Some Thoughts

I didn’t have it in me tonight (time, topic, or motivation) to write any kind of extended reflection, but I wanted to post at least something.  I realize that this is a dangerous combination.  But here are a number of quite disconnected thoughts either from various recent experiences or that simply jumped to mind as I sat here.  I hope that some might be encouraging or thought-provoking in a good way.

I get the impression that God means us to be greatly humbled every time we hear a language that we cannot understand.

It is fascinating how much people will compromise to make other people laugh.

If you started memorizing one verse per day tomorrow, you would memorize the entire New Testament in 22 years.  I would have the New Testament stored away in my mind at the age of 49.  I could cut out at least 5 years with the verses that I already know well.  That gives me the New Testament at age 44.

If you started memorizing one chapter per week tomorrow, you could memorize the entire New Testament in 5 years – by the spring of 2013.  This would only be 4-5 verses per day.

Perhaps more amazing than the previous two statistics is how few of us will actually do (or even try to do) something like this.

Maturity comes from small consistent choices over the long haul.  It cannot be microwaved.

I think that faith and faithfulness are the best responses when stuck in the valley of indecision.

When you feel lonely, discouraged, introspective, unknown, and out of sorts, you will probably feel like being alone, but it would be better for you to be around good people who love Jesus.

It takes great humility to pursue community when lonely.  Selfishness thrives in privacy and introspection but is exposed in community and relationship.

I always feel badly for extreme sports performers because none of us can even begin to appreciate what they do.  Like single mothers or missionaries to unreached tribes or parents with mentally handicapped children, most of us have little context for relating (and appreciating).

In general, I would suggest that the more time you spend on Facebook and MySpace, the more socially destitute you probably are.  If this is true, it is not a good sign for my generation.

You must prepare for the biggest tests in life before you know what they are, which means that you should be very diligent now.  You will not usually get the chance to prepare once the test is upon you.

Self-pity is a lie from the devil to keep us from serving others.

It is foolish to dichotomize too strictly between preparation and real life.  All of life is preparation and all of life is real.

It’s important to do what you know to be right even when you get made fun of for it.

I’ve concluded that homeless beggars must see an incredible amount of guilt through the eyes of passersby.  This must give them tremendous insight into the heart of man.

There are so many ways to slander someone.

There are many who love to point out that children have a refreshing sense of wonder that adults have lost, but few who work to recover it.

As we grow older, it is not that maintaining a sense of wonder is impossible.  It just takes more work.

Busyness makes us forget that small expressions of love are meaningful.

Sometimes in close communities like The Master’s College, it can helpful to hear the relentless phrase “How are you?” as a question expressing greeting instead of a question inviting introspection.

We learn by imitation; imitation begins with watching; what are you watching?

One way to bless people is to think of the question that they probably get asked the most and to avoid asking it.

Personal passivity may seem like a natural progression but it is actually a moral choice.

Moral erosion does not happen in leaps and bounds.

We may never know how much television and video games have emaciated our souls and how ashamed so many young men will be that they spent the years of their strength mastering Halo.

It is utterly astounding that Jesus never sinned.

Institutional Pride: Thoughts on Corporate Arrogance

Usually our battles against pride are individual battles, because we know our own hearts (hopefully) and we know how much we need to fight.  But in the last several years I’ve grown increasingly nauseated by some of the institutional, corporate, community pride that seems to thrive in some Christian circles.  Relentless criticism of other organizations, self-affirming comparisons with other decent schools, disparaging remarks about the emphases of other good churches.  Over time the institutional self-praise just gets old and starts sounding desperately immature and elitist.

There is something very attractive and subversive about community pride, because it feels more virtuous than individual pride.  Thinking highly of yourself is usually called conceit, but thinking highly of your institution or company is usually called loyalty.  In many ways, this distinction is fair and right.  It is foolish to praise your own qualities (Proverbs 27:2) but it is appropriate to praise what is praiseworthy about a group of people (Proverbs 14:34).

Yet in some corporations and colleges and even churches, this type of appropriate praise turns in on itself and degenerates into that inseparable yet miserable pair of boasting and condescension.  What started as pure delight in what God is doing turns into fawning corporate arrogance over our self-identified strengths and qualities and distinctives.  This in turn produces a condescending attitude toward any and all competitors as we learn to view other groups as so many rungs on the ladder of self-promotion, worthy only of the bottom sole of our institutional boot as we climb upward.

I don’t mind someone saying how grateful he is for his local church and the qualities that God has cultivated there (I certainly tell people that I’m grateful for my local church).  This spirit of gratitude and joy and honor is entirely biblical.  My objection is against those who sound content that other churches seem to be falling short and against Christians who talk about the weaknesses of another group of believers without even a hint of disappointment, sadness, or prayerfulness.  Even if our criticisms are accurate and necessary, we ought not to sound like CEO’s rejoicing over struggling competitors.

Consider how many things are said in the name of corporate self-honor that actually border on arrogance.  Listen to the vocabulary, even in Christian circles, of organizational self-promotion and condescension.  We praise our own churches and subtly imply that we are superior to the other good local churches in the area.  We off-handedly mention the weaknesses of other good groups (which we know next-to-nothing about) as though our observations were utterly factual, unquestionable, objective, and calculated, and as though our purpose were to simply to make a remark that aids discernment.  I would suggest that, more often than we realize, we are really stroking our own corporate ego.  And corporate ego is still ego.

The competitiveness of capitalism and the self-promotion of marketing have no place in the church of Jesus Christ.  Yes, rejoice if your church preaches the truth and functions as a loving, like-minded community.  Yes, rejoice over your college’s sound doctrine and the wonderful experience you’ve had there.  Yes, praise God for the clear spiritual priorities of your parachurch organization and the privilege you have of serving Christ with such a strong and healthy group.  But understand that there are others out there serving the Lord faithfully, too.  Remember that there are local churches in your state that are doing more for the gospel than you have ever dreamed of doing.  Don’t forget that there are other Christian colleges who are training young men and women in the ways of Christ, and that they’re doing it well.

When Jesus said that few will enter through the small gate and walk the narrow way, He wasn’t just talking about the people in your local church.  The true church of Jesus Christ isn’t stamped with your organization’s logo or my college’s initials.  There are others who are faithful.

How often do our local churches praise the work of God in other area churches?  How often do we pray publicly for the other solid churches in our cities and towns?  How often do our Christian colleges and seminaries honor and affirm other Christian colleges and seminaries around the country?  Are they our colleagues or our competitors?  Is this a family or is it a rivalry?

I realize that there are lines to be drawn; that not all institutions or churches that call themselves Christian actually follow Christ; that there are a lot of weak-sauce colleges and seminaries out there who have little doctrine and less spirituality; and that we need to exercise discernment which will often mean identifying weak points in groups of people who claim Scripture as their guide and rule.  Jesus and Paul and Peter and the prophets all did this, and we shouldn’t be ashamed to follow them.

But this doesn’t equal rejoicing over the weaknesses (whether real or perceived) of those who are our true brothers and sisters.  It doesn’t mean we throw others’ reputations in front of the firing squad simply because they disagree on secondary or tertiary issues.  And it certainly doesn’t mean that we should get used to patting ourselves on the back while claiming that we’re worshiping God for what He’s done.  There’s a difference between corporate adoration and communal arrogance.

I think there’s a high risk of this post being misunderstood.  Some might say, “Yeah, people who stand for the truth are always arrogant and critical and intolerant, and we should all overlook our doctrinal differences.”  Others might say, “Wait, so you’re saying that it’s arrogant to be confident in the truth or to rejoice in the fact that God has kept us biblical, or that we should just push all our differences under the carpet and never compassionately point out where other arms of the church are failing?”  I’m not saying either of these things, and I’m willing to clarify in the comments if what I am saying is unclear.

But I think it’s essential that groups who stand for the truth fight against the temptation to be uppity towards those who differ in relatively small ways.  I’m not talking about orthodoxy and heresy; when orthodoxy is at stake, be gracious and gentle but fire at will.  I’m not even talking about fringe churches and compromised colleges and hopelessly misled organizations that all need to be called on the carpet for their lack of faithfulness and biblical priorities.  I’m talking about those sound churches in your area that may differ with you on some small things, those healthy Christian colleges that train the same types of students you’re training but have some different distinctives, and those parachurch organizations that are helping the body of Christ fulfill some part of the Great Commission even though they have their own minor weaknesses.

And if you can’t think of any of those sound churches, healthy colleges, or biblical organizations (besides your own), that might just be symptom number one.  Don’t limit the work of God to your little group, wonderful though it may be.  God is not that small.

Bought with a Price

Most Christians are familiar with the powerful Pauline phrase, “you were bought with a price.”  It renders a hammer-blow to our constant notions of personal rights and privileges and reminds us quite forcefully that we belong to Christ and not to ourselves.

You were bought with a price, and this purchase has implications.  In 1 Corinthians 6:20, Paul makes this the capstone of his exhortation to sexual purity: “For you were bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”  And in his very next paragraph, he again appeals to this redemptive reality as one basis for his exhortation to be content with your earthly status and position: “You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men.  Brethren, each one is to remain with God in that condition in which he was called” (1 Corinthians 7:23-24).

The fact that we have been bought has invasive implications.  When God purchased you from the slave market of sin, His goal for you was not minor tweaking and slight service.  He aims for (and demands) your absolute transformation and His absolute ownership.  He bought you and He owns you.  No conditions, no qualifications, no fine print.  You are His.

This is staggering enough as it stands.  The implications of my life being owned by another are far-reaching and pervasive.  Yet Paul is getting at something much deeper, much more intense, much more devastating.  You were not just bought.  You were bought with a price.

Why did Paul add this phrase?  Why didn’t he just say, “You were bought; therefore glorify God in your body”?  Doesn’t the concept of purchase include the concept of price?  Doesn’t the idea of buying logically include a cost?  Were the Corinthians so economically-challenged that they needed to be reminded that the ideas of purchase and price are logically linked?  There seems to be some significant conceptual redundancy here.

But the Corinthians were not naïve about the marketplace, and Paul was not being redundant.  He is not simply saying, “You have been bought, and as with every purchase, there was a price.”  He is not reminding them about a general conceptual connection between purchase and price.  He is talking about blood.  He is talking about the cross.  He is talking about the Son.

“You were bought – and look at what it cost.”  “You were bought – do not forget the price that was paid.”  Or, from God’s perspective:  “I bought you – and I paid dearly.”

Oh, how much He paid!  See Christ on the cross, forsaken by his Father so that we might be forgiven; not just forgiven, but reconciled; not just reconciled, but sanctified; not just sanctified, but glorified; and not just glorified, but adopted.  See the Father turning His back on His heaving, suffocating, agonized, mystified Son, for the first and last time in the history of time and eternity.  Hear the Son cry out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”  Hear the Father say, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased,” then hear the prophet say, “The Lord was pleased to crush Him.”  God’s pleasure in His Son and God’s pleasure in crushing His Son are incompatible and incomprehensible.  Which is why Paul does not just say, “You were bought.”  He says, “You were bought with a price.”

How many things have been bought and sold and bartered in the history of the world?  The number is almost infinite.  But there has never been a purchase like this purchase.  Because there has never been a price like this price.  If you are looking for a motivating reason to devote yourself to God afresh today, this is it.  If you are searching for a reason to get up in the morning and fulfill your Christian responsibilities, let this be your reason.  If you desperately need strength to love, serve, pray, fight, forgive, study, stand, preach, parent, witness, endure, and rejoice, here is gospel strength.  Because perhaps the only redemptive reality more powerful than the fact that you were bought is the height of the price that was paid.

Why, today, should you do what is right?  Because you were bought.  With a price.

Happy Birthday, Grandma!