Download here.
We’re now well past halfway in our Ligonier Connect course on the Old Testament’s Prophets, Poetry, and Wisdom Literature. In this week’s podcast we consider student questions on Joel, Micah, and Habakkuk and then turn to Dr. Sproul’s introduction to Wisdom Literature. We also indulge in some baby-talk.
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This week’s Ligonier Connect/Connected Kindgom podcast covers Ezra, Nehemiah, Amos and Hosea. We look at some of the most important parts of these books and try to answer a few of the most pressing questions.
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This week’s episode of the Ligonier Connect – Connected Kingdom podcast considers the exile. Dr. Sproul’s lecture guided us through a complicated period of history, raising a number of questions among our students which Tim and I try to tackle, including:
1. The importance of understanding history for understanding Scripture
2. How the loss of biblical worship leads to the loss of God’s favor.
3. How is our day like Josiah’s day and why should this encourage us?
4. What does the Jewish exile represent for the Christian?
5. How do we reconcile the seeming difference between two Scriptures, one of which says the devil incited David to number the people and the other which says God incited him?
6. Why does Chronicles not mention David’s adultery?
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In this week’s podcast, Tim and I review R C Sproul’s Lesson 2: Isaiah in the Ligonier Connect course that we are studying with 1200+ others.
This week we answer some of the questions that have arisen about Elijah and Isaiah. Some of the questions we consider are:
1. How do we explain God seeming to send a lying spirit in 1 Kings 22?
2. What’s the best way to read and study Isaiah?
3. How do we interpret poetic literature in the Bible?
4. What will the new heavens and the new earth be like?
5. How should we read Isaiah 53? Tim refers to this testimony: The Revival of a Rebel Jew.
There were a number of other questions that we couldn’t cover in the limited time, but we’ll post the other answers to your questions on the Ligonier Connect Course pages.
If you would like to take this course with us, there is still a short time to join in. Simply click here and join the version of the course led by Tim and me. Have the first, second and third lesson completed by March 18 and you’ll be right there with us. And in the meantime, give the podcast a quick listen.
What’s a MOOC? It’s a Massive Open Online Course, the kind of free online education being pioneered by Coursera, Udacity, and edX.
And what’s perhaps the largest Christian MOOC? Possibly the Connected Kingdom – Ligonier Connect collaboration that I hope you are a part of. Yes, the course we launched last week now has over 1,200 people signed up from 45 different countries including: Niger, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Uganda, Saudia Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, India, Thailand, China, Columbia, Venezuela, Uruguay and even Scotland! Here’s a map showing our students’ locations.
There’s still time for you to sign up (it’s free!) and join the rest of us in learning about the Old Testament Prophets and the Poets from Dr. R.C. Sproul. You can find Week one’s podcast introducing the course here, and week two’s podcast reflecting on the teaching about Elijah below.
Download here.
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Last week Tim Challies and I announced that we will be taking a course together and that we would love for you (yes you!) to take it with us. As we take the course, led by Dr. R.C. Sproul, we will be recording weekly podcasts to discuss what we have been learning and to answer some of the questions that students ask of us.
This first podcast, which you can listen to right here, talks about why we are doing this course and introduces a few of the 700+ students that have already signed up. It also reminds you that the course officially begins today, which is to say you’ve got between now and next Monday to take the first lesson (which is on Elijah).
If you would like to take this course with us, you have only six days left to sign up. Simply click here and join the version of the course led by Tim and me. Have that first lesson completed by March 4 and you’ll be right there with us. And in the meantime, give the podcast a quick listen.
For the past few weeks, Tim Challies and I have been throwing around different ideas for the fourth season of our Connected Kingdom podcast. In the past we’ve done interviews, Q&A’s, monologues, and more. This time we thought we’d do something completely different. We’ve decided to learn something together and we want to invite you all to join us!
As we worked through various ideas, we found we were both eager to begin some kind of Bible study and preferably something not too long. We also wanted to study a less-travelled part of the Bible, something we could learn from ourselves. When we put all these things together, we settled on the Poets, Prophecy, and Wisdom Bible Survey, a 13-week course taught by Dr R.C. Sproul via video lectures. We asked Ligonier Ministries what they could do for us and they generously offered a free class to us and our listeners through Ligonier Connect.
If you sign up, you will get all course materials, a full downloadable study guide, and access to the students forum. Tim and I will moderate the class and record an optional weekly podcast where we reflect on the lessons, and answer some of the questions raised by our fellow students. You won’t need to be taking the class to benefit from the podcast…but we trust it will help!
This link will take you to the course page. Click on the Connected Kingdom Class tab and sign up for the course. Have a look around, introduce yourself, and bookmark next Tuesday for the first Connected Kingdom podcast when we’ll introduce the course and get us started. You will want to have the first lesson completed by March 4.
We’re so looking forward to learning from Dr. Sproul, and from one another, as we study God’s Word together. We hope many of you will join us.
Here is our tentative timetable:
Sign up for Connected Kingdom Bible Survey Class: Poets, Prophecy and Wisdom.
Here’s how Tim Challies describes this week’s episode of the Connected Kingdom. Download here.
Robert Shelby’s boys saved his life. On July 3 Shelby, a pastor in Baton Rouge, was teaching them how to swim when he dove a little too deep and slammed his head into the bottom of the pool, breaking his C-5 vertebra. Unable to move, unable to swim, he was helpless to save himself. For a few moments he hovered between life and death until his young sons realized that something was amiss. They dragged him from the pool, performed CPR and saved his life.
Last week we spoke to Robert about his accident and about life in the aftermath. He is now adjusting to life with quadriplegia (and do note as you listen to the interview that one of the effects of his condition is that it keeps his voice from being as expressive as it once was) and hoping to soon return to the pulpit.
Here is a link to the Shelby Family Fund, and this is a link to a newspaper report about what happened.
If you would like to give us feedback or join in the discussion, go ahead and look up our Facebook Group or leave a comment right here. You will always be able to find the most recent episode here on the blog. If you would like to subscribe via iTunes, you can do that here or if you want to subscribe with another audio player, you can try this RSS link.
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There are some stories that just need to be told—some testimonies of the Lord’s grace that are so unusual and so encouraging that they will bless everyone who hears them. This is exactly the case with Rosaria Butterfield who recently authored The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. Tim and I recently interviewed Butterfield for an episode of the Connected Kingdom Podcast. At the very least, make sure you listen to the first ten minutes or so where she shares the way the Lord saved her. After hearing how she came to know the Lord, we also talk about issues related to the church and homosexuality.
If you would like to give us feedback or join in the discussion, go ahead and look up our Facebook Group or leave a comment right here. You will always be able to find the most recent episode here on the blog. If you would like to subscribe via iTunes, you can do that here or if you want to subscribe with another audio player, you can try this RSS link.
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As I wrote in today’s blog post, while I appreciate much of what Tullian Tchividjian has written in his most recent book, Glorious Ruin, I do have some concerns.
Tullian was gracious enough to allow me to put some of these points to him in this interview and to clarify some of what he wrote. He also speaks about his own experiences of suffering, why he chose to write about it at this time, and a whole lot more.
If you would like to give us feedback or join in the discussion, go ahead and look up our Facebook Group or leave a comment right here. You will always be able to find the most recent episode here on the blog. If you would like to subscribe via iTunes, you can do that here or if you want to subscribe with another audio player, you can try this RSS link.
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In this week’s episode of the Connected Kingdom podcast, Tim and I discuss a difficult subject. Early infant loss is a term that applies to miscarriage, stillbirth, and the death of a newborn. We asked Glenda Mathes to join us to help us understand this issue from a practical and biblical perspective. Glenda is the author of Little One Lost: Living With Early Infant Loss and we ask her about how we can minister to (and how we should not attempt to minister to) those who have suffered this kind of loss, about the guilt that is so often a part of the grieving process, about how the church has too often failed such people, and about so much more.
Glenda has been married for forty years to the nicest guy in the world, David Mathes. They are parents of four living adult children and one little one in heaven, grandparents to five grandsons on earth and one grandchild in heaven. She regularly writes for Christian Renewal and The Messenger and blogs at Ascribelog. She has also written Not My Own: Discovering God’s Comfort in the Heidelberg Catechism, the first volume in the “Life in Christ” catechism curriculum, which is being translated into seven languages; and A Month of Sundays: 31 Meditations on Resting in God, scheduled for release in November from Reformation Heritage Books. She loves watching sun rays pierce clouds, smelling line-dried laundry, and crunching through autumn leaves. Her greatest joy comes from witnessing her children and grandchildren walking in the faith.
If you would like to give us feedback or join in the discussion, go ahead and look up our Facebook Group or leave a comment right here. You will always be able to find the most recent episode here on the blog. If you would like to subscribe via iTunes, you can do that here or if you want to subscribe with another audio player, you can try this RSS link.
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On this week’s podcast, we’re joined by Trevin Wax, who’s packed a lot into his relatively short life: missionary to Romania (where he also met his wife), Southern Baptist associate pastor, Gospel Coalition blogger, and now Managing Editor ofThe Gospel Project. We take a quick run through Trevin’s bio before settling down to talk about the exciting work he’s been doing in preparing Gospel-centered curriculum for the whole church. We asked Trevin to “sell us” on the package and he did a pretty good job. He also answered some of the criticisms that a project of this nature inevitably attracts.
If you would like to give us feedback or join in the discussion, go ahead and look up our Facebook Group or leave a comment right here. You will always be able to find the most recent episode here on the blog. If you would like to subscribe via iTunes, you can do that here or if you want to subscribe with another audio player, you can try this RSS link.
Download here.
On this week’s episode of the Connected Kingdom podcast, Tim and I talk to Michael Reeves. Mike works on UK campuses with UCCF and is the author of Delighting in the Trinity (you may want to check out Tim’s review). We talk to Mike about his work with students, but focus mainly on the Trinity—where Christians tend to go wrong, why illustrations don’t help, why Modalism (or is it Moodalism?) is such an egregious error, and how we can truly delight in the triune God. The Kindle version of Delighting in the Trinity will soon be available in the USA. Mike also runs Theology Network
If you would like to give us feedback or join in the discussion, go ahead and look up our Facebook Group or leave a comment right here. You will always be able to find the most recent episode here on the blog. If you would like to subscribe via iTunes, you can do that here or if you want to subscribe with another audio player, you can try this RSS link.
Download here.
The Connected Kingdom Podcast is back after a long but not lazy summer break. In this episode, Tim Challies and I interview Nathan Bingham, Director of Internet Outreach at Ligonier Ministries and social media guru, about how Christians and churches can use social media for God’s glory.
If you’d like to give us feedback or join in the discussion, go ahead and look up our Facebook Group or leave a comment right here. You will always be able to find the most recent episode here on the blog. If you would like to subscribe via iTunes, you can do that here or if you want to subscribe with another audio player, you can try this RSS link.
Should you go to Seminary? What are the pros and cons of Seminary? Should Seminaries exist? These are the questions Tim and I discuss in the latest podcast. Partial transcript below. Download here.
I have a hate-love relationship with Seminary.
When I was converted in my early twenties, and sensed an almost immediate call to the ministry, I was looking at six years of training before I got near a congregation. (I’d gone straight from High School into Finance, because, I mean, who needs a degree to make a million dollars? Right!)
Six years? Three years at University, then three at Seminary?
The world needs me, the Church needs me, lost souls need me! Why do I need books, lectures, professors, etc?
I was ready to jump on to MV Logos and save the world. Yet, despite trying hard to find someone to confirm my vital stop-the-clock mission, every voice, without exception, told me to get some education and some theological training first.
So with much reluctance and considerable resistance, I started the long, weary six-year plod through Glasgow University, then Seminary in Edinburgh.
Seminary Misery
Glasgow University taught me how to learn, and Seminary taught me what I needed to learn. At least, that was the theory. I’m afraid my Seminary years were a fairly miserable experience. Some of that was my own fault; but most of it wasn’t.
This is not the place to enter into the details, but suffice to say that the Seminary’s Faculty and the student body were angrily divided and fatally distracted by a major theological and moral controversy that eventually split our Presbyterian denomination. For that, and for other reasons, it was hardly the best place to learn or to prepare for ministry. I lost 24lbs going through Seminary (most people go the other way) because of the stress!
I’m telling you all this because I want to demonstrate that my current appreciation for Seminaries and their role in preparing men for ministry has been despite my own prejudices before Seminary and and my painful experiences in it. I’ve been won over through experience in the ministry and by seeing how wonderful places Seminaries can potentially be.
Seminary Hybrid
But one other detour before I get to that…After our Presbyterian denomination split, my own side of that divide were left without a Seminary or a Professor. After trying a few options, we eventually decided to start our own distance-learning Seminary.
As we couldn’t afford to hire full-time professors, we asked five pastors to add teaching duties to their pastoral work and to teach our handful of students using mainly distance education methods. The idea was that our students would stay in their own home congregations, receive lectures to read and listen to, and then come together for a couple of days a month for face-to-face instruction with the five pastor-lecturers.
I was a real enthusiast for this “hybrid” approach as I thought it would avoid some of the dangers and difficulties of the residential seminary method that I suffered.
On the whole it worked very well. The part-time lecturers did an amazing job of producing quality lectures on top of their pastoral work. At times it was frustrating for the teachers to have so little face-time with the students. Seminary training is much more than data-transfer. Ethos and pathos are as important as logos and you can’t communicate that without personal presence.
Some students found it very hard to motivate themselves without the daily discipline of lectures and seminars. The few face-to-face days were great, but they also reminded the students of how lonely the in-between weeks were. Some students were well-supported in their home congregations; others, however, had very little local interest or input.
Seminary Circle
And now I’ve come full half-circle. I started out hating Seminary before I even got there. I grew to hate it even more through my experience of training in one. I saw the potential of a healthy Seminary, though in a hybrid model, and now I’m teaching in a residential Seminary and I love it.
Although there can be significant disadvantages, and although it does not fit every student or church situation, on the whole I believe a good Seminary is a great way to prepare for a lifetime of ministry.
I’m not saying it’s the only way – we all know men, past and present, who’ve had faithful and fruitful ministries without Seminary training. And I’m definitely not supporting Seminary training divorced from the local church – that’s a disaster area. However I do believe in a significant role for Seminaries in training men for the ministry. Even where a large part of a man’s training is in a local church, I would strongly encourage the integration of well-taught Seminary courses, or even a short period of residential study in a Seminary.
Benefits for students
Some of the benefits of a Seminary education are:
Disadvantages
However, I know all too well that there are disadvantages, and I highlight them here, not as deal-breakers but as areas that require extra thought and care if we are to avoid Seminaries becoming a hindrance rather than a help:
Conclusion
Seminary is not a “Finishing School” for pastors. It’s more like a starting school. It sets you up for a lifetime of learning. In fact, if all Seminary teaches you is how much you have to learn – it might be worth it just for that.
If you’d like to give us feedback or join in the discussion, go ahead and look up our Facebook Group or leave a comment right here. You will always be able to find the most recent episode here on the blog. If you would like to subscribe via iTunes, you can do that here or if you want to subscribe with another audio player, you can try this RSS link. And here’s an archive of 2012′s podcasts.
Fresh off the heels of T4G, Tim Challies addresses the topic of Conferences. A partial transcript is below or you can listen in to hear the two of us interact. Download here.
I have had the privilege of attending an awful lot of conferences over the past few years. At first I went as a liveblogger, sitting through each session and tapping out a summary of what the speaker said. More recently I have gone as an attender or sometimes even as a speaker. I suppose this means that I’ve seen conferences from just about every angle.
I like conferences and I believe in their value. Of course, like every other good thing in life, they demand moderation. I have met genuine conference groupies, people who follow conferences like Deadheads follow the Grateful Dead. I have met pastors whose churches allow them to attend five major conferences each year. I can’t imagine how that can be healthy or financially-sustainable! But a conference or two a year can offer times of learning, refreshment and relationship that can benefit any Christian, whether a layperson or a pastor.
I believe there are several different ways you can benefit from a conference.
Teaching Value
The most obvious benefit of a conference is in the teaching. In the Christian world in general, and in this segment of the Christian world in particular, we have no shortage of great conferences featuring wonderful speakers. There are the usual suspects: Ligonier, Shepherd’s, Desiring God, Together for the Gospel, Gospel Coalition, and many others. Each one of them draws well-known, highly-skilled teachers and many thousands of attendees. Then there are, literally, hundreds of smaller events. There is no doubt: We are well-served by conferences.
I believe in the teaching value of conferences, and particularly so when the event has a well-defined theme. Hearing several people teach on a common subject, moving from the beginning to end of a topic, can be powerful and effective. I don’t think I will ever forget the Desiring God conference that looked at Suffering and the Sovereignty of God. That teaching genuinely changed me. I definitely won’t ever forget R.C. Sproul’s message at the 2008 Together for the Gospel conference where he looked at the curse motif of the Old Testament. Thousands of people sat transfixed as he led us to the cross and to the curse that was laid upon Jesus. It was an intensely powerful moment. I am hearing similar stories from David Platt’s message at this year’s Together for the Gospel.
I believe in conferences for their value in teaching. If teaching is high on your list, consider Together for the Gospel or Gospel Coalition to sit under the teaching of some of today’s most popular preachers. If you prefer an event that sticks closely to a theme, consider Ligonier Ministries or Desiring God’s annual general conferences. And, of course, be sure to look for events that may come to your local area.
People Value
Conferences also have great people value and, in my experience, this may be the greatest and most lasting benefit. Teaching is wonderful, of course, but what I love about conferences is the way they bring people together. In the midst of a digital world, conferences provide one of the only sources of real connectivity that most of us experience. I have emailed with Brian Croft a hundred times, but at last week’s Together for the Gospel I was finally able to meet him, to put a face to the name, to share a meal with him. The Internet gives us the ability to form relationships with more people and often we form these relationships based on common interests. Conferences take people of common interest and give them a good reason to be together in a common space.
When I attend a conference I love to meet new people and form real-world relationships with them. I also love to meet up with people I’ve met before. There are actually plenty of people—friends even—that I’ve only ever been face-to-face with at a conference. These events offer a great opportunity to be with people. So when you go to a conference, be sure that you set aside some time to be with people even if this has to come at the expense of some of the teaching.
If the people value of an event is high on your list, be sure to consider Shepherd’s Conference or The Basics Conference; both of these events offer a relaxed schedule and plenty of opportunities to spend time with people.
Excitement Value
Finally, conferences have a unique ability to get you excited, to get you pumped up about things that interest you. This can be either a great benefit or a great drawback; there are many people who go to a conference and come back pumped up about something that will soon fade away again. But for many more, a conference will renew and refresh. It will refresh them physically or mentally, allowing the teacher to receive some teaching or the busy mom to take a couple of days to get away from the normal routines. The excitement of a conference serves to stir up old feelings, to renew things long forgotten or neglected. They offer a different context or a different way of hearing things and this can be very powerful.
Tim Challies
If you’d like to give us feedback or join in the discussion, go ahead and look up our Facebook Group or leave a comment right here. You will always be able to find the most recent episode here on the blog. If you would like to subscribe via iTunes, you can do that here or if you want to subscribe with another audio player, you can try this RSS link. And here’s an archive of 2012′s podcasts.
This week’s episode of the Connected Kingdom Podcast has Tim responding to my challenge to talk about about reading fiction. You’ve got two options: You can read the transcript below or you can listen in by clicking on the audio player. If you listen in, you’ll be able to hear the two of us interact. Download here.
There is power in story. Christians have long realized this and today, perhaps more than any other time in the history of the church, believers speak of the whole sweep of Christian theology as a story—a story that has its beginning in the Creation of the world and a story that will close with the consummation, with God renewing this world and raising us to join him in it. This is the story that will go on and on forever, the story of all stories. Jesus himself used story in powerful ways, sharing amazing and important truths through parables, short stories designed to both hide and reveal truth—to hide it from those who would not hear and to reveal it to those who longed for it. It is worth noting, of course, that much of the Bible comes in the form of story and that the bestselling Christian book apart from the Bible—The Pilgrim’s Progress—is a story.
I confess that I usually enjoy fiction only in short batches. Every year or two I will pick up a few novels—a few that have been nominated for a Pulitzer prize, perhaps, and I will read them through. They transport me to strange places and, more often than not, make me uncomfortable. But I almost always benefit from them. They give me a glimpse into someone else’s mind, someone else’s world or worldview. And as often as not they also tell me what other people, the people around me, are thinking or feeling, or what they will be thinking or feeling soon enough.
In some ways fiction tends to be just very slightly upstream from culture, which is to say that the kind of fiction that deals with ideas and not just stories or passion or action, puts into words the times, the thoughts and feelings that pervade the culture or will soon pervade the culture. These works of fiction ask the questions so many are asking.
I have heard it said that the purpose of fiction is to ask questions while the purpose of nonfiction is to answer them. That may be an over-simplification, but maybe it is not too far off the mark. At least that has been my experience of fiction. Fiction introduces ideas and evokes feelings and arouses emotion. These feelings demand answers or make us long for them. There are many questions I have been asked in fiction that I’ve had to go to the world of nonfiction to answer.
Cormac McCarthy’s novels ask if there is hope even in a world like this one, a world of darkness and depravity. John Piper has rightly said that Cormac McCarthy is to the American literary canon what the book of Judges is to the biblical canon. McCarthy portrays the darkness of humanity and asks us if there is hope even here. It doesn’t offer answers—just questions, questions brought about by deep feelings of pain or revulsion or sadness. Answers must be found elsewhere.
The recent novel The Snow Child asks, Is it worth loving if we can love for only a short time? Where do we find our hope and our joy? It makes us hope and long and wish and maybe even believe. But it asks questions that it cannot answer.
Olive Kitteredge, a recent Pulitzer Prize winner, asks what value there is in life and what joy can be found in growing old. What do we do about the sins we committed so many years ago? Do they still matter? And how can two souls remain knit together even after so many years and through so much hurt and sin?
Tom Clancy…okay, never mind. His books just tell some action-packed stories.
But how about The Lord of the Rings, a true and lasting classic? Here is a novel that transports us to a world of such clear good and evil. It asks us what we will give to defeat evil and what value there is in the deepest kind of friendship. Born out of Tolkien’s experiences on the front lines of the First World War, this is a novel that seeks to give a very different take on this kind of a world—a world in which good and evil do battle to the death.
We could speak of C.S. Lewis and his Narnia series, which begins with the story of the Bible and then wonders, how would a story like this be told if there was a very different land in which it was always winter but never Christmas and where the Lion of Judah was actually a lion? But like most other fiction, it asks questions more than it answers them. It hints at something more, points to something beyond itself.
I am convinced that to truly enjoy fiction we need to have a knowledge of what is true and fixed and unchanging, which is to say, we need to know the Bible. So many questions are asked in the pages of books that can only be answered in the pages of The Book. The Bible interprets and refines and answers. It gives hope where fiction is hopeless, it gives light where fiction is dark, it gives joy where fiction is depressing. Fiction gives us stories of the world as it is or the world as someone images it; an author takes his experiences and hopes and desires and dreams and wraps them in a story. The Bible takes that story and makes sense of it. It tells us why the world is this way, why this author’s experience of the world has been so painful, why there is still hope even in a world like this.
That is what I love in fiction; that is why I love fiction that probes the deep questions and asks the tough questions. If I did not have access to the answers through God’s Word I would despair. But the Bible skillfully parries each blow and patiently, carefully answers each question. The fixed and unchangeable Word of God is the interpreter.
So I encourage Christians to read fiction—to read it carefully and discerningly and while listening to conscience and to allow it to asks its questions—but to always read it with the Bible as the source of answers.
If you’d like to give us feedback or join in the discussion, go ahead and look up our Facebook Group or leave a comment right here. You will always be able to find the most recent episode here on the blog. If you would like to subscribe via iTunes, you can do that here or if you want to subscribe with another audio player, you can try this RSS link.
On this week’s episode of the Connected Kingdom Podcast I take on Tim Challies’ challenge to explain Typology in 7-8 minutes!
Download here.
If you’d like to give us feedback or join in the discussion, go ahead and look up our Facebook Group or leave a comment right here. You will always be able to find the most recent episode here on the blog. If you would like to subscribe via iTunes, you can do that here or if you want to subscribe with another audio player, you can try this RSS link.
This week’s episode of the Connected Kingdom Podcast (another of our new, shorter episodes) has Tim Challies discussing the Christian life being safe—too safe. You’ve got two options: You can read the transcript below or you can listen in by clicking on the audio player. And if you listen to the end you’ll hear of an opportunity to contribute to the podcast as a guest speaker.
Download here.
A couple of months ago I worked with a graphic designer to put together an infographic that would display the attributes of God. Putting it together was far more worship than work as I looked to the Bible to see what God tells us about himself, about who he is and what he’s like. Each one of those attributes is worthy of a study because each one is part of an answer to questions like this: Who is this God who has forgiven me for my sin? What is this God like?
He is free, he is holy, he is wise, he is true, he is immutable. All that and so much more. Conspicuously absent from that list of attributes is safe. The Bible says nothing about our God being a safe God. But that is okay, because he is good.
I suppose I’m not allowed to pick favorites, but one of the attributes I find most comforting is God’s goodness. God is good, which means that he is the source of all good, he is the standard of all good, and he is only and ever and always good. That’s an awesome thing to know and believe, even if it can be hard at times to apply it.
This week I’ve been asked to speak on “safe,” or “the Christian life is not safe.” So why do I go straight to goodness? Because the Christian life truly isn’t safe, but that’s okay because our God is good and he would never ask us or command us to do anything that is in any way bad for us. I don’t just mean sinful—of course God will never lead us to sin. But he also won’t lead us to do anything that is less than what is best for us.
I think C.S. Lewis got it right with this little bit of dialog from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Mr. Beaver is trying to describe the attributes of Aslan, the book’s Christ-like character. Concerned that Aslan is a Lion, Susan jumps in and asks “Is he—quite safe?” “Safe?” Mr. Beaver says. “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
Our God isn’t safe, but he is good. Why then do so many of us live such safe lives? God’s attributes describe who he is, but in many cases they also describe what we are to be. Most theologians suggest that God’s attributes come in two forms: communicable and incommunicable. The attributes that are incommunicable are God’s alone—he cannot and will not communicate them to any other being. You and I will never be eternal, we will never be omnipresent. But most of God’s attributes are communicable—he gives them to us and we are right to pursue them. God is loving, so we are to be loving. God is merciful, so we are to extend mercy. And God is good so we, too, are to be good.
But God is not safe, so why is it that we value our safety so highly? We tend to value it above just about everything else. This isn’t just physical safety—the kind of thing that keeps us inventing and wearing seatbelts and the kind of thing that keeps us locking our doors at night. This is safety that keeps us from going outside our comfort zones, from refusing to do the difficult things that take us beyond what we are comfortable with.
So we give to the Lord a safe amount of money instead of an amount that is extravagant. Our giving to the Lord is just another budget item. We share the gospel carefully or passively, but without bringing it to the people who scare us or intimidate us. We praise the people who throw safety aside and who plunge into war-torn countries or who move to the difficult parts of the city. But it doesn’t do a whole lot to change our lives.
Reading the gospels can be intimidating, especially in those places that Jesus is speaking to unbelievers and telling them what it will cost them to follow him. We have to count our lives as nothing; we have to be willing to love him so much that the way we love family and friends looks like hate by contrast; we have to be willing to sell everything we have, offering ourselves up completely. That’s not safe and to most people it doesn’t sound good.
We who know the Lord have accepted all of this. We have agreed that our lives are dedicated to him. We have agreed that our health and safety is less important than his glory. We know this in our heads, but we have trouble translating it to our lives.
I am convinced that this failure to live comes from a failure to believe, from a conflict between our desire for safety and what God says about his own goodness. The fact is that everything that happens in your life, no matter how incomprehensible it may seem, it all happens for a reason, a good reason. All of it has been designed, lovingly crafted, to bring good to you and glory to God. This includes the difficult things as much as the good things, the things we don’t like as much as the things we love.
The antidote to a safe life is a firm and growing trust in God’s goodness. The Bible is full of promises to those who follow Christ, promises like this one: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” God asks for an all-encompassing kind of commitment. He asks for everything, but he promises even more. He isn’t safe, but he is good.
Tim Challies
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This week’s Connected Kingdom is on “Entitlement.” The podcast includes audio excerpts from others speaking on the subject, and concludes with some interaction between Tim and I. However, you can read a shortened version of the podcast below. Download here.
Jack Chambless is Professor of Economics at Valencia College. Every year he starts his class off by asking his students to write a 10 minute essay on what the American dream looks like to them, and what they want the federal government to do to help them achieve that dream. He describes this year’s results:
About 10% of the students said they wanted the government to leave them alone, not tax them too much, and let them regulate their own lives. But over 80% of the students said that the American Dream to them meant a house and a job and plenty of money for retirement, and vacations and things like this. But when it came to the part about the federal government 8 out of 10 students said they wanted free health care, they wanted the government to pay for their tuition. They want the government to pay for the down payment on their house. They expect the government “to give them a job.” Many of them said they wanted the government to tax wealthier individuals so that they would have an opportunity to have a better life.
Professor Chambless’ students belong to the “Entitlement Generation,” also known as the “Gimme Generation.” They think they can have and should have whatever they want, whenever they want, and from whomever they want it, while others pay for it.” Or more simply, as one Occupy Protestor painted on her placard, “Where’s my bailout?”
That sense of economic entitlement usually goes hand in hand with education entitlement. Students now come to college expecting straight A’s. That’s the default. And, as Anthony Carter notes, woe-betide any professor who “fails” to comply.
Harvard Professor of Law, Lawrence Lessig, has noticed a huge increase in the sense of entitlement among students especially in questioning authority. He says that the Internet “has created a world where everybody feels entitled to question somebody else.” He goes on:
There’s no authority, there’s no like “being the professor of law from Harvard” that entitles you to say “Here’s what the truth is.” There’s an opening. Here’s a professor of law from Harvard who says here’s what the truth is. That’s a way of beginning a conversation. Some fifteen year old can say “I just spent the last 6 months studying about the history about the fourteenth amendment and what you just said is #@X!. Here’s the right answer.” We’ve come to this place where the younger generation just believes it’s their right to be as involved and as engaged as anybody.
Of course, being a Harvard professor, Lessig thinks this is great:
I think that’s a thing to be celebrated and encouraged, but I think that what you recognize that what you can see in a wide range of internet contacts the sense of entitlement has driven enormous creativity and engagement that before was presumed to be disqualified.
So is it just a case of, “Well there are some pros, and some cons to this. No big deal. Let’s move on?”
Jean Twenge wrote the book Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before. She describes the entitlement generation as “smart, brash, even arrogant, and endowed with a commanding sense of entitlement.”
But, like Professor Lessig, Twenge also sees a flipside. She sees many of the “Gimme Generation” as individualists, “free-thinkers who are willing to break the status quo and pursue their dreams. Their confidence is what allows them to accomplish great things and can keep companies progressing.”
Again, we’re being tempted to minimize the significance of these societal changes. So, do we just shrug our shoulders and succumb to the spirit of the age? Economics Professor Thomas Sowell was interviewed about this on Fox News:
Interviewer: Professor, we had a series here a couple of weeks ago called Entitlement. There’s so many things that Americans now think they are entitled to because of government largesse. Everything from health care to food stamps, houses, even jobs. How do we get out of that?
Sowell: That’s going to be very tough. Because the whole media, politics, the educational system promotes the idea that you are entitled to something. It just seems obvious. Society is not entitled to anything. We can’t even get the food that we need without working for it. So when you say that somebody is entitled to it you mean that somebody else has to pay for what you want…
I’m totally with Professor Sowell on this. I see no long-term good coming from this entitlement mentality. It destroys initiative, independence, inventiveness, resourcefulness, motivation, the fear of consequences, and the link between cause and effect. It promotes indulgence, jealousy, conceit, laziness, and self-centeredness. It creates bad winners and bad losers.
It hurts marriages by putting the focus on “What can I get from him/her?” rather than “What can I give?” It hurts charity because the rich leave it to the government and withdraw from contact with the poor; the poor just get handouts from an impersonal, faceless, soulless State rather than from real caring people. Above all, a sense of entitlement destroys the Christian life.
As a Christian, I believe in one entitlement.
I’m entitled to Hell. That’s the only entitlement I have. That’s all I deserve, because of my sin. Anything else is grace, an unmerited bonus from the God of all grace. I don’t deserve a breath of life, a crumb of food, a drop of water, a stitch of clothing, a cent in my wallet, or an hour of education. I’m not entitled to one friend, one vacation, one verse of Scripture, or even one sermon. I’m certainly not entitled to salvation and heaven. I’m entitled to damnation and Hell.
That sense of entitlement makes me seek mercy, receive mercy, enjoy mercy, and be merciful to others. To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, “What have I that I did not receive as a free gift of divine grace? How therefore can I ever boast as if I had actually been entitled to it or earned it?”
So, there are basically only two ways to live: with a proud and angry sense of entitlement or with a humble and thankful sense of responsibility.
To summarize, “The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 6:23).
If you’d like to give us feedback or join in the discussion, go ahead and look up our Facebook Group or leave a comment right here. You will always be able to find the most recent episode here on the blog. If you would like to subscribe via iTunes, you can do that here or if you want to subscribe with another audio player, you can try this RSS link.
© 2011 David P. Murray. All Rights Reserved.