Barnabas Piper's Blog, page 86

New Happy Rant: Rape Culture, Daddy Blogs, and Christian Summer Camps

In this episode of the Happy Rant Ted Kluck, Ronnie Martin, and Barnabas Piper do something unusual – they take on a really serious topic, rape culture. We go on to take on a couple fun topics too, but that one serious topic was one we felt needed to be addressed.

Rape culture: how can a phrase like this even exist, where did it come from, and what can be done about it?
Why aren’t there daddy blogs the way there are mommy blogs?
Memories of Christian summer camp

Out first sponsor this week is Moody Publishers and the book On Pastoring: A Short Guide to Living, Leading, and Ministering as a Pastor by H.B.Charles. This is a phenomenal, grounded resource that will help anyone in ministry or who is considering ministry. It majors on the majors and minors on the minors by emphasizing relationship with God, character, and a biblical life over strategies and techniques. Charles shares many anecdotes from his own ministry, both of failure and success, to bring points home. Buy this book if you are in ministry or to encourage someone you know in ministry.

Our second, but not lesser, sponsor is NavPress. The particularly want to highlight two books by Jerry Bridges, The Blessing of Humility and his recently re-released classic The Pursuit of Holiness. Both books are rich with theology and gentleness, both reflective of their author. Pick them up, work through them slowly, digest, and benefit.

Like every week, we want to offer a big thank you to Resonate Recordings, the fine folks who make us sound listenable. If you are looking for great people to help your church put out recorded sermon audio or help you with a podcast they’re your people.

Feel free to hit us up on Twitter at @HappyRantPod or on Facebook or via email at HappyRantPodcast@Gmail.com with any topic suggestions or feedback. We love hearing from listeners!

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 #91

To Hope All Things In a World We Cannot Trust

Christians are to live lives marked by love – to, as 1 Corinthians 13 puts it, believe all things, hope all things endure all things. This means we are to be defined by characteristics of grace. We are to assume the best of people and offer them the same hope and patience and mercy we know we so desperately need. We are to offer them second and third and fifty-fourth chances. In short we are to exude the love Jesus poured out on us.

But it doesn’t mean we should pull the wool over our eyes. Believing and hoping all things does not mean being gullible. It does not mean ignoring sin or injustice or wrong doing of any kind. It’s not blind optimism about people. Christians must have a realistic sense of the world and its inhabitants. Yes, they are made in the image of God but Genesis 3 did happen. People are sinners and for all its wonders and beauty this world can be a pretty awful place. More often than not it will disappoint us and leave us hurt.

One of my pet peeves is the use of superlatives and over statement on the internet in an attempt to drive traffic and increase clicks. You know “check out this video of the most adorable kitten ever” and “whoa, this college basketball player just went into orbit on this dunk” and the like. Well one such phrase is particularly insidious, that about “restoring faith in humanity” as in “The way this man responds when he sees a three legged naked mole rat will restore your faith in humanity.” What they really mean is this will give you warm fuzzies. To be clear, warm fuzzies do not equate to faith in humanity, and if you are dumb enough to have faith in humanity you will deserve everything that comes your way. Look around. What’s to have faith in? Humanity is collectively pretty awful.

We are to have faith in God and love humanity, not have faith in humanity. Humanity will be a perpetual disappointment if we do that. It will lie, cheat, steal, and desert. It is capable of remarkable good, but aside from Christ is rooted in sin and will gravitate back to it – to selfish motives at others’ expense, including you.

Yet we are to hope all things and believe all things and love our neighbors as ourselves and treat others as we want to be treated. These realities seem incongruous. How can we believe and hope all things about someone or something that we cannot and should not trust? How can we assume the best about someone while also assuming they will disappoint?

The Balance

Somehow, some way we are to maintain optimism about people while being firmly realistic, even skeptical, of them. We are to assume the best and the worst simultaneously. Two things enable us to do this: grace and wonder.

Grace is the context in which we can love or trust or respect anyone. God’s life-shaping grace through Jesus in the person of the Holy Spirit is our daily means of living a God-honoring and others-loving life. Every good thing that we do is by grace. Every good thing that we have is by grace. Any ability we have to love others undeservingly is by grace.

While grace is the context and the means of loving and hoping, it is wonder that balances these two incongruous demands because wonder, curiosity, is what drives our own awareness of grace. The more we dig into grace and understand it and see it and discover its secrets the more we will be able to love the unlovable while still seeing them for exactly who and what they are. In large part this is because we will recognize how unlovable we are, how unpleasant, how unkind, how decidedly fallen. We will see the marks of grace on our lives, the way it shapes us and carries us.

We can only come to grips with our badness and God’s goodness through wonder and curiosity, by being noticers of our propensity for ill and God’s propensity to bless. We explore and ask and seek the depths of the riches of God’s grace, and the more we discover the more it will shape our interactions and reactions to others.

Knowing our own sinfulness puts us in a position to properly understand others too. Because of God’s grace we can honestly confront the evil within us and seeing what lies within gives a sense of what lies in others too. As I look into my heart and see the pride, lust, deceit, anger, and jealousy roiling I know two things: God’s grace is big enough to solve that mess and that same mess lies within every other person too.

We can now look at others with a clear sense of what evils they are capable of and a deep sense of hope in God’s grace for them. We do not trust them, but we do trust what God is doing in them. We trust that those who are in Christ are truly new creations. We are aware that every relationship is a risk because of every person’s endless capacity for selfishness and sin, but we know that God’s grace makes it a risk worth taking because grace in my life added to grace in someone else’s life is an exponential increase to both our benefits. We also know how little we can be trusted aside from God’s work and we know we need grace from others. It is a symbiotic relationship.

On this basis of grace we can safely turn our curiosity outward. We don’t blindly walk into relationships. Curiosity and grace have opened our eyes to the risks and rewards. We can ask questions without agendas and answer them without guardedness. We do not need to be surprised by what we find in others. (In fact, surprise and shock at someone else’s sin very well might indicate you haven’t acknowledged your own.)

As we turn our curiosity toward the lives of others we will begin to see more reason for skepticism but also more evidences of God’s work. This tension will pull us forward. Sometimes it will be uncomfortable – we will want to give on people and write them off, to withdraw and live behind a relational wall. When we do this, though, we fail to recall that God did not withdraw from us when we wronged Him. On the contrary, he reached down and drew us to Himself.

Grace and wonder are a risk. They open us up to hurt. But they are the only way to balance the twin realities that humanity is awful and we are to love it regardless. We are not fools, assuming the best and frolicking mindlessly out into the world expecting it to be all puppies and flowers and warm hugs – a curious mind recognizes this isn’t the case. Neither are we purely skeptics assuming the worst about others – grace reminds us of our need and theirs and how God changes lives. Grace and wonder keep us firmly rooted in our need for grace, the immensity of grace, humanity’s need for grace, and our ability to offer humanity grace because of what was given to us.

This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, The Curious Christian: How Discovering Wonder Enriches All of Life that is due to be released in early 2017. 

The Best Quotes from Strong and Weak by Andy Crouch

“Paradigm” is a WAY over-used word in describing books, but in Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk and True Flourishing Crouch genuinely presented a new and better paradigm that helped me think about all my interactions with others and with God. If that sounds overwhelming, keep in mind he did it in about 180 pages. That’s why I say he created a paradigm. It is a way of viewing and understanding interactions – parenting, marriage, work, leadership, ministry, neighborly, political, etc. I won’t give away or try to explain his framework for fear of cheapening it. Just buy and read this book. It is one the will genuinely reshape your thinking and, with a little effort, your living too.

Here are some of the best quotes from Strong and Weak.

Flourishing comes from being both strong and weak.

Much of the dysfunction in our lives comes from oscillating along the line of false choices, never seeing there might be another way.

There really is no other goal higher for us than to become people who are so ful of authority and vulnerability that we perfectly reflect what human beings were meant to be and disclose the reality of the Creator in the midst of creation.

Becoming a saint is about quite a bit more than ‘working harder’ – or perhaps better put, it’s about a great deal less.

Think of authority this way: the capacity for meaningful action. When you have authority, what you do, or do not do, makes a meaningful difference in the world around you.

Above all, meaningful action participates in a story. It has a past and a future. Meaningful action does not just come from nowhere, and it does not just vanish in an instant – it takes place in the midst of a story that matters.

The vulnerability that leads to flourishing requires risk, which is the possibility of loss – the chance that when we act, we will lose something we value.

Sometimes suffering is simply the painful payoff of risking love in a broken world.

It is almost never enough to reduce vulnerability – even though that is what most of us seek to do in our own lives. We must also restore proper authority to individual persons and to whole communities.

‘Helicopter parents’ have been replaced by ‘bulldozer parents,’ who clear ever obstacle from their children’s paths, and ‘drone parents,’ who hover invisibly overhead and then swoop in with overwhelming force when their progeny is endangered.

The greatest challenge of success is the freedom it gives you to opt out of real risk and real authority.

In social media you can engage in nearly friction-free experiences of activism, expressing enthusiasm, solidarity or outrage (all powerful sensations of authority) for your chosen cause with the click of a few buttons.

Amidst safety the world has never before known, the greatest spiritual struggle many of us face is to be willing to take off our bubble wrap.

Our affluence has left us unready for the tragedy and danger of the world.

The twentieth century sexual revolution’s promise of “freedom” has given way to a twenty-first century epidemic of attenuated, mediated sexual escapism.

Our idols inevitable fail us, generally sooner rather than later.

The first thing any idol takes from its worshippers are their relationships.

In the end the justice of God will abolish the authority of those who have purchased their power at the price of others’ flourishing, those who refuse to enter into relationship with the God who is authority and vulnerability together.

Leadership does not begin with title or position, it begins the moment you are more concerned about others’ flourishing than your own.

This is what it is to be a leader: to bear the risks that only you can see, while continuing to exercise authority that everyone can see.

Jesus drains the cup of wrath to its dregs. He does not take one taste of death, spit it out and fly up to heaven. He descends to the dead, and there, for all that his disciples can see or know for Friday to Sunday, he stays.

Death is the last enemy not just because it takes life but because the fear of death prevents real life.

It is hard to think of many things that do more damage to an organization than leaders who have no plan for how they will hand over power.

Only those who have opened themselves to meaningful risk are likely to be entrusted with the authority that we all were made for and seek.

New Happy Rant: Gorillas vs. Humans, Piper the Satanist, and Protesting Target

In this episode of the Happy Rant Podcast Ted Kluck, Ronnie Martin, and Barnabas Piper take on three of the HOTTEST topics of recent days, topics so hot only experts can handle them. Well, experts and anyone with a Twitter handle.

So a gorilla was shot and the internet went . . . ape over it. Why is this a thing?
A “youth leader in the home church movement” called John Piper and Russell Moore satanists for their views on minority adoption and tagged Barnabas in the post. His thoughts?
Should we be protesting and picketing Target for their decision on who can or can’t use which bathrooms?

This week we have two sponsors. The first is Missional Wear, that fantastic partner of ours that offers the best of reformed apparel, artwork, pub glasses, and mugs. In case you forgot Father’s day is not far away, check out their selection of pint glasses and mugs featuring quotes, solar, dead guys, and more. Aaaaaaaand Missional Wear is offering a special for our podcast listeners. Use the code HappyRant at checkout and get $10 of a purchase of $50 or more through June 12. This is the best of all Calvinist swag and that is only one week so move quickly!

Our second, but not lesser, sponsor is NavPress. The particularly want to highlight two books by Jerry Bridges, The Blessing of Humility and his recently re-released classic The Pursuit of Holiness. Both books are rich with theology and gentleness, both reflective of their author. Pick them up, work through them slowly, digest, and benefit.

Like every week, we want to offer a big thank you to Resonate Recordings, the fine folks who make us sound

listenable. If you are looking for great people to help your church put out recorded sermon audio or help you with a podcast they’re your people.

Feel free to hit us up on Twitter at @HappyRantPod or on Facebook or via email at HappyRantPodcast@Gmail.com with any topic suggestions or feedback. We love hearing from listeners!

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 #90

4 Things I Learned About Work from a Peewee Soccer Team

My first grade daughter just wrapped up her spring soccer season. If you’ve ever watched kids soccer you would not think there is much to learn about anything but the most rudimentary instructions.

“Wrong way!”

“Kick the Ball!”

“Run!”

Over the course of the season, though, I began to notice a few things that consistently occurred that turned the outcome of every game. Each of them is directly applicable to your work and mine.

Effort is a skill and we can all learn it.

When we think of skills we tend to think of nifty, maybe flashy, and definitely enviable. But one skill overrides all the others: Effort. It is a skill to try harder than everyone else, to not give up, to hustle, to walk away knowing you gave everything you had. My daughter is not the most skilled player, but I knew that is she played with the kind of effort I asked her to she could change games for her team.

Effort can be learned, and that is remarkably encouraging because we will all find ourselves in positions where we aren’t the best or aren’t highly skilled or don’t have innate talent. But we can outwork and outhustle everyone if we want. We may never be the top performer, but we can swing outcomes in our favor.

Focus is more important than talent.

Asking first graders to pay attention is about as fruitless as, well, asking first graders to pay attention. Time and again throughout these games a team would allow a goal because the defense was practicing ballet or the goalie was picking her nose. Even the most talented players got schooled by those who just paid attention to where the ball was and where they were supposed to be.

Like effort, we can all learn focus. In fact it is a big part of effort, the part that makes sure we trying at the right things and in the right ways. Focused effort trumps lackadaisical talent nearly every time. If you are talented and focused you are a super star. If you are only passably talented and focused you will still be an incredibly productive and valuable contributor.

Stay in your position.

Soccer, like most team sports, works best when the spacing and flow of the game is good. Players are in position and the other team are trying to get them out of position, to find angles and gaps in the defense. Well, first graders don’t think in terms of positions. They all orbit the soccer ball as it rolls around the field. It’s more like a scrum than a soccer match.

All of a sudden, though, the ball pops free and begins rolling. With every player out of position it’s a mad race to control it and kick it either into or away from the goal. Sometimes, rarely, a defender staid back and simply boots the ball clear. Sometimes, rarely, a forward staid outside the scrum and easily collects the ball for a goal. These players were in position. They were where they were supposed to be and could therefore complete the task required of them.

At work, like in sports, things fall apart when we get out of position. We miss an opportunity. We take on too much and fail. We aren’t there to assist a teammate in need. We fail because we aren’t as suited to a task as a teammate. We need to remember our spacing, our roles, our position. Avoid the scrum, stay home, and when opportunity is passed our way do what we are supposed to do.

Some players are just better than others.

It’s true. Some kids are simply much better soccer players than others. This is no insult to the other kids. Some kids won the genetic lottery and are faster and more coordinated. Others have former collegiate all-Americans as parents. These kids can dominate.

I say “can” because they too need effort, focus, and to be in position. But sometimes talent can overcome a lack of effort. Sometimes the talented ones just make the other look silly.

We work with people like this. They’re savants, geniuses, intuitive, sharp. They have a collection of gifts we only hope for. It’s ok to acknowledge this. I said earlier that focused effort beats talent almost every time, and that’s true, unless the talent is also focused and trying. Where does this leave us? Realistic. Grounded. And thankful that work is not a win or lose effort in most cases. It’s an effort to constantly improve, to reach goals, to grow, to learn, to achieve milestones.

And we can do this through developing the skill of effort, honing our focus, staying in position, and cleaning up every opportunity that comes our way.

New Happy Rant: Perpetual Potty Training, Doggy Daddies, and Hipster Homemade Tracts

In this episode of the Happy Rant Ted Kluck, Ronnie Martin, and Barnabas Piper bring you a particularly delightful episode for this long weekend. They rant about the following.

Why do we celebrate everything our kids do? First grade “graduation”, finishing dinner – everything gets a “Good job, buddy!”
Dogs are not children. There, it is said. And that means your dog is not your child.
What’s the deal with tract evangelism? Is it still around? Might it make a comeback with the retro-loving hipster crowd?

This week we have two sponsors. The first is Missional Wear, that fantastic partner of ours that offers the best of reformed apparel, artwork, pub glasses, and mugs. In case you forgot Father’s day is not far away, and they have some fantastic posters, prints, and wall hangings that pops or the pastor would love for his office. Aaaaaaaand Missional Wear is offering a special for our podcast listeners. Use the code HappyRant at checkout and get $10 of a purchase of $50 or more through June 5. That is one week so move quickly!

 

Our second, but not lesser, sponsor is NavPress. The particularly want to highlight two books by Jerry Bridges, The Blessing of Humility and his recently re-released classic The Pursuit of Holiness. Both books are rich with theology and gentleness, both reflective of their author. Pick them up, work through them slowly, digest, and benefit.

Like every week, we want to offer a big thank you to Resonate Recordings, the fine folks who make us sound

listenable. If you are looking for great people to help your church put out recorded sermon audio or help you with a podcast they’re your people.

Feel free to hit us up on Twitter at @HappyRantPod or on Facebook or via email at HappyRantPodcast@Gmail.com with any topic suggestions or feedback. We love hearing from listeners!

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 #89

A Pharisee in Tax Collector’s Clothing

Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee prayed boldly “God, I thank you I am not like that man” while the tax collector knelt in a corner, beat his chest, and prayed “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.” One of these men went home right in the eyes of God, and we all know which one. And we all despise the other.

In a weird, ironic, but quite predictable plot twist by pursuing the position of tax collector we have become the Pharisee.

We. All of us.

That’s right you, reformed guy. And you progressive lady. And you republican baby boomer and you libertarian millennial. And you homeschool family and you public school family and you house church planter and you mega church pastor. All of us.

We have learned to revel in our weakness, to lead with our flaws. We call it “authenticity” – we are real in what we reveal. We aren’t hypocrites; hypocrisy is the new unforgiveable sin. We are the tax collector, or at least we play one on TV. We are so elated in our role as tax collector we, well, we can’t help but be a bit smug that we’re not like that person. That judgmental jerk on Twitter. That fundamentalist crank. That whoever-is-on-the-other-side-of-my-ideological-fence.

By becoming the tax collector we have become the Pharisee. In pursuing the position of authenticity we have puffed ourselves up. In distancing ourselves from those with whom we differ we have revealed our true selves.

In fact, we have far more in common with those we disdain than we dare admit. We may play the part of tax collector, but in reality we actually are the tax collector – morally decrepit, broken beyond repair, in need, sinners. And so is the one we are so glad not be like. We have only posed as tax collectors, pretended to be humble.

Which posture do we find ourselves taking – “I am so glad I am not like _____” or “Have mercy on me, a sinner.” We cannot do both. If we take former stance we are incapable of admitting or recognizing both our sin and our similarities to those we despise. If we take the latter stance we are incapable of thinking ourselves better than another. We can still disagree, vehemently even, but we can never think ourselves superior because of our position. The two postures are diametrically opposed.

It is so easy to play the role of tax collector because we know we ought, only to find ourselves being a Pharisee. We define “Pharisee” by traditional church legalism not realizing that we have justified ourselves, claimed righteousness, a thousand times over by extra-biblical standards. And that is legalism.

The long and short of it is that we are prideful people. It expresses itself in self-justification, in judgment of others, in smugness at the presumed rightness of our positions, and in a million other ways. And it always comes back to this: Which prayer do you pray – “I am so glad I am not like _____” or “Have mercy on me, a sinner.” One is the prayer of the Pharisee in tax collector’s clothing and the other is the prayer someone who will go away right in the eyes of God.

Lord, Make Me Viral

Lord, make me viral.

Not like a cold or the mumps, but like kittens and Dude Perfect.

I know you said your word will not return empty,

But these are my words, and they just might be void and empty.

Lord, make me viral,

Because despite public opinion publishing isn’t all that lucrative.

I know fame is fleeting and often harmful,

But I’m pretty sure I’m the exception to the rule.

Lord, make me viral,

I can do a spoken word video or invent some Hebrew words.

My launch team is mostly strangers I bribed with free stuff,

But did you see how big it is? (That’s a lot of Amazon reviews!)

Lord, make me viral,

I don’t really care why I’m famous I just want to be famous.

If enough people know me my life will be fulfilled,

Or at least my bank account will be because of obscenely priced video courses.

Lord, make me viral.

I really, really need a platform.

So what if it’s built on the fragile base of petrified standards

And a dried up conscience.

Lord, make me viral.

You know better than anyone that “numbers= real people.”

So please give me the numbers.

I promise, despite all evidence to the contrary, it’s not about me.

Amen

New Happy Rant: Mr. Manners Answers Your Questions

In this episode of the Happy Rant Ted Kluck, Ronnie Martin, and Barnabas Piper take on some of the toughest etiquette questions you listeners had to offer. These are just some of the topics they sort out on your behalf.

Proper physical affection
Texting and social media while with others
Texting vs. calling
Eye contact while conversing

This week we are sponsored Moody Publishers, specifically the book Distant God: Why He Feels Far Away…And What We Can Do About It by Chris Nye, pastor of Willamette Christian Church in Portland, OR. Distant God explores why it is that we often feel like God is far away, not listening, not accessible. And then it digs into who exactly is far away – you or God? And what can we do when we fell far from God? Is it just wait and see or can we take actions to draw near to Him so that He will draw near to us?

Like every week, we want to offer a big thank you to Resonate Recordings, the fine folks who make us sound

listenable. If you are looking for great people to help your church put out recorded sermon audio or help you with a podcast they’re your people.

Feel free to hit us up on Twitter at @HappyRantPod or on Facebook or via email at HappyRantPodcast@Gmail.com with any topic suggestions or feedback. We love hearing from listeners!

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 #88

Life’s Not Fair, So Win and Lose Well

Recently, as we were flipping through radio stations in the car, my daughter heard the song “We Are the Champions” by Queen. She asked what a champion is, and we started talking about winning and losing. At one point in the conversation she said, “Winning isn’t fair because not everyone can do it.” Her response is, sadly, quite common.

Sometime over the past few decades a mindset of “fair” has developed, calling for everyone to finish in the exact same place and receive the exact same reward. Fair has become equity in the finish instead of equity in the process. This perspective says a reward is due just for showing up, not because it’s earned. It cheapens real rewards for actual successes, and as it creeps into different areas of life, it undermines valuable assets such as hard work or giftedness.

Naturally, accompanying this mindset is the idea that “everyone is a winner.” This is especially prevalent in teaching, coaching, and parenting younger children. I understand why this attitude prevails. Nobody wants a child to feel like a loser. Nobody wants a child to feel shame and sense that she is less significant because of a failure or because she was outdone. But saying “we’re all winners” doesn’t help much when the child eventually loses, and not keeping track of the score at peewee soccer or T-ball games can’t fend off reality forever. Everyone loses sometime.

One of my primary responsibilities as a parent is to prepare my children for all of life, not just what I want their life to hold. Of course, I never want my children to fail, but they will fail. I do not want them to experience disappointment, but it is unavoidable. They will not always be winners and will thus be forced to deal with the struggles of losing. If all I have taught them is that they are winners, what have I really prepared them for besides delusions of ease and grandeur?

Winning and losing are a part of life. And so are the accompanying rewards and struggles. Sadly, the contests are often not fair, making those struggles even more poignant. What am I to do as a parent? I cannot stick my head in the sand and my daughters’ along with it.

Winning and losing are real, so I must model being a humble and gracious winner and loser, no matter whether the circumstances are fair or not. My children need a definition of “fair” that motivates them to work hard and develop the gifts God has given them, not one that teaches them to expect praise and prizes at every turn. Most importantly, I must show them and teach them what it means to find value not in victory but in being a reflection of the Creator.

This column originally appeared at WORLD News Group’s website ( wng.org ). Reprinted with permission. Copyright © 2012 WORLD News Group. All rights reserved.