This makes sense.

“And listen to the way he talks about us: ‘You shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life’ (Phil. 2:15-16). As Shawn Mullins sings, ‘we’re born to shimmer; we’re born to shine.’ You are supposed to shimmer. ‘Let your light shine before men’ (Matt. 5:16). All this groveling and self-deprecation done by Christians is often just shame masquerading as humility. Shame says, ‘I’m nothing to look at. I’m not capable of goodness.’ Humility says, ‘I bear a glory for sure, but it is a reflected glory. A grace given to me.’ Your story does not begin with sin. It begins with a glory bestowed upon you by God. It does not start in Genesis 3; it starts in Genesis 1. First things first, as they say.

“Certainly, you will admit that God is glorious. Is there anyone more kind? Is there anyone more creative? Is there anyone more valiant? Is there anyone more true? Is there anyone more daring? Is there anyone more beautiful? Is there anyone more wise? Is there anyone more generous? You are his offspring. His child. His reflection. His likeness. You bear his image. Do remember that though he made the heavens and the earth in all their glory, the desert and the open sea, the meadow and the Milk Way, and said, ‘It is good,’ it was only after he made you that he said, ‘It is very good’  (Gen. 1:31). Think of it: your original glory was greater than anything that’s ever taken you breath away.

“‘As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight’ (Ps. 16:3).

“God endowed you with a glory when he created you, a glory so deep and mythic that all creation pales in comparison.” (John Eldredge, Waking the Dead, 77-78; his emphasis.)

Be blessed today. Be glorious!

Driving to school yesterday, I heard a story on the news that sent my mind reeling.  Being that I am a little behind the times sometimes, you all may have heard about this book, but I believe it bears repeating.

Kevin Roose, author of The Unlikely Disciple:  A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University, posed as an evangelical at Liberty University for a semester as research for this book.  Karen Swallow Prior has written a good review of it at www.christianitytoday.com.  This is the final section:

Not surprisingly, Roose interprets much of the good he finds in his experience through the lens of pragmatism. He quotes William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience throughout the book as he tries to reconcile his increasing admiration for certain aspects of evangelicalism with his opposing political and social views. But even pragmatism can’t explain the most profound part of his experience.

I didn’t meet Roose until two years after his semester here, when he sat in my office for a friendly, hour-long chat on one of those “good days” of February in Lynchburg, just a few weeks before his book’s release. He still comes back to visit the friends he made here—and, on this trip, to talk about the book. Of all the unexpected events at Liberty, the one that most moves him, one included in the book but conveyed even more poignantly face-to-face, is the love his Liberty friends showed him when he finally revealed the truth about who he is and why he enrolled here. One of his roommates, he says, expressed their reaction best: “How could I not forgive you when I’ve been forgiven so much?” Roose shakes his head in disbelief, sitting in the chair next to mine. “I never expected the people here to apply the principles of their belief to their lives in such a real way.”

It is this sense of love, ultimately, that Roose can’t shake, even two years later. He found at Liberty a kind of community, he acknowledges, that has no parallel in the secular world. “I never thought,” Roose writes to the school in the book’s acknowledgements, “that the world’s largest evangelical university would feel like home … . But by experiencing your warmth, your vigorous generosity of spirit, and your deep complexity, I was ultimately convinced—not that you were right, necessarily, but that I was wrong.”

Roose’s life was changed for the better through his semester at Liberty. And hopefully, Liberty University will be changed for the better, too, through having seen itself through the eyes of a stranger—an angel of sorts, perhaps (as Roose intimates in the book’s epigraph), that we entertained unaware.

Yes, we watch our language around children, or we edit our actions if we are out with friends we know to be unbelievers.  But we never know who is watching.  And we never know when what we say or do will make an impact, good or bad, on the person standing nearest us.  Roose’s reaction to these students’ forgiveness and grace is the exact reason that Andy Stanley hit the nail on the head in a video I watched the other day.  He said, “Jesus did not dispense guilt.  He did not leverage guilt.  It is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance.”  (Romans 2:4)  One of the fruits of the spirit isn’t guilt.  Love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Not condemnation.  Not guilt.  Jesus, with the blood on his back and the scars on His body that made him unrecognizable, having nothing in His appearance that we would desire Him…yes, He alone has come in and cleaned out the closets of my heart.  I am skeleton-free, guilt-free, and righteous because of His sacrifice alone.  Andy Stanley says that it is the guilty people who deal in the currency of guilt.  Christ has freed me from guilt, therefore He has given me the freedom to deal in the currency of grace.  May we all be rich in the currency of grace to ALL people, at ALL times, for we never know who may be watching and listening…

Annie Dillard on the Journey

“I live in tranquility and trembling. Sometimes I dream. I am interested in Alice mainly when she eats the cooky that makes her smaller. I would pare myself or be pared that I too might pass through the merest crack, a gap I know is there in the sky. I am looking just now for the cooky. Sometimes I open, pried like a fruit. Or I am porous as old bone, or translucent, a tinted condensation of the air like a watercolor wash, and I gaze around me in bewilderment, fancying I cast no shadow. Sometimes I ride a bucking faith while one hand grips and the other flails the air, and like any daredevil I gouge with my heels for blood, for a wilder ride, for more.

“There is not a guarantee in the world. Oh your needs are guaranteed, your needs are absolutely guaranteed by the most stringent of warranties, in the plainest, truest words: knock; seek; ask. But you must read the fine print. “Not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” That’s the catch. If you can catch it will catch you up, aloft, up to any gap at all, and you’ll come back, for you will come back, transformed in a way that you may not have bargained for—dribbling and crazed. The waters of separation, however lightly sprinkled, leave indelible stains. Did you think, before you were caught, that you needed, say, life? Do you think you will keep your life, or anything else you love? But no. Your needs are all met. But not as the world giveth. You see the needs of your own spirit met whenever you have asked, and you have learned that the outrageous guarantee holds. You see the creatures die, and you know you will die. And one day it occurs to you that you must not need life. Obviously. And then you’re gone. You have finally understood that you’re dealing with a maniac.

“I think that the dying pray at the last is not ‘please,’ but ‘thank you,’ as a guest thanks his host at the door. Falling from airplanes the people are crying thank you, thank you, all down the air; and the cold carriages draw up for them on the rocks. Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see. And then you walk fearlessly, eating what you must, growing wherever you can, like the monk on the road who knows precisely how vulnerable he is, who takes no comfort among death-forgetting men, and who carries his vision of vastness and might around in his tunic like a live coal which neither burns nor warms him, but with which he will not part.” (Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 275)

Amen.

Somewhere in the internet world there is a post about Jude being an original ADM/EDM/ODM. My question is where are the names? Where is Jude’s name calling? In fact, look at verse 16 and tell me who that looks like today? Take a look at verse 8. Just look at the whole book and I would offer that the very people who use Jude as their proof text are guilty of what Jude is writing against. I find it interesting this supposed forerunner of the ADM’s never uses names. He tells them to be merciful. Truth is, by their standards, he seems rather wishy washy.

Seriously, go read the book here. Come back and tell me what you think.

One has to wonder if Chris Rosebrough is Slowly Becoming Catholic or joining the Evanjellyfish of the Apostate Nation with this piece that does  wonderful impersonation of a batter striking out. Calling on Irenaeus (who is called the first great Catholic theologian) Chris tries to make the case that sites like SOL and ??N are just part of a long history of discernment ministries. He compares ??N to Irenaeus. Now, I’ll let you do a little study and compare the two. Chris makes a nice funny where he says some may have accused Irenaeus of having a PDM (Parchment Discernment Ministry). The strikeout is impressive when you consider it is 881 words long. The last paragraph is a prayer and who can be against those, so I took those 80 words out, which if you divide the remaining 771 by three strikes (the number necessary for an out) you get 257 outs. That’s enough for one team to have played 9.5 games. Impressive.

Oh, here’s two little differences to begin with.

1. Irenaeus was actually considered a pastor (ordained and held in the highest regard) by the people above him and around him.

2. His church had more than 6 people in it. Size isn’t everything but come on, it needs to be considered at some point, doesn’t it?

Comparing what the first great Catholic Theologian wrote to the tabloid tripe that comes from the EDM’s is downright silly. Mr. Rosebrough fails to be honest enough to mention that many who criticize the wanna be teachers and true trouble makers willingly make a distinction between real discernment and self linking. He also fails to mention Frank Turk’s comment about the Bible calling for Biblical elders not EDM/ADM/ODM’s.

So in a clear umpire voice, I say, “You’re out!”

This morning I hosted our weekly Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting at the local Middle School. It was a great hour we spent together.

We talked, incidentally, about Luke 18:9-14:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The first thing we talked about was what a parable is. I explained to the kids, in really cool and neat Junior High language what a parable is. We then read verse 9 where we are told to whom and why Jesus told this parable. Read it again:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable.

I then asked the kids: So what is Jesus teaching us in this parable? One of the students, not missing a beat said: That Jesus doesn’t like tall people?

I just thought that, perhaps, with all the important things we discuss around here, you might appreciate some levity. The boy’s name is Thomas. He’s a catcher on my baseball team and has a cannon for an arm.

I encourage you to find ways to be involved with the youth of your community. They are blessed creatures who need to be loved by God’s people and encouraged in their daily walk.

Be blessed today in Christ.

jerry

Ingrid in doing her part to alert the remnant has directed her readership to an article by Paul Proctor “Are Christians driving church numbers down” To quote Ingrid, the article is “interesting”. Unfortunately I suspect Ingrid and I have a different definition of “interesting”.

Sans the illogical rhetoric, the hubris, and the Silvanian word flourish I’m not quite sure what Paul was getting at. I mean the title is certainly an eye catcher but then he launches into a convoluted explanation that is rife with…well…it’s kinda hard to explain. Here’s my outline:

The church is dying.
It’s not our fault.
God is in control.
It’s probably God pulling weeds.
We are the only true converts.
It’s not our fault.
God is in control.
Save us from the apostasy.

blech!

If you do happen to head over to Paul’s article be sure to skip over this paragraph.

Is it not biblical compromise and carnal indulgence that has ultimately caused it – pleasure palaces built with borrowed money to produce sensory circuses that can better compete with the world for your patronage and mine with watered-down gospel messages, coffee shop ministries, rock and roll worship and people-pleasing programs? If it is, then how can more biblical compromise and carnal indulgence solve it?

You might get confused as you see the ads, promos, sales, email alerts, and store links for all kinds of “carnal indulgences”.

So today, Ken has a post up at ??N linking to Ingrid. What’s Ingrid so upset with? Well, Tim Challies wrote a piece about evil as entertainment. Here’s my favorite quote by her

Challies does not bother to specifically address what blogs/bloggers he is talking about, and as a result, anyone who reads a news and views blog can be made to feel that they may be in sin for doing so.

Here’s my question, How can anyone make anyone else feel that they might be in sin. For that matter, if her conscience is clear before God, why is she worried about one lone blogger? There’s a Shakespeare quote that comes to mind about protesting too much.

Commenting on Jesus’ miracle of raising the dead son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17), Todd Hunter writes:

‘God is back, looking to the needs of his people!’ And the news spread. This is how the rule and reign of God out to be experienced among us today. Caring for the needs of others is what I have in mind, not just the spectacular part about the boy’s resuscitation. I like the thought of others experiencing Christianity ‘for their good.’ But because of two dynamics, Christianity is seldom seen as being good for others. First, many Christians believe that our relationship with God is a private matter–just between Jesus and me. Second, when we do extend our beliefs into the public sphere, we are noted for nagging, for being judgmental, argumentative or holier than thou. But we see neither of these in Jesus.” –Todd D Hunter, Christianity Beyond Belief, 112-113

Yes. I do believe Mr Hunter is correct here. I can tell you from first hand experience that this type (the self-centered, judgmental type) of ‘christianity’ simply must die.  And, to be sure, I believe it will.

“There is nothing more disgusting than to see Pharisaical legalists splitting theological hairs, rigidly maintaining opinions at the expense of peace and harmony in the Body of Christ.”–Fred W Smith, The Plea, October 1951, volume 7, no. 8