the Gently Mad

I’ve been a long time fan of Don Miller, ever since I read Blue Like Jazz in college. While, not without his problems, I have always enjoyed his writing and been encouraged.

Just saw this new book on Amazon and got all excited until I realized that it won’t be out until the middle of next year. It looks interesting though…

I accidentally left my iPod at home when I left for work the other day. My commute is about 45 minutes and my iPod has been a trusty and faithful companion.

So, on this particular drive home I turned on the radio and hit the scan button which scans through each station, staying on each one for about 10 seconds or so.

I came across at least half a dozen different stations that were broadcasting sermons or christian music and stopped to listen for a few minutes at each. It was appalling.

I won’t even get into the music stations, other than to say it’s been so long since I listened to popular CCM that I couldn’t believe the ridiculousness of what I was hearing.

The sermons, I found, were no better.

I have no idea who was preaching these sermons, but I didn’t hear a solid gospel-centered exposition in any of them. Texts were being completely pulled out of context for the speaker’s own shallow applications.

The only example I remember was one preacher “expositing” John 9 where Jesus heals a man blind from birth.  If you’re not familiar with the story, read the chapter. The speaker’s main point from this entire passage was that we should help people… like Jesus did.

Are you serious?

He also used Luke 6:1-5 where the pharisees accused Jesus of not keeping the sabbath to say that obviously Jesus was keeping the sabbath and the pharisees just got it wrong. His application? Sometimes people will accuse you of not doing things the right way, but, just like Jesus, you have to stand your ground and do it your way anyway.

I guess I have been spoiled by great preaching and podcasts for so long that I forgot what was being propagated out there as truth. And what saddend me the most, was that if someone really searching for help were to turn on the radio to find it… well, they’re pretty much screwed.

Very interesting article over at DangitBill! that I found via Challies.

For a long time I’ve wanted to write at length about homeschooling and its place in our world. I have very strong opinions because I was homeschooled. Nevertheless, I haven’t yet had the time to collect my thoughts in a way that would be profitable. However, that may change in comming days as my family continues to grow in size.

Brian Sandifer, who is a homeschooling dad, has written a great post that’s a start in understanding some of my fundamental frustrations with homeschooling and homeschoolers.

Everyone acknowledges that the public school system in American needs reforming. It is producing graduates that are less and less prepared for the workforce, college, and the global marketplace. But the message went far beyond that. The speaker asserted that the public school system is working perfectly–just as it was designed to do. In other words, it’s not broken; it’s evil! In a perfect world it wouldn’t even exist. Public schooling was portrayed as useless, enslaving, stupifying, and monopolizing. The funny thing is that EVERYONE in the room (including the speaker) was educated in the public school system! (It didn’t seem to terribly fail us.) We were addressed as refugees and escapees of the system, as the only ones who are enlightened to the nature and purpose of REAL education. It occurs to me that the perceived problem framed in these terms amounts to a harmartiology.

Continue reading here.

He said:

It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity.

Thanks to my friend Ryan, I’ve realized that I judge people. Nothing new, right? But specifically I have found that I observe people that I meet and prejudge their hypothetical responses to the gospel.

Rather than believe that God meant it when he said that his word will accomplish it’s purposes, I assume that certain people will respond a certain way to Truth.

And sadly, this affects who I talk to and how I talk to them.

An example.

I have found that I am willing to talk about my faith and be generally more open with people at work who seem to be somewhat family-oriented or outwardly moral. I assume they will respond favorably and therefore I don’t hesitate to acknowledge the working of God in my life.

But I’m not nearly as quick to talk about these things with people who, on the outside, appear to be more hostile toward spirituality.

The thing is, people always tend to surprise me and act in ways I would not have expected. This is why it’s so important to remember that I can’t see a person’s heart or know what’s going on in their head purely from the level of casual acquaintance or conversation. And I certainly can’t tell just from outward observation.

This has been tremendously convicting because I do this all the time — without even thinking about it.

I mentioned in an earlier post how we live 90 percent of our lives without premeditation and that’s why the renewing of our minds is so important.

This area of assumption is part of that 90 percent for me. I just don’t think about it. I’ll meet someone in my neighborhood and think “This guy is young, educated and has formed his worldview in the current western moral climate and therefore will not take seriously the claims of Christianity.” And so I don’t say anything.

I don’t think I need to say that this is obviously wrong and a detriment to spread of God’s renown.

As I have begun to notice this in my life I have started to catch myself as I’m in the process of sizing up the people around me. This alone is grace, I’m convinced. Grace to see that I’m sinning as I begin to do it.

The only way I know to change this is to see each person around me as valuable and to not seek a relationship with them for my own ends. Which is another topic my friend Ryan and I have been talking about lately.

More on that to come…

I know I know. It seems that every Acts 29 affiliated believer finds beer at the foundation of missiology. But in this case that’s just the way it worked out.

Jessica and I moved about two months ago into the community that our church is in. We decided when we moved that we wanted to be intentional about getting to know our neighbors. We had just spent a year in an apartment complex and never met anyone that lived there. Not a single person.

I was done with that, and was committed to not wasting our new living circumstances. So she made cookies and we took walks and knocked on doors and met people and invited them over.

This past Saturday night, two couples (our next door neighbors and a couple from down the street) came by.

It was not at all what I was expecting.

keep reading –>

I’m a sermon freak, which could be good or bad, but that’s another post.

Tonight, on the way home from work, I listened to an old Piper favorite on Romans 12:1-2. He was talking about the idea of being transformed and a statistic he used really got me thinking. He said:

It is an overwhelming thought to ponder this fact: Ninety-five percent of your life, you live without premeditation.

It is indeed an overwhelming thought. And it leads me again to the question that has consumed my thoughts now for most of this year: How do I live intentionally? I’m not asking for examples, I’m asking for how-to. Maybe those are the the same thing.

Most of us aren’t in vocational ministry. Most of us have jobs, spouses, kids, responsibilities and myriad other activities consuming our lives and the question that has been plaguing my thoughts recently is, how do we not miss the opportunities? How do I seize the day, take every thought captive, beat my body into submission and live every moment intentionally for the glory of God?

The days slip by so quickly. I get ready to go to work on Sunday afternoon and before I know it, it’s Friday again. And that’s the cycle that repeats itself over and over again and I strive to look back and find intentional living in that blur of weeks.

Piper’s answer is to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, e.g. Romans 12:1-2. I think he’s right because transformation leads to a new set of defaults.

But how do we do that? You can listen to the sermon here.

I want to say right off that I have tremendous respect for John MacArthur because it was through his books and ministry that I first felt an awakening toward theology and truth vs. pop Christianity. He has had an indelible impact on the world and I thank God for him.

However, I was listening to one of this sermons from this year’s Together for the Gospel conference and this statement leaped out at me:

I’m not interested in creativity. I don’t care what’s going on in the culture. I’m just there to communicate the word of God.

It seems to me that the two (understanding culture and preaching the gospel) are inextricably intertwined. How are we to make disciples without an understanding of the people we are trying to reach? What would we say of a missionary who packs up for India and says “I don’t need to understand anything about India or Indian culture or the lives of the people who live there?”

I think we would say he’s going to have a difficult time. But then, I also think there is a huge divide in how we think about foreign missions and domestic missions, which is an entirely different post.

I’m not arguing against the sufficiancy or power of the scriptures. I just think it’s statements like that that lead to arrogance and a failure to understand what it means to make disciples and be agents of God’s kingdom in the world.

But then, John MacArthur is far more godly than I will ever hope to be and has forgotten more about the disciplines of a godly life than I will ever know.