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“The gospel of justifying faith means that while Christians are, in themselves still sinful and sinning, yet in Christ, in God’s sight, they are accepted and righteous. So we can say that we are more wicked than we ever dared believe, but more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared hope — at the very same time. This creates a radical new dynamic for personal growth. It means that the more you see your own flaws and sins, the more precious, electrifying, and amazing God’s grace appears to you. But on the other hand, the more aware you are of God’s grace and acceptance in Christ, the more able you are to drop your denials and self-defenses and admit the true dimensions and character of your sin.”

— Tim Keller

…working through an excellent book that speaks straight to the heart, Tim Keller’s Counterfeit Gods. Two quotes for now, more thoughts another time:

We never imagine that getting our heart’s deepest desires might be the worst thing that can ever happen to us.

Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart, than your idol…If you uproot the idol and fail to ‘plant’ the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back.

A “conscience” helps us make sense of a Holy God. A conscience illuminates a moral/ethical dimension in our lives/world that shouldn’t be ignored. When people don’t have these, oh the horror…I think we can all understand the need for a moral compass. But I’m not talkin’ bout that, Willis.

I’m talking about an over-active conscience. When one’s conscious has been hijacked and one becomes too sensitive and plagued heavy sense of being wrong/unworthy/not good enough. He or she has no gray, it’s all black and white; even if the “morality” is just a construct of societal/cultural norms, these are seen as mandates from God Himself. This could mean a prohibition on consuming lawful/moderate amounts of alcohol, using sarcasm, listening to non-Christian music, or so on. But Christianity isn’t about what you don’t do, it’s about who you know. (continue reading…)

Matt Chandler, teaching pastor of The Village Church, suffered a seizure on Thanksgiving morning and woke up in the hospital. After having tests run, he learned of a tumor on his brain.  Yesterday,  Matt updated his health status and tells us about where he is at with God in the midst of these recent events in this video… It it is encouraging to see unflinching faith in the God he preaches. What a gut check; reminds me of this passage.

Augustana - Hotel Roosevelt

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

- The Four Loves

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask-half our great theological and metaphysical problems-are like that.

- A Grief Observed

The Avett Brothers - And It Spread

In a recent article, Tim Keller addresses idolatry with relevance, clarity, and precision. His insights definitely strike a few chords with me. Here are a few quotes:

“An idol is something you rely on instead of God for your salvation…”

“We tend to worry about drugs, drinking, and pornography. But it’s not bad and nasty things that are our biggest problems. Sex, work, and money are great goods. They are intrinsic to our being made in God’s image. If God is second place in your life and one of them is first, you’re cooked. These things are candidates for first place because they are so great.”

(How does someone identify their idols?)

“Look at your daydreams. When you don’t have to think about something, like when you are waiting for the bus, where does your mind love to rest? Or, look at where you spend your money most effortlessly. Also, if you take your most uncontrolled emotions or the guilt that you can’t get rid of, you’ll find your idols at the bottom. Whenever I hear someone say, “I know God forgives me, but I can’t forgive myself,” it means that person has something that is more important than God, because God forgives them. If you look at your greatest nightmare—if something were to happen that would make you feel you had no reason to live—that’s a god.”

A synopsis of his new book, Counterfeit Gods:

“When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”- Bishop Dom Helder Camara

“Washing one’s hands [of the struggle] between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”- Paulo Friere

As I eluded to before, it’s not uncommon to see an apathetic/individualistic/fatalistic attitude about solving structural problems, especially when (because) one isn’t directly and negatively affected. So, allow me to prod a little more…and just in case the red scare is still in effect: I affirm that a planned/controlled economy is a disaster for a plethora of reasons.

Disclaimer aside, the market is a fallen entity and pregnant with moral considerations. We mustn’t look at it too simply and miss an entire ethical dimension, that would be like calling a cube a square.In God’s economy, everyone matters, not just profit motive. The CEO’s, those who hold stock, the consumers, those in US, those over “there”, the man, the little guy, and even labor.

Everyone matters.

So, are there additional questions to ask besides, “how can I get goods and services (that I mostly don’t need in the first place) as inexpensively and efficiently as possible?” The following video asserts that to say “no” would be shortsighted and self-oriented, privileging abstract principles over real people.

Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc. (Album Crossfade)

Those who lean right tend to focus on personal holiness issues. Lefties tend to focus on communal justice issues. We can peg ourselves on one extreme if we a) care about one type and not the other and b) think true morality is simply an ‘either/or’ instead of a ‘both/and’ when dealing with individual & corporate issues. The God of the Bible is portrayed as ‘both/and’, Jesus was ‘both/and’ — so, shouldn’t we be as well?

My experience and reading of culture tells me that evangelicals often have a largely individualistic view of morality & ethics, sometimes reducing the inquiry almost exclusively to matters of personal holiness. What it means to be good or bad usually goes like this: “I don’t cheat on my taxes” or, “I told a lie” or, “I have sex in the correct ways”. I agree, but let me push back…

(continue reading…)

Kings Of Leon - On Call

You know the old-bridge illustration, how the cross acts as a bridge for the chasm between Holy God and sinful humanity? Well, what if it is more complicated than that? What if there are other chasms existing in our post-Christian culture? What if other bridges are first needed to connect people to THE bridge?

…tonight @ Epic LT, I’ll be exploring examples of how God/scripture has always entered into culture (Incarnation, eh?) and relevantly spoke to it…for the culture…not against the culture…specifically looking at Acts (16 & 17)…being ‘all things to all people’…contextualizing the message with an awareness of different cultural assumptions and personal situations…the different bridges that were built to pave the way to THE bridge…(I just typed a massive run-on sentence)

Tim Keller - Post-everythings

Dan Kimball - They Like Jesus But Not The Church

C Michael Patton - Will The Real Emerger Please Stand Up

Lyons & Kinnaman - UnChristian

Michael Wittmer - Don’t Stop Believing

- You will never know how much you believe something until it is a matter of life and death. If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.

- I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

- Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

- If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

- There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way”.

What is gossip?

Bringing someone into a situation/giving them information when they aren’t part of the problem or the solution,

sin,

not going directly to the person(s) in question with your concerns to confront them or ask a question to assess the reality of a situation,

none of your damned business,

spreading a rumor under the guise of ‘asking for advice’ or ‘pray for so-and-so because…’,

behind the back,

often in concert with assumptions,

damaging,

& not without consequence.

CLICK HERE for the an excellent picture/analogy about the nature of gossip.

Damien Rice - Cannonball

It is easy to think of God as merely part of our story, when we are in actuality part of His story. I love the way Ephesians 1: 9 & 10 (in The Message paraphrase) tells us that Jesus is the end, the point…we find meaning and endless good for ourselves, but in the end, He is the end, not the means.

“He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.”

I’ve been prompted in this direction by reading “Christless Christianity” (website here) by Michael Horton…which is a series of pointed and critical examinations of the church in the US. At a few points he may be too critical, but none-the-less, I’ve been encouraged by how Horton has called out attempts to make God into ‘our’ image to do our will, as opposed to the other way around.

Here’s a few quotes:

It is easy to become distracted from Christ as the only hope for sinners. Where everything is measured by our happiness rather than by God’s holiness, the sense of our being sinners becomes secondary, if not offensive. If we are good people who have lost our way, but with the proper instructions and motivation can  become a better person, we need only a life coach, not a redeemer. p. 15-16

Does Christ come merely to improve our existence in Adam or to end it, sweeping us into his new creation? p.24

Jesus has been dressed up as a corporate CEO, life coach, culture-warrior, political revolutionary, philosopher, copilot, co-sufferer, moral example, and partner in fulfilling our personal and social dreams. But in all of these ways, are we reducing the central character in the drama of redemption to a prop for our own play? p.25

The challenge before us as Christian witnesses is whether we will offer Jesus Christ as the key to fulfilling our narcissistic preoccupation or as the Redeemer who liberates us from its guilt and power. Does Christ come to boost our ego or to crucify our ego and raise us up as new a creation with our identity in him? p.33

Guster - The Captain

“You’ve got to talk about the cross…you’ve got to talk about the atoning work of Christ on the cross, you’ve got to do that. If a place doesn’t do that, it’s not a church. If there’s no cross it’s not a church, it’s a gathering of good people…if there is no cross, not blood & agony & screaming & the absorbing of wrath — you don’t have a church, you’ve got something else. Self-help…good people…the rotary club…you don’t a church. You’ve got to have the cross to have a church.” - Matt Chandler