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A Holiday at the Sea
As a premeditated attempt to escape from the secluded rural lifestyle that is the norm here in Restenas, a group of friends and I commandeered a van and headed into the big-city for the afternoon. We were met by cobble-stone streets, brightly painted shops, backstreet cafe’s, and scores of locals all seemingly competing for the ‘most original attire’ award. After acquiring sore feet and maxing out our memory cards one of the participants and I sat down for a drink along one of Goteborg’s busier streets. Between sipping our pints, discussing the day, and comparing photo’s I found it fascinating to simply watch people as they passed by.
As is to be expected, what I first observed was the obvious differences in dress, style, mannerisms and speed with which they passed by. As I watched, a businessman with his briefcase rushed past and was soon followed by two strolling lovers, then a mother-daughter shopping team passed by excitedly chattering over their purchases. Next a proud father paraded his blond-haired twins by in a stroller, while across the street a local shopkeeper steped outside for a smoke wearing a tired expression. Fast or slow, smiling or sober, alone or with company they all pass us by.
Yet the question haunted me; why did they walk or stroll or smile or frown? To what purpose did they dress this way or that, choose that girl or this, drive this car or that? What drove them to live the way they did? To what end did the business man run or the shopkeeper grimace, the mother and daughter shop?
Men are curious creatures. So complex, yet in the larger scheme of things, simple. All seek happiness, all worship unceasingly. As Blaise Pascal aptly put it:
“All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, it is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”
I sat that saturday afternoon witnessing in all its varied fervor the unabashed pursuit of happiness. All men seek happiness, yet will these find it where they are looking? While contemplating this dilemma C.S. Lewis remarks that:
“Our desires are not too strong, but too weak. We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
John Calvin one of the fathers of the Protestant Reformation emphatically points those who seek after happiness to journey to the source. In his ‘Institutes of the Christian Religion’ he makes this statement.
“If God contains the fullness of all good things in himself like an inexhaustible fountain, nothing beyond him is to be sought by those who strike after the highest good and all the elements of happiness.”
How many men passed me by that afternoon that had settled for ‘making mud pies in the slum’ ? How many had never heard that ‘a holiday at the sea’ was being offered? There is idolatry in the hearts of our cities, yet how should we respond? How should I respond? Should I point the finger, turn aside? Allow my brothers to sit in the dirt with mud between their fingers? Hoard my seaside holiday to myself?
Or we might ask how many Christians themselves sit in the gutter making mud pies having succumbed to petty desires? Desiring too little?
For both we should stand with broken hearts and quick hands. For me, a simple drink by the roadside had turned into something else. Nothing short of a heart-wrenching paradigm shift.
Hello from Sweden
Here is a short video update of the recent comings and goings of Titus Project Europe.
Podcasts of Note…
Thanks to the genius of the Internet, a wealth of information and instruction that was hitherto difficult to access is now at our fingertips. Because of portable music devices we can now spend our time on the treadmill, working, waiting in line, or commuting – and be tearing up the classroom simultaneously. Many outstanding ministries, churches, and seminaries are serving kingdom purposes by distributing incredible content for free download and distribution. On average I try to spend between five to ten hours every week listening to audio-sermons or lectures and have been doing so for a few years now. I’ve also just tapped into a brilliant resource called the iTunes University, which offers lecture content from many top-notch Universities. Just last week I started working through a twenty five lecture series on Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion from Covenant Theological Seminary in the United States. I encourage you to check it out if you haven’t taken advantage of it already. So, all of this to say that I wanted to share what I believe have been the most personally challenging and helpful podcasts I’ve listened to last year. I’ve chosen three, Mark Driscolls ‘Ministry Idolatry’, John Piper’s ‘Learning From the Mind and Heart of C.S. Lewis’, and Matt Chandlers ‘Preaching to the De-Churched’ (Which actually has nothing to do with its title). They can all be found at theresurgence.com but here are the individual links… Enjoy.
Mark Driscolls: http://theresurgence.com/advance_driscoll_idolotry
John Pipers: http://theresurgence.com/why-cs-lewis-influenced-john-piper
Matt Chandlers: http://theresurgence.com/advance09_matt_chandler
The God Who is There…
[The following is the latest in a multi-article series in which the author evaluates and summarizes a number of classic Christian books read over the last few months]
In this first of his world renown twenty two book series Dr. Francis Schaeffer assesses and critiques the development of modern culture and philosophy. He explores the developing philosophy, art, music, general culture and theology generated over the past seven centuries – his verdict? Modern man is being strangled to death by his own system and has fallen below what Schaeffer calls the ‘line of despair’. Contrary to his renaissance counterpart, Modern man has abandoned hope in finding a universal or absolute through which to validate his existence. Meaning, morality, and reason have no place in his system. In response to this defeat the modern humanist honestly evaluating the logical conclusion of his own beliefs, lives in despair. To him as Satryre said the universe is ‘Absurd’. Interestingly however is that Schaeffer notes that modern man is incapable of living up to the conclusion of his own beliefs. Despite his conclusion, the reality of the external universe and (what Schaeffer calls) the ‘mannishness’ of man exist and must be reconciled. A Kierkegaardan ‘Leap of Faith’ towards meaning is therefore necessary for the rationalist whether that is a drug-induced ‘final experience’, eastern mysticism, or the new theology – in the modern mind reason and values have been divorced. Schaeffer concludes that rationalism is an inadequate system that does not account for all of human experience. As Dr. Steve Kumar said, an authentic worldview must be “Logical, Factual, and Livable” and humanism in the end becomes an anti-philosophy with very few answers to offer. In the midst of the death and despair of modern man Schaeffer challenges the bible-believing christian to understand the modern mans dilemma and make good on his responsibility to offer a logical, factual, and livable answer that encompasses all of reality. The answer founded upon the God Who Is There.
I would highly recommend this and/or any of Dr. Schaeffer’s other books.
History Continued…
Latourette’s second volume on Church History succeeded in keeping pace with its earlier counterpart as far as clarity and scope are concerned. In part II we pick up the tale at the turn of the sixteenth century delving into the details surrounding the long awaited Protestant Reformation and in a sense the consequent Catholic Counter-Reformation. With this period I found helpful the attention brought to the fact that on both sides of the theological conflict there was a widely growing rejection and intolerance in the general population’s attitude towards the rampant corruptions of the Church and rising religious unrest was witnessed on a unprecedented scale. Both the tragedies and triumphs of that particular period are recalled in painstaking detail. Following the Reformations, alongside colonial expansion, Latourette recounts the expansion of the gospel to hitherto unreached peoples and countries, making Christianity a truly unmatched global faith. We are then guided through the enlightenment with all the challenges and opportunities it afforded Christianity. The battles with modernism on one hand and liberalism in the Church on the other being only a few. The Protestant revivals and movements in England and the Thirteen Colonies (Later the United States) are also patiently dissected and the book finishes by evaluating the difficulties following the two World Wars while also noting the outstanding growth and increasing unity of the Church in the twentieth century.
Again, like the first volume this book has been profoundly helpful to me. Particularly reading the sections on the Reformation period helped to clarify more objectively the whole conflict and understand actually what was at stake in a less simplistic way of explanation. The revivals in England and the Thirteen Colonies also gave historical roots to many modern movements and even nations (The United States) and helped to connect the present with some past developments. Discovering the Church’s battle with the Humanism of the enlightenment also helped explain the liberalism we see in many modern churches and has made the battle against liberal theology all the more urgent to join. So in many ways the book has been helpful. At the same time I also should mention the obvious. This book strives to record the ‘History of Christianity’, not simply Protestantism, or Catholicism, but all of it. So naturally as history moves forward and the church divides and expands there is a lot more history to try to consolidate for any given time. Because of this some of the sections on the geographical expansion of the Gospel, the roots of every branch of Protestantism or every movement of Catholicism plus the struggles or triumphs of the Russian or Greek Orthodox churches were difficult to take in. Basically to cover it all you have to spread yourself very thin, and reading became more and more difficult in such sections. So there you have it! Latourette’s ‘A History of Christianity’ is now history!
Portraits of Gothenburg
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A Holiday at the Sea
As a premeditated attempt to escape from the secluded rural lifestyle that is the norm...
Hello from Sweden
Here is a short video update of the recent comings and goings of Titus Project...
Podcasts of Note…
Thanks to the genius of the Internet, a wealth of information and instruction that was...
The God Who is There…
[The following is the latest in a multi-article series in which the author evaluates...
History Continued…
Latourette’s second volume on Church History succeeded in keeping pace with its...
Major Project…
...