an outlet of encouragement, explanation, and exhortation
When unsure and seeking God’s calling on your life, Ray Bakke advises:
Follow Jesus, start loving your neighbors, and somewhere in there your calling will come.
Rick Villodas reports a helpful question from Bishop Robert Barron to consider when trying to discern God’s will:
Which path makes me most generous?
Of course, being in a trusting community with other followers of Jesus who can be with us in discernment is so important!
We must understand that God does not “love” us without liking us – through gritted teeth – as “Christian” love is sometimes thought to do. Rather, out of the eternal freshness of his perpetually self-renewed being, the heavenly Father cherishes the earth and each human being upon it. The fondness, the endearment, the unstintingly affectionate regard of God toward all his creatures is the natural outflow of what he is to the core – which we vainly try to capture with our tired but indispensable old word “love”.
– Dallas Willard
Andrew Walls has graduated on to that next level of existence that those of us who follow Jesus look forward to by faith. He was born in 1921! I never met him; but I heard him speak and read his books. He was quite a scholar of world Christianity, and I appreciated learning quite a lot from him. The Regent College Bookstore, where you can get audio of some classes that he taught there, shared a quote from him in its note on his passing. I think it is worth repeating, as an example of the orientation I found in his encouraging work.
“But since none of us can read the Scriptures without cultural blinkers of sorts, the great advantage, the crowning excitement which our own era of Church history has over all others, is the possibility that we may be able to read them together. Never before has the Church looked so much like the great multitude whom no man can number out of every nation and tribe and people and tongue. Never before, therefore, has there been so much potential for mutual enrichment and self-criticism, as God causes yet more light and truth to break forth from his word.”
Andrew Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History (1996), pg.15
Rest in peace, Andrew Walls! Thank you for your excellent scholarship.
We would rather be ruined than changed.
– W.H. Auden, The Age of Anxiety
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
I tend towards reading (or listening to) scripture in wider and wider context. More at one time. Sometimes, however, a jewel can be lost in the wider scope of a ….narrative? Poetry? Whatever one wants to consider the Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible, what we call chapter 28 is a gem that ends in an even more precious gem. Here it is, from the NIV translation.
1 There is a mine for silver
Job 28
and a place where gold is refined.
2 Iron is taken from the earth,
and copper is smelted from ore.
3 Mortals put an end to the darkness;
they search out the farthest recesses
for ore in the blackest darkness.
4 Far from human dwellings they cut a shaft,
in places untouched by human feet;
far from other people they dangle and sway.
5 The earth, from which food comes,
is transformed below as by fire;
6 lapis lazuli comes from its rocks,
and its dust contains nuggets of gold.
7 No bird of prey knows that hidden path,
no falcon’s eye has seen it.
8 Proud beasts do not set foot on it,
and no lion prowls there.
9 People assault the flinty rock with their hands
and lay bare the roots of the mountains.
10 They tunnel through the rock;
their eyes see all its treasures.
11 They search the sources of the rivers
and bring hidden things to light.
12 But where can wisdom be found?
Where does understanding dwell?
13 No mortal comprehends its worth;
it cannot be found in the land of the living.
14 The deep says, “It is not in me”;
the sea says, “It is not with me.”
15 It cannot be bought with the finest gold,
nor can its price be weighed out in silver.
16 It cannot be bought with the gold of Ophir,
with precious onyx or lapis lazuli.
17 Neither gold nor crystal can compare with it,
nor can it be had for jewels of gold.
18 Coral and jasper are not worthy of mention;
the price of wisdom is beyond rubies.
19 The topaz of Cush cannot compare with it;
it cannot be bought with pure gold.
20 Where then does wisdom come from?
Where does understanding dwell?
21 It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing,
concealed even from the birds in the sky.
22 Destruction and Death say,
“Only a rumor of it has reached our ears.”
23 God understands the way to it
and he alone knows where it dwells,
24 for he views the ends of the earth
and sees everything under the heavens.
25 When he established the force of the wind
and measured out the waters,
26 when he made a decree for the rain
and a path for the thunderstorm,
27 then he looked at wisdom and appraised it;
he confirmed it and tested it.
28 And he said to the human race,
“The fear of the Lord – that is wisdom,
and to shun evil is understanding.”
Wow. Once more.
And he said to the human race,
“The fear of the Lord – that is wisdom,
and to shun evil is understanding.”
This reminds me of the transfiguration of Jesus. God speaks, and He says Mark 9:7:
This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!
Simple, eh? As usual, the theory is simple but the practice more challenging. May you and I be blessed in the challenge.
“The crucifixion is not a defeat to be overturned by resurrection. The crucifixion is a victory revealed by resurrection.”
– Brian Zahnd
@BrianZahnd
Jesus Christ must be the center and the norm for Christian public engagement. Why? Because Christ and Christ’s Spirit aren’t at work only in our hearts, families, and churches, but in our civic communities, cities, nations, and the entire world.
Miroslav Volf, June 27, 2020, 4:36 AM. Tweet.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
James Baldwin
“But maybe if they didn’t treat us like monsters, we wouldn’t be monsters. I want us to try living like people for awhile, see how that goes.”
N.K. Jemisin, Stone Hunger
Some months ago, I watched the excellent Chernobyl mini-series on television. In the last episode (number five) the protagonist, Legasov, reflects on his experience with the nuclear disaster. Powerful people tried to cover it up and hide the magnitude of the disaster from public view. His comments are timeless, but particularly apt in our day. Here’s a couple of the comments that have been haunting me in this time of extreme partisan politics that carry over even into management of pandemics.
We’re on dangerous ground right now, because of our secrets and our lies! They’re practically what define us. When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can longer remember it is even there. But it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.
And then later, he writes of his life as a scientist, apparently in contrast to government bureaucrats and politicians.
To be a scientist is to be naive. We are so focused on our search for truth, we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there, whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth doesn’t care about our needs or wants. It doesn’t care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time. And this, at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: What is the cost of lies?
I find it (perhaps naively) surprising and dismaying that so many who claim to follow the one who is the Truth seem more concerned with politics than inconvenient truth. Of course, many have said this, and said it better, before me. But still. Really? The debt will come due.
As Christians, we tend to think of the debt coming due when Jesus’ kingdom comes in its fullness. At that last trumpet, so to speak. That’s not Legasov’s point. Consider all the references to “the land of the living” in scripture. Are these referring to that distant future or to reality in even this fallen world? With all due respect to those scholars who explain “the land of the living” refers to the fullness of new creation, I’m just not using the term here in that way. Legasov is talking about how the truth has a way of making itself known in the face of lies, in this world as we know it today. It doesn’t stay buried in the land of the living.
Some didn’t want the Truth when he came into the land of the living 2000 years ago. He was a danger to their plans – and He remains so. We recently remembered how Jesus was crucified and left dead in the tomb. And then the Truth returned, unbowed, from the grave. That’s the way truth is, I think. You can only hide it away in the grave for so long before the sheer life of it comes back to haunt those who sought to keep it down. That’s because the truth reflects how God is – how Jesus is. You can’t keep him down. The world He created reflects that reality. The truth is out there, and he is jealous.
I long for simple truth in the land of the living – the land I live in now. I think this is the proper attitude for one who follows the Truth.
For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. (Deuteronomy 4:24) The truth is of Him. He is the Truth. What is the cost of lies? It is death, naturally.
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