On Fat Ash Thursday: This Is Not About Naming Days.
Written by Benjamin T. Inman |
Friday, February 24, 2023
We need the outwards means that Christ actually uses. Where has he put his promises? How does he give us the benefits of redemption? It is appalling to assert that sanctification by faith urgently needs something other than what Christ has appointed. This is about how is it even possible, and how is it actually accomplished– that faith in Christ can deliver us from fruitless lives of being “anything but faithful, self-denying, cross-bearing Christians.”
That was Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday. My special needs daughter’s trainer gave her some red beads in the morning. That was kind of one, and delightful to both. We didn’t discuss penitential practices, or the twisted reliability of the-day-before-lent. Just a day on the calendar. Just shiny beads. Yes, I thanked her.
The next day I drove into town, past the Anglican Church: “Ash Wednesday: Drive-Thru hours 12-1 pm and 4-5 pm, Service at 5:30.” I’m new in this town and haven’t yet met the priest. I have only done some drive-by praying. I have no idea what to make of that sign. Somebody’s circus, somebody’s monkeys. For that clergy in that building, it was most certainly Ash Wednesday. What does it mean for them on Thursday?
Thursday is the day when I think about my two dear Anglican brothers. I think. I do not text the thought, though it would make them laugh. I am not making light of their discipleship. I know they think of me on this day too– fond thoughts edging over towards how immovable I am on this stuff. It’s me; it’s Thursday; it’s not a big deal; it just won’t budge.
But then, I read this from a fellow minister in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). He and I have communicated about my concerns before. He wrote this originally for all and sundry, though now he publishes it again for the members of his new congregation. He explains that ashes for repentance is something people actually did when open fires were ubiquitous to civilization. Perhaps today we would follow their example by licking an electrical outlet. Or we could anoint with embalming fluid. He carefully acknowledges that what we now do at the drive thru only emerged in the 11th century. He then goes on to speak of embodied rituals and their necessity for our sanctification.
He is not fooling around; he knows that it is an old practice, not an ancient practice. Accordingly, his reflection produces a flexible conclusion: this is like something seen in the Bible, and a lot of professing Christians have done it in the past– so, it is okey-dokey but not mandatory for congregations to do it now. Perhaps his session promulgates this ritual for those under their care. Perhaps he performs it in his office as their pastor. Perhaps some of them do not participate. This is an elective practice for Christians. No, not in the Bible, but cherished by some people who have high regard for the Bible. It is more than naming a day, but also less.
What’s The Problem?
Easter. Lent. Fat Tuesday. Ash Wednesday. I even made up my own name for Thursday. This is not about naming days. This is not about despising disciples in earlier centuries from whom we have received the legacy of their tenacity. I am not scandalized or deprived of a gleam of my thankful wonder by thinking that the people who blessed me did some stupid stuff. I am encouraged to think some folks may regard me similarly. I’m not bent out of shape because “that is not a very presbyterian thing to do.” Let all the jerseys be so smeared with mud and blood, that we can’t discriminate with our comments from the sidelines. There are differences and details, but don’t muck around like this:
We live in a culture that is constantly barraging us with rituals. We are moved along like sheep by the media and other forces. We participate in the Super Bowl, an event that is laden with ritual. We do Fourth of July, Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day – and most of these rituals involve opening up the pocket book to buy things. We participate in sporting events of all kinds, which are rituals. We do Valentine’s day, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day – all rituals. And yet even though our secular culture hits us with rituals all day long, seven days a week, and twice on Sunday, many of us Protestants and Evangelicals are wary of rituals in the church! In light of everything the culture uses to shape and form us, what we need in the church is not less rituals but more! We need rituals to shape and form us to counteract the forces in the culture which are forming us into anything but faithful, self-denying, cross-bearing Christians.
Ritual is a profound and trendy topic. My daughter is a professional philosopher, and she has schooled me a bit. It is of interest to professional philosophers lately. She doesn’t think my views of intinction or the call to worship or Matthew 18 are just persnickety opinions about details and criteria. She and I both are nodding with this impassioned paragraph about those cultural rituals. The real-world power and trajectories are weighty.
Most certainly, believers need something “to counteract the forces in the culture.” Romans 12:1ff and similar texts indicate that just such “greater than” power and influence is necessary in sanctification. The PCA’s view of wholesome religion thrums with the same urgency: “What doth God require of us, that we may escape his wrath and curse, due to us for sin?” (SC 85).
That dire question has a stout and energetic rejoinder. “To escape the wrath and curse of God, due to us for sin, God requireth of us faith in Jesus Christ, repentance unto life, with the diligent use of all the outward means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption.” No, under the pressures of our wicked society, we do not need to multiply liturgical rituals.
We need the outwards means that Christ actually uses. Where has he put his promises? How does he give us the benefits of redemption? It is appalling to assert that sanctification by faith urgently needs something other than what Christ has appointed. This is about how is it even possible, and how is it actually accomplished– that faith in Christ can deliver us from fruitless lives of being “anything but faithful, self-denying, cross-bearing Christians.”
This is not about being unpresbyterian. This is not about naming days.
What’s the Other Problem?
I am heartened about the point of agreement: we want Christians to live worthy of their calling. I am distressed at this out-of-the-ancient-blue prescription. We agree on how high the stakes are, and the necessity of every believer laying his cards on the table. Our Standards exempt no believer. There is no Christian freedom athwart this point: God requires “the diligent use” by everyone. Sanctification is serious business and it must contend with the atmospheric influence of the world, the flesh and the devil– peer pressure, systemic influence and worldly rituals. Given the glory of sanctification in Christ, of course there is urgency.
How then can a faithful pastor present something so powerful as optional? We must counteract the worldly rituals– on that we agree. If more rituals are a necessity for the spiritual good of every sheep, how could a pastor fail to urge participation on each and every one? How could one leave them bereft without more rituals? Isn’t that neglect? I am ashen faced at the thought of telling my bi-polar nephew that his meds are optional.
I am aghast at the illogical tolerance that wafts from mixing this 11th century smoldering into this 21st century muck. “Ash Wednesday and the imposition of ashes is one of those helpful rituals that push against the world, the flesh, and the devil.” Helpful? That’s an anticlimax. One of? Apparently, there are others to add. The imposition of ashes by a minister of the gospel is not for every Christian. Are we at the post-modernism part yet?
Does this mean that– which rituals are indifferent, but we must multiply other rituals? Do we need to make things more fitting for people who are ash intolerant? Is this the church’s task, inventing rituals? Thoughtfully the church describes the dire situation. Winsomely, she exposits the theological provisions. Then she earnestly urges, “Don’t just stand there; do something.” And she comforts: “Don’t worry, we’ll make something up.”
Given that worldly rituals are a malicious influence, surely the Word of God provides all the counterweight needful for life and godliness. According to our Standards, are there rituals with such influence? Are rituals so prescribed in our Standards? How on earth can Christians be shaped more by Christ in heaven (Col 3:1ff) than by the rituals of the society we inhabit?
This is about how Christians are enabled to honor Christ with faith and repentance in the world. This is not about naming days in the calendar. This is about the vitals of religion.
Benjamin T. Inman is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and a member of Eastern Carolina Presbytery.
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Beauty and Harmony: The Holy Spirit’s Work in Creation
Every work of the Spirit serves God’s eternal plan for his world and his people. In ordering God’s creation, beautifying Israel’s tabernacle, and bringing life to the First Adam and the Last Adam, the Spirit perfects and completes God’s eternal plan in history.
The first instance of the Spirit’s work appears in the opening verses of Scripture.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.Genesis 1:1–2
On day one of creation, God created all matter, time, and space. Think about it—before the first day of creation, all that existed was the triune God. There was not matter, time, or space. God created all of that on the first day.
But as Genesis 1:2 tells us, that space and matter—heaven and earth—was “without form and void.” Simply creating matter and space did not mean they were yet arranged in such a way so as to be inhabitable by human beings.
And so, it was the Spirit of God who hovered over the face of the waters as the person of the triune God who brought order to creation. The Hebrew term rûach can mean “breath,” “wind,” or “spirit,” depending on the context. The same is true in the New Testament of the term pneuma. We can have confidence that the term in Genesis 1:2 refers to the Holy Spirit because of the verb “hovering,” which would not fit “wind” or “breath.” Moses uses the same verb to describe God “hovering” over his people at the end of the Pentateuch as well, which appears to be a deliberate parallel with the opening verses of the Pentateuch (Dt 32:11).
Additionally, as we will soon note, Moses portrays deliberate parallels between the Spirit’s work in creating the world and his work in the creation of the tabernacle, further evidence that he intended rûach to refer to the Holy Spirit in Genesis 1:2. Similarly, Job states, “By his wind [rûach] the heavens were made fair” (26:13), and Job 33:4 clearly refers to the divine Spirit when it states, “The Spirit [rûach] of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.”
In other words, in the opening words of Scripture we find the Spirit of God actively involved in the work of creation. Indeed, in the opening chapter of Genesis we find all three persons of the triune God active in creation: God [the Father] created the heavens and the earth, he did so through his Word [the Son], and the work was brought to completion by his Spirit—these appropriations of the work of creation to persons of the godhead reflect their eternal relations of origin. Psalms 33:6 portrays this trinitarian act of creation: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath [rûach] of his mouth all their host.” So all three persons of the godhead were involved in creation, and as is true with all of God’s works, God performed the work through the Son, and that work was brought to perfection by the Spirit.
Thus, in the six days of creation, the Holy Spirit of God brought order to the cosmos—he brought to completion and perfection the creative activity of God. This orderliness is reflected in the Greek term cosmos, which the Greek translation of the Old Testament uses to characterize the finished work of creation: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host [cosmos] of them” (Gn 2:1). Paul uses this same term to describe creation in his sermon on Mars Hill: “The God who made the world [cosmos] and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man.”
The Holy Spirit of God formed the cosmos, an ordered arrangement of heaven and earth such that creation displayed his own orderliness. This is why God declares his creation “good” (Gn 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25). The Hebrew word implies more than just moral goodness; the term embodies the idea of aesthetic beauty and harmony. Creation is beautiful because it reflects the order and harmony of God himself.
Psalm 104 poetically embodies this idea of creation manifesting the beauty and order of God, identifying the person of the Trinity who brings about such wondrous creation:
30 When you send forth your Spirit [rûach], they are created, and you renew the face of the ground.
The Holy Spirit of God, in his active work of creation, brought wondrous order to the world that God made.
Wisdom and Beauty
Notice also the particular quality that characterizes the Spirit’s work of creation in Psalm 104:24:
24 O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.
Wisdom is the quality the psalmist ties to the Spirit’s creative work, and this helps us to further confirm the nature of this first work of the Spirit. Wisdom is the capacity to fit things together as they ought to be, the skill to create harmony and order. Thus we should not be surprised when Proverbs 3:19 states that the Lord founded the earth by wisdom—by the skill to fit things together in a harmonious fashion.
This harmony and order of creation that was brought about by the Spirit of God is what we call beauty. Beauty is fittingness, order, and harmony. This is ultimately the Holy Spirit’s work in creation. As Ambrose of Milan noted, “After this world being created underwent the operation of the Spirit, it gained all the beauty of that grace, wherewith the world is illuminated.” The Holy Spirit is the beautifier.
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Leading Science Magazine Questions Biological Reality of Male and Female
Humanity has never had any real trouble speaking scientifically, truthfully, and factually about what it means to be human as male and female. Never. No one has ever been confused about what those two words mean (and do not mean) until the last millisecond of human history.
We are often lectured, with no small measure of intellectual arrogance, that science is the one sure way of knowing all that is worth knowing. But it is not at all as simple and sure as that. Science cannot answer all questions, by any stretch. Especially the most important ones, like who is God, why do humans seek love, why do we laugh and cry, what is virtue and why does it matter, and why does extravagant beauty exist in the world? Science cannot answer any of these questions. It is not its domain.
But increasingly, we must also not miss the fact that “Science” itself doesn’t always follow science. In fact, sometimes “Science” directly violates science. Another example of this was recently demonstrated in the highly respected scientific journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
In their most recent issue, these editors published an academic letter from two neuroscientists and a biology grad student pushing a false gender ideology in the guise of science. What did these Princeton and Harvard scientists say? Their letter introduces a entirely novel view of male and female.
The first line of their published letter blankly asserts, “Inclusive language around sex diversity has never been more important.” And since, “scientific language directly affects trans-focused rhetoric and policy” they are calling on their peers to abandon the fundamentals of science in favor of just playing along with the lie that that there are more than two sexes or that people can switch genders. Science thought their learned readers would benefit from these two wholly unscientific sentences:
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Keeping God’s Word at the Center of Our Homes
As we strive to bring the Word of God to bear in every aspect of our homes, Deuteronomy prompts us to consider the flow of that faithful labor. Moses exhorts, “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deut. 6:7). With our lives centered on the truth of God’s Word, obedience flows outward as we live in the light of God’s path. One way that we demonstrate this disposition is by being diligent to pass God’s Word on to the next generation.
When Christian parents are struggling to find consistency in God’s Word as they disciple their children, Deuteronomy 6 is one of my favorite passages to consider with them. Verses 4–9, known as the Shema (from the first word in Hebrew, translated “hear”), are a beacon of clarity and practical encouragement. Drawing from this passage, we can look at the foundation, the flow, and the family essential to the holistic application of God’s Word in our homes.
First, look at the foundation of family discipleship. If we as Christian parents aim to better apply the Word of God in our homes, what’s our starting point? According to Moses here in Deuteronomy, we begin with our hearts and eyes fixed upward on God, not outward on the task before us:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.” (Deut. 6:4–6)
As we seek to disciple our children, God Himself is the foundation of our mission, not our own plans or efforts.
The Shema gives us a direct charge from God to base our lives on the revealed truth of who He is. In the Shema, God uses His covenant name to clearly declare Himself to be the one true God, the promise- keeping Redeemer who has humbled Himself to bless His people. That’s our starting point. We receive a truth external to us, a truth that should never cease to startle us: Almighty God wants a genuine relationship with us, and He is willing to instruct us, guide us, and ultimately substitute Himself for us so that He might grant us the righteousness needed to accomplish that union (2 Cor. 5:21). Our love for God is rooted in and grows out of that reality. It is all-encompassing; it occupies our entire being—heart, soul, everything, with all our might. There is no compartmentalization of our response to God. He will have all of us or none of us.
Applied more specifically to family discipleship, the firm foundation of the unique worthiness of God helps us clarify the aim of our efforts.Read More
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