Bully's Blog

“Wisdom and virtue are not found in mastering desire, but in the maturing of desire.”

From Peter Leithart yesterday:

Carey Ellen Walsh (Exquisite Desire) points to the difference between classical responses to desire and the account of desire in the Song of Songs.  Using Odysseus and the Sirens as an illustration, she notes how this scene reveals the Greek instinct that desire “harbors danger by rendering its victim under its spell.”  To counter desire, one needed to exercise rational management and control: “The Greek philosophical tradition placed desire under the care of rationality.  Hence, Odysseus did just what desire calls for; he bested emotion with a reasoned plan.  Under this classical influence, Foucault argues, desire became for the West largely something to manage, dominate, and even defeat.”  Sexual desire needed to be controlled, and that control is what makes someone virtuous.

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“Certain Protestants say, it is a true sign of a very gracious state when a man feels and deplores his inbred corruptions. How near do these come to the Papists, whose doctrine they profess to detest and abhor! The truth is, it is no sign of grace whatever; it only argues, as they use it, that the man has got light to show him his corruptions; but he has not yet got grace to destroy them. He is convinced that he should have the mind of Christ, but he feels that he has the mind of Satan; he deplores it, and, if his bad doctrine do not prevent him, he will not rest till he feels the blood of Christ cleansing him from all sin.

True humility arises from a sense of the fullness of God in the soul; abasement from a sense of corruption is a widely different thing; but this has been put in the place of humility, and even called grace.”

—Adam Clarke on 1 Cor. 13.

or Becoming the Finger of God on the Eject Button

“Immediately, the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness.” —Mark 1:12

NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN REMIXED AND INCLUDED IN GOD’S KITCHEN.

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Oswald Chambers says:

The first thing to do in examining the power that dominates me is to take hold of the unwelcome fact that I am responsible for being thus dominated. If I am a slave to myself, I am to blame because at a point away back I yielded to myself. Likewise, if I obey God I do so because I have yielded myself to Him.

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The Eccentricity of Religion
by Henry Drummond

“They said, He is beside Himself,”—Mark 3:21

The most pathetic life in the history of the world is the life of the Lord Jesus. 

Those who study it find out, every day, a fresh sorrow. Before He came it was already foretold that He would be acquainted with grief, but no imagination has ever conceived the darkness of the reality.

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Exhortation by Mike Lawyer (I think) at Christkirk, 27th September 2009.

The Bible tells us we were created for God’s glory. Glory means, in a very simple sense, to make one famous. Our job therefore is to make God famous. We do this by praising Him, bragging on Him, telling others of His glorious works in our lives and in the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ, both now and in history. When others hear about the mighty works of God, they believe our words and put their trust in Him, and He is made more famous than He was before. He gets glory.

One of the impediments to our making God famous is when the words of our message don’t match our behaviour. It sends mixed signals to those who are hearing the story. But we believe God’s story is glorious, so why don’t our lives match our story? I believe it is a combination of two very simple things.

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Sometimes the Costly Choice is to Stay

by Peter Scholl 

I’ve just spent a week in a country I doubt you’d want to live in; I don’t think I would. It’s a country wracked by multi-level poverty, which makes it a difficult place to visit and an even more difficult place to live. (NB: for the security of the people involved, I’ve deliberately omitted the name of the country.) The economic poverty is apparent on every street corner: buildings and infrastructure are run-down, food is scarce and expensive, and essential services are hard to access. But perhaps more pressing is the overwhelming social poverty—expressed in a lack of relationships, constant mistrust and suspicion, and the reality that you are being ‘watched’.

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Roman Catholics like to remind us Protestants that the Reformation’s sola scriptura has caused unmitigated doctrinal division. Interpretation must be done in community by people who know what they are talking about.

In his talk this week (see previous post Heliocentric Preaching), Doug Wilson humourously described the “just me and my Bible” people who fail to realise that the Bible itself calls us to theology in community. We all need teachers, and the Bible is written the way it is so we are forced into some sort of discipleship. Left alone with our Bibles, we are all Ethiopian eunuchs.

So regarding sola scriptura and interpretive authority, I kind of agree with the Catholics! It has always been something done by the church community.[1]

H O W E V E R . . .

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or There Is No Conscription In Christianity, So Stop Picturing It.

I’m not opposed to apparently weird and wonderful ideas from the Bible (anyone who visits this blog knows that), as long as they can be backed up repeatedly from Scripture. This is inevitably typological, and this is why I take issue with infant baptism. As I have written elsewhere here, the entire Old Testament typological freight train is against it, but I just want to hammer one point here, and I have a silver hammer.

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Today we had our final “Scripture” class at the high school for this term. After a summary of the term’s lessons and a final gospel presentation, students were asked to fill out a form and tick some boxes. It was encouraging to see how many students ticked the “I made a decision for God today” box (or words to that effect). And which kids tick that box is always very surprising. God is at work.

Which left us to decide what to do next term. We can’t just do the basics again (and believe me, the lessons we are doing now are kindy stuff). I suggested we challenge those who made decisions to join a church and get baptized. Look of horror from the Anglican teacher.

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or Suckers for Systems

God chooses certain men to do great works. Their work is duplicated and multiplied in the institutions they found. When these men are gone, those who remain tend to rely on systems. The machine must be maintained for pride’s sake, regardless of whether it is being used by God or not. This violates two basic biblical principles.

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