Kindness & Love

“…For about a hundred years we have so concentrated on one of the virtues – ‘kindness’ or mercy – that most of us do not feel anything expect kindness to be really good or anything but cruelty to be really bad.”[1]

When C.S. Lewis wrote these words in 1940, “Kindness,” ruled the day, but now over 70 years later, “Love,” rules. Starting somewhere - in the 1960’s I’d assume – love became the new pet virtue.

What we’ve seen is that our definition and understanding of love, that is what we’ve been conditioned to recognize as love, is nothing more than the obtaining of sex. And, therefore, the denial of sex is pure hatred.  We’ve been had. We have been lied to.

The lie is that sex is the true meaning of love. Whether this happened by some terrible accident of marketing, “Sex sells,” or it was some grand scheme of the devil (who needs no congratulations if it was) I don’t know. But what I do know is that the conditioning we’ve been conditioned to know as reality is truly a fiction.

A reconditioning not just of our knowledge but also of our feelings is what is required. We can know all we want about the facts of what Christian (and by that I mean true) love is, but that ought to influence our hearts – our emotions. Our conditioned understanding of love as sex must be reoriented to the true meaning of love, God.

But still more we must understand all virtues in this manner. This is the heart side of the matter of belief. In faith our emotions are impacted in a biblical way. So things that are truly unjust are seen and felt as such; things that are kind are seen as kind; and love is seen as Love.

Yet we live in – as Lewis called them – pockets and in these pockets we have convinced ourselves of our own goodness, our virtuousness. But as we look from our 21^st Century pocket to the pocket of the Middle Ages we call them cruel and mean while they would see themselves as courageous and chivalrous and us as cowardly and apathetic.

Indeed we ought to really be a horror to God and ourselves. Our pet virtue of love is really no virtue at all just a selfish desire of sexual satisfaction and our understanding of our own time’s, “goodness,” is simply because no one has yet interfered with us to the point of physical violence with them (while mental violence has already accosted them).

We must relearn what it is to be truly human and that by the blood of the cross.

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[1] C.S. Lewis. The Problem of Pain. Pg 56

The Title Explained: Why my blog is called what it's called.

I've never really explained why my blog is called "Aspiring Spurgeon," which, I guess, is a huge over sight in the realm of the blogger types. So I'd like to take a couple posts and explain the name. First, however, I want to give you a quote from one of his sermons, then later we can jump into why a blog has a certain name.

"... The more vile a man is, the more eagerly I invite him to believe in Jesus. A sense of sin is all we have to look for as ministers. We preach to sinners; & let us know that a man will take the title of sinner to himself, & we then say to him, 'Look to Christ and you shall be saved.' 'Look,' this is all he demands of you, & even this he gives you. If you look to yourself you are damned; you are a vile miscreant, filled with loathsomeness, corrupt and corrupting others. But look here - see that man hanging on the cross? Do you behold his agonized head dropping meekly down upon his breast? Do you see his hands pierced and rent, & his blest feet, supporting the weight of his own frame, rent well-nigh in two with the cruel nails? Sinner! Do you hear him shriek, 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabbacthani?' Do you hear him cry, 'It is finished?' Do you mark his head hang down in death? See you that side pierced with the spear, & the body taken from the cross? O, come you here! Those hands were nailed for you; those feet gushed gore for you; that side was opened wide for you; and you want to know how you can find mercy, there it is, 'Look!' 'Look unto me!' Look no longer to Moses. Look no longer to Sinai. Come you here and look to Calvary, to Calvary's victim, and to Joseph's grave. And look yonder to the man who near the throne sits with his Father crowned with light and immortality. 'Look, sinner,' he says this morning to you, 'Look unto me and be saved.' It is in this way God teaches that there is none besides him; because he makes us look entirely to him, and utterly away from ourselves."

I bet you're beginning to see why this preacher from one hundred years ago has made an impact on me. It's exciting to get to tell you how God used this man in my life so long after his death. 

We'll Remember

“When shadows fall on us we will not fear we will remember.”

We’ll remember the call; we’ll remember the light at the end of our dark night. We’ll remember the cross; we’ll remember the resurrection and our subsequent salvation. We’ll remember the cost; we’ll remember blood, the sweat, the tears, we’ll remember our fear now relieved.

We’ll remember the end of death and the first breath of life; we’ll remember the beginning of our sanctification and the end of our damnation; we’ll remember the beginning of all of forever of the life we’ll live with God; we’ll remember the first glimpses of the glory of the King who saved us and bought us with himself – for himself.

We’ll remember the God who did not delay but sent his own Son to die for us because he loved us with a great love – so great that it spelled then end of the end and the death of the grave. We’ll remember that our help comes from the LORD the maker of heaven and hell and all that is between them.

We’ll remember that neither death nor life nor things present nor things to come, nor angels, demons, heaven, hell, Satan himself and all the hosts of the man cannot separate us from the love of our God!

We’ll remember that all we are is nothing apart from him our everything. We’ll remember that we have been bought with a price and that it’s no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us. We’ll remember each breath is grace and each second is a second chance, that each life encountered is a life to be spoken into, that each life is a soul and each soul is eternal and each eternity can be impacted for the King by his poor ambassadors.

We’ll remember the cost of the cross and the call of the King. We’ll remember each step is faith and all faith is God’s. We’ll remember that what we deserve we do not get and what we do not get is what we deserve. We’ll remember that the closest to hell we’ll ever get is this life – this life with all its raindrops and smiles, all its baby laughter and nephew hugs, all is kisses of spouses and providences of God. We’ll remember the beginning, middle and end of all of everything in our small little lives is the cross of Christ, the empty tomb, and the love of God for us.

Confession: This Semester

Before I get into this’n it’s been freeing to say, “I was wrong.” At the end of the summer I planned out the semester, 12 hours of classes didn’t seem too bad. I’d taken a couple grad level classes before in undergrad so it seemed like it’d be doable. Mom said it was too much – she was right, I wasn’t.

It’s safe to say this has been one of the most difficult semesters I’ve had. Sure some undergrad semesters were hard, and when finals came they were really gross, but this one is taking the cake in the realm of stress, tiredness and changes. There’ve been a few breakdowns.

Taking the workload from school, the job at the church, fostering a new relationship and the normal things of life all together has been rich and difficult. Rich because there’s much to learn and much to be humbly amazed by; difficult because I’m prideful and thought I knew it all and this has been three months of being wrong. (In some ways I feel like a raw blister - hyperaware of failures.)

Yet there are three thoughts, which have made this semester more bearable:

1) Bear your burdens well.

Sure they’re heavy and sure they’re daunting, but they’ve been given to you by God to bear, so bear them well. Be emboldened by the simple fact of knowing God – for his own reasons – planned this.

 2) It’s good to be carefree.

When the moments of relaxing come, take them. Whether they’re on Skype, a phone call, staring at the stars from my front porch, in a book, with the roommates, or holding a sleeping nephew whenever and wherever learn to relax in a moment. 

 3) (This has been the most difficult to remember) your biggest problem has been taken care of by Jesus.

This one is beautiful. At the end of any day you can lay your head down on your pillow and remember it’s not your education that saves you, your job that saves you, your interactions that save you, but it’s Jesus’ death on a Roman cross two-thousand years ago that has saved you.

Sure I don’t remember all of these all the time. But at the end of my life – whenever that may be – this semester will be just a simple dark place in the patchwork of life – the dark tiles of a mosaic without which the picture is lost. You see it’s a perspective thing seeing life from the vantage point of farther along.

A Breath

Imagine something with me.

You’re in a cave, dark (pitch-black), cool, and eerie. You know it’s a tomb, you know it contains a body; you know it contains what remains of the physical body of Jesus.

You saw him just a few days ago, hanging from a cross, looking more like a hunk of meat than a man. You heard him give up his spirit; you saw the spear go in and out of his side. You know he’s dead.

The silence of the tomb is overwhelming. So quiet it hurts your ears, so still, so full of death.

Then it happens. So small, yet so profound against the prevailing silence, a breath was just taken! There is life in that ‘dead body.’ Soft and steady breathing.

Jesus’ death was loud, it was violent, and it was gruesome and bloody and seen by many. The Curtain was torn in two, an earthquake happened; there was darkness at noontime. Shouts and hate and the final words of Christ, “It is finished,” the proclamation of proclamations.

Jesus’ resurrection was quiet, a breath in the dark. But what it accomplished is more resounding than the darkness or the earthquake or the shouts, “Jesus took in that breath and shattered all death with his life.”

Imagining forth to the peace we have in him, his breathing alone in the tomb secures our hope.

Jesus’ first breath in the dark of the tomb will resound for all eternity.

Taken From the Journal

"It had been a while since the reality of the cross impacted my heart. Since an understanding of the brutality of the cross has shown to affect emotion.

"Henry Scougal is right in saying, "Faith hath the same place in the Divine Life, which sense hath in the natural, being indeed nothing else but a kind of sense or feeling persuasion of spiritual things; it extends itself unto all Divine truths; but in our lapsed estate, it hath a peculiar relation to the declaration of God’s mercy and reconcilableness to sinners through a mediator; and therefore, receiving its denomination from that principal object, is ordinarily termed, ‘Faith in Jesus Christ.’"

"Both emotion and the intellect should be engaged in faith. For while one or the other will be primary both ought to be present.

"Because if faith is simply based on swinging emotionalism there is no knowledge or wisdom thus the person is stupidly ignorant. But if faith is a mass of knowledge and has no outlet the person is witlessly unwise and heartless, beating people with knowledge as though he wielded a battle-axe.

"So I must have both."

Evangelical Leprosy

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD). It’s a blight on evangelicalism. It really is a disease inside the Christian Church.

Let’s take the idea one word at a time.

Morals. Lists of rights and wrongs made up by every individual person to live a good life. No drugs, no pre-marital sex, no cursing, no alcohol, yes church, yes trying to be kind, yes being a ‘good’ person. The church, meeting place, is teaching how to have a better life, and be a better you, and managing debt well, and have a better marriage/parenting/spouse/fill-in-the-blank-here.

Therapy. We all know this one. There’s no guessing what it’s about. Making us feel good about who we are and what we’ve been/are. No pushing to change only the desire to see just a few more 'how to’s' added to the list of morals from above because hey, God loves you.

Deism. Deism is the belief in a Supreme Being who created the universe. But deism is nowhere near Christian. Deism holds that this Creator created then left us to play everything out. The clock-winder-god. He wound the clock and now it sits on his mantel only to be glimpsed when wanted. This is not Christianity. Not. At. All.

Morals won’t save you.

Therapy won’t make you well.

Deism doesn’t do anything.

Morals won’t save you because you can’t be good enough (Romans 3).

Therapy won’t make you well because pride kills (Psalm 31; 59:12; Prov. 8:13…).

Deism won’t save you because it is absolutely void of the Gospel.

Let this be crystal clear. The cross is central to the Christian faith. Jesus is what separates Christians from all other religions. To call deism ‘Christian’ is like calling a mouse an elephant and the moon the sun. 1) It is a lie. 2) It is a blatant disregard for the way God has made things. 3) It is pure ignorance.

It’s why we preach the Gospel. It’s why we talk about the brutality of the cross and the glory of the resurrection. It’s why Christianity is Jesus and not morals or therapy or deism.

Quite frankly - I'll go Puritanical in my speech here - this way of teaching (MTD) needs to die. Pastors who preach this will be welcomed into hell by the screams of their congregants, I don't doubt this. "Whoa, that's a little harsh Sam." I'd agree with you, if it wasn't the glory of God and the saving of souls at stake. Wishy-washy belief makes for non-commital people which causes heresy that is not Christian.

And this heresy staralizes people to the Gospel, because why would a 'good person' need saving?

Amaze

I was able to go see The Civil Wars again last night in Lawrence. This was my second time and still it was amazing.

The crowd would scream, clap, whop and holler at the end of a song, yet during the song they (all 1200 of ‘em) would be still enough to hear a mouse squeak.

I don’t know if you could call it awestruck (or perhaps star struck), but I’m certain it’d have been admiration in the least if not much more.

Amazed.

Standing in front of a stage filled with just two people, a guitar, and a piano.

It’s how a believer stands before the cross, only in a smaller sense.

We stand before a hunk of wood and are truly amazed and awestruck, not by the melody it produces (though this melody becomes our song) or by the craftsmanship of the wood (though it’s roughness tells of the life we’ll lead) but by the act, which was done there.

Yet more than the finished act we look at the re-taken life. Laid down and picked up at the will of the one who lived/lives it.

So, yes, The Civil Wars were amazing to see again, and yes, their songs are still powerful for me, and yes, they are a shadow of the truth which we’ll know in time.

Our Constant Need

Do you know that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach? The one that feels strangely similar to hunger but isn’t hunger at all? Maybe yours is that feeling in your heart, when it seems to free-fall to your toes? Or perhaps yours is the fogginess of the brain, where the simplest thought is the hardest of struggles? What do we need in these moments, what must we have?

Jesus. Not a man to give advice or a woman to listen to the issue, we need Jesus. We do not need to understand the nuances of the deepest theology we just need Jesus.

We need him… I need him to have lived a perfect life. I need him to have been beaten far beyond recognition as human. I need him to have been nailed to a torturous cross. I need him to have yielded up his spirit. I need the blood and water to flow. I need him to have been buried and more than that to have risen from the grave. I need him to be seated at the right hand of the Father on high interceding on my behalf.

Saying, “His debt I have paid and his heart I have won. I have loved him before the foundations of the world were set when You, my Father, gave him to me. He is mine and I will not loose him.”

More than self-help and self-worth and self-love we need to hear of Jesus, the perfect God-Man, doing what none could do and willingly dying for wretch’s sins.

And this we will always need, even when our stomachs feel the way they should and our hearts are stationed in their proper places and when clarity of thought is a breeze. We can never or will ever outgrow our need for the astoundingly simple yet infinitely complex beautiful gospel of Jesus Christ our Savior.

Demanded

This morning I read Luke 14:25-33. The section heading in my Bible is, “The Cost of Discipleship,” and it uses words like, “hate,” “bear your own cross,” and “renounce.” It made me think of an interesting theme, one that has been running through my mind for quite some time now.

I don’t like soft language. To be sure it is necessary at many times, but, also, many times call for the proper words to be used, words which might be considered harsh.

Take for instance this passage; many might say after reading this, “God wants us to sacrifice our lives to him.” WANTS? Or to say it another way, “God wishes us to sacrifice our lives to him.” For wish is the definition of want. To soft serve what should be the most threatening statement of a believers life? This is a tragedy (it’s far worse than thinking turkey-bacon is somehow comparable to real bacon).

He demands our lives. He demands we live as dead men walking. He demands our crosses be daily on our shoulders. He demands all else to be renounced and used for his glory. He demands our love for him to be powerful and so all-encompassing that love for family looks like hate.

Is this demand one that should be on all believers? Yes. Why? Because we are his disciples, it is the cost of discipleship. Yes, it is a hard cost to pay – but the beauty of the Gospel is it makes life unfair and the debt we owe is paid. And therefore, the demand, though it looks hefty is seen as light for our burden of sin was nailed to a cross and we no longer must carry our pain. We are free to be radical in the mundane.