Hope for a World In Ruins
When the light of Scripture searches our hearts, we’re exposed as guilty. We’ve fallen short of the glory of God. We sin because we are sinners, and we deserve to reap the judgment in the darkness we love. But, grace upon grace, light shines into the world. There is hope in the ruins because Christ has entered the ruins. And where Christ is, there is light.
I don’t presume to know what your year has been like. But this I know: life is not easy. Every year has its hardships, its losses, its unmet expectations. In a fallen world filled with sinners, some manner of difficulty is not only reasonable, it is part of our day-to-day existence.
Don’t you see how every part of our world is in need of rescue? There’s nothing the curse of sin hasn’t touched. There’s no one unaffected by it. Broken families are everywhere. Loneliness abounds. Medical maladies seem overwhelming, and ultimately there is no medicine to stop death. Political and social tensions run hot and, especially in the United States, there’s pent-up anger that seeks outlets of every sort.
The only hope for a world in ruins is the redeemer of sinners. John tells us in the Fourth Gospel, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). That’s what we need—light that the darkness can’t overcome. This light is Jesus. He is the “true light, which gives light to everyone” (1:9).
What John has in mind is the incarnation of the Son of God. Jesus is the light, and the incarnation is how he came into the world.
Jesus shines in the world which was made through him (John 1:10). He was before all things, and he entered the world to redeem all things. What we need for the darkness is redeeming light, yet no one deserves this light.
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Destroying Marriage in Order to Save It
Written by Daniel Frost and Robert P. George |
Thursday, January 18, 2024
Polyamory harms marriage. Its mainstreaming by some would erode everyone else’s ability to understand and live out true marriage. As the late Oxford philosopher Joseph Raz, whose views on sex and marriage were much more liberal than ours, nevertheless conceded, “monogamy, assuming that it is the only valuable form of marriage, cannot be practiced by an individual. It requires a culture which recognizes it, and which supports it through the public’s attitude and through its formal institutions.”A recent article in the New Yorker paints a rosy picture of the many ways that polyamory and non-monogamy are making inroads into American culture. Amid a great deal of wishful thinking, one claim stands out: that opening your marriage to additional sexual partners can make it stronger. The New Yorker article notes that non-monogamy “is increasingly being presented not as a threat to bourgeois marriage but, rather, as a way to save the institution and all that it affords.”
This claim would be laughable if it weren’t being taken so seriously. It’s a bit like the infamous (and apocryphal) claim from an American military officer in the Vietnam War that “we had to destroy the village in order to save it.” Marital infidelity strikes at the heart of marriage, at its total commitment, expressed in vows of permanence and exclusivity. Spouses who engage in sexual non-monogamy, even if they act with each other’s consent, undermine the basis of an authentic and honorable marriage. And when their actions are public, and especially where they are publicly affirmed and celebrated, they further wound the culture of marriage that everyone benefits from when it is secure and flourishing.
Consider, by analogy, friendship. An ordinary friendship has a certain structure and point. In a true friendship, each friend wills the good of the other for the sake of the other. Without this goodwill, there is no friendship. As it weakens, a friendship withers.
Now, imagine that one friend, upset at the other for some perceived wrong, speaks maliciously of his friend behind his back, impugning his character. We would all have to admit that this action was a betrayal of the friendship, defying the norm that each friend acts for the other’s good.
But now imagine that the slanderer’s goal was to blow off steam over the perceived wrong and then return to the friendship with less resentment. If he is successful in this goal, someone might say that “the slander saved the friendship,” but this would be a mistake. The friendship was not saved, because the unrepentant friend stopped willing the good of the other, the very thing that made them friends. The opposite impression depends on a mistake about what friendship is—the deeply mistaken (and harmful) assumption that it’s most fundamentally a matter of feelings, not wills.
Now compare this to marriage. Like friendship, marriage has a structure and point. This structure is not subject to endless revision and modification but is a function of basic aspects of human well-being and fulfillment. As Western law and culture historically recognized, marriage is a two-in-one-flesh (“conjugal”) union of husband and wife. As a distinctive human good, marriage is an all-encompassing union.
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Lived to Be Forgotten: Dixon E. Hoste, Missionary to China
One of the most important and striking characteristics of Hoste was his prayer life—and related to that, his true humility before God and in his ministry. Hoste never sought fame or power. Instead, he was determined that his name and reputation would be subsumed under the desire to see Jesus get all the honor for everything. Hoste “lived to be forgotten” because he chose to be “hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3).
Dixon Edward Hoste (1861–1946) was a British missionary who served in China for over 40 years. Although he succeeded James Hudson Taylor as the general director of the China Inland Mission (CIM), much less has been written and recorded of his life and ministry than of Taylor’s.
This is not, however, because Hoste lacked achievements and contributions to the mission in China. He was instrumental to CIM’s development not only in terms of organization and mission mobilization but also in the indigenous principles that encouraged Chinese churches to self-grow and rely less on Western missionaries, as well as in dealing with the difficult Boxer Rebellion aftermath with grace and “the power of gentleness,” as former CT editor in chief David Neff put it.
One of the most important and striking characteristics of Hoste was his prayer life—and related to that, his true humility before God and in his ministry. Hoste never sought fame or power. Instead, he was determined that his name and reputation would be subsumed under the desire to see Jesus get all the honor for everything. Hoste “lived to be forgotten” because he chose to be “hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3).
Talking to God
Dixon E. Hoste was born on July 23, 1861, four years before CIM’s founding. Both his father and his grandfather were military men. When Dixon was 17, he entered the Royal Military Academy. At 18, he received his commission as a lieutenant to serve in the Royal Artillery.
Three years later, in 1882, Dixon’s elder brother, William, invited him to attend a special meeting in Brighton where the speaker was the American evangelist D. L. Moody. Phyllis Thompson, author of D. E. Hoste: A Prince with God (the primary biographical source in this article), described the scene. When Moody prayed, Thompson wrote, Dixon felt that he “talked as though God was there, as though he knew him, as a man talks to a friend. He talked as though God could be depended upon to do his work in men’s hearts, right then and there.” Hoste was converted at the meeting. Moody’s prayer left a deep impression on him that shaped his own prayer life over the next 40 years.
It did not take long before Hoste came across Hudson Taylor’s little bookChina: Its Spiritual Need and Claims. Hoste was captured by Taylor’s call for missionaries to serve “four hundred millions of souls, ‘having no hope, and without God’” in China. Hoste wrote to the London office of the CIM in 1883 and offered himself to be a candidate.However, the reference letter from the vicar of Sandown, Isle of Wight, W. T. Storrs, was not totally encouraging. On Hoste’s application form (in the OMF International archive) Storrs praised Hoste’s Christian character, calling him “a straightforward fellow, with much love and faith.” But he also characterized Hoste as naturally shy, a little impulsive, not able to teach well, not very enterprising, and not “naturally fitted” for missionary work—with a disclaimer of “but I may be mistaken.”
Though the clergyman’s assessment wasn’t very hopeful, Thompson writes, members of the London Council took note of the spiritual stature of this quiet young man. He was clearly humble and sincere and even in his youth demonstrated balanced judgment and foresight.
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How Valuable Is Bodily Training?
Bodily training does have some value, because God created the body and he will one day redeem the bodies of his people—but what will bring about the redemption of our bodies one day in the life to come is not bodily training. Our bodies are only part of who we are. When God formed Adam’s body, he breathed into Adam’s body the breath of life, and man became a living soul. We are not only physical, we are also spiritual.
Should Christians care about their bodies? How much emphasis should we place upon bodily exercise?
Some professing Christians in past history have argued that the body is bad—we don’t need to give attention to the body, we just need to focus on spiritual things.
But notice what Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:8: “Bodily training is of some value.” Don’t read that and think Paul is saying bodily training is worthless; he’s not. He is acknowledging here that bodily training does have some value.
Why is bodily training valuable? Well, the Bible actually has much to say about our bodies.
Our bodies matter to God.
First, God made our bodies.
For you formed my inward parts;you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Psalm 139:13–14
Genesis 2 tells us that God formed Adam’s body, and remember, he did this before sin entered the world. The body is a good thing that God made—he saw it, and it was good. God made our bodies, and therefore our bodies are good.
Sin affects our bodies.
But second, sin affects our bodies.
For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
Romans 8:22–23
God created Adam, but Adam disobeyed God; and as a result of Adam’s sin, God cursed the whole creation, including our bodies. From the moment of our conception really, our bodies begin to wear down and decay. It’s not so bad when we’re young and growing, but you hit 40, and it’s all downhill from there.
I jest, but it’s a reality, right? Even the youngest experiences aches and pains. Our bodies get sick. We break bones and sprain ankles. Our bodies are significantly affected by the reality of sin.
Bodily training is of some value.
The reality of sin is exactly why bodily training is of some value. Disciplined exertion of our bodies through exercise and athletics can help to hold back some of the worst effects of the curse upon our bodies. If we stay in shape and eat well, that can have positive effects on our bodies.
However, ultimately, no matter how much bodily training we engage in through the course of our lives, no matter how healthy our diet, no matter how well we keep our bodies in shape, they still will wear down. The best we can do with bodily exercise is to slow the breakdown of our bodies, and that does have some value. But one day each one of our bodies will fail, and we will die. And our bodies will be placed in the ground, and they will return to dust.
Christ will redeem our bodies.
But there is hope. The third reality that Scripture teaches about our bodies is what Paul said Romans 8:23: we eagerly await for the redemption of our bodies. One day our bodies, along with all creation, will be redeemed. That redemption does not come as a result of anything we do—in other words, the value of bodily exercise is not that our own bodily training somehow redeems our bodies. No, Christ will redeem our bodies.
And we know this for one very important reason: Jesus Christ—who is 100% God, and has existed co-equally with God the Father and God the Spirit for all eternity—took on a human body at his incarnation.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
Philippians 2:5–7
That body was truly human—Jesus was hungry, he was thirsty, he got sick, he had aches and pains—his body was affected by sin just like ours is.
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