The New Bereans

“Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them…”

–Romans 12:6

Something has been churning around in my gut for the past couple of weeks and it just won’t go away.  So I concluded I ought to put it down on paper.  It all centers on the word gift, and the difference between a gift I give to another person, (for Christmas or whatever) and the gifts God gives to human beings.  Although the same word is used in both instances the meanings are vastly different.

If I were to give you a gift for your birthday, say a toaster, after you opened it you may do what you want with it;  you could use it to toast bread, or as a paperweight, you could give it away, or even sell it to someone who needs a toaster.  As the giver I hope you would use it and enjoy it forever, but after you’ve taken possession of it…my say in the matter is over.  In our culture we resent those who try to give with strings attached, or even worse try to reclaim their gift.

Now when God gives someone a gift it is never meant to be hoarded, but invested in the way he sees fit, the parables of Jesus bear this out repeatedly.  The master gives a gift then checks up on the receiver to see what he has done with what he has been given.  A gift from him is never some bobble to play with, rather, it is a battle to fight, a mission to fulfill, or a quest to undertake.  In the verse before us relating to spiritual gifts one could even say that God is not really giving gifts to individuals, he is giving gifts through individuals for the benefit of the body, and the lost.

What I’m getting at could really be summed up in one word, responsibility.  We will be held accountable not only for every great deed, but every single word.  We must never forget that the things he has given us are not ours to play with, but his to faithfully use for his own benefit.

Artwork: The Nation Makers by Howard Pyle

. . . I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father.  John 15:31

Every believer eventually reaches a point of profound love for God without obvious expression.   When worship alone cannot fully display your love, what is a saint to do?  Paint a painting?  Plant a tree?  Sing really loud?  To show love for your wife you can buy flowers and chocolates.   To show love for a child, offer them ice cream.  But how do you show God your love? Jesus tells us how his love for the father is evident . . . obedience.  I know this is a four letter word among Christians today, but I bring it up because Jesus did.

Please do not misunderstand me, we are never told that it is possible to earn a spot in heaven, but we are repeatedly told to live a life that pleases God.  Our hearts are wrong when the idea of living a holy life causes us to recoil in horror.  According to Jesus, obeying God is of the best ways of expressing our love for God.

Using Christ’s measurement for love, our love for God should not be hard to gauge because its fruit is visible, obeying gods commands.  Much obedience = much love, little obedience = little love, no obedience = no love.

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” John 14:21

How then can man be in the right before God? How can he who is born of woman be pure? Behold, even the moon is not bright, and the stars are not pure in his eyes; how much less man, who is a maggot, and the son of man, who is a worm!” Job 25:4-6

I am becoming more and more aware of the necessity of humility for the believer. In American Christianity we place such emphasis on ability, and education while giving humility mere lip service. But the problem is that education and skill alone produce mountains of pride, and prevent Gods blessing from fully coming.

I remember when I was asked in High School, “Why is pride a sin? What is so wrong with feeling good about yourself?” I was tongue tied! I found it impossible to spit out a good answer at the time, but now I can explain it fairly well. The Bible tells us some things about pride: it goes before destruction 1, God hates it 2, and it keeps us from seeking after God 3.   If a sin is hated by God, leads to destruction, and keeps us from seeking after God, this is pretty damning.  Nothing will ruin your walk faster than pride because it gives you boldness to break all the commandments. The thrusting up of mountains of pride should be a self evident problem for the believer.

But there is another grievous effect of the prideful life, it prevents Gods blessing from fully coming upon us. Paul tells us that God has chosen the foolish things . . . base things . . . things which are despised . . .and the things which are not . . . that no flesh should glory in His presence 4 , Pride restrains Gods hand of blessing for he will share his glory with no one.

Pride bars the door of the vault in which Gods blessings reside; because Humility comes before honor 5.

1. Prov 16:18
2. Prov 6:17
3. Psalm 10 4
4. 1 Cor 1:27-29
5. Pro 15:33

Clive Staples Lewis

As soon as I was able to crack the spine of a book with legitimacy and authority, based upon the virtue of the fact that I was going to imbibe the words contained within it, I found myself consuming, “The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.”  My mother must have put me on phonic steroids when I wasn’t looking, because I remember reading it when I was between kindergarten and 1st grade.  My mother was always faithful to make sure I had plenty to read and for her persistence, I am eternally grateful.

In my last year of High School, I became gripped with a terrifying doubt about the validity of Christianity.   Post modern reasoning wormed its way into my brain and began to create a mash of my faith.   I do not remember how many nights I wept while my mind raced through all the maddening scenarios that would occur in my life should I choose to disbelieve.  Sleep, in those days, was like a long distance relationship to me, and I could hardly afford a calling card.  Most of the tears I cried flowed from fear and loneliness while the nature of my doubts were not really relatable to anyone I knew.  These doubts were so ghastly to me; in fact, I hesitated to talk to anyone about it for fear that I would infect them with the same plague that dominated my every waking thought.  If I ever did, God please forgive me.

Eventually, by God’s grace, I was granted the gift of faith and all my doubts washed away, but that is jumping ahead a bit.  Before the gift was granted however, my weak colander of faith was filled over and over with the thoughts and musings of C.S. Lewis.   He was not able to answer all of my questions, but many of the things he said in Pilgrims Regress, Mere Christianity, and Surprised by Joy kept me tethered and sane.  Every time I began to slip into the terrors of my doubts I would remember something he said which would counteract my dark brooding.

If I am granted the privilege of meeting him in the after, I think it will be difficult for me to respect British propriety, for I suspect I will hug the wind from his lungs.  He was a Father who nurtured me into true faith.  As he would have worded it in: “The Great Divorce,” he blew on the little glimmer of a coal within my soul till the heat of life began to spark.  I have had many teachers in my life, but very few Fathers (1 Cor 4:15).  I suspect that his writing, combined with my Grandmother’s prayers, and the passion my Mother instilled within me for the written word, (God’s sovereignty notwithstanding) granted me the right environment where God eventually flooded my doubts with the light of Hebrews 11:1.

As a belated thanksgiving post, I offer gratitude up to the Father of Lights, who has blessed me over and over again with the writings of this powerful thinker.  I was heavily reminded about it all as I read “The Great Divorce” last weekend in one interupted sitting and was gripped all over again and lead to weep in a new way because of his writing.  During this second foray into his real solid land I was confronted by the depth of my sin, and overwhelmed by the Grace of Jesus Christ.  These tears were much more welcome, praise be to God, who is able to keep me from falling.

“When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil? Present that to your governor; will he accept you or show you favor? says the Lord of hosts. Malachi 1:8

As believers we are called to give our best to God, but do we? Or like the priests in Malachi’s day, do we give God only what we don’t want. They were sacrificing blind and lame animals to God and taking the best for themselves. We no longer offer animal sacrifices but we are told to present our bodies as living sacrifices to God.1 Do we give God our best, or do we give him the rest? How do we spend our time? Everyone knows about tithing our money, do we tithe our time?  Do we spend 10% of our day (2.4 hours) Seeking God, studying the scriptures, or evangelizing? If not we should consider our ways.

We are told to love God with all our mind2, how much of our mind is occupied in studying theology, wrestling through scriptural truth, and memorizing scriptures?  Men, if you can remember all the stats of your favorite athletes, but can’t clearly explain the gospel, you should be ashamed.  Women, if you know all about Oprah, but don’t have a clue about Orpha, you are investing your time foolishly.  I will set no wicked thing before my eyes 3 declares the psalmist, do we watch wicked things?  If so Christ warns that our whole body will be full of darkness.4 Paul the apostle declares you are not your own, for you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.5

If we are his disciples we must put him first, give him our best, and seek first his kingdom.

1. Romans 12:1

2. Matthew 22:37

3. Psalm 101:3

4. Matthew 6:23

5. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

When Jesus taught us to pray that His Kingdom would come and His Fathers will be done in earth as it is in heaven, Jesus was not making a pious, pseudo religious statement.  He was actually dramatically flipping common prayer on its head.  This is an upside down, backwards from human, mentality.  It is far more natural for me to pray that God would submit to the wants and needs of my kingdoms.   One of the only hopes I have of being an overcomer in deed is to have this pilgrim mindset.  All my efforts need to be the result of a heart that cries, weeps, pleads, and yearns for the coming of the Kingdom of Christ and this is not a yearning for my benefit by the way, the yearning is for His sake, rather than mine.  I want this kingdom in two ways…I want the kingdom to come into the hearts of the dead, that they may be raised into the life which is Christ, and I want the physical reign of my Lord more than any other thing.  I am posting this video because, once again, Pastor Piper says so well what ought to be said to those of us who have maintained that materialism is somehow Christian.  We do this through very many incorrect associations.  Associations which I hope to write about some day.

Grant us Lord, as your children the desire to pray this along with the saints of old, and may our praying for it change our hearts that we may live like we believe it, not wasting our lives on those things which perish…but hastening the day of your return, but living as if eternity were NOW!

Read Acts 16:22-33 For Inspiration Reference

I am vividly aware this book has been reviewed probably thousands upon thousands of times, I am writing about it nonetheless, probably for the same reason so many other people have written about it…it is worth doing.

As an avid reader, I must state that this book is not for everyone.  I have read reviews by Christians who suggest that it is a, “Must read.”  While I generally agree with the sentiment, I also recognize that this is a difficult book.  Many of the things said require a lot of thought.   Not only do they require a lot of thought, but you have to be able to maintain a large mental log of points, because Chesterton takes about seventy pages to develop his thesis.  Not only that, but understanding some of his metaphors require some heavy mental boulder rolling, but it is calorie burning work, so it is certainly worth the effort.

The first seventy pages will cause many to wonder, “Where is he going with all these odd fractured points?”  I did this exact thing numerous times during my read, but he kept me going with many worthwhile quotable quotes, and barn-burning statements.   On occasions he rev’s his thesis’ engine with unique and entertaining humor.  All the while his observations made me feel as if I was seeing the world through the eyes of a six year old philosophical savant who also happened to be writing probably one of the greater apologetics penned.

When at first you try to wrap your mind around his thesis you will probably feel like a car does when it gets its front end wrapped around a tree.  I hope you have a lot of bondo and carnauba wax.  The scope of this book reminded me of project “Deep Impact,” where NASA hit a comet with a satellite, due to the difficulty of Chesterton’s thesis which was almost as complex to resolve as hitting a philosophical comet 83 million miles away.   Somehow he does it though, with striking clarity, if you are able to not jump off his train of thought.

Chesterton literally mows the forest of humanist philosophy with the fortitude and efficiency of Paul Bunyan.  His axe takes two or three trees at a blow, and does not relent from cover to cover.  I was stunned to realize that he had cut down trees which have found root and re-growth in the some of the institutional church today.  And herein lies the reason I want to recommend this book.  There are many things we believe with nonchalance, because we have been told to believe them.  We need to get our truth from truth, and Chesterton expends all his effort like a blacksmith in the foundries of war by reminding us that Christ is the truth.

There has never been a book of theology, or apologetics, that made me cheer or cry…but this one did.  At one point I jumped out of my chair and pumped my fist and wished to high heaven there was someone to share the moment with me.   The last two chapters actually had my eyes leaking a bit, and my heart threatened to beat itself out of my ribcage.   It is far from often, dare I say never, that apologetics does this.  Either I am twisted weird, or this book was actually that good.

The one thing I observed is that Chesterton keeps his quotes from the bible to a bare minimum, but I think he does this for a reason.  I almost can picture that the thesis and conclusion are like the great pyramid of Egypt that he is slaving to build, and once built he places at its top, a great golden pinnacle which is the scripture he references.  I think that it actually makes the passages he quotes beautiful in a unique way.   Almost as if he is endeavoring to give the bible its right place at the top, by building his analysis underneath the power of the word.  Another way of looking at it is like he is a man holding a torch aloft in a dark cave for many to find their way back to the light.

This is definitely a great book to read, Orthodoxy is one of the most adventurous and daring books on Christian Apologetics ever written, hands down.

Since this book is largely Chesterton’s personal testimony, it is worth being reminded that, “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lived unto the death.” -Revelation 12:11

This book is posted online for free at this catholic website, I however never recommend reading books online, it is bad for the future employment of wood chips, and I am an equal opportunity wood chip employment advocate, unless of course you cannot afford it, or plan to buy it later anyhow.  If you are also a revolutionary like I am you can buy the real deal here, from the American Chesterton Society.

And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. Mark 10:17-31

In the story of the “Rich Young Ruler” it is easy to miss the main point, I did for years. The young man asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus tells him to sell everything, give to the poor, and follow him. He did not do this, and we can draw the false conclusion that, because he wouldn’t sell his stuff he couldn’t go to heaven, but if he could have done this he would have been able to get in.

This conclusion is wrong. Jesus never told him that selling his stuff would reserve a spot in heaven, he told him to sell his stuff and follow. Jesus did not give a direct answer to his question because there is no good deed one can do to earn a place in heaven. His issue was not materialism, the issue is unbelief. He was told to leave behind his stuff, and believe that God had rewards for him which far exceeded what he was called to leave behind. The young ruler wanted to add one more good work to his life, and Jesus told him to loose his life. He wanted spirituality not suffering, position not persecution, honor not humility.

We mistakenly focus on his sin of materialism but this is peripheral, the core sin for him was unbelief.

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Hebrews 11:6

The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.  Proverbs 28:1

Why is there such timidity in our lives today?  Rather that demonstrating the power of the gospel, by the power of the Spirit, we tend to lob Christianity with all the conviction of a softball pitch.  We commonly tip-toe around bold truth in order to avoid offending unbelievers and we talk to them in an apologetic tone, what is wrong with us?  Do we see anything like this in the life of Elijah, Paul, or Jesus Christ?  No!  Why not?

I would suggest to you that the answer is staring us in the face.  It is my fear that the church today is filled with primarily tares and lost sheep, sin is the norm.  Jesus warned that whoever relaxed one of his commandments would be the least in the kingdom of heaven, yet pastor and parishioner do it with impunity today.  We love our sin and in refusing to turn from it, the church has become quite fearful.

When we give ourselves free license to sin, we are simultaneously quenching the spirit, and spiritually emasculating ourselves.  If we want any boldness, vigor, or life we must stop compromising.  Jesus proclaims, “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.”1  What does this mean to us?  Simply this; if we pray to God to help us to overcome the big sins in our life, while excusing the small ones with clever phrases like “that isn’t my conviction, bro”, we are deceived and should not be surprised when we experience constant spiritual defeat.

To live the victorious Christian life we must repent, turn from our sins and follow God.  We cannot give ourselves permission to indulge in the “little” sins, or the “big” sins will not have dominion over us.  If we were totally unable to resist sin Paul would not have told us “Do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts“.2  So we must follow James guidance and Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.3

1. Luke 16:10

2. Romans 6:12

3. James 4:7