'Why Are People Not Satisfied With Islam?'

Fascinating Muslim fundraising video in light of their alarm at the growth of the gospel in Indonesia, a major stronghold for Islam internationally.

Probably a better plug for Christianity than Islam.



HT: Paul Miller

Cultivation, Not Castration, of Masculinity

C. S. Lewis has a fascinating little essay in God in the Dock called 'Priestesses in the Church.'

In it he's addressing a 1950s Anglican/Episcopal issue, but the relevance to today's church scene is striking. Lewis argues that the office of priest should be open to men only.

At one point he says:

It is painful, being a man, to have to assert the privilege, or the burden, which Christianity places upon my own sex. I am crushingly aware how inadequate most of us are . . . to fill the place prepared for us. But it is an old saying in the army that you salute the uniform not the wearer. . . .

We men often make very bad priests. That is because we are insufficiently masculine. It is no cure to call in those who are not masculine at all. A given man may make a very bad husband; you cannot mend matters by trying to reverse the roles. He may make a bad male partner in a dance. The cure for that is that men should more diligently attend dancing classes; not that the ballroom should henceforward ignore distinctions of sex and treat all dancers as neuter. (238-39)

Thankfulness

"We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you . . ."
(Col 1:3)

Paul starts with thankfulness. Why?

Every one of us has a bunch of blessings and a bunch of adversities in life. Good and bad. Joys and sorrows. And every one of us at any given moment in the day is focusing on one or the other of these clumps of realities. We can be aware of both, but we can't simultaneously focus on both. One must always be in the mental foreground and one in the background. Ten seconds' notice of someone's countenance can usually tell you which is foregrounded for them at the moment.

Thankfulness is not false, painted smiles. It is not hollow words. It is not Pollyanna religion, pretending everything is better than it is. It is the gritty determination to focus on the blessings and not the adversities, even when, by the world's scale, the adversities far outweigh the blessings.

For those of us in Christ, it could be that just about every earthly reason to be thankful has been stripped away. But we are still in Christ. We still have the supreme blessing without which every earthly blessing is irrelevant and in comparison with which every earthly adversity pales.

Which is where Paul was at, most of the time. Destitute, beaten, forsaken, opposed. But he starts out Colossians, and most of his letters, thankful. Why? Because he had that one all-determinative thing, that one Friend. So he starts his letters thankful, before saying anything else. This is the tone-setter.

An Eternal Welcome

Bishop Handley Moule's commentary on Romans from a century ago, though a bit overly Keswick-ish at times, might be the most beautifully written commentary I have ever come across, on any book.

Here's a snippet from his comment on Romans 3:23-24:

In the discovery of your necessity, and of Christ as the all-in-all to meet it, you see with little need of exposition the place and power of faith. It means, you see it now, simply your reception of Christ. It is your contact with Him, your embrace of Him. It is not virtue; it is absolutely remote from merit. But it is necessary; as necessary as the hand that takes the alms, or as the mouth that eats the unbought meal.

The meaning of justification is now to you no riddle of the schools. Like all the great words of scriptural theology it carries with it in divine things the meaning it bears in common things, only for a new and noble application; you see this with joy, by the insight of awakened conscience. He who "justifies" you does exactly what the word always imports. He does not educate you, or inspire you, up to acceptability. He pronounces you acceptable, satisfactory, at peace with Law.

And this He does for Another's sake; on account of the Merit of Another, who has so done and suffered as to win an eternal welcome for Himself and everything that is His, and therefore for all who are found in Him, and therefore for you who have fled into Him, believing.

So you receive with joy and wonder "the righteousness of God," His way to bid you, so deeply guilty in yourself, welcome without fear to your Judge. . . .

The harlot, the liar, the murderer, are short of the glory of God; but so are you. Perhaps they stand at the bottom of a mine, and you on the crest of an Alp; but you are as little able to touch the stars as they. So you thankfully give yourself up, side by side with them, if they will come too, to be carried to the height of divine acceptance, by the gift of God, "justified gift-wise by His grace."

--H. C. G. Moule, The Epistle to the Romans (London: Pickering & Inglis, 1902), 96-97

Who knew one was allowed to write commentaries like that!

Only One of These Can Be True

1. Isaiah 53:

". . . he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,

and no beauty that we should desire him."

2. Hollywood: