God is sure good at making things clear. He leaves us with no confusion about the lives of those who trust in him and those who don’t. What a contrast! God makes it clear how these lives will turn out, doesn’t he? To be a “tumbleweed” or a tree with an endless supply of water…let’s see…which would be better? Wow, what a contrast. So it’s obvious that who you trust in is really important. Trust in one who gives you some stability and life or trust in one who leaves you driven and tossed by every wind.
“Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church, you are really listening in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going. He does it by playing on our conceit and laziness and intellectual snobbery.” —C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
In the podcast from July 13, 2006, “What Do You Live For? (Part 1)”, Greg Laurie closes with this:
The first-century Christians did not out-argue the pagans, they out-lived them. And it’s worth noting that Christianity of the first century made no attempts to conquer paganism, and dead Judaism, by reacting blow-by-blow. Instead, the early believers out-thought, out-prayed, and out-lived the non-believers. Their weapons were positive, not negative.
They did not conduct protests or organize boycotts. They did not put on campaigns to try to unseat the Roman emperors. But instead they out-prayed, they out-preached, and they proclaimed the message of Christ, and to a large degree won a good portion of their culture over. Because they, like Paul, could say, “To live is Christ.”
And I suggest to you if we would say the same thing, we could impact our culture today as well, in a much more effective way. To live is Christ.
You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips. —Oliver Goldsmith
My constant prayer is to be able to do precisely this.
Seen today at an archive over at Agnus Day:
“If you want proof of the existence of the Holy Spirit, read your church history.” Certainly such a flawed institution couldn’t continue to exist without serious divine intervention.
Kenneth, one of Steve’s readers, left this comment:
In Christ we have a love that can never be fathomed, a life that can never die, a peace that can never be understood, a rest that can never be disturbed, a joy that can never be diminished, a hope that can never be disappointed, a glory that can never be clouded, a light that can never be darkened, and a spiritual resource that can never be exhausted.
Just think about the situation Christ’s disciples were in after He left them. Here was a group of peasants, powerless, up against the most powerful empire in the world. Possible prison time was the very least of their worries. They knew that torture and execution could be in their future if they refused to stop preaching the name of Jesus Christ.
But they couldn’t stop.
To a man, they kept talking about Christ’s life, death, and resurrection to anyone who would listen. None of them would deny or retract their story. Eventually, just as the authorities had threatened, most of them were executed for it. But still, all of them maintained to the very end that Jesus had risen from the dead—that they had seen Him, touched Him, talked with Him.
What would inspire men to suffer and die for a belief? Only one thing—the absolute certainty that their belief was true.
[…]
Which leads me inescapably to one conclusion: Jesus’ resurrection was not a lie.
Love the overlooked. Jesus sits in your classroom, wearing the thick glasses, outdated clothing, and a sad face. You’ve seen him. He’s Jesus.
Jesus works in your office. Pregnant again, she shows up to work late and tired. No one knows the father. According to water-cooler rumors, even she doesn’t know the father. You’ve seen her. She’s Jesus.
When you talk to the lonely student, befriend the weary mom, you love Jesus. He dresses in the garb of the overlooked and ignored. “Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked and ignored, that was me—you did it to me.” (Matt. 25:40 MSG).
Remember, God loves you simply because he has chosen to do so.
He loves you when you don’t feel lovely.
He loves you when no one else loves you. Others may abandon you, divorce you, and ignore you, but God will love you. Always. No matter what.
Despite the financial hardships and the extended family dysfunctional, I have an incredible amount of things to be thankful for again this year. I pray you do, too.
“It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors.” —George Washington, Thanksgiving Proclamation, 3 October 1789
“To grant that there is a supreme intelligence who rules the world and has established laws to regulate the actions of his creatures; and still to assert that man, in a state of nature, may be considered as perfectly free from all restraints of law and government, appears to a common understanding altogether irreconcilable. Good and wise men, in all ages, have embraced a very dissimilar theory. They have supposed that the deity, from the relations we stand in to himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind, prior to any human institution whatever. This is what is called the law of nature….Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind.” — Alexander Hamilton
John Papanek, the editorial director of ESPN New Media, referring to sports fans congregating together:
“There’s nothing more communal that human beings do, outside of worship — and sometimes it’s hard to tell the two apart.”
I’ve heard from more than one pastor something along the lines of, “If Christians put as much enthusiasm and effort as they do in to cheering on their favorite sports teams, what a real difference the Church could be making in this world.” Reading Papanek’s comment reminded me of that.
“Time after time mankind is driven against the rocks of the horrid reality of a fallen creation. And time after time mankind must learn the hard lessons of history—-the lessons that for some dangerous and awful reason we can’t seem to keep in our collective memory.” —Hilaire Belloc
“The Christian and the Materialist hold different beliefs about the universe. They can’t both be right. The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesn’t fit the real universe. Consequently, with the best will in the world, he will be helping his fellow creatures to their destruction.” —C. S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis:
“Non-Christians seem to think that the Incarnation implies some particular merit or excellence in humanity. But of course it implies just the reverse: a particular demerit and depravity. No creature that deserved Redemption would need to be redeemed. They that are whole need not the physician. Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.”
Today we wrap up Chuck Colson’s look at the “Four Horseman” of this, our modern age, with this final quote from his speech, “The Enduring Revolution”:
The fourth modern myth is radical individualism. The fourth horseman brings excess and isolation.
This myth dismisses the importance of family, church, and community; denies the value of sacrifice; and elevates individual rights and pleasures as the ultimate social value.
But with no higher principles to live by, men and women suffocate under their own expanding pleasures. Consumerism becomes empty and leveling, leaving society full of possessions but drained of ideals. This is what Vaclav Havel calls “totalitarian consumerism.”
A psychologist tells the story of a despairing young woman, spent in an endless round of parties, exhausted by the pursuit of pleasure. When told she should simply stop, she responded, “You mean I don’t have to do what I want to do?”
As author George Macdonald once wrote, “The one principle of hell is ‘I am my own.’”
Revelation 6:7-8 tells us “And when He had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living being say, ‘Come and see!’ And I looked, and behold, a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”
The great sin which was the downfall of Lucifer, and led to his and a third of Heaven being cast out, was the sin of selfishness. I’ve read that to be a practicing Satanist, one doesn’t have to belong to the Church of Satan. All one has to do is to totally live for oneself, with no regard to anyone or anything else. How many of us are guilty of that at one time or another?
Ultimately, if this is the way you live your life, you will find yourself in Hell. Most people have this image of Hell as a place of fire and brimstone, with the Devil and his demons forever taunting them. Many people have said, oftentimes as a stab to harshly judgmental Christians, that they would rather be in Hell with their friends, than in Heaven with the likes of them. What these poor souls don’t realize is that Hell isn’t going to be a place where you will be with anyone. You will be utterly and absolutely alone. Worst of all, unlike here and now, where when even alone the Spirit of the Living God is present with you, in Hell you will be completely removed from the presence of God Himself. That is what Hell will truly be, and why one should fear, not embrace, it.
From “The Enduring Revolution”:
The third myth is the relativity of moral values. The third horseman sows chaos and confusion.
This myth hides the dividing line between good and evil, noble and base. It has thus created a crisis in the realm of truth. When a society abandons its transcendent values, each individual’s moral vision becomes purely personal and finally equal. Society becomes merely the sum total of individual preferences, and since no preference is morally preferable, anything that can be dared will be permitted.
This leaves the moral consensus for our laws and manners in tatters. Moral neutrality slips into moral relativism. Tolerance substitutes for truth, indifference for religious conviction. And in the end, confusion undercuts all our creeds.
From “The Enduring Revolution”:
The second myth of modernity is the promise of coming utopia. The second horseman arrives with sword and slaughter.
This is the myth that human nature can be perfected by government; that a new Jerusalem can be built using the tools of politics.
From the birth of this century, ruthless ideologies claimed history as their own. They moved swiftly from nation to nation on the strength of a promised utopia. They pledged to move the world, but could only stain it with blood.
In communism and fascism we have seen rulers who bear the mark of Cain as a badge of honor; who pursue a savage virtue, devoid of humility and humanity. We have seen more people killed in this century by their own governments than in all its wars combined. We have seen every utopian experiment fall exhausted from the pace of its own brutality.
Yet utopian temptations persist, even in the world’s democracies — stripped of their terrors perhaps, but not of their risks. The political illusion still deceives, whether it is called the great society, the new covenant, or the new world order. In each case it promises government solutions to our deepest needs for security, peace, and meaning.
I just read a speech delivered by Chuck Colson in 1993 to the Parliament of the World’s Religions. Colson was accepting the Templeton Prize, and this speech was the accceptance address. I was especially struck by his usage of the Four Horseman as a literary device, and thought I would share one a day. From “The Enduring Revolution”:
Four great myths define our times — the four horsemen of the present apocalypse.
The first myth is the goodness of man. The first horseman rails against heaven with the presumptuous question: why do bad things happen to good people? He multiplies evil by denying its existence.
This myth deludes people into thinking that they are always victims, never villains; always deprived, never depraved. It dismisses responsibility as the teaching of a darker age. It can excuse any crime, because it can always blame something else — a sickness of society or a sickness of the mind.
One writer has called the modern age “the golden age of exoneration.” When guilt is dismissed as the illusion of narrow minds, then no one is finally accountable, even to his conscience.
The irony is that this should come alive in this century, of all centuries, with its gulags and death camps and killing fields. As G. K. Chesterton once said, the doctrine of original sin is the only philosophy empirically validated by the centuries of recorded human history.
It was a holocaust survivor who exposed this myth most eloquently. Yehiel Dinur was a witness during the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Dinur entered the courtroom and stared at the man behind the bulletproof glass — the man who had presided over the slaughter of millions. The court was hushed as a victim confronted a butcher.
Then suddenly Dinur began to sob, and collapsed to the floor. Not out of anger or bitterness. As he explained later in an interview, what struck him at that instant was a terrifying realization. “I was afraid about myself,” Dinur said. “I saw that I am capable to do this … Exactly like he.”
The reporter interviewing Dinur understood precisely. “How was it possible for a man to act as Eichmann acted?” he asked. “Was he a monster? A madman? Or was he perhaps something even more terrifying … Was he normal?”
Yehiel Dinur, in a moment of chilling clarity, saw the skull beneath the skin. “Eichmann,” he concluded, “is in all of us.”
Jesus said it plainly: “That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man” (Mark 7:20).
There are few words in the English language more contrived and worthless than “homophobia.” Combing the Greek prefix “homo” and the suffix “phobia” should give us a term meaning “fear of the same.” Instead it is used in reference to a fear of homosexuals, a definition that is at best imprecise and at worst completely absurd.
“When you have nothing left but God, then for the first time you become aware that God is enough.” —Unknown
For a seventeen year-old, Chase has an incredible grasp on the meaning of things that eludes most adults:
[…] human life is not absolute. The physical forces acting upon us at any given time can be manipulated with mass or velocity. Everything around us can be changed in some way. Without an absolute “invisible cloud being”, how exactly, since biotic and abiotic nature is certainly not absolute, do you know that “lying, stealing, murdering” etc is wrong? How do you know that inflicting those consequences upon other people is not fine and dandy? In order for you to care about human life, it has to have value. Outside of God, how can human life, your fellow man, have any sort of intrinsic worth, if we are simply inserted into creation without design? Value is created by some sort of labor, some sort of work towards that. If there is no higher authority to give that life worth, then we must earn it for ourselves. Given this logic, we must not consider life from conception to graduation valuable. If your only reason for not “lying, stealing, and murdering” is legal consequences and the threat of death, then you obviously have no moral values to begin with.
Ravi Zacharias has posted on his ministry web site an interview he granted Julia Duin of The Washington Times last year. Ravi was born in India, and raised in Hinduism, before becoming a Christian. He is widely recognized as an authority on the major world religions. I found a couple of gems:
I am totally convinced the Christian faith is the most coherent worldview around. Everyone: pantheist, atheist, skeptic, polytheist has to answer these questions: Where did I come from? What is life’s meaning? How do I define right from wrong and what happens to me when I die? Those are the fulcrum points of our existence. I deal with cultural issues whether they be in the Middle East, Far East, the Orient or the West. You broach questions in the context of their culture and then present Christian answers.
[…]
What America needs more than anything else right now is to know she cannot exist without the worldview that helped bring her into being. And that was the Judeo-Christian worldview. What America also needs is the willingness to allow the Christian faith freedom of access in the institutions that it allows every other faith to have.
Isn’t it interesting that when these mainline divinity schools were conservative, room was given for the liberals. But they have become liberal and the conservatives are squeezed out, if not humiliated out, which is a fascinating reality.
“The Christian faith has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.” —G.K. Chesterton
Let’s put it this way. If you tell me you do not believe in God and then say to me that I should brake for animals, or pay women equally, or help the poor, on what basis are you making such an appeal? If no standard for objective truth, law, wisdom, justice, charity, kindness, compassion and fidelity exists in the universe, then what you are asking me to accept is an idea that has taken hold in your head but that has all of the moral compulsion of a bowl of cereal. You are a sentimentalist, trying to persuade me to a point of view based on your feelings about the subject and not rooted in the fear of God or some other unchanging earthly standard.
The mayor of New Paltz, N.Y., Jason West, recently performed same-sex “marriages,” saying it is the “moral” thing to do. Moral? According to whom? If only according to Mayor West, he is practicing moral relativism, not objective morality.
Thomas Jefferson did not speak of rights being endowed by the courts or vigilante mayors and judges who take the law into their own hands like a lynch mob in frontier America. He knew that for certain rights to have meaning, they must come from outside the reach of man. He also knew that in order to protect institutions essential to the preservation of the constitutional republic, it was necessary to create a system that would control human urges and appetites.
The idea of marriage did not originate in San Francisco or Massachusetts or even with the Founders. Like it or not, it came from the book of Genesis, where, after the fall of man, God said, “A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Homosexuals may become “one flesh” in their own eyes but not in a biblical sense, no matter how many Scriptural heretics with degrees from seminaries that are mostly schools of unbelief are trotted out.
Cross-referenced at Ludichris
I thought that pastor Adrian Rogers made an excellent point, when remarking to a crowd after seeing The Passion of the Christ:
“…are the things you are living for worth Jesus dying for?”
What’s the old saying? “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” Or something like that.
“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing. And that you may be always doing good, my dear, is the ardent prayer of yours affectionately.” —Thomas Jefferson