Moving on from Young, Restless, and Reformed

I recently turned 23 a few weeks ago. A small milestone, and really not all that important a year or an age. But with a new year brings a new season of personal change.

Starting at a new school, getting deeper in my job, and closing an era of my life after four years of service has put me in a state of contemplation and reflection on my life the past few years and the life that is now before me. Things that I wish to change, things that I want to stay the same, and things that I want to see come about (i.e. marriage) run through my mind and, given where God has placed me in the present time, are examined. Undoubtedly, this means that my theology about God comes under a similar scrutiny, and over the past few months a conviction has arisen that I felt the need to write about: I am ready to move on from the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement. 

It’s not that I think the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement has been a negative time of my life from me. Far from it, in fact; I have been blessed by it in numerous ways, and I have seen others blessed as well. It’s also not to say that I think ill of the movement; no movement within Christiandom has been free of mistakes or blemishes, and only the naive think that the YRR movement doesn’t have its shortcomings. Intellectual and personal immaturity is a common charge against the movement and I have (and will be) guilty of both. But just as one realizes that it’s time to begin swimming in the deep end, I have realized that, theologically, its time I grow up and move beyond TULIP, Piper, and all the other staples of this movement that I have identified myself with for the past few years. 

Swimming in the deep end is a scary thing. If you’ve not done it before, you undoubtedly realize you need help. Once I realized that there was more to my faith than TULIP and wearing the Calvinist badge - that the Reformed belief system goes much deeper and spans a larger horizon - the once-confident-that-he-knows-everything Calvinist realized that he is a guppy in an aquarium of sharks. Mostly nice sharks - but still sharks that can swallow you in one bite. 

So I dive into the aquarium of the confessions, of the creeds, of the history of the church, of paedobaptism and credobaptism (of which I presently hold the latter), of understanding the covenants, of many other things that I presently had not considered, and my mouth is silenced. I am not the expert in this area I once claimed to be. If anything I know nothing at all. Wrestling with the Westminster Confession of Faith, reading through Michael Horton’s “The Christian Faith” (which I cannot recommend enough), and struggling through Calvin’s Institutes with my church family has been one heck of a smack in the face of humility. Not that I have become pride-less, as my flesh would be happy to bring that out in me, but any confidence of theological boasting I once had isn’t quite what it used to be. 

I realize that, demographically and practically, I am still a member of the Young, Restless and Reformed movement. Whether or not others identify me with it is irrelevant to me. There is still  plenty of good hearted joking, rimshots and facepalming to be had (those darn "predestinated" jokes never get old or good). But, as far as my conscious before Christ is concerned, I am willing to re-enter the cage - albeit a much different cage from my Calvinist cage days - to submit myself to learning and listening, knowing that for every day I learn something new that there is a whole year of potential learning, falling, failing, and rising to be had. And not just learning for the sake of my own personal gain, but learning for the sake of blessing and benefitting others, sheathing the sword of debate only to draw it more infrequently than before. The old is gone; behold, the new slowly cometh.

Thanksgiving and Christ

Put the fork down. You have eaten too much already. Seriously, have you noticed your pants getting tighter with each spoonful of potatoes you shove in your mouth? If not, wake up. It's happening.

Today is a day where we are supposed to be thankful. But if there were one thing that we could be most thankful for, what would it be? Perhaps you are thankful for your spouse (for some, there is great wisdom in that answer). Maybe you are thankful for your job. Maybe you are thankful for your family or community. Maybe you are like me and are thankful for your new Xbox Live router that allows you to pwn n00bs with raw skill when your stats don't reflect you as 1337 (only nerds will get that last sentence).

All of the things that I just listed, though, have one inherited flaw - those things don't last forever. Eventually your spouse will die. You will lose your job, quit, or retire. Your community will change as time goes on. Someday Xbox Live will become obsolete. While we can certainly be thankful for these things, there is something that we can be thankful for that consistently and faithfully lasts forever.

Simply put, that one thing is salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, which results in eternal life in a state of indescribable goodness. The oft-quoted verse John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life", is a verse that contains something to be entirely thankful for. In love, God gave us his son so that we would have eternal life - if you believe in him for forgiveness of sins. Nothing in this world is capable of trumping this gift of salvation, because it is inherently temporarily. The destination of salvation is not - the destination of salvation is inherently superior to every other thing in the world on the basis alone that it is eternal. In this life, there is evil and pain. Such things will not exist in heaven. A promise that we will go to a place to live forever completely free of pain and suffering if we believe Jesus is our Lord and Savior? What could possibly be greater - and should receive more thanks - than this?

I think thanksgiving will be the only holiday celebrated in heaven. After everything has ceased to exist and we find ourselves before the throne of God, I believe it will necessarily require an attitude of thanksgiving incomparable to anything else this world could deserve.

Happy Thanksgiving from Another Ascending Lark, and look forward to the second annual Albums of the Year posts coming in December!

Ponder This: An Unholy Response to a Holy Salvation

"They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. 1 John 2:19-20 (ESV)"

For my daily devotionals, I have been picking apart 1 John verse by verse. Each day I move along, one verse at a time (sometimes two) and dismantle it as much as possible and then study it to apply it to my life. Today, as I was picking apart 1 John 2:20 (as quoted about with 2:19 for context), when I got down to studying it to apply it to my life, the Spirit spoke to me in a powerful way that I felt compared to share.

In my Intro to World Religions class, our teacher (who is one of the smartest Christians I know) started off the semester by defining "holy" and "profane", two words that should have great meanings to us as Christians. Profane, as he defined it, were things that were common, normal, not holy. Holy was defined as sacred, set apart, transcendent to what is profane. Those two words and their definitions came into my mind as I picked apart verse 20, when it says "you have been anointed by the Holy One". Most likely, what John was referring to by this is the inner regeneration of believers by the Holy Spirit, making an analogy to physical anointings in the Old Testament where oil was used to show outwardly an inner transformation by the Spirit.

With this in mind, a simple thought came to my mind: given what God has done in my life, a holy act of regeneration by a holy being, why does my response to that not take into account that it is a holy act? What God has done in my life and the life of every Christian is a holy act, so I am broken as to why my response to it is one that treats it as a common, normal work when it is anything but that. For the most part, my response to what God has done in my life is one that doesn't take into account how holy, sacred, set-apart of an act it was. My response to his holy act is one that is unholy.

Ponder with me: why is this the case? Why is my response, the way I live my life, so lacking? What must change in my life to where I am responding properly to God's holy work? Ask yourself the same thing.

"Ye shall have the attitude of a puppy dog"

When out in public, if people ask me if I have any siblings, I tell them I have two younger brothers. I know that I am lying. Indeed, I do have two younger brothers, but I also have a younger sister as well. You see, in my house, the puppy is a child.Yes, somehow we arrived at the notion that Abby = child.

Abby is the kind of animal that models a life that Christians could learn from. I know that the previous statement sounded crazy or insane, but just hear me out. She is a dog that models a series of behaviors that, once you simply transpose them to ways humans can understand them (as great as science is, it still hasn't produced the Universal Bark Translator), a Christian should also model. Allow me to present some examples.

1. "Go" is the word that she absolutely loves. If you tell her "Abby, let's go!", she will bolt to the back door making sure she can make it to the car. It's gotten to the point that all I have to do is look at her with the keys in my hand, and she knows to go. She doesn't know where she is going, but because Austin-dog (she becomes a child, and the people get demoted to dogs. Awesome, right?) tells her that we are going somewhere, that is a good enough of a reason to become a super happy butt-shaking dog. I wonder what would happen if I started living my faith like that. God tells me to "go" and instead of whining or putting up a fight, I would instantly and gladly go wherever God is taking me. I don't know where I am going, but because God tells me that we are going somewhere, that is all I need to know.
2.  Abby has a foe that occasionally walks by the house. We call her Nemesis-dog. When said dog walks by, Abby instantly becomes a siren, and getting her to shut up is hopeless. Yet when the front door is open, she just sits by the screen door and waits. Waits for what, I dunno, but the front door is one of her favorite spots. When she sees someone coming to the door, she runs to grab a bone (we haven't figured that one out yet), then starts shaking her butt in anticipation of this person who is coming over. It doesn't matter who the heck it is; if it's Daddy-dog, Mommy-dog, Travis-dog, Parker-dog, or a total stranger, she is always ready to greet people. I wonder what would happen if I treated the other people in my life the same way. What if I treated strangers the same way I try to treat all of the people I know in my life? What if I greeted visitors of my church or youth group with this kind of enthusiasm?
3.  While Abby has a playful side, she is known to be a protector. If Travis-dog starts yelling at Parker-dog or Parker-dog starts fighting with Travis-dog, Abby will usually step in and try to break up the conflict. Granted, often times she causes more problems than she fixes (she is a dog, after all), but she is at least trying to make sure nobody hurts each other. She will stand and face the aggressor and bark in her commanding voice, and we often imagine her saying something like "You! Stop! It! Now! I'm! Warning! You!" I wonder what would happen if I make an effort to be a peacekeeper like Jesus described in Matthew 5:9. What if I was willing to get in the face of my friends or my students when they start doing things they shouldn't do?

Abby is just awesome. But the God who created dogs is just even more awesome. He uses the simple things to teach important lessons.