October 19, 2007
You Mean Me?
 

There has been a tendency of late among certain Christian groups to emphasize “discovering one’s gifts” in a way that is both helpful and unhelpful. Let’s talk about the negative first and get that out of the way. Frankly, I find it hard to say to anyone: “These are my gifts” without sounding insufferably arrogant and self-centered. So, I don’t think I’ve ever, ever said this. Others don’t seem to have this hang-up and tell me all the time not exactly what they think their gifts are while I’m trying hard not to look surprised by the list or their self-assurance. A school of therapy exists that suggests we’ll not be content until we have identified them and grown comfortable with them. As I say, this all smacks of self-confidence that can easily turn into something less than humble, self-sacrificing discipleship and I have tried to steer clear of it. Still, there is something here that we need to talk about in this—the “stewardship season,” for we are stewards not only of our money and time (which we’ve looked into in previous weeks in this column), but also of our talents. So let’s examine it again from another angle.

    The risen Christ poured out the Spirit upon the church distributing gifts (Paul mentions apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers—the final two being seen by most as one office rather than two) “to equip the saints, for the work of the ministry” (Eph. 4:12). Commentators get excited trying to explain that Paul did not mean that these gifts were given to specialist folk (apostles, prophets and ministers) to teach the rest but the “work of the ministry” envisioned is that of the specialists. This was the line taken by the King James Version and finds redoubtable defenders still. The English Standard Version (the version now in the church pews) has dropped an important comma (there were none in the original Greek so nothing shady is taking place) to read, “to equip the saints for the work of the ministry” suggesting that these specialist gifts were given to help all Christians engage in the work of the ministry. Thus the phrase “every-member ministry” has been coined which makes some ministers nervous for it seems to threaten their status and suggests a more egalitarian church where “priestly” roles of authority have no place.

    I’ve no truck for priestly ministry other than the Reformation kind which emphasizes “the priesthood of all believers”— a truth that Luther found so precious that he wrote that his hope was for a day when “we shall recover that joyful liberty in which we shall understand that we are all equal in every right, and shall shake off the yoke of tyranny, and know that he who is a Christian has Christ, and he who has Christ has all things that are Christ’s, and can do all things.”1 In Christ, we are “a royal priesthood” (1 Pet. 2:5, 9). And as priests, we are gifted for ministry in the house of God, and challenging Christians to discovering what these gifts are is no longer a luxury reserved for what J. I. Packer once called “pietistic Protestant hothouses.” The thrust of Romans 12:3-13; 1 Corinthians 12; and Ephesians 4:17-15—the passage sighted above—teach us that all Christians have gifts which should be employed in the church’s total ministry. Nothing startling here, you, might say. Except that, in that sense, we are all charismatics— a term I use here because Paul uses it that way when he says in 1 Corinthians: “I give thanks to my God always for you because … you are not lacking in any spiritual gift (Greek: charisma)” (1 Cor. 4, 7).

    None of this has anything to do with those special sign-gifts which were identifiers of apostles and apostolic ministry—gifts such as speaking in tongues or prophecy or the ability to perform miracles, for this is how Paul saw them (2 Cor. 12:12). These were temporary identifiers of an office (an apostle) which has ceased. But gifts there are a-plenty which continue: gifts of speech and of loving, practical helpfulness, for example. In Romans 12:6-8, Paul’s list includes such things as serving, giving, and showing mercy. If these gifts were demonstrated in the church’s body-life it would be like heaven on earth:
    • A cup of cold water in Jesus name. • Visiting the widows and orphans.
    • Visiting the prisoner with words of  hope.
    • The telephone call of encouragement.
    • The “cheese grits” to the family in distress….
Now, what can YOU do?
___________
¹ Luther’s Primary Works, ed. Henry Wace and C. A. Bucheim (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1896), 401.

October 12, 2007
Stewardship and Prayer

It’s Stewardship Season. Time to hold ones breath while earnest pastors urge you to give generously to the Lord’s work. Sermons on tithing. And, amidst the whiff of pumpkin pies, financial charts are plummeting into dangerous depths where oxygen is scarce. Time to think about what God has given to us— that’s everything—and give some back.
    But it’s not just money; that’s for sure, but it is also about time and gifting. We are stewards of our time and our talents too and these, like our money, must be used for God’s glory.
    A lady once asked John Wesley if he knew that he would die at midnight the next day, how would he spend the intervening time. He replied, “Why, madam, just as I intend to spend it now. I would preach this evening at Gloucester, and again at five tomorrow morning; after that I would ride to Tewkesbury, preach in the afternoon, and meet the societies in the evening. I would then go to Martin’s house...talk and pray with the family as usual, retire myself to my room at 10 o’clock, commend myself to my Heavenly Father, lie down to rest, and wake up in glory.”
It would condemn us all to evaluate the proportion of our time spent on work and play. I’ve never done it, you understand—calculated precisely how many minutes I spend asleep, at work, listening to music (exclusively), playing sport (well, that’s easy, none!), etc. But as the book of Ecclesiastes puts it, “There’s a time for every activity under heaven” (Ecc. 3:1). Jesus spent long hours in ministry, costing bodily fatigue; and yet, He rested too. During the many hours He must have spent walking from one place to another, He cultivated personal relationships. He is the model for disciplined time and we never get the sense of Jesus being rushed off His feet.
    Ours is an age that is unforgiving. Earthly masters can often be tyrannical. We are constantly bemoaning the lack of time to do this or that. We rush from one place to another, accomplishing less than we think, in the belief that being frenetically busy is somehow preferred, productive, Protestant! But amidst the tyranny that worldly employment and recreation can often impose upon our lives, God has provided for us one day in seven as a day of worship and rest.
The provision of the Sabbath (the New Testament word for it is “The Lord’s Day” but it is essentially functions same as the Old Testament Sabbath, so insists the Westminster Confession of Faith in Chapter 21:7) is God’s way of ensuring that we are given a weekly reminder that our time is not our own to do with as we please. As one of the Ten Commandments, it is to be revered. Strange how some Christians think the Fourth Commandment seems to have been “fulfilled” in some way by the coming of Jesus Christ in a manner in which the other nine have not! That would then mean that we are obligated to keep Nine Commandments and not Ten!
    Sunday—it is a creation ordinance, to meet basic human needs: “the Sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2:27). Without the rhythm of work and rest (not “rest” as in snoozing, though that, too, but rest as in ceasing from the ordinary labor that consumes the other six days) we wither. Those who grow strong make use of God’s provision of a day of “rest and gladness”—the corporate gathering of the people of God twice on Sunday (yes, twice—our elders have chosen to maximize the profit of the Lord’s day by “double-dipping” from the benefit of gathering together; and for my own part, without Sunday evening worship, there’s no possibility of keeping the Day in a way profitable!). For the past thirty-six years, ever since God first drew me to Jesus Christ, I have found the Lord’s Day to have been one of his most precious gifts. It helps me “redeem the time” (Col. 4:5; “to make best use of” ESV). It is, as our RUF students are fond of singing, “a Day of Rest and Gladness.”
Are you making full use of it?
 

September 30, 2007
It’s That Time of Year Again!

The leaves have started falling and I’m longing for the days when I don’t have to mow the yard! I’ve seriously toyed with artificial turf! Soon, the nights will draw in, the temperatures become tolerable again and the grass will go to sleep! Bliss! But that means it must be “Stewardship Season.” Now promise me, if you’ve read this far, you won’t stop just because I’ve mentioned the word “Stewardship”!

Fox Television Network is being sued by a group of seven pastors for allegedly misleading them during their participation in a reality TV Show called, Catch a Tither by the Tail. The program, due to air this month, is currently under legal review and shows a group of pastors vying for the attention of a man worth $100 million. Preview episodes depict the pastors talking behind each other’s backs and playing up their own big vision to the millionaire to attract his allegiance. According to Larknews.com, one pastor pulled him aside and prayed for him. Another shed tears while describing his vision for a Christian elder-care facility. But there’s a twist: the millionaire doesn’t believe in tithing! Apparently, within seconds of discovering this news, some of the pastors turned hostile. Tension erupts between a Southern Baptist pastor and a charismatic in the hot tub… well, you get the drift. Honestly, you couldn’t write this stuff!

Whether this gripping piece of TV drivel will air is undecided at present. Let’s hope it doesn’t. But it does raise one interesting point: The church needs money and it seems some churches will do almost anything to ensure that it flows in. One is almost tempted to respond by suggesting that the church say nothing about what the King James Bible calls “filthy lucre” for fear that its motivation for doing so is misconstrued. And frankly, in thirty years of preaching and pastoring, I have given little attention to the issue of “giving” for this very reason. Coming from one who is on the church’s payroll, it all may sound a bit, well, self-serving! But that’s my problem and talk about we must, mainly because the Bible does so.

Now here’s a question I hear a lot: Should Christians tithe? Answer, yes. Next question: How much?  I suggest at least as much as Old Testament saints—and they only saw part of what we see!

Silence!

After a while comes this question: is that “net” or “gross” income?

It’s a bit like trying to respond to the casuistry that often surrounds discussion about observing the Fourth Commandment. Can I do this or that on Sunday?

Honestly, if that’s the way we are thinking, we need a heart change. For the best sort of obedience always stems from the heart—the response of gratitude for mercies received. There is, do you see, what one Scottish Presbyterian minister (Alexander Whyte) once called, “sanctification by vinegar” by which he meant that obedience which is both reluctant and grudging and only does any good if it tastes foul. Such Christians are accurate and orthodox, but not very attractive or winsome.

So let’s begin here: if my giving to the church is based on how little I can get away with and still pass the standard, my understanding of grace and the lavishness of God’s provision for us in Jesus Christ is wrong. What I need is a fresh glimpse of the depths of God’s mercy and the extent of His forgiveness. Then, when we find ourselves sinking into the depths of His love for me in the gospel, we can start talking about giving!
 

August 24, 2007

Hope Springs Eternal
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast” wrote tThe leaves have started falling and
I’m longing for the days when I don’t have to mow the yard! I’ve seriously toyed with artificial turf! Soon, the nights will draw in, the temperatures become tolerable again and the grass will go to sleep! Bliss! But that means it must be “Stewardship Season.” Now promise me, if you’ve read this far, you won’t stop just because I’ve mentioned the word “Stewardship”!

Fox Television Network is being sued by a group of seven pastors for allegedly misleading them during their participation in a reality TV Show called, Catch a Tither by the Tail. The program, due to air this month, is currently under legal review and shows a group of pastors vying for the attention of a man worth $100 million. Preview episodes depict the pastors talking behind each other’s backs and playing up their own big vision to the millionaire to attract his allegiance. According to Larknews.com, one pastor pulled him aside and prayed for him. Another shed tears while describing his vision for a Christian elder-care facility. But there’s a twist: the millionaire doesn’t believe in tithing! Apparently, within seconds of discovering this news, some of the pastors turned hostile. Tension erupts between a Southern Baptist pastor and a charismatic in the hot tub… well, you get the drift. Honestly, you couldn’t write this stuff!

Whether this gripping piece of TV drivel will air is undecided at present. Let’s hope it doesn’t. But it does raise one interesting point: The church needs money and it seems some churches will do almost anything to ensure that it flows in. One is almost tempted to respond by suggesting that the church say nothing about what the King James Bible calls “filthy lucre” for fear that its motivation for doing so is misconstrued. And frankly, in thirty years of preaching and pastoring, I have given little attention to the issue of “giving” for this very reason. Coming from one who is on the church’s payroll, it all may sound a bit, well, self-serving! But that’s my problem and talk about we must, mainly because the Bible does so.

Now here’s a question I hear a lot: Should Christians tithe? Answer, yes. Next question: How much? I suggest at least as much as Old Testament saints—and they only saw part of what we see!

Silence!

After a while comes this question: is that “net” or “gross” income?

It’s a bit like trying to respond to the casuistry that often surrounds discussion about observing the Fourth Commandment. Can I do this or that on Sunday?

Honestly, if that’s the way we are thinking, we need a heart change. For the best sort of obedience always stems from the heart—the response of gratitude for mercies received. There is, do you see, what one Scottish Presbyterian minister (Alexander Whyte) once called, “sanctification by vinegar” by which he meant that obedience which is both reluctant and grudging and only does any good if it tastes foul. Such Christians are accurate and orthodox, but not very attractive or winsome.

So let’s begin here: if my giving to the church is based on how little I can get away with and still pass the standard, my understanding of grace and the lavishness of God’s provision for us in Jesus Christ is wrong. What I need is a fresh glimpse of the depths of God’s mercy and the extent of His forgiveness. Then, when we find ourselves sinking into the depths of His love for me in the gospel, we can start talking about giving!
he eighteenth century poet, Alexander Pope. Platitude? Yes, but true for all that. I have to confess the lines (from An Essay on Man) come to mind frequently at dinner when Jake (my dog!) lies at my feet with fixed gaze on every morsel entering my mouth. Try telling him that this is but a platitude!
    These words are at the heart of human experience. They form the nerve center of the book known as Ecclesiastes (take a look at Ecc. 9:4 about a “living dog” as opposed to a “dead lion” and you’ll get the point). My sixteen-year-old neighbor has been trying to learn how to ride a skateboard all summer. He’s persisted through embarrassing falls and hostile temperatures. And why? Because, I fancy, it’s a cool thing to do and the girls will love him for it. Why do musicians spend endless hours playing scales, or athletes sweat it out in gymnasiums, or seminary students stay up half the night studying (well, perhaps I’m dreaming here)? Because they hope to succeed one day. They want to be someone or do something and this is the way to achieve it. They have hope!
    Without hope—the bitter experience of hopelessness—is a killer. Talk to medical therapists about the importance of sustaining hope in the fight against disease and again you’ll get the point. Tell someone they have cancer and hope temporarily evaporates. It is crucial to urge the promotion of hope at such times. It is time to gird up the loins and do battle against a viscous monster. Whatever must be faced, surgery, radiation, chemotherapy—these must be buoyed by the hope that they will do some good.
    But, for Christians it is more than a hope for now and the present; it is that there is a purpose behind it all, an overruling providence that sustains the darkness and points toward the light. We have a basic (God-given) instinct to know who we are and why we are here. Without it, as in radical existentialism, human worth diminishes.
    The secular humanists, men like Richard Dawkins (author of the current best seller, The God Delusion), must face the terrible dilemma that life really has no meaning except the self-absorbed obsession to make it as tolerable as possible. It is a philosophy of hopelessness – we exist, but there is nothing that gives our existence any meaning. There is no way to authenticate myself.
    Viktor Frankl (who later founded a school of psychiatry known as logotherapy) spent three years as a young man in the Auschwitz concentration camp where he noticed that those most likely to survive their ordeal were those “who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill.” Without meaning—hope—there is only a road that leads to boredom, alcoholism, and suicide.
    The gospel responds to this Edenic malaise by assuring that in Jesus Christ lies real hope and true meaning. He came that we might have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). It restores in us an image of God that has been broken by sin. Like once ruined castles we are rebuilt to form a something beautiful and Christ-like. In Christ we are a new creation anticipating a newer existence yet in the world that is to come—an existence that has, in part, already broken through into our own space-time continuum (2 Cor. 5:17). As such, we have value. Yes, value. We much valuable than a sheep or many sparrows, Jesus said (Matt.10:31; 12:12). As Archbishop Temple put it, “My worth is what I am worth to God, and that is a marvelous great deal, for Christ died for me.”
 

August 3, 2007

Horn Calls, Rings and Tunes that Will Not Go Away
Do you ever get a tune in your head that just won’t leave? It happens to me more times than I care to admit. Music, you see, affects me deeply.
    I am just back from attending one of my passions – Wagner’s Ring Cycle. And since you already think me mad, let me call it by its proper title, Der Ring des Nibelungen. I have loved it since a teenager, listening to it on gazillions of long-playing records (LPs) with Furtwangler conducting.
    Rooted in ancient myth (Germanic Nibelugenlied—a mythical Germanic tale of a family cursed by its possession of gold; the Völsunga Saga—Icelandic tales from around ad 1200), Wagner’s Ring cycle has a mythic status of its own and attracts its fair share of, well, weird people – half-crazy, middle aged women wearing Brünnhilde look-alike horned helmets for one thing. When classical music occupies less and less of a role in the popular culture, almost everyone knows at least some of the Ring’s music, if only from the use of the “Ride of the Valkyries” in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Once seen, who can forget the napalm bombing scenes in Vietnam accompanied by this music? A performance of the third act of Die Walküre was performed not so long ago at the Glastonbury Festival (more noted for partially resurrected sixties bands than opera) was surprisingly popular. But they got barely over an hour’s worth of what eventually evolves into over 16- hours worth, in four separate operas: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung.
    Of course, however unfairly (and it is grossly unfair), Wagner is still associated with Hitler’s Third Reich and the nihilistic philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), author, among other works, of the infamous The Antichrist.
    It is not my purpose here to defend Wagner or to provide a synopsis of the Ring – let’s just say that it is as well that it’s all sung in German! I defend my liberty to enjoy the music for what I see and hear in it, despite the distasteful and disturbing plot. It is a portrayal of aspects of human nature at its worst and best: greed, betrayal, lust, avarice, and ambition, with its abundant share of unseemly liaisons. It has its villains and heroes (and perhaps especially, one particular heroine). Like Prometheus, its heroine, Brünnhilde, a semi-god, sides in the end with human destiny in a final act of self-sacrifice – all in the name of love. And the final bars, some 16 hours later, more than hint that from among the burnt ruins, something better will arise.
    But that is to attempt to summarize a very complicated story in a few lines, and Wagner aficionados will rightly wince by its paltriness. So allow me to get back to the point with which I began:

Do you ever get a tune in your head that just won’t leave?

    Without getting too technical, Wagner’s Ring is composed in a manner that few other works are. He employed musical themes, leitmotifs, for various aspects of the story, phrases that represent various characters, objects or places. There are over 200 of these! Several of them have been in my head these past few weeks and I can’t get them out: “Siegfried’s horn call”; “the Rhine gold”; “the forest bird’”; etc.
    I have woken up in the morning with these tunes in my head! And as they have come to my mind, I am (for a moment or two, at least) away in some far-off place where only the imagination can truly go.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .

    The Bible, too, has its leitmotifs – words or phrases that evoke recurring themes expressive of God’s covenant promises that can never fail. Phrases like “I will be with you,” “You are My people,” “I am your God.” It was just such a phrase that just wouldn’t leave my mind this past week. It is one spoken by Peter after the Day of Pentecost in a lengthy sermon recorded in Acts 3. At one point, speaking of the purpose behind the coming of Jesus Christ, Peter says, “God raised up His Servant and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways” (Acts 3:26).
 

July 13, 2007
Summer Reading: What's on Your Patio Table?
Tolle lege! These are the famous words Augustine overheard children say, meaning “Take up and read!” They led him to take up the New Testament and Romans 13 and a dramatic conversion from a life of sin.
    It’s already mid-July and I’ve yet to have some time at the beach; truth is, I’m not that fond of sand and sea. But the summer arrived awhile back. Temperatures soared. Humidity levels questioned my sanity. And summer reading beckoned.
    But what to read these sultry evenings? Cecil Murphey and Don Piper’s 90 Minutes in Heaven? It has sold over 1.5 million copies and is one the bestselling “Christian” books in America to date. This is not a patch, of course, on The Prayer of Jabez at 9 million, or even The Purpose-Driven Life at 30 million, and we won’t mention the Left Behind series, now soaring above 60 million! And while we’re on the issue of blockbuster “Christian” titles, Blue Like Jazz is approaching the million mark.
    None of these titles grab me. Sorry! But there it is. I’m a Presbyterian and need something more…, well, substantive. Fluffy is for the birds.
    And what am I reading? A brand new biography of John Newton written by the former British MP and Cabinet Minister, Jonathan Aitken entitled, John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace (Crossway, 2007). He (Aitken, that is) was imprisoned for two years, charged with perjury. It was a delicious tale of a stay in the Ritz Hotel in Paris paid for, as it turned out, by a Saudi friend (around $1,800) – the matter brought to the surface by the hotel’s owner, Mohammed Al Fayed, and the left-wing British newspaper, The Guardian. Aitken denied it, even alleging libel and took them to court. There followed a, now, famous court case where Aitken was found guilty. Bankrupt and facing a two-year jail sentence, Aitken was converted in Her Majesty’s Prison, Belmarsh. He tells the tale in two books, Pride and Perjury and Porridge and Passion. Both of these are extremely interesting reading and, while I’m speaking of Aitken, I’ve cited another of his books from the pulpit more than once – Psalms for People Under Pressure. He also has a prize winning volume on Richard Nixon, which I must confess to not having read, mainly because of my disinterest in the subject of the book! Yet another volume on a fellow jailbird, Chuck Colson, should also be mentioned, but I’ve not read that either.
    A friend (and blogger – if you have to ask what this is, just do so quietly lest it disclose your age) writes of Aitken’s book on John Newton: “While it may lack the depth of some of the greatest biographies of the greatest Christians, it is eminently readable and enjoyable from the first page to the last. A unique contribution of this book is that it relies on diaries and correspondence that have previously been unpublished” [Tim Challies].
    It was Newton, of course, who wrote “Amazing Grace” and hundreds of other hymns. He once said, “I am a great sinner, but Christ is a great Savior.” I constantly read Newton’s letters; they provide invaluable pastoral insight into perennial conditions of the soul that we meet today as much as Newton met in the eighteenth century.
    That’s what I’m taking with me to my “virtual” beach. What about you?


June 22, 2007

Entertaining Ourselves to Death
Ours is the first generation of Christians that has seriously asked the question, how much time can I spend on entertaining myself? In all the reading I have done in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, I have never once come across this question in any serious fashion. It is not that these centuries, or the Christians who lived in them, were anti-leisure – killjoys each one! They were not. No one has done more to dispel that caricature of the puritans, especially, than Leland Ryken in his justly praised book, Worldly Saints.

Nevertheless, ours is a generation in which leisure time has been built into the week’s structure as a right. We have times ear-marked for entertaining—Friday evenings, the weekend, including (alas!) Sunday afternoons, despite strong Scripture texts warning us of the consequence of the latter (see, if you are willing, Isa. 58:13-14). Somehow, it never occurs to us to ask why it is that we never read of Jesus or the disciples simply “having fun.” There is no word of Paul “hanging out” with the lads in Ephesus or Corinth. What does the Bible have to say about leisure and the way we should use it?

Here’s a principle, tricky to be sure and likely to be misused, but a biblical one nevertheless: God has given to us a pattern, a rhythm if you will, of one day followed by six. One day of “rest” followed by six days of “labor.” Leaving aside for a the minute whether its appropriate to use up the Lord’s Day for entertainment, the principle that seems to be about right is that there’s nothing inappropriate in spending about 15% of the week, one or two hours a day, in entertaining ourselves.

But here’s the thing: it’s far too easy to become a couch potato and slump in front of the TV for 3, 4, or even 6 hours at a stretch. That’s letting entertainment get out of hand. It’s not that a few hours are bad for us (though, of course, it depends on what it is we are watching!); it’s just that, as Paul might say, it’s not expedient.

Truth is, for all the entertainment on offer, ours is perhaps a bored generation. We have movies, malls, and MP3 players and yet, the whine “There’s nothing to do” can still be heard, loud and clear. A recent survey revealed that 71% of us want more “novelty” in our lives. Boredom is on the rise. Dr. Richard Winter, a psychologist at Covenant Theological Seminary (the official seminary of the Presbyterian Church in America) suggests that Americans are being entertained to death. “Boredom can come from over- stimulation. There is a sense in which you need more and more excitement, more stimulation to keep you interested,” he writes. Just consider for instance the “Fear Factor” shows where people will do grosser and more disgusting things in order to find the requisite entertainment zing.

In his book, Still Bored in a Culture of Entertainment, Dr. Winter examines how boredom has increased as more leisure time has become available. In fact, he says the average person today has about 33,000 more leisure hours than a person in the mid-1800s.

Winter said, “These are addictive pursuits, so that people spend hours and hours, and that becomes their reality … they live in a virtual reality, rather than the real reality of God’s world, the physical universe that we are set in.”

Here’s an idea guaranteed to revolutionize our assessment of the worth of entertainment: start reading books again! Never was there a time when the best of books were more available than the present. A few hours a day reading good literature would repay us handsomely.

Have you read any good books lately?

 

June 8, 2007

Evaluating the Banal
A few weeks ago (May, 2007), a painting by Mark Rothko broke the auction record for post-war art. The 1950 abstract, entitled “Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose” consists in broad stripes of, well…yellow, pink and lavender on a background of rose color. Without being too facetious, I think I have seen something like this hanging on the walls of our Day School as I make my journey to what we endearingly have been calling “The Temporary Sanctuary” (i.e., The Gym!). There is nothing about it that strikes one as profound in any sense, or difficult to conceive. The entire painting could have been done in less than five minutes. Perhaps, the most testing artistic decision was the choice of colors! The difference between this painting and the ones hanging of the Day School corridor walls is that this one sold for $72.8 million! It is, of course, the “name” [Rothko] that accounts for the value despite the fact Sotheby’s in New York hailed the painting’s “commanding scale, sumptuousness and sheer intensity” as a mark of “a modern master in the first full flush of his mature creativity.”

Artistic appreciation in our society is the high priest of “culture.” Art critics establish themselves with almost Gnostic superiority, knowing true value and the inner meaning of reality. To depreciate “Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose” as a piece of banality is to reveal a lack of discernment, a form of Philistinism that simply fails to appreciate the finer things of life. Perhaps.

Art needs no justification, they say. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. A painting is simply a personal representation of how an artist views the world, or an aspect of the world. Its value resides in what the painting means to me. Postmodern this may be, but the Bible bids us value beauty as something objective and tangible: “whatever is lovely [beautiful]… if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8). But Christians have found this notoriously difficult to quantify. Some Christians think the church should be wedded to Bluesy-Jazz to give it an edge. Others, like myself, find beauty in the “churchly” music of Vaughan Williams (despite his agnosticism) or even the lush, unsubtle melodies of John Rutter (who likewise, in a recent interview for The Gramophone, does not embrace the faith for which he writes ever-popular choral music).

Christianity inevitably alters our esteem of culture. We should appreciate the cultural contributions that elevate us and more clearly reflect the created world, even in its fallen condition—as a ruined castle suggests former glory. But, we are under no obligation to accept anything and everything in the name of “creativity.” We cannot applaud the blasphemous or immoral. Christianity stands against secular humanism here in its demotion of man to the level of animal and its elevation of human liberty above all transcendent standards. Secular humanism gives value to that which degrades us rather than ennobles us. There can be no beauty in this.

Is there beauty in “Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose”? You must judge for yourself.1

Meanwhile, hang on to those paintings! They may be stuck to the refrigerator door by magnets, as mementos of your children’s artistry. But they may be worth a fortune.

1 http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/classic2a.html

May 18, 2007
Tyrannus Hall

I’ve just been preaching on Acts 19. I write these things on Sunday evening, you see, after preaching a few hours before. Tonight, I’ve been with Paul in Ephesus. A strange mixture of odd and, frankly, bizarre episodes: folks healed by touching Paul’s sweaty handkerchiefs; seven sons of a Jewish priest attempting to cast out demons and getting mauled in the process; former magicians burning spell books (at an estimated cost of five million dollars in today’s currency); a dozen disciples of John the Baptist who have never heard of Jesus; and Paul, renting a hall for a few hours of the day for over two years to engage in evangelism.
     Frankly, though I always sound confident in the pulpit (!), I’m not too sure what to make of some of these episodes, particularly why the dozen disciples of John, having been baptized in the name of Jesus, began to speak in tongues and prophesied once Paul had laid his hand on them. If tongues here means foreign languages (as it most certainly does in Acts 2) then to whom were they speaking? One of the most accomplished commentators on this passage (Dr. Richard Gaffin of Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia, no less) made the comment that this passage “contained a number of perplexities” (Perspectives on Pentecost, 25). Right!
While I’m still mulling on this one, Paul’s two-year evangelistic campaign of “reasoning” (Luke uses the word dialegomenos, which implies an apologetic approach) is something worth thinking about in more detail. It looks (according to the Western text) that Paul hired the hall from 11 a.m. until around 4 p.m. each day, the time when most Mediterranean folk were in siesta mode. One social historian of these times makes the remark that there were more people awake in Ephesus at 1 a.m. than at 1 p.m.! Evidently, they found Paul far too intriguing to avoid even for a siesta and Luke adds that “all who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord” over the two-year period (Acts 19:10).
     It would be fascinating to find out what Paul might have said during these occasions. One imagines that he debated with some, answering their questions, challenging their misconceptions, undermining their prejudices. Evangelism is like that; it cannot be reduced to a formulaic “one-size-fits-all” methodology guaranteed to work every time. In an age of MySpace, iTunes, Xbox, and plasma TVs formulaic evangelism will only produce spurious results at the expense of genuine engagement with the reality of unbelief and the integrity of the gospel message.
     We get a glimpse of how Paul engaged in evangelism in the two cities he had visited before arriving in Ephesus, Athens and Corinth. Paul began where his audiences were. In cultured Athens he cited from their poets, Epimenides and Aratus (Acts 17:15-34). Slowly, but surely, he argued that the god they ignorantly worshipped (“an unknown god”) was the only true God. They were in urgent need of repentance, because a day of judgment awaited every man (Acts 17:31). Similarly, in Corinth, this time among both Jews and Greeks, Paul “reasoned” and persuaded” his hearers, breaking down their epistemological foundations to make way for the truth of the Gospel.
     Hiring a hall for two years in Ephesus required a constant supply of funds, and Paul evidently worked making leather goods along with his friends Priscilla and Aquila in the mornings in order to do this. It is all too possible to get the wrong idea from this – that evangelism is the work of a trained and educated professional. That would be entirely false. Every Christian is to be a witness for Jesus Christ in the natural setting of day-to-day life. The renowned Yale historian Kenneth S. Latourette says that “the chief agents in the expansion of Christianity appear not to have been those who made it a profession . . . but men and women who carried on their livelihood in some purely secular manner and spoke of their faith to those they met in this natural fashion.” (A History of the Expansion of Christianity, 1:230)
     There is a place for both of these methods; personal day-to-day evangelism and the more specialized form utilized by Paul in the Tyrannus Hall. However you view it, Paul’s ministry here showed both enthusiasm and intellectual rigor. The Gospel demands it. The world deserves no less.

May 11, 2007

Who's a Pretty Boy, Then?
Driving home from church last Sunday night, I noticed a hand-written sign attached to the street lamp post outside my house asking if we had seen a “Missing Bird.” The note informed us that the bird, a parrot, had “brightly colored feathers.” I checked my cat’s mouth on entering the house (he tends to revert to type when birds are around) but no sign of brightly colored feathers! I breathed a sigh of relief.
     It reminded me of a story I read on the BBC news website this past week of an African grey parrot that had escaped its cage in Manafon, a village in Wales. The bird was discovered and caught several days later, four miles away, looking rather the worse for wear and hungry. Its bid for freedom had been successful. It had forgotten how to survive in the wild.
     Another story of a parrot caught my eye on a linked page: “Parrot Squawks on Woman’s Affair” the headline read. Too good a story to miss, so I read on! It appears the parrot, Ziggy, squawked to the woman’s live-in partner, “I love you Gary.” The partner’s name is Chris! Then whenever Chris’s partner’s mobile phone would ring the parrot would immediately begin to squawk, “Hi Gary.” It turns out she had been having an affair with a “Gary” for several months while Chris was at work. The affair tumbled when the word “Gary” was heard on the television and the parrot immediately began to make smooching sounds!
     The book of Ecclesiastes warns us: “Even in your thought, do not curse the king, nor in your bedroom curse the rich, for a bird of the air will carry your voice, or some winged creature tell the matter” (Eccles. 10:20).
     Among other things, this verse teaches us that nothing is secret to God. He knows everything. His eyes run everywhere, the Scriptures declare (Job 24:23; Psa. 139:13-16). He searches all hearts and observes everyone’s ways (1 Sam. 16:7; Luke 16:15). That means he knows things that we consider “secret,” things we may attempt to hide and camouflage—even from those we love. When the Lord comes he “will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart” (1 Cor. 4:5). He will uncover the evidence that shows whether our profession of faith is the fruit of an honest regenerate heart: “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil” (Matt 12:33-35).
     Alternatively, it will reveal it for the parrot-cry of a hypocritical religiosity: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness” (Matt. 7:21-23).
Lord, give me an undivided heart (Psa. 86:11).
 

May 4, 2007
Retiring Gracefully

This past week, at All Souls Church, in Langham Place in the heart of Central London, the announcement was given of the intention of its “Rector Emeritus” to retire. He is, of course, the world-renowned British preacher and writer, John Stott. On April 27 he reached the age of 86 and, we have been told, he intends to fulfill one more engagement at the Keswick Convention in July (one of the largest annual gatherings of evangelicals in Britain) and then retire. He plans to move to a retirement community in the south of England, which, he believes, will be able to provide for his present and future needs.
    “Every authentic ministry begins … with the conviction that we have been called to handle God’s Word as its guardians and heralds,” Stott wrote in his commentary on Thessalonians. “Our task is to keep it, study it, expound it, apply it, and obey it.” Stott has done this in a magisterial way all of his life.
Back in 2004, Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center noted, if evangelicals could elect a pope, Stott is the person they would likely choose. He was the framer of the Lausanne Covenant, a crucial organizing document for modern evangelicalism. He is the author of more than 40 books, which have been translated into over 72 languages and have sold in the millions. Commenting on the tendency of the media to choose Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson as evangelical leaders, the Jewish journalist, David Brooks, wrote in The New York Times: “There is a world of difference between real-life people of faith and the made-for-TV, Elmer Gantry-style blowhards who are selected to represent them. Falwell and Pat Robertson are held up as spokesmen for evangelicals, which is ridiculous. Meanwhile people like John Stott, who are actually important, get ignored.” (Nov. 30, 2004).
    It was back in the fall of 1971 that I first heard of John Stott. Two years later, I had the privilege of meeting him as he spoke at an InterVarsity Christian Union meeting at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (Wales), when I was its president. Truth is, from a human point of view, I owe my salvation to John Stott. It was reading his book, Basic Christianity, in December of 1971 – the book had been given to me by a recently converted friend, my best friend. Since then, the book has been translated into over 50 languages with over 20 more in the pipeline, and sold in the millions. Reading it brought instant conviction of a gospel message I had until then (I was 18) felt unsophisticated and unnecessary. Truthfully, a week before reading the book I could not have told you that I knew what sin was, nor why it was necessary for Christ to die to atone for it. I neither believed in God nor His Son. But within a few days, a burden weighed me down; crippled me, in fact. I felt that unless I was saved immediately, I was heading for hell (a place I did not even think existed before reading this book).
    I remember the occasion as though it were yesterday: on my knees late at night, crying to God to save me. Then, I had overwhelming reassurance that by trusting in Jesus Christ my sins were forgiven. The sense of peace was palpable. I never doubted I was saved, not then, nor in the 35 years that have followed. What Stott brought to the surface can be summarized by these lines from Basic Christianity: “If He is not who He said He was, and if He did not do what He said He had come to do, the whole superstructure of Christianity crumbles in ruin to the ground.”
    And admitting this leads to another conclusion: “We must commit ourselves, heart and mind, soul and will, home and life, personally and unreservedly, to Jesus Christ. We must humble ourselves before Him as our Lord; and then go on to take our place as loyal members of the church and responsible citizens in the community. Such is basic Christianity, and the theme of this book.”
I believed it in 1971. I still do. And without John Stott, I shudder to think where I would be today. Happy retirement!

April 20, 2007

How to Listen to a Sermon
Sermons! They are the stuff of jokes! Like this one which makes the rounds in different guises: “Barbara remains in the hospital and needs blood donors for more transfusions. She is also having trouble sleeping and requests tapes of Pastor Jack’s sermons.”

Last Sunday evening I preached on that passage in Acts 17 where the Bereans are said to have “received the word with eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things [what they had heard Paul preach] were so” (Acts 17:11). They knew how to listen to a sermon!

Which leads me to ask the question, How do you listen to a sermon? Or, perhaps better still, How should I listen to a sermon?

Interestingly, George Whitefield addressed this topic in the mid-seventeenth century in a sermon based on the words of Jesus in Luke 8:18, “Take care how you hear.”1 I summarize (and, to be honest, update) what Whitefield said in six points:

1. Come out of a sincere desire to know what God has to say to you. Sermons are not for entertainment. They are to reform our hearts and teach us our duty towards God and men.

2. Give diligent heed to the things that are spoken. Listen as you would to the voice of your president in the Oval Office and remember, the King of Kings demands even more respect! The stuff of sermons concerns eternal matters and not just the things of this world.

3. Guard your heart against prejudice to the minister. Jesus could do mighty acts in Chorazin and Bethsaida, but they wouldn’t repent because of their prejudice against Him (Matt. 11:21). Even when ministers may urge something they themselves have not been enabled to do well, don’t refuse the urging on that account. If what they urge is biblical, receive it as though Jesus were the one who spoke.

4. Guard your heart at over veneration of the minister. It was the Corinthian evil that they began to prefer one preacher to another openly with terrible consequences for the body of Christ. Though one may minister to you more than another, respect both for what God does through them to the body of Christ.

5. Make particular application to your own hearts of everything that is delivered. When our Savior spoke at the Last Supper that one of His own would betray Him, all the disciples applied to his own heart, saying: “Lord, is it I?” (Matt. 26:22). Beware of that roving eye that says in a sermon, “That was meant for him” or “that was meant for her.”

6. Pray to the Lord, before, during, and after the sermon. Pray that the minister might be endued with power and boldness to declare the whole counsel of God and might not be intimidated by any. Even Paul needed prayer “that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak” (Eph. 6:19-20).

Whitefield concludes: “If only all who hear me this day would seriously apply their hearts to practice what has now been told them! How ministers would see Satan, like lightning, fall from heaven, and people find the Word preached sharper than a two-edged sword and mighty, through God, to the pulling down of the devil’s strongholds!”

April 13, 2007
Can those who have never heard the Gospel be saved?
Deep question, I know. But it is one that I think about from time, prompted by the fact that there are millions in the world who never hear the gospel, or only an inadequate version of it. Are all these millions, past, present, and future all condemned to an eternity in hell?

The question is said to be addressed by two statements in Acts: Peter’s statement to Cornelius in Caesarea, that “in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:35); and Paul’s similar word a little later to the crowds in Lystra, some of whom had just bowed down before him as the Greek god “Hermes,” that even in the pagan nations of the past God “did not leave himself without witness” (Acts 14:17).

These words in Acts have given rise to a view known as “the wider hope,” a view that affirms the possibility of those who have never heard the gospel being saved on the basis of a response they make to what we might call general revelation.

Typical is the suggestion of John Sanders, of “open-theism” fame, that “the unevangelized may be saved if they respond in faith to God based on the revelation they have.”1 The late Sir Norman Anderson, a stout defender of old-fashioned evangelical truth of the conservative kind, came to the same conclusion, suggesting that a pagan who came to an appreciation of his sin, crying out to God for mercy would receive it on the basis of the light he knew and understood. John Stott, too, is convinced that the majority of the unevangelized will be saved because of God’s great mercy, but is unsure as to how this will be done.2

Don’t mistake these men as liberals who believe that everyone, in the end, will be saved. They are not universalists, and men like Sanders, Anderson and Stott are best called something different – something like inclusivist has been suggested.
What shall we make of this position? It is most certainly attractive from one point of view. It seems to suggest a view that sounds fairer to our sense of what is right or just. But who are we to make such a judgment? God is under no obligation to save anyone and certainly not under a divine compulsion to ensure that the gospel be heard by every individual, past, present or future. The fact is, we have nothing in Scripture to suggest that the unevangelized is saved on the basis of his response to general revelation. The fact of the matter is that such a view might seriously hamper missionary zeal – why bother with the dangerous task of missions in the modern world when God may save many of them without it. In fact, it might be better if they never hear the gospel – a message likely to prove far more offensive than the message of general revelation! Better not to hear it, than to hear it and then reject it

No, Peter isn’t saying to Cornelius that his response to general revelation had saved him, or could do so. How could that be since Peter has been divinely sent to him with the gospel? Rather, Peter is affirming that pagans can do good things. But they still need salvation—something that can only be known through faith in Jesus Christ.

The burden that should consume our vision for the present is the need to go into the whole world and make the gospel of redeeming grace in Jesus Christ known to all. That need remains as great and urgent as ever. Instead of thinking about ways the unevangelized can be saved without our engagement in missions, let us think instead of how we might better fulfill the task of missions.

1 In an essay in What About Those Who Have Never Heard? Three Views on the Destiny of the Unevangelized, edited by Gabriel Fackre, Ronald Nash and John Sanders (IVP, 1995), 20
2 See John Stott and David Edwards, Essentials: A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue (Hodder and Stoughton, 1988), 320-23.
Clark Pinnock and Stanley Grenz have written similar things, too.

 

March 30, 2007
Sneaker Seeker Sensitive Churches

I’ve been preaching through Acts and have been making some references to the “meat offered to idols” issue. And it crossed my mind, “This has some bearing on sneakers and church!”
    Right! The connection is tenuous, to be sure. Let me explain. Paul’s argument with the tenderloin at knock-down prices sold outside the local pagan temple is that in itself it is adiaphorous – that is, a thing indifferent. It’s meat after all and if it’s cheaper, to boot, all the better! It’s when nitpicky folk start asking questions that get weak consciences bent out of shape that trouble arises. “Ask no questions for conscience sake,” is Paul’s advice (1 Cor. 10:27).
You are following, correct? So, what has this to do with sneakers? Just this: why do we think we need to dress up for attending church? And if so, why do we do so in the morning but not in the evening (unless you’ve drawn the usher straw then its suit and tie for the evening, too). Are we saying that formal worship requires formal dress? And if so, how formal is formal? To one, a black suit, white shirt and tie are formal. To another, simply wearing a shirt that’s “tucked in” is formal. To another it’s simply the shirt! Forgive me, I keep my illustrations masculine here for fear of offending; but, then Gap® is currently running advertisements suggesting “gals” can wear the “guys” jeans, so my attempt may already have offended.
    Clothes in themselves are “adiaphora”; but, they also say, “This is what I feel like wearing right now”; and, “I’m wearing this rather than that because I want to be fashionable and trendy.” We dress up for weddings, but down for a baseball game; up for a visit to the Symphony, but down for the (forthcoming) ‘Police’ gig in New Orleans. Why these conventions? Is anything remotely important set by these seemingly arbitrary rules? Should we simply give up on these and whine that everything is going to the dogs, or that people just don’t get up and give their seats to the women anymore for fear of some feminist making a scene?
    So, why should church be any different? And when it comes to fashion and church, we must ask: is there a commodity which we can label “sacred” – time and place where conventions apply: things like rules of behavior (silence, punctuality, engagement), or dress code (clothes in certain contexts and worn by certain people – and “figures” are hardly neutral)?
    Times change, of course, as do the conventions of what is appropriate for certain age groups. I cringe at the thought of someone discovering photographs of what I wore in the sixties. Did I really wear bell-bottomed trousers and brightly colored shirts? One way or another, fashion changes. It is set these days by clever advertising designed to ensure a constant market demand. The gods of Madison Avenue are a greedy, insatiable lot, and every shift in fashionable convention reveals their “divine” footprints.
    It used to be that Sunday worship was done wearing “Sunday’s best.” The argument was that in church we met with God – in His presence, as it were. Like meeting the President in the White house! Interesting, as we have pointed out before in these columns, the furor caused by the lady caught on camera wearing flip-flops in the Oval Office! Is anything “lost” by wearing casual clothes in gathered worship services? Is it a “lost cause”? Are there more important issues? (Yes, yes, and yes). My point is to relate a sense of sadness at the loss of certain conventions. No one can convince me that it is a form of legalism to engage in convention (even of dress). We all have conventions. Ask the youth why it is they must have the latest style of jeans and you will see that conventions rule in every sphere. They may be changing conventions, but they are just as demanding – perhaps more so.
    The trend (in Emergent Churches and West Coast PCA churches) is for ministers (called by their first name and never “ministers”) to wear a Hawaiian shirt. The message is casual, fun and definitely hip! Hmm. But sacred?
    But, if someone insists that we cannot be holy without black suits, white shirts and ties – I’m going with Paul and saying, hand me the Hawaiian shirt! Aloha.

March 23, 2007

Pablo Picasso

I admit it! I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to the arts. Music I know something about; but art, well, I have to admit, is another matter. Don’t misunderstand me! I’ve read my fair share of coffee table books on The Great Artists – Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Raphael, Botticelli, Giotto, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Monet, Renoir, etc., etc. I recall two exhibitions, one of John Constable and another of late nineteenth-century Russian landscape painters in London that left me breathless. And this past week, on a visit to Chicago, Rosemary and I went to see an exhibition entitled, “Cézanne to Picasso: Ambrose Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde,” currently showing at the Art Institute of Chicago. We decided to go on a Tuesday – it was free on Tuesdays! No point in shelling out hard-earned dollars to see impressionist art at its worst!
    So, there we were, mingling with the school kids, all of whom seemed busily counting, as part of a school project, “How many blotches on the left arm of the figure in Picasso’s La Toilette [1906],” and “How many apples are there in Cézanne’s The Basket of Apples [1893]?”
    The beginning showed promise: Cézanne’s Boy in a Red Waistcoat [1888-90], better from a distance than close up; Cézanne’s Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair [1888-90], an ugly woman if ‘realism’ was the order of the day. Then, things began to slide, a “blue” (very blue) painting by André Derain called, Big Ben (yes, the Westminster clock in London), which reminded me of some of the paintings on the corridor walls of First Presbyterian Church Day-School, except that Derain’s work is worth millions of dollars. Then Picasso. It began with Crazy Woman with Cats [1901], moved steadily into the bizarre. I glanced at my guidebook desperately wanting to “get it.” “It’s all about ‘cubism,’” I said knowingly to my wife, but she was having none of it. One look told me all I needed to know. It was just as well we’d come on Tuesday, when it was free!
    I tried to remember what Hans Rookmaaker, Dutch Christian scholar much influenced by Francis Schaeffer of L’Abri fame. His Modern Art and the Death of a Culture (Crossway, 1994) had concluded that Picasso was a “true nihilist” I seem to recall. I have to admit that I’m skeptical of “Christian” views of the arts ever since reading Abraham Kuyper’s famous Lectures on Calvinism delivered at Princeton Seminary in 1897 at the behest of Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield. They are much praised, especially at the seminary where I teach. He had concluded that what epitomized the cultural decay of nineteenth-century France was the music of Claude Debussy! What? Could this giant of reformed theology be in his right mind? Debussy’s La Mer: trois esquisses symphoniques pour orchestre is one of the great masterpieces of twentieth-century music. True, it hadn’t been written when Kuyper gave his lectures which were given some five years previously. Just as well!
So I approached Rookmaaker’s assessment of Picasso cautiously. Could there be something about these distorted blotches of paint depicting individuals broken and disjointed? The painter, Paul Gaugin (1848-1903), once wrote that artistic effort is the only way for man to ascend to God, a statement which Nicholas Wolterstorff (Art in Action: Toward a Christian Aesthetic [Eerdmans, 1980], 53) sees as identifying the artist’s creativity with God’s. For Picasso, art was a weapon, an “orgy of destruction” reflective of the destructive passion that motivated his life. His life’s work was a war with creation and its Creator. He embraced the nihilistic Nietzschian mantra, “God is dead.”
    As I emerged into the sunlight of an unusually warm day in Chicago, I seemed to recall that a Picasso painting had been sold recently at Sotheby’s (London). I have checked: it was Picasso’s Dora Maar au chat and it sold for $95.2 million! Maybe, there was something to Picasso after all; but I wouldn’t hang one on my wall.

March 9, 2007
Amazing Grace
This Saturday, March 10, marks the date (in 1748) when John Newton, the captain of a slave ship, author of “Amazing Grace,” and friend of William Wilberforce, was converted during a voyage at sea.
    Born July 24, 1725, to a godly mother and a not-so-godly sea-faring father, John was nurtured in The Shorter Catechism and the hymns of Isaac Watts. He attended school for only two years (between the ages of 8 and 10). Throughout his teenage years, he accompanied his father, whom he greatly feared, on sea journeys around the Mediterranean. At 17, he fell in love with a girl aged 13, named Mary Catlett and for the next seven years of misery, involving being press-ganged into the navy, desertion, flogging and eventual abandonment on a remote island southeast of Sierra Leone, he dreamed of her, finally marrying her in February 1750. Rescued from the island in 1747, he found himself a year later on his way back to England.
Waking in the night to a violent storm, the captain sent him to the pumps where for the first time in his life he prayed for mercy. After nine hours at the pumps, he took the helm and steered for another twelve hours. The next day, the storm still raging, John turned to the Scriptures, discovering Luke 11:13, which he saw promising the Holy Spirit to those that ask. He reasoned,
        If this book be true, the promise in this passage must be true likewise. I have need of that very Spirit, by which the whole was written, in order to understand it aright. He has engaged here to give that Spirit to those who ask: I must therefore pray for it; and, if it be of God, he will make good on his own word. [Richard Cecil, Memoirs of Rev. John Newton, 28]

    Days later, the storm having abated, they anchored in Ireland. He wrote:
        Thus far I was answered, that before we arrived in Ireland, I had a satisfactory evidence in my own mind of the truth of the Gospel, as considered in itself, and of its exact suitableness to answer all my needs. . . . I stood in need of an Almighty Savior; and such a one I found described in the New Testament. Thus far the Lord had wrought a marvelous thing: I was no longer an infidel: I heartily renounced my former profaneness, and had taken up some right notions; was seriously disposed, and sincerely touched with a sense of the undeserved mercy I had received, in being brought safe through so many dangers. I was sorry for my past misspent life, and purposed an immediate reformation. I was quite freed from the habit of swearing, which seemed to have been as deeply rooted in me as a second nature. Thus, to all appearance, I was a new man. [Ibid., 32]

    Newton later wrote that this was not his full conversion, but only the beginning. He was aware that he was a sinner, but insufficiently. He had gladly accepted the Lord’s forgiveness of his past, but had turned for refuge to moralism and good intentions. For six years he drifted, without friend or minister to guide him, returning in 1749 as a captain of a slave-trading ship. In 1750, he married his childhood sweetheart, Mary. For the next three years, he made three sea-journeys, leaving his wife behind for upwards of ten months each time. Then, in 1754, he suffered an epileptic seizure and never sailed again.
Following ten years of private study in “the best writers of divinity” (he was a thorough-going Calvinist) he received a call to a church in Olney (where he spent sixteen years) and afterwards to St. Mary’s Walnoth in London (which would last 27 years).
John and Mary had no children of their own, but adopted two nieces. His

March 2, 2007
Woof, Woof

I have to admit that ever since one of our interns mentioned in a recent Sunday evening children’s devotional that he spoke to his puppy about Jesus, I have been intrigued. Not so much about talking to dogs about Jesus – I talk to mine about supralapsarianism and the divine decree and he agrees with me at every point. Rather, it is whether there will be dogs in heaven.

At one level, it’s a rather silly question. Of course there will be dogs in heaven! The more profound question is, What is heaven like? The common answer goes something like this: heaven is a place full of light in which we will float about on clouds, playing harps and sprouting wings. But this is fantasy, not biblical reality. The Bible depicts heaven as a place, a spatial reality that touches and interpenetrates all of physical reality. Angels and archangels are close enough to guard believers (Ps. 34:7; 91:11), little ones in particular (Matt. 18:10), and constantly observe what is going on in the church (1 Cor. 11:10). More than that, heaven (when we think of it as something future) is a physical place described in both testaments as the renewal of the heavens and the earth (Isa. 65:17; 66:22; 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:1).

Theologians have debated whether this involves the annihilation of the present world order followed by a totally new creation as Lutherans have argued, or whether this involves a re-creation of the present world order by eradicating all effects of sin as Reformed theologians have tended to argue. Either way, heaven is a physical reality, with a world like the one we already experience (rocks, rivers, vegetation, and animal life). Whatever may be the exact nature of the state between death and the final state, our ultimate hope (“hope” being the Bible’s word for certainty in Jesus Christ) is that we shall be raised from the dead with a glorified (but physical) body. There is mystery here, of course, but Paul compares the relationship (lines of continuity) between the present body and the future resurrection body as analogous to a seed and the plant that grows out of it (1 Cor. 15:35-44). Does this mean that the resurrection will possess physical properties that defy the laws of physics that govern our present existence (giving the possibility of locomotion through the vast cosmos)? I do hope so!

These are but clues, of course, but they give us a picture of the next world as a physical world in which all frustration and failure are removed, all in- stances of pain and evil are eradicated, and where joy is unimaginably full and rewarding. Isaiah depicts a future in which “the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them” (Isa. 11:6). It is possible to spiritualize this picture as a description of the church in the new covenant, but there is every reason for seeing it as a picture of the future world order. Of course, questions arise. Will lions become herbivorous, and more pertinently, dogs?

I have been imagining what my dog would make of all of this? I would ask him, but as I write this (late on Sunday evening), he is so busy snoring at my feet that I can’t bring myself to wake him just yet. I think I heard him anxiously whimpering in his sleep, “Revelation 22:15.”

O dear, it is a description of the heavenly city and says, “Outside are the dogs.”
 

The God Delusion

I wasn’t going to read Richard Dawkins’ latest book, The God Delusion (Boston, NY: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006), partly because books like this irritate me no end. It is for the same reason that I never listen to “Talk Radio.” Both infuriate me to the point of irritability. But, I failed in my determination and bought the book. And I’m, well …, irritable!
    Richard Dawkins, “the world’s most prominent atheist” (as the dust jacket claims), is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. Both The New York Times Review and The Wall Street Journal gush in their collective praise for Dawkins’ literary and rhetorical skills. Philip Pullman (author of the His Dark Materials trilogy—the dark side of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings) speaks of him “demolishing their [religious leaders] attempts to prove the existence of God” and “their presumptuous claims that religion is the only basis of morality or that their holy books are literally true.” He is currently the darling of the British Media, brought in as the charismatic critic for the delusion that is Christianity. He is probably better known in Britain than Jesus!
    Dawkins is no shrinking violet; both outspoken and insistent, he once reportedly told a friend, “I am not arrogant. I am merely impatient with people who don’t have the same humility in front of the facts.” (The Times, May 1995, cited by John Blanchard, Does God Believe in Atheists [Evangelical Press], 342). Revelation 13:5 comes to mind for some reason: “there was given him (the Beast of the Sea) a mouth to speak arrogant words and blasphemies”!
    This is definitely not the place to engage in a lengthy review of this book. But since it is the Christmas season again, I thought I’d dip into the book and see what Dawkins makes of the Christmas Story.
    He trots out the familiar chestnuts: that the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke get Jesus to Bethlehem by different routes; that there never was nor could have been an Empire-wide census in the time of Quirinius (Cyrenius)—the whole scenario is “complete nonsense” (p. 93); that a star in the east, virgin birth, veneration of a baby by kings etc., are all paralleled in the Mediterranean and Near east region; and that the genealogies of Matthew and Luke are different.
Yawn…these are really old chestnuts, long since answered by hundreds of scholarly works. Darrell Bock’s two-volume commentary on Luke—almost 2,000 pages, to name but one—deals with each objection in exhaustive (and exhausting) detail. Christians do not need George Gershwin (or Richard Dawkins) to suggest that “The things that you’re li’ble / To read in the Bible / It ain’t necessarily so.” I’m reminded of C. S. Lewis’ remark in Mere Christianity, to the effect that atheists are like ostriches who bury their heads in the sand. Dawkins amasses cozy evidence to suit his prejudice.
    There’s more at stake here than mere quibbles about this or that historical inaccuracy. The plot is not merely to ridicule belief in Christianity; it is to ensure that even respect for Christianity become socially unacceptable. Just a few weeks ago, Sam Harris, an even more apocalyptic atheist than Dawkins, published his Letter to a Christian Nation in which he advocates that “at some point there’s going to be enough pressure that it is going to be too embarrassing to believe in God.” It is part of the new militancy of New Atheism, designed to rid the world of “religion” in the name of science. For Dawkins, evolution is the “only game in town” and those who deny it are either “ignorant, stupid or insane” (cited by Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial [Monarch], 9). It is about the survival of the fittest and this mainly explains Dawkins’ crusading style. He is out to convert the world to the religion evolution—a religion with no basis for absolute ethical standards. After all, in the words of John Stott, if it’s all about survival of the fittest, “why should we care for the senile, the imbecile, the hardened criminal, the psychopath, the chronically sick, or the starving? Would it not be more prudent to put them to sleep like a well-loved dog, lest they hinder the evolutionary process?” (Issues facing the Church Today [Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 18]). Dawkins’ “Brave New World” is truly Orwellian, cold, merciless and deterministic.
    I can’t help but be sympathetic to Dawkins. “Religion” is evil. John Calvin believed that man’s religions were his greatest crime against God. His mind is a “perpetual factory of idols,” forever manufacturing yet another idol to bow down to and worship. I’ve been where Dawkins is —suspicious of all religious types, thinking them hypocrites. I even think Marx had it right when he suggested that religion was the opiate of the people. But it is not “religion” that we advocate. It is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, not just the “idea” of Jesus—a warm glow somewhere within—but an objective reality of One who loved and died and rose again and who is ALIVE in the most literal sense conceivable!
 

 
New England and Thanksgiving Day

I know, it’s too early to write about Thanksgiving Day. And as a Brit, who am I anyway to write about something so sacred? Truth is, I won’t be in the country on Thanksgiving Day, but rather in the “Motherland,” as you might say (though, perhaps you may not!).
    But, as you read this around November 11, I am not far off the mark in recalling that it was on this day, November 11, 1620, nine weeks after first setting sail, that The Mayflower, anchored off the coast of Cape Cod, made “history” as we say. Of the 102 passengers, sixteen men, eleven women, and fourteen children were Pilgrims, having been associated with the Separatist church in Scrooby, England. Refusing to conform to the Church of England, they had first sought religious asylum in Leyden, Holland. After twelve years there, they became concerned that their children would no longer regard themselves as English and (for a reason that has always struck me as amusing) decided instead to sail for America, making arrangements with the Virginia Company to settle just south of the Hudson River within the northern- most boundary of the Virginia Charter. However, fierce winds blew the ship northwards; and the rest, as they say, is history!
    Settling in Cape Cod meant they were no longer under the jurisdiction of Virginia, and having no agreement with the New England Company, the Pilgrim men wrote a contract (The Mayflower Compact) which was signed by forty- one of the sixty-five men on board. Thirteen of those who didn’t sign it were sons of signers, covered by their fathers’ commitments. The remaining eleven—nine servants and two sailors—were probably too sick to sign it.
    The Compact had famously included in its opening lines (once due deference had been given to King James as “Defender of the Faith”) the phrase, “the advancement of the Christian Faith.” Ostensibly, they had quit England for New England, in search for religious freedom. But, as Stephen Tomkins puts it, “once they found it, it proved too precious a commodity to be wasted on people who would not use it properly: Congregationalism became law, and only the converted could vote.” Baptists, like Roger Williams, were expelled to Rhode Island.
    Bradford was with the first party who used the Mayflower’s small boat — a shallop — to land at Plymouth Rock. When they returned later to the mothership, Bradford was to learn that his wife had fallen overboard and been drowned.
    William Bradford recorded that “when they stepped ashore in Cape Cod, being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven.” Within months, forty-seven died including thirteen of the eighteen women. Yet the remarkable fact is that within fifteen years, New England had taken over as the leading colony in North America. Her population had unparalleled growth, some 10,000 had settled there by 1634 and 18,000 by 1643. In the building of towns, the erection of churches [at least 35 in twenty years], the establishment of free schools in every township of fifty householders, the opening of Harvard College [1638], the setting up of the first printing press in the English Colonies [1639], the men of New England overtook and far outstripped all the other North American colonists.
    Whatever we may now think of their views concerning the proper ordering of society, it cannot be denied that others have held similar convictions with regard to the state and morality: J.C. Ryle (writing in 1881), wrote: “In the long run of years, the moral standard of a city or a nation is the grand secret of its prosperity. Gold mines, and manufacturers, and scientific discoveries, and docks, and roads, and eloquent speeches, and commercial activity, and democratic institutions are not enough to make or to keep nations great. Tyre, and Sidon, and Carthage, and Athens and Rome, and Venice, and Spain, and Portugal had plenty of such possessions as these, and yet fell into decay. The sinews of a nation’s strength are truthfulness, honesty, sobriety, purity, temperance, economy, diligence, brotherly kindness, charity among its inhabitants, and, consequently, good credit among mankind. Let those deny this who dare. And will any man say that there is any surer way of producing these characteristics in a people than by encouraging, and fostering, and spreading, and teaching pure Scriptural Christianity?”
We may, of course, be critical, but it cannot be doubted that this was the spirit of the first New-Englanders. And for which, we give profound thanks to God.