William Carey on Success

Posted on 31 January 2013 by Seth Meyers

Near the end of his life, the man who translated portions of the Bible into nearly two score languages said:

“I can plod and persevere. That is my only genius. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything.”

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Who Are We to Say that Lance Was Wrong?

Posted on 31 January 2013 by Seth Meyers

Last Wednesday while my bakkie rolled toward town for my weekly trip I listened to Feisel call into the national radio station, SAFM, to air his thoughts on their open line.

“Look, I don’t know what everyone’s getting upset about with Lance Armstrong. He did what everyone in that sport does.” Etc., etc.

The surprised announcer laughed out some question about whether we should change the rules for everyone. Lance broke the rules, and Mr. SAFM (and probably the vast majority of the listening audience) thought he should pay for the liberty he took.

Feisel however, was much more malleable. And I’m glad he called. At least he was trying to be—to a point—consistent.

If we can’t keep a rule, or if a fairly large segment of the population doesn’t like it, then let’s just let our legislation be honest with our action. Drop the rules that we don’t keep.

Is this not the situation that confronts us all today?

There is an obvious law that says, “Mothers should love their babies.” If a mother does not love her child, she has broken that rule known to all men because it is preprogrammed on our hard drives. But when that law conflicts with my strong desire to pursue my girlfriends or my voting block, then I will be faster than a speeding locomotive and able to leap over tall buildings in a single bound to justify a mother’s right to murder her baby. On average since I arrived in SA in 2004 well over 200 babies per day in this country have been murdered with consent of their mothers.

Or, we all know—in such a basic way that we don’t even think of it as a law, but of course it is—that a husband should be faithful to his wife in thought and action. Until he’s really tired of her because she’s not as perky as the latest wench who’s caught his eye. So says our inherently contradictory and ultimately inconsistent world. This law is broken repeatedly in divorce courts.

And we could expand our list of ways that the contemporary world not only breaks obvious rules, but revels in law-breaking. What I was reminded of so poignantly by Feisel’s call last week was that we are not law breakers when it comes to something we really care about. When it comes to our highest commitments—like sports—we will deal with criminals because of our love affair with pleasure and entertainment.

We live in a world of law breakers who incredulously gasp when someone implies that we should live as lawbreakers in all categories of life. Could it be that the essence of sin is inconsistency?

Nice wake up call, Feisel.

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10 Reasons Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is Better than Peter Jackson’s

Posted on 31 January 2013 by Seth Meyers
  1. Tolkien’s Faramir is a classic hero, whereas Jackson’s Faramir is a post-modern wimp with complex relationship problems.
  2. Tolkien’s Gollum has an internal heart problem that obliges him to sin and which he can’t overcome. Jackson’s good Gollum says at one point to the bad Gollum, “Go away and never come back!” At which Smeagol’s bad side actually goes away until the cruel environment in which Gollum is forced to live and work brings back the bad guy.
  3. Tolkien’s ring could only be destroyed by the power of Providence: Gollum “slips” on his own. Jackson has Frodo push Gollum. I guess his providence needed a little help.
  4. Tolkien had no crystal chicks. Peter Jackson couldn’t make it without spicing up the few girl parts to appease the modern feminist palate a little.
  5. Tolkien was written for adults who could follow a story. Jackson had to please the 20 year old video gamers by having—to pick just one example—a super cool elf run on top of a CGI cave troll to fire arrows down his throat while standing on said troll’s shoulders. Of course, in the book the troll doesn’t even get into the room.
  6. Tolkien wrote Sam and Frodo to be honest, loyal friends though Frodo was the obvious social superior. Jackson wrote Sam and Frodo to be… big surprise, a couple of peers who also have messy interpersonal problems including one of Jackson’s lowest dips where he has Frodo actually follow Gollum over Sam.
  7. Aragorn is a high and lordly king whose gaze cannot be held by either his friends (Eomer) or his foes (Sauron’s lieutenant). His will alone is sufficient to strengthen the men to enter the paths of the dead. Cut, cut, cut went Jackson’s scissors. Such heroes are far too heavy for today. They might make us feel bad since we obviously aren’t as good as them.
  8. Tolkien has some battles that are crucial to the plot, but occupy less than 30 pages out of 1,000. Jackson has scene after scene of gruesome orcs complete with creative ways to make blood fly.
  9. Tolkien wrote Theoden to be one more among many heroes. Jackson had him doubting and doting even after his “conversion.”
  10. Tolkien’s son and executor said, “They [Jackson and co.] eviscerated it [his dad’s classic tale] by making it an action movie for young people aged 15-25.”

And I haven’t even endured all the films.

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9 Problems with the Prosperity Gospel

Posted on 30 January 2013 by Seth Meyers

The prosperity gospel will find no corner in which to hide its head on this blog, so let me start with a simple list of problems inherent to the message that Jesus died to deliver us from poverty.

  1. The prosperity gospel is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
  2. The prosperity gospel urges sinners to commit idolatry.
  3. The prosperity gospel denies God’s sovereign purposes for pain as revealed in Scripture.
  4. The prosperity gospel ignores Biblical teaching on wealth.
  5. The prosperity gospel discourages logical thought about the Bible, a work ethic, sickness, economics, and politics.
  6. The prosperity gospel requires other heresies to support it such as deification and positive confession.
  7. The prosperity gospel inoculates people from hearing the truth because they think they already know Gospel.
  8. The prosperity gospel has never been accepted in the Christian church until the 1980’s.
  9. The prosperity gospel contradicts the lives of the many godly but poor believers in the Bible and history.
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If Only I Had Three Hands

Posted on 30 January 2013 by Seth Meyers

My right hand holds the London Baptist Confession of 1689 pretty firmly with only a few exceptions—like defining the pope as the antichrist (a pretty common hermeneutical conclusion back in the Luther-Calvin-Council of Trent days). And Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings rests comfortably in my left hand. My wife and I have read through the trilogy 5 times in 8 years of marriage. The last time through I even read the poems in Elvish.

These two books—one basically a pamphlet and the other a 1,000 page novel—summarize key aspects of my life. I want to believe right propositions about God, know objective truth about His revelation, and proclaim this body lucidly in whatever venues Providence opens up for me. That’s the Confession of Faith. We use it as textbook when training pastors, and my teammate and I have both worked through it with men in our church.

Tolkien stands for the wonder and intrigue that should grip the mind of a Christian who is eager to see the fingerprints of his Father in every area of life. Several years ago, when I first moved to South Africa, I began trying to find a trail back to God from everything I met with in life. Abraham Kuyper helped me do that. A few months before marriage I took my first visit to Lewis’ Narnia which helped me see the value of imagination in this process. The Lord of the Rings, with its languages, cartography, history, botany, anthropology, etc., etc. built walls, doors, and windows  on that foundation.

But I wish I had three hands because as important as these works are to me, I felt like I was neglecting one of my children by not putting John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God in the header for this blog.

On another occasion I plan to post a fuller interaction with the many practical, Biblical, and insightful sections of this book, but here suffice it to say, that Frame’s work fortifies the mind against hastiness in judgment. How often have I found myself assenting to some idea only to find my reasoning based on some passing stimulus rather than on real, logical bedrock.

Classic and enduring. Those are the watermarks I want to find on my conclusions. Frame’s book helps the thinker build stilts by which to get through the morass of post-modern triteness to the dry ground of appropriate and measured certainty.

I’ll go forward with two great works if I have to, but if I could carry three, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God would be a good choice.

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