The only thing worse than falling into a spiritual valley is the conviction that one must always be on a spiritual mountaintop. Though the Bible is the very history of the ups and downs of God’s people, God’s people go on thinking themselves immune, and that something is terribly wrong if their passion and joy today is not at the same fever pitch it was on the day they came to faith.
There is, of course, a ditch on the other side of the road. We can grow complacent, our ardor having all the vitality of lukewarm water. But cooler than it once was can be a long way from lukewarm. We ought to be taking our spiritual temperature. We ought to pray for passion, joy and gratitude. What we have to watch out for is when the devil comes calling like some diabolical pusher offering us his spiritual uppers.
When we are dissatisfied, when we are looking for more, the devil is more than happy to offer us what we think we need, and keep us from what we truly need. The history of the church is littered with sundry strategies to cure the spiritual blah’s. After Constantine turned down the heat and Christianity became acceptable, it got flabby. So monasteries were invented. You leave the world behind, enter into your vows, and become a super-saint. Not long after universities popped up, with much the same goal. Eventually contemplative prayer forms and then revivals, camp meetings stoked sundry fires, leading us to the annual tacky-fad-of-the-day in the broad evangelical world.
Pietism, Methodism, quietism, whatever-ism, all of these seemed to offer to the “plateau-ed” Christian a means to get to the next level, to relight the fires, to receive a second blessing, to stand out from the crowd, to draw nearer to the living God. The motive has much to commend it, the means not so much. What all these have in common is that the Bible says not a word about them. They are, every one of them, man made, human inventions to lift us up to God. Which is why they simply do not work. The Bible offers a gospel-infused answer to our problem. We do not labor to draw closer to Him, to stoke the fires of our passion. Instead He draws near to us. He lifts us up. And He does these things through His appointed means.
If we would be closer to God, we must give heed to His Word. We must attend to the preaching of the Word. If we would be closer to God, we must sit at His table, and feast in His presence. If we would be closer to God, we must grow closer to those whom He indwells. If we would be closer to God we must cease trying to be a special kind of Christian, and start crying out “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.”
There are no special Christians, only a special Christ. We have no need to ask Him to give us more. We need only ask Him to help us see all that He has already given.
Thesis 44 We must practice a judgment of charity toward others.
“Judge not,” Jesus preached in His Sermon on the Mount, “lest you be judged” (Matthew 7:1). There are, typically, two reactions to this potent warning. Those outside the kingdom of God, despite refusing to bow the knee to Jesus, here cheer Him on. This is, without question, the favorite text in all the Bible amongst those who don’t heed the Bible. These folks find here a blanket condemnation of all judging in all circumstances.
Those inside the church, however, have a slightly more sophisticated understanding of the text. They, perhaps after having this verse used as a club by unbelievers against them, have enough smarts to know we’re being judged, and that rather harshly, by those fussing at us for judging them. We point out the hypocrisy of our unbelieving friends, and move on.
In both cases, I’m afraid, we miss the point. Jesus, contra those outside the church, is not telling us that we ought never to make any judgments. Jesus, contra those inside the church, is in fact saying something about judging. Refuting the unbeliever’s take on the passage may tell us what the text doesn’t mean, but it doesn’t tell us what it does mean. What is means, simply put, is that we can expect to be judged with the same level of care with which we make judgments. If, for instance, we rush to judgment, we can expect others to rush to judgment against us. If we mistake our subjective guesses of the motives of others as gospel truth, we can rest assured that others will confuse their guesses on our motives as gospel truth. Jesus is here calling us to judge, with both care, and with grace.
We judge with grace by not assuming the worst about others. We take our well developed skills at self-rationalization, and use them for good, for explaining in a gracious way the behavior of our neighbor. That is, when we snap at a friend, it’s because we’ve had a bad day. When friends snap at us, it is because they are horribly impious people who are lucky to have us for friends. What we ought to think instead is that we snap at our friends because we are the chief of sinners. Our friends snap at us because our sins would test the patient of a saint, because we are so aggravating.
The practice, of course, puts us in grave danger of being abused. Which is a good thing. When we remember that we are already unchangeably the children of God, when we remember that we are called to die to self, we are in a position to take chances like this. Our snapping neighbor may in fact be a big, fat, jerk, and we are making, in our hearts, excuses for his boorish behavior. The end result is still coals heaped upon our neighbors head (see Romans 12:20). This practice allows us, encourages us to rest in God’s strong right arm, to enter into battle confident that He has numbered our days, and is our strong tower. Not only that, it encourages others to practice a judgment of charity toward us, something we are sure to need before long.
Ad hominem may be the most common of all informal fallacies. We commit it when we reject an idea or an argument not on the basis of a flaw in that idea or argument but on the basis of a perceived flaw in the person making the argument. Ad hominem is Latin for “to the man” and we are committing the fallacy when our counter “arguments” are directed to the man rather than to the idea. If you say to me, “The moon is made of green cheese” and I respond, “No it’s not. Why should I believe you, when your mother wears army boots?” Note here that it matters not whether the original affirmation “The moon is made of green cheese” is true or not. Neither does it matter whether the accusation is true or not. Your mother’s boots have nothing to do with it.
Why then do people commit this fallacy so often? Because we’re terrible people who don’t like either losing an argument or actually engaging one. Ad hominem is a short cut. And because it works. Now, by works I don’t mean it answers the argument. But it will often silence the arguer.
Just last week I posted a tweet that ruffled a few feathers, asking if perhaps the increasingly public drift to the political left by evangelical leaders is not because their thinking has changed but that they were always left leaning but were afraid to reveal it as it would look like a betrayal of the unborn. It was a question, not an accusation. But it seems to have had some legs, bringing more response than anything I’ve ever tweeted. One person didn’t care for the insinuation, so he brought careful arguments to bear. Well no, that’s not what he did. Instead he posted, “It is always good when those who bring shame to the gospel throw stones.” That, friends, is an ad hominem. Unlike your mother’s footwear, the truth is that I do bring shame to the gospel. That reality, however, has no bearing on the truthfulness of what I said.
My accuser presumably posted his remark in an attempt to silence me. The implication seems to be, “People who bring shame to the gospel should not be ‘throwing stones.’” I’m supposed to blush, clutch my pearls and run for the hills never to be heard from again. And I would, were it not for Jesus. I can’t be shamed because I have no shame. I have no shame not because I’ve never earned it. I do that daily, like everyone else. I have no shame because He’s taken it all. Were I standing on my own goodness, my own reputation, I would flee with the speed of a thousand very fast things. But just as, in Christ I have no shame, in myself I have not a leg to stand on. Which means I can’t run if I wanted to.
It is important that we learn to stop using the ad hominem fallacy against those we’re arguing against. It demonstrates that we are plenty not so bright and more than enough not very nice. It is also important, however, that we learn to stop being felled by those who seek to use it against us. For such demonstrates that we are dim enough to think our reputation can withstand an attack and weak enough to think it matters.
The simplicity of God is a doctrine that provides a rather useful fence. The perfections of God are, of course, worthy of our excitement. Their infinity is, of course, staggering. But the simplicity of God is that place where these infinite perfections show themselves to be one, where the glorious colors come together in a blinding white. Whatever else we delightfully affirm about God, we must affirm that He is one.
It is the very point of the doctrine of simplicity, however, that we don’t diminish one attribute when we remember another. We have misunderstood simplicity if, as we wax rhapsodic over the love of God, we throw a wet blanket over the party by remembering, “Well, He is also a God of wrath, after all.” The wrath of God doesn’t restrain the love of God, nor does the love of God restrain His wrath. Rather, in a profound way, they are one and the same thing.
There are some fairly obvious ways that we see this. In Psalm 2 we see the wrath of God coming for a specific reason, because the kings of the earth will not kiss the Son. The love of the Son is what provokes the wrath of the Father. We see much the same thing on the road to Damascus, as Jesus accuses Saul, “Why dost thou persecute Me?” Christ’s loving union with the Bride brings wrath on Saul. And in turn, that wrath brings forth love as Saul becomes Paul, a part of the bride.
Love is universally loved. We who belong to the King rightly celebrate His love for us. But those outside the camp do not stay outside the camp because of a self-conscious rejection of love. Those who think the lost are lost because they have trouble accepting love have been accepting too many foolish bromides from pop psychologists. The very creatures that the lost create, in their rejection of the Creator, are characterized by love. One can safely finish the idolater’s sentence, when he begins, “Well, my god is a god of…” It’s love, every time. Have you ever heard someone object, when we tell them to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus, “Well, I’m repulsed by your God that forgives the repentant. My god is a god of raging, irrational fury.” No. Everyone loves love.
But while love is not diminished by wrath, a love that excludes wrath is not a biblical love. The love clamored for by the lost is a wrathless love. But the love they crave is just unknown. While there is, rightly understood, a universal love of God that includes even those who will be damned, this love is a simple love, one that includes all that God is. There is no wrathless love that comes from God.
The Bible tells us that God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. We find there what some theologians call “common grace.” God acts kindly to all men living. We all need to remember this. When we, or others, in trying to describe their particular anguish describe their situation as “a living hell,” they do not understand the patient love of God. Any suffering experienced on this earth, save for the passion of Christ, is a suffering mitigated by His love, a suffering that is less severe than what is due, a suffering less severe than hell. But even the most wicked among us do not live their earthly lives exclusively in agony. Some unbelieving mothers genuinely rejoice when blessed with a child. Sometimes unbelievers win the Super Bowl, and are genuinely happy about it. Even the heathen in the remotest, most desolate part of the world sometimes sit down to a favorite meal, and feel real joy in eating it. Common love is common, love, and real.
Common love, however, the universal love of God, cannot be separated from common wrath. Because God is one, a simple being, you cannot wrap your arms around His love and miss the wrath. The Lord our God, the Lord is One. For the wrath of God is revealed against all unrighteousness, including the unrighteousness of ingratitude. The common love of God is connected with the common wrath of God right here, where Paul tells us of all natural men, For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him…” (Romans 1:21a). Though the lost will receive the loving gifts of God, they will neither honor Him, nor thank Him, and so earn His eternal wrath.
Which is precisely as He planned it. God’s love is not only inseparable from His wrath, but it is equally bound together with His sovereignty. That is, when God sends the rain to the unjust, He does so knowing that the unjust will not honor Him, and will not be thankful. But this doesn’t frustrate God. First, He planned it that way. And second, He planned it that way because of one more connection between love and wrath- God loves His wrath. He delights to manifest the infinite perfection of His wrath just as much as His love, because they are one thing.
This, in turn, must inform how we look at the world around us. The problem with the broader culture, that place where they love love, isn’t that they’ve embraced part of the truth, the pleasant part, and that our job as sound Christians is to teach them the hard parts. Rather we have to understand that the love they love is no more love than the god they worship is God. They are wrong on all counts. And unless they embrace the true and living God, the God of love that is wrath, of wrath that is love, of both that are manifest sovereignly, they will perish. Biblical love requires that we tell the world that their love of their love will earn them only His wrath.
Neil Postman, in his delightful, albeit ominous, little book Amusing Ourselves to Death, draws an insightful comparison to two important dystopian novels. Utopian novels, of course, are those designed to show us edenic cultures. Dystopian novels show us hellish futures. The two Postman discusses are 1984 by George Orwell, and the slightly lesser known Brave New World, by Alduous Huxley. Both books alarm us, but in different ways. The citizens of 1984 are haunted and hunted by Big Brother, the embodiment of the statist dictator. Every moment of every day is both regimented and watched by the repressive state. In Brave New World, however, the citizens are in a certain sense not at all oppressed. They don’t live in fear of the state. They are enslaved more by the carrot of pleasure and entertainment while in 1984 they are enslaved by the stick of torture and the secret police. What if, Postman asks, we were all on our guard for 1984, but what snuck up on us was Brave New World?
Winston, the “hero” of 1984 works as a bureaucrat at the Ministry of Truth. He is both a censor and a revisionist historian. The past is changed to fit the needs of the regime, and truth is sent to burn up after being sent to the memory hole. One of his friends has a slightly different job- culling the nation’s dictionary. Here the goal isn’t merely to rid the book of outmoded words, but to rid the language of dangerous thoughts. By whittling the language down the state could whittle away the capacity of its citizens to even think in terms of freedom and liberty. Is it possible that all our communication conveniences in our so-called “Information Age” are, in a manner of speaking, an assault on language and liberty, but from the perspective and approach of Brave New World? Have we, with emails, tweets and texts 4gotn how 2 thnk? Have we entered a brave new world not with our fingers in our ears, but our thumbs on our keypads?
Postman argues persuasively that levels of discourse can certainly raise or fall, and that such may be the fruit of given technologies. His argument is that with the advent of television we ceased to be a word based culture and were rapidly becoming an image based culture. Images, as a medium, are much better than words at evoking emotions. They are much less effective than words at communicating abstract ideas. I recall coming to realize just how dumbed down our culture had become when a student in seminary. One of the key books we were assigned to read for our systematic theology course was The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin. I read both volumes, finding them rich, helpful, but by no means an easy and comfortable read. I was ashamed, however, to consider Calvin’s goal in writing this work- it was designed to be a primer, a basic introduction to the Christian faith for laypeople. And there I was not only reading it as a text in my seminary, but finding it among the more difficult books in the whole of my studies.
Perhaps stranger even than our growing ignorance, is our concomitant growing confidence in our wisdom. Instead of looking to the ancients as our betters, we seen them as hopelessly undereducated rubes. Reading the epistles in the Bible, however, ought to disabuse us of our foolish pride. We might be tempted to escape this conclusion by remembering our doctrine of inspiration. Paul, Peter, John, all the authors of all the epistles had some rather potent help along the way. When the omniscient God of heaven and earth is superintending your writing, you can certainly reach depths of wisdom that you might not have reached on your own. Communication, however, is a two way street. What we learn from reading the epistles is not just the brain power behind the writing of them, but the brain power behind the reading of them. Like Calvin’s Institutes, the New Testament epistles were written by and large for lay people, pew sitters, regular folk.
The readers of these letters, while they were certainly blessed to have pastors and teachers as we do, to help them understand, likely did not sit down over the course of a year or three to dissect these letters, word by word. They didn’t spend a month of Sundays on I Corinthians 1:1a, before daring to move on the next month to 1:1b. Instead they received these letters as letters. They understood them as letters. They submitted to them as letters.
As education gadfly John Taylor Gatto has wisely argued, we are being dumbed down by our own state school systems. That is 1984. But we are also dumbing ourselves down by refusing to sit, be still, and to read reasoned discourse that moves sequentially from one thought to the next, communicated in complete sentences. That is our Brave New World. Our calling then is not to live as the citizens under 1984. Nor should we see ourselves as the vapid consumers of Brave New World. Instead we are called to seek first a different kingdom. Instead we are to seek His righteousness. We find both in the Word of Him who is the Word. May we drink deeply of that Word, that we might walk rightly with that Word.
