"It's My Money, And I Need It Now!"

There's a rather annoying (but effective) commercial for one of those we'll-take-all-your-money-over-time-and-give-some-of-it-back-to-you-now places; you probably know the one I mean.  They say, at least 20 times, "It's my money, and I need it now!".  In fact, other than the narrator giving the address and phone number of the company, that's about the only dialogue in the commercial.  It's effective because it plays directly to post-modern Americans' need for immediate gratification.

'Mr. Wentworth'

Cameron Cole wrote an interesting blog post over on The Gospel Coalition website.  Here's the whole thing...it is worth a read.  But I want to focus on just one of his points. In explaining some of the problems with contemporary youth ministry, he says this in point three-

3. Parents want moral children.

A gospel-centered youth pastor in South Carolina once told me that parents were his biggest opponents to him fully preaching the gospel. After several years of teaching the radical grace of the gospel, parents complained about a lack of concentration on drinking, sexual abstinence, obedience to parents, and "being nice." They viewed the message of grace as antinomian and as a license for kids to pursue hedonism. Parents rightly want moral children, as do youth pastors. Sometimes, families view the church exclusively as a vehicle for moral education, rather than spiritually forming them in Christ, and put pressure on youth and senior pastors to moralize their children. Many parents view the law alone as the catalyst for holy living, rather than law and grace, and want the youth ministry to embrace this same theology.

The fact that parents want moral children isn't surprising, nor (do I think) is it a bad thing to want.  The problem, as Cole hints at in this segment, is they want results now.  I struggle with this in my own parenting.  I keep wanting to treat the symptoms instead of the disease.  One of the things my wife and I remind ourselves and our Sunday School class on a regular basis is, we need to be more concerned about the long-term status of our children's faith than the short-term status of their behavior, without neglecting their behavior.

Here's how we put it: "Would you rather have a perfectly-behaved teenager who doesn't understand the gospel, or would you rather have a teenager who messes up on a regular basis, but has a great understanding of the gospel?"  The question may seem rhetorical, but it isn't.  We need to ask ourselves, and answer to ourselves, that question on a daily basis.  In our daily discipline and instruction of our kids and how they should behave, are we consciously focused on the long-term, big-picture aspects of making sure they have heard the gospel in all that we do toward them?

This isn't an easy task.  If any of you have any magic pills for this, I'll take a bottle at whatever price you ask.  (This could be a better retirement plan than weight-loss pills.  After all, not everybody is fat*, but everybody who has teens struggles to parent them!)

 (teens not behaving badly)

The problem is, we parents want what we need (good behavior from our kids) and we want it now.  Our own pride rears up when they misbehave.  We worry what other might think of us in the community, and this worry can easily outweigh our (well-placed) concern for the true state of their hearts in spiritual terms.  What that happens, we become like the parents in the blog post above; sort of a spiritualized version of helicopter parents, with just as much risk and the potential for even more damage than a secularized version of the same. We, like the parents in the post, begin to view patience and grace as bad things, when we have directly benefited from these things when we've behaved as badly as our own teens (and this from both our earthly parents and our heavenly father!). We begin to pressure our youth ministers to moralize our children, and the gospel gets lost in the mix.  No wonder we see the long-term results we see.

The only solution I see is to make sure our imperatives to our kids are given in the light of the gospel's indicatives.  We need to make sure we daily plan to purposely steer our kids toward the gospel whenever we also steer them towards the law.  We won't get it right as much as we'd like, but the good news (pun intended) is, the power unto salvation is found in the gospel, not our ability as parents.

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*OK, CDC says about 40% of Americans are fat.  That's too many.  The diet pill thing is still a good retirement plan, if you can find one that actually works.**

**This isn't medically possible, so quit wasting your time.  Go for a walk instead.

What Do You Think?

The US Supreme Court has finished the hearings on the Obama health care package.  Here's my prediction:

   The Supreme Court will NOT overturn the law.

OK, I'm on record.  What's your guess?

Discussions, Controversies, and Divisions- Where's the Line?

In the blog bailiwick where I hang (see the list on the side column), there isn't a lot of controversy.  I tend to read a more monolithic set of blogs.  When I want an opinion contrary, I know where to go find it (like Roger Olsen's blog...if he says the sky is blue, then I assume it must be something else...he's the author of How to be evangelical without being conservative, for example).  I seek those out as the need arises, but the need does not often arise.  Having grown up a semi-Pelagian, I am familiar with the other side of the Calvinist-Arminian debate.

Frank Turk has a blog he shares with a couple other fellows called Pyromaniacs.  It is usually a fun read, and there isn't much there I disagree with, though there's often stuff I don't fully understand.  Today, Frank published An Open Letter to Michael Horton. 

That got my attention.  I like Mike.  He co-hosts a radio program called The White Horse Inn, which I would listen to more often if I had time, but catch when I can.  Horton has written several outstanding books, including Christless Christianity and it's sequel, The Gospel-Driven Life.  I recommend both (though they can get heavy in places).  He just came out with a new systematic theology that I blogged about earlier today. He edits a magazine called Modern Reformation, to which I also subscribe.  I like Mike (did I mention that?).

So when I started in to Turk's letter, I was a bit ambivalent.  Nothing improved much after reading the very interesting post (found here).  It pointed out how much Turk appreciated and looked up to Horton, as do I. No disagreement there. But it also pointed out a possible problem with the results of the way Horton portrays the gospel.  Turk didn't say Horton said anything wrong at all...on the contrary, he completely agrees with Horton on the gospel.  The problem, Turk said, was how some people might react to what could be a bit of imbalance in the results of the presentation of the gospel in a indicative/imperative dichotomy.  (If you've read my blog in the past, you know I've presented the same dichotomy at times, leaning heavily on Tullian Tchividjian in the process.)

I noticed a lot of comments were already posted, and the article wasn't but a couple hours old.  Unusual.  In fact, there were over 200 comments in less than four hours.  Very unusual. While some of what Turk said made sense to me, I was still skeptical of Turk's thesis, so I started skimming the comments.  I quickly ran across a guy named Charlie (read the post and the comments, down to Charlie's, for the full effect).  Charlie was living, breathing, walking, talking empirical evidence that the problem Turk was fearing was a real problem...in living color.

A few months ago, I read a blog post (or maybe an interview, I don't recall for sure) by John Piper on what he saw as some threats to the integrity of the relatively new reformed resurgence, or as it is sometimes called, the YRR (young, restless, and reformed) movement.  Piper listed a few, but he missed one that I think is a real threat, and that is exemplified by Charlie in the Pyromaniacs comments section.  It's hard to summarize the problem, but it basically involves those of a certain reformed perspective denying that anyone outside their perspective can call themselves 'reformed' in any meaningful way.  Charlie uses name-calling to make his point:  he's a Baptist-hater.  He calls Baptists anabaptists, Arminians, Pelagians, and adherents to Roman Catholicism.  Wow.  He makes so many errors of basic logic, it is hard to even start on a criticism.  But that's not the main point.  I digress.  Back to the main point: divisiveness.

That won't work, folks.  Having heard Charlie, I now see Frank Turk's point, and he's right.  We need to balance the presentation of the gospel with the implications of the gospel, just as scripture does.  No, we don't need to call the gospel 'law' or call law 'gospel', and we certainly don't need to confuse justification with sanctification, but we need to be cognizant of what it means when the gospel is proclaimed and people believe.  We can't divorce the message of the gospel from what it means to us.  Good news is only good news if it is good news to the hearer.  The fact that someone won the Powerball Lottery on Saturday was good news to them, but it didn't mean much to me.  So that means that news was a subjective kind of good news.  The gospel is not subjective, it is objective, in the sense that it is universal good news to 'all He came to save'.  It is not simply an academic concept, as real, objective, and historical factual as it is.  The content of the gospel is express in words (not how we live), but words mean things (to quote Rush Limbaugh).  And the gospel means something very real to all of us.

Turk approaches the issue with fairness and brotherly love, and I have to think Horton will answer in the same way.  (Hopefully the right way to dialogue about disagreements will truly embarrass Charlie and he can see how disruptive his tact can be.  The 'line' in the title of this post?...Charlie crossed it, in my opinion.) I don't say this pointing a finger only at Charlie, however. I can see myself falling into the same trap, if not careful.  I usually lack balance because I'm such a black-and-white person, and I need constant biblical correction from my peers (thank God for my wife and my fellow SS classmates) to not get unbalanced.  If Iva Bates was a knee (a reference that those of you who worked through Experiencing God will get), I'm a foot.  As in, 'I'll-plant-my-size-12-Nike-in-your-hiney' kind of foot. I hope I never grow to old to listen to correction and rebuke from other Godly people.  If I dish it out, I gotta take it!

I also look forward to Mike Horton's reply, as I think it will build up the kingdom (knowing Horton) and God will be honored (knowing Turk).

Tullian's Blog

As I explore various blogs on the internet, I find most of them to be of little interest, but occasionally run across one that seems to be seeking me out. You'll find links to the blogs I love in the sidebar of this page.

One of the more recent blogs I've found is the one written by Tullian Tchividjian, pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida. (By the way, I admire him for the simple reason it took him a lot more effort to learn to spell his name in kindergarten that it took me.)

Recently, he's been talking about who we are in Christ, and more specifically, what we have as opposed to what we have to seek out and find. Here's what he said a few days ago-

"I used to think Christian growth happened as we go out and get what we don’t have–if we’re going to grow we have to go out and get more patience, get more strength, get more joy, etc. But after reading the Bible more carefully I’ve learned that Christian growth does not happen by working hard to get something you don’t have; Christian growth happens by working hard to live in the reality of what you do have.

You could say that Christian growth does not happen first by behaving better, but believing better–believing in bigger, deeper, brighter ways what Christ has already secured for sinners. In other words, the hard work of sanctification that Paul talks about in Philippians 2:12 is a continuous, daily going back to the reality of your justification."

That's a great look at what the Christian life is, and how we often fail to understand it, working hard to get what we don't have instead of working hard to live in what we do. Then, just today, he posted this tidbit about the gospel-

"The gospel isn’t simply a set of truths that non-Christians must believe in order to become saved. It’s a reality that Christians must daily embrace in order to experience being saved. The gospel not only saves us from the penalty of sin (justification), but it also saves us from the power of sin (sanctification) day after day. Or, as John Piper has said, “The cross is not only a past place of objective substitution; it is a present place of subjective execution.” Our daily sin requires God’s daily grace—the grace that comes to us through the finished work of Jesus Christ."

I've been saying that the gospel is for the church, not just the lost. Pastor Tullian says it a lot better than I have been (with a little help from John Piper, who's blog you'll also find listed in the sidebar). This quote will certainly turn up in my SS lesson in the next couple weeks.