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| It is interesting today that the moral life is often equated with filling your day with doing good. To be moral, as many think, is to be in a constant state of activity of 'doing good'. It is interesting since the two greatest commandments in the bible are commands to be, not to do. Loving the Lord your God is first a call to a life of personal devotion and prayer and then a call to act. Loving your neighbor is first a call to an attitude toward your neighbor and then a call act. Good works (doing good) by will power and not out of pleasure is not part of the Christian tradition, but the Pharisaic tradition. The Pharisaic tradition was quite impressive at keeping/doing commandments, but missed the whole thrust of the law which is first being a certain way and then doing out of that sort of heart. The difficulty is that God demands all of our heart-mind-soul-strenght as his own, while we loves so little thus violating the whole of the law. But, that is the meaning of the cross - that we receive what Christ deserves and he on the cross what we deserve. The trust of what I'm getting at is that the quiet life is essential to the holy life. Jesus himself spent much of his time in the quiet life - he went to remote regions - he went upon the sea - he withdrew from crowds seeking teaching. If Jesus could not minister without the quite life, then how can we? It is in a sense, knowingly or unknowingly, very prideful to think we could lead a holy life without the quiet life as even Jesus could not do this. | | |
| Machen on progress or lack there of: “Scientific investigation, as has already been observed, has certainly accomplished much; it has in many respects produced a new world. But there is another aspect of the picture which should not be ignored. The modern world represents in some respects an enormous improvement over the world in which our ancestors lived; but in other respects it exhibits a lamentable decline. The improvements appear in the physical conditions of life, but in the spiritual realm there is a corresponding loss. The loss is clearest, perhaps, in the realm of art. Despite the mighty revolution which has been produced in the external conditions of life, no great poet is now living to celebrate the change; humanity has suddenly become done. Gone, too, are the great painters and the great musicians and the great sculptors. The art that still subsists is largely imitative, and were it is not imitative it is usually bizarre.” | | |
| A couple quotes by Machen that I like: “The next thing less than the infinite is infinitely less.” “Modern preachers are trying to bring men into the church without requiring them to relinquish their pride; they are trying to help men avoid the conviction of sin.” Consequently, the church “is busily engaged in an absolutely impossible task—she is busily engaged in calling the righteous to repentance.” “This is the true order of Christian pedagogy— ‘trust in His redeeming blood’ first, and then ‘try his works to do.’ Disaster always follows when the order is reversed.” | | |
| “instead of investing energy in trying to demonstrate or prove the viability and truth of Christian belief, Barth assumes it and then seeks to describe it… From Barth’s perspective, theology could recover its essential integrity only when it came to realize that it was utterly dependent on God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ, which constituted its only possible basis. Dependence on revelation means that we cannot assume that we know in advance what reality and the nature of rationality look like and then assess revelation and Christian faith by these predetermined standards. Instead we must begin with faith in Jesus Christ and only then attempt to explain the internal rationality and intelligibility of such faith.” | | |
| A bit Michelle read to me from her book Disciplines of a Godly Woman: “Fourth, begin (giving) now. The natural tendency is to put giving off until you feel able to give. Such thinking keeps many from ever giving. There’s an old story about the preacher who came to see a farmer and asked, ‘If you had $200, would you give $100 to the Lord?’ ‘I would,’ answered the farmer. ‘If you had two cows, would you give one to the Lord?’ ‘Sure.’ ‘If you had two pigs, would you give one of them to the Lord?’ The farmer said, ‘Now that isn’t fair! You know I have two pigs’” - Barbra Hughes | | |
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