Getting things done

The key to getting things done is to consistently get things done. It is about building a new habit and making it so much a part of you that you don’t have to think about how you’re going to get it done and what you’re going to do to psych yourself up for it; you just sit down and complete it.

Motivation is important, but I’d contend that it’s not a big part of how much you complete. It can certainly affect you on an off day, but if your problem is repeated, regular procrastination, your problem isn’t motivation. It’s bad habits...

...Discipline, which is at the core of building new habits until the associated actions don’t require discipline in order to be executed, is like a muscle.

Joel Falconer (Lifehack, October 27th 2008)

Praying violins

James Boice said learning to pray is a little like learning to play the violin with the virtuosos. No instrument sounds worse in the beginning stages of learning; it's all screech and scratch. But if the student is determined to play well, he checks the program guide for the classical music station and notes when the violin concertos will be aired. He buys the score for each concerto and does his best to play along. At first he sounds terrible. As time passes, however, he begins little by little to sound more and more like the virtuosos. But all along, as he groans on his instrument, the orchestra plays the music beautifully—his poor performance is caught up and completed in the music of the masters.

Ben Patterson (on praying through the psalms), CT Direct, 24th October 2008

If only! (simplicity)

Simplicity in life...is evidenced by the ability to live an uncluttered life with focus, creating margins in life by learning the principles of effectiveness, Learning to say no by having bigger yeses is the key to simplicity in life. Instead of doing a lot of things efficiently, it is important to do the right things for effectiveness.

Harry Reeder, From Embers to a Flame, p.86

Tripp: disappointment

...we find midlife hard because it is hard! We struggle with the plan because it is not our plan. We are disappointed because we age. We are dissatisfied because our dreams slipped out of our hands. We are discouraged that, in our sin, we failed many, many times. We are disappointed that good things come to an end and people move on. Midlife exposes how much we struggle with the fact that God completes his work of redemption in us by keeping us in the middle of all the harsh realities of the fall.

Lost in the Middle, p62.

The Happiness Paradox

"the more directly one aims to maximize pleasure and avoid pain, the more likely one is to produce a life bereft of depth, meaning, and community."

quoted Ortberg (see previous post)

...which sounds a lot like CS Lewis view of joy:

Only when your whole attention is fixed on something else...does the "thrill" arise...It's very existence presupposes that you desire not it but something other and outer.

Suprised by Joy, p.136

Knowing your following

In our day, I think, we are seeing more accurate ways of understanding the gospel. But we need clarion calls of directness to help people respond today.

When Jesus walked the earth, the call "Follow me" was easily understood. People would actually, physically, bodily, walk with Jesus. People knew if they were following.

When the church formed, the call to follow Jesus was easily understood. There was an alternative community that met daily, that radically transformed people's financial lives, social lives, time, learning, allegiances, and hope. People knew if they were following.

In our day, that experience has become so diluted and enculturated that people have a hard time knowing.

The availability of life, with God, in his favor and power, as a gift of grace we receive by repentance and trust, through the death and resurrection of Jesus—that's the gospel with power. What needs still to be done is to find ways to express this with great clarity and simplicity, ways to help ordinary people know for sure they have made the great decision, the great commitment of their lives.

John Ortberg, Leadership online, October 20th 2008

Herbert: The Size

Inspired a bit by Doug's current series of posts on poetry, and following on from yesterday's post on midlife...well, it seems to me that when the frailty of life is very present, then the strength comes from heaven. Herbert wants us to let the blessings from above pour into the here and now, when our present experience of life is insufficient for us:

Content thee, greedy heart.
Modest and moderate joys to those, that have
Title to more hereafter when they part,
                                 Are passing brave.
Let th’ upper springs into the low
Descend and fall, and thou dost flow.

A principle to live by

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Robert J Hanlon

Tripp: what we live for

Midlife exposes what a person has really been living for and where a person has tried to find meaning and purpose. It has the power to reveal the significant gap between a person's confessional theology and their functional theology. What we say we are living for on Sunday may not, in fact, be the thing that has taken daily rulership over our hearts. And when these things which rule us are taken out of our hands, we tend to become angry, fearful, bitter or discouraged. We will experience a loss of identity and a flagging of meaning and purpose.

p.51

(I find this a facinating insight: from a Christian perspective then, the range of emotions that might come to us in midlife can actually be caused by the limitations of aging compromising the things we were really living for. It's showing us what was really at the centre, instead of Christ (because aging does not effect our ability to have a fulfilling life with Him; but it does, for example, stop us from feeling physically invincible, when our knees start to give out! So, to some degree our hope was actually just a teeny weeny bit, in being physically strong, in being a bloke (if you are a bloke that is). So my knees are helping to tear down idols, which means I can be stronger in the inner man even though the outer man perishes! This certainly, for me, adds another layer of meaning to 2 COR.4:16ff. It's just that "I'm being saved by my knees!" doesn't sound as cool as I hoped).

Tripp: life living us

There is a way in which we don't live our life, but our life lives us. We just get carried along by its locations, relationships, situations, responsibilities, opportunities and activities without stopping very long to look, listen, and consider. Huge chunks of time can pass virtually unnoticed.

p.49

Tripp: exposure

The struggles of midlife expose the true health and character of the relationships to which God has called me...

...everything we do is somehow shaped by who we think we are and what we have been called to do...

...midlife crisis is a struggle of identity and responsibility, and it exposes weaknesses in these area that have existed for a long time but are aid bare during this passage of life...

p.37

Tripp: little boxes

Instinctively, we organise things into the little boxes that we carry around in our brains. Sometimes we are wise enough to see that our boxes are too little or too few, but often we are quite skilled at squeezing our story into whatever boxes we happen to be carrying around in our minds. In doing so we fail to recognise how important and influential this interpretative function is. Life will always look like the categories you bring to it, and what you do will always be determined by the way you have organised your understanding of your own story.

...The overgeneralised category of 'adult' tends to ignore the fact that a human beings we are always in some kind of process of change...

Lost in the Middle, p34,35

Mid-life

I remember hearing Rob Parsons say there is no point in waiting til your children reach their teens before reading a book on teenagers - you have to start much earlier. That made a lot of sense to me. So on that basis, although I am not having a mid-life crisis at the moment (at least...I don't think so...am I?) I need to plan ahead for it. I don't simply mean making sure I have enough money for an Austin Healey; I mean by reading about it - so I have started Lost in the Middle by Paul Tripp, and the first 50 pages have been great. So I intend to start posting the bits that really strike me.... His essential point seems to be that mid-life itself is not a crisis, but that mid-life exposes issues that were there before - especially our wrong interpretations of life:

...we do not live by the facts of our experiences, but by the ways that our interpretations have shaped those facts for us. The difficult disorientation of midlife is not because the passage itself is disorienting. Whatever trouble midlife brings to us is essentially caused by the wrong thinking we bring to it. Suddenly we see things about ourselves that have been developing for years but went by unnoticed...

p.33.

The Shack

The Shack has engendered a huge amount of attention. For some it seems to have been a revelation (including Eugene Peterson who likens it to Pilgrim’s Progress). It has, on the other hand, attracted criticism for being a very imperfect view of Christianity and tending towards universalism. It’s really good, it’s really bad.

FWIW, here’s my opinion: it’s neither. It’s just not that good or that bad.

The story behind the story is great: homespun tale for family and friends becomes global publishing phenomenon, through efforts of said friends who have to form a company to deal with success. But the novel itself is a good deal more ordinary.

Without giving too much away, it seems to be a novelised attempt to present Christianity to a post-modern, suffering world. A man who cannot recover from a terrible event gets an opportunity to talk to God about it - and in the process God is revealed as compassionate and purposeful. So where do the radical, new, unexpected bits come in?

Good question because, I dare to suggest, there aren’t many. The answers the book suggests are actually fairly traditional evangelical apologetics. For example, in understanding why this event could happen: it’s a broken world where bad stuff happens, God works through bad events to bring about a greater purpose, He still loves you despite the appearances of the situation (witness His nail scarred hands) and is not distant. Along with this comes the usual stuff about God never forces anyone to do anything, but basically you could read similar themes in books on providence, suffering and theodicy. Perhaps putting it into novel-form, these ideas can be communicated well to those who would be resistant to other forms. But it isn’t new or radical; although it does lapse into what I would think of as a leap in the dark when God reveals that the victim of the crime was accompanied by Him through the experience, that she was conscious of this and therefore wasn’t scared. So there is a theological answer, and a sentimental one: good things will come (fine) and they didn’t suffer fear (not so fine or realistic).

There does seem to me to be a note running through it which I also found in some emergent stuff: the author appears to be reacting against a kind of church background. The main character learns the Trinity is a loving communion, that God cares in sorrow etc and reacts as though church has never taught him these things. Many of us have been in churches where, actually, we have always heard this. So, although not stated explicitly, it does imply the same idea as, say, Rob Bell, that probably all churches are like that and we need something new and different. (Which is a remarkably narrow view for allegedly open-minded people.)

So, having said all this, what’s good and bad in my illustrious opinion?

GOOD

• Trinitarian - at least to a degree - which not a lot of writing has been in recent decades. OK, so the Trinity seems to include two females, but I think this is largely a literary device to shake our preconceptions about God. I don't think it works well, and I think if you were looking for an exposition of the Trinity here, you will leave disappointed and confused. But I don’t think the writer set out to portray a feminist God. And critics don’t seem to notice that one member of the Trinity appears as male again at the end of the book.
• Compassionate: it really is trying to provide answers for hurting people.
• Biblically Literal (in some senses anyway): so, for example, it clearly holds the garden of Eden and the fall to be true. Absolutely shocking in this day and age.

BAD

• God is very cuddly. Now, what I mean by this is: cuddly to the point of not really having any other attributes. Admittedly, it is a book about how God’s love impacts our sorrow, but even so I could not imagine The Shack’s Jesus speaking the words of Revelation 1-3. In fact I couldn’t imagine this Trinity saying a great deal of the harder sections of the Bible. And when Mack, the central (human) character raises the question about OT violence, no real answer is made. If William Young is reacting against churches that major on judgment I can see why. But someone who read this book as an introduction to following Christ, is going to get a big shock later on when they read the whole Bible.
• It’s not strong on the Bible: it’s there, it’s referred to, it’s even stated we can hear God speaking through it - but it does seem somewhat relegated.
• Going back to cuddliness, this Jesus is so chummy and ordinary that His divinity is almost entirely lost, even though it is stated. The author’s theology implies he feels Jesus is completely and eternally limited by His human nature - which may be a reaction to the way-too-divine Jesus many emergents critique. But even so…
• Is there universalism? Possibly. The author has an unlimited atonement position, and because this is repeatedly emphasised it may wrongly seem imply he is universalist. It’s a bit too fuzzy to say for sure.

So what kind of book is it? It’s not a great book, because the writing is not up to, say, CS Lewis. This is evident for example in a sequence towards the end which resembles the final sections of Perelandra. I know which will stand out in my mind for the longest. But neither is it a terrible book. It may in fact open up helpful avenues for discussion. Would I buy it for a non-Christian friend? Maybe, if other routes had failed.

Badger.

Not the gospel

The gospel message is not that' God so loved the world that He inspired a certain Jew to teach that there was a good deal to be said for loving one another'.

Donald Coggan

Finally!

Back on line....

Hopefully....

back soon. We are inching towards a new internet connection...

sorry!

Just to apologise for not posting a post to say I won't be posting for a couple of weeks due to no internet.

Hopefully back on by mid-August!

Emergent eschatology

I don't understand enough about the emergent church to comment on many of their distinctive ideas (although part of the problem can be actually pinning down what those ideas are). But one area where I feel they are adrift is eschatology.

A recurring theme in emergent writing is the relative neglect Christians should have for the future. Now I understand where this comes from: as far as I can see there is a reaction against the ghetto mentality of some 20th century eschatology which led churches to abandon the needs of the world in favour of waiting out the last days in an ecclesiastical bunker. But to then advise us that the bible says little about the future and the emphasis is all now and that if we concentrate on the second coming etc then we will neglect present needs....is just wrong. There is no necessary connection at all.

I recently preached through the latter half of Romans 8. The whole basis of this most encouraging passage is that we can persevere in the present because we have such an overwhelming future hope (v25). Nowhere in Romans are we advised to ignore the present; rather we are told we will be joyful and strong Christians because of our hope based on the promised future that God gives to us in Christ. Which is why Paul can repeatedly speak of living in eager expectation (vv19, 23, 25). Daily, he powers himself up on future hope.

He then goes on to demonstrate how solid and infinite the foundation of this hope is, strecthing out of time (v29); and then spends most of the rest of the passage assuring us that absolutely nothing can rob us of this life, stretching from the present into the everlasting. Indeed it is the future that provides the great verse of hope (v28): because we are promised that we will be conformed to Christ we can be sure that all things work together for good: because everything feeds into this conformity, all events good and bad, in the hands of God, make us like Jesus, work for us an everlasting weight of glory.

I really think that emergent teaching on this point is losing out badly. Maybe I have misunderstood their teaching, because I can't see how anyone would willingly give up the present power of such a future hope.

Piper: live like He is treasure!

If Christ is an all-satisfying treasure and promises to provide all
our needs, even through famine and nakedness, then to live as
though we had all the same values as the world would betray
him. I have in mind mainly how we use our money and how we
feel about our possessions. I hear the haunting words of Jesus,
“Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall
we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after
all these things” (Matthew 6:31-32). In other words, if we look
like our lives are devoted to getting and maintaining things, we
will look like the world, and that will not make Christ look
great. He will look like a religious side-interest that may be useful
for escaping hell in the end, but doesn’t make much difference
in what we live and love here. He will not look like an
all-satisfying treasure. And that will not make others glad in
God.
If we are exiles and refugees on earth (1 Peter 2:11), and if
our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20), and if nothing can
separate us from the love of Christ (Romans 8:35), and if his
steadfast love is better than life (Psalm 63:3), and if all hardship
is working for us an eternal weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17),
then we will give to the winds our fears and “seek first the kingdom
of God and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33). We will
count everything as rubbish in comparison with Christ
(Philippians 3:7-8). We will “joyfully accept the plundering of
our property” for the sake of unpopular acts of mercy (Hebrews
10:34). We will choose “ rather to be mistreated with the people
of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin,” and we will
count “the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures
of Egypt” (Hebrews 11:25-26).

Don't Waste Your Life, p107-8