God's Love and Worldly erotica

Voddie Baucham has a great chapter entitled "Learn to Love" in Family Driven Faith.  In it he explores the differences between sexual love, aka the Cupid syndrome, and true Christian love which can span any and all relationships.

One of the most helpful thoughts he communicates is related to being a father:

"Like most men, I went through a difficult season when my daughter began to walk into womanhood.  how do I express love to this young woman if I believe that love is a sensual force?  Is it best for me to stop hugging my daughter?...I had to learn how to be appropriate with my daughter without ceasing to be affectionate.  The first step was to get over the Greco-Roman myth of romantic love.  I had to view love biblically if I was going to be able to translate it from one relationship to another." (pg. 55-56)

Praying God’s Will

If you are looking for a summary of many of the things we have learned over the past months concerning Paul's prayer life.  Here is a handout that may serve you well.  I have been praying for 1 item a day for our church community and for my family.  May God's peace be with you.

Mohler on The Economist's Falling Birthrate Article

Here is a quote from Albert Mohler's editorial on the recent article in The Economist:

The bad news is that the girls who will give birth to the coming, larger generations have already been born. The good news is that they will want far fewer children than their mothers or grandmothers did.

Do they really mean what they say here? The fact that these girls have already been born is "bad news." The good news is that they are likely to want fewer children, offers the essay.

...In the end, the economic calculations and forecasts are less important than the moral concerns raised by this cover story. The assumption of the article seems to be that human beings are primarily economic agents, who should be moved into the workplace as soon as possible. This is a sadly deficient understanding of human nature and what it means to be human. The depreciation of family life (and specifically of motherhood) found in this essay reveal a great deal.

A society that celebrates a falling fertility rate is a society that is trading maternity wards for nursing homes. There is something very troubling and very sad about that exchange. Not least among the troubling questions is this: Just who will come visit and care for the aged when the aged outnumber all the rest?

Read the full article here.

Doug Stringer and relational equity

"The seed is always sown for the a future harvest...and the degree of return you get is based on the level of investment you make..."  This sounds like an economics lecture, but in truth I just returned from a wonderful gospel presentation by Doug Stringer, President of Turning Point Ministries, at Western Washington University's Faculty Forum.  

Wrestling with Leadership

I am reading Barna's newest book, Master Leaders because I wrestle with being a leader.  What I mean is that I really struggle with what it means to be a leader, a good leader who serves the Lord well.  I struggle with my own belief that leadership necessitates charisma, being a great motivational speaker and somehow magically being able to get others to go where you want them to go - all of which I know I am lacking or unable to do.  I struggle with believing that leadership is militaristic - top down and positional, and since I am a pastor of a church, people should follow me by default.  In short, I am a mess in terms of leadership.  I know it and I pray for God to guide me and lead me, change me and conform me, even that he would give me the spiritual gift of leadership.  I am reading about leadership because I am truly in need of help, and while I understand Jesus' ideas of servant leadership, I don't know what that practically looks like since I have never served under a servant leader.

Christians and the Muslim Fast of Ramadan

There are some interesting posts floating around the blog-o-sphere related to the recent Christianity Today article on whether Christians should celebrate the Muslim Fast of Ramadan. People seem clearly divided on the issue, however, I am most aligned with McDermott's response. He says,

"Christians may fast alongside Muslim friends, either as a gesture of friendship or in order to open dialogue, but not as part of Ramadan itself. Christian fasting is fundamentally different from Muslim fasting. Christians must make clear that their view of God, God's approach to us, and therefore fasting as part of our relationship to God, are each different from Muslim views." - Gerald McDermott, Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion, Roanoke College

Unlike Wilson who believes it is an expression of serving a false god or engaging in false worship, I would argue it is a point of connection, however like Joel Hunter, a point of connection is not a spiritual discipline, rather it is a social contact. If engaging in the fast opens up social contact that allows the truth of the gospel to be shared, then by all means do it. That said, I have some reservations that I am still working out in my own mind, based on my time as a missionary in Africa.

Many of the Mbunda people we worked with rose early each morning and prayed circling a tree, dropping flour as they walked. Over time I came to learn that this act was a ritual which left an offering for the spirits and the ancestor to whom they were praying. Would it then be appropriate to engage in this act from a desire to make social connection? Would I truly be able to share the gospel truth with my Mbunda brothers and sisters, or would I be setting the stage for a severe form of syncretism? These are the deeper questions that must be wrestled with and each individual believer must seek God's leading in the Word and in the Spirit.

I personally do not see a problem with engaging in the Fast, as part of making the connections, Jesus calls us to fast, but he doesn't call us to walk around trees and sprinkle meal offerings for spirits. Others may disagree, and I respect their conviction. Yet all must be sure that the gospel which is preached is the pure Gospel of God's complete forgiveness of sin and acceptance as his children apart from any spiritual discipline we engage or fail to engage. I think what is being hinted at in all the answers and posts is the deeper question of "What will Christianity look like in a Muslim culture?" of maybe better "Is arabic culture different from islamic religion?" These two questions are huge and there is alot of scholarly work out there on these problems. We would do well to wrestle with a corollary in our context "How much has american culture become associated with christian religion?"

The Tragedy of Syncretism - 2 Kings 17

I have been reflecting on 2 Kings 17 for about a week or two, and their are two verses that continue to jump out at me. The first is the final half of verse 15, "They imitated the nations around them although the Lord had ordered them, "Do not do as they do," and they did the things the Lord had forbidden them to." The second is the concluding verse of the chapter, "To this day their children and grandchildren continue to do as their fathers did."

These two verses, though seperated by the exiling of Israel and the Assyrian policy of resettling conquered lands are connected more deeply than we might care to believe. These verses expound the tragedy of syncretism, the tragedy of individuals, families and cultures that refuse to submit to God's ways, and ultimately God's Son. Everyone of us is hopelessly syncretistic, we try to meld the worship of God Almighty, Creator of the heavens and the earth, with our worship of the gods of the land: money, power, sex, beauty, success, violence, death...