Time Management from John Owen

Men have not leisure to glorify God and save their own souls. it is certain that God gives us time enough for all that he requires of us in any kind in this world. no duties need to jostle on another, I mean constantly. Especial occasions must be determined accordingly unto especial circumstances. but if in anything we take more upon us than we have time well to perform it in, without robbing God of that which is due to him and our souls, this God calls not unto, this he blesseth us not in.

Thank God for Evolution?

A friend recently loaned me a book by Michael Dowd titled Thank God for Evolution: How the Marriage of Science and Evolution Will Transform Your Life and Our World. The endorsement on the cover reads, “The science vs. religion debate is over.”

Admittedly, I have not read the entire book. My interest waned early into the text. What I have read left me with several impressions:

Dowd’s book claims to find a middle ground where both religion and evolution are seen to contribute to our understanding of origins. However, one does not need to read very far to see that this is a patronizing look at religious belief while praising the intellectual superiority of those who have articulated scientific truth (read: evolution). In explaining the focus of Part 1, Dowd observes that in this section, “we shall consider what evolution is, what it is not, and why human societies require a mythic and meaningful context…We cannot thrive without myth – that is, without meaningful stories that freely use poetry and metaphor to communicate what we individually and collectively experience to be true” (italics mine). Note that there are things we collectively “experience to be true.” Certainly, religious experience could not actually be true!

Skillfully, Dowd praises the “science” of evolution while relegating religion to an evolutionary need to find meaning in life. Religion is a satisfying way of quenching an instinctive need for meaning. The door is left open that, with some evolutionary good fortune, we will grow out of this.

As Christians, we anchor our faith, not in a need to define meaningful existence, but in a God who is Creator and Redeemer. This God has revealed Himself in an inspired book, the Bible.

A system that omits a Creator from the equation can in no way be compatible with the belief of God as Creator. Dowd’s attempt to straddle the fence adds little to the continuing controversy.

Words

Words are wonderful things. They are not actually concrete things, they are symbols. They are expressions of thoughts and emotions. You can never know the depths of another’s thoughts without words.

Words are powerful. They encourage and destroy; they can mobilize an army or calm a riot. In 1095, the First Crusade was launched by Pope Urban II’s rousing sermon condemning Moslem control of Jerusalem. The world was set on a course of global war when Adolf Hitler became Reich’s Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and moved a nation with his rhetoric.

Words sometimes become toys or tools in our hands. By the art of “spinning” words, we can make something horribly ugly sound desirable. Who would not prefer to “go home to be with the Lord” over being “dead?” And while any sane person opposes abortion, who would disagree with the “right to choose?”

Christianity is inexorably bound up in words. Words are our tools of trade in that:

• They are the “stuff” of revelation. God has disclosed His power and Godhead in creation, but He has definitively spoken to us in His Word, the Bible. Without the inspired words of Scripture, we would have no knowledge of the saving goodness of God.
• They are the means of gospel communication. It has been said that of all the world’s religions, Christianity is unique in that it has been spread through preaching, through the use of words. God has chosen to speak at in different times and in various ways through human instrumentality.

Of course, the ultimate expression of God the Father is Jesus Christ. Heb. 1: 1-2 says that in these last days, God has spoken to us in His Son (or, literally “in a Son-kind-of way”). John calls Jesus “the Word” in the 1st chapter of his gospel. As the Word, He is the concrete expression of the Father. John says that the Son “declares” (or “exegetes”) the Father.

In this season, we remember the Word who was made flesh and dwelt among us. The eternal Logos or Word dropped into human history through the virgin’s womb to dwell among us, not apart from us, not above us. This He did to show us God’s glory; a glory filled with grace and truth.

Pastor/Theologians

This was posted on Michael F. Bird's website a few weeks ago. This is from a paper by Kevin Vanhoozer. The final paragraph is particularly challenging. May God give us a new perspective on pastoral ministry.

Seminary faculties need the courage to be evangelically Protestant for the sake of forming theological interpreters of Scripture able to preach and minister the word. The preacher is a “man on a wire,” whose sermons must walk the tightrope between Scripture and the contemporary situation. I believe that we should preparing our best students for this gospel ministry. The pastor-theologian, I submit, should be evangelicalism’s default public intellectual, with preaching the preferred public mode of theological interpretation of Scripture (emphasis mine).

Happy Reformation Day

(This is a repeat from last year)

Many in our country celebrate today with cries of “Trick or Treat.” For Christians, the more significant cry should be “sola Scriptura.” On this date in 1517, Martin Luther, a young Augustinian monk, posted his “95 Thesis” on the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church (this is probably apocryphal, but the door posting idea has survived). The resulting controversy over Luther’s opinions regarding the sale of indulgences led to what would be later known as the Protestant Reformation. As can be seen in the “95 Thesis,” Luther had no intention of creating a schism within his Church – he merely wanted to correct what he considered to be the bad theology practiced by those who did not understand canon law. In reality, it was Luther who naively misunderstood the furor that his thesis would cause. It was not so much theology at stake (for the Roman Church, that is), but power and money.

The essence of the Reformation is Luther’s insistence upon the authority of Scripture. Of course, his emphasis upon justification by faith alone (sola fide) is key; but this flows from his view of the sufficiency and primacy of the Bible’s teaching over the opinions of men. This is the relevance of the Reformation today.

For the world at large, people who believe in and take the Bible seriously are considered dangerous but probably not for the same reasons that Luther was considered dangerous. Those who actually believe the Bible are accused of endorsing book burning, Usher’s date of creation (4004 BC), and discrimination against any kind of people they don’t like. Nonetheless, the church must return to the principle of sola Scriptura. Thankfully, there are encouraging tokens of this. The very real shame is among those who profess to believe the Bible but do not honor or regard the Bible in the life or methodology of the church. There are churches that still covet the label “Fighting Fundamentalist,” yet one is hard pressed to hear the Bible capably and systematically taught or expounded. Scripture is preached about, but not always proclaimed.

On this Reformation Day, may we once again renew our appreciation for and determination to live by the holy Word of God.

Trick or Treat

Whatever you, as a Christian, think about the celebration of Halloween, read this blog. Bottom line: why are some so hot under the collar about this practice when popular assualts on the doctrine of the Trinity are welcomed, endorsed, studied, and defended? Perhaps the words of Jesus to the Pharisees are in order: "This you should have done and not left the other undone."

Providence

Jerry Bridges on God's Providence:

All things are indebted for their existence to the continuous sustaining action of God exercised through His Son. Nothing exists of its own inherent power of being. Nothing in all creation stands or acts independently of the Lord’s will. The so-called laws of nature are nothing more than the physical expression of the steady will of Christ. The law of gravity operates with unceasing certainty because Christ continuously wills it to operate. - Jerry Bridges, Trusting God