Echoes in Eternity

I mentioned this before, but here is a great clip from the movie, A Solitary Man.

My church is currently working through a sermon series on being the Church. The first message can be summed up by this excerpted quote:

"Bottom line: You cannot genuinely love Christ's bride, the Church, if you only love this abstract, idealized version of the universal Church while you refuse to commit and get your hands dirty and love real people - even really messy, broken people in one localized gathering of believers. The local church is a big deal to God"

That sermon message reminded me of Doug Wilson's "shacking up with Jesus" quote. Then this morning I saw this John Stott quote over on another blog, saying a very similar thing as the aforementioned:

“The church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought. It is not an accident of history. On the contrary, the church is God’s new community. For his purpose, conceived in a past eternity, being worked out in history, and to be perfected in a future eternity, is not just to save isolated individuals and so perpetuate our loneliness, but rather to build his church, that is, to call out of the world a people for his own glory.”

Last night, I watched "Solitary Man", a recently released film about aging businessman Ben Kalmen (played superbly by Michael Douglas) who finds himself losing everything from his health to his friends to his business to his family, in no small part due to his terrible moral choices. The movie is a surprisingly honest and realistic (for Hollywood, at least) depiction of the carnage that a self-centered, adultery-riddled, hedonistic lifestyle can create. While focused primarily on the man's sexual lusts and proclivities, it never once glorifies his choices and is surprisingly clean of graphic content considering the subject matter. In one particularly good moment in the film, he asks his one remaining friend Jimmy Merino (played by Danny Devito) why he has remained faithful to his wife of 30+ years. The friend says, "when my father gave me this [restaurant] years ago, I used to dream about these [college] girls. Every night, dreams, all kinds of dreams about 'em. But then I'd see them coming back after graduation. They'd come to homecomings, ballgames. They'd sit at the same tables, eat the same food. And I'd look at them and I noticed, they don't stay like this. None of 'em. They put on years and pounds and wrinkles. And I got one like that at home. And we can talk to each other. I know her and I'll always know her."

What does that movie have to do with the first paragraph of this post, you ask? It's this: just as our wives will eventually put on "years and pounds and wrinkles," so can our local churches. People join the church that you may not personally find that likable, or the music begins to lose touch with your particular tastes in worship style, or a new pastor just doesn't teach very well or focus on the things that you think are important. Many people in similar situations have moved on to greener church pastures, places where the band is cool, the children's program is thriving, and good coffee is served. But such spiritual adultery comes with its costs. For one, besides being disobedient to where God has placed you, jumping around from church to church rarely breeds close community. And those popular churches will one day find themselves wrinkled and old. What are you going to do then? Being faithful to the local Bride of Christ, with all its warts... that can be hard. But as the pastors and theologians above remind us, it's what we're called to be.

This is an interesting piece by Doug Wilson.

Husbands, what is your wife to you? If you have a decent marriage, you could probably answer in greeting card terms. “She is my best friend.” “She is a wonderful mother to my children.” But if you have a biblical marriage, the answer should be quite different. “She is my glory.”

This is a sad piece on the change in relational focus of women's magazines over the last few decades. The writer seems to believe that rags like Cosmo are the problem and leading the culture down the road to destructive debauchery. While I'm sure that is the case, I also wonder if Cosmo isn't merely a mirror which reflects what already exists in society. Chicken or the egg, if you will.

RIP, Coach.

If you're like me, you've been given the distinct impression that Puritans and others from the "olde tyme religion" of our spiritual ancestors were stuffy-shirted stoics who cared more about right thinking and right doctrine than living life fully and joyfully. We're told that it was only the secular Romantics of the day who knew how to feel and express real love... just as today's wisdom claims that to know true love is to take many sexual partners and to confuse and conflate one's lust with love.

Yet here is a snippet of a love letter written by John Broadus, a founder of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, to his wife in 1863 that paints a different picture:

Oh, my darling! The love of my life is bound up in your love. Tell me! Tell me that without reserve from a full overflowing heart you love me and that you will always love me with your whole heart! Then I am happy.

Or this excerpt of a letter written by Samuel Pearce, a renowned Baptist preacher, to his wife Sarah in 1795:

Called as I now am to mingle with much society and all its orders, I have daily opportunity of making remarks on human temper and after all I have seen and through my judgment as well as my affections still approves of you as the best of women for me. We have been too long united by conjugal ties to admit a suspicion of flattery in our correspondence or conversation. I begin to count the days which I hope will bring me to a re-enjoyment of your dear company.

Are not modern pop culture's attempts at displaying love largely poor impressions by comparison?

Normally I don't care to mention or comment on the seemingly daily stream of personal sins emanating from public offices around the country, but a little item caught my attention in the recent news that the Republican governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, has been committing adultery for some time. This is the statement that his wife, Jenny, made at the news conference. I'll highlight the following:

I believe enduring love is primarily a commitment and an act of will [emphasis mine], and for a marriage to be successful, that commitment must be reciprocal. I believe Mark has earned a chance to resurrect our marriage.

Psalm 127 states that sons are a gift from the Lord and children a reward from Him. I will continue to pour my energy into raising our sons to be honorable young men. I remain willing to forgive Mark completely for his indiscretions and to welcome him back, in time, if he continues to work toward reconciliation with a true spirit of humility and repentance.

This is a very painful time for us and I would humbly request now that members of the media respect the privacy of my boys and me as we struggle together to continue on with our lives and as I seek the wisdom of Solomon, the strength and patience of Job and the grace of God in helping to heal my family.

A few thoughts...

• It is to Governor Sanford's overwhelming shame that the spiritual leadership and discernment within their family is only shown by his wife.
• He is one blessed man to have such a wife, especially one scorned in such a wretched manner as adultery.
• Christians should pray that God will get the glory in this situation as the world looks on, waiting for another prominent Christian marriage to fail. May the Sanfords end their trip of reconciliation at the Cross and not on the couch of some worldly therapist.
• Lastly, there but for the grace of God go we all.

[UPDATE: Doug Wilson has something good to say on this issue.]