Disposable Men

 A patriotic Christian brother who served in north Africa in the 80s said to me recently, “I don’t know that anything we did there was any good at all.”

Patriotism can be a good thing. Unthinking, uncritical, undiscerning patriotism is not. Many a person who has served in good faith has died needlessly in the service of this country. Those who served in good faith deserve honor. Those politicians and profiteers who in their greed sent men like so much cattle to be slaughtered in pointless wars will receive their just reward.

The God Who Acts

 The Psalms, making up the hymn book of the Old Testament, were written with certain assumptions in view which we tend to be missing in our singing today. 

1.) God acts in time and space according to the worship, the faith, the prayers, and the obedient faithfulness, of His people.

2.) He blesses His people when they obey Him, and disciplines them when they don’t. He also comes to their aid when they cry out for Him in humble dependence, showing Himself at work in their lives according to their needs.

3.) His acts are generally verifiable, though exceptions exist, because God is eternally uncircumscribable. Sometimes God and His acts are known only to Him, as He chooses to keep Himself hidden. And yet He often makes Himself known even to unbelievers through His acts, such that He receives glory through them knowing He is the one living and true God. When God acts, both believers and unbelievers can identify it.

4.) Victory and blessing are things that should be expected among God’s people. This does not mean sinless perfection, but a general trend in that direction. Nor does it mean that sickness, suffering, and death will never exist, or only exist as the result of some specific sin. The absence of victory and blessing among God’s people, however, often indicates unbelief and disobedience.

5.) Reflecting on God’s acts in history through corporate song should be a part of worship. The Israelites could and would sing about how they saw God acting in their own time.

Our singing, in contrast, quite often has a Gnostic tilt to it - detached from our own lives, and as if God stopped operating in the world in the first century. Or, it is individualistic, focusing strictly on the salvation of individuals. At its best it focuses on the Work of Christ. But somehow we sing as if Christ’s work has no ongoing effects beyond the salvation of individuals, pulling them out of a world that is not under His kingly authority and supervision. 

These thoughts are a work in process, and for now I offer them up as they are.

Errant Hearts

 In Reformed theology we regularly talk about the failure of much of the Church in having bad theology, or just weak or absent theology altogether. This is without a doubt a common and ongoing problem. And it always has negative effects. But the Reformed church has proven itself to be ineffectual all on its own, and that for many decades. And sometimes that has shown to be connected to outright sin. I find myself beginning to wonder more and more if the problem in the Church isn’t so much bad or weak theology, but rather a failure to love and trust God.

Now the Reformed mind will immediately start talking about how this is a false dichotomy, noting that bad doctrine hinders a person’s understanding of, his trust in, and his love for, God. And, how unbelief and a lack of love will prevent our understanding of Scripture. But let’s knock off the theological debates and our desire to rush back to intellectual categories for a second.

Are people really loving, and trusting, God? I think that is the question. And it should be addressed all on its own.

God has proven Himself quite resilient throughout the ages in being able to work around and alongside of His people’s imperfect knowledge. But Jesus Himself found at times he was unable to do miracles due to people’s unbelief. Faith and love, these are the indispensable things.

It seems to me we’ve been getting this all wrong.

Hypocritical Unbelievers

“The Church is full of hypocrites.”

You will never meet a person, Christian or otherwise, who lives fully consistent with what they say they believe. Everybody is in some part of his life a hypocrite. If you believe that isn’t the case about a person you know, either you aren’t thinking deeply enough about the matter, or he’s got you fooled.

But there are Christians who largely live consistent with what Scripture teaches, while they occasionally sin. Unbelief might want to believe otherwise, but unbelief begins from a position of falsehood, and wants to see what it wants to see, no matter the truth. A wicked person naturally wants to drag everybody else into sin and misery with him, because otherwise he has to face up to God and his sin on his own.

Beyond this, there can never be such a thing as a “consistent unbeliever”. By virtue of living in a universe created by the one true God, any position of sin and unbelief creates contradiction and conflict, which can only be reconciled by faith.

Should We Expect Christians To Doubt God?

Two quotes side by side, not merely to be controversial, but as an exercise in thinking the matter through publicly.

“Surely, while we teach that faith ought to be certain and assured, we cannot imagine any certainty that is not tinged with doubt, or any assurance that is not assailed by some anxiety.” - John Calvin

"Doubts should never be cherished, nor fears harbored. Let none cherish the delusion that he is a martyr to fear and doubt. It is no credit to any man's mental capacity to cherish doubt of God, and no comfort can possibly derive from such a thought. Our eyes should be taken off 'self', removed from our own weakness and allowed to rest implicitly upon God's strength. 'Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward.' A simple, confiding faith, living day by day, and casting its burden on the Lord, each hour of the day, will dissipate fear, drive away misgiving and deliver from doubt: 'Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by supplication and prayer, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.'" - E. M. Bounds

Contemporary “Christian” Musicians

 Here’s the thing about Contemporary Christian Music, and along with it the Contemporary Worship scene. The safe assumption to start out with is that their theological knowledge is severely lacking. You should expect to find errors, sometimes serious, and sometimes just silly. You can also expect that at some point later in their lives some of them will admit either that they were never Christians to begin with, or that they have apostatized from the faith. If you want good theology, which you should, and if you want Biblical direction for your life, the place to start is with a solid Bible-believing church that isn’t afraid to use the word “theology”. The worship should not be dry and dull, nor should it be chaotic, but rather reverent, sincere, and passionate. And then you should start reading theological books, by good theologians, the kinds of teachers most people have never heard of, but who are solidly grounded in the historic doctrine of the Christian faith. Look to godly people in your life for recommendations, and don’t be afraid to read outside of your own church tradition.

1 Corinthians

 The big context of 1 Corinthians is that the Corinthians were dividing among themselves according to different teachers. Each one was claiming that their teacher was the best, and they were using this as a source of identity and pride. In other words, they were each replacing Christ with their chosen teacher. Paul was pointing out that this was a fleshly and worldly way of thinking - immature, and the way of thinking that existed among the Jews and the Greeks. And in this, like the Jews and the Greeks, the Corinthian Christians were seeking worldly power and worldly wisdom. But the way of Christ was different, being the way of the cross.

It’s worth noting in this that Paul was making the Jews and Greeks parallel to each other, as ways that were different from the way of Christ. In other words, Judaism was not an option, but rather on the same level in relation to God as paganism. What Paul held to be true was completely the opposite of what Dispensationalism proposes today.

The sort of fleshliness and worldliness that existed among the Corinthians in their sectarianism is always accompanied by other forms of sin. And Paul was also seeking to address that in the book. Rather than taking the approach of humility, love, and sacrifice for one another, their overall approach was one of pride, power, contention, division, and self-exaltation. This is why chapter 13 reads the way it does. It may get read at weddings, but much of what Paul says in the chapter, and the way it fits in the larger context of the book, is skated over in doing so.

Loving Correction

 1 Cor. 4:21 

Τί θέλετε; ἐν ῥάβδῳ ἔλθω πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἢ ἐν ἀγάπῃ πνεύματί τε πραΰτητος;

“What do you want? Should I come to you with a rod [literally, “in a rod” or “in a scepter”, i.e. “in my official position exercising authority over you”] or in love and a sprit of gentleness?”

The rod here is not something used to discipline a person per se, but rather a scepter symbolizing a person’s authority.

For some reason the ESV simply ignores the τε there. But if you’re going to drop a word entirely, you should have a good reason, and there isn’t one here. The τε is a conjunction connecting ἀγάπῃ and πνεύματί, both of which are functioning as objects of the preposition ἐν. 

One of the clear things about Paul in the New Testament is that he does not like exercising his authority in discipline. He will take off the belt and use it if he has to. But he would much rather ask questions and appeal affectionately as a friend and a father to the churches in order that they might correct their behavior, so that harsh discipline is unnecessary.

An Anxious Nation

 I have been thinking for sometime now...I wonder what percentage of Americans are prescribed and take anxiety medication regularly. I would expect that official statistics are unreliable, and that the number is actually much higher than what they report. And then you consider the number of people who are taking illegal drugs and/or other prescription medication to deal with their emotional and mental issues. Altogether, the number of people who are taking some sort of medication to deal with such problems has to be sky high. Now think for a moment of the widespread problems that can result from playing with one’s body chemistry like that.

So what are the causes of mental and emotional problems?

1. Not being born again
2. Being born again, but refusing to repent of or deal with some sin in our lives
3. Not being reconciled or at peace with a person in our life
4. Not understanding Scripture in a key area, i.e. bad theology
5. Being subject to abuse, either in the present or the past
6. There can be environmental causes as well, which mess with one’s body chemistry
7. An unhealthy diet

I’m sure there’s something I’ve missed. But in each of these cases, prescription medication is simply a patch job. It does nothing to solve the actual problem, and in the long run can do more harm than good.

That Nation We Call Israel

 In the Old Testament, whenever Israel supported the wickedness of the nations, God brought them into a time of severe discipline. The nation that today calls itself Israel also supports all manner of wickedness, the kinds of things that Christians would generally recognize as being evil. On top of that, according to Dispensationalism God has not yet brought Israel together as a nation, as that is something that cannot happen until the Church is raptured from the earth. Why then do Dispensationalists so thoughtlessly support this nation that calls itself Israel, in spite of its wickedness, and purportedly on Biblical grounds?

What is needed of the Church in America today, among other things, is for Christians to know basic theology. And with the events this week, we’re seeing how much that is lacking.

The Peace of the Lord

 “All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.” (Westminster Confession of Faith 1.7)

Trying to push the requirements for salvation beyond what Scripture says is a mark of spiritual immaturity, or as Paul puts it, being carnal or fleshly. It is the partisan spirit he talks about in 1 Corinthians. Arminians can be saved, and so can Calvinists. Or, for that matter, a person may call himself either one and not be regenerate.

The number of things a person has to know and believe in order to be saved is really quite small. And that leaves a world of things both in and out of Scripture to seek out with joy - in fact, to find enjoyment in. When we are always seeking to turn those things into grounds on which to battle or exclude fellow believers we surrender the peace and joy Christ purchased for us by His work. And that is the point at which we, following Paul, may reasonably begin questioning our salvation. The fruit of the Spirit, he tells us, is peace.