Rhino Hide, Calloused Knees and a Flinty Face (2006)

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There is a survey going around the blogosphere right now asking people to name the twenty books that have been most influential on them theologically. I tend to avoid answering these questionaires, or meme's as they are sometimes called. The irony is that I almost always read the ones that appear on the blogs I frequent. I like the fact that they usually reveal something about the person answering them. I did think about what twenty books would be on my list.

I did not read much theology, per se, during the earliest days of my Christian life. However, I did focus on a few streams of thought that helped me immensely. I read a number of missionary biographies. I read a fair amount of material about persecuted Christians and martyrs. I also read quite a bit about prayer.

I know, the suspense is killing you. What books were so formative in my early Christian life? Let me tell you what concentrating on those themes did for me instead.

I realized that Christianity was far more than just going to Bible studies and prayer meetings, singing praise songs and trying not to lust after the barely-clothed co-eds at the dining hall. I saw that the missionaries and martyrs I was reading about had offered themselves in toto to the Lord and the world. I knew that I would never be worthy to carry their jock straps, but a kid could dream, couldn't he?

Something resonated in me when I read about these Christians from past decades and centuries. What I was reading in the Scriptures certainly confirmed what I was reading in these books. The combination of the two provided an alternate witness for living out the Christian faith.

I saw an unflagging determination to preach the Gospel no matter what the monetary, physical or relational costs. Men saw their wives and children die. Women watched their husbands carried off to jail or to death. Children watched their parents invest everything into other people, only to be rejected and cast aside. These people were at war and had a Spirit-inspired tatoo on their soul that said "Faithful unto death."

John the Baptist, the Apostle Paul, the Prophets Elijah and Ezekiel. These were men. They were not the melt-in-your-mouth, milk-toasty, self-consumed wusses that dotted the landscape of collegiate Evangelical fellowships (I include myself in that number). I was no better than the people around me. I guess a difference between my compadres and most of the religious folks we knew was that we saw our poverty and wanted to try and attempt something better.

Now, there is something to be said about the seasoning and mellowing that takes place as we grow older. I certainly heard plenty about that when I was attempting to set myself on fire for Jesus (metaphorically speaking, of course). The problem with much of that unwanted counsel was that I didn't want to end up like the people who had their arms around my shoulders and were speaking so condescendingly about my zeal. To be honest, there is still something in me that doesn't want to end up like that.

I guess I will always be a bit of a radical. I love what seminary did for me. I think that it helped inform and direct the passions that the Lord has tried to give me. I don't think I am on a different path that I have been walking since my baptism in the spring of 1991. Those stories of preaching missionaries and praying martyrs continue to be a part of who I am. I still see that Christianity has a militancy about it. There is a war to be waged. It is fought with ideas. It is fought with love. It is fought by our witness to the Gospel in word AND deed.

Propers for Trinity 21

Joy and Violence (2006)

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The world is not a nice place. Since the first brothers were separated over religion, and one murdered the other, blood has wet the ground and fertilized seeds of violence. Strife, from domestic disquietude to war between nations, dominates the landscape and threatens to engulf us all.

The world is full of beauty. Every day babies are born to parents who will do their best to love them. Blushing brides dress in white gowns and travel down center aisles to be wed to nervous, fidgety grooms. People gather at tables and eat fried chicken together. In the sharing of food there is often the sharing of joy, whether the fare is scanty or bountiful.

How the heck do we live with this constant tension?

I read the CS Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia during a difficult time in my life. Every day during that period I was torn over my decision to leave Pentecostalism. I had put all of my religious eggs in that one, tongue-speaking basket. I had made the decision to leave. It was simply a matter of extricating myself from the local church that I had attended for four years. There was nothing simple about it.

Over a two-week period I would encounter such beauty, delight and joy in the pages of Lewis’s magical stories. I entered into the world that he created and found that it mirrored some of the best and worst of the world as I knew it. Lewis found the tension between joy and violence and rode it all the way through those seven books.

I have no evidence for the following assertion other than my own reading, observations and reflections upon what I know of the world and the people who live in it. I believe that we are determined to find something good in the world no matter how awful our surroundings. People who despair of all goodness have nothing left to them but suicide or some kind of practical zombie-ism.

I have read books about persecuted Christians that have made me sick to my stomach in the face of how evil man can be to other men. In those books I met, as Richard Wurmbrand wrote, truly joyful Christians. Somehow some of those men and women were able to touch the joy of the Lord in the midst of their horror. That became their sustaining strength.

There is going to be an incomparable feast at the end of time. At that time all tears and suffering will be done away. There will be only joy. There will be only truth, beauty and goodness. There will be only love between God and his people, all who sought him truly, however failing and clumsy their responses to his voice and efforts to obey.

Before that feast God is going to meet violence with violence. He is going to kick in the teeth of everyone who rejected his goodness and trampled upon the image of God in their fellow man by such evil means as the murder of unborn children or the imprisonment and torture of the innocent. Things will go badly for those folks, and that forever.

Propers for Trinity 20

Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band

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It is incumbent upon me to share these concert clips with you. I missed The Big Damn Band when they were in Clarksdale, MS this summer before I moved to Austin. I originally heard about them from Luther Punk. They are right up my alley.

Below are You Tube links to portions of one of their live shows (Indy, IN - the Patio, November 2005). They have plenty more stuff on You Tube, just do a search. You might hear a profanity or two from the crowd; you've been warned.

Enjoy.

Part 1 (skip to 2:55 in video)
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Here's their mySpace and website.

Why We Do and Don't Do What We Do and Don't Do (2006)

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God's will is not arbitrary. His will is utterly consonant with his essence. God is good. God is not evil. Therefore, do good and refrain from evil. God is love. Therefore, love of God and neighbor are the highest commands that we have to fulfill.

Sometimes the Church does not do a good job explaining the reasonableness, the goodness, the healthiness and the beauty of God's commands to itself or to the world. Our exhortations and prohibitions lack context and substance. We are perceived as stern and moralistic, without charity or understanding of the nuances and complexities of life. Sometimes that is the fault of the mute or mumbling Church. Sometimes it is the fault of worldlings who have have their fingers (or earbuds) stuck in their ears.

We do not lie because of our necessary connection one to another, not because of some arbitrary rule. We do not lie because we are created in the image of God, who is the Truth. We do not steal for the same reason. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are a fellowship of holy, self-giving love. Thievery does not exist in that fellowship.

We speak certain words in a certain way because of the effects of our words on our hearers. Everything that would hinder kind relations between those around us is to be put away. When one transgresses against another we are either to request or offer forgiveness. Self-offering is the way of the Trinity. Therefore, this is the way of those who are created and redeemed in the image of the Trinity.

Think of all the sick people whom Jesus healed. He did this as evidence of his authority to forgive the sins of every person. Healing, despite what some people teach, is not "in the atonement," that is, it is not promised in every circumstance before the final resurrection. People will continue to get sick and die until Jesus returns. Thankfully, some of them will be healed. Nevertheless, all of us will die.

In Jesus, all people will be resurrected. Those who look to him will be resurrected to eternal life. Those who turn away from him will be resurrected to eternal damnation. At that time, those who are resurrected to life will be finally healed and glorified, never to suffer again. The one who forgives us of our sins now will deliver us from death then.

As we walk through life we are in a process of transformation. God is committed to filling us will all goodness and ridding us of every shadow and scent of evil. It is a long road back for many of us. Do not despair. We have the Father's seal upon us. We are his and he is ours. The Holy Spirit abides in us so that we may be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. We have the communion of the saints with whom to share our tragedies, tribulations and triumphs. Take heart.

"O GOD, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee; Mercifully grant that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

Propers for Trinity 19

Fr. Jonathan Tobias on Calling

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"In each Apostolic ministry, the Gospel is new, but it is the same. Only prophets and apostles can say what Paul said: “God separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace,” just as Jeremiah said these words centuries before (Jeremiah 1.5). God calls only to the apostleship: He does not “call” to worldly careers. One can be a doctor, a farmer, a teacher or even a lawyer according to one’s own decision-making and planning: but the Orthodox Apostleship is a matter of Divine Economy, and the Sovereign ordering of salvation history.

"God called Peter and Andrew, James and John, from the fishing nets to the fishing of men. God called Paul from wreaking destruction on the Church to bringing the Church to wholeness and peace. He calls you and me to theosis and communion: and that is His will for us, pure and simple. It does no good to ask whether He wants you to be an analyst or actuary, to live in Pittsburgh or in the Mojave. What God wants is clear as spring water, and needs no augury (or haruspication): what He wants, what He wills, is Christlikeness in the Here and Now, nothing less, nothing easier, nowhere else, no one else."

From here

I have known many people who struggle with the issue of "calling." They want God to tell them what to do with their lives. I believe that this posture often works a paralysis in good people and a presumption in others. "Love God and do what you will."

Love As Tolerance (2006)

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So it comes down to this. (I try not to be an alarmist, an apocalyptist or a Chicken Little. I used to hold the return of Christ over people’s heads as a threat. No more. However, don’t kid yourself, you want to be on his right side when he makes his glorious appearance.) We live in crisis times.

I guess that could be said of many times in the history of God’s people, before and since the advent of Christ. What makes the crisis of our times what it is? Why are our times troubled?

We have redefined love as tolerance.

We have declared judgment to be the unpardonable sin.

We have rendered debate impossible.

I am not simply talking about the treatment we receive from the media or the pagan on the street. I am not even simply thinking about the talking past one another that passes for dialogue between conservatives and liberals (or whatever labels are currently in vogue). Such crippling and enervating inertia (or, more accurately, degeneration) is pandemic among people who believe the Creeds, the Scriptures and the Church. The message is clear: "Don’t you dare say anything negative during fellowship hour on Sunday morning."

How can we go about preaching the kingdom of God when we cannot talk to people about right and wrong, good and evil, sin and righteousness, heaven and hell? Public responses to the prophetic speech of the Church, and the too-present caricatures of that speech, are shot through with logical fallacies, almost without exception. We are working like Sisyphus to even get a fair hearing.

OK, so the godless revisionists, however sincere and insane they may be, are not the inheritors of the faith once delivered to the saints. They do not show the world what it means to follow the one who said “if any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” “If a man would seek to gain his life, he will lose it. If a man will lose his life for my sake, he will find it.”

I cannot bleed for a bloodless religion. A faith with no crucifixion does not inspire me. I won’t order my life after such a soft way. If your religion isn’t worth dying for, it’s not worth living for, either.

But what about us?

Love lays down its life for the other. Love respects the God-given varieties witnessed amongst all people. Love tells the truth, both by describing reality and declaring the condemnation that rests on what is against reality. Love suffers long.

For the sake of the world we cannot give up. There are good things happening. The Church is not dead. There is still hope for the world. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness neither understands nor overcomes it.

"LORD, we beseech thee, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil; and with pure hearts and minds to follow thee, the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

Propers for Trinity 18

When You're A Simple Man It's Not Hard to Have a Great Day

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Going to the public library to pay overdue fines - $3

Browsing the library book sale shelves - 15 minutes

Adding titles by Kierkegaard and Flannery O'Connor to your library for $2 - Priceless