Mere Reflections

That is the title of a great post by the late “iMonk” (Michael Spencer) who recently lost his battle with cancer. Or perhaps to say it another way, finally has total victory over sin, as he stands in the presence of God.

At any rate, I think this is an excellent article, and one that people like me need to read, and live by. Not to say that we shouldn’t be bold, and preach the hard truths of the Gospel unashamedly, but that we should be careful about what hills we are willing to die on. And also, we need to be constantly checking our motives to make sure that the reasons we are fighting are pure–that our heart is something other than just wanting intellectual or spiritual dominance.

I don’t know a whole lot about Spencer, and I haven’t really ever read much of his blog before, but I think after reading this article I’m going to have to go back and peruse his archives. He speaks with both wisdom and clarity, and seems to have a clear understanding of what is important (and what is not).

Let me say first of all that this is a topic that has been floating around in the back of my mind lately. It surfaces when I’m not doing much or when I’m working on a graphic design project that doesn’t take much thought. Some of my best thinking comes that way…ha. But anyway, here’s the question: What do I think about the doctrine of election? I mean, (as Trey so eloquently said of me) I’m a universalist in that I want everybody to go to heaven, but not in that I believe everybody will go to heaven. More recently I’ve been of the thinking along the lines of this quote from the end of an article written by Shane Claiborne to non-Christians:

In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion — I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, “I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you.” If those of us who believe in God do not believe God’s grace is big enough to save the whole world… well, we should at least pray that it is.

(Read the rest of this article here for an interesting point of view to consider from a very legit, if a little extreme, Christian.*) Not so much of the “It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you,” part, though it definitely pains me thinking about friends I have and other people who won’t be in heaven (all the better reason to live out Christ’s love and forgiveness), I’m guessing I won’t be concerned with much else than God. I’m more talking about the last sentence. I’m of the mindset that I should believe that God’s grace is big enough to save the whole world and pray that God will use me and every other Christian to help that be accomplished.

I was fairly conflicted with my line of thinking I’d been following in my mind and the doctrine of election that is so prevalent in the Christians that I know personally until I read a post the other day that made perfect sense to me. This is what John Piper posted about election, and it’s the best way I’ve heard it explained so far:

Is it a sin to dislike the doctrine of election?

It’s sin not to like the true doctrine of election. It’s sin not to like what God likes.

I want to say it like that because many people have conceptions of doctrines—all kinds of doctrines—that are inaccurate. And therefore their good hearts dislike them.

So you could say, “I dislike election,” and be a good person, because you don’t see election clearly. And what you’re disliking should be disliked. Or you may be a person who is starting to see it clearly and your old self, which is bad, is rising up and not liking what ought to be liked.

So I don’t know whether this person should be chastised or not. The principle would be, “To the degree that you see biblical truth clearly, you should like it.”

Hell is a biblical truth. So when I say, “You should like hell,” what I mean is that you should like it the way God does.

God, it says, “is not willing that any should perish.” God “does not delight in the death of the wicked.” God “afflicts us, but not from his heart” (Lamentations 3). So there is in God himself a willing that hell be and a liking that it exists in that big picture. And yet he grieves over sending anybody there.

So the word “like” is just a little bit difficult here, because you’re going to have to do double perspectives again.

If God ordains that Jerusalem be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, should we like that? My answer is both yes and no. We should not like women boiling their children, but we should approve of God’s decision that it happen.

And so there’s a double perspective in which the things that you see in the small lens should be disliked, whereas what you see in the bigger lens of how God runs the world should be liked.

So there you have it! While I may not appreciate that people go to hell, I should appreciate the place hell has in God’s plan. Though I’m definitely still not saying I’m a Calvinist in regards to this debate as a whole. I feel like that’s too simple of putting it. I believe there is a tension between the two sides and I believe that John Piper pegged that tension very well in that post.

(I feel like I didn’t write this post as well as I could have, so please feel free to call me out on anything that is unclear.)

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*Though from what I’ve read of his work, he would greatly appreciate me saying I thought he is a little extreme, because he believes that if everyone agrees with him he’s doing something wrong, but that’s another subject I can post later. If you are looking for a book that is challenging/a different perspective, try Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution. Though I don’t agree with everything he says, he poses very interesting points.

C.S. Lewis’s Weight of Glory sermon/speech/essay continues to be in my estimation the best work he ever produced. At least half, if not more, of the things I quote/reference from Lewis are contained in this very short piece. If you haven’t read it, you need to. Here is a taste, perhaps the most quoted paragraph of anything he ever said or wrote:

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.

Reposted from mah blog

It’s so simple! It’s so beautiful! It’s so unfathomably gracious!

So loving, undeserved, and the largest, most Amazing process we can/will ever be blessed to be a part of!

It makes perfect sense!

God provided for us a way that we can escape from the dismal failures that our lives are without Him!

We, though our fleshly selves are broken, messed up failures, have been given the opportunity to become perfect saints of God who are no longer slaves to our terrible intrinsic nature!

We can be made new people, NEW PEOPLE!

We still mess up, we still make mistakes, but the mistakes aren’t our own mistakes, but the mistakes of our old natures that we will one day be purged of completely!

Yes, you read that correctly! We aren’t judged based on our old natures, but on the NEW natures that God has created us by. Natures that know no sin!

Not only did you do this when nothing was making you, Lord, you laid your own life down to complete the process! Your love is Strong! Stronger than the anything else the universe will even know.

So.

Yes, so.

So then I should be SO THANKFUL for this completely undeserved grace God has given that I should love nothing less than to, and be completely unsatisfied unless I use ALL of my resources, time, money, love, life, opportunities, and everything else that I have been given (that pales in comparison to this awe-inspiring amount of grace that I have been granted), for the continual worship and adoration and thanksgiving to the One who allowed me to be part of such a beautiful process!

Because how could I not be THAT thankful for such an undeserved, unearned gift?

It is all so perfect.

It all makes so much sense.

May I never lose the wonder, the wonder of the Cross!

May I see it like the first time, standing as a sinner lost!

Undone by mercy and left speechless, Watching wide-eyed at the cost.

May I never lose the wonder, the wonder of the cross!

May I always be in wonder at the amazing, awesome things you done for Your undeserving Church, Lord.

Amen.

This is something I read a while ago that has been resounding in my mind recently, so I decided to share it. This is a quote from Richard J. Foster’s book “Freedom of Simplicity.” Here, Foster is talking about balance; how many teachings in the Bible are two seemingly opposite ideas that must be kept in balance, otherwise they become distorted. This is a great subject to have in the back of your mind when thinking about different ideas presented in the Bible.

“Christian simplicity lives in harmony with the ordered complexity of life. It repudiates easy, dogmatic answers to tough, intricate problems. In fact, it is this grace that frees is sufficiently to appreciate and respond to the complex issues of contemporary society. The duplicitous mind, on the other hand, tends to confuse and obscure. While the dogmatic person cannot understand the divercity in simplicity, the double-minded person cannot perceive the unity in complexity.

This brings us to the central paradox of our study: the complexity of simplicity. The fact that a paradox lies at the heart of the Christian teaching on simplicity should not surprise us. The life and teachings of Christ were often couched in paradox: the way to find our life is to lose it (Matt. 10:39); in giving we receive (Luke 6:38); he who is the Prince of Peace brings the sword of division (Matt. 10:34). Those with simplicity of heart understand the Lord, because much of their experience resonates with paradox. It is the arrogant ad the obscurant who stumble over such realities.

Paradoxes, of course, are only apparent contradictions, not real ones. Their truth is often discovered by maintaining a tension between two opposite lines of teaching. Although both teachings may contain elements of truth, the instant we emphasize one to the exclusion of the other the truth becomes distorted and disfigured. We can see this easily enough when we insist–rightly I think–that God is both imminent and transcendent, both in the created order and beyond the created order. If we stress imminence to the exclusion of transcendence, we end up with some form of pantheism. Conversely, if we stress transcendence to the exclusion of imminence, we will end up with a detached, disinterested, wind-the-clock-up kind of God. If we embrace either end of the teaching exclusively, we get a distortion; if we hold both in tension, we find the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We could just as easily take concepts sich as the love and justice of God, the deity and humanity of Christ, or and number of examples that abound in Scripture.”

I continually find that this is a true idea. Molly has mentioned this concept many times when we’re in a group that is discussing controversial subjects. Most times those conversations end up with the concession that both sides must be kept in a balance.

What do you think about this subject? Is there and teaching in the Bible (or an idea in general) that you’ve realized recently must be kept in a balance?

btw, I recommend this book, it’s very interesting.

“Who are you?” asked Shasta.

“Myself,” said the voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again, “Myself”, loud and clear and gay: and then the third time “Myself”, whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all around you as if the leaves rustled with it.

-C.S. Lewis from The Horse and His Boy

This is the point in the book where Shasta realizes (or, rather, is told by Aslan) that his entire life has been guided by Aslan so that it turns out right, even though it didn’t seem like it would when it was happening. Shasta can’t see Aslan because he is in a thick fog, so he asks who he is, and Aslan tells him in a very Holy-Trinity-esque way. I just thought this was a really inspiring passage.

Calvin commenting of Colossians 1:12

Again Paul returns to thanksgiving, that he may take this opportunity of enumerating the blessings which had been conferred upon them through Christ; and thus he enters upon a full delineation of Christ. For this was the only remedy for fortifying teh Colossians against all the snares by which the false apostles endeavored to entrap them–to understand accurately what Christ was. For how comes it we are “carried about with so many strange doctrines” (Hebrews 13:9), but because the excellence of Christ is not perceived by us? For Christ alone makes all other things suddenly vanish. Hence there is nothing Satan so much tries to effect as to call up mists so as to obscure Christ; because he knows that by this means the way is opened up for every kind of falsehood. This therefore is the only means of retaining as well as restoring pure doctrine–to place Christ before the view just as He, with all His blessings, that His excellence may be truly perceived.

–Quoted from Calvin’s Commentaries on Colossians in THL Parker’s Portrait of Calvin.