Maybe It's Easier to Solve a Problem Like Maria

On the general principle that publicans are closer to the kingdom than Pharisees are...

I agree it's a bad idea for pastors to use their children as examples, and I don't from the pulpit, and the ones I'm going to talk about aren't going to read this so I reckon it's alright to break that rule here and now.

The issue is this:  the bright, attractive, accomplished, compliant, self-reliant Pharisee child.  Know the type?  We have one of those here.  We do not, as of yet (and I pray we won't) have a prodigal --the child that may or may not be lovable, but that breaks your heart.  We do have a very high-maintenance child who tends to get into trouble a lot, mostly out of boundless energy and curiosity.  The effort of discipline tends to be mostly directed at him, because mostly he calls for it.

Which brings me to the "problem" child.  The problem is, she is anything but a problem!  She usually does nothing wrong.  She's conscientious, bright and motivated, and a lot of people (teachers included) tend to tell her how great she is.  This is not good.  I love her, but I fear for her --the worst thing I can do for her is to stoke the fires of pride and self-centeredness.  If I do that, she will be unbearable to live with, and pity the man that marries her.  At the same time, I do not want to dampen her enthusiasm, or fail to praise her when she excels (which, let's face it, she often does).

The heart of the problem is, as always, the problem of the heart.  I can love her and pray for her, and when I hear that Pharisee croak his ugly voice out of her cute little mouth, if she cuts down others, if she complains and critiques her mother, if she is snotty or bratty or throws a fit because she doesn't get her way, I can address her heart on the level of the gospel.  I am more and more convinced that we need to focus more and more on what Paul said to Peter at Antioch --you aren't behaving in accord with the gospel.  I have to find a way to say that in eight year old language.  We don't treat people or think of people that way, because it is not Christlike.

The worst thing I can do, as a parent struggling to do my job Christianly, is to make her my princess, the apple of my eye, the one I hold up as an example to my other kids, the one to whom they will never measure up (I'm not saying they don't measure up --they do).  I need to get her to see herself in light of this truth --God be merciful to me, a sinner.

How do you handle a child like this, if you have one?  I am starting to think that all parents need to watch the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory before they have kids to learn what not to do.

Friendship, Naturally....Or, Kuyper's Napkin Ring

I've told the story many times, but I find it very interesting.  One of my mentors in the ministry, of Dutch extraction and a lover of all things Dutch (the product of a mixed marriage, his father was RCA and mother CRC).  Someone gave him a prize possession --a silver napkin ring owned by the towering theologian, pastor, publisher, university founder and Dutch Prime Minister Abraham Kuyper.

The inscription?  Proverbs 17:17b.  The b is important. Proverbs 17:17 says, "A friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity."  The b is "a brother is born for adversity."

And the lesson is, if you are only a friend to people when they make little demand of your time or energy, you're really not their friend at all.  You are acting sub-Christian; you are acting naturally.

I've observed this in the church --if a person is difficult or makes demands on our time and energy, we naturally lapse into self-protecting mode, and withdraw.  We want to be around cheerful people.  Nobody wants to sit with Job in silence.  I think sometimes Job's friends get a bad rap for their obnoxiously bad advice --but at least they were there with him.

Having gone through some low periods, as we all do, I know the demands that makes on friendship, and how little understanding people are who don't share that particular malady.  We withdraw from people who bring us down --we want those who will lift us up.  It's natural.  Misery may love company, but company generally doesn't like misery.  Sometimes being a friend just frankly stinks.  We naturally want to talk about football or the weather or politics.  We don't naturally want to plumb the depths of another's suffering to help lift him out.

I have known a few people with diagnosed borderline personality disorder, and others I suspect are afflicted with it.  It's one of the most intractable mental maladies of all, and distinctly unpleasant.  There are no shades of gray in relationship with a person with BPD --they are either your best friend or your sworn enemy.  If you've ever been written off by a person with no good reason, it may be that they have BPD.

Or, it may be that they are just acting naturally.  This hurts; I know.  I have wanted to take certain people and shake them and say, "You know, I love you, but you are a really horrible friend."  The friends that ceaselessly talk about self --it's natural to do that.  Dale Carnegie taught people to exploit that --people love to talk about themselves so, if you want to make a sale, get them talking about themselves, etc.  But, we would do well to learn from Dale.  There is a studied art to friendship, and part of it is learning how to converse --and say "but enough about me, how are you?"

The church is supposedly a supernatural community.  Why are we so often held captive to what we do naturally?  Why do people withdraw from us when times are tough?  Why, when a person falls prey to an illness do they sometimes receive few (if any) phone calls, cards, expressions of empathy, or offers of help?  There are times when it feels like a good idea, even to pastors, to give up on the church altogether.  But, then, you see that there are a precious few who do.  Praise God for them!  The ones who are living the transformed life, the ones who do care.

The church is often said to look just like the world in terms of morality, which is sad enough.  I think it's even sadder though, when the church looks just like the world in lack of empathy --when we allow ourselves the luxury of selfishness with time and energy.  If that's you and you're a Christian, you're like Peter in Antioch --your conduct is out of accord with the gospel.

The Power of a Good Story, Well-Told

One of life's great pleasures for me is to read well-written books. I may care little about the topic or the subject, but good writing is compelling, in and of itself. Likewise, a fascinating figure or event can be rendered so inadequately that it becomes boring, and the details of the story itself are obscured behind turgid or unintelligible prose.



I am, as most who know me know, an avid devourer of biographies. I would rather read biography than anything else. The human story is compelling to me. There are some fantastic biographers out there: Manchester, Massie and McCullough come to mind (wonderful for alliteration). Right now, I am positively engrossed by Massie's huge biography of Tsar Peter the Great. I am waiting with baited breath for the third volume of Manchester's exhaustive work on Churchill, entitled The Last Lion. Manchester fell ill and the work had to be finished by another, but the man was hand-picked by Manchester and worked alongside him, so I am hoping not to be disappointed.



Probably the most compelling and well written biography I have seen in recent years is Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken. Hillenbrand has a great subject –Olympic athlete turned castaway turned POW survivor turned evangelist Louie Zamperini. Equally important, she tells the story very well –history as page-turner.



As a minister, I communicate for a living. Preaching and teaching consume much of my working life. I also have the privilege of mentoring some aspiring pastors. I repeatedly tell them that, in my experience, both in homiletics classes and in our own preparation, the accent of preperation falls on what to say and not how to say it. This results in turgid sermons, jam-packed often with information, but not presented in a way that is either compelling or digestable. Sermons are a form of oral communication (quite obviously) –and we often write them as if they were intended to be read (My colleague Andrew Vander Maas did his D.Min. dissertation on this, and I am hoping he will turn it into a book). The danger is that we cease to improve, not so much in what we say, but in how we say it.



Preachers have the most compelling story to tell in all the world –the drama of creation, redemption and consummation through faith in Christ. We have a good story, we need to tell it well. Nobody I have found has done as good thinking on this as Fred Craddock, emeritus professor of preaching at Candler School of Divinity, Emory University. His two books Preaching and As One without Authority ought to be read and re-read by anyone who steps the pulpit. Craddock is a proponent of not imposing a foreign rhetorical form on the structure of Scripture lessons –but rather that the message itself ought to be shaped by the form of the passage under consideration. He is right –it's difficult to do, and oughtn't to be done in an artificial or wooden way (and frankly, not everyone should do it his way --but we can all learn from him). But, stop to ask yourself when the last time was you heard a sermon on a Psalm that was as beautiful and affecting as the Psalm itself? I can remember the last time I did –where I was sitting and who was preaching.



The telling of the story is as important as the story itself. I am not arguing that all preachers ought to follow one particular style (certainly not main point, 3 sub-points!) but rather that, whatever their particular style, they need to become the master of it. Everyone else is expected to improve their craft; preachers ought to, too.

Our Big, Fat Greek Presuppositions (or "The Platonic Captivity of the Church")

"The longer I live" is something you start to say when you notice hair growing in your nose and ears, but why fight reality...."The longer I live and pastor in the church, the more I think we are the unwitting children of the Greeks."  Now, the Greeks were wonderful --Socrates, Plato and Aristotle deserve their places in the intellectual hall of fame.  They asked big questions, and formulated some of the best answers that one could, short of Biblical revelation.

(If your eyes glaze over reading this, just hang with me, I'll bring it home)

And yet....

Anyone who knows anything about history and doctrinal development knows that Roman doctrine, particularly after Aquinas, relied heavily on Aristotle.  Aristotle, it is said, reasons from man up to God, and in pondering how the human can possibly relate to the divine, posits a heirarchy of beings (one can see why it so resonated with Catholicism --think of those medieval pictorial representations of the universe with God at the top, man at the bottom, and a bevy of intercessors and mediators in between).

But, at least Catholics are honest.  The Western mind was a Protestant mind --that legacy is slow to die.  Even if it has died out in academia, it still permeates the understanding of the average person, even if he's never taken a philosophy course, and knows nothing more of Plato than his name.  Plato, it is said, reasons from God down to man, and the central feature of his school of thought is dualism.   Dualism discounts the physical world --sees it as a shadow (at best) or a deception (at worst).  The early church had to contend with dualism --it's why Paul got laughed at on Mars Hill.  The last thing a Greek wanted in the afterlife was a disgusting body, with all its filth and limitations.  But, perhaps even more difficult was the ingrained but opposing ideas that either the body was nothing, and so no deed in the body could affect the real you, and you could therefore be as immoral as you wanted, without affecting your soul (libertinism), or the body was in its very nature evil so all physical pleasure was therefore evil (asceticism).  So, in the early church, you get the detestable rites of the Gnostic sects, or Simeon Stylites on his pole for decades.  The saddest conclusion reached by Plato-drinking Christians was a denial of the resurrection, so pointedly refuted by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15.

We have to admit, the Scriptures posit some duality --there is a distinction between body and soul.  Traditional Christian theology (though some challenge it now) teaches an intermediate state --a time when body and soul are separated.  We are quick to note that this is an unnatural separation, and not one that God  intended originally, nor will such a state go on everlastingly.  We are meant to be bodies and souls together.  The body and the soul are two different things, but they are friends, not enemies.

Essentially, the problem of Plato is that he (and we) make enemies out of things that are supposed to be friends.  Body and soul are meant to be together.  I don't think that evangelicals of the Reformed stripe would argue that point, but the presupposition sneaks its way into other nifty arguments --any time we put in opposition things that ought to hang together, we are channeling Plato.  Things like:

• should a church be concerned about doctrine or about saving souls?
• Should Christianity be more an affair of the head or the heart, more about reason and belief or emotion and love?
• should a church be concerned about teaching or the poor?
• Is truth or love more important?
• Which is  more destructive:  lust or greed?  
• Is emotion or reverence more appropriate for worship?

You can probably add to the list.  But the point is that each of those questions forces us to make a relative comparison --we value (or eschew) one more than another.  This is a false choice.  The right answer is "all of the above."

How can we in the church escape our Platonic captivity?

Of Chickens, Christ, Law and Gospel

Too much has been written on the controversy over Chik-Fil-A scion and exec Dan Cathy's comments about traditional marriage, and the support of Chik-Fil-A that was rallied yesterday.  So why not add more?

Except, I simply want to consider it from one angle, and that is from this question: Do we expect the world will be more friendly to the gospel than it is to the law?

It's a hot topic for debate --how should the Christian interact with the unbelieving world?  Should he do it with law or gospel?  Myself, I don't think we can generalize.  Jesus used law where people's hearts were hard and self-righteous, and they had to be shown they were sinful (like the Rich Young Ruler).  Jesus used gospel where people's hearts were already broken --they knew they were sinners, and they needed grace.

But, the meme that seems to be current that troubles me is this:  If only we (or those) stupid evangelicals understood that if we showed (or spoke) the gospel instead of standing up for traditional marriage, then maybe secularists would know we're not hateful, and they'd accept us, and we'd get invited to their parties like Jesus did, and we would be able to bring the gospel to them sans the offense.

Now, this is not about whether or not boycotts or rally days or political action, or buying chicken or portly former Arkansas governors of the left or the right.  That is an issue for another time, and it's been exhausted.

It's an issue of whether or not it's true that the gospel is somehow less offensive than the law.  There is no question that the law can offend.  People who are flagrant violators of the law are offended by the law.  But, pretty decent outwardly moral people like the law's message which is "do this, and live."  Salvation by decency.  Very doable, very nice, and nice people can do it.  Moral, respectable people can do it.  Or, they think they can.

The truth is, whether we lead with gospel or law, we are going to be offensive.  The gospel is more offensive than the law because it hits humans at the point of pride.  "Do this and live" stokes pride.  "You can't do it no matter how hard you try" slaps pride down.  We don't like it.  I don't care how degraded a person is --by nature, we don't like the gospel.  It is only by grace that we come to like, and then to love, the gospel.  The gospel shows me who I am, and I don't like that picture very much.  I'd rather not look in that mirror.  But, the gospel doesn't leave me in the crumpled heap of an accurate self-assessment.  It shows me a savior who is God himself, who died for me, not just so I can go to heaven when I die (which is a grand thing) but so that I can be restored to that original dignity for which I was created --not the mess I have made out of it.

So, think Chik-Fil-A is gauche.  It's okay.  Think that all the Christians who supported it are misguided or whatever.  But, don't kid yourself in thinking that if Chik-Fil-A, or you or me, or the coolest hippest pastor out there, led with gospel instead of law, he'd get the love of the world.  If the world hates you, it hated me first.  That is from the lips of the walking Gospel himself.

Some Thoughts on Same Sex Marriage

I think it's important to state from the top that the Bible teaches that marriage is between one man and one woman for life.  Things can happen that break that bond, but the standard remains. In Matthew 19:5 (ESV) Jesus said, 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh'?  So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate."  Homosexual activity and marriages are therefore sinful.

How should we approach this issue?  First, we need to understand what the Bible says about marriage.  Second, we need to understand that our secularizing world will not care what the Bible says, and so the arguments we make for heterosexual monogamy ought to be primarily apologetic in nature.

From the first, we must admit that the evangelical church has done a lousy job on marriage in its own ranks.  Well might the homosexual activist say that evangelicals believe that marriage is between a man, and a woman, and a woman, and a woman....  It is wrong to argue that homosexual marriage will kill the institution of marriage.  The sexual revolution and the rampant divorce that followed in its wake have all but killed the stabilizing institution of marriage.  We need to give kudos to the Roman Catholic Church on this point --they have not yielded to popular pressure or practice.  Yes, there is some hypocrisy --granting annulments and so on, but their stance remains:  the Catholic church is firmly against divorce.

Some Christians have wrongly sought to abandon any public or legal protections for the institution of marriage.  If marriage were not a government issue, then we would not be having this discussion.  This is true, but hardly consistent with a Christian world-and-life-view, which is why I say that we must come to understand marriage Biblically.

Rome is wrong here:  marriage is not a sacrament.  Sacraments are means of grace for believers and marriage is for all men and women.  It is not a private religious contract between a man and a woman, but something undertaken for both private benefit and public good.  It is good for children to be raised in two-parent homes.  It stabilizes society and prevents poverty and every study ever done bears that out.  That is an apologetic argument for why government should recognize and sanction marriages, though it does not answer the question of why  two men or two women ought or oughtn't to be able to marry.

Theologically, we understand that marriage is a common-grace ordinance.  It is written into creation itself, and not just for Christians.  A pluralistic society can never grasp this teaching, since it believes that the Bible is simply one religious book among many.   Some point out that the current institution of marriage (one woman and one man, for life) is of relatively recent vintage and that Scripture itself contains abundant examples of believers who did not follow this example.  Genesis, however, is an ancient document (roughly 3500 years old) and Jesus draws his teaching from the very beginning of Genesis.  God's original intent and design was not polygamy, though believers did certainly engage in it.  Yet, without exception, polygamy introduced grief into the households where it was practiced (the deadly rivalries between Isaac and Ishmael, Joseph and his brothers, and among the children of King David).  It did so because it departed from God's design.

Although somewhat tangential to the main case, apologetically we might argue that polygamy creates nothing but problems: rivalries among wives and among the children of different wives, and a shortage of marriageable women (since the birthrate of males and females is roughly the same, polygamy inevitably creates too few marriageable females).  Those who would argue that the federal government's interest in "traditional marriage" is relatively recent might consider that the Federal Government denied Utah statehood from at least the 1850's in large part due to the LDS practice of polygamy.  The government has long realized that it has a vested interest in promoting stable monogamous heterosexual marriages.

What we must draw from this is:
1.) God has a particular design for marriage.
2.) Departures from that design bring misery (as in the case of polygamy and divorced and unwed motherhood).

Yet, living in a pluralist society, how can we make a commonsense apologetic case for the protection of monogamous heterosexual marriage in law?  I think too often our arguments are weak.  For instance,  the "marriage is chiefly for procreation" argument is deeply flawed.  Theologically, we understand that marriage is not chiefly for procreation but companionship.  You do not have to be capable of procreation to marry.  Infertile people can marry; people past childbearing years can marry.  Likewise, the definition argument fails --it is mere semantics to argue "Well, the definition of marriage is a union between a man and a woman, therefore marriage can only be between a man and a woman."  It's a sad day when we have to resort to a dictionary to make our arguments, and definitions change over time.  We don't have an unchanging language authority.

We must understand, too, that we are losing this battle, and are probably going to lose it definitively and for good in the very near future.  It shouldn't be a cause for rejoicing that 60% of North Carolinians who voted did so in favor of protecting heterosexual marriage.  Our focus should be on the 40% who didn't.  40 years ago, that would have been unthinkable.  20 years ago, the number may have been 90/10.  

That said, it is important we make the case.  We need to make it to our own children.  The younger generations of evangelicals are softening towards homosexual practice and we need to teach carefully how we in the church are to regard homosexuals and their desire to marry.  Too often, our stance has been motivated by somewhat of an "ick" factor (conservative Christians who were unruffled when pastors in their denominations were exonerated while preaching that Jesus did not rise from the dead are leaving their denominations in droves for ordaining and marrying homosexual persons, which I find troubling).  Mark Yarhouse's book Homosexuality and the Christian is a good place to start.

Why is it, from an apologetic standpoint, that state recognition of homosexual marriage is a bad idea?  Theologically we understand --God created man and women to be together in a one-flesh, companionship, head-helper relationship.  We know that any deviation from the norm brings misery.  Therefore, we ought to want to prevent people from experiencing misery.

How do we, then, make the argument?  I think presuppositionalism helps us here --in other words, the best way to win an argument is to look for the weaknesses or inconsistencies in your opponent's argument.  You don't have to be harsh or unloving as you do this, but gently pointing out inconsistencies in his case will build the case for the truth.  Presuppositionalism is built on the premise that the truth is a coherent whole and any false system will have cracks and flaws --find those and you can advance the truth.

I think the case might advance this way.  What is marriage, after all, and where does it come from?  Is it mere social convention, or something more?   What does it mean?  Why is it significant?  Is it only an emotive response --somehow solemnizing the fact that humans have some desire to mate for extended periods of time, not unlike geese or cardinals?  Why is it a desirable state to be sought by anyone, let alone homosexual persons?  Nothing hinders homosexual men or women from living together, committing to one another for life, from engaging in  sex, or solemnizing such with a ritual.  Why is it that civil marriage is a desirable state?  Is it for tax purposes?  Is it for the right to make end-of-life sorts of decisions for a much-beloved companion?  

In short, it is generally true that the burden of proof falls upon the one introducing the novelty.  What argues in favor of the change?   If modern Western society has upheld heterosexual monogamy as the ideal for two millennia (and arguably much longer), and, moreover, this practice also prevails in the Orient, why is it so?  Is it merely an evolutionary response --that it's better for offspring to pair for extended periods?

I would hazard a guess that most homosexuals would argue that marriage is of far more significance than the benefits listed above.  Here is where the point could be pressed --but why is it more, what invests it with such significance?  How can it really "mean" anything apart from its religious moorings?  And how could it mean anything if those religious moorings are just made up?   What is it in us that makes us desire a relationship that causes so much pain, is so unstable, calls for so much self-sacrifice, and so often fails?  

I am just putting this out there.  I don't know how strong it is, really, but I have yet to see it tried.  We must realize, however, that rationality doesn't always win the day.  One could make a rational and logical case, but if another person is heavily personally invested in his lifestyle, rationality won't change his mind.  The Holy Spirit, however, just might.

The Lord Gave, and the Lord Has Taken Away, Blessed Be the Name of the Lord

Many of you already know that my wife and I lost a baby in the womb this past week.  We discovered that the baby had died at a doctor's visit on Tuesday.  The procedure for removing the baby was scheduled for tomorrow.  In God's great mercy, that procedure is no longer necessary.  The baby came today.  I am glad that he did (I say 'he' though we do not know if he was a boy or a girl).  What a privilege it was to see him, tiny, perfectly formed, with delicate and perfect little hands, arms, legs, feet, and toes.  Truly we are knit together in the secret places, fearfully and wonderfully made.

I think the hospital procedure, while often necessary, would have separated us from the reality of what had happened.  We got the privilege of seeing him, of crying.  If the child had been a girl, her name would have been Zoe --life.  And he or she does live, before God.

Grief is such a strange thing.  There is no comparing the intensity of grief over one loss to another.  I have grieved friends and church members and grandparents, but not yet a parent, nor have I grieved a born child.  I will say this --there are different forms of grief.  Beyond that, I cannot characterize it.  It is grief and it is real, because it was the loss of a life, the life of a child unseen in life, and yet loved, both by us and by our Savior.

Our church's Westminster Confession of Faith summarizes Biblical teaching on such things this way:

10.3  Elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how He pleaseth. So also are all other elect persons, who are uncapable of being outwardly called by the ministry of the Word.

A. A. Hodge, in his commentary on this section, summarizes thus:

The phrase "elect infants" is precise and fit for its purpose.  It is not intended to suggest that there are any infants not elect, but simply to point out the facts --

1.) That all infants are born under righteous condemnation; and
2.) That no infant has any claim in itself to salvation; and hence
3.) The salvation of each infant, precisely as the salvation of every adult, must have its absolute ground in the sovereign election of God.

This would be just as true if all adults were elected as it is now that only some adults are elected.  It is, therefore, just as true, although we have good reason to believe that all infants are elected.  The Confession adheres in this place accurately to the facts revealed.  It is certainly revealed that none, either adult or infant, is saved except on the ground of a sovereign election; that is, all salvation for the human race is pure grace.  It is not positively revealed that all infants are elect, but we are left, for many reasons, to indulge a highly probable hope that such is the fact.  The Confession affirms what is certainly revealed and leaves that which revelation has not decided to remain without the suggestion of a positive opinion upon one side or the other.

The judge of all the earth will do right, and we leave such matters to him.  Whatever God's disposition towards the children of unbelievers, in Christ he is our Father, and his covenant promises to be God to us and our children are sure and true.

David Dickson gives the Biblical reasons for the teaching of this section:

1.) Because John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Ghost from his mother's womb.  (Luke 1:15)
2.) Because the Prophet Jeremiah was sanctified from his mother's womb (Jeremiah 1:5)
3.) Because the promise is made to believing parents and to their children conjointly (Gen 17:7, Acts 2:39).
4.) Because of such, says Christ, is the kingdom of heaven. (Matt 19:14)
5.) Because the apostle calls children which are descended but of one parent in covenant with God, holy (1 Cor. 7:14).
6.) Because God hath promised in the second commandment, that he will show mercy unto thousands that are descended of believing parents (Exo. 20:6).

In The Help, Celia buries her unborn children among the roses.  We put our unborn child in the ground, too, near the flower garden.  A seed is not given life unless it falls to the ground and dies.  We have a sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead --and a body, born or unborn, young or old, is the seed planted in hope.  Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust....but with a sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.