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Promoting health or throwing fire.
Check out these insights by Bruce Waltke, on Proverbs 10:11, a verse that includes this nugget:
“The mouth of the righteous is a well of life.”
Waltke observes:
The dependence of life on water is experienced existentially all over the earth, especially in the ancient Near East, where it is in short supply. Flowing well water is particularly precious, and people gather around it. The open, benevolent speech of the righteous is just as necessary for a community, offering everyone abundant life–temporal, intellectual, moral, and spiritual. The right word, spoken at the right time and in the right way, supports or corrects a community in a way that promotes its life. (The Book of Proverbs, p. 460-461)
He continues, “A community gathers around the open speech of the unselfish person in order to live…”
These thoughts are also connected to Proverbs 10:21: “The lips of the righteous feed many.”
What an opportunity is held out to us here. If we will pursue what God calls righteousness, we have the opportunity to have mouths that dispense life–things people can feed on–to the community of believers. Doesn’t our community need more and more of this?
And it reminds me of the counter examples in Proverbs, like 26:18-19 — “Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, ‘I am only joking!'”
Or 10:14–“The mouth of a fool brings ruin near.”
Or 12:18– “There is one who speaks like the piercings of a sword, But the tongue of the wise promotes health.”
Again, it seems like a choice and an opportunity are being held out to us here. What do I want my words to do? Specifically, what do I want them to do in the Christian community? Do I want them, like sword thrusts, to cut people down? Do I want them, when I have cut enough people down, to bring ruin (!) near for the community of Christ I’m a part of? Or, conversely, do I want them to promote healing…and feed many…and be a source of life people can gather around like a fountain?
Important, life-giving, good things to think about here.
Icepocalypse. Meeting cancelled tonight.
Hey everyone we hate to do it… but… seems like the ice is gonna be legit so… We’re cancelling tonight’s meeting.
Maybe take the evening and read 1 Corinthians 7, where we would have been tonight, and will be (Lord willing) next week. If you do, look for this thread: what is REALLY Paul’s concern–the main thing the Holy Spirit is focusing on on all the talk of marriage and singeleness and other circumstances? What are we directed to think about, regardless?
For those of you heading back to school before next Monday–may the Lord be with you. Stay safe tonight, everyone.
A Hymn for Christmas Night
By H.R. Bramley:
The great God of Heaven is come down to earth,
His mother a virgin, and sinless His birth;
The Father eternal His Father alone:
He sleeps in the manger; He reigns on the throne.
Then let us adore Him, and praise His great love:
To save us poor sinners He came from above.
A babe on the breast of a maiden He lies,
Yet sits with the Father on high in the skies;
Before Him their faces the seraphim hide,
While Joseph stands waiting, unscared, by His side.
Lo! here is Emmanuel, here is the Child,
The Son that was promised to Mary so mild;
Whose power and dominion shall ever increase,
The Prince that shall rule o’er a kingdom of peace.
The wonderful Counselor, boundless in might,
The Father’s own image, the beam of His light;
Behold Him now wearing the likeness of man,
Weak, helpless, and speechless, in measure a span.
O wonder of wonders, which none can unfold:
The Ancient of Days is an hour or two old;
The Maker of all things is made of the earth,
Man is worshipped by angels, and God comes to birth:
The word in the bliss of the Godhead remains,
Yet in flesh comes to suffer the keenest of pains;
He is that He was, and forever shall be,
But becomes that He was not, for you and for me.
Then let us adore Him, and praise His great love:
To save us poor sinners He came from above.
A Perfect Last-Second Gift Idea
Here’s Fred Sanders, with a perfect last second gift idea for you. These are at the bookstore…while they last.
A friend recently gave me a copy of this new devotional book, Meditations on the Trinity: Beauty, Mystery, and Glory in the Life of God, by A.W. Tozer.
W. Tozer (1897-1963) wrote a lot of books, but if you’re a fan, you’re probably thinking, “He never wrote a book called Meditations on the Trinity!” And you’re right. This is a book that culls exactly 100 selections on the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit from about 25 different A.W. Tozer books, and brings them together in one beautifully-produced volume.
Flip open to any page and you’ll find that characteristic Tozer tone of voice which few devotional writers manage to achieve: theological depth, spiritual warmth, and plain simplicity:
On God’s nature:
What a broad world to roam in, what a sea to swim in is this God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is eternal. He antedates time and is wholly independent of it. Time began in Him and will end in Him. To it He pays no tribute and from it He suffers no change.
On the incarnation:
We can surely know this, at least: that the Incarnation required no compromise of deity. Let us always remember that when God became incarnate there was no compromise on God’s part… He remained ever God and everything else remained not God.The gulf still existed even after Jesus Christ had become man and had dwelt among us.
Again:
When you think about Jesus, you have to think twice. You have to think of His humanity and His deity. He said a lot of things that made it sound as if He wasn’t God. He said other things that made it sound as if He wasn’t human… but the fact is, He is both.
On informed faith:
Because the heart of the Christian life is admittedly faith in a person, Jesus Christ the Lord, it has been relatively easy for some to press this out of all proportion and teach that faith in the person of Christ is all that matters. Who Jesus is matters not, who His Father was, whether Jesus is God or man or both… these things are not important, say the no-creed advocates. …What is overlooked here is that the conflict of Christ with the Pharisees was over the question of who He was. To believe on Christ savingly means to believe the right things about Christ. There is no escaping this.
On the atonement:
The Scriptures never represent the persons of the Trinity as opposed to or in disagreement with each other. The Holy Three have ever been and ever will forever be one in essence, in love, in purpose. We have been redeemed not by one person of the Trinity putting Himself against another, but by the three persons working in the ancient and glorious harmony of the Godhead.
On the Holy Spirit:
It would help us if we could remember that the Spirit is Himself God, the very nature of the Godhead subsisting in a form that can impart itself to our consciousness. We know only as much of the other persons of the Trinity as He reveals to us. It is His light upon the face of Christ, which enables us to know Him. It is His light within us, which enables us to understand the Scriptures.
On God:
Christianity, the great church, has for centuries lived on the character of God. But in recent times there has been a loss suffered. We’ve suffered the loss of that high concept of God, and the concept of God handled by the average gospel church now is so low as to be unworthy of God and a disgrace to the church. It is by neglect, degenerate error, and spiritual blindness that some are saying God is their ‘pardner’ or ‘the man upstairs.’
On old-fashioned Trinitarianism:
God love Himself –the Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father, and the Son and the Father love the Holy Spirit. They understood this in the olden times, when men were thinkers instead of imitators and they thought within the confines of the Bible.
There are about 300 pages of that sort of stuff in Meditations on the Trinity, and the book is physically designed to be an attractive object: It’s a compact volume in bonded leather, comes in its own box, has a placeholder ribbon, and the pages are printed in two colors (black text with decorative yellow accents and endpapers).
It’s hard to talk about the triune God in easy words and short sentences; it’s hard to keep the ideas clear and simple while speaking about the boundless depths of mystery that we are dealing with in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Tozer had a remarkable talent for keeping things simple without dumbing things down. I admit that not every page in this book is entirely satisfactory to my standards of theological precision (Tozer’s a little fast and loose with some of his Christological distinctions), but all of them are capable of being read charitably if you give Tozer the benefit of the doubt and admit that he’s carrying out a remarkable task remarkably well.
We need more people out there teaching the Trinity in a way that connects to the young, the uneducated, the busy, and the afflicted. Tozer has the perfect tone of voice, and Moody editor Kevin Emmert (though you have to read the very tiny print at the front to find any name but Tozer’s on this book) has done a great service by combing through 25 books to pull together this little beauty.
Christians and Haters (Lessons from 1800 years ago)
Here’s another excellent post by Dr. Michael Kruger, offering (as always) some important historical perspective to our situation, as we move forward into the future.
As you now know, my book on the second century has just been released in the UK: Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church (SPCK, 2017). It will be released in the US with IVP Academic in the Spring.
Since it has been released, folks have been asking how this book connects to the modern church. In other words, can we learn anything from the Christians of the second century that may help us in our current cultural moment? Absolutely. Here are a few lessons to consider.
1. Second-century Christians were regarded as “haters.” One might think the small size of the early Christian movement would allow it to be overlooked or ignored. But this is not what happened. On the contrary, the Roman government noticed Christians and didn’t like what they saw. Christians were seen as offensive, rude, peculiar, and a threat to a stable Roman society. Consequently, they suffered significant political persecution (arrested, thrown in jail, sometimes martyred).
Why were Christians viewed this way? Because of their refusal to worship the Roman gods. Christians were insistent that only Jesus was worthy of worship. And to not worship the Roman gods was to run the risk of invoking their displeasure. So, Christians were viewed as reckless and callous to their fellow man. They were called “haters of humanity” (Tacitus, Annals 15.44).
Put bluntly, it was the exclusivity of Christianity that was made it so offensive. The same is true today.
2. Second-century Christians were regarded as intellectually deficient. In addition to political persecution, the Christians suffered significant intellectual persecution. Christian doctrine was regarded as ridiculous, silly, and not worthy of the assent of the intellectual Roman elites. The likes of Lucian, Galen, Fronto, and Celsus offered scathing critiques of this “new” religion, mocking its books (the Gospels) as well as its founder (Jesus).
So, if you think the level of cultural ridicule Christians receive today is new, think again.
3. Second-century Christians were a textually-centered, “bookish” movement. In spite of the intellectual ridicule noted above, it is worth observing that second-century Christians were characterized by their distinctive commitment to the Scriptures as the basis for everything they did. They not only read these books, but they studied them in great detail, copied them in great numbers, and distributed them across great distances.
So dominant was the Christian commitment to their “books,” that even the critics took notice. Indeed, this is the reason that Christianity was often regarded more as a philosophy than a religion. In the ancient world, religions were not typically associated with written texts so directly. So, Christianity stood out in this regard (along with Judaism).
While some in the modern day will insist that Christians did not use or need the Scriptures in the earliest stages, the historical data says otherwise. Indeed, this “bookish” aspect of Christianity has been lost in some circles today. And this is one of the core elements that we need to recover.
In the end, these are three observations from the second century that have many implications for today. While prior generations of Christians might have enjoyed a time when the modern church was a lot like the church of the fourth and fifth centuries, the current generation of the church finds itself in a situation that looks a lot more like the second.
Thus, in order to engage with our modern world, perhaps we don’t need a new apologetic but an old one. A second-century one.
“It behaves just as he ordered it.”
Back in August I posted this introduction to the ancient Christian document known as “1 Clement”–
Sometime in the last few years of the first century or first few years of the second–in other words, within living memory of the Apostles–the leader of the church in Rome wrote a letter to the church in Corinth. It was the same church Paul wrote both of his New Testament letters to. The author’s name was Clement (of Rome), and the document has come down to us as 1 Clement. It’s one of the oldest Christian documents outside of the New Testament, and offers not only devotional depth, but some insight into the way Christians spoke and thought in those days. I recommend finding a copy of it and reading it.
Here’s a great passage from the letter (20:1 – 21:1-5) where Clement discusses the way God rules all of creation. It’s huge and profound–the kind of thing that inspires worship. And he ends with a serious charge too, one which we would do well to listen to. Enjoy…
The heavens move at his direction and obey him in peace. Day and night complete the course assigned by him, neither hindering the other. The sun and the moon and the choirs of stars circle in harmony within the courses assigned to them, according to his direction, without any deviation at all. The earth, bearing fruit in the proper seasons in fulfillment of his will, brings forth food full in abundance for both humans and beasts and all living things that dwell upon it without dissension and without altering anything he has decreed. Moreover, the incomprehensible depths of the abysses and the indescribable judgments of the underworld are constrained by the same ordinances. The basin of the boundless sea, gathered together by his creative action into its reservoirs, does not flow beyond the barriers surrounding it; instead it behaves just as he ordered it. For he said: “Thus far shall you come, and your waves shall break within you.” The ocean—impassable by humans—and the worlds beyond it are directed by the same ordinances of the Master. The seasons, spring and summer and autumn and winter, give way in succession, one to the other, in peace. The winds from the different quarters fulfill their ministry in the proper season without disturbance; the everflowing springs, created for enjoyment and health, give without fail their life-sustaining breasts to humankind. Even the smallest living things come together in harmony and peace. All these things the great Creator and Master of the universe ordered to exist in peace and harmony, thus doing good to all things, but especially abundantly to us who have taken refuge in his compassionate mercies through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the majesty forever and ever. Amen.
Take care, dear friends, lest his many benefits turn into a judgment upon all of us, as will happen if we fail to live worthily of him and to do harmoniously those things that are good and pleasing in his sight. For it says somewhere, “The Spirit of the Lord is a lamp searching the depths of the heart.” Let us realize how near he is, and that nothing escapes him, either of our thoughts or of the plans that we make. It is right, therefore, that we should not be deserters from his will. Let us offend foolish and senseless people, who exalt themselves and boast in the arrogance of their words, rather than God.
A prayer for the Holy Spirit
Here’s another awesome prayer/meditation from The Valley of Vision…
Spiritus Sanctus
O Holy Spirit,
As the sun is full of light,
the ocean full of water,
Heaven full of glory,
so may my heart be full of thee.
Vain are all divine purpose of love
and the redemption wrought by Jesus
except thou work within,
regenerating by thy power,
giving me eyes to see Jesus,
showing me the realities of the unseen world.
Give me thyself without measure,
as an unimpaired fountain,
as inexhaustible riches.
I bewail my coldness, poverty, emptiness,
Imperfect vision, languid service,
prayerless prayer, praiseless praises.
Suffer me not to grieve or resist thee.
Come as power,
to expel every rebel lust, to reign supreme and keep me thine;
Come as teacher,
leading me into all truth, filling me with all understanding;
Come as love,
that I may adore the Father, and love him as my all;
Come as joy,
to dwell in me, move in me, animate me;
Come as light,
illuminating the Scripture, molding me in its laws;
Come as sanctifier,
body, soul and spirit wholly thine;
Come as helper,
with strength to bless and keep, directing my every step;
Come as beautifier,
bringing order out of confusion, loveliness out of chaos.
Magnify to me thy glory by being magnified in me,
and make me redolent of thy fragrance.
Death Lost its Power at Christmas
Hey everyone, the hiatus from the blog was unintentional. Trip to Croatia, etc. Join us tonight for our Young Adults study, as usual!
But for today, here’s the ancient Christian writer Athanasius, kicking off the Christmas season for us. It’s such a familiar time of year, that we can forget what a huge, mind-blowing fact Christmas celebrates–the incarnation of the Son of God. Consider…
For naturally, since the Word of God was above all, when He offered His own temple and bodily instrument as a substitute for the life of all, He fulfilled in death all that was required. Naturally also, through this union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were clothed with incorruption in the promise of the resurrection. For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word’s indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all.
You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all, the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death.
Two Pro-Life Inconsistencies?
It’s not the only thing that’s important, but it is really important for us to be able to think, in public, out-loud, as Christians, in our world. This is especially true in hotly-contested (and life-or-death) issues like abortion. I recently ran across two great posts which provide the kind of thinking we should learn and practice when it comes to reasoning with two common pro-abortion arguments.
The first addresses this question:
In cases where the life of a pregnant woman is endangered because of her pregnancy, are Pro-Lifers inconsistent if they say the mother should be saved instead of the baby?
The answer includes this line of thinking:
This is a case where an ethical principle called the law of double effect comes into play. That is, there’s an action you are required to take ethically, the consequences of which, when viewed alone, would be immoral, but when taken in conjunction with the other circumstance, it’s the lesser of two evils. And even though you acknowledge that this is an evil because the death of the child would result, you do not intend the death of the child. It’s not the direct intention of the action. The purpose of the action is to save the life of the mother, not to take the life of the baby, even though that’s the consequence in this dilemma.
It’s short. I encourage you to read the whole thing.
The second article addresses a tweet storm where someone posted this chain of arguments:
“Whenever abortion comes up, I have a question I’ve been asking for ten years now of the ‘Life begins at Conception’ crowd. In ten years, no one has EVER answered it honestly.” It’s a simple scenario with two outcomes. No one ever wants to pick one, because the correct answer destroys their argument. And there IS a correct answer, which is why the pro-life crowd hates the question. 2/Here it is. You’re in a fertility clinic. Why isn’t important. The fire alarm goes off. You run for the exit. As you run down this hallway, you hear a child screaming from behind a door. You throw open the door and find a five-year-old child crying for help. 3/They’re in one corner of the room. In the other corner, you spot a frozen container labeled “1000 Viable Human Embryos.” The smoke is rising. You start to choke. You know you can grab one or the other, but not both before you succumb to smoke inhalation and die, saving no one. 4/Do you A) save the child, or B) save the thousand embryos? There is no “C.” “C” means you all die. In a decade of arguing with anti-abortion people about the definition of human life, I have never gotten a single straight A or B answer to this question. And I never will. 5/They will never answer honestly, because we all instinctively understand the right answer is “A.” A human child is worth more than a thousand embryos. Or ten thousand. Or a million. Because they are not the same, not morally, not ethically, not biologically. 6/this question absolutely eviscerates their arguments, and their refusal to answer confirms that they know it to be true. No one, anywhere, actually believes an embryo is equivalent to a child. That person does not exist. They are lying to you. 7/They are lying to you to try and evoke an emotional response, a paternal response, using false-equivalency. No one believes life begins at conception. No one believes embryos are babies, or children. Those who claim to are trying to manipulate you so they can control women. 8/Don’t let them. Use this question to call them out. Reveal them for what they are. Demand they answer your question, and when they don’t, slap that big ol’ Scarlet P of the Patriarchy on them. The end. 9/9
“No one has ever ever answered” this line of thinking… except that Robert George, a professor at Princeton University, has. He responded over at Public Discourse with a closely-reasoned argument is well worth the time to read. Professor George observes:
We agree that…most people in [these] circumstances would choose to rescue the girl. However, this by no means shows that human embryos are not human beings or that they may be deliberately killed to produce stem cells, or in an abortion.
The first thing to notice is that the case as described is not, in fact, analogous to the suggestion that we should perform embryo-destructive research for the benefits it might provide us, or to the suggestion that it is permissible to abort an unborn human being...
Second, there are differences between the embryos and the five-year-old girl that are or can be morally relevant to the decision concerning whom to rescue. For example, the five-year-old will suffer great terror and pain in the fire, but the embryos will not…
Third, there could be circumstances in which people could agree that it would be reasonable to save the embryos, even if other people, including those with no personal attachment to either the embryos or the girl, might be drawn to rescue the girl instead...
He fleshes each of those points out. And he makes this observation:
The argument here is quite simple: suppose you could save 1,000 comatose strangers or your own five-year-old child; and suppose further that the strangers will only come out of their coma if they are provided food and shelter for nine months. But you are quite confident that no one will, in fact, provide that food and shelter. Then, once again, it seems entirely reasonable for you to save your conscious five-year-old, without this indicating in any way that the comatose strangers are less than fully human, or deserving of less than full respect. Rather, the choice to save the child will at the same time be a sad commentary on a society that is unwilling to provide the necessary resources to nurse the temporarily incapacitated back to full health. We leave it to the reader to refine this example further to make it even more similar to the situation of cryopreserved embryos; we believe the analogy does not reflect well on us as a people.
…but you really should read his whole argument to see why the tweet storm, though it attempts to intimidate, doesn’t hold any water.
We don’t need to be scared, friends. Don’t worry about all of the shouting and feigned righteous indignation. Our culture has cut itself off from the source of truth, and as a result, it can’t see straight. It’s a loving thing for us to try to help people to the light.
Let’s go.
Ode to King David
I don’t know who Tim Murphy is, but he wrote a nice poem…
Ode to King David
Goliath
Picture a twelve-year-old
with round rocks for his sling
facing the fearsome, bold
Goliath. In a ring
two armies stand apart.
The boy with his brave heart
can kill from thirty yards
wolves on a pasture’s banks,
but now the lamb he guards
is Israel. The ranks
of Philistines at war
cut loose a curdling roar.
Drilled in his giant head,
Goliath drops down dead.
Rex Iudae
David, I say your songs
and live to right my wrongs,
doing so every day.
Yours is the text I pray.
The days of man are grass
so swiftly do we pass.
Compared to yours, my sins
mere barkings of my shins,
but depth of our belief
in God as our relief,
that is the faith we share,
our shield against despair.
Renewed, reborn, restored,
Wait, wait for the Lord.
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Hope to hear from you soon!