Author: Kyle Strobel
Lent Reading GuideWhat follows is a 40-day Lent reading plan to read Beloved Dust. This 40 day period excludes Sundays, where the focus of your time will be on the movement of the Lenten season to the Cross and Resurrection. We encourage you to follow lectionary readings for this season alongside your reading of Beloved […]
There is a scene in the movie “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas” where the Grinch is up on his mountain shouting down at Whoville. With an open phonebook in his hand, he goes down the line of Whoville residents to declare his utter disdain for them all. The Grinch’s hatred of the Whos […]
I have spent the better part of the last decade studying Jonathan Edwards’s theology and spirituality. Edwards has been such a close companion over the past several years that I find myself less and less surprised by him. But that is not always the case. He is such a broad and deep thinker that there […]
Here is a short excerpt from Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards (IVP, 2013), 120-122. Click here for the publisher page. Edwards on Meditation Edwards told his church to set their minds on things of a divine nature and to turn the eye of their minds toward […]
As of late I’ve been pondering dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction, in my mind, is a gateway vice – a vice that subtly lures you into the whole panoply of vices. It is so subtle, I think, because it hides behind other vices. You spend your time lamenting your lustful heart (or restless, prideful, etc.) and really the […]
I have become convinced, through several writers in the spiritual formation conversation, that the first sin provides us with something of an archetype of sin. Sin raises in us certain existential states that cause us to hide from God and cover ourselves from one another (as well as God). For many, the sin narrative in Genesis provides us with a glimpse of the Gospel, as God clothed Adam and Eve – an act that mirrors the handing over of robes of righteousness in the Gospel. In light of this, I wanted to focus on this paradigm in prayer. How does this existential condition play out in prayer.
As I was praying this morning I noticed my mind wandering. This, of course, is not an unusual occurance. My typical response to mind-wandering in prayer is to seek discernment as to why my mind is wandering, as well as question why it is wandering to these things specifically. Today, it was work – most specifically, various projects I am excited about that are still in the potential rather than actual phase of their existence. I was tempted to write off this reality as just excitement to start my work day, but I think it was more than that. I have noticed a tendency in my prayer life that when I seek to come before God in repentence and really take my place at the foot of the cross, it is there that my mind wanders.
Much of the texture of our lived existence depends upon our presuppositions about what growth looks and feels like. For some, the call to "be holy as I am holy" is a very literal endeavor, where we truly do take on holiness in a real sense. For others, the Reformed tradition for instance, it is not that we take on holiness as much as we learn dependence. We abide, to quote Jesus, in the vine. As a branch, it is not that we somehow come to take on the life-giving elements of the vine, but the connection we have with the vine deepens.
Along these lines, note Jonathan Edwards’s point about the texture of growth:
"A man that is very poor is a beggar; so is he that is poor in spirit. This is a great difference between those affections that are gracious, and those that are false: under the former, the person continues still a poor beggar at God’s gates, exceedingly empty and needy; but the latter make men appear to themselves rich…"
I’ve been working through and re-editing what I believe to be Jonathan Edwards’s greatest work, a book called Charity and Its Fruits. It is, even if in brief, Jonathan Edwards’s spiritual theology. Interestingly, it was really a sermon series through 1 Corinthians 13, the most over-read and under-lived Scripture references for weddings. One of Edwards’s tasks in the volume is to provide a series of reflections on virtues and vices. In his chapter on envy, he suggests that Christians often turn envy into something more palatable – we subconsciously tweak envy to try and make it seem virtuous. Edwards suggests that we do this in four ways: We 1) undermine the worthiness of the person we envy; 2) claim that our envy arises from a love to justice; 3) undermine the honor of the person we envy by questioning the use of their prosperity; and 4) question if the person we envy is spiritually mature enough for prosperity.
There are two things that Edwards sees clearly here. First, making up the second point, is that our subconscious functions in an attempt to justify our sin and turn it into something palatable – what ancients used to call beautiful vices. We turn envy into a zeal for justice. This point, secondly, builds on the other three, all of which turn our attention to the other person. Our hearts, out of self-protection, guard us by judging others. Envy leads us to conclude that others are not worthy, honorable, or mature, and therefore lifts us above others to judge them through our own elitist mindset. Envy is a fruit of self-exaltation, just as it is achieved through the degradation of others.
Not too long ago a blogger was criticizing contemporary evangelicalism’s obsession with the term "biblical." This blogger suggested, if I remember correctly, that seminaries should come up with a degree in Biblical Biblicalness." There is, of course, something to be lauded in this emphasis. But I would suggest the opposite is actually taking place. Terms like "biblical" often lose their meaning rather quickly. Instead, they become storehouses for other kinds of things. When I hear people use the word "biblical" today, more often than not it is a placeholder for: "what I find comfortable in light of my background."
It is usually easy to point this out, in light of the fact that these people’s claim to "be biblical in all things" is, itself, extra-biblical. The call to be biblical itself is based on theologizing. That is not to say that the inclination is somehow unbiblical, but that the content of what it means to be biblical is based on a theological development (the Bible never states, for instance, sola scriptura – Scripture alone). I say this because I find that the term biblical is usually used in an unbiblical manner. It is an elitist tendency to write off other people who stand under God’s word and to, instead, apply God’s sovereignty to themselves. Rather than standing under the judgment of Christ, they stand at his side, pointing out people they think deserve his wrath. They often mimic, in other terms, the Pharisees.
As many of you may know, I am a Jonathan Edwards scholar. In the grand scheme of things, that doesn’t mean all that much, expect that I read a lot of Edwards’s work and spend a great deal of time thinking alongside of him about the nature of the Gospel of God for our salvation. From time to time, I come across a really great nuggest in Edwards’s theology. What I mean by "nugget" is this, what I consider one of the great misfortunes of Edwards’s legacy is that we have next to nothing on what he was supposedly best at – spiritual direction. His daughter, in a letter to a friend, once commented on how blessed she was to have someone like her father to help her navigate her relationship with God. Edwards was, it would seem, a fantastic and discerning director of souls. Fortunately, we do have some evidence of this. Edwards wrote a letter to a woman who just saw her only son die. In it, he tells her that he writes about the one thing he knows for a time like hers – Christ. You can read the letter in its entirety here, but I have copied the last portion below.