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On April 21, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Healthy & Wealthy?

The point is, ladies and [gentlemen], that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.[1]

This was the end of the iconic cinematic speech given by Gordon Gekko at the Teldar Paper stockholders’ meeting in the 1987 film Wall Street (a film I do not recommend and have only watched this scene). Greed is considered a virtue and lauded as that which will save. With its insatiable appetite for more, its aggressive impatience, its lack of concern for others, and its myopia, greed gives its host hyper-focus and energy to seek gratification for its appetite. Greed is power, but it is a destructive power, destroying its host and everything around him.

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On April 17, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Easter: The Body Resurrected

What does the resurrection of one man have to do with the whole world? Sure, it is a spectacular event. People who die normally stay dead, so for someone to rise from the dead is extraordinary. Good for Jesus. But what does that have to do with me and the world around me? Or, to put it more crassly, why should I care?

Good questions.

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On April 16, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom, Worship

Holy Saturday: The Body Waiting

Holy Week, like the rest of the church calendar, gives us a multi-dimensional perspective on our present lives. We exist in tensions; tensions between what is already accomplished and what is yet to be accomplished, what is true but remains in a condition of relative immaturity and what will be true when God’s promises come to complete maturity in and for us. There is, for instance, one sense in which we live in a perpetual Easter. Christ is risen and ever lives to make intercession for us. He will never die again and, therefore, be raised again. Our bodies are in union with his body, so we have died and been resurrected with him (Rom 6.1-11). But there is another reality at work at the same time. Because Christ is the head of a body, the church, there is a sense in which he still suffers (Ac 9.4; Col 1.24) and waits for resurrection on the last day (1Cor 15). He moves with us through history until we come to have bodies like his glorious body (Phil 3.20-21). In union with Christ, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday are all present and continuing realities for the church as she moves through history, anticipating the resurrection of our bodies when union with our head will reach its fullest expression.

Holy Saturday is one perspective on our existence as the church in which we follow our head throughout history anticipating the resurrection. There is much to learn in the quiet stillness of Holy Saturday.

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On April 15, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Good Friday: The Body Broken

Jesus told his disciples a few times over the past several years that he would have to be delivered over to the Jewish officials who would then hand him over to the Gentiles to be crucified.  He transformed the old Passover meal into a memorial meal for his people in which he displayed and gave himself through his own broken body and shed blood in bread and wine. The disciples didn’t understand this, but for them and the rest of the world to have the life of a good, healthy, functioning body, Christ Jesus would have to suffer and die; his body would have to be broken for their bodies to be made whole. Death accompanied by the sting of sin was the fate of man, Adam, as promised by God from the beginning for his disobedience. That is, unlike the death Adam experienced in the creation of Eve when he was resurrected immediately into a greater state of glory, sin would hold him in death’s grip without resurrection.

This is Adam’s fate.

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On April 14, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom, Worship

Maundy Thursday: The Body Given

Jesus washed the feet of his disciples on the night he instituted the Lord’s Supper and gave his new commandment to love one another as he loved us. He served us, ultimately giving his body and blood so that we might be healed, which is the result of our sins forgiven, being reconciled to God, reconciled with one another, and reconciled with the non-human creation. He gave his body to be broken in death so that as we partake of the bread he proclaims to be his body, we are united with one another in his body as his body. This union created in Christ Jesus demands of each one of us that we love one another in the same way that Christ Jesus loved us. That is what it means to be a part of the body of Christ. We share his own life, which is not only the gift of individually passing from death to life and having life after this present life is over, but it is also having life with one another.

As a body we are to share a mutual love, a love that is the opposite of everything described in Prov 6.16-19. The command to love one another assumes our union with one another because the “one another” is a certain group of people, namely, the other disciples of Christ. Love nourishes and enhances the unity and health of the body, which is just the opposite of what the seven abominations do.

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On April 7, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Sowing Discord

The journey to the great Passover began as it had for hundreds of years. An individual man, family, or small band of families from a Roman province began the ascent to Jerusalem singing Psalm 120, the first of fifteen Psalms of Ascent that would end at the mountain of the Lord in worship. The Psalms of Ascent begin with a desire for peace in a world of war and move through the ebbs and flows of the journey of God’s people through history, celebrating and anticipating the promises of God in the midst of present distresses.

From north, south, east, and west Jews traveled, meeting up with other pilgrims along the way. Their bands grew larger and their voices stronger as they converged on the roads and finally at the gates of Jerusalem. Standing at the gates or inside the city, Psalm 133 is sung as the penultimate Psalm, declaring the goodness of the unity of God’s people as they have gathered as one body and one voice for one purpose: to pledge their loyalty to Yahweh their King and receive the promise of deliverance from him. The servants of Yahweh’s house are then called to lead them to the throne in Psalm 134.

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On March 31, 2022 By In Culture, Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Fleet Feet

In the second film of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight, the antagonist, the Joker, is an incomprehensible criminal. We might write the Joker off simply as a psychopath or sociopath, a man with no common human emotions or feelings that make him reluctant to do evil or feel remorse after doing so. At one level that may be true. While not feeling like you or I would feel had we done even a fraction of the evil he did, he has emotions. Those emotions are focused on doing evil. He believes that the whole world is like him. With a little push, the thin veneer of moral restraint that holds people back from the deep evil in their hearts will shatter and chaos will ensue. He calls himself an agent of chaos. He finds his purpose, joy, and short-lived satisfaction standing, somewhat peacefully, in the eye of the chaotic storms he creates. He is not a normal criminal who wants to kill and pillage for the sake of wealth or revenge. As Bruce Wayne’s butler, Alfred, tells him, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.” Some men, both individually and collectively, love evil and eagerly run toward fighting against God’s created order and creating chaos. Those men Solomon describes as having “feet that are swift to run to evil.”

In the list of six things, yes, even seven, that the Lord hates in Proverbs 6.16-19, the fifth is “feet that are swift to run to evil.” Solomon started at the head and has now reached the toe of this corrupted body. This distorted body is both the result of sin and its agent to twist the world into its image. The feet must play their part to bring to life the wicked imaginations that spring from the heart.

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On March 2, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Proud Eyes

Solomon instructs his princely son in Proverbs so that he might complete the mission of dominion given to man; namely, to form and fill the world that God gave to the stewardship of man (see Gen 1.28; Ps 115.16). This will take wisdom, the ability to see how everything should relate, and the skill to put everything in right relationship. This wisdom begins and matures in the fear of Yahweh, loving Yahweh and his discipline and zealously guarding his instruction. As the son submits to Yahweh, the mission will progress; the world will grow and come together to reach its intended purpose. If the son rebels, rejecting the wisdom of the Father, he will reap chaos and destruction, not only for himself but for the world. Adam’s story is a clear picture of this.

The seven-fold structure of the abominations in Proverbs 6.16-19 fit this theme of world-building, echoing the structure of the original week of history. However, Solomon is instructing by the contrary. If you want to know how to de-create the world, then these seven abominations will tell you. These are the sins the son must avoid.

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On February 24, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

A Healthy Appetite

In the beginning, God made us hungry. Some of the first words spoken to man were the joyful declaration of the gift of food from a loving Father: “Behold! I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food” (Ge 1.29). Our need for food is not a flaw in our design but a glorious feature. Food and our appetite for it are ever-present witnesses of our creatureliness and dependence upon our Creator. Through food, God doesn’t merely sustain our lives but gives us abundant life. Food is given for us to enjoy; not merely the myriads of tastes and textures, but because through food we have communion with God himself.

The ordination of food as communion began at the Tree of life, continued through the worship feasts of Israel (Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, New Moon, Sabbath), and is experienced now at the Lord’s Supper. History comes to an end in a feast with God. Food and drink, being a part of creation, are good. Anyone who teaches you that any food or any drink is off-limits for proper use is teaching you a demonic doctrine. Everything created by God is good and nothing to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving (1Tm 4.1-5).

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On February 17, 2022 By In Counseling/Piety, Discipleship, Men, Wisdom

Resisting Harlot Folly

Fighting sexual temptation has never been easy. There have been times in which societies such as ours helped by having and enforcing laws discouraging sexual deviancy. There were also general cultural mores that disparaged sexual immorality so great social shame was the lot of the sexually deviant. Temptations didn’t disappear, but cultural pressure at least encouraged restraint.

Studying history, you will see that these societies were few and far between. Our present Western culture is probably more in line with the way many cultures have treated sexual relations; that is, there are few cultural guards that help us with temptation. The lack of cultural sexual restraint that has ingrained itself over the past century or two combined with present-day technology has only increased temptations. I don’t think that we can say, “It is more difficult for us than it ever has been,” but the force of the battle is growing. None of this, of course, is an excuse for sexual sin. In fact, it is a call to arm ourselves all the more with the appropriate discipline to fight an enemy that is growing in strength. We must match our enemies’ strength with greater strength.

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