The Web Site and Blog of Pastor Chris Brauns
According to the AP:
DENVER (AP) – The Associated Press has learned that James Dobson has resigned as chairman of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family.
Jim Daly, president and chief executive officer of the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based ministry, said Friday that Dobson will continue to host the organization’s flagship radio program and speak out on moral issues.
More here.
HT: PK Musings
If you go to the Blazing Center (click here) you can enter a contest to win a free copy of my book.
“Only the possibility of offense (the antidote to the apologists’ sleeping potion) is able to waken those who have fallen asleep, is able to break the spell so that Christianity is itself again.” Soren Kierkegaard
Along with that, it’s in the Bible.
It isn’t that a bunch of intellects actually show up for coffee. I listen to them speak off the printed page. Books are stacked all around me at church and home and I turn from one to the other as though it was someone else’s turn to talk. During the sermons, I don’t tell you about all the influences during the week. It would be a distraction. But, I thought for this week (especially given the nature of the topic) you might benefit from knowing some of the people that I invited into my study.
Christopher J.H. Wright recently wrote a book called The God I Don’t Understand: Reflections on Tough Questions of Faith. Wright is one of the most brilliant-living Old Testament scholars. Per the web, he is “an Irishman who lives in London, with his heart firmly planted in the Majority World! Chris, with his wonderful wife Liz alongside, has pastored a local parish church, taught at a top seminary in India, served as President of a key Christian college, and authored a dozen books. Chris also serves as Chair of the Lausanne Committee’s Theological Education Commission and as honorary president of the Tearfund in the UK.”
Tremper Longman III is an Old Testament professor at Westminster (Per Servicemaster, he is now at Westmont) . Longman wrote, God is a Warrior and in the book, Show Them No Mercy: 4 Views on God and Canaanite Genocide. If you get really interested in the topic of this sermon, then you will want to read this book.
The British scholar Richard Hess wrote a commentary on Joshua I consulted. I know little about Hess. I benefited from what he wrote. I wrote down this quote and we’ll get to it in the sermon, “Christ takes upon himself the sin of the world and becomes the victim of the holy war that God wages against sin (2 Cor 5:21) (Hess, 46).” I also have a commentary by a former Calvin professor named Woudstra.
Wendell Berry writes both fiction and essays. He farms in Kentucky. His books consider how modernity is reshaping life. Berry is part of a Baptist church though his writings are not theologically explicit or sophisticated in the manner of Flannery O’Connor. Berry takes issue with individualism and modernity and by virtue of that interest was sitting at the table in my study part of the week. (I actually had to go home and get him at lunch). I listened to Berry through both his essays and his fiction. Berry refuses to have a computer. His wife types his for him on a Royal typewriter.
I have been thinking this week too about Flannery O’Connor, who wrote fiction. Catholic, she was more theological than Wendell Berry (and harder to read too). She died when she was only 39. In addition to attending the University of Iowa (despite being a Southerner through and through) she was a literary genius. Miss O’Connor suffered terribly physically, but her writing has a depth because of it. A Wheaton professor, Jill Palaez Baumgaertner has helped me understand O’Connor. See Flannery O’Connor: A Proper Scaring. She and I swapped e-mails this week.
Justin Taylor is a blogger who works at Crossway. He is the managing editor for the ESV study Bible. He wrote a post, “How Could God Command Genocide?” which I reread for this sermon. I know Justin just a little personally through my relationship with Crossway.
Dan Block is a professor at Wheaton. I have spent two different study retreats with him. I consulted an unpublished handout he wrote that has the title, The Ethics of Israel’s Conquest of Canaan.
The book, Hard Sayings of the Bible, by Walt Kaiser (he handed me my doctoral diploma), Davids, Bruce, and Brauch is a good one to think about owning. It is published by IVP.
Al Mohler has written a post that documents the alarming spread of pornography.
The scourge of pornography is now so pervasive that it begins to define the culture at large. America is fast transforming itself from a society that allows and markets pornography into a culture that is pornographic. Boundary after boundary is being transgressed.
Adding insult to injury, courts have ruled that public libraries have no right to use filters that prevent viewing of pornography on public computers. Now, the marketers of pornography are looking to mobile devices and cell phones as the next frontier. There is no safe place in a society that embraces pornography as a major industry.
Just when you think you are past being shocked, The Washington Times now reports that pornography “is a major workplace problem in contemporary American society.” Just look at what the paper reports:
The porn-at-work phenomenon is pervasive enough, a 2007 survey by the American Management Association and The ePolicy Institute found, that 65 percent of American companies use porn-detecting software – a dramatic increase from 40 percent in 2001.
Read the whole thing here.
Christina Langella (a “Brooklyn Blogger”) recently posted a review of Unpacking Forgiveness.
It has been encouraging to read several positive reviews in recent days. I found this review especially so. I can tell Christina read closely and put a lot of effort into this post.
If you are anything like me – and I trust that you are, you’ve picked up some baggage along the way. As we travel down this rugged road called life, the burden of past wounds, injustices, and relational strains can weigh heavy on us. I love how Shannon Popkin, a freelance writer who endorses Braun’s book puts it: “Unpacking Forgiveness”, “Offers a tender hand of guidance to those who ache to unpack what life has flung at them, and awakens a longing for the happiness that only forgiveness can bring.”
For several years now, I have been hitting a brick wall when it comes to the spiritual breakthrough necessary to get beyond – as Popkin’s so articulately describes, “what life has flung” at me. What’s more, it seemed that any outward attempt to deal with it, in a way that I thought was biblical, only complicated matters and inevitably added more weight to my already heavy load.
Much of what I heard from mainstream Evangelicals on the matter of forgiveness seemed so trite and clichéd. Even the sermons from well-known, and respected preachers all sounded so stale and commonplace. Nothing even remotely came close to addressing the painful, thorny issues of my heart that I so longed unload. Most, if not all, of the counsel that I received, (though sincere and well intended) did nothing to help. In many cases it only served to complicate matters and make them painfully worse.
A few weeks ago I read a familiar passage of scripture that came alive to me in a most peculiar way (Matthew 5:43-48). This was the beginning of my breakthrough that eventually led me to “Unpacking Forgiveness: Biblical Answers for Complex Questions and Deep Wounds”, by Chris Brauns.
Read the whole thing here.
How would you pray if you were on a plane that you knew was going down?
You will want to listen to the interview of a young man, Andrew Jamison, who was on the airplane that lost its engines and landed in the Hudson. He shares how he prayed with the other people with him.
Andrew and Jennifer Jamison are both 4th year medical students at the Medical University of South Carolina. Andrew grew up outside of Charlotte, North Carolina and attended Clemson University majoring in Biosystems Engineering. Jennifer was born and raised in the Upstate of South Carolina and received her degree in Biology from Erskine College. Andrew and Jennifer met in medical school and are in their second year of marriage. They are members of East Cooper Baptist Church in Charleston, South Carolina. They have been on several medical mission trips overseas, serving communities in northern Africa. They are currently awaiting match results for their respective residencies, dermatology and family medicine.
Click here to listen.
HT: Ligon Duncan
If you don’t know who Melanchthon was (a good friend of Luther for one), read this on post on The Scriptorium. By the way, this blog gets my vote for the coolest looking blog.
Quoting Melanchthon:
Rightly oriented teachers are needed, therefore, to clarify and preserve the proper meaning of the words of the prophets and apostles. And such true teachers do not invent new or peculiar doctrines about God; instead, they stay close to the unadulterated meaning, which God himself has revealed through the words which are found in the writings of the prophets and apostles and in the creeds. The entire office of preaching, which God has ordained for public assemblies, is to present to the people these and no other writings, except the writings of the prophets and apostles, and the creeds, and thus unfold, as in a grammar, the true meaning of the words, what God is called, what created things are, and what such terms as body, spirit, person, law, sin, gospel, promise, faith, grace, justification, and worship mean. To learn the true meaning of the terms and writings is to recognize sublime wisdom and divine light.
Click here to read more.
Mike Wittmer is anticipating the Oscars by quoting Meryl Streep and Will Smith.
It is scary to consider how much Hollywood shapes the thinking of the world. Wittmer quotes Will Smith:
I love the nature of humanity’s search for meaning. For me I’m certain about my relationship with the model of perfection of human life that’s laid out with the life of Jesus Christ. I’m certain of that. So I’m at home and not fearful when I sit in a mosque or a synagogue or a Buddhist temple…. I like anywhere people are searching for the truth
Read it all here.
Rob Bell* offers vivid, if not earthy, imagery of what pastors often experience.
Bell recounted the story of a letter he received from a supporter. The note, in which the writer recounted how he defended Bell when another person accused him of being nothing more than “fluff and irrelevance,” was intended to edify and encourage. But he said the only part he remembered was the criticism. This, says Bell, is the definition of a “chocolate covered turd.” It looks sweet on the outside until you take a bite. Then it betrays you.
That’s how ministry is. You may hear nine really good things, but it’s the one critical comment that will eat away at your soul. We tell ourselves that it’s really nothing, that “you just have to laugh about it,” and that those small paper cuts really don’t hurt. But they do. Over time, says Bell, those small wounds build up and we experience “death by paper cuts.”
Read the whole article by Skye Jethani here.
Still, before we bemoan our trials too much, it should be said to us as pastors. Unpleasant as they may be, very rarely do the paper cuts actually bleed (Heb 12:4). And, is this not our call?
Pollywog Creek by way of Vitamin Z.
*Having disagreed elsewhere with Rob Bell about his views on forgiveness, I will refrain here from dialoguing with his theology of forgiveness, thereby inflicting more paper cuts, though I suppose even this footnote could qualify as a paper cut.
Read endorsements for Unpacking Forgiveness here.
Click here to order Unpacking Forgiveness.
“. . . Chris Brauns has done a magnificent job in helping us understand the true nature of biblical forgiveness. Every Christian will profit from reading and applying this book.” Jerry Bridges.
“ . . . Unpacking Forgiveness is an engaging, convicting but emphatically encouraging treatment of this hugely important (and sometimes mindbogglingly challenging) part of life. Dr. Brauns writes from the standpoint of a faithful, wise, experienced and caring pastor . . .” Ligon Duncan, First Pres, Jackson, MS
A Brick in the Valley
