A Boomer in the Pew

Albert Mohler: The Shack Reveals a Disastrous Lack of Discernment in the Christian Community

Cowabunga!  I had no idea that this book has sold 10 million copies.

Frankly, it makes me very sad.

Let me just let Dr. Mohler explain:

"In evaluating the book, it must be kept in mind that The Shack is a work of fiction. But it is also a sustained theological argument, and this simply cannot be denied. Any number of notable novels and works of literature have contained aberrant theology, and even heresy. The crucial question is whether the aberrant doctrines are features of the story or the message of the work. When it comes to The Shack, the really troubling fact is that so many readers are drawn to the theological message of the book, and fail to see how it conflicts with the Bible at so many crucial points.

All this reveals a disastrous failure of evangelical discernment. It is hard not to conclude that theological discernment is now a lost art among American evangelicals -- and this loss can only lead to theological catastrophe."

As I see it, this book touches people on a deeply emotional level.  The problem is that the foundation upon which it stands is deeply errant.

When we allow our emotions to overpower our Christian discernment then we are certain to play into the hands of the Great Deceiver.

The universalism that is presented in this book stands squarely against the words of Messiah, and I am deeply troubled that 10 million people can't see that.

John Piper: Why do the Righteous Suffer - Book of Job

As we are coming to the end of the Book of Job, in our year-long study of the Bible, I thought it might be beneficial to call upon one of the big guns, in the world of theology, to help our understanding.

Here is a link to a recent video/audio series on Suffering, and the Book of Job.

Contemplating the Roman Catholic Rite of Confirmation and my Role as a Protestant Godfather

First of all, let me say that it is not my desire that this post turn into a theological diatribe between Protestants and Papists.

We can talk about such things another day.  Fair enough?

One of my best friends is a Roman Catholic.  He harbors deep distrust for the "organized church", but nonetheless has raised his beautiful children in the Roman Catholic Church.

When their first child was born, a most beautiful girl, we were asked to be her Godparents.

When I was asked what that meant, in the Roman Catholic tradition, I was told something to the effect that this tends to be an individual(s) chosen by the parents to take an interest in the child's upbringing and personal development.

I was certainly happy, and honored to step into that role.

Fast forward 14 years, and we now find our Goddaughter about to receive the Roman Catholic Church's rite of Confirmation.

Here is this from the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church:

"The sacraments of Christian initiation — Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist — lay the foundations of every Christian life. 'The sharing in the divine nature given to men through the grace of Christ bears a certain likeness to the origin, development, and nourishing of natural life. The faithful are born anew by Baptism, strengthened by the sacrament of Confirmation, and receive in the Eucharist the food of eternal life. By means of these sacraments of Christian initiation, they thus receive in increasing measure the treasures of the divine life and advance toward the perfection of charity.' (Catechism of the Catholic Church #1212)"

So, it seems the Roman Catholic believes that new life (regeneration) begins at Baptism.  Then, once the age of understanding is reached, the Confirmation (receiving the Holy Spirit) occurs to provide the strength to bear your witness, with the Eucharist being the weekly food of eternal life.

In preparation for this upcoming February event, we have been asked by our dear friends to write "an encouraging letter that our Goddaughter can open during her Confirmation Retreat".

I am most certainly going to do this.  What to write her?  This my current quandary.

I am currently leaning towards something to the effect:  be strong, the world will challenge your faith, your friends may desire to pull you down imprudent paths, and know that we are always here to help and guide. Above all, know God, and make your life's most important mission to get your name in the Lamb's Book of Life.

Thoughts?

New Years Eve Thoughts After my First Complete Reading of the Bible

Late 2008, and early 2009 were perhaps the most challenging of my life.

After 20 years of faithful, hard work we sold our business, and moved into what we thought was retirement in November of 2006.

Then, about 9 months later I was hit with a fairly large depression from having no challenge in my life, by October of 2008 our cash assets were nearly half of what they were, thanks to a profound stock market crash, and to top that all off, in March of 2009, the gentleman who bought our business decided to stop paying the balance of the note, and ended our income stream.

To be honest, all of this completely rocked my world.  It all seemed so unfair.  We had accomplished all this with integrity, and were good stewards of our earnings.  

Why was this happening?

The only thing I knew to do, while laying in a heap of ashes, was to go back to the very beginning.  If you drill down deep enough, you will find yourself asking, "who am I, why do I exist, and what is this life all about?"

As I see it, you really only have two choices, you believe in God, or you don't.

I do.

Therefore, if you boil this whole thing called life down to one thing, and ask the question:  why am I here?  The answer, I believe, is to know God.

That being the case, I decided, for the first time in my life, to read the whole of the Bible.

Today, the last day of 2009, I have just completed my first journey through the Bible.  To be completely frank, it was not an easy journey.  It seems that I had no idea who God was, and had built this inaccurate view from 52 years of skimming across the top of the water of God's word.

The second thing that comes to mind is that I now have a far better idea of who I am.  Through our business success, I was unknowingly harboring a great deal of pride.  I suppose, the only way for me to see, and understand this, was for the source of my pride, my business success, to be completely rocked. 

I am thankful that our life isn't shattered, but rocked it certainly is.

My mind is whirling with things that I have learned.  But to rehash it all here would be most time consuming for you.  I have written over 900 posts in this blog, laying bare for you the journey.  Many of these posts were written with tears streaming down my cheeks as I began to learn.

Let me end this post with a few lessons from Moses in Psalm 90:

• the Lord Yahweh is eternal.
• but man's life is fleeting.
• we are brought to an end by God's wrath (the hard one to get through our stiff necks)
• but then, teach us wisdom and establish our work.

Or,  this from my reading in Isaiah today:

Thus says the Lord:
“Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool;
what is the house that you would build for me,
and what is the place of my rest?
 2 All these things my hand has made,
and so all these things came to be,
declares the Lord.
But this is the one to whom I will look:
he who is humble and contrite in spirit
and trembles at my word.

Or, even greater still, from the last words of Christ in Revelation:

“Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay everyone for what he has done.  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

My worldview is completely changed.  My life is in the process of changing. 

I am not really given to New Years resolutions.  But if I was, I would borrow this one from David Powlison (via Justin Taylor):

"I now resolve and promise, in humble reliance upon the grace of the Holy Spirit, that I will endeavor to live as becomes a follower of Christ" 

I am looking forward to another journey through the Bible this year, and with all my heart I cry, come, Lord Jesus, come.

See you next year, and thank you for being a loyal reader of this blog.

John Piper, God's Sovereignty, and Satan With a Hook in his Nose

I used to be the type of person who thought of Jesus as a sort of Coca-Cola salesperson.  You know, standing on the mountain, singing songs with hundreds of hippies, offering the real thing. 

Then, in the last year, I read the whole Bible. 

This hip Jesus is a figment of our imaginations.  The Jesus of the Bible is very, very difficult to understand.  Yet, his message is very simple.  So simple in fact, that the simplest among us can understand.

Consider, for example, that in choosing his twelve disciples, Jesus Christ knowingly includes Judas.  He knew that Judas was of the devil, yet he brings this devil amongst his closest twelve.  Why would he do that?

In chapter six of John's gospel, Jesus talks in such offensive language that the crowd was reduced from 5,000 "believers", all the way down to 11!  Why?  People were leaving Jesus in droves.  Why?  Is the Sovereign of the universe out of control here?  If not, then what is going on?

Dr. John Piper handles this difficult question, and brings a message that you must hear. 

If your life has ever been, or is now currently out of control, and you wonder, "where on earth is God?", then you simply must take 45 minutes and listen to this message.

This is difficult to hear.  You are not going to completely understand.  God's infinite mind will not fit in our tiny little brains.  But, you can get a glimpse.  You can see through a mirror darkly.  You can somewhat see through the veil.  Look, dear reader, look!

Avatar on Imax 3D, Pantheism, and Ross Douthat

My wife and I went to see Avatar yesterday.  In fact, we decided to hunt out the film presented in Imax 3D. 

We were thinking that arriving an hour early would provide sufficient time to secure a ticket.  We were wrong!  The ticket salesperson said that the large theater was sold out in 10 minutes, and that we would have to wait 4 hours until the next showing.

Let me say this, the technology of this film was beyond anything I have ever seen.  The large Imax screen, coupled with the 3D transported your senses to places never seen.  It was simply amazing!

With that said, the other thing that quickly came to my attention was that this film was clearly promoting pantheism, rather than simply portraying a pantheistic culture.  In fact, it so permeated the film, I was beginning to wonder if there wasn't a pantheistic evangelistic message here beyond the sheer entertainment.

Ross Douthat, Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times, observed this as well, and has done a far better job explaining what I mean here.

Putting aside Cameron's dreams of a New-Age Nirvana, the technology of the film left me speechless.  I look forward to the day when this technology is more widely available.  Going from a 2D experience, to a 3D experience was simply unbelievable.

The Athanasian Creed: God in Three Persons

I have had a great many conversations over the past few years about God.  Surprisingly, not a few people have professed a belief in a god that, at the end of the day, they have created in their own minds.

I believe in the Jew's Yahweh.  I believe that Jesus Christ is in fact the Jew's long awaited Messiah, sent by God to become the only perfect sacrifice.  Further, I believe that when Messiah left, he, and the Father, sent the Holy Spirit who gave us the New Testament, and today is actively illuminating God's chosen.

The early church struggled for many years trying to sort out the relationship between God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. 

It wasn't until as late as the 5th century that we finally found, in The Athanasian Creed, a doctrinal statement regarding our Triune God.

The purpose of this creed is to put forth a proper understanding of who God is, and to prevent us from the grave error of dreaming up a god of our own imaginations.

I am going to copy The Athanasian Creed for you to read.  Keep in mind that when it uses the word Catholic (Greek:  katholikos), it means the universal Christian church, and is not referring to the Roman Catholic Church.

Do you hold this creed to be a part of your belief system?

Considering Geerhardus Vos' "Biblical Theology: Old and New Testament" as my Guide Through the Bible in 2010

I have been putting a fair amount of thought into my journey through the Bible in 2010.  Last year was the first time in my life where I have read through the whole of the Bible.

Now, I find that I desire to go again, but would far rather have a learned guide.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I was considering Horatius Bonar's Light and Truth, but it seems that the path of the biblical theologian might be a better first journey.

As I have been giving consideration to biblical theologians, Geerhardus Vos' Biblical Theology:  Old and New Testament keeps coming into my view.

Here is a quote I found from Google Books:

"The aim of this book is no less than to provide an account of the unfolding of the mind of God in history, through the successive agents of his special revelation. Vos handles this under three main divisions: the Mosaic epoch of revelation, the prophetic epoch of revelation, and the New Testament.Such an historical approach is not meant to supplant the work of the systematic theologian; nevertheless, the Christian gospel is inextricably bound up with history, and the biblical theologian thus seeks to highlight uniqueness of each biblical document in that succession. The rich variety of Scripture is discovered anew as the progressive development of biblical themes is explicated.To read these pages--the fruit of Vos' 39 years of teaching biblical theology at Princeton - is to appreciate the late John Murray's suggestion that Geerhardus Vos was the most incisive exegete in the English-speaking world of the twentieth century."

Have you read Geerhardus Vos' Biblical Theology:  Old and New Testament?  Might it be a worthy guide through the Bible for 2010?

Jonathan Edwards on the Greatness of the Incarnation

As the day approaches where we celebrate the incarnation, I thought it might be interesting to peek at Jonathan Edwards thoughts of this momentous day:

"The next thing I would observe concerning the incarnation of Christ is the greatness of this event. Christ's incarnation was a greater and more wonderful thing than ever had come to pass, and there was but one that ever came to pass greater; and that was the death of Christ which was afterwards. But Christ's incarnation was a greater thing than ever had come to pass before. The creation of the world was a very great thing, but not so great a thing as the incarnation of Christ. It was a great thing for God to make the creature, but not so great as for the Creator himself to become a creature. We have spoken of many great things that were accomplished from one age to another in the ages between the fall of man and the incarnation of Christ, but God's becoming man was a greater thing than they all. When Christ was born, the greatest person was born that ever was or ever will be born."

Sometimes I regret knowing of tradition.  For I am afraid that it is tradition that mires my view of this incredible event.

Even now, as I ask the Holy Spirit to bring me understanding, my mind is filled with countless nativity scenes, Christmas carols, all of which bring a certain sentimentality, but darkens the real wonder of this day:  the Creator became a creature.

Oh, to have been a shepherd that day.

Do you Really Believe This Baby Jesus is God Become Man?

The Doctrine of the Incarnation (God becoming flesh) is either the greatest con ever conceived in the mind of man, or the greatest miracle given to mankind.

This child Jesus comes by way of a virgin birth, later professes to be the Jewish Messiah, further claims to be part of the Triune God, dies on a cross for the sins of mankind, and promises to return later to destroy the world, and bring his elect home to a new world that has been created especially for them.

The Apostle Paul would later proclaim that Jesus Christ was "a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles".

How are we to believe these testimonies from 2,000 years ago? 

To me, you must take a look at the whole of God's revealed word.  When you consider Jesus at creation, the calling of Abraham to become a nation, and then the whole of the Old Testament pointing towards Messiah, and you give consideration to this birth, it will certainly make you scratch your head.

Is this in fact the Jews long awaited Messiah?  Born from a virgin, as the prophets proclaimed?

How can we believe this? 

To make this mystery all the more complex, Jesus would later proclaim "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day." (John 6:44)

In other words, you aren't going to believe unless God gives you eyes to see.  Yet, at the same time, this seeing is available to all who ask.

Here is Dr. Wayne Grudem's conclusion on the Incarnation, from his Systematic Theology:

"It is by far the most amazing miracle of the entire Bible - far more amazing than the resurrection and more amazing even then the creation of the universe.  The fact that the infinite, omnipotent, eternal Son of God could become man and join himself to a human nature forever, so that infinite God became one person with finite man, will remain for eternity the most profound miracle and the most profound mystery in all the universe."

The most profound miracle, and the most profound mystery.  That about sums it all up!

Grudem further describes a general statement of systematic theologians when thinking about the incarnation:

"Remaining what he was, he became what he was not."

What about you?  Will you let our culture overshadow this birth with its trappings, or will you give this matter the serious attention that it deserves? 

Do you believe that this baby was God incarnate, sent to seek and save the lost? (Luke 19:10)