Forgotten God

I am reading Francis Chan’s book, Forgotten God. It is very similar to the writing style and approach that Francis took when he wrote Crazy Love (which is on my “read every January list”).

In other words, it is easy to read, challenges assumptions, and dares us to move out of our routines into a powerful relationship with God the Holy Spirit.

Here are a few excerpts from later in the book to give the flavor:

God is not interested in numbers. He cares most about the faithfulness, not the size, of His bride. He cares about whether people are lovers of Him. And while I might be able to get people in the doors of a church or auditorium if I tell enough jokes or use enough visuals, the fact remains that I cannot convince people to be obsessed with Jesus. Perhaps I can talk people into praying a prayer, but I cannot talk anyone into falling in love with Christ. I cannot make someone understand and accept the gift of grace. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. So by every measure that actually counts, I need the Holy Spirit. Desperately.

p. 143

and

But God is not a coercive God. And though He desires for His children to know peace and love and to have wisdom, I have noticed that He often waits for us to ask.

He desires to do more than “help out” a bit. He wants to completely transform us. He wants to take a timid heart and set it ablaze with strength and courage, so much so that people know something supernatural has taken place–life change just as miraculous as fire coming down from heaven.

p. 146

and

I don’t know about you, but I cannot simply muster up more love. I can’t manufacture patience just by gritting my teeth and determining to be more patient. We are not strong enough or good enough and it doesn’t work that way. None of us can “do goodness” on our own, much less all the other elements that make up the fruit of the Spirit.
….
Instead of mustering up more willpower, let’s focus our energies and time on asking for help from the One who has the power to change us. Let’s take the time to ask God to put the fruit of His Spirit into our lives. And let’s spend time with the One we want to be more like.

p. 148

book recommendation

John Piper is making a book recommendation other than the Bible.  Same Kind of Different As Me.

My lovely wife read Same Kind of Different As Me last year and also recommends it highly.

here are some lines that Piper mentioned:

• “Denver and I are not preachers or teachers but sinners with a story to tell.”
• “You never know whose eyes God is watchin’ you through.”
• “I hope people will recycle the love they’ve been givin’ to somebody that’s not easy to love.”
• “This earth ain’t no final restin’ place, so in a way we is all homeless.”
• “Just tell ’em I’m a nobody tryin’ to tell everybody about Somebody who can save anybody.”
• “How do you live the rest of your life in jus a few days?”

current bookshelf

my current bookshelf of books that I am reading looks like this
Amazon.com Widgets

quite a stack on my nightstand

effect of literature

Kevin DeYoung wonders what hath literature wrought?

I agree strongly with his conclusion:

I’ll take passionate and logical romantic rationalism over the tired tirades of false dichotomies any day.

plus, I enjoy his perfect parallel prose. anyone who reads here long knows that I adore appropriate alliteration.

more reviews of The Shack

some big guns have turned their attention to Wm P. Young’s book, The Shack. Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian has read it and Dr. Al Mohler is concerned about the discernment ability of modern evangelicals in light of the fact that this book is so popular among them.

If you remember my main concern with the book was its false portrayal of God.

my summary is:

I am afraid that if someone reads the Shack and falls in love with Papa, then all they have fallen in love with is a fictional African American woman who likes to cook and give hugs. They have not been led to God. They have not fallen in love with the biblical Jesus.
They have instead been distracted by an anthropomorphic three headed idol created by Wm. Paul Young.

Therefore, I was pleased to see Tim Keller say:

But here is my main problem with the book. Anyone who is strongly influenced by the imaginative world of The Shack will be totally unprepared for the far more multi-dimensional and complex God that you actually meet when you read the Bible. In the prophets the reader will find a God who is constantly condemning and vowing judgment on his enemies, while the Persons of the Triune-God of The Shack repeatedly deny that sin is any offense to them. The reader of Psalm 119 is filled with delight at God’s statutes, decrees, and laws, yet the God of The Shack insists that he doesn’t give us any rules or even have any expectations of human beings. All he wants is relationship. The reader of the lives of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Isaiah will learn that the holiness of God makes his immediate presence dangerous or fatal to us. Someone may counter (as Young seems to do, on p.192) that because of Jesus, God is now only a God of love, making all talk of holiness, wrath, and law obsolete. But when John, one of Jesus’ closest friends, long after the crucifixion sees the risen Christ in person on the isle of Patmos, John ‘fell at his feet as dead.’ (Rev.1:17.) The Shack effectively deconstructs the holiness and transcendence of God. It is simply not there. In its place is unconditional love, period. The God of The Shack has none of the balance and complexity of the Biblical God. Half a God is not God at all.

I also very much enjoyed Dr. Mohler’s take. He points out the numerous serious theological concerns and wonders why so many people fail to see how the book contradicts Biblical theology.

here are some of the problems but be sure to read the whole article for others:

The relationship of the Father to the Son, revealed in a text like John 17, is rejected in favor of an absolute equality of authority among the persons of the Trinity. “Papa” explains that “we have no concept of final authority among us, only unity.” In one of the most bizarre paragraphs of the book, Jesus tells Mack: “Papa is as much submitted to me as I am to him, or Sarayu to me, or Papa to her. Submission is not about authority and it is not obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect. In fact, we are submitted to you in the same way.”

The theorized submission of the Trinity to a human being — or to all human beings — is a theological innovation of the most extreme and dangerous sort. The essence of idolatry is self-worship, and this notion of the Trinity submitted (in any sense) to humanity is inescapably idolatrous.

The most controversial aspects of The Shack’s message have revolved around questions of universalism, universal redemption, and ultimate reconciliation. Jesus tells Mack: “Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions.” Jesus adds, “I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, my Beloved.”

Mack then asks the obvious question — do all roads lead to Christ? Jesus responds, “Most roads don’t lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.”

Given the context, it is impossible not to draw essentially universalistic or inclusivistic conclusions about Young’s meaning. “Papa” chides Mack that he is now reconciled to the whole world. Mack retorts, “The whole world? You mean those who believe in you, right?” “Papa” responds, “The whole world, Mack.”

emphasis added.

I think the bit that I bolded above is why the book is so popular. self love and self worship has been honed to a fine art in our culture including our church culture. we like hearing ourselves say to each other “you’re good enough, you’re smart enough and doggone it, people like you.”

We very much would like to believe that God believes the same thing about us that we believe about ourselves.

Logos 4 is out

Libronix has come out with Logos 4. Here is a video introduction of the new product. It looks really great, but I will wait till they get the Mac kinks worked out before I make the leap. Can’t wait to keep everything in Logos synced on my iPhone.

I am still using the old Logos on my Windows XP virtual machine and quite happy with it. Logos 4 looks like a good reason to make the upgrade to the Mac version when it is ready.

Deep Church?

Kevin DeYoung takes a good long look at Deep Church by Jim Belcher.

As you know, Kevin wrote his own book about the emerging church movement, so he knows whereof he speaks.

he approached this new book with trepidation:

I am always skeptical of “third way” books anyways. Usually, the “third way” is basically the same as one of the other two ways, only a little nicer. In this case, I was expecting the third way to be emergent-lite with a less caustic attitude toward evangelicals. But actually Belcher was just the opposite. He is an evangelical–a traditional evangelical I would argue–who seems sound in his theology (he is a PCA minister after all), but wants to be non-traditional in a few ways. If I were titling the book I would call it “Why I’m Not Emergent, But I Like Many of the Emergent Folks and I Want to Do Church Differently Too.”

But he was surprised by it and liked it more than he thought he would.

Evaluation
As you can see, there is much to affirm in these chapters. Belcher understands the issues well and clearly rejects the worst of the emerging movement. His church sounds like a good church, and Belcher (whom I never met) strikes me as an honest, thoughtful, irenic pastor. I agreed with much more in this book than I thought I would. As a part of the PCA, Belcher is not only tied to the Great Tradition, but to the Reformed/Presbyterian tradition. As such, I imagine our theology is quite similar. We are on the same team. My agreements with him outnumber my disagreements.

Nevertheless, I have a few critiques for Deep Church. Let me mention four, each in the form of a question.

Go over to Kevin’s place and read those four questions as well as the rest of the review. Good stuff.

emerging church conversation

Here is an interesting interview by Trevin Wax of Robbie Sagers about the emerging church. Trevin is a blogger and Robbie is a PhD student and special assistant to Dr. Russell Moore.

Robbie has contributed a chapter to Evangelicals Engaging Emergent: A Discussion of the Emergent Church Movement (B&H, 2009).

here is a bit of the interview, but take some time to go read the whole thing.  very interesting stuff:

Trevin Wax: What will the long-range impact of the Emerging Church be on evangelicalism?

Robbie Sagers: That’s a very good question, and I think that only time will tell what – if any – lasting impact the emerging church movement will have on evangelicalism.

Part of that uncertainty is due to the somewhat shifting nature of evangelicalism itself; after all, what is an evangelical? (A question for another day, perhaps!)

Regardless, these last months certainly do seem to have indicated the demise of the emerging church movement, at least in terms of comparing it to the furor surrounding the movement in recent years. After all, fewer books are being published by self-identified emerging church adherents, less conferences planned, Emergent Village has been disbanded, and some of the movement’s key leaders are now deeply entrenched not primarily in the churchper se but rather in national politics–or, at least in one case, running for political office themselves.

I can tell you what I hope the long-range impact of evangelicalism will be. My hope is that conservative evangelicals, after having endured from some segments of the emerging church movement a challenge to doctrinal orthodoxy and orthopraxy, will avoid the temptation to a more-doctrinal-than-thou mentality that can be destructive to the soul. False teaching should be pointed out, yes, and corrected when possible. And there certainly is a place, biblically speaking, for sharp language in pointing out wolves among sheep. But such words should be spoken not with triumphalism, but rather with sobriety, in love.

Instead, I hope that evangelicals will discern humbly, through the lens of the Scriptures, those weak spots that led to some emerging church adherents’ exploitations of certain aspects of evangelicalism in the first place.

HT to Dr. Moore who adds:

Sagers is also correct to note that the criticisms of traditional conservative evangelical theology and spirituality and missiology is often on target in its diagnosis, if not always in its solution. American evangelicalism is indeed too captive to a story-less rationalism in both its academy and in its pulpits, just in different ways. The academy often seeks to replace mystery and paradox and narrative with syllogisms, true enough. Have conservative evangelicals in recent years often ignored issues of poverty, social justice, and the stewardship of the earth? Without a doubt. And evangelical churches often seek to replace story and water and bread and wine with principles, programs, ideas, and “worst of all” products to be bought and sold.

Logos Bible software

I mentioned Logos in passing the other day as my preferred Bible software to use on my laptop. I have been using it for at least 10 years and I love it.

When I originally moved to Mac OS back in 2007, Logos didn’t have a Mac version so I had to buy Parallels and a copy of Windows XP just so I could install Logos and keep using it. That setup has worked very well.

However, now Logos has a Mac version and it should be very nice indeed. (I haven’t bought it yet, but I did use the alpha test versions along the way)

Here is Michael Patton’s fairly thorough review of the Logos software. and here is the part of that review with which I completely agree:

Commentaries and Reference Library: I have basically quit buying DVDs because I can just get all of my movies on Amazon.com and use my Roku player to watch them. That way I don’t have to worry about losing them or worry that they get scratched. Well, it is the same thing with Logos and my commentary and reference library. I don’t buy the paper version any more. I only get them on Logos. That way I never have to worry about them. As well, it is such a blessing to be able to pull up a passage of Scripture and have dozens of commentaries available at the click of the mouse. Yes, there are many books that you would not want to read digitally. At least I don’t like to read digitally. But when it comes to reference works, you need a quick and easy way to reference them efficiently. Logos is the way to go.

To save space: There are certain collections such as the Nicene Ante-Nicene Church Fathers that are too large for most offices. Logos helps to save space. We are moving to a digital world. Start now or you will be sorry later.

Not only does it save space, but it makes all the commentaries much more useful. The global search function allows you to research a passage in the Bible or a topic across every single volume in your library. You can then look at the relevant portions of every book to thoroughly investigate the passage or topic. So much faster and more accurate than finding everything manually.

Here is what Michael says about the search feature:

Searches: With Logos, you can search your entire library for a key word or phrase. Theentire library! This is so valuable. When you are searching to see what the early church fathers said about the Lord’s supper or a particular passage, just type in your key words and hit search.

I love Logos. Like PocketBible, I have assembled a pretty good sized library of books in it and this software makes those books incredibly useful. I am sure that other Bible Software programs work well too, but Logos is where I have invested in a library and I know that it is fantastic.

I am not getting anything from either of these companies for talking about them. They are just what I use and love and thus want to recommend.

HT to vitamin Z.

4 G’s

from Jonathan Dodson, Tim Chester’s 4 G’s:

In You Can Change, Tim Chester helpfully points us to four basic promises. The 4 Gs:

1. God is great – so we don’t have to be in control

2. God is glorious – so we don’t have to fear others

3. God is good – so we don’t have to look elsewhere

4. God is gracious – so we don’t have to prove ourselves

These 4Gs are helpful summaries of God’s various promises, so better yet, find the promises in your Bible that back them up. Find truths to fight lies and start talking back to your idols. Start mortifying your sin! As you do, you’ll find that train of graces that attends God’s promises. You’ll find that God is glorious, good, gracious and great! You’ll find middle-of-the-road repentance.

Go read Jonathan’s full post to find out what he means by “middle-of-the-road repentance.”

another review of The Shack

Trevin Wax has the same problem with The Shack that I do. I really like his approach to the “it’s just fiction” argument.

Check this out:

Let’s say you meet an author who wants to use your grandparents as the main characters in a novel. The author tells you that the narrative will be fictional, but that your grandparents will have the starring roles. Sounds great!you think.

But when the manuscript arrives in your hands, you discover that the story does not accurately represent the personalities of your grandparents. The relationship between them is all wrong too. Grandma berates Grandpa. Early on, they run off and elope (which is totally out of character). At one point, they contemplate divorce.

When you complain, the author responds, “Remember? I told you it would be fictional.”

“Yes,” you say, somewhat exasperated, “I knew the story would be fictional, but I thought you would get my grandparents right. The grandparents in your story aren’t anything like my grandparents.”

“Who cares?” the author responds. “It’s a work of fiction.”

“Well, I care,” you say, “because people will put down this book thinking that my grandparents were like the way you portrayed them.”

My biggest problem with The Shack is its portrayal of God. I understand that the book is a work of fiction, not a theological treatise, and therefore should be treated as fiction. But the main characters are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These are actual Persons. To portray God in a manner inconsistent with his revelation to us in Scripture (and primarily in Jesus) is to misrepresent living Persons.

When people put down The Shack, they will not have a better understanding of the Trinity (despite the glowing blurbs on the back cover). They will probably have a more distorted view of God in three Persons.

What he says nicely is exactly what I said not nearly as graciously.

I am afraid that if someone reads the Shack and falls in love with Papa, then all they have fallen in love with is a fictional African American woman who likes to cook and give hugs. They have not been led to God. They have not fallen in love with the biblical Jesus.
They have instead been distracted by an anthropomorphic three headed idol created by Wm. Paul Young.

Do not read The Shack and think that you have gained insight into the Trinity as it is portrayed in Scripture.

Trevin goes on to point out some other problems with the book as well as things it does well. Definitely worth a read.

HT to Justin Taylor.

no direct fellowship?

going back to pages 35-36 of Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he makes a curious argument. He says that Christians should not desire to be directly involved in the lives of other believers.

Check this out:

Because Christ stands between me and others, I dare not desire direct fellowship with them. As only Christ can speak to me in such a way that I may be saved, so others too, can be saved only by Christ himself. This means that I must release the other person from every attempt of mine to regulate, coerce, and dominate him with my love. The other person needs to retain his independence of me; to be loved for what he is, as one for whom Christ became man, died, and rose again, for whom Christ bought forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Because Christ has long since acted decisively for my brother, before I could begin to act, I must leave him his freedom to be Christ’s; I must meet him only as the person that he already is in Christ’s eyes.

….
[Spiritual love] will not seek to move others by all too personal, direct influence, by impure interference in the life of another...It will rather meet the other person with the clear Word of God and be ready to leave him alone with this Word for a long time, willing to release him again in order that Christ may deal with him.

emphasis added.

what do you think? How does this compare with Paul’s words in II Corinthians 5:

14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

emphasis added

the Death Penalty

Challies has reviewed The Death Penalty on Trial by Ron Gleason.

It sounds like a interesting and useful book for Christians who have trouble with the Death Penalty as a possible punishment by the State.

Go read the whole review and see what you think. I thought this part was a particularly interesting bit of perspective:

A theme that runs throughout the book is this: all murder is killing but not all killing is murder. Thus a person who murders another can be justly executed by the governing authorities without multiplying the evil. To kill a murderer is not to commit another murder. Rather, terrible though it is to have to take a life, it is an act of justice and a fitting penalty for one who would destroy a person made in God’s image.

general principles

Kevin DeYoung gleans some general principles from Risking the Truth: Handling Error in the Church, the collection of interviews by Martin Downes.

You won’t agree with every line, just like those being interviewed don’t always agree with each other, but there is a remarkable similarity in the general approach to truth and error given by these men: preach the Bible, don’t neglect your own heart, don’t spend all your time on controversy, test your theology against historic creeds and confessions, beware of pride.

emphasis added.

go to Kevin’s place for some quotes from the interviews. Looks like an interesting book.

practical prayer helps

here is John Piper talking about how practically to develop a passion for prayer.

what he says about the stories is just so true. I read a book about George Mueller in high school and it has had to biggest impact on my prayer life of anything.

The other part about praying scripture, Julie and I learned from Beth Moore while we were in Arkansas. Very good stuff.

Hat tip to Vitamin Z.

a conception of self

I read the C.S. Lewis space trilogy the first time almost thirty years ago. I read them again 3 or 4 years ago. Powerful stuff.

I especially find the story in Perelandra to be a wonderful glimpse into the Garden of Eden through the mind and imagination of C.S. Lewis.

In the book, Satan constantly whispers in the Lady’s ear. His project is to build up her sense of self, her ego, to such a degree that she feels entitled to go on land (the book’s forbidden fruit) in spite of Maledil’s (God’s) instruction not to go there.

Only a creature that feels like it is somebody is willing to transgress God’s instruction because it wants its own version of happiness and joy rather than God’s.

The enemy’s scheme is bearing fruit in this quote from page 118 in the paperback version linked above:

But the Lady did not appear to be listening to him.  She stood like one almost dazed with the richness of a day-dream.  She did not look in the least like a woman who is thinking about a new dress.  The expression of her face was noble.  It was a great deal too noble.  Greatness, tragedy, high sentiment–these were obviously what occupied her thoughts.  Ransom perceived that the affair of the robes and the mirror had been only superficially concerned with what is commonly called female vanity.   The image of her beautiful body had been offered to her only as a means to awake the far more perilous image of her great soul.  The external and, as it were, dramatic conception of the self was the enemy’s true aim.  He was making her mind a theatre in which that phantom self should hold the stage. He had already written the play.

emphasis added.

This is the way our enemy works. He does whatever it takes to make us think that we are the ones that the play is about. A dramatic conception of self is always his true aim.

People who are great are the ones entitled to live in Disneyland all the time.

New Piper book, free pdf

zach points out that the new John Piper book with missionary stories is available free for download.

DG Blog:

John Piper’s new book Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ is now available for download. Get it for free.

Read an interview by JT with John Piper concerning this book.

here is the direct link to 128 pages of goodness.

and here is the book information page

what do we want?

Todd Bumgarner has a quote from Os Guinness that we all need to ponder long and hard.

[E]ven if we can do what we want, the question remains: What do we want? The near-omnipotence of our means of freedom doubles back to join hands with the near-emptiness of our ends.  We do not have a purpose to match our technique.  So, ironically, we have the greatest capacity when we have the least clue what it is for. Which makes us vulnerable to all the “expert services” whose “self help” methods promise us everything we crave, but end in delivering to us new forms of constraint – and charging us for them.

–Os Guinness, The Call (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson), pp 22-23.

something about which I had never even thought

here is something that never entered my mind even as a possible remote concept.

marriage links

Jonathan Dodson has a great roundup of links to marriage resources. Go check them out.

New Page

I added a new page over to the left which is the complete 2400 word essay that I wrote about The Shack in four parts here on the blog.

This Momentary Marriage

I posted a quick bit about John Piper’s book This Momentary Marriage last month with a link to download it in pdf for free.

Tim Challies has now reviewed the book and it is a review well worth reading. If you haven’t done so, do yourself a favor and download or buy the book and read it.

The point Piper makes time and time again is this: “Marriage is patterned after Christ’s covenant relationship to his redeemed people, the church. And therefore, the highest meaning and the most ultimate purpose of marriage is to put the covenant relationship of Christ and his church on display. That is why marriage exists. If you are married, that is why you are married. If you hope to be, that should be your dream.” Thus staying married is not about staying in love but about keeping covenant; getting divorced involves not just breaking a covenant with a spouse but misrepresenting Christ and his covenant.

the Shack part IV (conclusion)

this is the wrap up of my series on The Shack. Part I, Part II and Part III are intended to convey to you that God is God.

The reason that I am so exercised about this book is simple. The god portrayed in this book is not the God of the bible. Papa is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Papa is not the God who delivered the Israelites from Pharoah. Jesus in the Shack is not that Jesus preached about by John the Baptist. Jesus in the Shack is not the Jesus who taught that unless we all repent we will all likewise perish.

I am afraid that if someone reads the Shack and falls in love with Papa, then all they have fallen in love with is a fictional African American woman who likes to cook and give hugs. They have not been led to God. They have not fallen in love with the biblical Jesus.

They have instead been distracted by an anthropomorphic three headed idol created by W. Paul Young.

God does love you. He loved you enough to send His only Son to die on your behalf and in your place. He planned for this rescue and reconciliation from before the foundation of the world.

The God who would do that for us when we had nothing to offer Him back is a God of great love and mercy.

But here’s the thing that is glossed over, ignored, and contradicted by the Shack repeatedly. God is also holy. God is also righteous. God is concerned foremost with His glory. God requires repentance of us in order to be restored into fellowship with Him.

Failure to repent and confess Jesus as Lord will result in perishing. This truth makes the gift of salvation even more glorious and that is why the Shack is so incredibly bad. If we aren’t that bad, then salvation means less. If God won’t really destroy us then we don’t really need to be saved.

the Shack part III

I have written two posts (part I and part II) now rebutting with scripture this statement from “Sophia” in the Shack:

“But I still don’t understand why Missy had to die.”

“She didn’t have to, Mackenzie. This was no plan of Papa’s. Papa has never needed evil to accomplish his good purposes. It is you humans who have embraced evil and Papa has responded with goodness. What happened to Missy was the work of evil and no one in your world is immune from it.”

emphasis added.

You might be thinking that all that stuff about the Babylonians being prepared by God to wreak His vengeance on Judah as His sword is all just a bunch of Old Testament God meanness that doesn’t really apply in this modern church age of grace and mercy.

You are correct that God is exhibiting extreme patience with humanity right now in order to maximize the number of people who will accept His call to salvation. The problem is that we presume upon this patience and we begin to get a false picture of who God is and how seriously He takes His own holiness and glory. We begin to act as if we are the centerpieces of the universe when, in fact, He is.

Two quick examples from Jesus himself to show you that God in Ezekiel is very much exemplified in Jesus and the current time.

The first is John 9. A man blind from birth is encountered by Jesus and his disciples:

1 As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud 7 and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.

emphasis added.

do you see that? a man was born blind and lived his entire life as an outcast blind beggar. Is that a bad thing? Just happenstance? the result of sin? NO. This man and his parents had to endure a life of blindness in himself and their son so that “the works of God might be displayed in him.”

Does that make you mad? or does that make you celebrate with this born blind man that he was considered to be worthy of such an honor?
your answer to this question will tell you a lot about your feelings toward God.

the second example is the one that John Piper wrote about after the bridge collapse in Minneapolis Minnesota from Luke 13:

1 There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4 Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.“

and of course you all remember John the Baptist’s message about Jesus, don’t you?

11 “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

the message is clear. God still requires repentance. The kingdom of heaven that Jesus came to initiate is one based upon repentance. Failure to repent in the new covenant still leads to certain destruction at the hand of God’s “winnowing fork”

conclusion to come.

the Shack part I

I am reading the Shack. It took all the way to page 165 (out of 246) before I got completely angry. Up to that time I was reading at a relatively low grade frustration level. The prose was juvenile. the story was wooden. The theology was wrong. The emphasis was on Mack instead of God. All frustrating things.

But on page 165 Mr. Young finally made me mad. Here is what appears there, beginning at the bottom of 164 for some context:

“For love. He chose the way of the cross where mercy triumphs over justice because of love. Would you instead prefer he’d chosen justice for everyone? Do you want justice, ‘Dear Judge’?” and she smiled as she said it.

“No, I don’t,” he said as he lowered his head. “Not for me, and not for my children.”

She waited.

“But I still don’t understand why Missy had to die.”

“She didn’t have to, Mackenzie. This was no plan of Papa’s. Papa has never needed evil to accomplish his good purposes. It is you humans who have embraced evil and Papa has responded with goodness. What happened to Missy was the work of evil and no one in your world is immune from it.”

emphasis added.

The “She” above is Sophia, who is the distillation of God’s wisdom like Solomon portrayed in Proverbs.

Now just think one brief minute about what we know about God from the scripture. Revelation 13:8 says that there is a book written before the foundation of the world that is known as the book of the slain Lamb. It seems fairly obvious to me that God “needed” “planned” for some evil to occur that would result in the propitiatory sacrifice of His Son for the reconciliation of the folks whose names were written in that book.

The idea that God didn’t plan for things we don’t like is deeply offensive.

The thing about it is that this statement that Mr. Young puts in the mouth of God’s distillation of wisdom undercuts the whole central message of the book up to that point.

The Godhead was up to then taking turns convincing Mack that he had no right to sit in judgement of God’s actions or others. The author then does exactly what he is writing a book to argue against. He sits in judgment of God and decides that God would never plan or need what the author and Mackenzie agree to be evil. how arrogant is that? how stupid? how blasphemous?

Don’t get me started.

For a contrast between this kind of theology and the Bible’s portrayal of God see this post of mine regarding two approaches to the bridge collapse in minneapolis minnesota.

W. Paul Young is trying to do the same thing that Roger Olson wants to do which is to help God get off the hook for bad things that happen in the world that we humans don’t like.

Olson:

And God says, “Pray because sometimes I can intervene to stop innocent suffering when people pray; that’s one of my self-limitations. I don’t want to do it all myself; I want your involvement and partnership in making this a better world.”
It’s a different picture of God than most conservative Christians grew up with, but it’s the only one (so far as I can tell) that relieves God of responsibility for sin and evil and disaster and calamity.

emphasis added.

The Bible:

5 I am the LORD, and there is no other,
besides me there is no God;
I equip you, though you do not know me,
6 that people may know, from the rising of the sun
and from the west, that there is none besides me;
I am the LORD, and there is no other.
7 I form light and create darkness,
I make well-being and create calamity,
I am the LORD, who does all these things.

emphasis added.

So the question is, do we take God at His word or not? Do we think it is our job to “relieve God of responsibility” for things that happen to us that we don’t like?