Category Archives: The Uncategorizable

Let the Vase be the Vase Even if it is Hard to Draw

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Ozzie Smith was my favorite baseball player when I was a kid. I used to draw pictures of him all the time and collect them in a folder that looked like a giant baseball card. Here is one that’s lasted 15 years, many miles, and a quick scan.

I like this picture. I don’t like it because I think it is artistically good. I like it because it is old. I like it because it is funny, and because it is fun to wonder what was going through my 10-year old mind when I was perfecting the StL on his hat or the Cardinals on the bat.

I remember once in an after-school art class the teacher placed some fruit and a vase in the center of the class and asked us to draw what we saw. After a little while she let us 5th graders present our drawings to one another. One kid held up a picture of some animal and its offspring. The teacher loved it. She praised the student for his creativity. I thought it sucked. It looked nothing like a vase and apples. He didn’t even try.

It is okay to be creative and make up your own world. That is wonderful. Do it and enjoy doing it. But we shouldn’t make the task of seeing this world the way it is into an experiment of our musings stuck in a pretend world.

Don’t make the vase into something that it is not. See the vase for what it is. Someone made it. It was made by something. Someone had to collect the something and probably purchased it from someone else, etc., etc. That vase had a story of its own and didn’t need to be made into an animal. If the kid couldn’t draw the vase for what it is then that is his problem, not the vase’s.

It is better to call what is real real. And if it’s hard to draw then just say it’s hard to draw. But don’t try to create an alternative reality to pass over in its place.

I saw Ozzie hit one of his four career left-handed homers.

Grace is a Master and How That Trumps Our Stupid Folk Religion

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“I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine.
“If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.”
(Psalms 50:9-12)

Folk religion is an interesting phenomenon. It is something like the syncretism of superstition and legitimate religious doctrine. It is not Scripture-oriented. It is saturated with the practical. It is the scribbles of life removed from the realm of true truth. It develops over time, like a fungus. It contaminates our perception of reality. Here is one incentive for the person reformata semper reformanda.

What does a person really think about God if they believe that their attempt to do good things really accrues his favor? Is God so needy that the only way he is capable of giving us good is when we have paid our dues? Is the triune God who is sovereign over everything like a pool membership?

“Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” (Romans 11:35)

God does not want your stupid bull or goat or month of perfect attendance or successful week on your Bible-reading plan. He wants you. How have we forgotten that? We have been breathing in too much of the wrong air. Where are we hearing this stuff that we need to feed God? Who is promising people out there the favor of God if only they would do _____. Or give _____. Or act _____. Or stop _____?

God will have none of it. He says so.

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23-24)

God will stop your doing and giving and acting and stopping. If you will be justified, you will be justified by his grace as a gift. There are no options here. It is grace as a gift or it is suffering under His righteous wrath forever. It is threatening, isn’t it? To know that it is all of grace requires a submission that is not expected if you are allowed to pay your subscription. Grace is a master like that. It is a purely Christian concept.

The Holy Church in a Dirty World

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In reflection on this.

The Church’s holiness is a certain kind of derivative holiness in that because its reality is completely outside of itself, the manner of holiness is expressed in humble gratitude. This humble gratitude is a stark contrast to demeaning separatism. The Church’s calling to be separate is a gift given by God in His grace, not an achieved title in demonstration of human virtue. If this is not understood then the glory of the gospel is severely diminished and Church’s witness in the world is handicapped.

This naturally leads to implications for the Church’s relation to the world. God’s holiness is a communicated holiness. His being is expressed in His works. Holiness is perceived and confessed. In a similar way, the holiness of the Church is expressed not in its separation or mere moral transcendence over the world, but it its activity in the world. Light does not shine if it is tucked away in parochial seclusion. Light shines by being present. Light’s activity is the reality of its essence (Matt. 5:14-16).


When Criticizing Coolness is Cool: An Inescapable Problem and a Plea for Gospel Transcendence

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There is a severe irony at work in all our blog posts about uncool people needing Jesus and paragraphs that aim to describe what hip Christians like and dislike. The problem that we can’t get away from is that all this talk of coolness, with all its sarcasm, is itself, well, cool.

Anyone can sound cool and make something else look stupid if they are creative enough with their words. Who is cool becomes the one who can make fun of everything else. It is the battle of sarcasm. And I am afraid that we are all infected. We can make fun of door-to-door evangelism. No. Wait. Let’s make fun of people who make fun of door-to-door evangelism. And then let me write a post about people who make fun of people who make fun of door-to-door evangelism.

It is important to evaluate, to become aware, to step outside a get a good look at things. It is good to write about it. To show how silly that thing is, how silly we can be. But, we shouldn’t get lost in this. We have to keep our eyes on the cross. Watch out that we don’t buy into the sport of criticizing the critical, of getting the upper hand in situating everything in its respective realm, influenced by this or that cultural trend, and on and on. Let us get lost in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let us have tunnel-vision in that. Let that transcend and overpower everything else. Everything else.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

1 Corinthians 15:3-4

Sunshine and Glory: What Spring in Minnesota Helps Me Get

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March is here. Yes. The Lord’s kindness is easy to see amidst the slush of muddy snow and lake-like puddles stretching from one end of the street to the other. The sun is shining. Winter is on its way out.

S.A.D. may tarry for five long months, but springtime comes at some point in March.

Without making too big a deal about the weather, it is good that we soak in as much parable as possible. That is the attempt here. There is something reviving about sunshine. Our senses that have been numbed  by snow and gray skies are awakened to feel again. The sunlight smells good. We want it. And it is interesting that our desire for the sunshine is not some selfish craving that hogs it all. We don’t want to hoard the sunshine in some box to tuck away for our own pleasure.

In fact, our desire is not so much for the sunshine as it is to just be in the sunshine. We want to be dissolved in its splendor. We don’t want to possess it, but to be possessed by it. We don’t want to just observe it, but to move in it and feel its warmth.

The Reason Why I Decided Not to Terminate my ‘Christian Blog’

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I am broken either way, blog or no blog, and Jesus saved me.

The problem of distractions in prayer is the problem of my own sin. If it were not the blog then it would be something else. I’d be too much of an idealist to think that terminating my blog would then allow me to come to God in a way other than messed up.

The blog is not what makes by mind fragmented, affections askew, and my heart cold. That is my sin. That is why I need the cross. I do not, indeed, I cannot, come to God any other way. There I am, a mess with my heart laid out bare before Him. My mind chasing every little thought that comes by, a blog post or dinner that night or why the book of Leviticus is a lesser favorite than the Psalter…

And there I am, a sinner in need of salvation. A sinner who needs to get out of himself and look to the work of Jesus Christ. And look again. (That would make a good post.) Look again. And again. And again. (Post the ‘again and again’ part, too.) Look again. And come to write the post while looking again.

I pray broken and I write broken, and I pray and write as one saved only because of the work of Jesus Christ for me. Still looking, by His grace.

Reason #2 of Some Reasons Why I Hate My ‘Christian Blog’ and am Contemplating Its Termination

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#2 I am really questioning the overall benefit of Christian media

I work for a resource ministry and absolutely love it. The global Church is in need of good resources. The Father has blessed the Church in America with great training for ministry and scrupulous theology. Spreading is good.

And on the other hand, there are some serious dangers. Doctrine III class was helpful last night in this discussion. We were talking over Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. Bonhoeffer’s description of the ‘ideal’ dream of Christian community versus the divine reality of Christian community is particularly illuminating (Go read the book, it’s short). He writes,

He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial (27).

Christian media lets people hear really good music by really gifted artists and hear really good sermons by really gifted preachers. That is all wonderful until the Christian individual imports these things as expectations on their local Church. Your pastor will not preach like John Piper, get over it. Your worship leader will not sing like Hillsong United, get over it. I fear that the asset of Christian media (though unintentional) has become an impetus for the individual Christian to complain. We should be grateful for our community that is “in and through Jesus Christ” and not frustrated about what it is not.

I’ve talked to people, one sweet lady in particular. She loves Jesus and has some solid theology. However, she is so affected by a fellow sister’s cell phone ringing in corporate worship that she is derailed with vexation. “There are no good churches around here.”

Our expectations are askew. We have done exactly what Bonhoeffer warns against. I forget that this was about why I hate my ‘Christian blog.’ I guess this Reason #2 matters only inasmuch as I see my blog contributing to this negative aspect. Only insofar as my blog is a child of that system. Hmm…

Reason #1 of Some Reasons Why I Hate My ‘Christian Blog’ and am Contemplating Its Termination

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#1. It is intrusive to my life of prayer.

The irony here is that this particular post came to mind while in prayer. It happens too often. The quiet of the morning and the stillness of my home, I am praying to the Father, declaring the gospel of the Son, yearning to be filled with the Spirit and simultaneously fighting the all-too-easy ‘hey, that could be a blog post’ crap. This makes me very angry. All accusations are pointed at me in my sinfulness.

“I want to forget myself, be wise in nothing but the cross, live before and unto the LORD, careless towards the approval of man (oh, I should post this).”

There are a dozen comebacks. I hope that you are thinking of them now and confronting what I’ve said with “but…” and “what about…” Well done. Tell me, please. Comment. Challenge my thinking. I need it. Prayer is too important, bro. I am growing weary in fighting a battle that could be eliminated. I am sinful enough to let a web address rob my communion with God. That is painful enough to make me want to bash my MacBook and throw it in the cold Mississippi, or ball up like a baby and cry.

I hope you like my post, hope it gets lots of hits. Crap.

Jesus, please help me.

What Am I Doing Here?

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Am I really in this thing for me?

What a question to ask as a Christian Hedonist. The answer is “of course!”, right? I am in this for me because God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in him. Careful, careful.

Don’t misuse CH to shirk the question that we should ask ourselves regularly. Am I in this thing– this gospel community, this ministry, this training– am I really in this thing for me? Is this about me? Me, me, me?

I want the very thought of such a possibility to send chills down my spine. Moreover, I want the evidences of such defilement in my heart to send me to my face in prayer, asking God to slit my throat before it would become a reality. Yes, slit my throat. Put me down. Prayers interrupted with thoughts about research and papers and publication and books and Phds are enough distemper to make me nearly pull my hair out. I want no part of that. None.

And I don’t want the “it’s all about Jesus” flag to be in theory only. How can I practically live in decrease so that Christ may increase? How can I get the heck out of the way? Much heart work is needed. Oh, damn the subtlety of wanting my own name to be known (in the name of making Jesus known)!

Brothers, we cannot live any other way. Let us put this out there, from our souls to the Lord. If this is about us then let us get out of this thing now. Now. And Jesus, you must come and do something. Please! The last thing the church and the world needs is another gospel minister made up of the things I see in my own heart.

A Fierce Lamb Then and What It Means for Me Now (By the way…)

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Revelation 19:11-16 is a fierce picture of Jesus. The Lamb who was slain will then be known as the King of Psalm 2. The meek Savior will rule with a rod of iron. The suffering servant will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.

This will happen. Now what does it mean for me? If this is my King, the One in whom by grace I take refuge, how do I factor now into this future reality? Here are a few observations:

  1. I must be sure not to confuse the figure of Revelations 19:11-16 to be anyone other than Jesus. It is not me and it is not my example.
  2. The conquerors who belong to Jesus are victors by giving up their lives for the sake of others, not by taking the lives of others.
  3. The judgment that he administers on that last day is a judgment that we all deserve and that we would all experience if not for the sovereign grace to God to call and save sinners.
  4. This judgment is not capricious, but is the display of God’s righteousness–the unswerving commitment to uphold the glory of His name.
  5. I should be jealous for God’s glory, too. But my jealously for God’s glory is not executing judgment, but in giving up my own life out of love for others to display Christ’s worth.

By the way, doesn’t this thwart the intention is Islamic jihadism? How can one make war against those who are bowing their heads in love for the very ones who want to make war against them?