Don’t Raise Good Kids

Parents, don’t raise good kids. I’m a recovering good kid, and I’m here to tell you that the gospel isn’t for good kids.

I was pretty easy for my parents to raise. I was generally compliant, had a buoyant, warm personality, didn’t get into any serious trouble, was liked by my teachers for the most part, usually did respectably in school, was a leader in my church groups, and had plenty of friends. My adolescent, wild-oat sowing would only generate smirks and eye rolls.

My folks and most adults in my life affirmed me as a good kid, and I believed it. Which posed a problem for me: I struggled to grasp the gospel.

 

Me? Hell?

Though I believe my pre-adolescent conversion was real — God is gracious to produce and honor a small seed of real faith — it was hard to swallow that I was that bad. God showing favor on me in redemption made sense because others had shown favor on me. But it was hard for me to see that this favor was not the approval of a good kid but the pardoning of a condemned sinner. Really? Me deserve hell?

It took quite a while — I am, in fact, still recovering — to see that in reality I was (am) profoundly depraved. Much of my outward good behavior was fueled by evil, selfish motives. Underneath my good-kid veneer was a glory-stealing, envious, covetous, idolatrous, lecherous person.   Continue at Jon Bloom

Psychiatric Medication and the Image of God

Watch any daytime talk show with an expert medical guest or flip through Time magazine's colorful diagrams, and you'll see that the latest emphasis in neurology, the brain's causal influence on human behavior, has leaked down to the popular level. Many of these experts consider the human being primarily as a physical creature whose actions, feelings, and thoughts for the most part simply manifest neurological activity. Undesirable feelings or behavior, then, should be addressed by ever-more-precise medical methods.

Many Christians have correctly seen the incredible danger such an understanding poses to a biblical worldview, which involves realities beyond what can be seen, touched, or medicated. In other words, we know that a human being involves more than the body. But we also know that the body is a vital aspect of our being as designed by God. So we begin to answer this question---How should Christians think about psychiatric medication?---by considering at least two aspects of what it means for people to be made as the image of God.

1. The Image of God as Union Between Soul and Body

 

The immaterial soul does not function independently of the material body. The soul is not a "ghost in the machine" whose function is autonomous of corporeal mechanisms. God intentionally designed humankind to represent himself in the physical world---a psychosomatic unity comprising both a soul that reflects the immaterial God and also a body that grounds him in material creation.

The keystone passage introducing the image of God is Genesis 1:26: "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness'." Biblical scholar D. J. A. Clines has pointed out that this phrase is better translated, "Let us make man as our image" for grammatical reasons as well as for historical-contextual reasons. Man, as the image of God, is the physical representation of God's presence in creation.   Continue at Jeremy Pierre

Oh, Behave! Conduct Worthy of the Gospel in Corporate Worship

Other Christians. Can't do corporate worship without them, and yet sometimes it feels like we can't really do corporate worship with them either.

How nice would it be if everyone would just mind their manners in weekend worship? So thinks our old self.

Let's admit it. We're tough on others, easy on ourselves. We assume others should give us the benefit of the doubt---which is the very thing we don't give to others.

She's the reason I'm distracted, the old self tells us.

If he weren't singing so loud---and so off key . . . 

If they would just get off their iPads and smart phones. I'm sure they're all doing emails, or social media, rather than looking at the Bible text or taking notes.

We love to blame our neighbor, or the worship leader, for our inability to engage in corporate worship. But the deeper problem usually belongs to the one who is distracted. Few things are more hypocritical than showing up to a worship gathering of the Friend of Sinners and bellyaching that other sinners showed up too.

Checking Our Own Souls

 

If there is gospel etiquette for the gathered church, it starts with evaluating my heart, not their actions. Frustration with others' distracting behavior---whether in the pew in front of me, or on the stage---is deeper and more dangerous than the nonchalance or negligence that sidetracks others.

Of course, there are rare exceptions when someone really is totally out of line. Such as the guy who brought his own tambourine one week. But even in the occasional instance where someone's worship conduct is seriously out of bounds, what if we started by asking ourselves some hard questions?

• If love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8), might God be calling me to look past this distraction I perceive?
• Am I really applying John 13:34-35 ("love one another") to fellow Christians in weekly corporate worship? If we can't apply John 13:34-35 when the church is gathered, are we really going to apply this elsewhere?   Continue at David Mathis

Five Ways to Harm Your Husband by Being a “Good” Wife

Several weeks ago Wendy Alsup wrote a striking post about how complementarians (folks who believe that men and women have differing roles in society, the home, and the church) are shooting ourselves in the foot with faulty reasoning and extra-Biblical teaching. It seems that on our way to understanding manhood and womanhood, our generation has started taking some shortcuts--shortcuts that are going to have significant consequences on whether or not we develop a fully Biblical understanding of gender and human relationships. In this sense, the things she mentioned are serious; but even more so is her overarching point: while we may have a seemingly noble goal, if we don’t reach that goal in an authentic and legitimate manner, we undermine everything we are trying to accomplish.

This is not a new problem for us humans. Whether it’s yelling at our kids to be quiet or speeding down the highway to avoid being late to an appointment, we regularly--although often unintentionally--conduct our lives under the assumption that the end justifies the means. Wendy’s post also got me to thinking about how this kind of pragmatism can invade our relationships, specifically our marriages.

Is it possible that in our attempts to reach an ideal, in our progress toward becoming “good” wives and husbands, we could actually be harming each other? I think it’s more than possible; I think it’s very common. And like so many areas of Christian living, the danger is not so much in what we’re doing, as what’s happening in our hearts and revealed through the process of doing them. And while I can’t speak for the men, here some problematic tendencies I’ve observed among Christian women—they are simply things I’ve heard, things I’ve seen, and truthfully, things I’ve done myself at times.

Let’s just file them under: “It’s a bad thing when…

1) You encourage your husband to be a leader… the same way you encourage good behavior in your child or pet. Many women I know are not truly satisfied with their husbands, but they are “gracious” enough to give them time and space to develop. Much like they are gracious enough to give their children time and space to mature. While waiting, they offer false praise or over-praise them for small acts of kindness or what they consider to be “growth.”  This is dangerous for two reasons: First, it is fundamentally condescending. And second, people know when you are not being truthful. What your husband learns is the same thing that any of us learn once we realize praise is false or overinflated: he learns that he cannot fully trust you or worse, that you didn’t think he was capable of success in the first place. Continue at Being a Good Wife

Why Are Secular Progressives So Threatened by the Christian's View of Homosexual Behavior?

Why do the the secular progressives feel so threatened when homosexual behavior is called a sin by Christians? Is this sin unique among sins? The recent fury by the Hollywood crowd over Kirk Cameron's honest answer to a journalist's question got me to thinking about this. 

For thousands of years the church has declared many various things as sinful; practices that are in direct rebellion against the Creator. These are acts that God Himself revealed to men as opposing his Lordship. The church has always declared the sinfulness of sex outside the covenant of marriage (before and after marriage), the sinfulness of idol worship, greed, hatred, pride and arrogance, self-righteousness, murder and many more. And the largest proportion of these are directed toward the church's own sin. You can see this every morning in our prayers and every Sunday (in confessional churches) during the corporate confession of sin where we remind ourselves that we are sinners and do so by then naming specific sins we ourselves are all guilty of ... and the very grace in the gospel constantly reminds that we are no better than others (this is such an easy sin for all of us to fall into), and we also remind ourselves that but for the grace and mercy of God in Jesus Christ alone would would have no hope at all. We confess daily that if we based our ability to please God and earn eternal life on our own broken sinful lives, that none of us would make it, since we all justly deserve God's wrath. Humanity, therefore, needs a Savior because it is in slavery to sin and bent on rebellion against the only one who can deliver us. None of us are immune from sin and our personal sin is not above the sin of the gay person. We are all equally damned without God's grace. 

When we tell others that something they are doing is sinful behavior in the eyes of God it is not because we hate them or think we are better than them. On the contrary, it is a call from other sinners like them to escape their slave-master and flee to Jesus Christ, the one who lived the life we should have lived and, in our place, died the death we justly deserve. None of us are born free. Only Christ can set us free.  Continue at Reformation Theology

Teach Children the Bible Is Not About Them

When I go into churches and speak to children I ask them two questions:

First, How many people here sometimes think you have to be good for God to love you? They tentatively raise their hands. I raise my hand along with them.

And second, How many people here sometimes think that if you aren't good, God will stop loving you? They look around and again raise their hands.

These are children in Sunday schools who know the Bible stories and probably all the right answers, and yet they have somehow missed the most important thing of all.

They have missed what the Bible is all about.

They are children like I once was.

As a child, even though I was a Christian, I grew up thinking the Bible was filled with rules you had to keep (or God wouldn't love you) and with heroes setting examples you had to follow (or God wouldn't love you).

I tried to be good. I really did. I was quite good at being good. But however hard I tried, I couldn't keep the rules all the times so I knew God must not be pleased with me.

And I certainly couldn't ever be as brave as Daniel. I remember being tormented by that Sunday school chorus "Dare to Be a Daniel" because, hard as I tried to imagine myself daring to be a Daniel, being thrown to lions and not minding . . . who was I kidding? I knew I'd be terrified out of my skull.

 

How could God ever love me?  Continue at Sally Lloyd-Jones

A Question of Character

One of the great lacunae in many of the current debates surrounding ministry in the contemporary world is the issue of character.  In the world of confessional Presbyterianism, our focus is generally on elaborate theological integrity and intellectual accomplishments, reflecting the ideal of an educated ministry.   We tend on the whole to take character on trust, based on a few written references provided at time of licensure and ordination.   My observations of the YRR world is that intellectual accomplishments are less significant (read: adherence to three or more of the five points of Calvinism is sufficient to qualify) compared to numbers of converts or what one might call 'contextual skills' which I find difficult to describe without sounding as if I am being pejorative.   Yet in both cases, character is arguably a much neglected category.

It was very different for earlier generations.   In the early nineteenth century, Princeton Theological Seminary professor, Samuel Miller, wrote a book entitled Letters on Clerical Manners and Habits: Addressed to a Student in the Theological Seminary at Princeton, N.J.  The book is a fascinating, and frequently hilarious, description of behaviour which Miller found to be appropriate in a minister.  Some of the prohibitions now sound simply quaint: ministers should not, for example, spit on floors.  Still unacceptable today, one hopes, but not a major problem in the ministerial circles I mix in.  Nor should they engage in 'loud or boisterous laughter' (according to Miller, 'a mark of ill-breeding'), cough into a handkerchief and inspect the residue, or pare their nails in company.  Continue at Carl Trueman

A Question of Character Part 2

Are You Righteous?

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21

Ethical behaviorism is a term Psychologists use which defines righteousness exclusively in terms of what a person does or does not do. In this sense, a righteous person is one who does the right things and avoids the wrong things. An unrighteous person is one who does the wrong things and avoids the right things. Defined this way, righteousness is a quality that can be judged by an observation of someone’s behavior. Virtue and uprightness is purely a matter of outer conduct without any hint of what goes on inside you.

William Hordern illustrates well how this definition of righteousness is the definition held by the world:

The law enforcement institutions of society are concerned with right behavior. They do not care why people obey the law, so long as they obey it. The person who breaks no laws is righteous in their sight regardless of the motivation that produces law abiding behavior.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus breaks radically from this definition of righteousness. He cuts through the outer behavior of a person and looks at what’s in the heart. Jesus insists that righteousness is not simply a matter of what we do or don’t do but rather a question of why we do or don’t do it.

A few years ago when my boys were younger, they would gather all the neighborhood kids in our yard to play football. And every once in a while a pass would be overthrown, landing in my neighbors grass. My neighbor (an angry, grumpy, old curmudgeon) would always come outside and scream at my boys and their friends, threatening to confiscate the ball if it happened again. My boys, being young at the  time, would always come inside with tears in their eyes, lips quivering, because they were scared of our neighbor. Well, being the scrapper that I am, there were countless times that I wanted to march over to my neighbor and give him a piece of my mind. I wanted to make it clear that if he ever yelled at my boys again…well, you get the idea. I never did, though. I would stare him down from time to time, but I never went next door to let him have it. Some would assume that my refusal to let loose on my neighbor was an act of righteousness: I was exercising love, patience, self-control. But was it?  Keep Reading >>>

When Looking for Pornography…Begin in the Heart

Where would you look to locate the primary problem with pornography? In our culture?

Are you tempted to initially react to the sensual realities of our culture?

You should react!

You should be concerned!

But when you address the porn problem, are you more inclined to begin the discussion with the prevalent, pervasive, cultural, immodesty issues?

Granted it should be part of the discussion.

Certainly it is right to walk our wives and daughters through how to dress modestly.

It is wise to teach them how to help guard the hearts of their male friends, by dressing in an appropriate manner.

However, the way they dress should not be the starting point in the pornography discussion.

Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. – Luke 6:45

Jesus began the discussion regarding behavioral sins like porn not with the behavior, but with the heart. In the quote above Jesus tied the behavior (tongue speech) to the heart. He placed the source or the genesis of our sin problems in the heart rather than on the lip.   Keep Reading  >>>

Grace Without Buts And Brakes

When people talk about grace, listen carefully. I’ve listened long enough to listen for certain things. I listen for “buts and brakes.” We often speak about grace with a thousand qualifications which reveal a paralyzing fear that grace will be taken too far. Our greatest concern, it seems, is that people will take advantage of grace and use it as a justification to live licentiously. And since bad behavior is apparently the thing that scares us the most as preachers and parents, we end up saying more about what grace isn’t than we do about what grace is.

Matt Richard describes well how naturally we take it upon ourselves to reign grace in when we fear too much of it will result in lawlessness:

I have found that as Christians we many times attribute ‘lawlessness’ to the preaching of the Gospel. Somewhere in our thinking we rationalize that if the Gospel is presented as “too free, too unconditional or that Jesus fulfills the law for us” that the result will be lax morality, loose living and lawlessness. It is as if we believe that the freeing message of the Gospel actually produces, encourages and grants people a license to sin. Because of this rationalization we find ourselves strapping, holding and attaching restrictions to the Gospel so that we might prevent or limit lawlessness. In other words, the Gospel is placed into bondage due to our rationalization and reaction to lawlessness.    Continue Reading...

Why are we Experiencing an Epidemic of Open Sin in the Church Today?

Why are we experiencing such an epidemic of open – and not-so-open – sin in the church today?… [Because] we have promoted a “gospel” that says it is possible to be a Christian while stubbornly refusing to address practices or behaviors we know are sinful. We have accepted the philosophy that it’s OK for Christians to look, think, act, and talk like the world. We have made it an offense to admonish people about their sin, either privately or, when necessary, publicly. If only we were as loath to commit sin as we are to confront it! 

~ Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Learn More

• Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots by J.C. Ryle
• Am I Really a Christian? by Mike McKinley
• Race Set Before Us: A Biblical Theology of Perseverance & Assurance by Thomas R. Schreiner
• The Assurance of Faith: The Firm Foundation of Christian Hope by Louis Berkhof

Grace Online

Gay Rights: Don’t Ask, Don’t Think

...I want to zero in on the fatal flaw in most gay-rights causes, and the one the Admiral repeated. It is the failure to distinguish between desires and behavior. Having certain sexual desires—whether you were “born” with them or acquired them sometime in life—does not mean that you are being discriminated against if the law doesn’t allow the behavior you desire.

Take marriage as an example. Despite complaints by homosexual activists, every person in America already has equal marriage rights. We’re all playing by the same rules—we all have the same right to marry any non-related adult of the opposite sex. Those rules do not deny anyone “equal protection of the laws” because the qualifications to enter a marriage apply equally to everyone—every adult person has the same right to marry.

“But what about homosexuals?” you ask. The question would better be stated “what about people with homosexual desires?” Put that way, you can see the flaw. If sexual desires alone are the criteria by which we change our marriage (or military) laws to give people “equal rights,” then why not change them to include polygamy? After all, most men seem born with a desire for many women. How about those who desire their relatives? By the gay rights logic, such people don’t have “equal rights” because our marriage laws have no provision for incest. And bisexuals don’t have “equal rights” because existing marriage laws don’t allow them to marry a man and a woman. Read the rest HERE

Why Require Unregenerate Children to Act Like They’re Good?