Barnabas Piper's Blog, page 72

New Happy Rant: Public Protesting, Kneeling, but NO FOOTBALL TALK

In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted and Barnabas hash out some important issues while Ronnie continues his never ending tour of working class cities in middle America.

Protesting during the national Anthem – people’s responses, false accusations, and more
Are the protests ruining football?
Jemele Hiil’s comments about Trump and how politics have crossed into entertainment media
BUT NO FOOTBALL TALK

We’d like to thank our sponsor, The Good Book Company. They are highlighting Trillia Newbell’s new book, God’s Very Good Idea. It is a beautiful book showing kids (and adults too) God’s perfect intent in creating people of different races, cultures, gifting, and preferences and GOd’s perfect rescue plan to redeem those people after they screwed things up. It is a magnificent depiction of God’s image being reflected in all people and the gospel being the salvation for all people too. Get yours today!

Visit HappyRantPodcast.com to get your Happy Rant signature roast coffee from Lagares Roasters AND to sign up for Live in Louisville, coming this October. It’s really happening, and we’d love to see you there!

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Episode #163

Why Christians Need to Cultivate Curiosity

Why should Christians cultivate the discipline of Curiosity? Is it even a discipline or just a hobby? In this short video I recorded with For The Church I do my best to explain how intentional curiosity is essential for all believers who want to know God more and reflect him better as image bearers.

New Happy Rant: The Story Trend, Seminary Advertising, and the Right Time to Talk Controversy

In this episode of the Happy Rant podcast Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas suss out the following:

The story trend- living a story, believing a story, and when story jumped the shark
Ted takes a phone call live on the air
Bad Seminary advertising
Our ideal body types
When is “the right time” to talk about controversial issues?

Big thank you to our sponsor, Waterbrook, and their book Convicted, the true story of a corrupt cop and the man he falsely convicted finding reconciliation and redemption.

Visit HappyRantPodcast.com to get your Happy Rant signature roast coffee from Lagares Roasters AND to sign up for Live in Louisville, coming this October. It’s really happening, and we’d love to see you there!

To listen you can:

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Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
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Episode #162

He Reads Truth: Ruth – A New Name

I have the privilege of contributing to He Reads Truth, a website of whose purpose is “To help men become who we were made to be, by doing what we were made to do, by the power and provision that God has given us to do it, for the glory of Jesus Christ.” They do this by providing scripture reading plans accompanied by reflections that can be accessed for free online or purchased as print books. For those of you looking to engage scripture in a fresh way – either because you are dried up or have been away from it, these studies/plans will refresh your soul and engage your mind.

What follows is one of the pieces I wrote on Ruth. You can find the full plan HERE.

Ruth 1:19-22, Ruth 2:1-3, Job 27:2-6, Philippians 3:8-11

Many things can make us bitter against God. A job loss, a failed marriage, a church split, broken relationships, the death of a loved one, illness. When we experience these, we often think God should have fixed it. He should have helped.

He could have saved us but He didn’t. So we become bitter. We think ill of Him and speak ill of Him. We shake our fists and curse Him under our breath, and sometimes even reach the point of rejecting Him all together.

In Ruth 1, we see Naomi and Ruth experiencing loss to an extreme degree. They are left with no husbands, which, in that culture, meant no security and even no identity. They were on their own, destitute and lost. So Naomi declares her new name to be Mara, which means “bitter.” For, she says, “God made me bitter. He brought me back empty” (Ruth 1:21).

Like all good stories, though, this one has a twist. It is a twist on our understanding of “bitterness.” Mara doesn’t reject God. She doesn’t shake her fist. She responds more like what we see from Job; though God made her bitter, she did not lose her integrity, give up on following Him, or speak ill of Him. Her bitterness was one of pain and brokenness, but not one that lacked faith. She knew God was God and clung to Him regardless. We see this in her response to Ruth.

Ruth was, in many ways, a fruit of Mara’s pain. She was a reminder of loss. Yet Mara claimed her as a daughter. When Ruth sought her permission to go and find a means of livelihood, Mara blessed her on her way, saying, “Go, my daughter.” This small phrase shows both love and hope.

Mara loved Ruth and kept living life. Her bitterness did not steal her capacity for feeling, for faith, or for life. It was not the bitterness we so often picture. Such a response to suffering echoes Paul’s words in Philippians 3, where he says he “considers everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ” (3:8).

Suffering hurts. It brings bitterness to the soul, but that bitterness does not have to rob us of life or faith, even if it robs us of happiness. We can still love, we can still follow, we can still live.

And notice one more thing. When Mara (Naomi) responded to her suffering this way, something extraordinary happened; the door was opened for Ruth to meet her redeemer, Boaz. And, through meeting Boaz, the plot was set in place for the Redeemer of the world to be born – the Redeemer of whom we say we everything is loss compared to knowing Him.

Reflections on Tension, History, and Wheaton College

My country’s founding fathers were slave-owners and the entire history of my country is marred by racial inequality and injustice.

Many of my church tradition’s theological heroes owned other humans or stood silent in the face of those who did.

81% of my faith tradition, according to leading statisticians, supported a president who has presided over the most divisive presidency in my lifetime.

Year after year prominent leaders in churches with whom I am associated fail morally, ethically, or turn a blind eye to those who do.

Numerous churches and other Christian institutions continue to fail in their response to abuse – sexual, physical, or emotional.

How am I to respond or even to rightly think about these things? My heart is torn because I love my country and my church, but I also love the people these institutions have hurt. This is tension.

This week a story broke about a hazing and assault case at my alma mater, Wheaton College. I love Wheaton (not loved, love). My time there was formative spiritually, relationally, and intellectually. When I think back on people, places, and times of my life that imparted the most wisdom and shaped me the most Wheaton College is involved in a huge number of them. But now this.

The alleged incident was horrific an unconscionable. It was the kind of behavior that has no place in society at all, and especially not on a campus flying the banner “For Christ and His Kingdom.” Of course, I do not know the details. I may never know them, and I am not sure they are owed to me for my consumption anyhow.

I have read the accusations against five football players. I have read counter-statements and defenses. I have read portions of the school administration’s statement about how the situation was handled. I have read the vitriol poured out against that administration.

I’ve seen predictable lines drawn: forces massing to defend the accuser and condemn the accused in the court of public contempt VS. opposing forces demanding that we “wait for the facts” and “let the justice process be served.”

I have seen people hurt by, or at, Christian institutions empathize with the accuser and I have seen those whose experience was positive (like mine) assume innocence.

But what I have seen above all is the mass discarding of babies with bath water. In each dispute people pick a side and assume both the guilt and animosity of the opposition. And such a stance inherently breeds animosity. In a situation fraught with tension and complexity the instinctive response has been to over-simplify and create stark blacks and whites with no gradient of gray.

Our instincts in this are wrong. The desire to simplify and segment and draw lines doesn’t resolve issues – historical, theological, institutional, or legal. It exacerbates them. It escalates them. It widens the chasm between sides when, in fact, there ought not to be sides. The instinctive simplification of complex issues is a defense mechanism that ends up doing more harm than good.

We must train our instincts to recognize points of tension and move into them instead of away. We must find a level of comfort – though maybe that is the wrong term – with the unresolved and unresolvable, the gradients of gray rather than black and white.

This means a willingness to recognize the good and distinguish it from the bad simultaneously. It means a willingness to appreciate the good and condemn the bad simultaneously. It means we cannot idolize, lionize, or demonize the way we once did because few people eras, or institutions are as good or as bad as we have portrayed them. We have portrayed only a portion of who they are, or were, for the sake of simplicity and at the expense of truth.

America’s history and politics, with all its heroes and villains, are remarkable for their good and for their evil. The church over the ages is remarkable for its Christlikeness and its Christ-forgetfulness. Christian institutions are remarkable for the saints and sinners who have run them and been developed by them. This is a tension with which we must become accustomed.

And it is one with which we should be intimately familiar for it is a tension that reflects my heart and yours at a societal level. We are capable, by God’s grace, of remarkable good. And we are, by our sinful nature, capable of heinous evils. Put us in charge of a group, an institution, an organization, or a nation of like-hearted sinners and all this will be magnified.

It is dishonest to ourselves and those around us to over-simplify tensions. It falsely accuses or falsely praises. It refuses to acknowledge the whole reality or the whole person.

Tension is uncomfortable. It is not easy. It often does not relax over time. That is why we avoid it and precisely why we must engage it. Often tension is where truth lives, and to avoid it is to believe and perpetuate lies. If we refuse to acknowledge the push and pull between competing realities we are simply creating falsehoods we find easier to believe.

Pro-Life is About More than Abortion

Many people, especially white evangelicals, vote for political offices based solely on the issue of abortion. Pro-life ought to mean more than just defending the lives of the unborn, and that should be reflected in our voting and in our lives. No matter how messy it gets. In this short video recorded at the Legacy Conference I do my best to explain how we should work through this.

New Happy Rant: Whole 30, Why Do I Try, and Jim Carrey

In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas discuss the following:

The Whole 30 and other cult diets
Whats the thing in your life that causes you to exclaim “Why do I even try?” even though you have to try?
Jim Carrey’s shift from crazy funny to just plain crazy.

 Visit HappyRantPodcast.com to get your Happy Rant signature roast coffee from Lagares Roasters AND to sign up for Live in Louisville, coming this October. It’s really happening, and we’d love to see you there!

To listen you can:

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Episode #161

New Happy Rant: It’s OK to Fail, Working in ’85, and Fun Reformed Podcasts

In this episode of the Happy Rant Ted Kluck, Barnabas Piper, and Ronnie Martin rant about a bunch of stuff except the Nashville Statement.

Telling your kids it’s ok to fail
Telling your kids they’re bad at stuff
What it would’ve been like to do our respective jobs in 1985
What does it take to make a fun reformed podcast?

Visit HappyRantPodcast.com to get your Happy Rant signature roast coffee from Lagares Roasters AND to sign up for Live in Louisville, coming this October. It’s really happening, and we’d love to see you there!

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
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Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
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Episode #160

He Reads Truth: Thomas’s Encounter with Christ

I have the privilege of contributing to He Reads Truth, a website of whose purpose is “To help men become who we were made to be, by doing what we were made to do, by the power and provision that God has given us to do it, for the glory of Jesus Christ.” They do this by providing scripture reading plans accompanied by reflections that can be accessed for free online or purchased as print books. For those of you looking to engage scripture in a fresh way – either because you are dried up or have been away from it, these studies/plans will refresh your soul and engage your mind.

What follows is one of the pieces I wrote on Thomas’s encounter with Jesus. You can find the full plan HERE.

John 20:24-31

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Put your money where your mouth is.”

“Prove it.”

We’ve all heard people say these words before. We’ve likely said them ourselves. Phrases like these indicate skepticism. They express our doubts about a situation.

Here’s another phrase we’re likely familiar with: “doubting Thomas.” That’s someone who says those first three phrases all the time. He is a perpetual questioner, hard to convince and win over, needing incontrovertible proof before agreeing or believing.

That’s being awfully hard on the original Thomas, though. In John 20, Jesus appears to the disciples after His resurrection, but Thomas was not with them. Put yourself in Thomas’s shoes. You get back from running some errands or visiting family, and when you meet up with your friends again, what you hear is unbelievable. Literally, unbelievable. They insist that Jesus—the one you staked all your hope on, the one you saw die a criminal’s death—is alive. Who could believe that? Dead people do not come back to life. That is what the word “dead” means.

But your friends insist. You know they’re not insane and you can tell they aren’t pulling your leg. But dead is dead. Neither, though, can you just discount their sincerity. You say, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” You don’t believe, but you leave the door open in case the impossible happens.

That’s what Thomas did. Is that doubting? Yes, but it seems reasonable to me. After all, Jesus died and was buried in a tomb hewn of stone. And they were all witnesses to this fact.

What Jesus does next is beautiful; it’s exactly what Thomas needs in order to believe. Thomas said he would believe only if he could touch the scars in Jesus’ hands and side, so Jesus appears and shows Thomas the wounds. Jesus shows patience, grace, and understanding by giving Thomas what he needs to believe.

And Thomas does believe. He doesn’t cling to his skepticism or let pride get in the way. He doesn’t take time to come around. Immediately, Thomas responded with, “My Lord and my God!” That’s worship—the kind a risen Jesus deserves.

This passage closes with an exhortation from Jesus Himself, one that all of us who are doubters and questioners must cling to. Jesus says, “Those who believe without seeing are blessed” (v. 29). He isn’t calling us to blind, ignorant faith the way so many skeptics see it. He is calling us to trust His Word and promises.

Thomas had heard Jesus talk about dying and rising many times, yet still he doubted. We often do the same, but we would be happier and closer to Jesus if we took His Word to heart and simply believed.

Remember, He already proved His promises in His resurrection. What more do we need?

7 Standards for Good Writing

What is good writing? This book isn’t very good. That one is. But what is this “good”? Some might say good writing is only a matter of preference, but that gives too much power to one with limited taste. If you only like theology books then Pat Conroy’s heartbreaking novels won’t seem so good to you. But you’d be wrong.

How can I call an opinion about a subjective form wrong? Well, because there are standards by which I can argue. Each standard is open for debate, but combine them all and a sieve of sorts is formed to sift the poor works and let through the quality ones.

1) Writing is good when its purpose is good.

A work designed to deceive, glorify evil, or lead people astray is never good no matter the craftsmanship. Ornate devilry is still bad, no matter how intricate. However, a work designed to prod, move, encourage, inform, explore, or express truths has the necessary purpose to be truly good. But a good purpose is only the starting point.

2) Writing is good when it fulfills its purpose well.

If a writer writes a humor piece that isn’t funny it isn’t good because it failed at its purpose. If he is trying to inspire action but instead elicits yawns, if a work is supposed to explore and instead criticizes or is supposed to be fair-minded and instead is partisan they aren’t good. Writers shoot at a target of purpose, and their work is only as good as their aim.

3) Writing is good if the thinking behind it is good.

Writing is not a motor skill; it’s a mental one. All the grammar and vocabulary in the world will not make a good writer out of someone with a clumsy, lazy, unfocused, or flabby mind. Thinking must exhibit truthfulness, creativity, brightness, depth, insight, expression, curiosity, emotion, and more. Different works will emphasize different traits, but all must be in the mind of the writer for the work to be good.

4) Writing is good if it expresses good thinking well.

Does the reader know what the writer wants to communicate? Has it moved her so that she feels the emotion and bears the weight of the questions? Are the truths clearer now than they ever have been? And was the reading experience a memorable ride, if not altogether fun? For a work to be truly good it must offer a glimpse of the writer’s mind and soul and have expressed his thinking in an appropriate manner. This doesn’t mean spoon feeding the reader ideas bit-by-bit, but it does mean presenting ideas so the reader can encounter them in the right way.

5) Writing is good if it is technically proficient.

Language is a toolbox. Actually, language is Home Depot. To write well one must know how to make use of it, all of it. This isn’t limited to grammatical perfection. That just makes you a good proofreader. I mean the ability to combine description, metaphor, dialogue, similes, verbs, adverbs, analogies, and more into just the right structure so that when a reader comes across it she must stop and take notice. Proficiency is the ability to maximize this storehouse of wonder we call language.

6) Writing is good if it isn’t self-conscious.

Admittedly, this is more of a feeling than anything technical, and it is particularly true of fiction. If a piece of writing gives the reader the sense that the author is trying too hard, is holding back, or, on the other hand, is forcing things it isn’t good. Writing must feel natural and like it is flowing to be truly good. The effort of the author must make ease for the reader. Otherwise it’s bad writing.

7) Writing is good when it makes the reader both more conscious of self and less self-conscious.

The best writing shows us something about ourselves we otherwise would not have known. It inspires questions to make us dig and feel and squirm. But even as it does this it makes us willing to expose ourselves to its work instead of being embarrassed or protecting ourselves. When we have read something great we feel both more whole and more bared than ever before.

These seven standards combine into a whole. None can be removed and a piece of writing remain good. It’s by no means an exhaustive list, but maybe it will be helpful to you in your own reading and in conversation.