A Weaker Evangelicalism

A prophetic word:

When [William] Booth [1829–1912] was asked by an American newspaper what he regarded as the chief dangers ahead for the twentieth century, he replied tersely: “Religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God and heaven without hell.” Such a decline in the biblical message has indeed taken place and a weaker evangelicalism has been unable to stem the tide.

—Iain Murray, The Old Evangelicalism (Banner of Truth, 2005), xi.

Suffering or Sin: What Would You Choose?

You have a choice.

Option 1: The tiniest sin imaginable, a sin that would bring you tremendous wealth and other material pleasures.

Option 2: The greatest suffering imaginable, for rejecting that one tiny sin.

Your selection, please.

Or maybe you want to read this first.

In his sermon on Moses’ choice of Christ’s reproach instead of the pleasures of Egypt (Heb. 11:25), the Puritan Thomas Manton argues that the healthy Christian will choose the greatest affliction before the least sin. He then gives a number of reasons “why the greatest affliction is better than the least sin.”

1. In suffering the offence is done to us, but in sinning the offence is done to God; and what are we to God?

2. Sin separates us from God, but suffering and affliction doesn’t, and therefore the greatest affliction is to be chosen before the least sin.

3. Sin is evil in itself, whether we feel it or no; but affliction is only evil in our sense and feeling.

4. Affliction brings inconvenience upon the body only, and the concerns of the body; but sin brings inconvenience upon the soul.

5. An afflicted state is consistent with being loved by God; but a sinful state is a sign of God’s displeasure.

6. Affliction may be good, but sin is never good.

7. There is nothing that debases a man more than sin.

8. Afflictions come from God, but sin from the devil.

9. Affliction is sent to prevent sin; but sin must not be committed to prevent affliction.

10. The evil of suffering is for a moment, but the evil of sin is forever.

11. In sufferings and persecutions we lose the favor of men, but by sins we lose the favor of God.

12. To suffer is not in our choice, but to sin, that is in our choice. Afflictions are inflicted, sins are committed.

13. An afflicted man may die cheerfully, but a man in sin cannot.

14. Sin is contrary to the new nature; but affliction is only contrary to the old nature.

15. When you deliberately choose sin, it will within a little while bring greater affliction.

Still want to stick with your choice?

Why Disabilities?

From David Murray:

There are 600 million people with disabilities in the world? Why so many? What’s God’s purpose in this?

God’s purpose? Surely a good God has nothing to do with people having disabilities?

Yet, in Exodus 4:11, God claims a role in disability: “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?”

But why? Why disability, Lord? What’s your purpose?

Disability shows us sin
First, disability shows us sin. Whenever we see a person with disability, we cannot but think, “This was not how we were meant to be.” God created humanity “very good,” perfect in every way. We had physical perfection, uniting indescribable external beauty with smoothly-purring internal functionality. We had intellectual perfection, connecting knowledge, understanding, memory, perception, imagination, and reasoning powers in finely-tuned balance. We had emotional perfection, combining love, joy, and peace in sublime proportion. We had spiritual perfection, fusing moral excellence and communion with God in serene concord. We were made a little lower than the angels, in the image and likeness of God.

But now, when we look at even the best specimen of humanity, what do we see? Imperfection: deformed bodies, broken minds, chaotic emotions, and “soul-less” souls. When we enter hospitals, nursing homes, and respite-care facilities, imperfection overwhelms us.

What happened?
Sin happened. Not that people’s personal sin brought disability into their lives (though, rarely, that may happen); rather, sin brought God’s curse upon the whole of humanity, and on every part of human nature, to one degree or another.

The worst part of this curse is our spiritual disability. And yet it’s the most invisible, the most difficult for us to see or believe. That’s one reason God makes the curse more obvious in physical, mental, and emotional impairments. It reminds us that we have a deep and serious spiritual problem. These disabilities preach to us that we are spiritually blind, deaf, lame, ignorant, and senseless. Remember, no matter how bad someone’s disability is, our spiritual disability is worse.

Disability shows us God
Although sin has marred the image of God in us all. In some ways, it is even more marred in people with disabilities. Yet, in other ways, the image of God shines brighter in them than in the relatively able-bodied and mentally capable.

Without “romanticising” disability, we often see people with disabilities displaying much greater openness, joy, sincerity, purity, warmth, genuineness, integrity, sympathy, and even love. They often don’t have the same suspicion, cynicism, hypocrisy, and deceit that others regularly manifest.

We don’t just see God’s image more clearly through disability; we also see God’s grace more brightly. We see God’s grace to us by contrast and ask ourselves: “Who made you to differ, and what have you that you didn’t receive?”

We see God’s grace in Christ’s care and concern for the disabled. He not only healed many of them when He walked among us, vividly picturing what He can do for our souls, but He also showed His yearning heart for them: ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame” (Luke 14:21)

We see God’s grace in the salvation of the disabled. While there are difficult questions surrounding the spiritual responsibility of people with mental impairment, we must surely acknowledge that God can and has saved many people with disabilities. In some ways, the salvation of a person with disability shows even more clearly that salvation is by grace not works!

And, ultimately, we will see God’s grace in heaven, when he will showcase the glorified bodies and minds of those who suffered so much in this world. With what delight will he shout: “Look what I’ve done with this body, with this mind, with this soul!”

Disability shows us Humanity
Disability shows us humanity in its heights and in its depths. We are taken to humanity’s heights when we observe the sacrificial love, tender care, and persevering patience that family, friends, and other caregivers lavish upon those with disabilities. By showing us the inestimable value and worth of every human life, they provoke us to good works and to worship the God whom they image.

But disability also shows us humanity in its depths. 90% of children found to be with Down Syndrome are murdered before they see the light. Some children born with disabilities are victims of infanticide, official and unofficial. And even those who are spared to live in this world still face much sinful prejudice and cruelty.

Let’s grieve over humanity in its vicious depths, even in our own prejudices. Let’s continue to pray for God’s deliverance of our society from its terrible crimes against these little ones. And let’s encourage, appreciate, and imitate those who show us humanity in its heights of selfless love. As one caregiver said, “I treat every disabled person as Jesus in distressing disguise.”

A Black Book or A Black Phone?

From David Murray:

What captures the attention of toddlers and infants most at Disneyworld? The costumes? The animations? The rides? The toys?

Nope, none of these things. According to a recent study, it’s their parents cellphones! Kare Anderson, one of the researchers, comments:

Those kids clearly understood what held their parents’ attention — and they wanted it too. Cell phones were enticing action centers of their world as they observed it. When parents were using their phones, they were not paying complete attention to their children.

Among Anderson’s conclusions are:

1. Giving undivided attention is the first and most basic ingredient in any relationship.
2. Whatever we pay attention to has a huge effect on how we see the world and feel about it.
3. Others know what’s the center of our attention and thus what controls our life.

I have very little memory of my grandmother on my Dad’s side, but the one thing I do remember from my vacation visits to her home in the Scottish Highlands, and from her year of staying with us in the lowlands, is that a large black book had her full attention.

When my kids look back on my life I hope they see that what had my attention and controlled my life was a black book. Not a black phone.

Should We Answer the Questions People Are Asking?

Ed Stetzer’s most recent research found a significant change in the kinds of spiritual questions people are asking.

Very few are asking questions about heaven:

• Just 8% say they wonder about heaven every day (down from 20% just five years ago)



• While 46% say they never do

More are asking about meaning and purpose:

• 18% say they wonder about meaning and purpose every day



• Only 28% say they never do

Ed’s Conclusions
1. Christianity has the answer to the questions people are asking. Through Jesus Christ, people can have both meaning on earth and eternal life in heaven

2. As People are now more concerned about how to get happiness in this life than in the afterlife, the church should start at this point in evangelism.
As Ed says, “Knowing people’s questions and the gospel answer is a key part of clear evangelistic communication.”

My Question
While I appreciate Ed’s research, and I think the church should heed it and learn from it, I do wonder if unbelievers are really the best judges of the questions they should be asking? (I certainly wasn’t) Is it not a bit like asking an Inuit (an “Eskimo” for the non-politically correct) if they have any questions about gardening in the Sahara?

I’m not saying we should ignore the questions of unbelievers. As Ed says, they can be a starting point. But having answered them, perhaps we should go on to say, “Now these are important questions you’ve asked, and I’ve tried to give you serious answers. But there are even more important question you should be asking, like, “How can I get my sins forgiven? How can I get right with God? How can I be changed from within? How can I be born-again?” If an unbeliever isn’t interested in these questions, he/she has not begun to understand the seriousness of their state.

When the rich young ruler came with questions about the lack in his life and about how to gain eternal life, Jesus did not answer him directly. Instead, He started asking him about the commandments. It’s almost as if he was saying, “Wrong questions! Here, let me supply the ones you should be concerned about.”

Again with Nicodemus, Jesus interrupted Nicodemus’s introduction with a question that Nicodemus had clearly never even thought of before.

Sometimes we have to destroy the unbelievers’ bridges to nowhere, and start boring tunnels into their deepest problems.

Idols Everywhere You Look

Given the amount of column inches and air-time given to politics, one could be forgiven for thinking that politics is actually a religion, or even a deity with Sovereign and Savior-like qualities. But no one really believes that do they?

In the communist era maybe, but not today, right?

In Russia maybe, but not in the USA, right?

In the extreme left of the Democratic party maybe, but not among conservatives, right?

Think again, last week, in the USA, a highly respected conservative journalist revealed that politics is his god. Dr Charles Krauthammer (yes, I’m afraid so) used his Washington Post column as a call to worship with him:

For all the sublimity of art, physics, music, mathematics and other manifestations of human genius, everything depends on the mundane, frustrating, often debased vocation known as politics…Because if we don’t get politics right, everything else risks extinction…

We grow justly weary of our politics. But we must remember this: Politics — in all its grubby, grasping, corrupt, contemptible manifestations — is sovereign in human affairs. Everything ultimately rests upon it…

Fairly or not, politics is the driver of history. It will determine whether we will live long enough to be heard one day [he means heard by aliens – I’ll get to that!]

I find this so hard to believe, coming as it does from a man whose opinions I respect and whose character I’ve admired. “Everything depends on politics…politics is sovereign…politics is the driver of history…politics determines the length of our lives and of the earth’s existence.”

(By the way, if you substitute “Jesus Christ” for “politics” in these quotes, you come pretty close to an orthodox confession of faith. But that would never have got past the Washington Post censors, would it!)

I found it doubly hard to believe because it came in the same article that Krauthammer expressed the opinion that extra-terrestrial life exists and that it shall soon be discovered, even within the next few years!

At this point, my incredulity was so far off the scale that I double-checked to see if it was all written tongue in cheek. I wasn’t sure which claim was the most outlandish, that politics was God, or that ET was just around the corner. But I couldn’t find any evidence that Krauthammer had written with his tongue in his cheek or with a New Year’s dram in his mouth.

And people say believing in God is difficult! For all my interest in politics, I find it easier to believe that ET will phone us one day than that politics is our last best hope. If ever there was an opportune time to call everyone away from vain hopes of societal transformation via politics, it’s now. The problems are too huge, the people are too small, the proposed policies are too trivial.

While Christians should strongly support the political process and play an active role, we must do so with the base belief that neither the best personalities nor the best policies give us any hope of “saving” a nation. If we believe otherwise, we are dishonoring God by substituting an idol for Him, and risk therefore forfeiting His all-too-necessary blessing. We are also doomed to despair.

We so desperately need politicians who recognize and confess the limitations of even the best politics and policitians, and who will say instead, “Everything depends on God…God is sovereign…God is the driver of history…God determines the length of our lives and of the earth’s existence…Therefore let’s seek His blessing by honoring Him in all we say and do.”

Alternatively, and more briefly: “In God we trust.”