Spiritual Coffee: Being Christian Without Church or Bible? - Alan Jacobs on C.S. Lewis and Steve Jobs Moralizing - Listening to Christians with Same-Sex Desires

Weekend roundup of three thought-provoking articles for sharpening your thinking as a Christian.
(Click on Spiritual Coffee for prior posts collecting resources for the Christian mind.)

Majority of American Christians Do Not Find Bible Reading and Church Attendance Essential, Chris
Martin (Millennial Evangelical)
Thoughtful reflections on what Pew research shows about how millennials understand Christianity. A majority seem to believe in a Christian faith that requires no church body, Bible reading, or service to other Christians. It's essentially a Christian faith divorced from all religious activities. Think about the implications of that view, and what it means for trying to disciple and encourage millennial-age believers. It's not just a worldview issue, like previous Barna Group research on whether Christians have a biblical worldview. It's an issue that goes to the root of identity and soul - trying to be Christian without being part of the vine. (John 15).

"Earlier this month, the Pew Research Center published some data on what American Christians value in everyday life. The data is fascinating, and I’d encourage you to read the summary here or the full report here. Today, I want to look at just one of the graphs they provide.

"Following “believing in God” the four “essential parts” that received the most votes were: “being grateful for what you have,” “forgiving those who have wronged you,” “being honest at all times,” and “praying regularly.” 

"Obviously, all four of these actions are admirable and should be present in anyone who calls him- or herself a follower of Jesus. Any day of the week I can carry out one of these actions with some success I consider it a good day as far as obedience is concerned. 

"However, the intrigue in this graph is not so much in what is valued, but rather, what is not valued by a majority of American Christians."

Middle-Aged Moralists, Alan Jacobs (Medium.com)
In 1944, C.S. Lewis gave an address at King's College in London that is widely regarded as one of his most valuable messages. The Inner Ring is something every Christian should read (I summarized here the reasons why) because it teaches something penetrating and revealing about what influences and motivates us. Here, Jacobs (a biographer of Lewis and a remarkably interesting writer and professor) focuses on something else: the differences between the way Lewis gave something like a commencement speech and what we find in typical speeches today.

"When C. S. Lewis gave the Memorial Address at King’s College, London in 1944 — the occasion being very like an American university commencement — he began by commenting, 'When you invite a middle-aged moralist to address you, I suppose I must conclude, however unlikely the conclusion seems, that you have a taste for middle-aged moralising. I shall do my best to gratify it.'

"It was a shrewd move. Lewis himself always loathed the pompous didacticism he had found endemic to the English educational system, and expected that his audience would too. 'Everyone knows what a middle-aged moralist of my type warns his juniors against. He warns them against the World, the Flesh, and the Devil.' But with a smile on his face, he declared that he would play to type: 'I shall, in fact, give you advice about the world in which you are going to live.'

"Let’s fast-forward about sixty years, to a commencement address at Stanford University. The speaker this time is not a professor but rather a businessman named Steve Jobs and he makes it clear from the outset that he’ll not be doing any “middle-aged moralising.” Rather, he says, “Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.”

"And yet it’s not clear, when you think about it, that Jobs’s message is any less moralistic than Lewis’s. It just bears a different moral."

You Are Not Your Sexuality, Sam Allberry (TGC)
Video message with a short summary at the link. Allberry is a pastor who has resisted same-sex attraction throughout his life, and can speak from the inside about how to think biblically about homosexuality. This is exceptionally important for Christians. Too often we have missed the difference between disputing a cultural and legal change regarding marriage and sexuality vs. listening to and caring for individual people who have same-sex attractions and desires. Many of us have never really learned to understand what it feels like for people, partly because we are afraid that listening to their feelings will make us just like modernist and post-modernist Christians who affirm whatever someone feels is true. That has caused us to fail at ministering to people with this burden.

We need to understand, and yet remain biblical and Gospel-based in how we handle sharing this burden with our brothers and sisters. We need to excel at loving people while still caring for them in truth and wisdom. I am thankful for pastors like Allberry who can help us do that.

A Wise Man Never Trusts Himself Completely

J.C. Ryle (from Banner of Truth):

'Let it be a settled principle in our religion, that there is an amount of weakness in all our hearts, of which we have no adequate conception, and that we never know how far we might fall if we were tempted. We fancy sometimes, like Peter, that there are some things we could not possibly do. We look pitifully upon others who fall, and please ourselves in the thought that at any rate we should not have done so. We know nothing at all. The seeds of every sin are latent in our hearts, even when renewed, and they only need occasion, or carelessness, and the withdrawal of God's grace of a season, to put forth an abundant crop...The servant of Christ will do wisely to remember these things.

"Let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall" (1 Cor. 10:12).

A humble sense of our own innate weakness, a constant dependence on the Strong for strength, a daily prayer to be held up, because we cannot hold up ourselves, these are the true secrets of safety.'

Bottom line: the only one you can always trust is God Himself. The Bible gives us the standard against which to test our desires and motivations. It is always reliable, even when we are not. And God counsels and advises us through the Holy Spirit and prayer. But to receive that counsel, you must be often in the Word of God and spend time earnestly baring your heart to Him in prayer. You don't hear what you don't listen for. "Cease to hear instruction, my son, and you will stray from the words of knowledge." (Proverbs 19:27)

The Encouragement of the Old Testament - Genesis

Reading through Genesis has shown me a lot about God's power and faithfulness, which has greatly strengthened my faith that God can and will help us in our struggles. Seeing how God fulfills His promises despite impossible circumstances is a strong reminder that no challenge in front of us is too difficult for God.

God promised Abraham that he would be the father of a nation whose people would be like the sand on the seashore. God made this promise to a man who was well-advanced in age, and whose wife Sarah had never been able to have children. (Genesis 17:17; 18:11-13; 16:1.) In other words, God chose two people who no one would expect to have children to be the parents of an entire nation, His chosen people. (Gen. 21:5-7.) Most people know that God nevertheless gave them a child: Isaac.

What some of us may not have noticed is that Isaac, the heir of Abraham and the next in line to father the nation, also took a wife who couldn't have children! (Gen. 25:21.) And their son Jacob, who became the next heir of the Promise, also had two wives who both could not conceive. (Gen. 29:31.) God began His promise to create a great nation with three generations who could not naturally conceive any offspring. Yet he gave each of them children. Jacob's name was later changed to Israel, and he fathered the twelve tribes of Israel.

This has been a reminder to me of what the Lord said to Abraham: "Is anything too difficult for the Lord?" (Gen. 18:14.) God often chooses difficult or impossible circumstances in order to teach us to depend on Him and in order to make it clear that it is God's power that brings success, not ours. Reading these Scriptures reminds me not to be discouraged by what seems overwhelming, but instead to trust in God's faithfulness and power.

The Encouragement of the Old Testament - Psalms Part 2

Another way that the Psalms and Lamentations have encouraged me is how they express confidence in God's faithfulness and His goodness. When you read the words of people who were in deepest despair - people like David, whose father-in-law the King of Israel was hunting him down to try to kill him - you can find tremendous encouragement from the fact that these writers still trusted God and turned to Him for relief. Even in their darkest struggles, they had faith in God. If they can trust Him through such trials, then we can too.

Part of the comfort I have taken in books like the Psalms is the fact that they do not belittle or demean the pain of suffering. They don't try to trivialize it or suggest we're overreacting to it. On the contrary, it is clear from the Psalms that the writers experienced agonizing suffering. But their faith still held throughout their trials, and they still affirmed God's goodness. So whatever we're struggling through, we can be comforted that God was faithful to them and will be faithful to us. Great suffering is not evidence that God has abandoned us. If we put our trust in Him and hold fast to His promises, as the Psalmists did, we will find hope and comfort.

Four of my favorite Psalms for comfort: Psalm 34, Psalm 37, Psalm 56, and Psalm 73.

The Encouragement of the Old Testament - Psalms

I used to think the Old Testament was not as important as the New Testament. I have to confess I saw it more as historical background, and therefore not as relevant or useful in everyday Christian life. What changed my mind was reading through it regularly in my daily Bible reading. I am amazed by what I was neglecting. As my faith and my relationship with God have developed, I have grown tremendously in my appreciation for the importance of the Old Testament writings in my daily life.

Example #1: I have found great encouragement in struggling with pain and suffering (both physical and emotional) through books like the Psalms and Lamentations. These books express cries of pain, anguish, grief, despair, and doubt very powerfully. I used to dismiss them because they were poetic. Now I cherish them, because they show that real children of God do struggle and that it is right to cry out to God in your struggles. David wrote a huge number of the Psalms. He was a man after God's own heart, yet he had these thoughts and made these anguished cries. So it's okay to admit you feel this way and to tell God about it. If David could express his heartache and fear and still be a man after God's own heart, then you can too (man or woman).

Some of us think that we have to suppress our struggles and pretend we aren't feeling doubt or fear, because we would somehow be accusing God or showing a lack of faith if we admitted to feeling this way. That is dangerous and unhealthy. We can't bear these burdens on our own. We need God to overcome these struggles. David honored God by crying out to Him in his suffering, because David showed that he trusted God as both the One who was powerful enough to rescue him and the One who was gracious and compassionate enough to do it.

Your feelings and thoughts aren't hidden from God (Psalm 139:1-4). He already knows how you're feeling inside, so there's no reason to avoid sharing it with Him in prayer. But when you express these things to Him in prayer and ask for His aid, you honor Him the same way David did. And you can take comfort knowing that God responds to these prayers:

When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears
and delivers them out of all their troubles.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
and saves the crushed in spirit.
Psalm 34:17-18

Don't Waste Your Bible - Any of It

One foundational truth of reading Scripture is that you need the whole Bible. I mentioned here that you shouldn't discourage yourself by getting too ambitious when you first start committing to reading your Bible each day. However, once you get started, make it your goal to eventually get through every single book of the Bible. If you just stick to the New Testament or if you avoid some books, you will leave yourself with an unbalanced and fragmented appreciation of God. You will also miss out on some of the best ammunition for fighting sin and finding encouragement. I'll give examples in the next couple of posts.

Paul exhorted Christians to appreciate the value of reading the Old Testament:

"For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope." Romans 15:4

"Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come." 1 Corinthians 10:11

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work." 2 Timothy 3:16-17

God gave us the Bible as the best explanation of who He is and what He created us for. Unlike some books, there is nothing in the Bible that is there by accident. It is all important. We can't expect to have a full and abundant Christian life if we only listen to half of God's message.

A Little Bible Reading Can Go a Long Way

Don't get discouraged about Bible reading by thinking there's a quota you have to meet. You don't have to get through the whole Bible in a year and you don't have to read from several different sections in the same day. Even a short reading each day can have significant impact. Tom Elliff has a good example of this at his blog. He has made a practice for about 28 years of reading one chapter of Proverbs each day, regardless of whatever else he is reading in the Bible. His post gives some great insights into how putting the words of Proverbs before your mind every day can produce some valuable results. Having started my own daily Bible reading in Proverbs several years ago, I agree heartily with what he has to say about the benefits.

Tom's post identifies one of the key benefits of Bible reading: by spending time each day focusing on what God is teaching, you gradually learn to change your mindset and you begin to recognize bad or self-defeating attitudes in yourself. Reading your Bible is a regular reminder of what healthy thoughts are, and the more you listen to what you read and consciously try to incorporate it into how you think each day and how you make decisions, the more you will benefit from it.

The end goal of Bible reading is not just to learn some things about God. It is also to elevate your own thinking and improve your own choices so that you will be in harmony with God. The more you draw close to God and live and act in harmony with Him, the more you get to enjoy the way God designed you and what He has planned for your joy. God has a beautiful plan for you, but you won't get to appreciate or experience it unless you follow His instructions for it. Make no mistake: learning to listen to God and follow His instructions is a duty we all owe to Him because He is God Almighty and Lord over all. But God has not designed it to be simply a duty or obligation. He has planned it to be the pathway to our deepest satisfaction and joy.

Why You Feel So Thirsty and Empty

Once you believe in Christ as Lord and Savior, reading your Bible every day is the gateway to satisfaction in God. I am not saying that missing a day here or there means you won't find joy. What I am saying is that if you only read your Bible once a week, or only when someone preaches to you, you're missing out on what keeps faith and joy alive. It's like trying to keep a plant alive without watering it.

I am convinced of this because that is exactly what my experience has been. More importantly, though, this is exactly what Jesus said about how much we need our Bibles. He told us that God's words are the food by which we will live: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4 (Jesus was quoting Deuteronomy 8:3); see also Luke 4:4). What He was saying is that we need God's Word the way we need food – to survive! And we need it as often as we need food – daily. He was teaching that God's Word will nourish, refresh, and sustain us just the way food does.

He also taught us that if we want eternal life, we must abide in Him, and that if we want Him to hear our prayers His words must abide in us. (John 15:1-11). That means they have to remain in us, and in order for that to happen we have to keep them close and keep them in our minds. "So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." (Romans 10:17). In fact, it's so crucial to the Christian life that Jesus Himself is referred to as "the Word". (John 1:1).

This is a message God gives us again and again in the Bible. I wasted nearly ten years of my Christian life feeling empty and discouraged because I didn't listen to it. But I know now from experience that God simply means what He says: "Blessed is the man… [whose] delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither." (Psalm 1:1a; 2-3).

If you're feeling withered, God has given you the answer.

Two Essential Secrets to Bible Reading

One of the reasons that many people view Bible reading as a chore is that we often go about it the wrong way. First, we do it just like we would do homework or preparing a report for work: we try to just sit down and do it. But the Bible is not simply a book. It is a message from the Living God. The Bible even says that its words are "living and active" (Hebrews 4:12). There is something spiritual going on here. We can't experience the Bible meaningfully apart from experiencing God. So we need to pray and invite God to act as we read. Here's a promise I love: "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him." (James 1:5). My habit now is to ask God for help and understanding every time I sit down to read the Bible.

So don't try to go about Bible reading mechanically, like digesting a math assignment. It's a spiritual thing, and you need to go about it in a spiritual way. Pray for God's help, pray about what you read, and listen to the words to see if God stirs anything in your heart. When you hit something that really moves you, stop and spend some time thinking about it and asking God to show you what He wants you to do with that.

A second problem with our Bible reading is that most of us do it because we think we're supposed to. That's like saying we have to eat because we're supposed to. Yes, we are supposed to eat. Life doesn't function well if we don't. But are we stuck eating dirt and grass? No - we have an incredible variety to choose from, and we can usually eat what we enjoy! The same thing is true of Bible reading. Reading your Bible is a gift - it's something God has given to you in order to help you find the life He created you to enjoy. So approach it expecting something good to happen. Don't do it in the hope that if you stick with it for the rest of your life, God will approve of you. That's not how faith works.

God approves of those who trust in Him and pursue a relationship with Him in the heart. He doesn't keep score of your obedience to see if you've made the cut. He pays attention to whether you have the right attitude about Him and really want to know Him. He looks to see if you want to experience what He has prepared for you. So don't read your Bible as if you can earn God's blessings by doing your homework faithfully. Read your Bible with hope, trusting God that if you spend time with Him in the words He has given you, something wonderful will happen. In other words, do it because you are trusting Him that you will find satisfaction if you seek it through Him.

Bible Reading Made Easy

The way I started reading my Bible every day was by reading Proverbs. My father-in-law suggested it because there are 31 chapters, so you can read a chapter a day and that will take you through the whole book in a month. It's easy to keep track of, and having a sense of accomplishment right away is helpful. After working through the book four times, I really wanted to expand and experience the rest of the Bible. In the previous 10 years I had managed to read through the Bible perhaps twice, over a long period of time. But after starting simply by doing Proverbs chapter by chapter, I was hungry for more of the change in my outlook that I had experienced in those four months of daily Bible reading.

Just like any new habit, the key to sticking with it is to avoid biting off too much to chew at the beginning. Start with too much ambition and you're likely to get discouraged. It's more important to start and stick with it than it is to accomplish a certain goal right away. So where do you go after Proverbs? Or should you start somewhere else? There's no right or wrong place. The entire Bible is valuable. Listen to how Paul cherished it: "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work." 2 Timothy 3:16-17.

So all Scripture is useful, and you can start wherever you are most interested. If it helps to have a suggestion, I recommend starting with Matthew 1 and going through all four Gospels at whatever pace works for you - even just half a chapter a day. Spending time listening to and observing Jesus each day will do amazing things for your life.

Don't Get Discouraged If You Don't Feel It

I want to make clear at the outset that this was a process. For example, I didn't just wake up one day and decide I really wanted to read my Bible every day, and then happily take to the habit. At first the changes were very small and slow, and it was all I could do to get myself to keep the ambition of reading some of the Bible almost every day. I would miss days and then try to catch up, and sometimes it felt like an obligation that I wasn't excited about taking time for. But I knew that the way I had been doing things before had left me disappointed and unhappy. I knew that my previous pattern of life had failed. So I was trusting God that there was something better for me if I devoted myself to reading the book He gave us.

I would say that for the first several months Bible reading often felt like doing homework. You learn interesting things, and sometimes you have a pleasant time, but often it feels like a chore to get out of the way. So if anyone has tried this or is trying it and has found it to be difficult to stick with, I can empathize. I've been there, but I also can testify that sticking with it caused something wonderful to happen for me that was well worth it. The Bible is full of promises that God will give wisdom, hope, and encouragement to those who read and listen to His Word. The more I read, the more I placed my trust in Him that something would happen in me if I kept at this habit. And I gradually found that I really wanted to read my Bible - in fact, I began to realize that I was generally happier and less overwhelmed during the day if I had made time to read my Bible that day. As I stuck with it, I could see the difference between days I read the Bible and days I didn't. My spiritual mindset was beginning to change.

So Why Should I Keep Reading... ?

If you don't believe in the Christian religion, then my last post may have left you thinking there's nothing here that will be of use to you. You're wrong. Part of what I will do on this blog is explain how I changed from being dissatisfied with life - disappointed by all the pleasures we try to satisfy ourselves with - into a person who has found satisfaction and contentment. I'm talking about the kind of satisfaction that is fulfilling enough that you don't feel like you need to go chasing after anything else. Even if you don't believe Jesus is helpful to you, I am certain you want to be satisfied and fulfill the deepest desires in your heart. It hurts to feel empty and to be disappointed. So take a listen to what happened to me, because you just might find that the results are worth trying for.

A second reason to keep reading is that you might be surprised by what happens. Right now, you might feel like you've heard enough about Jesus from other people and that nothing new is going to make a difference to you. But when I talk about what happened in my life, I'm going to share how the Bible made a difference in my happiness. The Bible also says that "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ." (In other words, through the Bible – Romans 10:17). It also says that the people in the church in Galatia in the 1st century received the Spirit of God by "hearing with faith" (Galatians 3:5). So I have some confidence that if a person listens to what God has to say and listens to what God has done for me, something might change in the way he or she thinks about God and the Bible. It's a pretty safe challenge: if there's nothing to what I'm saying, then you probably won't change your mind. But if what I'm saying is true, then God has been at work here and reading onward might open a door for you to a place you are longing to go.