Friday, December 18, 2020
R. P. George: Central Tenet of Marriage
Sex is intrinsic to human persons, not an instrumental function. Therefore, the way we conduct ourselves sexually matters, and implies something about what we believe ourselves to be. Thus, if complementarity does not matter, then organs are purely subjective to the will. Therefore, gender is mutable, malleable; and there is no moderate realism whatsoever about masculinity and femininity. These most basic of human realities are now somehow subject to the human will and feelings. This can, I believe, be traced directly to loss of a sense of Creation. For Creation means intent and purpose and design and coherence. No creation means we can ultimately decide for ourselves since by some pure chance we have what we understand to be will and we further understand it to be autonomous and within such literally folly-ridden notions we lose all bearing completely because we make ourselves the beginning, end and all between. There can be no greater folly, no greater lostness. And its most stark demonstration is in the disintegration of sexual mores or norms.
George's definition of marriage: A one-flesh communion of persons consummated and actualized by acts which are reproductive in type and perfected, where all goes well, in the generation, education, and nurturing of children in a context -- the family -- which is uniquely suited to their well-being.
Alternate view as he sees it: Marriage is a mere convention which is malleable in such a way that individuals, couples, or, indeed, groups, can choose to make whatever suits their desires, interests, subjective goals, etc.
He then suggests the self-evident truth that a given view will have identifiable consequences and, in view of those consequences a government cannot afford to be neutral (were that possible) in its laws.
"A sound law of marriage is not one that aspires to moral neutrality; it is one that is in line with moral truth."
Tuesday, December 8, 2020
Ministry Remnants: The Work of the Holy Spirit in Daily Life
And so to title this "remnant" as I have is a bit grandiose, for books and lifetimes have been spent on the question. Thus I shall see once again if my penchant for saying too much can be redeemed, the "too much" shepherded into something helpful, worth your time.
I tried to craft a message working from Luke's account of Mary's visit from the angel, specifically the answer to Mary's question, "How can this thing be?" "The Holy Spirit shall come upon you," explained Gabriel, and then, after further detail, he summed it up with immortal affirmation: "For with God nothing shall be impossible."
Does this Encounter Teach us about the Holy Spirit in our own life?
The same Edsel Trouten mentioned above -- there is no other! -- once pointed out no Scripture has direct application because no situation is thoroughly identical to that which occurred at the time of the writing. So if we hold too strict a a rule for applying we would apply nothing, since our situation has no angel, no virgin, no child to come, no Elizabeth -- you get the picture.
But if we step back we see a person -- Mary; a word from God -- "With God nothing is impossible"; the intervention of God in a person's life -- "the Holy Spirit shall come upon you." Can these things apply? To you and me? Today? Well, let's not be subtle: OF COURSE!
But Who is this Holy Spirit?
He is God, co-equal with the Father and Son, eternal, to be worshipped, heeded and obeyed. He "convicts the world of sin", a gift to make aware of that which will undo us and in the end, damn us. Furthermore, he can be grieved. He is self-effacing -- does not promote Himself. And he, therefore, works behind the scenes, deep within, slow, steady, unobtrusive.
How Do we Receive the Holy Spirit?
This can be difficult because often great emphasis is put on a point-in-time, an encounter, a specific filling. This is well and good and has biblical -- to say nothing of logical -- basis. If we are "filled" or "indwelt"; if the spirit is to "come upon us" it will happen at a point-in-time. But I think we often neglect the equally important truth that his life in us is always ongoing.
How do we receive the Holy Spirit and begin walking with his inner, quiet, patient teaching and transformation?
- Repentance -- this is an essential, grace-enabled response to God. We turn from our own way and the door is opened for God to come in.
- We ask. Jesus taught so simply in the Gospels: "If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him." Need the presence of God in your life? Ask. He will give.
- Be still. A W Tozer says it well: "...cultivating heart stillness may be our most valuable activity because then we can hear God's gentle whisper." Or as Dallas Willard has it: "When we learn to be really quiet we begin to feel the breeze of heaven in our face."
Monday, November 30, 2020
Ministry Remnants: Laying Eggs, aka, Preaching Poor Sermons
- First things first: if you have not prayed, forget it. Pray for your people, pray regularly and at length, pray for wisdom and insight, effectiveness, anointing, unction, humility, brevity. Read Bounds for motivation. It will work if you are breathing. But pray.
- Spend time with your people. Nothing helps you relate better to others than really knowing them. Nothing. This is a central natural means we must use to help our preaching. You need to know their perspectives, the things on their mind, their worries, ideas, concepts of God and the spiritual life. This will humble you, and will shut your mouth on half the pontificating to which you may be prone. There is no substitute for personal time with the folks who listen to you on Sunday morning.
- Study. Of course. Widely, regularly, grounded in Scripture. Listening to other preachers must be part of this. Learn through trial and error what study methods work best, how best to shape the message and delivery. And there is no substitute for going over the sermon multiple times while standing in the pulpit. Or at least do it once before you preach it for the congregation.
- Stay with the task -- few preachers get really good without years of practice. It is easy to want to give up for any number of reason. The struggle is real. But few things are more important than perseverance. God will help you. Quitting short-circuits that process, painful as it is.
Saturday, November 28, 2020
Briefly, on Faith
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
"Definitely Some Lack"
a musing on pastoral performance, and lack
“Yes, definitely some lack.”
I smiled and grimaced at once, the words painful and familiar. A childhood friend and I were renewing acquaintance and he was telling me of a former pastor: “He was an OK preacher I guess, but kinda distant at times. And when my dad lost his job it was like our pastor didn't even know. Definitely some lack.”
Now that I am a pastor, I feel the sting. As a former parishioner, I know the guilt of discontent.
All pastors lack because they are, like you, human.
But why are we so easily disgruntled, askance, disaffected? What makes it so easy and natural to see the faults of our pastor?
There are many reasons to be sure, but one is the age-old problem of hero-need. Pastors are supposed to fill that need. Most do for some; a few do for most; none do for all. Pastors lack. Definitely.
So what is the parishioner to do? Here is an idea or 2 -- ok, three:
Pray for your pastor. I dare you: really pray. Daily. By name. Praying may change your pastor and it will definitely change you if you stay with it. The pastor's lack may remain but it won't be nearly so obvious.
Do what you can, in cooperation and harmony. The mildest initiative and leadership in church life will give you a look through the pastor's lens on the world. You'll be the better for it, become a practical asset, and understand his lack. You may even discover the perceived lack has a good reason behind it. And, best of all, you may be able to alleviate that reason!
Get to know your pastor. Yes, this can be hard. Pastors fill a role that is often relationally awkward. They are supposed to have the right word, correct conduct, and always be available. This creates unique psychological challenges and puzzling behavior. But stay with it. When you are with your pastor up close and personal you may learn to really love him – lack and all.
Yes, your pastor has lack. It pains him more than it pains you. You can't help seeing it, but what if...
- complaints give way to prayer
- “This should happen!” gives way to “I wonder if I could do it?”, and
- You (yes, YOU!) act first and often to get acquainted. You may find a real person emerges and lack fades into the background.
And after all, isn't that they way you hope your pastor will care for you?
Sunday, August 2, 2020
Indulge in the Delight of this Piece from Chesterton
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long, and the age of the great epics is past.
From Samuel Clemens on the things we know for sure...
Solzhenitsyn's Reminder: What is the object of life?
Sunday, June 21, 2020
Ministry Remnants: Pray for Your Pastor
What does a pastor do early Sunday morning?
- pray
- wonder
- worry (yes, pastor's do that, too)
- pray
- prepare
- think of details like lights and announcements and music
- worry about who no longer comes and why
- pray
- worry about normal struggles with health and family and finances and planning
- wonder again how it is possible to effectively preach, lead, love
- struggle to affirm the expected confidence in God from the inside out
- (the list is long)
Sunday, May 17, 2020
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1918-2008
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, 1918-2008
"One word of truth will outweigh the whole world"
So once said Alexander Solzhenitsyn , Russian dissident, Nobel Prize laureate in Literature, exhile to US for 16 years, hero in his native Russia. He is perhaps most well known for The Gulag Archipelago, his account of the Soviet prison system in which he lived for many years. While I am not a Solzhenitsyn scholar, of course, I am in the ranks of a great many who find him an inspiration and modern prophet.
I read some of his Oak and Calf, a sort of literary bio. Among the more remarkable accounts therein is his record of how he preserved his writing during the years when his work was forbidden. He literally memorized — if my memory serves — entire books. He also would write in tiny print and save the rolled MS in cannisters which were then buried.
I often wished I had taken time to travel to his American home in Vermont in the ’80’s though it’s doubtful I could have met him. And, of course, he had his detractors in recent years — you can find a dissenting view here.
But on any account his life is remarkable: from a young soldier on the front lines in WWII to political prisoner to father (one of his sons is Ignat Solzhenitsyn, conductor and composer in Philadephia) to dissident author, Nobel laureate, exhile, a Soviet non-person, modern prophet, American resident, returning hero to his beloved homeland in 1994.
He seemd like the aged sage that would always be here — and so he is for some time to come if we will have the sense to remember the kind of thundering and wise things he said. I have excerpted below some of his statements from the famous speech he gave at Harvard on June 8, 1978 . It was not what Harvard wanted to hear, but they, and we, need to take to heart what he said.
I was sad to hear of his passing. Ironically I have been reading his novel Cancer Ward not knowing he had died. My friend, Steve Blakemore, posted about his death on his excellent Third Millenium faith email which you can join here . He quoted from Solzhenistsyn’s 1978 Harvard Speech and I enjoyed re-looking at it. I hope you will have time to savor — and receive a helpful jolt — from the comments excerpted below.
It is time, in the West, to defend not so much human rights as human obligations. Mere freedom does not in the least solve all the problems of human life and it even adds a number of new ones. . .
We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life.
After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced by the revolting invasion of publicity, by TV stupor and by intolerable music.
If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die.
It is not possible that assessment of the President’s performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline.
People also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information.
Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic disease of the 20th century and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press. In-depth analysis of a problem is anathema to the press.
Such as it is, however, the press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and the judiciary.
Socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.
Very well known representatives of your society, such as George Kennan, say: we cannot apply moral criteria to politics. Thus we mix good and evil, right and wrong and make space for the absolute triumph of absolute Evil in the world. On the contrary, only moral criteria can help the West…. There are no other criteria.
On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility.
Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil…was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature; the world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems which must be corrected.
Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror.
I have spent all my life under a communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed….[However, yours is the opposite error, so I would say],whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relations, there is an atmosphere of moral mediocrity, paralyzing man’s noblest impulses.
Saturday, May 16, 2020
On Javert, Breaking Rules, Love, and the Easy Burden
“We are in the laundry room, sorting.”
Saturday, April 11, 2020
On being "Merely Dead"
He strives in sleep, in our despair,
And all flesh shudders underneath
The nightmare of His sepulcher.
All night the cold wind heaves and pries;
Creation strains sinew and bone
Against the dark door where He lies.
And stands. Pain breaks in song. Surprising
The merely dead, graves fill with light
Like opened eyes. He rests in rising.
Saturday, April 4, 2020
Keeping Relational Reverb in Check
There is a better way. Take it to the Lord in prayer. Let him heal both the self-talk and the behaviour it breeds.
And then, as with all seeds, “the corn of wheat” comes to life and we find a harvest of joy, bitter tears forgotten.
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
A Rare Rumination on our National Need
Is there an idea with the power to capture us enough to lay aside polarizing bombs? Are we doomed to the hyper-political every two years so we seek solace anywhere – in political newcomers or billionaires who buy the election? Might we ever realize the dream of life free of crushing election cycles and endless ads?
- Speak truth with humility, knowing you do not see all things clearly.
- Refuse to see the world through a political grid, but have patience with those who do.
- Strive for self-reliance, in part so you can help those who cannot help themselves.