Years ago a Christian band called Hokus Pick used to tour Canada once or twice a year. They were a great bunch of guys who truly loved the Lord. I would often catch them in concert and even promoted a handful of shows for them. Every time they toured, they did so with a different opening band and their tongue-in-cheek boast was that every band who opened for them immediately broke up after the tour. I guess this wasn’t far from the truth, though I’m sure it was mere coincidence. One of the bands that toured with them was called Doulos. I don’t think they survived for long after the tour, but one of their songs continues to be a favorite of mine. It is called, simply. “Again.” The song captures something precious to me.

my mouth is empty
shame surrounds me
I feel what I say can’t be heard or shouldn’t be
again I’m jumping into darkness
not knowing if my feet will land again

again I’m caught and made innocent
as I land in a pool of blood
how many times can the gift of life be given
I stand still and weep again

As we would expect, the song is tied together in the chorus. It is a simple chorus, containing only one line. “How long till I become holy.” But the line is not sung with great joy and excitement, but rather almost as a groan or a cry. “Oh, how long till I become holy?” I assume this song was inspired, at least in part, by Romans 8. And if you look to that passage, you may be struck by the sheer volume of groaning in the verses. It is not just believers who groan, but rather it is Christians, Creation and the Holy Spirit who are said to be groaning.

“For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.” The world was made perfect and holy, but through the sin of our first parents, Creation fell with us. And now, as if to show that this is an unnatural state, all of Creation cries out to God for the end of such sin and torment. The hills wait for the day when they can sing praise to God and the trees wait to clap their hands in joy and freedom. This personification of nature, as found in Isaiah, shows us that the whole world waits with us for redemption and the end of sin.

“And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” Christians, those who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, also groan as we wait for the final consummation. We groan inwardly as our spirits cry out to God. We know that sin is foreign to us as beings created in the image of God and our hearts cry out for an end to sin. Some also cry outwardly, eagerly anticipating the end of pain, suffering and physical affliction. It is this cry that is the subject of the song. “Oh, how long till I become holy?” How long must it be, Lord, before you take away this death and this corruption? How long before you make me who I so badly want to be? How long before you take me to the presence of the One I long to see?

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” But we do not groan alone. No, for we have Divine aid. The Holy Spirit intercedes for us in our cries to God. When I feel weak in prayer, the Holy Spirit is there, helping me. Even when I do not know how or what to pray, the Spirit knows, and stands between myself and the Father, presenting to him prayers that express what is best. Where I am limited by limited knowledge, the Spirit is not. He takes my prayers and conforms them to the Father’s will before bringing them before the Throne of Grace. When I pray in Jesus’ name, humbling myself before His sovereignty, I offer my will and desires to him, and truly seek “the good” that Paul speaks of in Romans 8:28. I acknowledge that in my humanness I would make a mess of even the most trivial decisions; I trust that God knows best.

And so until that great day when the world is finally perfected, the Holy Spirit groans with the Creation and with believers, as together we cry out for the new heaven and the new earth. And with the songwriter and with Christians through the ages, I groan at the burden of my own sin. But despite my hatred of sin I do the very thing I least want to do and jump once again into the darkness only to find myself caught again in a pool of blood. I am forgiven again and wonder within myself just how many times God can forgive me and just how long His patience can last. Often I pause to weep, either at the depth of my own depravity or at the height of God’s grace. And all the while I cry out, “Oh, how long? How long, oh Lord, before you make me fully, truly, purely, finally holy?”

Here’s one I dug out of the archives and tidied up some.

In early 2006, firefighters in Orange County, California, anticipating a dangerous forest fire season, began a controlled burn of 10 acres of canyon land forest. They lit a small fire to prevent a bigger fire, attempting to reduce the amount of flammable material that might serve as tinder during the dry season. They thought everything had gone as planned until the winds shifted and picked up. Somewhere in the brush a hot coal sparked a new fire and soon the forest was burning anew. Almost 1,000 firefighters were called in to fight this new blaze. Within days area schools had been closed, thousands of homes had been evacuated and nearby roads had been shut down. In the end, the fire consumed over 8,000 acres of forest. The 10 acre controlled burn turned into an 8,000 acre raging fire. Lesson learned: there is danger inherent in fighting fire with fire.

Last Monday I posted an article called Evil as Entertainment in which the basic encouragement was to avoid reading watchblogs. Much discussion, much gratitude, much criticism ensued. I am caught somewhere between having so much more to say and never wanting to mention it again. Today I’ll tend toward the latter and perhaps in the future I can write about this again and in more detail.

I guess any writer can attest that every now and then you write something that is really, objectively good; and other times you lay an egg. Having talked it over and having read plenty of feedback, I’m going to have to say that I laid an egg on Monday. While I do not feel that what I said was wrong or unnecessary, I can see that I should have said it better. At the same time, I think it sparked some useful discussion and for that I am grateful. I can see how I should have nuanced my article and how it could have been so much better and so much more useful. In just a moment I want to point you to a couple of articles that may be of use to you if you wish to think further about the issues I raised.

Since I posted that article I’ve gotten heaps of email (I think only articles on homeschooling could generate more feedback) and have learned more about these watchblogs than I would have wanted. I received plenty of ugly, angry rebukes and a few kind, gentle rebukes. I also received many comments that echoed my own experience—that these sites are like an anchor to joy in Christ and an anchor for many a Christian’s love for his brothers and sisters in the Lord. These sites have undoubtedly caused much harm. Several others wrote to say that they are reevaluating their desire to read such sites. This is good, I think, and shows that God may be willing to use even a bad article for his purposes.

Let me offer this as an aside: a few people, including some of the angrier emailers, suggested that I was censoring comments in that article—that I was deliberately excluding certain comments. I suppose you’ll just have to take my word for this one, but I did not censor any comments. I checked published comments, unpublished comments and spam comments and there was no trace of anything beyond the ones that were published to the site (with the exception of one very long and rambling one that was about the length of War and Peace except with no paragraph breaks). ‘Nuff said.

Now, for those articles. Here are four you may find useful:

• Great Damage: The Gift of Discernment Used in the Flesh - James MacDonald wrote this a few weeks ago and in it he highlights some of the ridiculous, ungodly argumentation used against him by just the kind of watchblogger I wrote about. He says, “A post I wrote on January 20th when President Obama was sworn in was picked up by a number of ‘watch dog’ discernment groups and the rest is history. I have been called weak, soft on the truth, a compromiser, politically correct, foolish, and worst of all, apostate (not truly saved). Wow!!!” Read between the lines a little bit and you can see the tactics such packs of watchbloggers use against their quarry.
• Establish Elders - Frank Turk simply says this: “Notice that Paul here instructs Titus to appoint elders in every town and not watchbloggers. That is: the focal point and center of discernment ought to be in the local church. If your counter-concern is that local churches today lack discernment (and this may be a valid concern), I suggest that the place to fix that is in the place God ordained and not everywhere else but that place.” The discussion that follows is very interesting. With Frank I believe the best, most natural context for discernment is the local church.
• Among the comments is this one by Frank and I think it is a very valuable read.
• Turning a Blind Eye to Evil is Evil Too - Phil Johnson wrote about how he both agrees and disagrees with me. This article really helped me see the lack of clarity in my own article (well, that and my wife telling me that Phil’s article was better than my own). “I think what Tim Challies is saying is that it’s unhealthy to fix one’s attention on error full time rather than spending most of our time dwelling on things that edify. If that’s all he is saying, I say (as heartily as possible) AMEN! (Philippians 4:8). But if someone wants to seize that point in order to suggest that it’s always better to be an encourager than a critic, my reply is: That very attitude is largely responsible for getting us into this mess in the first place.” Exactly. There is a time and place for calling error error; there is a time and place for humor and sarcasm and all the rest. But a fixation on evil is dangerous!

Most of what Phil says is most of what I should have said (or said more clearly) on Monday. There is a time and place to expose sin and even to expose sin publicly (see this article by James MacDonald for some good thoughts). But a blog that has as its bread and butter exposing error in the church, and especially error that is completely decontextualized and irrelevant to any of its readers, is a blog I think we ought to avoid. A Christian’s thoughts ought to be dominated by “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). As I said last Monday, “Do I really need to read and to know about the seedy underbelly of the church, when such things happen thousands of miles away, among people I will never meet and in places I will never be? Such news is plenty entertaining, but it is useless to me. It does nothing to further my faith or to cause me to grow in godliness.”

One analogy I opted not to use in Monday’s post was that of pornography. But let me haul it out now as I think it helps show what it is that I am reacting against. Imperfect, I’m sure, but worth thinking about. If a site wished to combat pornography, would the best way of doing so be to display lots of pictures of naked women with comments about how wrong they are to be doing what they are doing? Posted below the picture of a naked woman engaged in some lewd conduct are the words “This is what passes for sex in the church today. Lord save us!” If you were to visit this kind of a site day after day, do you think you’d continue visiting to help you be prepared to combat pornography (because by knowing what pornography looks like you could spot it in your own life)? Or do you think, just maybe, you’d find that you were visiting to see the naked women themselves? Isn’t it better to turn to Scripture to find what it says about sex and sexuality? Isn’t that the best way to learn about what is right? By studying evil you are learning about evil and are liable to be consumed by it. “Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature” (1 Corinthians 14:20).

Now I will grant that there are times when it is well and good to bring evil deeds to light and in such times there is a difference between heresy and nudity. But I think the point remains. Be very careful fighting fire with fire! Be careful fighting heresy with heresy, bad theology with bad theology, lack of love with lack of love. So easily the noble becomes ignoble. So often the controlled burn becomes the raging wildfire.

If you could take one thing away from this whole discussion I hope it is this: For the good of your own soul, think about why you visit the blogs you do. There is nothing wrong with entertainment and there is nothing inherently wrong with visiting a site to be entertained. But think about the nature of the entertainment. Is it possible that you are being entertained by what is evil? Are you finding joy in what God hates? Is it possible that there is no real value in learning what you are learning and in seeing what you are seeing? As you close down your browser and walk away from such sites, do you find that you are filled with the fruit of the Spirit? Or do you find your heart hardened and your mind cynical? Do such sites help you grow in your love for your brothers and sisters in Christ or instead do you find yourself hardened against them and mocking them? Think carefully about such things.

I leave you with those questions and with this Scripture: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22,23).

In the past week or two I have been thinking a lot about my times of personal devotion, trying to see where I have allowed them to become just the “same old”—where I may have fallen into bad habits or lazy customs. I have been thinking about what I can do to make these times that will serve to help me grow in godliness while at the same ensuring that they are opportunities to bring worship to God. This is something I find that I need to do on a regular basis. My reflections on prayer coincided with reading 1 Timothy in my times of personal worship. In 1 Timothy we read Paul’s command that “in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling.” This set me to thinking about the posture of prayer. The chapter has quite a few things to say about the content of prayer (e.g. “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people…”) but it also includes these words about posture, the actions of a person’s body in prayer. I began to think about how I pray; not just the words, but also the posture.

Of course we need to affirm that God is far more concerned with the content of our prayers than the posture of our prayers. It is far more important to examine the heart than to examine the feet or the hands. At the same time, there is no doubt that our bodies can be an expression of our hearts (as you see when you shake your fist at the car that cut you off or when you clap your hands at the end of an inspired performance). And so it is useful, I think, to examine what the Bible says about our bodies during prayer.

I turned to Philip Ryken’s excellent commentary on 1 Timothy and found that he highlights several of the ways the Bible tells us to pray. I will summarize them just briefly, hoping that you find it useful, as I have.

Bowing

The Bible, and the Psalms especially, describe bowing during prayer. This is a posture we often use today and one we teach our children when we tell them to bow their heads (out of respect) and to fold their hands (probably out of respect and so they do not fidget!). Psalm 5 says “I will bow down toward your holy temple in the fear of you” while Psalm 95:6 says “Oh come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!” Bowing is a sign of respect and honor. Even today we may bow toward a king or dignitary, expressing in that action our respect for that person.

Kneeling

The Bible mentions several people who knelt during prayer, among them Daniel (Daniel 6:10) and Stephen (Acts 7:60). And of course Jesus himself knelt to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. He “withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed” (Luke 22:41). Kneeling is a sign of humility and a sign of dependence. A person might kneel in the presence of a king or queen and he would do so as a sign of his deference to that person. It is difficult to be proud when kneeling before another. And so kneeling is a very natural posture for the Christian as he prays to the Lord. It seems a very natural position for bringing petitions to God, acknowledging God’s superiority and our utter dependence on him.

Standing

The Bible often mentions people standing to pray in public worship. When Solomon dedicated the temple, he knelt before God to pray while all the people stood (Chronicles 6:3, 13). In the same vein, Jehoshaphat “stood in the assembly of Judah and Jerusalem, in the house of the Lord” (2 Chronicles 20:5). It became customary for Jewish people to stand for prayer while in their synagogues. Such posture has roots in the Christian faith as well. Ryken shows that Justin Martyr, Origen, Jerome and Augustine all wrote of standing for public prayer. Today we stand in the presence of a judge when he enters his court room. Until recently students would stand when their professor entered the room. And, until recent days, many churches encouraged people to stand during prayer. Standing is, of course, a sign of respect. We stand in the presence of those we respect (or at least as a sign of our respect for their position or their authority). And so standing for prayer is a natural position especially for times of corporate prayer as the people stand in God’s presence out of respect for his authority.

Lying Prostrate

Scripture also mentions people praying flat on the ground with their faces pressed to the earth. Moses fell in the presence of the Lord (Numbers 16:22, 20:6) as did Joshua (Joshua 5:14). Job fell to the ground and worshiped when he was in the depths of his despair. And, of course, the angels and elders who pray before God’s heavenly throne fall on their faces. “And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”” (Revelation 7:11). This is a sign of utter respect. A man may fall to the ground before another person when that other person has absolute power of life or death. To do so is to acknowledge one’s absolute unworthiness and to beg the grace of the other person. And so in prayer laying prostrate is a natural position for those who are overwhelmed either by trouble and woe or by a sense of the glory and majesty of God (or both!).

Hands Raised

And Scripture describes those who raise their hands in prayer. This was the way the priests worshiped in the temple (Psalm 134, 141, etc). And from extra-Scriptural sources we know that raising hands in prayer was customary in the early church. Ryken quotes Tertullian who said, “We Christians pray for all emperors, &c., looking up to heaven, with our hands stretched out, because guiltless; with our heads uncovered, because we are not ashamed.” Early Christian artwork often portrays those who prayed doing so with their hands raised. Such a posture signifies praise. Think today of a rock concert where people may raise their hands toward the stage in what looks almost like an act of praise and worship. And, of course, many Christians raise their hands when they sing, using this as a physical manifestation of their praise. Raising hands is appropriate in prayer especially during times of praising God. Ryken says “This posture is especially appropriate for the minister who leads in public prayer. When he stands in God’s presence to offer prayer on behalf of God’s people, he may raise his hands to show that the church’s prayers are offered to God as a sacrifice of praise.”

Nowhere does the Bible command us that we must set our bodies in one position or another during prayer. Yet it does describe a variety of positions that each have their own significance. You may find it useful to practice some of these postures in your times of private prayer, allowing that posture to be a reflection of your heart, whether it is a heart overwhelmed with the cares of life, a heart rejoicing in the majesty of God or a heart quieted in humble obedience to God.

The internet is such a strange phenomenon and one we are really only beginning to understand, at least in terms of its impact on society and faith and family and just about everything else. What passes for entertainment on the internet would, at most other times in history, be regarded as shocking or wasteful or disgusting or maybe just plain absurd. Witness the web sites that offer video after video of people cracking bones doing stupid skateboard tricks. You can search YouTube for videos of people breaking bones and spend hours in senseless entertainment, guffawing at the stupidity and wincing at the pain. Or witness the sites that specialize in the macabre, displaying lineups of dead or dismembered bodies or photographic evidence of brutal accidents. Or witness the almost limitless amounts of pornography which is a contemporary form of entertainment for boys and men (and, increasingly, girls and women) of all ages. So much of the entertainment the internet offers is entertainment at its very worst. Evil has become entertainment.

Some time ago I read Girls Gone Mild, a book by Wendy Shalit. Shalit’s first book, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue was published eight years ago and caused quite a stir. Shalit, an Orthodox Jew, made the audacious claim that the sexual revolution may not have been entirely beneficial for women. She decried the lack of modesty this revolution has brought about and, according to TIME defended “compellingly, shame, privacy, gallantry, and sexual reticence.” Of course many people, and feminists in particular, were disgusted with the book and ruthlessly mocked her. In her second book, Girls Gone Mild Shalit investigated a new movement that seems to be growing in strength and is being led by young people. It is a movement back to modesty and back to an understanding of womanhood that is somehow distinctly feminine.

It is not just Christians who are aghast at our culture’s view of womanhood. The sexual revolution has produced a generation of girls who are brazen in their sexuality. We’ve come to a time when girls are offered the choice between being brave and sexual or timid and modest. Culture teaches that it is acceptable to wait to engage in sexual practices as long as you feel you are unprepared. It is those who are comfortable with their bodies who flaunt their nakedness while those who hide their bodies are ashamed. Hence it is the weak who wait and the strong who engage. And countless numbers of girls are engaged, even from a young age.

But that is not all. As girls become increasingly sexual at an increasingly young age, they also become aggressive. Girls have long been taught that traditionally feminine qualities such as niceness and gentleness are a sign of weakness. Girls are encouraged to be tough, to stand for their perceived rights. And girls do this. Bullying among girls has become commonplace in schools. The term “bullycide” has been coined, has had to be coined, to describe people, and often girls, who are driven to suicide by bullying.

Girls are being mean because their parents and teachers are teaching them to be mean, expecting them to be mean, demanding that they be mean. Adults are telling the children that it is the aggressive who will inherit the earth. The girls who are nice will be trampled on and will be left behind. Girls are also seeing meanness modeled for them in their entertainment. In discussing this topic, Shalit provided an interesting quote from none other than Erika Harold, who was Miss America 2003 and who is now studying law at Harvard. “A profound statement from a beauty pageant winner,” you ask? Read on.

We live in a culture where reality TV is pervasive, and we’re entertained by other’s humiliation and by pulling on people’s weaknesses and watching a weak person be embarrassed; and I maintain that’s the cause—glorifying humiliation of others—not being good. With bullying it’s about thinking you have the right to devalue other people, and there are some people who think people should just toughen up, grow up. But bullying, I think, is a much more pernicious problem than that. If people don’t value other people, they just see it as acceptable to bully other people.

Last February, just as a new season of America’s favorite program began, I wrote about American Idol and how it so masterfully combines our culture’s twin obsessions with exhibitionism and voyeurism. I thought back to this article as I read the quote by Erika Harold. I thought again of William Hung who, perhaps more than anyone else, typifies the victims of reality television. Hung is, well, just not a very good-looking guy (we’ll leave it at that). He may have thought that he was talented enough to make an impact at American Idol but the cold reality, as we all saw, was that he was utterly untalented as both a singer and dancer. Yet he passed through two levels of auditions and was given the stage in front of the judges where he was promptly humiliated and rejected. He was brought back later in the season for a special “Uncut, Uncensored and Untalented” episode where he performed again. He even released a series of three albums, all featuring his horrendous singing. He was a joke and we all laughed at him, not with him.

It is always educational to see what other reality programs are making waves. There is Hell’s Kitchen where a chef with a serious anger problem screams at potential chefs; there is Big Brother, where people compete to be the last person standing in a house filled with cameras; there is American Inventor where people try to create the next big product and America’s Got Talent where thousands compete in a national talent show with a million dollar prize. And then there is some horrendous show who’s name escapes me where young women and older women compete for the attention of a sleazy bachelor. A popular game show, Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? puts “average Americans” up against a group of 5th graders in a quiz show format. Those who cannot beat the children have to look into the camera and say, “I am not smarter than a 5th grader!”

The common thread with all of these shows is that they glory in humiliation. Some are worse offenders than others, but anyone who has seen the commercials where Chef Ramsey screams obscenities at chefs in Hell’s Kitchen or who has seen advertisements of older women in anguish after being outfoxed by a younger woman on that ugly dating show will realize that the humiliation is as much the attraction as is the challenge of the show. I suspect as many people watch Hell’s Kitchen to watch the outbursts as they do because they find the cooking interesting.

What is wrong with us? Why is it that we glory in the humiliation of others? Would we be as interested in these shows if they were merely about talent or about fascinating plots? I don’t think we would. I think we are attracted to them precisely because they humiliate other people. We are attracted to them, at least in part, because they give us the opportunity to feel better about ourselves at the expense of others. “I may not be a good singer, but at least I’m not as bad as him. I may not be able to carry a tune, but at least I’m not delusional enough to go and audition for the show!”

Read the book of James and you’ll come to the undeniable conclusion that what comes out of a person is a sure indication of what he puts in. This is true physically, emotionally and spiritually. What we allow into our hearts and into our minds necessarily impacts our lives. We may not be able to exhaustively examine our own hearts, but we can surely look to what comes out of us and see evidence of what we’ve been putting into our hearts.

It is impossible for us to revel in the humiliation of other people and not begin to see ramifications in our own lives. Bullying is a problem in schools today and it stands to reason that one of the causes of this behavior is children imitating what they see on television. The adults in these shows humiliate and belittle one another and the children take this as an example of acceptable human behavior. You and I may not be prone to bullying, but if we enjoy watching other people be humiliated, what does that say about us? And, of equal importance, how is that beginning to manifest itself in our lives?

I met Bob Bevington a couple of years ago. He and I both somehow ended up at a youth conference and we began to chat while walking from the venue to a nearby hotel; we were the only adults around so we must have naturally gravitated toward one another. We were surprised to learn that we were both under contract to write a book—I was writing The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment while he was working with Jerry Bridges on a book they were to co-author. Since that time he and Bridges have written two books together, the second of which is The Bookends of the Christian Life.

According to a new “Video Consumer Mapping” study by Ball State University, Americans aged 65 and older spend an average of 420 minutes per day in front of a television screen. 420 minutes per day. Let that sink in for just a moment. That is seven hours; seven full hours. Every day. On average. That means that half of the days it would be more than seven hours. Is that three hours in the morning, perhaps 8 until 11 and then four more in the evening, maybe 7 until 11 PM? How is it even possible? It is unbelievable. And it does not even include time spent watching DVDs or Tivo.

But perhaps it should not be that surprising considering that the average American of any age spends just over five hours per day watching TV. Older Americans, those who have retired, simply add a couple of extra hours onto the television they have already been consuming. America is obsessed.

I read this study and had to think about my life and whether I am on the kind of trajectory that will lead me to a useful, profitable, godly “retirement,” or the kind of retirement that will leave me spending endless hours in front of the tube. Some day I do hope to retire from the day-to-day money-earning responsibilities I have now. If God wills it, a time may come when I can dedicate more time to other things. But I hope and pray that it is something better, more spiritually-profitable, than television.

This was on my mind as I went to church yesterday. At Grace Fellowship Church we had the privilege of recognizing the hand of God in the life of one of our brothers as he was set apart as a pastor and elder. He is a man I’ve come to know well in the past few months and one I’ve come to respect a great deal. The gifting and call of God on his life is so clear, so obvious, that it was a joy to recognize it and to celebrate it together. Our pastor preached a sermon that, while it was directed specifically at this new elder, had application to all of us. He preached from 1 Timothy 4. There were a few words from that passage that stood out to me and resounded in my mind. “Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance.” The pastors’ charge revolved around this: “The greatest gift you can be to our church is to be full of God.” In other words, “Be godly!”

“Godliness is of value in every way,” said the Apostle, “as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.” And surely if it has value for now and value for eternity, it also has value for the time between now and eternity! So it must be that godliness will protect me from being a senior Christian, a gray-haired retired old man, who has nothing more to do with my time than to spend seven or eight hours of every day in front of the television screen. This passage was speaking to me, challenging me to be a godly man, a godly Christian. In his commentary on these verses, Philip Ryken says, “The word “godliness” (eusebeia) occurs fifteen times in the New Testament, but nine of them are in this epistle. If someone had asked Timothy what Paul’s letter was about, he might well have said, ‘Well, I suppose it was mostly about the life in God’s household, but the thing that impressed me was my personal need for godliness.’” And like that Timothy of so many years ago, I want to be godly.

Ryken says as well, “Above all else, God wants his people and his ministers to be godly. This is why Paul did not give Timothy seven steps to boost church attendance, or helpful tips about becoming a better administrator, or a thorough critique of his preaching style. Instead, he gave him the most practical instruction of all: a good minister is a godly minister.” And, of course, a good Christian is a godly Christian. Though this letter is directed at Timothy as a pastor, it is directed as well at all of us as believers. “When it comes to physical conditioning, it usually helps to have a trainer. These days, if people want to get their bodies in top condition, they hire a personal trainer. The trainer’s job is to set up a schedule of exercises to get the client into shape. There is a sense in which every Christian has a personal trainer: the Holy Spirit, speaking in Scripture. The Spirit of God uses the Word of God to produce the life of God in the soul. What makes people godly is reading, hearing, studying, and meditating on the Bible. As John Stott points out, ‘We cannot become familiar with this godly book without becoming godly ourselves.’”

John Piper has recently released a little booklet called Rethinking Retirement. This is what he says about finishing life to God’s glory: “So finishing life to the glory of Christ means using whatever strength and eyesight and hearing and mobility and resources we have left to treasure Christ and in that joy to serve people—that is, to seek to bring them with us into the everlasting enjoyment of Christ. Serving people, and not ourselves, as the overflow of treasuring Christ makes Christ look great.” I suppose it is obvious that taking eight hours of every day to watch television would radically reduce a Christian’s ability to live that kind of a life. It is difficult to make Christ look great while basking endlessly in the glow of a flickering 37-inch rectangle.

In Piper’s booklet he quotes Ralph Winters of the U.S. Center for World Missions who says this: “Most men don’t die of old age, they die of retirement. I read somewhere that half the men retiring in the state of New York die within two years. Save your life and you’ll lose it. Just like other drugs, other psychological addictions, retirement is a virulent disease, not a blessing… .Where in the Bible do they see [retirement]? Did Moses retire? Did Paul retire? Peter? John? Do military officers retire in the middle of a war?” Piper says, “millions of Christian men and women are finishing their formal careers in their fifties and sixties, and for most of them there will be a good twenty years before their physical and mental powers fail. What will it mean to live those final years for the glory of Christ? How will we live them in such a way as to show that Christ is our highest Treasure?” Will that involve seven or eight hours of television every day?

Just a few more words from Piper: “When I heard J. Oswald Sanders at the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School chapel speaking at the age of eighty-nine say that he had written a book a year for Christ since he was seventy, everything in me said, ‘O God, don’t let me waste my final years! Don’t let me buy the American dream of retirement—month after month of leisure and play and hobbies and putzing around in the garage and rearranging the furniture and golfing and fishing and sitting and watching television. Lord, please have mercy on me. Spare me this curse.’”

I was convicted yesterday that to avoid this kind of a retirement, this kind of a curse, I need to be and to become a godly man. I need to continually recommit to godliness, knowing that godliness will profit me now and in eternity, but also in all of those periods of time between now and eternity—and perhaps especially in those years when so much else is being taken away. Godliness is of value in every way.

I’ve been reading a new book by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington. It is titled The Bookends of the Christian Life. I read it some time ago when it was in manuscript form (as I was asked to write a blurb for it) but I am reading it again for review purposes, now that I’ve received a printed copy. I should have a review of the book ready to go for Tuesday. For now, though, I wanted to share with you what I’ve found one of the most comforting statements I’ve read in a long time. In the book’s early pages the authors describe Christ’s righteousness and the present reality of our justification. And here they offer some words that we all know, and yet somehow we tend to lose track of. They remind us that as sinful human beings, even as Christians, we are tempted to rely on our good deeds to save us but also on our bad deeds to condemn us. Here is what they say:

“Faith involves both a renunciation and a reliance. First, we must renounce any trust in our own performance as the basis of our acceptance before God. We trust in our own performance when we believe we’ve earned God’s acceptance by our own good works. But we also trust in our own performance when we believe we’ve lost God’s acceptance by our bad works—by our sin. So we must renounce any consideration of either our bad works or our good works as the means of relating to God.

Second, we must place our reliance entirely on the perfect obedience of the sin-bearing death of Christ as the sole basis of our standing before God—on our best days as well as our worst.

What a blessing it is that as Christians we relate to God only and always through the mediation of Christ. What a joy that we can renounce our works, whether good or bad, as our means of relating to God. What comfort!

For Christmas Aileen and I each received a little bit of money and found that, when we combined it, we had just enough to buy a GPS for our car. This is something Aileen has wanted for some time now, so we decided to go ahead and buy one (a Garmin Nuvi if you must know). There is something just a little bit comforting about having the GPS stuck to the windshield of the car, telling us where we are, where we’re going and how long it will take to get there. At least, we lived under the illusion that it was comforting until the GPS led us astray. For the first couple of months it performed flawlessly. But then it began to show that maybe we couldn’t trust it implicitly.

Last week when we were in the Chattanooga area, my daughter started to show the symptoms of some kind of an illness so we decided to take her to a doctor (who is a friend of the family). It was a bit of a drive, so we set the GPS and let it take us there. It got us close, I suppose, but not close enough. “Turn left” it said, and I did. And as I did that it said, “Arriving at destination.” I scratched my head as I looked around and saw that we were in the parking lot of a giant movie theater. There was no doctor’s office nearby. In fact, the road we were supposed to arrive at was nowhere in sight. Yet the GPS stubbornly insisted that we were where we were supposed to be. Its job accomplished, I suppose it decided it was time for a nap. We eventually drove around and found a local who could direct us to the doctor’s office, a couple of blocks away.

On the way home we decided to stop at Chick Fil-A for lunch. As part of its directions, the GPS wanted me to drive over a concrete median. I elected not to. Driving around Orlando, it told me to bear left only after I had already had to choose between right and left; I guessed wrong and had to drive 15 miles in a circuit to recover. While I will grant that the little device is right far more often than it is wrong, it has been wrong enough times now that it has us second-guessing its directions. And if a GPS can’t get us to the right place, what possible purpose does it serve (other than telling us where we are, something we usually know anyway)?

I was thinking about this on the long drive home from Chattanooga and realized that since we got the GPS, I have gotten lost more often than when I handled the directions on my own. Here’s the reason. I used to be responsible for getting myself where I wanted to go. When I went somewhere new, I would pull up Google Maps, print out a map of the area, and write out (or print off) turn-by-turn directions. I would even sometimes look at the satellite view or street view to ensure I knew just what to look for. When I did all of this research, I typically got exactly where I needed to be without any real trouble. But now my preparation is as simple as looking up the address and punching it in. I let the GPS handle the rest.

The GPS has done something else to me. It used to be that, if I drove somewhere once, I would be able to find my way home easily enough. And if I needed to go back to that place, I would remember how to get there. But as I follow the directions of the GPS, I somehow tune out to where I am going so that I can neither find my way home without its help nor can I find my way back there again. I’ve become reliant on the little gizmo. I follow directions obediently and it gets me where I need to go—most of the time, at least.

On Monday I spoke to a group of pastors on the subject of Pastor: Train Your Church to Think Biblically. And it occurred to me as I spoke that many Christians are perhaps like me when I drive—they rely on someone or something to give them the easy answers without having to do the hard work themselves. And perhaps pastors are sometimes prone to simply give out the answers without helping the men and women of their churches learn to think for themselves. After all, if a person approaches me with a question related to theology or the Christian life, I have different options available to me. I can simply respond with my understanding as if what I say is undoubtedly true, or I can help that person find the answer on his own. While I will grant that there are times when a short answer is fitting, more often, I think, we do well to teach people to think independently. It is better, I am convinced, to send people to the Bible where they can sort out the directions on their own, following turn-by-turn, so that they truly understand where they have come from and where they are going. In this way they learn to think for themselves, they learn to search the Scriptures, they learn to think biblically.

It is easy and even comforting perhaps, to rely on that simple and automatic guidance. But it is far better, I am sure, that we learn to do the work for ourselves. As for me? Well, I still use the GPS but I’m learning that I need to supplement it with my own research. Too often it has told me where to go, only to find that I don’t know where I am or where I’ve been. It’s great for what it is, but I can’t let myself trust it implicitly.

A few years ago I was asked to submit an article to a local magazine—an article dealing with the “-ism” of my choice. I decided to write about ageism, a subject that had been on my mind at the time. I recently saw that the Christian Post is is republishing a series Dr. Mohler wrote around the same time, one he titled “Do Not Cast Me Off in the Time of Old Age.” This seemed like a good time to revisit my old article and publish it again.

At the time I was researching a conference that was coming to Toronto later in the year. In the literature describing the event I noted the following statement which was in the short biography of one of the keynote speakers. “St. Thomas Church in Sheffield, England has grown to be one of the largest churches in England with 2,000+ in weekly worship, 70% of which are under the age of 35.” I was struck by the emphasis on youth, as if this person was a more credible minister of the Word because he appeals to youth rather than to the elderly.

As I thought about this, I remembered an article R.C. Sproul Jr. had posted as he reflected on passing another milestone in life. He said, “When I last crossed a decade barrier in my own aging process, God was good enough to grant me this small bit of wisdom - the Bible honors age, not youth. I came to understand that the disappearance of my youth was something God thought a good thing, and if I were wise, I would agree. Now a decade later and I have been given this bit of wisdom - easier said than done.” Sproul is correct that the Bible honors age above youth. This is not to say that the Bible marginalizes young people, but that it sees them in their proper perspective - as people who are far less wise than the aged. Each year I attempt to complete a study of Proverbs and this is always made abundantly clear throughout the book of Divine wisdom. These verses are typical of the wisdom of Solomon. “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him (Proverbs 22:15).” We can compare that verse with Proverbs 16:31 which tells us that “Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life.”

Only a cursory search through the other 65 books of the Bible will reveal the common theme that God honors age rather than youth. Allow me to provide just a few examples of the Bible mandate to honor the elderly.

Leviticus 19:32 “You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.” God commanded that we are to stand in the presence of the eldery to render to them the honor due to them. In Deuteronomy 28:50 God told the Israelites that a curse would come upon them for their disobedience. “A hard-faced nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young.” A hard-faced nation is one that does not respect the old. Perhaps one of the clearest endorsements of God’s commands towards the aged comes from Job 12:12. “Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days.” True wisdom comes from length of days lived walking with the Lord, not with the arrogant impulses of youth. In the story of Job we also see Elihu, who was the youngest of Job’s friends, wait to speak until the older men had spoken their part. He treated Job with both admiration and respect as his elder. Turning to the New Testament, Paul cautioned Timothy that he must “…not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father (1 Timothy 5:1).” He also tells him to treat elderly women like mothers.

The Bible also has much to say about youth. “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die (Proverbs 23:13).” “The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother (Proverbs 29:15).” Hebrews 12:6-7 compares new believers, who are immature in their beliefs, to children. “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?”

A clear picture emerges from the pages of Scripture. That God honors age above youth does not mean that God despises youth and that He honors all elderly people. But a person who has lived a long life of dedicated service to God, walking in the paths of wisdom, is surely worthy of higher honor than the youth who has only just begun.

And so we need to ask a question about the church. Does the church honor the Bible in honoring age, or does the church instead honor youth? Or are we a hard-faced church that does not respect the elderly?

In our day many are fearing the aging of the Baby Boomers, worrying that they will become a burden on society that will empty the coffers of pension plans and overrun the health care systems. A new word I have begun to hear increasingly lately is “ageism”, a term which has been defined as “any attitude, action, or institutional structure which subordinates a person or group because of age or any assignment of roles in society purely on the basis of age.” We are all familiar, of course, with racism which subordinates people based on their skin color or ethnicity. While this is surely sinful, we can understand how it comes to happen. One ethnic group outnumbers another, and treat the other group as somehow inferior to themselves. But this makes little sense with age, for, as C.S. Lewis said, “The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.” We will all be old some day. Ageism is not only unbiblical and destructive to a well-ordered society, but it is also selfish and foolish.

I remind you again of what spurred this article. “St. Thomas Church in Sheffield, England has grown to be one of the largest churches in England with 2,000+ in weekly worship, 70% of which are under the age of 35.” Is this something to boast about? Are we to be proud that we have built a church for the young? Is it boastworthy that the majority of the people who admire the pastor may be in the midst of their youthful folly? Has this church been built at the expense of the aged? Have we built a church that would rather have pews filled with youth than with the elderly? Have we built an institution that subordinates a group on the basis of their age?

I wonder if that the church has forgotten or perhaps deliberately overlooked Scripture’s focus on the value and importance of the aged. While I have read of hundreds of churches that boast about how young their median age is, I have heard of none that boast in the number of elderly members. While new churches are being planted on a daily basis to reach twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings, I do not know of any that emphasize reaching the elderly. And while many churches are transitioning to new models of “doing church,” none seem to be doing so at the expense of youth. Surely we have missed the Bible’s emphasis on honoring age.

Many years ago I listed to a memorable sermon dealing with Ecclesiastes chapter twelve. Much of the wisdom of that message, preached in a church that boasted many grey heads, has stuck with me to this day. The chapter begins with the words, “Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth.” That is God’s call to those of us who have not yet earned our grey hair. When we are young, we are to heed the call of Wisdom, who cries, “How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple? How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing and fools hate knowledge” (Proverbs 1:22)? We must seek after wisdom so that when we are elderly, we can share our wisdom with the young and foolish.

Until then, let us honor the aged. Let us give double-honor to those with grey hair. Let us stand in their presence and give them the honor God requires. Let our hope and confidence be in the words of the Psalmist who says, “Those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bear fruit in old age; they shall be fresh and flourishing (Psalm 92:13,14).”