In The God Who Is There, Francis Schaeffer surveys the philosophy and culture of despair that infects our world. In his chapter on general culture he quotes Dylan Thomas‘s unfinished poem Elegy. Schaeffer then mentions seeing a bronze of Dylan Thomas in Festival Hall in London, and comments:
Anyone who can look at it without compassion is dead…. It is not good enough to take a man like this or any of the others and smash them as though we have no responsibility for them. This [Elegy] is sensitivity crying out in darkness. But it is not mere emotion; the problem is not on this level at all. These men were not producing art for art’s sake, or emotion for emotion’s sake. These things are a strong message coming out of their own worldview.
In an earlier chapter Schaeffer had said this:
These paintings, these poems, and these demonstrations which we have been talking about are the expressions of men who are struggling with their appalling lostness. Dare we laugh at such things? Dare we feel superior when we view their tortured expressions in their art? Christians should stop laughing and take such men seriously. Then we shall have the right to speak again to our generation. These men are dying while they live; yet where is our compassion for them? There is nothing more ugly than a Christian orthodoxy without understanding or without compassion.
I am tempted when studying secular philosophy and culture (or other religions) to approach the material simply so that Ican explain what’s wrong with it. Of course, as a Christian I should be able to critique deficient views of the world—otherwise, how could I recognize them when they infect my own thinking? But the temption comes through my pride, in my desire not for the well being of those who have lost their sense of purpose and meaning, but to make a display of intellect, or to be satisfied with myself when I can demonstrate the folly of someone else’s thinking or art.
Schaeffer shows me a more excellent way (1 Corinthians 12:30b through chapter 13): before I approach others I must recognize in them the image of God and the dignity they have because of that image—whether or not they see it. I must acknowledge that they are in fact gloriously created, and worthy of my respect and compassion. I must humble myself and consider that whatever inkling of the truth of God I have comes from him—I have nothing that I did not receive as a gift (see 1 Corinthians 4, especially verse 7). Only then can I safely converse with an unbeliever. By listening to him in love, I stand the chance of winning his listening ear.
So, again, I ask you to pray for me….
Here’s a nugget from Lesslie Newbigin:
Science combines to deliver an ever-growing abundance of things to have and to do, beyond all the dreams of earlier ages. It offers no guidance, however, on the questions of worth: What things are worth doing? What things are worth having? Perhaps the most poignant example of this tragic situation is the way in which the wizardry of satellite telvision is now employed to pour a cataract of trash into every living room.
What a marvelous and apt metaphor for what flows from the television: a cataract of trash. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I was unable to find a fitting picture to post next to the quotation—so use your imagination, and go read a book.
One of my duties in Slovakia will be teaching English. To help prepare for that, I have begun with an online starter course in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). One of the first “warm-up” assignments was to find a quotation about good teaching, and write 200-250 words of reflection on it. I took a passage from Edward T. Hall‘s book, The Dance of Life:
After many years of teaching, I noticed that if I couldn’t love my students, the class didn’t do well…. What does it mean to love one’s students? Somehow the idea must be accepted that the greatest pleasure and real expression of love on the part of a teacher is to be able to watch and occasionally encourage the talent of each member of the group to grow. Also needed is the trust to permit each to do his or her own thinking. This means that we strive to bring out the best in each other and to somehow allow the rhythm of the group to establish itself and avoid at all costs the imposition of the artificial rhythm of a fixed agenda.
And here is the concluding paragraph to my brief reflections:
Loving one’s students isn’t easy. It demands more of the teacher to approach each student and each class with an openness to their needs–needs that may require the teacher to backtrack, change direction, or even create new material more suited to them. This in turn demands that the teacher be continually growing and learning himself, so that he is able to adjust his teaching to suit his students.
I have my work cut out for me.
Read carefully this definition of “religion” from Lesslie Newbigin in his book, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission. There will be a quiz at the end.
I realize the word “religion” is a notoriously difficult one. It can be used to describe any system of belief and practice that implies some sort of transcendence of the experience of the senses, in which case it becomes too vague to be useful. It is sometimes used as if it referred to beliefs and practices concerning God and the immortal soul—in which case it is too narrow, for it excludes the original message of the Buddha. I am using it to refer to that which has final authority for a believer or a society, both in the sense that it determines one’s scale of values and in the sense that it provides the models, the basic patterns through which the believer grasps and organizes his or her experience. When the word is used in this way it follows that it will include ideologies as well as what are usually called religions. It also becomes necessary to point out that what someone calls “their religion” may in fact be other than the ultimately authoritative factor in their thinking and acting. It is, for example, obvious that a person may be a Christian and yet limit the operation of his or her Christian commitment to a restricted field (for example, to private and domestic life) while the ultimate commitment is to some other way of understanding experience, to a traditional tribal “myth” or, in the case of contemporary Western man, to the modern scientific worldview. In this case the commitment to Christ will be conditioned by the person’s commitment to the overriding “myth,” and the latter will be his or her real religion. [pages 160-161; emphasis mine]
Quiz: What’s your real religion?
The good thing about our traveling has always been the people we have met. I believe that will remain the same over the next few months. Here is our itinerary, which I ask you to commend to God in your prayers.
- May 18-20: South Dayton PCA, Dayton, Ohio, Enemy Within conference
- May 27: All Saints PCA, Austin, Texas, Present the Slovakia mission
- Jun 3-8: Ridge Haven, North Carolina, MTW Living in Grace Conference
- Jun 9-10: Grace PCA, McAllen, Texas, Present the Slovakia mission
- Jun 15-17: Grace PCA, Shreveport, Louisiana, Enemy Within conference and present the Slovakia mission
- Jun 22-24: South Baton Rouge PCA, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Enemy Within conference and present the Slovakia mission
- Jun 29-30: Vista New Life church, El Paso, Texas, Enemy Within conference and present the Slovakia mission
- Jul 1: Grace Covenant PCA, Las Cruces, New Mexico, Present the Slovakia mission
- Jul 7: Calvary Chapel DC Metro, Falls Church, Virginia, Enemy Within conference and present the Slovakia mission
- Jul 7, Columbia Baptist, Falls Church, Virginia, preach their Saturday evening service
- Jul 8: The Harvester PCA, Springfield, Virginia
Slovaks love hockey – and they’re very good at it (their recent loss to the USA notwithstanding). And if the picture at the right is any indication, they can be rabidly enthusiastic about it.
Part of our calling will include immersing ourselves in our new culture, learning the Slovak ways, and even adopting much of the Slovak customs, cuisine, and lifestyle as our own. That’s part of the adventure, and part of the fun of our calling.
However, I have my limits. They are somewhat short of the face-painting pictured here.
By the way, his face is covered with the Slovak emblem.
You can find some buried treasure by clicking here.
If you prayed for our ministry in Midland this weekend, you can take great satisfaction in knowing that your prayers were answed—and certainly beyond anything I expected or imagined. We were in Midland, Texas, and ministered at two different venues. I’ll write about the first in this post.
The Christian Life Center hosted an Enemy Within conference Friday evening and Saturday. Billy Raies, the pastor, was a close friend of mine in high school, and has grown into one of the most loving servants of Jesus I’ve ever met. He looked out for our every need and desire with a doting but sincere affection and joy. He also showed keen insight as a shepherd of God’s flock: between my talks he was able to find key points for his own congregation and apply them—all done with the greatest encouragement imaginable.
The worship team at CLC enriched our time together with songs of depth and joy. Each time they led us in worship, I had the feeling that when they finished there was really no need for me to even speak. For just a dim taste, you can enjoy the theme song here. Look for “O Great God” in the song list at this link. You can listen to it, get the sheet music, buy it, download it, read the lyrics. The album is based on a book of puritan prayers called Valley of Vision.
God is good!
The May edition of Pen&Pulipit is Published here. My introduction is below, in order to whet your appetite.
Why do people sing the blues? Why are one-third of the Psalms laments? I suspect the reason has something to do with the fact that life is often painful. Singing our pain is somehow therapeutic (or at least gives temporary relief)—and praying our pain reaches out toward our only real hope of ultimate deliverance.
If any man ever felt like singing the blues, surely it was William Cowper (pronounced like “Cooperâ€). He struggled for many years with the conviction that he had been damned by a special decree of God. His friend John Newton and his faith in Christ buoyed him, but eventually he was overcome by his spiritual depression.
The Olney Hymns were a collection to which Newton invited Cowper, along with other writers, to contribute. You’ll find here a few well known works, such as “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood†and “God Works in Mysterious Ways.†But you’ll also find frequent struggles with the darkness of his heart. As you read them (and perhaps pray through them), consider some of your darkest moments, and how well Cowper expresses your fears. Does Cowper find light in his darkness? And does he help you to find light in your struggles?
Marilynne Robinson, the author of the book Gilead (which I have raved about), has written a powerful review of Richard Dawkins’s popular attack on religion, The God Delusion. Here’s a sample paragraph to pique your interest:
The nineteenth-century abolitionist, feminist, essayist, and ordained minister Thomas Wentworth Higginson made the always timely point that, in comparing religions, great care must be taken to consider the best elements of one with the best of the other, and the worst with the worst, to avoid the usual practice of comparing, let us say, the fatwa against Salman Rushdie with the Golden Rule. The same principle might be applied in the comparison of religion and science. To set the declared hopes of one against the real-world record of the other is clearly not useful, no matter which of them is flattered by the comparison. What is religion? It is described by Dawkins as a virtually universal feature of human culture. But there is, commingled with it, indisputably and perhaps universally, doubt, hypocrisy, and charlatanism. Dawkins, for his part, considers religion wholly delusional, and he condemns the best of it for enabling all the worst of it. Yet if religion is to be blamed for the fraud done in its name, then what of science? Is it to be blamed for the Piltdown hoax, for the long-credited deceptions having to do with cloning in South Korea? If by “science” is meant authentic science, then “religion” must mean authentic religion, granting the difficulties in arriving at these definitions.
For the record: I have not read The God Delusion, but I have read Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker. I can see why his writing stirs people up—but I have not been impressed by his arguments. Still, because he is so influential, it is worthwhile to read him and understand his ideas and their implications—as well as the presuppositions that drive them.