Relations between pure and applied mathematicians are based on trust and understanding. Pure mathematicians do not trust applied mathematicians, and applied mathematicians do not understand pure mathematicians.
True Christians should never be greatly moved by the persecution of man. Their enemies may be strong, and they may be weak; but still they ought not to be afraid. They should remember that “the triumphing of the wicked is but short.” (Job 20:5) What has become of the Pharaohs, Neros and Diocletians who at one time fiercely persecuted the people of God? Where is the enmity of Charles IX of France, and bloody Mary of England? They did their utmost to cast the truth down to the ground. But the truth rose again from the earth, and still lives; and they are dead and mouldering in the grave. Let not the heart of any believer fail. Death is a mighty leveller, and can take any mountain out of the way of Christ’s church. “The Lord liveth” for ever. His enemies are only men. The truth shall always prevail.
For the Lord spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying: “Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many shall stumble on it. They shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken.”
So some respectible dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his nest, and discussed the arrival of the shipful of pitiless sailors in want of animal food. "We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear."
We learn for another thing from this list of names, the sinfulness and corruption of human nature. It is instructive to observe how many godly parents in this catalogue had wicked and ungodly sons. The names of Roboam, Joram, Amon and Jechonias should teach us humbling lessons. They had all pious fathers. But they were all wicked men. Grace does not run in families. It needs something more than good examples and good advice to make us children of God. They that are born again are not born of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God. (John 1:13) Praying parents should pray night and day that their children may be born of the Spirit.
Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one's youth.
Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
'There are no servants here,' said Mother Dimble, 'and we all do the work. The women do it one day and the men the next. What? No, it's a very sensible arrangement. The Director's idea is that men and women can't do housework together without quarrelling. There's something in it. Of course it doesn't do to look at the cups too closely on the men's day, but on the whole we get along pretty well.'
'But why should they quarrel?' asked Jane,
'Different methods, my dear. Men can't help in a job, you know. They can be induced to do it: not to help while you're doing it. At least, it makes them grumpy.'
John Calvin understood what the Scriptures were like, and he knew what the Scriptures were given to us to do. The entire world is a theater in which the majesty of God is displayed. General revelation is that theater, and a glorious theater it is. Special revelation is God’s holy script. We are not supposed to be extemporaneous actors trying to figure out our lines by looking at the embellishments and scrollwork near the ceiling of the theater. We have a script in our hands, and in this script we are given our lines.
In one way, of course, God has given us the Morning Star already: you can go and enjoy the gift on many fine mornings if you get up early enough. What more, you may ask, do we want? Ah, but we want so much more— something the books on aesthetics take little notice of. But the poets and the mythologies know all about it. We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. That is why we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves—that, though we cannot, yet these projections can, enjoy in themselves that beauty grace, and power of which Nature is the image. That is why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods. They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into a human soul; but it can’t. They tell us that “beauty born of murmuring sound” will pass into a human face; but it won’t. Or not yet. For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God will one day give us the Morning Star and cause us to put on the splendour of the sun, then we may surmise that both the ancient myths and the modern poetry, so false as history, may be very near the truth as prophecy. At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.
The Scriptures do not take these tests; the Scriptures administer tests. The Bible is not that which meets the standard; the Bible is that which sets the standard. [...] The Scriptures are not a possession of ours, which we may put into the world’s balances to be weighed. Rather, the Scriptures are God’s scales, in which he places the entire world. They are the scales in which he places heaven and earth, and all the nations. He says to us, “Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin.” We do not get to say that to him. The ghostly hand of higher criticism does not get to write anything on the walls of heaven’s banqueting halls. And even if it managed that feat, nobody in those halls would be frightened—not even a little bit. There are no heavenly Belshazzars, no celestial knees to knock together.
If the iron is blunt, and one does not sharpen the edge,
he must use more strength,but wisdom helps one to succeed.
Sometimes, given our necessarily limited perspectives, the good that God has providentially ordained to come to us through some instance of sin or suffering may be beyond our ken, and then in our prayers we will almost inevitably ask for a lesser gift than the one that God is about to give. Yet this is the very reason, Calvin comments, why our Lord draws this conclusion, for taking Matthew 7:11 to heart can prevent us from giving ourselves too much free rein to indulge in what may prove to be “foolish and unworthy fancies in prayer.” And thus, as Calvin rather daringly puts it, Christ subjects our prayers to God’s will in order to restrain our Father “from giving us more than He knows is for our good.”
All this did not in the least influence his sociological convictions. Even if he had been free from Belbury and wholly unambitious, it could not have done so, for his education had had the curious effect of making things that he read and wrote more real to him than things he saw. Statistics about agricultural labourers were the substance; any real ditcher, ploughman or farmer's boy, was the shadow. Though he had never noticed it himself, he had a great reluctance, in his work, ever to use such words as 'man' or 'woman'. He preferred to write about 'vocational groups', 'elements', 'classes' and 'populations': for, in his own way, he believed as firmly as any mystic in the superior reality of the things that are not seen.
The Bible requires that the strong honor and respect the weak. But in the world, the strong take advantage of the weak. In the church, the strong are to respect the weak. This does not change the basic line of authority that God has created. Heads of households must be respected by their wives; there is a biblical obligation for wives to submit to their husbands. Scripture does not reverse our definitions of strength and weakness. But the thing that is unique about Christianity is that the honor and respect are required in both directions. It is natural for the weak to honor the strong. But for the strong to honor the weak requires grace from God.
I read in a periodical the other day that the fundamental thing is how we think of God. By God Himself, it is not! How God thinks of us is not only more important, but infinitely more important. Indeed how we think of Him is of no importance except in so far as it is related to how He thinks of us. It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God...to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness...to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.
I should not wish to argue any of these questions here even if I were competent to do so, but I will state my own position dogmatically in order to avoid minor misapprehensions. I believe that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to discover or observe it, and that the theorems which we prove, and which we describe grandiloquently as our ‘creations’, are simply our notes of our observations. This view has been held, in one form or another, by many philosophers of high reputation from Plato onwards, and I shall use the language which is natural to a man who holds it. A reader who does not the philosophy can alter the language: it will make very little difference to my conclusions.
'You've got to get the ordinary man into the state in which he says "Sadism" automatically when he hears the word Punishment.' And then one would have carte blanche. Mark did not immediately follow this. But the Fairy pointed out that what had hampered every English police force up to date was precisely the idea of deserved punishment. For desert was always finite: you could do so much to the criminal and no more. Remedial treatment, on the other hand, need have no fixed limit;it could go on till it had effected a cure, and those who were carrying it out would decide when that was. And if cure were humane and desirable, how much more prevention? Soon anyone who had ever been in the hands of the police would come under the control of the NICE; in the end, every citizen.
The sluggard says, “There is a lion in the road!
There is a lion in the streets!”As a door turns on its hinges,so does a sluggard on his bed.The sluggard buries his hand in the dish;it wears him out to bring it back to his mouth.The sluggard is wiser in his own eyesthan seven men who can answer sensibly.
Do what they will, then, we remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy. But is there any reason to suppose that reality offers any satisfaction to it? “Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread.” But I think it may be urged that this misses the point. A man’s physical hunger does not prove that that man will get any bread; he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man’s hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist. In the same way, though I do not believe (I wish I did) that my desire for Paradise proves that I shall enjoy it, I think it a pretty good indication that such a thing exists and that some men will. A man may love a woman and not win her; but it would be very odd if the phenomenon called “falling in love” occurred in a sexless world.
It is indeed rather astonishing how little practical value scientific knowledge has for ordinary men, how dull and commonplace such of it as has value is, and how its value seems almost to vary inversely to its reputed utility. It is useful to be tolerably quick at common arithmetic (and that, of course, is pure mathematics). It is useful to know a little French or German, a little history and geography, perhaps even a little economics. But a little chemistry, physics, or physiology has no value at all in ordinary life. We know that the gas will burn without knowing its constitution; when our cars break down we take them to a garage; when our stomach is out of order, we go to a doctor or a drugstore. We live either by rule of thumb or on other people’s professional knowledge.
More than bigger governments, bigger schools, more free school lunches, more child therapists, more child medications, more daycares, more prisons, and more birth control, we need more godly men who raise their sons to be godly men who raise their sons to be godly men who raise their sons to be godly men (Ps. 78:5-8).
I asked her what was so scary about unmerited grace? She replied something like this: "If I was saved by my good works – then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with rights. I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if it is really true that I am a sinner saved by sheer grace – at God's infinite cost – then there's nothing he cannot ask of me." She could see immediately that the wonderful-beyond-belief teaching of salvation by sheer grace had two edges to it. On the one hand it cut away any slavish fear. God loves us freely, despite our flaws and failures. Yet she also knew that if Jesus really had done this for her – she was not her own. She was bought with a price.
I have heard some men say foolish things like, “I don’t want to be a husband and a father because I want to do ministry.” This is simply silly. Wisdom leans into the future, and I pray that my sons and grandsons and great-grandsons worship the same God, preach the same gospel, and teach the same Bible so that the work of the gospel outlives me. I can assuredly get moregospel work done with children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren than I can by myself.
The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s must be beautiful; the ideas like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.
Where there are no oxen the manger is clean,
but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.
But in the meantime, it does make a difference how things are put. For instance, if it were even whispered that the NICE wanted powers to experiment on criminals, you'd have all the old women for both sexes up in arms and yapping about humanity. Call it re-education of the mal-adjusted, and you have them all slobbering with delight that the brutal era of retributive punishment has at last come to an end. Odd thing is–the word "experiment" is unpopular, but not the word "experimental". You mustn't experiment on children; but offer the dear little kiddies free education in an experimental school attached to the NICE and it's all correct!
However, public education in our country is only a few hundred years old. In fact, only with the spread of Christianity, particularly of a Calvinistic bent, has there been an increase in literacy and education, because Christians wanted their children to be literate so they could read the Bible. But as non-Christians grew wary of having their children attend Christian schools, public education was birthed by atheists such as John Dewey and Horace Mann. In conjunction with their erroneous beliefs in sinless human nature and the propensity of children to behave out of their intrinsic goodness, public schools give permission, freedom, encouragement, and esteem to small sinners who now have high self-esteem and low test scores. Even the focus has changed, as students are less inclined to write papers about people they admire than they are to write about themselves.
For some extraordinary reason, there is a fixed notion that it is more liberal to disbelieve in miracles than to believe in them. Why, I cannot imagine, nor can anyone tell me. For some inconceivable cause a "broad" or "liberal" clergyman always means a man who wishes at least to diminish the number of miracles; it never means a man who wishes to increase that number. It always means a man who is free to disbelieve that Christ came out of His grave; it never means a man who is free to believe that his own aunt came out of her grave.
Men are bewildered with the world around them and with the responsibilities that a man of God should bear in such a world. Some meekly submit to our cultural rebellion against masculinity; others silently fume, not knowing what to do; others pay lip-service to the concept of equality as a means of exercising ungodly power over women; still others settle for the scraps they are tossed. They do not think they have given up their masculinity, all because they consume a considerable amount of time with sports, cars and tractor pulls. But masculinity must be genuine, and it must be poured into the home.
Before any father disciplines his children, he is commanded to delight in them. Practically, this means that most of a father’s time is spent enjoying his children, encouraging his children, laughing with his children, being affectionate with his children, and enjoying his children so that there is a deep bond of love and joy between the children and their dad.
We have mixed up two different things, two opposite things. Progress should mean we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision. It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing justice and mercy among men: it does mean that we are very swift in doubting the desirability of justice and mercy [...] Progress should mean we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. It does mean that the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us. We are not altering the real to suit the ideal. We are altering the ideal: it is easier.
My son, do not despise the LORD's discipline
or be weary of his reproof,
for the LORD reproves him who He loves,
as a father the son in whom he delights.
The passage is a beautiful instance of the mingled wisdom and tender consideration of our Lord’s teaching. What a knowledge it shows of human nature! Nothing does so much harm to the cause of religion as the quarrels of Christians: no stone should be left unturned, no trouble spared, in order to prevent their being dragged before the public. What a delicate thoughtfulness it shows for the sensitivity of poor human nature! Many a scandalous breach would be prevented if we were more ready to practice the rule of “between thee and him alone.” Happy would it be for the church and the world if this portion of our Lord’s teaching was more carefully studied and obeyed! Differences and divisions there will be, so long as the world stands; but many of them would be extinguished at once, if the course recommended in these verses was tried.
This is why the faith has that elaboration of doctrines and details which so much distress those who admire Christianity without believing in it. When once one believes in a creed, one is proud of its complexity, as scientists are proud of the complexity of science. It shows how rich it is in discoveries. If it is right at all, it is a compliment to say that it's elaborately right. A stick might fit a hole or a stone a hollow by accident. But a key and a lock are both complex. And if a key fits a lock, you know it is the right key.
Kids should have predominant memories of enjoyable times with their dad. Which means when your kids are little, you have to be silly. You’re going to wear some outlandish outfits. You’re going to sit in on some tea parties. You’re going to wrinkle your clothes during living room wrestling matches.
A sentimentalist might shed tears at the smell of apple-blossom, because, by a dark association of his own, it reminded him of his boyhood. So the materialist professor (though he conceals his tears) is a yet a sentimentalist, because, by a dark association of his own, apple-blossoms remind him of apples. But the cool rationalist from fairyland does not see why, in the abstract, the apple tree should not grow crimson tulips; it sometimes does in his country.
In this teaching of confession it is important to emphasize that at conversion, our sins are forgiven, and we are completely justified. Our justification, our standing as forgiven men and women, is never altered by anything we do or do not do, including whether or not we confess our sins. A true child of God is perfect in Christ regardless of his behavior. But refusal to confess sin does affect the quality of a person's enjoyment of his justification. When David fell into his grievous sin of adultery and murder, he was a justified man the entire time. But he certainly was not walking in the joy of his salvation. "Restore to me the joy of Your salvation..." (Ps. 51:12). The fact of his relationship to God was not threatened, but his experience in that relationship was one of misery until he confessed his sin.
In short, the modern revolutionist being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.
Truly God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled,my steps had nearly slipped.For I was envious of the arrogantwhen I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
But when I thought how to understand this,
it seemed to me a wearisome task,until I went into the sanctuary of God;then I discerned their end.
The theory of a complete change of standards in human history does not merely deprive us of the pleasure of honouring our fathers; it deprives us even of the more modern and aristocratic pleasure of despising them.
As the Lord sums up all the curses He would bring upon the people for disobedience, He tells them in effect that they will be expelled from the land for not having a good enough time there. The godly have learned that idolatry is a sin; they have not fully learned that idolatry is a drag. "For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised: he also is to be feared above all other gods. For all the gods of the people are idols: but the Lord made the heavens. Glory and honor are in his presence; strength and gladness are in his place" (1 Chron. 16:25-27). Glory and honor, strength and gladness.
Beware of assaulting incarnation and inspiration. To scorn the hard mental work of reading and thinking about what we read is an assault on God's methods of incarnation and inspiration. We believe that God humbled himself. Not only in the incarnation of the Son, but also in the inspiration of Scripture. The manger and the cross were not sensational. Neither is grammar and syntax. But that is how God has chosen to reveal himself.
In this passage of Ephesians, Paul tells us that husbands in their role as head, provide a picture of Christ and the church. Every marriage, everywhere in the world, is a picture of Christ and the church. Because of sin and rebellion, many of these pictures are slanderous lies concerning Christ. But a husband can never stop talking about Christ and the church. If he is obedient to God, he is preaching the truth; if he does not love his wife, he is speaking apostasy and lie – but he is always talking. If he deserts his wife, he is saying that this is the way Christ deserts His bride – a lie. If he is harsh with his wife and strikes her, he is saying that Christ is harsh with the church – another lie. If he sleeps with another woman, he is an adulterer, and a blasphemer as well. How could Christ love someone other than His own bride? It is astonishing how, for a few moments of pleasure, faithless men can bring themselves to slander the faithfulness of Christ in such a way.
You can tell a lot about someone's theology from what they do in church. Involve Kenny G's music in your worship service, and I can tell not only that you have no taste in music but also that you have nothing to offer theologically to those who come through the church doors; indeed, what you do have can probably be found better elsewhere. Why certain academics hanker for the approval of the people who, when they leave the lecture theatre also abandon any semblance of adulthood or intelligence, beats me. More seriously, however, why certain orthodox churches strive to look like them, worries me intensely. Look, it's rubbish. So let's just call it rubbish, shall we?
Free men don't want a government that doesn't get into your email. Free men want a government that isn't in any position to get into your email.
Who is this King of glory?
The LORD, strong and mighty,
The LORD, mighty in battle!
Whatever the causes, the antidote to Christian coyness is a renewed vision of Christ's lordship over all: as Peter says, setting apart Christ as Lord. Our bosses, professors, parents, friends, politicians and the media do not rule heaven or earth. If for just a moment we could lift the curtain of heaven and see "the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God" (Acts 7:55), all causes of Christian embarrassment would vanish in an instant. We would see things as they really are, with God and his Messiah at the helm. One day, this curtain will be lifted for everyone to see. Until then believers are to live as those who know what lies behind the veil.
Whether the victory is Grendel falling before Beowulf, or Satan crushed beneath the heel of Christ, God is the only One to bestow any victory. The psalmist asked the God of Israel to rise up and scatter His enemies; whenever the Power of His right hand is pleased to do so, those enemies are driven before Him like smoke in a gale. The Church today is a stranger to victories because we refuse to sing anthems to the king of all victories. We do not want a God of battles, we want sympathy for our surrenders. We need to be taught to sing as Alfred the Great taught his men before going into battle – "Jesu, defend us."
If Paul had believed that Christians in general ought to proclaim the gospel in the same way as himself, Colossians 4:3-6 would have been the perfect occasion for him to have said so. In no other passage in his letters does Paul turn from discussing his own missionary speech to his readers' missionary speech. All he had to do was say something like, "let your word be always with grace so that you too may proclaim Christ as you should". But he doesn't say anything like this. Instead, he attaches missionary significance to the Christian's daily answers just as he does to his own evangelistic proclamation.
I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that I was eighteen hundred years behind it.
Good deeds must never be thought of as a missionary tactic, a means of getting people onside before hitting them with the gospel ('throwing cakes to children', as Emperor Julian would say). Rather they are the essential fruit of the gospel. Good works must be done for their own sake, in obedience to the Lord. God's grace proclaimed in the gospel finds its essential outcome in the godly life of those who believe the gospel.
Take the example of marriage. A theological liberal in a mainstream denomination should be considered covenantally a Christian, even though he denies the virgin birth, the substitutionary death of Christ, the resurrection, and the final judgement. He is a Christian in just the same way that an adulterous husband is a husband – even though he has slept with Suzy, Sally, Shirley et al. The fact that a man is a husband compounds his guilt; it does not lessen it in any way. If we knew that a man was promiscuous, and then found out he was married, we wouldn't say, "Well, at least he's married!" His covenant vows make his sin worse. When a single man sleeps around, his sin is great. When an infidel says that God didn't create the world, his sin is great. When a married man is sexually treacherous, his sin is multiplied many times over. And when a liberal bishop says that Christ was merely a man, he is more than wrong. He is treacherous, and an antichrist. But he does belong to that which he betrays.
And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Not all of us will feel confident speaking to others about the message of salvation, but all of us can feel confident speaking to God about the salvation of others. Doing so is a fundamental expression of both dependance upon God and commitment to his mission; it is a hidden but glorious promotion of the gospel.
A few years after these strange days, I asked Glenda what she put her 'success' down to. Without blinking she answered, "Prayer. We prayed earnestly, regularly and specifically for your school, and the Lord in his grace answered us." As an evangelist who is sometimes tempted to think too highly of skill, style and creativity in evangelism, her words were (and are) a salient reminder that the 'harvest' is the Lord's not mine. The most basic gospel-promoting task, therefore, is not evangelism or financial generosity or even the godly life; it is prayer to the Lord of the harvest.
Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshipped. And he said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD."In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.
No creed but Christ, no law but love. Sounds great. Who is this Christ guy? What did He do? Why did He do it? Does it matter very much that He did it? Why does it matter? Please answer all these questions, and any others that come up in the course of our discussion, in as non-creedal a way as possible. If possible, answer the questions without making any affirmations, which could be taken by some as triumphalistic and off-putting. This is admittedly hard to do, because no creed but Christ is a creed, but nobody is paying us for being consistent.
"You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room."
"Frequently."
"How often?"
"Well, some hundreds of times."
"Then how many are there?"
"How many? I don't know."
"Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed."
The people of the world have all sorts of needs of their Creator – it would be strange if it were otherwise – but more fundamental than their need of God is their duty towards him, to 'ascribe to the LORD the glory due to his name' (Psalm 96:8). This, above everything else, necessitates God's mission to the world.
The critical question for our generation – and for every generation – is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, all all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?
"So tell me, since it makes no factual difference to you and you can't prove the question either way, which story do you prefer? Which is the better story, the story with the animals or the story without animals?"
The problem is: God's word does not quite put it that way, and attempts to argue otherwise involve stretching biblical passages beyond their plain meaning. [...] The motivation was honourable – I wanted more Christians to be involved in the work of the gospel – but, as with so many other issues, a worthy goal does not grant permission to handle the Scriptures poorly. We are involved in God's mission; we must allow his word to shape our involvement.
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and all that is within me, bless his holy name!
Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits,
who forgives your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit,
who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy,
who satisfies you with good
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.
What a terrible thing it is to botch a farewell ... I'll tell you one thing I hate about my nickname, the way the numbers run on forever. It's important in life to conclude things properly. Only then you can let go. Otherwise you are left with words you should have said but never did, and your heart is heavy with remorse. That bungled goodbye hurts me to this day
How would you describe the spiritual aroma of your home? When visitors arrive, before virtually anything is said or done, what is one of the first things they notice about your family? In many cases, it is the aroma. Do they feel as though a bad attitude crawled under your refrigerator and died? Or do they think someone has been baking spiritual bread in the kitchen all afternoon?
Yet these notions are foreign to modern man. The kind of God who appeals to most people today would be easygoing in his tolerance of our offences. He would be gentle, kind, accommodating, and would have no violent reactions. Unhappily, even in the church we seem to have lost the vision of the majesty of God. There is much shallowness and levity among us. Prophets and psalmists would probably say of us that 'there is no fear of God before their eyes'. In public worship our habit to slouch or squat; we do not kneel nowadays, let alone prostrate ourselves in humility before God. It is more characteristic of us to clap our hands with joy than to blush with shame or tears. We saunter up to God to claim his patronage and friendship; it does not occur to us that he might send us away.
Why are our feelings a good test? Because we are wired to respond emotionally to events. When it seems as though our goals are thwarted, we will tend to feel negatively. When we fail to reach (or think we fail to reach) an idolatrous goal, we will tend to feel very negatively. It could be anger, sadness, disappointment, frustration or even boredom (feeling that nothing else will satisfy us).
Those who worship money define themselves in terms of it, and increasingly treat other people as creditors, debtors, partners or customers rather than human beings. Those who worship sex define themselves in terms of it (their preferences, their practices, their past histories) and increasingly treat people as actual or potential sex objects. Those who worship power define themselves in terms of it, and treat other people as collaborators, competitors or pawns. These and many kinds of idolatry combine in a thousand ways, all of them damaging to the image-bearing quality of the people concerned and the lives of those they touch.
"In our world," said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.""Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is but only what it is made of."
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.
Not whether, but which. It is not whether we will have an established state religion, but rather which established state religion we will have. It is not whether our culture will serve a god, but rather which god it will serve. It is not whether we will impose morality with a law, but rather which morality we will impose with a law. It is not whether our culture will rest upon a blood sacrifice, but rather which blood sacrifice it will be. It is not whether we will discipline in terms of our public morality, but rather which group will be disciplined. Not whether, but which.
I continue to be amazed by the number of youth and young adults who are stressed and burnt out from the regular shaming and feelings of inadequacy if they happen to not be doing something unique and special. Today’s millennial generation is being fed the message that if they don’t do something extraordinary in this life they are wasting their gifts and potential. The sad result is that many young adults feel ashamed if they “settle” into ordinary jobs, get married early and start families, live in small towns, or as 1 Thessalonians 4:11 says, “aspire to live quietly, and to mind [their] affairs, and to work with [their] hands.” For too many millennials their greatest fear in this life is being an ordinary person with a non-glamorous job, living in the suburbs, and having nothing spectacular to boast about.
Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that like as we do believe thy only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ to have ascended into the heavens; so we may also in heart and mind thither ascend, and with him continually dwell, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.
If I were the last man on the planet to think so, I would want the honor of saying no woman should go before me into combat to defend my country. A man who endorses women in combat is not pro-woman; he’s a wimp. He should be ashamed. For most of history, in most cultures, he would have been utterly scorned as a coward to promote such an idea. Part of the meaning of manhood as God created us is the sense of responsibility for the safety and welfare of our women.
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
In Minnesota they know that the Fetal Homicide Law makes a person guilty of manslaughter, or worse, if he kills the baby in a mother's womb. There is an exception clause for abortion. . . . It means that if the mother chooses to have the baby killed it is legal. If she doesn't, it is illegal. Nothing in the essence of the unborn determines the right to life. Only the will of the mother. They know it is the essence of totalitarian rule: the will of the strong determines the rights of the weak.
Like airline passengers on United Airlines Flight 826, Europeans and Americans in the glorious last days of June 1914 cruised ahead above a summer sea and beneath a cloudless sky – until they were hit by a bolt that they wrongly believed came from out of the blue.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Something like such an attack of clear air turbulence is supposed by some to have happened to European civilization in 1914 during its passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century. The world of the 1890s and 1900s had been, not unlike our own age, a time of international congresses, disarmament conferences, globalization of the world economy, and schemes to establish some sort of league of nations to outlaw war. A long stretch of peace and prosperity was expected by the public to go on indefinitely.
Moreover, the number and hardness of the Rules called the Pie, and the manifold changings of the service, was the cause, that to turn the book only was so hard and intricate a matter, that many times there was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out.
It seems to me that there are at least two varieties of words in the Christian lexicon, those that are trite and those that are specific. “God thing” is a trite phrase that has no objective meaning and there is not much to lose if we never use it again. “Propitiation” is a very precise term that has a distinct meaning. It is this second category that I believe we need to hold on to and we need to hold on to such words without shame. We impoverish ourselves when we lose these words. We impoverish ourselves if we never learn and teach these words.
But they would not listen, but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the LORD their God. They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the LORD had commanded them that they should not do like them. And they abandoned all the commandments of the LORD their God, and made for themselves metal images of two calves; and they made an Asherah and worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal. And they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking him to anger. Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only.
The Christian says, "Creatures are not born with desired unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same."
By the time Moses's sandals hit the base of Mount Sinai with God's commandments under his arms, God's people had collected their golden earrings, melted them in a fire, and cast a golden calf (Exodus 32). The adornment of the ear was sacrificed in order to create an image pleasing to the eye. The ear (the receiver of God's word) was plundered for the eye (the receiver of the image). The irony is striking.
I'll be honest about it. It's not atheists who get stuck in my craw, but agnostics. Doubt is useful for a while. We must all pass through the Garden of Gethsemane. If Christ played with doubt, so must we. If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" then surely we are also permitted doubt. Be we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.
Never forget that we are all still "the early Christians." The present wicked and wasteful divisions between us are, let us hope, a disease of infancy: we are still teething. The outer world, no doubt, thinks just the opposite. It thinks we are dying of old age. But it has thought that very often before. Again and again it has thought Christianity was dying, dying from persecutions from without and corruptions from within, by the rise of Mohammedanism, the rise of physical sciences, the rise of great anti-Christian revolutionary movements. But every time the world has been disappointed. Its first disappointment was over the crucifixion. The Man came to life again. In a sense – and I quite realise how frightfully unfair it must seem to them – that has been happening ever since. They keep on killing the thing that He started: and each time, just as they are patting down the earth on its grave, they suddenly hear that it is still alive and has even broken out in some new place. No wonder they hate us.
I felt a kinship with him. It was my first clue that atheists are my brothers and sisters of a different faith, and every word they speak speaks of faith. Like me, they go as far as the legs of reason will carry them – and then they leap.
Gosnell's problem is not with what he was doing, which countless progressives have defended with their special kind of passionate malice, but with where he was doing it. You see, he was doing it where people could see.
So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.
Hell is revealed as a place of torment where millions of human beings will be enclosed forever. Statisticians tell us that approximately ninety-five million people die every year. That means that, every second, three human beings enter hell or heaven. Within the next hour, eleven thousand men, woman and children will have gone forever to a place of everlasting joy or a place of everlasting pain. Imagine them dying even now, as you read these words - one, then another, then another. As you draw your next breath, several more are leaving this earth. When a plane crashes and two or three hundred people are suddenly snatched into eternity, everyone talks about it. It is an appalling disaster, headline news. And yet eleven thousand of our fellow human beings, every hour of every day of the year, are reaching their eternal destination. Surely for this reason alone such a doctrine must be an important one.
And yet - this is the other and equally important side of it - this Helper who will, in the long run, be satisfied with nothing less than absolute perfection, will also be delighted with the first feeble, stumbling effort you make tomorrow to do the simplest duty. As a great Christian writer (George MacDonald) pointed out, every father is pleased at the baby's first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. In the same way, he said, "God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy."
Some will doubtless dispute this. If that is so, they will say, why did Paul say all those nasty things about the law in Romans and Galatians? Paul was primarily opposing the way people were (mis)using the law; he was battling a misconception about the function of the law. The law can never be in any way to any degree a standard you can meet and so earn salvation. The law can show you how you fail to be or to do what God requires, but it cannot absolve you of the guilt incurred in breaking the law. The can accuse you but cannot justify you. The law is like your back-porch thermometer - it will show you how hot or cold it is outside, but it does not have the power to raise or lower the temperature. That's why my only hope is Jesus, the Law-keeper who suffered the lawbreaker's judgement (Gal 3:10, 13).
Teachers will tell you that the laziest boy in the class is the one that works hardest in the end. They mean this. If you give two boys, say, a proposition in geometry to do, the one who is prepared to take trouble will try to understand it. The lazy boy will try to learn it by heart because, for the moment, that needs less effort. But six months later, when they are preparing for an exam, that lazy boy is doing hours and hours of miserable drudgery over things the other boy understands, and positively enjoys, in a few minutes. Laziness means more work in the long run.
Whereas the God of Israel is not a God of the dead but of the living. For His city, the future is always the touchstone. His city now is not the preserve of the city of yesterday but an anticipation of the city of tomorrow.
I feel a strong desire to tell you - and I expect you feel a strong desire to tell me - which of these two errors is the worse. That is the devil getting at us. He always sends errors into the world in pairs - pairs of opposites. And he encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike like of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.
Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
