Significant Choices

On Sunday, we heard about a family serving in a restricted access country who was coming home due to threats of violence.  This reminded me of several things; the first was an assignment I had to complete for a missions block course in college.  The scenario was essentially the same: if threatened by violence or death, would you 1) come home, 2) send your family home but stay, or 3) all stay and suffer with the Christians in that place?  A difficult decision indeed; I'm not sure what I would do.

I don't want to downplay the importance of serving God where we are at, in terms of faithfully fulfilling responsibilities.  In one sense, there is no difference in terms of being pleasing to God whether I'm making tents like Aquila and serving in a local congregation or getting beaten up constantly like Paul for preaching the gospel in new places.  However, for me, I was struck by the comparative insignificance of the choices I make daily.  Should I read a book or go for a walk?  Which restaurant should I eat at, or stay home?  What time should I go to bed? 

Although the accumulation of these choices will affect the course of my life over time, these decisions don't have the seeming weight of one like "Should I leave my ministry? If I don't, I will probably die."  We need to be doing things that matter.  Faithfully obeying God in the daily, mundane tasks of life is a part of serving God, but we can't let the stuff of life deaden us to eternally significant choices.

The important questions we should be asking are things like "Does this please God, or me?"  "What value will this have in a year?  Five years?  Ten years?"  Then we can better place priority on activities which have a lasting impact: teaching our children, building our marriages, knowing our God.

A Long Break and a New Book

Sorry for the long hiatus.  Work has been exceptionally busy with the start of school plus several intensive renovation and upgrade projects.

I've been reading through The Shallows by Nicholas Carr recently.  Ironically, since the subtitle of his book is What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, I'm reading it in eBook form in iBooks on my iPod.  As a result, citations will be no more specific that what chapter I found them in, because I have no easy way to give page numbers.  Now, for some thought-provoking quotes (all taken from The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains).

From Chapter Three:

"Our technologies can be divided, roughly, into four categories, according to the way they supplement or amplify our native capacities."

 I appreciated his summary of technology, according to function: strength, senses, reshaping nature, and "intellectual," including computers and books.

From Chapter Four:

"Our fast-paced, reflexive shifts in focus were once crucial to our survival."

 This is in the midst of a discussion of the transition from distraction to immersing yourself in a book.  Obviously this flows out of an evolutionary view which assumes language and writing developed gradually rather than very early (cf. written records described in Genesis).  But, assuming there was such a transition (though not due to evolution, but rather due to growth of early ancient metropolitan areas or other factors), it would be ironic that we have seemingly come full cycle, from distracted reading among much toil, to dedicated reading, back to distracted reading among much leisure today.

From Chapter Four as well:

"Whether a person is immersed in a bodice ripper or a Psalter, the synaptic effects are largely the same."

Whether or not this is true, it is definite that the spiritual effects are not the same.  Still, it is hard for me to imagine that the type of reading won't impact the brain as well.  Obviously there are significant perceptual or conceptual differences between a literate and an illiterate person, but it would seem logical that there would be similar, though less noticeable, differences between a reader who primarily consumes romance novels and a reader of classics, like The Count of Monte Cristo.  But this remains to be seen.

Good Preaching

A final (or perhaps nearly final) quote from Why Johnny Can't Preach:

To preach the Word of God well, one must already have cultivated, at a minimum, three sensibilities: the sensibility of the close reading of texts, the sensibility of composed communication, and the sensibility of the significant.

(T. David Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, Kindle location 1012)



To preach better, we need to learn to read carefully, rather than distractedly, to write clearly and thoughtfully, rather than haphazardly, and to emphasize the important, not just the intriguing, in both our study and our sermons.

Outdated Worship Or Just Poorly Done?

From Why Johnny Can't Preach:

What the contemporaneists and emergents have not yet considered, however, is the possibility that such moribund churches are so not because they are doing the wrong things, but because they are doing them incompetently.

(T. David Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, location 269)

In other words, the solution to poor preaching and the resulting lack of interest by congregations is not to throw out the act of preaching and replace it with lots of loud music and entertaining skits.  The solution is to fulfill our job as preachers by clearly and fervently proclaiming the truth God has given (1 Corinthians 1:18-24).  Not our wisdom, not our marketing strategies, not following the latest fads: we must preach Christ.

Trading Moments

Again, from Why Johnny Can't Preach:

Every technological development has an opportunity cost because once we spend even part of our day using a technology we once did not use, some of the things we once did with our time we no longer do.

(T. David Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, Kindle location 564)

For example, if I'm watching TV, I don't have that time to read a book. This is not inherently a bad thing, but something about which we should be aware.  My point is not to avoid technology - e.g. we must write letters rather than email - but that we should be conscious of how we are using our time.