I don’t recommend Ted Talks often, or often write about diet on Christian blogs. But this presentation by a secular nutritionist seems to approach the borders of Eucharistic Theology.
I am not posting this for her recommendations of eating more plants. I am posting it for her acknowledgment of the social and personal significance of eating food. I recommend especially the beginning and the end of this video.
Her talk made me think…
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Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.
Colossians 3:22–4:1
The typical way I think this passage is applied and preached is to exhort Christians to be better employees because they want to please God by obeying him. Since we’ve eliminated slavery as they practiced it in the ancient world and later, these texts are usually applied to the employer/employee relationship. But I’d like to do something a little different here. I’d like you to consider how the way you work to please your employer should influence how you obey God.
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Why is the assumed reader of Proverbs a young man?
Youth is the golden period of life, and every well-spent moment will be like good seed planted in an auspicious season.
Eliza Cook
There is a saying, commonly referred to as an “old Chinese proverb,” that the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago and the second best time is today. When it comes to seeking wisdom, the two points in time are closer together the younger you are.
If you’re a young man, you’re near the optimal moment.
Seeking wisdom is the duty of all Christians of every age and station in life, but it is especially important for those who become aware of this duty in their youth. Start now and become a more faithful, reliable, capable adult. For what it’s worth you will probably be a much happier person.
Consider the Biblical theme of oversleeping. It is identified as a kind of sloth in Proverbs, warned against in Jesus parables, and treated similarly in the epistles. In all four Gospels, the failure to support Jesus in his hour of trial is highlighted by the failure of Peter, James, and John to stay awake.
So consider oversleeping as representative of many other kinds of folly. If one learns to wake up on time to get things done as a sixteen-year-old, one will be far more productive during the next decade than someone who learns to do it at the age of twenty-six. I’m not referring to the monetary income from being a reliable worker for a longer period of time. That may be significant in some cases but there are other issues. If a person is sleeping away hours of his life (or, what is the same thing, staying up late partying or playing video games), he is missing an opportunity to work on himself in other areas.
It is possible to be wise in various ways, yet foolish in one area. But it is more common for foolishness to spread. A person who oversleeps because he’s staying out too late is likely to try to earn just enough money to finance his late-night recreations because anything more would cost him some of those recreations. Every time he has an emergency he will be forced to beg for help or go into debt. Working on developing wisdom in areas relating to diligent labor or savings will not even be in his awareness. One behavioral problem precludes him from even thinking about any other habits to develop that would be productive.
And what about the person who still has a problem with sleep when he’s thirty-six years old? By that time, he has probably realized how much his bad habit has cost him. For just that reason he may be more resistant to changing his behavior. If he simply imposes some disciplines on himself to break the bad habit and start a better one then he would have to acknowledge the fact that he has robbed himself and anyone who depends on him for decades. Many people would rather believe they’re the victims of a genetic disorder that keeps them asleep rather than believe they cost themselves so much by being passive about a bad habit.
When you continue in a habit for a long time it usually gets harder to break. In fact, the destructive behavior even seems normal to a person under its power, and those lacking that habit seems strange to him. For that reason alone, the younger you are the greater the opportunity you have to avoid bad habits and build good ones.
Obviously, people in every age, when they finally listen to the claims of wisdom, will be better off if they begin the work to rid themselves of foolishness. But starting later will make the process more difficult, and a person will have more regrets to deal with. Being discouraged by past foolishness is no reason to continue in it. It is irrational to waste time thinking about how much time you have wasted. The proper and reasonable response is to get busy with what time you have remaining! But it is easy to allow discouragement to kill your motivation to escape foolishness.
If you are young, you have a chance to avoid all that self-inflicted loss of morale.
To consider all this another way, we all know that parents who are wise and conscientious can train children so they can be more productive and effective adults. “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). But if it is to a person’s benefit to be parented wisely and faithfully, it is also to his benefit to be thankful for his parents’ work and cooperative with them rather than resistant and resentful. He will be better off if he has a wise attitude towards his parents early in his life rather than realizing their value later.
Wise Christian parents raise their children with a goal in view: to equip them to become wise Christian adults. At first, a child is too immature to imagine that outcome. It doesn’t seem real to him and he doesn’t know enough to even picture in his mind what “being grown up” would be like. But as he grows that changes, partly because he gets closer to adulthood and partly because he sees how he is unlike the younger child he once was. He realizes that he is changing and can partially extrapolate what changes lie ahead. At that point, the child (or young man) starts to actively help or hinder his godly parents in their project to train him to be a better man.
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways, writes the Apostle Paul” (1 Corinthians 13:11). Being a child is fine for a child, but if you are starting to think about your future—what you will do, how you will live, who you will become—then you are on the threshold of adulthood. It’s time to intentionally work towards wisdom. You will never have this opportunity again.
Whether you realize it or not, what you are doing when you are young is building the man you will be. Build according to God’s blueprint from the start! An adult can repent, but he has the added hardship of having to demolish what he built wrong—break his foolish habits as well as adopt wiser behaviors. How much better to start before you have had a chance to develop a flawed character!
You are only young once. Pursue wisdom now! Don’t wait.
Get wisdom; get insight;
Proverbs 4:5-9 (ESV)
do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth.
Do not forsake her, and she will keep you;
love her, and she will guard you.
The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom,
and whatever you get, get insight.
Prize her highly, and she will exalt you;
she will honor you if you embrace her.
She will place on your head a graceful garland;
she will bestow on you a beautiful crown
Avoiding contention is so important in Proverbs that you are told you need to make a habit of keeping your opinion of others to yourself. Insulting people is a way to get entangled in strife. “Whoever belittles his neighbor lacks sense, but a man of understanding remains silent”(Proverbs 11:12).
Notice here the discipline you’re supposed to impose on yourself is a double standard. On the one hand, you are supposed to be concerned about provoking others. On the other hand you must not allow yourself to be provoked. You should regard it as an honor to overlook an offense (Proverbs 19:11), but you should also consider it imprudent (as well as wrong in other ways) to cause an offense. You may change your life forever if you do so: “A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city, and quarreling is like the bars of a castle.”(Proverbs 18:19).
If this strikes you as unfair, you’re missing the point. There is no conflict between living in a fireproof house and adopting the habit or not starting fires in other people’s houses. “For lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, quarreling ceases” (Proverbs 26:20).
Whoever restrains his words has knowledge,
Proverbs 17:27–28; 18:1-4
and he who has a cool spirit is a man of understanding.
Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise;
when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent.
Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire;
he breaks out against all sound judgment.
A fool takes no pleasure in understanding,
but only in expressing his opinion.
When wickedness comes, contempt comes also,
and with dishonor comes disgrace.
The words of a man’s mouth are deep waters;
the fountain of wisdom is a bubbling brook.
If I think about the number of hours I have watched sitcoms, it explains a lot about what kind of speech I have encountered (and practiced, I’m afraid) and why it has often not worked out that well for me.
The essential feature of many sitcoms for every age is that someone outwits someone else. As a person encounters a situation he says something, on the spot, that is really clever. When he has an argument, he makes a smart if insulting response that seems funny. This goes on and on.
What is true in every case in a sitcom is that no one is actually thinking up anything to say on the spot. No one spontaneously comes up with a witty comeback. It is all script. It was all written beforehand by a team of writers and memorized by the actors.
So a system of writing, memorization, and rehearsal is used in our culture to produce an ideal of how people should talk to one another in a quick, witty, and often insulting manner.
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I’ve written two posts on the possibility that we shouldn’t always (or as often) pray for release from our circumstances (here and here). So now I want to suggest a way to think about prayer that will lead us into better practices, and show some (more?) Scriptural support.
The central issue, in my opinion, should be settled by the account of the creation of mankind. Quite simply: God created humanity to rule—to subdue the earth and to multiply to fill the earth. Humanity was not created primarily to ask God for things. We were created to actually do something ourselves for God. While this activity had to be performed as subordinate creatures to the Creator, and thus entailed prayer as part of that relationship and mandate, it still doesn’t change our purpose. God didn’t make us to ask but to act.
Additionally, the creation story tells us that we are dependent on God but it doesn’t seem concerned with our asking for things. Rather, God gives before we can ask. While that doesn’t mean we aren’t supposed to ask for help, again the emphasis of creation lies elsewhere.
To repeat: none of this is meant to say we should not ask for things we need or want. Obviously, we should do so (Matthew 7:7). But such prayer is supposed to fit in the context of us as God’s vicegerents who are ordered to take dominion.
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Christians pray for deliverance and there is plenty of Biblical reason for them to do so. Nevertheless, I’ve begun to have some doubts regarding how Christians apply the Bible’s material on praying for different circumstances. (Or at least, I don’t think I’ve always done it right.)
I mentioned in my earlier post the ambiguous results from winning the lottery. While data is hard to collect, it seems that coming into money is not the solution to life that some people expect. Indeed, it is not a solution to one’s financial problems in some cases.
In the Bible, an event that resembled winning a big lottery occured for the Israelites when God brought them out of Egypt. They had groaned for release and God heard them (Exodus 2:23-25; 3:7-10). God transformed a society of slaves into an independent nation. Additionally, they were both enriched from the Egyptians and sustained in basic needs by God’s miraculous provision. Their circumstances were supernaturally changed.
But the change didn’t work out the way the Israelites expected. First of all, they got angry with Moses for confronting Pharaoh (5:21). Later, they continally expected God to abandon them to their enemies or to starvation. The Israelites even claimed they were treated better as slaves by the Egyptians than by God (Numbers 11:5-6). Ultimately, the entire generation had to die off in the wilderness and only the children survived.
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The issue of free will and compulsion is behind much of the material in Proverbs. Behind the metaphorical slavery is the economic fact that has been true in many cultures through most of history: impoverishment can end, if not in death, then in debt and slavery. One could be sold for the sake of one’s creditors. Thus: “The hand of the diligent will rule, while the slothful will be put to forced labor” (Proverbs 12:24; ESV).
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Proverbs begins and ends with women. Perhaps it is a bit delayed in the beginning (more on that below) but, once Wisdom is revealed to be a female human being, it becomes clear that even Proverbs 1:2 may be about more than you think when it declares the writings are to enable the reader “to know Wisdom.” (more…)
Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding, for the gain from her is better than gain from silver and her profit better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed.
The LORD by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens; by his knowledge the deeps broke open, and the clouds drop down the dew.
My son, do not lose sight of these—keep sound wisdom and discretion, and they will be life for your soul and adornment for your neck (ESV).
Many people want to know and have wanted to know what comes next in the Christian life. Once you’ve “been saved,” is there anything more you need or need to do in this life? What is this life for? Why does God keep us here?
Some groups of Christians push evangelism as the answer. We don’t need much but we are left with the remaining years of our life on this planet to get other people saved. In some quarters, it seems that learning how to present the Gospel as simply as possible, and doing so as often as possible, is a Christian’s main purpose in life.
Other groups have developed new quests for Christians to pursue. In some traditions, all Christians are supposed to acquire some kind of “complete sanctification” that often must be pursued for a while. Later, we got other groups that made “the baptism of the Holy Spirit” the mission that all Christians are supposed to pursue.
I differ from those traditions, but instead of talking about what might be wrong with them, I want to address what the “Christian quest” is actually supposed to be.
Obviously, evangelism is important, but do we really want to imply that there is only a point to the Christian life because there are non-Christians in the world? If everyone was a Christian, and the Lord hasn’t returned, what would be the point of the Christian life? Would it have no point?
More activist-oriented Christians might argue that the quest of Christians is to build a certain kind of community or even Christian nations. And, like evangelism, I think this has some merit. The Great Commission, in the context of Scripture, seems to encourage us to do that.
But again, does that mean once we were to form an ideal community, whether a church or something else, that there would be no point to the Christians remaining in this earthly life?
What I’m asking is: Is there a purpose for our passage through this life even apart from the issue of sin and salvation? (more…)
Kuyperian Commentary Podcast
