Writing Is Strange Work

As many readers have noticed, over the last few months I haven’t posted many writings. The reason behind the short number of posts is that I’ve been working on a book on marriage. At this point, it’s called The Parable of The Unmerciful Marriage. Writing a book on marriage has proved to be a grueling task. Each day I reminded me how much I depend on God’s mercy in marriage and in writing. As I slug away at this project I’m planning on posting little bits and pieces of the book here for feedback.

Thanks again for reading.

Christopher

Peter Kreeft: Atheism Cheapens Life

“Atheism cheapens the world, cheapens us, and cheapens life. To see this, just compare atheist fiction with theistic fiction. Belief in God does not squash man; it raises man to a divine image. Heroism grows only in the light of a divine sun. Squash the ceilings down low and we stoop. In classical Greek drama, in the Bible, in Shakespeare, man is great because he breathes the air of the absolute. In Faulkner, Gide, Sartre, Camus, Beckett, and nine out of ten lesser twentieth century writers, man is ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’ because he is a cosmic orphan . . . Life in that world is a meaningless flicker of a candle for a few years between the cold and barren darkness of two eternal nights.…Atheism screws down the manhole covers on the great deeps and flattens the sky to a low ceiling.” [Peter Kreeft]

Communion: The Remembering Meal

Years ago I watched a movie called Memento. In the movie, the main character is a man whose tracking down the people he thinks killed his wife. There’s only one problem: the main character also suffers from short-term memory loss. So the audiences watches as the man wakes up each day and literally forgets everything…

Who he is…

What happened to his wife…

What his mission is…

At one point in the movie the main character decides to tattoo himself with clues in order to help him remember who he is and what happened to his wife. With each new tattoo that the man gives himself he gets closer and closer to solving the mystery of his wife’s murder. Although most of us don’t suffer physically from memory loss like the man in the movie, I’m convinced that you and I suffer from a far more insidious sickness.

Each morning we wake up we with spiritual amnesia.

We forget who we are.

We forget who God is.

We forget what He’s done for us.

We forget what our mission is.

Every single morning.

Lamenting: The Lost Art Of Honest Worship

Years ago I was surprised to discover that over a third of the Psalms in scripture are songs of lament–54 Psalms to be exact. The OCD part of me counted. Now, it doesn’t take a Bible scholar to realize that if a topic keeps popping up at every turn in scripture it must be important. So, I concluded that lamenting must somehow be an integral part of what it means to be Christian . After all, don’t we have a book of the Bible called Lamentations? Sadly, although scripture is replete with examples of people lamenting when they suffer, most Christians these days do not lament. Although questions like “Why? When? How long LORD?” are lodged in our hearts, most of us honestly cannot bring ourselves to bring these questions to God. What keeps us from lamenting when we experience pain, despair, and loss? I’ve chewed on that question for weeks now. Although I’m still unraveling this one a bit, I believe that we ought to lament for the following reasons.

First, and most importantly, Christians ought to lament because God is absolutely good and sovereign. Only someone who is fully convinced that God is sovereign over suffering can cry with the psalmist, “Give ear to my words, O LORD; consider my groaning“ (Ps 5:1 ESV). Notice that the psalmist groans to the LORD. He does not grumble. To lament is to groan in the Spirit not grumble in the flesh (Rom 8:22-23). Grumbling against God—like Israel did in the desert—is sinful, selfish, and to be avoided (cf. Num 11). Instead, we “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons” and groan outwardly in prayers and songs of lament (Rom 8:23 ESV).

C.S. Lewis On The Trinity

“[Christians] believe that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else. And that, by the way, is perhaps the most important difference between Christianity and all other religions: that in Christianity God is not an impersonal thing nor a static thing – not even just one person – but a dynamic pulsating activity, a life, a kind of drama, almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance … (The) pattern of this three-personal life is … the great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality. … And now, what does it all matter? It matters more than anything else in the world. The whole dance, or drama, or pattern of this three-Personal life is to be played out in each one of us: or (putting it the other way round) each one of us has got to enter that pattern, take his place in that dance. There is no other way to the happiness for which we were made.”

– CS Lewis from Mere Christianity

Trinity: Parenting That Gladdens God’s Heart

As a father, I marvel at the fact that Jesus Christ obeyed his father perfectly and meticulously throughout His earthly ministry. Most days my wife and I are blown away if our boys obey half of the stuff we say!

Don’t push the dog through the screen door!

Please stop getting undressed in public places!

Stop giving that ninja sword to your baby brother!

Some days my wife and I wonder if it would be easier to just record ourselves saying, “That’s a terrible idea. Stop it.” That way, we could strategically place these little recorders around our home and raise our digitally children without yelling at them. Sadly, I’m fairly sure this wouldn’t work. Our boys would learn to ignore the sound of digital dad and mom pleading for their obedience. There’s something deep down in the heart of children that needs to know that we love them. And I’m convinced that most of us are unaware of what the Trinity teaches us about loving our kids.

Trinity: I See But One Torch

One of the ways that the doctrine of the Trinity has affected my everyday life recently is by making my time in scripture more wonderful. What I mean by this is that I’m re-reading many passages lately and marveling at what they say about the Trinity. I don’t always come to scripture to marvel at who God is. Sometimes I simply read the Bible and walk away saying, “Hmmm. Interesting.” Introspection come more natural to me than adoration. However, lately I’ve read passages like the one below and simply said, “Wow! What an amazing God!”

“’There is no God but one.’ For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.” (1 Cor 8:4-6)

Trinity: An Essential, Everyday Doctrine

Given the title of this post, some may wonder why I have chosen to refer to the doctrine of the Trinity as both an essential and everyday doctrine. For some, I am sure nothing could seem more irrelevant to their daily lives that the doctrine of the Trinity. Supposing this matter of Christian doctrine to be dry, irrelevant, overly-complicated, and esoteric many believers today live and minister in ways that are unaffected by and incongruent with the truth of the Trinity. After all, what does this doctrine have to say about the way I raise my children, go to work, pay my bills, love my spouse, or pastor a congregation? Thankfully, I’m convinced the doctrine of the trinity has much to say about these and other everyday matters. Over the next few weeks, I will attempt to shine some light on how the Trinity ought to shape everyday living.

D.A. Carson On Drifting

“One of the most striking evidences of sinful human nature lies in the universal propensity for downward drift. In other words, it takes thought, resolve, energy, and effort to bring about reform. In the grace of God, sometimes human beings display such virtues. But where such virtues are absent, the drift is invariably toward compromise, comfort, indiscipline, sliding disobedience, and decay that advances, sometimes at a crawl and sometimes at a gallop, across generations.

People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”

D.A. Carson

Marriage: True Love Is Treasure Loss

For my wife Jules and I, we feel like hundreds of things vie for our attention each week. As parents of young boys, our boys are completely reliant on us for everything. We look forward to the day where everyone in our house can wipe their own bum…we’re just not there yet. As homeowners, we  spend the majority of our free time fixing things and cleaning up messes. As dog owners, we have to water and walk the creatures responsible for messing up the house. As followers of Christ, we strive to read the Bible as a family and pray every morning. The constant demands of married life make it difficult to decide which things can wait and which can’t.

However, when Jules and I have carved out time to seek God together over the years, one verse has emerged as God’s clarion call for our marriage–“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21) As God refocuses our attention on Jesus, Jules and I often repent together of good things that we’ve treasured too highly–like a clean house and well-behaved kiddos. As Jesus has become more precious to us in our marriage we’ve learned how to treasure one another more faithfully.