Barnabas Piper's Blog, page 84
March 10, 2017
The 50 Best Quotes from The Ragamuffin Gospel
I recently read Brennan Manning’s classic work on God’s profound love and grace, The Ragamuffin Gospel. I’d known of the book for years, but it took dozens of recommendations before I bought and read it. Part of me wished I had done so earlier and part of me is grateful I encountered this beautiful book when I did. It is rare or me to read a book that makes me love Jesus and feel loved by Jesus more. This one did, page after page, relentlessly. It is magnificent in its simplicity and depth and honesty and gratefulness and worship. If you have not, please read it. Here are a election of the best quotes from it.
1) [This book] is for smart people who know they are stupid and honest disciples who admit they are scalawags.
2) The bending of the mind by the powers of this world has twisted the gospel of grace into religious bondage and distorted the image of God into an eternal, small-minded bookkeeper.
3) He has a single relentless stance toward us: He loves us. He is the only God man has ever heard of who loves sinners.
4) The kingdom is not an exclusive, well-trimmed suburb with snobbish rules about who can live there. No, it is for a far larger, homlier, less self-conscious caste of people who understand they are sinner because they have experienced the yaw and pitch of moral struggle.
5) The men and women who are truly filled with the light are those who have gazed deeply into the darkness of their own imperfect existence.
6) Aristotle said I am a rational animal; I say I am an angel with an incredible capacity for beer.
7) My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn or deserve it.
8) Whatever our failings may be, we need not lower our eyes in the presence of Jesus.
9) Something is radically wrong when the local church rejects someone accepted by Jesus.
10) Creation discloses a power that baffles our minds and beggars our speech.
11) Grace is the active expression of His love.
12) The child of the Father rejects the pastel-colored patsy God who promises never to rain on our parade.
13) Jesus learned how to walk, stumbled and fell, cried for his milk, sweated blood in the night, was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was fixed to a cross, and died whispering forgiveness on us all.
14) The legalists can never live up to the expectations they project on God.
15) The Word we study has to be the Word we pray.
16) Genuine self-acceptance is not derived from the power of positive thinking, mind games, or pop psychology. It is an act of faith in the grace of God.
17) One of the mysteries of the gospel tradition is this strange attraction of Jesus for the unattractive, this strange desire for the undesirable, this strange love for the unlovely.
18) Just as a smart man knows he is stupid, so the awake Christian knows he/she is a ragamauffin.
19) Repentance is not what we do in order to be forgiven; it is what we do because have been forgiven.
20) The Father in not justice and the Son love. The Father is justice and love; the Son is love and justice.
21) The deeper we grow in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the poorer we become – the more we realize that everything in life is a gift.
22) To be alive is to be broken. And to be broken is to stand in need of grace.
23) We grow complacent and lead practical lives. We miss the experience of awe, reverence, and wonder. Our world is saturated with grace, and the lurking presence of God is revealed not only in spirit but in matter.
24) If God is not in the whirlwind he may be in a Woody Allen Film or a Bruce Springsteen concert. Most people understand imagery and symbol better than doctrine and dogma. Images touch hearts and awaken imaginations.
25) It is only the reality of death that is able to quicken people out of the sluggishness of everyday life and into an active search for what life is really about.
26) Each moment of our existence we are either growing into more or retreating into less. We are either living a little more or dying a little bit, ad Norman Mailer put it.
27) We cannot apply human logic and justice to the living God. Human logic is based on human experience and human nature. Yahweh does not conform to this model. If Israel is unfaithful, God remains faithful against all logic and all limits of justice because He is.
28) Jesus has journeyed to the far reaches of loneliness.
29) We cannot will ourselves to accept grace. There are no magic words, preset formulas, or esoteric rites of passage. Only Jesus Christ sets us free from indecision. The Scriptures offer no other basis for conversion than the personal magnetism of the Master.
30) Just as the sunrise of faith requires the sunset of our former unbelief, so the dawn of trust requires letting go of our craving spiritual consolations and tangible reassurances. Trust at the mercy of the response it receives is a bogus trust.
31) When we wallow in guilt, remorse, and shame over real or imagined sins of the past, we are disdaining God’s gift of grace.
32) Christianity happens when men and women accept with unwavering trust that their sins have not only been forgiven but forgotten, washed away in the blood of the Lamb.
33) The ministry of evangelization is an extraordinary opportunity of showing gratitude to Jesus by passing on His gospel of grace to others.
34) Impostors in the spirit always prefer appearances to reality.
35) The alternative to confronting the truth is always some form of self-destruction.
36) The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior.
37) Many of us pretend to believe we are sinners. Consequently all we can do is pretend to believe we have been forgiven. As a result, our whole spiritual life is pseudo repentance and pseudo bliss.
38) We ought to attract people to the church quite literally by the fun there is in being a Christian. – Robert Hotchkins
39) As the chameleon changes colors with the seasons, so the Christian who wants to be well thought of by everyone attunes and adapts t each new personality and situation.
40) For most of us it takes a long time for the Spirit of freedom to cleanse us of the subtle urges to be admired for our studied goodness. It requires a strong sense of our redeemed selves to pass up the opportunity to appear graceful and good to other persons.
41) Living by grace inspires a growing consciousness that I am what I am in the sight of Jesus and nothing more.
42) A little child cannot do a bad coloring; nor can a child of God do a bad prayer.
43) Compassion for others is not a simple virtue because it avoids snap judgements of right or wrong, good or bad, hero or villain: It seeks truth in all its complexity. Genuine compassion means that in empathizing with the failed plans and uncertain loves of the other person, we send out the vibration, “Yes, ragamuffin, I understand. I’ve been there too.”
44) Usually we see other people not as they are, but as we are.
45) When God’s love is taken for granted, we paint Him into a corner and rob Him of the opportunity to love us in a NEW AND SURPRISING way, and faith begins to shrivel and shrink.
46) To be Christian, faith has to be new – that is, alive and growing. It cannot be static, finished, settled. When Scripture, prayer, worship, ministry become routine, they are dead. When I have decided that I can now cope with the awful love of God I have headed to the shallows to avoid the deeps. I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a teacup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.
47) To really be a disciple of Jesus, one must be as committed to the message of the kingdom as He was, and to preach it whether or not the audience finds it relevant.
48) The sinner is accepted before he pleads for mercy. It is already granted. He need only to receive it. Total amnesty. Gratuitous pardon.
49) After falling flat on your face, are you still firmly convinced that the fundamental structure of reality is not works but grace?
50) The love of God is folly.
March 8, 2017
Interview with BraveDaily.com
I recorded am interview with Crosswalk.com on my new book, The Curious Christian. In it we talk about where the idea of curiosity came from for a book, whether curiosity is safe for Christians, where our boundaries should be on our curiosity, and dealing in the mysteries and complexities of life.
Learn more about the book at CuriousChristianBook.com.
March 6, 2017
NEW HAPPY RANT: Gungor, The Oscars, and Surviving without Tim Keller
In this episode of The Happy Rant podcast Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas are back to their usual rantiness. All is well again and the evangelical world has delivered subjects on a sterling silver platter.
Who is Michael Gungor and why is everyone so enraged at his tweets?
We will indeed be offering Happy Rant Coffee in the near future
The spectacle of The Oscars and why anyone should care
Can evangelicalism survive the departure of Tim Keller?
Who will the next Timmy K. be?
Why doesn’t the reformed world do the red carpet thing?
To listen you can:
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Episode #131
March 3, 2017
Interview with Crosswalk on The Curious Christian
I recorded a short interview with Crosswalk.com on my new book, The Curious Christian. In it we talk about where the idea of curiosity came from for a book, why we need curiosity to go deeper in truth and understanding of God, and how curiosity makes us better image bearers of God. I also share a few things I am curious about right now and am enjoying.
March 2, 2017
New Happy Rant – The Curious Christian (A Bonus Episode)
In a departure from the norm, this episode is not all three hosts ranting about whatever they dang well please. Instead you will get to hear a free chapter from Barnabas Piper’s new book, The Curious Christian: How Discovering Wonder Enriches Every Part of Life. Barnabas did the reading himself, and while he’s no Jon Hamm or Morgan Freeman he did ok.
Christian Audio, who produced the audiobook, has partnered with us to make this available for your listening enjoyment AND to give a special offer. Through the end of March if you can get The Curious Christian audiobook for 50% off through ChristianAudio.com. Just use the code HAPPYRANT at checkout and you will be spending less (under $7) than you would to get full at Chick fil A.
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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BONUS EPISODE
March 1, 2017
Why I Wrote The Curious Christian
My third book, The Curious Christian: How Discovering Wonder Enriches Every Part of Life releases today. I think it is the book I am most proud of (and relieved to be done with) because it was the most challenging to write. The challenge stemmed both from the season of life during which I wrote it as well as the content itself. Curiosity is a nebulous thing to which most of us don’t give much focused, concrete thought. For that reason it is something we lack and don;t even realize we lack.
Most of us just aren’t very curious about very many things, and the results are striking . . . if you are curious enough to look for them.
A lack of curiosity undermines our spiritual lives and faith. Without it we decided that we know enough of God without over considering his magnificent infinity and the endless opportunity to discover more of Him
A lack of curiosity beaks down relationships with friends, co-workers, and loved ones. It leads to selfishness, thoughtlessness, disinterest, distance, and even abandonment
A lack of curiosity is a huge reason we have such political division in our country. We fall to ask honest, humble questions and to listen. We create a partisan rigidity that refuses to see and explore the complexity of many issues and work through them to a common good.
A lack of curiosity contributes hugely to the racial tensions in America. We are afraid of different and even more afraid of discomfort. We see only through the narrow sense of our cultural upbringing and refuse to consider seeing how another has experienced life. And so we judge from a disinterested distance or form false biases.
A lack of curiosity is why we get bored so easily and find so little enjoyment in good things. We always need a new thing instead of wringing all the good out of the thing we have. We are moving so fast that every enjoyment is like a taste test instead of a thing we savor.
A lack of curiosity is why we know so little about so many things and people and peoples. And so we live small lives defined by our day to day and waking hours.
The flip side of all this is that curiosity – the intentional pursuit of truth and desire to see God’s workmanship – gives life and hope and richness to all those parts of life. It is the means by which we can be better and fuller image-bearers of God and see that image in others. And it is how we can discover so many opportunities for enjoyment and joy and wonder and fun in the world around us.
That is why I wrote The Curious Christian. I hope to give readers a taste of wonder, a desire for more, and permission to be curious in whatever unique way God has designed them. I hope to help people see that curiosity is a virtue and a discipline, but more than that it is an ingredient to the best sort of life we can lead – the life that reflects God and see’s all that He is doing around us.
To learn more about the book you can visit CuriousChristianBook.com. There is even a short curiosity evaluation to help you see just how curious you actually are.
Order Your Copy
February 27, 2017
NEW HAPPY RANT: Only The Better Stuff and Some Days Are Bad Days
In this episode of The Happy Rant podcast Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas try something a little different with, um, indeterminate results. In honor of Stephen Altrogge’s latest podcast they set out to do an episode of “only the better stuff” exceot that Ted’s bad day gets in the way. In the end they discuss the following.
Creative funks
NBA Trade Deadline and NFL Draft
Live music
Books we like
Starting conversations with prominent theologians
NBA sports writing
Memory foam mattresses
We mentioned in a previous episode that Happy Rant Coffee is coming soon. We are near to finalizing those details, and here is a little proof. More income to come soon!
As usual we are immensely grateful to Resonate Recordings for doing all our mastering and editing. They make three audio hacks listenable. If you are looking for podcasting services head to ResonateRecordings.com and see what they offer.
To listen you can:
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Listen using the player below.
Episode #130
February 24, 2017
Curiosity, Crossing Cultures, and Breaking Down Barriers
The natural result of curiosity building in our lives is that we take relationships, work, and ministry and point them outward. Or rather it is the supernatural result because God is not a mono-cultural God. He is not the god of the suburbs, the soccer moms, yuppies, the hipsters, the yupsters (hipster + yuppie), or the yuccies (young urban creative, as found particularly in places like East Nashville or Greenpoint, Brooklyn) alone. We see God through our lens, out culture, our language, our past experience. We shape Him in our mind by our story and try our best to fit Him to our world. But He made the world and is fit to nowhere. Curiosity shows us this. It turns us insular-side out.
I write this from the perspective of a middle class, white thirty-something male. Culturally speaking, I live a cakewalk. I have all the racial and gender advantages America has to offer. (If you do not believe there are racial and gender advantages for white males I would simply encourage you get more curious. Read widely. Listen closely to minorities. Be humble enough to absorb.) I am at an age, by the world’s standards, old enough to be respected, but young enough to not be culturally obsolete. This means I function from a position of power as part of the majority, for the majority culture always has power. Majority doesn’t mean numerically larger; it refers to the culture that is dominant and defines the values and expectations of society. I have the privilege to never have to think about other cultures. After all, my way is the “right” way.
This is equally the most comfortable place to be and the most awful. By no choice of my own, I was born into and with little enough effort I have achieved a place where I can spend every day thinking nothing of how others live, think, survive, and navigate culture. They navigate around me, not me around them. It is a place of passive superiority that soaks deep into the soul. How easy. How terrible.
This is not what God intended. One day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. And it won’t be a segregated service with one group having their preferred music style. Heaven will be fully integrated with no culture dominating any other. So what can we do to move that way now?
Get curious.
Just as curiosity turns us to the well being of others in personal relationships it does the same culturally. Of course, this is best accomplished in relationship. Curiosity is the bridge between neighbors of different races because it is built on genuine interest and honest questions. It seeks to know the other person with no agenda or ulterior motive. Curiosity allows us to humbly admit ignorance of another’s way of life, perspective, or experiences and then humbly listen when they share. Curiosity assumes the veracity and validity of another’s pain or joy even if it doesn’t understand precisely because it doesn’t understand.
We can apply curiosity to outside study as well, to the macro level of culture. When we ask questions of neighbors or co-workers we hear one person’s perspective. When we read books and articles, when we look at the history of a people group, when we begin observing the scope of a culture we see where their individual experience fits. We see them as a blade of grass in a larger field. This kind of interest is of equal importance to personal conversation because it provides context to cultural clashes (The rising tension and cries of outrage after Trayvon Martin’s murder, the riots in Ferguson or Baltimore after the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray, the controversy over the Black Lives Matter movement, and more) – where they came from, what led to them, how they impact people. Without curiosity we will judge those of other cultures. With curiosity we seek to understand and then empathize.
We need relational, micro curiosity and macro curiosity to cross cultures well. It will be a life-long effort for the same reason that curiosity in relationship is – the endless rich depths of cultures reflect the endless rich depths of the individuals who form them. We will learn to respond to differences not as threats, our default position on the unknown, but as new aspects of something God made and we can learn to appreciate and love. We can learn to trust and we can gain trust. Curiosity born out of a desire to understand the creator of all nations and cultures will come to see those peoples and cultures as He does.
This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, The Curious Christian: How Discovering Wonder Enriches Every Part of Life, that is due to be released in early 2017.
If you would like to explore further and take a short (FREE) evaluation of your own curiosity visit CuriousChristianBook.com.
February 20, 2017
New Happy Rant: The Grammys, Chance the Rapper, and Why Christians Love Hip Hop
In this week’s Happy Rant Podcast Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas riff on the following:
Thoughts on the Grammys and how they stack up to other awards shows
Why the Grammys are actually fun
Chance the Rapper’s Christian (??) performance
Why white evangelicals all claim rap and love it so much now
Since we don’t have a real sponsor in this episode Barnabas takes the chance to highlight his forthcoming book, The Curious Christian: How Discovering Wonder Enriches Every part of Life. Visit CuriousChristianBook.com to to take a fun little evaluation to see what kind of a curious person you are.
As usual we are immensely grateful to Resonate Recordings for doing all our mastering and editing. They make three audio hacks listenable. If you are looking for podcasting services head to ResonateRecordings.com and see what they offer.
To listen you can:
Subscribe in iTunes.
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 #129
February 17, 2017
5 Podcasts You Should Be Listening To
I’ve done two previous posts about podcasts I enjoy (here and here) and you should be listening to. I stand by all of those, but one of the best things about podcasts is the ever-increasing number of amazing ones. Here are 5 more you might enjoy and should definitely try.
CultivatedMike Cosper hosts this interview podcast, but it is not the kind of interview driven by the host. The guest is the feature and Cosper excels at letting guests shine. It is highly edited and produced so there is no meandering or wasted words. The podcast focuses on work and Creativity and vocation as Christians by highlighting the individual stories and efforts of the various guests. From tone to content to production this podcast is the money and is a new favorite of mine.
Crime TownIt’s like Serial except without all the navel-gazing, first person host intrusions, and moral vagueness. So I guess it’s not like Serial at all. Instead it is like a really good-natured documentary of organized crime in the 70s and 80s in Providence, RI. Little did I know that that was a mob hub for decades, and the story of corruption and politics and intrigue is amazing. The best parts of the podcast are the interviews they get with former mobsters who speak with such nostalgia and frankness it sucks the listener right in. This is a brilliant podcast.
How I built ThisI learn leadership and business principles best by absorbing them from others who do them well and synthesizing ideas. That is what this podcast offers. It is, very simply, the stories of how many of the world’s most successful business ventures began as told by the founders. It is an interview, but only to tee up the story. It is not about principles. It is about how businesses started, but there is so much to glean from each entrepreneur and owner.
The Moment with Brian KoppelmanKoppelman is a screenwriter, director and producer of both films and TV shows, and in this podcast he talks with other creative people – actors, authors, musicians, etc. – about their creative lives. It is so fun and insightful to sit in on a conversation between tow creative, driven people to hear how they overcame challenges, what their processes are, and what they’ve learned. Anyone who is doing anything creative would benefit from this podcast and likely find it lots of fun too.
The Way I heard It with Mike RoweMike Rowe is best known for his TV show Dirty Jobs where he highlights the stories and efforts of largely overlooked folks. He kind of does the same thing in this podcast. Each episode Rowe tells one short biographical story of someone who has accomplished something significant. Usually it is a story of overcoming challenges or overcoming something. And the listener doesn’t know who the person is until the reveal at the end. It’s an interesting format with cool, brief stories. I prefer to let a few of these pile up and then listen to all of them in a row since they are bite-sized.
