In the same way, our patterns of disobedience to God have been developed over a number of years and are not broken easily or without discipline. Discipline does not mean gritting your teeth and saying, "I'll not do that any more". Rather, discipline means structured, planned training. just as you need a plan for regular Bible reading or study, so you need a plan for applying the Word to your life.Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness, p.100-101
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Discipline against sin
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Frightening but true
When we are looking at the internet we are looking at ourselves.Andrew keen, Google Authors Lecture
Nouwen: power leadership
What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God than to love God, easier to control people than to love people, easier to own life than to love life.In The Name of Jesus, p.59
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
But I read it....
Andrew Keen commenting on Freidman's view that we have canine hearing when it comes to the internet (ie.we only hear what it says about us):
http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_seduction/2007/05/but_i_read_it_o.html
The climax of Friedman's talk focused on the flattening of truth and fiction on the Internet. He told the story of Muslim woman in the Middle East who was against Al Gore because he was Jewish. When he tried to correct her, she refused to believe him:
Friedman has got the species right, but the body part wrong. It's not dog's hearing that we've acquired -- but a canine soul. I read it on the Internet has become the equivalent of a dog's faith in their master's voice."But I read it on the Internet," she insisted.
http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_seduction/2007/05/but_i_read_it_o.html
Amish technology
Bill McKibben,The Amish are the most technologically sophisticated people on this continent, the best at picking and choosing among innovations, deciding which ones make sense and which ones don’t….
The larger society at the moment has a primitive and superstitious belief that we must accept new technologies, that they are somehow more powerful than we are. Which makes the Amish in some ways the most modern American subculture—far more modern than some fellow with a cell phone who doesn’t really like how it changes his life, but has one just because it seems “normal.”
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Divine honour
The great God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob remains forever committed to claiming the honour and glory due His holiness, and when the time is right, He will ensure that every divine action is praised as faithful and just.
David Crump, Knocking on heaven's Door, p86.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Education, education, idolatry
There are some subjects which must be approached with caution and trepidation, because their content is so accepted that to question is to vandalise. Here is a subject which, if I question, I will be seen not as iconoclastic or revolutionary, but as needing therapy or possibly clinical restraint for my own good. The subject is: education.
Now let me qualify this: I don’t want to question the concept, necessity or validity of education. Education exists in our nation largely through the efforts of many Christians who saw it as a way of making God’s word accessible, of providing opportunities for the deprived, and of driving forward social progress.
The concept is not my problem. My issue lies elsewhere; and I should say at this point, that the questions I am about to raise are not ones I have had to face as yet. I ask them as a concerned onlooker, not knowing whether I am right or not. Here is my concern: evangelical Christians are in danger of turning education into an idol. The next few paragraphs outline what I mean in two areas.
The first is, I think we are in danger of becoming part of a new class movement. One of many twenty first century ironies is that, having thrown off the oppressive class regimes of previous eras, we have simply invented new ones. Witness the apparently irrepressible urge to push one’s spending to the limit in order to buy a 4X4. Not that we go off-roading, or live up a mountain (in fact most of us live on large housing estates with very nice lawns), nor do I own livestock and need to drive through bad weather and over rugged territory in order to feed them. In fact I have little or no practical reason for owning a vehicle approximately the same size as a Chieftain Tank with the fuel consumption of Lithuania. No. I need one because it shows who I am. It shows how much I earn. Because other people do not have one, and I do. In other words, we have bravely cast off a class system based on birth and money, and replaced it with a class system based on just money.
And I am uncomfortably suspicious we do the same with education. Once upon a time, of course, very few people got to go to university and the opening up of space for young people from all backgrounds was a tremendous achievement. However that is not the same thing as saying that everyone is academic, or suited to university life, or indeed that universities are able to teach something appropriate to everyone’s inherent gifts (I know a gifted salesmen for whom university would have been a complete waste of time, but who now earns substantially more than many graduates, whilst also earning the respect of his staff and witnessing effectively for Christ). But increasingly we seem to be ignoring this. The idea was that universities be opened up to all, that those suite to it should be able to attend. Now the attending part is the crucial element. The government has not helped by stating its aim of getting 50% of young people into university: this makes the assumption that everyone at least ought to be academic in a way that benefits from university education. And here’s the problem: many of us are buying into this.
Is this a problem? It could be, because we teach our teenagers to find their identity entirely in academic achievement. From an early age all they hear about is the need to strive at school, pass SATS, aim high, do lots of GCSEs and many A levels. That’s OK so far as it goes. But what happens if a child is not academic? Struggles with reading? With numbers? Or that their abilities are simply not in processing information through pen and paper? This is why I think it my be a problem: we’re turning academic success into a new class system. If you don’t get into university you are not as worthy as those who do. If you get an apprenticeship, or start in a shop and work your way up, then you are somewhere further down the scale than those who have a degree (by the way, if you think this is the disgruntled rant of an academic failure, I have an honours degree).
Let me illustrate with a genuine situation. In discussing the future of someone’s teenage son, education inevitably came up, and with it mention of university. What reduced this mother’s face to an expression bordering on horror? The suggestion that if the lad was not academic he could do something else. Nope. There was no question: he’s going to university, because if he doesn’t…well!
So here is my fear: Christians taking the profoundly positive concept of education, and making it almost the purpose of one’s early life. Narrowing personality, gifting and achievement to what can be measured within the confines of academic life. And looking with horror upon anyone who doesn’t make it.
Why is this such an issue? Because, along with many other pressures upon the young, it tells them their image, identity and purpose lie here. And what if they fail? What if they aren’t academic? What if their gifts would be best served outside of education? What if they aren’t ready, and in the loneliness of life in a faraway city they fall into wrong habits and company to comfort themselves and forget their failure? It used to be that the well to do would want their son in politics or the army or the church. Well, there is no kudos in the church any more, and no one wants their kids in the middle east - so it’s off to university you go!
It may be your child will excel at university. Maybe they won’t. Either way, what they really need to know is that their identity is as an image bearer of God; that no amount of exams will take away their sins; that in Christ they are safe and have a purpose and ‘career’ that God will carve out for them in good works; and that the only thing that endures is not a certificate, but Christian character.
My other point focuses a bit earlier on the transition from junior to senior school, and the incredible amount of energy used by parents to get their children into the ‘right’ institution. Now I must reiterate: I have not had to make this decision, so I may contradict what I am about to say in the decades to come, but I want to raise the question.
When parents are obsessed with getting the right school, the best school, when they fake addresses on forms, or keep moving house through terror that their kids might go to a less academically certain school - is this sending the right message? What I mean is this: are we implicitly telling our kids that it is absolutely essential that they go to the best places and mix with the best kids? Well, you may reply, so what if we are? God has given care for the family as a priority, and we are providing the best for our children.
True enough, and who can question that? And that’s the problem: we dare not question a decision based on “the best for my family”, because it is self-evidently true. However, that isn’t the whole story. We should indeed question our definition of ‘best’. Many times I have heard people say the reason they provide their kids with every conceivable toy and gadget is because they want the best for them - whilst they as parents are working 70 hour weeks to provide these trinkets, thereby hardly ever seeing the aforementioned children who are traded between grannies, clubs, childminders etc. In other words, ‘best for my family’ is not a universal absolute; it is as polluted by sin as any other motivation we have.
Now the reason I mention this is because it gives us an opening into the whole moving/catchment area/best school thing. “We moved three times in order to make sure we were in the catchments of the schools whose league tables showed the best academic results, and the areas were nice and peaceful; we do the best for our family”. And I can understand that, I imagine that one day I will feel like that. But I also feel, right now, when I watch the horrors on the news, that I would like to move my family up a deserted mountain in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a security fence and guarded by 4x4s adapted to carry 4 inch Howitzers. It may be for the best reasons, but it doesn’t work and it doesn’t fit with God’s plan for my children. They have to be in the world to serve Christ, I can’t create some kind of pseudo-Eden in which they never fail at school and they never meet nasty people. If they don’t learn how to fail, and how to cope with obnoxious people, they will never survive this world.
So my point is this: is the constant desire for better areas, better schools, no failure, killing the sense of mission which God wants for my children? Numbers of missionaries from the UK have dropped.. Is this related to the fact that missionaries go to difficult places, with difficult people, in difficult circumstances, with no status, possibly no clean water, no promotions, poor housing etc - whilst all through their lives we have taught kids that the best thing in life is keep going where its nicer, don’t fail, stay away from failures, get good qualifications, so you can get a good job and earn good money and have a good house etc etc.??? Over 25 years ago Roy Joslin noted that people converted in the inner city became more responsible at work, earned better money, moved to the suburbs and the inner city people were being left with decreasing gospel witness. Are we, inadvertently, worsening the situation through our idolising of education?
I’m aware you may be very upset as you read this. Please remember I’m only asking the question, and I know how strong the urge is to protect one’s child from failure and the world’s ills. But in the same way we have heard that our obsession with cleanliness has led to a fall in child immunity, maybe our drive for perfection has led to a loss of sense of mission.
I know, I’m being hard. And I can imagine this conversation:
Annoyed parent: “But God wants the best for our kids! God the Father cared for His Son as His Beloved!”
Me: “Yes he does love Him infinitely. But when Jesus was incarnated, where was He born? At the margins, on the edge of empire, in a nowhere place, in a shed, with no healthcare and only shepherds for company, with the outcast, the failure; in the dirt, with lowest, the most needy”
Annoyed parent: “Yes it may have been a shed, BUT! It was in a good catchment area”.
Now let me qualify this: I don’t want to question the concept, necessity or validity of education. Education exists in our nation largely through the efforts of many Christians who saw it as a way of making God’s word accessible, of providing opportunities for the deprived, and of driving forward social progress.
The concept is not my problem. My issue lies elsewhere; and I should say at this point, that the questions I am about to raise are not ones I have had to face as yet. I ask them as a concerned onlooker, not knowing whether I am right or not. Here is my concern: evangelical Christians are in danger of turning education into an idol. The next few paragraphs outline what I mean in two areas.
The first is, I think we are in danger of becoming part of a new class movement. One of many twenty first century ironies is that, having thrown off the oppressive class regimes of previous eras, we have simply invented new ones. Witness the apparently irrepressible urge to push one’s spending to the limit in order to buy a 4X4. Not that we go off-roading, or live up a mountain (in fact most of us live on large housing estates with very nice lawns), nor do I own livestock and need to drive through bad weather and over rugged territory in order to feed them. In fact I have little or no practical reason for owning a vehicle approximately the same size as a Chieftain Tank with the fuel consumption of Lithuania. No. I need one because it shows who I am. It shows how much I earn. Because other people do not have one, and I do. In other words, we have bravely cast off a class system based on birth and money, and replaced it with a class system based on just money.
And I am uncomfortably suspicious we do the same with education. Once upon a time, of course, very few people got to go to university and the opening up of space for young people from all backgrounds was a tremendous achievement. However that is not the same thing as saying that everyone is academic, or suited to university life, or indeed that universities are able to teach something appropriate to everyone’s inherent gifts (I know a gifted salesmen for whom university would have been a complete waste of time, but who now earns substantially more than many graduates, whilst also earning the respect of his staff and witnessing effectively for Christ). But increasingly we seem to be ignoring this. The idea was that universities be opened up to all, that those suite to it should be able to attend. Now the attending part is the crucial element. The government has not helped by stating its aim of getting 50% of young people into university: this makes the assumption that everyone at least ought to be academic in a way that benefits from university education. And here’s the problem: many of us are buying into this.
Is this a problem? It could be, because we teach our teenagers to find their identity entirely in academic achievement. From an early age all they hear about is the need to strive at school, pass SATS, aim high, do lots of GCSEs and many A levels. That’s OK so far as it goes. But what happens if a child is not academic? Struggles with reading? With numbers? Or that their abilities are simply not in processing information through pen and paper? This is why I think it my be a problem: we’re turning academic success into a new class system. If you don’t get into university you are not as worthy as those who do. If you get an apprenticeship, or start in a shop and work your way up, then you are somewhere further down the scale than those who have a degree (by the way, if you think this is the disgruntled rant of an academic failure, I have an honours degree).
Let me illustrate with a genuine situation. In discussing the future of someone’s teenage son, education inevitably came up, and with it mention of university. What reduced this mother’s face to an expression bordering on horror? The suggestion that if the lad was not academic he could do something else. Nope. There was no question: he’s going to university, because if he doesn’t…well!
So here is my fear: Christians taking the profoundly positive concept of education, and making it almost the purpose of one’s early life. Narrowing personality, gifting and achievement to what can be measured within the confines of academic life. And looking with horror upon anyone who doesn’t make it.
Why is this such an issue? Because, along with many other pressures upon the young, it tells them their image, identity and purpose lie here. And what if they fail? What if they aren’t academic? What if their gifts would be best served outside of education? What if they aren’t ready, and in the loneliness of life in a faraway city they fall into wrong habits and company to comfort themselves and forget their failure? It used to be that the well to do would want their son in politics or the army or the church. Well, there is no kudos in the church any more, and no one wants their kids in the middle east - so it’s off to university you go!
It may be your child will excel at university. Maybe they won’t. Either way, what they really need to know is that their identity is as an image bearer of God; that no amount of exams will take away their sins; that in Christ they are safe and have a purpose and ‘career’ that God will carve out for them in good works; and that the only thing that endures is not a certificate, but Christian character.
My other point focuses a bit earlier on the transition from junior to senior school, and the incredible amount of energy used by parents to get their children into the ‘right’ institution. Now I must reiterate: I have not had to make this decision, so I may contradict what I am about to say in the decades to come, but I want to raise the question.
When parents are obsessed with getting the right school, the best school, when they fake addresses on forms, or keep moving house through terror that their kids might go to a less academically certain school - is this sending the right message? What I mean is this: are we implicitly telling our kids that it is absolutely essential that they go to the best places and mix with the best kids? Well, you may reply, so what if we are? God has given care for the family as a priority, and we are providing the best for our children.
True enough, and who can question that? And that’s the problem: we dare not question a decision based on “the best for my family”, because it is self-evidently true. However, that isn’t the whole story. We should indeed question our definition of ‘best’. Many times I have heard people say the reason they provide their kids with every conceivable toy and gadget is because they want the best for them - whilst they as parents are working 70 hour weeks to provide these trinkets, thereby hardly ever seeing the aforementioned children who are traded between grannies, clubs, childminders etc. In other words, ‘best for my family’ is not a universal absolute; it is as polluted by sin as any other motivation we have.
Now the reason I mention this is because it gives us an opening into the whole moving/catchment area/best school thing. “We moved three times in order to make sure we were in the catchments of the schools whose league tables showed the best academic results, and the areas were nice and peaceful; we do the best for our family”. And I can understand that, I imagine that one day I will feel like that. But I also feel, right now, when I watch the horrors on the news, that I would like to move my family up a deserted mountain in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a security fence and guarded by 4x4s adapted to carry 4 inch Howitzers. It may be for the best reasons, but it doesn’t work and it doesn’t fit with God’s plan for my children. They have to be in the world to serve Christ, I can’t create some kind of pseudo-Eden in which they never fail at school and they never meet nasty people. If they don’t learn how to fail, and how to cope with obnoxious people, they will never survive this world.
So my point is this: is the constant desire for better areas, better schools, no failure, killing the sense of mission which God wants for my children? Numbers of missionaries from the UK have dropped.. Is this related to the fact that missionaries go to difficult places, with difficult people, in difficult circumstances, with no status, possibly no clean water, no promotions, poor housing etc - whilst all through their lives we have taught kids that the best thing in life is keep going where its nicer, don’t fail, stay away from failures, get good qualifications, so you can get a good job and earn good money and have a good house etc etc.??? Over 25 years ago Roy Joslin noted that people converted in the inner city became more responsible at work, earned better money, moved to the suburbs and the inner city people were being left with decreasing gospel witness. Are we, inadvertently, worsening the situation through our idolising of education?
I’m aware you may be very upset as you read this. Please remember I’m only asking the question, and I know how strong the urge is to protect one’s child from failure and the world’s ills. But in the same way we have heard that our obsession with cleanliness has led to a fall in child immunity, maybe our drive for perfection has led to a loss of sense of mission.
I know, I’m being hard. And I can imagine this conversation:
Annoyed parent: “But God wants the best for our kids! God the Father cared for His Son as His Beloved!”
Me: “Yes he does love Him infinitely. But when Jesus was incarnated, where was He born? At the margins, on the edge of empire, in a nowhere place, in a shed, with no healthcare and only shepherds for company, with the outcast, the failure; in the dirt, with lowest, the most needy”
Annoyed parent: “Yes it may have been a shed, BUT! It was in a good catchment area”.
Nouwen: servant leadership
The leadership about which Jesus speaks is a radically different from the leadership offered by the world . it is a servant leadership - to use Robert Greenleaf's term - in which the leader is a vulnerable servant who needs the people as much as they need him or her.
In the Name of Jesus, p.45
Monday, June 11, 2007
Baxter: Limits of knowledge 2
When man was made perfect, and placed in a perfect world, where all things were in perfect order, the whole creation was then man’s book, in which he was to read the nature and will of his great Creator. Every creature had the name of God so legibly engraven on it, that man might run and read it. He could not open his eyes, but he might see some image of God; but no where so fully and lively as in himself. It was, therefore, his work to study the whole volume of nature, but first and most to study himself. And if man had held on in this course, he would have continued and increased in the knowledge of God and himself; but when he would needs know and love the creature and himself in a way of separation from God, he lost the knowledge both of the creature and of the Creator, so far as it could beatify and was worth the name of knowledge; and instead of it, he hath got the unhappy knowledge which he affected, even the empty notions and fantastic knowledge of the creature and himself, as thus separated.
Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor
Baxter: Limits of knowledge
A world of business they make themselves about nothing, while they are wilful strangers to the primitive, independent, necessary Being, who is all in all. Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator: single letters, and syllables uncomposed, are no better than nonsense. He who overlooketh him who is the ‘Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,’ and seeth not him in all who is the All of all, doth see nothing at all. All creatures, as such, are broken syllables; they signify nothing as separated from God. Were they separated actually, they would cease to be, and the separation would be an annihilation; and when we separate them in our fancies, we make nothing of them to ourselves. It is one thing to know the creatures as Aristotle, and another thing to know them as a Christian. None but a Christian can read one line of his Physics so as to understand it rightly. It is a high and excellent study, and of greater use than many apprehend; but it is the smallest part of it that Aristotle can teach us.
Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Nouwen: irrelevance
I am telling you all this because I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self...
...one of the main sufferings experienced in the ministry is that of low self-esteem. Many priests and ministers today increasingly perceive themselves as having very little impact...The secular world around us is saying in a loud voice, "We can take care of ourselves. We do not need God, the Church, or a priest. We are in control. And if we are not, then we have to work harder to get in control..."
But there is a completely different story to tell. beneath all the great accomplishments of our time there is a deep current of despair. While efficiency and control are the great aspirations of our society, the loneliness, isolation, lack of friendship and intimacy, broken relationships, boredom, feelings of emptiness and depression, and a deep sense of uselessness fill the hearts of millions of people in our success oriented world...
...and the cry that arises from all this decadence is clearly: "Is there anybody who loves me; is there anybody who really cares? Is there anybody who wants to stay home for me? Is there anybody who wants to be with me when I am not in control, when I feel like crying?...
It is here that the need for a new Christian leadership becomes clear. The leader of the future will be the one who dares to claim his irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation that allows him or her to enter into a deep solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success and to bring the light of Jesus there.
Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus (1989)
Sayers: dogma drama
Official Christianity, of late years, has been having what is known as a bad press. We are constantly assured that the churches are empty because preachers insist too much upon doctrine—dull dogma as people call it. The fact is the precise opposite. It is the neglect of dogma that makes for dullness. The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man—and the dogma is the drama.
Dorothy L Sayers Letters to a Diminished Church
Dorothy L Sayers Letters to a Diminished Church
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