Salvation 'in' and 'from'

The revelation of a higher code of morals is no Gospel. By works of law no flesh shall be justified in the sight of God. We are not Christians because we have attained to a standard of morals which can truly be called Christian, but because Christ has given us His Spirit. Our hope now, and for the future, lies not in the attainment of a standard which shall make us fit for His grace; but in the assurance that acceptance of His grace will raise us. We often say that "His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins", with the addition: "not in their sin but from their sins." In so saying, whilst we express one truth, we suppress another; for if Christ does not save us in our sins we shall never be saved from our sins. He comes to us in our sins to save us from them. It is of the essence of the Gospel that Christ comes to men in their sins. He came to save sinners.

- Roland Allen, p. 69, The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church, 1927.

Spurgeon on evangelism

One man in Paul's dream, who said, " Come over and help us!" was enough to constrain him; and here are millions not in a dream, but in open vision, who all at once say, "Come and help us." Did we say, just now, we could not ? Surely we must recall our words and say, "We must." Good Master, we must! If we cannot, we must. We feel our weakness, but there is an impulse within us that says we must do it, and we cannot stop, we dare not — we were accursed if we did. The blasts of hell and the wrath of heaven would fall upon us if we renounced the task.

The world's only hope— shall we put that out? The lone star that gilds the darkness, — shall we quench that? The Saviours of men, and shall we fold our arms and let them die? No! By the love we bear [in] thy name; by the bonds that unite us to thee; by everything that is holy before God and humane in the sight of our fellow mortals; by everything that is tender and gentle in the throbbing of our hearts and the yearning of our bowels, we say we must, though we feel we cannot.

- Charles Spurgeon, from a sermon on Jesus' feeding of the 5,000

Christian spirituality

In the context of speaking about 21st century spiritual trends in the Church that have dislocated spirituality from that of the ancient church, Webber notes how the experiential spirituality of pietism and revivalism have turned into narcissism. He says,

Evangelism's focus on God's story taking experiential root in our lives is in itself not narcissistic. It only becomes narcissistic when one becomes fascinated with his or her own journey and gives priority to self-reflection. Our contemplative wonder and awe is not to focus on the spiritual journey of the self but on the journey of God who creates and became incarnate in his own creation to re-create. And our participation in the spiritual life is not a continuous search for a transcendent experience but the transfiguration of this life through a life lived in the continual pattern of baptism - dying to sin and rising to the life of the Spirit.
-Robert Webber, The Divine Embrace

"The Christian way of knowing [the truth about God]," Webber says, "is reflection on Scripture [God's revelation about himself] within community [that lives God's revelation]."

And "spiritual theology," says Eugene Peterson, "is the attention we give to lived theology - prayed and lived, for if it is not prayed, sooner or later it will not be lived from the inside out and in continuity with the Lord of life."

According to Webber, the problem with much contemporary spirituality, Christian or otherwise, is that it is focused on and preoccupied with the self. In Christianity this is manifest in spiritualities of legalism, intellectualism, and experientialism. True spirituality is not only centered on God revealed in Christ, but proceeds from God's story of creation, incarnation-Christ's birth, life, death, and resurrection, and re-creation through the Spirit.

These differing perspectives will manifest themselves in how we interact over issues from worship styles and environmentalism, to ethical discrepancies, doctrinal disagreements, and relational conflict of all kinds. In short, what is at stake is the Gospel, which is the "power of God for salvation to all who believe, the Jew first and to the Greek."

Prayer for the Church

Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

HT: Scot McKnight @ JesusCreed.org

I'm glad I'm not one of these... :)

	Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus - Cite This Source - Share This
Main Entry:	missionary
Part of Speech:	noun
Definition:	aide
Synonyms:	Holy Joe, apostle, bible-beater, clergyman, converter, evangelist, glory roader, herald, messenger, minister, missioner, padre, pastor, preacher, preacher man, promoter, propagandist, proselytizer, revivalist, sin hound, teacher
Source:	Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus, First Edition (v 1.3.1) Copyright © 2008 by Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Jesus, the Apostle

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Simon and his companions went to look for him, and when they found him, they exclaimed: "Everyone is looking for you!"
Jesus replied, "Let us go somewhere else - to the nearby villages - so I can preach there also. That is why I have come." So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.
- The Gospel According to Mark, Chapter 1

In his letter to the Ephesian church, Paul says that Jesus gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds and teachers to the church for the equipping of his people for "works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ." Implicit in the analogy is that Christ, as the head of the body (the source from which all the rest grows), is the fullness of the roles of apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, and teacher. So, it goes to reason that we would be able to see these roles active in the ministry of Jesus during his first 33 years of redemptive activity.

Someone recently commented to me that those with apostolic calling and gifting are normally pretty busy, under constant demands from others to be and do for them. It's evident that Jesus' life was no different. "Everyone is looking for you!" seems to be a consistent refrain in Jesus' life. Though I might have seen it as a scratch that causes the record to keep playing the same part of the song over and over, Jesus embraced his chorus much better than I.

That being said, it's instructive to see how Jesus, as the chief apostle, handled the constant draw on his time. First, after a full day of casting out demons and healing the sick, Jesus got up early in the morning to find a solitary place to pray. I've often had those plans in the back of my mind, to get up early, before everyone else, just me and God, a cup of coffee, a journal and my Bible. But, rarely does it happen like I imagine, not usually because I get interrupted, but because I never make it up in time! It is encouraging to think of our Lord, as a man, breaking through the weariness and grogginess of the morning to find a solitary place to pray before the day gets crazy. As many have noted, Martin Luther said that he had so much to do during the day that he must spend at least three hours a day in prayer beforehand!

Of course, when "found out" by his disciples (Peter taking the lead, of course, which reminds of the "let us build tabernacles" situation later on...), did Jesus tell them to go away because he was praying? Did he drop everything and go back to all the people according to their requests? Nope. He bolted! He said, "Let's get out of here!" So, secondly, Jesus stuck to his apostolic (and prophetic) mission. If he was only acting as a shepherd, evangelist, or teacher, it would have made sense just to stay there and care for the flock, teach them about the kingdom, and bring more people into his care. But, Jesus just left them there and went to another village! He knew that there would be a time for more shepherding, evangelizing, and teaching, but it was not the time for him. He had a mission to accomplish, that being proclaiming the kingdom in word and deed and accomplishing the initial stage of it through his crucified life and death. His vision was not first for individual villages but for the entire nation of Israel, thereby accomplishing his mission for the entire world.

Another thing that I recently was told about people that are apostolic, is that in their busyness, they frequently appreciate and respond to those who "don't take 'no' for an answer." You can see that when Jesus goes to the next village, and a leprous man comes to him and begs him, "If you are willing, you can make me clean." So, Jesus, indignant on account of the man's believing that Jesus might not be willing to heal him of his leprosy, said, in my paraphrase, "Of course I am willing! Be healed!" Then, in another apostolic move in keeping with his clandestine mission to proclaim an alternative messianic kingdom than what people were expecting, he told the former leper to keep quiet about his healing so that he, Jesus, could keep traveling from village to village without too much trouble and commotion. Of course, that didn't happen, and, as it says, after that "Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere." It seems that even Jesus still had trouble aligning people to his plan of how he wanted his mission to develop!

It seems, just from a cursory reading of this section of Mark, that Jesus fulfilled the role of shepherd, evangelist, and teacher as he went from town to town caring for people through healing and the like, gathering them together, and teaching them about the kingdom, but it was his apostolic (and possibly his prophetic) mission that kept him going from village to village rather than staying in one place. Like Robert Coleman demonstrates in his book The Master Plan of Evangelism, the entire time he was raising up the twelve disciples, primarily, to extend and establish through all the five roles the Gospel of the kingdom. Those disciples, and theirs that followed, were the ones that continued to expand, extend, and establish in a way that even Jesus could not have done on his own as one man. How good it was for him to go away and send the Helper!

Ecclesiastes for the Day

What do workers gain from their toil?

I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil - this is the gift of God.

I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.

Whatever is has already been,
and what will be has been before;
and God will call the past to account.

- Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3

Unless a seed falls to the earth and dies

Like seed I am buried in the ground
dead and unknown,
covered over in Friday,
soaked through with Sunday,
that in my dying,
our dying,
there might be living,
his living.

I go to the field called "Mission"
bought with the blood of a lamb,
I go with my deed labeled "Cross"
with good-news seed in hand,
I go to plant a garden
I go to grow a city
I go to harvest new reality
I go to to till new land.

Salvation, spring up from the ground,
in dogwood blossoms
and pomegranates
and cedars to shade,
populating,
a new garden in waiting.

Becoming "Unbusy"

At the beginning of the month I was reading a book by Eugene Peterson (author of The Message paraphrase of the Bible) called The Contemplative Pastor. In it Peterson talks about the need to clarify the role of a pastor with three adjectives: unbusy, subversive, and apocalyptic. Peterson takes much of the rest of the book to unpack those adjectives, so I won’t attempt that for you, but I will describe which one has been on my mind the most, the “unbusy” pastor. In the past couple of years I have become aware of my tendency to get busy doing stuff, especially ministry stuff, so that deep relationship with God and others moves to the periphery of my heart, mind, and schedule. In defining the “unbusy” pastor, Peterson made some observations that I really identified with. He said that often we are busy, not because we are selfless and noble, but because we are vain and lazy. We subconsciously think that we need to have a hand in everything around us, and we do not expend the mental and spiritual energy to focus on the things that God has called us to, saying “no” to the others. As an analogy, Peterson referred to the harpooner in the novel Moby Dick, quoting from Herman Melville’s commentary on harpooning: “To insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooners of this world must start to their feet out of idleness, and not out of toil.” Throughout the chaos of chasing the whale across the seas, the harpooner remained still, not caught up in all the activities of the ship, knowing that his time would come to practice his craft, and in order to be accurate he must be still. In reading this I immediately thought of both Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God” and Isaiah 30:15, “In repentance and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and trust is your strength.” As I reflect on this past month of so much ministry activity, I wonder at how the Lord was teaching me to focus and minister from a place of still and quiet trust even amidst the chaos of so many things to do. At the beginning of the month I thought He was telling me to slow down, and now I am seeing that it is more a matter of the habits of my heart and intentionality in my schedule than it is about how filled my week is with activities. Now that things have slowed down, my prayer is that I will be busy practicing stillness before the Lord and focused “harpooning” throughout the days as I live out my calling here in Oklahoma.

Patience

Two quotes on patience that a friend of mine shared with me:

“God never hurries. There are no deadlines against
which He must work. Only to know this is to quiet our
spirits and relax our nerves.” A.W. Tozer

“The strength of patience hangs on our capacity to
believe that God is up to something good for us in all
our delays and detours.” John Piper

This is seriously needed, especially in my line of work when job descriptions are over-weighted with the lead-based expectations of "eternal urgency" and "kingdom consequences".

What is required of us but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God in stillness and acknowledgment that He is God and we are not?

Confessions #14: T-shirts

01.12.08
After a long break for Christmas and New Years, I return, with nothing much significant to say, as you'll see.

"With what end in view do you again and again walk along difficult and laborious paths?

There is no rest where you seek for it. Seek for what you seek, but it is not where you are looking for it.

You seek the happy life in the region of death; it is not there.

How can there be a happy life where there is not even life?

He who for us is life itself descended here and endured our death and slew it by the abundance of his life." - Augustine

In the New Testament letter to the Hebrews, the author talks about how Jesus, by "the power of an indestructible life", was ordained into perpetual priesthood. I've always thought that would make a good Christian t-shirt. On the front it would say "indestructible" in those bold blocky letters that are each vertically misplaced giving that "under construction" or "hey-the-ground-is-shaking" feel. Then on the back it would say "Melchizedek style" in a cool script with the Hebrews verse reference on the back. I think it could sell. Does anyone know Mardel's buyer? Pretty ridiculous, I know. Maybe it's obvious I had the idea while working for a church youth group, or maybe I just made it up... It reminds you of a superhero, does it not?

Of course more serious things could be said, things about seeking life outside of the one who is life, things about his life in us being indestructible, breaking through the cracked and dying flesh-skin of the old man, things about how we ought to follow Paul in seeking the fellowship of Christ's suffering and the power of his resurrection..., but for now it's t-shirt ideas. Have I told you about the one that combines Benjamin Franklin and Aretha Franklin?

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."