Being Human ch 4 Active Obedience

I somehow overlooked ch 4. It's about the need to walk in faith and actively strive to do the right thing rather than passively waiting to produce Christian fruit without doing anything. We're supposed to put in our own effort - and that effort is our attempt to do what the Bible says: to obey God's Law as outlined in both the Old and New Testaments.

"Why is it that practicing God's law brings freedom, blessing, life and peace? As we stressed in chapter one, humans are made like God; and the law, which is holy and good, describes what our lives are to be like in order for us to reflect God's character.* The law describes the way we are intended to live."

That means that the Law isn't a negative limit to our freedom and fun. Instead, it's what fulfills us. It's a positive thing.

* Chapters 1 and 2 established that reflecting God's image is the goal of the Christian life. Sometimes other things are emphasized as our goal (good works, street evangelism, suffering, etc) but those are secondary. Our purpose is to reflect God's image in all of its fullness and various facets.

One more from chapter 3

"Someone will say to a Christian, particulary a young Christian or one in difficulty, 'This is good, you've believed in Christ. But now, in order to show that you really have a relationship with God and are really living a spiritual life, you must experience. . . .' Depending on who is speaking, the blank will be filled with speaking in tongues, the baptism of the spirit, the second blessing, brokenness or what have you. The spiritual counselor continues, 'Then you will be sure of the Spirit's indwelling and have power. You will be able to witness and pray freely. Then you won't just believe that you have the Holy Spirit in you, you'll know by experience.' The result of this is exactly as Paul describes. The Christian is disqualified, robbed of assurance in Christ, and made to feel unspiritual, unfaithful, and in need of something extra--something more than and higher than the cross. . . by stressing a higher spiritualty beyond faith in Christ, this teaching implies that Christ and his death are only the gateway to a superspirituality."

This is the wrong way; the right way is to take God at His word, accept our new standing in Christ, and then attempt to live holy lives with the help of the Spirit. Our focus shouldn't be on seeking spiritual experiences, but on getting down to the business of living. At least, that's what I'm getting out of this.

Being Human quote from ch 2

This is from the section on Neo-Platonic influences on Christian thinking, which is deemed even more dangerous than materialism because it's so easy to make this sound Biblical, and then slide into a denial and rejection of the physical/mental qualities that make us human.

"This emphasis on God being beyond all knowledge is a fundamental characteristic of the mystical tradition of the church. This way of ignorance can only be pursued by removing sense and reason, by abandoning not only what is impure but even what is pure. (Later we will discuss the similar emphasis in some evangelicalism of this century on self-emptying, on brokenness, on the uselessness of the mind and doctrine, and on the removing even of what seems good in the self.)"

Ch 3: The Centrality of Christ

More from Being Human:

"To the extent that we forget that our status before God is due to what Christ has done for us, we will try to make our own relationship with God depend on winning his approval. Thinking that unless we fulfill certain obligations God will not love us, we begin to focus on what we have or have not done. We make an anxious search for internal evidences of our 'new life.' But doubts arise as to whether God really loves us. Then, as we realize we cannot possibly meet his standards, resentment builds up against God for making such strict demands. So our hearts gradually harden against him and obedience becomes more difficult. Joy, wonder and praise dry up. Instead, frustration and a sense of failure make us feel empty and sterile. . . . It is often at just this point that superspiritual teaching or some kind of second blessing emphasis may gain a foothold. . . Rather than seeking for something else, we should turn back thanfully to Christ and remind ourselves of who he is and what he has done for us. Ingratitude eatsway at one's whole life by producing spiritual drought and bitterness."

I've been guilty of this very thing. I wish I'd read this years ago!

More from Being Human book

I'm in chapter 3; I'll post something from ch 2 later.

The authors talk about asceticism (punishing the body by doing things like walking on nails, extreme fasting) and seeking experiential spirituality (paying with mantras to clear the mind and have a touch from God) as resulting from the combination of Christianity with Plato, which I don't quite follow (I might, if I understood more about Plato, or if I read ch 2 again more carefully - or, even better, if I paraphrased it into short sentences of single syllable words! :P)

Here's the quote:

"The goal of the Christian life is to be restored to God's likeness, to be holy as God is holy, to be like Christ in character. It is not primarily to have direct experiences of the spirit or to become a kind of spiritual athlete. Consequently, Paul says, these regulations imposed by the Colossians teachers [Col 2:22-23] and their contemporary counterparts have nothing whatsoever to do with genuine Christian growth and true spirituality. They are of no value in restraining the desires and practices of the sinful nature. These techniques and regulations arise from Platonism and the world view of the East where the goal of spirituality, union with the spiritual realm, is a consequence of turning away from the external world of people and things. The biblical goal is holiness of life, expressed primarily in the giving of ourselves in service to other people."

I like that - the goal of Christianity clarified. Mysticism and contemplative prayer sound appealing to me, but I see that he's including them with the kinds of things that Paul warned about in Col. 2. Those things cause us to stray from our real goal and aren't what real Christianity is about.

He uses quotes from a book called Encounter With God by Morton Kelsey, written 4 years earlier (1974) to show how Christians were being drawn to seek eastern methods in prayer, and I'm wondering if Kelsey was an early Emergent Church proponent, it sounds very much like what (little) I've read about that movement.

Book Quote

I would love to see my church's women's study do a book like the one this quote came from:

"Sanctification (becoming holy), then, is essentially an affirmation of life. The whole purpose of the Christian life is the recovery of the original image of God, in other words, the recovery of the kind of human experience which God intended Adam and Eve to have before the Fall. The Christian experience . . . like theirs, affirms life.
Ironically, those who stand in the doctrinal traditions of the Reformation and the apostolic church have inherited from the nineteenth century a spirit of negativism quite out of character with these roots. It has been the spirit of 'Do not taste, Do not touch.' (Col 2:21) It has been characterized by a denunciation of the mind and a rejection of all cultural activities. The mind has been seen as a boogieman, and creativity as wasteful luxury. And, as in the 'tradition' opposed by Paul, this pirit of negativism has been presented as a virtuous and religious attitude.
Over against such a tradition, we contend for a view of sanctification which affirms all those activities which are truly human. Why? Because that is the sort of experience God intended us to have and which he called 'very good.' . . . Such an experience is fundamental to the Christian life because to be human is to be a reflection, as a finite and physical person, of the experience of the infinite Person who made us."
from Being Human: The Nature of Spiritual Experience by Ranald Macauley and Jerram Barrs

I'd like to know, when there are so many interesting aspects of Christianity to learn about, why does every woman's Bible Study I've ever heard of seem to only cycle through character studies of women in the Bible, being a Proverbs 31 woman, and wifely submission?

This is the book that was selected for the first annual book discussion at the CM Conference coming up in about ten days.

Our New Van!

We have a new van! Okay, it's not new new, it's a 2001 Honda Odyssey, but it looks new. It's a gorgeous gold color (the brochure says "tan" but it looks gold), and it has a CD player!!

As we drove it around town enjoying the newness, I was reminded of the excited, new feeling you have when there's a new baby in the house. Except that there's no hormone fluctuations, post-partum recovery or exhaustion from sleepness nights. Just pure newness. Although the excitement of a new vehicle wears off a lot quicker . . .

This means we're no longer limited to driving around town (our old van's transmission would no longer go up hills, and any way out of town is uphill). It also means, that, as long as the old van holds up, we're not house-bound when Mr. B is at work.

This photo isn't our van, it's a picture from the internet of a 2001 Odyssey that's the same color as ours.

Literary Meme

I saw this over at Little Pink House and thought it looked like fun.

How it works:

1.grab the book closest to you
2.open it to page 161
3. find the fifth full sentence
4.post the text of the sentence to your blog
5.don't search around for the coolest book you have, use the one that is really next to you.

The book closest to me is The Cloud of Witness, an old 1800's devotional. I keep it at the computer because I was transcribing it (now my newly typing son is!) It's a devotional book with many poems, and the fifth full sentence is from a Wordsworth poem.

So, like the Mountain, may we grow more bright
From unimpeded commerce with the Sun,
At the approach of all-invading night!

I also have Little Arthur's History of England right here (another one I'm transcribing) and Charlotte Mason's Volume 5 (I'm working with that one, too.) So where are the books I'm just reading? Come to think of it, I think I'm so busy working with books that I don't have even one that I'm simply reading!

Happy Mother's Day!

Itm having a great day - I'm watching my toddler play in her sandbox under our cherry tree, with dappled sunlight on her hair, and my sons practicing fencing with some wooden dowels. I received a really nice note from an AO member, and I'm remembering three years ago at church with my six-month-old daughter, a church friend whispered in my ear, "I see you brought your Mother's Day gift with you." :)

Happy Mother's day to all my gentle parenting and CM homeschooling friends!

Fragonard Gets With the Times

I think it's admirable when classic artists don't allow themselves to get stuck in tradition, but stay relevant by keeping in step with current trends.