This is Joel Osteen's Worst Nightmare

Well done sir, well done.

Missing the Point of Genesis 1-2

Aaron Armstrong:

This is the real reason people get in a tizzy about creation vs evolution. 

It’s less to do with the particulars of how the world came into being and more to do with an issue of autonomy. 

If the world came into being through happenstance, and we’re merely the result of the equation of time + matter + chance successfully adding up again and again and again, then we are beholden to no one. 

But if the Bible is true, then Jesus is over us, having made purifications for sins, seated at the right hand of the Most High (Heb. 1:3b). We are not little sovereigns free to run amok. 

We are under authority. That’s why people really reject the creation account, and it’s the point that we so often miss. 

Jesus is the Creator, and His command for all the earth is clear: Yield.

Read the rest and get his eBook for super cheap while the deal lasts.  

Everyone, Christian or Non-Christian, is Trying to Find Salvation

Everyone is trying to find salvation. They might not ask, “What must I do to be saved?” But everyone has some sense of what it is that would make them satisfied, fulfilled, and accepted: success in business, the admiration of men, a beautiful home, a liberated homeland, a secure future, the worship of women, a great body, wealth and prosperity, the acceptance of friends, a happy family, a dream vacation. 

Think about the people you know. Think about yourself. 

1. How do they define salvation? How will they know they’ve
arrived? “I’ll be happy, fulfilled, accepted if . . .”  

2. What must they do to be saved? What law or rules must they follow? “To achieve this I’ve got to...”  

3. How do they view people who don’t measure up to this law?
“People who don’t fit in are...” 

4. What happens when they don’t measure up? “When I don’t
achieve, then...” 

For the Pharisees it went like this: Salvation is national renewal. This will be achieved by personal purity. Those who don’t measure up, like tax collectors, sinners, and the poor, must be ostracized. 

Every version of salvation involves a principle, a rule, a law. If your idea of salvation is to have friends accept you, then your first commandment will be: “Thou shalt not be uncool.” And uncool people must be avoided at all costs. If your idea of salvation is a beautiful home, then your prophet will be Martha Stewart. Your rule will be antique pine, tiled floors, and distressed paint. Or maybe clean lines, white walls, and no clutter. Your first commandment will be: “Thou shalt not be untidy.” 

If other people don’t measure up, then we despise or avoid them. Yet, like the Pharisees, we need them so we can feel good about ourselves. And if we don’t measure up, then our “god” turns on us and condemns us. Life is seen as a race, and you’re a loser if you’re not successful, wealthy, or attractive. 

But self-salvation doesn’t work. It doesn’t work, because none of these versions of salvation deliver. They don’t bring satisfaction, identity, or joy, because we were made to know God and glorify him. Anything less is a cheap substitute. They’re not salvation!
And self-salvation doesn’t work because we can’t measure up. If you want to be admired by blokes, but you’re not blokey enough, then you’re condemned. Even on a good day you’ll worry what others think of you. If you want security and prosperity, and you lose your job, then you’re condemned. Even when you have a job, you’ll be anxious, over-busy, and unable to say no. “We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ ...” (Gal. 2:16). 

The good news is that Jesus has not come “to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.” 

He offers true salvation: being welcomed to God’s feast. And when we don’t measure up, we’re not condemned. Instead of condemning us, our God is condemned in our place. So salvation is found not through obeying any kind of law, but “through faith in Jesus.”

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table (Re:Lit), 27, 28

Human Nature on Display in Lance Armstrong

Mockingbird Blog:

The Wall Street Journal (online) has a piece in the January 15 issue called “Behind Lance Armstrong’s Decision to Talk” which attributes a quote to the athlete, and a response by a bureaucrat, that is decidedly not a snore. In a meeting with Travis Tygart, the head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), Armstrong pointed to himself and said,”You don’t hold the keys to my redemption. There’s one person who holds the keys to my redemption, and that’s me.” We’ve covered this human desire before (most specifically HERE), but the fascinating thing about this quote isn’t the brazenness; it’s the common nature of the refrain.

Everyone thinks that their redemption is up to them. Except, maybe, for Travis Tygart. Upon hearing Armstrong’s claim, Tygart allegedly responded, “That’s b-[expletive].” Now Tygart seems to have simply been calling bull-waste on Armstrong’s allusion to redemption in any form, claiming that the cyclist would do and say anything to be allowed to race again. But his initial reaction is accurate. The idea that we hold the keys to our own redemption is total b-[expletive].

That Armstrong might believe that baring his soul (or, at least, the contents of his medicine cabinet) to Oprah would lead to his redemption is, at worst, cynical in the extreme and at best, evidence of a woefully weak definition of redemption.

When Christians talk about redemption, we don’t refer to a return to a prior state of good standing.  Some do, actually, but such thinking, as Gerhard Forde points out in his seminal On Being a Theologian of the Cross, hinges on the un-Biblical notion of a “Fall.”   We imagine that we were once at a certain place in our relationship with God, we messed that up, and Jesus gives us the ability to get back. That is, according to Forde, “a tightly woven theology of glory.” The truth is so much better. In our redemption (in real redemption) we are saved to a state higher than we ever had before: we are regarded as one with Christ, as God’s own son.

If that is the gift, then we cannot hold the keys.  And thank goodness, too, because when another (a saving Christ) holds them, our gift is immeasurably more valuable.