Today, in Worldview, I talked about nihilism, which is less a worldview than a mood that is the psychological consequence of naturalism. Once again, my remarks were based on James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door, 4th ed.
In New Testament Survey today, I spoke about the Gospel according to John.
Check out Naomi Schaeffer Riley's review of two books on the evangelical youth movement in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. The books are Righteous: Dispatches from the Evangelical Youth Movement by Lauren Sandler and Body Piercing Saved My Life by Andrew Beaujon. She pans the former but praises the latter.
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Love is the foundation of Christianity.
Such love refers, first of all, to God’s love for us. According to Romans 5.8, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” But that public demonstration bears private fruit. According to Romans 5.5, “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” So intense is God’s love for us that, according to Romans 8.39, there is nothing “in all creation, [that] will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Second, love refers to our love for one another. In Romans 12.9-16, Paul lists twelve character qualities that ought to guide Christians in their relationships with one another. In his commentary on Romans, John Stott lists these character qualities as sincerity, discernment, affection, honor, enthusiasm, patience, generosity, hospitality, good will, sympathy, harmony, and humility. Today, I want to look at only the first two: sincerity and discernment, for Paul talks about them in a way that might be confusing to some.
Romans 12.9 says, “Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” For most of us, love and hate are mutually exclusive. If you love, you do not hate. If you hate, you do not love. But Paul teaches that love and hatred are both character qualities of a Christian. How is this possible? Let me give you an example from marriage.
Marriage is the purest demonstration of love a man and a woman can give one another. But there are many ways to pollute that love. For example, a husband could spend his best efforts at the office rather than at home. Or he could use online pornography. Or he could begin an extramarital affair. By the same token, a wife could give into bitterness about her husband’s freedom to work outside the home. Or she could resent his lack of involvement in chores and childrearing. Or she could indulge in gossip with friends about their respective husband’s failings. I admit that these examples are a bit traditional and stereotypical, but you get the point. Something pure becomes adulterated.
You’ve no doubt heard the expression, “True love waits.” That’s correct. If you love someone, you’ll wait to engage in sexual activity with them until you’re married. But here’s an expression you’ve probably never heard: “True love hates.” It never hates another person, but it always hates the attitudes and activities that destroy a relationship. Show me a wife who doesn’t hate her husband’s adultery, and I’ll show you a wife who doesn’t love her husband.
If love is sincere, it hates evil and embraces good. As expressions of love, then, whether in marriage or any other relationship, sincerity and discernment work together. If I love you, I will hate the things that push us apart and embrace the things that pull us together. After all, isn’t that how God expressed his sincere love for us on the Cross?
Today, in my Worldview class, I finished my remarks about naturalism.
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When I was born on Thursday, May 8, 1969, my parents named me George Paul Wood. Ever since, they have called me George. My sister calls me George. My wife calls me George. My extended family calls me George. My friends and colleagues call me George. And that’s the way I like. It is, after all, my name. But sometimes, people at church call me Pastor. Listen, if you’re my friend, please don’t call me Pastor.
There are several reasons why I don’t like to be called Pastor. One, it makes me feel old. Two, it makes me feel like I ought to be wearing a clerical collar and uttering profound mysteries about God. But I hate wearing black, and while I like talking about God, very little that I say about him ever rises to the level of the profound or the mysterious. And three, I don’t call you by your spiritual gift, so why should you call me by mine?
In order to explain that last reason, I need to quote Romans 12.4-8:
Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.
With these words, Paul lays out a vision of church in which every member makes a valuable contribution to the life of the community. Keep two things in mind: First, each person’s contribution is different. Just as one body has many parts, so one church has many ministers. Some of the ministers have the spiritual gift of pastoring, but others of prophesying, serving, teaching, encouraging, contributing generously, leading, and showing mercy. Second, each person’s contribution is equally valuable. Pastors may stand in the spotlight on Sundays, but behind the scenes and throughout the week, others are also doing the work of ministry.
And that’s the basic reason I don’t like being called Pastor. The title, which is sincerely intended as a form of respect, ends up privileging one spiritual gift over others, mine over yours. I may be Pastor George, but you’re just as equally Prophet Peter or Serving Steve or Teaching Theresa or Encouraging Eve or Contributing Ken or Merciful Marianne. So if you’re going to give me a title, why can’t I give you one too?
Through Christ, we’re all equal but differently gifted children in God’s family. Brothers and sisters call each other by their first names, the names their Heavenly Father gave them. Mine’s George. What’s yours?
Today, in New Testament Survey, I spoke about Jesus' use of parables and how to interpret them.
Ever heard of Mike Oher? I hadn't, but you will. He's an up-and-coming college football player. You can read about him here. This may be one of the greatest sports stories I've ever read.
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Brad Paisley sings a funny sung about alcohol that begins with these words:
I can make anybody pretty.
I can make you believe any lie.
I can make you pick a fight with somebody twice your size.
Actually, now that I read those lyrics, they’re not so much funny as just plain sad. Drunkenness makes people believe and do really stupid things.
Romans 12.3 doesn’t address the baleful consequences of alcohol consumption. In fact, it doesn’t mention alcohol at all. But it talks about “sober judgment,” and the easiest way to think about sober judgment is by contrast with “beer goggles.”
Perhaps you’ve never heard of beer goggles. I hadn’t either until friends explained that they’re what you put on when you drink too much. To the young man with beer goggles, every girl looks pretty, no matter how homely; every idea sounds like a good one, no matter how stupid; and every course of action is doable, no matter how dangerous. Looking at the world through beer-goggled eyes is a fool’s errand, but lots of young men and women (not to mention some older ones) still do it. And boy, do they suffer the consequences.
What Paul recommends—or, rather, commands—is sobriety. As he writes in Romans 12.3, “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.”
Sobriety is not the same thing as alcohol-free, although being free of alcohol is a good place to start. Some people wear beer goggles because they drink too much beer. But some people believe that anybody is pretty, any lie is true, and any fight can be won even when no alcohol has touched their lips. Sobriety, you see, is the spiritual and moral virtue of reality-centeredness long before it is a measurement of blood alcohol level.
So, the first thing truly sober people do is take a realistic assessment of themselves. “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought” is the negative aspect of this assessment. When the serpent tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, he seduced them into disregarding this negative. “You will be like God,” he said in Genesis 3.5. Adam and Eve put their beer goggles on and we’ve been wandering around like drunken sinners ever since. Listen, there’s only one God, and you’re not him. Neither am I. Sobriety starts with this basic fact.
But there’s a positive aspect to this assessment too. Paul writes about thinking of yourself “in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.” In verses 4-8, he lists a wide variety of spiritual gifts that God has bestowed on his people. You and I may not be God, but we’re not nobodies either. Rather, in Christ, we’re somebodies whom God values enough to save and use for his best purposes.
I just saw the trailer for the documentary, Jesus Camp. I haven't seen the movie itself, and I don't know whether I will. But after watching the trailer, I felt a tight knot in the pit of my stomach. Look, I'm all for Christian camps. I attended them as a kid. In high school, college, and graduate school, I served as a counselor. They serve many valuable purposes, both recreational and spiritual. I worry, however, about a camp that seems to get kids so riled up emotionally. What's worse is that I'm pretty sure the camp in the documentary comes out of thatPentecostal wing of Christianity, which is to say, my wing. Oy vey!
In this morning's Worldview lecture, I made a few remarks about deism among America's Founding Fathers, then I began my lecture on naturalism. Once again, I'm using The Universe Next Door, 4th ed., by James W. Sire as the outline for my lectures.
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During my first year of graduate school, I read A Black Theology of Liberation by James H. Cone. For me—a conservative, white, suburban kid—reading Cone’s book was an unsettling experience. Cone thought about God and society very differently than I did. Indeed, he argued that my theological methodology and conclusions served racist purposes. One of the most formative moments in my theological education happened when I stopped and asked myself whether he was right.
Why am I telling you about my unsettling experience? It’s not because I came to agree with Cone’s specific conclusions about white theologians. In my opinion, his conclusions were driven more by quasi-Marxist assumptions than by biblical imperatives. On the other hand, Cone was on to something. Sometimes, not always, but nevertheless all too often, we let our cultural assumptions shape our theology rather than the other way around.
An interesting case study of this tendency can be found in the September 18th cover story of Time magazine: “Does God Want You to Be Rich?” For some well-known television preachers, the answer is undoubtedly yes. And they have a point. I sincerely doubt that God wants anyone to be poor. That’s why the Bible contains so many commands to be generous to the poor and to do justice by them. But is the so-called “prosperity gospel” really biblical? Or is it, as the article suggests, “the latest lurch in Protestantism's ongoing descent into full-blown American materialism”? Do we emphasize what the Bible teaches us about prosperity because we—as a nation—are so rich, and we want to justify our lifestyles? Perhaps. I certainly like reading what the Bible says about God blessing me more than I like reading about (or actually putting into practice) what the Bible says about helping the poor.
The problem is that our culture’s way of thinking easily becomes our way of thinking. And then we—Christians, anyway—find creative ways to read our way of thinking onto the pages of the Bible. The end result is that we deceive ourselves into thinking we’ve acted biblically about some issue when in fact all we’ve done is found those verses in the Bible that validate our preconceived notions about God and society.
Romans 12.1 talks about offering our bodies as living sacrifices to God. Romans 12.2 goes on to explain how that living sacrifice applies to our minds: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
The purpose of sound thinking is godly living. In order to live a godly life, we need to think like him, to let his thoughts become our thoughts. That can only happen when we are alert to the subtle ways in our which our thinking about God conforms to our social prejudices, rather than our society being transformed by what the Bible teaches us about God.
Here's the audio for my lecture on deism.
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In August 1991, I traveled to the Qinghai Province in northwestern China with my family. We visited various cities where my missionary grandparents had planted churches prior to the Communist Revolution of 1949. While in the city of Xining, I saw a butcher kill a goat on the sidewalk in front of his store. Until then, I’d never seen a butcher at work. But now I had, and it gave me a new perspective on Romans 12.1. Here’s what Paul writes:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.
The work of a priest and the work of a butcher are very different. In the Old Testament, a priest killed an animal as a sacrifice to God. A butcher, by contrast, kills an animal in order to sell its meat to customers. The ends a priest and a butcher pursue may differ, but the means to those ends are the same. Either way, as sacrifice or meat, the animal must be killed.
But the necessary death of a sacrificial animal renders Paul’s remarks oxymoronic. How can something be a “living sacrifice”? It’s helpful to remember that Paul is speaking metaphorically here. He’s talking about us, not animals, although he uses the language of sacrificial animals to make an important point about us.
That point can best be illustrated by Pastor Mung, a remarkable Christian leader I met in Xining. Pastor Mung had been a colleague of my grandparents. He was an exceptionally gifted pastor and evangelist. Because my grandparents were American citizens, they fled the Communist Revolution and returned stateside. But as a Chinese national, Pastor Mung had no place to go.
The Communists were not kind to Chinese Christians. They viewed them as ideologues of the non-Communist West. So, the Communists confiscated Pastor Mung’s church buildings, they banned him from holding meetings, they imprisoned him, and even when they paroled him, they curtailed his ability to find good housing and a job. Throughout those very hard years, he soldiered on, ministering to his congregation in secret, encouraging small handfuls of believers through home visits.
Pastor Mung lived sacrificially. I’m sure he could have said a few words or performed a few actions that would have somewhat alleviated his situation. But before God, in his conscience, he knew that he could not compromise his calling. He subordinated his own interests to the greater interests of the kingdom of God.
Pastor Mung’s living sacrifice was effective. When I met him in 1991, the Communists had relaxed their attitudes, restored his church buildings, allowed him to openly gather a congregation, and even paid him a retirement pension. (He was in his early 80s at the time. He died a few years ago.) Most importantly, nearly 10,000 people had become baptized members of his church.
In the Old Testament, a priest killed an animal, and it provided atonement for a time. On the streets of Xining, a butcher killed a goat, and it fed people for a meal. But Pastor Mung’s ministry will stretch throughout eternity, as only living sacrifices can do.
Today, in New Testament Survey, I lectured on the Gospel according to Luke.
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Today, I would like to meditate with you on ten words from Romans 12.1: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy….”
Whenever you read the word therefore in Scripture, you should ask what it’s there for. In Romans 12.1, therefore connects religion and ethics. According to Gordon Fee, religion in the New Testament is grace, while ethics is gratitude. Romans 1-11 is a powerful exposition of the doctrine of justification by grace through faith. Romans 12-15 is an equally powerful exposition of the spiritual and moral work of the justified.
In the Christian worldview, the relationship between religion and ethics is never either/or, but always both/and. Grace begets gratitude. Faith works.
Therefore is a connecting term. In deductive logic, it links the premises of an argument to a sound and valid conclusion. For example:
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Is that how Romans 12.1 connects religion and ethics? Does Paul provide a logical syllogism showing why the proper conclusion to grace is gratitude? Or that the premise of works is faith?
Perhaps, although it’s difficult to pick out what precisely that syllogism might be. In my opinion, therefore in Romans 12.1 is less logical than psychological. Notice that Paul says, “Therefore, I urge you…,” not, “Therefore, the sound and valid conclusion is….” The connection between religion and ethics is personal, not philosophical. Ethics arises out of a specific kind of relationship to God. Notice that Paul says, “I urge you in view of God’s mercy.” Religion and ethics go together because grace and gratitude go together.
Did you know, in fact, that grace and gratitude derive from the same Latin word, gratia, meaning “grace” or “favor”? Gratitude, to coin a phrase, means having a “graced attitude.” Healthy individuals respond to a favor with thanks. When that favor is forgiveness for an offense, the gratitude grows in proportion to the enormity of the sin that has been forgiven.
In Matthew 18.21-35, Jesus tells the parable of a man who is forgiven by his creditor of a great debt but nonetheless turns right around and tries to niggle pennies out of his own debtor. He gets caught in the act and thrown into jail. “Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” the creditor asks. The debtor in Jesus’ parable didn’t understand the personal connection between religion and ethics. He didn’t realize that God’s goodness flows to you (that’s religion) and then through you (that’s ethics). He didn’t have a graced attitude.
But a graced attitude doesn’t just mean doing the right thing. It means doing the right thing with the right motivation. Had the debtor in Jesus’ parable forgiven his own debtor out of begrudging obligation to his own creditor, he still would have missed the point. Grace doesn’t entail duty. It entails opportunity. We don’t have to forgive others or do them good works. We get to.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy to __________. I’ll let your graced attitude fill in that blank.
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