Abortion and Slavery

Here is a powerful, and for me convicting, article by Thabit Anyabwile on the comparison of the tragedy of abortion to the tragedy of slavery. For those who don't know, Thabiti is a reformed Baptist pastor ministering in the Bahamas.

The Least of These

Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me. (Matthew 25:40)

As I write this a South African pastor has stirred up a heated conversation over his sermon series in which he pronounced that “Jesus had HIV.” Of course, the pastor is not seriously contending that Jesus physically contracted the HI virus, and thus his language is probably misleading. It’s much more proper to say, “Jesus has HIV.”

Many Christians are offended by such language, but it is merely taking what Jesus said seriously. “As you did it to the least of these, you did it to me.” Where does Jesus say he is? Who does he identify himself with? The hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the imprisoned, the strangers. That is, with the cast offs, the oppressed, the shameful, the least of society. A person infected with HIV gets put into “least of these” category, and to serve them is to serve Jesus.

The gospel of Luke tells us of a sinful women (probably a prostitute) who finds grace and forgiveness in Jesus. Her reaction is to throw herself at his feet, wet his feet with her tears, pour out her her perfume (her most valuable possession) and with her tears wash them. It’s a flesh and blood portrait of the worshipful gratitude all those who come to Christ experience. There is a problem with the portrait, however; Jesus doesn’t sit before us. We can’t weep and wash his feet. Or can we?

According to Jesus, “flesh and blood” worship can begin today. Jesus stands before us everywhere we turn. He is the “least of these.” As we wash the feet of the “least of these,” the poor, the hurting, the shamed, we wash the feet of Jesus. As disciples of Christ and recipients of his extravagant, blood shedding love, every morning we should wake up eager to find Jesus’ feet and start washing. We only need to look in the right places.

Bonhoeffer Says

Bonhoeffer on Christian action (you must put these words in the context of Nazi Germany to get their full power):

If we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ's large-heartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes, and by showing a real sympathy that springs, not from fear, but from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer. Mere waiting and looking is not Christian behavior. The Christian is called to sympathy and action, not in the first place by his own sufferings, but by the sufferings of his brethren, for who sake Christ suffered.

Bonhoeffer on Success:

In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity. The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done . . . With a frankness and off-handedness which no other earthly power could permit itself, history appeals in its own cause to the dictum that the end justifies the means. . . . The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.

Bonhoeffer on Cheap Grace:

Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.

Bonhoeffer on Costly Grace:

It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son . . . and above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us.

Bonhoeffer on Marriage (to his fiance from prison):

May God grant us this faith daily. I don't mean the faith that flees the world, but the faith that endures in the world and loves and remains true to that world in spite of all the hardships it brings us. Our marriage must be a "yes" to God's earth. It must strengthen our resolve to do and accomplish something on earth. I fear that Christians who venture to stand on earth on only one leg will stand in heaven on only one leg too.

Nastiest Election Ever

Joe Carter:

Whenever I hear a pundit or politician say—as they do every two years—that this season has seen the nastiest, most negative electoral campaigning in American history, I wonder: “Who was their history teacher?” Because the midterm elections of 2010 ain’t got nothing on the election of 1800.

The Twins of Science and Magic

C.S. Lewis from The Abolition of Man

You will even find people who write about the sixteenth century as if Magic were a medieval survival and Science the new thing that came in to sweep it away. Those who have studied the period know better. There was very little magic in the Middle Ages: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are the high noon of magic. The serious magical endeavour and the serious scientific endeavour are twins: one was sickly and died, the other strong and throve. But they were twins. They were born of the same impulse. I allow that some (certainly not all) of the early scientists were actuated by a pure love of knowledge. But if we consider the temper of that age as a whole we can discern the impulse of which I speak.

There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique; and both, in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious—such as digging up and mutilating the dead.

Amazing Church Plant

Gay Bar and church planting. What do they have in common? Watch this video and find out.

Bonhoeffer Says

I've begun reading Eric Metaxas' excellent biography on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer's writing is not new to me, but as I now read of his thoughts and life I find my heart increasingly knit to his. Through routes of my own, I have come to share many of his thoughts. Only his convictions run deeper, and he expresses them far better. Here is one quote that hit me.

Every day I am getting to know people, at any rate their circumstances, and sometimes one is able to see through their stories into themselves--and at the same time one thing continues to impress me: here I meet people as they are, far from the masquerade of "the Christian world"; people with passions, criminal types, small people with small aims, small wages and small sins--all in all they are people who feel homeless in both senses, and who begin to thaw when one speaks to them with kindness--real people; I can only say that I have gained the impression that it is just these people who are much more under grace than under wrath, and that it is the Christian world which is more under wrath than grace.

How To Miss Jesus

Dave Dorr at the Resurgence lists some sure fire ways to miss Jesus when you read your Bible

• You read the Bible to reinforce what you believe, not challenge what you believe.
• You imagine yourself as the type of person who believes the things you read about.
• You think the things you read are especially applicable for people you know, but not for you.
• You imagine yourself as the hero of the story, not the person or people who are unbelieving. You frequently ask in your heart, “How could these people be so unbelieving?” For instance, when you read the story of the Israelites wandering in the desert you might say, “How could those Israelites grumble about food and drink when they just saw God part the Red Sea?” But you are completely blind to how you grumble at work or home when you’re afraid of losing something.
• You love the attention garnered from your knowledge of the Bible, but give little thought to how you have applied what you have read.

Being Missional May Kill Your Church

I found this post from the Resurgence strangely comforting.

Bible-Centered or Gospel-Centered

Did you know that you can be Bible-centered without being Gospel-centered? Surprising? Well, it shouldn’t be. You may recall that Jesus repeatedly scolded the Pharisees for not knowing the Scriptures. Did they miss too many Bible studies? Hardly. Those heartless paragons of hypocrisy knew their Scriptures backwards and forwards. No, they knew the Scriptures and yet they didn’t know.

How many times have you read of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness by Satan and come away thinking “I should commit more Bible to memory like Jesus if I’m to resist Satan’s attacks” or “I should grow closer to God through prayer and fasting so that I can handle temptation”? How about the story of Jesus‘ healing of the paralytic? Generally applications run something like “We shouldn’t be annoyed by the needy and helpless even if they do a cut hole in our roof!” When you read these passages who are you identifying with? When we put ourselves into the story we are Jesus! Isn’t this what we ought to do? Aren’t we Christ-ians? Jesus is after all our example. To be sure, but Jesus is more than our example. Much more. He is our Savior.

The story of Jesus’ temptation isn’t told primarily to give us tips on our duel with the Prince of darkness. This is a David and Goliath moment. The giant is bigger, stronger, scarier than all of us. But Jesus, our hero, our warrior, our deliverer marches onto the battlefield and slays the beast. He did in the wilderness what Israel failed to do, what we all fail to do. The lesson isn’t tactics on how to cross swords with the great Deceiver. The lesson is Jesus fought and won for me.

When Jesus heals the paralytic, it is quite absurd, nay asinine and arrogant, that we place ourselves in the position of the Healer. There are only two positions we can occupy. Either we are the Pharisees who stand in judgment over Jesus (“We know our Bibles. Let us see if this fellow does it by the Book. Oh, blasphemy! Forgiving sins! Outrageous. Only God does that. Yes, yes the poor, paralyzed wretch is doing jumping jacks. No, I don’t know how that was done, but you’re missing the principle of the matter.) and tragically never realize that they need healing and forgiveness. Or we are the paralytic and his friends desperate for healing, desperate to meet the Healer, desperate to hear those words, “Your sins are forgiven.”

So do you know the Gospel, or are you content to just know the Bible?

The Church Problem is a Man Problem

That's what Darrin Patrick thinks, and I think he presents a compelling case.

Worship Music

Jeremy Pierce just can't stand some worship music. Here's why.

Dancing in the Minefields

Today Jen and I have been married 11 years. They haven't been pure bliss, but they have been the sweetest years of my life. Her beauty seems ever growing, and my heart seems ever more captured. I'm not a huge Andrew Peterson fan, but he does right pretty good lyrics. This song, I think, perfectly fitting for our marriage.

I love you, Jen. As the song says, I gladly dance with you "in the shadowlands until the shadows are no more."

Chan, Driscoll, and Harris

Excellent interview of Francis Chan by Mark Driscoll and Josh Harris. If you are not familiar with story, recently Francis Chan resigned from a megachurch, Cornerstone Church in Simi Valley, CA, for reasons that even after this interview seem a little hazy. What I find most intriguing is the discussion on poverty vs. wealth and simplicity vs. complexity.

What's Next for Francis Chan? A Conversation with Mark Driscoll and Joshua Harris from Ben Peays on Vimeo.

False Assumption #4: What's Grace?

Grace is not a very popular concept. Not sure that it is ever been. Being nice, courteous, thoughtful, fair are all quite popular. Not grace. By grace I mean, as one song puts it, the ability to “make beauty out of ugly things.” The world assumes the ugly gets treated as ugly. So if ugly you are, then better do your best to put on a pretty face. But real grace looks at the vilest evil and doesn’t even blink but suffers to transform it into good. Real grace hurts so that the offender doesn’t have to. Real grace gives selfless love when justice demands punishment. Such grace, as I say, is not very popular.

What’s wrong with the human race? A popular Christian answer to that question would be pride. And no doubt there is tremendous Biblical as well as practical evidence for the thought. But I’ve begun to wonder if there is a deeper issue than pride. An interesting story was told by David Brainerd, the 18th century missionary to New England Native Americans. Brainerd said that in his preaching to the Indians, conviction over sin seemed to be felt most by the Indians when he was presenting the grace and excellencies of Christ. Now Brainerd was mentored by the likes of Jonathan Edwards and his crowd, and if you know anything of those “New Lights,” as they were called, you know they could bring the thunder when it came to sin. Reading a few entries of Brainerd’s journal will leave the most smug of us deeply convicted over our own godlessness, for Brainerd was a man fully acquainted (and some would say morbidly acquainted) with his own depravity. In other words, Brainerd’s sermons on sin were not soft and light. Yet it was not discoursing sin that produced conviction. Rather, says Brainerd, conviction occurred as he proclaimed the grace of Christ to suffer for that sin.

Too good to be true. Brainerd’s testimony seems to suggest there’s more than pride at work in the human heart. Perhaps, we can’t admit our messed upness because we don’t believe, we can’t believe that there is actually a grace in the world that would look on our ugliness and make it beautiful. That there is grace that doesn’t treat us as we deserve, but instead lavishes gifts on us that we could never earn. That there is a grace that doesn’t even blink at what we ourselves can’t look upon, and then takes the hurt to make the evil into good. Such a grace is just too good to be true.

Grace is a message the world has never heard. It’s a message that they almost never see. They don’t believe it exists. They’ve never even considered the possibility that it could. That’s why the grace of Christ has the power to do what they law (God’s standard of good) could never do. The law can bring conviction of sin, but not like grace. The law points out our flaws, but grace shines hope onto them. The law fills us with guilt over our transgressions. Grace makes us sing about them.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
that saved a wretch like me.”

Christians have long thought that step #1 in conversion is understanding sin, and thus the need of evangelists to lead with the law. But perhaps step #1 is understanding grace, so that those living in the fog of unbelief can feel the freedom to come into the light.