choose joy

i continue to concentrate my blogging efforts these days on michael spencer's site, to help him while he undergoes treatments for cancer.

i know he would appreciate your continued prayers.

thank you for understanding my relative neglect of this site. i encourage you to check out internet monk to keep up with what i'm thinking and writing about these days, as well as the contributions of others.

you're especially invited to join the new discussion on a post i put up today, entitled, "choose joy."

mark galli on "transformation"

a wonderful interview with mark galli, senior managing editor of christianity today, has been posted over at the ever-interesting mockingbird blog.

a couple of paragraphs caught my attention as appropriate to share here, because they deal directly with the subject of being "weak on sanctification."

preach it, mark!

The other thing is the whole business of “transformation.” I notice how often that word comes up—our lives can be transformed, our churches can be transformed, our culture can be transformed. We imagine if we do everything right according to what the New Testament teaches us, that things will be completely changed. And if they aren’t completely changed, I’ve either bet my life on something that’s not true, or the Gospel itself is not true.

I just keep on coming back to Luther’s truth that we are simultaneously justified and sinners. I keep on looking at my own life, and at church history, and I realize that when the Gospel talks about transformation, it can’t possibly mean an actual, literal change in this life of a dramatic nature, except in a few instances. It must be primarily eschatological; it must be referring to the fact that we will in fact be changed. The essential thing to make change possible has occurred—Christ died and rose again. (And in this life we will see flashes of that, just like in Jesus’ ministry there were moments when the Kingdom broke in and we see a miracle. And these moments tell us there is something better awaiting for us and God is gracious enough at times to allow a person or a church or a community to experience transformation at some level.) But we can’t get into the habit of thinking that this dramatic change is normal, this side of the Kingdom. What’s normal this side of the Kingdom is falling into sin (in big or small ways), and then appropriating the grace of God and looking forward to the transformation to come.

click on the following link to read galli's article, "the scandal of the public evangelical," in which he expounds further on "the long-standing evangelical myth that there should be something different about the christian."


today's van gogh
field with poppies, 1889

group seeks genesis ban

a christian group, concerned about the moral breakdown in american society, is pushing for a ban on the book of genesis.

a spokesperson for people involved in saving, securing, and defending the old-fashioned family (p.i.s.s.d.o.f.f.), says that decent citizens have come together to protest that enough is enough, that our culture cannot go on promoting materials like genesis to our children.

jonathan fussminder, a parent and activist for the group said, "this book [genesis] is a classic case of the devil's bait and switch. it opens with an outstanding scientific depiction of how god created the universe, but then you turn the page and you have two people running around naked in a garden. that's satan's way. he draws you in with something that sounds good, and pretty soon, he has you looking at pornography. "they were naked and not ashamed" is the way the author puts it, and that's all you need to know about this book. i wouldn't want my boys reading that for anything."

when asked if that passage was the only one to which he and the other members of p.i.s.s.d.o.f.f. objected, fussminder rolled his eyes and said, "oh my, no. genesis is filled with r-rated material at best. you've got violent killings, parents having sex with their own children, men giving their wives away to harems to save their own skin, lies, deceit, polygamy, child-slavery, seduction, and so many explicit sexual scenes and references that i'm embarrassed to even talk about them."

when this reporter asked about the fact that some people consider genesis to be "god's word," fussminder became animated. "god's word? god's word? that just shows how far into decadence we've fallen. can you imagine a good and holy god inspiring a book like this? can you imagine god asking parents to tell these stories to their children? they'd be warped for life!

"no, this most certainly is NOT god's word. how it got into the bible we don't know, but the fact that it is in there may point to one of the most insidious acts in history. we are pushing hard for publishers to delete genesis from future bibles, and we also say that if genesis got snuck in there, who knows what might be in some of the other books? as we speak, p.i.s.s.d.o.f.f. has teams of investigators reading the other books in the bible so that we can root out this kind of immoral and corrupting material. just recently, i heard rumors that the very next book, exodus, may contain scenes of infanticide, murder, nightmarish and gory plagues straight from the latest horror movies, idol-worship, immoral partying, and more sexual perversion."

so it's possible that your work will not end with genesis? fussminder was asked.

"no way," he replied. "we're p.i.s.s.d.o.f.f., and we are here to protect the children of america from harmful influences. we won't stop until we've cleaned it all up, from genesis to revelation."


today's van gogh
the schoolboy (camille roulin), 1888

"wild things" i cannot control

david brooks writes an insightful column in today's New York Times about the new film, "where the wild things are." from my perspective, brooks sheds some very helpful light on what it means to be "weak on sanctification."

when describing some insights that the film sheds on the subject of character, brooks contrasts the "philosopher's view" of character with the "psychologist's view."

• the first perspective asserts that individuals have certain ingrained character traits that shape who we are and how we act. i am basically a dishonest person or an honest one. i am either compassionate or unsympathetic. one of the life's great tasks is to develop a deep-rooted character of virtue. then, i can be the "hero" who will always do the right thing and win the day.


• in contrast, the psychologist's view suggests that our actual behavior is not driven by specific permanent character traits that consistently apply across contexts. i may be honest in one situation while dishonest in another. i have many different tendencies that may be activated by various circumstances and moods. i am made up of what Paul Bloom calls, "a community of competing selves."

the film "where the wild things are" portrays that, even in childhood, we are torn by warring impulses that are difficult to understand and control. the main character, max, is a boy who adores his mother, yet rages against her; who looks up to his older sister, yet trashes her room when he cannot enjoy her in his life as he would like.

in the midst of this turmoil, max makes a fantastical journey to an island where wild things live. each of the monsters he meets represents a member of his own "community of selves." brooks comments on what the lad discovers on the island:

in the movie, max wants to control the wild things. the wild things in turn
want to be controlled. they want him to build a utopia for them where they won't
feel pain. but in the movie max fails as king. he lacks the power to control his
wild things. the wild things come to recognize that he isn't really a king, and
maybe there are no such things as kings.

the philosophers teach that once we achieve virtue, we do virtuous things. However, the view represented here shows that...

...people have only vague intuitions about the instincts and impulses that
have been implanted in them by evolution, culture and upbringing [and, I would
specify, our sinful nature]. there is no easy way to command all the wild things jostling inside.

that may be one of the clearest statements of the christian's spiritual struggle that i've read—"there is no easy way to command all the wild things jostling inside." i want to think that if i can only be king and rule over them, all will be at peace and there will be no more sadness. but i am not really a king, indeed, there really are no such thing as kings among ordinary humans. the answer is not within us.

however, there is a king outside of us who has overcome the wild beasts (mark 1.12-13), whom god rescued from the mouths of the menacing monsters and raised up in victory over them (psalm 22.6-24).

each and every moment, i look to this one, king jesus, to tame the wild beasts within.

today's van gogh
self-portrait with bandaged ear and pipe

you must read...

the article i'm recommending for you to read today represents "weak on sanctification 101". if you want to know what the title of this blog means, or go deeper into the meaning of simul iustus et peccator, here is a great place to begin.

michael spencer, aka "the internet monk," is a favorite blogger of mine, and every once in awhile, i go beyond the current posts, dive in to some of his archives, and find words that are even more remarkably profound and helpful. tonight i found his piece called, "when i am weak: why we must embrace our brokenness and never be good christians," in which michael lays out the lies we tell ourselves and others about sanctification. here's a sampling:

It's remarkable, considering the tone of so many Christian sermons and messages, that any church has honest people show up at all. I can't imagine that any religion in the history of humanity has made as many clearly false claims and promises as evangelical Christians in their quest to say that Jesus makes us better people right now. With their constant promises of joy, power, contentment, healing, prosperity, purpose, better relationships, successful parenting and freedom from every kind of oppression and affliction, I wonder why more Christians aren't either being sued by the rest of humanity for lying or hauled off to a psych ward to be examined for serious delusions.

Evangelicals love a testimony of how screwed up I USED to be. They aren't interested in how screwed up I am NOW. But the fact is, that we are screwed up. Then. Now. All the time in between and, it's a safe bet to assume, the rest of the time we're alive. But we will pay $400 to go hear a "Bible teacher" tell us how we are only a few verses, prayers and cds away from being a lot better. And we will set quietly, or applaud loudly, when the story is retold. I'm really better now. I'm a good Christian. I'm not a mess anymore. I'm different from other people.

What a crock. Please. Call this off. It's making me sick. I mean that. It's affecting me. I'm seeing, in my life and the lives of others, a commitment to lying about our condition that is absolutely pathological. Evangelicals call Bill Clinton a big-time liar about sex? Come on. How many nodding "good Christians" have so much garbage sitting in the middle of their lives that the odor makes it impossible to breathe without gagging. How many of us are addicted to food, porn and shopping? How many of us are depressed, angry, unforgiving and just plain mean? How many of us are a walking, talking course on basic hypocrisy, because we just can't look at ourselves in the mirror and admit what we a collection of brokenness we've become WHILE we called ourselves "good Christians" who want to "witness" to others. Gack. I'm choking just writing this.

You people with your Bibles. Look something up for me? Isn't almost everyone in that book screwed up? I mean, don't the screwed up people- like Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Hosea- outnumber the "good Christians" by about ten to one? And isn't it true that the more we get to look at a Biblical character close up, the more likely it will be that we'll see a whole nasty collection of things that Christians say they no longer have to deal with because, praise God! I'm fixed? Not just a few temper tantrums or ordinary lies, but stuff like violence. Sex addictions. Abuse. Racism. Depression. It's all there, yet we still flop our Bibles open on the pulpit and talk about "Ten Ways To Have Joy That Never Goes Away!" Where is the laugh track?

What was that I heard? "Well....we're getting better. That's sanctification. I've been delivered!" I suppose some of us are getting better. For instance, my psycho scary temper is better than it used to be. Of course, the reason my temper is better, is that in the process of cleaning up the mess I've made of my family with my temper, I've discovered about twenty other major character flaws that were growing, unchecked, in my personality. I've inventoried the havoc I've caused in this short life of mine, and it turns out "temper problem" is way too simple to describe the mess that is me. Sanctification? Yes, I no longer have the arrogant ignorance to believe that I'm always right about everything, and I'm too embarrassed by the general sucktitude of my life to mount an angry fit every time something doesn't go my way. Getting better? Quite true. I'm getting better at knowing what a wretched wreck I really amount to, and it's shut me up and sat me down.

folks, i have been convinced for a long time now that we simply claim too much for "christianity" and know far too little of the actual good news. god displays his mercy in and through broken clay pots, not fine porcelain vases.

read michael's article. clink the link above, read it carefully, and think upon these things.

and may god forgive our triumphalism and pride.

today's van gogh
the novel reader, 1888