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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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On February 3, 2022 By In Culture, Discipleship, Family and Children, Men, Wisdom

Sexual Mission

Sexual restraint in our Western culture is not a virtue. To deny your urges for sexual expression is, at the least, a passé morality of a puritanical by-gone era or, at most, abusive. Sexual expression is practically a sacred right, codified by law-making bodies and upheld by the courts under the constitutional privilege of “right to privacy.” Even so-called conservatives become libertarian when it comes to questions of sexual morality. What people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms or how they want to identify themselves sexually should be up to them, and no one should be able to say anything negative about them or deny them any privileges that those who live out “traditional sexual morality” enjoy. This lack of personal and authoritative discipline seems fine until you are dealing with sexually transmitted infections, rampant illegitimacy, homosexuals demanding to be “married,” and Johnny proclaiming himself a female so that he can shower with the girls whom he recently beat in some athletic competition.

Our sexual lives are not private. They are a part and parcel to the world-building, dominion project that God gave us as his image from the beginning. For this reason, they are public; not in the sense of being open to voyeurs, but rather in the sense of having public ramifications. Our sexual lives are created to serve our mission as humanity. When unrestrained by that context, sexual expression becomes bondage to sin leading to death. For this reason, God has called us to discipline our sexual appetites.

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On January 27, 2022 By In Discipleship, Wisdom

Self-Discipline: No Pain. No Gain.

We are living in an ever-increasing fragile world. Many in our society are not tough-minded or self-disciplined anymore. They are slaves to the comforts of their own minds and desires. The origins of this problem are many. Parents have coddled children, not allowing them to face any sort of discomfort, always rescuing them immediately when they express pain, giving into their every desire, and certainly not painfully challenging their children in any way. They let them fall to pieces and are “understanding,” and, consequently, they never learn any sort of mental toughness. If someone disagrees with them, challenges their view of the world, they become “Karens,” yelling and screaming and seeking to eliminate the one who is making them uncomfortable, making the entire world a safe space. Institutions have kowtowed to these adult-sized infants and institutionalized this mental bubble-wrap. These undisciplined minds can’t face the challenges of the real world. Because of this, they will eventually be crushed, whether through the weight of reality that they can’t control, or they will implode because they are ticking timebombs of fear, anger, and discontentment. Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt have documented and evaluated these phenomena in their book The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up A Generation For Failure.

God has called us, in one sense, to be anti-fragile, which means that he wants us to grow up and be able to handle the challenges he puts before us. If we are to accomplish the mission of dominion, he has given us, there must be some degree of anti-fragility that comes through self-discipline.

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On January 7, 2022 By In Discipleship, Theology

Jesus’ Baptism & Ours

If we would not be too proud to admit it, many of us American Protestants are scared of water. Whenever people start talking about what happens in baptism instead of what doesn’t happen in baptism, many of us start twisting in our seats. Images of superstitious priestcraft and mechanical guarantees of salvation start to swirl through our heads, and we have violent reactions like any good Protestant.

Some of us have seen people presume upon God because they have been baptized. That kind of abuse of baptism has caused us to go to the opposite extreme and reject any effect of baptism at all. Besides that, we know that God wouldn’t use water on our bodies to do anything substantive in regards to our salvation. That all happens directly by the Holy Spirit without any sort of means.

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On December 16, 2021 By In Discipleship, Wisdom

Discipline Is Freedom

“People look for the shortcut. The hack. And if you came here looking for that: you won’t find it. The shortcut is a lie. The hack doesn’t get you there. And if you want to take the easy road, it won’t take you to where you want to be: Stronger. Smarter. Faster. Healthier. Better. Free. To reach goals and overcome obstacles and become the best version of you possible will not happen by itself. It will not happen cutting corners, taking shortcuts, or looking for the easy way. There is no easy way. There is only hard work, late nights, early mornings, practice, rehearsal, repetition, study, sweat, blood, toil, frustration, and discipline. Discipline. There must be discipline. Discipline: the root of all good qualities. The driver of daily execution. The core principle that overcomes laziness and lethargy and excuses. Discipline defeats the infinite excuses that say: not today, not now, I need a rest, I will do it tomorrow. What’s the hack? How do you become stronger, smarter, faster, healthier? How do you become better? How do you achieve true freedom? There is only one way. The way of discipline.” (Willink, Jocko. Discipline Equals Freedom: Expanded Edition. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2020)

This may be something of the wisdom of the sons of the east and Egypt (1Kg 4.30). I don’t know the status of Jocko’s relationship with Christ, but much of what he says here lines up with the picture of the life of discipline that Solomon paints for us in Proverbs.

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On December 9, 2021 By In Counseling/Piety, Discipleship, Wisdom

All Hat And No Cowboy

In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.

~Proverbs 14.23

Originally, the cowboy hat was made to be functional for those who spent long days in the sun working cattle. The wide brim protected the head from the sun’s rays. Eventually, that rim was turned upward on the sides so that the swinging of a rope would not be impeded or knock the hat off. The pinch at the top of the hat made the hat easier to grip.

As with many articles of clothing, fashion followed function. People who have romantic visions about cowboy life, love country music, or like the style of headwear incorporate the cowboy hat into their wardrobe. The hat says “cowboy,” but they ain’t no cowboys. Real cowboys have a saying for this: “He’s all hat and no cowboy,” or “All hat, no cattle.” For all of you city slickers out there, this means that a person is all talk and no action.

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On December 2, 2021 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Hands On Wisdom

“The sluggard buries his hand in the dish and will not even bring it back to his mouth.”

~Proverbs 19.24

The image is a comical one. A platter of food rests in the middle of the table. If the dish to which Solomon refers is a common one for that day, it doesn’t have any sides to negotiate. It is not a bowl that one would have to reach into and pull out of. Those at the table could simply reach and retrieve food with a minimal amount of effort, scraping it to themselves if they had to. Here is this man who has exerted just enough effort to get his hand to the plate of food, buries his hand in the food, but now he has neither the will nor the energy to bring it back to his mouth. All that he needs to sustain him and bring him joy is literally at his fingertips (actually, all over his fingertips), but his torpor keeps him from it. He will starve even though everything he needs is easily accessible.

He started the whole arduous process of eating, but he didn’t have the energy to finish it. Not finishing what one starts is the way of the fool. Solomon characterizes this as having a “slack hand” in Proverbs 10.4 He puts his hand to something, he takes hold of a commitment and, therefore, a responsibility, but then he lets it go before the job is complete. Maybe he had good intentions. He made commitments. He may have even been excited at first about what he was going to do. His hand might have been the fastest to get to the dish, but he quit on the project as quickly as he started.

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On November 24, 2021 By In Discipleship, Wisdom

Own It!

Once upon a time in first-century Israel, ten virgin young ladies were excited about attending a wedding. They didn’t know exactly when the bridegroom was coming, so they had to make adequate preparations for their waiting time. Five of these young ladies wisely worked diligently to prepare for any length of time that the bridegroom would delay. Whenever he came, they would be ready to go into the wedding feast. The other five young ladies foolishly didn’t work diligently but assumed everything would work itself out.

As the time of absence of the bridegroom lengthened, the inadequate preparation of the five foolish young ladies became evident. They were running out of supplies. They asked the five wise young ladies to share what they had. The five wise young ladies told them that their foolish lack of preparation put no obligations upon them to give what they had collected in their wisdom. The foolish five need to go to the market to restock.

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On November 18, 2021 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Ant Wisdom

The wisdom that Solomon desires for his son is the wisdom that works. Wisdom worked from the beginning creating and ordering the world (Pr 3.19-20; 8.22-31). As the image of Wisdom, man is a worker, creating, ordering, and bringing productivity within the creation over which God set him to rule. We are world-makers, beginning with ordering the plot of creation that is uniquely ours–our own persons–and extending that dominion to wherever God grants us responsibility and authority.

God has created and commanded us to work. As Solomon’s son is moving into his maturity, the kingly stage of his life, Solomon is concerned that he understands his responsibilities as a worker and the tempting threats he will face as he fights the post-fall creation. Sin not only made the creation outside of man resistant to his dominion activity, but sin has also twisted man as a worker. We fight the curse of sin without and within.

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