Humility

Wednesday 24 October 2007 at 2:04 pm I never thought of the humility of God until I listened to some of Peter Kreeft’s MP3s on the net. God including God the Father is completely humble. That helps me locate humility beyond “aw shucks…” Why is God so hidden so often? I think it is his humility. He likes to work quietly, unseen, behind the ordinary and even the vulgar. God’s humility meets his patience and we have human history with human freedom at tremendous cost. We associate this with the Holy Spirit, the point made in the CTS Focus piece out recently but the whole trinity is of course humble. God also loves the humble. Proverbs notes numerous times that God draws near to the humble but flees the proud. Jesus says “the meek inherit the earth”. Satan, like Sauron majors in control and domination. Satan is all about “making it happen”. God somehow “lets it happen”. I’m doing Yancey’s “Prayer” book for a small group and he makes the point well in chapter 8. God loves to do things and not be obvious about the credits. Look at the universe. He does so to such a degree that lots of folks just call it an accident.

Willow's New Initiative

Tuesday 23 October 2007 at 10:03 pm

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2007/10/willow_creek_re.html 

http://revealnow.com/storyPage.asp?pageID=12

They've got 4 stages of progress:
Exploring Christianity
Growing in Christ
Close to Christ
Christ-centered

Then there are two maladies that beset states 3 and 4: "Stalled", not growing lately and "Dissatisfied": disappointed with the church.

They've got "Spiritual behaviors: tithing, evangelism, serving, etc." and "Spiritual Attitudes: love for God, love for people".

Not long after my first visit to Willow I was all geeked about intentionality. I launched an effort here at church called the Spiritual Inventory. I set out to develop a tool to help people somehow put a number on their spiritual life and diagnose it with regard to things like attitudes and behaviors. Then we were going to find the areas where growth was required and figure out how to grow them in those places. I got quite far into the project before it started to unravel for me. There certainly are very common sense indicators of spiritual maturity and spiritual growth, but there is also an element that is notoriously indefinable. I eventually abandoned the project like any good pastor does who realizes mid-stream that they've led the flock astray, I stopped mentioning it and hoped people would forget, which they seemed to do. I also learned that people are used to pastors flapping their lips and wisely listen selectively.

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Jimmy Carter and Biblical Christianity

Thursday 11 October 2007 at 12:27 pm

This was a response I wrote on Calvin-in-Common, a listserve when the question was raise as to how Jimmy Carter could both be so obviously "good" AND possibly a Christian fundamentalist (the opposite of good in the minds of many). One person posted asserting the public/private framework. Jimmy  Carter's "private' religion may be fundamentalism but he divorces it from his public good.

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