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Attempts at Honesty

Reflections on the interplay of the Bible and Culture

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No retreat baby and no surrender – Inspired by Bruce Springsteen

Posted on January 4, 2012 Written by Mark McIntyre Leave a Comment

Springsteen
Image via wikipedia

I woke up this morning with the Bruce Springsteen song “No Surrender” bouncing down the corridors of my brain. The line “we made a promise we swore we’d always remember, no retreat baby and no surrender” grabs my attention. This line reveals the heart of someone who is all in, someone who will not settle for half-way measures. Having a goal in mind, nothing will deter him from pursuit of that goal.

While the chorus is catchy and the no surrender attitude seems praiseworthy, the song does not articulate a goal worthy of such dogged pursuit. Yet, there is in the heart of man the desire for such a pursuit. The question comes in, what is worthy of such focus and energy?

One of my favorite C. S. Lewis quotes comes from his essay entitled, “The Weight of Glory.”

“Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

The Apostle Paul demonstrates this attitude when he writes “I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus” in Philippians 3:12. In his first letter to the Corinthians beginning in Chapter 12, Paul tells us that each believer has been given a gift or gifts from God for the purpose of building up the Church. Putting these two thoughts together it seems that the goal toward which Paul presses is the development and use of his gifts to build up the Church.

The responsibility of church leaders is to equip those in the local body to pursue what God has called them to do (see Ephesians 4:11). The responsibility of church members is to find out how God has gifted them and then find opportunities to use those gifts.

If we are pursuing depth in our relationship with God, if we are seeking to develop our gifts and put them into practice, then we are right in taking the no retreat, no surrender attitude. The goal must be worthy of the focused energy.

What goal do you think is worthy of a “no retreat” attitude?

Filed Under: Bible Reflection, Christianity and Culture, Quotation Tagged With: Apostle Paul, C. S. Lewis, Christ Jesus, God, Gospel, Weight of Glory

The Storm Before The Calm: Why Utopias Fail

Posted on August 27, 2011 Written by Mark McIntyre 1 Comment

StormI am not an expert on Biblical prophecy. I read prophetic passages and have interest in them, but it is not my calling to find correlation between current events and Scriptural predictions. I think that this type of study is useful, and I’m glad someone does it, but it is not my primary interest.

That being said, I see indication in Scripture that things will get worse before they get better. Scripture indicates that the world will move into a storm before it will experience the calm that follows the culmination of history.

Contrast this with utopian predictions by people such as Ray Kurzweil who see technology solving all of man’s problems. In this writings, Kurzweil does a good job of demonstrating that the pace of technological advancement is accelerating. We can be grateful for much of this advancement. I am writing this blog post on a personal computer which has speed and computational power that would have been unimaginable just a few decades ago. I am also grateful for the advances in medicine and technologies that provide for better living conditions. Technology has proved effective in correcting what is wrong with the physical aspects of life.

Those who believe that man can solve all his problems through technological innovation ignore one basic fact. Man is inherently flawed in a way that no technology can fix.  Technology cannot address or correct man’s moral problem. Utopian schemes fail because they refuse to acknowledge the moral problem with all men. Every elitist scheme fails because the elite are as morally flawed as those to whom the elite feel superior.

Every advancement in technology can be used for good or for evil. We live this out every day. I have virus protection software because some very smart people are intent on destroying what I create on this computer. Criminals use computers and other technology to commit crime. Dictators use technology to force their will on their people. Advances in weaponry increase the ability of would-be conquerors to kill and subjugate.

I am grateful for technology, with it we can do much good. Therefore I am not against technology. I do see, and Scripture predicts, that the advances in technology will be used for evil purposes and that it will not go well for humanity until Jesus returns.

I began writing this post before I knew that Hurricane Irene was bearing down on the east coast of the United States. I am reminded that this physical storm and the havoc it can bring, is a picture of the moral and political storm that is brewing. The moral and political storm will be more destructive and ruin more lives than the physical one.

Yet, I am comforted that the one who calmed the storm when he walked the Earth, is still living and active. For those who embrace him he offers salvation out of the storm until that day when he will cause all storms to cease.

The Apostle Paul reminds us in Romans 14:11 and Philippians 2:10 that eventually every knee will bow to the name of Jesus. It is then that all will experience calm.

Filed Under: Christianity and Culture Tagged With: Apostle Paul, calm, Jesus, storm

Truth Whack a Mole

Posted on March 13, 2011 Written by Mark McIntyre 10 Comments

Whack-a-moleIn reading the “new” atheists, I see confirmation of the Apostle Paul’s assertion that their unbelief is not due to the lack of evidence but the suppression of it. There is a large difference between those who are truly seeking answers to difficult questions and those who are unwilling to believe no matter what the data suggest.

At times Jesus gave some hard answers to seekers (i.e. “go and sell all your possessions”) but was willing to engage them in a loving manner. He reserved his anger for those who came with certainty about their grasp of the truth. Every believer who pauses to reflect on the issues of life has moments of doubt and questions about what he has been taught and questions about what he observes in the culture around him. Contrary to what some think, doubts and questions are not condemned in Scripture, nor are they outside the experience of believers through the ages.

I have come to realize that those who refuse to believe (it is a will issue, first and foremost) have to spend a lot of energy whacking down those truth moles as they pop up. How are you going to respond to the claims Jesus made about himself? How could the complexity we see in biology happen by chance? Can you really live as though there are no absolute truths? Why is it that so many believe in the supernatural? These are examples of questions, like moles, that pop up and must be swept aside to remain antagonistic to belief. Those who are truly wrestling with these questions are more open to dialog.

Perhaps this is why the tone of several of the recent popular atheist manifestos is so angry. Maybe they’re tired of whacking those moles . . . .

Technorati Tags: Atheism,Christianity,truth,Jesus,Christ

Filed Under: Apologetics, Atheism Tagged With: Apostle Paul, atheism, Christ, Christianity, God, Jesus, Religion and Spirituality, Truth

Checklist for Christian Service

Posted on February 21, 2011 Written by Mark McIntyre 1 Comment

white_flag What qualities must be present in the believer to be used by God to build His Church? Here is the list as I see it:

  • Complete surrender to God

That’s it. One item. Everything else follows nicely after surrender.

Paul gives us a description of what this kind of surrender looks like in Philippians 3:8–11 (ESV)

8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Paul surrendered everything he had been prior to his encounter with the risen Jesus on the road. This surrender laid the foundation for the ministry that Paul was to have. Earlier in the same letter (Philippians 2:5-11) Paul points to Jesus as an example of one who surrendered his will to the father.

I am not writing this as one who has achieved this. It would be more accurate to say that I want to surrender and am in the process of doing so. The words of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14 come to mind as they seem to express this desire as a prayer:

Batter my heart, three-person’d God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

I am finding that as I learn to surrender control and follow God’s lead, there is peace in the midst of uncertainty. I’m learning to be OK with not seeing how it all fits together. I’m learning to be OK with leaving people and events in God’s hands. I’m beginning to better understand where the extent of my responsibility ends and be content with the piece that God gives me to do.

Here’s to raising the white flag . . .

Filed Under: Bible Reflection Tagged With: Apostle Paul, Jesus, Surrender

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