"Compassion"? A parable

by Dan Phillips

A Visitor's Center one day was manned by twin brothers Nick and Knack. A car pulled into the parking lot, disgorging a breathlessly eager visitor.

"May we help you?" offered Nick genially.

"Yes, thank you!" bubbled the newcomer. "All my life I've been longing to travel Route 49! Can you show me the most direct way?"

Nick paled.

"Oh, I'm very sorry, but you don't want to go Route 49."

"But I do!" insisted the visitor.

"Let me rephrase myself," amended Nick. "You may want to, but you really mustn't.  The road goes along nicely at first, but then you'll see a bunch of roadblocks and obstacles laid across it, slowing you down and warning you off. These impediments aren't really a problem; they're actually a good thing...."

"How can they be a good thing," the visitor cuts in angrily. "This is my dream! I want to zoom, not be slowed down."

"I was going to say," continued Nick, "they're a good thing because otherwise you'll shoot straight off the stub of a broken bridge and plummet 800 feet to your death on the rocky rapids below."

"Oh," said the visitor, turning a bit white himself.

"He says," observed Knack, leaning forward, putting down his latte and stroking his soul-patch.

"The map says," countered Nick.

"Map?" asked the visitor.

"Yep, right here," replied Nick, spreading out the item itself on the counter. "See that red X there? It means bridge out."

"You say it means that," snarked Knack. "I say it means 'X marks the spot.'"

"Oh, come on," retorted Nick. "There's a legend at the bottom of the map, for crying out loud! See? 'Bridge out!' It isn't rocket science."

"Scholars now realize that 'X' means many different things in different cultures. Besides, you're talking as if that's the only map," drawled Knack. "This one shows a clear, delightful road right where our visitor wants to go. See?"

"That's in crayon!" exploded Nick.

"You got something against crayon?" inquired Knack.

"No," Nick shot back. "I have something against people destroying themselves."

"Psh," Knack sneered. "You just want safety in rules. The visitor's a daring seeker. He should seek. The journey is what matters, not the destination."

"Seek death?" Nick replied. "I think he'll care plenty about the destination when his car shoots off into space."

There was an angry silence, broken by a sob. It was the visitor, who has tears running down his cheeks.

"All I know is I've yearned to go down Route 49 as long as I remember. Some kids mocked me, others ridiculed me and were mean to me, but the desire has always been there. I can't conceive of not wanting to go down Route 49. It's what my heart tells me to do, and I have to be true to my heart, don't I? I can't lie. It defines me. You can't separate this desire from me. I can't imagine not wanting to go that way. It fills my dreams. I even have a T-shirt. See?" He pulled open his blazer and displayed the garment.

"I understand," crooned Knack. "There is nothing wrong with you or with what you want. And there's nothing wrong with going that way. For you, it is the only way. And in fact, I want to help you. I will personally go ahead of you and remove all the blocks, chains, signs, speed bumps, and ropes that have been stretched across the road. I will mount a parade for you — a Route 49 Pride parade. I will lobby to prohibit people from speaking against traveling Route 49. I will side with you against all the harsh, rule-happy Route 49 nay-sayers. In fact, I will get my brother here fired, because he made you feel bad about wanting to go Route 49. He doesn't care about your feelings, as I do. He doesn't have any love or compassion for you, and I've got buckets of both. Nick's all about rules and maps and shutting you out and playing it safe; I'm all about love and compassion and justice and being bold and daring. Nick is shallow, reactionary and not helpful. I'm deep and thoughtful and helpful. So you just get in your car, and you go go go!"

As the visitor beamed, Nick sprang to block the door. "Whoa whoa whoa, not so fast! Look, friend — how you feel about Route 49 doesn't change the facts: the bridge is out! My feelings aren't the map, your feelings aren't the map. Go that way, and you will die! I don't want you to die. I don't think it's loving or compassionate to give you bad information that means your death. The people who put up those signs and those obstacles knew what they were doing, and they did it because they care about people like you. It shouldn't be easy an comfortable to go down that road. It wouldn't be compassionate of me to focus on giving you a smooth ride to your own destruction, and it isn't "bold" and "daring" to head off to certain doom. Enabling you isn't really helping you. And look, I can show you other ways to go, or I can try to find other ways to help — but don't go that way! It'd be the end of you."

Silence fell again for a moment, then:

"We could call a five-year moratorium on this," offered Knack.

"But I want to go that way now," countered the visitor.

"The map says what it says now, and it isn't unclear," said Nick. "It's said that for a long time, and nothing's changed. Nothing's going to change in five years."

The visitor looked back and forth between the brothers, confused. He knew which brother's advice he liked best, which brother told him what he wanted to hear, but... was that the wisest way to decide?

PREMISE: the bridge was indeed out, and the map was indeed accurate.

QUESTION: which brother actually showed love and compassion?

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Open Letter to Donald Miller

by Frank Turk

Dear Donald Miller,

After the success of my last open letter, I've decided to write 52 open letters in 2011, one for each week of the year -- and your recent contribution to CNN's 11 faith-based predictions for 2011 seems like a fantastic conversation-starter.

I'm sure your remarks are edited for space at CNN, but here's what they printed:

As religious tensions grow[1] over the coming presidential election and domestic cultural issues involving perceived legislation of morality[2], the media will find more zealous Christians[3] reacting to the issues of the day whose extreme positions[4] will further divide the evangelical church[5] into radical positions[6], and turn away seekers[7] looking for a peaceful resolution[8] to the churning in their own souls[9]. In other words, the devil[10] will play a trick on the church[11], and the church will, like sheep, lose their focus on the grace and love of Christ[12] and wander astray. Those who seek peace, then, will turn to liberal ideologies[13].

To make sure I don't go too far afield, Don, I want to make sure I understand what you're saying here, so I added numeric annotations to your comments for the sake of reference.

Here's how I would paraphrase your letter, by the annotation marks:

[1] Religious tensions are growing. That's a broad enough statement, but given the rest of your comment, I think you are headed in the right direction. What you mean by this given your other statements is bold and prophetic.

[2] One reason is presidential elections, the other is the perception that morality needs to be legislated. As a premise, this one deserves a minute of thought -- because it's odd that you bring this up. Yes, I get it: Prop 8 was a right-wing attempt to codify a premise of law, as are the consitutional amendments in various states to establish marriage as the state-regulated union of one man and one woman. But that premise is the one we operated under for centuries here in the West, and the reason that this is an issue now is that someone wanted to change it for what they perceived to be moral reasons. So this statement by you was the first inclination I had that you were onto something rather radical here -- the fact that you recognize that there's an attempt to re-write morality by re-writing the law. It's a great insight and I credit you for it.

[3] The media seeks out "zealous Christians" -- "zealous" meaning "ardently active, devoted and diligent", certainly not "conservative in religious creed and serious about reading the world through the Bible's lens". By "zealous Christians" I take you to mean "people who are living the love of Jesus, not judgment."

[4] By "extreme" here, I think you mean "radical", as in [6] -- they are seeking radical Christian solutions to the problems we see in our nation from a sociopolitical standpoint.

[5] As all radicals do, this activity will divide the church. For example, Brian McLaren and his radical activity has divided the church; Rob Bell has divided the church with his radical hispterism; Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones have been trying to divide the church.

[6] And the divisions are radical divisions -- ones which even go to the place of ignoring and overturning historical and traditional places where the differences between "Christian" and "non-Christian" are drawn.

[7] This activity actually turns away seekers -- and of your points so far, this is the one from you that has surprised me the most. This is David F. Wells' point, which he has been on about for the last decade, and it's about time someone from the post-confessional church actually caught on to it. I applaud your broad-mindedness in embracing an analysis which comes from outside your usual circle of friends and thinker/workmen.

[8] This is the first place you threw me for a loop -- because it's so unlike what we've all come to expect from you. I'm going to work through what I came up with there. You're saying there are "seekers who are looking for a peaceful solution to the churning in their souls" (7-8-9 together). What I have to take this to mean is that you think that someone who is in spiritual unrest wants to find the place where what troubles them is resolved. This is a radical view of the problem, and again I salute you for it. What's more common in popular circles today is to say that if we tell people that they have no reason to worry, that the turmoil in their souls is either self-inflicted (they have a bad attitude, cf. Joel Osteen) or inflicted by oppression (they are victims, cf. Joyce Meyer or Doug Pagitt [who knew they were so similar?]), they will finally get peace because they have received a therapeutic treatment for their ailment. What I perceive you to say here is that they are seeking true peace.

[9] And it is a true peace which is not merely superimposed on them or added. It is a soul-deep solution which is not merely a matter of environment or hard work. This is a truly-radical solution you're talking about, and it's about time someone said it.

[10] After the theological arc you drew in 7-8-9, the next most radical thing you said in this short piece is summed up in two words: "The Devil". Here you are assigning the work of a person called "The Devil" to the radicals who are dividing the church, and I wonder -- did you call them before you let CNN run with this? That's tough talk -- John MacArthur could not have said it better, but the tone police will come for you for saying such a thing. I'm sure you're fine with it, but that you'd say it without vetting privately so that your targets can nuance such a thing into something they can accept from you will get you some flack.

Telling the world that people like McLaren, Pagitt, Jones and Bell are doing the work of "The Devil" might also sound a little dated -- a little fundamentalistic or revivalist, which is something I never expected from you. But I like it -- it's retro spirituality. It goes all the way back to Jesus rebuking Peter for telling "the Christ" that dying and rising from the dead is a bad idea (cf. Mat 16:13-23). I applaud your insight here as it is bound to rankle the people you are saying it to. "The Devil" is doing something through these people. That will get media attention.

[11] So "The Devil" will play a trick on the church. While I'm enthusiastic about the retro feel of saying "The Devil" will do this or that, "The Devil will trick the church" reads a little like Dispensational fiction. Yes, I know Christ says this will happen, if it is possible, but here you're actually accusing people of following Satan and not just making a mistake but actually harming the church. It's bold language. I'm not sure I could have been that bold. If your next book is that bold, my friends at Gut Check Press want to have lunch with you the next time you're in the Lansing area to talk about a book deal.

[12] And the trick is this: the church will lose grace and love. Let me say it first: wow! That's a HUGE insight! When the church resorts to "love not judgment" (as you said so well in 3-4-5) but tries to legislate that morality (as in 1-2-3), the church loses grace and love. Here I blame CNN for cutting out the obvious fleshing out you would have had to do here to make this point, but since this is an open letter, I'm going to fill in for you, and I hope I capture everything you meant in that statement.

See: the church doesn't offer a truly-radical, soul-sustaining message (a-la 7-8-9) if it merely tells people "it's alright! it's alright! All right! She moves in Mysterious Ways!" That's not actually the Christian message. The Christian message, starting from its basis in the Old Testament, is that God's concern for mankind is that mankind does not want God, and does not think it needs God. So God offers a radical solution to wipe the slate clean of man's offenses in the death of Christ, and then give man the offer to repent and receive forgiveness so that he may truly and finally be at peace with God.

So without this message, the Church loses the exclusively-Christian offer of the Gospel, and it loses the ability to give people true peace. As you say, the church loses Grace and Love. It's a nightmare, and I'm glad you said it so well in a forum like CNN gave you.

[13] The best part is the last part of your prediction: those who then seek peace will not be able to find it in Christianity -- because they will not be able to find Christianity. Christianity will have lost Grace and Peace, and then people will look elsewhere for it -- and sadly, they won't find it anywhere else. They'll have to settle for the so-called "love of Jesus without judgment", or else they will go follow the Dalai Llama or Oprah's latest guru or fall into atheism so that they can just dispel the idea that there is anything better than what they have and can make themselves.

It was a brilliant comment, and I applaud you for it. As I said to Derek Webb last week, if more actual Christians spoke to CNN, they'd be improved for it. Thanks for your faithful witness, and for your renewed view of the Gospel. I was worried that, after your last 3-4 books, you had given up on the faith and were looking for something unreal and unfulfilling. I'm pleased to say I was wrong, and I ask your forgiveness for doubting you.

Unless I have misunderstood ...

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Assorted self-referential trivia: pizzas, publication, preaching

by Dan Phillips

I must admit: offering a post when one knows in advance that the most one can hope for is a distant second-place is a bit daunting. But, you know, I'm not a stranger to the concept of duty. And last Thursday (perhaps you missed it?) already gave me a reminder of life in the shadow of Frank. So, one offers one's widow's mite, as we all wait for the sonorous tones of the master's voice to roll forth tomorrow.

FIRST: some of you dear folks are interested in my annual Christmas pizza. This year, however, I was trying to get over a cold, wanting to be able to preach 2.20 times over Christmas week — more on that, later — and the schedule just got whacked. So, no Christmas Eve pizza.

However, I did make pizza last Saturday. In fact, I made two. Better two than one, and better late than never, eh?

The one on the left is the with-everything pizza, the one on the right is the meat-lovers', veggie-light, no-olives/no-'shrooms pizza. Both were yummy, but we're going to experiment a bit more with the dough.

For newbies, here's some pizza-background:

With making-of pictures, from 2006
Still more pictures, plus recipe, from 2008

SECOND: others of you dear souls show continuing interest in my books, and have asked questions I haven't been able to answer.

Now I can!

The World-Tilting Gospel should be available for pre-order from Amazon either in late April or early May. It may be available for pre-order from Christianbook.com slightly before that. As I always say, when I know more, I'll tell you more. But thank you for your interest. Of course, a healthy pre-order would be a great thing.

THIRD: earlier I mentioned preaching 2.20 times over the Christmas weekend. That included a sermon on the Sunday before Christmas, a Christmas Eve mini-sermon, and a sermon the day after Christmas. If you like, you can listen to (or download) the full sermons I preached on Sunday, December 19 and Sunday, December 26. (The Christmas Eve mini-sermon is not online.)

To wit, offered to the world by the generosity of Sun Oak Baptist Church and pastor John Kane:

Immanuel (12/19/10)
Rich Gifts, Unopened (12/26/10)

There y'go.

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Joy

by Phil Johnson



"Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice" (Philippians 4:4).
"Rejoice always" (1 Thessalonians 5:16).

uthentic joy is not about temperament. I hope you don't think of joy as a personality quirk that belongs to naturally upbeat people. True joy is a fruit of the Spirit. It's not a mood or a reaction that is triggered by external stimulus like slapstick or funny stories. True Christian joy is not a sensual emotion.

Don't make the mistake of equating the biblical concept of joy with laughter, merriment, or humor. Laughter and levity are sometimes fruits of joy, but they are not the essence of joy.

As a matter of fact, post-modern society is filled with laughter but almost totally devoid of real joy. Have you ever noticed that some of the angriest people in the world are our best-known comedians?



Laughter is often used to mask the utter absence of genuine gladness. The world uses humor and hilarity as substitutes for authentic joy. We in the church should not ape that mistake.

Nor should we take the approach of certain old-style Victorian high-church prigs who seemed to think every expression of jubilation or happiness was carnal and uncouth. The joy Scripture commends is a pure sense of well-being, delight, gladness. The joy the apostle Paul constantly wrote about is a vivid pleasure that arises from a sense of well-being and satisfaction—even in the midst of earthly hardships. It is a wholly positive thing. It does often produce smiles and even laughter.

Authentic joy—the kind of joy we have a duty to cultivate—is a deep gladness that springs from within. It is impervious to external circumstances. Its ultimate source and object is God. Scripture speaks of it as "the joy of the Lord." Nehemiah 8:10: "the joy of the Lord is your strength."

It is called "the joy of the Lord" because it comes from God. It is His gift to us. It is the birthright of every Christian and a natural result of our unshakable security in Christ. Again, it is not dependent on sensual delights or any external catalyst. Its source is God Himself. That is precisely what Scripture means when it calls joy a fruit of the Spirit. It is one of those inner qualities that comes to every true child of God when our heavenly Father "strengthens us with might by his Spirit in the inner man."

Also, the ultimate object of this joy is God. It is "the joy of the Lord"—joy in the Lord.

What is the chief end for which we were created? To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. That enjoyment—a delight in God, a love for Him, and an attitude that finds gladness in every one of His attributes—that great delight and satisfaction is the source of true Christian joy.

So it's not merely a sense of humor or a love for laughter per se. But within the context of delighting in God—when He is the source of our joy—there is no limit to the happiness and rejoicing and pleasure we are entitled to enjoy.

Spurgeon said, "You cannot be too happy, brother. Nay, do not suspect yourself of being wrong because you are full of delight. You know that it is said of the divine wisdom, 'Her ways are the ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.' Provided that it is joy in the Lord, you cannot have too much of it."

Indeed, joy is our duty, and according to 1 Thessalonians 5:15-18, it is a moral duty on the same level as prayer and thankfulness and doing good to one another.

Baal worshipers can cry aloud and "cut themselves with knives and lancets, after their manner." But Jesus said you, even when you fast, "anoint thine head, and wash thy face; That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret." We are supposed to be cheerful, contented, always rejoicing in the Lord. That is part of our testimony, and if your countenance is barren of joy and gladness, you are not being a good testimony for Christ.


ht: Tim Challies

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A Rebuke to Our Cold-Hearted Calvinism

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following is an excerpt from "Earnestness," an address Spurgeon gave at an Assembly of the London City Missionaries on New Year's Day, January 1861.

xcept we are in earnest, our souls can never be in sympathy with the soul of Christ.

I see him now standing on the hill. He looks down upon the city; he marks the gilded roof of the temple, and the streets, and he weeps. He foresees the total destruction of that city, "beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth." In vision he marks her streets crimsoned with gore, and her temple already in flames; and what does he say?

Does he harden his heart by some ideas of divine sovereignty? Does he stand there callous and dry-eyed, feeling that this is predestinated and must be, and that therefore he need not weep? No. We believe that Christ knew the destiny of Jerusalem, but he wept over it too. Down from his eyes the torrents ran; down his cheeks they scalded furrows for themselves: but at last he bursts out in passionate grief, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not?"

Now, if your heart does not feel like that, it is not in harmony with Christ's. There must be the same weepings, the same longings, the same yearnings, or else we have not had fellowship with Christ in the great end and aim of his incarnation—the salvation of the souls of men.

Tell me not of your communings in your closets; tell me not of your raptures and your ecstasies, when your soul has been like the chariots of Amminadib. These things are blessed if they are coupled with the other; but, unless you have fellowship with Christ in labour, fellowship with him in perseverance, fellowship in suffering, I care not for your ecstasies or your reveries; they are hollow and deceitful things. . . .

Oh, let the Crucified One stand before each one of us this morning! I think I see him, and he looks at me and says, "I gave my blood to save sinners; wilt thou not give thy life too?"

And if I feel faint and weary, methinks he puts his hand upon me and he says, "Son of man, I have set thee to speak unto this multitude, for I have much people in this city; be strong and fear not; by my wounds I charge thee, be thou faithful unto death."

By the wounds of Jesus, I charge you, brethren; "by his agony and bloody sweat, by his cross and passion, by his precious death and burial, by his glorious resurrection and ascension,"—in his name I charge you, be ye faithful unto death, and ye shall inherit the crown of life.

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Coda to Frank: a few of Phil's PoMotivators, timely as ever

by Dan Phillips

It's nice working with people smarter and more creative than I am. So here are a few of Phil's brilliant Po-Motivator graphics that I think put a nice cherry atop the brilliant Biblely Sundae of Frank's exceptional previous two posts. Comments closed, to respect Frank's closure of the previous post — but my co-admins should feel free to add their own, and Phil should bump this if he has a post.

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What did Jesus (not) say about... the majority's eternal destination? (Full post)

by Dan Phillips

"Barring something extraordinary, odds are most people will end up in Heaven. Nothing to get worked up about."

Let's key off of Mark Lussier's comment from the last post: Of course we musn't forget about John 3:16 ;), Mark wrote. Indeed, not; so let's take a closer look: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." So if "whoever believes in" Jesus does "not perish, but [has] eternal life," what does that say about those who do not believe in Jesus? Clearly, they do perish, and they do not have eternal life.

That, then, must be the default setting of man, according to the Gospel: bereft of eternal life, and headed surely for perdition. After all, no one is born believing in Jesus. To enter that state would require a change, a shift; it is a shift that is necessary for a change of destiny. Minus that change, the destiny is death and perdition. Something extraordinary must happen, to change our fate.

Exegetically it is difficult to tell whether John presents this verse as Jesus' words or his own thoughts. There is, however, no such question about Matthew 5-7, the famed Sermon on the Mount. In a recent post, we had a drive-by  commenter give the Sermon a careless glance, and he pronounced it unremarkable. That's a bit like glancing up in a particular structure in Italy and pronouncing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel "a bit busy."

Regardless, Jesus approaches a critical, confrontive, red-hot climax to His sermon with these words:

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matthew 7:13-14).

What is Jesus saying? He is saying that the easiest, broadest, and most popular way is that which leads to destruction. For that reason, it is the most well-traveled; "many" take that path.

By contrast, the path to life is narrow, it is a hard way, and those traveling by it are relatively "few." So something extraordinary must happen for one to get off the majority's path, and onto the minority's.

On another occasion, Jesus is asked, frontally and in so many words, "Lord, will those who are saved be few?” (Luke 13:23). Well, that set it right out, plain and blunt. How will He answer?

One thing we soon learn about our Lord is that He was not over-fond of gauzy, billowy theological yarning. Jesus shows no great affection for "what-if's" and "what-abouts." So here, rather than answering the question in detached terms, in effect He says "You are asking the wrong question. Standing here, in front of Me, you should not first be thinking about them, what they are going to do, and where they are going to go. You had better concern yourself with you. You strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able — and 'many' means you, unless something changes" (cf. Luke 13:24).

Jesus tells His questioner that he will have to "strive," he will have to focus and struggle and give effort — because "life" is not his default-setting. It is ordinary for him to miss the door. It would take something extraordinary for him to find it.

It was similar with those who may have been getting out their what-if and how-about game pieces when a bunch of Galileans were killed by Pilate, and some others had a tower fall on them. Ooh, juicy stuff — what theological debates can we get into over that?


None, Jesus responded; none, except one: "unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. ...unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (cf. Luke 13:1-5). Two stories, one moral.

In fact, this takes us all the way back to Jesus' first recorded sermon in Matthew — not the Sermon on the Mount, but this: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 4:17).

Repent, Jesus says. Repent: plunge yourself into a fundamental paradigm shift towards God and the world. Something extraordinary must happen in your heart and life. Change! Transform!

So we return to our opening thought. I daresay that most people would agree with what Jesus didn't say. That is, most would agree that, barring something extraordinary, they're headed for Heaven. I mean, if they turned into some kind of Hitler or Dahmer or Pol Pot, then they'd be in peril. Otherwise? Relax. Don't sweat it. Nothing to get "het up" about.

Don't you see, Jesus' thinking is the exact opposite? The default setting of man is death and doom. Unless something extraordinary happens — unless he repents, unless he finds the narrow door, unless he is miraculously born again — he is heading towards the wrath of God without a plea, a hope, or even a prayer.

Do the math, dear reader, as we head for the year's close. This means that the odds are that you and I both are headed for damnation — barring something extraordinary. It is not that we must have an extraordinary reason to believe that someone (including ourselves!) is doomed; it is that we must have an extraordinary reason to believe that someone is saved.

The Gospel alone provides that reason, in and through and because of Christ alone..

This, in closing, is one thing that drives me a bit nuts about emerg*s, liberals, and academics. we already saw that Jesus was deadly-earnest about all this. Further, Jesus said,

I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!" (Luke 12:4-5).

Given what we've been looking at, that makes perfect sense. It makes sense of the generations and generations and generations of Christians who have died for their faith, embraced torture and death rather than renounce the faith, sometimes with songs of praise on their lips.

But emerg*s, academics, liberals, tough-talking self-promoters? What would they die for? About what are they urgent? They play around with eternal truths, and eternal souls, as if it were all just a great gay game, just a grand faculty tea social. They give interviews to unbelievers, and write articles and present speeches and sermons, and spend the time whacking on Biblically-faithful Christians and puffing themselves up, leaving their hearers confirmed in their contempt for the Gospel.

It isn't like anything Jesus would say.

And I can't imagine He'd think much of it.

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Open Letter to Derek Webb, 2010

by Frank Turk

UPDATED 25 Feb 2012

Yes: hello.  Before you read this further, this post is, right now, the #2 all-time viewed post in the history of this blog.  It accounts for 1% of all traffic to this blog. And, methinks, a lot of people miss about 2/3rds of what went into the original post because it misses the detailed analysis of the original interview which posted the same day, but gets missed when someone links through to this letter only.


For the sake of that being remedied, I offer a link to the analysis right here.  Don't miss it for the sake of your our righteous indignation.

-- Frank Turk

Dear Derek Webb --

I started my (meager and non-profit) blogging career with an open letter to you about 6 years ago, and it's funny how that has come full circle as you stay on your quest to be come an artist (we'll come back to that) and I stay on my quest to, um, blog.

Over at HuffPo, Chris Stedman's interview of you has made some waves in the week after Christmas. It's really cool that, unlike the rest of us, you can get interviews with secularists and directors of inter-religious dialogue -- and I mean that sincerely even though I know it sounds sarcastic. If more people who were actually Christians could get interviewed by Chris Stedman, Chris himself would probably be better for it -- and his readers would at least be disabused by the stereotype of "Christianity" with which they are abused today.

I have to grant you something: you are right about the problem the church has in addressing the "gay" issue. I blogged about that a few years ago myself, refer to that post frequently as the topic comes up and further notes are required, and I commend that to you for context of my note to you today.

There are three things which bothered me about your talk with Mr. Stedman that I want to pass on as we approach the New Year, and I offer them to you in no particular order:

1. The Gospel

What is the Gospel, Derek? (please forgive the faux familiarity; I address you as one somewhat-public person to another) You seem to have summed it up to Mr. Stedman as, "Jesus says we are to be preemptive about how we love." Yet this is not at all how Jesus prepares people for the Gospel, nor what he seems to put at the first place for the reason God sent him, the Son, into the world.

I know someplace, somehow, you "get" this: the Son of Man was not sent to be served, but to serve, and to lay down his life as a ransom for many. He came to suffer much at the hands of the leaders of Israel and to be put to death. And he did this not as a moral example but as a sacrifice -- as the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Yet your interview with HuffPo doesn't really mention that -- and maybe that's Mr. Stedman's editorial hand showing. You instead leapfrog that in this interview and go directly to "love". But this is how we know what Love is: seeing that God did something for us when we were unworthy of it. Christ died for sinners and not merely for morally-neutral people -- or worse, for people who are just moral equivalents of each other who can't see either the log in their own eye or the mote in his brother's eye.

The key note of the Gospel, Derek, is the need for it. I am well-known in this little backwater of the internet for saying that any random sinner is "just like me" -- but can I point out a difference between your approach and mine? Your approach is to say, "I'm not any worse than the least of these," and my approach is to say, "I am no better, and maybe I am worse."

The nuance there is important. From the perspective you have delivered to the readers of HuffPo, it's just a "come as you are" thing to say that men are sinful. Them's the breaks, as they say. It soft-soaps the problem of sin significantly into something you put this way: "One of the hallmarks of following Jesus is to pursue and love people who are different than we are and have different beliefs than we do, and to live our lives loving, understanding and coming into common ground with those people."

The problem with that is that Jesus didn't die to establish common ground, Derek: Jesus died because the wages of sin is death, and that's the common ground of all men of all times and all places. I may actually be worse-off than the homosexual, morally: my sins may be more wide-spread and more deeply-rooted (which is an interesting question, given your position here; again: more on that in a second). But what that does not do is mitigate the fact that the homosexual's sin is actually an offense to God from which he must repent, and not merely recognize as a different expression of self.

2. the Church

To that end, Jesus died to make the believers into the Church, right? Jesus didn't die so that we can make a moral equation up which makes Islam and Hinduism and Judaism and then the social/religious agnostics who come 'round about Him as "believers" into a happy mixed family. Jesus died so that the believers can be called out from death into life, and called out from the world to the household of God, and called out of sin and into salvation.

Readers of this blog know that I am not a perfectionist -- I don't believe that there are any Christians who are perfect morally, least of all me personally. In fact, I think one of the greatest sins in the American Christian life is the inability of so-called theologically-conservative Christians to live in community with other believers. There is a call to repentance needed there which has not yet been sounded or even rightly-framed which we English-speakers have to face up to. It smashes our idols of individuality and intellectual pride. That matter is for another day.

But that said, Christ died to call out the Church. This is an unquestionable fact of the New Testament; it's the key-note point of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, and also the "book ends" of Paul's letter to the Romans. Somehow, if Christ died for us, we are a new people set apart from the world and it's fallenness. Right? Colossians 3? So when we make the confession that we are sinners, we are also making the confession that we ought not to be sinners. Making allowance for the sins of others so that we can "love them" is unloving because it is spiritually deadly. It completely squashes the actual Gospel in place of a new kind of legalism. Rather than seeking to find out all the ways in which we ought "not to do," we are in fact seeking out all the ways we can allow all the things we ought not to do. It's a legalism of tolerance -- which you exchange in your interview into a legalism of love. It's not love, you might say, if it doesn't include those who mutilate themselves to justify their sexual urges. It's not love, you might say, if we can't bless the sexual union of two people who are sexually identical rather than sexually compatible. It's the legalism of permissiveness, which is merely license raised to a moral imperative.

The Church cannot say such things. When it does -- and I submit to you that the conservative church does this exactly today regarding marriage and sexuality -- it is gone far afield. To have it go far into another false field for the sake of balance (which, as I take it, is your complaint) is not prophetic or artistic: it is blasphemy, and anti-Gospel.

3. The Artist

Which brings me to my final comment. Personally, I grew up in a liberal-arts environment. Then I "got saved" and spent 20 years as a Christian. I have found that there is a singular refuge for people who do not want to be held morally and philosophically culpable for the trash they flatulently expel into the common conversation. In Christian circles, it's the "prophet"; in academic circles, it's "the artist".

Back in the "old days" before you started filing complaints against the local church and Christians in general, you didn't couch yourself behind the conceit of being "an Artist". But today, that's your trip. Are you really more-qualified to make moral, political and social pronouncements than anyone else -- than pastors and qualified teacher of the Bible, for example -- now that you are "an artist"? Is it really at all reasonable let alone generous or spiritually-mature to denigrate pastors as people who don't have enough time to get spiritually informed except through CNN and blogs? I think it's a dodge you can cleverly use to escape scrutiny, and you should frankly know better. You're not some kid floating through college on his father's hard-earned dime; you're not some flattered entertainer who lives in a vacuum protected by publicists and agents and sycophants (I hope). You're in some way a self-made man who has been there, done that -- which makes your daffy diatribes against conservative Christianity, and the disguise of being an "artist", all the more unbelievable.

To say, as you have said here, that your pondering these issues trumps other views because you are an "artist" is simply adolescent. If your moral pronouncement trumps, for example, John Piper (not an artist), what if Charlton Heston says you're wrong? His artistic cred trumps yours for sure: how do you deal with it? And what if Ian McKellen then comes out and proffers yet another moral pronouncement -- does his cred trump Heston? What exactly will we do when the artist community unsurprisingly cannot speak with one voice and cannot come to a moral consensus? What will us poor non-artists do if CNN or FOX does not clear it up for us?

The answer, of course, is to put the artist in his place -- subject to God's revelation. That's the Christian answer, anyway -- settle matters of faith and practice by what God hath said -- and that, done by men of good faith who are elders and leaders in the church. But the way you have, over time, read the Bible, has become shallow and ambiguous -- which is the hallmark of pretentiousness, not artistic depth. To see Jesus as only a lover of the sinful and not a judge or even decent moral counsellor is to misread all of the book of John and all of Revelation and all of Paul's statements which begin "therefore" in the New Testament.

May we all suffer fewer artists of this sort in the future, and may you repent of it as soon as possible.

We all know you want to be a lion -- we all want to pass as cats. You want to be a big, big star; you want to be someone to believe. You want to be Bob Dylan. The problem is that you're not. You're a kid fellow from Texas who has, over 20 years, convinced himself that there is no Old Testament substantiating the New Testament; that Jesus does not fulfill that law so that in his death those who repent and believe are made a people like him. What we therefore ought to be is both enemies of sin and friends of sinners -- but I think you have missed this someplace, publicly and intentionally. My offer to you is to come back to this, which is the Christian faith and not some romantic or secularized stereotype of the actual faith.

While I have been harsh here, I hope this letter finds you well, and in the good graces of God, and with a heart inclined toward him and inclined to repent. You have said that you refuse no invitations for interviews, and I post this as an open invitation to do two things inclusively here together: [1] to post your [unedited] open reply to this letter in this space at your convenience, and [2] to also record a 60-minute interview with me on this subject which would be available here unedited on this subject to correct the record as necessary, correct my view of the interview with Stedman, and to dialog on the question of the church being in the world, on mission to lost people, but not of the world.

You can tweet me @Frank_Turk, or e-mail at frank at i-t-u-r-k dot com.

Awesome Update:

BEFORE YOU POST A COMMENT (and I do mean you personally), ask yourself this question: "Self, if my response to Frank Turk is that he should have first called Derek and had coffee with him to do the Biblical thing and not make this all like this, and I'm going to set him straight, why am I posting a comment on his blog rather than calling him? Am I just like Frank, or am I really following Jesus?"

If you can answer that question in a way that doesn't embarrass yourself, lay on, MacDuff.

--The Neighborhood Bully

Awesome Update #2:

After closing the comments and reflecting on this post, the one very obvious and glaring problem with the discussion has been the actual lack of actual discussion. For example, with the panoply of people pelting me for not contacting Derek directly to make nice with him privately over his public disapprobation (notice I got it right this time) of the church and its moral judgment, only two people have bothered to send me an e-mail about the subject to take their points off-line. TWO. And I bring it up only because I put my e-mail address and Twitter ID in the post. Finding me would have been as hard as blinking.

This describes the kind of objection that concern is -- because it apparently doesn't apply to the people who offer it. It certainly didn't apply to Derek who, rather than respond here, or respond with an e-mail, or even respond with a quick note with any clarifiers, posted drive-by tweets for three days about nameless bloggers and told people via twitter that I was specifically a body part of inglorious use.

File that with this open letter, and keep it between the ditches.

--The Neighborhood Bully

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Notes: Where I am coming from

by Frank Turk

Most readers will have already read my open letter to Derek Webb, but this post is actually being published prior to the open letter. So I offer it as a post-script or epilogue or prologue (depending on when you read it) based on a phone call I had this week. I had a phone-chat with a reasonably-well-known SBC blogger (name obscured to give him the freedom to be in or out) after I tweeted about Derek's interview (long story, but he called because I didn't want to have a tweet war about the subject), and before the Ozarks canned my cell signal he asked me to at least deal with the interview and what it actually said -- not what I thought it implied.

I think that's a totally-fair request from him, and a totally-fair expectation from Derek Webb, so here is where I'll do that. Consider my letter to be based on what I have here exposited here from the interview.

The right thing to do is to place the interview in context, and the interviewer (Chris Stedman) does exactly that:

Given [Derek Webb's] willingness to reach across dividing lines, I asked Webb about his religious identity and how it relates to his work and his positions on issues relating to LGBT people, Muslims and atheists.

So explicitly, this interview is about Webb's "religious identity", and specifically it is about "his positions on issues", and those issues are specifically regarding "LGBT people", "Muslims" and "atheists". It's interesting to note that this interview offers one question each to the matter of atheism and Islam, and the rest stays in orbit around the question of receiving LGBT people into the church with open arms.

Here's Q1 from the interview:

Tracking the arc of your career, it seems to me that you've become increasingly vocal about your opinions on certain social issues. What's behind that?

So "certain social issues" are at stake here -- not just philosophy of ministry issues, but the actual "social issues" which Webb is speaking of. Here's the first half of his answer:

My wife and I are both artists. Part of the luxury of being an artist is that you not only can but kind of have a responsibility to think long and hard about things on behalf of those who might listen to your music. You can give them a jumping off point for subject matter that might be too tangled for most people in the busyness of their daily lives. I think there are a lot of smart people out there who honestly just don't have the time to think through some of these issues, and it becomes easier to watch CNN, to watch Fox News, to read some random blog and just get your answers and talking points from those kinds of places.

Now, get this: It's the artist, in his own words, who has a responsibility to "give people a jumping-off point for [complicated] subject matter". This is interesting because the second question was "Were you concerns about the risk of taking a stand on such a heated issue?" -- the "issue" being whether "LGBT" is acceptable Christian behavior, because the context is Webb's single "What Matters More" -- and his answer was this:

In terms of my being fearful or not [about the] reaction; I take my job really seriously, and I have tried to make a habit over the years of not listening to people who either criticize me or praise me. Spirituality is a really mysterious thing, and I feel as though I have received various coordinates from God over the years in terms of what I need to be spending my time and my work on, and that's really what I'm listening to. If following faithfully along those coordinates puts me in a season of praise with a certain group of people, that's fine -- but I don't do it to get in those graces, and neither am I upset if that also costs me some people along the road. I would much rather be faithful than successful, and I think that's a real professional difference [from] how some people do it.

So Derek Webb has said this explicitly about himself: [1] he's the deep thinker who is giving people the "jumping-off point" for complicated issues, and [2] if he takes criticism (or praise, as he says -- a point we have to get back to) for those jumping-off points, he doesn't listen. He feels like he has "received various coordinates from God over the years in terms of what I need to be spending my time and my work on, and that's really what I'm listening to".

Personally, I think that's troubling -- because Derek Webb says he's talking with God, and unlike the rest of us who are only invested enough (or maybe only spiritual enough, if I read his first answer correctly) to get our answers from CNN or blogs who ought to listen to him, he's not going to really take on outside analysis of his approach.

Now, that's a pretty clever way to set up one's vocational priorities -- to set the artist literally above criticism. But it seems to me that Derek is not really that disassociated from his critics and fans. Consider the first half of his second answer:

[the feedback] that I didn't really expect was the response from those that are at the business end of the church's judgment, especially around the gay issue. But what was surprising in a good way -- what showed me that I picked the right kind of trouble to get into -- was the response from a lot of people who were really struggling spiritually because they had no language for being who they actually were and believing what they actually believed. For their whole lives they had people telling them they couldn't be a certain kind of person. I was really gratified to be able to provide some small bit of sanity to a handful of people. That was worth whatever judgment or misunderstanding that might've come from the record itself.

There's a second reason to consider this statement, but the first is this: in fact, Derek does consider the voice of his praisers because they are the ones who showed him "he picked the right kind of trouble to get into". The criticisms he got were "predictable" and did not take him off the coordinates God put him on, but the praises: they gratified him.

The second reason to think about what Webb says here is the underlined part. My admission here is that Derek doesn't overtly say, "For their whole lives, LGBT people have had others telling them they couldn't be LGBT, but the church should not judge them for that." But if Derek does not mean my paraphrase by his statement, I'd like to see the paraphrase which will actually fit the context of his comment and still maintain the flow of his thought here.

So we make it to the third question:

How do you think the Christian community can build bridges to the LGBT community?

This is perhaps where the blogger I spoke to needs to take specific note of this conversation -- because as I talked to him, he seemed to think that Derek Webb was talking in abstract terms -- but the question makes the answers rather concrete.

So when Mr. Webb begins his response:

Initially, Christians can stop pretending that they're so different. I think there would be an immediate change in the conversation if we all realized how similar we are and the common language we share.

I find this catastrophically-inverted, but the SBC blogger thinks we should read this generously. We should read it, he has told me, as if Derek Webb was telling Stedman that the church is full of sinners and the LGBT community os full of sinners, and in that we have a common language.

But that's neither the tone of this statement, nor is it the intention of this statement -- and it overlooks the fact that it is not the church which establishes the "difference" necessary to even use the term "LGBT" to describe a demographic.

For the uninformed, "LGBT" means "Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transexual". Now think on this: that is a community which takes its identity from sexual expression and not from, for example, any other sociological accomplishment. The primary designator of one's heritage and people group is sexual practice and orientation -- that's what defines this community. When it is then said that the church is the one making a big deal out of what the "differences" are, it's a little more than a little sly to do so. It's actually accepting the LGBT definitions of how things work -- making others the bad guys for categories the LGBT are actually demanding be taken into account.

Let's be as clear as possible: this is a theme which is overtly stated in the song "What Matters More". Here are the lyrics for the song:

You say always treat people like you'd like to be
I guess you love being hated for your sexuality
You love when people put words in your mouth
About what you believe
Make you sound like a freak

'Cause if you really believed
What you say you believe
You wouldn't be so damned reckless
With the words you speak
You wouldn't silently consent
When the liars speak
Denying all the dying of the remedy

(Chorus)
Tell me, brother what matters more to you
Tell me, sister what matters more to you

If I can see what's in your heart
By what comes out of your mouth
Then it sure looks to me like being straight
Is all it's about
It looks like being hated
For all the wrong things
Like chasing the wind
While the pendulum swings

'Cause we can talk and debate
Till we're blue in the face
About the language and tradition
That He's coming to save
And meanwhile we sit
Just like we don't have give a **** about
Fifty thousand people who are dying today

Webb's point in this song is obvious: the church ought to care more about the sick people in the world than about what kind of sex people will have. In fact, it seem that what kind of sex is only a matter of "tradition", and to say otherwise is "hatred".

For the doubters this is where Derek Webb makes his stand on the issue.

That said, returning to the interview, how the church then "stops pretending they are so different" is an intimation of moral guilt to the church which Webb does not flesh out at all -- and I leave it to him to flesh it out in some way other than to huff at people he disagrees with.

Now I say "other than to huff" because this is the next part of his answer:

Another thing that would really change the conversation between the church and the broader gay community -- and it so desperately needs changing -- is the church's response. The church has spent so many years dealing publicly in the morality of the issue, in a way that misrepresents the response that I believe Jesus would have, that Christians have forgotten, or maybe never really [knew] in the first place, that whether your moral response to the gay issue is that it is perfectly permissible in the eyes of the Bible, or that it is totally reprehensible, your interpersonal response should be absolutely no different to gay people.

The response, by the way, is love. Period. It's love and open arms, regardless of your position on the morality.

I find this disturbing for several reasons. First, if we consider the Sermon on the Mount, Christ is classically judgmental for all manner of sin -- including heterosexual sin, greed, and all the trouble which pours out of the heart of man. Jesus publicly decried immorality -- and not merely the superficial kind of the morally-careless, but the deep kind in which one discovers that one does not love God but one's self and one's pleasure. It's simply biblically illiterate to say Jesus' response to public immorality would have been "love and open arms" -- because Jesus rejected anyone who thought they were morally-clean, anyone who thought their sin was not sin.

Second, the interpersonal response that Christians provide to most people is not stoning, or shunning, or any manner of real moral approbation. It's just apathy. If he wants to get on about that, I'll applaud him -- but to say that most Christians somehow treat LGBT people with anything more-active than simply passing them by is just ignorant of the average Christian. Worse, it plays to anti-Christian stereotypes which do not serve anyone well.

Last, for a fellow trying to creating jumping-off points for Christians into complex issues, it would be useful to define love in a little more nuanced way -- perhaps in a more biblical way -- than to make it group hugs as if fellowship and interpersonal respect looked like a Michelob commercial.

Here's Derek's next answer to the question of whether he is "too Christian" or "not Christian enough":

You can't please everybody, and I don't do this to please everybody. But the job of any artist is to look at the world and tell you what they see. Every artist, whether they acknowledge it or know it, has a grid through which they view the world and make sense of what they see. Even if it's a grid of unbelief -- that you don't think there is anything orchestrating the world and that everything is completely random -- that is a grid through which you make sense of the world.

A lot of "Christian art" is about the lens they're looking through, rather than the world they see through it. I'm not going to criticize anybody for doing that, but I would rather look at the world through the grid of following Jesus and tell you what I see. But that doesn't presume that all the art I'm going to make will be about following Jesus.

The year I made Stockholm Syndrome, there were a lot of triggers that brought issues of race and sexuality to my mind. I have a lot of friends and family that have suffered because of the church's judgment; my best friend in the world is gay. I felt a lot of people around me drawing lines in the sand, and that year I decided: I don't want to draw lines and have to be on one side or the other, but if someone's going to push me to one or the other side of the line, I'm going to stand on the side of those being judged because that's where I feel Jesus meets people. Making Stockholm Syndrome was about that journey. That same lens, this year, brought Feedback to life. They are very different pieces of art, but the exact same ethic brought both of those records out.

That statement is the subtext -- perhaps the presuppositions -- of the rest of this interview for Derek Webb. It tells us explicitly his state of mind and what is driving him to make certain judgments of his own.

And let's make sure this gets clarified: in spite of Webb's explicit beef with the church making "public moral judgments", he is himself making public moral judgments about the church -- and juxtaposing himself against the church on certain issues. How he can justify himself and condemn the church is for him to explain, but I think it is obvious to anyone reading where he comes to this conclusion -- and it stems from his position as an "artist" who is set in some coordinates by God himself.

It's also interesting that he here again stresses that people who are being "judged" are not actually subject to Jesus' approbation. The church or the religious people might judge people, but not Jesus: he's about "meeting people". This is another point which I want to make explicitly to the SBC blogger if he is reading: this riff of Derek Webb in this essay is where I find him most obviously soft-soaping the problem of sin. This is the way Joel Osteen talks about sin; this is the way Oprah talks about sin. This is not the way people who are serious about sin being a problem for mankind which sets them at odds against God speak about sin. Sin is not the fault of the church which drives people away: sin is what comes out of a man by the overflow of his heart (a saying of Jesus, btw; a saying he can use against others but not in a balanced way), and God judges it.

There is more to this interview, and I ask the reader to read it for himself. This post is already twice as long as I intended to make it, but the perspective that we ought to deal specifically with what was said in the interview rather than with what we think was said is a legitimate one. I hope I have done that here, and look forward to other comments on this subject.

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What did Jesus (not) say about... the eternal destination of most people?

by Dan Phillips

"Barring something extraordinary, odds are most people will end up in Heaven. Nothing to get worked up about."

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Simple Gifts

by Phil Johnson



    friend gave me a Flip Video camera for Christmas, so I made this Youtube Channel, and posted a video I took Christmas Day afternoon. Ray, Wrigley, and I made a mess of Darlene's kitchen, but it was fun. We find the best joy in the simple gifts:


Enjoy the rest of the holiday, and I'll be back in the New Year.

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The Reason Jesus was Born

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon
posted by Phil Johnson

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from The Spurgeon Archive. The following excerpt is from "Jesus, the King of Truth," a sermon preached Thursday evening, 19 December 1872, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London.

hrist did not merely speak the truth, but he was truth. Had he been truth embodied in an angelic form, he had possessed small power over our hearts and lives; but perfect truth in a human form has royal power over renewed humanity. Truth embodied in flesh and blood has power over flesh and blood. Hence, for this purpose was he born.

So when ye hear the bells ringing out at Christmas, think of the reason why Jesus was born; dream not that he came to load your tables and fill your cups; but in your mirth look higher than all earth-born things. When you hear that in certain churches there are pompous celebrations and ecclesiastical displays, think not for this purpose was Jesus born.

No; but look within your hearts, and say, for this purpose was he born: that he might be a King, that he might rule through the truth in the souls of a people who are by grace made to love the truth of God.

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Stamp Thine Image in its Place

by Charles Wesley [and others]



Hark! The herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
With th’angelic host proclaim,
“Christ is born in Bethlehem!”

Christ, by highest Heav’n adored;
Christ the everlasting Lord;
Late in time, behold Him come,
Offspring of a virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail th’incarnate Deity,
Pleased with us in flesh to dwell,
Jesus our Emmanuel.

Hail the heav’nly Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all He brings,
Ris’n with healing in His wings.
Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that man no more may die.
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.

Come, Desire of nations, come,
Fix in us Thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring Seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.
Now display Thy saving power,
Ruined nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to Thine.

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp Thine image in its place:
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in Thy love.
Let us Thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the Life, the inner man:
O, to all Thyself impart,
Formed in each believing heart.

Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

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DJP book announcement: title and date, woo-hoo

by Dan Phillips

I promised -- someone, somewhere -- that I'd share, when I knew. Now I know.

My book from Kregel has an official title and publication date. Now we start work on a cover and such.

Official title: The World-Tilting Gospel: Embracing a Biblical Worldview and Hanging on Tight

Official release date: August 1, 2011

That leaves my Proverbs book in the works with Kress Biblical Resources, but I don't have a publication date. When I know, I'll share.

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What did Jesus (not) say about... His mother, Mary? (Full post)

by Dan Phillips

"You know what you lot's problem is? You just don't think enough about My mother."

I've often had two thoughts about Mary:

1. I dearly hope that her heavenly bliss has not been spoiled by the knowledge of how monstrously men came to pervert her significance and place in relation to her Son. And...
2. In that view, I've thought that my article on Mary in a Bible dictionary might read, "The mother of Jesus. A pivotal yet minor figure in the New Testament, mentioned by name in only four books."

On the subject of Mary -- as on all other subjects -- the world divides into two kinds of people: those who affirm the binding sufficiency of Biblical revelation, and those who rebel against it. With the latter, their issue is spiritual in origin, and no amount of reasoning or Biblical evidence will suffice. With the former....

My semi-humorous summary above makes a point, but it is scarcely fair to the real woman, who was a truly remarkable individual. Few if any of us (and certainly no men) can do much of a job of imagining ourselves in her sandals. She was clearly a God-fearing young lady, as we shall see, who found a massive weight laid on her small, young shoulders.

We once dwelt on the difference between aged priest Zechariah and young Mary. The trained expert, faced with a word from God that would bring him blessing and cost him nothing, doubted and was judged. The rustic young girl, receiving a word that would also bring blessing but potentially cost her dearly, simply responded "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word" (Luke 1:38). For this, her cousin later said, "blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord" (Luke 1:45).

That tells us a great deal about Mary.  Also, when she went to see Elizabeth, Mary burst forth in a song of praise that could be described as a glorious patchwork of quotations from (and allusions to) previous written revelation (Luke 1:46-55). Given that this is presented as a spontaneous outburst of praise, we surmise that Mary had hidden God's word in her heart. This gives us a strong indication as to how she could embrace the angel's word with such believing grace.

Think of it: this is in all likelihood a young teenaged girl. No formal education, no Bible college, no T4G or TGC conferences, no Christian blogging or bookstores. Probably not even a personal copy of the Torah -- just what she heard in synagogue and at home. But Mary received what she heard with such faith and eagerness that it prepared and enabled her for this absolutely and literally unparalleled place in history. It would be churlish at best to denigrate Mary as a believer solely because cultists deify her.

In fact, it is ironic that cultists themselves slander Mary by insinuating that she was in effect an ungodly, faithless wife in standing aloof from her wifely obligations to her husband (cf. 1 Corinthians 7:3-5). Though any word of Scripture can be twisted to say anything when subjected to alien agendas, we do best to take the text in its most natural meaning, and affirm that Jesus was the first of a number of children (Matthew 1:25; 12:46; 13:55; Luke 2:7; 8:19; John 2:12; 7:3, 5, 10; 1 Corinthians 9:5), sharing the same mother but separated from them by His virginal conception and birth, and His divine nature.

Yet (and all Christians will add "of course") Scripture portrays Mary as a flawed sinner, saved by grace alone just like every other believer. She knew and confessed that she personally needed a Savior (Luke 1:47). When she tried to hint to her adult Son what she thought he should do, she received a respectful reminder of how their relative roles had changed (John 2:4). We must note the grace with which she accepted that word (John 2:5).

Nor was this the only time Jesus put a distance between Himself and His earthly family. One day when He was teaching the Word of God, His earthly family -- who evidently were not numbering themselves among His students at this point -- stood outside the circle of believing pupils, and tried to call Him from His ministry and back to themselves (Matthew 12:48; Mark 3:33). How did Jesus respond? "Family first"? "Mom first"? Hardly:

But he replied to the man who told him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother." (Matthew 12:48-50).

So it is hardly surprising that the rest of Scripture gives very little notice to Mary. The New Testament is primarily about Jesus, not about Mary. She has played her role -- pivotal, yet taking up less space in the inspired text than the patriarchs, Moses, David, Peter, Paul, or even Job. As a devoted Son, in His dying moments Jesus assures Mary's continued care (John 19:25-27). Then she basically vanishes from the text, apart from one last appearance in Acts 1:14, where she has finally taken her place on a level plane with every other Christian, in prayer and worship of her risen Son.

So what would Mary say to us today, were she to speak? Would she bid our attention on her, summon the spotlight from her Son to herself to any degree, try to increase her place in the Christian's worshipful consciousness?

Or would she not rather reiterate what she had already said - "Whatever He tells you, do" (John 2:5)?

To ask the question is to answer it. We best honor Mary not by idolatrously focusing on her person, but by embracing her example of humble, devoted, Biblically-informed, self-disregarding, God-centered faith.

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