“Integrity does not simply move us away from the path of evil, but moves us aggressively toward the path of good.”
—Erwin McManus, Uprising, 76
Aggressively toward good.
Category Archives: Quotes & Excerpts
-ISMS: Idealism.
“Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.” —George Carlin
Do you call yourself a realist? And do others call you a pessimist? Was there perhaps a time when you were a romantic idealist, envisioning things that could be if only we believed and persevered towards them?
I struggle with cynicism on a daily basis, which is not a surprise confession among those who know me well. Recently I’ve begun to own up to my cynicism, which is really nothing more than pride packaged together with a know-it-all perspective and delivered by way of humor. I like to think of myself as smarter than others, and able to laugh about how things actually work as opposed to the common view of how things should work. Cynicism and its cousin sarcasm are insufferable to live with.
It’s actually not ignorant to be an idealist, as long as one’s ideals are true. Of course, being true to one’s ideals is the next step. We are as much what we do as what we say.
In continuing these intermittent series on “-ISMS,” I thought it helpful to label another one that gets both bad and good press. Ideals set before us as something to aspire toward and attain can be a great motivator, but we get into trouble when we foist our ideals on others, expecting them to measure up. Consider the ideal of community, as described by Dietrich Bonhoeffer:
“Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it has sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves.”
Continuing on to the end of the next paragraph:
“Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.”
“… The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God Himself accordingly.”
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, pages 26-27; translated with an introduction by John W. Doberstein.
In the Gospel the real is better than the ideal. Let God shatter your ideals of community, for that is His grace to you to bring you something far richer, more beautiful, and more nourishing for your soul.
Relationally generous.
Ever felt too empty to give more to those who ask or need, or forgive one more time that person who doesn’t really deserve it?
Consider the limitations of your own soul, and then move from that tiresome place to consider the infinite grace of God found in Jesus — the One who gave far more than He received, and continues to give to us who don’t deserve one ounce of His compassion.
“Generosity is not contingent on what you receive, but on what you are willing to give… If we only give what we have received, we are nothing more than relational and emotional barterers.”
—Erwin Raphael McManus, Uprising: A Revolution of the Soul, 136.
“In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
——Paul speaking to the Ephesian Elders, applying the words of Jesus, Acts 20:35
In a world stocked full of self-style self-help gurus and manuals, the whole “God helps those who help themselves” mottoes fall far short. God helps those who plead on His Mercy. And He gives them more grace than they can manage to give away.
It’s hard to count on one hand how many times I hear as a pastor each week, “I just need to learn how to love and forgive myself more.” That’s an incomplete load of nonsense. (It’s partly true, as are all lies.) Find your dignity and worth in Christ, who has become your identity in all the ways He impressed the Father for you, and quit focusing all your energies on loving yourself — that’s code here in the West for normalizing our innate self-centeredness.
Why is it more blessed to give than to receive? Because that’s what God is like. He’s a Giver, not a Taker. Be like Him and quite taking so much and start giving yourself away. I’ll be seeking the same.
Survival.
The challenge we face, as people and churches, in our fight to survive:
“The ‘ultimate concern’ of most church members is not the worship and service of Christ in evangelistic mission and social compassion, but rather survival and success in their secular vocation. The church is a spoke on the wheel of life connected to the secular hub. It is a departmental sub-concern, not the organizing center of all other concerns. Church members who have been conditioned all their lives to devote themselves to building their own kingdom and whose flesh naturally gravitates in that direction anyway find it hard to invest much energy in the kingdom of God.
They go to church once or twice a week and punch the clock, so to speak, fulfilling their ‘church obligation’ by sitting passively and listening critically or approvingly to the pastor’s teaching. Sometimes with great effort they can be maneuvered into some active role in the church’s program, like a trained seal in a circus act, but their hearts are not fully in it. They may repeat the catchwords of the theology of grace, but many have little deep awareness they and other Christians are ‘accepted in the beloved.’ Since their understanding of justification is marginal or unreal – anchored not to Christ but to some conversion experience in the past or to an imagined present state of goodness in their lives – they know little of the dynamic of justification.
Their understanding of sin focuses upon behavioral externals which they can eliminate from their lives by a little will power and ignores the great submerged continents of pride, covetousness and hostility beneath the surface. Thus their pharisaism defends them both against full involvement in the church’s mission and against full subjection of their inner lives to the authority of Christ.”
—Richard Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Renewal, page 204-05.
Questions » How do you see this in your own heart? In your community?
Defined.
“We define ourselves in the same way that God does: by what Jesus has done on the cross. We are not defined by what we have done or by what we do or by the things that we have. Jesus has atoned for our sin, clothed us in righteousness, and adopted us as sons and daughters. This is our identity.”
—Brad House, Community, 91.
Less is more.
Every time we add something new to our schedule, we must take something out. Alongside your ‘to do’ list think about keeping a ‘don’t do’ list as well.
“Many times, developing the ability to spend time in the Bible and to hear what it’s saying is less about our aptitude for scripture and more about all the noise that exists around us. We all know we could use more Bible, but we often forget we could use less of everything else.”
—Jared Wilson, Abide
Pride.
“There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.”
—C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 109
Our God Above.
“Our God Above,” a song of God-centered renewal, from Andy Melvin’s album The Human Engine Waits:
Come and fill us Father
with Your living water
’cause these wells we’ve dug are dry
the world we have befriended
has left us empty-handed
and only You can satisfy
as we return to You
our spirits are renewed
and our hearts are moved to worship You alone
our God above
we lift You up
to the place that You deserve
within our hearts
and we glorify
the Lord on high
You have no equal on the earth
No equal on the earth
Lord, we claim the promise
that the work You started
You’ll be faithful to complete
so we trust in Your might as we offer our lives
as a living sacrifice of praise to You
and we! declare! our love! to You!
yeah we! declare! our love! to You!
Live recording of “Nothing Compares” by Andy Melvin and the Unlikely Sons [see in HD]:
Good words: End your own Veneer for just a buck.
The great book VENEER: Living Deeply in a Surface Society by Tim Willard and Jason Locy, is now on sale for Kindle for $0.99.
Get it. That will be the best dollar you invest today. (Even if you don’t have a Kindle device, you can read it with their app on your computer, mobile device or smartphone.)
A quote from Veneer:
“We need to go to God and then stop. We need to lay down our burdens and requests for a moment and attempt to gather him in, encountering his vastness. We do not approach him with a laundry list of wants. Rather, we approach him in order to worship him—giving him his worth—hoping that by being in his presence, we will glean a small piece of his glory to season our daily existence.”
Grow your emotions.
How are you growing your emotions, like as one tending to a garden? Matthew Elliott writes in FEEL:
“At the time the New Testament was written, there was a lot of talk about the emotions. Stoics and Epicureans saw emotions as a disease, something we were to be cured or by using the power of reason. Later Stoics, following Plato, looked at the emotions as irrational forces to be defeated. As we’ve seen, their model, and their solution to emotional problems, was tragically wrong. And yet, the New Testament, coming out of the same time and place, takes a very different view and adopts a totally different model—one that scientists and psychologists today are embracing. The Bible brings emotion and reason together into the unified ‘heart.’
I believe this three-part garden of emotions — Grow, Keep, Done — along with the gardener’s toolbox we’ve already put together — Focus, Know, Value, and Believe — can significantly help us if we are struggling in our emotional lives. It can also be a guide to help us develop the Christlike character God wants in us.
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The Bible specifically indicates four emotions that God wants us to grow:
- Love for neighbors, God, and goodness
- Joy in God, good relationships, and the good things in life
- Hope in [Christ who is the focus of] our eternal destiny, in God’s supreme power, and in his promises
- Hatred of evil
- (One can rightly add the Fear of God, which is a complex reality.)
Each of these emotions is not just hanging out there by itself. It is very important to remember that every emotion is connected to an object. It is tied to what we think, know, value, and believe about something. Determining the place that a particular emotion should have in our lives involves understanding why we feel it and the nature of its focus on a particular object — a person, idea, or thing.”
—Matthew Elliott, FEEL: The Power of Listening to Your Heart, pp. 164-65.
Route 66: A Crash Course in Navigating Life with the Bible [book review].
Ever left reading a so-called “Christian” book feeling empty? It happens to me all the time. Even as a new Christian 15 years ago I was almost shocked how sappy and substance-less the market was for books branded to help Christians grow. Whenever a solid book comes along, combining substance and style, I take heart. (There’s a false dichotomy separating those two, as if to be faithful and true we cannot be compelling? Or to be creative we must become soft on the true message?) I’m convinced that for us to have substantial lives we need to be challenged with solid truth and not just palatable platitudes. Please, no more easy-believism.
I was invited to participate in a blog tour for the new book, Route 66: A Crash Course in Navigating Life with the Bible, by Krish Kandiah. Here’s my review provided freely in response.
Buckle up, we have quite the adventure ahead. The subtitle of Krish Kandiah’s latest work Route 66 [paperback|kindle] summarizes the intent well: “a crash course in navigating life with the Bible.” Oftentimes the driving metaphors used in Bible summaries are such a far reach that it’s painfully obvious the message has morphed to fit into a new mold. Route 66 employs the metaphor of a touring a highway, navigating life with a guide in hand (Route 66 here in the States; think of the winding road in the Pixar animated CARS if that helps). Why 66? That’s the number of books in our English Bible.
What makes this book unique is the author is not content to try to fit God in the glovebox. He is not in the car along for the ride with us. He is in the driver’s seat, showing us the way. Unfortunately that’s rare in popular level Christian writing. Encouraged by the opening pages I grabbed my keys and began down the road optimistic about what lay ahead. Continue reading
4 steps to good decisions.
From Matt Perman, “4 Steps to Good Decision Making“:
- Understand the objectives
- Consider the alternatives
- Consider risk
- Decide
He summarizes: “Very basic, to be sure. But it is surprising how often we go into important decisions haphazardly, without taking an intentional (albeit simple) approach.”
For an over-analyzer like me — who thinks through opportunities, risks, and rewards on every little thing — this streamlines things. Plus, for those of us prone to living in the past (“hindsight is always 20/20” is actually a dumb adage, don’t you think?), second-guessing our decisions that are not of a moral nature, we can confidently move into the future knowing that no real damage has been done. When you consider the options to good decision-making, a little process is worth the risk.
Go … you are now free to make good decisions. (In the good will of God.)