so i’ve recently decided that if i do doctoral work (many, many years down the road) then i’m going to do it in early American studies. more specifically, i’ll probably do something in the study of Jonathan Edwards or in the early to mid 1700s. because of this, it should go without saying that i am very interested in our nation’s colonial history and its struggle for independence. it was these reasons that i decided to pick up a book that i had heard so much about lately, David McCullough’s 1776.

this book is the story of that fateful year and starts in October of 1775 as King George III rides in grand elegance and ceremony to speak at the opening session of Parliament. it is in this session where the two houses, Lords and Commons, are divided over a possible war with the House of Commons being strongly against it and the House of Lords showing such arrogance as to say they could march from one end of the American continent to the other and subdue all the lands with little more than 5,000 soldiers. as we all know, the British will decide to fight.

perhaps one of the most interesting things about this book is the amount of devoted attention it gives to the ordinary soldier on both sides of the conflict. of course there is a lot written on the major players like Washington, Hancock, etc. for the Americans and Howe, Cornwallis, etc. for the British, but a good deal more is to be learned about the ordinary soldiers and lesser officers than one would probably expect from a book about the early stages of the war. i think the person i found most impressive in the study of this book was General Nathanael Greene, who, besides Washington, would be the only soldier to take part in “the Glorious Cause” from its inception to its conclusion. Greene was a loyal devotee to Washington, to his country, and to his men and would come to know very hard times as well as times of great triumph over the course of the year. yet, though times were often tough, Greene would persevere courageously and be one of the leading players in the final battle of the War for Independence at Yorktown in 1783.

what i came away from this book with was a greater understanding and appreciation of the trials that the American forces had to go through in the first months of the war. after securing a great success at the Siege of Boston in the early months of the year, the army was then faced with disaster after disaster until they achieved relatively small victories (though the effects would be enormous) in the closing weeks of 1776 and early weeks of 1777. faced with desertions, traitors, disease, and extreme lack of supplies, it is no wonder that the British thought the American leadership to be nothing more than a bunch of blubbering fools. but devoted to their cause, steadfast in their resolve, and, according to their words, with a little help from “Providence”, the Americans would hold on to hope of freedom from under tyranny and would eventually win the day.

this book also made me really wonder whether the times that it seemed that God was intervening to help the Americans out would come to be a time of great blessing or a time of great judgment. no doubt the soldiers who were there would believe the events to be of the former, but after 200+ years since that time i’m not entirely convinced. having made intellectual gods out of such men as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Locke, men who would come to be opposed to the Gospel of Christ in favor of a kind of Deism, it really makes me wonder if Independence from Britain was such a great thing.

now i don’t have carefully thought out opinions on this, but it does get me thinking. i feel i should also say that i do love this country and am grateful for the men that have come before me and have fought for the freedoms that we all enjoy, as well as the men who continue to do so today either at home or abroad. but as i see the great moral decline over the last 200 years and everything going on in America today, i guess only time will tell if the perceived “acts of God” enjoyed by the Americans during the war would in fact be a blessing or a judgment.

so this book has been out for a couple of months and i’ve finally gotten around to reading it. it is the book that was the result of the Desiring God National Conference (you can find this year’s conference page here) last October that had the same name. if you are unfamiliar with these conferences, they are held annually in Minneapolis, Minnesota at Bethlehem Baptist Church, the church which John Piper presides over. several leading speakers and scholars are invited to attend and give talks or lead seminars for the edification of those who attend.

this book that has been published out of that conference contains chapters written by each of the attending speakers and basically covers what they spoke about in their sessions. the book covers a great expanse of the contemporary sexual spectrum ranging from topics such as homosexuality to helpful advice on how to romance one’s spouse to dealing with singleness, all within the framework of biblical and evangelical Christianity.

in short, this book is a priceless treasure among the gobs of drivel that has been written on these very subjects.

opening with two very powerful chapters by John Piper, two points are made that will encapsulate the rest of the book. the first of these points is that “sexuality is designed by God as a way to know God in Christ more fully,” or put another way “all misuses of our sexuality distort the true knowledge of Christ.” the second point is that “knowing God in Christ more fully is designed as a way of guarding and guiding our sexuality,” or (put negatively) “all misuses of our sexuality derive from not having the true knowledge of Christ” (to see how Dr. Piper works these two points out fully, you’ll just have to read the book!)

these two points serve as the launching point for a discourse in what man has done to the God-glorifying, inspired, and designed act that human sexuality is and gives some insight on how to go about redeeming sex in the individual lives and marriages of Christians with hopes that that redemption will spread to the greater culture. in a culture so plagued with pornography, openness to homosexuality, licentiousness, etc., as well as the flip side which makes sex such a taboo that it seems it’s not to even be enjoyed in marriage, it’s quite refreshing to read a book that gets “back to the basics” of sex and sexuality in order to show its true purpose and design.

having been married for about two months now, this book has been extremely valuable in getting me to a point to realize what (and Whom) ALL relationships, not just sexual ones, are a reflection of and have challenged me to strive for purity in all relationships.

i believe this book to be beneficial to anyone at any point in life. whether they’re single, engaged, newlyweds, or married for 10-50 years, this book can help the reader look at their relatioship with themself, their spouse, and of course with God and give help and comfort to restoring those relationships to what we are Biblically told those relationships should look like.

so i guess i’m not the only one that’s had Lewis and Tolkien on the brain for the last couple of months or so. my last entry was all about my recent experience with C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. i have recently acquired Andrew Peterson’s latest effort, The Far Country, and i have lost count of the number of times that he references either Tolkien’s work or the Narnia series. this post won’t have much to say as its main purpose is to convey the lyrics of one of andy’s songs that i found to be particularly relevant (especially the last verse) to my last post. by the way, the album is brilliant. it’s one of the best written collection of songs that i have seen in quite a long time. for example:

little boy heart alive

open the door and run outside, your little boy heart alive
into the morning light, into the deep and wide

dinosaur bones in the flowerbed, rockets in the clouds
in a fight with a spider’s web, tunnels in the ground

winding to china, to the mist of the distant shore
better be home by suppertime, back through the planet core

feel the beat of a distant thunder, it’s the sound of an ancient song
this is the kingdom calling, come now and tread the dawn

come to the Father, come to the deeper well
drink up the water and come to live a tale to tell
the pages are turning now, this is abundant life
the joy in the journey is enough to make a grown man cry

kings and castles in the neighborhood, swords on the forest floor
dragons in the magic wood, better saddle your battle horse

fighting Goliath, better choose your weapons right
five little stones and a faith on fire, in a little boy heart alive

feel the beat of a distant thunder, it’s the sound of an ancient song
this is the kingdom calling, come now and tread the dawn

come to the Father, come to the deeper well
drink up the water and come to live a tale to tell
the pages are turning now, this is abundant life
the joy in the journey is enough to make a grown man cry

met a kid at the railroad track, he had a stick and a nylon sack
i ran to the house to pack, i wanted to follow

take a ride on the mighty lion, take a hold of the golden mane
this is the love of Jesus, so good but He is not tame

so come to the Father, come to the deeper well
drink up the water and come to live a tale to tell
the pages are turning now, this is abundant life
the joy in the journey is enough to make a grown man cry

with a little boy heart alive

ever the road goes on and on…..

so i’ve recently finished reading The Chronicles of Narnia all the way through. now i’ve read bits and pieces over the years, including reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe a score or more times, but i’ve never read them successively all the way through until now. and in fact, i’m rather glad that it has taken until now for me to have done so. i don’t know that i could have as fully appreciated them if i had read them before as i do having read them now.

i don’t think i’ve ever been so taken in by a series of books as i have been by Lewis’ masterpiece. and that’s a rather odd thing for me to say. anyone who knows me well knows that i am pretty much obsessed with J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy, The Lord of the Rings and have been for quite some time. but in all the times i’ve read that series, or even The Hobbit, i don’t think i’ve ever quite wanted to actually be in Middle Earth. this might be because i am always kind of exhausted after reading a good bit of LotR because the story is so heavy and burdensome. if you’ve seen the recent movies (but haven’t read the books) i think you can sort of understand that, and can even moreso in reading the books. after all that the characters go through throughout the book’s 1000+ pages, Middle Earth just doesn’t seem like the kind of place that you would want to go and frolic about. maybe if the story went on a bit longer and talked of happier times as it did in the beginning and in The Hobbit, but not after the entire world is nearly destroyed, lots of brave and noble people have suffered and died and the story ends in the middle of “picking up the pieces” (which takes a good while after that sort of ordeal).

Narnia, on the other hand, is not quite like that at all. Narnia seems so much more magical and colorful and lively than Middle Earth, that i don’t think one can help wanting to actually go there. i guess that may be the point, the Narnia books being “children’s books” afterall, but all the same. as i finished the seventh and final book, The Last Battle, i couldn’t help but feel sort of envious that the characters in the books had come to a point where they could spend the rest of their (eternal) lives in Narnia, or “New” Narnia as it turns out. i found myself sort of lamenting that i knew of no such wardrobes, pictures, or magic rings that could take me to such a place and that i’ve never met a faun or centaur or Talking Beast.
but i suppose the biggest reason that i felt envious of the characters is that they get to spend their lives with Aslan, the lion. now if you know anything at all about the Narnia series, you may have heard that Aslan is a sort of “Christ” figure. the series isn’t strict allegory, meaning that every little detail has a deeper meaning, but it is, as the author intended, allegorical in that certain elements do have deeper meanings. Aslan is one of these elements. Aslan is responsible for creating Narnia, for judging Narnia in its “last days”, for creating the new paradisical Narnia, for changing the hearts of the wicked, and is even slaughtered and resurrected.

Aslan is one of those strange characters in literature. one of the kind that just leaps off the pages and, forgive the cliche, into your heart. as i read the stories i wanted to see Aslan. to touch him, to hear his voice, to look into his deep brown eyes. just to be in his presence. it is much the same for the characters in the story. they are all drawn to him. drawn to a lion. one of the most ferocious beasts known to man, a beast that is even referred to in many parts of the world as a “man eater”. it may seem strange then (or a sheer stroke of brilliance!) that a writer could create a lion character that one is actually drawn to. there are many points in the stories where those that are drawn to this lion are questioned. others tell them that it’s not safe to just go up and talk to a lion or even to look one in the eyes, yet one can hardly keep from doing so when in the presence of this lion, even after being told that Aslan is not safe. but though they are told that he is not safe, they are told that he is good and that he is the king of Narnia.

i suppose that Jesus is the same way for Christians (and non-Christians). Jesus has that same sort of mystique about Him. just as we’re told in the Narnia books that Aslan can be the most gentle of beasts in embracing you with gentle paws or giving you a “lion’s kiss” on your forehead, we’re told in the Gospels that Jesus can be as gentle as a little lamb in letting children run to Him and to not be afraid of Him. but in the same set of books, whether Narnia or the Gospels, we also get strikingly different pictures of these two Kings. Aslan can be fierce in punishing those who have done wrong or by merely roaring so powerfully that those to whom the roar is directed are forever changed and cower in fright. likewise, Christ can be fierce in His condemnation of the Pharisees, His overturning the tables in the temple, and especially in His foretold return to earth where He will come in fury and judgment as He rides on the clouds of the sky to the sound of great trumpets and earthquakes. and both strike fear into the hearts of those that hate them, yet are a sight of pure joy to those that are theirs.

Jesus, like Aslan, is not a tame lion. i suppose that meeting Him face to face for the first time, you may not know quite what to expect. i suppose there might be a sense of great fear and trembling, but also (especially for believers) a great sense of peace and calm and anticipation. not necessarily the long drawn out kind of anticipation that we experience here on earth where moments can seem like a lifetime as we await unknowable circumstances. those that are believers already know the circumstances to come. i expect a kind of sudden anticipation that is fulfilled almost as soon as the feeling starts. fulfilled as the new heavens and new earth are revealed and Jesus, just as Aslan does, tells us to go “further up and further in”, challenging us to a race to see who can get to the new Jerusalem first where we will find a feast far greater than any of us can imagine and experience an eternal joy far greater than the most exilerating joy that one could experience on earth.

i suppose that it is this kind of unpredictability that leads Lewis to allegorically say that Jesus is not safe. saying one is “safe” is to imply predictability, ease, and even tameness. but i doubt that any of us will be able to predict (beyond the brief and somewhat vague outline that Scripture gives us) what will happen when we meet our Lord, and thus Jesus cannot be said to be “safe.” but He can be said to be good and the only one that we should call King. and that should definitely be something to long for and hope for.

so this would be part 2 of my thoughts concerning the story of natala and “marie”. i guess this post will be similar to the other one in that the story is what inspired the posts. it’s not going to be a commentary on the events or anything like that, just….trends, i guess, that i notice in the story that make me think about what’s going on in Christianity (particularly American Christianity) today.

i think i’m really kind of sick of the way that modern American Christianity does evangelism. now it’s not all bad. there are some people who do evangelism a LOT better than others. but for the most part, i think the American church is just really really bad at evangelism. a good deal of the problem is due to inefficient methods. you have groups like Campus Crusade that just throw tracts (or 4 Spiritual Laws) at people and tell them that Jesus has a wonderful plan for their life. then you also have itinerant motivational speakers like Joel Osteen (or the worse kind like Benny Hinn and all of the TBN station) who water the Gospel down so much that it’s reduced to a series of 7 or so steps that one can take in order to have a happy and better life. well correct me if i’m wrong, but i don’t think there’s any kind of promise in Scripture that Jesus is going to give us a happy and better life. if anything, all Scripture promises the believer is hardship, suffering, persecution, etc. with the promised release from all of that when one enters eternity.

aside from method, however, i think it’s pride that is the biggest thorn in the side of modern evangelism. Christians are so caught up in how many people they’ve led (or can lead) to Christ, that it becomes a game. i’ve actually heard of someone getting mad at a friend of theirs because the friend had given a Gospel presentation to someone that they had wanted to evangelize. instead of encouraging the person that had shared Christ with a mutual acquaintence, this “friend” was so angry with this person that they didn’t talk for two weeks.

i’ve also heard of many people so proud of how many people they’ve led (not how many that God has called, but how many they themselves have led) to Christ that they wear their number as some sort of merit badge and are always looking for the next lost person to attack with the Gospel. i challenged one of these people on this same idea one time and they told me that “the Bible says to boast in the cross!” well friends, robbing God of His glory by claiming even the smallest ounce of credit for a changed life and wearing people’s salvation as a badge on your arm or a notch in your belt could not be farther from “boasting in the cross”.

it is these kinds of attitudes that natala admits to having towards “marie”. natala admits to so wanting “marie’s” conversion for herself that when it wasn’t coming easy, she faded away. she stopped loving “marie” in the way that she had been because she wasn’t getting what she wanted. she held “marie’s” salvation as an idol that could give her a good story to tell people. well she got a story, and an amazing one at that, even if it wasn’t the story that she so dearly wanted.

natala got a story of what happens when we put ourselves first. of what happens when we let pride dictate our thoughts and actions instead of the glory of God. God showed her through this that things don’t always work in the way that our selfish desires would like them to work and that if anything is to happen, if anybody is to be changed, it is because of Him. not because of what we want for the other person or for ourselves. natala’s story is a powerful story of the sovereignty of God and can do wondrous things for the Kingdom of Christ.

it is my prayer that a lot of people will eventually come away from this story really thinking about evangelism. i hope people will see that we need to love people in the way that natala initially loved “marie” and to keep on loving them in that way even when the times get tough, when we’re not seeing the results we would like to, and especially when it seems that all hope is lost. it is only through this continued love, this sacrificial love, that we can even begin to understand the great love that God has for us, and the great sacrifice that Christ endured for us that we might be called children of God as adopted sons and daughters.

this is why i think methods that groups like Crusade use are so ineffective. even if they seem to work for a time, a good number of the conversions produce shallow Christians or just turn out to be false conversions (now i do know a lot of solid Christians in Crusade and that’s great. but even they have shared concerns with me over this type of “cold-contact evangelism). there just seems to be no love in this kind of evangelism. there’s no nurturing, no encouragement, no discipleship.

natala had it right in the beginning. she invested her whole being into “marie’s” life. she was a friend and someone to hold “marie’s” hand through the worst of times. natala said that she feels like she loved “marie” more as Christ loves before she had become a Christian and seems to conclude that it was becoming a Christian and being involved with the Christian community she was involved with that drove her away from “marie”. that may be true to a point, but i think there might be something deeper. i think it was the longing for a “notch on her belt” as she herself described it that would ultimately drive her away from “marie”. i think natala fell into the same trap that many “baby Christians” fall into, the trap of wanting to do for others what they believe someone did for them. a lot of new Christians believe that it was “so-and-so” that led them to Christ, failing to see that it was none other than Christ that led them to Himself! He merely used “so-and-so” to help along the process. natala may have truly wanted “marie” to find and experience the kind of saving grace and love that God had bestowed upon her and from reading the story i believe that she truly did. i believe she truly wanted Christ to rescue “marie” from destroying herself. but her desire for a great conversion story and witness story may have been a little stronger, and that would eventually drive her away from “marie”. i’ve seen this happen a lot of times and even speak from experience on this. but praise God the loving correcting that He does time and time again in our lives when we seem to lose sight of what matters most.

so i guess the point i want to make is that evangelism is not easy. it’s not about how many tracts you can give out in a day in order to make yourself feel good. it’s about how well you love the other person and about how dearly you want them to share in the amazing love of Christ that you have, apart from any of the selfish desires that we all have in our hearts. most of all it’s about the sovereign grace, love, and mercy of our Creator. we will never be able to evangelize perfectly, but i think that stories like natala’s and “marie’s” can help us learn how to do it better and remind us of Whom evangelism, ultimately, is all about.

so this post is inspired by a story that making rounds on blog and Christian circles. you can find the 8 part series here and i would definitely recommend reading it. i should warn you though, it’s not a light, easy, or particularly uplifting read. it’s actually quite difficult at times to read and, as many have described it, is very “heart-wrenching”.

unlike many, i didn’t really come away from this with my whole life changed. i don’t know that there’s many things that can actually do that to a person. give them an “ultimate makeover” in the span of 10 minutes, that is. i actually think that conversion (and not even all conversions!) is one of the only things that can actually do that to a person. but while i may not have come away from it a changed person, i did come away from it with a lot to think about and a lot to pray about. this actually might turn into a two-part series because the two main things i came away really dwelling on were so vastly different that i don’t think it would be right to throw them both into one post. so maybe this will be part one.

people are always looking for a revolution. political, musical, sociological, religious, whatever. people always want to be revitalized and sometimes think that the only way that this can happen is for the status-quo to be so completely reversed or overthrown that they actually think things will be better now that the “revolution” has come. only they’ll soon find that post-revolution, things will be the same, or often times worse, than they were before in a matter of time and will thus be waiting for the next revolution because the next time will be better. it’s kind of the same mentality that Chicago Cubs fans have year and year out. “wait til next year” they cry emphatically, always knowing in their hearts that the next year will likely produce the same result (i can say all this being a rabid Cubs fan myself).

it’s this mentality that i see in postmodern Christianity. “pomo’s” want a revolution. they want church to be done “their way” or they’re just going to say “to hell with it” (now before i go any farther, i should note that this is not what all postmoderns want, nor may it even be tenets of the majority of postmodern churches. this comes from those who, even if erroneously, call themselves “postmodern Christians” that i have interacted with). they’re tired of the church. the people in it, the people that oversee it, sometimes even with the God that established it. they think that all they need is Jesus and if the community isn’t acting in the way that they’ve neatly boxed Jesus up in, they bolt. i know a lot of self-proclaimed “pomo’s” that aren’t going to church anymore because church is too institutionalized, full of hypocrites, or just isn’t the place that they think Jesus would want them in. most postmoderns would prefer a church that just lets the person be themselves and worship the way they want to worship, whether it’s by singing psalms or singing Marilyn Manson songs, just as long as it brings you “closer to Jesus”, whatever that may happen to mean to them at that particular nanosecond in time. they think that this freedom will revolutionize the church and allow Christians to “love people” better by engaging them through the culture and showing them that “we’re all alike”. true as that may be…..good intentions, bad strategy. at least in my point of view. but that might be a separate post.

i see a lot of the kind of disillusionment with the church that “pomo’s” have in the writings of Natala, the girl who wrote the 8 part series that inspired this post. i’ve never met natala and i have no idea if she would call herself a “postmodern” or not, but all the same. she’s been disillusioned by people that told her she could love “marie” but not have “marie” involved in her life. disillusioned by “pastors and crusaders” that “marie” had been involved with in one way or another. disillusioned with a Christian culture that drove her farther and farther away from a point in which she actually could help “marie” and truly share the Gospel with her, not only in words and Scripture recitation, but in true love by doing whatever it took to get “marie” away from the things that would eventually destroy her. and i have to say that i deeply empathize with all of this. i don’t know that there’s many Christians who can go through their life and never be disillusioned by the church.

but let’s face it. the church is made up of humans. we’re all messed up. deeply. beyond repair apart from the grace, love, and mercy of our great Savior. i don’t know that a revolution in the church is what the church needs. after all, as has happened many times throughout history, any revolution will still recess back to the way things were before the so-called revolution happened. i don’t even think the church needs revolution’s younger sister, revival. i think that what the church needs is to actually take the one thing in it that truly does change lives and begin to live out and practice the things that that one thing prescribes for us.

the church needs to remember (or learn for the first time!) how to truly love. not by throwing tracts at people. not by having music festivals or famous travelling “pastors” that are nothing more than motivational speakers. not even by building wells or houses for impoverished people, although that is a wonderful and God-honoring practice. the church needs to learn to truly love by becoming so saturated with Scripture and the examples of Christ, Paul, John, Peter, David, Abraham, etc. that things like building wells and houses just flow out of her. but not because doing missions or things like it is a “good” thing to do, but because it is through those missions that souls can be won and built up and ministered to through the overflowing grace of the Holy Spirit. we need to learn how to minister in order to truly love. we need to learn to meet and care for the spiritual needs of the sheep AND the goats before we can learn to meet the physical needs of people.

building wells will not ultimately save lives. it may prolong earthly lives, but it will do nothing for eternity. the church needs to get down and dirty with those who it deems “of the world” and truly love them by sharing them the revolutionizing power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. this can never happen as long as we have a community that says “you can love a porn star, but you can’t have her in your life”. “lost” people will never even be given the opportunity to be revolutionized by Christ until we put down our stones and tell the lost “go…and sin no more”.

we don’t need a revolution. we need to get back to basics.