What drives us? Perhaps nothing?

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Time for installment four of our What Drives Us series looking at why we do, think and feel the way we do. The core idea is this: we either make our decisions based on God’s promises in the Gospel, or on something else.

We’ve looked at Preference, Perfection, and Protection. Now it’s time to consider the strongest force among my generation: apathy.

Perhaps ‘nothing’ drives me? And perhaps the greatest danger facing my generation and those who will follow us is not the threat of terrorism, nuclear proliferation, a down economy, or a tsunami. No, we are being washed away by wave after wave of triviality. We’re a generation deeply committed to being entertained, and thus prone to taking very little seriously. Perhaps our priorities may be a bit askew? (I am asking myself this question too.)

Does nothing drive you?

Let’s look at how this may play out in life.

Situation … response:

  • When all is well in my life … I don’t think much about God; I’m doing okay on my own.
  • When trials enter my life … I ask “why?” and blame others, because I feel like a victim.
  • When I am criticized, I … act cool and pretend it doesn’t bother me.
  • My relationship with God … good or bad, depending on the circumstances around me.
  • Motivation: Whatever feels good at the moment.
  • When I sin … I think it only affects me and don’t feel bad unless consequences impact daily life.
  • I trust … in not very much or many people. (I trust in myself.)
  • My greatest strengths/ weaknesses are … my strength is how easy-going I am; my weakness is that I won’t rise to meet challenges.
  • My identity is found in … what I think of myself, which is probably different than how others perceive me. (I pretend ‘I don’t care what others think or say about me.’)

What is the antidote?

The maturity process brought to us through accumulating responsibilies in the normal course of life. Paul talks about the transition to manhood specifically when he writes, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways” (1 Cor. 13:11). That comes in the middle of a poetic section on love. Love takes courage, putting away childish ways marked by a perspective of greed and one’s feelings of personal pride. We move past our sense of entitlement when we continually recognize all that we have comes by grace. Our hearts will overwhelm with gratitude, and we will live in humility before others and God. Maturing people grow in gratitude and humility because what drives them is something greater than themselves.

So, when a young man, for example, has not developed the skills necessary to enter a career, but has completed his college degree — something’s clearly wrong. The system has failed him and parental influences have not prepared him well for life as a responsible adult.

And it’s not just that the economy is down, though that could be the reason for joblessness for a season. Let me suggest that the real issue is that for years this young man was coddled into thinking the world revolved around him, and he was happy to live in that fantasy world. (“You can do and be anything you want to be,” his parents told him.) Things came easily, as he didn’t have to work or sacrifice too hard.

Then when a real challenge comes along he will escape into the world he knows best. This may help explain why for some men their hobbies are self-oriented (and take valuable time from their families to go ‘recreate’), while for maturing men their hobbies are renewing and constructive (the true meanings of ‘re-creation’).
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Withness.

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Everything changed when Jesus rose from the dead. He conquered sin, death and Satan. And then He told His followers:

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”

He not only sent them out — go do this! — He was to go with them. How did the Father send the Son? He went with Him. How are we ‘sent’ by Jesus. With Him, in relationship with Him, to live His life, a resurrected life that will never end. He is with us. One could call this “withness.”

There’s a famous quote from William Carey, an ambitious believer who was a key shaper of the modern missions movement. In what came to be called the “Deathless sermon,” Carey said:

“Expect great things from God;
attempt great things for God!”

I think Carey would agree: we don’t do things ‘for’ God. In Christ we get to do things with Him. Withness.

Grateful for the reminder from Pastor Matt Kottman in his Easter 2011 sermon on John 20:19-23, “So I Send You.”

 

For all you goldfish lovers.

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Since Chris Nye is at a hip and cool conference this week, he won’t have time to tell me not to post his words. Plus, he emailed them to me. Plus plus, below is part of a story about a goldfish.

This Sunday Chris will teach our middle schoolers on the Resurrection of Jesus (John 20:1-23).

Chris wrote a little preview for us:

I can remember when my first goldfish, Bowser, died. I had bought Bowser on sale at the local pet store after begging my dad for 25 cents. He was trying to talk me out of it, telling me that I wouldn’t feed it, that cleaning the bowl would be difficult, but I insisted over and over again that I would take care of him and love him forever.

It would be only three weeks before Bowser died. But I would like to take this time to defend myself: I fed Bowser, I cleaned his bowl, and I even gave him a nice spot in the shade on the counter in the kitchen. Even though I followed all the directions perfectly, Bowser still died.
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What’s Your Type? Wired to engage the Bible.

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We all talk about the things we are excited and confident to speak about. I’ve noticed many men need both of those elements (enthusiasm and confidence) to open up, whereas women are more apt to speak on themes and topics they are excited about, and ask questions when we lack confidence. So, while I rejoice that women around the globe are diligently studying the Scriptures, I lament that us men tend to let others seek God for us and we’ll just sit here and watch. We’re missing out.

Yesterday I borrowed from the May/June 2011 Bible Study Magazine feature, Breaking Down Your Bible Study Type. The author listed five types of people who engage the Bible: the Newbie, the Perpetual Planner, the Nonconformist, the Extreme Extrovert, and the Ascetic. I confessed I am a mix between the ascetic and the nonconformist, which isn’t always help since I lead people and its often helpful for a pastor to set the pace and pattern and not deviate from it. Thus I’ve learned to color between the lines and trade color crayons with other people too.

Are their others? I think so. Today I want to expand the list of “types” to include many of those I interact with weekly.

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What’s Your Type? Breaking down how you engage the Bible.

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I’m a sucker for good content wrapped in stellar design. So, when a publisher like Logos takes an interest (Bible study) and wraps it in a magazine with great typography, apt use of white space, and plenty of well-made charts, I have a hard time setting it aside.  The magazine passes what I call the ‘six foot test’ — from six feet away do you want to move closer and read it? Yep. Things like that don’t get thrown away; they have some alluring quality making you want to hold onto them.

Bible Study Magazine is a great monthly read. And it’s not just for Bible nerds. Anyone from a novice to the curious to theo-dorks and everyone in between would benefit from BSM.

Their May/June 2011 issue has a special section “9 Ideas for Better Bible Study.” One of the nine is #2: Breaking Down Your Bible Study Type. An intro from author and BSM associate editor Rebecca Kruyswijk:

What’s your Bible study “type”? Are you the newbie or the planner? The nonconformist or the extrovert extreme? We don’t like to think we fit into categories, but we certainly need to examine the habits that keep us from interacting with the Bible.

Recognizing who we are, and how we’re wired, will help us launch into meaningful and life-transforming devotions before God. Kruyswijk gives five categories or labels for people who seek to study the Bible:
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So beautiful it hardly seems real.

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Video of the Milky Way galaxy in a timelapse which grasps only a fraction of its vast beauty:

The One God created all this. He spoke it into being. How great and beautiful this Creator must be!

Just as Nehemiah described as he prayed:

You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.
—Nehemiah 9:6

 

A transforming moral imperative. (It’s more fun to obey.)

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“Christians today will understand that biblically authentic Christianity is never merely a matter of rules and regulations, of public liturgy and private morality. Biblical Christianity results in transformed men and women—men and women who, because of the power of the Spirit of God, enjoy regenerated natures. We want to please God, we want to be holy, we want to confess Jesus is Lord. In short, because of the grace secured by Christ’s cross, we ourselves experience something of a transforming moral imperative: the sins we once loved we learn to fear and hate, the obedience and holiness we once despised we now hunger for. God help us, we are woefully inconsistent in all this, but we have already tasted enough of the powers of the age to come that we know what a transforming moral imperative feels like in our lives, and we long for its perfection at the final triumph of Christ.
—Don (D.A.) Carson, Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, pp. 31-32.

 

Today: groan with the earth.

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It’s not every year the the events of Holy Week align with Earth Day. But, when we think about it, it makes more than a little sense that Earth Day (today) is also Good Friday. Tonight I get to speak a meditation on the crucified Christ. We will gather to sing about the day God-in-a-bod died, the climax to the Story of the world.

The created world we live in has a stake in what happened on the day the Creator suffered at the hands of His creation. We not only trash the earth with our consuming and wastefulness; we trash the Creator with our willful sin and rebellion. (Seems like one is the symptom, while the other is the cause.)

Paul helps us see this connection:

18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we await for it with patience.
—Romans 8:18-25

While we know the Holy Week leads up to Easter, the day to celebrate the ultimate Victory, we recognize we live in a good-friday-world, full of suffering and rebellion. We suffer not as complete victims, while the created order was not complicit in our rebellion. So, we meditate on Earth Day as part of the truths of Good Friday, in hopes that the full weight of what happened on Resurrection Sunday will be ours. Christ conquered all His enemies — sin, death, Satan, and our rebellion — to bring us to God. The Creator makes us His change agents in this world, as we experience the power for transforming coming not from us but from Him and through us.

In this hope we who trust in Christ have been rescued, and are being rescued. Celebrate Earth Day by looking to the Cross where our Savior — our only Hope — willingly gave Himself for us.

 

Fear and Desire.

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Kari writes:

The Long Road“Fear and desire are the motivators of all that we do. And of course they are connected. We desire that which will take us as far as possible from our fears, and we fear that which will take us as far as possible from what we desire. Both can be good, both can be bad. But we are wise to consider them and get down to the bottom of both–because whether we like it or not that’s what will drive all that we do.”

 

Worth a read: Counterfeit Gospels.

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The Good News in 3-D:

  1. The Gospel Story // Creation ➙ Fall ➙ Redemption ➙ Restoration (the storyline of Scripture, and of the world)
  2. The Gospel Announcement // Jesus Christ our Substitute, who gave Himself for us in order to bring us to God
  3. The Gospel Community // Jesus purchased a people to embody His message, people who live in a new reality, being zealous for good works, living His life

We need all three to faithfully believe, embody, and proclaim the Good News of Jesus. When we negate one, we have a partial or incomplete gospel, that while perhaps not direct heresy will dissolve the foundation of our hope in Christ. These are ‘counterfeit’ Gospels, where we have tweaked God’s message to soften it and suit our preferences. Just about every time, counterfeit gospels represent either a dilution of the truth or a truth that is out of proportion. Sadly, these watered down versions never satisfy our longings.

Author Trevin Wax summarizes the message of his new book — Counterfeit Gospels: Rediscovering the Good News in a World of False Hope — with a video trailer:

Wax takes aim at these six ‘counterfeit’ gospels Wax in his book (p. 210):