God Loves Nerds

As a student of history my entire life, I have always been as fascinated by what occurred in the past as what could occur in the present. There was never a seminal moment where I realized the value of history; I’ve had a healthy appreciation for it since birth. I never received a book as a child that I recall giving me that. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that since I can remember, I’ve loved placing myself in the footsteps of those who have walked before me.

From the beginning, I was engrossed in books about anything from Abraham Lincoln to the ’92-’96 US Olympic Basketball teams. My Dad recalled my having memorized George H.W. Bush’s cabinet members and I remember absolutely LOVING my ruler with all the Presidents listed on the back. I used to keep a white board in my room that I updated daily. On this whiteboard you would find a feast of useless information; I kept track of how many days I had my basketball shoes, how many days til my birthday, how many days til Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, NBA season, the Super Bowl, etc. I remember looking forward to taking Stats class in High School because I thought that it would basically be a class where kids brought their baseball cards in and we decided who had the best cards. At one point, I embarked on a journey to discover how many total HRs/RBI/SB and what the overal batting average was of all of my cards combined. Yes, I was that kid.

I didn’t just love the numbers, but what they entailed. Those numbers were meaningful, in the sense that they represented a moment in time. I have the same fascination with numbers and historical figures and dates now, although I try to keep it to a socially acceptable level on the surface.

The purpose of this post though, is not to belabor the fact that I’m a massive nerd (although check and checkmate on that, I suppose), but to point to the fact that lies behind the ministry leader’s admonitions to spend time reading the Bible. The fact is, that the Bible is not JUST inspired by God, but it also actually happened.

Unfortunately, we often read the Bible as a handbook for daily life…which in a sense it is. But labeling it as that alone is doing it a ridiculous disservice. I recently was struck by that fact again on vacation this past week. I spent ten wonderful days with my wife at her Grandma’s condo in Naples, Florida. It was an incredible blessing, and it gave me the opportunity to do something I generally struggle to find time for: read a book for fun. Well, sort of for fun. As part of my New Testament II class, Dr. Pennington at SBTS recommended that if we had some time, it would be worth our while to check out Paul Maier’s book, The Flames of Rome.

It is set during the years before and during Nero’s reign as Emperor of Rome; this time period is interesting to me in particular, as it is around this time that Paul and Peter are thought to have been martyred in and around Rome. Maier portrays the events that were occurring in Rome with historical accuracy and some necessary filling in of details based on educated conjecture, and does a splendid job recounting the Roman system of governance and the likely nature of their relationship with Christianity (at that time, thought of as a cult by much of Rome, which still held to the Roman mythic Gods).

It is an utterly fascinating work that is character-driven and well-paced, providing a balanced look at Christianity from afar in that context.

There is one anecdote within the work that struck me in particular, and brought to bear much of what leaders in ministry are trying to convey to the congregation (who sometimes views it as a chore) regarding the importance of studying Scripture. During his reign, Nero makes an attempt on his mother, Agrippina’s life. Maier notes that this occurred within the acceptable time and place that Paul could have been arriving from his harrowing journey with a Centurion escort to see his appeal to the Caesar heard as a Roman citizen.

This small anecdote reminded me of the historical vibrancy of the Bible, in this case, the book of Acts and Paul’s letters. These letters weren’t written in a sterile environment. History was occurring around them, just like what happens every day today. We take it for granted that historical events have enduring meaning, and we completely neglect that Scripture was recorded in the midst of them.

So what I’m trying to say is pretty simple. Embrace nerdity. God didn’t give us the Scriptures so that we could put them on a shelf. He gave us the Scriptures so that we could experience those “geek-out” moments when a solitary word makes our hair stand on end, and a smile creep across our face unbeknownst to us. God’s Scripture is His love. In words. To us.

So push those glasses up your nose and get cracking.

Soap and Lye Don’t Cut it, Mister.

Of all the innumerable superlatives that can be said of Scripture, I think I treasure most the inexhaustible nature of God’s Word. It never returns void.

I’m reminded of that again today. I taught from Luke 1:26-35; 2:1-7 and Hebrews 2:5-10 today. I challenged the students at Chapel Hill Academy to recognize the miraculous fact that Jesus Christ carried the one attribute that no human being before or since has ever had. Holiness.

Jesus’ death on the cross means nothing if not for this perfect holiness. For me, Christmas is put in perspective only when I reflect on all of the sins I’ve committed in the past year. Countless.

I’m reminded of the fact that I so often throughout my life trust in ritualistic cleansings, much like Israel’s cleansing rituals depicted in Jeremiah 2.

“Though you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your guilt is still before me, declares the Lord God.” Jeremiah 2:22

It always strikes me how quickly I lapse into ritualistic cleansings. By that I mean, I often provide my token “I’m sorry for my sins, please forgive me God.” Prayer. The arrogance I show, genuinely believing that God doesn’t understand what I’m doing.

This is the God who has EVERYTHING under his control. Jesus Christ knew this kind of control. Everything was in subjection to him. We often don’t realize that. Hebrews 2:8 is a great reminder. We can’t hide our sin behind ritual, or behind veils.

This is why, this Christmas, I am humbled and utterly bereft of pride in myself, with God’s grace. Only by the grace of God can I understand just how useless all of my soap and lye is at the feet of a holy God. And only by the grace of God can I understand that my savior, my propitiation, my payment, my advocate, my redeemer, my hope, my salvation, my strong tower, my fortress, my deliverer, my shepherd…is holy.

He is holy. He was, is, and always will be. He didn’t start being holy. He is eternally holy. This is why his birth matters, and it’s why his life matters, and it’s why his death and resurrection matters. Let’s not forget it.

The Activity and Art of Reading…and Reflections on Thinking

I think one of my most useful purchases as an adult with a yearning for knowledge, has been the classic book “How to Read a Book” by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren.  After graduating college I began to realize that much of my reading had become about information-gathering, as opposed to interaction with the author/s.  This coincided with a time in my life where I began to grow more and more aware of people’s acceptance as facts whatever they happened to gaze at in a newspaper, magazine, or book.  That wasn’t the most bothersome thing, though.  The most bothersome thing was that I came to realize that I did it too.  All the time.

It was a decidedly difficult thing to diagnose, because I found that I truly believed that I read everything critically.  This would account for my being able to point out the flaws in every argument that was opposed to me, and recognize every strength of those arguments I resonated with.  Get me in a room with an opponent and I could usually remember all of the arguments I liked!

I’m going to have a bit of fun in this next paragraph.  Bear with me.  It actually is true.

The problem of diagnosis, I came to discover, was due to the fact that I hardly ever actually thought about what I read.  I believed that by reading I was thinking…but really, I was just thinking what I was reading.  Or in the case of a disagreement, I was thinking what I wasn’t reading.  It all sounds so very convoluted, but I discovered that I only thought that I thought well.  In reality, what I thought I had thought well really wasn’t a real thought at all!  Rather, all of the thoughts I thought I thought were just someone else’s thoughts!  I had repackaged them into my own words and added my own personal experience, but they weren’t anything close to interactions with the author.  Instead, they were either flat rejections or acceptance of the author’s arguments.

Reading this book helped me to realize that I’m part of a generation where all of our thinking is done for us.  If we have a question, we check out the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Slate, Townhall, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, MSNBC, Current, Redstate, Time, or CNN.  They provide the answers.  Then, we jump on the comment section and throw grenades at the article or the opponents of it.  We even do it on ESPN.com.  We push others who disagree with us to “interact critically” by posting an article we like (although to be fair, most make it clear that articles they post are things they endorse, and does not mean they have not critically interacted with them in some way).

All this to say, this is an important book, and I’m shocked and saddened that it wasn’t required reading for me in high school (all four years), and college (all four years).  Regardless, it should be required reading for adulthood, anyway.  Here is an excerpt from the first chapter.

This is a book for readers and for those who wish to become readers.  Particularly, it is for readers of books.  Even more particularly, it is for those whose main purpose in reading books is to gain increased understanding.

By “readers” we mean people who are still accustomed, as almost every literate and intelligent person used to be, to gain a large share of their information about and their understanding of the world from the written word.  Not all of it, of course; even in the days of radio and television, a certain amount of information and understanding was acquired through spoken words and through observation.  But for intelligent and curious people that was never enough.  They knew they had to read too, and they did read.

There is some feeling nowadays that reading is not as necessary as it once was.  Radio and especially television have taken over many of the functions once served by print, just as photography has taken over functions once served by painting and other graphic arts.  Admittedly, television serves some of these functions extremely well; the visual communication of news events, for example, has enormous impact.  The ability of radio to give us information while we are engaged in doing other things–for instance, driving a car–is remarkable, and a great saving of time.  But it may be seriously questioned whether the advent of modern communications media has much enhanced our understanding of the world in which we live.

Perhaps we know more about the world than we used to, and insofar as knowledge is prerequisite to understanding, that is all to the good.  But knowledge is not as much a prerequisite to understanding as is commonly supposed.  We do not have to know everything about something in order to understand it; too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few.  There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding.

One of the reasons for this situation is that the very media we have mentioned are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance).  THe packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day.  The viewer of television, the listener of radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements–all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics–to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum difficulty and effort.  But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all.  Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player.  He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so.  He has performed acceptably without having to think.

You can find this book here.

God has given us minds with which to think, let us be good stewards of them.

Political Partisanship and the Christian

Fresh off what has regularly been touted by the average citizen as one of, if not the most, partisan election cycles America has ever witnessed, I’ve been quite content to slink backwards from the political television and take a breath.  It’s been nice.  Then I went and saw Lincoln the other night with my brother and my Dad.  I’ve read Team of Rivals, and I’ve always been an admirer of Lincoln so I know about the partisan state of politics at the time (ahem, Civil War…slavery…).  Seeing it on the big screen brought that imagined partisanship to life in a cold-splash-of-water sort of way, and it reminded me that I’ve wanted to try to formulate some thoughts on the issue for the blog.

First, for the history buffs, or the people who tend to think that politics is only partisan now…check out this post by my former professor, Chris Gehrz, at Bethel University.  It is a timely reminder of the historical partisanship of politics, even regarding one of history’s most well-regarded speeches of all time, the Gettysburg Address.

Secondly, check out this reaction from Russell Moore, Dean of the School of Theology at my school, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.  Jim Daly, President of Focus on the Family contributed a very wise response to those dejected by the results here.

Alright well I’m going to keep this succinct (hopefully…fingers crossed).

Every Christian, and every human, has a tendency to veer into idolatry.  A great quote from John Calvin is that “the human heart is an idol factory,” actually creating idols to worship constantly while we’re not devoted to the one true God.  I keep this quote in the back of my mind constantly, because I constantly have reason to quote it in my own life.  I’m constantly rebuking myself for idolatry…most often idolatry of myself or my ideas or opinions.  I think this problem, the problem of idolatry, and ultimately the problem of sin, is at the heart of all the partisan bickering.  Newsflash, I’m not the first person to say that.

I do have to remind myself of this tendency often, because I also tend to hold non-Christians to the standards that I find set for myself in Scripture.  What I mean by that is this:  As a Christian, who believes in the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, I desire to figure out what Scripture says my life should be like, how it should look.  A non-Christian could care less.  And that’s not saying they don’t care what their lives look like, it’s saying that they could care less what Scripture says.  That is an important thing to remember, particularly in these contentious election cycles.  There is no point being overly upset as Christians when we hear non-Christians speak and act like non-Christians.

So since that is the case, the Christian needs to constantly remind him or herself that they are responsible for themselves firstly.  In Colossians 3, Paul talks about the putting on of the new self:

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.  For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.  Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.  On account of these the wrath of God is coming.  In these you too once walked, when you were living in them.  But now you must put them all away: anger wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.  Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.  Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.  Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy  and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.  And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.  And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.  And be thankful.  Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.  And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.  (Colossians 3:1-17)

This is important, and I think many may read it as if it is merely instructive for our relationships with fellow believers.  Certainly it speaks to that at length, but the new self as Paul describes simply cannot be so truncated as to bear fruit within the Church only, can it?  No.  The new self is exactly that, it’s a new self, it’s complete, total, holistic.  The Christian is being conformed to the image of Christ, meaning they are in the process of being made more Christ-like.  Certainly that doesn’t mean that we are instantly like Christ, but it also means that we aren’t the same person as before, and we aren’t changing for the sake of change, but we’re changing so that we can have an impact, and we are being changed in one direction…toward Christ.

Reading this it also becomes clear that while the Christian is responsible for their own actions and heart attitudes, they are also representatives of Christ, which should probably carry more weight than we allow it to all too often.  In this age of twitter, blogs, facebook, and just interconnectedness in general, everything we say and do online bears our stamp of approval as soon as it becomes public.  Do we understand the gravity of that?  Does that give us pause as we dive into the political debate?  Or does it only occur to us after we’ve said something and spent hours arguing about it?  I know from personal experience how easy it is to write comments dripping with sarcasm on an article that I think no one else I know will see, only to find myself opining that very action by another person, complaining that they don’t understand the message it sends.  Do we hold ourselves to as high a standard as we hold others?

Political partisanship will always exist on earth (or the moon).  As a Christian, the real question that matters is what standards am I going to set for myself in my interactions with those who disagree with me?  How about my responses to those who agree with me but who go about it the wrong way?  Is it our responsibility as Christians to call fellow believers to embrace that “new self”?  Or are we just supposed to let them figure it out on their own?  These are important questions to ask ourselves, particularly during times like these, where we have approximately 1 month before it starts back up again.  At the end of the day, as many of said, Jesus is King, and he is triumphant indeed.  So we must ask ourselves why we so often allow ourselves to believe that it is our utmost responsibility to win his battles for him.

Must we stand firm in the faith?  Absolutely.  Colossians 2:8 speaks to this: “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.”  So we are to make it clear that we are not taken captive by the ideas that are not of Christ.  But can we communicate that in a way that represents Christ well?  Absolutely.  We won’t ever do it perfectly, but we have to strive to, and where necessary…we’ll have to apologize for not meeting that standard.  The key trait of a humble heart is the willingness to recognize fault and apologize for it sincerely, with repentance.  Another characteristic of humility (and discernment) is recognizing that our desire to “win” arguments is not Christ’s agenda.  It simply isn’t.  As our agenda begins to match up more and more with Christ’s the necessary implication of that is that our agenda will shift from winning arguments, to winning affection.  This isn’t done by accepting every argument, or shifting positions to be agreeable to all.  It’s not glad-handing.  It’s being winsome, even when we disagree.  There will be those who see simply don’t care.  There will be those who will still hate you for what you say, no matter how winsome.  But that doesn’t drive us!  Why should we seek the fickle approval of sinful men?  We seek the approval of the one true, gracious and loving God, and that is good news.
As always, I welcome discussion!
-Seth