Studd: prime qualifications

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Meditation:
    Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.
    —Romans 12:1-3 (NIV)

Quotation:
    A lost reputation is the best degree for Christ’s service.
    ... C. T. Studd (1860-1931), C. T. Studd—Cricketer and Pioneer [1933], Norman P. Grubb, Read Books, 2008, p. 164 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I abandon my good name and ambition for Your sake.

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Herzog: the "social" Christ

Friday, July 31, 2009
    Commemoration of Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of the Society of Jesus, 1556

Meditation:
    But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
    —2 Timothy 4:5 (NIV)

Quotation:
    One of the catchwords in contemporary Protestantism is that religion must aid man in “becoming human” or even “truly human”—whatever that means—and the “model” is Christ. Take the “obvious things” about Christ as listed by a contemporary minister:

    He was a popular and controversial preacher;
    He gathered a group of followers;
    He spent most of his time with the disinherited;
    He taught with authority;
    He never married;
    He never (so far as we know) held a job;
    He did not participate in public affairs;
    He did not have income, property, or an address;
    He was in bitter and frequent conflict with the religious and political authorities;
    He seemed to expect that the world would be eminently, radically, and supernaturally transformed;
    He attacked the traditions and values of his own people;
    He practically forced the authorities to prosecute and execute him.

    There is nothing exclusively religious, much less Christian, in this description, which, with a few exceptions, might apply also to Socrates or to “Che” Guevara. I asked many socially oriented ministers why they were Christians at all. Some said through faith, and some said that Christianity gave them courage and the motivation to endure (but so do other beliefs). Some said they hardly knew and that, if another, more acceptable, ideology came along, they would embrace it.
    ... Arthur Herzog (b. 1927), The Church Trap, New York: Macmillan, 1968, p. 166 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, recall Your people to Your power and service.

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Lewis: curing people of Christianity

Thursday, July 30, 2009
    Commemoration of William Wilberforce, Social Reformer, 1833

Meditation:
    It is better to take refuge in the LORD
    than to trust in princes.
    —Psalm 118:9 (NIV)

Quotation:
    [Continued from yesterday]
    We know that one school of psychology already regards religion as a neurosis. When this particular neurosis becomes inconvenient to the government, what is to hinder the government from proceeding to ‘cure’ it? Such ‘cure’ will, of course, be compulsory; but under the Humanitarian theory it will not be called by the shocking name of Persecution. No one will blame us for being Christians, no one will hate us, no one revile us. The new Nero will approach us with the silky manners of a doctor, and though all will be in fact [compulsory], all will go on within the unemotional therapeutic sphere where words like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, or ‘freedom’ and ‘slavery’ are never heard. And thus when the command is given, every prominent Christian in the land may vanish overnight into Institutions for the Treatment of the Ideologically Unsound, and it will rest with the expert gaolers to say when (if ever) they are to emerge. But it will not be persecution. Even if the treatment is painful, even if it is life-long, even if it is fatal, that will be only a regrettable accident, the intention was purely therapeutic.
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”, in God in the Dock [1970], ed. Walter Hooper, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1994, p. 293 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I have confidence in You alone.

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Lewis: an instrument of tyranny

Wednesday, July 29, 2009
    Feast of Mary, Martha & Lazarus, Companions of Our Lord

Meditation:
    It is better to take refuge in the LORD
    than to trust in man.
    —Psalm 118:8 (NIV)

Quotation:
    The practical problem of Christian politics is not that of drawing up schemes for a Christian society, but that of living as innocently as we can with unbelieving fellow-subjects under unbelieving rulers who will never be perfectly wise and good and who will sometimes be very wicked and very foolish. And when they are wicked, the Humanitarian theory of punishment will put in their hands a finer instrument of tyranny than wickedness ever had before. For if crime and disease are to be regarded as the same thing, it follows that any state of mind which our masters choose to call ‘disease’ can be treated as crime, and compulsorily cured. It will be vain to plead that states of mind which displease the government need not always involve moral turpitude and do not therefore always deserve forfeiture of liberty. For our masters will not be using the concepts of Desert and Punishment but those of disease and cure. [Continued tomorrow]
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”, in God in the Dock [1970], ed. Walter Hooper, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1994, p. 292-293 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, may Your law prevail throughout the world.

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Stravinsky: God and music

Tuesday, July 28, 2009
    Commemoration of Johann Sebastian Bach, musician, 1750

Meditation:
    Sing for joy to God our strength;
    shout aloud to the God of Jacob!
Begin the music, strike the tambourine,
    play the melodious harp and lyre.
    —Psalm 81:1,2 (NIV)

Quotation:
    The Church knew what the Psalmist knew: music praises God. Music is as well, or better, able to praise Him than the building of a church and all its decoration; it is the Church’s greatest ornament.
    ... Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), Conversations with Igor Stravinsky [1958], Robert Craft, Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1959 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    My heart sings Your praises, Lord.

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Hatch: the flexibility of Christianity

Monday, July 27, 2009
    Commemoration of Brooke Foss Westcott, Bishop of Durham, Teacher, 1901

Meditation:
    Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.
    —1 Corinthians 9:19-22 (NIV)

Quotation:
    Nor is the fact that a particular form was good in a particular age a proof that it is also good for another age. The history of the organization of Christianity has been in reality the history of successive readjustments of form to altered circumstances. Its power of readjustment has been at once a mark of its divinity and a secret of its strength.
    ... Edwin Hatch (1835-1889), The Organization of the Early Christian Churches [1880], London: Longmans, Green, 1918, p. 218 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, grant Your church the understanding and power to speak Your word to this generation.

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Denney: the only sphere of existence

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Meditation:
    [John the Baptist:] “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
    —Luke 3:8,9 (NIV)

Quotation:
    We cannot divide either man or the universe... into two parts which move on different planes and have no vital relations; we cannot... limit the divine reaction against sin, or the experiences through which, in any case whatever, sin is brought home to man as what it is, to the purely spiritual sphere. Every sin is a sin of the indivisible human being, and the divine reaction against it expresses itself to conscience through the indivisible frame of that world, at once natural and spiritual, in which man lives. We cannot distribute evils into the two classes of physical and moral, and subsequently investigate the relation between them: if we could, it would be of no service here. What we have to understand is that when a man sins he does something in which his whole being participates, and that the reaction of God against his sin is a reaction in which he is conscious, or might be conscious, that the whole system of things is in arms against him.
    ... James Denney (1856-1917), The Atonement and the Modern Mind, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1903, p. 59-60 (see the book)

Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, quicken consciences for the sake of the Gospel.

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