Having Two Legs

Archives For Pastoral Theology

Welcome to Extremist-ville

May 29, 2013 — 10 Comments

A reasonable follow up question to my recent post on Rush Limbaugh and Jesus is: why the obvious lean towards being willing to be mistaken for right-wing nut jobs? Why not speak more even-handedly about being associated with left-wing nut jobs too?

Well in principle, that is of course true. We should be willing to stand with Jesus whatever the threat. If I stand up and say biblical principles require that nations have very lax immigration laws, and that we should grant amnesty to all illegal immigrants with no criminal records, I suppose there might be a few conservatives who give me a squinty look. If I suggest that our military has been grossly entangled in economic charades and treated other nations so unjustly and shed so much innocent blood that Christians ought to stay away and get out, I might get a few nationalistic shrieks and boos. What if I endorsed various plans to gradually reduce government spending, taxing, welfare, etc. while continuing benefits for the most at-risk demographics? I’m just an annoying luke warm moderate at the end of the day and not a real threat to anybody. I will receive no hate mail, no bomb threats. Yawn.

Another way to make this point is the fact that, Rahm Emanuel notwithstanding, there are no liberal retards. There are no left-wing nut jobs. There are only right-wing extremists. Now I know that there actually *are* some on the left, but they don’t get tarred and feathered in the media. They don’t get strung up and chased out of town with laughter nipping at their heels. Al Gore shouldn’t be given the time of day. Al Sharpton shouldn’t be anything but a loon. But instead they get time on CNN with people asking them serious questions. On the other hand, Sarah Palin is a complete goon. Ron Paul is a crazy old fart. If Kirk Cameron mentions that homosexuality is a sin, he gets trounced. If an ESPN correspondent is cornered on the air with the same question and politely shares his belief, he gets the red-faced, mouth agape, finger pointing chatter of the media monkeys. Anybody that has a real independent, vaguely biblically informed worldview is a complete nutcase buffoon. But now a guy with the last name Weiner comes along, whom heaven has laughed at previously for having an obsession with the member for which he was named, and now he’s running for mayor of New York City. Heh. Continue Reading…

In Culture, Economics, Education, ethics, Justice & Mercy, Pastoral Theology, Politics, Wisdom

Stay There

May 21, 2013 — 3 Comments

The most important thing for a husband to remember is the most important thing for everyone to remember, and that’s the gospel of Jesus. The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus is the most important thing to remember.

This is for many reasons, but take just one. Men were made to be strong and to lead their wives. But men are sinners and foolish, and they marry sinful and foolish women and that’s just for starters. But the gospel is good news for sinful men and women, even the kind who get married to each other. And so you have to remember the gospel.

Paul says as much to the Ephesians: Husbands love your wives like Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her. This means that husbands are called to die for their wives in order to be strong for them and lead them. The problem is that dying sounds like losing. Far too many men plunge into a conflict and after suffering for a bit, after they feel that they have felt the sensation of dying enough, jump off the cross and start barking orders and demand to know why no one is listening.

But when Jesus was mocked as weak, Jesus refused to jump off the cross. The problem many men have is that they jump off the cross thinking that the sensation of dying is the same thing as having died. And unfortunately this is the worst of both worlds. Now your wife’s miffed and you feel like you’ve been through death but haven’t actually fixed anything. And so many men, even Christian men, secretly conclude that it just doesn’t work for them. But that’s like shooting yourself in the foot, and concluding that guns just don’t scare bad guys away. Yeah, good luck with that.

Jesus didn’t jump off the cross. He stayed there and suffered and bled until it was finished, until He died. If you have conflict over how to train your children, where to go to church, what your sex life should be like, how to spend your money, how to spend your time, you need to remember the gospel. Not like some kind of mantra. Not like some kind of good luck charm. You need to remember how the gospel works. Jesus died for sin. He took the shame. He took the false accusations. He took the lies. He took your mess. And He died for it. Now that’s your job, husband. Not that you take away your wife’s sin, not that you’re some kind of perfect savior. No, but it’s your job to imitate Christ to and for your wife. So it’s your job to patiently, graciously listen to her, talk gently to her, pray with her, study the Scriptures with her, get counsel with her, and then make the best decision you can muster for her, remaining calm, cheerful, gentle, affectionate, good humored, full of tenderness and kindness. No matter what. And stay there. Stay there. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Ephesians, Family, Grace, Manalive, Marriage Bed, Pastoral Theology, Theology - Christology, Theology - Soteriology, Wisdom

Getting Grace

May 13, 2013 — Leave a comment

Sin is insanity. Sin doesn’t make sense. And for that reason sin always looks for an excuse, justification. And for the same reason, any excuse will do, any justification will work because there really isn’t a good one.

All sin makes matters worse. But we momentarily pretend that sin is the solution, our salvation, our deliverance. Things are not going my way, so I will get angry. Things are taking too long, so I will demand them. I am sexually frustrated so I will serve my lusts. I do not feel respected or honored enough, so I will criticize the success of others. I am depressed and lonely so I will drink until the pain is numb. I have no direction so I will sit here and watch movies and play video games and check facebook every five minutes. I was late to work, so I will lie to my boss. It’s all insane. It never makes sense.

But this isn’t the same thing as saying that sin is completely random. From the perspective of grace, walking in the Light, sin can look horribly schizophrenic and at times completely out of nowhere. But grace also teaches us wisdom, and that wisdom can see the way seeds are planted, sprout, and grow up into big problems. While sin is a certain breed of insanity, it has it’s own predictable logic and trajectory. And that logic includes the need for justification.

Because God is good and righteous and holy, and we are made in His image. We have an inherent need and deep desire for goodness, righteousness, and holiness. In other words, we like being right. We like when things come together, are harmonious, make sense. Only those who are truly mentally handicapped can be at ease with being wrong or inconsistent. And even then, we probably don’t realize or understand how it’s still not that simple. Continue Reading…

In Grace, Pastoral Theology, Wisdom

A Prayer For These Days

April 22, 2013 — 1 Comment

Almighty and Most Merciful God: You spoke the worlds into existence. The mountains stand by your command. The oceans toss and foam because you tell them to. The earth shakes at the sound of your voice.

When we disobeyed your voice, when we did not love your Word, the world grew wicked and so you spoke a flood. When men despised your word again and lifted themselves up and built a great city with a tower reaching up into the sky. You came down and spoke a flood of confusion. When our fathers went down into a strange land, they became slaved by the gods, by the demons, by their sins, by a wicked tyrant who did not know you who refused to bow to your Word. So you spoke blood in their rivers and sores on their backs. You spoke flies and locusts and you destroyed their land. You put out the light of the wicked and they went down into the darkness of death, but you had mercy on your people and you shined your light upon them, and they walked through the sea unharmed with walls of water on their right hand and on their left.

Again and again, you have been our God. You have been our fortress, our rock, our stronghold, our deliverer, our judge, our Savior. When we have forgotten your word, you have risen up for us. When we have rejected your word, you have had mercy upon us. When tyrants and cruel men have oppressed us and taunted us and sought to crush us, though you have turned your face from us for a little while, your mercies are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.

And in the fullness of time, you sent your Word, and the Word became flesh dwelt among us. But sinful men hated Your Word again. They despised it. They rejected it. They spat on it. They mocked it. They condemned it. And finally, they crucified it. They hung your Word, Your Good Word, Your Life-Giving Word on a cross. They drove spikes through His hands and feet and they drove a crown of thorns into His head. They pierced His side with a spear. And they buried Him in a tomb, sealed with a stone, and guarded by a regiment of Roman soldiers. Continue Reading…

In Church, Justice & Mercy, Pastoral Theology, Prayer, TRC, Worship

Jesus Was Not a Victim

March 19, 2013 — Leave a comment

Rich Bledsoe writes:

The book of Hebrews speaks of the “deceitfulness of sin.” Once sin is unmasked one way, it transmutes itself like a virus into a slightly different form that is immune to the old antidotes. We live in the very odd day when the Christian Gospels have done a great deal of work to unmask what was invisible to the ancient world in regard to the victim. But now in many cases the garb of victimhood can be donned in order to victimize others, in order to persecute. The persecuted have in many cases become the persecutors, and it is necessary to understand that victimhood is not an automatic ticket to righteousness or moral superiority. Several recent theological perspectives have granted to victims a special status and even an “epistemological advantage”, meaning that only victims really see the world as it is. In all of this thicket, it is essential to highlight the fact that Jesus was not in the final analysis a victim, and He did not pioneer the way to make victimization profitable, but he opened the way to overcome and create a new social order that is truly based on righteousness.

Read the whole article here.

In Culture, ethics, Justice & Mercy, Lent, Manalive, Pastoral Theology, Theology, Wisdom

Jesus is Enough

January 25, 2013 — Leave a comment

One of the key themes in Paul’s letters to the fledgling churches of the first century is the insistence that Jesus is enough. In Jesus, they have been granted all that is needed. Everything that the Old Covenant foreshadowed is found in Jesus. Everything that the pagan nations ached for and groped toward, has now been revealed in Jesus. All goodness, all pleasure, all wisdom, all blessing is found in Jesus because Jesus is God’s Eternal Son. Jesus is the Executor of God’s estate. He runs the whole show. He has access to everything, and therefore in Him, we have access to everything.

One of the greatest threats to the early church’s grasp of this came specifically from the Jews, the nearest relatives of the Christian Church. The book of Acts clearly shows that the Jews were the center of the persecution of the first Christians (witness Saul/Paul), and in every city Paul proclaims the gospel to the Jews first and then when they have had enough, Paul turns to the Gentiles and this tends to enrage the Jews and before long they have stirred up mobs and riots and chased the apostles out of town. Surely other pagans had their own axes to grind, but the pressure is coming in its most virolent forms from the synagogues.

This pressure included direct political/physical threat and force (beatings, imprisonment, trials), but it also included multiple layers of social force and threat below this: threat of excommunication from the synagogues, being cut off from friends, family, and inheritance, as well as enduring the frowns, the disappointment, the implicit and explicit signs of betrayal, disappointment, let down. And these pressures and tensions aren’t usually just theological or abstract. God made the world such that battles are usually pitched in particular places, on particular dirt. There is usually much more going on than what can be seen in a particular flash of conflict, but the location and occasion for the conflict are relavent. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Colossians, Bible - Galatians, Creation, Culture, Education, ethics, Food, Grace, Jesus is Enough, Pastoral Theology, Politics, Wisdom

Wodehouse Reality Television by C.S. Lewis (& Jesus)

December 14, 2012 — Leave a comment

What would happen if (God help you) you pulled one of those lurid, wide-eyed tabloids off the newsstand at the grocery checkout and started reading, only to find out by the time you reached the back cover you’d just read a gospel tract, repented of several sins, and recommitted your life to Christ?

What if the stunning insight into human psychology of C.S. Lewis crash landed into a P.G. Wodehouse novel, which (somehow) managed to be about a major sex scandal in an American evangelical megachurch?

What if a faithful Christian pastor of over 30 years, immersed in evangelical Christianity (as well as Lewis, Wodehouse, and Chesterton) wrote a reality television show for MTV that could possibly spark a true reformation in America?

Well, somehow, that’s exactly what Doug Wilson has done with his recent novel Evangellyfish.

One part Wodehouse Reality Television, one part Lewis on the human heart, one part parable, and one part altar call, I finished the book (having laughed and cringed repeatedly), and realized that I had also, strangely and wonderfully, been edified.

Seriously: I was blessed, encouraged, built up. It made me love Jesus more, want to love and serve my wife and children more, want to love and serve my people better. And it’s actually a pretty strange phenomenon. How does a story about a sex scandal in some rotten-to-the-core evangelical megachurch do that? How does a fairly simple plot about a fairly average but faithful Reformed Baptist pastor who gets tangled up in the mess, how does that translate into a blessing? Continue Reading…

In Against Christianity, Books, Church, Culture, Evangelism, Grace, Pastoral Theology, Preaching, Wisdom

Asking for Car Accidents

October 22, 2012 — 1 Comment

I’m a casual person. Ask my wife. Ask my friends. I sort of have to decide to get worked up about stuff. I like hanging out. It’s pretty easy for me to get goofy, be silly, and go into clown mode. I like having fun. I like my people having fun too. I’m laid back. I want people to be comfortable, to be at ease, relaxed.

But turns out casual, relaxed, and laid back didn’t make the fruits of the Spirit list. There’s probably a bit of overlap in there. Peace is calm, collected, but peace can also be militant and bold. Joy can certainly include happiness and fun, but it doesn’t have to. Self-control and gentleness have their laid back sides, but that’s not all there is to them.

And then combine casual and laid back with sinful hearts, sinful habits, sinful tendencies, and there’s no shortage of laziness, cowardice, and disrespect wound through any number of situations. It’s easier, more comfortable not to confront someone in their sin. It’s simpler, less messy to not get off the couch and discipline the child who needs it. So it’s lazy and cowardly. But it’s also ultimately cruel.

Douglas Wilson taught me years ago that etiquette and manners are just love in the trifles, love in the little things. But informality can be oppressive. Casual can be tyrannical. Continue Reading…

In Bible - Proverbs, Culture, Education, Family, Grace, Justice & Mercy, Misc, Pastoral Theology, Wisdom

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

How Confession of Sin Can Make Things Worse

September 26, 2012 — 6 Comments

So I tweeted a couple days ago that there’s a way to do a weekly confession of sin that actually makes things worse rather than better. And there were a few questions. So here are a few thoughts on the matter.

First, the Bible verse: “For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.” (2 Cor. 7:10). In other words, you can have two different guys come into your office (say you’re a pastor) or two different kids sit down to talk to you (say you’re a parent), and they might both be sorrowful, sad, in tears and make confession to you about some particular sin in their life and ask for forgiveness. And on the surface both situations may look entirely identical, but Paul says that one guy will be forgiven, cleansed, saved, while the other guy is actually closer to death. Now that’s the principle, and I believe worldly sorrow is even more likely to creep in whenever you schedule repentance, like say, a weekly confession at the beginning of the service. Now I happen to believe that the dangers inherent in the planned weekly confession are to be preferred to not planning it at all. There are other dangers on the other side, and given the full biblical witness, I’m convinced that weekly, corporate worship should normally include a confession of sin and assurance of forgiveness. But, the Bible says to watch out for worldly sorrow, a kind of false repentance that actually produces death. There’s a way to do confession of sin that actually makes everything worse.

Second, there’s a deep down human nature sin problem that people have that wants all the glory. This is the self-god problem. I want to be my own god, my own lord, the master of my own fate. And this translates into being your own savior, your own deliverer. And we are so sophisticated with this idolatry that we can twist perfectly good things into a moments of self-worship. And confession of sin is just as good as any other, if not better. So there we are called to remember sin, called to remember our sinfulness, and the self-god doesn’t mind lots of vague guilty feelings. Lots of vague guilty feelings are an opportunity to be magnanimous, to bear up under it. And the advantage is that vague guilty feelings are completely worthless as far as getting rid of them. Jesus died for particular sins, particular offenses, specific transgressions, but guilty feelings hover and cloud and remain ambiguous. And if you have a fairly distorted picture of God as the great angry Zeus in the sky, then you have vague, generalized guilt coupled with a vaguely angry God, always rather annoyed with all the stupid people and all their stupid sins. So what a weekly confession serves up is a big pile of mud and invites all these false, distorted versions of confession and who God is to lumber into the room. This doesn’t mean that everyone just gets morbid and depressed (they might), they might actually have some kind of false version of joy. But what the absolution, the declaration of forgiveness becomes isn’t a release, a promise of free grace, it becomes, rather, a sort of pep-talk. Of course that’s not what the words mean. But if sin is vague, and God is vaguely mad, then when the pastor says joyful words, the only way to grab joy is to assume that you’re just supposed to feel joyful and try your best to force it. And this is just old fashioned self-righteousness, the surest way to Hell. Continue Reading…

In Bible - 1 John, Bible - 2 Corinthians, Bible - Psalms, Church, Grace, Justice & Mercy, Lent, Pastoral Theology, Wisdom, Worship