Everything is Backwards

My favorite moment in all of the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis is the last part of the final book, The Last Battle. The children enter into the “real Narnia” through a narrow door and find that this new Narnia is even more beautiful and more real than the one they had known.

They are constantly invited to come “further up and further in.” At each successive turn, just when they think they had arrived at their destination, they found that something more spectacular was yet beyond and they needed to go even further in to reach it. And so it went, journeying further up and further in, always more elated than the moment before.

From the book:

For them, it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever, in which every chapter is better than the on before.

This part of the book really made me long for heaven, because that is what the New Creation (aka “heaven”) will be like. We will be totally fulfilled and joyous and lacking nothing, yet each day will bring greater experiences of that fulfillment in God than the day before. The life we have been living for as many years as we have been alive is merely the title page and cover. Everything you have ever done in your life will amount to little more than a publisher’s stamp in eternity.

So I wrote a song about it and would like to share it with you. We have sung it at my church in Louisville the last couple of weeks and it has gone over pretty well, I think. I hope these lyrics make you long for God in eternity like it does me.

Further Up and Further In
written by Michael Clary and Andy Barlow

Further up and further in
The master bids us come
To see and taste the foreign fruit
The savior’s blood has won

Come and drink your heart’s content
The water without price
Recline and dine, the finest wine;
The blood of sacrifice

[Chorus]
Further up and further in
So much deeper than you’ve ever been
Further up and further in
Into the love that washed away our sin

The Bride adorned from those reborn;
Dressed in her proud array
Ascending glories of the Lamb
Are burning new each day

Clothed in linen, pure and bright,
And crowned in righteousness
The bridegroom loves her, his delight
Eternal love to her express

Perfect Eden; perfect rest
God’s dwelling place with man
The work of Christ has been fulfilled
He sits at God’s right hand

A thousand years now distant past
The joys have just begun
Yet further up and further in
The master bids us come!

Few people actually think of themselves as racist. It is social suicide.

But that doesn’t keep people from harboring subtle prejudices in their hearts that may seem innocent enough. Some of the most bigoted things I have ever heard from other peoples’ mouths were often preceded by the phrase, “I’m not a racist, but…”

Many feel that racial reconciliation should be sought — as long as white daughters don’t marry black men, or as long as black daughters don’t marry white men. Of course, this is all couched in the sincerest of concerns, such as, “I’m not a racist, but I just think that this will cause unnecessary problems in your marriage. What will people think?” Or, “I’m not a racist, but what if you have children? Do you really want them to grow up being half-white and half-black?”

When I was working at a Circuit City store once, I had a customer who was buying a computer from me. While asking some questions, he looked past me and saw an inter-racial couple in an adjacent department. He didn’t hesitate to confide in me, “I just think that’s disgusting.” I not only found his remarks offensive, it was also offensive that he thought that he could share them with me, a total stranger!

How, then, can a bi-racial couple navigate the treacherous waters of bigotry in their marriage? These are some of the questions I hope to learn about as I seek to plant a church in Cincinnati. This article from the AP highlights some of the various issues involved in race and religion.

But one thing is certain: true racial unity does not come about by seeking unity as an end in itself; this is only fool’s gold. That is like building a friendship on being friends. Friendship is built on a common interest; a common love. There’s lots of talk in the media about racial reconciliation recently, but the talk has been about racial reconciliation for its own end.

This is idolatry. We cannot expect to see any traction in racial reconciliation until we are willing to unite around something other than race. We can still talk about it and work towards solutions, but unity for its own sake lacks unifying power.

I like A. W. Tozer’s solution:

One hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other… They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers meeting together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be were they to become “unity” conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified.

For this reason, I am convinced that a racially unified church is not only possible, it is more likely to unify than any government program or a litany of “conversations.”

And I dream of a racially unified church filled with racially unified marriages, too.

Because its in the top 100 places to raise a family.

CNN.com has a helpful article tracking and attempting to explain how the price of gas went from 90 cents to $4 a gallon in around 9 years.

Here’s a compendium of recent internet articles about the Queen City that I found interesting.

Cincinnati is a top ten city for relocation.

An urban wanderer gives an outsider’s honest take on Cincinnati. Cincy has an embarrassment of riches in top notch cultural institutions, parks, modern architecture, and several Fortune 500 company’s headquarters.

The Cleveland Free Times discusses the effects of sprawl on population centers in Ohio.

The Cincinnati Reds are on a tear, completing a 6 game win streak, the longest in the major leagues, having just swept in-state rival Cleveland Indians and Florida Marlins before that. Up next: the Dodgers.

I don’t like using this blog for personal updates, but I have a couple of updates worth publishing.

First: Our house is now under contract. We’re praying that there aren’t any problems with this and everything will go smoothly through the process.

We’re set to close on June the 27th, which means that we will be moving to Cincinnati at that time.

Second: We’re having another baby boy! Laura was convinced it was a girl all along, but I thought it was a boy. Reese is very disappointed.

You can track with our family and kids stuff at Laura’s blog.

As if we hadn’t already reached the lowest levels of Christian cheese, along comes Evangelical Idol.

If every Christian is called to be generous with their resources, how much should we give? To what extent should we sacrifice?

I am reading Tim Keller’s book Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road and he offers a helpful principle. “Be sure that your giving cuts into your own lifestyle so that the burden of the needy falls on you.” He is essentially arguing that if your giving habits do not alter your lifestyle in someway, you aren’t giving enough yet. You should give until you feel pinched.

He also quotes another book by Thomas Gouge, who said that “the poor have a right unto part of thine estate.” God supplies some of us with abundance so that we can steward it properly by giving to meet others needs. Gouge says that the poor man’s bread rots in my cupboard, the poor man’s clothes hangs useless in my closet, and the poor man’s gold rusts in my treasure chest.

What dollar amount out of your monthly income causes you to feel squeezed?

This would need to be determined by each person’s conscience, according to Keller. Are we squeezed when it forces fewer meals out in restaurants? Are we squeezed when we buy a higher mileage used car instead of a new car?

This is convicting for me, because I can force myself to squeeze when OPEC and the Saudi’s want more oil money to waste in Dubai by charging me $4 a gallon for gas, but did I squeeze myself enough for my poor neighbors down the street?

Pop Quiz.

First Question: Who are some of the most beloved figures of American Evangelicalism?

Answer. Consider these names: Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and Charles Hodge. Great theologians and preachers all.

Second Question: Even though most African American Christians believe in a generally evangelical theology, why do so few identify with evangelicalism as a broader movement?

Answer. Consider these names: Jonathan Edwards (owned at least 6 slaves), George Whitefield (slave owner, fought for legalization of slavery in Georgie, used slave labor in his orphanage, bought 20+ slaves in his lifetime), Charles Hodge (defender of the slave trade). Also, Charles Finney, D.L. Moody and Billy Graham all preached to segregated audiences even while on some level denouncing the slave trade (source: The American Evangelical Story by Doug Sweeney).

In other words, history shows us that white evangelical heroes of the American past have either outright participated in slavery or at least tacitly supported its through racist ministry practices. While Edwards was writing his brilliant essays on the Religious Affections, maybe he had a few slaves in the backyard working to provide food for him and his family to eat.

This is the evangelical slavery problem. Modern day American Christians benefit theologically from the writings and practices of incredibly influential men who directly supported something as wicked and inherently racist as slavery.

From the perspective of history, it is just short of miraculous that any slaves became Christians at all. The economics of the slave trade so intermingled with Christianity that few preachers were willing to denounce it because so many in their audience were profiting from it. At the same time, they continued to preach the gospel to slaves.

How could you preach some of the backwards verses of the Bible, such as proclaiming “liberty to the captives (Is 61:1),” all the while supporting the very system that enslaves them? Rev. Peter Randolph, a rural Virginia former slave once said that “the gospel was so mixed with slavery, that people could see no beauty in it, and feel no reverence for it.”

The paradox is that these preachers treated them as spiritual equals but as physical inferiors. The hypocrisy in this message is clear.

Many Christians even opposed the preaching of the gospel to slaves because they feared that Christian baptism not only freed slaves from their sins but this also implied freedom from slave owners as well. Some evangelists were so eager to preach to the slaves that they made agreements with slave owners to not preach on the deliverance of Israel from Egypt in order to not incite the slaves to seek their own emancipation.

This well intentioned agreement ended up being a pact with the devil.

Many slaves did indeed accept the gospel, but their “good news” wasn’t as good as the white man’s good news. This baggage has been passed down through the generations.

The question for us in this modern era is this: what can we do to remedy this situation?

My answer is to plant churches in racially diverse neighborhoods that embody the gospel racially, economically, and socially, until it becomes clear that the gospel of Christ is more unifying than our collectively divisive racist past. I will be chronicling my thoughts on this issue in the coming weeks.

Do you think a racially unified church is possible?

Backwards Verse of the Day #15: John 9:39-41

The state of unbelief in Christ is not a matter of whether or not one chooses to believe in Christ, but rather it is a much more profound condition. Throughout the Scriptures God calls this, in one form or another, “Spiritual Blindness.” The biggest problem with spiritual blindness is that those who are blind don’t know they are blind.

Here are a couple of examples.

1. Isaiah’s call to ministry in Isaiah 6 is to preach to people who “keep on seeing but do not perceive.”

2. When the ministry of the Messiah is summarized in Matthew 11, it includes this: “the blind receive their sight…”

3. Paul explains the power of the gospel by calling it a shining of the gospel’s light into spiritual darkness. God says “Let there be light!” to the spiritually blind person and “creates” light and sight in the unbeliever (2 Cor 4). This is the same as the creation account where God says “let there be light” into the dark void.

Conversion is a miracle of God restoring sight to those who are spiritually blind. If one thinks he can see, he cannot be healed because he does not recognize his own need.

This is what happened to the Pharisees in John 9.

Jesus said, “For judgment I came into this world, ?that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.

Since they refuse to acknowledge their blindness, they will never see. The blind man is a living parable to this fact. He knew he was blind, he called out to the one who could restore his sight, and his sight was restored.

This is exactly how it works in coming to faith in Christ. We acknowledge our own spiritual blindness, we call out to him who can restore our spiritual sight, God restores our sight. What we see when we first open our healed eyes is the beauty and wonder of the God who rescued us. Or in Paul’s words, we behold the “light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4).