Amen

Thabiti Anyabwile in a message from The Gospel Coalition 2009, heard on one of my daily walks. This is a paraphrase, but the essence is accurate:

We speak of the social gospel, the prosperity gospel, full gospel, etc. If you have to put an adjective before it, it isn’t the real gospel.

Meditation

In my morning walks, I have been listening to the messages and workshops from the 2009 Gospel Coalition Conference. During one of those, Erwin Lutzer made a brief comparison between transcendental meditation (TM) and Biblical meditation. TM involves thinking about nothing; Bible meditation involves thinking about something. As I thought (meditated) about this distinction, these differences came to mind:

TM wants you to empty your mind. Bible meditation is about filling the mind.

TM provides a nonsensical word so that by concentrating on this word, the mind can be cleared. Bible meditation provides the Word of God so that by concentrating on it, the mind can be filled.

TM is a method of relaxation. Bible meditation is a method of sanctification.

TM emphasizes freeing the mind of thoughts, it is thinking about nothing. Bible meditation fills the mind with the highest and most complex thoughts that a human can have. Meditation focuses on the eternal, inscrutable God.

Bible meditation is expanding – the discipline expands our minds and our capacity to know and love God and His Word.

Bible meditation is exhausting – to really consider things that are so high to us is tiring. It is work, but it is sweet, exhilarating work.

Leadership

This is not original (is anything?). Someone else pointed out this clip as an example of Robert E. Lee's leadership style, but I cannot remember where I saw it. In this brief clip from the movie Gettysburg, there are principles that emerge regarding how leaders deal with failings and errors in subordinates. By the way, the entire movie is packed with leadership vignettes. It is worth watching again looking for these.

Martin Sheen does a masterful job playing Lee. This clip shows Lee at the end of the 1st day of battle. It is after midnight and obviously the men are exhausted and battle weary. Lee calls Stuart into his office because Stuart and his cavalry have failed their mission, no doubt at the cost of many lives. The error was egregious. But note how Lee handles this situation:

• This is obviously a difficult situation for General Lee. He does not relish the confrontation, but he addresses the problem squarely, without hesitation.
• Lee rebukes Stuart for his error. He allows for no excuses. Stuart is responsible, no one else. As a leader, Jeb Stuart must take responsibility for his failures.
• Lee doesn't just rebuke. He tells how and why the error was so costly. He delineates the consequences of the mistake.
• At the same time, Lee recognizes the worth and value of Stuart. He will not allow him to resign or to dwell on the dressing down. In fact, Lee uses the opportunity to teach leadership lessons to his general. He says, "You must take what I have told you and learn from it, as a man does." He will not allow Stuart to resign, but after the rebuke, begins to build him up.
• Once the matter is addressed, it is over. "We will speak no more of this." says Lee. The clip closes with a look of wonder and admiration on Stuart's face.

Communication

In his blog post yesterday, blogger extraordinaire Tim Challies writes about the idol of communication. It is a fact; we are adept at making idols of anything. Here is his opening paragraph:

In this digital world, communications dominates. In 2010 141 million blogs were active, 1,052,803 books published, 4.5 billion text messages sent, 175 billion letters mailed, 247 billion emails delivered. Do you see the scope of it? Communication is all the rage. It is what we do for business, education, entertainment, devotion. While people have always communicated and have probably always wanted to communicate more, what is unique in our time is its sheer dominance. What has changed is not the fact that we can communicate and that we like to communicate, but the scope of the it, the speed of it and the reach of it. It is now the dominant paradigm through which we live our lives. Perhaps amidst all of the communication we are prone to forget that we do not need to communicate all the time or that it is not wise to do so all the time. It may be that communication is not always good, that it brings problems even with all of its benefits

This made me think:

• Why is it that there is so much communication, yet most will say that the number one issue in marriages, business, and organizations is a lack of communication?
• Why is it that with so much communication, there’s not a lot being said of substance?
• How will this impact future generations when they want to write our history? If most communication is electronic, how will future historians study our culture if there are no letters or journals?
• With 141 million active blogs, who in the world do I think I am?

Reformation and Revival

Over the centuries, seasons of reformation and revival in the church have come when the sovereign grace of God has been openly proclaimed and clearly taught. When a high view of God has been infused into the hearts and minds of God’s people, the church has sat on the elevated plateaus of transcendent truth.

Steven Lawson, Foundations of Grace.

More Random Thoughts

When we read of the atrocities committed in Europe by the Nazi regime, “shocking” is hardly a sufficient word. I am amazed at how a sophisticated culture could move so easily into barbarism – that is, until I remember the doctrine if human depravity.


What does Nazism teach us? It should be obvious, but read this section from Evan’s The Third Reich at War. It is a personal account from a member of the dreaded Einsatzgruppe (caution: sensitive readers may want to skip this. It is graphic):

The Jews had to lie face down on the earth by the ravine walls. There were three groups of marksmen down at the bottom of the ravine, each made up of about twelve men. Groups of Jews were sent own to each of these execution squads simultaneously. Each successive group of Jews had to lie down on top of the bodies of those that had already been shot. The marksmen stood behind the Jews and killed them with a shot in the neck. I still recall the complete terror of the Jews when they first caught sight of the bodies as they reached the top edge of the ravine. Many Jews cried out in terror. It’s almost impossible to image what nerves of steel it took to carry out that dirty work down there. It was horrible… I had to spend the whole morning down at the ravine. For some of the time I had to shoot continuously (p.227).

This occurred not in some foggy medieval past, but in 1941. When I read these accounts, I substitute the word “Christian” for “Jew.” You could easily substitute any group for the Jews. If something so barbaric could occur in modern day western civilization a mere 69 years ago, there is no reason to think that that it could not happen again. Who will be the next group of people subjected to this kind of treatment, and who will be the persecutors?

Random Ideas on Reading

One of several books I am reading this summer is The Third Reich at War by Richard J. Evans. This is a lengthy book, with 764 pages of text and 873 pages including notes and bibliography. As massive as it is, it is only the final volume of a trilogy on the Third Reich by Evans (The Coming of the Third Reich and The Third Reich in Power).


So, why spend valuable time reading something like this? I have been asked about my morbid fascination with all things Nazi in particular and WWII in general. I have read at least 20 books on Hitler, his henchmen, Nazism, WWII, and the holocaust. So these, in order to explain my fascination, I list these reasons:

• Perhaps there is a genetic link (that is if you can plow through the DNA that came to me via Kentucky and West Virginia) with my German ancestors.

• I was part of a pilot program in my elementary school that began foreign language class in grade 4. Of course, we had German. I studied German through my junior year of High School.

• My mother’s older brother was killed at Normandy on June 10, 1944. I knew that he died in the war, but I was an adult before I learned that he died during the invasion to liberate France from Nazi occupation. Visiting his gravesite at Normandy was an exciting and moving event.

But, perhaps the greatest reason for my fascination lies in the well worn dictum: “those who refuse to learn from history are destined to repeat it.” Erwin Lutzer’s little book Hitler’s Cross stimulated my thinking along the lines of Nazism and its relation to Christianity. Thus, my reading has been to see how a modern, technologically advanced, well educated, and theologically active society (even though Germany was the seed bed of liberalism, there was theological debate) could fall for the likes of Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler, Göring and the like.



More on this tomorrow.