THE DOCTRINE OF SNOW

I had a very interesting encounter after the second worship service here at First Baptist Church a while back. A personable young man I have known for some time, who was a guest of some of his friends in worship, approached me with a serious look on his face. He shook my hand and told me how much he had enjoyed the service, and that he always loved it when he got to worship with the folks at First Baptist.

Then he said, “And you know, I agree with almost all of the doctrines you teach here. All except one doctrine.” Here he paused, and I immediately began to wonder what I had said that would make him raise a doctrinal issue in the lobby after worship.

“What doctrine is that?” I asked.

With apparent earnestness he said, “Well, Pastor, I hate to say it, but it’s your doctrine of snow. I just can’t agree with your position.” Then he broke into a smile and we both had a good laugh as he explained his mock concern.

He pointed out that during prayer time, I had voiced our gratitude to God for the wonderful moisture we had received over recent weeks, but went on to ask God if He might arrange for the temperature to be warmer the next time we get some precipitation. You see, I’m not personally all that crazy about snow. And yet, I know it’s a wonderful blessing to have the wheat lay under a blanket of the white stuff, which is just what we had experienced for the previous several weeks. As a result, as my people know, I struggle with how to pray for precipitation in the winter. I recall mentioning in my prayer that we were giving “reluctant though heart-felt thanks” to God for the snow: reluctant, because I hate snow; heart-felt thanks, because we always need the moisture.

This young man said that he, by contrast, loves snow, everything about it, and wishes it would snow more often. And so, with what turned out to be simulated seriousness, he indicated he could never sit under my teaching or be a part of any church whose “doctrine of snow” was so out of line with his. We laughed and laughed. It was hilarious. Simply hilarious. I continue to chuckle as I think about our conversation!

And yet, there’s a serious side to this young man’s remark. Every pastor in town knows that some people leave churches over matters no more consequential than a “doctrine of snow,” as our worship guest called it. Matters such as who gets to pass the offering plates or the color a room gets painted (or who gets hired to paint it) have actually split churches. The “doctrine of snow” is a genuine heavyweight by contrast!

The challenge for each of us is to do a well-prayed-through inventory of what really matters in a church. If you go to the Word of God, and read what it says, you may be surprised at the brevity of the list of truths that define a biblical church. More on that, next week.

SERVING GOD IN A BROKEN WORLD

They were so sure of themselves, this little band of Jesus-followers. The miracles they had seen and the wonders He had performed apparently gave them a sense of importance, as if He had chosen them by virtue of some special character or assets they possessed.

So it was that as they left the temple precincts one day, Jesus came upon a man blind from birth, and His followers decided it was time for an explanation. “Teacher,” they asked Him, “why was this man born blind? On account of his parents’ sin, or his own sin?”

They were like so many in the church today, anxious to conjecture about the cause of things, even to find fault and place blame. They seemed to have forgotten that they were living in a broken world, and that in a broken world unexplainable tragedies take place. Babies die. Earthquakes strike. Children are born blind.

Jesus reminded them of this truth even as He rebuked them. “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents,” He said (an explanation they probably didn’t like very much), “but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” In other words, the issue was not so much who to blame, but rather, how God might be glorified in the situation. Not “Why?” but rather, “What now?”

“We must work the works of Him Who sent me,” Jesus continued, and immediately began to do so. He got down on the ground, made mud out of dust and spit, placed it on the man’s eyes and told him to go wash in the pool called Siloam. He went and washed, and came back miraculously able to see.

When the earth shakes and people die, it’s natural to look for reasons why. But Christ commands us not to let our curiosity paralyze us. When once we’ve asked the “Why?” question, and received whatever explanation God’s word affords (even if we don’t like it very much), it’s time to move on quickly to “What now?” What can we do now that the works of God might be displayed? How can we point to God’s goodness and mercy, and draw the wounded to their only all-sufficient Healer?

The extraordinary tragedy in Haiti should remind us of the more common tragedies among which we are called to work the works of God. Every month in America, 100,000 unborn children are killed, matching the Haitian earthquake’s toll once a month, twelve months a year. And what question do you ask? Why? Or what now?

Every hour in sub-Saharan Africa, a hundred children become orphans. Why? Or what now?

Every day on this broken world, 500,000 souls slip from this life into eternity, most of them due to old age, natural causes, the silent horrific incursion of the last enemy, death. Why? Or what now?

And every moment, all around you, marriages fail, children hurt, and people struggle and sin and suffer. It’s a broken world we live in; and what are you doing about it, for the glory of God?

Al Mohler Says It Better Than I Did

Just go to his blog and read it for yourself. It's the article for January 14, 2010.

http://www.albertmohler.com/2010/01/14/does-god-hate-haiti/

What he said.

LIFE IN A BROKEN WORLD

It's been a very long time since I posted anything here, and so probably nobody is looking in on my blog any more. Anyway, with the events of the last week in Haiti, I thought I'd enter the fray. Here's my article for the January 15 edition of the Sterling Journal-Advocate, our daily newspaper here in Sterling, Colorado. May it get you thinking.

We’ve all seen bits and pieces of the horrifying tragedy that has taken place in Haiti. Already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, this island nation is reeling under a blow from which it may never fully recover. The depths of heartbreak and hardship are beyond the capacity of most to even imagine.

Just before the earthquake happened, I began reading a new book by Randy Alcorn, called “If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil.” Alcorn does a spectacular job of wrestling with the truly difficult questions about what C. S. Lewis called “the problem of pain.” He dedicates a whole section to issues surrounding the occurrence of so-called “natural disasters,” including Hurricane Katrina and the December 2004 Asian tsunami. He doesn’t evade the knotty subjects, but faces them head-on with a firm conviction that God’s Word is true.

I strongly recommend the book to you, because Alcorn tackles the problems most Christian authors simply gloss over. As we think about what happened Tuesday afternoon in Haiti, let me lift up some of what Alcorn wrote.

“Many people blame God for natural disasters. ‘How could he allow this?’ they ask. But what if the Architect and Builder crafted a beautiful and perfect home for Earth’s inhabitants, who despite his warnings carelessly cracked its foundation, punched holes in the walls, and trashed the house? Why blame the builder when the occupants took a sledgehammer to their own home?”

Alcorn isn’t saying that the Haitian earthquake was the specific fault of some certain group of people, but rather that when God turned the earth over to the human race so that we could “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28), the planet was still in perfect condition. There were no earthquakes in Eden.

So . . . what happened?

Alcorn explains: “God placed a curse on the earth due to Adam’s sin (see Genesis 3:17). That curse extends to everything in the natural world and makes it harder for people to live productively. Paul says that ‘the creation was subjected to frustration’ by God’s curse, until that day when ‘the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay’ (Romans 8:20-21). The next verse says, ‘The whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth.’ Earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis reflect the frustration, bondage and decay of an earth groaning under sin’s curse.”

We live in a broken world. In a broken world, unexplainable tragedies take place. Babies die. Planes crash. Earthquakes strike. And when the world’s brokenness inflicts enough pain, thinking people start asking reasonable questions. As we seek answers to our profound uncertainties, it is important to remember who broke the world we live in. It wasn’t God. For thousands of years, He has called to humanity to follow His plans and submit to His order for creation. And since Eden, we have defied Him.

No, it wasn’t God who broke the world.

It was us.