Digenis.org

Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

-John Donne

“I don’t think anything has been done in the name of Christ and under the banner of Christianity that has proven more destructive to human personality, and hence counterproductive to the evangelistic enterprise, than the unchristian, uncouth strategy of attempting to make people aware of their lost and sinful condition…Classical Reformed theology has erred in its insistence that theology be God-centered, not man-centered.” - Robert Schuller

What kind of drugs is Robert Schuller on? “Theology must be man-centered…” Geez

A remarkable number of people who write to me are people who are not part of any church. My articles critiquing evangelicalism seem to resonate with those folks. Of course, I am part of a church community, and believe I always will be, for reasons that are compelling.

It’s not that I haven’t experienced the hurts and shortfalls of the church. I have, and in painful doses. I have some resentments towards one group of church people that stings as much now as it did almost thirteen years ago. I’ve been financially mistreated and had my reputation and morality publicly questioned. Yet, I’m still there, and I bring my wife and kids.

The reasons are quite selfish. I understand, as C. S. Lewis came to understand, that Christianity’s ability to be a power for good in my life is wrapped up with being part of an assembly of believers. I need the physical, visual reminder of the absurdity of the Gospel. THESE people, these sinful, selfish, petty, guilty, cruel, lazy, stingy, narrow-minded people, are the bride of Christ. And I am not an observer of this miracle- I am a major part of it.

From the The Internet Monk, home of such articles as:
Throwing Luther From The Train, Leave Your Seat, Leave Your Sin, and The Glory of the Nations: How Common Grace Redeems Nationalism.

Christmas passed just as quickly as it came this year. I spent a quiet, peaceful holiday with my family in Salt Lake City, Utah, where we even got a few surprise inches of snow that morning to make it a white Christmas.

Last week on the Derek Webb board someone posted a topic called “Christmas is about ME”, in which they told of a recent service they were at where a preacher told the congregation that because Christ came to the world and died for sinners, that Christmas was essentially about US. I have heard preachers say similar things before, not always regarding Christmas particularly, but no matter what context it is put into, it always bothers me. I went with my family to the Evangelical Free Church they attend for a Christmas Eve Service, and the pastor said the same thing. Ugh.

Here’s a decent John Piper sermon on the issue:

Did Christ Die For Us, of for God?

Right now I am in Duluth, Minnesota visiting friends and family for New Years. The city is having a rather warm winter. There is snow, but there are places where you can see weeds and bushes popping up out of the snow banks. The coldness is not as harsh as it usually is in December either. I hope to take a fair amount of pictures while I am up here. At about one am last night, while we were driving up to Schultz Lake from St. Paul, the Northern Lights provided an awesome, colorful backdrop to I-35. What a beautiful and welcoming sight as I headed back to the place I called home for four years.

It’s awfully good to be here.

Can’t quite accept the Doctrines of Grace just yet? Still checking out the differences between that and Arminianism? Richard posted this link to the Arminian Archive at the Derek Webb Board earlier today.

A great quote from Oswald Chambers:

“Never waste your time looking for justice; if you do, you will soon put yourself in bandages and give way to self-pity. Our business is to see that no one suffers from our injustice.”

Just to avoid confusion, I want to say something quick about that last entry I posted on Sunday regarding Matthew chapter 3. I was in no way trying to say that Christ’s baptism was substituionary in the same sense that his death on the cross for our sins was substitutionary, although I do think the two are somewhat related.

We are told to be baptized and so we should be. However, Christ’s atonement on the cross was sufficient to appease the wrath and judgement of God so that the sins of the elect would not have to be punished by Hell. Let there be no confusion there. When I say that Christ participating in John’s baptism of repentance was in a way substitutionary, I am just refering to the position of federal headship that Christ took. Feel free to email me your thoughts on this passage as well.

I was eagerly anticipating the scheduled return of Antithesis.com today. They’d announced that they would be starting up a new season of articles and resources today, begining with “Before a Watching World : Why Should They Give a Damn?”, an article which has apparently been in the works since late this past summer. If I remember correctly, it was supposed to be published on the net back in early August, but since then it has been postponed and postponed again. Today when I got back from church (and actually before I went as well), I checked to see if the article was up yet. It wasn’t. Instead, in it’s place there was an announcement stating that the new season would begin on October 28, 2002. Another delay.

Today Pastor Hobbs spoke on something which I hadn’t really though about before. In Matthew 3, we read of Jesus coming to John the Baptist to be baptized. John describes the baptism which he performs as a ‘baptism of repentence’, and promises that there would come one that would ‘baptize with the Holy Spirit and with Fire.’ So, John’s was a baptism of repentance, yet Jesus the spotless Lamb came to him to be baptized. . . Why was this necesary? If Jesus never sinned, then he would have nothing to repent of.

John himself realizes the apparent absurdity of it and says that it would be more fitting for Jesus to instead baptize him (John). So why was it he was baptized by John? The easy answer is that Christ says it must be done in order to ‘fufill all righteousness’ (v. 15), and also that the Father in Heaven gives his approval of the act directly after it happens. God ordained it to be.

But why? Inquisitive minds ask. . . I think that it has something to do with the whole concept of Jesus being the propitiation for our sins. Perhaps, just as his death was substitutionary, so was his baptism. This makes sense to me because the baptism of Jesus us commonly seen as the start of his redemptive ministry.