Speedy Imperfection vs. Sluggish Perfection

If there is one thing that I know from Scripture and experience it is that holiness takes time.  There are no shortcuts to perfection.  But in the world we live in, there is this constant pressure to accomplish and acheive something yesterday.  We are naturally impatient with holiness and so the nature of the pursuit of holiness drives us mad.

As Christians, we don’t need to feel this pressure.  God is sovereign, the days are evil and we are headed for Glory.  I am OK to take my time and do things right.  When they go wrong, as they generally always do I will take my time and correct them.  The break-neck, workaholic, consumer mentality has no place in the Christian Religion.  Stay the course.  Be thoughtful and deliberate in your life.  Rushing carelessly and indiscriminately into any decision or course of action is foolishness.

On the other hand, we cannot let our caution cripple us from actually doing something.  The Christian life is an active one.  Paul said that he, “worked harder than all others.”  This is a good model.  Paul was hardly a thoughtless guy.  He did not seem impetuous.  He seemed deliberately active.  Peter was impetuous and he was rebuked by Christ.  Christ consistently withdrew himself for prayer and contemplation.  The godless urgency (even under the guise of the godly urgency of the Zealots or Pharisees) did not seem to have a grip on him.

What I need and what we need is a holy activity about our lives.  Get a mandate from Christ and run full speed in obedience, checking ourselves constantly to make sure we are acting, living and thinking righteously and if we find ourselves off track we need to stop, revaulate and run in a new course.  But we must not be afraid to stop simply because we think we must remain active at all times.  That is a ridiculous lie from the world.  If stopping constantly makes us sluggish, so be it.  I am not sure it was designed any other way.

Babel, Abraham, Jesus, Pentecost and Evil

Inspired by R.C. Sproul’s review of N.T. Wright’s Evil and the Justice of God:

The Tower of Babel is one of the oft-overlooked yet quintessential pictures in the Old Testament of the rebellion of man.  Men have wickedness in their hearts and they employ all of their unsubmissive, faithless efforts in finding a way to escape accountability to and reliance upon God.  Evil, you see, comes from inside.  I am not attempting to explain sufferings caused by tsunamis, hurricanes and earthquakes.  I am simply thinking about how God has responded to Holocausts, 9/11’s, ethnic cleansings and Soviet Gulags.  Suffering at the hands of men.  Evils perpetrated by godless men, unhindered by the convicting and guiding work of the Spirit of God.  We are a helpless, hopeless and wicked lot.  We are all sons of Adam.  The Tower of Babel is simply the early stages of evil.

God answers Babel with Abraham.  Once the judgment of confusing their languages and scattering them aboad is leveled, God calls out one man to carry the seed of hope.  Of restortation.  Of righting all wrongs. 

God delivers on is promise to Abraham in the Incarnation.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  God is righting wrongs through the greatest wrong in the history of man, the Cross.

Pentecost undoes Babel.  Men who lost the ability to communicate in a common language due to rebellion carried this curse from generation to generation until God, in His mercy, breaks down the barrier of varied language in a miraculous way.  Tongues.  A sign that Babel is being undone by the Gospel and the Spirit.  Evil is being undone.

God does not attempt to explain evil and justify himself.  He answers evil and glorifies himself.  He answers evil with Promise.  He glorifies himself with the Cross.

Wash and Be Clean

I heard a fantastic sermon on the story of Namaan and Elisha this past Lord’s Day.  I know the dangers of spiritualizing and reading too much into OT narrative but the story just seems like such a blatant inference to life under the New Covenant.  “Wash and be clean.”  The four glorious words given to Namaan are the same four words given to us.

Two observations were particularly potent to me:

1) Namaan came roled in his full battle garb along with his processional of officers and a letter from the king requesting healing.  He wanted Elisha himself to come out to meet him and call upon the Lord of Heaven in a mighty show with much pomp.  Elisha sent a lowly servant with the message, “Wash and be clean.”  Insulted by this, Namaan at least wanted to wash in the regal rivers of his native country, not the piddly little Jordan.  He was trying desparately to preserve some sort of worthiness in himself.  In his mind, he most certainly deserved grace.  He need the Lord to remove his leprosy so that his resume would be complete.  That resume which had a disatrous blemish.  A mighty warrior…Captain of the King’s Guard…A leper.

As humans, we come to God with so much self-inflated sense of our own worthiness.  I come to God this way.  I want God’s help but only as an addition to my own strength, not in spite of my weakness.  I am like the false apostles of II Corinthians.  I would prefer to boast about my accomplishments, my status, my wisdom, my strength.  Elisha was forcing Namaan to leave behind his self-sufficiency and come to God as needy.

The culmination of this was when he had to strip off his battle armor, with all its distinctions and decorations.  Namaan had to expose his leporous skin.  He had to come disrobed and shamed.  He had to come needy of grace.

“WASH AND BE CLEAN!”

2)  The second thing that struck me was the fact that the means of grace are just as humble in the story.  The nameless Jewish slave who, although in an unjust bondage, professed the ability of the Lord to cure leprosy to her captors.  The nameless servant of Elisha, delivering the message.  The simplicity of the message itself.  The nameless servant of Namaan who encouraged him to do the simplest of acts…trust the Word of the Lord.

God does not want my effort.  He wants my trust.

C.A.H.

Why I Am Where I Am

Students like this:

http://silentnomore.wordpress.com/

I am proud of you guys.

Gossip

I had a heated conversation about gossip yesterday and I wanted to write out what my convictions are so that I can make sure they are sensible and accurate.

Gossip is sharing any bit of information that is not rightly yours to share.

Gossip is telling any story that, even unintentionally, makes someone look bad, incompetent, etc.

Gossip is telling any story that, even if it had a good moral or redeeming feature, in the process hurts someone’s reputation. (i.e. Jane used to beat her kids, but now her anger managment classes have helped her and she doesn’t do it anymore.)

Gossip is not simply about sin (i.e. John is a liar, Frank is a jerk, etc.) but also about reputation or competence (i.e. Julie doesn’t feed her kids enough, Mike takes 10 minute longer lunch breaks than everyone else.)

 I am going to read this again in a week to make sure it makes sense.

 C.A.H

Blessed Dissatisfaction

“By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remebered Zion.  On the willows there we hung up our lyres. For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!” Psalm 137:1-6 

Blessed dissatisfaction.  That is what I want.  I want to have such an anticipation and fondness for Zion that everywhere else is a wastland.  Babylon had all of everything to offer to anyone who wanted it.  Can someone say “America?”

Why do I find my joy here if I am undergoing my alien sojourn upon this earth?  How dare I be mirthful when I am so out of place? 

When I don’t really think about it, I feel in place here.  I am comfortable by the waters of Babylon.  I am not weeping over my worldliness.  I am not pining for glory like I should.  When I force myself to meditate upon heaven I begin to experience this blessed dissatisfaction but I want more.   I want to be famished for glory.  I want to recognize that everything I do here is dehydrating my soul if I don’t look to Zion as my ultimate satisfaction and resting place.

Until this is straight in my heart, I cannot enjoy things here at all.  My enjoyment is whoredom unless it is in context of the hope of Zion. 

Lord, give me a heart for Zion.  Don’t let me be satisfied with less, no matter how blue the waters, how fat the calf, how rich the storehouses…

C.A.H.

You’re Going to Die, so what’s the Point?

Why does the resurrection matter?  Two reasons.

First, because if Jesus’ resurrection didn’t happen we have no hope of our own resurrection because death is still reigning.  Death has conquered the Son.   We are still in our sins.  Salvation itself is a vain hope.  The gates of heaven are shut.

Second, if we are not resurrected then what we do here on earth doesn’t matter.  If there is no life after this life then nothing matters.   Obedience, comfort, enjoyment are all vanity.

We have no reason to obey.  There would be no consequence for disobedience and no reward for obedience.  There would be no ultimate approbation from our Creator.

We have no comfort during suffering and injustice.  If there is no hope of all things being set to right; No ultimate justice being dealt;  No restoration of all things ruined by the Fall.  Then we cannot possibly endure while undergoing suffering.  It would make no sense and it would result in ultimate despair.

We have no grounds to enjoy creation.  The thing that makes our experience on earth rich and wonderful is the hope that we are only enjoying it as a sliver of a shadow of what is to come.  Our enjoyment of a sunset, marital affection,  or a great pork chop is empty materialistic hedonism if it is not in anticipation of a fuller glory to come;  In anticipation of enjoyment unhindered by the weight and gravity of sin.

If the resurrection is false, Christians are the most to be pitied.  Christianity is not a religion of healing, it is a religion of resurrection.  If people were cars, they wouldn’t just need a tune-up, they need a new engine.  We are dead.  We need to be made alive.  We will die.  We will be raised.  That is glorious.

C.A.H.

Eating My Fill

This is my first post.  I started this blog as a sort of journal.  It will not always be long and developed…actually it will probably be very short and trite in the beginning but that is point.  It is more of an opportunity to keep myself accountable to reading my Bible, praying and thinking.

The title of the blog is taken from a book by G.K. Chesterton called, Manalive.  Everyone should read it.  It carries the idea that until we are confronted with our own mortality we cannot begin to enjoy life and our worldview is only as good as its ability to make sense of life and death.  I believe in the Christian Worldview.  I believe that Christ defines who I am and that God has declared, created and upholds the world around me and how it functions. 

This blog is to expand my appetite for that world.  Not physically…Lord knows I don’t need that.  It is to expand my appetite to enjoy life under that Lordship of Christ. 

The world we live in is full of so many things that promise satisfaction and fulfillment but we are all starved not for lack of food, but for lack of appetite.  We are busting at the seams of pleasure but we have gaunt souls.  I have a gaunt soul.  Not because I have not parktaken (which indeed I have done to excess) but because I have partaken godlessly and it has left me starving.

So now, let us eat, drink and be merry…because Jesus reigns and I will too.

C.A.H.