Category: BlogWalking

Morality Is Not The Baseline

Jared Wilson once again skewers the idea that the aim of Christianity is to produce good people, or better people. The bottom line is lots of folks do good stuff and are ‘good’ by any worldly standard and do so with no help at all from any church or from Christ. Jared writes:

… the still persisting message of the American evangelical church, that of “Be a better you thanks to God” or what-have-you, is a powerless, un-compelling message. Aside from the fact that “Behave!” is not the message of the gospel or the concerted call of Scripture, it is not something that will appeal to millions of Americans who think they’re doing pretty well already, thank you very much. They love animals, provide for their families, give to charities, cry when “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” ends, and aspire to justification by recycling. And see the dangers of p*rn and the moral bankruptcy of many modern films. Why add the baggage of church when they’re managing moral just fine?

As long as ‘Church folk’, or at least the politically vocal ones, connect Christianity to good behavior, the church will continue to loose the attention of the population. Christianity is all about how we cannot become good people until we fall at the feet of the only true good man to ever live.
If anything, Christianity is about demonstrating the truth than people are incapable of any meaningful goodness at all so that they may see that they must turn to Christ’s goodness if they wish to be rescued.

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Romans 7:21-25

“Bad People Know Very Little About Badness”

Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to talk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ , because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means – the only complete realist.

-C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity Book 3 – “Christian Behaviour, Ch. 11 – Faith“

HT – Bill @ Thinklings

To the Woman on the Turntable

I just got back from the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit this past Saturday. It was a pretty slow show this year, a lot like last year. No Nissan. No Infiniti. No Porsche.
My biggest disappointment wasn’t the caliber of the show over all, it was the turntable personnel or “Booth Professionals”. There have always been attractive folks standing on the turntable with the show cars or new production cars. In the past, however, they were all dressed professionally and had something intelligent to say about the car next to them. This year, in the Chinese electric micro car maker CT&C’s booth and in the Chrysler area, the booth professionals were ultra skinny women wearing not nearly enough fabric and said absolutely nothing. Worse, they were relentless about staying with the cars and posing, making getting a shot of the actual vehicle with out them nearly impossible. Now, I like the female form as much as the next guy, but I take seriously what Jesus said about lust and adultery. Besides, I’m there to see the cars, not them.
Jalopnik today has a post from one of these ladies, well, at least someone who works in that capacity. She’s, for obvious reasons, not letting us know who she is or even if she’s actually working NAIAS this year, only that she’s a ‘Booth Professional’.
In her post, she takes guys to task, rightfully so, for treating her like another object to be added to the options list. She says:

The comments on this and other websites that publish ‘Girls of the Auto Show’ posts can be downright disgusting. Do you have a daughter? A sister? Wife? Mother? What would you do if a total stranger walked up to her and asked how much she charges for the evening?
… I don’t object to being a sex symbol. I object to objectification. When you ask me, even in jest, “Do you come with the car?”, do you know what you are implying? Let me fill you in: that I am nothing more than an accessory to be bought, like 20-inch rims or a stereo upgrade. It’s not cute, it’s degrading.

She’s absolutely right, too many guys go there, and for every one who says it out loud, I bet there are at least 10 that are thinking something like it in their mind. It’s disgusting, plain and simple and keeping it to yourself doesn’t make it a whole lot better. Guys, man up and treat her with respect. She is someone’s daughter, someone’s sister, maybe even someone’s wife. If you can’t muster the cojones to do so, move on and go look at another booth.
She goes on to say that the way she dresses isn’t her idea, the marketing department dictates every last stitch. Now here’s where I’ve gotta challenge her. Look, no one put a gun to your head and made you take the job. They may have chosen the dress (and frankly, shame on them for that), you put it on. To think that all the guys will look at you in skin tight spandex and think happy thoughts about flowers and bunnies shows you to be very naive about the male psyche. Not to absolve them of the responsibility of treating you right, but to dress like that in a male dominated venue is a bit like opening a fifth of Jack Daniels at dinner with a recovering alcoholic and expecting him to stay sober. Sure, it’s his responsibility to stay clean, but you ain’t helping.
In case my comments above aren’t clear enough, nothing I’ve said here should be construed as meaning that guys have an excuse to lust. To be clear, I don’t care what she’s wearing (or not wearing), guys, you are responsible for keeping your thoughts pure. She’s still a child of God and as such should command your utmost respect. But, ladies, to paint on a dress and then complain when a man says or thinks something inappropriate, well, what did you expect? When you play with fire, you’re gonna get burned.

Chill the Heck Out

A short but excellent post from Jared Wilson, which I’m gonna quote in it’s entirety because, as I mentioned, it’s short and it’s awesome.

Yes, people watch too much TV and play too many video games and spend too much time on the Internet and what-have-you. But the proper response to our media over-saturation is not a rigorous attention to the explicitly “spiritual” in every margin of life. Be a Christian, not an ascetic. Don’t be lazy, but realize that Jesus Christ did not die and rise for you so that you would stress out about whether you’re being spiritual enough. So take a nap. Watch some television. The gospel frees you to chill the heck out.

Yup. I worry too much that I’m not doing the ‘right’ thing or the ‘Godly’ thing at any given moment. I need to just chill the heck out and enjoy life.

The (Non) Monotony of the Gospel.

When we “get” the gospel for what it really is — the power to save, the most thrilling news there could be, the declaration that God’s Son died for us and then came back to life! to be the risen Lord and supreme King of the universe, not just the entry fee for heaven but the currency for all of life — we revel in the new creation it unleashes in its wake at every turn. We never get tired of hearing it. It’s the new song that never gets old. “Play it again, play it again!” we will cry.

Jared Wilson warns preachers not to be tempted to drift from proclaiming the gospel, out of fear it will grow old or stale.
I think the same warning applies to regular Joe Christians – don’t think that you ‘got’ the gospel and can take some time to study something else for a few seasons. Don’t think you can leave the gospel lie and look at some ‘other’ aspect of God the father or the Son. And don’t pester your minister to do it either. Rather, look at those other things through the lens of the gospel, for the gospel permeates everything that the father is and does.
When we look at obedience without the gospel we get legalism. When we look at grace without the gospel, we get permissive religion. When we look at service without the gospel, we are simply another charity.
The gospel is what makes Christianity distinct from any other system of beliefs or method of thinking or religious philosophy. Our world, and we ourselves, are fundamentally broken and Jesus fixed it. We were in hot water with our creator, but Jesus has patched things up for for us. Other systems are about finding the way for you to help yourself, the gospel doesn’t even pretend that you can help yourself, it simply steps in and rescues you, no questions asked.
When we approach everything as disciples of Jesus from the stand point that we are flawed, broken and limited and He has done for us what we could never do ourselves, we see everything of God – grace, love, faith, obedience, etc – differently.
His grace is an astounding gift, undeserved.
His love is astounding in it’s depth, determination, lack of conditions, decisiveness and completeness.
Our faith is the only appropriate response, clearly insufficient but yet enough.
Our brokenness is insurmountable, yet utterly vanquished.
Our efforts at obedience are wholly inadequate, but absolutely necessary in view of what we’ve been given.
As Jared says, when we see the gospel, it makes everything new, and continues to do so, as long as we don’t give up on gazing at it.

Maybe Restoration Wasn’t What Was Needed

Keith Brenton asks if maybe the good hearted men who began the Restoration Movement (of which my church has it’s roots) didn’t perhaps start off in the wrong direction in the first place.

The whole Restoration exercise has made us church-centered instead of Christ-centered. We preach church instead of Christ. We preach what to do instead of what He has done – and is doing, and would like to do through us, if we’d just let Him. …
I don’t want to be like the church of the first century. Or the eighteenth century. Or the twentieth, or even the twenty-first. I want to be like Jesus.

Amen Keith. I think you nailed it. Rather than the restoration business, perhaps we need to be in the redirection business. Redirecting people to Jesus.

More Grace Than You Can Handle

From C. John Miller’s The Heart of a Servant Leader as seen on Jared’s blog, The Gospel Driven Church (emphasis mine):

Let me urge upon you the importance of cultivating faith if you are to be able to walk in love and spiritual power. Without faith it is impossible to please God, but those who believe are given more grace than they can handle. Believing is to expect God to be with you and change you and to change others…When the work is dull and routine or people are slipping away, go forth with new boldness and preach Christ until you are filled with faith yourselves and God works faith in others.
Think of it this way. All the powers of hell and earth are ranged against the gospel and your ministry. They will not compromise. Therefore don’t expect it from them. Don’t expect the enemy to coddle you. He will continue to attack from every quarter. At night. On the streets. In your meetings. Wherever. This is a take-no-prisoners kind of war, and we must not compromise with the uglies and with evil in any form.
Therefore resist, fight with all your heart against evil in yourself and others, seek holiness through faith in the blood of Christ, and live boldly out of your union with Christ. You are in Him and He is in you. Don’t doubt it. On that basis keep at it.

When things are going badly, or the simply the routines of life are dragging you down, preach Jesus until you are again filled with faith. It seems to be addressed to ministers, but I think it applies to all of us. If life sucks, focus intently on Jesus until your faith is revived.
Then again, if life is good, focus on Jesus too. It can’t hurt. 😀

Grace That Changes

In the middle of a post on the future of conservative and progressive Churches of Christ, Jay Guin said this:

Escaping a works-based salvation is not about finding freedom to be selfish. We flee works to find grace — but we’ve not really found grace until grace changes us to become gracious people, that is, people who serve others, especially those others who least deserve it — you know, like us.

It underscores his point – that the future for both groups, and other churches for that matter, lies not in maintaining the traditional path or moving to new ways. It lies in preaching and living the gospel of grace.

Why Does Christ Come?

Does Christ come merely to improve our existence in Adam or to end it, sweeping us into his new creation? Is Christianity all about spiritual and moral makeovers or about death and resurrection — radical judgment and radical grace? Is the Word of God a resource for what we have already decided we want and need, or is it God’s living and active criticism of our religion, morality, and pious experience? In other words, is the Bible God’s story, centering on Christ’s redeeming work, that rewrites our stories, or is it something we use to make our stories a little more exciting and interesting?

Michael Horton from his book Christless Christianity

From It’s Not About Improvement at Jared’s relentlessly gospel centered blog, The Gospel Driven Church. Go. Read. Be challenged.

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