J. Edwards Quote: God is not Narsissus, we are.

“As God delights in his own beauty, he must necessarily delight in the creature’s holiness which is a conformity to and participation of it, as truly as (the) brightness of a jewel, held in the sun’s beams, is a participation or derivation of the sun.’”

- Jonathan Edwards (The End for which God Created the World)

Though it is a constant theme in Scripture, many Christians recoil when confronted with the idea of God’s Delighting in His Own beauty. We simply don’t like it. We want God to delight in us above all things. I want Him to be all about me – my world, my life, my concerns, my beauty, my standing, my reputation, my health. Me and me alone. What a shock it is to our system when we discover that God is all about God – first and foremost; that His desire to glorify Himself takes precedence over every other concern.

When we consider this, we immediately try to “humanize” the idea. Is God not arrogant? How could he demand so much attention without being guilty of selfishness.  We mumble inside our hearts, “God is just an attention hog, that’s what He is. Always demanding our love, demanding our devotion, demanding our worship. He’s just a big old baby!  And if we don’t give Him what He wants then He pouts and thinks about ways to smite us into oblivion.”

Though deeply flawed, it is very natural to think this way.  When we truly contemplate God’s demand to be glorified, it only makes sense to go this direction with our thought. But let’s consider just a couple of things that may help us to move in a better direction.

First of all, let’s understand that God’s love and worship of Himself is not selfish or arrogant, but supremely sacrificial and otherly. I once had a pastoral colleague tell me that he hated the idea of God seeking His own glory. He said that he refused to teach this doctrine to his people because it perpetuated selfishness and made God out to be nothing more than a Narcissistic deity who cared nothing for others.  Is this true?

Just so you know, in Greek mythology, Narcissus was a hero who was renowned for his astounding beauty. In fact, according to most traditions, Narcissus was so beautiful that he fell in love with himself, constantly gazing at his own reflection in a pool of water.  Eventually, so obsessed with his appearance, Narcissus fell into the water and drowned.

Is this God? Is God like Narcissus – self absorbed and arrogant?

This is where the Christian doctrine of the Trinity becomes so imperative. Understanding that God is tri-personal – three persons and one God – affirms that God is communal – in and of Himself. This explains how God has always been loving, and that His love is not contingent upon having a creature on which to bestow that love. God is love, and always has been. God is perfectly able to express that love within the Godhead – the Father loving the Son, the Son loving the Spirit, and so on. Therefore, God’s passion for His Glory is no self absorbed passion no more than His love for Himself is a self-absorbed love. The scripture bears this out for us. When faced with the Crucifixion, Jesus said, “for this purpose I have come unto this hour. Father, glorify your name (John 12:27).”  Also, in John 17:1, Jesus prays, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You.”

Do you see it? We could go on and on to make this point. The Holy Spirit glorifies the Son. The Son glorifies the Father. The Father glorifies the Son and so on. So then, God’s divine compulsion to Glorify Himself is other-ly, sacrificial, and supremely loving. God is not Narcissus, we are. We are the ones who stare at our own reflection. We are the ones who are self-absorbed. When God commands us to Worship Him, it is His invitation for us to enter into community, into self-forgetfulness, and into divine love. Yet, we refuse. Because of our sinful condition, we are addicted to staring into the proverbial pond, fawning over our supposed beauty, preening in self-delight; so much so that we eventually fall headlong into the siren call of those waters, drowning ourselves inside ourselves.

Moving further, let’s also understand that God’s invitation, His command, that we Glorify Him, is not an unloving desire. When God created us, He made us after His own image. This is a mysterious idea. We may never fully understand in this life, nor in the life to come, what it fully means to be created in God’s Image. Yet, we can know this: Just as God Glorifies Himself and enjoys and finds pleasure in that Glory, so He has also made us to Glorify Him and share in the pleasure of that Glory. In other words, we were designed to Glorify God. It is our greatest pleasure and joy. Just as fish were designed for water and birds were designed for flight, so we were made to Glorify God and Love Him supremely.

Think about what Edwards is saying. We are like diamonds that are created for the light of the sun. The brighter the light, the more brilliant the diamond shines, which gives glory back to the wonder of light and color. In the same way, God has made us, to shine like stars in the universe. As we Glorify Christ, we come alive – we are doing what we were designed to do. God glorifies us with His Glory that we might more perfectly Glorify Him. And this is our crown…our design…our ultimate purpose. Thanks be to God, who has sent us Christ Jesus, so that we might be given the desire and ability to glorify God, and in so doing, discover our deepest joy.

Blessings in Christ!

Ash Wednesday, Spiders, Jonathan Edwards, and the Glory of God in Small Things

“We hence see the exuberant goodness of the Creator, who hath not only provided for all the necessities, but also for the pleasure and recreation of all sorts of creatures, and even the insects and those that are most despicable.”

- Jonathan Edwards “Of Insects”

On this Ash Wednesday, as we begin the season of Lent, I would like to consider together with you the Grace of Christ that lurks in the nooks and crannies of our lives. On this somber day, for a moment, let’s allow the possibility that the Grace of Jesus is not wholly seen by our eyes; not fully heard by our ears; not truly understood in our perception. Grace is not often gaudy, but quiet, moving slowly and effortlessly within our hearts and in the world around us.

In the Scriptures we read about the faith of a mustard seed moving mountains and about being faithful in small things and about Christ saying suffer not the little children to come unto me and about Christ knowing how many hairs are on our heads and that He feeds tiny birds and clothes the wild flowers in beauty. Among other things, I think these verses tell us that Christ cares about small things…in between things…what we might call boring things.

Yesterday I read an article by Jonathan Edwards – one of the greatest theological minds ever to live in America. The article was about the beauty and wonder of spiders. Edwards went into intricate detail about how spiders, almost invisible to men, hop from tree to tree and shoot a miraculous “liquor” out of their tails to spin their webs. He explains that their webs are spun in the full light of day, yet we do not see them unless the light and our line of sight come together at the proper angle.

(They) are so exceeding small and fine as that they cannot be discerned except held in a particular position with respect to the sun.”

These tiny creatures, dancing in the shadows, after fulfilling their divine purpose, eventually construct a substance from their webs that enables them to fly by catching hold of the breeze, taking them out over the ocean and into the sea.

Edwards says that he learned these things about spiders through careful observation, which means he must have spent time out in the fields, observing the insect world. He went on to say that this taught him much about the Wisdom of God and how God does such miraculous “little things” among the insects.

Reading Edwards’ words caused met to consider my nature and the modern culture in which I live. We claim that we cannot hear God and never imagine that it is our pride that clogs our ears and not God’s silence. We, being blind, accuse God of hiding from us. We demand that Christ speak to us with large, over hanging words, written by hand in ornate calligraphy, replete with personal affirmations and affections. We order Christ to play his music according to our tastes, to dance a jig for us, to make much of us, to entertain us. We forcefully require Christ to be our Jester and not our King; we order the Church to be our spiritual muse while rejecting her as our mother.

Meanwhile, thinking ourselves abandoned and betrayed, we are absolutely drenched in the Glories of God. We are swimming in the Grace of Christ. We sit at a Banquet Table with clenched lips and accuse God of starving us to death while Manna falls from the heavens; but our eyes are closed. Our Line of Sight is not adjusted to the Sun. The spiders in the fields weave wonderful tapestries from the tip of their tails and ride the wind into the seas; but we do not see. The heavens are telling a story. Nature is singing a song. The Gospel drips from the trees as each branch reaches for the skies, lifting holy hands to the world’s Redeemer. But we cannot hear nor see nor feel the music because we are blind, deaf, unfeeling, unthinking…numb and jaded by our idolatry.

Yet, it is in the small things…in the life in between, in the so called boring stuff of life, where our Savior dwells; And holding out His Gracious hand, to blind and silly men, our Messiah, not our Jester, lifts us up into the Full Light of Day, and singing soft the song of Mystery, He invites us to the Cross. As we bow our ashen heads on this first day of Lent to consider our hearts before God, may the Lord fully awaken every spiritual sensibility, that we may know the Resurrection joy that continually holds us in the quiet Grace of Christ.

Note: Just so you know, Edwards was only 11 years old when he made these observations. You can read his article “Of Insects” by clicking HERE.

Scripture Verses to Consider…

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” – Matt 5:3

“Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.” Matthew 5:8

“But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” – Matthew 19:14

“He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much.” – Luke 16:10

“Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?” – Matthew 6:26

“The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, And night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; Their voice is not heard.” – Psalm 19:1-3

I Have A Gospel Dream – Revisiting Dr. King’s Famous Address

I am a child of the civil rights movement. I grew up as a minority white kid in inner city Atlanta, Georgia during the volatile season of the late 1960s and early 70s. The desegregation movement sent me, along with a hand full of white kids, to the previously all black Elementary School known as C.D. Hubert. My sixth grade year, on the first day of class, Coretta Scott King, Dr. Martin Luther King’s wife, spoke at C.D. Hubert to encourage us to embrace one another and to remember the reason her husband died. We ended that meeting as we did every all-school meeting, with students and teachers, black and white, raising their hands together and singing in on voice – “We shall overcome”

However, as a ‘minority’ white kid, I sometimes became the face of the enemy. In 1977 I attended a brand new school named Martin Luther King Middle. The week that the miniseries “Roots” was aired on television, I was attacked five times by angry black kids who blamed me for American slavery. I also suffered at the hands of a few racist teachers in the days when it was legal to spank children who forgot to finish their homework. My spankings tended to be much worse. In fact, one beating was so severe that it left me with deep bruises on my legs and backside. My mother saw to it that the teacher resigned. Yet, somehow, in the midst of all of that drama, I avoided becoming a racist. I didn’t hate black people. Somehow I was able to see that the major differences in people were not determined by the color of their skin, as Dr. King so eloquently puts it in his “I Have a Dream” speech, but by the content of their character. In the world that I grew up in, there were mean and evil and broken black people, and there were mean and evil and broken white people.

Yet, at the same time, there existed remarkably loving people of color like my elementary school music teacher – Mr. Fleming – who discovered that I had a voice that could sing with the soul of black man (his words). He taught me to use my voice and he put me right up in the front of the Black Gospel Choir, singing the lead in “Going Up Yonder.” I also had great and loyal friends like L.D. Hull, Eddie James, David Fields, and another kid named David that we all called “Skee Ball”. We were determined not to allow the racism of our culture to shape how we felt about each other.

Sadly, as things go, my family moved from inner-city Atlanta at the end of my sophomore year and I lost touch with my childhood friends. But those days gave me a paradigm for seeing the world. People are not evil because of the color of their melanin. They are evil because of the darkness in their hearts. As a child, I memorized Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech. It has stuck with me through the years and I have recently had the opportunity to analyze the speech and to think about its message. Ultimately, the speech really is a homily about heaven. It is a speech about the Church. It is a speech drawn from the truth of the Gospel and almost lifted from the pages of Isaiah. It is a speech that could only be written by someone who possessed a Christian view of the world.

Yet, with no disrespect to Dr. King, the speech does not go far enough. The heart of our collective Dream must rise above the struggles of the civil rights movement. It must speak to something deeper…something more. It must speak to something eternal. Because at the end of the day, our hope is not found in the human spirit to overcome. Our hope cannot rest in our ability to save ourselves. Our hope is not in Barak Obama or Martin Luther King or Bono or Mother Teresa or John Calvin. If we understand the Gospel rightly, we must admit that our one and only True Hope must rest in Jesus Christ, and in Jesus Christ alone. There is no one else who can change the content of our character. No one else can rescue us from the wretchedness of sin or the ugliness of hate. Only the Cross can save us. And only through Christ can we ever hope to be truly “free at last”.

With these thoughts in mind, as way to commemorate my respect for Dr. Martin Luther King, and with a desire to root Dr. King’s thought more clearly in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I have re-written the “I Have a Dream Speech”. Somehow, I don’t think Dr. King would mind.

I call this speech, “I Have a Gospel Dream.”

Click at the top to Listen or click below to Dowload…

I Have A Gospel Dream – Audio

I Have A Gospel Dream – PDF Document

The Gospel is Sacrosanct: The Scripture Rainbow

When Christoph Römhild, a Lutheran pastor in Hamburg, Germany, sent Carnegie Mellon Ph.D. student Chris Harrison a list of 63,779 cross-references between the Bible’s 1,189 chapters, the two became enthralled with elegantly showing the interconnected nature of Scripture. Each bar along the horizontal axis represents a chapter, with the length determined by the number of verses. (Books alternate in color between white and light gray.) Colors represent the distance between references. Graphic by Chris Harrison, Carnegie Mellon University.

A friend of mine, and fellow pastor, Mark Upton says, “This visual representation of just how interconnected the Bible is (is just one more) reason I believe in the Divine Inspiration of Scripture. No conspiracy of man made teachings could actually be this tight and coherent.”

The Gospel is indeed Sacrosanct.

By the way…take note that the strand coming down right in the middle is the longest chapter in the Bible – Psalm 119 – which extols the riches of the Word of God.

Celebrating Christmas in a Season of Economic Crisis

Below is an article that I recently published in our church newsletter…

I don’t know if you have noticed (of course you have), but America is in a pretty serious economic recession. This financial crisis has certainly affected our church. Over the past several months, I have talked with a number of families and individuals at Surfside PCA who are feeling the impact – retired couples who have lost more than half of their retirement nest egg, craftsmen who have nothing left to build, real estate agents who have no buyers or sellers, and small business owners who have gone belly up. There are a good number who are facing the reality of losing their home, losing their automobiles, and to be sure, some are even having a difficult time putting food on the table.

In the midst of these challenges, we approach Christmas – the season of buying and selling and giving gifts. I think it is safe to assume that this is not good news for most of us. In fact, instead of a time of celebration and cheer, the Christmas Season may feel like a swift kick to the head of a guy who is already down. If you identify with what I’m saying, allow me to offer a word of spiritual encouragement

First of all, let’s admit that there is not a lot we can do to change our circumstances. Our economy is in trouble and none of us can change that by working harder. Not one person that I have talked to is hurting financially because they are lazy. They are willing to work hard, but that is not the issue. No amount of hard work and ingenuity can change their situation. We are now beginning to feel the weight of our true needs.  It’s not as if we didn’t have those needs before, but without the cushion of financial security, we feel those needs more deeply.  Aren’t we all in desperate Spiritual need all the time? Isn’t this why we needed Jesus to “move in next door” to us, to become a man, to give His life? This Christmas season provides us with a great opportunity to worship Jesus. We are desperate. We have come to the end of ourselves. We need Jesus to dwell with us.

Secondly, let’s admit that we do not consist of the things we own or the money we have or the jobs that we do. The Scripture tells us that we are more than what we wear or what we eat. Now more than ever, we have the opportunity to feel that truth. We may not have jobs or money or financial security, but we do have our spouses, our children, our church family and most of all, we have Christ Jesus – the greatest gift that God could give us. Jesus never owned a home. Never had a savings account. The Son of Man had no place to lay his head. Yet, he was satisfied with the love of His Father. He trusted that His Father would commune with Him and ultimately would provide for Him. When He was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, Jesus said, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.” Jesus makes it clear that His greatest need was not food or shelter, but His greatest need was to commune with His Father. As hard as it may seem, and as foreign as it may be to our flesh, isn’t this also true for us.  We may not want to believe it.  But ultimately, we need Jesus to feed us.

Finally, let’s admit that we can still celebrate this Christmas season by giving gifts. What an opportunity we have. Jesus came into the earth as the King of Kings and gave us the greatest gift He could possibly give – He gave us Himself. He sacrificed Himself that He might give us Freedom; that He might give us Hope, that He might give us Love. Church, you can do the same. Maybe you do not have “silver or gold” but what do you have? You have the Love of Christ. You have Hope. You have Freedom. So, this Christmas season feel free to mourn over what you have lost.  That is perfectly legitimate.  Cry out to the Father.  Cry out to Christ.  Jesus mourns with you.  He knows what you are going through.  Do not allow your circumstances to drive you away from Christ.  Instead, allow your desperation to drive you to the foot of the Cross.  Yet, do not simply mourn what you have lost.  Allow Christ to take you further, so that you might also celebrate what you have. You have Jesus!  You have Hope.  You have Freedom.  If the Lord has blessed you financially, give to others who are need in our church.  Give sacrificially and celebrate the Gospel. If you have no money, consider what you do have and give that. Give Cheer. Give Hope. Give time. Give your heart. Give your Love. Remember Christian, no man is impoverished who has Christ.

O come, O come Immanuel
And ransom captive Israel
Who mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Immanuel shall come to thee O Israel

Religion v. The Gospel

Below is an article that compares the aims of Religion v. the aims of The Gospel. The article was originally constructed by Rev. Tim Keller, a PCA pastor in Manhattan. I have refurbished it a bit. Have a read. I would relish any comments or observations! (FYI – I have included a link to the Word Document if you would like to download it by clicking here -  religion-v-the-gospel

Word Document: religion-versus-the-gospel

Do I Believe in Jesus?

I teach a college aged Bible Study on Sunday Mornings.  Over the past several months we have been going through 1 John and as we walked through the book one thing seemed to emerge right out of the pages and dance before our very eyes…Jesus is Grace.  When John speaks of Loving one Another – he is not talking about a love that can be separated from the Love of Christ.  When John speaks of holiness he is not talking about a holiness that exists apart from the Holiness of Christ.  When John says “Do not Sin”  he is not talking about behavior modification, he is talking about the idolatry that leads us away from Christ.  Christ is our Grace.  There is no Grace apart from Him.  John culminates this idea in 1 John 3:23 – “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.”

The First Command?  “Believe in Jesus!”  There is no other way to please God.  Believe in the name of Christ!  This is our righteousness.  This is our Grace!  And this gives us Grace upon Grace to obey the Second Command…to Love one another as He has commanded us. 

Isn’t it strange that the Apostle should feel the need to command us to Believe?  I think most of us assume that we believe.  We think that that should be the easy part.  But it isn’t.  In fact, there could not be anything more difficult for us.  ”Believing in Jesus” really is the command that is impossible without Grace.  We need Jesus, so that we might believe in Jesus.  Everything else in the Christian life dances forever around this central truth.  Whenever we move away from believing in Jesus, we move toward idolatry.  And when we move away from Jesus, we move away from love, away from forgiving, away from grace.  This is why John ends his letter with this abrupt warning…”Little Children, keep yourselves free from idols.”   

So, do I believe in Jesus?  Do you?  Does believing in Jesus define our Christian life?  Or does our affiliation to a particular political party define it?  Does Jesus define our righteousness or does our moral behavior define it.  Is Jesus our Messiah?  Our Hope?  Or are we holding out for John McCain or Barak Obama?  Do we believe that Jesus is Sovereign?  That He is King?  That Jesus is our power?  That He is our future?  That He is our forgiveness?  That He is our Grace?  Or do we simply treat Jesus as the “Audience of One?”  The God who is watching us.  Making a list.  Checking it twice.  NO!  Jesus in NOT our Audience!  We do not perform for Him.  This is not the Gospel. 

Wake up Tim!  JESUS IS YOUR GRACE! 

Do I believe?  Do you?

1 John 5:1 – Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God

“Heaven is not my Home” – a book review

I would like to recommend an excellent book that I am presently reading called “Heaven is not my Home” by Paul Marshall. In his thought-provoking book, Marshall asserts that God is not seeking to destroy the earth, but to restore it to its original splendor. He shows us how the redemption of all things should shape the way we look at every aspect of our lives. He especially fleshes out some of the things I’ve talked about in regard to developing a healthy theology of play. (See “Christian Impact and Football” and “C.S. Lewis and a Theology of Christian Hope“). However, Marshall’s work goes much, much further. His fuller emphasis is focused on broader aspects of the Kingdom of God ‘yet to come’ and connecting those to the Kingdom of God that exists ‘right now’.

N.T. Wright on the Cobert Report

I love Stephen Cobert. The dude cracks me up, especially when he interviews people. I recently found out through my friend Scott Stewart (click here) that N.T. did an interview with Cobert. I think for the first time ever I thought, “Stephen Cobert, you should just shut up.” I wanted so badly to hear more of what Wright had to say. Of course, we can always read the book – “Surprised by Hope”. I’m reading it now and, man, it’s so good. Our theology of heaven is often confused with Greek mythology along with a plethora of retarded ideas that we get from ‘Left Behind’ and other such top notch scholarly work. “Surprised by Hope” basically outlines for us a demythologized version of heaven that’s rooted in Biblical exegesis. I recommend it highly. You can order it through the Sacrosanct Store. In the meantime, take a look at Bishop Wright’s interview with Cobert. I bet you will also feel what I felt…”Cobert! Shut up for a minute. Let the Bishop talk, bro.”

Sorry: Video No Longer Available

The Idol of Christian Impact and Football

In my former post “C.S. Lewis and a theology of Christian Hope“, I had a pretty good comment exchange with my good friend DonBob. DB’s prodding helped me to develop some further thoughts along these lines that I felt were worth posting.

One of my primary intentions here at Sacrosanct Gospel is to attempt to clear away thoughts and ideas that often cloud or adulterate the Gospel of Jesus. I don’t suppose for a moment that I have a corner on this market so I look to friends, authors, thinkers, and theologians to help me along the road. John Piper, Tim Keller, Eugene Peterson and Mark Driscoll are some of my biggest allies in this regard. I also read a few dead guys like Edwards, Calvin, and Lewis. However, as I observe our modern evangelical cultural trends, it seems that some of those who currently defend the Gospel most heartily – namely Piper, Driscoll, and Macarthur – often get a little too zealous in their collective emphasis on missiology.

C.S. Lewis and a theology of Christian Hope

I love C.S. Lewis. I can’t help it. About 20 years ago I read “Mere Christianity” and “Until we have Faces” and right then and there, I was hooked. The thing that I find most appealing about Lewis is the way he approaches life and spirituality. He loved to read, loved to teach, loved to debate, loved to think, and loved to study…but he also loved to imagine, loved a good story, loved to have beer with friends, loved to laugh, and loved to enjoy life. In short, Lewis saw work and play as simultaneous expressions of worship given to God. I have read very few authors, and met even fewer people, who keep as firm a grasp on this as Lewis. I am recently reading Jonathan Edwards and as I work through the material, I can’t help but wondering, “When did this guy ever lighten up?”

The Love of Christ and our Enemies – Matthew 5:38-44

It’s dangerous to read the Bible. Even more dangerous to believe it. In fact, if you are the kind of Christian who wants to stay nice and safe, then I would recommend reading something else. The Bible isn’t safe and is often terribly discomforting. Recently, I have been renewing myself in reading the Scriptures in a devotional way and as I’ve been doing this, I’ve been struck by the commands of Christ regarding love. As I study scripture and grapple with the call to love – not only the call to love God, my family and friends, but to love my enemies as well – I am overwhelmed. First of all, let’s just admit that It is difficult to understand the Love of Christ. It is ridiculously unfathomable and I am convinced that even if we did understand it, we could not begin to actually show the Love of Christ without the Holy Spirit working in us.

Death and the Gospel

Somehow we seem to have lost touch with the fact that we’re dying. I don’t know how this happens. It is the one thing in life that is absolutely guaranteed: we will die. Yet, we tend to live as if our days will last forever. We make money, buy big houses, buy new cars, watch our big screen televisions and whisper to ourselves that death is long way off…that we should eat, drink, and be merry, and pretend that life will continue on forever. That we are able to trick ourselves like this – to blind ourselves to our impending demise – is one of our strangest capacities. For death is all around us. Our friends and loved ones pass away. The evening news is filled with the reality. And if we’re still and quiet, we can feel ourselves getting older…heading toward death. How is it that we are able hide our eyes from this?

The Gospel is not a Gun – Part 2

The following video clip is from the movie, “Saved”…

Hilary Faye: Mary, turn away from Satan. Jesus, he loves you.
Mary: You don’t know the first thing about love.
Hilary Faye: [ throws a Bible at Mary] I am FILLED with Christ’s love! You are just jealous of my success in the Lord.
Mary: [ Mary holds up the Bible] This is not a weapon! You idiot

Like I’ve said before…The Gospel is not a Gun.

Click here or on pic to see video

I don’t want to be a Professional Pastor

“If I, even for a moment, accept my culture’s definition of me, I am rendered harmless.” – Eugene Peterson, Contemplative Pastor, p.15

Over the last year, I have been feeling more and more called to church planting. This ‘call’ has been discomforting to say the least. I have never struggled more, prayed more, read more, whined more, or yelled at God more than I have over the past year. As I continue this struggle with God, I have examined several possible avenues and options. I continue to look first at my own denomination – the PCA – to decide whether this would be the direction of God’s leading. Last week, I went to our quarterly Presbytery meeting where several young men were being examined to become pastors. What I witnessed was no different than what I have witnessed before. The whole affair is like a cross between a “geeked-up” fraternal hazing and really bad episode of Jeopardy. The pastoral contestant stands up in front of his “brothers” in Christ – brothers who generally don’t know him or know anything about him – who then fire questions at him that supposedly examine his theological credibility.

Question: What is the proper Ordo Salutis? (Insert Jeopardy Theme here)

The Gospel is not a Gun – Part 1

I profess that I tend to be an adolescent minded Christian . It’s true. By and large, I live my Christian life like a middle school kid playing Cowboys and Indians. Cops and Robbers. Good Guys v. Bad Guys.

I study theology. But not so I can attain intimacy with Christ. I study so that I can feel right about myself. It’s a way of loading my gun. I pride myself on knowing the right things about God, on being Orthodox. I want to be Orthodox so that I can hide myself inside an iron clad fortress of Theology, the way a Sheriff might barricade himself inside the jail when the bad guys come to town. I surround my Orthodoxy with a plethora of hired guns – Jonathan Edwards, John Calvin, Spurgeon, Piper, and Keller. I recruit all the deputies I can, just in case a fight breaks out. I pin the tin star of my pastoral position right above my heart as proof of my Legitimacy. The star sparkles and shines and says “Sheriff” in bold letters and it gleams bright in the high noon sun.

We Need God

Douglas Coupland is a writer from Vancouver, Canada who became fairly famous in 1991 for his fictional novel,“Generation X: Tales of an Accelerated Culture”, in which he coined the phrase, you guessed it, “Generation X”. Coupland is eccentric to say the least. He’s written several odd and provocative novels on post modern culture. With titles like, “Shampoo Planet”, “Microserfs” and “Girlfriend in a Coma”, Coupland has become a semi sub-cultural pop icon. Besides writing, Coupland has also gained recognition as a film maker and as a visual artist. He once sculpted a series of works in which he chewed up copies of his own books and wove them into hornets nests. Weird dude, huh? Coupland does not claim to be a Christian, and is in fact openly gay. But here’s the thing…

Douglas Coupland is very different from me. He is a non-southern, gay, liberal, public TV watching, sports hating, non-Presbyterian. Yet, he wrote one of the coolest paragraphs I’ve ever read about the human need for a relationship with God.

We are Sacrosanct!

Do you dream? I mean, when you’re sleeping. I usually don’t but in the last year, I’ve started dreaming a lot. That hasn’t happened since I was a child. When I was a kid, I used to have a lot of crazy dreams and nightmares. This extended on into college, but after I got married, somewhere along the line, I stopped dreaming. Lately though, for some reason, I’ve started dreaming again.

A couple of months ago, I had a truly startling dream. After a restless night of tossing and turning, I got up, went into the kitchen, and drank a glass of orange juice. I lay down on the sofa with the TV playing quietly, trying to find something to bore me to sleep. After a few episodes of Sports Center, I finally dozed off. I was dreaming that I was in an urban neighborhood; one like where I grew up in inner-city Atlanta. I was standing outside a club or something, talking to some people about Christ. These people looked really sketchy: poor, angry, tattooed, and hostile – just like where I grew up. Definitely not Presbyterian, probably not Baptist…not even Republican (ha ha). Anyway, in the dream my family was with me and I was worried about them and their safety. So I looked up and started praying to the heavens, “Jesus, I want to follow you, but this isn’t safe. Why did you lead me here? Why did you give me this family if I can’t keep them safe. I’m too weak, too faithless, too…”

Just at that moment, in my dream, a voice spoke to me. It was loud and commanding and it spoke slowly, emphasizing each word, “Tim Melton! You are Sacrosanct!“