Thursday, May 20, 2010
The Problem of Perpetual Adolescence
Mark Driscoll is a very funny guy, but he always has a point to make. Here he tackles the Peter Pan culture that seems to afflict Western Christian guys. You may feel battered and flattened by the end, but there is something to learn from it!
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Getting Along Very Well Without God
'God is teaching us that we must live as men who can get along very well without him.'
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
This startling quote was brought to my attention by my son, Toby, and it has prompted a lot of thinking on my part. I have to say, I haven't chased up Bonhoeffer's context, and so my reflections are more on the simple idea of the statement, not on the wider argument that Bonhoeffer follows wherever it is he makes this statement: my thoughts in no way claim to mirror those of the great Dietrich.
In our contemporary evangelical culture, the idea of dependence upon God is stressed. Bonhoeffer's statement seems to say that in fact the opposite is the will of God, that, as we grow in Him, we become less dependent and reliant upon him, and more dependent and reliant upon ourselves. This progress is virtuous. This is a shocking idea to evangelical people! Try saying it in a Bible study group and see what reaction follows!
It would be fairly obvious that there are many people who, at the level of day to day life, get along very well without God. The thoughts of God, of heaven, of hell, would not pass through their minds in many, if any, days. They are like those Jesus spoke of: "Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark.... It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building (Luke 17:26ff)." Jesus points out the foolishness of such an approach: the end of the age is coming, and account must be given to God of our relation to Him.
But Bonhoeffer is speaking of something other than this practical atheism. His statement encourages us to see ourselves in a very responsible light.
Geoffrey Bingham used to speak of the intention of God in creation as being that we become a peer community with Him in His action in history and into eternity. The intention of God at the creation of the man and the woman in Genesis 1 is that they be fruitful, fill the earth, subdue it, and to rule over all the living creatures. Humanity has a given co-regency with God. The broad parameters of humanity's serving of God are given in the commission but not the day to day nitty-gritty of it. All of the gifts and talents given to humanity are with a view to our responsibly taking up this commission and making something of it.
Life in the fulfilling of this commission involves the making of a multitude of decisions every day. Humanity must make these decisions. We must weigh the options, consider the possibilities and then finally we must act. The person unable to make decisions is a crippled person. Such a person cannot be entrusted with responsibility.
In many decisions—most in fact—we are faced with the fact that God Himself does not tell us what to do. We have to act on what we know of God, what we know of His will for creation, and what we know of our partnership with Him in the outworking of that will. In this way we have to get along very well without God. We don't have Him looking over our shoulder telling us what to do next. It is a truth that ennobles us enormously. We are truly peers alongside Him.
Of course it is true that all the gifts and abilities and resources we bring to this task are gift to us from Him. There is a deep and fundamental dependence. But it is not a dependence which results in a perpetual infancy or adolescence before Him, but which grows into a maturity, in which finally we stand in equal stature with Him as His son.
Perhaps it is the favour and kindness of God our Father that in our first days and early years as Christians He leads us with a greater immediacy than is so later. And it is the same favour and kindness that the immediacy of that direction is lessened and removed as we grow in maturity. We become men and women grown up.
It would be fairly obvious that there are many people who, at the level of day to day life, get along very well without God. The thoughts of God, of heaven, of hell, would not pass through their minds in many, if any, days. They are like those Jesus spoke of: "Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark.... It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building (Luke 17:26ff)." Jesus points out the foolishness of such an approach: the end of the age is coming, and account must be given to God of our relation to Him.
But Bonhoeffer is speaking of something other than this practical atheism. His statement encourages us to see ourselves in a very responsible light.
Geoffrey Bingham used to speak of the intention of God in creation as being that we become a peer community with Him in His action in history and into eternity. The intention of God at the creation of the man and the woman in Genesis 1 is that they be fruitful, fill the earth, subdue it, and to rule over all the living creatures. Humanity has a given co-regency with God. The broad parameters of humanity's serving of God are given in the commission but not the day to day nitty-gritty of it. All of the gifts and talents given to humanity are with a view to our responsibly taking up this commission and making something of it.
Life in the fulfilling of this commission involves the making of a multitude of decisions every day. Humanity must make these decisions. We must weigh the options, consider the possibilities and then finally we must act. The person unable to make decisions is a crippled person. Such a person cannot be entrusted with responsibility.
In many decisions—most in fact—we are faced with the fact that God Himself does not tell us what to do. We have to act on what we know of God, what we know of His will for creation, and what we know of our partnership with Him in the outworking of that will. In this way we have to get along very well without God. We don't have Him looking over our shoulder telling us what to do next. It is a truth that ennobles us enormously. We are truly peers alongside Him.
Of course it is true that all the gifts and abilities and resources we bring to this task are gift to us from Him. There is a deep and fundamental dependence. But it is not a dependence which results in a perpetual infancy or adolescence before Him, but which grows into a maturity, in which finally we stand in equal stature with Him as His son.
Perhaps it is the favour and kindness of God our Father that in our first days and early years as Christians He leads us with a greater immediacy than is so later. And it is the same favour and kindness that the immediacy of that direction is lessened and removed as we grow in maturity. We become men and women grown up.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
From Horatius Bonar: When God's Children Suffer
Sickness prostrates us. It cuts into the very centre of our carnal nature; it exposes in all their deformity "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life". What vanity is seen in these upon a sickbed! These are our three idols; and these, sickness dashes down into the dust.
Sickness takes us aside and sets us alone with God. We are taken into His private chamber, and there He converses with us face to face. The world is far off, our relish for it is gone, and we are alone with God. Many are the words of grace and truth which He then speaks to us. All our former props are taken away, and we must now lean on God alone. The things of earth are felt to be vanity; man's help useless. Man's praise and sympathy desert us; we are cast wholly upon God, that we may learn that HIs praise and His sympathy are enough. "If it were not for my pain," says one, "I should spend less time with God. If I had not been kept awake with pain, I should have lost one of the sweetest experiences I ever had in my life. The disorder of my body is the very help I want from God; and if it does its work before it lays me in the dust, it will raise me up to heaven." It was thus that Job was "chastened upon his bed with pain, and the multitude of his bones with strong pain", that after being tried he might "come forth as gold" (Job 33:19; 23:10).
Sickness teaches that activity of service is not the only way in which God is glorified. "They also serve who stand and wait." Active duty is that which man judges most acceptable; but God shows us that in bearing and suffering He is also glorified. Perhaps we were pursuing a course of our own and required to be arrested. Perhaps we were too much harassed by a bustling world and needed retirement, yet could find no way of obtaining it till God laid us down, and drew us aside into a desert place, because of the multitude pressing upon us.
None of the family rods is more in use than this, sometimes falling lightly on us, at other times more heavily. Let us kiss the rod. Let us open our mouth wide to the blessing, seeking so to profit by each bodily ailment, slight or severe, that it may bring forth in us the peacable fruits of righteousness. "I know," says one, "of no greater blessing than health, except pain and sickness."
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Friday, March 5, 2010
Excerpts on Revival
The following video contains excerpts from various preachers (Leon Ravenhill among them, and I think Ian Paisley, but not sure) on the matter of revival. Not sure how I think about each particular, but the overall effect causes me to search myself and to seek the Lord for that fiery love of the glory of God which will be seen when He is glorified in joy and holiness among His people. Why do we settle for so much less than that?
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
The Difficulty of Preaching the Text
I have good friends in ministry who often describe preaching as "explaining the Bible". I've felt uncomfortable with this and have been averse to using such a description myself.
Part of the reason I think is that, at its worst, it sounds so terribly patronising! "I, the great and knowledgeable one, and going to explain this complex and mystifying matter that my mind has penetrated through hours in the study, with my knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, and which clearly your minds are not able to do."
I wonder what such a view makes of the perspicuity of Scripture, and of the fact that John tells us that "we all know the truth" or "we know all the truth" (1John 2:20-21) as we have been given the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The clarity of God's word, and the ministry of the Spirit to lead us into all truth means that whenever we hear a preacher we have both an outer guide (Scripture) and an inner one (Spirit) that enables us to assess the speaker. It is not that we need the preacher to enable us to get the meaning of the Scripture.
The problem isn't an intellectual one. Sure, the study and learning of a godly preacher will surely bless and benefit a congregation, but something much more important is going on.
The real task of a preacher is to wrestle with the text as one who is simultaneously saint and sinner, and then proclaim that to a congregation in the same spot! The real problem in our hearing of the word of God is a moral one and not an intellectual one.
A preacher has the task of exposing the false readings we prefer to the actual meaning of the text which makes a moral claim on us. The one who really hears the word of God is he or she who does it. Being sinners still, we tend to be like the son in Jesus' parable who hears the word of the Father, cheers it as wonderful and then goes away and does whatever he intended in the first place (Matt. 21:28ff)!
There are a number of ways that sinners dull the claim of the text whilst still feeling some degree of piety for doing so!
The preacher must himself let the searching word of God do in him what he is hoping the searching word of God will do in his congregation. Pain, agony, sweat, blood, tears must mark the hours of the preacher's preparation. Only then will he come with the love, joy, grace and goodness that will be necessary in the pulpit.
Part of the reason I think is that, at its worst, it sounds so terribly patronising! "I, the great and knowledgeable one, and going to explain this complex and mystifying matter that my mind has penetrated through hours in the study, with my knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, and which clearly your minds are not able to do."
I wonder what such a view makes of the perspicuity of Scripture, and of the fact that John tells us that "we all know the truth" or "we know all the truth" (1John 2:20-21) as we have been given the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The clarity of God's word, and the ministry of the Spirit to lead us into all truth means that whenever we hear a preacher we have both an outer guide (Scripture) and an inner one (Spirit) that enables us to assess the speaker. It is not that we need the preacher to enable us to get the meaning of the Scripture.
The problem isn't an intellectual one. Sure, the study and learning of a godly preacher will surely bless and benefit a congregation, but something much more important is going on.
The real task of a preacher is to wrestle with the text as one who is simultaneously saint and sinner, and then proclaim that to a congregation in the same spot! The real problem in our hearing of the word of God is a moral one and not an intellectual one.
A preacher has the task of exposing the false readings we prefer to the actual meaning of the text which makes a moral claim on us. The one who really hears the word of God is he or she who does it. Being sinners still, we tend to be like the son in Jesus' parable who hears the word of the Father, cheers it as wonderful and then goes away and does whatever he intended in the first place (Matt. 21:28ff)!
There are a number of ways that sinners dull the claim of the text whilst still feeling some degree of piety for doing so!
- We reduce the text, refusing to see it in its full Trinitarian and salvific glory. The preacher has the task of making us see the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of the glory and the love of God that every word brings to us.
- We manipulate the text, discarding either the moral claim of the text upon us on the one hand, or else reducing the text simply to a "to do list" on the other. The preacher must remember God's solid foundation which remains firm, sealed with this inscription: “The Lord knows those who are his,” and, “Everyone who confesses the name of the Lord must turn away from wickedness.” (2Tim. 2:19) The preacher must expose the legalist and the libertine in us all.
The preacher must himself let the searching word of God do in him what he is hoping the searching word of God will do in his congregation. Pain, agony, sweat, blood, tears must mark the hours of the preacher's preparation. Only then will he come with the love, joy, grace and goodness that will be necessary in the pulpit.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
The Loneliness of Revelation
Currently I am reading Helmut Thielicke's collection of sermons entitled, How To Believe Again. I was struck by this section:
'Our text [Matt. 16:13-23] reaches its climax in the words that are now spoken. For Peter feels himself driven to a confession the madness of which (there's no other way to put it) hardly hits us any more because, in the meantime, the words have become all too familiar. They have long since become a Christian cliché. But at the time this confession was uttered, it must have been a powerful shock to those who heard it...
'When Jesus broke the silence that followed this precedent-shattering statement (and there must have been a pause of astonishment and confusion) he explained to Peter and the onlookers that this statement itself was a miracle. It was miraculous that such words could be uttered at all. "Flesh and blood," mere instinct or mother-wit, could not have discovered this secret. For one moment the walls of fog that mysteriously shroud the figure of Jesus of Nazareth are parted, and the eyes of an incomprehensible majesty gaze upon a stunned Peter.
'At that moment Peter is the loneliest man on the face of the earth. He is almost as lonely as the Master himself. Formerly Peter was a man like everybody else. He was a man like you and me. He affirmed God's providence when things suited him, and he protested when they got in his way. He wanted to do the right thing, the consciousness of his sin weighed on him like a millstone. He had not settled matters with his own conscience and therefore, with good reason, steered clear of the circuit of the eternal Judge.
'That's the way it usually is with all of us. Peter was no different from you and me. But now, at one blow, all that changes. Now he is the only one who has felt the scales drop from his eyes. Now he sees that God's heartbeat can be touched and felt and heard, despite all of life's riddles, all the world's horrors, and even judgment itself. You are the assurance (Peter is now able to confess) that there is no "Fate," but that, far above our heads, there are higher and loving thoughts about us. You are the assurance that there is something other than the eternal law of crime and punishment, that there is a Father who forgives our incriminating past and gives us the miracle of a fresh start.'
The loneliness of the discovery of grace—by revelation and not by wit or work—is a loneliness in the world in which we are placed, but which is visited by the presence of God our Father, Christ and the blessed Holy Spirit. Any person who has borne witness to the truth of Christ will know the bitter sweetness of confessing him and having others know nothing of what is shared.
The loneliness of revelation is also part of the impetus for the proclamation of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Where we forget the loneliness of what we have we may well show that we forget the sadder and deeper loneliness of the person without God, an alien in this creation intended to be his home.
"Oh that world might taste and see the riches of his grace: the arms of love that compass me would mankind embrace... Happy if with my latest breath I might but gasp his name; Preach him to all and cry in death, "Behold, behold the Lamb!"
'Our text [Matt. 16:13-23] reaches its climax in the words that are now spoken. For Peter feels himself driven to a confession the madness of which (there's no other way to put it) hardly hits us any more because, in the meantime, the words have become all too familiar. They have long since become a Christian cliché. But at the time this confession was uttered, it must have been a powerful shock to those who heard it...
'When Jesus broke the silence that followed this precedent-shattering statement (and there must have been a pause of astonishment and confusion) he explained to Peter and the onlookers that this statement itself was a miracle. It was miraculous that such words could be uttered at all. "Flesh and blood," mere instinct or mother-wit, could not have discovered this secret. For one moment the walls of fog that mysteriously shroud the figure of Jesus of Nazareth are parted, and the eyes of an incomprehensible majesty gaze upon a stunned Peter.
'At that moment Peter is the loneliest man on the face of the earth. He is almost as lonely as the Master himself. Formerly Peter was a man like everybody else. He was a man like you and me. He affirmed God's providence when things suited him, and he protested when they got in his way. He wanted to do the right thing, the consciousness of his sin weighed on him like a millstone. He had not settled matters with his own conscience and therefore, with good reason, steered clear of the circuit of the eternal Judge.
'That's the way it usually is with all of us. Peter was no different from you and me. But now, at one blow, all that changes. Now he is the only one who has felt the scales drop from his eyes. Now he sees that God's heartbeat can be touched and felt and heard, despite all of life's riddles, all the world's horrors, and even judgment itself. You are the assurance (Peter is now able to confess) that there is no "Fate," but that, far above our heads, there are higher and loving thoughts about us. You are the assurance that there is something other than the eternal law of crime and punishment, that there is a Father who forgives our incriminating past and gives us the miracle of a fresh start.'
The loneliness of the discovery of grace—by revelation and not by wit or work—is a loneliness in the world in which we are placed, but which is visited by the presence of God our Father, Christ and the blessed Holy Spirit. Any person who has borne witness to the truth of Christ will know the bitter sweetness of confessing him and having others know nothing of what is shared.
The loneliness of revelation is also part of the impetus for the proclamation of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. Where we forget the loneliness of what we have we may well show that we forget the sadder and deeper loneliness of the person without God, an alien in this creation intended to be his home.
"Oh that world might taste and see the riches of his grace: the arms of love that compass me would mankind embrace... Happy if with my latest breath I might but gasp his name; Preach him to all and cry in death, "Behold, behold the Lamb!"
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