Don Bryant now on Tumblr

I have joined the Tumblr community to do some quicker postings that are less intense than longer blogs. I invite you to join me there. Username is DonBryant.

Death is not a savior! Adam Lanza, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Lady Justice.

John Piper has authored a poem concerning the deaths of the Newtown shooter, Adam Lanza, and the Boston Marathon bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Piper reminds us that their deaths did not deliver them from giving account of their crime. Death delivered them straight into the presence of the Almighty. They discovered they were not dead but alive and that the the pistol pops and bomb explosion were heard on the other side of time. They stood not before a jury of their peers but before the Ancient of Days who is all-seeing and all-just.

Grace Forfeited
Adam, Tamerlan, and the Lady

Was Adam Lanza’s bullet to the head,
With all its millisecond length of dread
And suffering, a fitting recompense
For twenty children dead?

And the events
Of Boston’s bloody marathon—is one
Hour’s bullet-riddled dying how it’s done?
Is that the penalty for killing three,
And ripping off our legs, as if a knee
Could run?

Can Tamerlan and Adam rob
So easily the State of its last job
Of punishing these crimes?

Perhaps. But not
The Lady Justice. No. In truth she got
Her verdict. Firm. And she is not so blind
That any criminal, by her consigned
To suffer suitably, could ever slip
Away through merest mortal stings, or skip
Her perfect rectitude through suicide.

Nor is her Ladyship so dignified
Among the cynical elite that she
Would bow to their philosophy,
And lose her right to judge—her sacred breath—
By not, at last, existing after death.

As if this bloody universe were one
Long empty triumph of injustice, done
By no one, leaping into nothingness
From dreams, where there is nothing to transgress.

No. Those last pistol pops in Sandy Hook
And Watertown pursued and overtook
Their prey, and echoed like a slamming door,
Heard on the other side of time, and tore
Away the fatal hope that they were dead.
They were not dead. Nor she, enflaming dread.
In her right hand the Lady held the chains,
And in her left the everlasting pains.

—John Piper, May 8, 2013

Winsome Words 5/1/13

“Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic.” – Pope-Emeritus Benedict XVI

What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Qur’an – James White on The Reformed Forum

Here is  helpful program on the Qur’an at Reformed Forum. I regularly listen to the program “Christ the Center” on their website. Christians need to buck up on their ability to have a meaningful conversation about Islam. It is part of our culture now and necessary for Gospel proclamation.

Winsome Words 4/30/13

For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
Nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt.     Alfred Lord Tennyson

Freedom Has Its Requirements

As they say, freedom isn’t free.

The times we are in require serious thinking about freedom, a freedom that moves beyond sheer libertinism. With freedom there comes a yoke, the yoke of virtue. Only good men can prosper from freedom and only good men can produce it.

Os Guinness is here interviewed by Al Mohler concerning his new book, A Free People’s Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future. Sloppy thinking about freedom gets many a Christian into a mess. Theologically, free grace cannot mean freedom to sin, yet many professing Christians so believe. They don’t quite say it like that, but that is the conclusion. Grace’s nature is not to produce holiness but simply forgiveness. What a paltry and ghostly, not to say ghastly, version of the Christian faith. As a pastor, sometimes I think I have heard it all, but I never cease to be amazed at the conclusion some church people draw from grace. They absolutely see no need for holiness nor the imperative of it. Holiness is simply not related in any direct way to the Gospel of grace.

It is not merely the simple who make such a slip. It comes in all kinds of sophisticated guises. I have previously expressed my concern about the New Calvinism and its flirtation with antinomianism, the cutting of the cord that links justification to sanctification as if salvation was complete in the act of imputation of the righteousness of Christ alone. This strain of Christianity is all too sterile and undramatic. It simply makes Christianity a state of affairs rather than a walk with God.

But, to my broader concern, at the political and cultural level I conclude that too many Americans think they are being good American simply by saying “live and let live.”  They face the same project Socrates faced in Greece in 400 BC, how to produce a man who is capable of sustaining freedom without collapsing society into a cauldron of libertinism. Freedom alone does not make us good and a good man is required for a good society. There must be something else. What is that something else?

This is what is on the mind and heart of Os Guinness. He is one of Evangelicalism’s leading cultural analysts who brings to the table a breadth of sources and a depth of intellect, as well as a heart that breathes the air of affection for the things of God. I recommend this program to you, as well as all the writings of this time tested one-man-think-tank.

Winsome Words 4/28/13

When the Christian trusts, he is happy; when he doubts, he is miserable. When the believer looks to his Master and relies upon him, he can sing; when he doubts his Master, he can only groan. What miserable wretches the most faithful Christians are when they once begin doubting and fearing! It is a trade I never like to meddle with, because it never pays the expenses, and never brings in any profit —the trade of doubting.  CH Spurgeon

Christian Bloggers Strangely Absent on the Marathon Bombers

I have more than a handful of Christian bloggers at my Netvibes aggregator. If I can, I spend significant time perusing the blogs for current topics and issues as well as to fuel my thinking on longer term subjects of interest I mean to preach or write about.

They are mostly missing in action when it comes to the Marathon bombers and Muslim terrorists. That is, except for those who are from the Reformed camp. This more muscular kind of theology is more ready than most to wrestle issues to the ground, take no prisoners and offer no apologies. Try on Albert Mohler for size. The topic hasn’t been concocted yet that he is not ready to comment upon.

But most of the bloggers I visit are strangely AWOL. There are many minefields on this subject, and I am sure they don’t want to land on one. That’s my best interpretation. But it does occur to me that their usual version of spirituality might not be up to the heavy lifting one has to lean into on this one. Or that they just aren’t interested.

I have been getting the usual “chipper” (as John Piper calls it) emails from Christian leaders as if nothing much has happened in our country, as if there has been no death and destruction, as if there is no war being waged, as if there is no penetrating evil at the door. How can this be? Where is the grief? Where is the sympathy for families and communities? Where is the concern for righteousness? Where is the real dealing with cloud and rain, bullets and bombs, civilization and barbarity?

Perhaps in such instances our communities need more than a bit of cheering up, or the promise that Jesus will meet your financial needs or land you that perfect home. Perhaps we need more than bromides and balms. Maybe we need to believe courageous things and do strong deeds. Maybe we need to raise the bar from comforting those who already have so much to calling brothers and sisters to the city’s walls to bring protection to the innocent and the vulnerable. And maybe our leaders have an instinct that either their version of Christianity has nothing to add at a time like this or that Christians have a right not to listen to their usual formulas.

It was at such a time as this that Augustine wrote The City of God, a muscular work that fortified the church while the Roman Empire gasped its last breath. In our time, too, barbarians are at the gate. Have you been reading about Dr. Kermit Gosnell as of late and the butchery he ran? For a long time you had to search hard to find his name in the media though a few courageous Christians who were pointing others to the breach in the walls of city his acts were making. Have you been reading about the US cultural giveaway that is handing a society long cultivated and  watered by the blood of patriots to the disinterested and even alien elements that have no intent to participate in our cultural project? Have you been reading about a culture drowning in drug abuse, child neglect, financial desperation, generational illiteracy and marriage disaster? The answer is not much, even if you are reading Christian blogs. There are no alarms sounding, no drums vibrating, no voices rising. Business as usual

Christians who do care about such things are being shamed by their own pastors and leaders into silence. They are told that we don’t want to be perceived as bigots, prejudiced, angry or anything else that will keep people from coming to our churches. Guess what!! People aren’t coming to our churches already. Why? It could be that the one thing we do not offer them is the beauty of holiness and righteousness and zeal that God’s healing purity roll across the globe. Maybe the culture needs to see a church disturbed by the viruses to which our culture has lost its immunity. Maybe people will want a righteous King who stands against the tide of evil and restores hope to cultural disintegration.

My guess is that many of our popular bloggers can’t get their minds and hearts around this one. They have not much to say, not much to offer. Because maybe our world is realizing that it needs more than hallmark card Christianity which is only good on birthdays and in funeral homes but cannot handle the darkness in between.

Winsome Words 4/15/13

“The paints of piety are like the withdrawal symptoms when an addict goes clean and sober.  God does not cause pain; sin causes pain.  But the juxtaposition of God and sin also causes pain.”

“The surgeon who does not cut out the cancer is not kind but cruel.  The God of mere kindness whom we long for, the Grandfather God who leaves us alone to enjoy ourselves rather than the Father God who constantly interrupts us and interferes with our lives is really not kind but cruel.  (He is also non-existent!)  The ‘cruel’ God of the Bible is a God of battles.  He fights a spiritual war for us against the demons of sin in us.  This God is not cruel but kind, as kind as he can possibly be.  The sword he comes to us with (Mt. 10:34) is a surgeon’s scalpel, and this Surgeon’s hands are covered with his own blood.”

             Peter Kreeft

Winsome Words 4/14/13

Blaise Pascal:

“It is true that there is something painful in beginning to practice piety, but this pain does not arise from the beginnings of piety within us, but from the impiety that is still there….  We only suffer in so far as our natural vice resists supernatural grace, but it would be very wrong to impute this violence to God, who draws us to him, instead of attributing it to the world which holds us back.  It is like a child snatched by its mother from the arms of robbers….  The cruellest war that God can wage on men in this life is to leave them without the war he came to bring.  ‘I came not to send peace but a sword,’ he said.  …Before his coming the world lived in false peace.”