Current Reading Nov 2011

Well, this may not be of much interest to you, but here's what I'm reading or have been reading recently. It's certainly been interesting for me!

I've really enjoyed getting through Grace Upon Grace: Spirituality For Today (Concordia, St. Louis: 2008) by Rev'd Dr. John Kleinig — it's a treatment of Luther's understanding of the means by which we are grown by God, i.e. prayer, meditation and temptation. God Himself is the prime actor in these three areas. Christian spirituality is essentially a receptive spirituality.

Along similar lines is Gene Veith's outline of Lutheran spirituality, The Spirituality Of The Cross: The Way Of The First Evangelicals (Concordia, St. Louis; 1999). Particularly helpful to me in this study was his treatment of the doctrine of vocation, and the Lutheran understanding of the two kingdoms. Vocation is the means God uses in order to mask Himself in His provisions for creation. Veith argues that Luther's thought could be summarised under two great doctrinal heads: the doctrine of justification and the doctrine of vocation. I was convinced.

I've also read Roland Allen's missiological classic, Missionary Principles—And Practice (Lutterworth, Cambridge; 1913, 2006). A great stimulus for a preaching project. Allen is exploring the role of the Holy Spirit in the mission of the church in four brief, pungent and thought-provoking chapters. The Spirit himself provides the impulse for mission (not the command to be on mission). The goal of the mission is the revelation of Jesus Christ, and this goal is realised more and more as the various nations express the truth of Christ in their settings. The means of the mission are in Christ: we are the means he uses. We don't need to find means to accomplish something for him; He is using us to accomplish what he will do. (Jens Christensen makes the same point in his classic book, Mission To Islam And Beyond, New Creation, Blackwood; 1977, 2001). In the last chapter he explores the reaction to all this in the church.

Currently I am reading The Ethics Of Evangelism by Elmer Theissen (Paternoster, Milton Keynes; 2011). This is a philosophical defence of ethical proselytising. I'm only through the introductory material, and have just started reading his analysis of various objections to proselytising as essentially unethical. It seems an important book to me.

And for my enjoyment and to wind down at night, I am taking little bits of Alexander McCall-Smith's Bertie Plays The Blues as my bed-time reading. I love his gentleness, his fondness for his characters, his amiable humanity. And I really want to know of Bertie ever gets to being seven! I know I could read the book in one day, but it is nice having little lolly-sized packages to read each evening, and to stretch out the pleasure that his writing gives.

Virtuous Ambition

On the whole, ambition has much about it that is dangerous, corrupting, selfish and sinful. But wanting something is a very important Christian virtue. It is the corruption of desire and ambition that is the problem, not desire and ambition in themselves.

If sacrifice is to make any sense, if laying a thing down in honour and praise of God actually means anything, there must be desire and ambition at the start. If what we give away or give up is actually gift, and expresses self-denial in love for another, then there must be desire or ambition to begin. A gift that means nothing to us to give is no act of love.

Positively, ambition and desire lie at the heart of loving the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. Passivity, nonchalance, indifference are hardly the ideas that come to mind with that command! Instead there is the anticipation that the whole of life is seen as the arena in which we seek to glorify and praise Him as largely as we can. Great ambition!—to make God's glory as clearly seen as possible. This isn't necessarily best done by a false humility that glories in our being "nothing". Rather, the glory of God is a man or a woman fully alive!

Paul urged Timothy with a motto for life, one that he wanted Timothy to pass on to the congregation in his care. "This is a trustworthy saying: whoever desires to be an overseer desires a noble work." The saying is encouraging and cautionary. The desiring that Paul speaks of is eager, keen, longing. The desiring to be an overseer (Gk: episkopos) is not for a position but a work. Sinful ambition seeks position; godly ambition seeks to be as useful to God and His people as possible.


[Here is some teaching I recently gave on this topic.]

Wise words on preaching from Sinclair Ferguson

Sinclair Ferguson offers his Decalogue for preachers. Wise words.

Sheep Without A Shepherd

"When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd." (Matt. 9:36)

Harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. I think the translation, and the way we've heard these words preached on, doesn't help us. We may be tempted to think that there is silliness, confusion, lostness as the main problem that faces these shepherdless sheep.

Harassed - the Greek word contains the idea of being flayed, skinned, mangled. And even possibly of these being self-inflicted.

Helpless - the Greek word contains the idea of being violently cast down or cast away.

The problem for sheep without shepherds is not so much that they are lost and leaderless; it is that they face terrible danger and even death.

So, when Jesus looked compassionately at the crowd, he was moved with deep pity because they were in mortal danger and there was no one to help.

But there was him! He had a gospel to proclaim, and kingly authority to exert. And this gospel and this kingdom would take him to a cross where he would be violently cast away and mangled by the angry mob of humanity. And entering our lostness, he found us to bring us home to Him who clothes and heals us, and who will in no way cast us down. To the Father of all grace and mercy.

Let Your Light Shine

"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." (Matt. 5:16)

Why is it so commonly assumed that the light Jesus speaks about here is the same as the good works that are done?

The light enables seeing. The things to be seen are the good works. Until the light shines the good works are in shadow and darkness, and their form and reality are not truly perceived. What is it that is mistaken about these works, whilst darkness prevails? It is the origin of the works that is not clear.

Until the light shines, the person seeing the works in the shadows assumes that works arise from the human do-er. That is the normal assumption of self-justifying humanity: "Our good deeds arise from ourselves. We are not really rightly judged by God."

When the light shines, suddenly something very shocking is exposed. There is no one who does good, no not one. No one is good but God alone. All that is true and good is wrought in God. I of myself am an unprofitable servant.

The light is not the works. They cannot light themselves. The light is the gospel. The works do not give light to the gospel; the gospel gives light to the works.

Without the light of the gospel, what is done is inherently misinterpreted. The best man in the world, who went about doing good and healing and releasing men and women, was crucified as a sinner by the "righteous" who judged him. Without the clarifying light of the gospel, good works will be misinterpreted as bad.

The good works we are to do must be good not in unenlightened eyes but good in God's eyes, who alone is good. Every person, since our fateful upward Fall, thinks he or she knows what is good, what is evil. But if the light within us is darkness, what then? What God calls good, rebellious humanity calls bad, inhuman, degrading, repressive. But what if our seeing were blinded, lit not by light but darkness?

Let your light shine: proclaim the gospel. Only this gospel brings reconciliation to the Father, and so enables true seeing from His side and in His light.

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!

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.