Story-Shaped Lives

“The same impulse that makes us want our books to have a plot makes us want our lives to have a plot. We need to feel that we are getting somewhere, making progress. There is something in us that is not satisfied with a merely psychological explanation of our lives. It doesn’t do justice to our conviction that we are on some kind of journey or quest, that there must be some deeper meaning to our lives than whether we feel good about ourselves. Only people who have lost the sense of adventure, mystery, and romance worry about their self-esteem. And at that point what they need is not a good therapist but a good story. Or more precisely, the central question for us should be, ‘What personality dynamics explain my behavior?’ but rather, ‘What sort of story am I in?’”

~ William Kilpatrick, Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong (New York, NY; Simon & Schuster, 1992), 192.

Diagnosing the Human Condition: Sickness or Sinner?

“The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of men. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian know this. In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must first search my  heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and yearns for God’s forgiveness. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God; the brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ.”

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (New York, NY; Harper & Row, 1954), 118-119.

Finding Ourselves in the Holy History of God

“Consecutive reading of Biblical books forces everyone who wants to hear to put himself, or allow himself to be found, where God has acted once and for all for the salvation of men. We become a part of what once took place for our salvation. Forgetting and losing ourselves, we, too, pass through the Red Sea, through the desert, across the Jordan into the promised land. With Israel we fall into doubt and unbelief and through punishment and repentance experience again God’s help and faithfulness. All this is not mere reverie but holy, godly reality. We are torn out of our own existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God on earth. There God deals with us, and there He still deals with us, our needs and our sins, in judgment and grace. It is not that God is the spectator and sharer of our present life, howsoever important that is; but rather that we are the reverent listeners and participants in God’s action in the sacred story, the history of the Christ on earth. And only in so far as we are there, is God with us today also.

A complete reversal occurs. It is not in our life that God’s help and presence must still be proved, but rather God’s presence and help have been demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus Christ. It is in fact more important for us to know what God did to Israel, to His Son Jesus Christ, than to seek what God intends for us today. The fact that Jesus Christ died is more important than the fact that I shall die, and the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, shall be raised on the Last Day. Our salvation is ‘external to ourselves.’ I find no salvation in my life story, but only in the history of Jesus Christ. Only he  who allows himself to be found in Jesus Christ, in his incarnation, his Cross, and his resurrection, is with God and God with him.”

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1954), 53-54.

Beholding & Becoming

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).

“For God who said , ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

We Become What We Worship

“What people revere, they resemble, either for ruin or restoration.”

~ G. K. Beale, We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Academic, 2008), 16.

Martin Luther on “Christian Liberty”

“A Christian man is the most free lord of all, and subject to none; a Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all, and subject to everyone.”

~ Martin Luther, Christian Liberty (Philadelphia, Pa.: United Lutheran Publication House, n.d.), 6.

Where Do We Find Our True Identity?

“To be human is, on a Christian account, to have one’s being outside of oneself, to owe one’s being to the being and activity of the triune God. True humanity is thus not possessed identity but rather life in a perpetual movement of receiving and responding to a gift. We are humans as creatures of our heavenly Father in whom we have our being; as those reconciled ‘in Christ’; and as those led toward perfection in the Spirit. . . . Human being is certainly a-centric, ‘never centered in itself,’ and so free from ‘the circle of appropriation and possession.’ But this does not spell the end of subjectivity . . . but rather its existence in (by virtue of, through the mercy of, out of the absolute generosity of) the triune God.”

~ John Webster, “The Human Person,” quoted by Peter  J. Leithart in Solomon Among the Postmoderns (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Brazos Press, 2008), 132.

Two Attractive but Dangerous Lies

“All fallen human beings tend to buy into two attractive but dangerous lies. These are the lies that were on the tongue of the serpent on that fateful day of manipulation and disobedience in the garden. The first lie is the lie of autonomy, which tells me that I am an independent human being with the right to invest my life however I choose. The second lie is the lie of self-sufficiency, which declares that I have everything I need within myself to be what I am supposed to be and do what I am supposed to do. Because we do not want to live for God, but for ourselves, we are easily seduced, at the mundane, everyday level, by these lies.”

~ Paul Tripp, Whiter Than Snow (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books, 2008), 23.

On Fashion & Identity

When we have lost our identity in relation to God, fallen humanity looks everywhere and anywhere else. Here’s an insightful thought from Peter J. Leithart on the relationships between fashion, identity, advertising, and consumerism. Worth pondering at this time of year — and in the midst of a global economic downturn.

Fashion is an ‘identity industry.’ Brand labels are tribal markings that lend a sense of belonging, status, respectability. But fashion is a fickle identity marker. If I am going to maintain my belonging, my status, and my respectability as a fashion icon, I can’t afford to miss out on next year’s (next week’s?) fashions. Advertisements channel not just a lust for novelty but a lust for an ever-new me. Goods are dangled before us promising fulfillment and bliss; they require no commitment, elicit perfectly disposable emotions, and ask only for a moment of our attention and a few of our dollars. In a consumer society, the good life is defined by the goods I am able to afford. I am defined by what I’m able to afford. I’m identified by what I buy, and the continuity of my personal identity is a continuity of lifestyle, forged by frequent visits to the mall and to online catalogs.

~ Solomon Among the Postmoderns (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Brazos Press, 2008), 120.