Let’s get the obvious facts out the way first. If you love somebody, you want to marry that person. Religions don’t make people vow eternal love; their whole being demands it. Nobody has a right to marry any individual, the beloved has to share your affection for starters, but anybody with an ounce of romance in his body hopes love works out for everybody.

Breathes there a man with a soul so dead that his default position is not to root for love?

There is a commonplace argument, however, in favor of interfaith marriage that is a very bad one. It says, “When two people love each other, they should get married.”

Reason must temper romance and respond, “Maybe.”

Romantic love is good, but it is not the only good. It is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for marriage, because marriage is something more enduring than romantic love.

Plato has a character in one of his dialogues claim that Eros is a great god. Eros was the personification of romance for the Greeks and his name is at the root of our English word “erotic.” The sanction of Eros, the burning desire to be one, makes a man long for his beloved.

The vast majority of American culture tells us that when Eros commands we must obey.

This is wrong. The impulses of Eros are powerful, but they can be denied. No man or woman needs to be a slave of romance. As I have learned at personal cost, the commands of Eros do not always lead to happiness.

Romance is good, but in the real world, as opposed to a Hollywood happy ending, you cannot always have it all. For example, the desire to build a business or write books may be not leave the time necessary for a real and lasting relationship. Whatever young adults may believe, human life and energy are finite, and so choices must be made. Eros oft promises endless time and the energy to defeat any foe, but he lies when he says it.

Love is not necessary for a good marriage, because Eros comes and goes. He is, as every poet points out, a fickle god. Many an arranged marriage began as a duty and ended with his blessing, just recall Victoria and Albert.

Romantic love is not sufficient for a good marriage, because Eros is not the main purpose of marriage. How do I know? First, it is a lesson taught us by Plato, Shakespeare, the Bible, and our grandmothers. The wise unite in cautioning us against Eros, there is a reason he is pictured as blind. Second, Eros does not last. If a marriage is built on Eros, the fickle god will vanish and nothing will be left of the marriage.

Marriage is hard school for souls. A man and a woman, different from body to soul, come together in an explosive union so powerful that it always has the potential to create new human life. A true romantic remembers both the bliss and the pain that will come from such a risky maneuver. To enter into this state with deep disagreements on the most fundamental questions complicates it.

It is a lie that there is only one person, a soul mate, for each one of us. Some love of other good things, such as love for a country or a church, will conflict with the sanction of Eros. Such a man will turn from one beloved to another.

Even at our happiest moments, my wife and I are not only for each other. We have lives apart from service to Eros, because there is a greater god than Eros. At his best, the winged god of romance is a mere forerunner to the Love that moves the heavens and not just the human heart.

There are happy times when Eros has come to my marriage, but also times when he has vanished altogether. Adults learn the hard truth that these “hard times” can be amongst the very best times, even some of the happiest times, in a real marriage.

Friendship can blossom during the times when Eros has gone to visit other couples. He always returns, just as Valentine’s Day always returns on the calendar. One can no more bid him stay than one can make July into February, but no wise man really wants to try.

I have no idea whether Chelsea and her beloved are well suited for each other. I am not in a position to have an informed opinion, but this much is certain: the sanction of Eros is not enough. It is not enough to justify any person’s marital choices and it will not be enough to sustain the couple in the hard, but glorious school for the souls that will begin the day after the wedding.

Chelsea and her beloved have picked their life. It appears they have the sanction of Eros.

I hope they have something more.

(The title of this essay comes from a much superior piece done by the late Sheldon Vanauken and found in his Under the Mercy.)

Shaw writes that global revivals are “charismatic people movements that seek to transform their world by translating Christian truth and transferring power” (p. 28). Moreover, says Shaw, global revivals are characterized by five dynamics: spiritual, cultural, historical, global and group. Each of these dynamics corresponds to an important question:

• Spiritual: What makes a revival Christian?
• Cultural: What are the essential elements that make up a local revival?
• Historical: How do revivals develop over time?
• Global: How do global trends influence local revivals?
• Group: Why are Christian revivals so different in content and character?

Shaw’s book and case studies (he looks at the Korean Revival of 1907, the African Aladura revival of 1930, the Dornakal revival in India, the East African revival, the post-WW II revival of American evangelicalism, Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal revivals in Brazil, African Pentecostalism and Chinese house churches) are explications of these questions with attempted answers. Combining insights from sociology, anthropology, theology and biblical studies, Shaw’s study is a pleasure to read and very instructive. Though I know a bit about Christian history, I learned a lot from this book, and Shaw’s synthesis of the information is incisive and concise. In fact, it will make its readers long for revival in their own churches!

Shaw not only sees five dynamics at work in revival, but he also sees a “typical historical pattern” to global revivals. First there is the “problem stage” where there is a recognized failure of the “old ways” and the “old lights” (i.e., those promoting, supporting and upholding the “old ways”). Then comes the “paradigm stage” in which new leaders, “new lights” and new movements are born. Lastly comes the “power stage” where the new movement experiences conflict, followed by resolution, resulting in a wider impact. It is the way a movement handles conflict that spells success or failure for a revival. Shaw uses case studies to support this analysis as well, choosing global revivals of the twentieth century that illustrate each stage. Though I am no expert on global Christianity, I am convinced that Shaw’s analysis is solid and well-founded, especially in light of the evidence presented in the case studies. Finally, in the last chapter Shaw asks two concluding questions: 1) why do revivals come in such different flavors? and 2) are revivals works of God, creations of men or some combination of both? Without giving too much away, Shaw’s answers to these questions are as perceptive as the rest of the book. Though this book is more a history of global revivals than theology text on revivals per se, scholars, pastors and lay people alike will benefit from Shaw’s study, and his simple prose makes the book a rather easy read.

I first met Kenny over a decade ago because we lived on the same dorm floor as classmates at Gordon-Conwell Seminary. Kenny was a vibrant, unforgettable guy, and truly larger-than-life. He was often loud and boisterous, with a hilarious sense of humor. Me being a Red Sox fan and he being a Yankees fan, we’d let each other have it—but more often than not, he’d win (simply by virtue of the fact that he could just pick me up and hang me upside down until I cried mercy)!

I recall all the trips we took together: camping in Acadia National Park (Maine), doing a Polar Bear Dive during the first snowfall in Boston, Disney World, England (and taking a crazy overnight bus to Scotland), New York City (mainly to watch Broadway musicals—we were huge Lea Salonga fans and saw her perform in both Les Mis and Miss Saigon, though The Pirate Queen was just awful), Walden Pond (where he tried to dump me in the water), Cooperstown (Baseball Hall of Fame), eating crab in Maryland, an Orioles game at Camden Yards, Vancouver, Whistler, and Santa Barbara. He’d drive people around in his little red Honda Civic (later upgraded to a little black Mazda Miata), loving having the convertible top down, and relishing the feel of the wind as he talked theology and ministered to people. Some of my most profound spiritual moments came as he would expound theology to me in his car and we would listen to Tim Keller sermons on his iPod. It was from Kenny that I learned that the Christian life is not one extreme or the other but is often that hard middle way (and you can see that influence throughout many of my blogs—I am constantly advocating a “third way” and that was largely Kenny’s influence, via Tim Keller and the Parable of the Prodigal Son). He also gave me a piece of advice that has always stuck with me, which I often pass on to my students: “Don’t take yourself too seriously; but take God seriously. And know the difference between the two.” Kenny worked hard and played hard, but most of all, he loved all the people under his care, whether they were part of his congregation or just his friends.

I had a lot of nicknames for him: K-Rod; Dice-K; Kid ‘n Play; Kentastic; Special K; Circle K; Kendo; Kennedy Lake; Kennilicious; Kennedy International Airport; Kentucky Fried Chicken; K-Fed; Kenobi; Kid Rock; O Kenada; Clark Kenny; K Dawg; Kentucky Derby; R. Kenny; Kenny G; Kennedy Space Center; Kennebunkport; O Say Ken You See; Ken & Barbie.  He would call me, in turn: A-Rod; Mel Allen (“How about that?”); Tim Allen; Leaving Allentown; Alienation; Alaska Pipeline; Alzheimers; Alimony; Abimelek; Allen Parsons Project; Yo Arnold; Alvin the Chipmunk; Aloysius; A-1 sauce; and Alan Ye (“the way it should be spelled”).  But to those who he ministered to under his pastoral care, he was simply “PK”:  Pastor Kenny.

Kenny was a big man, and he would give you a bear hug every time he saw you. But he was more than just a big teddy bear—he knew that life was not just about encouragement but also incisive discernment, and he could cut straight to the heart of the matter better than anyone I knew. Every time I would be arrogant or stupid or trying to impress girls or trying to justify something to myself, he would call me out on it. He knew what was in a man’s heart and he never let people get away with it—but this keen counselor’s insight was always balanced with care. He was like a big brother—willing to say the hard things to me that no one else would say. But I always knew that we were family, which is why he had a right to say such things.

In many ways, he and I were opposites. He is Korean-American, and I am Chinese-American (given the fact that our surnames are so similar, he would always swear that his was the original spelling and mine was just a corruption); he’s a large guy, and I’m not particularly big; he’s a talker, I’m an emailer; he was heart and I am head. It took me only 3 years to finish my M.Div. but it took him 10, but that belies the fact that I think he was still a lot smarter than me despite all my earned degrees.We stood next to each other at graduation (because our names were ordered alphabetically) and he wept when he got his diploma because it had been a long-time coming and he had to overcome many obstacles to get there; but I still maintain that, between the two of us, he definitely had the keener mind (and a more magnanimous spirit). But I think this is part of what made Kenny what he was—things were never easy for him, so like the Parable of the Two Debtors (Luke 7:36-50), the one who possesses less has greater appreciation and thankfulness for everything in life. Or rather, he only appeared to have less, but really he had more—and that is, I think, one of the Gospel principles of Jesus’s upside-down kingdom which Kenny so often showed me by his word and his life lived out.

Kenny ended up being a pastor in Baltimore, Maryland, but he always maintained a heart for missions, regularly traveling to places like Turkey, Namibia, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka to bring the Gospel. And it was on one of these trips that he lost his life. This is the first time in my life that a close friend of mine has died. I have lost three grandparents, but it is a completely different thing to lose someone unexpectedly “before their time.” Of course I put that phrase in quotes because everything is in the Lord’s timing. Yet, that doesn’t make this pill any easier to swallow.

The main question I have been wrestling with is this: Why would God take someone who was faithfully serving him?

Reflecting on the kind of God we serve, I think we often (wrongly) still think he operates in a quid pro quo manner, i.e. he is a reactionary God: we do something wrong, we get our hands slapped; we do something right, we get rewarded. But that turns God into a predictable slot machine. And that turns Christianity into a religion of works, making it just like every other religion on earth.

The fact of the matter is, we worship a God who loves to lavish grace on us—to people who don’t deserve it. If we wanted a God who gave us our just desserts, I’d be quaking in my boots, because none of us deserve very much at all if we are rewarded according to our behavior! Now, of course some people in the Bible did lose their lives because of their sin (e.g. Uzzah;, Ananias and Sapphira), but I think that is not the usual way that God acts. This is why the Psalmist so often laments the fact that the wicked prosper and the righteous have to wait for justice to come. How long, oh Lord?

If death is often not a punishment for wrongdoing, could it possibly be just the opposite—a reward? I know that seems strange to contemplate, but Jesus did say that those who die for his sake will be accorded the highest honors in heaven. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all but one of the twelve disciples were martyred. And the Apostle Paul, himself a martyr, said: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21)

This is just speculation, but I wonder if God calls people quickly to himself if they especially please him. I have listened to a lot of Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) in my life, and unfortunately a lot of it is rubbish. But two of the most profound singers that have affected me are Keith Green and Rich Mullins. Green was considered a modern-day prophet, refusing to give us candy-coated sugary songs but instead challenging us with lyrics like:

“The world is sleeping in the dark
that the church just can’t fight ‘cause it’s asleep in the light
How can you be so dead when you’ve been so well fed?
Jesus rose from the grave and you, you can’t even get out of bed!”

And Mullins was nicknamed the “Ragamuffin Poet” because he was a modern-day St. Francis of Assisi, giving away all his money for the sake of the poor and ministering to Native Americans while living on a reservation, but expressing his theology poetically with lyrics like,

“We are frail, we are fearfully and wonderfully made,
forged in the fires of human passion
choking on the fumes of selfish rage.
And with these our hells and our heavens
so few inches apart, we must be awfully small
and not as strong as we think we are.”

Keith Green died in a plane crash and Rich Mullins died in a car accident. Why did God take the two most profound and uncompromisingly Christian CCM singers?

I am a big baseball fan, and I also think of Roberto Clemente, the first Latino to be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Clemente was not only a phenomenal hitter, he was an extraordinary Christian. He often took trips to Latin America to deliver food and other supplies to the needy. He had just reached the 3,000-hit landmark in baseball when a devastating earthquake struck Nicaragua in 1972. Roberto Clemente flew out there to deliver relief supplies to the victims and died en route in a plane crash. How do we make sense of Clemente, Green, and Mullins? I think of Rich Mullins’ prophetic song, “Elijah,” in which he says:

But when I leave I want to go out like Elijah
With a whirlwind to fuel my chariot of fire
And when I look back on the stars
Well, It’ll be like a candlelight in Central Park
And it won’t break my heart to say goodbye
…
But the Jordan is waiting
Though I ain’t never seen the other side
They say you can’t take in
The things you have here
So on the road to salvation
I stick out my thumb and He gives me a ride
And His music is already falling on my ears

Kenny, you went out like Elijah, now go with God. I take comfort in knowing that we will see each other again.

“Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.” (Psalm 116:15)
“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” (Matthew 10:28)
“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” (Luke 9:24)

at Kennedy Lake, Canada

I find that the three biggest assumptions/obstacles that postmodern Western atheists have are universalism, relativism, and tolerance. Before anything else, you have to address these three issues otherwise they cannot move on to other thoughts.

Regarding universalism, I point out that it is an untenable position to hold that all religions are the same. There is a reason that interreligious worship services never work: they appeal to no one. No Muslim or Buddhist or Christian or Jew will say that their religion is the same as the others; if there is anything they can all agree on, it’s that each religion is not the same as, and cannot be blurred with, the others. Maybe Hinduism can say this, as they have 100 million gods, but all other religions argue for exclusivity as one of their characteristics.

As for relativism (really, universalism is just a subset of relativism), that does not hold water either, because everyone (even postmodernists!) operates on standards of absolute truths, otherwise you cannot do science or logic. We cannot even be having this conversation if there is not an assumption of absolute truth, otherwise we would not even make sense to one another, because language is predicated on mutual assent of what words mean. And the statement “All truth is relative” is in and of itself an absolute statement, so it undermines itself by its own force.

Finally, the issue of tolerance is not a bad one if it is balanced by free speech. In Western democracies, we believe in both, and they seem to go together if tolerance means “I will accept your right to believe as you wish.” However, tolerance has become twisted to mean, “Everyone should leave everyone else alone—you can do whatever you want to do, as long as it doesn’t infringe on me in the least.” This is absurd thinking; a society is based on social relationships, and it is impossible for people to not be affected by anybody else. Unless one were to go into a cave and become a hermit, our ideas will affect each other—but that is for the better. We are not a totalitarian society where nobody is allowed to say anything that anybody else disagrees with. Rather, the tension is between “I have the right to try to convince you of my position,” and “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”* It is my right to tell you what I think; and it is your right to hold whatever position you think. This is how free speech and tolerance go hand in hand. Jim Wallis has a great quote: “Faith is always personal but never private.” He highlights a distinction that is often missed by many atheists and liberals. Religion has always been public and corporate. The solution is not to remove religion from the public sphere, but to respect each other’s rights to express our faith openly, so long as the ones who profess faith do not use force or undue coercion to achieve their ends (and it goes without saying that those who do not profess faith should not use force or undue coercion against those who do!). So, if you will allow me to speak my mind, and indeed to tell you that you are wrong (and to give plausible reasons why), I will also promise to listen to your side equally, and to leave you alone when you feel enough is enough.

(For more on navigating the difficulties between modernism and postmodernism, and why I don’t think that postmodernism is the evil many Evangelical Christians think it is, see my blog here)

If you can lay the foundation with the above, then I ask them to consider three major questions, in this order:
1) Is there such thing as the divine?
2) If there is a divine, is it polytheistic or monotheistic?
3) If it’s monotheistic, then is it Judaism, Christianity, or Islam?

Regarding the first question, consider the world (this is what Christians call general revelation). The second law of thermodynamics is entropy, the fact that everything descends into chaos unless there is intelligence behind it to create and maintain order. The way the world works, from the ecosystem down to our own physical bodies, is utterly amazing and more finely complex than any machine or computer ever created. Is this all an accident? I think you have to have more faith to believe in this universe being a huge accident than that there was intelligent design behind it. (I don’t think it’s helpful to tackle the creation-evolution debate at this point; that is a rabbit trail which will often be an unnecessary diversion. Suffice it to say that we are not talking about whether things change, but whether there is a God as a source behind it all, which are two different questions).

As for the second question, if they assent to the possibility of the divine, then you have to ask whether there is one God or a multiplicity of gods. Throughout human history, the tendency is toward polytheism. I think that this is our sinful nature hardwired into us. We love to worship celebrities, objects, ideas, trends, saints, and objects of our romantic affection. At its most extreme, we have pantheism, where even rocks and trees are gods. It goes against our nature to worship only one God. There is a parallel to be drawn with sex (the Bible draws this parallel too, as the word “to know” in Hebrew can mean either to worship God, or to have sex with a woman—and worshiping another god is akin to committing adultery). Men especially, if given free reign, would want to sleep with a multiplicity of women; monogamy goes against our nature. However, to stay with one God or one woman is much healthier in the long run. Even the most atheistic men, if they sleep with many women, end up in disaster (e.g. Tiger Woods). To stay loyal to one (God or woman) ultimately is more rewarding and is less fraught with peril. There is one other argument for monotheism: it actually makes more sense in terms of divine sovereignty. In Greek mythology, it does not matter if you worship Zeus, or Athena, or Apollo, or no god at all. You are just as likely to be harmed or helped no matter what you do, because the gods war against each other, so in a sense it is absolutely pointless to honor any divinity. (Take Hektor from the Iliad, for example—he was the best worshiper of Zeus, but that helped him not a whit in his battle against Achilles, because Zeus turned against his very own man). In fact, probably the best way to keep from harm is to avoid catching the attention of the gods at all, then they will just leave you alone. No, if there is the divine at all, monotheism goes against our urges, but it is the only way that works and makes sense in the final analysis.

Finally, the third question: if monotheism, then why Christianity (rather than Islam or Judaism)? One answer is that it’s the most egalitarian religion in the world. It is the only religion which says that your salvation is not predicated on what you do, but only by faith. If works is the basis for your salvation, then of course some people have greater knowledge or ability or tenacity or strength, and access to God ends up being inherently unequal. But anybody can have faith! This levels the playing field. In addition, Christianity is the most widespread religion in the world; it is not localized in one place, unlike all the other religions (Islam in the Middle East and North Africa, Hinduism in India, Buddhism in SE and East Asia, Judaism in Israel). If there is truly a God up there, and he truly loves the world, I think he would give everyone the best chance to know him, namely a worldwide geographical spread combined with the “easiest” access to him. (Of course this is a very crude way in which to put Christianity, but we’re working with their starting assumptions for the moment; you can’t get more refined until they have accepted certain other premises first). Christianity is the most egalitarian religion in the world, it is the most widespread religion in the world, and it is the most accessible religion in the world. As people mature and go further in discipleship, they will find that the road is not easy, but the initial entry into the community of faith is more open than any other religion on earth.

I want to end, though, by saying that all of the above is based on logic. Logic is great, but when it comes to heart vs. head, heart wins every time. I know of a lot of Christians who may not have all their questions answered, but they know in their heart that God is real and alive in them. They have vibrant faith. On the other hand, I have been able to “win” theological arguments with atheists, but at the end of the day, though they may not have the answers to rebut me, they will not assent to Christianity because their hearts are not changed. Yes, it takes both—head and heart—but you can have the latter with less of the former; you cannot have the former without a strong dose of the latter. And, ultimately, you must love them. This is not just a check-off list; anybody you engage must be someone you care about. They can see straight through you if you do not care for them, and your words will ring falsely. Invest in people, love them, and by doing so hopefully they will see God’s love in you.

*This latter quote is attributed to Voltaire, but never appears in his writings. It comes from The Friends of Voltaire, written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall and published in 1906 under the pseudonym Stephen G. Tallentyre. Despite its origins, I like it, much as I like the quote (falsely) attributed to St. Augustine: “In things essential, unity. In things nonessential, diversity. In all things, charity.”

People are all similar. Reality does not change from person to person, but the interpretation of reality can be different. Nobody should be so “nice” they end up insulting other faiths by refusing to admit they make truth claims that cannot be sustained.

If one religion says that it is good for people to be poor and another that it is evil, then both cannot be right. The law of non-contradiction does not stop at the church door.

Just because a religion, or religious person, gets something wrong does not mean it gets everything wrong. Old and tested ideas, like all the great world religions, must get more right than wrong in order to have survived the hardest test of all: time.

Most great religions are mostly right, but “mostly” is not good enough. Making an error in physics, even a small one, can be fatal to the body. Making a metaphysical error, even a tiny one, can be fatal to the soul.

Christianity proves to be the best explanation for the world as it is: both the metaphysical and the physical. Some religions downplay the importance of nature and others downplay the importance of the spiritual reality. Both are too simple to explain a cosmos full of matter, energy, and personality. Mind does not come from matter and matter does not come from mind.

Christianity, with Judaism and Islam, gets this balance right, but Christianity also has an explanation for the life of Jesus. Jesus, so great nobody can ignore Him, stands at the center of history. His empty tomb demands explanation and His wisdom compels respect. Who is Jesus? Only Christianity adequately explains His marvelous life.

Christianity also built marvelous cultures. It can inspire Bach to his great Mass in B Minor and Newton to his science. It has built great churches in Ethiopia, hospitals in India, and colleges in Idaho. Every inquisitor inspired a Dostoevsky, bad bishop a Saint Francis, fundamentalist a Thomas Aquinas.

Christianity, though not always Christians, has been good, true, and beautiful. To the extent that any religion does not acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus it has gotten something dramatically wrong. It is not explaining all the data.

Or so it seems to me.

Metaphysical reality is, however, not different from person to person, so mature faiths tend to agree on many “big ideas.” Love just is greater than hate. Libertine sexual values have never built a culture, but have destroyed many. Judaism and Islam particularly deserve our respect. Christianity owes its existence to Judaism and has learned much from Muslims. Both can sustain both science and high culture.

I have gained great insight into my life from other religions and from people who disagree with me. Even if Christianity is true, it does not contain all truths and many Christians have misunderstood the truths it contains. Any reasonable believer would also admit that he might be totally wrong and open-minded to other possibilities.

Studying the works of other Christian traditions or other faiths is never a waste of time. I have always learned something or enriched my own faith in the process. For example, I spent a profitable year studying the Book of Mormon. At the end, I did not think the Book of Mormon was the Word of God, but I did think it a work of literary genius. It was often compatible with my beliefs, it got much right, but the differences were important and real. The claims of traditional Christianity and Mormonism could not both be true. Reading it stretched me mentally and, even though I came to reject the truth of its unique religious claims, the sheer act of carefully reading Mormon apologists was good for me.

Faith is wonderful, because it allows you to wonder! You commit yourself to your faith and then you see.

There is only one group that does not deserve our respect: the extremist wrapped in certainty. From the jihadist to the Dawkensian atheist, a certain personality type is sure about the big questions. Their opposites are all fools or cads and they can dismiss every different religious point of view as wrong, obviously wrong.

These people lack faith, because all they have is certainty. Certainty leads to a loss of wonder, because there comes to be nothing to wonder about. Those atheists, theists, Christians, Jews, Hindus, or any other philosophical tradition that commit themselves, but are still wondering about things, deserve our respect and attention.

The journey to see the Good is long, but even if it lasted a thousand years I am convinced that if we are motivated by love and pursue it, then we will see Him at last clearly. Lord how I want to be in that number!

We have watched hundreds of parents drop their kids off at camp or college and have learned a few things in the process. As parental mistakes were made we came to recognize those parents: the ones who made growing up much harder for their adult children. Of course, there is nothing like living a situation . . . recently Hope and I realized that under pressure we easily become those parents.

We see some parents forced to realize their kids are headed in destructive directions. These kids are not just growing up, they are going bad. This is sad to see. Dealing with that situation requires special grace. Some kids’ biggest assets are their parents and their problems are self-induced.

Those parents, however, have basically decent adult children whose biggest problem is Mom or Dad! That is an entirely different situation.

Whenever we find ourselves becoming those parents, we try to remember five things.

First, those parents do nothing to prepare themselves or their children for the transition to adulthood. They let it fall on their kids in one huge change.

How can you make the transition smoother?

Send your son or daughter to “college camp” to get them used to the experience. Treat it as if they were actually leaving for good. Next week our oldest daughter will go to Wheatstone, a first-rate academic summer camp, as preparation for college.

Between ages seventeen and eighteen transition family governance from “obey” to “honor.” Small children obey their parents, while older children honor them. In our household, by the time our children leave the house, they are making all their own decisions. Of course, if they live in our house, they must be respectful, but in the way any adult would be.

We reach an agreement with our adult children about house responsibilities (or rent!) and then honor their autonomy.  We want our children to grow to be decision making adults. My Dad and Mom are excellent examples of this as they have gladly moved from “authority figures” to wise mentors and guides.

Dad would give me counsel in college, but not “orders.”

Of course, the most extreme sort of those parents try to treat their adult children as little kids. You can use money or guilt for a short time to “win” struggles with your adult children, but this is surely folly. A wise parent knows that short term victories only lead to long term defeat. Time is on the side of your child!

Besides, turning the loving relationship between parents and children into a matter of winning or losing is a bad idea in any case.

Second, those parents think it no longer matters what they do. The kids are “raised” so parents can cut loose.

Mature adults remember that “parenting” is done, but you are still a parent.  Many parents of my college students go mad. In extreme cases, Dad will abandon his family because “the kids are grown.”  In less extreme cases, the parents become unavailable or think that their example no longer matters.

While we no longer rule over our children’s lives, we still reign as heads of the family. Adult children are no longer our subjects to give orders, but we can still lead by example. Hope and I want to show our adult children how to age well and that it is possible to be middle-aged, virtuous, and happy!

Third, those parents believe they always know best. They react to increased knowledge on the part of their children by diminishing the importance of whatever their child is learning.

Good parents accept that after a camp like Wheatstone or college, your adult children will often have gained wisdom from which you can learn. My sons and daughters have competencies that I do not and so I have learned to be guided by their knowledge. The joy of parenting a large brood is that one gains “in house” experts in dozens of areas!

As my kids have headed for college, Hope and I have gained the benefit of smart kids who can correct us. My son, heading into his junior year at the Torrey Honors Institute, will correct my errors or teach me the meaning of texts he has studied more closely than I have.

This increase in knowledge is a great benefit, but it goes beyond this.  If we raised our children well, they will also be wise. Hope and I have no corner on virtue and sometimes they will be right and we will be wrong when it comes to the deeper things. Learning this is even more difficult on our foolish pride!

Recently, I lost my temper and my adult son had to remind me that this was wrong. He did so gently and with great respect, but he was right and I was in the wrong. I appreciated his insight.

Having a son who loves you and gently gives you advice is a great blessing to a Dad.

Fourth, those parents think they can pick their children’s major.

If a parent is paying for education, they have a right to set some boundaries, but I have never seen telling an adult child that they must major in “x” to work. If your kid is impractical and majors in something you think useless, just try to see that they get a good general education. Life will teach them if they have chosen wisely.

Remember: there is no major so “useless” as to lead to no jobs.

We want our children to be happy and so know that they must find careers for themselves. Sometimes happy people have jobs and their “avocation” (such as community theater or music) are their actual careers. Generations of church ladies knew that one need not get all their satisfaction from paid work.

Fifth, those parents value prestige over true education.

I have talked to parents, many parents, who don’t care about the actual quality of the education their adult child will receive. What matters most to them is the “name brand.” There is some sense to this, but not much.

It is true that a diploma from Shiny U might get you a first job, but then performance will tell the tale. A hard worker, with an actual education, from a less shiny university will do better long term than a fast starter with a good diploma, but no real education.

How do you know a school that will give you a good education? Here are three signs. First, class size is less than twenty in all your adult child’s classes (including general education). Second, classes mostly are taught by full time (not adjunct) faculty. Third, the conservatory is better than the football team.

Of course, no parent should feel obligated to pay for a school that is unaccredited or a diploma mill.

No matter what you think, however, your adult child will have to make this choice. He may choose poorly, but if his school is accredited, then his decision is rational enough to be respected.

As I say good-bye to the child Mary Kate, I am saying hello to my adult daughter. Someday it is possible that our relationship will change again, and she will be the caregiver and I will be the one who receives care. Remembering this, and because of love, I will try to do to her as I wish, someday, Mary Kate will do to me.

But during Easter week in April of 1779, Simeon got saved. He came to understand the real meaning of the Christian faith in which he had been nominally raised, and trusted Jesus Christ to deliver him from sin and condemnation. For a period of several months following his conversion, Simeon found those “irreverently performed” mandatory chapel services to be a source of powerful inspiration.

such was the state of my soul for many months from that time that the prayers were as marrow and fatness to me. Of course there was great difference in my frames at different times; but for the most part they were very devout, and often, throughout a great part of the service, I prayed unto the Lord ‘with strong crying and tears.’

Picture the scene. Imagine the worst Jane Austen clergyman you can, droning his way heartlessly and artlessly through a read-aloud Book of Common Prayer liturgy for a captive audience of undergrads. And there, under the voice of a priest who has forgotten how to communicate reverence, in a crowd of college kids who don’t want to be there, Charles Simeon is taking in the word of God from the mouth of the Lord himself, and pouring out his own prayers to God in the language of Holy Scripture and the 16th century wordsmithing of Cranmer. Maybe nobody else was having church, but Simeon was. He goes on:

This is a proof to me that the deadness and formality experienced in the worship of the Church arise far more from the low state of our graces than from any defect in our Liturgy. If only we had our hearts deeply penitent and contrite, I know from my experience at this hour that no prayers in the world could be better suited to our wants or more delightful to our souls.

Not long ago, somebody (Harold Best, ultimately) put a nice phrase into circulation: Easily edified. It captures a frame of mind in which a person can be built up and inspired by just about anything. Simeon had this virtue. Not only in the rapturous experiences he had in the months following his conversion, but also, in a more softened and sustainable way, throughout his long life, Simeon was easily edified. Just a word or two of Scripture could encourage him or call his mind into the presence of God.

“Easily edified.” What would it be like to for a pastor to preach a sermon to a congregation of spirits who were easily edified, who didn’t require an especially impressive showing, and who didn’t think that some technical tweaking or reinventing of the structure of the worship service would generate enough pressure to force edification into them? What would it be like to be so easily edified that you could tolerate, and even benefit from, the weak and even misguided attempts at spiritual encouragement that are offered to you by well-meaning believers?

Great. Great is what it would be.

Well, clear your reading schedule, because this time I really mean it. We have mostly forgotten Charles Simeon (1759-1836), and he is well worth remembering. His name used to be synonymous with evangelical preaching, and it is not a good sign that he has lapsed out of our memory. UNJUSTLY NEGLECTED, I dare say. Here are some leading ideas and reading suggestions:

The Ultimate Pastor
Simeon was appointed as Minister (or “Perpetual Curate”) of Holy Trinity Church in Cambridge at age 23, and he preached there for the next 54 years, until his death at age 77 in 1836. He didn’t look around and consider other jobs or opportunities, he just took his post and stayed at it faithfully for well over five decades. He encouraged and inspired missionaries (the UNJUSTLY NEGLECTED Henry Martyn), supported all kinds of evangelistic and educational work, and read widely about current events. But week in and week out, the main work he did was the work of the Christian pastor: bringing the word of God to the people of God. He was very well educated (Kings College, Cambridge) and had an able intellect, but he honed his sermons and pastoral counseling to make sure that his words were profitable to everyone in his parish, educated or not. He found other outlets for the more intellectual side of his gifts, and his sermons always gave his listeners plenty to think about, but for Simeon the question was always, for fifty-four years, how can I bring this passage of scripture to my people in a way that will accomplish three goals simultaneously: “to humble the sinner; to exalt the Saviour; to promote holiness?” Everything else Simeon accomplished was based on this commitment.

A Builder, Not a Destroyer
The Church of England that Simeon was raised in was in trouble. All the life had drained out of the elaborate forms, everybody was Christian in name only, and churches were so empty that one pastor could perform four services at four separate churches in a single morning by riding quickly from town to town and skipping the churches that put out a “No Congregation Here Today” flag. As a boy, Simeon heard his culture’s message clearly: don’t take this Christian thing too seriously. But when he went to college, the Provost announced a policy that everybody had to take communion at the beginning of the semester. The very idea left him thunderstruck. He had never thought about the whole thing before, but now he thought of it: what is communion, what is Christianity, what is church, who is Jesus, what does God expect of me? Simeon threw himself into studying the meaning of the lord’s supper, the Old Testament sacrificial system, and the Biblical plan for dealing with human sin. He was convinced, converted, and took that mandatory communion as a new believer in Christ.

Simeon was saved by a mandatory chapel requirement; one that he took far more seriously than the people requiring it of him. And that was characteristic of him. After all, what was a pastor expected to be in the Church of England in the late 1700s? Picture Mr. Collins from Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice: that’s your Anglican clergyman of the time. Or, to be more fair, look at the debate about ordination in Mansfield Park, where the clever young socialite makes it clear that promising young men of real talent are expected to avoid a useless job like the priesthood. Simeon knew how low the expectations were for pastoring. But he accepted the call as if it were coming from a higher authority, because it was. He took Christian ministry seriously even when everything about his age encouraged him not to.

A lot of Anglicans worried about Simeon’s evangelical preaching, especially as it began to be effective in the lives of his congregation. Their worry was that these people would wake up out of their spiritual slumber and leave the established church. After all, if these Anglicans are going to start acting like Methodists, what’s to keep them from becoming Methodists? (You have to imagine a world long ago and far away in which “Methodist” meant “marked by spiritual vitality and excitement.”) Revived church members might also move down the street to the Baptist meeting house, or some other “dissenting body.” In other words, the Church of England was in such a bad state that it couldn’t even afford a revival, for fear it would leak members to other churches. But Simeon was a Church of England man, and without being bigoted or un-ecumenical, he stayed at his Anglican post and preached with all his might.

What He Preached
Simeon’s message was a well-rounded presentation of the Bible’s main, central truths, applied to Christian experience, in reliance on the power of God’s word and Spirit. His sermons ranged over a territory as wide as Scripture itself, but what I have found in Simeon’s work is an applied trinitarian theology. He certainly believed, with all Christendom, that the one God is eternally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but what comes to the fore in Simeon’s preaching is the way the gospel itself depends on that Triune God. To believe in Christ is to experience fellowship with the three persons, and the Christian who has that experience will understand the nature of sin and salvation more fully. Simeon drew the connection between salvation and the Trinity quite directly. Here is a passage from his sermon (Sermon Number 2,063!) “On the Uses of the Law:”

I say, then, without a distinct knowledge of the moral law we can have no just sentiments respecting the Holy Spirit and his operations. The less is required of us, the less there is for him to do within us. And hence it is, that many deny the necessity of his influences altogether, either for the illumination of our minds, or the sanctification of our souls. The truth is that the whole denial of the doctrine of the Trinity, and of all the doctrines dependent on it–the doctrine of the atonement, of imputed righteousness, and of divine influences–must be traced to this source. Men feel not their need of a Divine Saviour; they feel not the need of an Almighty Agent, to work in them the whole work of God. Hence their principles of theology are brought down to the low standard of the Pelagian, Arian, and Socinian hypotheses.

One of the uses of the law, apparently, is to teach the necessity of the Trinity acting for our salvation. And the doctrines that Simeon says are “dependent on” the doctrine of the Trinity are precisely the doctrines that he became famous for preaching: the atonement, imputed righteousness, and divine influences. He preached about sin and salvation to show that our situation is so bad it takes the Trinity to save us.

What to Read by Simeon:
Simeon’s lifework was preaching, and he put it into print for us. His masterpiece is the twenty-one volume series of sermons on the entire Bible, originally published as Horae Homileticae and later given the less formidable title Expository Outlines on the Whole Bible. These sermons are uncanny. They cover the whole Bible, but not as commentaries. Instead, they answer the question, “If you had to preach on this passage, what would you say?” His judgment is nearly always right. If you are assigned a passage to preach or teach, check into Simeon and see what he focuses on: you may have a reason to deviate from his decision, but it had better be a good reason. Simeon knew a method of presenting the main ideas of each passage, memorably and effectively, and that method is both explained and exemplified in the Horae.

Okay, how do you get a copy of the Horae Homileticae? If you’re near a good theology library, they ought to have it. Remember, you don’t need all 21 volumes, just the one that’s relevant to the book of the Bible you’re currently studying in devotions or with your church. Logos software has apparently digitized the whole thing and has it for sale. The price is pretty steep for the 21-volume set, in my opinion. Google Books has scanned Yale’s copy of Volume 13 (on Luke and John); how much longer until the other volumes appear there? (Aside: What if Google Books, in digitizing everything not copyrighted, providentially puts the great tradition of 19th century evangelicalism back into circulation? God Googles in mysterious ways…)

Regent College Publishing has a good selection of sermons in print under the title Evangelical Preaching, selected by James Houston and introduced by John Stott.

Helps to Composition, or Six Hundred Sermon Skeletons, is available online. Not excited about reading skeletons? Spurgeon said of Simeon’s sermon outlines, “They have been called ‘a valley of dry bones’: Be a prophet and they will live.”

Also available online are three sermon series, Offices of the Holy Spirit, The Gospel Message, and The Excellency of the Liturgy.

Where to Read More About Simeon:

The biggest and most comprehensive biography is Carus’ Memoir. Available online, but try something shorter and more focused first.

For instance, H.C.G. Moule, the great evangelical bishop of Durham, wrote a short biography of him that’s also available online. This book has the virtue of being written about a spiritual giant by another spiritual giant. He gets some details scrambled and indulges in some digressions, but Moule on Simeon is a worthy read.

Max Warren wrote a booklet about Simeon, which can be read in full at the Church Society website.

And two people who have taken the edge off of the NEGLECTED side of Simeon’s UNJUST NEGLECT are John Piper and Adrian Warnock. Piper has done a great job of reminding this generation about how Simeon handled adversity: read or listen to Brothers, We Must Not Mind a Little Suffering. And the excitable Warnock has written about Simeon often enough that he has a “Simeon” category on his blog index!

(This is re-posted from July 2008, because I’m actually in Cambridge right now teaching about Simeon.)

He wrote great Bible commentaries, an outline of Christian doctrine, and many sermons and poems. When the editors of The Fundamentals wanted to assign the very important article on Justification by Faith, they turned to Moule for a clear, concise, moving chapter on the doctrine.

There are many good stories from Moule’s life, but one of my favorites is the story of his correspondence with a schoolgirl who started writing to him as a joke. She and her brother chose two Anglican bishops with well-known and sharply contrasting doctrinal views, and wrote to them with hard questions. The idea behind their prank was to get the bishops battling with each other by luring them to make strong statements in private correspondence. The instigators chose the topics of private confession and the elements of communion. They expected Moule, a strong evangelical bishop, to criticize the high church variety of Anglicanism with bitter scorn.

They were all set for a fun round of rock-em-sock-em bishops. Instead, Moule struck up a correspondence that went right to the heart of the matter, and wrote to the girl as a real person with a real question and an eternal soul. In her own words, what he said to her “…so went home to me that I owned up and begged his pardon” for the prank. “He became my beloved and honoured friend, ever more dear and trusted until his departure from this life.”

A book of Moule’s letters has nearly a whole chapter of letters to this girl as she grew older and more serious, and Moule continued giving her counsel as she obviously grappled with some hard questions about her self-image and identity as a believer who didn’t fit in well. Here is the best letter, between the lines of which you can tell what a sensitive spiritual guide HCG Moule was, and how blessed this prankster was to have chosen Moule to torment.

Oct 2, 1913:

… I take affectionate note of all you say, and I think, in a sense, I understand it all. And not one word makes me doubt the reality and truth of your knowledge of the Lord Jesus and your love for Him. Nay, word after word makes me only surer of it. And again, I don’t for a moment expect you to exchange your character for somebody else’s. Grace does not make us correct copies of other people in that sort of way. It was not so in the first days, so no wonder it is not so now. Paul, Peter, Thomas, Mary Magdalene, you see the personal character quite strong and clear in each always. God is in them, and works in and through them. But He works along the lines of the nature He had given. So I shall never expect in you the elimination of a certain strong element (may I say it?) of the boy-nature which in some girls and women is so strong and can take forms so vivid and so bright. In that sense, be not afraid (as to conscience) of being yourself.

There is a vile principle abroad to-day among the semi-pagan people who are so often met with in modern life –that the great thing is to ‘fulfil yourself’; to ‘do as you please irrespective of parents, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters.’ It is the rebel-devil’s parody of liberty –liberty, which without the noble balance of loyalty to right is licence, the straight path to basest slavery. But the vile principle is a travesty of the true principle; ‘let the Lord fulfil you on the lines on which He made you, as to individual cast of character.’

On the other side never forget that the Lord Jesus in us is meant to ‘fufil Himself’ through us. And so our call is, not in slavery but in worshipping loyalty, to bring without reserve every habit and way to Him to be examined and dealt with. Not as a censor but as a loving friend I particularly beg you to do this, day by day, with the points you so delightfully take me into counsel about. I’ll say nothing in detail about any one of them. I only say this –you have, in honest purpose, given yourself and your life to your most dear Redeemer and Master. Talk it out on your knees, sometimes, with Him.

Above all, in His Word get more and more into sympathetic touch with Him ‘the great companion.’ That companionship will mould your life, not with cast-iron patterns but touches of the Master’s living hand, into more and more correspondence with e.g. Philippians iv. 8.

–Letters and Poems of Bishop Moule: Selections from the Spiritual Letters and Poems of Handley Carr Glyn Moule Bishop of Durham (1901-1920), ed. John Battersby Harford (canon of Ripon) (London: Marshall Brothers Ltd, 1921?)

(This is reposted from May 2008. I’m trying to get back into the blogging habit after a few months away)

In a recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal praising Bol’s ‘radical Christianity’ and chiding sports journalists’ tendency to ignore the Christian faith that energizes selflessness like Bol’s, Jon Shields writes:

Bol reportedly gave most of his fortune, estimated at $6 million, to aid Sudanese refugees. As one twitter feed aptly put it: “Most NBA cats go broke on cars, jewelry & groupies. Manute Bol went broke building hospitals.”

I don’t know about you, but ‘Africa’ is a really big idea. I know there is so much pain there; there is also so much life. And to speak of such a massive continent as one thing like ‘Africa’ likely does more injustice than justice to those who live there. Like many Americans, I suffer the paralysis that comes in knowing that this is a place bigger than I can imagine. How do I begin to think about, pray for, learn from, attend to ‘Africa’?

Flannery O’Connor wrote that ‘somewhere is better than anywhere’. The mistake I make – maybe you make it, too – comes when I try to think about ‘the needs of the world’ or ‘the beauty of the world’ rather than starting with the needs or the beauty of somewhere in particular.

So why not Sudan? Why not begin there, by learning and praying and listening to the history of the peoples of Sudan? One thing we will quickly learn is that the geopolitical entity we call ‘Sudan’ was cobbled together recently, tragically and artificially. The north and the south have been shoehorned into one nation and continue to suffer the consequences of that forced marriage. They will decide soon about whether to break apart.

But how are we to learn more about a particular place? The news is a good place to start. Again, I drown in all the news of tragedy. I become numb too it so quickly, or at best collapse into sentimentalism and offer a quick, vague prayer. So why not begin with looking for news on Sudan? Why not learn about the church in Sudan? About the challenges to mission there? About the people who live there, their landscape and history, their joys and anguish.

Still, news can feel like a string of isolated crises, without a narrative to make sense of them, without a sense of their past or future. Here is where literature comes in. The novel is suited – perhaps uniquely so – to train its readers in empathy. The whole point of things is that we ‘lose ourselves’ in a novel and ‘identify with’ a protagonist. Stories train us morally, socially and spiritually. (Stanley Hauerwas has much to say on this. His recent memoir is well worth a read.)

Of course, there’s a real danger that stories will idealize or deal falsely with the people and place it purports to evoke. This is always a danger in story-telling, whether in the news or a novel; but it is one of which we ought to be aware.

A good place to start is the riveting What Is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng by Dave Eggers. Eggers is the author of the much-lauded and much-read (this being a rare randem) A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Valentino Achak Deng is one of the ‘lost boys’ of Sudan who had been separated from their families (usually orphaned) in the rapacious violence in southern Sudan and walked across the country to a (relatively) safe haven in Ethiopia and Kenya. Like many of the lost boys, Deng emigrated to the United States. After arriving in Atlanta, he was encouraged to tell his story. Someone connected him with Eggers, and the writer set to putting Deng’s story down.

In a preface, Deng clarifies: ‘It should be known to the readers that I was very young when some of the events in the book took place, and as a result we simply had to pronounce What Is the What a novel. I could not, for example, recount some conversations that took place seventeen years ago. However it should be noted that all of the major events in the book are true. The book is historically accurate, and the world I have known is not different from the one depicted within these pages.’

It is a difficult book – not in its prose, as Eggers is less a wordsmith than a storyteller with an eye for incident, narrative flow and device. His moving back and forth between Deng’s life in Atlanta and his life in Sudan and various refugee camps bridges the gap between ‘here’ and ‘there’, ‘us’ and ‘them’ very effectively. The novel opens with a break-in in Deng’s apartment. At that point and others he longs to tell his assailants just who he is and what he has experienced. People treat him as an object or an instrument, but not as a person with a history. In effect, the novel invites its readers to treat Deng and others like him as a person with a history. It succeeds in that it refuses to turn a blind eye to Deng’s hardship, but also in that it refuses to reduce him to an object of pity. He suffers horrible loss; he also grows up, falls in love, goes to school.

Eggers’ remarkable achievement is to have written a piece of activistic art. It is good writing, a piece of literature that needs to be read on its own merit; it is also activism, in that Eggers chooses to tell this story. So much of contemporary American literature documents the alienation and malaise of the middle class. Think Philip Roth, John Updike. Movies to the same. Think American Beauty. This is a certain kind of truthtelling; and insofar as it is truthful and self-indicting, we can admire and be grateful for it. But Eggers’ work quite consciously refuses to collapse into this narcissistic gaze, turning our attention instead to a place where it is not love that it is a battlefield, but a battlefield that is a battlefield. And he does it beautifully, somehow evoking empathy without bludgeoning the reader.

Manute Bol is a minor hero in What Is the What. He is a pioneer of sorts, a promise of what life after war might become. Even more, he is a model of self-sacrifice and of faithful remembrance, of refusing to turn his back on his home. Jon Shields again:

‘When his fortune dried up, Bol raised more money for charity by doing what most athletes would find humiliating: He turned himself into a humorous spectacle. Bol was hired, for example, as a horse jockey, hockey player and celebrity boxer. Some Americans simply found amusement in the absurdity of him on a horse or skates. And who could deny the comic potential of Bol boxing William “the Refrigerator” Perry, the 335-pound former defensive linemen of the Chicago Bears?

‘Bol agreed to be a clown. But he was not willing to be mocked for his own personal gain as so many reality-television stars are. Bol let himself be ridiculed on behalf of suffering strangers in the Sudan; he was a fool for Christ.’

Manute Bol’s funeral was Tuesday, June 29.