Kuyperian, Author at Kuyperian Commentary

On February 23, 2015 By Kuyperian In Theology Like

Jesus and the Sea: A Narratological Understanding of Evil and its Evaporation

Guest Post by John Howell

In ancient literature, the sea is at times an image used to depict chaos and evil. The ancients, in common with their predecessors, had a hard time justifying and understanding the dark that seemed to exist inappropriately in their world. The Sea was a powerful and mysterious thing, completely out of human control. The great armies of the most powerful rulers on earth were powerless and themselves at the mercy of the sea. It was thought that monsters lived there and great storms could come out of nowhere, seemingly under the command of the gods, and swallow the largest and best equipped of ships, or entire fleets. Every great people tells of their difficulties with the sea. From the mighty Egyptians of ancient times to our own Gulf Coast in recent years, it is known that the sea is powerful to destroy any who are too close or too comfortable. It is vast and even with modern technology and incredible amount of focus on it, the sea is still as much a mystery and out of human control as it was tens of thousands of years ago. Mankind is no match for the sea.

The Christian story is one full of this imagery. In the opening scene of Genesis there is nothing but the sea and the Spirit of God “moving over the waters” (Genesis 1:2). God’s power is displayed when he, with just a word, places the mighty sea within its boundaries therefore creating land. This is a reoccurring praise of God’s power and authority in Scripture as seen in Job 38:10, Proverbs 8:29 and Psalm 104:9. God is Lord of the sea. He alone has established its limits and he alone has authority over it.

The Exodus narrative acknowledges this with powerful and dramatic displays. The first plague in Egypt is one such example, Exodus 7. The mighty and life-giving Nile was the domain of Hapi, a favored god of the Egyptians. He was responsible for the waters flowing and bring the soil enriching silt every year. The annual flooding was known as the “arrival of Hapi”. He was, at a time in Egypt’s history known as the creator of all things. The Nile was turned to blood by the God of Israel as a direct overthrowing of Hapi from his place of authority. Even the god of the Nile, the loved and worshiped, Hapi, was not able to control the sea. This plague demonstrates that Yahweh alone is Lord. Indeed all the plagues of Exodus were direct challenges to and victories over the major deities of Egyptian culture.

The Red Sea would be a dead-end, resulting in death and misery, for any who found themselves between it and a vengeful and pursuing Egyptian army. The Israelites themselves saw their own death sentence as they stood before the waves of the sea, “they became very frightened” (Exodus 14:10), and they cried out to Moses, “Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” God was victorious over Hapi, he had demonstrated his authority over the Nile. What now of this enormous sea that expanded out before them? We know the story and indeed it is repeated and re-imagined all throughout the rest of Scripture. God has Moses raise his staff and the waters part before the people allowing them to cross unharmed. The Egyptians do not have the same experience, they are swallowed up by the deep as God brings the waters down upon them. It was believed by the Egyptians that Pharaoh was a god, yet he was not able to safely pass through, nor deliver his mighty army. He was no match for the sea, vs. 28.

There is a story about Jesus and the sea. His disciples are fishing and a storm breaks out over them suddenly. The storm was causing water to fill the boat and fear grips the disciples. They seem to be angry with Jesus who is sleeping, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” (Matthew 4:38) Jesus tells the storm to ““Hush, be still”. And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm.”, vs. 39. The disciples were afraid of the storm, and who could blame them? What is interesting is that they were more afraid once all was calm. For it is then they realized that they had with them in their boat one who could command and control the sea, “Who is this?”. But the story of Jesus and the sea does not end there.

Elsewhere in the New Testament the mission of Jesus is described as an Exodus. Paul teaches this idea in Ephesian, Romans, I Corinthians, Titus, his letters to Timothy and even in Philemon. The author of Hebrews as well conveys that Jesus is a better Moses, Hebrews 3. Jesus delivers all Peoples, not just those of Israel. The Gentiles were in need of exodus from the bondage of their idolatry, and the Jews were in need of liberation from their worship of the Law as that which could make them God’s possession. Paul argues this in his letter to the Romans, chapter 3. Jesus would do more than deliver from political oppression and slavery, he would make all the nations free from sin and death. If death itself were to be defeated, then so also would all the lesser evil powers of the world. If he were to defeat death, then what would follow would be the obedience of the nations, Romans 1:1-5.

Jesus himself would enter the sea. He played this out with his own baptism and his time in the wilderness. As Israel went through the sea and then spent forty years wandering, so Jesus went through the waters of his baptism and into temptation, Matthew 3. It is on the cross that Jesus faced the great sea, evil itself. All of its fury and terror, injustice, betrayal, misery and death would come against Jesus as a great wave, smashing and breaking him. It did not hold back, it did its worse. The broken and bloody body of a would be King, washed lifeless upon the shore as so many before him. It seemed as though the sea would always be a scourge to humanity and a chaos to insult and denounce God’s authority and justice.

In his Gospel, John tells the story of Jesus and his ministry in a series of sections. These sections are to be seen as “days” of a week to make a point that Jesus is the means through which a new creation is coming. God’s new age of salvation has finally appeared. According to John, Jesus is laid in the tomb, he rest on the Sabbath. The week is over, ending in the tragic death of the one who would be both a new Adam and the Creator of a new world. John 20 is one of the most exciting texts in all of literature, for here John reveals that though one week has ended, a new one has begun. On the “first day of the week”, vs.1, it is discovered that the body of Jesus is not in the tomb. When the disciples are told this they run to the empty grave site to be met by an Angel who tells them that Jesus has risen. Jesus later on appears before them. Every one of the Gospels tell of Jesus eating and feeding, teaching and praying, appearing to a few on the road or even to a group of over 500 at once, I Corinthians 15:6. The phrase in John 20, “the first day of the week”, is to point us forward. The new world has come. Each of the Gospel writers invites regardless of where (or when) one may be, to join them in the new age, a world that has come as a result of the apocalyptic event(s) known as the ministry, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Jesus has come and since he has risen nothing has ever been the same. The world, as it was known before him, has ended.

This brings us back to the sea. In John’s Revelation he tells of a new heavens and a new earth. The prophet Isaiah also tells of this (Isaiah 65:17). Like Isaiah, John’s vision of the new world is of a world very different from the old. Isaiah says that there will be no more weeping or infant death. There will be long life for most people. A world of justice and plenty, without calamity or famine. All will be as God originally intended for his world. In accord with Isaiah, John simply says,

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.” Revelation 21:1

No longer any sea. Other translations say, “the sea was no more”. When one observes how the image of the sea is used in the biblical narrative, what John is saying here is extraordinary. It has been demonstrated that in John 20 Jesus is the one through whom a new creation week has begun and that week has not ended. He is currently active in his mission, which is directly stated in Revelation 21:5, “Behold, I am making all things new”! The New heavens and New earth are being created now as Jesus is reigning from the throne of God. This new creation will be a place where, upon its completion, there will be no sea, evil will be evaporated from God’s good creation once and for all. The sea with all its chaos, terror and monsters, the sea that drowned the Son, has itself been swallowed up in his victorious resurrection. It is being evaporated from the earth through the activity of Jesus as King.

The sea is no more. What does this mean for his Spirit filled people? They too have come through the waters of baptism and now find themselves in the wilderness of a broken world. The Gospel is about the justice and power of God through the reign of Christ over the nations (Romans 1:5, 16&17). How does the power and the justice of God, revealed within the Gospel, go forth and do its work? It works through his obedient people. The Church has been given the very presence of God. The Shekinah that led the former slaves of Egypt through their wilderness now inhabits the Israel of God as they are sent into theirs (see John 17:22). Since the victory of Jesus, evil and death have no authority here. Fear and lack of faith must be cast away, since the saints are set apart as ones sent to complete the work of the King. An evaporating and diminishing sea seems to convey that Christ is working through his people to subject all authorities and powers, both earthly and spiritual, to himself (see I Corinthians 15:24-28). When the sea rages and floods communities and even a society, the faithful are called and equipped to stem the tide. They are the ones who are called to stand between an oppressive authority and defenseless people. They are the ones who are called to feed the hungry and poor, clothing them with all they have. They are the ones who must stand and demonstrate the liberty and beauty of God’s Law as the standard for all human societies for the civil government, Church, family and the individual. There exists a power and a liberation in the truth of the Gospel of King Jesus, the good news that his Kingdom has come. It is a Kingdom that is everlasting and will never be defeated (Daniel 7:14). In his Kingdom the sea is no more.

John Howell lives in Clearwater Florida with his beautiful wife Jillian and their three year old son Elijah William. He is a member of Grace Church of Dunedin, where he serves as a Deacon, Director of Connections and most recently, Pastoral Assistant. John has a passion to preach and demonstrate the Gospel: the good news of the Kingdom come in Jesus Christ. Article originally appeared here.

On February 21, 2015 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Biblical Horizons Complete Set -ALL CONFERERENCES (1991-2014) 50% OFF!!

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Biblical Horizons 1994 Conference – Daniel and Zechariah

Biblical Horizons 1995 Conference – Prophecy and Society

Biblical Horizons 1996 Conference – Doorways and Passages

Biblical Horizons 1997 Conference – Mark, Hebrews, and Scapegoating

Biblical Horizons 1998 Conference – The Psalter

Biblical Horizons 1999 Conference – Preterist Eschatology

Biblical Horizons 2000 Conference – Genesis

Biblical Horizons 2001 Conference – The Levites and Music

Biblical Horizons 2002 Conference – The Inspection of Jealousy

Biblical Horizons 2003 Conference – Modernism and Postmodernity

Biblical Horizons 2004 Conference – The Mission of God in History

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Biblical Horizons 2014 Conference – Sacrifice and Clothing

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On February 3, 2015 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Theologizing on Pipe-Smoking with Joffre Swait

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On January 31, 2015 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Wendell Berry: Standing By Words

“In order for a statement to be complete and comprehensible, three conditions are required:

1.) It must designate its object precisely.

2.) Its speaker must stand by it: must believe it, be accountable for it, be willing to act on it.

3.) This relation of speaker, word, and object must be conventional; the community must know what it is.

These are still the assumptions of private conversations…We assume, in short, that language is communal, and that its purpose is to tell the truth.”

–Wendell Berry, “Standing By Words”<>mobi online раскрутка а этапы

On January 23, 2015 By Kuyperian In Culture, Politics Like

Federal Liberty: The Importance of the Dutch Example

By guest contributor Bruce P. Frohnen[1]

Conservatives to a significant degree are defined by their respect for historical origins. In the American context this has meant recognizing the importance of a tradition with its roots in England, but also further back, and further East. To put it in terms reminiscent of Russell Kirk, the religion of Jerusalem, the philosophy of Athens, the law of Rome, and the common law culture of London all were critical to the development of the American political tradition, of our constitution of government, and of our way of life.

There is one source of our tradition, however, which too often is overlooked, or at any rate minimized. If one were to place it in a particular city, it probably would be The Hague. Capital of the Netherlands, this unusual little city is, and was, the capital of a highly unusual little country which for a century or two had an outsized impact on the world, and on American settlers in particular.

Of course, any college or even high school course in American history should (though probably no longer does) mention the fact that many of the Puritans who would settle New England first fled English suppression of their Calvinist religion by going to Holland. They did not like what they found there (lax public laws and lax morals). But they continued to be influenced by the political and religious thinking and lived examples that had been shaping English Calvinism and Calvinist politics for some time.

Of course, Calvinism generally is identified with the Swiss city-state of Geneva. But that city existed, politically, as a kind of hothouse flower, protected for years by the presence of Calvin himself (though that did not prevent significant problems) and, more important, the strength and isolation of the Swiss confederation. The Netherlands, on the other hand, was a nation born in the crucible of sustained conflict. The Dutch people over generations developed a pluralist society and a kind of federal government sufficient to win independence from the Spanish monarch while retaining local freedoms and significantly divergent, traditional ways of life.

The Dutch republic had only a relatively short time as a major power and example of good government, before descending for some time into a rather petty empire seemingly motivated only by greed. But beginning in the 16^th and going into the early 18^th century, the Netherlands provided examples of ordered liberty, as well as practically grounded theories underlying good government. Here a people numerous and organized enough to constitute a nation gave perhaps the first viable alternative to the centralizing monarchies then solidifying power throughout Europe. Here an early modern people came to grips with the intrinsically plural structure of society in such a way as to win their independence as a nation without losing their religious identities or local rights of self-government.

The great theorist of this time and place was Johannes Althusius. Born in what is now Germany, Althusius identified closely with his fellow Calvinists in the Netherlands. He understood, in part from simple observation of lived examples all around him that people do not exist as individuals. We all are, in our essence, members of various communities. Where in most early modern states monarchs had set about destroying most of the communities in which people become fully human and live out their lives, the Dutch never fully succumbed to the power of any single monarch. Their “petty” republics and principalities hung on tenaciously to their particular liberties and ways of life. Split by religious differences, the Dutch developed somewhat (note the lack of emphasis, here) more toleration of religious dissent than most other countries. But where they truly showed their strength was in their recognition and practice of what Calvinists in the New World would term “federal liberty.”

Federal liberty is the freedom to live according to one’s covenants. Daniel J. Elazar explained federal liberty as a kind of correction to modern rights theory. We must recognize for every person, he argued,

“the right and obligation to covenant, which is simultaneously both right and obligation. The exercise of all rights is through the covenants freely entered into by humans. Every individual human and every human community and polity lives within this network of covenants and only can find expression for rights within a network of covenants. Humanity is the sum of its obligations and rights, not to the state but to a transcendent and mutually accepted morality. Humans are free because only the free can be obligated to be moral and just and only by being obligated to strive to be moral and just do they find expression of their inalienable rights.”

When the Calvinists of the seventeenth century formed their conception of federal liberty they were not concerned primarily with discussions of individual rights. But they were concerned to establish the limits of legitimate power in the face of monarchs hostile to their religion, traditions, and ways of life. Those powers were limited, they claimed, by the duty of rulers to respect the variety of covenants into which their people had entered. These binding agreements, including God as a guaranteeing witness, bound individual persons to local communities rooted in family, in religion, in geography, and in public connections (e.g. rights to vote for local leaders) that we today can only understand as political. A monarch seeking to stamp out these communities broke his own covenant with God and, if he persisted over time, forfeited his right to the loyalty and support of his people.

King Philip of Spain reached this point with his Dutch subjects. The Dutch people organized themselves into an alliance of communities under the leadership of “William the Silent,” whose constitutional role and power over the whole nation was distinctly limited.

The result in the Netherlands was one of the very few victories against the drive to royal absolutism. The formation of their country was the result of a willingness to build from the bottom up—that is, from the great variety of small republics and principalities, with roots going back centuries, to which the people had developed strong attachments—up to the provincial and only from there any national level.

The Calvinists of New England would develop their own communities in the covenantal fashion practiced in the Netherlands. Their habit of forming church covenants was rooted in Calvinism and in the political circumstances of their own time and place—including the circumstances presented by English hostility toward Calvinist communities. But the example of the Netherlands would show how these covenants might be built upon to forge further, higher covenants—such as that joining several smaller communities into the “federation” of what would become Connecticut—or that joining the larger, provincial communities of the various states into the decidedly limited federal government.

Bruce P. Frohnen is Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University College of Law and the author of Virtue and the Promise of Conservatism: The Legacy of Burke and Tocqueville, The New Communitarians and The Crisis of Modern Liberalism and editor (with George Carey) of Community and Tradition: Conservative Perspectives on the American Experience.

[1] This article originally appeared at The Imaginative Conservative and is re-posted here with permission

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On January 21, 2015 By Kuyperian In Scribblings Like

Rediscovering the Sacraments

If ever there was a topic that is undeservedly neglected in the modern evangelical and Reformed world, it is surely the doctrine of the sacraments. This is surprising, to say the least, since Scripture teaches that in baptism we are united with Christ in his death and resurrection (Romans 6), and Jesus himself promised to give his flesh as bread for the life of the world (John 6). Perhaps bread, wine, and water are a bigger deal than we might have thought.When something so significant is neglected, that neglect must be addressed.

That’s why we’re delighted to be welcoming Peter Leithart to London later this Spring to speak at two conferences on the subject of the sacraments.

The first conference is for the whole church, and takes place on Saturday 28 March. Here, Peter will take us back to the Scriptures, and show us what the Bible really teaches about Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Could we be missing something very significant? Is it possible that rediscovering the Bible’s teaching about the sacraments could help us grow in personal godliness and Christian maturity, deepen the relationships within our churches, and strengthen our evangelistic witness to the world?

The second conference is aimed particularly at Ministers, church leaders, and theological students, and is on Monday 30 March. On this occasion, Peter will be be considering this topic in some depth, exploring its biblical basis, theological contours, and connections with other systematic loci such as soteriology, eschatology, mission and ecclesiology.

For more information, please visit www.northlondonchurch.org.

Guest Post by Rev Dr Steve Jeffery, Minister at Emmanuel Evangelical Church, London, England (Blog, Facebook, Twitter)<>

On December 30, 2014 By Kuyperian In Culture Like

Unbroken: Broken Storytelling. Read the Book. See the Movie To End All Wars.

Guest post by Brian Godawa

The true story of Louis Zamperini, a steel-willed Italian American who survived atrocities of WWII, including a plane crash, being adrift at sea for 45 days, and unspeakable brutality at the hands of Japanese captors in a POW camp.

Read the book. I will start with my punchline. I will give away my conclusion. I cannot be more emphatic. Read the book.

This is not to say that the movie, Unbroken is a bad movie. It is not. It is only half a movie. It is a set up without a pay off. It is a well-written, well-directed and well-acted half-story that views like an exciting build up to a powerful third act, and like a tease, is cut off before it can end, leaving you unsatisfied. It is a story about survival and the triumph of the human will without any real soul to it.

The story begins with a young Louis in his bombardier position on a WWII plane running missions. Act One flashes back to his youth, where we see Louis comes from a religious Italian family. He is a troublemaker, whose brother finds an outlet for Louis’ restlessness in running. This running ultimately takes him to the 1932 Olympics in Berlin, where Louis runs an impressive, though not winning race.

The War however, stops Louis’ dreams, and he finds himself on a bombing squad that crash lands in the ocean and sets him and two other survivors adrift for a record setting 45 days before capture by the Japanese.

The last half of the movie is then about his will to survive the brutality of a particular Japanese POW guard nicknamed, “The Bird.” We see Louis’ will standing strong against a truly barbaric and evil Bird, who seeks to break him by beating him into the ground.

The theme of the movie is about the unbeatable human will to survive the evil men do to one another. Early on, Louis’ brother gives him a slogan that is reiterated later, “If you can take it, you can make it.” Another phrase shows up, “A moment of pain is worth a lifetime of glory.” And of course there are some amazing moments of pain indeed in this festival of suffering, that will bring you to tears, as Louis defies his captors in will if not in actual behavior.

The problem with it is that survival is as deep as it keeps. Mere survival and the power of the will. This is a shallow and unsatisfying story that lacks real transcendence of meaning. Which is such a shame because it sets up for a powerful redemption of the hero, and it even points in that direction, but we are left starving for that redemption, because it is “off-screen” and after the movie is over in a mere title card.

Jolie sets us up for the redemption that Louis is to have when in his life as a young child, we hear a sermon of a pastor preaching that “God sent his son, Jesus Christ not to wage war, but to forgive. To love thine enemy.” The midpoint transformation of the hero even occurs, when on the open sea, about to die, Louis says a prayer to God, “If you see me through this, I swear I’ll dedicate my whole life to you.”

Jolie does a fantastic job of setting up the feel of the first half of the story of Unbroken the book. But the absolute POWER of Unbroken is not in the will to survive, but in the will to forgive. That is the second half of the story she cut out. Zamperini went home to America and began to plot how to go back to Japan and kill The Bird. But when he became a Christian at a Billy Graham Crusade, he transformed and went back to forgive the Bird and the others. It was not until Zamperini was broken by God that he found his redemption. Jolie puts this on a title card at the end, “Louis did make good on his promise to serve God. He found that the way forward was not revenge, but forgiveness.” And it tells us he went back to forgive his captors.

Sadly, the very heart of what makes Unbroken so powerful a story of redemption is to Jolie, a mere postscript.

There is even a scene in the film where Louis takes on himself a beating in order to protect a fellow prisoner from being beaten. And this is a beautiful moving example of self sacrifice. But in the end, the only spirituality that is understood comes from the mouth of the praying religious pilot who, when asked by Louis whether there is some kind of grand plan by God, replies, “You just go on living, the best you can, have some fun along the way. And when you die, you meet an angel who tells you all the answers to your questions about life.” This seems more like the uneducated lack of understanding spirituality by the writers and director than anything an actual Christian would say or believe.

Look, I know how impossible it is to make a movie of a whole book. You have to cut a lot out and you can’t get it all on the screen. And I know that Zamperini, before his death, gave his blessing on the movie because he wanted it to reach a wider audience. But from a strictly professional storytelling perspective, Jolie and her writers (otherwise very competent screenwriters) set up a spiritual story that they didn’t pay off with redemption. They left it at mere survival and the will, a rather shallow and empty story without transcendence. And in that sense, I don’t expect secular screenwriters to care about transcendence. They don’t believe in true transcendence. They believe that survival is the strongest human urge, because they themselves do not understand the power and beauty of spiritual redemption and sin atonement. They are like Louis before his redemption. They are unbroken – and unforgiven.

I wrote about this sad phenomenon of secular storytellers eviscerating the faith and spiritual element of movies about Christians. In my book, Word Pictures, I list off nine popular movies made by secular filmmakers, who either ignored, or cut out the faith of the heroes whose stories were intimately driven by their spiritual faith. Hotel Rwanda, The Pursuit of Happyness, Becoming Jane, Anna and the King, Pocahontas, The New World, Walk the Line, Hardball, and Valkerie. Some of them, like Unbroken, may have at best hinted at the faith.

I won’t attack or accuse these filmmakers of malicious motives. They may have had them, they may have not. But I certainly understand why they would subvert those stories and spin them to communicate their own humanistic worldview of self-salvation through good works or other. Secular storytellers do not believe in transcendence, so when they see the faith of these people, they simply are blind to its power. They must of necessity reinterpret that spiritual transcendence through their own paradigm of humanistic immanence.

They have no transcendence in their lives, so their stories communicate no transcendence.

Unbroken, the movie? Good, but falling way short of great storytelling. I would rather you read the book Unbroken. It will change your life.

And if you want to watch a true story about spiritual transcendence, and the power of forgiveness in a Japanese POW camp, watch To End All Wars, starring Kiefer Sutherland, on Amazon Movies On Demand. It’s got everything the movie Unbroken has about survival in suffering injustice. But it also has on-screen what Unbroken doesn’t: redemption, atonement, transcendence.

Brian Godawa is an American screenwriter and author. He wrote the screenplay for To End All Wars and The Visitation, and co-wrote Change Your Life! with Adam Christing.

Originally appeared at Godawa.com<>

On December 25, 2014 By Kuyperian In Theology Like

Mary – God’s Glory and the Female Body

Annunciazione, Matthias Stom

God could have given Jesus a body in any way that He chose. It is important to consider this, and to believe that the way He chose for Jesus to come into the world as a human man has great significance for us as women. Mary has been referred to as the ark of the new covenant; her womb becomes the holy place where God chooses to dwell and to come near to His people. God honors the female body by creating in it a place for glory to dwell. When he first created woman, He had this plan in mind.

As I was considering Mary’s role in the incarnation of Jesus as is seen in Luke 1, I kept thinking of Jesus saying, “I go to prepare a place for you…” in assuring and comforting His followers that there was a special place, a beautiful home especially prepared for them. It is beautiful to consider that when God prepared a place for Jesus – a special place, a beautiful home, a secret, glorious, mysterious dwelling place – He lovingly chose the female body to be that place. In our culture, for years and years, there has been shame upon shame heaped on the female body, but this is not from God.

God, from the very beginning, honored our bodies by creating them female, able to conceive and carry and bring forth life. Each one of us walks around with a hidden picture of the ark of the covenant – by God’s design. We are walking pictures of the hidden glory of God. Treasure your body, treasure your femininity, your sexuality that God has given with great purpose to bring pleasure to Himself and to reveal Himself to the world. Whether or not we have ever had a child, ever been married, our physical bodies are glorious pictures of the holiness of God.

Regarding Mary specifically, it is wonderful to look at her response to the role that God announces to her in bringing about the incarnation of Jesus. I have always loved Mary’s words, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” I have always thought that this statement should be interpreted as a humble, sweet resignation to the hard, scary, and yet wonderful, honorable thing that God was telling her she had been chosen to do. And, I imagine, that is true. However, having been reflecting on these words more and more, I’m starting to wonder if Mary was saying, “Amen! Yes, I receive it. May it be unto me to be the ‘favored one,’ may it be true that the ‘Lord is with [me]’; let it be true that I ‘have found favor with God.’”

I think the ability to receive the blessing of the Lord takes at least as much humility as receiving hardship or suffering from His hand. May we, like Mary, have the humility to know we are not worthy of His blessing but to acknowledge that we want it and that He has the right to bestow it on us even in our unworthiness because that is what HE wants, what HE chooses. Saying, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” means having the humility to allow God to do great things in our lives that we DO NOT DESERVE as well as having the humility to allow God to do hard things in our lives.

Two questions
Are there areas in your life that you feel God has promised to bless you that you have been unwilling to receive because you feel you are not worthy (“How will this be?” Or “How can this be?”) Remember, as the angel said to Mary, “…nothing will be impossible with God.”

Would considering your femaleness as a picture of the dwelling place of God bring healing to you in any way?

A suggested application
Please consider spending time praying the words of Mary in The Magnificat during this Christmas season, asking God to allow your soul to magnify Him and to bring to mind specific ways in which He has done the following for you:
• Looked on the humble estate of his servant
• Allowing generations to call you blessed
• How he who is mighty has done great things for you
• Shown you how his name is holy
• Shown you and your generations mercy
• Shown strength with his arm
• Scattered the proud thoughts of your heart
• Brought down the mighty from their thrones
• Exalted those of humble estate
• Filled the hungry with good things
• Helped you in remembrance of his mercy
• Any other phrases of the Magnificat that jump out at you as words to speak back to God, rejoicing in God your Savior!<>mobi online

On December 17, 2014 By Kuyperian In Politics Like

“The Death of Me”

A few weeks ago I ran errands for my wife. I was in our local grocery store picking up a few essentials: 17 jars of peanut butter (we have six children), 53 bags of potato chips, and several mega-packs of diapers (two of the six children are still in diapers). In other words, an average every-other-day trip to the grocery store for the Hale family.

While on the cereal aisle I noticed a mother dealing with two unruly children. In actuality, she was the one being dealt with. The children were working her over pretty good as they fussed, fought, and carried on about something or other. I came in late so I was unclear as to what set off the uprising. The mother attempted to appease the dissidents by offering to buy them the cereal with a “free prize inside.” As I listened to her appeasement attempts I thought, “Good woman, please. Put down this uprising already. Don’t negotiate with the terrorists.” With her offer of détente clearly rejected by her offspring the mother succumbed to exasperation and exclaimed, “You kids are going to be the death of me.”

That last exclamation struck me as odd and stayed in my mind throughout the rest of my shopping trip. “Now there is a phrase you don’t hear much anymore,” was my initial thought. My next thought was (I confess) rather judgmental. “Two kids are going to be ‘the death of you?’ Two kids?!? My tenacious wife frequently takes all six of our children to the store without incident. And she has been known to add a couple of neighbor kids to the trip just because she can.” Then Philo of Alexandria’s famous quote about being kind because everyone we meet is fighting a great battle floated into my head and I confessed my judgmental attitude to the Lord. Clearly this mother was, and had been, fighting great battles for some time and was being routed quite handily in the latest skirmish.

Then I personalized her exclamation and thought about it in my own life. “You kids are going to be the death of me.” There is much truth in this rather antiquated saying. My children have been the death of me. Or to put a finer point on things, they have been the death and resurrection of me. This is exactly the way God designed my children to operate in my life. I love sleeping in a little too much and so God kills that in me by giving me infants that won’t sleep and toddlers that awake periodically with nightmares or needing to go potty. But He doesn’t leave me there. I am resurrected as someone who learns that my time — even my sleeping time — no longer belongs to me but I must share it with others so that they might have what they need. I have a love for eating out at restaurants and so God kills that in me by giving me six children so that eating out is almost always a financial impossibility. Then I am resurrected as someone who falls in love with cooking, eating at home, and looking forward to a royal feast created with two pounds of pinto beans, Jiffy cornbread mix, and a slow cooker.

In Proverbs 27:17 we hear, “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.” It is easy to read a verse like that and imagine two equally competent adults sitting around a table vigorously discussing theological points. One adult expresses a view, the other adult offers a slightly different viewpoint, and in the back and forth iron sharpens iron. Having been a parent for over 15 years I can honestly say that I never really knew what that verse meant until my wife and I had children. Children sharpen us far more — and far more often — than any of our relationships with our adult friends. Got anger issues? Rest assured, a screaming toddler or a tired 6-year-old will force those issues to the surface in a way no Bible study ever could. Got problems controlling your tongue? Try controlling it when your teenager is experimenting with the finer nuances of the rhetoric stage and you forgot to change out of your cranky pants.

Pastor Douglas Wilson pointed out in a sermon once that we pray to God for joy and God answers our prayer by enrolling us in “school of hard knocks classes” that eventually produce deep, meaningful joy, provided we stick with the classes long enough to see graduation day. But we kick against the goads of all of that and reply, “God, I prayed to you and asked for joy but my life has been a dumpster fire ever since. I didn’t mean to sign up for ‘hard knocks classes.’ I wanted to skip right to the ‘joy diploma’ at the end.” We want the diploma but we want it without the blood, sweat, and tears of going to class, learning the material, pulling all-nighters cramming for finals, and mastering skills over years of study. Eugene Peterson calls this a long obedience in the same direction and that is most certainly the way of God as He sanctifies His people.

Just like Jesus in Hebrews 12:2, the only way to the joy set before us is through enduring the cross. But the cross is never the final word in the matter. After death, resurrection. After the removal of the dross, gold. After iron has sharpened iron, a razor-sharp blade. For Christian parents, our children are the iron that God uses to run us through and bring about “the death of me.” They are the most effective means in God’s arsenal to bring about the death of all that is selfish, petty, ugly, and wicked in our lives. What God kills He also resurrects to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. The Christian parent can confidently submit to the “death of me” because he or she realizes that what awaits on the other side of that death is not “more death,” but rather resurrection life, a better life, a fuller life, and hopeful life. We will be better for it and so will our children.

—-

Derek Hale has lived all of his life in Wichita, Kansas and isn’t a bit ashamed about that fact. He and his wife Nicole have only six children – four daughters and two young sons of thunder. Derek is a ruling elder, chief musician, and performs pastoral duties at Trinity Covenant Church (CREC). Derek works for NetApp and enjoys reading, computers, exercising, craft beer, and playing and listening to music. But not all at the same time. He blogs occasionally at derekthehale.wordpress.com/.<>

On December 13, 2014 By Kuyperian In Politics Like

What are You Prepared to Do?

Guest Post by Steven Wedgeworth

The so-called “conservative” responses to the Senate torture report are now making their rounds, and they tell us quite a bit about what really matters to certain people. Thus far no one has denied that the most morally repugnant alleged practices actually took place. No one has said, “That’s crazy! We would never use rape as a weapon! We could never forcibly insert food into someone’s rectum! No way!” No. They have not said that. They have attempted to justify the practices by arguing that the practices produced important information, that the proper authorities knew about them, and that our enemies do much worse. But they are not denying those practices.

Tellingly, Dick Cheney declined to refute the charge of rectal re-hydration. He sidestepped the gravity of the question entirely by saying he had “no knowledge” of that specific practice, but then he went straight to a defense of its hypothetical use on the grounds that it would have been necessary: “What are you prepared to do to get the truth against future attacks against the United States?” It’s a good question. What are you prepared to do? Are you prepared to threaten to rape someone’s mother? Are you prepared to make that threat within a context where it is credible? Are you prepared to carry through with that threat? If the answer is NO!, which it should be, then Mr. Cheney’s justification fails.

It’s also worth pointing out that Mr. Cheney’s “rebuttal” to the Senate report actually heightens the moral culpability of the United States government, as he spends great time arguing that the President was fully aware of everything he needed to be aware of. He denies that the CIA acted alone or simply went off track. He says it was very well-executed and in line with what the authorities instructed. That might be a kind of political point scored, but for moral onlookers it makes things worse not better.

Let’s be clear about this. The “partisan” nature of the Senate report has nothing at all to do with the identification of the “techniques.” The partisan nature has to do with where the blame should be put and the level of functionality and efficiency claimed for the program. But thus far no one disputes the depraved actions used to obtain information. You cannot skip that point. Anyone who does is irresponsibly avoiding the primary moral issue.

This is actually not the first we are hearing of such practices. If this were 2007 or 2008 one might have reasonable grounds to wait for more information to come out. But the evidence has piled up since then. In fact, the making and revealing of this report was staunchly opposed by many of the defenders of the US’s torture practices. They didn’t want more information back then. But more evidence has been available for some time. Eric Fair was a party to the torturing. He has been writing about the effects torture had on him since at least 2007. On Tuesday of this week he wrote:

Today, the Senate released its torture report. Many people were surprised by what it contained: accounts of waterboardings far more frequent than what had previously been reported, weeklong sleep deprivation, a horrific and humiliating procedure called “rectal rehydration.” I’m not surprised. I assure you there is more; much remains redacted.

This also isn’t the first time defenders of torture have reserved the right to employ the most barbarous methods if necessary. John Yoo was a high-ranking legal counsel to George W. Bush, the author of the “Torture Memos,” and a principal legal architect of the policies and methods used as enhanced interrogation. In 2005, wholly in the open and with no shame, he acknowledged that crushing the testicles of a suspect’s child was within the bounds of what the United States ought to be permitted to do:

Under the logic of Deputy Assistant Attorney General Yoo’s view of presidential power, the president, as Commander in Chief, could direct the torture of a detainee’s innocent child in order to obtain his cooperation, and no law can stop him. This is no exaggeration, nor is it a proposition from which Mr. Yoo would retreat. In a December 1, 2005, debate with Notre Dame Professor Doug Cassel, Mr. Yoo stated the president could lawfully order “crushing the testicles of a person’s child”:
Mr. Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Mr. Yoo: No treaty.
Mr. Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Mr. Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.
(Reining in the Imperial Presidency pg. 117-118)

If John Yoo will publicly claim for the US the right to crush the testicles of an innocent child, then it is not at all difficult to believe that the US would threaten to rape someone’s mother. In fact, Yoo’s fiendish imagination almost makes what really happened seem a relief. At least it was only a threat. But it was a threat given in a context where it was believable and where its credibility was essential to its effectiveness.

We also have to face the reality that such torture debases and degrades the torturer along with the one being tortured. Remember Eric Fair. Or how about those lower-ranking soldiers who were arrested? Remember Lynndie England, Megan Ambuhl, Charles Graner, and others. I have no problem saying that they were, at least for a time, moral monsters. But now we have to wonder how it was that they became moral monsters. It certainly seems as if they were molded into them. And make no mistake, their lives are forever ruined. They will never recover. They will never be “normal.”

In 2008, Michael Peppard showed that female serviceman degraded themselves sexually in order to degrade Guantánamo detainees. I won’t reprint the material here, for it is truly disturbing, but those who wish to read for themselves can find it towards the bottom of this essay. This week Mr. Peppard has again written on the subject, showing how the latest Senate Report demonstrates such methods were intentional and a consistent part of the program.

So again, back to the Vice President’s question. What are you willing to do? Are you willing to crush the testicles of a young boy? Are you willing to destroy the lives of American servicemen? Are you willing for your daughter to sexually degrade herself in an attempt to obtain information that a detainee may or may not possess? What are you willing to do?

This all highlights the problem here for humans. Not for politicians. Not for abstract conversations. For humans with moral consciences responsible before a living God. There are some things that are off limits. These things are always evil. They are malum in se.

The Apostle Paul famously anticipates a certain sort of consequentialism in Rom. 3:8 saying, “And why not say, ‘Let us do evil that good may come’?—as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just.” Notice that Paul says any suggestion that he affirms such an argument is slander. If something is evil per se, then it may not be used in the service of good. That’s a basic Biblical principle. There are lots of things that are not evil per se which are still “bad” and ordinarily off-limits. The taking of human life is such an item. Murder is evil per se, but not all taking of human life is murder. Capital punishment, as well as the taking of life in defense of other life immediately threatened is not murder. But what of sexual assault? That’s what I keep coming back to. Can one engage in sexual assault in order to save a life? The question is hard to take seriously. One obvious reason is because it cannot reasonably be conceived as “necessary” to do such an act. But it’s also because sexual assault is a special kind of evil that can never be justified, not under any circumstance.

There’s a saying popular in the legal community that goes like this: “If the facts are on your side, pound the facts into the table. If the law is on your side, pound the law into the table. If neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound the table.” Conservatives right now who avoid the gravity of such immoral actions are currently pounding the table. They do not have the facts on their side. So they attack commentators. They do not even have the law on their side, certainly not the moral law of God. So they attack partisan motives or try to stir up competing emotions. They are pounding the table.

But this is a massive failure because this isn’t just an argument. We humans are not the only participants in this conversation. God is here. He is not mocked. He has eyes. He sees all. It does not matter if our enemies would have done the same thing to us. We are not judged by that standard. To suggest that the greatest existential need was to avoid the threat from those enemies is to actually miss the big picture. God is here. Fear Him.

Also, we have to remember that an immoral freedom is actually not freedom at all. It is a new kind of bondage. If we defeat our enemy only to discover that we have become very much like him, to learn that we are no longer honest and upright men, then we have not defeated the greatest enemy at all. We have succumb to his powers. To bend our wills and distort our consciences is not freedom.

What are you prepared to do? Are you prepared to sell your soul? Are you prepared to sear your conscience and forfeit your claim to justice?

And any Christian who is not worried about this fact right now needs to step away from the politics and draw near to their God.

This article was originally posted at Steven’s blog, Wedgewords.

Steven Wedgeworth is the pastor of Christ Church in Lakeland, FL. He is also a founder and general editor of The Calvinist International. A graduate of Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson, MS), a Presbyterian minister, and a classical school teacher, Steven lives in Lakeland, FL with his wife, son, and daughter.<>проверить ping а