Spiritual Coffee: A Beautiful Life Raising Kids with Special Needs - Feast of Theology with John Webster - Teaching Children Obedience Without Legalism

Here are three things worth feeding your mind. You can find prior roundups under Spiritual Coffee, and stay tuned for new installments later this week.

The Beautiful Trial of Raising Kids with Special Needs, Paul Martin reviews Andrew and Rachel Wilson's book The Life We Never Expected: Hopeful Reflections on the Challenges of Parenting Children with Special Needs. (TGC)
The Wilsons "are part of the leadership team at Kings Church in Eastbourne in the United Kingdom" and their parenting took a completely unexpected turn when "both their children (Zeke and Anna) showed signs of autism around age 3. It was regressive autism, meaning both had been meeting typical developmental milestones, but then started going in reverse." Most people flee from the idea of having a child with any developmental disabilities or special needs. The Wilsons seem to have done a remarkable job of both showing the beauty and hope involved in parenting these unique and precious children, while also being blunt and honest about the discouragement, difficulty, and demands. Consciously or unconsciously, most of us pin our happiness on having the life we expected. But there is a glorious and breathtaking part of experiencing God that can only be seen and felt by people who have surrendered and let God use them to humbly serve other lives. We usually fight tooth and nail against that surrender, and it is helpful to be shown the reward of what's on the other side by people like the Wilsons who have been taken there.

 "When you read The Life We Never Expected, you feel like you’ve been transported into the Wilsons’ living room to shoot straight with them about life and parenting—only with a twist. 

"God, in his great wisdom, saw fit to bless the Wilsons with two children with autism. It may be worth stopping here to say what autism is and isn’t. Some tend to think a few good spankings, more rigid discipline, and a parenting course or two will straighten things out, but you cannot discipline genetics. Autism is 'a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction, verbal and non-verbal communication, and restricted and repetitive behavior.' Its cause is unknown, and it manifests in a variety of ways—Asperger syndrome, pervasive developmental disorder, not otherwise specified PDD-NOS, and childhood disintegrative disorder are all related disabilities on the Autism Spectrum." 

"Andrew isn’t ashamed to tell us how, when the second diagnosis came, he

was overwhelmed by the most sweeping, drowning sense of pain and anguish I had ever experienced, ran into the playroom, curled up on the floor, and wailed until I thought there was nothing left. It was, and still is, the lowest point of my entire life.

"That’s the kind of raw honesty that pervades The Life We Never Expected. And that’s what I loved most about it. There’s a kind of denial the Christian church tolerates when it comes to disability. We often ignore things that scare us or we don’t understand. The Wilsons, however, bravely invite us into their world to taste their anguish and joys.  

"This book is much more than a lament. It’s that, but it’s also a vivid description of God’s dependability amid the sorrow and chaos of disability."

Perfection & Presence: God With Us, According to the Christian Confession, John Webster (Carl F.H. Henry Center at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)
Webster, a massively influential theologian, passed away last month. At that time I posted some links to articles detailing his life and contributions to Christianity. Here is a great chance to absorb some of his work through six audio lectures. And yeah, this is probably much more than one coffee break, but consider it a chance to stock up and take these in little sections at a time in order to reflect on them.

"Professor John Webster delivers a rich reflection upon the perfections and presence of God. The question at the center of this lectures series is the nature of human fellowship with God. The Investigation of the nature of this fellowship entails for Webster, a comprehension of the divine perfections and their relation to the Trinitarian relations and missions. From the nature of God, the Trinitarian relations and the nature of Divine presence more generally, it can then be understood more clearly what scripture means when it speaks of the Word becoming flesh. Webster offers, therefore, an extensive reflection upon the human history of the divine Word and the nature of his presence in the flesh. Finally, Webster moves to discuss the nature of the resurrected and exalted Lord’s presence, a presence manifest in his Lordship over his creatures and in the practices and Sacraments of the holy church."

Is It Anti-Gospel to Teach Kids Self-Control Before Conversion? - Owen Strachan (For the Church)
Valuable reflections from a remarkable theologian, who is also the president of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (in other words, a man who cares very deeply about families and children). If we really understand the Gospel, then we know that obedience to God does not earn us salvation. Instead, obedience is frequently described in Scripture as "fruit." Fruit only grows on a tree that is already alive. Unless we are made alive by the Spirit, we cannot bring forth the fruit of obedience and good works. These things come after saving faith in Christ, not before. And the last thing we want to do is confuse our children by making them think that they have to "be good" in order to get God's approval, because that is the deadly peril of legalism. Strachan has a very practical answer for parents. Read on:

"No true transformation can happen without miraculous grace.  There is surely truth to this argument.  Without the gospel, we are slaves to sin.  We cannot conquer sin or master it; as long as we are unconverted, sin is in fact our master.  We need God-given faith in Christ to know true and lasting transformation.

"But I am wondering if, in highlighting this ultimate truth, we might forget a penultimate (secondary) reality.  It is good and well to train children, pre-conversion, in obedience and self-control.  If you do this in a way that indicates that successfully resisting a given temptation equates with the highest form of pleasing God, then that’s problematic.  In other words, if you train kids that doing right actions saves them, that’s tragic.  But it’s also tragic to not raise children to discern right from wrong and to think that they have no ability whatsoever to follow commands.

"If, though, you train children in good habits while always holding out the need for repentance and faith, I think you’re being a wise and godly parent.  The father who speaks repeatedly to his son in Proverbs clearly directs him to steer clear of sin.  The father is forming habits in his son, and those habits are not opposed to saving faith.  They are creating channels through which the life-giving water of the gospel will flow."

Does "The Inner Ring" Dominate Your Life? - Summarizing C.S. Lewis's Essay on Relationships and Ambition

I shared the link here to Alan Jacobs contrasting and comparing how C.S. Lewis gave a speech to students with how modern commencement speakers such as Steve Jobs imply moral lessons without acknowledging them. The C.S. Lewis speech Jacobs used was The Inner Ring. For several years I have been passionate about seeing every Christian read it, because it is one of the most important and universal explanations of human nature I have seen.

The longer I observe how people choose to prioritize their lives, which groups they prefer to join, and who they want to spend time with, the more I see Lewis’s insights confirmed. The best value for me has been what Lewis revealed about wrong motives for being a part of

things, which makes us able to recognize those motives in our own hearts and choose to resist them. What it comes down to is the difference between using people and relationships as a means of self-advancement, or valuing people and relationships for their own sake. As Lewis also brilliantly showed, doing the former makes you a prisoner and slave of ambition, rather than enabling you to control it. On the other hand, being authentic with people, doing good work for its own sake, and accepting the people God places in your life can be amazingly liberating.

The whole essay is here, but I’ve done my best to give you an abridged survey of Lewis’s main points identified by headings. All the material below is from Lewis, except for the headings I have added. The last two paragraphs are especially encouraging.

The Longing to Be Inside the Inner Ring

I believe that in all men’s lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside. This desire, in one of its forms, has indeed had ample justice done to it in literature. I mean, in the form of snobbery. Victorian fiction is full of characters who are hag-ridden by the desire to get inside that particular Ring which is, or was, called Society. But it must be clearly understood that “Society,” in that sense of the word, is merely one of a hundred Rings, and snobbery therefore only one form of the longing to be inside.

People who believe themselves to be free, and indeed are free, from snobbery, and who read satires on snobbery with tranquil superiority, may be devoured by the desire in another form. It may be the very intensity of their desire to enter some quite different Ring which renders them immune from all the allurements of high life. An invitation from a duchess would be very cold comfort to a man smarting under the sense of exclusion from some artistic or communistic côterie. Poor man—it is not large, lighted rooms, or champagne, or even scandals about peers and Cabinet Ministers that he wants: it is the sacred little attic or studio, the heads bent together, the fog of tobacco smoke, and the delicious knowledge that we—we four or five all huddled beside this stove—are the people who know.

The Longing that Will Dominate Your Life – Unless You Choose to Resist It

My main purpose in this address is simply to convince you that this desire is one of the great permanent mainsprings of human action. It is one of the factors which go to make up the world as we know it—this whole pell-mell of struggle, competition, confusion, graft, disappointment and advertisement, and if it is one of the permanent mainsprings then you may be quite sure of this. Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the first day on which you enter your profession until the day when you are too old to care. That will be the natural thing—the life that will come to you of its own accord. Any other kind of life, if you lead it, will be the result of conscious and continuous effort. If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an “inner ringer.” I don’t say you’ll be a successful one; that’s as may be. But whether by pining and moping outside Rings that you can never enter, or by passing triumphantly further and further in—one way or the other you will be that kind of man.

The Fear of Being Left Outside

Often the desire conceals itself so well that we hardly recognize the pleasures of fruition. Men tell not only their wives but themselves that it is a hardship to stay late at the office or the school on some bit of important extra work which they have been let in for... But it is not quite true. … It is tiring and unhealthy to lose your Saturday afternoons: but to have them free because you don’t matter, that is much worse.

Making the Inner Ring More Important than True Friendship

Let Inner Rings be unavoidable and even an innocent feature of life, though certainly not a beautiful one: but what of our longing to enter them, our anguish when we are excluded, and the kind of pleasure we feel when we get in?

I have no right to make assumptions about the degree to which any of you may already be compromised. I must not assume that you have ever first neglected, and finally shaken off, friends whom you really loved and who might have lasted you a lifetime, in order to court the friendship of those who appeared to you more important, more esoteric. I must not ask whether you have derived actual pleasure from the loneliness and humiliation of the outsiders after you, yourself were in: whether you have talked to fellow members of the Ring in the presence of outsiders simply in order that the outsiders might envy; whether the means whereby, in your days of probation, you propitiated the Inner Ring, were always wholly admirable.

I will ask only one question—and it is, of course, a rhetorical question which expects no answer. IN the whole of your life as you now remember it, has the desire to be on the right side of that invisible line ever prompted you to any act or word on which, in the cold small hours of a wakeful night, you can look back with satisfaction? If so, your case is more fortunate than most.

The Danger of Moral Compromise in Pursuit of the Inner Ring

To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.”

And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.

That is my first reason. Of all the passions, the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.

The Endless Thirst that the Inner Ring Can Never Satisfy

My second reason is this. The torture allotted to the Danaids in the classical underworld, that of attempting to fill sieves with water, is the symbol not of one vice, but of all vices. It is the very mark of a perverse desire that it seeks what is not to be had. The desire to be inside the invisible line illustrates this rule. As long as you are governed by that desire you will never get what you want. You are trying to peel an onion: if you succeed there will be nothing left. Until you conquer the fear of being an outsider, an outsider you will remain.

This is surely very clear when you come to think of it. If you want to be made part of a certain circle for some wholesome reason—if, say, you want to join a musical society because you really like music—then there is a possibility of satisfaction. You may find yourself playing in a quartet and you may enjoy it. But if all you want is to be in the know, your pleasure will be short lived. The circle cannot have from within the charm it had from outside. By the very act of admitting you it has lost its magic.

Once the first novelty is worn off, the members of this circle will be no more interesting than your old friends. Why should they be? You were not looking for virtue or kindness or loyalty or humour or learning or wit or any of the things that can really be enjoyed. You merely wanted to be “in.” And that is a pleasure that cannot last. As soon as your new associates have been staled to you by custom, you will be looking for another Ring. The rainbow’s end will still be ahead of you. The old ring will now be only the drab background for your endeavor to enter the new one.

Becoming Free from the Desire for the Inner Ring

The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain.

And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.

The Only Sure Way to Enjoy God Is by Embracing God's Will

This devotion from March 6 in Tim and Kathy Keller's The Songs of Jesus is a particularly clear summary of why the only way to happiness is to trust God to teach us how to live, rather than dreaming up a good life for ourselves.

One caution first: please, let us resolve to avoid any misunderstanding that would wrongly cause us to think that keeping moral standards or doing good works is what brings God's love to us or gives us our reward with Him. Those who love God do good because it enhances their enjoyment of the love God has already given them, and because it pleases Him. But it is certainly true that if you refuse to do good or live a life of integrity, you will spoil and trample your enjoyment of God. You can't enjoy a relationship with any other human being if you are constantly disappointing that person and treating him or her with contempt. Why should we think it is any different with God?

We are accepted by God completely freely, by believing and trusting in Christ's bearing of our sin and suffering judgment for us. We become fully and completely His children through this, before we ever do a single good work beyond believing. But even though you already have that relationship if you're a Christian, you can certainly deprive yourself of all the joy of it by living a life that disdains God's moral character and ignores His words. Therefore Keller is exactly right in saying that to "enjoy a good life... you must live a good life[.]" (emphasis added)

Psalm 34:11-16

¹¹ Come, my children, listen to me;
    I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
¹² Whoever of you loves life
    and desires to see many good days,
¹³ keep your tongue from evil
    and your lips from telling lies.
¹⁴ Turn from evil and do good;
    seek peace and pursue it.

¹⁵ The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,

    and his ears are attentive to their cry;
¹⁶ but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil,
    to blot out their name from the earth.

THE LIE. To enjoy a good life (verse 12) you must live a good life (verses 13-14). This challenges the lie of the serpent in Eden that if we obey God fully we will be miserable, that rich living lies outside God's will, not within it.[29] This lie has passed deeply into every human heart: that we would be happier if we, rather than God, were free to choose how our lives should be lived. But the ultimate good is knowing God personally, and the ultimate punishment is just as personal--to lose the face of God (verse 16), the only source of joy and love, to be "left utterly and absolutely outside--repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored."[30]

Prayer: Father, if I want to love life, I have to love you--and loving you means doing your will with gladness. Shine your face on me--let me know your love--so I can love you for who you are. Remind me that the only loss that is unbearable is to lose you and your presence. Amen.

From The Songs of Jesus (March 6), p. 65.

29 Derek Kidner, Psalms 1-72, p.158. See also Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance: Why the Marrow Controversy Still Matters (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2016).

30 C.S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory."

[n.b. I edited Keller's footnotes to make the references to the books clear, instead of abbreviations and ibid.]

Spiritual Coffee: Why Every Job Matters to God - Christian Errors We Often Believe - Demand More of God

Today's collection to stimulate your Christian thinking and encourage your heart. I deliberately took a break from political and policy subjects today.
(Prior collections here under Spiritual Coffee.)

Faith at Work: Individual Purpose, Flourishing Communities, 30 Christian leaders collected in a 28-page PDF (Institute for Faith, Work & Economics)
If you feel like what you do at your job all week has no meaning other than keeping your bills paid and having the means to do good things for your family, friends, and church, you need to read this. Some of the best explanations of why every job matters in God's kingdom, collected and summarized. Includes Tim Keller, Os Guinness, Andy Crouch, Nancy Pearcey, Greg Thornbury, Sam Brownback, and many more gifted Christian writers.

Three Lies Christians Believe, Tricia Lott Williford (PJ Media)
A useful and quick explanation of three common assumptions Christians make about how God works, and how they affect how we feel about what happens to us. There's enough here to make us reflect on God's Word for quite a while. Williford gives a positive counterpoint to each, to encourage a healthy mindset that accepts the complexity of God's purposes with hope and trust.

"If you believe God wants you to be happy, then you’ll believe that whatever makes you happy is okay with God. If you believe God wants you to be happy, then you’ll also believe that whatever makes you unhappy can’t possibly be what God wants for you."

"He wants more than just your happiness. Here’s where we got it wrong: 'He will give you the desires of your heart' (Psalm 37:4). We found the part we liked, and we held on to that with both hands… but we have forgotten the entire verse. Here’s the whole thing: 'Take delight in God, and he will give you the desires of your heart.' What that means: Want what he wants, and then he will give you what you want. Be part of what he’s doing, and you’ll find something so much deeper, bigger, and better than happiness."

"Truth: Following God will make your life better. But here’s the corollary: better is almost always harder. Anytime you undertake a journey of transformation, you know that better is almost always harder. Get healthier, pay off debts, climb a mountain, run a marathon, fix your marriage—all of these things are better and harder than the lazy life. You and I will have some pain in our lives. We’ll face heartache and disillusionment and hurt. That’s a result of the world we live in, this world that’s been ruined. But every time we encounter pain, we get in touch with what’s actually happening, what’s really going on in this world: God is making it new. And like everything else worth having, the journey is hard."

2 Audacious Demands We Are to Make of God, Philip Graham Ryken (Crossway)
Short meditation on why we should be as bold as Moses in asking God to show Himself to us.

"Any man who seeks God's calling should pray the way Moses prayed. We should ask God to give us intimate knowledge of him. The things we do will be successful only if God is in them. Whenever we do something that God has called us to do—whether it is serving in our singleness, learning how to be married, working at a job, or getting involved in ministry—we need to pray that God will show us his way to go about things.

"Moses also wanted something more: he wanted to see God's glory. This request was not as imperious as most translations make it sound. In the original Hebrew it comes across more like an entreaty; Moses was saying "Please . . . " Still, it was an audacious request. The prophet was asking to see the splendor and radiance of God."

Get Used to Failure if You Want to Overcome It

Failure is something we all dread. The fear of failure often produces tremendous anxiety. The experience of failure often produces depression and shame and bitterness. Notice those are all emotions that Christians are told to resist and overcome. We are not meant to sit alone after a loss, feeling sorry for ourselves and wondering if we have what it takes. We are meant to put our trust in God and keep going. (See 2 Corinthians 1:8-10.) Easier said than done, of course. But here is one of the most encouraging lessons I've seen on why you should simply make peace with failure and keep pressing on through it.

Naval Admiral William H. McRaven, a Navy SEAL for 36 years and ninth commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, gave an extraordinary commencement address in 2014 to the University of Texas at Austin. You may have seen it shared widely on Facebook and in many blogs and business and professional magazines. The YouTube video embedded below has had over 3.4 million views, and rightly so. The speech is remarkable because Adm. McRaven drew on ten lessons from Navy SEAL training that apply to pretty much everything in life and work for anyone. They're all good, but there is one that made a huge impression on me. It's the lesson of the "sugar cookie."

Several times a week, the instructors would line up the class and do a uniform inspection. It was exceptionally thorough. Your hat had to be perfectly starched, your uniform immaculately pressed and your belt buckle shiny and void of any smudges. But it seemed that no matter how much effort you put into starching your hat, or pressing your uniform or polishing your belt buckle — it just wasn't good enough. The instructors would find "something" wrong.

For failing the uniform inspection, the student had to run, fully clothed into the surfzone and then, wet from head to toe, roll around on the beach until every part of your body was covered with sand. The effect was known as a "sugar cookie." You stayed in that uniform the rest of the day — cold, wet and sandy.

There were many a student who just couldn't accept the fact that all their effort was in vain. That no matter how hard they tried to get the uniform right, it was unappreciated. Those students didn't make it through training. Those students didn't understand the purpose of the drill. You were never going to succeed. You were never going to have a perfect uniform.

Sometimes no matter how well you prepare or how well you perform you still end up as a sugar cookie. It's just the way life is sometimes.

If you want to change the world get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward. 

Mark this: the people who gave up and went home - the ones who didn't become Navy SEALs - were the ones who couldn't accept failure. The ones who succeeded and became SEALs were the ones who learned to get used to failure and keep going. The point of the exercise was to ensure that everyone ended up a "sugar cookie." No illusions here that some people always get it right while others fall short. The only way forward was to accept that you were going to fail, and to keep trying anyway. What sent some of the men home was simply pride. Our fear of failure, and our avoidance of situations where we might fail, does not come from an urgent need to accomplish important things. The people who accomplish important things are the ones who keep trying and failing until they get it right. Our fear and avoidance is due to our vanity in wanting to look successful and impressive. The ones who went home were the ones who couldn't handle the idea of having to look like a failure in order to get to the point of success. 

Bonus points if you're thinking: Kobayashi Maru. This was the infamous test at Starfleet Academy in Star Trek that every person training for command must take. And it was deliberately impossible. This quote by Spock in the 2009 Star Trek film captures it perfectly: "The purpose is to experience fear. Fear in the face of certain death. To accept that fear and maintain control of oneself and one’s crew.” The purpose of this training exercise was never to succeed. The purpose was to learn to maintain courage and control even when everything failed; to avoid giving in to panic or despair. The lesson is to never let your perception that you are failing or your fear of losing tempt you into giving up. The people that succeed are the ones that refuse to give up after failing (or after thinking they've failed).

The application for Christians is critical: more often than anything, it's our doubts about how we're doing and our own insecurities that discourage us and cause us to get derailed. Very often we are on the right track spiritually but we lose heart because we can't see that things are working out. Our perception is that we've failed, and we shrink back from what seems hopeless. 

Keeping our faith fixed in God includes persevering in doing the right thing even when the evidence of our senses tells us we're losing. We trust in God's point of view instead: "When I thought, 'My foot slips,' your steadfast love, O LORD, held me up. When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul." (Psalm 94:18-19). One of the precious comforts in Scripture is that God often does His most glorious work when it looks like it's already too late. Think about how the disciples felt for those three days after Jesus died upon the cross. And then...

We need to stop keeping score of our "successes" and worrying if we think our "failures" outnumber them. We need to stop measuring ourselves against other people or against what we think a successful Christian should look like. Everybody ends up a sugar cookie sooner or later. Instead, we need to keep following Christ in every way we can, and trust Him to make the most of the results.

"Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised." (Hebrews 10:35-36)

What a Transformationist Model Looks Like in Culture: Showing God Is Great

Having summarized in my last post what H. Richard Niebuhr described as the Conversionist (or Transformationist) model of Christians interacting with the culture, I wanted to give a good example of what that looks like. Here is the beginning of a recent message John Piper gave in which he described how our transformed lives as Christians affect what people around us see about God. The full video is embedded at the end.

John Piper on Romans 12:1-2: 

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12:1-2

We are going to look at the first two verses in Romans 12 and talk about the will of God, what it means, how to find it, and what it means to have your mind renewed to find it.

As you know, chapter 12 follows the first eleven chapters. And it begins with a glorious “therefore” (“I appeal to you therefore”). The wonders that he is calling us into in walking with Christ in a renewed way are built on massive theology in chapters 1-11. It doesn’t get any bigger than Romans 1-11. It doesn’t get any deeper than Romans 1-11. And this is what it was all building towards: new minds discerning the will of God and lives of worship.

“I appeal to you, therefore brothers [on the basis of Romans 1-11 and all the glories there and the pillars that suck down into the bottomless foundations] by those mercies [the mercies of God that I have unfolded for 11 chapters] present your bodies [that is, your whole bodily life, what you are everywhere you go including everything you do] as a living sacrifice. Your bodily existence is not going to die. It goes up on the altar, but it won’t die so that it ceases to live. It dies so that it lives a different way. As a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.

It is possible, Christian, to live pleasing to God. Don’t overstate the doctrine of the justification of the ungodly. Don’t make it cancel other Scriptures. People are doing that today by taking the doctrine of justification of the ungodly, a beautiful, Romans-taught doctrine, and extrapolating from it that you can’t please God, that you can’t be acceptable to God day by day. All you can do is confess that you are ungodly and bank on the righteousness of Jesus. That is false.

You are now called — built on justification by faith alone and accepted on the basis of the righteousness of Christ alone — to offer sacrifices to God in your body that please him, sacrifices that he smiles upon. This afternoon you can do something that pleases God. You can make a phone call that pleases God. You can speak a word of sweetness and kindness to your spouse that pleases God.

A Life of Worship

Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that by testing that you may prove [or discern] what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfected and, thus, thus, live a life of worship.

The aim of these two verses is that all of life becomes worship. "Present your bodies, your bodily life as living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship." In other words, the aim of all human life is that God in Christ be displayed as infinitely valuable. That is what life is for, to live your life in such a way that by what you say, what you think, what you feel, what you do with your arms and your lips and your eyes and your legs and your hands, all will show he is more valuable than anything.

That is what worship is: showing God’s value, supreme value over all other things. So if you have a job, do your job in a way that shows that Christ is supremely valuable. And if you can’t do that at your job, either change jobs or do verse two better.

When your life becomes worship, God begins to look valuable to other people. God looks infinitely worthy when others look at you. When they look at you, it looks like you value God more than money. It looks like you value God more than power. It looks like you value God more than illicit sex. So what is with you? They want to know the reason for the hope that is in you.

You probably don’t have to change jobs. That would probably be a mistake. That is not going to solve the problem. But verse two will solve it. And that is what we are going to think about for a while here.

You Are New, Now Get New!

Verse two is Paul’s answer to the question: How all of life becomes worship (from verse one). It doesn’t call for mere change your external behavior. It says, “Be renewed in your minds.” Now I have got to step back and get a little Pauline theology in here so that “being renewed” is understood in the context of what has really happened to you, Christians.

For the rest, see the video below.

Fundamentals Part 2: Christ and Culture - Niebuhr's Five Categories of Interaction

60 years ago, H. Richard Niebuhr addressed the same ideas summed up in Bruce Ashford's lecture (see my last post) with even more depth and broadness. If you really want to grasp the strengths and weaknesses of each approach to culture, Niebuhr's book Christ and Culture is priceless. My ambition here is to simply sketch out and summarize the basic categories Niebuhr charted out, showing how they compare to Ashford’s discussion. People could spend entire books on the significance of Niebuhr’s work and its application to a wide range of problems and issues. I only aim to be as simple as possible without distorting his meaning. This makes for a longer-than-average blog post, but the understanding of these ideas is worth it. If you want a really detailed discussion and examination of his categories and ideas by a far superior commentator, you’ll be glad to get D.A. Carson’s 2008 book Christ and Culture Revisited. You can even preview the first section here. (I gladly admit to drawing freely from Carson's analysis.)

First, it is crucial to stop and think about what we mean by the words “Christ” and “culture.” D.A. Carson takes time to examine this right away in Christ and Culture Revisited. We can’t just take for granted that we all mean the same thing by those terms; if we do, we will leave a lot of room for confusion in how each approach to culture affects the Christian and just where the line between culture and Christian thought can be drawn. For purposes of my discussion, when I refer to Christ, I have in mind not simply Jesus Christ as a person and Savior but also what the Apostles' Creed and the historic confessions of the Church teach us about God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and other basic Christian doctrines. This differs from Niebuhr’s approach, for he tried to be very inclusive and make room for some modern perspectives on Christ and Christianity such as liberal theology and existentialism. Niebuhr himself, however, drew some boundaries and excluded reflections/imitations of Christianity like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons. My point is simply to clarify that I think of Christ in terms of traditional, biblical Christian teaching such as would have been accepted and approved by Augustine or Luther or Wesley or Charles Spurgeon.

As for culture, Niebuhr sums it up brilliantly:

What we have in view when we deal with Christ and culture is that total process of human activity and that total result of such activity to which now the name culture, now the name civilization, is applied in common speech. Culture is the “artificial, secondary environment” which man superimposes on the natural. It comprises language, habits, ideas, beliefs, customs, social organizations, inherited artifacts, technical processes, and values. This “social heritage,” this “reality sui generis,” which the New Testament writers frequently had in mind when they spoke of “the world,” … is what we mean when we speak of culture. (Niebuhr, Christ and Culture)

In short, culture can be described as the world the Christian interacts with beyond purely Christian circles such as church or youth group. Niebuhr helped us a lot by identifying it with what the New Testament writers meant when they referred to “the world.” In fairness (and Niebuhr and Carson both say this) it is hard to identify a Christianity that is entirely outside culture, just as no person can be entirely outside the culture in which he lives, but what we all have in mind here is how the Christian interacts with the culture that we see as distinct from Christ and the Church. We want to figure out how to interact with that which differs from Christianity. Note that culture includes beliefs and ideas as well as traditions, social structures, etc. Culture is not devoid of values or a shared sense of moral purpose; but these are often different from or vastly weaker than the values and purpose Christianity reveals to mankind.

D.A. Carson does us another favor by making the distinction even clearer. What Niebuhr is really doing is comparing “two sources of authority as they compete within culture, namely Christ… and every other source of authority divested of Christ (though Niebuhr is thinking primarily of secular or civil authority rather than the authority claimed by competing religions). If we do not recognize that the polarities Niebuhr sets up are along such lines, the rest of his elegant discussion simply becomes incoherent.” (Christ and Culture Revisited, p. 12)

Now, the five categories from Christ and Culture:

Naturally, these are all generalizations and people who fit under a certain category may very well not fit all the attitudes or weaknesses described. 

1. Christ Against Culture. An attitude often described as "withdrawal" or "separatism." On this view, Christianity and culture are simply incompatible. The culture is too corrupt for Christianity to redeem, and the Christian is at risk of being tainted and compromised by culture if he or she gets involved in it. No matter how one tries to carefully engage the culture, the moral compromises are unavoidable. Christians should not involve themselves in politics, or military service, or other positions of cultural entanglement. However, Christians do interact with the world as ordinary folk: shopping, paying taxes, going to the health club, etc. For some particular Christians, this approach may serve their calling: monasteries and convents would fit here. Historically, it was advocated by Tertullian and Leo Tolstoy, and is commonly seen in Quakers, Mennonites, and the Amish. It was included in Ashford’s lecture as the Second View: Grace Against Nature.
   Weaknesses: Christians who hold this view sometimes make the mistake of viewing the non-religious studies and disciplines as inferior or bad. They may end up despising literature, science, etc. as too corrupted by sin and “godless” thinking to be of any value. Ashford critiques it for its wholesale rejection of much of the created order: “[T]his vision gives sin too much credit. The evil one does not have the power to make bad what God has made good. The best that he can do is to take God’s good creation – which remains good structurally – and twist it toward wrong ends. … This vision unintentionally, as I see it, undermines Christ’s lordship and reduces it to one’s private life, one’s personal activities, and one’s church worship.” A logical consequence of this view is that whole areas of work and study are considered immoral or unworthy for Christians: no Christian lawyers, or legislators, or judges, or public school teachers. If followed through, this would ultimately mean no Christian representation in any of these fields or in any of the decisionmaking or lawmaking of society. Even in its weaker forms, this view can create a crisis of conscience for Christians who cannot reconcile their participation in a career or government position with their belief that these things are corrupted almost beyond redemption.
   
   
2. The Christ of Culture. This view often disregards or minimizes conflict and tension between Christianity and culture. Those who hold this view embrace what they consider to be best in culture, and have an optimistic view of the possibilities of human culture. Rather than seeing Christ and the Lord God as sovereign rulers of the universe who are establishing a new kingdom defined by God's righteousness, followers of this view tend to view Christ and Christian truth as "improving" culture and perfecting what is good in culture. At the same time, they tend to minimize the conflict between Christianity and whatever is bad or undesirable in culture; there is no need for Jesus to take lordship of all of culture, on this view, and so the parts that are backwards or unsavory can simply be disregarded as they focus on making the best parts better. Jesus is often accepted as God by those who hold this view, but not as a ruler of all Creation who must one day remove what opposes the righteousness of God. People who fall into this category often have little use for concepts like the Fall or Redemption. Jesus is more of a hero who has come to better humanity, much like a Plato or Socrates (although on a higher and more divine level). Historical persons who fit under this view include Abelard, Thomas Jefferson, some Enlightenment philosophers like John Locke, and even Kant (who charted a course in philosophy away from the spiritual and supernatural aspects of Christianity but found the moral reasoning compelling). From the late 19th century, liberal theology in the United States has largely fit under this category. In Ashford's lecture, this view doesn't have a direct counterpart, but the discussion in my last post described how the First View: Grace Above Nature and the Third View: Grace in Tension with Nature can end up leading to a practice of this view and its weaknesses - but in pure form they resemble the third and fourth categories below.
   

   Weaknesses: Niebuhr sees more promise in this view than the first view, which rejects most of culture wholesale. Those who embrace the higher aspects of culture and become fluent in them may become "missionaries" to the aristocracy, academics, and cultural leaders who are offended by Christians who treat culture as polluted. But there are significant weaknesses (see also those raised in my last post). Christ tends to be reinvented and adapted by those holding this view to reflect what they see as the needs of the times. So he becomes a great moral rationalist, or an advocate of social justice, or a general example of inner spirituality. The tendency is to broadly include people in spite of vague or nonexistent theology, and to sidestep or reject parts of Christianity that would exclude some people from the community of believers. The fact that the Christ conceived by these Christians usually reflects the cultural demands and the trend of popular thought makes Him little more than an idol created to support their social objectives. In particular, this view often fails to see the importance of grace because it downplays or discounts the effects of sin. The focus is primarily on improving society here and now, rather than looking forward to a new heavens and new earth and the kingdom of God. Those holding this view often have no grasp of some Christian doctrines or theological concepts; they are prone to picking and choosing the aspects of Christianity that serve their vision of culture. This view is sharply criticized by orthodox Christianity as sacrificing too much of the essence of Christian faith and teaching.

   
   
3. Christ Above Culture - the Synthesists. Let's subtitle this "Render Unto Caesar the Things That Are Caesar's" or "One Foot in Both Worlds." Niebuhr's last three categories are really sub-categories of what he calls "Christ Above Culture." He sees the historical positions of the Church over the centuries as fitting into three categories: 1) Synthesist, 2) Dualist, and 3) Conversionist or Transformationist. (Carson at p. 20). First, the Synthesist recognizes the distinctions and tensions between Christ and Culture but also believes we have a role to play in culture. We are conscious of the corruption of sin and the effects of the fall, but we also see the created order (both nature and social structures like government) as things God designed for good and for which God still has a purpose. Matthew 22:21 ("Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.") and Romans 13:1 ("Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.") suggest that God seems to have a purpose for civil government and society. Christ is far above culture, but uses all the institutions of culture (government, education, law, philosophy, civic life) for good purposes in fulfilling His work in the people of God and the world. Bruce Ashford's point that God's creation may be corrupted by sin directionally (in how we use it) but is still good structurally seems to be the same idea. However, this is only a part of Ashford's Fifth View: Grace Renews or Restores Nature, and the best match for that view will be Niebuhr's fifth category: Conversionist or Transformationist. Ashford's First View: Grace Above Nature could fit here, but you can't define this entire category by how Ashford describes his First View. Important synthesists included Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Thomas Aquinas. I will skip a discussion of weaknesses, except to refer back to what I said about Ashford's First View in my last post, and leave this as a comparison with the final two approaches.
   
   
4. Christ Above Culture - the Dualists. The Dualist (which has nothing to do with the historic Christian heresy of dualism) is essentially Ashford's Third View: Grace in Tension with Nature. Martin Luther was probably the most famous developer of this view. In short, Christ sets us free through grace to approach culture with a renewed mind and purpose, but He doesn't directly govern what we do in the institutions of culture or how they develop. We are free to use the tools of culture to build and improve culture. Luther's contributions here were enormous: he recovered and affirmed the idea that every vocation (job) in human experience had a significance for the Christian; every man's vocation was the arena in which he lived out the Great Commandments by loving his neighbors and being the instruments of God's blessing to them. Faith makes us acceptable to God, but our works serve our neighbors. Niebuhr said: "More than any great Christian leader before him, Luther affirmed the life in culture as the sphere in which Christ could and ought to be followed; and more than any other had discerned that the rules to be followed in the cultural life were independent of Christian or church law. Though philosophy offered no road to faith, yet the faithful man could take the philosophic road to such goals as were attainable by that way." (Niebuhr, pp.174-75). Søren Kierkegaard is a more modern Dualist.
   Weaknesses: Niebuhr acknowledges that there are few actual examples of full Dualists. He identifies some criticisms others have made. Carson sums these up: 1) that Dualists tend toward conservatism and focus on some institutions and traditions to the exclusion of others, so they are unlikely to bring about major social change such as dismantling slavery; and 2) Dualists can fall into antinomianism (a false belief that since grace has covered and forgiven all our sin, we can go forward in the world without worrying about whether we sin or how our behavior conforms to holiness). As I described in my last post, this kind of thinking can result in a "split-personality" set of values: a Christian mindset at church and an entirely secular, agnostic set of values when it comes to work or society. In spite of these dangers, Luther's contributions to the theology of work and the meaning and purpose of our business and employment are rich with encouragement and wisdom. Gene Edward Veith has made them very accessible and clear in God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life.
   
   
5. Christ Above Culture - the Conversionist or Transformationist Model. The main feature of this approach is its hopeful vision that authentic Christian living can transform the world around us. This is not just about converting people but redeeming and transforming the institutions of culture - at least in part. This is the same as Ashford's Fifth View: Grace Renews or Restores Nature, which he identified as the one he believes in. The Christian can live out his or her faith in the midst of the world and the culture without compromising that faith. We do this by being faithful to Christ in each challenge we come across and allowing that steady devotion to transform our corner of the culture a little at a time. As Niebuhr explains, this vision has a long tradition in church history:

   The men who offer what we are calling the conversionist answer to the problem of Christ and culture evidently belong to the great central tradition of the church. Though they hold fast to the radical distinction between God’s work in Christ and man’s work in culture, they do not take the road of exclusive Christianity into isolation from civilization… Though they accept their station in society with its duties in obedience to their Lord, they do not seek to modify Jesus Christ’s sharp judgment of the world and all its ways. In their Christology they are like synthesists and dualists; they refer to the Redeemer more than to the giver of a new law, and to the God whom men encounter more than to the representative of the best spiritual resources in humanity. ...

   What distinguishes conversionists from dualists is their more positive and hopeful attitude toward culture. (Niebuhr, pp. 190-91)

   For the Conversionist, the Creation has a more significant place in God's plan for humanity and for redemption than simply being the place we live while we wait for the new heavens and new earth. God is at work in the world and the culture as part of establishing the kingdom of heaven, and He does some of that work through our involvement. Where some Dualists can think of human institutions as having largely a negative or neutral function (restraining evil, for instance), the Conversionist sees the possibility of establishing good things that reflect the coming kingdom of God. We cannot make these institutions perfect or sinless, but we can pursue some reflection of God's ideal order. Think of Handel's Messiah, or Christian universities, or hospitals founded by Catholics and monastic orders. We do the best we can to display the true, the beautiful, and the good and show the world that God is wonderful and generous. 
   

   
   

   Conversionists believe that, in spite of the brokenness of the world, for God all things are possible. They are more likely to see in the history of the Church and the history of humanity evidence that God has taken an active role in the affairs of men to guide them to His glorious purposes, intervening to turn the instruments of culture unexpectedly in the direction of God. They believe it is possible to use all the activity of ordinary life - eating and drinking and marrying and mourning - in a redemptive way that contrasts the life eternal against unbelieving culture. These things all ultimately belong to God, were created for Him and by Him, and can still be used that way. That does not mean we claim dominion as Christians over everyone else's use of culture; but rather we display to the world how much better it is to use the things God has given us in a Christlike way that embraces God's design. Niebuhr seems to favor this model, although he does not state his personal preference. Augustine, John Calvin, and John Wesley each demonstrated this approach in their works.
   

   
   

   Weaknesses: This model may slip into excessive optimism about just how much it is possible to redeem the institutions of culture, which can result in getting so caught up in culture that one confuses Christian duty with cultural roles and objectives, letting those roles shape us more than Christ. For instance, achieving a Christian vision for politics becomes so consuming that the visionary becomes mostly a politician with an agenda founded in Christian ideas and little more. This is different than the Christ of Culture category, because the visionary may retain very traditional Christian theology and see the culture as alien to Christian practice, but he or she is so enthralled with "winning" the culture that this comes to occupy all Christian activity. It can also be distorted into pushing a uniquely Christian vision of culture onto others who do not share the faith in Christ, as seen in some of the more polarizing and inflexible approaches to the "culture wars." However, that is not the vision of this model and represents a shallow grasp of the role of an ambassador. The goal is not to wrest institutions of culture away from others, but to win their support and admiration for the superior blessings of using these institutions in a Christlike way.