Emmanuel, God with us

Advent: the arrival of a notable person, thing, or event.

Look back and celebrate the first:

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. 

Truly, truly I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice.  You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. 

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven.  And they worshiped him...

 And look forward with anticipation to the second:

Oh come, desire of nations, bind into one the hearts of all mankind; oh bid our sad divisions cease, and be yourself our King of Peace. 

Less theatrics, more nourishment

Calvin's opinion on the Eucharist:

For Calvin, the Supper is not a theatrical miracle at which the people of God are spectators, but a living encounter with the glorious person of the ascended Christ; the elements are given not to gaze upon but to consume.

Peter Leithart,  "What's wrong with transubstantiation? An evaluation of theological models." Westminster Theological Journal 53 (1991): p. 318.

 

Whole holiness

The best thing I've ever read on how sanctification works: 

Without sincerity and diligence in a universality of obedience, there is not mortification of any one perplexing lust to be obtained...He that has a running sore upon him, arising from an ill habit of body, contracted by intemperance and ill diet, let him apply himself with what diligence an skill he can to the cure of his sore, if he leave the general habit of his body under distempers, his labor and travail will be in vain.  So will his attempts...be that shall endeavor to stop a bloody issue of sin and filth in his soul, and is not equally careful of his universal spiritual temperature and constitution.  

-John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation, eds. Kelly M. Kapic, Justin Taylor (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006), pp. 86-87.

In other words, to grow in holiness we must care for our whole person and pursue spiritual health in every way, rather than spending all of our energy eliminating one or two habitual sins.  

Every Christian, every grace

 You cannot choose which beatitudes you want to be true of your life, and leave the others to one side.  The Beatitudes come as a whole, not as a series of options.  Every Christian is intended to show every grace.  One beatitude flows into the next, as we have already seen:  the poor in spirit mourn for their sins, and as a result are marked by the meekness of those who know the truth about themselves in the presence of God.  Such men and women hunger and thirst for righteousness, and receive it.  Since they have been filled only because of the Lord's mercy to them, they become merciful to others.  

-Sinclair Ferguson, The Sermon on the Mount: Kingdom Life in a Fallen World (East Peoria, IL: Banner of Truth, 2009) pp. 35-36.

Upholder and Restorer

Sobering, encouraging, and pastoral words from Augustine, preached on the anniversary of a martyr's death: 

The whole world is against you, and you can say Who is against us?  They answer you: "And what is the whole world, when we are dying for the one by whom the world was made?"

Let them say it, let them say it, let us hear them, let us all say together, If God is for us, who is against us? 

They can rave, they can curse, they can slander, they can hound us with false reproaches, finally they can not merely destroy the body but even reduce it to shreds; and what will the achieve?  For behold, God is my helper, and the Lord is the upholder of my soul (Ps. 54:4).

Tell me, blessed martyr, your body is being torn to shreds, and you can say, "It has nothing to do with me"?

"Yes, I said that."

Why? Tell us why.

"Because the Lord is the upholder of my soul.  My body is restored through my soul..."

But your body is being torn by dogs.

"Even if my body is being torn by dogs, still it is to be raised up by the lord...Seeing that the Lord is the upholder of my soul, he will also be the restorer of my body. What will I be lacking, if the enemy tears my limbs to shreds, since God is numbering my hairs?"

So let us say, let us say out of faith, let us say in hope, let us say with the most ardent charity, If God is for us, who is against us?

[...]

How can you prove it, O glorious martyr, how can you prove to me what you say: If God is for us, who is against us?  It's obvious that if God is for you all, who can be against you?  But prove that God is for you.  

...Here, I'll teach you:  Who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us all.  You heard this that follows when the apostle was read.  You see, after saying If God is for us, who is against us, [it is] as though he were told, "Prove that God is for you," straightaway he brought forward a grand document in proof, straightaway he introduced the martyr of martyrs, the witness of witnesses; namely the one whom as his own Son the Father did not spare, but handed him over for us all.

-Augustine, Sermon 334, The Works of St. Augustine.

How has God proven his love for us?  See Romans 5:8.

Louis C.K., smartphones, and the gospel

Check out this video of Louis C.K. telling Conan O'brien what he thinks of smartphones, and why he won't get them for his kids.  In it he makes a couple important points.  First, he mentions how social media and the like inhibit our ability to have compassion or develop empathy for others (he's not alone; also, see: psychopathy).  Also, and just as importantly, he notes its power to distract us from our immediate situations--but he doesn't leave it at that, he tells why that matters:  

You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something.  That's what the phones are taking away, is the ability to just sit there.  That's being a person.  Because underneath everything in your life there's that thing, that empty--forever empty.  That knowledge that its all for nothing and that you're alone.  Its down there. 

And sometimes when things clear away, you're not watching anything, you're in your car and you start going, 'Oh no, here it comes...that I'm alone.'  It starts to visit on you.  Just this sadness.  Life is tremendously sad, just being in it.

"It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick," said Jesus.

But you've got to know you're sick first.  

Pardon has dawned from the grave

 John Chrysostom on Easter.  It doesn't get much better than this:

If anyone is devout and a lover of God, let them enjoy this beautiful and radiant festival.
If anyone is a grateful servant, let them, rejoicing, enter into the joy of the Lord.
If anyone has wearied themselves in fasting, let them now receive recompense.
If anyone has labored from the first hour, let them today receive the just reward.
If anyone has come at the third hour, with thanksgiving let them feast.
If anyone has arrived at the sixth hour, let them have no misgivings; for they shall suffer no loss.
If anyone has delayed until the ninth hour, let them draw near without hesitation.
If anyone has arrived even at the eleventh hour, let them not fear on account of tardiness.
For the master is gracious and receives the last even as the first; he gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour, just as to him who has labored from the first.
He has mercy upon the last and cares for the first; to the one He gives, and to the other he is gracious.
Enter all of you, therefore, into the joy of our Lord, and, whether first or last, receive your reward.  

O rich and poor, one with another, dance for joy!
O you ascetics and you negligent, celebrate the day!
You that have fasted and you that have disregarded the fast, rejoice today!
The table is rich-laden: feast royally all of you!
The calf is fatted: let no one go forth hungry!

Let all partake of the feast of faith.  Let all receive the riches of goodness.
Let no one lament their poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn their transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Savior's death has set us free.  

He that was taken by death has annihilated it!
He descended into Hades and took Hades captive!
He embittered it when it tasted His flesh!  And anticipating this, Isaiah exclaimed:
"Hades was embittered when it encountered Thee in the lower regions."

[...]

O death, where is thy sting?
O Hades, where is thy victory?
Christ is risen, and you are overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and no one dead remains in a tomb!

For Christ, being raised from the dead, has become the first-fruits of them that have slept.
To Him be glory and might unto the ages of ages.

Amen. 

The mind incarnate they cannot confine

I know I've been a bit Wendell Berry-poetry-heavy of late...but its just so good.  One more, for good measure:

After the slavery of the body, dumbfoundment 
of the living flesh in the order of spending 
and wasting, then comes the enslavement 
of consciousness, the incarnation of mind 
in machines.  Once the mind is reduced
to the brain, then it falls within the grasp 
of the machine.  It is the mind incarnate 
in the body, in community, and in the earth 
that they cannot confine.  The difference 
is love;  the difference is grief and joy. 
Remember the body's pleasure and its sorrow.
Remember its grief at the loss of all it knew.
Remember its redemption in suffering 
and in love.  Remember its resurrection 
on the last day, when all made things 
that have not refused this passage 
will return, clarified, each fully being 
in the being of all.  Remember the small 
secret creases of the earth--the grassy, 
the wooded, and the rocky--that the water 
has made, finding its way.  Remember 
the voices of the water flowing.  Remember 
the water flowing under the shadows
of the trees, of the tall grasses, of the stones.  
Remember the water striders walking over 
the surface of the water as it flowed.  
Remember the great sphere of the small 
wren's song, through which the water flowed 
and the light fell.  Remember, and come to rest 
in light's ordinary miracle.  

-Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997 (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 1999), p. 118.

Let us look in anticipation for that last day--that day of return, clarity, and fullness of being. 

Though he slay me

How do you explain the interplay between God's sovereignty and our responsibility in the midst of suffering?

Says Job,

Though he slay me, I will hope in him; yet I will argue my ways to his face. (13:15)

Indeed,

Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life... (John 6:34)

Google mapping the end of man

Check out this nice piece from Mockingbird on some of the gains and losses that come along with the really spectacular technology of Google maps.

A snippet:

...this is the gist of Walker Percy's critique of modernity, that our age has lost humankind's God-given sovereignty or, better yet, that our age has shipped off our capabilities to Experts in the Field...this loss of sovereignty feigns sovereignty: even in the remotest canyons, I can find me, my blue blinking dot.  I have the illusion of control that I bought (happily) from Google, Inc.

Creation, Fall, Redemption in two poems

See Gen. 1-3, and the following:

To sit and look at light-filled leaves

May let us see or seem to see,

Far backward as through clearer eyes

To what unsighted hope believes: 

The blessed conviviality

That sang Creation's seventh sunrise

Time when the Maker's radiant sight

made radiant every thing He saw,

And every thing he saw was filled

With perfect joy and life and light.

His perfect pleasure was sole law;

No pleasure had become self-willed.

For all His creatures were His pleasures

And their whole pleasure was to be 

What He made them; they sought no gain

Or growth beyond their proper measures,

Nor longed for change or novelty.

The only new thing could be pain.

Also see 1 Cor. 15, and the following:

What hard travail God does in death!

He strives in sleep, in our despair, 

And all flesh shudders underneath

The nightmare of his sepulcher.

The earth shakes, grinding its deep stone;

All night the cold wind heaves and pries;

Creation strains sinew and bone

Against the dark door where He lies.

The stem bent, pent in seed, grows straight

And stands.  Pain breaks in song.  Surprising

The merely dead, graves fill with light

Like opened eyes.  He rests in rising. 

-Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir, "1979: III," "1980: I."

When what was made has been unmade

A gracious Sabbath stood here while they stood
Who gave our rest a haven.
Now fallen, they are given
To labor and distress.
These times we know much evil, little good
To steady us in faith
And comfort when our losses press
Hard on us, and we choose, 
In panic or despair or both,
To keep what we will lose.

For we are fallen like the trees, our peace
Broken, and so we must
Love where we cannot trust,
Trust where we cannot know,
And must await the wayward-coming grace
That joins living and dead,
Taking us where we would not go--
Into the boundless dark.
When what was made has been unmade
The Maker comes to do His work.

-Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997 (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 1999), p. 74.

Which way to the master?

My lot is to approach thee with godly fear and humble confidence, for thy condescension equals thy grandeur, and thy goodness is thy glory.

[...]

This is the foundation of my hope, the refuge of my safety, the new and living way to thee, the means of that conviction of sin, brokenness of heart, and self-despair, which will endear to me the gospel.  

[...]

May every part of my character and conduct make a serious and amiable impression on others, and impel them to ask the way to the Master.

-Valley of Vision, "Confidence".

The blood of Christ, neat

The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, 200-proof grace--of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly.  The word of the Gospel--after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself to heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps--suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started...Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case.

-Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997), pp. 114-115.

See John 4:14, and drink your fill of Jesus, our Redeemer who has come to take back what is his.

Celebrity roommate

Ty Simmons, the face of Covenant Seminary, with whom I happen to live, has written an excellent guest post on Trevin Wax's blog over on The Gospel Coalition.  You'd do well to read it.  A highlight to get you interested:

Here is my confession: I assuage my guilt with beauty.  In my struggles with sin, in my struggles with addictions, in my struggles with inclinations of the heart, I have sought out beauty alone to make me feel better...I do not continue down the narrow path because the beautiful sentence I have just read has atoned for my sin or the music I've been listening to brought me to tears.

[...] 

I long for beauty to save me and she continually proves an impotent savior.  

A writer, he is. 

iPod, YouTube, Wii Play

Check out T. David Gordon's review of Brent Layham's new book iPod, YouTube, Wii Play.  Looks like an helpful discussion of the impact of digital media on Christian discipleship.  

Understanding Understanding Jacques Ellul

Ellul is getting some attention!  Head over to Second Nature Journal to get the highlights of a recent review of Understanding Jacques Ellul, or head to Cardus to get the whole thing.  Ellul is taking over the world! Just kidding.  That will never, ever happen.  Mostly because he's dead, and also because people get offended by him really, really quickly. 

However, as my sister so aptly noted yesterday he is surely doing somersaults in his grave after hearing that the Roman Catholic church is now offering plenary indulgences via the Pope's twitter feed ("When a tweet in the server rings" etc. etc.).  

Miracle and martyrdom

So I just picked up a book called Understanding Jacques Ellul, by three professors at Wheaton (Jeff Greenman, Read Schuchardt, and Noah Toly). More Ellul!  It never ends!  Anywho, I HIGHLY recommend it to everyone everywhere if a.) you have tried to read Ellul and find him dense and difficult to follow (which he is), b.) you want to get a grip on the interconnectedness between media ecology, technology, religion, politics, and the Christian life, c.) you love Ellul, or d.) you're alive and can read.  

Here's what these guys have to say about Ellul and the city:

...he believed [the city] was the most significant human achievement--even the sine qua non of a host of other achievements--but he believed that this achievement represented a fundamental rejection of God and God's promises.  Self-expression and self-realization, for Ellul, are expressions of our sinfulness, even when the issue in great achievements.  

[...]

For Ellul, Christians are called to the city in imitation of the ministry of Jesus Christ, whose work in Jerusalem represented both martyrdom and miracle.  Christians are without question called to live and work in the city.  In doing so, they represent the presence of God in the midst of the self-assertion, self -realization, and self-sufficiency of human beings--the body of Christ, as God's greatest accomplishment  in the midst of the greatest accomplishment of his rebellious creatures.  Our presence in the city should signify and symbolize what the heavenly city of God will be like and that it will be different from the city of man.  For this betrayal of the city and the self-sufficiency that it symbolizes, Christians should expect rejection and suffering.  In other words, they should expect to follow Jesus' footsteps into martyrdom.   

If the city does not reject us, then this is, strictly speaking, miraculous.  Like the resurrection and ascension, this is a supernatural even that requires God's intervention. For the people of faith in a God who performs miracles and rules over nature, this is perfectly conceivable, even if it is both unexpected and unlikely.  For this reason, Christians should not prejudge whether our faithful representation of God's judgment upon and adoption of the city, of the promised triumph of faith over self-assertion, self realization, and self-sufficiency, will result in miracle or martyrdom.  That is up to God.  We know we are called to the city.  We cannot know whether our calling is to martyrdom or to miracle.  

-Jeffrey P. Greenman, Read Mercer Schuchardt, and Noah J. Toly, Understanding Jacques Ellul: (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012), pp. 70-73. 

At the moment, its pretty popular to be an "urban church" or to be "intentional" about "loving the city", etc etc.  I think this is excellent.  However, I have wondered how often, in the name of affirming the goodness (image-bearing) of all that goes on in the city--art, music, culture, community--we cease to embody (as Ellul would say it) the presence of the Kingdom in the city.  Or, using Ellul's terms, how often does it seem a miracle that the city does not reject us? 

A humble enterprise

Ellul's caution in the conclusion to The Presence of the Kingdom:

Day after day the wind blows away the pages of our calendars, our newspapers, and our political regimes, and we glide along the stream of time without a judgement, carried about by "all winds of doctrine" on the current of history, which is always slipping into a perpetual past.  Now we ought to react vigorously against this slackness--this tendency to drift.  If we are to live in this world we need to know it far more profoundly; we need to rediscover the meaning of events, and the spiritual framework which our contemporaries have lost.  This will be a difficult enterprise, for it is new and humble.  But "all things are ours," that is, for us, as Christians, and we are able to undertake this new work.  

[...]

In so doing, we need to avoid...adopting, purely and simply, one of the attitudes of the world, that which seems to be most in harmony with the Christian ideal, and then becoming Communist, Liberal, Pacifist, Personalist, and so on, according to one's taste and sentiment, which we then justify by appealing to some Christian truth.  But to do this, under the pretext of being "in the world," actually means belonging to the world.  Christians who do this are no longer acting as "leaven" in the world--they have capitulated to it.  They are simply agreeing with the world, walking in the same way, adopting its method, and, in spite of appearances, simply fostering the devil's work in the world.

-Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom, 2nd ed. (Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard Publishing, 1989), pp. 114-119.

Gains and losses

If Wendell Berry's list left you wanting more, check out Jacques Ellul's list of "76 reasonable questions to ask about any technology", divided by category (Ecological, Social, Practical, Moral, Ethical, Vocational, Metaphysical, Political, Aesthetic).  They're actually very revealing things to consider, and most are pretty simple (so don't be intimidated by the number!).  

Some of my favorites include:
-Is it ugly?
-What noise does it make?
-Does it require a bureaucracy for its perpetuation?
-What aspect of the inner self does it reflect?
-Does it express love?
-Does it express rage?
-What does it allow us to ignore?
-What are its effects on the land?
-What are its effects on the planet and the person?

And these two questions are the first two we should ask, in my opinion, when considering any technology, as they lead to all the others:
-What is gained by its use?
-What is lost in using it?

And, in light of your answer to those two, I would add the following:
-Are you OK with that?

Whither are we going?

Back to Ellul, after a brief hiatus.  Had to stop for a few weeks and breathe again.  Consider his assessment of our culture with regard to means and ends:

The first great fact that emerges from our civilization is that today everything has become "means."  There is no longer an "end;" we do not know whither we are going...we set huge machines in motion in order to arrive nowhere.  The end (by this I mean the collective end of civilization, for individuals still have their own ends--for instance to succeed in a competition, or to get a higher salary, and the like) has been effaced by the means.  Thus man--who used to be the end of this whole humanist system of means--man, who is still proclaimed as an "end" in political speeches, has in reality himself become the "means" of the very means which ought to serve him: as, for instance, in economics or the State.  In order that economics should be in a good condition, man submits to the demands of an economic mechanism, becomes a total producer, and puts all his powers at the disposal of production.  He becomes an obedient consumer, and with his eyes shut he swallows everything that economics puts into his mouth.  Thus, fully persuaded that we are procuring the happiness of man, we are turning him into an instrument of these modern gods, which are our "means."

-Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom, 2nd ed. (Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard Publishing, 1989), p. 51.

Whither are we going?  See Revelation 21.  

Kingdom life in a fallen world

Sinclair Ferguson on the kingdom of God and the Sermon on the Mount:

A paradox lies at the heart of the kingdom.  On the one hand it has already come near (Matt. 4:17, 23)...But in another sense, it is still to come.  That is why Jesus teaches us to pray to God, 'Your kingdom come' (6:10).  How can the kingdom be here, and yet lie in the future?   

[...]

The kingdom of God has come, in Jesus.  Through faith in him, we enter the kingdom.  It belongs to us.  But we live in 'the kingdom of the world' (Rev. 11:15), although we do not belong to it.  We belong to a new order of things, a new age altogether, a new humanity in Christ.  But that new life has to be lived out within the context of the old. 

[...]

That kingdom will be consummated only when Christ returns and transforms the kingdom of this world into his own kingdom, publicly putting everything under his authority.  But the Sermon on the Mount is not about there and then; it is about here and now.  It its not asking us whether we will live a Christlike life in heaven.  It is calling us to lead that life on earth, as Jesus himself did to perfection.  It is not a sermon about an ideal life in an ideal world, but about the kingdom life in a fallen world.  

How do you react?

Sinclair Ferguson, The Sermon on the Mount, pp. 7-8, 10. 

For your consideration:

Consider Wendell Berry's helpful and practical (doable!) criteria for deciding whether or not to use a new technology, written in 1987:

1.  The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.

2.  It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.

3.  It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces. 

4.  It should use less energy than the one it replaces.

5.  If possible, it should use some sort of solar energy, such as that of the body.

6.  It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools. 

7.  It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.

8.  It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.

And finally, this last one is particularly worthy of our consideration: 

9.  It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.  

 -Wendell Berry, "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer."

p.s.- I know, I know.  It is indeed ironic that I first read and am posting this list onto the Internet with a computer (two things Wendell clearly had, and continues to have, no use for).  But I've already got one, so I'll work on applying these principles from here on out.  As soon as I find some solar panels.  Deal?

Receivings and deservings

O Lord, I am astonished at the difference between my receivings and my deservings, between the state I am now in and my past gracelessness, between the heaven I am bound for and the hell I merit.  Who made me to differ, but thee?...O that such a crown should fit the head of such a sinner!  such high advancement be for an unfruitful person! such joys for so vile a rebel!  Infinite wisdom cast the design of salvation into the mould of purchase and freedom...Secure me by thy grace as I sail across this stormy sea.

-Valley of Vision, "The Mover," pp. 12-13.

Work which is slow and deep

Elull on the nature of the Christian's work in the world:

But when we say that the situation of the Christian is revolutionary--and that it is here that the change in our civilization must begin--this statement sounds paradoxical and ironical. To say that the Christian is a revolutionary, does not always seem obvious in history...For today Christians certainly seem to be the most conservative, and indeed the mildest, of men...But the fact that Christians, as human beings, at certain periods in history lose sight of the revolutionary character of their religion, does not mean that the Holy Spirit has ceased to work, and that the position of the Christian...has ceased to be revolutionary.

For the intervention of the Holy Spirit is not dependent on man and his choice, any more than the revolutionary character of the Christian situation depends on man. It is not because people choose Christ that they become Christian, it is because Christ has chosen them.  It is not because Christians choose to go out into the world that they work there, it is because Christ sends them there. They are not revolutionary because they feel the urgent need for revolution...The situation of the Christian is revolutionary for other than intellectual or self-chosen reasons...This situation is part of the work of the church in the world, and it is true to say (as simple fact) that during the greater part of its history the church has, indeed, been in a revolutionary situation.

We must, however, define what we mean more precisely: we are here concerned with a situation, but not necessarily with an action.  This situation may be defined as a "state of permanent revolution," which may be translated into concerted action, but which may also remain in a state of ferment, and lead to a work which is slow and deep...Our concern is for a revolution affecting the world, and not only the State, or the government.  It is possible to have a conformist attitude to the government, and yet to be revolutionary toward the world.  Here the idea of revolution is much deeper.  Here the concern is not essentially to change the form of the State, or of an economy, but the very framework of a civilization, which ought to be continually examined and tested...Thus we have a deeper vision...of what this revolutionary character of the Christian faith might be in the world at the present day.

Jaques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom, pp. 32-33. 

A choice

Ellul on what he perceives to be our situation in the world as believers (and I tend to think he's right, which freaks me out):

At present we are confronted by a choice: either a mass civilization, technological, "conformist"--the "Brave New World" of Huxley, hell organized upon earth for the bodily comfort of everybody--or a different civilization, which we cannot yet describe because we do not know what it will be; it still has to be created consciously, by men...if we let ourselves drift along the stream of history, without knowing it, we shall have chosen the power of suicide, which is at the heart of the world.

[...] 

Now the situation of the Christian in the world is a revolutionary situation.  His or her share in the preservation of the world is to be an inexhaustible revolutionary force in the midst of the world.  Here we are concerned with the preservation of the world, for in our own day, as I have tried to show already, "conformity to history" leads to catastrophe: to the death of millions of people...to the technical establishment of suicide.  In order to preserve the world, it is actually necessary that a genuine revolution should take place. 

-Jaques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom, p. 31. 

We are all implicated

Wendell Berry, speaking in 2012 at the Jefferson Lectures for the National Endowment for the Humanities:   

[My teacher, Wallace Stegner] thought rightly that we Americans, by inclination at least, have been divided into two kinds: “boomers” and “stickers.” Boomers, he said, are “those who pillage and run,” who want “to make a killing and end up on Easy Street,” whereas stickers are “those who settle, and love the life they have made and the place they have made it in.” “Boomer” names a kind of person and a kind of ambition that is the major theme, so far, of the history of the European races in our country. “Sticker” names a kind of person and also a desire that is, so far, a minor theme of that history, but a theme persistent enough to remain significant and to offer, still, a significant hope.

[...]

That we live now in an economy that is not sustainable is not the fault only of a few mongers of power and heavy equipment. We all are implicated. We all, in the course of our daily economic life, consent to it, whether or not we approve of it. This is because of the increasing abstraction and unconsciousness of our connection to our economic sources in the land, the land-communities, and the land-use economies. In my region and within my memory, for example, human life has become less creaturely and more engineered, less familiar and more remote from local places, pleasures, and associations. Our knowledge, in short, has become increasingly statistical.

Statistical knowledge once was rare. It was a property of the minds of great rulers, conquerors, and generals, people who succeeded or failed by the manipulation of large quantities that remained, to them, unimagined because unimaginable: merely accountable quantities of land, treasure, people, soldiers, and workers. This is the sort of knowledge we now call “data” or “facts” or “information.” Or we call it “objective knowledge,” supposedly untainted by personal attachment, but nonetheless available for industrial and commercial exploitation. By means of such knowledge a category assumes dominion over its parts or members. With the coming of industrialism, the great industrialists, like kings and conquerors, become exploiters of statistical knowledge. And finally virtually all of us, in order to participate and survive in their system, have had to agree to their substitution of statistical knowledge for personal knowledge. Virtually all of us now share with the most powerful industrialists their remoteness from actual experience of the actual world. Like them, we participate in an absentee economy, which makes us effectively absent even from our own dwelling places. Though most of us have little wealth and perhaps no power, we consumer–citizens are more like James B. Duke than we are like my grandfather. By economic proxies thoughtlessly given, by thoughtless consumption of goods ignorantly purchased, now we all are boomers.

In other words, "None is righteous, no, not one".

An intolerable dilemma

Jaques Ellul, writing in 1945 on "collective sin" and the Christian's place in a lost world:

It is now impossible to be isolated, to be separate.  The illusion of a Christian life attached to a convent or hermitage has vanished.  Whether it be due to the simple material fact of communications, or to the interdependence of economic institutions, or to the growth of democracy, in every way these influences combine to force man into this solidarity with others.  Thus the Christian cannot consider himself pure, as compared with others.  He cannot declare that he is free from the sin of the world.  A major fact of our present civilization is that more and more sin becomes collective, and the individual is forced to participate in collective sin. 

[...]

This situation is, however, disagreeable for a Christian...Some will try to dissociate the spiritual situation from the material one, despising the material situation, denying that it has any meaning, declaring that it is neutral, and does not concern eternal life, and that we can turn our attention solely to "spiritual problems."  Such people argue that nothing matters but "the interior life": that is, that to be the "salt" or the "light" is a purely spiritual affirmation, which has no practical consequences.  This is exactly what Jesus Christ calls hypocrisy.  It means giving up any attempts to live out one's religion in the world.  It turns the living person of Jesus Christ into an abstraction.  God became incarnate--it is not for us to undo his work.  This dissociation of our life into two spheres--the one "spiritual," where we can be "perfect," and the other material and unimportant, where we behave like other people--is one of the reasons why churches have so little influence on the world.  This avoidance of responsibility for our faith is evidently a convenient solution for the intolerable dilemma in which we are placed by the society of our day.  All we can say is: this is the exact opposite of what Jesus Christ wills for us, and of that which he came to do. 
 

-Jaques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom, pp. 6-7. 

Though I would say 1) the hope of remaining pure by separation has always been an illusion, and 2) this separation of spiritual and material has been an issue for much of the history of the church, Ellul's point nonetheless stands (and is, in fact, made more relevant).

 

Our calling

It's finals week, so this will be short...but its too good not to share.  Here's a gem from class discussion the other day:

[As image-bearers], we've been called to a life of putting the world back together.
 

-Mike Williams

Only possible by the power of God, of course. 

 

The parable of the clown

A parable from Soren Kierkegaard, born 200 years ago Sunday:

It happened that a fire broke out backstage at a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was just a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the wits, who believe that it is a joke.

-Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Vol. I, p. 30.

Divine economics

...the Enlightenment emphasis on human reason and autonomy 'left nothing to restrain the competition for wealth', so that the laissez-faire economics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was powerless to restrain corporate human greed...Associated with the unrestrained use of capital (and interest) without regard for the human consequences, 'capitalism' came to have a bad name in many christian circles.  Conversely, the prohibition of private property in Marxist 'socialism' has had similar dire consequences for human society.

Rebuilding a theology of social relations has been a major challenge facing the churches in the last century.  This task is made more difficult by a lack of awareness of the corporate dimensions of sin among many Christians, seen at its worst in the simplistic identification of personal prosperity with divine blessing, or of 'freedom of choice' consumerism with gospel values.  Debates about wealth creation in modern western societies illustrate some of the issues involved...According to the Christian vision, wealth creation is inseparable from the growth of people as persons in relationship.  Christians are to be effective contributors in the manufacturing industry, on the factory floor, in the research laboratory, and as directors.  Nevertheless, those so involved are called not only to ensure the quality of the product, and a fair return to all involved, but also to implement policy that is consistent with Christian ideals of what it means to be human, in social as well as personal terms...On a wider front, matters such as national policy on aid and development, support of cross-cultural evangelism, or the promotion of peace and justice come into view.  Christians who see their role in the divine economy as limited to immediate friends or neighbourhood fail to catch the breadth and grandeur of the divine vision for a 'commonwealth' of all races, tribes and tongues.

- Charles Sherlock, The Doctrine of Humanity, pp. 108-110.

Cash-as-sacrament

The narrowing of 'economy' to refer only to money arrangements has gone along with a simliar narrowing in the meaning of 'wealth'. It derives from the old world 'weal' (meaning 'goodness'), the root from which terms such as 'welfare' (meaning 'well-being') derive. Wealth in this sense may be defined as the sum total of resources which enrich human living, relationships and service. Money, in turn, can be described as the 'effectual sign and symbol' of wealth. This sacramental language reflects the idea that although a banknote is in itself only a (very fancy) piece of paper, when used in exchange for goods it conveys its face value effectively; but it is not the goods themselves...money is not wealth in and of itself; wealth transcends having money in the bank. In societies where the cash economy is less significant, wealth may be measured by the number of cattle one owns, the food one grows, or the degree of influence carried by one's reputation. The accumulation of capital is limited in such societies, since it requires larger barns to be built to house the crop; large-scale capital accumulation is possible only in a society where money functions as the effective symbol of wealth.

 

[...]

 

One distortion in modern capitalist systems is the way we have come to think of money as real in and of itself, so that money has become the barometer of wealth. In biblical terms, however, it is the created order and the gospel of Christ which constitute the divine 'wealth' God offers us, an 'inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading (1 Pe. 1:4)...We are to care for and promote the 'common weal', the good of the whole human community, local, regional, national and global (cf. Je. 29:1-7)...In this light, Christians should be as committed to justice and as critical of vested interests as any Marxist, but with greater realism about the difficulties involved, a more nuanced ethic, and a firmer hope. 

 

-Charles Sherlock, The Doctrine of Humanity, pp. 106-107.

The center

If we understand that we have a natural aggression which is aggravated by the inevitable frustrations life, and amplified by the increasing controls of civilization, that we use each other and ourselves as scapegoats, that the deepest aspect of our anger is in the face of innocent suffering and injustice, and that the often unrecognized but primary object of our anger is toward God, then we are at that very center of Christianity asking the question to which the crucifixion of Christ is the answer.

-C. Fitsimmons Allison, Guilt, Anger, and God, p. 86.

All-sufficient preciousness

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world's finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.

-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamozov

Know yourself

Labour to see the emptiness, shortness, and the pollution that cleaveth to a man's own righteousness.  This also must in some measure be known, before a man can know the nature of the love of Christ.  They that see nothing of the loathsomeness of man's best things, will think, that the love of Christ is of that as to be procured, or won, obtained or purchased by man's good deeds.  And although so much gospel light is broken forth as to stop men's mouths from saying this, yet 'tis nothing else but sound conviction of the vileness of man's righteousness, that will enable men to see that the love of Christ is of that nature, as to save a man without it; as to see that it is of that nature as to justify him without it:  I say, without it, or not at all.  There is shortness, there is hypocrisy, there is a desire of vain glory, there is pride, there is presumption in man's own righteousness: nor can it be without these wickednesses, when men know not the nature of the love of Christ. 

-John Bunyan, All Loves Excelling, p. 85.

Certain, consistent, purposed love

Love in us is a passion of the soul, and being such, is subject to ebb and flow, and to be extreme both ways.  For whatever is a passion of the soul, whether love or hatred, joy or fear, is more apt to exceed, or come short, than to keep within its due bounds.  Hence, oft-times that which is loved today is hated to-morrow (2 Sam 13:15).

...love in us is apt to choose to itself undue and unlawful objects, and to reject those, that with the leave of God, we may embrace and enjoy...

Love in us, requires, that something pleasing and delightful be in the object loved...for the love that is in us, is not of power to set itself on work, where no allurement is in the thing to be beloved.

...Love in us decays, though once never so warm and strongly fixed, if the object falls off as to its first alluring provocation; or disappointeth our expectation with some unexpected reluctancy to our fancy or our mind. 

...All this we know to be true from nature, for every one of us are thus...our love, as we are natural, is weak, unorderly, fails and miscarries, either by being too much or too little...

...We therefore must put a vast different betwixt love, as found in us, and love as found in Christ...here there is no ebbing, no flowing, no going beyond, no coming short; and so nothing of uncertainty...Love in Christ pitcheth not itself upon unlawful objects...Love in Christ requireth no taking beauteousness in the object to be beloved, as not being able to put forth itself without such attracting allurements (Ezek. 16:6-8)...

Love in Christ decays not, nor can be tempted so to do by anything that happens, or that shall happen hereafter, in the object so beloved...The reason is, because Christ loves to make us comely, not because we are so (Ezek. 16:9-14).

-John Bunyan, All Loves Excelling, pp. 48-50.

What are we lacking?

The late Neil Postman, longtime professor of media ecology at NYU, commenting in 1994 on our false hope in technology/information to save us from ourselves:

...let me summarize in two ways what I mean. First, I'll cite a remark made repeatedly by my friend Alan Kay, who is sometimes called “the father of the personal computer.” Alan likes to remind us that any problems the schools cannot solve without machines, they cannot solve with them. Second, and with this I shall come to a close: If a nuclear holocaust should occur some place in the world, it will not happen because of insufficient information; if children are starving in Somalia, it's not because of insufficient information; if crime terrorizes our cities, marriages are breaking up, mental disorders are increasing, and children are being abused, none of this happens because of a lack of information. These things happen because we lack something else.

 

 See Genesis 3. 

Death is the Gate of Life

On this Easter morning, pay a visit to His grave...because it is a quiet spot...

 

Let me lead by the hand of meditation, my brother: let me take thee by the arm of thy fancy, and let me again say to thee, "Come, see the place where the Lord lay." 

 

Oh! I have longed for rest, for I have heard this world's rumors in my ears so long that I have begged for "a lodge in some vast wilderness, some boundless contiguity of shade," where I might hide myself forever. I am sick of this tiring and trying life; my frame is weary, my soul is made to repose herself awhile. I would I could lay myself down a little by the edge of some pebbly brook, with no companion save the fair flowers or the nodding willows. I would I could recline in the stillness, where the air brings balm to the tormented brain, where there is no murmur save the hum of the summer bee, no whisper, save that of the zephyrs, and no song except the caroling of the Lark. I wish I could be at ease for a moment. I have become a man of the world; my brain is racked, my soul is tired. Oh! Wouldst thou be quiet, Christian? Merchant, wouldst thou rest from thou toils? Wouldst thou be calm for once? Then come hither. [Christ's tomb] is a pleasant garden, far from the hum of Jerusalem; the noise and din of business will not reach thee there: "Come and see the place where the Lord lay." It is a sweet resting spot, a withdrawing room for thy soul; where thou mayest brush from thy garments the dust of earth and muse awhile in peace...

 

Jesus rose, and as the Lord our savior rose, so must all his followers rise. Die I must--the body must be a carnival of worms; it must be eaten by those tiny cannibals, peradventure it shall be scattered from one portion of the earth to another...[but] like the bones lying in the valley of vision, though separated from one another, the moment God shall speak, the bone will creep to its bone; then the flesh will come upon it; the four winds of heaven shall blow, and the breath shall return. So let me die, let beasts devour me, let fire turn this body into gas and vapor, all its particles shall yet again be restored...Christs same body rose; so shall mine. O, my soul, dost thou now dread to die? Thou wilt lose thy partner body a little while, but thou will be married again in heaven...

 

The grave--what is it? It is the bath in which the Christian puts his clothes of the body to have them washed and cleansed. Death--what is it? It is the waiting-room where we robe ourselves for immortality...Death is the gate of life. 

 

Come, view the place then, with all hallowed meditation, where the Lord lay.

-CH Spurgeon

Delivering mercy

Christians have sometimes their sinking fits, and are as if they were always descending: or as Heman says, 'counted with them that go down into the pit' (Psa. 88:4).  Now guilt is not to such a wind and a tempest, as a load and a burden.  The devil, and sin, and the curse of the law, and death, are gotten upon the shoulders of this poor man, and are treading of him down, that he may sink into, and be swallowed up of his miry place...Yea, there is nothing more common among the saints of old, than this complaint: 'Let neither the water flood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up, neither let the pit shut her mouth upon me' (Psa. 69:14, 15). 

...Now for such considereth that underneath them, even at the bottom there lieth a blessing, or that in this deep whereinto they are descending, there lieth a delivering mercy...to catch them, and to save them from sinking for ever, this would be relief unto them, and help them to hope for good...There are of those that have been in the pit, now upon Mount Zion...with the song of the Lamb in their mouths. 

-John Bunyan, All Loves Excelling, pp. 15, 18-19.

Regain your humanity

The New York Times published an incredible article on Saturday by Barbara Fredrickson, a professor at UNC, on the real, physiological and psychological changes that are occurring as we spend more and more time using electronic media--smart phones in particular.   

Our ingrained habits change us. Neurons that fire together, wire together, neuroscientists like to say, reflecting the increasing evidence that experiences leave imprints on our neural pathways, a phenomenon called neuroplasticity. Any habit molds the very structure of your brain in ways that strengthen your proclivity for that habit.         

Plasticity, the propensity to be shaped by experience, isn’t limited to the brain. You already know that when you lead a sedentary life, your muscles atrophy to diminish your physical strength. What you may not know is that your habits of social connection also leave their own physical imprint on you.

 

Fredrickson and her team put their subjects through a course intended to develop empathy and compassion towards themselves and others, and found that as individual's real, face-to-face interactions with other people improved, so too did their health.  What's more--and this is the crazy part--there is an actual correlation between healthy interpersonal relationships and cardiovascular health!  In other words, its literally good for your heart to be in community with others.  

Therefore, as we spend more time glued to our phones--and less time engaging with those around us--the less able we become to create relational bonds with one another. 

  

In short, the more attuned to others you become, the healthier you become, and vice versa. This mutual influence also explains how a lack of positive social contact diminishes people. Your heart’s capacity for friendship also obeys the biological law of “use it or lose it.” If you don’t regularly exercise your ability to connect face to face, you’ll eventually find yourself lacking some of the basic biological capacity to do so...

When you share a smile or laugh with someone face to face, a discernible synchrony emerges between you, as your gestures and biochemistries, even your respective neural firings, come to mirror each other. It’s micro-moments like these, in which a wave of good feeling rolls through two brains and bodies at once, that build your capacity to empathize as well as to improve your health.

If you don’t regularly exercise this capacity, it withers. Lucky for us, connecting with others does good and feels good, and opportunities to do so abound.

Now, this isn't really news to anybody.  We all know the smart phone/social media explosion has had a generally negative influence on interpersonal relationships (save us from our phones!).  But it should shake us up a little bit to know that there is a growing collection of data to confirm it.  People are lonelier than ever before, and wondering why, when they seem so "connected" to everybody all the time.  Fredrickson gives us, at least in part, an answer. 

The implications are widespread, especially when considering the issue from a Christian worldview.  Words like "community" and "connection" have reached ubiquity in Christian churches and books, but for good reason.  We need each other.  We were created this way.  Its important for our hearts--spiritually, physically--to know others, and be known by them.  What the gospel tells us is that what prohibits this is our sin.  Knowing we should be perfect, but are not, makes us fear that if the person with whom we want to relate (friend, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife, mother, father, son, daughter, etc.) were to really know us in the repulsiveness of our thoughts, desires, and actions, they would want no part of it.  And so we manage what they see.  This is not new.  But it amplifies something we've always been doing.

Things like Facebook, Twitter, and the like make it easier than ever for us to create and manage an identity which will present us in the most favorable light possible.  And it is wonderfully (tragically) ironic that as we're doing these things in an effort to ensure relational eligibility, in the hope that we will be known, we are actually dulling and weakening our ability to do so.  What we are doing here is, at the root, an exercise in self-justification.  We are, through the augmentation of what people perceive to be true about us, attempting to obtain the confirmation from others (including God, I would argue, even if we don't think we are) that we are "right or reasonable"--Webster's definition of the word "justify".

 

This idea--that if we can keep people from knowing us at our worst we can find deep connection, love, relationships, etc.--is exactly the opposite of what we find in the gospel.  It is true that our sin is repulsive, deep, dark, and severe.  But what we find in the work of Jesus for us is that for Christians, who we are has been hidden in who he is.  And because of this, we are free to open ourselves to one another and be honest about the reality that we are not who we should have been, and joyful about the fact that who we should have been has been granted us in love through Christ.  In other words, what matters, ultimately, is not what others think of you, because Christ covered you with himself.  You can rest from the endless and exhausting task of proving yourself right to others and to God.  Its an impossible and dishonest task anyway.  You and I are not right--to God or to others.  But Christ has united himself to those who believe in him in such a way that we may call him brother, co-heirs in all the blessing that is due to him.  That's God's solution to our problem.  With it, you can rest and go free.

 

So understand and fight against the natural inclination to self-justify.  But also remember that God has created you to be in relationship with real people in time and space.  This world is his good creation, and we, as Fredrickson shows, are made to be in relationship with one another.  But what we all want won't come through the most meticulously edited Facebook profile, or the most witty and followed Twitter feed.  This is only possible, in its fullest, most restful and most fulfilling sense, in real life protected by the justification we receive before God and man through faith in Jesus Christ. 

 

In light of all this, Fredrickson offers this wonderful bit of advice:

So the next time you see a friend,or a child, spending too much of their day facing a screen, extend a hand and invite him back to the world of real social encounters. You’ll not only build up his health and empathic skills, but yours as well. Friends don’t let friends lose their capacity for humanity.

You are within reach

When we think his mercy is clean gone, and that ourselves are free among the dead, and of the number that he remembereth no more, then he can reach us, and cause that again we stand before him...There is a length..beyond apprehension or belief, in the arm of the strength of the Lord; and this is that which the Apostle intended by this word, Length; namely, To insinuate what a reach there is in the mercy of God, how far it can extend itself.

...This therefore should encourage them that for the present cannot stand, but that do fly before their guilt: Them that feel no help nor stay, but that go, as to their thinking, every day by the power of temptation, driven yet farther off from God, and from the hope of obtaining of his mercy to their salvation; poor creature, I will not now ask thee how thou camest into this condition, or how long this has been thy state; but I will say before thee, and I prithee hear me, O the length of the saving arm of God!  As yet thou art within reach thereof...do not thou conclude, that because thou canst not reach God by thy short stump, therefore he cannot reach thee with his long arm...for it is long, and none knows how long.

-John Bunyan, All Loves Excelling, pp. 13-14.

A memento:

Alas!  the sin of God's children seemeth sometimes to overspread not only their flesh, and the face of their souls, but the whole face of heaven.  And what shall he do now, that is a stranger to this breadth, made mention of in [Eph. 3:18]? Why, he must despair, lie down and die, and shut up his heart against all comfort, unless he...can, at least, apprehend what is this breadth, or the breadth of mercy intended in this place...

This therefore should be that upon which those that see the spreading nature of sin, and the leprosy and contagion thereof should meditate, to wit: The broadness of the grace and mercy of God in Christ.  This will poise and stay the soul; this will relieve and support the soul in and under those many misgiving and desponding thoughts unto which we are subject when afflicted with the apprehensions of sin, and the abounding nature of it...Let this therefore, when thou seest the spreading nature of thy sin, be a memento to thee, to the end thou may'st not sink and die in thy soul.

-John Bunyan, All Loves Excelling, pp. 9-11

To your low and trembling spirit:

Bunyan comments on Eph. 3:17-19--

[Breadth, length, height and depth] are made use of the show the Ephesians, that God with what he is in himself, and with what he hath in his power, is all for the use and profit of the believers...As who should say, the High God is yours; the God that fills the heaven and earth is yours; the God whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, is yours; yea, the God whose works are wonderful and whose ways are past finding out, is yours...It is my support, it is my relief; it is my comfort in all my tribulations, and I would have it yours, and so it will when we live in the lively faith thereof.

...So we should conclude that all this is love to us, for Christ's sake; and then dilate with it thus in our minds, and enlarge it thus in our meditations; saying still to our low and trembling spirits: 'It is high as heaven; what canst thou do?  deeper than hell; what canst thou know?  the measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.'

-John Bunyan, All Loves Excelling, pp. 5-6.