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In addition to Jayber Crow, our Faculty Ministry Leadership Team is also reading Under the Unpredictable Plant by Eugene Peterson. I’m pretty excited about both this book, which uses the story of Jonah as a framework and its central idea of vocational holiness. If I had space and time, I would quote the entire introduction. Instead, here’s just a snippet.

Peterson begins by describing a crisis he faced when he was 30 years old (a symbolic age, by the way - it was the age when Hebrew priests traditionally began their service, and the age when Ezekiel and Jesus began their public ministries) and just a young pastor. He felt a chasm open between his life as a Christian and his life as a pastor, and Peterson, after a page or two, concludes that this chasm was not unique to him. One reason is the uncapitalized vocations of the pastorate.

Spiritual leadership vocations [pastors, missionaries, teachers, deacons, etc.] in America are badly undercapitalized. Far more activity is generated by them than there are resources to support them. The volume of business in religion far outruns the spiritual capital of its leaders. The initial consequence is that leaders substitute image for substance, satisfying the customer temporarily but only temporarily, on good days denying that there is any problem (easy to do, since business is so very good), on bad days hoping that someone will show up with an infusion of capital. No one is going to show up. The final consequence is bankruptcy. The bankruptcies are dismayingly frequent.

There was an ad in this morning’s paper that confused me.  It was for Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project, and the ad started with this scenario: “Your sons favorite ballplayer just got arrested.” There is then a looping, swooping string of possible advice to give your son - I’m not sure if it’s meant to be a variety of options or a single conversation - that read,

Say he’s an example of how NOT to act -> Athletes aren’t role models -> Keep your opinions to yourself. -> Life’s all about second chances. -> Who am I to judge?

I’m not really sure what “keep your opinions to yourself” is all about; I’m not familiar with any U.S. athletes being arrested as political prisoners.  But it struck me that we talk a lot about athletes being role models or not being role models, either as good citizens or bad seeds, as if a person was one or the other and could never change.  Here in Cincinnati in recent years, we’ve had our share of “bad seed”-type athletes (or so we think - more on that in a second).  Most of the time, they are either written off altogether as too much risk, or their athletic ability earns them a second, third, or fourth chance to be on the team. Our city has also had its share of  “role model” athletes, who are put on such a high pedestal that they seem almost like gods.

We’ve also been fortunate enough to have had a local athlete who has given us a glimpse of true reality: Josh Hamilton. Hamilton was a golden boy, the #1 pick in the baseball draft, who quickly turned into a “bad seed,” complete with drug addictions and scary-looking tattoos.  But then, so far as anyone can tell these types of things, Hamilton was converted to Christ, and, through the power of Christ, his life has been transformed and redeemed.  Praise God.

We tend to lump athletes (all celebrities, really) into “good guys” and “bad guys,” as if life were some sort of action movie or pro wrestling set-up. We tend not to take the time to think about athletes as human beings who happen to be extraordinarily gifted in one area of life, who are made in God’s image, who have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and who are in need of Christ to redeem their lives.

The Liberty Mutual ad was not Christian, did not even suggest what the right way to approach their scenario might be.  (The ad’s tag line is “What’s the responsible point of view? Everyone has one.  Let’s hear yours.”  I don’t think I buy the idea that “everyone” has a “responsible” point of view.)  Yet it motivated me to pray for some of the local athletes who have gotten themselves into trouble.  They are usually young men doing the stupid, destructive things that young men tend to do.  I really don’t care if they get their athletic careers back on track, since the celebrity and wealth that come from those careers seems to be enabling their destructive behavior.  But I confess that, for the first time, I was moved to pray for them and their families, that Christ would redeem their lives, and heal both their wounds and the wound they have inflicted on others.

May God make it so.

From the Book of Common Prayer (Canada):

Almighty God, of whose only gift cometh wisdom and understanding: We beseech thee with thy gracious favour to behold our universities, colleges, and schools, that knowledge may be increased among us, and all good learning flourish and abound.  Bless all who teach and all who learn; and grant that in humility of heart they may ever look unto thee, who art the fountain of all wisdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Lately, the Psalms have grown in their importance to me.  I have been listening to John Piper’s podcast sermons from his recent series on the Psalms, and found myself meditating particularly on Psalm 42:

Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your faith in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God. (Psalm 42, TNIV)

Here’s Piper’s sermon on Psalm 42.  Piper notes that the psalmist is confident in God’s love, though his current state of mind is depressed.  The psalmist speaks to his own soul, educating his soul in the truth of God’s love.

At Lakeside, I’ll be teaching a series, beginning next month, on the same psalms that Piper preached on.  We’ll be focusing on inductive study of the psalms, but I’ll be recommending Piper’s sermons as good listening for the week after our own study.

I am amazed at the miracle of the New Testament. To me, it’s mere existence is one of the touchstones of my faith in God.

Let’s assume for one moment that Jesus was not the Son of God, and that there is no Holy Spirit. Jesus wrote nothing himself; all of the records of his life and teaching come from his followers and his followers’ followers. According to some scholars, we can’t even be sure that he really said what his followers say he said. According to some other scholars, the rest of the New Testament after the Gospels - the letters of Paul, Peter, et al., the Revelation of John - are dramatically different than what Jesus “really” taught. Again, I’m not endorsing these thoughts, but just telling you what some people think.

What then are we left with? The text of the New Testament has spurred on some of the most profound moral achievements in the history of mankind: Augustine’s philosophy, the great monasteries, the life of Francis of Assissi, humanitarian projects like hospitals and orphanages, the dramatic rise of literacy in the West, the work of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Theresa. The list could go on and on. Not bad for a group of smalltown fishermen and merchants.

The New Testament was written by a small group of people, mostly from a couple of villages in Galilee. Luke and Paul probably had the equivalent of a university education, but the rest were tradesmen. Yet their writings triggered not only dozens of moral revolutions over the last 2,000 years, but also radically reinterpreted the Hebrew Scriptures, completely transforming an entire religion. Assuming that authorship is correct, then we have, at minimum, seven of the world’s greatest moral geniuses - the 4 Gospel writers, plus Paul, Peter, and James. I would argue that the work of any one or two of them would be enough to found a religion, yet we have at least seven, not even counting the anonymous author of Hebrews, or considering whether any of their attributed writings were written by someone else. And remember: most of these “geniuses” were Galilean tradesmen, considered uneducated by their neighbors. All of them were contemporaries with one another, and their collected works were written over a span of no more than 50 years. Along the way, they created from scratch a new literary genre (the Gospel), wrote the highest achievement in all of Jewish apocalyptic literature, and redefined the possiblities for letter writing.

Either this is the greatest coincidence that history has ever seen, or there’s something to this idea that Jesus is the Son of God and sent the Holy Spirit to teach and inspire his disciples.

“Favorite books” is a stand-by question for personal information, and I see “The Bible” listed on many of these.  Recently, I was reading a profile of a professional basketball player in ESPN the Magazine.  When they asked for his favorite book, he said something like, “The Bible. But I don’t really read much of anything.  Oops…I’d better not say that, I’m working with Read to Achieve [the NBA's literacy charity].” 

When people say that their favorite book is the Bible, do they mean that the Bible is a book they read regularly, that has lots of underlined passages, that they treasure in their personal library? Or is it a code for “I’m a Christian,” even if they haven’t opened their Bible in years? 

Why Church Matters: Worship, Ministry, and Mission in Practice by Jonathan R. Wilson bridges the gap between theologians of the church and practitioners of the church.  Though the book is short (158 pp.), Wilson’s ambition is large:

In this book I intend to give a relatively comprehensive account of the practices of the church: the role of the pastor, the proclamation of the gospel, the celebration of the sacraments, worship, evangelism, discipline, and many more activities are developed as practices.

“Practice” is an important word to Wilson.  By “practice,” he means regularly developed, intentional acts that create and shape a culture or community.  He includes worship, communion, baptism, discipleship, preaching, and other acts of the church. Read the rest of this entry »

In my work with the Emerging Scholars Network and Faculty Ministry, we call Christian students and faculty to be “redemptive influences within higher education.”  People often ask me what that means, and it’s tempting to paint a picture of thousands of C.S. Lewises, spiritual giants at every college in the country.  First of all, that would be unrealistic - someone like C.S. Lewis comes along once in a century.  But more importantly, it would give a distorted image of what a faithful follower of Christ in the academy looks like.  C.S. Lewis is famous because of his many acclaimed books, now being made into blockbuster movies, and his justified fame as both an apologist and scholar. However, as Lewis himself pointed out in The Great Divorce, greatness in heaven is very different than greatness in the world.  Worldly success, such as that enjoyed by Lewis, is not a guaranteed result of faithfulness to Christ.  The very opposite may be the case. Read the rest of this entry »

I recently read Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a book I had long wanted to read and which I wish I had read much sooner.  Among the many wise things Bonhoeffer writes in this short book, he describes “the day alone,” and counsels Christians to spend time alone - really, alone with God - in what he calls “meditation.”  This meditation 

is to be devoted to the Scriptures, private prayer, and intercession, and it has no other purpose.  There is no occasion here for spiritual experimentation. 

The whole time, though, is to be guided by meditation on Scripture.  Both your private prayer and your intercession for others, Bonhoeffer advises, should be guided by the Scriptures you meditate upon. 

In another book that I have started reading, Why Church Matters by Jonathan R. Wilson, Wilson describes theology as “the language of faith, not the language about faith.” Bonhoeffer centers our prayers in the words of Scripture so that God’s language will shape us, rather than our false ideas of God shaping our reading of Scripture. 

I’ve long been uncomfortable with our contemporary habit of attacking our dead ancestors in the church for their blind spots.   I hope you know what I mean: you’ll be reading some Christian classic from 100, 200, even 1500 years ago, and suddenly come across a phrase or thought that is so utterly abhorrent to you, that for a second you can’t believe that this person was actually a believer. For example, I read a book review recently, in which the reviewer condemned the book’s author for making the same mistakes as Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin.   (If I’m going to be making mistakes, that’s the company I want to keep!) 

It’s easy for us to condemn these uncomfortable statements from the past as patently absurd and plainly anti-gospel.  And our culture habitually favors the new, so it’s easy for us to see our current culture as inherently superior to that of the past.  And, let’s admit it, it’s easy: the dead are no longer around to defend themselves.  We don’t have to worry about some preacher from 300 years ago calling us up and giving us an earful for distorting his sermon. 

We have our own cultural blind spots, and reading books from the past with a hyper-critical eye robs us of the chance of having our own blind spots pointed out.  C. S. Lewis and G. K. Chesterton each made this point in various places, and I recently heard an interview with the late Jaroslav Pelikan that again made this point well.  Pelikan was a church historian, and he described his role as “filing a minority report for the past 2,000 years.” 

Secondly, we deny the communion of the saints when we are too quick to point out the faults of our spiritual ancestors.  Today, it is easy to condemn a dead believer or long-gone community of believers for their now-rejected beliefs.  It is much harder to extend grace to them and accept them as brothers and sisters in Christ. It is much harder to forgive their faults, and praise them for the accomplishments they achieved without the benefit of hindsight.  It is much harder to put aside judgment, and submit ourselves to their judgment, so that our own blind spots can be revealed.