Sweet aromas.....

"But praise be to God who makes us strong to overcome in Christ, and makes clear through us in every place the value of the knowledge of him. For we are a sweet perfume of Christ to God in those who are getting salvation and in those who are going to destruction; To the one it is a perfume of death to death; to the other a perfume of life to life." 2 Corinthians 2:14-15 BBE

"The church exists in order to change the subject from us and our deeds to God and his deeds of salvation, from our various "missions" to save the world to Christ's mission that has already accomplished redemption." Michael Horton writes in his article "Christless Christianity" (Modern Reformation May/June, Vol. 16 No. 3 2007 pp 10-16) "If the message that the church proclaims makes sense without conversion; if it does not offend even lifelong believers from time to time, so that they too need to die more to themselves and live more to Christ, then it is not the gospel."

Michael Horton is the J. Gresham Machen professor of apologetics and systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California), host of The White Horse Inn national radio broadcast, and editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation magazine. He is author of several books, including Power Religion, A Better Way, Putting Amazing Back Into Grace, God of Promise: Introducing Covenant Theology (Baker, 2006), and Too Good to be True: Finding Hope in a World of Hype (Zondervan, 2006).

We are called, by the authority of the Great Commission, to preach the Good News (read Gospel) to the ends of the Earth to every people, tribe and nation. But the more mankind takes 'charge' of his religion, the further from such 'preaching' or 'evangelizing' we wander. It is no wonder, in the complexities of our institutions of faith, that we are as unattractive as a wart on a hedge hog.

And the world, in its ignorance and blind sinful state, has the right and the logic to accuse us of being hypocrites. For the message of the Good News is lost in our 'painted faces' that we've put on in the churches throughout our land to attract the 'seeker'.

What is this Good News? Simply put, Christ came to Earth born of woman, fully God and Man, and was crucified upon the Cross, died. After three days, He rose again and ascended to Heaven. He will be coming back. The simplest of stories, lacking the complexities of human interpretation or desire that is often added to and subtracted from depending on our ability to 'read' the other person's level of interest.

And when the flame is put to the 'progressive, modernistic' form of Good News retelling, the odor is far from pleasing to anyone's nostrils, too often making them sick to their stomach with the malodorous stench of self-righteousness and believed authority. Doctrine becomes interchangeable with conviction and is as fleeting in its resoluteness. Absolute Truth becomes a manner of subjective interpretation and the battle lines, once so clearly drawn, have become hazy in the smoke screens of charismatic and energetic leaders.

As my mentor puts it, the main character in the telling of our 'story' is an indicator of our spiritual journey through this world. If God is the author and main character, then it is His larger story that ours is told in context with. If we are the main character, the woes and tribulations become an indictment against God's love and authority.

In the first context of 'story', when God is larger than we ourselves and His plan is of primary highlight within its borders….as a mountain top covered in the mist of the burning off of the darkness' deposited moisture by the dawning sun that we know is there despite the denial and inability of our eyes to see its contours.

In the context of our own 'story', not seeing the mountain top invokes anger and disillusionment within us. We walk around the mountain, denying its existence and its authority to block our path. When someone else tells us that 'there be a mountain', we argue and berate them into silence; for our acknowledgement of that mountain would invalidate our very existence and call into question the complexities of our lives.

We smell the 'sweet perfume' of Christ and gag; for His aroma is displeasing to our illusions, like the 'burning', heavy-laden and misty smell of the morning air from that imaginary mountain.

Humans are gifted story tellers, especially when it is a subject or experience by which they have personal acquaintance with. Be it horror, science fiction, or documentary in nature; mankind will not speak or reiterate that which it doesn't know and we often look down upon those who claim such ignorance. Many Christians, in an effort to be considered 'growing', find themselves overwhelmed by the various doctrinal and theological discussions out there.

It's simple, really……if God said it, God meant it and we're to follow it even if we don't understand it.

Even in our broken, sinful humanity we are to boldly go forth, tripping over our own feet that often want to go in the direction opposite of our LORD's which calls to our very souls with a sweet melody.

"The more we confess our sins and receive forgiveness, and pass this good news on to others, the more our lives will be authentically changed in the bargain." Horton says, "…..the gospel is only something that can be told (i.e., words), a story that can be declared. When our lives are told within that larger story, rather than vice versa, there is genuine salvation for sinners and mission to the world."

In the manipulation of activities worthy of Jesus' pleasure, tailoring 'worship' to suit the emotional strings of hearts yet spoken for by Christ and corporate-style leadership where the legalistic protection of the church is greater than the desire to bring ordinary ministries that express the Good News and the reception of Christ's salvation that is given to us by grace and grace alone.; we lose Christ as the sole answer to our condemnation through the commission and denial of sin's embrace. That we must suffer as Christ did, though realistically often far less than the suffering inflicted upon His human body on the Cross.

But the Church wants to be 'relevant' to the seekers, progressives, liberals, lost and disenfranchised of the world and can only promote such an agenda through a gospel retooled to offer Christ as the answer to everything else and a lifestyle of prosperity of all too-human desires.

"Our only true triumphs are God's triumphs over us." Henry Alford, the English Churchman and theologian said, "His defeats of us are our only true victories." God is 'made manifest by us', that is; His triumph lies within the 'catching' of us and preserving us 'alive in Christ' so that the sweet aroma of that triumph over the wages of our sins is manifested in the Triumphant Conqueror's victory.

That sweet smell of Christ's triumph assaults the eyes, invades the nostrils and overwhelms all of our senses. And it is that righteous, holy incense that brings attacks from those who would promote an alternative offering of what the Good News is. To those who find delight and profitability within preached Word of God, such a smell is sweeter than the finest offerings of our finest cooks, and brings life within the dead flesh of our broken bodies within our spirits that cling to the realized hope of eternity.

It is those, willingly ignorant and obstinate, that have their corruption heighten by this aroma of Christ, and reject through the alteration, manipulation or simple denial the Good News; creating in their limited capacities the 'humanistic' gospel of survival and make-up perfumes in the form of a 'god' to cover the stench of their sin.

Josh Graves, Teaching and Young Adult minister of Rochester Church of Christ and author, writes about Phyllis Tickle's new book The Great Emergence, in his blog "Jesus Feast: Spirituality for the Hungry" (www.joshgraves.blogspot.com). Tickle, Graves mentions, categories the types of Christianity that exist in an "emerging world landscape." (141-143) that I have placed unaltered here:

• Traditionalists: "Like those who have fallen heir to Grandpa's old home place and who still like things just the way he had them, they see no need either to fight with the neighbors or to change the furniture." This group is content, fine with business as usual.

• Re-traditioning: This group has chosen to stay with their inherited group, but unlike the Traditionalists "they energetically wish to make it [the church] more fully what it originally was." These folks want to keep the house, but make major interior changes and modifications: create a new kitchen, update the plumbing, drop new floors.

• Progressives: "[W]hile wanting to maintain their position in institutional Christianity, they want also to wrestle with what they see as the fool heartedness of holding on to dogma based ideas and doctrinally restricted governance and praxis." This group will knock out some walls, extend favorite rooms, even build additions if need be.

• Hyphenateds: "[T]hey recognize theirs is the most schizophrenic of the encompassing circles . . . householders who have fallen heir to Grandpa's old home place, feel a compelling need to honor the land it sits upon and the trees that surround it, but no need to retain its structural shape. Imaginatively enough, though, while they may tear down the house, they will savage some of the material out of which it was built and incorporate those honored bricks and columns, plinths and antique doors into the new thing they are building."

I haven't read Tickle's material, but I would offer (based on these categories) one more to add to the list.

Pilgrim: Those who, through no appreciative ability or reasoning of their own, have been told that they are being given inheritance in the form of a homestead from an forgotten Grandfather to whom they were estranged from. And as they walk upon the grounds of their inheritance, amid the majesty and beauty of the landscape, they realize that it is far more than they could ever be capable of comprehending its uniqueness to the point where they feel comfortable enough to attempt alternations. For any alteration that they could do would diminish and tarnish the glory and scope of the original.

Far from maintaining status quo like the "Traditionalists", returning to remembered comforts like the "Re-Traditionalists", or listening to the yammering of the latest contractors to loose this or that like the "Progressives" or the self-justifying 'honoring' of the homestead while dismantling the structure standing upon it to morph into their own expression of 'inheritance' the 'modern homestead' like the "Hyphenateds", the pilgrim realizes that all they will ever need is already built and lies simply- as yet- undiscovered within the rooms of Grandpa's old home and scattered throughout the trees and fields of the landscape.

And they realize within the context of the inheritance that they won't be there long enough to fully explore the power and strength of the foundation or the craftsmanship of the builder, for the inheritance is of a temporary nature and they will, in the fullness of time, move on as their Grandpa did, to a more permanent homestead to which their Grandpa went to prepare. It is that to which the inheritance has been obtained.

It is that, to me, which is the truest expression of what we have in Christ and it is the aroma given off by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within the lives of those who have embraced the sweetness of salvation in its full reality that attracts others into our sphere where we, as commissioned story-tellers in God's epic adventure, are compelled beyond the utterance of a doctrinal formula or formal declaration to speak the "Good News" that has been brought into our own lives so that others may see the grace of God and His love for those who would turn to Him.

Living life in a realized outlook of an eternal future, bringing joy and peace within the storms of our lives to attract the wonder of those who are rocked in the same stormy seas as we are.

Living in the context of the inscription on Alford's tomb;

" Diversorium Viatoris Hierosolymam Proficiscentis"

("The inn of a traveler on his way to Jerusalem")

Journey on........

The blame is......

“Let us make search and put our ways to the test, turning again to the Lord.” (Lamentations 3:40 BBE)

Pastor Jim Combs, the Lead Pastor of the River Church, spoke about Job this Sunday. About faith being tested and refined in the harsh winter of trials and tribulations, a subject of which I am too well-versed as of late. In my relationships, in my roles as father/ex-husband/friend/man and in my economic/social status, I have been found wanting (in the standards of society and by the stewardship of the Biblical instruction) and yet God continues to call me forth…into the wealth of His purpose and the work of the Kingdom.

Such as I am is where God’s glory becomes undeniable and most highly evident.

I have begun reading the fable by C.S. Lewis entitled “Till We Have Faces”, which is his rendering of the Cupid and Psyche tale of mythology which embodies his love of ancient cultures and his artistic style. Yet this is the one book in the offerings from this great apologetic that was never really well received by the reading public…….

I also continue to read about George Mueller, and I am in a constant state of shaking my head in amazement and awe of the powerful testimony this man has given to the cause of the Kingdom. The power of prayer, of true heart to heart with God is another lesson that I have been learning lately. I’m far from a giant of Mueller’s stature, but I can hear the echoes of what he learned so earlier in his own journey towards home.

Everyone is offering their ideas of why we’ve gotten into the economic and social mess that wraps us up into the cloak of worldliness; Christian and sinner alike.

The wealthy blame the poor, the poor the wealthy.

The financially irresponsible are blamed by the financially stewards of well-renown, while they deny any culpability in the current state of their own affairs.

The older generation blames the younger, the younger points to the outrageousness of the older.

The Christians who voted for Obama are quick to call those who didn’t racist, while those who voted for Obama are confound those who didn’t.

And the Church sits in the back pews of this fight, afraid to raise its voice because it has been complacent for far too long in the worldly things, seeking to ‘make the Gospel culturally acceptable’ rather than standing upon the morality and ethics of the Gospel message, creating disillusioned religious-ites than disciples.

In the midst of the entire finger pointing, God must be sitting patiently…sadly shaking His head at the foolishness of the ones who call Him Father, at least in name, and the ones He desperately wishes would (who tend to be at least more truthful in their foolishness than the other). Foolish children, who have become engaged in pursuits of self-serving ends and who ignore the very signposts and waypoints that were so plainly laid out upon the narrow path…….

T.S. Matthews, a past managing editor and editor of TIME, wrote in the preface to C.S. Lewis’ book “Till We Have Faces”, in the 1966 reprinting, what would seem a prophetic word about the American concept of happiness that has begotten the liberal and universalistic concept of ‘self-fulfillment’ and personal choice.

“The pursuit of happiness, which has always been good American doctrine, has largely degenerated into the sentimental heresy of the ownership of happiness, the notion that happiness can actually be shared; that the sum total of material prosperity and vague humanitarian inclination that make-up the American way of life can be or should be happiness itself.”

There is a song, I don’t recall off-hand by whom, whose lyrics pop into my head as I write this, “Sometimes it rains night after night, but our hope remains….”

Does it really?

We question God’s love for us;

Especially when we are struggling ‘well’ (as one of my mentors is oft to say) in the effort to bring our earthly and sinful flesh into the bondage of our spiritual life.

A child goes away to an event, healthy and strong, and now lies in the morgue of the local hospital awaiting burial by his parents who have loved them with a godly passion and taught them with spiritual wisdom.

And yet, another who is full knowledgable of God and refuses Him grows healthily until the pain becomes so isolating that they walk into school one day and kill their schoolmates in a shout of anger.

Loved ones, cherished and honored, disappear into the seemingly never-ending jaws of war and we quail at the cost of our nation in the pursuit of national security to the point we are willing to cultivate the worldly wisdom of atheistic and immoral nations that we once stood at a distance from.

Everywhere, we seek to throw the blame upon a group, a culture, a community or a nation….everywhere but upon the doorstep of our own foolishness and pride. For us, after all, are a God-fearing, God-seeking people set upon by a nation that seems intend on destroying itself from within, like so many empires and cultures of the historical past.

We quail at the price yet to be paid, in full, by a nation for its rejection of what it once acknowledged as ‘good and true’ because of a desire to be ‘accepted and loved’ by all people.

We don’t look to our own doorstep and the guilt of our own relaxing of absolutes, or moral authority, of a God who doesn’t fit into our desired opinion of what a God who truly loves us would be like. Painful events, foolish suffering and the trials of a morality that was born in the purest of desires surely wouldn’t happen if such a God existed.

Surely a God who can do no evil would not utilize its birth through the actions of man to chastise, discipline and correct such foolishness as a momentary lax of sexual purity or prideful anger. Surely not.

We discuss, theorize and form an opinion on scriptural context, ethical biblical considerations and moral issues that often seem to conflict, just like our view of a good, loving God who allowed a nation to wander the desert for forty years, until a sinful generation was gone, before the Promised Land was opened to them. A peaceful God who wreaked havoc upon the enemies of that nation because of His wrath, delivering them into His chosen's hands.

We don't rely upon God anymore. We talk, we argue and then leave such discussions empty and without fulfillment. Because we have an agenda that is far beyond what Christ gave us when He commissioned the Church.

Humanity has made Christianity complicated and alien.

We no longer mourn a godless direction our nation takes, but pat ourselves upon our own disillusionment and call ourselves enlightened and religious. We have gotten to the point where the wait for the return of the Messiah has become a tedious journey into the unknown and we've gotten weary with the constant watch.

Jesus says we have to have faith like children.

Most children, myself included, waiting with anxious gazes upon the living room the weeks leading up to the Christmas holiday; not questioning the fact that something would be placed underneath that evergreen tree that would bear their names. With wholesome and wild gee, they would race downstairs at the second the clock showed the appointed hour and rummage through the stacked presents to select that very first one to open……

The longer we wait for God to release His Son to return to the earth in victory, the less we act like those children. We dig deeper into the mysteries of the faith and make up our own decisions upon the text that is written there. What we can't explain, we justify with 'well, that was a different time' or 'culturally-speaking its not revelent.'

We relax our standards to the degree where sin becomes commonplace and immorality the norm.

And we blame the others. Society, Culture and the base sinner for our woes.
We don't want to examine our own ways and bring them into compliance with God's word. We don't want to say, "This is the absolute and we will follow it" because we are fearful of being 'unloving' and 'uncaring'. We excuse ourselves in any way possible and call it 'faithful execution in trying times.'

And become the very people that the LORD said he would "spit from His mouth."
Faith doesn't guarantee us prosperity of equal measure, equal physical shaping or of monetary/health wealth. Some were made to do with less, some with more and it is the usage of that measure that brings the testimony of the grace received within the bounds of salvation and enriched by tribulations.

God's love doesn't mean we can walk away from the punishment of our transgressions, rather that the full measure of the price has been paid in full by another, who walked within the Law and overcame with Love the fullness of God's righteousness. We suffer, of our own making, by being less than firm on the commandments we know.
We twist the example of the One until it fits within the square hole of our making, thereby justifying lukewarm love, hollow accountability and plastic faith.

George Mueller was one who refused to listen to the 'easy road' of faith.

C.S. Lewis refused to allow such pettiness as another's ignorance or pride interfere with the message he was compelled (and gifted) to write.

In the context of Lewis' Till We Have Faces, we find the answer in its simplistic form about why God allows what God allows:

"Are the gods not just?"

"Oh no, child. Would become of us if they were?"