Scot McKnight on the recent Rob Bell controversy:

“…we saw too much gloating and pride and triumphalism on both sides. I felt like those who watched the sinking of the Titanic and who didn’t cringe at the thought of thousands sinking into the Atlantic to a suffocating death. They were instead singing and dancing to a jig that they were right or had been predicting the sinking all along.

If there is an eternity, and I believe there is, and if there is a judgment, and I believe there is, then let us keep the immensity and gravity of it all in mind and refrain from flippancy, gloating, triumphalism — and let it reduce us to sobriety and humility and prayer. When Abraham faced the prospects of the destruction of Sodom in Genesis 18, he didn’t gloat that he was on the safe side but supplicated YHWH for mercy for those who weren’t. We need more Abrahams.

***

I find some people can get intoxicated on wrath and it can lead them in a triumphalist dance of anger. And I find some who get intoxicated with a flabby sense of grace. Isn’t it better to get lost in the dance of God’s good and triumphant grace and of making things right? If we are to be intoxicated, let it be from imbibing the hope and grace of God’s love which will both win and be right in the End.”

Read the rest here.

So Rob Bell sounds like a Universalist… this is news? Rather than add even more to the recent controversy, I’m reposting my review of one of his previous books called “Jesus Wants to Save Christians” from two years ago. The latent Universalism was already obvious then, so the current (potential?) continuation of that trajectory should not be that surprising.

__________________________________

To be honest, I have tried to like Rob Bell’s work many times without much luck.  That’s probably a bad way to start a review.

I’m not a Bell-basher, but I’m not a fan either; I understand his appeal, but it doesn’t appeal to me; I have been to his church, I know some people there, and I like them and have enjoyed worshiping at Mars Hill.

Many who haven’t read Rob Bell’s books are at least familiar with the phenomenally successful series of short films called Nooma (which are quite good). Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile is the third of his provocatively titled books – the previous two being Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith (my review) and Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality.

If you’ve ever heard Bell speak, it’s easy to hear his voice when you read his books – his pacing, pauses, and emphases are communicated well by the format of the text. The size of the books is appealing and the cover designs are clever, making them nice books to be seen with.

In Jesus Wants to Save Christians Bell uses the motif of exile to illustrate the condition of God’s people at present and in times past, drawing parallels between the two. Exile, by Bell’s definition, is “when you fail to convert your blessings into blessings for others… [and] when you find yourself a stranger to the purposes of God.”

In describing the new covenant Bell says: “No more fear, no more terror, no more thunder. That was the old way, the former thing, the first covenant.” In this new covenant, “the truth will be so deeply etched into people’s consciousness that they will naturally do the right thing.” There is a common thread in Bell’s work, one that is the cause of some accusations that he favors Universalism. There are certainly overtones of that soteriological view and it would be nice to hear Bell explain his thinking on the matter a bit more.

By challenging Bell’s allusions to Universalism, one is put into the position of having to answer questions like “Are you saying you DON’T want everyone to be saved?” That is not the point here. Of course everyone (except the most extreme hyper-Calvinist) DOES hope that all will be saved, but the likelihood of this goes against numerous passages of scripture.  Some will spend eternity separated from God; Bell would do well to mention this more often in his teaching – not as a gleeful condemnation, but as a plea for repentance.

The text on the back cover says the following:

“There is a church in our area that recently added an addition to their building which cost more than $20 million. Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty. This is a book about those two numbers.”

That claim is not substantiated in the pages of JWTSC; it would have been a much better book if it had.

The tone and scope of JWTSC reminds me of two other titles I’ve read. Neither one sold me completely on its thesis, but they challenged my preconceptions more effectively. So if a vibrant screed against the culture of excessive consumption and affluence is what you’re after, you’re more likely to be inspired by reading Naomi Klein’s No Logo or Kalle Lasn’s Culture Jam: How to Reverse America’s Suicidal Consumer Binge–And Why We Must.

Apparently he’s not one. Have a listen:

Download audio file (N.T.%20Wright%20-%20Universalism.mp3)

Favorite quote from the above audio: “Heaven is important but it’s not the end of the world.”

(audio excerpted from Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Podcast)

On March 25-26 2011 I’ll be in Seattle at BibleTech 2011, a conference about – you guessed it – “Bible” and “Technology” (You are so s-m-r-t). I’ll be live-blogging for the 8Bit Network.

From the BibleTech website:

This two-day conference is designed for publishers, programmers, webmasters, educators, bloggers and anyone interested in using technology to improve Bible study.

BibleTech 2011 is an opportunity to meet others who share your interests and hear from industry leaders. If your passion is the Bible and technology, this conference is for you!

I’ll also be writing a special feature for Christian Week after the event and  (of course) I’m hoping to check out Mars Hill Church while I’m there.

I’ll be honest – I haven’t been a fan of Derek Webb’s work apart from Caedmon’s Call. For some reason though it’s starting to grow on me. Check out the video below… which is serves as a nice visual aid for a sermon on Galatians.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr4DBnB7aNQ&feature=player_embedded

A New Law

(Derek Webb)
Don’t teach me about politics and Government
Just tell me who to vote for
Don’t teach me about truth and beauty
Just label my music

Don’t teach me how to live like a free man
Just give me a new law

I don’t wanna know if the answers aren’t easy
So just bring it down from the mountain to me

I want a new law
I want a new law
Gimme that new law

Don’t teach me about moderation and liberty
I prefer a shot of grape juice

Don’t teach me about loving my enemies

Don’t teach me how to listen to the Spirit
Just give me a new law

I don’t wanna know if the answers aren’t easy
So just bring it down from the mountain to me

I want a new law
I want a new law
Gimme that new law

What’s the use in trading a law you can never keep
For one you can that cannot get you anything

Do not be afraid
Do not be afraid
Do not be afraid

© Derek Webb Music

So says David Fitch. First, Fitch offers an admission (one that I could make myself):

I often use the pedagogical tactic that starts out by saying something provocative and then, after I’ve gotten myself into some trouble, and acquired some people’s attention,  I try to explain myself. It’s a bad rhetorical habit. Nonetheless, it works. This time it seems to have attracted some attention so let me take advantage of it and explain what I meant.

So, is there some hyperbole in the statement? Yes, but it did get your attention, didn’t it? Fitch explains:

Prototype youth groups are built on the worst of modernist assumptions concerning the way human beings develop as cultural beings. [Parents] think the answer is to somehow get their children to a place where the youth culture attracts them and somehow makes Christianity attractive to their age group. All these things, I argue, work against the child growing up into a vital and real relationship with the living God and what He has done in Christ for the world.

He then lists as least three ways that prototype youth programs are destructive:

1.) YOUTH GROUPS FOSTER PEER ORIENTATION.

Youth groups segregate the youth from the adults creating programing geered towards them as a separate culture. This creates a gap between the youth and the adults culturally. This then leads the youth to look to their peers for orientation into life. This I contend works against the discipleship of youth into Christ. I contend this peer orientation is disasterous for the lives of our children.

2.) YOUTH GROUPS UNDERCUT WHOLISTIC COMMUNITY from which a child can learn faith in Chirst as a way of life/relationship, not just information slickly delivered… children learn about the living God by being in living relationships within a community where God is present. Once Jesus becomes infotainment, once it becomes a program, detached from real relationships, it loses its reality. It takes on the character of a learning experience in competition with other learning experiences.

3.) YOUTH GROUPS TOO OFTEN TRY TO ATTRACT YOUTH PLAYING TO THEIR WORST INTERESTS.

It’s a mistake to try to “attract” youth to discipleship with either social occasions that play on their sexual insecurities or music entertainment that plays on their desire to be “cool.” There will be times I am sure to attend the occasional rock concert or have the occasional social time together. But what the church should do for its youth most of all is foster spaces for meeting God where they can be trained to listen for God and commune with Him in silence, in prayer.

These are just the highlights. Read the whole thing here. If you have time, take in some the content in the comments section as well.

Half the time I can’t tell whether I read Doug Wilson because I agree with him or because I enjoy his writing so much. He makes me think, flips conventional wisdom on its ear, and turns a good phrase with every swing at the plate.

He does these things again here in a post called “A Tornado With Boots“:

“The perennial temptation for modern Reformed Protestants, especially after they get college degrees, is to float toward the sky in wisps of gnostic vapor.”

***

“I have often quoted that glorious passage in Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, where a junior officer in the War Between the States was being reprimanded by the general for his unit’s reluctance to charge. “Sir,” the hapless lieutenant replied, “I am convinced that any further demonstration of valor on the part of my troops will bring them into contact with the enemy.”

The early Reformers were not like this at all. They were about the most un-gnostic bunch ever assembled in the history of Christendom. They were the most Christ-loving, world-affirming, money-making, beer-drinking, sword-wielding, music-making, kingdom-overthrowing, love-making, poetry-writing bunch of Christians the world had ever seen up to that point. And they kept it up, by and large, for several centuries.”

***

“At the time of the Reformation, if there had been a gnosticism susceptibility line on the blackboard, on a scale of 1-to-10, the papists would be hitting the eights and nines. The monks would be sweating out sexual temptations in their dreary cloisters while the Puritans with plumes in their hats and lawn tops on their boots were striding home to make love to their wives.”

Read the whole thing here.

There was an excellent post at Desiring God a few days ago called “Embracing the Ordinary“. The posts consists of a quote by Carl Trueman in Republocrat followed by six implications – three for churches and three for pastors. First, Carl Trueman:

[The] Lord has blessed the church of today with some remarkably talented individuals who have been used to do remarkable things. The danger is that, in focusing on such men, we create unrealistic expectations. The evidence that the church models developed by these men can be transplanted with success elsewhere is highly equivocal; more likely, their success is rooted in God’s using their own remarkable gifts and contexts—the right men in the right place at the right time for something great, if you like. The life of Don Carson’s father, outlined so movingly in his Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor, is more likely to be closer to the norm for most churches and pastors than that of Redeemer in New York (38-39).

Bingo! This, as I have pointed out ad nauseum, is the major failing of Willow Creek’s “Leadership Summit” event. The “leaders” they present as authorities bear little to no resemblance to the average attendee of the event. Unless you are trying to build an empire with the same look and size (which is actually the goal of many), it makes no sense to idolize these leaders.

They are the exception, not the rule and by defining leadership success by their accomplishments implies that a majority of pastors and other leaders are losers and failures.

The post at DG then considers these six implications (Shortened here. Read the full post for the expanded points):

Three Implications for Churches

1. Listen (attentively and expectantly) primarily to your pastor’s sermons
2. Listen to extraordinary preachers (unless he’s your pastor) sparingly
3. Lower your (likely unrealistic) expectations of your pastor. While he may not be (and likely isn’t) extraordinary, he is (for you and your church) likely the right man in the right place at the right time.

Three Implications for Pastors

1. Broaden your diet of your favorite preachers
2. Be content being an ordinary pastor and preacher
3. To give you proper perspective (and deep encouragement) as you aspire and cope with your newly embraced “ordinariness,” read Carson’s Memoirs annually

Posts like this is one of the reasons I continue to read content at Desiring God written by John Piper and others. Piper’s church is  mega-church size without mega-church BS. Theologically, you may have a few bones to pick with him, but you have to admit that there’s a refreshing lack of mega-church thinking.

There is far too much free-lance pastoring going on, and that’s where this post hits a bit of a paradox. Desiring God and other large ministries put out so much content, with increased influence being the primary goal. Still, I like the “proceed with caution” attitude displayed in the post.

Sometimes people need to be told “That’s a nice thing to say, but that guy’s not your pastor,” and also “If you want him to be your pastor, here’s the address of his church and a membership transfer form.”

In Matthew 28 Jesus tells his disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” Disciples making disciples – this is what Jesus has sent us to do.

But this is more than a one-trick assignment. We are not called merely to bring people to the front door of faith, usher them through it, and then circle back to gather more recruits.

The task of disciple-making is at least threefold and is accomplished not just in getting new people “into the fold”, but also caring for them while they are there, and retrieving them when they wander off – leaving the other 99 in relative safety, depending on the terrain and prevalence of predators.

Focusing on getting people into the fold is what we’ve tended toward -  a remnant of “sign on the line and get saved” Evangelicalism perhaps.  And while new community is formed with the making of new disciples,  deeper community is found only as we pursue the other two aspects of disciple-making.

These other two – care for and retrieval of – are by far the more difficult and time-consuming, and for that reason they are more often neglected.

More wise words from John Stott about pastors and their people:

A pastor caring for his people, “is not satisfied that Christ dwells in them; he longs to see Christ formed in them, to see them transformed into the image of Christ, ‘until you take the shape of Christ.’(NEB)”

In response, a congregation should, “neither flatter him because they find him attractive, nor despise and reject him because he is not… Instead, a congregation’s attitude to their minister should be determined by his loyalty to the apostolic message.”

“In the church today there is far too little deference to the apostolic word. Frequently, what interests a contemporary congregation most is the teacher’s technique, mannerisms, or voice, how long he preaches for, or whether they can hear him, understand him and agree with him. And often when the sermon is over, they love to criticize it and pull it to pieces.

Certainly, people have cause for criticism if the preacher is unfaithful to his commission, if he makes no attempt to preach biblically, or if he is not himself subject to the apostolic word.”

The pastor’s attitude in the process should resemble Paul’s in that, “He should be preoccupied with people’s spiritual progress and care nothing for his own prestige… He should not use them for his own pleasure, but be willing on their behalf to endure pain.”

- John R. W. Stott – “Only One Way: The Message of Galatians”

Below are some excerpts from an excellent book that was recently published (2007) and not widely read. Can you identify the author? (If you can, please just leave the name as a guess – PLEASE DO NOT TELL EVERYONE WHICH BOOK AND WHAT PAGES THE QUOTES ARE FROM)

If you can’t, can you guess what denomination or line of theological thinking the author subscribes to? Leave your guesses and observations in the comments section below.

I have a free copy of Kevin Abell’s book “The Edge of His Cloak” for the first 2 people who correctly identify the author of the following excerpts:

“The church must organize itself in such a way as to express its understanding of itself… The most common fault is for the church to be structured for ‘holiness’ rather than ‘worldliness,’ for worship and fellowship rather than mission… Further, our static, inflexible, self-centered structures are ‘heretical structures’ because they embody a heretical doctrine of the church…

Some zealous churches organize an overfull program of church-based activities… Such churches give the impression that their main goal is to keep their members out of mischief!

[This abundance of programs] inhibits church members from getting involved in the local community because they are preoccupied with the local church.”

How, then, should the local church organize itself?

“Every five to ten years each church should conduct a survey in order to evaluate itself and especially to discover how far its structures reflect its identity. In fact, it should conduct two surveys, one of the local community and the other of the local church, in order to learn how far the church is penetrating the community for Christ…

Is the church in reality organized only for itself, for its own survival and convenience, and for the preservation of its privileges? Is it organized to serve itself, or to serve God and the community? What are its cherished traditions and conventions which unnecessarily separate it from the community?”

On church members and leaders:

“Do we imprison our members in the church? Or do we deliberately release at least some of them (including leaders) from church commitments in order to encourage them to be active for Christ in the community, and then support them with our interest and prayers as they do so?

For example, a group of committed young people could adopt a local nightclub, not in order to make occasional evangelistic raids into it, but between them (in pairs) to visit it regularly over a long period, in order to make friends with the other young people who congregate there.”

Have at it…

The entirety of chapter 10 of Eugene Peterson’s “The Contemplative Pastor:Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction” is worth further exploration since it deals with small talk. What’s that you say… you didn’t think Peterson would be a fan of Seinfeld?

He may or may not be, but endless, mindless, pointless chatter is not what he’s talking about in this chapter.

I have to admit that sometimes as a pastor I feel the need to turn ordinary conversations into “spiritual” conversations. There is sometimes a guilt experienced in the aftermath of a coffee meeting or an evening spent with people from my church in which the conversation never made its way past the ordinary things of life. But this is more guilt than conviction; more a capitulation to a perceived requirement than a failure to act on what I know to be right.

“Pastoral work,” says Peterson, “is that aspect of Christian ministry that specializes in the ordinary. It is the nature of pastoral life to be attentive to, immersed in, and appreciative of the everyday texture of people’s lives – the buying and selling, the visiting and meeting, the going and coming.”

There are always crisis situations to attend to but most people, most of the time are not in crisis.

“Small talk: the way we talk when we aren’t talking about anything in particular, when we don’t have to think logically, or decide sensibly, or understand accurately. The reassuring conversational noises that make no demands, inflicts no stress. The sounds that take the pressure off.  The meandering talk that simply expresses what is going on at the time.”

This is about the only way I do person meetings. No agenda, no point list, no “desired outcome” – just start talking and see where it goes. But I’m not sure that this is working, insofar as I haven’t tried going prepared, with an agenda and a desired outcome. Something to try perhaps – being more “intentional” – but I don’t think I can bring myself to do it.

Being intentional, to me, means being available, being involved, trusting God providence to supply opportunity. Seeing what happens, watching where it goes, making my contribution (by the grace of God and the guidance of the Holy Spirit) and then repeating the cycle. Time will be the judge of the effectiveness of this strategy.

Peterson’s childhood pastor was the opposite – the only thing he ever wanted to know was how your SOUL was doing. The pastor’s refusal (or inability) to engage in any other kind of conversation implied that most of Peterson’s life was being lived at a sub-spiritual level. “Vast tracts of my experience we ‘worldly’, with occasional moments qualifying as ‘spiritual’.”

Not only is this practiced by some, it is expected by many. Back to Peterson’s earlier quote about the Pastor as court jester.

“I never questioned the practice,” he continues, “until I became a pastor myself and found that such an approach left me uninvolved with most of what was happening in people’s lives and without a conversational context for the actual undramatic work of living by faith in the fog and drizzle.”

I don’t have a 5-year plan – I don’t have a 1-year plan… I question whether I can legitimately say I have a plan beyond next week. I rely on serendipity as much as intentional action. I am wary (and weary!) of manipulation – of me or by me.

Stay tuned…

Just read the following sentence on a blog:

“The issue between gospel exclusivists on the one hand and either agnostics or accessibilists on the other is logically only a dispute between monergists. For synergists, gospel exclusivism is incoherent.”

That’s a lot of 10-dollar words right there, but the post itself is quite interesting and addresses a passage of scripture I’ve written about in the past – Romans 1:18-25. (You can read those posts here, here, and here).

The post I’m putting snippets of here is a review of John Piper’s “Jesus: The Only Way to God: Must You Hear the Gospel to be Saved?” by Terrance L. Thiessen. The entire review can be found here.

Thiessen agrees with most of Piper’s ideas in the books and lands roughly (in disagreement) where I do on an issue related to Romans 1:18-20:

When Piper reads Romans 1:18-20, for instance, he concludes that natural revelation leaves everyone without excuse but it does not save (11). But that is an over-reading of the text. Paul says that the wrath of God is revealed against all who suppress the truth in unrighteousness but he does not say that the Spirit of God never illumines the minds of some people whose only access to God’s self-revelation is in nature or history, so that they acknowledge God as Creator and are thankful. Indeed, we have examples of such people. Piper says that natural revelation “does not overcome this suppression. Only the gospel does” (11). But even the gospel does not, as external revelation, overcome people’s sinful tendency to suppress God’s truth. An accompanying work of the Spirit (illumination and enabling) is needed for special revelation to have saving effect. Paul does not say that such work of the Spirit is never done in connection with natural revelation so that it elicits justifying faith.

In short, Scripture clearly states that all who believe and obey God’s revelation are saved and that all who reject God’s revelation remain under condemnation. In numerous texts (such as John 3), gospel exclusivists hear a judgment of those who do not believe, where Scripture is speaking only of those who receive the particular revelation, not of those who are ignorant through no fault of their own.

*****

Those who, by the Spirit’s gracious illumination and enabling, have believed appropriately to the nature of the revelation they had received, will meet Christ at death with joy, recognizing him instantly as the one for whom they were looking. I’ve wondered whether that should be identified as the moment of their justification but, currently, I think it better to grant that God justifies immediately people who have the faith of Noah or Job or Abraham or Melchizedek or Jethro, if they have only received the revelation available to those individuals, regardless of the progress of redemptive history of which they are then ignorant.

.

On Thanksgiving weekend I had the privilege of preaching once on Saturday night and twice on the following Sunday morning. I chose to prepare a “giving sermon” on Thanksgiving weekend. Gasp… the audacity!

At this church, long before I was around they started a tradition of collecting financial contributions as well as canned goods on Thanksgiving weekend. This collection is then strategically distributed locally and globally to relieve both physical and spiritual suffering. And so giving is the main event of the weekend.

I was preaching in those services in order to motivate people to give – I really was. Nobody asked me to do this. In fact, I designed the sermon series and assigned myself the “giving sermon” for Thanksgiving weekend.

By the end of the services I was preaching in, at the very moment it came time to stuff an envelope and bring it forward, I wanted them to be extremely motivated.

The question was: How would I do that? How would I motivate them?

Would I do it in a way that communicates that I don’t care one bit about how they felt afterward?

Would I play on their emotions? Would I show them pictures of starving children in other parts of the world?

Would I employ the hammer of guilt? Would I give them stats about how many people in the world live on less than a dollar a day while many of us own two cars and a house that could house 3 families the size of our own?

Or would I talk about how little they’d given in the past? Would I say that it’s time to make up for that?

Did I want them to give, even if it was reluctantly?

Did I want them to give in response to pressure or coercion?

Did I want them to give out of a desire for the praise of others?

Did I want them to give out of fear of criticism?

Would any of those tactics work? They might have worked that day, that one time. But would they really work? Would they transform anyone into a person who is so eager to give and so full of joy when giving that they’d regularly put their own financial well-being at risk in order to give as much as they can?

No, it wouldn’t. And yet, this is often the way the “giving sermon” is designed and delivered. And it’s not that the goal of the average “giving sermon” is wrong – it’s that the the tactics and methods used to motivate people to give are wrong.

Why? Because the average “giving sermon” is designed to make you feel bad about yourself – to feel guilty. This motivates immediate giving but it does very little to transform your heart and your passions and desires. It does very little to take your eyes off of YOU and turn them toward God.

So I didn’t use any of those tactics. Instead, we dug into a passage of scripture that we often summarize with these words: “God loves a cheerful giver.”

In 2 Corinthians 9:6-15 Paul is preparing the Gentile believers in Corinth to send a gift of financial relief to their Jewish believer brothers and sisters in Jerusalem.

(to be continued)

Eugene Peterson:

[As a pastor] “the culture treats me so amiably. It encourages me to maintain my orthodox creed; it commends me for my evangelical practice; it praises me for my singular devotion. All it asks is that I accept its definition of my work as an encourager of the culture’s good will, as the priest who will sprinkle holy water on the culture’s good intentions.

But if I, even for a moment, accept my culture’s definition of me, I am rendered harmless. I can denounce evil and stupidity all I wish and will be tolerated in my denunciations as a court jester is tolerated. I can organize their splendid goodwill and they will let me do it, since it is only for weekends.”

– The Contemplative Pastor:Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction (p16)

For the majority of the congregation in most churches, the Pastor search process is heavily biased toward the 30 minutes people see the candidate on one Sunday morning when they deliver a sermon. This is unfortunate both when the candidate is a good public speaker and has few other skills and when the candidate is a weak public speaker but has many other redeeming qualities.

It is also a disservice to both the pastoral candidate and the people who are called upon to offer an evaluation. But it is not terribly surprising. Churches typically look for a Peter-type leader – the bold, outspoken extrovert – so if the candidate doesn’t impress as that type of person in his “30 minutes of examination” they assume he won’t be a good fit.

But what about the Paul-type leader?

Paul was, by his own admission and by the testimony of the people who heard him, not an overly impressive public speaker. That didn’t seem to matter in the grand scheme of things since aside from Jesus, Paul is the most influential Pastor/Shepherd in all of Christian history. Why? Because (among other things) he could communicate clearly and powerfully in other ways and often led the charge from among rather than from the front.

When in need of a new Pastor, most churches are still looking for that Peter-type leader because that’s what they’ve become accustomed to looking for over the years; it’s what they believe a Pastor should BE. I don’t believe that one type is better than the other but the Paul-types are rarely hired and that’s a shame.

Unfortunately most people (even those on Pastor Search Teams) are unprepared to make such a distinction.

What do you think? Should a candidate still be hired if their verbal proclamation skills are sub-par? Can we make room for a Pastor who communicates primarily in epistles rather than strong verbal presentation?

Should a candidate’s Sunday morning preaching skills be the ultimate go/no-go gauge for their hiring?

In our haste to name things, we often call the parable found in Luke 15 “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” but the parable is as much about the older brother as it is the younger. In fact some (like Tim Keller) would argue that it is actually MORE about the older brother.

If you grew up in the church – like I did – you are probably more like the older brother. Here is a list of traits that I can certainly identify with.

1. We think highly of ourselves

We think so highly of ourselves that we expect God to think like us instead of the other way around. Grace doesn’t work according to our logic. It doesn’t make sense to us that it does two things simultaneously:

1.     If overlooks wrong
2.     While it transforms repentant sinners

“It can’t do both – it’s not fair!  Prodigals can come back but we should never forget what they’ve done. If we do they’ll think they can do it again without consequence!”

2. We have a “good reputation”

We’re thought of (by others and ourselves) as “good”… not having major faults… not really struggling with sin. The reality is that we’re just better at hiding these things.

3. We take pride in our consistency

We’ve been here the whole time, going to church! We’ve had to sit through all the poorly performed worship songs, all the badly delivered sermons. Those prodigals need to do the same before we can see them as equals!

4. We save our freedom for future reward

Prodigals use their freedom to experience and consume. This is the path of self-discovery. Their thinking is that unused freedom is wasted freedom.

Older brothers resist using their freedom.  Instead we save it up, thinking of it as an investment that will compound like money saved inside a mutual fund, doubling in size every 10 years or so. Our thinking is that freedom used NOW is freedom wasted and that by saving and sacrificing now we’ll have more and will be able to get more later than we ever could now. Self-denial now in exchange for lavish self-indulgence later.

5. We need prodigals to make us look better

Older brothers need prodigals because they provide us with an easy comparison to rise above. “Your extravagant sin makes me look better – it takes the attention off my minor faults. Thank you!”

When the father says, “He was dead but now he’s alive!” we mutter, “I wish he was still dead. It was better for me that way.”

6. We harbor unacknowledged envy

When the prodigal returns, his life is turned upside-down because he discovers that his father loves by different rules than he does. He has been out doing all the things that the older brother, in truth, would also love to be doing but doesn’t because he believes he is storing up extra grace for himself.

Is this perhaps one reason why we too react badly when a prodigal returns? Do we harbor some envy at the life of wine, women, and song (or “wine coolers, firemen, and dance music” for the ladies) they’ve experienced?

It causes us to question: What has all my self-denial been good for?!?!

7. We think God owes us

Because of this we sometimes see grace as a bit of a rip-off. Partly because we don’t think we need very much of it, but also because grace dictates that obedience can never be a way to obtain rights.

If your perception of your relationship with God is that you think you’ve earned something or that you’ve done so much good that God owes you something, you are in danger. This is typical older brother thinking.

8. We are likely to be punitive

We take a punitive position on prodigals. We say that they need to pay for what they’ve done – in essence to pay their way up to our status level. But that’s not the way grace works. If it did it wouldn’t be grace.

On the rare occasion that a prodigal returns, do they see in you a father waiting with open arms or the scowling face of an older brother?

Eugene Peterson on pastoral busyness:

“How can I persuade a person to live by faith and not by works if I have to juggle my schedule constantly to make everything fit into place?

The word busy is the symptom not of commitment but of betrayal. It is not devotion but defection. The adjective busy set as a modifier to pastor should sound to our ears like adulterous to characterize a wife or embezzling to describe a banker. It is an outrageous scandal, a blasphemous affront.”

– The Contemplative Pastor – p17-18

This is what I’m failing to live. “Busy” to me is still a win, not a FAIL.

WHAT IS A KINGDOM?
The New Testament and especially the Gospels are full of kingdom language. About 120 of the 155 references are in the Gospels. This is the basic definition of kingdom: “The realm or domain in which the will of a ruler is done.”

THE KINGDOM OF GOD
So working with this definition of a kingdom, what is the Kingdom of God? The Kingdom of God is the realm or domain in which the will of God is done. Now, what often comes to mind when you hear the words “Kingdom of God” is one of two things:

1. “Kingdom of God” = heaven

2. “Kingdom of God” refers to the future reign of Christ

And it is both of those things but too rarely is anything taught about it having anything to do with the present. But many of Jesus’ kingdom references were about something happening in the present. The Kingdom of God is not just something we choose as our post-death option for eternity, it is a way of life we can choose to enter now

THE KINGDOM OF THIS WORLD
The Kingdom of This World:  The realm or domain in which the will of the ruler of this world is done. And we know that this is who? Satan. (Ruler of this world: Jn 12:31; 14:31; 16:11)

The Kingdom of God seeks to glorify God; the Kingdom of This World seeks to glorify self and the prince of selfishness who is the ruler of this world.

From an article in Touchstone Journal. Read the whole thing here.

“I owe Lewis a great debt. In my late teens and early twenties I read everything of his I could get my hands on, and read some of his paperbacks and essays several times over. There are sentences, and some whole passages, I know pretty much by heart.”

I owe a great debt to Lewis as well. Someone recently asked me to recommend some good fiction books for their 14-year-old son to read. I tried to think of some but realized that at 14 I was reading theology (an odd child, I know) and a prominent landmark in my reading was Mere Christianity. I still have the copy I read at 14 somewhere, a cheap paperback that blew my mind. I think there is more underlined than not underlined, and there are comments in the margins and dogeared pages -  all the marks of a well-loved book.

“One of the puzzles, indeed, is the way in which Lewis has been lionized by Evangelicals when he clearly didn’t believe in several classic Evangelical shibboleths. He was wary of penal substitution, not bothered by infallibility or inerrancy, and decidedly dodgy on justification by faith.”

This has been a great puzzle to me through the years as well as I explored the entrance gates of both Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. Many of my Evangelical brethren are so wary of Roman Catholicism and yet they quote both Lewis and Chesterton without hesitation. Why? If these men were mired in error and heresy – as they accuse rank and file Catholics to be – then why should their words be any more quotable than Ghandi’s or Mother Teresa’s?

A couple more good quotes:

“There’s a good reason why we allow Lewis to lead us on. There is a real, not a pretend, humility about his “only-a-simple-layman” stance. For some of the time, as I shall suggest, he is a professional pretending to be an amateur; for much of the time, he’s a gifted amateur putting some of the professionals to shame; sometimes he’s an amateur straightforwardly getting things wrong.”

“If you don’t put Jesus in his proper context, you will inevitably put him in a different one, where he, his message, and his achievement will be considerably distorted.”

Read the whole thing here.