Tag: Reformed Church

Spin

Long before my lofty aspirations to software design and pastoral ministry, I harbored thoughts of another noble, yet more humble vocation – that of the garbage man.  Every Tuesday was trash day on Inca Court.   I would help my dad carry the cans to the curb before he left for work and then I would eagerly await the arrival of the trash truck, sitting by the curb to get a front row seat for the action.  I dreamed of donning an orange jump-suit and swinging from the back of the truck as it moved from house to house.  I was not discouraged by the distinctive aroma.  Nothing seemed more sensible and adventurous than being a garbage-man.   Though we cannot call them that now.  The simplicity of their craft is now obscured by titles such as “sanitation engineer.”  Ironically, by elevating the language of their craft we show contempt for their vocation.

A “euphemism” is the use of language to make the unpalatable, palatable.  But we call it “spin” or “political correctness.”  It is the art of using pleasant speech to transform what is morally repugnant to something we can more conscientiously ignore.  For example, the rhetoric of abortion-rights advocates is rife with euphemism – and indeed depends upon it.   Labels such as “pro-choice,” “Planned Parenthood,” “women’s rights,” and “reproductive health” are utterly disingenuous.   Nothing is further from the minds of abortion providers than parenthood.  And in what way can killing your offspring be considered “reproductive health?” And what about the choice and rights of unborn women?

Christian apologist, Ravi Zacharias, commenting on the Tower of Babel, conjectured that God confused the languages of the people because they used their words to create a rival reality to the one He revealed through His Word.   Spin, political correctness, and euphemism are sedatives we take from the hard realities of sin and responsibility.   No one expresses euphemism’s deceitfulness, quite like G. K. Chesterton.   The quote is long, but worth the read.

Most Eugenists are Euphemists. I mean merely that short words startle them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the same thing. Say to them “The persuasive and even coercive powers of the citizen should enable him to make sure that the burden of longevity in the previous generation does not become disproportionate and intolerable, especially to the females”; say this to them and they will sway slightly to and fro like babies sent to sleep in cradles. Say to them “Murder your mother,” and they sit up quite suddenly. Yet the two sentences, in cold logic, are exactly the same. Say to them “It is not improbable that a period may arrive when the narrow if once useful distinction between the anthropoid homo and the other animals, which has been modified on so many moral points, may be modified also even in regard to the important question of the extension of human diet”; say this to them, and beauty born of murmuring sound will pass into their face. But say to them, in a simple, manly, hearty way “Let’s eat a man!” and their surprise is quite surprising. Yet the sentences say just the same thing.  — G. K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils

But spin and euphemism thrive in the church as much as in culture.   Phrases such as “open minds” and “affirming” and “ecumenical” are code-words for elevating the opinions of man and the norms of culture over the authority of God’s Word.   Like the men of Jeremiah’s day we love our idols. We don’t call them idols, of course, but we install them in our churches and use double-speak to legitimize them.  What we fail to grasp is that our idols – traditionalism, works-righteousness, money, entertainment, affirmation, felt-needs, cultural relevance, church growth, etc. – will consume us.   Like invasive weeds, they crowd out vibrant, gracious Christian living and drain us dry.

There is no spin in Jeremiah’s words.  He speaks plainly and directly without any attempt to sugar-coat his message.  God’s people had abandoned the Lord for every conceivable idol.   Now God will abandon them to judgment.  They are beyond repentance.  In one of the Bible’s most terrifying passages — Jeremiah 7-8 — the prophet pulls back the curtain and shows the deadly effect of turning your back on God.  For the men of Judah, it is too late to turn back.  They have gone too far.  Even the prophet is forbidden to pray for them.   But it is not too late for you.  God gives this warning so you will turn back to Him.  Time and time again, the Scripture declares, “Today is the day of salvation.”

Join us this Sunday, August 25 as we consider from Jeremiah 7:16-8:3 what is ahead for those who are walking away from God and will not turn back.  We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions. Come with a friend and join us for fellowship and worship. We look forward to seeing you there.

Donor Match

Some days seem to take forever to arrive.   As a boy, Christmas day and the last day of school seemed as though they would never come.  Like a mirage on a hot summer highway, as you move toward them, they only seemed to be further away.  But what if that long-awaited day was a matter of life and death?  What if you were waiting for a heart or liver transplant in order to live?

Those who need an organ transplant are placed on a waiting list for a donated organ. Transplant organs are matched to patients based on a large list of criteria including: blood type, tissue type, medical urgency, body size, and distance from donor hospital to recipient hospital.  The process is never based simply on your position on the list.  Unfortunately, there are a lot more people on the waiting list than there are organs available each year.

Depending on how well you are, you may wait for your organ transplant at home or in a hospital. It is impossible to anticipate exactly when one will become available.  Some people wait only a few days while for others the wait much longer, possibly many months, if at all.  The waiting, the wondering, and the worrying become all consuming.  What if it never comes?  What if no match can be found for me?  As the time passes, desperation increases and the difficulty of holding on to hope grows exponentially. And if an organ is found, the danger of the transplant and high likelihood of rejection weigh heavily.

Then the call comes – a donor match has been found — and all the emotions converge.  Hope shines in and the life-giving gift is given by another whose gift cost them everything.   While heart and liver transplants have become almost routine today, it is never routine if it is you waiting and praying for a donor match.  But what if your fatal diagnosis is more than physical?  What if you have a failing soul and spirit?  What if your heart of hearts is failing for a lack of righteousness and faithfulness?  You seek diligently some other person – a counselor, a teacher, a lover, a friend — who can give you what you need to fill that growing emptiness in your heart, to stop the metastatic corruption of sin and guilt that threatens your life for all eternity.

But no matching donor can be found.  Every teacher, every counselor, every lover, every friend, every good man or woman, every role model — they are all on the waiting list as well.   Life is ebbing away, time is ticking, a donor must be found.   But where can we find a donor match for our sin-sick soul?   This was the question posed to the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 5.  Jerusalem has been given a terminal diagnosis.  The sin-sickness of the people had metastasized into every area of their lives from worship to family life to social injustice.  God commands Jeremiah.

Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem,
    look and take note!
Search her squares to see
    if you can find a man,
one who does justice
    and seeks truth,
that I may pardon her.    Jeremiah 5:1

Jeremiah looks everywhere.  He looks among the ordinary people.  He looks at the leaders, the wealthy, the scholars, and the movers-and-shakers.  Surely, he can find such a man among the priest and prophets.  But there is no match.  As the Psalmist said.

They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt;
    there is none who does good,
    not even one.  Psalm 14:3.

No even one!  No donor can be found.  The situation is desperate.   God had promised to spare Sodom and Gomorrah if only ten righteous could be found, but Jerusalem’s judgment depended on just one.  Despite Jeremiah’s diligent search no righteous man could be found.   This is the desperation of our own spiritual situation.  Dying from a depraved soul, we need a righteousness transplant.  But can a donor be found?  The good news is that a perfect donor match exists.

Jesus Christ is a perfect donor match for your diseased soul.  Made like us in every way, fully man yet fully God, His perfect obedience and atoning death on the cross make his perfect righteousness available to those who will receive it.   He alone is the way, the truth and the life.  But as with someone on the transplant list, it is not enough for the donor to be found.  The donated organ must be received by transplant.  This happens for us when we place our faith in Jesus and repent of our diseased life.  Have you received a transplanted life from Jesus?

Join us this Sunday, July 28 as we consider the good news that a donor match has been found to transplant in us the new heart we need to live.  We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions. Come with a friend and join us for fellowship and worship. We look forward to seeing you there.

Breaking Faith

Mrs. Dixon’s fourth grade class was a burgeoning nest of young love.  That was the year when girls leapfrogged past spiders on the list of interesting creatures in the life of a boy.   After lunch each day we would have a half-hour or so of time dedicated for quiet study.  But the subject most pursued during this “quiet time” was the study of relational engagement.  Notes were carefully constructed, though with little imagination or variance.  “Will you ‘go with me’? Yes __ or __ ”   Who knew that romance was so straightforward?  It is ironic that young love could be reduced to a form letter.

But if, perchance, the note was returned with the ‘Yes’ box marked, things immediately got complicated.  First, the idea of “going with” someone was amorphous.  Where were we going?  Were we actually going somewhere?  Was the relationship supposed to “go somewhere?”  Sure, there was some public identification as a couple, with all the requisite teasing that accompanied each ‘go-wither’s’ gender clique, but no one knew what happened next.  Then, quickly and without warning, the euphoria of a “Yes” on that original note was followed by the crushing news from everyone that you had broken up and that your beloved was now ‘going with’ someone else.   Relationships often were born and died without anything passing between boy and girl except a note.  While pride was briefly humbled in the dust, there was little relational pain, because after all, two days and a checked box on a passed note is not a recipe for intimacy.

All this relational callousness can never prepare you, however, for the real, deep, intense pain that comes from broken love.   When that person in whom your hopes, dreams, tears, and vulnerability have been lovingly vested breaks faith and moves on, it releases intense emotional energy.  Like the splitting of the powerful bonds that hold the atom together, relational fission creates massive devastation, sweeping away those in its shock-waves.  I pray that you have not experienced this personally, but I imagine that you have.   So much invested, so much given up and now what?   With every pain, a little callousness develops, a little trust is lost, a little hope is gone.   But have you ever considered how God reacts toward us when we break faith with him and move on and away from Him — the most intimate of lovers?

The ancient prophet, Jeremiah preached during a time of both apathy and antipathy toward the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  The Twentieth Century prophet, Francis Schaeffer, called Jeremiah the prophet for post-modern times, because our contemporary culture, like that of Jeremiah’s day, has turned away from love for God and has moved on in its headlong pursuit of self-love in a relational fission which has ignited stunning devastation.   In his very first recorded sermon, Jeremiah makes an impassioned plea on behalf of Israel’s divine husband to leave her sordid affairs and return to her true love, lest she destroy herself in the process.

How would we react if our beloved treated us as God’s people treated Him?  And before we cast too many stones on ancient Israel, let us be honest if things are really any different with us?   How patient, how tender, how willing to reconcile would we be with such a spouse?  Yet, in this word we hear the great grace God extended to the rebellious and unfaithful who have refused the fountain of living waters to drink from stagnant and broken troughs.

Join us this Sunday, July 7 as we examine a terrible picture of spiritual unfaithfulness in Jeremiah 2:1-13 and consider the deadly consequences of abandoning God but the life giving grace He extends to us in Christ.  We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions. Come with a friend and join us for fellowship and worship. We look forward to seeing you there.

Ancient Paths

My father loved nothing more than a new ‘short-cut.’  He hated driving on the interstates in Atlanta and avoided them like the plague.  As an office equipment salesman, he had a good sense of the layout of the city, but his love of a new ‘short-cut’ was proverbial in our family for ‘long dangerous route that ended up getting us lost.’  On vacations, my older sister would act as navigator so when my dad could not resist the urge to ‘take the road less traveled’ she could get us back to the ‘road more reliable.’

Like my father, society today is obsessed with finding the new path, the fast-track, the short-cut.  Our evolutionary mind-set has deceived us into thinking that we are very different men than those who came before.  After all, our problems are modern problems, not like the ancient concerns of our forefathers.   Surely modern problems demand modern solutions – new paths, not the worn and rutted path of those traveling ahead of us.

But this quest for novelty pervades our thinking beyond the realm of technology into our morality and spirituality.  We clamor for a new ethic, more flexible and adapted to the shifting mores of men.   Progressive political candidates habitually call for the Church to hitch its theology to the wandering star of public opinion, rather than remain tied to some outdated idea of transcendent and absolute truth.  But what if our problems are not new?  What if they are just more technologically advanced versions of the same old problem – the problem man has faced from the very beginning?  It is a grave danger to view our problems as modern problems in need of modern solutions.  As one theologian has noted, “what modern problems need are ancient solutions.”

The men of the prophet Jeremiah’s day faced social, spiritual, and national ruin.  Caught in the crossfire of colliding world powers, they looked to modern solutions — globalism, multi-culturalism, and nationalism, rather than return to the ancient paths found in God’s Word.  They were masters of compromise and political intrigue.  Pragmatism was their only core conviction.  ‘Go along to get along’ was their motto.  But to no avail.  Their departure from God’s Word led them further and further from the only path to peace.

Though the people left God behind, He did not leave them.  He sent His Word and His prophet, Jeremiah, warning them not to follow the empty traditions of their fathers or adopt the modern mantra, ‘coexist.’  Jeremiah charges them sternly.

 Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.  But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’  Jeremiah 6:16

Take note of their response – “we will not walk in it.”  Sound familiar?  How like us, whose pride scoffs at anything we did not devise.   “How foolish,” we say, “to look to at outdated ideas like faith and repentance.  How narrow-minded and unscientific to believe in the God of the Bible.”  We must look to ourselves.  Solve our own problems.  But the only solutions to uniquely modern problems are the ancient ones revealed by a God who stands above and beyond time.

Join us this Sunday, June 23, as we look at the words of Jeremiah and consider how this ancient preacher speaks to our modern concerns with amazing relevance and clarity.  We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions. Come with a friend and join us for fellowship and worship. We look forward to seeing you there.