Tim Keller: Counterfeit Gods

Filed under: Culture, Idolatry, Salvation, Sanctification, Tim Keller

“We preach Christ crucified” – Do we?

Martyn-Lloyd Jones:

“I am increasingly convinced that so much in the state of the Christian church today is to be explained chiefly by the fact that for nearly a hundred years the church has been preaching morality and ethics, and not the Christian faith. It is this preaching of the ‘good life’, or being ‘a good little gentleman’, and of viewing religion as ‘morality touched by emotion’, as Matthew Arnold put it, that has been the curse. Such men have shed the doctrines; they dislike any idea of atonement, they dismiss the whole notion of the miraculous and the supernatural, and ridicule talk about re-birth. Christianity to them is that which teaches a man to live a good life.”  (Life in the Spirit, 19)

(HT: Matthew Morizio)

Filed under: Biblical exposition, Christ crucified, Church, Culture, Doctrine, Evangelical, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Moralism, Preaching, The Gospel

Does Church Membership Matter?

Kevin DeYoung thinks that membership matters in the church, so he provided six reasons for the importance of church membership:

1. In joining a church you make visible your commitment to Christ and his people.
2. Making a commitment makes a powerful statement in a low-commitment culture.
3. We can be overly independent.
4. Church membership keeps us accountable.
5. Joining the church will help your pastor and elders be more faithful shepherds.
6. Joining the church gives you an opportunity to make promises.

Read the whole post, and check out DeYoung’s book Why We Love the Church (written with Ted Kluck).

(HT: James Grant)

Filed under: Church, Culture, Discipleship, Evangelism, The Christian Life

On Jesuslessness

I love this from Jared Wilson:

There is a pastor whose Twitter feed I occasionally read, but I shouldn’t, because it absolutely drives me nuts. A large portion of my reaction is tied to my own issues, I’m sure, but I see in his broadcasts an almost pathological intention not to mention Jesus. And as I thirst for Jesus, I notice this withholding lots and lots of places in the Bible Belt.
I have been and always will be doggedly suspicious of pastors who rarely (or never) mention Jesus.

John Piper says, “What we desperately need is help to enlarge our capacities to be moved by the immeasurable glories of Christ.”

We ministers of the gospel — and Christians at large — can fumble this commission in three main ways:

1. We speak in vague spiritual generalities. Love. Hope. Peace. Joy. Harmony. Blessings. All disembodied from the specific atoning work of the incarnate Jesus and exalted Lord. It all sounds nice. It’s all very inspirational. And it’s rubbish. He himself is our peace. He himself is love. He himself is life. He does not make life better. He is life. Any pastor who talks about the virtues of faith, hope, and love, with Jesus as some implied tangential source, is not feeding his flock well.

2. We speak Christ as moral exemplar. We tell people to be nice because Jesus was nice. We tell them to be sweet because Jesus was sweet, good because Jesus was good, hard-working because Jesus was hard-working, loving because Jesus was loving. This is all well and good, but you could substitute “Mother Theresa” or even “Oprah” for “Jesus” and essentially have the same message.

3. We avoid the real problem — sin — and therefore either ignore the real solution — the cross — or confuse its meaning. In many churches, not only is sin never mentioned — Joel Osteen, for instance, flat out says he doesn’t like to talk about it basically because it hurts people’s feelings — the cross is rarely mentioned. And when the cross is mentioned, because we don’t want to talk about sin, it becomes instead the great affirmation of our special-ness, rather than the great punishment for our unholiness. The cross becomes not the intersection of God’s justice and mercy but the symbol of God’s positive feelings about our undeniable lovability.

In all of these instances, and others, people are inspired and enthused, but they are moved about God’s recognition of their own awesomeness, not about the glories of Christ. The capacity is enlarged with our growing self-esteem.

Even angels long to gaze into the life-giving riches of the gospel of grace. We prefer to drink deeply from the well into which we’re gazing — our navels.

Pastors, inspiration sells. But only Jesus transforms.

Filed under: Christ-centred, Culture, Evangelical, Preaching, Spirit of the age, The Gospel, The glory of Christ, The word of God, Worldliness

DeYoung and Kluck on the Church

Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck write as guest columnists today in the Newsweek/Washington Post forum on religion. Here’s an excerpt:

Perhaps Christians are leaving the church because it isn’t tolerant and open-minded. But perhaps the church-leavers have their own intolerance too–intolerant of tradition, intolerant of authority, intolerant of imperfection except their own. Are you open-minded enough to give the church a chance–a chance for the church to be the church, not a coffee shop, not a mall, not a variety show, not Chuck E. Cheese, not a U2 concert, not a nature walk, but a wonderfully ordinary, blood-bought, Spirit-driven church with pastors, sermons, budgets, hymns, bad carpet and worse coffee?

Their book Why We Love the Church: In Praise of Institutions and Organized Religion is now available.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Filed under: Church, Culture, Discernment, Doctrine, Emerging Church, Evangelical, Jesus Christ, The Bible, The Church

Tim Challies on Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson was in so many ways a product of this sick celebrity culture (that he helped create) that will never rest satisfied until it has both created and then destroyed the newest celebrity. We want our celebrities to start strong and finish weak, to begin with a bang and then fizzle, pop and sputter, all for our enjoyment and entertainment (Susan Boyle stands as the most recent example of this). Jackson gave us so much to talk about, so much to enjoy. More than any other celebrity he embodied the “vanities” of Ecclesiastes. He was at one time known for what he did so well and then was known for being a freak; he was at one time fantastically wealthy and then utterly broke; he was once loved and then despised. He had it all and yet, it seemed, he had nothing. All of it was meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Filed under: Culture, Idolatry, News & Views, The world

The Great god Entertainment

“For centuries the church stood solidly against every form of worldly entertainment, recognising it for what it was — a device for wasting time, a refuge from the disturbing voice of conscience, a scheme to divert attention from moral accountability. For this she got herself abused roundly by the sons of this world.

“But of late she has become tired of the abuse and has given over the struggle. She appears to have decided that if she cannot conquer the great god Entertainment she may as well join forces with him and make what use she can of his powers. So today we have the astonishing spectacle of millions of dollars being poured into the unholy job of providing earthly entertainment for the so-called sons of heaven. And hardly a man dares raise his voice against it.”

A.W. Tozer

(HT: Todd Pruitt)

Filed under: Church, Culture, Worldliness

Beware of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

From my experience this is true of Christian youth culture in Europe, but not in Africa and Asia.  My thanks to Jason Robertson for this:

Dr. Albert Mohler reports that when Christian Smith and his fellow researchers with the National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill took a close look at the religious beliefs held by American teenagers, they found that the faith held and described by most adolescents came down to something the researchers identified as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”

Therapeutic Deism consists of beliefs like these:

1. “A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.”
2. “God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.”
3. “The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.”
4. “God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.”
5. “Good people go to heaven when they die.”

Notice that the belief system of these youth is very inconsistent.  It is a muddled mixture of both moralism and hedonism.  In short, they are creating a god in their own image, according to their own pleasures.  They want a Divine parent… who will provide for them so they can have fun.

By the way, #3 reveales that “goodness” is completely subjective.  In other words, the god that these young people believes exists is not the righteous God of the Bible but the god of their own imaginations.

I encourage you to read the whole article.

Filed under: Christianity, Culture, Discernment, Moralism, The Christian Life, The Church, Youth

That’s Why

“Over half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’

Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1983

(HT: Ray Ortlund)

Filed under: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Culture, God centredness, Man in Sin, The word of God, Truth

3 questions with Tim Keller

By Garrett E. Wishall

Tim Keller serves as senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, N.Y.

Question: What do pastors need to be doing to lead their flock out of idolatry and into Christlikeness?

Tim Keller: The subject of idolatry is a lot more nuanced and complex than I could possibly get across in my talk at the Gospel Coalition conference. I made an allusion to the fact that idolatry sometimes is talked about in the Bible under the heading of spiritual adultery. It is also sometimes talked about under the heading of spiritual mastery and slavery. When Paul talks about those who are slaves to sin: all of those categories are actually talking about idolatry.

Most preachers feel like “If I’m going to preach about idols, I have to tell people what an idol is.” What they don’t have in mind is: idolatry is at the root of all of our psychological problems, moral problems, cultural issues, our political problems. It is such a pervasive category in the bible. For example, at the end of 1 John 5, even though idols have not been listed — he has been saying, “Walk in holiness,” “Walk in the light,” “Walk in love,” “Walk in truth,” — at the very end he says, “Keep yourself from idols.” The word idolatry isn’t anywhere in there before the last verse. What that means is, we don’t think deeply enough. We just look at the behavioral level and say “Stop doing this, start doing this,” and we don’t realize that there is an idolatrous reason behind each behavioral issue. For example, behind the belief that women should be ordained is the need for power and a love for feeling in charge.

To get a grasp on the pervasiveness of idolatry, I would say the first thing you would need to do is that you need to get a better grip on the subject. Most of the Christian Counseling Education Foundation (CCEF) stuff on changing, talks about idolatry, particularly about psychological idols. You could read a politically liberal Christian or a political conservative to understand what’s going on in culture. There are a whole lot of other books that are now being produced on the idea of idolatry in the church…and I think what a minister needs to do is get that into their bloodstream so they are always preaching with idolatry in mind. I think you have to understand the concept pretty deeply and then it will influence the way in which you preach and the way in which you pastor.

Q: What safeguards should 20-something pastors have in place to avoid the idolatry of ministry fame and the attitude of big numbers equals success?

TK: If you know it is a danger, that is a very important start. Additionally, when you find yourself unusually discouraged because things aren’t growing or people aren’t listening to you — you have to catch yourself. You have to realize “This is an inordinate amount of discouragement, which reveals the idolatry of justification by ministry.” Meaning, you say you believe in justification by grace, but you feel like and are acting like you believe in justification by ministry. You have to recognize you are making something of an idol out of ministry. When you do experience inordinate discouragement because things aren’t going well, you need to say, “It’s okay to be discouraged but not to be this discouraged. This is discouragement that leads to idolatry,” and you repent.

Additionally, idols create a fantasy world. You may think that you are just thinking about ministry strategy, but it could be you’re fantasizing about success. So be careful about doing too much daydreaming about success, what you would like to see happen. Because it’s really a kind of pornography. You’re actually thinking about a beautiful church and people acclaiming you: be careful about fantasizing too much about ministry success and dreaming about it and thinking about what it’s going to look like.

Q: What are your favorite and least favorite elements of New York city?

TK: New York city is the greatest place to live. As my wife would say, there would be no better place to live in the whole world as long as you have someone following behind you with a wheelbarrow full of money. What I like about it is its diversity and vitality, but what I don’t like, frankly, is how expensive it is.

(Via Justin Taylor)

Filed under: Culture, Discernment, Discipleship, Doctrine, Evangelical, Idolatry, Renewing the Mind, Repentance, Spirit of the age, The Christian Life, Tim Keller

Collision Movie Trailer

A preacher and an atheist walk into a bar…

Preview of the first 13 minutes of the forthcoming documentary “Collision”.
The film follows renowned author and anti-theist Christopher Hitchens and
Pastor Douglas Wilson as they debate the topic: “Is Christianity Good For
The World?”. A Darren Doane film. level4.tv collisionmovie.com

Filed under: Apologetics, Books, Culture, News & Views, Truth

No, Mr. President!

Filed under: Abortion, Culture, Evangelical, John Piper, Political, Sin, The word of God

The Lordship of Christ & the Kingdoms of this World

“Jesus Christ is Lord. That is the first and final assertion Christians make about all of reality, including politics. Believers now assert by faith what one day will be manifest to the sight of all: every earthly sovereignty is subordinate to the sovereignty of Jesus Christ. The Church is the bearer of that claim. Because the Church is pledged to the Kingdom proclaimed by Jesus, it must maintain a critical distance from all the kingdoms of the world, whether actual or proposed. Christians betray their Lord if, in theory or practice, they equate the Kingdom of God with any political, social or economic order of this passing time. At best, such orders permit the proclamation of the gospel of the Kingdom and approximate, in small part, the freedom, peace, and justice for which we hope.”

~ Richard John Neuhaus, quoted by D. A. Carson in Christ & Culture Revisited (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2008), 203.

(HT: The Big Picture)

Filed under: Culture, Doctrine, Evangelical, God's Kingdom, Jesus Christ, Jesus is Lord, Politics, The Church, The word of God

Did You Know?

I’m so glad that our Sovereign God has planned His work, and is working His plan, otherwise we might be intimidated by shifts that occur, so rapidly, in our world.

Check this out!

Filed under: Culture, I.T., Knowing God, The world

Carson on the Relationship Between the Gospel and Social Issues

From an essay by D.A. Carson on “The Biblical Gospel” (in For Such a Time as This: Perspectives on Evangelicalism, Past, Present and Future, ed. Steve Brady and Harold Rowdon [London: Evangelical Alliance, 1986], p. 83):

Pundits have often noted that many in the Western world have become single-issue people. The church is not immune from such influences. The result is that many Christians assume the gospel (often, regrettably, some form of the ‘simple gospel’) but are passionate about something on the relative periphery: abortion, poverty, forms of worship, cultural decay, ecology, overpopulation, pornography, family breakdown, and much more. By labelling these complex subjects ‘relatively peripheral’ I open myself to attack from as many quarters as there are subjects on the list. For example, some of those whose every thought is shaded green will not be convinced that the ecological problems we face are peripheral to human survival. But I remain quite unrepentant. From a biblical-theological perspective, these challenges, as serious as they are, are reflections of the still deeper problem—our odious alienation from God. If we tackle these problems without tackling what is central, we are merely playing around with symptoms. This is no excuse for Christians not to get involved in these and many other issues. But it is to insist that where we get involved in such issues, many of which are explicitly laid upon us in scripture, we do so from the centre out, ie beginning with full-orbed gospel proclamation and witness and passion, and then, while acknowledging that no one can do everything, doing our ‘significant something’ to address the wretched entailments of sin in our world. The good news of Jesus Christ will never allow us to be smug and other-worldly in the face of suffering and evil. But what does it profit us to save the world from smog and damn our own souls? There are lots of ways of getting rid of pornography. For instance, one does not find much smut in Saudi Arabia. But one doesn’t find much of the gospel there, either.

The point is that in all our efforts to address painful and complex societal problems, we must do so from the centre, out of a profound passion for the gospel. This is for us both a creedal necessity and a strategic choice. It is a creedal necessity because this gospel alone prepares men and women for eternity, for meeting our Maker—and all problems are relativized in the contemplation of the cross, the final judgement, and eternity. It is a strategic choice because we are persuaded that the gospel, comprehensively preached in the power of the Spirit, will do more to transform men and women, not least their attitudes, than anything else in the world.

(HT: Justin Taylor)

Filed under: Culture, DA Carson, Discernment, Doctrine, Evangelical, Gospel-centred, Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, The Bible, The Church, The Cross, The Gospel