Reformation Heritage Books has Carl Trueman’s Reformation: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow on sale for $5.00 (for a limited time). I just ordered copies for my elders and deacons – it’ll be on our winter reading/discussion list. If you don’t have it, I highly recommend getting it! It’s not long (120 pages) but it is good, straightforward, and applicable.
When I first read through many of Luther’s sermons, I was delighted and refreshed to hear the Reformer explain how a person can be a good Christian in and through one’s ordinary life stations (parenting, working, being a student, etc.). It was good for me to learn that a Christian doesn’t need to retreat away from others to better follow Christ: he or she can do it while flipping burgers, writing computer software, or changing diapers. Gene Veith explains this concept of vocation well in his helpful book, God at Work. Here’s one excerpt.
“…Luther said that faith serves God, but works serve our neighbor. We often speak of ‘serving God,’ and this is a worthy goal, but strictly speaking, in the spiritual realm, it is God who serves us. ‘The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many’ (Matt. 20:28). In our vocations, we are not serving God – we are serving other people. Luther excoriated the monastic hermits who claimed that they were doing such good works in spending all of their time in prayer and devotion. These are not good works at all, he said; who are they helping? To offer religious exercises as good works before God while hiding yourself away from other people who might need your help is to miss the point. Genuine good works have to actually help someone. In vocation, we are not doing good works for God – we are doing good works for our neighbor. This locates moral action in the real, messy world of everyday life, in the conflicts and responsibilities of the world – not in inner attitudes or abstract ideals, but in concrete interactions with other people” (p.39).
That’s refreshing: God doesn’t need our good works, but our neighbor does. God serves us each Lord’s Day in the “divine service” (as we note at the top of our liturgy) and we serve our neighbor in our jobs/vocations during the week. This is freeing because it keeps the law and gospel from being all mixed up and it means we can be solid Christians in and through our ordinary weekday labor. We don’t have to become hyper-spiritual mystics who retreat into forest cabins or join a monastery on a solitary hilltop. In other words, as Veith later says, “Vocation is played out…in the realm of the ordinary” (p.59).
Here’s the full title/info: God at Work: Your Christian Vocation in All of Life (Wheaton: Crossway, 2002/2011).
shane lems
In a pastoral way, I feel sorry for Christians who sit under preaching that doesn’t clearly, consistently, and convictingly discuss sin (total depravity, radical corruption, etc.). If you think about it from a human perspective, I can understand why one might avoid the topic of sin, for it is hard to hear that our anger, lust, and pride offend the living God. However, if you think about it from a biblical perspective, there are tremendous benefits in knowing what the Bible teaches about sin and misery (including our own dark hearts). Here’s how puritan Ralph Venning stated it.
“…It cannot but be extremely useful to let men see what sin is: how prodigiously vile, how deadly mischievous, and therefore how monstrously ugly and odious a thing sin is.”
He then explained the benefits of knowing sin and its vile aspects:
1) It helps us better admire the free and rich grace of God.
2) It makes us flee – by faith - to our Lord Jesus Christ.
3) It vindicates the holy, just, and good law of God and his justice in condemning those who break his law.
4) It leads us to hate sin, repent from it, and take a holy, just, and good revenge on it and ourselves.
5) It helps us love and serve God better than we did before we understood the depth of depravity.
6) Seeing sin’s ugliness and darkness makes God’s incomparable and transcendent beauty of holiness stand out all the more.
Of course we shouldn’t take sinful pleasure in talking about sin, but avoiding the issue isn’t the biblical and Christian way. If we do avoid or downplay the doctrine of sin, we will not understand the other truths of Scripture: God’s holiness, the justice of his law, the amazing aspect of his grace, the work of Jesus, true repentance and faith, and growing in godliness (plus several more). In the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, before we truly know what it means to live and die in the comfort of the gospel, we must know how great our sin and misery are (cf. Q/A #2). In other words, if we don’t know the depths of our depravity, we won’t know the greatness of grace displayed on the cross. God, have mercy on me, a sinner! Where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more!
For the above Venning quotes (which I slightly edited), see page 18 of The Sinfulness of Sin.
shane lems
sunnyside wa
John Newton’s letters are, in my opinion, some of the most edifying, biblical, and practical pastoral letters ever written (aside from inspired epistles, of course). Here’s a great section from his letter to a friend on the topic of temptation. I’ve slightly edited it to make it easier to read.
“[Satan] hates the Lord’s people, grudges them all their privileges and all their comforts; and will do what he can to upset them, because he cannot prevail against them. And though the Lord sets such bounds to Satan’s rage that he cannot pass, and limits Satan as to manner and time, God is often pleased to allow him to succeed in his rage to a considerable degree – not to gratify Satan, but to humble and prove Christians, to show Christians what is in their hearts, to make them truly sensible of their immediate and absolute dependence upon himself, and to excite them to watchfulness and prayer.”
“Though temptations, in their own nature, are grievous and dreadful, yet when, by the grace of God, they produce these effects (listed in the previous sentence), they deserve to be numbered among all things which are appointed to work together for the good of those who love God. …One gracious end that the Lord has in permitting his people to be tempted, is for the prevention of greater evils, that they may not grow proud or careless, or be ensnared by the corrupt customs of the world.”
This quote - along with Newton’s full discussion of temptation – is found in The Letters of John Newton.
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I finally got around to reading through Corbett and Fikkert’s When Helping Hurts. I typically don’t read all the new and popular books that are heavily marketed, but since this one covered a topic that is unique, I though I should get it. I’m glad I did – with some qualifications.
First, the negatives. I’m not too wild about the theological/biblical aspect of the book. For example, it isn’t helpful to say that the church must preach the gospel in word and deed (cf. p. 38). The gospel is an announcement of Christ crucified, not a deed for the church to do (Mike Horton addresses this well in The Gospel Commission). Also, I didn’t see any distinction in this book between how the church helps the poor in its own ranks and how it helps the poor who are not Christians (cf. Gal. 6:10). I disagree with the neo-Kuyperian aspect of the book, which shows up in phrases like these: “Christ is actively engaged in sustaining the economic, social, political, and religious systems in which humans live;” “Jesus is bringing reconciliation to…the systems that emanate from [our foundational relationships];” “One day…neighborhood associations, schools, businesses, governments, etc. will be liberated from their ‘bondage to decay;” and other such phrases (pp. 59, 77, 128). I simply don’t think these types of teachings have solid biblical foundation; they are very ambiguous (whose version of government is being liberated, and what will liberated government look like?). Finally, I would have liked to see more discussion of those NT verses that specifically talk about money, finances, and helping the poor in the church. There could have been a better balance between the main teaching of Scripture and the specific details in it.
Positively, I liked every other aspect of this book. The authors are exactly right when they explain that and how our helping the poor often hurts them and us. Most of the time our solution to poverty is to throw cash at it, which is ironically what we shouldn’t normally do! “When North American Christians do attempt to alleviate poverty, the methods used often do considerable harm to both the materially poor and the materially non-poor” (p. 28). I’ll come back to their excellent chapter critiquing short-term-missions later. For now, I want to point out another solid principle they discuss: “Do not do things for people that they can do for themselves” (p. 115).
This paternalism, as Corbett and Flikkert call it, is a typical attitude of Western Christians: we have the money, spirituality, power, and know-how to help people who are lower on the social ladder than we are (they also call this a ‘god-complex’). In other words, when we paint the house of a poor person who could have painted it himself (or at least helped paint it!), we’re really not helping the situation at all – we’re hurting it instead. When we give someone money or a new car when they more desperately need job and financial training or basic life-skills, we’re hurting him and ourselves. Or, from a different angle, the authors say that we usually err in our helping the poor by thinking they need relief when they actually need rehabilitation and development. This is covered well in chapter four, which, in my opinion, is worth the price of the entire book.
In summary, while I don’t think it is as biblically solid as it could be, I do think the practical side of this book is something all church leaders and missionaries should read and discuss. The book did challenge me in many ways. Theologically, it got me thinking how one could approach this topic from more robust theological point of view – with Reformed theology in mind. Practically, it helped me think harder about helping the poor in ways that actually help, not hurt them.
Here’s the full title and more info: Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, When Helping Hurts (Chicago: Moody Press, 2009).
shane lems
sunnyside wa
