TheLionRampant.net

I just found out the train ticket I bought for 40 quid for tomorrow for the trip down to Manchester is just ONE way. So I had to buy another ticket for another 40 quid to get home. All for a conference to put on my CV. It’ll be 7 or 8 hours of travel and I’ll be there for just about 4 hours. At least I hope to get a lot of work done on the train rides! Plus it’s cold here–grey, ugly, windy, ick. The sun has flown away to somewhere prettier! But, the good thing to look forward to is that after I finally arrive back in Edinburgh Sarah and I are going out for ‘girl time’ at a wine bar.

Some guy from Scottish Power came and told us that THEY were cheaper than Scottish Gas (unless you use like NO gas or electricity) as far as supplying gas and electricity to the flat. After living in our flat for 8 months, we still don’t know what’s happening with our gas and electricity, so we signed up with them. I think they have our electric account but not our gas, or something like that; frankly at this point, I don’t care! It’s sort of funny when you think of it and I’m sure Sarah will laugh at this as the Hays have had the same craziness!

I quit. Well mostly. I am working my full two days next week and then one day the following week. Then we’re off to Greece for nine days and I’ll work one day after we get back. Then I’ll cover a few days in the beginning of June so the manager, Fiona, can take a holiday. I hate quitting. I hate confrontation, but at least it’s over now.

Happy news! The College was allocated more funds and now has money to give out two more scholarships at the home tuition rate (3,010 GBP) and being that I was on the reserve list, I get one!

I figured if I blog now, I won’t forget as much as if I blog later; so here it goes. You can see pictures here.

Friday:
Left the trickling Edinburgh rain to hop the Airlink bus to make my 4:50 flight to Dublin. I arrived safe and sound and got some euros from a cash machine only to have my 20 Euro note eaten up by the Air Bus ticket machine. However, the Irish seem to be exceedingly hospitable and the porter not only refunded my 20 Euro but got me onto the bus for free. I made it to my hotel about 15 minutes before the opening lecture at 7 PM. I quickly tried to make myself presentable and made my way to Trinity College Dublin. It’s an amazing campus with a cobbled walkways, huge open greens, and old buildings (plus a few modern monstrosities to vary it up). The opening lecture was by a historian, Dr John Bowman. It was interesting, but I was tired. They then had a lovely wine, cheese, cracker, etc. reception where people mastered the art of small talk and intelligent conversation. Being not so great at mingling with people I don’t know, I grabbed a few bites and left. I picked up some fish and chips and took them back to my room. Slept awfully (noisy and weird not sleeping with Bryce!).
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As I was reading the news today, I came across an interesting headline: “Church Group Raps Bush on Clean Air Act.” The group is concerned that the President’s ‘Clean Skies’ initiative will relax environmental regulations and lead to increased pollution. The group, representing 50 million Christians, is sending Bush a letter today, Earth Day, expressing their concerns about the protection of God’s creation. As I read the article I did so with great interest. I do think this is an important subject, but what really amazed me was the fact that clean air is the topic that has caused this group to speak out. This got me thinking about what the church actually stands for. Are we only a group that puts forth our opinion on issues of politics, morality, entertainment, and other issues, or are we the body of Christ, witnessing the grace of Jesus Christ to the world?

I have become increasingly aware (mostly due to my previous ignorance) lately of the various issues that cause churches and Christians to take a stand, and I am often saddened by the relative triviality of these motivators. I receive emails from friends and see churches in the news that are proclaiming their political ideologies and opinions about morality (or, probably more often, condemning those of others) while failing to even reference the truth of the Gospel. In doing so they do two things: first, they effectively give up on anything that would distinguish them from the non-Christian world. If churches and individual Christians have nothing more to offer than opinions on current affairs then they are no different from groups like the Surfrider Foundation, the NAACP, or the NRA; they exist solely to advance a political agenda. But the church is so much more than that. We are the covenant people of the Living God. We are sustained by His grace alone, and we have been charged with the task of ‘[making] disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.’ By the grace of God, we are to teach, baptize, and make disciplines; advancing a political agenda is not high on the church’s biblical commission.

The second thing this behaviour does is reveal that the church is suffering from a lack of understanding of the fundamental problem with humanity. The fundamental problem with humanity is not political, social, or even moral. The fundamental problem with humanity is spiritual. The fundamental problem with humanity is that we are sinners. If you go back to the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis chapter 3 we see that that Adam and Eve disobeyed God because they thought they knew better than God. They realized they were wrong and then tried to hide their sin from God, and this is what people have been doing ever since. And this is exactly what the church is doing when it tries to counter the problems of this world by advancing a political agenda. They are not relying on the gospel of God’s grace in Jesus Christ to transform sinners; they are instead trying to fix the problem by some other means. But in Genesis 3, God comes to Adam and Eve and He takes away the garments they made to cover their sinfulness and He covers them with garments that came as the result of the sacrifice of another. Our methods and means of covering our sin are not sufficient; we must rely on God’s own work to cleanse us.

Now please don’t misunderstand me. I am not saying that Christians should not take part in politics. Of course we should. But when we do we must ensure that the Gospel is forming our opinions about the world and not the other way around. And when the church decides it is appropriate to make a public statement on a political issue it must ensure that it is made clear to all that its position is not just another opinion founded on human ingenuity. The church must make it clear that it is compelled to make such a statement because to remain silent would malign the Name of God. To do this the church must ensure that its witness to the Gospel is strong and consistent at the local level. In other words, for the church to remain silent for a period of time on all matters (spiritual, political, moral, etc.), and then issue a political statement out of the blue is off the mark. When this happens one cannot help but wonder why the church even exists.

We must never forget that God’s ways are not our ways. It would seem right and effective to us as fallen human beings to come up with the right answers, vote the right people into office, and get the right legislation passed. We are not the first people to think this way. In fact, those who were closest to Jesus while he was on earth thought this same way. The Jews had been waiting for the Messiah to come for a thousand years, and they were expecting him to be a military and political leader. When Jesus came onto the scene they were sure he would soon enlist an army and set Jerusalem free from Roman rule. That?s why the disciples didn?t understand what he was talking about when he started telling them that he had to suffer and die. They had expected a political leader who would turn things around. Instead they had a saviour who defied understanding. Instead of gathering an army he suffered on the cross, died and was raised on the third day. In doing so he paid the price that had been foreshadowed since Genesis 3. In his death he once and for all covered the sin of all who believe in him. Since our own efforts could never hide our sinfulness, God sacrificed His own Son to cover our shame.

Fortunately, Jesus? disciples, in the providence of God, did not die confused about what Jesus had come to do. They bore witness to Him, proclaiming that man?s efforts, his attempts to cover his sin, will never satisfy God. The Messiah had not come to institute a long sought-after political reform; He came to pay the price for sin. Jesus? disciples proclaimed the Good News of God?s grace, and it is upon this tradition that the Church of Jesus Christ is founded, and to which the church today bears witness. We will not heal the world with the right political, moral, or social strategy; the only hope for the world is transformation through the blood of Christ. Let us, as members of the church, continue to proclaim the Gospel to all who will listen, as we have been commanded to do.

Yay, work is over for the week (well, paid work is over). Tomorrow I’m off to buy new shoes (check out the picture of my old ones in the “New Camera, New Photos” section under “Photos”–link at left), have an interview for another job, do washing and other household tasks, edit my paper for this weekend’s conference in Dublin, and maybe work on some editing. As there were some slow parts of today’s shift at work, I took some photos. Feel free to check them out (in the Photos section) and comment on them!

Here’s an article from Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York. He wrote this within the context of church-planting, but I think it is very applicable to our lives as Christians on the whole. Let me know what you think…

THE GOSPEL-CENTERED CHURCH - Acts 15: This is the next strategic principle for ministry in the 21st (and the 1st!) century. I do not simply mean by ‘gospel-centered’ that ministry is to be doctrinally orthodox. Of course it must certainly be that. I am speaking more specifically. (1.) The gospel is “I am accepted through Christ, therefore I obey” while every other religion operates on the principle of “I obey, therefore I am accepted.” (2.) Martin Luther’s fundamental insight was that this latter principle, the principle of ‘religion’ is the deep default mode of the human heart. The heart continues to work in that way even after conversion to Christ. Though we recognize and embrace the principle of the gospel, our hearts will always be trying to return to the mode of self-salvation, which leads to much spiritual deadness, pride and strife, and ministry ineffectiveness. (3.) We must communicate the gospel clearly?not a click toward legalism and not a click toward license. Legalism/moralism is truth without grace (which is not real truth); relativism is grace without truth (which is not real grace). To the degree a ministry fails to do justice to both, it simply loses life-changing power.

Text: 15:1-25 Here we see Paul, in the middle of a church-planting career, going to Jerusalem for a big theological debate. Now, why do that? Surely we ministers need to be about the work of evangelism, not going in for theological discussions! But Paul makes no bifurcation here. Chapter 15 is down the middle of Paul’s mission! It’s clarifying the gospel itself. (1) The cause of the debate is that the earliest Gentile converts to Christianity had already become Jewish culturally. That is, many of them were “God-fearers” who had been circumcised and/or abided by the clean laws and the Mosaic legislation. (2) Then Paul began bringing in real pagans or God-fearers who had not become culturally Jewish. And he was not demanding that, when they became Christians, that they had to adopt Jewish cultural patterns. (3) Then a group arose (15:1) saying, “unless you are circumcised according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved”. They had taken cultural norms and promoted them to be matters of virtue and spiritual merit. When they did that, they lost grasp on the gospel of grace and slid into ‘religion’. (4) The Council on the one hand in Peter, got hold of one end of the stick: v.6-11 No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we [Jews] are saved, just as they are.” (5) But, wouldn’t you know it- -James gets a hold of the other end of the stick. He agrees with Peter, but rightly asserts that Gentile Christians, though free from any requirements as to salvation, are not free to live as they like as members of a Christian community. They are obliged to live in love and to respect the scruples of culturally different Jewish brethren. So they are ordered (we tend to miss this) to live in such a way that does not offend or distress their brethren who are culturally different. (They are not to eat raw meat, they are to abide by Levitical marriage laws, and so on.) There could hardly be a better case study of the old Luther-proverb that expresses the balance of the gospel. We are “saved by faith alone, but not by faith that is alone.” We are not saved by how we behave, but once we are saved we behave in love.

So “religion” just drains the spiritual life out of a church. But you can “fall off the horse” on the other side too. You can miss the gospel not only through legalism but through relativism. When God is whoever you want to make him, and right and wrong are whatever you want to make them?you have also drained the spiritual life out of a church. If God is preached as simply a demanding, angry God or if he is preached as simply an all-loving God who never demands anything?in either case the listeners will not be transformed. They may be frightened or inspired or soothed, but they will not have their lives changed at the root, because they are not hearing the gospel. The gospel shows us that God is far more holy and absolute than the moralists’ god, because he could not be satisfied by our moral efforts, even the best! On the other hand the gospel shows us that God is far more loving and gracious than the relativists’ god. They say that God (if he exists) just loves everyone no matter what they do. The true God of the gospel had to suffer and die to save us, while the god of the relativist pays no price to love us.

The gospel produces a unique blend of humility and boldness/joy in the convert. If you preach just a demanding God, the listener will have “low self-esteem”; if you preach just an all-loving God, the listener will have higher self-esteem. But the gospel produces something beyond both of those. The gospel says: I am so lost Jesus had to die to save me. But I am so loved that Jesus was glad to die to save me. That changes the very basis of my identity–it transforms me from the root.

I can’t tell you how important this is in all mission and ministry. Unless you distinguish the gospel from both religion and irreligion?from both traditional moralism and liberal relativism?then newcomers in your services will automatically think you are simply calling them to be good and nice people. They will be bored. But when, as here in Acts 15, the gospel is communicated in its unique, counter-intuitive balance of truth and love, then listeners will be surprised. Most people today try to place the church somewhere along a spectrum from “liberal” to “conservative”?from the relativistic to the moralistic. But when they see a church filled with people who insist on the truth, but without a shred of superiority or self-righteousness?this simply explodes their categories. To them, people who have the truth are not gracious, people who are gracious and accepting say “who knows what is the truth?” Christians are enormously bold to tell the truth, but without a shred of superiority, because you are sinner saved by grace. This balance of boldness and utter humility, truth and love?is not somewhere in the middle between legalistic fundamentalism and relativistic liberalism. It is actually off the charts.

Paul knew that ‘getting the gospel straight’?not falling off into either legalism on the one hand or license on the other?is absolutely critical to the mission of the church. The secret of ministry power is getting the gospel clear. To be even slightly off to one side or another, loses tons of spiritual power. And people don’t get really converted. Legalistic churches reform people’s behavior through social coercion, but the people stay radically insecure and hyper-critical. They don’t achieve the new inner peace that the grace of God brings. The more relativistic churches give members some self-esteem and the veneer of peace but in the end that is superficial too. The result, Archibald Alexander said, is like trying to put a signet ring on the wax to seal a letter, but without any heat! Either the ring will affect the surface of the wax only or break it into pieces. You need heat to permanently change the wax into the likeness of the ring. So without the Holy Spirit working through the gospel, radically humbling and radically exalting us and changing them from the inside out, the religion either of the hard or soft variety will not avail.

Conclusion: Who is sufficient for these things? Not me! But fortunately, Jesus is the great church planter! He said, “I will plant my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it!” (Matt 16) and “Therefore, go to every ethnic group and bring them to be my followers.” (Matt 28). It’s a good thing he is really the church planter?or we’d have no hope. But since he is the church planter, we have all the hope in the world!

As we have finally received our digital camera (our bday gift to each other) we have taken a few pictures that are up on the website now. More will come soon (as we take study breaks; one of tomorrow’s study breaks is to go buy a new novel for us to read together since we finished The Promise by Chaim Potok). Click here to see the pictures. How do you all at home like Bryce’s long hair?

We saw 50 First Dates tonight. Those of you who have seen it, what did you think? We liked it and I wondered what my mom would think of it (if she’s seen it), as she had a brain injury as well. I was thinking it would be like “Groundhog Day” and drive me mad when I saw the trailer, but I really enjoyed it.

That’s it for now.

*in no particular order*
1. Annie and her friend, Beth, came to visit for a few days and I didn’t do much research.
2. We finally received both our digital camera and books from Amazon today.
3. I have an interview tomorrow morning for a part-time corporate report writing/research position.
4. There’s also a possibility that I could work at the Banner of Truth this summer.
5. I don’t have to work at Plaisir du Chocolat until Monday.
6. It wasn’t horrendously busy this last week at work.
7. We climbed Arthur’s Seat yesterday.
8. I’ve been able to sleep in but haven’t slept in so much that I lose too much of my day.
9. My husband is super caring, loving and knows when I need to cuddle, or when I need my back rubbed, or whatever else it is.
10. Annie and Beth washed up our dishes for us every night they were here since we cooked them dinner.
11. Although I am faithless so much of the time, God still loves me with an everlasting love and nothing can take me out of His hand.
12. We’re going to lunch at Helen’s Sunday. (Helen is an elderly lady in the church with tons of spunk and love for Jesus)
13. We’re going to Greece in a month!
14. We have food in the fridge and a roof over our heads.
15. We’re “supposed” to be getting a new shower installed today. Hooray for more water pressure!

I only have 2 weeks left of class, then exams, and then I’m done with my first third of seminary. Wow. We’re starting to get study guides for finals, which is good, but they also remind me of how much studying I need to do in the next month. It’s good, though, to be forced to review stuff we’ve learned this semester.

In other news…it is definitely spring in Edinburgh! It seems like just in the last week trees have started getting green, Holyrood Park is now green, and the various gardens around the city have started to bloom. It’s pretty cool. I guess living in California my whole life I never realized how refreshing that sort of thing is. It’s also nice that the weather is getting warmer. It’s currently 55 degrees! I have put my warmest jacket away for the duration and can get away with only wearing 2 layers now. Very nice:).

That’s about it for now I guess. Sorry I’ve been kinda lax about blogging lately. Hopefully something cool will happen soon that I can write about. We should be getting our digital camera in the mail any day now, so we should have some new pictures to post at some point. I hope you’re all doing well, thanks for reading our blog, we appreciate it.

“Gutting Golgotha” by Jane Lear (c) PCAnews.com

“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
This is not a question hanging in the air
but an agonizing scream as the sovereign mighty God
tips the bitter, brimming cup of His wrath
completely over His suspended Son.

The ground erupts with exploding rocks.
The Temple veil is ripped top to bottom.
Graves fly open
as a palatable darkness shrouds the earth.
Heaven expectantly watches.
Hell drops by for a visit.

“It is finished.”
This is not a three-word sentence
mumbled by a dying man
fastened to a torture stake
but a ringing declaration of eternal truth
shouted by the triumphant Son.

The earth lies quietly waiting.
The veil exposes its’ wound.
Heaven explodes with joy.
Hell slinks away defeated.
Golgotha is gutted.

And Easter morn is yet to come.