Thursday, December 3, 2020

Vaccines and Total Depravity

For the record: I can hardly wait to get vaccinated for COVID-19.  I’ll be happy to develop what immunity I can that way, so that I don’t get sick – or perhaps just “as sick as I otherwise would” – or even more importantly, pass it on to others.

But I also know that things happen in life.  And not all of them are good things.

People mean well.  They do their best.  They have good intentions.  They take precautions.  But then something unexpected results.  We call it the “Law of Unexpected Consequences.”

For me as a Christ-follower – of the “Calvinist” stripe, to be more specific – I understand that “Law of Unexpected Consequences” to sometimes be the result of sin in our world.  The Canons of Dordt called it Total Depravity.  Sin – and its brokenness – touch everything that humans are and everything that humans create.  Of course, not everything we do or make is bad, evil or dangerous.  I’m thankful for modern plumbing, modern medicine and big-screen TV’s – to name just a few.  But each of these have “unintended consequences” and not all of them are beneficial to everyone all the time.  We are broken people living in a broken world who create things. That is a reflection of being made in the “image of God.” We usually intend those things for good, but they are touched by our brokenness.  Unintended consequences can result, even with pure motives.

Including with vaccines.

So let us be honest about that:  The anxiously awaited COVID-19 vaccine will have some unintended consequences.  I expect most to be minor for most people.  Some consequences will be more problematic for some people.  I fear – and expect – that for a small fraction of people, the vaccine might even be fatal.

The question is not “Are there risks?”  The question is: “To the best of our knowledge, what are the risks?  And are they worth the benefits? And what is the risk/benefit of doing nothing?”  And then, there is the Law of Unintended Consequences.

So I am ready to be vaccinated, even as I understand the risks and the Law of Unintended Consequences.

All this comes to mind as the United Kingdom has approved and begun to administer a COVID-19 vaccine by Pfizer.  Meanwhile, here in the United States, we will be waiting at least another two weeks for FDA approval.  Am I upset that the US is “in second place”?  Not really, and here’s why.

Part of this process is evaluating risk and potential consequences.  Our FDA has a history of being more thorough in this part of the process and as a result, taking longer getting medications to market than other countries.  I am willing to live with that though because I remember the drug thalidomide.  Let me point you to two references:

British doctors prescribed thalidomide for expectant mothers from 1958 to 1962 to control the symptoms of morning sickness. The drug, developed by a German firm, was used internationally as a sedative and hailed because overdose simply caused prolonged sleep, not death. – CLICK HERE

Thalidomide was first marketed in 1957 in West Germany, where it was available over the counter. When first released, thalidomide was promoted for anxiety, trouble sleeping, "tension", and morning sickness. While initially thought to be safe in pregnancy, concerns regarding birth defects arose in 1961 and the medication was removed from the market in Europe that year. The total number of people affected by use during pregnancy is estimated at 10,000, of whom about 40% died around the time of birth. Those who survived had limb, eye, urinary tract, and heart problems. Its initial entry into the US market was prevented by Frances Kelsey at the FDA.  (Emphasis mine.) The birth defects caused by thalidomide led to the development of greater drug regulation and monitoring in many countries. – CLICK HERE

Though I am anxious to get vaccinated so I can eventually shake hands with people, sing hymns without a mask and go to a restaurant, I’m willing to move slowly on this one and better evaluate risks and consequences.  I’ll keep my mask on, keep my distance and stay home for another two weeks.  Even three if that helps.

Until then, we are broken people living as best we can in a broken world, but aware of the Law of Unintended Consequences.  We’re sinners, who long for a Savior.  Come, Lord Jesus.

Saturday, November 28, 2020

Donkeys, Carrots, and Sticks - Excerpt From Give Them Grace

Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids With The Love of Jesus by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Jessica Thompson is a GREAT book on gospel-centered parenting.  I can't recommend it enough, and boy!, don't I wish I had read it before my oldest was born.  Just to give you a taste, here is a story I often used when preaching.  CLICK HERE to purchase the book.

Donkeys, Carrots, and Sticks 

Everyone struggles with obedience no matter how old they are. Little children want to touch what Daddy has said no to; older children refuse to share their toys even though they know they should; teens sneak their cell phones out to text their friends when they should be studying; adults know they are commanded to love their neighbor but gossip about him anyway. No matter what our age or our maturity in Christ, everyone has a problem with sin, even the apostle Paul. He said, “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (Rom. 7: 19).

Every parent also has a theory of training and motivation, an underlying belief of how to get kids to do what they want, whether it’s clearly stated or not. During the 1800s one theory based on promises of reward and threats of punishment was developed. Basically, this theory proposed that there were two ways to get a donkey to move a cart. First, you could dangle a carrot in front of the donkey, fooling the donkey into thinking that if he pulls the cart far enough, he’ll get to eat the carrot. The second is to prod the donkey along the road by hitting him with a stick. If the donkey is motivated by the ultimate reward of a carrot, the stick won’t be necessary, but if he’s not really all that interested in carrots, then the stick will be employed. Either way, through reward or through punishment, the cart driver gets what he wants. 

I learned this motivational paradigm when I taught in a Christian school in the 1970s and early 1980s. I remember a cartoon of a silly-looking donkey moseying down the road with a carrot dangling in front of his dim eyes and a farmer seated behind him with a whip. It seemed logical to me. Motivate the kids with a reward or motivate them with punishment; either way was fine, as long as they got down the road. 

I’m sorry to say that I carried this philosophy over into my home with my own children. When they behaved, they got to put beans in a jar to earn a trip to the ice cream shop. When they failed to behave, beans were removed. If one child disobeyed, the others suffered for it and would pressure the rebel to fall into line. I really believed that the carrots and the sticks were working well with my little donkeys. But there were several significant problems: my children weren’t donkeys; they were image-bearers of the incarnate God; I wasn’t ultimately in charge— he was— and, of course, we had completely overlooked the gospel. 

How would the gospel transform the motivational paradigm above? Quite simply, by turning the entire model on its head. Because both parents and children obstinately refuse to pull the cart of God’s glory down the road, the Father broke the stick of punishment on his obedient Son’s back. Rather than trying to entice us by dangling an unattainable carrot of perfect welcome and forgiveness incessantly in front of our faces, God the Father freely feeds the carrot to us, his enemies. He simply moves outside all our categories for reward and punishment, for human motivation, and gives us all the reward and takes upon himself all the punishment. He lavishes grace upon grace on us and bears in his own person all the wrath that we deserve. Then he tells us, in light of all that he’s done, “Obey.” 

Yes, we do have promises of rewards in heaven, but these are not earned by us through our merit. Yes, there are promises of punishment, but not for those who are “in Christ.” All our punishment has been borne by him. The carrot is ours. The stick is his. Manage them with beans in a jar if you must, but be sure to tell them that it isn’t the gospel. And perhaps, once in a while, just fill the jar up with beans and take everyone out for ice cream, and when your son asks you, “Daddy, why do we get ice cream? How did the jar get to be full?” you’ll know what to say, won’t you?


Fitzpatrick, Elyse M.; Thompson, Jessica. Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus (p. 107-108). Crossway. Kindle Edition.


Friday, November 13, 2020

Giving Thanks Like The Pilgrims

Several years ago, Mary Lynn and I had the opportunity to take a three day "American History" tour for college credit through Massachusetts.  That kindled a deep respect and ongoing appreciation for the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620.

Since then, Thanksgiving has become my favorite national holiday.  No surprise there!  I love to eat, gather with family, nap through football games, and watch advertisers attempt to commercialize a holiday meant to focus on giving thanks, not acquiring more.  And I always love to review the history of those Pilgrims and their Plymouth Colony.

Thursday, November 12, 2020

Thanksgiving Day Service 2020 at Harderwyk

God’s people – from Passover to Plymouth Colony to right here and now – have made a practice of gratitude, hospitality and a meal during hard times.  We need not give that up, even if we do it differently in 2020.

For this year, our annual Thanksgiving Day Worship Service will be online only.  Harderwyk will have no onsite gathering on Thanksgiving Day as we have done in the past.  Instead, we are encouraging households, both large and small, to take a pause from the challenges of life, and join together online for a time of Scripture, prayer and music focused on gratitude and thanksgiving.  Watch for links in email from Harderwyk both Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving and Thursday, Thanksgiving Day.  

We plan to include a simple "Forward To A Friend" button that should make it easy to "invite" someone to view the service where ever they are.

When you have viewed the service, show hospitality by making a phone call who has been isolated.  Or safely deliver some food or a gift card to a neighbor rather than having them join around your table indoors.  Or make a holiday gift donation online to Neighbors Plus or another food ministry.  However you choose to express it, plan to give thanks to God and extend kindness to a family member or neighbor.

Pandemics, with the needed distancing and masks and protocols, are not pleasant.  Let’s just be honest about that.  But for Christ-followers, gratitude is a response to the Gospel of God’s Grace.  How we express that gratitude may need to be different this year for health reasons, but no external circumstance should have place to rob our hearts of what Jesus has done on the cross.

Grace Abounding!,
Pastor Bill


Saturday, October 31, 2020

Understanding Apocalyptic Visions: There's More To Reality Than Meets The Eye

This Sunday, Harderwyk preachers will be working through Daniel 7.  It’s the first in a series of dreams and visions that dip into the “apocalyptic” writing of Daniel.  As we start in that, I want to collect some thoughts and Scriptures that I think are key to understanding apocalyptic writings in light of the Gospel of God’s Grace.

To begin: I believe that if we take the Bible seriously as it is written, it presents us with a very complex and nuanced view of reality.  As a 21st century, college-trained American, I am very comfortable with the “cause-and-effect” reality of the physical world.  The Scriptures offer that – but they offer more as well.  The Scriptures do not contradict the scientific process of that cause-and-effect view, but they do say that there is more to reality than only that cause-and-effect.  In the worldview of the Bible, there is BOTH a physical world of cause-and-effect AND a “spiritual realm.”  They are distinct, but in some way connected.  They are different, but they interact.

I’ll admit, that I have more questions about these two realms - how they operate, and how they connect - than I have answers.  I think that what the Bible tells me about all of this is sparse enough, that I will hold my conclusions on these matters pretty lightly.  For now, all I need to know for faith and life is sufficiently revealed in the Scriptures for me to respond to the Gospel of God’s Grace.  

But this I know: it is a reductionist error to say that the “cause-and-effect” of the physical world is all that there is to reality.  That is an over-simplification of the world in which we live.  There is more to reality than simply meets the eye – or the telescope or the microscope.

Here are some key texts that make this more complex view of reality clear to me:

Genesis 1:26 (NIV) 
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 

Job 1:6–7 (NIV)
6 One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. 7 The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” 
Satan answered the LORD, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.” 

2 Kings 6:16-17 (NIV) 
16 “Don’t be afraid,” Elisha the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” 
17 And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

Book of Revelation – “in the spirit”
Revelation 1:10 (NIV) 
10 On the Lord’s Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, 

Revelation 4:2 (NIV) 
2 At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. 

Revelation 17:3 (NIV) 
3 Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. 

Revelation 21:10 (NIV) 
10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. 

Ephesians 6:12–13 (NIV) 
12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 

While these texts don’t answer every question we might have about this “spiritual realm,” there are some solid conclusions that we can draw:
  • This view permeates the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.  It is not an isolated idea.
  • The LORD God created all that exists: both physical and spiritual.
  • The LORD God is sovereign over this realm as well as the physical realm.
  • The incarnation of Jesus, the cross, the resurrection, and the Great Commission are much more prominent issues in the Bible than the details of the interaction of these two realms.  We ought to, therefore “keep the main thing as the main thing.”
I find that this more complex view of reality helps me understand the apocalyptic portions of the Scripture.  The dreams and visions are often seen in the realm of the spirit.  That realm is different from the physical realm in which I typically live and move.  How those two relate – ie. how an apocalyptic vision connects to the headlines of today – can be pretty tricky.  Hold conclusions lightly, and look to the Gospel.  Which is, after all, the Main Thing. 

Thursday, October 22, 2020

Why I Will Not Tell You Who To Vote For From The Pulpit

Actually. I would be happy to tell you who and why I am voting for.  But it will cost you some time and a cup of coffee.  If you want to hear more about the issues and convictions that bring me to those votes with some references, it will cost you even more: the price of a lunch!  But you will not hear about my voting plans from the pulpit.  In that position, I deal with things that matter for eternity, not just this election cycle.

There is a good deal more to say about this than I will take room for here.  Instead, I will simply focus on four reasons that I won’t be telling people at Celebration - Harderwyk how to vote.

Thursday, October 15, 2020

Freshman Humanities Class and The Book of Daniel

I'm preaching Daniel 5 this Sunday - the account of Daniel, Belshazzar and "the handwriting on the wall" - and it brings to mind fascinating archaeological developments in my lifetime that involve this event.

There is a fascinating story about just how the Persians under Cyrus conquered the great city of Babylon that Nebuchadnezzar had built after it went into decline under the rulers that followed him.  The story is recorded in the writings of Heroditus and others.

These historians though name Nebuchadnezzar's son Nabonidus as the king of Babylon when the walls were breached and the city overrun.  They make no mention of any Belshazzar - the Babylonian ruler that Daniel deals with here - as king at any time.

Fast forward to 1973.  I am sitting in a Humanities class as a freshman at Davidson College preparing to be a pastor in the denomination that the college is affiliated with.  We are taught that Daniel is more "historical fiction" than historical record.  Among the reasons we were given was this: The Book of Daniel refers to Belshazzar as "King of Babylon" but there is no other historical record of Belshazzar at all and someone else is named as king at that time.  Clearly, the authors of Daniel had their facts wrong was the conclusion, and by inference, this could be extended to other portions of the Bible.  The young men in my dorm quickly extended it to the Bible's statements on sexual ethics and behavior, but that is a different story for a different day.
The Nabonidus Cylinder

Little did we know - speaking for myself and my classmates - that in 1881 an archaeologist named Hormuzd Rassam had unearthed a clay cylinder while excavating what is now Abu Habba.  The cylinder eventually made it's way to the Pergamon Museum in Berlin where it is today.  Not until 1989 - notice this is 1989, nearly a century AFTER it was unearthed -  was it translated by a scholar from the University of Toronto named Paul-Alan Beaulieu.  Guess who is mentioned?

Belshazzar!  Turns out that Belshazzar was the first-born son of Nabonidus and grandson of Nebuchadnezzar.  Nabonidus made his son Belshazzar co-regent of the crumbling empire with him, and then he himself departed (ran for the hills?!?) leaving his son in charge of the city of Babylon almost as the Persians were surrounding it.  We now understand that Belshazzar was a "second-in-command" of what was left of the Babylonian Empire just as it was overrun by the Persians.  This explains why Belshazzar could only bribe his advisors with being "third highest ruler in the kingdom."  (Daniel 5:7, 16, 29)

So.  Buried for some 2,400 years, forgotten in a museum for another hundred and finally translated a decade after I graduated, the Nabonidus Cylinder testifies that the Book of Daniel is much more reliable history than my professors thought or taught.

CLICK HERE or CLICK HERE (Scroll down to Persian Conquest section) for further detail on these events from Wikipedia.

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Harderwyk Gospel Meditation

Because of what Jesus did on the cross for me and for all humanity, I am not my own, but instead, by the working of His grace, I am a deeply loved and fully-adopted Child of the Great Creator-King.

Jesus has loved me first, and loved me as I am right here and right now, not as I should be or could be. He has also given the Holy Spirit to work in me, transforming me day-by-day into His likeness. 

In that way, Jesus increasingly works through me as He brings about the restoration and reconciliation of all creation.  Holy Spirit, help me to believe this and increasingly see the evidence of Your work in my life, values and actions.

Saturday, September 26, 2020

In His Asking Is His Promise of Grace - New Morning Mercies

My "Gospel Posse" is a group of men that gathers for spiritual conversation every two weeks or so.  We've been reading a daily devotional called New Morning Mercies by Paul David Tripp.  (CLICK HERE for the Amazon link.  You really do want this book.)  When we gather one of us simply asks, "So what did you underline in the past two weeks?"  The conversation unfolds from there.  If one of us gets distracted, another of us simply asks, "So what did you underline in the past two weeks?  Anyone else?" and we're back on track.

I used bits of the September 27 reading to close this Sunday's sermon, so I've included that below.  And I'll point to these statements on Monday when we gather again.  

Oh, and we have breakfast because it's hard for a posse to ride through the day on an empty stomach, but it's other men sharing the Gospel of God's Grace with me in this way that gets me out of bed in the dark of a Monday morning.  I can make eggs myself.






Friday, September 25, 2020

“And About That Statue in the Dream . . . .” – Daniel 2:27-45

Our plan was to preach the events of Daniel 2 this Sunday at Harderwyk.  That includes 49 verses, all related to a single event, so I knew I’d want to focus clearly on the central point of the passage and what the Spirit would have for us there.  I planned to communicate the dream and it’s interpretation, vss 27-45 pretty succinctly so I could give adequate focus to the larger message of the narrative.

Then I did a quick google search for a graphic representation of the statue.  Yikes!  Friends, I don’t recommend you do that on this one.  Let me explain why.

It’s crazy out there!  Most of the graphics went well past what the text said and began to connect different materials in the statue to different historical empires that would follow.  The Persians, the Greeks, the Romans.  The Roman Catholic Church.  Great Britain.  The United States.  There were “prophetic interludes” to stretch the statue over centuries of human history. Where would it end?!?

I actually found one graphic that presented the statue, and the different materials of its construction (this is in the text, so I’m good thus far) and then began to connect each material to different known historical civilizations that followed (not uncommon, but stepping beyond what is written, so I’m starting to get a bit wary) and ends by pointing to the United States as the New Jerusalem (Honestly!  I had not every realized that there is a “U” and an “S” and an “A” together in the word “Jerusalem”!) and the Rock was a “Stone Mountain”  that made me think of the laser light attraction by that name outside of Atlanta, GA.  I’m not including the link to this graphic.

So be careful!  Daniel, with its dreams and visions, is one of those books that seems to gather wild speculation and secret meanings that invite one to a feeling of special knowledge and the prideful sense of spiritual superiority that follow along.  The Apostle Paul warns us saying, “avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless.” (Titus 3:9, II Timothy 2:33, Colossians 2:4)

The dream and its interpretation are part of the story, and there are things to learn here, for example: 

  • God has history under control.  He knows empires before they rise and fall because history is moving at His direction.
  • Things are headed downhill.  The empires that follow will be increasing less valuable and stable.
  • There is something important coming though - “the rock cut out of a mountain, but not by human hands” - that is clearly a foreshadowing of Christ and the Gospel.

As we work our way through Daniel in the weeks ahead, we will deal more with dreams and visions and how best to understand what they mean for us.  Part of that is learning to discern and separate interpretative schemes and perspectives that actually obscure the Gospel.  We want to keep “the main thing as the main thing.”  And frankly, the “main thing” in the Bible is not about arming me with some secret knowledge that puffs me up (I Cor 8:1) with a sense of self-importance that obscures Jesus and His Gospel.

 Make sure to join us for worship, by livestream or by recording as Aaron, Kyle and I try to make that “main thing” compelling, alive and life-giving this Sunday. 

CLICK HERE for Harderwyk LiveStream page on our website.

Thursday, September 17, 2020

Preaching Daniel at Harderwyk - Daniel 1 - Sunday, Sept 20

Our collaboration on Daniel has been really rich, so I'm taking an idea we have talked about for a while and will try and massage it into a workable form that we can sustain week by week.  I'm hoping to collect material from each Harderwyk preacher that was really interesting in our preparation, but that we either decided not to use or want to more clearly reference, and then put it into a weekly blog post.  Sort of like picking up pieces of a film from the cutting room floor.

Use the comment section to tell me what you think and guide our future development of these resources.

Thursday, September 10, 2020

Preaching Daniel at Harderwyk: Resources

 This Sunday – September 13 – all three worshipping communities of Harderwyk Church will begin a series of eleven sermons through the Book of Daniel.  As Aaron and I prepare together, joined with a number of guest preachers as well, we have been excited and challenged by the timeliness of this book and the light it shines on the Gospel of God’s Grace for our own life and times.

As we start, this seemed like a good time to share with you three resources we will be preparing this series with.  These three books are a way we have three gifted pastors and scholars join us in our prayer, study and encounter with God in the text of Daniel – all in preparation for our gatherings on Sunday.  We’re glad to share these sources that have been part of our process.

How To Read Daniel by Tremper Longman III

Dr. Longman is Professor of Biblical Studies at Westmont College specializing in Old Testament.  His 25 books have been translated into 17 languages.  He was one of the main translators of the New Living Translation and is a compelling writer – able to engage scholarly questions in a way that is understandable, thoughtful and applicable to the lives of everyday people.  If you would like a thoughtful, 200 page overview of Daniel, this book is both accessible and meaty.     CLICK HERE for Amazon

 

Daniel (Reformed Expository Commentary) by Iain M Duguid

Iain Duguid is a professor at Grove City College who has served as missionary in Liberia, a church planter and part of the translation team for the Holman Christian Standard Version of the Bible.  In his seminary classes, Dr. Duguid is eager to help students learn how to preach Christ from ancient Hebrew texts in ways that minister to the hearts of contemporary congregations.  This is a more traditional “passage-by-passage” commentary that enriches careful reading and study of Daniel itself, but is both accessible and worth any effort needed.  Where many cloud Daniel’s message with end-times speculation, Dr Duguid shines a bright light on Christ and His Gospel.  You will never see the Book of Daniel in the same way!     CLICK HERE for Amazon

 

Daniel and the Twelve Prophets for Everyone by John Goldingay

Professor of Old Testament at Fuller Seminary, John Goldingay is Old Testament editor of the “For Everyone” commentary series, of which NT Wright is New Testament editor.  This book – and the series – is intended to serve well for daily devotions, group or personal study and conversation with questions for reflection and 14 sections focused on Daniel.     CLICK HERE for Amazon

 

Through the course of this sermon series, I hope to post regularly with references, reflections and background material for our series in Daniel.  We will touch archaeology, end times and more.  This lets Aaron and I stay focused the text for the week in our sermons, while giving opportunity on the blog to provide more depth or background for issues that are secondary bot of importance as well.

Thursday, August 13, 2020

Pursuing Discernment - Part 3 - How Do People Change? Atheist Marxism vs. Gospel

Karl Marx referred to religion – of all sorts – as “the opiate of the masses.”   Faith of any sort in something beyond the physical world was like a drug that clouded the reality and injustice of our physical world for the oppressed group.  And of course, for Marx and his followers, the physical world is all that there is. (See Note below) Marxism is profoundly atheistic as every Marxist experiment in the 20th century demonstrates.

I recently had the opportunity to view a presentation by Dr. Robin DiAngelo, author of the best-selling book White Fragility.  Though I’ve not invested the time to read her book, this 20-minute video was a powerful expression of the Marxist underpinnings of the “critical race theory” that is foundational to “BLM-the-organization.”

In classic Marxist fashion, Dr. DiAngelo sweeps religion and faith into the dustbin of irrelevance.  No need to consider it whatsoever.  Beginning at 8:15 in the video, she says:

Universalism says “why can’t we all be the same?”  This is a very popular ideology in religious or faith communities.  I’m not arguing that on a deep, spiritual level we’re not all universally the same.  But we don’t live, if you will, in the spiritual realm.  We live in the physical realm.  And here in the physical realm, we have to ask ourselves, “How does it function to say, “We all bleed under the skin.”  Well, it functions to take race off the table; to take power off of the table.

Less than 30 seconds to be done with “the opiate of the masses” and move on to the “real” setting of the physical world and the “real” issue of power. (See Note below)

As a Gospel-centered believer with a biblical worldview, I recognize that people and reality are more than simply flesh-and-blood.  There is more to reality than meets the eye.  The sin in my broken life that I build into the broken systems of my world are indeed real, but they are not all that is real.  That sin - both personal and structural -  need to be acknowledged and repented of with my life and culture, and then transformed by an "outside-of-me-power" that works in me.  And that is a work of God’s grace, by the power of His indwelling Holy Spirit. 

An example: John Newton was changed from slave ship captain to abolitionist and evangelical pastor.  How did that happen?  The power of God.  He wrote about it in his hymn “Amazing Grace.”  That is how authentic, Gospel-centered spirituality changes a culture.

That authentic Gospel-centered spirituality is what we desperately need in this moment.  God make us a church that equips John Newtons for our time. 

CLICK HERE to see the video.

I’d love to interact with you more on some of these observations, as well as listen to your response.  if you would like to pursue further conversation, then contact me through the church, and let's talk.  I would be anxious to listen and consider, as well as dig deeper with you into my own reading.  Grace Abounding!

Note:

I didn't want to get too deep in the weeds in the body of my post, but specific aspect of Marx's worldview that we are dealing with here is called "dialectical materialism."
From Wikipedia: Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of science and nature developed in Europe and based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxist dialectics emphasizes the importance of real-world conditions, in terms of class, labor, and socioeconomic interactions.  .  .  .  The formulation of the Soviet version of dialectical and historical materialism in the 1930s by Joseph Stalin and his associates (such as in Stalin's book Dialectical and Historical Materialism), became the official Soviet interpretation of Marxism.  -  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism

Resources

From TheGospelCoalition.org:  Not White Fragility—Mutual Responsibility   CLICK HERE I find this article to be of particular help: written by an African-American social scientist and professor that I have followed for years.  He writes from a decidedly Gospel-centered perspective as well.  

 I would also recommend this fascinating background from three sources that are hardly "conservative" or "evangelical."

From The Atlantic: The Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility - CLICK HERE

From New York Magazine:
Is the Anti-Racism Training Industry Just Peddling White Supremacy?  CLICK HERE

From the New York Times:
White Fragility Is Everywhere But Does Antiracism Training Work? - CLICK HERE

From TheGospelCoalition.org:  Not White Fragility—Mutual Responsibility   CLICK HERE I find this article to be of particular help: written by an African-American social scientist and professor that I have followed for years.  He writes from a decidedly Gospel-centered perspective as well.

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Pursuing Discernment - Part 2 - The Line Between Good and Evil: Within My Heart, Not Between Our Groups

As a prisoner in the Stalinst Gulag of Soviet Russia, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn knew something about the consequences of Marxist ideology.  In his masterpiece The Gulag Archipelago, he points out the fallacy of the "class conflict" worldview:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.

Socrates taught us: "Know thyself."

Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't.

From good to evil is one quaver, says the proverb. 

From Part I The Prison Industry, Ch. 4 "The Bluecaps" (p168, The Gulag Archipelago, Collins 1974) 

The "problem" my friends is in me, and in everyone of us.  Our various group identities are infected by the brokenness within each of us.  Real change must start inside each person, and that change is the work of the Gospel of God's Grace, not simply the transfer of political power from one group to another.

This is why the matter of character is so important in a gospel-centered worldview - and so missing in the Marxist perspective where a person's group identity is what matters instead.  If you belong to the "oppressed group" then any "character flaw" is of little concern.  "Being on the right side of history" when seen through "class conflict" eyes means being on the approved side of the conflict as the oppressed overcome the oppressors.  Personal character is of no consequence. 

I’d love to interact with you more on some of these observations, as well as listen to your response.  if you would like to pursue further conversation, then contact me through the church, and let's talk.  I would be anxious to listen and consider, as well as dig deeper with you into my own reading.  Grace Abounding!