Considering the Denial of Depravity

A funny thing happens when someone denies the reality of depravity.  Sin becomes something “out there” rather than in my heart.

Case in point.  I was reading part of Richard Foster’s Money, Sex & Power.  I bought this some time ago.  Today I was leafing through the book since my sermon is on the immoral and righteous use of wealth from James 5.  Foster’s theological roots include the denial of total depravity.  Jesus makes some difficult statements about the wealthy.  Foster takes these to mean that money is not morally neutral.  Instead is had a dark power.  For him all money is unrighteous though we may use it for righteous purposes.

You’d think he was basing his theology on Trivial Pursuit.  They erroneously answer that money is the root of all evil.  Sorry, the Bible says the love of money is.  The problem is not out there- money.  The problem is in my heart which seeks life from money instead of from Jesus.  My heart is a factory of idols- and it is prone to make money an idol.  Money does not make me worship it- it is an inanimate object.  The problem is my adulterous heart.

As long as we continue to objectify sin we will be on crusades against all manner of things: alcohol, TV, books etc.  When we do that we never put the earthly, sinful desires of our hearts to death in the power of the Spirit.  We fight the wrong war and wonder why we don’t make any progress.  Where you think sin is makes a world of difference.

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Considering God and Guinness

I’ll freely admit it; I’m a little behind the times.  In this instance I’m only about 18 months behind the times.  The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World by Stephen Mansfield came out in 2009.  I picked it up with a gift card for my birthday in late 2010.  I’ve slowly been reading it in my spare time.  Finally, I am done.

In some ways it has the feel of a conversation at a pub over a pint or 2 of Guinness.  The conversation will shift periodically to seemingly unconnected things.  This book covers plenty of ground.  As a result, it is not as in-depth as some people might like.  The point is more the big picture than the details.  There were sections I really liked, and sections I found frustrating.

He starts before Guinness.  Since this is about God and beer, he develops the history of beer and how it was viewed “back in the day.”  Just today I heard a brief selection of a sermon by a local pastor who indicated that having a beer was worldly and should not be something Christians do for evangelism (I agree on that last part, it should be done for the glory of God!).  In a world without much clean water, beer was a safe beverage.  The monks and nuns often brewed beer.  Since beer has a lower alcohol content than wine and particularly hard liquor, it was viewed as a blessing by the church.  Faith did not reject beer, only drunkenness.  This is one of the better chapters in the book.  But the people who most need to read it, probably never will.

“John Wesley drank wine, was something of an ale-expert, and often made sure that his Methodist preachers were paid in one of the vital currencies of the day- rum.”

The second chapter focuses on Arthur Guinness and the birth of Guinness.  He was a methodical man who slowly perfected his art brewing beer for Reverend Price (as did his father).  But he also took calculated risks.  When he was ready, he started his independent brewery.  They had one brew- a stout.  To this day it remains a very good stout.  I’ve had better stouts, but it is consistently good.  It was also good for the people of Ireland and England.  The gin craze had hit and drunkenness was a growing problem.

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Considering Counterfeit Gods

While on vacation I started to read Tim Keller’s most recent book Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power and the Only Hope that Matters.  Yes, that is a long subtitle.  You’d think a Puritan wrote this book.

Others have tackled these topics, like Richard Foster in Money, Sex and Power.  But Tim Keller, for better or worse, frames it historically in light of the failure of many of these false gods in the economic crisis most of the world is experiencing.

This is an excellent book, though I am not sure it measures up to The Prodigal God.  Few books do.  This is a subject Tim Keller handles very well.

Some have been critical of the new, prevailing notion of idolatry as if it takes the place of sin.   Keller argues that the idea of idolatry makes more sense than the idea of sin (in this world of relativism).  Beyond that he refers to Luther’s point that idolatry is the root of sin rather than just being one of many sins.  So what Keller is doing here is trying to get to the root of our sin, the many false gods that we serve.

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Considering A Proverbs Driven Life Part 3

You might be asking, “what happened to part 2?”  Part 1 was mistakenly saved as a draft instead of published, so Considering Proverbs and Work is actually part 2 of my review of A Proverbs Driven Life by Anthony Selvaggio.  Did you catch that?  Do you care?

The third part of the book addresses wealth.  His little summary statement is : A Proverbs-Driven life understands the place and purpose of material wealth.  This is much needed in our day and place.  American Christians’ perspective on material wealth is only slightly less skewed than the average non-Christians’. 

Selvaggio starts by addressing the heart.  This is where all our problems with money and wealth come from- our bent toward selfishness.

“… money is not the basic problem at all, but rather our love for it. … The moral issues regarding wealth arise entirely from how we acquire it, relate to it, and use it.  In other words, the problem is us.”

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Considering A Proverbs Driven Life, Part 1

I consider Proverbs to be “preventative grace”.  It was initially written to prepare young men for adulthood by providing practical wisdom.  It was to help them avoid the pitfalls of life’s choices rather than get out of them.  So, when I saw Anthony Selvaggio’s A Proverbs Driven Life, I was interested.  When I was offered a copy for free to review- I was estatic.

Before Selvaggio gets into the various topics that Proverbs covers, he wants to orient people to what Proverbs are, and aren’t.  Since Proverbs is a book about wisdom, it is about everyday life.  It is not about laws & precepts (he hits that again in a later section) but more like signposts.  Proverbs are generalisms that help us to make good choices by cluing us in to the typical outcomes. 

We need this book because, as he says, “people make a lot of short-sighted, self-centered decisions.”  And those decisions bring lots of misery to them and others.  We are a people who profoundly lack wisdom.

Proverbs offers us future-oriented wisdom and guidance so we can make wise decisions and live in ways that please and exalt God.

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