November 20, 2008
Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do. (Galatians 2:10)
Remember the poor? What a strange intrusion into this passage. What an unexpected burp in the narrative Paul has been writing to demonstrate his apostolic authority.
Paul knows everything else–and the apostles in Jerusalem know he knows. The gospel. The relation of the law to gentiles. About none of these things do they instruct him. Once he has “set before them” the gospel that he preaches, they see how much the Spirit of God has already led him to know without their tutelage. They respect Paul enough to divide the labor of pastoral care for the world with him, as with an equal: “they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.”
But they say one little word of instruction–one little thing–that he should remember the poor. And Paul already knew about that as well–but he mentions it in order to affirm their speaking. It follows that his agreement with them, his affirmation of the fact that they instructed him to do “the very thing I was eager to do” must also go to assert his apostolic authority. Just as their silent approval on all the points of doctrine and practice which he had set before them affirmed his authority, so their open instruction on this matter, and his open agreement, affirm his authority. What does this mean?
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Posted in Evangelism, Galatians, Missions 
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November 17, 2008
What he worships is not the only thing that separates an idolater from a true worshiper.
I really think that we can participate in “Christian worship” in an idolatrous way. In prayer, in praise, the character of the God we turn toward alters the character of our worship. If that God is one shorn of all but a few attributes that we are comfortable with–love, forgiveness, and peace for example; or if that God is one whom we think will accommodate our whims or the whims of our culture–giving us wealth in exchange for allegiance, or comfort in exchange for commitment;–if that is the kind of God we worship, then we are idolaters.
In fact, it strikes me that worshiping the true God ought to be a profoundly uncomfortable experience. As I mentioned in the last post, that worship will always involve service and waiting. The service I hardly need expand upon–the cost of discipleship, however neglected, is well know to those who will listen; but the waiting really gets most people’s goat.
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Posted in Idolatry, Prayer, Time, Worship 3 Comments »
November 16, 2008
“For they [the believers in Macedonia and Achaia and "everywhere"] themselves report concerning us [Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy] the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.” (I Thess. 1:9-10)
The admirable Thessalonians, by their wholehearted conversion, have strengthened the church–because the apostles, having strengthened the Thessalonians to believe by preaching the gospel and living among them, are being strengthened in return by the witness of their newborn faith.
This morning this question occurred to me: Does the witness of the Thessalonians faith come, at least in part, from the fact that they used to serve idols, and that they clearly understand the difference between idol worship and God-worship? In this context, the two major themes of the letter resonate with them–the themes of serving God and waiting for Christ.
For us, on the other hand, the idea of serving God and waiting for Christ is often muddied–sometimes is indistinguishable from worship of an idol. But how could any sort of worship directed at God be idol-worship? Because idol-worship is not worship.
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Posted in 1 Thessalonians, Idolatry, Worship No Comments »
November 16, 2008
First, a report on my degree of success with the Fall Reading List. Due to a certain amount of unexpected responsibility (connected with chapel coordinating and people), I didn’t get the whole list finished. I still have the final two books in Pelikan’s history of Christian doctrine to read (I hope to offer a combined book review on the entire series when I finish it); I didn’t even crack Waltke’s Old Testament Theology; I discovered after the first one that Frame’s books weren’t the most vital for me at this point; and I didn’t get very far yet with Muller. But otherwise, I’ve read and benefited immensely from everything else on the list. So it’s time for the next installment: winter reading, here I come! (Note: I’m splitting this list up into three parts, to correspond to the three sections of the blog. What you see here is my more theologically/devotionally oriented list, and if you’re really interested you could look at the other two blogs–via the SITE MAP link to your right–which deal, respectively, with my “cultural” reading list, and my “political” reading list.)
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November 16, 2008
Today I made a few changes to the structure of this site.
I noticed that I have begun to lose the purity of purpose with which this particular blog started–the purpose of writing a devotional blog post every morning, and providing resources helpful to Reformed Christians. A certain amount of cultural reflection got mixed in right from the beginning, and I begin to have almost daily urges to write about political subjects as well. But I understand that the readers who subscribe to and frequent this blog are primarily interested in the devotional aspect.
So I have created two separate blogs to host my political and cultural reflections, reviews, and rants. If you’re interested in that sort of thing, you can find them by clicking on the new SITE MAP link to your right. If you’re not interested in that sort of thing, you will be happy to hear that you won’t be receiving notices in your feed reader about things that don’t interest you–and you will be further happy to hear that I intend to resume my practice of morning devotional blogging. The impediments to that habit have died down once again.
As always, thanks for reading this blog and don’t ever hesitate to comment if you have anything to say!
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November 12, 2008
I just read this interesting article: “Public Intellectual 2.0” (hat tip to Arts & Letters Daily).
I found the place of blogging as described in the following section of the article to be fascinating, mainly because it utterly contradicts my view.
The pessimism about public intellectuals is reflected in attitudes about how the rise of the Internet in general, and blogs in particular, affects intellectual output. Alan Wolfe claims that “the way we argue now has been shaped by cable news and Weblogs; it’s all ‘gotcha’ commentary and attributions of bad faith. No emotion can be too angry and no exaggeration too incredible.” David Frum complains that “the blogosphere takes on the scale and reality of an alternative world whose controversies and feuds are … absorbing.” David Brooks laments, “People in the 1950s used to earnestly debate the role of the intellectual in modern politics. But the Lionel Trilling authority figure has been displaced by the mass class of blog-writing culture producers.”
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November 12, 2008
Last week I visited Mid-America Reformed Seminary, in Dyer, Indiana. Most people haven’t heard of it. It’s basically the denominational seminary for the United Reformed Church. Most Presbyterian reformed denominations would condone it because of its similarity to the Westminsters, for example; and most continental reformed denominations would condone it because of its heritage. I am attracted to it for a number of reasons, which in good confessional-blog-style I will enumerate for you. Least important to most important:
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October 22, 2008
First of all, a laughable attempt to harness the power of advertising to the propaganda of atheism: A Look At Atheist Public Relations, by Al Mohler.
Second, check out this interesting historical note from the Scriptorium Daily, regarding the author of The Church’s One Foundation: Lyra Fidelium.
Third, consider these thought-provoking quotations in One Issue Politics from Miscellanies.
Finally, check out this absolutely excellent website: Andy Crouch’s Culture Making.
Posted in Reformed Blog Carnival No Comments »
October 21, 2008
I paused half-way up the fire-tower. Night had swallowed the trees a few yards beneath me and my friends weren’t climbing yet. I leaned back against against the girders behind me and let go of the ladder. My palm was cold against my fingers when I clenched my hand.
In the silence and darkness I felt like I was floating.
Out in the miles around the fire-tower hill, lights twinkled from isolated RV parks and rippled across the waters from lakeside villas. In a few moments I would continue up. When I reached the top of the tower, I would wait for my friends. When they had joined me, we would all flash our lights in unison to the west, where another group of friends sat on a boat in a lake to flash their lights back at us. The adventure was my idea, a throwback to my childhood of make-believe. But for the moment all that context disappeared and I felt something we just don’t feel very often anymore.
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Posted in Faith, God, Nature No Comments »
October 20, 2008
My pastor gave an appropriate analogy yesterday.
Imagine, he suggested, that you want to get a classroom full of middle-school boys to learn math. They refuse to pay any attention. So you consider all your alternatives and finally settle on a plan. You hire an attractive female teacher–in her twenties–and have her stand at the front of the classroom and teach the boys math while wearing a two-piece bathing suit.
You will have their attention, he pointed out. But they still probably won’t learn any math.
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Posted in Evangelism, Fear 3 Comments »
