Uri Brito

On January 7, 2020 By Uri Brito In Politics 1

How to Mock Leftists Better than Ricky Gervais

The Ricky Gervais monologue at the Golden Globes has caught a lot of attention. Gervais earned 300K new followers on twitter the same night after the comedian’s bombastic roast. I don’t want to go over his jokes. Most of them were rated R and I am sure by now most of you have at least heard or watched his 8-minute diatribe against the liberal elites sitting elegantly and sipping luxuriously. The ire was almost immediate from the leftists. How dare someone criticize our way of being? Our lifestyle choices? Our wokeness? Our promiscuity? Our friendships?

Notably, Gervais found himself in the unlikely company of conservatives who stood up and cheered not for the nominees in that building, but the ability to ferociously attack evil in their very den.

It is a remarkable thing that atheists like Stephen Fry and Ricky Gervais and Bill Maher can speak truthfully to their fellow liberals. What gives them this ability is their loyalty to no god and no party. Now, their atheism will condemn them to an eternity of hell, but in the meanwhile, their atheism gives them the ability to condemn the hell out of shallow ideologies that pervade Hollywood.

Remember that Hollywood worships all sorts of gods, which is why they dread those who worship no god. Hollywood has a commitment to the gods of perversion and money and sex so they need to be cautious with their speech; they need to outwoke one another daily; they need to offer their petitions carefully, kneel before their gods consistently and watch out to not offend their fellow superstars whose gods may share identical agents.

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On January 4, 2020 By Uri Brito In Worship 3

Ten Blessings of Community

Dear friend,

I just want to take a few moments to exalt the virtues of community life and to show that without it one’s humanity suffers:

First, to be in community is the closest human sample to that heavenly experiment in the age to come.

Second, to be in community is to put to test those divine imperatives to love, show kindness, and cover one another.

Third, to be in community is to see weakness displayed often and to be humbled by it.

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On December 18, 2019 By Uri Brito In Counseling/Piety 1

Why We Hate Advent

No one likes to long for things. No one likes to wait. We are consumerist beings expecting everything to be hand-delivered not one second too late; preferably, one second earlier. It’s for these and other reasons that we hate Advent! It’s perhaps for this reason also that we join together Advent and Christmas conceptually. We don’t grasp what Schmemann called the “bright sadness,” of this Season, so we rather incorporate it with a happier season.

But we usually don’t hate Advent intentionally; we hate it emotionally–almost like a visceral reaction. We hate it because words like longing, waiting, expecting, hoping don’t find a comfortable home in our hearts or vocabulary. So, I propose we begin the process of un-hating Advent. But we can’t simply un-hate something we have long hated. It takes time to undo our habits. We must try to see Advent for what it really is; a season of practice. It’s a season to warm up our vocal cords for the joys to the world, to strengthen our faith for the adoration of the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Few of us treasure the practice time, rehearsal, the conductor’s corrections to our singing, the coach’s repetitive exercises before the big game. So, there we have it. We hate Advent because we don’t like to practice. Sometimes, however, the solution to stop hating something is to reframe the way you think about that something. Imagine you sit under a tedious professor who reads from his notes with no modulation in his voice. To make matters worse, he rarely if ever looks up to engage your eyes, but buries himself in his manuscript. While the material is wonderful, you long for that intimate connection between the content and the character. The next class comes along and suddenly you have an engaging lecturer who is interested in connecting with you. He will add a couple of funny lines to ensure you are awake. Those professors almost always make a greater emotional impact than the tedious lecturer.

Advent is like longing with an engaging professor who not only enjoys teaching but looks up to you and seeks to connect with your eyes and heart. If adventing (waiting) was only a process of listening without engaging, it would be a duty without pleasure. But Advent is being guided by someone who looks into the eyes of affliction and who talks out of experience. So, yes, it’s about perspective. To Advent is to wait actively, to long hopefully and to engage the dynamic prophets who prophesy and proclaim Messiah Jesus.

If we begin to see Advent as an engaging practice for Christmas, suddenly our distaste for the season before Christmas will decrease and our longing will be more meaningful. Perhaps we won’t hate Advent after all. We will long together with the prophets and those first-century saints who practiced well and embraced Christmas with sounding joy.

On December 16, 2019 By Uri Brito In Podcast Like

Episode 70, KC Podcast, Inspired Questions in the New Testament

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 16:02 — 15.5MB)

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In our 70th episode, we have the return of Dr. Brian Wright to Kuyperian. We discuss his newest book, Inspired Questions which focus on the questions raised in the New Testament. Brian structures his book following the liturgical calendar by discussing one question a day from the New Testament and providing theological and practical answers.

If you are looking for a great devotional to use at the dinner table–one which will raise good questions and provide satisfactory answers to the Bible’s deepest questions–look no further.

Inspired Questions: A Year’s Journey Through the New Testament by Dr. Brian Wright

On November 19, 2019 By Uri Brito In Politics 1

Five Basic Kuyperian Propositions

It has to be Kuyper’s fault. I have been pondering his words ever since 2003. Someone gave me a copy of his Lectures on Calvinism and it hit me with electrifying power. Now, mind you, I was already versed in Rushdoony, North, Van Til, Bahnsen, and Sproul, but Kuyper was from the past; an ancient past. At least that’s how I viewed him as a novice in Church History. And what is it that brought me to my theological knees when I first read him? It was his non-exhausting claim of the exhaustive Lordship of King Jesus. Here are five propositions that makes him such a superb apologist for the kingdom of Jesus:

a) Kuyper was Trinitarian. In his Pro Rege: Living Under Christ’s Kingship (Volume 1),^a he notes that “There can be no separation or contrast between the authority of God and the authority of Christ.” For Kuyper, the dominion power is not inherent in fallen humanity but comes from the divine power of the Son who creates all things. Kuyper does not separate the power of the Son from the Father, but he harmonizes the Triune work. As the Catechism states, “…and these three are one God, the same in substance, equal in power and glory.” Kuyper operates from beginning to end as a Trinitarian Christian. Dominion can only occur in a Trinitarian universe and the Father and the Son work together to ensure it.

b) Kuyper believed in the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Though Kuyper did not use the theological categories of Postmillennialism in his writings, his vision harmonizes quite well with that of his fellow theologian B.B. Warfield who invited Kuyper for the Princeton lectures in 1898. Kuyper notes in profoundly optimistic categories:

Christianity [is] being carried forth into the world, coming into contact with the elements and laws of human life and through that contact modifying and changing life entirely.

Jesus’ Commission was not a mere hope, but the promise that the nations would fall under Christ’s authority. Everything Christianity touches, Kuyper notes, changes for the good.

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The other quotations come from the same source (back)

On November 14, 2019 By Uri Brito In Wisdom 3

Why Your Local Pastor is a Better Pastor than Tim Keller

Dear friend,

I am a better pastor than John Piper, John MacArthur, Tim Keller and any other pastor of renown. No, I am not as rhetorically gifted, nor am I widely published, nor will I ever draw the crowds, but for you, specifically, the members of my congregation, I am the best pastor you will have. I will go further and say that your local pastor, whoever he may be, is also a better pastor than all the men I mentioned above. They are uniquely called men to shepherd you, to hear your stories, to know your individual names, to baptize your children, marry your daughters, bury your fathers; yes, these men are better pastors than the prestigious men above.

You can go ahead and gain from their insights, listen to their sermons and lectures, read their books, but at the end of the day, only one man (or a couple of them) will be at the hospital when your son has a concussion or breaks his leg, or when your aging mother has a heart attack, or when the unexpected comes.

Friends, don’t lose sight of your local reality and community. Encourage your pastor to continue the hard work of ministering, bearing burdens, exhorting, comforting, and more. Don’t believe the lie that you can do church alone with these celebrities or that you don’t need a local body or that theology is a job best done in isolation or that your local pastor is only a fill-in or an add-on to the real pastors. You belong to a local body. And that weak and sometimes unsophisticated and sometimes clumsy, and sometimes corny, but always faithful man is a better pastor for you than all those super names combined.

Sincerely,
A local pastor

On November 11, 2019 By Uri Brito In Podcast Like

Episode 68, KC Podcast, Abraham Kuyper and Lectures on Calvinism with Jesse Sumpter

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:56 — 32.0MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | RSS

Abraham Kuyper’s most concise work is entitled Lectures on Calvinism which were lectures delivered at Princeton in 1898. Little did Kuyper know just how much these lectures would shape Calvinist thought to this very day. Kuyperian Commentary decided to dedicate the month of October to Abraham Kuyper and his famous work. Our very own Jesse Sumpter took on the task to summarize the chapters of this work by providing the central features of each section and adding his own observations. The end result is six fine articles focusing on Kuyper’s views on Science, Sphere Sovereignty, Election, Culture, and more.

This is a great interview to send to a friend who you think would benefit from a synopsis of the work of this Reformed giant.

You can find Jesse’s articles here.

On November 1, 2019 By Uri Brito In Theology Like

Why We Need All Saints’ Day

Robert Jenson argues that theology is “the church’s enterprise and the only church conceivably in question is the unique and solitary church of the creeds.”[1] That is to say, doing theology has boundaries. To study the Bible and God we must have creedal presuppositions. We affirm God is the Creator of Heaven and Earth. We believe in the Communion of Saints. If a church abandons these central ideas she is doing theology in vain. She forsakes the hermeneutic necessary to think about God properly.

This is All Saints’ Day. As we celebrate the great actors in God’s history/play, we are celebrating men and women who did theology in the context of the holy, catholic, and apostolic church. They were not isolationists, they did not drink of the wine of the individualist, but rather they discovered that studying the Scriptures happened most effectively when there was proper accountability, faithful ministers, and pure worship.

Part of this profound inability to do theology ecclesiastically stems from our evangelical distaste for anything that is old. I have often said that most evangelicals believe church history began when Billy Graham was born. I exaggerate to make the point that we are untrained in the ancient. We don’t read our forefathers. We don’t relish their words. Therefore, we keep innovating worship, adding our human ingenuity to church methodologies, always trying to outdo the next local assembly in gadgets and lights. And the church keeps losing; losing the youth, losing our identity, losing our history, and losing our Gospel.

For this reason, we need All Saints’ Day! We need it to remind us that we come from a long line of faithful travelers “tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection.” We need it to remember we come from a long line of interpreters. We need it to do theology well. Our history is not a beginning history, but one that has begun long ago. We follow in their train; a noble army of men and boys, the matron and the maid. We continue their journey to that eternal city. We do theology in unison.

Happy All Saints’ Day!

On October 24, 2019 By Uri Brito In Theology Like

Reformation Myths, Part 2

In the first post, we dealt with two myths. First, the myth that the Reformers did not care about the outward unity of the Church, and second, the myth that the Reformers wanted each individual Christian to read the Bible on his own and interpret the Bible on his own. In this final post, I will offer two additional myths. We cannot detail all the various myths surrounding Reformational theology, but we will be content with these four.

The third myth is that the Reformers invented the idea of predestination. The Reformers certainly taught the idea of predestination, but they certainly did not invent the idea of predestination. Augustine many centuries earlier in response to the heretic, Pelagius, had a very developed theology of predestination. Augustine wrote:

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On October 22, 2019 By Uri Brito In Theology Like

Reformation Myths, Part 1

Reformation Sunday is coming! Thanks to the vast availability of theological material on-line, the Reformed faith has become familiar furniture in the evangelical house. Still, Reformed theology can be very divisive. A quick search through on-line debates will produce a plethora of healthy and detrimental interactions between Reformed and non-Reformed. Our calling as Christians is to strive towards like-mindedness (Jn. 17) with the non-Reformed, but this does not mean that we ought to strive towards like-mindlessness. The call to unity is a call for us to dialogue with other Trinitarians with an open Bible and a humble spirit. ^a. To begin this conversation we need to clear away misunderstandings; to clear away the myths concerning the Reformation. It is my humble opinion that the greatest expression of Trinitarian orthodoxy in the world today is found in the Reformed faith. Explaining precisely what this great tradition desired to do will help us ground ourselves in the Reformation’s conviction that the Scriptures are our highest authority in life.

Critics have developed many myths about the 16^th century Reformation. Ironically, the critics would not have the privilege and liberty to express their criticisms if it had not been for the Reformation. They persist nevertheless. We will examine four of these myths in the next couple of posts.

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