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Made to Hunt Treasure

May 4, 2013 — Leave a comment

The Bible teaches that God made man for this world. God created this world for man. He invented this place for people. God made all things and called them good. Then He created man and woman, and He called it all very good. But God didn’t create the world finished. He didn’t create the world like a piece of art meant only to hang in a gallery somewhere. He created the world as a work in progress. He created the world good and very good, and He rested from His work on the seventh day, the first Sabbath. But in the work of creation, God established a pattern, a picture, an example and told Adam to follow it. Which is to say that God created the world good but not finished. He completed His work and rested, but God made Adam for work also. God made Adam for real work. God made Adam to be fruitful, to create, to invent, to discover, to rule creation with wisdom. And God created the woman to work with him, alongside him, to help him.

When God planted the Garden of Eden and placed Adam and Eve in it, He explained to them that the river flowing out through the middle of the garden actually split into four different river heads. God said, down the first river Pishon, you will find the land of Havilah which is full of gold. It’s good gold and there is bdellium and onyx stones there as well. Adam didn’t even know what gold was. He didn’t know where Havilah was. He didn’t know what bdellium and onyx stones were either. But God gave him these descriptions and pointed into the distance and said, You’re gonna want to go that way. What God did was give Adam the very first treasure map.

But God wasn’t done. He pointed to the other rivers: Gihon goes down to Ethiopia. Hiddekel goes toward Assyria. And the fourth river is called Euphrates, and I’m not even telling you where that one goes. This is glorious. God created the universe and the first man and the first woman, and He set them down in this lovely garden and immediately points out the world to them. But He doesn’t tell them everything. He just points and gives clues. But the point is clear. This world is loaded with glory. It’s loaded with goodness, and it was made for us. And God wants us to find it.

Solomon says that it’s the glory of God to conceal a matter, and it’s the glory of kings to search it out (Pr. 25:2). That’s what this world is for. That’s what people are for. They are for hard work. They are for late nights and early mornings. They are for digging in the dirt: inventing and discovering and uncovering and planting and building and birthing. They are for trial and error. They are for learning. They are for uncovering the glory of God in this world. Continue Reading…

In Bible, Bible - Genesis, Bible - Proverbs, Creation, Family, Manalive, Marriage Bed, Wedding Exhortation, Wisdom

The Porn War

April 30, 2013 — 8 Comments

I’ve blogged about lust and porn before, but I thought I’d put a few more thoughts down here.

You should think about the porn war like any other war as having both defensive and offensive aspects. Defensive warfare is not a winning tactic, but it is a necessary tactic. And usually, when the Spirit has sacked a man, and he comes to his senses, repents, and wants to get out the prison cell of lust and pornography, the defensive angle has to be emphasized first. You need to get real accountability (pastor, parent, wife, godly roommate), change jobs, stop traveling so much, throw away your computer, put Covenant Eyes on your smart phone, cut off your hand or eye causing you to sin (Mt. 5:28-30). Jesus prescribes amputation, so don’t expect this to be very fun. This should be done right away while the Spirit is still burning within you. After about two weeks, the chances of you wanting to do anything drastic fall dramatically. But you should basically imagine your lust as a wild beast. You need to think about killing the damn thing, and that means you need to be your own worst enemy. Imagine the worst about your self. What are you likely to do in your weakest moment? Then cut that off. Pluck it out. Move out. Quit your job. Throw away your phone. Sounds crazy, but if it doesn’t look crazy, I don’t think you can say you’re actually obeying Jesus.

But the real problem is in your heart, in your mind, in the way you think about women, the way you think about sex and love. So after you slammed all the doors shut, padlocked them, run barbed wire around the tops of the fences, and dumped a bunch of broken glass around every entrance and exit, you need to do some hard thinking and praying about your heart and mind. Here’s a list to get you started:

1. God made women in His own image. Women are people. They are human beings. They are beloved daughters of God. He made them. He loves them. He values them. Do you think of women as God’s daughters? Do you recognize that they all belong to Him? They are His? And they are daughters, mothers, sisters, and friends of other people. They are real people. And this does not cease to be true when they are photographed or filmed. When you see a woman on the cover of a magazine do you remember that God made her? That she has an eternal soul, a story, a family, loves, hopes, dreams? Continue Reading…

In Bible - Matthew, Culture, Justice & Mercy, Manalive, Marriage Bed, Wisdom

Jesus Love

March 10, 2013 — 1 Comment

Daniel and Claire, you know well Paul’s command to husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her. But I wonder if we often miss just how scandalous this command is. I think perhaps our modern culture’s general aversion and disgust with Paul’s teaching on marriage is probably approaching the level of scandal that it is. But I suspect that they are actually not scandalized enough. They get hung up on the asymmetry of Paul’s language. Husbands lead like this; wives follow like that. Husbands love; wives respect.

But the scandal is deeper than that. Paul says that husbands are to love their wives like Jesus loved the Church, and when we look elsewhere, we see that the kind of love Jesus had for us when He went to the cross for us was not a reasonable sort of love, not a sensible kind of love. In Romans 5, Paul uses four different adjectives to describe our state when Jesus died for us. Paul says we were weak, we were ungodly, we were sinners, and we were enemies when Christ died for us.

The culture around us uses a word that sounds exactly like our word “love.” They spell it the same; they even pronounce it the same. But I would suggest that based on what they actually do with that word, most of the time, they mean something entirely different than we do. In the immortal words of Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.” Continue Reading…

In Bible - Ephesians, Family, Lent, Marriage Bed, Wedding Exhortation

Kill Your Feelings

February 27, 2013 — 3 Comments

A man is required by God to disconnect his feelings from his duty. This is not because a man doesn’t have them. A good man is not cold and heartless. But a good man represents Jesus rightly by bearing his own feelings as well as the feelings of others, specifically those people entrusted to his care. The man who dumps his feelings whether in an emotional puddle or in an outburst of anger is misrepresenting Christ. But a Christian man bears them patiently, cheerfully because He knows the gospel. He knows that he has an older brother named Jesus who has borne it all.

This is not stoicism or apathy. Rightly understood, this is just faithful obedience to our Lord. Feelings are not holy. They have no automatic rightful place in the world. Feelings may be as sinful as thoughts and actions and words. You have no innate right to your feelings. And they are not exactly the same thing as the pain you feel when you stub your toe. Of course there’s the “ouch” factor, but hurt feelings may be completely disobedient to Jesus. Anger may be in complete rebellion to Jesus. There is a time to mourn; there is a time for rejoicing. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Ephesians, Culture, Family, Lent, Manalive, Marriage Bed, Wisdom

We Call It Glory

February 18, 2013 — 1 Comment

Peter says that a godly man must honor his wife as the weaker vessel (1 Pet. 3:8). The fact that many Christians would turn a light shade of pink when this verse is read out loud is an indication of just how spineless and cowardly we have become. But still worse are the consequences that necessarily flow from ignoring this verse or explaining it away with footnotes and throat clearing.

This means that a man who gets up multiple times a night with young children throughout the week and continues to get up early to go to work must not complain or be bitter when his wife happens to get up once and asks to sleep in for a bit. He may not respond by pointing out how “unfair” that is. This is to ask God to flatten out the differences between men and women. This is to dishonor a woman’s glory rather than to honor it.

Let me give you another example: This means that a wife or daughter may feel free to unload her feelings, hurts, confusions, worries, and fear to her husband or father, and that man may not unload in the same way on his wife or daughter. A man must be honest, but his duty is to be strong for his wife, to be strong for his daughter. This may seem unfair to some, but it is nothing less than the gospel in operation. Paul says that a man’s example is Jesus who loved His bride and gave Himself for her (Eph. 5:25). He bears our burdens, and men must bear the burdens of those they are responsible for. To ask a man to be “transparent” and to “share his feelings” is to ask a man to disobey Jesus. There is of course a generic way in which, all Christians “bear one anothers’ burdens,” but this is not a command at odds with the way God made the world with men and women and their respective glories. Continue Reading…

In Bible - 1 Peter, Bible - Ephesians, Family, Manalive, Marriage Bed, Wisdom

Cute Mormon Secularists

November 14, 2012 — 6 Comments

So my wife and I schlepped our way through one of the more recent offerings in the “romantic comedy” genre last night. Turned the first one off out of pure boredom (despite the reputations of the actors). The one we actually watched was only slightly better, but the fact that casual sex was presented in both, within 2-3 minutes of the start of the movie was actually pretty amusing.

It was like a college kid pulling out his black rimmed glasses at a hipster conference to show his street creds. It was like a mom sheepishly laughing and explaining away her two year old flopping and doing the angry ninja dance on the floor in front of a house guest. It was like a politician well, doing what politicians always do.

In other words, it was preachy. It was like, hey this is a romantic comedy, and psssst, *wink*wink*, don’t worry, we believe in sex. Hey guys, hey guys: we’re cool too. It was so totally Mormon. It was like Maxim and Cosmo sent their best reps in white short-sleeve shirts and bland ties on bicycles to my front door. And they both had elder name tags pinned to their nerdy shirts. Continue Reading…

In Against Christianity, Bible - Proverbs, Creation, Culture, ethics, Family, Marriage Bed, Movies

Fundy Politics

November 8, 2012 — 7 Comments

I’m not much of a political pundit. I suppose this is because I’m a child of my generation, born wedged at the end of Generation X and at the beginning of Generation Y (according to the venerable Wikipedia). I’m an old Millenial or a baby GenXer, one way or the other. I have skepticism and disillusionment deep in my bones, and I would say apathy is a nice way of describing the sort of mountain I have to overcome most days. I have a deep distrust of the political establishment, little to no hope that anything that takes place inside the District’s beltway amounts to more than paper shuffling (at best) and various schemes to make money, have sex with page boys, and abuse power (at worst).

I didn’t vote for Romney or Obama because they both smell like corporate and political BS from a mile a way. I could kind of get excited by someone like Ron Paul since he said extremely reasonable things and didn’t make ridiculous promises couched in meaningless rhetorical fluff. But he has his problems too.

At the end of the day, I’m a Bible thumping fundy. I don’t mean in the “don’t drink/don’t smoke” variety. In fact as a Bible believing Christian, I think the legalization of marijuana is a good thing because if God had wanted governments to criminalize mind-altering drugs, He would have said so and He didn’t. I happen to believe that smoking dope is something like drunkenness and so there’s that, but I don’t think it should be against the law to drink a bottle of Jack Daniels and puke your guts out the next morning. The Biblical name for that is stupid, but it ain’t against the law to be stupid. Now, if you run someone over in your 4×4 while three sheets to the wind, you ought to have the book thrown at you. I drink and smoke and play cards and dance like a fool with my wife and kids. So I’m not talking about that kind of fundy. Continue Reading…

In Against Christianity, Bible - Romans, Culture, Economics, ethics, Justice & Mercy, Marriage Bed, Politics

Justin Bieber Porn

October 19, 2012 — Leave a comment

Ok, Justin Bieber is actually some form of soft porn. Justin Bieber is the swimsuit issue in the grocery store checkout line. And yes, I realize that porn is a buzz word. It’s a bit over the top. I’ve taken to using it as a multi-purpose slur of various trends I’ve noticed here and there in the broader reformed, evangelical world. And some have wondered if I’m just blowing hot air. If it’s so elastic to include both Eastern Orthodox icons and Justin Bieber as well as pictures of nekked people, has the word ceased to mean anything?

Well let me try to assure you that I’m not smoking anything illegal, and I don’t have to do any sort of rhetorical acrobatics to pull off the connections. I believe fornication (from whence the word “porn” originates) is just a straightforward biblical category of sin and idolatry that pastors and all Christians are charged to attack, destroy, and burn to the ground. But let me get a running start here:

First off, let’s settle the fact that we are in a culture war. And in order to be in a culture war we must have at least two things: we must be asserting a culture, proposing one, cultivating one, and on the other hand, we must be throwing grenades, tomatoes, and generally giving other false, idolatrous cultures our most enthusiastic and slobbery raspberries. And to be clear, this means people are going to get hurt. You can’t bust out “culture war” rhetoric, and then whine when there’s smoke in the air and someone next to you catches shrapnel in the leg. That’s what a war is, people. This isn’t an excuse for being nasty or vengeful; but it means we can’t sit on the sidelines checking our hair in the mirrors. So for example, if I say that I think Sufjan Stevens is basically a limp-wristed poser with security issues who writes mediocre poetry set to trendy indie rebel tunes (as I think is the case), some of my friends will show up with pitch forks and some of them might think I’m attacking them. But I’m not. (Did you catch that? I’m not!) I’m actually attacking that version of culture, that version of a Christian culture, that version of masculinity, that version of popular/folk aesthetic values. I’m actually not even attacking Mr. Sufjan directly either. I’m challenging his version of the world, the way he’s telling the story, the picture he’s painting and asking us to buy, support, defend, celebrate. No thanks, Mr. Sufjan. But I do occasionally listen to his music (and I don’t become violently ill). Continue Reading…

In Bible - James, Bible - Romans, Creation, Culture, Marriage Bed, Music, Pastoral Theology, Wisdom

Jared & Janine

July 29, 2012 — Leave a comment

The fact that we’re standing here today like this, with smiles on our faces about to celebrate this particular marriage is a miracle. There’s no good reason for this. There’s nothing really ordinary about any wedding. When you think about all the twists and turns in peoples’ lives, decisions to move, decisions to take particular jobs, decisions to go to a particular event or not. If you think about all the ways in which something could have gone wrong, should have gone wrong, all the ways you shouldn’t have clicked, it shouldn’t have worked out, the impossibility of a wedding looms large. But sometimes the circumstances are even more obviously fantastic, obviously impossible.

And I don’t mean that anyone doubted that you liked each other. I mean the fact that you’re standing here, your parents and siblings are all around you, and you’re in fellowship with one another. You’re standing underneath a huge fountain of God’s grace and blessing that you don’t deserve, that we don’t deserve. God’s goodness is pouring out on you right now, far beyond measure, far beyond reckoning. I hope you can feel that.

But this isn’t a vague, you-won-the-lottery-lucky, the point isn’t to say, oh looky, sometimes things randomly turn out. No, the point is to say that there is a God and He has revealed Himself to us in Jesus. And Jesus is alive. He’s not dead. He’s not a mythological character. He’s not a figment of our imaginations. It’s not a name that we say like some kind of good luck charm or superstitious incantation. Jesus is God; Jesus came and died and rose again for our sins and for the sins of the world. He’s alive now in heaven, and He rules and reigns over all things. And “all things” includes our lives, in every detail. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Ephesians, Family, Grace, Marriage Bed, Wedding Exhortation

Liturgy, Glory, and Homosexuality

July 24, 2012 — 10 Comments

So a few days a go I posted a quote from private correspondance by Rich Bledsoe concerning the connection between liturgical worship and homosexuals. His thoughts came in response to some recent posts like this and this.

For what it’s worth, the broader context of his comments actually included the point that the Orthodox Church is finally coming out into the open, coming out of the various cultural ghettos she has tended to hide away in for centuries. And part of coming out into the mainstream of western culture means dealing with all the same sins that all the rest of us have been dealing with already. Part of the “pristine” reputation of EO is bound up in the fact that lots of their churches spoke Russian and Ethiopian and worked (in some measure) to stay separated from mainstream American culture. The point wasn’t to point at EO and laugh, the point was in part to say, “hey, look who decided to show up to the party.” Now you get to fight along side the rest of us Bible believing Christians. So in one sense, you could take the whole comment as a compliment.

But the point I zeroed in on was relative to liturgy, glory, and homosexuality. Now here’s the argument, and I really would like to hear honest feedback. I thought the argument made good sense.

We know from Scripture that the woman is the glory of man. She is his crown. In fact, in the Hebrew this is underlined. The man is called “dirt” because he was taken out of the ground, and then God rips a rib out of his side and “builds” the woman. Literally, God builds a “fire” (Ishshah), and then (and only then) the man is called a “fire” (Ish). In other words, man becomes glorious when he has a woman at his side. He becomes a fire, when the fire-babe becomes his crown. The woman is the glory of the man. We might wonder what it is about a woman that is glorious: Paul points to her hair (1 Cor. 11), Solomon says it’s her wisdom (Proverbs), and elsewhere we gather that she is created to be beautiful physically and make and do beautiful things (like magically making babies inside of her). Continue Reading…

In Against Christianity, Church, Creation, Culture, Family, Federal Vision, Marriage Bed, Why I Won't Convert, Worship