Tried With Fire

Forgive me for being blunt, but I might as well call it what it is. Perfectionism is worse than "You will be like God." It's "You must be like God or else ..." Perfectionism is a dystopian version of " The Little Red Hen " on steroids, where you ask for help and receive none. "Then I must do it myself or else ..." It creates a virtual reality where there is no God. There is no common grace and especially no grace to sinners. But it's a lie. All of it. This world is groaning under the curse and we are groaning, too. But we live as imperfect people in an imperfect world where there is a merciful, compassionate, and perfect Savior. We live in a world where this is true: The Lord is compassionate and gracious,  Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. He will not always strive with us, Nor will He keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. ...

I started reading American Slavery, American Freedom by the late historian Edmund Morgan. This book was recommended in The Search for Christian America, so I checked it out of the library. I thought I was done with American history when I fulfilled my humanities requirements in undergrad, but I was wrong.  I'm not interested in history as a standalone subject. I read history because I want to understand what has led up to the present. We can vilify it, gaze at it through rose-colored glasses, but we can't escape it. How I see myself and where I find myself is a direct result of past events, and those events were not impartial nor kind to all people. We are reaping what was sowed whether we like it or not. But uncomfortable as it may be, the more accurately we understand our history can only help our understanding of one another. In a nutshell, I read history because only God has the right to think that He knows all there is to know about people and their experiences. ...

During the Theology Conference Q&A , Dr. Murray stated: At the core of all empathy and sympathy is humility, that you have something to learn from someone else... The first thing you want to do is just listen. I don't know about you, but this is the opposite of what I have done, which brought back memories for my daughter and me. I was not always the best listener nor the best learner when it came to helping her through some of her struggles. There are moments when she still feels sad over this, and I have more than my share of regrets as well. Thankfully this sadness does not mean that we have we have not reconciled nor forgiven one another. The sadness does not mean that our relationship isn't stronger and healthier, which it is by God's grace. But hurts take time to heal, and grief is part of that process. I don't whether it is just me or in the larger Christian culture, but it's hard dealing with sadness. It's a normal response to want someone to fe...

Dr. David Murray from Puritan Reformed Seminary was the speaker at our annual theology conference last weekend. We've had great speakers in the past, but this conference, in my humble opinion, has been the best. So many of us have been touched by anxiety/depression/mental illness either experiencing it ourselves or with someone we love. We want to help but often make it worse because we don't understand the complexity of the issue. Dr. Murray addressed our emotions, the good, the bad, our failures, and our identity but within the framework of who God is, who we are, and redemption. I am very hopeful that this will be the beginning of greater understanding and empathy in my family as we wrestle with some of these issues but also within our church.. Here are a few snippets that stood out to me: Emotions are pre-fall. However, we did not have negative emotions prior to the fall. Only positive ones. Our emotions are disordered because of the fall. However, God is redeeming ou...

I cried unto God...You led Your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. Psalm 77:1-20 This psalm describes the condition of a child of God under deep depression of spirit. He is much tried and bowed, and yet, at the same time, the saint at last gets the victory and, before the psalm is over, the clouds are all removed from the sky and the heart rejoices in the sunlight of divine love. It is known to every believer that the experience of a Christian is very variable. We are like our own strange weather in this land. South winds blow and all is warm and balmy, but in a few hours the north wind comes, or the cutting east wind—and soon the ground is covered with snow or hard white frost—and yet, perhaps, in another day or two there will be a storm! Some believers have all spiritual weathers in a week. Being somewhat excitable, perhaps naturally, they readily take to themselves wings and mount aloft, but then as a high soar is often followed by a great fall, these very belie...

I've probably read more history in the last 5 years than in my entire life. It's funny how the things you thought were completely impractical are very relevant. History is awkward. It's very natural to want to distance ourselves from the injustices that occurred in the past. One reaction I have seen is for someone to talk about all the things he/she did that were the opposite of the situation in question or how his/her community was different. I get that. I'm not blaming you. But just because you or your community would have behaved differently doesn't mean that the event didn't occur. It still stands as a moment in time that we have to deal with. Sometimes it seems that American "city set on a hill" Christianity has morphed into the bunker in the hillside. It's a also a weird combination of withdrawal, very strong us/them mentality, and yet wanting to regain control via political means. It's also odd that a Christian subculture that is exp...

I've been listening to I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn't) by Brene Brown. She is known for her research in the dynamics of shame, and this book is specifically for women and shame. I don't know whether Brown is a Christian or not. She doesn't bring God explicitly into her writings at all. However, her work is very helpful because it names what many of us experience and also raises issues that may hinder us as individual Christians and/or communities. In the section on shame triggers, Brown writes of identity as being a primary trigger but from two aspects. The first is desired identity. I want or need to be this. I want people to see me as that. If not, I have not measured up to whatever this desired identity is, which brings shame. However the second aspect is where she grabbed my attention - unwanted identity . This is the case where we are given an identity that is not truly ours by others. Growing up as an Asian American in an era where there was inaccur...

When we attended the 2012 Ligonier Conference, Dr. Robert Godfrey spoke on the damage anti-intellectualism has done to the Christian mind and traced its rise in American history. After the Revolution, the glory of individualism took hold in such a way that "Power went from the snobs to the mobs" in three specific areas - medicine, law, and religion. In The Search for Christian America , the authors also discuss the Revolution's affect on theology, but they get specific with the school that was affected. It was Calvinism. "The kind of democratic individualism unleashed by the American Revolution altered no dimension of the church more than its theology. Most obvious in the fifty years after the Revolution was the revolt against Calvinism. But most notable was the revolt against the accepted ground rules of theology itself. This second revolt attacked especially the long-standing Christian conviction that it was valuable for an educated segment of the church to re...

This do in remembrance of Me. Luke 22:19 I am never happier than when I am in your midst, my beloved brethren, and we all sit around the table, because I think of all the Lord has done for you and for me. Why, it is not worth while going to heaven alone. A little lost child sits down on the doorstep of a West end mansion and cries because it is so lonely; is that to be our position in heaven? Are we to take no friends there with us? Who wants to be solitary in the New Jerusalem? But oh, to come with all of you to the table, and to look into the faces of all God’s people, and to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is in each one of them! They are a poor lot, full of mistakes, full of errors, full of infirmities, just like their minister, but the Lord has loved them, and bought them with His blood. A precious Christ He is, not only to have saved me but tens of thousands of His saints everywhere, for there are people of His in all churches, even in the churches that are most full of e...

Walking Through Twilight: A Wife's Illness - A Philosopher's Lament by Douglas Groothuis is a book that is tragic, moving, but beautiful at the same time. The author's wife has a form of dementia that has robbed her of words, both written and verbal, due to the area of the brain that the disease has affected. This is especially painful because Rebecca Groothuis was a gifted writer, editor, and Mensa member. I have a few of her books on my shelf. Her husband, Douglas, is a philosophy professor by trade, so he writes of the sorrow, struggle, and trying to find meaning while holding on to the grace of God and the gospel. "I am hanging by a thread, but the thread is knit by God." (pg. 153) One thing worth noting, Rebecca Groothuis is one of the editors of the Council for Biblical Equality's Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy . Yes, they are egalitarians. There are assumptions made by non-egals about egalitarians, sometimes even qu...

Albert Einstein was really born on Pi Day! But as for the rest of the following information... ht: Fake Science

My pastor preached on Sunday from 1 Cor. 10 and the lessons in the passage for us today. The 2nd point in the sermon gave me a lot to ponder. Paul refers to Numbers 25, which tells of the Israelites' idolatry, God's righteous response, and Phinehas staying that judgment. While the exact nature of Phinehas' intervention would not translate to the present, Pastor Ryan remarked that his zeal for the Lord may not be that well-received today. Maybe he would have been told to back down, chill, and show a little grace. But this is a warning for us to not use the grace of God as a license to sin or an excuse to stop fighting sin .  We may not be tempted to worship Baal this week, but where is "grace" used to excuse sin today? As an excuse to: 1 - Disparage and mock people who disagree with us because we are obviously "right?" Thus our "rightness" takes precedence over loving our neighbor? Not only is pride at stake but the fear of los...

So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. John 8:36.  The Son of God can make the prisoner free. No matter who you are, nor what you are, nor how many years you may have remained the slaves of Satan—the Son, the glorious Liberator—can make you free. “He is able also to save them to the uttermost, who come unto God by Him.” Perhaps that which weighs upon you most heavily is a sense of your past guilt. “I have offended God—I have offended often, willfully, atrociously, with many aggravations. On such-and-such a day, I offended Him in the foulest manner, and with deliberation. On other days, I have run greedily in a course of vice. Nothing has restrained me from disobedience, and nothing has impelled me to the service of God. All that His Word says against me, I deserve; and every threat, which His Book utters, is justly due to me, and may well be fulfilled. Is there a possibility that I can escape from guilt? Can so foul a sinner as I am be made clean? I know that t...

I've been waiting for Rosaria Butterfield's new book, The Gospel Comes with a House Key, ever since she and her husband, Kent, spoke at our theology conference two years ago. The books arrived yesterday, so I started flipping through a copy. My first reaction is - "Fasten your seat belt." I don't know where the idea came in that hospitality = entertaining and entertaining = Martha Stewart. Maybe it's my own introvert insecurity making a wrong connection, but Rosaria's book couldn't be farther from this. Radical ordinary hospitality gives evidence of faith in Jesus's power to save. It doesn't get dug in over politics or culture or where someone stands on current events. It knows what conversion means, what identity in Christ does, and what repentance creates. It knows that sin is deceptive. To be deceived means to be taken captive by an evil force to do its bidding. It knows that people need to be rescued from their sin, not to be giv...

It's interesting how we avoid talking about death in our culture. People don't die; they "pass away." There's probably unspoken fear, but there's also the idea that we can circumvent the effects of the fall provided we do the right things. In Being Mortal,  the physician author sees how unprepared people are to deal with dying because medicine has made it seem that we can almost live forever. As a theologian, Kelly Kapic goes a step further. Failing to own our mortality may keep us from being prepared for suffering but also keep us from living now. The following excerpt is worth considering: "The untiring siren call of the future - with its grand plans to be accomplished, vacations to be had, retirements to be enjoyed - can become so strong that it swallows our ability to live in the now . This often means people fail to be fully present, to live in the moment. We neglect spouses and children, disregard care of our bodies, and dismiss relationships t...

I'm posting at Out of the Ordinary today. It's funny how my pastor's recent sermons have provided the exact encouragement I needed from the Word at exactly the right time. Being reminded of who God is in His Word is a lifeline in the middle of a trial, so God's timing is pretty amazing. I just got off the phone with my dad. Today was a rough day for him and my mom. He never knows what the dementia may bring, but the stress ramps up when my mom won't comply with the care that is necessary and good for her. Because of the disease, she will question and argue, and because of the disease, trying to reason with her is futile. This is hard for my dad when all he wants to do is help his wife whom he loves. I encouraged him as best as I could, and we prayed together on the phone. When I hung up, then I could release the tears I had been holding inside. It's no wonder the Heidelberg Catechism refers to this life as a vale of tears. Read the rest of the post here ...

Organic chemistry was a required class for my undergrad major. I hated the lecture, but I liked the lab. It was easier than my physical chemistry lab, and the TA wasn't nearly as tough of a grader as some of the other instructors. I was surprised one day to have my lab notebook handed back to me with a comment of how well I expressed myself in English. It was on the tip of my tongue to sarcastically say that English was read and written even in remote places like New Jersey, but I took pity on  him. He meant it as a compliment, which I received  rather awkwardly, although I tried to correct his wrong impression about me with the usual, "I was born here. I'm an American. Blah, blah blah." There could have been a number of factors that played into his wrong assumption. He was a grad student. He could have been running on caffeine fumes and probably had tons of work on top of a teaching assistantship. He may have come from a part of the country with very few Asian im...

“I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction.” Isaiah 48:10.  [Y]ou have the Son of Man with you in the furnace. In that silent bedchamber of yours, there sits by your side one whom you have not seen but whom you love. And oftentimes when you know it not, He makes all your bed in your affliction and smoothes your pillow for you. You are in poverty. But in that lonely house of yours, that has nothing to cover its bare walls—where you sleep on a miserable pallet—do you know that the Lord of life and glory is a frequent visitor? He often treads those bare floors and putting His hands upon those walls, He consecrates them! Were you in a palace He might not come there. He loves to come into these desolate places where He may visit you. The Son of Man is with you, Christian. You cannot see Him, but you may feel the pressure of His hands. Do you not hear His voice? It is the Valley of the Shadow of Death—you see nothing, but He says, “Fear not, I am with you, be not dismayed, for ...

If you've watched  Hidden Figures,  it depicts a scene where Katherine Johnson (Goble at the time) comes into her new office and is handed a trashcan from a white engineer with the order to empty it the next time. The following excerpt from the book describes the incident very differently with much less drama than the big screen, but it gives insight into Katherine's character. The room hummed with pre-lunch activity as Katherine surveyed it for a place to wait for her new bosses. She made a beeline for an empty cube, siting down next to an engineer, resting her belongings on the desk and offering the man her winning smile. As she sat, and before she could issue a greeting in her gentle southern cadence, the man gave her a sideways glance, got up, and walked away. Katherine watched the engineer disappear. Had she broken some unspoken rule? Could her mere presence have driven him away? It was a private and unobtrusive moment, one that failed to dent the rhythm of the o...