If you’re familiar with my blog, you know that I post fairly often, typically about every other day. However, since Km and I left Fort Worth back on June 20 to visit mine and her parents in the Carolinas, I just haven’t had the time during the day, nor the energy at night, to post as regularly. It has been a great trip so far and we’ve stayed pretty busy. Kim and I have also probably done more traveling on this trip than ever since I made a personal trip to the place where I grew up to see an old friend and my horses, going to Myrtle Beach with Kim’s family, and going tomorrow to visit my sister and her new husband in Tennessee. And then, we still have to drive a good 16 hours on Sunday back to the Lone Star State.

I’ve missed blogging, but taking some time off has allowed me to free up my mind whereas back in Fort Worth before we left I felt like I was hitting the wall with respect to coming up with fresh ideas and thoughts concerning material for blogging as well as in my relationship with the Lord. Yet, I do not believe that I was in any kind of spiritual rut. It just felt good to have a little change of scenery to jog the mind and heart.

Nonetheless, I am excited to get back in the swing of things and I have some posts in mind that I’m looking forward to writing. Don’t give up on me yet. Lord willing I will be back to my normal blogging routine soon. In the meantime, it would be wonderful if you all could continue to lift up in prayer Kim and our little baby in the womb. She is about 11 weeks pregnant and everything is going great thus far. Also, I’m looking for a full-time job that will be able to replace Kim’s salary and benefits as a teacher so that once the child is born (approximate due date is January 16) she can come home from work and not have to go back. Both of us would really appreciate your prayers concerning these matters.

Until later or til He comes!

Billy

Well, Kim and I made it safe and sound to the Carolinas. Right now we are staying with her parents in Wagener, SC, and later this evening, we are going to be making our way with them to Myrtle Beach where we will be staying til Saturday. Woo hoo! Still, to her family’s amazement, I brought a mini-library with me so that I could keep my reading going. You can never coast. Plus, I don’t want to give Bret Rogers a chance in catching up with me on knocking out books on our Ph. D. reading bibliographies. Nonetheless, I have little time to read what I brought as well as time to blog. But I wanted to squeeze this one in real fast.

I’ve been reading Francis Schaeffer’s third book, Death in the City, which has proved to be just as profound and prophetic as his other works. This was the case before I even reached the chapter that I want to share with you today. In Death in the City, Schaeffer includes chapter 5 which is called, “The Persistence of Compassion.” As I began reading its contents, I was at once touched and ministered to by Schaeffer’s thoughts and encouragement regarding the necessity for a messenger of God (based upon Jeremiah’s situation) to continue in compassion towards those whom God has ordained for his message to reach despite the fact that his words always seem to fall upon deaf ears or that persecution is always what seems to follow obedience to God as his faithful ambassador.

Have you ever been discouraged in doing the Lord’s work? I can testify to this from some very real examples having served in two difficult church positions where I felt like a voice crying in the wilderness. But, although the circumstances are so costly and sometimes can be quite harmful in many different areas of your life such as your health or even your marriage, there is a waking feeling deep down that keeps you coming back for more. Compassion. Love. Brokenness. If you are a believer, then there ought to be an unending reservoir of mercy and compassion in your heart towards those who had not heard nor heeded God’s Word for repentance.

Schaeffer cites Jeremiah 15:10 as an example of a heart discouraged as result of struggling for the Lord among a people who will not turn from their wicked ways, “Woe is me, my mother, that you bore me, a man of strife and contention to the whole land. I have not lent, nore have I borrowed, yet all of them curse me.” In response to Jeremiah’s lament, Schaeffer wrote, “I am glad Jeremiah said that, because I have known discouragement too. And if you are being faithful in your preaching and not just opting out, in a culture like ours you too will experience times of discouragement (82).”

However, don’t misunderstand Schaeffer’s reply. The emphasis is not on the discouragement, but rather that the discouragement is a sign that you are actually waging war for God. The purpose of this chapter is not to validate discouragement in the believer’s life. Instead, what Schaeffer wants to show is that if you can’t identify with Jeremiah’s lament as a prophet of God, there’s a good sign that maybe you aren’t preaching his Word at all. Schaeffer goes on to share,

And you say, how can a man of God be discouraged? Anybody who asks that has never been in the midst of the battle; he understands nothing about real struggle for God. We are real men. We are on this side of the Fall. We are not perfect. We have our dreams, our psychological needs, and we want to be fulfilled. There are times of heroism as we stand firm and are faithful in preaching to men who will not listen. But there are also times when we fell overwhelmed (82).

It is definitely a heroic feeling to resolve as a young preacher that you are going to go to the small churches who have been abandoned for larger church scenes, or that you are going to go overseas where no man has gone before. But it is a much different experience once you have arrived and your story never becomes something worthy of a movie script for the masses. However, God uses the reality of these situations to get our minds and hearts right. We are to preach. We are to herald his coming. We are to call all men everywhere to repent. And these demands have nothing to do with whether or not people will turn and obey. Yet there remains the fact that we still should be looking out over the people with heart-wrenching compassion as we long to see them awake from their blindness and see Jesus Christ, the light of the world. Again Schaeffer adds:

It is possible to be faithful to God, and yet to be overwhelmed with discouragement as we face the world. In fact, if we are never overwhelmed, I wonder if we are fighting the battle with compassion and reality, or whether we are jousting with paper swords against paper windmills (83).

I hope these words have ministered to you in some way. I know that Schaeffer’s admonitions gripped my heart in this chapter, especially in light of having some familiarity with his life and the radical persistence he had in showing compassion to endless amounts of people, never failing to preach God’s Word. It can be hard sometimes. Let’s not try to be super-spiritual and deny this fact. But as ministers of God, we must press on in faith, content in obedience to God’s will, even when we rarely see any fruit from our labors. Ultimately, our peace and satisfaction must be found in him, and we will be quick to find that our joy in him will sustain us when happiness in others is lost.

And what is Schaeffer’s final words to this chapter? “Keep on, keep on, keep on, keep on, and then KEEP ON!”

A friend and I are reading through the book Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be) this summer and discussing the chapters two at a time. So far I have been very impressed with their assessment of the Emergent Church and with the fact that the authors have not taken this work as an excuse to jab their opponents in the kidneys every other sentence. It has been a fair and gentle critique of the Emergent Church and its philosophy/theology.

However, I must say that I was a little nervous about reading the first chapter due to its title, “Journey: Are The Pilgrims Still Making Progress?“. I thought to myself as I began to turn the pages, “Am I Emergent and don’t know it?” As you can tell, it’s no secret that I am in favor of the “pilgrim” or “journey” motifs for viewing Christian spirituality. In fact, for about the past 6 or 7 years, I have built most of my approach to the Christian walk and worldview around concepts such as these. Needless to say, I took a deep breath and started to make my way through this chapter for fear that I was possibly about to have most of what I held dear rebuked.

The chapter begins with two quotes that set the tone for what follows. The first is one from Leonard Sweet which immediately serves to reveal just exactly how the Emergents view the concept of “journey” as a Christian worldview. Sweet intimates that, “The Way is not a method or a map. The Way is an experience (30).” Here is where I began to let out a sigh of relief when I realized that my emphasis on “journey” as a preferred lens through which to view the Christian life is quite different from how others are interpreting it. Kevin DeYoung, one of the authors of this book and the author of this particular chapter, shared a personal encounter he had with a seasoned musician in church one day where the man proceeded to unload many of his unique stories and experiences on DeYoung. During this conversation, DeYoung noted that the man said something to him that has never left him. Commenting on the philosophy behind a large deal of the folk music scene, the man stated that, “In the music scene it’s really cool to search for God. It’s not very cool to find Him (32).” I’ve noticed that this aspect is very evident in secular music, and now I feel that it has been slowly making headway into the more defined Christian music scene in some respects, perhaps even credited to the influence of the Emergent church on Christian art circles. (On a side note, as I have celebrated the downfall of the fluffy and superficial CCM movement, I have begun to mourn the fact that now Christian artists have felt loosed from the chains of certainty and explicitness in their lyrics, making it much harder for listeners to find God, and more so, the gospel in their music. I’m all for creativity and originality; however, I’m not sure where we have gotten the idea that art always has to be in the abstract. I would like to see more of my favorite singer/songwriters spend more time in the Psalms and come to an awareness that there is nothing unspiritual or unoriginal about singing explicitly to God and his salvation.)

DeYoung goes on to add that spirituality in the West, as mirrored in the simple observation from the man above concerning the music scene, says that “The destination matters little. The journey is the thing (32).” Once I reached this part of the chapter, I was greatly relieved inasmuch as I was assured that I have in no way advocated this type of approach to the Christian life. I hope that this is clear to all of my readers by just glancing at my web address to this page: abettercountry.wordpress.com. For me, there is no journey apart from the destination. Yet, according to DeYoung, Emergents try to have their cake and eat it too. He writes, “The journey is more wandering than directional, more action than belief, more ambiguous than defined. To explain and define the journey of faith would be to cheapen it (33).” Cheapen it? How can you cheapen the journey by explaining and defining the one thing that gives it value?

I don’t know about you, but if the above definition is in fact true of the Christian life, then it seems like we are more akin to the Grateful Dead than Abraham. This is what I’ve tried to show in my study on the Sojourner. Looking back on Abraham as the prime example of how what the Word teaches in contrast to the emphasis being placed on the journey itself, we can clearly note that God’s original calling on Abraham’s life in Genesis 12 was explicity destination driven. And even though God was taking Abraham to a physical place on this earth, we see that Hebrews testifies that Abraham never viewed his arrival at the Promised Land as the final stop in his journey. In Hebrews 11:10, the author comments, “For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” In other words, though the actual Promised Land on earth was a real destination, Abraham was more concerned about arriving at a heavenly Promised Land, the home of the One True God. Although the journey should be one of “joy” (note reference to my blog’s title), it never should be an end in itself. When the Christian life seeks to find meaning and purpose within its own adventure rather than looking urgently for the Father over the horizon, then there is a much deeper problem than mere misdirection that must be addressed. And I will attempt to discuss that issue in a subsequent post.

Last month, I published two posts (Part I and Part II) in response not only to William P. Young’s unorthodox portrayal of the doctrine of the Trinity and the Gospel in his new fiction book The Shack, but even more so in response to the collective shrugging of the shoulders from Christians who dismissed Young’s unacceptable allegorization of the One True God in order to retain and praise his depiction of the Gospel. Thankfully, the book was brought to my attention as soon as it was gaining a lot of popularity from many circles which gave me the opportunity to share with several people inside and outside of the blog. However, the same question continues to spark controversy that, no matter how much I am aware of the theological state of most Christians (with a little help from David Wells and his books), it still leaves me utterly dumbfounded and scratching my head. In some of these discussions and others that I’ve heard about through secondary sources, I have found myself quoting aloud and in my head more than ever the classic words of Cool Hand Luke’s prison warden, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” The question that keeps rising is, “What in the world does the doctrine of the Trinity have to do with the Gospel?” And I must confess, the reason that I continue to be left speechless is not due to the fact that I have become a stuffy seminary student who sits in his ivory tower doing theology with me, myself, and I. This could not be farther from the truth. In fact, I know that I would have acted with the same level of passion and intensity in response to those who believe that the Gospel and the Trinity are somehow disconnected realities before I had ever taken any of my Christian education courses, whether at seminary or in college.

I grew up with a very high understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity and never thought for a single moment that there could be a Gospel apart from its God. In a similar case, I recall one of my first theologically shocking experiences as a youth pastor in South Carolina when I began teaching a singles, young adults, teenagers sunday school class and was astonished when I mentioned the Trinity and received nothing in return but blank stares. I remember quizzing a twenty-something in the class who had been in church his whole life and yet confessed as to never having heard the word “Trinity”. Since then I have come to realize that his situation was not unique. In fact, it has been all too common. And now, with the impact of The Shack, this truth is becoming clearer.

On my first post, I made it plain where I stood with respect to the necessity of the Trinity for there to any Gospel at all. Later a person submitted a comment who said that he was surprised by the resoluteness of my declaration that there could be no Gospel apart from the doctrine of the Trinity. He posed a set of very thoughtful and honest questions regarding how I came to my position. Here are his questions: (1) What is it about the Trinity that causes it to be so central to the gospel do you think? (2) What do you think the heart of the gospel is if it is so lost apart from the Trinity?

In his message, he said that the best way to respond to him would be via email. So I waited and prayed and wrote him a brief email attempting to answer his questions in a non-confrontational or argumentative manner. I have yet to hear back from him. However, I still want to encourage discussion on this issue. Since his comment on my post, I’ve been asking my friends and even my wife this question, “Why is the Trinity necessary for the Gospel?” And so I want to ask you. How would you answer this question? Can the Gospel of Jesus Christ exist apart from an orthodox view of the Trinity? Can we dispense of this doctrine and all of its complexity and still expect to retain the simplicity of a saving and redeeming Gospel message? What do you think? The purpose of this post is to put the ball back in someone else’s court. I wish to hear what you all think because this issue has been lingering over my head now for a while and I am curious as to what others perceive about it. Through this post, I would hope to start some very healthy and fruitful dialogue about the Trinity and the Gospel. I long for the doctrinal purity of the Church so that we might grow more and more in the knowlege and love of our Savior Jesus Christ. Furthermore, I desire to live under the banner of Francis Schaeffer’s motto, namely, “to give honest answers to honest questions.” How would you reply to these “honest questions”?

If you can remember, a little while back I pointed you all to a set of lectures that could be downloaded in an audio or video format by Dr. Al Mohler on the New Atheism movement delivered at Dallas Theological Seminary. Now, I’m not a prophet or a son of a prophet, but in that post I made the comment that I really hoped that Mohler would convert his lecture series into a book, and now, I believe that wish has come true. I just so happened to search to see if Mohler was coming out with a published form of these speeches anytime soon and found an entire website devoted to promoting its upcoming release.

Although nowhere on the website does Mohler come outright and say that his new book is the publicized version of his lectures, the content description and philosophy behind the thesis is exactly parallel to the what he spoke on at DTS. I love the title for the book, which is, Atheism Remix: A Christian Confronts the New Atheists. I won’t steal Mohler’s thunder since the book is supposed to be about 112 pages, but “Atheism Remix” is a perfect title to illustrate just exactly how the “New Atheism” has arisen in our culture in terms of its arguments and even publicity. Mohler demonstrates this in his lectures, and I’m sure also in his book, that the “New Atheism” differs from older versions insofar as atheism has never been praised by the culture as a preferred worldview in the manner it has today. In the past, no one ever thought it was popular to disbelieve in the existence of God. Now, as a broad generalization, theism, but even more so Christianity, in our culture is gradually becoming something that is frowned upon. This, and many other critiques, contribute to Mohler’s assessment of the “New Atheism” with respect to how what we are hearing from the popularized books and speeches from the leading atheists today is much different than what has been encountered in the past, primarily since the Enlightenment.

The book is due out sometime in July. The website gives various details and descriptions about its content as well as a brief audio clip from Mohler telling his motivations behind writing it. There is also a link for pre-order and several other endorsements. Check it out, I’m excited to see a resource on how to respond to this movement in today’s culture from one of evangelicalism’s and Southern Baptist’s most influential and intellectual leaders. I know it will be well worth the money spent.

• Click here to view the website for Atheism Remix.
• Visit Al Mohler’s personal website where you can gain access to articles, his blog, and radio program.
• Visit The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s website where Mohler is the president.