(considering) 8:28

Implications of the Sovereignty of God

recent posts

  • Knowing I Need to Get Better

    Texts reflecting: Proverbs 1, Ecclesiastes 1

    A large chunk of the Biblical worldview for an individual is that I am not actually as good as I can be. In fact, I am so bad that independent of an act of God, a just judge would put me in hell. It’s at this point that a lot of well-meaning people would seek to minimize the problem (and I’d be totally okay with that, as few things are less uplifting to my own ego than the thought that at my core I’m shot through with corruption that taints even my intentions.

    Yet without that understanding I am left in the dark continually trying to convince myself that everything is okay, or at least that I am, and that any issues or problems are someone else’s problem. Having tried this once or twice, I can assure you it’s an exhausting argument that I never quite win.

    Yet reading Proverbs 1, I’m faced with some pretty direct statements. Wisdom and foolishness are cast as two ways before me, and wisdom is calling out to me to stop being foolish and seek instruction from God.

    Quite simply, I need to learn. Thankfully, the book of Proverbs (and the Bible generally) exists to help with the best of that instruction. Instruction that begins with the fear of the LORD.

    The fear of the LORD is an important facet, and helps us understand the futility of a certain type of wisdom that Ecclesiastes 1 calls futility and a chasing after the wind (a waste of time that can’t result in anything… most Newfoundlanders have enough experience with wind to know not to chase it). We are called to get better, to seek wisdom instead of folly, but we should know that some of that folly poses as wisdom. In fact, people around us will call it wisdom.
    The foolishness that we have to turn from has promoters, and in isolation the promotion can seem good. Seek our own good at the expense of others, after all who will know?

    The answer: God knows, and we need to fear Him first. And the kinds of wisdom that puff us up, that call us to use others to make ourselves feel better, or provide us gain at the expense of others are futile and won’t lead anywhere good. They’re wise folly.
    Here at the beginning of yet another year, above all of the resolutions we can have for the new year, let’s resolve to great better; to seek God above all else, and by His grace, hopefully learn the wisdom that brings flourishing.

  • Economics in a Genesis 3 World

    Economics in a Genesis 3 World

    By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

    Genesis 3:19 (ESV)

    We sometimes assume that the Bible says very little about “non-religious” topics such as economics and politics. Of course, there are many who assume that the Bible says more than it does about these topics, but it is a bit of an overstatement that the truths of scripture have nothing to say about the economics we follow, and more importantly about the economic decisions we need to be making. 

    Genesis 3, and especially 3:19 tells us a truth about the world after the coming of sin into the world through Adam’s rebellion to God, namely that in the world we now live, scarcity is a real thing. This is said as God tells Adam that an economic good (food) will have to come about as the result of “the sweat of your face”. Where once the only necessity for finding food was simply reaching out and taking, now in order to produce those economic goods, there was going to need to be work, and as a result, there would be scarcity based on the amount of sweat that was willing to be put into the production of the economic good.

    Thomas Sowell, as far as I know not a Christian, but a noted economist puts it this way when he defines the concept of economics itself:

    Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses

    Thomas Sowell Basic Economics p.2

    He also expands this into a necessary corollary, that when it comes to economic problems, there aren’t solutions, only trade-offs. If I want bread, I will need to put in work, if I want to be lazy, I can get excessive rest, but I will have the trade off of being hungry. The result is that I will need to balance the level of tiredness I am willing to put up with and the level of hunger I’m willing to deal with. In a land outside of the garden of Eden, we as humans are left making decisions as to how to use our resources to get to the conclusions we want.

    This means that as Christians face the world around us, we will have to accept that until Christ returns, there will always be poor around us, there will always be illness, and there will always be death. When we work to love our neighbours (and even our enemies) we will have to accept that our love for them cannot solve all of the problems, because there are simply more needs and wants than there are resources to deal with those needs and wants. Our faithfulness will not save people in the ultimate sense, but only alleviate suffering. It also means that since the resources are limited, we will have to learn how to be faithful with the resources God gives us so as to best provide for the needs of those around us. 

    Utopia is not something Christians build, but something that God gives. In the meantime, in the world where we eat beead by the sweat of our brow, we need to be faithful to God’s goodness with what we are given. 

  • Bible Reading Plan 2024

    Bible Reading Plan 2024

    Hey dear readers. 

    So you may know that I do a (mostly) daily livestream on youtube, facebook and X (twitter), where I reflect on some segment of the Bible. The Bible Reading plan I’m using is the same one being followed by my local Church. If you’re interested in keeping up with that reading plan, here it is

  • Slow to Speak, Slow to Anger

    Slow to Speak, Slow to Anger

    We have it on good authority that Socrates believed that the unexamined life was not worth living. 

    I’m not sure he was right or wrong, but I am sure that our unexamined conversations can be very dangerous.

    I’m honestly not sure, when I think about it, that our conversations are usually menat to communicate anything as much as they are often dances of rhetoric meant to help us maintain our own presently-held prejudices. So often very complicated ideas and concepts (even good ones) are boiled down to slogans, not so that people can understand what we’re saying, but more so that we can be more assured in our own correctness, even with people who disagree with us.

    The same bombastic statement can serve multiple roles in doing that. When I say that “Socialized medicine is a right”, while the statement is a meaningful claim that can have merits and demerits, I’m not often asking to hear them. More likely I’m trying to get people who already think like I do to affirm my position, and to anger and disgust those who do not agree with me. In the first case, I will get wise knowing nods to my statement, and in the other I will get snarky (or even angry) counter-claims. In either case, I’m not actually communicating as much as seeking affirmation (from the enlightened people who agree) and identifying an outgroup (seeing those who disagree with me to be the unthinking brutes that they are).]

    Yet, I’m commanded in scripture to have a different goal:

    James 1:19–20 (ESV) — Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

    In context, James is speaking about the need for believers to submit to the teachings of God, first by working to understand them, and secondly by avoiding the ways we can avoid being taught (such as through speaking too early and so losing the opportunity to hear what is being taught, or by just getting angry and so closing our ears to something we may need to hear).

    The Christian is meant to be seeking the righteousness of God, and that requires that I not skip the all-important early steps in a conversation. First that I seek to understand what the other person is saying. This means breathing when we hear the slogans of the other person and try to understand what might actually be wisdom in what is being said. If we can’t see it, we can ask questions to learn from the person what it is they mean, and give them the time to express it before coming to the conclusion that they are wrong. After all, even if we have heard the same slogan a thousand times and each of those thousand times defended poorly, it may be that this time the person has thoughtfully come to a conclusion, and the fact is there may be something correct in what they say that will lead us to greater righteousness. A place that our anger will rarely bring us. 

    In short the first step is to assume that the person is at least as thougtful and knowledgable as you are, and even if they are not, to recognize that they may have wisdom to impart to you. God has developed that person to the place they are, and has put them into our lives as a gift. It is best we use the gift well. 

    Of course, this is not to say that we are never to speak, and never to anger. There are very foolish ideas around, I know, I believed many of them at various times in my life. But James is wise in telling us to be quick to hear and sloe to speak and slow to anger. There is a time for speaking and anger, but only after we have heard. 

  • Advocacy isn’t itself action.

    Advocacy isn’t itself action.

    One of the greatest dangers for the pastor comes from the very role that we have in teaching the Gospel to people. We are called (in many places scripturally) to preach the Word of God to those around us. We are told not to neglect it, we are told to strive at it and we are told to do it with patience. With all that as central to the role of whar we are called to do, it’s interesting that in Timothy and Titus, when Paul sees the need to express the necessary qualifications of the elder, we are faced, not with a skill set, but with a character set.

    There is a clear reason for this, one that comes to mind to me now only after I’ve been angered by the way people in my own culture can use the idea of calling for some social change as the same as working to bring about that social change. So often we pretend that protesting and calling on the government to end homelessness, or lower the cost of living or some other perceived social need, is the same as actually working to make those things come about. There may be some minor utility in such activity, but overall it’s unlikely to change anything because of the simple fact that telling other people to do something does not in itself cause the thing. 

    It is always much easier to call on someone to do something, and it can even make ourselves feel better about ourselves, but that is not the same thing as doing something. Telling the government (or the church, or a social group) to help the poor is not a replacement for actually helping the poor. Saying that there should be help for people who are caught in loneliness is a lot less helpful than visiting the lonely, and thinking, praying and loving people in hard situations is going to help more than saung that something “should be done”.

    This is the same for those of us who call others to repentance as part of our calling. That I call my neighbour to turn from wickedness and trust in Christ is not itself me doing that. I still need to make a practice of holiness, and a practice of turning from, confessing and repenting of my own sin. 

    Calling for something to be done is not the same as doing it, and we are called to be not merely hearers (or even speakers) of the Word, but doers of the Word.

    SDG