9December2011

Letting the Church Pick Your Job

Written By robfaircloth

In The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline (Crossway 2010) Jonathan Leeman describes the different facets of a member’s submission to his local church body.

In a proper, biblical relationship, members submit to their church: publicly, physically and geographically; socially; affectionately; financially; vocationally; ethically; and spiritually. Submitting this way assumes that members will seek the counsel of elders and other church leaders, not in the sense of yielding to authoritarian rule, but of utilizing the wisdom of shepherds God has placed over the flock.

We rarely consider counting others more important than ourselves (Philippians 2:3-4) or of obtaining wise counsel, especially in such important matters as where we live, how we spend money, and what we do for a living, and even with regard to members of our own churches, who are frequently as unknown to us as estranged third cousins.

Submitting vocationally to the interests of other church members, as Leeman suggests, is particularly alien to us.

How we earn our living is a significant component of our image of ourself, both as we are and as we want to be. Nothing, we suppose, is more fundamental to self-governance and personal liberty than our vocation.

But decisions about jobs and careers frequently involve changes that require us to move away from our congregation or that place demands on our time that lead us to give less of it, and have implications for our giving, our fellowship, and our ministry in the body.

If we truly count the interests of others as more significant than our own, as the teaching of Jesus and the New Testament authors indicate we should, then how a promotion, or relocation, or career change will affect our ministry to others in the congregation should factor as prominently as salary, title, and 401k.

This is difficult enough a concept in the abstract, but when faced with the choice between accepting a job promotion with better pay and more hours or rejecting it in order to keep teaching the 4th grade boys, it appears simply unthinkable.

But think, we must, because it is all too easy to make life decisions considering only our own interest. A sure corrective, as Leeman suggests, is to begin yielding to our fellow members in these areas.

8December2011

Spiritual Blinders and the Love of God

Written By robfaircloth

Jesus says that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:28-31).

The list of things needed to love God is not a catalogue of body parts: it is a radical demand for the totality of our being. Many times it is fairly easy to acknowledge the high expectations that God has for his people in general, but when it comes to rooting out our waywardness in particular, we erect spiritual blinders to the things closest to us.

A whole heart. God commands that his people be undivided in their loyalty to him, unreserved in their dedication to his — and rejection to their own — cause. It is what Jesus demanded when he told followers to deny themselves and take up their cross (Mark 9:345) and is what is demonstrated in the parable of the man who sold all he had to purchase the pearl of great price (Matthew 13:45-46). When the king commissioned settlers to explore and conquer new lands across the sea, upon arrival the captain would burn the boats so that there would be no longing for the old but complete dedication to the new. What boats do we leave moored at the dock, just in case we need them? Do we fear going “all in” for God because others will see us as strange? Do we hold back some of our money, our time, our energy because we want to spend them in our old world?

All our soul. “Soul” here likely means our passions and excitements: what things get us the most excited? God expects that our greatest passions, our greatest excitement, our greatest joy will come from him. This doesn’t mean that God hasn’t given us things on earth to enjoy and be excited about. It does mean that Satan knows how to manipulate our passions and desires, and lead us to think that we cannot be happy or fulfilled or complete without having and enjoying something that God hasn’t given. Adam & Eve were lured with this very notion. We shouldn’t just let our passions and excitements happen to us, but guard them and ensure that they are the result of godly things. Do we get the most excited about football, hunting, and the latest Twilight movie or secular holiday tradition? Are we — by comparison, ho-hum about evangelism, spiritual warfare, holiness, temptation and worship?

All our mind. People don’t like to think. It hurts. And believers are generally no better about this, even though we are told such things as that our transformation into Christ-likeness is in part through the “renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:1-2) and that we are to “train our senses to discern good and evil” (Hebrews 5:14) and we are to “think about” worthy things (Philippians 4:8). Do we relish memorizing sports schedules and statistics but balk at reading Scripture? Do we absorb social media like facebook and Twitter like a sponge but shed spiritual media like books and journals or the meditation on scripture like water off a duck’s back?

All our strength. The old truism bears much truth: actions speak louder than words. If I claim to love football, and believe it is the greatest game, and encourage others to enjoy its manifold benefits, but haven’t seen a game in five years, all my claims to loving football ring hollow, especially if in the same time I’ve participated in every bowling match there was. If we claim to love God, but slight the study of his word, or praise his greatness, or enjoy his people, our strength is being wasted somewhere. If we claim to love God but ignore all he has commanded — most apparently in how we treat other people — then our actions are saying something different that our mind and our mouth.

We keep from God our heart, soul, mind and strength at our own peril. We won’t be perfect in any of these before Christ returns, but we are given the Spirit to keep on reforming them until then.

7December2011

Packer on Calvinist Evangelism

Written By robfaircloth

J.I. Packer assesses the Calvinist mindset:

What Calvinists have practised in the past and seek to re-establish in the present is a type of evangelism which does justice to the truths that God himself is the true evangelist, that it is he who brings souls to new birth, that the local churches are the basic evangelizing units, that evangelism must be fully integrated into local church life, and that evangelistic practice must be reverent, worshipful, and worthy of God.

It is difficult to find a more pithy statement of the issues appropriate to the Calvinist-Arminian divide today. There is only one problem. Packer wrote this in 1966. It appeared in an article entitled “A Calvinist — and an Evangelist!” in The Hour International (London, August 1966) (reprinted in Serving the People of God: The Collected Shorter Writings of J.I. Packer (Paternoster 1988)).

Forty-six years ago Packer saw the caricature of Calvinism as anti-evangelistic, and sought to correct the error in part by cataloguing the numerous stalwarts of evangelistic practice who also happened to be Calvinist. Or, as Packer proposes, by citing men who were ardently evangelistic because they were Calvinists.

7December2011

My Mother’s Brother is Openly Avuncular

Written By robfaircloth

“Who do you expect to visit for Christmas?”

“Why, all the usuals: Gramps, Granny, the cousins, and Mom’s brothers and sisters.”

“What do you look forward to?”

“The highly competitive and minimally charitable plethora of board games. Except that Mom’s oldest brother frequently hides the deed to Boardwalk, thinks the Rook can move diagonally, and insists that the losers partake of regular helpings of fruitcake.”

“Oh, dear, I’m afraid that your criticisms are highly avuncular.”

Avuncular: of or pertaining to an uncle.

7December2011

The Greatest Commandments

Written By robfaircloth

In a memorable — and likely much memorized — episode in the ministry of Jesus, a scribe whose fellows had been laying theological and political traps for Jesus, approached him sincerely.

Keeping with the tradition of asking rabbis to summarize the demands of the law, the scribe asked Jesus “what is the greatest commandment?” (see Mark 12:28-34). Jesus gave him not one, but two: love God (Deuteronomy 6:5) and love neighbor (Leviticus 19:18).

These weren’t necessarily radical concepts: other rabbis before and after Jesus cited both of these. But what Jesus did that other rabbis didn’t was combine them. According to Jesus, there is no greater law than these.

The demands of love for God are high, in themselves: we are to love him with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength. In a sense, we are to love God with the mind, will, and emotions PLUS an undivided, loyal heart. Our dedication to God must be total: we can harbor no alternative deity or backup means of salvation. Our passions (what our predecessors called “affections”) must be oriented to respond to God and his truth. Our mind, intellect, habits of thinking must be exercised to appreciate the truth of God. And our actions must accord with what our mind has apprehended and what our emotions have praised.

There are many things that threaten our single-minded devotion to God, and divide our hearts from him. The world and its accoutrements demand our passions and emotions, and all too frequently get them (what, for instance, do you get most excited about?). We too frequently decide that we know enough, we have been schooled enough, we have studied enough and can put our minds in “neutral” regarding spiritual things, biblical things, God things. And the temptation to be the spiritual couch potato and either fail to act according to our God-ward thoughts and emotions or to expend all our energy in worldly pursuits (what do you find yourself most tired after?)

As demanding as those expectations are, Jesus adds that we are to love our neighbor as ourself. And this “neighbor” is not merely the one who looks like me, dresses like me, acts like me, but is all those who are different and in need. Which is to say, after all, all of us.

Certainly Jesus’ combination of these two demands is significant. We don’t love God rightly if we don’t love our neighbor. We don’t love our neighbor rightly when we don’t love God. Loving God is ontologically prior to properly loving anyone else, including ourselves. But perhaps we demonstrate or apply love for God by seeking and obtaining the highest good for our neighbor.

We cannot love God or love neighbor without soul that is regenerated and sanctified by the Holy Spirit. And how different Christ-followers would look to each other and to the world should we seek his aid in loving rightly.

2December2011

Payroll Taxes Need to Go

Written By robfaircloth1 Comment on Payroll Taxes Need to Go

Like most things, the issue of extending the payroll tax cuts is used as a political football by both sides of the aisle in Washington. The strange scenario now foisted upon is that President Obama lauds the extension of the cuts, which forces him and the Democrat Party to acknowledge the benefit of tax relief for some while “paying for” the extensions with new taxes on the “rich” (euphemistically called “surcharges”).

We are subject to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”, but Christians and openness-loving people everywhere should take the opportunity to question the method of extracting taxes via payroll deductions itself.

It should be obvious to each citizen or family how much is being paid to Caesar (the national government). Payroll taxes obscure the fact by deducting a fraction of the yearly total from each paycheck. Sure, the amounts deducted are listed on the stubs, but no one really pays much attention to those things. Payroll tax deductions should be banned altogether, and each citizen should be required to write a check annually, semi-annually, or quarterly for the amounts previously deducted for FICA, Social Security and so forth.

If everyone had to write a check for their bill to the national government — as well all do to the power company, the cell phone company and the mortgage company or landlord — it is not difficult to imagine a much different sentiment about taxes in general and how much Caesar should take.

We should note, too, that suggestions to “pay for” payroll tax cut extensions by taking more from the “rich” presumes that tax relief is good for all but them, and that there is no other way to “pay for” diminished tax revenues filling government coffers, such as, say, reductions in spending.

1December2011

Submitting to church geographically

Written By robfaircloth

Jonathan Leeman has an excellent treatment of the nature of church membership and how it relates both to God’s love and discipline, The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline.

In describing how an individual submits to a local congregation of which he is a member, Leeman challenges us to consider what biblical submission to others looks like when it comes to choosing where we live:

Living close to church is hardly a biblical requirement, but it may be prudent, even loving. Our culture’s formula for home selection is simple: how do I get the most for least? But a Christian no longer belongs to himself. He belongs to Christ and Christ’s people. Shouldn’t his formula for home selection, therefore, look a little different? Why not instead choose a residence that will let us count others more significant than ourselves and look to the interests of others?

Leeman describes how believers should consider the location of a good church before looking for homes, how members should obtain counsel from elders when thinking through family moves, and consider where other members of their church live in order to facilitate congregational community.