Now What?
It is a question I get asked with fair frequency: What book would you recommend for a new Christian? If someone has just made a profession of faith in Christ, what would you suggest they read? The answer changes with the times because the times continue to change, so while there are some issues that will face all new believers, there are others that will be specific to a context or culture.
A new book that I’d recommend for a modern Western context is Aaron Armstrong’s I’m a Christian—Now What?: A Guide To Your New Life with Christ. Here’s how it begins:
Imagine waking up one morning and being you, but not. You get out of bed and look in the mirror. What’s different? you wonder. You still look like you—you haven’t magically switched bodies with your best friend or your teenage self. No new gray hairs as far as you can tell. A six-pack didn’t appear overnight. You lean in as close as you can to the mirror, so close that you’re about to leave a mark. Still, there’s nothing different. You’re the same you as you were before you woke up this morning.
That is a pretty good description of what it’s like to begin your first full day as a Christian. And while some will have grown up in a Christian context and know roughly what to do with this new-found faith, many others will have grown up in a non-Christian context and will have no idea whatsoever. This is exactly the case for many I have seen and known here in the Toronto area. Such new believers need to be cared for and taught and mentored. And a book like this one could play and important part in that.
Armstrong begins where we might expect—with the importance of relating to God through Scripture and prayer and with relating to God’s people through the local church. Through several chapters he provides basic discipleship in the Christian disciplines and basic guidance in finding an appropriate local church.
And then the book takes an interesting turn. He dedicates a chapter to beauty and creativity, perhaps to battle the notion that Christians ought to completely separate themselves from the world around them. The next chapter looks at the Christian sexual ethic and leads with the not-entirely-unlikely assumption that this new Christian is currently involved in a cohabiting relationship (as, indeed, are so many people today). Here he tries to help readers understand God’s plan for sexuality and to gently untangle the bits of their lives that are opposed to it.
From here he encourages new Christians to spend a good bit of their time learning rather than being drawn too quickly into leading within the church and its ministries. He explains how to get along with other believers and encourages them to begin to evangelize others by telling their own story of how God saved them. A final chapter calls readers away from the two extremes of being culture-warring or capitulating Christians and toward a kind of convictional kindness—a person who lives a quiet life, who isn’t constantly obsessed with the controversy du jour, but who loves Jesus and his church.
All the while Armstrong provides illustrations from his own life, for he and his wife came to faith as adults—cohabiting adults with little Christian background and with little knowledge of how God calls his people to live in this world. It’s an effective writing technique and one that adds both interest and experience.
I’m a Christian—Now What? is an excellent book that accomplishes its purpose well. It is a good and trustworthy guide to a new believer’s new life in Christ and one that I trust will prove beneficial to many of God’s people.
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A La Carte (November 22)
Good morning. May the Lord be with you and bless you today.
There is another little batch of new Kindle deals for those who may be interested.
Is Work Good?
“Here’s a quick word association test: What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word work? Go ahead and think about it. Regardless of your answer, I’m guessing that few of us would respond with the word good. We don’t tend to think of work as good, but rather as difficult, frustrating, and exhausting.”
Loaves and Casserole Dishes: Will Church Cookbooks Survive?
Do you remember the church cookbook? I enjoyed reading this article from CT where they ask whether it’s likely to survive.
Introducing Eikon 5.2 (Fall 2023)
CBMW has released a new edition of their journal Eikon. This edition focuses on masculinity and features articles from James M. Hamilton Jr., Richard D. Phillips, Kevin DeYoung, Alexander Strauch, and Kyle Claunch. It also offers quite a number of book reviews.
What Happened at ETS 2023?
I don’t go to ETS so always enjoy Denny Burk’s annual roundups of some of what happened there. What happens in the academy eventually finds its way to the pew.
The Goal of Our Instruction
Betty-Anne Van Rees: “When a hurting or struggling soul reaches out for care, they generally have one thing in mind—relief. We empathize. Haven’t we all felt the angst of longing for life to be somehow less difficult than it is? Less conflict, less cruelty, less inner turmoil, less pain, just less suffering. As helpers, it’s easy to get caught up in working toward that relief. What circumstances can we change that will alleviate the struggle? A different job? A new neighborhood or church? Cut ties with that difficult friend? Won’t this help?”
This & Tat in a Christian Bookshop
Paul Levy reflects on an alarming visit to a Christian bookshop. “The issue I think with my visit to the bookshop is the issue of God’s weightiness. The Christian gospel is gloriously simple and joyful and yet it is not light and weightless. God is our Father, yes, but he is also in Heaven. His glory should weigh heavily upon us. The bible is wonderfully clear but there is also a glorious depth to it. We mustn’t be content with a superficial understanding of our faith.”
Flashback: Helpful Things You Can Say to Grieving Parents
It can be awkward to reach out to those who are deep in grief. It can be hard to know what to say and easy to believe that our words are more likely to offend than comfort, to make a situation worse rather than better. We sense that our words ought to be few, but also that the worst thing to say is nothing at all.A home, and not a grave, is the true ending of our earthly life; we depart, not to be, as we say, ‘dead’, but really to live. —P.B. Power
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Why Domestic Abuse Is So Very Evil
There are few churches that have no members who bear painful scars related to domestic abuse. There are few churches where pastors and members are not at times called upon to respond well and wisely to troubling allegations and sorrowful situations. In their book When Home Hurts, Jeremy Pierre and Greg Wilson provide guidance for such times and, as they do so, explain why domestic abuse is so very evil. I, for one, found it very helpful.
“Abuse occurs,” they say, “as a person in a position of greater influence uses his personal capacities to diminish the personal capacities of those under his influence in order to control them.” Physical and spiritual capacities meant to be used to love and build up are used instead to harm and tear down. Thus abuse is identified in two different directions: in the manipulative intent and behavioral forcefulness of the one in a position of influence, and in the diminishing effect on those under his influence. With that in mind, here are five ways in which abuse does particular damage and brings about grievous harm.
Abuse desecrates the personhood of the one being abused. God created each person in his image so we could represent him in the world he made. Every person is privileged by God to use his or her personal capacities to represent God by bringing order and goodness to the world. Where all sin is a failure to be like God in using these personal capacities, abuse goes a step further by diminishing the personal capacities of another person. “An abusive person uses his personal capacities to force other people to deliver on his personal desires. The force he exerts inflicts damage—that is, the effect of weakening someone to make them easier to control.” That damage is what we call trauma, and it has pernicious and long-lasting effects on those who have been victimized.
Abuse is a dangerous reversal of love. God gives us personal strength, but not so we can use it to control others. Rather, God designed us in his image with certain God-like faculties so we could commit them to the purpose of love. “Love is using one’s personal capacities to bring about good for others in the world—ordering it, caring for it, arranging it to bring about the greatest benefit not to oneself, but to other people.” But an abusive person dangerously reverses this design by using his God-like capacities to overpower those faculties in another person, so he can get what he wants. “Instead of using his powers to arrange the world to God’s glory, he uses his powers to arrange the world for his own.”
Abuse is a form of oppression. God hates oppression and expects that we will hate what he hates. So often in Scripture we see God responding to the cries of those who have been oppressed and in like manner we ought to respond to their cries. When God delivers us from the oppression of sin he calls us to oppose sin in our own lives, sin in the church, and sin in the world. In other words, “we begin to respond as God does when we see sin, including the sin of human oppression. God sees the oppressed, hears their cries, and acts with compassion, mercy, and justice. He tells us we should do the same.”
Abuse warps the purpose of marriage. The reversal of love that comes part and parcel with abuse is particularly dangerous in marriage because of marriage’s unique design. God calls a husband to use his unique and complementary strengths to build up his wife. “God intends a man to take the initiative in spending his efforts for the good of his wife. Her good is to be formed not into the image of her husband’s preferences, but rather into what God determines for her individual calling to look like Jesus Christ.” But abuse takes what can be used so powerfully for good and uses it for evil. “When a husband leads by using his capacities for the opposite purpose, for belittling his wife, he harms her in particularly destructive ways. And God holds him to stricter account. What makes domestic abuse a particularly cruel form of violence is that the home is supposed to be the place where personhood blossoms into its greatest potential. When home hurts, the world suffers.” (Of course there are occasions in which a wife is the perpetrator rather than victim of domestic abuse, but those are very rare compared to the opposite.)
Abuse corrupts the witness of church. In God’s design, families are not fully independent and self-contained units, but are accountable to a wider community—to the church. A family that hides and insulates itself from community influence puts its members at greater risk. And in situations of domestic abuse, the family often does that very thing—it insulates itself from the oversight and accountability of the local church. “God made the church to be the Spirit-indwelled people of the Word who are together learning to love what God loves and to hate what God hates. The beliefs and values conveyed in the pages of Scripture find their embodiment in living people. Jesus wanted the church to be the one type of community in all the world that demonstrates authority as self-emptying service for the good of those under it. In the church, greatness is demonstrated in servanthood.” But when abuse is present or, worse, tolerated, the church is denying God’s perspective and hindering victims of abuse from finding their bearings. To the contrary, When abuse is foreign and outrageous to God’s people, the church is reinforcing God’s perspective and assisting victims in gaining their bearings and healing their hearts.
You can learn more about domestic abuse, what it involves, and how you can help those suffering from it in When Home Hurts. -
Who is Jesus?
This week, the blog is sponsored by the D3 Winter Conference, hosted by Boyce College. This year’s conference is designed to help high school students answer, with biblical fidelity, life’s most essential question: “Who is Jesus?” Registration is underway now for the March 10-11, 2023 in-person event.
Who is Jesus? Your answer to that question will ultimately determine your eternity. Yet, that is a question that Christians and non-Christians have been asking for more than 2000 years. As generations come and go it is vital that each new generation of Christians be challenged and equipped to answer this age-old question. Furthermore, it is paramount that younger (or newer) Christians answer this question from a biblically informed perspective. Who is Jesus according to the Bible?
In this current cultural climate, it is not uncommon for parents and pastors to wonder, is the younger generation of Christians prepared to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3)? In other words, is the 9th grader in your church youth group ready to defend their faith? Is the high school senior ready to articulate from a biblical worldview the person and work of Jesus on a college campus? These are urgent and timely questions for the next generation.
Today, Christians young and old are faced with competing ideas and claims concerning the identity of Jesus. Was he simply a wandering teacher? Was he a mythical figure used to pass down moral and meditative thoughts? These notions and others are commonly expressed in popular culture. Furthermore, many people, when talking about Jesus are prone to emphasize and highlight the qualities that best justify their personal opinions and perspective. Some want to emphasize his love, others his forgiveness, others his willingness to stand against the religious and political rulers of the day, and some are content to merely quote the words of Jesus that best serve their agenda.
So, back to the original question, Who is Jesus? At the outset of 2023, one could argue that it has never been more important for the next generation of Christians to be able to answer that timeless question. At the D3 Winter Conference we will challenge and equip high school students from the Bible to rightly understand and confidently respond to the question: Who is Jesus? Main speakers will include Drs. R. Albert Mohler Jr., Jimmy Scroggins, Paul Akin, and Rev. Scott Long. Breakouts will be led by Drs. Jeremy Pierre, Dustin Bruce, and Curtis Solomon. Over the course of the conference we will discuss the person and work of Jesus, the significance of his birth and death, be challenged by his words and commands, and discern what it really means to follow Jesus today.
At Boyce College and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, we are passionate and intentional about equipping the next generation of Christians to serve the church and fulfill the Great Commission. One of the ways we seek to accomplish that purpose is through the D3 Winter Conference. This conference is designed for Christian high school students to develop and mature in their faith. The D3 Winter Conference will take place in Louisville, Kentucky on March 10-11, 2023. We look forward to seeing you there!
