Tried With Fire

I wrote this post last year but never published it. Believe me, I would much rather that this issue be properly dealt with in Christian circles, and I never write about domestic abuse again, but that time has not come yet. Until Christians realize the damage we inflict on one another because of the horrible advice we give *, domestic abuse needs to be discussed openly with humility and repentance. Cancer is a horrible disease. While there are many very successful treatments, I know of no absolute cure that can guarantee eradication once and for all. Survivors still undergo regular monitoring in case there is a recurrence. When someone is diagnosed, treatment is initiated quickly because of cancer's propensity to spread. While it is not wrong to hope and pray that a cure will be found, if I was diagnosed, I would accept existing treatment even with its limitations. This doesn't indicate a lack of faith. Rather it is wisdom because I don't know the future. It would be fool...

He restores my soul. Psalm 23:3 All our healing lies in Christ, Christ is the physician and Christ is the medicine too. The way to get your soul restored is not to try to restore it yourself, nor to undergo any processes by which it may work itself right. But go straight away to Christ and lay hold on Him, just as you are whatever your condition may be. Coming into contact with Him, you shall soon have to sing in the words of the text, “He restores my soul.” Let others talk of their sacraments, “He restores my soul.” Let men boast and glory of special ways of raising their souls to heaven, “He restores my soul.” Let some rejoice because their souls need no restoring, but are always strong, I cannot say that, but I can say, “He restores my soul.” I hope this morning I shall have many beloved brothers and sisters of like mind, who will go out of this house saying not only, “I knew He could restore my soul,” but, “He restores my soul. I was very cold when I came in here, as co...

This is one of the saddest true-life stories I have ever read - Japan's Rent-a-Family Industry .  People may quibble at the word "broken," but this article shows how broken we are when it comes to human relationships. It's tragic that people have become so disconnected that they would pay a stranger to act a part to fill that void. Ironically one of the reasons for the rental is conforming to society's expectations. If everyone took of their masks, who would be even close to the ideal? But that is the power of culture, you are loyal to the ideal even if it is out of reach and the exception, not the norm. Another related article is this one -  Japan's Prisons Are a Haven for Elderly Women . This breaks my heart that the elderly would find a better community in prison because their families have rejected them and they are friendless. This may be Japan, but it is worth taking note. America is getting grayer and grayer too. After I read these stories, a few th...

I have a lot of questions regarding how we got to where we are today, which can only be answered by examining history and not relying on vague memories and urban legends from grade school. So I read books that could potentially raise some eyebrows. I just started One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America by Kevin Kruse. Did your eyebrows go up at the title? If his thesis is true, the push for an increase in civil religion in the 50's was not just a response to the Cold War but a fear of Roosevelt's New Deal. Big business did not like the way the country was headed, so they promoted an amalgam of the independent self, Christianity, and capitalism to get the backing of ministers and, in turn, their congregations. In my words, you can worship God and Mammon. 1 I am troubled by what I am reading, not because I think Kruse got it wrong but because he might be right. The church shouldn't be the dupe or the pawn of any political agenda whether ri...

At that day you shall ask in my name, and I say not unto you that I will pray the Father for you, for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me, and have believed that I came forth from God. John 16:26-27 To ask anything of God does not require that you should use a set form of words. The children in your family do not read a petition to you when they need any favor at your hands. They state their need in childish language, you understand them and grant their request, if it is a right and proper one and compliance with it is within your power. Act in just the same way with your God.  We are often far too careful about picking and choosing the phrases that we use in prayer. Do you think that God is pleased with a display of oratory, or that He takes notice of your elocution when you come to the throne of grace? It may suit a teacher of English composition to criticize your sentences, but God thinks much more of your desires than of the words in which they ar...

This is what Jesus prayed in John 17 . If anyone prayed without selfish motives, Jesus did. If anyone prayed in full accordance with the will of the Father, He did. v.1 - glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You v.4 - glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. v.11 - Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are. v.15 - I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. v.20 -21 - I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even 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 sent Me. v.22 - that they may be one, just as We are one v.23 - that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world...

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us. 1 John 3:16 And you Christian people, who do love Him, if you have perceived His love somewhat, try to perceive it still more, that you may love Him more; and if you really love Him more, try to show that you do. Notice the rest of the verse from which my text is taken; I did not leave out the latter part because I was afraid of it, but because I had not time to deal with it as it deserves: “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” We ought to prove our love to our God by our love to our fellow men, and especially by our love to our fellow Christians, and to prove our love by our actions. I do not know what the love of some professors is worth; I suppose they do, if they put down how much it costs them in a year. I fear that it does not cost some professors nearly as much for their religion as it does for their ribbon...

There has been a lot of virtual ink spilled ever since the recent TGC conference on the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. I still stand by my desire to take these conversations out of e-space and bring them face-to-face. I affirm that there is a single human race that fell in Adam and has been redeemed through the work of Christ. I affirm that He is the source of our unity and that He fully paid for the sins that divide. While I agree that race is a social construct, God has providentially created us with roots in different countries and cultures. This a wonderful thing for which we should thank Him. Thus the church is not the Borg. Unity is not colorblind nor ethnic blind. Neither is it gender blind. Yet I'm still discouraged by what I've seen on social media. The visceral response to events like MLK50 and David Platt's talk at T4G seems to indicate that there is something unstable below the surface.  Amy Mantravadi describes it as a ...

I'm still listening/reading Thinking Fast and Slow. I probably need to go back and read the book more slowly because almost every aspect of how we think gets tackled.  I just finished the section on the Illusion of Pundits in which the validity of so-called experts (political, economic, etc.) comes under scrutiny. They are not as expert as they think they are or we want to believe. In a study of pundits, Philip Tetlock, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, found out that: "experts resisted admitting that they had been wrong, and when they were compelled to admit error, they had a large collection of excuses: they had been wrong only in their timing, an unforeseeable event had intervened, or they had been wrong but for the right reasons. Experts are just human in the end. They are dazzled by their own brilliance and hate to be wrong. Experts are led astray not by what they believe, but by how they think, says Tetlock. He uses the terminology from Isaiah Berl...

We took a whirlwind 24-hour trip to see family this weekend. My dad will be celebrating his 90th birthday this year but it falls near the due date of his first great-grandchild and my daughter's commencement. My sister and brother-in-law planned a surprise party for him on Saturday night, so we flew up for the celebration and flew back the next morning. On the flight up, I started reading Troubled Minds: Mental Illness and the Church's Mission by Amy Simpson. David Murray recommended this book in the Q&A at our recent theology conference as a good resource for growing in empathy and understanding. The copy I was reading was for the church library. I need to get one for myself. When it comes to mental illness, Amy Simpson knows firsthand the struggles of a family with mental illness. Her mother's diagnosis of schizophrenia came after years of hospitalizations and medications. She renounced Christianity, pursued the occult, and went missing only to be found in a shelt...

I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one; as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us: that the world may believe that You have sent Me.  John 17:20, 21 Beloved, Christ prays for the unity of His Church, that all saints who have gone to heaven in days gone by, that all saints who live now, that all who ever live may be brought into the unity of the one life in Him. I fear we do not attach enough importance to the power of Christ’s prayer. We think of Joshua fighting in the valley, but we forget our Moses with hands outstretched upon the hill. We are looking at the wheels of the machine—to go back to our old figure—and we are thinking that this wheel, and that, and the other, needs more oil, or not working exactly to its point. Ah, but let us never forget the engine, that mysterious motive force which is hidden and concealed, upon which the action of the whole depends. Ch...

When emotions run high and opinions are strong, social media reflects that. The tweets and statuses may be preaching to the choir or not. They may disperse into the ether without making a blip on anyone's consciousness, or they could potentially wound a fellow saint. As I've seen the volleys go back and forth even yesterday, it saddens me. But lest I point the finger out there, have I ever given any indication that I would: - Disrespect or mock a fellow believer if I found out that we disagreed and pressure them to agree with me? - Be unwilling to listen? Not care enough to learn more and try to understand where someone is coming from even if the disagreement still stands? - Be the last person they would go to because of lack of empathy/sympathy? God forgive me if I have done so, and I would ask the same of you, my brothers and sisters. The interaction among opposing sides is getting less and less civil in the culture at large, and it is rubbing off on us. And yet th...

I read books about thinking - not only what we think but why we think the way we do. I loved How to Think by Alan Jacobs, and when an author I like recommends other works, I'm interested in checking them out. One of his recommendations was Thinking Fast and Slow by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman proposes that we have two systems that comprise our thinking. System 1 is the fast one. It's the system that kicks in when we jump to conclusions, know how to get through a sticky traffic situation without consciously being aware of what we are doing, and the source of intuition. System 2 is the slow one. This system requires far more mental energy and engages when we are in a situation that causes us to pause and deliberate. These systems have strengths and weaknesses and rely on one another at different times but not always in the best way. Because System 2 takes more effort, it is lazy and would sooner go along with the gut reaction of System 1. This only works w...

The following excerpt is from The Happy Christian by David Murray, in which he tells the story of what happened in the checkout line at Walmart. He left this chapter to the end of the book because it may be the hardest for his readers. I appreciate his transparency because this is a hard confession to make: "Wouldn't it be much better if they weren't here? Yes, that's the question that arose in my mind. Followed by: What right do they have to be here? Which suddenly provoked an inner dialogue:     Hey, you're an immigrant yourself, Murray!    Yes, but I'm not a Mexican immigrant.    What's the difference?    Well, I'm white and speak proper English.    So what? Does that make you better than them?    Well, yes ... I mean, no ... I mean..." "It was an unforgettable moment of painful self-discovery. I had to face the facts. I was prejudiced. Racist even. It had been there all along, but it was being exposed in all it...

Now, let it be known and understood that our faith is that those very limbs that lay stiff and cold in death, became warm with life again; that the very body with its bones, and blood, and flesh which lay there, became again instinct with life, and came forth into a glorious existence! Those hands broke the piece of honeycomb, and the fish in the presence of the disciples; and those lips partook of the same. And He held out those wounds, and said, “Reach here your finger, and put it into the print of the nails.” And He bared His side, the same side, and said, “Reach here your hand, and thrust it into My side and be not faithless, but believing.” He was no phantom, no spectra! As He Himself said, “A spirit has not flesh and bones as you see I have.” He was a real man as much after the resurrection as He had been before! And He is real man in glory now, even as He was when here below! He has gone up—the cloud has received Him out of our sight. The same Christ who asked Peter, “Do you ...