Worst Days, Best Days

This Gospel-focused quote from Jerry Bridges' book The Discipline of Grace is worth reflecting from time to time:

Pharisee-type believers unconsciously think they have earned God’s blessing through their behavior. Guilt-laden believers are quite sure they have forfeited God’s blessing through their lack of discipline or their disobedience. Both have forgotten the meaning of grace because they have moved away from the gospel and have slipped into a performance relationship with God . . . Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God’s grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God’s grace.

Mother's Day Prayer

I asked the following prayer, which is part of a prayer called Family from the Valley of Vision, to be included in the church bulletin yesterday as we celebrated Mother's Day. The second paragraph is particularly outstanding to me. We prayed yesterday for our mothers, those of us who have mothers who do not yet believe in Christ Jesus, those who are not in good terms with their mothers, those who have lost their mothers, those who long to be mothers, and those who are about to be mothers (there are three in our congregation - one actually delivered today!), and those who receive the gift of singleness hence never become biological mothers but be mothers to many in Christ.

O God, I cannot endure to see the destruction of my kindred.

Let those that are united to me in tender ties

be precious in thy sight and devoted to thy glory.


Sanctify and prosper my domestic devotion, 
instruction,
discipline, example,
 that my house may be a nursery for heaven,

my church the garden of the Lord,
 enriched with trees
of righteousness of thy planting,
 for thy glory;


Let not those of my family who are amiable, moral,
attractive,
fall short of heaven at last;

Grant that the promising appearances of a tender conscience,

soft heart, the alarms and delights of thy Word,

be not finally blotted out,
but bring forth judgment
unto victory in all whom I love.

Piper on Sleep

John Piper on Sleep:

Sleep is good and absolutely needful. But let us find the amount we need to function fully for God and take no more. Why? Because Paul said in Ephesians 5:15f, "Look carefully then how you walk, no as unwise men but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil." Time is precious because the stakes are so high in an evil age. Let us beware of frittering away precious hours in fruitless dawdling and excessive sleep.

I remember the story of a German New Testament professor who was asked why he rose so early and worked so hard. He answered: "Ich spare den Schlaf fuer die ewige Ruhe!" ("I am saving sleep for the eternal rest.") Of course this can be abused so that you kill yourself with heart failure or turn yourself into a first class grouch. But perhaps the time has come to sound Paul's trumpet again from 2 Corinthians 11:27, "... in toil and hardship, in hunger and thirst, through many a sleepless night..."
Let us take heed to ourselves and to our appetite for sleep, redeeming the time for the days are evil.

Read the full-text of his sermon from where the quote above is taken here.

When Quiet Time is Too Quiet

I love getting tips on how to sustain our spiritual discipline. Here is a good set offered by Pam Farrel. Among the twenty tips she mentioned on how to awaken our quiet time, these are the ones I like best. Read the entire twenty in the Discipleship Journal article.

1. WRITE A LETTER TO GOD about your life. Give it to a friend to mail hack to you in three months. In the letter, talk to God about the areas of your life that are bothering you. Write about how you'd like to grow and what attribute of His you'd like to see more clearly.

2. WRITE OUT AND PERSONALIZE Scripture by inserting your name into promises relevant to your life or current struggles. For example, I would personalize Ps. 84:11 in this way: "No good thing does God withhold from Pam when she walks uprightly." Many of the Bible's promises come to life and seem more powerful and relevant when personalized in this way Spend some time meditating and praying over verses that you personalize. I once copied a set of verses and strung them together as a personalized love letter from God's heart to my own. I have it framed and hanging in my room. Those personalized verses help me keep a trig view of God.

8. WRITE OUT a Phil. 4:8 list. What is lovely to you, worthy of praise, excellent, etc.? Hang the list in a place where you tend to be grumpy, such as above the washer and dryer or on the dashboard of your car for that frustrating commute!

11. PRAISE JESUS FROM A TO Z. For example, "Jesus, You are amazing ... Jesus, You are beautiful...." This activity will challenge you to think deeply about who Jesus is and why you love and serve Him. As you praise Jesus using each letter of the alphabet, spend some time meditating on each word you use to describe Him. Thinking deeply about Him is more important than racing through each letter of the alphabet as fast as you can.

16. SPEND A PERIOD OF TIME FASTING from food, TV, or a hobby to spend more time with God. If you're able, combine your fast with a day at a quiet retreat center, the beach, the mountains, or even tucked away in a library to reflect upon God's Word and His hand in your life.

Which ones are your favorites?

Nicholas Wolterstorff on Justice

My Monday morning is brightened with an email in my inbox notifying me
the content of the latest issue of the Journal of Religious Ethics, Volume 37
Issue 2 (June 2009), which has a few articles focusing on Nicholas Wolterstorff and his new book, Justice: Rights and Wrongs. Wolterstorff is the Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale Divinity School. As many others, I thoroughly benefited from his highly-acclaimed work on the subject, Until Justice and Peace Embrace (Eerdmans, 1983, second. ed 1994).

Here are the articles I referred to above:

*NICHOLAS WOLTERSTORFF'S JUSTICE: RIGHTS AND WRONGS:/ AN
INTRODUCTION (p 179-192)* Paul Weithman

*THE LANGUAGE OF RIGHTS AND CONCEPTUAL HISTORY (p 193-207)* Oliver O'Donovan

*WOLTERSTORFF, RIGHTS, WRONGS, AND THE BIBLE (p 209-219)* Harold W. Attridge

*DOES HE PULL IT OFF? A THEISTIC GROUNDING OF NATURAL INHERENT HUMAN RIGHTS? (p 221-241)* Richard J. Bernstein

*GOD'S VELVETEEN RABBIT (p 243-260)* Paul Weithman

*JUSTICE AS INHERENT RIGHTS: A RESPONSE TO MY COMMENTATORS (p 261-279)* Nicholas Wolterstorff

The last article above is Wolterstorff's response to his commentators. Here is the abstract of the article:

The critical comments by my fellow symposiasts on my book, Justice: Rights and Wrongs, have provided me with the opportunity to clarify parts of my argument and to correct some misunderstandings; they have also helped me see more clearly than I did before the import of some parts of my argument. In his comments, Paul Weithman points out features
of the right order conception of justice that I had not noticed. They have also prodded me to clarify in what way rights are trumps; and both his comments and Bernstein's have prodded me to clarify certain aspects of the theistic account of human rights that I offered. Attridge's comments lead me to see that I was perhaps over-zealous in emphasizing the objective aspects of the semantic range of dikaiosunê as used in the New Testament and downplaying the subjective aspects. And O'Donovan's comments have provided me with the opportunity to make clear that my account of rights is not an immunities account that presupposes nominalism, and to emphasize the ways in which it is not an asocial individualistic account.

What is Worship?

Worship is the strategy by which we interrupt our preoccupation with ourselves and attend to the presence of God. Worship is the time and place that we assign for deliberate attentiveness to God – not because he’s confined to time and place but because our self-importance is so insidiously relentless that if we don’t deliberately interrupt ourselves regularly, we have no chance of attending to him at all at other times and in other places
Eugene Peterson, Leap Over A Wall

Seven Pounds, Sense of Guilt and God's Grace

I like this flick. It brings to surface a side of human nature that often is neglected in typical Hollywood movies. The plot revolves around a man called Tim Thomas (Will Smith) who because of multitasking (driving and texting) found himself in a car crash. Seven people who were passengers in his car died. Everyone died but him.

He then tried to live his life so radically different after the crash. He quit his job as an aeronautical engineer, then chose 7 people to whom he would be doing something good; donating what he has to them freely, voluntarily with no strings whatsover attached. These noble acts he did as his way to pay his 'penance', silent the roaring sense of guilt within him.

He donated his lung lobe to his brother, Ben.
He donates part of his liver to a child services worker named Holly.
He donated a kidney to George, a junior hockey coach.
He donated bone marrow to a young boy named Nicholas.
He donated his beach house to Connie Tepos
He donated his corneas to Ezra Turner, a blind meat salesman who plays the piano.
He donated his heart to Emily Posa, a self-employed greeting card printer.

To help the last two individuals, Ezra and Emily, Tim has to literally die. Hence, this movie has a sad ending. Tim fills the bathtub at a motel he stays (he is now homeless as his house is already donated) with ice water to preserve his vital organs, climbs in, and then commits suicide by pulling his box jellyfish into the water with him.

If you are confused what the title "Seven Pounds" refers to (as I was before), someone suggested that it is derived from the expression "pound of flesh" which in its original meaning refers to a terrible burden or debt which has to be repaid by whatever mean. Originated in Shakespeare's play Merchant of Venice, 1596. In this case Will Smith's character feels that he has to pay a pound of flesh for each of the seven lifes lost in the car accident for which he felt that he caused.

I think this is a powerful movie. Interestingly, it was mostly reviewed rather negatively. A reviewer at New York Times, for example, wrote the following:

An I.R.S. agent who wants only to help people. This is a nice, small joke that provides a few grace notes of levity in what is otherwise a lugubrious exercise in spiritual bushwa. For all its pious, earnest air, “Seven Pounds” cries out to be remade as an Asian horror movie, so that the deep, creepy grotesqueness of its governing premise might be allowed to flourish, rather than to fester beneath the surface.

As it is, the movie is basically an inverted, twisted tale of revenge. Ben Thomas, Mr. Smith’s character, is in essence a benevolent vigilante, harassing, stalking and spying on unsuspecting citizens for their own good, and also to punish himself. Why such misery should also be inflicted on an innocent, affirmation-hungry audience — and also on the marvelous Ms. Dawson, who plays one of Ben’s victim-beneficiaries — is another matter entirely.

But maybe I’m approaching this in the wrong way. Maybe “Seven Pounds” isn’t a spiritual parable about redemption or forgiveness or salvation or whatever, but rather a collection of practical lessons. Don’t drive while using a BlackBerry. Fertilize your rose bushes with banana peels — sorry, that was a spoiler. But please, whatever you do, don’t touch the jellyfish.

I’m serious. Don’t.

I think the above reviewer missed the entire plot. On the contrary, the movie powerfully portrays how it feels to live with a strong sense of guilt. It haunts someone and stubbornly comes back at us without fail throughout our lives. Perhaps the clearest way to really know the most basic foundation of our life is our reactions to failure. How do we handle failure and deal with a sense of guilt. In that movie, Tim spent his entire life trying to redeem himself and seek forgiveness to be able move on, but he can't.

This tells something about us. As fallen creatures we all made mistakes. We can't escape from that sense of guilt. The greater the mistake, the more haunting the feeling we have as a consequence of that mistake. Have you been forgiven? Have you experienced God's unconditional forgiveness so that you can move on? Or are you still beating yourself up?

As Christians, we can say that our foundation is the grace of God. But in reality it may not be that grace of God. But the quality, the purity, the intensity of our commitment to God. In the final analysis, it's still resting on your performance. It's still resting on you. It's still resting on something beside God. We will never experience the grace of God if we always treat it as a challenge to be a more committed person, a more faithful person, a morally better person. We need to stop trying, and start resting on the the grace of God.

Helping Our Leaders Not to Become Destructive

In my line of research, I have been fascinated with the topic of destructive or toxic leadership for quite some time now. What is interesting in the myriad of findings in extant literature is the fact that destructive leadership happens not only because of the leader, but also because of the followers (and the environment). In other words, the role of followers in turning good leaders into bad is pivotal, particularly those with unmet basic needs, negative self-evaluations, and psychological immaturity (Padilla, Hogan, & Kaiser, 2007).

I am intrigue by that last characteristic: Followers' psychological immaturity.

Padilla et al. (2007) in their Leadership Quarterly article highlighted that psychologically immature individuals are susceptible to collude in destructive acts their leaders initiate. They drew on famous works of Freud, Milgram, and Kohlberg in suggesting that between 60 and 75% of Western adults conform to their leaders and respect rules; this tendency to conform can be easily manipulated in such a way by the leaders that the followers then engage in immoral behaviors just because their bosses say so. Further, Padilla et al (1997:184) wrote:

"Persons lacking a firm sense of self tend to identify with cultural heroes and to internalize their values. Weierter's (1997) model of charismatic relationships also proposes that followers who lack a clear sense of self will adopt the values of charismatic leaders, which then enhances their self-esteem. Although these vulnerabilities might apply to any immature adult, they apply well to the young (Popper, 2001)—for instance, the Hitler Youth, the Manson family, or Mao's Red Guard. When impressionable followers internalize a destructive leader's vision, they can become committed to a destructive enterprise-conformers can become colluders (Hoffer, 1951; Kets de Vries, 1989; Weierter, 1997)."

The implication is loud and clear for churches and other organizations. We need to ensure that the body of Christ is developed into maturity not only spiritually but psychologically, which really means they need to have a healthy self-concept rooted in what Christ has done on the cross, a Christ-centered set of core values, and a Christ-exalting life vision which will give their lives anchor, meaning, and direction.

Disability and Christlikeness

I just came across this short article by Angela Beise--a missionary and the mother of four children, including a 10-year-old with a rare genetic chromosomal disorder ("18Q-minus"). It is a very moving and thoughtful one. Indeed it uncovers the hidden blessing that God gives to those parents who have to endure all sorts of inconveniences of having a child with disabilities. Angela wrote in Christianity Today:

In the days following this teacher's remark, I tried to imagine a society devoid of people with disabilities. What if any and all babies with special needs were to be eliminated? What would a society look like if everyone were "normal," if we never had to make provisions and exceptions for people who are deaf, blind, mute, or lame?

I didn't have to look any farther than my own family to start finding answers. My children are among the most unselfish people I have ever known. Brian, 19, Melissa, 17, and Rachel, 13, have made sacrifices, too many and too big to count, for their disabled sibling. One would think that this would have made them bitter and discontented. Amazingly, it has done exactly the opposite. They are thankful, giving, and tolerant to difficult and unlovely people.

As I pondered this potential "perfect" society, one verse from the Bible kept coming to my mind: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit" (Phil. 2:3). Parenting a child with special needs makes living out this verse a little easier.

This child becomes the focus of most of his parents' time and energy. An enormous amount of money may have to be spent on therapists, doctors, hospitals, and equipment. He limits what dreams his parents can pursue. They grieve throughout his lifetime. They not only grieve the child they "lost" at his birth, but grieve as they see him struggle with tasks that normally come easy, grieve when he realizes that he is not like other children, and often when he is in physical or emotional pain. They have little room left for selfish ambition.

What about vain conceit? That is likely to die, too. It's often embarrassing to have a child who cries out in public for no reason, looks different, and acts different. He won't be at the top of his class, won't be the best athlete, and will probably never be voted Most Beautiful or Most Likely to Succeed.

I wonder, if our advanced technologies successfully eliminate the weak and needy, will future scholars, theologians, politicians, and poets ponder: "Why has our society become less loving, so selfish, so intolerant, so uncommitted to anything outside of individual gain? Why are we so full of selfish ambition and vain conceit?" Is this "perfect" society a place where any of us would want to live?

If having a child with certain disabilities is what it takes for God to make Christian parents more Christ-like, which is in the final analysis is what it matters when we see God face to face, then they have to be thankful for this unique means of grace. Of course there are other ways to be more Christ-like, but I am sure if having a child with disability is what God, in his perfect and sovereign will, arranges for that to happen among those who love Him, then it is surely something that He meant for good (Romans 8:28)

Carson on the Gospel

So what is actually the Gospel? How do you define it? Professor Don Carson writes with clarity answering the question in his editorial piece in the latest issue of Themelios. As always, we can say: It's Don, it's good:

In blogs, journal essays, and books, there has been quite a lot written recently about what “the gospel” is. In the hands of some, the question of what “the gospel” is may be tied to the question of what “evangelicalism” is, since “gospel” = εὐαγγέλιον = evangel, which lies at the heart of evangelicalism. People talk variously of the “simple” gospel or the “robust” gospel or the “pure” gospel—and doubtless a rich array of other adjectives. Some make a distinction between the gospel of the cross and the gospel of the kingdom. . . A handful of other essays have noted the instance where the gospel is not “good news” for certain people, but a promise of terrifying judgment. The writers of these essays argue that εὐαγγέλιον may not mean “good news” but something like “great and important news”: whether it is good or bad depends on those who hear it.

A couple of these questions I hope to address shortly elsewhere. For the moment, however, I’d like to underscore another distinction that is still worth making. It was understood better in the past than it is today. It is this: one must distinguish between, on the one hand, the gospel as what God has done and what is the message to be announced and, on the other, what is demanded by God or effected by the gospel in assorted human responses.

If the gospel is the (good) news about what God has done in Christ Jesus, there is ample place for including under “the gospel” the ways in which the kingdom has dawned and is coming, for tying this kingdom to Jesus’ death and resurrection, for demonstrating that the purpose of what God has done is to reconcile sinners to himself and finally to bring under one head a renovated and transformed new heaven and new earth, for talking about God’s gift of the Holy Spirit, consequent upon Christ’s resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Majesty on high, and above all for focusing attention on what Paul (and others—though the language I’m using here reflects Paul) sees as the matter “of first importance”: Christ crucified. All of this is what God has done; it is what we proclaim; it is the news, the great news, the good news.

By contrast, the first two greatest commands—to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves—do not constitute the gospel, or any part of it. We may well argue that when the gospel is faithfully declared and rightly received, it will result in human beings more closely aligned to these two commands. But they are not the gospel. Similarly, the gospel is not receiving Christ or believing in him, or being converted, or joining a church; it is not the practice of discipleship. Once again, the gospel faithfully declared and rightly received will result in people receiving Christ, believing in Christ, being converted, and joining a local church; but such steps are not the gospel. The Bible can exhort those who trust the living God to be concerned with issues of social justice (Isa 2; Amos); it can tell new covenant believers to do good to all human beings, especially to those of the household of faith (Gal 6); it exhorts us to remember the poor and to ask, not “Who is my neighbor?” but “Whom am I serving as neighbor?” We may even argue that some such list of moral commitments is a necessary consequence of the gospel. But it is not the gospel. We may preach through the list, reminding people that the Bible is concerned to tell us not only what to believe but how to live. But we may not preach through that list and claim it encapsulates the gospel. The gospel is what God has done, supremely in Christ, and especially focused on his cross and resurrection.

Failure to distinguish between the gospel and all the effects of the gospel tends, on the long haul, to replace the good news as to what God has done with a moralism that is finally without the power and the glory of Christ crucified, resurrected, ascended, and reigning.

The Aroma of Christ

"For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient [1] for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God's word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ" (2 Corinthians 2:15-17).

These are mighty words. Paul Barnett in his commentary on the 2 Corinthians, page 53-55, unpacks these verses as follows:

If incense impinges on the senses, even though invisible, so to Paul’s ministry makes its presence felt. . . Although an aroma of sacrifice is unseen, its presence is unmistakable in the nostrils of the worshipper. The point of the metaphor is that although the word of God is also invisible, there is no doubting of its effects. It divides its hearers into two groups; those who are being saved and those who are perishing (verse 15). For those who receive the word of God the message is the fragrance of life, but for those who reject it there is the smell of death...

It is through us he says that God spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. The sacrificial lifestyle of the messenger is an extension of the ministry and death of Jesus himself… The message incarnated in the messenger is a fragrance of life to those who obey it, but to others it has the odour of death. Barrett comments that “the apostles are the smoke that arises from the sacrifice of Christ to God

Sunday Prayer

A prayer I wrote in Indonesian recently for the Sunday service at the church where I serve:

Ya Allah, kebahagiaan sempurna ada dalam diri-Mu.
Namun Kau ingin ciptaan-Mu mengalami nikmat itu bersama-Mu.
Benar, Engkaulah sumber kebahagiaan ciptaan-Mu, Ya Allah Penciptaku.

Engkau menenun aku dalam kandungan ibuku.
Engkau menyelamatkanku, memeliharaku, dan menjagaiku.
Engkau mati bagiku ketika aku masih menjadi musuh-Mu, ya Yesus
Engkau setia ketika aku setia, dan Engkau tetap setia ketika aku tidak setia, ya Bapa
Engkau mengerti segala jeritan batinku dan tangisan hatiku, ya Roh Kudus

Mampukan aku untuk hidup bagi-Mu.
Selamatkan aku dari diriku ya Allah agar ku tak lagi hidup bagi diriku sendiri.
Bawa aku naik lebih tinggi tuk mengerti, bahwa kepuasan hidupku ada pada-Mu,
Dan hanya pada-Mu.
Karena saat aku puas didalam-Mu, kepuasan-kepuasan palsu disekitarku
Menjadi nyata bagi hatiku.

Tatkala aku menatap salibmu, mari ya Allah,
Getarkan jiwaku,
Usik lah hatiku,
Remukkan ego-ku
Sampai kasih Kalvari itu melingkupi aku untuk taat kepada-Mu,
Sehingga ketaatanku pada-Mu menjadi kesukaanku tiap-tiap hari.

Jika orang lain menganggap imanku sebuah ketololan,
Kelemahlembutanku sebuah cacat karakter,
Cintaku pada-Mu sebuah kefanatikan,
Pengharapanku sebuah mimpi kosong,
Kuatkan aku untuk berbagian dalam penderitaan bagi-Mu.

Aku ingin dapat mengingini-Mu.
Aku rindu selalu merindukanMu.
Tak pernah puas dengan kemajuan imanku,
Terus rindu serupa Kristus.
Bertumbuh setiap saat semakin sepadan dengan Injil-Mu,
selaras dengan karakter-Mu, dan seirama dengan kehendak-Mu.
Dengarlah ya Allah, permohonan hariku. Dalam nama Yesus, Amin.

Deblogging No More

A month has passed since my last post below. There are many things happening in and around my life that are worth blogging between March 28 and April 27. Not that I felt guilty when I haven't blogged that long, but on the contrary missing the opportunities to write freely feels like there is a blockage in the sewerage system inside my mind or heart (thank God that was written only metaphorically not literally). But I have a good excuse or two for being absent from this blog for a month. I am now ready to blog again, even if it is only for the sake of maintaining my sanity....

He Bore Our Griefs

I stumbled upon this beautiful poem, He Bore Our Griefs, written by Jacob Revius. Very moving and relevant piece for these holy weeks:

No, it was not the Jews who crucified,
Nor who betrayed You in the judgment place,
Nor who, Lord Jesus, spat into Your face,
Nor who with buffets struck You as You died.

No, it was not the soldiers fisted bold
Who lifted up the hammer and the nail,
Or raised the cursed cross on Calvary’s hill,
Or, gambling, tossed the dice to win Your robe.

I am the one, O Lord, who brought you there,
I am the heavy cross You had to bear,
I am the rope that bound You to the tree,
The whip, the nail, the hammer, and the spear,
The blood-stained crown of thorns You had to wear;
It was my sin, alas, it was for me.

When Christ meets WIIFM

As an Indonesian-born Chinese, I instinctively know how deep the concept of 'gain and loss' is embedded in my life (and countless others who were brought up in Indonesia - and the rest of the world, for that matter). Our well-meaning parents typically teach us to approach every single issue with this one big idea: "How is that gonna benefit you?" If we make a silly decision or a foolish bargain, they will say "Shame on you. How could you not lose if you did that?" Such seemingly innocent remarks given repeatedly over a few critical years at young age cement in our mind a certain attitude that goes very far in our lives. We are wired to think: "What's in it for me?"

What's in it for me. WIIFM. That's the mantra we live by.

Nearly everyday we are led to believe that if we don't think "I, Me, My, Mine, and Myself", we won't last in this dog-eat-dog world. If you don't look out for yourself, no one will. Only the paranoid survive.

Find it hard to believe? Think again.

When it comes to choose a major, we assume it is only logical if we think along this line: Which one will give me the most opportunities to land in a most highly-paid, socially admirable, eternally secure job?

When it comes to getting to know new acquaintances, we wonder: Which ones of these folks who will at least allow me to reap half the benefit I give if I make some efforts to befriend them? Let see this couple has a social status I want to be associated with, she has very powerful friends who knows other powerful people, he is good with financial stuff, she is the queen of bargain stuff, he is a handy man I can always rely on, and so on.

When it comes to select a business opportunity, we will be remiss if we don't ask: Which one will give the greatest rate of return, so I can take my family to five-star overseas holiday every year, pay off that mortgage ASAP, or retire young?

When it comes to find a soul mate, we ask: Which man or woman will satisfy me the most first visually, then perhaps emotionally, relationally, intellectually, morally, spiritually, physically, etc. (often it's not in that order).

When it comes to choose a church, we muse: Which church will help me to experience the most enjoyable worship? The most inspirational sermons? The warmest fellowship? The nicest folks? The most gourmet snack after church?

. . . and so on (feel free to contribute to the list).

I am more and more convinced today that this WIIFM mindset is a huge barrier that stops us from personally coming face to face with Christ to experience inside out transformation. Of course we swim well along the religious tide in our Christian circles, but we never knew that our WIIFM tendency is in a major collision with Christ's terms.

WIIFM Christians always ask: How does following Christ benefit me?

If by knowing Christ, going to church, obeying the 10 Commandments, getting involved in the ministry, praying, fasting, tithing, I will be less likely to be infected with anything from flu virus to cancerous cells, I will be getting a great job and an ideal soulmate, I will be having obedient kids, I will have a comfortable life relatively free from stress-inducing problems, then HEY I WILL BE MORE THAN HAPPY TO DO ALL THAT!

We serve the Lord and sacrifice our time, energy, and money to make him indebted to us that He owes us His blessings.
We lead a holy life and avoid sinful behavior so the Lord felt compelled to bless us with what we wish to get.

Christ Jesus is nothing but a means to an end. In our interaction with Him, we are the ones who hold the remote control, since we control how much we give and surrender to Him on the basis of what we can get out of Him. Either that or Christ is useless.

If we are willing to step aside from all the trapping of our religious circus, we will know that there are areas in our lives where we relate to Christ the way the Greeks relate to their gods. When I was little, I lived in a remote town in the deep end of East Java where the villagers there dutifully worship the goddess of the sea, Nyai Roro Kidul, of course while expecting something in return from the goddess. Safety, Fertility, Harmony, Peace, Comfort, Health, Success. I don't see much differences between the villagers and the 21st century suburban Christians in big cities.

WIIFM stops us from seeing Christ as He really is. We just don't get it, just as Judas never got it though He was always physically close to Christ. We never taste and see the majestic glory of God, the blinding holiness of God, the deafening love of God in Christ, the sweet grace of Jesus Christ, the astonishing death of Jesus Christ, and the life-altering resurrection power of Christ. We know all that intellectually of course, but never personally. We know that in group, but never alone one-on-one with Christ.

The only way to reverse this trend is not to try harder. But to turn to Christ and humbly cry:

Lord, please undo my WIIFM so I can see you for who you really are.
Save me from myself, from my relentless desire to control my life.
Save me from using You to get the things I wish and want.
Save me from moving on the road that leads to eternal destruction.

Turn me o Lord for the pig that I am who trample the pearl You gave me
Into a new creation, a fully spiritual human being who values the pearl
That is, Christ who came for me, the almighty became a single cell for me,
Lived the life I should have lived, and died the death I should have died.

Stop me Lord from asking what You can do for me in the future
by continually pondering what you have done for me in the past.

I don't want to make You a means of my success.
because I now see that You alone are my success.
I don't want to add You so I live a happy life
because I now see that You are my happiness

I don't want to ask You to find me the man/woman I love
because I now see that You alone are my true lover.
I don't want to use You for to get Your blessings
because I now serve You for Your intrinsic worth

I offer my life promptly and sincerely
For you alone are worthy O Lord.

The Pig and the Pearl

Of all commentaries written on the Sermon on the Mount that I have read (and there are quite many), Dallas Willard's Divine Conspiracy I think most accurately explains Matthew 7:6 “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you":

So let us be clear once and for all that Jesus is not suggesting that certain classes of people are to be viewed as pigs or dogs. Nor is he saying that we should not give good things and do good deeds to people who might reject or misuse them. In fact, his teaching is precisely the opposite. We are to be like the Father in the heavens who is "kind to the unthankful and to the evil" (Luke 6:35).

The problem with pearls for pigs is not that pigs are not worthy. Worthiness is not in question here at all, but helpfulness. Pigs cannot digest pearls, nor nourish themselves upon them. Likewise for a dog with a Bible or a crucifix. The dog cannot eat it. The reason these animals will finally 'turn and rend you', when you one day step up to them with another load of Bible or pearls, is that you at least are edible.

... The needy person will finally become angry and attack us. The point is not the waste of the pearl, but that the person given the pearl is not helped.

Technology Sabbath

To me it is quickly (or slowly) becoming a matter of necessity to take Technology Sabbath, as suggested by a recent article in Breakpoint. To unplug my life from the god of technology so I can focus on communing with the Almighty God (and spending quality time with my family) even for 12 hours would be a huge challenge for me. But the stats cited in the article is quite startling:

According to a 2005 survey, most Americans—including children—spend at least nine hours a day watching TV, surfing the web, or talking on their cell phones. Of those hours, one-third of the time is spent using two or more of those media at once.

While technology has many worthwhile purposes, it demands a high price from us. Studies have shown that our increasing media dependency is crippling our attention spans, wounding our ability to create meaningful relationships, and generating a false expectation that we should be able to be contacted at every hour of the day.

Do you think you will be able to go over the next 24 hours unplugged?

Using iPod to Memorize Scripture

Kevin Young posted step-by-step instructions on how to download certain bible passages to your iPod for free. Doing that helps him to memorize the Scripture. This is what he wrote:

I love memorizing Scripture. But I don’t do it much. I love memorizing Scripture because it enriches my prayers with Scripture, it helps me counsel people well, it saturates and sanctifies my mind with God’s words, and in general helps me to set my mind on things above (Col. 3:2) and to think about what is pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise (Phil. 4:8).

Here are the steps he proposed:

1. Open another browser tab so that you can refer back to these instructions as you do what I tell you to do.

2. Go to the ESV Online site.

3. In the top right corner, click on the “Options” tab.

4. Under “Audio Options,” click in one of the buttons for MP3 (I use David Cochran Heath because he has the most “normal” sounding voice).

5. At the bottom left of the page, click the “Save” button (that should open a page that says, “Your preferences have been saved” at the top).

6. Type the passage you want (e.g. Ephesians 4:29 or Matthew 6:25-34) into the search bar and click “search.”

7. When the passage comes up, you should see a link that says “Listen” next to the passage reference. Control-click (silly PC users right-click) on the “Listen” tab. A menu box should come up. Click on “Save Link As…”

8. When the box pops up, you will have to add an extension name on the end of the title if it doesn’t have one. So, for example, if the title of your selection is “49004029″ then you need to add .mp3 on the end, so that it reads “49004029.mp3″. Save the file to your Desktop.

9. Find the file on your desktop and open it with iTunes or Windows Media Player, or whatever you use. You can then load it onto your iPod, MP3 player, or burn it onto a CD for your car.

How should one pray during financial crisis?

During one of the most volatile periods of the current economic crisis—a week in which global stock markets declined by $7 trillion—Philip Yancey received a call from an editor at Time magazine. The editor's question was simple: "How should a person pray during a crisis like this?" Here is a summary of what Yancey shared in response:

The first stage is simple, an instinctive cry: "Help!" For someone who faces a job cut or health crisis or watches retirement savings wither away, prayer offers a way to voice fear and anxiety. I have learned to resist the tendency to edit my prayers so that they sound sophisticated and mature. I believe God wants us to come exactly as we are, no matter how childlike we may feel. A God aware of every sparrow that falls surely knows the impact of scary financial times on frail human beings. . .

If I pray with the intent to listen as well as talk, I can enter into a second stage, that of meditation and reflection. Okay, my life savings has virtually disappeared. What can I learn from this seeming catastrophe? . . .

A time of crisis presents a good opportunity to identify the foundation on which I construct my life. If I place my ultimate trust in financial security or in the government's ability to solve my problems, I will surely watch the basement flood and the walls crumble. . .

A friend from Chicago, Bill Leslie, used to say that the Bible asks three main questions about money: (1) How did you get it? (Legally and justly or exploitatively?); (2) What are you doing with it? (Indulging in luxuries or helping the needy?); and (3) What is it doing to you? Some of Jesus' most trenchant parables and sayings go straight to the heart of that last question. . .

The same week that global wealth shrank by $7 trillion, Zimbabwe's inflation rate hit a record 231 million percent. In other words, if you had saved $1 million Zimbabwean dollars by Monday, on Tuesday it was worth $158. This sobering fact leads me to the third and most difficult stage of prayer in crisis: I need God's help in taking my eyes off my own problems in order to look with compassion on the truly desperate. . .

What a testimony it would be if, in 2009, Christians resolved to increase their giving to build houses for the poor, combat AIDS in Africa, and announce kingdom values to a decadent, celebrity-driven culture. Such a response defies all logic and common sense — unless, of course, we take seriously the moral of Jesus' simple tale about building houses on a sure foundation.

Read the full-text Christianity Today article here.

Embrace the Cross by Steve Green

John Piper Interviewed

John Piper was recently interviewed by CJ Mahaney on various things that don't transpire from his sermons. Here is a snapshot:

Thanks for your time, John! Please describe your morning devotions. What time do you wake up in the morning? How much time do you spend reading, meditating, praying, etc.? What are you presently reading?

I get up two mornings at 5:15, four mornings at 6:15 and one morning at 6:00.

I set aside one hour for prayer and Bible reading using the Discipleship Journal read through the Bible reading plan. That puts me now (February 2009) in Exodus, Psalms, Matthew, and Acts. On the five free days when there are no assignments I focus on memorization.

What books on preaching, or examples of it, have you found most influential in your own preaching?

Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students; Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers; John Stott, Between Two Worlds; Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture.

Read the full interview here.

Mark Driscoll on CNN

HT: JT

Mark Driscoll on Nightline

Pastor Mark Driscoll of Marshill Church in Seattle was interviewed by ABC Nightline some time ago. If you are not familiar with Driscoll, it's worth looking at how this pastor attracts lots of young people to Christ in a very agnostic city like Seattle. Unlike many today who dumb down the message of the Gospel in the name of outreach, Driscoll stays true to the pattern of sound teaching, preaching Christ and him crucified in the midst of the young, hip, and restless generation.

Check out the video interview here

.

Christians and Facebook

Happy Birthday, Facebook!

Yes, it's turning 5 on Feb 5. And it now has 280,000,000 users worldwide. Fully aware of the sheer size and influence of this social networking giant, Dr Albert Mohler raised 8 points to help us do a reality check on our social networking experience:

1. Never allow social networking to replace or rival personal contact and communication. God made us to be social creatures that crave community. We cannot permit ourselves to substitute social networking for the harder work of building and maintaining personal relationships that are face to face.

2. Set clear parameters for the time devoted to social networking. These services can be seductive and time consuming. Social networking (and the Internet in general) can become obsessive and destructive of other relationships and higher priorities for the Christian.

3. Never write or post anything on a social networking site that you would not want the world to see, or anything that would compromise your Christian witness. There are plenty of young people (perhaps older persons now, too) who are ruining future job prospects and opportunities by social networking misbehavior. The cost to Christian witness is often far greater.

4. Never allow children and teenagers to have independent social networking access (or Internet access, for that matter). Parents should monitor, manage, supervise, and control the Internet access of their children and teens. Watch what your child posts and what their friends post.

5. Do not allow children and teens to accept any "friend" unknown to you. The social networking world can be a dangerous place, and parental protection here is vital.

6. Encourage older friends and relatives to sign up and use the technology. Grandparents can enjoy keeping up with grandchildren and with friends and loved ones separated by distance or mobility.

7. Use the social networking technology to bear witness to the Gospel, but never think that this can replace the centrality of face-to-face evangelism, witness, and discipleship.

8. Do all things to the glory of God, and do not allow social networking to become an idol or a display of narcissism.

--

Another interesting article on Facebook in Christianity Today by Mark Galli can be found here, where he wrote:

While the popularity of Facebook facilitates broad connectivity, I believe it does so at the expense of intimacy. Intimacy is what we really want. But because we are lazy and fearful creatures, we'll settle for connectivity, because connectivity suggests intimacy but without all the bother. It's like fooling around before marriage: lots of fun but without the danger of pregnancy or the psychological commitment of intercourse.

God and Tragedy

Last Saturday 7 February went down in the Australian history not only as the hottest day on record, but also the darkest day. As of this very minute, 108 people dead and 750 homes and two towns wiped out. It is a national tragedy. The full coverage is here.

Let us pray for those who mourn the lost of their loved ones. We pray that "the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your [their] hearts and your [their] minds in Christ Jesus."

The Scots' Church family retreat to be held in Maryville, one of the severely affected towns, had to be cancelled as the camp site was burnt down. Interstate reinforcement have descended in Victoria to help identify victims as I write these words.

The temperature shows 46.5 degrees in the city, and up to more than 47 degrees in a few towns. It was also very windy. When I opened the window, the wind felt like the desert wind, the kind typically blew in Las Vegas desert. What was truly remarkable on that day was that the 46 plus degree temperature dropped to 20 degrees in a matter of hours. In fact, the Bureau of Metereology reported that the temperature dropped about 10 degrees in less than 15 minutes. In a nutshell, Saturday 12pm was unbearably hot at 46 degree, but Sunday 12pm was rainy and cold at 20 degree.

Imagine two different overseas tourists stopping over in Melbourne only for the day, one on Saturday and the other one on Sunday. They would have had a big disagreement over the weather. "What do you mean it's cold? It was so hot I can boil egg in 3 seconds on top of my head." "You're out of your mind. It was wet and cold I had to put another layer on. So much for a great summer day."

I don't know what good one can deduce out of this tragedy. But I am sure it is not a random, meaningless event brought about by the mother nature who ran amok. God allowed it. God did it for a reason that we would be hard pressed to find out. He is not accountable to us His creation, that's perhaps the most important lesson that Job learned from God when he complained to God about his darkest day in his life. His infinite wisdom is far deeper than ours.

A few things are certain, however.

1. God shows to the people of Australia that He alone is sovereign. He alone is omnipotent. He is the Lord of creation who is capable to control the weather, fire, wind, snow, water, etc. And that other things people hold onto and rely upon are fragile. In fact, those things are idols that cannot give us security on earth, let alone eternal security. God alone deserves our utmost reliance. This perhaps is the most recent national reminder to people of Australia that their lives, without God, have no certainties whatsoever.

2. God shows us that our life is like a vapor, and without God that brevity of life is lived in vain. The ridiculous amount of wealth and asset we amass over the years in the end amount to nothing in the absence of God. Jesus once called a rich man who did the same "Fool!" I was reading these verses this morning, and was reminded of the futility of running after things of this world:

"And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him,'Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God" (Luke 12:19-21)

3. For those who are God's purchased people, His promise in Romans 8:28 applied on Saturday. "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." We do not know what good can be drawn out of it, as I wrote above. And I don't want to pretend I know. But I know two things for certain:

a. God does not have to account for what He did or allowed to happened. He didn't have to answer it verbally. But He did not sit around doing nothing. He came in the midst of us, suffered with us emotionally and physically on the cross. Not only He showed solidarity to us human, but through His death and resurrection He gave us hope beyond death. He who experienced first hand the pain we feel as human shows us the way that death is not the ultimate thing. It does not have the final say. Jesus does. And in Him, we have the strength to carry on. In Him, we have hope beyond death.

b. This tragedy, to those whose lives are spared by God to see their loved ones gone, provides the loudest and clearest opportunity for them to acknowledge in the middle of this otherwise unbearable sadness that Christ is enough. Christ in sufficient. In Him alone one finds refuge, solace, and comfort. The happy times we have don't give us that perspective; on the contrary that blurs our devotion between God or Mammon. If we praise God when we get a promotion, pass an exam with flying colors, have a successful surgery, restore a broken relationship, it is easy for us to savor merely the blessings of God, but not God himself. Only difficult times provide the crystal clear opportunity to say with the Asaph

"Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever"(Psalm 73:25-26).

Photo above courtesy of The Age

Piper on Christ and Christian Sacrifice

An excellent 'sermon jam' from John Piper's keynote at the 2008 Together for the Gospel Conference entitled How the Supremacy of Christ Creates Radical Christian Sacrifice.

If you want to hear the whole sermon (it's worth doing, I did. Twice so far), you can find it here.

The Return of Ted Haggard

Christianity Today posts a piece on Ted Haggard by someone who knows him well and questions his repentance. This is an interesting piece to read when one asks the question: How should we treat a fallen pastor?

But what is most painful is the question the documentary doesn't ask:Why? Why, just a few months after Haggard and his family suffered an unspeakable tragedy in public view, would he invite the cameras back? Why would he want his story documented and sold in this way? Anyone who cares about Haggard, as I do, must see this comeback as a continuation of his tragedy.

If you are not aware of Haggard's case, Christianity Today has a special section on Haggard.

Hot Days, Cool Change, and Jesus Christ

The last three days have been very trying for me, and everyone who lives in Melbourne. The temperature soared beyond 40 degrees C for four consecutive days. This is the worst temperature in the last 100 years, according to the Bureau of Meterology. Today the media reported the temperature hit 45.1 maximum around 4.30pm. It is unbearably hot! I can prepare a sunny set up in a blink on my work desk.

Approximately 350,000 homes across Melbourne and the greater area of Victoria do not have power following a massive power blackout. Hundreds of trains have been cancelled throughout the city, causing a huge mass of commuters left stranded in various stations across Melbourne. Lots of people who can afford their time and lifestyle choose to stay overnight on the beach. There is a lot of bushfire around the outer areas, and many firefighters experienced heat stress fighting them. Some people lost their houses. I feel for them.

At a much smaller and personal level, I had my share of agony as I moved office in the last two days. Yesterday I spent hours packing my stuff into boxes until 6.30pm. Altogether there were 24 reasonably large boxes of textbooks, books, journal articles, and research data. Weird it may sound, but my old office does not any air con, as it is part of a very old building that simply can't take the load that comes with a cooling system. Understandably I perspired quite a lot.

In between packing books and getting endless cups of cold water, I cannot stop thinking about what hell must feel like. If I can't stand 43 degree for even 2 hours, what does it feel to be in hell for eternity?

The New Testament's word understood as hell is Gehenna, which is really a metaphor for hell. It was actually a burning garbage dump near Jerusalem. The place used to be a site for child sacrifice to a pagan God, a practice that was outlawed by King Josiah in the book of Second Kings. Jesus used the word Gehenna some 12 times (e.g., Matthew 10:28; Matthew 23:33). When He used Gehenna as a metaphor of hell, don't think for a minute "O in that case, there is no real hell." The whole purpose of using a garbage dump where the fire never stops was to give a word picture and evoke a certain sensation of hell. If Gehenna is hot and painful, let alone hell!

I had a preview of hell yesterday in my office, which is like a modern Gehenna minus the garbage.

The cool change that will come on Sunday is always a reminder of God's mercy towards men and women who deserve to get hot days beyond 50 degrees all the days of their lives. But in His own way of showing love and justice, and keeping them in the balance, God sent His son Jesus Christ to rot under the scorching sun, crucified. He was crushed for our iniquities, bearing the sins of the world on His shoulder, experienced hellish suffering.

A series of hot days in Melbourne should remind us of Christ who went to hell so that you and I don't have to. When the cool change comes, we know we are the recipients of that amazing grace of God in Christ Jesus.

Christian Meditation: More Metaphors

The whole quote below is taken from A Christian on the Mount by Thomas Watson, who wrote with such an impassioned eloquence!

Without meditation the truths which we know will never affect our hearts.
Deut. 6:6, "These words which I command this day shall be in your heart."
How can the Word be in the heart—unless it be wrought in by meditation?

As an hammer drives a nail to the head—so meditation drives a truth to the heart.
It is not the taking in of food—but the stomach's digesting it, which makes it turn into nourishment.
Just so, it is not the taking in of a truth at the ear—but the meditating on it,
which is the digestion of it in the mind, which makes it nourish.

Without meditation, the Word preached may increase notion, but not affection.

There is as much difference between the knowledge of a truth, and the meditation on a truth,
as there is between the light of a torch, and the light of the sun.
Set up a lamp or torch in the garden, and it has no influence.
But the sun has a sweet influence, it makes the plants to grow, and the herbs to flourish.
Just so, knowledge is like a torch lighted in the understanding,
which has little or no influence—it does not make not a man the better.
But meditation is like the shining of the sun—it operates upon the affections,
it warms the heart and makes it more holy.

Meditation fetches life in a truth.
There are many truths which lie, as it were, in the heart dead—
which when we meditate upon, they begin to have life and heat in them.
Meditation on a truth is like rubbing a man in a swoon—it fetches life.

It is meditation, which makes a Christian!

Christian Meditation: A Metaphor

“Remember that it is not hasty reading, but serious meditation on holy and heavenly truths, that makes them prove sweet and profitable to the soul. It is not the mere touching of the flower by the bee that gathers honey, but her abiding for a time on the flower that draws out the sweet. It is not he that reads most, but he that meditates most, that will prove to be the choicest, sweetest, wisest and strongest Christian”

~ Thomas Brooks

Occasional Shot

A two-hundred year old tree at Fitzroy Garden, Melbourne.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.

~ Psalm 139:13-16

Pastor Steven Cole cited the following amazing facts and stats from Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden, Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence [Ballentine Books], pp. 23-25) about our God-knitted body:

Consider the miracle of the human body: Every second more than 100,000 chemical reactions take place in your brain. It has 10 billion nerve cells to record what you see and hear. That information comes to your brain through the miracle of the eye, which has 100 million receptor cells (rods and cones) in each eye. Your retina also has four other layers of nerve cells. Altogether the system makes the equivalent of 10 billion calculations a second before an image even gets to the optic nerve.

Once it reaches your brain, the cerebral cortex has more than a dozen separate vision centers in which to process it. Your tear ducts supply a bacteria-fighting fluid to protect your eyes from infection. The tears that fight irritants differ from the tears of sadness, which contain 24percent more proteins. That’s not to mention the miracle of the ear and how it translates sound waves into meaningful speech and sounds; or of touch, taste, and smell.

Part of your brain regulates voluntary matters, such as muscle coordination and thought processes. Other parts of the brain control involuntary processes, such as digestion, glandular secretions, the rate at which your heart beats, etc. How did it accidentally happen that your body could speed up your heart rate to the proper speed to meet increased oxygen demand when you exercise and slow it down when that need is met?

One square inch of your skin has about 625 sweat glands, 19 feet of blood vessels, and 19,000 sensory cells. Working in coordination with your brain, it maintains your body at a steady 98.6 degrees under all weather conditions.

Your stomach has 35 millionglands which secrete the right amounts of juices to allow your body to digest food and convert it
into stored energy for your muscles. To avoid digesting itself, your stomach produces a new lining every three days. Your body is an efficient machine: to ride a bicycle for an hour at ten miles per hour requires only 350 calories, the energy equivalent of only three table-spoons of gasoline.

You have more than 200 bones, each shaped for its function, connected intricately to one another through lubricated joints that cannot be perfectly duplicated by modern science. More than 500 muscles connect to these bones. Some obey willful commands; others perform their duty in response to unconscious commands from the brain. They all work together to keep us alive. The heart muscle itself beats over 103,000 times each day, pumping your blood cells a distance of 168 million miles.

Coupled with that, your lungs automatically breathe in the right amount of life-giving oxygen (about 438 cubic feet each day),
which just happens to be mixed in the right proportions (about 20% oxygen, 80% nitrogen) in our atmosphere. Each of the other vital organs and glands in your body works in complex conjunction with the others to sustain life, which science can’t explain or create.

A single human chromosome (DNA molecule) contains 20 billion bits of information . . . Twenty billion bits are the equivalent of about three billion letters. If there are approximately six letters in an average word, the information content of a human chromosome corresponds to about 500 million words. If there are about 300 words on an ordinary page of printed type, this corresponds to about two million pages. If a typical book contains 500 such pages, the information content of a single human chromosome corresponds to some 4,000 volumes.

Psalm 139

What is the Gospel?

“The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.”

~ Tim Keller, The Reason for God.

It's about the Worldview

Robert Giacalone uttered a prophetic voice from the wilderness to those who work in business schools. As one of those people, I feel his article in the Academy of Management Learning & Education (6:4) entitled Taking a red pill to disempower unethical students: Creating ethical sentinels in business school convicting and true. Here is the highlight:

"At the turn of this century, the choices confronting business educators are no less daunting and the consequences are no less severe . . . We are focused solely on the noble goals of serving our students and their organizations by giving students skills that impress potential employers . . . We are following the implicit "orders" of powerful interests and shaping student worldviews to fit those who control the resources . . . We are supplying organizations with the tools of their destruction-unethical students credentialed with our degrees who help to ruin organizations and the lives of countless stakeholders . . We have taken the easiest path, socializing and educating students cued to the organizationally desired profile.

While this approach makes organizational executives smile, it relieves us of our role as experts and leaders. Experts should not tell their clients what they want to hear, unquestioningly give clients what they want to buy, or automatically deliver what clients think they need. Experts inform, educate, and enlarge the worldview of those with whom they collaborate; they do not appease" (Giacalone, 2007:534-535).

Confessing Your Sins to Others

I always believe that vulnerability is a great asset that leaders can have. Leaders who are willing to be vulnerable garner a level of trust that followers would otherwise never develop towards their leaders. The reason is simple. When the leaders are willing to be vulnerable (admitting mistakes, limitations, and weaknesses, or simply sincerely saying "I am sorry. That's completely my fault"), followers can associate themselves with their leaders in a far more profound way.

In the context of Christian community, that may mean leaders who are willing to confess their sins to a (few of) Christian brothers and sisters in their accountability circles. The practice of confessing sins is without question very hard to do in cultures that uphold face-saving. Confessing sin is a big way to lose face, one runs the risk of losing his/her reputation for good. Sure the risk is minimized or even absent in the context of a Christian accountability group. But the risk is still there on the part of the confessor. But what is interesting is that this tendency is not exclusive to those cultures. Because of the prevalent presence of pride in every person, no one likes to confess sins. The following quote from Bonhoeffer's Life Together says it best:

“Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, andthe more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation… This can happen even in the midst of a pious community. In confession the light of the Gospel breaks into the darkness and seclusion of the heart. The sin must be brought into the light. The unexpressed must be openly spoken and acknowledged. All that is secret and hidden is made manifest. It is a hard struggle until the sin is openly admitted. But God breaks gates of brass and bars of iron (Ps. 107:16)…”

“The root of all sin is pride… I want to be my own law, I have a right to my self, my hatred and my desires, my life and my death. The mind and flesh of man are set on fire by pride; for it is precisely in his wickedness that man wants to be as God … In the confession of concrete sins the old man dies a painful, shameful death before the eyes of a brother. Because this humiliation is so hard we continually scheme to evade confessing to a brother. Our eyes are so blinded that they no longer see the promise and the glory in such abasement.”

“Since the confession of sin is made in the presence of a Christian brother, the last stronghold of self-justification is abandoned. The sinner surrenders; he gives up all his evil. He gives his heart to God, and he finds the forgiveness of all his sin in the fellowship of Jesus Christ and his brother… Now he stands in the fellowship of sinners who live by the grace of God in the Cross of Jesus Christ.”

Coffee as A Means of Grace

I can't live without coffee (though thankfully it has not become my idol). When I worked on my doctorate years ago, I felt like a machine that turned coffee into dissertation. Today I still feel the same way though the outputs are different. The coffee are turned into journal articles and sermon texts.

If you can relate to my experience, you may want to read the following theological reflection from Michael Svigel on the doctine of drinking coffee. Svigel took his humor painstakingly serious. Read his full-text academic paper on the doctrine of coffee drinking here. But here are the highlights of the spiritual benefits of coffee (apart from the obvious, physical ones):

1. Drinking Coffee Prepares the Flesh for Suffering.
According to the New Testament, suffering is an honor, a virtue, and a means of sanctification. We are to endure it with joy. Drinking coffee helps our sinful flesh to prepare for joyful suffering. It upsets the stomach and has a diarrheic effect on the digestive system. It can irritate ulcers and causes a jittery nervousness. Withdrawal from long coffee binges causes dreadful headaches that no amount of medication can relieve. Besides this, any honest coffee drinker will admit that coffee is a horrid beverage. If the brew is too weak, it tastes like dirty water; if it is too strong, it tastes like motor oil. To temper the inherent and unavoidable nastiness, one must add cream, milk, sugar, blue stuff, pink stuff, clumps, lumps, drops, syrups, froth, or foam. The whole ordeal can cause mental or emotional anguish to the indecisive and possibly separation anxiety when a failed mix of coffee and condiments must be poured down the drain.

In short, coffee drinking is suffering.

However, it is also joy. It stimulates the body and the mind. It acts as an anti-depressant and creates a bond of fellowship and community among consumers. A hot, steamy cup warms the heart on a frosty day; a cold, icy glass cools the soul when it’s hot. It wakes us up and keeps us alert. It gives us something to hold firmly in our hands and sip soothingly with our lips for peace and security in uncomfortable and stressful times.

2. Drinking Coffee Prepares the Body for Prayer.
We are told to pray without ceasing; to offer up prayers of every kind to God. However, there is always an obstacle that seems to separate us from true, heart-felt prayer to God: the weak flesh. On the night he was betrayed, our Lord instructed his disciples to be alert and to pray, lest they fall into temptation (Matt 26:40-45; Luke 22:45-46). Unfortunately, on three occasions he returned to find his disciples asleep!

Until I accepted coffee as a means of grace, I struggled both internally and externally with the entire concept of waking up early in the morning to seek the Lord in prayer. Internally, I could never believe the tales of people who said they woke up at 4:00 a.m. and prayed for hours. I thought, “How could anybody get up that early and then stay awake that long?!” Externally, whenever I attempted to follow this model, I ended up asleep using my folded hands as a pillow. No, certainly there had to be an answer to this difficult question.

When one factors in coffee as a means of waking up the believer and then keeping him or her alert, all of the practical problems with rising early and seeking the Lord are solved. Coffee has a very positive effect on the prayer life of the believer. In some cases, it is indispensable.

3. Drinking Coffee Contributes to the Edification of the Church.
A story was once told to me about Lewis Sperry Chafer, the founder of Dallas Theological Seminary. The story goes that early in his career Dr. Chafer was morally opposed to the consumption of coffee, believing its effects were detrimental to the spiritual life of the believer. He avoided all forms of caffeine.

However, as he began to work on his magnum opus, his multi-volume Systematic Theology, he began to tamper with the beverage: a sip here, a taste there. Surely, the experience tried his conscience, but slowly the Spirit led him out from under his self-imposed spiritual bondage to a legalistic view of coffee consumption. In no time, Dr. Chafer was drinking coffee every day. It is said that without his coffee throughout the day, Dr. Chafer could never have completed his Systematic Theology and the Church would have never benefited from his work.

What Makes Pastors Unhealthy?

I came across a fairly recent article by Little, Simmons, and Nelson (2007) in the Journal of Management Studies (one of the top management journals in the world) which reported a study on the leaders' psychological health. The title of the article is Health Among Leaders: Positive and Negative Affect, Engagement, and Burnout, Forgiveness, and Revenge. What is unique about the study is that it utilized pastors as its sample.

Ninety four all-male pastors from various congregations belonging to a denomination in a five-state region in the US participated and completed the survey questionnaire. Nearly 40% were senior pastors; the rest were pastors, exec pastors, worship pastors, youth pastors, etc. Hierarchical regression analyses were employed to analyze the data obtained from completed questionnaires which measure family-work conflict (family interferes with work-related responsibilities), work-family conflict (work interferes with family-related responsibilities), negative affect, positive affect, burnout, engagement, revenge behavior, forgiveness behavior, and perception of health.

The purpose of the study is to examine the positive psychological state engagement, the negative psychological state burnout, the positive behavior forgiveness, and the negative behavior revenge and their influence on the leaders' health. The study was based on the assumption that the health of a leader has significant effects on the organization, its members, and the leader him/herself.

To cut to the chase, their studies found the following points:

1. Only two of six variables that were hypothesized to predict health (positive affect and revenge behavior) were statistiscally significant predictors of health. What it means is as follows.

2. Positive Affect (PA) was found to be positively and significantly related to health. PA reflects the extent to which a person feels enthusiastic, active, and alert at work and derives pleasure from their general work environment and responsibilities. This study confirmed previous finding that a leader's PA level does affect his or her psychological health and effective functioning.

3. Revenge behavior was another factor that significantly predicts health, but in a negative way. The study used the definion of revenge as "the infliction of harm in return for a perceived wrong" (Bradfield and Aquino, 1999). The pastors were asked to think back over the last six months when another person offended them, then to write a few sentences describing the offence prior to completing the measure on revenge behavior which has the following items:
- I told them something was wrong with them
- I tried to make something bad happen to them
- I did something to make them get what they deserved
- I got even with them
- I prayed for God to deal severely with them

Interestingly, contrary to common belief, burnout was not significantly and negatively related to health. More interestingly, while the pastors in this study engaged in (thankfully) very little revenge behavior, when they did it even in a small degree it had a major negative impact on their health.

Another finding worth considering is that while work-family and family-work conflicts do not have a direct relationship with health, they are positively related to revenge behavior. Thus, when the pastor is being called at night to meet with bereaved families, hence miss his family time, the propensity to engage others in great emotional intensity (revenge) increases. Similarly, when the pastor's child complains that his dad is always absent from his soccer game because of ministry duties, the pastor is likely to respond vengefully towards the child (e.g., "There is nothing I can do about this. I am a pastor - don't you understand?")

The lessons are clear. If pastors want to maintain their psychological health, they need to ensure that (1) they really need to enjoy their work immensely as a matter of delight (not duty) and (2) guard their hearts against the raw emotions that might erupt as a result of the conflicts they have with their family and the congregations no matter how insignificant they may appear to be in the first place.

All things Calvin

These past two weeks Reformed bloggers have been buzzing with the coverage of many important events surrounding the 500th anniversary of John Calvin’s birth this year. Yes, Calvin is turning 500 this year! It's his quincentennary! To be exact, his birthday will be celebrated on July 10, 2009.

The sixteenth century Reformator is no doubt the most influential figure in the history of the church. His life, piety, theology, and action have had continuing, profound effects in various private and public domains both within and beyond the church which were transformed as a result.

This year is a very opportune time to read the Institutes for those of us who haven't done so, or just read a few sections of his masterpiece. It is also a good time to go deep into the essential tenets of the Reformed theology, knowing that there is a great incentive to do so namely there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who are doing the same thing this year.

Below is my attempt to list all things Calvin online as of today (albeit it is incomplete). You will likely to encounter household names in the Reformed circle offering their thoughts on how Calvin has influenced them and the world.

1. The Calvin 500 blog. Fostering a healthy discussion for an international community about events, conferences, tours, reviews, studies, discussions, and developments related to the 2009 quincentenary of Calvin’s birth.

2. Monergism on John Calvin. One of the best sources for commentaries, essays, articles, multimedia on Calvin.

3. Martin Downes collects audio links to Calvin.

4. Knowing the Truth radio program features many scholars who will discuss Calvin during the month of January.

5. Reformation 21 is blogging the Institutes.

6. Princeton Seminary is also blogging the Institutes

7. Scott Clark offers his take on Calvin-related books.

8. Martin Lynk reads the Institutes and provides his daily reflections on it.

What is interesting is the big anticipation of heaps of books that will be published this year on Calvin. Here is a case in point, which have enjoyed positive reviews and one that I have been wanting to purchase: John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine, Doxology, edited by Burk Parsons. See the Table of Content and Sample Chapter. Also an interview with Dr Parsons on the book.












Finally, I thought I end this post with the statues of the leading Reformation figures in the Reformation Wall Geneva: (left to right) Theodore Beza (1519 – 1605), John Calvin (1509 – 1564), William Farel (1489 – 1565), and John Knox (c.1513 – 1572).

Learning How to Live from Death

If you are like many people who try to get your life back in shape, by now you would have done your end-of-year reflection and built a list of resolutions or some sort of action items organized and set to put into action (with some anxiety whether or not inertia will soon kick in).

What I found very convicting recently was the way Moses reflected his life as a spiritual father of the Israelites. In Psalm 90 he was enabled to face his life forward by looking forward. In fact, he stated that the significance of his fleeting life when he pondered about death. Sound too morbid?

We know that Moses led approximately 2 million Israelites out of bondage in Egypt to usher them into the promised land. Their disobedience to God however has stopped them from entering the land. Moses was the man who dealt with death of one generation among these people in the wilderness. Number 1 tells us about the census of every man who were able to go to war. According to verse 45-46 "So all those listed of the people of Israel, by their fathers' houses, from twenty years old and upward, every man able to go to war in Israel — all those listed were 603,550."

If you include the women and children as well, there must be are least 1.2 million people who died during those 40 years. And if you do the math, that averaged 30,000 every year, or about 82 per day! Tragically however we read in Numbers (e.g., 16:49; 25:9) that in certain days there far more people who were killed due to their sins.

Can you imagine how Moses looked with his own eyes body after body falling to the ground? Can you try to comprehend what could have been in his mind when he had to lead mass funerals for his people?

He knew however that these deaths was the consequence of their sins which were met with God’s wrath. This should remind us that death is never a natural part of the life cycle, as the secular values teach us to believe. It entered this world as God’s direct judgment on the sin of the human race (Gen. 2:17; 3:19).

The reality of death and sin that confronted Moses propelled him to reflect deeply on how his (and our) fleeing life can have meaning? Thankfully he was not driven to despair and cynicism in his reflection. Instead, he was driven to worship and prayer, and his prayer came to us today in the form of Psalm 90.

Moses reminded us that life is futile if we do not truly know this eternal God as our personal dwelling place. Life is futile if we are outside Christ as we will be under God’s condemnation for our sins. Understanding this background makes me appreciate more his famous line: "So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom" (90:12).

Social Entrepreneurs: The Next Big Thing?

Around this time last year, John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan released an interesting book on how social entrepreneurs deal with and solve some of the world's most pressing economic, social, and environmental problems almost simultaneously and (this is the neat thing) while doing so creating new markets across the globe.

Pamela Hartigan is the head of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Her co-author, John Elkington, is the founder of a consulting firm SustainAbility and a progressive thinker whose work I have read since many years ago as an MBA student. His most famous one is perhaps Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business.

Why does the term 'social entrepreneurs' become one of today's buzzwords?
a. Because the challenges we face today as human beings are getting extremely complex
b. Governments are too slow to respond to these challenges; the bureaucrats are once again clueless
c. Businesses are finding themselves in a dire need to revitalize themselves in the declining global market

The combination of the three facts above set the stage of social entrepreneurs; those who know how to do well by doing good. They are both socially responsible and commercially adept at spotting profitable opportunities in unlikely places. They are able to solve large scale issues in developing countries with very limited resources, very creative solutions, and very tangible, lasting benefits for the wider society.

The title of the book, The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets that Change the World, was inspired by a quote by George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

The book outlines cases of how these social entrepreneurs capitalize on the dire situations confronting the poorest consumers at the "bottom of the pyramid". Following the footsteps of the grandad of social entrepreneurs and the nobel prize winner Mr Mohammed Yunus, they turned the poorest clients into profitable customers.

Several cases in point cited in the book. ParqueSoft is an innovative technology incubator that reaches out to young people from poor areas of Columbia to develop software teams for companies in optics, artificial intelligence, “edutainment,” bioinformatics, and nanotechnology. At the same time that the incubator supports research and development and teaches business concepts. Another social experiment cited in the book is a for-profit organization called Sekem which developed new farming methods in Egypt to support six new businesses in the area of food production. It also improves the value chain and builds transparency and fairness that did not exist before; hence enhancing the overall welfare of the farmers.