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April 24 - April 25, 2017
Normalcy is not our calling. Faithfulness is.
normalcy is not our calling; faithfulness is. And this is our time. This is the moment in which we are called to be faithful.
The primary myth the smartphone tells you every day is that you are the center of the universe. If your phone is your world, and if the settings and apps are tailored to you and your interests, then with you at all times is a world that revolves around you. No wonder we like to be on our phones so much! Nothing else has the same effect of putting us at the center of things. Nothing else makes us feel more in control, more Godlike, more knowledgeable, more connected.
The phone gives you the knowledge you need most. The phone says, “Hey, I’ve got knowledge! Come over and get more book smarts, become more culturally savvy, stay tuned in to online conversations!” What the phone does not give you is wisdom. That’s the kind of skilled living in the world that requires thought, contemplation, and soaking in the Scriptures, not just scrolling through a time line.6
Knowledge and Wisdom our phones give
need
New is more about affirmation than information
your phone tells you another myth: You are right. You’ve selected the slant, the angle from which you want to receive all this knowledge, and it’s an angle that confirms your thoughts and opinions. This is why in our time “news” is less about information and more about affirmation. News comforts you when it is presented in a way that backs up what you already believe to be true of the world. Once you’ve taken this step, technology is no longer just about informing you; it’s forming in you a desire to hear people who usually affirm and never challenge your assumptions. It’s telling you two
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Every space is a kind of visual echo chamber. We are no longer seen doing something; we’re doing something to be seen.”
God doesn’t just know everything about you—the Wikipedia version of your life; He knows you truly. God doesn’t just see the image you want the world to see; He sees what you’d never want the world to know. And He loves you anyway.
God outshines our self-displays of glory with His sacrificial display of love. He loves you just as you are but also enough to make you more like Him.
We live in the age of the smartphone and selfie. Let’s not fret over this era but be faithful in it. While others are enslaved to world-shrinking devices from which they crave affection, we can be free. We don’t have to live for likes; we already live from love.
The light of the gospel helps us see that we are significant because of who we are, not just what we do; we are made in God’s image and redeemed by His Son.
dreams? These are the questions with which we must wrestle. We need Christians with Scripture-soaked imaginations, standing in a long line of faithful saints who have gone before us. There are three ways to cultivate that kind of imagination. The first begins with full and regular immersion into God’s Word as the great Story of our world. Here’s the deal. If you know the songs of the world better than you know the great hymns of our faith, then the world’s soundtrack will have a greater impact on you than the church’s. If you’ve seen certain movies or shows so many times you can quote from
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Hollywoods hold music and movies
We cannot grasp the longings or see through the lies in the world’s most popular stories if we do not first see all of history as part of the unfolding Story that Scripture tells. Unless you inhabit the strange world of the Bible, with God’s Word on your lips and His stories planted in your heart, you will not be faithful in a world of entertainment. Faithfully engaging the world’s entertainment doesn’t start with cinema but with Scripture.
When believers tell me they have no problem with explicit content because they have a high tolerance for viewing violence or nudity, I tell them that’s like bragging about having deadened senses.
Desensitization is not a sign of spiritual progress but of sensual dullness. Do not confuse the ability to be unfazed by depictions of sin with spiritual maturity.
There’s an important lesson for us here. You can be courageous yet still be wrong about the world. You can be brave yet perish. You can be a strong and determined person on a path to destruction. Sincerity, as good a quality as that may be, cannot ultimately save you. “There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death” (Prov. 14:12).
as Christians seeking to be faithful in this era, we ought to be aware of how inspirational stories work on our imaginations.
The longing—to have the desires of your heart—is right. But the lie is that your heart can tell you exactly what those desires are. Instead, we are to obey the words of the psalmist: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”35 Delight in God, and your desires will match His. And note the command: not “find yourself” but “delight yourself.” Note also the object: we are to find joy not in things but in the Lord.
Two options in a world of mythical maps. Live authentically by rebelling against the constraints imposed on you by others. Or live in conformity, by keeping the rules of an ordered, godly life. Christianity says, “No thanks” to both. In response to people who believe we should be “authentic” above all else, we say: You don’t know yourself well enough to grasp your deepest desires, and even if you did, your desires are often wrong. We need deliverance from many of our deepest instincts, not celebration of them. In response to people who believe we should keep the rules and conform, we say:
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We want to be conformed into the image of Christ. But this conformity means we look like rebels to the rest of the world. The true rebellion is in the heart of the Christian who follows Jesus by swimming upstream against the currents of the world. That means, when everyone else is following their hearts, we will follow Jesus.
Advertising is effective because one of the prevailing myths of our time is that salvation comes through accumulation. As we accumulate stuff, we find happiness, or at least security.
The myth of accumulation is so powerful and ever present that we often don’t notice it. We also don’t see how our habits of accumulation, as well as our expectations for how easy it ought to be to buy something, shape our hearts. The myth of accumulation determines what we value and why.
It’s not what we affirm out loud that makes the biggest impact but what we assume in quiet, the practices we don’t even think to ask about.
The American Dream is the idea that anyone who works hard should be able to find comfort and success. That dream becomes the narrative that shapes our choices; we tell our life stories in ways that correspond to its terms. Whether we are “moving forward” or “stepping back” depends on our financial progress.
The longing expressed in this story is the desire for stability and comfort. That longing is good. To rest and enjoy the fruit of our labor is part of what it means to be humans made in the image of God.9 The lie in this story is that accumulation is the goal of life and that it is a good and noble thing for our financial aspirations to be the primary guide for our actions and choices.
For this reason Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,”15 rather than the reverse. Do you see the difference? Jesus did not say, “Have your heart in the right place, and then you’ll put your treasure there,” as if you can consciously make a decision about what you will love and then have your actions fall in line. No, He said, “Put your treasure where your heart should be, and there your heart will follow.” In other words you should recognize that earthly possessions have a gravitational pull, so you ought to be strategic in putting them where you want your heart
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I may not believe the lie that money is all I need to make me happy, but I have fallen for the myth that money makes me happier.
Maybe these tumultuous times serve to remind us that the Christian faith transcends and critiques every political group. We’ve always said that’s the case. It’s just that now we feel the weight of that truth. To feel “not at home” should be the sentiment of every Christian in a fallen world. Christian
needed to be done, and he was willing to take
Some Christians fear that to disagree with their political party or their country’s policies is to be disloyal. Not so. Sometimes dissent is the greatest form of patriotism.
The main reason we should not feel “at home” in a political party is because we already belong to a political society. It’s called the Church.13 It transcends national borders and breaks down worldly barriers. There, we don’t vote for a president; we bow before a King. As the people of God, we should always feel in the world but not of the world, in America but not of America, in a political party but not of a political party. Embracing that tension is not weakness but faithfulness.
darkness. The church will be around long after today’s empires and political parties fade away. So, if you want to put down roots somewhere, put them in the soil of the church. After all, the gates of hell are shaking not because of an election but because of Easter.
Love is not what makes marriage work. Marriage is what makes love work
When we share the same undergirding ideas about marriage as the culture, the Christian’s no to same-sex marriage looks arbitrary and motivated by animus toward our LGBT neighbors rather than being a part of a comprehensive vision of marriage that counteracts our culture in multiple ways.
We are not called merely to reject wrong views of marriage; we are called to build a marriage culture where the glorious vision of complementarity, permanence, and life-giving union of a man and woman, for the good of their society, can flourish. Rebuilding a marriage culture must be more than lamenting the current state of the world at multiple conferences a year. It must include the strengthening of all our marriages within the body of Christ: from the truck driver, to the police officer, to the teacher, and to the stay-at-home mom.
K. Chesterton wrote about the power of marriage when he said: “The greatest political storm flutters only a fringe of humanity. But an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children literally alter the destiny of nations.”
Tebow, for his out-of-the-mainstream belief that sex should be reserved for marriage, and Collins, for his identification with the LGBT community that sees itself as a coalition of sexual minorities. But because Collins’s view of sexuality is more common today, bashing Tebow is just harmless fun, while mocking Collins would be hateful bigotry. (And, of course, Jesus would have us mock neither of these men.)
The truth is, every generation believes that things are getting worse when compared to the past. Every generation adopts, at some level, a variation of the myth of decline or the myth of progress. Every generation of Christians believes they are in the last days of this world. And every generation, so far, has been wrong.
