When I need to travel by plane, I often catch a shuttle to the airport. This is one of those little buses that will pick me up at my door and drop me at the terminal. The service is a little bit expensive (and getting more so), at least compared to having Aileen drive me, but the cost is well worth it when compared to waking the family at 5 AM and bundling them into the car. That just does not work out well.

A couple of months ago, when heading from the airport to home, I noticed a little magazine in the seat pocket ahead of me and, with nothing else to do, dug it out and gave it a read. It was a tourist guide to Southern Ontario, focusing on Toronto and the cities and towns surrounding it. Naturally, I flipped about halfway through to the “O” section to see what the editors would say about my home town of Oakville. They had a lot to say, as it happens. They mentioned the beauty of the old neighborhoods along the shores of Lake Ontario where many of the homes have stood for 100 years or more and where you need not even apply unless you’ve got at least seven digits to put toward your home. They mentioned the main street with all its quaint shops, boutiques and cafes and suggested that a person could easily spend a day there browsing, shopping, eating, snapping photographs. They wrote of the beautiful harbor, of some of the provincial parks and of the little museum dedicating to preserving the history of the area. They declared Oakville an exceptionally beautiful town and a must-visit for anyone who happens to be in the area.

As I finished up the Oakville section, I couldn’t help but think, “Wow. Oakville sounds like a really great place!” The editors’ description of my town opened my eyes, or re-opened my eyes, to some of the beauty I have lost in its familiarity. I see so many of these things so often that they have lost their interest, lost what sets them apart. It brought to mind the old cliche, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” When I see those grand old homes, I see inflated real estate prices and snobby kids who attend tens-of-thousands-of-dollars-a-year private schools that pretty much set them up for life in the local old boy network (and where their high schools are called “colleges” just to set them apart). When I see Lakeshore Road, the main street, I think of overpaid merchandise and far too little parking. I have rarely ventured into the local parks and have never set foot inside the museum. I suppose I’ve pretty much taken my town for granted. In all its familiarity it has eventually generated contempt. It’s just Oakville, right?

I would like to say that since that day I’ve taken a renewed interest in my town and have begun to see it for what it is. Maybe in some ways I have. The last time I went down to the old part of town I did pause to take in some of those grand old homes and to appreciate their beauty. And there is beauty in those homes—more so, I think, than the new builds that fill so much of the rest of the town. We recently went down to the edge of Lake Ontario, right near the museum, to shoot some family photographs and couldn’t help but note the beauty of the parks and the unique character of the old part of the town. It is picturesque, without a doubt.

But even more than helping me appreciate the town I live in, simply reading this simple little magazine began to open my eyes to some of the other things in life I take for granted, some of the other things I’ve allowed to become too familiar. Some of God’s greatest gifts to me are the ones that are closest to me and it is discouraging that these are the very ones with which I am most likely to grow too familiar—so familiar that they begin to seem so drab, so…normal. The remarkable can so soon become unremarkable just by its closeness. The greatest gift can fade just because it is so accessible. Discontentment seems native to the human heart, at least in this sinful world. And I think we all are prone to allow the greatest, closest gifts to fade simply by virtue of their familiarity.

The Bible tells us repeatedly that we will eventually and inevitably begin to resemble the people we spend time with. If we walk with the wise we will become wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm (Proverbs 13:20). Much of the book of Proverbs deals with this very theme, warning the young and foolish to avoid similarly foolish companions. Such proverbs cannot always be taken too woodenly or literally, yet they do point us to an important truth. If you spend time with a person you will begin to resemble that person. Perhaps you will not resemble the person in appearance (unless you are a teenager) but at least in spirit, in thought, in attitude, you will. Experience shows me that this is true. This is one of the great blessings of the local church, that in the church the foolish are able to spend time with the wise, learning how to be like them.

Again we know this is true with teenagers, isn’t it? Many boys will drift toward older, cooler, more popular teens. They will do what they do, play what they play, wear what they wear, speak the words they speak, watch what they watch. In each of these things they give testimony that they want to be like the older boys. Maybe it is not too much to say that they want to be these older boys. Girls are no different. They find heroes and model themselves in that image. With each moment they spend with their heroes they learn to be more like them.

As adults we have probably learned to be a little bit more subtle. We have learned not to be quite so shameless. But still we gravitate toward the people we want to resemble. A man who wants to be rich and powerful will find any excuse to hobnob with powerful men. He will live where they live, drive what they drive. And as he spends time with such people, he will develop their thoughts and will look at the world in the same way they do. A woman who craves popularity will spend time around the women she deems most popular and, in so doing, she will begin to emulate them, hoping that she can capture the same formula that made them so popular.

It is easy to see this as a curse, to focus much on the fool and his folly. And while certainly it is true that the person who spends time with a fool will begin to be a fool himself, the opposite is also true. That we begin to look like the people we spend time with can be a great means of God’s grace. Have you ever considered that the people you spend time with are a reflection of the person you want to be?

I thought about this topic and wrote this far and then began to think about the people I love to spend time with and the blessing they are to me. Would this not prove a reflection of who I want to be? And from there I thought of the people I have spent time with in recent weeks and the character qualities, the fruits of the Spirit I would love to see in my life. It just so happens that I’ve been able to spend quite a bit of time with the men in my local church who have been set apart to serve as elders and pastors.

There is Murray whose love for people and whose genuine interest in them is unsurpassed. I am a person who is naturally shy and I can allow shyness to be an excuse to permit me to be reclusive. Murray’s love for people stands as both a challenge and an inspiration. And I mean that; he truly inspires me to grow in my love for others, to extend hospitality, to be a genuinely caring Christian. I love to spend time with Murray because I want to be like Murray.

There is Tom whose patient kindness resonates in my soul. I cannot think of anyone who has so powerful a combination of gentleness of spirit and firmness in the faith. Always ready with a word of encouragement, always eager to steer a conversation to spiritual matters, Tom serves relentlessly with kindness, with patience and with boldness. I want to be like Tom.

There is Julian who, though young the youngest of the bunch, exhibits such spiritual maturity. He is proof that though an elder is not allowed to be a young and immature Christian, a young man can be mature and be well-qualified to serve God as an undershepherd. In Julian I see a relentless desire to read Scripture, to study it, to live it. And through that I see such growth in maturity and godliness.

And there is Paul. From Paul I’ve learned to love and respect my wife as I’ve seen the way he loves and respects his wife. From him I’ve learned to refer to Aileen not only as my wife but as my bride. I love that word; it points to a freshness that looks back to the day that she was first given to me. And from Paul I’ve learned about the importance of, the skill of, applying the gospel to all of life. He loves the gospel and knows of the importance of living in the joy and freedom of that good news. And I love to spend time with him because I want to be like him, to resemble him in these ways and so many others.

In these men God has given me the opportunity to learn how to love, how to be gently bold, how to grow in maturity, how to treasure my wife and how to hold fast to the gospel. Each one has blessed me immeasurably. What a blessing it is that, by spending time with them, I can eventually be like them. And what a blessing that he who walks with the wise grows wise.

Several months ago I received an email from a person who had happened by this blog. As you will see in the excerpt of that email, she had been searching for information about original sin and its application to babies who die in infancy (or who die because of abortion). Google led her here. This is what she wrote:

I volunteer at a pregnancy resource center here in Southern California. I teach a post abortion Bible study for women. Until yesterday, I believed that all aborted babies, including two of my own, were in heaven with their Father. Then I had a conversation with a family member who thinks otherwise, and after that conversation I went looking for additional information. I found your two columns on the doctrine of original sin. I’ve been on the verge of tears ever since last night. The idea staggers me. I’m not writing to argue the point. I understand it’s what you believe and, for all I know, you may be right. Meanwhile, all the years of peace that I enjoyed seem to have evaporated. You may be doctrinally accurate, but I am utterly miserable. I feel like I’m back at the edge of the religious hell hole I crawled out of some years ago. Not a good place to be. I will have to do some serious thinking and praying.

The articles she references state my position on children who die in infancy—that the Bible simply does not tell us beyond any shadow of doubt whether all children who die in infancy are saved. I understand the position of those who declare “instant heaven” for any child who dies in infancy and I do hope that this is the case. However, I do not find that the Bible tells us one way or another. Important to the discussion is my understanding of the doctrine of original sin. From this doctrine we know that no person is born innocent. Rather, in some mysterious way all of us fell in Adam and because of his sin are born as sinners. There is no one who is entirely innocent before God, even in the womb. It was this doctrine that so surprised and so upset this woman as she came to understand its implications. After all, a biblical understanding of original sin must have implications to everyone who ever lived or died.

While her story and her state is sad, I find it remarkable that a professed Christian who has had two abortions and ministers to others who have had abortions has never been faced with the doctrine of original sin. She has never come face-to-face with her own badness and with the overwhelming, inherent badness of others. She staggers under the weight of learning that all human beings are conceived as guilty sinners before God and the necessary implications of this. Yet this is hardly a new teaching and is not something that only a select few Christians believe. It is theology that is not far from the very core of the Christian faith. A person who does not understand original sin cannot truly understand anything else. How can we understand the cross, the atonement, without first properly understanding sin?

What’s even more sad is the fact that her hope has ultimately been placed in her babies being in heaven. For her to be thrown back into this “hell hole” means that she’d been finding peace in spite of her sin, not because of the finished work of Christ on her behalf. Her peace, such that it was, was built on the shaky foundation of God taking care of her babies. What we see is that she is still ultimately carrying the guilt of her sin. As my friend Julian said when I discussed this with him, “She needs a bigger cross, not just an assurance that her babies are in heaven.” And that is exactly what she needs! She needs a cross that can both forgive her and give her the assurance that God’s ways are best; she needs assurance of forgiveness that comes through Christ’s completed work there at Calvary.

It is interesting to think as well about how her pastors and counselors must have helped her think through this issue. The easy way is to give pat answers and quick lines about David’s baby being in heaven and about God being a God of grace. There may be arguments to make along those lines, but they can only provide so much comfort. The much harder—but cross-centered—way is to point her to the cross for the forgiveness of her sins (regardless of whether or not her babies are in heaven). As Julian said, “She needs to own that guilt and that possibility, then cast it on the cross of Jesus. Then, take her back and show her the cross again, and the grace and goodness and kindness and mercy of God and teach her to hope in that, not in some obscure verses that may imply some hope for the salvation of babies.” It is here, at the cross, that she can properly own her guilt and then cast it on the cross; it is here at the cross that she can receive forgiveness—true forgiveness; it is here at the cross that she can crawl out of that religious hell hole and know that she stands righteous before God, believing that his ways are always best.

In his book Respectable Sins, Jerry Bridges writes about the important discipline of preaching the gospel to yourself every day. Realizing that many people have heard of this discipline but do not know how to practice it, he provides an overview of how he does so. I found it helpful and trust you will too. What could be more important than beginning each day with a fresh understanding of the great work of the gospel and its application to your life?

*****

Since the gospel is only for sinners, I begin each day with the realization that despite my being a saint, I still sin every day in thought, word, deed, and motive. If I am aware of any subtle, or not so subtle, sins in my life, I acknowledge those to God. Even if my conscience is not indicting me for conscious sins, I still acknowledge to God that I have not even come close to loving Him with all my being or loving my neighbor as myself. I repent of those sins, and then I apply specific Scriptures that assure me of God’s forgiveness to those sins I have just confessed.

I then generalize the Scripture’s promises of God’s forgiveness to all my life and say to God words to the effect that my only hope of a right standing with Him that day is Jesus’ blood shed for my sins, and His righteous life lived on my behalf. This reliance on the twofold work of Christ for me is beautifully captured by Edward Mote in his hymn “The Solid Rock” with his words, “My hope is built on nothing less, than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” Almost every day, I find myself going to those words in addition to reflecting on the promises of forgiveness in the Bible.

What Scriptures do I use to preach the gospel to myself? Here are just a few I choose from each day:

As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:12)

“I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” (Isaiah 43:25)

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)

Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. (Romans 4:7-8)

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1)

There are many others, including Psalm 130:3-4; Isaiah 1:18; Isaiah 38:17; Micah 7:19; Ephesians 1:7; Colossians 2:13-14; Hebrews 8:12; and 10:17-18.

Whatever Scriptures we use to assure us of God’s forgiveness, we must realize that whether the passage explicitly states it or not, the only basis for God’s forgiveness is the blood of Christ shed on the cross for us. As the writer of Hebrews said, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (9:22), and the context makes it clear that it is Christ’s blood that provides the objective basis on which God forgives our sins.

I am on vacation this week—at home but taking a break from the web design that keeps me busy day after day. Sometimes I relax by writing; other times I relax by not writing. I don’t know yet whether this vacation will see more of the former or the latter. My plans for today involve taking my son to swimming lessons, heading to Ikea to look at some living room furniture to replace the now-tattered couches we’ve had since we got married (useless fact—we live exactly equidistant from two Ikeas, both of which are 22.4 kilometers away), taking the car for an oil change and spending a bit of time reading. It sounds like the makings of an okay day.

Today I wanted to share just a short reflection on something I read in the Bible—a little reflection on Jeremiah 25:9. Here are verses 8 and 9:

Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: Because you have not obeyed my words, behold, I will send for all the tribes of the north, declares the Lord, and for Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants, and against all these surrounding nations. I will devote them to destruction, and make them a horror, a hissing, and an everlasting desolation.

What always stands out to me in these verses are the words “my servant Nebuchadnezzar.” If you’ve read the account of King Nebuchadnezzar as it is found in the book of Daniel, you’ll know that he was not a man who submitted his life to God. While at a point he was forced to acknowledge that Daniel’s God was the true God, he never submitted to his authority and acknowledged him as the only God. The Bible gives us little reason to hope that Nebuchadnezzar ever turned from his sin and cast himself upon the Lord.

Despite Nebuchadnezzar’s sinfulness and his rejection of God, we see that God calls him a servant—his servant. Now we are accustomed to thinking of God’s servants in the way Paul speaks of himself—a bond servant dedicated to the ministry of Jesus Christ. Yet here we find an unrepentant man, unregenerate man also being called a servant. I guess this should come as no surprise. Jesus Himself spoke of “wicked servants” in his parables, showing that there are two types of servants, the willing and the unwilling. In either case, this person is subject to God and must bow before his authority, whether he wishes to or not.

So the question for you and for me is this: will we be God’s willing servant? Will we be the kind of servants who bow before God as master and seek to lovingly and obediently carry out his will? Or will we be among those wicked and evil servants who are subject to God, but who refuse to acknowledge his superiority? Will we be submissive as servants should be or will we seek to usurp the role of the Master?

God help us to be faithful, submissive, willing servants.

I’ve always loved Calvin & Hobbes. My friend Brian first introduced me to the comic strip back when I was a young teen and I immediately fell in love with it. (Here is a must-have for any true fan: The Complete Calvin & Hobbes). The strip works on at least two levels. There is the philosophical level where Calvin and his tiger discuss topics of science, philosophy and religion that are clearly far beyond the grasp of a six-year old mind. Yet they reflect the questions most people wrestle with during their lives. And then there is the more realistic level, where Calvin is just a young boy doing what boys do: learning to ride a bike, going to school, imaging himself as a superhero or astronaut, building snow forts, fighting with girls, and digging for treasure. Every young boy is convinced that there’s treasure everywhere. Any boy with a strong imagination will realize that there truly is treasure everywhere.

As you well know, I use this web site to discuss a wide variety of topics. I post personal reflections, book reviews and links to other sites I recommend. I write articles about theology, current issues, sexuality, philosophy and just about anything else that crosses my mind. I may not offer reflections that are particularly deep and original, but surely no one can complain about the variety!

One of the great benefits of having this site and of committing to contribute to it each day is that it has forced me to think a lot and to think widely. My wife will be the first to tell that she often has to snap me out of moments of thought where I am present in body but absent in mind. She will also have to testify that I often use her as an initial audience for what I am thinking about. I am quite convinced that my eclectic range of interests often frustrates and bewilders her. She is good to put up with me. Every day my mind wanders. Sooner or later it rests for a while on a particular subject—some news tidbit I’ve seen on the Internet or a word or phrase or idea I’ve read in a book. And then I just have to let my mind run for a while to see what I think about what I’ve discovered and to see how it relates to the Christian life. I often think best while writing, jotting down my thoughts as they come to me. I often turn to the Bible, allowing the thoughts to lead me through the Bible, helping me understand what God says about the issue.

The more I have thought about different topics, the more I’ve realized that there is theology everywhere. And this is what motivates me to write; it’s what motivates me to read and to think and to explore. Everywhere I turn I see theology, whether in a book about the atoning work of Jesus Christ or in a book about the future of business or in a biography of a man who lives half a world away. Sometimes the theology is lying on the surface, exposed and easy to see. Sometimes it is hidden within and just needs to be coaxed out. But always there is something to think about, something to wrestle with, something to help me think deeply about how Christians are to live in this world.

Now don’t get me wrong here. I’m not one of these people who watches R-rated movies and tries to read into them some kind of redemptive theology that is simply not present. But it seems that every time I read the news and every book I read I find something that is profound, something that is or should be theological. Everything I read seems to provide some starting point for deeper reflection.

And I guess this is what this web site has become. It’s become a place where I try to unearth treasure. It’s a place where I write down and post my thoughts about a theology of, well, everything. When I read about technology I want to understand how this technology will impact the church. When I read about psychology or current events I want to learn how Christians need to respond. When I read about history or economics I want to see what the Bible has to say about these things. I want to know how they impact me as a Christian and how I should think about them and react to them to the glory of God.

As I continue to try to grapple with these things, I realize more and more my dependence on the Holy Spirit. He leads me into truth. He leads me into and through Scripture where the answers can be found. And ultimately he leads me to Jesus Christ who in turn points me to the Father, so I can bring the glory and the praise to Him. I can see that I need to improve in my ability to allow myself to be led to the cross and to share the shadow of the cross as it falls over all areas of theology. But I know, and am convinced, that there’s a theology of everything. There’s treasure everywhere. And I get such a thrill out of finding it.

The more I grow in my knowledge of the Lord (through my knowledge of his Word) the more I see the utter centrality of the church, the local church, in his plan for his people. The more I learn of him, the more I see what a jewel the church is—what a blessing, what an honor it is to be part of something so amazing, so other-worldly. This is something that has been brought home to me in recent years primarily by the joy and privilege of being part of a faithful local church. But it has also been emphasized through many of the books I’ve read.

Last week I read Ligon Duncan’s Does Grace Grow Best in Winter? (see my review) and followed that with Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck’s Why We Love the Church (check in tomorrow for a review). One is a book about suffering and the other is a book specifically about the church. And yet the theme is the same. I will have more to say about Why We Love the Church tomorrow. But for today I wanted to share something I read in Duncan’s book—something that really grabbed my attention.

You may be familiar with these words from the first chapter of Colossians:

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.

They are words I have read many times and yet somehow Duncan’s application of them was entirely fresh. In the chapter in which he discusses these verses he is explaining what God may be accomplishing through your suffering and one of the four points he brings up is this one: Building up the church. Have you ever considered this before, that through your suffering God is strengthening the church? He says, “Our suffering aids the maturity of the whole body of believers. It is extraordinary that our suffering is designed not only to work godliness in us as individuals, causing us to prize Christ more, but also to work maturity within the whole church.” And this is exactly what Paul points to in the opening verses of Colossians. “Suffering is God’s instrument to bring about the maturity of the whole church. God ordains for our suffering, as a participation in the suffering of Christ’s body, to bring about in the church the purposes of Christ’s affliction. In other words, sometimes God appoints his children to suffer so that the whole body will become mature.” We all know that as members of the church we are to rejoice together and to mourn together, but do we understand that these occasions of mourning are given for our maturity? If we truly are a body, each part dependent on the other, then it cannot be any other way. One person’s suffering is every person’s suffering; one person’s maturing is every person’s maturing.

And as you think about this, can’t you see how it is true? Can’t you think to some of the Christian men and women whose suffering you have witnessed and see how their example has served to strengthen the church? I can think of many examples. Some of them are people who suffered far away from me, far from my local church, but whose suffering served to strengthen even those Christians whom they had never met face-to-face. Others of them are people who have been a part of my local church, my local congregation, whose suffering has been witnessed by only a few; but those few have been strengthened by their witness. I think of people who suffered through illness or joblessness or the loss of a child; they grew in maturity through the suffering but, remarkably, so did those of us who wept with them.

Duncan says, “These ‘lacking; afflictions of Christ’s do not indicate that his suffering was insufficient for our salvation. They are simply a recognition that when you become a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you become a part of his body. Since you are part of his body, your sufferings are his sufferings. What are the sufferings that are lacking in Christ’s affliction? They are the ones that have not been experienced yet by his body, the church. They will continue to be experienced by his body until he comes again and makes an end of all suffering for his people.” Duncan goes on to say, “The apostle Paul is telling us something amazing. The afflictions of the body of Christ are intended to bring it to maturity. That is to say, God ordains, by the Spirit and by faith, for our suffering to bring about in the church the purposes of Christian affliction. These purposes are: Christ in us, the hope of glory, and every one of us being made mature in Jesus Christ.”

So I guess this is something we ought to keep in mind in those times that God calls us to suffer. Our suffering is not pointless; it is not meaningless. At least in part, our suffering is mandated by God so we can strengthen and edify our brothers and sisters in Christ so that they, and we, may strive toward Christian maturity. “Your suffering does not just belong to you. You are members of a body. Your suffering is for the body’s maturity as much as it is for yours. Your suffering is there to build up the church of Christ. It is there for the people of God to be given faith and hope and confidence in the hour of their trials. Your suffering is also the body’s suffering because one of God’s purposes in suffering is the maturity of the whole church.”

If you’ve never read Lou Priolo’s Pleasing People, well, it’s a good thing to add to your list of things to do. The book takes aim at the human desire to orient our lives around pleasing people instead of first and foremost pleasing God.

In one of the chapters, Priolo looks at clothing ourselves in humility and here he offers some wisdom on the subject of forgiveness. As the father of three young children, and as the owner of a proud and sinful heart, I have endless opportunities to teach about forgiveness and to practice both forgiveness and repentance in my own life. I’ve had to tell my children that true repentance doesn’t involve the word “but” (“I’m sorry I smacked you but you shouldn’t have said that to me…”). But then I’ve seen that I can fall into the same sin. I’ve had to tell my children that true repentance doesn’t drag up the past and use forgiven sin against others. But then I’ve seen that I can do the same thing. Though I’m many years older than they are, the lessons about forgiveness are still coming.

In Pleasing People Priolo portrays the heart of forgiveness as being a promise. Here is what he says: “Forgiveness is fundamentally a promise. As God promises to not hold our sins against us, so we also must promise not to hold the sins of those we’ve forgiven against them.” This is, of course, the foundation of the forgiveness God promises to us: that He will never hold our sins against us. On the day of judgment we know that He will not suddenly charge us with sins that have been forgiven us through the blood of Jesus. We have faith in God and trust in this promise. Without this promise our faith is hopeless. Praise God that he offers us this manner of forgiveness!

The promise of forgiveness, says Priolo, can be broken into three parts. First, you promise not to bring up the offense to the forgiven person so as to use it against him. Second, you promise not to discuss with others the sin you have forgiven. Third, you promise not to dwell on the forgiven offense but to remind yourself that you have forgiven the offender in the same way that God has forgiven you for a multitude of far greater sins. Thus when you ask forgiveness you secure these promises for yourself.

Seeking forgiveness cannot be confused with apologizing. An apology is not the means to reconciliation (which is to say that “I’m sorry” and “Please forgive me” are not the same thing). If I apologize to a person I’ve offended and he subsequently apologizes to me, we still have not taken responsibility and truly humbled ourselves. We haven’t tied up loose ends and, to use Priolo’s term, the ball is still up in the air. Apologies are not enough. We must seek forgiveness and its fruit—reconciliation.

According to Priolo, true forgiveness looks something like this:

1. Acknowledge that you have sinned. Let the party you’ve offended know that you acknowledge wrongdoing. This is humbling but necessary. Acknowledge not only that you sin but that you have sinned against this person.
2. Identify your sin by its specific biblical name. Do not simply acknowledge generic sin but acknowledge specific sin and call it by its biblical name (which keeps you from acknowledging something society may label as sin but the Bible does not). This ensures that you have thought deeply about your sin and have seen how it fits into what the Bible calls sin.
3. Acknowledge the harm your offense caused. This is also humbling. You must acknowledge that your sin has had consequences and that you are owning up not only to the sin but also to the harmful consequences your sin brought about.
4. Demonstrate repentance by identifying an alternative biblical behavior. Show that you have truly considered your sin by explaining what you should have done instead. Show what the appropriate alternative behavior would have been.
5. Ask for forgiveness. This puts the onus on the offended party to accept your repentance and to extend forgiveness to you. It completes the reconciliation between the offender and the one who has been offended.

These are simple steps, to be sure, and even obvious ones, but serve to display and prove true humility and true repentance. They bring about true and lasting reconciliation—the kind of reconciliation we experience with our God despite far greater, far more grave, offenses.

Yesterday I described the book as The Perfect Technology. There was perhaps a little bit of hyperbole involved, but I think the point was well-taken. I was actually surprised to see how many people agreed with me. Maybe as Christians we are unusual in this regard; maybe Christians are, almost by definition, readers and, thus, people who will toss away their books only with great caution. This is good, I think, as Christians tend to be too pragmatic, prone to believe that any innovation that claims to make life immediately easier or more convenient (without violating any clear teaching of Scripture) must be good.

Today I want to carry on with a few more thoughts about reading in a digital world and I want to focus in on one issue in particular.

I have witnessed recently what I consider a disturbing trend—Christians coming to church armed not with a Bible but with an iPod or an iPhone or another hand held device. With many versions of the Bible available in electronic formats and with the widespread popularity of MP3 players, cell phones and other digital devices, I guess it just makes sense to some people to bring Scripture in that electronic format. Pragmatists that we are, I believe many Christians have done this without thinking at all about the implications.

I want to encourage you not to bring an electronic Bible to church. I want to encourage you today to bring to church a Bible—an old fashioned kind of Bible, with ink printed on paper and slapped between two covers made of cardboard or leather or pleather. I also want to encourage you not to get into the habit of doing your daily Bible reading using an electronic device. I think we stand to lose far more than we gain.

In the past couple of months I have spent a fair bit of time reading the works of Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman—gurus of the technological age. I tend to prefer Postman as I find him not only more accessible but also more accurate and more realistic. McLuhan is prone to hyperbole, excessive hyperbole even, and I find that this detracts from his effectiveness as a communicator (though I know that many would disagree with me on this point).

McLuhan is undoubtedly best-known for his catchy little phrase, “the medium is the message.” It sometimes helps to emphasize that little word is as if to stress that the the medium and the message carried by that medium cannot be neatly separated. This is exactly what McLuhan emphasized time and time again—we cannot afford to fall into the trap of believing that media are neutral, simple bearers of a message. “The medium is the message.” In a classic case of McLuhian hyperbole, he would say that the content of a particular medium “has about as much importance as the stencilling on the casing of an atomic bomb.” He turns the equation right around, saying that the content is nothing, the medium is everything.

I think McLuhan makes an important point and one that we discount at our folly, though he overstates his case here and elsewhere. Still, where McLuhan is so important is in understanding that every medium carries with it a message that necessarily impacts the content. We like to think that we are smart enough, holy enough, to draw complete and utter separation between medium and content. Christians do this all the time when we assume that there is no difference between singing songs from a hymn book and singing songs via a projector and Powerpoint. We do this when we listen to sermons online instead of listening while seated in a pew. But what if we are fooling ourselves? What if the medium really does radically shape our perception, our understanding, of the content it carries? What then?

This is where Neil Postman comes in. In Technopoly Postman says that, when two technologies come into competition or conflict (two technologies such as the Bible printed on paper and the Bible on an iPod), it is more than technologies that are squaring off, but rather, entire worldviews. Every medium, he says, carries with it some kind of an ideological bias, “a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value one thing more than another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another.” Thus, again, the method we use to convey information is inseparable from the content of that information. And even more so, every medium carries with it both content but also a worldview. When we read the Bible electronically, we read the very same words, but in a way that influences us toward a different worldview, a different way of understanding the reality of those words.

Postman also adds to this discussion a phrase that is so simple but so important: a technology does what it was created to do. Over time, a technology will play out its hand, to to speak, and it may do so in ways we would not expect. Had Gutenberg known what would happen through the invention of the printing press, do we believe that he still would have invented it? That printing press was instrumental in forever changing the Roman Catholic Church (of which he was a faithful son). How many other technologies have played out their hands in completely unexpected ways? Should we not be on our guard, then, when considering such new innovations?

So where does this leave us? It leaves us wondering what ideological bias, what predisposition, is carried in the book and in the electronic book. It causes us to wonder what skill or attitude is amplified in the book and what skill or attitude is amplified in the iPod.

But I will have to take this up in another article. Check in next week for that.

I was skimming headlines and noticed a story about some activists on a college campus who were planning to cover all of the school’s mirrors for a day. I did not read long enough to see why they wanted to do this, but I assume it was somehow meant to draw attention to a problem the school or government was covering up. You know how these college-aged activists are, always thinking they are so clever and profound. They make me laugh, really, as if with their eighteen years of life experience they understand all of the world’s problems and are equipped to lead us all in doing great things about it. At least in this case they got me thinking about life without mirrors.

Now I’m not one of those metrosexual guys who spends half of my life primping and preening in front of a mirror. My bathroom isn’t stocked with hundreds of different kinds of moisturizers, hair products and body sprays. But I still wouldn’t want to start my day without a quick peek into the mirror. I still want to make sure that my weird and wiry hair isn’t doing anything too obnoxious or that the afflictions of age (primarily those thick black hairs that seem to grow suddenly out of strange places) are not protruding from places they shouldn’t be.

There is something comforting about peering into a mirror every now and then. Certainly there is usually no reason to gaze at myself when I go into a bathroom but, like you, I always make a cursory check to ensure that nothing too weird is going on. If I eat a poppy seed bagel (my favorite!) I have to check that there isn’t a seed stuck between those two teeth that are just a tiny bit crooked and always (always!) manage to trap a seed. Few things are worse than trooping around all day and only realizing at the end of it that I’ve had a piece of parsley or spinach stuck to one of my teeth or that I’ve had a ridiculous cowlick (or, more commonly, that I’ve had a Dora the Explorer sticker stuck to my pants). You know the feeling.

All this talk of mirrors draws me to the closing verses of the first chapter of James. You no doubt know the words well:

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

As I read these verses and began to meditate upon them I was reminded immediately of those activists on the college campus. I realized that I would never intentionally head out to a meeting or an appointment without first checking a mirror to make sure that everything looked just about right (or as right as it can, anyways, based on what I’m working with here). Covering all the mirrors in our house would bother me! And then I was struck by the way James portrays the Bible as a mirror for the heart. I thought of how loathe I am to begin my day without peering into a mirror but how little it troubles me when I begin the day without peering into the mirror of the Word.

I know there have been times when I’ve forgotten to check a mirror before heading out. Most of the time it hasn’t mattered, but there have been a couple of occasions when I realized only when it was too late that I had forgotten to shave or that I was still showing clear evidence on my face of having eaten a chocolate cookie earlier in the day. I could have saved myself embarrassment by just checking the mirror. I know there have been times when I’ve forgotten or neglected to look into the mirror of the Word, the perfect law of liberty, to assess my heart. Most of the time it hasn’t shown, but I know there have been occasions when I gave clear evidence of this to the people I encountered. There have been other times that I’ve read the Bible, but have not allowed it to penetrate or to take hold. I’ve been just the person James warns about who “looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.” I have looked quickly, glanced briefly, but have not looked long enough to allow the Scripture to reflect back to me my sin and God’s standard of holiness. I have gone merrily on my way having already forgotten to be both a hearer and a doer.

God’s Word has the unique ability to give great clarity to what God demands and expects of us. It also unmasks our sin and our rebellion. I would be a fool not to gaze into this mirror every day. I would be a fool to go about life without regularly looking into this amazing mirror.