Barnabas Piper's Blog, page 78

He Reads Truth: Mark – Belief and Unbelief

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 Mark. You can find the full plan HERE.

Mark 6:1-56, 2 Kings 2:11

 

“I remember when you were just a little tyke! You used to cruise around this neighborhood on your bike and cause all sorts of trouble.”

One visit to the town you grew up in and you’ll hear something like this. It even happened to Jesus. The problem was that Jesus wasn’t just in town for the holidays; He was on a mission to save the world and He wanted to begin with those He knew and loved most.

Instead, all He got was “Isn’t that Mary’s boy? I think He made me my end table a while back.”

The closeness of the people in Nazareth to Jesus blinded them to His identity. They could not hear the truth or power of His words, and He could not do any miracles there, because of their unbelief. All they could see was the son of the carpenter.

So Jesus gathered His twelve disciples and commissioned them to take His mission to other parts of Israel. And did they ever – preaching with power, seeing people repent, and even casting out demons in Jesus’ name.

It was a shame that the people of Nazareth missed out, but the story turns here. The mission is progressing nicely. Right? Well, about that…

In a remote place, Jesus preached to a crowd of 5,000 men and likely as many women and children. They are hungry; so He told His disciples, those same twelve, to feed the people and they panicked. “How can we? Should we spend half a year’s salary on food?” So Jesus miraculously provided. Only this time, it was the disciples who did not believe.

Hours later, as they sailed to their next stop through high seas and strong winds, Jesus came walking across the water toward them. When they panicked and cried out, “It’s a ghost!”, Jesus reassured them. Still, the disciples did not believe.

It’s easy to look at the people of Nazareth and shake our heads at their hard hearts. It’s easy for us to look at the disciples and tsk tsk just a little. How could they preach and perform miracles and still not believe? What we should see is ourselves. We should see our own blindness and unbelief and our own ability to overlook the great things Jesus has done. We, too, see miracles and brush them off or fail to understand. We see them in Scripture. We see them in our own salvation. Yet still we panic. We doubt. We wander.

Thankfully, Jesus provides and reassures and draws us close to Himself. He continues to reveal Himself to those seeking to believe, so that over time we truly can.

New Happy Rant: Hef, Hell, Greetings, and Judging

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

Pastor’s making points about hell and eternity when guys like Hugh Hefner die
How do we describe a person we like? Do we go the celebrity route of “delightful” or “lovely”? Or do we go the “good guy” route?
What do we judge other people for enjoying?

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!

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #164

New Happy Rant:

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

Pastor’s making points about hell and eternity when guys like Hugh Hefner die
How do we describe a person we like? Do we go the celebrity route of “delightful” or “lovely”? Or do we go the “good guy” route?
What do we judge other people for enjoying?

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!

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #164

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!

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

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:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

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:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #161