Category Archives: Writings

-ISMS: Materialism.

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Ever been consumed with a product – with the getting of it — that you fantasized about how great life would be once you finally obtained it? That’s the promise and allure of advertizing: your life is incomplete without __________, but would be so awesome and complete with it.

That item for me was an iPad. When they first came out in early Spring 2010, I really wanted one. I thought of all the ways I could justify a purchase of the base model ($500) and present the case to my wise, frugal wife. Knowing our united family desire to simplify life, coupled with our commitments to become more generous, there was to be no iPad in our near future.

So, over the course of the next 12+ months I saved up, sold some of my books, and earned some additional funds through some creative work. This June I was able to purchase an iPad 2. It was a helpful tool on our UK travels, and remains a daily companion as a mobile device, e-book reader, and ubiquitous capture tool. Even still, I must live without it, and set it in our re-purposed “technology basket,” and while home with the kids the iPad must just sit there on the counter.

As American families prepare for this Christmas, starting on or before Black Friday, all sorts of gadgets like the iPhone 4S (with the automated do-everything Siri) will fly off shelves into the “deserving” hands of boys and girls, young and old alike.

Of course, we can stand at the edge of culture and decry all this “materialism” and the commercialization of holidays like Christmas. The real question is, why do we run to material things to meet our unmet needs?
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Influence: beyond impact.

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My generation grow up being told we can make an IMPACT. I’m realizing its far better to grow and wield INFLUENCE.

Impact is more apparent, easily measured, and makes us feel better about ourselves. Business people, coaches, and churches all talk about “making an impact.” Few talk about how impactful things cause collateral damage (like meteorites and car collisions). Or how people wanting to make an name for themselves and leave their mark on history do things to compensate for their insecurity like have their face engraved on money — as the Roman Caesars did.

We built up to impact, but then what?

Influential things cannot be as easily measured, but their effect reaches far beyond the moment of interaction. Influential people listen more than talk, give more than they receive. The people who have influenced me the most in life are those who weren’t aiming to make an impact; they were just being faithful and had the courage to persevere in dire circumstances. It sounds so exciting to make an impact, but my money is now on the people who are so compelling by their serving and sacrifice, that their words carry great weight.

Influential people grow towards impact and then disappear, pointing people past themselves. Impact was never the goal, but a byproduct, a result of their steadiness, consistency, courage and generosity. Influential people may feel they haven’t done much or “not enough,’ though those who get caught up in their wake all agree the influence of their life was immeasurable.

Truly influential people have come to realize it’s not great talents that God blesses, as much as great likeness to Jesus.

  • Who has influenced you?
  • Have you recently expressed gratitude to that person?
  • How are you influencing the people around you? 

 

Photo credits:

“The scars of impacts on Mars” by europeanspaceagency

“12 Caesars” by Joe Geranio

“Wake” by Beardy Git

 

Weighty Words: Ambition & approval.

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The goal and power of the Christian life is worship. Everyone everywhere at every moment worships someone or something. What do you worship? What are you worshiping right now? Whose approval do you crave?

Paul’s ambition in a phrase:

So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him.
—2 Corinthians 5:9

Here’s a man so bent on helping others grow and know God that he takes responsibility for their very lives. So he sacrificed and gave and confronted and extended grace. Paul was relentless and driven, yet transparent and authentic.

Things can get complicated quickly when so many relationships are at stake. Yet his ambition and desire for approval was singular: pleasing God was all he wanted to do. When he submitted his daily plans to God no one else was CC’d on the email.

In a culture where we are commended to focus on pleasing ourselves and where masses celebrate those who make their living pleasing themselves in public (celebrities), what a freeing reality to find ourselves wrapped up in pleasing Someone who is genuinely worth celebrating. He is so worthy and compellingly beautiful that any small thing done for Him is greater than something big done for ourselves (who are so small).

How will you please God today?

 

Let us break the seal which seals up holy things and give wings to Truth.

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“God suffers in the multitude of souls whom His word can not reach. Religious truth is imprisoned in a small number of manuscript books, which confine instead of spread the public treasure. Let us break the seal which seals up holy things and give wings to Truth in order that she may win every soul that comes into the world by her word no longer written at great expense by hands easily palsied, but multiplied like the wind by an untiring machine.”

—Johannes Gutenberg, in a preface to the Gutenberg Bible (1454)

Of course, up until that time no book, including the Bible, had been copied and mass produced on a printing press. Everything had to be written in pen, by hand. (There actually is a blessing in that activity, as words are less likely to be taken for granted.)

Whether you grab a paper copy or a digital version, take up and read the Great Words! Let’s not squander the Truth by keeping it to ourselves. Embody it; proclaim it; be changed by it.

Grateful Johannes Gutenberg employed creativity and innovation for the common good.

[quote source; image source]

 

A response to the best question all week.

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Last week our daughter asked, “Mommy, why God haffa die?”

While I cannot completely remember what her older brother Dutch said in response (though I remember chuckling), the question came during Bible story time right before bedtime. This may have been the first inquiry on the nature of what we were reading. Other questions have shown curiosity about the characters on the page, and our son is beginning to get excited about the complexity of the Trinity (how can Jesus be God and God the Father be God too?).

The question Heidi asked made my heart leap, and I knew Kari would have a terrific answer. (Mostly because she embodies doctrine and godliness like no one else I know.) We recognize a response is not so much about saying the exactly correct thing once; it’s about showing why and how we believe what we believe, every day.

So, “Why God haffa die?” Kari responded that God gave His Son Jesus to rescue us and forgive us from all the naughty things we do. (Do you do naughty things?) God wants to be with us, but we ran away and disobey Him. We chose to leave Him; Jesus came to bring us back. Jesus did this to bring us back to Him, so we can be with God. 

It’s starting to click in her mind. Heidi then smiled, joyfully exclaiming,

“Now He happy!” 

So true.
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Best question all week.

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One night last week while finished up our evening routine — “family bath and family snuggle” (always inseparable) — we ended with a Bible story and prayed for one another. Right after reading the story of Jesus dying on the cross in the Jesus Storybook Bible, our two-and-a-half old daughter asked:

“Mommy, why God haffa die?”

That’s the best question all week. I wanted to put that moment in my pocket and never forget it.

Love how both of our kids are wrestling with the substance and implications of the Gospel. Wish I was that curious all the time.

Question: How would you answer that question? (When asked by a toddler, or even an adult.)

Tomorrow I will share what her older brother said, and what we’ve been telling our kids, repeatedly and in different ways.

 

 

Weighty Words: in Him.

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Every branch receives its full nourishment from it’s root. The hidden part animates the seen parts.

“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”
—Colossians 2:6-7

Notice the words “in Him,” which form the basis of the exhortation. What God did for us in Jesus — rescuing us from sin, death, wrath, and Satan — He now does in us. He calls us to grow into His likeness, with our whole identity becoming “in Him.” Everything we need for they journey is ours. Yet, this connectedness to God is more than me-and-God spirituality. There’s an ‘us-ness’ to this walk.

Interconnected Roots

God intends that we grow; He designed us to flourish together. Just as the roots of all the trees in a healthy forest are interconnected below the surface, we have opportunities to strengthen one another. We can move beyond our preference for comfort and leave behind our want of control, success and approval. In Jesus we have found all we could ever wish for. He is making us whole; we can now give more than we take.

Do you want to grow like this?

Commit yourself to a life of gratitude and humility, cultivating true community in honesty with others, serving people who cannot pay you back — proactively and sacrificially giving away your time, talents, and treasure. All the while, you’ll be surprised how much God is shaping your character into the image of His Son.

What Jesus did for us is becoming what He is doing in you, and will do through you.

You’re becoming like Him.

Remember, healthy people grow.

(See part one & part two.)

 

Weighty Words: rooted, built up, established, taught, overflowing.

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Yesterday we took a quick glimpse at Colossians 2:6:

“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him,”

Note how the way on in the same as the way in. We trust Jesus by faith, relating to God by His Grace, as a whole way of life. Not cheap grace, but costly grace. Jesus gave up His life for us. We know we can never repay Him, so we don’t try to earn His favor. We have God’s favor because of what Jesus did for us. Now begins the effort, working out what God has worked in (Philippians 2:12-13).

Colossians 2:7 shows us the ‘how’ of continuing to walk in Jesus:

“… rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.”

Paul’s vision of the Christian life is both ambitious and sustainable. He calls us to accomplish the extraordinary through faithfulness in the ordinary moments of life. (Clearly we were not meant to merely ‘accept’ Jesus as our way to Heaven.) He and we want much more than that. Jesus comes to take masterful control of every area of our lives as our Savior and Lord. Yet what we read here is sustainable as well. As we began in Jesus, we shall continue in Him. The same way we trusted Christ at first, we continue to trust Him each day.

(Paul employs five metaphors in verse 7 as he illustrates how growth works. )

The growing process is rooted like a healthy plant. We shall be continually built up and renovated together as a luxuriously designed dwelling, established on a solid foundation. When Jesus is our sure foundation, we can weather any season and storm. God leads us forward by pointing us back to what we’ve been taught — we never outgrow our need for the good news of Jesus.

People who live this way — rooted, built up, strengthened in the gospel — will naturally overflow (abound) with thanksgiving, like a river at flood stage.

No one can contain that life, it’s an unstoppable force.

(Tomorrow, part 3.)

 

Weighty Words: SENT.

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(Maybe it should be called Pure Words instead. Read on.)

[John 17] Jesus is about as calm as the eye of a hurricane as He awaits an inevitable betrayal, arrest, conviction and crucifixion. So He intently goes to a familiar place to pray. An urgent conversation awaits Him. His closest friends are oblivious to the weight of the scene; the only weight they feel is their eyelids shutting as they sleep instead of watch. I would chide them expect for the fact that I would have done the same.

What Jesus prays is both shocking and re-assuring. He wrestles with the Father, resigning His will to what must be done. (For the joy set before Him He endured the cross, despising the shame [Hebrews 12:1-3].) Then His prayer takes the tone of a man giving his final resolution, a battle cry of certainty. Jesus doesn’t say much after this, at least not for a few days. The risen Christ had much to say on the other side of the grave.

He had just said His peace to His betrayer, Judas, who would come onto the scene soon after this hour of prayer. Earlier, at the Last Supper, celebrating the substitution of the Passover Lamb, Jesus told His adversary to get on with what he intended to do.

What Jesus needed to say next He said to the only one who did not betray Him. Though the Father would soon turn His face away, He is the only One in Jesus’ life who would keep all His promises.

This was a moment of sweet communion and a glimpse into the most pure conversation to ever take place on planet earth. No pretense or manipulation. No one ‘winning,’ and getting his way through whining or verbal abuse. The strength of Their wills is unfathomable, their rights as Deity immeasurable. But — check this — neither asserts His rights.


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Sacred token, signed by the president.

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The inside cover of my wife’s grandfather’s pocket Bible, his constant companion as a merchant marine serving in the military during WWII:

20110902-095912.jpg

When you get to a page like this, keep reading. What follows is even better. It’s far better than the previous page describes as “A Sacred Token.”

Howard Zoet signed the cover page on March 26, 1942. He read the Bible often because he loved the God of revealed in its pages more than life itself. Grandpa Zoet was changed as he read and responded. No mere “sacred token” here.

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Happy Labor Day weekend. Thanks for reading.

 

Is God really Good? (How does Jesus explain the problem of evil?)

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The problem of evil is a challenging subject to tackle. The question is often put this way: If God is all-good, all-powerful, and all-wise, why does He allow so much suffering and evil?

For the last five years I have read and graded position papers of first-year seminary students seeking to biblically answer this question for the ages. (In theology we call it “theodicy” as in Theos = God, and dika = to judge or justify. In this question we are seeking to judge, defend, or justify God. And that’s part of the problem, if we’re honest; who are we to judge God?) In Just 7-10 pages these first-year theology students are often over-matched. It’s difficult to give a comprehensive and compelling answer.

Let’s make no mistake: it’s not just a philosophical question begging for an abstract answer.We suffer; personally, painfully, and relationally. Where is God in the midst of tragedy, especially when suffering hits our lives?

A related question usually follows:

  • Why can’t (or won’t) God just remove all the evil from the world, just leaving the good behind?

That assumes that we who ask the question are on the “good” side, and there are others who are on the “bad” side. Why can’t God just rid the world of evil and pain in one moment? Can’t He do whatever He wants? (See Psalm 115:3.)

In grading each student’s paper I seek to counter the students argument with the question: How does Jesus answer this question? (Not just with His words, but also with His life and death. Certainly the God-Man has much to say about the problem of good and evil, right?) In looking at His life, His words, will, ways, and worth, does Jesus answer the problem of evil?

In teaching His disciples, perhaps Jesus simplifies the issues at play. Read on: Continue reading →