I Doubt It

Lately I have been dwelling on Thomas' doubt of the risen Lord. Hardly a Christmas story, I know. But since I can't get it out of my head, I must make the obvious observations. Many times this story has been used to explain our doubts about God. How much faith is still faith when we also harbor doubts? How can our doubt strengthen us? One can hardly go through church life without encountering these interesting discussion questions in a bible study.

But is that really what this story is about?

The Gospel According To Me

Michael Horton pens "The Gospel and the Sufficiency of Scripture", a feature this month in Modern Reformation magazine. In it he quotes the best-selling Habits of the Heart, where Robert Bellah and fellow sociologists surveyed religion in the United States. They concluded that it is best described as "Sheilaism," named after one person they interviewed who said that she follows her own little voice. Bellah proposes that every American is the founder of his or her own religion, following the dictates of his or her own heart.

Horton's (very meaty) article wants to focus on the integral connection between the sufficiency of Scripture and the sufficiency of the gospel, but must begin with the reality that the American church is basically millions of different ideas of what scripture and the gospel mean. To the average Christian, Christianity is just the relative way they see Christianity.

Where I Have Been

Pew Warmers In The Grace Of God

"A graceless Calvinist is a guy who knows how a car works but who's never driven through the countryside in the warm spring air with the top down and the wind blowing through his hair." -Jared Wilson, The Gospel-Driven Church, in response to a pastor's remark about some folks getting sucked into "that Reformed theology."

Jared "gently" concludes his argument about graceless Calvinists, "The problem is not the Reformed theology, as many free-willers suspect, not the Calvinism. No, the problem is gospel wakefulness (which crosses theological systems and traditions). Or the lack thereof."

In my service as a worship leader, much discussion is had about the perpetual pew warmer. Pastors want to "fire them up" and get them contributing to the life of the church in one form of service or another. The pastor is sure they are believers, and can't figure out why they never help in anyway at all. Even with inspiring worship and preaching, nothing seems to get through to them. Isn't this all the same problem?

Are You Ready?

One need only spend a short time watching or listening to Christian broadcasts to learn that many believe this mountain of Megeddo will soon be a very busy place. Of course, the cinemas are depicting the end times as the year 2012, rapidly approaching, which is the end date of the Mayan calendar; as the Mayans read the alignment of the planets with the galactic center of the Milky Way. It is certainly a great achievement of the Mayans to understand the rotation of the planets and the wobble of the earth on it's axis. That alone should cause everyone to take notice of their ingenuity. Few people even understand how early civilizations could grasp something as difficult as the planetary rotation cycles in relation to the galactic center.

Jesus makes it clear in the gospels that he doesn't want us to be unaware of the end times, as does Paul. But one must wonder what difference it is actually supposed to make in our lives. It is almost a given that at the conclusion of any "end times" broadcast the question will be asked, "Are you ready for the Lord to return?" Is this the reason we have been taught about the end times?

God Is In Control???

Home-grown terrorist Nidal Hassan stunned the country this week with the carnage at Fort Hood Army Base. How can a sovereign God allow this type of carnage to exist? Is God really in control, or is man's free will an irritation that God has to work around? For that matter, how can a loving God allow events like Katrina, the tsunami, 9.11, and now this horror in Texas, to even happen. It hardly seems that the "Kingdom" is at hand. What possible good can come from these events? It would seem that God is taking too many days off, and the efforts of the saints to declare Christ are only hampered by these events. Kingdom building seems set back every time God drops the ball and something ungodly happens.

Modern Warfare

"Prayerlessness is an expression of our meager confidence in God’s ability to provide and of our strong confidence in our ability to take care of ourselves without God’s help." - Kevin DeYoung, The Gospel Coalition

Kevin tugs at the very crux of Gospel living. Do we really see how we need a savior every day? To be self absorbed, self sufficient, independent, is to be our own savior, the most deadly of sins.

Grace, First and Decisive

John Piper posted this a couple of days ago at Desiring God. It's just too good for a link. (In it's entirety), Piper writes:

Sometimes readers of the Bible see the conditions that God lays down for his blessing and they conclude from these conditions that our action is first and decisive, then God responds to bless us.

That is not right.