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Love and Technology and Immigration
Check out this paragraph from a comment posted to a popular blog, on the issue of immigration and Americans who fear for their communities:
We (as in, human beings in the 21st century) are probably having a tougher time assimilating people into our communities than we have in the past because of our epidemic of loneliness and isolation. If we never physically walk over to speak with our neighbors or spend time with them in person, we can’t begin to understand them, or their cultural symbols, or even begin to assess their moral character or hope to influence it for the better. And we all know at least one big reason why: we spend WAY too much time behind our TV’s, computers, and smartphones.
This is interesting on two levels.
First, it connects two things that most people probably don’t connect in all these heated discussions everyone’s having:
- Personal technology use habits, and
- Ability to deal with the changing nature of the country and many neighborhoods.
I mean, imagine if someone was complaining about a new family that moved into their neighborhood, and you asked them, “How much time do you spend watching TV, gaming, or looking at your phone?” I think most people would assume that you had just changed the subject. But no, the writer of that paragraph has pointed out a very real connection, and pointed indirectly at another one. Technology use is most definitely driving this “epidemic of loneliness and isolation,” and in turn, as more and more of us simply get home from work or school and turn to a screen for the rest of our waking hours, that creates a dynamic in which people stay indoors and never meet their (physical) neighbors, and therefore come to see the people they live near as strangers and potential threats. All of this is (to quote one former Facebook exec) “ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”
What if all the fear and anxiety (on display in many of these discussions about immigration) is made exponentially worse by Americans‘ own bad habits–our absolute addiction to entertainment and mindless time-wasting whenever we’re not on some clock? What if the problem has as much to do with people who’ve been living in America for years or generations as it does with anyone trying to get here for the first time?
More importantly, for Christians, is the need to remember that neighbor-love is a core teaching of Jesus. And, when he was asked to explain who counted as a neighbor, he told a story involving a people from groups who feared, loathed, and mistrusted each other (Jews and Samaritans). So as followers of Jesus, we know that we do not have the option to simply fear and wall out people who are unfamiliar to us. Especially people in need.
…Which brings us to all the way around to the connection made in the comment above. What if this is just one more reason we need to examine our personal use of entertainment and technology?
If we take it to the Lord in prayer, would he tell us that the way we use screens is directly affecting our ability to love our neighbor?
Would he tell us that technology is standing in the way of keeping his commands?
“If I speak now…”
A friend just passed along the website for this movie. I’ve never read the book it’s based on, but I have read Richard Wurmbrand’s other account of his life, In God’s Underground. It is one of the most moving and profound books I’ve ever read. The movie looks to be just as powerful, but of course, read a book about if you need to choose one or the other. Nevertheless, check out these trailers. The second ends with one of the most courageous and powerful lines I’ve ever read (maybe, that was ever spoken…?).
From the book:
In 1945 a ‘Congress of Cults’ was called in the Rumanian Parliament building, with 4,000 representatives of the clergy filling the seats. Bishops, priests, pastors, rabbis, mullahs applauded as it was announced that Comrade Stalin (whose vast picture hung on the wall) was patron of the congress–they preferred not to remember that he was at the same time president of the World Atheists’ Organization. The trembling old Patriarch Nicodim blessed the assembly and the Prime Minister, Groza, opened it. He told us that he was a priest’s son himself, and his lavish promises of support, echoed by other personages who followed him, were appreciatively cheered.
One of the chief Orthodox bishops said in reply that in the past many political rivulets had entered the great river of his church–green, blue, tri-coloured–and he welcomed the prospect that a red one should join it, too. One leader after another, Calvinist, Lutheran, the Chief Rabbi, rose in turn to speak. All expressed willingness to co-operate with the Communists. My wife, beside me, could bear no more. She said, ‘Go and wash this shame from the face of Christ!’
‘If I do, you’ll lose your husband,’ I replied.
‘I don’t need a coward. Go and do it!’ Sabina said.
Promoting health or throwing fire.
Check out these insights by Bruce Waltke, on Proverbs 10:11, a verse that includes this nugget:
“The mouth of the righteous is a well of life.”
Waltke observes:
The dependence of life on water is experienced existentially all over the earth, especially in the ancient Near East, where it is in short supply. Flowing well water is particularly precious, and people gather around it. The open, benevolent speech of the righteous is just as necessary for a community, offering everyone abundant life–temporal, intellectual, moral, and spiritual. The right word, spoken at the right time and in the right way, supports or corrects a community in a way that promotes its life. (The Book of Proverbs, p. 460-461)
He continues, “A community gathers around the open speech of the unselfish person in order to live…”
These thoughts are also connected to Proverbs 10:21: “The lips of the righteous feed many.”
What an opportunity is held out to us here. If we will pursue what God calls righteousness, we have the opportunity to have mouths that dispense life–things people can feed on–to the community of believers. Doesn’t our community need more and more of this?
And it reminds me of the counter examples in Proverbs, like 26:18-19 — “Like a madman who throws firebrands, arrows, and death is the man who deceives his neighbor and says, ‘I am only joking!'”
Or 10:14–“The mouth of a fool brings ruin near.”
Or 12:18– “There is one who speaks like the piercings of a sword, But the tongue of the wise promotes health.”
Again, it seems like a choice and an opportunity are being held out to us here. What do I want my words to do? Specifically, what do I want them to do in the Christian community? Do I want them, like sword thrusts, to cut people down? Do I want them, when I have cut enough people down, to bring ruin (!) near for the community of Christ I’m a part of? Or, conversely, do I want them to promote healing…and feed many…and be a source of life people can gather around like a fountain?
Important, life-giving, good things to think about here.
Icepocalypse. Meeting cancelled tonight.
Hey everyone we hate to do it… but… seems like the ice is gonna be legit so… We’re cancelling tonight’s meeting.
Maybe take the evening and read 1 Corinthians 7, where we would have been tonight, and will be (Lord willing) next week. If you do, look for this thread: what is REALLY Paul’s concern–the main thing the Holy Spirit is focusing on on all the talk of marriage and singeleness and other circumstances? What are we directed to think about, regardless?
For those of you heading back to school before next Monday–may the Lord be with you. Stay safe tonight, everyone.
A Hymn for Christmas Night
By H.R. Bramley:
The great God of Heaven is come down to earth,
His mother a virgin, and sinless His birth;
The Father eternal His Father alone:
He sleeps in the manger; He reigns on the throne.
Then let us adore Him, and praise His great love:
To save us poor sinners He came from above.
A babe on the breast of a maiden He lies,
Yet sits with the Father on high in the skies;
Before Him their faces the seraphim hide,
While Joseph stands waiting, unscared, by His side.
Lo! here is Emmanuel, here is the Child,
The Son that was promised to Mary so mild;
Whose power and dominion shall ever increase,
The Prince that shall rule o’er a kingdom of peace.
The wonderful Counselor, boundless in might,
The Father’s own image, the beam of His light;
Behold Him now wearing the likeness of man,
Weak, helpless, and speechless, in measure a span.
O wonder of wonders, which none can unfold:
The Ancient of Days is an hour or two old;
The Maker of all things is made of the earth,
Man is worshipped by angels, and God comes to birth:
The word in the bliss of the Godhead remains,
Yet in flesh comes to suffer the keenest of pains;
He is that He was, and forever shall be,
But becomes that He was not, for you and for me.
Then let us adore Him, and praise His great love:
To save us poor sinners He came from above.
A Perfect Last-Second Gift Idea
Here’s Fred Sanders, with a perfect last second gift idea for you. These are at the bookstore…while they last.
A friend recently gave me a copy of this new devotional book, Meditations on the Trinity: Beauty, Mystery, and Glory in the Life of God, by A.W. Tozer.
W. Tozer (1897-1963) wrote a lot of books, but if you’re a fan, you’re probably thinking, “He never wrote a book called Meditations on the Trinity!” And you’re right. This is a book that culls exactly 100 selections on the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit from about 25 different A.W. Tozer books, and brings them together in one beautifully-produced volume.
Flip open to any page and you’ll find that characteristic Tozer tone of voice which few devotional writers manage to achieve: theological depth, spiritual warmth, and plain simplicity:
On God’s nature:
What a broad world to roam in, what a sea to swim in is this God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is eternal. He antedates time and is wholly independent of it. Time began in Him and will end in Him. To it He pays no tribute and from it He suffers no change.
On the incarnation:
We can surely know this, at least: that the Incarnation required no compromise of deity. Let us always remember that when God became incarnate there was no compromise on God’s part… He remained ever God and everything else remained not God.The gulf still existed even after Jesus Christ had become man and had dwelt among us.
Again:
When you think about Jesus, you have to think twice. You have to think of His humanity and His deity. He said a lot of things that made it sound as if He wasn’t God. He said other things that made it sound as if He wasn’t human… but the fact is, He is both.
On informed faith:
Because the heart of the Christian life is admittedly faith in a person, Jesus Christ the Lord, it has been relatively easy for some to press this out of all proportion and teach that faith in the person of Christ is all that matters. Who Jesus is matters not, who His Father was, whether Jesus is God or man or both… these things are not important, say the no-creed advocates. …What is overlooked here is that the conflict of Christ with the Pharisees was over the question of who He was. To believe on Christ savingly means to believe the right things about Christ. There is no escaping this.
On the atonement:
The Scriptures never represent the persons of the Trinity as opposed to or in disagreement with each other. The Holy Three have ever been and ever will forever be one in essence, in love, in purpose. We have been redeemed not by one person of the Trinity putting Himself against another, but by the three persons working in the ancient and glorious harmony of the Godhead.
On the Holy Spirit:
It would help us if we could remember that the Spirit is Himself God, the very nature of the Godhead subsisting in a form that can impart itself to our consciousness. We know only as much of the other persons of the Trinity as He reveals to us. It is His light upon the face of Christ, which enables us to know Him. It is His light within us, which enables us to understand the Scriptures.
On God:
Christianity, the great church, has for centuries lived on the character of God. But in recent times there has been a loss suffered. We’ve suffered the loss of that high concept of God, and the concept of God handled by the average gospel church now is so low as to be unworthy of God and a disgrace to the church. It is by neglect, degenerate error, and spiritual blindness that some are saying God is their ‘pardner’ or ‘the man upstairs.’
On old-fashioned Trinitarianism:
God love Himself –the Father loves the Son, the Son loves the Father, and the Son and the Father love the Holy Spirit. They understood this in the olden times, when men were thinkers instead of imitators and they thought within the confines of the Bible.
There are about 300 pages of that sort of stuff in Meditations on the Trinity, and the book is physically designed to be an attractive object: It’s a compact volume in bonded leather, comes in its own box, has a placeholder ribbon, and the pages are printed in two colors (black text with decorative yellow accents and endpapers).
It’s hard to talk about the triune God in easy words and short sentences; it’s hard to keep the ideas clear and simple while speaking about the boundless depths of mystery that we are dealing with in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Tozer had a remarkable talent for keeping things simple without dumbing things down. I admit that not every page in this book is entirely satisfactory to my standards of theological precision (Tozer’s a little fast and loose with some of his Christological distinctions), but all of them are capable of being read charitably if you give Tozer the benefit of the doubt and admit that he’s carrying out a remarkable task remarkably well.
We need more people out there teaching the Trinity in a way that connects to the young, the uneducated, the busy, and the afflicted. Tozer has the perfect tone of voice, and Moody editor Kevin Emmert (though you have to read the very tiny print at the front to find any name but Tozer’s on this book) has done a great service by combing through 25 books to pull together this little beauty.
Christians and Haters (Lessons from 1800 years ago)
Here’s another excellent post by Dr. Michael Kruger, offering (as always) some important historical perspective to our situation, as we move forward into the future.
As you now know, my book on the second century has just been released in the UK: Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church (SPCK, 2017). It will be released in the US with IVP Academic in the Spring.
Since it has been released, folks have been asking how this book connects to the modern church. In other words, can we learn anything from the Christians of the second century that may help us in our current cultural moment? Absolutely. Here are a few lessons to consider.
1. Second-century Christians were regarded as “haters.” One might think the small size of the early Christian movement would allow it to be overlooked or ignored. But this is not what happened. On the contrary, the Roman government noticed Christians and didn’t like what they saw. Christians were seen as offensive, rude, peculiar, and a threat to a stable Roman society. Consequently, they suffered significant political persecution (arrested, thrown in jail, sometimes martyred).
Why were Christians viewed this way? Because of their refusal to worship the Roman gods. Christians were insistent that only Jesus was worthy of worship. And to not worship the Roman gods was to run the risk of invoking their displeasure. So, Christians were viewed as reckless and callous to their fellow man. They were called “haters of humanity” (Tacitus, Annals 15.44).
Put bluntly, it was the exclusivity of Christianity that was made it so offensive. The same is true today.
2. Second-century Christians were regarded as intellectually deficient. In addition to political persecution, the Christians suffered significant intellectual persecution. Christian doctrine was regarded as ridiculous, silly, and not worthy of the assent of the intellectual Roman elites. The likes of Lucian, Galen, Fronto, and Celsus offered scathing critiques of this “new” religion, mocking its books (the Gospels) as well as its founder (Jesus).
So, if you think the level of cultural ridicule Christians receive today is new, think again.
3. Second-century Christians were a textually-centered, “bookish” movement. In spite of the intellectual ridicule noted above, it is worth observing that second-century Christians were characterized by their distinctive commitment to the Scriptures as the basis for everything they did. They not only read these books, but they studied them in great detail, copied them in great numbers, and distributed them across great distances.
So dominant was the Christian commitment to their “books,” that even the critics took notice. Indeed, this is the reason that Christianity was often regarded more as a philosophy than a religion. In the ancient world, religions were not typically associated with written texts so directly. So, Christianity stood out in this regard (along with Judaism).
While some in the modern day will insist that Christians did not use or need the Scriptures in the earliest stages, the historical data says otherwise. Indeed, this “bookish” aspect of Christianity has been lost in some circles today. And this is one of the core elements that we need to recover.
In the end, these are three observations from the second century that have many implications for today. While prior generations of Christians might have enjoyed a time when the modern church was a lot like the church of the fourth and fifth centuries, the current generation of the church finds itself in a situation that looks a lot more like the second.
Thus, in order to engage with our modern world, perhaps we don’t need a new apologetic but an old one. A second-century one.
“It behaves just as he ordered it.”
Back in August I posted this introduction to the ancient Christian document known as “1 Clement”–
Sometime in the last few years of the first century or first few years of the second–in other words, within living memory of the Apostles–the leader of the church in Rome wrote a letter to the church in Corinth. It was the same church Paul wrote both of his New Testament letters to. The author’s name was Clement (of Rome), and the document has come down to us as 1 Clement. It’s one of the oldest Christian documents outside of the New Testament, and offers not only devotional depth, but some insight into the way Christians spoke and thought in those days. I recommend finding a copy of it and reading it.
Here’s a great passage from the letter (20:1 – 21:1-5) where Clement discusses the way God rules all of creation. It’s huge and profound–the kind of thing that inspires worship. And he ends with a serious charge too, one which we would do well to listen to. Enjoy…
The heavens move at his direction and obey him in peace. Day and night complete the course assigned by him, neither hindering the other. The sun and the moon and the choirs of stars circle in harmony within the courses assigned to them, according to his direction, without any deviation at all. The earth, bearing fruit in the proper seasons in fulfillment of his will, brings forth food full in abundance for both humans and beasts and all living things that dwell upon it without dissension and without altering anything he has decreed. Moreover, the incomprehensible depths of the abysses and the indescribable judgments of the underworld are constrained by the same ordinances. The basin of the boundless sea, gathered together by his creative action into its reservoirs, does not flow beyond the barriers surrounding it; instead it behaves just as he ordered it. For he said: “Thus far shall you come, and your waves shall break within you.” The ocean—impassable by humans—and the worlds beyond it are directed by the same ordinances of the Master. The seasons, spring and summer and autumn and winter, give way in succession, one to the other, in peace. The winds from the different quarters fulfill their ministry in the proper season without disturbance; the everflowing springs, created for enjoyment and health, give without fail their life-sustaining breasts to humankind. Even the smallest living things come together in harmony and peace. All these things the great Creator and Master of the universe ordered to exist in peace and harmony, thus doing good to all things, but especially abundantly to us who have taken refuge in his compassionate mercies through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the majesty forever and ever. Amen.
Take care, dear friends, lest his many benefits turn into a judgment upon all of us, as will happen if we fail to live worthily of him and to do harmoniously those things that are good and pleasing in his sight. For it says somewhere, “The Spirit of the Lord is a lamp searching the depths of the heart.” Let us realize how near he is, and that nothing escapes him, either of our thoughts or of the plans that we make. It is right, therefore, that we should not be deserters from his will. Let us offend foolish and senseless people, who exalt themselves and boast in the arrogance of their words, rather than God.
A prayer for the Holy Spirit
Here’s another awesome prayer/meditation from The Valley of Vision…
Spiritus Sanctus
O Holy Spirit,
As the sun is full of light,
the ocean full of water,
Heaven full of glory,
so may my heart be full of thee.
Vain are all divine purpose of love
and the redemption wrought by Jesus
except thou work within,
regenerating by thy power,
giving me eyes to see Jesus,
showing me the realities of the unseen world.
Give me thyself without measure,
as an unimpaired fountain,
as inexhaustible riches.
I bewail my coldness, poverty, emptiness,
Imperfect vision, languid service,
prayerless prayer, praiseless praises.
Suffer me not to grieve or resist thee.
Come as power,
to expel every rebel lust, to reign supreme and keep me thine;
Come as teacher,
leading me into all truth, filling me with all understanding;
Come as love,
that I may adore the Father, and love him as my all;
Come as joy,
to dwell in me, move in me, animate me;
Come as light,
illuminating the Scripture, molding me in its laws;
Come as sanctifier,
body, soul and spirit wholly thine;
Come as helper,
with strength to bless and keep, directing my every step;
Come as beautifier,
bringing order out of confusion, loveliness out of chaos.
Magnify to me thy glory by being magnified in me,
and make me redolent of thy fragrance.
Death Lost its Power at Christmas
Hey everyone, the hiatus from the blog was unintentional. Trip to Croatia, etc. Join us tonight for our Young Adults study, as usual!
But for today, here’s the ancient Christian writer Athanasius, kicking off the Christmas season for us. It’s such a familiar time of year, that we can forget what a huge, mind-blowing fact Christmas celebrates–the incarnation of the Son of God. Consider…
For naturally, since the Word of God was above all, when He offered His own temple and bodily instrument as a substitute for the life of all, He fulfilled in death all that was required. Naturally also, through this union of the immortal Son of God with our human nature, all men were clothed with incorruption in the promise of the resurrection. For the solidarity of mankind is such that, by virtue of the Word’s indwelling in a single human body, the corruption which goes with death has lost its power over all.
You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all, the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death.