Justin Taylor's Blog, page 271

Cultivating Distrust of the Certainties of Despair

I was thankful to read Paxson Jeancake's meditation on how depression—even insanity—was used by God to to produce words of gospel hope and insights from the pen of William Cowper (pronounced like Cooper), who lived from 1731-1800 and was friends with John Newton (the slavetrader turned pastor who wrote "Amazing Grace"). Paxson writes:

Art is not birthed in a vacuum, nor is it produced solely from a life of blissful devotion and ongoing prayer and song. Art is often brought forth from hardship and struggle, turmoil and tears. There is something about a troubled soul that taps into both the reality of our fallen condition and the hope of something greater than ourselves. Such is the life of William Cowper, the troubled but gifted artist whose hymns have been sung in many different languages for more than two centuries.

You can read the original poem he goes on to reference here, which they turned into a contemporary worship song.

You can get a 3-minute intro to Cowper from this video produced by Mars Hill in Seattle:

Seeing this sent me back to John Piper's 1992 talk on Cowper: "Insanity and Spiritual Songs in the Soul of a Saint." Piper asks at one point in the talk, "What are we to make of this man's life long battle with depression, and indeed his apparent surrender to despair and hopelessness in his own life?"

At the end of the talk, he draws several lessons. For those who might be tempted in a melancholy direction, this counsel is priceless:

We all [must] fortify ourselves against the dark hours of depression by cultivating a deep distrust of the certainties of despair. Despair is relentless in the certainties of his pessimism. But we have seen that Cowper is not consistent. Some years after his absolute statements of being cut off from God, he is again expressing some hope in being heard. His certainties were not sureties. So it will always be with the deceptions of darkness. Let us now, while we have the light, cultivate distrust of the certainties of despair.

And pastors, make note of this lesson in particular:

The first version of this lecture was given in an evening service at Bethlehem Baptist Church. It proved to be one of the most encouraging things I have done in a long time. This bleak life was felt by many as hope-giving. There are not doubt different reasons for this in the cases of different people. But the lesson is surely that those of us who teach and preach and want to encourage our people to press on in hope and faith must not limit ourselves to success stories. The life of William Cowper had a hope-giving effect on my people. That is a very important lesson.

For those suffering from depression, tempted toward it, or ministering those in this situation, here are some resources to consider:

Ed Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness (revised edition)

David Murray, Christians Get Depressed Too
John Piper, When the Darkness Will Not Lift: Doing What We Can While We Wait for God—and Joy
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure
"Depression and the Ministry" (blog series by BCC & TGC)

For those in ministry, the writings by and about Charles Spurgeon on depression may be particularly valuable:

Charles Spurgeon, "The Minister's Fainting Fits" in Lectures to My Students
Darrel W. Amundsen, "The Anguish and Agonies of Charles Spurgeon"
Zack Eswine, "Listening for the Sound of Reality: The Melancholy of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Haddon Spurgeon"
John Piper, "Charles Spurgeon: Preaching through Adversity"
Randy Alcorn on how Spurgeon's writings on depression helped him go through his own depression in 2007 (part 1, part 2, part 3)

The Adventures of TinTin: Coming to the Big Screen

I'm a late-comer to The Adventures of TinTin, a series of 23 classic graphic novels (published now in 7 volumes) by the Belgian artist Georges Rémi (1907-1983), writing under the pen name Hergé. The series following TinTin—a Belgian reporter and adventurer—and his dog Snowy through adventures with realistic events of the 20th century as a backdrop.

Greg Thornbury—Dean of the School of Theology & Missions and Vice President for Spiritual Life at Union University—first mentioned them to me. I asked if he enjoyed reading them to his kids, and he made it clear that first and foremost he enjoyed reading them himself!

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have now teamed up for a performance capture 3D film. If it's successful, I think they are planning to produce a trilogy.

If you're interested in seeing the film but want to read the real thing first, the script for the first movie is based on the following stories: The Crab with the Golden Claws (in volume 3), The Secret of the Unicorn (in volume 3), and Red Rackham's Treasure (in volume 4).

Here's the trailer:

Jesus + Nothing = Everything

In this interview with Leadership magazine, Tullian Tchividjian describes some of the ugliness and pain that resulted from attempting to merge his church plant with Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in 2009:

There were people in the choir who, when I would stand up to preach, would get up and walk out.

People would sit in the front row and just stare me down as I preached.

It was extremely uncomfortable. People would grab me in the hallway between services and say, "You're ruining this church, and I'm going to do everything I can to stop you."

I would come out to my car and it would be keyed. . . .

They put petitions on car windows during the worship service.

They started an anonymous blog, which was very painful . . . fueling rumors and lies. The blog almost ruined my wife's life.

Anonymous letters were sent out to the entire congregation with accusations and character assassinations.

It was absolutely terrible.

He then recounts a family vacation that summer when he poured out his frustration to God. But then things began to change as he read God's word:

But then I started thinking, why does this bother me so much? Yes, I have people writing nasty things about me, lying about me, spreading rumors about my team. They're after power. And they're not getting it, and these are the tactics they're using. But why does that bother me so much?

I remember saying to God in that moment, "Just give me my old life back." And he said, "It's not your old life you want back. It's your old idols you want back. And I love you too much to give them to you."

I opened up my Bible. In the reading plan I was following, it so happened that the day's passages included the first chapter of Colossians. As I read those verses, my eyes were opened. My true situation came into focus. I'd never realized how dependent I'd become on human approval and acceptance until so much of it was taken away in the roiling controversy at Coral Ridge. In every church I'd been a part of, I was widely accepted and approved and appreciated. I'd always felt loved in church. Now, for the first time, I found myself in the uncomfortable position of being deeply disliked and distrusted, and by more than a few people. Now I realized just how much I'd been relying on something other than the approval and acceptance and love that were already mine in Jesus. I was realizing in a fresh way the now-power of the gospel—that the gospel doesn't simply rescue us from the past and rescue us for the future; it also rescues us in the present from being enslaved to things like fear, insecurity, anger, self-reliance, bitterness, entitlement, and insignificance. Through my pain, I was being convinced all over again that the power of the gospel is just as necessary and relevant after you become a Christian as it is before. When that biblical reality gripped my heart, I was free like I had never felt before in my life. It gives you the backbone to walk into a room full of church leaders and say "this is what we're going to do and this is why we're going to do it, even if it gets me thrown into the street." There is a fresh I-don't-care-ness that accompanies belief in the gospel. Whether you like me or not doesn't matter, because my worth and my dignity and my identity are anchored in God's approval. Christ won all of the approval and acceptance I need.

Tullian's new book—just published by Crossway—is called Jesus + Nothing = Everything. There he tells the full story of what went wrong, and glories in the gospel afresh as liberating truth. It's a great model for how to read Scripture—in this case the book of Colossians—and to apply these biblical teachings to our everyday life. Crossway has also put together a page of short video discussions from Tullian, designed to complement each chapter. Here's an example from chapter 2:

Tim Keller on the Mission of the Church

Two interesting footnotes from Tim Keller's Generous Justice:

Is the mission of the church only to preach the Word—evangelizing an making disciples—or it is also (or mainly) to do justice? . . .

I am of the opinion that [Abraham] Kuyper is right: it is best to speak of the "mission of the church," strictly conceived, as being the proclamation of the Word.

More broadly conceived, it is the work of Christians in the world to minister in word and deed and to gather together to do justice.

And:

Strange ["Evangelical Public Theology"---now see "Not Ashamed! The Sufficiency of Scripture for Public Theology"], Carson [Christ and Culture Revisited], and Hunter [To Change the World] all recommend a chastened approach that engages culture but without the triumphalism of transformationism.

All of them also insist that the priority of the institutional church must be to preach the Word, rather than to "change culture."

Timothy Keller, Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes Us Just (New York: Dutton, 2010), 216 n. 128; 223 n. 153.

5 Questions with Andreas Köstenberger on Excellence

[image error]Andreas Köstenberger's latest book is Excellence: The Character of God and the Pursuit of Scholarly Virtue (Crossway, 2011), on the pursuit of excellence in Christian scholarship and in all aspects of the Christian life.

You can read online for free the table of contents, introduction, and first chapter.

I'm grateful he was willing to answer a few questions:

1. You start the book with your personal story and say this is the most personal book you wrote. What is it that makes the topic of excellence such an intensely personal one for you?

My call to excellence came at my conversion when I was gripped by a realization of the utter excellence of God. I was impressed by the fact that because God is excellent in every way, everything I do for him ought to be characterized by excellence. This, to me, is what it means to bring glory to God—to do everything I do for him with excellence.

2. In your book, you say that many Christians are "addicted to mediocrity." Why do you think that is and what is your message to those Christians in your book on excellence?

Yes, sadly, I have found that while many in the evangelical community pay lip service to excellence, far fewer have a demonstrated track record of excellence. Frank Schaffer wrote about evangelicals' "addiction to mediocrity" years ago. While I'm sure there are many causes, one key one, I believe, is the notion of cheap grace. People don't understand grace. The other day, I taught on Romans 6, and once again was impressed by the fact that Paul says that while we were once slaves to sin, we now have become slaves to God! In other words, as recipients of God's grace we don't simply move from a state of bondage to a state of freedom where there are no more constraints whatsoever. Rather, as committed Christian disciples, we are now expected to serve God with distinction—not because we have to, but because we want to. God is more than worthy of us giving him everything we've got, rather than just presuming on his grace and being satisfied with mediocrity.

So, my message in the book to my fellow believers is simply this: God is a God of excellence, and if you are a Christian, he has called you to pursue excellence in everything you do, whether in the personal, moral, or vocational arena.

3. In your book, you seem to be taking a somewhat critical approach toward the customary emphasis in Christian circles on spiritual disciplines. Why is that?

As someone who grew up Roman Catholic, I have found that we as evangelicals have at times imported an ethos that owes more to medieval monasticism than to biblical spirituality. When we look at the life of Jesus, we don't find someone who practiced a monastic-type lifestyle at all. Jesus was grounded in a close relationship with God but he was also actively immersed in vibrant ministry in community with his followers. For this reason I propose in chapter 4 of my book on Excellence that spirituality must not become an end in itself; it must be vitally connected to the gospel. A biblical understanding of spirituality must be centered in the work of the Holy Spirit, not self-effort, no matter how sincere or noble one's motivation might be.

4. There are a lot of secular books on excellence. How does a Christian approach to excellence differ from secular ones?

"Excellence" has been a buzzword in the business community for many years. I remember reading In Search for Excellence by Peters and Waterman a couple decades ago. Usually, the approach taken in secular books on excellence is that researchers identify traits of greatness in companies or individuals and then study what makes these individuals or companies great. This is then held up as an example for others to emulate. Another popular approach is simply to assemble quotes of famous people and to produce an anthology on the topic of excellence. One such book is Excellence: Inspiration for Achieving Your Personal Best, edited by J. Pincott. There is nothing particularly wrong with such efforts, but I believe they remain very much on the surface when it comes to understanding what true excellence is really all about. By contrast, a Christian approach to excellence, as I argue in my book, must start with the excellence of God. On this theological foundation, we must understand our own call to excellence, which entails the pursuit of virtues such as diligence, courage, passion, restraint, integrity, humility, interdependence, and love.

5. How can we as Christians pursue vocational, relational, and moral excellence?

In the book, I make a case for the need to pursue excellence not merely in the vocational realm but also in one's personal life and moral sphere. Too often we see people in public life—including Christians—succeed professionally but succumb to personal or moral failure. The key passage in Scripture that I use in my book as a blueprint for pursuing Christian virtue is 2 Peter 1:3-11, which speaks of God calling us to his own glory and excellence and urges believers to make every effort to supplement their faith with virtue. I find this striking—as Christians, we are called to supplement our faith by pursuing a series of virtues! How can we as Christians pursue such virtues? To find out, you've got to read the book! After discussing the excellence of God, our call to pursue excellence, and chapters on holiness and spirituality, I devote 13 chapters to individual virtues that believers are called to cultivate, with special emphasis on the pursuit of scholarly virtues. God's call to excellence is both a daunting and an exhilarating call. Together, let's pursue personal, moral, and vocational excellence for the glory of God.

One Thing

One thing to know:

One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see. (John 9:25b)

One thing is necessary:

Mary . . . sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her." (Luke 10:39-42)

One thing to do:

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14)

One thing to ask for:

One thing have I asked of the LORD ,

that will I seek after:

that I may dwell in the house of the LORD

all the days of my life,

to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD

and to inquire in his temple.

(Psalm 27:4)

HT: Helen Roseveare

The Best Christian Novel You've Never Heard Of

Leland Ryken has taught literature—specializing in the classics—at Wheaton College for 44 years. So when he describes a book as "one of the best literary 'finds' I have ever made," I take notice. I asked him if he would explain:

Bo Giertz's fictional work The Hammer of God is one of the best literary "finds" I have ever made.

I discovered this novel-length series of three novellas while co-authoring a soon-to-be-released, co-authored (with Philip Ryken and Todd Wilson) book entitled Pastors in the Classics: Timeless Lessons on Life and Ministry from World Literature. Initially Giertz's book came onto my radar screen as a candidate for the handbook section of our book on the portrayal of pastors in the literary classics, but once I started to read the book I could hardly put it down. My son quickly agreed that The Hammer of God merited a full-scale chapter and not just an entry in our handbook section.

The story of the author is nearly as interesting as the masterpiece of clerical fiction that he composed in a span of six weeks while serving as a rural pastor in Sweden. At the age of only 43, Giertz became a bishop in the Swedish Lutheran church. The best-known biography of Giertz calls him "an atheist who became a bishop." The publication of The Hammer of God in 1941 brought Giertz immediate fame.

The design of this trilogy of novellas is ingenious.

Each of the three stories follows a young Lutheran pastor over approximately a two-year span at the beginning of his ministerial career, all in the same rural parish. The overall time span for the work as a whole is 130 years.

Each of the three pastors arrives fresh from theological training and decidedly immature (and perhaps a nominal rather than true believer).

Each of the three attains true Christian faith through encounters with (1) parishioners, (2) fellow pastors, and (3) assorted religious movements that were in fact prominent in Sweden during the historical eras covered.

There are thus two plot lines in the book: one recounts the "coming of age" spiritual pilgrimages of the three young ministers, and the other is an episodic fictional story of a rural Swedish parish.

No other work covered in Pastors in the Classics covers more issues in ministry than this one, and it has the added advantage of being packaged in three manageable units.

In an essay entitled "Fiction as an Instrument for the Gospel: Bo Giertz as Novelist," published in A Hammer of God: Bo Giertz, Gene Edward Veith Jr. makes a comment on Christian fiction in general:

Fiction lends itself well to the exploration of spiritual issues, since the form gives life to ideas, making them tangible and relating them to human life. . . . And yet, good Christian novels are rare. . . . It is preachy, contrived, and it does not ring true.   The story is often formulaic, and the characters are stock "good guys" or "villains," with no complexity or inner lives.  The obligatory conversion scene is often unrelated to the on-going plot, coming as an interruption rather than as a believable development in the character's life.  And, ironically, much of today's Christian fiction is moralistic, rather than evangelical, presenting good characters to emulate, rather than sinners being forgiven.

In contrast, Veith points out that "Giertz's characters . . .  have a duality that makes them complex, in stark contrast to the one-dimensional stock characters of most religious novels." "Most Christian fiction today," he writes, "lacks [Giertz's] kind of grounding in the tangible, the concrete, the actual, honest realities of human life and of divine revelation."

Here Veith summarizes the essence of this trilogy of novellas as follows:

What Bo Giertz does is explore that Gospel and the false theologies that obscure it by bringing them down to earth, showing what difference they make in the lives of ordinary human beings. He shows "tortured souls"—often made such by the legalistic religiosity they embrace—and how the Gospel of Christ is the "medicine" that alone can heal them. He works not with abstract propositions but with concrete individuals and situations. He makes the case for orthodox evangelical Christianity not by setting forth an intellectual argument, but by writing a novel.

So for those who lament the mediocrity of much of what passes today as "Christian art," and for those who are tempted to think that all explicit presentations of the gospel in art end up being preachy or moralistic or cheesy, perhaps we should simply tolle lege ("take up and read") The Hammer of God.

Salt & Light Are More Than Simply Agents of Survival

[image error]You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet.

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

—Matthew 5:13-16

From John Stott's article "Four Ways Christians Can Influence the World":

In both these metaphors of the salt and the light, Jesus teaches about the responsibility of Christians in a non-Christian, or sub-Christian, or post-Christian society. He emphasizes the difference between Christians and non-Christians, between the church and the world, and he emphasizes the influences Christians ought to have on the non-Christian environment. The distinction between the two is clear.

The world, he says, is like rotting meat. But you are to be the world's salt.

The world is like a dark night, but you are to be the world's light.

This is the fundamental difference between the Christian and the non-Christian, the church and the world.

Then he goes on from the distinction to the influence.

Like salt in putrefying meat, Christians are to hinder social decay.

Like light in the prevailing darkness, Christians are to illumine society and show it a better way.

It's very important to grasp these two stages in the teaching of Jesus. Most Christians accept that there is a distinction between the Christian and the non-Christian, between the church and the world. God's new society, the church, is as different from the old society as salt from rotting meat and as light from darkness.

But there are too many people who stop there; too many people whose whole preoccupation is with survival—that is, maintaining the distinction.

The salt must retain its saltiness, they say. It must not become contaminated.

The light must retain its brightness. It must not be smothered by the darkness.

That is true. But that is merely survival. Salt and light are not just a bit different from their environment. They are to have a powerful influence on their environment.

The salt is to be rubbed into the meat in order to stop the rot.

The light is to shine into the darkness. It is to be set upon a lamp stand, and it is to give light to the environment.

That is an influence on the environment quite different from mere survival.

The Gift of Critiquing an Artist in Truth and Love

Flannery O'Connor:

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

Fernando Ortega reflects on "the important, sometimes predominant role negativity has played in the creation of my songs: so much stripping away, so much tearing apart before I can get to the heart of what I'm trying to communicate."

What Does the Tabernacle Symbolize?

Illustration from the ESV Study Bible, copyright (c) 2008 Crossway Bibles

The note on Exodus 25:1-31:17 in the ESV Study Bible points out two important keys to understanding the symbolism of the tabernacle:

First, the tabernacle is seen as a tented palace for Israel's divine king. He is enthroned on the ark of the covenant in the innermost Holy of Holies (the Most Holy Place). His royalty is symbolized by the purple of the curtains and his divinity by the blue. The closer items are to the Holy of Holies, the more valuable are the metals (bronze→silver→gold) of which they are made.

The other symbolic dimension is Eden. The tabernacle, like the garden of Eden, is where God dwells, and various details of the tabernacle suggest it is a mini-Eden. These parallels include the east-facing entrance guarded by cherubim, the gold, the tree of life (lampstand), and the tree of knowledge (the law). Thus God's dwelling in the tabernacle was a step toward the restoration of paradise, which is to be completed in the new heaven and earth (Revelation 21-22).

Douglas Stuart, in his commentary on Exodus (NAC, 2006), p. 572, brings out another nuance:

The tabernacle represented Yahweh's house among the Israelites—he would soon encamp in his large house in their midst, and they would encamp around his house according to their tribes in concentric circles (Num 2).

He himself was symbolically represented as dwelling in the "back room" of his house by means of the ark.

In the tabernacle's "front room" were several pieces of furniture, the sorts of things that represented the furniture of a home, though on a grander scale. The first of these pieces of household-style furniture to be described is the table. It was primarily for food—a dining table of sorts, symbolizing the fact that Yahweh really did live among his people and inhabit his house in much the same way that they inhabited theirs.

And as the storyline of redemptive history progresses, we see that Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of these shadows:

Jesus is the true tabernacle.

John 1:14 tells us that "the Word became flesh and dwelt [Gk. σκηνόω] among us," and the Greek translation of "tent of meeting" is σκηνὴ μαρτυρίου (Ex. 33:7). In other words, when Jesus became the God-man he "tabernacled" among us. (And of course Jesus spoke about "the temple of his body" [John 2:19, 21], and Paul taught that because we are united to the risen Messiah "we are the temple of the living God" [2 Cor. 6:16].)

Jesus' body is the curtain ripped in two that brings us to the holy presence of God.

"Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh. . . ." (Heb. 10:19-20). (See also Matthew 27:51: "the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.")

Jesus is the great high priest over the house of God.

". . . and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water." (Heb. 10:21-22)

Jesus is the full and final sacrifice.

"Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29).

". . . We have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. . . . Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins . . . By a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified." (Heb. 10:10, 12, 14)