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Contemporary Issues as Sidetracks

People who are too easily intimidated by the wickedness of any one generation and who panic over things which go wrong, are living so near their own day that they have lost the message of the ages which is full of such seeming disasters. It is they who run with their poultices and eyewash to meet the needs of the hour instead of abiding by the radical measures of the Word of God which gets down to the elements of the case. It is like trying to purify foul water at the tap, instead of at the reservoir or the poisoned stream. There is an application of the Word of God for even the most urgent contemporary situations, but if we get all hot and bothered about it, and myopically concentrate all our ministry on that, forever moaning from our pulpits about the evils of the day, what are the hungry sheep going to feed upon the while? The devil is a master of sidetrack.

-William Still, The Work of the Pastor, Kindle Loc. 1302

He continues,

But as a minister you cannot turn aside to deal with political or sociological questions. Who is going to perform your task of feeding the sheep if you do? What of the Kingdom of God? If all the ministers in one generation essayed the task of making our human conditions better, more decent and worthy so only a few were added to Christ, and those who were added were left as undernourished starvelings because the ministers were at the political and sociological front, what would happen to that generation’s representation in the heavenly repository? (Loc. 1312).

And,

Although in itself it is a good thing, a little temporary alleviation of the conditions of men on the earth is as nothing compared with the task of building a house of God of human, living stones, and a Kingdom of redeemed humanity come to Christly maturity (Loc. 1318).

While I’m in the pulpit foaming at the mouth like so many 24 Hour News pundits about what happened last week, who is going to feed the sheep? I need to feed them something they can’t get from Fox News or Facebook.

Should Christians Read and Quote Non-Christians?

John Calvin on Paul’s reference to a Cretan author in Titus 1:12:

12 One of themselves, a prophet of their own
I have no doubt that he who is here spoken of is Epimenides, who was a native of Crete; for, when the Apostle says that this author was “one of themselves,” and was “a prophet of their own,” he undoubtedly means that he belonged to the nation of the Cretans. Why he calls him a Prophet–is doubtful. Some think that the reason is, that the book from which Paul borrowed this passage bears the title Περὶ Χρησμῶν “concerning oracles.” Others are of opinion that Paul speaks ironically, by saying that they have such a Prophet — a Prophet worthy of a nation which refuses to listen to the servants of God. But as poets are sometimes called by the Greeks ( προφὢται) “prophets,” and as the Latin authors call them Vates , I consider it to denote simply a teacher. The reason why they were so called appears to have been, that they were always reckoned to be ( γένος θεῖον καὶ ἐνθουσιαστικόν)“ a divine race and moved by divine inspiration.” Thus also Adimantus, in the Second Book of Plato’s treatise Περὶ Πολιτείας after having called the poets υἵους Θεῶν “sons of the gods,” adds, that they also became their prophets. For this reason I think that Paul accommodates his style to the ordinary practice. Nor is it of any importance to inquire on what occasion Epimenides calls his countrymen liars, namely, because they boast of having the sepulcher of Jupiter; but seeing that the poet takes it from an ancient and well-known report, the Apostle quotes it as a proverbial saying. (228)

From this passage we may infer that those persons are superstitious, who do not venture to borrow anything from heathen authors. All truth is from God; and consequently, if wicked men have said anything that is true and just, we ought not to reject it; for it has come from God. Besides, all things are of God; and, therefore, why should it not be lawful to dedicate to his glory everything that can properly be employed for such a purpose? But on this subject the reader may consult Basil’s discourse (229) πρὸς τοὺς νέους, ὅπως ἂν ἐξ ἑλλ κ.τ.λ

Read the whole thing HERE. I came across this quote in an article by the Calvinist International a while back.

Calvin’s answer (to ‘Should we read and quote non-Christians’) is obviously ‘Yes.’

This is interesting to me for a number of reasons:

1) I like reading non-Christians and quote them regularly. It’s nice when Calvin has your back. (I decided to post this today because I am going to meet one of my own favorite ‘heathen’ authors today at a book reading).

2) It acknowledges common grace in non-Christian authors, which implicitly endorses the reading of non-Christian authors as a source of learning (rather than simply reading with a view toward critique).

3) Calvin explicitly says superstition is the only thing that keeps us from reading such.

4) Paul calls the Cretan a “prophet.” Calvin has no great explanation for this. But if you take G.K. Chesterton’s idea that a prophet is essentially someone who sees the world (under the sun) as it actually is, then there should be no quibbles about some non-Christians having a quasi-prophetic perception of the world. Chesterton put it this way:

…If we see what is the real trend of humanity, we shall feel it most probable that he was stoned for saying that the grass was green and that the birds sang in spring; for the mission of all the prophets from the beginning has not been so much the pointing out of heavens or hells as primarily the pointing out of the earth.

Religion has had to provide that longest and strangest telescope – the telescope through which we could see the star upon which we dwelt…

So then, a worldly prophet is someone who sees the world, particularly the age, with insight, and therefore can accurately describe the state of the fallen world. We are called to learn from such.

This doesn’t bode well for those who would tell us we should only read books from ‘trusted sources’ that will surely never lead us astray. Holding such a position, Calvin says above, is from nothing other than superstition.

The Preacher’s Self-Counseling

Unless the Word of God works for you, and solves the problems of your own life (I do not mean perfectly, but in the sense that you know where you are in relation to them), how can you expect that you will be able to make it work for others?

-William Still, The Work of the Pastor, Kindle Loc. 280

Do you use the Scriptures in order to deal with your own problems? Your own pain? Your own suffering? Does that actually work in your life? Are you familiar with the Scriptures enough to allow them to work? If not, don’t be surprised if people aren’t being helped by your preaching.

  • 2 Corinthians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

Chesterton on Following Advice and Being Different

I think I owe my success to having listened respectfully and rather bashfully to the very best advice, given by all the best journalists who had achieved the best sort of success in journalism; and then going away and doing the exact opposite. . .

I have a notion that the real advice I could give to a young journalist is simply this: to write an article for the Sporting Times and one for the Church Times and put them in the wrong envelopes…What is really the matter with almost every paper, is that it is much too full of things suitable to the paper.

– G.K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton

This quote now hangs on my office wall.

 

You Too?

Whenever I hear someone say they write to “express themselves,” my first thought is, nobody cares. Life is hard for everyone, some more or less than others, but it’s hard enough that a complete stranger demanding attention in order to express feelings about whatever is significant to them, personally, smacks of entitled bulls**t, aka privilege. I tell my students over and over, the purest way to express an emotion is to elicit that emotion from your reader. I say purest, not quickest or easiest. The expression is purest because the emotions are the reader’s, unadulterated and straight from their own motherboard.

The purest way to express an emotion is to elicit that emotion from your reader.

Conveying an emotion—fear, joy, anger, love, contempt—by eliciting that response from the reader makes the feeling shared. It’s those moments that make reading so worthwhile, those moments when we come across a passage that speaks to us, where the author simply nails it by putting into precise words a feeling, perception or experience that is so fleeting and nuanced we thought we were alone with it, or lacked the capacity to express it, to share it. Those lines that make you stop and think, Yes, that’s it, exactly, those are the moments when the writer and reader meet each other halfway. It’s the shared experience of emotion taking place above some chasm of time, distance, age, etc., that is the very nature of empathy. “Yeah, I get it.” “Me, too.” “I thought nobody else felt that way.” It’s the same note struck at the beginning of a friendship or love affair. “Yes, you get me.”

-Craig Clevenger, from The Safety of Transgression versus the Risk of Honesty (LitReactor.com)

In Jack Gilbert’s poem, Poetry is a Kind of Lying, he says,

Degas said he didn’t paint
What he saw, but what
Would enable them to see
The thing he had.

Preachers, evangelists, writers, people take note: it is not enough to be excited. It’s not enough that something gives you goosebumps. It’s not enough to tell someone that you love it or how it makes you feel, or to tell them that they should feel the way you do. You need to communicate it in a way that will actually make them feel the way you feel and see what you have.

Everything You Write is Autobiography

The good writer/artist/preacher disappears in his work, but that does not mean that he is not revealing himself:

Writing is revealing yourself, not concealing yourself. Revealing yourself does not necessarily mean exhibiting yourself. Revelation and exhibitionism may be the same thing, but not inevitably. If you conceal yourself, you are no writer. You may be a banker, a general, certainly a statesman—but not a writer. Writing need not be an unabashed revelation of the emotions, but when you write you express, even through other characters, what you are and who you are. You cannot repress and express—they are contradictory terms.

and

In everything you write there are two more characters than you think. There’s yourself, and there is your audience.

-Samson Raphaelson, The Human Nature of Playwriting, Kindle loc. 480, 1946

Everything you write is autobiographical. You are always a character. You cannot not work from your own experience and personality. The trick is that you should be on a mission of revelation, not exhibition.

The good preacher (and writer) reveals his heart, but never puts himself on exhibit. In the words of Spurgeon, his own chains clank as he preaches to himself, but the listeners won’t always discern the sound. They’ll think it is their chains clanking, and that he is actually preaching to them.