Born October 7th at 6:15 a.m.
6 lbs, 12 oz.
Momma and baby are doing great.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Augustine and Holistic Witness
It seems to be generally acknowledged now by Christian observers of postmodern culture that old "presentation style" evangelism and rationalistic apologetic approaches are largely ineffective. Tim Keller, Bill Edgar, Lesslie Newbigin, and others have all helped articulate a holistic approach to Christian witness to our age. Keller especially has described coming to faith as a long-term process in which various "mini-decisions" are made regarding the plausibility, relevance, credibility, content of Christianity.
So it was remarkable to run across the following section of Augustine's Confessions where he describes his own holistic, multi-stage journey towards embracing Christ.
Here he describes the impression made upon him by Ambrose: "That man of God received me in fatherly fashion, and as an exemplary bishop he welcomed my pilgrimage. I began to love him, at first not as a teacher of the truth, which I utterly despaired of finding in your Church, but as a man who was kindly disposed toward me." As always, love is the greatest apologetic.
Augustine goes on to describe how he listened to Ambrose's preaching at first more out of interest in his rhetorical abilities than his Christian content. But, he found that the beauty of Ambrose's language carried the content of his message into his heart: "with the words, which I loved, there also entered into my mind the things themselves, to which I was indifferent. Nor was I able to separate them from one another, and when I opened up my heart to receive the eloquence with which he spoke, there likewise entered, although only by degrees, the truths that he spoke." Witness is not just a matter of truth, but also of beauty.
Next, Augustine clearly speaks of reaching a point where Christianity has become plausible to him: "I now judged that the Catholic faith, for which I had thought nothing could be said against the Manichean objectors, could be maintained without being ashamed of it." The gospel first had to become a real option for him before he could take it seriously.
Finally, Augustine, having come this far (and rejected Manicheism), decides to continue seeking the truth in the church, even though he has yet to grasp it fully: "I determined to continue as a catechumen in the Catholic Church, commended to me by my parents, until something certain would enlighten me, by which I might direct my course."
So it was remarkable to run across the following section of Augustine's Confessions where he describes his own holistic, multi-stage journey towards embracing Christ.
Here he describes the impression made upon him by Ambrose: "That man of God received me in fatherly fashion, and as an exemplary bishop he welcomed my pilgrimage. I began to love him, at first not as a teacher of the truth, which I utterly despaired of finding in your Church, but as a man who was kindly disposed toward me." As always, love is the greatest apologetic.
Augustine goes on to describe how he listened to Ambrose's preaching at first more out of interest in his rhetorical abilities than his Christian content. But, he found that the beauty of Ambrose's language carried the content of his message into his heart: "with the words, which I loved, there also entered into my mind the things themselves, to which I was indifferent. Nor was I able to separate them from one another, and when I opened up my heart to receive the eloquence with which he spoke, there likewise entered, although only by degrees, the truths that he spoke." Witness is not just a matter of truth, but also of beauty.
Next, Augustine clearly speaks of reaching a point where Christianity has become plausible to him: "I now judged that the Catholic faith, for which I had thought nothing could be said against the Manichean objectors, could be maintained without being ashamed of it." The gospel first had to become a real option for him before he could take it seriously.
Finally, Augustine, having come this far (and rejected Manicheism), decides to continue seeking the truth in the church, even though he has yet to grasp it fully: "I determined to continue as a catechumen in the Catholic Church, commended to me by my parents, until something certain would enlighten me, by which I might direct my course."
Monday, September 24, 2007
Finding God at Home
I love used bookstores for the same reasons as alot of other people: the highly improbable hope that I will run across a signed, first edition of As I Lay Dying (or something similar) wedged between a copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul and The Book of Mormon.
This hasn't happened to me, at least not yet. Mostly, I scan the religion, philosophy, and psychology sections and then give half a glance at the fiction aisle on the way out the door. But every now and then I stumble upon something that meets some of the more realistic criteria for a good used-bookstore "find." In this case, it's a book that is: 1) cheap, 2) I've never heard of before, 3) looks like it could be great, and 4) actually turns out to be great once I take the plunge to buy and read it.
The recent used bookstore"find" in question is Finding God at Home: Family Life as Spiritual Discipline by Ernest Boyer, Jr. Boyer trained under Henri Nouwen and writes out of the Roman Catholic tradition. His intent is to develop a theology of family life that pays particular attention to the mundane struggles that attend marriage, child-rearing, house-keeping, living together, passing through different familial seasons of life, etc. There's alot of great wisdom here about how to seek God's face in the midst of life at home; below are a few samples.
"In addition to courage, persistence, trust and forgiveness there is a fifth element of the sacrament of the care of others: the ability to balance the tension between holding on and letting go....Caring is holding...But caring is also letting go. It is releasing those we love to go in the direction they need to go and to develop in ways that may at times be perplexing to us their husbands, wives, parents, or friends, but ways essential to their growth. The difficulty comes in finding ways to do both of these, both holding and letting go, within the same relationship...The general movement of parenthood is from holding - a holding that is almost constant in the early days - to letting go, although each stage of raising children involves a little of each....[This process of holding and letting go] involves for the child a long pattern of stepping out and returning, stepping out and returning, each time going further and further, developing more and more, always in ways that ask the parent to let go, then hold, let go, then hold - but each time to let go a bit more fully than before."
"We are reluctant to see how much God loves us not out of humility, but out of pride. Each of us secretly wants to be perfect. many of us carefully avoid looking at those aspects of ourselves that seem to us to be less than perfect. But to really know God's love, those aspects must be acknowledged simply because they too are a part of what God loves."
"Christianity is the story of something that happened in the past that points to a better future through a life with God in the present."
Another cool feature of the book is that there is a prayer at the beginning of each chapter, most of which are perfect for harried parents: "Dear God, whose name is Love, who in love and with love formed all that is, teach me to see the great worth of those small, everyday tasks involved in the care of others. Teach me to see them for what they are: re-enactments of the greatest truth there is, the truth of your unfailing care for me and for all that is."
This hasn't happened to me, at least not yet. Mostly, I scan the religion, philosophy, and psychology sections and then give half a glance at the fiction aisle on the way out the door. But every now and then I stumble upon something that meets some of the more realistic criteria for a good used-bookstore "find." In this case, it's a book that is: 1) cheap, 2) I've never heard of before, 3) looks like it could be great, and 4) actually turns out to be great once I take the plunge to buy and read it.
The recent used bookstore"find" in question is Finding God at Home: Family Life as Spiritual Discipline by Ernest Boyer, Jr. Boyer trained under Henri Nouwen and writes out of the Roman Catholic tradition. His intent is to develop a theology of family life that pays particular attention to the mundane struggles that attend marriage, child-rearing, house-keeping, living together, passing through different familial seasons of life, etc. There's alot of great wisdom here about how to seek God's face in the midst of life at home; below are a few samples.
"In addition to courage, persistence, trust and forgiveness there is a fifth element of the sacrament of the care of others: the ability to balance the tension between holding on and letting go....Caring is holding...But caring is also letting go. It is releasing those we love to go in the direction they need to go and to develop in ways that may at times be perplexing to us their husbands, wives, parents, or friends, but ways essential to their growth. The difficulty comes in finding ways to do both of these, both holding and letting go, within the same relationship...The general movement of parenthood is from holding - a holding that is almost constant in the early days - to letting go, although each stage of raising children involves a little of each....[This process of holding and letting go] involves for the child a long pattern of stepping out and returning, stepping out and returning, each time going further and further, developing more and more, always in ways that ask the parent to let go, then hold, let go, then hold - but each time to let go a bit more fully than before."
"We are reluctant to see how much God loves us not out of humility, but out of pride. Each of us secretly wants to be perfect. many of us carefully avoid looking at those aspects of ourselves that seem to us to be less than perfect. But to really know God's love, those aspects must be acknowledged simply because they too are a part of what God loves."
"Christianity is the story of something that happened in the past that points to a better future through a life with God in the present."
Another cool feature of the book is that there is a prayer at the beginning of each chapter, most of which are perfect for harried parents: "Dear God, whose name is Love, who in love and with love formed all that is, teach me to see the great worth of those small, everyday tasks involved in the care of others. Teach me to see them for what they are: re-enactments of the greatest truth there is, the truth of your unfailing care for me and for all that is."
Friday, September 14, 2007
Monday, September 3, 2007
Bird
Someone once asked me, with all seriousness, "are you a redneck?"
I suppose this post answers that question.
Isaac's first kill.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
A Collision Course with Justice
I feel that I've been on a collision course with justice for a while now. Coming out of the evangelical tradition, the "continuing" Reformed tradition in the twentieth century, and (in some sense) the southern Presbyterian tradition, the biblical teaching on the ethics of justice is not a strong suit for me - this despite the fact that my own family history is heavily implicated in the racial issues that define the white southern experience. In short, I knew the Bible talked about justice but I didn't know much about what it said and what it meant for me, my life and vocation.
All that began to change last spring when I read two books which broke through my relative indifference: Mountains Beyond Mountains and Until Justice and Peace Embrace. The former, by Tracy Kidder, tells the story of Dr. Paul Farmer, founder of Partners in Health and advocate for health care among the poor (especially in Haiti). Until Justice is the theory, the theology, that undergirds Farmer's vision; it's a translation of the justice tradition into Reformed theological and philosophical categories by one of the best thinkers around, Nicholas Wolterstorff.
The next stage of the collision just happened; I bought Gary Haugen's Good News About Injustice last Friday and had finished it by Saturday night. This time the theology of justice and the story of its incarnation are woven together as Haugen tells about his U. N. mission to Rwanda to investigate the genocide and how it led him to found International Justice Mission in 1994.
Finally, I read the introduction and first essay in Charles Marsh's The Beloved Community about MLK in Montgomery. I was struck by his youth (25 years old!), his spiritual transformation, and, of course, his moral courage. A couple of beautiful stories: after his house was bombed, with his wife and baby inside, King showed up and single-handedly calmed and dispersed the angry crowd, exhorting them to "love their enemies." And, after their boycott victory, King and his followers instructed the blacks of Montgomery on how to board the buses with dignity, respect, and a hand towards reconciliation with their white oppressors.
The biblical theology of justice presented by Haugen and Wolterstorff, together with the stories of its application told by Haugen, Kidder, and Marsh, offer a compelling vision for the pursuit of justice in today's world. Perhaps these books will serve to awaken other "sleepy Christians" to God's call to "seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, and plead the widow's cause" (Is. 1.17).
All that began to change last spring when I read two books which broke through my relative indifference: Mountains Beyond Mountains and Until Justice and Peace Embrace. The former, by Tracy Kidder, tells the story of Dr. Paul Farmer, founder of Partners in Health and advocate for health care among the poor (especially in Haiti). Until Justice is the theory, the theology, that undergirds Farmer's vision; it's a translation of the justice tradition into Reformed theological and philosophical categories by one of the best thinkers around, Nicholas Wolterstorff.
The next stage of the collision just happened; I bought Gary Haugen's Good News About Injustice last Friday and had finished it by Saturday night. This time the theology of justice and the story of its incarnation are woven together as Haugen tells about his U. N. mission to Rwanda to investigate the genocide and how it led him to found International Justice Mission in 1994.
Finally, I read the introduction and first essay in Charles Marsh's The Beloved Community about MLK in Montgomery. I was struck by his youth (25 years old!), his spiritual transformation, and, of course, his moral courage. A couple of beautiful stories: after his house was bombed, with his wife and baby inside, King showed up and single-handedly calmed and dispersed the angry crowd, exhorting them to "love their enemies." And, after their boycott victory, King and his followers instructed the blacks of Montgomery on how to board the buses with dignity, respect, and a hand towards reconciliation with their white oppressors.
The biblical theology of justice presented by Haugen and Wolterstorff, together with the stories of its application told by Haugen, Kidder, and Marsh, offer a compelling vision for the pursuit of justice in today's world. Perhaps these books will serve to awaken other "sleepy Christians" to God's call to "seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, and plead the widow's cause" (Is. 1.17).
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