There is a reason that Saint Augustine is considered the greatest mind the church produced in the first millennia after the ascension of Christ. The man was flat out brilliant, blazing theological trails like Daniel Boone. His writings continue to instruct and inform the church to our day. Just a few weeks ago I finished a project writing curriculum for classical school students on The City of God, a classic in any era. What may demonstrate his greatest genius, however, was the one book he no doubt wished he didn’t have to write.
Late in his life Augustine looked over the corpus of his work and went on to publish his “Retractions.” Here he catalogued the things he believed at life’s end that he had gotten wrong earlier in his life. In so doing he demonstrated what he had gotten right, a biblical embracing of humility. We all know ourselves well enough to know that we make mistakes. Yet we all hide from ourselves how sinful we are, because we don’t realize how far we are willing to go to cover our mistakes.
When your writing is published, it can often haunt you. It remains out there for people to read, even when you wish they wouldn’t. A decade or so ago I wrote a horribly muddled and inaccurate brief piece on women blogging. And the women, along with not a few men, blogged about what a doofus I was. They were right, and I was wrong. My second essay, acknowledging that reality, did not, of course, get spread out as far and wide as the first one. This is a perfectly natural consequence of my failure.
Still, some go to great lengths to try to cover their tracks. They erase old websites. They seek to nuance their previous views, spinning them into their current views. Others, far more strangely, go heavily on the attack against what they once believed, believing perhaps if they yell loudly enough now, people will not hear them back then.
I once had a fan on the internet. It was his habit to quote from me extensively, to praise my wisdom, to encourage others to drink deeply of that wisdom. While he was saying all these nice things about me, however, he was saying some not so nice things about friends of mine. I then published a brief piece pointing out to this fan where we disagreed. Suddenly, though nothing of what I had believed had changed, I became an enemy. No, I became THE enemy. This gentlemen wrote tens of thousands of words articulating just which hell hole I had apparently crawled out from. All of which is fine by me. The issue we disagreed on was a biggie for him. What surprised me was that there was no acknowledgment by this writer that he had once been foolish enough to be a fan. There was no apologizing to the folks he had encouraged to look my way, for giving them a bum steer.
In the end, that great African bishop Augustine showed the greater wisdom. One way to see if your commitment is more to the doctrine of total depravity, or more to acknowledging our own desperately wicked hearts is to see whether we spend more time confessing our own sins, or pointing out the sins of others. I know which one I do- I point out the sins of others. For that, I need to repent.
Dunamis Fellowship and Sovereign Grace Fellowship continue tonight our weekly Bible study at 7 eastern. Tonight is part five of our look at the Lord’s Prayer, Lord, Teach Us to Pray. All are welcome to attend at our home. You can even come early (6:15) and we’ll feed you a meal. You can also watch on Facebook Live, RC-Lisa Sproul. We hope you join us as we consider together the Lord’s Prayer.
No, not at all. One of the ways the ancient heresy of gnosticism continues to wreak havoc in our day is by encouraging us both to see the problem in things, and to see things as a problem. Consider greed. There is no question greed is a grievous sin, a sin to fear and to flee. The folly comes when we think greed grows in the fertile soil of having a lot. No, it grows out of the fertile soil of our own ingratitude. It may well be that a guy checking his Rolex watch driving a European sedan in his $3000 suit is greedy. It is just as likely, however, that the guy checking his Timex, riding the city bus in Goodwill sweats is greedy. By the way, most of us in between these two extremes, yeah, we’re greedy too.
We don’t, however, slay the evil beast greed by getting rid of stuff. The Timex, the bus pass and the hand-me-downs didn’t put a dent in the greed of the second guy. Greed is what happens when we live for the gifts rather than the Giver. It is the certain end of all those who seek their satisfaction in stuff.
The greedy, and remember that’s all of us to one damnable degree or another, are those who with parched throats race to the ocean’s shore and begin to drink. We can’t figure out why it won’t quench our thirst and determine to drink more. We gulp and we grasp, drowning ourselves in the very thing that is killing us. Stuff is never evil. Seeking satisfaction in stuff is always evil. What the stuff is doesn’t matter a bit.
The solution isn’t less stuff but more gratitude and more contentment. There is no virtue in either poverty or wealth. There is no need for shame or pride over what we have or what we don’t have. It’s true the Bible warns of the dangers that come with wealth. It’s also true it warns of the dangers that come with poverty. (Before you think you’re safe, you’d be wise to remember that taking in all the people across the globe and across time, you’re in the 1%.) It’s true the Bible reminds us that ultimately God is the owner of all things, and we are but stewards. It’s also true that that doesn’t mean everything belongs to the false god of the world, the state. It doesn’t mean I’m the steward of what He has placed under your care. Which does mean I should not sit in judgment. “If I had his money,” said every self-deluded person ever, “I’d spend it on the needs of others.”
Give thanks to Him for all He has placed under your care. Care for it. Always, however, find your peace, your joy, your contentment by looking through it to Him. Do not turn up your nose at His good gifts. Do not ever lose sight that He is the good gift.
The internet draws all kinds. It is a democratic forum that gives anyone with an ip address opportunity to address anyone willing to listen. Some on the internet, however, use their access to it to scold others for presuming to hold forth without holding an advanced degree. They seem to reason, “Why would you listen to the cogent and careful arguments of this layman steeped in the Word of God when you could listen to the obtuse, jargon laden pontifications of me, a professional who speaks academ-ease with ease?”
That said, there are others on the internet who think their ISP is the same as an advanced degree, that this idea they got in their head last night is more cogent than the labors of the Westminster Divines. Or, that their understanding of the Westminster Divines is surely more accurate than the aged professor who wrote his dissertation on Westminster and has been lecturing on it for decades.
Both of these groups have a problem that they share with everyone who manages to be in neither of these two groups, pride. It’s everywhere. While you’re scanning the landscape in agreement with me, don’t forget the mirror. One of the places, however, that pride turns its klieg lights on itself is among the young, reckless and reformed. When a young man, and sometimes a young woman, comes to embrace the doctrines of grace it seems all too often that they first gave away the practice of grace. We call this the “cage-stage,” when the newly Reformed is so zealous, so obnoxious, so ungracious that the rest of the Reformed and the non-Reformed form an alliance to try to cage the beast until he calms down. If he never calms down, he has reached thunder puppy stage.
What’s a thunder puppy? Imagine a young hound dog, all ears and paws. He’s clumsy, weak, small, harmless. He barks, however, as if he were Cujo. The barking is the thunder. The rest is the puppy. With the advent of the internet, thunder puppies can add a megaphone to their bark without bothering to add any wisdom to their thought. They take up their cyber gavels and excommunicate their fathers and elder brothers in the faith. They drag out of context snippets of sermons and blog pieces to Jesus, demanding that He concede that the guilty should be stoned. They see themselves as Luther at the Diet of Worms, when they are more like Urkel eating a diet of worms.
How then do you tame them? Shame. We who embrace the sovereignty of God over all things can rest easy knowing that He will bless His own with humility one way or the other, either by the slow, steady process of maturation or the jarring train wreck of humiliation. Do not answer our brother fools in their folly. Speak gently and calmly. Do not show fear. It only encourages them. Offer your hand for them to sniff. And speak the truth in love, like a mature believer.
It is a sure sign that we are sinners that we tend to be more concerned about what we do than what we are. That is, our guilt or peace oftentimes is the fruit of our own judgment of how often we commit a known sin, less often grounded in what we think and how we feel. I may hate my brother, but if I can keep myself from killing him, well, how bad could I be?
In Romans 1 Paul is setting about the business of explaining the universal guilt of men before God. There he answers the telling question, “What about the innocent native in Africa who knows nothing of Christ?” by affirming that all men everywhere both know who God is, and reject that knowledge. Before we have done anything we stand guilty, if only because our eyes tell us there is a God and our hearts hate that truth. Paul then, however, in describing the universal sinful condition of all men outside of Christ adds this condemnation—neither were they grateful.
If it is true that all men exist—were made to glorify God—our gratitude failure is not simply a failure of manners, akin to forgetting to write a thank-you card for a gift. Instead it is like adultery, like murder, like cosmic rebellion. How so? Well, a failure to be grateful is grounded in the conviction that we are due better than what we have been given. We are all born with an expectation of a certain level of comfort, a certain level of fulfillment, a certain level of pleasure. When these exceed our expectations we believe all is right with the world. We have received our due. When they fall below our expectations, however, we grumble, we complain, we howl. We scratch our heads thinking something is wrong with the universe.
Something is wrong with the universe—us. The lost are, well, lost. They have not been changed. They do not have the Holy Spirit. They are on their own. But we complain just like them. We have the same set of expectations, and so mimic their grumbling. We, because we are worldly, look at the world and our place in it just like the world.
Gratitude, however, isn’t the fruit of happiness, but its root. When we give thanks, when we look at the world and our place in it realistically, remembering what we are due in ourselves, what we have, and all that we have been promised in Christ, we are astonished, overwhelmed. And therefore overjoyed.
I have an amazing wife who loves me, and our Lord. I have friends who love me, and their Lord. Most important of all, I am beloved of the Father. How could I ever even begin to think “It isn’t enough”? And, when I fail, my Father forgives me, His Spirit works in me, and I get better. Saint, thanksgiving isn’t a holiday to be observed, but a lifestyle to be practiced. Give thanks. And when you are done, do it again.
