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).”

Today I want to say a word about Christians and accountability groups or accountability partnerships. I am not sure if Christians have always spoken as much of accountability as we do today or if this has been a happy result of organizations such as Promise Keepers. I guess I have not been an adult Christian long enough to know.

I am convinced there is great benefit in Christians pursuing accountability relationships, at least in some situations. It is valuable, I believe, for Christians to meet on a regular basis to confess sin, to speak of God’s grace, to share triumphs, to ask tough questions and to pray for one another. I meet every week among a group of leaders from my church and just about every week somebody asks one of these questions: “Is there anything you really do not want to talk about?” or “Is there something you should tell us that you’re hoping nobody will ask?” These are good questions, leading questions, that cause us to probe our hearts a little bit to see if there is something we ought to confess. As leaders and potential leaders in the church, we desire transparency; we believe the Bible demands it.

As much as there has been great personal benefit in these times of accountability and in living with the specter of accountability, I’ve seen as well that there is one drawback; not surprisingly, it is a drawback related to my own sin. A little while ago I was reading a book review by Erik Raymond and thought he brought this out so succinctly. “Accountability is often quite helpful,” he said. “However, many times folks end up fearing their ‘accountability partner’ while remaining numbly void of a healthy fear of God. This does not kill the root of sin, but unwittingly increases a fear of man (idolatry).”

I know that this has been something I’ve been prone to. Because of my accountability relationships I find myself putting sin to death, or at least refusing to give in to sin and temptation of various kinds. But often, when I look to my heart, I see that my motive is hardly pure. I am motivated by not wanting to have to admit or confess such sin to another person. Every week, before we meet, we fill out a sheet that asks a variety of questions: have I been faithful to pray for the men and women of the church this week? Have any of my financial dealings failed to be filled with integrity? Have I given sufficient time to my family? Have I fallen into any kind of sexual sin? Did I take a day off this week? Though this is a helpful way of examining my week, looking back to see evidence of sin in my life and evidence of God’s grace, I know that my heart is often motivated more by a desire not to confess sin to other men than it is to honor God. In other words, I am often motivated more by fear of man than I am by a fear of God.

I’ve (quite literally) laid awake some nights, wondering what is going on in my heart that I’d be more concerned about what my friends and pastors think of me than I am by a desire to obey God. If I want to be very pragmatic, I can rejoice that at least I am not sinning; without accountability I might be more likely to give in to temptation. After all, if that were the case, only God might ever know. If no one was going to ask me whether I’ve been faithful to pray for the people of the church, I would be more likely not to pray. But I pray, at least in part because I know that I will have to answer the question, “Did you pray for the men and women of the church this week?”. But then I wonder, what kind of prayers am I offering if they are motivated by fear of man instead of obedience to God? Does God even want to hear such prayers? What if they are 50% obedience, 50% fear of man? Or 80% obedience and 20% fear or man?

I think Erik nails it when he says accountability may give opportunity not to kill the root of sin, but to actually increase a fear of man. This is not the fault of accountability, I’m sure, but of the individual’s sinful heart. It’s my fault, not accountability’s. There is some kind of idol in my life that values the acceptance of man or a desire to perform well in the eyes of man more than it desires to be obedient to God for the sake of God. At least, that’s the only explanation I can offer.

On Wednesday I posited that endless choice brings us endless discontentment. While marketers may try to assure us that a consumer with more options is a happier consumer, evidence seems to indicate that more options mostly make us increasingly miserable. Speaking personally, I can attest that this is true. I don’t want to disparage choice as if being forced to choose is somehow wrong. But plain experience shows that infinite choice does not bring about greater happiness. If anything, the opposite is true.

I began thinking about this as I read news articles about so-called “designer babies.” An article from the BBC says, “LA Fertility Institutes run by Dr Jeff Steinberg, a pioneer of IVF in the 1970s, expects a trait-selected baby to be born next year.” Using a lab technique called preimplantation genetic diagnosis, his clinic allows parents to choose not only the sex of their child, but also physical traits such as hair color and eye color. Though in the past this technology has been used primarily to screen for inheritable genetic defects, clinics are now beginning to use it to screen for physical traits. By next year we should begin to see the first generation of customized children—children whose parents have ensured that they will be free from genetic disorders and children whose gender, hair color, eye color and even height have been carefully selected.

The ethical dilemmas here are dizzying; they are so plentiful, I hardly know where to begin.

Maybe the best place to begin is with the conscience. I believe any biblically-informed conscience (and even many consciences that know nothing of the Bible) will rebel against this. And rightly so. As Christians we know that God has given conscience as a gift; somehow he has planted within us some knowledge of his law and conscience can steer us away from violating it. And so we ought to listen to conscience. When conscience reacts as strongly as it does when it hears of designer children, we need to take heed.

But I want to look at just a couple of other implications—ones that are related to what I wrote on Wednesday.

Endless choice bring endless regret. When we have fewer options, we are able to have more confidence in the choice we eventually make. If I have only three cell phones available to me, the task of choosing just one of them is relatively straightforward. When I have three hundred phones available to me and each one can be customized with cases, colors, ringtones and nearly everything else, the choice becomes much more difficult. And after I finally make a choice, it is far more likely that I will regret my decision. This is especially so when each of these phones will soon be replaced by something even better; even the latest and greatest is on the verge of utter irrelevance and obsolescence.

How much more so when we think about our children? When we customize our children, we will think of them differently; we will have to think of them differently. Since the dawn of Creation, humans have regarded children as a surprise and mystery. Will he have mom’s hair? Will she have dad’s eyes? Will it be a boy or a girl? We have always had to leave such things in the hands of God. We may wish or hope or dream, but ultimately each child is a gift from God. This is true whether the child is mentally and physically sound with just the physical traits we had hoped for or whether the child is mentally and physically handicapped and with none of the physical traits we may have wished for. Of course genetic testing and widespread abortion have already allowed us to destroy almost every child with mental or physical handicaps. But now this technology is going further so that we are able to choose far more; at the very least we can increase the probability for one or more of the physical traits.

What would cause us to believe that the ability to choose our child’s hair color, eye color and other traits is going to make us happier with the child? Does not the very fact that we can make such choices open the possibility that we will then be able to regret the choice?

Endless customization also leads to discontent because it raises our expectations. If I go to the local car lot and buy a standard model car, my expectations of that vehicle will be far different than if I buy a heavily-customized car. I once saw a television show where a football player was buying a new car. He bought it from a dealer and immediately drove it to a shop where it was heavily customized; the after-market customization cost far more than the original value of the vehicle. And, of course, when the car was ready he looked it over with the utmost care to make sure it had been customized to his exact specifications. He would have been satisfied with nothing less. He had paid for, demanded and now expected perfection.

How could things be any different with children whose importance and impact obviously far eclipse a car? How will a parent react when her customized child turns out to be just as fussy, just as grouchy, just as sinful as any other child? Will this parent not have increased expectations of the child and potentially unrealistically high expectations?

Imagine a mother’s reaction when she pays money (lots of money!) to customize her child—perhaps she has selected a child with blond hair and blue eyes—and finds that the child actually has brown hair with green eyes. Will she demand her money back? Will she still be able to love such a child? After all, this technology offers no guarantees—she may demand a physical trait only to see the technology fail her. Can she live happily with a green-eyed child when all her friends’ children have blue? One British fertility expert warns against “turning babies into commodities that you buy off the shelf.” And this is exactly what we face—children who are commodities who can be carefully customized and personalized. Only if we buy into today’s consumerist mindset could we possibly believe that this will make us any happier or any more content. The reality, I’m convinced, will be just the opposite.

Again, I think the ethical implications go far beyond this, but these are just two implications that grow out of the consumerist mindset so prominent in our culture. Shopping for just one out of hundreds of cell phones may be relatively insignificant, but I think we can see it as just a shadow of the moral dilemmas that we are beginning to face as technology continues to far outpace morality.