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On June 30, 2021 By In Books, Church, Discipleship, Theology

Kill Goliath and Save his Skull

Last week, our church hosted a Vacation Bible School that included the story of “David and Goliath” as one of the Bible stories. I was responsible for the “Bible story station” that introduced the characters, the meaning behind the story, and its application. Groups would spend twenty minutes with me and then return later in the day for ten minutes of reflection and prayer.

Our VBS theme’s package included scripted lessons that a leader could simply read with sample questions and ideas for applications for various age groups. Our materials were produced by the Methodist publisher Cokesbury and generally faithful to the Biblical story. They were also insightful about how to manage the attention of younger students, but like all modern children’s curricula – do not expect much from the child.

On Bite-Sized Lessons

Exercises like this always cause me to question how much of Sunday’s sermon is actually understood by my youngest congregants. The VBS curriculums seem to assume that children need everything delivered in such easily digested, bite-sized pieces. Perhaps this level of VBS is meant for children who may have never been to a church. But not even two minutes into my introduction of David and Goliath it was obvious that my group of eight and nine-year-olds were already very familiar with the details of the story—down to the number of stones that David collects. The study guide wanted me to focus on “facing bullies” and “overcoming adversity” but the kids had heard it all before.

Caught off guard, I went into “Rev. Clowney Mode” and thought I would pivot into teaching how Goliath’s downfall points to Christ. Now completely off script, I asked the students, “So what happened to Goliath next?” A few hands went up. One young man was so excited to share that I decided to ignore his impatient “I know! I know!” and call on him anyway. “David cut his head off!” For some strange reason, this scene wasn’t included in the coloring sheets and didn’t make it into any of the suggested drama skits for the day. Go figure.

And, “and then what happened?” I asked. The students looked at each other, shrugged, and back to me. Here I explained that King David eventually took the giant’s skull to Jerusalem, to be buried just outside of the Holy City of Jerusalem.

I asked them to consider Goliath a type of serpent, reminding them that “coat of mail” that we see described as his armor in 1 Samuel 17 is more akin to a breastplate of snake scales. I then asked them to remember the Garden of Eden and to consider the promises made to Adam and Eve after their expulsion, chiefly that a descendent of theirs was to crush the head of the serpent. I pointed out that in our Scripture reading, David’s stone “sunk” into Goliath’s head. David was Adam’s great-great (times thirty-five generations) grandson and he was well aware of the promises to his family’s line. He and all future generations would remember David as the son of Adam who had crushed the serpent with a stone to the head.

Yet David was only fulfilling part of that promise. David’s battle with Goliath was looking forward to when the Messiah would destroy the true serpent and undo mankind’s death curse. David anticipated this when he brought Goliath’s skull back to Jerusalem as a covenant sign of God’s future faithfulness. For the very place that David buries Goliath’s skull is to become the very same spot that Jesus is to be crucified: Golgotha.

David with the Head of Goliath, circa 1635, by Andrea Vaccaro

As James B. Jordan points out:

“Golgotha is just a contraction of Goliath of Gath (Hebrew: Goliath-Gath). 1 Samuel 17:54 says that David took the head of Goliath to Jerusalem, but since Jerusalem was to be a holy city, this dead corpse would not have been set up inside the city, but someplace outside. The Mount of Olives was right in front of the city (1 Kings 11:7; 2 Kings 23:13), and a place of ready access. Jesus was crucified at the place where Goliath’s head had been exhibited. Even as His foot was bruised, He was crushing the giant’s head!”

Biblical Horizons Newsletter No. 84: Christ in the Holy of Holies The Meaning of the Mount of Olives by James B. Jordan (April, 1996)

I had gone way off course from the VBS script. I was talking about burying a giant’s skull and Christ crucified, where the script had this as its closing reflection: “If you wonder how you can face challenges that might seem bigger than you, remember that with God you can find what you need to help you meet your challenges.”

Goliath Cross Skull

At reflection time they returned eager for more juicy details about David’s bloodlust, only for me to remind them of Christ’s present promises to conquer sin and that perhaps us miserable sinners are more like Goliath than David in the story. We deserve a stone to the head for our life of war against God. And like Goliath’s lifeless skull outside of Jerusalem, our only hope was the blood dripping down from the saviour on the cross.

On Practical, Relevant Preaching

The need for a “practical application” and the lure of relevance or accessibility has detached the Christian meaning of David versus Goliath from its place in the story of the Gospel. King David as a historical figure with a natural and spiritual lineage leading to Jesus is of no real consequence in the VBS version. While I have no doubt that this story also presents a great opportunity for character building in giving us examples of overcoming adversity, let’s not limit David to the realm of mere fable.

David and Goliath - Malcolm Gladwell

After all, popular authors have done much better than pastors with this self-help approach. For example, Malcom Gladwell parlayed the underdog notion of David and Goliath into a New York Times Bestseller back in 2015 when he connected this story to all sorts of character applications. Everything from the religious sacrifices of the French Huguenots to the jumbled but noble struggle of dyslexics. In Gladwell’s applications, the whole idea of the story was simple: what we saw as disadvantages in the small-statured shepherd boy, were actually his secret weapons against the Philistine giant. David had it in him the whole time, everyone else just couldn’t see it. Is this the message of Christ?

We must contend that the Holy Spirit did not include the battle with Goliath to add a Hebrew hero to the Aesopica. David’s battle must be more than a story for inspiring courage and spurring on self-development. We have not faithfully taught any passage of Scripture without connecting it to the story of Christ’s redemption. Or as Rev. Edmund Clowney put it, “Preachers who ignore the history of redemption in the preaching are ignoring the witness of the Holy Spirit to Jesus in all the Scriptures.”

Rev. Clowney was Professor Emeritus of Practical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, where he served for over thirty years, sixteen of those as president. He authored several books, including The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament.

Esoteric Speculations

Grounding our teaching in the story of Christ also prevents the fetishizing of obscure details in the Hebrew text. I was recently asked to lead a book study through Michael S. Heiser’s book The Unseen Realm. While leading the study, I quickly learned that the generation of men taught under “relevant preaching” styles had missed out on the necessary theological framework to hang the Old Testament narratives. They craved the order and structure The Unseen Realm offers. Unfortunately, Heiser’s book reads like he has just recently unlocked a secret code to understand the Bible through special ancient symbols and obscure language clues.

Speculations about Nephilim, angels, and giants creep in and have the power to wedge an artificial gap between our historical theology and our new pet passages. Men like Othmar Keel, Meredith Kline, and Gregory Beale have been offering us similar approaches to Biblical symbolism while staying within Nicene orthodoxy and the historic church. And of course, James Jordan offered a very accessible compendium of Biblical symbolism in his book Through New Eyes.

How much did Goliath’s armor weigh? Were his ancestors fallen angels? Did the giants survive the flood? Does new Philistine DNA evidence prove the existence of bronze-age giants? The depths of the Biblical text are inexhaustible, or as D.A. Carson put it in his book The Gospel as Center, “The Bible is an ever-flowing fountain…” but wild speculations detached from the story of salvation are not equal to seeing Christ in every passage of Scripture. To see Christ in every God-breathed passage is to drink from the living stream, while a desire for obscurity inevitably leads to the brackish waters of pseudo-scholarship based in the mysteries of pseudepigraphon and cliches of post-modern religious studies.

Teach Christ

There’s nothing foolish, redundant, or mediocre about Christ-centered preaching. Those who love the Lord will never tire of hearing how Christ is present on every page. Those who are far from him desperately need to hear him speak to every area of life. Let us never grow weary in taking captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:5)

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On June 24, 2021 By In Discipleship, Family and Children, Wisdom

The Limited Power of Parenting

Any of us who have been parents for a while have felt the weight of responsibility and the sense of inadequacy that comes with the task. We don’t know enough. We’re going to make a mistake that destroys our child’s life. How can I know that I am doing this right? No matter how many children we have, we are ever learning so that the rearing of each child feels like an experiment.

This weight of responsibility and sense of inadequacy should keep us humble before God, seeking his wisdom from the Scriptures and others who have passed this way before. Even with all of our perceived or real deficiencies, as Christians, we should approach our parenting with confidence. We can do this because we know that when God entrusts children to us, he has given us a calling we can handle.

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On June 22, 2021 By In Culture

Are the Chronicles redundant?

During my daily prayer regimen, I read through the New Testament at morning prayer and the Old Testament in the evening, one chapter at a time. At evening prayer I am now making my way through the two books of Chronicles, which many believe form a unit with Ezra and Nehemiah, composed after the return from Babylonian exile, possibly by Ezra himself.

When I’ve read Chronicles in the past, I’ve sometimes thought that they are redundant, simply repeating what the books of Samuel and Kings had already recounted. In the larger biblical narrative, it feels as though the story, which thus far has been smoothly told from Genesis to the exile, is suddenly interrupted by an apparently unnecessary flashback, taking us all the way back to, well, Adam, the first human being. Then we are treated to a long series of proper names, some of whom are familiar but most of whom are not, leaving us wondering what relevance they could possibly have to the larger story of salvation. What harm would have been done by leaving them out and simply skipping from 2 Kings to Ezra?

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On June 21, 2021 By In Culture, Family and Children

Marriage Wars

The following was delivered at the wedding of Michael Jones and Kaitlyn Jack.

What we are witnessing here today is becoming more and more counter-cultural in Western Civilization. The foundations of Western Civilization have been cracking and crumbling for some time now. As men’s abdication of their responsibilities became increasingly evident in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, precipitating the rise of Feminism, the seeds were sown for the destruction of marriage and, with it, a stable civilization.

First, women wanted to be equal with men, and they believed that the greatest codification of that would be the right to vote, which is now enshrined in the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. But the seeds of discontent with biblical structures continued to grow. In the second wave of Feminism, women declared their independence from men. Gloria Steinem proudly declared that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

Men stood by and watched while the serpent continued to convince the woman that God’s structures were oppressive. Consequently, the seeds continued to grow, and in the third wave of Feminism women essentially declared, “We are men.” There are no differences between biological men and women. Our outward displays may be different in some respects, but we are the same. This led to where we are today with the declaration that there is no such thing as men and women; gender is fluid; it’s all in what you feel.

All along the way, men watched and gave tacit approval. Why not? Feminism fed men’s slothfulness.

With the rise of Feminism came the sexual revolution, and with it the availability of sexual relationships without the commitment. Whereas the prevailing culture of chastity and honor encouraged men to take up the responsibilities of a husband, now they could have all of the sexual benefits without the responsibilities. Besides that, with seventy percent of divorces being initiated by women who then leave the man penniless and kept from his children, many men are seeing marriage as a bad business deal.

Women are frustrated because they were told that they could have a career, marry late, and still have all they want. They are discovering that they were lied to.

Marriage has been damaged deeply in our culture. From the hook-up culture to high divorce rates to homosexuals demanding to be recognized as married, God’s institution of marriage, which is fundamental to the stability of any society, is mocked.

But here, today, Michael and Kaitlyn stand before God and witnesses to receive God’s gift of marriage. This gift is given to you, Michael and Kaitlyn, to enjoy. Because you are receiving God’s gift in the way that he prescribes it, there is a reward that comes with it. There is the freedom to enjoy one another without guilt; to know and be known by one another in a way that those who do not obey God will never experience. Enjoy God’s gift to you.

God’s gifts always come with responsibilities. You are stewards of his gift. You enjoy marriage, but marriage does not belong to you. God created marriage for a larger purpose than the personal enjoyment of the individual man and woman. Marriage is a mission. More particularly, it is a military mission.

As I alluded to earlier, we are in a war, not just over the definition of marriage, but the purpose of marriage in the world to help establish the kingdom of God in the world. God instituted marriage as one of the tools or weapons to complete the mission of bringing the world under the lordship of his Son; to see the world patterned after his heavenly abode. The structure of marriage with the man as the head, the woman in submission, and children obeying their parents is not arbitrary and merely a practical way to function. These structures reflect the deep structures with the relationship of God himself that is the pattern for all of life.

Marrying this day before God and witnesses, you are committing yourself to be warriors in this fight. You will do so, not with guns a-blazing, but by simply living out God’s structure and purpose for marriage.

Michael, as you take the lead, determining the mission of the home, part of which is cultivating Kaitlyn’s beauty as a woman, you will be taking up the responsibilities that many men in Western Civilization have neglected. Kaitlyn, as you submit to the loving headship of Michael, helping him in his God-given mission, you will be taking up the responsibilities that many women in Western Civilization have scorned. As the Lord wills and you have and rear godly children, you will be providing even more weapons for the fight. In doing all of these things, you will be faithful to the purpose for which God gave marriage.

Be bold! Be brave! Take up your responsibilities with courage and fight the good fight.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

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On June 18, 2021 By In Discipleship, Men, Wisdom

Letters To Young Men: Discipline

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. (Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual MK1-MOD1, Expanded Edition, 2-3, emphasis original)

Created in the image of the Divine Warrior (Ex 15.3; Ps 78.65), you are a warrior. This is the calling given to you by birth about which you have no choice. You are either a faithful or unfaithful warrior, but you are a warrior. Warriors have a mission. I wrote to you about your mission a while back. You can find those letters here and here. The only way to achieve the mission is through discipline. You want your disciplines to become habits, routines and automatic responses to given situations. However, no matter how ingrained your habits become, discipline will always be required. There will always be a pull toward sloth and, consequently, atrophy. You must resist this. You resist through discipline.

Discipline is training to accomplish a mission. This training involves the correction of wrong and unproductive behavior as well as strengthening your abilities to meet challenges to achieve the mission. The two are interrelated. You bring your mind, will, emotions, and body under control in order to direct them toward positive ends. Discipline is not done for discipline’s sake. We discipline ourselves for a purpose, a goal. These goals may be short-term goals with clear, measurable characteristics at a point in time (for example, a bench press 1RM or a certain amount of money earned), or they may be ongoing purposes that are measured by progress over time (for example, staying healthy or becoming a better husband and father). Whatever the nature of the goal, discipline is the process by which you achieve the goal. Discipline is the ability to maintain your focus, not allowing the extraneous and distracting to overcome you.

Discipline is a fight; a fight against a disordered self and creation that is resistant to change. But you are a warrior, called and equipped to fight this fight; to shape the creation into order. This fight begins with you: your body, your mind, your will, your emotions.

In good circumstances, discipline begins when you are children, imposed on you by your parents. Your mother and father are called as parents to train you, telling you what to say “no” to and what to say “yes” to. Parents are to drive foolishness–rebellion against God and his wisdom–from your hearts with the rod of correction and instruction in righteousness (Pr 13.24; 19.18; 22.15; 23.13, 14; 29.15). The calling of fathers and mothers is to set you in order, to arrange your lives according to God’s wisdom.

When you are young, discipline primarily comes from outside of you. But the goal of parenting is to train you in order that you might learn how to train yourselves. Hearing, seeing, and receiving wisdom through the rod and instruction were always aimed at you treasuring wisdom in your hearts so that you would see its beauty, desire it, and seek after it (Pr 2.1-5; 4.20-27). Progressively, as you grow older, you must fully own the responsibility of your mission and, therefore, the discipline to achieve it. This must be the case whether you had faithful parents or not. Sitting around wishing things had been different in your childhood, that you had parents who had trained you is a waste of time and energy. You can’t change the past. All you can do is deal with your present reality and work with what God has given you in his providence. Don’t sit there and mope and wallow in self-pity. You must take up the mission. That is still your responsibility. No one else can do it for you. Others can only give you wise counsel, but they can’t force you to walk in the way. If you do not learn how to discipline yourself, you will not escape discipline. No one can. You will either discipline yourself or you will be disciplined by others. You will mature in wisdom, growing in self-discipline, or you will be a fool and have situations and others beat you in the form of loss of jobs, relationships, criminal punishment, or in a myriad of other ways.

Self-discipline is key to accomplishing your mission. Indeed, self-discipline is a fundamental part of your mission. Remember, you are a plot of earth, created from the dust of the ground. From you will come either good fruit or thorns and thistles. Much of what determines what is produced is how you cultivate the soil. Before you can impose order on the world and make it productive, before you can be trusted with this greater responsibility, you must first learn how to handle what you have. If you can’t order your own person, how are you going to bring order to the world?

Self-discipline is freedom. It is the freedom from being controlled by outside circumstances as well as the whims of others. Even in unpleasant circumstances over which you have no control, you can still be free. Circumstances and people don’t dictate your attitude (cf. Phil 4.10-13). Self-discipline keeps you in control of yourself so that others can’t manipulate you. Those who lack self-control (literally, the ability to hinder one’s spirit/breath) are like cities broken into and left without walls (Pr 25.28). The lack of self-control, the ability to discipline yourself, leaves you vulnerable to attack by others.

Self-discipline or self-control, however, leaves the walls up to guard you against the enemy. You are to be a walled city, a plot of earth with boundaries that protect you from the outside and allow you to move freely inside in order to accomplish your mission. Freedom is not life without limits. Freedom is the ability to be what you were designed to be. You are not free to be a woman, for instance. There are boundaries, walls that must be recognized.

Discipline begins, then, with self-knowledge. You must know who you are and what you were designed to do. (Again, refer back to the “Mission” letters.) You must recognize your limits and work within them to maximize your potential. Knowing your boundaries aids you in determining your focus, keeping you from setting your eyes on the ends of the earth (Pr 17.24), thinking you can be whatever you want. You are wasting your time and energy on worthless pursuits if you don’t discipline yourself to stay within your God-given boundaries.

God sets broad boundaries for men and women and, then through his providence, he sets specific boundaries on each individual that range from physical ability to the place you are born in the world to the intellectual resources with which you have to work. Your limits must be tested to discover what God may have hidden. “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; it is the glory of kings to search a matter out.” (Pr 25.2) You have to test the limits of your strength physically, mentally, and emotionally. Sometimes this will result in injury, pain, and frustration, but then you know your limits. You back off and re-focus.

As Jocko alluded to in the opening quote, there is no hack, no shortcut, and no magic formula to self-discipline. You know who you are and what your mission is. Everything that contributes to the accomplishment of that mission you say “yes” to. Everything that doesn’t contribute to the accomplishment of that mission you say “no” to.

“It’s just not that simple.” Yes, it is. The concept of discipline is simple. It’s the practice of discipline that is difficult. It is difficult to say “no” to what you want to do at the time. I have dealt with many people through the years who, when it came right down to it, just don’t want to do what is necessary to get the results they desire. They want to keep doing what they are doing with different results. They will whine, complain, and moan, not because the answer is complicated, but because the work is difficult. The way you overcome this is just do what is necessary; tell your body what it will and will not do. Paul, speaking about self-discipline, says this to the Corinthians,

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. [Note the mission] Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (1Cor 9.24-27)

You tell yourself what you will and will not do. As Jocko says in another part of his book Discipline Equals Freedom, “’How do I get tougher?’” Be tougher. ‘How can I wake up early in the morning?’ Wake up early. ‘How can I work out consistently every day?’ Work out consistently every day.” (12) When people say, “Well, I’m just not motivated,” all they are saying is, “I don’t feel like doing it.” Part of discipline is doing what you don’t feel like doing because it is the right thing to do and contributes to your goal. The farmer doesn’t want to weed the garden all the time. The athlete isn’t always motivated to lift and run. A husband is not always excited about going to a job. A father is not always thrilled about dealing with disobedient children. You don’t feel like praying or reading the Scriptures. You’re tired. You don’t want to deal with it. If you let these feelings dictate what you do, if you let your “lack of motivation” determine your goals, it will be like a creeping disease. “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come on you like a robber and want like an armed man” (Pr 6.10-11; 24.33-34). Your lack of discipline–slothfulness–will rob you of your goals.

Your emotions must not be what trains you. You must stay focused on the prize. Proverbs deals quite extensively with emotions, especially anger. A man given to anger is one who lacks self-control; he is controlled by his circumstances. He believes his anger demonstrates power. It doesn’t. It demonstrates weakness. His outbursts of anger reveal a feeling of loss of control and helplessness. He is trying to regain control of the situation through force. We feel powerful when we’re angry because it gives us tremendous focus. However, not being able to control our anger, while giving us focus, causes us to lose perspective. Not being able to control your anger will cause you to act foolishly (Pr 14.17, 29) and stir up strife (Pr 15.18). There will be stiff penalties to pay for uncontrolled outbursts (Pr 19.19). However, a man slow to anger is “better than the mighty; and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city” (Pr 16.32). Anger itself is not evil. Jesus was angry (Mk 3.5). God is a God of wrath. There are times to be angry. But anger must be under control and serve the mission. The difference between sinful, unproductive anger and proper anger is discipline, keeping anger within boundaries and focused on righteous ends. It must be made a servant and not allowed to be the master.

While Proverbs focuses much on anger, the same could be said for other emotions as well. They must be servants. They must be made servants to your mission. Discipline is able to keep focus through the emotions, give them proper expression, while always keeping them under control.

Disciplines of the body will aid you in disciplines of the mind. Body and mind are integrated. The rod can drive foolishness from the heart (Pr 22.15) and “blows that wound cleanse away evil; strokes make clean the innermost parts” (Pr 20.30). There is a connection between bodily pain and the discipline of the heart/mind. Physical pain trains. When you are a child, physical pain comes through the rod. (And if you grow up to be a fool, then the rod will continue to be used; Pr 26.3.) As you grow older and self-discipline, you learn how to inflict pain on your own body. Whether it is the pain of sleep deprivation, physical exercise, eating certain foods and avoiding others, or other areas, physical pain in many forms is a part of discipline. No pain. No gain. Pain is a part of life. Like anything else, it will be your servant or your master. You will either inflict on yourself, using it as a servant, or others will inflict it upon you as your master.

Some will speak of “spiritual disciplines” over against or distinguished from disciplines of the body. Though the category of spiritual disciplines can be helpful in some ways, I am cautious about using the phrase. Spiritual disciplines, especially in our time, tend to be understood as set over against physical disciplines. Weight-lifting is a physical discipline. Reading the Scriptures is a spiritual discipline. One deals with your body while the other deals with the immaterial part of you and your relationship with God. Where this dichotomy is present, the thinking is wrong. As mentioned earlier, blows that wound cleanse away evil. The rod drives foolishness from the heart. The Scriptures know nothing of these divisions. Weight-lifting is a spiritual discipline, and reading the Scriptures is a physical discipline. Training my body, bringing it under control, and keeping it as healthy as I am able, sharpens my mind with which I love God (Mt 22.37). Reading the Scriptures involves my physical body. We are not compartmentalized creatures. Everything we do must contribute to our mission of bringing order to our lives and the creation around us. This includes prayer, reading/hearing the Scriptures, caring for our bodies, as well as other disciplines. You are not fulfilling your mission if you are well instructed in the Scriptures but you neglect to subdue your body. Neither are you fulfilling your mission if you seek to subdue your body but neglect being instructed in the Scriptures. Every discipline contributes to the mission.

The benefits of discipline are numerous. Here are a few. Discipline reduces anxiety. Because you have a focus, you know who you are and what you are doing, you are not being pushed and pulled by every whim that comes along. Anxiety is created when you feel that you are out of control. Discipline doesn’t allow what everyone else thinks and demands of you to control you.

Discipline cultivates strength. The more you practice something, the better or stronger you become. This is true, of course, with physical exercise. The more the muscles fight resistance, the more they grow to adapt to the stress. The same is true mentally and emotionally. The more you discipline yourself, the tougher you become. The more you face your fears with disciplined behavior because they are obstacles to your goals, the more you will overcome them and the stronger you will be the next time.

Discipline makes you productive. The disciplined farmer who goes through the daily grind eventually sees fruit. When you employ positive disciplines in your life, disciplines governed by your God-given mission, you will see results; they may not be immediate, but you will see results.

Discipline yourself. You are a warrior. Discipline is the path to victory and freedom. Discipline yourselves to receive wisdom by listening to good counsel, not being arrogant. Discipline yourself physically to maintain a healthy body and sharp mind. Discipline your minds through reading and listening to that which contributes to your mission. Discipline your emotions, making them your servants. Discipline yourself so that you may be free.

For Christ’s Kingdom,

Pastor Smith

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On June 17, 2021 By In Culture, Theology, Wisdom

Revealed Wisdom

The words of Agur son of Jakeh. The oracle.

 The man declares, I am weary, O God; I am weary, O God, but I can prevail. Surely I am too stupid to be a man. I have not the understanding of a man. I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One. Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth?  What is his name, and what is his son’s name? Surely you know! Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar. ~Proverbs 30.1-6

The search for wisdom is difficult even when you are doing it right. But when a man searches for wisdom divorced from God’s revelation, it is frustrating, futile, and fruitless. This revelation-less search for wisdom is what Agur describes in the first few verses at the beginning of Proverbs 30. The man is weary in his search. He doesn’t know what it means to be a man in this world. He doesn’t understand the meaning and purpose of it all and how to put his own life in relationship with everything else because he has no knowledge of the Holy One. Divorced from God’s revelation he cannot answer the questions, “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?”

This man has searched for wisdom using human reason divorced from divine revelation. This is not an uncommon human experience. This is how man fell in the beginning and how he continues to try to put his life and the world together ever since.

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On June 11, 2021 By In Counseling/Piety

The Abuse of Introspection: Some Thoughts

Some people dwell so much on their sinfulness that they find themselves constantly bombarding their status before God with doubt. Am I really a Christian? Am I worthy? These questions are not atypical of those who grow up in environments where internalized Christianity is emphasized. There is a healthy form of self-examination and Paul informs Pastors (II Corinthians 13:5) to encourage parishioners to examine themselves. At the same time, there is a difference between self-examination and introspection that is not often considered.

It is worth mentioning that God cares about our hearts. Out of it can flow the waters of destruction or waters of peace (Ps. 42). The repentant psalmist cries for God to create in him a clean heart and that God would restore the joy of his salvation. Here again, it is important to notice that this salvation has a face, a joyful one.

Martyn-Lloyd Jones wrote that a depressed Christian is not a good apologetic for Christianity. Whether there are physiological components at the root of this depression or not, it is still not a good presentation of the Christian faith. Depression–which must be differentiated from other forms of mental effects– is a form of despising God’s gifts and goodness. All of us are prone to it, and all of us must fight it. Schmemann once wrote that “Of all accusations against Christians, the most terrible one was uttered by Nietzsche when he said that Christians had no joy.” Joy often is not forced, though many have to work hard at it. But most often, it is the natural outflow of a heart saturated with grace.

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On June 10, 2021 By In Church, Worship

Singing Like Men

Why are men not singing in Church?

Various articles have attempted to answer that question recently. But before we can try to offer a rationale for such a spectacular question, we need to observe that some are entirely comfortable allowing this trend to continue. After all, music plays a minimal role in their worship expressions. Others find the issue of congregational singing irrelevant due to the trained praise bands that lead worship each Sunday. “Let the professionals lead.”Certain environments encourage people to hear and feel the music rather than sing it. And some groups have placed such high priority on the preached word that the very idea of a singing congregation seems secondary, if not tertiary in the priority list. But on to better things.

Fortunately, there are a vast amount of churches and leaders that still treasure congregational singing and long for a time when men return to the old-fashioned task of singing God’s melodies. The cruel reality is that we are far from the mark. In my many visits to evangelical churches over the years, the few men who opened their mouths timidly read the words like a child attempting to spell out his phonics assignment.

Timid singers make for timid Christians.

Let’s Begin with Singing Anything in Church, Shall We?

I am not arguing for a particular style of music. That would be to ask for too much. I think we need an incremental strategy. I am arguing for men to sing whether through projected song lyrics, Fanny Crosby classics, or Scottish Psalter. I am imploring for men to take up their holy charge and lead by example. Set the tone and watch the little lions roar.

There is a more insidious reason why men do not sing. One author boldly observed:

“Look around your average Evangelical church and you’ll likely see a 3 to 1 ratio of women to men. And of the men who actually do attend, you can see on about half of their faces that they’re only there because their wives want them to be there. The other half are there because they genuinely want to be there.”

We have succumbed to a kind of cowardly environment where instead of men leading the women with their voices and character and fervor, the women are attempting to make up for the lack of interest in their own husbands. How often have I encountered the scenario where women hunger to learn and grow in their Christian walk, but husbands are content with the slobberiness of impious entertainment.

Evangelical men are wanted. But they are lacking. They lack leadership and the ones who make it to church after their wives’ brave attempt to persuade them the night before, sit still in a silence resembling a preserved ritualized mummy.

Yes, there is certainly much to blame for the weakness of the evangelical man. And there is much to commend in female saints who tirelessly bring their children to church on Sunday morning while their husbands engage in their rock-n-roll fantasies. May God curse their dreams.

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On June 10, 2021 By In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom, Worship

A Heart For Wisdom

Approaching the book of Proverbs as a superficial “how-to” manual for relationships can be tempting. The practical wisdom saturates the pages. Those in the field of behavioral psychology could benefit greatly from reading Proverbs. Solomon gives us disciplines to employ that lead to productivity and long-term happiness. We are also given behaviors to avoid that are destructive. So, if we are not careful, we can read Proverbs like one might read Atomic Habits by James Clear, 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson, or Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. These books (and other books like them) have much to commend them, but they aren’t Proverbs.

Proverbs is not merely a manual for superficial techniques. At the heart of the wisdom of Proverbs is the matter of the human heart. The wisdom that God requires of us runs deeper than a mere manipulation of our situations to turn things to our benefit. The wisdom that God calls for is wisdom that captivates the heart.

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On June 8, 2021 By In Church

Doing Theology with Laughter

I have always loved theological discourse. I had my share of interactions in high school and made a few of my classmates endure the cadence of my naivete. Of course, whatever I believed at the height of my 18th birthday was pure Gospel, unadulterated. From my views on the Sabbath to Supralapsarianism (the latter which never appealed to me, btw), everything I spoke was spoken with the conviction of a seasoned dogmatician. And in those days, I was not well-read, which added an additional percentage of hubris to my declarations.

One thing that permeated those early years from 18-22 was my impeccable ability to convince myself that what I argued was passionately serious and seriously passionate. It came from my deep inner being saturated with certainty.

Take, for instance, the renowned doctrine of Calvinism with its soteriological vigor. When I first embraced the soteriology of Calvinism I believed firmly that I was embracing the sine qua non of theological hierarchy. Again, I defended it fervently around my sophomore in college as if it were the highest and most significant element of Christendom. As I have written in a previous post, I had to do a repentance tour for my unfavorable debating techniques.

But I have always loved the discourse. I loved the dialogue late at night in the hallway. I loved pulling out my Greek text and looking at particular pericopes and savoring James’s words together with others. All those conversations prepared me for graduate studies both at the Masters’ and Doctoral levels. Indeed, good conversations, especially around theology, shall save the world. I still hold to that, even though I abused my place at various times.

But here is the nuance to this process, which most of us who do this for a living and the studious parishioners must consider. And it hit me again when I read it from my old mentor, John Frame, who wrote:

“Don’t lose your sense of humor. We should take God seriously, not ourselves, and certainly not theology. To lose your sense of humor is to lose your sense of proportion. And nothing is more important in theology than a sense of proportion.”

The discourse is not the end-all. At the end of a long exchange of words, friendships are the end-all. Communion is the heart and reason for the discourse. If we lose our closest allies in the process of doing theology, we lose theology at its best, which is often the result of taking ourselves too seriously; of lacking the comedy of life which makes every encounter and relationship more valuable.

A regular comment I have made to my congregation over the years is that a man can speak the truth in a thousand ways, but if love is not the companion of the truth it rarely communicates effectively. I am certain I won a thousand debates in college. I was a disciplined Bible student, but as I look back I also know I lost half of those debates because I failed to achieve the telos of human discourse, which is to lead my companion to a better understanding of God and love for neighbor.

We have lost our sense of proportion in doing theology because theology is no longer the domain of the good, but the domain of the greedy. There is all the time in the world for the righteous anger of good theologians opining against real evil. That too is a form of theological discourse. But mostly, in our unique communities, our discourse needs to happen more often with cigars and drinks in a sacred environment of peace and humor.

The present evangelical scene is already too primed for destructive interactions. To do theology well we need a sense of proportion. Not everything can be life or death, but everything should be light and best around a table. All things are best when the discourse happens around the mutual agreement on proportion.

When theology loses that sense, we fail to do it as well as it should. Theology–the study of God–is the story of everything that is good, true, and holy. When it is a tool of rhetorical pugilism, it quickly loses its appeal. But when it is a tool of discovering corporately the goodness of life, the splendor of the Bible, and the majesty of God it is then the best life offers.

If that process succeeds, more often than not, and if we can make our theologizing a source of joy, we may even contemplate our role as angelic, for the angels–as Chesterton notes–can fly because they can take themselves lightly.

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