Peterson on Resurrection Living

This comes from Peterson's introduction to his book, Practice Resurrection:

The resurrection of Jesus establishes the conditions in which we live and matufre in the Christian life and carry on this conversation: Jesus alive and present. A lively sense of Jesus' resurrection, which took place without any help or comment from us, keeps us from attempting to take charge of our development and growth. Frequent meditation on Jesus' resurrection--the huge mystery of it, the unprecedented energies flowing from it--prevents us from reducing the language of our conversations to what we can define or control. "Practice resurrection," a phrase I got from Wendell Berry, strikes just the right note. We live our lives in the practice of what we do not origniate and cannot anticipate. When we practice resurrection, we continually enter into what is more than we are. When we practice resurrection, we keep company with Jesus, alive and present, who knows where we are going better than we do, which is always "from glory to glory."

More this, More That

I think Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings have been making some of the finest music around. They've developed a sound. a voice, that is all their own, even as it draws heavily on American folk traditions.



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My son, Timothy, who is a visual artist, got a job doing a mural in Monticello, Indiana. He made the front page of the local paper! That is so cool!

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I bought myself a new journal. Just the right size, lined just the way I like it. The journal is a place of retreat, stock taking, and of taking note. The practice of journaling makes me watchful. At least, that's what I hope it will do for me.

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It's good to slow down. It's good to be watchful. It's good to be quick to listen, slow to speak.

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From Ray Ortlund come these "one anothers" not found in the Bible:

Humble one another, scrutinize one another, pressure one another, embarrass one another, corner one another, interrupt one another, defeat one another, disapprove of one another, run one another’s lives, confess one another’s sins, intensify one another’s sufferings, point out one another’s failings . . . .

Some Monday This and That

A nice article by Elyse Fitzpatrick at at the Gospel Coalition blog called The Transforming Power of the Gospel. The example she uses and her analysis of it are excellent.

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I got to that post through bob.blog. Bob Hyatt's blog. He's a sharp whipper-snapper, he is. Read his post, Forget Everything Except...

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Randy Alcorn, who is a fine writer, said at a recent book fair of some sort that we've had enough books by people who are sick of church. Ha! Was he thinking about Mere Churchianity? What else?

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I love the word "wayward."

On the relationship between discipleship and community

We can talk all we want about missional churches, but they are not missional at all if they are not full of missional people. Missional churches help folks be/become missional people.

That's why I like Dave Harder's blog title, Living Missional, and his subtitle, "engaging in a journey to love God and others." Here's a snip from his post entitled Love and Loss:

I have to say I absolutely love the way God calls us to live. He invites us to take His presence, His Kingdom wherever we go and when we are awakened to that reality things happen... God things happen. I don't know where you are at in your views of church and this Jesus life but God calls us into this way of living that is way more exciting than sitting in a church service listening to some dude talk... the church is real, active, alive, risky, present in every area of life.

The "living" is the life of discipleship. Here's what Eugene Peterson says about that in Practice Resurrection:

Jesus used the birth metaphor for another kind of birth: becoming alive to God. Alive to God-alive. Life vast, complex, damaged, demanding . . . and beautiful. Alive to God's holiness, God's will, God's kingdom, power, and glory. There is more to life after birth than mother's milk, sleeping and waking, walking and talking. There is God.

When I decided to "turn down" the Sunday morning church thing for a while, I knew that I would have to be more intentional than ever about discipleship. I would have to pursue it in new ways. I haven't exactly worked that out yet, but folks like Harder and Peterson are helping me get the focus right.

Bottom line, I'm not totally delighted about being church-less, but neither am I rushing out to find a congregation. Yes, the author of Hebrews did advise "not neglecting to meet together," and the ESV Study Bible footnote for that passage says, "Christian perseverance is a community endeavor." I like that. But I'm not convinced that the "community" has to be in the form of hundreds of folks from far and wide getting together once a week to sit in neat rows in a big auditorium and listen to an expert speak. If you want to do that, fine. Maybe the dude is a great and helpful speaker.

Yes, the talking dudes are okay and can be very helpful. They're on the radio, televison, Internet. They're talking all over the place. I'm thinking they might show up somewhere on my list of "good stuff" associated with Christian discipleship, maybe #27 or #28, I dunno. But more important than all that is "meeting together." And I don't take that to mean "listening together" to the expert Bible guy, not primarily anyway.

Here's anothert quote from Dave Harder (this time from a post called Churchless Christianity:

Instead of being the church, we have fallen into merely doing church, and far too often our doing is disconnected from being.

I stopped into a Panera last week, early morning, and there were some guys in there meeting and talking with their Bible's open (well, actually, one of them had an ipad, but the rest were using the old "turn the page" technology). Anyway, this is Maine, and you don't see that kind of thing too often up here (not guys with Bibles at coffee shops, I mean). In fact, this was the first time I've seen it (other than those times when I myself have been a part of the group). It did my heart good, it did. Discipleship was going on.

Discipleship. Eee gad, but that's a scary word. Eugene Peterson is good at de-mystifying this sort of thing. Here's another example of how he talks about it in his book Practice Resurrection.

The most signifcant growing up that anybody does is to grow as a Christian. All other growing up is preparation for or ancillary to this growing up. Biological and social, mental and emotional growing is all ultimately absorbed into growing up in Christ. Or not. The human task is to become mature, not only in our bodies and emotions and minds within ourselves, but also in our relationship with God and other persons.

Growth. Growth in relationship with God and others. This kind of thing cannot be primarily church-based. It has to be day to day, or it's mere playacting. That's why all the church-talk about "community" is trivialized when it only manifests itself as a Sunday gathering (no matter how effervescent that gathering may be).

Discipleship happens in community, but community has to be more, much more, than Sunday morning. Try this metaphor: Sunday morning is the flower of community, but the roots are in deeply real and authentic personal relationships among believers.

Here's my deal. I'm going to pursue the latter (the roots) and hope for the former (the flower) and not the other way around. After all, it was Paul who said, "if the root is holy, so are the branches" (Rom 11:16). And maybe the flower too.

Willie

More from Mere Churchianity

Some nuggets from Michael Spencer's Mere Churchianity. My, how I loved this book. I'm not going to go on and on about it here, but I wanted to feature a few gems from the book.

I've discovered that many of the most consistently Jesus-shaped people are not telling anyone what to do.

Discipleship happens at the speed of life.

The stage of Western culture is crowded with Christians delivering rehearsed, made-up lines.

The fear of individuality is deeply-ingrained in the church, and it extracts a terrible cost on a person's identity.

We long for a spirituality of stillness, contentment, and acceptance in the place of spiritual competition and wretched urgency. We have grown weary and sick of being challenged to do more and to be more committed, more surrendered, more holy under our own power.

The church's primary goal is to support every disciple in his or her mission in the world, not to draw them into the church's programs five nights a week.

There is little need for large churches stuffed with satisfied audiences. There is a great need for a movement of disciples going into the overlooked places of the world to see and serve the Kingdom of God.

North American Christianity may have the distinction of having promised more of God and delivered less of God than any single act on the stage of Church history.

Mere Churchianity

Since I stopped going to church I've had a few online conversations where people made the assumption that anyone who does so is surely a selfish seeker of entertainment, irresponsible and lacking "commitment." That's simply the party line of church leaders, and not indicative of thoughtfulness on the subject. But if anyone really does want to understand that there may be another explanation for all the "church leavers," then read Michael Spencer's Mere Churchianity, please. The conversation will never be the same.

The June Poem: "Solstice"

It's another bird poem of course. This describes something I actually saw today--a large but immature bird, its wings undeveloped, covered with whitish fuzz but for the black spots around its head, apparently unhurt, and seeming to be looking for a way into a great old stone church as I happened by. And since all this took place on June 21, I'm calling it "Solstice."

Featherless half-grown stranger,
fallen from who knows where,
your webbed ungainly feet
flip-flapping on the granite stairs
of a downtown church, you hop
to the great oaken doors
as if expecting them to open--
not a chance. Mottled,
gawky, determined yet dazzled,
your madcap prancing
before the intransigent gates
seems cause enough to silence
even the traffic's roar.
I scan the lofty steeple,
then the placid sky beyond,
in search of a frantic mother.
Nothing. Then turning back
I see you wobble earnestly around the corner
as if to try the side entrance--

some dorky angel messenger
carrying your startling news
to a deserted church.

What's in YOUR wallet?

I'll be honest. When my friend Milton Stanley asked me to review Jeff Weddle's The Gospel-filled Wallet, I didn't exactly jump at the chance. I mean, one of the things about Christian media that tires me the most is the constant torrent of advice. Do this, do that, do it this way, do it that way, and have a happy life. Was Jeff's book going to be yet more Christian-ish advice about money management? I had an inclination to pass it up.

But, well, the book is the first offering from Milton's publishing venture, Transforming Publishing, and after years of reading both Milton's blog and Jeff's, I had a competing inclination to trust their judgement. So I agreed to read and review the book here.

And I'm glad I did.

The first point I want to make is, this is not really a how-to book about wise financial management. This is, as the subtitle suggests, a book about "what the Bible really says about money." Jeff spends the lion's share of these pages pointing out the sheer consistency of the Bible on the subject of money. In passage after passage the message is the same: you cannot serve both God and money. If you love the one, you will hate the other.

The strengths of this book are: first, Jeff's no nonsense handling of the Scriptures. In most cases, the Word is simpler and more straightforward than we like to think. I love the way Jeff handles these verses. Second, Jeff's writing is crisp, punchy, to the point. Brief, uncomplicated sentences, clear thinking, and a swift pacing make this book a pleasure to read.

More importantly, The Gospel Filled Wallet is not financial advice. As Jeff explicates one Scripture passage after another dealing with money, we quickly get the feeling that the Bible's counsel on this topic is, to put it mildly, challenging. As Jeff puts it (in a chapter provocative titled, "I think I hate God"):

Our lives are consumed with money. All of our life is centered on the pursuit, acquisition, and spending of it. Our lives prove that we love money. You show what you love by where you put your time and energy. Money consumes us. We love money.

Thus, we hate God.

Much of this small book is taken up with demonstrating that Jesus, Paul, and the other prominent voices of the Bible never back off from this strict understanding. The things of this world, the things money can buy, are a poor investment. You should give it away!

If you're wondering where the Gospel comes in amidst all this (the book is called, after all, The Gospel-filled Wallet), well, so was I. If I have a criticism of this book, it is that Weddle did not make the connection between the Gospel and a Biblical attitude toward money as clearly and unmistakably as he might have. It's there, in his last chapter, but somewhat muted, I think. In my notes I marked the page where I found its clearest expression (page 69, by the way), and yet I believe Jeff could have used his fine skill for explaining and applying Scripture to better purpose here. I think Jeff misses a chance to vividly apply the Gospel to this issue in a manner that inspires. We know more clearly than ever, after reading this book, that the love of money is truly the root of all sorts of evils, and that we love money far more than we ought. But what we don't know any better how Jesus solves this dilemma.

Two more points, one a strong positive, and the other a minor criticism. The positive: Jeff's attitude throughout the book is one of humility. He admits that he doesn't have this all figured out, and that his own life does not comport with the Biblical perspective on money. He's working it out, just like the rest of us. I really, really love this aspect of the book. The minor criticism: I'm sorry, but I see no reason to use the KJV for all Scripture references. I don't know if Jeff is a KJV-only sort of guy, but for those of us who don't read it (or Milton or Shakespeare) regularly, it's distracting.

In summary, The Gospel-filled Wallet is a brief, highly-readable, and at times powerful book. Its challenge to us is a Biblical challenge to live Godly lives in an evil age. But I do think that Jeff's explication of problem is more thorough than his explication of the Biblical solution, which, yes, has everything to do with the good news.

The book is for sale at Amazon, and Jeff continues to ruminate on this subject at his book blog of the same name.

Gospel

The Mail Carrier's been very good to me!

Mere Churchianity has finally arrived at my doorstep, I'm happy to say. The first book I've ever pre-ordered! Probability of future posts about this book: high.

Of course I hate to pay shipping for Amazon book purchases, so I always bundle a couple of books together (if I have to) in order to reach the $25 free-shipping level. In the bundle with this one was Eugene Peterson's Practice Resurrection. Of course Peterson is one of my heroes. I'll whet your own appetite by quoting from the introduction:

Americans in general have little tolerance for a centering way of life that is submissive to the conditions in which growth takes place: quiet, obscure, patient, not subject to human control and management. The American church is uneasy in these conditions. Typically, in the name of "relevance," it adapts itself to the prevailing American culture and is soon indistinguishable from that culture: talkative, noisy, busy, controlling, image-conscious.

Katzenjammer

Son Nate brought my attention to this one. Demon Kitty Rag!

Flash: Two Bloggers Speak Honestly of Dying

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.

I wasn't going to link to Denise Spencer's personal memoir of her husband's death (Sometimes It's Just Plain Hard), simply because so many others have done so already. I will only say that it's one of the finest things I've ever read for it's sheer unblinking honesty.

Anyway, the reason I link to it now is because I've just read David Wayne's response, The Truth is Uglier Than We Think, God is More Beautiful Than we Realize. Both of these posts are must-reads.

The crux of David's post is this: "I find that very few Christians are able to accept that we live in a fallen world." Thus, they are surprised and even affronted by death, when it touches their lives. David adds some wise words from a book called I Told Me So, by Greg Ten Elshof:

Terminal cancer wards are full of patients who believe things we all know to be radically improbable. They believe that they will be one of the very, very few who fight back and win-or that they’ll be the recipient of a miracle healing in response to the prayers of friends and family. It’s not just that they believe that they could get better-that God could perform a miracle on their behalf. In this they’re surely correct. No. They believe they will get better-that God will perform a miracle on their behalf. Nearly all of them are wrong. And anyone familiar with the statistics is well situated to see that they are. But-and this is the most salient part for our discussion-nobody corrects them. In fact, they are encouraged to persist in these highly improbable beliefs.

I know this so well, and have observed it often: Christians confused and dismayed about suffering. Surely it's not God's will, they say, as if they'd never read Genesis 3 or heard it preached.

I know a fellow who has sat by the bedside of many dying people, and he tells me that there's no way to predict how someone will pass through that portal--as if the faithful should always "pass" with beatific smiles, while the unbeliever goes in abject fear to the grave. Sometimes, my friend has told me, it's quite the other way around. But doesn't it demonstrate a horribly maimed understanding of the world, of life, and of God that so many of us feel surprised to discover that death is not more friendly to believers than to unbelievers?

I have heard Christians say, "Surely it is not God's will that His children should suffer." Besides completely ignoring Genesis 3, a piece of Scripture that ought to be foundational to our understanding of the world, they ignore Jesus' own words recorded at Matthew 16:24-25. Their rose-colored glasses only do themselves and others harm.

But the Biblical truth about suffering--that God hides himself in suffering--which David delineates so well in his post, runs exactly counter to the "you gotta believe" form of Christianity, which expects faith to act as a magical get-out-of-suffering card. Here faith is reduced to a confidence that one's desired outcome will surely come to pass here and now, and trusting God is reduced to trusting Him to give you what you most desire here and now. What else can a God be for, after all, if not to satisfy our desires? For these people, it seems that God looks at your confidence level, which is the key to all his promises, and rewards you accordingly. In this view, our faith determines everything, and God is not sovereign!

But every now and then someone has to mention that "sometimes it's just plain hard." Two truth-telling bloggers have done so in a rare and beautiful way.

Saturday Book Notes (and a song)

OK, before I read God's Batallions, I'm going to have to read The Jesus Wars. A little historical perspective never hurts!

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C. J. Mahaney on reading and forgetting.

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I just received my review copy of Jeff Weddle's The Gospel-Filled Wallet. Weddle brings together two subjects, the gospel and money, which are often kept apart in the church. I'm extremely curious to get Jeff's take. I'll be reviewing the book here in a week or so.

Jeff, btw, blogs on these things here.

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The authors of The Invisible Gorilla argue from science that "a state of illusion seems to be part of our neurological make-up." Yup, I noticed that. Read the review here.

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And to finish off, a little folkie nostalgia:

Friday is (still) for the Doe-Cee-Doe

Lyrics are mysterious but strangely beautiful. Arrangement, the same.

Thoughts and Excursions

Jared Wilson's Kill Your Jesus Talisman. Jared has the knack for making great points with great brevity, often by way of powerful and original metaphors. Makings of a fine writer, that.

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An old post from Frank Viola's blog, Discipleship, Mission, and Church. This challenges me a little, because Frank says "you cannot separate discipleship from ekklesia." I know he's right about that, and it's got me thinking I should wander into a church one of these Sundays.

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God is missional. His mission has everything to do with Himself, and so the community that He is building is essentially Godward and worshipful, much as is the heavenly "community" we see in the Book of Revelation. In that context of what we might call "shared awe" lies the possibility for true and deep community.

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Dwell London - Steve Timmis from Ed Stetzer on Vimeo.

Saturday Odds & Ends

I want to read Randall Balmer's All We Like Sheep.

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It seems that people like Rick Warren can't help but speak in grandiose terms. He declares the next decade will be The Decade of Destiny for Saddleback, marked by exponential growth. This is just the routine promotional blather we've all grown used to, decked out in the religious garb of Christian positive thinking. This article quotes him telling his massive congregation,

Let me just be honest with you as somebody who loves you. If you passively just want to sit around in the next 10 years and just waste your life on things that won't last, you probably want to find another church because you're not going to really feel comfortable here. Because if you're in this church, I'm coming after you to be mobilized.

This is just the kind of nonsense that raises the biggest red flag for me. Church leaders create all these programs and "ministry opportunities" and then try to plug everybody into them, suggesting that if you're not so plugged you must be passive, etc. Can I just mention that being a Mom and Dad might be a more fruitful and important place to minister than any of the church's "ministry opportunities"? Things that won't last, indeed.

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But there is a better way. Check out Beautiful Descent.

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I'm sitting in the library this morning, having just had coffee with my blog-typer friend, Abraham of La Vie Graphite. I'll bring home three or four books, maybe read one of them in the end. I like to go into the stacks, sit down on one of those library stools, and peruse the lower shelves. I look for old books, written back when people wrote with wonder and joy (a rare trait among contemporary scribblers, I find). This morning I picked up William Saroyan's My Name is Aram, written in 1937. Here's the opening page:

One day back there in the good old days when I was nine and the world was full of every imaginable kind of magnificence, and life was still a delightful and mysterious dream, my cousin Mourad, who was considered crazy by everybody who knew him except me, came to my house at four in the morning and woke me up by tapping on the window of my room.

Aram, he said.

I jumped out of bed and looked out the window.

I couldn't believe what I saw.

It wasn't morning yet, but it was summer and with daybreak not many minutes around the corner of the world it was light enough for me to know I wasn't dreaming.

My cousin Mourad was sitting on a beautiful white horse.

Now that's an irresistible opening.

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Finally, Nicholas Carr's new book, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, sounds very interesting. Here's a snip from the review at SFGate:

Rather than relying on exhortation and appeal to antiquarian love of tradition, Carr has meticulously and elegantly grounded his thesis in the latest cognitive sciences. He begins with underscoring the concept of neuroplasticity, the fancy term for the brain's ability to learn by changing itself. You repeat a task and new neural connections are formed; with repeated usage, these connections are gradually enhanced. Stop using particular neural circuits and synapses will wither and connections will be greatly diminished (use it or lose it). It is this two-way role of neuroplasticity that is the bedrock of Carr's thesis that our brains are adapting to the way that we read online at the expense of previously learned ways of reading off-line.

I think he's right. I sense it happening in me. So I'm going off in a corner to enhance my neuroplasticity with a good book. See you later.

On Default Positions

Have you ever noticed that holiness is not the Christian's default position? In other words, sin is not an occasional lapse for us born agains, who are otherwise strikingly moral and righteous to the core.

For example, you decide you're not going sit in the seat of scoffers any longer. You do pretty well with that for a day or too, and give yourself a little pat on the back, informing your friends of another holiness echelon you've just achieved. But then, well, a day comes when, without even noticing, you slide back into the old patterns. Easy as sipping milk.

Or, on a more positive note, you commit yourself to letting your light so shine before men that they praise their Father in Heaven. By the end of the week, taking stock, you have to admit that no one has praised their Father in Heaven because of your little light. What happened?

This problem . . . you'd think it would garner more attention among us than it does. Sin remains the default position of the flesh. We have no grounds for triumphalism, even the subtle kind where we teach others by way of our own stellar example.

Reading Mark 2 this morning, I notice that Jesus, though he's healing folks right and left, doesn't seem to think that illness is the main problem he came to solve. Apparently, sin is the main problem. It's just something you notice again and again when you read the Gospels. Sin is a much bigger issue for Jesus than it seems to be for us. We preoccupy our prayer time asking for healing, comfort, and special favors for our children, when our need for forgiveness is the real issue.

In additon: Read Greg Gilbert on the Cross and the Kingdom. This is a more thorough and judicious unpacking of the same point. In a nutshell,

it is the cross—and the cross alone—which is the gateway to the blessings of the kingdom. That’s how you put all this together. You don’t get the blessings of the kingdom unless you come into them through the blood of the King. Therefore if you preach a sermon or write a chapter on the good news of the kingdom, but neglect to talk about the cross, you’ve not preached good news at all. You’ve just shown people a wonderful thing that they have no right to be a part of because they are sinners. That’s why we never see Jesus preaching, “The kingdom of God has come!” No, it’s always, “The kingdom of God has come! Therefore repent and believe!” He didn’t just preach the coming of the kingdom. He preached the coming of the kingdom and the way people could enter it.

Why do we so often preach (and write and talk) about kingdom realities (like healing), at the expense of the Cross?

Miracle lust?

Reading chapter 1 of the Gospel of Mark this morning (when in doubt about what Scripture to read next, I often return to Mark), I noticed how after he begins his ministry Jesus routinely silences the demons (because they know who he is), and he also attempts to hush the man healed of leprosy. It's interesting to me that he does not want people to focus just now on "who he is" nor on the healings themselves. His desire now is simply to announce, rather mysteriously, the nearness of the kingdom of God. However, when the former-leper tells everyone that this Jesus had healed him (it must have been hard to keep that a secret, in any case), that's all that seems to matter to "the crowds." It's a kind of miracle lust, and Jesus is not inclined to indulge it at the expense of his message.

The ESV Study Bible note on verse 45 puts it this way:

The joy of the healed man overrides Jesus' injunction to silence and therefore Jesus could no longer openly enter a town, lest he be mobbed. So Jesus cannot stay hidden (e.g., v. 45; 3:7–12, 20; 6:31–33). Mark often emphasizes how the crowds' excessive attention to Jesus' miracles is a frequent problem, causing the crowds to miss the true purpose of his ministry (i.e., to proclaim the good news of the kingdom).

I wonder if it sometimes happens with us, too, that our desire for a miracle, a work of wonder, actually causes us to miss the core message--the kingdom of God is at hand.

Cash does Elvis