Koinonia in Communion

In 2019, I read Remembrance, Communion, and Hope: Rediscovering the Gospel at the Lord’s Table by J. Todd Billings. I chose to read this book because I have been bothered for a few years by the low frequency with which our church (and, more broadly, the evangelical church) chooses to practice communion. I have never heard an argument against practicing it more. I can only assume that we limit the frequency because of the time it takes during the worship service and perhaps the extra volunteer burden for preparation and clean-up. Billings opens with a wager:

...that a renewed theology and practice of the Lord’s Supper can be an instrument for congregations to develop a deeper, more multifaceted sense of the gospel itself. The fundamental reason for this is not anthropological but theological: the Supper is God’s own instrument for conforming believers to the image of Christ. The Supper is a God-given icon—displaying the Word in signs and actions in the assembled community—an icon that draws us into a divine drama by the power of the Spirit. In this icon, we do not simply reflect from a distance but we enter in, living into our new identities as adopted children of the Father and tasting fellowship with Christ and others in the covenant community.

Billings points out that our "functional theologies" may be different than our "stated theologies." He argues that both "traditional" and "contemporary" evangelical churches have a limited "functional theology" of the Lord's Supper that focuses solely on "remembrance of the cross," failing "to inhabit God's Word more fully." This inward focus of "individual devotion" results in a lack of hunger for "the multifaceted character of the gospel," which is about more than the forgiveness of sins. To address this problem, we need to develop a deeper hunger for God's Word. We need to view Christ the Word as more than a get out of hell free card. We need to abide in Christ for our spiritual food and nourishment (John 6:56).

Billings echoes K. A. Smith, suggesting that we need a counterliturgy of Christian worship to counteract the "secular" liturgies that turn our affections and behaviors away from Christ and His kingdom. We need to form our lives through "the church's distinctive repertoire of disciplines, from singing psalms to daily prayer to communing with Christ at the Supper." Both intellectual memorialism and human-centered revivalism fail to capture "the affective perception of the gospel" in which believers fellowship with God "through the means of Word and sacrament with his people." We ought not "reduce the benefits of the gospel to either forgiveness or transformation." Rather, we ought "to recover a multifaceted sense of the gospel by returning to the scriptural narrative of Israel, as fulfilled in Christ."

In the Reformed tradition, God uses the Supper as a means and instrument of grace, where believers receive the grace through the Spirit by faith. The sacrament or ordinance does not signify the faith of believers; rather, it signifies Jesus Christ. When we partake, we eat Christ's body and drink his blood by the Spirit through faith. Thus, we should focus not on objects but on the sign-action of enacting a communal meal, a foretaste of heaven. Our participation (koinonia) in the blood of Christ (1 Cor. 10:16) is always horizontal (with other believers) and vertical (with Christ).

To transform our identity "in the triune drama of salvation, then we need a robust and multifaceted remembrance of God's promises...inseparably connected with a present communion with our Lord Jesus Christ mediated by the Spirit...[and] a hope for the return of the same Christ, and the final consummation of creation giving way to the promised kingdom." In fact, the communion at the Supper is "a dual encounter with Christ and with others around the table." During this sacrament or ordinance, we should remember that we are rehearsing the future Supper in heaven, where there as now we will and do touch and taste, enjoying "the embodied fellowship of brothers and sisters in Christ."

The Sufferings of a Reformed Galley Slave

Today, I finished reading The Huguenot Galley-Slave: Being the Autobiography of a French Protestant Condemned to the Galleys for the Sake of His Religion by Jean Marteilhe. I started this book two days ago while vacationing in Arizona. Prompted by my church's sermon series in 1 Peter, I started studying 1 Peter on my own last month. In his commentary The Message of 1 Peter, Edmund Clowney mentions a museum display in the mountains of southern France that refers to "the words of a Reformed Christian galley slave: 'My chains are the chains of Christ's love.'" Motivated to learn more about these Huguenot martyrs, I discovered the aforementioned autobiography, which provided a fascinating and humbling glimpse into the suffering of fellow believers. I set out to better understand the nature of suffering for the faith through the eyes of this galley slave, and I achieved my goal. This galley slave wrote, "…the more we suffer afflictions, the more we remember God." 

Throughout his account, Marteilhe shows a steadfast faith that exceeds any faith that I could imagine in the face of such dire circumstances. As a prisoner of the state for 13 years, half of those serving on a French galley, he never waivered from his conviction as that all his steps were in accordance with God's will, even when he missed an opportunity as a 16-year-old to avoid arrest: "But it was God's will that we should remain in this ignorance, so that our constancy and our faith should be put to trial during thirteen years of the most frightful misery in dungeons and in the galleys, as will be seen in the course of these memoirs."

His account should motivate Christian parents not to neglect our responsibility to instruct our children in the Lord: "We replied, that we placed our whole confidence in God, and that we resigned ourselves to His holy will; that we did not expect any human help and that by God's grace, which we should never cease to implore, we would never deny the Divine and true principles of our holy religion; that he must not believe it was through obstinacy or infatuation that we continued steadfast; that it was, thank God, through a firm conviction of the goodness of our cause, and that our parents had taken all possible care to instruct us in the truth of our religion and the errors of the Roman faith, that we might boldly profess the one, and avoid falling into the dangers of the other." Later in the book, he affirms the role of his parents once more: "…thanks to God and to my parents, I have been brought up and very well instructed in the principles of the reformed religion…"

The behavior of Marteilhe and his fellow Reformed prisoners reminded me of Paul and Silas in prison. While in prison, these Frenchmen "had prayers morning and evening," read sermons, and sang psalms, "so that [their] prison was something like a little church." In fact, their witness reversed the so-called conversions of many recent converts in Hayre-de-Grice to Roman Catholicism, who, after visiting these prisoners, recognized their own hypocrisy and, convicted by the actions and attitudes of the prisoners, came to a true faith in Christ.

If these men could face and endure bastinados (lashings to the brink of death), starvation, long marches carrying their 150-lb chains, endless days chained to a bench in a galley, and endless abuse and deceitful neglect by their captors, and yet affirm God's power, grace, and mercy on their behalf, what prevents me from giving all of myself for the sake of Christ, no matter what nature of persecution may follow? As Marteilhe so aptly states, "for when I consider that Jesus Christ, his apostles, and so many faithful Christians have been persecuted, according to the prophecy of their divine Saviour, I cannot but believe myself to be in the right road to salvation, since I am persecuted as they were."

Biblical Worship

The book Engaging with God: A Biblical Theology of Worship by David Peterson surveys the entire Bible, identifying themes that are relevant to our worship of God. From my reading of this excellent but challenging text, which includes fascinating analyses of key Hebrew and Greek words used by the biblical authors in the context of worship, I identified five key points, summarized below. 

1. Worship must be on God's terms, not our terms. Peterson's hypothesis is that "the worship of the living and true God is essentially an engagement with him on the terms that he proposes and in the way that he alone makes possible."
2. Worship is a whole-life activity (Romans 12:1-2), not a Sunday morning diversion. Peterson states, "Worship is a subject that should dominate our lives seven days a week. Vitality and meaning will not be restored to Christian gatherings until those who lead and those who participate can recover a biblical perspective on their meetings, seeing them in relation to God’s total plan and purpose for his people."
3. Jesus is the temple and we are his body, so we should honor and care for his body as the Israelites did for the physical temple in the Old Testament. The New Testament proclaims that Jesus Christ in union with his church is the new temple, where God dwells in or through the Spirit. (See, for example, 1 Corinthians 3:11–17 and Ephesians 2:18–22).
4. The Bible has something to say about our liturgy when we meet corporately. From the New Testament, we see that the first century church was preoccupied with apostolic teaching. Paul further emphasized in 1 Corinthians 14 that any words spoken during their gatherings should build up one another. Given the context of the home churches, they commonly shared meals together as part of their corporate fellowship. In addition, prayer was a core activity of their meetings.
5. Worship is more about reverence and respect than awe and fear (Ecclesiastes 12:13). Peterson states, "In the Old Testament, reverence or respect for God is essentially a matter of walking in his ways and keeping his commandments."

How do we as a church body respond to the commands and patterns for personal and corporate worship in God's Word? In 2019, Midland Free's worship arts ministry will be focusing on 24/7 worship, striving to make worship the subject that dominates our personal lives seven days a week. Although our ministry is music-centric, we will be encouraging one another to grow in our knowledge of God, to pray without ceasing, to serve the body of Christ, to give generously, to fulfill God's calling to worship Him in our vocations, and to lead or assist our families in times of worship, in all of these things rejoicing continually and giving thanks to God in all circumstances. The biblical church is one where its members build up one another in love. Together, we, the church, are building up  the temple of Christ's body, one spiritual brick at a time, eagerly "waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ" (Titus 2:13, ESV).

God Is Light

Ever since high school physics, I have been intrigued, even awed, by the properties of light. Light provides at least two metaphors for the nature of God. In the first metaphor, the wave-particle duality of light teaches the concept of complementarity. Depending on the type of experiment used to observe the behavior of light, the human observer can show that the properties of light can be explained as waves or particles. These two different qualities are in apparent conflict, yet they are both true. In the same way, the principles of free will and determinism are both true when applied to our understanding of human behavior under the providence of a sovereign, omnipotent God. Likewise, the hypostatic union, the term describing the complementary attributes of Christ as fully human and fully divine, can be similarly understood.

In the second metaphor, the unique property of the speed of light as a universal constant in all reference frames as expressed in the theory of special relativity provides another illustration of God's nature. Einstein proposed, and many scientists have since confirmed, that the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant, regardless of the relative speed of the observer. Likewise, God's standards and character are constant and unchanging—He is immutable. Furthermore, from the theory of special relativity, we know that an object of finite rest mass will increase in mass, decrease in length, and experience a dilation (slowing) in the elapse of time as seen by an external observer who is at rest. In fact, according to this theory, an object with mass cannot achieve the speed of light, because, if it did, its mass would become infinite, its length would become zero (invisible), and time would stand still, making it eternal. By analogy, John's statement that "God is light" has new meaning in light of the theory of special relativity, providing insight into God's infinite, invisible, and eternal nature.

The apostle John makes the simple statement that "God is light" in 1 John 1:5. It thrills me to think that the Holy Spirit inspired John to pen those words knowing that it would take almost two millennia before mankind would fully appreciate their significance.

Aftershadowers

I have been thinking and reading a lot about the church in the past few years, and I have been praying that our local church would be a shining example for our community and world. I have also been thinking about relationships lately, including and especially the marriage relationship. Today, I was reminded of a prophecy that helps me see another link between these categories.

In the Old Testament, Psalm 34:20 says, "He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken." According to the subtitle in the ESV, this psalm is "of David, when he changed his behavior before Abimelech, so that he drove him out, and he went away." In writing this psalm, David is probably rejoicing that God protected even David's bones in this confrontation with his enemy, but he is also extrapolating from his circumstances to the circumstances of the righteous, making many proverbial statements leading up to this declaration of protection as he reminds the reader that "the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit," delivering the righteous out of all their afflictions.

If I read this Psalm on its own merits, I am encouraged to "taste and see that the Lord is good" (Psalm 34:8), but I miss another level of meaning revealed by Jesus in John 19:36, where he quotes Psalm 34:20. John is describing the crucifixion of Jesus, when, at the request of the Jews, the Roman soldiers broke the legs of each of the thieves who were crucified with Jesus so that they would die in time to be removed before the Sabbath. When the soldiers approached Jesus, he was already dead, so they did not break his legs. John claims that Psalm 34:20 prophesies this event, but, without John's insight, I would certainly have missed that connection. In fact, in retrospect, my initial instinct is that John was grasping for meaning beyond the original intent of David in writing that psalm. After all, David does not explicitly identify his statement as a prophecy, and the context feels more like an exhortation to God's people to enjoy the benefits of their salvation from God as they live righteous lives.

In making this assessment, I am too near-sighted and too self-focused. I am reading the text to look for a personal application. I have forgotten that Jesus came "that the scripture would be fulfilled." All of the Old Testament is preparation for Jesus, looking ahead to Jesus, the Messiah who would save his people. In particular, Jesus was declared to be the son of David (Matt. 22:41-46) while also being David's Lord. Thus, David was a particularly important "type" of Jesus, his life and words foreshadowing Jesus. David's entire life was intended by God to foreshadow the coming Messiah, including the seemingly small detail that David's bones were not broken in his escape from Abimelech.

Now, I want to connect these concepts to the concept of marriage. In Ephesians 5:23, Paul writes that "the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior." Paul has provided us with an analogy, stating that the husband is the Christ-figure in the marriage relationship. Thus, just as David was used as a type, an example, a foreshadower, of Christ, so husbands are called to be examples or "aftershadowers" of Christ. David's example was not one of sinless perfection, but God used his life and circumstances to prepare his people for the coming Messiah and to explain the Messiah to those of us who live in the present age. In the same way, then, husbands are called to be "aftershadowers" of Christ, reverse prophecies that point back in time to Christ while also pointing to Christ in eternity, loving our wives as Christ loved the church so that the world will see our living examples and thereby "taste and see that the Lord is good."

The God Who Spins

This morning, our congregation opened the singing portion of our worship with these words as a modern chorus added to a classic hymn, Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee:

We sing in jubilation adoration to a joyful King
You are spinning and You are singing
Zealous love over all Your children

Spinning? Huh? What's with that? I couldn't ask our congregation to sing a song about our Lord "spinning" without a clear biblical explanation. So, in preparing for this morning, I did some homework. Thankfully, the writers of that chorus (Charlie Hall and Trent Austin) appear to have been studying their Hebrew. In Isaiah 65:17-19 (ESV), the prophet attributes these words our Lord, Yahweh:

"For behold, I create new heavens
      and a new earth,
and the former things shall not be remembered
      or come into mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
      in that which I create;
for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy,
      and her people to be a gladness.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem
      and be glad in my people;
no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping
      and the cry of distress."

I don't know Hebrew, but my digital interlinear Bible and lexicon tell me that the noun and verb forms of the same Hebrew root word (gyl, גִּיל) are translated joy and rejoice in this passage. Now, here's where this gets interesting. According to Strong, this root means "to spin round (under the influence of any violent emotion)."^[1] Thus, in this verse, the only reference I can find in the Old Testament where the subject for this particular Hebrew verb is God, Isaiah uses the word for rejoice that has a sense of motion, of spinning. 

Now, I know that "God is spirit" (John 4:24), so this sense of motion is likely not within the bounds of the time-space continuum. However, I think God gave these words to Isaiah so that we would understand that this rejoicing is that uninhibited, no-holds-barred, dancing, singing, shouting, whooping, and hollering type of rejoicing that we barely sample just a few times in our earthly existence. Importantly, we are commanded earlier in this same passage, using that same verb, to rejoice forever in God's creation, his people, the church.

I am reminded of my daughter as a young girl. She had an affinity for a particular type of dress, the dress with a full skirt that opened up as she spun around. We called these dresses "spinny dresses." At times, when she could not contain her joy, she would just spin and spin and spin some more in her spinny dress. This childlike expression of unrestrained joy is the heart attitude that I seek as I worship God. I look forward to that future state in the new heavens and the new earth in which I will see my Lord rejoice and be glad in his people, and I will rejoice and be glad with his people. Hallelujah, praise God!

---

^[1] Strong, J. (2009). A Concise Dictionary of the Words in the Greek Testament and The Hebrew Bible (Vol. 2, p. 27). Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.

Real Men Reject Passivity

This Sunday is week two of six in The Art of Marriage, a class Sarah and I are facilitating at church.  The Scriptural focus for this week is Genesis 3, the most important chapter in the whole Bible for understanding the Christian worldview.  This chapter explains why things are as they are, providing the reason for death and suffering but also providing the first glimpse of the gospel.  That glimpse is encapsulated in verse 15,

And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.” (NIV)

In speaking to the serpent, the Lord God (Yahweh Elohim) makes the first messianic prophecy recorded in all of history, the Protoevangelium.  From the beginning of sin, God planned to deliver His people by crushing the head of Satan.

How did humanity find itself in need of a Savior?  Earlier verses in this chapter clearly show the path to sin.  While there are many lessons we can glean from this passage, in the context of the husband-wife relationship, one important lesson strikes me as a husband: Adam is credited with the sin.  Sure, Eve is also at fault, but God curses the ground because of Adam.  All of creation groans (Romans 8:22) because Adam "listened to [his] wife and ate from the tree."  The Hebrew word for listened is shama, suggests that Adam yielded to or obeyed his wife.  He agreed to follow her rather than obey God.

I think Adam's sin is largely the sin of passivity.  Rather than actively asserting God's command and correcting his wife, he passively went along with her suggestion to eat the fruit.  Then, when confronted by God, Adam blames Eve.  He even blames God for giving Adam this woman.  Rather than leading his wife away from sin, Adam passively followed her into sin, choosing a way of life marred with curses and a broken relationship with his creator.

When my son was young, I learned about Robert Lewis's four principles of biblical manhood.  Lewis teaches that "real men" (1) reject passivity, (2) accept responsibility, (3) lead courageously, and (4) expect the greater reward.  Genesis 3 reveals the consequences of failing to be a "real man."  In one brief series of events, Adam disobeyed God by (1) passively accepting Eve's plan to disobey God, (2) failing to accept responsibility for his passivity, (3) following into sin rather than leading away from sin, and (4) accepting a lesser reward rather than expecting the greater reward.  Men would be wise to learn from Adam's mistake by resisting our natural tendency toward passivity.  We must actively and relentlessly pursue our true calling in Christ.

Horace Mann's Legacy

I am struggling with a personal dilemma.  I feel an extremely strong conviction that I know something that can help millions of parents and their children, as well as our nation and world.  This conviction is rooted in a personal experience.  Statisticians may not be persuaded because my personal sample size is small, but others who share my values have had similar personal experiences.  My dilemma is simple.  I want to boldly encourage all of my friends and acquaintances to seriously consider my advice, but I know my view can be offensive to many.  Because my opinion on this matter relates to parenting, the subject touches very sensitive emotional tissue.  I do not want to alienate and polarize; I just want to challenge, exhort, and motivate.  I want to encourage parents to make a thoughtful, carefully reasoned decision rather than continue to follow the same path chosen by their parents because of tradition, inertia, and convenience:  "I turned out just fine.  Why should I expect things to be any different for my kids?"

Earlier this week, I watched a documentary that had been collecting dust on our shelf for a few months.  As the film began, I grew increasingly nervous that it was another low-grade, low-budget attempt by a Michael Moore wannabe who shared my values and perspective on a particular issue.  Early segments of the film included interviews of individuals who lacked credibility and name recognition.  And it didn't help that the narrator had a Scottish accent.  But then, the film took a turn in a better direction as the narrative began to build a strong case through personal vignettes, interviews of respected Christian leaders, and a brief timeline of the history of education in America.

I found the brief history of education to be the most compelling.  In short, the film shows how public education has gradually but successfully replaced the influence of parents and churches with that of the government.  Furthermore, that government has grown increasingly hostile to Judeo-Christian morals and philosophy.  What should our response be?  I would humbly submit that those who believe that truth is absolute and that Judeo-Christian values are the only stable foundation for achieving life, liberty, and true happiness must avoid subjecting their children to government-controlled education, which promotes the anti-Christian views of humanism, moral relativism, naturalism, and atheism.  Horace Mann, often called the father of American public education, argued in 1849 that "our [public school] system earnestly inculcates all Christian morals; it founds its morals on the basis of religion; it welcomes the religion of the Bible..."  This Unitarian may have meant well in his effort to provide schools for "the children of the entire community," but we have drifted far away from that situation.

In closing, consider these words from two humanists whose words reveal the progressive agenda for shaping public, government-led education in America:

"... education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction....  I believe that in this way the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of God." (John Dewey, "My Pedagogic Creed," 1897)

"Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school's meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?" (Charles F. Potter, "Humanism: A New Religion," 1930)

In my opinion, responsible Christians must prayerfully consider pursuing alternatives to government-sponsored public education for the sake of their children's souls and minds.  I think a mass exodus from government schools is the best option.

Grammar, Informal Logic, and Theodicy

This week, media outlets around the nation swarmed like sharks to blood when the GOP's Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said, "I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."  This comment set off a political firestorm, with both major political parties distancing themselves from Mourdock's statement.  The Democratic National Committee Chairwoman released a statement that "Mourdock's rape comments are outrageous and demeaning to women."  A more careful examination of the statement and the response prompts an important grammar lesson and a deeper theological reflection.

First, ambiguous pronouns are very dangerous.  Mourdock's "it" leaves an opening for his political enemies.  The context of his statement is clear:  when he uses the pronoun "it," he is referring to life.  He means that God has ordained the existence of a new life, a new human being.  He is not referring to the act of rape.  The response of the Democratic Party is predictable, as the Chairwoman employs the fallacy of ambiguity or equivocation by taking the clear context and shifting the reference of the ambiguous pronoun to the "situation of rape."  Certainly the Democratic Party does not think that a new life is outrageous and demeaning to women, especially when half of all new lives are women!

Second, this exchange prompts a much deeper question:  what is God's role in rape?  Theologians have struggled with the more general form of this question for centuries:  What is God's role in sin?  If God is sovereign, does He cause a person to sin?  Or, does He passively allow a person to sin by taking a hands-off role in the affairs of humans?  Or, is He not completely sovereign over the events in a fallen world?  These questions do not just apply to the sinful acts of human beings but also to the events of a Genesis 3 world.  In Genesis 3, God's Word says that God cursed the ground, decreeing that the earth would now produce thorns and thistles and that man would physically die.  In making this decree, did God commit an evil act?

As stated in numerous statements of faith and church constitutions,

“God from eternity, decrees or permits all things that come to pass, and perpetually upholds, directs, and governs all creatures and all events; yet so as not in any way to be the author or approver of sin nor to destroy the free will and responsibility of intelligent creatures.”

The difficult theological issue regarding God's role with respect to evil is labeled "theodicy."  Jesus' words in the New Testament teach us about two kinds of evil:  moral evil associated with the willful deeds of sinful people (Luke 13) and natural evil that is not a direct result of a particular sin (John 9).  With respect to both kinds of evil, the orthodox Christian response to a question of the causality of evil must acknowledge the omnipotence and omniscience of God, His sovereignty over all things.  In addition, the believer must acknowledge that God is pure righteousness and goodness.  In the case of evil, these two aspects of God's character lead to a tension that we finite humans cannot fully understand. 

Nevertheless, in the case of pregnancy resulting from rape, we should see clearly that two wrongs do not make a right.  The evil of rape is not corrected by the evil of murder.  The pregnant woman does not face a moral dilemma just because she was raped.  Without question, she has suffered as the victim of a heinous crime, and her life will certainly be irreversibly changed.  She is a valuable human being, created in the image of God, who needs the love and compassion of her family, friends, and society... just like the child in her womb.

Meaning and Purpose – True Success and Significance

I have been recently studying, reflecting, and praying along two parallel streams of thought. First, I have approached the conclusion of a four-year study of the worldviews of the Western world. I have studied the writings of many of the great thinkers in the history of man. I have traced the course of western thinking from the Greeks and the Romans to the Renaissance of southern Europe to the Reformation of northern Europe to the founding of a nation on principles rooted in the absolute truths of Christianity to the rejection of those truths in favor of the arbitrary whims of naturalistic humanism. At the same time, in a second stream of thought, I have been reflecting on my calling, my purpose: how do I strive for significance in God’s eyes rather than success in man’s eyes? I believe that I am more than a collection of molecules driven by a complex, biochemical computer that is deterministically governed by fixed laws of nature; the entity I call myself is not limited to the material world that we can see, touch, and measure. I believe in the supernatural, including a good and active Creator who has created me in His image. Believing that God has a purpose for my life gives me a sense of meaning. Without that belief, I would descend into nihilism, a hopeless existence trapped by the conflict of a self-aware entity that exists by chance as the most advanced machine yet to exist in this part of the vast universe. To escape that nihilism, I would probably choose the drugs of the 21st century: fame and fortune. I would try to drown my feelings of meaningless in hyperactivity, running from one activity to the next, keeping so busy that I do not have time to ask why I am so busy. I would strive to earn more so I can buy more so I can distract myself more. In addition, I would avoid thinking about the future, because the future for that life ends with a mass of chemicals no longer driven by a complex, biochemical computer.

In light of these streams of thought, as my oldest child approaches the end of his high school career, I am reminded of the attitude I inherited from the culture of the 1980s: Why go to college? To earn a degree that will enable me to earn more money. Why earn more money? To enable my children to go to college. This circular reasoning, a significant factor in the guidance I received as a young person, is inherently flawed. While education itself is not a bad thing – it is a good thing – my personal meaning and purpose for existence can and should be so much more than striving for personal peace and affluence. The search for personal peace and affluence leads to pessimism for the thinking person or continuous entertainment and amusement for the person who chooses distraction over nihilism. What do I hope my children will answer if asked for their reason for attending college? Likewise, what drives me to continue to learn and grow and strive for something bigger than myself? “To fulfill my calling from God, a vocation in which I work because I love Him and I love others, a role wherein I feel God’s pleasure as I serve him and others using the particular gifts He has given to me.”

What is Love?

What is love? In recent years, wise men have said, “Love’s not a feeling.” However, can the love of a man for a woman or a woman for a man be love if it has no feeling? I think not. Emotions are a gift from God. Even before the Fall, Adam expressed strong emotions about Eve. When Adam first saw Eve, he said,

“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
for she was taken out of man.”

The NIV sets this text apart from the surrounding prose as if this is not just a sentence; these lines are presented as a poem. The ESV translates the first line of this poem, “This at last…” It seems that Adam was announcing, with an exclamation point and even a sense of both relief and excitement that, finally, God had provided a truly suitable partner. Because of God’s provision of Eve, Adam may have uttered the first love poem from a man to a woman. Clearly, God wired us to have passionate feelings about our spouses.

While passion is important, I believe that life includes various phases where God works in our hearts and lives in different ways, focusing on some aspects of our soul rather than others. Perhaps a season of passion in a husband-wife relationship may be followed by a season of intellectual growth, for example. Regardless, our love must follow Christ’s pattern, in which his love ultimately fulfilled the law (Rom. 13:10). Christ’s love led to giving his life out of love for his people. Likewise, the husband must in essence lay down his life for his wife, and vice-versa. How? Before he gave his life, Christ taught that the law can be boiled down to two commands: love God and love others. Clearly, such love is expressed in a multitude of ways, by various means, in a relationship. Effective love for others is positive, encouraging, and helpful: “…love builds up." (I Cor. 8:1)

The Apostle Paul also teaches, “Let love be genuine…” (Rom. 12:9) Our world is filled with illegitimate love. The media promotes love of an image rather than true love for a person. Adolescent infatuation and unashamed lust have been substituted for the selfless love of the Bible. These are not true love and are devices used by the kingdom of darkness to prevent and destroy God-centered marriages.

Better than Eden?

In describing the future state of heaven, the prophet Isaiah teaches in Isaiah 25:8 that "he [God] will swallow up death forever." This prophecy suggests a situation superior to that of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In their original state, the possibility of sin existed. God provided a forbidden tree. However, the book of Revelation only mentions a tree of life (Rev. 2:7; 22:2, 14, 19). Since death will be swallowed up forever, there will no longer be a path to destruction.

Why did God choose to offer an option to sin in the original Creation, and why does He not do the same in heaven? I think the difference is grounded in love. God loves man, and He wants man to love him. The Bible teaches that we love God by our obedience: "If you love me, you will obey what I command." (John 14:15) In the original creation, God needed to give man a choice that that man could love God. Without a choice, man could not love God because obedience would not be possible. Sadly, man chose himself over God. However, this was part of God's bigger plan to love man in spite of man's rejection of God. Although man rejected God, God responded by giving up His Son. This is the ultimate act of love: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." (John 15:13)

In the new heavens and earth, the only people that will live with Christ for eternity will be those who have made the choice, by God's grace, to obey Him. Having already chosen to love God, they do not need to be offered yet another choice. Rather, their love will be complete. Death will be swallowed up forever. There will be no more tears.

The Sacrifice of Service

The following is an article from our family's annual Christmas newsletter. If you would like to read more articles like this and are not a current subscriber, post a comment or send an email with your request, and we'll send you one!

The Hickman family has been making a real effort to give time in service to others. Sometimes, they end up giving more than they planned. This past summer, Sarah, Dan, Luke, and Leah all worked in their church’s 3-year-old Sunday school class. One Sunday, three of them failed in body fluid management. During story time, one of the children sat on Dan’s lap for assistance and guidance in paying attention and sitting still. This student still wore Pull-Ups as a precaution, although Dan quickly realized that this safety net was being used as more than a precaution. This child had pushed his superabsorbent polymer to beyond its saturation point. The result? A soggy patch on Dan’s pants, just above his right knee. Later, Sarah was comforting a weeping little girl, holding her as she cried on her shoulder. Later, in the church service, Dan noticed that the tears on Sarah’s solid navy blouse had dried, depositing a dried film of snot. That same morning, Luke was proud to show off his medal of honor: smears of blood on his khaki shorts. Undaunted by their mutual contamination, Sarah continued in her role into the fall. She was the storytelling teacher, occasionally misunderstood by the wide-eyed toddlers. For example, a teacher in the second hour recently informed Sarah that, following Sarah’s lesson on John the Baptist, complete with visual aids that included desert flora, the children continued during the playtime to recount the adventures of the prophet in the wilderness known as “John the Cactus.” Note to be outdone, but absent from the body fluid super-Sunday because she was on a summer youth trip, Leah took her turn later that week. As a helper at the American Red Cross Safety Town for pre-kindergartners, Leah missed the announcement of the recent unplanned release and subsequent clean-up. Apparently, a child had sprung a wee-wee leak, which was cleaned and followed with a puddle of sanitizing fluid. Later, Leah entered the area and sat squarely in the puddle of sanitizer.

Vitamin D for Back Pain

For about 9 months in 2009, from April to the end of the year, I suffered from a continuous, nagging lower back pain. It was as if I awoke one day with a new condition, a chronic problem that would continue for the rest of my life. I could no longer sit for more than a few minutes on our soft, cushy couches in our family room. The task chairs at our computer desk were suddenly awful.

I immediately ramped up my physical exercise routine, adding an entire stretching regimen. Surprisingly, that made little difference. Suddenly, I was unable to do certain activities without significant consequences. Raking or shoveling would set me back several days with a very stiff lower back. Running, even jogging, a short distance led to significant pain and limitation of mobility and flexibility. I was exasperated. Months of effort to resolve my problem had passed, with no solution. Was I destined to suffer this way for the rest of my life?

When December arrived, I noticed that we still had a supply of multivitamins that was not being used. With the winter before me, I decided to strengthen my immune system by taking a multivitamin daily. Within a few days to a couple weeks, my back pain magically disappeared. Then, I stumbled upon an article that claimed that declared vitamin D to be the "new supervitamin."

Apparently, more than one study has shown a correlation between low vitamin D levels and back pain. A simple Internet search makes this case. My experience agrees.

Our "Faith" Story

This post will be a lot longer than usual. Today, Sarah and I gave a five-minute "testimony" in church about the priorities in our home over the past 17 years. The text of that speech is below in its entirety.

Recently, during a dinner table conversation, we were reflecting on our transition from the innocence of youth to a more complete awareness of the responsibilities of adulthood. For us, this happened around the age of thirty, coincidentally with the arrival of our second child. In many ways, this eye-opening transition was a realization of our personal call to make our entire lives an act of worship of our Creator. Today, we would like to share our passion for a lifestyle of worship in our home.

We have attended this church since 1994. We have two high schoolers, Luke and Leah. Our story is one of God’s faithfulness and our human, imperfect efforts to be obedient to His Word.

You may recognize me as the guy who sometimes plays the piano or keyboard on Sunday mornings. You may be thinking, “We can’t ‘do’ worship in the home – I don’t have the musical skills.” Before you tune out (pun intended), we want to be clear: worship is not just singing songs of praise. While we certainly can and should worship God using His wonderful gift of music, this is only one element among many facets of a lifestyle of worship.

Jesus commands us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30) He labeled this as the most important commandment. How do we do this? In our experience, parenthood confronted us with the practical challenge of creating an environment where worship of God is more than an ideal, where we truly love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

A key component of our worship at home during the preschool years was turning off the TV and memorizing scripture instead. You might be thinking, “Wait a minute! I thought you were talking about passionate worship in the home, not teaching and training children. Instead, you speak of turning off the TV and memorizing scripture.” Remember the most important commandment? Jesus was quoting the writings of Moses, inspired by God. In Deuteronomy, where God commands us to love Him with all our heart, soul, and strength, the very next verse commands us to keep His commandments in our hearts. We are to impress them on our children, to talk about them when we sit at home and when we walk along the road, when we lie down and when we get up. We are to write them on the door frames of our houses and on our gates. So, our worship is expressed in our keeping and memorizing of His commandments.

One thing we learned is that you cannot start too soon. When Luke was four and Leah was two, we thought we were drilling him on a particular verse when she chimed in with her cute two-year-old voice. We soon discovered that, if we fill a child’s mind with scripture early, he will be better equipped to filter the trash that this world will try to dump into his mind. Then, as he matures, he will be able worship God with all of his thoughts.

In our home, worship included a lot of planned family time focused on teaching our kids some scriptural principle. Over the years, the how and what have varied as our kids have grown, but the purpose has been the same: fulfilling our commission as parents to talk about these things when we sit at home, when we lie down, and when we rise up. We pray together, we read the Bible together, we read good books aloud together, and we sing together. Two very important decisions we made along the way included observing the Sabbath in our home and teaching the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

Dads, my commitment to this was important. I remember realizing as a young father that I needed to figure out how to switch gears from my current R&D project to my family worship leader responsibility during my 10-minute drive home. But, how and when was I going to choose the right devotional, plan the scripture memory program, or decide on the next family worship activity? In our case, this is where the power of teamwork between husband and wife plays a big role.

Moms, I worked hard to become my husband’s helper. I was careful not to usurp his role. I didn’t do his job, but I made it easy for him to succeed. I left that devotional book on his chair at the dinner table. I took care of the laminating for those shower verses. I worked with the kids to memorize and review their scripture verses and their catechism answers.

If you feel challenged but ill equipped, rest assured that we did not start this process with a host of programs and activities in place. Rather than being overwhelmed with the concept of making our home a place of worship 24/7, we took one step at a time. Every 6 to 12 months, we would merely add one new worshipful practice to our family’s schedule. In some cases, we would eliminate one activity or commitment to make room for another one. Once we established a pattern of obedience in that one small thing, we would take the next step.

We are thankful that God has chosen to reveal His will to us through His Word and through godly counsel in the form of mentors and good books. Looking back, our lives are pointed in a very different direction than where we started. Yet, there was no single event, no single decision, that led to a drastic change. Rather, God worked in our lives through the successive accumulation of small but important choices and decisions. Soon, our kids will be on their own. It is our prayer that God will continue to build on the foundation of His Word in their families so that their children will teach their children to live a life of worship to our God.

In closing, we want to encourage you to be purposeful in choosing an attitude and lifestyle of worship in your home, regardless of your family situation and personal giftedness. We can safely say that it is never too late to start choosing to worship God every day.