Vindiciae:

Our Christmas Letter 2011

2011-12-15T15:35:00.003-05:00

The Douglas Family 2011

But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. …

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Isaiah 9.1-2

This was a big year for our family. Elinor celebrated her first birthday in January and Mila was born in August! Iain turned 5 and Brian began teaching classes at Boise State University in addition to his work at Ambrose and as an elder at our church, All Saints PCA.

Top Ten Things We Thank God For This Year:

Iain put his faith in Jesus! We are so excited about this. He is interested in spiritual things, often starting conversations with us about God.

Brian's work at Boise State. Not only is this an excellent career-builder and encouragement for him professionally, but this was also a means of God's provision for our growing family.

Mila's safe and healthy birth. Our third child is such a rich blessing to this formerly barren family. It is beyond our ability to comprehend it, but we are so thankful for our sweet, snuggly, smiley daughter.

The beginning of God's work in our two daughter's lives. Nora has learned Jesus Loves Me, the Doxology, and Silent Night along with several catechism questions, and understands the story of the Fall. We had the privilege of baptizing Mila.

Despite the distance from our family in Florida, we were able to see Auntie Kathryn, Nana Douglas and Grandma Thomas over the past year.

Our 10^th Wedding Anniversary. We are thankful that by God's grace what was joined together has not been split asunder, and that we have grown together in the Lord this past decade.

During my difficult pregnancy with Mila, our church family was so wonderfully supportive and helpful, bringing meals, doing shopping, watching Iain and Nora, and many other things. Thank you for your help and love church family!

That I am strong and healthy again. It is so awesome to be able to walk!

In these difficult economic times, we are so thankful for Brian's employment and for our home, as so many people are have lost both of those things this year.

That Brian has the opportunity in the coming year to begin studying again at Knox Seminary.

Prayer Requests for 2012:

Brian: For grace in balancing family, church, school, university, and study.

Jordan: For a continued sense of calling and contentment as I mother.

Iain: That he would grow in faith and never turn away from his heavenly Father.

Elinor: For her salvation and that she would learn cheerful obedience.

Mila: For her salvation and that her blocked tear duct would clear itself.

For those of you who are interested, here are the websites for our church and school:

http://www.allsaintspca.org/

http://www.theambroseschool.org/

We would love to pray for you too. Please e-mail or call us with your prayer requests.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

My Battle for Pizza Supremacy

2011-11-01T01:16:00.005-04:00

An article written for the All Saints Presbyterian Church November 2011 newsletter:

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An interesting piece of news recently came out of my home state of Florida. The Associated Press headline read: “Pizza workers burn down rival store."

According to the subsequent article, “The battle for pizza supremacy has taken a wrong turn in Florida. Two managers of a Domino's Pizza restaurant in Lake City, in north-central Florida, have been charged with burning down a rival Papa John's location.”

Why did they decide to burn down Papa John's? “Police say one of the men admitted that he believed with his competitor out of the way, more pizza lovers would flock to his restaurant.” Both men involved (ages 22 & 23) have been arrested and await trial.

I laughed at the headline, and if it weren't for the destruction they caused, I would have found the article to be humorous as well. What ridiculous lengths they went to! And over pizza! It sounds like something out of a mediocre comedy film.

But the reality is that I've done the same thing many times. While I haven't actually burned down anyone's pizza shop, I have had a heart of envy, jealousy, and malice. I've been bitter about someone else's success and I've even tried to prevent it. There is nothing at all humorous about that.

According to Romans 3, we all act that way:

None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

This is one of the most important realizations a Christian can have: the only thing that has ever kept me from acting on the desires of my heart (even burning down a Papa John's) is the grace of God. I came into this world broken and sinful. My only hope is his grace.

Romans 3 goes on to say that even though “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” we are “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” It is miraculous and amazing: that “in his divine forbearance he [has] passed over our former sins.” Even though we fall woefully short of what we should be, he showed “his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

So I shouldn't laugh at the pizza arsonists. I should see myself in them – their battle for pizza supremacy is no different than the sins of my heart. I should pray that God would show his grace to them – his grace is the only difference between me and them. And I should thank God for his forbearance – that he would pass over my sins and give me more faith in Jesus.

Give thanks to the God of heaven, for his steadfast love endures forever! (Psalm 136.26)

Why everyone at All Saints should be looking forward to September

2011-07-22T00:54:00.003-04:00

An article written for the All Saints Presbyterian Church August 2011 newsletter:

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We all know that being a Christian is not something we do alone. That is one reason we go to church in the first place: we could (and should!) worship God on our own seven days a week, but we know that we need to come together to worship God on the Lord's Day. It is something God has commanded us to do, and it is good for us.

Worship is central to what we do at All Saints, and it should be. But there is more to being a Christian than worshiping together on Sunday. We are called to live in fellowship with one another, serve God's people and the world, train up our children in the Lord, share a meal, rejoice with those who rejoice, and mourn with those who mourn. These kinds of things are central to what it means to be a Christian, and we know that we cannot do these things alone.

All Saints has Sunday School and Covenant Groups to help us fulfill our calling as Christians. The leadership of the church would like everyone at All Saints, members and visitors alike, to be involved in Sunday School and Covenant Groups. We believe that these two ministries are essential for our church to be a healthy Christian community. They will both resume in September soon after Labor Day, and we hope you will be involved.

This year Jeff Miller will be leading our children's Sunday School. Jeff is a gifted educator who has spent many years as a teacher and administrator involved in Christian education in Boise, Texas, and Japan. He will be building on the solid foundation provided by Cheryl Gammon and all our teachers who served last year. We are thankful that Jeff and our teachers are willing to serve our children in this way.

Raising children who love Jesus is a difficult but important task. We encourage our parents to be faithful in bringing their children to Sunday School this year. We strongly believe that if parents bring their children and follow up by talking about their Sunday School lessons at home, they will see spiritual growth in their children.

Covenant Groups are a great blessing to our church. Getting together in a home, sharing a meal together, having real relationships, studying God's Word and praying together: these are the kinds of things our souls crave. But they are difficult to do on Sunday morning, and our culture doesn't encourage them either. Between work and our other commitments and pastimes, it can be hard to have the real fellowship that we truly need.

We encourage everyone at All Saints to get involved with a Covenant Group. We currently have several thriving groups, but only a small portion of our people are involved. We plan to expand our Covenant Groups this year to include more people and help All Saints grow as a Christian community.

We are excited about what God is doing at All Saints. We hope you are excited too and will be involved in September. If you would like to know more about Sunday School or you are interested in serving as a teacher, please contact Jeff Miller. If you would like to know more about Covenant Groups, please contact Brian Douglas.

Adam and Jesus: How God's hero makes everything better

2011-07-08T02:28:00.002-04:00

An article written for the All Saints Presbyterian Church July 2011 newsletter:

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The very first hero in the Bible is Adam. But after reading Adam’s story (Genesis 1.26-3.24), you might think to yourself: he cannot be the first hero in the Bible—he is not really a hero at all! He is given a beautiful, perfect world, but he ruins everything. He is anything but a hero.

If you think that, then you understand Adam’s story perfectly. In literary terms, Adam is the quintessential tragic hero. Tragedy starts off well, with a noble person in a state of peace and happiness, but that person’s situation rapidly deteriorates—usually because of some lack of knowledge or understanding—and he ends up utterly ruined.

Examples of classic tragedies include Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Othello, modern plays like Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire or Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, and films like The Alamo and Bridge on the River Kwai. Adam’s story certainly belongs at the top of the tragic list:

1. He was made in the image of God (Genesis 1.16-27), but he caused that image to be tarnished by sinfulness. In many ways, he became more a reflection of the serpent than of God.

2. He was given a chance to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1.28), but instead of being the father of a fruitful, productive people, he became the father of sin and destruction, passing it along to all who come after him.

3. He was given a beautiful bride—look how he sings about her in Gen 2.23! But instead of preserving and protecting her, he stood silently by and allowed her to fall into sin (Gen 3.6) and then blamed her for his own sin (Gen 3.12).

4. He was given paradise: see how the beautiful garden is described in Gen 2.8-14. But instead of tending and nourishing it, he turned it into wasteland: Gen 3.17-19.

This is the true tragedy of tragedies: God’s own representative, made in his image to be like him as he governs the world, has turned his back on God and become a source of sin and cursing rather than of goodness and blessing. Because of Adam, the perfect, wonderful world has been cursed and the beautiful bride has been corrupted.

Why would God let this happen? If he knew Adam was going to ruin everything like this, why did he create the world at all?

The answer is that he had a better plan in mind all along: he allowed Adam to ruin everything in order to display the glory of the one who is greater than Adam: Jesus.

Everything that Adam destroyed, Jesus restores. And he does not simply restore, but rather he makes these things far better than they ever were:

1. Jesus bears the image of God in that he is God himself in human flesh. Unlike Adam, he does not allow that image of God to be marred by sin, even though he was “in every respect . . . tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4.15). Instead, he takes the most sinful and corrupt things in the world – human hearts – and makes them clean again.

2. Unlike Adam, who was the father of a sinful people, Jesus is the father of a holy people, a people who will carry out God’s command to “fill the earth and subdue it” by obeying Jesus’ words, “Go and make disciples of all nations.” Jesus’ people are described as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2.9-10).

3. Unlike Adam, who allowed a perfect, beautiful bride to be ruined, Jesus took a corrupt, unfaithful bride and made her pure and beautiful again. The New Testament repeatedly calls the church “the bride of Christ.” That bride was once marred by sin, but she has now been made holy and beautiful again.

4. Unlike Adam, who took God’s perfect world and ruined it, Jesus will take this cursed world and create a new heavens and earth that far exceeds this one: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’ And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’” (Revelation 21.1-5).

Jesus is the new Adam, only he is infinitely greater than the first. Only Jesus can undo the tragedy that grips our world and even our souls. He has created a new world, a new bride, a new people, a new image of God given to man, and each is even better than the first.

James 4.13-17: Two Kinds of Vapor

2011-06-19T23:11:00.005-04:00

A sermon preached at All Saints in Boise, Idaho on 19 June 2011.

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On the Fourth of July in 1845, American writer Henry David Thoreau moved away from civilization. He decided to do this because he was tired of his life; he was tired of the constant demands of society and work and government and industry and culture. It was all too hectic and unsettling. Surely humans weren’t meant to live this way. There must be a better way to live.

That Fourth of July was 166 years ago, but I think we can relate! If anything, life has gotten more hectic and unsettled. Our society, work, government, culture, and just life in general make even more demands on us. Despite new technology that makes our lives easier in some ways, our daily schedules are maybe even more packed than they would have been in 1845.

Thoreau built himself a small cabin near Concord, Massachusetts and lived a very minimal lifestyle: simple house, simple clothes, simple food, simple friendships, simple furniture, simple pleasures. He stopped to smell the roses – literally! He did his best to get into the rhythm of nature: the four seasons, the subtle differences of the different times of day, the sights and sounds of animals and thunderstorms and country life. He tried to arrange everything in his life to be the opposite of his previous hectic life.

Thoreau wrote about his time in the woods in a book called Walden. He described the beauty and serenity of his life there in terms that make his reader wish to live that way too. As I read the book, it’s easy to think: What a relief it would be if we could just slip away from my crazy life into Thoreau’s simple life! Maybe this is how human beings were meant to live! Maybe it appeals to me even a little more because I live in Idaho.

It all sounds very attractive as you read Walden. But at the book’s conclusion, Thoreau does something strange: after two years in the woods, without any ceremony or explanation or apology, he simply packs his bags and moves back to the city. At the end of it all, despite all the wonderful things he tells his reader about, Thoreau can’t live his simple life in the woods forever. At the end of it all, his experiment in a new way of life didn’t work.

Thoreau’s Walden is just one of ten thousand different ways people have tried to make sense of their lives. How am I supposed to live? What am I supposed to value? What am I supposed to do with my time and energy and mind and money and emotions?

Everyone asks these questions at some point or another, and different generations have answered them differently. In ancient times the meaning of life was found in the glory of the nation. In medieval times it was the glory of the church, while in modern times it was the glory of humanity.

In the 1950s the most important things in life for many people were working hard, providing for the family, and preserving the American way of life. The 1960s emphasized peace and love. In the 1980s many people defined their world in terms of personal prosperity and the triumph of the free market. Perhaps for many today the key to a good life is getting a job and keeping it.

Each of these ways of looking at life can be attractive, just like Thoreau’s simple life. But in the end, they are just as broken. The problem with all of these views is that they are vapor. The book of Ecclesiastes--which is, like Walden, a book about the meaning of life--begins like this: “Absolute vapor, absolute vapor, everything is vapor.”

Vapor clouds our vision. Try to cling to smoke and you end up with nothing. Try to find your way out of a fog – you’re only guessing which is the way out.

Ecclesiastes says that apart from God, all of life is vapor. Nations come and go. So does money. So does war and so does peace. Even love, even our minds, even our lives are vapor, they are fog and dust and smoke.

James chapter 4.13-17 takes up these same themes:

Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will travel to such and such a city and spend a year there and do business and make a profit." You don't even know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be! For you are a bit of smoke that appears for a little while, then vanishes.

Instead, you should say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So, for the person who knows to do good and doesn't do it, it is a sin.

Here is the irony in this passage: We feel like the things in our lives are vapor, but James is telling us that we are the vapor. We are “a bit of smoke that appears for a little while, then vanishes.” I think our instinctive reaction as human beings is to hate this idea, but I also think we know it is true.

Here is an example of this: I come from a pretty tight-knit family. Most of my relatives value their family pretty highly, and we can tell you where our ancestors immigrated from once upon a time. But I recently had to ask my mom, who keeps the family tree, what several of my great-grandparents names were. I had met my two of my great-grandmothers when I was a toddler, but until I asked, I couldn’t have told you that their names were Alma & Helen, and there was no way that I remembered my great-great-grandmother’s name: Katrina Maria Paulina Paulsen Hansen Jensen.

Do you remember your great-grandparents’ names? You have eight of them. That’s not many generations ago. And if we go any further back, the memory becomes even fuzzier. And this is family. If anyone is going to remember us, it would be our family, right? But eventually everyone fades into history. James says we are smoke.

Another example: even if we donate money to get our name on a building that will last much longer than we do, the name eventually becomes associated with the building as the person is eventually forgotten. I still remember the names of the dorms I lived in at college: Gordis, Carson, Emily. Who were those dorms named after? No one knew; the name had become the building and the person had aded away.

The truth is that we are the vapor, dust, smoke, and we know it. But James points out an even greater irony: Even though we are smoke, we boast about it! We are arrogant smoke.

We boast in this way, according to James: We say things like, “Today I’m going to do this, and then tomorrow I’m going to do that. And guess what! I’m going to succeed in these plans! I’m going to make a profit and win and accomplish and achieve!”

Can you see why this attitude is arrogant? Isn’t it kind of ridiculous for smoke to say, “I’m going this way, and then I’ll go that way!” Smoke has no control over its course, and neither do we. Just as smoke is moved by the wind, so also we are moved by life. We’ve all known someone, or even been someone, who has had no choice but to move or change jobs or make other major life decisions that are completely out of our control.

And to think that our plans are successful just because we decided they would be! How many times in your life have things worked out well for you, when you knew that they just as easily might have been a disaster!

I think about this often. Every time I make a big decision, or teach a new class, or preach, or go on a family vacation, I have a feeling in the back of my head that this might turn out really well, or it might be a disaster.

And to think that we can accomplish something just by the sheer power of our will! Today or tomorrow, we will do this and that, and because we plan it well enough and want it bad enough, we will be successful! This simply isn’t true.

Here is an example of what I mean: It always annoys me when I hear a professional athlete claim that they were successful because they “wanted it” more than anyone else. At any given moment, there are exactly 750 professional baseball players in the major leagues. At any given moment, there are approximately 5000 professional baseball players in the minor leagues.

What makes the difference between a major leaguer and a minor leaguer? While desire or will power might play a role in some cases, the fact is that there are minor leaguers who have all the desire in the world, but they will never play in the major leagues. They’re simply not talented enough.

And even when talent and will power and whatever else are on our side, we all know that in life things sometimes simply don’t work out. It’s not necessarily anyone’s fault, but sometimes things just don’t work out. We’ve all experienced that.

James says, “You don’t even know what tomorrow will bring—what your life will be!” But even though we know all that because we’ve all experienced it, James says we are still prone to boasting like arrogant smoke.

James instructs us to see things differently. Instead of saying, “Today or tomorrow” we will go and do and be successful, we should say, according to v. 15, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” I think James would want to write that phrase in italics and underline and bold if they’d had those things in his day: “If the Lord wills,” then I will live and go and do.

Now, I am convicted that most of the times I have thought about this passage in the past, I have understood it to mean that James wants us to change our words, that he wants us to say things differently. Instead of saying this, I should say that. That was the point as I understood it.

However, that is not what he is getting at. He is not advocating a change of words; he is advocating a change of attitude. He is not trying to change the things we say; he is trying to change the way we think. This is not just a new way of talking – prefacing everything we say with “If the Lord wills…” – it is a new attitude toward life.

The difference this way of thinking makes is enormous. Factoring the Lord’s will into the story of our lives changes everything. I will briefly describe three ways in which this “If the Lord wills…” attitude changes our lives. They are 1) God’s direction, 2) God’s provision, and 3) God’s glory.

First, this “If the Lord wills…” attitude makes us keenly aware that we live our lives at God’s direction. So much of our lives are beyond our control. We are smoke blowing in the wind. But God is the wind. It is in him, the apostle Paul said while preaching in Athens, that we live and move and exist. It is his will, not ours, that charts our lives.

Jesus taught us to pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This prayer should define our lives. It teaches us to recognize the reality behind all that happens to us, and it readies our hearts for whatever his will brings us.

Joseph and his brothers learned the lesson of God’s direction. Their story is in the last 14 chapters of Genesis. Joseph’s brothers nearly murdered him but decided to sell him into slavery instead. In the end they come face to face, but this time the tables had turned since Joseph was in the position of power. But Joseph showed them kindness and summarized their lives this way: “What you meant for evil, God meant for good.” God’s will was behind the entire story of their lives, and he used the events of their lives to save not only their family, but also their entire nation.

God’s will is behind our story too. God has used the events of your life, the good and the bad, to shape you into who you are. If you are in Christ, then what others might have meant for evil, God meant for good. He will use even our worst moments for his good purposes.

Second, this “If the Lord wills…” attitude James writes about teaches us to trust in God’s provision. What God has called us to do, he will certainly enable us to do. That means intellectually, emotionally, financially, spiritually, and in any other way.

Certainly, it will be tough at times. The Bible is full of stories of people who were called to do incredibly difficult things: think of Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samuel, David, Elijah, Daniel, Ezekiel, and dozens more. But in each of those cases, God had prepared them to do what he asked them to do, and God was with them while they were doing it.

God has provided for us in the same way. If you are in Christ, whatever God has called you to do, he will enable you to do. He has prepared us and he is with us even today.

Third, James’s “If the Lord wills…” attitude proclaims God’s glory. Instead of arrogantly boasting about our lives, James’s attitude recognizes that whatever comes is from God. If I am successful, I need to remind myself, it is not because I’m so good at all this. It could’ve just as easily gone the other way.

For example, I’m sure you’ve noticed this: Whenever things go right, we take credit for it—I made a good decision; I acted quickly; I was smarter or better than everyone else. But when things go poorly, we blame God—Why have you forsaken me? Why didn’t you come through for me?

By recognizing the Lord’s will in every area of our lives, we are giving him the glory for the good things that happen, and we are trusting that he will work things out as he has promised when the bad things happen.

God’s direction, God’s provision, and God’s glory: The greatest example of a life lived with this “If the Lord wills…” attitude is Jesus himself.

Jesus is the one who taught us to pray, “Your will be done…” The night before he died on the cross, Jesus pleaded with his Father, asking that he not have to go through with his coming execution. But then he prayed, “Yet not as I will, but as You will.”

Through the best and the worst, Jesus recognized he Father’s will was behind the direction of his life, he recognized that his Father had equipped him to do everything he was called to do, and all he did was for the Father’s glory.

And we are called to be like Jesus. We are to take up our cross, die to self, and live for him. Like Jesus, we are supposed to believe the promises of God: that he has prepared us and is with us, no matter how good or how bad our circumstances are.

If we follow the example of Jesus, we will be a new kind of vapor. The first kind of vapor comes and goes and is forgotten in a few generations at most.

The second is a vapor that is transformed. 1 John 2.17 says that the world is passing away, but the one who does God’s will remains forever. So which is it? Are we vapor, as James says, or will we remain forever, as John says?

The answer is, both. What an apt description of those who are in Christ! Having an “If the Lord wills…” attitude almost certainly won’t result in earthly success or immortal fame. In many ways, we are still vapor. But if we do God’s will and not our own, we are a vapor that remains forever.

Pruning & Joy

2011-06-17T11:28:00.005-04:00

Click here to read my wife's latest article about the similarities between gardening, parenting, and the discipline of God.

James 4.1-10: Laughing v. Weeping

2011-06-16T11:14:00.007-04:00

A sermon preached at All Saints in Boise, Idaho on 12 June 2011:

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Over the last month or two, our pastor, Brad, has been preaching through the book of Ecclesiastes. He recently read to us Eccl 3.1,4:

There is an occasion for everything, a time for every activity under heaven...
A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.

I think this resonates with us as human beings. There is something fundamentally human about laughing and dancing and weeping and mourning. They are a fact of human life. I would guess that nearly all your most powerful memories, the ones that you can still “feel” to this day, involve laughing or weeping.

One of the questions that the Bible asks – and thankfully answers – is this: in this cycle of life, from laughing to mourning to dancing to weeping, where does the wheel stop? Will my life end with a time of laughter or a time of weeping?

This is a very important question. How we answer it will (or at least should) change a tremendous amount in our lives: how we spend our time, who we spend it with will change very much depending on how we answer that question: Will my life end in laughter, or will it end in weeping?

As we try to answer that question in our lives, it turns out to be a very tricky question. Perhaps if I figure out how to do the right things, if I carefully arrange my life so that I can live successfully, my life will end with a time of laughter and not a time of weeping.

But Hollywood legend Ingrid Bergman describes that road well: “I remember one day sitting at the pool and suddenly the tears were streaming down my cheeks. Why was I so unhappy? I had success. I had security. But it wasn’t enough. I was exploding inside.”

Maybe you don’t feel that way this morning. Maybe you wouldn’t put it in quite those words. But who hasn’t felt this way at some point? Have you ever looked your life and wondered whether you’ve made any good choices? I’ve felt that way many times. Am I doing anything in my life well at all?

Even love, that greatest of human emotions, the one that above all else is supposed to make life worth living, brings its own unique kind of pain. Legendary French singer Edith Piaf once said: “I think you have to pay for love with bitter tears.”

One of my students posted as her Facebook status last night: “Love is giving someone the power to destroy you, and trusting them not to.”

Whether it’s the aftershocks of a failed marriage or the tears of a parent whose children are growing up and moving away, even the joy of love is mixed with pain. “Until death do us part” is unfortunately a reality even in the best of marriages.

And this problem is not limited to just me, or just us as a church, or just our nation, or just to the world in the 21st century. Woodrow Wilson, who was a noted historian and president of Princeton University before he became the 28th president of the United States, said: “There is little for the great part of the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath.”

What we want to ask this morning is: How does the Bible answer this question? Does it say whether my life will end in laughter or in tears?

The book of James addresses this question. James 4.1-10:

What is the source of the wars and the fights among you? Don't they come from the cravings that are at war within you? You desire and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and don't receive because you ask wrongly, so that you may spend it on your desires for pleasure.
Adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the world's friend becomes God's enemy. Or do you think it's without reason the Scripture says that the Spirit He has caused to live in us yearns jealously?

But He gives greater grace. Therefore He says:

God resists the proud,
but gives grace to the humble.

Therefore, submit to God. But resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, double-minded people! Be miserable and mourn and weep. Your laughter must change to mourning and your joy to sorrow. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you. (HCSB)

Why is weeping a part of human life? Where does all this pain and strife come from? It comes from within: “the cravings that are at war within you.” Here is the problem, according to v. 2: “You desire and do not have.” We crave things and desire them but we don’t get them. Even more, those times we do ask, we ask for ourselves and our own success and our own glory.

So how do we solve this problem of not having what we want? “You murder and covet and cannot obtain,” according to v. 2. Murder and coveting, the Bible makes clear, are problems of the heart. We are willing to hate those around us and rage because we want what they have but can’t seem to get it.

Ironically, if we asked God for our desires, in humility, knowing our place in this world and following his lead, he would give us the desires of our hearts.

Jesus taught in Matt 6:

Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the sky: they don't sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you worth more than they? Can any of you add a single cubit to his height by worrying? And why do you worry about clothes? Learn how the wildflowers of the field grow: they don't labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these! If that's how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won't He do much more for you—you of little faith? So don't worry, saying, 'What will we eat?' or 'What will we drink?' or 'What will we wear?' For the idolaters eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.

Jesus later said, If you then “know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!” But we covet instead of asking.

Paul taught in Romans 12: “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Try to do what is honorable in everyone’s eyes. If possible, on your part, live at peace with everyone.” But we don’t do that. We have hearts filled with rage and hate and jealousy and envy.

If you don’t think this is true of you, consider this: Who is that person that you just can’t get along with? In your family, your workplace, maybe in your own home. You just don’t understand them, they do such weird things, they make such bad decisions, they are just so frustrating. Who is that person for you? Or persons? We all have them. Right now off the top of our heads, we could all make a list of people that we would prefer to never see again.

Or consider this: Has someone’s success ever made you mad? Have you ever been upset that they did well? Or that they had the opportunity to do something that you didn’t? It might sound a little petty and childish when we put it that way, but aren’t we all petty and childish sometimes?

Why do we do this? Why are we murderous and envious? Because we’re trying to create our own joy. We are trying in our own strength and by our own means to make our lives end in laughter instead of weeping. We want joy so badly that we are willing to take other people out to get it. V. 3 puts it this way: We want to spend everything, even those we love, on our desires for pleasure.

Where does this way of life leave us? James describes us as God’s enemy -- look at verses 4-5 and 7.

According to James, our hearts have sided us with the World and with the Devil, which automatically makes us the enemies of God. The World and the Devil tell us: to find joy, you need will power, you need to follow your heart, you need to think, you need to feel, do better, try harder, fight for every inch and strive for every moment of joy!

But to strive for ourselves above all else is to make ourselves the purpose of the universe. It is to make ourselves God.

Can you see the irony in this? We battle so hard to create our own joy, but in doing so we become the enemies of God. And what is the outcome of being an enemy of God? A life that ends in weeping, not laughter. By pursuing laughter so hard, we end up with weeping.

And that is the Bible’s answer to the question. Do our lives end in weeping or laughter? James tells us that in ourselves, apart from God’s work, we pursue joy so badly that we leave a wake of destruction behind us. Our lives are wars and fights to satisfy our cravings. We are allied with the World and the Devil and thus enemies of God, which means our lives will end in mourning. In ourselves, apart from any intervention by God, that is the answer.

But thank God that he has intervened for us! Look at v. 6: “But…” – what a wonderful word! – “But He gives greater grace.” The gracious gift of God – his intervention on our behalf, his saving us from ourselves – is greater than our own sinfulness!

God’s gives greater grace. Look at v. 6: “Therefore, He says: God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” God gives grace to the humble.

Note that humility is the exact opposite of what we did before: Before we made ourselves the center of the universe. We saw everything and everyone around us as existing to serve me, to fill my life with joy and laughter. Even God himself: when we did ask him for something, it was so that we could “spend it on our desires for pleasure” (v. 3).

Twice James tells us to be humble: v. 6, v. 10. We need to admit how sinful we are, turn to God in repentance, and cease our pride. We need to be so honest about our sin with ourselves and with God that it brings us to tears. James writes in v. 9: “Be miserable and mourn and weep. Your laughter must change to mourning and your joy to sorrow.”

Has your sin ever made you weep? Have you ever been so distraught over something you’ve done that you’ve shed tears over it? Believe it or not, that’s a good place to be. Because God resists the proud, but he gives his overwhelming, unbelievable grace to the humble.

The most important verse in this entire passage is v. 10: “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.” We want our lives to end in joy so badly, but the incredible irony of the work of God is that a life of joy comes through weeping.

Instead of exalting ourselves, we need to see ourselves as we really are: inadequate, broken, sinful – yes, even shameful. We need to mourn over it. And then we need to remember the promise of God:

“Blessed are those who mourn, because they will be comforted.” That’s not an empty platitude or a wishful pleasantry. That’s a vow made by the God of the universe! If we mourn before him, if we admit defeat in the joy-at-all-costs game that we’ve been playing with our lives, then he will comfort us!

The God of the universe humbles the proud and lifts up the humble. That is how he works! Think of the things Jesus taught: The first shall be last and the last shall be first. The shameful sinner’s prayer is heard, but the arrogant theologian’s prayer is meaningless. The poor will be rich and the rich will be poor. The gentle will inherit the earth, but the violent conqueror will lose it all.

The God of the universe turns mourning into laughter and sorrow into joy. Psalm 30.5 says, “Weeping may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” If we humble ourselves before God, then our lives will not end like an evening, when the light fades into darkness and the world around us fades into quiet slumber. No, if we confess our brokenness to him, our lives will end like a morning, with new light and hope and purpose.

Have you ever seen one of those chick flicks where the girl & the guy almost get together, but in the end they go their separate ways. Doesn’t your heart react against that? No! They’re supposed to be together in the end!

Or one of those westerns in which all the good guys die and the bad guys ride off into the sunset? Again, you say, no! It’s not supposed to be that way! The good guys are supposed to win!

The God of the universe has intervened in the world so that things will end as they should. This world is going to be a comedy, not a tragedy. It’s going to end in blissful summer, not bleak winter. This is a world of light and knowledge, not darkness and ignorance. God is turning this world into a place of life, not death; of joy and laughter, not sorrow and mourning.

Now I want to be clear: I am not saying that the sorrows of this life aren’t real. Nor am I saying that once we become a Christian, and perhaps have enough “faith”, we will stop experiencing the pain of this life. The weeping in this life is all too real, and it will be with us until God makes all things new.

What I am saying is that we can now answer the question: Will my life end in laughter or in weeping? If you are in Christ, you can know that your life will end in joy.

But how do we know all this? Is this just wishful thinking? Are we just deluding ourselves into believing in unicorns and happy endings?

Everything I have said today has been most powerfully displayed in the person of Jesus. Think of the downward spiral that was Jesus’ story: the creator of everything took on our limited, finite nature. He was born to a poor family and was mocked as illegitimate in a culture where that mattered a lot. He was rejected by his countrymen, his close friends, and his own family in ways that we can’t even imagine. More than any of this, he was the only innocent man who ever lived, and yet he died a savage death on a cross.

Imagine what an observer to that whole story would have said: Weeping and mourning really are all there is. Life is pain – anyone who says differently is selling something. Think of the real sorrow, the horror even, that his disciples must have felt. We bet everything on this guy! And now look: all is lost.

But Jesus’ story doesn’t end there! Jesus humbled himself before God, and just as James claims, he was exalted! He rose, he ascended, he was seated, he is the name above all names and the ruler of all that is.

And in his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus opens the way for us to follow him. That same path can be ours. If we too humble ourselves, God will exalt us. That is the only way we can have the laughter & joy that we’ve always wanted.

If we will not humble ourselves, we will have our moments of laughter, but that joy will only slip through our fingers.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. That’s God’s promise. Be miserable and mourn and weep, change your laughter to mourning and your joy to sorrow. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

1 John 2.15-27: The Obstacles

2011-06-15T14:10:00.002-04:00

A sermon preached at All Saints in Boise, Idaho on 25 July 2010:

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A few weeks ago, we looked at the first chapter and a half of a very interesting letter, 1 John. In this letter, John, who as an old man had been exiled away from everything he knew and loved, writes about his desire for fellowship – not just for himself, but also for all the people of God.

John told his readers that fellowship breaks down because every one of us is sinful. Yes, even people in the church are sinful – I know, isn’t this shocking? When we are selfish, when we pursue our own desires instead of looking to the needs of others, fellowship is broken.

This is true, John writes, most especially with our relationship with God. Instead of pursuing him, loving him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we give our minds, hearts, souls, and strengths to other things. When this is done, fellowship with God is broken as well.

How can fellowship be restored? John’s very strong answer to this is grace. Our relationship with God is restored when he graciously reaches down and fixes the problem of sin by the death of Jesus on the cross.

And our relationships with each other are restored when we do for others what God has done for us: just as God showed his gracious love to us while we were still sinners, our relationships with each other can only be restored when we show God’s gracious love to each other, even while they are sinning. When it comes to our relationships with each other, who is more wrong doesn’t matter nearly as much as we think it does. What matters more is who is extending divine grace to the other.

So this is John’s letter so far: First, fellowship with God & with each other is the goal. Second, fellowship is broken by our sin against God and against each other. And third, fellowship is restored when God shows us his grace, and then when we show God’s grace to each other.

However, in this next part of the letter, John warns us about two looming obstacles to this whole process, two large hurdles that stand in our path as we run this race.

We see the first in verses 15-17:

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

Here John cautions his readers about the danger of loving the world. He contrasts the things from the Father with the things from the world, and he tells us not to love the world. But what does this mean? Let’s think through this.

By “do not love the world”, John is not telling us that our enemy is the physical world. Tangible, physical things – dirt, plants, animals, and the like – are not the cause of our spiritual struggles. The physical world can certainly effect us deeply; we cannot discount that fact. But when we struggle with issues of fellowship, sin, grace, and the like, the underlying root problem is spiritual, not physical.

When I was growing up, my parents told me many times that while I can’t often control the things that happen to me, I can always control my reaction to those things. It’s like this:

A child is playing at recess when another child hits him. In response to this one problem, different children will react in very different ways. One child will go to the teacher with tears in his eyes and tell what happened, hoping to gain the support of the authorities. A second child will simply hit back. A third child might withdraw and mope about being picked on, but a fourth child might secretly rally the other students and turn them against the one who hit him. I’ll let you guess about which one of those kids I was.

Depending on the circumstances, some of those responses might be appropriate while others are not. But in each case, the child who was hit cannot point at the child who hit him and say, “My reaction is his fault!”

It is very, very dangerous to blame our spiritual problems on physical things. If we struggle with a particular sin, such as selfishness, laziness, lust, or drunkenness, it is not the fault of something outside myself: it’s not the fault of other people, my bed, my computer, or a bottle. If I struggle with those sins, it is my fault. We can burn our beds and still be lazy. We can sell our computers and still be lustful. We can never touch a bottle again and still lack self-control.

Jesus put it this way: it is not the tangible, physical thing that goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but the spiritually revealing thing that comes out of the mouth; this is what defiles a person. Until we begin to see the true source of the problem – my own heart – then we will never be able to deal with the problem.

Indeed, this is John’s very point! Too often Christians read John’s instruction, “do not love the world or the things in the world,” and they focus on the world and the things; they think that they can follow John’s instruction by purging themselves of the right worldly things. But the key word in this sentence is the word love!

Understood properly, love is the key word for all our lives. What does God ask of us? The first and foremost thing, basic idea number one, the first rung on the ladder, the most fundamental thing God asks of us is to love him with everything we have: heart, soul, mind, and strength. The second thing he asks of us is like it, in that it is also a command to love.

When John says, “Do not love the world or the things in the world,” the emphasis is on our love. What do we invest in and pursue more than anything else? That is what we love! There are at least two reasons why we should love God and each other more than we love the things of the world.

First, v. 17 points out that this world is temporary. It is “passing away,” but doing the will of God abides forever. Which is the better choice, to pour ourselves into things and experiences that come and go, or to invest in things that last forever?

Second, loving the things of the world is incompatible with love for God. When it comes to love, there is only room at the top of our hearts for one thing. We were designed to love God more than anything else; if we love anything else more than we love God, then we are not functioning as we are designed to function. If we are not functioning as we are designed to function, then we cannot be happy. Isn’t it ironic that the things of the world, which promise us so much joy and happiness, take those very things away from us in the end?

So the world is the first obstacle in our path as we seek to be the kind of gracious, loving, fellowshipping community that John is describing in this letter. And by the world, John is not pointing to something outside ourselves, but rather is pointing to our own hearts: do we love temporary things more than permanent things? Do we love God most, or do we love the world and the things of the world?

If we cannot answer these questions satisfactorily, then we cannot clear the first hurdle, we cannot have this kind of gracious, loving, fellowshipping community.

John describes the second hurdle in verses 18-27:

Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he made to us—eternal life.
I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you. But the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie—just as it has taught you, abide in him.

The second obstacle to our gracious, loving, fellowshipping community is anti-Christ. Some people want to make anti-Christ into a single person, the Anti-Christ, an end-times figure who will do certain things before the second coming of Jesus.

But John doesn’t seem to have any idea of a single Anti-Christ; he talks about many anti-Christs having already come when he wrote this letter, and he says that this kind of thing will continue into the future.

So what is this anti-Christ? What does it look like? John identifies anti-Christs as teachers who deny truth and teach falsehood. In v. 19, John says they claim to be sent from the apostles and represent themselves as teachers of truth. But the reality is they should not have gone out as teachers; these are people who need most to learn. They should have stayed with the apostles as students, but instead they set themselves up as teachers.

More importantly, these anti-Christs are exactly that – anti Christ – because of what they teach. Specifically, they deny the two most important, fundamental truths about who Jesus is and what he has done.

First, anti-Christs deny that Jesus is the Christ – that is, the Messiah who is responsible for the salvation of man. This is the number one, most fundamental, most central doctrine of the Christian faith. Either we believe that Jesus died in our place, substituting for us, on the cross, or we believe that our salvation depends on who we are and what we can do.

All religions on earth can be divided into two categories at this point. All religions but one teach that the answer to man’s problems lies within himself. If only he tries this or does that, he can solve his own problems.

Only Christianity teaches that man cannot by any means save himself. Someone else had to do it for him. To deny that Jesus is the chosen one, the promised one, the one sent to save humanity from its broken fellowship and its broken love – to deny those things is to be an anti-Christ.

Second, anti-Christs deny that Jesus is God. John highlights this in verses 22-23: This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.

To deny the fundamental relationship between the Father and the Son is to deny that Jesus is God. To deny this idea, this Trinitarian idea, runs completely against the Bible. Yes, I know that the word ‘trinity’ never appears in the Bible. I’ve been reminded of this many times.

But to emphasize that fact here is to overlook the fact that this is one of the most Trinitarian passages in the entire Bible! Look at what John is calling us to believe: he says that to deny the Son is to deny the Father; we must accept them both. You can’t have God but not Jesus. Either you confess the Son along with the Father, or you are constructing your own God.

And see how John says we are able to confess this fundamental relationship between the Father and the Son: it is only through the work of the Holy Spirit. Those who are in Christ have been anointed by the Holy One, John writes in v. 20. This is his first response to the obstacle of anti-Christ.

Some people believe that being anointed by the Holy Spirit is a special circumstance, something that happens only to a certain few Christians. But John writes that all his readers have received this anointing. The work of the Holy Spirit is for all Christians; everyone who is in Christ has been anointed by the Holy One, he says in v. 20.

John writes that the Holy Spirit will permanently abide in us (v. 27). The Holy Spirit will give us knowledge (v. 20) and lead us to truth (v. 21, 27). This means that the Holy Spirit is by the power of God actively re-forming us – re-shaping us, re-fashioning us, making us more like what God has called us to be.

And when we see the re-forming work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, it assures us that we are not in this on our own, that our salvation does not depend on our own goodness. Are you different now than you were a year ago? Five? Ten? The typically quiet, steady work of the Holy Spirit on our souls reminds us continually that he who began this work in us is faithful and will finish the job.

God does not intend us to blindly follow teachers. We are meant to take the things we have heard and weigh them against the knowledge that the Holy Spirit has given us. We are meant to analyze, discern, and judge the things we hear, not just passively sit back and listen to whatever someone happens to tell us.

We must do so humbly, recognizing that we are in-progress and certainly don’t know everything yet. But John’s first means of overcoming the obstacle of anti-Christ is to point us toward the work of the Holy Spirit within us.

His second means of overcoming the obstacle of anti-Christ is to repeatedly remind his reader to go back to the beginning. You already know the truth, he writes in v. 21. You have already received the instruction that you need about who Jesus is and what he has done, he writes in vv. 26-27. Abide in the things that you learned in the beginning, he tell his reader in vv. 24 & 27.

Think of it this way: You can’t become a master builder without first learning the first things about building. You can’t become a college professor without knowing the first thing about your subject.

What is the first thing we learn as Christians? What is it that made us a Christian in the first place? What was the idea that separated us from everything non-Christian at the beginning? Is it not that the God of the universe sent his only Son to die for me, a sinner who could not save myself?

Do you see? The single idea that made us Christian in the first place – that the God of the universe sent his only Son to die for me, a sinner who could not save myself – affirms both the relationship between the Father and the Son and affirms that Jesus is the Messiah, the very two things that John upholds as the answer to anti-Christ.

If we are in Christ, if the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives, then we already know the first things that are needed to clear the hurdle of anti-Christ and have a gracious, loving, fellowshipping community.

There is just one last thing that we need to keep in mind. It is too easy to point at worldliness and anti-Christ where it exists outside ourselves and say, there is the problem! This is always the temptation when we read what God requires of us. When we hear his commands, we too often respond like the man who said to Jesus, “I have done all these things!”

When we read about Cain and Abel or David and Goliath, of course we are Abel! Of course we are David! But if we take an honest look at ourselves, we see the truth: on our own, we have more in common with the bad guys than we do the good guys. Every day I reveal my soul to be more like Cain’s than Abel’s.

When we read this passage, we must be honest and admit that far too often in our lives, we have loved the world and the things of the world instead of God. Far too often in our lives, we have listened to and followed the false ideas of anti-Christ instead of remembering the first things. When we read these things in the Bible, it is important that we remind ourselves, “That is me!”

But always remember this as well: If you are in Christ, then by his work on the cross and by the re-forming work of the Holy Spirit, God loves you and treats you as if you were the good guy, always the good guy, as if you had never loved anything more than God and never believed anything that was anti-Christ.

This is, in fact, the first thing you learned, the very thing John is telling you to go back to. Remember: the God of the universe sent his only Son to die for you, a sinner who could not save yourself. And the Father who began that work before the creation of the world, finalized it with the work of his Son on the cross, and is perfecting it even now by the work of the Holy Spirit – he is faithful to complete it.

Does China break the mold?

2011-02-12T01:53:00.003-05:00

Jordan & I are currently enrolled in a course on the history, politics, and culture of post-Mao China at Boise State University. This course requires us to write a few reflections based on our readings and the lecture materials. This is one of those assignments:

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Does China break the mold?

While the history of America’s foreign policy of “benevolence” and democratization (or imperialism or hegemony, as some call it) dates back well into the 19th century, the real beginning of the expansion of American international influence beyond the confines of North America is the brief Spanish American War of 1898. According to William McKinley’s campaign posters for the election of 1900, his administration had done the good service of converting Cuba and the Philippines from poor, oppressed properties of the evil empire of Spain into American-controlled citadels of democracy, education and prosperity. Meanwhile, back on the American mainland, the war had finally jump-started an economy that had been stagnant since the Grant presidency, but that is an aside.

Since McKinley, US foreign policy has bound democracy with education and prosperity. If a country is democratically governed, the other two are bound to follow. Alternatively, if we can foster education and economic prosperity in another nation, then the inevitable result will be the development of a democratic form of government.

This connection has borne out in some circumstances, such as post-war Japan, late-20th-century Brazil, the final decade of the Soviet Union, and of course the United States itself. However, had Americans paid better attention to their early experiments in spreading democracy around the globe, perhaps they would have avoided this naïve link between democracy, education, and prosperity. In neither Cuba nor the Philippines did the American democratization work out in the end. The political and economic instability that lingered in both countries throughout the 20th century can be traced back to the American regimes in the immediate aftermath of the Spanish American War.

There have been other calls to second-guess the American democracy-education-prosperity equation, such as the oil-rich nations of the Middle East, which have plenty of education and prosperity but not even a hint of democracy, or the numerous countries of Central America, South America, and Africa that have had on-and-off democracy in the past century but have not seen the economic development that was supposed to follow. An even closer-to-home example is the political and economic instability that has plagued America’s neighbor, Mexico, for two centuries. In our present day the real political and economic power in this democratic country belongs to the illegal drug trade. Worse yet are the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, which were ostensibly to bring democracy and its concomitant benefits to those nations but have put them in such a state that neither democracy nor its blessings are on even the distant horizon.

The American political philosopher quickly explains away these counter examples. These nations were not ready for democracy or prosperity. The proper mindset and infrastructure were not in place. Or if all else fails, one can declare the other nation to be simply evil or crazy. Why did the Nazis and the Reds do what they did? They were simply evil, crazy, or both.

Into this conversation walks 21st century China. While Maoist China certainly fits the description of a country that was not ready for democracy, education, or prosperity, post-Mao China presents something of an anomaly. No country in human history has experienced the kind of meteoric rise to global prominence that China has seen in the last thirty years. Almost no one predicted these developments because China completely broke the mold: political authoritarianism and economic prosperity united in a way that political philosophers said could not happen. Further, China is quickly becoming one of the most educated countries in the world in terms of the technical skills of math and science, but the humanities that are said to be essential for democracy lag behind. Throughout China’s rise, American foreign policy has not known what to do with these anomalies, and it is still at a loss.

Political philosophy is regrouping. Can totalitarianism and prosperity coexist? Can a successful nation be highly technically educated but underdeveloped in the humanities? Will China’s prosperity lead to democracy, or does China’s late success require us to redefine how these ideas relate? In short, does China break the mold, or will the democracy-education-prosperity equation be balanced in time?

What can miserable Christians sing?

2011-02-08T10:55:00.015-05:00

I put together the following article for our our church newsletter this month:

Those who are have worshipped at All Saints might see our worship service as a little bit unusual. Such things as our liturgical style, the subject matter of our services, and our weekly celebration of the Lord’s Supper might strike some as different than what many other churches do.

Why do we worship as we do? The following article explains a few aspects of our approach to worship, such as the centrality of Scripture in worship and the necessity of being honest with God and each other as we approach His throne.

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What Can Miserable Christians Sing?

Having experienced -- and generally appreciated -- worship across the whole evangelical spectrum, from Charismatic to Reformed -- I am myself less concerned here with the form of worship than I am with its content. Thus, I would like to make just one observation: the psalms, the Bible’s own hymnbook, have almost entirely dropped from view in the contemporary Western evangelical scene. I am not certain about why this should be, but I have an instinctive feel that it has more than a little to do with the fact that a high proportion of the psalter is taken up with lamentation, with feeling sad, unhappy, tormented, and broken.

In modern Western culture, these are simply not emotions which have much credibility: sure, people still feel these things, but to admit that they are a normal part of one’s everyday life is tantamount to admitting that one has failed in today’s health, wealth, and happiness society. And, of course, if one does admit to them, one must neither accept them nor take any personal responsibility for them: one must blame one’s parents, sue one’s employer, pop a pill, or check into a clinic in order to have such dysfunctional emotions soothed and one’s self-image restored.

Now, one would not expect the world to have much time for the weakness of the psalmists’ cries. It is very disturbing, however, when these cries of lamentation disappear from the language and worship of the church. Perhaps the Western church feels no need to lament -- but then it is sadly deluded about how healthy it really is in terms of numbers, influence and spiritual maturity. Perhaps -- and this is more likely -- it has drunk so deeply at the well of modern Western materialism that it simply does not know what to do with such cries and regards them as little short of embarrassing. Yet the human condition is a poor one -- and Christians who are aware of the deceitfulness of the human heart and are looking for a better country should know this.

A diet of unremittingly jolly choruses and hymns inevitably creates an unrealistic horizon of expectation which sees the normative Christian life as one long triumphalist street party -- a theologically incorrect and a pastorally disastrous scenario in a world of broken individuals. Has an unconscious belief that Christianity is -- or at least should be -- all about health, wealth, and happiness silently corrupted the content of our worship? Few Christians in areas where the church has been strongest over recent decades -- China, Africa, Eastern Europe -- would regard uninterrupted emotional highs as normal Christian experience.

Indeed, the biblical portraits of believers give no room to such a notion. Look at Abraham, Joseph, David, Jeremiah, and the detailed account of the psalmists’ experiences. Much agony, much lamentation, occasional despair -- and joy, when it manifests itself -- is very different from the frothy triumphalism that has infected so much of our modern Western Christianity. In the psalms, God has given the church a language [that] allows it to express even the deepest agonies of the human soul in the context of worship. Does our contemporary language of worship reflect the horizon of expectation regarding the believer’s experience [that] the psalter proposes as normative? If not, why not? Is it because the comfortable values of Western middle-class consumerism have silently infiltrated the church and made us consider such cries irrelevant, embarrassing, and signs of abject failure?

I did once suggest at a church meeting that the psalms should take a higher priority in evangelical worship than they generally do -- and was told in no uncertain terms by one indignant person that such a view betrayed a heart that had no interest in evangelism. On the contrary, I believe it is the exclusion of the experiences and expectations of the psalmists from our worship -- and thus from our horizons of expectation -- which has in a large part crippled the evangelistic efforts of the church in the West and turned us all into spiritual pixies.

By excluding the cries of loneliness, dispossession, and desolation from its worship, the church has effectively silenced and excluded the voices of those who are themselves lonely, dispossessed, and desolate, both inside and outside the church. By so doing, it has implicitly endorsed the banal aspirations of consumerism, generated an insipid, trivial and unrealistically triumphalist Christianity, and confirmed its impeccable credentials as a club for the complacent. In the last year, I have asked three very different evangelical audiences what miserable Christians can sing in church. On each occasion my question has elicited uproarious laughter, as if the idea of a broken-hearted, lonely, or despairing Christian was so absurd as to be comical -- and yet I posed the question in all seriousness. Is it any wonder that [the church in our culture], from the Reformed to the Charismatic, is almost entirely a comfortable, middle-class phenomenon?

Excerpted from: Carl R. Trueman, “What Can Miserable Christians Sing?”, in The Wages of Spin: Critical Writings on Historic and Contemporary Evangelicalism (Fearn: Mentor, 2004).

One man's treasure is another man's trash?

2011-02-07T07:26:00.005-05:00

Jordan & I are currently enrolled in a course on the history, politics, and culture of post-Mao China at Boise State University. This course requires us to write a few reflections based on our readings and the lecture materials. This is one of those assignments:

It is always interesting to note how one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
The courses I teach focus primarily on Western history and philosophy, which is one of the chief reasons that I was keen to take this course on 21st century China.  I was convicted of my need to improve my understanding of China given its status in the coming century as perhaps the world’s most important country.
Among the focuses of my previous research and teaching is the transition from Reformation to Enlightenment amongst the Western nations.  This transition began with Francis Bacon’s return to the inductive method of reasoning, which was in direct reaction (perhaps even rebellion?) to the more authoritative and deductive methodology of the Scholastics and the Reformers.  This methodological revolution was expanded in the work of Newton, Descartes, and others who were the backbone of the Enlightenment, from its beginning in the 17th century and continuing well into the 19th century.
The work of these men and women produced, among many other things, a strong tendency toward optimism and progressivism in the West.  The Lockes and Jeffersons worked to establish a more perfect kind of government with the hope that if they could find the right configuration, tyranny could be brought to an end for good.  The Listers and Curies of the age worked to cure disease with the hope that perhaps one day all disease could be eradicated.  In the minds of many in the post-Enlightenment, things had never been as good as they were as the 19th century advanced and the world was getting continually better.
It was not until the World Wars and the Great Depression in the first half of the 20th century that the progressive bubble was burst and the attitude of the West shifted from general optimism to the pessimism of the 1960s and following years.  It should be noted that the 19th century was also the West’s great age of imperialism, forced political and economic expansion into the Americas and especially the Far East.  The Western nations understood these expansions to be mutually beneficial.  Not only were the “mother” countries receiving economic prosperity and political power, they understood their expansion as bringing civilization and culture to the East and in some ways fulfilling the great needs of those nations as well. 
This contrasts sharply with the Chinese perspective as described in last week’s class.  Whereas the 19th-century West understood its own history as ever-progressing, with the then-present as its greatest moment and an optimistic view of the future, China saw its own history as one of decline: its pinnacle was in the past and the present represented a new low-point.  Whereas the West viewed its imperial expansion as at least something of blessing on its colonial countries, China considered this to be an unmitigated curse that was directly responsible for its own state of frailty.  In this case, it would seem that one man’s treasure was another man’s trash.  The only thing on which the West and the Chinese did apparently agree was that the expansion of national sovereignty was the way forward to political, economic, and cultural prosperity.
For my own teaching, this contrast translates into a vivid lesson on how our perspectives on these issues are formed by our fundamental assumptions.  What are the rights of nations and how should they be enforced?  What is prosperity and how should it be achieved?  Is there an intrinsic conflict between innovation and tradition, and how much should we let these two forces drive our society?  In these questions and so many others, our presuppositions manifest themselves in our ethics.

The Humility and Glory of Christmas

2010-12-07T23:50:00.006-05:00

An article written for the All Saints Presbyterian Church December newsletter:

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Mother Teresa gave up everything to live amongst the nobodies of India. Every now and then an actor goes undercover and lives on the street to prepare for a movie role. I once knew a campus minister in Tampa, Florida who intentionally purchased a home in the worst slum in town so that he could try to reach the people there. CBS has a TV show called Undercover Boss. Thousands of missionaries give up homes near the people and places they know and love to serve others.

These are the closest analogies that we have to the incarnation of the Son of God in our culture, but they all pale in comparison. No matter how much a person gives up in each of the above examples, no matter how low he or she has stooped to serve others, no matter how moving their actions might be, they are nothing compared to the humility displayed in the birth of Jesus.

Philippians 2.5-11 is considered to be one of the oldest recorded creeds, or commonly held statements of faith, of the Christian church. Verses 6-8 describe the humility exhibited by the Son of God far more vividly than any analogy we can think of today:

Christ Jesus, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God
As something to be used for his own advantage.
Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a slave,
Taking on the likeness of men.
And when He had come as a man in his external form,
He humbled himself by becoming obedient
To the point of death—even death on a cross.

He came down from heaven, down to become an obedient creature, down to become a man, down as a slave, down even unto death, and down even unto death on a cross. It is the ultimate tragic trajectory, spiraling further downward than anyone could ever anticipated that the Son of God would go. Surely the angels wondered what in the world was going on. Surely the devil thought that this was the most delightful turn of events in the history of the universe. It is this unbelievable humility of Jesus, the Son of God, that we celebrate at Christmas.

But this humility leads to glory--the ancient creed continues in Philippians 2.9-11:

For this reason God highly exalted him
And gave him the name that is above every name,
So that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow--
Of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth--
And every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
To the glory of God the Father.

The story of Christmas might be the beginning of a tragic downward spiral, but it is also the beginning of the great triumph that ends in salvation. Who would have thought that a deadly cross would eventually evoke joy? Who knew that a homeless newborn baby would one day be named King of Kings and receive the praise of everyone, everywhere?

Only in the person of Jesus could humility and glory be so perfectly united. That is what Christmas reminds us: Our God is the God who turns tragedy into comedy. He turns horrible downward spirals into merriment. He turns enemies into friends--who could know that better than us, his people?

Being overwhelmed by the pains and difficulties of this life is a part of the human experience. The Son of God chose to join us in that experience, not only so that he could lead us out of it, but also so that we could ultimately share in his glory. That is why we decorate our homes and give gifts--to celebrate! Merry Christmas indeed.

Welcome Home

2010-09-28T18:20:00.004-04:00

Click here to read my wife's latest article about what living in the UK taught her about hospitality.

Spiritual biography

2010-09-27T18:10:00.008-04:00

I was asked to write a spiritual biography of about 300 words. I'm not quite sure what exactly that means, but this is what I wrote:

The most important thing that God has ever taught me is that he is the God who redeems: he is powerful enough to take our worst moments and use them for our good.

I remember learning this in college. I was struggling with sin, failing to overcome even the little faults and bad habits in my life. I was frustrated. How was I supposed to ever conquer the big things when I couldn’t even manage the little ones? It was then that God taught me that his strength is made perfect in my weakness: every time I fell short, it was an opportunity for him to show how amazing his grace truly was.

I learned it again when my wife struggled with extensive medical problems a few years ago. As a consequence, quite a few doctors told us that having children wasn’t in our future. For that and a number of other reasons, those couple years were the lowest point in my life. But it was by taking me through the valley of the shadow of death that God taught me that he is my shepherd.

I learned this again when we moved overseas for a couple years. What was supposed to be a fun experience turned out to be a financial and logistical nightmare. If someone had handed us a free plane ticket back when we first got there, we would’ve taken it without hesitation. But when it came time to move away, we were sad: it had become our home, thanks mostly to the Christians there who had shown us God’s love.

God has demonstrated his love for me in so many ways—-some pleasant, others painful, but each one proof of his grace. Many times he has brought me to the place where I can say, “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” I rest in the knowledge that God will continue to change me by his powerful, redemptive grace.

1 John 2.1-14: The New Commandment

2010-07-05T08:47:00.006-04:00

A sermon preached at All Saints in Boise, Idaho on 20 June 2010:

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Last week we began reading from a very interesting letter, the letter of 1 John. In the first part of this letter, John – the letter’s author and one of the closest friends of Jesus – defends the reliability of his message. The criticisms John was receiving are surprisingly the same ones we hear about the Christian message today.

John responds by reminding his readers that he was a first-hand witness to the things he was talking about, and that the desired outcome of his teaching was unselfish: he wanted nothing but fellowship and joy. These are the same things that we can respond to the critics of the Christian message today.

We learned last week that John was in exile when he wrote this letter. He had been serving the people of God, the church, for perhaps as many as 50 years after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. But now all that he loved had been taken away from him and he was on an island, writing a letter.

This brings us to one of the main themes of this letter: fellowship. It is not at all surprising that the exiled John desired fellowship. We learned last week that he was not talking about any ordinary kind of fellowship either. He was not calling his readers to have “a couple guys and a grill” kind of fellowship, nor “a couple girls going shopping” kind of fellowship.

Rather, we learned last week that he was calling his readers to a special kind of fellowship that is only possible through grace. Our relationships with God and with each other are hopelessly broken because of our own sinfulness. Why would God care to fix that? Why would he want to repair his relationship with me when I’m the one who is the problem? Grace.

And how then can our relationships with each other be fixed? Again, grace. Our relationship with God is repaired when we receive his grace, and our relationships with each other are repaired when we show that same grace toward others.

But we read about all that last week. But it is with this very same theme of grace that John continues writing in the second part of his letter.

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. [1 John 2.1-2, ESV]

In verse 1, John tells us that he wants us to avoid sin. Why? I don’t think our culture minds sin very much. We joke about this all the time – it even makes it onto t-shirts, bumper stickers, and the like. I’d rather be a devil than an angel. Hell was full so they sent me back. Rules were meant to be broken.

We’re Americans, after all – we pave our own path, we don’t like people telling us what to do, we need to do things our way. Even our heroes are like this: the rogue cop who goes by his gut no matter what the rules say. The CIA operative who does whatever it takes to get the job done, even if it “crosses the line”. The rock stars and athletes who live above the rules. The politician who does good work – who cares if his personal life is a bit shady?

Maybe this part of the letter is just hopelessly outdated. Maybe we’ve moved beyond these ideas. Maybe sin just doesn’t need to be a big deal anymore.

But remember John’s goal for writing: he desires fellowship, both with God and with man. And what destroys fellowship, both with God and with man? Sin. John wants us to avoid sin because sin destroys true, deep, meaningful, joyful fellowship.

We know this is true. If I do something harmful to you, we might continue to be citizens of the same country, we might continue to be coworkers, we might still have to be in the same family, and we might somehow even manage to still be friends, but if I’ve done something harmful to you, we cannot have fellowship.

This makes me think again of our culture: I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t characterize our culture as one of fellowship. Would you? We live busy lives in the suburbs, we drive to work all by ourselves, we have our own agendas and timetables, and if you want to spend time with me, maybe we can get together next month.

Is that fellowship? Perhaps friendship, perhaps something else, but it would seem to me that that certainly is not fellowship. And why is fellowship almost nonexistent in our culture? Perhaps it is because of our attitude toward sin.

Remember this: If we embrace sin, either as individuals or as a culture, we cannot have fellowship with each other.

Is that true of us here at All Saints? Does our sin exterminate our fellowship? Do we have a “see you next month when I can fit you in” mentality? We are all sinful, so unfortunately that is inevitable. But are we mindful of this? Do we pay attention to the effect our own shortcomings are having on this community?

However this leads us to the next thing: How can we avoid sin? John tells us:

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says "I know him" but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. [1 John 2.3-5, ESV]

To love God is to keep his commandments. This is simply the opposite of what John has written previously. If sin destroys our relationship with God, then the opposite of sin preserves that relationship. If sin is rebelling against the things God has told us to do, then the opposite of sin is doing the things God has told us to do. Therefore, in order to have a loving relationship with God, we must keep his commandments.

Where did John get this idea? First of all, this would be one of those things he heard with his own ears, as he puts it early in his letter. He learned this idea straight from Jesus. In John 14.15, Jesus says, “If you love me, keep my commandments.”

But this idea is not a new one. The call to keep God’s commandments in order to preserve a loving relationship with him far predates even Jesus’ earthly ministry. In the historical records in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, and Nehemiah, God repeatedly commands, reminds, and pleads with his people to preserve their relationship with him by keeping his commandments.

This idea is not just found in the historical books either. In the poetry of the Psalms, which directly appeal to the reader’s emotions, the people of God are reminded to preserve their relationship with him by keeping his commandments.

Multiple times in the book of the Proverbs, God’s people are reminded of the way of wisdom: if you are to receive the rich blessings that will come to the wise man, you must keep the commandments of God.

So from the very beginning and throughout his relationship with his people, God has been communicating this message: in order to have a loving relationship with me, you must keep my commandments.

But the historical record informs us that throughout history, God’s people have been as bad about that as you and I are. In Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, Nehemiah, and even before the face of Jesus himself, the people of God have chosen to disregard God’s commandments, just as you and I have done many times.

Thus we have all chosen to terminate our relationship with God by following our own commandments instead of his.

But let’s get more specific here: What commandment is John talking about in this letter anyway? He answers that very question in verses 7-11.

Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. [1 John 2.7-11, ESV]

Just as the call to love God by keeping his commandments was not a new idea John dreamed up, he points out that this idea is nothing new either. In fact, this too is something John heard with his own ears from Jesus himself.

In Matthew 22.39 and Mark 12.31, Jesus says that loving your neighbor as yourself is one of the two great commandments, the two that sum up everything else that God tells us to do. The other great commandment is to love God with everything we have.

But this idea of the importance of loving our neighbor is also older than even Jesus’ earthly ministry. In Leviticus, in the books of the law, loving one’s brother is central to the law of God.

The idea was central also to the message of the apostles, who taught with John after Jesus’ earthly ministry. Three times is this command explicitly referred to in the apostles’ writings, and many other times is it implied.

So throughout the Bible, the two greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbor. This is the very thing that John calls fellowship. Sin breaks fellowship; love restores fellowship. God graciously showed his love to us, thus restoring our relationship with him. And here John calls us to graciously show love to others, which will restore our fellowship with each other.

But in vv. 9-11 John reveals even more – this is something new: Loving our brother is even more than a means to fellowship; it is a mark of our salvation. If you hate your brother, John says in vv. 9 & 11, then you are in the darkness. It doesn’t matter whether you claim to be in the light. If you hate your brother, then you are in the darkness. Likewise, if you love your brother, you are in the light, John writes in v. 10.

In other words, this is an indicator of the state of your heart. Are you the kind of person who loves his brother? When it comes to our neighbor, are you characterized by love? If you do not love your brother, you are still in darkness. The selfishness of your heart has blinded your eyes, John writes in v. 11, and you cannot even know where you are going.

Isn’t it ironic? We are selfish because we want to pave our own way, to do our own thing. We don’t want someone else – either you or God or whoever – telling us what kind of person to be. But the result of this attitude is that we cannot pave our own way. We stumble around in the darkness, wondering where we are, and we don’t even know where we are going.

John tells us that it is only when we take our eyes off ourselves and love our neighbor as ourselves that we walk in the light. It’s a powerful irony.

What kind of person are you? Do you love your brother? Do you give preference to others? Do you assume the best of them? Do you default to showing grace and love toward the people in your life? If we as the people of God, as a church, are going to have fellowship and the joy that comes with fellowship, then we need to be characterized by gracious love.

But this leads us to the next question. You might be asking: How can I do this? What does it mean to love my brother?

I have two illustrations to answer that question. The first is from Jesus, and the second is my own. His is obviously better, but I’ll tell them both to you nonetheless.

Luke 10 tells us about a time when Jesus was asked this very question. Jesus had just told someone to love his neighbor as himself, and the other person asked Jesus how he was supposed to do this.

Jesus told him a story about a man who was ambushed by robbers, beaten, and left to die. Two supposedly “good” people found the victim; they had every reason in the world to help him, but they passed by and did nothing.

Then his enemy, a hated man, found the victim. Unlike the other two, he helped him, even at his own great expense. In this story, the hated man was the one walking in the light. The supposedly “good” people were still in darkness.

My own answer to the question, what does it mean to love my brother? is similar. Almost three weeks ago, my wife and I celebrated our 9th wedding anniversary. While that is reason for celebration, I nevertheless groan inwardly when I think that it was only recently that I understood this idea:

When do I most love my wife? If I asked you that question, what would you say? When do you most love your wife?

If you’re like me, you would say that the most loving moments in your relationship involve walks on the beach, candlelit dinners, leaving notes for each other, and those mushy kinds of things.

But the revelation I had recently was this: Those aren’t the times when I most love my wife. It’s easy to love my wife at those times! The times when I most love my wife are when I feel like I hate her, when we are in the middle of a fight, when we are most at odds – and yet in that very moment, I choose to set aside my own selfishness and do what is best for her. That is when I most love my wife.

It’s when I accept blame, even if it’s mostly not my fault. It’s when I want to rest more than anything, but I choose to get up and do what needs to be done so that she can rest. It’s when I would rather do anything in the entire world except what she wants me to do, but I choose to do that for her anyway. That is when I most love my wife.

And that is what means to love our brother. That is what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves. If you heard that the person you dislike the most – not your best friend, that’s not really loving you neighbor – was having trouble, would you help them? If you discovered that the person who annoys you the most, the person you can’t stand to be around, if that person needed gracious love, would you give it to them?

That is what John is calling us to do. That is what it means to walk in the light. That is the mark of our salvation. Is that true of us? That’s what we’re supposed to be. Are we gracious and loving even those people?

That’s a horribly tall order. And sadly, we fall horribly short of that. And sadly, that’s true not only of our enemies, but even with our friends. We don’t even graciously love the people we care about the most, the ones we are powerfully predisposed to love, let alone our enemies.

Thankfully, even though we fall so short of what we know we should be, God is gracious. See what else John writes here.

But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. [1 John 2.1b-2, ESV]

The restoring power of the work of Jesus is so much greater than the destructive power of our maliciousness.

And look, the saving, restoring work of Jesus rolls back even the darkness of our sinful hearts: read v. 8!

At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. [1 John 2.8, ESV]

The darkness is passing away! It has been rolled back, and it is even now being rolled back. If you are in Christ, then this passage is true of you! By the grace of Jesus making up for your deficiencies, you can love your brother and you do love your neighbor. Certainly not perfectly, at least not yet, but the darkness is passing away! The true light is already shining!

And the promise that gives us such hope is that the day will come when you will do this perfectly! The gracious love of God is transforming! He has promised that the day is coming we will be what we are supposed to be.

See how happy John is about this: he writes a song about it! Verses 12-14 are in poetry form, which is somewhat rare for a New Testament letter and usually indicates a kind of song. John is so ecstatic about this transforming, gracious love that he wrote a song about it!

I am writing to you, little children,
because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake.
I am writing to you, fathers,
because you know him who is from the beginning.
I am writing to you, young men,
because you have overcome the evil one.
I write to you, children,
because you know the Father.
I write to you, fathers,
because you know him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
because you are strong,
and the word of God abides in you,
and you have overcome the evil one.
[1 John 2.12-14, ESV]

Listen to what John writes about us: Our sins are forgiven for his name’s sake! We know him who is from the beginning! We have overcome the evil one! We know the father! We are strong, the word of God abides in us, and we have overcome!

Are those things really true of us? When I look at the facts of my life, I can’t imagine that they’re true. But if you are in Christ, then yes! By God’s grace, they are true. We have even now been transformed, and we are even now being transformed into this poetic image, even if it’s just piece by piece, little bit by little bit.

And the promise is that he who began this work in us will complete it. Someday we will love God and our neighbor as we should. For those who are in Christ, fellowship has been restored, is being restored, and will be restored. Thanks be to God for his transforming, gracious, saving love!

1 John 1: The Life of Grace

2010-06-19T23:12:00.009-04:00

A sermon preached at All Saints in Boise, Idaho on 13 June 2010:

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For the next couple weeks we will be reading together from a very interesting letter. The letter of 1 John was written by John, one of the closest disciples of Jesus. We don’t know to what exact persons this letter was first written. It is believed to have been written, interestingly enough, to everyone. It seems that John wrote this letter to the whole church, to all the people of God. As it turns out, that includes us. Among many other readers, of course, John wrote this letter to us.

We do know from where John wrote this letter. He almost assuredly wrote this letter while banished to an island. For years – perhaps as many as 50 years – he had lived among the people of God and taught them and served them and trained them and loved them. Now he lived in isolation, in exile, away from the things he knew and loved.

It is no surprise then that one of the main themes in this letter is fellowship – and especially the joy that come through fellowship.

Another idea that is central to this letter is love. What is love, or more importantly, who is love? It is from 1 John, in fact, that our own culture has learned the one thing that it knows about God: that God is love. It might not realize that this idea comes from 1 John, but it is in this letter that that phrase first occurs.

Turn with me to 1 John and we will read the first chapter.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—-the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—-that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. [vv. 1-4, ESV]

It is important to understand a few things before we continue reading the rest of the letter: First, note how John argues for the reliability of the apostles, their message, and their work.

John was the last living apostle, the last member of Jesus’ closest group. He was the last one who could speak to what they saw, what they heard, what they touched. And he very badly needed to speak to those things because the apostles’ message and work were under attack.

Their enemies were saying that none of what they taught was true – Jesus was not God, he had not said and done the things they claimed, and most importantly he was not raised from the dead. It was all a lie, these opponents said. The apostles had made it all up for their own gain, to trick people into following them.

Does this sound familiar? Do we not hear these same things today? Many years have passed since this letter was written, but the criticism of the Christian message is virtually exactly the same today as it was when John wrote.

But there was John, the last apostle. All the others had been killed for the things they taught. Only John died of natural causes, and there he was writing a letter defending the things he had said and done over the past decades.

And his response to his critics is something along these lines. I was there. I saw and heard and touched these things. Can you make the same claim? I’m an old man and that was a long time ago. But I was there. Which one of us is a more reliable witness to these things?

Moreover, this letter points to the goal or desired outcome of his message and work as further evidence of its authenticity. For what purpose did he teach the things he did? For his own gain? To acquire wealth and popularity? If so, then his plan didn’t work out very well. He was now poor and alone in exile.

Instead, look at what two things he says he hoped to get out of it: fellowship; and joy. Nothing self-centered at all.

Now, just as the criticisms John heard about his teaching about Jesus are virtually the same criticisms we still hear today, our response to those criticisms is still essentially the same as John’s. Why should we believe that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are telling the truth about Jesus?

First, because they were there. What is the best source of information about something? An eye-witness, of course! When a policeman wants to know how the accident happened, he doesn’t stop a random pedestrian who happens to be coming by the scene 20 minutes later and ask him to analyze the scene and give a hypothesis of what happened. No, he asks the person who was there, who saw and heard what happened.

And if we want to know the facts about Jesus, should we ask an 18th century philosopher who Jesus is? What about a 19th century prophet? A 20th century revolutionary? Obviously, it would be better to get our information from someone who was there!

But what if those apostles were trying to trick us? They had their own reasons for writing those things, right? What if they only said those things for selfish reasons?

Our response is the same as John’s: That can’t be why they wrote what they did because they only received pain for their trouble: some were tortured, all but one was executed, and that one – John – was exiled and, from the perspective of selfish gain, lost everything. They all lost everything. By the standards of wealth and power, they gained nothing at all for what they said about Jesus.

If it was all a lie, they would not have held onto it to the death. Not all of them. Someone would’ve cracked. But none of them ever did. And that’s why we should believe them.

Before we read further, we need to keep in mind what exactly was this message was. What did John teach that got him exiled?

He says his teaching was about the “word of life”. This leads us to one of the most interesting features of this letter. John loves to write things that have double meanings. He loves to make his reader say, “Wait, does he mean this or that?” He does this to make his readers thing. Sometimes it’s even subtly humorous – sometimes he will slip a pun in there, just to see if you catch it. John was definitely not a crotchety old man.

In this case, the double meaning is this: does “word of life” mean the message or the person? That is, by “word of life” does he mean the message that he taught – literally the word that brings life to its hearer?

Or does he mean the person of Jesus himself? In the gospel of John, Jesus is identified as both the Word and the Life. Which does John mean here in his letter, the message or the person?

Of course, when John uses these double meanings, he doesn’t always – or even usually – mean it to be an either/or sort of question. In this case, it’s both. The message is the person. The person of Jesus is the thing John taught, the message that got him banished. Jesus is the word of life, he was with the Father, and he is manifested with us.

Not only was that John’s central teaching, it is the central teaching of the Bible. Not just the gospels or the New Testament either, but the whole thing, from Genesis forward. From the beginning to the end, Yahweh and Jesus are the same, the message of salvation from sin and brokenness is the same, and the people of God – those saved by grace through faith – are the same.

Very often our historians treat Christianity as an offshoot of Judaism, as something new that broke with the old in the middle of the first century. But this is not the case. John’s teaching, what he taught to the people to whom he wrote this letter, was taught centuries before by Isaiah the prophet, by David the king, by Joshua the conqueror, and by Moses, the writer of the first books of the Bible.

And it is the same thing that we read and rely upon today. The person of Jesus – the Word of Life who was with the Father and manifested himself among us – must be the very center of everything we believe and do.

Before we continue reading John’s letter, I’ll just remind you of his purpose in writing it: he desires fellowship, a fellowship that results in joy.

Now, let’s continue reading.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. [vv. 5-10, ESV]

Here John does it again: It’s another metaphor with a double meaning. What does it mean that God is light? Does light mean perfection or illumination? That is, does John mean that God is like a pure light in that he is morally perfect and completely holy? Or does he mean that like a pure light, God both reveals and rolls back the darkness that is in our world?

The answer is, of course, both! Not only is God pure light in the sense that he is the definition of perfect holiness, but also the pure light that is his holiness illuminates everything else.

Everyone who has tried to paint their home knows that there are different shades of white, right? It is only by shining a strong, pure light that a painter can determine what shade of white it really is. In the same way, God’s holiness reveals the true color of everything else. Even those things masquerading as pure white are revealed to be false under his light.

Unfortunately in everything outside himself, the light of God’s holiness reveals sin. Nothing but God himself is true white; nothing but God himself measures up; nothing and no one but God himself is what it should be.

The idea of sin is not popular in our culture. People make mistakes, but they don’t sin. They do things they shouldn’t, but it’s not bad enough to apply the harsh word of sin to it.

Deep down, however, I think everyone knows that they aren’t what they should be. In fact, I think everyone knows that there isn’t one area of their life that is good enough and doesn’t need work.

Do I really love my wife as I should, or am I more interested in how she should love me?

Am I investing in my children, spending time with them and getting involved in their lives, or do I more often than not expect them to come to me?

Are we all not guilty of forming friendships based on what we can get out of it – whether it’s fun or the ego boost, etc? How often do we really consider how we can serve our friends?

Which one of us can say that we are the perfect employee? What is it you would be embarrassed if your boss walked in and found you doing at work?

Can any of us claim to be a great citizen? Aside from paying taxes, are we really doing what we should to serve our communities and make this a better place to live for all of us?

These are just basic things, the kinds of things that everyone would admit we should be doing but the kinds of things that everyone should admit that we are not doing. And these few examples pale in comparison to the pure light of the holy God. We don’t even meet our own standards, let alone his, and yet we deny that we are sinful people.

The most horrible thing about sin is that it destroys fellowship. Every one of us, thanks to our sin, has fractured relationships among our homes, workplaces, churches, communities, and friends. Where there was once common ground, there is now hostility, thanks to our sin.

Think back over your life: have we not all left a wake of broken relationships over the years? Sure, there might have been wrong done on both sides, but if we are honest with ourselves we know that our sin played a central role in each instance.

This is true not only of our human relationships, but of our relationship with God as well. Our sin has permanently broken that relationship. Another writer wrote long ago that our hearts are restless apart from God, but unfortunately our sinfulness has left us permanently apart from God.

Fellowship and joy are the two main themes of this part of John’s letter. Fellowship is destroyed by sin, and when fellowship is destroyed, joy is lost as well. But the good news, the message John taught, the one that got him banished, was that the damage of sin can be reversed! Fellowship can be restored!

How is fellowship restored? John tells us that it is by walking in the light. But he used a double meaning for light, as you might recall. By light he meant both perfection and illumination. Which does he mean when he tells us to walk in the light?

If by “walking in the light” John means that we should strive to be as holy and morally perfect as God is, then we are in trouble. But he cannot mean us to take “walking in the light” this way, because he is quick to point out our complete lack of holiness and moral perfection in vv. 8-10.

He must want us to understand “walking in the light” in terms of the illumination that God’s holiness brings on our lives. It is by pretending that we have no sin, by treating everyone else, including God, as if they are the problem – as if I am the one who is in the right – I am the standard, I am the measure of goodness that everyone else should adjust to. It is this kind of sinful heart that fractures relationships, that destroys fellowship, and consequently destroys true joy.

It is when we confess what we are, what the pure light of God’s holiness has revealed us to be, that the problem is fixed. Only when we confess to God and to each other that I am the problem, not the solution, can these relationships be restored. If we walk in the light in this way, vv. 7 & 9 tell us that the problem of our sin is solved and fellowship is restored.

And this brings us to the last thing that we will look at from this part of John’s letter: Why would God do this? Why would he want to fix the relationship between himself and us? Why would he want to restore that fellowship? I’ll tell you what, if someone had done to me what I’ve done to God, I would never even want to think about them again, let alone see them. Why would he want to befriend me again?

And especially at that cost! To forsake his own Son? Just so he could have a relationship with me? It doesn’t make sense to us. We would never do that for someone else. Thank God that he isn’t like us.

Friends, this is grace. Grace is when God gives us something that we not only don’t deserve, but even worse: we deserve the exact opposite. We deserve for God to say (as we often say), “That’s enough! If you don’t want to have a relationship, that’s fine! We won’t!” Instead, God says, “I love you. I want you. And I will go to any length to restore our fellowship.” For all who are in Christ, that is grace.

And grace is powerful! It changes who we are! Once we have received the grace of God, it causes us to crave fellowship, not just with him, but with each other. As recipients of God’s grace, we begin to be conduits of his grace to each other.

Let us make one thing as plain as possible: Every relationship we have is only really, ultimately possible by God’s grace changing who I am and making me more gracious to those around me. I need to confess my shortcomings and stop pretending that I am the standard by which everyone else around me should live. I will never love my wife or children or coworkers or friends or community or you unless God’s grace has changed my heart and I am communicating his grace to you.

For those who are in Christ, ours is a life of grace! And that phrase, “life of grace”, also has a double meaning: First, we live a life of grace because we are recipients of God’s grace, and everything that we have has been given to us by God’s grace!

And second, we live a life of grace in that we now show grace to those around us. We do not yet do so perfectly, but if we are in Christ, then the grace we have been shown is changing us more and more into a gracious people.

Fellowship has been restored! And joy with it! This is John’s teaching, the one for which he was banished. How amazing and gracious it is that God did not treat us as we treat him, that he did not forever banish us from himself, but has instead revealed to us the Word of Life. Amen.

Manifesto, part 2

2010-06-16T00:18:00.007-04:00

Following the previous post, this is the second sermon, part 2 of my manifesto:

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Which one are you?

Before we look to God’s Word together, I have a question for you. If I were to ask you what the book of Genesis is about, what would you say?

No doubt the first thing that comes to mind is creation, the story of God creating the world. But think about it: The story of creation takes up just the first two of the fifty chapters of Genesis. No doubt the creation of the world is important, but is that what Genesis is really about?

Of course, Genesis 3 tells us the story of the fall of man, the first sin that plunged the human race into an estate of sin and misery, to use the language of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. But while this is indeed an important story, it is just one chapter out of fifty. Is that what Genesis is really about?

The story of the sons of Adam is two chapters. Noah and the flood is given four chapters. The story of Abraham covers parts of 14 chapters – that would seem very important. Isaac and Jacob are given a substantial amount of attention as well.

But you might be surprised that more space is devoted to the last story in Genesis – the story of Joseph and his brothers – than any other story in the book: over 14 chapters all told, about 30% of the book. If we are judging the emphases of the book of Genesis is based on how much attention its writer gives to a particular story, then Joseph and his brothers are the surprising winners.

Now I’m not saying that this is the way we must evaluate what the book of Genesis is really all about. Certainly all the stories I just mentioned are absolutely vital to the book of Genesis and more importantly to our faith.

But this is one valid way of evaluating the book: if a biblical writer emphasizes or pays more attention to a particular fact, idea, or story, then we should certainly do so as well.

And I’d bet that if you had made a list of the most important stories in Genesis, the story of Joseph and his brothers wouldn’t have been at the top of your list. Perhaps we should give it more emphasis than we would have originally thought.

We are going to look at that story today. I wish we had time to read all the way through its 14+ chapters. Since we don’t, we’ll read a few key places and survey the rest. Ready?

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Genesis 37.1-11

Jacob lived in the land of his father’s sojournings, in the land of Canaan. These are the generations of Jacob.

Joseph, being seventeen years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him.

Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers they hated him even more. 6He said to them, "Hear this dream that I have dreamed: Behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and behold, my sheaf arose and stood upright. And behold, your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf." His brothers said to him, "Are you indeed to reign over us? Or are you indeed to rule over us?" So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words.

Then he dreamed another dream and told it to his brothers and said, "Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me." But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, "What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?" And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind. (ESV)

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This is where the story begins. Joseph, the 11th of Jacob’s 12 sons, is loved more than anyone else by his father, but he has already made an enemy of his brothers. Joseph’s prophetic dreams will prove to be very important in this story – not once, but twice.

If you are familiar with the story, you know what happens next. In the rest of chapter 37, Joseph’s brothers kidnap him, fake his death, and sell him into slavery. Their first impulse was to murder him. They only spared his life because there was more profit to be gained from selling him instead of killing him.

Rather than crumbling in the face of such adversity, however, Joseph’s actions were exemplary. He doesn’t simply become a slave, he becomes the best slave in the world. He does such an amazing job that his master puts him in charge of his entire household.

Unfortunately for Joseph, the tragedy continues. In chapter 39, his master’s wife falsely accuses Joseph of trying to rape her. He is thrown into prison indefinitely – he would most likely spend the rest of his life there.

But even in prison, Joseph is exemplary – perfect even. Listen to this:

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Genesis 39.21-23

But the LORD was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison put Joseph in charge of all the prisoners who were in the prison. Whatever was done there, he was the one who did it. The keeper of the prison paid no attention to anything that was in Joseph’s charge, because the LORD was with him. And whatever he did, the LORD made it succeed. (ESV)

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After years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, not only is Joseph released from prison, he is miraculously made a ruler over the entire empire of Egypt, second only to the Pharaoh himself! You can read how this happens for yourself in chapters 40 & 41.

Joseph prophetically predicts that there will be a seven years of plenty followed by seven years of harvest. The Pharaoh puts him in charge of gathering food during the good years in preparation for the coming famine.

Again, Joseph’s work is exemplary. He stores up so much food that not only does Egypt have enough during the famine, but they are able to sell food to other nations as well! All the nations of the then-known world sent caravans to Egypt to purchase food. In this sense, Joseph saved the world – a very Christ-like action for sure.

It was through this position of feeding the world that Joseph is reunited with his brothers. They come to Egypt looking for food, and in the end they find that their brother is feeding the world. The entire family moves to Egypt, where they live like kings with Joseph. Along the way they bow down before Joseph, which is the first reference to his prophetic dreams. You can read the details in chapters 42-47.

As you hear this story, does it strike you that Joseph is a little too good to be true? He’s perfect. Everything he touches turns to gold. Even in the hardest of times, he keeps his eyes on God. And he manages to save the world, and even his hostile brothers, in the process. Joseph is a very Christ-like figure, isn’t he?

Joseph’s assessment of his entire life is found in Genesis 50.20: What you meant for evil, God meant for good. This is one of the most profound and important passages in all the Bible, one that should be the meditation of every Christian’s heart in this fallen, tragic world. It’s great to have a story with such a happy ending, isn’t it? Wasn’t Joseph a great guy?

But wait: there is much more to this story that we have overlooked. Turn in your Bibles to Gen 38 and see what I mean. In this chapter you will hear a catalogue of evil deeds centered on one man: Joseph’s brother Judah.

The writer has already introduced us to Judah in chapter 37. It turns out it was Judah’s idea to sell Joseph as a slave instead of murdering him. He was as willing as anyone else to kill Joseph, but as he put it, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites…”

It turns out this wasn’t even the worst of Judah’s sins.

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Genesis 38.1-26

It happened at that time that Judah went down from his brothers and turned aside to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah. There Judah saw the daughter of a certain Canaanite whose name was Shua. He took her and went in to her, and she conceived and bore a son, and he called his name Er. She conceived again and bore a son, and she called his name Onan. Yet again she bore a son, and she called his name Shelah. Judah was in Chezib when she bore him.

And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, and her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD put him to death. Then Judah said to Onan, "Go in to your brother’s wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother." But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother’s wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. And what he did was wicked in the sight of the LORD, and he put him to death also. Then Judah said to Tamar his daughter-in-law, "Remain a widow in your father’s house, till Shelah my son grows up"—for he feared that he would die, like his brothers. So Tamar went and remained in her father’s house.

In the course of time the wife of Judah, Shua’s daughter, died. When Judah was comforted, he went up to Timnah to his sheepshearers, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite. And when Tamar was told, "Your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep," she took off her widow’s garments and covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up, and sat at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah. For she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she had not been given to him in marriage. When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. He turned to her at the roadside and said, "Come, let me come in to you," for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law. She said, "What will you give me, that you may come in to me?" He answered, "I will send you a young goat from the flock." And she said, "If you give me a pledge, until you send it—" He said, "What pledge shall I give you?" She replied, "Your signet and your cord and your staff that is in your hand." So he gave them to her and went in to her, and she conceived by him. Then she arose and went away, and taking off her veil she put on the garments of her widowhood.

When Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adullamite to take back the pledge from the woman’s hand, he did not find her. And he asked the men of the place, "Where is the cult prostitute who was at Enaim at the roadside?" And they said, "No cult prostitute has been here." So he returned to Judah and said, "I have not found her. Also, the men of the place said, 'No cult prostitute has been here.'" And Judah replied, "Let her keep the things as her own, or we shall be laughed at. You see, I sent this young goat, and you did not find her."

About three months later Judah was told, "Tamar your daughter-in-law has been immoral. Moreover, she is pregnant by immorality." And Judah said, "Bring her out, and let her be burned." As she was being brought out, she sent word to her father-in-law, "By the man to whom these belong, I am pregnant." And she said, "Please identify whose these are, the signet and the cord and the staff." Then Judah identified them and said, "She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah." And he did not know her again. (ESV)

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Before we continue, think about this for a moment: Why is this chapter here? Look at the layout: chapter 37 leaves Joseph as a slave in Egypt; chapter 39 picks up with the same story again, right where it left off. Why does this story of Judah lie right between the two, so abruptly interrupting Joseph’s story?

Critics have pointed to this passage as an example of what a sloppy book the Bible is. It is so poorly edited, they say, that someone plopped this chapter here, interrupting the Joseph narrative in the most clumsy, awkward way possible. Surely such a sloppy book cannot be a divinely inspired text.

But what if this was intentional? Why might the writer have chosen to write it this way?

I would suggest that the answer is this: we are not meant to focus on Joseph alone as we read these last 14+ chapters of Genesis. The divinely inspired writer is drawing our attention to both Joseph and Judah.

If this is true, we should not consider these 14+ chapters to be simply “the story of Joseph.” We should instead consider it to be a contrast between two of Jacob’s sons. You’ve heard of Charles Dickens’s classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities? Well, think of this as “A Tale of Two Brothers.”

And the contrast between the two men could not be starker: Joseph, a man so perfect that he draws comparisons to Jesus himself. He’s downright intimidating, isn’t he? I know I can’t be like Joseph. If I tried as hard as I could for the rest of my life, I couldn’t be like him. His cheerful attitude, his constant trust in God, his apparent inability to make a bad decision. Whatever evil befell him was the work of others, he never brought it on himself. He just did his best in whatever circumstance he found himself, and his best, it turns out, was consistently impressive.

And then there’s Judah. Nothing this guy does is good. He was a liar and a cheat, he clearly did not teach his sons the ways of the Lord, he celebrated the death of his wife by visiting a prostitute, and twice he attempted to unjustly kill someone. And all of this he did to his own family! Judah is kind of intimidating too, only in a different way. “O Lord, please do not let me be like that man!”

The contrast between these two men is absolutely incredible.

Let me ask you a question: Which brother would you choose? If your spouse and children were trapped in a burning building, which brother would you trust to get them out? If you owned your own business, which one would you make your right-hand-man? If these two brothers asked to borrow your car, what would you say? If you needed someone to hold your briefcase containing a million dollars in small, unmarked bills – I know you all have one of those – which brother would you choose? The answer is obvious!

If you were God, which brother would you choose? Who would you choose to honour, and in which man’s hands would you place the hope of the entire human race?

Let’s read Gen 49.8-12 and find out:

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Genesis 49.8-12

"Judah, your brothers shall praise you;
your hand shall be on the neck of your enemies;
your father’s sons shall bow down before you.
Judah is a lion’s cub;
from the prey, my son, you have gone up.
He stooped down; he crouched as a lion
and as a lioness; who dares rouse him?
The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until tribute comes to him;
and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.
Binding his foal to the vine
and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine,
he has washed his garments in wine
and his vesture in the blood of grapes.
His eyes are darker than wine,
and his teeth whiter than milk." (ESV)

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Can you believe this? Here we find the second reference to Joseph’s prophetic dreams, only this time the honour goes to Judah! And we learn that Judah is the one who will inherit the throne of the nations, not Joseph! And the Saviour, prophetic references to Jesus himself, will come from Judah, not Joseph!

Why? How can this be? Does God know what he’s doing here? Doesn’t he know that he’s choosing the wrong brother? God, Joseph’s the man you want! Judah isn’t worthy of this! How can you trust and honour him?

But don’t you see? That’s the point of this entire story! God does not choose people based on who they are or what they’ve done! He chooses them for his own purposes and with a vision toward what he is going to do through them!

Think about that – what a grounds for joy! The truth is that we all – every person who has ever walked this planet – are more like Judah than Joseph. Listen again to last week’s sermon if you think otherwise.

And yet: according to his own wisdom and for his own purposes, God has chosen us – his people, those who are in Christ – for salvation! We who are most undeserving receive the very best because of the work of Jesus on the cross! What joy and hope this offers us! Even though I am the very chief of sinners, as Paul phrased it in 1 Tim – God chose me! My salvation is secure.

And not only has he saved us, he’s also given us great things to do for his glory in this life! Each one of us has a family, a vocation, a church, circles of friends – these are all areas of our lives in which we are called to do great things by loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and by loving our neighbours as ourselves! To think – it doesn’t take someone as über-competent as Joseph to do God’s work. He’s called me to do it as well!

But why wouldn’t God choose someone more skilled at these things? Why would he choose a Judah like me over some Joseph who could really do a good job? The answer is simple: for his own glory. His power and grace shine brighter when a Judah does his work.

Listen, are you nobody? Do you feel incompetent? Have you failed? Do you have little or nothing to give?

Perfect! Welcome to the people of God, a community of failed and failing sinners whom God has miraculously called to be his children and to do his work.

Rejoice in him, rest in him, and go and do what he has called you to do!

Manifesto, part 1

2010-06-16T00:10:00.007-04:00

One thing I've learned in the past few years is how often I've been wrong about things. Perhaps it's the naive idealism of youth or perhaps it's just my own "raw material", but far too many times I have taken my stand on an issue only to later discover my folly. This is especially disconcerting when it concerns theological issues. How sure I was at the time that this was true or that writer said it best, only to discover later that I was as blind as a pharisee.

I think these kinds of discoveries should humble us. While we certainly need to be willing to stand up - and strongly - for the things we believe in, we need to temper that with the idea that sometimes we believe in the wrong things. As a friend sometimes puts it, I'm pretty sure that about half of what I believe is heresy, but I'm just not sure which half. This is the kind of humility that we need to have.

That said, there must be some things that are rock-solid, untouchable, foundational to every other thought that passes through our minds. Otherwise we stand for nothing, we are blown like the wind and ultimately are of no use to anyone.

On 12 and 19 July 2009, I had the opportunity to preach at my home church, All Saints in Boise, Idaho. For those two sermons, I chose to preach on the two things I know, the two things that are the foundation of my understanding today and will be on my deathbed.

Those two sermons are my manifesto. Here is the first:

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Which one are you?
Matthew 21.28-32

"What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' And he answered, 'I will not,' but afterward he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, 'I go, sir,' but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?" They said, "The first." Jesus said to them, "Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him." (ESV)

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This parable of Jesus displays a trait that is typical of nearly all his parables. So often he uses his parables to draw a line in the sand: you are either on this side or you are on that one. You are either this kind of person or that kind of person. You value either these things or those things.

You are either the man who builds a house on a rock or a man who builds a house on sand. You are either a tree that produces good fruit or a tree that produces bad fruit.

Are you the good soil that receives the seed of the gospel or you are bad soil that prevents it from growing? Are you wheat or tares?

Are you the Pharisee who prays, thank you that I am not like that man, or are you the tax collector who prays, have mercy on me O God?

Sometimes the line in the sand is implicit, but there is almost always a line in the sand. And in this parable, Jesus asks, which son are you?

Are you the one who has the wrong attitude, says all the wrong things, but in the end does what is right?

Or are you the son who has the appearance of obedience, tries to look good to those observing, but secretly has a spirit of disobedience and defiance?

Before we answer that question, I’d like to introduce you to an idea that one of my teachers taught me many years ago. This principle has changed everything for me – it has changed the way I read the Bible, changed the way I see myself, and changed my understanding of God.

The principle is this: When we read the Bible, my teacher said, we have a strong tendency, a natural reflex even, to identify with the good guys. Of the characters in this story, we think, I’m obviously David, not Goliath. I’m the man who built his house upon the rock, not the man who built his house upon sand. I’m the tax collector who prays for God’s mercy, not the Pharisee who prays, thank you God that I am not like that man over there.

We should be very careful about this, my teacher taught us. This mindset is subtle and subversive. The truth is, we absolutely must identify ourselves first and foremost with the bad guy in biblical stories.

This is a radical shift in mindset; it requires an overhaul of how we think. In our culture we are taught to think only positive thoughts about ourselves. Push out any negativity, minimize your flaws, and concentrate only on the things you do well. Don’t get down on yourself, you are who you are, and we are meant to express ourselves truly in the things we do.

But I submit to you, and this is a radical statement: the more you identify with the villains of Scripture, the more you will understand yourself, the God of the universe, and the true meaning and power of the gospel.

What do I mean by this? Let’s look at several examples from Scripture that illustrate this principle:

Adam, the first man, had two sons. He actually had many more sons than this, but the writer of Scripture wants us to focus on these two men and the two kinds of people that they represent. Abel was a good man who followed the ways of God, but Cain was rebellious. He hated God and Abel and everything they stood for. In the end, Cain murdered his brother and treated God with absolute defiance and contempt. Now, which one are you?

Noah was called by God to build the ark. It took him 120 years to build it, and all the while he was telling everyone around him that they needed to prepare for the coming flood. They laughed at him and mocked him. You’ve been saying that for 120 years, Noah, and still no flood! You are a fool! Which one are you, the man who obeyed God all those years in the face of such opposition, or the scoffer who won’t believe that God will keep his promises until you see it for yourself?

Similarly, David was just a boy when he single-handedly conquered the most destructive fighting machine of his day, the giant Goliath. Which one are you, the one with confidence in God far beyond your years, willing to go into such a battle without even wearing armour? Or are you the one who says, where is God now! He seems so far away from this battle, doesn’t he?

The entire book of the Proverbs is a contrast between the wise man and the fool. The wise man fears God, and he consequently receives these blessings. The fool trusts in his own judgment, and he consequently receives these curses. Which one are you?

Are you Daniel, who remained faithful in his lifestyle of worshipping God in all that he did, or are you Nebuchadnezzar, who seemed to think that everyone around him should bow down to him and do what he told them to do?

Are you the tax collector in Jesus’ parable, who understands his own moral poverty, or are you the Pharisee who actually has the nerve to thank God that he is not like that disgusting man over there?

In each of these cases, which one do you identify with? Which one is most like you? Which one would those around you, those who hear your words and observe your actions, identify as you?

Jesus said that it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. I can’t tell you how many times my mother used to tell me that actions speak louder than words.

I don’t know how you feel about this, but when I look at my actions and words, I find myself to be very deficient. I can’t even live up to my own standards, let alone God’s.

If you are still wondering whether you should identify with the good guy or the bad guy, think about this: the first and greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. Can any of us really claim to have done that?

It seems to me that my teacher was right – we must identify first and foremost with the bad guy, the villain, the loser. That’s us. We’re fallen. We’re corrupt. We fail – a lot. That’s us. Until you realize that, you can’t really understand the gospel.

Back to our parable in Matthew 21, which son are you? Are you the one who says all the right things and yet is disobedient, or are you the one who, in the end, does what his Father asks him to do?

Let me tell you which one you are. Are you ready for this? If you are in Christ, you are both of them. By God’s grace, you are both of these brothers.

If you are in Christ, you are both Cain and Abel. If you are in Christ, you are both Noah and the scoffers. If you are in Christ, you are both David and Goliath. Is it true? How can this be?

This is the very heart of the gospel. This is exactly what it means to be a Christian, what it means to trust in Christ alone for salvation. This is why we can’t just say, oh no, I’m not like that guy. We must embrace it and say, I am the bad guy. According to the gospel, the core of what it means to trust in Christ for salvation is that you are both of these.

In ourselves, we have lived a life of rebellion against God. We have rejected his way of thinking and substituted our own, just like the fool in Proverbs.

In ourselves, we have contempt for those who have the mindset of God, those who follow him, just like Cain, Noah’s scoffers, and Goliath. In ourselves, we’re just like them.

In ourselves, we seem to think that the whole world should revolve around us, that the universe itself should actually bend to give us what we want, just like Nebuchadnezzar.

In ourselves, we actually have the guts to look down on a humble sinner with contempt, thankful like the Pharisee that I’m not like him. The truth is, we are not like that man – in ourselves, we are in fact worse than that man, which is in fact the very point of that parable.

In ourselves, we are not much really. Apart from the work of Jesus in my life, I wouldn’t really want to be around me. Would you really want to be around you, apart from the work of Christ in your life?

But thank God for the work of Jesus! He lived the perfect life that God expects of us – the one and only man who has ever done so. He was the perfect good guy: the perfect Abel, greater than Noah, greater than David, the very embodiment of the wise man of Proverbs, the perfect Daniel.

And yet he was treated as if he were the quintessence of evil, mocked, tortured, dying a hideous, horrible death, forsaken even by God. Why did this happen?

When Jesus died on the cross, it was as a substitution for his people. For everyone who looks to Jesus’ work and not to his own for salvation, a trade took place, an exchange: Jesus took upon himself the penalty for our wickedness.

But even more, just as he took upon himself the curses that we had earned, he gave to us the amazing blessings that he had earned. And now those whose faith is in Christ are called sons of God, adopted into his family, and given every blessing and honour that can be given – even though we have earned none of it.

I love to think of it this way: When God looks at you, how does he react? Does it depend on how “good” you’re being at that moment? Is he happy if you happen to be acting right, and is he mad if you happen to be sinning? Do you think as if your relationship with God fundamentally hinges on your actions?

But the truth is this: if you are in Christ, when God looks at you, he smiles. It doesn’t matter how you happen to be acting at that moment. Your standing before God does not depend on what you are doing, it depends only and completely on what Jesus has done.

The substitution has taken place: when God looked at Jesus on the cross, he saw you & your sin. Now when he looks at you, he sees Jesus and his perfection.

And now when God looks at you, he says exactly what he said about Jesus: This is my son, in whom I am well pleased. This is because when he looks at those who are in Christ, he does not see the muck and filth and habits and sins that we struggle with every single day; he sees nothing but the perfection of Jesus.

This is the gospel. And identifying yourself as the villain is the first step toward understanding what it really means that Jesus died on the cross. Even while you were still a sinner, Jesus died for you.

We all should receive every curse that can be imagined, and yet by the grace and mercy of God we are given blessings that we have not earned and cannot even imagine – if our faith is in Christ alone and not our own works.

========================================

This gospel mindset has radical implications; it will change absolutely everything about your life. A few brief examples:

First and most obvious, it will change the way you read the Bible. Identify yourself with the bad guy, think about the ways in which you fall so short of God’s calling on your life. Think about it and be honest: that is me. But all the while remember that if you are in Christ, God treats you as if you are the good guy. Even though you are the fool, you receive the blessings due to the wise man.

Second, this gospel mindset will radically alter the way you view yourself. You are both. Stop having too high a view of yourself –- and stop having too low a view of yourself. You were once the one, you will someday be the other, but for now you are both. What does that mean for your life?

In what ways should you struggle with sin, fight against your innate personality and acquired habits, in what ways wage war to put off the old man and put on the new man? And in what ways should you quit trying to fight harder and do better, and instead how should I rest in God’s grace, mercy, and love? That’s the Christian life! Both. Balance between fight hard and rest.

And finally, this gospel mindset will radically alter the way you view God. Can you believe it? It seems far too good to be true, doesn’t it? That we would earn the worst but receive the best? Can you believe it? What kind of God is this anyway?

An amazing God, that’s what kind of God he is. A poem by Charles Wesley puts it so well:

Amazing Love

And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain—
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

’Tis mystery all: th’Immortal dies:
Who can explore His strange design?
In vain the firstborn seraph tries
To sound the depths of love divine.
’Tis mercy all! Let earth adore,
Let angel minds inquire no more.
’Tis mercy all! Let earth adore;
Let angel minds inquire no more.

He left His Father’s throne above
So free, so infinite His grace—
Emptied Himself, so great his love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race:
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine;
Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach th’eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.
Bold I approach th’eternal throne,
And claim the crown,
Through Christ my own.

Why Christians should read Ernest Hemingway

2008-03-12T15:21:00.010-05:00

Published in the 15 February 2008 edition of Christian Renewal magazine.

Ernest Hemingway is one of the most famous authors in American history. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899, his writing career began in 1917 as a reporter for the Kansas City Star in and continued as a European correspondent for the Toronto Star. Within a decade, he had earned an international reputation.

It is for literature, however, not journalism, that Hemingway is most widely known. His first successful collection of short stories was In Our Time (1925), and his first novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926), was considered a masterpiece immediately after publication. His other major works include the novels A Farewell to Arms (1929), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and The Old Man and the Sea (1952); the nonfiction works Death in the Afternoon (1932) and A Moveable Feast (1964); and numerous short stories, which have been collected in The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigía Edition.

In terms of style, Hemingway was one of the most influential writers of all time. One biography describes him as having done “more to change the style of English prose than any other writer in the twentieth century . . . [He] wrote in short, declarative sentences and was known for his tough, terse prose.” Hemingway compared his own writing to an iceberg, in that the words on the page are only part of the story. The rest, “the underwater part of the iceberg,” is always just beneath the surface, giving depth and character to what is written. Such famous authors as Jack Kerouac, J.D. Salinger, and Hunter S. Thompson have credited Hemingway as an influence.

To Christians, perhaps the most interesting thing about Hemingway’s writings is the way they so clearly convey his worldview, which can be summed up in two words: truth and tragedy. Everything he wrote reflects in some way those two ideas.

Hemingway described writing – fiction or non-fiction, it makes no difference – as a struggle to describe people, places, experiences, and ideas as truly as they could possibly be expressed.

"Good writing is true writing. If a man is making a story up it will be true in proportion to the amount of knowledge of life that he has and how conscientious he is; so that when he makes something up it is as it would truly be" (By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, p. 215).

"Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’ So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or heard someone say. If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written" (A Moveable Feast, p. 12).

"All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was" (By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, p. 184).

"The hardest thing in the world to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn" (By-Line: Ernest Hemingway, p. 183).

Hemingway demanded this kind of truthfulness about all of life. His combination of an unusual perceptiveness and exceptional writing skill enables his readers to see the world as he saw it. Many of his written works – which range in subject matter from war in Europe to bullfighting in Spain, skiing in Switzerland, the people of Paris and Key West, hunting in Africa, and fishing in Michigan and the Gulfstream – consequently resonate as genuine and honest. They seem real above all else.

Hemingway’s characters are often memorable and reveal how he perceived the people he met. Some are deep and dynamic, like Frederic Henry in A Farewell to Arms or Nick Adams, the hero of numerous short stories. Others are shallow caricatures meant to mock the people they represent, like the Bimini brawler in Islands in the Stream or the laughing lady in To Have and Have Not. His descriptions of children can be particularly moving, as in the short story, “A Day’s Wait.”

One of Hemingway’s editors, Maxwell Perkins, said of him, “If the function of a writer is to reveal reality, no one ever so completely performed it.” Unfortunately, Hemingway’s insistence on telling the truth does not provide his reader with many happy endings. As Hemingway saw it, life is tragedy.

In his well-known short story, “Big Two-Hearted River,” Hemingway refers to swamp fishing as a “tragic adventure.” Sadly, the phrase also aptly describes the majority of his life. He certainly understood his profession to be tragic:

"Dostoevsky was made by being sent to Siberia. Writers are forged in injustice as a sword is forged" (Green Hills of Africa, p. 71).

"Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you" (Death in the Afternoon, p. 122).

Hemingway’s tragic adventure was not confined to his writing; his favorite pastimes also inevitably ended in tragedy. In hunting and fishing, either the animal dies or the hunter or fisherman experiences the tragedy of failure and loss. In bullfighting, either the bull is killed or the torero is gored.

Hemingway seemed bent on extending his tragic adventures into his personal life as well. He was married four times, with numerous paramours on the side. According to one story, his last wife, Mary, threatened to kill one of Ernest’s lady friends if she caught them together. His relationship with his three sons was often strained as well.

Thus death and loss was a way of life for Hemingway, and he lived out his tragic adventure to the end. After several years of mental deterioration and depression caused by lifestyle and genetics, on the morning of July 2, 1961, Ernest Hemingway shot himself in the head with his favorite shotgun in his Ketchum, Idaho home.

Why should Christians read Ernest Hemingway?

The ideas of truth and tragedy encapsulate Hemingway’s life, writings, and worldview – or perhaps truth as tragedy is a better way of putting it, for Hemingway saw tragedy as the message that he was truthfully telling. And concerning the tragedy of life, Hemingway was right. This world is utterly and completely fallen; that fallenness spares no one and extends itself to every area of our lives.

The saddest thing about Hemingway – the shortfall of his worldview – is that he understood tragedy so deeply but rejected the hope that comes in Jesus. Without that hope, it is no surprise that he sought relief in such things as drink, dalliance, sport, and suicide, but found no lasting satisfaction in them. The real surprise is that he was so driven to communicate the truth of tragedy to others, diligently beginning his work at dawn each day. By his writing he became an apostle of a grim gospel of loss.

Sadder still is the fact that Hemingway’s worldview is shared by so many around us. Even those who talk themselves into optimism or distract themselves by one means or another are only temporarily avoiding the reality that a world without Jesus is just as Hemingway describes it:

"What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. . . . [H]e knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. . . .

"Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself, it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it." (From “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” written by Hemingway in 1926 at the age of 27, in The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition, p. 288.)

The first reason Christians should read Ernest Hemingway is because they regularly meet people who share his worldview, whose hearts and lives reflect the hopelessness he writes about. Reading Hemingway will give us a better understanding of exactly how such people see the world.

We will find many of his writings to be offensive, but it should not surprise us when the lost act lost. We must temper our offense and respond in compassion and love, for they can learn only from us that “everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame” and that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Every time we are confronted with a worldview like Hemingway’s is a golden opportunity to respond with the world-transforming gospel of Jesus Christ.

A second (and equally important, I believe) reason why Christians should read Ernest Hemingway is to better their writing. Above all other people, Christians know the power of words. Every Christian has experienced the power of God’s Word to change lives, and that same Word commands every Christian to be ready to articulate his faith. Learning to speak and write as well as possible is part of taking that command seriously, and doing so does not undermine the Holy Spirit’s work in conjunction with the Word, even though some so-called evangelists have relied more on their own skill than God’s power.

Few authors in history have been such a keen observer of people, such a vivid and moving reporter of life, and such a master of words as Hemingway was, and he had much to say about developing the skill and style of writing. Who better to learn from than such a man? No one would say that we should ignore such unbelievers as Monet when learning about art or Jefferson when learning about politics. Why then would we not learn how to write from Hemingway? I have certainly learned more about writing from him than I did in my university English classes.

Hemingway is not the only writer who can teach us to write better while revealing something of how our neighbor understands life. He is particularly skilled at doing those two things, but perhaps you prefer a different author. By whatever means, however, Christians must be sure to remain aware of the worldview surrounding them and to improve continually their ability to speak the truth in such a setting.

Why Christians should visit Rome

2008-01-17T00:33:00.012-05:00

Published in the 30 January 2008 edition of Christian Renewal magazine.

For over two millennia, Christians have been travelling to Rome. In the first century, no less than the Apostle Paul expressed a passion to visit the church there “in the fullness of the blessing of Christ.” While Roman pilgrimages have been almost universally connected with the Roman Catholic Church, a visit to Rome would be of great benefit to even the most committed Protestant.

Of all the great cities in the world, Rome exudes history perhaps more than any other. Volumes have been written about the things to see and do there – from the grand and beautiful, such as the Villa Borghese and the Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II, to the dark and sombre, like the Carcer Mamertinus, the dank prison cell where Paul is supposed to have written Philippians. Here we will contrast just two of Rome’s many magnificent sights.

The catacombs of Domitilla, St. Sebastian, and St. Callixtus, three of the five catacombs that are open to the public, are within walking distance of each other just off the Via Appia Antica, an ancient Roman road that runs south from the city center. The Roman Christians of the first few centuries A.D. dug the catacombs and used them as subterranean graveyards, expanding them downward as the upper passages filled. Thousands of small burial niches, each averaging only about 20 inches high and 135 inches long, were carved one-over-another along the miles of passages of soft rock. A body was placed in each one and sealed inside with a plaster slab, usually inscribed with only the deceased’s name and a small Christian symbol, such as a fish or dove.

A handful of the graves are more elaborate; some of the wealthier families used more than the usual amount of space, constructed ornate sarcophagi, and commissioned paintings to adorn them. But these few tombs stand out as the exception; indeed, one of the most striking things about the catacombs is their uniformity and simplicity. In the ancient world, an elaborate tomb was a sign of wealth and power. But in the catacombs, the graves of the mean and the significant are almost always identical.

From the sacking of Rome to the 10^th century, and then again after they were rediscovered in the 16^th century, the catacombs were pillaged. Treasure-seekers smashed open the vast majority of the graves, expecting to find valuables buried with the bodies. However, in contrast to most ancient religions, which taught that certain possessions should be buried with the deceased in order to demonstrate their greatness and equip them for the afterlife (for example, see the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs), the early Christians knew that the dead leave the world just as they entered it – naked. Consequently, with the exception of those who sold bones as relics in the era of the Reformation, the treasure-seekers found almost nothing of value.

Even the relatively few paintings that were done in the catacombs have a remarkably different focus. Whereas much graveyard art from the ancient (and modern) world portrayed the deceased and extolled his virtues, the paintings in the catacombs are almost universally of Christological (for example, the Good Shepherd or Jesus’ miracles) or eschatological (the resurrection and last judgment) images – I do not recall a single one that portrayed the dead.

Visitors to the catacombs can barely help but notice how they reflect the beliefs of the early church. The graves’ simplicity and imagery almost force one to walk slowly and quietly and speak in a whisper. One might even feel an unexpected closeness to these brothers and sisters, who are separated from the visitor only by time. After all, the strange sense of hope and subdued joy that the catacombs seem to emit remind those who share their faith that we will one day be privileged to meet those who carved these tombs of rock.

Across Rome’s city center from the catacombs, in its northwest corner, lies la Città del Vaticano, the Vatican City. This city-within-a-city is the remains of what was once one of the most extensive and powerful kingdoms in Europe, in which the pope exercised political control over a territory covering most of present-day Italy and extending far northward. Today his direct political power extends only to this mini-state.

St. Peter’s Basilica dominates the Vatican skyline, but the symbols of the pope’s temporal power extend well beyond this famous church. Within its high walls, the Vatican boasts one of the world’s greatest libraries, the best art collection in history, and opulent palaces and churches, including the Sistine Chapel. The papacy makes full use of its holdings from a cash-flow standpoint as well, collecting admission fees from thousands of visitors per day. Between its elaborate buildings, the priceless and irreplaceable treasures they contain, and the mind-boggling amount of cash in its independent bank, the Vatican exudes power and wealth, the two great measures of worldly greatness.

The Vatican’s symbols of greatness were ostensibly built to prove the greatness of God to all the world, but they stand in such striking contrast to the catacombs. Whereas the catacombs are simple, humble, uniform, and focused on future glory, the Vatican is immense, grandiose, inimitable, and focused on proving the glory of God in a temporal sense, here and now through the Church of Rome. No visitor to Rome can help but notice the vast differences between the two sights, but such an observer must guard against externalising this great contrast – that is, understanding them as caused simply by the errant beliefs or extravagant tastes of the Roman Catholic Church and being of little concern elsewhere.

Being Protestant or Reformed or whatever else makes us no less vulnerable to losing sight of the humility and promise of future glory that are still displayed so movingly in the catacombs, even after two millennia of pillaging and decay. Nor does it make us less likely to pursue those things that seem so important here and now, yet are nowhere to be found when we go naked to our graves. The Scriptures teach that God’s glory is displayed not in temporary, worldly greatness, but in weakness and hope in the future promises of God:

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12.9-10, ESV. See also 2 Kings 18.17-19.37; Psalm 20; Zech. 4.6; 1 Cor. 1.17-2.9, 13.10, 15.42-44; 2 Cor. 4.1-11, 11.30; Phil. 4.11-13).

Between the beautiful, the base, the grand, and the gritty, there is plenty to see and do in Rome, and any Christian who pays attention will learn much in this great city.

Why Christians should know about Che Guevara

2007-12-21T06:00:00.006-05:00

Published in the 16 January 2008 edition of Christian Renewal magazine.

Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara de la Serna is arguably the most iconic Marxist revolutionary of all time. A surprising menagerie of people have made use of his name and legacy: from communist dictators and guerrilla warriors to artists and agitated middle-class students. His image, especially the famous Alberto Kordo portrait, has adorned political posters, t-shirts, and high-fashion handbags, and his books are still in print in numerous languages. One of the most surprising things about the worldwide ‘cult of Che’ is how little most his followers know about his life and what he believed.

Che Guevara was born in Argentina in 1928, the eldest of five children in an aristocratic, yet Marxist-leaning, family. He was an unusual child, whose interests were as varied as philosophy, rugby, chess, the military, and poetry. At school he was nicknamed ‘Chancho’ (‘pig’) because of his proud aversion to bathing, but he was given his more famous nickname because of his habit of frequently saying the colloquial exclamation, ‘che’ (rough equivalent: ‘hey’, ‘man’, or ‘mate’).

At age 20, Che began to study medicine at the University of Buenos Aires. Four years later, in 1952, he set off with a university friend for a year of travel. On an old motorcycle they named ‘La Poderosa II’ (‘The Mighty One II’), they headed north to work for the summer at a leper colony in Peru. Their journey was chronicled by Che in his book, Notas de Viaje, and popularised by the film, ‘Motorcycle Diaries’ (2004).

As they travelled, the two men noted the widespread poverty and oppression of the people they encountered - how different life in Buenos Aires was from what they were seeing in the countryside. The trip took longer than they had anticipated due to many (sometimes humorous) mishaps with the motorcycle, but they eventually made it to the leper camp.

In 1953 Che graduated from medical school and traveled again, this time all the way to Guatemala. There Che sought to observe first-hand the transition from capitalism to communism as the recently elected Marxist president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, sought to implement reforms. Although he strongly sympathized with the Guatemalan Marxists and was widely known in their circles, he at first refused to join the Communist Party and become active politically.

A year later, however, a CIA-backed coup overthrew the communist government, replacing Arbenz with Carlos Castillo Armas; from this time onward, Che committed himself to fighting what he perceived to be the imperialism of the West, particularly the United States. When the Argentine embassy offered him a flight back to his homeland after the coup, he turned it down and headed north to Mexico City, where he intended to join a Cuban revolutionary group that was forming there.

When he met a young Fidel Castro in Mexico City in September 1954, Che immediately joined his ‘Movimiento 26 de Julio’ (‘July 26th Movement’), which was preparing to overthrow the Cuban dictator, Gen. Fulgencio Batista. Although he was supposed to be the group’s medic, Che trained as a soldier along with the others. Gone were the days when he was content to remain an observer and see how political solutions might bring about change. Che now believed that the only answer was violent revolution.

In November 1956, the Movimiento invaded Cuba. Nearly half the group was captured or killed almost immediately; soon after landing, the number was down to 15-20 members. According to Fidel Castro’s recent autobiography, the force was reduced to three men, two rifles, and 120 rounds of ammunition at its weakest moment. Che quickly distinguished himself as a leader in the small band, and after nearly three years of guerrilla fighting, they famously succeeded in overthrowing Batista’s government and installing Fidel as the new communist leader.

After the Cuban revolution, Guevara held several high-level positions in the Cuban government. He again served as Fidel’s second-in-command, at various times overseeing the island nation’s prisons, agriculture, manufacturing, and banking. All the while, he was organizing small revolutionary expeditions in which the Cuban government would send advisors, finances, and equipment to communist guerrillas in Panama, the Dominican Republic, and elsewhere. He was also instrumental in bringing to Cuba the Soviet missiles that instigated the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962; he was quoted soon afterward as saying that if the missiles had been in Cuban control, they would have been launched at cities in the United States.

Government administration positions did not suit Che’s thirst for revolution. In March 1965, he disappeared, and his whereabouts were an international mystery. Months later, he resurfaced in the Congo, leading a revolutionary expedition of a dozen Cubans to train locals in Marxist ideology and guerrilla warfare techniques. The expedition was short-lived, however; Che’s preface to his published diary of his time in the Congo begins, ‘This is the history of a failure.’ He withdrew temporarily to Mozambique and Prague while planning his next move.

Che’s final expedition was in 1966 and 1967. Again he led a Cuban-backed force, this time intending to start a revolution in Bolivia. He set up a clandestine training camp in the mountains and tried to recruit locals to join his movement. He was surprised at their reluctance, and he was even more surprised when the Bolivian government learned of his whereabouts before he had had a chance to recruit and train a proper army. Backed by the CIA and a battalion of US Army Rangers, the Bolivian military captured Guevara in October 1967 and quickly executed him. After displaying his body to prove his demise, Che was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1997, his remains were found and transferred to Cuba, where he is interred in the city of Santa Clara.

Pro-Che demonstrations protesting his execution occurred around the world, and the news of his death sparked a flurry of articles, tributes, and even folk songs about him. Che quickly became the quintessential symbol of revolution in all its forms. Young and old, East and West, rich and poor, learned and unlearned all appealed to Che as representing their fight against oppression. French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre even called Che ‘the most complete human being of our age.’

After his death, however, stories of Che’s brutality increasingly emerged. The same man who had started his revolutionary career by noting the cruelty and oppression experienced by the poor became, his critics argued, the very thing he had so hated. While fighting in Cuba, he regularly killed those accused of being informers or deserters. During his time as a government official in Cuba, as many as several hundred people were executed without judicial process by Che’s order. Many more stories of his ruthlessness emerged from the Congo and Bolivia.

Yet even now, the ‘cult of Che’ remains around the world; he is as recognizable an icon today as he was in his lifetime. Some of his latter-day followers believe in his Marxist revolutionary ideology, while others use his image as a symbol of fighting the system in all its forms, without reference to any particular political philosophy.

Why should Christians know about Che Guevara?

Most Christians view Che Guevara as the antithesis of what they believe, and consequently they might not see any point to learning anything about him. However, given his religion-like cult status in popular culture and the great number and wide variety of people who seem to identify with him, it might benefit Christians to know two things about this radical Marxist revolutionary:

1. Che Guevara correctly identified many of the same problems that Christians recognize.

One of the most enigmatic things about Che Guevara is the way he was both a ruthless revolutionary and yet so sensitive to the suffering in the world. In his travels as a young man through South America, he was deeply moved by the injustice and poverty he witnessed. Instead of pursuing a potentially lucrative and successful career as a medical doctor, he completely gave up his former life and committed himself to doing anything he could to right those wrongs. No sacrifice was too high, even his life.

This is, without doubt, why Che Guevara’s legacy remains so strong today. Those who feel oppressed are looking for a larger-than-life figure, a hero who represents the hope for release from their chains. Sadly, Che Guevara was not that hero, and all who look to him, his ideology, or his image for salvation hope in vain.

In this respect (and only this respect), Che Guevara’s life is reminiscent of what we as Christians are called to do. Should anyone be more sensitive to the troubles of the world than we are? And should anyone be more willing to sacrifice than we are? What an indictment it is that a Marxist revolutionary was more sensitive and more willing to sacrifice himself than I am.

2. Sadly, Che Guevara offered gravely wrong solutions to those problems.

The great tragedy of Che Guevara’s life is that he sacrificed everything in vain, and he took down a great many people with him. Many lost their lives fighting with and against him, and the echoes of his actions are still reverberating today.

Each of Che Guevara’s solutions to the problem of injustice and oppression ultimately fails to solve the problem. Warfare causes as many problems as it solves; revolution replaces one oppressive government with another. In the final analysis, he caused a multitude of people to feel the very kind of political, economic, and religious oppression that he so loathed. Indeed, Che Guevara himself became the very kind of iron-fisted dictator that he had overthrown.

Only the gospel offers a solution to these problems, and how different that solution looks: Jesus came to save his people, not as a Che-style iconic warrior, but as a sacrifice. He sends forth his people, not as an expeditionary force of Marxist missionaries intent on fomenting rebellion, but as merciful servants who are poor in spirit; meek mourners who hunger and thirst for righteousness, not bloodshed; and persecuted peacemakers who are pure in heart.

We go forth into a world that makes a hero of a murderer and revolutionary while executing the innocent, but we offer a message that can turn that all upside down. Che Guevara thought he could change the world, but we have the assurance of the One who is seated on the throne that, if we follow him, we most certainly will change the world. May our King grant us the grace and courage we need to do so.

My response...

2007-12-21T04:06:00.002-05:00

... to the below letter.

Thank you for your letter in response to my article, 'Why Christians should watch The Mask of Zorro'. Nowhere in that article do I suggest that Christians should forsake the Scriptures and get their theology from Hollywood, and I certainly agree with you that no film should supplant God's Word as a 'book for the laity'.

I do believe, however, that Christians should pay attention to the culture around them, looking especially for things that reflect the human heart's recognition of the world's imperfection and its yearning for salvation. Such things are sometimes wide-open doors of opportunity to share the gospel, and I believe the Zorro character can provide such an opportunity for the reasons stated in the article.

When we make use of such characters and other opportunities from popular culture, it is important to demonstrate how Jesus is greater than his cultural counterparts. Jesus is like Zorro in the ways I mentioned in the article, but he is far greater than Zorro in the various ways you mentioned - and many more.

I apologize if I did not make this clear enough in the Zorro article, but it is true of every one of the articles in this 'Why Christians should...' series. Our Savior far excells Henry V, Zorro, and anyone else I might compare him to in the course of the series - and that is indeed the point.

Yours in Christ,
Brian Douglas
Brighton, England

A letter in response

2007-12-21T03:59:00.002-05:00

Volume 26 of Christian Renewal dated Nov. 21 2007 has an interesting story, “Why Christians should watch “The Mask of Zorro”. Brian Douglas refers to similarities between the deeds done by Zorro and the deeds done by our savior Jesus Christ. I believe that he thinks he is doing well by this and surely he is not trying to lead anyone astray. In his article Brian Douglas is giving the impression that we can see how the first Zorro portrays what Jesus did while on earth and the second Zorro portrays Christ’s return, or at least that is the way I read it. We should be warned, however, not to learn from dumb images (in this case a movie) but instead turn to scripture, which makes it clear that God’s word is sufficient for us.

LORD'S DAY 35 of the Heidelberg Catechism states:
Q. 98: But may images not be tolerated in the churches as "books for the laity"?
A. No, for we should not be wiser than God. He wants His people to be taught not by means of dumb images1 but by the living preaching of His Word. 21 Jer 10:8; Hab 2:18-20. 2 Rom 10:14, 15, 17; 2 Tim 3:16, 17; 2 Pet 1:19.

Habakkuk 2:18-20: Of what value is an idol, since a man has carved it? Or an image that teaches lies? For he who makes it trusts in his own creation; he makes idols that cannot speak. Woe to him who says to wood, 'Come to life!' Or to lifeless stone, 'Wake up!' Can it give guidance? It is covered with gold and silver; there is no breath in it. But the LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him.

2 Peter 1:19: And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

So much for learning from the lies and deceits of Hollywood. Now let’s see some comparisons alluded to in this article. Zorro being portrayed as a hero first pretends that he is a friend of the governor. Jesus on the other hand never pretends to be a friend of those who hate him; instead Jesus stands before the High Priest, the Scribes and Pharisees, before Caiaphas and later in the desert before Satan never denying that he is the son of God.

Zorro changes his clothes and dons a mask so as not to be recognized and takes the law into his own hands. Jesus on the other hand never betrays his identity but obeys all the rules and even repairs the damage done by Peter when he cut of the ear from Malchus.

There is much more which can be said about this, again we can see how sly Satan is using movies to try and mislead believers.

Mark 13:22 For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and miracles to deceive the elect—if that were possible. Let us be ever watchful and not think that we are strong enough to withstand these temptations instead it would be better if we were to spend the time in scripture instead of the movies and learn from what God has given us in his word rather than twist fantasies to make them look like truth.

1 Corinthians 10:12 So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!

[signed]

A third book review . . .

2007-11-26T14:38:00.009-05:00

. . . written by my wife and published in the Winter 2007 issue of the University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History. Her review is of Judith Flanders, Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain (London: Harper Press, 2006) and can be read by clicking here.

Two book reviews . . .

2007-11-25T11:41:00.010-05:00

. . . published in the Winter 2007 issue of the University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History. The first review is of Tevi Troy's book, Intellectuals and the American Presidency; the second review is of Whatmore & Young, eds., Palgrave Advances in Intellectual History.

After the reviews were published, I was honored to receive the following via e-mail:

Thanks for the nice review of my book Intellectuals and the American Presidency. You did a very nice job of conveying what I was trying to accomplish.

One minor correction: Theodore White was a journalist, not a Presidential aide. He was famous for the "Making of the President" series.

Best,

Tevi Troy

Good news concerning stem cell research: Two developments that respect human life

2007-11-20T16:53:00.002-05:00

Published in the 12 December 2007 edition of Christian Renewal Magazine.

Two recent news articles described major developments in the area of stem cell research. The first, an Associate Press (AP) story published on 20 November, reported, “Scientists have made ordinary skin cells take on the chameleon-like powers of embryonic stem cells, a startling breakthrough that might someday deliver the medical payoffs of embryo cloning without the controversy.”

This new technique, developed by researchers in Japan and the United States, is called “direct programming.” Scientists collect skin cells from a volunteer, then use viruses to introduce new genetic material into the cell. The new genetic material overrides the cell’s existing DNA, and it begins to function like a stem cell.

One of the researchers who developed direct programming, James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is quoted as saying, “People didn’t know it would be this easy. Thousands of labs in the United States can do this, basically tomorrow.”

The AP article quotes Dr. Robert Lanza, chief science officer of Advanced Cell Technology, as saying, “This work represents a tremendous scientific milestone – the biological equivalent of the Wright Brothers’ first airplane. It’s a bit like turning lead into gold.”

Stem cells considered valuable for medical research because of their ability to become into any type of cell in the human body. Newly fertilized embryos are composed entirely of stem cells, which in time develop into the various components of a mature human body.

Stem cell research involving the creation and destruction of embryos has caused been condemned by those who believe that human life begins at conception. The most widely used stem cell production method is called “nuclear transfer.”

In a nuclear transfer procedure, the nucleus of an egg cell, which contains its genetic material, is removed and replaced with the nucleus of another cell, usually an embryonic stem cell. The egg cell then essentially becomes an embryonic stem cell, one which could mature into a fully grown human being if given the proper conditions.

Objections to nuclear transfer rise because of the procedure’s very low success rate – well over 90% of the cells created die, leading some to charge that it carelessly handles human life. As an alternative to nuclear transfer, however, direct programming would provide the medical research community with an abundance of stem cells while satisfying the reservations of the pro-life community.

In addition, direct programming is significantly more cost-effective and efficient than nuclear transfer. Also, since stem cells created by direct programming come from the patient’s own body, there is no risk that they would be rejected by that person’s autoimmune system.

A related article, which appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 16 November, reported that Prof. Ian Wilmut of the University of Edinburgh, who created the world’s first cloned animal, Dolly the Sheep, has publicly abandoned nuclear transfer in favor of direct reprogramming. Prof. Wilmut has gone on record as saying that direct programming is a superior means of creating stem cells, which can in turn be used to research treatments for such serious illnesses as heart disease, Parkinson’s, muscular degeneration, and blindness.

Prof. Wilmut admits that his motivation for changing his method, despite his earlier success with nuclear transfer, is mostly practical; direct reprogramming provides stem cells at a significantly cheaper cost and with vastly greater degree of efficiency. However, he also recognizes that direct reprogramming is also “easier to accept socially” than its alternatives.

As the science of stem cell research has developed, the facts concerning its practice have unfortunately been too often clouded by misinformation and politicization. For example, those reporting on the progress of stem cell research, both in the scientific community and in the media, have often failed to properly nuance between its various kinds and the practical and moral considerations of each development. This misinformation might at times be caused by the technical nature of the subject, but in some instances it is more caused by the ideological commitments of the reporter.

Political figures have obscured the matter by using stem cell research as a means of appealing to different groups of voters, either the pro-life community or the seriously ill. Too often oversimplifications and misinformation abound when things of a highly technical nature get sucked into the arena of politics.

The pro-life movement has at times misunderstood the difference between embryonic stem cell research, in which human embryos are created and destroyed, and alternative stem cell research methods that offer genuine medical promise but in no way threaten human life. Consequently, it has sometimes wrongly condemned stem cell research as a whole.

If Prof. Wilmut’s abandonment of nuclear transfer in favor of direct programming indicates a wider trend in the scientific community – and indications are that this is so – then perhaps stem cell research will sidestep some of these ethical and political issues and be resolved in a way that satisfies all involved.

Why Christians should watch 'The Mask of Zorro'

2007-11-06T20:26:00.005-05:00

Published in the 21 November 2007 edition of Christian Renewal magazine.

First created in a 1919 serialized story, Zorro has been wildly successful character, inspiring innumerable books and comic books, nearly a dozen television shows, over forty films, and even popular and classical music. Named the Spanish word for fox in honor of his cunning, Zorro is a hero of the people who stands up for justice and protects the innocent when seemingly no one else can. Most often set in a corrupt and ruthless portion of the Spain-controlled areas of Mexico or California, Zorro customarily appears at a story’s most dire moments – wearing an all-black costume with a flowing cape, wide-brimmed hat, and thin mask while armed usually with only a sword and a bullwhip – and inevitably saves the day.

Some literary scholars believe Zorro to be inspired by the title character of the novel The Scarlet Pimpernel. Zorro in turn served as an inspiration for such popular characters as Batman, The Phantom, and many other regular-men-turned-heroes who rely on their mental and physical skills rather than any super powers.

‘The Mask of Zorro’ is an action film released in 1998 about the legendary vigilante hero. It stars both Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas as older and younger versions of Zorro. The latter is the first Spanish-speaking actor to portray Zorro in a major film.

Set in California at the transition from Spanish to Mexican rule, the film begins with a memorable depiction of Zorro in action and what he means to the people for whom he fights. The evil governor, Don Rafael Montero, decides to execute a batch of innocent peasants. Just as the firing squad is preparing to shoot, Zorro intervenes. With the help of the cheering crowd, he thwarts the executions in grandiose fashion and then returns home to his wife and newborn daughter.

However, Montero discovers Zorro’s real identity: Don Diego de la Vega (Hopkins), whom Montero thought to be his ally. In retaliation, Montero kills de la Vega’s wife, kidnaps his daughter, and has him sent to prison, where he remains for twenty years. During that time, Zorro has not shown his face, and consequently the people are increasingly oppressed. They mourn the loss of their hero and yearn for him to return and restore justice to their society.

Finally de la Vega escapes with plans to kill Montero in revenge, only to find that Montero has raised de la Vega’s daughter as his own – an act of ultimate revenge on his former nemesis.

Although de la Vega is too old and broken by his imprisonment to return as Zorro, he recruits a bitter, drunken, and impetuous young thief, Alejandro Murrieta (Banderas), to take his place. The older Zorro begins to train the younger, and in more than just acrobatics and swordsmanship: he teaches the rough young Murrieta how to be a gentleman as well, including posture, speech, and dancing. In a memorable scene, the de la Vega gives his mask Murrieta, symbolizing that he has completed his training, and the younger Zorro becomes the hero for which the people have been waiting.

Posing as a nobleman recently arrived from Spain, Murrieta slowly earns Montero’s trust. In the process, he learns of the many ways in which Montero has been taking advantage of the peasants; in particular, he has been using them as slave laborers at a gold mine that he is using to finance his schemes. Dressed for the first time as Zorro, Murrieta breaks into Montero’s house and steals a map to the gold mine, fighting off dozens of soldiers in the process. As word of this daring raid reaches the people, their hope is restored for the first time in many years: perhaps Zorro will return and all will be made right.

Using the map he stole from Montero, Zorro heads for the gold mine with hopes of freeing the people and ending Montero’s reign of terror. If you want to know the rest of the story, you will have to watch the film.

Like all action movies, ‘The Mask of Zorro’ is at moments more about choreographed fighting, explosions, and an upbeat soundtrack than it is about plot. Nonetheless, certain themes make its story resonate with any viewer – for example, the people’s yearning for their hero.

To the citizens of Montero’s California, Zorro was their only hope for justice and protection. Their rulers were corrupt and conniving; they saw them as something sub-human and sought only to take advantage of them. The very ones who had a duty to serve and protect them became their oppressors. Zorro, however, was a man of honor and integrity. He treated even the meanest of people as something worth fighting for and sought to protect them from every injustice.

After Zorro disappeared, the rulers again had their way with the people, and the people’s hopes slowly died. Every time some injustice or oppression occurred, they remembered the days when their hero would intervene and they wished to see his return – if Zorro were here, all would be made right.

Why Christians should watch 'The Mask of Zorro'

Many people in our own day wish some hero could swoop into their lives and make everything right. Everyone would agree that this world is frequently cruel and unjust, and far too often throughout history, those in authority have abused their power in one form or another. Whether or not they realize it, Christians and non-Christians alike make at least some effort to explain the harsh realities of this life, with each explanation varying in terms of its complexity and consistency.

Some explanations offer hope through the exercise of the collective will of the people – by acting together, we can overcome the difficulties of this life and have peace and happiness. Others say that success comes by exercising the individual will – by discovering myself and being myself, I can overcome the difficulties of this life. Still others assert that there are no such things as peace and happiness – we just have to accept that what is, is, and that is simply the end of it.

The problem with these explanations and others like them is that they simply do not work. People have tried to achieve peace and happiness through the collective will and the individual will and by many other means, but the outcome has always been the same.

Further, such explanations do not really address the yearning to see things made right that is common to every human being. We might each have a very different idea of what is right, but there can be no question that we all yearn for it, and this belief most visibly affects our thoughts and actions on a daily basis. But where does that universal belief in right, which is so strong that some even sacrifice their lives for it, come from?

Only Christians can fully understand this yearning, for only Christians know the whole story: that man was created in the image of God with certain duties to perform on the earth. But man rebelled against God, he ceased performing the duties that he had been given, and the divine image was marred by this sin. This story is the origin of the cursedness of our world, and this explanation is only found in Christianity.

Further, only Christians can offer a solution to the problem. How interesting it is that heroes appeal so broadly! Everyone has a hero, and it can be a disastrous thing when people see their heroes fall. But Christians can offer a hero who will never fail: Jesus, the ‘Savior of all people’ (1 Tim 4.10).

Like Zorro, Jesus came a first time offering a taste of the peace and justice to come. As we witness injustice of every kind as we yearn for his return, it is easy to lose hope and ask,

How long, O LORD?
Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul
And have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? (Ps 13.1-2, ESV)

But unlike the citizens of California, who could only hope that Zorro might someday return, we have assurance that our hero will return in a full display of his power. He has already demonstrated that power by rising from the dead, thus providing the ‘first fruits’ as evidence that he will do what he has promised.

Watching ‘The Mask of Zorro’ should turn Christians’ eyes toward their true hero, remind them of his promises, and fill them with joy that he is even more honorable and capable than Antonio Banderas in a black mask.

Further, this film should turn their eyes toward their neighbor, knowing that he is as desolate and oppressed as the peasants for whom Zorro fights. Who else can address their needs – both spiritual and physical – but us, and how else can they know about our real-life, non-fictional, death-conquering hero unless we tell them?

Consider and answer me, O LORD my God;
Light up my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death,
Lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
Lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.
But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the LORD,
Because he has dealt bountifully with me. (Ps 13.3-6, ESV)

My response

2007-10-24T08:10:00.002-04:00

My letter, published in the 7 November 2007 issue of Christian Renewal magazine, responding to the below letter.

------------------------------------------------

In response to the letter by Mr. Henry Groen in the 24 October edition of Christian Renewal:

I appreciate Mr. Groen’s response to my article, and I offer a few thoughts in reply:

1. Mr. Groen repeatedly asserts that frozen embryos have no souls; for example: “A human being does not become a living human being until God gives it a soul at the time when the woman conceives.” In the case of frozen embryos, however, conception has already occurred. So if embryos become human beings and receive souls at conception, then frozen embryos are human beings and have souls.

Indeed, that is the central point of my argument: if life begins at conception – which I have argued previously in, for example, the 17 January edition of Christian Renewal – then these already conceived, now frozen embryos are human beings and should be treated accordingly.

Perhaps Mr. Groen meant that a soul is conferred to the embryo not at conception but at implantation, a point that frozen embryos have not yet reached. But this distinction is completely arbitrary: no substantive change to the embryo itself occurs between the moment before it implants and the moment after. It seems problematic to choose this or any other equally arbitrary point to confer humanness on an embryo.

Indeed, if we believe that embryos are not human beings until implantation, then we should have no problem with the “post-coital,” “morning after,” or “plan B” (as it is alternately called) contraceptive pill. An embryo does not implant on the uterine wall until five days after conception, and this contraceptive works by simply preventing implantation. If not-yet-implanted embryos are not human beings, then this contraceptive poses no threat to human life and we should not oppose it. But if human life begins at conception, than we should oppose it on the grounds that even a not-yet-implanted embryo is a human being.

2. Mr. Groen describes embryos as “potential” human beings. We need to be careful using this particular language as it is precisely the same as that used by the pro-abortion and pro-embryonic stem cell research movements. They, too, assert that embryos are not real human beings – or “living human beings,” to use Mr. Groen’s other description – but rather “potential” human beings.

But I will again press the question: when do these embryos become human? Certainly by birth, and certainly no earlier than conception, so it must be at some point between the two. But when? Mr. Groen does not adequately answer this question, but we must if we are to be consistently pro-life.

I submit that the only answer to that question that is not arbitrary and indefensible is that human life begins at conception, and consequently I reject the idea that frozen embryos are theoretical, possible, potential human beings.

Brian Douglas
Brighton, England

A letter . . .

2007-10-23T12:06:00.003-04:00

. . . published in Christian Renewal magazine, 24 October, 2007, responding to my article, Embryo Adoption: Questions Answered.

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Re: Ethics, embryo adoption: Questions answered (CR, Sept. 12, 07, Vol. 26, #1).

It was with great interest that I read the above mentioned article. It is good that someone opens this matter for a discussion. There are a number of points that could be addressed. However, I will just address one issue in that article.

Mr. Brian Douglas states repeatedly, that the embryos are human beings. I would rather say that they embryo here, has the physical potential to become a human being. The 400,000 frozen embryos he mentioned have no souls. A human being does not become a living human being until God gives it a soul at the time when the woman conceives. Only God can give us a soul. Read Ezekiel 18:4 - "Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine." Doctors cannot produce a soul in a dish.

The article ends by saying that there is no difference between adopting an embryo and adopting a child. There is no comparison between adopting a child that already lives and has a soul, and an embryo that has no soul. For this readon, in my understanding, no one is under any obligation to adopt an embryo, while adopting a child is commendable.

(signed)
Dundas, Ontario

Why Christians should read Shakespeare's Henry V

2007-10-22T18:34:00.004-04:00

Published in the 7 November 2007 edition of Christian Renewal magazine.

In Henry V, Shakespeare uses the title character to put forward his vision of the ideal king. The play begins when Harry, as Henry V is affectionately nicknamed, learns that he is the true heir to the throne of France; he informs the French monarchy that he intends to exercise his right and asks them to step aside. Their response is to mock him: they send him a gilded barrel of “treasure” in tribute to their claimant king – a treasure of tennis balls, implying that Harry is more fit for games than governing.

Harry sets out with his army to force the French to recognize his claim. Undaunted by the fact that the French army is superior in size and skill to his own, he presses forward with courage and resolution.

As the play progresses, Shakespeare’s king is revealed to be larger than life – indeed, he seems nearly perfect in character and ability. No less than the Archbishop of Canterbury says of him:

Hear him but reason in divinity;
And, all-admiring, with an inward wish
You would desire the king were made a prelate:
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs;
You would say it hath been all in all his study:
List his discourse of war; and you shall hear
A fearful battle rendered to you in music.
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter: that, when he speaks,
The air, a chartered libertine, is still,
And the mute wonder lurketh in men’s ears,
To steal his sweet and honeyed sentences:
So that the art and practice part of life
Must be the mistress to this theoric . . . (1.1)

As the story progresses, Shakespeare demonstrates his vision of an ideal king through Harry’s three principal actions.

First: by his speeches, Harry conquers those who oppose him.

Harry begins his conquest of France at Harfleur, and at pivotal points in the battle to take the city, Harry’s speeches, even more than his sword, decide the battle. In a monologue interspersed with descriptions of the horrors of war that will come upon the citizens of Harfleur if they prolong the battle, Harry appeals to the city’s governor and citizens:

How yet resolves the governor of the town?
This is the latest parle we will admit:
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves . . .
Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people . . .
What say you? Will you yield, and this avoid? . . . (3.3)

The city does yield and consequently becomes the first part of France to recognize Harry as its king. The English army marches immediately onward toward the full French army.

Second: by his speeches, Harry rallies his friends.

Harry’s army meets the mighty French army near a castle caled Agincourt. It is to be an almost apocalyptic battle – the battle of battles, the one that will settle the question of who will rule France. The outcome appears decided before the battle even begins, though, as the English are outnumbered five to one.

Throughout his preparations for the battle, Harry demonstrates extraordinary care for those with him. In an age in which common soldiers were considered to be expendable pawns in the king’s game, Harry’s deepest concern is for even the basest of his men. On the eve of the battle, he disguises himself and goes from campfire to campfire to learn how his men are and to encourage them.

On the fateful morning, before the epic fight begins, Harry overhears one of his nobles wish for ten thousand more men on their side. To rally his friends, encourage them, and prepare them for the battle to come, Harry gives his most memorable speech:

What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are marked to die, we are now
To do our country loss: and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will, I pray thee wish not one man more. . . .
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God’s peace, I would not lose so great an honour,
As one man more, methinks, would share from me,
For the best hope I do have. O, do not wish one more:
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart, his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship, to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall see this day, and live old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say, “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve, and show his scars,
And say, “These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words . . .
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.
This story shall the good man teach his son:
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be rememberéd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers:
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother: be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition.
And gentlemen in England, now a-bed,
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here;
And hold their manhoods cheap, whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day. (4.3)

Immediately after the speech, the English prepare for battle. The French attack, the battle is fought, and the English win a stunning victory. In the end, ten thousand French nobles and soldiers die; of the English, only 29 men are killed. Harry tells his men where the credit for their victory lies:

Was ever known so great and little loss,
On one part and on th’other? Take it, God,
For it is none but thine! . . .
And be it death proclaiméd through our host
To boast of this or take that praise from God
Which is his only. . . .
[His men are only allowed to speak of the battle’s outcome] with this acknowledgement,
That God fought for us! (4.8)

Third: by his speeches, Harry gains a bride.

After the battle, the two monarchs meet to settle the conflict. Among other things, it is decided that Harry will marry Katharine, the French princess; their wedding will be a symbol of the union of the English and French throne. As the conqueror, Harry could simply claim Katharine and take her for himself. Instead he woos her, desiring that she genuinely love him.

In a playful scene (5.2), Shakespeare uses the couple’s language barrier to comic effect as Harry attempts, at first in overly ornate language and often using downright silly analogies, to profess his love for Katharine. The French princess asks him in her broken English, “Is it possible dat I sould love de enemy of France?”

Harry reassures her that he loves France so much that he “will not part with a village of it.” He attempts to prove this to her by professing his love for her in French – rather humorously as his French turns out to be far worse than her English. Finally he gives up his fumbling for words and says:

"Now fie upon my false French! By mine honour, in true English, I love thee, Kate; by which honour, I dare not swear thou loves me, yet my blood begins to flatter me that thou dost; notwithstanding the poor and untempering effect of my visage. . . . I was created with a stubborn outside, with an aspect of iron, that when I come to woo ladies, I fright them: but in faith, Kate, the elder I wax, the better I shall appear. My comfort is, that old age, that ill layer up of beauty, can do no more spoil upon my face. Thou hast me, if thou hast me, at the worst; and that shalt wear me, if thou wear me, better and better: and therefore tell me, most fair Katharine, will you have me? . . . Come, your answer in broken music; for thy voice is music, and thy English broken: therefore, queen of all, Katharine, break thy mind to me in broken English; wilt thou have me?"

She agrees, and by his words Harry has turned the daughter of his fiercest foe into his queen.

Why Christians should read Henry V

Harry’s appeal is universal – rare indeed is the reader who does not admire him greatly and perhaps even wish that Harry were the head of state in his country. But as excellent as Harry is in courage and character, there is a greater king than Harry: his words and deeds pale in comparison to those of Jesus.

Like Harry, Jesus conquers his enemies by the power of his words. But while Harry’s battle speeches are filled with threats of destruction, Jesus’ words in this time of grace are those of love, offering forgiveness to anyone who repents. Only Jesus is able to work in the hardened hearts of his mortal enemies and make us his friends, giving us a genuine, abiding love for himself.

Like Harry, Jesus rallies his friends by the power of his words: there can be no greater encouragement in times of trouble than God’s Word. But while Harry could only inspire his men to fight for victory, Jesus guarantees victory. Even more, Jesus himself does all the fighting, conquering death itself and leaving us to borrow Harry’s words: “God fought for us!” And while Harry’s men could never be his brothers in more than a figurative sense, Jesus makes us the very sons and daughters of God, co-heirs with him of the kingdom of God.

Like Harry, Jesus woos a bride by the power of his words. Unlike Harry’s beautiful princess, however, Jesus’ chosen bride – the church, his people – was already hopelessly corrupted, unfaithful, and defiled. Yet he demonstrates his love for her in this: while she was still a sinner, he sacrificed himself to make her a more pure and perfect wife than any other. And no language barrier or any other obstacle can prevent him from communicating his eternal love to her.

Christians should read Shakespeare’s Henry V because it makes them think even more highly of Jesus. Harry is the best kind of king we could hope for in this life, but the character, words, and deeds, of Jesus, our eternal king, are far more amazing and beautiful than Harry’s.

Also, Christians should read Shakespeare’s Henry V because it can help them point others to Jesus. Harry appeals to all kinds of people, Christians and non-Christians alike, and many would wish that we had such a king in our often lonely, impoverished, nasty, and brutish world. But Christians can respond: we do! We have a king greater than Harry, and his kingdom has come and is yet coming and will be forevermore.

For any who are interested in reading Henry V, it can be read for free on several websites; simply search for it in any search engine. Also, I highly recommend the film version starring Kenneth Branagh.

After God fought for them, Harry and his men sang from Psalm 115:

Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us,
But unto your Name give glory.

What more can we say but “Amen”?