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

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

There are no sins God’s people are more subject to than unbelief and impatience. They are ready either to faint through unbelief, or to fret through impatience. When men fly out against God by discontent and impatience it is a sign they do not believe this text. Discontent is an ungrateful sin, because we have more mercies than afflictions; and it is an irrational sin, because afflictions work for good. Discontent is a sin which puts us upon sin. ‘Fret not thyself to do evil’ (Psalm 37:8). He that frets will be ready to do evil: fretting Jonah was sinning Jonah (Jonah 4:9). The devil blows the coals of passion and discontent, and then warms himself at the fire. Oh, let us not nourish this angry viper in our breast. Let this text produce patience, ‘All things work for good to them that love God’ (Rom. 8:28). Shall we be discontented at that which works for our good? If one friend should throw a bag of money at another, and in throwing it, should graze his head, he would not be troubled much, seeing by this means he had got a bag of money. So the Lord may bruise us by afflictions, but it is to enrich us. These afflictions work for us a weight of glory, and shall we be discontented?

–Thomas Watson, All Things for Good (Puritan Paperbacks)

~Jeff

The last thing at least some believers need in their trials is the added burden of trying to figure out why it is all happening. And the good news here is that nowhere in Scripture are we expected to do that. God’s secrets remain just that. We must try to avoid two extremes: one, suggesting that God’s secret purposes in our lives and in providence generally are available to us; and the other, usually in reaction, concluding that God does not actually have a purpose for all of the details of our lives, from the smallest to the greatest.

Like Job’s counselors, well-meaning brothers and sisters sometimes encourage us to try to discern what God is up to in a given tragedy or what he is trying to teach us. They assume God is directly causing our suffering in order to do something to or for us that will bring him glory and us an ultimate good. Since this sounds so close to the truth, it is vital to use an entire chapter to try to sort this out from the Scriptures. While God is ultimately sovereign over all events, large and small, and will not allow us to endure a trial that he cannot turn to our profit, a lot of the adversities we face in this life are simply part of the web of ordinary causes and effects in the world. Upon learning that one has cancer, the first reaction should not be to think as if God had pointed his finger in the victim’s direction and shouted, “Cancer!” Nor should we think God is uninvolved—perhaps caught off guard himself with the bad news. God has arranged a world in which he neither controls everything directly (that is, apart from means) nor is just another member of creation who could himself be overwhelmed by the course of events.

–Michael Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

In my circles, especially when I was younger, it was assumed that when we went through trials, we were to try to figure out what God was trying to teach us. We would say, You might not know right away, but in time God will show you. Then most of the time forget about it, unless we thought of something. God is always sanctifying and perfecting believers, but we don’t have to know exactly what the sovereign Lord of our life is up to in order for that to happen.

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?

If you base your faith on lack of affliction, your faith lives on the brink of extinction and will fall apart because of a frightening diagnosis or a shattering phone call. Token faith will not survive suffering, nor should it.

–Randy Alcorn, If God  is Good, pg. 12

I’ve heard people say things like, “Boy I’m glad God was watching out for us, otherwise something really bad may have happened.” So if something bad happened then how do you see God? What about the young Christian listening to you who was in a similar situation and it turned out differently?

This one may require a second read, as it did for me:

God is both our greatest problem and solution. His presence is the worst news or the best news, the most fearful threat or the most cheerful comfort. From Genesis to Revelation, there is this struggle, this awkwardness, ranging from indescribable joy to utter terror, when we talk about God’s presence or face.

This is far indeed from the modern triviality with which we treat this subject. We assume that God is near, and that this is necessarily good news, without needing to hear anything more said. Or when we are tormented by life’s circumstances, we assume that God is far away, when in fact, as the cross itself demonstrates and Paul attests in his own suffering, it is precisely there and then when God is closest. That’s the paradox. Our experience is simply wrong. Things are not as they seem. God is most intimately involved in our lives often when we least experience him. Such contradictions of our ordinary experience are abundant even in the natural sciences. It was perfectly understandable that people once upon a time thought that the earth was flat, the sun and the moon were roughly the same size, and the earth was the center of the universe: after all, this matches the most universal experience of ordinary people. However, we know better now, because more thorough and sophisticated analysis has challenged such commonly held notions. How much more likely it is, then, that our ordinary experience of God and his ways can be challenged by his own revelation!

–Michael Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

Aren’t two sparrows sold for a penny? Not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s permission.
Matthew 10:29 GW

Unfortunately, the first one is a succinct article and the second is a ‘sermon’ which takes a lot of time to listen to. I skimmed much of the sermon to know what it’s about. The first 30 seconds are a gross mis-characterization to give you a taste of what’s to come, although there is a lot of good truth mixed in. I respect Voddie Baucham but don’t know why he’d give a sermon that goes so far outside of Scripture. But I just want to post them both for you. Many people who are at least relatively healthy may agree with the sermon and everyone who suffers from more severe mental illness, along with its physical symptoms will identify with the article.

Many things in the sermon will overlap the article, but in general I believe there is a different perspective. The article is what I’d say if I could write and research well.

What I like about the article is how it says that it’s a complex thing. There are many variables. Baucham says that mental illness is absolutely not a medical issue (and many times I’m sure it isn’t). How he knows this, I have no idea. He also says that there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance in the brain. I don’t know if there is or not. He says it’s because there’s no test for it. I wish the article wouldn’t have mentioned something similar, because we don’t know, and that will put up a red flag for some people, but I think on the whole it’s an extremely reasonable article.

Going Outside the Camp by James Coffield | Reformed Theology Articles at Ligonier.org

Nebuchadnezzar Loses His Mind – Voddie Baucham | Truth Endures (sermon)

The sermon and comments on Facebook upset me enough that I may not comment here, or may turn off the comments, which I’ve never done. I purposely put up two Reformed sources by people I respect so that you wouldn’t think I’m being biased. These attitudes are still going on in good churches. In fact this is part of what brought on my diatribe in the last post.
Mental Illness is Because of Sin | Scripture Zealot

That’s what many still think. I have been spared the hurt that many people who are suffering experience because of other Christians who are eerily similar to Job’s friends.

Some people are suffering guilt and depression because of sin. This can be repaired through the help of people pointing them to what Jesus did on the cross for them and help them to learn what behaviors and ways of thinking they need to change. And this is the case with everyone to a degree.

But there are also things that go on in our brains and body that we just can’t explain. People want to, because people like to be “right” and have answers.

Why does such suffering take place? We want an answer. We want to say, for instance, that human suffering is a result of sin—at least, those of us who aren’t in pain at the moment hope so. After all, we can control our pain that way. We can delude ourselves into thinking that as long as we are good, we won’t suffer.

–Suffering and the Book of Job

Through seeing some ugly comments on Facebook–not my friends thankfully–I can see how misguided many people are. None of the ones who have the ‘answers’ are the ones who are suffering with severe chronic mental illness.

My heart is broken. I can’t imagine how awful it must be to be suffering and be surrounded by people like this. It’s a very complex issue. There are in fact doctors over-prescribing pills, people who don’t feel good and want a pill to feel better because they have a “right” to be happy and healthy, people who minimize sin, disorders that shouldn’t be labeled as disorders. I could go on and on. But concerning the misguided notions, I feel like I could write a book based on what I’ve read in the last few days. But I don’t have the skill, authority and especially the energy, because of course if I examined my sin my energy could be restored.

I don’t know why I get into it with these people. I’m extremely confident in my views on many of these things–including what I don’t know–based on years or decades (depending on the condition) of reading the Bible, stacks of books, hundreds of articles, listening to talks and sermons, hundreds of hours of counseling, trying enough medications that I feel like a pharmacist, diets and supplements, seeing many doctors, and thinking for thousands of hours trying to figure things out. But the happy people seem to have many of the answers based on what they want to think. I don’t get to fix my life according to what I think, no matter how hard I try.

I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but do you think that someone who isn’t very experienced in these things can give advice to someone who’s done what I’ve done and gone through what I’ve gone through? I’m not trying to sound special. There are many, many others just like what I’ve described and many who suffering from various conditions much worse than me. And the sad thing is that many of those people are suffering even more because of the happy people who know more than you do. Because, if you knew more, or tried harder, or listened to this sermon or read this book, or tried this supplement, or ‘gave it to God’, you wouldn’t be suffering so much, right?

After Job and the friends finish their sermons, God finally speaks up and preaches for himself. Out of the whirlwind, he answers Job: “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand” (Job 38:2–4 NIV). After listing a litany of divine actions that illustrate his wisdom and power over the universe, God shuts the mouths of Job and his well-meaning friends. For they have all been arguing on the basis of their own experience and common sense. They have all operated under the assumption that they could read God’s mind on the surface of the events.

How easily we attempt this when suffering strikes us or our loved ones! We immediately strike out to rationalize the purpose behind it all. But God refuses to be figured out in these matters, and his counsel is hidden to mortals. God asks them all, “Can you make a pet of [me] like a bird or put [me] on a leash for your girls?… Any hope of subduing [me] is false; the mere sight of [me] is overpowering… Who then is able to stand against me? Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me” (Job 41:5, 9–11).

Job’s friends had all the answers: Job’s suffering was the effect of his sin, or of his failure to claim victory over his circumstances. Refusing to buy into their works-righteousness and hollow platitudes, Job became an existentialist, preferring no answers to wrong answers. God was sovereign and just, but in the abstract, he concluded.

For those who are tied to the high masts of suffering, there is often a fear greater than the fear of death. It is the fear of life. It is the fear of the next morning, and the morning after that [and having to listen to well-meaning 'friends']. In the face of deep despair, the temptation is great to turn away from God because the suffering is somehow credited to his wrath toward personal sins rather than to turn toward him because one knows that he or she is at peace with God. This is why Job has said he would be able to turn toward God in this situation if only he had a go-between, an advocate. Gradually, he came to a greater confidence in this mediator. The confession bears repeating: “Even now my witness is in heaven; my advocate is on high. My intercessor is my friend as my eyes pour out tears to God; on behalf of a man he pleads with God as a man pleads for his friend” (Job 16:19–21 NIV).

Michael Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

Praise God we have an Advocate and a Healer who has healed the believer’s relationship with Him and gives us the grace to not only endure suffering, but uses it to draw us to Himself so that it’s not for nothing. I hate the fact that there is suffering, but how much worse it would be if there was no benefit at all from it in this life. I pray for those who have suffering heaped upon suffering, and that it would eventually give them all the more confidence in our Lord.

I recently finished one of the best books on suffering I’ve read. I’d like to write a little more about it in the future. I’d also like to offer some quotes.

I can say that for me trials have been an integral part of sanctification as a Christian and brought me along much farther than I would have without. But they must go along with Scripture and prayer. Trials by themselves won’t get us very far.

Our weaknesses really are an opportunity for God to show his strength. This isn’t just a platitude. Another interesting point Luther made was that being a theologian of the cross—which is the general vocation of every Christian—requires three things: oratio (prayer), meditatio (study), and tentatio (trials). It is pretty easy to reduce faith to a “peaceful, easy feeling” of uplifting prayer and praise (“Just pray about it,” according to the sometimes glib advice of our Christian subculture). It’s also easy to turn faith into mere assent—a merely academic exercise concerned simply with getting the answers right on the exam. If we just memorize enough Scripture and quote it at the right moments, we’ll be fine; or if we just get our theology right, everything else will fall into place. Yet without the trials, faith is not really roused to grab hold of the God of promise.

In a moving and sympathetic exchange of correspondence, John Calvin once told Cardinal Sadoleto that what the prelate needed most in order to understand that all of his righteousness before God was Christ’s and in no measure his own was a crisis of conscience. He needed to be shaken in his confidence that he could cooperate with God’s grace sufficiently to attain a final acquittal. Trials come in all sizes and shapes, targeting our conscience, our hopes and dreams, our expectations of how life works, our confidence in God and his purposes. Lisa and I have had our faith tested; and although we are even less confident in the future on its own terms, we are more confident in the God who holds it, and us, in his hand. The trials do make a difference.

–Michael Horton, A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering

Eight Helps for Coping with Affliction by Joel Beeke

The Puritans really had a good handle on counseling, suffering and psychology. Here are some examples:

• Helpful Truth in Past Places: The Puritan Practice of Biblical Counselling
• A Lifting Up for the Downcast (Puritan Paperbacks) by William Bridge – I just bought this
• Overcoming Worry by David Clarkson, James T. O’Brien, New Puritan Press: Kindle Store
• The Puritans on How to Care for the Sick and Dying: A Contemporary Guide for Pastors and Counselors by Christopher W. Bogosh
• A Grief Sanctified (Including Richard Baxter’s Timeless Memoir of His Wife’s Life and Death): Through Sorrow to Eternal Hope by J. I. Packer, Richard Baxter

I should read this once a day for a while.

Acceptance means that I allow the process to transform me into the image of God’s Son. It means that I’m willing to let go of who I think I ought to be, and become who God wants me to be. The more we fight our pain and sorrow, the more tense we become and the more the pain is amplified.

Most of us are conditioned in this society to have a “wanting mind.”

Many of us try to get out of pain as fast as we can, so we can be more “useful” to God. Yet God reminds us again and again throughout Scripture that his greatest treasure fills earthen vessels, in order to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us (2 Corinthians 4:7). In our weakness we are strong (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

–Tim Hansel, You Gotta Keep On Dancin’

We tend to ask, “How can God use me if I can’t do anything?” Can you pray? Isn’t that one of the most important things? If you can’t pray because of mental difficulties, God will still glorify himself in believers. Who are we to question what God is doing (Job 9:12, Daniel 4:35)? It’s not up to us as to how God will use us (Ephesians 2:10). These are things I need to tell myself.

You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price.
1 Corinthians 6:19a-20b

Question 1 of the New City Catechism is worth it even if I don’t go through the rest of it. It starts out with a bang. Thinking about it this whole last week has been very good for me.

Q1: What is our only hope in life and death?

A: That we are not our own, but belong, body and soul, in life and death, to God and to our Savior Jesus Christ.

I know I belong to God but often forget that I’m not my own. That’s the tough part for me.

Recently I’ve been having a hard time dealing with with my long standing conditions–Biploar depression (more of a description than an official term), anxiety, fatigue, and back pain–all chronic. I don’t say this to try to sound special, there are millions who have it a lot worse than me. And it’s nothing to show off about. But I’ve been having a hard time dealing with living like this and that this is where God has me.

As I’ve written before, one of my main spiritual gauges is A.W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God. This little book is so challenging, I had to admit I couldn’t quite fully ‘get with the program’ the first time I read it. But when I read it again years later, I was so broken and low, I was willing to give it all up, which is often what it takes for us to surrender to God to that degree.

But as time goes on, I want a little more control, I want to try to figure more things out on my own (not that I don’t do regular reading, research, and work on things everyday), feel like I shouldn’t have to have it this bad, etc. It creeps up, being almost unnoticeable. It comes down to knowing that I’m not my own and God has planned everything for good (Gen 50:20). Realizing this through the Holy Spirit’s conviction is the first step.

Whether we are well or broken, we are not our own, which isn’t something we read and hear much of these days. Maybe that’s why Q1 is where it is in the catechism. Why not? See Calvin’s quote for that day (c:) for a wider application than this post, which I hope isn’t too indulgent.

For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.
Romans 14:7–8 Keller (?)

You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
Colossians 3:3 GW

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?
1 Corinthians 6:19

The LORD said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the LORD?
Exodus 4:11 NIV

“Rabbi,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?” “It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.”
John 9:3 NLT

Lamentations 3:37-38 Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it?
38 Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?
Lamentations 3:37-38 NIV

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
16 your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
Psalm 139:13-16 NIV

“The cross does not give us a minor shift or two with regard to a few of our ethical and moral and religious values. The cross radically disrupts the very center and citadel of your life from self to Christ. And if the cross has not done that, you’re not a Christian!”

–Albert Martin, Sermon: Warning to Professing Christians

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I didn’t find this on the Web–not this translation anyway–so I thought I would type it out and post it.

Hence arose that aspiration which believers used as a solace of misery and as a remedy for suffering: “The Lord’s anger is but for a moment, but his mercy is for a lifetime” [Ps. 30:5]. How could they end their afflictions in a moment when they were afflicted almost throughout life? Where could they see such long-lasting divine generosity, when they had scarcely tasted it? If they had clung to the earth, they could have found nothing like this. But because they looked up to heaven, they acknowledged that the saints suffer the cross at the Lord’s hands “only for a monent”; “the mercies” they recieve “are everlasting” [Isa. 54:7-8 p.]. On the other hand, they foresaw an eternal and never-ending ruin of the wicked who had for one day been happy as in a dream.

–John Calvin, Institutes, II. x. 18, pg 444-445, Battles translation, Vol. I

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
Colossians 3:1-3

This is something in the category of Suffering, which would have gone on the old Suffering Christians blog.

If the cross of Christ, the most evil act in human history, can be in line with God’s will and be the source of the decisive defeat of the very evil that caused it, then any other evil can also be subverted to the cause of good.

More than that, if the death of Christ is mysteriously a blessing, then any evil that the believer experiences can be a blessing too. Yes, the curse is reversed; yes, blessings will flow; but who declared that these blessings have to be in accordance with the aspirations and expectations of affluent America? The lesson of the cross for Luther is that the most blessed person upon earth, Jesus Christ himself, was revealed as blessed precisely in his suffering and death. And if that is the way that God deals with his beloved son, have those who are united to him by faith any right to expect anything different?

…

in the moment of the cross, it becomes clear that evil is utterly subverted for good. Romans 8:28 is true because of the cross of Christ: if God can take the greatest of evils and turn it to the greatest of goods, then how much more can he take the lesser evils which litter human history, from individual tragedies to international disasters, and turn them to his good purpose as well.

–Carl Trueman, Luther’s Theology of the Cross, New Horizons (October 2005) — regarding Martin Luther’s Theses at the Heidelberg Disputation

HT: Warren Cruz at Underdog Theology – go there for Luther’s theses and Trueman’s article, which is fantastic

Louis at Baker Book House Church Connection and I both started doing a Challies style form of a general links post whenever we feel like we’ve collected enough interesting ones. We hope you find them educational and informative, and a good use of your time. Also look for his book giveaways and great articles.

Fifteen Myths about Bible Translation by Daniel B. Wallace – tackling ideas like ‘literal is better’ and KJV-only

The Pastor’s Guide to Twitter: 10 Tweets to Impact Your Church at Pastoralized
via @NWBingham

New October Books from Crossway

A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life by Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones – just published on October 10, this 1200 page volume looks to be very good (Joel Beeke has been very busy) 50% off at Westminster through 10/19

Three Critical Truths On The Problem Of Suffering at Between The Times – this is great
via @NWBingham

For Kindle and eBook readers (the people), most of you know about Gospel eBooks – Free & Discount Christian e-Books, but I thought I’d mention it again for those who aren’t familiar. The easiest way to keep up is to sign up for their email updates (look for the yellow Subscribe button), or follow on Twitter if you’d like or RSS.