I Am MORE than an Evangelical

I’m headed off to my seventeenth men’s retreat at Camp Wooten in southeast Washington State’s Blue Mountains, sponsored annually by a church in the Pullman-Moscow area. Our guys from Grace Bible Church of Diamond Lake have joined over the years, initially due to a fellow elder’s connection via his brother in that church. Last year I was privileged to be one of the main speakers. (See links to the talk and notes below).

This year I am doing one of the smaller breakout seminar sessions as I’ve often done. The topic of the retreat is evangelism. It’s got me thinking about being an “evangelical.”

In the Autumn of 1980 I was shocked out of my until then largely unquestioned dispensational fundamentalism when I encountered the Holy Spirit in a liberal Presbyterian theologian. During my decades of dancing with Catholic monasticism, I was always struck by periodic testimonies of evangelicals turning (back?) to Rome. More recently I’ve noticed those with evangelical beginnings like my own—Bart Ehrman and Frank Schaeffer, for instance—just sliding away from it all, it seems.

As for me, I just can’t jettison the basics, such as Jesus crucified and resurrected, the Bible as trustworthy and authoritative, and salvation needed from sin. But I have grown to need more of the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. For all the wonderful Truth in my tradition, I have this against it: My teachers left out too much!

It seems to me that an honest appraisal of two millennia of Christian faith forbids presumption that only one denomination of theology has gotten it right. I see no evidence in general or special revelation (categories of my limited tradition!) that God is sectarian. O Lord, I am confident that I can know you and love you and your truth. (Hear my prayer, O God.) But this is now my standard boilerplate: “I have blind spots and a lot more to learn about everything!” (Like the cosmic as well as the personal dimension of redemption.)

Last year’s retreat talk on teaching marriage to our children:

http://www.efreepalouse.org/media/5%20Dan%20Peterson%20Teaching%20Marriage%20to%20our%20Sons%20and%20Daughters.mp3

Last year’s notes on teaching marriage to our children:

http://www.efreepalouse.org/media/2013/05/Teaching-Marriage-to-Our-Sons-and-Daughters-DLP-notes.pdf

The Colors of our World in Northeast Washington

I just returned home from two weeks in the desert Southwest of these great United States.

Working this morning outside a bit around the farm, I’m reminded of the seasonal color changes I’ve not yet grown tired of, over 23 years:

The year begins in sparkling white.

Around now comes mud grey.

Then comes green green green.

(Fortunately one of the characteristics of this northeast corner is that the green stays all year, without the constant rain I grew up in on the west side.)

Then my favorite—if it’s possible to have one—the luminescent gold of Autumn.

(I capitalize the seasons, as in my view they deserve it!)

Eventually yielding once more to sparkling white.

White … grey … green … gold … white.

(I don’t know how to paint, except with words.)

Not long after we moved here I was reading a book of Washington State maps in the Newport library. There was a note something like this at the bottom of the climate map: “Only one area of inhabited Washington State has a growing season less than 90 days: Parts of southern Stevens and Pend Oreille Counties.” And I had just left the greater Seattle-Everett rat race around Maltby in order to garden here.

Next week, seeds will once again go into the soil … in the house. (18°F this morning, long gone now in full sun forenoon.)

 

Where do you Live? (With Quiet Desperation)

I’m struck by a line in the 1995 version of the movie Sabrina. In the greenhouse scene with Linus Larrabee, Sabrina says “I know you work in the real world and you're very good at it. But that's work. Where do you live, Linus?”

Where do you live?

Tomorrow I fly out after living for a couple weeks with one of my daughters here in this west side suburb of Las Vegas. As I walked busy Durango Drive this morning from the apartment to the nearby Starbucks inside an Albertsons store, I thought of Thoreau's famous line from Walden. “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” There are over a million people in this metropolitan area and much evidence of quiet—and noisy—desperation.

I miss home, where I usually live, where I see only a handful of neighbors from our hillside vista on twenty acres. There are only about 13,000 people in the entire county. When I walk Veit Road it is never busy, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t just as much “desperation” around. Thoreau goes on to imply that there is no difference between the “desperate city” and the “desperate country.”

Come to think of it, I have my own fair share of desperation. It does seem to follow me everywhere. But I’m still ready to return to home sweet home. And hopefully I’m wise enough to avoid doing desperate things, wherever I am!

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” —Henry David Thoreau, Walden

How to be the Right Kind of Cult

1. Make sure that the only particular human figure and object of your system of veneration, devotion, and hero-worship is Jesus Christ.

2. Make sure that the only extreme and dangerous belief you hold is that Jesus Christ actually died from crucifixion and then actually rose from the dead.

3. Make sure that the only major book you use as a reference is the Bible in all of its translations and paraphrases from its original languages.

4. Make sure that the only rite and ceremony you require is to love one another as demonstrated by your Founder.

5. Make sure that you condition (“brainwash” and “indoctrinate”) yourself with the mystery and paradox that in Jesus Christ you have confident knowledge of the truth AND that you have remaining blind spots, with more to learn about everything from everyone. Condition yourself with humble confidence and confident humility. Condition yourself with Peter’s conviction that you will always have room to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Condition yourself with the absolute conviction that you yourself are always limited and God’s Spirit is never limited!

The Eyes of Your Heart

“My son, give me your heart and let your eyes delight in my ways …” (Proverbs 23:26)

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened …” (Ephesians 1:18)

Motivated by these two verses, I have been studying the biblical connection between the heart and the eyes. This is my conclusion:

When we focus on our own or others’ outward appearance and performance, we are not seeing what God sees. As Jesus emphasized, we need to start with the heart. Only changes made in ours and others’ hearts will make any real or lasting difference.

Our behavior flows from our heart. Changing our behavior or appearance never changes our heart, but changing our heart inevitably affects our behavior. This “one-way street” is the “law of the harvest,” that we reap what we sow (Galatians 6:7). We can know someone by their fruit because, “As water reflects the face, so one’s life reflects the heart.” (Proverbs 27:19; Matthew 7:15-20) Everything starts in the heart. “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23).

What makes a desire good or bad is not its object as much as its heart. This is why “to the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure” (Titus 1:15).

Matters of the heart have to do with living persons, dynamic relationships, and true loves. Thus “laws” and “principles” are a “dead-end street”—powerless!—to change the heart. Only the living Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, interacting with our own living spirit, can change our heart. Our hearts are strengthened by God’s grace, not by the strange teachings of others (Hebrews 13:9).

This is major surgery, certainly NOT minimally invasive. The scars become gifts of the Master Surgeon whose skillful hands never make mistakes.

Our heavenly Father urges us, “My child, give me your heart and let your eyes delight in my ways!” When God has our heart and our eyes are on him, we know truth, joy, freedom, and peace. (Otherwise, just like “the camera,” our eyes always lie!)

[Excerpted from “What Do You See with The Eyes of Your Heart?” Request an electronic copy of the full study by email to daniellesliepeterson@gmail.com.]

When Eyes Meet, When Hearts Leap

“You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes …” Song of Songs 4:9

When lovers’ eyes meet, and their hearts leap, it is God’s good design.

“Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. … and they become one flesh. Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.” Genesis 2:22-25

“There are three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand: … the way of a man with a young woman.” Proverbs 30:18-19

Sex in marriage is amazing, honorable and pure (Hebrews 13:4). The sexual aspect of the relationship between man and woman celebrated by the Song of Songs is very good.

God’s goodness is made clear throughout the Bible. Scripture also makes clear that with good there is evil. Sin ruins what is good, and there are things that make God angry. We must always seek to discern the good God has created from sin’s effect and Satan’s evil work. Every evil is a perversion or negation of something God created very good. Every lie distorts a truth.

The great delight in Adam’s eyes when he first saw naked Eve was very good and came before the problem of lusting eyes.

[Excerpted from “What Do You See with The Eyes of Your Heart?” For more about God’s good design for sex, see the preceding two posts.]

God's Great Design for Sex

Here is part of an introduction to the subject of “Christian Sex” which I wrote a few months ago to the parents of my grandchildren:

Sex in contemporary American culture is a contradiction. While it remains a very private and intimate experience, it is also a very public subject, splashed at nearly every grocery store checkout line, headlined on the cover of seemingly every issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. Television, movies, magazines, and especially the internet openly depict and describe sexual activities without embarrassment. Meanwhile, most of us would be truly embarrassed if our own sexual activity was displayed or talked about in the same way!

The Bible presents a similar contradiction. Before sin, “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame,” but afterward “they realized they were naked” (Genesis 2:24; 3:7). Ever since, covering nakedness has been appropriate, and moral standards for sexual activity are made clear. Yet at the same time, the Bible is very open about sexual activity. Scripture tells the stories of Tamar’s seducing her father-in-law as a prostitute and Amnon’s rape of his half-sister. Samaria and Jerusalem are compared to sisters whose young virgin breasts are fondled and who end up prostituting themselves and lusting for donkey-sized penises that ejaculate like horses (Genesis 38, 2 Samuel 13; Ezekiel 23). The Song of Songs is an erotic celebration of a man and woman desiring each other. Proverbs plainly instructs a man to let his “fountain” be blessed by rejoicing only in the breasts of the wife of his youth (Proverbs 5:15-21).

In the course of discussing the human body as an illustration of the members of the church, Paul mentions that some parts are unpresentable are treated with special modesty. Yet in the same letter to believers in sex-charged Corinth, he frankly discusses sex in marriage and prostitution. A sexual matter shocking to even pagans is dealt with openly (1 Corinthians 12:21-24; 7:1-6; 6:12-20; 5:1ff).

The writer to the Hebrews summarizes well the witness of all Scripture: “Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral” (Hebrews 13:4). As followers of Jesus Christ, we need to preserve the privacy and purity of sex while being open about its reality. In seeking to understand my own sexuality as both designed by God and ruined by sin, I have become burdened that parents learn this balance in their own sexual relationship and communicate it well to their children.

Unfortunately, it is now nearly inevitable that children will come across internet pornography. Even if we successfully shelter our own kids, the ones they marry are likely to have been influenced by the sexual excess of our culture. More than ever, Christians need to answer perversion with the truth of God’s design for sex which makes it truly great!

Christian Sex

[This is an excerpt from a Bible study booklet I am currently writing about "The Eyes of Your Heart."]

Christians, just like many others in our culture, can be confused about gender and sexuality. Cover-ups of sexual infidelity and sexual abuse, especially by conservative Christian churches and organizations, are at root really a failure to honor God’s very good foundation for sex.

Sex is intimate and thus properly very personal and private. But every one of us is the result of it, and from Genesis through Revelation the Bible speaks openly and plainly about it.

My purpose for these remarks is not to embarrass anyone but rather to urge us to fill our hearts with the truth that the proper foundation for sex is God’s design for it to be great. All that we’ve picked up from our parents, family and friends, church, school, and culture may not be true!

Whether we have been abused or the abuser, whether we have indulged in pornography a thousand times or only once, whether we are highly “experienced” or still largely “pure and innocent,” the starting point for all of us is God’s good design for sex. Once love for his truth about sex fills our hearts, we can see clearly how horribly sin ruins it.

Insatiable hunger for sexual connection reveals our basic heart need for God alone, and his desire for intimacy with us. This is an aspect of the “profound mystery” Paul explains in Ephesians 5, and one of the reasons there will no longer need to be human sexual relations after the resurrection (according to Jesus in Matthew 22:30 //Mark 12:25 //Luke 20:35-36). Augustine, who may have greatly misunderstood the relationship of sex to sin, got this statement absolutely right: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

When my eyes wander, it is a reminder that my heart needs to have eyes only for my Lord.