Jesus Christ must be the center and the norm for Christian public engagement. Why? Because Christ and Christ’s Spirit aren’t at work only in our hearts, families, and churches, but in our civic communities, cities, nations, and the entire world.
Miroslav Volf, June 27, 2020, 4:36 AM. Tweet.
Category: Quotes (Page 5 of 10)
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
James Baldwin
“But maybe if they didn’t treat us like monsters, we wouldn’t be monsters. I want us to try living like people for awhile, see how that goes.”
N.K. Jemisin, Stone Hunger
Some months ago, I watched the excellent Chernobyl mini-series on television. In the last episode (number five) the protagonist, Legasov, reflects on his experience with the nuclear disaster. Powerful people tried to cover it up and hide the magnitude of the disaster from public view. His comments are timeless, but particularly apt in our day. Here’s a couple of the comments that have been haunting me in this time of extreme partisan politics that carry over even into management of pandemics.
We’re on dangerous ground right now, because of our secrets and our lies! They’re practically what define us. When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can longer remember it is even there. But it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.
And then later, he writes of his life as a scientist, apparently in contrast to government bureaucrats and politicians.
To be a scientist is to be naive.  We are so focused on our search for truth, we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there, whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not.  The truth doesn’t care about our needs or wants. It doesn’t care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time. And this, at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: What is the cost of lies?
I find it (perhaps naively) surprising and dismaying that so many who claim to follow the one who is the Truth seem more concerned with politics than inconvenient truth. Of course, many have said this, and said it better, before me. But still. Really? The debt will come due.
As Christians, we tend to think of the debt coming due when Jesus’ kingdom comes in its fullness. At that last trumpet, so to speak. That’s not Legasov’s point. Consider all the references to “the land of the living” in scripture. Are these referring to that distant future or to reality in even this fallen world? With all due respect to those scholars who explain “the land of the living” refers to the fullness of new creation, I’m just not using the term here in that way. Legasov is talking about how the truth has a way of making itself known in the face of lies, in this world as we know it today. It doesn’t stay buried in the land of the living.
Some didn’t want the Truth when he came into the land of the living 2000 years ago. He was a danger to their plans – and He remains so. We recently remembered how Jesus was crucified and left dead in the tomb. And then the Truth returned, unbowed, from the grave. That’s the way truth is, I think. You can only hide it away in the grave for so long before the sheer life of it comes back to haunt those who sought to keep it down. That’s because the truth reflects how God is – how Jesus is. You can’t keep him down. The world He created reflects that reality. The truth is out there, and he is jealous.
I long for simple truth in the land of the living – the land I live in now. I think this is the proper attitude for one who follows the Truth.
For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. (Deuteronomy 4:24) The truth is of Him. He is the Truth. What is the cost of lies? It is death, naturally.
“None of us starts off with a pure internal ‘kit’ of impulses, hopes and fears. If you are true to ‘yourself’, you will end up a complete mess. The challenge is to take the ‘self’ you find within, and to choose wisely which impulses and desires to follow, and which ones to resist…”
“Some desires, says James, start a family tree of their own (verse 15). Desire is like a woman who conceives a child, and the child is sin: the act which flows directly from that part of the ‘self’ which pulls us away from the genuine life which God has for us. And when the child, sin, grows up and becomes mature, it too has a child. That child is death: the final result of following those desires which diminish that genuine human life.”
N.T. Wright
Early Christian Letters for Everyone: James, Peter, John. and Judah
comments on James 1:9-18
True peace is not made when powerful parties gather and dictate terms to their enemies. The hard work of peacemaking requires listening, tough choices, hard conversations, and mutual sacrifice.
Todd Deatherage
Fleming Rutledge prayed on a podcast interview I heard yesterday. I decided to write it down. When asked by the host if she would pray to close the interview, she indicated she would be disappointed not to pray, and spontaneously poured out this prayer:
Oh Lord God, our creator, redeemer, sustainer,
Father, Son, Holy Spirit,
Hear us when we feebly call upon you out of our manifold sins and weaknesses, ignorances, failures, cowardice, bewilderment. Lord we turn to you and call upon you because we know that is what you want from us. You love nothing more than to hear the confession of confused, troubled, insecure, worn-down people who desire to be your servants. Because you have called us to be your servants, dear Lord, we know that you will give us the strength to do what you have purposed for us to do. Just, please, Lord, please keep us faithful to that calling.
Heavenly Father, look with mercy and grace upon your church. woven in a hundred different directions, filled with sin, disgraced by scandal – not just the Catholics but the Protestants also – and all churches, we all have our besetting difficulties and violations of your commandments, neglect of the gospel – Lord, look mercifully upon your church, which you have called to yourself, and which in spite of our utter inability you have strengthened, which you have undergirded and overarched with your Spirit. We pray for the churches, that we might capture, by your grace, a new wind of the spirit – a great awakening to the truth of your gospel and the difference between that and all the other messages we are hearing from so many different directions.
Lord, I pray for a greatly increased love of your holy word in scripture and in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Guide us in ways that we can make this known – new ways, fresh ways. Sometimes it seems as if the old ways that we’ve been so accustomed to have fallen into disrepair, decline. We need an invigorating breath of the Holy Spirit, dear Lord, for your church – all your churches – and for the great church which exists in your future. Let us look to that with confidence, with faith – faith that only you can give.
We pray for all those young people who are drawn to faith in our Lord Jesus Christ – that you would strengthen them in the midst of this hostile culture – that you would give them courage and joy that is very different from the joy that the world foolishly promises. Let us seek our being – our past, our present, and our future – in you, dear Lord, and in your son Jesus Christ, in whose name, alone, is salvation, power, mercy, and everlasting love. In His name we pray, Amen.
I was listening to Crackers and Grape Juice, episode 244, in which Fleming Rutledge was interviewed about the 20th anniversary edition of her book Help My Unbelief.
In our world, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.
— C S Lewis, The Last Battle
Merry Christmas!
I listened to an interview with Matt and Julie Canlis. They both had quite profound things to say. One thing Matt said is sticking:
The biggest way to impact the world is to be trusted by a few.
And then, speaking of Christian faith:
Think of faith as trusting a person you know.
I know from the rest of what they said that faith includes being known by the person you trust. Instead of being “tossed out” when your uglies are uncovered, you’re given grace and honesty, which leads to change. Transformation, even.
Check out the Regent Audio Podcast, episode #74 with Matt and Julie Canlis.
I really want to be an advocate for whatever I find is healthy or good. I think people don’t change very much when all they have is a finger pointed at them. I think the only way people change is in relation to somebody who loves them.
– Fred Rogers