The dappled die-away
Cheek and the wimpled lip,
The gold-wisp, the airy-grey
Eye, all in fellowship--
This, all this beauty blooming,
This, all this freshness fuming,
Give God while worth consuming.
Both thought and thew now bolder
And told by Nature: Tower;
Head, heart, hand, heel, and shoulder
That beat and breathe in power--
This pride of prime's enjoyment
Take as for tool, not toy meant
And hold at Christ's employment.
The vault and scope and schooling
And mastery of the mind,
In silk-ash kept from cooling
And ripest under rind--
What death half lifts the latch of,
What hell hopes soon the snatch of,
Your offering, with despatch, of!
"So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life--your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking around life--and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what Gods does for you is the best thing you can do for him." (Romans 12.1, The Message)
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Thursday, June 23, 2005
War of the world(s)
Watching the Pistons' playoff games, there have been several commercials for a new television series called Invasion. I think it's about aliens, or at least some girl whose mother smells strange, from what I can gather. But in his introduction to his translation of the NT epistles, J. B. Phillips writes of a different invasion:
The great difference between present-day Christianity and that of which we read in these letters is that to us it is primarily a performance, to them it was a real experience. We are apt to reduce the Christian religion to a code, or at best a rule of heart and life. To these men it is quite plainly the invasion of their lives by a new quality of life altogether. They do not hesitate to describe this as Christ "living in" them. (Letters to Young Churches).
Whole people, true people, live with consistency. We can recognize our friends, coworkers, and family by how they act. We recognize people by how they walk or their handwriting or how they respond in certain situations. This is possible because it is the same person each time: you know what person X is like because he is one person.
The problem comes when it's the Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde situation, when it's suddenly two people living in one body. I once dated a girl who suffered somewhat from bipolar disorder, and this wreaked havoc on our relationship. The thing I find scariest is that so often I am Mr. Hyde living in Dr. Jekyll's body (all the more made true by my new job working in a genetic research laboratory!). The point is, I find myself torn between listening to my old self and to Jesus. Most of the time I speak louder. It wrecks my life, even if only by causing strange tensions in me because I don't (want to) believe the fullness of my forgiveness by God.
The early Christians, according to Phillips, knew Christ was living in them--or, as poet Gerard Manley Hopkins once penned, Christ was "playing" in men. When we learn to live this out, the ascended Son's Spirit living within us, we can live whole again. When it's not Drew-over-Christ or Drew-and-Christ, but only Christ himself, then I can begin to live true shalom: wholeness with God, with community, with myself, and with creation. Only his voice, his actions, his choices will come through. People will recognize me. And maybe then I'll be able to recognize myself in the mirror once again, but this time I'll see someone else's face.
The way I see it, he said, you can do one of two things. One of them, not both. Nobody can do both of two things without straining themselves. You can do one or you can do the opposite.
Jesus or the devil, the boy said.
No no no, the stranger said, there ain't no such thing as a devil. I can tell you that from my own self-experience. I know that for a fact. It ain't Jesus or the devil. It's Jesus or you. (Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear it Away)
The great difference between present-day Christianity and that of which we read in these letters is that to us it is primarily a performance, to them it was a real experience. We are apt to reduce the Christian religion to a code, or at best a rule of heart and life. To these men it is quite plainly the invasion of their lives by a new quality of life altogether. They do not hesitate to describe this as Christ "living in" them. (Letters to Young Churches).
Whole people, true people, live with consistency. We can recognize our friends, coworkers, and family by how they act. We recognize people by how they walk or their handwriting or how they respond in certain situations. This is possible because it is the same person each time: you know what person X is like because he is one person.
The problem comes when it's the Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde situation, when it's suddenly two people living in one body. I once dated a girl who suffered somewhat from bipolar disorder, and this wreaked havoc on our relationship. The thing I find scariest is that so often I am Mr. Hyde living in Dr. Jekyll's body (all the more made true by my new job working in a genetic research laboratory!). The point is, I find myself torn between listening to my old self and to Jesus. Most of the time I speak louder. It wrecks my life, even if only by causing strange tensions in me because I don't (want to) believe the fullness of my forgiveness by God.
The early Christians, according to Phillips, knew Christ was living in them--or, as poet Gerard Manley Hopkins once penned, Christ was "playing" in men. When we learn to live this out, the ascended Son's Spirit living within us, we can live whole again. When it's not Drew-over-Christ or Drew-and-Christ, but only Christ himself, then I can begin to live true shalom: wholeness with God, with community, with myself, and with creation. Only his voice, his actions, his choices will come through. People will recognize me. And maybe then I'll be able to recognize myself in the mirror once again, but this time I'll see someone else's face.
The way I see it, he said, you can do one of two things. One of them, not both. Nobody can do both of two things without straining themselves. You can do one or you can do the opposite.
Jesus or the devil, the boy said.
No no no, the stranger said, there ain't no such thing as a devil. I can tell you that from my own self-experience. I know that for a fact. It ain't Jesus or the devil. It's Jesus or you. (Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear it Away)
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Don't get "left behind"!
I've been doing this plan where you read through the OT once and the NT and Psalms twice in a year, and right now is my first go-around with Revelation. I'm becoming more aware of how bogus I think current pop eschatology is. Everyone is trying to find out when the "rapture" is going to take place and what the signs are for how things are progressing toward The End. Movies, books, and TV shows have all been dedicated to this and received with lots of fanfare and dollars. I think it's a total circus. Jesus' disciples asked him, "Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?" His reply: "It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority; but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth" (Acts 1.6-8). In other words, "Don't waste your efforts trying to figure it all out. I'm gonna come like a thief in the night and--Shazzam!--the shit's gonna hit the fan. Instead, spend your efforts doing the one thing that must happen before the end: making disciples all over the globe" (Matt 24.14).
Here's the reality, folks: You want to figure out the "millenium"? You're wasting your time. It's right now. During the "thousand years" Jesus will restrain Satan's sphere of influence so that he no longer deceives the nations. ("Bound" means restricted, not impotent; cf. Paul in 2 Tim 2.9.) If you're a Christian and not Jewish, you and I are living proof that this is happening. Satan is bound, so now we can and should do the one and only thing that will determine when Christ will come back: preach the gospel and plant churches in unreached places.
And yet, with all my brash talk, I'm still a pansy at heart, unwilling to give up the comforts of the English language, other Christians, and my library. Dang it.
Here's the reality, folks: You want to figure out the "millenium"? You're wasting your time. It's right now. During the "thousand years" Jesus will restrain Satan's sphere of influence so that he no longer deceives the nations. ("Bound" means restricted, not impotent; cf. Paul in 2 Tim 2.9.) If you're a Christian and not Jewish, you and I are living proof that this is happening. Satan is bound, so now we can and should do the one and only thing that will determine when Christ will come back: preach the gospel and plant churches in unreached places.
And yet, with all my brash talk, I'm still a pansy at heart, unwilling to give up the comforts of the English language, other Christians, and my library. Dang it.
Thursday, June 9, 2005
We need to get drunk at church
Here we are, supposedly a nation full of "evangelicals" -- whatever that means nowadays. Our forefathers over in Europe, the first evangelicals, "went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered...a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two hundred proof grace--of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyonethat God saves us single-handedly. The word of the Gospel...suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started" (Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three, quoted in Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel; emphasis mine). The evangel, Greek for "good message," was found not in a higher-up's teachings, nor in some day's poet or songwriter, but in the written Word of God.
Last summer I left the church I attended for my first two years as a disciple of Christ down at MSU. Why? There was something off about the preaching, er, sermons. What once appealed to me had become bland, like pop (not soda) gone flat. Messages about the Christian life were okay, but they weren't about Christ. I learned a lot about how men are like microwaves and women are like ovens when it comes to sex, and I heard lots of entertaining jokes and movie quotes, but where was the Object of our faith? In this church's earnest desire to draw people to God, I believe they were short-circuiting their own goals.
Baptist pastor John Piper, commenting on Albert Einstein's indictment of the 20th-century church, wrote that "in our worships services God simply doesn't come through for who he is. He is unwittingly belittled. For those who are stunned by the indescribably magnitude of what God has made [referring to astronomers and physicists such as Einstein], not to mention the infinite greatness of the One who made it, the steady diet on Sunday morning of practical how-to's and psychological soothing and relational therapy and tactical planning seem dramatically out of touch with Reality--the God of overwhelming greatness" (Let the Nations be Glad).What we need today in preaching is not self-improvement or some pastor's vague insights from the latest box office smash (with a few over-paraphrased scraps of Scripture thrown in for good measure). What we need is the raw Word of God, opened up and laid bare. It was only in his detailed study of the Greek New Testament that Martin Luther said he found the true gospel. I'm sure you're thinking, "C'mon, Drew, you nerd, get real. Do we really need to know Greek? Syntax? Grammar?" No, you may not need to know it per se, but pastors must--and use it.
And here is why: Without faithful preaching of Scripture, no one can come to faith. It is clear that God's Word is the regenerating instrument of the Spirit. "So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ" (Rom 10.17). "In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures" (James 1.18). "You have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God" (1 Pet 1.23). Apart from the Word, no one is saved. And if it the preached Word is the means of salvation and strengthening (2 Pet 3.18) of the church, why not preach it most fully? Who cares about movies and rock music and the like; the Spirit makes no promise to utilize them. We must return to the faithful preaching of men like Luther, Calvin, Edwards, and Spurgeon if we desire to be true to God's mission on Earth.
Last summer I left the church I attended for my first two years as a disciple of Christ down at MSU. Why? There was something off about the preaching, er, sermons. What once appealed to me had become bland, like pop (not soda) gone flat. Messages about the Christian life were okay, but they weren't about Christ. I learned a lot about how men are like microwaves and women are like ovens when it comes to sex, and I heard lots of entertaining jokes and movie quotes, but where was the Object of our faith? In this church's earnest desire to draw people to God, I believe they were short-circuiting their own goals.
Baptist pastor John Piper, commenting on Albert Einstein's indictment of the 20th-century church, wrote that "in our worships services God simply doesn't come through for who he is. He is unwittingly belittled. For those who are stunned by the indescribably magnitude of what God has made [referring to astronomers and physicists such as Einstein], not to mention the infinite greatness of the One who made it, the steady diet on Sunday morning of practical how-to's and psychological soothing and relational therapy and tactical planning seem dramatically out of touch with Reality--the God of overwhelming greatness" (Let the Nations be Glad).What we need today in preaching is not self-improvement or some pastor's vague insights from the latest box office smash (with a few over-paraphrased scraps of Scripture thrown in for good measure). What we need is the raw Word of God, opened up and laid bare. It was only in his detailed study of the Greek New Testament that Martin Luther said he found the true gospel. I'm sure you're thinking, "C'mon, Drew, you nerd, get real. Do we really need to know Greek? Syntax? Grammar?" No, you may not need to know it per se, but pastors must--and use it.
And here is why: Without faithful preaching of Scripture, no one can come to faith. It is clear that God's Word is the regenerating instrument of the Spirit. "So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ" (Rom 10.17). "In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures" (James 1.18). "You have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God" (1 Pet 1.23). Apart from the Word, no one is saved. And if it the preached Word is the means of salvation and strengthening (2 Pet 3.18) of the church, why not preach it most fully? Who cares about movies and rock music and the like; the Spirit makes no promise to utilize them. We must return to the faithful preaching of men like Luther, Calvin, Edwards, and Spurgeon if we desire to be true to God's mission on Earth.
Tuesday, June 7, 2005
Here, catch this!
I wish I could relate to a blind old beggar who desperately cried, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" (Luke 18.38). This word for "mercy", eleos, means kindness toward the miserable and afflicted, joined with a desire to help them. This man knew the dire straits he was in and acknowledged that he had no hope but for this wandering rabbi. Yet, if I understand this word eleos, he also looked to Jesus as one who would indeed pity his wretchedness and help him.
Mercy and grace: two things about which I know little, if nothing at all. The fact is, I was dead in trespasses and sins, in which I formerly lived, breathed, and had my being. I used to live only to gratify the desires of my flesh and my mind (notice that both are totally f'ed) and was by my very nature a child of wrath (Eph 2.1-3). But do I believe this? Do I understand it? Not at all. Maybe it's because I've believed in Jesus as, somehow, the One who provided relief from God's wrath my whole life long. Not that it made much of a difference, though.
I wish I could understand how very dead we all are apart from Christ and God's sovereign grace. I know that we don't just limp along, wheezing and coughing, flailing for breath. We were dead. Flatliners. "But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)" (Eph 2.4-5). We were made alive, you see? God didn't just make some great offer to each of us, saying, "Look, I'm throwing you this life preserver. Just take hold of it and you won't drown!" Gaseous, bloated, floating corpses do not take hold of life preservers. And dead men do not resuscitate themselves! It's entirely God's work, start to finish.
This is so hard for me to grasp. Yes, I can explain it in rather precise doctrinal detail--first comes rebirth by the Holy Spirit, which enables us to see the light of Christ, then God grants us faith in this Christ, etc. etc.--but its effects on me seem lost. Donald Miller wrote in Blue Like Jazz about a friend of his who "didn't know how to live within in a system where nobody owed anybody else anything" (p. 83). This is what I don't get. When I find myself faced with sins that won't go away, I can't even take my own advice (see the previous post). Instead of believing I am just as fully loved by the God who proved the full measure of his love on a cross while I was still a sinner and a God-hater, and that he is immutable and that my sins can't change or affect his kind disposition toward me, I believe in some man-like God who gets upset when I sin and will withhold some part of his approval of me until I get my act straight. I pervert grace and the fact that none of this redemption bit was ever my doing or choice. Duh, Drew! We all need to get this, to know this, to believe this. We need to cry, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us", knowing full well that he longs to be gracious to us and have compassion on us, changing us and healing us and showering his free love on us (Isa 30.18).
Mercy and grace: two things about which I know little, if nothing at all. The fact is, I was dead in trespasses and sins, in which I formerly lived, breathed, and had my being. I used to live only to gratify the desires of my flesh and my mind (notice that both are totally f'ed) and was by my very nature a child of wrath (Eph 2.1-3). But do I believe this? Do I understand it? Not at all. Maybe it's because I've believed in Jesus as, somehow, the One who provided relief from God's wrath my whole life long. Not that it made much of a difference, though.
I wish I could understand how very dead we all are apart from Christ and God's sovereign grace. I know that we don't just limp along, wheezing and coughing, flailing for breath. We were dead. Flatliners. "But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)" (Eph 2.4-5). We were made alive, you see? God didn't just make some great offer to each of us, saying, "Look, I'm throwing you this life preserver. Just take hold of it and you won't drown!" Gaseous, bloated, floating corpses do not take hold of life preservers. And dead men do not resuscitate themselves! It's entirely God's work, start to finish.
This is so hard for me to grasp. Yes, I can explain it in rather precise doctrinal detail--first comes rebirth by the Holy Spirit, which enables us to see the light of Christ, then God grants us faith in this Christ, etc. etc.--but its effects on me seem lost. Donald Miller wrote in Blue Like Jazz about a friend of his who "didn't know how to live within in a system where nobody owed anybody else anything" (p. 83). This is what I don't get. When I find myself faced with sins that won't go away, I can't even take my own advice (see the previous post). Instead of believing I am just as fully loved by the God who proved the full measure of his love on a cross while I was still a sinner and a God-hater, and that he is immutable and that my sins can't change or affect his kind disposition toward me, I believe in some man-like God who gets upset when I sin and will withhold some part of his approval of me until I get my act straight. I pervert grace and the fact that none of this redemption bit was ever my doing or choice. Duh, Drew! We all need to get this, to know this, to believe this. We need to cry, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us", knowing full well that he longs to be gracious to us and have compassion on us, changing us and healing us and showering his free love on us (Isa 30.18).
Wednesday, June 1, 2005
Drew, where is your victory?
Here in Saginaw, there is a huge church in the middle of the hood called Victorious Believers. But about a year ago I began to rethink this whole "victorious Christian life". As you may know, Romans 8 is probably my favorite chapter in the Bible. Verse 13 has been both a source of comfort to me and also a total scare at times: "If you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live." This is a comfort in that sin is not to be totally dead in us, but rather we are to be putting to death our misdeeds, just as we are being renovated after the image of our Creator (Col 3:10). Neither is to be a finished work yet. But we should, can, and must press on toward this end.
Yet how much more often do I feel like Paul in chapter 7 instead? Yesterday was a prime example. Victory? What do I know about that? I'm a Detroit Tigers fan, after all. It's just scary how polarized our sanctification can be portrayed in the church. Some places it's like, "Hey, dude, Jesus loves ya, so just do your thing. In time you'll come around. No sweat. Wanna play some disc golf?" In others, scalpel-armed surgeons are standing by to literally gouge out the eyes that cause us to sin. The former bastardizes and dilutes grace; the latter denies it.
So I think we are so naturally confused and alarmed when sin still lives in us. Listen, my friends! Only those indwelled by the Spirit of Christ (Rom 8.9) can put sin to death. And something can only be killed if it is currently alive! Therefore sin must be alive in us for us to be Christians. Sounds funny, huh? Well, that's what it says, at any rate (see 7.17,20). So do not be entirely alarmed when you find yourself prideful, lustful, envious of others, gossipping, lazy, indulging in too much chocolate, or even ungrateful. But do not be complacent, either.
Now where do we find the victory? "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 15.56f). Here's what I realized last summer: it is not we who are victorious over death and sin. We will never experience our own victory over our sinful nature; but we have Christ's! You see, it was given to us by God. Therefore it cannot be our own. We have been given his life, his power, his righteousness. We have the Spirit of him who lived sinlessly and beautifully, who loved and forgave rather than getting even, who rose from the grave, living inside us. Only when we stop thinking about ourselves (which is the reason for all wrongdoing anyway) and think about Jesus can we put sin to death with for real, because only then can we worship God aright.
Solo Christo!
Yet how much more often do I feel like Paul in chapter 7 instead? Yesterday was a prime example. Victory? What do I know about that? I'm a Detroit Tigers fan, after all. It's just scary how polarized our sanctification can be portrayed in the church. Some places it's like, "Hey, dude, Jesus loves ya, so just do your thing. In time you'll come around. No sweat. Wanna play some disc golf?" In others, scalpel-armed surgeons are standing by to literally gouge out the eyes that cause us to sin. The former bastardizes and dilutes grace; the latter denies it.
So I think we are so naturally confused and alarmed when sin still lives in us. Listen, my friends! Only those indwelled by the Spirit of Christ (Rom 8.9) can put sin to death. And something can only be killed if it is currently alive! Therefore sin must be alive in us for us to be Christians. Sounds funny, huh? Well, that's what it says, at any rate (see 7.17,20). So do not be entirely alarmed when you find yourself prideful, lustful, envious of others, gossipping, lazy, indulging in too much chocolate, or even ungrateful. But do not be complacent, either.
Now where do we find the victory? "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 15.56f). Here's what I realized last summer: it is not we who are victorious over death and sin. We will never experience our own victory over our sinful nature; but we have Christ's! You see, it was given to us by God. Therefore it cannot be our own. We have been given his life, his power, his righteousness. We have the Spirit of him who lived sinlessly and beautifully, who loved and forgave rather than getting even, who rose from the grave, living inside us. Only when we stop thinking about ourselves (which is the reason for all wrongdoing anyway) and think about Jesus can we put sin to death with for real, because only then can we worship God aright.
Solo Christo!
Welcome to my rants, raves, and ramblings
At the inspiration of a man whom I love and respect much, I've decided to start a second weblog as a venue for my "theological voice" you may have come to expect from me. This way, I can be somewhat helpful to others (or at least whine a lot) without creating super-long posts on Xanga, which I'll leave for my everyday events. I hesitate to separate theology from daily living, though. After all, real spirituality is taking what we know of God and ourselves and living our every moment by it. Not only is the ongoing incarnation of Jesus Christ the most important reality in history, but also that we who belong to Christ are indwelled by his Breath, his Spirit as well. Incarnational or "sacramental" living is how we are all to live, too. This type of separation was exactly what saints of old, such as the elder John, fought against so vehemently against. But for the sake of brevity and convenience in this gotta-have-it-my-way-now world (Anyone up for Burger King?), this journal will be restricted to my theological musings.
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