FreeTruth

Last week I shared with the folks in the TruthWalk class a quote from J.C. Ryle that hopefully served as a helpful exhortation to us regarding the practical importance of the Bible in our living of the Christian life. In fact, the phraseology "practical importance" may be too mild. Perhaps, something like "vitally needed for our very spiritual lives" might be more like it. At any rate, for those who read this blog but were not present in the class, I thought it good to pass this quote on to you. And if you were present, it will do you good to hear it again (and again, and again), as we always need to be reminded afresh of the things we need to know (2 Peter 1:12-14).

You live in a world where your soul is in constant danger. Enemies are round you on every side. Your own heart is deceitful. Bad examples are numerous. Satan is always laboring to lead you astray. Above all, false doctrine and false teachers of every kind abound. This is your great danger.

To be safe you must be well armed. You must provide yourself with the weapons which God has given you for your help. You must store your mind with Holy Scripture. This is to be well armed.

Arm yourself with a thorough knowledge of the written Word of God. Read your Bible regularly. Become familiar with your Bible.... Neglect your Bible and nothing that I know of can prevent you from error if a plausible advocate of false teaching shall happen to meet you. Make it a rule to believe nothing except it can be proved from Scripture. The Bible alone is infallible.... Do you really use your Bible as much as you ought?

There are many today, who believe the Bible, yet read it very little. Does your conscience tell you that you are one of these persons?

If so, you are the man that is likely to get little help from the Bible in time of need. Trial is a sifting experience.... Your store of Bible consolations may one day run very low.

If so, you are the man that is unlikely to become established in the truth. I shall not be surprised to hear that you are troubled with doubts and questions about assurance, grace, faith, perseverance, etc. The devil is an old and cunning enemy. He can quote Scripture readily enough when he pleases. Now you are not sufficiently ready with your weapons to fight a good fight with him.... Your sword is held loosely in your hand.

If so, you are the man that is likely to make mistakes in life. I shall not wonder if I am told that you have problems in your marriage, problems with your children, problems about the conduct of your family and about the company you keep. The world you steer through is full of rocks, shoals, and sandbanks. You are not sufficiently familiar either with lighthouses or charts.

If so, you are the man who is likely to be carried away by some false teacher for a time. It will not surprise me if I hear that one of these clever eloquent men who can make a convincing presentation is leading you into error. You are in need of ballast (truth); no wonder if you are tossed to and fro like a cork on the waves.

All these are uncomfortable situations. I want you to escape them all. Take the advice I offer you today. Do not merely read your Bible a little--read it a great deal.... Remember your many enemies. Be armed! (J.C. Ryle, from The Most Important 18 Words You Will Ever Know, by J.I. Packer, Christian Focus, 2007, pgs. 40-41)

Labels: Bible, Guest Post, Sanctification

"Rejoice O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment." (Ecclesiastes 11:9)

You know what I'm learning as a father? Sanctification cannot be legislated into the life of my children. It's been difficult for Theresa and I to watch our oldest son take the inevitable steps toward independence. When Peter John was little, he was happy batting wiffle balls with an oversized bat, or falling asleep before a Beatrix Potter video, or watching planes come into Chicago's O'Hare Airport in daddy's arms. A promised ride to McDonalds for lunch (along with jumping in those colored balls) was something to look forward to the entire previous day!

Things have changed.

This summer (besides work), it was the beach, Applebee's, and a Fried Chicken Wing Joint down in Beach Haven that was all the rage.

As a man very close to 50, I find myself more suspicious than ever of a world I feel I know less and less. Too often I transfer that suspicion to my son, who seems to enjoy being out and about, engaged in "things of the world." When I let these fears and suspicions (which aren't rational) lay hold on me, I'm always proven wrong. PJ returns home on time, cheerful, and, (I know him well enough to say this), innocent. I then reproach myself for my untrusting heart, feeling foolish that I was very nearly ready to yank the car keys out of his hand, and reprimand him for his sin and guilt.

My son is not "seeking the Lord" with all his heart. He's the first to acknowledge it. The sports, the friends, and the sunny beach-- followed by a bowl of spicy wings afterward-- this has his attention now. And aside from a very short devotional time in the morning, I am not likely to find him meditating on scripture in his room, or praying.

The verse from Ecclesiasties has always intrigued me. "Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes." It seems to encourage a carefree, honest, "grab for the gusto" kind of existence. The kind of life my teenage son is living now. One thing I find in this verse is a healthy safeguard against hypocrisy. Enjoy yourself, young man, and do what you like! Don't pretent to be something you're not! But there is a caveat. The last phrase (which seems to support the meaning I have inferred above), is a warning. "But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment."

I suppose I understand why our 18 year old son prefers frivolous dinner table banter with his friends, and being at the beach more than pondering a portion of holy scripture. He doesn't seem to realize that we live in a fallen world. He hardly notices the suffering all around him.

But God knows how to deepen young men, and we leave it to Him. I suspect difficult circumstances, and assorted sorrows will drive him eventually to seek the Lord more than he does at present. In less than a week he will leave his comfort zone. We're dropping him off at a school near Pittsburgh, in unfamiliar surroundings with 640 other college freshmen, and leaving him there. This begins a new chapter, filled with joys, and hopefully a sufficient dose of sorrow too. In the end, whatever it takes, he must come to know the Lord, and to see all else as child's play.

Sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit... and only God can do the work of God.

Labels: Change and Growth, christian life, Guest Post, Sanctification

To wrap up my posts on the tongue let me give you one final step toward cleaning up our mouths.

Step Five: Gratitude and Wonder

In Ephesians 5:3, 4 Paul tells us not to be crude and vulgar, profaning the sacred gift of sexuality. But that's not all he says; he also says that we should speak and think of these things with "thanksgiving". Over in 1 Timothy 4:1-5 he says something similar: we sanctify God's gifts of sex and food by thanking Him for them.

Here's how to keep your heart from profaning things holy and beautiful: be actively, consciously, insistently, reverently thankful for them. Think of them and then treat them as holy and precious gifts from God. This putting on of thankfulness will help you to put off profanity.

It's hard to treat with dishonor something that you are consciously thankful for as a gift from God. So spend time thanking God His name, for His church, for His Law, for His gift of sex, for all things holy and good and beautiful. Use your tongue to praise the holy and good, and you'll find your tongue reticent to speak flippantly about the same.

Nothing so mortifies sins of the tongue like the right use of the tongue. Nothing so lifts us up from the gutter of the profane like a love and celebration of the sacred.

God help us to tame our tongues by turning them loose with praise.

Labels: Sanctification, speech, tongue

Step Four: Trust God

I have found that the single greatest help in the restraining of my angry tongue from sinful outbursts has been a strong, sustained, conscious trust in the sovereignty of God.

Think about it: normally why do people curse? It's because we get angry. Why do we get angry? Because either people or circumstances do not treat us the way we want.

But who controls and governs the people in our lives or the circumstances that fill them? God. That means that when we curse in anger it is because in that moment we are not trusting or resting in the sovereign purposes of God for us in that moment. We're mad at what God has ordained. Cursing is anger expressed which is really unbelief at work.

A few years back I made a picnic table. It took hours of planning and labor and (as you would expect with me) sweat. Within a week or two of when I finished it--and I think even before we had a chance to use it more than once or twice, a storm hit. Heavy winds blew, knocking down a tree. Guess where it landed? Right on my table.

How do you think I responded? Believe it or not, I laughed. It was a good hearty, cheerful, full-bodied laugh of faith. For somehow in that moment, I was conscious of the fact that God rules over wind and trees and where trees trees land--and God must have had a reason for landing one on my handiwork.

Faith in a sovereign God made me laugh at that moment when at other times, when I have not been God-aware, I have not. Trust in a soveriegn God made me laugh at calamity; it never even crossed my mind to curse or even come close.

I wish it was always easy to keep from the angry outburst. What I have found is that the more I live in the shadow of God's throne, conscious that He reigns over every detail of life, including smashed tables, hammer-smashed thumbs, dents to the car, and the flat out crises of life, the less I get angry or succumb to anger's outbursts against God or others or things. The more I trust sovereignty, the less i even think about cursing the problems or people in my life.

Labels: Sanctification, speech, tongue

Step Three: Hope

Some of us may hear our speech patterns and despair that we can ever clean them up. Don't.

Just because we may be far removed from where God wants us to be does not mean that we cannot get there from here; it only means that we have a long way to go.

In all my years I've never figured out a way to get from anywhere to any other where except to take a first step. The fact that there is a long way to go need not deter us from going. Let's move!

Start today: pray that God gives you awareness of when you're about to sin with your mouth or just have. Ask Him for grace to have a vigilant mind. This will help you to have one victory here; another there. One good word choice to restrain or change the tongue will lead to another. And while you may never get to perfection, you'll sure make progress.

If you curse or use profanity one less time than you did yesterday, that's one less sin. And be sure of this: that's growth; growth that will lead to more.

Have hope in the power of grace!

Labels: Sanctification, speech, tongue

Please read: Romans 9:1-26; 11:33-36; Ephesians 1:1-14.

In wrapping up this series of posts wherein hopefully something spiritually profitable was conveyed regarding the practical implications of the Biblical doctrine of God’s sovereign electing grace, that it is not a cold, abstract, ivory tower theory, but rather that which is manifold in its life affecting significance, I leave you in this concluding post an excerpt from the exceptional When Grace Comes Home: How the Doctrines of Grace Change Your Life, by Terry L. Johnson (I highly commend the entire book for your reading and strengthening in God):

Where does a true comprehension of the doctrines of grace lead us? To our knees in worship. Perhaps one reason why so few are motivated to worship God with fervor is that we have reduced God to a slightly larger version of ourselves. He can be comprehended by our logic. He works within the bounds of our rules and reasons. He is so much like us that we see no real reason to worship Him. It is pathetic but true. What is the antidote? A God who is sovereign over the souls of wicked, undeserving sinners, including me.

This is the insight that was for me so life transforming. It inaugurated a Copernican revolution in my perspective--I realized I was displaced from the center of my universe and that God was enthroned there. It is a revolution which goes on.

What practical difference does Calvinism make?... It will make you into a worshipper. When you come to realize that the God who is there is not subject to your desires, that He is sovereign over your eternity, and when you realize the greatness of His mercy and grace, you will begin to long for genuine worship, worship that prostrates you and exalts God.

Moreover, you will begin to experience a divinely given discontent with worship that is not worship. Entertainment that poses as worship will become distasteful to you. Revival meetings that pose as worship will leave your soul unsatisfied. Superficial song services, preaching services, and fellowship services which fail to finally get around to worship will leave the soul longing for worship that worships. Your soul will crave and demand worship that is God-centered, that is filled with high praise and lowly confession, and characterized by a spirit of reverence and awe for the almighty Trinity. When once you grasp the greatness of the sovereign God, your worship will be transformed because you will be transformed, hereafter to have the perspective of one who lives on his knees. (pgs 27-28)

Soli Deo Gloria!

Labels: Doctrine, Election, Guest Post, Sanctification, Worship

In the battle to clean up our words we come to another key element.

Step Two: Embrace Grace

When Isaiah came to grips with his dirty mouth he right away found grace to have it forgiven (Isiah 6:5-7). God forgives dirty mouths like he forgives everything else we've ever done wrong.

As you confess your sins, realize that God is faithful and just to forgive it (1 John 1:9). Two things to keep in mind: Jesus died for your dirty mouth, and Jesus didn't have one. Because He had a clean mouth, His cleanness is counted as yours. Your record before God--based on the imputed clean mouth of Christ--is that you have never cursed, never been profane, never been potty-mouthed at all. Infact you've always said the perfect, right, clean and pure thing!

Praise God in Christ for a blood-bought forgiveness and a perfect righteousness in which before God we stand. To be sure don't let your forgveness in Christ become a license to sin, but also don't let your battles with profanity become a battle with condemnation.

Live in the power and freedom of a clean record before God. Then go out and seek to sin no more.

Labels: Sanctification, speech, tongue

Before I go any further I want to clarify something I wrote yesterday by emphasizing it. In my first couple of paragraphs I was not endorsing the use of the s- or f- words as if they really, in today's culture and use, are valid. I tried to qualify that at the end of those comments but at least one has thought that maybe I was not strong enough in what I said.

Folks, when a word has an overwhelmingly vulgar and base sense connected to it in a given time and place--even if there is a strict literal meaning of that word that is not vulgar, it is the height of foolishness (at best) to use that word. More likely the choice to use that word even in a strict literal way would evidence a carnal desire to sound edgy, and/or a callous disregard for others and for the name and testimony of Christ. Avoid these words because even if you think you are using a valid word in a valid way, you'll be about the only one who thinks so. In such a case you may not be guilty of vulgarity, but you will be guilty of something worse: a lack of love and concern for others.

Now that said, I want to be sure to include in these posts a few helps as to how to move toward the cleaning up or sanctifying of our words. Over the next few days I'll suggest five steps toward a cleaner mouth. I hope they provoke growth and holiness in us all.

Step One: Integrity

I think the first step toward cleaning up our mouths is being honest that they are dirty. If the holy, godly, mighty prophet Isaiah admitted a dirty mouth (Isaiah 6:5), we can be pretty sure that we need to admit it too.

Let's be honest: all of us are at least tempted to curse and be profane. I'm not talking necessarily about certain four-letter words. Your curses may be words that others consider innocent. You can be cursing by saying "Phooey!!" if the word is coming out in anger; or by saying "Idiot" if your heart is defiling and denegrating another human being made in the image of God.

People often say that because words are used so frequently and mindlessly they lose their meaning so that when people use them they may not really be cursing in ther hearts at all. I suppose that it's possible, in a given moment, to use a word mindlessly, but I'm not sure that that means cursing has not happened. I still would maintain that these words are chosen at some level precisely because they carry a certain sound and cultural meaning that satisfy the flesh at that moment.

Why don't more people say "Phooey!" instead of "D**n"? I think it's because the latter feels better to an angry heart than the former does. Why do so many exclaim the "s" word instead of some other word for excrement? Folks, the words we use, we use because they sound/feel sufficiently nasty to express our anger, naughty to satisfy our flesh, edgy to sound cool, or titillating to get attention. We need the integrity to confess that we use them for these reasons, and ask God to forgive the sinful heart that produced them.

It does us no good to make believe there's no profanity or cursing in our hearts. Integrity admits it, and integrity gets us moving in a new direction. Why not start here and go to God with an honest heart?

Labels: Sanctification, speech, tongue

S**t and f**k are not, in themselves, bad words. In their original meanings and still in some places they are simply synonyms for excrement and copulation respectively. Profanity is not made up of words with four letters. Profanity is a state of the heart. What makes a person profane is not the collection of letters and words he uses, but the angry or dirty or naughty or titillating intent of the heart when he uses them.

It is possible theoretically to use the "s" or "f" word without being profane at all, if one uses them as simple straight-forward terms for waste or copulation. I would not recommend doing this, since in fact cultural use has so influenced our perception of these terms that they are equated with profanity even if no profanity is intended. If at all possible, unless we have a really good reason for it, we need not risk confusing people by using words that they think are dirty just because we know a strict literal meaning that allows their use. Why bother when there are plenty of other more reputable words to use?

Apparently though, there are times when really strong words are justified. Paul seems to use a strong, even socially edgy term for excrement in Philippians 3:8. The Greek word that the ESV translates "rubbish" should more accurately be rendered dung or manure or excrement. Some argue that the term he chooses (skubalah) goes beyond a mere reference to waste; that it is a colloquial term meant to communicate the repulsiveness and filthiness of waste. They argue that it might even be equivalent to a bold, disgusted use of the word "s**t" (see Mark Driscoll/Doug Wilson, Chapter Two of Driscoll's Religion Saves). At least Mr. Driscoll, whose ministry I highly respect in many ways, seems to find in this some justification for the use of edgy, even crude terms in ministry and life.

Having read their sources and the Theological Dictionary of New Testament Words' entry on skubalah, I am not convinced that their conclusion is at all necessary or accurate. The term Paul uses clearly does speak of the righteousness produced by our good works as no better than waste. And Paul is clearly trying to communicate that we should think of our self-made righteousnes in the most vile and repulsive of categories.

But this is not to say that Paul is coming anywhere near to cursing or being profane, or justifying the use of profanity. He's simply using a strong term of revulsion in its literal sense to describe what is truly revolting in the sight of God: the dung of self-made righteousness. Friends: any attempts at creating a righteousness of our own before a holy God are as revolting and disgusting in God's sight as a pile of filthy fresh stinking dung is in ours.

Granted, there is shock in Paul's words, but there is no profanity. He is not using words about waste because he regularly thinks about waste or lingers at the bathroom level in his mind. He simply tries to find the strongest word he can think of to describe the filth of human righteousness. Paul is not speaking of the vile for profane reasons; nor is he using words that refer to holy and sacred matters irreverently. He's simply calling self-made righteousness what it is.

To conclude from this that we can freely use words about filth or sex or hell or damnation without careful regard for their vile or holy or fearsome significance is to go beyond what is allowed. In my opinion, it is to be profane.

Am I making any sense?

Labels: Sanctification, speech, tongue

I've argued previously that profanity begins with a fundamental baseness of mind; a thought or word or life-style that violates the standard of loveliness, worthiness of praise , and positive virtue and excellence that is called for in such passages as Phil. 4:8. Commitment to moral excellence will entail abstinence from things base and vile.

But there is a more serious profanity of which we must be aware. It is that profanity addressed by Bruce in his comments the other day:

A basic dictionary definition of the word profane is to treat (something sacred) with abuse, irreverence, or contempt; or, to debase by a wrong, unworthy, or vulgar use. Having said that, let me take a stab towards a basic definition. We might say that profanity is expressing or reflecting in our words, attitudes that are contemptuous or irreverent toward God, or toward that which God regards as sacred or special.

It's hard to improve on that so I think I'll deal only with specifics. We are guilty of being profane whenever we treat lightly or flippantly anything that God treats seriously or sacredly. This would include the following (to mention just a few):
1. His Name (phrases such as "O my God" or their euphemistic sounds-alikes should be avoided out of reverence for the Holy Name.
2. Vows made in His Name, and then broken, profane the Name by which they are made.
3. Flippant references to "hell" or "damnation". In addition to being literal curses which only God has a right to speak in anger, the words hell and damn should never be spoken except with strict and sober attention to what they mean and how serious they are (as for me, I'll risk really sounding extreme by adding that we'd do well to avoid the euphemistic substitutes of heck and darn while we're at it; why even kid ourselves into thinking we're not sinning, or at least being careless about something serious when we use such subsitutes?). When we use such words without strict attention to what they mean, at best we water down their holy meaning; worse we are guilty of profanity and cursing.
4. All careless, flippant, irreverent references to sex, God's holy gift in marriage. It's clear from scripture that sex is a holy gift not to be treated lightly (Ephesians 5:3,4) so any reference to it that is not made in a most careful tone of gratitude and wonder, is profanity. (Along these lines I've noted how many words people choose to use that mess around with the scatological and the sexual: cr-p, s--t, f---, frick-n, p-d off, scr-wed, s-cks, SOB, A--, A--h-le; need I go on?). Let us stand guard my friends, lest we defile what is pure, and render commonplace and normal what isn't.
2. His Church or Word or Law--any time we ignore or slander the church or disobey His law or disregard His Word we treat as common that which is very holy in the sight of God.

It should go without saying, but it doesn't, that one may be profane in all these areas without ever actually using a four-letter word. As Bruce has indicated, profanity is a state of heart before it is a set of words.

The call upon all of our lives to to treat as holy all that is holy; to love what God loves, honor what God honors, elevate what is meant to be high, and while we're at it, to just plain stay out of the profanity gutter.

Labels: Sanctification, speech, tongue

In this next to last entry on the practical, heart affecting applications of the truth of God’s sovereign electing grace, I would like to share with you once again an excerpt from my reading in the very excellent book: Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism, by Joel R. Beeke. In the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism we are asked: “What is the chief end of man?”, to which we are given the succinct Biblical answer: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.” Joy in God is an essential part of what it means to glorify Him. And glorifying Him is our primary purpose for existing at all. And God’s electing grace in salvation is meant to elicit overflowing joy in response to this great sovereign, saving God. Here’s the way Living for God’s Glory puts it:

J.I. Packer calls the joy election brings to believers their "family secret." Believers have a joyful security that is incomprehensible to the world. For true believers, John Piper says, election is not "a doctrine to be argued about, but a doctrine to be enjoyed. It’s not designed for disputes; it’s designed for missions. It’s not meant to divide people (though it will); it’s meant to make them compassionate, kind, humble, meek, and forgiving," and to fill them with joy (Eph. 1:3-14).

Election glorifies God (Eph. 1:6,12). "The end of our election is that we might show forth the glory of God in every way," Calvin says. According to the Canons of Dort, the final glorification of the elect is for the demonstration of God’s mercy and for the praise of His glorious grace (I, 7). Election makes us praise God for our salvation. As Sinclair Ferguson writes, "Until we have come to the place where we can sing about election with a full heart, we have not grasped the spirit of the New Testament teaching." [italics mine] Election assures us that God is the seeker rather than the sought; thus, all the praise belongs to Him. As C.S. Lewis says: "Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about man’s search for God. For me, they might as well talk about the mouse’s search for a cat... God closed in on me." As Josiah Conder wrote in 1836:

"Tis not that I did choose thee, for, Lord, that could not be;
This heart would still refuse thee, hadst thou not chosen me.

Thou from the sin that stained me hast cleansed and set me free;
Of old thou hast ordained me, that I should live to thee.

Twas sov’reign mercy called me and taught my op’ning mind;
The world had else enthralled me, to heav’nly glories blind.
My own heart owns none before thee, for thy rich grace I thirst;
This knowing, if I love thee, thou must have loved me first."

Election is the Bible’s teaching, not man’s. It promotes humility, not pride; encouragement, not depression; confidence in evangelism, not paralyzing fear; holiness, not license; assurance, not presumption; God’s glory, not our own. Oh, that election would make us cry out with the apostle Paul, "For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever" (Rom. 11:36). (pgs. 71-72)

Have we come to the place where we can sing about election with a full heart, grasping the spirit of the New Testament teaching? The Bible must be our guide here, and we must bring our thinking and our affections under it’s authority as God’s very word. As we reflect on these things, may we do so in preparation for corporate worship tomorrow, and so come into God’s awesome presence with hearts overflowing with joy for His totally undeserved sovereign mercy toward us--chosen in Christ before the worlds began!

Labels: Doctrine, Election, Guest Post, Joy, Sanctification

Bruce and Tom's comments on yesterday's post about the nature of profanity were excellent and can help us move toward a biblical understanding of this matter. We must see that we can and do have a profane heart before we ever have a profane mouth.

First of all, a profane heart is a heart that simply dwells on base, filthy, crude, vulgar, unlovely things. By the standard of Philippians 4:8, Ephesians 5:4, and 1 Corinthians 13:5 anything that is unlovely, dishonorable, crude, unworthy of praise, and/or rude (the Greek word for "rude" in 1 Cor. 13:5 speaks of that which is unbecoming or disgraceful) is simply not to occupy our minds or hearts, never mind our conversations.

In my view, this most basic form of heart profanity self-evidently rules out language that is crude or vulgar or unlovely. By this definition, it disallows scatological "potty mouthed" talk (bathroom humor, flippant references to human waste--whatever the choice of four, five, eight, ten letter words one might opt for--or crude bodily functions and sounds that everyone knows to be base, filthy, unlovely, rudely unbecoming). Every careless word we use about these should be put off so that something better can be put on.

This is not to say that bathroom functions and related matters can never be spoken of in a proper and appropriate way; they can and indeed at times must be. But it is to say that when Christians think and speak of such things commonly or crudely or flippantly, they are at least dabbling in the profane.

There are of course worse forms of profanity than this--such as when we treat and speak of holy, sacred, pure, awesome, and terrible (in a holy, fear-of-God sort of way) matters as if they are trite or trivial or base or common--about which we will think in further posts. But we can discern profanity at this starting point.

It is a sign of what John Piper calls a "minimalist ethic" when Christians argue that such bathroom humor is not really that bad; that it's morally neutral at worst. Folks, isn't that succombing to a minimalist approach to virtue; a settling for something that really isn't that bad instead of pursuing something that really is that good?

Shouldn't we be aiming at what is actually and positively pure, holy, lovely, and good? Does a Christian really want his mind and/or his mouth to live in the bathroom? I think not. In every thought, word, and deed, the Christian should be striving for what is excellent, lovely, and worthy of praise. I have my doubts that bathroom and gutter-talk qualify.

Labels: Sanctification, speech

One of my growing concerns in recent years is what I've called "the dirtying of the Christian mouth". Isaiah identified having a dirty mouth as one of the sins that made him feel undone in the presence of a holy God (Isaiah 6:3-5).

What I don't seem to sense today is a similar conviction among my Christian contemporaries. The Bible has a lot to say about the sins of the tongue; a lot! Why is it then that we seem so little concerned about what God seems so very concerned about?

There's a lot of ways we could go with this conversation, but let me start with a conversation starter: "What is profanity?" I'd really be interested to hear from you regarding how you'd define this; then I'll chime in some thougths over a few days period.

One with you in aiming for all things honorable, virtuous, good and lovely (Philippians 4:8).
Tim

Labels: Sanctification, speech

So how do we confront the culture in which we live? I think first we need to confront the culture in us that lives.

As I see it our times are marked by:
1. Perverse Materialism: Has any culture ever been marked at every level by such a raw love of money and the things money buys, and then had the perverse gall to think of it as an entitlement?
2. Uninhibited Hedonism: Has any culture ever had so much sensual pleasure easily at hand, with so little moral conscience to feel guilty about any of it, so few social stigmas to restrain it, and such a focused greed to make sure that not one of those pleasures goes unexperienced?
3. Unblushing Narcissism: Has any culture ever had so many mirrors, so much make-up, and such radical makeovers; or has any culture ever been so self-absorbed, self-confident, and self-preening, and actually been proud of it, turning all this vanity into a virtue?
4. Mind-numbing Decibalism: Has any culture ever created so much noise and turned it up so loudly to blare away all silence, and with it nearly all capacity to think, to reflect, to feel the deeper things?
5. Unvarnished Secularism: Has any culture ever been so brazenly and boastfully secular as ours, making agnosticism a mark of humility, and banishing the sacred to the realm of the closet and the cathedral?
6. Rampant Relativism: Has any culture ever intoned the "what's true for me may not be true for you" mantra more mindlessly than ours, leaving a whole generation or two almost really believing that anything goes?
7. Pervasive Nihilism: Has any culture ever embraced Hemingway's "life is a short day's journey from nothingness to nothingness" pessimism more enthusiastically than ours, and then lived like they meant it by feeling no sense of the transcendant, and by creating an abortion friendly, euthanasia open, suicide embracing, and violence craving culture of death?

These are the signs of our times; the charactristics by which future generations will remember us, if in fact we survive long enough for there to be any future generations.

The question for us culture-war minded Christians is this: "To what degree are we losing the war in the territory of our own hearts?" How much culture has already invaded my inner self? Where does the "spirit of the age" already rule my life?

We'd do well to review all the above and discern how much each of these soul-diseases has infected us. To win the war out there, I'm convinced we need to recapture the territory within.

Not only do we need this recovery of the soul for our soul's sake; we need it for our witness' sake. For when Christians speak out against a world gone mad when it's clear to the world that the church is both in and of the very same world she condemns, our witness sounds shrill and phony.

And it is.

Labels: Culture War, Mission, Sanctification