Spiritual Coffee: Barnabas Piper Leadership Podcasts (Spiritual Disciplines) - Sports Community Replaces Church - Richard John Neuhaus, Liberal and Orthodox?

Catching up on a week of interesting developments. Here are three of the most useful things I've come across to stimulate and sharpen your Christian thinking. As always, prior selections are under Spiritual Coffee.

5 Leadership Questions podcast: Spiritual Disciplines and Leadership, Todd Akins and Barnabas Piper (with Kevin Spratt)
The bonus here is discovering this podcast by Akins and Piper, which has weekly episodes where they "ask five questions of different guests or about different leadership topics. The aim of the podcast is to inform and encourage Christian leaders whether they serve in the pastorate, the business world, non-profits, or on a volunteer basis." This one has a valuable perspective on why we can't take the spiritual disciplines for granted, or get tired of them. Kind of like we shouldn't get tired of breathing or eating. Some things are so basic that you just can't opt out of them if you want life to work.
In addition to a useful concept, Akins and Piper have quotes from each episode posted below the player so you can skim what they talk about.

“Many times the delta between our knowledge and our application is immense.”“Without the fundamentals you don’t have anything to build off of.”
“There are some things that there simply isn’t a newer better way to do.”
“Character is as valuable now as it ever has been, and there aren’t different versions.”
“You can’t really innovate spiritual disciplines.”
“You can’t lead people in a direction you’re not going yourself.”

Check out the episode with Jon Acuff too. Good thoughts on developing yourself for success and staying away from moral failure.

“I try to surround myself with people who have the kind of lives I want to live.”“Hustle is an act of focus, not frenzy.”

Lessons from Cleveland's Religious Devotion to Its Teams, Ed Uszynski (Athletes in Action)
This is a remarkably well-written comparison that identifies the community-bonding and identity-formation aspects of the investment people have in their cities' sports teams. It contrasts how those aspects used to be served primarily by church community. There are some valuable observations here about what may be missing from our churches, as well as what we need to make sure we are getting from church instead of simply from sports and other recreational friendships.

"They actually fill a void previously filled by church attendance and the experience of being a church member. With the decline of institutional religion as an influential reality in communities across America, a key component of human development and one of the primary areas that Christian education used to fill—identity formation—has been taken over by sport culture."

The Liberalism of Richard John Neuhaus, Matthew Rose (National Affairs)
Neuhaus was founder and editor of the Christian magazine First Things, a commentary on religion and public life, up until his death. He is probably one of the most well-known voices addressing the absence of religion in the public square and civil government. He coined the phrase "the Naked Public Square" with his book in the 1980s, describing what had happened to social and civic discussions by the exclusion of 'religion' as an accepted aspect of those discussions. He was a great champion for the importance and appropriateness of religious thought being applied in society, politics, law, and education, but also a very wise and reasonable thinker who didn't suffer from the extremes that some Christians do in trying to 'put the Bible back in school.' He is a man well worth studying and knowing. It's only fair that I include a link to the reminiscences of First Things writers about Neuhaus as well. This article is by no means the definitive portrait of Neuhaus, but it is a great picture nonetheless.

"At the time of his death in 2009, Richard John Neuhaus had been a public figure for nearly four decades. To admirers and friends, he was arguably the most influential American Christian intellectual since Reinhold Niebuhr or John Courtney Murray. The New York Times described him as a 'theologian who transformed himself from a liberal Lutheran leader of the civil rights and anti-war struggles in the 1960s to a Roman Catholic beacon of the neoconservative movement of today.' It was a conventional biographical arc — Neuhaus's life was defined by exchanging the ideals of liberalism for the dogmas of religious traditionalism."

"But that story is misleading, if not worse, since it distorts the convictions of a man wholly defined by his convictions. Neuhaus spent his life contending for the soul of the liberal tradition. Conversions great and small marked his career, and he often quoted Cardinal Newman, saying that 'to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.' But his commitment to political liberalism, far from being a youthful error he later repudiated, was one of his life's few consistent threads. The other was his orthodox Christian faith."

Why You Should Let G.K. Chesterton Baptize Your Christian Mind

If the title seems a bit irreverent, I hope you'll forgive me for quoting C.S. Lewis. Lewis said that what Chesterton did for him was to baptize his intellect much the same way George MacDonald had baptized his imagination. In other words, Chesterton persuaded a young and atheistic Lewis of the rationality and sensibility of Christianity. It would be some years before Lewis fully converted to Christianity, helped largely by J.R.R. Tolkien, but Chesterton's book The Everlasting Man was one of the most significant steps forward. (Here is more on that story.)

Yet that is only a fraction of what Chesterton accomplished. My prayer is that I can persuade you to increase your joy and encouragement by seeing what Chesterton has to offer every Christian.

Image: goodreads.com
http://ow.ly/BrM2301gLHo

G.K. Chesterton died 80 years ago today, but in life he was one of the towering intellects of the 20th century. There are certain Christians that virtually every believer feels they should know something about: Augustine, Martin Luther, John Wesley, John Bunyan, Charles Spurgeon, C.S. Lewis, etc. Chesterton definitely qualifies. He contributed his reason and wit to almost every possible subject that a Christian might encounter. He wrote dozens of books applying Christian truth and reason to the problems of culture and society, addressing everything from materialism and secularism to the culture of death and the disintegration of marriage. He was not trained as a theologian, yet wrote on theology with a brilliance and perceptiveness that stunned professional scholars. His biography of St. Thomas Aquinas was called perhaps the best book ever written on Thomas by Etienne Gilson (himself probably the most significant Thomist scholar of the 20th century).

He debated George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells on philosophy, reason, science, and culture - but they were also his friends. Indeed, Chesterton had a gift for being on good terms with almost anybody, and an irrepressible joviality and cheerfulness that make his writing delightful to read. He wrote biographies of Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson and more. He published a newspaper column for decades as well as his own newspaper. He wrote poetry. He wrote plays. He wrote detective stories that rivaled the Sherlock Holmes tales in popularity. He wrote on history and literature. He debated Clarence Darrow on evolution in New York City in 1931 after the Scopes Trial publicity. Several commentators believed Chesterton won the debate.

On top of all that, Chesterton was a tireless defender of the common man, and skewered political systems and social agendas that pretended to be progressive but in effect really hindered or oppressed the average person. He was relentless in holding ideas and people accountable to plain common sense, and showing how even the most sophisticated rhetoric often fell down when exposed to it. In the conclusion to his book What's Wrong With The World, he gives perhaps the most powerful and thundering defense I've ever heard for why government social engineering must give way before the basic virtue of individual human dignity. Chesterton was not about to tolerate for one minute any social scheme or government plan that made the man (usually the poor man) merely an object manipulated by the state.

As a Christian, you can probably find something Chesterton wrote that speaks to anything in your life. One of the remarkable resources to help you do just that is the American Chesterton Society. They have put an enormous variety of Chesterton's work online and indexed and explained it so that you can pick and choose where to start and what to explore. The Society is really responsible for much of the availability of some of Chesterton's work today, and is a very precious tool.

The American Chesterton Society's "Discover Chesterton" page gives a brief overview of the diversity of his work, and links broken down by category for a sampling of his most interesting writing in each area:

• Chesterton 101
• Chesterton in Brief
• Chesterton's Selected Works

o    The Critic

o    The Detective

o    The Distributist

o    The Essayist

o    The Historian

o    The Philosopher

o    The Poet

o    The Theologian

Additionally, they have 94 lectures covering both the major works and a generous variety of his other writings. I shared earlier today some other suggestions and an article for getting started with Chesterton. I hope these links will be a doorway to delight and inspiration for you.

As a post-script, the book I treasure most is Orthodoxy, Chesterton's spiritual autobiography. Although it may not be the most accessible place for some people to start, once you are ready for it, what awaits you is a story of enchantment that unfolds Christianity like a fairy tale - and demonstrates why only Christianity makes sense of the world. This is the story of how Chesterton discovered through his own ponderings about life, and his own experiments in searching for truth, beauty, and reason, the great story of Christianity and how it made sense of everything in life. The difficulty people encounter in reading it is that Chesterton uses metaphor and imagery very heavily, and some of it can require a lot of careful thought and imagination in order for the concepts and arguments to come through clearly. It is well worth the investment, but working up to it by getting used to Chesterton's style may be helpful.

Happy reading.

Spiritual Coffee: Make the Most of the Things of Earth - We All Need Church History - Knowing Yourself in Spite of Technology

Three tools for inspiration to energize your mind for the week. Here's some help for enjoying the things in the world without loving God less, for taking an interest in church history, and for reconnecting your soul to God's gift of grace and mercy in spite of the distractions of so much useful technology.

Prior collections are tagged under Spiritual Coffee.

The Strange Brightness of the Things of Earth, Joe Rigney (Cities Church)
Rigney has brought a common dilemma of faith into clear focus: does enjoying things in the world subtract from our love for God, or can it help increase it? Should we be cautious and self-conscious about enjoying things too much? Rigney's writing and teaching is some of the most insightful work I've ever read or heard on this subject. Sermon transcript or audio at the link. This is part of a series, so you can look at the related sermons as well. Rigney also has a five-hour seminar available in audio here at the bottom under Media ("The Whole Earth Is Full of His Glory") that I strongly recommend for going deeper.

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus/Look full in his wonderful face/And the things of earth will grow strangely dim/In the light of his glory and grace.

"What is the song telling us? It tells us that earthly things may have some brightness; they may have some beauty. They may bring us some joy. But when Jesus shows up, that brightness grows dim in his light. That beauty fades in comparison to his wonderful face. In his presence is fullness of joy, and therefore the delight we had in earthly things is now dullness and dust."

"That tension comes into focus when we take the dimness of earthly things in the light of Jesus and set it alongside the hymn we just sang, “This Is My Father’s World.”

"This is my Father’s World/He shines in all that’s fair/In the rustling grass I hear him pass/He speaks to me everywhere. 

"What does this hymn teach? Not that earthly things grow dim, but that God shines in them. “He shines in all that’s fair.” They’re not dim; they’re bright with his brightness. They don’t go silent when God shows up; He speaks through them. And there’s the tension: which hymn is true?" 

13 Reasons We Need Church History, Matthew J. Hall (TGC)
Excellent thoughts on why church history has special value and importance for Christians, and how to study it wisely. Although Hall doesn't state this directly, there's a lot of encouragement here for all Christians that we should care about knowing our history, and we shouldn't think of it as a matter only for seminary students and scholars. 

"Throughout Scripture, rightly remembering is critical to faithfulness. As early as Eden, Eve listens to the serpent, succumbing to faulty interpretations of the past and of God’s revelation in particular.

"Throughout the Old Testament, God calls his people to recall and retell his gracious saving acts. Yet Israel repeatedly forgets, fails, and strays. The New Testament is also clear: Historical events are at the heart of the good news.

"Our mission is to recount that history and call the nations to repent and believe in the Christ. Even the development of post-apostolic doctrine involved history. The early church fathers and councils had to determine, for example, what it meant to say with historical confidence that Jesus was both God and man."

Habits of Mind in an Age of Distraction, Alan Jacobs (Comment Magazine)
The summer issue of Comment Magazine is available online now (free and simple registration required). It's hard to choose among the articles - the focus on how design and technology influence us and our faith is tackled in a diversity of forms. For an introduction, James K.A. Smith examines cutting-edge technological marvels against the potential to forget who we are (or what makes us human) in Our Built World. I chose Jacobs, however, because distraction and divided attention are major challenges for most of us. Having used social media and tech prolifically and personally himself, as well as questioned and criticized it, Jacobs speaks from real life with the benefit of examining himself and all of us against Christian thinking across several centuries. But what he grabs hold of here and leads us through is not a list of ways to tame technology; instead, it's a vital question of what happens when our perception of life and self goes wrong. Those who see only their own failures and imperfections and those who see only a world of outward problems in need of the right technological fix both suffer from a distorted view of the Gospel and self. Here is good medicine.

"So what do we do with the great majority of people for whom excessive self-examination is the last problem they're likely to face? I think this is one of the most important problems Christians—and especially pastors—face today."

Spiritual Coffee: Power of Christian Narrative in Fantasy - Against the Myth of Progress and Historical Pessimism - Glorifying God as a Generalist

I really enjoyed today's collection of links. I hope that you will as well. Taken together, these three pieces restore some of the excitement and wonder in exploring God's Creation and the endless possibilities of discovery in the Christian mind and imagination. There is even now a great portion of beauty and glory awaiting us.
(Click on Spiritual Coffee for earlier collections of links.)

James Stoddard's Interior Castle, David Randall (First Things)

The quoted section below is enough to excite interest, especially for those who enjoy C.S. Lewis's fiction or The Lord of the Rings. I usually get the most enduring and satisfying enjoyment out of stories that have a great layer of truth underneath them. When you piece together the fantastic and unusual elements of a story and find they reveal a mystery about reality, you gain something personal and permanent. It is always a delight to discover beauty, but to discover something that is both beautiful and true is priceless.

"James Stoddard ought to be famous for his Evenmere trilogy—The High House (1998), The False House (2000, revised 2015), and Evenmere (2015). He isn’t, unfortunately. The High House received the Compton Crook Award for best fantasy by a new novelist, but The False House and Evenmere haven’t gotten much notice. But the three books are wonderfully written fantasy, and Stoddard is nearly as good as C. S. Lewis at recapitulating aspects of the Christian myth. He isn’t just trying to be another Lewis, either. Stoddard’s trilogy does something new and nifty: It is an argument in fiction that narrative is at the center of Christian theology—that the universe is narrative, that Christ is its sacred narrator, and that narrative is the means by which mankind can understand God. Stoddard’s sustained invention and stylish prose are enough by themselves to earn him a place in the mainstream fantasy canon. But his shift of emphasis from Christian myth to Christian narrative makes his trilogy a major work of Christian fantasy."

[I also find this description of the worldview of the villains to be brilliant. The deception that mankind can achieve a perfect world lies behind virtually all modern false ideologies (and the next link from Al Mohler happens to show what it's like for those ideologies to crash down).]

"The books’ villains are the Society of Anarchists, who are ruthlessly dedicated to establishing a perfect world."

Christ’s Exaltation: The Ground of Our Hope, Albert Mohler (Ligonier)
A succinct picture of Christ's reign and how it provides us confidence both now and for the future, contrasted with the hopelessness of faith in "progress" or perfection of humanity and its disillusioned counterpart, historical pessimism.

"'The twentieth century, it is safe to say, has made us all into deep historical pessimists.' So observed Francis Fukuyama in his seminal 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man. What happened? The nineteenth century’s humanistic faith in inevitable moral progress was destroyed on the battlefields of two cataclysmic world wars and in the unprecedented murderous cruelty of Hitler’s gas chambers, Stalin’s gulags, and Pol Pot’s Cambodian killing fields. History seemed to point, not to a golden age of moral progress and enlightenment, but toward an age of unspeakable cruelty backed by technological developments that would stagger the moral imagination.

"Fukuyama demonstrated the failure of historical 'faiths' such as Marxism, with its confidence in the ultimate victory of the proletariat through class struggle and revolution. His analysis of modern historical pessimism was correct, at least in this respect, for secular myths did not fare well in the twentieth century, and most contemporary Americans look to the future with a mixed sense of unease and uncertainty.

"The Christian worldview stands in stark contrast both to the humanistic idea of progress and to modern secular pessimism."

How to Glorify God by Being a Generalist, Joe Carter (TGC)

Probably fascinating for anyone who is curious how people like Justin Taylor, Russell Moore, Tim Challies, and departed heroes like Chuck Colson manage to have such diverse knowledge and insight into so many subjects. Carter is careful to say he can only describe his own experience, and that it may not be a calling that applies to many people. Particularly interesting are his conclusions that generalism is artistic, generalism is a personal act of worship to God, and generalism is not primarily pursued for the sake of imparting knowledge to others (although that is a valuable byproduct) but for the sake of beholding the majesty of God in greater and wider detail. The highest reward is a private moment of awe and wonder between the generalist and the Lord.

This line is also helpful and practical for those of us who get stalled out trying to find the perfect way to do things: "sometimes you have to use whatever method works for your personality, even if it’s less than ideal."

"What if we generalists are beckoned to seek knowledge not as a means for some other end but simply as an act of performance before our Creator? This is not to say that the knowledge gained cannot be used for practical purposes or in service of our neighbor. But viewing knowledge-seeking as a performative act done for God and before God frees us to treat it as a form of ongoing artistic worship. Just as David performed for God with leaping and dancing (2 Sam. 6:16) we are free to seek truth, knowledge, and understanding in a variety of areas as a way of glorifying him." [On Sincerity:] "'By validity I mean whether an artist is honest to himself and to his world-view,' Schaeffer says, 'or whether he makes his art only for money or for the sake of being accepted.' If it’s to glorify God as a work of art, generalism cannot be pursued as a means of impressing others with our erudition. For the Christian generalist, the pursuit of knowledge is a performance for God, not an act of pedantry to impress our peers. The validity comes in performing not for the applause of others but for the approval of our divine patron."

"What turns generalism into an art (or at least one major “style” of art) is “sublime pattern-matching,” seeing the interconnectedness of God’s creation in a way that impresses our minds with a sense of awe and veneration of his grandeur and power. 

"God takes delight not in the discovery of the patterns of his revelation (which, of course, he already knows) but with the way that the process leads us to childlike worship. It is the process that leads us to continuously repeat the prayer of the 17th-century astronomer Johannes Kepler: “O, Almighty God, I am thinking Thy thoughts after Thee!” It’s the pursuit of knowledge and discovery as a way to glorify our Redeemer by becoming increasingly enchanted by his majesty." “What is elementary, worldly wisdom?” Charles Munger asked. “Well, the first rule is that you can't really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang 'em back. If the facts don't hang together on a latticework of theory, you don't have them in a usable form.”

Seven Pearls of Wisdom from Chesterton's Father Brown

I came across The COMPLETE Father Brown Mysteries on Kindle, containing basically everything Chesterton wrote involving Father Brown, for $0.99. There are a number of versions out there labeled as The Complete Father Brown Mysteries, but which actually only contain the first two volumes GKC wrote. (He wrote five.) The one I linked above is really complete, containing all the stories. [There is also a 24-story collection of Father Brown mysteries (thus incomplete) for $0.99 for Kindle which has links to an audio recording of each story and an image gallery. These are in the public domain, so you may be able to track down audio on the Web anyway, but for $0.99 it would save you trouble.]

I’ve written about why these stories are priceless, especially for Christians, here and here. In honor of this latest opportunity, I’m posting seven examples of the brilliance and wit of Chesterton’s little priest detective (avoiding spoilers of the solutions).

Part of the charm and genius of these mysteries is how often they reveal and revolve around genuine spiritual truths. This is entertainment that also forms a Christian mind and teaches wisdom. Quite a few of the tales turn on the fact that outward appearances of respectability may make one person seem above suspicion and another quite guilty. Yet when the emotions and character are examined, it makes perfect sense that even the most honorable appearances can be misleading, while the poorest appearances may cover an honest heart and sincere intentions.

“Have you ever noticed this — that people never answer what you say? They answer what you mean — or what they think you mean. Suppose one lady says to another in a country house, ‘Is anybody staying with you?’ the lady doesn’t answer ‘Yes; the butler, the three footmen, the parlourmaid, and so on,’ though the parlourmaid may be in the room, or the butler behind her chair. She says ‘There is nobody staying with us,’ meaning nobody of the sort you mean. But suppose a doctor inquiring into an epidemic asks, ‘Who is staying in the house?’ then the lady will remember the butler, the parlourmaid, and the rest. All language is used like that; you never get a question answered literally, even when you get it answered truly."

“The Invisible Man” from The Innocence of Father Brown

"Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down. The kind man drinks and turns cruel; the frank man kills and lies about it."

“The Flying Stars” from The Innocence of Father Brown

“Don’t say anything! Oh, don’t say anything,” cried the atheist cobbler, dancing about in an ecstasy of admiration of the English legal system. For no man is such a legalist as the good Secularist.

“The Hammer of God” from The Innocence of Father Brown

On the reliability of determining truth or lies by measuring the pulse:

“What sentimentalists men of science are!” exclaimed Father Brown, “and how much more sentimental must American men of science be! Who but a Yankee would think of proving anything from heart-throbs? Why, they must be as sentimental as a man who thinks a woman is in love with him if she blushes. That’s a test from the circulation of the blood, discovered by the immortal Harvey; and a jolly rotten test, too.”

“The Mistake of the Machine” from The Wisdom of Father Brown

"And if you don’t know that I would grind all the Gothic arches in the world to powder to save the sanity of a single human soul, you don’t know so much about my religion as you think you do."

“The Doom of the Darnaways” from The Incredulity of Father Brown

“What we all dread most,” said the priest in a low voice, “is a maze with no centre. That is why atheism is only a nightmare.”

“The Head of Caesar” from The Wisdom of Father Brown

‘Oh, I am sick of his holy pictures and statues!’ she said, turning her head away. ‘Why don’t they defend themselves, if they are what you say they are? But rioters can knock off the Blessed Virgin’s head and nothing happens to them. Oh, what’s the good? You can’t blame us, you daren’t blame us, if we’ve found out that Man is stronger than God.’ ‘Surely,’ said Father Brown very gently, ‘it is not generous to make even God’s patience with us a point against Him.’

“The Insoluble Problem” from The Scandal of Father Brown

Spiritual Coffee: Use What You Know - A Theology of Defeat - Freedom and Conscience Go Together

Today's three resources worth reading. Click on Spiritual Coffee for prior roundups to sharpen and equip your Christian thinking and enlarge your heart.

Put Your Knowledge to Work, Barnabas Piper (The Blazing Center)
A short but insightful piece of motivation to use what you know creatively and actively. Also an excerpt from a forthcoming book Barnabas Piper is publishing next year.

"If you have profound knowledge of life-altering genetic research and do nothing with it then it is worth less than if I use my sports trivia knowledge to spark a new friendship."

"we need to be able to see a truth and think of all the ways it might be useful – useful to connect to another person, useful to teach a child, useful to reveal something of God, useful to bring a smile to someone’s face, useful to help someone in need, useful to create something beautiful, useful to protect or defend truth. And this imagination, this curiosity, is what allows us to do with our knowledge."

Peter Leithart's Theology of Defeat, Richard Clark interviews Peter Leithart (Podcast from "The Calling" on Christianity Today)
Wrestling with the reality of failure and our own weaknesses has been a very personal journey for me, both spiritually and relationally. We almost all begin with the assumption we aren't supposed to fail, and the corresponding sense of crushing shame and worthlessness if we do. Scripture teaches the exact opposite, and I am always encouraged at seeing another theologian's analysis of the acceptance of failure with humility. Leithart shares his own personal journey as a young pastor in learning to let go of his need to be perfect and to cease feeling responsible for everything himself.

The Captain of Conscience, Jordan Ballor (Acton Institute)
This is clever, playful, and though-provoking. Ballor is usually insightful and entertaining at the same time. This is no exception. He examines the Civil War movie and the different worldviews of Tony Stark and Captain America to make a simple point: freedom of conscience and the individual right to choose - to act independently of some paternalistic government overlord - only matter and only work out well if the individual is anchored by virtue. If Captain America and his allies weren't driven by a strong moral code and conscience, they would simply be terrorists. Virtue and morality are indispensable to liberty.

Spiritual Coffee: What's Worth Reading for a Christian Mind Today

Very often the best words on a subject belong to someone else, and I would rather read them than write about it myself. With the label Spiritual Coffee I will post three links to things from this week that combine thoughtful Christian thinking and application with important issues. Just like many of us use a morning cup of coffee (or three) to kick start our physical activity, my goal is to provide three things to help fuel your mind and heart to engage with the world by wisdom, devotion to the Lord, and clear biblical thinking.

Ground Rules

1. All subjects are fair game, as long as the content tackles them with a Christian mind that seeks to be faithful to God, authentic in love, and an accurate display of the Gospel to the world.


2. I will try to mostly avoid the Christian leaders who are so prominent that you probably saw this in their Twitter, Facebook, or blog feeds already.


3. My priority will be sharing things that will help shape and fortify your mind and heart with mature Christian thinking, but sharing it for consideration doesn't mean I endorse every word or conclusion. Test everything, use your own judgment, and pray and reason through to what is valuable.

Get Your Cup Ready

Happy Ascension Day, Kevin DeYoung (TGC)
How many of us pay attention to Ascension Day? Yet it couldn't be more important for how we view mankind - with an illustration from The Lord of the Rings to close the deal. 

God Is Not Like You -- And That's a Good Thing, Kristin Tabb (TGC) (book review)
Tabb explains that what makes Jen Wilkin's new book on the attributes of God, "None Like Him", so valuable is the way it contrasts how we try to imitate - and be independent of - God. The insights on the human heart double the impact.

"But the most valuable gift None Like Him offers is Wilkin’s stark contrast between each unique divine attribute and our desire to get that attribute. In other words, she reveals a foil for God in the idolatrous human heart. …

"Instead of trusting and worshiping God for his attributes, in our sin we want to hawk them. So rather than pursuing his moral attributes Scripture enjoins (wisdom, justice, mercy, faithfulness, goodness, truthfulness), we seek his limitless power, knowledge, and authority."Wilkin’s insights into how humans attempt to assume limitlessness, rather than embrace God’s infinitude with humble trust, are worth the price of the book. The chapter on self-sufficiency is especially poignant"

Evangelicals and Politics After Trump, Matt Lee Anderson (Mere Orthodoxy)
Many of us as Christians, accepting the responsibilities of citizenship, are wondering where we stand now. This piece captures all of it in one place better than I could have imagined.

"Here is, perhaps, the only silver lining I can find to this sad affair. The rise of Trump is the death blow to any pretenses, any illusions about where the convictions of those conservative Christians involved in politics at our highest levels lie. We face the prospect of a great untethering of the evangelical witness from the Republican party, a prospect that every Christian—including, and especially, those like me who have claimed the Republican name—should meet with joy and gladness."

Freedom Is Impossible Without Limitations (Chesterton)

You can check the tag Sunday Salt for a compilation of reflections and wisdom posted to this blog from significant Christians of past centuries.

G.K. Chesterton was unquestionably one of the most brilliant men of the 20th century, a fact even his ideological opponents like George Bernard Shaw insisted upon. One of the most precious things about his mind was his ability to see paradox (two things that appear to contradict each other, but actually don't) as a window onto truth. He was able to reveal how our understanding of reality and truth is often hindered by simplistic assumptions. And he often demonstrated how the objections of even the most sophisticated and educated people to Christianity were a result of such simplistic assumptions. This is one example of how he demonstrates that true freedom actually requires some limitations - some definition - in order to be able to go along freely.

Moderns ... imagine that romance would exist most perfectly in a complete state of what they call liberty. They think that if a man makes a gesture it would be a startling and romantic matter that the sun should fall from the sky.

But the startling and romantic thing about the sun is that it does not fall from the sky. They are seeking under every shape and form a world where there are no limitations -- that is, a world where there are no outlines; that is, a world where there are no shapes. There is nothing baser than that infinity. They say they wish to be as strong as the universe, but they really wish the whole universe as weak as themselves. Chesterton, Heretics (1905).

Take just one example from real life. Many people imagine that the idea of romance necessarily suggests the complete liberty to follow your emotions for another person wherever they lead, and never to restrain them. But it is surely true that the more romantic thing is for love to last, to stay true to another person and to be constant and unbreakable through every test and trial. The most romantic love is one that does not permit itself to change. The least romantic thing of all is for a person's professions of love for you to simply vanish tomorrow or the next day because a new feeling has swept them away in a different direction. Being unstable and constantly carried along by every impulse is not the same thing as being free.

Imagination Serves God... if It Is Shaped by God

The imagination sometimes gets overlooked as a tool of faith. Some people see the imagination as a tool of fantasy and daydreaming, something that people use to escape from the really important business of life. Others may be put off by the association of imagination and "imaginary," as if talking about using the imagination about God somehow implies He isn't real. But the fact is that without imagination, we can't really encounter God.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. (Hebrews 11:1-3 ESV)

the conviction of things not seen. That sure sounds like a job for imagination.

There are many other good examples in Scripture: “The imagination is a necessary component for reading fiction books, non-fiction books, and, of course, for reading the Bible. God’s book engages our imaginations by the parables of Jesus, the poetry of the Psalms, the adages of the Proverbs, and, of course, the apocalyptic language of the prophets. But what makes human imagination even more incredible is how we experience in our minds things we did not, have not, or cannot experience ourselves. The book of Revelation is one example.” (Tony Reinke, Dragons and Holiness). In the past several months, I have noticed some exceptionally good articles on DesiringGod.org by various authors examining the imagination at work in faith. Here's my quick summary connecting the dots.

Imagining for Good or for Evil

Like anything else, the imagination can be misused. Bryce Young captured both sides well a few days ago in a thoughtful post: Imagine Your Way to Joy. He starts out by confronting "an often-overlooked aspect of sin: the power of imagination." Young observes: "For sin to be accepted, approved, and even celebrated in our own minds, it must first be nourished by something stronger than just our senses. The seeds of sin, though sown in the flesh, are protected and watered by our imaginations. Sin is supplemented by story, an alternative narrative — an imaginative world in which sin does not afflict the conscience as easily because in that world, wickedness credibly plays the part of virtue."

Imagination allows us to construct an "alternate reality" where we rearrange what is right and wrong so that we can justify our desires. In our minds, we can bend the rules until the wrong direction seems natural and right. Have you ever noticed how most people who are caught up in some sin will rationalize it by saying they think God understands? In their minds, they can imagine God's reaction to be anything they want. And conveniently, they usually imagine His reaction supports what they feel and desire.

But imagination can also get you out of trouble too. When you feel a strong temptation or desire for something, and at the moment it seems like you couldn't possibly be content or satisfied without giving in, imagination allows you to experience the feelings that will come with standing firm and keeping faithful to God. At the moment, the self-denial seems painful, but later on you will be grateful for having stayed true to the Lord, and the blessings of a clean conscience will seem very sweet. But you don't feel that in the moment of great temptation - and so you need imagination to remind you what those rewards of faithfulness feel like. Young concludes:

From all this, you might begin to think that we should suppress imaginative activity. Imagination may appear to be a distraction from the pursuit of truth, or worse, a misleading trail away from it. Fidelity to reason alone, unpolluted by creations of the imagination, may appear a much safer stewardship of our cognitive capabilities.

However, dismissing the imagination from the Christian life will neither save us from sin nor help us grow in righteousness. In fact, all hope of putting off the old man and putting on the new rests in a God-given, Christ-purchased, Spirit-empowered redemption of the imagination. ...

By using the imagination to envision the possibilities of our faithful service to God, we also find help in fighting our sins. The problem is that we are far too easily pleased with the imaginary worlds in which our sins find shelter. The glorious stories that act out God’s purposes will always be more beautiful than the stories we throw together to explain away our sins. So, we kill sin by expending imaginative effort to envision the superior delight and beauty of God’s stories over the twisted, ugly plots we write to justify evil. 

The imaginary life we build up around some desires can be overpowering and very hard to give up. Even when we are convinced that we need to do that, and we direct our imagination to consider the glory and joy of pursing God instead, there is normally a gap between breaking off from the pleasure of deceitful sin and actually experiencing the satisfaction that comes from embracing God. For that, I strongly recommend Breaking Free from the Spell of Fantasy, an article from several months ago that left a strong impression on me.

Letting God Shape Your Imagination

Our imagination is a powerful weapon and tool, but it has to have something reliable to guide it. And that something is not going to be found within ourselves. I recalled Jon Bloom's description in an August post:

Everything God creates is good (Genesis 1:31). But we must take this in large measure on faith because under the curse of the fall, our fallen perceptions often don’t see it. And our fallen natures often don’t believe it. We are disordered and pathologically self-centered. We are out of sync.

The only things fallen humans tend to believe are good are those that sate our appetites, increase our personal prestige, align with our preferences, pleasantly interest us, operate within our desired timetable, and are convenient and comfortable. In the scope of the created universe, these add up to only a very few things. (Let Good Things Run Wild)

When our imaginations are used to make sin seem normal or okay, they aren't doing it on their own. They are conspiring with our hearts, which desire things they shouldn't. Then the imagination tries to serve the desires of the heart by creating an illusionary world in which fulfilling those desires seems good or even inevitable. Jon Bloom summed it up perfectly in another post: "Our hearts were never designed to be followed, but to be led."

Bloom's description that follows, on how our hearts should be led, is excellent, and his points apply to the imagination as well: let your imagination be used and used freely, but let it be directed and shaped by God. Your imagination can be a slave to your desires or it can serve God by shaping your heart and desires. Let the Scriptures and the life of Jesus define the nature of your invisible world.

If we make our hearts gods and ask them to lead us, they will lead us to narcissistic misery and ultimately damnation. They cannot save us, because what’s wrong with our hearts is the heart of our problem. But if our hearts believe in God, as they are designed to, then God saves us (Hebrews 7:25) and leads our hearts to exceeding joy (Psalm 43:4).

Therefore, don’t believe in your heart; direct your heart to believe in God. Don’t follow your heart; follow Jesus. Note that Jesus did not say to his disciples, “Let not your hearts be troubled, just believe in your hearts.” He said, “Let not your hearts be troubled, believe in God; believe also in me” (John 14:1).

So though your heart will try to shepherd you today, do not follow it. It is not a shepherd. It is a pompous sheep that, due to remaining sin, has some wolf-like qualities. Don’t follow it, and be careful even listening to it. Remember, your heart only tells you what you want, not where you should go. So only listen to it to note what it’s telling you about what you want, and then take your wants, both good and evil, to Jesus as requests and confessions.

Why Chesterton Chose a Priest to Be a Detective - Father Brown's Reason and Religion

There's an interesting and thoughtful take here from Dr. Mitchell Kalpakgian on how Chesterton had Father Brown employ spiritual rationality (retaining a healthy balance of reason and common sense right alongside his very deep convictions about the supernatural - in fact, retaining it because of them) to solve crimes, along with a Christian insight into human nature and human depravity. 

One of the delightful treasures about Father Brown is the story of how Chesterton got this idea of creating him. Chesterton had been visiting a friend, father John O'Connor, and he was repeatedly stunned by how broad and deep the priest's knowledge of human depravity proved to be. It had been no surprise to him that the Church would know a good deal more than him about good, but that it also knew a good deal more about evil was a shock. After one such meeting, Chesterton overheard a couple of young men saying to one another that they felt it wasn't right for a man to be like that priest and shut himself up all cloistered and cut off from life, that it created a naiveté and ignorance of the world. This was Chesterton's reaction to this irony:

To me, still almost shivering with the appallingly practical facts of which the priest had warned me, this comment came with such a colossal and crushing irony, that I nearly burst into a loud harsh laugh in the drawing-room. For I knew perfectly well that, as regards all the solid Satanism which the priest knew and warred against with all his life, these two Cambridge gentlemen (luckily for them) knew about as much of real evil as two babies in the same perambulator.

To this broad experience of the fallen human heart and its consequences, Chesterton added a deep conviction about reason and common sense. He exploded the shallow myth that a churchman must be a bit weak in reason and somewhat gullible simply because he happens to believe in miracles and the supernatural. Chesterton rather proved that point himself in his life: even his atheist friends like George Bernard Shaw considered the Catholic writer to be one of the towering intellects of the 20th century. In his first Father Brown story, The Blue Cross, his priest-detective defends reason against a tall impostor posing as another priest:

   The taller priest nodded his bowed head and said:

   "Ah, yes, these modern infidels appeal to their reason; but who can look at those millions of worlds and not feel that there may well be wonderful universes above us where reason is utterly unreasonable?"

   "No," said the other priest; "reason is always reasonable, even in the last limbo, in the lost borderland of things. I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason."

   The other priest raised his austere face to the spangled sky and said:

   "Yet who knows if in that infinite universe—?"

   "Only infinite physically," said the little priest, turning sharply in his seat, "not infinite in the sense of escaping from the laws of truth."

As the impostor reveals himself, demanding the priest surrender a holy relic he wants to steal, an exchange takes place where the priest one-ups the thief each time in criminal tricks:

   "How in blazes do you know all these horrors?" cried Flambeau.

   The shadow of a smile crossed the round, simple face of his clerical opponent.

   "Oh, by being a celibate simpleton, I suppose," he said. "Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil? But, as a matter of fact, another part of my trade, too, made me sure you weren't a priest."

   "What?" asked the thief, almost gaping.

   "You attacked reason," said Father Brown. "It's bad theology."

Chesterton wrote some 52 short stories featuring his "dumpy little priest" detective, and for a time in the early 20th Century, Father Brown was nearly as popular as Sherlock Holmes. Part of this charm was due to the very different style and reasoning Chesterton employed in the stories. Father Brown knew what was in his own heart, as a human being corrupted by sin, and therefore he was in a position to deduce the desires, motives, and passions that tempted other men and women to commit crimes. I would be remiss if I didn't give you a link to where Father Brown himself explains his method of solving crimes, but this commentary captures the contrast well:

Father Brown was inspired in part by Chesterton’s good friend Father John O’Connor, a priest in Yorkshire. The central idea was that no other figure was better suited for solving crimes. In one story, the cornered murderer, having listened to Father Brown’s explanation of how he worked out the sinister truth, cries out: ‘How do you know all this? Are you a devil?’

‘I am a man,’ replies Father Brown, ‘and therefore have all devils in my heart.’ ...

The great pleasure of Father Brown is that he represents a step away from the icy inductive logic of Sherlock Holmes. There are still clues, though they do not just stand there as facts; it is how they are interpreted that counts. And the interpretations are frequently paradoxical. On the other side of Father Brown are the sleuths of Agatha Christie — Marple and Poirot — who, while understanding crimes of passion, have nothing in the way of passion themselves. Conversely, Father Brown has an innate, unstoppable optimism; whatever one’s beliefs or non-beliefs, as a narrative device it is very clever.

Sinclair McKay, Bring back Father Brown (The Spectator: Dec. 14, 2009).