Foundations for Soul Care

I am reading such a good book. It is called Foundations for Soul Care by Eric L. Johnson. Two of my girls are majoring in Psychology, so I wanted to "read" up on what the Christian community was saying. I hit the jackpot in that respect. He first gives the history of soul care and delves into the many directions that it has taken in the past century. Wonderful reading. I have only finished 100 pages of the 600 page book, but his emphasis on the Word is key. So far, he has given me resources for my teaching, fodder for thought, and conviction of soul. It was not the book that I thought it would be, but it is much more. Obviously, you can get it at Amazon, but I ordered it from Westminster Bookstore; http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=4207776029639604608

The Word is Key to all we do, all are hearts need, all we will ever need in order to fight the battles that we face. In 2012 my goal in teaching, in living, and by example is to make the Word more of the centrality to all my thoughts, meditations, and hopefully my actions.

More on the book as I read it.

On to a teacher's meeting............

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

This is a book that I had heard of quite a while ago, bought, and it has sat on the shelf for months, until....Bekah was assigned it for her summer reading. While she was at the beach last week with a friend, I decided I would have to read it and finish it before she came home, which I did. At first I balked at the author's writing style. It is choppy, elementary, not very creative, and I just didn't care for it at all. Never having read anything else by the author I don't know whether the style is intentional or not. It could be a different way to describe the main character.

I finished it lickety-split because the story grew in interest, and I just wanted to know how it would end. The world, or the US in particular, has evolved into a totalitarian state where the President is a dictator, thug, and controls the peoples every move. He rules from "the Capitol" and life is abundant there, although, as in 1984, Big Brother is watching you. Their are 12 Districts that surround the Capitol. They are all involved in some form of commerce that they are known for; coal, agriculture, etc... The farther away from the Capitol the more meager the resources are to feed and clothe your family. The story revolves around a 16 year old girl who has lives in District 12, has lost her beloved father in a coal mine accident, and has taken on the role of protector, and provider for her mother and her 12 year old sister.

Every year the poorer families have to submit their children's names to a lottery, every district does the same. Once a year every district draws a name of a boy and a girl between the ages of 12-18 to go the Hunger Games Competition that is televised all over, and watched compulsively by all. The 24 children are put into an artificial arena and must fight to the death. The President does this to quell rebellions, and mentally keep people in line. The main character, Katniss, has taken the place of her 12 year old sister Primrose, whom she loves very much. Katniss is a hunter and that becomes her strategy to win in the arena.

Having taught ancient Roman history, it greatly resembles the Roman empire. The Emperor and Rome had an abundance of resources, although 3/4 of the people were slaves, yet the farther you got from Rome the more desperate the people were just to exist on a daily basis. The author uses Greco-Roman names throughout the story for the people that live in the capitol, but whether this is her intent, I don't know. The jacket cover says that she wants to show the ravages of war on young adolescents, but being the political animal that I am, having studied totalitarianism, communism, and every other "ism" it shows the wrong headedness that comes from NOT fighting for freedom. It also shows the inhumane way that a society such as Rome treated it's subjects, subjects of the State. That is before Christ came and literally changed everything. Christianity chipped away at the State treating people, individuals as made in the image of God.

I am now reading the second in the Series; Catching Fire. Will tell you how it turns out soon. Just looked on Amazon and the third and final book in the series is coming out August 24.

Dug Down Deep by Joshua Harris

It’s strange to see an Amish girl drunk. The pairing of a bonnet and a can of beer is awkward. If she were stumbling along with a jug of moonshine, it would at least match her long, dowdy dress.

But right now she can’t worry about that. She is flat-out wasted.

Welcome to rumspringa.

The Amish, people who belong to a Christian religious sect with roots in Europe, practice a radical form of separation from the modern world. They live and dress with simplicity. Amish women wear bonnets and long, old-fashioned dresses and never touch makeup. The men wear wide-rimmed straw hats, sport bowl cuts, and grow chin curtains—full beards with the mustaches shaved off.

My wife, Shannon, sometimes says she wants to be Amish, but I know this isn’t true. Shannon entertains her Amish fantasy when life feels too complicated or when she’s tired of doing laundry. She thinks life would be easier if she had only two dresses to choose from and both looked the same. I tell her that if she ever tried to be Amish, she would buy a pair of jeans and ditch her head covering about ten minutes into the experiment. Besides, she would never let me grow a beard like that.

Once Shannon and her girlfriend Shelley drove to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for a weekend of furniture and quilt shopping in Amish country. They stayed at a bed-and-breakfast located next door to an Amish farm. One morning Shannon struck up a conversation with the inn’s owner, who had lived among the Amish his entire life. She asked him questions, hoping for romantic details about the simple, buggy-driven life. But instead he complained about having to pick up beer cans every weekend.

Beer cans?

“Yes,” he said, “the Amish kids leave them everywhere.” That’s when he told her about rumspringa. The Amish believe that before a young person chooses to commit to the Amish church as an adult, he or she should have the chance to freely explore the forbidden delights of the outside world. So at age sixteen everything changes for Amish teenagers. They go from milking cows and singing hymns to living like debauched rock stars.

In the Pennsylvania Dutch language, rumspringa literally means “running around.” It’s a season of doing anything and everything you want with zero rules. During this time—which can last from a few months to several years—all the restrictions of the Amish church are lifted. Teens are free to shop at malls, have sex, wear makeup, play video games, do drugs, use cell phones, dress however they want, and buy and drive cars. But what they seem to enjoy most during rumspringa is gathering at someone’s barn, blasting music, and then drinking themselves into the ground. Every weekend, the man told Shannon, he had to clean up beer cans littered around his property following the raucous, all-night Amish parties.

When Shannon came home from her Lancaster weekend, her Amish aspirations had diminished considerably. The picture of cute little Amish girls binge drinking took the sheen off her idealistic vision of Amish life. We completed her disillusionment when we rented a documentary about the rite of rumspringa called Devil’s Playground. Filmmaker Lucy Walker spent three years befriending, interviewing, and filming Amish teens as they explored the outside world. That’s where we saw the drunk Amish girl tripping along at a barn party. We learned that most girls continue to dress Amish even as they party—as though their clothes are a lifeline back to safety while they explore life on the wild side.

In the documentary Faron, an outgoing, skinny eighteen-year-old sells and is addicted to the drug crystal meth. After Faron is busted by the cops, he turns in rival drug dealers. When his life is threatened, Faron moves back to his parents’ home and tries to start over. The Amish faith is a good religion, he says. He wants to be Amish, but his old habits keep tugging on him.

A girl named Velda struggles with depression. During rumspringa she finds the partying empty, but after joining the church she can’t imagine living the rest of her life as an Amish woman. “God talks to me in one ear, Satan in the other,” Velda says. “Part of me wants to be my like my parents, but the other part wants the jeans, the haircut, to do what I want to do.” When she fails to convince her Amish fiancé to leave the church with her, she breaks off her engagement a month before the wedding and leaves the Amish faith for good. As a result Velda is shunned by her family and the entire community. Alone but determined, she begins to attend college.

Velda’s story is the exception. Eighty to 90 percent of Amish teens decide to return to the Amish church after rumspringa. At one point in the film, Faron insightfully comments that rumspringa is like a vaccination for Amish teens. They binge on all the worst aspects of the modern world long enough to make themselves sick of it. Then, weary and disgusted, they turn back to the comforting, familiar, and safe world of Amish life.

But as I watched, I wondered, What are they really going back to? Are they choosing God or just a safe and simple way of life?

I know what it means to wrestle with questions of faith. I know what it’s like for faith to be so mixed up with family tradition that it’s hard to distinguish between a genuine knowledge of God and comfort in a familiar way of life.

I grew up in an evangelical Christian family. One that was on the more conservative end of the spectrum. I’m the oldest of seven children. Our parents homeschooled us, raised us without television, and believed that old-fashioned courtship was better than modern dating. Friends in our neighborhood probably thought our family was Amish, but that’s only because they didn’t know some of the really conservative Christian homeschool families. The truth was that our family was more culturally liberal than many homeschoolers. We watched movies, could listen to rock music (as long as it was Christian or the Beatles), and were allowed to have Star Wars and Transformers toys.

But even so, during high school I bucked my parents’ restrictions. That’s not to say my spiritual waywardness was very shocking. I doubt Amish kids would be impressed by my teenage dabbling in worldly pleasure. I never did drugs. Never got drunk. The worst things I ever did were to steal porn magazines, sneak out of the house at night with a kid from church, and date various girls behind my parents’ backs. Although my rebellion was tame in comparison, it was never virtue that held me back from sin. It was lack of opportunity. I shudder to think what I would have done with a parent-sanctioned
season of rumspringa.

The bottom line is that my parents’ faith wasn’t really my faith. I knew how to work the system, I knew the Christian lingo, but my heart wasn’t in it. My heart was set on enjoying the moment.

Recently a friend of mine met someone who knew me in early high school. “What did she remember about me?” I asked.

“She said you were girl crazy, full of yourself, and immature,” my friend told me.

Yeah, she knew me, I thought. It wasn’t nice to hear, but I couldn’t argue. I didn’t know or fear God. I didn’t have any driving desire to know him.

For me, the Christian faith was more about a set of moral standards than belief and trust in Jesus Christ.

During my early twenties I went through a phase of blaming the church I had attended in high school for all my spiritual deficiencies. Evangelical megachurches make good punching bags.

My reasoning went something like this: I was spiritually shallow because the pastors’ teaching had been shallow. I wasn’t fully engaged because they hadn’t done enough to grab my attention. I was a hypocrite because everyone else had been a hypocrite. I didn’t know God because they hadn’t provided enough programs. Or they hadn’t provided the right programs. Or maybe they’d had too many programs.

All I knew was that it was someone else’s fault.

Blaming the church for our problems is second only to the popular and easy course of blaming our parents for everything that’s wrong with us. But the older I get, the less I do of both. I hope that’s partly due to the wisdom that comes with age. But I’m sure it’s also because I am now both a parent and a pastor. Suddenly I have a lot more sympathy for my dad and mom and the pastors at my old church. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

At the church where I now pastor (which I love), some young adults remind me of myself when I was in high school. They are church kids who know so much about Christian religion and yet so little about God. Some are passive, completely ambivalent toward spiritual things. Others are actively straying from their faith—ticked off about their parents’ authority, bitter over a rule or guideline, and counting the minutes until they turn eighteen and can disappear. Others aren’t going anywhere, but they stay just to go
through the motions. For them, church is a social group.

It’s strange being on the other side now. When I pray for specific young men and women who are wandering from God, when I stand to preach and feel powerless to change a single heart, when I sit and counsel people and it seems nothing I can say will draw them away from sin, I remember the pastors from my teenage years. I realize they must have felt like this too. They must have prayed and cried over me. They must have labored over sermons with students like me in mind. I see now that they were doing the best they knew how. But a lot of the time, I wasn’t listening.

During high school I spent most Sunday sermons doodling, passing notes, checking out girls, and wishing I were two years older and five inches taller so a redhead named Jenny would stop thinking of me as her “little brother.” That never happened.

I mostly floated through grown-up church. Like a lot of teenagers in evangelical churches, I found my sense of identity and community in the parallel universe of the youth ministry. Our youth group was geared to being loud, fast paced, and fun. It was modeled on the massive and influential, seeker-sensitive Willow Creek Community Church located outside Chicago. The goal was simple: put on a show, get kids in the building, and let them see that Christians are cool, thus Jesus is cool. We had to prove that being a Christian is, contrary to popular opinion and even a few annoying passages
of the Bible, loads of fun. Admittedly it’s not as much fun as partying and having sex but pretty fun nonetheless.

Every Wednesday night our group of four-hundred-plus students divided into teams. We competed against each other in games and won points by bringing guests. As a homeschooler, of course I was completely worthless in the “bring friends from school” category. So I tried to make up for that by working on the drama and video team. My buddy Matt and I wrote, performed, and directed skits to complement our youth pastor’s messages. Unfortunately, our idea of complementing was to deliver skits that were not
even remotely connected to the message. The fact that Matt was a Brad Pitt look-alike assured that our skits were well received (at least by the girls).

The high point of my youth-group performing career came when the pastor found out I could dance and asked me to do a Michael Jackson impersonation. The album Bad had just come out. I bought it, learned all the dance moves, and then when I performed—how do I say this humbly?—I blew everyone away. I was bad (and I mean that in the good sense of the word bad ). The crowd went absolutely nuts. The music pulsed, and girls
were screaming and grabbing at me in mock adulation as I moonwalked and lip-synced my way through one of the most inane pop songs ever written. I loved every minute of it.

Looking back, I’m not real proud of that performance. I would feel better about my bad moment if the sermon that night had been about the depravity of man or something else that was even slightly related. But there was no connection. It had nothing to do with anything.

For me, dancing like Michael Jackson that night has come to embody my experience in a big, evangelical, seeker-oriented youth group. It was fun, it was entertaining, it was culturally savvy (at the time), and it had very little to do with God. Sad to say, I spent more time studying Michael’s dance moves for that drama assignment than I was ever asked to invest in studying about God.

Of course, this was primarily my own fault. I was doing what I wanted to do. There were other kids in the youth group who were more mature and who grew more spiritually during their youth-group stint. And I don’t doubt the good intentions of my youth pastor. He was trying to strike the balance between getting kids to attend and teaching them.
Maybe I wouldn’t have been interested in youth group if it hadn’t been packaged in fun and games and a good band. But I still wish someone had expected more of me—of all of us. Would I have listened? I can’t know. But I do know that a clear vision of God and the power of his Word and the purpose of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection were lost on me in the midst of all the flash and fun.

There’s a story in the Bible of a young king named Josiah, who lived about 640 years before Christ. I think Josiah could have related to me—being religious but ignorant of God. Josiah’s generation had lost God’s Word. And I don’t mean that figuratively. They literally lost God’s Word. It sounds ridiculous, but they essentially misplaced the Bible.

If you think about it, this was a pretty big deal. We’re not talking about a pair of sunglasses or a set of keys. The Creator of the universe had communicated with mankind through the prophet Moses. He gave his law. He revealed what he was like and what he wanted. He told his people what it meant for them to be his people and how they were to live. All this was dutifully recorded on a scroll. Then this scroll, which was precious beyond measure, was stored in the holy temple. But later it was misplaced. No one
knows how. Maybe a clumsy priest dropped it and it rolled into a dark corner.

But here’s the really sad thing: nobody noticed it was missing. No search was made. Nobody checked under the couch. It was gone and no one cared. For decades those who wore the label “God’s people” actually had no communication with him. They wore their priestly robes, they carried on their traditions in their beautiful temple, and they taught their messages that were so wise, so insightful, so inspirational. But it was all a bunch of hot air—nothing but their own opinions. Empty ritual. Their robes were costumes, and their temple was an empty shell.

This story scares me because it shows that it’s possible for a whole generation to go happily about the business of religion, all the while having lost a true knowledge of God.

When we talk about knowledge of God, we’re talking about theology. Simply put, theology is the study of the nature of God—who he is and how he thinks and acts. But theology isn’t high on many people’s list of daily concerns.

My friend Curtis says that most people today think only of themselves. He calls this “me-ology.” I guess that’s true. I know it was true of me and still can be. It’s a lot easier to be an expert on what I think and feel and want than to give myself to knowing an invisible, universe-creating God.

Others view theology as something only scholars or pastors should worry about. I used to think that way. I viewed theology as an excuse for all the intellectual types in the world to add homework to Christianity.

But I’ve learned that this isn’t the case. Theology isn’t for a certain group of people. In fact, it’s impossible for anyone to escape theology. It’s everywhere. All of us are constantly “doing” theology. In other words, all of us have some idea or opinion about what God is like. Oprah does theology. The person who says, “I can’t believe in a God who sends people to hell” is doing theology.

We all have some level of knowledge. This knowledge can be much or little, informed or uninformed, true or false, but we all have some concept of God (even if it’s that he doesn’t exist). And we all base our lives on what we think God is like.

So when I was spinning around like Michael Jackson at youth group, I was a theologian. Even though I wasn’t paying attention in church. Even though I wasn’t very concerned with Jesus or pleasing him. Even though I was more preoccupied with my girlfriend and with being popular. Granted I was a really bad theologian—my thoughts about God were unclear and often ignorant. But I had a concept of God that directed how I lived.

I’ve come to learn that theology matters. And it matters not because we want a good grade on a test but because what we know about God shapes the way we think and live. What you believe about God’s nature—what he is like, what he wants from you, and whether or not you will answer to him—affects every part of your life.

Theology matters, because if we get it wrong, then our whole life will be wrong.

I know the idea of “studying” God often rubs people the wrong way. It sounds cold and theoretical, as if God were a frog carcass to dissect in a lab or a set of ideas that we memorize like math proofs.

But studying God doesn’t have to be like that. You can study him the way you study a sunset that leaves you speechless. You can study him the way a man studies the wife he passionately loves. Does anyone fault him for noting her every like and dislike? Is it clinical for him to desire to know the thoughts and longings of her heart? Or to want to hear her speak?

Knowledge doesn’t have to be dry and lifeless. And when you think about it, exactly what is our alternative? Ignorance? Falsehood?

We’re either building our lives on the reality of what God is truly like and what he’s about, or we’re basing our lives on our own imagination and misconceptions.

We’re all theologians. The question is whether what we know about God is true.

In the days of King Josiah, theology was completely messed up. This isn’t really surprising. People had lost God’s words and then quickly forgot what the true God was like.

King Josiah was a contemporary of the prophet Jeremiah. People call Jeremiah the weeping prophet, and there was a lot to weep about in those days. “A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land,” Jeremiah said. “The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way” (Jeremiah 5:30–31, NIV).

As people learned to love their lies about God, they lost their ability to recognize his voice. “To whom can I speak and giving warning?” God asked. “Who will listen to me? Their ears are closed so they cannot hear. The word of the LORD is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it” (Jeremiah 6:10, NIV).

People forgot God. They lost their taste for his words. They forgot what he had done for them, what he commanded of them, and what he threatened if they disobeyed. So they started inventing gods for themselves. They started borrowing ideas about God from the pagan cults. Their made-up gods let them live however they wanted. It was “me-ology” masquerading as theology.

The results were not pretty.

Messed-up theology leads to messed-up living. The nation of Judah resembled one of those skanky reality television shows where a houseful of barely dressed singles sleep around, stab each other in the back, and try to win cash. Immorality and injustice were everywhere. The rich trampled the poor. People replaced the worship of God with the worship of pagan deities that demanded religious orgies and child sacrifice. Every level of society, from marriage and the legal system to religion and politics, was corrupt.

The surprising part of Josiah’s story is that in the midst of all the distortion and corruption, he chose to seek and obey God. And he did this as a young man (probably no older than his late teens or early twenties). Scripture gives this description of Josiah: “He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and walked in all the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left” (2 Kings 22:2, NIV).

The prophet Jeremiah called people to the same straight path of true theology and humble obedience:

Thus says the LORD:
“Stand by the roads, and look,
and ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way is; and walk in it,
and find rest for your souls.” (Jeremiah 6:16)

In Jeremiah’s words you see a description of King Josiah’s life. His generation was rushing past him, flooding down the easy paths of man-made religion, injustice, and immorality.

They didn’t stop to look for a different path.

They didn’t pause to consider where the easy path ended.

They didn’t ask if there was a better way.

But Josiah stopped. He stood at a crossroads, and he looked. And then he asked for something that an entire generation had neglected, even completely forgotten. He asked for the ancient paths.

What are the ancient paths? When the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah used the phrase, he was describing obedience to the Law of Moses. But today the ancient paths have been transformed by the coming of Jesus Christ. Now we see that those ancient paths ultimately led to Jesus. We have not only truth to obey but a person to trust in—a person who perfectly obeyed the Law and who died on the cross in our place.

But just as in the days of Jeremiah, the ancient paths still represent life based on a true knowledge of God—a God who is holy, a God who is just, a God who is full of mercy toward sinners. Walking in the ancient paths still means relating to God on his terms. It still means receiving and obeying his self-revelation with humility and awe.

Just as he did with Josiah and Jeremiah and every generation after them, God calls us to the ancient paths. He beckons us to return to theology that is true. He calls us, as Jeremiah called God’s people, to recommit ourselves to orthodoxy.

The word orthodoxy literally means “right opinion.” In the context of Christian faith, orthodoxy is shorthand for getting your opinion or thoughts about God right. It is teaching and beliefs based on the established, proven, cherished truths of the faith. These are the truths that don’t budge. They’re clearly taught in Scripture and affirmed in the historic creeds of the Christian faith:

There is one God who created all things.
God is triune: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The Bible is God’s inerrant word to humanity.
Jesus is the virgin-born, eternal Son of God.
Jesus died as a substitute for sinners so they could be forgiven.
Jesus rose from the dead.
Jesus will one day return to judge the world.

Orthodox beliefs are ones that genuine followers of Jesus have acknowledged from the beginning and then handed down through the ages. Take one of them away, and you’re left with something less than historic Christian belief.

When I watched the documentary about the Amish rite of rumspringa, what stood out to me was the way the Amish teenagers processed the decision of whether or not to join the Amish church. With few exceptions the decision seemed to have very little to do with God. They weren’t searching Scripture to see if what their church taught about the world, the human heart, and salvation was true. They weren’t wrestling with theology. I’m not implying that the Amish don’t have a genuine faith and trust in Jesus. But for the teens in
the documentary, the decision was mostly a matter of choosing a culture and a lifestyle. It gave them a sense of belonging. In some cases it gave them a steady job or allowed them to marry the person they wanted.

I wonder how many evangelical church kids are like the Amish in this regard. Many of us are not theologically informed. Truth about God doesn’t define us and shape us. We have grown up in our own religious culture. And often this culture, with its own rituals and music and moral values, comes to represent Christianity far more than specific beliefs about God do.

Every new generation of Christians has to ask the question, what are we actually choosing when we choose to be Christians? Watching the stories of the Amish teenagers helped me realize that a return to orthodoxy has to be more than a return to a way of life or to cherished traditions. Of course the Christian faith leads to living in specific ways. And it does join us to a specific community. And it does involve tradition. All this is good. It’s important. But it has to be more than tradition. It has to be about a person—the historical and living person of Jesus Christ.

Orthodoxy matters because the Christian faith is not just a cultural tradition or moral code. Orthodoxy is the irreducible truths about God and his work in the world. Our faith is not just a state of mind, a mystical experience, or concepts on a page. Theology, doctrine, and orthodoxy matter because God is real, and he has acted in our world, and his actions have meaning today and for all eternity.

For many people, words like theology, doctrine, and orthodoxy are almost completely meaningless. Maybe they’re unappealing, even repellent.

Doctrine is something unkind people fight over.

And orthodoxy? Many Christians would have trouble saying what it is other than it calls to mind images of musty churches guarded by old men with comb-overs who hush and scold.

I can relate to that perspective. I’ve been there. But I’ve also discovered that my prejudice, my “theology allergy,” was unfounded.

This book is the story of how I first glimpsed the beauty of Christian theology. These pages hold the journal entries of my own spiritual journey—a journey that led to the realization that sound doctrine is at the center of loving Jesus with passion and authenticity. I want to share how I learned that orthodoxy isn’t just for old men but is for anyone who longs to behold a God who is bigger and more real and glorious than the human mind can imagine.

The irony of my story—and I suppose it often works this way—is that the very things I needed, even longed for in my relationship with God, were wrapped up in the very things I was so sure could do me no good. I didn’t understand that such seemingly worn-out words as theology, doctrine, andorthodoxy were the pathway to the mysterious, awe-filled experience of truly knowing the living Jesus Christ.

They told the story of the Person I longed to know.

Excerpted from Dug Down Deep by Joshua Harris Copyright © 2010 by Joshua Harris. Excerpted by permission of Multnomah Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Crime and Punishment by Fydor Dostoevsky

I am in the process of reading Crime and Punishment. I am at the very end, and have not been able to put it down for other different readings that I have had to do. I downloaded it from Audiblebooks.com and the man that reads it is fantastic. I also have read parts of the novel when I couldn't for some reason listen to it on the computer. Listening to it while the reader acts out the parts is something I would highly recommend. It has really made the characters come alive, and some of the Russian dialogue makes much more sense.

The main character has murdered an old pawn broker woman who takes advantage of the poor and her sister who happens to come in right after the first murder. The old pawn broker is one that the murderer feels deserves to die, but when he is forced to kill her sister as well, who was a meek and mild, religious woman who was regularly beaten by her sister, he is faced with all sorts of conflicting emotions that he can't rationalize away. He finds himself in torment being chased down by a detective, and scared of being caught, he befriends a drunken man who is conflicted because of all the rotten things he has done to his poor family, leaving them destitute because of drink. The drunken man has a daughter of eighteen who is forced into prostitution just to keep the younger children somewhat fed. Our murderer meets her and is confronted by her faith and devotion to God. She continues to trust, believe and have faith in a God that has allowed all sorts of suffering upon her. He cannot deal with her faith. He asks her in a most poignant way, "What has God ever done for you?" Her response brought me to tears. She pauses for a long moment, and replies, "Everything." Her faith at this point makes mine look at the most, weak and faltering. God to her is worthy to be worshipped and adored because He is God, not for what He can or cannot or even will not do for her. Oh to have that kind of faith. Oh to worship God not for His blessings, but for who He is. I like Peter have denied Him over and over again. Maybe not in words, but in deeds. Please forgive me Father. Oh may I worship You above all else. Because You alone are worthy.

Waiting till He comes again, not just in the future, but in my heart as well...............................Lynn

Crime and Punishment by Fydor Dostoevsky

I have read The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, but have never read Crime and Punishment. I am already into it by about 40 pages, and have been very moved. I may even like it better than I did The Brothers Karamazov. Below is a Breakpoint (Chuck Colson) commentary on it. Christian author Ken Boa does a marvelous series on the Great Books which you can get on CD from his website. When I taught the Great Books I used his cd's as a resource. They are well done. Anybody want to read Crime and Punishment with me? Let me know. This month he is reading Anna Karenina by Tolstoy which is one of my all time favorite novels. That would be a good one to put on the classic list for us to read together.

The novel tells the story of Raskalnikov, a student in St. Petersburg, Russia. Burdened by the poverty, oppression, and decadence that he sees all around him, Raskolnikov isolates himself from most other human beings. In his self-alienation, he begins to see himself as a superior being, a kind of “superman,” who transcends the moral laws that bind other people. He looks for a way to “validate” himself and his feelings of superiority—a process that Boa calls “suicide by self-affirmation.”

Dostoevsky had lived in Western Europe, and as a Christian, he saw the dangers of its fashionable intellectual ideas like nihilism and utilitarianism. A “pattern in his work,” Boa says, is the conflict of Christianity with utopian worldviews. Dostoevsky wanted to make it clear that “ideas have consequences.”

In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov’s nihilism and utilitarianism lead to his murder of two women. “Under the spell of an idea,” he decided that a miserly old pawnbroker does not deserve to live—and then he kills her sister when she discovers the crime.

Paradoxically, these evil acts become the turning point for Raskalnikov. This “rational and proud” young man, spurred by guilt, begins to move toward “humility” and “openness” to other people. He comes to realize that the moral law that he disdained is written on every human heart, and that he is just as bound by that law as every other human being.

Guided by a young woman named Sonia, who has been forced into prostitution to feed her starving family, Raskolnikov learns that suffering, not rebellion, leads to redemption.

Finally turning himself in, he is sentenced to eight years in a Siberian prison. Still, his repentance is not yet fully genuine. He is still the man who was willing to “sacrifice his existence for an idea.” Only when he realizes that he loves Sonia—that he finally has developed the ability to care for another human being besides himself—is he ready to experience full redemption. The epilogue ends as he begins to read the New Testament that she has given him.

Boa notes that some critics have called this a “weak happy ending,” not understanding that “in . . . the very structure of the novel, we see that the gospel is central within the novel’s plot.” Sonia has acted as a “Christ figure” all along, helping to liberate Raskalnikov from the Nietzschean “will to power” that had enslaved him.

As you can see, Crime and Punishment offers some very sobering and valuable food for thought for us today. As Ken Boa points out, this book helps to show us that we’re still surrounded by the bankrupt worldviews that have descended directly from the utopian ideals of Dostoevsky’s time—and that the way out is not through focus on our self (as our culture teaches us today,) but only through surrender to Christ.

Asleep/Book Review

Asleep: The Forgotten Epidemic that Remains One of Medicine's Greatest Mysteries by Molly Caldwell Crosby

The last two times Ken and I have had a date night we have literally gone to the bookstore. Yea, how cool is that! One of the perks of living in the city is the larger stores and offerings that a city has. In Charlotte there is an independent bookseller by the name of Joseph Beth, it is an independent bookstore, but I think there are about five of them across the country. One of the perks of this bookstore is that it has a terrific restaurant. Last night I had the turkey and spinach salad with cranberries and feta cheese, and also the summer squash homemade soup. It was wonderful, I couldn't even finish all of the salad. If you are ever over this way you should stop in and see them and eat while you browse, or eat and then browse.

They have quite a few places to sit and read, so after dinner I found a rocking chair beside the fireplace and finished an entire book. Kind of like going to a movie with your spouse, yet your are reading instead! Ken sat next to me and half way finished the book he was reading.

I picked up a book that I literally couldn't put down. Asleep chronicles some of the case studies of a forgotten epidemic that first appeared in the United States in the 1920's. The disease called sleeping sickness or encephalitis lethargica first had been noticed during WWI in Paris and Vienna. People would just go to sleep, for some up to almost 200 days at a time. The reason it fascinated me so, was that my mother, off and on during my growing up years, would say things like, "oh maybe they have sleeping sickness," or " they sleep so much maybe they have the sleeping sickness." To my surprise, when I picked up the book last night at the bookstore, it really was a real disease. I just thought my mother was making it up. She was born in 1923, and somewhere along the way had heard of this epidemic and it must of made an impression on her.

The author chronicles cases in Europe and then in the United States. Tens of thousands died of the disease, but it was over shadowed by the flu pandemic in 1918 which killed somewhere around 20 to 40 million people worldwide. Sleeping sickness did strike worldwide, but did not kill near as many as the flu did, thus it became the forgotten disease. Actually it was forgotten for several reasons; the flu epidemic, they never understood what the pathogen that caused it was, and to this day the reasons for the disease remain a mystery. One third of the people that caught the disease died, the others that lived had strange neurological symptoms that debilitated them. Many of the people languished in asylums for decades before dying of the disease. Very sad. They would wake up and then sometimes as long as two years later would exhibit sometimes bizarre symptoms called parkinsonism. They would loose the use of their limbs, and the saddest thing of all they would lose their minds.

How sheltered we are as a society. We have never had to encounter an epidemic like the 1918 flu or sleeping sickness. I remember my father talking about how my cousin had polio (before I was born) and had to be in an iron lung for many days, don't remember how many. The disease stunted her growth, left her limbs partially paralyzed and she died at about the age of 30+ from it. We have had many modern medical miracles in my life time. It is staggering to think about the progress we have made. I was completely fascinated by this book. Crosby doesn't just bore you with the facts and the progress that epidemiologists have made towards it, but she tells story after story of actual case studies of real people. That is truly what makes the book worth reading.

On a different note:

I could make an analogy of the progressive era here. I know it is pretty far fetched, but here goes. The twenties ushered in the era of the progressives; Utopian thinking, governmental fixes for all that goes wrong, big government everything, etc..... It seems when the progressives were infiltrating the psyches of the people they were literally falling asleep. They have been in a coma for decades and we as a society better wake up before we have given over all of our freedom to a "progressive" government that wants to rule our lives. I am afraid that there will be "neurological" consequences even if we are able wake up and take back the freedoms that we lost while we were in our slumber, allowing them to take our property, free markets, and God given rights.

The book is fascinating and it gave me a piece of a puzzle from my childhood that I wasn't even aware of as reality.

The Samurai by Shusako Endo

A couple of years ago I read a wonderful book The Samurai by Shusako Endo, I think I read it as a part of a Book Club. I still think of that book. Very heavy, but very thoughtful. One that I would love to read again. I used it as a Thanksgiving mediation that I led at church that year. Here it is, very similar to what I am reading philosophically in Broken-Down House, but in novel form.

Premise (for the mediation that I lead):

We have come to believe that the blessings of God are deserved. Abundant life is then squashed under the weight of our expectations.

Having a Biblical Worldview means to change ones mind about major issues of life.

1. The Fall has caused life to be full of thorns and thistles.
2. The reality of life is much worse than we think it is.
3. American Christianity is in complete denial.
4. The Christian life, the abundant Christian life happens as we die.
5. We need a change of mind on what it means to live the “abundant” Christian life.

Christ’s Life:

Isaiah 53

Jesus; “was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief.”

Quote from; The Samurai by Shusako Endo

“At daybreak the guards wrapped the priest’s body in a straw mat and took it away. His arms and legs, which poked out from the mat, were as spindly as needles, covered with dirt and caked in mud. As I watched the scene with Luis Sasada, I had a flash like a revelation from Heaven. This was reality. No matter how much we try to camouflage or idealize it, the real world is as wretched as the dirt stained, mud-caked corpse of Father Vasquez. And the Lord did not avoid this miserable reality. For even the Lord died covered in sweat and dirt. And through His death, He cast a sudden light upon the realities of this world.”

“As I think back on it now, I feel as though the Lord gave me all those setbacks so that He could force me to look this reality in face. I t is as though my vanity, my pride, my haughtiness, and my thirst for conquest all existed for the purpose of shattering everything that I idealized, so that I could see the true state of the world. But, as the Lord’s death pierced that reality with light, in order that my death may someday pierce Japan.”

More on Broken-Down House

I have seemingly so very much to do, but here I am blogging again. Upsidedownbee complains she doesn't get her laundry done because of blogging, this week I have done the laundry but I haven't walked all week! I feel pretty yucky. But, I am here blogging away.

Ok to the subject at hand. Last evening I posted about a couple of books that Paul David Tripp has written that have had a profound impact on me. This morning the chapter that I read in Broken-Down House has stunned me. The chapter is 10 and the title is Be Good and Angry. He has changed my thinking about anger in a very profound way.

Those of you who know me know that I am prone to depression. I have learned a great deal through my depression, it has actually brought me closer to Jesus as I have fought the good fight through it. Anger is a type of depression. Tripp makes the case that God is angry, that isn't anything new, but he discusses righteous anger in a way that I hadn't thought about before. "In a world that has been terribly broken by sin, in a world where nothing operates as was intended, and in a world where evil often has more immediate influence than good, it would be wrong not to be angry....In a fallen world, anger is a good thing. In a fallen world, anger is a constructive thing. In a fallen world anger is an essential thing. That is, if the anger is about something bigger than you." (p. 128-129) So often in my life I have seen anger as the unforgivable sin. Therefore, if it is the unforgivable sin, then what to do about it? Also, I redirect my anger at the wrong things, or I feel guilty about the anger at the right things! How convoluted is that? With depression, let's just point it inward. Isn't that the safest place? That way, I don't really look like a bad Christian, a bad wife, or a bad mother, just one that is "depressed."

Tripp says, "In a fallen world, people of character and conscience will always be angry." (p. 129) "For people who have accepted God's calling on their lives, for people who claim to be living for something bigger than their own happiness, and for people who profess to be committed to what is right, true, loving and good, such anger is a calling. You cannot be like God and be free of anger as long as you live in a sin-broken world." (p. 129-130) He says this kind of righteous anger is definitely different from just being angry at not getting my own way. This is an underlying anger at the suffering and heartache of this sin soaked world. This is profound to me. That validates some of the underlying anger in my life. There are times when I should feel angry. I look at the world, the country, and the culture around me, and I get angry. I see sin in me and my family, and I should get angry. Anger can be a huge motivator for change. Passivity is thrown out when enough righteous anger is around. Maybe those around us who have an anger problem should look at it a bit differently. That underlying anger that just seems to be under the surface at all times needs to be challenged towards sin, misery, and injustice. Those of us that are passive need to be more angry.

Tripp makes the great case of how God is angry. "His hunger for right is so strong that he will not relent until wrong has been completely destroyed. He will not rest until evil is no more and justice and righteousness reign forever and ever! Where do we see both sides of God's anger coming together in one moment? On that hill outside the city gates where Jesus hung. That is where we see justice and mercy kiss. If God were incapable of anger, there would have been no cross. You see, anger is one of God's most beautiful characteristics. For God's children, anger is a place of bright hope. Because he is righteously angry with sin every day, we can rest assured that everything sin has broken will be restored. Everything sin has twisted will be straightened. Everything that has gone wrong will be made right again. God's anger assures us that all things will be made new." (p. 131-132)

I really believe the more I mull over these thoughts, the more I will be changed. I don't have it all figured out yet, but I am going to be working on it.

Book Review: Broken-Down House and Shelter in a Time of Storm by Paul David Tripp

I can't seem to read enough these days. I am reading 8 plus books for my classes at RTS, and yet, I have many books personally that I am reading right now too. Oh just to have more time to read!

Right now for my devotions in the morning I am reading three books (plus the Bible of course.) I have found them to be the best devotional books that I have read and enjoyed since I first read John Piper's devotional books. They are: Broken-Down House by Paul Tripp, A Praying Life by Paul Miller, and A Shelter in the Time of Storm by Paul Tripp. I already highlighted A Praying Life by Paul Miller in a previous post, so I will not belabor that book, but I want to talk about the other two books by Paul Tripp. I looked up on Amazon's website about how many books Paul David Tripp had written, and compare that to how many of his books I have read. I was surprised that he has written quite a few, and many more that I have yet to read. I have read seven of his books and really have gained quite a bit from each one. The ones that I am reviewing here have been absolutely wonderful. I have cried more than once having my devotions and being convicted of sin, and the conviction that I really do not pay attention to my heart or the state of my heart much. The more I look, the more I see my sin for what it really is, and then the grace, mercy, and love of God grows and grows.

My friend from aLs CoRam DeO must be reading it too, because she had a post about Tripp's book Broken-Down House. She quotes the poem at the beginning of the book. Tripp intersperses his poetry in both of these books and they are especially powerful. A Shelter in the Time of Storm is a devotional book taken from Psalm 27, which has been one of those Psalms that I have returned to over and over. I read the Psalm every morning and then glean greatly from Tripp's insights. Whiter Than Snow was a devotional centered around Psalm 51. I ended up giving that book last year for Christmas to several family members and friends.

If you want greater insight into your heart, God's Word, and the infinite grace of God, get one of these books and be blessed.

Just found this on You Tube. It is Tripp talking about his book! I am so excited. Please listen. He describes it much better than I can.

Bondage of the Will by Martin Luther

Have any of you read Bondage of the Will by Martin Luther? I have to read it for a class that I am taking. I read it several years ago for a class that I was teaching, but this time I am actually taking more time with it. I did not appreciate it for what it was then as I am now. It is quite funny and entertaining at times. Luther is answering a diatribe set down by Erasmus concerning the doctrine of free will. Luther is very colorful when it comes to painting a picture of Erasmus's writing, and his arguments, very colorful indeed. When it comes right down to it Luther is a logician at heart. His arguments are pretty much irrefutable. Luther makes me feel better about some of the words I have used as I have lashed out at my TV recently while watching the news. Great book for those of you who like a challenge, theology, and a little bit of humor mixed in.

*Ben if you are reading this, it really is a perfect book for you to read!

A Praying Life by Paul E. Miller

I am in the midst of several quality books. One that I want to highlight this morning: A Praying Life by Paul E. Miller is one that I have gotten into and do not want to let go or let down. I am not going to go into much detail, the title speaks for itself, but I do want to set down some quotes that are pretty profound.

"You'd think if Jesus was the Son God, He wouldn't need to pray or at least he wouldn't need a specific prayer time because He'd be in a constant state of prayer." p. 43

"If you know that you, like Jesus, can't do life on your own then prayer makes complete sense."

"Jesus defines Himself only in relationship with His heavenly Father. Adam and Eve began their quest for self-identity after the Fall. Only after thy acted independently of God did they have a sense of a separate self. If you are not praying, then you are quietly confident that time, money, and talent are all you need, in life." p. 44-45

"Time in prayer makes you even more dependent on God because you don't have as much time to get things done. Every minute spent in prayer is one less minute where you can be doing something 'productive.' so the act of praying means that you have to rely more on God."

Boneman's Daughters by Ted Dekker

I just finished a very disturbing book, Boneman's Daughters by Ted Dekker. The disturbing part is that it is the story of a serial killer and really explores the mind, motives, and methods of the said killer, who is killing young girls and breaking their bones in order to make up for the fact that Christ's bones were not broken at the crucifixion. I will not go into all the details, but some of Dekker's descriptions are pretty freaky. Usually when things are disturbing they some how illustrate reality in some way. Dekker's books are almost universally allegorical in nature. They illustrate some aspect of the Christian life or the Christian story. I don't know whether they fit the strict definition of allegory, but he loves to illustrate the bigger meta-narrative of the Christian Worldview in story form.

I found myself wanting to weep at the end of this particular novel, because he touched a raw nerve of mine. I have been very convicted lately of just how much I protect myself from any kind of hurt. Self protecting is a game I play very well, and recently the Holy Spirit has been showing me just how much. Fear is a factor that can easily take over my life. Not fear of drowning, or airplanes, or anything like that, but fear of how others can hurt me. I have found myself not just skirting relationships, but running the opposite way, even with my immediate family members. The more I run from human relationships, the more I run from Him. This shows a great deal of insecurity on my part when it comes to my Heavenly Father.

This is where Dekker's book comes in. The story involves the depths in which the Father in the story will go to save his daughter, who doesn't want to have anything to do with him. She is an adopted daughter who is being held captive by a serial killer. The dad walks through hell to save his precious daughter, all the while knowing that he could die at anytime. When the father finally gets to his daughter she rejects him at first, but he ends up saving her and nearly loosing his life in the end, and they are reconciled. You need to read the book to gain an adequate picture of this harrowing scene. It disturbed me, because it moved me to crying from the depths of my soul. You know, one of those really deep cries. There is a part of my heart that really doesn't grasp just how much Christ suffered for me, because He loves me. That's what this book is trying to illustrate, the depths, the price, and the suffering that Christ went through, because He loves me and wants me to be His daughter, to love, to cherish, to even honor me. If I truly, with all my heart, believed that Christ loves me that much, then I would not, as a habit, put such walls of protection around my heart. So, I am on a quest, a quest to actually experience that kind of love. A love that is open, free, giving, because He loves me first.

Always learning, Always exploring, Always onward......................Lynn

Book Review: Christless Christianity by Michael Horton

I need constant reminding of what the Gospel truly means everyday. When I get tired of myself (like my last blog post), and feel like I just can't make it one more day, that is when I have forgotten about the Good News, the Gospel. God has once again knocked me flat, and used Horton's book as the heavenly reminder. He says on page 120, "We always gravitate back toward ourselves: 'Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it; prone to leave the God I love.' We wander back toward self-confidence just as easily as into more obvious sins."

Going into some of the movements of the "different" Gospel that we hear today, he examines the likes of Schuller, Osteen, Brian McClaren, and some of the emerging church leaders and what they deem as "good news." He briefly gives some historical perspective of how we got here through Charles Finney et. al., but quickly examines the difference between what Christ's Good News is really and the actual "bad news" of the preaching that lays our condition squarely on our backs. We all know where that leads to ultimately, but we are lulled too easily into believing that we can be our own good news. The true Gospel says that only in Christ will we ever be free. He has a terrific quote by CS Lewis as Lewis quipped,

"I haven't always been a Christian. I didn't go to religion to make me happy, I always knew that a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity." (From God in the Dock).

In another essay Lewis wrote,

"We are defending Christianity; not 'my religion'....The great difficulty is to get modern audiences to realize that you are preaching Christianity solely and simply because you happen to think it true; they always suppose you are preaching it because you like it to or think it good for society or something of that sort. Now a clearly maintained distinction between what the faith actually says and what you would like to to have said or what you understand or what you personally find helpful or think probable, forces your audience to realize that you are tied to your data just as the scientist is tied by the results of the experiment; that you are not just saying what you like. This immediately helps them to realize that what is being discussed is a question about objective fact-not gas about ideals and points of view."

I need to hear this truth everyday, sometimes continually all day long. I cannot save myself, I am doomed, but God in His mercy has sent His Son on my behalf, and the Son willingly gave up His life for mine. I am saved the same way that I am being saved, by Grace through faith. I cannot work do anything, even my good works are as filthy rags. On my best day I am a hypocrite and let those down around me, especially if you were to examine the thoughts and motives of my heart. Christ's story of redemption saves me, not only by bringing me justification but by baptizing me into His resurrection life. This changes who I am, and my motives as well.

Horton puts it this way,

"It is no wonder that the average person today assumes that all religions basically say the same thing and that singling one out as the only truth is arrogant. After all, who doesn't believe in the Golden Rule: 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'?....If religion is basically ethics-getting people to do the right thing-then why get uptight over the different historical forms?...What distinguishes Christianity at its heart is not its moral code but its story-a story of a Creator who, although rejected by those he created in His image, stooped to reconcile them to Himself through His Son. This is not a story about the individual heavenward progress but the recital of historical events of God's incarnation, atonement, resurrection, ascension, and return and the exploration of their rich significance. At its heart, this story is the Good News that God has reconciled us to Himself in Christ."

Why has this "preaching the Gospel" to myself again so encouraged me? I have real hope in Christ. When I look at myself, I see only a heart that is deceitfully wicked, and thus the previous blog post. Christ though, the truth is, that He has given me the only way to be reconciled to the Father, and He has actually paid the price for me, as well. That is Good News! I thank God for this wonderful reminder by Michael Horton.