Life and Books and Everything: What We Love About Christmastime
In this episode, Collin and I enjoy a fun conversation about the best parts, and the worst parts, of the Advent/Christmas season. Were the Puritans right to strip all the fun out of it? Are Christmas cards worth it? Can we bear another rendition of “Last Christmas”? Plus, by popular demand, time management, and productivity tips! Learn how I manage to read so many books and also be present for my family.
Timestamps:
You Just Keep Turning the Pages [0:00 – 4:22]
Airing of Christmas Grievances [4:22 – 11:51]
Favorite Christmas Activities [11:51 – 24:33]
Keep Christmas Messy [24:33 – 31:25]
Time Management & Productivity Tips [31:25 – 43:22]
How to Read 82 Books in a Year [43:22 – 57:31]
I’m working on new books. [57:31 – 1:02:36]
Books and Everything:
Psalms in 30 Days, by Trevin Wax
“Joyous Surrender: A Rhapsody in Red (and Green),” by Joseph Bottum
(Sleighbell sounds from zapsplat.com.)
Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Council member of The Gospel Coalition, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He has written numerous books, including Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children: Ian, Jacob, Elizabeth, Paul, Mary, Benjamin, Tabitha, Andrew, and Susannah.
You Might also like
-
Thinking Theologically About Racial Tensions eBook
Trent Hunter and the elders at Heritage Bible Church in Greer, South Carolina did a nice job of turning the “Thinking Theologically About Racial Tensions” blog series into a free eBook with questions at the end of each piece for their congregation. I’ve included the preface below and you can download a free copy here.
“Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
The church has the best resources for dealing with the world’s greatest problems because we have been given a Word from God.
We know who we are because we know the One who made us. We have a common ancestor in Adam and a common dignity as those made in God’s image. We know what’s wrong with us because we have the true story about what happened when our first parents sinned. We failed to acknowledge God and so he has given us over to all manner of unrighteousness. We are haughty, hateful, and inventors of evil. But thankfully we have more than just an explanation for these things—our universal human dignity and universal corruption and guilt. We possess a universal offer of salvation. Through repentance and faith in the death and resurrection of Christ, we are new creations with a new common ancestor in Jesus. For, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Ro. 5:8).
Our problem is that bad. Our God loves sinners that much.
We don’t hear much about these truths on the topic of race. Maybe that’s one reason this topic is famously tense. One individual denies the universal dignity of all people, another denies the universal corruption of sin. We are trying to discuss a problem we don’t understand. Even worse, we’re trying to solve a problem between people without God or grace. Each location on the map of history and the globe has its own unique truth suppressing profile. As Americans we have had our own evolving profile.
For all these reasons, our elders recognize that there is a need to offer biblical instruction on the topic of race. This is not because we believe that we are demonstrating sinful thoughts or attitudes on this topic as a church. Not hardly. Rather, this topic—filled as it is with human beings, human history, and human conflict—deserves nothing less than our best biblical thinking in order that we might honor Christ as Lord in our conversations with one another and with our neighbors. Our purpose is not corrective but instructive. As with every generation of Christians in every challenging place, God has equipped us well. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2Tim. 3:16, 17).
Our commitment to the sufficiency of Scripture is why we are commending to you the work of Kevin DeYoung in his five-part series, Thinking Theologically about Racial Tensions. DeYoung teaches at Reformed Theological Seminary and pastors at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina. As elders, we used this writing to guide our conversations during a weekend retreat in the fall of ’20. By it we want to instruct you.
In the months prior to our retreat, our elders spent some time mapping the theology coming to us through our newsfeeds in the summer of 2020. We heard biblical terms used in unbiblical ways, such as justice and oppression. We heard ideas that weren’t in the Bible but that needed definition, such as wokeness, white-fragility, and critical theory. Finally, we noticed that there were some crucial biblical terms that were missing altogether, such as partiality or forgiveness. The more any conversation becomes unmoored from the categories of Scripture the more difficult it becomes. This proliferation of terms and teaching was an indication that we needed to anchor ourselves in the Word.
In Kevin’s work we found a great deal of help in slowing down to think God’s thoughts after him, to think in explicitly biblical categories. He put words to our own concern:
I fear that we are going about our business in the wrong order. We start with racial issues we don’t agree on and then try to sort out our theology accordingly, when we should start with our theology and then see how racial issues map onto the doctrines we hold in common. Good theology won’t clear up every issue, but we might be surprised to see some thorny issues look less complicated and more hopeful.
That’s getting things in the right order.
Working from the right starting place, others are doing important work as well. Scholars and pastors like Carl Trueman are writing incisive essays to help us discern the winds of doctrine blowing about us. In his article, “Evangelicals and Race Theory,” Trueman puts Critical Race Theory in its historical and philosophical context and shows the bankruptcy of this system. Then, in his piece on race and policing, “Across the Race Divide,” Kevin DeYoung interacts with a key chapter on the topic in David Kennedy’s book Don’t Shoot: One Man, A Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America, to explore some underexamined dynamics involved in urban policing.
This is important reading. But the most important kind of reading is Bible reading. God has something to say about humanity and sin, about guilt and redemption. We want these truths to be clear in our minds so that we may speak the gospel clearly as we ought (Col. 4:4).
To that end, Kevin DeYoung and Christ Covenant Church were kind to allow us to put this material into an ebook for you. We commend it to you.
Read these articles alone or with a friend. We’ve drafted some questions to help you along. They are provided at the end of each section. We hope they help.
Your Elders,
Heritage Bible Church”Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Council member of The Gospel Coalition, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He has written numerous books, including Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children: Ian, Jacob, Elizabeth, Paul, Mary, Benjamin, Tabitha, Andrew, and Susannah.
-
Come, Let Us Reason Together
The church is divided as never before.
Okay, that may be an overstatement. But I think most Christians would agree that, from personal conversations and from social media scrolling, it certainly feels like the divisions are as bad as ever, and only getting worse. The church has been divided over doctrine before—sometimes for bad reasons, often for good reasons. That is to be expected. What seems new in our day is how Bible-believing Christians who share almost all the same doctrine on paper are massively and increasingly divided over non-doctrinal matters, torn apart by issues the Bible does not directly address.
Think of the three most contentious issues in the church over the past year: racial tensions, Covid restrictions, and the presidential election. On each of these matters, Christians have disagreed not just on interpretation or strategy or where the slopes are most slippery. We have fundamentally disagreed on the facts themselves, and because we disagree on the facts we disagree even more profoundly on the appropriate response.
Is America deeply and pervasively racist? Are people of color routinely and disproportionately in danger of being killed by police officers? Is virtually every aspect of our society hostile to the presence of black and brown bodies? If you answer yes to all these questions—that is, if you believe the facts warrant all these conclusions—then how can you not be engaged in (peaceful) protest? For the church to ignore injustice on this level is to be guilty of indifference at best and moral turpitude at worst. But if our society and our policing is not fundamentally racist, then much of the social justice movement is motivated by false premises.
What about Covid? If the facts tell us that this is a once-in-a-century pandemic, that we are facing 300,000 excess deaths, and that masks are a simple and effective way to limit the spread of the virus, then extreme care and caution are important ways we can love our neighbors as ourselves. If, on the other hand, coronavirus is hardly more dangerous than the seasonal flu, then the worldwide restrictions look rather onerous, if not outright nefarious.
And what about the election? Setting aside the question of whom to vote for, we are now divided over who people actually did vote for. If the election was stolen, perversely overriding the will of most Americans in an act of unconscionable thievery, then we should be marching (peacefully) until we are blue in the face. But if the facts do not support that conclusion, then we help no one by pretending that the loser of the election actually won.
In each set of issues, you can see why the stakes are so high and why the emotions run even higher. If things are as dire as some purport (on race, with Covid, and with a disputed election), then to do nothing displays a cowardly and colossal failure of nerve. But if, in each situation, things are much less dangerous and less insidious than the doomsdayers say, then taking a full-body chill pill would be the better part of valor.
So what are Christians to do?
First, let us be humble, understanding that few of us are experts on these issues. A little epistemic humility—in our hearts and toward others—can go a long way.
Second, let us be measured. This doesn’t mean our default has to be the status quo, but it does mean we should keep our passions in proportion. We should be religiously dogmatic about our religious dogma and not much else.
Third, let us reason together. It is the profound irony of our age: never has there been more information at our fingertips, and never has it been harder to know what information to trust. In most things, whether we realize it or not, we have no choice but to rely upon the expertise of others. We simply don’t have the time or ability to properly investigate every disputed claim. That means it is more important than ever before that we are discerning about the voices we listen to.
And how can we be discerning?
Read widely—not just from different voices online but from different voices across the centuries. Reading Calvin or Augustine won’t tell you what to think about Covid, but they will help you think better.
Listen to those who know you best and love you most. Of course, parents and pastors and friends can be wrong too, but there is something unhealthy about putting ourselves under the influence of distant personalities while neglecting those who will have to give an account for their care over us.
Where possible, look at the fruit of someone’s life. To be sure, bad people can make good arguments. But in general, if you are honest with other people, honest with yourself, and honest with God, you tend to be honest with facts and ideas. The opposite is also true.
Run through a series of diagnostic questions in your mind. Questions like:Does the argument I’m reading deal in trade-offs or only in the categories of all-good/all-evil?
Are the terms and definitions clearly defined?
Can the person fairly state the argument he is arguing against?
Is he willing to acknowledge any fair points on the other side?
Does the person I’m listening to seem unhinged and unstable?
Is the argument full of emotive reasoning and ad hominem attack?
Does the force of the argument rely on hard words and high passions or on rational arguments and sound evidence?
Does this person have a track record of being fair, accurate, and well-researched?
Does this person have any credentials or experience that would make him worth listening to?
Does the argument make sweeping claims based on personal anecdotes?
Does the argument require me to believe what is non-falsifiable?
Does the argument require a level of highly elaborate clandestine scheming such that only the most disciplined, organized, and intelligent people in the world could pull it off?
Does the argument confuse correlation with causation?
Is the person a jerk on Twitter, constantly self-congratulatory on Twitter, seeking victim status on Twitter, or otherwise living online in a way that seems imbalanced?Are these questions a magic elixir that will solve all our disagreements? Of course not. But perhaps they can nudge us in the right direction. I’m sure I’m getting things wrong. In fact, I hope on these non-biblical matters in particular that I’m always open to being corrected and learning something new.
For my part, while I believe there are many ways that the relationship between African Americans and police officers can improve, I don’t think the evidence suggests that racist cops are disproportionately killing unarmed black people. I don’t think Covid is deadly for the vast majority of people but it is very dangerous for some. And while I am sure there were irregularities in November’s election, I don’t think there is evidence of voter fraud so widespread that it could have changed the presidential outcome.
I hesitate to share these convictions because that’s not what I want this post to be about, but neither do I want to pretend that any of us can so rise above the fray that we don’t have to reach any of our own conclusions. My larger and more important point, however, is to urge us as Christians to lead the way in thinking carefully, and in carefully engaging those who think differently–especially on these disputed factual matters that can’t be answered (as I would prefer) by reading our Bibles alone or by quoting from Turretin.Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Council member of The Gospel Coalition, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He has written numerous books, including Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children: Ian, Jacob, Elizabeth, Paul, Mary, Benjamin, Tabitha, Andrew, and Susannah.
-
The World Is Catechizing Us Whether We Realize It or Not
I love the Olympics. I got up early and stayed up late to watch whatever I could in real time. As a family, we figured out the various NBC platforms and turned on something from the Olympics almost all the time for two weeks. I’d put our knowledge of Olympic swimming and (especially) track and field up against almost anyone. I’m a big fan of the Olympics.
But something was different this time around. And judging from conversations with many others, I’m not the only one who noticed.
You couldn’t watch two weeks of the Olympics—or at times, even two minutes—without being catechized in the inviolable truths of the sexual revolution. Earlier in the summer, I watched parts of the Euro, and you would have thought the whole event was a commercial for rainbow flags. And yet, the packaging of the Olympics was even more deliberate. Every day we were taught to celebrate men weightlifting as women or to smile as a male diver talked about his husband. Every commercial break was sure to feature a same-sex couple, a man putting on makeup, or a generic ode to expressive individualism. And of course, Megan Rapinoe and Sue Bird were nearly ubiquitous. If America used to be about motherhood and apple pie, it’s now about birthing persons and lesbian soccer stars hawking Subway sandwiches.
Some will object at this point that the last paragraph is filled with a toxic mix of homophobia, heteronormativity, cisgender privilege and a host of other terms that were virtually unknown until five minutes ago. But those labels are not arguments against biblical sexual morality so much as they represent powerful assumptions that no decent person could possibly believe that homosexuality is sinful behavior, that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that switching genders is a sign of confusion more than courage. What NBC presented as heroic and wonderful was considered wrong and troublesome by almost everyone in the Christian West for 2,000 years. Is it possible that instead of deconstructing the beliefs that have marked Christianity for two millennia, we might want to deconstruct the academic jargon our culture has only come to affirm within my lifetime? Remember, it was only in 2008—hardly the dark days of the Middle Ages—that Barack Obama said he did not support marriage for same-sex couples.
I know there are many issues confronting the church today. In some contexts, there may be a lack of love toward outsiders, or a fascination with conspiracy theories, or a temptation toward idolatrous forms of Christian nationalism. You may think that the drumbeat of the advancing sexual revolution is still far off in the distance, a problem in someone else’s village but not in yours.
The wider world is not tempting young people with the blessings of chastity and church attendance.
But no one lives in an isolated village anymore, and the wider world is not tempting young people with the blessings of chastity and church attendance. People older than me may have enough Christian maturity and cultural memory to roll their eyes at the sexual revolution’s round-the-clock bombardment. But if you are a Millennial or Gen Z (or whatever comes next) your first instinct is likely to be more upset with Christians offering criticism of Megan and Sue kissing than with the fact that their kissing is demonstrably not Christian.
It is worth remembering David Well’s famous definition: worldliness is whatever makes righteousness look strange and sin look normal. Here’s the reality facing every Christian in the West: the money, power, and prestige of the mainstream media, big time sports, big business, big tech, and almost all the institutions of education and entertainment are invested in making sin look normal. Make no mistake: no matter how good your church, no matter how strong your family, no matter how gospel-centered your Christian school or homeschool, if your children and grandchildren are even remotely engaged with contemporary culture (and they are), they are being taught by a thousand memes and messages every week to pay homage to the rainbow flag.
The Christian family, Christian church, and Christian school must not assume that the next generations will accept the conclusions that seem so obvious to older generations. We must talk about the things our kids are already talking about among themselves. We must disciple. We must be countercultural. We must prepare them to love and teach them what biblical love really means. We must pass on the right beliefs and the right reasons for those beliefs.
We must prepare our children—and be prepared ourselves—that following Christ comes with a cost (Luke 9:23). The Jesus who affirmed marriage as between a man a woman (Matt. 19:4-6), the Jesus who warned of the porneia within (Mark 7:20-23), the Jesus who warned against living to be liked by others (John 12:43), this Jesus demands our total allegiance (Matt. 28:20).
The world is already busy promoting its catechism. The only question is whether we will get busy promoting ours.Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Council member of The Gospel Coalition, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary (Charlotte). He has written numerous books, including Just Do Something. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children: Ian, Jacob, Elizabeth, Paul, Mary, Benjamin, Tabitha, Andrew, and Susannah.