Monthly Archives: May 2010

No small things

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Last week, Jared Wilson excerpted a post from a Christian counseling website, Counseling Solutions, called “Christ is not sophisticated enough for what I am going through.” It’s a remarkable post; the author, Rick Thomas, clearly advocates and seeks to practice gospel-centered counseling, which in my experience is not exactly the norm even among Christians in the counseling industry (and in fact seems to be actively discouraged by many who train counselors). Here’s how he opens:

Jeremy & Carol do not like each other. Jeremy is passive and Carol is hurt. Carol has been in therapy for many years and their problems have not gone away and their marriage is no better off today than it was when Carol began her therapy sessions. The fundamental problem with Jeremy and Carol is that they do not understand the Gospel.

When I shared this with them, they dismissed this notion with a wry smile. The Gospel is too simple and they had already “accepted Christ” twenty something years ago. From their perspective, they understand the Gospel, accepted the Gospel, and are now looking for something a bit more sophisticated to help them through their marriage difficulty.

Their attitude, unfortunately, is all too common among churchgoers in this country. We’re supposed to be gospel people—this is what we’re supposed to be on about, it’s what’s supposed to define us and give us our purpose—but somehow or other we’ve gotten the idea that this is kid stuff that we’ve outgrown. It’s not big enough or deep enough to apply to our grownup problems and struggles; we need something more.

I could be wrong about why that is, but I think it’s because we have far too small and shallow a view of our sin.Read more→

Crucified, Resurrected, Ascended, Coming

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(Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Acts 1:6-11, Philippians 2:5-11)

This is what defines us as Christians: our confession of what Jesus Christ has done for us. This isn’t the foundation of our faith—that must necessarily be God the Father, the one who made us. Nor can it be separated from our understanding of who Jesus is; had he been just another human being, nothing he did would have mattered a whit. It’s because he was the God of all creation become one particular human being that his work is worth everything instead of nothing. But it’s when we consider the astonishing reality of his life that all this stops being merely theoretical and becomes for us in a way that no other religion accepts. Judaism begins with God, too, and Islam even honors Jesus as a prophet; we are the only ones who bow before him as Lord and Savior.

Now, back when the early church was fighting about who Jesus was and what he did, going through the process of figuring out which popular beliefs about him were true to Scripture and which ones weren’t, they laid out five basic affirmations about his redeeming work. In one of the least creative titles in the history of preaching, I got four of them in there, but couldn’t fit all five. Obviously, first, Jesus Christ is God become human—the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, born by the power of the Holy Spirit as an apparently ordinary human baby to a most decidedly ordinary human woman, with a human father even more along for the ride than we usually are. This is a truth which the poets have generally handled better than the theologians, because it’s just too big for our propositional language; thus, for instance, the Anglican priest-poet John Donne wrote, addressing Mary,

That All, which always is All everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo, faithful Virgin, yields himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; . . .
Thou hast light in dark; and shutst in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.

This truth has launched a thousand speculations, many of them designed to avoid having to face it squarely, but in the end, I think Michael Card offers the wisest counsel in his song “To the Mystery”; having spent the verses exploring this inexplicable reality, he finally concludes, “Give up on your ponderings and fall down on your knees.”

That really is, I think, all we can do in the end as we contemplate this. The God of the universe traded in the throne of glory for a working-class childhood—not that his family was poor, they probably weren’t, but they were of no real status in a highly status-conscious society—then spent his adulthood as a vagabond, an itinerant teacher with no fixed address and no financial security. He spent the time teaching his disciples and preparing them for what was to come—not only in telling them he would have to die, which they never understood, but in teaching them what they would need to know in order to be able to carry on his mission to the world. The teachings of Christ in the gospels are not incidental to his redemptive work, but are an integral part of it.

Of course, any time you speak the truth without flinching and without obscuring it, you’re going to make people mad, and you’re going to make enemies, because all of us have places in our lives where we’re actively walling out the truth, and for a lot of folks, those places are pretty big and pretty central to their lives; in Jesus’ case, the enemies he made were the leaders of his own people, who decided he had to die before he ruined everything for them. Through a mass of trumped-up charges and quasi-legal interrogations and trials, they succeeded in accomplishing his judicial murder, never really registering that they were only carrying out things which he had set in motion, or that they were only able to kill him because he let them.

From the Roman point of view, of course, Jesus wasn’t a citizen, so he wasn’t a real person; as such, if it was expedient to get rid of him, his execution need not be carried out with any sort of respect, and so they crucified him. As I’ve noted before, this was a form of execution designed for maximum pain, both physical and also emotional, because it was intentionally degrading, humiliating, and dehumanizing; what I don’t think I’ve mentioned is that this was even worse for the Jews than for anyone else. You see, Deuteronomy 21 declares,

If a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God.

From the Jewish point of view, then, to be crucified was not merely to be executed, it was to be accursed. Paul picks up on this in Galatians 3, quoting this passage and concluding, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” These are the depths to which he was willing to go for the sake of his people.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, but of course, that wasn’t all that needed doing; nor could death ever hold the maker of all life. As we talk about on Easter, his resurrection was both inevitable and necessary; having paid the penalty for all sin by his death, by his resurrection he broke its power forever, putting death itself to death and giving us his life in its place. As I’ve said before, in his resurrection it’s not merely that he rose from the dead, but also that we rose with him, spiritually speaking, from the death of sin to the new life of God. I don’t think we can repeat this enough, that in Christ we are no longer bound by death and grief and loss and defeat, because in him, we have overcome the world. These things do still oppress us now, but their presence in our lives is only temporary; Jesus has conquered all of them, and in him, so have we. His full victory is still coming, but its coming is assured, because he has already won it.

Having done this, Christ finished his work when he returned to heaven. This is something that’s often overlooked; I preached a series on it a couple years ago, and I expect we’ll be touching on it again later this year, but Christ’s ascension is not merely an afterthought. Rather, having made the sacrifice once and for all for human sin, in his ascension he returned to the presence of the Father to complete his work by bringing the sacrifice into the holy of holies, then sat down at the Father’s side as our great high priest. There he intercedes for us before the heavenly throne, inviting us into God’s presence and bringing our prayers to the Father. It’s because he ascended and is now our great high priest that we can come freely to God in prayer.

Finally, we affirm that in the proper time, Christ will return; this sinful world will come to an end, the wicked will be judged, and all things will be made new. Christians disagree about the details, but on that much, we can all agree, that those who are alive in Christ will live with him forever in the kingdom of God, filled with his love, made new in his perfection, shining with his glory. This is our hope in Christ.

Now, this is central to our faith; this is basic truth that the church ought to teach all of us from the time we are very young, because it’s essential to our understanding of who God is and who we are in him. This is the gospel, the good news; it’s what we’re supposed to be on about. The problem is, far too many in the church believe that because this is basic, it’s kid stuff that they’ve outgrown; they don’t think it matters to their lives, and so they think they need something else to speak to their problems and challenges. For an example, let me share this with you from a Christian counseling website:

Jeremy & Carol do not like each other. Jeremy is passive and Carol is hurt. Carol has been in therapy for many years and their problems have not gone away and their marriage is no better off today than it was when Carol began her therapy sessions. The fundamental problem with Jeremy and Carol is that they do not understand the Gospel.

When I shared this with them, they dismissed this notion with a wry smile. The Gospel is too simple and they had already “accepted Christ” twenty something years ago. From their perspective, they understand the Gospel, accepted the Gospel, and are now looking for something a bit more sophisticated to help them through their marriage difficulty.

In that response, they aren’t uncommon among American churchgoers, but they are unfortunate; they think they need something better and deeper than the gospel when in fact there is nothing better and deeper. Their problem is that they don’t understand their problem; as the author goes on to say,

they are spoiled Americans who believe they deserve better than what they currently have. They believe they are better than what they are receiving, when the truth is they deserve a lot worse than what they are receiving.

As, in truth, we all do. Their problem—which is a problem to varying degrees for most of us—is that they don’t take their sin anywhere near seriously enough, and thus don’t think the gospel is really all that big a deal. Their shrunken sense of their own sinfulness has given them an even more shrunken view of the redemptive work of Christ, such that they truly do not understand the incredible grace and mercy of God; thus when they face problems in their lives, they think they need something else in addition to the gospel in order to deal with them.

This is nothing less than a tragedy, because it leads them, and us, to believe that Jesus is not enough, and thus to look elsewhere for redemption when he is the only redeemer there is to be found. It’s a tragedy that is driven, I believe, by the desire to avoid looking too closely at ourselves and our sin. The only solution to it is to do exactly that: to look unflinchingly at our lives and ask God to teach us to see our sin as he sees it. To pull from this piece about Jeremy and Carol one last time,

Suppose Jeremy & Carol truly understood that they were on the precipice of hell. Let’s further suppose that they knew they were the worst, wickedest, and most undeserving people who ever lived. And there was not one ounce of an entitlement attitude in their souls. They were the worst of the worst.

Now let’s suppose someone came and totally transformed their lives. If anyone had ever gone from worst to first, Jeremy and Carol were those people. They received an “other worldly” gift that they not only did not deserve, but they were absolutely helpless in ever earning. Jeremy and Carol were truly regenerated: they were born again. They are now seated in heavenly places with the One who fully secured their regeneration. They have been affected by the Gospel.

That’s what all of us need to understand, because that’s where all of us are. God doesn’t owe us anything except judgment—even the best of us. But instead of giving us judgment, he gave us himself; he gave us his Son, Jesus Christ. We were and are utterly undeserving, and he saved us anyway, at unimaginable, immeasurable cost to himself; he did it because even though we turned our backs on him, he loved us too much to let us go. This is the reason for everything Jesus did, and it’s the reason he is the answer to all the deepest problems of our lives; it’s the reason that the truth of the gospel is sufficient, that it doesn’t need any of our human fake “wisdom” piled on top of it like poison ivy on a hot-fudge sundae. The gospel is enough; his grace is sufficient.

So what does it mean to live this out? Well, that’s what Paul’s talking about in Philippians 2. I think the best expression of the idea here that I’ve ever heard came from Fr. Ernest Fortin, a philosopher and priest from Quebec—the Roman church in Quebec is not exactly known for being saturated with the gospel, but he was, and I love this quote that was attributed to him by one of his students:

The Christian virtue par excellence is humility. . . humility first of all of a God who would humble Himself to take on our humanity and give His life as a ransom for the many. But humility as well for the believer—to understand that all is grace; that we have no right to claim anything as our own—not our life, not our gifts, not even our faith. We are at every moment God’s creation.

That’s really the bottom line: all is grace. Everything that is good in our lives is grace. Everything that is good in us, everything that is best about us, it’s all grace. It’s all Jesus, it’s all his gift in us, to us, through us. At every moment, we exist because he made us, we live because he gave us life, we love because he first loved us, we have faith because he placed it in us, we have hope because he is the source of hope, we see because he gives us light . . . all is grace, and we can take no credit. All we can do is give thanks, and bow in humble awe at how good is our Lord, how good he is to us.

Was this what you had in mind, Madam Speaker?

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Nancy Pelosi famously declared that they’d have to pass the health care bill to find out what’s in the bill. Well, now we’re finding out:

“Turns out ObamaCare means if you like your health plan you can lose it. The president didn’t have to actually strong-arm companies into dumping their employee health insurance because his bill carried financial incentives to virtually guarantee that result,” [Rep. Joe] Barton said. “But something’s very wrong when, like AT&T found out, paying $600 million in penalties will allow you to stop paying $2.4 billion for insurance, leaving both workers and taxpayers stuck. I suppose we can’t know for some years how many thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of workers will lose their company insurance because of health care reform, but I know that it will be a breach of faith for most of them and a tragedy for some.”

Transparency: it isn’t just for Catholics anymore

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I’ve been wondering for a while when we’d see this. From the Anchoress:

In New York, Queens Assemblywoman Margaret Markey routinely presents a bill which seeks to open a year-long “window” into the statute of limitations on child sex-abuse cases, allowing victims whose cases may go back as far as 40 years to bring suit for damages.

Because the bill has—until now—always been limited by Markey to impact the churches, exclusively, it routinely failed, or been shelved. It is difficult to pass a bill that essentially finds some sexual abuse victims to be more worthy of redress than others.

Markey seems to have figured that out; her new bill includes suits against secular institutions, and the previously silent civil authorities, among others, are reeling . . .

So, the secular institutional world may soon find itself forced onto the same learning curve that has impacted and the Catholic Church over the past few years; that world too may find itself finally forced to confront the filth that too often stays hidden. The confrontation—painful as it may be—will ultimately be for the good. . . .

As we begin to acknowledge that child sex abuse has long infected the whole of society, and not just the churches, we will be forced to take a long and difficult look at ourselves. Church-sex stories may be sensational, but these others will quickly come to seem dreary, mostly because they will indict not just those oddball celibates and religious freaks, but our cops, our doctors, our teachers, our bureaucrats—you know, the “normal” people, all around us, in our families, attending our barbecues and graduations, healing our wounds and teaching our kids.

Extending the “open window” to include secular sex abuse cases will impact the whole of society. We will be invited to look in and—seeing the width and breadth of the problem—will be forced to ponder the human animal and the human soul in ways we have not, and would rather not. It may bring home some uncomfortable truths: that “safety” is relative; that human darkness is not limited to various “theys” but seeps into the whole of “us”; that the tendency to look at the guilt of others has, perhaps, a root in our wish not to look at ourselves; that human brokenness is a constant and human righteousness is always imperfect.

Read the whole thing—this is important. I for one hope this bill passes, not least because it will expose the sanctimonious pretense by many outside the Roman church that this is only a Catholic problem. For all the agonies of what Fr. Richard John Neuhaus called the Catholic church’s “Long Lent,” and for all the opportunistic false charges that were levied, it does seem to have been a necessary cleansing that will leave the church stronger and healthier in the long run; perhaps this would indeed do the same for our society.

Random thought

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I only ask two things from those who disagree with me. I don’t ask that they claim not to believe me wrong; such a claim only dishonors both of us, and is dishonest besides. Nor do I ask them to censor themselves, which could only prevent true conversation. Rather, I ask that though they believe me wrong, they give me credit for being wrong in good faith and honest inquiry. And in addition, I ask that they be willing to listen honestly to my reasons for disagreeing with them, accepting the possibility that they might be convinced that I am in fact right after all. These are the things I seek to give in return to those who disagree with me, though I certainly do not claim to do so unfailingly or perfectly. They are, it seems to me, the necessary prerequisites for a truly open, honest, and constructive discussion; they are the characteristics we must have if we are to experience any kind of real and meaningful unity in the midst of our diversity.

On this blog in history: June 1-8, 2008

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Politics in a state of grace
The founding principle of any truly Christian politics must be the absolute sovereignty of God.

“Doubting Thomas”?
We’re in no position to talk.

Skeptical conversations, part VI: Relationship with God (or not)
Salvation as a matter of knowing the one who saves

Worldly heavens make me ill
On the rubbish that is the popular idea of heaven

Firefly, Tolkien, and narrative theology
On the intrinsic theological significance of story

Jesus is Lord

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Ever since the very beginning, the church has declared that Jesus is Lord; and I suspect that ever since pretty early on in there, large chunks of the church have proceeded to go out and ignore that proclamation. When we say that, we’re not saying any small thing. Rather, we’re saying that we acknowledge him not merely as the one who saves us, not merely as someone who blesses us, not merely as someone who loves us and whom we love, but also as the God of the universe, the one who created and sustains and commands everything that is; we’re bowing before him as the one who has the undisputed right to our wholehearted worship, our absolute allegiance, and our unquestioning obedience. No exceptions; no qualifications; no ifs, ands, or buts.

Which is easy enough to say; but of course, just saying it isn’t good enough. This is one of those things, if you just say it and don’t do it, you haven’t really said it at all. Making this confession commits us to actually living it out—and that’s the rub, because there are always places where we don’t want to do that. We tend to want to tell Jesus, “OK, you can be Lord of 95% of my life, or even 98%—but I have this thing over here that I want to hang on to, that I want to keep doing my way. It doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t affect anything else, so just let me keep doing this one thing and you can have the rest of my life.” To us, that makes sense; to us, that seems perfectly reasonable. We don’t understand why Jesus looks back at us and says, “No. You need to give me that, too”; but that’s what he does, every time.

In truth, whatever is the last thing we want to give up is the first thing Jesus asks of us, and the first thing that truly acknowledging his lordship requires of us. It may be a sin, or it may not; it may be something he intends to take away from us, or it may be something he intends to let us keep. Indeed, it may be our greatest gift, the one thing he will use most powerfully in our life for our blessing and the blessing of others. But whatever it is, good or ill, we have to give it over to him and let it be his, not ours. Anything we will not give up, anything of which we’re unwilling to let go, is something which is more important to us than Jesus is; and anything which is more important to us than Jesus is an idol, and God will not tolerate idols in our lives.

It’s tempting to look at this and say, “No, it really doesn’t matter that much.” Even if what we’re trying to hang onto is a sin, we can always convince ourselves that it’s not that big a deal; and if it isn’t—well, marriage, for instance, is a good and biblical thing, and if we’re married and love the person to whom we’re married, it doesn’t seem particularly unreasonable to tell Jesus no, this person is all mine. God can have the rest of my life, but my marriage is all mine.

Now, certainly, we have enduring allegiances in this world that are good and right. But here’s the rub: every single one of those allegiances, and every last one of those loves, has to take its proper place—behind our love for and our allegiance to our Lord Jesus Christ. We love our family, our friends, our church, our country, maybe our jobs, and then along comes Jesus and says, “Anyone who comes to me and doesn’t hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, cannot be my disciple.” No, I didn’t make that up, it’s Luke 14:26. Obviously, “hate” is a strong word, especially when Jesus commands us to love everybody, but this is a rabbinic way of speaking—he’s saying that our love for everyone other than him has to come so far second to our love for him that we’ll put him and his will first, even if it means that others come away from it thinking we hate them. This is the degree of allegiance our Lord wants from us, and the totality of worship he desires from us—with no competition, no exceptions, and nothing else smuggled in.

That sounds pretty demanding, but it really isn’t; it’s simply what’s necessary. C. S. Lewis explained this well when he wrote,

God claims all, because he is love and must bless. He cannot bless us unless he has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, he claims all.

Liberalism

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On Twitter some time ago, John Piper offered this succinct definition of the impulse behind liberal theology: “Make the Gospel acceptable to the world rather than showing the world it is unintelligible without the Gospel.”

Some might say that many conservatives do the same—that the only difference is what part of the world they’re trying to please. Those people would be absolutely correct; but it doesn’t invalidate Dr. Piper’s point. Rather, what it shows is that many conservatives are, in fact, far more liberal than they think they are. Indeed, it shows just how great the triumph of the liberal Protestant project was, and how many of those who consider themselves to be in opposition to it are actually captive to its assumptions. The so-called “modernist-fundamentalist” controversy of the 1920s was in truth a conflict between modernists; fundamentalism was (and continues to be) a movement that sought to refute liberalism’s conclusions while accepting its presuppositions about knowledge, truth, and the proper basis for belief.