Faith Firmly Rooted

Last year, I was doing a series of entries on reading. Several entries were about Augustine and Reading. Here's another installment. Just read Augustine's Egyptian Gold Analogy. It can be found in both De Doctrina Christiana (In English that title means On Christian Doctrine or Teaching Christianity) as well as The Confessions. In it, Augustine shares an analogy that allows us to answer the question "Is there some sort of value for Christians to read pagan works or works that are written either by non-believers or from a non-Christian perspective. He writes:

If those, however, who are called philosophers happen to have said anything that is true, agreeable to our faith, the Platonists above all, not only should we not be afraid of them, but we should even claim back for our own use what they have said, as from its unjust possessors.  It is like the Egyptians, who not only had idols and heavy burdens, which the people of Israel abominated and fled from, but also vessels and ornaments of gold and silver, and fine raiment, which the people secretly appropriated for their own, and indeed better use as they went forth from Egypt; and this not on their own initiative, but on God’s instructions, with the Egyptians unwittingly lending them things they were not themselves making good use of.

In the same way, while the heathen certainly have counterfeit and superstitious fictions in all their teachings, and the heavy burdens of entirely unnecessary labor, which everyone of us must abominate and shun as we go forth from the company of the heathen under the leadership of Christ, their teachings also contain liberal disciplines which are more suited to the service of the truth, as well as a number of most useful ethical principles, and some true things are to be found among them about worshiping only the one God. All this is like their gold and silver, and not something they instituted themselves, but something which they mined, so to say, from the ore of divine providence, veins of which are everywhere to be found. As they for their part make perverse and unjust use of it in the service of demons, so Christians for theirs ought, when they separate themselves in spirit from their hapless company, to take these things away from them for proper use of preaching the gospel. Their fine raiment too, meaning, that is, what are indeed their human institutions, but still ones that are suitable for human society, which we cannot do without in this life, are things that it will be lawful to take over and convert to Christian use.

So what does it mean? Click this link for some great insights from Dr. Naugle of Dallas Baptist University distributed at his summer institute in Christian scholarship.

As a Christian, don't be afraid to read a different perspective.  Read Oscar Wilde or a Hindu text or The Celestine Prophecy.  You'll find falsehoods.  But you might find something useful and true as well.  Search for the truth as for gold and silver, harvest it wherever it may be found, sanctify it unto God, and put it in service to Christ--for it is there that it finds its true value.

-RCW

As you ready your hearts for Christmas, let us not easily forget that Jesus Christ is central to our celebration.

Certainly, we know that Jesus was not born on December 25th.  Few people would ever make such an argument (and if they did, they'd be flat wrong!).  But it is at this time every year that we remember His coming.  We as Christians anticipate Him throughout the Christmas season via Advent and we long for His coming---both remembering His first coming on the 25th and ultimately looking to His future glorious second coming as well.

The Christmas holiday season is a great time of year (like Halloween as I mentioned before) to ask yourself a question....

• Does the way I celebrate Christmas bear the markings of something distinctively "Christian"?  

          OR

• Does the way that I celebrate Christmas (or even my Christianity) instead seem to have adopted all the trappings and accommodations of our contemporary culture leaving nary an inch for Christ?           

As you ponder that question, I'll leave you with a humorous story.  C.S. Lewis once pinpointed the marked difference between celebrating the birth of Christ and "all this ghastly [Christmas] racket at its lowest" with this story actually, so the credit for the laugh is his and not mine... Lewis wrote to a friend: "My brother heard a woman on a 'bus say, as the 'bus passed a church with a crib outside it, 'Oh Lor'!  They bring religion into everything.  Look--they're dragging it even into Christmas now!'"


Prayer: Lord, help us at this time of year to think of this season as we ought.  Help us to enjoy the time of rest, the time with family, the time of reflection, and let this all lead us ultimately to savor this time of year as a time of worship.  You are the cause of celebration for us this season and forever.  Amen.


-RCW


   
P.S. For some of my Southern Baptist friends who live somewhat in a bubble and legitimately do not know what "Advent" is, click here and you can see what the majority of the universal church in western culture does around the holiday season.  (That means what other Christians do who aren't Baptist....Yes, I do mean to tell you that there are a great many Christians who aren't Southern Baptist).   :)   I don't mean to poke fun....for I was certainly once very ignorant of these matters myself.        

P.P.S.  For my scholarly friends, the Lewis quote is from Letters to an American Lady (29 December 1958), p. 80.  The letter itself is housed in the Wade Center at Wheaton...an amazing place should you ever manage a visit.  I know how several of you (like myself) have a nasty distaste for quotes that lack a citation.

Saw a cool article about Christianity and voting, government, etc. I am not endorsing the source or the religious affiliation of the associated institution, but overall it was readable, informative, rational, and helpful for someone who might wonder about the curious relationship/tension between Christianity and politics especially in America. This is not the article to end all articles (I could no doubt search and find a better and more exhaustive one, but brevity is nice). Here is the link in case you want to read it. The Romans 13 passage is a recommended read for a Biblical voice.

I won't tell you guys whether I am dressing up tomorrow on October 31st...actually I am dressing up. [NO, I am NOT going trick-or-treating. Nothing is tackier than a 19+ yr old knocking on your door asking for candy.] I won't tell you what I am going to be though.... Really I am not telling. Why? In a few words, there would be inevitable judgment cast upon me by some of my fellow Christians. There are a handful of Christians I know who have very little idea why someone like myself would dress up...let alone as a certain fictional character very much despised by hyper-conservatives in the Christian community.

At the heart of it, the reason for my decision is actually because I have a different view of the relationship between Christianity and culture than many of my Christian counterparts. Does that makes sense? I hope that it indeed does...If however, it doesn't, then don't fret; for I am going to try to explain some more anyway. So just sit tight, take a deep breath, and read on.

A few books have come out recently that are rehashing this issue (one of which is by a very trusted author named D.A. Carson whom I had the privilege of sitting under at one time...do look his name up on Amazon.com and see if his titles don't interest you!). These new books are simply revisiting the classic text Christ and Culture, which is over 50 years old now. I, being one who likes to honor the Reformers by going straight "to the source," have to confess that I have not read any of the new "revisits," but have only read the original. Having done so, I must say that I firmly believe Christ and Culture is a must read for any minister...and I would add for any growing disciple who really wants to form a solid Christian worldview.

The book outlines and assesses some of the different ways that Christians allow their Christianity to interact (or NOT interact at all!) with the culture around them. The implications of the book are extremely visible in the way that different Christians react to Halloween. Yes, I just said the dirty word banned from all hyper-conservative Christian dictionaries.

Seriously, there is sometimes no better way to pinpoint how a Christian believer understands the relationship between his faith and the world around him than by observing his chosen behaviors on October 31st. There are any number of choices...

• there are those who allow Halloween to influence their Christianity (seeing absolutely no conflict between the two and really not viewing or celebrating the day any differently than the non-believer down the street);



• those who choose to ignore the holiday altogether and hide in the darkness of their home (believing that the day and all who observe it in any fashion whatsoever are an evil abomination before God);



• still other Christians use a "replacement technique" of celebrating the holiday in an entirely different emphasis...such as a Fall Festival, or my own favorite is Reformation Day (since Oct. 31 is the day that Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to door of the church at Wittenberg).



• Finally, there are those like myself who believe that somehow, Christianity doesn't have to be always on the defense against "the world." On defense against "Worldliness"? - yes; on defense against "the world"? - no. It grieves me that there are many Christians out there who know that they have been encouraged by the Scriptures to "be in the world but not of it," but they are actually not doing EITHER! Instead, they have chosen to retreat into a small and irrelevant subculture, huddling together and swimming upstream (sometimes just for swimming upstream's sake!). My own opinion is that there is a way in which Jesus Christ can influence and transform the culture around us if we just be authentic Christians--little Christs---engaging the culture, living in the world, being salt and light, like yeast in the dough--spreading Christ's influence throughout all of society in all of our earthly endeavors. I KNOW this truth is paramount for building a healthy Christian worldview. I believe it to not only allow for us to live out our faith in creative and freshly relevant ways, but I also believe it to be THE Biblical choice.

I hope this all sheds some light and perhaps helps you cut to the root of a dilemma that bewilders and divides many Christians...and not just on Halloween.

-RCW