Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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The idol of approval

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UbelievableThis morning I was challenged by a paragraph that I read in The Unbelievable Gospel by Jonathan K. Dodson.

“In Christ, we possess a power that can rip the muzzle off, chase away the shadows, and bolster winsome, authentic gospel witness. That power lifted Jesus out of the grave, but it sits latent in our blanketed heart, where we are inordinately troubled by what others think. Beneath the blanket of persecution there often lies a golden idol, the one thing we cannot live without – the approval of others. We pine for the approval of others and would rather quiet down about the good news than speak up and risk our coworker thinking we are preach, impersonal, or intolerant. Our reluctance to talk about Jesus springs from a desire to gain the approval of others instead of resting in the approval of God our Father. We desperately need to set apart Jesus as Lord in our hearts, not what others think as lord. This is where deep security is found. To get there, the idol has to be replaced with a greater God who offers deeper security and meaning. We need the gift of repentance, regularly, to exchange our worship of what others think of us for what God the Father thinks of us in Christ – fully loved, fully accepted, no condemnation, no rejection.”

This paragraph highlights two of the reasons why I often fail to speak up about what I believe.

The first is that I forget (or I never really learned) that the power that conquered death is promised to be operative in my life if I am in Christ. The power remains constant, my appropriation of that power is restricted by my weak faith.

The second is that I am far too concerned about alienating anyone and far too concerned about what others think of me.

To these, I can add a third reason. That reason is that I am very aware of my failures and do not want to be labeled as a hypocrite. The problem is that I will never perfectly live out the truths of Scripture. I should not let my failures deter me from sharing the gospel, because my failures are why I need the Gospel in the first place.

The solution to all three of this is rather simple to understand, but difficult to do. The solution is to take my eyes off myself and focus on Jesus (see Heb. 12:1-2). In those verses in Hebrews, Jesus is presented as enduring the cross for the joy of being united to believers as a result of his sacrifice.

Certainly then, I should be willing to endure a little embarrassment for the joy of seeing others come into relationship with God.

N. T. Wright on Intellectual Totalitarianism

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On death and tyrants“The intellectual coup d’état by which the Enlightenment convinced so many that ‘we now know that dead people don’t rise,’ as though this was a modern discovery rather than simply the reaffirmation of what Homer and Aeschylus had taken for granted, goes hand in hand with the Enlightenment’s other proposals, not least that we have now come of age, that God can be kicked upstairs, that we can get on with running the world however we want to, carving it up to our advantage without outside interference. To that extent, the totalitarianisms of the last century were simply among the varied manifestations of a larger totalitarianism of thought and culture against which postmodernity has now, and rightly in my view, rebelled. Who, after all, was it who didn’t want the dead to be raised? Not simply the intellectually timid or the rationalists. It was, and is, those in power, the social and intellectual tyrants and bullies; the Caesars who would be threatened by a Lord of the world who had defeated the tyrant’s last weapon, death itself; the Herods who would be horrified at the postmortem validation of the true King of the Jews. And this is the point where believing in the resurrection of Jesus suddenly ceases to be a matter of inquiring about an odd event in the first century and becomes a matter of rediscovering hope in the the twenty-first century. Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize that a different world view is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word.”

N. T. Wright in Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church

C. S. Lewis on Christian morality

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C. S. LewisIn a collection of broadcast talks called Christian Behaviour, C. S. Lewis’ said this:

“People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’ I don’t think that is the best way of looking at it. I’d much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven; that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.”

This is a good reminder that our moment-by-moment choices do have consequences. The Apostle Paul supports this idea when he writes:

“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5:15–16, ESV)

There are two extremes to be avoided in thinking about the choices that we make. The first is to become frozen because the understanding of the importance of each one becomes overwhelming. The second danger is to be stop caring about them because the decisions come so fast that it is difficult to process them correctly.

This is an imperfect illustration but perhaps it might help the discussion.

Assume for a moment that I have a perfect understanding of exactly what type of diet is good for me. I have a strict list of things that I know are good for me to eat. But these foods are not found in their purest form. In other words, the “healthy” foods are available but are combined with things that are not on the list. One extreme would be to not eat anything at all until I was sure that it was 100% healthy. The other extreme is to give up any hope of choosing well and eat Krispy Kreme donuts (or Dunkin’ Donuts, I am an equal opportunity donut eater).

The Christian’s desire is to choose well, but often we do not. But a proper understanding of the sovereignty of God frees us up with the understanding that even when we don’t choose well, God can use that poor choice to draw us closer to himself. We have the opportunity to repent and have our relationship restored.

Resurrection People

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I read this sentence in Surprised by Hope by N. T. Wright and thought I would share it with you.

“Our task in the present . . . is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.”

Resurrection PeopleThere is a challenge at the end of this sentence. The way Christians live should give evidence of the truth of Easter. The way Christians live should also give people a foretaste of what life will be like when Jesus comes back to make everything right.

If Easter really happened (I believe it did), then why do I get upset by the small things in my life. If death is truly conquered, what problem that I face is bigger than death? (Tweet This)

Also, the fact that salvation is only on the basis of God’s grace and the work of Jesus, we can live in the confidence that when the final day takes place, it will be a day of rejoicing. The king will return, depose the usurpers and set everything right. That will be a party and our life right now should reflect that hope.

As N. T. Wright points out, this hope will affect our worship and our mission. It will affect our gatherings and what we do out in the world.

We are to be resurrection people.

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