A Clean Conscience or a Pure Heart?

I was copying some notes from one journal to another, and came across this quote from Heiko Oberman’s biography of Martin Luther:

“There would be ‘storms sweeping over the conscience’ when faith clung to its hope in God without seeking refuge in good works. At that moment the idol of good conscience would demonstrate its power” (p. 320).

The "idol of good conscience"? How can a good conscience be an idol?  Isn’t Luther going a bit too far here?  What about Paul’s confession that he “always take[s] pains to have a clean conscience toward both God and man” (Acts 24:16), and his exhortations in the Epistles to act on the “grounds of” or “for the sake of” conscience? On the one hand, I see what Luther is saying, and it is breathtakingly liberating. Can it really be true that “saying yes to God means saying no to one’s own conscience," as Luther put it (320)?

It’s a bit ironic that I found an answer in a Puritan prayer, for Oberman likened the Puritans to the monks of Luther’s day, as those who  define their faith by their ability to maintain clear consciences.   It’s possible that Oberman, though an expert on Luther, may have something to learn about the faith of the Puritans. Consider this stanza from “The Spirit as Teacher” from The Valley of Vision.

Apply to my soul the blood of Christ, effectually, continually,
and help me to believe, with conscience
  comforted, that it cleanseth from all sin;
….
Thy office is to teach me to draw near to Christ with a pure heart,
steadfastly persuaded of his love, in the full assurance of faith.
 

If our consciences must be comforted, they can’t be clean.  A clean conscience needs no comforting. Here is a picture of a true believer: of one who comes to the Father with a pure heart, i.e., a troubled conscience, because he knows he is unclean before God. As God the Spirit applies the blood of Christ to his soul, He comforts his conscience.  To have a pure heart, therefore, means to come to Christ without pretense, not as clean, and therefore worthy, but as unclean and in desperate need of the Fountain which flows from the Rock of Ages.

The way is narrow and painful, Luther says, because we must constantly be “torn out” of our conscience – that is, the conscience that “seeks peace in its own holiness.”  May I never presume to think that I can offer a clean conscience to God; may I never step out of the cleansing flow of Christ's blook into the barren desert of self-righteousness! 

"Christ is that tree of life"

     I read this today in John Owen’s Communion with the Triune God: 

When the heat of wrath is ready to scorch the soul, Christ, interposing, bears it all. Under the shadow of his wings we sit down constantly, quietly, safely, putting out trust in him; and all this with great delight. Yea, who can express the joy of a soul safe[ly] shadowed from wrath under the covert of the righteousness of the Lord Jesus! (139).

     This is written in the present tense, implying that even now, Christ is shading us, His children, from the wrath of God.  But was not our justification a one-time event, as described in Romans 8:1-2?  And yet – He continually intercedes for us. He is functioning as a mediator, praying for us, so something is happening continually with respect to our salvation.  Jesus never ceases from his work in saving us!  As it says in Hebrews 7, “…he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”

     So, although his sacrifice was made “once for all” (Hebrews 7:27), it did not obtain for us immediate access to the Father.  We must always come to Him through the mediation of Christ.  I have been taught this, but Owen’s metaphor of Christ as a tree, to whom we can run for shade is new, and reminds me of how ugly my sin is.  I must run to Christ.  I can’t sin and then step out into the sunlight, so to speak, away from the protective boughs of Christ’s mediation, and I shouldn’t want to, for, as Owen says “who can express the joy of a soul safely shadowed from wrath under the covert of the righteousness of the Lord Jesus?” 

     And yet, this is what we are prone to do.  “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.  Prone to leave the God I love," as the hymn-writer puts it.  Even when we think we are stepping towards Him, if we try to approach Him apart from Christ, we are not approaching Him in faith, but in self-sufficiency and pride.  Owen’s picture of a tree brings me back to the full realization of what Christ is doing.  He is shielding me from the wrath of God – continually – when I am working, playing, sleeping, eating.  He doesn’t stop.  This is almost too much.  As David said in Psalm 139, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.” 

      I cannot attain it, and yet I can revel in it.  I can rejoice that the same God whose only response to sin is wrath, is also so full of love that He would make a way to shield His children from that wrath, and to make them holy – and happy, forever!

Loves Comes Full Circle

Listening to today's sermon on Philippians 3:8, I felt weary, and inclined to feel sorry for myself.  We were being admonished to count everything as rubbish in order to gain Christ. All things, in comparison to the treasure of Christ were to be regarded as no better than manure (and in reality, a much stronger, even offensive word was used in the original Greek text).

As I thought about all that my life entailed, I felt frustrated.  I wanted nothing more than simply to sit at Christ's feet, as Mary had done, basking in His truth and love, but the realities of my life would not allow this (or so I told myself, after a second trip to the "potty" with my daughter deprived me of a hymn and half of the sermon).  What does one do with all of life's obligations?  How do they fit into this model of treasuring only Christ?

B.B. Warfield says this in The Emotional Life of our Lord:

"...[Jesus] declares that the love of his followers to him, imitating and reproducing his love to them, is to be the source of their obedience to him, and through that, of all the good that can come to human beings, including, as the highest reach of social perfection, their love for one another.  Self-sacrificing love is thus made the essence of the Christian life..." (emphasis mine)

 It's not always about the "cloister," the secluded time of prayer and communion with Christ.  It is often about imitating Him and loving Him by obeying Him.  For me this means caring for my children, for my special-needs child, for my husband, and being faithful in the many tasks I have been given as a way of sacrificially loving my neighbor.

Quick Observation from Deutoronomy 27

Just wanted to make note of the emphasis on kindness (to the blind, fatherless, widow...) and sexual purity in this chapter.  I see these as recurring themes throughout Scripture in places where God gives His law.  This presents a clearer picture of His character, as He reveals what is important to Him.

And of course -- verse 15 is the foundation:  worshiping God alone, and refraining from idolatry.

This is reiterated by Christ himself in Matthew 22:37-39:

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind...
You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

The Thief's Creed

I recently read a comment on Facebook that said "Theology didn't save the thief on the cross."  This got me thinking.  Of course theology per se doesn't save us, but our theology is also our creed.  Our creed is what we believe, and is therefore inextricably linked to our faith.  So, I turned to Luke 23 to see what the thief said, and realized that this man confessed his faith very clearly in his last hours of life.  Here is his Credo, in my own words:

• I fear God, who has justly condemned me for my wicked deeds.

• I believe that Jesus lived a sinless life, and is Heir to the kingdom of God.

• I believe that Jesus is the one who can plead for me - who can release me from my condemnation.

• I am guilty; Jesus is sinless.

• I am a man; Jesus is the God-man, my mediator, and my Savior! 

Encounter With an Onion

A friend of mine sent me a book entitled The Supper of the Lamb, by Robert Farrar Capon.  It belongs to a genre all its own, something along the lines of "theological treatise meets the cookbook."  In Chapter 2, ("The First Session"), he has his reader "confront" an onion, examining, peeling, and carefully studying it in order to make various discoveries about onions and their Maker.  He also uses this encounter to say the following about "place."

You have, you see, already discovered something:  The uniqueness, the placiness, of places drives not from abstractions like location, but from confrontations like man-onion.  Erring theologians have strayed to their graves without learning what you have come upon.  They have insisted, for example, that heaven is no place because it could not be defined in terms of spatial co-ordinates.  They could have written off man's eternal habitation as a "state of mind."  But look what your onion has done for you:  It has given you back the possibility of heaven as a place without encumbering you with the irrelevancy of locations.  This meeting between the two of you could be moved to a thousand different latitudes and longitudes and still remain the session it started out to be....

...What really matters is not where we are, but  who -- what real beings -- are with us."

Now compare this to an excerpt from Sinclair Ferguson's book, Grow in Grace.

The order of spiritual experience has not changed since the psalmist's day.  We too need to go to the place where God has promised to meet with us.  That is no longer in Jerusalem.  It is in Christ.  No longer in a place, but now in a person.

Back to Capon:

"In that sense, Heaven, where we see God face to face through the risen flesh of Jesus, may well be the placiest of all places, as it is the most gloriously material of all meetings."

Amen!

Sunday Reading

I'm finishing up a theologically-rich book edited by John Piper entitled Beyond the Bounds: Open Theism and the Undermining of Biblical Christianity. This book has been very thought-provoking, as it has shed light on some ways in which I am tempted to think unbiblically.

Recently I encountered the question, "Did God allow it or did He plan it?" (This was concerning the birth of a child with Down Syndrome.*) Some may say that it somehow relieves God of His responsibility if He only "allows" something. This is somehow the more comforting answer for some people, but I say, "NO!" My only comfort in hard situations is the knowledge that God has indeed planned it. For only then can I know that God is working His good purpose in my life. To quote from Beyond the Bounds,

From the smallest thing to the greatest, good and evil, happy and sad,
pagan and Christian, pain and pleasure--God governs all for his wise, just, and
good purposes (Isa. 46:10). Lest we miss the point, the Bible speaks most
clearly to this in the most painful situations. Amos asks, "Does disaster come
to a city, unless the LORD has done it? (Amos 3:6) After losing his ten
children, Job says "The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the
name of the LORD" (Job 1:21). Covered with boils, he says, "Shall we receive
good from God, and shall we not receive evil?" (Job 2:10) . . . Let us beware.
If we spare God the burden of his sovereignty, we lose our only
hope. (emphasis mine)

*I also have a child with Down Syndrome, and am so glad to know that she is not an accident. God planned, before the foundation of the world, to create her and to put her in our family. That is a true comfort during the difficult times.

Thoughts on Frankenstein

I have just finished reading Frankenstein for my son's Omnibus course, and was struck by the way that the monster "fleshes out" (sorry for the pun) the Biblical doctrine of man's depravity and slavery to sin. At the end of the book, he laments:

"I knew that I was preparing for myself a deadly torture, but I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested yet could not disobey."

And earlier, he confronts his creator with these words:

"Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful
and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more
horrid even from the very resemblance."

And yet, not only is he a "filthy type" of man, he is, as Harold Bloom says in his afterword, "more human" than his creator. He is more intelligent, thinks and feels more deeply, has more appreciation for beauty, and when he falls, falls deeper. Bloom doesn't discuss the sin issue, but it is interesting to me that the creation of Shelly's imagination is still subject to the Fall. And because he is "more" of everything that we are, his fall is greater ("how the mighty are fallen").

There is no redemption in this novel; the only rest for Frankenstein and for his creature is in death. Why death would be any better than earthly life is not explained, except in portraying death as a "rest."

I really like it when I find nuggets of truth in unexpected places. In a novel such as Frankenstein, they seem more valuable because they weren't necessarily intended to be found.

Little Peep

Charles discovered a baby robin the other day, followed it around, and took some pictures of it. He then drew pictures of it in his nature journal, using the pictures as a model. He named the little bird "Peep."

Look at the lizard!!!!

Wordless Wednesday Post

Why It's My Favorite

Just read Jane Eyre again. (Long sigh.) It's not really the story at all that I love, though it's a great one; it's the thoughts that Jane has. She's so real. She is a flesh-and-blood Christian woman trying to make her way in the world. What's so novel about this novel is that Jane talks to God and thinks about God as a person, not an idea. Christianity for her is truly a relationship. Modern "Christian" romances throw this terminology around all over the place, talking about relationships with Jeus, etc., but for Jane to remember God when her life is falling apart, in such a personal way, is new for the 19th century. Bronte did it much better than Oake, et. al. do.

I've gotta run -- wanted to say more, but don't have time. This is why my blogs are so few and far between (5 kids will do that to a woman).

Oliver: Too Good to be True?

At our last meeting, we were talking about how Dickens portrayed Oliver. Did he actually believe someone could be that good? Or, was he presenting us with a caricature of an innocent child, in danger of being corrupted?

In defense of Dickens' orthodoxy, I found two excerpts that might shed light on this. First of all, it looks like Oliver is meant to symbolize what is good and pure. From the "Author's Introduction to the Third Edition" I quote: "I wished to show, in little Oliver, the principle of Good surviving through every adverse circumstance, and triumphing at last..."

Secondly, Rose acknowledges the source of Oliver's goodness when she says of him "He is a child of a noble nature and a warm heart...and that Power which has thought fit to try him beyond his years has planted in his breast affections and feelings which would do honour to many who have numbered his days six times over."

In light of this, Dickens' original title, The Parish Boy's Progress makes sense. Here is a boy who tirumphs over evil. Yes, he is helped and rescued from harm, (as is Bunyan's Christian), but by the grace of God he stays on the path. Looking at it this way, I have a hard time agreeing with Susan Wise Bauer that that title would have been used satirically, but then, I haven't been agreeing with her that much lately anyway.

Thoughts, anyone?

Postmodern Jane Austen

Last Friday, my husband and I watched the recently released Pride and Prejudice on DVD (Kiera Knightley, Donald Sutherland, etc.) I enjoyed it, but with this nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right (besides the fact Kiera's performance was not convincing to me). The "problem" was so subtle I almost missed it.

When checking out the Bonus Features, I took a look at the "Bennett Family Portrait." That's where it hit me. As several of the actors described the characters they were playing, I realized I was hearing a new, sort of humanistic twist on each of the characters. Mrs. Bennett is actually quite a heroic figure because she gives her all to save her daughters from poverty; Mr. Bennett loves all of his daughters so affectionately and would do anything for them. The family is happy, etc. etc.

• Thinking back on the film after seeing this bonus clip, I remembered some scenes that illustrated this view. At the ball, after Mr. Bennett stops Mary from playing another tune on the pianoforte (and embarrassing her by doing so), you see him searching her out and consoling her as she weeps on his shoulder. This does not happen in the book.
• Lydia, after getting married to Wickham, has none of the self-importance she portrays in the book -- merely a tragic sort of adoration for her new husband.
• Mrs. Bennett's comments are toned down, especially her rudeness to Mr. Darcy and her favoritism toward Lydia.

So what you get is less of a moral story. When you read the book, or see the BBC version with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth, you see the good, the bad and the ugly. Some characters struggle with faults and are aware of them (Darcy -- his temper and pride). Some characters discover their errors a bit late (maybe too late?), but repent nevertheless (Mr. Bennett- his neglect of his family). Others are entirely blind to their own hypocrisies (Mrs. Bennett, Mr. Collins). You see human beings in various stages of both ruin and redemption.

The new movie takes all of that away, leaving you with basically one message: that one should be careful not to form opinions of others too hastily. Everyone has a good side and just needs to be understood. We're all just trying to make it in this world full of pain, etc. etc. Even the soundtrack plays this up, with its melancholy melody.

I still think it's a good movie for many reasons. Being faithful to the book is not one of them. Did the director read the book? I can't help but wonder.

You'll never believe who said this!

I love studing history! Just today, I came across these comments from a historical figure who lived in the 18th century. I'd love to see some guesses as to who penned these thoughts. I'll post the answer in a day or two.

I firmly believe it requires but a little philosophy to make a man happy in whatsoever state he is. This consists in a full resignation to the will of Providence, and a resigned soul finds pleasure in a path strewed with briers and thorns.

Need another clue? Here's one more quote:

"In this situation I was constantly exposed to danger and death. How unhappy such a situation for a man tormented with fear, which is vain if no danger comes, and if it does, only augments the pain! It was my happiness to be destitute of this afflicting passion, with which I had the greatest reason to be affected. The prowling wolves diverted my nocturnal hours with perpetual howlings, and the various species of animals in this vast forest, in the daytime, were continually in my view."

Happy guessing!

P.S. How do I get back to the left margin? Everytime I do a block quote, it's indented more than the last time. Help!

At Least They Get Some Interaction

I was getting my teeth cleaned by a new hygienist, and, typical of dental workers, she was asking me questions about myself that I could barely answer, being that her hands were in my mouth. Anyway, she asked how many children I had (4), and if I was a stay-at-home mom (yes), and then, if I homeschooled (yes). "Is there an organization for homeschoolers?" she continued. I told her about the myriad of options, both at the state and national level, as well as the local groups sponsored by many churches. "That's good," she said. "At least they get some interaction." I had to let it go. After all, I was at a great disadvantage, only being able to utter a few syllables at a time. But what in the world did she mean? Well, I guess I know what she meant, but how is it that people think that the larger the group of children, the better the interaction? When you're at a party, or a restaurant, or the neighborhood pool, how many people can you relate to at once? With how many people can you have a good conversation at one time? 25? And remember your childhood? Which field trips were the most fun and interesting -- the ones where you were herded about in a large group, or the ones where you got to explore on your own, or get personalized attention? Anyway, I just need to vent a little. Five years ago, I would have needed to vent a lot more. Now, I'm more amused than anything, and feel a little sorry for this 50-something-year-old married woman with no children of her own who means well.

How thick is a Rhino's skin?

I had just finished reading aloud a chapter from The Princess and the Goblin when my son S asked, "Mom, do rhinoceroses have thick skin?" What a mental leap! "Yes," I answered, wondering where this was going, not to mention where it came from. "If you shot two flaming poisonous arrows into it, would it die?" was his next query. Hmmm. Any rhino experts out there?

Edwards on Calvinism

I've been reading a biography of Jonathan Edwards, and was very interested to find out his change of belief regarding the doctrines of predestination and election as he grew spiritually. Quoting from Ian Murray's biography, which is quoting Edwards' Personal Narrative:

"From my childhood up, my mind had been full of objections against the doctrine
of God's sovereignty in choosing whom he would to eternal life, and
rejecting whom he pleased; leaving them eternally to perish, and be
everlastingly tormented in hell. It used to appear like a horrible doctrine
to me,"

and later, after coming to a new conviction on the subject:

"But I have often, since that first conviction, had quite another kind of sense of God's sovereignty than I had then. I have often since had not only a conviction, but a delightful conviction...Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God. But my first conviction was not so."

So what produced this change? It is what Ian Murray describes as the "Valley of Humiliation" in Edwards' life. Quoting again from Murray:

"He learned by experience, as others had done before him, that while those who have little awareness of the real nature of sin may assert man's ability to repent and believe, . . . those who know the true condition of human nature (italics mine) can find comfort only in the knowledge that God saves by his sovereign good pleasure adn for the praise of the glory of his grace. . . Men must be saved by sovereign mercy or not at all."