No man lives unto himself. Either directly or indirectly, you are deeply influencing somebody else. If you are a carelessly living Christian, there may be persons who will use your careless life as a shield, a hiding place for his own much more serious iniquity. Or there may be those who kneel at night and say, "God, make me like brother So-and-so, make me like Mrs. So-and-so." It can be both ways, for deeds have consequences and are the result of choices, whether they are impulsive choices or carefully thought out choices. In the Bible, a wise man is not necessarily an educated man or one of high cultural level, although he could be. A wise man is a man who acts with an eye to consequences. He thinks, "What will the result of this be?" Then he acts in a way that will bring him consequences he will not have to be ashamed of or afraid of in the day to come. --Paragraphs excerpted from "The Dangers of a Shallow Faith," A. W. Tozer I'm not dead, bu...

AMONG CERTAIN CHRISTIANS it has become quite the fashion to cry down creed and cry up experience as the only true test of Christianity. The expression “Not creed, but Christ” (taken, I believe, from a poem by John Oxenham) has been widely accepted as the very voice of truth and given a place alongside of the writings of prophets and apostles. When I first heard the words they sounded good. One got from them the idea that the advocates of the no-creed creed had found a precious secret that the rest of us had missed; that they had managed to cut right through the verbiage of historic Christianity and come direct to Christ without bothering about doctrine. And the words appeared to honor our Lord more perfectly by focusing attention upon Him alone and not upon mere words. But is this true? I think not. ... While we may worship (and thousands of Christians do) without the use of any formal creed, it is impossible to worship acceptably without some knowledge of the One we seek to worsh...

I’m re-reading Neil Postman’s classic jeremiad Amusing Ourselves to Death , subtitled Print discourse in the age of show business , in which this fantastic writer and philosopher explains why he thinks television, as an entertainment-oriented medium, is unfit for conveying serious thought (like political discourse, for example). In the second chapter he gets into how different cultures’ concepts of truth are influenced by the media that predominates, and through the course of the exploration he makes the following observations on what really is required of a reader: You are required, first of all, to remain more or less immobile for a fairly long time. [RS: Of which I’m incapable. Thus fidgeting.] If you cannot do this (with this or any other book), our culture may label you as anything from hyperkinetic to undisciplined [i.e. ADHD] ; in any case, as suffering from some sort of intellectual deficiency. The printing press makes rather stringent demands on our bodies as well as our mi...

I came across an excellent observation on imprecatory and abusive language from the prolific pen of C. S. Lewis: …In the vocabulary of abuse and complaint we see things that once were words passing out of the realm of language (properly so called) and becoming the equivalents of inarticulate sounds… The “swear-words”— damn for complaint and damn you for abuse—are a good example. Historically the whole Christian eschatology lies behind them. If no one had ever consigned his enemy to the eternal fires and believed that there were eternal fires to receive him, these ejaculations would never have existed. But inflation, the spontaneous hyperboles of ill temper, and the decay of religion have long since emptied them of that lurid content. Those who have no belief in damnation—and some who have—now damn inanimate objects which would on any view be ineligible for it…. It has ceased to be profane. It has also become very much less forceful…. So with abusive terms. No one would now call hi...

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep-- Nature’s observatory—whence the dell, Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell, May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep ’Mongst boughs pavilioned, where the deer’s swift leap Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell. But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee, Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, Whose words are images of thoughts refined, Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be Almost the highest bliss of humankind When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. —John Keats’ first published poem

“Missions exists because worship doesn’t.” –John Piper This week is missions conference at my newly adopted church. The featured missionary in yesterday’s morning service started by saying that the reason for missions couldn’t be as superficial as “Jesus said so in the Great Commission.” (And at a Christian and Missionary Alliance church as missions/Commission-focused as mine have been, that’s a weighty declaration.) Sure, he said, it was a command Jesus gave, but that couldn’t be the only basis for such a large-scale project. This missionary to Kosovo had wondered about the real reason for missions, the reason behind the mandate, even as early as his first months in college. But—what was the answer? It begins with this: Jesus calls us to be missionaries, each in his own way, for one purpose: To bring more people into the knowledge of God, to make them his worshippers. The purpose of all of life, reiterated the missionary, was to worship God, to give him glory in everything we do...

A quote was mentioned in a comment to a blog post written about the religious views of the man who killed several dozen campers in Oslo, and the quote was attributed to Chesterton. Being the Chesterton fan I am, I looked it up via Google; and not only did it sound like something he’d say, it was something he’d written. It is not enough to say “Christians persecuted; down with Christianity,” any more than it is enough to say, “A Confucian stole my hairbrush; down with Confucianism.” We want to know whether the reason for which the Confucian stole the hairbrush was a reason peculiar to the Confucians or a reason common to many other men. —G.K. Chesterton, “The Eternal Heroism of the Slums” chapter in his book The Blatchford Controversies P.S. This was the blog post , noting that the Christianity that Anders Behring Breivik purportedly espoused was cultural rather than spiritual. If that makes sense.

Length is the enemy of strength. The delivery of a discourse is like the boiling of an egg; it is remarkably easy to overdo it, and so to spoil it. —Charles Spurgeon

I re-read Perelandra by C.S. Lewis a few weeks ago, both to get something done on the summer reading program and because I wanted to buy the Space Trilogy , but thought I ought to remind myself why I decided to buy it after the first time I read the books. Conclusion: I am definitely using my gift card on this trilogy. The following quotes will give you a sampling of the reasons I love it so much. ….His journey to Perelandra was not a moral exercise, nor a sham fight. If the issue lay in Maleldil’s hands, Ransom and the Lady were those hands. the fate of a world really depended on how they behaved in the next few hours. the thing was irreducibly, nakedly real. They could, if they chose, decline to save the innocence of this new race, and if they declined its innocence would not be saved. It rested with no other creature in all time or all space. This he saw clearly, though as yet he had no inkling of what he could do. The voluble self protested, wildly, swiftly, like the propelle...

Lest my dear readers think I’m going off the deep end in my consideration of introversion and church-going , I present one final quote from Introverts in the Church : I do not intend to create yet another target audience for a church culture that is already marinating in consumerism. We should not cater our worship services to introverts any more than we should to extroverts. There are times when introverts should feel uncomfortable in worship, though we should be cautions as to the degree of discomfort. But if we are always comfortable, our faith goes stagnant. Introverts need to be challenged to experience God in ways that stretch us, and we need to be in situations that help us grow in love for others. Introverts may need to keep struggling through greeting times in church, because we need the constant reminder that the Christian life is never lived in isolation… Because introverts understand what it’s like to be on the outside of a community looking in, we can relate to people...

Want to know what I do during the linguistics class in which I could almost see myself falling asleep? Well… This past summer I linked to an article helping introverts find their place in church. Guess what? There’s a whole book about introversion and church-going, called Introverts in the Church by Adam S. McHugh ( Evangelical Outpost review here ). It was on the new-books display case at my college library so I picked it up. The paperback isn’t too big so it fits right on top of my linguistics notebook, and I read it for, oh, the first forty or so minutes of class, while the monotone professor goes over the homework. I got through over a hundred pages that way (while still participating in some of the class homework discussions). However, it’s now spring break and I can read it in more extended segments. I’ll likely finish the book tonight. But before I forget (or get sidetracked by other parts of the book), I wanted to comment on what I just read a few minutes ago: Some int...

Eleven days after I return to ministry, I turn 65. One could look at this two ways: 1) it’s the age most people retire, or 2) it’s the age Winston Churchill became Prime Minister and led England and the Western World to victory over Hitler’s aggression. I find Churchill much more inspiring than retirement. --John Piper, 1/1/11

The heroine of many a modern novel writhes and reels her way through the story, chews and flings away fifty half-smoked cigarettes, is perpetually stifling a scream or else not stifling it, howling for solitude or howling for society, goading every mood to the verge of madness, seeing red mists before her eyes, seeing green flames dance in her brain, dashing to the druggist and then collapsing on the doorstep of the psychoanalyst; and all the time congratulating herself on her rational superiority to the weak sensibility of Jane Austen. That is, the “weak sensibility” of a woman who (according to G.K. Chesterton) “was certainly not of the fainting sort.” The obvious irony that he pointed out made me laugh. (Quotes from his essay “On Jane Austen in the General Election,” included in Come to think of it… published in 1931.)

You know all those famous quotes that people attribute to famous people? Like the quote “A woman’s heart should be so hidden in God that a man must seek Him in order to find her.” Probably not a C.S. Lewis quote (or a Maya Angelou one either). I think it’s Max Lucado but I haven’t found the source for it yet. But anyways, here’s another one, coming from the theological types: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” At the theologically Wesleyan university that I attend, this line has always been attributed to John Wesley, beloved father of that theological tradition. I wondered this morning where he had said that, so I did a Google search… turns out it wasn’t him at all, though he no doubt subscribed to that school of thought. Instead, it is a translation (poetic, too) of a line in a 1617 Latin book called “De Republica Ecclesiastica Libri X” by Marcus Antonius de Dominis—a man I have never heard of before now, but with a name and a book like that,...

I often fret about the comparatively little time I spend reading my Bible. It’s as if the time spent reading the Bible, praying, reading devotionals or singing worship songs must be equal to the time I spend in my waking hours doing anything else… which would, of course, amount to a solid 7 or 8 hours a day doing those things. But then what of the other 7 or 8 hours? Are they wasted hours, because I am not steeped in God’s Word then? It pushes me to despair. And then I am refreshed by something like this, part of the A. W. Tozer book I’ve finished (re)reading tonight. One of the greatest hindrances to internal peace which the Christian encounters is the common habit of dividing our lives into two areas, the sacred and the secular. As the seas are conceived to exist apart from each other and to be morally and spiritually incompatible, and as we are compelled by the necessities of living to be always crossing back and forth from the one to the other, our inner lives tend to break up...

Yeah—community is a buzzword in Christian circles (and octagons for that matter). People wonder how to define it, how to create it, how to nurture it—I do too. Who doesn’t want community? But it’s elusive. Maybe we’re barking up the wrong tree, though, by focusing on community itself. If it’s anything like humility, the moment you turn your attention to it in and of itself it begins to break down… Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become “unity” conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified. --A.W. Tozer, towards the end of the chapt...

(Just for some meager amusement while I spend all day tomorrow on a bus and all the next day out of reach of the Internet. Sweet dreams.) There's a loyalty that's deeper than mere sentiment And a music higher than the songs that I can sing The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the Giver of all good things... --Rich Mullins But there's more to this life than living and dying, More than just trying to make it through the day; More to this life, more than these eyes alone can see, And there's more than this life alone can be. --Stephen Curtis Chapman For as long as I shall live, I will testify to love I'll be a witness in the silences when words are not enough And with every breath I take, I will give thanks to God above For as long as I shall live, I will testify to love. --Avalon Be thou my vision, oh Lord of my heart Naught be all else to me, save that thou art Thou my best thought, by day or by night Waking or sleeping, thy presence my li...

That quote is from the philosophy department chair at my college. (Remember, it's a Christian college, so they can talk about God and all that.) I thought of it as I read a thought-provoking post over at Stuff Christians Like--one about how Christians tend to think people would always choose the right, logical choice, if they knew the consequences of the wrong, illogical choices , when in fact that's quite definitely not realistic. He makes a good point, and he makes it better than I could. Go read it. I'm not exactly sure why I thought of the quote as I read the blog post. But they must have something in common....