Pillars of Corrugated Cardboard: Reflections on Ministry from Tony Reinke
A reminder that Christian ministry must always be about Christ.
Last week Tony Reinke, one of my favorite authors, posted on social media some reflections on Christian ministry (Instagram, Twitter). The theme of his observations is that for Christian ministry to be Christian, it must be about Christ not the minister and ministry.
Reinke didn’t necessarily write to have his comments shared far and wide, but with his permission I wanted to post his reflections here to help them reach a few more people.*
A few thoughts on ministry. As voices for the gospel, we must never allow our ministry output to become our identity, something that gets talked about more and more these days — thankfully —a hard awakening we all need to experience at least once.
But here’s why we need this path in the first place. It’s too easy to allow our “faith” to devolve into a mere expediency, a means to get or maintain ministry prominence. As personal faith wanes, platform and paychecks can prove powerful to prop up a façade for a hollowed heart. Eventually when the job evaporates or the platform declines or the money stops, all semblances of the “faith” will crash, too. Very often this same heart will reflexively turn against the very doctrines, denominations, publishers, etc. once used like duct tape to keep the façade up.
The takeaways:
(1) Don’t be shocked when prominent Christian leaders, who seemed to be so strong and stable for so many years, fall away from major doctrinal convictions or even from the faith itself. Apostasy will increase, not decrease (2 Tim. 4:3–4). And the most inauthentic heart motives for why ministers “believe” can be very complexly masked by a host of worldly perks.
(2) Pray for your leaders. Pray for the authenticity of their doctrine and faith and marriages. Pray that prominent leaders who do fall away, and who maybe are just now confronting the hypocrisy of their own faith, would be restored to Christ through a real and robust faith, a faith that rests on nothing else than the beauty and worth of Christ himself.
(3) For all of us, we must never allow our personal trust in Christ to subtly become replaced by pillars of corrugated cardboard — public affirmation, a paycheck, book sales, or popularity within a movement, church, or organization. We must treasure Christ above all other things, because one day, whether in this life or when we stand before God, all those other things will disappear. And in that moment our faith in Christ will be called on to stand alone, naked, unsupported by popularity or paychecks.
I love this writing. Note the lyricism in “platform and paychecks can prove powerful to prop . . .” and the use of concrete, earthy images like hollowed heart, duct tape, and corrugated cardboard.
But most of all, I appreciate the conviction these thoughts bring. I am in fulltime vocational Christian ministry, which means to some extent my paycheck comes through my performance. That’s not wrong, but it is dangerous for a minister’s soul.
May we all desire most in our hearts what John the Baptist said of Jesus—that “he must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30)—because on the day God unveils forever and we stand stripped of ministry trinkets and public accolades, both of us will: Christ will increase, and we will decrease.
* As I moved Reinke’s words from a tweet to a blog post, I made a few tiny formatting changes.
** Photo by Alfonso Navarro on Unsplash
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We Are the Perpetual Resistance Movement: A Review of COMPETING SPECTACLES by Tony Reinke
A great book by one of my favorite authors.
As we discussed purity and parenting during a seminary class, Rob raised his hand from the back of the room. Our professor called on him. Rob said, “More than I want my daughter to not wear clothing that draws attention to her body, I want my daughter to want to not wear clothing that draws attention to her body. I want her to want the right things, not just do them.”
It was a formative moment in not only my seminary education but in my Christian maturation. Rob was on to something, and I wanted to be on to it too.
Tony Reinke’s new book Competing Spectacles: Treasuring Christ in a Media Age is a book to help us not only look at our smartphones less, but a book to help us want to look at them less by giving us something better to behold.
Competing Spectacles is a solid sequel to his book 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You (2017). In a culture of “viral moments competing for our attention,” Reinke explores how we can not only survive spiritually but even thrive (p. 13). “Few of us,” he writes, “have reckoned with the consequences of this tele-visual culture on our attention, our volition, our empathy, and our self-identity” (p. 33). But Reinke has reckoned with the consequences, and he relays them well—not in an alarmist, fear-mongering way but as a concerned friend and father.
Competing Spectacles has an uncommon structure. It’s one long essay broken into 33 mini-sections, which are separated into two parts, “The Age of the Spectacle” and “The Spectacle.” This structure might catch a few readers off guard, but he’s such a gifted writer that a 34,000-word essay isn’t as imposing as it might sound. Reinke is senior writer for Desiring God and author of several other books, The Joy Project (2018), John Newton on the Christian Life (2015), and Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books (2011). I’ve only done this for a few authors, but I make it a point to read (and in Reinke’s case, write reviews of) all his books.
“Spectacle” can mean different things. Spectacles are something we wear to help us see. But spectacles can also be what we see. This is the way Reinke uses spectacles throughout the book, spectacles as events. So, for example, each year the Super Bowl is a spectacle. The recent box-office hit Avengers: Endgame is a spectacle. The 2016 presidential election is a spectacle—actually the 2016 election had lots and lots of spectacles to it, something Reinke explores extensively in several sections of the book (especially “§9. Politics as Spectacle,” pp. 39–44).
But a local church worship service is also, by this definition, a spectacle. It’s a different spectacle, a smaller, less sexy spectacle than the latest Hollywood blockbuster or Adam Levine half-naked at half-time, but the gathering of the people of God is a spectacle nonetheless.
Competing Spectacles has tons of crispy writing, the kind of writing prevalent in Reinke’s other books. Just to give you a taste, he writes of the way “we never stop hungering for the Turkish delight-sized bites of digital scandal” (p. 56) and how the spectacle industry is a “gatling gun firing at us new media modules nonstop” (p. 150). That’s good writing! My favorite quote comes during his discussion of the spectacle of the local church. It’s a long quote, but read it slowly, perhaps even out loud.
Matched to the multi-million dollar CGI spectacles of Hollywood, the church’s interior spectacles seem dull. But they are beautiful and profound. Each week the local church reenacts the same things—Bible preaching, the Lord’s Table, water baptism—all of them faith-based, repeated, microspectacles (unlike the sight-based and unrepeated, expiring spectacles of the world). These church ordinances are weighted with cosmic influence. In Colossians and Ephesians, Paul is careful to show how the gospel-driven love and unity of local churches is a spectacle of the victory of Christ to the powers and principalities who seek to destroy God’s created order. The church is the perpetual resistance movement. And from generation to generation, she displays a spectacle of God’s victory to his cosmic foes, repeatedly striking those enemies with déjà vu of their defeat at the cross. (p. 101)
A few weeks ago, with as much passion as I could muster, I read this quote to our church. I might as well have been William Wallace on horseback with blue warpaint. “They may take our lives, but we are the perpetual resistance movement!”
For the first time in our 20-year church’s history, we enjoyed preaching, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper in the same worship service. We preach each week and have regular communion services, but we’ve always done our baptisms offsite in special services. We did this, in part, to mark baptisms off as special—they got their own service. But performing baptisms at another time than Sunday morning and in another location than our church building also meant we disconnected baptisms from the spectacle of a regular Sunday. Yet there is nothing, Reinke implies, regular about it at all. “From generation to generation, [local churches display] the spectacle of God’s victory to his cosmic foes.”
I want Christians to not only come to church each week but to want to come to church. And a big part of wanting to come to church regularly involves coming alive to the extraordinary reality of what happens on every ordinary Sunday in every ordinary local church.
If the local church is to become precious to us, another spectacle—the greatest spectacle—must first become precious to us: the spectacle of the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross is the heartbeat of Reinke’s book; it’s the central spectacle, both the theological center of the book and the geographic center of the book (e.g., the special attention the cross receives in section 17). He writes,
Into the spectacle-loving world, with all of its spectacle makers and spectacle-making industries, came the grandest Spectacle ever devised in the mind of God and brought about in world history—the cross of Christ. It is the hinge of history, the point of contact between BC and AD, where all time collides, where all human spectacles meet one unsurpassed, cosmic, divine spectacle. (p. 79)
Reinke’s book is not a book to get you to simply look at your phone less or watch media with a more critical eye. Competing Spectacles is a book to stoke your desire to want to behold something more than your screens; it’s a book, as the subtitle says, to help us treasure Christ in our media age. Channeling the famous quote by puritan Thomas Chalmers, Reinke writes, “The Christian’s battle in this media age can be won only by the expulsive power of a superior Spectacle” (p. 145).
* Photo by Barbara Provenzano on Unsplash
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THE JOY PROJECT by Tony Reinke: Updated and Expanded
A new edition of The Joy Project by Tony Reinke is now available.
Last fall I wrote about how much I liked Tony Reinke’s book The Joy Project. The book tells the story of what God has done to bring us joy—forever.
The Joy Project was recently re-released. Tony Reinke, Desiring God, and Cruciform Press teamed up to improve the book. It now has a new subtitle (“An Introduction to Calvinism”), a foreword by John Piper, expanded and clarified content, and a new study guide.
And because The Joy Project now has its own study guide, I retired the study guide that I wrote for the book. It’s no longer available for purchase. Thank you to everyone who bought a copy and found it helpful.
I feel prividgled that Reinke included my endorsement with the new print version, which goes like this:
The Joy Project is a celebration of reformed theology, and in this way it’s more in keeping with the Bible’s treatment of the subject—behold the beauty before bemoaning the controversies. We cover this topic briefly in our church membership class, and for those who want to pursue it further, this book, for its accessibility and warmth, is the one I’ll recommend first.
If you’d like to pick up the book, you can do so on Amazon.
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I Only Write Books When I Must
Some thoughts stirred by Tony Reinke’s recent blog post.
Over the last few years, I’ve read and reviewed all of Tony Reinke’s books. He’s an author and the content strategist for Desiring God. First, there was Lit!, then Mom Enough, then Newton on the Christian Life, then The Joy Project, and finally 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You. I even wrote a study guide for one of them (The Joy Project).
Okay, okay, okay. You can make fun of me if you want to, but I’m a fan.
Recently Reinke wrote a “thank you” post to his readers. It’s been just over a year since his book 12 Ways was published by Crossway. There were several things I appreciated about the short post. Being thanked was one of them. But the main encouragement to me were his convictions about writing books. He said,
In the publishing market, plagued by its razor thin margins, many authors face tremendous pressure to cave to editors aiming at pop appetites. I don’t. I write the books I want to write, in complete freedom, because (1) I have a publisher that believes books should be better than what the mass market wants, and that authors are better when they fear God more than the market’s silence. And (2) I have readers who share my vision of God and vision of the world.
My promise to you: I refuse to become a professional author. I only write books when I must. Maybe one more, two, four — who knows? But I know I will never ask my busy wife to edit, or for you to read, any book not driven by an urgent need to share with you a necessary message yet unpublished.
I’m not sure precisely what Reinke means when he says, “I refuse to become a professional author.” I suspect he has the pejorative sense in mind, suggesting an author’s pipeline of projects more determined by money than anything else. I read a lot of books, and I know I gravitate toward the books that seem they had to be written, those books that fill far more than a market need.
His post renewed in me the passion to do the same, to write only those must-be-written books. Next week I hope to share more about my job-search book for pastors, a book that—in my opinion—needs to be written. I promise, it certainly wasn’t market forces that drove my decision to spend three years working on it.
What about you? We all have things in our life we must do because they are necessary parts of life—work, sleep, cleaning the house, mowing the yard, and so on. But what things in your life are you doing because you feel compelled to do them for the glory of God, regardless of whether they are efficient, make money, or achieve some other requirement?
The apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:14 of the love of Christ that compels us. Paul has in mind here what he calls the ministry of reconciliation. But it seems to me that the same compelling love of Christ also unleashes Christians to a thousand different God-honoring, people-helping pursuits. For Reinke, it meant writing a book about faith and phones.
What is it for you? What has the love of Christ unleashed you to do for the good of others and the glory of God?
* Photo by Felix Russell-Saw on Unsplash.
12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You by Tony Reinke (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)
How is your phone changing you? I know it’s changing me.
I see it at stoplights. I see it during timeouts at my daughter’s basketball games. And I even see it when I stand in the back of the sanctuary during church services. When there’s a lull in the action, however brief, smartphones appear, and eyes are toward them.
But why must we check them so often? Is it because smartphones are such great tools for human flourishing or because they are evil taskmasters that make us less human with each use?
This is the dilemma with which Tony Reinke opens his book, and if you are like most people, the dilemma isn’t theoretical. Your phone is changing you. It’s certainly changing me. How could it be otherwise when we apparently check our smartphones every 4.3 minutes of our waking lives (p. 16)?
Reinke is the author of several books, as well as the host of the popular Ask Pastor John podcast and a senior staff writer for Desiring God. He is well suited to write this book for at least two reasons. First, Reinke feels the tension between the blessings and curses of technology more acutely than most. As a professional producer of online content, he must navigate reaching readers without succumbing to the click-bait, Buzzfeed-type posts that dominate web culture (to which, by the way, DG doesn’t capitulate).
Second, Reinke is the perfect person to shine the glare from our screens back into our eyes, not only because he is a competent researcher and a nimble wordsmith, but because he is also a God-centered theologian. And this trait is necessary because, as he points out, “conversations about our smartphones often do not raise new questions; they return us to perennial questions every generation has been forced to ask” (p. 24). And it’s this point about how new technology always brings us back to the perennial questions—questions about what it means to be creature not Creator; about beauty vs. efficiency; about loving God and neighbor—which makes this book so insightful.
Consider for just a moment our longing for approval (covered especially in chapters 3 and 6). Each generation must wrestle with this. The lore of Narcissus in Greek mythology, who fell in love with his own reflection, certainly predates the 2004 birth of Facebook. Today, perhaps, there are just more metrics to measure our beauty (likes, retweets, followers, pins, subscribers, and so on). And if you let it, your smartphone will send you push notifications for each of these so that when you wake up in the morning, you can glance at your phone to find out how many others love your face too. “When we talk about ‘smartphone addiction,’” writes Reinke, “often what we are talking about is the addiction of looking at ourselves” (p. 110).
The chapters of the book include topics such as the way we become addicted to distractions, how we ignore people, crave immediate approval, get lonely, become comfortable in secret vices, fear missing out, and half a dozen other changes our phones are doing to us. Additionally, readers will find the foreword by John Piper something that not only recommends the book to us, but also begins to engage with the topics at hand, including several of the ways technology has changed in his lifetime. For example, Piper bought his first computer in 1984. It was an IBM PC with 256K of RAM, which he bought for $1,995. A quick internet search (and yes, I did it on my phone) tells me this would be nearly $5,000 in today’s dollars!
If there were something to critique about the book, maybe it would be the structure. The title and layout of the book (12 Ways …) could make the book seem like one giant list-article, or listicle as they’re called. Listicles tend to be the lowest common denominator of online content. I say this, by the way, as the author of several listicles. But this criticism, in my opinion, doesn’t hold. The depth of Reinke’s insights and his biblical fidelity resist formulaic chapters.
One final comment. I found the book disturbing. But not because the problems created by smartphones are merely “out there” in culture or even in the church. Rather, I’m disturbed because the problems are “in here.” Despite all the blessings of smartphones (connection to others, wealth of information, and Bible apps galore), I still see the negative impact in my heart and habits. Too often my children compete with a screen for their dad’s attention. Being confronted with this change was disturbing, but it’s the good kind of confrontation, the kind that when paired with repentance of sin and faith in the gospel, leads to the good kind of change.
* This book review originally appeared in the theological journal Themelios.
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TULIP: Quick Reference Q&A
When theologians talk about a famous Dutch flower (TULIP), here’s what we mean and do not mean, as well as why it is precious to us.
A few weeks ago I posted a short introduction to what is called Reformed theology. In that post, I mentioned I would come back with a longer post about what are often called “the five points of Calvinism” or “the doctrines of grace.”
These doctrines are a way to talk about the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, especially in salvation. These points are frequently explained using the acronym TULIP, which stands for:
Total depravity
Unconditional election
Limited atonement
Irresistible grace
Perseverance of the saints
No one knows when the acronym was first used, but the grouping of these ideas first occurred in the early 1600s. The story goes like this. A group of ministers heavily influenced by the teachings of Jacob Arminius drafted a theological document called the Remonstrance, which had five points. (It’s from Jacob Arminius that we get the name Arminian, just as we get Calvinist from the name John Calvin.) The five points of the Remonstrance were actually a critique of Calvinistic teachings. Several years later, another group of ministers drafted a Calvinistic response to the Remonstrance, which also had five points. This Calvinistic response is known as The Canons of Dort. For the most part, TULIP uses different vocabulary than the five points of The Canons of Dort, but the ideas are the same.
What follows in the rest of this post is a “quick reference” guide to each of the five points. My intention is to bring clarity to the topic, without being laborious.
(Note: all sentences in the second question labeled “Piper & Reinke” come from page 6 of the first edition of The Joy Project by Tony Reinke.)
T in TULIP
What does “T” stand for?
Total Depravity.Other helpful names?
Pervasive or radical depravity; affectional atheism (per Piper).What does total depravity mean?
Everything about us has been touched by, indeed corrupted by, the fall. When the Bible speaks of us as being spiritually dead, it means we are unable to come to God on our own and that nothing we do can earn his love.
Piper & Reinke: “Total depravity is not just badness, but blindness to beauty and deadness to joy.”What does it not mean?
Total depravity does not mean we are as “bad” as we possibly could be. “Total” doesn’t mean we do every evil we could.Why is it controversial?
It’s controversial because the concept of deadness seems too radical. By asserting our inability to perfect ourselves and earn God’s love, total depravity assaults our pride. It’s also controversial because people sometimes misunderstand the doctrine to mean that people cannot do anything good.Why is it precious to us?
If apart from Christ we are really, truly spiritually dead and unable to come to God on our own, then it means when God does make us alive—when he does save us—our salvation is a free gift! In short, if salvation depends upon God, not man, then that’s a good place to rest our hopes. Also, a robust view of human depravity allows us to not be perpetually frustrated by the failures of humans to perfect ourselves. We do bad things because we are sinners.Key verses?
Genesis 6:5; Jeremiah 17:9; John 3:20–21; Romans 3:9–18, 14:23; and Ephesians 2:1–3.
U in TULIP
What does “U” stand for?
Unconditional election.Other helpful names?
God’s predestination or choosing of his people.What does it mean?
Before birth, God chose people to be his children, regardless of anything they would do for him.
Piper & Reinke: “Unconditional election is how God planned, before we existed, to complete our joy in Christ.”What does it not mean?
Unconditional election doesn’t mean we should give up all hopes of sharing the gospel with people because everything has already been decided.Why is it controversial?
Unconditional election is controversial because it leads some people to believe that our actions in this life do not matter. This is a wrong understanding, however, and not at all what the Bible teaches.Why is it precious to us?
It’s good news that my eternal happiness was planned before I was born and doesn’t depend on me. Additionally, rather than the doctrine of election undercutting our evangelistic zeal, it should give us hope that many will embrace the gospel.Key verses?
Deuteronomy 10:14–15; John 6:35–45, 17:24–26; Romans 9:1–29; Ephesians 1:3–23; Colossians 3:12; 1 Thessalonians 1:4–5; and 2 Thessalonians 2:13.
L in TULIP
What does “L” stand for?
Limited atonement.Other helpful names?
Particular atonement or definite atonement.What does it mean?
When Jesus died on the cross, he paid the punishment for the sins of all who trust him. As well, Jesus purchases for them the power that makes their salvation not just possible, but actual.
Piper & Reinke: “Limited atonement is the assurance that indestructible joy in God is infallibly secured for us by the blood of Jesus.”What does it not mean?
Limited atonement does not mean that God doesn’t love all people or that the benefits of the cross cannot legitimately be offered to non-Christians in an evangelistic way.Why is it controversial?
Limited atonement is controversial because, to be blunt, there are a number of verses that seem to indicate “Christ died for all” (2 Corinthians 5:19; 1 Timothy 2:6; Hebrews 2:9; 10:29; 2 Peter 2:1; 1 John 2:2). Many people understand these verses to teach that Jesus took the punishment for sins for all people, regardless of whether they trust him or not.Why is it precious to us?
It’s a joy to know that Jesus has done something special for his bride.Key verses?
John 6:37–39, 10:11, 17:9; Acts 20:28; Romans 5:8, 10, 8:32–34; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 1:4, 3:13; Ephesians 1:3–4, 7, 2:8, 5:25; 1 Peter 2:24; and Revelation 5:9.
I in TULIP
What does “I” stand for?
Irresistible grace.Other helpful names?
Effectual grace and inward call. Also, closely associated with the cluster of synonyms of new birth, regeneration, and born again.What does it mean?
God’s power to overcome all of our resistance to his love.
Piper & Reinke: “Irresistible grace is the sovereign commitment of God to make sure we hold on to superior delights instead of the false pleasures that will ultimately destroy us.”What does it not mean?
Sometimes people take this to mean that we cannot resist God and his grace. We can do this. We all do it. But what irresistible grace actually means is that God can overcome all of our resistance.Why is it controversial?
Irresistible grace is controversial because it means our wills are not free in an absolute sense. It means, to quote the famous poem “Invictus,” I am not the ultimate “master of my fate . . . the captain of my soul.”Why is it precious to us?
Irresistible grace is precious because it means God can overcome all of my resistance and deadness to true joy.Key verses?
Hosea 2:14; John 6:44, 10:27–29; 12:32; Romans 9:1–29, esp. v. 25; and 1 John 4:19.
P in TULIP
What does “P” stand for?
Perseverance of the saints.Other helpful names?
Preservation of the saints (note the word preservation looks similar to perseverance, but preservation emphasizes God’s sovereign work).What does it mean?
All those who have been genuinely saved will continue believing the gospel until they die.
Piper & Reinke: “Perseverance of the saints is the almighty work of God to keep us, through all affliction and suffering, for an inheritance of pleasures at God’s right hand forever.”What does it not mean?
Some misunderstand the doctrine to mean that whether we keep believing or not, and whether we keep living the Christian life or not, is irrelevant to our final standing before God. This is not what “perseverance of the saints” means. The saying, “once saved, always saved,” doesn’t mean you can “get saved,” but then live a morally bankrupt life, one that is indifferent to God, and then still go to heaven. If they did fall away, perhaps they were never really saved.Why is it controversial?
Perseverance of the saints is controversial because some passages seem to indicate that people can lose their salvation. Plus, we all know people who seemed to have once loved Jesus, but now they don’t.Why is it precious to us?
Is it possible to have legitimate assurance that you’ll wake up a Christian tomorrow morning? Yes it is. God undertakes within Christians everything needed to keep us trusting him.Key verses?
Matthew 13:1–24; Romans 8:18–27; 1 Thessalonians 5:23–24; Hebrews 12:14; 1 Peter 1:3–9; 1 John 2:19; Jude 24–25; and Revelation 2:7.
* Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
What is Reformed Theology? A Short Introduction
If you've ever wondered what "Reformed Theology" is about, this is a short introduction.
When I was in college a guest speaker from Reformed University Fellowship came to speak to our Bible study in the athletic department. After he had been introduced by our leader, someone in the study asked the speaker what it meant to be reformed. It seemed like a good question to ask. His campus ministry, after all, was called Reformed University Fellowship. The pastor looked over at the person who introduced him, shrugged, and then looked back at us. He said something like, “I’d love to explain it, but I’m not sure this is the place to do that well.” At the time, I thought this was a bit odd. Now I understand why he did this. He was nervous that giving a sound-bite answer could do more harm than good. I am too.
What is Reformed Theology?
In his book Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian, author John Piper claims that he loves Reformed theology the way he might love a picture of his wife. The point Piper makes is that he does not love the picture of his wife in and of itself. He doesn’t love ink on paper or pixels on a screen. Rather, he loves the picture because it is an accurate portrayal of the woman he does love. Similarly, when he says, “I love Reformed theology,” Piper means that it reveals God in that “It’s the best composite, Bible-distilled picture of God that [he] has” (p. 130). In short, he doesn’t love doctrines on paper but the God these doctrines describe.
I think this is a helpful way to talk about any doctrine, but especially the doctrines of Reformed theology. Yet here comes that question again.
What is Reformed theology? What is this “Bible-distilled picture of God” Piper is talking about?
I love to answer this question and yet struggle to answer this question. Explaining Reformed theology takes only a few pages, but it can also take libraries. It can take me 15 minutes to introduce in a Sunday school class, but it might take 15 years for someone to embrace. Part of the reason Reformed theology can be so difficult to grasp is because it’s a topic that requires us to have both a broad understanding of redemptive history as well as familiarity with key Bible passages. Without each of these, it’s hard to make much headway.
Regardless, I still love to try to answer this question because I believe a good understanding of Reformed theology can deepen our joy in God. Even as I say this, I’m aware that the study of Reformed theology can cause a good bit of consternation, especially at first. It sure did for me. Though I didn’t know Reformed theology by its name, when I was first considering what it teaches, I once threw John Piper’s book Future Grace at my bedroom wall in frustration.
So, I won’t attempt to explain Reformed theology exhaustively here, but let me try to introduce it to you under four headings.
1. Appreciative Heirs of the Reformation
Those who embrace Reformed theology see themselves as heirs of church reforms that took place around the 1500s (and beyond). The Reformation began with the growing desire to show the Roman Catholic Church its errors and make it healthier. In fact, as I write this, many Protestants around the world are commemorating the 500th anniversary of The Reformation, which is marked by the date October 31, 1517 when Martin Luther famously nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany.
Eventually, however, what began as an attempt mainly to reform the existing church led to breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church altogether. This split away from the Roman Catholic Church was the birth of Protestant denominations, a split that has resulted in many splinters. And while the proliferation of Christian denominations is in some ways undesirable, those who embrace Reformed theology deeply appreciate the faithful women and men who lived during the Reformation and who worked to reform the church, often at great personal cost. Martin Luther, like every believer, had deep flaws (see this article), but God used him and many others in a mighty way.
2. The Five Solas
Reformed theology is committed to the five great solas that came out of The Reformation (sola is Latin for “alone”). The five solas are:
Sola Scriptura Scripture Alone
Solus Christus Christ Alone
Sola Gratia Grace Alone
Sola Fide Faith Alone
Soli Deo Gloria To the Glory of God Alone
In the book Bloodlines, Piper weaves the underlying meaning of these individual phrases into one unified meaning with the statement: “God’s justification of sinners is by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, on the authority of Scripture alone” (p. 131).
Not everyone, however, gives a hearty “amen” to this statement. The Reformation solas came over and against what we might call “anti-solas.” These anti-solas were the common teaching of the church before the Reformation, and sadly in many places they are still taught, whether directly or indirectly. The anti-solas might go something like this:
Scripture plus church dogma
Christ plus his mother, priests, and saints
Grace plus the sacraments
Faith plus doing good deeds
To God’s glory plus human ability
Similar to Piper’s statement, let me try to weave together these anti-solas into one unifying sentence: “When we seek God through Scripture and church dogma, we can be made right with God only through Christ, his mother, priests, and saints, by trusting in God’s grace and the sacraments, as long as we do enough good works alongside our faith.”
I hope it’s clear that these anti-solas amount to what Paul calls a “different gospel” (Galatians 1:6ff). The anti-solas don’t offer us the good news of the finished work of Christ for our salvation. Instead they tell us to try hard and do our best, while strapping on ankle weights. The gospel alone makes us right with God.
3. The Doctrines of Grace
Those who embrace Reformed theology see Scripture teaching what is often called “the five points of Calvinism” or “the doctrines of grace.” These doctrines are a way to talk about the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility, especially in salvation.
These points are frequently explained using the acronym TULIP, which stands for:
Total depravity
Unconditional election
Limited atonement
Irresistible grace
Perseverance of the saints
No one knows when the acronym was first used, but the grouping of these ideas first occurred in the early 1600s. The story goes like this. A group of ministers heavily influenced by the teachings of Jacob Arminius drafted a theological document called the Remonstrance, which had five points. (It’s from Jacob Arminius that we get the name Arminian, just as we get Calvinist from the name John Calvin.) The five points of the Remonstrance were actually a critique of Calvinistic teachings. Several years later, another group of ministers drafted a Calvinistic response to the Remonstrance, which also had five points. This Calvinistic response is known as The Canons of Dort. For the most part, TULIP uses different vocabulary than the five points of The Canons of Dort, but the ideas are the same.
In a few weeks, I’ll do a longer post on how TULIP should be understood (here), but I thought it would be helpful in this brief introduction to Reformed theology to simply mention what the acronym stands for and some of its history.
4. Substantial Continuity between the Old and New Testaments?
Timothy Keller and D.A. Carson are the co-founders of The Gospel Coalition, a ministry committed to helping churches faithfully communicate the gospel and train Christian leaders. The ministry considers itself to be “broadly reformed.” In saying they are “broadly reformed,” they are hinting at the differences represented between these two founders, with one being baptistic in his convictions (Carson) and the other Presbyterian (Keller). The same differences are seen in Charles Spurgeon (Baptist) and Jonathan Edwards (Presbyterian). These differences among the broadly reformed illustrate why I put a question mark after the heading for this section; some see a substantial continuity between the Old and New Testaments, and others do not. Let me back up to explain.
Perhaps we could call Christians who embrace Reformed theology in its fullness, “fully Reformed”—that is, those who are Reformed with a capital “R” (Presbyterians might fit into this category). Conversely, we could call those who are not fully reformed, reformed with a lower case “r” (reformed Baptists).
The difference between these two groups has to do with the amount of continuity or discontinuity each group sees between the Old and New Testaments. Presbyterian theology tends to see greater continuity between the testaments (though of course not complete continuity), while reformed Baptist theology tends to see more discontinuity between the testaments (though of course not complete discontinuity).
One specific area in which this plays out is how much continuity each group sees between the people of God in the Old Testament (Israel) and the people of God in the New Testament (the Church). The slight differences here lead each group to have a different understanding of baptism. You were probably aware of the differences between Baptists and Presbyterians over baptism—Presbyterians practice infant baptism and Baptists baptize only adult believers—but you might not have been aware of some of the background that leads to this difference.
The Joy Project
There are many helpful books you can read to learn more about Reformed theology. My personal favorite, especially if you're going to focus on TULIP is The Joy Project by Tony Reinke. I like to start people with Reinke's book because of his emphasis on joy. It’s not simply a dry lecture about Reformed theology, but rather a celebration of it, which is more in keeping with the way the biblical authors write about how we are saved—beholding the beauty before bemoaning the controversies.
Reformed theology helps us understand God’s solution to our spiritual deadness (total depravity); that God’s plan for our salvation does not depend upon me and my good works (unconditional election); that on the cross Jesus purchases for me everything I need to be right with him (limited atonement); that God’s grace is so powerful it can overcome all of my rebellion (irresistible grace); and that life with God is worth fighting for every day of our lives, as well as something to which God himself is committed (perseverance of the saints).
In short, Reformed theology shows us how we get increasing and expanding joy—forever.
* Photo by Alessandro Valenzano at Unsplash
Books by Benjamin Vrbicek
Are you struggling with pron? I’d love to help you win the war.
God’s Joy Project: A Small Group Discussion Guide
I’ve written a discussion guide for Tony Reinke’s book The Joy Project: A True Story of Inescapable Happiness. You can get it here free of charge.
[Update June 29, 2018: Tony Reinke published an updated edition of The Joy Project with it's own study guide, which means mine is now longer for sale.]
I’ve written a discussion guide for Tony Reinke’s book The Joy Project: A True Story of Inescapable Happiness, which can be downloaded free of charge in three digital formats at desiringGod.org. Reinke is senior writer for desiringGod.org, host of the popular “Ask Pastor John” podcast, and the author of several books, including 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, which was published in the spring.
My workbook for The Joy Project includes a short introduction to Reformed theology as well as a 7-week discussion guide. This companion guide is ideal for personal study and small group discussion. It provides questions for each chapter of Reinke’s book and discussion questions related to Christian songs that share the themes of each chapter.
We are all looking for joy. The Joy Project, however, is the story of how joy finds us. It’s the story of how God has worked, and is working, to save his people and love them forever.
Reinke tells this story through the theological framework of Calvinism, or more specifically the acronym TULIP (total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints). In one of my favorite quotes from the book, Reinke writes,
Anticipating unending joy in the presence of Christ changes everything. It means we can relinquish control over our lives. It means we have no fear of the future. It means all our pressing toward personal holiness is not in vain. God elects so that we will be conformed to the image of Christ, in his holiness and in his happiness. It will be done, and we strive and obey in this inescapable hope.
You can download electronic versions of the workbook free of charge here (PDF, Kindle, iBook).
{Special thanks to Ben Bechtel, Stacey Covell, Jason Abbott, and Alexandra Richter for their editorial assistance on the workbook.}
12 Quotes from 12 WAYS YOUR PHONE IS CHANGING YOU
Here are 12 quotes from Tony Reinke’s new book 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You.
A few days ago, one of my favorite authors from one of my favorite publishers released a book I’ve been waiting for since I first heard about it. The book is 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You by Tony Reinke, and it’s published by Crossway. You can watch the promo video for the book above.
I loved the book and will post a review sometime in the future. For now, here are 12 quotes to whet your appetite.
“We now check our smartphones every 4.3 minutes of our waking lives.” (p. 16)
“What we need are new life disciplines birthed from a new set of life priorities and empowered by our new life freedom in Jesus Christ. So I cannot tell you to put your phone away, to give it up, or to take it up again after a season of burnout. My aim is to explore why you would consider such actions in the first place.” (p. 21)
“Conversations about our smartphones often do not raise new questions; they return us to perennial questions every generation has been forced to ask.” (p. 24)
“This means that whatever happens on my smartphone, especially under the guise of anonymity, is the true exposé of my heart, reflected in full-color pixels back into my eyes.” (p. 27)
“We find ourselves in the middle of this garden-to-city unfolding of history, and God is governing the entire process in several ways. Between the guardrails of natural law, as well as the guardrails of the abundance and scarcity of certain raw materials in the earth, and carried forward through his image bearers, each wired for innovation, the trajectory of technological progress—from the garden to the city—was set in motion.” (p. 30)
“To be without the constant availability of distraction is solitary confinement, a punishment to be most dreaded. That is why in those moments when we realize we have forgotten our phone, lost it, or let the battery run out, we taste the captivity of a prison cell, and it can be frightening.” (p. 45)
“For those with eyes to see, Christ’s return is so imminent, it potently declutters our lives of everything that is superficial and renders all of our vain distractions irrelevant.” (p. 50)
“The modern-day mantra we hear so often—‘I will follow Christ, but don’t bother me with organized religion’—is symptomatic of the disembodied assumptions of the digital age. In reality, the Christian life could not be more embodied.” (p. 62)
“Those who feed on little nibbles of immediate approval from man will eternally starve. But those who aim their entire lives toward the glory and approval of God will find, in Christ, eternal approval. The stakes are that high.” (p. 77)
“Our souls have been raised to new life in order to brag of Christ, and as we speak, our joy expands and overflows, and we become creators and artists. Art is spontaneous. Art is doxology. Art is the reflection of God’s beauty into the world. This is why we exist!” (p. 96)
“The smartphone is causing a social reversal: the desire to be alone in public and never alone in seclusion. We can be shielded in public and surrounded in isolation, meaning we can escape the awkward” (p. 124)
“We pay more attention to our phones than we do to the third person of the Trinity, but he cares for us more than we care for ourselves. Perhaps you believe you would benefit spiritually by stepping away from your phone for a season. Or perhaps you feel led to rethink better boundaries in your digital life. Or you may be fed up with your love-hate-deactivate-delete-reactivate relationship with social media, and you are ready to rid yourself of your smartphone altogether. I cannot tell you what to do, but I can encourage you to heed the conviction of the Spirit, who will help you make the next step of obedience.” (p. 197)
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NEWTON ON THE CHRISTIAN LIFE by Tony Reinke (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)
John Newton’s life is a spiritual, gourmet grocery store, and author Tony Reinke spent several years selecting and preparing for us a splendid meal. It’s called Newton on the Christian Life: To Live Is Christ.
Tony Reinke. Newton on the Christian Life: To Live Is Christ (Theologians on the Christian Life). Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2015. 288 pp. $19.99.
I’m not a John Newton scholar.
But likely, neither are you. Likely, you only know the things most of us know: Newton wrote the classic hymn Amazing Grace, and that he was a former slave trader in the British Empire, who, upon conversion, became an influential pastor and author.
That’s about all.
However, if we only know this, then we have only sampled the appetizers about Newton. There’s more. Newton’s life is a spiritual, gourmet grocery store, and author Tony Reinke spent several years selecting and preparing for us a splendid meal. It’s called Newton on the Christian Life: To Live Is Christ.
The book is part of a series by Crossway called “Theologians on the Christian Life”; it’s a series designed to expand our palates. Stephen J. Nichols and Justin Taylor, the series editors, explain in their preface that modern Christians need perspective from the past to correct our overemphasis on the present, on the NOW.
A Focus on Newton’s Letters
Perspective from the past doesn’t necessarily mean biography, however; and this is certainly the case with Reinke’s contribution. There are occasional details about Newton’s sailing career (especially a few treacherous moments), and a few passing references to his marriage (which was evidently quite exemplary), but the focus is not his life—but his letters. Newton wrote volumes of them, a thousand of which have been collected and published. Reinke writes,
I have read and reread every letter with the goal of condensing his core message and collecting his most distinct contributions on the Christian life. (p. 31)
That’s no small task. On every page, the extensive footnotes remind readers of the enormity of Reinke’s endeavor.
And by the way, when you hear “personal letters,” don’t think personal e-mails, or even “thank you” or “birthday” cards. Instead, think blog post: think thoughtful words intended for a wider reading. In fact, letter writing was the social media of the 18th century, Reinke writes (p. 22).
The book is structured in 14 chapters, with fitting bookends that focus on the all-sufficiency of Jesus Christ and the insufficiency of self. Other chapters cover topics such as “Indwelling Sin” (Chapter 5), “The Goal of Bible Reading” (Chapter 10), and “Victory over Spiritual Weariness” (Chapter 12).
Some Things I Love
First, I love the writing.
Reinke and Newton are gifted with words, especially fresh metaphors and similes.
Consider these examples from Reinke: he describes the human protections one makes for his or her soul as “castles of cardboard” (p. 53); a Christian who walks in God’s grace as one who will “rub the world’s fur in the wrong direction” (p. 100); and our longings for God as “dehydrated affections” (p. 114). Cardboard, fur, and dehydration—all fresh.
And Newton, for example, describes the remaining sinful desires in a Christian as trying to write with perfect handwriting while sin and Satan keep smacking your elbow (p. 112); of faith surviving inside a Christian like “a spark burning in the water” (p. 116); and preaching his Calvinism as “sugar [in tea]. I do not give it alone, and whole; but mixed and diluted” (p. 26). Scribbles, spark, and sugar—all fresh.
Second, I love the solid theology.
Junk food can taste good, but it’s not good for you. And poison might taste good, but it’s certainly not good for you. In contrast, what I love about Newton on the Christian Life, is that the writing tastes good and works for our health, not against it.
Both Newton and Reinke are evangelical and reformed, which means they love the Bible, cherish the gospel of free grace from a big God, and believe the “substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ is the epicenter of ministry” (p. 56). These are the meat and potatoes, plus the kale, wheat germ, and chia seeds of the Christians life; yet it’s all prepared by authors who make nutrition tasty.
I think it’s for these two reasons—skill in writing and large overlap in theological emphasis—that John Piper says what he says in the foreword about Reinke and Newton. He writes,
One of the most remarkable things about this book is that the voice of Tony Reinke and the voice of John Newton have become almost indistinguishable. (p. 15)
When I first read that, I wasn’t sure exactly what Piper meant, or if it would even be a good thing to have such a blending of voices, but now I see what he means, and I agree—it is a good thing.
Finally, I love the devotional warmth.
I won’t belabor examples, but consider two. On page 158, Reinke encourages pastors in their struggle over the “imperceptible growth” they so often see (or don’t see!) in their flock. And on page 215, he challenges “Christian communicators, songwriters, authors, and pastors” to “display the magnificent beauty of Christ” in all that they do. Both of these spoke to me. You, perhaps, are not a pastor or communicator, but as you read the book, I’m sure you’ll find sections that speak to you with equal devotional warmth; I’m sure of it.
One “Word to the Wise” & One Pushback
First, one quick heads up to readers. The nature of the book, and I suspect the series, lends itself to lots of block quotes. Readers accustomed to skipping these will have some re-training to do, especially when Newton’s poetry and hymns are quoted, as these require even closer reading. But don’t let this scare you. Just be ready to chew this delightful meal slower than normal.
Second is my one critique. Reinke saves his one pushback on Newton for the end of the book, as I have in this review (pp. 260-3). His pushback is related to, what Reinke detects, as an imbalance in Newton’s theology.
Newton, in an effort to be faithful to the Bible’s emphasis on the sinfulness of man—including the remaining sin in a believer’s life which rightly brings God’s displeasure—tended to undervalue something else that the Bible does teach, namely, that in the doctrine of definite atonement, there is “an unbreakable and particular love” that God has for his children, regardless of their moment-by-moment obedience. Or in short, Reinke sees in Newton an overemphasis on God’s displeasure with sin that kept him (and others) from resting in God’s abiding gospel-given favor, the favor purchased on the cross.
Okay, now we’re getting somewhere, right?
A lot of learning happens at the points of contention: learning about Newton, learning about Reinke, learning about Christian thought, learning about joy, learning about the God who made us and his Word that sustains us.
I tend to think more frequent “pushbacks” might have helped us learn these lessons. They might have worked like rumble strips on a highway, that is, kept us alert, whereas smooth sailing, albeit through beautiful scenery, was less engaging—you can zone out. I’m not advocating driving on the rumble strips indefinitely (who wants that book?!), just a tap here and there to keep us attentive.
Despite this pushback, I love the book and highly recommend it.
Reinke writes that he hopes we will think of his book as “a field guide meant to get dirty, dog-eared, and faded in the clenched hands of a Christian pilgrim” (32).
Mine did. And if you read it, yours should too.
* Tony Reinke also wrote Lit! and The Joy Project, and edited Mom Enough (which I reviewed here, here, and here).
9 Quotes from THE JOY PROJECT by Tony Reinke
The Joy Project by Tony Reinke was released earlier this week. You can download the book free of charge at Desiring God. Here are nine of my favorite passages in the book.
Yesterday I rode my bike past a church sign that said,
Happiness is not
the absence of difficulties
but the presence of God.
Typically, church signs are nothing more than clichés and sentimentality. Blah. But this one is pretty good. Yet we must ask, “If happiness comes from God’s presence, how do we get God’s presence?”
Tony Reinke wrote The Joy Project: A True Story of Inescapable Happiness to answer this question. The book was released earlier this week, and you can download the book free of charge, in three digital formats, at desiringGod.org/thejoyproject.
The book explores—no, celebrates!—God’s mission to bring his children infinite joy. And it does so through the theological framework called Calvinism or the doctrines of grace or the acronym TULIP (total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints). In fact, these five points serve as the scaffolding for the five central chapters of the book.
The Joy Project, however, is not a polemical fight. Rather, as I said above, it’s a celebration, and in this way it’s more in keeping with the Bible’s treatment of the subject—behold the beauty before bemoaning the controversies.
In the spring I read Five Points: Towards a Deeper Experience of God’s Grace by John Piper. It was a good book (and Reinke quotes from it a few times and Piper more than a few times), but I think The Joy Project is the book that I’d be more likely to give to the people in our church. I’m not saying it’s necessarily better, just perhaps more suited.
Reinke wrote on his blog, “The Joy Project…fulfills of a dream of mine to write and publish a full book free of charge to the world.”
Thanks, Tony, for livin’ the dream. And thanks, Desiring God, for making it happen. And now may God use this book as a means to completing his joy project.
* * *
Below are a few of my favorite passages.
We conclude that the barriers to abiding joy are the unhealthy choices that clog our lives. The root problem, we think, is that we’re stuck in a rut of predictability and laziness, so we must unstick ourselves. We turn to self-improvement... We buy productivity apps for our phones. We resolve to become more “chill” parents, sexier spouses, better friend-winners, and more purposeful people-influencers. We need to sit less and walk more. We need to sleep more and eat less… We drink more water, less coffee, less soda. We buy organic, fair trade, rBGH-free, gluten-free, free-range. We pay off credit card debt and build our savings… We commit to staying on top of our e-mails, checking our phones less often, watching less television, visiting the library more, and reading our neglected stacks of books. (p. 2*)
Simply put, the driving motive in history is the desire for happiness. All sin, from slavery to prostitution to racism to terrorism to extortion to the sparks that ignite world wars—all are driven by a desire for happiness apart from God. (p. 13)
The greatest hazard we face is not intellectual atheism—denying that God exists. Our most desperate problem is affectional atheism—refusing to believe God is the object of our greatest and most enduring joy. This is the heart of our foolishness. The fool speaks from the depths of his affections and longings and declares: God is irrelevant (Ps. 14:1). (p. 13)
Even if we don’t feel them, the consequences are real. Our idols misshape our souls like drugs alter the facial features of a meth addict. Unlike a drug-ravaged face, whose degeneration can be captured by time-lapsed photos, we don’t see the drastic changes to our souls quite so readily, but this soul-distortion afflicts everyone who follows after the pleasures of sin. (p. 22)
We are dying sinners in desperate need of a spiritual double bypass surgery, but we spend our pocket change on double cheeseburgers. We get happy again with a momentary food buzz, but the temporary buzz is slowly killing us. (p. 25)
Left to ourselves, we are stuck in our total depravity. The centripetal force of our affections keeps us gazing at ourselves. We turn away from God for our joy, and turn toward all we have left: money, sex, power, personal affirmation, Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and Instagram “likes.” We use these old technologies (and we will use new technologies in the future) to tabulate our approval and then to use those metrics of approval to compare our popularity with others. When we do, we trade authentic glory for residual sludge. It’s like drinking mud. And we choke. (p. 33)
The cross did not merely make salvation possible. The cross is not like a single who secures a wedding date and reserves an elegant church years before finding a mate, hoping they will find someone in the meantime. No, Christ’s death secured salvation for the elect individually, by name. In his death, Christ effectually pursues a bride by entering the brothel of idolatry to grab hold of the elect, one by one, by name, and pulling them out from the bondage of sin. (pp. 55-56)
Anticipating unending joy in the presence of Christ changes everything. It means we can relinquish control over our lives. It means we have no fear of the future. It means all our pressing toward personal holiness is not in vain. God elects so that we will be conformed to the image of Christ, in his holiness and in his happiness. It will be done, and we strive and obey in this inescapable hope. (p. 99)
But of course you and I know better than to say we found joy. Rather, joy found us—sometimes slowly, sometimes at warp speed. That is the story of TULIP. Calvinism is the story of a long-planned, sovereign joy that finds you before you even see it coming. (p. 121)
* All pages numbers from the PDF version.
#thejoyproject
MOM ENOUGH edited by Tony and Karalee Reinke (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)
Becoming a mother is to enlist in a war. And what makes this war so difficult, is that the enemies are not always obvious. MOM ENOUGH is written by women that know much about the difficulties of this war, but who also know about how to win.
Tony and Karalee Reinke (editors). Mom Enough: The Fearless Mother’s Heart and Hope. Minneapolis, MN: Desiring God, 2014. 120 pp. $7.99.
Being a mom is a wonderful but difficult job. Too often Pinterest does in subtle ways what Victoria Secret does overtly—crush women under the weight of airbrushed unrealities.
But it’s not only Pinterest and Victoria Secret that can inflict damage. Sometimes damage comes from other moms. Innocent playgroups turn into competitions over who has the perfect, God-ordained way of preparing organic, gluten-free, low-carb snacks. And sometimes damage can even come from the Bible, or, at least, from the mishandling of it. For example, Proverbs 31—a chapter that celebrates women and mothers—can be (mis)taught so that it becomes just another crushing airbrushed unreality.
This is why I’m so thankful for books like Mom Enough: The Fearless Mother’s Heart and Hope edited by Tony and Karalee Reinke. It doesn’t make this mistake. Mom Enough doesn’t crush; it gives wings.
When I bought Mom Enough, I knew it was a collection of short essays from various women, all published authors. However, when I received the book and read in the preface that each entry was originally a blog post for Desiring God, I was a little disappointed. I love the ministry of Desiring God, but at first I was annoyed because the last book I read like this (blog posts turned into a book) was lousy. Mom Enough, however, is not lousy. It’s excellent. As soon as I finished the book, I bought three more to give away. And with Mother’s Day coming next month, there is still plenty of time for you to get several copies to do the same (here).
The title Mom Enough is taken from one of the book’s essays of the same name, which in turn, is a callback to the Time magazine article from the summer of 2012 that had those words on its cover. If you saw that cover, you’d remember it; it pictured a woman breastfeeding a toddler that looked like he was about a year away from kindergarten.
In the book, author Rachel Pieh Jones pointedly describes the “mom enough” battle.
From television, Facebook, blogs, and Pinterest, the message screamed at moms is this: unless you are fit to run marathons, breastfeed into the preschool years, own a spotless and creatively decorated home, tend a flourishing garden, prepare three home-cooked meals per day, work a high-powered job, and give your husband expert, sensual massages before bed, you are not mom enough. (Rachel Pieh Jones, Mom Enough, 19, emphasis original)
But Jones is waving the white flag.
From my perspective, however, the Mommy War is over. Done. Finished. Kaput. And I lost. I am not mom enough. Never was, never will be. (19-20)
Yet quitting the “mommy war” does not mean she is ceasing to fight.
But I am on the frontlines of another war. The battles are raging and the casualties could be my children, my husband, or myself. This war isn’t about me being mom enough. This war is about God being “God enough.” (20)
And this war—the fight of faith to believe that God is an all-satisfying fountain of joy and big enough and caring enough to help us in our daily lives—is a war that began long ago. This war started in a garden when a serpent implied that God wasn’t God enough and when Adam and Eve believed they would be happier if they went their own way.
Right now, my wife is pregnant, which I know is a difficult season for all women, but it is especially so for my wife. No, she won’t spend the entire time in the hospital (Lord willing), but during past pregnancies, we have certainly made a few visits for extreme dehydration because of constant vomiting. My wife is a warrior, that’s for sure. I try to help her as best as I can, but what Mom Enough reminded me is that what my wife needs most—and what I believe all Christians need most (mothers or not)—is to know that in the midst of the battle, God is always God enough.
LIT! by Tony Reinke (FAN AND FLAME Book Reviews)
There was a time when I hated to read and write. Today, all of that has changed. But with this change came questions. For example, how do I pick which books to read, and once I do read them, how shall I make the most of them? Tony Reinke wrote a helpful book called LIT! to answer these questions.
Tony Reinke. Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books. Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2011. 208 pp. $15.99.
A few years ago, Tony Reinke wrote a great book about reading called, Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books. But let me say at the start: the thought of reading a book written about the topic of reading books was a strange thought. But an even stranger thought was writing a book review of a book about how to read books. That proposition made me feel like I was standing in front of a mirror—holding another mirror. So, I’m not going to do a long review here. Instead, I’d like to offer a “miniature memoir” about why I found Lit! tremendously helpful and why I think other people will too.
From Blended Wheatgrass to Strawberry-banana Smoothies
In college, I studied Mechanical Engineering. I chose this major for three reasons. First, my father is an engineer, and so it was familiar. Second, I was pretty good at math and science. Third—and this might be the most important reason why I chose engineering—I hated to read and write. Hated it!
But maybe this feeling isn’t so uncommon. Reinke writes, “For most, reading is like trying to drink down a huge vitamin” (15). Imagine that!—drinking a tall, chalky glass of Flintstones. And, with only a few exceptions, that is what reading was like for me.
Then things changed. God took hold of my life in a powerful way. The specifics of why and how the change occurred I will leave for another day, but I should say this part now: when I began to understand God’s love for me through Jesus, I also began to realize something else, namely, Christians read the Bible, and they read lots of other books too.
This, as you can imagine, was a difficult transition for me, especially as I began to feel called into full-time ministry. For instance, when I started seminary, I struggled with the demands to read and write. I think that is true for most seminary students, but I know that I certainly felt behind. And, if I am honest, not only did my enjoyment of reading lag, but also my ability. I just wasn’t very good at it. And, even today, I wouldn’t say that I’m great at it.
However, after lots of practice—much of it forced upon me by seminary and pastoral ministry—I can honestly say my frustration with drinking down vitamins has grown into love.
A Little Summary
Now enter Reinke’s book. The subtitle, A Christian Guide to Reading Books, was just the type of thing I needed. I bought it on a table at The Gospel Coalition’s national conference in 2013, but unfortunately, as books tend to do, it sat on my shelf for a year and a half before I read it. Now, however, I wish I had read it sooner.
Lit! is set up in two parts. The first section is a theology of books and reading. In the opening chapter, Reinke explores the fundamental distinction in literature. He writes:
Somewhere around 1450 BC, on a remote Egyptian mountaintop called Mount Sinai, an author wrote something so earth-shaking that the publishing industry has never recovered. It never will. (23)
Reinke is talking about the Ten Commandments, and, of course, the author is God. Using this moment in history as a starting point, Reinke goes on to argue that there are really only two genres of literature: Genre A: The Bible, and Genre B: All Other Books (27). Borrowing words from Charles Spurgeon, Reinke frames the distinction pointedly: there is the gold bar (the Bible) and the gold leaf (everything else). Only the Bible is—in the most ultimate sense—“inspired,” “inerrant,” “sufficient,” “supreme,” and “offers us a coherent worldview” (25).
Some people, because of their high view of the Bible, are tempted to conclude that we should never read anything but the Bible. This makes some sense, right? We all have limited time, so why not make the most of our time: read the best and forget the rest?
Reinke disagrees, however. Those “other books,” the gold leaves, matter too; they have much to offer. I do not think Reinke actually uses this phrase, but we might say there is a feedback loop between the Bible and other books, especially the good ones. This feedback loop works in such a way that by reading both (the Bible and other good literature) our reading of both is enhanced.
This is where the second half of Lit! comes in, namely, practical advice on reading. Reinke is asking questions like this:
If we are going to read things other than the Bible (which he says we should), then how do we maintain the primacy of the Bible?
And if we read other books, how do we know which books? There are so many. As Solomon said, “Of making many books there is no end” (Ecclesiastes 12:12).
And once we have picked which books, then what steps can we take to read them well?
These are good questions, and Reinke gives good answers to them.
So Why Not Launch a Book Club?
As I read though Lit! in the fall, I was encouraged to try something we’ve never done at our church before. This year, I’m teaming up with my co-pastor to lead a book club. For this first year, we picked eight novels, books like Of Mice and Men and Pride and Prejudice. Our first meeting was last weekend—The Great Gatsby.
I suppose I probably should have already read most of these books, perhaps even in high school. But this is what I’m trying to say; I’m playing catch up. And as I attempt to make up for lost time, books like Lit! have been so helpful.
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A Few Favorite Quotes
“In non-Christian works we discover what is so close, and yet so far away, from what we read in the Bible. The challenge is to make use of the ‘so close’ for our edification and for the glory of God while being aware of the ‘yet so far.’” (Reinke, Lit!, 77)
“The imagination-stretching images [especially in books like Revelation] are God’s way of sliding the spiritual defibrillator over the slowing hearts of sluggish Christians. The images are for Christians who are growing lazy and beginning to compromise with the world, Christians who are allowing their hearts to become gradually hardened by sin. The answer is a spiritual shock. It is God’s way of confronting worldliness and idolatry in the church. When idolatry begins to lure the Christian heart, God reaches into our imagination with images intended to stun us back to spiritual vibrancy … [Thus] to view imaginative literature as a genre fit only for the amusement of children is an act of spiritual negligence.” (Reinke, Lit!, 88-9)
“The rewards of reading literature are significant. Literature helps to humanize us. It expands our range of experiences. It fosters awareness of ourselves and the world. It enlarges our compassion for people. It awakens our imaginations. It expresses our feelings and insights about God, nature, and life. It enlivens our sense of beauty. And it is a constructive form of entertainment.” (Reinke, Lit!, 128)
Related Post
In my first blog post I interacted with Reinke’s podcast Authors on the Line. You can read that post here, Fresh Words, Fresh Language, Fresh Blood.
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Fresh Words, Fresh Language, Fresh Blood
Not stale, not rehearsed, not clichéd language—we need fresh words, fresh language, fresh blood. In these, there is life. And in the pursuit of these, I launch a blog.
For some time, I contemplated starting a blog. When I made the decision to move forward, an unanticipated question arose: What shall be my first post? You always remember your first. Recently, while listening to an episode from Tony Reinke’s podcast Authors on the Line, I found my answer.
In the episode, Reinke interviewed Pastor Douglas Wilson (also posted on desiringgod.org here). The main talking point was the use of metaphor; but a subtheme, as least as I heard it, was how to communicate effectively.
Early in the interview, Reinke asked Wilson this question:
Was there an ‘ah-ha’ moment in your life or ministry when you discovered the importance of non-fiction imagination to communicate divine truth?
Here is Wilson’s response:
The first resolve was when we were first establishing Credenda as a magazine. I grew up in an evangelical household; I’ve been around missionary newsletters my whole life; I’ve seen Christian magazines and publications and books, etc., for a long, long time. And one of the things that they all had in common, or seemed to me to have in common, was their boringness, their blandness.
So in the acceptable world of evangelical discourse, you have the bland leading the bland… When we were first setting out with Credenda, this was a central resolve… I wanted to write about theology, and history, and doctrine, and culture in a way that was engaging and interesting—not boring. It might be infuriating or it might be exasperating, and you might be tearing your hair out, but you don’t want to put it down. (emphasis added)
Pastor Wilson’s point: Christian writers are [on the whole] bland and boring, and I do not want to be either.
It’s not my place to say whether the appraisal was accurate then or if it remains true today. I have not been around Christian publications long enough or broadly enough to say either way.
And part of me wonders if Wilson, if asked, would say his critique of a few decades ago still holds today. Perhaps he would say that it is still true, at least broadly, though there are many great exceptions. This would be my evaluation.
But to Wilson’s own takeaway (namely, to move beyond bland and boring), I feel a strong resonance. When he says, “I wanted to write about theology, and history, and doctrine, and culture in a way that was engaging and interesting—not boring,” I say, “Amen. Preach it, preacher.”
I see this as a sensible and timely pursuit, not simply because I personally like to read the type of writing Wilson wants to produce, but also because of the cultural shift away from the historic message of Christianity.
Two Ways to Lose the Christian Message
There are two ways to lose the historic message of Christianity.
On the one hand, we can lose it by cutting ties with the actual historic message—the centrality of the announcement of the good news of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. This is the death of severing the veins from the heart. Blood will not flow when the pathways are disconnected from the source. And of this type of ‘death,’ I do feel that I know enough to say that it is rampant today—a lifeless Christianity, not lifeless because Christianity is lifeless, but because it’s not Christianity. As an example of this ‘death,’ consider how often Christianity becomes mere rule keeping devoid of the gospel. That’s not Christianity; it’s mere religion disconnected from the source of salvation, the foundation of forgiveness: the person and work of Jesus.
However, on the other hand, we can lose the historic message of Christianity by saying the message in the same way that we have always said it. This is the death of recirculating oxygen-depleted blood.
I was reminded of this recently when I asked my young children what made someone a Christian. Their first answer: “Ask Jesus into your heart.”
Well, okay, I guess that could mean something helpful, but what does this phrase even mean? It’s an example of language that has lost meaning because it’s expected; it’s been recirculated too many times.
Not stale, not rehearsed, not clichéd language—we need fresh words, fresh language, fresh blood. In these, there is life. And in the pursuit of these, I launch a blog—a first I want to remember.
May God use it to “fan into flame” (2 Timothy 1:6) the craft of speaking and writing the historic message of Christianity in accessible and riveting language. May God use it to pump fresh, oxygen-rich blood into the body.
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A reminder that Christian ministry must always be about Christ.