Until we are content with being one of the million nameless, faceless church members and not the next globe-trotting rock star, we aren’t ready to be a part of the church. In the grand scheme of things, most of us are going to be more of an Ampliatus (Rom. 16:8) or Phlegon (v. 14) than an apostle Paul. And maybe that’s why so many Christians are getting tired of the church. We haven’t learned how to be part of the crowd. We haven’t learned to be ordinary. Our jobs are often mundane. Our devotional times often seem like a waste. Church services are often forgettable. That’s life. We drive to the same places, go through the same routines with the kids, buy the same groceries at the store, and share a bed with the same person every night. Church is often the same too — same doctrines, same basic order of worship, same preacher, same people. But in all the smallness and sameness, God works — like the smallest seed in the garden growing to unbelievable heights, like beloved Tychicus, that faithful minister, delivering the mail and apostolic greetings (Eph. 6:21). Life is usually pretty ordinary, just like following Jesus most days. Daily discipleship is not a new revolution each morning or an agent of global transformation every evening; it’s a long obedience in the same direction.

“In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist,” the ever-articulate Hitchens writes in the September issue of Vanity Fair. He concludes:

Against me is the blind, emotionless alien, cheered on by some who have long wished me ill. But on the side of my continued life is a group of brilliant and selfless physicians plus an astonishing number of prayer groups. On both of these I hope to write next time if—as my father invariably said—I am spared.

His essay is a mix of stoicism and dry British wit, but with an understated gravity that penetrates the gallows humor that marks his reflections. In truth, there is little said about facing death, but much about the “oncology bargain” that trades quality of life for quantity.

Let us pray that God is gracious and merciful to Mr. Hitchens.

But for now, I’m still here. It would really be a shame to lose all the good stuff that Facebook has to offer.

It came to my attention that an independent group has created a Facebook privacy scanner that will tell you just how exposed your information is. You can find that here:

http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/facebook

I encourage all of you to follow the instructions there and see if you’re sharing more than you think with the rest of the world.

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.

— Douglas Adams

After yesterday’s Connections class on Psalm 19:1, I got lots of people asking for the link to the web site that let you zoom in and out on the universe… so as promised, here it is:

The Scale of the Universe

Note: when you load the page, it has a “visit our sponsor” advertisement while the animation loads. When it’s done loading, click the “Play” link at the bottom of the screen.

For those of you who weren’t there, you can zoom it all the way out to see the entire universe, or all the way in to see the tiniest subatomic particles. It’s amazing how God’s creation takes your breath away whether you look up or down — it seems that man has been placed right in the middle to be awestruck in both directions.

In the seventeenth century, Pascal considered man’s place in this sweeping scale and wrote:

For who will not marvel that our body, a moment ago imperceptible in a universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, should now be a colossus, a world, or rather a whole, compared to the nothingness beyond our reach? Anyone who considers himself in this way will be terrified at himself, and, seeing his mass, as given him by nature, supporting him between these two abysses of infinity and nothingness, will tremble at these marvels. I believe that with his curiosity changing into wonder he will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence than investigate them with presumption.

— Pascal, Pensée #199

Even the demons believe—and shudder!

James 2:19

I just noticed that Antony Flew died.

Professor Antony Flew was one of the most prominent atheist philosophers of the twentieth century. He had little in common with the so-called “New Atheists” like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and others; Professor Flew was an intelligent and amiable fellow who simply disagreed with theists on the facts. He even struck up a rich friendship with Dr. Gary Habermas, Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Philosophy and Theology Department of Liberty University.

Then, in 2003, a funny thing happened. Antony Flew, atheist extraordinaire, changed his mind at the age of 80. He decided there is a God after all.

What changed his mind? Two things: first, the idea that the universe has been masterfully designed by an intelligent designer was a better explanation than that life, the universe, and everything just happened at random. “I have been persuaded that it is simply out of the question that the first living matter evolved out of dead matter and then developed into an extraordinarily complicated creature,” he said.

Second, he was persuaded that the universe seems to have had a beginning—and if something began, something must have caused it.

But he was hardly a Christian:

Flew’s conversion did not embrace such concepts as Heaven, good and evil or the afterlife – let alone divine intervention in human affairs. His God was strictly minimalist – very different from “the monstrous oriental despots of the religions of Christianity and Islam”, as he liked to call them. God may have called his creation into existence, then, but why did he bother? To that question, it seemed, Flew had no answer.

“Flew had no answer.” Sadly, Antony Flew must now come up with one. He died and went to face the God he merely acknowledged and answer for his own rebellion against him. I say this not because I know how bad Antony Flew was, but because I know what the Bible says about God, man, sin, judgment, death, and resurrection. If the Bible is wrong, then I will happily consider more cheery prospects for Professor Flew.

Though he acknowledged the existence of a god, he did not repent and seek forgiveness in the name of Jesus. This is a man who will be convicted by evidence from the creation, evidence even he admitted was persuasive:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Romans 1:18-21

The demons and Pharisees alike agreed that God exists, and both groups went further than Antony Flew did in recognizing Him. His brilliance as a philosopher was of no help; the good news of the Gospel, curiously, is that you bring nothing to the table. If the Gospel were something to be figured out, perhaps he would have fared better… but as C.S. Lewis said, “Reality, in fact, is always something you couldn’t have guessed. That’s one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It’s a religion you couldn’t have guessed.”

So while I am encouraged to hear of someone taking matters seriously enough to change his long-considered position on God’s existence, the tragic fact is that this is quite different from a sinner coming to the end of himself and calling on the name of the Lord to be saved.

We will be studying Mark Driscoll’s new book, Sweetheart: Becoming the Man You Were Made To Be. You can expect to grow in three key areas:

1. Crying

A moving chapter on John 11:35 demonstrates that real men cry. Lots. He tells the tragic story of one pastor who was so hard-hearted he remained dry-eyed right the way through Sleepless in Seattle. He explains how in choosing Peter, himself a cry-baby (Matt 26:75), Jesus shows the type of sensitive soul that he is looking for in church leadership.

2. Caring

The way some people talk, you might think that being a man is all about feats of strength and endurance, winning wrestling matches or climbing mountains. But Driscoll shows that the real way to be a man is to care for beauty. Those men closest to God have always enjoyed what some might consider "girly" interests. He illustrates this with examples of Calvin’s love for poetry, Stott’s love for bird-watching, and Don Carson’s gift for interpretive dance.

3. Cowering

One of the real problems with being a macho man, is that by confronting problems you could get hurt. And God doesn’t want any of his little preciouses getting hurt, does he? Driscoll shows how the great masculine heroes of the Bible knew when to run and hide. The great apostle Paul set the example for us by hiding inside a basket rather than facing up to his opponents (Acts 9:25).

Sign-ups will begin at the information table in a few weeks. See you there!

Real grace makes a difference. It sets you free from everything you’ve always wanted to escape, but couldn’t. It sets you free to run to the home you’ve longed for all your life. It hands you a glass of cold water after hours in the scorching sun. It puts food before you for the first time in so long, you don’t remember the last time you ate. It welcomes you in out of the cold and wraps you in a warm blanket.

People who receive that kind of grace bury themselves in it. When the gates of the prison fly open, they run out. When home is in sight, they will walk across broken glass or burning coals to get there. When the water is poured, it’s bottoms up; food offered quickly becomes food devoured; and the person wrapped in the blanket after days of exposure will not be separated from anything that supplies the warmth he has missed for so long.

Do you wonder if you are “in Christ?” Are you lingering in your prison cell, or running for your life toward the gate that’s been thrown open?

If you’re just sitting there, wasting away in your cell, I suppose you’re free to do that. But I also say, “Dude…!” You don’t need grace to get that kind of freedom. That kind of freedom is just oppression in disguise, like slavery with designer manacles.

True freedom does not leave you free to choose slavery.

Look at Romans 6. Everything up to that point was such good news, even Paul felt the need to say, “now don’t go crazy, y’all.”

In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s the dangerous, controversial, frightening truth of the gospel: if you are in Christ, you are free. You are untouchable. The verdict is in, and you’re innocent. Nothing you or anyone else can do can change that. You are adopted into God’s family and you stand in line for His eternal inheritance. Really.

If you are in Christ, what is “too good to be true” has come true.

As Jared Wilson said,

Yes, people watch too much TV and play too many video games and spend too much time on the Internet and what-have-you. But the proper response to our media over-saturation is not a rigorous attention to the explicitly “spiritual” in every margin of life. Be a Christian, not an ascetic. Don’t be lazy, but realize that Jesus Christ did not die and rise for you so that you would stress out about whether you’re being spiritual enough. So take a nap. Watch some television. The gospel frees you to chill the heck out.

Do you sense a “but” coming? There isn’t one. That’s it. Nothing but good news.

Really.