da.rryl.me

Let the nations be glad

We’ve just been away on a week long holiday.  While away, I had the usual list of books that I thought I’d read and a bunch of blog posts that I thought I’d write.  And as usual, I got virtually none of it done.  We did however, have a heap of fun and enjoyed a great time away together as a family.

The one book that I did manage to finish is “Let the nations be glad” by John Piper.  It may sound like I did well, but the truth is I’ve been reading this book for months (just ask the nice bloke I borrowed the book from ).

Anyway, if you’ve never really had a passion for missions or evangelism, this book may well e the book for you.  I’ve always struggled with evangelism and missions, however, this book has helped me immensely.

My prime passion is to see the Lord glorified in my life (which I do poorly) and in the lives of others.  The reason this book was so helpful to me is that in it, John Piper starts with the glory of God and then works backwards from there.  The first paragraph of chapter 1 contains the following amazing concept which really frames the entire book:

Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church.  Worship is.  Missions exists because worship doesn’t.  Worship is ultimate not missions, because God is ultimate, not man.

Don’t confuse the current thinking of “worship” with what is intended here.  Worship is not singing praise to God in and of itself.  It is the surrender of our entire lives to do and enjoy doing that which brings pleasure to God.  Thus, God saves people not for their sake alone, but primarily for His sake alone. Not that He needs us, but that it benefits Him.

Piper then works through this through prayer, suffering (great chapter – the most challenging to me), the centrality of Christ in the proclamation of the gospel and then a discussion of what is intended by “all nations” found in Matt 28:19-20 (among numerous other places).

Piper also works through the difference between evangelism and mission briefly in the final chapter which is helpful.

Some of the closing remarks of the book are also profound:

The goal of missions therefore is the gladness of the peoples in the greatness of God… The missionary command to be happy in God is simply a command for the consummation of praise.  Professed praise of God without pleasure in God is hypocrisy… Therefore worship is the fuel and goal of missions… because you can’t commend what you don’t cherish… Missions begins and ends in worship.

Piper is very thorough in his analysis, taking time to examine at times all instances of particular words or phrases.  This takes time, but ensures that the reader understands how he comes to the conclusions he comes to.  This can make the book difficult to work through at times.

The analysis and conclusions in the book are outstanding and the book is well thought out, tackling difficult issues and dealing with them well.

If you are interested in the heart of God around missions and evangelism (even if you don’t , this book will challenge and inspire you.

The best way to get the book is from desiringgod.org directly – however, you can also get it from Amazon for much the same price..

Conspiracy theories

I was anonymously pointed to the Zeitgeist movie and told "watch this…".  Shame it is anonymous as I can’t correspond with whoever it was… anyway, here are my thoughts.

I spent the first 40 minutes of the 2 hours (wow – that is a lot of my time) listening to yet another attempt to debunk Christianity claiming that it is all based on astronomy (or astrology?), and citing a bunch of things that suggest that Christ never walked the earth and that he was compiled from a collection of more ancient beliefs (incidentally, none of these more ancient beliefs cited, which I looked into, were even noted in passing by wikipedia).

This part of the film was generally poorly researched (this or this is better), being instead the result of selected reading that slanted heavily in one particular direction (based on the information sources listed at the end of the film).  Interestingly the first part of the film concludes that Christianity (the one religion singled out by the film) is necessarily false and that Christ never walked the earth – which somehow means that every other religion is also false.

Once past that the film went on to talk about conspiracies behind September 11, war, the federal reserve act and the bankers that they suggested managed to put all these things together to line their own pockets.

However, the 9/11 conspiracy suggests that somehow the conspirators managed to (among other things):

• coordinate some people to plan and hijack planes, fly them into buildings and kill themselves in the process
• put together demolition teams for the two towers and building 7, completely rig the buildings, including special cutting of key structures, pack explosives, etc
• get the CIA and FBI to work together to cover up the fabricated terror attack
• somehow be happy that over 3000 Americans would die
• purposely negate NORAD’s response capability
• work the media to present one story without thorough investigation
• and do all this without people knowing what they were up to or it being leaked

The point of the film seems to be that people are trying to control your life, but you should take it back and buck the system.  The initial part about religion being wrong seems out of place in the film.

I can’t help but wonder if the general observations are true (e.g. I think governments are continually striving for more control as a generalized rule), it is all possibly leading to a logical end point, but perhaps, rather than an elaborate network of people controlling it through clandestine activities, meetings, plans and ultimately war, financial meltdowns and government policy that perhaps there is a group of spiritual entities behind it… I believe the Bible may also suggest such things as time ticks on…

Perhaps Christ is the ultimate answer to these problems and throwing Him out is actually counter productive in the end.  Maybe, just maybe, the anti-establishment sentiment actually undermines itself completely in the end…

Oh – and don’t waste time watching the film – you’ll never get the time back.