Friday, March 16, 2007

God-in-a-Box?

By Bob Gerow

We’ve all heard it. Many of us have used it. Most of us think we know what it means. “It” is the leadership buzzword of our day: “Out of the box.” It even came up our recent planning for a pastor’s conference! Oddly, and perhaps a bit irreverently, the question was posed this way. “What does it mean to let God out of the box?”

Being somewhat analytical, my first response was to ask what the “box” was. My conclusion was that the “box” is the awkward combination of what we theologically hold to be true about God, and the understanding of God that our behavior betrays. We preach a correct theology about God, but we live with a God of our own making.

The dangers that accompany such divided loyalties are subtle. We hardly notice that imploring God’s favor soon becomes a hope that things will go our way. Divine comfort easily becomes a salve to address our felt needs. We grow comfortable with the assumption that the will of God will always be suitable to our temperament and interests. We embrace God’s promises as cozy reassurances that fit the ups and downs of our days. Rather than embracing the Giver on His own terms, we have unwittingly re-crafted Him into a source of “all that we think we need.” We have limited God by making Him useful and manageable. We have designed a theologically correct, but false, image of God, and have become idolaters!

(Don’t tune me out. I’m not exempt. I’m speaking to myself as well!)

I found a quote from J. C. Ryle (1816-1900) that describes our condition: “True faith does not depend merely on the state of man's head and understanding, but on the state of his heart. His mind may be convinced. His conscience may be pricked. But so long as there is anything the man secretly loves more than God, there will be no true faith. The man himself may be puzzled and wonder why he does not believe. He does not see that he is like a child sitting on the lid of his box and wishing to open it, but not considering that his own weight keeps it shut.”* What I find is that the “box” does not enclose God; it encloses me and is of my own making!
So, how do I pry open the box that encloses me? If you’ve read Isaiah 40:18-31, the next verse provides the first answer: “Be silent before me …” (41:1).

The first thing I need to do is to let God speak on His own terms. I must quit trying to describe Him only in terms I can manage or grasp. If His ways and thoughts are higher than mine (Isa. 55:8-9), who am I to try to comprehend Him fully?

Consider also Ecclesiastes 5:2: “God is in heaven; you are on earth, so let your words be few.” Or Isaiah 30:15, “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.” What about Psalm 46:10: “Be still, and know that I am God.” I once asked my seminary professor about the Hebrew in that verse. His response was to quote his then four-year-old son, who rendered it: “Don’t Move! Don’t you know that I’m GOD?”

So, the silence is not just about who speaks, but about getting out of His way! God must be allowed to be who He is and do what He does without my input! The agenda, it appears, is all about Him! He needs no help from me. Look at the second part of that verse in Psalms: “Be still! Know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations!” (46:10).

Once again, this sentiment is not without parallel in Scripture. God had been frustratingly silent, yet Job’s bitter complains are met with: “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me!” (Job 38:2-3). God never answered Job’s questions. Job himself never sees the whole picture. But he does see God on God’s own terms, and steps out of the way to let God be God.
What does this have to do with your daily work and mine? A lot of leadership is about describing the future, and challenging people to go there. It’s not about doing all the work, but about making sure the important work gets done.

Push open the lid of your box, and step out into the presence of God as He really is. Let your own heart, and the hearts of the people whom you shepherd, get a glimpse of a future that none of us can fully fathom. You can’t create a sunset, but you can call attention to it for others to enjoy with you. You can’t possibly define, predict, manage or comprehend God, but your life and ministry can certainly point in that direction so that others can stare in wonder with you.
Life can be frustrating and messy. The God you serve can seem shrouded in silence and mystery, and His providences can appear to be marshaled against you. You may not get many of the answers you hope for. You may have a plateful that seems impossible to manage.

Stepping out of the box can be a risky business. You feel you have turf to protect, but see it slipping away. God As He Is inspires fear and wonder. He can be frightening! As C. S. Lewis noted, Aslan, after all, “is NOT safe, but He is GOOD!”
What a sunset!

Robert H. (Bob) Gerow, M.Div., is an administrator in AMG’s Development Office and oversees Pulpit Helps.

*www.studylight.org, February 14, 2007.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Keeping on Keeping on . . .

I'm sure everyone noticed that there were no posts on this site between November 30, 2006 and March 7, 2007.

I'd like to apologize for that lapse and announce our commitment to faithfully update "Point of View" in the future. I'm imposing a one post per week minimum, and hopefully and even fuller schedule.

Naturally, we'll keep our commitment to preventing at all cost any lazy or unbiblical thinking out of this space, except for purposes of analysis & commentary on our world.

Thanks for your patience, and happy reading!

Friday, March 09, 2007

More from Wilberforce . . .

This is a quote from Wilberforce's book referenced in the last post concerning the unwillingness of most Christians to study the Bible with intellectual rigor (i.e. - to love the Lord with all our minds):

"It were needless to multiply arguments in order to prove how criminal the voluntary ignorance of which we have been speaking must appear in the sight of God. It must be confessed by all who believe that we are accountable creatures, and to such only the writer is addressing himself, that we shall have to answer hereafter to the Almighty for all the means we have here enjoyed of improving ourselves, or of promoting the happiness of others. If, when summoned to give an account of our stewardship, we shall be called upon to answer for the use which we have made of our bodily organs, and of our means of relieving the wants of our fellow-creatures; how much more the the exercise of the nobler faculties of our nature, of invention, memory, and judgment, and for our employment of every instrument and opportunity of diligent application and serious reflection and honest decision! And to what subject might we in all reason be expected to apply more earnestly than to that wherein our own eternal interests are at issue? When God of his goodness hath vouchsafed to grant us such abundant means of instruction, in that which we are most concerned to know, how great must be the guilt, and how awful the punishment of voluntary ignorance!

"And why are we in this pursuit alone to expect knowledge without enquiry, and success without endeavor? The whole analogy of nature inculcates a different lesson; and our own judgments, in matters of temporal interest and worldly policy, confirm the truth of her suggestions. Bountiful as is the hand of Providence, its gifts are not so bestowed as to seduce us into indolence, but to rouse us to exertion; and no one expects to attain to the height of learning or arts or power or wealth or military glory, without vigorous resolution and strenuous diligence and steady perseverance. Yet we expect to be Christians without labour, study, or enquiry! This is the more preposterous, because Christianity, being a revelation from God, and not the invention of man, discovering to us new relations, with their correspondent duties, containing also doctrines, motives, and precepts peculiar to itself; we cannot reasonably expect to become proficients in it by the accidental intercourses of life, as might might learn insensibly the maxims of worldly policy or a scheme of mere morals."

(A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes of This Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity, pp. 99-100)


Ouch.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Amazing Grace


I saw the film Amazing Grace over the weekend. This powerful tale of courage in the struggle to do the Lord's will against the tide of human opposition should be a must see for all Christians. William Wilberforce's example of being fully devoted to God & fully active for Him in this world strikes a contrast with the private faith of the masses and their public accession to all things worldly. We could (and should) learn a lot from God's use of this man to accomplish His purposes.

Yesterday, I found a book by Wilberforce in AMG's library. This particular copy was printed in Scotland in 1846 - the 10th edition of the book (the original was published in 1797), carrying an introduction by "Daniel Wilson, D.D., Bishop of Calcutta". The work's title: A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in this Country Contrasted with Real Christianity. Wilberforce's stinging indictment of nominal Christianity still rings as true as ever. It's been often reprinted in the past two centuries, most recently under the title A Practical View of Christianity. I encourage you to read it when you get a chance.

All that said, the following is an article in a recent issue of WORLD magazine on the topic that says better than I could the rest of what I'd like to share. Most of the quotes from Wilberforce in the article are taken from the aforementioned book. Enjoy.


Humble courage
William Wilberforce reasoned with opponents but did not rant at them by Marvin Olasky


You'll probably hear something about William Wilberforce this month, because an important 200th anniversary is coming. On Feb. 23, 1807, the double-decade determination of Member of Parliament Wilberforce finally brought results when the House of Commons voted to abolish the British slave trade. Year after year, voted down, he had not responded bitterly, and this time the other MPs stood and gave three hurrahs as Wilberforce bowed his head and wept at the culmination of his long battle.

Others are cheering in 2007. Washington, D.C., has a Wilberforce Forum, under Chuck Colson's auspices, and that organization plus the Trinity Forum sponsored Wilberforce Weekends last month. A major film biography of Wilberforce, Amazing Grace, is scheduled to hit theaters across the United States on the bicentennial, Feb. 23. A documentary, The Better Hour: William Wilberforce, A Man of Character Who Changed The World, is scheduled for television broadcast this fall in the United States and the United Kingdom. Members of the state legislature in Alaska have a Clapham Fellowship, named after the British group Wilberforce headed.

Furthermore, John Templeton is funding a national essay contest on Wilberforce for U.S. schoolkids: It's scheduled to begin in September 2007 with awards coming in spring of 2008. I hope students will learn about Wilberforce's theology, including his complaint about those who "either overlook or deny the corruption and weakness of human nature. They acknowledge there is, and always had been, a great deal of vice and wickedness [, but they] talk of frailty and infirmity, of petty transgressions, of occasional failings, and of accidental incidents. [They] speak of man as a being who is naturally pure. He is inclined to virtue."

Wilberforce contrasted that view with "the humiliating language of true Christianity. From it we learn that man is an apostate creature. He has fallen from his high, original state. . . . He is indisposed toward the good, and disposed towards evil. . . . He is tainted with sin, not slightly and superficially, but radically, and to the very core of his being. Even though it may be humiliating to acknowledge these things, still this is the biblical account of man."

His realistic view of man allowed him to deal with many kinds of disappointment—including the agonizing one that many of his initially reform-minded parliamentary colleagues gave in to political lures. As a young man Wilberforce was one of 40 MPs called the Independents who covenanted "not to accept a plum appointment to political office, a government pension, or the offer of hereditary peerage." And yet as years went by, only Wilberforce and one other stuck to that resolution. (Sounds like the Republican Revolutionaries of 1994.)

His realism also helped when he faced sharp attacks. James Boswell, famed now for his biography of Samuel Johnson, wrote of Wilberforce, "I hate your little whittling sneer./ Your pert and self-sufficient leer . . . begone, for shame,/ Thou dwarf with big resounding name." (Wilberforce stood only five feet tall.) Other famous writers, including Lord Byron, also wrote hit pieces. But Wilberforce did not respond in kind. Instead of speaking of his own accomplishments, he often said that one line of prayer summarized his only hope: "God be merciful to me a sinner."

Wilberforce emphasized teaching about Christianity but not imposing it, and wrote that Christians should "boldly assert the cause of Christ in an age when so many who bear the name of Christian are ashamed of Him. Let them be active, useful, and generous toward others. Let them show moderation and self-denial themselves. Let them be ashamed of idleness. When blessed with wealth, let them withdraw from the competition of vanity and be modest, retiring from ostentation, and not be the slaves of fashion."

He proceeded boldly but not arrogantly, knowing that he could commend belief but not command it. He stated, "The national difficulties we face result from the decline of religion and morality among us. I must confess equally boldly that my own solid hopes for the well-being of my country depend, not so much on her navies and armies . . . as on the persuasion that she still contains many who love and obey the Gospel of Christ. I believe that their prayers may yet prevail."

Amen.