Rock of Ages

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure;
Save from wrath and make me pure.

Not the labor of my hands
Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone;
Thou must save, and Thou alone.

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to the cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress;
Helpless look to Thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.

While I draw this fleeting breath,
When mine eyes shall close in death,
When I soar to worlds unknown,
See Thee on Thy judgment throne,
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee.

Augustus M Toplady

Biography of George Müller

I just recently finished reading Roger Steer's biography of George Müller.

In case you don't know (I didn't really), George Müller was a Christian who lived through pretty much the whole 19th century. He was most famous for founding several orphanages, but also preached a lot. He deliberately made most of his life a demonstration of God's faithfulness. He never asked for money, gave spare money away, prayed a lot and got all the money, food etc he needed.

The thing I found really striking include Müller's insistence that we take God at his word when he promises to give us what we ask for in prayer if we believe we will receive it and seek to use it for his glory.

Müller then gets round the problem of how we can be sure that we will receive something not directly promised in the Bible (e.g. money for the orphanage) by saying there is a seperate gift of faith that God gives that he will answer some specific prayers. So he would pray differently for things he believed he would receive and things he was not certain about. He does however manage to avoid claiming infallibility for his own perceptions of what God wants, rather using the usual means of guidance. I'm not entirely sure how that fits together - it's something I need to work out in my own mind. I don't want to argue with Müller's experience, or with God's promises.

Certainly a very interesting read, and also challenging to take God at his word and pray more, to pray also for faith when praying. I guess many of the questions this book raises for me in the end are pastoral in terms of how I pray - I'll pray and trust God that he will lead me into the right way.

Funny Cartoon

[Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.]

Well, I thought it was funny anyway... Reminds me of that great quote:

Before you criticise someone, make sure you walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you do it, you're a mile away from them and you've got their shoes.

Mark Driscoll on Gene Robinson

Mark Driscoll, of Mars Hill Church in Seattle is always good value for a quote. Here's what he wrote on his blog about Gene Robinson:

First the Episcopalians gave us V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the openly gay bishop who left his wife and kids to have sex with a man and later revealed that he had been a closet alcoholic for years. He was the obvious choice because he is just like Jesus with the minor exceptions of his beliefs and life.

For some reason that I still haven't got to the bottom of, Driscoll seems to be a hugely controversial figure. There are some suggestions of reasons why here. For my part, having listened to a few sermons of his online, he seems like a faithful Bible teacher who is particularly gifted at communicating with fairly unchurched young adults. Very clear, and the kind of guy "normal people" could (and do) listen to for an hour or so. He's also better than most at avoiding assuming things that everyone else seems to assume. (His sermons are available via the Mars Hill website).

In the Image of God 3

Part 1
Part 2

I've written a bit over the last couple of months about whether we are in God's image, what that means, etc. Over the last few days, I've thought some more about it, largely spurred on by hearing a talk by Phil Keymer and reading a book by John Piper.

To summarise what I've said so far then:

Part 1:

• Adam was made in God's image
• Adam fell from that image
• We are made in Adam's image, which is a corruption of God's image
• Christ was perfectly God's image
• Christians are being restored into Christ's image

Part 2:

• God's image in Adam consisted in ruling
• Adam fell from that image
• Christ perfectly exhibited God's image in ruling
• God's image will be restored in Christians

God's Image - Relationships

Back to Genesis 1:26-28:

Then God said "Let us make man in our own image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground."
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number... Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves on the ground."
Genesis 1:26-28 (NIV)

Part of what it means to be in God's image is that we are in relationship with others. God is of course the perfectly relational God - Father, Son and Spirit all existing in eternal, perfectly loving relationships. In the same way, people are made male and female, and told to increase in number.

God's Image Spoilt at the Fall

Once again, we see that this aspect of what it means to be in God's image ruined.

To the woman God said,
"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing;
with pain you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you."
Genesis 3:16 (NIV)

God's Image Restored

Once again, also, we see God's image perfectly restored in Jesus. He was perfectly loving in human relationships; he could not be fooled by people's masks; he was in a perfect relationship with God.

Once again, also, we see that God's image in terms of relationships is being restored in Christians as we love one another and are united with one another in Christ and will be perfected in us in heaven.

The Purpose of God's Image

The purpose of God's image is to display God's glory - to show the world what God is like. Why else would he need or want an image?

So what is the application of all this stuff about God's image? We as Christians, who are being restored into Christ's image, should be displaying that image so that the world can see more and more what God is like by looking at us.

Pet Hates #3 - Forced to Watch TV

Last time I was in hospital overnight, there was a TV on on the ward I was on. I was really grateful that the other guys in the ward spend a lot of time unconscious, because it meant I could get up and turn it off. Horrible thing. It's hard enough to spend time doing useful stuff anyhow, without mindless and meaningless rubbish blasting out.

On the same note, I don't think prisoners should be allowed TV except for (possibly) stuff like footie matches (and then only if they behave well). Part of the problem is that they have low aspirations, educational levels, etc. And that isn't going to be helped by TV. It might just be helped by education, books, proper games, which teach skills which might actually be useful in life.

Pet Hates #5

Painful mind games. I tend to take whichever course of action gets most emotional distance from whoever I think is playing them. That's deliberate. 'Nuff said.

Mental Illness and Salvation

Some (probably atheistic) chap called Simon, who posted a comment to my review of The Twilight of Atheism has a blog, on which he asks "Do Retards Get Into Heaven?"

I think it seems like an interesting question, if slightly insensitively asked. It also ties in with a question I've been quite interested in for a number of years - what about those who are mentally ill such that their perception of reality is horribly twisted? So here's a few quick thoughts from me...

1. We can and should trust God

We don't know everything. We don't know the state of people's hearts. God does. He has shown in Jesus that he is incredibly loving, even to us, when we reject and ignore him. We can trust him to be fair or better and to do what is right, far more so than we could trust ourselves in the same situation.

2. The Christian faith is not a set of propositions

One thing I dislike is the responsive form of the creed that we use sometimes in church. Here's a sample...

Q: Do you believe and trust in God?
A: I believe in God, the Father Almighty...

The question asks "believe and trust"; the answer is just "believe". We so often seem to reduce Christianity to believing the right things, rather than acting on them. The creeds were originally written in Latin, and the word that translates as "believe" is "credo", from which we also get "credit". It is much closer to "believe and trust" than just "believe". And in a strong way, it's the trusting bit that really matters. I think, for example, of the woman Jesus met who had haemorrhagic bleeding:

And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.

"Who touched me?" Jesus asked.
When they all denied it, Peter said, "Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you."
But Jesus said, "Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me."

Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace."

Luke 8:43-48 (NIV)

The woman in question doesn't seem to have had a great intellectual understanding of the truths of the gospel. Her "faith" seems to have been little more than an almost superstitious trust that touching Jesus would help. Yet that "faith" enabled her to be healed. It doesn't take someone who understands and can explain Calvin's Institutes or Aquinas's Summa Theologica to have faith in Jesus. It just requires someone who can trust him, regardless of their intellectual capacity. And pretty much everyone I know is capable of trust.

Of course, trust in Jesus produces a change in lifestyle, and the extent of the change will of course depend on circumstances including intellectual capacity...

3. Difficult questions

What about stillborn children / aborted fetuses? Does the status of the parents matter in those cases? What about people who have been in a permanent vegetative state for a very long time? What about those who are severely delusional?

I could hazard some guesses to some of those, but that's all they'd be. I don't think I will know all the answers in this life either, but I'm happy and content with trusting Godmy Saviour, my Rock and my Redeemer.

The Twilight of Atheism

Just finished reading The Twilight of Atheism by Alister McGrath.

It's aimed to be an introductory history of atheism, considering its philosophical, literary, polemical, political, psychological, etc implications, origins and effects. It's also aimed to be popularly accessible. It does a pretty good job of both.

What I found especially interesting is the suggestion that atheism is largely a reaction against corruption in religious establishments - that when the Church is doing its job and not bothering to try and prove the existence of God, people in general accept God's existence.

In particular, McGrath highlights the role of the Protestant Reformation in being a causative factor in the rise of atheism, especially because it largely removed the sense of the divine in the world and at times reduced Christianity to a form of dry intellectualism which was both unfaithful and unappealing. In a sense, it emphasised the transcendence of God (the fact that we can't reach him by our own abilities) above his immanence (the fact that he is present with us). McGrath then links the modern rise of Pentecostalism to its emphasis on that immanence, even if this is sometimes at the expense of transcendence.

I think that's a very interesting idea, and that there's probably something in it. On the other hand, I don't see how it explains the fact that atheism became strongest in Russian and China, countries largely unaffected by the Protestant Reformation. I know that was partly becasue the atheists became identified as liberators, but more exploration of the issue would have been helpful.

As the title suggests, McGrath also spends a good deal of time on the way that atheism is very much on the wane in the modern world and why that is.

All in all, a good and interesting read.

Word of the Day - Claustric

Claustric (adjective):
(of a place) of a kind that induces a sense of being closed in, producing claustrophobia.