Advent Prayer

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

-from The Book of Common Prayer

Confessions #13: Sand and Love

"If physical objects give you pleasure, praise God for them and return love to their Maker lest, in the things that please you, you displease him. If souls please you, they are being loved in God; for they also are mutable and acquire stability by being established in him...so seize what souls you can to take with you to him, and say to them: 'Him we love; he made these things and is not far distant.' For he did not create and then depart; the things derived from him have their being in him."

- St. Augustine

We are worshipers. That is our business. We see, we find, we gather, we declare. We are on the hunt, metal detectors and butterfly nets in hand, gathering up bits of hidden treasure and created glory, to put them together, labeled, organized, on display for the world to see, and to marvel.

Once you sign up for one credit card, it seems like you get offers from every other credit card. It's like the girl in college that not many guys are interested in until she gets a boyfriend. And all those offers come with a mock credit card as if to say, "Look! Here's what our credit card looks like! Put it in your wallet; carry it around with you. You'd rather have our credit card in your wallet, right?" Just for convenience sake, they put in those reply envelopes with the big black letters "BUSINESS REPLY MAIL" boxed in with thick black lines. It's all very official.

I wonder, what if instead of a fake credit card they sent me a caterpillar? One of those caterpillars that is just ready to cocoon; all it needs is a nearby overhanging twig, or lampshade. I have a lamp beside my bed; it's connected to my bedside table, a package deal. The caterpillar could hang out, make laps around the lampshade while I read my book before going to sleep. I'd bring in some leaves for him to munch on as a bedtime snack, before he and I cover up for the night. Of course, his night is a bit longer and more...effective, I would say. If only our nights were so effective...

So after the given amount of time for all the transforming and wiggling that goes on for the caterpillar to become a butterfly, I suppose I'd play around with him a bit, show him to my friends, and take some pictures, us and the butterfly. Then I'd take those pictures and stuff them back in the envelope marked BUSINESS REPLY MAIL, return to sender. Why? 'Cause that's the business I suppose. Maybe he puts the pictures up in his office somewhere, next to the ones of budding trees, advancing glaciers, new families, restored relationships. He keeps sending out more letters with more reply envelopes, every day, every minute...every second?

This whole business of being human worshipers is like one big expedition of "found" art. We see, we find, we gather, we declare. We take from the "raw material" of the created order, as Pastor Keller would say, and put it together for beauty, advancement, and human flourishing. We are mothers shopping for the family dinner; we are archaeologists digging for lost cities; we are businessmen building networks of relational pragmatism; we are children with cups in hand building empires out of sand.

In Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made. He gave life to everything that has been made, and his life brought light to everyone. For in Him all things were created: things in heaven and things on earth, visible and invisible, whether the sand that makes a castle or the love that makes a marriage; all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together, whether it is sand, or love. And He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have supremacy...glory.

Confessions #12: Magneto

One of Augustine's stumbling blocks to Christianity and the Bible in particular initially was his aversion to the stories of the Old Testament where he often found those reputed to be "righteous" to do some seemingly very "unrighteous" things. He, like the Manichees with whom he spent many years in fellowship, was disgusted by the polygamy of the patriarchs, the character of those like Moses and David who committed murder, and the Old Testament sacrifices.

But along the way of his education, Augustine came upon Cicero's Hortensius, in which he was drawn irresistibly to the search for wisdom and truth in the study of philosophy. Augustine comments, "The book changed my feelings. It altered my prayers, Lord, to be towards you yourself. It gave me different values and priorities. Suddenly every vain hope became empty to me, and I longed for the immortality of wisdom with an incredible ardor in my heart. I began to rise up and return to you."

Augustine also recalled about Hortensius that he was "impressed not by the book's refining effect on my style and literary expression but by the content." In the footnote, Chadwick remarks that "among Augustine's sharp criticisms of contemporary culture of his time is the proposition that it valued for far higher than content." How true that seems to be today! How many more albums have been sold by the packaged pop bands than by those that sing about meaningful issues? Or how many times has the latest blockbuster been more of a glorified fireworks show with some witty lines and a vague moral platitude than a film of substance and reflective analysis of life and culture? It is not much different in the Church where if the music doesn't sound a certain way or the design isn't quite cool enough, we pass it by regardless of the content of the message. We live in a very similar age.

So it was Augustine's reading of philosophy, particularly Hortensius, that lead him back to the Scriptures. Cicero had exhorted him "not to study one particular sect but to love and seek and pursue and hold fast and strongly embrace wisdom itself, wherever found." One thing that held Augustine back in his enthusiasm for Cicero's call to philosophy was this--"that the name of Christ was not contained in the book." Because of his mother's influence, the memory of Christ was implanted in him deeply, and "any book which lacked this name, however well written or polished or true, could not entirely grip [him]."

In Augustine's return the the Scriptures he found "something neither open to the proud nor laid bare to mere children; a text lowly to the beginner but, on further reading, of mountainous difficulty and enveloped in mysteries." He was not ready at that time to begin the ascent into the mysteries of the Scriptures. Augustine was still thought too highly of his own taste and preferred the large tomes of philosophy current at that time. He was not yet able to start from the beginning, as it were, as a child. But the seed had been planted in him; the seed of hunger for wisdom, for truth, over against the love of vanity and physical pleasures. Not only did Augustine direct his search upward through the thoughts and words of the philosophers, but also through his reflection on the created order. Still, in all these things, Augustine still was hungry, hungry for truth, for nourishment. As he said, "I derived no nourishment from them, but was left more exhausted than before." So it was this memory of Christ and the hunger that his absence affected that would eventually lead Augustine back to the Scriptures and to the God whom Scriptures reveal.

The last line of one of John Donne's holy sonnets (which are holy not because they're sonnets, though many a high school teacher might disagree, but because their content is about that which is holy) goes like this: "And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart." Adamant is a magnetic loadstone, so you can imagine what would the nature of its relationship with iron be like. So it is with our hearts, hard and heavy as iron before the Lord. We do not, indeed we cannot, rise to meet him in the air, as the rapture imagery so goes. His Word hangs in the air like a thick cloud, unreachable, but even if we did reach it, we have not the capability of capturing it's shape or form. So we need him, to come on those clouds, like Magneto, to draw us up into is his atmosphere, His Word, His life. Come Lord Jesus, come quickly.

Communities of the Kingdom

N. T. Wright on the Gospel and Empire (read: "the man") in today's world:

Somehow, the gospel of Jesus has to be announced as the good news over against all the self-serving power-broking of our day. This won’t be easy. But the start for us, as it was for Paul, is without a doubt the creation of communities, cells of people under Caesar’s nose but loyal to Jesus as Lord and committed to living by faith, hope and love. The call to worship and prayer, to invoking the powerful name of Jesus and to applying his victory to the sometimes dehumanizing structures and power games of our day, remains at the top of the list of Christian priorities, of gospel priorities.

Irish Theological Quarterly
72 (2007) 131–146
Paul as Preacher: The Gospel Then and Now, p.145
N. T. Wright
© 2007 Irish Theological Quarterly

It's a strong vision for the creation of and building up of close-knit, deeply-impacting, far-reaching Christian communities, churches.

Faith Bubbles Up

N. T. Wright on Paul's preaching:

God’s word, that is, the message about Jesus as the climax of God’s saving plan, the unfolding of God’s future putting-to-rights of all things, is announced. Foolish and scandalous though it is, when you tell this story, the story of the great eschatological apocalypse that has taken place in Jesus, God’s spirit goes to work in a new apocalyptic event, itself part of the inaugurated eschatology. Human hearts and minds, to their own great surprise, are opened, warmed, challenged, broken and healed and remade, all through the word and the Spirit. And the immediate result, as any reader of Paul will know, is faith: discovering that the creator of the world is our very own Abba, father; believing, against all other evidence and wisdom, that Jesus really was raised from the dead, and that his death was therefore not a nonsensical disaster but really did deal with sin; hailing him gladly as lord.

‘If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord,’ says Paul in Romans 10, ‘and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.’ Granted, each time he defines Christian faith it comes out slightly differently, but that passage sums it up pretty well. The preaching says, Jesus is Lord and God raised him from the dead; the Spirit works through that preaching, so that (although it’s scandalous nonsense) faith bubbles up, the faith which is thus the sure sign that the word has done its work and which is for that reason the single badge, the only badge, by which Christians are to be identified.

Irish Theological Quarterly
72 (2007) 131–146
Paul as Preacher: The Gospel Then and Now, p.138
N. T. Wright
© 2007 Irish Theological Quarterly

Confessions #11: The Real World

As a young guy in Carthage, Augustine was "captivated by theatrical shows". He loved them because he identified with them; their performances moved him; he craved to feel response to suffering on stage without having to suffer it himself. Looking back, it seemed strange to Augustine, foolish and grotesque even, that he and others would find pleasure in the pain induced by the sufferings on stage which they would never wish upon themselves or their friends and family.

"What is this but amazing folly?" Augustine remarked in his Confessions. What use is it to excite grief without the opportunity to show mercy because the object of that grief is fictitious? Is it not sadistic that for the spectator "the greater his pain, the greater his approval of the actor in these representations"?

"Tears and agonies," Augustine says, "are objects of love. Certainly everyone wishes to enjoy himself."

But Augustine does see some light to this experience of feeling grief and compassion if it then in turn moves one to mercy so that there would be no cause for sorrow. But this is not possible for the actor, because it is all an act. Right...?

So then, Augustine recounts his miserable state,

"But at that time, poor thing that I was, I loved to suffer and sought out occasions for such suffering. So when an actor on stage gave a fictional imitation of someone else's misfortunes, I was the more pleased; and the more vehement the attraction for me, the more the actor compelled my tears to flow. There can be no surprise that an unhappy sheep wandering from your flock and impatient of your protection was infected by a disgusting sore. Hence came my love for sufferings, but not a kind that pierced me very deeply; for my longing was not to experience myself miseries such as I saw on stage. I wanted only to hear stories and imaginary legends of sufferings which, as it were, scratched me on the surface. Yet like the scratches of fingernails, they produced inflamed spots, pus, and repulsive sores. That was my kind of life. Surely, my God, it was no real life at all?"

It was no real life because there was no real grief, no real mercy, no real objects of compassion but only "representations of [his] own miseries", and no real effect, but instead they only "fueled [his] fire" to continue in his pernicious lifestyle.

The Real World, circa 4th century A.D. "Surely, ... it was [not] real life at all."

Confessions #10: the love of love, part 2

So, it occurred to me after writing the last Confessions post, that there might me something more to say about Augustine's comment that he "rushed headlong into love, by which I was longing to be captured." That seemed to capture the attitude toward romance and relationships that prevail in the social consciousness of the day, and my own as well. Under the auspices of the supposed proverb, "love is blind", there seems to be a willful blindness and abandonment to the consuming nature of romantic desire. It is seen as the "yellow-brick road" that leads to the "emerald city" of lifelong relational bliss where many discover that the promises there made by the "wizard" are hype and disillusionment.

It seems that the same romantic obsessiveness was alive in Augustine's day, even without such stimulants as You've Got Mail and The Bachelor. It was only later that Augustine came around to understand his error in not considering it "more than a marginal issue how the beauty of having a wife lies in the obligation to respect the discipline of marriage and bring up children." It is not unlike the experience of practicing many of the spiritual disciplines. Their beauty lies not only in the "highs" of experience, but also in the "lows" and therefore in the entire covenanted experience itself.

Of course, I don't speak from marital experience, just by way of extrapolation and analogy. But, from what I've heard, this seems to be the right way to see things. What do you think?

A Prayer for Thanksgiving

Prayer of Thanksgiving

by Walter Rauschenbusch

O God, we thank you for this earth, our home;
For the wide sky and the blessed sun,
For the salt sea and the running water,
For the everlasting hills
And the never-resting winds,
For trees and the common grass underfoot.
We thank you for our senses
By which we hear the songs of birds,
And see the splendor of the summer fields,
And taste of the autumn fruits,
And rejoice in the feel of the snow,
And smell the breath of the spring.
Grant us a heart wide open to all this beauty;
And save our souls from being so blind
That we pass unseeing
When even the common thornbush
Is aflame with your glory,
O God our creator,
Who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

From Living God’s Justice: Reflections and Prayers, compiled by The Roundtable Association of Diocesan Social Action Directors

Confessions #9: the love of love

Having now traveled a few days into the Thanksgiving holidays, my little writing project has been set aside for other things that have been more immanent, namely our regional staff retreat with Campus Crusade for Christ staff and the normal catching up with the family. So, I may only have a couple of entries this week, but I hope they will overcome their poverty of quantity with a wealth of quality. ;)

Here I start on Book 3 of The Confessions, where Augustine recounts his coming to Carthage in 370 A.D as a young man of 16 to begin his formal studies. It was in Carthage that Augustine began his life of high culture, learning, and promiscuity. It was not until he reached 18 and read Cicero's Hortensius that it dawned on Augustine that happiness was not found in food, sex, and purely material pleasures. In that respect, there are not a few similarities between Augustine as a young male university student and the experience and temptations of many today. The lure and hunger for physical pleasure, notoriety, and and materialism are as alive today, or even more so, as they were in the fourth century. There is nothing new under the sun.

As it begins, Augustine recalls that he "came to Carthage and all around me hissed a cauldron of illicit loves. As yet I had never been in love and I longed to love." How often this is the situation for not only the modern college student, but even for those entering high school and even junior high. The "cauldron of illicit loves" has boiled over and filtered down through our tv's, computers, iPods, and lunchroom conversations. In that respect, I wonder if the cauldron burns hotter and broader than it once did in Augustine's day.

Augustine goes on to say, regarding the fact that he longed to love but had never been in love, that "from a subconscious poverty of mind I hated the thought of being less inwardly destitute. I sought an object for my love, I was in love with love, and I hated safety and a path free of snares." It should be said that Augustine's understanding of "love" was certainly age-appropriate and not the mature, self-giving sort of love that is true love, marital or otherwise. On reading these remarks at first, I didn't quite understand what Augusine meant by saying he "hated the thought of being less inwardly destitute." I thought that certainly he did not want to be more inwardly destitute. In Albert Outler's translation, we have Augustine saying it this way, "from a hidden hunger, I hated myself for not feeling more intensely a sense of hunger." So, it occurred to me that although Augustine had not experienced that love for which he longed, he was reflecting on the fact that he loved his desire for illicit love so much so that he hated that it was not stronger than it was. He thought the idea of his becoming less hungry for this illicit love as something to be despised and avoided altogether, and only later on did he realize that this was an indication, not of the virtue of his illicit hunger, but of its poverty and the magnitude of his real hunger beneath it for incorruptible love. Augustine loved his illicit hunger, not knowing that it would overtake him to consume him. He said,

"my hunger was internal, deprived of inward food, that is of you yourself, my God. But that was not the kind of hunger I felt. I was without any desire for incorruptible nourishment, not because I was replete with it, but the emptier I was, the more unappetizing such food became...I was glad to be in bondage, tied with troublesome chains, with the result that I was flogged with the red hot iron rods of jealousy, suspicion, fear, anger, and contention."

I have noticed this same inclination in my own heart, that I find many times that I am in love with desire, illicit or otherwise, to the exclusion of its object, the corruption of the purposes of desire itself, and the loss of real love. This affects relationships in the most radical way. Several years ago while interning with a youth group in near Houston, I realized during the Sunday morning worship time that my anxiety over how I "felt" during the singing time was really more an indication of me worshiping not the Lord who is to be worshiped but the experience of worship itself. It was and is an idolatry to be repented of, worshiping the relationship over the one I relate to, or in the words of Romans, "worshiping the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever." I also find this principle at work concerning human relationships, especially of the romantic kind, that I (I would say "we", but I dare only speak for myself) tend to love the experience of the relationship more than the one with whom I am in relationship. This is that very same self-centered destructive principle also at work in worship that I mentioned earlier, where we become "spiritually inbred". If Christ and his image is not at the center, then things become convoluted indeed!

Toward the end of this first paragraph, Augustine recalls how he had "rushed headlong into love, by which I was longing to be captured." But then he prays, "'My God, my mercy' in your goodness you mixed in much vinegar with that sweetness." So this continues to be the theme of much of Augustine's journey to conversion, that God exposed to him the depravity of his own pursuits so that he would turn to the source of true satisfaction and love. He was restless, and his heart would be at rest until it rested in God. We also pray with Augustine that in His mercy God would mix in vinegar with all that is at first sweet in our sinful pursuits so that we would return to Him, "the shepherd and guardian of our souls."

Transmission of the Bible: not like the telephone game

Dan Wallace, from Dallas Theological Seminary on the nature of textual variants in the New Testament (i.e. places where the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament differ from each other). If you've ever been told that the Scriptures have been corrupted by copying and then have come to find out that there are in fact differences in many of the Greek copies of the New Testament that we have, then this article will be a big help. Dan Wallace is one of the best Greek and New Testament scholars around, but he's also a good teacher too!

In it he notes that at most only 1% of the textual variants in the New Testament manuscripts are meaningful with respect to influencing Christian doctrine and viable as being part of the original writer's words. So, 99% of the things that don't match between the different copies of the NT are inconsequential!

Confessions #8: the gift of worship

"Therefore he who made me is good, and he is my good, and I exult to him, for all the good things that I was even as a boy. My sin consisted in this, that I sought pleasure, sublimity, and truth not in God but in his creatures, in myself and other created beings. So it was that I plunged into miseries, confusions, and errors. My God, I give thanks to you, my source of sweet delight, and my glory and my confidence. I thank you for your gifts. Keep them for me, for in this way you will keep me. The talents you have given will increase and be perfected, and I will be with you since it was your gift to me that I exist."
- Augustine

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and he said, "It is good." He made the heavens above and the earth beneath and filled them with birds and fish and plants and other animals, and he made man and woman after himself to govern and cultivate the earth as his stewards. But man and woman chose to worship the things they were to rule over, even themselves, and we continue to plunge ourselves into "miseries, confusions, and errors."

It's like becoming spiritually inbred. We worship ourselves and so complicate, multiply, and propagate the corruptions in our own nature. So Jesus comes to fix our broken, crooked DNA with "the word of life, which is able to save our souls."

Maybe that's why he's the "seed of Abraham". Like a human genome project in the divine laboratory, and project to map our flaws and inject the healing strand, the seed of new life, from which sprouts true worship, in spirit and in truth, to the creator himself. This true worship, spreading like a virus of light throughout the darkest rooms of our heart to realign, renew, rebuild, refresh, restore.

It says of Jesus that when he ascended "gave gifts to men", gifts of worship I assume, so that in possession of them we are possessed by the one who gives them, in thankfulness, in worship.

Some say that this life is merely preparation for the next. If that is true, and gifts and talents are really gifts for worship, then I had better get busy worshiping. Or else, I might not have much to do in the next life but sit on the bench. Whatever the afterlife (or life after life after death, as some say) holds, it sure isn't a place you'd want to be "benched" at for lack of practice.

Time to start existing.

Confessions #7: In the image

"In you are the constant causes of inconstant things. All mutable things have in you their immutable origins. In you all irrational and temporal things have the everlasting causes of their life."
- Augustine

"God has instituted prayer so as to confer upon his creatures the dignity of being causes."
- Blaise Pascal

Blog reading level

Not the highest, but I'm satisfied... :)

What's yours?

"authentic Christian mission"

“Historically the church has indeed seen its mission in these broad terms. It is not a matter of engaging in both the gospel and social action, as if Christian social action was something separate from the gospel itself. The gospel has to be demonstrated in word and deed. Biblically, the gospel includes the totality of all that is good news from God for all that is bad news in human life–in every sphere. So like Jesus, authentic Christian mission has included good news for the poor, compassion for the sick and suffering justice for the oppressed, liberation for the enslaved. The gospel of the Servant of God in the power of the Spirit of God addresses every area of human need and every area that has been broken and twisted by sin and evil. And the heart of the gospel, in all of these areas, is the cross of Christ.”
- Christopher J. H. Wright (italics mine)

- found on the front page of The Boars Head Tavern blog

Confessions #6: Woe to the Silent

"But in these words what have I said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? What has anyone achieved in words when he speaks about you? Yet woe to those who are silent about you because, though loquacious with verbosity, whey have nothing to say."

In the notes, Chadwick observes that in the Confessions "the loquacious" are usually "either pagan philosophical critics rejecting the Christian revelation or Manichees." So, it was not for want of speaking about the divine that Augustine criticized these, but for want of speaking truly and meaningfully about God. They were somewhat like the smooth-talkers and the weak-willed women of 2 Timothy who were "always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth" or those from 1 Timothy who devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship which is from God by faith."

Instead of these wanderings and divergences, as Paul told Timothy, "the aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith." And as Augustine observes, in love we must speak of God, of His goodness and his nature, or else we will find ourselves like the prophet Jeremiah who said,

If I say, "I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his name,"
there is in my heart as it were a burning fire
shut up in my bones,
and I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot.

So, "since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, 'I believed, and so I spoke,' we also believe, and so we also speak" with words that at best fall just short of the Word whose words are "spirit and life". If we don't speak, it is true, the rocks will cry out. But why wait for them, when it is we who have been charged to speak to the mountains and have them cast into the sea?

I will end with Augustine's words that led to his observation above:

"Most high, utterly good, utterly powerful, most omnipotent, most merciful and most just, deeply hidden yet most intimately present, perfection of both beauty and strength, stable and incomprehensible, immutable yet changing all things, never new, never old, making everything new and 'leading' the proud 'to be old without their knowledge'; always active, always in repose, gathering to yourself but not in need, supporting and filling and protecting, creating and nurturing and bringing to maturity, searching even though to you nothing is lacking; you love without burning, you are jealous in a way that is free of anxiety, you 'repent' without the pain of regret, you are wrathful and remain tranquil. You will a change without any change in your design. You recover what you find, yet have never lost..."

Peterson on living in reality

Every call to worship is a call into the Real World.…I encounter such constant and widespread lying about reality each day and meet with such skilled and systematic distortion of the truth that I’m always in danger of losing my grip on reality. The reality, of course, is that God is sovereign and Christ is savior. The reality is that prayer is my mother tongue and the eucharist my basic food. The reality is that baptism, not Myers-Briggs, defines who I am.

—Eugene H. Peterson
Take & Read

-Found it on the front page of City Church of San Francisco

Confessions #5: Heart-rest

"You are great, Lord, and highly to be praised," begins the first paragraph of Augustine's Confessions. Although humankind bears "'his mortality with him', carrying with him the witness of his sin and the witness that you 'resist the proud'...Nevertheless," Augustine prays, "to praise you is the desire of man, a little piece of your creation. You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." Doubtless you have heard this refrain before but possibly did not know where it came from. "You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you." It is the theme of the Confessions and of Augustine's story found in its pages.

"The LORD our righteousness", the Israelites said of YHWH, their faithful, covenant, creator-God.
"He himself is our peace", said the apostle Paul of Jesus, YHWH incarnate, God in the flesh "reconciling the world to Himself."
Jesus himself says, "come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
And we therefore follow the urging of the author of Hebrews who says, "let us therefore strive to enter that rest."
So we say, "Yes, Lord. You urge us to 'keep ourselves in your love, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.' So fill us with 'joy and peace in believing' so that we may 'abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit'. We are yours; you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you."

Confessions #4

So the final comment on what is written in the the introduction (I must get on to the book itself!) will be in relation to this quote:

"In Augustine's time there were a few educated people for whom all religion was superstition; but the dominant consensus held to belief in divine providence, visible in the mathematical order and coherence of the world, and given special manifestations to individuals by dreams and oracles. Design was evident to the eye."

How different it seems to be in America these days! Do you agree? Is belief in "divine providence" more common than not among the average American?

Throughout his life and wanderings, as Chadwick observes, Augustine "never lost his belief in the being and providence of God." Even though he was at times very far away from the Christian faith, he still seemed to hold on (unknowingly) to the promise of Hebrews 11:6 that "whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him."

Even in the very first paragraphs of the Confessions, this theme of seeking and finding is already apparent:

"In seeking them they find him, and in finding they will praise him. Lord, I would seek you, calling upon you--and calling upon you is an act of believing in you...It is your gift to me."

So, in Augustine's day, although there was a common assumption in divine providence with the occasional divine "flare up", it seems that the belief in a real, immanent God who is actively involved in world and people's lives was not the reigning perspective. But Augustine discovered otherwise. Let us pray that would be the case in this day as well.

Confessions #3

In discussing the events leading up to Augustine's conversion, Chadwick notes in the introduction that Augustine's move to Milan from North Africa coincided with a growing intellectual crisis in which his "lost belief in Mani (the leader of a gnostic religious group) was replaced by a skepticism about the possibility of any certainty. He devoured the writings of skeptical philosophers of the Academic school telling him that certainty is not available except in questions of pure mathematics." Chadwick rightly observes that it was this disillusionment with Manicheism and resultant skepticism towards any certainty that laid the ground work for his later conversion.
As a side note, if in the 4th century pure mathematics was the only discipline in which one could hope for any certainty, then as of the turn of the previous century, that's not an option either. I guess certainty needs to be of a different sort and come from outside of us if it is to achieve what we hope "certainty" would achieve. Maybe this is why, later on in the Confessions, Augustine said "My desire was not to be more certain of you, but to be more stable in you." So the "certainty" or "stability" we need is not so much a scientific and cognitive one as much as it is a relational and holistic one.
It seems to me that we are in a period of skepticism much like Augustine's where disillusionment with a disappointing worldview and the proponents thereof have led to a radical skepticism about certainty and any sort of realistic hope for meaning and change. Could it be that we are being readied for conversion? Would it be that the Spirit who groans and intercedes for us on our behalf would cause Augustine's same prayer of "stability in you" to be our prayer in such unstable times? Would the Spirit who also convicts the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment use this to bring the restless skeptics despairing of certainty and meaning to Jesus to "find their rest in Him"? Yes Lord! Amen!

the 700+1 Club

Pat Robertson endorses Giuliani for president. Either the situation is desperate or the 700 Club has decided to broaden its membership. I guess you could see this a sign of hope for those on the far right that they will look at the big picture a bit more, or a sign of defeat and compromise. It will be interesting to see how this affects things.

Confessions #2

Still in the introduction, the second thing that caught my attention was Chadwick's discussion of Augustine's first exposure to the Bible. Augustine was first led to pick up the Bible after reading Cicero's Hortensius in which Cicero taught that "happiness is not found in physical pleasures of luxurious food, drink, and sex, but in a dedication of the mind to the discovery of truth." Prompted to explore the foundation of true happiness as the "discovery of truth", Augustine was turned off by the language of the 200 year old Latin Bible he found. The language of the translation was so rough that it immediately offended the sensibilities of Augustine who was used to classic and skilled Latin of those like Cicero and Virgil. As Chadwick notes, "Augustine found that once he had put it down, it was hard to pick up again. Moreover, he was offended by the polygamy of Old Testament patriarchs and the different genealogies of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke."
When I first read this I was again struck by the similarities in Augustine's reaction to the Bible and of the reactions of those in our own day. We are descendants of the Western culture that found its birth not long before Augustine's time, and we still suffer much of the shortsightedness and cross-cultural tension that Augustine did when he read the Bible for the first time. Although Augustine was much closer to the original setting of the New Testament than we are, his philosophical mindset and worldview was still far removed from the earthy aspect of Christianity and its roots in the world. He was not prepared to take into account the translational "gap" that had arisen over the 200 years of change and learning. He was also not prepared for the differences in genre and perspective that the Biblical authors used to communicate their religious realities and experience. The earthy and literary nature of the Jewish writings and worldview were different enough from the abstract and speculative reason of the Hellenistic philosophers to cause Augustine to stumble over the Scriptures. Yet, in time, by God's sovereign grace Augustine came back around to understand, appreciate, and believe the Scriptures and the God they presented.
All of this underscores the fact that we need fresh and current translations of the Scriptures that speak in the language and to the thought patterns of all different kinds of people groups that exist and will emerge in our time; we also need to be aware of the methods, customs, skills, symbols, aims, and worldview of the Biblical writers' over against our own cultures' methods, customs, skills, symbols, aims, and worldview when we read the Scriptures and let them speak to us; but finally we can trust in God's sovereign grace through all these efforts that He will work above and beyond our failures, inabilities, and carelessness to advance His kingdom and build His church. Soli deo gloria!

Confessions Writing Project #1

I'm going to attempt to summarize and highlight my experience of reading through Augustine's Confessions as writing project to build my writing skills and develop my reading and retention skills...and of course to talk about Augustine's Confessions. It goes without saying that I won't be saying much compared to everyone else who's responded to Augustine over the past 1600 years, but, no matter, I have other aims for now.

I'll start with the introduction to the Oxford University translation by Henry Chadwick. In discussing the aims and situation of Augustine's writing of the Confessions, Chadwick mentions that at the end of his life, Augustine wrote a review and reappraisal of his work entitled Retractationes (which, Chadwick says, cannot be translated 'Retractions', because Augustine affirms nearly all of what he wrote). Chadwick says this about Augustine's perspective on the Confessions,
"When he came to the Confessions he observes that they serve to excite the human mind and affection towards God; the act of writing the book had done that for himself at the time, and 'that is the effect when it is read now'."
When I first started reading the Confessions, I made a note next to this saying, "this is when it is good to write." That was back in 2003 (it took me a while to come back around to the book to finish it apparently). I still feel the same way. Of course, in the discipline of writing as in any discipline there are times of awkward and painful growth, many times the soil gives way to beautiful fruit, ten, twenty, and one hundred-fold. "Inspiration or feeling is borne of regular daily work," said Camille Pissaro, the 19th century French Impressionist painter who has been called the "Father of Impressionism" . (I saw this quote while at an art gallery in Florence last spring break. Sometimes you just get lucky and see the right things...)
Chadwick goes on to explain that Augustine wrote his Confessions over the course of three years at the end of the fourth century as a "man in his mid-forties, recently made a bishop, needing to come to terms with a past in which numerous enemies and critics showed an unhealthy interest." As with many other aspects of Augustine's life, there is striking familiarity with contemporary figures and situations. Chuck Colson and his book Born Again come to mind first.
But I'm digressing. I mentioned this first to recognize that it took three years for Augustine to write his Confessions. On the one hand, that's a heck of a long time to write a book, let alone one's own story, but on the other hand (maybe a tired one at that after all that writing), he wrote it all by hand. No typewriters, no computers, no editors. Pretty impressive. So, even if it takes a while and is not easy going, writing is good and well worth it, especially when it serves to "excite the human mind and affection towards God", both for the writer and the reader.
Lord, may that be true of all that I ever write, whether for myself alone or for others with me.

JESUS and CHANGE

Mars Hill Church's 10th anniversary video. (This year is now their 11th year, and the two things they say have remained constant are JESUS and CHANGE.)

God, would you continue
and increase
this same work of
transforming lives
by the Gospel of Jesus
in cities all over America
and beyond.
Make us true disciples and disciple-makers,
for your glory
and for the good of the world around us.

Orthodox and Born Again

Dr. Brad Nasiff of North Park University and an Orthodox theologian reflects on what has kept him believing in Christ after years and years of scholarship and life. His answer may surprise you!

http://audio.ancientfaith.com/nassif/so5_pc.mp3

Great Light of the World Come to Impart (old and new)

I make the cross of Christ upon my breast,
over the tablet of my hard heart,
and I beseech the Living God of the universe -
may the Light of Lights come
to my dark heart from Thy place;
may the Spirit's wisdom come to my heart's tablet
from my Saviour.

-From the Aidan compline, who lived in the early 7th century in Ireland.

Sometimes at night
I am afraid
I cover my eyes,
Cover my shame
So here in the dark
Broken apart
Come with your light
And fill up my heart
Oh great light of the world
Fill up my soul
I’m half a man here
So come make me whole
Oh great light of the world
Come to impart
The light of your grace
To fill up my heart

The wind of this world
Can push us around
Folding us up
Backing us down
But here in the dark
I’m not alone
So come with your strength
And carry me home
Oh great light of the world
Fill up my soul
I’m half a man here
So come make me whole
Oh great light of the world
Come to impart
The light of your grace
Oh great light of the world
Fill up my soul
I’m half a man here
So come make me whole
Oh great light of the world
Come to impart
The light of your grace
To fill up my heart
The light of your grace
To fill up my heart

-Bebo Norman, Great Light Of The World

The Two Tasks

"...Responsible Christians face two tasks-that of saving the soul and that of saving the mind. No civilization can endure with its mind being as confused and disordered as ours is today. All our ills stem proximately from the false philosophies that have been let loose in the world and that are now being taught in the universities.... Save the university and you save Western civilization and therewith the world."

-Dr. Charles Malik, Lebanese educator and statesman

______________

The United States Supreme Court ruled, "The classroom is peculiarly the 'marketplace of ideas.' The Nation's future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth 'out of a multitude of tongues, [rather] than through any kind of authoritative selection."

.
— United States v. Associated Press, 52 F. Supp. 362, 372.

______________

"We have a gospel to proclaim. We have to proclaim it not merely to individuals in their personal and domestic lives. . . . we have to proclaim it as part of the continuing conversation which shapes public doctrine. It must be heard in the conversation of economists, psychiatrists, educators, scientists, and politicians."

—Lesslie Newbigin, Truth To Tell: The Gospel as Public Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1991), p. 64.

->for more on what some are doing about this, check out www.clm.org

We ignore the academy and marketplace of ideas at great peril to the rest of the world that is at their mercy and the subject of their policies and publications. Let us embrace the call to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind. Only then can we fulfill the call to love our neighbors as ourselves.

With M. Teresa in view...

You must have often wondered why the enemy [God] does not make more use of his power to be sensibly present to human souls in any degree he chooses and at any moment. But you now see that the irresistible and the indisputable are the two weapons which the very nature of his scheme forbids him to use. Merely to over-ride a human will (as his felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For his ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve.... Sooner or later he withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs--to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.... He cannot "tempt" to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away his hand.... Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.*
-Uncle Screwtape
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

*See also, Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith in TIME

Who can tell?

Morning Prayer from
				The Book of Common Prayer
				Sunday, 2 September 2007 The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity

All
Almighty and most merciful Father,
we have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep.
We have followed too much the devices and desires
of our own hearts.
We have offended against thy holy laws.
We have left undone those things
which we ought to have done;
and we have done those things
which we ought not to have done;
and there is no health in us.
But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.
Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults.
Restore thou them that are penitent;
according to thy promises declared unto mankind
in Christ Jesu our Lord.
And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake,
that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life,
to the glory of thy holy name.
Amen.

First Reading: Jonah 3.5-9

So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
For word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.
And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water:
But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.
Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?

Second Reading: Revelation 3.19-22

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.
He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.

Today's Morning Reading

From today's morning reading of the Book of Common Prayer:

from the OT reading, Habakkuk 3:2
O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy.

from Te Deum Laudamus

				O Lord, save thy people and bless thine heritage.
				Govern them and lift them up for ever.
				Day by day we magnify thee;
				and we worship thy name, ever world without end.
				Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin.
				O Lord, have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us.
				O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us, as our trust is in thee.
				O Lord, in thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded.

Nooma:thoughts

Until today I had only seen one of Rob Bell's Nooma films. At the time, for various reasons, one of which was pride, I didn't fully appreciate it (sorry to the friend that showed it to me!). I read Velvet Elvis several months ago and bought six of the Nooma films this summer in order to jump in once more. I just watched two of them and wrote down a few thoughts I had in response. Overall, I really like them. I like the concept, the topics; the production is top-quality (not that I would really know, but it seems well done); Rob is a great communicator; and, they are multi-lingual (with subtitles)! Also, I didn't realized until I bought some that they come with a booklet with some quotes, scripture, pictures from the film, and reflection questions which would be great for small group discussion. So, I definitely recommend them as ways to open up or further dialogue on the topics presented and relevant passages of Scripture. They're great for those that follow Jesus and for those that are still looking. Following are a few thoughts and questions that I had as I was watching them today.

Nooma:Rhythm
Rob evaluates what it means to be in relationship with God in terms of the process of relating and following instead of the in/out terms common in conversion language. Near the end he says "you ARE in relationship with God," and on the back of the DVD package it says "maybe it's through trusting Jesus and living the kind of life he taught us to live...that we have a relationship with God." Is this "discipleship to converted discipleship"? What does it look like for someone to walk the path of Jesus before they are counted "in Christ", reconciled to God in Him?
In the notes, the question is asked, "Which is more important to Jesus: what we believe or what we do?" I think I understand what he's getting at, but to me, really, it's neither, because what we do betrays what we really believe, and what we really believe is inevitably worked out in what we do. Jesus repeatedly told people to "believe" in Him, and there was no gap in His mind between believing and doing. To believe is to do and to do is to believe. It is trust. So the question is really "Who or what do you trust?" because life and reality is personal, relational, or at least it was meant to be.
So, maybe at some point those that begin to walk the path of Jesus and listen to the words of Jesus begin relate to him and finally come to say, "You have the words of eternal life. I have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God."
And this is renewed, just as the grounds of our baptism is remembered in the Eucharist week by week, so at points we are reminded of our confession when we find Jesus asking us, "Do you love me more than these? ... Then feed my sheep." And so it continues until we die, finally, with Him.

Nooma:You
Rob made a lot of assertions about many of the New Testament concepts being firmly in relation to and in opposition to the 1st century religious and political context, concepts and expressions like "No under name by which men must be saved" and "Jesus is Lord" and "Gospel" and "Ekklesia (or church)" and even the resurrection of the savior-god. I'm familiar with a few of these points of contact and conflict, but I wonder if the emphasis is too heavily placed on the 1st century context on not enough on the language and tradition of the several thousand years before as revealed in the hopes and experience of the nation of Israel. He brought it through a little bit in talking about the hope of the Messiah, the brokenness of the world, and the hope of God's program to fix it.
Some good questions to ask would be: "What are the sources and context for some of the sayings like "No other name..." and "Caesar is Lord" and "Gospel" and "Ekklesia"? Are there roots in Israel and the OT for these concepts and assertions as well (e.g. the Lord as YHWH, salvation in the name of YHWH, the gospel or good news of Isaiah 52, the congregation of Israel as ekklesia)? Where's the overlap? Where's the conflict? How were the Jewish concepts translated into the Greco-Roman? What influenced the Jewish concepts? What influenced the Greco-Roman? Any other influences? What were the apostles and 1st century church aware of? And Jesus?
I think the most powerful part of the film was near the end when Rob said, "There's a deeply personal dimension to this. Jesus is saving me, he's saving me from my sins, from my mistakes, from my pride, from my indifference to the suffering of the world around me. From my cynicism and despair, the brokenness I see in the world around me is true of my own soul."
As some of have observed in response to the popular recent discussions about evil and those on the side of evil, "If we look close enough we will see that the line dividing good and evil runs right through the middle of each one of us."

Anyone seen these, thought about this stuff? Thoughts?

New Every Morning

Today I was afraid. I was afraid of being insignificant.
Today I was proud. I wanted honor and success and notoriety.
Today I was ashamed. I did not size up, and I was sizing up.
Today was like yesterday.
And the day before, and the day before...
Will tomorrow be like today?
... but today's trouble is overwhelming enough.

The sun dies,
The sun rises,
each day
Does it die under the weight of our collective sin?
So that we help it over the noonday hump and push it back into the ground?
Does it mean to wake us up in the morning when our blinds are shut tight?
Does is muffle through the curtains
"Awake sleeper!
Arise from the dead
and I will shine on you!"?

Today the sun died, again.
Today I buried it just past the mountains.
Tomorrow the sun will rise, again.
Tomorrow will I rise with it?
Tonight the sun will not die for nothing.
Tonight the curtains are pulled back.




Picture from www.discosuperfly.biz

A Poem and Prayer

Jesus,
bread and light of life,

I am not
but you are
in me I am
in You alive.
















"But we, O Lord, behold we are Thy little flock; possess us as Thine, stretch Thy wings over us and let us fly under them. Be Thou our glory." - St. Augustine

long time, no blog, good link

I haven't written anything in a while, and to commemorate that I will continue not writing anything and just post a link to something someone else wrote. Shame on me...

Here's Scot McKnight answering a question that I specifically begin asking in earnest last summer but have asked in many other ways since college. He gives some great advice, not necessarily solutions, but a good way forward in faith, especially in the last paragraph. Check it out and be encouraged.

Scot McKnight on questions about difficulties in Scripture and who to believe.

Links and excerpts

Jurgen Moltmann on our conception of God and ourselves:

Without a revolution in the concept of God, however, there will be no revolutionary faith. Without God's liberation from idolatrous images produced by anxiety and hubris, there will be no liberating theology. Man always unfolds his humanity in relation to the divinity of his God, and he experiences himself in relationship to what appears to him as the highest being. He directs his life toward a highest value. He decides, who he is by his ultimate concerns. As Martin Luther said: "Where you put the trust of your heart, that in fact is your God." That holds true for the Christian faith just as for every secular faith.

In fact, there is no true theology of hope which is not first of all a theology of the cross.


Eugene Peterson on Annie Dillard on worship and creation:

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is a contemplative journal of her attendance at the theater (of God's creation) over the course of a year. She is breathless in awe. She cries and laughs. In turn, she is puzzled and dismayed. She is not an uncritical spectator. During intermissions, she does not scruple to find fault with either writer or performance-all is not to her liking and some scenes bring her close to revulsion. But she always returns to the action and ends up on her feet applauding, Encore! Encore! "I think that the dying pray at the last not 'please,' but 'thank you,' as a guest thanks his host at the door. Failing from airplanes the people are crying thank you, thank you, all down the air; and the cold carriages draw up for them on the rocks. Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see. And like Billy Bray I go my way, and my left foot says 'Glory,' and my right foot says 'Amen': in and out of Shadow Creek, upstream and down, exultant, in a daze, dancing, to the twin silver trumpets of praise."

Got your cars Straight? On Automobile Gender and Sexuality

John McCain on the War

Pope Benedict, his new book on Jesus, and criticism of the West
"Only if something extraordinary happened, if the figure and words of Jesus radically exceeded all the hopes and expectations of his age, can his Crucifixion and his effectiveness be explained."

A Poetic Prayer from Down Under

God of Eternity, Lord of the Ages,
Father and Spirit and Saviour of men!
Thine is the glory of time’s numbered pages;
Thine is the power to revive us again.
Pardon our sinfulness, God of all pity,
Call to remembrance Thy mercies of old;
Strengthen Thy Church to abide as a city
Set on a hill for a light to Thy fold.
Head of the Church on earth, risen, ascended!
Thine is the honour that dwells in this place:
As Thou hast blessed us through years that have ended,
Still lift upon us the light of Thy face. Amen.

-Australian Presbyterian, Ernest Northcroft Merrington

On Institutions, Western Culture, and Spirituality

Speaking about lay movements in the Roman Catholic Church and Pope Benedict's addressing of the spiritual state of Western Europe, Russell Shorto of the New York Times said in his article, "Keeping the Faith",

According to many observers, the lay movements substantially accounted for the unimagined numbers of mourners who poured into Rome. Data on declining church attendance obscure the fact that there is a good deal of spiritual hunger in Europe, but it is largely outside institutional religion, a phenomenon that the British sociologist Grace Davie calls “believing without belonging.” The Vatican is aware of this and says that the lay Catholic movements may represent a bridge, a way to bring the aimless, searching, largely secular Europeans back into the fold.

Msgr. Donald Bolen, an official with the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, told me that the lay movements “are movements of the Holy Spirit. The temptation in the church has long been to try to keep the parishes filled, to spend energy on maintenance. These movements are not about maintenance of old structures. But this isn’t a new thing. When Francis of Assisi started with his little band of disciples, some were confused. Movements within the church are not new.” The pope’s media spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, made much the same point to me: “The lay movements are a sign of life. The Vatican is not the whole church.”

But the problem is that the spiritual hunger that exists in Europe seems to be precisely for what the church can’t provide. Polls show that Europeans distrust institutions of all kinds. For an institution that is practically synonymous with hierarchy and control, the lay movements may represent as much a threat as a promise...

Benedict may be right that the Catholic Church has a world-historic chance to transform Europe and bring about change. But the church’s own strictures could work against that... “Think of the silencing of theologians in recent decades,” said Father Reese, the former editor of the Jesuit journal America. “The suppression of discussion and debate. How certain issues become litmus tests for orthodoxy and loyalty. All of these make it very difficult to do the very thing Benedict wants. I wish him well. I want him to succeed. But it seems everything he has done in the past makes it much more difficult to do it.”

A friend of mine living in Italy said that she felt like she has seen the possible future of Christianity and culture in the U.S. I saw some strikingly similar parallels as I read this article in the New York Times, confirming where it is that we are now in a post-Christian Western culture. Like mentioned in the quotes above, there is hope in the Spirit's work in the people, but there will be tension with the power structures of the institutional church to the extent that there are conflicting interests, both in the RCC and other denominations of the Christian church. It's really sad to me to see such power struggles. Though we must contend for the faith, it seems that many, once established as authorities on "the faith", contend for much more than that.

Like the last guy said, I really do want the Pope to succeed in helping Europe to move past postmodern secularism. I really do want the institutional church to succeed so far as it makes disciples of Jesus, but it seems that, like the Jews of Jesus' day, there are some systemic "logs" that will prevent the institutional church from being all that, in Christ, it could be.

Maranatha. Come Lord Jesus, make all things new.

"I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me." (Jn 17:20)

The Shadow of Good Friday

To reflect and to pray.

"But what Christ did on the Cross was in no way intended to spare us death but rather to revalue death completely. In place of the 'going down into the pit' of the Old Testament, it became 'being in paradise tomorrow'. Instead of fearing death as the final evil and begging God for a few more years of life, as the weeping king Hezekiah does, Paul would like most of all to die immediately in order 'to be with the Lord' (Phil 1:23). Together with death, life is also revalued: 'If we live, we live to the Lord; if we die, we die to the Lord' (Rom 14:8).
-Hans Urs von Balthasar (as quoted at the BHT)

"If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you." (John 15:18)

VOM News and Prayer Update: April 3, 2007

"Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."(Hebrews 12:1-2)

UZBEKISTAN
Pastor Appeals Sentence - VOM Sources/Forum 18 News
Pastor Dmitry Shestakov has appealed his four-year work-camp sentence. According to The Voice of the Martyrs contacts, Pastor Shestakov's family will be permitted to go with him to one of Uzbekistan's open work camps. Forum 18 News reported that in imposing its verdict, the court said it would be impossible to "re-educate" Shestakov without isolating him from society. Forum has also reported that prison administration has banned Pastor Shestakov from kneeling to pray and his New Testament has been confiscated. In exchange, he has been offered the Koran to read. He remains imprisoned in Andijan until his appeal is heard. Pray Pastor Shestakov's appeal is successsful and for God to comfort his family. Psalm 41:2-3


NIGERIA
Teacher Killed by Muslim Students - Compass Direct News/VOM Sources
On March 21, 2007, Christianah Oluwasesin, a teacher at a secondary school in Northern Nigeria was beaten, stoned and burned by Muslim students over claims she desecrated the Quran. According to a Compass Direct News report, Oluwasesin was supervising a final examination on Islamic religious knowledge when she collected papers, books and bags from the all-girls class and in accordance with school procedure and dropped them in front of the class to prevent cheating. According to another teacher, soon after Oluwasesin dropped the bags in front of the class, one of the girls began to cry. She told her classmates she had a copy of the Quran in her bag, that Oluwasesin touched the bag and by doing so had desecrated the Quran, since she was a Christian. This led to a riot which was joined by Muslim extremists, resulting in Oluwasesin being beaten to death. They brought old mats to where her body was, placed dirt on her corpse and then burned it. The Voice of the Martyrs has met with her husband and is supporting her family. Pray God will comfort Oluwasesin's family and for her testimony to those that killed her, that it will bring them into the knowledge of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 1:5


INDIA
Christians Attacked, Pastor's Arrested - VOM Sources

• ORISSA - On March 18, 2007, Hindu extremists attacked Abraham Burdhan with a sword. According to The Voice of the Martyrs contacts, Abraham was pulled off his bicycle, beaten with rods and sticks on his whole body and hit with a sword causing severe injury to his hand. Doctors are not hopeful they can save all four of his fingers and think he will lose two. Pray for Abraham's healing and the safety of more than 20 Christian families living in the area which is in the midst of more than 150 Hindu families.
• RAJASTHAN - Pastors Gorthan Leetha, Laxman Gorthan, Khana Gutta and Ramesh Gutta were attacked by Hindu radicals and handed over to the police, who are sympathetic with the radicals. They are being held in the local prison. In addition, more than 30 families had to flee the area when they were attacked and their homes destroyed. The families had to scatter to nearby villages and work as laborers. Meanwhile, VOM in partnership with Emmanuel Ministries is providing emergency food and clothing for the family, and their pastor is helping them relocate to relatively safe, Udaipur City. Pray for the pastors in prison and the families who have lost all their belongings. Ask God to comfort them and encourage them to continue standing for Him.
• KUNDRA - On March 25, Pastor Rajendra Chauhan was arrested after Hindu extremists complained he was involved in "forced conversions." He was charged under the State's Anti-Conversion Law because the police said he was holding large religious gatherings without asking permission. Through VOM's legal network, Pastor Chauhan was released. Pray his ministry will not be hindered by these challenges. Psalm 111: 5-9

www.persecution.com

Training and Tradition

Some thoughts on training for Christian ministry.

Where I work we talk about it a lot, so I thought, why not a little more? It's natural for us as humans to find that the things that we have systematized and refined for the purposes of understanding and transferability have lost their edge and clarity of vision. So, it's helpful and necessary to rethink old concepts reconstituted in new contexts so as to bring the vision back into focus and the life back into the methods.

In thinking about training, we want to train so as to enable the vision to take root and grow in the community of faith for the sake of the of the world. In our training we want not so much to instruct as to enable, to provide the trellises without which the vines have nowhere to go. We want to make level the roads to freedom, creativity, and inspiration so that students can engage authentically in Christ with the world around them, speaking and acting in the world and as part of the world so as to be light and salt, the truth and redemptive power of the Gospel, to bring people to Christ and Christ to the people.


"Tradition, then, is not something which is essentially static and backward looking. It looks to the past and seeks to learn from its inheritance; but it looks equally to the present and the future, seeking in the acquired wisdom of former generations appropriate ways and means of dealing with new challenges and circumstances; seeking to adapt itself, so that its voice may be heard speaking in the language which today's generation can hear and understand; committed to the view that what it offers is of lasting value, but open in principle to the revision and adaptation which ongoing engagement with reality and new discoveries may compel it to accept." - Trevor Hart in Faith Thinking, p. 180

in Christ

The Hidden Smile of God

Light shining out of Darkness
(Book III, Hymn 15, page 571)
by William Cowper
(taken from ReformationINK)

God moves in a mysterious way,

His wonders to perform;

He plants his footsteps in the sea,

And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines

Of never-failing skill,

He treasures up his bright designs,

And works his sov'reign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,

The clouds ye so much dread

Are big with mercy, and shall break

In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,

But trust him for his grace;

Behind a frowning providence

He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fasts,

Unfolding ev'ry hour;

The bud may have a bitter taste,

But sweet will be the flow'r.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,

And scan his work in vain;

God is his own interpreter,

And he will make it plain

Power of Percentages

"If Christians had given a 10 percent tithe to their churches in 2004, instead of the actual 2.56 percent, there would have been an extra $164 billion. And of churches spend $70 to $80 billion of that on missions and humanitarian works, the basic needs of every person on the globe would be provided."
- Relevant, Nov./Dec. 2006, p. 30

"Personal wealth is distributed so unevenly across the world that the riches two percent of adults won more than 50 percent of the world's assets. The poorest half of the world hold only 1 percent of the wealth."
- Financial Times, www.ft.com, Dec. 5, 2006


As quoted in Campus Crusade for Christ's March 2007 issue of Connection.

The Breadth of Incarnation

"...people are more interested in seeing Christians actually live in a way the reflects what they believe instead of an hollow invitation to come to a church service where you can meet God."

-Chris Burton on the changing scene of church in America

Exactly. It's not only non-Christians who feel that the invitation is hollow...

Our breadth of incarnation has been insufficient. Meeting with God happens no more on Sunday morning than on Friday night. Everything is sacramental, every moment "charged with the grandeur of God." And yet, Sunday morning or Saturday night, or whenever the church gathers for worship, is special, or should be special. It is not so much the place to come meet with God as it is the place to come and celebrate having been met by God and to find the context for and learn the shape of what it means to be God's image out there in the world.

This morning in church we danced. Not the palm leaves, people with banners in the aisles, and tambourines kind of dancing (not that there's anything wrong with tambourines per se), but the all we needed was a strobe light and some turntables kind of dancing. And it was beautiful. Not because people were so holy and so spiritual that they had ascended to the heights of "holy dancing" or "holy laughter" or any other imaginary spiritual watermark, but because we are material beings who live in bodies that engage in life with God and life with others through the bodies God has given us by seeing and eating, singing and dancing. Much of Christian subculture has been stiff and split down the middle by a dualistic gnosticism that says "this material world is bad, the spiritual world is good. Only what is 'supernatural' is good. Whatever is 'natural' is bad." Tim Keller talks about how Jesus is the happy ending to every community's cultural narrative. Today I saw how Jesus breathes life into his design for us to worship Him with rhythm. And besides, it was all still pretty tame compared to the church in Africa...