God, deliver us from Santa!

He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake.
He knows when you've been bad or good...
Santa Claus is coming to town!

Aaaaahhhhhh!

I don't know who made up this moralistic scary threat, and I don't care. But it worries me that so many assume that this is a Christian Christmas message. "If you don’t like God, I think I know why… You probably think He’s St Nick in the Sky."


Glen Scrivener has written a witty ditty on the subject, definitely worth a read even in this busy time:

They say there’s a big man who lives far away,
Supposedly jolly but it’s hard to say.
I’ve never seen him, and neither have you.
But the children believe, ... [continue reading.]

Thanks, Glen! 
 

Oprah, Christianity, Quakers, the M People

Spot the odd one out: Oprah, Christianity, The Religious Society of Friends, the M People.

'Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within you. ... Let Jones worship the sun or moon, anything rather than the Inner Light; let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in his street, but not the god within. Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment ad enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain. The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner Light, but definitely recognised an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.' - G.K.Chesteron, Orthodoxy

In contrast, the name by which every Christian must be called is 'The LORD is our righteousness.' (Jeremiah 23.6)

[Quoted in The Good News We Almost Forgot, DeYoung]

Gospels = eye-witness accounts

If you're not sure, take a listen to this engaging and up-front lecture by Dr Pete Williams (Warden of Tyndale House, Cambridge).

Good news of memory loss

From Challies' The Next Story, following on from yesterday's quote:

While the search engines may never forget, while those who capture data about us may never forget, we serve a God who does forget and who places great emphasis on the virtue of forgetting. He accepts all those who turn to him and confess their sins. Psalm 103:12 promises, "As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us." In Hebrews 8:12, God makes this promise: "I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more." And in these things he commands us to imitate him - to forgive all offences and to never again bring those sins to mind.

How can we forgive if we can never forget? How can we move beyond a sinful past if we know that the evidence of it lives on somewhere, waiting to be mined, waiting to be discovered? Can we leave a past transgression between ourselves and God, knowing that the evidence of us remains in a database and may someday be drawn out?

Even today, when Facebook will remember every old boyfriend, every bad photograph and unkind word, every foolish sin of our younger days, we must be willing and eager to forgive as we've been forgiven, to forget as God has forgotten our transgressions against him.

To live & die in comfort

Dear Government,

I guess you want to know what we're like because you're trying to work out what we need most. Or at least, our needs relative to the budget, legislation... and votes. I'm not convinced that the questions you asked really got to the heart of the matter, so I suggested a better one for the vacant Q17, here. And its corollary, is, 'So what do we actually need, in order to live and die in the joy of that comfort?' Wouldn't any government give a lot to know the answer to that?

Someone suggested an answer some years ago, and it's not been found wanting since. That what we need is to be grasped by guilt, grace and gratitude. Everything else you could want in your Big Society, will flow from that. Admittedly, this isn't peculiar to the UK, or our particular difficult times. It was made possible by a Jew in the 1st century due to a plan well before our time, nicely summed up by a Pole/Austrian in Germany in the C16th, and here's an explanation by an American:

'All three things are necessary. If we don't know about our sin - which brings a true sense of guilt - we will be too confident in our abilities to do right and make the world a better place. We will ignore our most fundamental problem, which is not lack of education, or lack of opportunity, or lack of resources but sin and its attendant misery. 

'But if we don't know how we are set free from this sin and misery - which comes through God's grace - we will try to fix ourselves in futility or give up altogether in despair. And if we don't know how to thank God, showing gratitude for such deliverance, we will live in a self-centred, self-referential bubble, which is not why God saved us from our sin and misery in the first place. ...

'When we think of living and dying in comfort, we imagine reclining armchairs, massages, and all the food you can eat (with none of the pounds, of course). But the Catechism has in mind a different kind of comfort, one that is deeper, higher, richer, and sweeter. We find this comfort by admitting our sin, instead of excusing it; by trusting in Another instead of ourselves; and by living to give thanks instead of being thanked.'

 [DeYoung, The Good News We Almost Forgot]

A question of caring & cowardice

Most of us probably know the value of a well-placed, well-phrased question. Not that the questioner is simply asking as a means of pushing their view, but seriously giving you what they consider to be a pertinent question to help you onwards. Or perhaps a question to try to understand more, rather than assuming and answering on that basis ('Why?'). 

Sometimes, voicing a troublesome question is helpful, because it raises a topic for healthy discussion, and we can dig down deeper on it. It invites a variety of perspectives, honing each other's ideas, filling in blind spots and correcting error. Good questions will pierce through and encourage us to examine our foundations, our authorities for knowledge. But everyone also knows the frustration of someone raising an interesting question, which engages us personally, only to create more confusion and walk away. It is one thing to question and hold things in tension. It is another to deliberately tangle the strings, mislay the ends, and make fun of those who try to find them. Or as Challies says, better than me:

Questions matter. They can help you to grow deeper in your knowledge of the truth and your love for God—especially when you’re dealing with the harder doctrines of the Christian faith. But questions can also be used to obscure the truth. They can be used to lead away just as easily as they can be used to lead toward. Ask Eve. ...

They say that the person who frames the debate is going to win the debate.

And so, Tim Challies considers the difference between thought-provoking and falsely framed questions, in relation to Rob Bell's latest book, on hell. It's a helpful review.

The debate about the video which introduced this book, raised questions for me, too. Specifically: yes, it's serious that a supposed pastor-teacher would confuse his flock rather than feeding them, and would feed them sweet-tasting thorns to tear their gut. But how can I feel righteously angry at someone for teaching that there’s no hell, when I don’t warn my friends of it? How much can I protest at someone causing others to question if there's eternal punishment, if I act in conversation with my friends as if there's little danger of it? Bell may question whether hell is eternal; I can act as if my friends have eternity before they need to know of Christ. Bell may imply that God isn't that angry about our God-rejecting, selfish disobedience. Would my friends know from my speech and life that I worship a God who made us in justice, holiness and righteousness, and cares about that enough to be angry at our twisting of it, and punish wrong?

So, friends. Despite some cowardice, I do love you and want you to be reconciled to God in Christ. I do think the consequences of staying an enemy of our good Creator will be horrendous, and it tears me up to think that might be you. But I worry that you'll misunderstand, and think I'm trying to say I'm better than you, or that you've got to clean up your act somehow, or get religion - so I've not mentioned it much. Is that what you'd think? You know I'm not some naturally better person - I know if God were to judge me by what I've done, I'd have been in hell long ago. I'm just waiting for Jesus, God in skin, to come back and rescue us from God's judgement to follow. Rescue not for better people but for those who call, 'Help!' And I'd love you to join me, because the kind of God who devises a rescue plan not according to how good we are but by coming to us, suffering, and dying himself, precisely for those who know they're no good - that God is a joy to know! Would it not be worthwhile to question it a bit, see what this rescuer God is like, who Jesus claimed went to such lengths for you?

And I really don't mind a hard, 'stupid', or possibly offensive question, between friends. Better that than things assumed and never talked about. Hm?

What's so good about the gospel?

When the sun rises and warms the birds, they sing. And so, when our hearts are warmed by being reminded of the love of God, we cannot but speak of Him. The gospel - God giving himself in Christ - really is stupendously good news. 

Mike Reeves on John 20.19-23 (and assorted other passages), from UCCF's Forum conference: download here.

Waste your life!

If the gospel weren't true, would my life have been wasted?

Or in other words, do I live as if the gospel is true?

That the ever-looming horizon is that Jesus is coming back as judge and to save those who are looking forward to his return?
That love takes risks, because we have a Father in heaven who doesn't?
That the worst that can happen is they'll kill you, and that's no loss for the glory of Jesus?

Do others now think that my decisions and attitudes are crazy, because they think the gospel isn't true?
Or do my decisions and attitudes make sense, even to those who don't believe that Jesus is Lord and that I have died and been raised in Him?

If the gospel weren't true, would my life have been wasted?

Something to sing about!

O how the grace of God amazes me!

It loosed me from my bonds and set me free!

What made it happen so?

His own will, this much I know,

set me, as now I show,
at liberty.

My God has chosen me, though one of nought,

To sit beside my King in heaven’s court.

Hear what my Lord has done:

O, the love that made him run

to meet his erring son!
This has God wrought.

Not for my righteousness, for I have none,

but for his mercy’s sake, Jesus, God’s Son,

suffered on Calvary’s tree -

crucified with thieves was he -

great was His grace to me,

his wayward one.

And when I think of how, at Calvary,

he bore sin’s penalty instead of me,

amazed, I wonder why

he, the sinless One, should die

for one so vile as I:

my Saviour he!

Now all my heart’s desire is to abide

in Him, my Saviour dear, in Him to hide.
My shield and buckler he,

covering and protecting me:

from Satan’s darts I’ll be

safe at his side.

Lord Jesus, hear my prayer, your grace impart;

when evil thoughts arise through Satan’s art,

O, drive them all away

and my God, from day to day,

keep me beneath your sway,

King of my heart.

Come now, the whole of me, eyes, ears and voice,

join me, creation all, with joyful noise:

praise Him who broke the chain

holding me in sin’s domain,

and set me free again!

Sing and rejoice!

Emmanuel Sibomana, c.1910-75

Translated by Rosemary Guillebaud

Cyborg & Avatar: what's wrong with us?

What have the Navi in common with Arnie, or Cyborgs with Jake?

Cameron doesn't seem happy with humanity, whether the threat or rescue plan involves evolving technologically into a better species. Why do we have this malaise about our humanity? One might say that the humans with the disatisfaction are more likely to breed well and thus perpetuate the psychological phenomenon. And yet animals don't appear to have existential or racial crises of conscience.

Perhaps, it's the truth that we surpress which bubbles up to the surface of the swamp and stinks - just every so often. That uncomfortable scent of a memory that God had a better plan for us than this.

I confess that I haven't yet seen Avatar. But Vinoth Ramachandra (Sri Lanka) has got round to watching it, and reflects on how - when that memory wafts painfully up our nostrils, that all is not well with the human race - there is a solution, better than cyborgs and avatars. Better than spiritual escape to outside our world, or technological domination from the future. Better than fleeing pain to enter a perfect virtual world. One from outside our world, entering our world fully and in pain to redeem this physical world to what it should be. Read on chez Vinoth...

Comfort food

What is your only comfort in life and death?

That we with body and soul, both in life and death, are not our own, but belong to our faithful Saviour Jesus Christ; who, with his precious blood, has fully satisfied for all our sins, and delivered us from all the power of the devil; and so preserves us that without the will of our heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from our heads; indeed, that all things must be subservient to our salvation, and therefore, by his Holy Spirit, He also assures us of eternal life, and makes us sincerely willing and ready, from now on, to live to him.

[The Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 1, de-individualised]

Better than chocolate. Should be turned into a congregational song, I think!

Meet the family

A triad well-worth meeting, introduced by Andy Shudall:

QUADTYCH: ...pared and set free!

POOR TRAIT: 'Year in, year out. This is my home. This is my heart.'

PRODIGAL: Discover how prodigal this prodigal is.

[Thanks, Andy.]

Have you heard the good news?

One of the best posts I've read in a while, from Dave Bish: Have you heard the good news?

With lyrics from Galatians, set to a melody by Luther, arranged by Reeves, kicked off with an intro by Pascal: but all of Christ, and I'm grateful to Dave for treating us to it. Make it yours.

Christians find themselves not in possession of a get out of jail free card, but caught up into the relationships of the members of the Triune God. In the Son, with the Spirit of the Son in their hearts, considered by the Father to be his son. And this is no legal fiction but the realisation of the perfect and eternal purpose of the Father’s grace in his Son by the Spirit. His design is that the Christian might know him, just as his beloved Son does - joined to Christ, found in Christ - and in the gospel this is accomplished - we die with him, we rise in him. Everything in him. Is it good to be a Christian? Yes.

A Christian is someone in Christ. Good men would wish that this were true, and it is.

Read the whole thing: please.

Beneath the cross? No fear!

I love radio, and particularly at the moment BBC Radio 3, 4 and 2, depending on the mood and in that order. Earlier today BBC Radio 3 was playing various lamentations, judged appropriate for the Saturday of Easter. I switched over. I just can't keep myself mournful on the Saturday of Easter. I do find some aspects of the church calendar tradition very helpful to our corporate memory. And it is not that I don't consider it right to grieve over the ongoing presence, corruption and effect of sin and the curse: but death, hell and sin are now subdued - all grace is now to Jesus given; and so I plead the atoning blood, and by his grace receive his heaven! How can I be gloomy when that is the reality of the universe, and applied to me by the Spirit of God?

Of course, you may say that Christ's death was indeed a sorry affair, at that we await Easter Sunday. But we don't! We cannot view Christ's death without the resurrection - the cross is empty; it is finished! It is no longer gloomy, beneath the cross.

Rather this, which I discovered and sang on Friday, by Keith & Kristyn Getty (2005):

Beneath the cross of Jesus I find a place to stand,
And wonder at such mercy that calls me as I am,
For hands that should discard me hold wounds which tell me come.
Beneath the cross of Jesus my unworthy soul is won.

Beneath the cross of Jesus, His family is my own.
Once strangers chasing selfish dreams; Now, one through grace alone.
How could I now dishonour the ones that You have loved?
Beneath the cross of Jesus, see the children called by God.

Beneath the cross of Jesus, the path before the crown,
We follow in His footsteps where promised hope is found.
How great the joy before us to be His perfect bride.
Beneath the cross of Jesus, we will gladly live our lives.

[Music here - clip of mp3 streamed or sample the whole score with Sibelius Scorch (free) here.]

Shiny empty bubbles and tea dregs

Euan Murray, of the Scottish Rugby team, has fascinated the press by deciding to not play on Sundays. The Guardian interviewed him, and allowed him to express the decision that's really been life-changing for him: not so much that he doesn't play on Sunday, but that he's been saved by Christ.

He suggests that the path many professional sportsmen follow is "rotten". He tries to explain. "All the shiny bubbles," he says, holding out his big hands and shaking his head in sadness. "The money, the possessions, the fame, the great elusive relationship – all bubbles that appear perfectly spherical, all the colours of the rainbow. They're bright and shiny and light as a feather, and you chase them because it's good fun, but the minute you get them they burst and they're empty." He pauses. "I'd had enough of chasing bubbles."

What were the "bubbles"? "The attraction of all the glamour and glitz that society puts up on a pedestal and says is the be all and end all. All the tinsel, you know? The success. There are many ways of measuring success – it could be in popularity, the funniest guy, or the guy with the best scores, it could be money, it could be getting the best-looking girl, lifting the most in the gym, having the best clothes, it could be being the best rugby player in the world." He trails off. "It's not wrong to be funny, or have a great-looking wife. It's not wrong to have money and to want to be the best player in the world, but if that is your idol then that is wrong."

In finding God, he says, Murray was able to change his path. He picks up a mug of tea and a glass of water and holds them out in front of him. "This is the tea, all dirty and horrible, this is me, yeah? That's Jesus," he says, motioning to the water. "Pure. He's taken that filth upon himself and before God he says, 'Punish me for it'. He's been punished and look what he's given me. That perfect goodness in the eyes of God. He's declared me innocent." He swills the dregs of the tea and smiles. Can it be that simple? "I'm ashamed of the things I've done. Of course I am. But I'm thankful I have a saviour. He's saved me from that lifestyle. He's given me a new life."

Read the rest here.

[HT: Derek Thomas]

Quote of the day: the big gospel

The 9Marks eJournal is well-worth reading this edition (not that others aren't: this is the first month I've read it). The topics are good, the articles are just the right length to be able to read online. This quotation from an article by Jonathan Leeman: Is the God of the Missional Gospel Too Small? That is, he addresses the tendancy to say that our gospel is too small if it merely speaks of sin, and not also of AIDS, or war, or abuse, or poverty.

The truly big problem does not lie with anything that humanity found outside of Eden. It’s not in the effects of the curse. The truly big problem is what got us kicked out of Eden in the first place. It’s in the all-important conflict between the nature of the one who issued the curse and the reason we gave him to issue it — our treasonous decision to make ourselves “like God.” The problem, in other words, is that God is so exquisitely righteous that his eyes cannot look upon sin, and we have sinned. He is so perfectly good and just that he cannot let the guilty go unpunished, and we are guilty. He is so wonderfully holy that the whole earth is full of his glory, and we have fallen short of his glory. The truly big problem is that, in our sin, we have acted treasonously and hatefully against a tri-personal God who is infinitely glorious and beautiful, the penalty of which is eternal damnation. To say that the gospel is “big” because it solves a human problem instead of a divine problem is, quite simply, to devalue his infinitely divine glory to something less significant than human suffering. I don’t mean to make light of human suffering, but we certainly must not make light of transgressions against God’s glory.'

Deeper than shame; further than far, far away

Matt Redman's new song:

Who, O Lord, could save themselves
Their own soul could heal?
Our shame was deeper than the sea
Your grace is deeper still.

You alone can rescue
You alone can save
You alone can lift us from the grave
You came down to find us
Led us out of death
To You alone belongs the highest praise

You, O Lord, have made a way
The great divide you healed
For when our hearts were far away
Your love went further still
Yes, Your love goes further still

We lift up our eyes, lift up our eyes
You're the giver of life.

[HT: Dan Hames]

Quote of the day: Not because of me

"Look, don't believe in Christ because I'm a marvelous person with wonderful experiences and morality. Look at Christ, because you and I both are so sinful and so prone to evil that we need a Saviour."

- Michael Horton, in an interview with Christianity Today which is well-worth reading.

Quote of the day: What are you wearing?!

It matters what you wear. Whatever you do, don't go making your own clothes. You'll only be constantly wondering if it's enough. Or proud enough to imagine that it is, when everyone around you can see right through it.

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord;
my soul shall exult in my God,
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;
he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. [Isaiah 61.10]

I've enjoyed listening to Mike Reeves' talks on Union with Christ on my way to & from the office lately! [Oh, and if you're looking for the quotation, it's from God's word this time. Lush.]

PS Just read Stephen Dancer's paper on Calvin on Union with Christ - a helpful addition to Mike Reeves' talks.

"Thou shalt not be unhappy"?

Is our main problem sin against God and his right anger at that, or life's threats to my happiness and my hurt at that? Do we live in a way that fits our answer to that? Carl Trueman mentions how our therapeutic culture has fed into some of evangelicalism in a White Horse Inn broadcast.

In a wide-ranging conversation, he also addresses some problems in "traditional" church worship. Preaching is not an explanation of the Bible for information transfer or moral advice: it's declaring God's word to the transformation of his people. A worship service isn't just a handy gathering, it's a drama of worship.

And since we were speaking earlier of the Hibernian mentality, Carl says of the Scots and assurance, "Few Scotsmen can believe they're going to heaven; no American can believe they're not going to heaven, in my experience!"