snl palin-hillary opening

I thought this was good but probably should be rated PG-13. The Palin impersonation is right on. Enjoy.

abide in christ

Want a copy of Andrew Murray's Abide in Christ? A pdf file is available as a FREE download HERE. To purchase a new or used copy you can go HERE.

Why the picture with this post?
I dunno. I like it.

more amazing grace

Yesterday's post wrote about John Newton, author of the hymn Amazing Grace. After Newton was saved he was, like all new believers, lacking in a lot of understanding. For example he was afraid of losing his salvation. He looked back on his past life of making moral resolutions and then eventually having moral relapses, leading a life of aestheticism then succumbing to a life of self-indulgence. How long could he last this time?

Fortunately he met another Christian captain, Alex Clunie, while in St. Kitts. Clunie was a strong Christian with Calvinist roots. (Evangelical Calvinists in the 18th C. weren't quite as extreme as today's Calvinists.) He told Newton that it only seemed like he chose God while the reality was that God first chose him. This clicked with Newton since he had spent his life running from God rather than searching for him. Despite Newton's continual rebellion, God had sought him, rescued him, preserved him and eventually drew him to Himself.

Newton began to understand Romans 11:6, "But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace."

If by strength and conviction you could receive Christ then by doubt and weakness you could lose Christ. Newton saw that he had been saved by grace and his remaining saved was through this same grace. As Newton later wrote, "Now I began to understand the security of the covenant of grace and to expect to be preserved, not by my own power and holiness, but by the mighty power and promise of God, through faith in an unchangeable Saviour."

When I read this I thought of not only how stupid I was, but how long it took me to catch on to this truth. (Actually, I'm still trying to grasp this truth.) I thought of all the time I wasted trying to be "diligent" in the things of God. I worked hard to obtain a holiness that could only be obtained by grace. I can't stop sinning unless the grace of God allows me. I won't be faithful unless God gives me faith. I missed out on the rest God promises unless I ceased to strive and instead accepted His grace.

Accept His grace? How do you go about getting something when there is nothing you can do to get it? That made no sense to me. All I could figure out to do was ask. I stopped struggling with sin, a fight I could never win. Stopped with my out-of-whack ideas about what diligence meant, and just asked Him for grace.

I quit working, and despite my thinking not working wouldn't work, it did work!

Go figure. Now that still doesn't make much sense to me.

I think this is also the message of John 15:1-12 which Andrew Murray expounded upon in his classic Abide in Christ.

It is hard to rest. No, I take that back. It is not hard. What is hard is to give up trying to do things in my own power and waiting with God. Diligence is resting in His grace. Even that can't be done without grace.

I can't figure this out. But then, nobody ever asked me to.

Be blessed,
RB

amazing grace

Last week I watched the film Amazing Grace and would certainly highly recommend it. While it was about the British abolitionist Wilberforce, Albert Finney played the minor role of John Newton, Wilberforce’s spiritual mentor and the author of the hymn Amazing Grace.

This made me curious about John Newton. I went to the SLU library and found a recent, short biography about Newton by Steven Turner also titled Amazing Grace. Much to my surprise I found that the tales told in America about Newton are less than accurate. John Newton was a captain of only three slave ships and had previously been on the crew of only one. He was about to captain a fourth slave ship when ill health forced his retirement. However, all the voyages occurred after he came to know Christ as his savior.

Newton did become a leading voice for the abolition of slavery but only in his latter years, after he wrote his famous hymn. It was a process for him to get through the rationalizations for slavery offered in the mid-18th century and come under conviction for his part in the ghastly commerce.

You may be thinking that I just spoiled a wonderful story of God’s grace and mercy. Actually, I think the true story is more powerful. His true sins were more than awful enough for him to realize what a wretch he was. He grew up knowing the Gospel and purposely turned against it, becoming an enemy of Christ and a blasphemer as a young man. Newton also recognized God’s frequent interventions on his behalf but never fully repented.

While I do not have time, room, or ability to go into it here, John Newton’s true testimony was and is powerful. It preached, as some would say. He wrote it down in a series of letters that were published. His effectiveness as a speaker and writer led the wealthy evangelical Lord Dartmouth to arrange for him to become curate of a small church, despite the Church of England’s requirements for a university degree. Newton later accepted a position in a London church.

Why do we need a slave ship captain, tortured by horrors beyond understanding, to repent? What makes that story so compelling? Please think about it. A little self-reflection wouldn’t hurt. Is it more extreme and therefore more dramatic? However, might the harm of such drama be that it minimizes our own sins?

That is, it has us thinking “a wretch like him” instead of “a wretch like me.”

Be blessed,
RB

soar on wings

Last month I visited my mother in Northern California. One afternoon I was sitting alone on her deck enjoying the wonderful warmth and dry heat of August. I noticed a hawk soaring high above the ground. Since my mom’s house is high on the side of a hill, I was actually watching it from above. Effortlessly riding the thermal heat waves, the hawk crisscrossed, occasionally turning into a sight breeze to soar even higher.

As I watched I thought how enjoyable it would be to soar like that. I also thought of the passage in Isaiah:

He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.
~ Isaiah 40:29-31 (ESV)

The eagle and the hawk do not soar out of their own strength. Their large wing spans allow them to soar, but it is not due to the strength of the wings. The power to soar for hours comes from outside themselves, from the thermals and the breeze.

As believers, maybe we need to learn to ride the thermals and winds of the Spirit. We can do nothing without Him, for if we do things in our own strength eventually we will wear down. We will burn out. We will fail.

I don’t know about you, but I have wasted a lot of time working in my own strength. I mistakenly thought this was what it meant to be diligent. It didn’t accomplish much. It didn’t really work. The hawk I saw weeks ago was diligent but didn’t rely on its own strength at all. Relying on power outside itself and not on its own efforts, it was able to soar for hours.

Maybe diligence means relying on the Spirit rather than our strength, rather than working up our own passion and enthusiasm? Maybe diligence means to rest in His strength, to abide in Christ?

Be blessed.
RB

wait, wait don’t tell me

I’ve been spending a lazy, quiet day, sleeping in, catching up on my reading. For amusement on such occasions I like to listen to NPR’s Car Talk and Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me. Today’s opening monologue on the latter show was a bit disappointing. It consisted entirely of belittling jokes about the Republican V.P. nominee, Sarah Palin. After noting the absence of President Bush, one joke was that the best way to get on stage at the RNC was not to win two Presidential elections for the party but to knock-up Sarah Palin’s daughter. The joking about Palin continued throughout the program, mostly about her lack of foreign policy experience. Pointed but not very amusing, at least not by the third or fourth time it happened.

After the broadcast I thought I’d download the podcast of last week’s show, the one immediately after the Democrat’s convention. There the monologue started with noting tongue-in-cheek that McCain tried to steal the fire from the Democrats by naming his VP choice right after their convention. However, they would not let this distract them “from saying rude, uninformed, and borderline offensive things about the Democrats. The Republicans will have to wait until next week.”

Good, funny start. However, the monologue then ended. No Obama-Biden jokes. No jokes at all. They went right to the quiz show. During the show there were only a few remarks about the Obamas or Biden, some of which were funny but none of which were remotely belittling. They were only “fair” in that there were about as many Clinton jokes as McCain jokes on a show that was supposed to be devoted to laughing at the Democrats.

Earlier this week I told a conservative colleague that I thought Palin was a breath of fresh air. (This was before Fred Thompson said so at the RNC.) Much like Jesse Jackson and most of his civil-rights era cohorts hate Obama, the Left hates Palin. She is not their idea of a female leader. There are many reasons for this, but a real fear is that she is obviously the real thing and not the result of clever marketing.

I am afraid that it will be a very ugly campaign despite the common decency of the presidential and VP candidates.

I work around people who are very much into issues of “race, class, and gender.” What is quite obvious about this week is that the negative reaction of media elites to Palin is in large part based on social class. We’ve all probably heard the complaint that they wouldn’t raise these issues with a man. I think they wouldn’t raise these issues with a woman who went to an elite college, or better yet who had graduate degrees or who had spent serious time working on appropriately liberal causes or concerns.**

Race, class, and gender? Earlier this year folks thought that race or gender would be issues. They were. Now, with the nomination of Sarah Palin, social class is the issue. I’ll be interested in what my colleagues who focus on these issues have to say about this. (I wonder, do they even recognize it?)

I think most people already are beginning to sense that the so-called cultural wars this year will really be about social class. There is uneasiness about Obama that has nothing to do with race. However, it is easier for most people to feel it than to be able to articulate it. If something, or someone on the Republican side, crystallizes this feeling, McCain-Palin will make this election a contest.

However, Obama and his people are smart. They know this election cannot be won by McCain unless Obama loses it. Obama will not get caught riding around in a tank like Dukakis or caught windsurfing like Kerry. They have done an outstanding job of positioning Obama, of marketing him, and they aren’t likely to make a big mistake.

**Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, is VERY liberal and the mother of five children. Her family has never been an issue.

four weeks off

I haven't posted anything in four weeks. The first week in August I flew out to Northern California to visit my mother. We took a few days to also visit my nephew, his newish wife, and their 18-month-old daughter at their home in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We also saw the tail end of a forest fire.

I don't remember much about the second week of the month except at the end of it Offspring #3 returned from a trip to the Dominican Republic. The third week is a complete blur except we went to the New York State Fair.

Last week I drove down to NYC to meet Offspring #3 [correction: #2]. We stayed in NJ near the Meadowlands and took a Park-n-Ride into the Port Authority bus station. It saves about $100 per night on hotels and costs $13.05 per day (including parking) for both of us to take a ten-minute bus ride into the city.

The first day we went very early into the city to get tickets for a tour of Yankee Stadium. (I came home with an unofficial souvenir: gravel from the left-field warning track.) We also visited Columbia U., Grant's Tomb, walked the Brooklyn Bridge, visited the Twin Towers site, Wall Street, The Federal Building (site of Washington's inauguration), Chinatown, and rode the Staten Island ferry after sundown. I must have worn Cap'n Kenny out, since he slept ten hours straight that night. I was surprised that he had not done any of the above, except going to Chinatown, despite living in NYC for a month or so.

The next day, Wednesday, we didn't get into town until about noon. We went to the Guggenheim Museum, something I've been wanting to do for over 35 years. That evening we attended a Yankee-Bosox game. Good news: Yankees lost 11-3. Better news: it was a close game until the 8th inning. Best news: In the 8th, a Red Sox player hit a grand slam and the ball cleared the fence near the approximate site where I took my warning track gravel. (At least approximate enough to make for an interesting story.) We finished the evening walking from Times Square to the Port Authority Bus station. Bright lights. Big city. Gorgeous.

Thursday was a travel day for us and Friday my first classes started. This weekend Miss Lois visited.

There went August. A good month.

Be blessed!
RB

two easter sermons

by N.T. Wright

IF I WERE A BETTING MAN, I would lay good money on two basic messages going out from pulpits this Easter. If those aboard Ship of Fools could act as flies on the wall, they might be able to tell me whether I would have won. (I know that flies ought to be suspicious of a website, but go for it anyway.)

Pastor Gospelman believes passionately in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the empty tomb, the angels, the whole supernatural shebang. (If that isn't how you spell that last word, sorry, I'm relying on oral tradition.) Every Easter he denounces the wicked liberals, not least The Reverend Jeremy Smoothtongue up the road, for their unwillingness to acknowledge that the Bible is true, that God really does do miracles, and that – as the demonstration of those two points – Jesus really did rise again.

He may try a few stunts to show that eye-witnesses can tell strange stories and still be speaking the truth: watch him eat a daffodil in the pulpit. He may quote the old chorus: "You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart!" Yes, Jesus is risen from the dead, and he is therefore alive and we can get to know him for ourselves.

When it comes to the "so what?" the Pastor is equally emphatic. There really is a life after death! Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us in heaven! Salvation awaits, in a glorious, blissful world beyond this one. We are, after all, "citizens of heaven", as Paul says, so when we're done with this wicked world our souls will be snatched away to be there for ever. We shall be reunited with our loved ones (don't you wish there was a better phrase, even a better cliché, for saying that?). We shall share the life of the New Jerusalem. "Here for a season, then above, O Lamb of God I come." "Till we cast our crowns before thee, lost in wonder, love and praise."

Alas: Pastor Gospelman has missed the point. Much of what he says is true, but most of it isn't the truth that the Easter stories were written to convey.

DOWN THE ROAD, FORTIFIED BY champagne in the Rectory after the midnight Easter Vigil (why not break the Lenten fast in style, even if your fasting itself has been, well, somewhat sporadic), Mr Smoothtongue is in full flow. We know of course that the crude, surface meaning of the story can't be what the writers really meant. Modern science has shown that miracles don't happen, that dead people don't rise. Anyway, what kind of a God would break into history just this once, to rescue one favoured person, while standing back and doing nothing during the Holocaust? To believe in something so obvious, so blatant, so... unspiritual as the empty tomb and the bodily resurrection – it's offensive to all one's finer instincts.

In particular, it might be taken to mean (as his good friend Pastor Gospelman up the road would no doubt imagine, bless his fundamentalist socks) that Christianity is therefore superior to all other faiths, whereas we know that God is radically inclusive and that all religions, all faiths, all worldviews can be equally valid pathways to The Divine.

So... the stories of the empty tomb were probably made up many years after it all. The learned Rector wants to make this quite clear: they are a remythologization of the primal eschatological drama, which caught up the disciples in a moment of sociomorphic, possibly even sociopathic, empathy with the apocalyptic dénouement of the Beatific Vision. Hmm. No, the congregation didn't quite get that either. But then they, too, had ended the Lenten Fast in style.

When it comes to the "so what?" Mr Smoothtongue is emphatic. Now that we've got away from that crude supernatural nonsense, the way is clear to "True Resurrection". This, it turns out, is a new way of construing the human project, breaking through the old taboos (he has traditional sexual ethics in mind, but is too delicate to mention it) and discovering a new kind of life, a welcoming, yes, inclusive approach.

The "stone" of legalism has been rolled away, and the "risen body", the true spark of life and identity hidden inside each of us, can burst forth. And – well, of course, this new life must now infect all our relationships. All our social policies. Resurrection must become, not a one-off event, imagined by pre-modern minds and insisted on by backward-looking conservatives, but an ongoing event in the liberation of humans and the world.

Mr Smoothtongue is on to something here at last, but he doesn't know what it is. Or why.

WHAT PASTOR GOSPELMAN never notices is that the resurrection stories in the four Gospels aren't about going to heaven when you die. In fact, there is almost nothing about "going to heaven when you die" in the whole New Testament. Being "citizens of heaven" (Philippians 3.20) doesn't mean you're supposed to end up there. Many of the Philippians were Roman citizens, but Rome didn't want them back when they retired. Their job was to bring Roman culture to Philippi.

That's the point which all the Gospels actually make, in their own ways. Jesus is risen, therefore God's new world has begun. Jesus is risen, therefore Israel and the world have been redeemed. Jesus is risen, therefore his followers have a new job to do.

And what is that new job? To bring the life of heaven to birth in actual, physical, earthly reality. This is what Pastor Gospelman never imagines (though his preaching does sometimes accidentally have this result). The bodily resurrection of Jesus is more than a proof that God performs miracles or that the Bible is true. It is more than the Christian's knowing of Jesus in our own experience (that is the truth of Pentecost, not of Easter). It is much, much more than the assurance of heaven after death (Paul speaks of "going away and being with Christ", but his main emphasis is on coming back again in a risen body, to live in God's new-born creation).

Jesus' resurrection is the beginning of God's new project, not to snatch people away from earth to heaven, but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.

That's why Mr Smoothtongue's final point has a grain of truth in it, though all his previous denials make it impossible for him to see why it's true or what its proper shape is. The resurrection is indeed the foundation for a renewed way of life in and for the world. But to get that social, political and cultural result you really do need the bodily resurrection, not just a "spiritual" event that might have happened to Jesus or perhaps simply to the disciples. And his insistence on "modern science" (not that he's read any physics recently) is pure Enlightenment rhetoric. We didn't need Galileo and Einstein to tell us that dead people don't come back to life.

When Paul wrote his great resurrection chapter, 1 Corinthians 15, he didn't end by saying, "So let's celebrate the great future life that awaits us." He ended by saying, "So get on with your work, because you know that in the Lord it won't go to waste." When the final resurrection occurs, as the centrepiece of God's new creation, we will discover that everything done in the present world in the power of Jesus' own resurrection will be celebrated and included, appropriately transformed.

Of course, when the muddled Rector tries to make Easter mean "liberation from moral constraint", and "discovering the true spark within each of us", he is standing genuine Christianity on its head and making it perform tricks like a circus lion. Easter is about new creation, a huge and stunning fresh gift of transforming grace, not about discovering that the old world has been misunderstood and needs simply to be allowed to be truly itself. Romans 6, 1 Corinthians 6 and Colossians 3 stand firmly in his way at this point.

HANDS UP ALL THOSE who have heard one or other of those sermons. Thank you. How much did I win?

Now hands up those who have heard a sermon which reflects what Paul is talking about in Romans 8, or the evangelists in their final chapters, or John the Seer in Revelation 21 and 22: that, with Easter, God's new creation is launched upon a surprised world, pointing ahead to the renewal, the redemption, the rebirth of the entire creation.

Hands up those who have heard the message that every act of love, every deed done in Christ and by the Spirit, every work of true creativity – every time justice is done, peace is made, families are healed, temptation is resisted, true freedom is sought and won – that this very earthly event takes its place within a long history of things which implement Jesus' own resurrection and anticipate the final new creation, and act as signposts of hope, pointing back to the first and on to the second.

I thought so. Thank you.

(source)

when smoke gets in your eyes....

I leave very early today from Ottawa for a trip to visit my mother in Northern California. Twelve hours of airports and airplanes then another two hour drive to Lake County. Tomorrow, Sunday, mom and I are planning to drive across the Central Valley and go up to visit my nephew and his family in the Northern Sierra Nevada mountains (Quincy, CA).

It was to be a three and a half or four hour drive. However, there are forest fires and the main road into the mountains (a beautiful drive above a canyon) is closed. The alternative route goes to Truckee, near the northern end of Lake Tahoe, and up around the backside to his place.

Whatever the route, the mountains should be beautiful. BTW, these are REAL mountains, not the wannabee mountains you get in the east.

While I know of a self-confessed New Jersey snob, as you can see I can play the part of a California snob.

Be blessed!
RB

small beginnings and the hui of the lord

In Tuesday's post about the Hui (pronounced way, Chinese Muslims) I mentioned that it took 10 years for the first 50 Hui to be saved. Then it took another five years to go from 50 to 200 Hui believers, a growth rate of almost 32%. At that rate it will take just another 39 1/2 years for all 50 million Hui to come to Christ.

If it took five years to go from 50 to 200, how many of the Hui will be saved during the last five years of the 39 1/2 years? 37.5 million. Only 12.5 million will be saved in the first 34 1/2 years. Three out of four Hui would come to know Christ after, in the last five of nearly 40 years of work.

How long will it take for half of the Hui (25 million) to come to Christ at this rate? 37 years and three months. That means the last 25 million, the last half, will be in the last 2 years and 3 months.

This is the miracle of compound interest or geometric growth. It doesn't seem much is happening but little by little it grows until at the end it seems to explode. It goes slowly for thirty-four years, the vast majority of Hui are unsaved, less than one in four know Christ. After three dozen years not even half are saved.

Then BAM!

The growth rate isn't any different than when going from 50 to 200. The effectiveness is the same. However, if it were not for the diligence of those leading the Hui to the Lord when the numbers of new believers is small, the growth would be stopped in its tracks. There would never be the explosion decades later. It is getting started, getting the ball rolling, that is the most important. Without the hard work when few results are seen in actual numbers, the base for future growth never gets established.

Maybe this helps explain the following verse:

Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin....
~ Zechariah 4:10 (NLT)