Amazing Grace August 31, 2007
Posted by Barrett in : Biography, Resources/Links, Required Reading, Great Christian Hymns , 1 comment so farThe release date for the movie Amazing Grace has finally been announced. It will be released on November 13th. I cannot recommend this movie enough. I saw it in the theater last February, and although I do not know why it has taken 9 months to come to video, I have been eagerly waiting for its release ever since.
The website for the movie is www.amazinggracemovie.com
Here are some resources to get you prepared for this movie:
Books:
A Practical View of Christianity - William Wilberforce
Amazing Grace in the Life of William Wilberforce - John Piper
An Interesting Narrative - Olaudah Equiano (autobiography)
Out of the Depths - John Newton (autobiography)
John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace - Jonathan Aitken
Audio:
Peculiar Doctrines, Public Morals, and the Political Welfare: Reflections on the Life and Labor of William Wilberforce - John Piper
John Newton: The Tough Roots of His Habitual Tenderness - John Piper
DANGER!!!!! WARNING!!!! August 31, 2007
Posted by brian in : Biblical Manhood , 2commentsIf you are allergic to reading stay away from this post!
This is an article from John Piper’s Book “Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood A Response to Evangelical Feminism”. The Atricle is called “Where’s Dad?: A Call for Fathers with the Spirit of Elijah” by Weldon Hardenbrook.
I am putting the entire article up. Can I beg men to take the time to read it?
“Lucille Ball was the first lady of American comedy. Some time before her death she did a remarkable television interview with Merv Griffin, who asked her a very pointed and serious question. “Lucille, you’ve lived a long time on this earth and you are a wise person. What’s happened to our country? What’s wrong with our children? Why are our families falling apart? What’s missing?”
Lucy’s startling yet matter-of-fact reply came quickly. “Papa’s missing,” she said. “Things are falling apart because Papa’s gone. If Papa were here, he would fix it.”
Lucille Ball was far better known for her comic performances than for her social insights. But she was right. For so many of the family problems that beset American culture have, at their root, dysfunctional fathers.
At the very beginning of the creation of our world, God proclaimed that it is not good for man to be alone, and through Adam He instituted the family as the center of human community. Throughout the historical transitions of a variety of cultures, the family existed as a natural society that provided the soul of each nation and that was to be nourished and protected through fatherhood.
But what is fatherhood? Certainly there is more to true paternity than merely breeding offspring. Author Clayton Barbeau does a good job of defining the essence of fatherhood when he writes, “The notion of responsibility is at the crux of true fatherhood. The conscious sense of responsibility for the physical and spiritual well-being of others is the mark of a true father.”{2}
I humbly but firmly submit that the soul of our nation is in crisis in large part because American men have—from ignorance and for various and sometimes even subconscious reasons—abandoned their God-given role of fatherhood. They have discarded the notion of being responsible for the physical and spiritual well-being of those around them.
A series of historical events, beginning at the Industrial Revolution, traversing the search for American independence and the Second Great Awakening, and culminating in Victorianism, has had the net result of disestablishing American men from a true role of fatherhood and moral leadership in our land. The American male, at one time the ever-present guide of the close-knit colonial family, left his family for the factory and the materialistic lure that the Industrial Revolution brought. The most numerous and most active members of the church, the men—who commonly debated theology in the colonial marketplace—were, in time, to be found arguing business practices in the tavern. The fathers who labored hard to instill the value of cooperation in their offspring, in time gave their children the example of unlimited individual competition. Men who once taught their children respect and obedience toward godly authority came to act as though independence were a national virtue. Men who once had an active hand in the education of their sons relegated this responsibility to a public school system dominated by female teachers and feminine learning patterns. Once the leaders of social progress, American men came to look on social reform and mercy movements as women’s work and, in time, became themselves the objects of that social reform, in the case of movements such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.
Over the course of 150 years, from the mid-eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century, American men walked out on their God-given responsibility for moral and spiritual leadership in the homes, schools, and Sunday schools of the nation. As sociologist Lawrence Fuchs notes, “The groundwork for the 20th-century fatherless home was set. By the end of the 19th century for the first time it was socially and morally acceptable for men not to be involved with their families.”{3}
This disappearance of the American father has led writer Marion J. Levy in Modernization: Latecomers and Survivors to note that “for the first time in the history of humankind the overwhelming majority of little boys and little girls continued under the direct domination and supervision of ladies until they reached maturity. This has never happened before in history. Crusades, wars, migrations, pestilence—nothing for a people as a whole ever before took so large a percentage of young adult and older adult males out of the family context for so much of the waking time of the children. Most of us have not even noticed this change, nor do we have any idea of its radicality.”{4}
Lucille Ball was right. Papa is gone. Consider these sobering statistics: One of every four American children has no father in the home to welcome him or her at the time of birth. Only 41 percent of today’s children will grow up in a two-parent family. Almost a million children are left with one parent because of divorce each year. Nine out of ten of these are with their mothers. “Today’s children are the first generation in this country’s history who think divorce and separation are a normal part of family life,” says Andrew Chrerlin of Johns Hopkins University.{5} From 1950 to 1980, the annual rate of illegitimate births increased by a staggering 450 percent. The 715,200 children born without fathers in 1982 represented 19.4 percent of all births for that year. On average, American fathers give each of their children a mere three minutes of undivided attention each day.
My own twenty-three years of pastoral experience bear out these figures. By far the most commonly recurring complaint I hear from married women is about phantom fathers who do not connect with their wives and children. Here is a letter I received, from the wife of a Christian friend, that tragically expresses the feelings of countless women in America today:
The kids are in bed. There’s nothing on TV tonight. I ask my husband if he minds if I turn the tube off. He grunts. As I walk to the set my mind is racing. Maybe, just maybe tonight we’ll talk. I mean have a conversation that consists of more than my usual question with his mumbled one-word answer or, more accurately, no answer at all. Silence—I live in a world with continuous noise but, between him and myself, silence. Please—oh God, let him open up. I initiate (once again; for the thousandth time). My heart pounds—oh, how can I word it this time? What can I say that will open the door to just talk? I don’t have to have a DEEP MEANINGFUL CONVERSATION. JUST SOMETHING!
As I open my mouth—he gets up and goes to the bedroom. The door closes behind him. The light showing under the door gives way to darkness. So does my hope. I sit alone on the couch. My heart begins to ache. I’m tired of being alone. Hey, I’m married. I have been for years. Why do I sit alone? The sadness undergoes a change slowly—then with increased fervor I get mad. I AM MAD. I am sick and tired of living with a sissy. A wimp—a coward. You know, he’s afraid of me!
Hostile, you say. You better believe it. I’m sick and tired of living in a world of passive men.
My two sons like sports. They’re pretty good. They could be a lot better if their Dad would take a little of his precious time and play catch with them. (I’m sorry, catch once a year at the church picnic doesn’t quite make the boys into great ball players.) But Dad’s too busy. He’s at work. He’s at the health club. He’s riding his four-wheeler. He’s working on the car. He’s playing golf. He’s tired. He’s watching a video movie. So who plays catch with my boys? Me. My husband says, “You shouldn’t be playing men’s sports.” So who’s going to do it? He says he will. But he doesn’t. Remember? He’s too busy. Satisfying himself doing what he likes. . . . So my poor sons have to be second-rate in sports. They could have been good. Really good. Yeah—I’m mad.
My daughter is a teenager. She likes boys. They notice her. They pay attention to her. She responds. I know what’s coming. I try to talk to her. But it’s not me she wants. It’s Dad. Yeah, Dad! If he’d just hug her, notice her, talk to her—just a little—she wouldn’t need those boys so much. But no . . . so she turns elsewhere for attention and love. And there’s nothing I can do.
A mom isn’t enough. Kids need a father. And not just a body, a passive, silent presence.
And here’s the killer. My husband’s father did the same number on him. Didn’t hug him. Didn’t take him to anything, let alone watch his baseball games. And he HATES his father. Now my husband’s doing the same thing. Will our sons grow up to be passive? Will they be cowards?
Edwin Cole rightly labels father absence as the “curse of our day.”{6}
That absence has dramatic effects on our children, especially our sons. My wife has been an elementary school teacher for over twenty-seven years. Most of this time has been spent in special education in California schools. Who has filled her classroom year after year? Boys. Ninety-eight percent of her special education students have been emotionally damaged young boys whose shared characteristic is father-loss. Of course, biological and chemical factors are involved in boys’ problems. However, in many cases father-loss has exaggerated them.
The lack of the father’s presence greatly damages the son’s self-esteem and confidence. The lack of a male role model at home is compounded by the lack of male role models at school. Eighty-five percent of elementary school teachers are women. And a system that insists that little boys learn as if they were little girls contributes to this sad litany of educational problems. Some experts say that boys are not mature enough to begin school until they are six-and-a-half years old while girls seem to be ready for the classroom at five years and nine months. I agree that many boys are not ready for school at the usual age of five. But this is not necessarily because they are immature. Could it not also be that teachers are not ready for normal five-year-old male behavior? Momism author Hans Sebald argues,
All too often these boys’ fundamental learning process is left exclusively to females—the mother, the Sunday school teacher, nursery and kindergarten personnel, and the elementary school teacher. Thus, boys are exposed to the continuous authority and teaching of agents whom they may not imitate, but whose guidance and information about what they should be they are expected to accept and practice.{7}
More than two out of three students who fail one or more grades are boys. Learning and behavioral disorders are three to ten times as common among boys as among girls of the same ages. Three out of four retarded readers are boys. Four out of five school discipline problems are caused by boys.
Boys learn differently and at a different pace than girls. But school systems fail to allow for such differences. In classrooms, natural expressions of masculine behavior are commonly viewed as improper. Too often the boys of America find themselves in a conflict between “being good” and being male. Associating “being bad” with being masculine, many boys start behaving in destructive ways. These are the lads who are growing up to be the so-called bad boys of America. Four out of five of the nearly two million juveniles arrested in America every year are boys.
What is causing young people, particularly boys, to commit so much of the serious crime in this country? There are many reasons, but a key common factor is the absence of the father. “Fatherless families . . . generate far more delinquency and personality disorders than do normal or motherless families,” declares Daniel Amneus. “The ratio of delinquent children living with the mother only compared to those living with the father only is about three to one.”{8}
Psychologists and sociologists have been surfacing with evidence that identifies a new kind of disordered personality among these child criminals: a desensitized, almost passionless youth who has no feelings, no compassion toward those whom he strikes out against, no remorse. Thus we see such shocking phenomena as violent sexual crimes perpetrated by children against other children.
In 1982, more than eighty thousand juveniles were residing in juvenile custody facilities, not in their homes.{9} The year before that, over 51 percent of people arrested for what the FBI considers to be serious crimes were under the age of twenty.{10} New York Times writer William Shannon discloses, “Since 1963, crimes by children have been rising at a faster rate than the juvenile population. . . . The rate of armed robbery, rape, and murder by juveniles has doubled in a decade.”{11} The FBI estimates that in 1983 youths under the age of eighteen accounted for more than 218,000 burglaries, 81,000 drug abuse violations, 45,000 motor vehicle thefts, 43,000 aggravated assaults, and 10,000 arsons. In that same year over 5,600 women were raped by youths aged seventeen and under, and over 1,400 people were murdered by the children of America.{12}
Who were these young perpetrators? You guessed it. They were overwhelmingly boys. In 1983, for example, there were approximately 1,722,531 people under the age of eighteen arrested in this country. More than 78 percent were boys.{13} What is causing young people, particularly boys, to commit so much of the serious crime in this country? The key common factor is the absence of a father.
Even more startling is the situation in the black community. In 1988, 75 percent of all black infants were born to unwed mothers.{14} Already in 1983 four out of ten black families in America had no father present, a ratio 300 percent greater than that of white families. Through a history of slavery, segregation, exploitation, oppression, overwhelming prejudice, emasculation, and well-intentioned but degrading government assistance programs, black families have lost their leaders—the fathers.
The effect on the sons is tragic. Richard Stengel wrote in Time about
a frighteningly familiar but largely unspoken national scourge: the epidemic of violence by young blacks against other young blacks. The leading cause of death among black males, ages 15 to 24, in the U.S. is not heart disease, not cancer, not any natural cause. It is murder by other blacks. More than 1 out of every 3 blacks who die in that age group is the victim of a homicide. Across America, particularly among the underclass in the nation’s urban ghettos, brother is killing brother in a kind of racial fratricide. More than 40% of all the nation’s murder victims are black, and 94% of those who commit these murders are black. The 6,000 or so Americans who lost their lives because of black-on-black violence in 1981 alone rivals the number of black serviceman killed during the twelve years of the Vietnam conflict.{15}
The fatherless black youth, in his flight from the feminizing forces of a matriarchal culture, has pursued the only option he sees available to him to gain masculinity. In his mind, being physically tough is masculine. The main issue here is not poverty. “Poverty is not necessarily associated with crime because there are many poor and law-abiding people.”{16} If poverty were the main reason for crime, almost everyone in the Third World would be a criminal. It seems that no one, for some hopeless or fatalistic reason, wants to touch on the raw nerve that needs to be healed—absent fathers, in both the white and black communities.
The plague of missing fathers is creating an American male who is confused about his identity and under a great deal of psychological stress, and who ends up lashing out in frustration. Our land is increasingly filled with angry, frustrated, isolated young men who no longer know who they are. In desperation, they are tearing everything to pieces. American husbands abused six million wives in 1988, four thousand of whom died as a result. And because of self-hatred, American men are destroying themselves also. They are the overwhelming majority of victims of substance abuse and murder. Of the 27,000 Americans who commit suicide each year, 75 percent are men.
Absent and disinterested fathers also take a toll on their daughters. Fathers play a crucial role in the development of girls’ image of their femininity. Dad’s positive feedback is essential. Ponder the following letter in Seventeen magazine from one girl whose father is not making contact:
Have you ever heard of a father who won’t talk to his daughter? My father doesn’t seem to know I’m alive. In my whole life he has never said he loves me or given me a goodnight kiss unless I asked him to.
I think the reason he ignores me is because I’m so boring. I look at my friends and think, “If I were funny like Jill or a superbrain like Sandy or even outrageous and punk like Tasha, he would put down his paper and be fascinated.”
I play the recorder, and for the past three years I’ve been a soloist in the fall concert at school. Mom comes to the concerts, but Dad never does. This year, I’m a senior, so it’s his last chance. I’d give anything to look out into the audience and see him there. But who am I kidding? It will never happen.{17}
The lack of attention from her dad led this girl to the conclusion that she was dull, unintelligent, and all-around boring, hardly what you would call positive self-esteem. Girls like this are forced to seek male attention from other places. Usually they find a poor substitute in the American dating scene where, all too often, they end up victimized by a young man who takes advantage of their need for male approval. Each year three-quarters of a million teenaged girls become pregnant in America. Half of them will deal with their unwanted pregnancy by taking the life of their unborn child. Most of these girls are subconsciously trying to compensate for affection that should have come from Dad.
I sadly submit, America’s children are lost.
It reminds me of the prophesy of Hosea, when the kingdom of Israel was in the darkest hour of her entire history. The land was polluted by greed, oppression, robbery, falsehood, adultery, and murder. The fathers of the nation had failed in their responsibility. Hosea summed up the tragic situation this way: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being my priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children” (Hosea 4:6, NASB).
American society has divorced itself from heaven because American fathers have ceased to pattern their fatherhood after the Fatherhood of God. There is no hope for the children of America unless their fathers return from the exile of self-serving behavior and offer their souls to the mercy of the Father who created them. The fathers of America must come to know God as Father and to see His Fatherhood as the pattern for their own.
This is what happened to the Apostle Paul at his conversion. This is how he could call Timothy his son. This is how he became the spiritual father we acknowledge him to be. This is how he can confidently say to his spiritual children, “Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1, NASB). He could say this only because he bowed his “knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom all fatherhood (Greek patria) in heaven and earth is named” (Ephesians 3:14-15, author’s translation). In doing this, St. Paul related all fatherhood to God’s Fatherhood.
It is only when we, the men of today, like Paul, reconnect earthly fatherhood with the heavenly model that we will find out what is supposed to be true about ourselves, how we are supposed to function, how we can heal the hurts of America’s forgotten children. If American men are going to return to responsible fatherhood, we must look at what the Father does. Even Jesus said, “Truly, truly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner” (John 5:19, NASB).
When we look at the Father, we do not see a passive, uninterested father who refuses to be involved. Not at all! We see One who loves, One whose affection publicly bursts from heaven upon His Son, declaring, “You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11, NKJV).
When we look at the Father we do not see someone who is uninvolved with His creation. Not at all! We see One who initiates love toward His creation. “God so loved the world that he gave . . .” (John 3:16). “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1, NKJV). “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19, NKJV).
When we look at the Father we do not see someone who runs and hides and abandons His family. Not at all! We see One who commits Himself, who “bears all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7), who is so committed that He remains faithful even when we are faithless, for to do otherwise would be a denial of who He is (1 Timothy 2:13).
When we look at the Father we do not see someone content to have His family in discord, ripped apart by social chaos and anarchy. Not at all! We see One who unifies, One whose love is called the “bond of perfection” (Colossians 3:14, NKJV). We see a Father from whose headship peace and order flow.
When we look at the Father we do not see someone who is self-centered and unwilling to forsake personal pleasure for the good of others. Not at all! We see a Father who sacrifices. He was willing to sacrifice His only-begotten Son for the well-being of the human family.
When we look at the Father we do not see someone with a halfhearted, lukewarm, unfeeling attitude toward His family. Not at all! We see One who is zealous! We see an intense and passionate concern that declares, “I am zealous for Zion with great zeal” and “with great fervor I am zealous for her” (Zechariah 8:2, NKJV).
When we look at the Father we do not see someone whom His Son could not image. Not at all! We see One who models, and a Son who could declare, “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9, NKJV). Christ is the image of the Father.
Because our view of God will determine our view of man, the essence of all fatherhood and family life can be found within the Holy Trinity. All the critical questions of our day regarding roles, functions, and equality can be solved by a better understanding of the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
In the last few decades we have seen a Jesus movement and a Holy Spirit movement. Both of these movements contributed greatly to spiritual awareness. Yet neither of these movements has healed the American home. If anything, things are worse, even among Christians. Today America desperately needs a Father movement, where men can again get connected to the Heavenly Model. After all, it is the Father who is the very source and fountainhead of the Holy Trinity. We must see God as three persons in one divine nature, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The same prophet Hosea who spoke of God forgetting our children if we reject knowledge of Him later declared, “Come, let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us. He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day, that we may live before Him. So let us know; let us press on to know the Lord” (Hosea 6:1-3, NASB). Our hope is in knowing God. If we are going to win the battle for the family in America, we must become people who are determined to know God the Father and commit ourselves to boldly call our nation back to Him and the model of fatherhood that He is for us.
We do not need a little squeak. We need the roar of a lion. We need the mighty spirit of Elijah to sing out in our churches and in our schools and in our nation. Why do we need the spirit of Elijah? Because he is the prophet who turns fathers back to their children. In the last two verses of the Old Testament the prophet Malachi says:
Behold, I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the Lord. And he will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse. (Malachi 4:5-6, NASB)
If the hearts of fathers are to turn to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers, we need the spirit of Elijah at the highest level of government. For too long president after president has failed to exhort American men to responsible fatherhood. For too long passivity toward the American family has characterized the White House. For too long we have had Father’s Day come and go without the father of our nation issuing a forceful call to the men of this country to engage in the battle for the survival of the basic building block of society, the family. For too long we have allowed bandages to be put on social cancers because no one at the highest level of government will dare to tell American men that we are going to continue to lose our children and see our marriages disintegrate until we get off our backsides and put the same sacrificial energy into our families that we put into our professions and personal amusements.
Mr. President, if you want a kinder and gentler America, we need you to use all the power and prestige of your God-given office to exhort the men of our land to turn their hearts to their families. Lyndon Johnson was right when he said, “History and instinct tell us that a society that does not encourage responsible fatherhood will pay for its failure in future generations.”{18}
Mr. President, you have been a good father to your family. We need you, as the father of our nation, to use your Father’s Day proclamation as a national platform to exhort American men to responsible fatherhood. We need you to push for legislation that will encourage men to abandon their preoccupations with personal pleasure and act in the best interests of their wives and children. We need the spirit of Elijah in the Oval Office to turn the hearts of American men back to their families.
But that is not the only place where we need the spirit of Elijah. The spirit of Elijah also needs to be felt in the classrooms of America. For too long the identities of our young boys have suffered from the absence of male teachers. For too long the government has sat on its own indisputable statistical evidence that proves this to be true. For too long the educational bureaucracy has closed its mind to the crucial need for teaching about masculinity. For too long educational bureaucrats have failed to incorporate masculine learning models into their curricula. For too long boys have been forced to choose between “being good” and being male, because of a system that does not allow for normal masculine development.
We need the spirit of Elijah to turn the hearts of fathers to their children and meet them in the classrooms of America. In private and public schools alike, the cry needs to be sounded for men to reenter the educational sphere. Only then will boys receive their instruction and guidance from models they can also imitate.
One last area where we desperately need the spirit of Elijah is in the church. For too long the boys of America have been viewing the church as a sanctuary for women and Sunday school as a place for sissies. For too long the most predictable fact about young males in the church is that the majority of them will leave by the time they are young adults. For too long the feminized clergy of our land have been known as nice guys rather than courageous leaders.
Fellow-clergy and lay leaders, we need the spirit of Elijah to be manifest among us most of all. If we are to remove the curse of father-loss from our land, the church more than any institution on this earth must face the responsibility of turning the hearts of fathers back to their families. Men must know that fatherhood is established in heaven and that only in the church can we experience the fullness of fatherhood. Men must again become the primary religious educators of their children. Men must enter the Sunday schools. Christian men must imitate God the Father and, like Him, become father to the fatherless. Big brothers are great, but the fatherless need more than big brothers.
I am not merely talking about biological fathers at this point. All men are called to be spiritual fathers, even single males and childless husbands. Men who are not biological fathers are still called on to devote time, effort, and energy to the guidance and care of the young people around them, comforting and counseling and instructing those who have no dads.
There is a desperate need for the single men and childless husbands of our nation to imitate God, the Father of us all, who is described as a “father to the fatherless” (Psalm 68:5).
At this point a Christian may ask, “Aren’t you linking masculinity and fatherhood much too closely? Isn’t Jesus Christ our highest standard for what it means to be manly? Yet He Himself is not a father.”
Jesus Christ is a father. As Adam was the father of a fallen race, so Jesus Christ is the father of the new race. In fact, Isaiah’s accurate prophecy concerning the Incarnate shows that one of the titles to be given to the Son of God would be “Everlasting Father” (Isaiah 9:6).
As to the Trinity, we keep the Father and the Son distinct. Jesus is not a father in relation to the Trinity, but He is in relation to His church. The first Adam was the father of the human race while Christ, the Second Adam, is the father of the new race that is born in Him. Thus, the Son of God the Father has Himself the attributes of fatherhood. Jesus’ words are true when He says, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9, NASB). In revealing the Father, He, as father of the faithful, is the perfect expression of fatherhood. He is the progenitor of the new humanity! Jesus Christ is both father and husband to the family of the faithful (Ephesians 5:22-33; Hebrews 2:13).
All men, married or single, can follow Christ in fatherhood, being spiritual fathers of those they bid to follow Him. If single men and childless husbands of this country see that God’s call to fatherhood extends to them as well as to biological fathers, perhaps some of the millions of children who have no father present will have a chance of making it.
Real men do not just make babies. Real men take responsibility for the physical and spiritual care of children they beget and for those begotten and deserted by others. Responsibility lies at the heart of fatherhood as it was intended to be.
Let me end with a story. I was with a friend some time ago, driving home from Los Angeles. It was midday, and we were coming down a steep grade. In front of us was a new pickup truck with a family. The mother was driving, and the father was beside her in the cab. In the open bed of the truck were four small children. They had a picnic basket, fishing poles. The children were obviously excited to be going on vacation.
Suddenly, one of the back wheels snapped off. The truck veered sharply to the right and shot off a sixty-foot cliff. My friend and I were the only ones there. We stopped our car and started down the hillside. We ran to the children, doing what we could do. All of them were unconscious.
The mother was seriously injured. It looked as though she had broken her legs and pelvis. But she started crawling on her belly to each child. We couldn’t prevent her.
The father could not restrain her either, although he tried. He was in the best shape of anyone, but he stayed in the truck, and called out to his wife to stop.
The scene is forever engraved in my mind. It says something to me about the fathers of our country. The children of America are lying wounded, strewn throughout our cities. In too many cases, their fathers are leaving them to their mothers’ care. The children need the father to get out of the truck and join the mothers who care for them.
The fathers of America need to have such an extraordinary passion for God and be so consumed with the vision of responsible fatherhood that we will allow no obstacle to stand in the way of the healing of the American family.
This is our greatest challenge at the end of the twentieth century: turning the hearts of fathers to their children so that, as the prophet promises, the hearts of the children will turn back toward them.”
My carriage is broken! August 29, 2007
Posted by brian in : John Piper , 1 comment so far
Desiring God:
“Picture this life as a journey on your way to receive a spectacular inheritance. It will protect you from idolatry and make all your burdens lighter, and quiet all your murmurings.
Here’s the way the old John Newton put it:
Suppose a man was going to New York to take possession of a large estate, and his carriage should break down a mile before he got to the city, which obliged him to walk the rest of the way; what a fool we should think him, if we saw him ringing his hands, and blubbering out all the remaining mile, “My carriage is broken! My carriage is broken!” (Richard Cecil, Memoirs of the Rev. John Newton, in The Works of the Rev. John Newton, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1985), p. 108.)”
Test Yourself: Football or Christ? August 28, 2007
Posted by brian in : John Piper, American Christianity , 1 comment so farYou Shall Take Up Your Tamborines August 25, 2007
Posted by Barrett in : John Piper, Perseverence, Devotion , 2comments
(Piper, A Godward Life, Chapter 11)
On the Whole Counsel of God:
A Hedonistic Defense of Doctrine
I have loved you with an everlasting love;
Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness…
Again you will take up your tamborines,
And go forth to the dances of the merrymakers.
JEREMIAH 31:3-4
In my preaching I stress doctrine. One reason is that the apostle Paul stressed doctrine. It was his mission strategy. When he had finished his church-planting labor in Ephesians, he said. “I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:26, RSV). So on Sundays I preach doctrine.
Today is Monday. The sun is shining. The sky is deep-sea blue. The temperature is in the seventies. The wind is gentle. The air is crystal clear and clean. The tulips are halfway up. At times like this you want to leap for joy, not study doctrine.
Me too.
I am not interested in a religion that offers anything less than fullness of joy and pleasures for evermore (Psalm 16:11). I don;t just mean deep, weighty desires that come in moments of heart-heaving discoveries of God’s faithfulness in tragedy. I do mean that! There is too much cancer and killing in the world not to mean that–until the curse is finally lifted–but not just that.
I also mean what baby cows do: “You shall go forth leaping like calves from the stall” (Malachi 4:2, RSV). I love the April sunshine and the warmth on my skin and the breeze in my face. I love the yelping of my little ones as they come home from school, testing their high notes. I love the fast-fading, uninhibited preadolescents. I love the exuberance of some of the young people in my church unleashed in drama for Jesus’ sake.
Exuberance!
That’s a rare word, isn’t it? We grow out of it about eleven, I think. We try to find it again in a hundred artificial ways, but it’s gone. We’ve grown up. We know too much now.
Or could it be that we know too little? Could it be that we have grown up halfway? Out of the naive exuberance of childhood into the cloud-covered realism of half-adulthood.
Reenter doctrine. The whole counsel of God. What is it?
It’s the new foundation of exuberance when the naiveté of childhood won’t work anymore, but it’s different. The old foundation could not handle reality, but the new foundation sees everything–cancer, nuclear weapons, environmental crises, terrorism, abortion, burned-out cities, broken marriages, bummed-out kids, depression–it sees and feels everything. Nevertheless, it does not break or sink–not in the hospital and not in jail.
This is the whole counsel of God. If you intend to dance in the April sun, just remember, either you do it with your eyes closed or you do it on the great granite tableland of the whole counsel of God, also known as doctrine.
“Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold_________” (Luke 6:22-23). Yes, the blank is filled with “your reward is great in heaven,” but how you come to hope in this reward, how this reward was purchased for you by Christ, what the nature of faith is that lays hold on this reward, what the content of the reward is, and how you maintain daily confidence in the surety of reward–that is all doctrine. Without it, we will not leap for long. And surely not in jail.
