Democratic Ukraine, autocratic Russia: Why?

Here's an interesting article on the historic foundations of Ukrainian and Russian political development. Certainly overstated in it's view of the success of Ukrainian democratic development, but at least an interesting thesis.

Antipsalm 23

I found this in an article by David Powlison at CCEF Its quite the statement about sin and self-absorption in the human heart and the resulting alienation and fear.

Antipsalm 23

I’m on my own.
No one looks out for me or protects me.
I experience a continual sense of need. Nothing’s quite right.
I’m always restless. I’m easily frustrated and often disappointed.
It’s a jungle — I feel overwhelmed. It’s a desert — I’m thirsty.
My soul feels broken, twisted, and stuck. I can’t fix myself.
I stumble down some dark paths.
Still, I insist: I want to do what I want, when I want, how I want.
But life’s confusing. Why don’t things ever really work out?
I’m haunted by emptiness and futility — shadows of death.
I fear the big hurt and final loss.
Death is waiting for me at the end of every road,
but I’d rather not think about that.
I spend my life protecting myself. Bad things can happen.
I find no lasting comfort.
I’m alone … facing everything that could hurt me.
Are my friends really friends?
Other people use me for their own ends.
I can’t really trust anyone. No one has my back.
No one is really for me — except me.
And I’m so much all about ME, sometimes it’s sickening.
I belong to no one except myself.
My cup is never quite full enough. I’m left empty.
Disappointment follows me all the days of my life.
Will I just be obliterated into nothingness?
Will I be alone forever, homeless, free-falling into void?
Sartre said, “Hell is other people.”
I have to add, “Hell is also myself.”
It’s a living death, and then I die.

It sounds to me like something out of the mouth of a Dostoyevsky character. A summation of Man's condition and his end outside of redemption.
I am convicted though by how many of its statements sound like attitudes of my own heart. How about you?
Now read the real PS 23 for a glorious contrast of being shepherded by our Gracious Christ Jesus.

I also encourage you to read Powlison's couple of blog entires in this series as they give such Gospel hope and truth to challenge and answer our dark hearts of sin. They are long but worth it.

inspiration for a weary greek student

I am in the middle of an intensive NT Greek class. (6 hours a day of class and I have lost track of the time memorizing and doing the exercises.) We have a break this week before we hit it again next week. My brain feels like mush but it is already encouraging to be able to read some of the text. I have so far to go... why am I doing this?

I took Greek 15 years ago at School of Ministry in Costa Mesa but didn't take it seriously nor was I convinced of the usefulness and need. I thought "if i need to know a word, I'll just look up the definitions." But after 15 years in Ministry I am aware of my exegetical weakness because I cannot access the Word directly. Specifically the Grammar.

Having taken Greek before, I am often frustrated and haunted and by the knowledge that I could actually know what clauses are subordinate to what, and what modifies what within the passage I am studying ...if I could just read it in Greek.

Because I can't, all that essential grammatical information and therefore exegetical information that I need to understand and teach the text, is unavailable to me. Knowing that the information is in the text, and not being able to see it has left me feeling a bit naked, and certainly weaker in my teaching through the years.

So, I am subjecting myself again to the crucible of Greek class so that I can actually see these things in the text.

It's a great idea, but language learning is mostly frustrating and discouraging. Having spent time in a couple different languages, I have lived that frustration. I realize how much work it is to develop the ability to understand and discover meaning. You need conviction about the need to learn this stuff, especially at 2 in the morning when the Perfect Indicative has caused your brain to mutiny and run out your ear. (...Not that I know anything about that...I only lasted till 12:30.)

A guy needs a little encouragement sometimes. So along came the following encouragement and exhortation...

I was listening to Piper's Sunday sermon this week where he gave a wonderful description of why it is essential to be able to see these things in the text. I immediately wanted to pull out a clip from that video to post, but I lack the technical savvy. Today on my blog reader I found out someone has done it for me!!

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This really isn't a slam on translations (... well no more than is necessary anyway) nor is it a snobby "I know Greek and you don't" kind of point Piper is making. He brings it up because as the sermon develops, he shows that the main points of the scriptural text hang on something that cannot be seen well in English... though if you are a careful reader of an accurate translation you will at least notice that something is going on. If you read something else, where the editors have done you a favor (you decide if that's a kind favor) by "smoothing" it out to make it "readable" you will miss John's point about Jesus, Belief and True Faith.

...Oh and that's John the Apostle's point BTW, the writer of Holy Scripture ...not John Piper.

Watch listen or read the whole sermon to see how this grammatical point plays out. You will see the Greek is not merely snobby, nor a small detail. ...it's also a really good sermon.

are we going to die in our religion, or die in our devotion?

David Platt: SBC Pastors Conference 2009 from Todd Thomas on Vimeo.

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Check out a great interview with David Platt here

Cultivating community … at warp speed?

"I read a book on stress a few years back, and the author made a side comment that I thought was so insightful. He said that the highest value of materialistic western culture is not possessing. It's actually acquiring."

Paul Tripp answering a question on the challenges of building in the American church read the full interview here

Multi-Site Churches - Modern Day Bus Ministry?

I had an exchange on my friend Danny's blog a few weeks back. you have to read down a bit in the comments to follow the conversation its really about more than junior mints.

then I came across this post by a guy I don't know but whose thoughts nicely summarize my own.

(Two posts in one day... with five links... cheap bloggin' hun?)

What do YOU mean...or expect in preaching?

Whatever this day may bring

O God, early in the morning I cry to you.
Help me to pray,
and to concentrate my thoughts on you:
I cannot do this alone.

In me there is darkness,
But with you there is light;
I am lonely,
but you do not leave me;
I am feeble in heart,
but with you there is help;
I am restless,
but with you there is peace.
In me there is bitterness,
but with you there is patience;
I do not understand your ways,
but you know the way for me …

Restore me to liberty,
And enable me so to live now
that I may answer before you and before me.
Lord, whatever this day may bring,
Your name be praised.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

From Prayers of the Martyrs
ed, Duane Arnold

The Donkey of the One Who Hates You

I stumbled upon this jewel in Exodus today. I would prefer to avoid my enemy. This verse gave me conviction to repent, to love, and to rescue my enemy, his donkey …and myself.

The Decline and Fall of Evangelicalism?

I was sent this article by my Dad. It's worth the read. Don't choke on the CSMonitor source, Spencer is certainly no C-Scientist, and the article is a summary of a series he had on his own blog. I have run into Spencer's articles in various place in the past year or two. He's definatley thought provoking. I'm not sure I agree with every point in this article of course, or the causality of said implosion. ...but that's nitpicking. The bulk/substance is some pretty solid criticism and reminds me of some books I read by Os Guinness, and others years ago. It has come true. Evangelicalism is in a downward spiral.

Evangelicals are notorious for chicken little political and cultural analysis, but I think what is different here is that Spencer's analysis is less prophet of doom and more state of the union.

 

I came across this video on a friend's website a while back,
Piper puts it pretty clear...



...I think I have the same fear.

For the church today, doctrine is optional, knowledge is personal experience, wisdom is often personal intuition, community is conditional, and felt need and "what can this passage do for me?" shape most preaching. "Relevance" rules, and today's churches are probably more culturally shaped than Gospel formed.

I grew up a church kid, and I used to wonder how there could be a great falling away? How could people leave the Church? Desert the Gospel? I thought, 'that must be in a future whose preconditions are a long way off' .... but now I think they might be uncomfortably close to home in our age. Like Piper I fear that many people in evangelical churches don't know the Gospel. They have come to Jesus for dubious self improvement reasons, not because they are sinners, wholly lost in sin and bound for hell apart from the Grace of God in Christ. 

I have had some discussions over the past two years with my students and various others regarding "The Way of the Master" evangelism series by Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron. It's an approach to evangelism that emphasizes a need to show a person their sin and utter separation from God first. Only when a person knows their hopelessness can the hope of the Gospel be clearly seen without distraction. 

It is interesting what a discussion of this approach has revealed about the understanding of the Gospel among Christians from Bible teaching churches. Putting the Holy standard of the Law up front so that sin is revealed is a shocking approach to many in evangelical culture today. (Those of us who hung out with Martin in His small catechism immediately sense the binary Biblical pattern of Law and Gospel.) The fact that the message of the Law is shocking to many makes me wonder what they are used to hearing, and what they personally understand they were saved from and saved to.

Evangelical culture has tended to put the personal benefits of salvation front and center, both in evangelism as well as church life. I once heard a pastor say that what you use to draw people, you will also use to keep people. If we have drawn people with the promise of Jesus as the key to a better life, what will we keep them with? We invite people to come to Jesus so they can get their life straightened out, then continue with preaching that presents Jesus as the key to the maximized life. It's not about what the text says, but what it can do for you.

What Joel Olsteen shamelessly places in the center of his sinless-self-improvement christianity, is probably the subtle mantra woven into much preaching and church culture: Evangelical culture is all about our Best Life Now. It's what I sarcastically refer to as the church of Pimp my Ride. No Sinners in the hands of an Angry God in church today.

So...who's in church? What do they believe? What are they here for?

The question my discussions with these students and others has brought up is the question of what is it that is preached in most churches today? What "Gospel" are people getting "saved" into? As Ray Comfort rightly questions, does the self improvement Gospel really save? Maybe I've read too much Luther and Bonhoeffer and Paul (...is that possible?) but I have the same question; can you preach the Gospel without first preaching the Law?

...Or is that Cheap Grace? ...and therefore not Saving Grace?

When things get tough, when Gospel fidelity becomes costly, and the church no longer appears "self improving" to the masses, we will experience 2 Timothy 3. I think that is what Spencer is getting at.

The hope is, as always, abiding in The Vine. The Source of true life is there, not Church. But we cling to that vine in clusters because that is how we are made to grow. Contrary to our hyper-individualistic self-determining culture we need each other. We need to be where the Gospel is faithfully proclaimed in a way that holds us accountable to it. Teaches truth and doctrine that form us, not principles we extract from it. We need to be among Gospel formed people forming a Gospel formed accountable Christian community ...not just "families of association" or community of convenience (Bonhoeffer's Life Together springs to mind as a definition) and then faithfully living, witnessing, and proclaiming the Gospel.

...There are still some of these around, precious few, but there are some new clusters forming on the vine with this awareness and intention in mind. But is going to take a counter-cultural... maybe even counter-evangelical-culture commitment to create, maintain, and defend such a creed and community.

The real Church existed before there was Evangelical, Relevant, Emerging, Emergent, or Contemporary and it will exist after all that is dust. We should make sure we don't mistake one for the other.