A friend of mine shared this video with me and some others on Friday. It does a great job of drawing attention to the spiritual darkness that pervades much of Tibet. I would warmly recommend watching it.
Last night for the first time I joined a couple friends of mine who run regularly at the Metrodome. During the winter off-season the stadium opens its doors to exercise enthusiasts who want to sweat and gasp in a climate-controlled environment. All you have to do is pay a dollar and you get to run around the concrete concessions loop as much as you want.
If you stop and think about it long enough, running is a pretty quirky activity. Especially running in the Metrodome. I mean, think about it. People actually pay money to huff and puff and wear weird, stinky clothes for 30 minutes or so. The Metrodome profits off of a mobile mass of pain and fatigue.
But these runners know what they are doing. They aren’t after pain. They are ultimately after pleasure. Health. Slimmer bodies. Sounder minds. They know that the pain is working a greater joy, and so they keep on chugging.
For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)
This is an excerpt from a chapter by D.A. Carson in “Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace” entitled, “Reflections on Assurance.” We had to read this for a class. My good friend Phil praised this paragraph to me and I join in his exclamations. Carson discusses how God relates to good and evil while being sovereign over both:
[A]lthough God, by virtue of the fact that he is sovereign, stands behind both good and evil (e.g., God can be portrayed as the one who incites David to number the people, the one who sends a strong delusion so that people will believe the lie, the one who sends nations to war, the one of whom Romans 8:28 is predicated), he stands behind good and evil asymmetrically. He stands behind evil in such a way that none of it takes place outside the limits of his sovereign sway, but so that no evil is chargeable to him; he stands behind good in such a way that all of it is credited to him. Do not ask me to explain how this can be so: these are components of the biblical “givens,” perspectives that the biblical writers teach or assume. (pg. 271-272)
Open Doors has released their World Watch List 2009, which details the top 50 countries in the world were persecution of Christians is the worst.
In 2008 the status of religious freedom grew worse in the following countries:
- Saudi Arabia
- Iran
- Afghanistan
- Somalia
- Pakistan
- Iraq
- Mauritania
- Algeria
- India
- Nigeria (North)
- Indonesia
- Bangladesh
- Kazakhstan
The status of religious freedom grew better in these countries in 2008:
- Bhutan
- China
- Turkmenistan
- Vietnam
- Azerbaijan
- Sudan (North)
- Zanzibar Islands
- Cuba
- Turkey
- Columbia
You can access a detailed exaplanation of the World Watch List for more information. For example, here is Open Doors’ recounting of conditions in North Korea, the #1 perpetrator on the list:
North Korea tops the World Watch List for the seventh time in a row. Daily life for Christians in the country remains extremely harsh. The border between China and North Korea is almost closed; everything and everyone going in and out of North Korea is strictly checked. As usual, executions occurred in secret. The number of people sentenced to labor camp or prison has increased compared to last year. North Korea is closing its doors and Christians are persecuted constantly. They suffer immensely as no one is allowed to be a Christian in North Korea. Genuine religious freedom does not exist at all. The constitution is firmly based on Juche ideology. The North Korean regime believes that it will collapse if it fails to stop the spreading of Christianity.
Let’s pray that God would give boldness and persevering grace to our brothers and sisters in these countries and that he would grant repentance to their persecutors.
(HT: James Grant)
Facebook recently celebrated its fifth anniversary. Al Mohler has offered some reflections on how to use the website and other social networking media wisely:
Social networking is like any new technology. It must be evaluated on the basis of its moral impact as well as its technological utility. Social networking sites offer unprecedented opportunities for communication and contact — and that is both the promise and the peril of the technology.
Here are a few suggestions for safeguarding the social networking experience:
1. Never allow social networking to replace or rival personal contact and communication. God made us to be social creatures that crave community. We cannot permit ourselves to substitute social networking for the harder work of building and maintaining personal relationships that are face to face.
2. Set clear parameters for the time devoted to social networking. These services can be seductive and time consuming. Social networking (and the Internet in general) can become obsessive and destructive of other relationships and higher priorities for the Christian.
3. Never write or post anything on a social networking site that you would not want the world to see, or anything that would compromise your Christian witness. There are plenty of young people (perhaps older persons now, too) who are ruining future job prospects and opportunities by social networking misbehavior. The cost to Christian witness is often far greater.
4. Never allow children and teenagers to have independent social networking access (or Internet access, for that matter). Parents should monitor, manage, supervise, and control the Internet access of their children and teens. Watch what your child posts and what their friends post.
5. Do not allow children and teens to accept any “friend” unknown to you. The social networking world can be a dangerous place, and parental protection here is vital.
6. Encourage older friends and relatives to sign up and use the technology. Grandparents can enjoy keeping up with grandchildren and with friends and loved ones separated by distance or mobility.
7. Use the social networking technology to bear witness to the Gospel, but never think that this can replace the centrality of face-to-face evangelism, witness, and discipleship.
8. Do all things to the glory of God, and do not allow social networking to become an idol or a display of narcissism.
The fifth anniversary of Facebook is a milestone in American culture — and a good time for a reality check. We were made by our Creator to be social creatures, but made for far more than mere social media.
One of my big-time quirks is that I chew abnormally forcefully. I don’t know how I got started, but there’s no dinking around when I eat my food. It’s one deliberate, pulverizing chomp after another. I’m surprised my jaw muscles aren’t the size of my thighs by now. My wife and others have lovingly pointed this out to me because of the very audible noises my teeth make at the table. I can, at times, sound unsettlingly bovine.
How about you? What is one of your idiosyncrasies?
I have a few words in my vocabulary that are verbal ditches. I’m stuck saying them over and over again and I can’t get out. One of those words is “helpful.” If I’ve benefited from something someone else has said, I’ll say it was helpful. If I’ve read a good book, I’ll say it was helpful. Good weather is helpful. Wool socks are helpful. Quesadillas are helpful. Revolving doors are helpful. Timing belts and dead bolts and asphalt and stop lights and grocery bags and incandescent light bulbs. Helpful. Helpful. Helpful. Helpful. Helpful. Helpful.
Blah.
Here are six remedies for my unhelpful locution:
- Advantageous
- Beneficial
- Profitable
- Useful
- Salutary
- Salubrious
Six cheers for synonyms. Mabye they’ll get me back on the road to rhetorical flavor.
It’s interesting to see that there are significant parallels between the story of Noah and the flood and the story of Lot and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Here are some comparisons:
1. In Noah’s day, “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and…every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). In Lot’s day, the “outcry against [Sodom's] people [had] become great before the LORD” (Gen. 19:13) and there were apparently not even ten righteous people in the city (Gen. 18:32).
2. Noah “found favor in the eyes of the LORD” (Gen. 6:8). Lot tells the two angels of the Lord, “Behold, your servant has found favor in your sight” (Gen. 19:19).
3. Noah is saved from destruction along with his wife, his sons, and his sons’ wives (Gen. 7:7). Lot is saved from destruction along with his wife (until she is turned into a pillar of salt) and his two daughters (Gen. 19:15-16).
4. God promises to Noah that in seven days “I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and every living thing that I have made I will blot out from the face of the ground” (Gen. 7:4). When Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, the text says that “the LORD rained [same word as Gen. 7:4] on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground” (Gen. 19:24-25).
5. In Noah’s time, God destroyed the earth by water. In Lot’s time, God destroyed the cities by fire.
6. Jesus couples the story of Noah and the flood with the story of Lot and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah when he explains to his disciples what the days of the Son of Man will be like (Luke 17:26-30).
7. Peter also links the two stories to show that “the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment” (2 Pet. 2:9).
It appears, then, that Lot is a lot like Noah.
I was going over Matthew 2 the other day. The wise men had come to Jerusalem searching for the one who had been born king of the Jews. Herod sent them to Bethlehem to find the child. They left, and the star that they had seen earlier went ahead of them and stopped over the place where Jesus was. I’ll let Matthew continue:
“When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him” (Matthew 2:10-11).
Notice that Matthew makes it plain that the wise men worshiped Jesus. I’m sure the mother and child were an awesome pair to behold: the virgin who had conceived and her boy the Son of God. If Matthew had said simply, “and they fell down and worshiped,” there could have been ambiguity about who they were worshiping. But the text says clearly that they fell down and worshiped him.
The wise men worshiped Jesus.
They didn’t worship his mother.
One of the perpetually difficult (and, I think, invigorating) areas of biblical studies is how the New Testament uses the Old Testament. For example, Matthew says of Joseph, “And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’” (Matthew 2:14-15).
Matthew is quoting from Hosea 11:1, which says (together with verse 2), “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.”
How did Matthew get Jesus’ relocation to Egypt out of Hosea 11:1? Well, first of all, I think it shows us a lot about who Matthew understands Jesus to be (namely, the true Israel), but I would like to bring in some helpful remarks Greg Beale has made in We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry on this issue. It’s originally one paragraph, but I’ll break it up to make it easier to read:
Thus New Testament, or Old Testament writers before them, can build on earlier Old Testament texts that they interpret and develop creatively, though the creativity is to be seen in understanding such texts in the light of the further developments of a redemptive-historical epoch in the Old Testament, or developments in the light of the later events of Christ’s coming and work.
In this respect, part of the creative development lies merely in the fact that fulfillment always fleshes out prior prophecy in a way that, to some degree, would have been unforeseen by earlier Old Testament prophets. Another way to say this is that progressive revelation always reveals things not as clearly seen earlier.
Geerhardus Vos’s metaphor for this creative development between the Testaments is that Old Testament prophecies and texts are like seeds and later Old Testament and New Testament understandings of the same texts are like plants growing from the seeds and flowering; from one angle the full-bloomed plant may not look like the seed (as in botanical comparisons), but careful exegesis of both Old and New contexts can show, at least, some of the organic connections. (pg. 29)
The issue is certainly more complex than a single paragraph can address, and there are others who have different views on this subject, but I share this excerpt in the hopes that it will be a helpful stimulus to further reflection.
