People have a lot of different ideas about God and Jesus and the Christian life. Many of them may not necessarily be right, but people can still have a fruitful walk while believing and adhering to them. The rightness or wrongness of our theology isn’t what makes us Christians. God makes us Christians through our faith in his redeeming power.

But I think there is at least one disposition that is a kind of prerequisite. Whether it’s understood with this language, or in a less concrete or intellectual sense.

It’s from the end of Job where God is rebuking Job and his friends for their presumptuous attitudes.

“Who has first given to me, that I should repay him?
    Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine”

Christians must believe that God is all and that we have no claim that we can stake before him. We cannot believe that God owes us something. This would be contrary to grace, which is the only ground our salvation stands on.

As I have been in a season of self-examination and reconsideration, I found this quotation from the puritan author Thomas Watson (among my favorites) to be very encouraging.

“Make up your spiritual accounts daily; see how matters stand between God and your souls (Psalm 77:6). Often reckonings keep God and conscience friends. Do with your hearts as you do with you watches, wind them up every morning by prayer and at night examine whether your hearts have gone true all that  day, whether the wheels of your affections have moved swiftly toward heaven.”

Watson is encouraging us (me) to make self-examination not something that we do in seasons of change and reflection, but something we do as a regular part of our day. Much like reading scripture and prayer should be a regular discipline that we don’t grow out of, so should self-examination be something that is a disciplined part of our daily lives.

For me, this is something that I realize has always been clearly missing from my regular prayer times. Not that self-examination is something missing from my life altogether. In fact, I feel in general, I’m fairly good at it. Rather, it’s missing from my discourse with the Father.

When I pray, I pray for myself, for friends, family, social issues and anything else that may graze my mind at the time. But a conversational examination of self with God isn’t something that I habitually work into my prayer times.

I would like to see this change. And I hope that when I do, I will see me change as well.

I was gearing up to write about some thoughts on John 20:17 and was reading Matthew-Henry’s commentary, when I was caught by what he said on another verse entirely. About verse 11 he writes:

“We are likely to seek and find, when we seek with affection, and seek in tears. But many believers complain of the clouds and darkness they are under, which are methods of grace for humbling their souls, mortifying their sins, and endearing Christ to them. A sight of angels and their smiles, will not suffice, without a sight of Jesus, and God’s smiles in him.”

It’s extremely easy to forget that the gloom we are under today is often among God’s gracious means of bringing sanctification tomorrow.

For the believer, it may be that the hardest part is not overcoming that difficulty or pain, but learning to embrace it while it is here as a tool God is using. Learning to believe that it is a tool God is using. And learning to expect and search for God’s gracious hand in it.

These are things that, for me, do not come with any kind of ease, but are a perpetual struggle. Thank you Matthew-Henry for the reminder and a renewed sense of confidence.

It seems to me that that it’s impossible for anything a human being does to be absolutely without some kind of error. We simply don’t have the capacity to do absolute good, and probably not likely to do absolute bad. Even in doing evil, it seems that there’s usually a hint of something good—however misguided or warped it may be. And likewise, even in the greatest intentions, we mingle in at least a hint of pride, or selfishness or fear.

So, in the less extreme cases, it would seem that most things become a cost-benefit situation.

Obviously, we’re never to choose to do something evil, regardless of how good a benefit it might serve. It would be wrong steal a million dollars no matter how much good that money could do for the poor. It would be wrong for a prostitute to continue her trade no matter how many unlikely people should could share the Gospel with.

But what about things that are good, but with a margin for bad? For example, what about wishing to work hard at your business to glorify God and provide for your family, but with the potential to alienate and neglect them?

I suppose we would have to assess the risk and decide whether the negative effects outweighed the positive ones. (All of this assuming your heart and mind were in the proper place). Frankly, it just seems logical. Even with the right frame of mind, if the good intentions weren’t panning out and family was being neglected, you’d have to concede that even though the intentions and motivation were good, it’s simply something you shouldn’t do.

Reading in the book of Haggai today, it got me thinking about all this stuff. This is what the Lord said to the people of Israel. Haggai 1:7:

Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.

Now, the nation of Israel was not in the same position that I’m describing. Their neglect of the temple of the Lord was decidedly wrong. But I think his call to them to “Consider your ways” isn’t too much different than what I think God could say to the church today.

For all of the church’s good intentions and ideas, it’s simply not panning out. The expensive buildings, contemporary bands, the multitude niche ministry programs and corporate services simply aren’t producing the effects we’d expected. Studies continue to confirm this. Our popularly accepted system of church isn’t working. In fact, I think it’s doing more harm than good.

People often defend the church in this way. “Good things are happening”. They’ll often cite people who have personally benefitted from our specific system. But I think this violates logic. Just because a father works hard and provides well for his family, if they are neglected and estranged, the benefit is not justified. It’s nullified. No one would defend his methods. Not for long.

Yet this may well be the case with the church system we’ve accepted today. I believe it should be abandoned.

I took a self evaluation test today to help develop some observations about my professional habits as a photographer. Here is a short excerpt from the feedback it provided:

“Stay conscious about your attitude. Ask yourself often (even now) what is ruling your heart. Is your good or bad day being determined by things outside of you or by your own decisions? This is a question you need to place at the forefront of your mind until it becomes your default habit.”

Of course, this is talking about my career. But it’s eerily applicable to my day in day out walk with the Lord.

And it does need to be placed ‘at the forefront’ of my mind everyday.

As I said last week, I’m currently reading Dane Sanders’ Fast Track Photographer to help inspire some new thoughts on my photography business. He has quite a lot of interesting things to say. And today, I read something particularly pertinent, no just to a business in the technology industry, but to the endeavors of the church as well.

Sanders writes:

“If you embrace our times with an open mind, you will have a dramatic competitive advantage. Just remember that the day will come when things will change again. An attitude of staying creatively adaptable may be the single most important asset in extending your lifespan as a photographer…”

The landscape of the photographic industry is in a unique place historically. It won’t operate the way it used to and no one really knows what exactly it’s going to change into.

The church is in almost the exact same place. Although, we shouldn’t be competing with each other.

Thanks to massive changes in technology, our culture interacts in a way that is almost completely different from how it used to interact 10 years ago. And, no one really knows how it’s going to interact in six weeks, let alone in another 10 years.

The church is severely dwindling in its ability to reach a culture (not to imply that it is our approach that solely sustains our effectiveness). However, it’s hard to deny that it’s in part thanks to most Christian’s unwillingness to engage the culture in the way that the culture engages itself.

What does that mean exactly? I don’t fully know. But I’m betting it includes (but is not limited to) things like engaging in social networking technologies, not on a corporate level, but on a personal one. Many, many churches are attempting to build a corporate presence on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. But almost no churches are encouraging their members to sink themselves into these technologies personally.

But that’s where the culture is engaging. It’s not about having bible study in a Starbucks. It’s about going there yourself and doing what you do there. It’s not about having a Facebook page for your young adults ministry, it’s about having the whole young adults ministry on Facebook—from the members (who probably already have Facebook) to the pastors and lay people (who probably don’t).

This is just one (big) way our culture is operating, but the church is failing to. It’s nothing like how we used to do things, but it’s not going back to how it used to be (at least not any time soon). And, like Sanders explains, it’s not going to be like this forever. It will change into something else, and we must change with it.

As the church, we need to abandon our ‘culture’ and be a part of the larger one. It may look completely different, but at it’s core, failing to do so isn’t much different from failing to introduce yourself and build a relationship with the new neighbors next door. In fact, often, they might be one in the same.

I’ve just begun reading Tim Keller’s new book Counterfeit Gods. Literally, the second page of the introduction and I’m already floored with introspection and personal reassessment.

I will share a brief excerpt from Keller’s introduction, though I’m sure there will be quite the slew of quotations in the forthcoming weeks as I creep through the book.

Keller writes:

“There is a difference between sorrow and despair. Sorrow is pain for which there are sources of consolation. Sorrow comes from losing one good thing among others, so that, if you experience a career reversal, you can find comfort in your family to get you through it. Despair, however, is inconsolable, because  it comes from losing an ultimate thing. When you lose the ultimate source of your meaning or hope, there are no alternative sources to turn to. It breaks your spirit.”

This resonated with me in some ambiguous way. See, for me, I often struggle with emotions that are difficult to describe in any other way that despair.  The trouble is, I’m uncertain what was “lost” that was so deeply important that it continually produces this posture in my spirit.

Keller continues in his introduction to convincingly explain that we experience despair when we have some ‘counterfeit god’ as a foundation for our hope and joy.

If then, I believe myself to be experiencing despair, it would it would follow that perhaps I have set up something less than God as a god. This is deeply troubling, yet simultaneously telling and stimulating. I can only pray that as I explore this these ideas that the Spirit would speak and reveal truth.

I have only read the introduction, but I already feel like this is a book that many of us should be reading. It’s very reasonably priced. You can buy it here.