Called to be saints together

Hunter Baker explains "The Secret of Appreciating Church", and it isn't discovering the most entertaining venue, or the most satisfying intellectual experience, or the most talented musicians.

.... You may hear of individuals who are so disenchanted with the church that they practice Christianity on their own as if they are advanced Christians. I think that’s the wrong interpretation. A failure to find a church and invest yourself in it is a sign of spiritual immaturity. ....

Don’t go with a consumer mindset. Don’t go thinking that you have to be entertained or amazingly taught or lifted into a higher plane by an ultra-talented worship team. Don’t sit back and judge the person teaching Sunday school as though you are Simon Cowell and the teacher is a performer. Pay attention. Look for opportunities to contribute. ....

The secret of the church is not that it is some business to be run or a show designed to catch curious onlookers. The secret of the church is that is a community. It is a place where you belong and where people know you. In other words, it is a lot like the old bar on the television show Cheers. And it helps you to live the Christian life. In the church, you will become aware of what is going on in other people’s lives and they will learn about your life. You will pray with each other and minister to needs. Christianity is not meant to be practiced in isolation.

So, stop shopping for a church. Stop sampling. Don’t fall for all the hype of a Disneyworld experience with a Christian aura around it. Don’t chase after a superstar preacher. You can hear that on your iPod. Feel free to contribute to that ministry. But find a church where you can be part of a community of people who know each other and will help one another live the Christian life, sometimes as helpers and sometimes by being in need and providing an opportunity for others to help. [more]

The Secret of Appreciating Church » Evangel | A First Things Blog

Higher expectations

G.K. Chesterton:

"There is a very real sense in which the Christian is worse than the heathen, the Spaniard worse than the Red Indian, or even the Roman potentially worse than the Carthaginian. But there is only one sense in which he is worse; and that is not in being positively worse. The Christian is only worse because it is his business to be better."

As quoted in Mary Eberstadt, The Loser Letters, p. 110.

"When lilacs last...bloomed"

The lilacs are in bloom in Madison. Inevitably I am reminded of the poem part of which we memorized in grade school: Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d":

.... In the door-yard fronting an old farm-house, near the white-wash’d palings,
Stands the lilac bush, tall-growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom, rising, delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle......and from this bush in the door-yard,
With delicate-color’d blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig, with its flower, I break.....
When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom’d. Whitman, Walt. 1900. Leaves of Grass

Foyle

The return of one of my favorite television series is celebrated by S.T. Karnick. Foyle's War is a perfect example of an historically set mystery series that gets everything right.

.... Starring Michael Kitchen as Inspector Christopher Foyle, the chief police detective in a coastal English town during and after World War II, the series includes good mystery puzzles while taking quite seriously the moral implications of all of its characters’ actions.

The second good thing was the nature of last night’s episode. “The Russian House,” dealt with a very serious moral and political issue and foregrounded an atrocity committed by the Soviet Union with British complicity at the end of World War II. The brutal nature of the Soviet Communist regime is quite apparent in the episode. ....

We soon find out that the reason the Soviet authorities are so intent on repatriating the escaped Russian POW whom Foyle has been assigned to locate is his knowledge of a Soviet atrocity in Odessa after the Yalta agreement at the end of the European hostilities. A boatload of Russian soldiers being repatriated from England against their will was machine-gunned by Soviet soldiers–an act in which the British government was fully complicit.

That was the Conservative Churchill government, it is worth noting, which turned a blind eye to such horrors in hopes of ensuring the safe return of the 20,000 British POWs then still being held in Soviet territory. (A character notes that U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt was likewise complicit in allowing the Soviet Union to perpetrate such horrors without being called to account.) Foyle correctly refers to this as a “deeply offensive little secret.” Both the Soviets and the British government desperately want to keep it under their bloodstained hats. .... (more)

The forcible return to Stalin's NKVD of the Russian POWs was accompanied in the USSR with the wholesale incarceration in the GULAG of all those who had been captured in battle by the Nazis. Stalin didn't really care whether they had fought for or against him — it was enough that they had surrendered or been captured. The complicity of the West was shameful.

PBS ‘Masterpiece Mystery’ Deals with Communist Atrocity, UK, U.S. Complicity | The American Culture

Immanentizing the eschaton

Melanie Phillips, writing in the UK's Standpoint, finds that the causes animating the Left demonstrate many of the less attractive characteristics attributed to religious fanaticism. From "How the West Took Leave of its Senses":

In the post-Christian West, it is an article of secular faith that religion and reason repel each other like magnetic poles. Religion, it is said, is not rational and reason cannot embrace anything that lies outside materialist explanation. ....

It is therefore odd that the great ideologies which currently consume the West — such as man-made global warming, scientism (the belief that science alone can explain the world), anti-Americanism and hostility to the state of Israel — all share characteristics of religious belief such as dogmatism, intolerance and evangelical fervour.

Even odder, they all display specifically Christian motifs of sin, guilt and redemption. Odder still, they all exhibit features of the millennarian apocalyptic beliefs associated with medieval Christianity, the pre-modern world and Islam throughout the ages.

Millennarianism is a religious belief in the perfectibility of mankind and life on earth through the collective redemption of sin. Contemporary secular ideologies identify the sins committed by humanity — oppression of Third World peoples, despoliation of nature, bigotry, poverty, war — and offer redemption and salvation by a return to the path of righteousness.

Dissenters are heretics forming diabolical conspiracies against the one revealed truth. Thus the decision to invade Iraq, Israel's military operations, scepticism of man-made global warming and the persistence of religious faith cannot possibly have any reasonable basis because they deny the unchallengeable truths of anti-imperialism, environmentalism and scientific materialism. The explanations must therefore lie in conspiracies by the neocons or the Jews, Big Oil or the Creationists, whose hidden hands are detected everywhere.

The left-wing intelligentsia, the environmentalists, the anti-Zionists and the militant atheists are, along with the Islamists, today's Gnostics. Their knowledge of a higher truth puts them on a plane above the rest of humanity, who have to be exhorted to change their ways in order to be saved from bloodcurdling apocalyptic scenarios: war and social disorder, floods, famine and pestilence, or slaughter perpetrated (solely) by religious fanatics.

These modern Gnostics all believe they can usher in a higher state of being. The greens believe they will save the planet. The leftists believe they will create the brotherhood of man. The anti-Zionists believe they will turn suicide bomb-belts into cucumber frames. The atheists believe they will create the Garden of Reason. And the Islamists believe they will create the Kingdom of God on earth. .... [more, although the full article is behind a subscription wall]

How the West Took Leave of its Senses | Standpoint

Left alone with your thoughts

Theodore Dalrymple:

.... Does silence really have no moral qualities, no intellectual advantages, no significance for the deepening of character? Of course, every person is inclined to indulge in special pleading on behalf of his own tastes, such as mine for silence; that is to say, to think that his own tastes are conducive to some higher end or good. ....

I know that many people now claim that they cannot concentrate unless there is a television flickering in the background and rock or rap insinuating itself into their ear; but I would not be telling the truth if I said that I believed it. It seems more likely that such people do not know what to concentrate really is.

More than the effect on concentration, however, I fear the effect of constant noise on the development of human inwardness. I find it difficult to believe that those who live in constant noise can ever reflect very deeply upon anything. Their taste for noise, that becomes almost a physiological need for them since they grow anxious without it, seems to me to bespeak a fear of being left alone with their own thoughts. .... [more]

Silence, PLEASE — Features — In Character, A Journal of Everyday Virtues by the John Templeton Foundation

A place to stand

At Christianity Today, John Ortberg suggests five books about faith and doubt. One of them I read quite some time ago. This is what he says about Elton Trueblood's A Place to Stand:

Trueblood points out what we so often miss: The modern deference given to doubt is neither necessary nor rational; we speak of "blind faith" and "honest doubt" when faith can also be honest and doubt can also be blind. He unpacks the core conviction of Christianity: that Christ was not wrong.

The book, unfortunately, has gone out of print. Two excerpts from my copy:

It is popular in some circles to accept Christ as a teacher, but not as one who provides a unique revelation of the Father. The familiar stance is one that involves admiring comments about Christ but denies any supernaturalism. Such a position, however, cannot be defended rationally, since all four Gospels bristle with supernatural claims on the part of Jesus. The person who takes this position has surely not read the Gospels! Familiarity has blinded men to the radical nature of Christ's claims about His peculiar relationship to the Father. Both C. S. Lewis and J. B. Phillips have performed a useful service in helping readers to see that the only alternative to acceptance of Christ's teaching about Himself is that He was either "a lunatic or a quack." "Now if He believed thus and spoke thus," writes Phillips, "and failed to rise from the dead, He was, without question, a lunatic. He was quite plainly a young idealist suffering from folie de grandeur on the biggest possible scale, and cannot on that account be regarded as the World's Greatest Teacher." The inescapable conclusion is that, if Christ was only a teacher, He was a very misleading teacher. [pp. 41-42]

.... The entire New Testament glows with the conviction that this life is not all and that our best personal experience, far from being ended by the death of the body, can be thereby brought to completion and fulfillment. The new faith is not expressed in isolated passages, but is found in both the Gospels and the Epistles. The most striking feature of Christ's own teaching on this subject is its unqualified and unequivocal confidence. The essence of His position is that, because God really is, and because the whole world, both present and future, is under His fatherly care, we shall be objects of His affection just as much after the death of the body as we were before. Because we could not be objects of His affectionate care if we were not alive, then those who love Him will continue to live. The heart will stop beating, but that it is only a minor incident. [pp. 110-111]

Elton Trueblood, A Place to Stand, Harper & Row, 1969.

My Top 5 Books on Doubt | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Not a tame God

From Eric Metaxa's biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, this in a letter to his brother-in-law:

If it is I who determine where God is to be found, then I shall always find a God who corresponds to me in some way, who is obliging, who is connected with my own nature. But if God determines where he is to be found, then it will be in a place which is not immediately pleasing to my nature and which is not at all congenial to me. This place is the Cross of Christ. And whoever would find him must go to the foot of the Cross, as the Sermon on the Mount commands. This is not according to our nature at all, it is entirely contrary to it. But this is the message of the Bible, not only in the New Testament but also in the Old Testament.

Thanks to John Starke for finding this.

Bonhoeffer and Where God is to Be Found - TGC Reviews

Good points

Justin Taylor posts a recent "tweet":

If Jesus answered all your prayers from the last 30 days, would anything change in THE World or just YOUR world.

Update: Another from the same blog, quoting Alan Jacobs:

There is no such thing as “spirituality.” Doesn’t exist, has no meaning. It’s just a name for “doing what I want to do and feeling that the universe somehow smiles on me for doing it.”

Your Prayer Life – Justin Taylor, “Spirituality” – Justin Taylor

"The only kind of discipline that's out of bounds"

I just received my copy of The Loser Letters, and have read the first several chapters. I'm liking it. P.J. O'Rourke's blurb may be a bit over the top:

As a Christian humorist, Mary Eberstadt is the rightful heir and assignee of C.S. Lewis, and her heroine in The Loser Letters is the legitimate child (or perhaps grandchild) of "the patient" in The Screwtape Letters.

But the book, so far, is very good. Here is an excerpt from the first chapter. The "Brights" are, of course atheists [self-labeled] so Christians are the "Dulls." The author is a convert to atheism, but thinks its most prominent advocates need to improve their arguments if they wish to appeal to the young. This is part of what she advises they keep in mind about sex:

The bottom line is, after everything that's happened since the Sexual Revolution, I'm telling You that we Atheists really need to knock off all the happy talk about how fantabulously liberating sex is. Privacy, privacy, privacy is everybody's mantra — as if that word settles anything at all! It's messed up, isn't it, when You think of how otherwise puritanical our own times are, that the Church's notion of sexual discipline should seem so funny to so many people? After all, it's the only kind of discipline that's out of bounds! We all know that people who eat too much are pigs, people who drink too much are drunks, people who don't exercise are slobs and parasites on the body politic what with all their health costs, and people who smoke are just as disgusting as it's possible to be, like an old person crossed with a fat one wearing a fur coat and eating venison and cake at the same time or something — and the rest of us are all really put out at every single one of those kinds of people for being such slobs and so hard on our own eyes and wallets. You know?

Yet sex behind closed doors, just as the Dulls point out, has more serious consequences for the world than any of these other kinds of piggishness. It's those "private acts" outside of marriage that have sent illegitimacy soaring and put so many kids in the rough hands of Mom's rotating boyfriends. It's consenting adults who have turned AIDS and STDs into global health problems. All this is to say nothing of the consequences that are harder to measure of all those mature adults doing as they please "in private". And kids know all about those kinds of consequences, as You can see if You ever look at their music and movies and Facebook pages. There's a backlash out there that none of You seem to know about — one You might call Ozzie and Harriet, come back — all is forgiven! I would go even further, based on what I saw as a Dull, and say that this notion of sexual discipline and its importance is not only serious rather than unserious; it is also what pulls many of the Dulls into practicing or even turning to religion in the first place, because they feel somehow better about life when it's lived inside of those rules.

Please understand that I'm not criticizing here! Cheering for pornography and omnivorous sex and, by extension, broken homes and abused and screwed-up kids and all the rest of the Sexual Revolution's fallout may not be everyone's thing; but most of You new Atheist guys have definitely made it Yours. I respect all that! I'm just saying for now that we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that the believers' sexual codes are an unmitigated bad on them and a plus for us, when most evidence suggests it's quite the other way around. .... (the entire letter is online here)

The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death, and Atheism. By Mary Eberstadt.

"If I swell against Thee..."

I have acquired a new edition of the 1559 Book of Common Prayer, my earlier copy having been damaged. It is identified as "The Elizabethan Prayer Book" because it was adopted early in the reign of Elizabeth I. It has been the basis for every edition of the prayerbook since. This edition includes a "History of the 1559 Book of Common Prayer," which explains Elizabeth's role in its adoption, including information about her Christian convictions. She was a rather learned lady who was able to read and write in English, French, Latin, Greek and Italian and apparently read from Erasmus's Greek New Testament every day. She wrote prayers in all of those languages. One of the English ones is quoted:

O Lord God Father everlasting, which reigneth over the Kingdoms of men, and givest them of Thy pleasure: which of Thy great mercy hast chosen me Thy servant and handmaid to feed Thy people and thine inheritance: so teach me, I humbly beseach Thee, Thy word, and so strengthen me with Thy grace, that I may feed Thy people with a faithful and a true heart; and rule them prudently with power.

O Lord, Thou hast set me on high, my flesh is frail and weak. If I therefore at any time forget Thee, touch my heart O Lord that I may again remember Thee. If I swell against Thee, pluck me down in my own conceit.

Create therefore in me O Lord a new heart and so renew my spirit that Thy law may be my study, Thy truth my delight: Thy church my care: Thy people my crown.

[John E. Booty, editor, The Book of Common Prayer 1559: The Elizabethan Prayer Book, University of Virginia Press, pp. 332-333.]

Above Suspicion

I spent an enjoyable ninety minutes last evening watching a newly acquired DVD from Warner Archive, Above Suspicion [1943] based, fairly faithfully, on Helen MacInnes 1941 bestseller. The book was MacInnes' first. It and the film came out during World War II but are set mostly  in Germany and Austria in 1939 just before the beginning of the war that September.

From an online review of the book by a D. Nowak:

Above Suspicion, the novel by Scottish author Helen MacInnes, is an entertaining, light yet surprisingly incisive spy thriller about a young British couple from Oxford, Richard and Frances Myles, who are enlisted as undercover agents at the onset of World War II. (MacInnes' own husband was a don at Oxford.) ...[T]hey are hired precisely because they appear “above suspicion,” although their mission is not without risk. ....  Like their film counterparts, Richard and Frances Myles have an enchanting, loving relationship with Frances matching her husband in brains, wit, nerve and athleticism. Their romance is pure champagne. (“[Richard] felt that wave of emotion which came to him when he looked at Frances in her unguarded moments; and he had the bleak horror which always attacked him then when he thought how easy it might have been never to have met her.”) The action builds to a great cat-and-mouse chase and satisfying conclusion. This novel ranks among the best of the World War II vintage novels I’ve read.

I enjoyed both the film and original novel. The film did a great job in capturing the flavor of the novel and its characters while adding many hokey yet fun MGM touches. The book affords a more realistic window into Europe at the early stages of Nazism with its grim implications, but both versions are fast-paced and escapist with courageous, charming protagonists.

I read the book long ago and re-read it last year, but don't remember ever having seen the film. Warner Archive is an on-demand producer of DVDs that Warner apparently doubts would be commercially viable otherwise. I've ordered several from them and have yet to be disappointed with either the movies or the quality of the DVDs. They are bare-bones, film only, and not digitally re-mastered.

From an early review of the film in The New York Times:

...[I]t recounts the misadventures of a professor and his bride, to whom is given an errand for the British Secret Service just as they are departing for a honeymoon on the Continent. Arriving in Paris, they are at once involved in a shadowy search and just as shadowy threats that follow them. The maid in the hotel is a vaguely disturbing creature, a phrase about roses brings them a guide-book with a mysterious message in code, a torn page from a Liszt concerto provides a clue to the assasin of a German bully, a collection of chessmen leads on to the ultimate goal. And after threading through a labyrinth of clues and hints a trap is sprung, and the chase comes into the open with cars roaring down the road toward the Italian frontier.

It is all carried off very deftly, thanks to the cagey direction of Richard Thorpe and to a neatly constructed script. From the very beginning, the director has managed to create and to sustain the suspense of an innocent young couple entering a world where no one is to be trusted and where friend and foe are apt to act alike. Once or twice he makes the audience his confidant a little too quickly, but for the most part he keeps a sure hand on the progress of the plot. All the actors do well. Fred MacMurray carries off his role with the quiet ease of a long-experienced actor, and Joan Crawford, after a couple of pretentious roles, is a very convincing heroine. The late Conrad Veidt must have enjoyed this sabbatical from his portraits of thin-lipped villainy; here he plays a sort of underground Robin Hood who bobs up in various guises just when the professor needs him most. Basil Rathbone, Reginald Owen, Johanna Hofer and others do admirably in lesser roles. Among them, they have made a sound and completely entertaining thriller. [T.S., N.Y. Times. August 6, 1943]

Above Suspicion, Above Suspicion by Helen MacInnes

Too much information

In the world of my parents, and still in the society in which I grew up, reticence was a virtue. Recently, more than once, I have found it necessary to explain why I was not exhibiting more emotion in circumstances where others thought I really should. When, and with whom, should one "share" personal information? Christine Rosen on "The Death of Embarrassment":

...[O]ne young Manhattan resident recently complained in the New York Times, "Everywhere I go, people are fondling each other as if the entire city were a cheap motel room." At work, over-sharing is becoming as vexing an office problem as gossip. Wall Street Journal reporter Elizabeth Bernstein wrote recently of the challenge of erasing from her mind the image of a colleague who, in pursuit of his bicycling hobby, described "shaving his entire body to reduce aerodynamic drag." We have even devised an acronym - TMI, or "Too Much Information" - to capture the uncomfortable experience of listening to people natter on about their personal problems.

What ever happened to embarrassment? Why are an increasing number of us comfortable bringing our private activities - from personal hygiene to intimate conversation - into public view? Bernstein and others place some of the blame on the desensitization wrought by reality television and social networking sites like Facebook, both of which traffic in personal revelation. ....

.... Pier Forni, who founded The Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins University thirteen years ago, recently told Obit magazine, "We are more and more concerned with our own pursuit of personal goals. As we engage in a mad rush for the attainment of our personal goals, we don't seem to have the time or see the point of slowing down for the purpose of being kind to others." Nor have we yet found the right balance between connecting with others and TMI. So the next time you feel like sharing the details of your upcoming bunion surgery with your coworkers, resist. You will not only avoid potential personal embarrassment, but you might just make one small step toward improving civility for us all. [more]

The Death of Embarrassment — Features — In Character, A Journal of Everyday Virtues by the John Templeton Foundation

The Loser Letters

Paul Mirengoff liked The Loser Letters. I think I might, too. Mirengoff:

The Loser Letters consists of letters written by A.F. (A Former) Christian to the leading atheists of our time. As her name suggests, Ms. Christian, a confused 20-something, is a former believer who has become an atheist. She fancies herself as atheism's only convert. The idea here (pretty much true, I think) is that people generally don't convert to atheism, as they convert to religion, but instead drift into it.

As a convert, Ms. Christian wants above all to be helpful to her new cause. Thus, her letters take the form of advice to atheism's leading lights - men of a certain age - about how atheism can win converts among her generation and among women generally. She focuses in particular on those arguments raised by believers that she thinks are the major obstacles to consigning "The Loser" (God) to the rubbish heap.

This premise enables Eberstadt to argue the key issues in the debate over atheism in the tragicomic tones of 20-something female-speak. Consequently, The Loser Letters never becomes didactic (and certainly not metaphysical in the bad sense). The touch is simultaneously light and profound - more profound because of the touch of lightness.

To those who enjoy books that debate the existence of God, I recommend The Loser Letters. To those who are skeptical about such books, I recommend The Loser Letters.

Power Line - "The Loser Letters" -- a winner

Cowardice and rot

I am not a fan of South Park precisely because it is so offensive. I would prefer a society with a certain reluctance about giving offense - enforced by a culture of civility, not by government. Ross Douthat nails the real problem with the Comedy Channel's censorship:

...[E]ven Parker’s and Stone’s wildest outrages often just blur into the scenery. .... Our culture has few taboos that can’t be violated, and our establishment has largely given up on setting standards in the first place.

Except where Islam is concerned. There, the standards are established under threat of violence, and accepted out of a mix of self-preservation and self-loathing.

This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that “bravely” trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.

...[I]f a violent fringe is capable of inspiring so much cowardice and self-censorship, it suggests that there’s enough rot in our institutions that a stronger foe might be able to bring them crashing down. (emphasis added) [more]

Ross Douthat - Not Even in South Park?

When we are in error...

From the 1559, or Elizabethan, Book of Common Prayer:

ALMIGHTY God, which showeth to all men that be in error the light of Thy truth, to the intent that they may return into the way of righteousness: Grant unto all them that be admitted into the fellowship of Christ's religion, that they may eschew those things that be contrary to their profession, and follow all such things as be agreeable to the same; through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

Collect for the Third Sunday after Easter, Book of Common Prayer, 1559.

"Disregard your feelings; trust his promise..."

From Basic Christianity by John R.W. Stott:

Are you a Christian? A real and committed Christian? Your answer depends on another question - not whether you go to church or not, believe the creed or not, or lead a decent life or not (important as all these are in their place), but rather this: which side of the door is Jesus Christ? Is he inside or outside? That is the crucial issue.

Perhaps you are ready to open the door to Christ. If you are not sure whether you have ever done so, my advice to you would be to make sure, even if (as someone has put it) you will be going over in ink what you have already written in pencil.

I suggest that you get away and alone to pray. Confess your sins to God, and forsake them. Thank Jesus Christ that he died for your sake and in your place. Then open the door and ask him to come in as your personal Saviour and Lord.

You might find it a help to echo this prayer in your heart:

'Lord Jesus Christ, I acknowledge that I have gone my own way. I have sinned in thought, word and deed. I am sorry for my sins. I turn from them in repentance.

I believe that you died for me, bearing my sins in your own body. I thank you for your great love.

Now I open the door. Come in, Lord Jesus. Come in as my Saviour, and cleanse me. Come in as my Lord, and take control of me. And I will serve as you give me strength, all my life. Amen.'

If you have prayed this prayer and meant it, humbly thank Christ that he has come in. For he said he would. He has given his word: 'If any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him....' Disregard your feelings; trust his promise; and thank him that he has kept his word.

John R.W. Stott, Basic Christianity, William B. Eerdmans, 1974, p. 129

Walking in the will of God

St. Augustine wrote “Love God and do as you please” because as you grow in love for God what pleases Him will become what pleases you. A portion of the last chapter from Kevin DeYoung's Just Do Something:

The will of God isn’t a special direction here or a bit of secret knowledge there. God doesn’t put us in a maze, turn out the lights, and tell us, “Get out and good luck.” In one sense, we trust in the will of God as His sovereign plan for our future. In another sense, we obey the will of God as His good word for our lives. In no sense should we be scrambling around trying to turn to the right page in our personal choose-your-own-adventure novel.

God’s will for your life and my life is simpler, harder, and easier than that. Simpler, because there are no secrets we must discover. Harder, because denying ourselves, living for others, and obeying God is more difficult than taking a new job and moving to Fargo. Easier, because as Augustine said, God commands what He wills and grants what He commands.

In other words, God gives His children the will to walk in His ways–not by revealing a series of next steps cloaked in shadows, but by giving us a heart to delight in His law.

So the end of the matter is this: Live for God. Obey the Scriptures. Think of others before yourself. Be holy. Love Jesus. And as you do these things, do whatever else you like, with whomever you like, wherever you like, and you’ll be walking in the will of God.

The Whole Duty of Man – Kevin DeYoung

Religionless Christianity

Joseph Loconte reviewed a new biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. The review suggests that some of those who admire Bonhoeffer have misunderstood just where he stood: "...he made unreserved obedience to Jesus—in every realm of life—the mark of authentic belief. 'If we worry about the dangers that beset us, if we gaze at the road instead of at him who goes before, we are already straying from the path.'" More from the review:

In April 1933, during the early months of Nazi rule in Germany, the "Aryan Paragraph," as it came to be called, went into effect. A new law banned anyone of Jewish descent from government employment. Hitler's assault on the Jews—already so evidently under way in his toxic rhetoric and in the ideological imperatives of his party—was moving into a crushing legal phase. German churches, which relied on state support, now faced a choice: preserve their subsidies by dismissing their pastors and employees with Jewish blood—or resist. Most Protestant and Catholic leaders fell into line, visibly currying favor with the regime or quietly complying with its edict.

Such ready capitulation makes the views of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young Lutheran theologian in Hitler's Germany, all the more remarkable. Within days of the new law's promulgation, the 27-year-old pastor published an essay titled "The Church and the Jewish Question," in which he challenged the legitimacy of a regime that contravened the tenets of Christianity. The churches of Germany, he wrote, shared "an unconditional obligation" to help the victims of an unjust state "even if they [the victims] do not belong to the Christian community." He went further: Christians might be called upon not only to "bandage the victims under the wheel" of oppression but "to put a spoke in the wheel itself." Before the decade was out, Bonhoeffer would join a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler and pay for such action with his life. ....

Since the 1960s, some of Bonhoeffer's admirers have seized upon a phrase from one of his letters—"religionless Christianity"—to argue that he favored social action over theology. In fact, Bonhoeffer used the phrase to suggest the kind of ritualistic and over-intellectualized faith that had failed to prevent the rise of Hitler. It was precisely religionless Christianity that he worried about. After a 1939 visit to New York's Riverside Church, a citadel of social-gospel liberalism, he wrote that he was stunned by the "self-indulgent" and "idolatrous religion" that he saw there. "I have no doubt at all that one day the storm will blow with full force on this religious hand-out," he wrote, "if God himself is still anywhere on the scene." .... (more)

Book review: Bonhoeffer - WSJ.com

Tulips and blue sky

Experimenting with a new camera. This is the Wisconsin capitol building on a beautiful spring day.