Dude, Where's Your Bride?

I like almost anything Kevin DeYoung writes. He is engaging and very diagnostic. I think I resonate with this particular post because I have observed many of the same nagging trends among men my age.








By Kevin DeYoung


As I speak at different venues across the country, one of the recurring questions I get comes from women, young women in particular. Their question usually goes something like this: “What is up with men?”


These aren’t angry women. Their question is more plaintive than petulant. I’m not quite sure why they ask me. Maybe because they’ve read Just Do Somethingand figure I’ll be a sympathetic ear. Or maybe they think I can help. They often follow up their initial question by exhorting me, “Please speak to the men in our generation and tell them to be men.”


They’re talking about marriage. I have met scores of godly young women nearby and far away who wonder “Where have all the marriageable men gone?” More and more commentators–Christian or otherwise–are noticing a trend in young men; namely, that they don’t seem to be growing up. Recently, William Bennett’s CNN article “Why Men Are in Trouble” has garnered widespread attention. The point of the post is summarized in the final line: “It’s time for men to man up.” Sounds almost biblical (1 Corinthians 16:13).


Virtually every single single person I know wants to be married. And yet, it is taking couples longer and longer to get around to marriage. Education patterns have something to do with it. A bad economy doesn’t help either. But there is something even more befuddling going on. Go to almost any church and you’ll meet mature, intelligent, attractive Christian women who want to get married and virtually no men to pursue them. These women are often in graduate programs and may have started a career already. But they aren’t feminists. They are eager to embrace the roles of wife and mother. Most of the women I’ve met don’t object to the being a helpmate. There just doesn’t seem to be a lot of mates to go around.


What’s going on here? Why are there so many unmarried, college graduated, serious-about-Christ, committed-to-the-church, put-together young women who haven’t found a groom, and don’t see any possibilities on the horizon?


Maybe women have impossible standards. That is a distinct possibility in some circumstances. I’m sure there are guys reading this thinking to themselves, “I’ve pursued these young women, Kevin! And they pushed me over the edge of the horizon.” Some women may be expecting too much from Mr. Right. But in my experience this is not the main problem. Impossible standards? Not usually. Some standards? Absolutely.


On the other end of the spectrum, some women may be so over-eager to be married they make guys nervous about showing any signs of interest. There is a fine line between anticipation and desperation. Men don’t want to spot the girl they like inside David’s Bridal after their first date. The guy will panic–and be a little creeped out.


This path of prolonged singleness is a two way street. But I think the problem largely resides with men. Or at least as a guy I can identify the problems of men more quickly. I see two issues.


First, the Christian men that are “good guys” could use a little–what’s the word I’m looking for–ambition. Every pastor has railed on video games at some point. But the problem is not really video games, it’s what gaming can (but doesn’t always) represent. It’s the picture of a 20something or 30something guy who doesn’t seem to want anything out of life. He may or may not have a job. He may or may not live with his parents. Those things are sometimes out of our control. There’s a difference between a down-on-his-luck fella charging hard to make something out of himself and a guy who seems content to watch movies, make enough to eat frozen pizzas in a one room apartment, play Madden, watch football 12 hours on Saturday, show up at church for an hour on Sunday and then go home to watch more football.


I don’t think young women are expecting Mr. Right to be a corporate executive with two houses, three cars, and a personality like Dale Carnegie. They just want a guy with some substance. A guy with plans. A guy with some intellectual depth. A guy who can winsomely take initiative and lead a conversation. A guy with consistency. A guy who no longer works at his play and plays with his faith. A guy with a little desire to succeed in life. A guy they can imagine providing for a family, praying with the kids at bedtime, mowing the lawn on Saturday, and being eager to take everyone to church on Sunday. Where are the dudes that will grow into men?


The second issue is that we may simply not have enough men in the church. Maybe the biggest problem isn’t with nice Christian guys who lack ambition, maturity, and commitment. Maybe we have lots of these men in the church, but they’re all married and there aren’t enough of their brethren to go around. I don’t know which is the bigger problem, the lack of good men or the lack of men in general. It’s probably a combination of both. The church needs to train up the guys it has. And by “training” I don’t mean “clean ‘em up, plug ‘em in the singles ministry and start matching them up with a spouse.” I don’t believe most unmarried Christians are looking for a church community full of Yentas. But a church full of godly, involved, respectable, respected, grown up men? That’s a project worth undertaking.


So, what can be done about the growing tribe of unmarried women? Four things come to mind.


Everyone, pray. Pray for a joyful accepting of God’s providential care, believing that godliness with contentment is great gain. If you are single, pray more for the sort of spouse you should be than for the sort of spouse you want. Pray also for the married couples and families in your church. If you are married, pray for the single people in your church, for those never married and those divorced or widowed. All people everywhere, pray for ways to start serving the Lord now, no matter what stage of life you are in or wish you were in.


Women, don’t settle and don’t ever compromise on requiring solid Christian commitment in a husband, but make sure your list of non-negotiables doesn’t effectively exclude everyone outside of Mr. Darcy.


Churches, don’t make church one giant man cave or machismo, but think about whether your church has been unnecessarily emasculated. Do you challenge and exhort? Do you sing songs to Jesus that men can sing with a straight face? Does “fellowship” at your church always focus on activities men don’t typically excel at, like sitting around and talking about how you feel? Does your church specifically target the discipling of men–particularly young men in high school and college? Grab them young and get them growing up in their teens instead of their twenties.


Men, you don’t have to be rich and you don’t have to climb corporate ladders. You don’t have to fix cars and grow a beard. But it’s time to take a little initiative–in the church, with your career, and with women. Stop circling around and start going somewhere. It’s probably a good idea to be more like your grandpa and less like Captain Jack Sparrow. Even less like Peter Pan. Show some godly ambition. Take some risks. Stop looking for play dates and–unless God is calling you to greater service through singleness–start looking for a wife.

Ryle: Do We Really Use and Know the Bible Like We Should?

by Justin Taylor

Bishop J.C. Ryle (1816-1900) exhorts us on the importance of “Bible Reading“:


You live in a world where your soul is in constant danger. Enemies are round you on every side. Your own heart is deceitful. Bad examples are numerous. Satan is always laboring to lead you astray. Above all false doctrine and false teachers of every kind abound. This is your great danger.

To be safe you must be well armed. You must provide yourself with the weapons which God has given you for your help. You must store your mind with Holy Scripture. This is to be well armed.

Arm yourself with a thorough knowledge of the written word of God. Read your Bible regularly. Become familiar with your Bible. . . . Neglect your Bible and nothing that I know of can prevent you from error if a plausible advocate of false teaching shall happen to meet you. Make it a rule to believe nothing except it can be proved from Scripture. The Bible alone is infallible. . . . Do you really use your Bible as much as you ought?

There are many today, who believe the Bible, yet read it very little. Does your conscience tell you that you are one of these persons?

If so, you are the man that is likely to get little help from the Bible in time of need. Trial is a sifting experience. . . . Your store of Bible consolations may one day run very low.

If so, you are the man that is unlikely to become established in the truth. I shall not be surprised to hear that you are troubled with doubts and questions about assurance, grace, faith, perseverance, etc. The devil is an old and cunning enemy. He can quote Scripture readily enough when he pleases. Now you are not sufficiently ready with your weapons to fight a good fight with him. . . . Your sword is held loosely in your hand.

If so, you are the man that is likely to make mistakes in life. I shall not wonder if I am told that you have problems in your marriage, problems with your children, problems about the conduct of your family and about the company you keep. The world you steer through is full of rocks, shoals and sandbanks. You are not sufficiently familiar either with lighthouses or charts.

If so, you are the man who is likely to be carried away by some false teacher for a time. It will not surprise me if I hear that one of these clever eloquent men who can make a convincing presentation is leading you into error. You are in need of ballast (truth); no wonder if you are tossed to and fro like a cork on the waves.

All these are uncomfortable situations. I want you to escape them all. Take the advice I offer you today. Do not merely read your Bible a little—but read it a great deal. . . . Remember your many enemies. Be armed!
HT: J. I. Packer, 18 Words: The Most Important Words You Will Ever Know, pp. 40-41.

Addicted to Diversion

JUSTIN TAYLOR|9:46 AM CT

Addicted to Diversion and Afraid of Silence

Some people write out of their strengths; others out of their weaknesses, because they care most about what they struggle with most. I’m aware of my own temptations toward distraction and busyness, so I care about calls away from our cultural addiction to diversion.

Blasie Pascal (1623-1662) has been a good mentor on these issues. I’d recommend getting Peter Kreeft’s edition, Christianity for Modern Pagans, Pascal’s Pensees Edited, Outlined, and Explained, where his thoughts on God, man, and diversion are all gathered in one section (pp. 167-187). Kreeft writes that when he teaches this material, his “students are always stunned and shamed to silence as Pascal shows them in these pensees their own lives in all their shallowness, cowardice and dishonesty.”

Here is one line from Pascal (from #136) that it worthy of a lot of meditation::

I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

Kreeft’s restatements and commentary are also worth reading. For example, here is an excerpt from pp. 167-169:

We ought to have much more time, more leisure, than our ancestors did, because technology, which is the most obvious and radical difference between their lives and ours, is essentially a series of time-saving devices.

In ancient societies, if you were rich you had slaves to do the menial work so that you could be freed to enjoy your leisure time. Life was like a vacation for the rich because the poor slaves were their machines. . . .

[But] now that everyone has slave-substitutes (machines), why doesn’t everyone enjoy the leisurely, vacationy lifestyle of the ancient rich? Why have we killed time instead of saving it? . . .

We want to complexify our lives. We don’t have to, we want to. We wanted to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very things we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our hearts and see the great gaping hold in our hearts and be terrified, because that hole is so big that nothing but God can fill it.

So we run around like conscientious little bugs, scared rabbits, dancing attendance on our machines, our slaves, and making them our masters. We think we want peace and silence and freedom and leisure, but deep down we know that this would be unendurable to us, like a dark and empty room without distractions where we would be forced to confront ourselves. . .

If you are typically modern, your life is like a mansion with a terrifying hole right in the middle of the living-room floor. So you paper over the hole with a very busy wallpaper pattern to distract yourself. You find a rhinoceros in the middle of your house. The rhinoceros is wretchedness and death. How in the world can you hide a rhinoceros? Easy: cover it with a million mice. Multiple diversions.

Douglas Groothuis (Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary) has written wisely on these issues. In his essay “Why Truth Matters Most: An Apologetic for Truth-Seeking in Postmodern Times” (JETS, September 2004) he takes his cues from Pascal:

In the middle of the seventeenth century in France, Blaise Pascal went to great lengths to expose those diversions that kept people from seeking truth in matters of ultimate significance. His words still ring true. In his day, diversion consisted of things like hunting, games, gambling, and other amusements. The repertoire of diversion was minute compared with what is available in our fully-wired and over-stimulated postmodern world of cell phones, radios, laptops, video games, omnipresent television (in cars, restaurants, airports, etc.), extreme sports, and much else. Nevertheless, the human psychology of diversion remains unchanged. Diversion consoles us—in trivial ways—in the face of our miseries or perplexities; yet, paradoxically, it becomes the worst of our miseries because it hinders us from ruminating on and understanding our true condition. Thus, Pascal warns, it “leads us imperceptibly to destruction.” Why? If not for diversion, we would “be bored, and boredom would drive us to seek some more solid means of escape, but diversion passes our time and brings us imperceptibly to our death.” Through the course of protracted stupefaction, we learn to become oblivious to our eventual oblivion. In so doing, we choke off the possibility of seeking real freedom.

Diversion serves to distract humans from a plight too terrible to encounter directly—namely, our mortality, finitude, and failures. There is an ineluctable tension between our aspirations and our anticipations and the reality of our lives. As Pascal wrote,

Despite [his] afflictions man wants to be happy, only wants to be happy, and cannot help wanting to be happy. But how shall he go about it? The best thing would be to make himself immortal, but as he cannot do that, he has decided to stop thinking about it.

Pascal unmasks diversion as an attempt to escape reality, and an indication of something unstable and exceedingly out-of-kilter in the human condition. An obsession with entertainment is more than silly or frivolous. It is, for Pascal, revelatory of a moral and spiritual malaise begging for an adequate explanation. Our condition is “inconstancy, boredom, anxiety.” We humans face an incorrigible mortality that drives us to distractions designed to overcome our worries:

Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now the order of thought is to begin with ourselves, and with our author and our end. Now what does the world think about? Never about that, but about dancing, playing the lute, singing, writing verse, tilting at the ring, etc., and fighting, becoming king, without thinking what it means to be a king or to be a man.

Pascal notes that “if man were [naturally] happy, the less he were diverted the happier he would be, like the saints and God.” Diversion cannot bring sustained happiness, since it locates the source of happiness outside of us; thus, our happiness is dependent on factors often beyond our control, so that we are “liable to be disturbed by a thousand and one accidents, which inevitably cause distress.” The power may go off, the screen freeze, or the cell phone connection may break up. Worse yet, our own sensoriam may break down as sight dwindles, hearing ebbs, olfactory awareness fades, and all manner of bodily pleasures become harder to find and easier to lose. As the Preacher of Ecclesiastes intones, “Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’ ” (Eccl 12:1).

Diversions would not be blameworthy if they were recognized as such: trivial or otherwise distracting activities performed in order to temporarily avoid the harsh and unhappy realities of human life. However, self-deception often comes into play. In the end “we run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it.” According to Pascal, this condition illustrates the corruption of human nature. Humans are strangely not at home in their universe. They cannot even sit quietly in their own rooms. “If our condition were truly happy we should feel no need to divert ourselves from thinking about it.” Woody Allen highlights this in a scene from the movie “Manhattan.” A man speaks into a tape recorder about the idea for a story about “people in Manhattan who are constantly creating these real unnecessary neurotic problems for themselves because it keeps them from dealing with more unsolvable, terrifying problems about the universe.”

The compulsive search for diversion is often an attempt to escape the wretchedness of life. We have great difficulty being quiet in our rooms, when the television or computer screen offers a riot of possible stimulation. Postmodern people are perpetually restless; they frequently seek solace in diversion instead of satisfaction in truth. As Pascal said, “Our nature consists in movement; absolute rest is death.” The postmodern condition is one of oversaturation and over-stimulation, and this caters to our propensity to divert ourselves from pursuing higher realities.

Walmart vs. Amazon

Via: Online MBA

Drinking Coffee=Hearing Voices?

Drinking Too Much Coffee can cause people to hear voices and experience other hallucinations.

What?! That's silly. I've been drinking coffee for years and I've---what?...No! You shut up!...

Southern Baptists pass resolution against the 2011 NIV

Baptists and the NIV - Scroll down to 5:14pm and there is an interesting resolution from the Southern Baptists not to use, buy or sell the new NIV translation.


Good for them. 

Top Ten misused English words

Anyone else guilty?

Misused Words - Top ten misused English words.

Horror in Sudan

Horror in Sudan - EPM makes a plea for prayer for Sudan. Some of the things that are going on there are so evil, so horrific, they are almost impossible to believe.

Book Review: The Next Story

In exchange for a copy of the book, I am participating in the promotional blog tour of Tim Challies' The Next Story (2011, Zondervan). I offer up my thoughts having just finished this most enjoyable read.

Do you own your technology or does your technology own you? Tim Challies explores this question in his recent book, The Next Story (Zondervan, 2011). While the question he poses may seem silly to some, but it is a given that everywhere we look people are addicted to texting, unable to sit and enjoy dinner with their spouse without being interrupted or taking a phone call at dinner in a nice restaurant, and entire generations are spending what seems to be 90% of their time staring at glowing rectangles and neglecting to interact with the natural or real world, it seems that we are not masters of our technology, but that our technology has mastered us.

We invent technology, he pontificates, to become our servants, to aid and improve our lives, as a means to take dominion over creation, and to make us more productive and efficient. But in an elusive reversal, the digital have become the master and we are often stuck reloading and trouble-shooting, spending countless hours unwillingly obsessed with the trivial and many more hours willingly obsessed with the boorish and mundane (i.e. YouTube’s “David After the Dentist”).

Challies writes with a very thoughtful tone, offering to consider a “middle-way” (though he does not employ that term) with regard to our response to the outpouring of new technologies. He does not advocate blindly accepting technology, as if we should not be critical or analytical about how it affects our behavior. Nor does he advocate a Luddite/retreatist attitude, as if we should burn all our cellphones, notebooks, and iPads and go back to the horse and buggy, thus ensuring our moral purity. Rather, he reminds us that anything in our life can become an idol—food, sex, money, power, or digital gadgets. For the Christian, it is important to think seriously about our use of technology, as well as how it reflects our commitment to biblical living.

Challies reminds his readers that man was created to take dominion over the earth (Genesis 1) and technology is one way that mankind obeys that mandate. It is important to remember that cell phones and computers are not the only thing that constitutes “technology”, but any created item that man uses is “technology” (chalk, wagons, plows, spears, nuclear bombs) and it is important to be critical and thoughtful about its intended use, knowing that any technological power can, ultimately, be used for good or ill; the same power that can be used to fuel a nation with energy for 100 years can also be used to destroy an entire city in one detonation.

While avoiding the anti-technological bent of the Luddites (of which he gives brief historical background and suggests that the term, though it is usually one of derision, ought not to be necessarily), he reminds his readers that advances in technology (i.e., the printing press) have been met with resistance and that people from all ages, not just our own, have called out for careful, thoughtful reflection before accepting all technological developments uncritically.

He explains how information, in of itself, came to viewed as a commodity and that with the progression from the Pony Express to the telegraph, telephone, TV, and Internet, its value has been determined by the speed at which it is disseminated, and people have had to re-evaluate social etiquette (the interruption of a telegraph delivery is not unlike the interruptions we constantly receive with the beeping and buzzing of our cell phones. Challies also explores the advent of social media and its effect (good and ill) on our lifestyles, how it has shifted our priorities and even, ironically, impaired our ability to communicate with our fellow man.

One of the high points of Challies’ book is his discussion of mediated vs. immediate interaction. Created in the image of God, man was intended for immediate (that is, no mediator, no go-between) relationship with God, which Adam and Eve had in the Garden. Since the Fall, man’s sin has created a need for a mediator, a medium, a go-between man and God: first Moses and the Law, then the Aaronic priesthood, and now, in these latter days, Jesus Christ, who is God himself. And now Christians await the last day when they shall have no more need for mediation but shall see God face to face.

Challies, rightly, argues that face to face communication and interaction is superior to all mediated forms of interaction, since that is how man is designed.  Yet, this current trend seems to be seeking ways to place more media between one another (Aside: media is the plural of medium, it is not synonymous with “news/press outlets”. A medium is anything, in this context, like a cellphone or computer that is a go-between; it serves as a tool of communication with another person).

It seems as if we are frighteningly favoring distance and ambiguity rather than rich, personal, bodily interactive community. Our generation seems to prefer sending a text message over having a conversation on the phone, or favoring email over a face-to-face conversation.  Strangely, when people wrote letters, they would often mention how they longed to be in the presence of that individual, not the other way around. Yet that is what seems to be the trend today: people genuinely aim toward and prefer inferior forms of interaction and “community.” Digital technology, with all of its boons, is serving to drive us as humans further apart. It is distorting our humanity, marring the imago Dei in one another and destroying our perception of the beautiful and the rich.  It is an ugly thing that is causing us to love ugliness and we are allowing ourselves to become self-developed cyborgs, an identity that is tragically reflected in our human relationships.

Challies also has several very helpful chapters discussing distraction, our love of distraction, how to protect our homes and families from such, the idolatry of gadgets, the idolatry and over-valuing of speed vs. the value of pondering and careful thoughtfulness, truth and authority or relativity, and the need for privacy in the midst a world where the entitlement to privacy is quickly diminishing.

As well, he gives some extremely helpful musings on intellectual authority, the advent of the power of consensus/popular opinion in the age of Wikipedia, and on “data trails.” The fact is that transparency and integrity are of even greater import now since Google/Bing/AOL have on digital record forever the pattern and history of one’s Internet searches. These data trails tell a story, they give an insight, and, to many, they may even bring shame and conviction.

To elaborate further on the contents of the book would be tipping too far into the realm of summary and leaving the realm of review. Suffice to say, The Next Story is an enjoyable read; it is succinct, concise (under 200 pages), and thought-provoking. I highly recommend it to any thoughtful Christian, family, Sunday School class, or book group for reading and discussion of its many commendable, intriguing pages.

Challies writes with a lucid, flowing, and logical style and for those of you who have heard him preach or speak at conferences, you will notice how his writing style is very much akin to his manner of speaking. Woven throughout the book are various sections on application where he discusses the interaction of our theory, theology, and experience with much of the subject matter (i.e. social media).

As noted, Challies gives due focus to an oft-overlooked blemish in contemporary Christendom: idolatry. Nobody likes to talk much of idolatry these days and when they do it is often in reference to ancient, pagan peoples who once bowed to wooden and stone statues. Challies’ book is more diagnostic than prescriptive, and he echoes Calvin’s diagnosis of the perpetual factory of idols that man’s heart is by noting our tendency to idolize (inadvertently worship?) our gadgets.

A caveat? I would not recommend this book to a non-believer. If you are a person who is concerned for his non-Christian friend or family member and their idolatry/misplaced priority on digital technology, this is not the book to give them for conviction. Granted, God works in mysterious ways and can use anything as an instrument in regeneration/conversion. However, Challies writes with various presuppositions in mind such as the Image of God, the inerrancy of Scripture, and other biblical values that a non-believer is not likely to share. Since those presuppositions are often the basis from which he draws his conclusions, the Christian is likely to give a hearty “Amen!” or feel convicted because he is convinced of Challies’ arguments, but the non-Christian is not likely to be persuaded since he probably does not share the same worldview.

Be that as it may, evangelical Christians are indeed his target audience, and as one who shares Challies’ concerns and perhaps has even greater disdain for the invasion/enslavement of humanity to digital beeps and buzzes, I heartily recommend this book for all to read. I hope and pray that the tech-savvy among us will be thoughtful in their reading and not arrogantly dismiss his concerns and conclusions and go on about their uncritical use of gadgets and gizmos. My hope is that many readers will be convicted and begin to use their technologies in a way that reflects man’s dominion over the device, not the other way around, and that we can soon begin to see the imago Dei restored, rather than ravaged, by the advent of otherwise useful, helpful devices.

The 50 Best / Worst Childhood Fads

They were the best of fads, they were the worst of fads—all at the same time. The faddish objects of our childhood were sometimes loved and sometimes hated but they were hard to ignore. Here are a list of the 50 best/worst from the 1960s to today…


http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/05/27/the-50-bestworst-childhood-fads-2/

Obedience is Possible

via KDY

KEVIN DEYOUNG|5:26 AM CT

I believe with all my heart that we can do nothing to merit eternal life. We are justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. God accepts and declares us righteous not because of our good deeds, but because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We cannot earn God’s favor. We depend entirely on his gospel grace

Full stop. Period. New paragraph.

We can also be obedient.

Not flawlessly. Not without continuing repentance. Not without facing temptation. Not without needing forgiveness. But we can be obedient.

Obedience is not a dirty word for the gospel-centered Christian. We are saved from the wrath of God by sovereign grace, and that sovereign grace saves us unto holiness. Our great God and Savior Jesus Christ has redeemed us from all lawlessness to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works (Titus 2:14).

More Spiritual than the Bible

Sometimes in a genuine effort to be honest about our persistent imperfections we make it sound like holiness, of any sort, is out of reach for the Christian. But this doesn’t do justice to the way the Bible speaks about people like Zechariah and Elizabeth who “were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord” (Luke 1:6). Likewise, Jesus teaches that the wise person hears his words and does them (Matt. 7:24). There’s no hint that this was only a hypothetical category. Quite the contrary, we are told to disciple the nations that they might obey everything Jesus commanded (Matt. 28:19-20).

God expects the Christian to be marked by virtues like love, joy, and peace (Gal. 5:22-23) instead of being known for sexual immorality, idolatry, theft, and greed (1 Cor. 6:9-11). No Christian will ever be free from indwelling sin, but we should no longer be trapped in habitual lawlessness (1 John 3:4). “By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:10).

Filthy Rags?

That’s true, you may say, but in the end all our righteous deeds are nothing but filthy rags. There’s nothing we work we can do that truly pleases God or can be considered righteous in his sight. I’ve probably explained Isaiah 64:6 with similar words, but I don’t think it’s quite right. The “righteous deeds” Isaiah has in mind are most likely perfunctory rituals offered by Israel without sincere faith and without wholehearted obedience. In Isaiah 65:1-7 the Lord rejects Israel’s sinful sacrifices. There is nothing really righteous about these deeds. They are an insult to the Lord, smoke in his nostrils, just like the ritual “obedience” of Isaiah 58 that did not impress the Lord because his people were oppressing the poor. All that to say, we should not think every kind of “righteous deed” is like a filthy rag before God. In fact, Isaiah 64:5 says “You meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways.” It is not impossible for God’s people to commit righteous acts that please God.

John Piper explains:

Sometimes people are careless and speak disparagingly of all human righteousness, as if there were no such thing that pleased God. They often cited Isaiah 64:6 which says our righteousness is as filthy rags. It is true–gloriously true–that none of God’s people, before or after the cross, would be accepted by an immaculately holy God if the prefect righteousness of Christ were not imputed to us (Romans 5:19; 1 Cor. 1:30;2 Corinthians 5:21). But that does not mean that God does not produce in those “justified” people (before and after the cross) an experiential righteousness that is not “filthy rags.” In fact, he does; and this righteousness is precious to God and is required, not as the ground of our justification (which is the righteousness of Christ only), but as an evidence of our being truly justified children of God. (Future Grace, 151)

A Double Danger and a Triple Testimony

It is a dangerous thing to ignore the Bible’s presumption, and expectation, that (a certain kind of ) righteousness is possible. On the one hand, some professing Christians may be deceived, thinking that personal holiness isn’t really necessary and therefore it doesn’t matter how they (or anyone else) lives. On the other hand, some Christians may be too reticent to recognize that they actually do good things. We can think it’s a mark of spiritual sensitivity to consider everything we do as morally suspect. But this is not the way the Bible thinks about righteousness. As Piper puts is, “our Father in heaven is not impossible to please. In fact, like every person with a very big heart and very high standards, he is easy to please and hard to satisfy” (152)

There is no righteousness that makes us right with God except for the righteousness of Christ. But for those who have been made right with God through faith alone, many of our righteous deeds are not only not filthy in God’s eyes, they are exceedingly sweet.

Obedience is possible, prescribed, and precious.

The Pastoral Challenge and Opportunity When the Rapture Doesn’t Happen

Via JT

Some wise words from Eric Landry:

We must be very careful about how we respond. Will we join our friends at the “Rapture Parties” that are planned for pubs and living rooms around the nation? Will we laugh at those who have spent the last several months of their lives dedicated to a true but untimely belief? What will we say on Saturday night or Sunday morning?
History teaches us that previous generations caught up in eschatological fervor often fell away from Christ when their deeply held beliefs about the end of the world didn’t pan out. While Camping must answer for his false teaching at the end of the age, Reformational Christians are facing a pastoral problem come Sunday morning: how can we apply the salve of the Gospel to the wounded sheep who will be wandering aimlessly, having discovered that what they thought was true (so true they were willing to upend their lives over it) was not? If this isn’t true, they might reason, then what other deeply held beliefs and convictions and doctrines and hopes might not be true?
It’s at this point that we need to be ready to provide a reasonable defense of our reasonable faith. Christianity is not founded upon some complex Bible code that needs years of analysis to reveal its secret. Christianity is about a man who claimed to be God, who died in full public view as a criminal, and was inexplicably raised from the dead three days later appearing to a multitude of witnesses. When his followers, who witnessed his resurrection, began speaking of it publicly, they connected the prophecies of the Old Testament to the life and death and resurrection of this man who claimed the power to forgive sins. This is the heart of the Christian faith, the message that deserves to be featured on billboards, sides of buses, and pamphlets all over the world.  It is also the message that needs to be reinvested into the hearts and lives of those who found hope and meaning in Harold Camping’s latest bad idea.

Does Fair-Trade Actually Help The Poor?

One noted economist argues, "No."

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/05/18/does-fair-trade-help-the-poor/

Also, an intriguing Q&A with that same economist here: http://www.worldmag.com/articles/17811

What if Starbucks marketed like the church?

So much hokeyness.

Yet, there's a lot of truth in this parody of what modern/contemporary/trendy evangelical churches try to do in order to be "relevant."

Shallow Small Group

uMove

Links for Weekend Reading

Where Is the Steeple? - Veith shares an article from USA Today about the decline of the steeple (and with it traditional church architecture) and asks a few questions: “Architecture, like other art forms, expresses meaning.  Do you know why older churches built steeples?  Why they had bells?  What does it mean that today’s churches tend to use cheap materials?”


 Matt Chandler: Is Church Membership Biblical?


 When the Lights Go Out: The Death of a Denomination

How Should Christians Think about the Death of Osama bin Laden?

(From JT)

Doubtless there will be much commentary in days ahead about the appropriate Christian response to the death of Osama bin Laden.

I think it’s appropriate for Christians to intermingle grieving and gratitude.

Grief for a life made in the image of God but so destructive of human life and so dishonoring to God.

And gratitude for justice being served as an instrument of God’s wrath.

If it’s true that “God’s emotional life is infinitely complex beyond our ability to fully comprehend,” it should be no surprise that his followers would reflect some of that complexity as well. After all, we are the people who are “sorrowful yet always rejoicing.”

A couple of early pieces that point to this tension in the Christian life:

• Christopher Morgan, “Grieving, Rejoicing that Osama bin Laden Is Dead“
• Denny Burk, “Some Thoughts on the Death of Osama bin Laden“

A Resurrection Postscript: Saved by Justice

From Kevin DeYoung:

Though few would put it this way, it’s easy for Christians to think the cross is where love overcame holiness. Or to put it more prosaically: God saved us because he loves us so much he decided to look past our sins.  God is love and he loves to forgive our sins.

But that’s not exactly how justification works. We are not justified because God’s mercy triumphed over God’s justice. We are justified because in divine mercy, God sent his Son to the cross to satisfy divine justice. Mercy triumphs over judgment, but it does not remove the need for justice. We were saved not by the removal of justice, but by the satisfaction of it.

A Loud Declaration

The resurrection, then, is the loud declaration that there is nothing left to pay (cf. Rom. 4:25). Peter says in Acts 2:24, “God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.” Why was it impossible for Jesus to remain dead? Because God is more powerful than death and the devil? That’s certainly true, but there’s another reason. The grave could not hold the Son of Man because it had no claim on him. The wages of sin is death. So when sin is paid for, there is no obligation to pay the wages of sin.

Here’s how Charles Hodge puts it:

Our sins were the judicial ground of the sufferings of Christ, so that they were a satisfaction of justice; and his righteousness is the judicial ground of our acceptance with God, so that our pardon is an act of justice.

Think about that.  Our justification is not an act of legal fiction, but an act of justice.  God would be unjust if he did not pardon those who belong to Christ.  It would be a denial of his name, his character, his own justice.

I believe many of us have not begun to grasp just how good the good news is, just how secure our salvation is, just how completely and unalterably justified we are through faith in Christ. Mark this: God did not set aside the law in judging us; he fulfilled it.  Christ bore the curse of the law so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  Not because we possess this righteousness, but because God credits it to our account.  So that, in one sense, at the moment when Christ died, it was what he deserved (by imputation).  And now by faith, blessing and mercy and favor are what we deserve (by imputation).

Justice is shot through the entire plan of redemption. People go to hell because God is just, and people go to heaven because God is just. We are not forgiven and justified because God waved his magic wand and decided to whitewash your faults. He has not overlooked the smallest speck of your sin. He demands justice for all of your iniquities. He demands justice for every last lustful look and proud thought and spiteful word. He demands justice for all of it. But praise God: the resurrection of the crucified Son of God assures us the demands of justice have been met.

The Resurrection Gospel

The resurrection is not a sentimental story about never giving up, or the possibility of good coming from evil. It is not first of all a story about how suffering can be sanctified, or a story of how Jesus suffered for all of humanity so we can suffer with the rest of humanity. The resurrection is the loud declaration that Jesus is enough–enough to atone for your sins, enough to reconcile you to God, enough to present you holy in God’s presence, enough to free you from the curse of the law, enough to promise you there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Something objectively happened on the cross, and that objective work was broadcast to the whole world by an empty tomb. The good news is not a generic message of love for everyone or hope for all. The gospel is the theological interpretation of historical fact. You might put the good news like this: Faith will be counted to us as righteousness when we believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification (Rom. 4:24-25).

Are There Any Gentlemen Left? Jane Austen vs. The Hook-Up Culture

Check out this intriguing article from the Front Porch Republic.

Carl Trueman on American Pastor Celebrity Culture

Interesting thoughts here as usual from Dr. Carl:

Now, I am aware that hero-worship is the sin of the worshipper, not necessarily the hero.  The factions in 1 Corinthians who claimed to follow Paul or, even more so, Jesus as their celebrity guru were clearly not encouraged to do so by their chosen leader.   Likewise an alcoholic barman who gets drunk on the job is himself responsible for his drunkenness; but if the bar owner hired him knowing of his drink problem, the bar owner too shares in the guilt.  Thus it is in the highly celebrified culture of the USA: church leaders who know that their people have a tendency to the sin of idolizing their heroes need to take account of that fact in how they decide to behave.  So here are my suggestions...

Read the rest.  


Via Z

A Moment for Perspective

Brethren,


Remember that amidst the concerns of Libya and budget issues/potential federal government shut-down (both of which are heavily relevant to American citizens and rightly capture our attention), we would do well to remember in our prayers before the Father several other issues on the world stage. Major, potentially world-changing events are happening or have happened. 


Governments have been toppled. Totalitarian regimes are being challenged. Protesters are being massacred. 


Far beyond weightiness of rising gas prices (which in the US are still a third of the cost that Europeans pay at the pump) and the monumental significance of Charlie Sheen's latest exploits, or Lindsay Lohan's most recent rehab session, millions of people, including many of our Christian brothers and sisters, are in very real chaos, turmoil, or life-threatening danger.


Please remember in prayer:


-Japan: pray for recovery and relief from the tsunami devastation, that the unstable nuclear reactors may come under control, and that the Gospel would take deep root and produce much fruit in an otherwise gospel-drought nation


For Nations that have undergone or are undergoing severe political unrest, violence, and government upheaval, pray that there might be good, just governments in these lands that have been wracked by injustice and tyranny for ages, and pray that the God who causes all empire to rise and fall would direct these events in lands of biblical origin, that many might come to saving faith in Him: 


-Bahrain
-Yemen 
-Egypt 
- Syria 
- Libya 
- The Ivory Coast


-Brazil (we have several Brazilian students here at the seminary whose families were directly/indirectly affected by this tragedy): pray for the grieving families of children killed in the tragic school shooting, and for the nation of people who are unused to instances of this kind of violence that we in the USA are, sadly, finding ourselves more and more un-phased. Pray also that God would get gospel glory and the Word would go forth and accomplish what he purposes for it, amidst the tragedy and heartache.


Consider the word of II Thessalonians 3:1 to be from your Christian brothers and sisters in these regions:


Finally, brethren, pray for us that the word of the Lord will spread rapidly and be glorified, just as it did also with you.

The Simplest, Most Complex Commercial

What Kind of Feast For You?

“They enjoy breakfast more than the testimony of their salvation.”

John Calvin on the sometimes worldliness of his congregation on Sunday morning.

via: KDY

The Real World

By Tony Esolen

When my daughter was young, she would often be asked, not usually by fellow homeschoolers, why she kept reading The Lord of the Rings. I told her to reply, "Because I want to know what's going on in the world."

That came to my mind today after a discussion I had with a Catholic men's group at our school. One of the young fellows told me that his professor in Introduction to Sociology -- a typical course assigned during orientation to unsuspecting freshmen -- expressed her disdain for our twenty-credit Development of Western Civilization Program, required of all students. "You should be studying something that will be of use to you in the Real World," she said, "like feminist sociology."

Pause here to allow the laughter to die down.

Homo academicus saecularis sinister, the creature beside whom I have spent all my adult life, is a source of endless entertainment, like a child with wobbly consonants trying to talk serious grownup. I really could not repress the merriment. "If somebody said that to me," I laughed, "who was a construction worker, or who went down in the mines, or quarried rock, or built roads, I'd say, 'Fellow, you're wrong about that,' but at least I'd say there was something to what he'd said." But homo academicus saecularis sinister doesn't really have much regard for the men who do that. HASS never drives down the highway, saying, "You know, I'm quite lucky, because I don't have to break my back in the sun, and I get three months of the year off, and am paid quite well compared with what a man or a woman who does something absolutely necessary is paid, as for instance the men who rolled the asphalt on this road I'm speeding on." Indeed HASS will complain about never being paid in accordance with his or her intelligence, which, according to the most reliable testimony, that of HASS -- who should know best, after all -- is astonishingly high.

When I hear a phrase like "The Real World," I must confess that I fall into the sin of detraction. That is, I immediately detract fifteen points of intelligence and ten points of common sense from my interlocutor. If it's followed by such phrases as "today's society" or "the global marketplace" or "thinking outside the box," I inevitably turn to an object of greater interest, a child playing in a sandbox, a retriever wagging his doggy tail, or the purple streaks of cloud gathering in the west. I dearly hope that my students will never consider the sand-furrowing child, or the galumphing retriever, or the setting sun, to be anything other than deeply Real, mysteriously and beautifully and achingly Real, and that their encounter with the great poetry and art of the west, not to mention that perennial philosophy of Aristotle, and that wisdom-seeking eros of Plato, and the word of God itself, will confirm them in their love for that Reality.

One of the students said, "She's overeducated," but alas, that is not true. If I were to take my friend the truck driver to the Sistine Chapel, he would not be so foolish, I am sure, as to say, "Hmm, a lot of naked people falling all over themselves." He would sense that there was a mystery there to which he'd hope someone might introduce him, to lead him by the hand, saying, "Notice the electric space between the finger of God and the finger of Adam," or "See how Michelangelo has painted his own face in the sagging skin held by Saint Bartholomew." My friend might be slightly undereducated for an hour in the Sistine Chapel -- and who, for that hour, would not be? But the college professor who sniffs at the Gilgamesh, Hesiod, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar, Plato, Aristotle, Livy, Cicero, Virgil, Marcus Aurelius, Augustine, the Torah, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the letters of Saint Paul -- just to take the first semester for example -- is not overeducated. That professor is undereducated, andoverschooled, a deadly combination. Deadly, but common enough, from what I see, and especially common among people who reduce all matters to contemporary partisan politics, ashomo academicus saecularis sinister is wont to do.

Posted by Anthony Esolen at 08:20 PM | Permalink from Touchstone Magazine