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Monday, June 28, 2004 posted by R.C. 10:23 AM link |
Cutting Off One’s Nose I know how people struggle with assurance. Having spent the better part of my adult life sitting beside a phone attached to a toll-free number, while working at one ministry or another, I’ve received my share of calls for help. Half of the calls are some variation of the assurance question. Half of them are people fearful they have committed the unpardonable sin (those are the easy ones—if you’re worried about it, you haven’t done it.) The other half were simple fears that they weren’t saved, usually couched as, “How can I know that I’m elect?” My deep pastoral resources always float to the surface and I reply, “You can’t possibly know; why would you want to?” Too many people, instead of being humbled by the discovery of the sovereignty of God, decide to take a look around. And they end up in some pretty deep weeds. The question, I tell my insecure friend, isn’t whether or not you are elect. The question is whether or not you trust in the finished work of Christ alone. Do you throw yourself on the mercy of God in Christ? Given my own experience then, in dealing with this common and poignant pastoral issue, I appreciate the clarion call of my friends from Auburn Avenue to lift our eyes up off our navels. We are not to be suspicious of the depths of the grace of God. We are not to look to ourselves but to Christ. He is our surety. What I don’t understand, however, is how their solution helps the problem. Looking to ones baptism is all well and good, if it really works ex opere operato. The trouble is, of course, that everyone concedes, even the Baptists, that there are wet headed people in hell. Here is the good news coming from Auburn Avenue—all who have been baptized receive every benefit in Christ. And here is the bad news—except those who are reprobate do not receive persevering grace. Assurance, according to how I understand my friends, isn’t found in the love one has for Christ. All who are baptized have that. It isn’t found in growing in grace. All who are baptized have that. It isn’t found in a heart that trusts in Christ. All who are baptized have that. It isn’t found in the indwelling Spirit. All who are baptized have that. So how can you know? What separates the reprobate baptized and the elect baptized is whether you are in the faith when you die. So if you want assurance while still living, all you have left is to figure out whether you are elect or not. We’re right back where we started from. This doctrine likewise destroys the doctrine of perseverance of the saints. The doctrine does not now nor did it ever hold that those who persevere will persevere, and God knows who they are. It has always held that those who are in stay in, and those who do not stay in never were in. Of course, as I said at Auburn Avenue II, denying the P in TULIP doesn’t make you a heretic—it makes you a Lutheran. The long and the short of it is that I am puzzled. I may have bungled what my friends are teaching. If so, I apologize. If not, I’d love to understand how this response to a “pastoral concern” is pastoral at all. [comments] |
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Thursday, June 24, 2004 posted by R.C. 5:12 PM link |
Wheels Keep Turning There are few things I appreciate more than being appreciated. I’d rather my dear wife jump up and down in gratitude for the supper I cooked than have her cook a great supper for me. The difficulty is that the too often, the more we do in search of appreciation, the more temptation we create to be taken for granted. Squeaky wheels get greased, while those that run smoothly get ignored. A case in point is our own web geek, Rick Saenz. Rick has not only done yeoman’s work on our website over the past several years, but has done so with no fanfare. The only mention that is ever made of it is that I constantly call him a web geek. How’s that for appreciation? Rick’s web duties, which were not duties at all, but chores he dutifully and cheerfully took on, are merely symbolic of a life marked by commitment and service. Rick serves as the treasurer of Saint Peter Church. He produces all of our tapes and CDs. He writes for Every Thought Captive. And he is the thoughtful one, the George Harrison of the Basement Fab Four. None of these are paying positions. Bigger still, when we were foundering in terms of getting our teaching out to people, he volunteered to create a company to do just that. Now we weren’t merely talking time, but money, real money. This work, unlike the others, at least has some chance of making enough money to support his family. But to do this, it needed to become the squeaky wheel. And now the other wheels are rightly falling off the wagon. Rick will no longer be our web geek. He will no longer be the church treasurer. He will no longer be a contributing editor to Every Thought Captive. (And this may hurt us the most, as his articles are consistently among the best we publish.) All this, we hope, will free him up to devote the time to grow Draught Horse Press to a thriving enterprise. In the meantime, I am once again caught in my own hypocrisy. I who want to be appreciated, have failed to sufficiently appreciate all of Rick’s (and his fine family’s) sacrifices. For this I am truly sorry. I have already said as much to Rick. Let me ask this favor of you—if you like what you see on this website, if you like the Basement Tapes, or ETC, or our teaching series, please let Rick know of your appreciation. And please help him, and us, continue to grow. Tell others about us. Buy more tapes and CDs and give them away to your friends. Kill three birds with one stone, and let us, and Rick, and your friends know you appreciate us, and Rick, and your friends. And remember to thank loudly, often and publicly, the Ricks in your life, and the God who gave them to you. [comments] |
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Tuesday, June 22, 2004 posted by R.C. 12:16 PM link |
Like Nathan Said…Our Baptist Betters Those were the giddy days, back in the first half of June. Dem Babtists were getting together and were talking about poking the government schools with a big stick, and getting their babies out of the bathwater. Wouldn’t it be something, we all wondered, if they actually pulled it off? Well, that’s what we said we were thinking. Really we were thinking, “Cool, they’re talking about us on CNN and in Time magazine.” Our contemplating a grand gesture produced a grand gesture—cultural relevance. What too few people know is that the document in question, the one the Baptists were considering, was written by a Presbyterian—a very conservative Presbyterian pastor. He wrote it as a suggestion for the denomination in which he serves, a group much smaller than the Baptists, but still the largest conservative Presbyterian denomination in the country. In passing around this draft to assorted friends and educational gurus, it found its way into the hands of those Baptists, who cleaned it up the way they cleaned up the Westminster Confession back in 17 whatever it was in London. The proposal never saw the light of day in that denomination known the world around for its commitment to its covenant children, and to sophisticated worldview thinking. Nope, it took the fat ties and helmet hairs to do anything with it. They didn’t do much with it, but they did more than we did. Which reminds me of a story. Back when our little church was institutionally adrift, back when we were Saint Peter Oxymoronic Independent Presbyterian Church, we considered four different groups with which to affiliate. The largest denomination, a group of Presbyterians, turned me down for entrance into their august group because I believe it a sin to render unto Caesar the things that bear God’s image, our children. Another group, the Reformed Episcopals, we rejected because of the funny hats. That left the little Presbyterian denomination we joined, and a confederation of independent churches. I was against the latter—despite my many friends who are a part of it—because it is a confederation, and not a denomination. Others, however, were opposed for another reason. Their hope had first been that we would become Episcopal. (And they wanted to be absolutely certain that the congregation would have a chance to vote on the matter.) Their second choice was the Presbyterians that were in the process of rejecting me. (Which, of course, may actually be a good sign for a denomination.) Their objection to the confederation, however, was what puzzled me. It wasn’t its polity, as such, but its views on baptism. No, this was back when there was only one perspective on Paul. The problem was that this confederation included churches that are baptistic. They weren’t, in the minds of these good people, sufficiently covenantal. I explained to my friends, “Look, you know I don’t want us to join that merry band. But don’t you see that while the big Presbyterians are in the process of rejecting me because of my rejection of government schools, that in all likelihood there isn’t a single elder in this Baptiterian association that has their children in government schools?” They were unimpressed with my argument. Who is more covenantal, a Baptist teaching their covenant child at home, or a professional Presbyterian who gives his children to professional secularists? Or to put it another way, who is living the objectivity of the covenant, and who is denying both their own and their children’s baptism? Victory isn’t found in passing grand resolutions. It is found when parents wrench their children free of Leviathan, and begin to train them up in the way that they should go. They won’t cover that on CNN, but the angels in heaven rejoice. [comments] |
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Wednesday, June 16, 2004 posted by R.C. 12:39 PM link |
Red Letter Days Sundry forks and crossroads dot the maps of each of our lives. Life, it could be argued, is little more than a series of decisions, a dizzying progression of little Edens, wherein we are tested time and again, illumined by countless stars of adiaphoric choices. These are the ways of our lives. What is more rare are those decisions that are so significant that they come equipped with those interstate sign sized warnings: Decision ahead—Be prepared for altered traffic patterns. This past Lord’s Day, Saint Peter Presbyterian Church didn’t so much make such a decision, but actually made the turn we had determined to make long ago. Our commitment at the time looked at least premature, if not brazen. As I looked out over a congregation that numbered under forty, over half of which were under ten, I told them that if the church should ever grow to 250 or so, we would plant a daughter church based on a geographic concentration of members. That number, 250, was neither biblical nor magical. That is, we will not argue that all good churches must split once they reach this size. But we believed that the congregation couldn’t know and love each other as they ought at that size. Nearly eight years later and we still haven’t reached that size, but we are approaching it. In the providence of God we were also reaching the capacity of the building we rent in Bristol. Likewise in His providence, we had a ready-made new parish waiting for us—Mendota. Bristol is either a large town or a small city. About 50,000 citizens call it home. We love that city, and are delighted to be there. Mendota, on the other hand, is home to roughly 300 citizens. About fifty of them belong to Saint Peter Church. With tears of sorrow and rejoicing, the Mendotans in our church began meeting for worship in Mendota this past Lord’s Day. My last Sunday with the entire congregation I preached a sermon I called The Twelve Stones, on the story of the children of Israel, who at God’s command, created a marker where they crossed the Jordan entering into the Promised Land. That marker not only pointed to God’s miraculous deliverance, but reminded those tribes east of the Jordan that they were yet God’s people, and reminded those on the west of the same. We are still one body, but we meet in two places, two parishes. And henceforth, our road will never be the same. Praise God for His many blessings, and that He will yet walk with us, all of us, all the way to glory. [comments] |
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Saturday, June 12, 2004 posted by R.C. 10:47 AM link |
An Update on Denise Friends, Many of you have written looking for an update on my dear wife as we continue to fight the good fight against cancer. For the first update from last February, click here. At this point Denise has had five of the six scheduled chemotherapy sessions. The last is scheduled in two weeks. After that she will have two or three weeks to recover before beginning six weeks of daily (weekdays) radiation therapy. After that sometime in the coming months will be reconstructive surgery, and a second mastectomy. Denise has been a real trooper, and my biggest challenge has been getting her to a. let go of her chores and b. be at peace about my performance of those chores. We have been overwhelmed with help, both local and not so local. Several former resident students young ladies have returned to help care for the family, and of course the Saint Peter body has been a living example of the body of Christ to us. As I write Denise is dealing with bronchitis. We spent the wee hours in the emergency room making sure it wasn't pneumonia. She was having trouble filling her lungs in the night. We ask that you continue to pray for strength, for patience for all of us, and especially that our children would be at peace, and would be spared any ill effects of changes in our family at this time. Little Maili especially has had a hard time with seeing less of her mommy than usual. Thank you again from all of us for all your faithful prayers, and please join us in thanking our heavenly Father for His grace not only in dealing with this hardship, but in sending it. RCJR |
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Monday, June 07, 2004 posted by R.C. 7:16 PM link |
In Praise of Gridlock It should not surprise readers of this space that I am less than enthusiastic over the Bush presidency. Truth be told, I am right puzzled over the joy many so called conservatives and Christians feel over this man. Such doesn’t mean that I can’t imagine any president I would be happy with. I’d be pleased as punch were God in His grace to give us eight years of Michael Peroutka as our president. He is the candidate for the Constitution Party, a fine bunch committed to all the right things. I believe ultimately that all it would take for him to be elected would be a grand outpouring of God’s grace. Proximately, I think all we would need would be for Christians to stop voting for the socialists and neo-cons that they call conservatives. Suppose, however, that God should not so bless us. I’m inclined to think that the next best choice would be John Kerry. Are you still there? I don’t doubt that if you were to pile up every egregious conviction held by Kerry, and do the same for the President that the former would stink more than the latter. I’m perfectly willing to agree that all things being equal, Bush is the lesser of two evils. But I believe a Bush presidency would be the greater of two evils. To prove my point all I ask you to do is to look over the last ten years. For six of those we had a wildly leftist president, and a mildly leftist legislature. For four of them we have a mildly leftist president and a mildly leftist legislature. Which moved us farther to the left? In the former we had smaller government, fewer adventures in empire building, lower taxes, and a nation more deeply committed to comparative social conservatism. It has long been argued by wise men that the Democrats are driving this nation to a deadly cliff at sixty miles an hour. Republicans, on the other hand, want to drive at thirty miles an hour. My pragmatic Christian friends have been arguing that we need to get us a thirty mile an hour president. But isn’t it so much better to have the car stand still, while the thirties and the sixties fight for control? Give me that old fashioned gridlock, so that we can be left alone. Let the Beltway Babylon babble on, so we can get on with our lives. [comments] |