Category: Spiritual Formation

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The Marks of the Christian

9 And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

Philippians 1:9-11, NIV

The Marks of the Christian

Regularly reading the New Testament ought to remind us of the ways contemporary Christians fall far short of the vision of the Christian life found among the early Christians.

I’m convinced that this shortfall is rooted, at least in part, by our neglect of the Bible as our rule of faith and life.

Faithful friends

As the Apostle Paul writes to the Christians in Philippi, we note his obvious affection for them (verses 3 and 8) and his gratitude for they way they have come alongside him in his gospel ministry (verse 5). Despite the personal cost and the difficulty of the Apostolic work entrusted to Paul, the fellowship of Christians like those in Philippi have made the burden more bearable as together they have entrusted themselves to the grace of Christ.

Personal transformation

These faithful brothers and sisters in Christ Paul reminds of God’s transformative purpose. “[H]e who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion in the day of Christ Jesus” (verse 6b).

Who among us doesn’t need to be reminded of Christ’s promise to work in us by faith the transformation we need so that when we meet him face to face we may step into a new creation free from the curse of sin and death?

We’re not yet the people we will become, but those who have placed their faith in the Lord Jesus are moving–if at time haltingly–in the direction of Christ-likeness.

Paul’s prayer

Paul shares with his readers the content of his prayer for them and I suspect that Paul would pray the same for us today. This prayer shows us at least three marks of the Christian, that is characteristics of one who is a growing disciple of Christ. 

Able to discern (verse 9-10a)

Christians ought to be loving. And the love that marks our lives must be, according to Paul, a love that has some attendant qualities. Christian love is marked by growing “knowledge and insight.”

Knowledge and insight of what? It’s difficult to know precisely what Paul means here. At the very least it would seem to imply an experiential knowledge of God and of God’s revelation of Himself to us in the Bible. It is this knowledge that enables us to “discern what is best,” that is what most closely aligns with God’s revealed will.

Pure and blameless (verse 10) 

This discernment, rooted as it is in a love that is marked by knowledge and insight, produces in our lives a purity and a blamelessness. The concepts of purity and blamelessness seem to be neglected in contemporary Christianity.

All Christians are positionally pure and blameless because the obedience of Christ and his sacrifice on the cross have been credited to our account. However, what Paul is talking about here is volitional purity and blameless–it is based upon choice and upon actions that together form a way of life.

Fruit of righteousness (verse 11)

Christians are expected to produce the “fruit of righteousness” that is the product derived from the above and that is expressed inwardly before it is expressed outwardly.

It’s not difficult to see how we all have a long way to go on this. Ask God what needs to change in your life so that you’re not only willing, but able to devote yourself to Him in a way that leads to transformation.

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3 questions for the end of the day

3 Questions for the end of the day

Summary

You should ask yourself three questions at the end of the work day when the garage door has closed and you’ve take as seat in your comfy chair. These questions will help you put your day into perspective as you transition to family time.

  1. What is one thing that I accomplished today?
  2. Was it the right thing?
  3. Who is one person I encouraged today?

Why

Question one makes sure that you had a minimally productive day. If you struggle to answer the question, consider how you can take back control of your day.

Question two ensures that the your productivity was in the right direction. If you conclude that you’ve been working in the direction or on the wrong project, ask yourself why. Do you need to practice saying no or letting go of projects that are going nowhere?

Question three guarantees that you improved someone’s life in some small way. Each of has struggles of which others know little. My general rule has been to try to do something to encourage a co-worker and/or author everyday. After all, the world doesn’t need one more jerk.

Conclusion

In the words of the insurance commercial, “life comes at you fast.” In order to grow spiritually and emotionally its necessary to grab periods of quiet reflection throughout the day. I find that the major transitions of the day are a good place for a moment of stillness and a quick review.

Try it and leave a comment if you find this idea helpful.

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How to interact with suffering friends

Society doesn’t provide us with much in the way of resources for caring for those who are suffering. Our TV shows tend to either ignore suffering or simply (in reality shows) allow us to—voyeur-like—gaze upon the suffering of another without actually entering into it. There are precious few role models of care for those suffering. Pop psychologists offer a sliver of resources, but again they’re limited by time and attention. We look to the presidents and governors to assuage our pain, but in reality they are—despite their great power—powerless to lift of the pain from our lives.

Sometimes we’re tempted to believe that perhaps suffering isn’t really as pervasive as it might first seem. Perhaps most people go through most of life with relatively few bumps in the road. Maybe suffering is the exception rather than the rule. And, even if it really is widespread isn’t there very little I can do to offer comfort to friends in difficulty? I’m not clergy or a mental health professional. What can I offer?

Suffering is universal. It is all around us.

Pulitzers

We rarely, however, pause and become open to encountering it in the life of another. We may get a brief sense that a friend is suffering, but in our haste to move to the next thing we breeze through a conversation without offering our friend space simply to express the pain, to let some of the suffering move from heart to lips—even for a brief moment of respite.

Despite our society’s messages, there is much each of us can and should do to care for friends who are experiencing suffering.

Every one of us should be able and willing to simply lend a listening, non-judgmental ear. Suffering is a profoundly isolating experience. The only way to let another know about it, which can sometimes offer just the slightest reprieve from the weight, is to talk about it.

Consider this: the moments in which someone recounts to you the greatest sorrow in their life are moments in which that friend is opening his or her soul to you. The pain may be so great that he feels he can do no other, yet it is still true that the very moment of sharing is an intensely vulnerable moment.

In those moments, each of us can either alievate (albeit briefly) another’s suffering or we can increase it. None us would intentionally say something believing that it would increase the suffering of another. Yet, how often do we unconsciously do precisely that?

Broadly, when we have the privilege of speaking with suffering souls—and we’re all suffering souls in various ways—we should avoid speaking of the

 

  1. The secret will of God. I believe firmly in the sovereignty of God and yet I know that God is not the author of sin. Further, I know that I am not privy to what has traditionally been called the secret will of God (in contrast with his revealed will found in Scripture). It is presumptuous of us to speculate about God’s designs moreover it is counterproductive, especially in the moment.
  2. God’s intent for this experience. God may use all things redemptively in the life of the Christian, but the moment of acute anguish is not the right time to point that out. At times, considering that God may have some deeper purpose is comforting. As a general rule, explore this only when the person you’re speaking with seems to be open to exploring it. Each of us has to reach a spot where we’re ready to consider this—moving there prematurely is dangerous.
  3. Causation. “Who sinned, this man or his fathers?” Linking sin and suffering is a natural human impulse that is exhibited in the book of Job. Job’s friends become certain that the anguish in his life has been caused by some offense against God. The reality is that there is no correlation—at least in Job’s case—between sin and suffering. More accurately, the relationship between sin and suffering is broader than 1:1. Suffering exists in the world because of the Fall and sin’s entry into our lived experience. However 1:1 causation is never easily detected.

As you move into this week, you will encounter people in distress; suffering souls who need a shoulder to lean on even if only for a moment. You can make a positive difference in their lives if you will only stop, listen, and allow them to lean on you.

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Five podcasts I couldn’t live without

podcast

Like most of you I have a lot on my plate. One of the most challenging elements of life can be making time to continue to learn and develop both as a minister and as a leader. I’ve found that podcasts are an excellent way to learn.

I listen while I exercise. During the warmer months I’m out on the bike and it’s not safe to wear earbuds and listen to a podcast. However, in the winter months I shift my exercise routine toward jogging, which is perfect for podcast listening. I typically run for about 30 minutes which is just about the same length of many of the podcasts that I enjoy.

Podcasts also form a key part of my evening going-to-bed ritual. Research shows that ritual practices can have a calming effect and actually provide a structure that leads to freedom (more about this in another post). I listen to two podcasts right before bed.

So, here’s my list of five podcasts that I really value:

  1. This is Your Life (Michael Hyatt). This is my podcast for running. Michael focuses his podcast on intentional leadership and influence often touching on productivity as well. At around 25 minutes its the perfect length for a run and also features a question section at the end that is helpful.
  2. Insight for Living (Chuck Swindoll). I love Chuck’s Bible teaching. He’s a master of teaching the Bible in a way that’s both true to the text and deeply engaging. I often listen to this podcast while working in the yard or, less often, while relaxing in front of a fire in the living room.
  3. Truth for Life (Alistair Begg). A little known fact is that every presbyterian pastor secretly wishes he had a Scottish accent. Begg is a master of expository preaching and a Bible Calvinist. He excellently preaches Scripture without allowing his doctrinal system to be of greater focus than the Bible. His style is simple, straightforward, and often employs hymnody. A valuable model of the Puritan plain style of preaching.
  4. Pray as You Go (British Jesuits). This daily podcast provides a brief (>15 minute) devotional service featuring prayer, sacred music, scripture reading, and reflection questions. Anna and I listen to this in the evening as we get into the bed and settle toward sleep. There’s something beautiful about the Word of God washing over us as we let go of the troubles of the day.
  5. The Archers (BBC Radio 4). The Archers is the longest running radio drama in the world. Set in the rural community of Ambridge, the drama centers on the lives of the village’s residents many of whom are farmers. What’s intriguing about The Archers is how compelling and interesting a host of small and trivial events can be in the life of a community.

 

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The virtue of self-acceptance

selfacceptance

It is often said today…that we must love ourselves before we can be set free to love others. This is certainly the release we must seek to give our people. But no realistic human beings find it easy to love or to forgive themselves, and hence their self-acceptance must be grounded in their awareness that God accepts them in Christ. There is a sense in which the strongest self-love that we can have, in the sense of agape, is merely the mirror image of the lively conviction we have that God loves us. There is endless talk about this in the church, but little apparent belief in it among Christians, although they may have a conscious complacency which conceals the subconscious despair which Kierkegaard calls ‘the sickness unto death.’

Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal

 

I wonder how effective we are at helping people to experience the deep love God has toward them in Christ?

If Tim Keller is right that flourishing and effective congregational ministry can only happen where people repeatedly encounter and experience the love of God in the gospel, then surely this has to be at the heart of the church’s ministry.

Moreover, this communication of God’s love for us has to be married with the Christian virtue of self-acceptance. Self-acceptance isn’t a virtue in our society. We favor self-improvement–you can make yourself into anything you want to be if you only try hard enough, buy and use the right product, and surround yourself with the right people.

Self-acceptance means coming to the place where you’re able to accept yourself as you are. You can only get there through coming to accept God’s unconditional electing love that chose you just as you are not on the basis of your idealized self or even your future self. No. God saved you because he loves you. And he loves you because he saved you. File that under the category of “mystery.”

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Making a life or making a living?

News reports regularly give statistics about the rise or decline in new applications for unemployment benefits. Each of us probably knows at least one person who has been unemployed for more than a year. We likely know many more who have been without work for a shorter period of time. Our society has generally embraced the model of work for wages–we exchange our knowledge and/or manpower for cash. Most of us can’t think of any other way in which to order our lives. The question is, however, does this arrangement really work all that well? Does making a living require us to sacrifice our lives?

make-a-difference

Frederick Buechner has written:

We must be careful with our lives, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously.

Given the premium our culture puts on comfort (the ‘good life’), it’s ironic how little we intentionally our lives to see if we are treating them as precious or as simply a means to an end. Are we simply doing more and more meaningless things with ever greater efficiency?

What does making a life really look like? In a recent post Scott Martin notes:

Those focusing on making a living see wealth solely in the context of the cash nexus: the opportunities, possessions, luxuries and leisure that money affords. Those focusing on making a life see wealth in terms of the depth and quality of their relationships, the strength of their home, the memories they make, the moments they share, the lives they touch. In fact, the people I most respect who have made lives worth emulating rarely focus on money at all. There have been times when they have had plenty and times when they have struggled, but the constant is in how deeply they have loved.

Imagine sitting down with a financial planner and in addition to totaling your bank accounts and mapping your investments, you also mapped your significant relationships and explored your relationship to your home.

Martin continues quoting Buechner:

Buechner writes that the world is full of people who “seem to have listened to the wrong voice” and are doing work that “seems simply irrelevant not only to the great human needs and issues of our time but also to their own need to grow and develop as humans.”

It’s ironic that some of the vocations that directly seek to meet the greatest human needs are the least esteemed (and rewarded) in our culture: teacher, care-giver, social worker, priest. Could it be that our value system is inverted?

Ask yourself: am I making a living or making a life? What two things could I most easily change in order to improve the quality of my life (in terms of relationships)? Resolve to start making those changes.

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Five ways to respond to disappointment

ImageEach of us is going to experience significant disappointment during the course of our lives. Funding for a ministry project doesn’t materialize; a position you thought yourself well qualified for goes to another; attendance drops despite your fervent prayers and well-prepared sermons; the congregation chooses an option that you disagree with.

Failure and disappointment is often an inevitable by-product of the attempt to actually get off your rear and try to do something. As Teddy Roosevelt put it,

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

Knowing this, however, doesn’t take the sting out of disappointment. At best, it can help to redeem it. The question is: how are we to respond to disappointment? Is there a way to make something out of the nothing of rejection or failure?

My friend Kathy Tuan-Mclean has written about disappointment in the context of helping her children move through it. You can read her post here. Kathy identifies the five responses we typically move through in the face of disappointment or failure:

  1. Blame someone or something.
  2. Blame (or shame) the victim.
  3. Stop caring.
  4. Just quit.
  5. Work harder and try again.

Then she adds, “But perhaps the best thing to do, at least initially, is to mourn. To just be sad.” And to be sad is specific way: to grieve cleanly. Grieving cleanly means, according to Kathy, experiencing the pain without inflicting pain on others.

The promise when we grieve cleanly, as Jesus said, is that those who mourn will be comforted.  When we mourn with God, we remember that God, not our loss…defines our hope and future.

God reminds the exiled covenant community through Jeremiah: “For I know the plans I have for you…plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” So when disappointment knocks on your door, remember to:

  1. Give yourself permission to mourn and feel the loss
  2. Entertain and reject poor responses
  3. Admit your weakness and lean on God’s grace
  4. Remind yourself that God’s purposes are greater than your circumstances

Doing this won’t eradicate disappointment from your life, but it will be the yeast that leavens the loaf of failure and redeems it to become something God uses to make you both holier and humbler.

 

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Are there really two marriages? (Part Two)

In his brief anthology of blog posts entitled, There are Two Marriages: A Manifesto on Marriage (2011), Tony Jones argues that the church ought to seek the strict separation of what he calls “legal marriage” and “sacramental marriage.” A result of this change would be the removal of much of the church’s resistance to same sex marriage.

Yesterday I rehearsed Jones’s historical and theological objections to the connivance of state and in marriage. I will argue today that Jones fails to recognize that marriage is, for the Christian, necessarily the union of religious belief with the physical world:

tony-jones

….Marriage matters because we are embodied and what we do with our body matters.

The church has affirmed over the centuries—almost with no exception—that marriage exists not only for the mutual aid and comfort of husband and wife, but also for the procreation of children.

“The union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord. Therefore marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God.”[1]

We’d likely all agree that a marriage may be legitimate without children being born to the couple—having children does not a marriage make. However, it is a relatively recent innovation to believe that childbearing and marriage are totally unrelated.

Jones seeks to trace the changing nature of matrimony as grounds for a continued development of marriage to include same-sex couples. For example, in the ancient world marriage was simply the exchange of property with the consequent production of progeny.

Today marriage has become simply, “formalizing and cementing a romantic attraction.” It is emphatically not about having children. If it were, we would not allow “celibate, infertile, post-menopausal, non-producing” people to be legally married.

The reference is to restrictions on marriage, principally state laws that forbid consanguinity but that fail to forbid marriage between people unable to conceive. To derive a mandate for the church simply by the absence of state law on the matter is not a terribly good way to do affirmative theology.

As a pastor, were a couple to ask me to marry them and state up front that they would not be sexually intimate with one another nor would they even consider attempting to conceive, I would likely not marry them. Marriage is intrinsically linked with both sexual intimacy and with procreation. That some are unable to conceive doesn’t invalidate the rule, rather it’s the exception that proves it.

In all, Jones fails to build a compelling case for changing the nature and definition of marriage either in the state or in the church. He assumes that since people will always be gay—which is true—we should incentivize gay monogamy in the context of marriage. On the surface this may appear sound. However, Jones’s contention fails to consider that in the Christian view it is not simply that homosexual polyamory is wrong, but that all homosexual practice is not only inconsistent with Christian holiness, and is detrimental to human wholeness. To change marriage means more than “live and let live,” it necessarily encourages destructive behavior and, moreover, will inevitably lead to restrictions on religious groups that fail to recognize the appropriateness of same sex marriage.

[1] Book of Common Prayer

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Are there really two marriages?

[This is part one of two discussing Tony Jones’s series of blog posts compiled as, There are Two Marriages: A Manifesto on Marriage (2011) and available on Kindle.]

In his brief anthology of blog posts entitled, There are Two Marriages: A Manifesto on Marriage (2011), Tony Jones argues that the church ought to seek the strict separation of what he calls “legal marriage” and “sacramental marriage.” A result of this change would be the removal of much of the church’s resistance to same sex marriage. The church would conduct a rite that refers exclusively to the religious or sacramental nature of marriage, and the state would ratify a legal agreement between two people, known as civil marriage.

Image

Jones builds his case on the basis of what might be a called a strict separationist—even Anabaptist—view of the relationship of the church to the state. Jones’s argument is plausible, but is relies in places on a view of both the church and of the state that is problematic.

A central pillar in Jones’s argument is his discomfort at clergy acting as agents of the state in the case of marriage. This is an objection I am hearing with increased frequency, even outside anabaptist churches. He writes, “…almost all of them [pastors and priests] express extreme discomfort at this situation, for it actually requires the clergyperson to act as an extension of the state.”  Further, “…that conflicts with the theology held by many pastors, Calvinist and Arminian, Protestant and Catholic.”

At first glance, Jones’s argument seems compelling. On further examination, we’re forced to ask whether Jones has, in fact, gotten it backwards. Is the cleric really an agent of the state or is it the other way round? Is the state an agent of the church or at least offering sanction for a rite of the church that the state finds beneficial? In reality, neither is fully the case and perhaps that’s why marriage is often something of a mystery to modern and postmodern people—it presupposes that the spheres of religious belief and law can peacefully coexist and together accomplish a societal good.

Moderns and post-moderns—really, hyper-moderns—presuppose what Richard John Neuhaus referred to as the “naked public square.” That is to say, they presuppose a sharp division between religion and public life. Religious considerations ought not to shape public policy since religious knowledge is not universal and is questionable as a legitimate type of knowledge. Public policy is empirical and verifiable, religious knowledge is simply internal and subjective.

In arguing for the separation of religious and civil marriage, Jones appeals to the “two kingdom” view: “Jesus said his kingdom was not of this world. And the Apostle Paul expands this idea in the book of Ephesians, writing about the spiritual realm as opposed to the physical.” Jones’s reading of Jesus and Paul is, perhaps, a bit over the top. That the kingdom of God is not something currently apprehensible to the senses is not the same thing as saying that God is unconcerned with this world. It is surprising that Jones reaches this conclusion since later in the book he reveals himself as a panentheist. That is, Jones believes that “God indwells all of creation.”

Jones further claims that Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and Locke all follow in the steps of Jesus and Paul by making a distinction between the church and the civil magistrate. Clearly blog posts are not the best context for discussing precisely what this differentiation means, but suffice it to say that Jones is clearly here unable to give a cogent rationale for his sharp division of the two. He fails to realize that marriage is necessarily the union of religious belief with the physical world.

…To be continued…

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Trayvon Martin, an anglo reflection

The recent jury verdict in Florida v. Zimmerman has served as a magnifying glass that has focused the rays of racial reality in the United States and caused a fire. My own thought life around the case has been something of a roller coaster ride. Facebook has allowed me to listen in to the pain of others with an immediacy often not afforded across cultures. It has also afforded me the chance to realize how tone deaf those of us in the majority can be to the pain of those who are not.

As I’ve read various blog posts, articles, columns, and the like I’ve noticed something of a trend. Many of the reflections by people of color focus on their first person experiences of profiling or of some other form of injustice. Many of the reflections by anglos have focused on a defense of the judicial system as a reasonably fair arbiter of an approximate truth. In some ways, we’ve been talking past each other.

As a white American, the Martin case has been difficult to interpret both in itself and in how it sheds light on race in America. I don’t have much to offer in this regard.

At the risk of raising the ire of some readers, I’d like to offer a brief reflection on encountering this discussion as a white man. Much has been written using words like “privilege” and “oppression.” I don’t dispute that those are appropriate words in many respects.

It’s curious to me that many who have written about white privilege should be so apparently taken aback when Anglos resist the notion or, at least, seek to minimize it.

Consider what is really being said.

Those words are used to describe a reality that is said to affect all of life, sort of like a filter that is set between a camera lens and the subject of the photo. The filter is prior to the actual scene being shot and yet it silently affects the final photograph. It could also be like the floors in my old house. They have a gentle slope to them–place a ball in the center of the room and it will begin to roll, always in the same direction.

Ironically, despite having cultural privilege and power I have experienced in the Trayvon Martin case a sense of profound powerlessness:

  • I am told that there is something of a cultural law (an uneven floor, if you like) in place that conspires, despite my objections, to automatically favor people like me (though not all equally) over others who are unlike me.
  • That law exists in a space that is unconscious (and imperceptible) to most all of us. In the discharge of their normal duties, many are operating with unconscious reference to this law.
  • It affects everything–employment decisions, subjective feelings of safety, traffic stops, etc.
  • There seems to be precious little that can be done about it in the normal ways we seek to remedy ills. Do we require that juries in certain instances have a fixed number of jurors of the same ethnicity as the defendant? Does this bias the jury or counter-bias it?
  • It renders decisions of even the most sacrosanct institutions of our society–the jury–as open to question. This is no small thing for whites to swallow since we’re generally confidant that our courts will deliver something closely approximating justice.

To someone generally used to being able to solve problems, this powerlessness is profoundly frustrating.

This may sound whiney and I certainly don’t wish to make myself out as suffering in anything close to the same degree as my black friends, but this experience is real. It is a real grieving in the face of something wrong that is bigger than me–even though it benefits me. I’m not sure, but I think this grief undergirds the silence of many in white America.