Faith

Categories Following Christ

God Provides

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A week and a half ago, at the last minute, I was asked to teach the elementary-aged Sunday school at my church. As the kids are currently between curricula, I had to come up with the material for myself.

I chose the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac as my lesson–mostly for the sake of convenience. You see, I’m a true believer in gospel-centered teaching–and that story doesn’t require any work to get to the gospel-center.

Isaac was going to die. God provided a substitute. It’s as easy as that.

Even Abraham’s obedience can’t be simply taken as a moral to-do: “You should obey.” The point of Abraham’s obedience was faith displaying itself in action. Abraham believed that God would be faithful to His promise, therefore Abraham was able to trust God and be obedient to His direction.

So the story of Abraham and Isaac makes a nice text for a gospel-centered teacher.

Then, I was asked to teach for the next week.

I figured I’d just follow the chronology of Scripture. Isaac and Rebekah. Another story of God’s provision–this time of a wife for Isaac.

Abraham had a predicament. His family was all alone in the land of Canaan–and the only women around were godless Canaanites. His son Isaac is single, but he needs a wife if God’s promise that Abraham would be the father of a great nation was to be fulfilled. And Abraham can’t well send his son back to his homeland. He can’t risk Isaac not returning. After all, God had promised to give Abraham’s descendants this land–the land of Canaan.

Abraham sends his servant back to the land of his origin. The servant prays for provision–and God provides a wife for Isaac.

Abraham and his son Isaac had a need. God provided for their need in Rebekah.

The import of this story smacks me upside the head.

God provides.

Last week, we saw Him provide a lamb. This week He provides a spouse in a land without godly women. If I’d gone back a few stories, I’d have seen that God provided water for Hagar and Ishmael when they were in a waterless desert; God provided a son to the barren Sarah; God provided an escape for Lot from the doomed cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

And here I am worrying about my career, about my future, distressed over the personal barrenness I (and even those around me) see in the city I’ll soon be relocating to. It looks to be a good move for me professionally. Personally, it feels like death to my dreams.

I’m Abraham saying “How can I have a son? I’m old.” I’m Sarah laughing that there might be room for the promise in my barren body. I’m Hagar laying down to die because I have no water. I’m Isaac asking where the sacrifice is, then staring in terror as my father restrains me and places me on the altar. I’m Abraham’s servant asking “But what if no woman is willing to come back with me to marry your son?”

And amidst my need, amidst my lack of faith, God provides.

Not one of His good promises will fail. My needs will never go unmet. God sees my every need and provides. First, He provides me with Himself–my ultimate, deepest need. But then He also provides me with every temporal thing He deems necessary to accomplish His good purposes through my life.

I intended to teach the gospel to some children through a couple of Old Testament stories. I ended preaching the gospel to myself through the same stories. For one truth permeates the pages of Scripture: I, we, all of humanity are desperately needy–and God provides for our needs in Christ Jesus.

Categories Faith

Who can you trust?

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Greg Boyd (author of The Myth of a Christian Nation) espouses open theism. John Stott (author of The Cross of Christ) has written in support of annihilationism (which denies an eternal hell). Ergun Caner (author of Unveiling Islam) lied about the extent of his Muslim upbringing.

It seems I can’t read anyone without uncovering a theological skeleton in their closet.

What’s an armchair theologian like myself supposed to do? Who can I trust?

Should I take Beth Moore’s tack?

“She does not show much interest in theology or tradition, distrusting the way the academy has, at times, handled the Bible.”

“Moore is primarily self-taught. She uses commentaries and concordances when writing her studies, but she relies primarily on her own intuition when interpreting and applying Scripture.”

Maybe I should just throw out the academics, throw out theology, throw out tradition, throw out the scholars. I can be my own scholar.

I don’t really like the hubris of this approach. I’m not a Greek or Hebrew scholar–and it doesn’t matter how many times I look up the Greek or Hebrew word that the scholars translated as such, I don’t have the intimate knowledge of the language that allows me to determine which of the many translations of the word is the best. What’s more, I’d be foolish to suggest that I don’t have blind-spots in my theology–underlying assumptions that may or may not be based on Scripture which inform my interpretation of Scripture. Reading a variety of scholars can help me to identify and correct those blind spots.

So maybe I just need to find the perfect teacher. I can read all of his books and become a groupie. Let’s see. I could choose John Piper–he’s a favorite among the young Reformed, and I like him quite a bit. The middle-aged Reformed folk of my acquaintance really like John MacArthur–he’d be an option. N.T. Wright is a popular fellow among my book-club friends. Or I could do the really hip Reformed thing and find myself a good Puritan pastor to go ga-ga over. And then there’s always Beth Moore :-P

The problem with this approach?

There’s no such thing as a perfect teacher (except Christ Himself). Each of these men (or women) have something useful to say, certainly–but they also have blind spots, things they overemphasize, things they underemphasize. They’re humans, they’re fallible, and so is their understanding of Scripture.

I’ve said I can’t trust myself to do theology alone. I can’t trust an individual to do my theology for me. So who can I trust?

I don’t really have an answer. Instead, I have a reminder.

Remember the Bereans.

They were said to be fair-minded because they a) “received the word with all readiness”, and b) “searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.”

I urge all armchair theologians (and if you’re not one yet, you should become one!) to do the same. Gladly hear what the scholars have to say–and then search the Scriptures daily to see if what they say is so.

Some bloggers I’ve enjoyed for quite a while have recently started a new blog called Southern Baptist Girl, which encourages women to critically evaluate what they hear and read in light of Scripture. Those who want to know what critical analysis of teaching looks like might want to follow along to see how Lisa, Melissa, and Leslie do it.

Categories Book Notes, Theology

God’s passion for His glory (Part 2)

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At the end of last week, I posed the question:

Is God primarily passionate for Himself, or for people? Is the idea that God is passionate for His own glory contradictory with the idea that God is love?

This week, I’ll share the conclusions I’ve drawn about the subject.

First, comparing God’s purpose to man’s purpose, as Piper does when he states

“The chief end of God is to glorify God and enjoy Himself forever.”

is invalid. Man’s purpose is to glorify God, whether man consciously decides to do so or not. This is because man is a created being–and the purpose for which he was created was (at least in part) God’s glory (“Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness…” Gen 1:26). God, on the other hand, is not a created being. He has no “purpose” for existing. Rather, He exists because He exists, because He is. The question then, when referring to God’s purpose, is not about God’s purpose in existing, but His purpose in acting.

Now, to a certain degree, God’s existence is explanation enough for His actions. When questioning any of God’s purposes of acting in a particular way, a perfectly appropriate answer is “He acted in this way because this way of acting is consistent with His nature.” In other words, God does what He does because “that’s just the way He is.”

God demonstrates mercy because He is merciful. He exercises justice because He is just. He displays His glory because He is glorious.

Perhaps the idea of God being passionate for His own glory is merely another way of saying “God’s purpose is to be Himself–that is, to be gloriously Himself.”

But Piper’s thesis–and I daresay Scripture itself–would suggest that God’s passion for His own glory is not merely a way of saying “When God acts in accordance with who He is, the result is God’s glory–therefore, God is passionate about His own glory.” No, it seems that Piper, and Scripture, would say that this is indeed a driving passion that influences God’s activity. It implies that just as I read out of a passion for learning, God acts out of a passion for being glorified.

Which brings us right back to the initial problem of God being self-seeking.

But what if God, though one in deity, were three in person? What if God were triune (which He is, indeed)–and each member of the Trinity were passionate not for His own glory, but for the glory of each other member of the Trinity? What if the Father’s supreme end was to glorify and delight in the Son and the Spirit? What if the Son’s supreme end was to glorify and delight in the Father and the Spirit? What if the Spirit’s supreme end was to glorify and delight in the Father and the Son?

If that were so, then God’s “self-love” would not be self-seeking. The paradox would be resolved. God could be both love and passionately God-centered.

And I think this idea has Scriptural support.

In John 8:49-50, Jesus states that He does not seek His own glory, but that He honors His Father. John 16:14 states that the Spirit glorifies the Son. In John 17, Jesus prays that the Father would glorify Him (the Son) so that He (the Son) might glorify the Father. In Hebrews 5:5, we read that Christ did not glorify Himself to become High Priest, but that God the Father “promoted” Him to that position.

God can be at once both gloriously God-centered and gloriously un-self-centered. For each member of the Trinity submits to the others’ will, and each wills the others’ glorification–with the end that God glorifies God and enjoys Himself forever.

(This is a reflection on the first chapter of John Piper’s Desiring God. For more reflections on Desiring God, see my notes here.)

Categories Book Notes, Theology

God’s passion for His glory (Part 1)

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God is uppermost in His own affections, John Piper would say. God’s supreme and driving passion is for His own glory.

It’s perhaps the most provocative and uncomfortable of all of Piper’s statements.

It’s been the source of a dozen heated discussions between myself, my sister, and my dad. Anna and I take Piper’s side; Dad argues that Piper can’t be right. God is love (I John 4:8,16) and love does not seek its own (I Cor 13:5). Surely the whole of Scripture, the redemptive story reveals that we are uppermost in God’s affections, that God’s supreme and driving passion is for our redemption.

I don’t like to admit it to my dad, but I sympathize with his argument–an awful lot. (Believe it or not, even “perfect” homeschooled daughters like myself have difficulties admitting that they agree with their parents!)

I see Piper’s point and agree with it. God is certainly jealous for His own glory. It is certainly in man’s best interest that God be glorified rather than man. God’s glory is undoubtedly a major theme of Scripture.

But God is love. And love does not seek its own.

Piper’s response to this–that it is in man’s best interest that God be glorified rather than man–does not fully address this issue. Basically, it says that “love does not seek its own” except when we’re talking about God’s love. The rules are different for God because God’s self-seeking is for our best.

I don’t really buy that. The rules aren’t different for God–the rules exist because of who God is. Love isn’t self-seeking because God, from whom love is defined, is not self-seeking.

I’ve wrestled with this question on and off for years–and while I can’t claim to have come to a full understanding, I do feel that I have come to a position that I have some degree of peace about.

I’ll discuss my wrestlings, and the conclusion I’ve come to, a bit more next week–but first, I want to hear what you think about the topic. Is God primarily passionate for Himself, or for people? Is the idea that God is passionate for His own glory contradictory with the idea that God is love?

(This is a reflection on the first chapter of John Piper’s Desiring God. For more reflections on Desiring God, see my notes here.)

Categories Book Notes, Following Christ

Inciting Passion

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This year, I have been concentrating on exercising my mind towards the things of God.

No doubt my longer-term readers have noticed the emphasis of this blog shifting from anecdotes to thinking and theology. Those who have seen my book lists have seen weightier books appearing more often on my lists–and have seen a greater emphasis on critical evaluation in my reviews. Those who know me personally have likely seen or heard some of my intellectual struggles of this past year as I’ve wrestled with the role of the miraculous gifts in today’s church, with what might appropriately induce someone to leave a church, with the role of Christians in government, with non-violence as a Christian virtue, and more.

Now, as I return to the classroom, teaching again, I still intend to exercise my mind towards the things of God–but to that I add one more goal.

I would like to stir up my passions towards God.

I want to incite within my soul such a thirst for God that I find the murky waters of this world unfulfilling. I should like to develop such a taste for God that I will turn aside from every trifle this world offers. I would like to desire God so deeply, so fully that the desire for Him drowns out every desire for any other person or thing. I should like for Him to become my consuming passion, my deepest longing, my forever quest.

I am reading John Piper’s Desiring God–and as I read, I am crying:
“Lord, awaken my hunger. Lord, awaken my thirst. Lord, awaken longing. Awaken my desire–for You.”

“I know of no other way to triumph over sin long-term than to gain a distaste for it because of a superior satisfaction in God.”
~John Piper, Desiring God

O Lord, I desire to find such superior satisfaction in You!

“…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…We are far too easily pleased.”
~C.S. Lewis, quoted in Desiring God

O Lord, may I not be easily pleased by the small joys this world offers.

“…This persistent and undeniable yearning for happiness was not to be suppressed, but to be glutted–on God!”
~John Piper, Desiring God

O that I may be glutted on You!

“God is glorified not only by His glory’s begin seen, but by its being rejoiced in.”
~Jonathon Edwards, quoted in Desiring God

May my life bring You glory as I rejoice in You.

“The pleasure Christian Hedonism seeks is the pleasure that is in God Himself. He is the end of our search, no the means to some further end.”
~John Piper, Desiring God

O, that I might delight in You, not as a means to my heart’s desire, but because You are my heart’s desire.

(This is a reflection on the foreword and introduction to John Piper’s Desiring God. For more reflections on Desiring God, see my notes here.)

Categories Book Notes, Following Christ

Pleasure seeking

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To be human is to be a pleasure-seeker.

We are fond of thinking of the dissipated fellow partying all night, drunken, sleeping around, and experimenting with drugs as a pleasure-seeker. We are not likely to think of the sturdy fellow who goes to school, gets a job, and raises a family as a pleasure-seeker. Instead, we call him a level-headed chap. Then there are the philanthropists and volunteers. We call them altruistic. Certainly they are not pleasure-seekers. And finally, there is the missionary who travels to a different land to face certain death. He cannot be a pleasure-seeker, we say. We either call him crazy or a hero for his self-sacrifice.

Yet each of these is a pleasure-seeker.

Pleasure seeking does not distinguish one man from another, for pleasure seeking is a trait common to man. What separates one man from another is not that he seeks pleasure, but what he seeks pleasure in.

Furthermore, what separates one man from another is his relative success at not only seeking but finding pleasure.

The dissipated man is forever chasing a fleeting pleasure, a buzz that quickly fades. The steady man may have traded these “buzzes” for the pleasures of stability and comfort. The altruistic man has denied the buzz of the dissipated man–and perhaps even the stability and comforts of the stead man–for the pleasures of “doing the right thing” or the laud of other men.

All of these are pleasure-seekers, seeking pleasure in a variety of things. Each man trades some form of pleasure for another, depending on what he feels most likely to bring him long term pleasure. Some pleasures last longer than others. None of these last forever.

The Christian does the same thing. The difference is that while all these other pleasures are earthly and momentary, the Christian knows the source of true eternal pleasure.

The Chinese believers who face certain death as they seek a way into North Korea to share the gospel of Christ crucified and risen–they do so in pursuit of pleasure. They deem Christ the highest pleasure t be found–and are thus willing to forgo even fleshly life itself in order to chase after Him.

Crazy?

Only if God is not the eternal source of pleasure.

Heroes?

Perhaps.

Or maybe just the ultimate in pleasure-seekers.

God-seekers

(This is the beginning of my notes and reflections on Desiring God by John Piper. See other notes on the same topic by clicking the Desiring God tag.)

Categories Book Notes, Faith

Crying “Uncle”

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How many times in my moments, hours, days, months of sorrow have I cried out to the Lord for mercy? Like a boy wrestling with his much stronger brother, I plead “Uncle.” I can’t take it any more. The pain is too strong. I have not the power to keep fighting. Mercy, I beg.

Could it be in those days that He refused my request in order to answer my prayer?

“Mercy,” I pray.

And in His mercy, He ignores my “Uncle.”

I can’t take it anymore.

In His mercy, He keeps giving it–until I learn to cast my cares on Him.

The pain is too strong.

In His mercy, He lets the pain remain so that my faith can be refined.

I have not the power to keep fighting.

In His mercy, He keeps the fight going until at last I put down my arms.

In His severe mercy, He refuses to change my circumstances–lest in my changed circumstances, my heart should be unchanged.

A Severe Mercy–to give me not what I want, but what I need.

“It was death–Davy’s death–that was the severe mercy. There is no doubt at all that Lewis is saying precisely that. That death, so full of suffering for us both, suffering that still overwhelmed my life, was yet a severe mercy. A mercy as severe as death, a severity as merciful as love.”

~Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy

Categories Following Christ

I’m so vain…

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I think that this blog’s all about me.

Am I the only person who occasionally wastes hours of her day reading her own blog?

I find myself nodding, mm-hmm-ing, and occasionally bursting into an amen.

I want to write myself comments to say “Bravo”.

I become impressed with how I express myself, with the topics I write about, with the way I think about issues.

I’m pretty much my biggest fan.

Which is pretty much not cool at all.

My pride would say that I am wise, that I know the answers, that bekahcubed is a fount of wisdom and discernment.

The word of God says otherwise.

In fact, God’s word places wisdom and pride on opposite ends of a spectrum.

“When pride comes, then comes shame; but with the humble is wisdom.”
~Proverbs 11:2

“By pride comes nothing but strife, But with the well-advised is wisdom.”
~Proverbs 13:10

“In the mouth of a fool is a rod of pride, But the lips of the wise will preserve them.”
~ Proverbs 14:3

In fact, pride is the one thing that Scripture tells us God actively opposes: in both James 4:6 and I Peter 5:5, we read:

“God resists the proud,
But gives grace to the humble.”

In taking pride in my wisdom, I reveal how little wisdom I truly have–
and I set myself in opposition to God and He to me.

How much better that I heed the word of God through James:

“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.”

Categories Book Notes, Theology

I could never myself believe in God

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Notes on John Stott’s
The Cross of Christ
Chapter 13: Suffering and Glory

“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross.”

This quote is found on the back of my library’s copy of The Cross of Christ. I’ve seen it every time I grab the book to read it–and, quite frankly, it has always mystified me.

Sure, if it were not for the cross, God would be a very different God than the God of the Bible, since the cross is the crux of all Scripture (pun partially intended!) But does that mean that I could not believe in Him? I don’t know. I mean, He would still be powerful and in control and creative and so on and so forth. Surely I could still believe in Him. Couldn’t I?

As I said, that quote puzzled me.

But then finally, in the very last chapter of the book, I found the quote’s origins. And then I understood.

“I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as ‘God on the cross’. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples…and stood respectful before the statue of the Buddha…a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering.”
~John Stott, The Cross of Christ

Stott is not speaking of whether or not he could believe that God exists without the cross but of whether or not he could believe in Him–that is, whether he could place his trust in this God.

A God who is incapable of pain, who is merely a detached observer, cannot be trusted. A God who cannot be touched by suffering is a God who can heedlessly cause all sort of suffering. And we would be right to rail at Him: “What are we,” we might say “but pawns in a game, moved about to suit your purposes without any regard for our suffering.”

But the God of the cross is ultimately worthy of trust. For He has experienced our pain, has borne our pain, has drunk the full dregs of God’s wrath. He has suffered at man’s hand and at His own father’s hand. And it is He, who has for our sakes experienced pain beyond our comprehension, who now calls us through the pains of this world to take heart for He is using these light afflictions, which are but for a moment, to work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory (II Cor 4:17).

I could never myself trust in God, if it were not for the cross.

Yet because of the cross, I can make no better choice than to entrust my all to Him who bore my suffering.

(See more of my notes on The Cross of Christ.)

Categories Book Notes, The Week in Words, Theology

Does the cross promote pacifism?

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Notes on John Stott’s
The Cross of Christ
Chapter 12: Loving Our Enemies

Those of you who’ve been following me for a while know that I’m in a book club that’s reading Greg Boyd’s The Myth of a Christian Nation (our last meeting is tonight, boo-hoo.) Well, Boyd, who appears to be from an Anabaptist tradition, seems to be a pacifist (I’m reading the last chapter, about violence, right now).

If you’re at all familiar with my family, you know that I have two brothers in the Marines (currently, they’re “poolies”.) John leaves for training in October. Tim’ll leave in January.

And a few of you know that, over the past year, I’ve developed friendships with several people who ascribe to a basically pacifist or nonviolent position on the basis of their faith–in Christ.

It’s been an interesting process, sorting out my own thoughts in relation to pacifism and the cross and how the two relate–or if they relate.

I definitely don’t have it all figured out. I don’t have any problem with personally being non-violent (I don’t have any desire to join the military, etc.)–but I’m not sure if I’m ready to suggest that others should also subscribe to non-violence, or that I should promote non-violence as national policy, etc.

Of course, those are merely side issues compared to the big question that I’m wrestling with, that is: How does the cross inform a Christian’s involvement or non-involvement, support or opposition, approval or disapproval of war and other acts including violence? Or, to put it more simply: Does the cross promote pacifism?

Many of those within my book club (who tend towards non-violence) have said that they do believe in some concept of justified violence–that states have some authority to “wield the sword” (a la Romans 13) which results in violent acts of justice. The question, then, is whether Christians can and/or should be participants in this just violence. This has been my primary struggle.

John Stott addresses Christian involvement in state administration of justice (including via violent means) in The Cross of Christ:

“It is important to note that Paul uses the same vocabulary at the end of Romans 12 [‘do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath’] and at the beginning of Romans 13 [‘he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath’]. The words ‘wrath’ (orge) and ‘revenge/punishment’ (ekdikesis and ekdikos) occur in both passages. Forbidden to God’s people in general, they are assigned to God’s ‘servants’ in particular, namely officials of the state. Many Christians find great difficulty in what they perceive here to be an ethical ‘dualism’. I should like to try to clarify this issue.

First, Paul is not distinguishing between two entities, church and state, as in Luther’s well-known doctrine of the two kingdoms…

Secondly, Paul is not distinguishing between two spheres of Christian activity, private and public, so that (to put it crudely) we must love our enemies in private but may hate them in public….

Thirdly, what Paul is doing is to distinguish between two roles, personal and official. Christians are always Christians (in church and state, in public and private), under the same moral authority of Christ, but are given different roles (at home, at work, and in the community) which make different actions appropriate. For example, a Christian in the role of a policeman may use force to arrest a criminal, which in the role of a private citizen he may not; he may as a judge condemn a prisoner…and he may as an executioner (assuming that capital punishment may in some circumstances be justified) kill… This is not to say that arresting, judging, and executing are in themselves wrong (which would establish different moralities for public and private life), but that they are right responses to criminal behavior, which however God has entrusted to particular officials of the state.”

~John Stott The Cross of Christ

This makes a lot of sense to me–but still leaves the question open in my mind: But should a Christian seek out “official” roles in which they must perform actions that are not permissible to them in their “personal” roles as private citizens and members of the body of Christ?

The Week in WordsSince bulk of this post is an extended quote from Chapter 12 of John Stott’s The Cross of Christ, I’m linking it up in lieu of my regular Week in Words post. Collect more quotes from throughout the week with Barbara H’s meme “The Week in Words”.

(See more of my notes on The Cross of Christ.)

***I’d also like to clarify that we should attempt to keep our comments Christ-honoring. I know that this is a topic that can get people riled up (I do, after all, belong to a military-ish family, and you know those pacifists :-P) But let’s try to be respectful.****