a common grace

First final in 8 hours. So naturally I’m blogging. On my phone.

I’ve learned many things here in my first semester of Westminster. Theologically, it’s evident that I don’t know much. I’ve barely scratched the surface of this Reformed expression of the Christian faith, yet the difference between me three months ago and now seems worlds apart. Also, seminary is not monastery. Pietism seems to be somewhat of an unfavorable term here with the chips falling more on the side of Christian liberty. I’m okay with that since it’s what I’ve been arguing for years. But there is this weird side of me that wants to push against the status quo.

So far it’s been true that a deconstruction of belief is necessary to move forward in faith. Every statement of “god this and god that” posted on the Internet, or preached at some campus event, now automatically runs through a filter in my head. A friend pointed it out and asked why I’m so critical of people’s theology. I responded that it’s my job now. Maybe he was right. In my defense, the ghost of liberalism, of personal experience over the written word… the theologia gloriae over crux sola nostra theologia… seems ubiquitous. (Can you tell I’ve been studying for my Reformation history final?)

Personally, it’s been hard to be away from my friends and family. At least I’m still in California. I’ve gotten used to 20-30 minute drives to go see a friend. Now that I’m older my heart has gotten colder. Sounds corny. Listen to Wake Up by Arcade Fire. You’ll get what I mean.

Learning how to listen (and consequently when to shut up) is like learning how to take a good photograph. You wait, wait, frame, then take a snapshot. On the flip side, it generally seems like people don’t care about what you have to say, as long as you agree with them.

short thoughts

1. If it’s in God’s will, then why keep pointing it out? If God told you to move to Austria, then does Facebook need to know?

2. If we understand as much about a subject as we say we do, would we talk as much about it?

3. Beauty is mostly simple and uncomplicated. Love seems to be as well.

4. Children think grown-ups have life figured out. Are kids just that naive or are adults just that deceptive?

5. Fanaticism thrives on emotional intensity.

6. The companion to modern loneliness is an inflated ego. And a keyboard.

7. The level of one’s stress and the amount of time spent looking at cute things is positively relational. For example, Japan.

8. Expectations=\= Reality. Always.

what I need;
a new space to live, a perspective shift,
a companion, perhaps adopt a dog, a satisfied mind, a grateful heart;
more books about nothing and everything, more prayer,
more time, more prayer,
less junk food, less wasteful spending,
less unappreciative glances, less daydreaming;
not to worry about what comes tomorrow, (unless it’s finals week)
to remember to breathe deeply, to relax, to forgive and forget,
rest from labor, but to labor diligently when I do,
to write stories, to write songs,
to sing in the morning, and to listen at night,
and to love, always remind myself to love what is, and not what it should or could be, truly, without pretension and fear.

“It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.”

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

Out of illusion; into covenant blessing, the promised glory, realized through grace and faith. Looking forward for hope. Holding to the past for strength. I will meet you there.

Murmur

A girl I knew from high school was murdered earlier this week.

We had Journalism class together.

I remember feeling intimidated by her generous helping of extraversion. Hers was like the fullness of life that bursts forth in an explosive array of expensive fireworks, the kind where you can’t help feeling like a boring old coot in her brilliant light. 

~

I wonder what people would say if I were to die suddenly. Tragically. Would they tell my life’s story as it is? That I spend countless hours on the computer, looking at stupid pictures while I laugh to myself and eat spicy Cheetos? Or would they paint a portrait that covers the reality, one which celebrates life instead of mourning the passing? I don’t think I want to know because really, these words of remembrance are as air filling empty space; no words can fully convey the ugly injustice of death. Or the grief of a loved one lost. Dreams dashed on the dirt like precious spilled milk. All I can say is that I’d like to imagine her soaring high above the city lights, savoring the chill of the midnight sky, off to some place where she will be safe. Away from the pain.

Somehow. 

Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.

Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise up, and each would stand at his tent door, and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent.

When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the LORD would speak with Moses.

And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship, each at his tent door.

Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.

When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.

~

“As a man speaks to his friend”

Some disembodied spiritual force; a benevolent grandfather who bestows gifts and blessings; an imaginary friend in times of distress; the desire-fulfilling deity established in our temple-warehouses. the god who is no God at all; the experience of life de-personalized, decontextualized and generalized into emotional tension and release on revival night. whom do we worship? these names of false gods, the Ba’als we’d rather sacrifice our posterity to, for the sake of a comfortable and quiet life. can we not see that it amounts to nothing? I would rather worship no god than a false one. I would rather have spent this fleeting life gorging myself on the excesses of modern suburbia and chasing paper dreams. I would rather live in one glorious second of unadulterated truth than spend the entirety of waking life consumed with dull passions.

To be honest. To be alone in my togetherness— to lose myself in others. For the pursuit of personal gain is not the highest height of my existence— I am not alive for my own glory. If I am to be free, my freedom is found in the dissolution of my ego. To be clothed in a righteousness that is not my own, in a gift not earned by my labor.

we will not, at least on this side of the redemption, recognize how utterly sinful and disgusting we were to God. How much the Messiah’s work redeemed us. How deep the suffering of the God-man— directly relational to our degree of trespass; the wages that earned a fate worse than death. After all, why did the Christ, the beloved Son, have to suffer and die, experience total abandonment, the curse of an agonizing and shameful bloody death, the very wrath of God upon injustice and those who do it? He took it in our stead. And his righteousness is imputed to the believer— Christ’s perfect life and worth. In him, we are absolutely righteous. If you are found in Christ, God looks at you and declares you Holy. Good. Faithful. Not a neutral state, but the very worth and beauty of Christ; a positive balance on a scale of value.

Remove Christ from the equation, and what remains is a clean and empty cross, an undisturbed tomb, and a bunch of ignorant yet poignantly relatable stooges called the Twelve. Without death, without the spilling of blood, there can be no remission of sin. No forgiveness.

I do not think this concept of blood and sacrifice rings true in the minds of many young believers. It is too primitive. too remote from our modern predications of God for it to be pious. After all, God is love. No, we want a religion where drinking and smoking are prohibited at all times. We want to hear about how we can ease into forgiving others so we can improve the quality of our lives. About how God changed my life and healed me and now I am a beautiful so and so. All good notions, yes. But is that it? Can we go home now?

~

I am still broken. I am still prone to wander. I sin, and I enjoy it. I delight in it. I am a fool because I’d still rather be making mud pies when I’m offered a holiday by the sea. I’m nothing but a useless, spoiled child.

Yet this is how I am to receive the kingdom of God. like a child. knowing that I don’t deserve it, yet receiving it regardless of how dumb and blind I am.

and so I would entreat you, dear reader.
The Bible describes this consummation of salvation like a wedding feast. So come to the table.

Receive it.

There is a story waiting for you.

Not just a story about a plan for your life, but the story of God: of his creation, his covenant, his people, and his kingdom and of his reign.

Receive it because you’ve never heard it before.

Receive it even if you’ve heard it a hundred times.

Write it on your heart. Remind yourself of it. Cherish it and keep it like a hidden treasure.

Nothing can separate you from this salvation that is in Christ alone. You can never fall from it because you received it freely and without strings attached- God did the work for you in the sense that every good thing that you could possibly do has already been done by Christ.

Even if you are struggling in sinful repetitions of detestable habits, you can’t fall away. Even if his presence ‘feels far away,’ his word is near.

As a human being, formed in the image of God’s glory, I am bound by his covenant Word of creation to be like Him; in perfect obedience, even, as Christ was perfectly obedient to the Father’s will. 

“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Of course, it is expected that I fail in keeping that Law. Disobedience, the essence of ungodliness, reigns in me through Adam’s sin. Adam had no Law, so to speak. He was obliged to obey the command of God, that he should not partake of the fruit of the tree of Knowledge of good and evil. 

The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Sin increased because the Law was added. And this guilt does not confine itself merely to moral failings, but exposes my breaking of the covenant bond of creation.

I do not love God with my entire being. I do not love others as myself. I am, instead, selfish and disobedient; I long to tear down others as I build myself up. Like a wolf upon the prey, I feel the eagerness to tear my fangs into those who commit evil, or those who do good. 

I cannot keep the Law of God. Yet even if I am unaware, or unwilling, to keep any law of God, I am still cursed; the Law is written on my heart. Human societies have flowered and fallen on oppression and bloodshed (yes, even the ones who will say to Christ, “Lord, Lord, did we not do these things in your name?”). 

Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

“It is finished.” The forgiveness of sins. I am justified before the Father; my guilt wiped away, stainless, spotless, without blemish if I would repent and believe. I must give my sins fully to Him. Yet there’s more.

He fulfilled the Law that I could not. He fulfilled the work that Adam did not accomplish in the garden. “It is finished.”

So when they met together, they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”

He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

A cloud hid him from their sight. Shekinah. The cloud of glory present with Israel in the desert. The cloud from which God spoke “This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased. Listen to Him!” The same spirit of God who hovered over the waters of the formless void. 

Christ finished Adam’s work and was taken up by the cloud! Enthroned at God’s right hand. The Sabbath, the conclusion of the King’s creative work, was finally fulfilled on earth as God had first intended. 

The Gospel, the announcement of the good news of Jesus Christ, is that Christ has died and risen, our sins have been forgiven. All has been fulfilled. Christ has redeemed Adam. We are the righteousness of God because Christ became a curse for us on the Cross. Hooray, hoorah, now you can go to Heaven!

Wait, there’s more. This means that the Pentecost was an inauguration of a new age. Christ is ever creating; the church is the down payment in the new creation. Gentiles have been grafted into Israel.

So there is a reversal of sorts. Adam was judged, death came through sin, and judgment reigned before mercy in Christ. Now we are in an age where mercy triumphs over judgment, though judgment shall come. The day of mercy is now, yet… he shall return with trumpet sound, announcing his eternal reign.

All this to say:

Our law as human beings is to love God and our neighbors. Our imperative as the church is to proclaim the Gospel news. We should not confuse the two realms; but as Christians, we are called to be in the world but not of it. We are part of a new creation, but we are also part of the old creation. We must love. We must proclaim. Think about the implications.

~~

I think this is fantastic stuff. It might not make much sense to you. Though, the book I’m reading, which espouses a really cool perspective on Covenant theology, called “Kingdom Prologue” by Meredith Kline isn’t exactly easy to make sense of either. Look up covenant theology. There’s a good Wikipedia article on it. To read Scripture as a coherent whole (connected logically by a system) is pretty amazing. You start to see connections all over the place. 

νόστος (returning) + αλγος (pain)=
nostalgia

I’ve lost contact with so many people over the years. Often, I feel that the fault was mine— I was preoccupied with petty things, or just plain ignorant of the hurt and heartache around me. I’ve made people cry; inadvertently, due to insensitivity, or inflicting hurt intentionally. And then there are those who have caused me pain; my unforgiving heart wanted to stay bitter and cold so that nobody could hurt me in those ways again.

I’ve always wondered why we keep ashes in ornate urns.

~

I never really could maintain a proper romantic relationship with a girl. I know there have been some great ones over the years with whom I’ve completely dropped the ball. Most, though, I never had a fighting chance to begin with. I’ve always been either too cowardly to make a move or too stupid to realize all the signals and signs.

I’ve also made new friends: brothers I can share interesting and tedious facts of life with over late nights and whiskey. And family is always family; it’s our only tangible connection to who we truly are.

~

Christ is the eschatological Adam. The new man. The proto Adam fell from Eden; death entered the world through sin, yet the resurrection of Christ inaugurated a new age- an age to come, overlapped by this present evil age. We live in the already, but not yet; justified now, but not yet fully. Glorified now in Christ, but not yet in the fullest extent.

In thinking about the past, I realize the tension: I know where I want to be, yet I can’t go there yet (and on the contrary, I know where I don’t want to go). Caught in the overlap between the ages. Simul iustis et peccator— at the same time, justified and sinner. Sin lingers like the stink of death before me, but grace provides the aroma of resurrection.

I’m not quite sure why people tend to use hyperbole (in the realm of awful pop lyricism) when talking about God or spiritual stuffs. Perhaps by doing so, one can validate and subsequently codify their awesome (or terrible) emotional religious experience in order to compensate for a perceived lack of real ecstasy. Maybe. I guess I tend to trust and appreciate those who use the Bible (correctly, as in exegetically sound) in order to gauge their spirituality and talk about God. You don’t have to be no scholar, but guys, how can you seriously worship, singing a song that literally repeats, ad nauseum, “come away with me… it’s gonna be wild, great, full of me… open up your heart and let me in!” (to cite one example) without feeling a bit… silly? or icky? It’s concert entertainment posing as worship. Well, I suppose you could be worshipping something- I mean, God in that song could be Peter Pan (you are Wendy) as far as I can tell and it really wouldn’t make any difference.

Terminus

-

It is true, the Gospel teaches that to know God is life eternal. But the concept of ‘knowledge’ here is not to be understood in its Hellenic sense, but in the Shemitic sense. According to the former, ‘to know’ means to mirror the reality of a thing in one’s consciousness. The Shemitic and Biblical idea is to have the reality of something practically interwoven with the inner experience of life. Hence ‘to know’ can stand in the Biblical idiom for ‘to love’, ‘to single out in love.’ Because God desires to be known after this fashion, He has caused His revelation to take place in the milieu of the historical life of a people. The circle of revelation is not a school, but a ‘covenant’.

-Geerhardus Vos

“You and I—” The syntax assigns two separate subjects.

In grammar there exist categories to which we must appeal to appropriate understanding and conversation. I (verb) you. You are (noun). In order to know you, I must define you. These formulations, as objects, must be interpreted subjectively, borrowing from cultural context and experience. What I imagine when I think of love is certainly different than what you would imagine. TS Eliot puts it well:

We must remember; that at every moment we are meeting a stranger.

How can a person possibly hope to know another soul to the fullest extent without being impeded by the confines of language? Furthermore, how does it follow logically that one should claim to know God, an infinite and transcendent being, in all of His divine essence, through one’s subjective interpretation of his or her life events? This is surely an absurdity; it is like saying we can know what creates and sustains a thunderstorm by how the lightning makes us feel. An independent, autonomous, and individualistic conception of God does not serve to increase our grasp of the truth; instead, it acts as an impediment.

This (spurious) assumption from the realm of emotion is congruent with the sphere of intellectual ascent. The grammar, so to speak, regarding God ultimately serves to mirror the utilitarian function of a divine being in the human mind. Now then, to know another being at all from our subjective standpoints, requires a disclosure of self, whether through action or speech, from the external party. For example, to interpret the cause and effect of past events, the historian must rely upon primary and secondary sources in order to compile a perspective that truthfully compiles the data into a salient interpretation (that is, if we are ‘doing history’ correctly). This is absolutely true in the realm of theology, which is the study of knowing God. In other words, the oft repeated assertion that one can know God apart from historical revelation, is operating upon fallacious presuppositions. We cannot know God and his work without the authoritative Word.

This points us toward an inevitable conclusion: there can be no new revelation of God, no new ‘outpouring of the Holy Spirit,’ (as some are prone to claim) that contradicts the written revelation of God. The Lord doesn’t do anything ‘new’ in the sense of being novel and acclimating to the developments in the 21st century. Through the revelation of the Word and Christ’s salvific work, his mission is made crystal clear: the Scriptures have been fulfilled, so we get Jesus’ words in Matthew 28:18-20. It is therefore of utmost importance that the Christian get the missio ecclesiae right— a correct understanding of the Great Commission. I believe that the mission of the church is understood to be —at least in popular literature and culture— our taking part in the work of God, that is, to build up the Kingdom of God. But is that what scripture really teaches? In other words, are we active participants in the divine work? I would say no; I think it’s something far simpler: preach the Gospel, teach, make disciples, and baptize. There’s nothing in that imperative that expects the church to take part of God’s redeeming work.

As I’ve mentioned before, knowing God is not a matter of how we think and feel about Him. Neither is it our responsibility to fulfill the mission dei— the mission of God. In fact, God’s work has been accomplished through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. To borrow the words of that famous hymn:

Lifted up was he to die;
‘It is finished!’ was his cry;
Now in Heaven exalted high.
Hallelujah! What a savior!

Our response to this Gospel ought to be one of open-handed surrender. We bring nothing to the economy of grace— we merely accept the message without bringing our works to the table. And this work of God manifests itself through faith, made possible through the Spirit. Pentecost, therefore, was the ‘down payment’ on our salvation. In the history of redemption, the church, as a covenant community, has been secured through the giving of the Holy Spirit. The revelation of God unto man allows us to take part in what we cannot accomplish on the merit of our will. God provides the grammar of self disclosure and creates a community that, despite its failures and trappings, serves to glorify His name. Thus to take part in the promises of God in Christ through the Holy Spirit, one must belong, in a sense, to this covenant community of faith.

wanderer

How telling it is; that our longing for better shores should feel so much like nostalgia.

In Eden, the man and life giver distorted the imago dei, yet God clothed them with garments of skin and sent them away. East of Eden, the jealous farmer slayed the shepherd, yet God put his mark upon the guilty and gave Seth to the woman whose son had been taken away. And upon the earth, where wickedness and corruption —instead of blessing and fruitfulness— multiplied, God revealed his heavy heart to Noah and sent him away. Farther and farther away, like pollen in the wind, Adam’s offspring were being driven from where they came, yet in all these sufferings there remained a seed of hope. God would cultivate the garden where man had failed; he would choose one man and bless the world through the One man. And from begotten to begot, through Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, David to Joshua to Joseph, the plan never failed. All of God’s elect, his covenant children, brought home into the Father’s hands because Christ fulfilled Adam’s task. By grace we have been saved through faith in the one who justifies, not in our own works. Go, therefore, and make disciples— so the church spread throughout history. Often she was clumsy with the task with which she had been entrusted; to await with eager preparation, glorifying the bridegroom who is to come, who shall come like a thief in the night, when all of us have fallen asleep, when the night watch has burned through the midnight oil.

Are we watching for a UFO in the sky? It’s a bird, it’s a plane… it’s… Jesus? To await and anticipate an abduction, when the Son of man shall descend with trumpet sound, to spirit us away from this profane earth? No, our home is here, though it’s former glory has faded beyond recognition. Sweet dreams of a suburban ideal —or something close— keeps the modern laboring toward a reality which they once knew but forgot over the grand eons of time.  That taste of heaven is like the familiar face whose name dances on the tip of your tongue; a childhood lullaby that stirs the wellspring of faint remembrance. And it causes me to wonder, in the end, with our idolatrous affections exhausted, if we shall remember him as he remembered his beloved at Calvary? Home seems so distant that this foreign land has started to feel like where we should have always been— and remain. Or perhaps it is precisely that— that our home is wherever the Spirit of God takes us… where the ocean waves reflect the radiance of the sunset, where the trees of the forest whisper gently of ancient riddles, where the city lights glow with affections unspoken. 

I see clearly now. Wherever beauty aches, there you are, calling me Home.

I am exceedingly selfish. in my heart of hearts, I wonder if I truly care about anything other than myself. if even for a fleeting moment, if I could fly away, if only.

What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?

the gray sky casts a cold, flat light onto the mountain road. no shadows or ghosts to be found here; instead, many visitors. sometimes, the rain will decide to come around, but never stays for long- maybe it found someplace warm and dry to go. I roll the window down and let the damp ocean air fill the car, then my lungs, and settle like a hazy mist over my heart. I think about the parade of souls that has driven through this pass, existing to enjoy the grace that is found in momentary miles like these. 20 minutes ahead there awaits a dream ready to be awakened. sleepers waiting to be resurrected. I wonder if they will find this world to their liking, and where I’ll go next.

For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.

may I be shaped by the Word alone, not by my expectations of it.