Ecumenicism: Accommodation and Orthodoxy

Here in First Things, Dr. Scott Redd shares a charitable and nuanced approach to ecumenicism in light of a letter from Pope Francis to evangelicals. Redd invites believers to have a respectful and truthful dialogue about what both unites and divides Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox.

Link to First Things article

Here's an outquote that hits at the crux:

In the letter, Francis also cites recent, public instances of Christian persecution around the world and the impact they have had on his understanding of Church unity. “The one that persecutes does not make a mistake, he doesn't ask if they are Catholic, Evangelical, Orthodox. . . . They are Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, and that is enough. This blood challenges us,” he writes. Indeed it does. The global plight of the Christian in the twenty first century ought to unify those who follow Christ and seek to proclaim his gospel in word and deed.

This issue also raises the question of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ and to share in that, for lack of a better word, communion in which the church is united in his suffering. Not all who share in his suffering, for instance, can share in the same sacramental table, due to different understandings of the meaning of Christ's presence at the table or altar. Similarly, not all of those targeted by ISIS or North Korea agree about the meaning of the church or the content of the gospel we proclaim. All religious persecution is horrific and wrong, but we do not define the community of faith by those whom the persecutor victimizes. How ought we to think about other persecuted groups who hold to a heretical understanding of the incarnation or the deity of Christ? We are united with them in their humanity, but are they Christ's church?

These questions are not without significance, touching on the person of Christ and the nature of faith, and the answers will only come from an engaged discussion of the authority of Scripture, the historical witness of the church, and the clarity with which the councils, creeds, and confessions give expression to the teaching of the Bible. These discussions can get into the weeds quickly, to be sure, but they are nevertheless crucial to moving toward meaningful unity. True healing comes once the illness is diagnosed.

"Cheerful Courage and Compassion"

Here's an article in The Gospel Coalition on InterVarsity's response to challenges:

How Marginalization Can Empower Christians on Mission

An excerpt:
 "...because InterVarsity students did not see exaggerate their difficulties, they were better prepared to treat their opponents with respect and dignity. They overcame the temptation to resent the people who marginalized them. Even though they were taunted and shamed, accused of being intolerant bigots no better than white supremacists, they cheerfully served the people who maligned them. They brought water and doughnuts to LGBT groups protesting them. They took stands against LGBT bullying even while facing ideological bullies in university leadership. They prayed for their university leaders and found creative ways to support and strengthen the institutions that were bent on driving them out.

David French witnessed InterVarsity’s cheerful courage and compassion firsthand:

“With my own eyes I’ve seen young college students – kids who months before never imagined they’d be at the center of a national controversy – braving physical intimidation in deliberately darkened hallways, barred from entering campus hearing rooms to respectfully defend religious freedom. I’ve seen young women endure rape threats and death threats yet double down on their faith commitments and commitment to free speech for all. Young students have been subjected to Star Chamber-like proceedings in which furious campus administrators tried to hector them into doubting and denying their faith. And students have turned out by the hundreds, crowding campus buildings, to pray for their university and protest their unjust punishments.”

InterVarsity leaders challenged policies they believed were unwise or discriminatory, but whenever they lost, they submitted to the decisions and moved forward without campus recognition."

Prayers for the People (2)

Continuing my project to, each day, print the seventy prayers listed in The Book of Common Prayer. (Brackets [ ] indicate a place to insert personal or specific pleas.) Scroll down for prior prayers.

2. For All Sorts and Conditions of Men

O God, the creator and preserver of mankind, we humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of men; that thou wouldst be pleased to make thy ways known unto them, thy saving health unto all nations. More especially we pray for thy holy Church universal [the believers everywhere]; that it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life. Finally, we commend to thy fatherly goodness all those who are in any ways afflicted or distressed in mind, body, or estate; [especially those Christians persecuted and suffering in the Middle East]; that it may please thee to comfort and relieve them according to their several necessities, giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of all their afflictions. And this we beg for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen

-- The Book of Common Prayer, page 814-815 

"Joyful Exiles, Penitent Strangers"

One for the Church in the West today -- here's a good post dealing with biblical perspective by Scott Redd of sunergoi at The Christward Collective

Joyful Exiles

And here a sermon by Scott Redd which describes

 Walking in the Light in Cultural Darkness

Screwtape Pipes Up

Here is a site, goodreads, with some of the memorable quotes from Under Secretary Screwtape in C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters.

The kids and I listened to the book on our road trip this summer to Georgia, Virginia, and North Carolina. (Nothing like a captive audience. But they enjoyed it more than they thought they would.)

To begin with a little humor:

-- "She's the sort of woman who lives for others - you can tell the others by their hunted expression.” 

And moving on to the more serious:

-- “Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality.” 

-- "...thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the the impossible.” 

-- "Whatever their bodies do affects their souls. It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out...” 

-- “[M]an has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "true" or "false," but as "academic" or "practical," "outworn" or "contemporary," "conventional" or "ruthless." Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous—that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about.” 

-- "When He [God] talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.” 

and many more

Paper airplanes

Paper airplanes: warm, sweet ad about a military childhood, and about fathers, sons, and good neighbors.

Paper airplanes

Conquest's Conquests

Robert Conquest, a man who described misrule in Stalinist Russia when information was scarce, has died.

What an interesting man: historian, advisor to Margaret Thatcher, poet, and writer of prose. I enjoyed reading this obituary:

Seminal Historian of Soviet Misrule 

Stalin's daughter also recently died. She lived in Wisconsin.

About her life in Wisconsin:

Lana about Svetlana

Review of a biography of her (by Rosemary Sullivan)

Stalin's Daughter

"Behold, I make all things new."

"When we preach the gospel, we preach the promise of new life,
new mind,
new hope,
new purpose,
new union with Christ,
new company of the Holy Spirit,
new pardon of sin,
new affinity for repentance and closeness with God,
new love of the law,
new ability to obey,
new understanding of why God demands chastity outside of marriage and fidelity inside of marriage,
new patience with people who do not yet know Jesus,
new perspectives of suffering and affliction, addiction and change,
new hatred of our own sin and patience with the sin of others,
new responsibilities,
new heartaches,
new friendships,
a new family from within the body of Christ,
new allegiances,
new dangers, and
new grace.

I needed the expulsive love of my risen Savior to whisper in my ear that my burgeoning conviction of sin was truer than what my flesh craved."

-- Rosaria Butterfield in Openness Unhindered 

(with my formatting)

From Deep to Deep

Sunergoi on Water in Psalm 32

21

Sunergoi on "21 for 1"

From Sunergoi: A Simple Love

For those in search of a simple life, here is a post by my brother about a simple love:

http://thegospelcoalition.org/article/simplicity-is-about-god

And on creation ordinances:

http://sunergoi.blogspot.com/2014/07/during-conversation-today-seminary.html

Grief Pondered

Teaching Us How to Grieve

A few weeks ago, our dear friends lost their adult son in a tragic car accident. The young man had a wife and a 2-year-old boy, who still doesn't understand why daddy does not come home. He also left behind a mother and father and sisters and brothers-- all people who loved him in this tight-knit family.

The manifest transparency and courage of these friends grieving deeply is something to behold. It is nothing short of an honor to be near. It is sacred, almost, like peeking in on a cataclysm and a glory.

There are many ways to grieve. We have watched our friends do it well. They grieve openly and frankly in a way that strips aside all conventions and flatly proclaims questions, faith, and courage. They cry during the stories, laugh between the tears, and say, "I believe, help my unbelief." They turn from their tears and encourage another. In the end -- whether they know it at this fresh point of their sorrow or not -- they are teaching us how to grieve and how to collapse onto God.

Not a Tame Lion

Watching a great sorrow up close puts all of my barely-quashed, dark fears on display -- a flickering picture newsreel. I want to look away from my own fears. But when I see someone suffer, I am turned inside out and my insides are revealed. The worst can happen, and does. It's true, and we can't pretend anymore: Here there be monsters.

I believe that this one of God's methods of forcing me to put feet to my faith. He is calling my bluff.

As Mr. Beaver says, "Aslan is not a tame lion." God himself is not safe. He is not a coddling God. This faith we have -- this never was the safe option. At least not now, not with respect to the flesh.

Faith -- believers know this -- is not an opiate, but a cold splash of water on the face. Faith does not allow you to muffle your fears in nice phrases and memories and that "The Circle of Life" song. Faith says, "All is as God has decreed," and "yet I will praise Him." Even a tiny mustard seed of faith is a gift, because we surely could not generate it ourselves.We only need that tiniest of gifts, and He gives it freely.

This faith is not safe, but it is real and true. And part of that realness and trueness is that Death does not have the last word.

Grief Pondered: At the Back of All the Stories

Good News is only really good when the first set of news is really bad.

I just finished "Til We Have Faces" by CS Lewis. I read it in college and missed its depth then. (I kept worrying over the mechanics of the metaphor.)

Expressly, it is a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. However, in the end it is about Psyche's sister, who is an aged monarch of an ancient kingdom.

Telling her strange story for posterity, an old queen seeks to make a water-tight case against the gods. She lays out her case against them -- their cruelty, their hidden-ness, and jealousy, and teasing trickery. But as she writes, something happens. We figure it out only slightly before she does. She realizes the case she is making is against herself.

Righteously indignant, she finds she was the cruel and unjust one, after all.

Coolly logical and academic, she finds that she was the liar and deceiver, after all. (The worst lies she tells are to herself.)

Pragmatic and effective as a ruler who has built a solid empire, she finds her kingdom will pass to a distant relative she hardly knows, after all.

Meanwhile, the One behind the stories was always drawing this withered queen to meet Him. To show her that truth never was found in shrines and magic, or book learning, or politics. It was always, only, and forever found in Him. The story was about Him. All the stories are about Him.

He wants to meet her. He will meet her. He comes to her. 

"You have seen the torches grow pale when men open the shutters and broad summer morning shines in?"

As she reflects on the events of her life and her grappling with the gods,

"I knew that all of this had been a preparation. Some far greater matter was upon us...'He is coming,' they said....The earth and stars and sun, all that was or will be, existed for His sake."

Our God is personal. He is intimate. He is far too much concerned with loving us to let us idle along forever in indolent accusations, or in the opiates of endless logical disputes or smoky mysticism or worldly pragmatics.

Christianity has laws, but it is not a religion of laws and rules. Christianity has miracles and mysteries, but it is not a religion of magic and smoke. Christianity is reasoned and wise, but it is not a religion for the proud academic and all-knowing logician. (The Greeks seeks wisdom, the Jews look for miracles. But we His people, both Jew and Gentile, seek something else. Him, crucified. It's a stumbling block.)

Christianity is a most intimate love story of a Groom for His bride, a Father for his child, a King for his subject, a Doctor for his patient.

Communion with Christ is a most uncomfortable and invasive surgery, a nakedness, a subjection, and a knowing.

We're sick and oozing sore, and He is our Doctor. We are weak and defenseless, and He is our protecting King. We are lost and crying out, and He is our shepherding Father.

We are ugly, unloved, wrinkled, bitter, barren, sour, and cast-off. We wear a hood to hide our ugliness. And He is our beloved Groom, making us radiant, smooth, strong, healthy, and whole. He removes our masks and shrouds, looks in our face, and clothes us in white.

"Let the bones you have crushed rejoice." Jesus, lover of my soul.

Just one last thing the old queen learns: He doesn't answer to her. She answers to Him.

With Us and For Us

If you haven't heard this old song by Michael Card I recommend it. Unlike other kings and kingdoms, which rise and fall, our King and his kingdom never diminish or crumble. Unlike pagan gods who rape and trick, our loving God gives and provides. Christ's name -- Immanuel, God with us  -- is a good comfort to remind us that our God is with us and for us and against him nothing can stand.

For all those who live in the shadow of death
A glorious light has dawned
For all those who stumble in the darkness
Behold, your light has come.

Immanuel
Our God is with us!
And if God is with us, who could stand against us?
Our God is with us,
Immanuel

"Immanuel" by Michael Card

"Heavy Cloud, No Rain"

Texas has long periods of drought. In this clip, one Texas hill-country man discusses how he has improved the situation on his land.

Drought Relief Link 

And here is a link to the Montgomery Farm green home right here in Allen, Texas. Our friend and an elder at our church, Lee Hall, was the builder. The home is beautiful as well as innovative.

Allen, Texas Green Home Link

Texans are used to living in a harsh environment and have some innovative solutions for preserving precious resources.

As the Sparks Fly Upward

City Journal book review by Steven Malanga on questioning the noble savage: "Welcome to the Jungle" LINK

What's Your Temptation?

Interesting post from Justin Taylor quoting some writers on the erosion of religious liberty in America.

Interesting to consider: which temptation are you more likely to face in cultural adversity? Silencing/suppressing your conscience OR reacting in anger or pugnaciousness?

LINK: Erosion of religious liberty

The Anti-Snowden

Read about a true hero, Helen Denton

Abortion: a Brutal "Justice"

In this article, children conceived in rape and incest speak about the value of their lives and the injustice of abortion laws towards others like them.

What if Americans bent our minds and our resources to love and help brutalized women rather than establish laws protecting the brutalization of the children?

As one woman says in the article, why should I die because my father was evil? I think we can do better for women and children than offer death as an answer to death.

LINK

God with Us: CCEF Conference "Not Alone"

Background:
Last weekend, David and I attended the CCEF conference on biblical counseling entitled "Not Alone" with a group of about 30 people from our church (men, women, married, single, widowed people). Our marriage and family pastor urged and encouraged people to attend, and our church even provided scholarships.

The goal: love of one another, Christian community, and wise and equipped discipleship. I am so thankful that our pastor values these things enough to make this a priority.

Speakers and Topics:
We were privileged to hear Ed Welch, Elyse Fitzpatrick, Winston Smith, and David Powlison discuss how they bring the truth of Christ's presence to bear upon various counseling situations.

We participated in smaller discussions, where counselors discussed such topics as "How to Affirm and Encourage Others" and "How to Build Bridges to Your Children." I will include notes from each in blogs to follow.

But...we had the greater privilege to fellowship with dear brothers and sisters in our local church, seeking to preach Christ to themselves and model Him to their families, and others.

Theme and Reflection:
In retrospect, the purest biblical short expression of being "not alone" is found itself in Isaiah's name for the Messiah: Emmanuel, God with Us.

God. With. Us.

How do we counsel others and ourselves when we find ourselves in the dark and lonely places? Whether we are inhabiting the dark night of the soul or stopped up short by the occasional flash of loneliness or feeling "outside," how can we gain, remember, and model the simultaneously cosmic and intimate perspective that God Himself is with us?

And how can we truly be with others, like He is? How can we be like Christ and love them and be with them when they are alone?

And how can we hold on to this perspective in the mundane, everyday labors of life as well? In all of this, I am reminded of one of my favorite little books, The Practice of the Presence of God, written about a kitchen monk named Brother Lawrence, hundreds of years ago. Brother Lawrence labored to find and then found joy in scrubbing the pots, and his joy was so infectious he became renowned in his circle for his transforming joy in the mundane.

The way he served God transformed the scullery to the sacred. God with him in the kitchen.

So, I purposed to transcribe the notes I took in brief form so that I wouldn't forget the perspective that the conference encouraged in how we contemplate "God with Us" and "God with Others."

First Topic:
First appropriately, the conference began and ended with a musical meditation on the hymn "St. Patrick's Breastplate." (Credited to St. Patrick but actually written by a saint in, perhaps, the 800's.)

This first blog will be the text of that hymn, but first, here is the refrain.:

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

St Patrick's Breastplate

I bind unto myself today
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same
The Three in One and One in Three.

I bind this today to me forever
By power of faith, Christ’s incarnation;
His baptism in Jordan river,
His death on Cross for my salvation;

His bursting from the spicèd tomb,
His riding up the heavenly way,
His coming at the day of doom
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power
Of the great love of cherubim;
The sweet ‘Well done’ in judgment hour,
The service of the seraphim,
Confessors’ faith, Apostles’ word,
The Patriarchs’ prayers, the prophets’ scrolls,
All good deeds done unto the Lord
And purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the star lit heaven,
The glorious sun’s life giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even,
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
The power of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, His might to stay,
His ear to hearken to my need.

The wisdom of my God to teach,
His hand to guide, His shield to ward;
The word of God to give me speech,
His heavenly host to be my guard

Against the demon snares of sin,
The vice that gives temptation force,
The natural lusts that war within,
The hostile men that mar my course;

Or few or many, far or nigh,
In every place and in all hours,
Against their fierce hostility
I bind to me these holy powers.

Against all Satan’s spells and wiles,
Against false words of heresy,
Against the knowledge that defiles,
Against the heart’s idolatry,
Against the wizard’s evil craft,
Against the death wound and the burning,
The choking wave, the poisoned shaft,
Protect me, Christ, till Thy returning.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One and One in Three.

By Whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.