Nothing

Let me lay out some facts as I see them.
There is nothing about what you do that is 100 percent secure.
There is nothing about what you have that cannot be taken from you.
There is nothing about what you desire that cannot change.
Do you disagree with these statements? To me they seem beyond disagreement—not because I’m so wise and profound, but because the claims they make seem clear and warranted. As far as I can tell—and I’ve thought about this a great deal and talked to hundreds of people in all walks of life about this very issue—these three statements are solid, universal descriptions of what it means to be human.— The Truest Thing about You, chapter 2

<idle musing>
Pretty much sums up the human condition, doesn't it?
</idle musing>

A complete circle

One could say the end of ends in 1 Corinthians 15:28 completes the task God gave to humans in the opening chapter of the Bible on day six (creation of humans). Humans were given just one charge: to govern this world as God’s representatives. So, in 1 Corinthians 15:28, when we are finally connected to God in this eternal union with God through his Son, humans will be doing exactly what God intended for his creation. God will be God and we will be God’s people—and the whole Story will be about God.— The King Jesus Gospel, pages 56-57

<idle musing>
God will be God—it's so simple, but we want to be God, so we end up as "foolish puppets, who desiring to be kings, now lie pitifully crippled after cutting our own strings." (Randy Stonehill </idle musing>

Thought for today

Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker,

but whoever is kind to the needy honors God. (Prov 14:31 TNIV)

<idle musing>

Those in Congress and more than a few wealthy magnates would do well to remember that...

</idle musing>

That's a serious charge

If we preach the Plan of Salvation as the gospel, we will find ourselves doing everything we can to get people motivated or, to used words from earlier, bucking up our efforts to get more people into column three, The Discipled. But, if we learn to distinguish gospel from Plan of Salvation, we will discover an altogether different world. I am convinced that because we think the gospel is the Plan of Salvation, and because we preach the Plan of Salvation as the gospel, we are not actually preaching the gospel.— The King Jesus Gospel, page 40

<idle musing>
That's a serious charge he's making—but I believe he is right! We are doing both God and people a disservice by selling the gospel as a salvation package apart from discipleship and restoration. There is no salvation without transformation!
</idle musing>

It's deeper than that

Here’s the deal with Jesus. He’s egalitarian when it comes to this issue, and He wants everyone to repent of their sexuality because everyone is broken sexually. Straight, gay, bi, whatever … if there is something truer to our fundamental identity than Jesus and what it looks like to follow Him, we’re not really following Him.— The Truest Thing about You, chapter 2

<idle musing>
Amen! I've never heard it put so well before. We are more than sexual beings and we all need to repent of our dysfunctional sexuality. And far more important than our sexuality is who we are in Jesus and how we respond to his overtures.
</idle musing>

Half-baked

In this book I will be contending firmly that we evangelicals (as a whole) are not really “evangelical” in the sense of the apostolic gospel, but instead we are soterians [Greek for salvation]. Here’s why I say we are more soterian than evangelical: we evangelicals (mistakenly) equate the word gospel with the word salvation. Hence, we are really “salvationists.” When we evangelicals see the word gospel, our instinct is to think (personal) “salvation.” We are wired this way. But the two words don’t mean the same thing…— The King Jesus Gospel, page 29

<idle musing>
I think Jim Wallis calls it the "atonement only gospel." Either way, it is a defective, half truth—at best! God gives us more than that in Jesus!
</idle musing>

Fickle

What we desire, whether noble or corrupted, is not the truest thing about us. Building our identity on the foundation of what we desire guarantees that our identity will change every time our desires change.— The Truest Thing about You, chapter 2

<idle musing>
We're fickle, aren't we? If we reduce who we are to what we want, then every time we see a new advertisement, we become something new. Of course, that is what the advertisers want us to think, isn't it? They are no longer selling stuff, they are selling a feeling, a new you, a new image. No wonder we buy at unprecedented rates! And the whole time we are ignoring our real needs...I'm reminded of something well over 2500 years old:

  “Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.

   Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and you will delight in the richest of fare. (Isa 55:1–2 TNIV)

</idle musing>

Decisions, decisions, decisions

I believe the word gospel has been hijacked by what we believe about “personal salvation,” and the gospel itself has been reshaped to facilitate making “decisions.” The result of this hijacking is that the word gospel no longer means in our world what it originally meant to either Jesus or the apostles.— The King Jesus Gospel, page 26

<idle musing>
To our great loss, I might add.
</idle musing>

The sum of the parts...

When we take any one of our strongly felt desires and construct our entire identity around it, we discover that we are making a part of who we are into the whole of who we are.— The Truest Thing about You, chapter 2

<idle musing>
The old saying, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, is so true. We are more than a collection of felt desires—we are a unique creation of God, but he'll get to that!
</idle musing>

Truest and things

What we have—or don’t have—is not the truest thing about us.

Building our identity on the foundation of what we have means that we’ll always be focused on ourselves. A world of self-focused individuals sounds strangely like the world we live in now. . . and it’s the lonely experience of living in that very world that sends us in search of something truer.— The Truest Thing about You, chapter 2

<idle musing>
What is that old saying? A man (or woman) wrapped up in himself makes a very small package. Self-focus is a dead end; we need to focus outside ourselves—of course focusing on God is the best—but as Viktor Frankl found, even focusing on others, without God, pulled people out of depression...how much more when we focus on God!
</idle musing>

Whose gospel?

Isn’t the more important question about whether Paul preached Jesus’ gospel? Moreover, there’s another problem: Piper’s assumption is that justification is the gospel. The Calvinist crowd in the USA—and Piper is the leading influencer in the resurgence of Calvinist thinking among evangelicals—has defined the gospel in the short formula “justification by faith.” But we have to ask whether the apostles defined the gospel this way. Or, better yet, when they preached the gospel, what did they say?— The King Jesus Gospel, page 25

<idle musing>
Ah, that is the question, isn't it? We revere Paul so much that we start with him rather than with Jesus or the other apostles. Not that Paul is wrong, but without the added input of what Jesus and the apostles taught, we can put undue emphasis on certain aspects of Paul that the early church—and Paul himself—didn't...
</idle musing>

I should have expected this

This showed up in my inbox this morning:

Last month, “Big Food,” in the form of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), a trade organization that represents more than 300 businesses, sent a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advising that it intends to petition the agency to allow foods containing GMOs to be labeled as “natural.”

Right! But if GMOs are natural, then why this a bit further in the article:

General Mills, Inc., has started producing GMO-free Cheerios. The company expects this new product, which will bear the label, “Not Made With Genetically Modified Ingredients,” to be available to consumers “shortly.” However, this change does not affect other General Mills brands such as Honey Nut Cheerios.

Anything for a quick buck...Lord, deliver us from ourselves!

Grammar musings

I'm always wondering about grammatical usage of words. The question in my mind today was which is the correct way to say something: online, on line, or on-line. I've seen it all three ways, with online being the most common of late. When I worked at Eisenbrauns we always used on line as two words. But, which is correct in the minds of the rest of the world?

Google to the rescue—or not!

Here's what one grammatical source said:

Although all forms are seen in written communications, only two forms are correct (on line and on-line); the difference between them (ie the use of the hyphen) is very important and applies to many other grammatical forms.

To say that you are ‘online’ would be like saying that a tennis player is ‘oncourt’ or that a builder is ‘onsite’, rather than saying she/he is ‘on site’. We will never see the back of ‘online’, however, and the overall situation may change. To remain consistent though…

Where the phrase is just a factual statement, we use two words.
Where the entire phrase is used to further describe something else, we must use the hyphen to show this.

Seems straightforward enough—but can you trust a source that says "ie" instead of "i.e.,"? Plus, it is a site in the U.K. and their usage varies from American usage sometimes...

How about this: Purdue Online Writing Lab which is the next site Google lists after an ESL site. They don't raise the issue, but just use online as one word in their title. What does that say?

I could cite a bunch of sites (see the pun?), but this one says a lot (two words—not alot!): what is the name of the Merriam-Webster dictionary's Internet presence? Yep, you guessed it: Merriam-Webster Online!

Or, what about the venerable Chicago Manual of Style, my constant companion? Their Internet presence is The Chicago Manual of Style Online!

And my second companion, the The SBL Handbook of Style, what do they say? It might be getting a bit dated, being published in 1999 (before the Internet became the default source for research, what with JSTOR, WorldCat, and others), but even then, in paragraphs 7.3.13 and 7.3.14, they use online as one word...

What's a person to do?

The trials of being a copy editor...the question raised by all this searching? Does one still capitalize Internet? : )

True or truest?

But here’s the truth: what we do is not the truest thing about us. Building our identity on the foundation of what we do creates an identity that can crack or break or tumble down at any moment.— The Truest Thing about You, chapter 2

<idle musing>
But that's exactly what we do all the time. We take transient things about us and make them the absolute definition of who we are. The problem is that life is full of changes—and not all of them are better! If you have a minor (or major) setback/disappointment, you have to redefine yourself. Stress, anyone? But in Christ, we don't need to accept the merely true things as ultimate—that's what this book is all about—who you already are in Christ. And it's good news!

I read this in the electronic version, so I don't have page numbers, instead I will be citing the excerpts by chapter number.
</idle musing>

With open eyes

As a result of my Evangelism Explosion experience and its aftermath in my own thinking, I developed a cynicism about evangelism. It took deep root as I continued through my college, seminary, and doctoral education. I began to pay close attention to the connection of gospel and evangelism and salvation and our methods of persuasion, which (embarrassingly at times) border on the slick and manipulative. I am convinced there is something profoundly wrong with our evangelism and so have developed over the decades a sensitive ear for anyone with a thought about this problem.— The King Jesus Gospel, page 21

<idle musing>
Isn't it sad that we feel we have to stoop to slick marketing and emotional manipulation in order to get people to become Christians? As if the God of the universe is something we can put in a neat little package and sell!

We can be so blind...
</idle musing>

Security

So many of us grew up in homes where we never felt secure. We had to work extra hard, trying to earn approval or love that never came. Our tendency is to carry that mind-set into our relationship with God. We end up anxiously working to gain approval, not realizing that we already possess it.—Francis Chan in foreword to The Truest Thing about You

<idle musing>
I'm not sure that you need to grow up in such a home to feel that way. I didn't, but I still felt the need to earn God's love. Granted, it could be culture, but I suspect it's deeper than that. I think we know we don't deserve God's love—how can we? We're just created beings and he's the creator—infinite, all-powerful, totally other—how can we hope to gain his favor? But that's exactly what the gospel is all about. We are accepted in the beloved; we are the righteousness of God, we are...you get the idea. Later in the book, Lomas will list a whole slew of things that we already are and have...
</idle musing>

The two Ds

Most of evangelism today is obsessed with getting someone to make a decision; the apostles, however, were obsessed with making disciples. Those two words—decision and disciples—are behind this entire book. Evangelism that focuses on decisions short circuits and—yes, the word is appropriate—aborts the design of the gospel, while evangelism that aims at disciples slows down to offer the full gospel of Jesus and the apostles.— The King Jesus Gospel, page 18

<idle musing>
Forget the American obsession with numbers! A thousand "decisions" that don't result in a transformed life are worthless. If a transformed life isn't the result of that raised hand, then I question if there was a real encounter with the living God...but that's just my
</idle musing>

Thorn bushes

Looking back, I can see how I’ve tried to get others to perform, regardless of their motivation. I’ve focused a lot on their work and not enough on their identity. In hindsight, I realize I was shooting myself in the foot. I was trying to squeeze Christ-like actions out of people who hadn’t been transformed by Christ. You’ve helped me remember that when we trust in Christ, and take hold of that identity, our actions begin to happen naturally—or supernaturally.—Francis Chan in foreword to The Truest Thing about You

<idle musing>
Good stuff. I've been guilty of the same thing over the years...we can't get apples off of thorn bushes. We have to let God transform people from the inside out. We are frequently trying to get people to whitewash the tombs instead of pointing them to Christ, who can make them alive so they aren't a tomb.
</idle musing>

There's so much more

Multitudes in the Church walk around as if they are in mourning—never knowing rest of soul or the peace of Christ’s presence. They picture themselves under the thumb of God’s wrath rather than under His protective wings. They see Him as a harsh taskmaster, always ready to bring a whip down on their backs, and so their lives are filled with fear, guilt and despair. They live unhappily, with no hope, more dead than alive…The real problem is our lack of faith in God’s covenant promises. We refuse to accept His unconditional love, His unlimited forgiveness, His free reconciliation. We are not willing to believe He pardons and restores us simply because He loves us. Instead, we become focused on our sin, losing all sight of what God wants from us most.— It Is Finished, pages 180-181

<idle musing>
Wow. That aligns perfectly with what I posted yesterday. We just don't know who we are and what that means. Or, more likely, we just can't believe it—it seems too good to be true.

Part of the problem is the way the "gospel" has been presented to us (I put gospel in scare quotes for a reason). We are told that God-is-mad-at-us-and-hates-us-and-we-are-on-our-way-to-hell-unless-we-turn-and-repent-right-now-because-Jesus-may-come-at-any-moment-and-you-don't-want-to-go-to-hell-do-you?

Who in their right mind would turn down an offer like that! But that isn't the gospel! That is a small portion of the gospel—the salvation part of the gospel. The gospel is the story of God at work in the world from Genesis 1 through Revelation and beyond. The gospel is the good news that God loves you—always has—and wants to restore you (and all of us) to what we were in the garden. And he won't stop until he accomplishes that.

That's the final snippet from this book. Tomorrow I'll begin pulling stuff from Scot McKnight's The King Jesus Gospel. He goes on at length about what the gospel really is and how we got to where we are today. Good stuff...
</idle musing>

It's true

I just finished reading a new book (relaased February 1). I rarely read popular Christian literature, and even more rarely read a new release. But, Olive Tree offered a free book last Friday. Now come on, who can resist a free book?! But the funny thing is, I actually read this one! (Be honest now, how many of you have at least a hundred free books stashed in your computer/tablet/phone that you've never even opened!?)

And you know what? It was actually a good book!

Yep. A popular Christian paperback that I liked. And has good theology. And is practical. And is readable.

OK. Enough hype : ) You get that I liked it...

The name of the book is The Truest Thing about You, written by David Lomas and published by David C. Cook. That's right, the Sunday School people. Well, that's how I always thought of them anyway, but they've been doing some good non-Sunday School stuff in the last 10 years or so. When I worked at Eisenbrauns, one of the reps who called on me (Jerry Gortmaker—a great rep!) also represented them; we didn't carry their stuff—not academic enough—but he would periodically offer me an advance reading copy. One I remember especially is The Furious Longing of God by Brennan Manning.

Anyway, the thesis of the book is that there are many true things that can be said about you, but only one is truest—who you are in Christ. The whole book is an outworking of what that means and what it should look like in your life. Good stuff, and I'll be excerpting from it for the next few weeks or so. But, right now, I'm going to jump to the very end and throw in the last few paragraphs, because this is usually where books like this fall apart. Ready? Here we go:

At this point in the book you might expect application points. A “to-do list” of identity. Some journal questions. Five things you can do in the next five weeks to actualize your new identity.

But that’s not what this book is about. Unless you drive the single message of this book to the core of your being—beyond belief, to the place of your deepest trust—no application will stick.

So here it is.

You will not find your identity in what you have, but in who has you. You will not find your identity in what you do, but in what has been done for you. And you will not find your identity in what you desire, but in who has desired—at infinite cost to Himself—a relationship with you.

Christ is your life. He gives you a new identity and will work that new identity out in your life until the day when He appears. On that day you will finally see clearly, as Christ sees you now. You will know as you are known.

And you will understand that the truest thing about you—that in Christ God called you His beloved in whom He is well pleased—has been true all along.

And is now true forever.

Believe. Trust. Base your entire identity and worth on that fact.

Isn't that great? No long (or short!) list of "things to do to make this real" or other such garbage! You get the idea that he actually believes what he's writing! Once you know who you already are in Christ, you will begin to live like it! In the words of Augustine, "Tolo! Lege!" (Pick it up and read it!)