TRUTH AND GRACE VENTURES

Last Thursday, the Servants Quarters community gathered to discuss 40 Days of Nothing, our walk together through this season of Lent.  In undertaking 40 Days of Nothing, we have entered a season of intense, deliberate reflection, self-denial and, hopefully, transformation.  We are striving to limit our consumption to the basic necessities, resisting the empty promises of the world that we can find well-being through indulging our endless wants and instead focusing on God’s promise that His grace is sufficient. 

The spirit of our discussion and the character of my new friends impressed me greatly.  Our discussion topic, revolving as it did around radical self-denial, is not particularly attractive on its face.  On the contrary, it seems to possess significant potential to generate feelings of depression and self-pity.  In my opinion, though, our time together could be best characterized as joyful.  Despite the nature of the material and its serious implications, the room was filled with laughter and joking and a sense of hope.  Perhaps some would suggest that it was nervous laughter, but I believe the atmosphere was born of a common sense of peace not unease.  These young leaders shared thoughts and stories evidencing not only a commitment to allow God to transform them, but a willingness to share that blessing with others.  I believe that was the immediate reason for the hope permeating our time together. 

What did we discuss?  Here’s a taste: 

We shared details of what we are denying ourselves and which disciplines we plan to undertake.  Each person’s commitment is unique.  I have my own habits and weaknesses.  You have yours.  Some in our group, for example, are inclined not so much to acquisitiveness as busyness.  For them, 40 Days of Nothing will involve not a decrease in consumption but a decrease in activity, a slowing of the pace, leaving stillness in which the soft voice of God may be heard.

We debated whether to share with others what we have undertaken during the season.  After all, Jesus taught that we are to care for our appearance when fasting “so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting” (Matthew 6:18).  He warned against praying like “the hypocrites [who] love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men” (v.5), and against letting our left hand know what our right hand is doing when giving to the needy (v.3).  Does this mean that we ought not share with others concerning our journey through Nothing?  Or does it mean only that we ought to check our motives for doing so?

We talked about what types of responses we might expect from others who learn about our radical (by contemporary American standards) commitment.  Some of our friends and loved ones have warmly welcomed the idea of trading needless consumption for spiritual transformation, and have decided to join the fun!  Praise God.  On the other hand, experience and the Scriptures indicate that, no matter how gently or innocently we share our story, some will react with anger and defensiveness.  People have called the Compactors “un-American” and “anti-capitalist”;  others have called them and the folks behind Buy Nothing Day a threat to the economy and the American way of life.  Add to that the reality that we are motivated by a desire to become more like Christ, and we can expect some people to hate us and our testimony without reason (John 15:18-25).  My hope and prayer is that we are able faithfully to follow the example of St. Paul, respectfully departing from those who sneer and turning instead to nurture those who are drawn to the truth (Acts 17:32-34).

Posted by Ramsey Wilson at 05:12 PM | Permalink

T.M. Moore offers important advice for those who, like me, may have been drawn to biblical worldview studies by the prospect of acquiring information.

I get the impression sometimes that for many of those engaging in this [worldview] conversation, “Biblical worldview” refers to a raft of propositions to be developed, adumbrated, embraced, proclaimed, and defended against the unbelieving worldviews of our day—a category of knowledge, a system of beliefs or views about reality that we propose in contradistinction to the manifestly bankrupt worldviews of our modernist/postmodernist generation. Worldview equates to knowledge for many people. When you know the Biblical worldview, your job is to propound and defend it against all comers.

Certainly this apologetic dimension is part of what we intend by pursuing this conversation over Biblical worldview. We want the followers of Jesus Christ to understand the full ramifications of His Lordship, the profound implications of His all-embracing truth, and the utter beauty and goodness of the system of faith that we have received from the Apostles and the grand tradition of our forebears.

But the Scriptures never equate knowledge with knowing, and, in Biblical terms, the latter is by far the more important idea. Anyone can get knowledge; only those who make proper use of it can arrive at a place of knowing.

So how can we know when we know, as well as when we don’t know?

Read it all

Posted by Ramsey Wilson at 09:26 AM | Permalink

Posted by Ramsey Wilson at 10:31 PM | Permalink

When Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, February 21, the Servants Quarters community will embark on 40 Days of Nothing.  As described in the Book of Common Prayer,

The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting.  [Likewise, we are invited] in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.

The Litany of Penitence for Ash Wednesday calls on us to confess, among other things,

the pride, hypocrisy and impatience of our lives, [o]ur self-indulgent appetites and ways, . . . our exploitation of other people, . . . our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves, [o]ur intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, . . . our blindness to human need and suffering, . . . our indifference to injustice and cruelty, . . . our waste and pollution of [God’s] creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us . . . . 

Having confessed, we turn to the Lord, praying that He would restore us and accomplish in us the work of His salvation so that we may reflect His glory in the world.  This is why we will undertake 40 Days of Nothing, so that we may honor our Lord by deliberately and systematically identifying and removing obstacles that impede our relationship with Him. 

What will 40 Days of Nothing look like from a practical perspective?  Because the culture’s materialistic onslaught ensnares each of us in different ways, 40 Days of Nothing will look different in each of our lives.  But we will share the same motivation (described above), as well as a commitment to (1) limiting our acquisition and consumption to what we need rather than what we want, and (2) seeking to use the resources we save to the benefit of God’s Kingdom.  To see how one family recently implemented this concept, see 30 Days of Nothing.

When we gather next, on February 22, we will discuss the contours and specifics of our individual plans, lending each other a hand in discerning between needs and wants, and discussing what we might do, individually or collectively, with the resources we conserve.  In preparation for this session, it might be useful for you to spend some time reflecting on similar movements against consumerism such as the “Compactors” (see here and here), Adbusters and people inspired by Judith Levine’s book Not Buying It:  My Year Without Shopping. 

Posted by Ramsey Wilson at 03:37 PM | Permalink

Keith Plummer offers an interesting perspective on the American evangelical “impulse to stamp a Scripture verse on every imaginable object.”

In large part we have an anemic doctrine of creation. Our conviction that God is the maker of heaven and earth should be evidenced in more ways than ongoing debates with evolutionists. Certainly, there’s a need for such apologetic activity but the doctrine of creation, like all biblical doctrines, is not given primarily for the purpose of our defending it but for our living it.

How do we live the doctrine of creation? By affirming along with God that his creation, though cursed on account of humanity’s rebellion, is still good and is given to us to richly enjoy with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:4; 6:17). As Michael Wittmer says in his book, Heaven is a Place on Earth:

Because we know that this creation is the good gift of God, we are not only permitted but encouraged to enjoy it as is. Unlike those who think that worldly objects are somehow enhanced by stamping Scripture verses on them, Christians who understand the goodness of this world celebrate the freedom to enjoy God’s creation as is. We no longer need to sanitize secular items with our sanctified slogans to make them suitable for Christian consumption....In fact, our feeble attempts at baptizing creation tend to cheapen both it and the gospel (p. 66-67).

If believers really grasped this, many Christian businesses would go belly up and perhaps Christian “bookstores” would become bookstores again.

(HT:  JollyBlogger)

Posted by Ramsey Wilson at 08:56 AM | Permalink