Advent Thoughts

It can be challenging to come up with fresh approaches to the Advent Season year after year. Yet, the Glorious Event is so significant that it bears a fresh sounding of every note. In previous years, I have done the songs of Advent (Zechariah's, Simeon's, the Angels', Mary's etc), and the prophecies of Advent.

This year, my series focuses on the various reactions to Advent by the affected parties. I am fascinated by those God chose to be witnesses to the obscure event. One can see God's plan of salvation clearly revealed in whom he chooses to witness and announce the birth of his Christ.

The shepherds, for instance --the unclean people of the land, beloved in Scripture but derided by the establishment of Jesus' day. God loves the outcast and came to cleanse the unclean through his Great Good Shepherd. Shepherds, like women, could not testify in court. They were considered unrealiable. God chooses shepherds to bear witness to his incarnation, and women to bear witness to the empty tomb. God values what man despises.

Then, the angels, who speak of God's dual, intertwined purpose in the Incarnation: Glory to God, and peace among humanity. In the incarnation, God will vindicate his glorious purposes by setting into motion the reclamation of both humanity and his creation. God's glory and his creation's good are intertwined purposes.

Then, Herod. The kings of the earth rise up, rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed. Yet, God in Christ came to displace the wicked reign of the powers that be with the peaceable reign of his son. This troubles all the Herods of the world in Christ's time and ours --and it should, because Christ will one day assert his crown rights....

Then, the Magi. The Gentiles shall come to thy light... Christ's saving purposes extend to the nations.

Then, Mary herself. Her soul magnifies the Lord and rejoices in God her savior --exaltation and humility, submission and contemplation. Who is she that God should choose her? She is no-one, yet she bears the Son of God. Like her, we "carry" the Son of God, despite our low status. We bring God's glory into the world by the power of the Spirit.

The Advent of Our Lord was one of the signal events in God's work of redemption, and indeed in all human history. Let us rejoice!

Good Stuff from Mark Driscoll

This

On churches and how they ought to be like families, and why sometimes they don't feel that way.

This, of course, is one side of the story. There are other sides. Sometimes churches haven't quite learned to function like families, sometimes they have cliques that function like families whilst leaving others out, and sometimes they are a bunch of people collected around a particular style, set of doctrines or a personality.

There are things that can be done, both from the side of the individual and the side of the church, to bring about the family Christ intends, whether the church is small, medium or large.

How Heaven Is Like an Idealized City

Okay, so Tim Keller's comment on my last post got me thinking....

In Revelation, the vision we are given of the eternal kingdom is that of a resplendent city. John, in recounting his vision, strains at the limits of his understanding and of human language to describe what he sees, "The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel...and the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass...and the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light and its lamp is the Lamb...and there will be no night there. (Rev 21).

One wonders how a first century man, as John was, would describe a modern city. How would he describe the Chrysler Building or the Hancock Building in Chicago? What would he think of street lamps --ancient cities were dark, and today's cities are permanently alight? No night in the modern city. Concrete and asphalt would seem a wonder compared to streets of dust. I am not arguing that John saw twenty-first century Manhattan, I simply find the thought intriguing.

How is heaven like an idealized city? Not the modern, cookie cutter oversized inconvenient office park cities of recent vintage, but the grand old industrial and financial center cities. Think Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York, or Detroit in its glory days. How might heaven be like those, shorn of avarice, crime, sexual sin, and corruption?

• Cities are beehives of productivity. In the same building, you will find CEO's who command multi-million dollar salaries and fast food workers making minimum wage, and all of them are busy, busy, busy, making the economy of a city hum. Heaven is not a place of indolence --my father works, and I work. Part of being in the image of God is being productive.
• Cities are multi-cultural. Since the late nineteenth century, the nations have poured in to North American cities. The mix of languages and cultures at the same mingling together and retaining their distinctiveness, add zest to the city. Heaven will be the gathering place of the redeemed of all the nations.
• Cities are built to impress. I love Chicago, because it got a chance to "do over" after a great fire, and they did it right. Chicago is built on a swamp. After the fire, the city fathers elevated the city, so now all utility and garbage collection happens on lower level streets, below the sidewalks. You don't share the street with garbage in Chicago. They reversed the flow of the Chicago River away from Lake Michigan out of sanitary concerns: they drank Lake Michigan water. Brilliant. City of Big Shoulders indeed. Steel girders and human ingenuity gave us the skyscraper, and skyscrapers convey wealth, beauty, and ingenuity. Many of them are iconic: Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, the aforementioned Hancock and Chrysler buildings, etc. Heaven is clearly built to impress us with the ingenuity and wisdom of God.
• Cities are cultural centers. They are repositories of the best of cultural artifacts. Go to Chicago and see their incredible Monet collection. The Guggenheim Museum in New York is itself a work of art. There are public art installations, and theaters on every corner. Great symphonies reside in great cities. Great temple-like building are built to house them. Everything is lavish and done well. Heaven is the abode of he who does all things well, the Author of beauty and music.
• Cities are endlessly interesting. There are always new diverse neighborhoods to explore. My wife grew up in Pittsburgh, and yet we are still discovering new neighborhoods and new things to do --and Pittsburgh is certainly far from the largest of cities. Heaven will have an infinite number of fascinating things to explore.
• Cities gather up impressive people. Imagine what it takes to build a building in a city, with its maze of regulations, unions and challenging property. Then, think of Donald Trump. The Donald is a master of self-promotion, and I am sure there are better real estate minds, but he is the one that everyone knows. The brain flow goes toward the cities --they are places of great universities, and great minds, and great things happen there on a massive scale. Heaven will be full of impressive people --not those that impressed the eyes of the world when they were here, but those through whom God did great things, often in secret, while they were here.
• Cities provide for every human need. Imagine the massive amounts of water needed for a city. Imagine what is needed to eliminate rainwater from the streets of a city. Imagine the emergency services needed. Imagine the amount of food that must flow into a city, the amount of electricity and other forms of power. Imagine the information superstructure that flows through cables --the massive interconnection of computers and telephones. Transportation, sustenance, sanitation, rescue, entertainment are provided by the city in spades. Heaven will be the fulfillment of all our needs, and all our sanctified wants.

Much more could be said. We are looking for a celestial city, and I am longing to see it!

How Heaven Is Like a Small Town

There is a tendency to idolize both one's upbringing and the small town, and it is not my intention to do that. I know full well the ugly side of small town life: the provincialism, the petty infighting, the divisions, etc. I also know that the small town itself is dead or dying in many places. It is the rare small town today that is a self-contained society, with a vibrant communal life and commercial and career opportunities.

When I was younger, I could not wait to get away from the small town. I grew up in a small town not too far from Grand Rapids, a mid-sized city. My parents had moved away from the city before I was born, seeking a smaller town in which to raise their family. My cousins and grandparents lived in Grand Rapids, and I was always curious about that life. Everything was so convenient. My cousin and I could ride our bikes to a convenience store. There were restaurants and movie theaters. As I got older, I discovered the cultural life there. I loved trips as a young child to the big downtown department stores, which have since perished.

Being from a small town, and now living in a suburb, I have discovered they are two very different things. Small towns are far enough from cities to have their own community life, while the suburb leeches off the city. No, heaven is not like a suburb. We live in one of the best suburbs I could ever imagine, and yet I profoundly hope that heaven is different than the suburb.

It is hard to imagine heaven being like a megalopolis either. We are told to look for the city that has foundations, which is a new Jerusalem...Jerusalem, like a city that is compact together. Even Rome, the largest city of the ancient era, was scarely larger than Grand Rapids. I'm with Jacques Ellul on this one --cities can dehumanize, as much as I love to visit them and experience them. Probably community used to happen in cities, but I sense that probably met its demise with the death of self-sufficient neighborhoods, which were like small towns within cities.

Being from a small town gives one a sense of place. You knew who you were in a small town, and other people did, too. You were somebody's child, who want to this or that church, and had this or that teacher. All the spheres of your life overlapped: some of the people you saw at church were those you saw at school, you worked for people who knew your parents, life centered on family, church, school and community events. You had a sense of place, a feeling of belonging. There was life there, and it was lived, not in isolation, but community.

My graduating class had about 65 people. We were not all friends. We did not all get along. There were pecking orders and popularity contests. It all seems so petty now --because it was. Yet, you knew everyone, for good and bad, you were bound together.

This is how heaven is like a small town, though shorn of sin and pettiness: everyone there stands in intimate, unbroken community forever. They all go to the same places. They all do things together. You know and are known. There is no anonymity, no isolation.

Lewis said heaven felt more like home than any earthly home. I'm looking forward to that.

In Which He Wades into the Sin / Sickness Debate, and Shows Why We Can't Just "Stop It."

And Argues Not for Either/Or but Both/And

Okay, this is one funny clean sketch, but it does introduce a question...

When it comes to mental illness, compulsion and addiction, why can't a person just "stop it?"

The snarky side of me says, "Well, why don't you just stop sinning?" Stopping it isn't so simple, is it?

Let's be clear what is not under discussion. There is no suggestion that if a person is sick that he must of necessity be a worse sinner than anyone else. That is the bad theology of Job's comforters or those sorts that ask, "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind..." We live in a fallen world, and people get all sorts of sicknesses for all sorts of reasons.

What is under the Biblical microscope today are the thorny issues of the mind and innate proclivities, both in terms of mental illness and addictive / compulsive behavior, things like: schizophrenia, bi-polar, depression etc., as well as homosexuality, sex obsession (or addiction), and substance addictions.

I have had some dealings with this, seen some particularly gut-wrenching tragedies up close and personal, and have a heart both for those who struggle with mental illness and addictions. Thus, my thoughts.

I know all these are not of one kind, certainly, and I approach them as the proverbial layman. I think it will be useful to group them together for one part of the consideration and separate them for another.

Some, in the scientific/medical or psychological community, would say that certain disorders of the mind and attendant behaviors are simply illness --the products of conditioning or physiological malfunction, with no moral component at all. An affliction like depression has no element of choice (which would imply some moral dimension and possibility of sin) --it simply is, and it needs to be treated.

Depending on the specialty of the practitioner sometimes is a predictor as to what treatment is viewed to be most effective: primarily medication or talk therapy. Medication may treat the underlying physiological issue, or it may simply suppress the issue. Talk therapy may give some sort of external perspective and tools for addressing the internal and external manifestations of whatever affliction or behavior.

Sometimes Christians, either without thinking or without the best of intention, based upon positive result, will buy this model without any reservation. If a pill makes the depression abate, then a pill must be the right answer; if 12 steps help the alcoholic stay sober, then 12 steps must be the way to sobriety; if talk therapy helps conquer post-traumatic stress disorder, then talk therapy must be the way to cure PTSD.

Some in the church have reacted strongly against this. The Scripture, they say, tells us not to allow ourselves to be mastered by anything --hence in this view addiction, quite simply, is sin. Even if substances are taken by way of self medication --to quell the lasting after-effects of trauma-- it is still a wrong moral choice to take those substances. At any point, the person who is taking those substances can simply choose to stop taking them. Every needle injected and every pill swallowed is a moral choice --simply a choice to sin-- which one could choose not to do, by simple act of will.

Perhaps the clearest picture we get of this is the attitude of many in the church towards homosexuality. It is interesting, as an aside, how quick we are to condemn sins which may hold no particular temptation for us, and how quick we are to excuse sins of which we are guilty. If I leer at a woman, then that is simply natural: men are supposed to be attracted to women; but, if a man leers at another man, then that is gross and disgusting. The truth is --all sin is gross and disgusting. Gossip is gross and disgusting, so is envy, strife, slander and vainglory. Sexual sin is not disgusting because of its physicality (which after all is created and observed by God) and is very good within moral boundaries) but because it is disobedient to him.

Many in the church treat homosexuality as if it were a simple choice --a young man or woman, in a simple act of rebellion, chooses to be sexually attracted to their same sex. This is absurd in the extreme. No choices of that magnitude are simple choices --there are a multitude of conditioning factors, some of which may be genetic predisposition and gender confusion early in life.

It is, however, important to add that genetic predisposition does not remove human sexual attraction from the realm of moral consideration. Human beings are broken by the effects of the fall --we are born with all sorts of baggage and proclivities, some of which we must resist with might and mien.

Understanding those factors helps us to be compassionate to the person struggling with gender identity, who may have given in to that attraction on occasion, or may have adopted it as a lifestyle. Yes, homosexual lust is sin. Yes, homosexual behavior is sin. Yes, a homosexual lifestyle is sin. It is a particularly powerful sin. It is particularly a mark of mankind's rebellion against God's order, even expressed in his general revelation. In that sense, it is a mark of the brokenness of our entire race, as much as it is an indictment on the individual who engages in it.

It also points us to the work of the church, which is not the sort of condemnation that leaves people in despair, but rather rescue. It is not moral people helping the immoral, but rather immoral people saved by grace helping other immoral people find the same grace that both restores them to God and rescues them from the particular manifestation sin has taken in their life, acknowledging that this particular sin does not easily die (and in fact, at the desire level, may not die till glorification). Sin is not a simple choice --it does not simply go away.

Addictions and compulsions are different. Yet, often these are not simple choices, either. It is possible that a young person may simply start using drugs recreationally out of peer pressure, rebellion or to have a good time, and this young person may find himself ensnared. Another person may live through a trauma, and "self-medicate" and be ensnared. Another may have a prescription narcotic and become ensnared. These are not morally equivalent.

Is the addiction disease or sin? Yes. Addiction works physiological changes in the body (at least according to my friends in the medical profession). A body begins to crave substances, and withdrawal itself can be a physically dangerous proposition. Yet, the choice to engage in the addiction or compulsion, even with the physiological "need" factor, involves moral consideration --namely, sin.

We need to say, however, that our idea of sin is flawed. People get very angry when a behavior is labeled "sin," as if that means the person who is engaging in the behavior is worthless, less of a person, or morally inferior to others who do not engage in that sin. That is not the image the Bible gives us of sin. Sin is a want of conformity unto or transgression of God's Law. That is a freeing thing. God is in the business of delivering us from sin, allowing us to repent of sin, and freeing us from the guilt and power of sin. To call something sin is to highlight the beauty of God's willingness to forgive sin, and his help in turning us away from sin (that is, repent).

None of this is easy or a simple choice --this cannot be reiterated enough. Turning away from sin may require years and much help. This is where I argue for a "both / and" approach. Depression has a physiological aspect. I know some of this up close and personal. I also know, however, that self-pity, which seems to be a feature of depression, involves a moral choice. On what battlefield do I fight this? The physiological or the spiritual? Well, why not both? The depressed person can be helped by medication. He may be helped by truth-based therapy. Yet, he can also be helped by hearing the good news that God forgives him of the sin of self-pity, and is willing to help him turn away from it.

Schizophrenia and bi-polar, and the combination thereof are probably the thorniest of these issues. A person loses his grip on reality. He sees and hears things that aren't there. He may see demonic manifestations ordering him to harm himself or others. He may take his own life. There is a physiological defect of a profound nature. Does that mean there is no moral choice involved? It is very difficult to say. I have known a fine, kind, gentle young man who was afflicted with schizo-affective disorder --the worst of both schizophrenia and bi-polar. He took his own life. What killed him --the disease or his own hand? The secrets are locked away in the dark recesses of the tormented mind. Yet, suicide is sin, but God forgives sin. Making a moral judgment on suicide does not mean there is no hope for forgiveness.

We are body-soul unities. These sorts of questions are impossible to separate out --what is sin and what is sickness? In fact, they are both. They are the products of the fall and affected by moral choice. Therefore, we ought to attack them on all fronts. Medication. Talk, Repentance. Grace. Hope. Love. Our weakness in dealing with these things is separating body from soul. One person only looks at the physiology, another only at the psychology, another only at the sin. Someday, we will learn to pull all these together, and maybe then gain more substantial victories over thorny sins, addictions and mental illness than we can today.

Sermons: Information or Encounter?

Not a hard and fast line: encounters have information, of course! The beloved Doctor says:

The life of Christ is in us! It is not theory, it is a life-giving teaching, it is a life-imparting teaching. If I am preaching in the Spirit, as I pray God I am, I am not only uttering words to you, I am imparting life to you, I am being used of God as the channel of the Spirit and my words bring life and not merely knowledge. Do you accept that distinction? I am almost afraid sometimes for those of you who take notes, that you may just be getting the words and not the Spirit. I am not saying that you should not take notes, but I do warn you to be careful. Much more important than the words is the Spirit, the life; in Christ we are being taught, and built up in Him. So that in a sense, though you may forget the words, you will have received the life, and you go out aware of the life of God, as it were, pulsating within you. David Martyn. Lloyd-Jones, Christian Unity (Studies in Ephesians, Chapter 4, Verses 1 Through 16) (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1972), 114.

Some Words on Silence

I spill verbiage for a living. I need to have something to say, at least enough to get through the various lessons and sermons of a week.

Lately, however, I've had little more to say or write than that. God bless the prolific bloggers, article writers and authors --I simply don't know how they do it. I have a book in process, but have not written on it in weeks --I simply lack the words.

Silence can be the result when life itself feels oppressive. Some people pour forth out of the difficulties of life --think of David or Job's many words. For others, it renders them mute.

Sometimes it feels as if God is not speaking to us. I know, the theologue will point out that God has spoken and has said all he needed to say. Yet, in our experience, it can appear that, however much we may speak to God in prayer, he has nothing to say to us in return.

I am hoping against hope, however, that God's silence is a way of his communicating to us, as maddening as it can be. And sometimes, we just need to be silent before him.

I do not like silence. I fill my silence with music to lift my spirits, and with the mindless blather of talk radio to quieten the solitariness that accompanies the pastorate (solitariness is different from loneliness, mind you --I have friends). Yet, I need to leave room for silence.

Maybe God is speaking to me about the importance of silence.