Anticipation

If we knew no frustration,

tied to decay in farce of autonomy

a universal word of condemnation

apple falling, stars collapsing

in on themselves

more than Newton knew

heart retracting, stony, cold

on downward course whose light is but the spark of friction;

If tongues joined in with burning orbs in chorus:

but our base noise has toned us deaf to tune,

we hide our eyes beneath blanket orange glow

shaded by our own reflection

and blind, pass buck to Orion's piercing beams.

So aberration, blot in soundscape

Man, of all things made like Word

stand vertically

silent;

If we stuck no fingers

in our ears, at Death

- children, pretending

that what they hide their eyes from, isn't there,

if could un-man ourselves, mere brutes

kill Psyche

in a fit of suicide

- homo sapiens (self-adjudged) - thus sine science

deny our soul's here now

that god may die hereafter: with effect;

Then it were no news

that God died there and then

that homo ruined edifice dei, might live again.

Then no good that stone forced back

spilt tuning power to stone in ground and sky and heart to sing.

Then no good news that first fruit risen

ascended, radiant breathing new dynamic

before whom all must fall.

Lest you burn, hide in the Sun.

- RG

Le lever du soleil

Francis Méan © 2006

Quote of the day: taking issue with not having an issue

I noticed rather belatedly that the November issue of Themelios is out. It's like an early Christmas present! I used to subscribe, and I confess I like paper copies, but now they've ceased hard copy publication, it's free online here. I usually turn first to Carl Trueman's Minority Report, which in this instance gives us food for thought about polemics: terrible beauty, beauty, and the plain terrible. He points out just how polemical the first Q&A of the Heidelberg catechism was at the time; I've been learning it, meditating on it, and teaching it to our teens in church for a while now, for its pastoral richness, but its polemical nature hadn't occurred to me. Anyway, now pondering our quote of the day, from Trueman: 

If assurance is not an issue, it is likely because you have a sub-biblical view of God’s holiness and a sub-Pauline view of human sin...

Quote of the Day: Pursuit of perfection

Particularly for preachers, pastors & pastors-in-preparation - but the rest of us, too. Because God has said, 'No one who abides in him keeps on sinning.' [1 John 3.6] Pursuit of perfection?

Any pursuit of perfection that is not awash in the grace of God displayed on a little hill outside Jerusalem is bound to trip us up.

Read more from Don Carson in the latest Themelios (issue 35).

'I'm sorry but it's not my fault.'

It's not really a real apology when you blame someone else, is it? The current Roman Pope has sent a 13 page letter to the Irish Roman church to say, 'Sorry: the Irish church leadership should clean up its act.' Hans Küng, a German priest of Rome and its frequent critic (his right to teach theology has been rescinded), suggests that Ratzinger himself is the one who needs to apologise for a top-down coverup. He also suggests that Rome's insistence that forbidding priests to marry has an unsurprising and strong connection to systematic sexual abuse of decades. The Bible says that forbidding marriage is the teaching of demons; the Reformers critiqued it (as there were known examples of immorality 'hushed up' in their time) and we're supposed to be totally surprised about child sex abuse now? Küng:

Honesty demands that Joseph Ratzinger himself, the man who for decades has been principally responsible for the worldwide cover-up, at last pronounce his own "mea culpa".

Read it here.

[HT: Carl Trueman]

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.'

"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!"

Sin allergy

This past few weeks, hayfever has been rather a pain. A constant irritant, disrupting my life. Interrupting social situations, stopping me from enjoying the lovely weather, depriving me of sleep, impeding my sight.

So it is for many, I'm sure - enough of the catalogue of moans! So I thought, how can I not waste my hayfever? It's such a small thing, in the scale of things: such a very small part of the frustration to which this world is subject. But if the irritation of hayfever is such a very small part of the curse on our sinfulness, and yet disrupts my life so much, how is it that the sin itself which is at root, affects me so little?

So my hayfever prayer is that the Holy Spirit would give me a sin-allergy.
That every morning as I wake I would be aware of the suffocating nature of sin, so that rather than trying to breathe its air...
That I would turn to Christ as quickly as I down an antihistamine, and meditate on his word more automatically than I reach for the tissue-box.
That I would constantly be irritated by my sin, that it would be painful to me.
That I would go out of my way to avoid sin being stirred up in me.
That I would be aware of how sin spoils relationships far more than hayfever interrupts social engagement.
That my sight would not be blearied or blinkered by sin, but by the light of God's word I'd see the world truly.

In other words, that as my Father is so pure he can't look passively on evil, so I would be allergic to sin. As I look forward to my Father recreating the world no longer subject to frustration, so I look to him to purify me from the roots of that frustration - my refusal of his way.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. [1 John 3.1-3]

Pray that I wouldn't waste my hayfever, but that it would be a reminder of the sinfulness of sin, and the righteousness of Christ, accomplished for us and still to be applied to all creation. That I would be allergic to sin.