Spurgeon on the Centrality of the Cross

Are you content to follow Jesus from a distance? O, let me affectionately warn you for it is a grievous thing when we can live contentedly without the present enjoyment of the Savior’s face. Let us work to feel what an evil thing this is – little love to our own dying Savior, little joy in our precious Jesus, little fellowship with the Beloved! Hold a true Lent in your souls, while you sorrow over your hardness of heart. Don’t stop at sorrow. Remember where you first received salvation. (Simon the Leper) Go at once to the cross. There, and there only can you get your spirit aroused. No matter how hard, how insensible, how dead we may have become, let’s go again in all the rags and poverty, and defilement of our natural condition. Let’s clasp that cross, let’s look into those languid eyes, let’s bathe in that fountain filled with blood – this will bring us back to our first love; this will restore the simplicity of our faith, and the tenderness of our heart….The more we dwell where the cries of Calvary can be heard the more noble our lives become. Nothing puts life into men like a dying Savior.—C. H. Spurgeon, http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/606_cdg_conference_session_4/

Old Books and Communal Interpretation of Scripture

In writing about the importance of reading old books and the joy that awaits us in them, John Piper quotes Michael Horton, who says:

"The best way to guard a true interpretation of Scripture, the Reformers insisted, was neither to naively embrace the infallibility of tradition, or the infallibility of the individual, but to recognize the communal interpretation of Scripture. The best way to ensure faithfulness to the text is to read it together, not only with the churches of our own time and place, but with the wider 'communion of saints' down through the age."

John Piper, When I Don't Desire God, 128

Reformation & Revival

"At times men think of the two words, reformation and revival, as standing in contrast one to the other, but this is a mistake. Both words are related to the word restore.

Reformation refers to a restoration to pure doctrine; revival refers to a restoration in the Christian's life. Reformation speaks of a return to the teachings of Scripture; revival speaks of a life brought into its proper relationship to the Holy Spirit.

The great moments of church history have come when these two restorations have simultaneously come into action so that the church has returned to pure doctrine and the lives of the Christians in the church have known the power of the Holy Spirit. There cannot be true revival unless there has been reformation; and reformation is not complete without revival.

Such a combination of reformation and revival would be revolutionary in our day - revolutionary in our individual lives as Christians, revolutionary not only in reference to the liberal church but constructively revolutionary in the evangelical, orthodox church as well."

-- Francis Schaeffer, Death in the City, 12

Tozer on the "new cross"

“The new cross does not slay the sinner, it redirects him. It gears him into a cleaner and jollier way of living and saves his self-respect. To the self-assertive it says, "Come and assert yourself for Christ." To the egotist it says, "Come and do your boasting in the Lord." To the thrill- seeker it says, "Come and enjoy the thrill of Christian fellowship." The Christian message is slanted in the direction of the current vogue in order to make it acceptable to the public.”

-AW Tozer

Os Guiness on Desire

"The very fact that we humans experience desire is proof that we are creatures. Incomplete in ourselves, we desire whatever we think is beckoning to complete us. God alone needs nothing outside of himself, because he himself is the highest and the only lasting good. So all objects we desire short of God are as finite and incomplete as we ourselves are and, therefore, disappointing if we make them the objects of ultimate desire."

-- The Call, 13

Os Guiness on Purpose

"Have you concluded that your desire for purpose is an illusion? Then follow the Eastern masters to their various states of detachment. Have you determined that your purpose is something that you must figure out yourself and accomplish all on your own? There are many secularist thinkers to cheer you on in the attempt. Or are you open to the possibility that there is one who created you to be who you are and calls you to be who he alone knows you can be? Then listen to Jesus of Nazareth and his two words that changed the world - 'Follow me.'"

-- Os Guiness, The Call, ix

Is Aslan Safe?

I'm reading CS Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe before I watch the movie adaptation. Upon first hearing about Aslan (the original Lion King), one of the children asks if Aslan is safe. The reply (p75-76) is well worth considering:

'If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than me or else just silly.'

'Then he isn't safe?' asked Lucy.

'Safe?' said Mr. Beaver. 'Don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'

Rookmaaker on Films

HR Rookmaaker was a Dutch art historian and critic and a close friend and colleague of Francis Schaeffer. In his work Modern Art and the Death of Culture he offers an interesting critique of popular films:

"Many of the films people see, for instance, are good entertainment, and often have a little moral point. Yet they are bad. For they depict as true a world which is limited and superficial, one without God, without the deeper questions in man's heart, without real matters of life and death, for life and death are reduced to sentiment, or adventures, or crime and violence or cruelty, without any sort of judgment expressed. Most films of this type are good in the bourgeois sense, and they are certainly not meant to be anti-Christian. But they help to close the sky. They leave God out of the picture."

"The strange belief in innate (rather than learned) human goodness that animates much so-called 'liberal' thought seems to me a delusion that even a cursory familiarity with human history and human nature should expose."

-- Bruce Thornton, Plagues of the Mind

On Worldview

You may have noticed that I'm doing PhD work in the field of Christian apologetics and worldview. Here's a nice description of what exactly that means:

"The purpose of worldveiw studies is nothing less than to liberate Christianity from its cultural captivity, unleashing its power to transform the world."

"The purpose of worldview thinking is far more than a mental strategy or a new spin on current events. At the core, it is a deepening of our spiritual character and the character of our lives. It begins with the submission of our minds to the Lord of the universe - a willingness to be taught by Him. The driving force in worldview studies should be a commitment to 'love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.'"

Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, 17 and 24

"Moral character is assessed not by what a man knows but by what he loves."

-- Augustine

Kuyper Quote

Abraham Kuyper was a remarkable man - a theologian, educator, journalist, and politician. He served four years as Prime Minister of the Netherlands near the turn of the 20th century, and founded the Free University of Amsterdam in 1880 with a vision of education founded upon a commitment to the sovereignty of God and the lordship of Christ over all things in all branches of knowledge. In his inaugural address at the university, he said,

"There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'"

(as quoted by Naugle, Worldview: The History of a Concept). I'd love to read a good biography of Kuyper one day.

Culture and "cult"

David Naugle offers an interesting insight:

"Culture, as the term suggests - though it is often forgotten - is ultimately the product of the cult. How people think and what they worship determines what they make and how they live."

(in Worldview: The History of a Concept)

Interesting Quotes from John Paul II

Pope John Paul II, born Karel Wojtyla, was a great philosophical thinker in the Catholic Church, one who did much to develop Catholic thinking in the direction of worldview thinking. The worldview he worked to promote has been described as "Christian Humanism." It is a fundamentally Christ-centered view that emphasizes the intrinsic value and worth of human personhood.

He wrote:

"The evil of our times consists in the first place in a kind of degradation, indeed in a pulverization, of the fundamental uniqueness of each human person."

And:

"In Christ and through Christ man has acquired full awareness of his dignity, of the heights to which he is raised, of the surpasssing worth of his own humanity, and of the meaning of his existence."

Elijah Part 1

When we first meet Elijah in 1 Kings 17, times are not good for prophets of the Lord. King Ahab has just been introduced as King and we are told right off that "did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him." (1 Kings 16:30) His wife Jezebel (who, it seems, really "wore the pants" in that household) only made matters worse. They worshiped Baal and erected altars and even a temple for this false god. Ahab was awarded the dubious distinction of doing "more to provoke the LORD, the God of Israel, to anger than all the kings of Israel who were before him." He was a bad guy.

So Elijah comes on the scene as God's man, and obediently proclaimed the Lord's word in predicting the severe drought that was to come, and then went and hid. The Lord directed him to hide near a brook and commanded ravens to feed him. Talk about being totally dependent upon the Lord — Elijah saw God's provision in a miraculous way during this period.

But life must have been difficult there all alone in the wilderness, being sustained only by God's gracious provision of a brook and food from ravens. No doubt there was still the nagging fear that he might be discovered by those who would kill him. So we can only imagine what Elijah must have been thinking as the brook - the one God had led him to - began to dry out as the drought worsened. Here he was, totally dependent upon God, who had provided for him in miraculous ways, and slowly but surely the creek ran dry. Where was God? What happened?

Sometimes, even when we have seen God working on our behalf, our circumstances begin to change and we wonder if God has forgotten us. Maybe we wonder if he's really all-loving and/or all-powerful after all. We wonder where he went. Maybe Elijah had these thoughts, but God was no doubt at work building his faith. After the creek totally dried up, God again spoke to Elijah and sent him somewhere else.

A last observation is that Elijah did not leave that creek before God directed him. Even as it was obviously running dry, Elijah did not take matters into his own hands to try to fix the situation. He probably did wonder what was going on, but ultimately he trusted in the Lord to take care of him, just as he had done through the ravens to that point. We can learn a lesson from Elijah here because I suspect that many of us are prone to want to "fix" tough circumstances quickly (after all we live in the "your way right away" culture). But Elijah demonstrated uncommon patience and trust in the face of a worsening situation. How would we respond in similar trials?

Well God was not done building Elijah's faith....

Thoughts on the Word

A few nice quotes on the Scriptures from Daniel Montgomery:

"The Scriptures are God's Voice: The Church is his echo." -John Donne

"We enjoy Christ only as we embrace Christ clad in his own promises." -John Calvin

"God has opened his heart to us in the Bible." -Richard Sibbes

On sin, sinners, and moral introspection

There is a significant difference in thinking about sin as wrong acts versus understanding what it means to be a sinner. John Piper quotes N.P. Williams to that effect:

"The ordinary man may feel ashamed of doing wrong: but the saint, endowed with a superior refinement of moral sensibility, and keener powers of introspection, is ashamed of being the kind of man who is liable to do wrong."

-- from John Piper, When I Don't Desire God, 48.

Cutting through the early Twentieth Century prose, there's a few nuggets for us to chew on. Why would the ordinary person feel ashamed of doing wrong? For starters, let me suggest that it is increasingly the case in our culture that we don't have any idea what "shame" feels like. Often people will exult in what was once considered shameful. Today it is more common for people to think of shame as some kind of psychosis that must be overcome. In the past, however, shame was the result of a conscience pricked by doing what was commonly regarded as wrong. It was probably sometimes simply the result of a breach of public decorum, but it may also be thought of as a result of the fact that God's law is indeed written on the heart of all people.

Williams also notes that saints (believers; followers of Christ) have a heightened sense of moral responsibility because of the Holy Spirit living within them. Curiously, he also mentions "keener powers of introspection." I wonder if we tend to think of Christians today as introspective people. How often do we really ponder the condition of our own hearts? How often do we look inward in a healthy way to discern where God is moving, stretching, calling for more of us? Sure there is a kind of naval-gazing introspection that is morbid and/or self-absorbed. I don't think that's what Williams (or Piper) have in mind. But do we know what a healthy and keen sense of introspection looks like?

Do you ever feel shame because of sin? Do you ever feel shame because you have within you the ability to sin? Have you cultivated a godly sense of moral introspection, to look inside at the condition of your own heart? What do you see?

Most of us are familiar with the story of Jesus visiting the home of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. While Martha was stressing out over the details of having so many people in their home (cooking, cleaning, who knows what else), she famously complained to Jesus about the fact that Mary was just sitting there listening to Him. Jesus, however, affirmed that Mary had chosen best. Commenting on Luke 10:42, Nancy Pearcey reminds us of the difficulty of pausing from busy lives to sit and listen to Jesus:

"Given our fallen human nature, we typically do not really sit before the Lord until our legs are knocked out from under us by crises - sorrow, loss, or injustice. It is only when stripped of our personal dreams and ambitions that we truly die to our own agendas. Union with Christ in His death and resurrection is the only path to sanctification of both heart and mind - to being conformed to the likeness of Christ."

--- Nancy Pearcey, Total Truth, 26

What does it mean to sit at the feet of the Lord? How can you cultivate such an experience in the midst of the hustle and bustle of life?

Substituting Generic "God-talk" for Jesus

Russell Moore, in a recent post at Touchstone Magazine's blog, describes how the use of the term "God" is an easy substitute for talking about Jesus. He says that "God" is an abstract enough term that people can load all kinds of meaning into it. He says that's why people in the culture would rather talk about vague notions of spirituality and God rather than about Jesus Christ. Such equivocation is also true among liberal Christians. But....

The gritty flesh and blood reality of Jesus of Nazareth, however, is much more
particular and much more exclusive. I think the fatal flaw of contemporary
Christianity, on both the right and the left, is what Adrio Koenig called "the
eclipse of Christ." We speak of the glory of God, and we aim for "God-centered
worship," but we forget that God's glory is tied up in what Maximus the
Confessor called "the Christic mystery," namely that God's purpose is "to sum up
all things in Christ" (Eph 1:10). Contemporary Christians may have "WWJD"
bracelets and other sorts of "Jesus junk" in our closets, but too rarely do we
hear the big picture of how our God is no generic God, but the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jesus of Nazareth.

Bonhoeffer on Prayer

My last post was from Bonhoeffer, and so is this one. (His classic work Life Together is a short book that I commend to anyone). In writing about the Psalms, he draws some important lessons about Christian prayer:

Here we learn, first, what prayer means. It means praying according to the Word of God, on the basis of promises. Christian prayer takes its stand on the solid ground of the revealed Word and has nothing to do with vague, self-seeking vagaries.

It is really easy to pray using vague, self-seeking vagaries. These prayers don't tend to be specific for one thing, and tend to be focused on what I want rather than on what God wants. Such prayers tend to treat God like a cosmic Santa Claus - "I'll be really good if you'll give me this thing I want." What does it look like to "pray according to the Word of God?" That's a good question to ponder. I suppose that it involves praying the kinds of prayers we see in Scripture. Bonhoeffer is pointing to the Psalms as a good place to start. We might also look at the model Jesus gave us in the Lord's prayers. The epistles often include challenging and wonderful prayers that can be made on behalf of yourself or others. See, for example, Ephesians 3:14-21 or Philippians 1:9-12. I suppose it also means that we anchor our prayers in revealed Truth. We often pray "in Jesus name," but don't often really ponder what that means.

These are a few thoughts off the top of my head. What do you think? What is the difference between biblical prayer and self-serving vagaries? Which do your prayers more resemble?