"A Pastor & His Worldview" / John Piper and Doug Wilson

so the the sort of the origin of this idea for a conversation between you two came out of this these two realities on the one hand there's from what I see there's a lot of common ground a lot of similarities between the two of you you both are preaching pastors you both have writing and speaking ministries beyond your congregations you're both founders of institutions of higher education new st. andrew's chancellor Bethlem College and Seminary you both have Evangel evangelistic father's father's from ministry who were very evangelistically oriented there's the theological kinship reformed theology Calvinism and so forth and at the same time this is the other side there's a lot of differences panel Baptist Baptist premillennial post-millennial and and then beyond that just kind of a ministry philosophy tone ethos emphasis and other differences there and so well what we thought would be helpful would be to kind of explore some of those overarching common ground and and then some of those differences as well so I want to begin kind of here with a segment on the big picture both of you have mission statements that guide and govern your lives your ministries churches and so I'd like to maybe have you each unpack your mission statement briefly and then we'll reflect from there so John once you go first mission statement for your life Bethlem Baptist Church Bethel in college seminary desiring God so you want to define briefly donor define brief briefly think paragraph Internet paragraph or book paragraph this comes out of a lunch conversation we love definitions I exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all people's through Jesus Christ that's my life mission statement and it's the church mission statement the seminary mission statement desiring God mission statements what happens if you stay in one place for a long time it's a sweet thing and it gets tweaked in terms of its outworking but a paragraph on that I exist we'll leave that one philosophical profound affirmation how do I know that but we'll leave it I think operative is spread I'm leaning toward a world that doesn't have a passion for the supremacy of God just leaning there all the time how can more people be awakened and so secondly I'm not ultimately mainly concerned with rational knowledge that is a means to an end so I want a passion for and not just any old God but a supremely powerful supremely wise just good holy God so I want passions to abound for his bigness and greatness I want that to be experienced joyfully those are almost interchangeable hordes in the statement passion and for the joy because I think God is most glorified in us when we're most satisfied in him and therefore pursuing people's joy is in God is pursuing God's glory and people's for the joy of all people's puts that global multi-ethnic piece on it there are twelve to sixteen thousand people groups in the world and I would like to be used by God to get the gospel to each of them through Jesus Christ was added interestingly because I assumed it and you can't assume it in a world like ours that's dominated by Islam the way it is and so through Jesus Christ means that he died he who did not spare his own son but gave him up first of all how shall he not with him freely give us all things so the all things that I'm after are only possible because Christ died for me that's a long paragraph yes you went with the Piper paragraph so Doug what I want to I want the same question to you and the particular statement that I want you to unpack because you may have had others over the years is all of Christ for all of life for all the world what do you mean by that yes all of Christ for all of life for all the world is entirely and fully consistent with what john was just talking about i regard one of the great enemies of our time one of the great ideological intellectual sins or failings in our time is compartmentalization where we divvy things out and we put something in this look and cranny that's inconsistent with that one so there are christians who believe in all of christ for part of part of my life or all of my life two part of christ so all of my life to Christ as Savior or all of Christ Lord and Savior to Sunday to my Sundays so we want all of Christ for all of life for all the world and and then so all of Christ includes not just the the god man our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ but it would also encompass what theologians have called todas Christos head and body Christ in His Church all of all of Christ for all of life Sunday through Sunday Lord's Day through the Lord's Day everything and for all the world which would include evangelization mission and that would prevent sort of a nationalistic parochialism where you you have all of Christ for all of my life for us here in North America or anything like that so I would say that all of Christ for all of life for all the world is our attempt at a caipirinha thinking the lordship of Christ extended into everything all the time for everyone okay good so so I hear that and we start there because when we talk about differences I don't want that to get lost that there's a profound because I hear a lot of profound agreement on centrality of Christ globalizing totalizing universalizing reach and into the details but then so then the next thing I want to do is take that a step down and talk about some of sub themes in your ministries and so here's something you do modify yeah yeah it's supposed to be free right I can back up whatever I think it would be helpful to make a comment about the difference the way these are framed you know I think that would be helpful to my house I didn't whenever we out vote you it you're a guest whenever I hear a three phrase to phrase I say senator I need a verb and and and the reason I mean just just feel this see this is this is a personality bed it's a it's a philosophical bed it's to me phrases are always ambiguous without propositions and so this is the least ambiguous person I've ever known okay sitting over here except when he wants to be ambiguous but she always does in one sense but so you want to try that again use at least that person who doesn't who's never M yeah that that you just have to you'd have to know him right you'd have to know him so he's not surprised by what I'm saying and so know that in my saying spread and my same passion I'm unpacking all of Christ and for all of life because for is a unbelievably ambiguous word right and so just that's that's that's not a difference I don't think in personality here because you really are a stickler for meaning and clarification and whatnot but if if we were to push back on each other's life statements or whatever that's where I'd start pushing but we don't need to go there no consider it pushed I would agree I I would agree all of Christ for all of life for all the world scans all right it's it's the sort of thing you can print and say and then tell people this is what we mean the verb is rain's so Jesus reigns the Lord the Lord Jesus is king we're talking about the crown rights of King Jesus so the Lord Jesus reigns , all of Christ for all of life for all the world that's that's not a mission statement that's a statement that's not that's you got to have us so what should we do what yeah that's the truth mission we do in response to that what we're saying what it was so what you know so what I would do is I'd say all of Christ for all of I for all the world can I have an amen that's the mission so I exist to pursue amen to these three statements yes I think that's totally worthy I I want the world to say Amen the Lord Jesus reigns I want it with all their art I want the Jew be happy about it really happy about it I want the church to say I wholly satisfied you trying to take how much we agree so when we say all of Christ not a partial Christ I want the church to say Amen when we say for all of life not just your son to go to meet and Christian stuff can I have an amen yes all of my whole life not just for us but for the people who've never heard do I have agreement there so basically that the mission is to get people to confess that truth so it's a it's a propositional statement that Jesus reigns he is king these are these things are true and then we are summoned to affirm that with a whole heart okay good that was easy sub-themes John I want you to comment briefly explain this something you've written a book about this don't waste your life and then Doug I believe I don't know if it still is but it used to be the go ahead waste it the motto of can't impress the model can't impress I think what is or was living the good life one family at a time so don't waste your life live the good one and so I start with you what do you mean by don't waste your life and fulfill the mission no more than that well that was a short paragraph yeah a little bit a little bit more about kind of what it were you Amy where does it come out of it just means I'll spend another paragraph unpacking the mission why do human beings exist is what I am driven by why does God exist first of all and why do we exist we exist to join God in his reason for existing he exists to make much of God at least he created the world to make much of God and therefore we exist to make much of God in Christ so I I'm in that book I unpack Philippians 1 my eager expectation and hope is that I might not be ashamed but that now as always Christ might be magnified in my body whether I live or whether I die whether my life or by death so Paul's passion keyword was to magnify which means make Christ look magnificent in the way he lived which is the unweighted life so a wasted life is a life devoted to anything that does not make much of Christ everything should somehow figure into making Christ look great and I measure the significance of my life by whether or not I am intentionally pursuing and then the fruitfulness of my life whether people are responding to that magnificent Christ the way I think Paul unpacked it because the reason you can make Christ look magnificent in your death is that two dies gained so we experience death as gain when all we get is Christ and we lose everything else and we call it gain which means we must be totally satisfied in Jesus when we lose our wife and children and health and this world and only have him we call it gain and that's what I'm after I'm after people who so loved Christ are satisfied in Christ that when they lose everything but Christ they can call it gained okay good so living the good life one family at a time what do you mean with it well let me begin by responding to what John just said by by saying I would agree with absolutely every every word everything there amen and I think that this illustrates when we get to some of the differences where those differences would be theological agreement exegetical agreement yes this Christ demands our highest Allegiance we should firm this and then we get to the level of execution and and so one of the things I'm concerned about and this would be a pastoral concern it's not a concern about the mission it's not a concern about any of those things that he wanted to do but I would want to urge people to remember that in executing the mission it's possible to outrun your own supply lines it's it's possible to be Napoleon marching on Moscow and and cut off your supply lines or lose contact with your supplies and then there you are with winter coming in Russia which is not a good place to be so there are many people who say the if you outrun your own supply lines to use that metaphor or out you outrun your own headlights you're just you're just going this is the mission the mission the mission well sometimes that's a way of wasting your mission yeah sometimes you miss the mission because you're too eager for the mission so that but that's a difference of caution you know like okay make sure you're your people aren't doing this but yeah yeah we agreed that that kind of thing that's where the the the possible differences would come up now our emphasis teaching people to live the good life one family at a time that emphasis is that it's not possible I don't believe is I don't think it's possible to make a good omelet with rotten eggs and Jesus says when you you cross earth and sea to make a proselyte and when you get them done he's twice as much a son of hell as yourselves you you can only export what you have you you and now the danger is if you concentrate on cultivating it so that you have it to export and then you have you've got a wonderful community going or a wonderful church life going or your families are great then it the temptation is to be too cozy and then you don't want to go because it's so wonderful here so the temptation I can hear John saying yeah make sure you guys don't get too comfortable with your good life one family at a time and you've got a wonderful thing going and then you forget the lost I would say yeah amen we have we have to be concerned about that but then I would say don't be so eager to reach the lost that when you get there you're about as lost as they are and there are many many people who have gotten chewed up by the machinery of mission and they haven't had a life they haven't had a robust experience of Christ worshiping God with their families and their people and everybody's together and then we take that on the road so no qualms at all about it's all of Christ for all of life for all the world if this is to go to the whole world but what I want to do is make sure that the families are getting it so the families are experiencing what we want the families out there to experience because if we don't have it we can't teach it if we don't have it we can't communicate it if we don't you can only export what you have so the one family at a time is not teaching Christians to live the good life one family at a time and then well there were in we we've had a comfortable life and then we're done that would be the abuse of what we are saying but I'm just wanting to make sure that we have a healthy experience of what we want other people to experience you describe the difference I think in terms of emphasis is that how you think about man do you hear a difference there between kind of orientation or would you agree with that kind of assessment of this it's at the top level it's a it's yes an amen and then you work down to execution and there's is there a different emphasis you think in terms of the way that you think about mission and or yes and I think I think I'm weak I don't hear what he's saying as a I don't feel any need to justify my way I think one family at a time would be a weakness of my ministry so yes I think a difference would be in specify explicit specificity when you say the good life I said what's that I'm always pressing you know towards Ultima see define it yeah and and make Christ present you know you know the good life one family at a time could be pagan that's a pagan statement and you have to put in the context of the wider man and ministry and so I would just say explicitness matters to me but that that's marginal the the real issue is I think Doug's ministry has been much more specific on the ground fleshed out than mine and that's not a bad thing I think it's part of who I am and part of what I don't think I know that probably has left me operating at a 10,000 foot level as I've preached and ministered and and Doug is coming down across the treetops a lot more frequently okay so when you you said when you preach live the good life you're mindful of the tendency toward insular ingrown we can just camp out in our holy Huddle's how do you counteract that in like how are you guys thinking and processing we need to make sure how do you prevent that if that's if that's the tendency how do you prevent how do you forget that from becoming ingrown but by echoing what John just said someone could interpret the good life as a suburban house and the sweet barbecue set up in the backyard and and you know swimming lessons for the kids and that's the good life well as I'm understanding the good life that's not possible outside of gospel categories so the good life for a husband and a father and his family Bonhoeffer says when christ calls a man he bids him come and die and i don't think the good life in your household is possible unless you're dying I'm les you're giving yourself away unless you're loving your wife as Christ loved the church so the good the good life is always gospel goodness it's all its so in suburban America and an inner city works and where you happen to be there's always going to be temptations to be selfish and self-absorbed and self-centered and carve out a niche for yourself and so what I try to do in my preaching is emphasize take up your cross daily come follow me so that that's that's the way to the goodness there's no end run around it you can't circumvent the cross to get to the good stuff it's the story that's the good stuff it's the death burial and resurrection that's the good stuff it sounded like you you know you were menthe you're mindful of the the tendency we exist to spread and you can get spread thin supply line thing how are you how do you think about trying to counteract that prevent that tendency from burnin people out because we're there's a mission and there's a there's a lost world and we're pushing and we're pushing and there's people who need to know passion for supremacy of God how are you thinking about how do we how do we counteract that or prevent that from burning people out by emphasizing the sweetness of satisfaction in Jesus that's the way I do it well that's the best way to do it there's another question but I would say what I want to do is say that the very nature of my mission like you would say can't make a good omelet with rotten eggs I would say you can't awaken passion for Jesus where you don't have it you can't cause Egyptians to turn to Christ with thrill if the missionaries board with Jesus or if he's so eaten up with anxieties that he's reckon his kids anxieties are solved by don't you know you have a father in heaven who supplies all your needs consider the lilies consider the Ravens and Jesus argues for peace by the sufficiency of the father so might might answer to how to keep from thinning it meaning having it so ineffective in home and soul and elders is to try to teach how one maintains a deep sweet satisfying through all hell and high water peaceful enjoyment of Jesus and and then my belief is that out of that grows kinds of love and virtues that that sweeten relationships that's helpful and I think we'll probably circle back to these things in a moment I want to move to kind of a second segment here on influences and I have two in mind in particular Jonathan Edwards and CS Lewis who both had influences on on both of yous so John we'll start with start with you in this one and we'll start with Edwards what would you say the how would you describe briefly again the main impact that Edwards has had on you and then secondly the main impact you hope he has on the wider church today whether that may not be the same thing that may be the same thing but you and then the divider Church you know whenever I think about documenting influences my life I just want to put over the beginning I'm not sure that this is the main impact it's just a huge one because I think there are impacts on us we don't know I think as I read my Bible each day I don't know what's doing it's doing more it's doing more than what I think it's doing and so when I read Louis or Edwards I'm sure more was happening to my soul that I can document but what I can document is the end for which God created the world that book and the freedom of the will that book and the nature of religious affections that book just take those three in three distinct ways were massively shaping and for which God created the world set my mission God created the world for the glory of God God is for God God exalts God God worships God I mean that's my message and I got it from Edwards from the Bible I hope through Edwards secondly the freedom of the will that the governance of all things including the moral actions of all men is not inconsistent with the blameworthiness of their sin or the virtue of their deeds or their accountability that is a David will says that book is a watershed book for him it was for me you're reading it in seminary and you know if you go this way all the water runs to the Pacific Ocean you go this way all of the water runs the Atlantic Ocean and if you decide he cannot be that in control and still have human personality meaning anything then then you go to the Pacific Ocean so that that book settled this the core Calvinistic issue on the freedom of the will for me and then and then the religious affections was a heart-rending exposure of my subtle sinfulness oh all with a view to the massive centrality of the affections in human life so those two things are just big for me and and he was the strongest voice okay Doug maybe before he same question to you but maybe as you answer it you can describe just kind of how you how you can counter dead words over the years because I know in one sense you've kind of got back into him recently I've seen things in your writing but he goes you guys go way back yeah so maybe talk about it's the same question of what are the main documented ways that he's impacted you yeah it's a great question he had a pivotal role in my theological pilgrimage I grew up in a conservative evangelical home you just pick up comments here and there the kind of world in which Finney was a good guy and nobody was reading him or studying him but he was just a hero and I had read lectures on revival and I was appalled you know yeah you know and so I put that down and said if that's revival I don't want I don't want to work of man yeah and it's just the use of proper means and if we can gin it up if we just know the right buttons to push yeah we can we can build this machine ourselves and we can operate it in ourselves and so what so that was part of the backdrop then through other circumstances that I won't go into I had become post-millennial it was really weird being an Arminian evangelical conservative post-millennial the post millennium it was all downhill from there what was all but very fun it's but it's fun going this fast when you're going downhill you know there were maybe at the time in the country there were maybe two post millennialist s-- you know Lorraine Buettner and John Jefferson Davis but we're gaining well I so I'd become a post millennialist and and somewhere in there I read in Murray's book the Puritan hope and and after I became post-millennial I thought okay now I believe the earth is going to be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea but then I looked around at the condition of the church and the condition of the world was in and I was thinking well not at this rate you know you know talk about a discrepancy between what I had now come to believe in what I saw with my eyes and so that caused me and I thought all right if that ever happens if what I believe that psychologically is going to happen then future historians will describe it as a great revival and awakening so I I was forced to go back and say well maybe Finney isn't the last word on revival and that took me back to Jonathan Jonathan Edwards and so I read his account his Northampton account and I'm somewhere in there I read the religious affections Northampton account and and I came to the recognition that historically the kind of river I was not a Calvinist yet but the the kind of revival that didn't creep me out the way the Finney I approach did was historically a kind of fruit that grew on one kind of tree and that was reformed preaching and so a few years later when I was going with working through the whole Calvinism thing which was a humbling experience Jonathas so the first Jonathan Edwards left a good taste in my mouth with regard to revival and awakenings and Reformation reading that and then when I was working through the Calvinist era when I was sorting through all those things the freedom of the will was magnificent it just sorted everything out in terms of the psychology of how how the human heart did the will is this arm that reaches into the kind of the mechanical arm like you like when you take your you go to the county fair and there's a bin full of teddy bears and they've got this mechanical arm that grab that well the mechanical arm doesn't have any power to create the contents of the chest the contents of what's pulled out and Jonathan Edwards taught me that the will pulls what's out of your heart whatever's in your heart and you and if I could repent and believe with my old heart why do I need a new one you know and so God gives me a new heart and I and the psychology of Calvin a Calvinistic psychology all clicked and came together for me with Edwards I'm greatly indebted to Edwards so he was since that time was great good good guy all about him but so I'd read it a number of his books and then went on did went on and did other things and then a year or two ago you came out to New Zealanders and gave a talk at dispute ah tio rebuking us all at new st. Andrews for being so Edouard Z and without doing homage to him you know why isn't he in the curriculum and yeah what are you doing yeah he was very forthright and manok Edwards emphasis on typology and his emphasis on Trinitarian his Trinitarian emphasis was which is one of our embassies and his his typology his post millennialism you know all of these things what why are you guys not more explicitly and we thought it was a good guy and we're happy for him to have done this thing but we anyway after that I decided to teach an elective on Edwards and we and that rhe kick started it and having read some of his stuff again recently after the 20 years or whatever it had been since I'd been reading him it just really I was thunderstruck actually at some of the stuff that's going on in Edwards so I I made a decision there - I was Yael has got a nice collection of his collected works and so I've been piecemeal buying them pretty expensive but piecemeal buying them and working I decided I'd like to work through the whole set of Edwards books before I die it's just he's just wonderful you mentioned that the trinitarian emphasis and I know that this is something you've written on as well and some of your books there's an Edwards Ian flavor on the Trinity and and so I'm wondering when Edward scholar describes him says the Trinity is like a subterranean river that just kind of runs underneath everything he wrote and thought and did and and I find that encouraging and I'm wondering if you guys can give some some counsel and help how do you keep how do you ensure that when we talk about God and you preach about God and you in and so forth that you're always talking about the triune God do you have to make it explicit all the time are there other ways that you think about I want people to think like triune Christians and not just generic deity sorts of things so it is is how does how does the Trinity shape ministry shape life shape worldview for you guys start with each other yeah I'll tell you what I do but look you know this is one of the problems but being old is that you look back and you think could have done that better so I I haven't preached many sermons on thought Trinity and and probably I should have preached more than I did so confession even there so that's where Edwards never wrote anything that was published in the Trinity there's the unpublished essay which is I think what you were referring to and so he here's what I do do and and I don't regret it I do exposition and call out what's there and I think a pastor should in passing regularly make sure that when he uses the word spirit he says he and he says a sentence or two why he says he and he draws out the distinction between the fact that all three are mentioned in this paragraph and the way they are inter working and their economic distinctions and how they are won so I'm working through John now and that's been a prominent theme in John is that we beheld his glory glory as of the only son from the father full of grace and truth in the beginning was the word the Word was with God the Word was God so you don't fly over those who say it but in general I think pastors who who don't preach individual sermons on the Trinity will by their use of language and their occasional references to their personhood keep alive in their people that we're talking about son father and spirit as persons in one God I agree with everything John just said about how you tackle it and preaching as it comes up in the text don't be shy about pointing to those things I don't think that you should have to say I don't think you can say everything you must say all the time about everything in every instance you've got to let some things go unsaid and I'm very comfortable with that approach if you're doing expositional preaching then it's in the text and it's gonna come up in the text when you the one thing I would add in our in I would like visitors to our church to not be able to go away I would not want them to come for a month or two months and not know that this is a Trinitarian church I would like them to know on the first Sunday this is a Trinitarian Church and my call to worship is let us worship the triune God everybody stands up every Sunday we say the Apostles Creed we can you know we confess the members of the Trinity many of our hymns our Trinitarian and structure of about the father a verse about the son that verse about the spirit and then the expositional preaching ministry is just as job John described I'd venture to say John that your book pleasures of God at least for me on the Edwards II and stuff is where I've I see that come out most fully and they're just publishing a new edition anything you want to say about that book and and how you know everybody a lot of people come into contact with your ministry through something like desiring God but in some ways pleasures of God goes underneath that so you want to say something about that that book in particular yeah I thought your question on the Trinity might have been since Lewis has this subterranean Trinitarian thought how does it function that way for you and so this gives me an occasion to answer that question with the pleasures Edwards understanding of the Trinity is that the Sun is the perfect idea word thought of the father the father has a picture of himself and therefore that movement in the Godhead is reason and is thought and is head between those two flows an infinite energy of delight carrying CS Lewis exactly said it's like an esprit de corps in the Trinity carrying so fully the personhood of the son the personhood of the father that it stands forth as a third reality only it is distinctly defined as the delight that they have in each other I was just reading before you preached the first message that you preached when you said this is my son in whom I am well pleased pleasure between father and the son the spirit is descending like a dove and as I read that the morning before you preached I thought those are the same those are the same one with word one with symbol dove the Dove is descending and the word is being spoken my pleasure is on you there he is a bird called the holy spirit so the implication of that is that in the Godhead you have the essence of humanity head and heart you have you have true knowledge of God in God the Son and you have true love for God in God the spirit and therefore we are made in His image as capable of knowing him and loving him and everywhere I move and everywhere I go I'm thinking in those terms right knowledge of God right affections for God everywhere so that's the subterranean effect of the Trinity on me so head and heart for you are Trinitarian categories they they were this way for Edwards and when you think about them you think whether or not it never comes out specifically in every message or something like that that is a subterranean River as you if some if some person from Mars or some atheists and where does that come from where's your ultimate basis for giving a hoot about what you think and giving a hoot about what you feel I would say because God is the ultimate knower and feeler and he made me in His image to reflect him that way amen Doug you I think you said this in the introduction to Doug the other night and so I wanna turn this to Louis for a moment this is right that Louis has had more impact on you than all other theologians outside the Bible combined mm-hmm okay so why don't you unpack how why that's that's a pretty tall because you would even say that about Edwards or somebody like that you wouldn't say over over all of their combined and say that I know of okay he may have been I don't know okay okay so once you explain the bromance with yeah it is well let me go on record as saying I don't like the word bromance duly noted that's not that's not where we she hadn't said yeah I'm I'm not it's not don't receive that so with with louis i'm lewis died when I was ten years old I was born in 53 and and and the my folks started reading the Narnia stories to us in the 50s when I was a young boy and I think they were maybe still coming out they were they were either just just fresh on the market or still even coming out when we were first introduced to to the Narnia stories and we love those stories adored the stories and my dad would read to us I was the oldest and my dad would read a chapter to in the evening and I would sneak the book off and finish it that night finished it that night and it was just I I grew up grew up as a sort of quasi Narnian so that that was the first thing and then in high school I began reading the first serious theology that I began to read was Louis the problem of pain and mere christianity and i started to read his his straight writing and that had a big influence on me and then when i started to read other other great influential theologians that i've read john calvin and you know they're they there are a number of theologians who have had a monumental impact in my life but always in but they were it's striking that they were always in a louis context you know it's like lewis set the key or the pitch that everything is is understood in so i was processing calvin as a as a lewis guy and i was and and so accepting one didn't mean rejecting the other and as as i got Wilbur and I got into the ministry I began to read just just in a disciplined way all kinds of things Louis had written and I just and the more and then I go back and read reread some of the early stuff that I read and I think oh that's where I got that you know I remember that now I learned that first from him and I learned that first from him and so that's one thing his just there are areas where I disagree with him I think he's out to lunch and there's but he's the kind of writer who can edify me even when I think he's being crazy I letters to Malcolm on prayer he's got some stuff in purgatory in there and there's there's some just stuff I that's nuts but his and reflections on the Psalms is a glorious book but he says some atrocious things in that book about some of the Psalms and you you discount that set it up put that on the side of the plate and even when he's being not very good its edifying you know it's just edifying to me it really resonates with me so I I loved his way of thinking I loved his commitment to clarity of thought I loved his rejection of relativism his rejection of subjectivism coupled with his vivid Christian imagination so he he's not a logic chopper but he's he's a logician but not a pedantic logician because he's got he's a Christian romantic and a Christian logician at the same time he marries things he brings together in his person things that I think are just absolutely essential for us to have together in one man and then the last thing I would say is that Lewis was a jovial man and his joviality Michael Ward's book planet Narnia is a great book and and I want to live as a if you permit this astrological observation I want to live as a Calvinist under Jove not a Calvinist under Saturn just tease that a little bit because if people don't know the astrological background those routine well the first time to say when I used the word astrological we're not talking about the newspaper column astrology we're not talking about any kind of superstition or anything like that but this is just a shorthand metaphorical way of saying I much prefer the God is good life is good Christ is good he's given you all things richly to enjoy Calvinism to eat your spinach Calvinism so saturnine Calvinism would be it's your it's your duty its puddle glum and public glum is an endearing character off to the side but you don't want all public oh you don't want all puddled them all the time and so I I want to see and and Louis himself in selected literary as essays Louis's defenses of the Calvinists and Louis's defenses of the Puritans I think are among among the most compelling defenses of the Puritans when people talk about Puritans being puritanical or what they mean is Victorian or uptight or blue you know blue nose or whatever Lewis says in selected literary essays that the Puritans were he said if I may use the the name of a great Christian a great writer and a great Roman Catholic he said the Puritans were much more Chester tone e'en than their adversaries and that's what I want to be I want to be a Chester Tony and Puritan as Lewis describes them and in in history that's the first hundred years or so of the Reformation the the era of when the Reformation first exploded is in English literature in the sixteenth century Lewis's book he he says that that the key note for the Reformation was relief forgiveness joy be done with all the motives scratching be done with all the digging around trying to the introspective gunk and then later on I think there was a reformed stream that that turned inward in an introspective unhealthy way later but that wasn't characteristic of the relief that God gave to the West in the Reformation and I learned that I learned that from Louis John kind of same question over to you what main impact of Louis if it's the same things here than unpacked when your own way if there's different things that you picked up from him I'm listening and thinking they're probably profoundly similar the way I have put it and this is why I wasn't sure whether he was a the most dominant impact is that Louis / Wheaton College their most synonymous where they hit me put kindling in place and the fire fell at fuller with Dan fuller and Jonathan Edwards the kindling was not the content of the theology it was a way of thinking and seeing the world he was the the book that moved me most and I cannot find it in print anywhere but I can see the cover little thin 30 page paperback called CS Lewis romantic rationalist the very title made my spine tingle because I wanted that so bad I knew from 10th grade geometry I loved think and proving things with axioms and I knew from the awakening in the 11th grade with mrs. Clanton I love to read and write poetry and see the world and feel the power of nature and those felt at odds geometry and literature weird and then you see this title romantic rationalist you say really and you dive into that ocean and you just want to swim all day long called CS Lewis so the the kindling that was put in place is there hasn't been in the last 200 years a sharper logician than CS Lewis probably what do I know but he was really sharp and nobody nobody compares do they of what he saw when he looked at trees and faces and ground and books he saw things he saw things that he talked about there quiddity the sheer business of reality and whenever I read him I feel like I come alive I feel like my eyes are open I have to go back to Louis for it kind of like a dose of reality to just see the world because the world starts to be rationalistic lis hazy are emotionally hazy and you lose the robustness of the jovial orientation of just clouds I mean I found myself walking to church anxious about the meeting and then suddenly Louis the Holy Spirit bang look at this sky look at that sunset look at these cars like a river going under this bridge wake up to reality this is awesome this is like a tilt the world or whatever you know it's just uh whatever that was so those two things a mind lucid and clear in his thinking a is a and not not a and that's a tree and you're tempted to worship except that you're a Christian now and so you just enjoy it as a creature now you you go to seminary then with with your heart just seething with readiness to have passion for something and your mind ready to latch on to something and and understand it and and Calvinism shows up you just say okay now I think I'm home it's been the rest of my life trying to spread this passion that's good that's good that's good that's getting this a good place to this is gonna be shown they're filming this and everything I'd like to go on the record now as saying that if anybody ever comes up with an idea of publishing CS Lewis a reformed appreciation of contributing essays from different reform thinkers I would dearly love to be able to claim it was my idea and and and then parlay that into being able to contribute an essay to that I I think John's could probably pull some strings with there you go new book project the editors probably in the audience good and I'd also like to note that I don't think you meant this but I think someone there you said you're walking to church and then all of a sudden the Holy Spirit CS Lewis says and I said CS Lewis comma the Holy Spirit oh there's a comma there it's the old problem of the serial comma the Holy Spirit uses many means and the means he has used to make Lewis a constant reminder wake up Claude kill be my Lewis Ian incarnation at Wheaton published an anthology of Lewis's quotes and the name of the book was a mind awake that that title just that's what I mean so having read Lewis now as I walk through life asleep the wake-up calls that happen I believe our god-given and instrumentally the memory of what I've seen in Lewis is what he uses often okay so thus far we've mainly focused on areas I think of profound agreement appreciation for different for Lewis and Edwards and so forth and so I want to talk a little bit about maybe a place where there's some differences so segment three here's on Christian hedonism and so Doug a couple years ago you wrote a couple of blog posts interacting with Christian hedonism I think you just reread desiring God or doing something in relation to that and you had some suggestions modifications for things that we should you know push it further or something like that you were a mending it and then saying let's let's go a little bit further up further and yeah yeah and in the to the two terms you advocated for one of which we maybe talked about already so we can focus on the second was a Trinitarian he'd ISM so we've kind of already talked a little bit about that cover that and the one maybe to spend a little bit more time on is incarnation Allah hedonism so what do you mean by incarnation Allah hedonism this is I think another example of I think there's some differences here but there's there's gonna be a lot of yes budding I think in this because Jon you recently wrote something you were discussing CS Lewis's meditations in a tool shed the idea of looking along the beam of light looking at it and the differences there and gods the material world that God has given us as a revelation of his character and the trick is how can we be God oriented God centered God saturated as we're dealing with material things and that's so if you ask for me for a snapshot of what do you think of John Piper's Christian need anism I'd say I'm enthusiastic Lee in favor of it and like what he's done I'm grateful for him doing all the spade work that he's done though I'd like more bacon and more beer involved in in this hedonism and not we have an amen to the bacon I'm not I'm not sure well so the question is somebody just went so so the question is it there's a way of pursuing the pleasures of God and wanting to commune with God in these pleasures in a way that sort of detaches from the world you're in you know in your prayer life in your worship and in an exalted spiritual frame of mind which of course I'm not against any of that but I also want it to be constantly and regularly engaged with this world and not to think that I can protect myself spiritually from becoming an idolatry diluting this world at all this world is thick the world is thick it presents itself to us as thick and I believe to use the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins the the world is charged with the glory of the grandeur of God he says it flames out like shook foil so this material world the thicker it is the more solid it is the brighter it is doesn't make it more of a distraction so this goes back to Lewis also in the last battle and in the Great Divorce the resurrected state is solid more solid than here it's more substantive than here which means if you're following the argument it doesn't make it more distracting away from God than here right if materiality if this if the quiddity of the thing if the if the if the substance of these things were an inherent distraction and I could protect myself spiritually by finding a diluting agent that would make the material world thinner my my money thinner my house thinner my food thinner if I could dilute it and protect myself spiritually then of course that's what I have to do but I don't think that's a protection so this is where when John and I were talking at one of our meals together and and he was saying the New Testament is full of warnings about wealth and material goods and I agree with that completely that the New Testament constantly tells us to guard our hearts over against the distractions of the world I just don't think guarding our hearts can be accomplished by minimizing the material I think it is accomplished by maximizing the gratitude for these things so I look through the material world to God and that's where I think the protection is so if I pull away in an ascetic way it feels like I'm protecting myself from materialism but I don't think I really am so this is a pagan story but one time Diogenes the cynic went over to plato's house and when he went into plato's house there were some fancy rugs on the floor and Diogenes the cynic stomped on the rugs and wiped his feet and said the side trample upon the playa the pride of Plato and Plato responded mildly with greater pride all right you can there's such a thing as spiritual pride like if I can I can detach myself from the things of the flesh and be giving way to the flesh so you know all of these things I think in in the abstract I don't I can't imagine John and I disagreeing on this but it's this is where the practical turn of mind comes in when you're in the pulpit and you and you have affirmed the goodness of pleasure and the goodness of hedonism and the good you know goodness of all these things and then you're sending them all out to try this at home what do you costing them to not do have you which way do you lean when you say no now don't get too wrapped up in your car and don't get too wrapped up are you caution cautioning them against material goods or are you cautioning them against maybe a more ethereal spiritual Euclidean pride you know I my tendency is to caution against the immaterial pride and exhort people to get maybe grateful for the stuff and make it thicker and make it more grateful make the soup make this make the soup and to stew and make it make it thicker and be grateful for it and say your prayers before I say anything about we have information a question is nature the material world a mural or a window it's a window the heavens declare the glory of God so I am reading something I'm I'm God is invisible he's the invisible God I cannot see him and so he shows me he shows me himself through the things that have been made his divine Majesty his glory so that's my duty is to the thicker it is the better I can see through it is my it's a misleading word thick thick thicker it is the better I can see through it most people wouldn't go there right but I just did so you wanna why why does increase thickness increased transparency increased thickness if I see it as thick as a gift from God the more God lays it on the thicker God makes it and I see that the more grateful I can be the more grateful I can be the more I'm linked to the giver of the gift so this this whole thing is wrapped up in how do I respond rightly to the gifts that the giver gives now we all know that if if a kid receives a gift for a Christmas present and then snatches it out of his mother's hands and then runs back to his bedroom to play with it he is separating the gift from the giver and focusing on the gift and that's what our consumerist materialistic society does we snatch things from God's hand and run off never say thank you and run off and try to enjoy them and so that's one problem but the other problem the thing I'm trying to I'm trying to resist is when you have the super spiritual kid who the parents have shopped for they're just the right president president and the and they give the president Christmas present of the child and the child sets that doesn't unwrap it just sets it aside and say thank you so much for shopping for me thank you for the president whatever it is but I just want to spend time with you so you got a lot of those people in Moscow yeah I thought what I would say that the world is full of them yes I think there are people who want to separate the giver in the gift and The Consumerist world wants the gift without the giver and I think far fewer but I think that there are a number of people who want thing who want the giver and they are very very nervous about the gifts they just they don't know what to do with them they they set them aside and well thank you for this but I I can't think about how much I like it because I don't want to forget Jesus I suppose that would be a difference in tone is that that's just not my perception of the world I live in that there are a lot of people like that I think most of the people in my church and in this city are very happy turocy gifts and it's been all their time thinking about them and playing with them and are almost never setting them aside for Jesus sake as wrong as that might be no I think I think you're right that that we almost never set them aside but I think there are many people who feel guilty for not setting them aside okay that that's closer to reality perhaps so first of all the agreement is is the more we talk about this at the Principia level the more agreement there is because we're just Bible guys you know that's the reason and the Bible's pretty clear that he has given us all things richly to enjoy and and woe to those some pretty nasty things about those who forbid marriage and food because these were given for your enjoyment and they are to be sanctified by the Word of God in prayer so clearly that little unit there and the pastoral is to show a paradigm for how to take the thickness of the world and to turn it into an act of worship here's another difference though you're focusing on gratitude as the remedy for how increased thickness becomes more transparent the bigger better the benefit of a material thing or just the goodness dentistry material I suppose this created life the richer deeper stronger the gratitude and hence God getting more glory that's almost never my emphasis that probably overstatement my emphasis is constantly on enjoying God as God delighting in God delight yourself in the Lord and then I try to fit in stuff and as how that works not not everybody should live for gratitude I'm not a good Calvin guide there but and and then and then how do you fit in stuff easy you know easy that's what you do with gifts you say thank you but if I'm if I'm on to the Trinity right that the father is not thankful for the Son and the son for the father he is ripped satisfied delighting it enjoying enraptured by stunned with amazed with admiring iron ran said that's cool I read there's a transition for you admiration is the highest and most rare pleasure and with for her that was an absolute mockery of humanity it's true I think we were made to admire mainly not mainly to be grateful grateful is essential according to Romans 1 you can't have God without it and if you lack it you don't honor him there is a way of honoring God but at the core of my system and this is this is why we're wrestling with this a little different I think is I am leaning on people not mainly to be thankful for their stuff but to delight in God if they don't have any stuff and then because that's that's what happens at death Paul and we're gonna get it all back I believe in the new heavens and new earth then I'll be suited to really handle thickness but but for now that to me practice now though yes it will absolutely we practice now but what's the biggest threat now you see you're operating with the threat that that people are rejecting their gifts and I'm operating with the threat that people are in love with their gifts and they're idolizing their gifts and they love them way too much and so I'm on a crusade to show a God up here that is more satisfying more beautiful than what the gifts can give that's a different model than gratitude issue then I ask so what is a sunrise for and the answer is to reflect the majesty glory beauty of God so that when you see it and feel rising up within you and I don't think it's much of a intellectual process here delight some 19 says the Sun comes up and just like a bridegroom like it's joy he's crossing the sky and I think the point there is you see it I'm happy to son you're happy I'm happy we're happy because because God is an ending for this for the spiritual soul the thickness is transparent at them and the Sun is majestic it's beautiful its glories it's working in me it's making me happy and it's becoming transparent it's God God God so I labor and the closest I've gotten is is the Augustine quote he loves the two little this is a prayer who loves anything together with thee which he loves not for thy sake so Augustine is not working with a gratitude model there he's working with a sovereign joy model there and that that maybe I like to attack something on to that first we agree that the priority in our responses to God we agree that worship and adoration precedes gratitude so the admiration the praise for God is senior in your print in your prayers I think is senior in your prayers to the thank yous for the the things he's given you I think we agree there but even with admiration what and maybe this is another area work I would not mark myself down as disagreeing but just mark me down as nervous i I don't know that we have the the ability to enter into the heavenlies and sort of tap into God raw right I believe that we we need a mediator and of course we can do this in Jesus name but there's a way of going seeking to get detached from everything and then sort of accessing him raw I think that God writes our lessons for sin big block letters he gives us the Bible he gives us the world and so on so I want to use my primers I want to use the things that he's given me so that I can approach him appropriately so when the Bible talks about worship worshiping God admiring God very rarely does the Bible it it's not like this is excluded because it is there in the Bible but admiration for God worship of God praise for God is overwhelmingly connected to his mighty works things he's done in history his deliverance of it and it could be slopped over with gratitude you know you've your your work sir your deeds are mighty the bible doesn't spend a lot of time there's some but doesn't spend a lot of time working through stephen charmix systematics on these attributes of God we don't have chapter after chapter on omniscience and chapter after chapter on omnipresent sin chapter we don't have that we have his mighty works what he did to Pharaoh what he did to Egypt what he did you know so this tells me I believe what charnok is saying I have no I don't have a beef against the system system additions but we are not mature enough to to go there yet I believe in the resurrection we will be a lot more able to do that but I want to exult in what God has done in this world in history in my life and all and and then realize that I'm being invited further up and further in it's the there will there will come a time when we will be more able to exalt in God as he is but I I'm still in kindergarten and I'm I don't ready I don't feel like I'm ready for graduate school physics yet but I totally agree totally agree in fact I don't think we'll ever get there right we're always going to be finite and he's always gonna be infinite we're always gonna be material always gonna be what material material the new heavens new earth new body will be a material body of a spiritual kind he has locked himself in to materiality it seems to me in the Incarnation in the Godhead for now so I'm totally yes there and we're just posing the questions slightly differently this might be clarifying bring it on you know I want my people to I don't tend to send them out saying solve your spiritual community problem with God by by minimizing lessening thiing make the soup thicker and the celebration richer and but we agreed the other day I think and so just talk for a minute about the role of self-denial because here it is my my experience and I think it's biblical for the sake of maximum enjoyment of all that God has made too much of it is bad for you oh yeah yes absolutely absolutely if if we want to embrace the life under Christ under the lordship of Christ one of the first things that you should learn one of the first things your parents should teach you is that self-denial is not done for the sake of self-denial self-denial is done for the sake of a right enjoyment a balanced enjoyment if if your kids go out to the mall with money in their pockets and they will not be content unless they came home having purchased something something's wrong it's it's not whatever whatever it was they purchased is not the problem the fact that they had to purchase it that's the problem if someone is incapable of saying no whether it's to to food or to sex or to music or what you know whatever they they just don't have any brakes on this thing eventually the thing that they're idolizing is going to be something that they lose you know alcoholics don't enjoy wine the way they ought to the people who are addicted to sexual compulsions don't enjoy sex the way they ought to you lose the thing you idolize it it comes apart it comes apart in your hands so self-denial is not for the sake of self-denial self-denial is for the sake of a right rightly ordered relationship to God and pleasure and goodness and so on right so I think your statement you just qualified that it's of no use in killing the lusts of the flesh to move in the direction of asceticism right just qualified that didn't you I yes when when Paul is talking in Colossians where he says why do you submit to decree saying during a handle do not taste do not touch he says these things have an appearance have the appearance of wisdom but he says they're of no value in checking fleshly indulgence obviously self-denial the the the thing that he was talking about the asceticism he's talking about there in that context has no value in checking fleshly indulgence godly discipline under the rule of Christ done for the right reason not to put yourself in with him and not you know godly godly denial self-denial is of great value in checking fleshly indulgence but asceticism by itself is as much a temptation as consumerism so that's that's my point if it's under Christ it's it's as bad a temptation do you mean it's as much of temptation well it depends on who you are I mean Americans just say Americans like these people right here I don't think they're tempted tor citizen nearly as much as they're tempted toward materialism there are two ways you can this goes back to a comment I made earlier some people some people actually embrace a lot you know they go to the mission they give it all away they go to the mission field and some of them are doing it for healthy honorable godly reasons the same way that my father's generation went off and the fought in the war there was a incredible sacrifices not because they were it was an end in itself but because that's what it took to get this job done and there are many godly people go into the mission field for that same reason but there are other people going denying everything giving up everything going to the mission field because they're trying to be they're trying to wrestle with their junk there's that they've got I mean I'm too I'm too messed up and and there are people who believe and I've read a lot of the the the the Jim Wallace sojourners wing of the church you own something you have a problem it they think of life as a zero-sum game if you've got more that means somebody else has less and he has less because you have more I think that that's a misunderstanding of how economics works so there are people who either give it all up for the wrong reason you know they go to the mission field and die for the wrong reason not taking anything away from those who do it for the right reason and then there are all the people who remain with all their stuff they remain with their white suburban middle-class values but they feel like they're Class B Christians they they don't they don't get to the point of making that surrender but they've accepted the obligation that they ought to be and so they're they're falling between two stools they keep all the stuff and they walk around with guilt because because of it and they feel like oh and and so you I've been in evangelical circles my whole life you're flipping through a magazine you see a picture of a starving kid you could for the cup of the price of a cup of coffee a day save this child from starvation or you could turn the page you jerk you know and and if you turn the page you're you're under condemnation so what do you do you you have guilt motivated giving instead of gratitude motivated giving if I'm if I receive blessings and I give out of gratitude I'm gonna give as much as I can for as long as it can for the rest of my life if I give out of guilt what am I gonna give I'm gonna give just enough to make the guilt go away which usually works out to about 20 bucks so I'm gonna bring it a couple quotes here and see if that does anything here's a is from these blog posts that you did interacting with it you're talking about the integration between gift-giver vertical horizontal enjoyment this kind of integration will prevent dislocations from arising in families that are sold out to the glory of God integration will keep our neighbor wife husband kids from feeling like a means to an end there's a delicate balance here and that's what we're trying to discuss this with this balance you say this but God is most glorified in me when I love what he has given to me for its own sake this is teleologically related to the macro point of God's glory being overall of course but we still have to enjoy what he gives flatout period stop now oh I'll throw that over to you first and and then because I think that that's you're saying no not flat-out period to stop if you do flat-out period stop you're an atheist you're an atheist there you go that would be bad and so and so I was on saying you're gonna you're rejecting where he goes in that sense but does that then mean that our neighbor's wife husband kids should feel our are today in fact I don't know if merely is the right word means to an end in other words I love you honey I love you children I love you neighbor I love you food merely as means to an end and and does that then what does that do to those relationships so I just wanted you to comment on on that how do you know how are you navigate in that if you if you want to reject where Doug's going and what in that emphasis on flat-out period stop right how does the means anything work right here's here's the way I have thought about it why is my Christian hedonism not offensive if I am motivated to help someone or bless someone because it makes me happy well I back up and I say what makes me happy is seem more of God knowing more of God loving more of God and that happiness enlarges when it is shared by others my enjoyment of God in your enjoyment of God through my enjoyment of God on your behalf makes mine bigger so I come to you desiring that I will get my joy bigger in your blessing if somebody says to me why isn't that manipulation why isn't that means then why aren't you using me and my answer is because the way you enlarge my joy is by sharing in my joy and God's joy which is the greatest thing you could ever know the way you will make me glad is if you are glad in God and you're being glad and God is the highest gladness you could ever have so if my finding more joy in your being more glad in God looks manipulative to you call it what you will that's what I'm after I'm after my maximum joy in your maximum joy in God guess what I hear there is your joy our Joy's don't cancel each other out right so the greater that mine goes and God the greater yours is going to go and God if you're some have some part in making that happen so they said it's not a zero this is not a zero-sum game like you were talking about this but now see I really haven't answered your question that that's that's the way I I'm constantly trying to figure out how my motivation of love is not manipulative but the question you asked I think would go back to pleasure in your children pleasure in your wife not doing them good necessarily I'm not on their sick how can I make them well but rather they're there that there's a who they are and how can I be happy about that yeah and enjoy but there's a part of it I think where you're like this is what we've been talking about I think in your talk on that first talk you did the other day your delight in your children simply considered I love you son I love you daughter is good for them if you are doing good to them simply as father so expressly okay I'm just dealing with his stop I delight in your wife stop and and I'm saying my wife would should want me to say the Augustine quote that you delight in me because you see in me reflections of evidences of traits of God there are evidences of God in my character and there's evidence of God's power and creativity and wisdom in the way he's made my face in my body and my personality and if I worked that you wouldn't love me as much dear as you love me you would not love me dear so much you loved you not honor more and it's I I've always taken that loveless poem and just say love you know God more now let me I'd like to agree agree with that and then take this opportunity to distance myself from atheism in that in that quote you read you said this is we acknowledge the tealy a lot the overarching teleological coherence of all things in Christ in other words I agree with the Augustine quote everything coheres in Christ everything converges on Christ everything finds its meaning and purpose in him so that that's we agree with that that's what I meant by the tealy all the teleology of the thing so what did I mean by focused period stop you know what I mean by that and this has to do with the psychology of the thing it doesn't have to do with the abstract theology of the it doesn't have to do with how I how I would answer questions about my life and my responses and my reasons for going and doing this in a setting like this if someone said why did you start a school for your children and why did you do these things and and why did you do that the other thing I would hope that my answers would always come back to Christ that because this is where we're reflecting on our lives and we're looking down on our lives sort of detached and we're looking at years and decisions at the you know from a from a higher perspective the way I Dilla strated is this suppose we're in this room and we hear the screech of tires and a crash and someone says that little little girl's been hurt out here with a car wreck and we all run out there and suppose I'm thinking at the time this is great I'm full of compassion look how fast I'm running I'm running faster than everybody else I wanted to get there first I'm full of I'm overflowing I'm full of compassion well if I were doing that I'd be full of something all right but it was but it would it wouldn't be compassion because we are finite and because we're finite if I'm doing a math problem I could I have to think about the math problem I can't think about the math problem and Jesus or if I'm if I'm in an emergency if I'm running into a burning building to get rescue someone I'm not thinking about the the schematic diagram of the theology of the of the thing I'm loving my neighbor which means that I'm not doing theology about loving my neighbor if I'm so go back to this car accident if I'm running if I'm running out there thinking about an except that little girl then I don't have love I've got in order to love my neighbor I've got to be loving my neighbor now if I step out of that later and someone asked me requested questions about it I can take that finite human act that I experienced as a total is it a horizontal totality at the moment that's that's what that's all I was thinking about but I was thinking about it in a certain way because of my Christian upbringing because I'd been prepared myself beforehand to respond in a certain way all of those things are true and I could reflect on them afterwards after the point but if I if I come to my child and say you know to one of my daughters let's say their little daughter I say I love you with everything I've got because Jesus is making me you know that is not gonna fly as well as if I just say I love you if I'm laughing and my and now it's my grandkids if I if one of the toddlers is toddling around the doing them and I'm just enjoying it stop all right all I'm describe I'm not describing a worldview there I'm simply describing a moment there and I think that it's the stop that makes that moment potent in that relationship now what I'm teaching my children or grandchildren or whatever later I would in marriage seminars I say if your wife is number one in your life she's gonna get shortchanged you know Christ has to be number one if she's number two she's gonna get more love than she would if she were number one if you make an idol out of your kids or your grandkids or your family and put them in the position of number one in the ultimate till then that you're gonna rob everybody because you've detached yourself from the source of all love which means that you can't love you can't love them but when I'm connected to the source of all love I can only think about so many things at a time Edison and I've got to focus on what I'm doing and and and hopefully I've positioned that beforehand so there's operating in a Christian framework okay so what so what I hear there is you're saying and I think in one of the posts you mentioned something about anchor points creatures need anchor points and so if you're thinking about the moment it's okay to do . provided that there's these periodic regular I think you do think you used you know Sunday morning worship and then sort of daily quiet time type examples where you're going directly immediately God word so I'm going vertical I'm thinking about God I mean I'm in the worship moment and then if those are there then I'm sort of freed to engage with my wife engaged my kids so forth . just boom because it's punctuated by these directly Godward moments and so that when i think about that the analogy i think of is when I'm eating dinner and I pray before the meal I commend the time to God and our fellowship to God and then I just eat and talk and then and then afterward I think man that was great thank you Lord for the for that for that time those are the anchor points so that there's anchor points at the front in the back end so I just wanted to say okay that little model there to you and and maybe in the context of things that you've said about drinking orange juice to the glory of God and those sort of just daily like does that require me to every time I take a sip go up go up go up or is there this sort of a momentary dug-in distancing himself from that possibility I think he uses a character or straw man I love you because he made me nobody's suggesting that that's a straw man that's that that's not what we're talking about coercion versus authenticity that's not the issue nor is the issue here I love you that's a fair point that's good I love you and I need to add that God made you I don't think verbally that's the issue that's not the issue whether you need to verbalize that the issue in that quote with the full-stop is where does our delight terminate now I think psychologically you're making a totally valid point given my finitude and my fallenness and my selfishness and my materiality all kinds of in finiteness I think that's right do you you cannot probably do a geometry problem or design things and and be consciously God focused all the time now my my question is in saying that that would be a good thing I think I'm saying something true and that I suspect that everything if you could do it if you could do it if I could be God focused and you focused simultaneously and God focused in you the unis the thickness of the you would not thin out in my being God focused I would see God and see you for all that he made you and I think what maturity in Christ is now and what we will be in the age to come probably means those won't be have to Kipp be kept as separate as they are now so I'm just agreeing that those limitations that are on us now are there and and that's reality no every sip not a conscious thank you won't work because you're probably talking to your wife or thinking about your work or something else but I don't regard that as unnecessary virtue to be pursued it's just a reality and the more I can help people toward who knows what level of God consciousness simultaneous with any given enjoyment of natural things I want to take them there so there's a difference right between saying because you said you know that that the fact that we have to go God word and then downward and God word and horizontal you use two different words I think it probably matters which one its owing to if it's owing to our finitude creatureliness then it seems like it's just sort of a feature of our existence that's never going to go away no matter how big we get in the page to come if it's a function of our sin then it's something that I need to repent of yeah and I stumbled because I'm not sure included infinitude I simply meant body says we have them now minds as we have them now I don't know what the resurrection body and mind will be capable of but I'm inclined to think they'll be capable of more god saturated nests in our thinking and seeing then we have no and I agree with that and I I would agree provided it's not the kind of discipline anchor points where I need to touch base in this fallen world in my body I need to touch base periodically you know we say grace before meals we begin each day with prayer we touch home base to remind ourselves as I go through this next stretch and then we touch base again let's imagine a mature Saint in this life before the resurrection who's lived in such a way that their God saturated it's not good there you won't have the sense that they're touching base so much as that Christ's presence pervades the the whole but the one other comment you know this dear brother Martin Luther again when he observed somewhere that he he discovered that it was impossible just to give himself to prayers while he was making love to his wife and and I can't believe you even tried no there's there's he did did you invited him that's right never starts all folks so with Martin Luther what you've got is this idea of a touching base sort of formal formal connection formal invocation conscious conscious conscious intentional God word but I don't think anybody has any quarrel I can't see how anyone who loved God would have any quarrel with someone who is living in the fruit of the Spirit all the time all the time and when they're brought to their senses and asked a direct question was Christ involved in that well well yes of course but it's not it's not the formal anchor point when when so when we're talking about growth and maturity the God saturated Ness which I hope that we will have in the resurrection is not we're not going to be I don't think having to stop every seven times a day in the resurrection to remind ourselves that we're still Christians so okay so here's a question that's related to these sort of things and then we're close to time we got about thirty more minutes and I want to get to one or two other issues but but this is like a kind of more pastoral practical question related to all of these things and so I wonder how you would deal with this situation you have someone faithful Christian in your church who comes to you and says okay I'm sold on Christian hedonism sold on God's passion for his glory I'll call of Christ for all of life and so I know that God loves me Joy's me delights in me for his glory I know that he loves me delights in me and enjoys me for the sake of Christ who is my righteousness I know that but does he just love me for me so so they're giving you the macro points they're giving you the you know I know all of that but is there a sense any sense in which just me as I am it is he just love me for me or maybe even a better way to put it would be does he like me this is he does he think my personality's enjoyable does he delight in me and and Weejun I think about it that way is because I look at my sort of my sons I've got two little boys and I look at them and think I love them overarching for the sake of the glory of God I hope one day I loved them as brothers but I like their personalities I enjoy them for them in that sense and I'm so I'm wondering I see how that relates father to son humanly speaking is there an analog in that is that a picture of some sort between the way that God thinks about me because I think that there's a pastoral question that people are coming they're not trying to be man centered they're not trying to put me at the center of the universe they just want to know does God enjoy me and like me and and so maybe I don't whoever wants to go first can go first but how would you talk to that person the reason you can delight in your sons for themselves is because you're not delighting in your own work so when when God delights in us it's we are not we are not independent of him or his will or his predestination or everything that he's delighting in is comes back as you point out to his own glory and his own pleasure for his own purpose is the good purpose of his his will so this goes back to the previous discussion I'm finite I'm limited I can just get a blast out of one of my grandkids just because I'm watching something that I didn't do I'm partly responsible upstream a number of years ago but this is if I didn't you guys so so I I'm this child's ancestor so but I'm not doing all this stuff I can just delight in it and delight it in the moment for its own sake but that has to do with my finitude and my limit my limitations but when God delights in us he rejoices over us with singing that there's more Luke it says there's more joy in the presence of the Angels over one sinner who repents that prayer in the presence of angels that's God's joy God God is rejoicing over the sinner who repents but God who rejoices over the repentant sinner is rejoicing in his own work innocent in his own wisdom so that's at least a distinction that should be factored two things the second one will be more pastoral first more exegetical in in Ephesians five we are being made beautiful because we are his body we are being made beautiful so that he can delight in us because we are him I think that text is one of the most amazingly Christ is the hedonist in Ephesians 5 and he's making a wife that he can delight in because he will conform her into his image and make her a perfect reflection of him self and so with Romans 8 so I think that's agreeing with what what you said now here's the person comes to me and says does he delight in me just and you could their voices wavering just because of me because they've just heard of sermon that's big and global and and all about the glory of God I think I would put my hand on her arm because it is usually a her for me anyway and I would say what what what would be the opposite of that well what are you feeling you're gonna what'swhat's it I want to dig in there up a little bit because operating at the theoretical level at that moment see I got to feel that radical answer to that question that's not I don't think what she's after at least she should know quite I want to know what's the opposite of that for you and she'll probably start talking about some experiences and some which I'll be able to affirm probably things that she needs wants that are not evil and go there but but the answer the answer is God is God and you may not yet be at the point where you are most happy that he's God your deepest happiness should be that God is God and that you get to know him and my room this is eternal life that you know me you know God father and him of his son and and you still are so wounded from your upbringing that you believe right now your deepest need is for God to be affirming of who you are it feels like the absolute gigantic need emotionally right now so I want to go there and affirm all that I can about what God will do about that he's caring he's attentive he's loving he's a wise he's of their father but I do want to take her beyond that I want her in the end to get to the point where there's a robustness about her soul that says you know come hell or high water God is God and though he slay me yeah well I trust him and she's not there he's just not there and so giving her you know just a quick theoretical answer he's not gonna help her so pastor Lee that would be my effort I agree with that and I would distinguish the two questions you said does God like me and does God care about me for me I would answer those two in this setting pastor Lee I think that John's right there's something else going on there but if someone asks does God like us just got it I would say of course if God says does God care about me for me I said of course not ma'am but this is huge this is worth lingering another one minute theologically and experientially most of us probably generalisation walk with a sense of God's disapproval theologically it's based on the fact that he's perfect and I'm not and he doesn't like sin and I commit it regularly none of my attitudes is without some element flaw God is perfect therefore he is always I think this is a true statement always looking upon me with disapproval and and if you stop there that is oppressive impossible discouraging blank wait'll if you're looking into clouds if you're feeling that all day if God should mark iniquities who could stand so now what so Hebrews twelve God disciplines those whom he loves and so our lives I think are shot through with God's disciplines because of things he disapproves of in her life as a father but and this is this is where Noel and I have just gone pretty deep trying to work through these things for each other God never ever though he disapproves of any bad attitude that I have he never looks upon me with contempt he never looks upon me with contempt and as I think of my father hood in its failures that distinction I often failed to make the disapproval of my child's behavior here is is I observe it they feel it they know daddy doesn't like this attitude daddy didn't like what I just did now am I at that moment or have I setup such an atmosphere that they don't feel contempt from me that that disapproval I want both hands I need both hands that that that disapproval is couched swallowed up in this singing over me and dying for me and purchasing me and planning me in his son and conforming me to his image all that grand redemptive affirming delighting work can exist simultaneously with the God who is infinitely perfect under standards are infinitely high and therefore never met in this life that's really hard for our people to get it's hard for me to get and and yet I think and it's why justification is so crucial I think that that was a longer session than I anticipated but I think it was really good and there's a there's one or two other issues that I'd like to explore so this is a kind of a one ninety degree turn here for a minute and and it has to do with engaging broader issues outside the church public square so it's just stuff with both which both of you do and and so I have kind of two two questions in it one is John you've you do you speak into certain public square' issues most notably I think racial harmony and the pro-life movement you know sermons every year for the past twenty some odd years but it's largely those are the ones that are sort of your issues that you speak to Doug on the other hand you are all over the map right you're but your blog you even sermons you know everything from you know taxation national debt climate change what have you it's it's it shows up there so I'm just wondering if you guys could give any reflections on for pastors and maybe for Christians more broadly perhaps but mainly pastors is there a is there a reason or is there a is one of those models better is it just you guys are different so different ministries and so you know Lord bless you right hand of fellowship and off you go how do we think about that that you kind of go deep and one or two issues that are really big and and you're willing to speak you'll say that those are you know that that I've pro-life issues at the topic or your list but you're you're doing a lot more so I would say that I I feel constrained to address all these other issues there's so many shenanigans and corruptions and evil in so many areas I feel constrained to address them but I believe with all my heart it's because people the country was not listening to the sorts of things that John has been saying all these years so if if you prophetically address certain key issues and people respond at a certain at the time in the moment you're not going to have to deal with downstream corruptions that you know the the the things that are going on in Washington DC now would have astounded our fathers you know just Christian non-christian Democrat Republican they would have just they would have been totally flummoxed at the trillions of dollars that we are stealing from our grandchildren and great-grandchildren it's evil it's a moral issue so I address it because it's a more i address those things because they're moral issues I don't believe I'm getting into politics I believe that the state is getting into breaking every one of the Ten Commandments and when the civil government comes over onto my turf I'm a preacher these are the commandments of God you shall not commit murder you shall not steal you should you know all of these things that they're enshrined they're redefining marriage which is a violation of the prohibition of adultery you you name their work they claim to be God they claim all of these things are necessary for us to address and then we have to do the spade work and the thinking that's that goes to that but that's I believe that there's certain root issues that anybody who addresses in principle any one of those issues from the pulpit is preserving the prophetic prerogative that I think the church must maintain for itself so I have nothing but appreciation and respect for what John's done I would say just do so more and more and that's that's what we need because that's the that's where the principle is if John the Baptist rebukes Herod for taking his brother's wife I don't have any complaints against on the Baptist for not address addressing other things that Herod may have done and I have no doubt that there were some there's really a simple and very encouraging answer I think for my orientation there's a principal one but I would be flattering myself to say that it's the reason I'll take it anyway I'm often in reading news and blogs tempted to make snide comments about the world and its folly on Twitter in particular and I've just resolved it would dilute what I think Twitter should be for me so I've just resolved keep Twitter Godward and and here's the real reason Doug is smarter than I am and and and in this in this regard he reads more and remembers more I I don't understand the world I really don't understand the national debt I try to read it I said I don't have time to read this time that's not your problem that's their problem but you understands you if there's a big you don't understand it enough to to to see a real moral issue and where it is frankly I don't know I just say okay if I did that with my house that would be a bad idea you know don't borrow that but but on issue after issue I read you and I'm thankful so I'm not picking on you either I'm thankful for your perceptive 'ti you have read more you have thought more you understand more and therefore you can comment on more with integrity if I tried to go from issue to issue to comment I'd have to take up to three weeks sabbatical and and read a book or two and then study some history and and then I might feel safe to understand this political orientation and why this doesn't work and so this is supposed to be encouraging I really feel the reason my life is this narrow simple straightforward on a few things as it is is because I'm a pretty limited guy I I left at the academic world largely because of my limitations academically by reading limitations my memory limitations like JC Ryan okay here's to being an example I dumped on you an hour nine minutes of JC rile and you would say goodness guys she'd have lots of quotes and he knows lots about JC rile you know what in one year I won't be able to tell you one sentence of what I said he standing here a year from now would be able to remember lots of quotes that I gave you probably I watched him do it up here he's not taking any notes while the speakers are down there he's sitting there and he's quoting back to him what they said up here I can't remember what they said so we're just dealing with to know who you are know who you are light a torch and stick it in that oven you know just just take that little that thing that you are and and just stop trying to be pie / or Wilson out there and and just inflame that thing that you are for Jesus sake so really I think if if I could read as much as you read and remember as much as you remember I would really make a pain of myself in the political sphere amen no I think okay good so so it is just it's different gifts different callings and and so we we can so then the the second issue and I wanted to bring this up because I think first time you guys met I think was about 10 years ago at a league in your conference and you were sitting on a panel something like this and you said something like who said something to him like you know I just wish there were more tears coming out of what I said a Moscow and you look back at him and said if you only knew how much we were holding back and and so and then so that's ten years ago and then last June this is I remember seeing this kind of in them there's two blog post one you did one you did and I remember thinking that's a good pairing for this sort of event it was during the Gay Pride Month and they were doing the March and all that sort of stuff and you wrote a post and the title of the post was something like my eyes shed streams of tears thoughts in the new calamity and you started talking about the institutionalization the governor attended the the March and so just the embrace by the establishment of this of a homosexuality and gay marriage and so forth and that lifestyle and you just said my reason for writing is to help the church feel the sorrow of these days in our best moments we weep for the world so you did that meanwhile you know right over on the World Wide Web if it's possible for a man to put a fruit plate on his head and it is and it's also possible for him to deck his tan little body out in leather and oil and it is and possible to him to gyrate that little body on a float cruising down Main Street USA and it is then we should consider three possible responses and reject another one and you and it got better from there you know and so there you know phrases like you know fruity contributions from the homo hipsters the femi Flannery fanboys militant homos pomo poofters these are all the sort of like you know you know what I was holding back yeah no I know right I know so you know one's an accident Tuesday trend 3 is a problem and so I'm just I'm looking at that going weeping tears because of this and mocking and so I just wanted so 10 years on or so since you guys kind of got to know each other this may be a good place to end and just I just like to hear thoughts on that you know is those good both good models different models which how should we think about reading and engaging with with that I think I'd like to go first on that ok the John's response is one that I am in sympathy with and grateful for I believe that Jesus wept over Jerusalem Paul said that with tears that many are enemies of the cross of Christ I believe that the body of Christ at large must show compassion for these people who are like sheep without a shepherd and there and it's just a it's a disaster and so I have zero objection to John's response and I have similar responses also in in our ministry when I'm when I'm preaching I've there are there have been plenty of plenty of times where I've encountered that kind of thing or responded that way I have no objections to it whatever there's a difference between in my in my thinking and this is what I tried to lay out in the serrated edge I don't believe that satire is a one-size-fits-all response I believe it's appropriate in some cases and totally inappropriate in others you don't you don't mock people in their grief you don't mock people in their pain if if you're dealing with human wreckage you don't you don't do that but when you're dealing with priests of bail who are dancing around an altar cutting themselves with knives and saying that they're gonna if you're dealing with the people who are doing the gay pride parade thing you're dealing with a certain kind of you're dealing with a certain level of arrogance and insolence and and hubris that the last thing in the world they want to hear is someone I think in that post I said the last thing they would want to hear is the sound of my lonely kazoo I'm not gonna I'm not going to give them the seriousness what they're leading people astray but I'm not mocking them because I don't care about the people they're hitting you know the people they're harming the people they're hurting so I believe that this is a this is as funny as it may sound this is a giftedness issue I think some people are called to be Jeremias and that they're just called to be weeping prophets I think other others are called to sometimes be partly that and partly something else Elijah is different than Amos as different than Isaiah is different than Jeremiah and I have nothing but respect for people who can weep over Jerusalem but the man who wept over Jerusalem was the same one who made fun of their flowing robes their phylacteries their haircuts or whatever else you know he he had he said some things that their expense yeah absolutely two things in the early days as I read credenza agenda not knowing Doug at all all I read was satire and I I didn't know if he was a cynic at heart and didn't like the tone of it it didn't feel pastoral and I didn't know him as a pastor and never anything else and I think 99% satire is unwise and I don't think that is your life as a pastor and as a husband so that's the first thing my take after years of awareness is that you're not at root a cynic you're not at root ugly mean-spirited bitter but robustly jovially passionately in hatred of sin and love of God and all the delights that hate at sin destroys and and so I don't stumble as much as I used to and I don't know if you got the proportion right yet but I don't working on working on it but here's here's probably the reason I say what I say and it's just it's again rooted in my weaknesses I don't buy gum because like I said last Sunday I - the whole pack you know my first reaction to the gay pride is discussed and to go where you wind up with eloquence I know that my first reaction is not as loving as I'd like it to be I feel like in my first reaction there is truth and wisdom there I'm not I think disgust is appropriate but knowing myself I'm also sinning because the movement from disgust to go to hell is is slippery and near and go to hell is a sin just say that I think that it is not to want them to be saved and I do want them to be saved so I rescue myself from myself by making myself right those things that is I go to my knees and I say God I'm not feeling that way would you help me to feel more compassion course people whose first reaction are making me so angry and what they're destroying in this world I don't even want my children know the word queer or gay I'm almost sexual when they're eight years old they shouldn't even have to deal with that and on and on and on and so I try to pull back and say God teach me other things about capacities in me I want to I want to treat my wife more compassion I'm a daughter more compassion in a church so a lot of my bent is running away from a sinful side of me and protecting myself from it I really do believe Doug is a healthier person than I am in significant ways and I could point to other people like I think Mark Dever I mark ever listen to this mark just strikes me as being so free from the kinds of inner introspective turmoils that are from who knows where inside of me that he could just say things much more quickly and easily and and just and I'm always second-guessing my motives and and therefore I'm leaning towards the trying to become a more compassionate person than a more cleverly indicted person because I think I've cut that would come pretty naturally to me whereas I don't think Doug is wired in such a way that to write what he wrote there is nearly so much a temptation to be sinful as it would be for me that's helpful well I want to thank you both for participating in this this has been really helpful I hope for all of you and thank you for sticking around and John I just wonder if you pray to close this out and before I praise I mean just you know this group is left thank you for being here when we're done with this prayer we're done with the conference really done and so this is my last opportunity to say thank you we're really really happy you were here may God grant us to apply what we've heard father in heaven let's say that for myself all I've heard from these speakers rich rich rich thank you for rummies and thank you for crawford and thank you for Darren and thank you for Doug and thank for all who led this conference and now Lord make us better fathers better husbands better pastors better leaders for the women that are here better single women better wives and better Church Minister members and ministers so God be pleased I prayed to multiply the effectiveness of what's been done here give it a ripple effect across the churches the neighborhoods and the nation's I pray in Jesus name Amen

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Id: -Be_t9lVVu0

Length: 119min 42sec (7182 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 05 2019