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On January 19, 2023 By In Culture, Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom

Authority & Authorities

“Divination is upon the lips of the king; in his judgment he does not act unfaithfully with his mouth.”

~Proverb 16.10

When I say “authority,” what images come to your mind? Those images have a great deal to do with how you have related to authorities throughout your life. If authorities in your life abused their authority, your reaction will be negative. Any time someone exercises authority, you will connect that with the abuses of the past.  If your authorities were negligent, you will believe that authorities can’t be trusted. If you have had good relationships with authorities, you will tend to trust people … maybe even too much.

Though our thinking is inevitably and understandably shaped by our experiences, all of our thinking about authority and authorities must be shaped by the Scriptures.

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On January 12, 2023 By In Church, Counseling/Piety, Discipleship, Wisdom

The Spiritual Pastor

Within the life of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit has a special role. He creates and sustains bonds or relationships between people. He has been doing this forever. This is his activity in the life of the Trinity in eternity. He is the Spirit of God the Father (Gen 1.2; Rom 8.9, 14; 15.19) as well as the Spirit of the Son/Christ (Gal 4.6; Rom 8.9). The Spirit “belongs” to both the Father and the Son.

Our early church fathers described the Spirit as the “bond of love” between the Father and the Son. In the Trinitarian relationship described in terms of love, the Father is the Lover, the Son the Beloved, and the Spirit is the Bond of Love between them.

We understand his eternal ministry in the Trinity because we hear of his work with us. His work with us images his eternal ministry. He creates bonds between us and God as well as one another. This is why Paul says in Ephesians 4 that we are to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

The Spirit creates the bond with the body of Christ through baptism according to 1Corinthians 12.13: “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body–Jews or Greeks, slaves or free–and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” The Spirit is the one who puts the body of Christ together; whether you are talking about the Person of Christ in the womb of Mary (Lk 1.35) or the body of Christ, the church (1Cor 12.11). The Spirit puts things and people in a relationship with one another.

The pastoral ministry is a Spiritual ministry. This does not mean that he has a “mystical ministry” over against dealing with the material aspects of the world. The pastor is a bond-maker. He brings people together, facilitating the creation of relationships.

The pastor/king introduced to us in Ecclesiastes is called qoheleth, normally translated as “Preacher.” But the word speaks about someone who gathers or is a convener. He brings both people and words together, and he creates bonds with people through his words. He creates bonds.

The pastoral ministry aims to reconcile God with man (2Cor 5.18-20). We exercise that ministry by gathering people for the preaching of the Word and administering the Sacraments. By the power of the Spirit, the Word is proclaimed, and people are united with Christ through baptism and the supper.

This Spiritual ministry doesn’t end there. As the Spirit creates relationships among the members of the body of Christ, joining each member to the other to work together as one body, so the pastor is given to the church to equip the saints for the work of the ministry so that each member works properly with other members for the body to build itself up in love (Eph 4.11-16).

At times this will mean that the pastor helps individuals work through personal and interpersonal relationship issues. He instructs members through the Scriptures on how to apply wisdom to their particular situation so as to restore and maintain the bond of peace.

Many of us pastors take it upon ourselves (whether through personal expectations or expectations imposed upon us by our congregations) that our calling is to be an expert in every area of dealing with issues; that if there is a problem in the church we must be the ones who personally “fix it.” However, this is where understanding our Spiritual ministry is extremely helpful. While dealing with issues in the church is our responsibility, dealing with the issue can take the form of helping the person make the right connections with other Christians who are better equipped to help them in particular areas. Just as a medical doctor who is a general practitioner may refer one of his patients to a specialist, so we soul doctors may need to do the same. The Spirit creates relationships with Christ and with one another, pointing to others. As pastors, we also point people to Christ and others who are better equipped to help.

Many of us pastors don’t like this for a number of reasons. Our lack of expertise in any area and not being able to fix each and every problem is viewed as weakness that will cause us to lose respect in the eyes of our people. They may believe that they no longer need us. Consequently, we try to become an expert in counseling, therapy, and/or other areas so that we can do everything ourselves. It’s job security. However, it is also a lack of love for God’s people. Though good intentions may be in there somewhere, there is a selfishness that cares more about my pride and my job than for the health and welfare of the people of God. Sometimes loving people means pointing them to others for help.

For us to fulfill our Spiritual ministry as pastors, we must be humble, recognizing our limitations. Some of us are better in certain areas than others. Each pastor comes with his own set of strengths and weaknesses. We can’t be experts in every area in which our people might need help. We may be general practitioners, knowing many of the basics so that we can help people with common problems, but we must recognize that there are specialists to whom we may need to refer our people. Connecting people with other people is not a dereliction of your duty. It is your Spiritual responsibility.

In order to connect our people with other Christians who may be able to help them better than we can, we need to get to know other people. These people may be within your own congregation. Get to know people and their skills so that you can make connections with others. This may also mean learning of resources outside of your church to which you can refer people who need help that you can’t give them.

Humility once again comes into play here. When you point people away from yourself and to Christ in other people, you will not receive the initial glory for fixing the problem. That’s okay. The Spirit was sent to glorify the Son (Jn 16.12-14). As we point to Christ in other people and help create those relationships, we are doing the Spirit’s work.

Pastor, you don’t have to know it all. You don’t have to do it all. You are not deficient as a pastor if you must point your people to others to find the help they need. You are doing the Spirit’s work.

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On January 5, 2023 By In Culture, Family and Children, Politics, Wisdom

Tyranny

“Tyranny” is thrown around in our culture much like the word “abuse.” Every time you make me feel uncomfortable, it is “abuse.” Every exercise of authority is “tyranny.” Because words are misused doesn’t mean that genuine abuses and tyrants don’t exist. They do. But we need to know where God draws these lines.

Solomon’s concern in Proverbs is to train his son to be a wise king and, therefore, to exercise authority properly, whether that authority is over his own appetites or the entirety of Israel. Authority is a right and responsibility granted by God to govern. Wherever God grants authority, that authority is real. When that authority is exercised in harmony with God’s authority, it must be obeyed. To disobey legitimate authority is to disobey God himself.

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On November 17, 2022 By In Culture, Politics, Theology, Wisdom

Christ the King

Proverbs is a training manual for David’s son to learn how to exercise authority wisely. Yahweh promised him the nations as an inheritance (Ps 2); that he would rule over the world (Ps 72). Consequently, he must grow in wisdom to match the responsibility that the Father planned for him.

Standing on a mountain in Galilee, having been recently declared David’s true son through his resurrection from the dead (Rom 1.3-4), Jesus proclaims, “All authority in heaven and upon earth has been given to me” (Mt 28.18). Unlike the first son, Adam, who grasped for authority prematurely, seizing the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which had the power to make one wise (Gen 3.6), Jesus was patient, waiting until the Father gave him the authority. He resisted, what James Jordan calls, “the dominion trap,” on several occasions. During his temptation in the wilderness, the devil tempted him by promising him authority over all the kingdoms of the world if he would pledge his fealty to him. “You don’t need to wait. The world is a mess. You need to be a man of action. Jump out there and do something about it. You have power. You could change the world.” Jesus knew that it wasn’t time. Going about taking dominion without first being established in the fear of the Lord and maturing to the point that he could handle the responsibility was a fool’s errand. No matter how good his intentions might be, without the wisdom to handle the responsibility, the mess made in the end would be worse than the beginning.

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On November 10, 2022 By In Culture, Wisdom

Thick-skinned Wisdom

A fool’s vexation is known at once, but the shrewd covers shame

Proverbs 12.16

Western culture, particularly Americans, has become emotionally fragile. We are thin-skinned. Overprotection from parents who have coddled their children, shielding them from all physical and emotional discomfort, not allowing them to fail, always defending their actions whether justifiable or not, and safety-netting them created this problem. Is it any wonder that governments have seized upon this to empower themselves, promising complete safety from disease to poverty without any discomfort for their children? While seeking protection of self-esteem and the like, our helicopter parents have made us so fragile, that the least bit of force on our emotional state shatters us.

This safetyism, as Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt name it in their book The Coddling of the American Mind, has become a moral code. Anything that is mentally stressful–a criticism, joke, disagreement–is morally wrong. These relativists in sexual and economic morality become fundamentalist preachers when it comes to the moral code of their feelings. Combine that moral code with a weak mental constitution and you have people who are triggered and fall to pieces when the supreme judge, feelings, is challenged. There are no appeals in this court. If you violate this morality, it is the death penalty. Your reputation, livelihood, or even your physical existence is forfeit. There is no genuine forgiveness and, therefore, no justification no matter how you may grovel. Words such as “transphobic,” “homophobic,” and “racist” are not mere adjectives. They are judicial sentences that condemn.

This thin-skinned-ness is not an incidental cultural irritation. It is morally culpable foolishness. Solomon describes one of the fool’s actions as allowing his emotions and impulses to control him in the face of being put to shame or insulted; his “vexation is known at once” (Pr 12.16). Vexation is an inner agitation or anger. Others control his actions through insults. He is a slave to what everyone thinks of him. Negative comments to him or about him on social media or other outlets must always be answered. He is irritated, and everyone must know it so that he can engender sympathy for himself and against his opponents to regain his status of “justified.” Nothing rolls off his back because it penetrates his skin too easily. This man is a fool who will destroy anything and everyone around him because his feelings were hurt. He is a slave to his impulses, and his masters–everyone around him–will use his own impulses to manipulate him.

The wise, on the other hand, are thick-skinned. They “cover shame.” They either couldn’t care less about unjustifiable insults or, if they are agitated, they don’t allow it to enslave them to irrational or time-consuming responses to seek to justify themselves. Those insulting them lose their power over them when the insulted ignores, laughs at, or even embraces the insult.

Being thick-skinned is important to wisdom’s mission. One of wisdom’s goals is to create an environment of peace, where relationships are whole, healthy, and joyful. This can never happen in relationships with thin-skinned people. They are always getting offended by real or perceived insults. Everyone has to walk on eggshells around them. Their presence is like a flammable fume that fills the air, creating anxiety in the relationships because the slightest word could be an ignition that blows everything up. Marriages, businesses, friendships, churches, and even society as a whole can’t be healthy with these thin-skinned people. People must be able to handle criticism and disagreement, justified or unjustified, if they are going to build healthy relationships.

So, how do you do it? An entire book can be written on this, but here are a few basics for becoming thick-skinned or tough-minded.

First, develop confidence in who you are and what you are doing. I’m not talking about some prideful self-reliance. Learn and accept what your heavenly Father says about you in Christ. Be confident in how he defines you and your purpose. That is foundational. But then, as Proverbs counsels in other places, develop and become competent in skills. You are always open to critiques from those people who have proven themselves to you, but the insults of others don’t matter.

Second, discipline yourself not to respond to insults. There is no hack to this. It will come down to you keeping your mouth shut or not typing that response, but you can put some things in place to help you. Count to one hundred, sleep on it, breathe deeply, quote Scripture, or do something else that makes you pause before you react. Think about the source of the insult. Is he a jerk whose opinion doesn’t matter? Is he having a bad day? Was he innocently joking? Also, think about the consequences of your response. Will this escalate the situation and get me embroiled in something that will be at least a distraction or, at worst, knock me off course?

Third, stress yourself. To discipline yourself in any area requires that you accept stress as a friend, many times bringing it on yourself in smaller doses so that you can handle the larger stressors later. You need to be brutally honest with yourself. You need friends who will be brutally honest with you and whom you will not fight when they tell you the truth. Put yourself in situations in which you can and will be criticized. Ask for critiques. If you can’t handle criticism, you will never get better, and you will always be able to be manipulated by others.

Thick skin is not a luxury in our mission. It is integral to the way of wisdom.

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On October 27, 2022 By In Culture, Theology, Wisdom

A Beautiful Gray Crown

A crown of beauty is the gray head found in the way of righteousness.

Proverbs 16.31

We are a culture obsessed with the appearance of youth. When a middle-aged or older man or woman is told, “You look so young,” it is taken as a compliment. To keep those compliments coming, we will do everything from taking supplements to having surgeries; we dress young, nip and tuck everything we can, color our hair, and apply stuff with hyaluronic acid to our faces because it sounds like the model knows what she’s talking about. Forever young is our aim.

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to maintain as much youthful vitality as possible. The curse that works through our bodies should be fought just as we fight the thorns and thistles of the ground. But there are certain aspects of aging that we should joyfully accept. Solomon tells his son that gray hair is one of those glories.

One theme that runs through Proverbs is that of exaltation and its means. Our all-glorious God created us with an appetite for glory or exaltation. That appetite drives us in our dominion project just as our appetite for food drives us to find ways to be fed. We want to be more and have more. Sometimes we want the wrong kind of glory and/or we pursue glory in a sinful way, but the fundamental appetite for glory is God-given. It is, after all, the promised end of our salvation (cf. e.g., Rom 8.18-30).

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On October 20, 2022 By In Theology, Wisdom

Judgment According To Works

We Protestants get nervous when talking about water and works. Let someone quote the Apostle Peter, “baptism now saves you” (1Pt 3.21) and you might be accused of being Roman Catholic or told why baptism in that passage is not baptism and how it doesn’t save you. We get a little nervous around water.

We become equally antsy when someone brings up those pesky passages in the Bible about a final judgment according to works. James has that irritating sentence, “You see that a person is justified¬ [judged to be righteous] by works and not by faith alone” (Jms 2.24). Solomon says that God will bring every deed into judgment, every secret thing, whether good or evil (Eccl 12.14). Jesus joins this party by saying that those who have done good will participate in the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil in the resurrection of judgment (Jn 5.29). He also speaks about how he will separate his sheep from the goats based on the deeds of mercy (Mt 25.31-46). Paul jumps in here by saying that the doers of the Law will be justified (Rom 2.13) and that we will all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive what is due for what we have done in our bodies, whether good or evil (2Cor 5.10). Finally, the judgment scene in Revelation 20.11-15 describes judgment based on what the person has done. And this is only a smattering of passages that speak of this reality. Is it just me, or is it getting difficult to breathe in here?

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On October 6, 2022 By In Wisdom, Worship

Living the Liturgy

I grew up in the South. The deep South. Any deeper South, I would have been in the Gulf of Mexico. I love my Southern roots. I love everything in the South;  our accents,  our food (I’m from Louisiana, inarguably the best food in the South), our obsession with sports in general and football in particular. I love the blue-collar work ethic, the relative simplicity of life, hunting, fishing, and, at times, everybody in the community knowing your business. Those same nosey neighbors will be there for you when you need them.

An indispensable aspect of this Southern culture is “going to church.” Country songs have repeatedly memorialized the place of going to church in the South. Those songs both reflect and drive the culture (as does all art). Sadly, many of them quite accurately reflect the southern culture. Going to church is just what we do along with getting drunk on Friday and Saturday and having sex with multiple people. Going to church is a relatively unexamined ritual. Again, it’s just what we do.

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On September 29, 2022 By In Theology, Wisdom

The Standard

Throughout Proverbs, Solomon assumes the reality of the righteous and the wicked. The righteous are those who are in the way of wisdom and the wicked are in the way of folly. They are antithetical to one another in their hearts’ thoughts and affections (12.5), the way they speak (12.6), how they treat their animals (12.10), the way they do business (16.11), and their confidence before real or perceived accusers (28.1). Each finds the other odious (29.27). The righteous and the wicked live together in this world.

Wait. Is that really possible? Are there really righteous people in the world?

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

Pure Strength

In my half-century-plus of life, I have watched movements and men come and go. Fads in fashion as well as issues are like vapors that appear for a little while and then vanish away. Men’s stars have risen and fallen quickly and hard, many times leaving a great deal of damage. Growing up in and around the Christian ministry, my stepfather being a pastor, and being associated with ministers and ministries for most of my life, I have seen the good, bad, and ugly. I watched men through the years who could captivate crowds with their dynamic preaching, mesmerizing people through emotional fervor, rhetorical skill, and/or theological sophistication. As a young man I remember desiring to be like many of these men. But then I learned what would eventually become apparent to all: many of these men lived duplicitous lives. Some men told outright lies about their lives to make their testimonies more exciting. Others used their magnetism to engage in adultery with multiple women. Still others’ families were in absolute shambles while they were out “saving the world.”

I was disillusioned and sometimes discouraged.

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