A Brick in the Valley

If you are in the midst of a conflict, Molly Friesen has posted an excellent prayer on the Peacemakers web site. 

Maybe if you are in the midst of a conflict, you could print this out, get on your knees and pray through it.  (If you are really environmentally conscious, rather than printing it out, kneel next to your computer).

The prayer is from The Peacemaker written by Ken Sande.  I highly recommend this book as well as the other resources available in their resource store.

On pages 84-85 of The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Resolving Personal Conflict , Ken Sande explores what it means to obey Paul’s command to “rejoice in the Lord always” (Phi. 4:4), even when we are in the midst of conflict.  He asks, “What on earth is there to rejoice about when you are involved in a dispute?  If you open your eyes and think about God’s lavish goodness to you, here is the kind of joyful worship you could offer to him, even in the midst of the worst conflict:”

Oh Lord, you are so amazingly good to me! You sent your only Son to die for my sins, including those I have committed in this conflict. Because of Jesus I am forgiven, and my name is written in the Book of Life! You do not treat me as I deserve, but you are patient, kind, gentle, and forgiving with me. Please help me to do the same to others.

In your great mercy, you are also kind to my opponent. Although he has wronged me repeatedly, you hold out your forgiveness to him as you do to me. Even if he and I never reconcile in this life, which I still hope we will, you have already done the work to reconcile us forever in heaven. This conflict is so insignificant compared to the wonderful hope we have in you!

This conflict is so small compared to the many other things you are watching over at this moment, yet you still want to walk beside me as I seek to resolve it.

Read more here.

See also, Four Promises Christians Make When They Forgive and The Gospel is at the Heart of Peacemaking

There’s a good chance you’ve read The Shack.  Read Pastor Tim Keller’s thoughts about it here.

Some of the wisest thoughts I have heard on conflict were from C.J. Mahaney.  Indeed, I included this quote in Unpacking Forgiveness. 

In fact, it is with great confidence that I can predict: You will face relational conflict in your future. Not only your distant future, but your immediate future. . . For as sinners living in a fallen world, conflict is inevitable and in fact, is heading your way right now. You can count on it.

If you go over to Reformation 21, you can read this article.

Or, click here to him sharing similar thoughts in 7.5 minutes.

A forgiveness question that comes up often is whether or not there is an unforgiveable sin. Ed Welch answers the question thoroughly and responsibly in this article.

The Unpardonable Sin

by Ed Welch

With all the attention being given to addictions and lusts, the scrupulous among us can feel neglected. But, just as there is an addict within us all, so is there a legalist who feels guilty and never able to measure up. Here is something for the legalist within.

Pound-for-pound, the passage on the unpardonable sin can deliver the most guilt in all Scripture.

Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. (Matthew12:32)

That’s enough to catch the attention of both the libertine and the scrupulous. I wonder how many of us prefer to skip over this one. Like Kennedy’s assassination or 9/11, we can remember the day we first encountered this troubling passage. Most of us were able to move on and focus on other more conscience-soothing Scripture. But there remains a question every time we encounter Matthew 12-"Is it I?"

For others, this passage has become sticky, perhaps haunting. "Is it I?" is no longer a question but a confession, "It is I." If there is any doubt, merely reading the passage can invite a fleeting thought that says something nasty about the Holy Spirit. There it is: if you didn’t do the unpardonable sin before, you just did it now. Sure, you didn’t mean it – or did you? It seems a bit more like a common response to, "Don’t think about pink elephants." The elephant magically appears. Either way, the blasphemous thought emerged and you feel doomed.

The list of those haunted by this fear is a long one.

The popular consolation offered by well-meaning friends is well-known: if you think you committed the unpardonable sin and feel miserable about it, you didn’t. Since you feel bad about it, you are not guilty of it, so don’t worry. Only those who couldn’t care less about it are the potentially guilty. That response actually makes good sense in the larger context of the passage. The problem is that it is effective for those who are only temporarily tripped up by it and probably would have moved on anyway. For those who are deeply troubled, the advice at least needs more substance.

So what do we do with this rogue passage? Here is some background.

Read the rest here.

HT: JT

If you’re one of the millions of people who have read The Shack, or, if you’re thinking of reading it, you can benefit from reading Al Mohler’s interaction with it. 

The publishing world sees very few books reach blockbuster status, but William Paul Young’s The Shack has now exceeded even that. The book, at first self-published by Young and two friends, has now sold more than 10 million copies and has been translated into over thirty languages. It is now one of the best-selling paperback books of all time, and its readers are enthusiastic.

According to Young, the book was originally written for his own children. In essence, it can be described as a narrative theodicy — an attempt to answer the question of evil and the character of God by means of a story. In this story, the main character is grieving the brutal kidnapping and murder of his seven-year-old daughter when he receives what turns out to be a summons from God to meet him in the very shack where the man’s daughter had been murdered.

In the shack, "Mack" meets the divine Trinity as "Papa," an African-American woman; Jesus, a Jewish carpenter; and "Sarayu," an Asian woman who is revealed to be the Holy Spirit. The book is mainly a series of dialogues between Mack , Papa, Jesus, and Sarayu. Those conversations reveal God to be very different than the God of the Bible. "Papa" is absolutely non-judgmental, and seems most determined to affirm that all humanity is already redeemed.

The theology of The Shack is not incidental to the story. Indeed, at most points the narrative seems mainly to serve as a structure for the dialogues.

Read the rest here.

Deek Dubberly preached on forgiveness last night at his church. He has distilled his thinking down into 5 principles we learn from Jesus.

Of course, where forgiveness is concerned it’s hard for me to remain underground when reading a blog.  I made a comment.

Click here.

In a Christianity Today interview, Gayle Haggard responds to questions about her decision to stay with her husband after his infidelity became public.  I’m thankful the Haggard’s are together.  While there are biblical grounds for divorce (Matthew 19:9), and Gayle Haggard had them, restoration is the goal to be pursued.  The question of whether or not a couple should remain together is one I address in Unpacking Forgiveness.

At the same time, in this interview, Mrs. Haggard questions how their relationship to the church was handled.  Consider her response to this question:

You spend a significant portion of the book explaining the way the overseers treated your family, asking you to break ties with New Life and move out of the state. How did you view the Christian community differently after what happened?

I was disappointed because I so believe in the church. I was disappointed that people started believing the worst about Ted and that we were cut off from our church, which wasn’t representative of our church at all as a body. We had a family, relational church, but others made that decision and separated us from the church. That was devastating to me. I felt that not only was I being ripped and ravaged in my relationship with my husband but just a few days later was told that I no longer belonged at the church, so I felt that I was being ripped and ravaged by the church, or certain leaders. That was as devastating to me as what was going on in my marriage. I was so invested in both in our marriage and in our church. That did shake me, and it was a dark time for me as I tried to process through. But God who is the gentle restorer walked me through it. I haven’t lost my passion for the church, but I want the church to be the church and to stop denying the power of the gospel in the lives of people.  (Read the rest of the interview here.)

It is unfortunate that Mrs. Haggard is critical of how this was handled.  As I talk about in Unpacking Forgiveness, forgiveness doesn’t mean the elimination of consequences.  With the level of leadership that Ted Haggard accepted at his church, came a proportionate accountability.  There is simply no way the Haggard’s could have continued in a relationship with that particular body without being a terrible distraction. 

Further, given his disqualification, the Haggard’s should have realized in this situation that repentance submits to the process. 

Some who know the situation better than I might counter, “It was a very flawed process.”  Of course, it was a flawed process.  Until Christ comes back, how the church does things will always be flawed.  And, the leaders should be accountable.  But, in this case, accountability and critique should not come from the leader (or the family of the leader) when he so grievously betrayed their trust.

Your thoughts?  Is it the Haggard’s place to critical of the process, flawed as it may have been?

David Augsburger:

Since nothing we intend is ever faultless, and nothing we attempt ever without error, and nothing we achieve without some measure of finitude and fallibility we call humanness, we are saved by forgiveness.

This quote is a good reminder of why we all need to learn to biblically unpack forgiveness.  I read it in an advance copy of Paul Tripp’s, What Did You Expect , a forthcoming book on marriage. 

If you are married, What Did You Expect? Redeeming the Realities of Marriage, is a book you are going to want to read once it is out.

In the mean time, consider reading something on forgiveness . . .

My brief answer: yes, but forgiveness doesn’t mean the elimination of consequences.

Douthat’s point is that we should be careful in saying that we won’t forgive McGwire, because we may have to discount every hero from that era of baseball.

Ross Douthat:

As Joe Posnanski notes, nobody seems much inclined to do it. And you can understand why. McGwire’s extended mea culpa comes years after it became clear that he took steroids, years after he stammered his way through a Congressional hearing, years after a public expression of contrition would have counted as brave and morally impressive. He’s been beaten to the admission-and-apology punch by everyone from Alex Rodriguez to Jason Grimsley. And he still doesn’t want to acknowledge, for understandable reasons, that the steroids made all his home runs possible, even though saying that they kept him healthy so that he could hit home runs is basically the same thing anyway.

But here’s the thing: If McGwire shouldn’t be forgiven, then I’m not sure anybody can be forgiven from here on out.

Read more here.

I pray Tiger hears this and responds.

HT: Sarah Flashing at Evangel