The WTJ article, written by my good friend Jason Hood, can be read here for free.
I’ve bcome increasingly sensitive to the fact that I cannot see into the future, and yet also convinced that wisdom ought to enable me to face its uncertainties without fear or anxiety. How is this possible? The book of Proverbs points to two interlocking aspects of wisdom for the future: planning for the possibilities and trusting in God’s providence.
The first of these, planning, revolves around the responsibility we have as human beings to think (Proverbs 1:1-7). As a book of wisdom literature, Proverbs insists that we steward the life of the minds God has given us. And so, it follows that when this responsibility is extended to the future, stewardship requires us to apply our minds in planning:
The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty. (Prov 21:5)
Just as we would say, “Haste makes waste,” Proverbs stresses the importance of careful planning, especially with respect to the future. One of the most important aspects of planning is the pursuit of good advice. In fact, a particularly large swath of Proverbs’ teaching on planning involves the concept of listening to and accepting guidance from others:
- Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance. (Proverbs 1:5)Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed. (Proverbs 15:22; cf. 11:14)
Make plans by seeking advice. (Proverbs 20:18a; cf. 24:6)
Yet Proverbs is quick to warn us that “the advice of the wicked is deceitful” (Proverbs 12:5). Merely seeking advice is not enough. Advice must come from those who are righteous and wise. Proverbs is emphatic when it comes to reminding us that God does not tolerate plans that neglect his priorities. In fact, listed among the “six things the LORD hates” is a “heart that devises wicked schemes” (Proverbs 6:16, 18), and several proverbs repeat this warning against bad advice in several different ways:
- There is deceit in the hearts of those who plot evil, but joy for those who promote peace. (Proverbs 12:20)Do not those who plot evil go astray? But those who plan what is good find love and faithfulness. (Proverbs 14:22)
There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. (Proverbs 14:12)
These warnings are crucial when it comes to seeking financial advice. Do we self-consciously look for advisors who seek first the kingdom of God with all we have been given — not just a phat resume or a big black bottom line? Or do we think of financial advice as something that is merely “practical” or perhaps spiritually neutral such that we can go to any advisor who is able to finagle our finances with an eye for profit? “Those who plot evil go astray,” says Proverbs, and one of the easiest ways to stray into financial disobedience is by allowing our plans to focus exclusively on ourselves. “Evil” may sound like a harsh way of talking about financial plans that fail to take risks for mercy, justice and generosity, but we should remember that the apostle Paul told Timothy that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). Just as “all a man’s ways seem innocent to him” (Proverbs 16:2), selfish financial plans often appear to be “prudent.” Money is mighty, and few things have the power to pervert our way of thinking about the future more than plans which fail to fight financial fears with God’s promises. Our natural proclivity is to be selfish and afraid and afraid when it comes to the future. Because of this, we need the advice of those who are not only competent to help with the “nuts and bolts” of our decisions but also able and eager to remind us that nothing in this life will last. As Proverbs says, “Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone, for they will surely sprout wings and fly off to the sky like an eagle” (Proverbs 23:5). And so, rather than accept the advice of advisors who encourage us to store up treasures on earth where cars rust, fur coats are moth eaten, houses get termites, and things tend to fall apart, we ought to seek long-term advisors like Jesus who will challenge us to “store up treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19-20).
As insistent as Proverbs is on our responsibility to plan wisely, the most notable piece of wisdom this book provides for the future is a relentless reminder to trust in God’s providence:
- Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails. (Proverbs 19:21)A man’s steps are directed by the LORD. How then can anyone understand his own way? (Proverbs 20:24)
Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth. (Proverbs 27:1)
Proverbs does not criticize money-making, wealth creation or strategic planning in general—it commands and encourages both. However, Proverbs insists that God owns the future and warns against the attitude that “boasts about tomorrow” in self-reliance. Proverbs rebukes the assumption that human beings have the ability to determine their own destiny or chart their own course in the world. Proverbs addresses the spirit of the “rich fool” against which Jesus warned in his parable, the attitude that says, “You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry” (Luke 12:19). This attitude drives many to make extravagant plans for the future that they may never enjoy, and it is diametrically opposed to what wisdom dictates. We are to “commit to the LORD whatever [we] do” (Proverbs 16:3), depending on God’s providence for our provision. After all, if Jesus, who is God, submitted himself and his plans to the will of the Father in Gethsemane, how much more should we as creatures commit our future to him?
Of course, what is important is not that we say, “Lord willing,” whenever we make a plan. Rather than merely paying lip service to God’s providence, we ought to pray for a mindset of humble reliance to direct us in all that we do. We must not do anything without recognizing that our “life is but a breath” (Job 7:7) which rests in God for its future, “a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:14).
NB: This post is adapted from an article that I originally wrote for Generous Giving.
…has now officially accepted Kelly Kapic’s and my book project, God So Loved He Gave for publication!
“It is a great part of a Believers work, to have Christ’s Image very much upon his imagination and so upon his mind. As if he saw him in the Manger, in his temptations, in his preaching, in his praying, watching, fasting, weeping, doing good, as crowned with Thorns, as crucified, &c. that a Crucified Saviour being still as it were before our Eyes, we may remember the price of our Redemption, and the example which we have to imitate; and that we are not to live like a Dives or a Caesar, but like the Servants of a Crucified Christ. A Crucifix well befitteth the Imagination and Mind of a Believer.” – Richard Baxter
HT: Kelly Kapic
“After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already to be
crossed’d,)
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d
Their work,
After the noble inventors, after the scientists, the chemist,
the geologist, ethnologist,
Finally shall come the poet worthy of that name,
The true son of God shall come singing his songs.”
- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass quoted by Walter Bruggemann in Finally Comes the Poet
Via Tom Okie via Andy Crouch:
Crouch comments: “The best part of this marvelous deconstructed music video is at the bridge, when Nataly Dawn sings, “Don’t make me sing this part of the song—the lyrics are so bad, we’re going to skip ahead.” There’s a lot to admire in this sly and super-catchy arrangement, but it does make me wonder why so much popular music by and for hip white people is so flat in affect. C’mon Nataly, don’t you believe in something enough to belt your heart out?”
…but the daughter has consumed the mother.”
- Rev. Cotton Mather, 1600s America
Just found this new gem being advertised on the Covenant College Website:
“The first Thorn was published in 1970 as the brainchild of a small group of Dr. Nicholas Barker’s creative writing students, and Covenant’s fine arts publication is alive and flourishing today. On a yearly basis, student editors have gathered submissions and creatively published a body of poetry, short prose, photography, and artwork for the Covenant community. Thorn: An Anthology features the publication’s finest work from 1970 to the present. Editor Sarah Lester (’07) compiled and designed the anthology as her Senior Integration Project, an endeavor that grew out of a brainstorming session in Nicholas Barker’s office.
Thorn: An Anthology includes over 100 pages of contributions from the students and faculty members listed below. The book is warmly dedicated to Dr. Barker, who helped cultivate the college’s rich literary and artistic culture, and includes a short dedication piece written by Dr. Jim Wildeman. Thorn: An Anthology also features a “Where Are They Now” index with current information about the anthology’s contributors.”
You can buy it here.
Focus on Family’s Webzine Boundless quotes an article I wrote for Generous Giving’s Stewardship Study Notes here. It addresses the ticklish issue of whether saving is biblical.
I’m happy to announce that the NIV Stewardship Study Bible is now available in stores. Brett Elder, one of the editors, wrote me this morning to let me know that copies have now left Zondervan’s warehouse and are populating the major retail outlets around the country and over seas. In fact, he was able to deliver fifty pre-release copies in Kenya to various international leaders who are championing the message of biblical generosity around the world.
It was my privilege to work on the editorial content review board for this Bible which I believe is going to prove to be a great resource, pressing the church towards greater levels of biblical stewardship and generosity. The Bible also makes extensive use of Generous Giving’s Stewardship Bible Study Notes which I wrote with Jason Hood and Jasper Reynolds. These notes are available for free and can be accessed here.
For a preview of the Stewardship Study Bible’s actual content click here. Or why not just buy it at Amazon?
“For how could there be any pleroma [fullness] or principle, or power, or any other God, since it behoves God, as the fullness of all things, to contain and evelop all things, and to be contained and limited by none. For if there is anything beyond Him He is not the fullness of all things, nor does He contain all things.”
Notice how closely Irenaeus correlates the ideas of 1) the fullness of God and 2) the embraciveness of God. If there is anything beyond God’s embrace he is not the fullness of all things. Thus, to receive anything from God is to belong to him and to belong to him is to receive.
“The Treatise of Irenaeus of Lugdunum Against the Heresies,” trans. And ed. F.R. Montgomery Hitchcock, pp. 45.
“Those who have more come to the aid of those who lack, and we are constantly together. Over all that we receive we bless the Maker of all things through his Son Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit.”
The First Apology of Justin, the Martyr, trans. Edward R. Hardy pp. 276ff
This is going to be good…
How the Father gives up His Son for us
1) He does not spare him
2) He offers him
3) He sends him
4) He gives him
5) He sacrifices him
6) He forsakes him
How the Son gives up Himself for us
1) He does not grasp his rights
2) He comes to us
3) He dwells with us
4) He suffers for us
5) He is slain for us
6) He dies for us
7) He offers himself for us
8) He lays himself down for us
9) He empties himself for us
10) He sacrifices himself for us
11) He gives himself for us
12) He hands over himself for us
13) He yields himself for us
14) He becomes poor for us
15) He becomes flesh for us
16) He is poured out for us
17) He gives himself as a ransom for us
18) He is gives himself as food and drink for us
“How great a God is He who gives God!”
- St. Augustine, On the Trinity
“Paul’s thought that God “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all” (Rom 8:31) points to a certain convergance between sacrificing and giving. The gospel is all about God’s giving. The drama of redemption begins when God gives his word to Abraham in the form of an unconditional promise: “I will make you a great nation and I will bless you; and I will make your name great… and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen 11:2-3). The covenant of grace begins with God giving his word. And it reaches its apex with God giving his Word, his only begotten Son, in fulfillment of his earlier word. The atonement ultimately concerns God’s self-giving.”
- Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “The Atonement in Postmodernity: Guilt, Goats, and Gifts”
“No matter how grateful we are, gold will not make the world think our God is good; it will make people think that our god is gold. That is no honor to the supremacy of his worth.”
- John Piper, Let the Nations be Glad! p. 102
“Personal peace means just to be let alone, not be troubled by the troubles of other people, whether across the world or across the city–to live one’s life with minimal possibilities of being personally disturbed. Personal peace means wanting to have my personal life pattern undisturbed in my lifetime, regardless of what the result will be in the lifetimes of my children and grandchildren. Affluence means an overwhelming and eve-increasing prosperity–a life made up of things, things, and more things–a success judged by an ever-higher level of material abundance.”
Francis A. Shaeffer, How Should We Then Live?, p. 205.
It’s a nagging question that’s been haunting me recently. What is human flourishing? Can we give an account? I’ve got a working definition, but I wonder what you guys think? Any takers?
Increasingly, my inclination has been to define human flourishing in terms of a participation in God’s gifts. I think Paul had something like this in mind when he said “You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God” (2 Cor. 9:11). That’s a good word, at least to begin with, on the nature of human flourishing.
I’ll have more on this and other supporting passages later. But first, what do others think? Can you give a clear account of the nature of human flourishing? What does it look like?
“Why ‘gift’ exactly? The primary reason is that gift is a kind of tracendental category in relation to all the topoi of theology, in a similar fashion to ‘word.’ Creation and grace are gifts; Incarnation is the supreme gift; the Fall, evil and violence are the refusal of gift; atonement is the renewed and hyperbolic gift that is for-giveness; the supreme name of the Holy Spirit is donum (according to Agustine); the Church is the community that is given to humanity and is constituted through the harmonious blending of diverse gifts (according to the apostle Paul).”
- John Milbank, Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon, ix.
I haven’t read enough of Milbank yet to know what to think of him. But I do have one concern. That concern consists of the danger posed by focusing on the category of the ‘gift’ in such a way that the Trinity, the Spirit, the atonement, the church, and everything else ends up turning into little more than great examples of some ‘deep’ ontological principle. With that said, however, Milbank and the other theologians of the ‘gift’ are definitely onto something in their emphasis on the gift. As 1 John 5:11 itself says so succinctly, “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” There’s one active verb here in the testimony, and that verb is “given.” This emphasis is hard to ignore.
Here’s Herman Bavinck at his best…
“The fruits of Christ’s sacrifice are not restricted to any one area of life; they are not limited, as so many people think nowadays, to the religious-ethical life, to the heart, the inner chamber, or the church, but are extended to the entire world. For however powerful sin may be, the free gift is not like the trespass. The grace of God and the free gift through grace are superabundant (Rom. 5:15).”
- Reformed Dogmatics, 3: 451.
by J.R. Caines
I cut down the curtains
like pulling a bandage off bare light.
I cracked the lame chairs into sticks
and stacked them by the road,
herded out half the ailing furniture
into the yard and set them free,
burglarized my own home
carrying off the plunder,
and burned boxes of small notations,
mailings and magazines.
From the fire I rescued one photograph
of blue domes on a Greek island.
My good friend Lowen Howard just sent me these mesmerizing photographs of this man who paints himself into his surroundings. For some reason, these pictures immediately reminded me of that hackneyed old quote in The Weight of Glory where C.S. Lewis says, “The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing.”
The Avett Brothers have a new album out, I and Love and You which you can listen to in its entirety for free here at NPR.
I like these guys for their unadorned chords and honest lyrics. The words of their songs have all the stuff of life in them. They sing about dirt roads, beach umbrellas, and sin. The Avett Brothers seem to know that we’re all outlaws, murderers, and fools in need of redemption.
Thanks to Fritz Schalmo for the heads up on this link.
“…a religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference.”
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, p. 64
HT: John Hyman, “The Gospel According to Wittgenstein” in Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Religion
I began reading what is supposed to be the greatest novel ever written today, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. I’m using the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation which is twelve-hundred and twenty four pages long. I wonder if I will ever get through…
“This is true perfection: not to avoid a wicked life because like slaves we servilely fear punishment, nor to do good because we hope for rewards, as if cashing in on the virtuous life by some business-like arrangement. On the contrary, disregarding all those things for which we hope and which have been reserved by promise, we regard falling from God’s friendship as the only thing dreadful and we consider becoming God’s friend the only thing worthy of honor and desire. This, as I have said, is the perfection of life.”
- Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses
“Somewhere here I want to bring in a learning which has been most rewarding, because it makes me feel so deeply akin to others. I can word it this way. What is most personal is most general. There have been times when in talking with students or staff, or in my writing, I have expressed myself in ways so personal that I have felt I was expressing an attitude which it was probable no one else could understand, because it was so uniquely my own…. In these instances I have almost invariably found that the very feeling which has seemed to me most private, most personal, and hence most incomprehensible by others, has turned out to be an expression for which there is a resonance in many other people. It has led me to believe that what is most personal and unique in each one of us is probably the very element which would, if it were shared or expressed, speak most deeply to others. This has helped me to understand artists and poets as people who have dared to express the unique in themselves.”
- Carl Rogers, On Becoming A Person, p. 26
What strikes me about this wonderful passage is, first of all, how true it is and, second, how easily it can be abused. On the one hand, there is an ironic universality to the particularities of our individual experience, isn’t there? This seems to be manifestly true. But on the other hand, when this principle becomes absolute, it is nothing less than a recipe for the most abjectly idolatrous navel gazing imaginable. If I am to find what is universal in my particular, individual experience I cannot help but absolutize me. The world will suddenly revolve around me and, like Narcissus himself, I will see nothing besides my own face in the pool. So, there seems to be a very fine line to walk here…. How can we keep from falling? Biblically, I think a Christian response to this principle would have to focus on what it means to be created in the image of God. This would provide a way of escape when it comes to the question of idolatry and it would also provide a way for us to acknowledge the fundamental truth that what we find in our particular experiences, even in the deepest recesses of our consciousness, at some level, reflects something universal as image bearers of God. It would provide a way of lifting our focus from self to the other.
Check out this chilling passage (below this equally chilling picture) from Darwin’s book, The Descent of Man:
“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that surive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilized society propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.”
Commenting on this passage, Marilynne Robinson concludes that Darwinism is “harsh and crude in its practical consequences, in a degree that sets it apart from all other respectable scientific hypotheses; not coincidentally, it had its origins in polemics against the poor, and against the irksome burden of extending charity to them–a burden laid on the back of Europe by Christianity.”
See Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam, 43, 46.
“John Calvin,” Robinson says was “a figure of the greatest historical consequence, especially for our culture, who is more or less entirely unread. Learned-looking books on subjects to which he is entirely germane typically do not include a single work of his immense corpus in their bibliographies, nor indicate in their allusions to him a better knowledge than folklore can provide of what he thought and said. I have encountered an odd sort of social pressure as often as I have mentioned him. One does not read Calvin. One does not think of reading him… Calvin seems to be neglected on principle. This is interesting. It is such a good example of the oddness of our approach to history, and to knowledge more generally, that it bears looking into.” – Marilynne Robinson, The Death of Adam, 12.
“An adult human being consists of sedimentary layers. We shed more skins than we can count, and are born each day to a merciful forgetfulness. We forget most of our past but embody all of it.” – John Updike
“A lecturer to a group of businessmen displayed a sheet of white paper on which was one blot. He asked what they saw. All answered, “A blot.” The test was unfair: it invited the wrong answer. Nevertheless, there is an ingratitude in human nature by which we notice the black disfigurement and forget the widespread mercy.” – George Buttrick
