Tragic Worship | First Things by Carl R. Trueman

This article has been getting a lot of “press” today, so if you haven’t seen it, I hope it might be of interest.

His whole idea of tragedy as entertainment is rather disturbing. But then so is what Christ has done for us and what He needed to save us from and is saving us from.

During the first half of the article, I was thinking, “This is why I don’t like ‘life celebrations’ instead of funerals.” But then he wrote exactly what I was thinking, which is also what Michael Horton had written about in his book on suffering. My two favorite guys intersecting in explaining an aspect our real Hero and worshiping who He is and what He’s done for us forgiven sinners.

Hard to imagine this is the 46th one of these I’ve done.

Tominthebox News Network – Religious Humor/Satire – Religious humor and satire from a reformed perspective. Not trying to be mean here, just trying to laugh. [He used the word Religion!]

A.W. Pink Quotations.docx – Google Drive

Theology Proper by Charles Hodge – Available free in Kindle .mobi and ePub formats

FactChecker – Search Results – The Gospel Coalition Blog – Very interesting posts

Dictionary of Christianese

I will be writing a series on Christian sayings and platitudes at some point.

Spurgeon on Why You Should Read Wesley on the Christian Life – Justin Taylor

This goes along with another post on this blog:
Stuff On Calvinism | Scripture Zealot blog
which has some links to other things related to being a nice Calvinist.

I’ve not written one bad word about Arminians on this blog. Although I write about many things from a Reformed point of view, this blog isn’t about apologetics for the Reformed faith. When people come here hating on Calvinism, they are way out of line. Arminianism is probably the closest thing there is to Calvinism, as far as I know. When it comes to prosperity preachers or other false teachers, I will write some negative things about them once or twice a year, and often regret it. Not because I went too far, but because I just don’t like dealing with the backlash, and that’s not what this blog is about.

I will write about things critical of evangelicalism, of which I’m a part of. I’m writing this as sort of a preamble for a series I’ll be writing on things Christians say that aren’t Biblical or don’t make any sense. But mainly I found the article linked to at the top of the post and it reminded me of other links I have found that are similar. So I guess I kind of went off track there. Sorry. I think something sparkly caught my attention.

Also see:
A Conversation with My Favorite Wesleyan Theologian – Justin Taylor – on why Calvinists shouldn’t be the enemy of Arminians either

We have been inundated with articles on mental illness lately. I post a lot of these because I would be under that category and because I post a fair amount about suffering on this blog. There is a Category on the right for suffering and also a link to the old Suffering Christians blog.

I’ve read things from Oswald Chambers and D. Martin Lloyd-Jones about what I call “real psychology” and thought they were ahead of their time–earlier and middle of the last century. As it turns out, the Puritans were way ahead of their time. They even recognized that there can be physiological components to depression, which many people today still don’t believe. I’ve read that the contemporary book Helpful Truth in Past Places: The Puritan Practice of Biblical Counselling by Mark A. Deckard is a good place to start.

The Puritans and Mental Illness | HeadHeartHand Blog

The following is a good article about how certain terms can be hurtful and unhelpful. I don’t think there is a need to go all politically correct on this, but there should be some guidelines, especially for journalists who write about these things. I don’t really mind the terms like mental, headcase, wacko or whatever, unless they’re meant in a truly hateful manner. (Sometimes we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously either.) I think it’s the proper medical terms used incorrectly that can be especially unhelpful. The writer of the article mentions calling yourself “a little bit OCD”. I’m extremely particular, almost to the point of being ‘certifiable’, but I’ve stopped using the term ‘a little OCD’ once I learned how awful being truly OCD really is. It’s not funny. And people always get schizophrenia wrong. They’re usually meaning ‘multiple personality disorder’, as in a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Or people who say one thing and then another, which could just be hypocrisy. Schizophrenia is awful (I’m not), and not funny or something that should be used when a more accurate term could be.

Another area is when someone is chronically depressed and they’ve tried everything, and have lived with it for decades, and then when mustering up the courage to mention it, have someone else say, “Yeah, I get depressed too.” That’s a tough one because there are so many degrees of depression. Same goes for anxiety and a number of other things, including chronic [physical] pain.

The article also mentions that those who are mentally ill are not likely to be more violent than the general population. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard people say, “Yeah, she’s Biopolar, so she’s kind of dangerous” or something to that effect. I deal with Bipolar Disorder (Bipolar II on the depressed end of the spectrum, or the unofficial term Bipolar Depression, if you’re familiar) and I know there’s no truth to that. Being Bipolar doesn’t make someone violent or mean.

By the way, incorrect spellings would be Bi-polar or BiPolar, if you happen to be writing about it. Bipolar Disorder is the general term, but there are two basic types, being I and II (1 and 2) and it’s a spectrum disorder in many ways. So two people who both suffer from ‘Bipolar Disorder’ could have varying symptoms that vary in severity.

‘Crazy Talk’: How We Characterize Mental Illness | Her.meneutics | Christianitytoday.com

The 9 words you missed. – This is a post about hope. I identify with the majority of what he says. I’m basically in a permanent “season of hurt”, so I get a lot of practice. I really like his “edge verses”. I call them “verses off the beaten path”, which I like to post on Twitter or Facebook when I come across them if they don’t require explanation–especially the OT, but his term sounds less like some are more important than others.

A couple of Reformed resources:

Westminster Theological Seminary – The Westminster Theological Journal – this has somehow failed to acquire my attention until now

The Beatitudes by Thomas Watson – free ebook in various formats and even as an MP3 audio book too

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 15:13

Mental Illness and the Church | Biblical Counseling Coalition Blogs

Why Should we “Study” the New Testament? | Baker Book House Church Connection – Terrific rebuttal to “just me and the Holy Spirit”

Are those people [who worry about theology] just being cold, heartless, unfeeling, selfish and indifferent to the world’s needs? I don’t think so. We tend to compartmentalize our Christianity, and this is our undoing. Strong dichotomies and strict antitheses are not helping anyone. It is not a matter of doctrine versus practice, truth versus love. It is both. It is a matter of the doctrine under-girding our practice; the truth in our love. That order is deliberate. Doctrine precedes and is the foundation for practice. Truth precedes and informs love.

–Are You a Member of a “Real” Church? | Alien Citizens

It’s nice to see more writings out there on introverts. I am one, but I never let others bamboozle me into thinking it’s a bad thing. I always stood my ground on this one, even as a high school student. There’s nothing wrong with being quiet. I always naturally did things like taking a break to be by myself between dinner and desert during holidays, and many other things. I never felt selfish about needing to have a certain amount of time alone.

One time during a meeting with the Navigators (a college Christian ministry, in this case), they handed out pieces of paper with the name of one of four or five animals on it. Then they had everyone close their eyes. We were supposed to make the noise of whatever animal was on your piece of paper and migrate (get it?) into groups of the animals. I was too shy to do it. Which nobody could tell I was [not] doing. I still don’t know the purpose of that one, but it shows how the leaders were extroverts, the group was filled with extroverts and many of these people were unaware of what an introvert is, and belittled me for being “quiet”. If you’re an introvert, there’s nothing wrong with you.

Although we have been kind of bombarded with blog posts on introverts lately, I hope this one will be helpful for some of you.
Four Lies About Introverts – The Gospel Coalition Blog

My 3 Excuses for not watching The Bible on the History Channel | Stuff Christians Like – Jon Acuff

The Really Big List of Kindle Deals | Challies Dot Com – the commentary on Deuteronomy looks interesting and I read Michael Horton’s A Place for Weakness which is excellent

Gospel Grace blog is owned by Luma, who writes about all kinds of interesting things in a very intelligent way, much of it from a Reformed perspective (just as a warning to those who are sensitive to R rated content)

I may as well mention Housewife Theologian again, which is where I found Luma from Gospel Grace (noted above) commenting. If I had a twin sister, it may be her.

One of Justin Taylor’s Favorite Prayers in the Whole Bible:

“We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.”
2 Chronicles 20:12

Related Scripture:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
Do not be wise in your own eyes;
fear the Lord and shun evil.
Proverbs 3:5-7

A person’s steps are directed by the Lord.
How then can anyone understand their own way?
Proverbs 20:24

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
Colossians 3:1-3

I may be blogging a little less for a while. I’m working on a big series on the silly sayings that evangelical Christians say. But it won’t just be poking fun at others, or each other, but will be writing about the problems and possible alternatives. I will also be thinking and praying about what I write here. Pray with me if you’d like.

On the subject of prayer, my back pain has been worse this week than ever outside of surgery recovery. I don’t know what’s going on. I hope that if there’s something wrong with the various hardware in there that it could be figured out. I’m trying my best to trust and not worry. It’s hard not to be thinking of various scenarios.

~Jeff

To me, suicide is almost an unmentionable word because it’s such a horrible thing. It’s in the news now because of pastor Rick Warren’s son. We can’t ignore it because it does happen and because if we do ignore it, we could miss the signs of someone wanting to kill themselves and not intervene when we might have been able to help. They’re not thinking rationally–which I’ve experienced myself, as have many of you–and we may be able to help them to think more objectively.

At the same time, there are many people who live with a tremendous amount of guilt because they felt that they should have intervened and didn’t. The responsibility goes to the person who ended their life–and who probably hid the signs well–and not the person who felt they could have done something. People who are intent on going through with it aren’t going to let others know about it.

These two links contain a plethora of information. I know that I just posted a page with links on Dealing With Depression (and the last link is very good if you haven’t seen it), but I think it’s important enough to post more that I’ve recently found.

Depression & Suicide Articles, Devotionals & Current Events News at crosswalk.com

Suicide, Mental Illness, Depression, and the Church – Justin Taylor – covers it from all angles with all kinds of resources

Depression is something that affects me on a daily basis, and suffering is something written about here fairly often. For those who want to read more on that topic or if you know someone who does, and would like quotes, Scripture, reading material etc., you can see the old Suffering Christians blog, which has very organized Categories, and also go to the Suffering category here in the right column.

Also see:

• 7 Questions about Suicide and Christians | HeadHeartHand Blog
• Mental Illness & Suicide: The Church Awakes | HeadHeartHand Blog
• Pastoral Thoughts on Depression | HeadHeartHand Blog
• For those considering suicide . . . | Parchment and Pen
• My Take: How churches can respond to mental illness – CNN Belief Blog

Because if there is no wrath by God on sin, and there is no such thing as Hell, not only does that actually make what happened to Jesus inexplicable—Jesus staggering the way He is, asking God, “Is there any other way?” [and] sweating blood means that He was wimpier than hundreds of His followers, if there was nothing like [God’s wrath]—but…the main thing is, if you don’t believe in the wrath and Hell, it trivializes what He’s done…. If you get rid of a God who has wrath and Hell, you’ve got a god who loves us in general, but that’s not as loving as the God of the Bible, the God of Jesus Christ, who loves us with a costly love.

Look what it cost. Look what He did. Look what He was taking. You get rid of wrath and Hell, He’s not taking anything close to this. And therefore, what you’ve done is you’ve just turned His incredible act of love into just something very trivial, very small….

And by the way, if the anticipation of these sufferings—if the very taste of these sufferings—sent the Son of God into shock, what must it have been to drink them to the bottom?

–How Tim Keller Made Peace with the Wrath of God, a part of a quote from a post which is a quote from a sermon

This to me is a very sobering explanation of the “additional suffering” as I might call it, that Christ went through. This is what many of us didn’t know about (or might not yet realize) until later on in our knowledge of what Jesus accomplished on the cross.

In order to go along with this, one must believe in penal substitution, which I most definitely do. I do not believe that it’s “cosmic child abuse”, which John MacArthur responds to. If you would like to read more about it you can read a long treatment of the subject by J.I. Packer or a shorter one at 9Marks.

Praise God for loving the world in this way. I don’t know why He had to work it out this way. Maybe it’s to show the depth of His love for us.

When I praise God, each week He’s been showing me something new to praise Him for. One of the recent ones is that Jesus didn’t have to die on a cross. What was required was a blood sacrifice, meaning a death. Aside from prophecy, Jesus could have died by the sword, or literally drank a cup of poison. But more than the horrific death on a cross, He drank the cup of God’s wrath, as a sinless person, dying an unrighteous death in an unrighteous way by unrighteous people, and then being forsaken by his Father, which is far worse even than “just” dying on a cross, which was probably the worst way people were put to death.

• Resources for Depression
• Are You Afflicted? – Justin Taylor
• 8 Ways Preachers Harm the Depressed | HeadHeartHand Blog
• Don’t You Dare Be Caught Rejoicing with Those Who Weep – Justin Taylor

I’m saving the best (below) for last. It was originally written in 2009 so you may have seen it. It’s written from a Christian perspective (of course) and may be of more benefit for those who aren’t depressed. It’s rather cathartic in a way for those who do deal with depression and comforting to see that others go through exactly the same things. David Murray (see below) says, “This is one of the best short articles on depression I’ve ever read.”

• Depression: When the black dog howls | Kingdom In The Midst

HT: David Murray who wrote Christians Get Depressed Too (and the third link above)
~Jeff

This started out small and ended up being a whopper. The letter from a gay woman has really been getting around, so I hope it’s not a repeat for too many of you. I think it’s a good reminder that there are people who struggle with their sexual preferences everywhere.

• This is something the evangelical church badly needs:
  Making Our Prayer Requests More Biblical – Justin Taylor
  • Also see:
    Complete List of Paul’s Prayers | Scripture Zealot blog
• Updates to ESVBible.org
• An Astonishing Message from a Gay Sister in Christ | Hunter Baker
• Being a translation geek, minus the knowledge of original languages, I’ve learned that the NIV is more literal than we think. Here is a quote that illustrated this in part: When the NIV is More Literal than the NASB and ESV | Baker Book House Church Connection. I’m not saying this is good or bad–just interesting to some of us. Also, Louis and I seem to link to each other’s blogs a lot, and use this same title (I thought of it first!). We seem to like much of the same material.
• For a while, it didn’t seem like there were a lot of good commentaries on Galatians. The one by Luther is very good but left me with some unanswered questions, and I read the one by Longenecker which was way over the top for me, with references to Latin rhetorical devices that drove me nuts. A few new ones have been coming out, and here is a book on Galatians that I’d like to get someday:
  Galatians For You Blog Tour | Cross Focused Reviews
  

• So … I believe that God, who created the world and everything else that exists, exercises absolute, meticulous and exhaustive sovereignty over all events, including every thought, word and deed of mankind, through His definite predestination and continual providence. I also happen to believe that human beings make real, significant, voluntary and uncoerced choices for which they are morally responsible in a just economy.

  –THEOparadox – The Biblical Paradox Blog: Big Shoes, Small Minds (or “Sovereignty and Freedom in Perspective”) – click the link to read the rest

• Conversational Koine Institute
• Will ‘The Minuum Keyboard’ live up to the hype? – freewaregenius.com

Why (I Think) People Like Awful Christian Books | Marturo – now if he could tell me why people like bad Christian movies

Speaking of mediocre Christian entertainment:
Abandoned to Christ: History Channel’s ‘The Bible’ exalts man over God – see the two other links at the bottom of her article; and she has an interesting blog you may want to peruse

Two on Bible translation:
How Literal is the NASB? | Baker Book House Church Connection

Five Myths About Bible Translation | Parchment and Pen – I thought I had seen this before somewhere else

Here we go again, with less fanfare and hopefully less vitriol, but always lots of questions:
WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT GOD – Rob Bell (2013) | Veritas et Lux

Warfield’s description of Christianity sounds very Puritan to me (in a good way):
Warfield on the Essence of Christianity – Reformation21 Blog

A Reformed Farewell to Benedict XVI – White Horse Inn Blog – The ever-reasonable Michael Horton writes a good piece on this

Lutheran Satire – “Choose Your Pope” | Baker Book House Church Connection

Underdog Theology: Van Til the Street Preacher[?]

February 2013 Best Sellers | Baker Book House Church Connection – Always interesting, and shows that a Christian book store can have a great department like the one that Louis McBride is in charge of

It's God's Drama, Not Ours-Housewife Theologian – This is my kind of post

Kevin Vanhoozer on inerrancy and the fact that we don’t have the original manuscripts:

First: the Bible speaks truly ‘in the original manuscripts’. First: the Bible speaks truly ‘in the original manuscripts’. We have already seen that the Reformers were able to affirm the truthfulness of the Bible and to acknowledge errors due to faulty translation or transmission. To the objection that we do not now possess the original manuscripts, it must be pointed out that textual critical studies have brought us extremely close to the original text. The relatively small number of textual variations do not for the most part affect our ability to recognize the original text. At the same time, it is important not to ascribe inerrancy to the copies of the originals, since these are the products of an all-too human process of transmission.

The second qualification is just as important: ‘when interpreted according to the intended sense’. It is often tempting to claim the same authority for one’s interpretations as for the biblical text itself. The thrust of the doctrine of inerrancy, however, like that of sola scriptura, is to stress the distinction between the Word of God and the words of men. Interpretations of the Bible fall under the category ‘words of men’. It is thus important not to ascribe inerrancy to our interpretations. To the objection that we do not possess the correct interpretation, we must appeal not to inerrancy but to the perspicuity of Scripture. What conflicts there are about biblical interpretation ultimately must be ascribed to the fallible interpreter, not to the infallible text.

From: Theology Network – The Bible – The Inerrancy of Scripture

HT: Around the Web | Baker Book House Church Connection

~Jeff

• Seven Basic Axioms About the Bible and Four Faulty Assumptions: Thoughts from Lee Martin McDonald « Baker Book House Church Connection
• The Most Sobering Verse in the Bible (at least for me)
• The Piecemeal Method of Bible Reading and the Need for a Change in Diet | Jeff K. Clarke
• Bill Mounce on The Lord’s Prayer
• A video you might find humorous, especially given the Reformed view of total depravity (I hope I didn’t explain the joke too much):

HT: @voxstefani

~Jeff

I don’t remember ever listening to a whole podcast ever. But I listened to these first two new podcasts by my favorite guy out there, Carl Trueman and his podcast comrade Todd Pruitt. They mix some of Trueman’s humor with some very serious, and a little bit of not so serious issues with a backdrop of Reformed theology–just to warn the haters–and speak about important current cultural topics and events. Truman’s knowledge of history, being a professor, is always used pastorally (he’s one of those too) to benefit listeners and readers of his material. Although there is only one approximately 20 minute podcast every two weeks, I hope that this will be an amount that they will be able to sustain for a long time, even if it seems a paucity for “fans”. The content of the first two podcasts are all things I’m so interested in that I’m afraid it’s going to be all downhill from here.

Rock Star Pastors in Las Vegas | Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals – see the others in the right column–only one as of this writing

HT: @aimeebyrdhwt

~Jeff, opponent of overly happy people everywhere

P.S. here is a great song I learned of from the beginning of one of them:

I know I’ve been writing a lot about mental illness lately, but this is so good I have to pass this on. It also goes against the Voddie Baucham type preaching where he feels he knows what mental illness is not, and preaches outside of Scripture on it. For those who need more Biblical encouragement from someone who’s not a coddler, here is a quote and a link to the article, which I highly recommend reading, at the end. It’s also a good mini-lesson on one facet of the book of Job. This would go along with Two [Three?] Views of Mental Illness | Scripture Zealot

The lessons of Job are manifold but it seems that a few rather stand out: this is acomplicated, fallen, evil world; Christians can expect to suffer – hey, we all die in the end, no matter how jolly we might feel at points in the interim, so we had better get used to the idea; Christians are no more exempt from depression than they are from cancer or strokes; and the idea that these things are necessarily linked to our lack of faith, to our personal sin, to our outlook on life, or, indeed, to anything intrinsic to us, is nonsense and unbiblical. A pastoral theology which has not grappled with the whirlwind and the speeches of the last part of Job is sub-biblical; and preaching which does not take these things into account is not biblical preaching. One might add that perhaps one of the key lessons of Job (and the Psalms, for that matter) is: it is OK to be depressed. It is horrible and grim and dark. But it may not be your fault, any more than cancer or a stroke are your fault. Above all, it does not mean that you are forgotten by God, even if God only ever seems to come to you in the whirlwind; and, finally, it does not mean that you will not participate in the glorious resurrection when all the travails of this world will be definitively left behind.

Carl Trueman, Any Place for the God of Job?