Good News Quote #49

From Chapter Nine, Why "Applying It to Your Life" Is Boring: Or, How the Gospel Is Beautiful.

So here is another thing that the preachers who want to be "practical" don't get. They are apt to conclude the sermon with an application that goes like this: "We need to ask ourselves: Am I really following Christ, focusing on him, loving God with my whole heart, caring about my neighbor," etc. The most truthful answer to such questions is surely, "Of course not! I'm not like that!" But then I want to ask the preacher, "Now do you have any good news for sinners like me?" Unfortunately, there's usually no good news coming, because that's the end of the sermon. The whole point is to throw the ball in our court and see what we can do with it. It's a "practical" sermon, so it leaves us trapped, left to our own resources and cut off from Christ.

Good News Quote #48

From Chapter Nine, Why "Applying It to Your Life" Is Boring: Or, How the Gospel Is Beautiful.

The "application" part of the sermon works by making people anxious about whether they're living the way "we as Christians are supposed to: faithful, loving, caring, experiencing the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and so on. It's a trap. Either you believe that stuff about yourself, which makes you self-righteous, or you don't, which makes you anxious. Either way you're stuck. You can try to convince yourself you're oh-so-loving (so much more loving than your neighbors -- now isn't that nice!) or you can worry about how shabby your Christian life is (haunted by that feeling, "what's wrong with me?"). There's no escaping the trap unless you believe that Christ came to save sinners and that includes you. As the apostle Paul wonderfully put it: "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost" (1 Tim. 1:15). For each one of us, the foremost sinner is the one we're talking about when we say the word "I."

Good News Quote #47

From Chapter Nine, Why "Applying It to Your Life" Is Boring: Or, How the Gospel Is Beautiful.

To see what I mean, try this thought experiment. Imagine you're someone who likes poetry and drama, and you're looking at courses being offered at a local community college. Two courses have caught your attention, one titled "The Poems and Plays of Shakespeare" and another titled "The Relevance of Shakespeare to Our Lives." Which one would you rather take? I figure that if it's poetry and drama you really want -- if you're eager to encounter the beauty and power and wisdom in Shakespeare's poems and plays -- then you'll avoid the second course. You want to take in Shakespeare's words, not listen to some professor going on for a whole semester about how they're suppose to be relevant to you. At least that's what I'd choose. When I want to learn something interesting or beautiful, the last thing I want is a series of lectures on how that thing is relevant to my life. I want to encounter the thing itself: literature or history, math or biology, music or the gospel, all of which move me because of their beauty as well as their truth.

Good News Quote #46

From Chapter Nine, Why "Applying It to Your Life" Is Boring: Or, How the Gospel Is Beautiful.

My contention is that the kind of sermon that gives real help living the Christian life is not about us but about Christ. It does not tell us what to do, but what Christ does. [...]

Think of it this way: we who believe in Christ belong to him like a bride waiting for her Bridegroom. He is on his way to us and our whole life is a preparation for his arrival. And we want to be a good bride, pleasing him in everything we do. So what can we hear that will help prepare us for his coming? You could give us sermons about how to be a good bride, but that gets tedious very quickly. This is not because we don't want to be a good bride, but because we don't want to hear about ourselves all the time -- we'd rather hear about our Beloved!

Good News Quote #45

From Chapter Eight, Why You Don't Always Have to Experience Joy: Or, How God Vindicates the Afflicted.

There are many enemies of the virtue of patience, including our own unwillingness to suffer and our egocentric desires to be the kind of person who makes a difference in people's lives. There is also a kind of intellectual impatience, and unwillingness to wait for understanding. We can be tempted to think we must already have a solution to what philosophers call the "problem of evil," the problem of why God allows such suffering in the world. Like Job's friends, we can make the terrible mistake of thinking it's our job to defend God and explain his ways.


The Bible in its wisdom offers us no solution to the problem of evil. [...] We live without a solution but not without hope. No matter how little we know of the meaning of our suffering, we know that it is a story with a happy ending. This may not make us feel any better -- and it is a terrible mistake to demand that the afflicted feel better because of it -- but it is nonetheless the truth.

Good News Quote #44

From Chapter Eight, Why You Don't Always Have to Experience Joy: Or, How God Vindicates the Afflicted.

[Job's three friends] did better when they did nothing. That's a hard lesson to learn, but it's indispensable for anyone who really wants to comfort the afflicted. Sometimes there is nothing we can do to comfort them, and this itself is a form of suffering that is hard for us to bear. But it is also a way that we enter into their suffering and share it. It is essential to the work of sympathy and compassion -- both of which are old words meaning to suffer with someone. And it is hard work to sit in silence and listen to someone we love groan and cry and say dreadful things about God. Sometimes the most we can do to relieve their suffering is just hear their awful words and bear with them patiently. This is the cross of listening, a cross Job's friends were unwilling to bear. They thought they had to do something about his awful words.

Good News Quote #43

From Chapter Eight, Why You Don't Always Have to Experience Joy: Or, How God Vindicates the Afflicted.

One temptation we have is to blame the afflicted for upsetting our worldview. The very existence of their undeserved suffering raises questions about our theology and our faith that are hard to face. [...]


There is a whole book of the Bible that deals with the temptation to blame the afflicted for upsetting our worldview. I'm talking of course about the book of Job. [...]


Job's speeches hardly mention the literal or physical aspects of his suffering, his foul skin disease and the death of his children. Job makes it clear that his real problem is with God. [...]


But he wishes things were different: there ought to be someone in heaven who could speak up for him!


And it turns out, Job has his wish and things are as they ought to be. For the whole story began with God speaking up for Job in heaven, and that in fact is why Job is suffering -- so that God may be proved right when he speaks up for Job. But Job is in no position to know that, which is why he suffers so badly.