Today’s Quote 11/12/09

Part of maturity is getting to the place where we can let go of one wish in order to have another.

Today’s Quote 11/11/09

“A man’s greatest care should be for that place where he lives longest; therefore eternity should be his scope.” – Thomas Manton

Thoughts on Prophets on Purpose, the story of Rick and Kay Warren

Christianity (it just took me 5 tries to spell Christianity right-what’s up with that???) Today has run a couple of pieces on the new biography of Rick and Kay Warren. Central to their story is the troubling of their marriage.

This is one of those things where I say to myself – more than I need to know, more than I want to know. I am not sure what purpose it serves. Does it give hope to us to know how bad things were? Not really, I think. By this time in life I just assume that people who have stayed together have by and large paid a pretty big price to do so. Does it make them more human? Again, not really. I don’t need to know this stuff to look at them as real people who are doing real Christ-following.

But it does one thing I think needs to get across. GET HELP!!!!! People go too far before they get help and then the light flickers out, anger and resentment settle in and people inside are on a slow burn that will cook their goose over time. The vast number of affairs I have seen in the ministry are not the result of really bad and bawdy people who don’t care what God says and who just want the evil of the experience. They are most often tired, lonely people who don’t see a way to resolution. And when they get caught, everybody says “naughty, naughty” when what they often are is very, very tired people who couldn’t figure out how to handle the loneliness. When marriage partners don’t resolve stuff, they are playing with fire. Their partners are not robots who just do the will of God by pushing a button. They need encouragement, support, honesty, confession, resolution, etc., in order to press on.

There is an acidic side to Kay’s style that disturbs me, as well as her willingness to take potshots at Rick that make him look like a buffoon. Rick laughs and guffaws when she so comments, but I feel as if this is what he has to do.  What she says in the book makes sense of this impression I have. I just wish they didn’t have to bring it up.

There is no doubt that Rick is an extraordinary leader and that his style is truly of another kind. He develops trust in the listener in short order and does not go looking for fights. He and Max Lucado seem twins on this score. I have a high regard for him and wish some of those Christian leaders who are of a more theological bent would mirror his grace and kindness.

As they say, the good man with the bad theology will most every time triumph over the bad man with the good theology. This is what Aristotle labeled as ethos in speaking. Whatever it is, Rick has plenty of it.

Twitter and free books on Kindle

One of the great things about twitter is news of the immediate kind that lets me know free kindle books are available at Amazon. These free book offers are often for only a day and apparently the people who I follow on twitter are on enough networks to get the word out. This is cool.

Who is going to care for your pet after the Rapture?

Some pretty creative people out there. Click here.

Praise You in This Storm

Really like this song by Casting Crowns. The song starts at 2 minutes in so you might want to forward through the introduction.

Lee Strobel and EHarmony

Yes, it’s true. I saw Lee Strobel on a website today speaking for EHarmony, the “Christian” dating service. Sure, it’s ok. I just never put Strobel (Case for Christ, Case for Faith, Case for Creation) and internet dating together.

Someone needs to manage the kids

This is fun – an academic with humor

Martyn-Lloyd Jones UP/JI Packer DOWN

When I was in college JI Packer was the hero of a sophisticated, thoughtful evangelicalism. He had taken on the separatists of the Reformed wing of evangelicalism in Britain whose most famous spokesman was Martyn-Lloyd Jones. These were the days of the ascendancy of Billy Graham. Graham represented a mainstream evangelicalism that had risen out of the flames of an anit-intellectual fundamentalism, which had then rejected Graham and his project. Now Graham found that he was also running into the Reformed, who also rejected Graham, but for different reasons and yet with the same strain of resistance. In this case Graham was also seen as a compromiser because he cooperated across the denominational spectrum and because his evangelism method appeared too Arminian. Packer was part of the British evangelical scene and cast his lot with Graham.

For many of us American evangelicals who knew a cross-denominational cooperation that came out of the Great Awakening experiences of the 1700s and 1800s, Packer was a leader. He was writing for InterVarsity Press. I was working for IVCF in the early 1970s.

We would read Jones’ books, but in fact he had disowned our brand of churchmanship. His ascendant sun had reached its perigree. But things are different now. With the energy of the new Calvinism, Jones once again is coming into the spotlight and Packer is running into a cultural and theological critique that takes some of the shine off.

This is especially due to two things. One, Packer is a signer of the Evangelical Catholic Accords, which laid out common ground with the RCs (along with such luminaries as Chuck Colson). The second is his continued affiliation with morally bankrupt Anglicanism and its acceptance of gay marriage and the ordination of gay priests. Many have wondered how far Packer would have to be pushed before he would cry out “anathema” and wash the dust off his feet. Pretty far for most evangelical’s tastes.

And thus we have Martyn-Lloyd Jones. More and more in the blogosphere his name is popping up as a fav read.

I remain a Packer man. His clear evangelicalism and yet his recognition that the Christianity of the Great Tradition extends beyond Reformed formulations is my taste.

I like Reformed theology best when it is constricted to a smaller circle and becomes just one of the vitamin pills the church takes for its health rather than the multiple vitamin that replaces all others. Left to itself, it becomes arid rather quickly and finds it difficult to become a multi-generational movement. Whenever it has had its full sway, it soon becomes unitarianism and centripetalistic. Witness the history of the Puritans in England, the Puritans in Massachusetts Bay Colony and the Separatists of Plymouth.

The healthiest expression of Reformed theology was seen for a time in the ministry of CH Spurgeon. But the Reformed have not found a way yet to teach that God specifically elects certain people not to believe in His Son and to be damned and still have the guy in the pew find beauty and glory in that doctrine. Nor have they found a way to keep people more focused on faith in Christ rather than trying to find out if they are elect. The psychological gymnastics this puts believers through eventually squeezes out life and joy and makes Christians all too comfortable with people being lost. It just happens, no matter how much Reformed leaders cry it down.

JI Packer is thoroughly Reformed but he has done the best job of keeping reformed theology as part of the great Christian movement in dialogue with the breadth of the church. And I think that is about the best we can do.