Goespel-Centered Resources For Thinking About Same-Sex Marriage

For all the coverage and conversation about the issue of same-sex marriage, there seems to be very little that I would consider Gospel-centered in a way that is consistent with my understanding of the Gospel of Grace.  I'm happy to pass on these resources that I've found helpful.

Just Assume You Don’t Get It

Just assume you don’t get “it.”  “It” being the Gospel of grace.

One of the most honest and important steps any person can take towards growing in Christ, is to simply accept the fact that you don’t really live by the Gospel.  Take that step in your thinking, and you will be open to repenting and then pursuing the Gospel.  Think that you “have got the gospel” and you will want to “move on” to whatever you think is next.  And in that, you step away from the Gospel.

Not Alone In The Face Of Suffering

The past several months have been filled with a number of tragedies.  On every stage - international, national and personal - I've seen things happening that make the question of human suffering and the goodness of God very real and very close to home.

Different worldviews bring differed resources to such suffering.  My Buddhist friends in Asheville would tell me that suffering was just an illusion.  My Word of Faith friends would tell me I'm confessing the wrong thing.  Round and round and round.  Everybody has an "answer."  None of us feel safe or satisfied.

The challenge for Gospel-centered Christians is bringing together the Father's ability - omnipotence - and His will - loving character.  You know the drill, either He lacks the power to end suffering or He lacks the will.  Either way, my unbelieving friends feel like they have me on the point of a real "gotcha."

I've concluded over the years that no one has a neat and tidy answer that pulls together all the different strands of suffering and its reasons.  The Gospel does offer us a unique resource among all others though: A God Who Has Suffered With Us.

The Gospel Changes EVERYTHING

This is a recent post from blogsite Keller Quotes ~ The words of Dr. Timothy Keller.  It's too good not to pass on:

The Gospel And Other Relationships

To Other Races And Cultures.
The liberal (hedonist) approach is to relativize all cultures. (‘We can all get along because there is no truth.’) The conservatives (moralists) believe there is truth for evaluation of cultures, and so they choose some culture as superior and then they idolize it, feeling superior to others in the impulse of self-justifying pride. The gospel leads us to be, on the one hand, somewhat critical of all cultures, including our own (since there is truth), but on the other hand, we are morally superior to no one. After all, we are saved by grace alone. Christians will exhibit both moral conviction yet humility and cultural flexibility.

Follow-Up on Authority of the Scriptures

This Sunday, as part of a series based on the EPC statement of the "Essentials of our Faith," I preached from the Scriptures on the topic of the Authority of the Bible.  Then Monday I cam across two outstanding articles on the Gospel Coalition website that expanded my message.

From "An Interview with Craig Blomberg on Jesus and the Reliability of the Gospels":

Can you tell us a bit about your own personal experience in coming to embrace the historical reliability of the gospels? Was there a period of time in your life when you seriously doubted the historical integrity of the gospel accounts?  Click Here to read the entire article.

From "Making Sense of Scripture's 'Inconsistency'" by Tim Keller

I find it frustrating when I read or hear columnists, pundits, or journalists dismiss Christians as inconsistent because "they pick and choose which of the rules in the Bible to obey." Most often I hear, "Christians ignore lots of Old Testament texts---about not eating raw meat or pork or shellfish, not executing people for breaking the Sabbath, not wearing garments woven with two kinds of material and so on. Then they condemn homosexuality. Aren't you just picking and choosing what you want to believe from the Bible?"

I don't expect everyone to understand that the whole Bible is about Jesus and God's plan to redeem his people, but I vainly hope that one day someone will access their common sense (or at least talk to an informed theological adviser) before leveling the charge of inconsistency.  Click Here to read the entire article.

 And for Monday morning bonus points, here's the video I used in this Sunday's sermon.  It's Tim Keller (again) - "Jesus: The True and Better"

Summer Reading - 2012

Summertime and the living is easy, or so goes the song!  Let me pass along four great books that I’ve read recently for great pleasure and benefit.  They are each perfect for pool or beach.  They taught me about grace and what it might look like to live more deeply from that source.  Three of the four are great stories that would do well on CD while you drive to your vacation destination.

Dallas and the Spitfire: An Old Car, an Ex-Con, and an Unlikely Friendship by Ted Kluck and Dallas Jahncke (Kindle Edition).

So just what is a “dsicipling/mentoring relationship?  This is a great story and a genuine “guy book” that answers that question for men.

Ted Kluck is a former athlete now sports-writer whose family worships at the church in Lansing, MI pastored by Kevin deYoung – one of my favorite gospel-centered bloggers.  Ted is asked to “disciple” Dallas – a young, ex-con, recovering drugs/sex/alcohol abuser who has come to faith in a rescue mission and decides to head off to a fundamentalist Bible College to grow in his faith.  They meet once in Starbucks and realize immediately that they are not “let’s-meet-weekly-at-Starbucks-to-share” people.  They are guys – with EVERYTHING that could mean.

How Marriage Can Shape Our Lives . . . For the Better

 I've been reading Tim Keller's latest book The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God with some friends and finding it full of insight, challenge and encouragement.  I've been a pastor long enough to see marriages fail in a way that left people deeply damaged and with great pain.  I've observed other marriages where people find great grace and transformation - even with no small share of pain as well.  I'm thankful to be living in the second of those.

Keller's picture of marriage - a deep spiritual friendship where each partner becomes an instrument of God's grace, challenge and transformation in the life of the other - has been the most inspiring insight for me.  Here's an excerpt that shows what that sort of marriage would look in the lives of two real people.

All his life, Rob had few friends. One reason for this was that since childhood, Rob had a real problem putting himself into the shoes of others. He had little or no empathy and often was surprised at people’s negative reactions to his words or deeds. When he was in fourth grade, a school counselor told his parents that he thought Rob was a “mild sociopath,” someone who often trampled on the feelings of others because he couldn’t sympathetically imagine what they were feeling. This character flaw had created problems for Rob for years, but he couldn’t see it for what it was. Few of his acquaintances ripened into friendships, and in his first jobs he regularly made missteps that infuriated both superiors and those reporting to him. He lost one job over it.

 Then he met Jessica, and by the second date they both were deep into the in-love experience. She thought he was a brilliant conversationalist, and he was, and he loved the fact that she was an assertive kind of woman who didn’t easily get her feelings hurt. Several times, his sense of humor strayed into the realm of the hurtful and the insulting. This was a problem that he had had all his life, but unlike so many others, Jessica just told him off and put him in his place. He liked that! Finally a woman who wasn’t a shrinking violet.

And so they married, but as the months went by, Rob’s insensitive humor and semi-abusive remarks got worse. When we are in love, we are on our best behavior, but at home and with someone becoming more and more familiar, our natural instincts take over. We no longer catch ourselves. Soon the full extent of Rob’s problem character was there for Jessica to see in all its ugly detail. Jessica began to see how he spoke to other people, and most of them were not as resilient and thick skinned as she was. She realized the kind of relational problems that he was going to have all his life. She became deeply disillusioned with him, and, just a year after their wedding, she found herself fantasizing about being single again and free from him.

 When Rob realized the depth of her unhappiness, he became alarmed, and together they sought counseling from the pastor of their church. That began a long journey. After many weeks of meetings with their pastoral counselor, they had their first breakthrough. One evening, both Rob and Jessica began to see that she had been brought into Rob’s life for this very purpose. She was a strong woman who was not fragile. She was exactly the person who could stand toe-to-toe with Rob and say, “That hurt me. I’m going to tell you exactly how it felt until you learn what your words do to people. I’m not going to clam up on you and just withdraw, and I’m not going to attack you back. I’m going to be like Jesus has been with us—accepting us in love but not allowing us to just destroy ourselves with sin.”

Rob had never had anyone love him like this. People had either just given up and withdrawn from him or had simply attacked him. Here was someone who calmly but candidly described the devastating effect of his words. And most transforming of all was the fact that the person who was telling him about his hurtfulness was the person he loved most in the world. The more Jessica loved him so nobly and well, the less he wanted to see her hurt. And so, slowly but surely, Rob began to listen, learn, and change.

Jessica herself came to see that she also had a need for radical change. “I had a fiercely independent spirit that made it hard for me to depend on anyone,” she said. “If anyone let me down, I simply dropped them. I was completely impatient with them.” When she saw the depths of Rob’s problems, she wanted to flee as she always had, but her marriage vow wouldn’t allow her to do that. For the first time in her life, she couldn’t run from a damaged person.

Three years after their wedding, Rob’s parents hardly recognized him. He was more thoughtful and empathetic than they ever thought he could be. Jessica’s parents noticed a gentleness and a graciousness toward weakness that they hadn’t seen in her before. Marriage’s “power of truth” had done its work.

Keller, Timothy (2011-11-01). The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God (pp. 133-135). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.

Sorting Through Recent Challenges

It's been a tough week for Christians living in the United States.  I never thought I would write that sentence, but it certainly seems like an obvious statement to me right now.  Our federal Health and Human Services Secretary is mandating that the Roman Catholic Church and it's institutions provide health insurance coverage for procedures the church finds morally unacceptable.  New York City Schools will no longer rent space to churches.  These are issues that are deeper than slogans.  And they require responses that go deeper than slogans and self-preservation.  Let me recommend four articles from various sources that are helping me face these issues with some depth of thought and a gospel-of-grace perspective.

Times of Refreshing: Thoughts on Authentic Revival

I'm looking forward to time with the InterVarsity chapter at the University of Mary Washington this Thursday, 3/10.  I'll be speaking to these students about something close to my heart: Authentic Revival.

I use the term "Authentic Revival" to distinguish between an outpouring of the Spirit and the practices associated with "Revivalism."  There is a difference between a season of God's renewing work and a series of meetings in a local church aimed at "getting people saved."  The one can be transforming for people and community, the other is prone to manipulation and dysfunctional excesses.  One I pray for daily, the other I resist.

I'll have more to say at the meeting, but I want to use this post to make several resources available to everyone.

The Gospel Changes Everything!

I make no secret of the impact that Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, has had on my own life and experience of the Gospel of Grace.  "My 'Gospel Yoda' he is," as I listen to his sermons each week for my own growth and encouragement.  I'm passing along a link to this interview of him and Rabbi David Gelfand from the February 18th episode of MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

There are three powerful gospel truths touched in this clip:

Art in the Life of the Church

We had a great weekend with friends from the Grace Photography Team joining us here at Christ Covenant.  Grace Community Church was a season in my life where I began to connect in fresh new ways to an understanding of the Gospel and art in the life of the local church.  Even more fun, I got to join in Gospel community with others as we tried to live that understanding out.

Part of clarifying my own sense of how the Gospel vision of life and faith effects art was to differentiate other approaches to art in the life of the church.  As I look back through my own history, I can see several different approaches.  At the risk of setting the argument, I give them my own name and description.

Why Plant Churches?

I heard a number of startling facts and figures last week at the meeting of the EPC Presbytery of the Mid-Atlantic - my regional accountability structure and "church planting support group."  For instance: There is an annual net loss of churches in the United States of about 2000.  Click here for more.

Let's put aside for a moment all the issues related to making statements like these: the challenge of counting churches, determining what are the churches you want to count, etc. etc. etc.  Even as difficult as it is to ascertain the particulars of the data, the conclusion is one that most people would affirm, even intuitively.  Fewer people in the United States today have a meaningful relationship with Jesus and His community than in years not too far past.