A Message to the 100% (99% + 1%)

The world is on fire.  A brief glimpse of the headlines is enough to cause concern for the direction of current events (though a look at Scripture should give confidence to the believer in a God who is in control).  The news item that is all the rage (intentional usage) today is the Occupy Wall Street protests.  What seems to be fueling these protests is a belief that 99% of the people are being held captive by the richest 1% (excluding athletes and celebrities apparently).  To simplify the arguments, the 99% believe that they have a right to the wealth of the 1% and the 1% believe that they should be able to keep what they’ve earned.  Of course this is an issue that will effect the church of Jesus Christ.  But what is our response?

This is mine:

To focus on wealth misses the point.  Even to focus on daily needs (which to the OWS crowd seems to include iPads, iPhones, free sex, and the freedom to deficate on police cars) misses the point.  The believer has one simple message:  Christ is supremely valuable!  Therefore we are willing to place our entire trust in him.  It means that we look out for the needs of others as Christ took our need for a Savior upon himself.

Demanding the wealth of others or even demanding to keep my own wealth demonstrates one thing:  I value wealth above Christ.

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A second word on propositional truth statements…

Last week I looked at a section from John Piper’s book “Contending for our All” that dealt with the importance of using propositional truth statements when declaring our love for Christ.  The section that was quoted was the third out of six lessons that we should learn from the life of Athanasius.  Now it’s not my intent to go over all six lessons, you can buy the book for that, but the fourth is closely related to the third.

4.  The truth of biblical language must be vigorously protected with non-biblical language.

Bible language can be used to affirm falsehood.  Athanasius’s experience has proved to be illuminating and helpful in dealing with this fact.  Over the years I have seen this misuse of the Bible especially in liberally minded baptistic and pietistic traditions.   They use the slogan, “the Bible is our only creed.” But in refusing to let explanatory, confessional language clarify what the Bible means, the slogan can be used as a cloak to conceal the fact that Bible language is being used to affirm what is not biblical.  This is what Athanasius encountered so insidiously at the council of Nicaea.  The Arians affirmed biblical sentences while denying biblical meaning.

R.P.C. Hanson explained the process like this: “Theologians of the Christian Church were slowly driven to a realization that the deepest questions which face Christianity cannot be answered in purely biblical language, because the questions are about the meaning of biblical language itself.” The Arians railed against the unbiblical language being forced on them.  They tried to seize the biblical high ground and claim to be the truly biblical people – the pietists, the simple Bible-believers – because they wanted to stay with biblical language only – and by it smuggle in their non-biblical meanings.

But Athanasius saw through this “postmodern,” “post-conservative,” “post-propositional” strategy and saved for us not just Bible words, but Bible truth.

 

As Piper alludes to in this section, this way of looking at, and dealing with the Bible is still with us today.  A lot of “Bible” terms get thrown around – grace, justification, faith, kingdom, justice, mercy etc. – but unless we are willing to define these terms the way that the biblical authors (and biblical Author) intended them to be defined we can quickly end up believing or teaching something different from what the Bible teaches.  You don’t have to go far to find examples of this either.  From hyper-fundamentalists to the emerging church to the Wild Goose festival (ok..redundant there on the last two) we the need for Inigo Montoya to say “you keep on using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.”

The final application of these two points is this:  is my life transformed by the truth statements of Scripture?  Or to put it in the words of a reply to the last article:

As in our debates with Charismatic subjectivism a few decades ago, our debates with post-modern anti-propositionalism today must not box us into an either/or corner. While there can be no salvation apart from embracing the propositional truth of Scripture, we will be led astray if we are not on the alert to the danger of offering truth without imagination, truth without community, truth without love, etc.

Piggy-backing on the last statement – does the truth of God’s love (illustrated dynamically against the truth of God’s holy wrath) drive us to deliver the truth in love to those who know nothing of it? Does the truth of God’s grace (illustrated vividly against the truth of God’s justice) drive us to speak graciously to those around us?

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A word on propositional truth statements…

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I’m currently re-reading John Piper’s book “Contending for our All” in which he gives brief biographical sketches of three men in church history who stood faithful to God’s Word against sometimes overwhelming opposition – A far cry from today where some who claim the name of Christ want to join the opposition, but I digress. The first biographical sketch is of the early church father Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria. In his battle against Arianism (the belief that among other things God the Son is not co-equal with God the Father) he stood oft-times in the minority but firmly on the Truth of God’s Word. As Piper wraps up the chapter he gives several lessons that we can learn from this man’s life, I’d like to reproduce the third for your edification:

3. Loving Christ includes loving true propositions about Christ

What was clear to Athanasius was that propositions about Christ carried convictions that could send you to heaven or to hell. Propositions like “There was a time when the Son of God was not,” and “He was not before he was made,” and “the Son of God is created” were damnable. If they were spread abroad and believed, they would damn the souls who embraced them. And therefore Athanasius labored with all his might to formulate propositions that would conform to reality and lead the soul to faith and worship and heaven.

I believe Athanasius would have abominated, with tears, the contemporary call for “depropositionalizing” that we hear among many of the so-called “reformists” and “the emerging church,” “younger evangelicals,” “postfundamentalists,” “postfoundationalists,” and “postevangelicals.” I think he would have said, “Our young people in Alexandria die for the truth of propositions about Christ. What do your young people die for?” And if the answer came back, “We die for Christ, not propositions about Christ,” I think he would have said, “That’s what the heretic Arius said. So which Christ will you die for?” To answer that question requires propositions about him. To refuse to answer implies that it doesn’t matter what we believe or die for as long as it has the label Christ attached to it.

Athanasius would have grieved over sentences like “It is Christ who unites us; it is doctrine that divides.” And sentences like “We should ask, Whom do you trust? rather than what do you believe?” He would have grieved because he knew this is the very tactic used by the Arian bishops to cover the councils with fog so that the word ‘Christ’ could mean anything. Those who talk like this – “Christ unites, doctrine divides” – have simply replaced propositions about Christ with the word ‘Christ.’ It carries no meaning until one says something about him. They think they have done something profound and fresh, when they call us away from the propositions of doctrine to the word ‘Christ.’ In fact they have done something very old and worn and deadly.

(emphasis mine)

If I were to take these paragraphs and summarize them down to one practical application it would be this, we must continually be asking those who through the name of Jesus around, attaching it to every political cause under the sun – “Which Jesus?” To quote from a previous post:

Now our western Christianity is filled with many people who just “love Jesus”, but the question must be asked – “Which Jesus do you love?” There are many “Jesus’” being proclaimed that look nothing like the Jesus of the gospels, and these “anti-Christ’s” (as it were) tend to focus on making the believer happy, healthy and wealthy.

Which Jesus do you serve? The Jesus defined by truthful statements about Him in Scripture and vigorously protected by men like Athanasius? Or a Jesus of your own making?

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Spam Alert!!!

What's for Dinner! - Spam

Image by brizzle born and bred via Flickr

So, every once in a while as I’m cleaning out my spam folder a comment catches my eye.  This of course is what at least some of the authors of these comments are trying to do in order to get their comment approved so their link can be attached to this site.  Mostly these comments are over-the-top praise of my astute and amazing communicating style – this of course immediately reveals that the spammers have never read this blog.  But today I spotted something new:

How is it that just anyone can write a weblog and get as popular as this? Its not like youve said something extremely impressive more like youve painted a fairly picture through an issue that you know nothing about! I dont want to sound mean, right here. But do you really think that you can get away with adding some pretty pictures and not definitely say anything?

Ouch.

To label my thoughts as issues I know nothing about cuts deep…even from a spammer.  But then I noticed something that made me laugh – the post that the spammer had left this comment on was….

“About the Author”

Apparently what I know nothing about….is me!

I love spam.

 

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Caption this…

In my last post some might have noticed that I did not give my dog, Sniffles, a lot of attention.  In fact, she was only given three words out of the entire post.  So, for all you animal lovers, I give you this picture highlighting our lovable k-9 for your captioning pleasure.

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Writers block…

Writers block.  That would be a good excuse for the absence of posts here for the past few months.  Or as parents are wont to tell their children, “if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.”  Combine that with placing my priorities on other things in life and the outcome is a silent blog.

So, before a post on some deep topic like why on earth would professing Christians throw in their lot with the covetousness induced occupy wall street crowd, I’d like to give a brief overview on what God’s been doing in the life of the [Lakeland area] Comings family.

Rosalie - What fun the past 5 1/2 months have been!  I’m sure there are some more “Thoughts of a New Father” posts in the future, but for the time being it’s just great being a dad!  Rosalie’s personality is showing more each day and her smiles and laughs are more addictive than Mountain Dew (and for me, that’s saying a lot!).  Of course the sin nature that I passed along (thank you Adam) is also evident and thus much time is spent in prayer that it wouldn’t be long before God opens Rosalie’s eyes to the complete joy and satisfaction in God through the saving work of Jesus Christ.

Emily - Not only has it been fun watching Rosalie grow, it’s also been fun, and awe-inspiring to watch Emily enjoying her new role as mother.  It tires me out just thinking about everything that Em does, and yet she wouldn’t trade any of it.

Sniffles - Is still around.

Preaching - Since the last post here in July, I have finished preaching through the book of Philippians and, as of last Sunday, begun preaching through the book of Ruth.  The shift from preaching Christ-centered expository sermons on doctrinal/practical passages to preaching Christ-centered narrative sermons will be fun and challenging.  More on this to come.

Teaching - Wednesday nights and Sunday School are both dedicated to teaching teenagers.  This years Wednesday night youth curriculum focuses on eschatology and its implications to our lives today.  In the Sunday School hour we’re working our way through the story of the Old Testament.  So basically, between the two, I get to teach on God’s providential hand in the first coming of our Messiah, and his providential hand in the second coming of our Messiah.  And this means – I get to talk about Jesus twice each week!  Can life get better?

Youth Ministry - Is fabulous!  It never gets old seeing God at work in people’s lives.  New leaders, new teens, new opportunities to display the joy that comes from a completed life in Christ!

Texas Rangers (baseball)

Image via Wikipedia


Texas Rangers - Ok, this one has little in the line of spiritual value, but as a long-time Ranger fan, I’m psyched about my team making it to the World Series for the second straight year.  Hopefully they win this time!  If not, I get to understand how all my friends who are/were Buffalo Bills fans felt in the ’90s.

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Tis But a Taste…

Spurgeon near the end of his life.

Image via Wikipedia

From this mornings “Morning and Evening” by Charles Spurgeon:

Oh! what enlightenment, what joys, what consolation, what delight of heart is experienced by that man who has learned to feed on Jesus, and on Jesus alone. Yet the realization which we have of Christ’s preciousness is, in this life, imperfect at the best. As an old writer says, “’Tis but a taste!” We have tasted “that the Lord is gracious,” but we do not yet know how good and gracious he is, although what we know of his sweetness makes us long for more. We have enjoyed the firstfruits of the Spirit, and they have set us hungering and thirsting for the fulness of the heavenly vintage.

Spurgeon, C. H. (2006). Morning and evening : Daily readings (Complete and unabridged; New modern edition.). Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers.

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