Let's Make Things Easier

If you ever visit any Christian theological blogs or listen to certain podcasts, I'm sure you've noticed the technical jargon that they tend to use. Contrary to popular belief, this jargon isn't used for the purpose of confusing the masses and making the writers seem smarter than they actually are (that shouldn't be the reason, at least). In reality, people resort to this usage of jargon for precision's sake. It's much easier and more precise at times to use the word "apologetics" than it is to have to write out the definition each and every time.

The problem is that, most of the time, the terms remain undefined on the website. Not everyone who visits these sites has a PhD or has ever read or written something at the doctoral, masters, or even undergrad level. Not everyone who hears one of these weird terms that no one else uses knows exactly what it means. Or perhaps the authors defined the terms in previous posts two years ago and don't feel the need to define them again. But not everyone has the time to dive into two years of old posts to find the definition, especially if the author is someone who posts every day, or multiple times every day.

Although I don't want to imply that there's anything wrong with using these terms with my next statement, I'll say that I, too, am "guilty" of using these terms at times, honestly because I'm going for precision in what I say. But that doesn't mean that everyone who reads my blog knows what I'm saying, or even that I'm using the term correctly. What we need is some definition.

You may notice the top of my blog now has a page titled "The Jargon List." Yep, I'm going to start storing all the jargon I use right there for easy reference! Right now it's pretty short, but I realized when I first considered this idea that I could potentially just keep adding things before I post it and just never post it because I keep thinking of things to add. So I've decided just to stick with words I have used recently or do use often. I'll add any new terms in the future if they come up, or if I deem it necessary to do so.

In addition, you may notice the fun little dotted line under the word "apologetics" in the first paragraph. No, it's not a link. If you hover over it, you'll see a tooltip pop up. I've decided that, while the main page is a great idea for consistency and reference, not everyone will want to have to have two pages open to scroll through to understand my posts. So I've decided that, when a technical term comes up, I'll add the tooltip with the definition of the term so you can simply hover over it, see what it means, and continue reading. Yay for (hopeful) ease of use!

I hope this helps you all out. It'll help me for sure; it means I don't have to define a term in-post every single time I use it. I can define it once and then use tooltips later. That way, the flow of the post doesn't have to be interrupted by the need to define words, and you, the reader, can know what I mean by those terms. It's a great way to ensure original intent is preserved, and hopefully will help you understand me better.

Living, Moving, and Being

Recently I've been working my way through R.C. Sproul's The Consequences of Ideas lecture series. It's a series about the history of Western philosophy, examining the various philosophical systems from a Christian worldview and discussing, as the title indicates, the consequences of those systems of thought. Thus far this fascinating journey has taken me from the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales to "The Philosopher" Aristotle (I've watched further on to Thomas Aquinas, but there's a study guide with questions and I've only gone through those up to Aristotle). These various worldviews have mostly been responses to the question of ultimate reality.

What fascinates me is how some of these thinkers, who had no access to Sacred Scripture, came to at least semi-Biblical ideas from their thought processes. It's also interesting how the God of the Bible answers all of those questions.

One of those questions was this: what is ultimate reality? What is the ultimate substance, the stuff, that makes up reality? According to what I've learned, this substance had to have the attributes of life, existence, and motion in and of itself. In other words, it's life, existence, and motion had to be uncaused. It had to be the source of those three things.

Thales' solution to this question was water. He thought it through pretty well.

1. Everything living needs water to live. There is life.
2. Water can exist in the three basic forms of matter. Its ordinary form is that of a liquid. When frozen, it becomes a solid. When heated enough, it becomes a gas. There is existence.
3. Water appears to move on its own. This is where Thales' idea falls, but not for lack of trying. He knew nothing of the moon's influence on the tides. Water simply looked as if it moves with no other influence.

Other philosophers said that the substance was air, others earth, and still others fire. Some said it was all four.

But what was it that the Apostle Paul said to the thinkers in Athens? "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). He was quoting from a Greek poem, but he declared that this was true of Jesus Christ. He was directly answering this question. God is the source of all life, existence, and motion. He himself lives, exists, and moves by his own power, not influenced by anything or anyone else. The Bible says so in John 1:3-4: "All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men." And for God to create, he has to first move. He begins all motion. He creates, beginning all life. And he sustains all of existence. He is sovereign over all life, motion, and existence.

I hope to talk more about this later on as I learn more about other ideas the philosophers have come up with. I think it would be interesting to do so. Later on in history we actually start seeing Christian philosophers such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. I'm not sure what I'll do when I get to that point in history, but I'm sure I can come up with something.

He Shall Be Their Peace

Now muster your troops, O daughter of troops;

siege is laid against us;

with a rod they strike the judge of Israel

on the cheek.

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah

who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,

from you shall come forth for me

one who is to be ruler in Israel,

whose coming forth is from of old,

from ancient days.

Therefore he shall give them up until the time

when she who is in labor has given birth;

then the rest of his brothers shall return

to the people of Israel.

And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD,

in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God.

And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great

to the ends of the earth.

And he shall be their peace.

- Micah 5:1-5 ESV, emphasis added

Heaping Up Empty Phrases

In times past, the church would gather on Sunday and go through a liturgy during her worship services. There would be recitation of previously-written prayers and creeds and things like that as a form of directed worship to God. Nowadays such things are almost unheard of. The average church-goer finds those types of services to be repulsive, unhelpful, unedifying, legalistic, ritualistic, soulless...you get the idea. They aren't entirely without precedent; in the past, those kinds of services and recitations and repetitions did become mere ritual without any kind of genuine affection for God or any real edification of the church body.

In fact, Jesus Himself speaks to this kind of thing in Matthew 6:7: "When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words." Now, that last phrase shows he's specifically talking about drawing prayers out for long lengths of time. But if those repeated phrases really are soulless and unedifying, if they are being said for the mere ritual of it, then they are empty phrases.

Does that mean, however, that we must never, ever pray previously written prayers? Can we never say any phrases we have previously used? Can we never quote anyone? Of course not. That would logically lead to the conclusion that we could never recite Scripture in prayer, and I'm sure we don't want to get to that conclusion.

The real issue is the heart.

What is the reason you recite those words? Is it because ritual saves? Is it because that's what you learned in your childhood? Is it because it's "just what you do"? Those are all bad reasons.

What if you recited those prayers or phrases because you actually meant them? What if they spoke to your heart and expressed what you meant to express in better words than you could come up with, or perhaps with the best words possible? What if those words were exactly what you wanted to say, previously stated by someone else? Can we quote God's words in our prayers when they express so clearly and fully what we want to say?

I'd answer, "Why not? Just so long as you actually mean those words from your mind and your heart."

Personally, I have a few phrases I like to use in my prayers sometimes. For example:

Our Father in Heaven. You may recognize this as the beginning of the Lord's Prayer. In my opinion, it perfectly expresses just who we are talking to in very few words. God is our Father. This means he has authority over us. But it also expresses his loving kindness for us, the love that the perfect Father has for his children. It also states that he is in heaven. He is our Heavenly Father. Why not start a prayer with this phrase? It's beautiful, isn't it?

Forgive me, for I have sinned. In the Catholic tradition of confession, I believe they are supposed to start their confession with this petition, then tell their sins to the priest. But if you ask me, it's a great way to end a confession in a prayer. You're asking for forgiveness. You have sinned. You are a sinner. It pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? And if you're a writer like me, you like to finish off with a good summary. There's nothing theologically unsound about the phrase. In fact, there's a Biblical quote similar to this: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" (Luke 18:13).

(I may add that that verse comes from the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. The tax collector speaks these words and feels the weight of his sin so much that he can't even bear to look up to God when asking for mercy. Saying that phrase brings that image to mind and reminds me of how I should feel about my sin. It seems to me, then, that the exact quote from the Bible itself would be better than the phrase I started with.)

In Jesus' name. This is a common one. It's also a commonly misunderstood one. Let me address them:

1. No, not tacking this on the end of your prayer is not like sending an envelope without a stamp.
2. No, God will not be obligated to grant your wish if you do tack this to the end of your prayer.

Here's the verse that this phrase originates from: "Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it" (John 14:13-14). What Jesus really meant, however, is that whatever you ask according to the will of God will be granted (1 John 5:14-15). I end my prayers with this because it's a way to remind myself what I really need to be praying for. It's causes me to look back and ask, "Do I really think that what I have prayed about is what Jesus would want?" It's sobering.

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Yes, I know that the Lord's Prayer doesn't actually end with this phrase. I know that it's actually a quote from 1 Chronicles 29:11. But what better way to end a prayer? I see absolutely no reason not to finish a prayer with this verse. It puts God in his place and me in mine. In fact, I'll quote the full verse from the ESV, because it's different from the commonly-quoted phrase and the whole verse is quite amazing:

Yours, O LORD, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O LORD, and you are exalted as head above all.

Powerful, right?

Now, I'm not trying to tell you you must recite particular phrases in your prayers. I'm not trying to set a precedent or anything. I just know that my generation is dead-set against anything that may even remotely be thought of as "ritual." And like I previously said, that's not without good reason. But if there is real beauty in the phrases, and if the heart is moved to worship from them, or if one really means the words said, why not say them? One must obviously be careful that they don't become mere ritual, of course, and perhaps one would need to avoid them because they are inclined to such practices. But if you aren't, why not?

Drilling Prayer Into My Brain

I'm not sure exactly what day it was, but recently I realized something horrible: lately, I've been spending time learning about God without spending time with God himself. I have not been thinking about the relationship aspect of the Christian walk. The head knowledge is extremely important, but its end is to bring the heart closer to God.

But what was missing? I had been reading my Bible daily. I had been listening to good Christian teaching on a regular basis. I had even recently started reading a daily devotional on the Internet. I had started slowly studying 1 Thessalonians. I'm still doing those now, and those are all very good things I ought to continue in, but...something was missing.

So what's missing from that list? I'll give you a few hints.

This past week, Renewing Your Mind, a radio show I listen to daily, had a theme to its teaching. Monday's episode featured R.C. Sproul reading his children's book titled The Barber Who Wanted To Pray, which tells the true story of how Martin Luther's barber, Master Peter, asked him how to pray, and Luther taught him his personal method. The next two broadcasts were about God's providence and why we should pray, even knowing that God already knows what we'll ask for and has his plans. Thursday he taught how to pray, and the week concluded with an explanation on The Lord's Prayer. Along with all that, the chapter that we were reading in Wayne Grudem's book Christian Beliefs for Christianity 101 is titled "What Is Prayer?

In all this, I realized that God in his providence was trying to get something into my head. But what?

You get three guesses as to what it was. No, it wasn't the proper method of engaging in presuppositional apologetics. And no, it wasn't the Aristotelian rationale behind the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation (though I did learn about that this week, though that's a completely unrelated blog post I may write in the future).

Never mind, I'll just tell you. It's prayer. Come on, people.

That's right, that same old thing I still seem to have a problem with. Despite my desire to be as theologically sound as possible, despite my desire to lead my children to Jesus, my personal prayer life has been all but non-existent. And as any good (or average like myself) theologian could tell you, a lack of prayer is a serious hindrance to one's relationship with Christ and any semblance of Christian growth, both of which are essential aspects of the Christian walk.

In reality, I realized I needed to get back into the habit of praying on Monday while listening to the audiobook about Martin Luther and Master Peter. It was only on Thursday when I saw that this week's chapter of Grudem's book was about prayer that I noticed God's providence in the mix.

So I pretty much devoured every teaching on prayer that I heard this week. Despite that, though, it wasn't until Friday that I started trying to get back into the habit of daily prayer. Ever the lazy sinner, right?

As I wrote previously, it's a personal help to me to write down my prayers. It helps me focus and stay on track. I also decided to incorporate themes from my daily Bible reading and my devotional into my prayers. It's a way to meditate and really absorb the things I learn.

Last time I wrote about prayer, I made this boisterous declaration that I was done being prayerless. Now, I stand convicted of not even slightly living up to what I said. So rather than make some sweeping declaration, I think the best way to end this is with a prayer.

Lord, teach me to pray. Teach me to pray daily, without ceasing. Let me be a praying man, my family a praying family, and your church a praying church. Amen.