I like this phrase from John Piper. (see title)
He says, "The mark of God's people is not incapacitating fear, but rather contrite courageous confidence in God. That's the main point of Isaiah 41:14."
Isaiah 41:14
Fear not, you worm Jacob, you men of Israel! I will help you, says the Lord; your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.
I pray this for myself and fellow Christians.
"That you develop a wartime mentality and lifestyle; that you never forget that life is short, that billions of people hang in the balance of heaven and hell every day, that the love of money is spiritual suicide, that the goals of upward mobility (nicer clothes, cars, houses, vacations, food, hobbies) are a poor and dangerous substitute for the goals of living for Christ with all your might, and maximizing your joy in ministry to people's needs."
- From A Challenge to Women by John Piper
Why do I want to enter full-time ministry? Because 'billions of people hang in the balance of heaven and hell every day'. Life is short and nothing matters more than making Christ known, even as I know Him myself.
Note: From the Serious Time Update. To enjoy a free e-mail subscription to the Serious Times Update, log-on to www.serioustimes.com
Science and Religion: No Place for God
The National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most eminent scientific organization, produced a book on the evidence supporting the theory of evolution (and arguing against the introduction of creationism or other religious alternatives in public school science classes) in 1984. It published another in 1999. This month, they produced a third, but with a twist, for it is intended specifically for the lay public. Further, it devotes a great deal of space to an explanation of the differences between science and religion, maintaining that the acceptance of evolution does not require abandoning belief in God.
Barbara A. Schaal, who is a vice president of the academy, an evolutionary biologist at Washington University and a member of the panel that produced the book, said to the New York Times, “We wanted to produce a report that would be valuable and accessible to school board members and teachers and clergy.” Titled “Science, Evolution and Creationism,” the 70-page work asserts that “attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist.”
I would agree. While I am not convinced of much that has been suggested under macro-evolutionary theories, and even less those pertaining to hominoid evolution, I have no problem with those who hold to various forms of theistic evolution. If, in the end, it is demonstrated that this is the method God chose to use, so be it. The Genesis narrative does not speak to how God created, only that God created. The Christian has nothing to fear from science because the God of the Bible is the God of creation. All true scientific discoveries simply illuminate the world God has made.
But this is not what is meant by the report’s desire to diffuse the tension between science and religion. Faith is upheld by trivializing it, reducing it to the likes of a favorite color, or preferred style of music. As the report phrases it, science and religion deal with two different kinds of human “experience.” There is the experience which can be validated as fact (science), and there is the experience that can only be embraced in faith (religion). So believe what you want about God – that is your prerogative – just don’t treat it like you would a scientific reality.
It is to be granted that modern science is based on empirical evidence and testable explanation. One cannot put God in a test-tube and determine His existence. But there is more at hand here than science doing its job, and knowing its limitations in regard to matters of faith. It is about limiting what religion can say about science. The working idea is that we can maintain our religious faith and our scientific discoveries not by seeing both as operating in the realm of public truth – to be jointly engaged and interpreted accordingly – but by seeing them as separate categories altogether that should never be allowed to intertwine. If you wish to believe in God, fine; just don’t posit that this God actually exists as Creator, or that He could actually be pulled out to explain anything.
As Ronald Numbers has written, “Nothing has come to characterize modern science more than its rejection of appeals to God in explaining the workings of nature.” Hence the report’s categorical rejection of any and all forms of creationism, including intelligent design - calling such positions devoid of evidence, “disproven” or “simply false.”
At issue here is the larger cultural current of privatization. As I wrote in Serious Times, privatization is the process by which a chasm is created between the public and the private spheres of life, and spiritual things are increasingly placed within the private arena. So when it comes to things like business, politics, or even marriage and the home, personal faith is bracketed off. The process of privatization, left unchecked, makes the Christian faith a matter of personal preference, trivialized to the realm of taste or opinion. Yet faith does not simply have a new home in our private lives; it is no longer accepted outside of that sphere. More than showing poor form, talk of faith has been banished from the wider public agenda.
So the National Academy of Sciences is happy for religion to exist, and does not want anyone to see a conflict between science and religion. But do not think this means that those with religious conviction should pursue science with a religious worldview on equal footing as those who engage it with a naturalistic perspective.
No, science and religion are encouraged to co-exist…as long as religion knows its place.
Which is no place at all.
James Emery White
I couldn't resist lifting this from the Desiring God blog...
"You can be so interested in great theological and intellectual and philosophical problems that you tend to forget that you are going to die." - Martin Lloyd Jones, Preaching and Preachers, p. 193
Ouch. A good thing to keep in mind.
Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes...
There are enough left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week--
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted--quite unsuccessfully--
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away...
The Christmas Feast is already a fading memory,
And already the mind begins to be vaguely aware
Of an unpleasant whiff of apprehension...
“Do you really want a solution or is the constant refrain ‘why’ a way of escaping the responsibility of the answer?”
When we cry out “Why?” in the midst of the unthinkable violence of our time, our predicament, I believe, is the same. There are some clues we already have--enough to bring correctives within our reach. But do we really want the truth?
- from 'Miltons in a Weary Land' by Ravi Zacharias
