In praise of music

One of the biggest blessings for me has been that of song. By God's grace, He's wired us so that we are somehow better able to remember things when they are put to song. And by God's grace, He's raised up a generation of musicians to better do that and improve and deepen our worship of God.

This has been one song that's been in my head lately. It's really simple to sing. Only a few lines. No fancy chord progression or anything. But it's filled me with such a peace and hope.

Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus -

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
look full in His wonderful face
And the things of this earth will grow strangely dim,
in the light of his glory and grace.

I love this song. It is a continual reminder to meditate upon Jesus and who He is. It pushes me to the Word of God, that I might better know Christ as He has revealed Himself. It encourages me to stop focusing upon myself and my personal failings and the anxieties of this world, but reflect upon a God who is so glorious, so awesome, so gracious, that He sent His Son so that I might have life, joy, hope, and eternal fellowship with Him. It reminds me of the promises of God, that He for His own glory, had mercy upon me, a sinner, and having spared me from death by giving His Son, now graciously pours out all other gifts to me.

And the things of this earth grow dim, the tests, the future, the wondering, the questioning, the church, the girl problems (or lack thereof!), all held by a gracious hand of a loving God.

Ephesians 1:16-23

16I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, 17that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Musings on 2 Timothy 1:5-7

I've been meaning to write on 2 Timothy for a little while now, but I (as with every typical student) have been caught up with schoolwork and have put it off until now. I suppose that's no excuse, but I've also at least had more time to think through the verse and understand it a little better.

First things first--the verses:

I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you as well. For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. (2 Timothy 1:5-7).

Normally, when I think of these verses, I start from verse 6 and think upon Paul's reminder to Timothy, but verse 5 goes along with Paul's reasoning here.

It's clear that because Paul is persuaded (the Greek passive verb comes from the verb "to persuade") of Timothy's sincere faith, he issues Timothy this reminder. While I am hesitant to expound on why Paul is persuaded (i.e., what signs of maturity marked Timothy as having such a sincere faith), I will offer up the idea that Paul's "sureness" of Timothy's faith (and of God's gift in him) has very little to do with Timothy. That is, whatever reason Paul had for believing that the faith of Timothy's grandmother and mother is in Timothy is independent of Timothy's actions. After all, Timothy is the one shying away from "the gift of God" in a "spirit [...] of fear." Timothy is the one that Paul has to gently remind, "Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord" (2 Timothy 1:8). Reasonably, there's plenty to be ashamed about a crucified Savior. Furthermore, Timothy is not some great personality with immense leadership qualities and charisma. If he were, wouldn't we have a "Book of Timothy" somewhere? (Let me know if you find such an apocryhal book. :-D) Or some significant page in church history for him? No, whatever--and I offer, "Whoever"--convinced Paul of Timothy's faith, it was not Timothy himself.

For us, I think it means a couple of applications, but I'm only going to dwell on one. For those of us (and I count myself among these) who believe that Christian leadership is for the great, the brilliant, the charismatic, the successful, or the fearless--for those of us who think "to make it big" is to be like Calvin, et al.--and not for the "rest of us" ordinary folk. I think upon Timothy, who was probably a very ordinary leader with an extraordinary faith. Christian servant-leadership is too often mistaken for the movers and shakers of the world; when, in reality, they are anything but. In fact, to use Paul's own words, they are the "scum of the world" (1 Corinthians 4:13). In 1 Corinthians, there are plenty of "great leaders"--those with the proper rhetoric, the wily arguments, and so on--but Paul dismisses them all as foolish, not having known the Spirit of God. In 1 Timothy, one of Paul's requirements for being an overseer in the church is that "he must not be a recent convert [...]" (1 Timothy 3:6); stated positively, Paul is saying that he must be a mature Christian. Thus, I think the aim of anyone who aspires to Christian service (in any way shape or form, vocationally or not) is not to seek great "leadership" skills (though I do not deny that having certain abilities makes one more effective, but also gives one more room for arrogance) but rather to seek utmost maturity in Christ. If the aim of Christian service is to "reach and equip" (as we often say in RUF) others for Christ, how can we do it if we ourselves do not have a firm grasp of this gospel?

And precisely because Paul is so convinced of Timothy's faith and maturity, he encourages him, "For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control" (6-7). Why? Because it would be an utter waste of Kingdom resources for someone who understands the gospel so thoroughly to let its fire simmer out because of an oppressive fear. (Caveat: I'm not suggesting all "mature" Christians become firebrand preachers, etc. but I'm only trying to point out what I think is Paul's motivation for encouraging Timothy, which is not because of any disappointment in Timothy's performance.) I think Timothy's fear may have been a very understandable fear of other people, since Paul concludes that because God did not give Timothy a spirit of fear, Timothy should not be ashamed of the gospel.

But what is this "spirit [...] of power and love and self-control"? I leave you with Romans 8:15. "For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, 'Abba! Father!'" Granted, the word used for "fear" here (roughly, phobia) is different than the one in Timothy (which is more or less associated with cowardice), I think the general idea--which is not a focus on different types of fears--remains the same. This "spirit [...] of power and love and self-control" and the "Spirit of adoption as sons" are the same. After all, what better way to "overcome" fear--which we'll personify as the big bully we all had to deal with as young kids (unless you were the bully; in which case, let me have the honor of letting you know what it's like to be bullied... :-D)--than to remember our adoption as sons and daughters of God? Because, when we were kids, the best retort we could come up with against the bully was, "My Dad is bigger than your dad." And, even now, in the face of our crippling fear, our best retort, which we can say with utmost certainty, still remains, "My Dad is bigger than you."

Serving one another

All -

I claimed to have a response to the question I posed. Well I do, but Grace's mom has graciously left a response on my blog which I think deserves to be posted instead (I'll probably post it in mine too).

M. Z. Ahern said...

The question put to girls is, “Does this make you feel awkward?” Perhaps the phrasing should be re-thought. Should it matter whether or not a guy doing things for us that we are physically capable of doing for ourselves -- like carrying our luggage or opening a door for us or helping us with our chair -- makes us feel awkward? Should we not rather be asking, “Has he done a good thing?” If we know he has done a good thing, yet we feel awkward about it, we need to keep our feelings to ourselves and pray that God would bring those feelings in line with reality. And we need to focus on expressing appreciation, as Hannah did, for the goodness of what he has done… right?

And I would say, yes, he has indeed done a very good thing, and in doing what did he is serving and honoring women in general (not just this particular woman) in a manner that points to the glory of Christ. Keep on doing it, men! You exhibit godly, Christ-like, servant-masculinity when you do.

For most of history, these gestures would have been understood to be a way of serving and honoring women. Royalty had servants to open their doors and carry their luggage even though they were physically capable of doing these things for themselves. We are a confused people. A few have chosen to impute back-handed insults and demeaning intentions: that men do these things chauvinistically, as a way of asserting their superior strength or power. Others just wonder why it is traditional for guys to do these things that women are perfectly capable of doing for themselves.

Consider the following excerpt:

Respecting Women

A two-year-old boy should be taught to respect his baby sister because she is a girl. A five-year-old boy should be required to say “yes, ma’am” to his mother simply because she is a woman. Young boys need to be taught to stand when a woman enters the room. They should be taught to hold open doors for women. They should seat their mother at the dinner table. These are not arbitrary or random cultural practices which have no meaning. They are a constant daily reminder to males – whose lusts when unmortified always degrade women – that women must not be degraded, but rather honored. Manners are therefore a form of sexual discipleship; they are a sexual discipline. A boy who has learned to honor women everywhere will have difficulty in despising one in the back seat of a car.

…The impulses to dishonor in sexual desire are strong – our earthly members tend toward sin, Paul tells us – and so we need constant rebukes and admonitions. The cultural discipline of honoring women is very important. It is no accident that feminists have succeeded in getting women treated “equally” with men, and now that women are no longer singled out for honor, that men around them just go with their lusts. The results have not been at all favorable for women. After decades of established feminism, the end result is that far more women, in their relationships with men, are treated like dirt.” (Douglas Wilson, Future Men, Girls and Sex, p.136)

Girls, the most important reciprocal service you can give guys is graciously and appreciatively affirming them in this masculine honoring of your sex. Our cultural climate does not make this sort of honoring an easy thing for them to do. Christian men often want to do the right thing but get conflicting messages.

Thanks to the several generations before you, your generation is coming at this discussion with so many ill-founded assumptions that you may not realize just how enormous and life-encompassing the discussion is. As you think about how to practice your faith in these matters, remember to always take your questions back to First Principles, which generally means look to the Creator’s design, order, and purposes. He made us male and female. Why? Male and female do not equal each other. Genesis tells us we complement -- complete, perfect -- each other.

Remember that manners are a very tangible practice of your faith, of “theology coming out your fingertips”; remember that good manners are a matter of the Christian virtue of esteeming others more highly than oneself: being considerate of others, being kind with tone, words, gestures, and deeds.

And remember that just because several generations before you have fumbled the torch and not passed on the reason behind most Christian traditions does not mean that very good reasons for them do not exist. One generation gets lazy and lukewarm and passes on only the doing of a tradition without any explanation of the reasons why; the next generation then loses all connection to meaning and within a generation or two, the tradition which once was a visible sign of an invisible reality, is now dropped and one more chunk of Christian capital is lost.

--Peggy Ahern

Keep It Real

So.... time to lower the bar.

Corn starch + proper amounts of water = hours of endless fun at Casa Italiana.

Ask the legendary David Scudder. (I really should have named this blog "DavidScudder.blogspot.com") It would be like bobis80. :-D

Speaking of which... David Scudder t-shirts, anyone? LOL

Hey we have people!

Maybe we can actually have conversations!

One of my friends asked me this:

How should a girl respond when a guy offers to do something that can be handled on my own? Like the other day someone offered to carry my luggage, but it wasn't really heavy at all.

Hannah also threw out this:

What's the equivalent way that girls can serve guys?

I have my answer, but I want to hear what you guys think, and feel free to chuck out other questions too.

Still Resolving

Friends,

The Energizer bunny keeps going; so we'll keep resolving. And continue resolving, even when the Energizer bunny stops going.

In keeping with the topic of resolutions, I will put mine up as well. First, though, a reiteration of the questions.

1) What are your resolutions?

2) What do you hope that looks like on a day to day basis?

The Resolution.

I'm going to take my resolution from Scripture and quote Paul:

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. (1 Corinthians 2:1-2, emphasis mine).

The verb "decided"--past tense of the Greek word meaning to decide / judge--has the same connotation as the word "resolved." In fact, the NIV renders the verb as "resolved." So here is my resolution, short and sweet:

I resolve to know nothing except Christ and Christ crucified.

A qualification is in order here, because I want to bring to your attention that Paul makes this resolution in response to the various preaching methods of his day (full of "lofty speech" and "wisdom"); not, as I am using it, as a sort of "way of life." In other words, Paul is not writing this resolution with precisely the same intention that I am using it here--he uses it to describe his preaching, and I use it to describe my life. Nonetheless, the implications of such a bold resolution are the same for one's life as they would be for one's preaching, as I am sure Paul would be unable to preach Christ crucified if he did not live as one who believed as much.

What it Means.

This resolution is particularly close to my heart because it directs me to the cross. It is an extremely cross-saturated resolution that Paul has made--and the application of this resolution has far-reaching consequences, which I shall flesh out. This resolution--to know nothing, but Christ and Christ crucified--embodies a couple simple truths of the gospel: God's strength in weakness, His wisdom in folly; His amazing, saving grace; and the basis of my pride.

Strength in Weakness; Wisdom in Folly.

I am consistently crippled by an unhealthy fear of man that puts me at inaction. I desire success more than the glory of God; and at times, I desire God glorified by my means than by His--let us sing louder, strum harder, and pray better, so God can hear us!

But this verse reminds me that God could care less about how "successful" our endeavors as a church are. Christ crucified is the prime example of a failed movement. For all his signs and miracles; for all his raising the dead and healing the sick; for all his talk; and for all his claims to deity; Jesus could not--correction, would not--save himself from death on a cross. With the death of its leader, early Christianity should have simply vanished from sight--like the movement of Bar-Kochba (sp?) shortly after. And, yet, at its precise moment of weakness, with the leader crucified, Christianity exemplifies its greatest power--the breaking of the bonds of sin. And the confirmation of Christianity's claims? The physical and bodily resurrection of Christ, as has been expounded for ages--and for ages to come.

One must wonder how ridiculous the message of the gospel sounded to anyone at the time. How could it even be considered "good news"? The good news consisted of telling people that the Messiah--the one who came to deliver Israel from its enemies--had died! And not only had he died, he died the most gruesome and grotesque death known to mankind! He died an insignificant death, flanked by petty thieves.

According to some statistics that I've read, Rome once crucified 2000 Jews to crush a rebellion and left the crosses on the roads to Jerusalem to serve as a warning to those would-be rebels. Vivaldi (or some other classical composer) wrote a symphony that supposedly conjures up the scene of travelers entering Jerusalem and being flanked by crosses on either side, with the crows and vultures scavenging for food. Of all those ever crucified by the Romans, Jesus was a statistic--one among the many to die the most horrific death. Think of it as Jesus dying in Guantanamo Bay; something we just don't talk about.

Yet within years of His death, a movement spread, proclaiming the message that He had risen. How insane his followers must have been! To think that He had come back to life? How can one possibly believe in a religion that kills off its deity in the worst possible way and proclaims that as "good news"? And to back up their claims, these people say that their deity came back from the dead? It is utter insanity!

Or perhaps it is the power and wisdom of God.

To this day, the great paradox of "Christ crucified" confounds the greatest of minds. I quote, from the New York Times, regarding the "science of religion."

These scholars tend to agree on one point: that religious belief is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved during early human history. What they disagree about is why a tendency to believe evolved, whether it was because belief itself was adaptive or because it was just an evolutionary byproduct, a mere consequence of some other adaptation in the evolution of the human brain. (Darwin's God).

What is the adaptive advantage of Christianity? What is the adaptive advantage of believing in Christ crucified? Where is the adaptive advantage? Scientists puzzle over why religion ever appeared on the face of the earth; some calling it a "tragedy of human cognition."

And, yet, I am reminded of the earlier verses of 1 Corinthians.

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. (1 Corinthians 1:21).

If rhetoric and "wisdom" (sophia) was the rave in Paul's day, let us replace those words with "science" and, still, "more science." The contemporary man refuses to look at the world except through the lens of science; and in turning this lens to religion, he is completely confounded at its folly! And of all the lamest religions, Christianity is the lamest of them all! By all means, I agree--the basic tenets of its faith are wholly absurd and grotesquely offensive. Even modern-day marketing would do little to make it appeal to me in its rawest element.

But I am a fool for Christ; not ever of my own choosing, but for the grace of God.

Amazing Grace

Here--I find this amazing--I am, a Christian; a Christian wholly convinced of the truth and reality of the cross and resurrection. As I have written previously, the Christian faith is utterly nonsense when viewed in light of modern world views. So I must put the question, consistently, to myself, "Why? Why am I a Christian?"

The verses in 1 Corinthians speak of God choosing the foolish things of this world to shame the wise; that, in his plan, all human wisdom would fail to understand Him. Then, if in my human wisdom I would be unable to know Him, by what have I come to understand Him at all? By what have I become a Christian?

Were it not for God's grace and mercy, I should not be a Christian today.

Humility

At the heart of this verse, I must remember that I have nothing. Everything that I have is on a divine loan. There is no boasting, even in my salvation. I can't even say, "I found God." And now that God has found me, opening my eyes to the mystery of salvation, I must go and proclaim a message of "foolishness." There really is no (worldly) gain to be had in being Christian.

Therefore, in light of these things that I've written, the resolution ultimately must move me to action--to continually meditate on my undeserved salvation, to recall that I have nothing to boast in save the Lord, and to grow in His wisdom (not the world's wisdom) by consistently studying His Word, for His Word is about Christ and Christ crucified.

Resolved and Always Resolving

One thing that C.J. Mahaney remarked during their Q&A session was that we ought to take a couple points from Resolved to apply to our daily lives.

1) What are your resolutions?

2) What do you hope that looks like on a day to day basis?

Hopefully we can continually come back to this and add to it as we grow.

So I'm going to go first, because I don't want to be the one looking like he's copying everyone else. =D

By the grace of God I am and I strive to be...

1) Resolved, to credit all things that make me different from anyone else as from God and God alone, to remember all that I have is a gift from the Lord and to rebuke and repent of trusting in myself as if my accomplishments were mine (1 Corinthians 4:7)

2) Resolved, to seek to see Jesus Christ in all of Scripture through diligent study and meditation upon it. (John 5:39)

Subpoints for application

1.1) Resolved, that daily I would preach the Gospel to myself, waking up and remembering how undeserving and ill-deserving I am of all that God has given me, that my sins entailed the possibility of me being crushed that very moment and shipped off to the hottest fires of hell, but by God's grace I lived another day and God has permitted me to know and taste Him.

1.2) Resolved, to answer (in my mind if not aloud) "better than I deserve" to those questions of "how are you doing today?"

1.3) Resolved, to think of myself, when hearing of or seeing other people's sins, as if I had done the same if not worse if it was not for the grace of God, that this would occasion me to confess my own sins of the same ilk (This is based in large part off of Edward's resolution 8)

1.4) Resolved, to seek true greatness found in serving my brothers and sisters, actively asking if there are things I can help with and not just being passively "willing."

2.1) Resolved, to read Scripture for myself, that my first application would be for me and not for how I would use it to defend and attack other people/positions. (Evan said it well in his 3rd resolution)

2.2) Resolved, to memorize Scripture, so that I would be able preach at myself from the very Word of God even when I do not have a physical Bible handy.

2.3) Resolved, to strive when reading Scripture to see how this points me to Christ and the cross.