(considering) 8:28

The good mental OS

July 5, 2016

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 12:1–2. ESV

The screencap of me working on this. Pretty meta, huh?

Being a bit of a tech geek (amateur) means that I find different things interesting and exciting. As I now await with baited breath the coming of yet another permutation of MacOS, I was struck by how this provides some good insight into Romans 12.

When Paul says that we need to not be conformed to this world, it finishes the statement that we need to instead be transformed by the renewal of our minds, that by testing we may discern the will of God, what is good, acceptable and perfect. I’ve often only thought of this as a simple call to allow for Christian ideas to be the basis of my understanding, and not ideas that the world has. I was thinking that a Christian should simply have a list of beliefs about what is true, and then understand the world from that perspective.

In light of the above application, it seems that Paul is getting at something far more fundamental. The renewal of a mind isn’t just replacing one set of ideas for another, but is rather an alteration of the basic understanding of things around us. To use the computer analogy, it isn’t like changing programs on a computer, it’s like changing an operating system. It doesn’t necessarily change the things we think about, but it does change the way we think about the things we think about. In a good OS update, it can cause things to run more quickly and efficiently, and cause damaging programs to no longer do their damage. Some things cease to run, but many other things run and run better, and some new tasks even become possible.

Similarly, the Christian change Paul is talking about isn’t having the right opinions on specific moral and social issues, but instead working through all facets of our lives in a different way. The change is a fundamental one. Where we were once based on a worldly understanding which was fundamentally at odds with God’s truth, we begin to think from a different perspective, even when we are thinking things that kinda look like worldly ideas. Of course, this will mean that opinions that are sinful will work less and less readily on our new operating system, and new ideas, Godly ideas that we find in God’s Word, will begin to make more and more sense.

One would think that these verses, coming as they do right after Paul tells us to give our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, that we’d understand that the change in view here is a very profound one, not merely a change in surface opinions.
This also isn’t to say that the result is a mind that invariably comes to “Christian” opinions from the outset. If that were the case, Paul wouldn’t have to tell us that “by testing” we would be able to “discern” the will of God. The Christian mind doesn’t magically know what would be Godly, but instead works through the implications of an idea, an action, or a decision from a fundamentally altered mind.

There are important implications for this on a range of issues, from apologetics, to cultural contextualization, living your faith and evangelism. God willing, I’ll try to reflect on these over the next couple of days.
Where Once They Stood We Stand (or why plant churches in Newfoundland)

July 4, 2016

When I wrote the post for Friday, there wasn’t a great deal of mention of Christian witness, or of the previous Christian character of Newfoundland. “What’s up with that?” you may ask, “I thought you were all about Jesus”. Indeed, and I have a great desire to see Bible-preaching churches raised up in Newfoundland, and while I did not talk about it on July 1 (intending a readership of friends who might be put off by what I’m going to say here stated plainly on such a solemn day).

July 1 (Canada Day/Memorial Day) makes a clear statement that Christians wishing to preach the Gospel here in Newfoundland need to understand. The history of Newfoundland is often quite divergent from even the history of Canada. The result is that the culture here is different, even as most Newfoundlanders will be unable to voice the reasons behind why it is different.

The history I gave in the previous post lacked something fairly central to the actions and motivations of the people in early 20th century Newfoundland. You see, my grandfather was also fairly involved in his local Church, as were most people of his generation. Indeed, when the First World War began, Newfoundland lacked a standing military. The CLB (or Church Lad’s Brigade) filled the role. Many of the first 500 to join the Newfoundland regiment were volunteers from the older ranks of the CLB. This shows how Christian faith had a massive role in Newfoundland culture. Many of the celebrated facets of the character of Newfoundlanders was shaped by our Christianity.

While in the modern Newfoundland mind, many no longer attend church or see “religion” as important (even as they continue to self-identify as part of Christian denominations), that was not true of our ancestors. This can be seen in the many monuments around St. John’s of a clearly Christian nature, the history of our province with religion closely entwined with our health care system, our education, and even our political system until quite recently. The result is that modern Newfoundlanders are often blind to large facets of the understandings our ancestors had of the world, and what gave them the strength to continue through nearly hellish, (and less difficult) times.

Sometimes, we Newfoundlanders read into history the perceived betrayals of our later religious history (events such as Mount Cashel). This is the reason for some of the criticisms of the Christian worldview of the strategically inept high command during the battle of the Somme (a worldview that was shared by the majority of Newfoundlanders both before and after the war).

As I said in my last post, my grandfather was in his 80s when I was born, so I do not know his spiritual background. By the time I was a born-again believer, he had already gone on to his eternal reward. However, it is important that his legacy of Christian faith seems to be a strong one. Most of his children remained active in the Church, and even my continued faith in Jesus Christ is, in some measure, shaped by my father (my grandfather’s youngest son), and his imperfect but continued faithfulness as a Christian.

This is why I believe that Church planting in Newfoundland is not simply a task of planting a new Christian witness among our people, but rather a repentance and reclamation of a forgotten part of our heritage. I think that Church planters that forget this understanding do a disservice to Newfoundlanders, themselves, and most especially to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

While I am now a member of a Christian denomination that was not the denomination of my fathers, I stand as a believer in Jesus Christ, not in rebellion to the faith of my fathers, but in continuity with them. Where many of the churches that were strong in the past have moved away from the faith in a Bible that is God’s very Word, and a faith in salvation by faith alone, through grace alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, I still hold to those beliefs, and I think I may be closer to my ancestors on this point than is often understood.

I desire to see Churches planted in Newfoundland, to the glory of Jesus Christ because, as the National Anthem of Newfoundland says:

As loved our fathers, So we love
Where once they stood, we stand
Their prayer we raise to heaven above
God guard thee, Newfoundland
As Loved Our Fathers, So We Love.

July 1, 2016

July 1 is a bit of a different day in Newfoundland. It is Canada Day, and so people will be celebrating the birthday of the country (149 years today), but it is also Memorial Day for Newfoundland, commemorating a disastrous battle for the Newfoundland Regiment during the first world war (100 years ago today), and more broadly those who served and died in the war. It was one of the concessions we in Newfoundland made to the dominion of Canada in joining them in 1949, that we now have a slightly bipolar day at the beginning of July.

My family has a link to the battle of Beaumont Hamel (the specific engagement that saw hundreds of members of the Newfoundland regiment killed in roughly 40 minutes). My grandfather, Frank Dawe, was a member of the Newfoundland Regiment throughout the war.

Granddad was 82 by the time I was born. I was one of a twin born to his youngest son so I didn’t know my grandfather as anything other than an older man, who in his youth had had some noteworthy experiences in some far off exotic war.

Granddad is the frowning boy on the bottom left. Born in 1892, he was 22 when he enlisted in the Newfoundland Regiment.

Regimental number 915, Frank G. Dawe volunteered for service with the newly founded Newfoundland Regiment on January 8, 1915, 6 months after hostilities had begun in Europe. Most people of the time, not yet experienced in mechanized trench warfare, believed the war would be over in less than a year.

He sailed from Newfoundland in 1915 from St. John’s, and joined the regiment as they trained in England, not knowing where he would eventually see service.

By this time, the Ottoman Empire had entered the war to support their German allies (and to help stay Russian ambitions to regain Constantinople… and access from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean). This was expected to have little effect, as the Ottoman’s were seen as a weak and tottering empire, which probably led to the decision to attack the Dardanelles (and eventually take the Bosphorus… and access to the Black Sea). Thus the Newfoundlanders (and my

My Grandfather as a soldier

grandfather) first saw action, not in combat against German, but against the Ottomans in the battle of Gallipoli (a battle also infamous to our cousins the Australians and the New Zealanders).

The regiment’s first death of the war was a Pte. Hugh Walter McWhirter, killed by a Turkish shell on Sept. 22, 1915. His regimental number (902) was close to my Grandfather’s, so it is likely they knew each other, probably fairly well. While the Newfoundlanders distinguished themselves as brave and competent soldiers in the conflict, the campaign was doomed to failure, and after three hellish months, the Newfoundlanders were evacuated back to Europe. After 3 months of training and regrouping in Egypt, The rest of the war would see them in France and Belgium.

Frank Dawe was in action with the rest of the Newfoundland Regiment as they served along the front lines after March of 1916. On June 15 of 1916, he was one of 11 men wounded during shelling, which the commanding officer by now called “situation normal”. This would mean that Granddad would be in hospital when the order came on the morning of July 1, 1916 to go over the top at the beginning of the battle of the Somme. The battle would have over a million casualties over the next 5 months, of which Newfoundland’s experience would be a small part.

At the beginning of the battle, hundreds of Newfoundlanders were cut down by the machine guns some elements British command had believed were “overrated”. The shelling the allied command had hoped would dislodge the German defenders had not been as effective as hoped, and so the Newfoundlanders ended up running headlong into largely intact defences.

The tragedy for Newfoundland is hard to overestimate. The population of the then-country was a little over 255,000, so the death of hundreds of her young men hit hard back here in the Dominion of Newfoundland. That is why July 1 bears such a huge importance for Newfoundland over and above the anniversary of the promulgation of the British North America Act (which serves as the birth of Canada, a foreign

Part of my grandfather’s discharge papers.

country to us until April 1949). Most of the people my grandfather had served with in multiple engagements against both the Ottomans and the Germans died that day. I feel a little bad now, how I asked with shining eyes for him to tell me about the first world war. I was young and still believed that such things could be exciting. He only told me he spent months dirty in a potato field.

Granddad’s war ended during the battle of Arras on April 14th
between 9 and 10 AM. His company had moved forward to take an area in advance of the front, near the town of Monchy Le-Preux. That morning, a German counterattack
pushed back many of the defenders and surrounded his company’s position. As a Lewis gunner, he was unable to retreat under the advance, and as the story is told among members of my family, A German officer came up behind him and with his sidearm drawn informed him in perfect English, that the war was over for him. While he was reported in Newfoundland as missing in May of 1917, it would be July of that year before he would be confirmed as a prisoner in Germany.

It’s said he would attempt escape from the POW camp 3 times over the next 19 months, but before he would successfully escape, the war ended on November 11, 1918. The man w

The Forget-Me-Not, a common flower in Newfoundland is also our traditional flower of Remembrance

ho was once Cpl. Frank G. Dawe would return to Newfoundland, eventually marry and have a family, which is why I am here to write this. Today, my niece, his granddaughter, is on the fields of Beaumont Hamel, to commemorate a battle my Grandfather missed, even as many of his compatriots did not, and paid for that difference in experience with their lives.

So today, as Canada celebrates its birthday, I also join with my fellow Newfoundlanders in remembering the sacrifice of so many of those who did not live to help build up our nation, now our province.
Embracing Awkward

May 10, 2016

I have to admit, sometimes I’m just an awkward dude.

It comes to mind when I am talking to people, and again I realize I’ve said something highly inappropriate to the context. Of course, I never think of these things in advance, only after people start looking at me in the way I’ve since learned is “quizzically”. Unfortunately, by that time, it’s already too late, and if the person doesn’t know I’m a generally awkward dude, I’ve got some explaining/apologizing to do. If they do know me, I’ve provided them some additional amusement, and hopefully they will forgive me.

…and sometimes I don’t even realize I’ve done it.

The simple fact is, I’ve always been terrible at reading social and emotional cues. It means that in large measure, other people’s emotions are a closed book to me, and I am usually saying and doing things that sometimes hurt others. It’s not my favourite part of myself, and it’s something I work on a lot, but still I often fail and say something really really inappropriate.

This is probably one of the reasons I prefer my own company, and also one of the reasons I live in my own head a lot. It also means I can make horrific first impressions on people, since I don’t often have a governor. Worse, the ignorance of cues extends to my own actions. Facial expressions mean little to me, so I don’t produce facial expressions in keeping with what I’m actually thinking (and since I live in my head, I’m thinking a few hundred different things at any given time). In essence, I don’t read people well, and they don’t read me well.

As a Christian, and worse as an aspiring full-time pastor, this can be difficult. Sometimes I wonder if God really has called me to this, and as I think He has, I sometimes wonder if He’s been cruel in the decision. After all, I do still care about hurting people, and rejection is still lonely, (I’m awkward, not unemotional). Yet God’s Word helps me in a couple of ways here:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8

Here I understand that God’s call is for me to seek Him and to follow His ways, even though they can be hard to understand. As people find it difficult to interpret me, often God has the same experience, because His ways are not like our ways. God has me going through feelings He Himself knows well. While people misunderstand Him because He is so much more profound than us, and mine is only because I lack many of the skills of social understanding, the result is the same.

Moreover, since God is sovereign over all things (and He has profound reasons for all He does), He is working glorious things in me, even through my weaknesses. In Him, I have friends and acceptance (most clearly, the friendship and acceptance of God in Jesus Christ), not because I’m a charismatic person, but because of Christ. God displays His goodness here to me, and I am able to rejoice (albeit awkwardly) in the friends I’m given, because I deeply feel how valuable they are. Even better, while I lack the ability to see what’s appropriate, I end up with less fear of rejection over telling people about Jesus. While I may apologize more than I need to (a nervous tick I have, since I really don’t know by your body language if I’m saying something that offends you), I will still say things as I see them (for ill, but also for good).

The simple fact is that God made me awkward for reasons, and His reasons are always good. I do have things I need to work on, but even weaknesses are used for God’s glory. As my favourite verses say:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Romans 8:28-30

SDG
Online Reading (May 6, 2016)

May 6, 2016

Fort McMurray: For those who haven’t heard yet, the town of Fort McMurray, Alberta has been victim to a major wildfire. Fort McMurray has huge connections to Newfoundland, and I have many friends and acquaintances who were evacuated. Many who were at logging camps north of the city are being evacuated today through the burned city. The fire is still burning out of control, and the confusion caused has claimed victims. Donations can be made to the Canadian Red Cross, and are presently being matched by our federal government.

Compassion: Related to the fire, stories like this one and this one, show compassion isn’t dead in Canada quite yet.

Fallen Leaders: Tim Challies has a great reflection on what we should do about the resources produced by leaders who have since been removed from their ministries in disgrace.

Bible Reading: TheLook at the Book series by John Piper is great training for people eager to learn how to read the Bible accurately and well.