Blessings to you, my friends.

(Yesterday on the blog: Are We Performing or Are We Participating?)
One Month After the Roe Leak: Reflections on the Supreme Court’s Draft Opinion
Though we saw many hot takes on that leaked draft of the majority opinion of the Supreme Court, Steven Wedgeworth waited a month to offer some slightly more mature reflections.
Expressive Individualism and the Death of Mental “Illness”
“Everyone who knows anything at all knows you must never attribute someone’s character or behavior to their identity. It is universally agreed in polite society that no person is ever good or bad at something because of their gender, or their race, their family, sexuality, etc. To indulge in this reasoning is at best a crude stereotype, at worst an expression of flagrant bigotry.” Or that’s what we’ve been led to believe…
Why the Promise that Jesus Will Build His Church Does Not Mean He Will Necessarily Build My Church
This is a key distinction.
Beware the Free Steak Dinner and Financial Advice Retirement Seminar
“I recently received another one: an invitation in the mail to a ‘free dinner and retirement discussion.’” I am starting to get those too! Chris Cagle tells what they are about (though from a distinctly US-based perspective).
Letters from Lockdown: A Shanghai Pastor on Pandemics and Persecutions
“Though the church I serve in Shanghai still rents a physical space for worship, for many weeks it seemed useless. As much of the world—and many of the churches in it—moved on from strict pandemic protocols, a viral uptick here kept many Chinese Christians in an extended lockdown.” I was challenged by this one.
Embodied Discernment: Learning to Discern with Our Minds, Hearts, and Actions
“If discernment is a spiritual gift, you’ve got it. You never turn off your discerning brain—it’s always engaged and evaluating the words you read, hear, and sing. You have a stack of theology books on your desk and a tattered, marked up Bible. Whenever a theology question comes up during Bible study, all heads turn to you.” This is all good, but it comes with certain temptations.
Flashback: Could You Use Some Joy Today?
But we do not need to be Christians for long before we learn that the greatest joy connected to wealth does not come from gaining but from giving…Where we tend to associate joy with how much we get, higher joy comes from how freely we give.

Reading the Bible isn’t just reading words on a page but listening to one who loves us more than life itself, and who has a very clear agenda for our lives and our world. —Gary Millar

I still remember, and may never forget, the first time I stopped to consider envy. I was reading a book by Os Guinness and was blindsided by a section on that particular sin. I immediately understood that it was prominent in my life and immediately began to take steps to address it. The process took some time and the sin still lingers, but its power has been broken and its grip diminished. I am still prone to occasional bouts of envy, but, by grace, I have learned to identify it and counter it.

Envy

Because I know I am prone to the sin of envy, I find value in pausing to consider it from time to time. Most recently this took the form of Mike Fabarez’s new book Envy: A Big Problem You Didn’t Know You Had. That one little word envy, he says, “represents an injurious threat to your sanctification. It has probably already racked up a multitude of hits in your life. And much of the pain it has caused has been lamented and grieved. But I find we all too often fail to connect the dots.” It is, after all, a sin that has a way of flying under the radar. We identify its consequences and lament them, but rarely identify the sin, admit its presence, and put it to death.
Every book on envy makes it clear that envy is a particularly insidious sin. They all make it clear that it has long been considered among the worst when it comes to the evil it works within our hearts and lives. They all make it clear that Christians of bygone eras were far more concerned about it than we are today and far more dedicated to dealing with it. It’s for good reason that it appears on the list of the “seven deadly sins” and that it is the father of many other transgressions.
Fabarez’s purpose is to provide some biblically guided exposure to this sin—to show where it may exist in our lives, how it may be manifesting itself, and where it may be reaping evil consequences. For it is only when we are familiar with the sin that we can identify it and put it to death.
What is envy? Envy is begrudging another person their joy or success. It is being resentful and frustrated at what another person has received, has earned, or has been blessed with. It is not merely wanting what another person has, but wanting that other person not to have it. It is feeling low, diminished, and hard done by when another person receives some good. And it always expresses itself in other forms of sin—hatred, gossip, ingratitude, and even murder.
Fabarez begins his book by showing where and how envy exists in the Bible, beginning in the opening pages of the Old Testament and continuing well into the New. He considers how it exacts a heavy internal cost to those who allow it to put down deep roots, then how it exacts a relational cost and even a societal cost. It turns out that much of the sin that mars the church and much of the sin that causes conflict in the world can be traced back to envy.
Having shown the ugly consequences of the sin, Fabarez provides instruction on countering it. He calls Christians to diligently examine themselves to see if and how this sin is present in their lives. Then he calls them to combat the sin with love and rejoicing—to love other people and to rejoice in their happiness, joys, and successes.
This is a short book, but one that packs a punch. It is a helpful examination of a particularly deceptive and odious sin and it offers a biblical solution to it. Those who read Envy may just find themselves grappling with a big problem they didn’t know they had. Even better, those who read it will be equipped to repent of that problem and to put to death that sin.

I’ve got marriage on my mind today as we prepare to gather this evening to celebrate Abby and Nathan’s wedding. One little gift I have given them is a copy of J.R. Miller’s The Wedded Life, a sweet little book he wrote for just such an occasion. This particular copy was given to a couple in 1906 and contains the signatures of all those who attended their ceremony over a century ago. I love that it will be present in the early days of their marriage as well. Here’s just a small snippet of the wise counsel Miller offers in his book.

No marriage is complete, which does not unite and blend the wedded lives at every point. This can be secured only by making every interest common to both. Let both hearts throb with the same joy and share each pang of sorrow. Let the same burdens rest on the shoulders of both. Let the whole life be made common.
In another sense still, should their lives blend. They should read and study together, having the same line of thought, helping each other toward a higher mental culture.
They should worship together, praying side by side, communing on the holiest themes of life and hope, and together carrying to God’s feet the burdens of their hearts for their children and for every precious object. Why should they not talk together of their personal trials, their peculiar temptations, their infirmities, and help each other by sympathy, by brave word and by intercession, to be victorious in living?
Thus they should live one life as it were, not two. Every plan and hope of each should embrace the other. The moment a man begins to leave his wife out of any part of his life—or that she has plans, hopes, pleasures, friendships or experiences from which she excludes him—there is peril in the home. They should have no secrets which they keep from each other.
Thus their two lives should blend in one life with no thought, no desire, no feeling, no joy or sorrow, no pleasure or pain, unshared.