Helping humans, not ‘humanity’

November 18th 

For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Titus 3:3-7 (NASB)

The New Testament way of looking at humanity is not the modern way. In the New Testament men and women exist, there is no such thing as “Humanity,” the human race as a whole.

A materialist says—Because my religious beliefs do for me, therefore they are satisfactory. Not in the tiniest degree. The test of a man’s religious faith is not that it does for him, but that it will do for the worst wreck he ever knew. If every one were well brought up and had a fine heredity, then there are any number of intellectual forms of belief that would do. The materialistic line works like a searchlight, lighting up what it does and no more, but the daylight of actual experience reveals a hundred and one other facts. It does not show a clear simple path, but brings to light a multitude of facts never seen before. The evolutionist looks at man and says, What a glorious promise of what he is going to be! The New Testament looks at man’s body and moral life and intelligence and says, What a ruin of what God designed him to be!

from Oswald Chambers’ Shadow of an Agony
(Humanity and Holiness)

Knowing truth personally

October 5th 

And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

John 17:3 (NKJV)

With the faithful You prove yourself faithful; with the blameless man You prove Yourself blameless; with the pure You prove Yourself pure, but with the crooked You prove yourself shrewd. For You rescue an afflicted people, but You humble those with haughty eyes. Lord, you light my lamp; my God illuminates my darkness… God — His way is perfect; the word of the Lord is pure. He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him. For who is God besides the LORD? And who is a rock? Only our God. God— He clothes me with strength and makes my way perfect. 

Psalm 18:25-28,30-32 (HCSB)

New and old treasure

January 15th 

And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house, who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.”

Matthew 13:52 (ESV)

This mistaken preference for the modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant than in theology.  Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old.

A new book is still on its trial… it has to be tested against the great body of Christian thought down the ages, and all its hidden implications (often unsuspected by the author himself) have to be brought to light. Often it cannot be fully understood without the knowledge of a good many other modern books. If you join at eleven o’clock a conversation which began at eight you will often not see the real bearing of what is said.
Remarks which seem to you very ordinary will produce laughter or irritation and you will not see why—the reason, of course, being that the earlier stages of the conversation have given them a special point. In the same way sentences in a modern book which look quite ordinary may be directed at some other book; in this way you may be led to accept what you would have indignantly rejected if you knew its real significance. The only safety is to have a standard of plain, central Christianity (“mere Christianity” as Baxter called it) which puts the controversies of the moment in their proper perspective. Such a standard can be acquired only from the old books. It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.

Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books. All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united—united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions. We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century—the blindness about which posterity will ask, “But how could they have thought that?”— lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth.

None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill. The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.

from C.S. Lewis’ introduction to On the Incarnation

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…and a very old treasure: God and Man at Table Are Sat Down on Youtube, and a slightly more Esteban-ish version on Spotify.

‘Wait, I say, on the Lord’

January 3rd

The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.

Lamentations 3:25-26 (KJV)

It is profitable for Christians to be often calling to mind the very beginnings of grace with their souls. It was Paul’s accustomed manner,  when tried for his life, to open before his judges the manner of his conversion: he would think of that day, and that hour, in which he first did meet with grace; for he found it supported him.

I can remember my fears and doubts, and sad months, with comfort; they are as the head of Goliath in my hand: there was nothing to David like Goliath’s sword; for the very sight and remembrance of that did preach forth God’s deliverance to him.  Oh! the remembrance of my great sins, of my great temptations, and of my great fear of perishing for ever!  They bring afresh into my mind, the remembrance of my great help, my great supports from heaven, and the great grace that God extended to such a wretch as I.

My dear children, call to mind the former days, and years of ancient times: remember also your songs in the night, and commune with your own hearts.  Yea, look diligently, and leave no corner therein unsearched for that treasure hid, even the treasure of your first and second experience of the grace of God towards you. Remember also the word, the word, I say, upon which the Lord hath caused you to hope: if you have sinned against light, if you are drowned in despair, if you think God fights against you, or if heaven is hid from your eyes; remember it was thus with your father; but out of them all the Lord delivered me.

from John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

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The title is a reference to Psalm 27. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners is, I’m not going to lie, is a bit of a slog. But Bunyan’s knowledge of the bible is impressive, the cross references are nice, and, to be fair, very few writers from the 1600s have held up so well. Of course, his personal testimony is pretty much timeless too, and it’s nice to know that he wrote something other than The Pilgrim’s Progress.

…and No Doubt by Petra, on Youtube and Spotify respectively, because, really? try to find a song that goes with this.