The New Testament is eternally young. It is you who are so old

Seventy years ago the great French writer Georges Bernanos published a little essay called “Sermon of an Agnostic on the Feast of St. Théresè.” Bernanos had a deep distrust for politics and an equally deep love for the Catholic Church. He could be brutally candid. He disliked both the right and the left. He also had a piercing sense of irony about the comfortable, the self-satisfied and the lukewarm who postured themselves as Catholic — whether they were laypeople or clergy.
In his essay he imagined “what any decent agnostic of average intelligence might say, if by some impossible chance the [pastor] were to let him stand awhile in the pulpit [on] the day consecrated to St. Théresè of Lisieux.”
“Dear brothers,” says the agnostic from the pulpit, “many unbelievers are not as hardened as you imagine . . . [But when] we seek [Christ] now, in this world, it is you we find, and only you . . . It is you Christians who participate in divinity, as your liturgy proclaims; it is you ‘divine men’ who ever since [Christ's] ascension have been his representatives on earth. . . . You are the salt of the earth. [So if] the world loses its flavor, who is it I should blame? . . . The New Testament is eternally young. It is you who are so old . . . Because you do not live your faith, your faith has ceased to be a living thing.”

I’m so lonely

Christopher Hitchens relates Roman Catholic resurrection of Latin Mass to anti-semitism

Htichens is not only an atheist (and an entertaining one at that) but a proponent that those who practice religion do not deserve respect. They are dangerous and anti-Enlightenment. He is acutely aware of the “goings on” in our religious communities and makes connections that are not at the first obvious and should make us pause once they are raised. Here is his newest article from Newsweek, Jan 31, 2009

Here’s your copy of the federal budget

Here it is.

Today’s Quote 2/27/09

“Maybe the greatest threat to the church is not heresy, not dissent, not secularism, not even moral relativism, but this sanitized, feel-good, boutique, therapeutic spirituality that makes no demands, calls for no sacrifice, asks for no conversion, entails no battle against sin, but only soothes and affirms.” – Archbishop Timothy Dolan – newly named Archbishop of New York

While 80 percent of the employees of private schools are teachers, only half the employees of public schools are.

Just thinking about how all the new money that is supposed to reflect a higher commitment to education is going to be spent. The beasts between the money and the child are the school staff who must get their food first. As one person has said, “Thanks to the hard work of thousands of government workers at the Department of Education and well-paid teachers’ union employees, American schoolchildren perform worse on education tests for every year they spend in a public school. It turns out that being in U.S. public schools has the same effect on people as hanging around Paris Hilton does.”

“Finally Alive” by John Piper

I am awaiting my copy of Piper’s new book. It is a treatise on the biblical teaching on regeneration, the new birth. It is timely. Along with the questioning of the meaning of justification by faith by evangelicals we would expect there to be some reconfiguration of the doctrine of the new birth. There are some truths that come in pairs. This is one of them.

Afer my many years in ministry, I have come to believe that the constant teaching on the theme of the new birth is both a path and a curb. It is the path in that the church is to be made up of those who profess an awakening in Christ that can only be described as “new.” If there is no new, rightly defined, what is conversion? If there is no new, there is no essential difference between simply being religious and being awakened because of a new and heavenly nature planted within us. Of course, being awakened brings with a host of other companions – new zeal for holiness, humility, a new ability to be wounded in our spirits and able to grieve over our sin, love for God’s Word, a teachable spirit, a weaning away from love for and dependence on the values of this world, a hope of heaven and an eagerness for Christ’s glory, etc. New birth is the only way to enter the kingdom of God, according to Jesus. This is the path. There is no other. The fundamentalists get this. Us evangelicals tend to equivocate and soften the edges of this teaching.

The teaching of the new birth is also a curb. It makes a distinction between the mere religionists who in some sense believe and are kindly disposed to religion (and who would never question another person’s religious convictions) but have no real taste for the excellency of Christ nor desire to live wholly unto Him. I have found that the church can attract these in buckets. If the music is good, the preaching interesting, the facilities up-to-date and the nursery and children’s programs are safe and well-run, they will come and never wholly let on that there is, in fact, a deep divide between their experience and desires and what the church seeks to be true for its people. I have always been stunned by the numbers of faithful church attenders who are good people, as we count good, but have no problem with cohabitation, homosexuality, divorce and remarriage (multiple times), a dismissive attitude toward the unique authority of the Bible, and any number of other matters. The teaching of the new birth makes a distinction between the broad way that leads to death and the narrow way that leads to life. If this difference is clouded, the church can fill up with those who have no experimental knowledge of Jesus.

But it is a curb in another sense. It keeps in the way those who do love Him but can become sentimental in their affections and fail to make the true distinction between what it means to be in Christ and outside of Christ. This weakens their zeal, waters down their commitments, and exposes them to constant pressure, even in church itself, to cool their own spiritual passions for they are surrounded by many whose own coals of spiritual fire have grown cold, smoky and cloudy.

I have recommitted myself to a new zeal for teaching the new birth in a manner that it puts this “Jesus truth” at the center of my ministry. At times I have given the benefit of the doubt, as charity so disposes us. But I have often done so not to the blessing of the hearer but to his hurt and to the hurt of the community of the gathered church.