I’m not someone who thinks history should be told through the rosy lens of the discontented nostalgic, but I am someone who thinks Steven Spielberg knows how to make a great film. Ever heard of him? Let me jog your memory: Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, Catch Me If You Can, Jurassic Park, Memoirs of a Geisha, Transformers.
I hope in LINCOLN he is true to both history and his art… and I hope it makes us think.
“If you know what a man’s doing, get in front of him; but if you want to guess what he’s doing, keep behind him. Stray when he strays; stop when he stops; travel as slowly as he. Then you may see what he saw and may act as he acted.”
Wise words spoken by the character Valentin in G.K. Chesterton’s novel The Complete Father Brown Mysteries. He is tracking a notorious thief, Flambeau, and explaining to two policemen why he chose to track the thief in a bus instead of in a much faster taxi.
Aristide Valentin is Chief of the Paris Police, but in this particular thief-chasing caper, he didn’t have any clue where to look. He was stuck in what he called the “naked state of nescience.” I like how he is so articulate about his lack of knowledge – I guess sometimes we need to sound impressive and confident even about our ignorance. I’m most interested, though, in Valentin’s method in chasing the thief once he realizes how little he knows.
His method? “If you want to guess what he’s doing, keep behind him.”
I’ve been trying to figure out what it means to follow Jesus and I think I’ll take a cue from Valentin on this one.
I’m not about to propose I know enough of what Jesus is doing to get in front of Him, but I’ll confess I’ve done it before. I’ve run ahead, made plans, entertained assumptions and arrived at conclusions. The more I study the life of Jesus, the more I think Valentin’s tracking tactic is the way to understand my Savior.
Because I seem to always be in the naked state of nescience when it comes to doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God. So, in my searching today, I will remember:
Keep behind him.
Travel as slowly as He.
See what He sees so I can act as He would act.
let LOVE fly like cRaZy
There is a way of sharing the gospel that makes people wish it was true, even if they believe it’s not. At least, Tim Keller thinks so (The Faith to Doubt Christianity).
There is a way of sharing the gospel that draws people in first because it’s beautiful. Not at first because it’s reasonable or socially responsible or sweet sounding, but because it is simply beautiful.
I know we can do battle about beauty – what it is and who decides – but that’s for another day (and a day that’s already been).
Today, I’m trying to be a student of this kind of gospel sharing. I’m trying to understand what it means to put the beauty of redemption on display – to draw back the curtain on the glorious story acted out on the living stage. I’m trying to remember what it felt like to see the hero die for the villain… and the horrible knot in my gut when I realized the villain was me.
To share a beautiful story, one must believe the story is beautiful.
And for that, I must go and sit in the theatre. I must watch wide-eyed and remember every interaction and every awe-inspiring stage direction. I must hang on every word because every time I know the villain is doomed, but every time the story plays out opposite what I am sure I know. And it is beautiful.
To share a beautiful story, one must first believe the story is beautiful.
There is a way to share the gospel that makes a person sit on the edge of their seat and hang on every word. There is a way to share the gospel that makes one appreciate and even wonder at the beauty so much that one wishes it was true.
I want to learn this way.
And so I must go again to the theatre.
let LOVE fly like cRaZy
Have you ever had a string of days where putting one foot in front of the other seems harder than it should seem? I mean, have you ever been frustrated at being frustrated?
I’m just wondering, I guess.
Here are some things that are taking my mind off my feet this week. I hope it pushes you to think harder or differently … and then I really hope that your knowledge grows feet. I mean, I hope your knowledge does something because otherwise it’s just about puffing up.
Do you know Al Mohler? Well, he’s kind of a big deal. Anyway, he wrote an article in The Atlantic recently about Helen Gurley Brown’s influence on the sexual revolution. It is an interesting piece that speaks to one of the most confused cultural categories (sexuality) of our generation.
Bryan McWhite writes in a post for the EFCA online magazine about the difference between simply knowing theology and doing theology and what it means for reaching young people today. This is exactly what I like to hear! We must be about living theology not about knowing it. He writes,
What I didn’t understand at first (and realize now that I am a recovering theologeek) is that the younger generations are intensely pragmatic. And contrary to what many in the church might assume, their pragmatism is in no way opposed to serious theological thought. Young people really do desire theological understanding. But they want theological inquiry to serve a purpose beyond simply knowing.
To this generation, studying theology merely for the sake of knowing is inextricably linked to arrogance. For them, the study of theology isn’t complete until it ends in praxis. They do not abide the last three chapters of Ephesians being severed from the first three. They want to understand how knowing culminates indoing.
This piece on contemporary art, “Absolutely-Too-Much” admits that contemporary art can be a hard thing to appreciate, but it remains something to be admired. I like how this article shifts to philosophical implications in contemporary art because, of course, they are connected.
“We all had new iphones but no one had no one to call…” Thats a line from the song, “Life’s for the Living” by Passenger. Sometimes, on those days when one foot drags as we put it in front of the other, we just have to remember that “life’s for the living. So live, or you’re better off dead.” Sometimes, it’s as simple as that.
let LOVE fly like cRaZy
Darkness fell like a hush; the lights circled us as we circled the fire. The jumping glow splashed on our faces and warmed our autumn skin as we cupped black coffee in thankful hands. The sky speckled with stars and the creatures sang out their evening melodies.
And we sat in the front row in the glorious theater of God.
After reading Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas, we had all carried around conversations that couldn’t happen over the phone and couldn’t happen half-hearted. This night was set apart to try to understand someone from the great cloud of witnesses – to look at the life of someone who treasured the Lord in such a way that he was ruined for anything else.
And we sat in the front row in the glorious theater of God, right there in the backyard of an Iowa farmhouse.
The candles glowed in mason jars to light the path from the woodshop, where we enjoyed a bountiful spread of German delights, and inside I was a mess of emotion. A weighty, good mess of gratitude and purpose and joy and hope and pain and fear and defeat and doubt and sorrow. When despair seems simpler and right, stories of hope read more like fiction. But not last night… not when we remembered people whose lives were anchored by one thing, driven by one thing, delighted by one thing … and not when I looked around at the firelit faces of my friends, whose struggles on stormy seas are anchored deep down by the same greatest treasure.
The struggle is not to stay upright, but to rejoice in the anchor which holds us. Bonhoeffer’s life was not about making the message of Jesus look good or better or more intellectual than whatever religion his peers and countrymen presented. He was not about being interesting or popular or approachable, at least in the end. Bonhoeffer purposed to be about truth. He set out to know God and to draw others into a knowledge of God as it is revealed in the Word of God. His culture said a lot of things, burned a lot of books, and printed a lot of promotional materials for massive political campaigns… but Bonhoeffer had eyes to shake off the surface storms and cling to the hope that anchored and the only hope that would reveal the evil that had usurped the hearts of his countrymen.
This. This is beautiful, I thought.
I love how David Hall describes John Calvin’s thoughts on our seats in the glorious theater.
Calvin described this world, moved by God’s providence, as theatrum gloriae. For him, every aspect of life from work to worship and from art to technology bears the potential to glorify God (Institutes, 1.11.12). Creation is depicted as a platform for God’s glory (1.14.20) or a “dazzling theater” (1.5.8; 2.6.1), displaying God’s glorious works. Calvin viewed the first commandment as making it unlawful to steal “even a particle from this glory” (2.8.16). Such comments support Lloyd-Jones’ later claim that for Calvin “the great central and all-important truth was the sovereignty of God and God’s glory.” (“The Theater of God’s Glory” by David Hall at Ligonier Ministries)
I went away from the night knowing we hadn’t talked about everything, hadn’t appreciated history completely, hadn’t understood theology thoroughly… but oh so thankful that we showed up at the theater. I’m thankful I have others with whom I can behold the glory of God and I’m thankful for the support we give each other to be unapologetic about truth.
Today, I am still purposing to know God, find out what pleases Him, and delight to do those things. And today I am thankful for those I can share steps with along the way.
let LOVE fly like cRaZy
After reading this post by Tony Reinke at Desiring God, this excerpt from Robert Murray McCheyne’s letter is rumbling around in my soul,
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jer. 17:9. Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely. Such infinite majesty, and yet such meekness and grace, and all for sinners, even the chief! Live much in the smiles of God. Bask in his beams. Feel his all-seeing eye settled on you in love, and repose in his almighty arms . . . Let your soul be filled with a heart-ravishing sense of the sweetness and excellency of Christ and all that is in Him. Let the Holy Spirit fill every chamber of your heart; and so there will be no room for folly, or the world, or Satan, or the flesh.“
He is altogether lovely.
Oh, and how grateful I am that we can know this love! How ready I am to “live much in the smiles of God” and “bask in his beams.” This kind of delight in the Lord not only purifies, but it also protects and perseveres.
When all our delight is found in the One whose love and joy can never be exhausted, we are always safe and always secure. We are swept up into celebration and nestled into the friendliest nook – in the cleft of the Rock. When all our delight is found in Christ, we dance as David – unashamed and giddy with praise in front of the Lord. When all our delight is in the Lord, all our despair and defeat are drowned out.
And, you’ve never seen such perseverance as Christ-drenched delight. Christ, the image of the invisible God who holds all things together and in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (Colossians 1), has made a way for me through the blood of the cross. I can never run far enough to forget this delight – this deep gladness of rescue and this gift of new life. The delight chases me with thunderstorms and children’s smiles and the taste of a homemade, family dinner.
This delight pushes out from every corner of my soul and expands it, leaving no room for sin or folly or Satan. This delight perseveres to consume a life, even the life where wickedness once reigned.
This delight that purifies, protects, and perseveres is as steadfast as a one hundred-year-old oak tree. Today, I’m resting in its shade with thanks enough for one hundred years.
In a few weeks, I’ll sit around a table of delicious German food with some of my closest friends to discuss a true story of transformation, tragedy, and terror. We’re going to discuss a book about a life – the life of a man who would not tolerate a theology that would wipe out a race of people. Reading the book, Bonhoeffer by Eric Metaxas, a few years ago was terrifying. I had walked inside the gates at Auschwitz in Poland and seen the incinerators; I had stood in the tower and looked across the field of long buildings built for suffering and death.
The account of this brilliant German man with the right pedigree and the right education and the right friends is ugly in its revealing of everything wrong about the world… about the human condition… about everything culture slowly and slyly considers “right” without question.
But book clubs with biographies are meant to focus on the past, to stir up nostalgia or pride or gratitude that terrible times had such wonderful people to overcome them. So why is The New York Times making me nervous today? Why do I think Bonhoeffer’s words would ring as poignant today, in our much progressed culture of tolerance?
Why does today seem so terrible?
I have to read the news in waves – a little bit here, a bit there… some in the morning and some over lunch. Because it feels ominous. A sliver of a column on the front page was dedicated to the continuing conflict in Syria while a lion and her cubs enjoyed a photo and feature further down on the page. Zoos are having trouble deciding what to do when babies “don’t fit the plan.” I guess those babies were part of, “All the news that’s fit to print” in a more prominent sense than the failure of any diplomatic, peaceful measures by Annan in the battered and bruised country of Syria.
This probably reads like a jumbled jigsaw puzzle and that’s because it is. I know I’ve got a hope secure and I know I’ve got to share this message, but is this world making anyone else nervous? When I sit around that table in a few weeks, enjoying good German food with kindred spirits, I have a feeling they’ll know exactly what I mean.
Good morning, friends. This little post has been brewing since I got a text from my mom at 7:30 am. She was on her way to Chick-fil-A to buy a chicken sandwich. They make a good sandwich, to be sure, but the closest store is an hour away and this is a particular day to make the trek for chicken.
And, with all my freshly-wakened, Wednesday morning (pre-coffee) clarity, I wondered if this emphasizing of polarization is productive. How can we sit down with the sick – those in need of the Great Physician – if we persist in putting ourselves in opposition? The lifestyle of the woman at the well didn’t stop Jesus from hanging out there – he didn’t go out of his way to go to a different well, one that supported a monogamous lifestyle.
He very intentionally went to where the hurting hung out because (though the woman didn’t understand she needed saving) he knew he could offer something they would never find in the cycle of their sin. We have to step into the cycle of brokenness in the lives of the wayward in order to point to the freedom of wholeness. It is so crucial that we recognize how desperately we daily cling to Christ for wholeness. It’s not as if we share a message that we’ve attained. Rather, we lean into God’s faithfulness and hang on his words and stand on his promises because He is our wholeness.
We have been rescued from the cycle of brokenness and this is a message to share with the broken.
Don’t get me wrong – I agree with Dan Cathy’s beliefs (which I think were originally intended to communicate his disappointment in the divorce rate) and boy! can he make a great chicken sandwich! But at the end of the day, I want to be able to sit down with the prostitute, the lesbian, the bi-sexual, and every kind of wayward. I’m not sure that they would feel welcome at a table full of my friends who clearly oppose what they claim as identity.
It’s a question of effectiveness, I think. I appreciate what everyone is saying, but I’m just wondering if it is all turning into noise.
Matthew Hall yesterday tweeted, “If not resisted, the siren song of political power/influence will usually drown out theological conviction & prophetic witness. #theory” and I think I agree.
In my Bible study this morning, I read:
And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will. (2 Timothy 2:24-26 ESV)
and this:
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already happened. They are upsetting the faith of some. (2 Timothy 2:15-18 ESV)
What does it mean to rightly handle the word of truth? avoid irreverent babble? Is it possible that people on both sides can lead people into more and more ungodliness? I just pray against the talk that spreads like gangrene and that in its place we would lean into the Word so much that what comes out in our speech is gentleness and compassion and hope. By all means, eat your chicken sandwich and enjoy it (Dan Cathy didn’t get so huge on the sale of a bad product), but consider what is the best way to engage with those who are sick and in need of a physician.
Go make a friend – have lunch, sit across the table, listen and care about the person looking back at you.
See them and let them see you.
Let’s pray they see Christ, whose love constrains us to obedience.
How Long (Love Constraining to Obedience) by Wayfarer
To see the law by Christ fulfilled, to hear His pardoning voice
Can change a slave into a child and duty into choice
No strength of nature can suffice to serve the Lord aright
And what she has she misapplies for want of clearer lightHow long, how long beneath the law I lay
How long, how long I struggled to obeyThen to abstain from outward sin was more than I could do
Now If I feel its power within, I feel I hate it too
Then all my servile works were done, a righteousness to raise
Now, freely chosen in the Son, I freely choose His waysHow long, how long beneath the law I lay
How long, how long I struggled to obey
How long, how long in bondage and distress
How long, how long I tried without success…
Articles that give some great insight:
Evangelical Credibility and Religious Pluralism by John W. Morehead (posted at Qideas.com)
Why the Chick-Fil-A Boycott is really about Jesus by Trevin Wax (posted at The Gospel Coalition)
Is Chick-fil-A a Bold Mistake? by Denny Burk (Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Boyce College)
Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day: A Bold Mistake by Barnabas Piper (WORLD magazine)
Chick-fil-A Controversy Draws In Jonathan Merritt’s Sexuality by Jasmine Young (Christianity Today)
Hello, friends!
I am posting a this & that post today because my Sabbath is getting crowded with good things. I am learning to enjoy God as I walk through crowded days as much as when I sit through solitary ones – He is faithful either way.
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I read this article, “Not Like Me,” over at The Curator magazine because I resonated with the opening anecdote of a new father with a notoriously bad driving record driving his first child home in the family car. I think I’ll have a similar moment someday. But, the article mostly focused on this father’s hope for his children – a hope that they would have the freedom to be teachers and artists and writers instead of a computer programmer. I’m not sure how I feel about this idea of progress producing generations more free to pursue less technical careers. He quotes John Adams in a letter he wrote in a letter to Abigail,
I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine. (John Adams to Abigail Adams, [post 12 May 1780])
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Did you watch the Olympic Opening Ceremony? It was a production, to be sure. Danny Boyle‘s dramatic presentation drew 40.7 million people to tune in to NBC on Friday night. I was one of those 40.7 million and I think there were beautiful things and strange things and things I wouldn’t want my children to see (if I had children). This article from the Huffington Post, “NBC Sets Opening Ceremony Record with London 2012 Olympics.” I’m a sucker for good competition and the underdog stories that are so easy to dig up when there’s a world stage, so I’ll be tuning in this week in what will add up to more TV than I’ll watch all year.
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I am so grateful for this article from the Gospel Coalition, “Do You See the Suffering? Our Mirror Eyes and U.S. Latinos” because it says what people aren’t talking about in the political arena: it talks about what we see when we look at people. Take away policies and papers and really look at our Latino population, without mirror eyes. What do you see?
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I have been reading sermons from C.H. Spurgeon – a well-known preacher from England who became famous for his common (some said vulgar) style. I love what he says about studying God,
“There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subject we can compass and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go our way with the thought, “Behold, I am wise.” But when we come to this master-science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth, and that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought, that vain man would be wise, but he is like a wild ass’s colt; and with the solemn exclamation, “I am but of yesterday, and know nothing.” No subject of contemplation will tend more to humble the mind, than thoughts of God.” (C.H. Spurgeon in his sermon, “The Immutability of God”)
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let LOVE fly like cRaZy
What a beautiful encouragement from D.A. Carson as he answers the question, “Why read the Bible?”
If we are motivated by mere routine to open the Bible, we will not experience transformation and we will welcome a more merit-based salvation system. I struggle with this on a regular basis, so I’m thankful for these thoughts.
MUSINGS IN THE MIDST 