Colossians 3:13

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.

Luke 5:17-26

One day Jesus was teaching, and Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting there. They had come from every village of Galilee and from Judea and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was with Jesus to heal the sick. Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.

When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven.”

The Pharisees and the teachers of the law began thinking to themselves, “Who is this fellow who speaks blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

Jesus knew what they were thinking and asked, “Why are you thinking these things in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” So he said to the paralyzed man, “I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home.” Immediately he stood up in front of them, took what he had been lying on and went home praising God. Everyone was amazed and gave praise to God. They were filled with awe and said, “We have seen remarkable things today.”

Adam's Wager

I wrote the following many years ago as I was wrestling with the creation/theistic evolution debate. This is just a mental exercise, but it helped me to make my decision at the time. It's sort of a strange argument, but I'm a bit strange, too. Maybe you will find it interesting.

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In recent articles in Christianity Today and World Magazine, the debate over the biblical account of creation rages on. Traditional – some would say, fundamentalist – believers hold to a literal Adam and Eve, two beings created by God several thousand years ago who began the human race in the Garden of Eden. Other arguments range from an Adam and Eve that sprung from pre-humanoid beings who God embedded with an eternal soul to Adam and Eve being merely metaphors for God’s creative intent for mankind. At the center of the debate is the interpretation of the Scriptures: Should the Bible be taken at face value for claims made by both the Old Testament and New Testament authors and, probably, most convincingly, the words of Jesus in the Gospel writings? Or are the accounts of Adam and Eve to be read in light of science and other modern considerations? The latter, of course, carries the burden or blessing – depending on your perspective – of evolution. On this side of history, I don’t think one position will conclusively win over the other, as neither position seems to convince the other side that it is correct. As I thought through this, I was wondering if we could borrow from another Christian who used an apologetic for the existence of God to convince some to believe in Him.

Blasé Pascal, a Danish philosopher of the 17th century, offered what has become known as Pascal’s Wager. In his argument, Pascal offered the following:

One should believe in God due to the consequences of the decision. If one chooses to believe in God, and he is correct, then he will have eternal life and avoid the suffering of hell. If one chooses to believe in God, and is wrong, then nothing has been lost: his death will have the same result as if he did not believe. However, if one chooses not to believe in God and is incorrect, then the result will be a separation from God and an eternity in torment. On the other hand, if one chooses not to believe in God and is correct, then life ends and he is no worse off than if he believed in God and was wrong. In terms of probability and positive outcomes, taking Pascal’s Wager – that is, belief in God – is the most prudent course of action.

Can we apply the same thinking to the Adam and Eve debate – that is, what are the risks and rewards of believing in a literal Adam and Eve as opposed to some rival hypothesis? In other words, what would be the downside of accepting “Adam’s Wager” that the traditional, literal interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve is true? And, similar to Pascal’s Wager, we must look at the eternal ramifications of the choice, not the temporal “my neighbor will think I’m ignorant” consequences. Maybe we can frame this in the context of meeting the Lord at the end of one’s life; the assumption here is that both the literalist and the scientivist Christian will both be saved and that their position on creation will not doom their souls.

The one who accepts Adam’s Wager might realize a situation like this; in this scenario the literalist interpretation is incorrect:

God welcomes you to heaven, but notes that you incorrectly believed that Adam was a real person who existed in history. God tells you that this is not true and that Adam and Eve were representative of His creative power, but were never meant to explain accurately the origins of mankind. The evolutionists were right. God asks you to explain why you did not believe the scientific proclamations. You explain that you tried to understand the science and labored to believe the explanations, but none of them fit satisfactorily with the story in His Word. As 2 Timothy 3:16 states, the Bible is true for all matters of teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. You just could not believe in something – in good conscience – that could not be squared with Scripture. You claim that you can see now how it fits, but in your life, you wanted to honor God’s Word and in your ignorance understood falsely the nature of the reality of creation, but when there was a choice of trusting the revelation of man (as understood) with the revelation of God, you chose the latter.

On the flip side, what if the scientivist interpretation is incorrect;

God welcomes you to heaven, but notes that you incorrectly believed that Adam was not an historical figure, and merely a metaphor of God’s creative power. God asks why you believed this given the inerrancy of Scripture and the many passages that speak of a literal Adam and references throughout the Scriptures that express the genealogy of Adam, the sin of Adam and its effect on mankind, the claims of Christ and the apostle Paul and the integration of Adam into their narratives and dialogues. You claim that while those passages were difficult to explain in light of the scientivist approach, you were unable to reconcile the claims of science with the claims of Scripture. Given what you understood of science, the literal claims of Scripture could not be understood and, therefore, believed.

The wager then centers on (a) which explanation would you most likely want to offer to God, and (b) which explanation would God be more pleased to hear? That is, if you hold to the inerrancy of Scripture, with which explanation do you think God will be more pleased? Even if in error, which explanation would you rather stand in front of God and confess? Of course, if you do not believe in inerrancy, all bets are off. But if you are committed to inerrancy, you have to consider God’s pleasure or displeasure with your use and understanding of Scripture in what might be competing truth claims.

Adam’s Wager would require one to accept an understanding of man’s beginnings which would be most pleasing to God in light of inerrancy. Which approach – the literalist or scientivist – are you willing to wager is more pleasing to God? Upon which approach are you willing to wager your claim to inerrancy?

Moral Obligation - Part 7

For the last post in this series, I want to recount Wilson's final invitation to Hitchens. It's a profound perspective on our Savior.

Jesus was not just one more character in history, however important - rather, He was and is the founder of a new history, a new humanity, a new way of being human. He was the last and true Adam. But before this new humanity in Christ could be established and begin its task of filling the earth, the old way of being human had to die. Before the meek could inherit the earth, the proud had to be evicted and sent away empty. That is the meaning of the Cross, the whole point of it. The Cross is God's merciful provision that executes autonomous pride and exalts humility. The first Adam received the fruit of death and disobedience of Eve in a garden of life; the true Adam bestowed the fruit of His life and resurrection on Mary Magdalene in a garden of death, a cemetery. The first Adam was put into the death of deep sleep and his wife was taken from his side; the true Adam died on the cross, a spear was thrust into His side, and His bride came forth in blood and water. The first Adam disobeyed at a tree; the true Adam obeyed on a tree. And everything is necessarily different.

Christ told His followers to tell everybody about this - about how the world is being moved from the old humanity to the new way of being human. Not only has the world been born again, so must we be born again. The Lord told us specifically to preach this Good News to every creature. He has established His great but welcoming household, and there is room enough for you. Nothing you have ever said or done will be held against you. Everything will be washed and forgiven. There is simple food - bread and wine - on the table. The door is open, and we'll leave the light on for you.

Moral Obligation - Part 6

I appreciate this debate between Hitchens and Wilson. Of course, I agree with Wilson, but I'm trying to understand Hitchens' position.

If I'm understanding him correctly, Hitchens is saying that morality has evolved over time and, like creatures, evolution - over time - has taken "nature" to higher levels; for example, from amoebae to homo sapiens. Similarly, morality is evolving, providing human beings with higher perspectives on what is right and wrong. We've moved on from cannibalism and slavery and one day we'll move on from genital mutilation and abortion. It's interesting, though, that regarding abortion, Hitchens mentions that it was condemned by Hippocrates long before Christianity came on the scene. But wait, Hitchens seems to suggest that abortion is wrong, but somehow - thousands of years later - the debate continues and most of the people in the US (at least among certain political persuasions) don't believe it violates human morality. How long will it take for everyone to agree? And while abortion seems to be wrong according to Hitchens' "innate human solidarity," that solidarity doesn't seem to have been impressed upon others. Why can't humans achieve moral solidarity? I think Hitchens died believing that one day our morality would evolve to achieve a universal understanding of the good.

In one sense, Wilson does agree with Hitchens. All humans - according to Romans 1 - do have an innate sense of God and morality, but they suppress it. It is suppressed because humans are dead in their sins and we are futile in our thoughts when we do not acknowledge God as Lord. And we will never achieve "innate human solidarity" when we are all following our own "gods": "...who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator...." To Wilson's point, without a transcendent standard, which innate morality is the right one? Has anyone experienced the solidarity in morality that Hitchens claims?

I do not want to dismiss Hitchens. He was a brilliant man and 10 time smarter than I am. I think he would say that morality is evolving and that morality is whatever is best for the preservation of the species. But how long will it take for humans to figure out if abortion is better or worse for the preservation of the species?

I think he painted himself in a corner by taking God out of the moral equation. "Innate human solidarity" was the best he could do. RIP.

Moral Obligation - Part 5

Wilson responds to Hitchens previous point on his position that human morality "evolved":

There are two points to be made about this reply. The first concerns evolved morality and the future, and is a variation on my previous questions. If our morality evolved, then that means our morality changes. If evolution isn't done yet (and why should it be?), then that means our morality is involved in this on-going flux as well....Our current "morals" are therefore just a way station on the road. No sense getting really attached to them, right?

....When dealing with people whose moral judgments have differed from yours, do you regard them as "immoral" or as "less evolved"?

....Your notion of morality, and the evolution it rode in on, can only concern itself with what is. But morality as Christians understand it, and the kind you surreptitiously draw upon, is concerned with ought....You believe yourself to live in a universe where there is no such thing as any fixed ought or ought not.

....Your invitation to us to try to "name one moral action...that could not have been performed or spoken by an atheist" shows that you continue to miss the point. We have every reason to believe that such atheists, performing such deeds, will be as unable as you have been to give an account of why one deed should be seen as good and another as evil. You say you have no alternative but to call sociopaths and psychopaths "evil." But you surely do have an alternative. Why not just call them "different."

A fixed standard, grounded in the character of God, allows us to define evil, but this brings with it the possibility of forgiveness. You reject forgiveness, but at the end of the day this means that you don't believe there is anything that needs forgiveness. This means you have destroyed the idea of evil, regardless of what you might "call" behaviors that happen to be inconvenient for you.

Moral Obligation - Part 4

This is a continuation of the Hitchens/Wilson debate in Christianity Today:

Wilson

In response [to the question about the source of morality], you now tell us that we have an innate predisposition to both good and wicked behavior. But we are still stuck. What I want to know (still) is what warrant you have for calling some behaviors "good" and others "wicked." If both are innate, what distinguishes them? What could be wrong with just flipping a coin? With regard to your retort that my "talent for needless complexity" has simply gotten me "God's coexistence with evil," I reply that I would rather have my God and the problem of evil than your no God and "Evil? No problem!"

Hitchens

My answer is the same as it was all along: Our morality evolved. Just as we have. Natural selection and trial-and-error have given us the vague yet grand conception of human rights and some but not yet all of the means of making these rights coherent and consistent. There is simply no need for the introduction of the extraneous or the supernatural....

[Hitchens goes on to say that he does not steal or do other harm to others, except sometimes he may take a cheap shot at someone.]

But I am always aware of doing so, or if you like, of the temptation to do so, and I strive (not always with success) to resist the tactic, and rather dislike myself when I give in to it. Why do I do this? Socrates called this restraint the daemon: an inner voice that helps us toward self-criticism. I am content to regard it as indefinable, which is where we part company. My own inclination is to regard it as a human faculty without which we could not have - I shan't say "evolved" yet again - made  the smallest progress as homo sapiens. You believe that I owe this inner prompting to the divine....[but] Ask yourself this question. Can you name one moral action, or moral utterance, performed or spoken by a believer that could not have been performed or spoken by an atheist?

Moral Obligation - Part 3

Wilson continues in his response to Hitchens on his proposed "innate human solidarity":

There are three insurmountable problems for you here. The first is that innate is not a synonym for authoritative. Why does anyone have to obey any particular prompting from within? And which internal prompting is in charge of sorting out all the other competing promptings? Why? Second, the tangled skein of innate and conflicting moralities found within the billions of humans alive today also has to be sorted out and systematized. Why do you get to do it and then come around and tell us how we must behave? Who died and left you king? And third, according to you, this innate morality of ours is found in a creature (mankind) that is a distant blood cousin of various bacteria, aquatic mammals, and colorful birds in the jungle. Your entire worldview has evolution as a key foundation stone, and evolution means nothing if not change. You believe that virtually every species has morphed out of another one. And when we change, as we must, all our innate morality changes with us, right? We have distant cousins where the mothers ate their young. Was that innate for them? Did they evolve out of it because it was evil for them to be doing that?

Hitchens

The fluctuations between social and anti-social conduct are fairly consistent across time and space: some societies have licensed cannibalism but they tend to die out, and others have licensed human sacrifice and infanticide....But I answer your question by making the pragmatic observation that, if we surrendered to our lower instincts all the time, there would be no language in which to write this argument between us and no society in which we could find an audience. The struggle to assert what is positive in our human capacity - I don't mind Lincoln's metaphor of our "better angels" if you promise not to take it too literally - is arduous enough.

Moral Obligation - Part 2

Continuing with the Hitchens/Wilson debate, Christopher Hitchens responds to Wilson's challenge to claim of "innate human morality":

Hitchens

Ordinary morality is innate in my view. But if, in yours, it is still not known, then centuries of divine admonition have also gone to waste. You are trapped in a net of your own making. Take a look at the list of actual or potential crimes that you mention. Genocide is not condemned in the Old Testament and neither...is slavery. Rather, these two horrors are often positively recommended by holy writ. Abortion is denounced in the Oath of Hippocrates, which long predates Christianity....To your needlessly convoluted subsequent question: Atheists are by no means "coy" on the question of evil or on the possibility of non-supernatural derivation of ethics. We are simply reluctant to say that, if religious faith falls - as we believe it must and to some extent already has - then the undergirding of decency falls also....

The argument that you have been making was over long before either of us was born. There is no need for revelation to enforce morality, and the idea that good conduct needs a heavenly reward, or that bad conduct merits a hellish punishment, is a degradation of our right and duty to choose for ourselves.

Wilson

Your book [Hitchens wrote a book, God is not Great] and your installments in this debate thus far are filled with fierce denunciations of various manifestations of immorality....I simply want to know the basis for your florid denunciations. You preach like some hot gospeler - with a floppy leather-bound book and all. I know the book is not the Bible and so all I want to know is what book it is, and why it has anything to do with me. Why should anyone listen to your jeremiads against weirdbeards in the Middle East or fundamentalists Baptists from Virginia like Falwell? On your terms, you are just a random collection of protoplasm, noisier than most, but no more authoritative than any - which is to say, not at all.

Moral Obligation - Part 1

In May 2007, writer and atheist, Christopher Hitchens, and author and pastor, Doug Wilson, engaged in a debate in Christianity Today on the topic, "Is Christianity Good for the World?" The debate was eventually published in a small book by Canon Press and was followed up with a debate tour and film.

I picked up the book again and after reading it, wanted to share some of the debate here. There is much in the exchange, but I want to focus on one area: The warrant for moral obligation; that is, given a worldview, how can a person justify what is good or evil in the world? I'll pull passages from both Hitchens and Wilson. Both are brilliant men and the exchange is very interesting and provocative.

This will take a few posts...I hope you will find it beneficial.

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Hitchens

On the much more pertinent question of the origin of ethical imperatives,...I believe [they are] to be derived from innate human solidarity and not from the supernatural....

Wilson

You say in passing that ethical imperatives are "derived from innate human solidarity." A host of difficult questions immediately arise, which is perhaps why atheists are generally so coy about trying to answer this question. Derived from whom? Is this derivation authoritative? Do the rest of us ever get to vote on which derivations represent true, innate human solidarity? Do we ever get to vote on the authorized derivers? On what basis is innate human solidarity authoritative? If someone rejects innate human solidarity, are they being evil, or are they just a mutation in the inevitable changes that the evolutionary process requires? What is the precise nature of human solidarity? What is easier to read, the book of Romans or innate human solidarity? Are there different denominations that read the book of innate human solidarity differently? Which one is right? Who says? And last, does innate human solidarity believe in God?

Philippians 4:6-7

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. (NLT)

Frame on "Signs"

Today, I was looking for some theology resources and came upon theologian John Frame's website that he shares with Vern Poythress:

https://frame-poythress.org/

It offers some great FREE resources, including chunks of excerpts from their books.

John Frame wrote a book about movies back in 2005 and it is available in its entirety on this site. I perused a few reviews and then I saw that he had reviewed one of my favorite movies by M. Night Shyamalan, Signs. It's ostensibly about aliens, but there is much more to the movie. I really like what Frame has to say about its themes:

So the film works on several levels. On one, it is a reprise of “War of the Worlds,” but much scarier than any other movie about aliens I can recall. On another, a study of a very real family, responding to their fears in the midst of equally difficult problems of health, regrets, and loss. On still another level (I think even deeper), it is a film about worldviews.

Shyamalan was born into a Hindu family. Later he went to an Episcopal school on the Philadelphia Main Line. I don’t know much about his theology, but this film gets deeper into theology than any other film this year. For Christians, it raises the question of general revelation. When we think about general revelation we tends to think, Thomistic fashion, about causality: God reveals himself in the starry heavens, because who else could be great enough to bring them into being? Or teleologically: God reveals himself in the intricate machinery of the human eye (or now, thanks to Michael Behe, the living cell) because these machines require intelligent design. But Signs suggests that general revelation is also to be found in the rhythm of human life, the structure of coincidence, the fact that one event prepares us for the next. Apparently meaningless events turn out, maybe years later, to take on importance in our lives. And as we reflect on that, that too seems to presuppose a designer.

This kind of teleology is not so much that of a machine-designer as that of an author writing a novel or play, using one event to anticipate another. We are not surprised to find insight into that kind of teleology from a gifted writer and film director like Shyalaman, for it is precisely his business to design a world with such a structure of foreshadowing and recapitulation. The interesting thing is that that kind of world, from my experience anyway, comes out looking very much like the real one.

If you haven't seen Signs, you should.

Calvin on Loving Your Neighbor

I've been studying Christ's exchange with the lawyer who tempts him by asking him about the greatest commandment. This exchange is documented in Matthew 22:34-40, Mark 12:28ff, and (arguably) Luke 10:22ff. In reading various commentaries, I haven't come upon any new insights, but Calvin's take on 'love of neighbor' is interesting, particularly, in the way he parses love of self and love of neighbor. This dichotomy has always interested me. If possible, I'll post more on this, but for now, here is what Calvin has to say (from his Commentary) on Matthew 22:39:

And the second is like it. He assigns the second place to mutual kindness among men, for the worship of God is first in order. The commandment to love our neighbors, he tells us, is like the first, because it depends upon it. For, since every man is devoted to himself, there will never be true charity towards neighbors, unless where the love of God reigns; for it is a mercenary love which the children of the world entertain for each other, because every one of them has regard to his own advantage. On the other hand, it is impossible for the love of God to reign without producing brotherly kindness among men.

Again, when Moses commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves, he did not intend to put the love of ourselves in the first place, so that a man may first love himself and then love his neighbors; as the sophists of the Sorbonne are wont to cavil, that a rule must always go before what it regulates. But as we are too much devoted to ourselves, Moses, in correcting this fault, places our neighbors in an equal rank with us; thus forbidding every man to pay so much attention to himself as to disregard others, because kindness unites all in one body. And by correcting the self-love (philautian) which separates some persons from others, he brings each of them into a common union, and--as it were--into a mutual embrace. Hence we conclude, that charity is justly pronounced by Paul to be

"the bond of perfection," (Colossians 3:14,)

and, in another passage, the

"fulfilling of the law," (Romans 13:10;)

for all the commandments of the second table must be referred to it.

Matthew 11:28-30

"Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”

Email test

The email feed on my blog stopped working. This is a test.

Daniel Webster on Democracy

Daniel Webster was an early 19th century Federalist and US Senator. His quote from 1802 impressed me as I see the American republic begin to plunge into a democratic abyss:

The path to despotism leads through the mire and dirt of uncontrolled democracy.

Unfortunately, his words are becoming quite prophetic.

Constructing Men and Women

In her essay in World Magazine ("Constricted by 'Constructs'"), Janie B. Cheaney laments the recent American Psychological Association counseling guidelines for boys and men:

From the beginning, Guidelines claims that all defining characteristics of masculinity are socially constructed. All of them. Men are that way because they are taught that way. Testosterone? A trifle. DNA? Forget it. The only place, oddly, where the APA even suggests that nature may play a part is in the supposed genetic makeup of trans men (i.e., biological women).

Of course, the Lord disagrees. From the beginning, he created the world differently:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

Human beings have a way of distorting God's world and manipulating it for their own purposes. The Apostle Paul warns us of this as well:

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. - Romans 1:19-23

Ignoring God's purposes and plans for us as men and women can have dire consequences. Janie Cheaney ends her essay with this:

Being "traditionally" male is not a psychological problem. But if we don't figure out that men and women are, by and large, a certain way because they're created that way, and learn to work with it rather than against it, some psychological mainspring within the collective culture is certain to break.

2 Peter 3:8-14

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

Your Proper Identity

No human being was ever meant to be the source of personal joy and contentment for someone else. Your spouse, your friends, and your children cannot be the sources of your identity. When you seek to define who you are through those relationships, you are asking another sinner to be your personal messiah, to give you the inward rest of soul that only God can give. Only when I have sought my identity in the proper place (in my relationship with God) am I able to put you in the proper place as well. When I relate to you knowing that I am God's child and the recipient of his grace, I am able to serve and love you.

However, if I am seeking to get identity from you, I will watch you too closely, I will become acutely aware of your weaknesses and failures. I will become overly critical, frustrated, and angry. I will be angry not because you are a sinner, but because you have failed to deliver the one thing I seek from you: identity.

When I remember that Christ has given me everything I need to be the person he has designed me to be, I am free to serve and love you. When I know who I am, I am free to be humble, gentle, patient, forbearing, and loving as we navigate the inevitable messiness of relationships. - Timothy S. Lane and Paul David Tripp

Romans 5:18-21

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Coping with Criticism - 5

This is the final post on the topic of coping with criticism. I hope it's been helpful:

Eighth, consider love. Love your critic. Seek to understand him. Thank him for coming directly to you with his criticism. Be willing to forgive any injury done to you. Pray for your critic and if possible pray with your critic - with integrity and humility. Put away anything that inhibits love. As Peter writes, "Laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings" (1 Peter 2:1). When you do this, you will discover that your own wounds will heal more rapidly.

Ninth, consider eternity. Remember, all criticism for us as true believers is temporary. Our faithful Savior will be waiting for us on the other side of Jordan. He will wipe away every tear from our eye and will prove to be the Friend who sticks closer than a brother. All wrongs will be made right. There our believing critics will embrace us, and we them. We will understand that all the criticism we received here below was used in the hands of our Potter to prepare us for Immanuel's land. We will see fully that all criticisms were but a light affliction compared to the weight of glory that awaited us.

Thanks to the Reader in Portugal

Google tells me that I have a faithful reader who lives in Portugal. If that is true, I would like to thank whoever you are for continuing to read my blog all the way from Europe! :-)

Coping with Criticism - Part 4

We're continuing with ways to deal with criticism from the The Reformation Heritage KJV Study Bible. Here are a couple more suggestions:

Sixth, consider Scripture. Memorize and meditate upon texts such as Ephesians 6:10, "Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might," as well as Romans 12:10: "Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love." When critics attack and you can't understand God's ways, trust Jesus' words in John 13:7,"What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter."

Seventh, consider Christ. Above all, look to Jesus in the face of mounting criticism. Hebrews 12:3 advises, "Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself." Peter is more detailed: "Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth; who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously" (1 Peter 2:21-23).

Tomorrow will wrap up this series with a couple more items to consider.

Coping with Criticism - Part 3

The next two suggestions for coping with criticism have us consider a posture of humility:

Fourth, consider yourself: The Holy Spirit uses our critics to keep us from exalting ourselves. So let yourself be vulnerable. Don't be afraid to say, "I was wrong; will you forgive me?" Be grateful that you can learn valuable truths from your critics. Some of our best friends are those who disagree with us lovingly, openly, and intelligently. "Faithful are the wounds of a friend" (Prov. 27:6).

Fifth, consider the content. Ask yourself honestly: What are my critics saying that might help me improve myself? Is there a kernel of truth in this particular criticism that, if changes are made, will make me more godly? If critics say something constructive, absorb it, confess your fault, take the lead in self-criticism, ask for forgiveness wholeheartedly, make change for the better, and move on. If the critics offer nothing constructive, be kind and polite, and move on. Either way, move on - don't harbor internal bitterness. Fight God's battles, not your own, and you will discover that He will fight yours (Rom. 12:19).

Tomorrow, we'll look at the ways the Scripture and our relationship with Christ can help us get a right perspective on criticism.