Kevin DeYoung's Blog, page 143

Monday Morning Humor

A Confession

In case you haven’t heard, you should know that I never write my blog posts at 5 or 6 in the morning, no matter what the time stamp says. I write 99% of my posts well before I post them, usually a day or several days in advance. I queue them up to go live in the morning when most people in this country are waking up. So if you’ve pictured me up at 4am, working by candlelight, blogging my little heart out before the world gets out of bed, then you’ve given me too much credit.

The other thing you should know is that once in a great while I don’t have anything to say, so I just find filler. Case in point.

Give a Rip? Have a Kid

Jonathan Last, reviewing the new book Population Decline and the Remaking of Great Power Politics:

The world is heading for demographic catastrophe. Fertility rates have been falling across the globe for 40 years, to the point where, today, Israel is the only First World country where women have enough babies to sustain their population. The developing world is heading in the same direction, fast. Only 3 percent of the world’s population live in a country where the fertility rate is not dropping.

As fertility falls, populations shrink. As populations shrink, economies will sputter. Western countries will struggle to support too many retirees without enough workers, and the rest of the world (particularly places such as China and Russia) will be challenged just to maintain order as societies change in unprecedented ways: Most people will have neither brothers, sisters, aunts, nor uncles, and there will be no such thing as an extended family.

This forecast may sound apocalyptic, but it’s nearly conventional wisdom among the demographers and economists who study such things.

On the positive side, for this country at least, if current trends continue, America has a chance to actually be more religious in 2050 than today. The least secular people in this country are having the most children (have you ever met a Christian home schooler?!). In general the most conservative states have the highest fertility rates and anecdotal evidence suggests that a younger generation of devout Christians are trying to have more children, not fewer. A silver lining perhaps.

What’s Wrong with Theistic Evolution?

Theistic evolution, generally defined, is the belief that natural processes sustained by God’s ordinary providence were the means by which he brought about life and humanity. It often entails a common ancestry for all living things, macro-evolution, and some version of polygenesis.

William Dembski explains:

For young-earth and old-earth creationists, humans bearing the divine image were created from scratch. In other words, God did something radically new when he created us–we didn’t emerge from pre-existing organisms. On this view, fully functioning hominids having fully human bodies but lacking the divine image never existed. For most theistic evolutions, by contrast, primate ancestors evolved over several million years into hominids with fully human bodies. (God and Evolution, 91)

According to some proponents of theistic evolution Genesis 2:7 is a reference to God’s work in history whereby he made Adam into a spiritual being in the image of God, instead of the lesser sort of being he was before. This approach still insists on the historicity of Adam and Eve and their real fall in the Garden. But, on this view, Adam may not have been the first human:

According to [Denis] Alexander’s preferred model, anatomically modern humans emerged some 200,000 years ago, with language in place by 50,000 years ago. Then, around 6,000-8,000 years ago, God chose a couple of Neolithic farmers, and then he revealed himself for the first time, so constituting them as Homo divinus, the first humans to know God and be spiritually alive. (Should Christians Embrace Evolution?, 47)

And what’s wrong with this approach? Why can’t we say Adam was a real person and the first person to know God, but not the only human on the planet? Aren’t we still in the realm of historic orthodoxy even if Adam evolved from other beings and may not have been the physical father of all living persons? I am raising these questions not to suggest a single blog post and a few quotations obliterates evolution. The point rather is to examine whether full-blown evolution can be reconciled with complete allegiance to biblical authority.

Listed below are eight problems Wayne Grudem finds with theistic evolution. I realize he may not be an authority on these matters, but in typical fashion he distills the main points nicely and explain succinctly what unbiblical conclusions we must reach for theistic evolution to be true.

(1) Adam and Eve were not the first human beings, but they were just two Neolithic farmers among about ten million other human beings on earth at that time, and God just chose to reveal himself to them in a personal way.

(2) Those other human beings had already been seeking to worship and serve God or gods in their own ways.

(3) Adam was not specially formed by God of ‘dust from the ground’ (Gen. 2:7) but had two human parents.

(4) Eve was not directly made by God of a ‘rib that the Lord God had taken from the man’ (Gen. 2:22), but she also had two human parents.

(5) Many human beings both then and now are not descended from Adam and Eve.

(6) Adam and Eve’s sin was not the first sin.

(7) Human physical death had occurred for thousands of years before Adam and Eve’s sin–it was part of the way living things had always existed.

(8) God did not impose any alteration in the natural world when he cursed the ground because of Adam’s sin. (Should Christians Embrace Evolution?, 9)

These are other questions theistic evolution raises for the Bible believing Christian. How can we uphold the special dignity and majesty the Bible accords human beings when we are only qualitatively different from other life forms and continuous with the rest of the animal world? How can God impute sin and guilt to all humans along the lines of federal headship when some of us have no physical connection with Adam? Likewise, if we are not all descended literally from one pair, how can we all have an ontological connection with Christ who only assumed the flesh of Adam’s race?

Of course, these problems are no problems at all (conceptually) without the Bible to account for. But theistic evolution purports to bring together the evolutionary consensus and a faithful doctrine of creation. That’s the whole appeal. And yet, I don’t see how the two are compatible, whether Adam really existed or not.

Why Idolatry Was (and Is) Attractive

Most Westerners have struggled at one time or another to understand the attraction of idolatry in the ancient world. What could be so compelling about an inanimate block of wood or chunk of stone? Hard core idolatry feels as tempting as beet juice. It’s likely someone out there loves a frothy glass of obscure vegetable extract, but the temptation doesn’t weigh heavily on our souls.

But idolatry made a lot of sense in the ancient world. And, had we lived two or three millennia ago, it almost certainly would have been tempting to each one of us. In his commentary on Exodus, Doug Stuart explains idolatry’s attraction with nine points. You’ll likely want to save this list and file it for future sermons or Bible studies.

1. Idolatry was guaranteed. The formula was simple. Carve a god out of wood or stone and the god would enter the icon. Now that you have a god in your midst, you can get his (or her) attention quickly. Your incantations, oaths, and offerings will always be noticed.

2. Idolatry was selfish. Scratch the gods backs and they’ll scratch yours. They need food and sacrifices; you need blessings. Do your stuff and they’ll be obliged to get you stuff.

3. Idolatry was easy. Ancient idolatry encouraged vain religious activity. Do what you like with your life. So long as you show up consistently with your sacrifices, you’ll be in good shape.

4. Idolatry was convenient. Gods in the ancient world were not hard to come by. Access was almost everywhere. Statues can be used in the home or on the go.

5. Idolatry was normal. Everyone did it. It’s how woman got pregnant, how crops grew, how armies conquered. Idolatry was like oil: nothing ran in the ancient world without it.

6. Idolatry was logical. Nations are different. People are different. Their needs and desires are different. Obviously, there must be different deities for different strokes. How could one god cover all of life? You don’t eat at one restaurant do you? The more options the better. They can all be right some of the time.

7. Idolatry was pleasing to the senses. If you are going to be especially religious, it helps to be able to see your god. It’s harder to impress people with an invisible deity.

8. Idolatry was indulgent. Sacrificing to the gods did not often require sacrifice for the worshiper. Leftover food could be eaten. Drink could be drunk. Generosity to the gods leads to feasting for you.

9. Idolatry was sensual. The whole system was marked by eroticism. Rituals could turn into orgies. Sex on earth often meant sex in heaven, and sex in heaven meant big rain, big harvests and multiplying herds.

Can you see the attraction of idolatry? “Let’s see I want a spirituality that gets me lots, costs me little, is easy to see, easy to do, has few ethical or doctrinal boundaries, guarantees me success, feels good, and doesn’t offend those around me.” That’ll preach. We want the same things they wanted.  We just go after them in different ways. We want a faith that gets us stuff and guarantees success (prosperity gospel). We want discipleship that is always convenient (virtual church). We want a religion that is ritualistic (nominal Christianity). Or a spirituality that no matter what encourages sexual expression (GLBTQ). We all want to follow God in a way that makes sense to others, feels good to us, and is easy to see and understand. From the garden to the Asherah pole to the imperial feasts, idolatry was the greatest temptation for God’s people in both testaments.

A look around and a look inside will tell you it still is.

Straight In His Face

Then there came-at first from very off-sounds of wailing and then, from every direction, a rustling and a pattering and a sound of wings.  It came nearer and nearer.  Soon one could distinguish the scamper of little feet from the padding of big paws, and the clack-clack of light little hoofs from the thunder of great ones.  And then one could see thousands of pairs of eyes gleaming.  And at last, out of the shadow of the trees, racing up the hill for dear life, by thousands and by millions, came all kinds of creatures — Talking Beasts, Dwarfs, Satyrs, Fauns, Giants, Calormenes, men from Archenland, Monopods, and strange unearthly things from the remote islands or the unknown Western lands.  And all these ran up to the doorway where Aslan stood.

 The creatures came rushing on, their eyes brighter and brighter as they drew nearer and nearer to the standing Stars.  But as they came right up to Aslan one or other of two things happened to each of them.  They all looked straight in his face, I don’t think they had any choice about that.  And when some looked, the expression of their faces changed terribly – it was fear and hatred. . . .and all the creatures who looked at Aslan in that way swerved to their right, his left, and disappeared into his huge black shadow, which (as you have heard) streamed away to the left of the doorway.  The children never saw them again.  I don’t know what became of them.  But the others looked in the face of Aslan and loved him, though some of them were very frightened at the same time.  And all these came in at the door, in on Aslan’s right (C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle).

No matter what you think of him now, one day you will stand before Jesus. And on that day you will not see him as a little baby or as a dying man on a cross. He will stand before you as the glorious and exalted Son of Man. You will see the nail marks in his hands, but instead of a crown of thorns, a crown of glory will rest upon his brow. He will be more dazzling than you imagined, his splendor more radiant than you thought possible.

There will be no mistaking who he is at that moment—the Lord, the Messiah, the image of the invisible God, the Word made flesh. No one will wonder if there might be other gods besides him.  No one will speculate about the plausibility of this or that historical Jesus. No one will dare to think that some clandestine council or some rogue disciple concocted Jesus the Christ. There will be no atheists at that moment. No skeptics on that day. Every knee will bow.  Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.  It will be the immediate and unavoidable conclusion for everyone who sees him.

And as you stand before this Christ you will do so alone. You will not be able hide in a crowd. You will not have your family or church or well-wishers to stand in the gap. Just you. Your name will be called and you will rise to stand before him.

At that moment what your parents thought of you will be inconsequential.  Whether you were popular or rich or intelligent will make no difference. Your diplomas will be of no use to you. Your talents and earthly treasure will not matter. When you see Christ as he is, for who he is, you will not be neutral. Your response will not be tepid. No one will equivocate or find some middle ground. You will either thrill to realize that this is the One you have loved and have longed to look upon, or you will hate to look on One so lovely when you’d rather be looking at yourself.

He Did Something With His Life

My grandpa was born on August 9, 1918. He died last Thursday on April 12, 2012. His funeral, which I have the privilege to lead, is today.

One of the best parts about writing Just Do Something is that I got to include stories about both my grandfathers. In honor of my Grandpa Van I thought it would be appropriate to forgo Monday Morning Humor today and reprint what I wrote about him in Just Do Something back in 2009. Fittingly, the chapter is entitled “The End of the Matter.”

*******

I have two living grandparents—both old Dutch men with sharp minds, strong wills, and a full head of white hair.  Peter DeYoung is my dad’s dad.  I’ve mentioned him a few times already.  Menser Vanden Heuvel is my mom’s dad.  He was born in 1918 in a small farming community outside of Zeeland, Michigan.  He was one of nine children and, from what I gather, did not suffer fools gladly.  As a young boy, after a friend and he were being picked on, Grandpa Van told his friend, “If they start something tonight, I’m going to knock the tar out of the younger guy and when he’s down, you hold him down.”  When I think of my Grandpa Van now, I think of how proud he is that I’m a pastor and how warmly he smiles at all his grandkids and great-grandkids.  But I’ve known him long enough to imagine that back in the day you probably didn’t mess around with Menser.

Grandpa Van didn’t go to school past the eighth grade, but he never stopped learning, and he certainly never stopped working hard.  By age 12, at the beginning of the Great Depression, he was splitting time on the farm and at a machinery shop in town, where he was paid in bundles of green firewood.  (Grandpa has always had a knack for mechanics and fixing things, a trait that landed squarely with my cousins more than me or any of my siblings.)  At sixteen or seventeen, he and a buddy went to wait in line for work at American Seating Company in Grand Rapids.  They waited through the morning and afternoon, only to hear, “Sorry, nothing today.”  So they came back the next day, and the next, and the next.  Finally, the foreman said, “If these two want to work that bad, let’s put them on.”  So they got a full time job building church furniture during the Great Depression for the princely wage of forty cents an hour.  “We were rich,” Grandpa told me.

Within a few years, Grandpa owned and operated several service stations in town.  He was only twenty or twenty-one at the time—the age most “kids” today are still playing video games, sneaking off to parties, and trying to “find” themselves.  In talking with my Grandpa about his life, I asked whether he wrestled with God’s will, or remembered waiting for a sense of direction in taking so much initiative in life as a young man.  “No,” he said, “I felt like God was waiting for me to get involved.”  I wonder how many of us are just the opposite – waiting for God to tell us what to do rather than assuming He’s waiting for us to go out and be obedient.

Grandpa Van was thinking specifically about Christian Endeavor (CE), the cutting edge youth program of the day.  Grandpa felt called to work with the young people in CE.  The only problem was he belonged to the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) and CE was a program in the local Reformed Church in America (RCA) congregation.  Now, to most outsiders, these two denominations seem almost indistinguishable, but if you’ve ever lived in West Michigan or Northwest Iowa or any other Dutch enclave, you would know that the CRC and RCA are siblings separated by a common history.  They are kissing cousins that have never kissed and made up.  So when my grandpa told his CRC elders that he wanted to work with the RCA-sponsored Christian Endeavor, they let him have it (I’ll take his word for it).  No CRC boy had any business collaborating with the RCA.  They pointed fingers, read him the riot act, and did a masterful job of ticking him off.  So Grandpa stood up straight and spoke right to their faces: “And I suppose that you have a special corner in heaven just for the Christian Reformed.”  And that’s how my Grandpa became an RCA man.  He’s told me the story of getting kicked out of the CRC more than any other story I remember from him.  And he always tells it with a bit of a smile.  I should add that after more than sixty-five years away, he’s now happily rejoined the CRC, going to a fine church that sits just behind his suburban condo.

Grandpa married a wonderful Lutheran woman named Mildred from northern Michigan in 1941 and got drafted less than a year later.  He left for Fort Custer in Battle Creek.  There he was examined to see which branch of the armed forces suited him best.  He had never even seen the inside of a high school, but “God’s will carried me through those exams and put me in the Air Force, which is what I wanted all along.”  Because he had been in the National Guard for three years, Grandpa was put in charge of the drill at basic training.  He eventually wound up in the South Pacific, working on B-29s and taking heavy fire from the Japanese.  When he came back to Michigan and Mildred in 1945, he went to Grand Rapids to be an airplane mechanic.  But he needed a civilian license.  So he maneuvered his way into college – quite a trick since he had never been to high school – passed some classes and got his necessary credentials.  Several years later, Grandpa started his own airfreight business, which he owned and operated for over twenty years, and made a pretty nice living doing it. Through it all, he raised three kids and stayed very active in the church—teaching high school Sunday School, having the youth over for hay rides, and even working with a Japanese ministry later in life.

At some point in the story, I’m not sure when, he got twenty acres outside of Battle Creek in exchange for a plane he had fixed up.  Then he got twenty more acres and another twenty, until he had enough to start farming and get into the cattle business.  As he accumulated more land, he would dredge up the swampland and sell the soil.  The whole marshy lowland became a man-made lake dug out by my grandpa and his trusty crane.

He always made sure I had some good work to do when I visited during the summer—hauling rocks from the peat, helping to plant a few trees, and standing by scared stiff as my grandpa killed an occasional snapping turtle that threatened his swans. (In my memory I actually participated in the heroic deeds of turtle carnage, but according to my brother and grandpa, my contribution was more akin to tiptoeing away backwards and crying like a little girl.)

He lost Grandma to heart trouble in 1990 and remarried a year later.

Not long ago I asked my Grandpa, “Is there anything you think younger generations of Christians have lost that your generation understood.”

“Oh yes,” he said quietly.

“Like what, Grandpa?”

He thought for a moment.  When he opened his mouth, he didn’t answer the question directly, but I got his point, and it was good one.  “I started with nothing,” he stated.  “What right did I have to hope for all these things that fell into place?  Hard work, sure, but I know it was from God.”

Compared with my affluent, lazy, trivial, tinkering generation, my grandpa would be a remarkable man, except that so many from his generation seem to have been so remarkable.  He had his faults to be sure, but my Grandpa Van, like most of the WWII crowd, certainly did something rather than nothing.  He worked hard, took chances, showed constant initiative, and, by his own account, lived a pretty fulfilled life – all without searching desperately for fulfillment.  He prayed, but didn’t hyper-spiritualize his every move.  He had several different jobs, but never in hopes of finding the next best thing.

More importantly, growing up in the Depression, he expected little from life, so when he got little he wasn’t surprised, and when he got a lot, he chalked it up to God’s doing, not his.  I sense from talking to my grandpa that he labored hard at everything except trying to discern some mysterious, hidden will of direction from God.  Not that he didn’t believe in God’s providence.  Far from it.  But the providence he believed in helped him take chances instead of taking breaks.  And now that his life is almost done, it helps him trace God’s hand of blessing over nine decades gone by and trust the Lord for whatever years lay ahead.

That’s Grandpa’s life in God.  And that’s how it should be for the Christian: active in the present, grateful for the past, and hopeful for the future.

The Third and Principal Use

It's worth noting, as many have, that the Heidelberg Catechism included its exposition of the Law in the gratitude section and not in the guilt section.  This choice reflects the widespread Reformation belief in the so-called third use of the law.  The law is given (1) to restrain wickedness and (2) to show us our guilt and lead us to Christ.  But, according to Calvin, the "third and principal use" of the law is as an instrument to learn God's will.  The law doesn't just show us our sin so we might be drawn to Christ; it shows us how to live as those who belong to Christ.

In one sense Christians are no longer under the law.  We are under grace (Rom. 6:14).  We have been released from the law (Rom. 7:6) and its tutelage (Gal. 3).  On the other hand, having been justified by faith, we uphold the law (Rom. 3:31).  Even Christ recoiled at the idea of coming to abolish the law and the prophets (Matt. 5:17).  Christians are free from the law in the sense that we are not under the curse of the law–Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes (Rom. 10:4)–nor is the law a nationalized covenant for us like it was for Israel.  But the law in general, and the Ten Commandments in particular, still give us the principles which instruct us how to live.

The Ten Commandments were central to the ethics of the New Testament. Jesus repeated most of the second table of the law to the rich young man (Mark 10:17-22). The Apostle Paul repeated them too (Rom. 13:8-10) and used them as the basis for his moral instruction to Timothy (1 Tim. 1:8-11).  The commandments are holy and righteous and good (Rom. 7:12). How could they be anything else? They are an expression of God's character. If we do not love what God commands us to do, we do not love what God is like.

We obey the commandments, therefore, not in order to merit God's favor but because we have already experienced his favor.  The Decalogue was given to Israel after God delivered them from Egypt.  The law was a response to redemption not a cause of it. In one sense, the law shows us our sin and leads us to the gospel. But in another sense, law ought to follow the gospel just as the giving of the Decalogue followed salvation from Egypt. We obey God's words not because we cower under threat of judgment, but because we stand confidently with our Deliverer and gladly accept his good rule for our life.

Wednesday Morning Humor

This song says what we've all been feeling for more than a decade. Thanks BoE. I know nothing else about your band, but you've done a great service for a lot of young men with this single. Speaking truth to power!

Four Thoughts for T4G

Blogging will be a little different this week. I posted a substantive piece yesterday and will post a little mid-week humor tomorrow. Everything is off kilter because this is Together For the Gospel week. Like many of you I'm in Louisville for a wonderful week of learning, reconnecting, and being overwhelmed by the book store. Because my week is so busy, and many of you will be drinking from the same fire hose, I'll be aiming for brevity on the blog for the next several days–a little humor, a few highlights, a little folding of the hands to rest.

But as T4G kicks off, I thought I'd remind myself (and you) of how to approach a big conference like this.

1. Be thankful. There should be a deep, pervasive sense of gratitude for a gathering like this. Thank God for the singing, for the resources, for the teaching, for the people serving you at the hotel and in the restaurants, for the people (you may never know or meet) who have worked and will be working tirelessly behind the scenes to make a massive event like this possible. Thank God for the freedom to gather in large numbers to learn and worship. Thank God for his work in recent years to stir up a passion for his glory, a hunger for good preaching, and a love for the particularities of the gospel.

2. Pray. I know the schedule is insane, but it would be a shame to go prayerless for three days at a gospel conference. Pray for the speakers and the organizers. Pray for your fellow pastors and pastors' wives. Pray for the churches represented. Pray for safety. Pray for conviction of sin and the comfort of the gospel. Pray for the result of our gathering to be greater humility before God, greater fidelity to the Scriptures, greater integrity in our ministry, and greater harmony in our families. Pray for people to get saved. Pray for preachers to be renewed. Pray for churches to be revived, encouraged, and strengthened

3. Stand against the devil. Resist the many temptations that can fly into our hearts in a week like this: temptations to jealousy and envy, temptations to bitterness and despair, temptations to compare and criticize, temptations to be haughty and proud, temptations to impress instead of to serve. Be mindful of the accusations and deceptions of the Evil One. Our battle is not against flesh and blood.

4. Take something home. No doubt, you'll be stuffed full of teaching, conversation, and free books by the end of the week. No one should go away empty. But it's wise to be strategic with all you'll receive. You may want to think in terms of the one thing(s) you will take home: one new song to share, one practical suggestion to implement, one new idea to ponder, one new friendship to cultivate, one new book you will definitely read, one sermon to revisit, one Louisville Slugger for each of your non-violent children. Make a point to make your take home stuff more manageable and more useful.