though it sucks, and I try to spread a little joy and humor to those who are going through the Valley of Death-by-Endless-Rehab with me.
5. My husband and family have provided me with so much encouragement, stability, and Kleenex. Trials bring us closer together, showing us how we really do and should depend on each other.

Physical difficulties and victories can teach us so much. I think the main struggle is that we tend to make bodily circumstances more than what they are. There’s so much we learn through athletics, through pain, through triumph, through sickness, through healing, through scars, that we can derive metaphors and lessons for life, but the physical is not life itself, just part of it. Adverse physical circumstances should draw us closer to the One who makes life more than just physical.

Abortion: a not-so-silent killer anymore

I read on AlbertMohler.com that The New York Times reported on January 6, 2011 that the abortion rate in New York City is about 40 percent of all pregnancies and almost 60% of African American pregnancies…insert time to double-take… That means on average, more than two of every five pregnant women in the world’s most recognizable city choose to kill their babies. This is by far the most tragic statistic I’ve probably ever read.

I recall a conversation wherein my dad described abortion as the most unnatural and inhumane action a parent could ever perform. What is more basic than a parent’s instinct to protect her young? That’s even the most fundamental intuition among animals, since the survival of one’s offspring is essential to a species. A parent’s choosing her own life (especially when it is some ridiculously trivial aspect of life, like career, for example) over the existence of her child, is backwards, inhumane, and ultimately completely depravedly selfish. In no other case does a law permit a “choice” to end another human being’s life without his or her consent.

In October 2010, Dr. Mohler blogged about Dr. Mildred Jefferson, the first black woman to graduate from the Harvard Medical School, who was outspokenly against abortion and Roe v. Wade during her lifetime. She once summarized her sense of urgency to reverse the infamous case with these words: “I am at once a physician, a citizen and a woman, and I am not willing to stand aside and allow this concept of expendable human lives to turn this great land of ours into just another exclusive reservation where only the perfect, the privileged and the planned have the right to live.” In America, Planned Parenthood began because of the eugenics movement – the idea that people could breed a more superior race by preventing pregnancies and births of “less fit” the genes – a philosophy that had its roots in (though is also a distortion of) Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection, and a movement that was the basis of the Nazi Party’s practices in Germany.

Since abortion is the termination of an unwanted pregnancy, the real problem is, of course, adultery. People want to sin without consequences, so they try to kill and bury the consequence as if that itself will not have additional consequences.

That people can end the lives of their unborn children is unbelievable. That physicians who have taken an oath to “do no harm” can knowingly kill a living human being is unthinkable. That murder has been legalized by authorities who have sworn to protect the lives of citizens is deplorable. That the public has become desensitized to this wretched and foreboding practice is alarming.

What can we do to help those who are deceived into believing abortion is acceptable, or even the only way to “deal with” conceiving a child?

John MacArthur Rebukes Joel Osteen

“When men and women are awakened to the facts of judgment and their own sin, they become eager listeners to the Good News of the Savior who brings forgiveness. There is grace in such preaching because any Christ whom men receive without being in the wilderness, without the stern preacher of sin and judgment, is but half a Christ, and the vital half is missing.” - Kent Hughes

My husband Chris showed me this video clip of John MacArthur, renowned Bible expositor and preacher, who I've been listening to via my dad for as long as I can remember. MacArthur is never one to beat around the bush because, as he says it, his prerogative is to present and defend the true gospel of Jesus Christ. He rarely publicly rebukes specific false preachers, and he does so only after they have refused his private counsel to preach the Word, lest they keep leading others astray. I recently listened to an interview on apostasy where MacArthur explained that since he was younger, he has been extremely distressed by friends that have "abandoned" the faith because they were deceived - whether by self or a false teacher - and therefore he aims to expose false teachers in order to protect people from their lies, because the followers of these distorters think they're christians when they are not.

In this clip, MacArthur goes so far as to call Osteen and others like him "satanic", which is shocking, but someone needs to say it, for anyone presenting a half-gospel is leading his followers to hell, and therefore the term is fitting. Osteen would be a fine secular motivational speaker, and seems like a great guy, but he distorts the Bible as if it's all about our present comfort, trying make us bigger and God smaller. I've watched Osteen sermons on TV where he diminishes the main points of Jesus's birth, ministry, and death to some weak self-help example instead of (like the Bible) proclaiming the Messiah's redemption of sinful man. Chris can vouch that he made me vow to never watch Osteen again because I've almost damaged our TV by hurling things in the direction of Osteen's image.

Without exposing sin, there is no gospel. Without a God who detests sin, there is no gospel. Without exposing the therefore consequences of sin, there is no gospel. Without highlighting God Himself becoming man, yet without sin, paying the consequences of our sin for us, and abating the wrath of a justly angry God, there is no gospel.

Those who merely believe that God is here to make our lives better do not believe in the God of the Bible, which is a huge tragedy. Those who "receive" Christ without the stirred preaching of sin and judgment, and therefore have not repented from their sins, turned from their ways, and sought to follow Him though it cost them every worldly thing, have not received the gift of Christ offered in the Bible. For if you don't think you need to be saved from anything, how can you be saved at all? A "half" gospel is a damning one, for it produces deceived people who are then unreceptive to what the Bible says about real things like sin and death and hell and a just Judge. They'd "rather" believe in a fluffy, fake god who accepts people the sinful way they are, requires nothing of them, and will give them any trite thing they want in order to have their "best life now", which (J.M. so perceptively puts it) means there is either is no heaven or they don't care to go there.

Chris and others who have posted this video have received some harsh criticism by people who incorrectly interpret scripture that we should not judge others to mean that we should blindly and indiscernibly let distorters lead our friends astray by tickling their ears with hollow, false, worldly hope. Other critics claim the postmodern ideal that no one knows truth, so therefore Osteen's interpretation of the Bible just as valid as MacArthur's... to which I just laugh at the ignorance. There's a difference between opinion and research, and, as I said before, MacArthur is one of the most well-known (world-wide) preachers for how well he teaches the Bible, verse by verse, word by word, every Sunday. Few people in the world today know the Bible as well as MacArthur. As lastly, to repeat just as a disclaimer, MacArthur rarely rebukes other pastors, his sermons are always straight from scripture (as I just said), and calling those who are in error to repentance and truth is the most loving gesture any Christian can perform. May God forgive us all from vices we commit or say, and may we daily seek knowledge and understanding of Who He has revealed Himself to be in his precious Word.

Resolution 2010

"Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life." - Jonathan Edwards

It's a new year, which means another (probably failed) attempt to resurrect my blog. Maybe if I keep my blogs short, sweet, and to the point, it wouldn't be so daunting a task, but I'll be the first to admit that that's near impossible.

New Year's also mean resolutions, and who is better at that than the resolver himself, Jonathan Edwards. When I read his "Resolutions" #7 above, I immediately sank into a pensive, even melancholy state, and thought on how trite all my day-to-day business seems. Wake up, shower, do PT exercises (if anyone reads this who doesn't know me - I had shoulder surgery [maybe could've used that for a blog - eh, maybe later]), eat oatmeal, go to school, come home, work out, make dinner, do housewifey stuff, do PT exercises, read maybe a word before crashing into slumber. Bleh!

Goodness, gracious, did I do a single thing today that I would do if it were the last hour of my life? I wasn't too fond of ol' Jon for a moment as I jealously considered that it was his stinking job to share the gospel every day and he had a wife to take care of everything, and I mean everything, else. I wonder if he'd say he wanted Sarah to have the same resolution: "Nope, honey, I wouldn't be washing diapers for our 37 kids if I had one more hour to live!" Ok, self-pity mode subsided with that image.

So then I started to consider the overall intent through most of Jon's resolutions, notably #6: "to live with all my might, while I do live, " and especially #1, which is repeatedly echoed: "Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God's glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now, or never so many myriad's of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general. Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, how many and how great soever." When considered in light of Colossians 3:23, "Whatever you do, do it with all your heart, as serving the Lord and not men," it became clearer to me that it's how I serve others joyfully through my day to day tasks (and even more so when we someday have children) that brings glory to God. It's not so much that every second I need to so something spectacular, as if I'm closing my earthly chapter with a bang, but that each second I do whatever I'm doing to glorify God and bring others closer to Him.

So that's my resolution. It's not exactly measurable, except by honest assessment, and I know I will fail at it more often than not, but a heart that delights in the Lord is always something to strive for.

Tolstoy on Free Will

I had a great conversation with a colleague and fellow Christian today on the idea of free will. He, being a closet-Calvinist (what I call all Christians who do not yet realize that they are Calvinists), reasoned, as most pre-Calvinists do, that he chose God, and must have chosen God, for forced love is not love at all. Therefore, his un-forced love for God must mean his will is free to choose heaven or hell. There were more good points to his argument, but that was the thrust of it.

I completely agree that all people have the responsibility to choose whom they serve, just as it is our responsibility to keep all of God’s commandments. However, the built-in problem is that we are sinners unable to follow all God’s commandments, unable to choose what is good. I agree that I chose (and choose everyday) to follow Christ, but my question is: What made me choose Christ?

That’s where we get to the heart of the free will argument: no will is truly free. Every single choice I make, from the clothes I wear to the food I eat, I chose because of some other factor beside myself. Example: I wore a skirt today because I must look professional for my job, the weather is nice outside, I bought the skirt for ½ price, knee-length A-line skirts are in style (tho’ when are they not?), it looks good on me, it goes with the shirt color I feel like wearing, etc…… And the same list of prescripters could be given for the shirts I wore, the food I ate, and list goes on. For every decision I make.

Leo Tolstoy, in his masterpiece, War and Peace, (which I finished, finally, a week ago, yay!) discusses at length the notion of free will, though not from a theological standpoint (he makes that clear in the epilogue), but solely an historical one. He uses the same line of reasoning I demonstrated above, though much more pointedly, that though people FEEL that they are free to choose whatever they wish, their choices are actually governed by countless outside agents. His main analogy is of a person dropping his hand to his side, as if saying, ‘See, I just chose to do that of my own free will.’ Tolstoy argues that you dropped it in the direction you did because it was free of obstacles that might hurt your arm, because that way was most comfortable to you, and because you don’t have a prior arm injury that would’ve prompted you to otherwise drop your other arm, foot, or anything else. And let’s not forget that fantastic law that you’re depending on to make your “choice”: gravity.

I’m pretty sure that this line of reasoning is what made his novel so controversial: he quite adamantly downplays Napoleon’s impact on his own reign, going so far to say that Napoleon wasn’t that great of a general/emperor/war expert/whatever, but that really he was just in the right place at the right time and the people under him would surely have done the same things no matter who was leading. Quite a scandalous notion, having written this about a generation after Napoleon’s career, but the ideas are very logical, in that by the time the one general (the farthest removed person from the battlefields) hears of what is going on with the millions on the various battlefields, synthesizes the various reports, figures out a plan of action, and orders it of the various messengers who then take it back to the various battlefields to the millions, the time would have already passed for the necessary decision and Napoleon’s decrees would be moot. So therefore Napoleon really didn’t lead his troops when they were in battle; he was just an observer, being (as Tolstoy puts it) a pawn of fate or God.

If even the greatest (or the perceivably greatest) among us do not have a truly free will, then how much less do we normal people have one. The last words of his last epilogue frame the reason why people invented – and why they cannot let go of – the notion of free will: we trust our feelings more than our reason. Reason clearly tells us that every decision we make has a cause; it’s not just generated within us at random. Likewise, the Bible clearly shows God to be a God who chooses, from Jacob (“… whom I loved and Essau I hated…”) to Israel (“Mine elect” to Christ (“chosen before the foundations of the world” as the way to salvation) to each Christian. The theological idea of free will was invented long after the scriptures were written and considered heresy by the Christian Church many many times. And yet, for some reason, people would rather hold firm to an extrascriptural philosophy that elevates man and belittles God, and quite frankly all but claims salvation to be a work of man. Why do people do this? Because it fits with their feelings.

Tolstoy compares this to Copernicus’s discovery that the Earth moves around the still Sun. People refused to accept this because “the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the earth lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth’s fixity and the motion of the planets, so in history [and theology] the difficulty of recognizing the subjection of personality to the laws of space, time, and cause, lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the independence of one’s own personality. But as in astronomy the new view said: ‘It is true that we do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at laws,’ so also in history the new view says: ‘It is true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our freewill we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause [and in theology, the work of the Holy Spirit], we arrive at laws.’

“In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness of an unreal immovility in sace and to recognize a motion we did not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of which we are not conscious” (War and Peace, 1306).

Don’t trust your feelings, for they often tell you what you want to be so, where as your reason, through meditation on scripture, will tell you what God wills to be so.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom

King Soloman, the wisest man who ever lived, stated, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” I usually pass over this statement with affirmation but little thought, but something caused me to ponder over it a while today: that is completely the opposite of how most people today treat God. I remember when the “Jesus is my homeboy” shirts came out and was appauled that this style followed the doctrine that has been harped on from too many a-pulpit for the last umpteen years: the familiarity (sans-holiness) of God. We are encouraged not to fear God, but quite the opposite, really; namely the errantly overused saying that He accepts me “just as/where I am.” We make up a false god who is all about us and doesn’t care what we think about Him, when clearly the God of The Bible requires that we desire Him above everything (even ourselves).

Because I think this heresy has trickled down into our family practices – and thus giving me students who have no concept or fear of authority – I often analogize this by God calling Himself our Father. I have a great dad. Probably the best. I respect him, love him, try my best to obey him, seek his council, and love to spend time with him. I know that everything he does, he has my best interest in mind. Do I fear him? Heck, yes, I do! (More so when I was under his roof, of course, but that’s the vantage point from which I’m drawing this analogy.) Why do I fear my dad if I know he loves me? My dad wants the best for me, demands my very best, and has the power and authority to punish me when I don’t do what is right. When I don’t give my best or make a poor decision, he responds with anger and consequences. Because he loves me.

Why do people buck at authority? Because they think they know better than the authority does, I suppose. But though you may be more intelligent than government officials, administration, or even your own parents, do you have the audacity to say you have more intelligence that the God who invented the idea of intellect? Even more so than my human father, our heavenly Father demands perfection and has justice on His side to eternally punish those who aren’t perfect. That’s pretty fearsome. And it’s not until one understands the righteousness God demands and the justice He pours out on all who fall short, that a person can then understand God Himself becoming one of us and undergoing that punishment on our behalf. That is why the fear of the Lord is the BEGINNING of wisdom; it is the beginning of the Gospel of Good News in Jesus Christ, our Savior.

Archetypal Wonderings

The other day, I was talking with a friend who showed me a short film he was in, where a girl dreams that he overcomes many obstacles in quest for her. I made the observation that it’s true: all girls want to be rescued. Each woman wants a man to be willing to fight a battle for her, pursue her at any cost to him, slay the dragon, climb the tower, and rescue her from the evil witch’s spell. All those Disney movies didn’t make bank for nothing. The same storyline that we find over and over in fairytales, legends, and folklore across the globe is written on our hearts for a reason. It’s the gospel.

I first heard the word “archetype” when I was assigned as a summer project for my preAP 10th grade English class a paper on the archetypes in The Lord of the Rings’s prequel, The Hobbit, and in the Star Wars trilogy. My research of the assignment’s prompt led me to the Latin roots: arch, meaning ‘first’, and typ, meaning ‘print’, or of course, ‘kind’. So an archetype is the first of its kind, or really, a model for a reoccurring character-type, symbol, situation, etc. For example, in Star Wars, Darth Vader is an archetypal Satan (devil/evil) character, the light saber is an archetypal symbol of magic/knowledge/power, and Luke goes on an archetypal quest of self-discovery while in pursuit of The Force. You get the idea.

It has since intrigued me that most – arguably all – archetypes are not confined to culture, but span across the globe, which has caused many scholars to inquire of the human collective conscious, or subconscious if you’re Freud. Why do we all have these same ideas of truth, beauty, love, fulfillment, etc? I would argue that the best archetypes are written on our hearts because they are a portrait of the gospel.

The ‘plot’, if you will, of the gospel (put in fairytale-ish terms), starts with the King choosing a bride, for His Son (Eph 1:4). As all princess brides should be, she is to be pure, beautiful, and faithful. Of course, it doesn’t take long into the Bible to see that she (we) mess that up, and through evil’s deception, she is placed under a curse and unable to save herself (hence, damsel in distress). Like Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, et al., we are unresponsive, “dead in [our] trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1). Here’s were the climax of the story comes: our Prince, Jesus Christ, despite our imperfections and even outright rejection of Him, tackles unfathomable obstacles to get to us. He leaves His throne and condescends to humanity, he blamelessly overcomes fleshly sin, and he even defeats the real archetype of evil himself, Satan. But this tale doesn’t end there because He still has to release the curse’s grip on His beloved. He buys back her purity by giving her his own through taking her sin and shame on Himself on the cross, dying the death she is sentenced to, and receiving the wrath of a holy God on Himself. Prince Charming can’t go this far, though, because if he dies, then the princess would have no one to marry; so to die for the princess is noble, but it doesn’t make for a good story. However, Christ our Savior did die, and then rose from the dead because sin and the grave had been conquered; our debt has been paid in full, “tetelestai” (John 19:30). The princess (believer) is saved from evil and free to marry her Prince, sin/death is conquered, and the Prince is exalted.

Sadly, I didn’t make this connection during the conversation, as I rarely do, but thought about it late into the night afterwards. What if the Author and Perfector of our faith planted the archetypal storyline into our “collective subconscious” to preach the beauty of His salvation to our aesthetic psyche?

Meekness vs. Passion

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5)

I’ve always had a little trouble reconciling the notion of meekness with my inherent and cultivated passionate personality. Dictionary.com defines meekness as being “patient; docile; overly submissive,” which in my mind never fit with the athletic mentality of confidence and zealous exertion. The adage, “Meekness is not weakness, but power under control,” helped the issue, but still didn’t solidify anything for me. But John MacArthur, in his Grace to You study of the beatitudes, shed light on this seeming controversy, and pointed out how one can be both meek and fervent.

The key is the object of your passion. If you are passionate about yourself – your promotion, your recognition, your success – then of course you are not humble, submissive, or gentle, and therefore not meek. If, on the other hand, you are passionate about God and His glory, then you can be humble about yourself and assertive about Him. Jesus was the perfect embodiment of meekness. He did not care how people affronted, ridiculed, beat, abused, or even killed him personally. He took it. However, when people were blaspheming God (i.e., the temple incident in Mark 11), He retaliated with righteous anger. So we are to be passionate, just not about ourselves, but about God’s Holy Name.

This visual helps me so much because I’ve always found it easier to focus on what TO do, rather than what NOT to do. Before, meekness always seemed like negative (don’t promote yourself, don’t desire your own way above others’, etc.), and it does carry that, but it also carries the positive: focus on God, His holiness, and what He deserves. I deserve nothing, which is why I should not promote myself, and also why I should be patient in affliction. He deserves everything, which is why I should be zealous about proclaiming His truth, and give my all to protect the sacredness of His renown.

Meekness is an abandonment of self for an adherence to God.

The Shanks Produce Patience and Therefore Godliness

“Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain. You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.” ~James 5:7-8

Last week, the sermon on James 5:7-11, struck a chord with me as I was thinking about its application in my life. In our Bible study the following Friday, we were sharing life examples of patience – or lack thereof – and my example of endurance came out all wrong (as my stories often do), and so I’d like to take a stab at achieving its point by writing it down…

When I arrived on the OSU campus as a freshman, my golf game was at its all-time high. I made the traveling squad for the first tournament, to my coach’s shock and seeming dismay, and sparing the details, it all went downhill from there. I don’t know if it was pressure or voodoo, but at the NCAA Preview, I caught some strand of shank-itis (if you don't know what a "shank" is, look it up on youtube) that stayed in my system for about a year and a half.

…This is where I lost the group to whom I was telling the story, for they thought that they needed to comfort me in my golf-esteem. It’s okay – I know I was and am a decent golfer who can beat the Joe Shmo who didn’t spend every daylight-filled minute outside of class on the links. So back to my story…

My first year and a half of college was pretty much miserable. Everyday I’d spend hours shanking ball after ball in front of coaches and teammates – which I’ve tried to equivocate to other sports, and it’d be like a runner tripping over his left heel. Every step. And 4-6 hours spent on the course each day adds up to many painful hours. My boyfriend of 2 ½ years and I broke up, and this made me realize that I had virtually no girlfriends. I never felt so alone and miserable.

Here’s where the patience part comes in. Now, one could say that I endured this trial, which I did of course, but I think, upon last week’s sermon, that the defining mark of true godly patience is one’s attitude. During this time, I was a speaker for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), and, as we’re supposed to, I used my story as my message when speaking to junior high and high school student-athletes. I often focused my message on James 1:2; “… count it all joy when you fall into various trials…” and encouraged them to seek the Lord when things of this world weren’t going the way we wanted them to, and that we must trust that the Lord is using this trial to produce something greater in us. It was good stuff for an 18 year old, but my idea of the “good” that would come out of my trial was that my golf game would come around, I'd win the NCAAs, etc. Hindsight of 5 years shows me just how foolish and narrow-minded my scope was. The idea wasn’t completely selfish: I wanted to be one of those success stories that FCA eats up, and I knew my success could be used to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. Even so, my endurance through shank-ville was motivated by a Joel Osteen-esque, very worldly ambition: God’s allowing this trial in golf, so surely He’s going to bless my golf game if I’m faithful to Him.

The amazing part is that despite my idiocy in what I thought His plan for me was, God did use this time for my good and His glory, and of course golf trophies were not a part of either. Through becoming an English major, I was blessed with the opportunity to study Jonathan Edwards and many other reformed thinkers, which spilled over into what I read and studied on my own time. In the lowest time of my life in many respects, God revealed Himself to me in ineffable ways of such depth that required absolute dependence on and abandon to Him. He wanted me broken. He wanted me to understand that I bring nothing but my sinful self to the cross, and I guess I needed to feel abject humility in a worldly sense before I could fathom it in a spiritual manner.

In many places of scripture we find that it is God who reveals the major truths to our dead hearts and even the smallest tidbits of doctrine, and I think many times that is because it is He alone Who knows what circumstances will prepare our hearts to really absorb each piece of truth about Himself. He knows what will take a belief from an intellectual accent to a heartfelt conviction, and He can procure that encounter. He alone can break a person to the point that they see the beauty and majesty of the doctrines of grace, and though I had always professed their biblical adherence, it was not until I was in my worldly lowest of lows did I realize that the glory of God is more rightly seen from our lowest vantage point.

Hence, patience is a willingness to submit my will for God’s will, to understand and trust that: a) He is omnipotent and has the power to do anything He pleases, b) He is loving and will do what is best for me, and c) what is best for me is to become more like Christ.

Thank you to any who endured this blurb. I pray that you are blessed in your patience with my rambling, and I hope it made some sense!

100% Whole Wheat

My multi-talented husband lightened the picture of Joy and me... Thanks Beeb!







I've been thinking on the parable of the wheat and the tares because MacArthur's The Gospel According to Jesus gave me a new perspective on the story. Matthew 13:24-30 -

• "The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the lade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, the appeared the tares also. So the servants of teh householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said to them: an enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay, lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: ad in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn.

What I learned from John MacArthur is that people/preachers often use this parable to condone unbelievers within a congregation. Because Jesus later explains to the disciples that the field represents the World in the parable, the field should not mean the church or the body of Christ. Also, MacArthur points out that this is more a warning about people who look like or profess to be christians but really are not. Tares completely resemble wheat, but when harvested, they have an empty hull. Thus, they are like professing christians who maybe look and sound like the sheep they are emulating, but they produce no fruit (they are empty). To relate to the parables surrounding this one, they may spring up quickly but without root, and thus become scorched under the heat of persecution; or they may not be like the man who sold everything he had buy the field with treasure or the pearl of great price.

The interesting thing to me about this parable is that all believers are (or at least appear to be?) tares (spiritually , unregenerate, sons of iniquity, broods of vipers, etc) before the Holy Spirit rebirths our soul. The Lord alone knows who the Father has given Him to become wheat, so when the servants ask Him if they can go gather up the tares before the harvest, He doesn't let them because He has miracles yet to perform in people's hearts.

Conclusion? Examine yourself, that you are 100% whole grain wheat (not just enriched flour!). Don't be surprised at the empty hulls around you, for there seem to be so many these days, and therefore fill your speech to all with the gospel of Truth. Other conclusions?

The Gospel According to Jesus

Wow... this is the best book on the gospel that I have ever read. Granted, I don't have the biggest theological bookshelf out there, but I truly give this book a standing ovation. John MacArthur spells out through scripture what this century has abandoned in the gospel: repentance. True repentance, given to a believer by the Holy Spirit opens the regenerate to see who Jesus Christ really is, how ugly of a sinner the person is, and that he must trust in Christ and surrender to Him in obedience. A professing Christian can be assured in his salvation not by a card he signed or an aisle he walked down, but by a turning from sin, a hatred of sin, and a passion for following and obeying Christ.

While church-shopping at college, I had an encounter with the pastor of the college-student-magnet-church during Sunday School. He was teaching from the gospel John about John the Baptist's message of repentance, which the pastor said only means "to believe." Even though it was my first Sunday in the church and I wasn't really quite sure if Sunday School was a discussion-format or a lecture, I raised my hand. "Sir, doesn't 'repent' mean 'to turn'?" I asked. "Well no," he explains, " the Greek word here means only to change your mind about something, thus believe." Now I was only 18, but give me a break, I grew up with decent teaching (see former blogs about my dad), so I asked him that if it's just an intellectual matter, why does Jesus tie all these actions to it (ie, forsake all others, deny yourself, sell everything you have and follow Him, etc)?

He gave me some high-falooting answer, I'm sure, but all I remember is how my face was on fire, sitting next to these college people I didn't know, arguing with the pastor. Believe it or not, confrontation used to scare the bageebies out of me (that's before I entered the blogosphere). Turns out, that pastor went to Dallas Theological Seminary, apparently a huge proponent of his stance on repentance. Charles Ryrie said that repentance is "'a false addition to faith" when made a condition for salvation, except 'when [repentance is] understood as a synonym for faith'" (177). Repentance = faith? As a grammarian, that's a little odd.

• MacArthur rebuts with: "Repentence is not simply a mental activity; genuine repentance involves the intellect, emotions, and will [as Jesus uses the word in context]. Geerhardus Voswrote: 'Our Lord's idea of repentance is as profound an comprehensive as his conception of righteousness. Of the three words that are used in the Greek gospels to describe the process, one emphasizes the emotional element of regret, sorrow over the past evil course of life, metamelomai; Matt. 21:29-32; a second expresses reversal of the entire mental attitude, metanoeo [I think this is the one the pastor above was referring to], Matt.12:41; Luke 11:32; 15:7,10; the third denotes a change in the direction of life, one goal being substituted for another, epistrephomai; Matt.13:15 (and paralels); Luke 17:4; 22:32. Repentance is not limited to any single faculty of the mind: it engages the entire man, intellect, will and affections... again in the new life which follows repentance the absolute supremacy of God is the controlling principle. He who repents turns away form the service of mammon and self to the service of God" (180).
  

Too bad I couldn't quote all that back then when I needed it. Oh well, you live and learn, I guess. :) I'll try to write more on the issue later, as my mind is just overflowing with joy over it. But first, one of the main oppositions to "lordship salvation," as this idea is nowadays called, is that people deem repentance and sanctification (the process of a believer becoming more like Christ) a work, which if true, would make this idea salvation by works. Completely not a "work" of an individual by himself, for it is the Spirit who leads me to repentance. Repentance and faith are more or less two sides of the same coin in that they are both given to the new born at his new birth.

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them" (Eph 2:8-10.

Quoteworthy

"If a profession of faith in Christ does not grow out of a deep sense of lostness; if it is not accompanied by an inner conviction of sin; if it does not include a tremendous desire for the Lord to cleanse and purify and lead; if it does not involve a willingness to deny self, to sacrifice, and to suffer for Christ's sake, then it is without a proper root. It is ony a matter of time before the flourishing growth withers and dies." (John MacArthur, The Gospel According to Jesus, 130)

I've been a fan of MacArthur since borrowing my dad's tapes of Grace to You back in the 90's (I think he has GTY tapes from the 70's!), but I've never read his quintessential book: The Gospel According to Jesus. So I'm about halfway through it now, and though I've heard most of these ideas before in his sermons, a person could not pay heed to them enough.

I think the main idea of this book (as much as I've read so far) is captured in the excerpt above. This book has been deemed a treatise on the concept of "Lordship salvation," which refutes the present day "easy believism" that reduces salvation to mere believing and no repentance/submission. Evangelism in the last 100 years or so has produced a crop of fruitless who think that Jesus is just something they add to their life to make it better. It seems that I've been frustrated for as long as I can remember with preachers who "share the gospel" without confronting a person's sin (which is their need for a Savior in the first place!). Acknowledging sin is humbling, but that's precisely the point - we need to be humbled to view ourselves correctly in relation to a perfect and holy God. No talk of sin = no talk of salvation, because then there's nothing to be saved from!

More on this book later when I finish.

Sidenote: This summer I'm alternating between novels I've always wanted to read and Christian works, because if I didn't make myself read for fun, I'd only read for what will help me grow in my walk with the Lord. Well, I've wanted to read Joseph Heller's Catch-22 since high school, and though it was a VERY entertaining read filled with wit and vocabulary that sent me to dictionary.com every page, the overall themes felt like a Voltaire novel (bleak, depressing, 'life sucks' kind of stuff).

The story follows Yossarian, a bombardier in WWII, in a tailspin of absurdities, skepticism, and self-gratification because everybody is only looking out for himself and therefore you must do the (the idea of integrity is shown to be completely comical idea). The book is filled with no-win situations (which its title now defines) and just when you think it can't get any worse, something else completely ridiculous happens (which is why I liken it to Voltaire's Candide). I can completely understand the mentality (outside of a Christian worldview) especially during this post-war era (which completely fascinates me by-the-way) because the bottom dropped out from under everyone just when they thought things were getting better.

After The Gospel According to Jesus, I plan on reading Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.

Compassion Kills

Compassion is definitely something I should work on. This was pointed out to me in Mike's comment on my last post. It was also pointed out to me in a Ligonier Ministries podcast that I listened to today about Jesus' encounter with the adulterous woman (John 8). The pharisees definitely felt no compassion whatsoever on "sinners" because they had the audacity to think that they themselves were not such. I never want to be considered as remotely near that camp because I know all to well what an awful sinner I am.

• "Early in the morning He came again into the temple, and all the people were coming to Him; and He sat down and began to teach them.3The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, and having set her in the center of the court, 4they said to Him, "Teacher, this woman has been caught in adultery, in the very act. 5"Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women; what then do You say?6They were saying this, testing Him, so that they might have grounds for accusing Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground.7But when they persisted in asking Him, He straightened up, and said to them, "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."8Again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.9When they heard it, they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones, and He was left alone, and the woman, where she was, in the center of the court.10Straightening up, Jesus said to her, "Woman, where are they? Did no one condemn you?"11She said, "No one, Lord." And Jesus said, "I do not condemn you, either Go From now on sin no more."

Through RC Sproul's words, I began to put myself in the emotions of this woman, dragged to the temple of the Lord, probably naked, and scorned publicly in front of people she probably knew. How horrid!

The pharisees didn't do this because they really cared, but to trap Jesus in between the Law of Moses and Rome: "Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the Law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do you say?" Roman law forbade execution by any ordinance other than Roman trial (which is why Jesus fulfilled prophesy by being crucified and not stoned). If He said "Stone her," they'd turn Him into the Roman authorities; if He did not stone her, He was disobeying God's Law. That would be a toughy for anyone other than God Himself.

What does He decide? Stone her! I mean, He wrote the Law, so He's going to keep it, right? However, He also appoints the executioners - the only ones who can justly put someone to death for sins - "He who is without sin among you." Oops. And then there was One. He's the only One around with no sins, and what does He choose to do when He judge her (rightly) right there? He offers mercy.

What a beautiful reminder of the mercy of God toward sinners. I am equally deserving of God's wrath as this woman, and yet He bore my burden so that I may no longer be defined by the sin that had previously enslaved me. I praise Him for saving me, like He did this woman, from the judgment I so deserve! And may I likewise have compassion on all people, knowing what we naturally all are.

Why I know Jesus lives (feel free to add to this in a comment)

Because of the last post, I had a few requests in comments and emails to complete my story with how I know Jesus lives. These will be short answers, because I'm a novice apologist, so please feel free to add your convictions to the list in a comment:

• The congruencies yet distinctions of the gospel accounts. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all record Jesus appearing to many people after His resurrection. The stories (as with the other stories contained in more than one gospel) are similar, yet not exact, just as eyewitnesses to an event all see the same thing, but notice and observe it from a different point of view.
• Jesus first appears to women. Good Jewish (Greek, orRoman, for that matter) men who were making up a story would NOT include this. Women's credibility as eyewitnesses would not hold up in court.
• Hundreds of people attested to seeing Jesus alive after He had been crucified, spent their lives proclaiming this event, and died defending it.
• Thousands and thousands more during the first few centuries after Christ's death believed and spread the doctrines of the disciples despite the most grueling persecution of any religion known to date. Under decrees of Nero and others, Christians were tortured, crucified, burned, stoned, drowned, etc. for being followers of Christ, and despite this, the faith in Christ as sinful man's Savior spread faster than Nero's fiddle-playing fire.

Those are the historical reasons I can think of off the top of my head to back up the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The spiritual reason is even more convincing (or is it more convicting than convincing?). The outright logic in God's plan of mankind's redemption is mind-boggling to me, and leaves me shaking with awe every time I think about it. The doctrine of propitiation, wherein God's wrath for sin is satisfied through His own sacrifice, is ineffably magnificant. Any person who is not an idiot or deranged knows that people are not perfect or even really good. God is a holy (perfect, set apart) Judge, who not only cannot allow anything less than perfect in His presence, but also cannot stand evil (which, let's face it, we are). However, to save fallen humanity and glorify Himself, He became one of us, through Jesus Christ, and lived a life without any tarnish of sin. Though He was without fault - and because He claimed to be God - the people crucified Him, fulfilling prophesy. Through the crucifiction of Christ, the undeserving One was punished in place of the deserving many. "He who knew no sin became sin" to satisfy the wrath of a just God. "The wages of sin is death," and mankind's sin brought the Messiah's death, because "the gift of God is eternal life in [the death and resurrection of] Jesus Christ our Lord." So that to those who look upon Him as their Savior, God sees the perfection of His Son. Our sins were imputed to Him on that cross, and His righteousness is imputed to those who know we have no righteousness in ourselves.

The fact that Jesus did, then, rise from the dead the following Sunday, shows that this propitiatory act was indeed successful. Hallelujah! Because He lives, I too can LIVE! Praise the Lord in His merciful Providence!

Apologetics at its philosophical hard-coreness

I have a feeling that my blog is going to turn into a mini book-review station, as my goal this summer is to read 87.3 books. Well, hopefully I can be a little more lively than that, but nonetheless, I've never really had a summer where I didn't have a job (golf is included in the 'job' category) the whole time. I just finished summer school last Friday (and I'll probably give some high-and-low-lights in an upcoming post), and I have approximately 2 months to read, paint, work out, lay out by the pool, visit Joy in Colorado (!), and climb the Tetons with my dad (!).

Book #1 checked off from my reading list (well, actually, I've been working on this one for a while): Beyond Opinion; Living the Faith We Defend by Ravi Zacharias. An anthology of essays by people associated with this modern-day CS Lewis (as I've heard Ravi called), this book provides a insight into a plethora of religions, philosophies, and worldviews that affront Christianity today.

What really got me thinking while reading this book is how ill-equipped Christians are in the deep and incredibly stimulating truths of the Bible. Ravi describes his three levels of philosophy: "level one states why one believes what he believes. Level two indicates why one lives the way he lives. And level three reveals why one legislates for others the way he does" (321). The problem with most "Christians" today is that they cannot legitimately answer a single one of those questions. They believe a pile of fluff because it makes them feel good about themselves through emotion, conformity, and tradition. They don't want doctrine because they don't want to think, and they don't want someone telling them what to do if it contradicts what they like. "Christianity Lite" and the Emergent movement promote the feel-goodism of emotional experience without the real truth of the Gospel behind it. They only want to invision a God that they like, and forget about the yucky stuff like justice and wrath over sin. However, Ravi says, "None of these levels can live in isolation. They must follow a proper sequence... Life must move from truth, to experience, to prescription" (322). People often jump to experience (hence, personal testimony trumps Gospel presentation) as if the doctrines (what make experiences happen) don't matter. We can't have a real experience without knowing the truth behind it. You can't really "ask Jesus into your heart" without knowing what that really means. You can't be "saved from your sins" without knowing why and how you can be relieved of them. Granted, people do that every day, but can the transformation be real if they don't know what they're doing besides getting a good feeling of acceptance? I'd of course argue no.

While reading this book, I've also been listening to some of the podcast of the White Horse Inn (look it up), which for a series discussed the dumbing down of people and the Church in the name of self-esteem. As a teacher, I've witnessed this sad truth in the classroom, and as a Christian, I'm enraged that people claim to be Christians without any intent to know Christ. Those don't fit together. [That could be a long red-herring, so I'll get back to my intended write].

When I was younger, my dad was constantly quizzing Asher and me over what we learned at church, what we were studying, or what we could explain about what we believed. This questioning was crucial to my growth, because I could not get by with fluff, cliche, or "I don't know". I remember that one time Dad asked me why I know Jesus lives, and I answered, as a good little baptist, with the hymn lyrics: "You ask me how I know He lives; He liiiiiiives withiiiiiin my hearrrrrrrrrrt." Dad banished me from the table until I give him an argument that actually held. Now I was probably ten at the time and used to giving a quick, prescripted Sunday School answer, but I found out rather quickly the merit in actually thinking and reasoning why this is so. Needless to say, I did not go hungry that night or any. :)

I fully believe that this interrogation is what made me dig deeper into the Whys and Hows of the Word of God. It made me make my faith my own, and not just a slew of cute words that had no meaning for me personally. I think this is why, when I went to college, my faith in Christ blossomed under pressure instead of wilting as happens to so many these days. I praise God often for the guided challenge my parents provided, and I wish that all parents and youth pastors could do the same for others. Kids (and all of us) need truth: unfiltered, un-dumbed down, big churchy words and all, TRUTH. And we need to be questioned, without allowance for easy-button answers, so that we actually grow as we are researching to find the best, fullest, most accurate answer. The Word of the Almighty Living God deserves no less!

"Why I'm Not Emergent" By One Gal Who Could Never Be

Upon finishing Kevin DeYoung's and Ted Kluck's Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be), I hope I have a greater understanding of the movement that is apparently sweeping the world of Christendom, though this more informed viewing only reveals that there's not much new in the movement, but more of the same ideas that Christians have battled since the beginning.

While the emergent movement calls Christians to be more loving, which is good, it seems to focus way too much on people and not enough on Christ (which is why there's nothing new about it). Particular to the emergent movement (apart from other heresies) is its mother, postmodernism, which (according to Wikipedia), "Largely influenced by the Western European disillusionment induced by World War II, postmodernism tends to refer to a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy... and embodying extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, diversity, and interconnectedness or interreferentiality." Wikipedia later mentions its philosophy founders, who were predominantely men who really hated God.
The emergent church embraces postmodernism and seeks to not only fit in with the postmodern culture, but be itself postmodern as well. When I first heard about this movement, I picked out the postmodern influences immediately, was shocked that they called this movement Christian, and was even more shocked to find out that the above mentioned connection (the fact that this idea was started by atheist should be a red flag) did not cause any concern in the people I know who are caught up in the movement.

Some things to beware of about this movement (that I found in the book) are:

• The movement focuses more on Christ's life and not His death. While emulating Jesus is what Christians are supposed to do, it IS kind of important to know what a Christian is: a former "vessel of wrath" who was chosen and set apart by God in the beginning, purchased by God per Christ's sacrificial death, and transformed by the Holy Spirit. The Cross was the reason Jesus came - for there is no other way a person can be righteous before God but by wearing Jesus's righteousness. Hopefully this does not represent very many emergents, but whenever you consider the real gospel a footnote instead of the focal point, you've got MAJOR issues.


• What emergents are most known for is their pride in their "humility". They take the ambiguity factor of postmodernism so far that they claim that someone who thinks they know something about God is just being arrogant, because no one can know anything about God. The movement finds more beauty in "mystery" than the knowledge of God. So the point of the Bible is...??? and this leads into the next point which is...


• False dicotomies - TONs of them. Like the one above, they say God cannot be known completely and fully (and I agree). However, they also say that if a person cannot exhaust God, then they can't claim what they do know about Him. Which is False. Just because my finite mind can't possibly comprehend everything about the infinite God does not mean that I should claim ignorance of what He's clearly revealed through creation, scripture, and Christ.


• The emergents generally have an errant view of history. They claim that understanding of scripture, exegetical preaching, and doctrine all derive themselves from modernism and the enlightenment (1600's - 1900's). I'm guessing that they haven't read much Augustine, Luther, Calvin.


• I think one of the main causes for all the stirring in the emergent church is emergents' problem with authority. They don't like people who actually know what they're talking about (which is why all their "leaders" constantly claim that they don't know, or that they may be wrong), probably due to the whole 'self-esteem' thing we all want to be equals. Maybe they think only authorities are totally depraved. Maybe they were traumatized when they were spanked as kids (dang parents who don't "spare the rod"!). Who knows. As DeYoung assesses, "Much of the emergent disdain for preaching is really an uneasiness about authority and control. Discussion, yes. Dialogue, yes. Goup discernment, yes. Hearlding? Proclamation? Not on this side of modernism!" Brian McLaren (the main guy [of course titleless] in the emergent church) promotes leaders who are like Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz: "Rather than being a person with all the answers, who is constantly informed of what's up and what's what and where to go, she is herself lost, a seeker, vulnerable, often bewildered." WOW. Could this be an example of "blind leading the blind"? I think so.


• The movement is full of verbiage that lacks real meaning, other than sounding mystical. Most of the phrases just make me laugh, but there are some that cross the line. I'm tired of hearing sacred words like 'incarnate' thrown around when someone could say 'personified' or 'lived out'. Overusage tends to dull down the word so that what it really means no longer has the punch. "Incarnate" should be reserved for speaking of Christ's divinity, so that it can bear more weight of the concept.
  

As with most wayward works-focused movements, the emergent movement puts the cart before the horse, for how can a person act like a Christian unless he first knows Christ? How can he know Christ unless Christ can be known?

This movement is so troubling to me because I can see how people fall susceptable to its deceptions. It is sneaky because it sounds uber-spiritual, nonconformist, and novel, but really the emergent movement is smoke and mirrors, like what Dorothy at first believes is the true Wizard.

"All we need is Jesus" and a million dollars

I've been reading Why We're Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck, mostly because I've become intrigued by the emergent movement in the church and its unfortunate ties to postmodernism. By ties I mean origins. In a nutshell, it is somewhat a backlash against the megachurch, Joel Ostein phase that is leaving many people jaded and empty. My understanding is that its big thing is that there is not really authority or absolute Truth, but that Christianity is grey, ambiguous, and mysterious (and that that is a good thing). This is not going to turn into a rant filled with Bible passages pointing out the absoluteness of our holy and righteous God, because that could get way too long. Instead, today I'm going to focus on a quote that I found particularly interesting to a broader scope than just the emergents.

"'All we need is Jesus,' many emerging Christians [and I'd say other modern groups as well] cry, 'not these fancy theologies and donctrinal formulations.' Thus Erwin McManus writes, 'The power of the gospel is the result of a person -- Jesus Christ -- not a message.' Granted, this sounds good, and McManus may mean something good by it. But the argument is overstated. How is the gospel event we proclaim different than a message? And how is a message about Jesus -- say, who He is and what He did on earth -- different than doctrine? We can tell people about Jesus every day until He returns again, but without some doctrinal content filling up what we mean by Jesus and why He matters, we are just shouting slogans, not proclaiming any kind of intelligible gospel" (108).

I think that this kind of thinking is not exclusive to the emergent church. A few times in college I attended what I'd consider a 'mega church' where the pastor's practical, almost self-help "sermons", the rock music, and the non-commital atmosphere drew in many of the cool kids of campus. In a sermon about love, the pastor labored the importance of action by saying (almost a direct quote), The doctrine of justification does not matter; what matters is that we love each other.......
.....Ali's jaw hits the floor.........
........You mean the reason I'm going to heaven doesn't matter?!?

My question is: Why is doctrine a bad word? The dictionary defines doctrine as a specific belief. So it's bad to believe something specific? Or is it just bad to know what you believe? I think this is the rub, because whenever one gets too specific about one's beliefs, there could be (gasp) a differing opinion. I've often heard "Doctrine divides," which is true, but so does Christ, and the Gospel, and I'll tend to side with the offensive Truth.

I've sadly seen way too many people who "are just shouting slogans, not proclaiming any kind of intelligible gospel" because they do not know wonderful, deep, enriching, and life-changing doctrine. They most likely have never been taught of the wonder and awe of studying Who God is and what He has done. The Lord spoiled me with parents who seek Him fervently, and I've never known anything different, and therefore people who claim to be Christians but seem comfortable with not really knowing what that means often frustrate me. People sing songs that have no meaning (7-11 songs - 7 word repeated 11 times), they say words that have no root in anything real ("I'm saved" From what? "uhhh?"), they go through actions motivated by who-knows-what-really; and why? because they do not seek to know Him and Him alone. Too many people focus on what Jesus can do for them and not Who He is.

It seems that every errant movement is really the same: it's all about me and what I want. Or is it just me?

One last note on Laz...

I meant to write this a while ago, but you know life - it just gets in the way of important things like blogging.

Probably the reason that the story of Jesus' resurrection of Lazarus is so dear to me is that it is this story that "saves" Raskonikov in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. The first time(s) I read this most masterful novel, I couldn't figure out why this murderer (Ras) becomes so obsessed with this section of scripture (that a girl-prostitute reads to him, but that's another matter) above all others. I think that Raskolnikov identifies with Lazarus because he knows that he's a dead-man walking due to his crime, and even more than that, he becomes increasingly guilt-stricken and tormented (hence, Punishment) because of his sin. What a solace for Rask to know that Christ raised a man completely and utterly dead, and therefore He could do the same with him.

Dostoevsky knew that this is the gospel incarnate (as so many of our modern-day emergents mis- and therefore over-use): Jesus, for His and the Father's glory, by His own will and strength, raises a dead man, who can do no good thing, to new life. Hallelujah!
When I studied the gospels and C & P more, I became more and more drawn to the parallels Dostoevsky creates between Rask and Laz, and I think, for me personally, greater familiarity with each has made the other more meaningful.