Prof. John Stackhouse’s Weblog

A friend and former student wrote recently of having her heart broken by a man who had told her he loved her and wanted to make a life with her.

“Why would God allow me to be hurt like this?” she understandably wondered. “I’m not a kid, not foolish in relationships, said and did all the things I thought I was supposed to say and do, and out of the blue he dumps me. How can such a thing be part of God’s good plan?”

So here’s some of what I replied, which some of you will recognize is the perspective I outline in my book on the problem of evil (Can God Be Trusted?) and in my book on our calling in the world (Making the Best of It):

I believe that God does indeed “work all things together for good” (Rom. 8:28). But that oft-quoted Scripture needs to be understood carefully.
Read the rest of this entry »

Friends, I’m heading off to Bangalore, India, for the next week to teach pastors and graduate students at Dr. Ken Gnanakan’s ACTS Institute. I’m not sure if I can post from there, so I’ll leave you with something substantial over the meanwhile: this splendid, touching prayer of commitment from the Methodist Covenant Service, anthologized in The Oxford Book of Prayer, edited by George Appleton.

I am no longer my own, but thine.

Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt:

Put me to doing: put me to suffering:

Let me be employed for thee, or laid aside for thee:

Exalted for thee, or brought low for thee:

Let me be full, let me be empty:

Let me have all things: let me have nothing:

I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.

And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

Thou art mine and I am thine. So be it.

And the covenant which I have made on earth let it be ratified in heaven.

During my commute today, I listened to a lecture on CD by colleague Iain Provan, professor of Old Testament here at Regent, on the story of Jacob. That’s not a typical Advent story, of course, but it’s interesting to consider it in a Christmas context.

Brother Provan, superb expositor that he is, notes that God reiterates the Abrahamic promise to Jacob during Jacob’s famous dream of a ladder reaching to heaven: “the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring” (Genesis 28).

But when Jacob eventually responds to God’s extravagant promise, he mentions nothing about gaining an entire land, or having numberless offspring, or being a blessing to the whole world. Here’s what he says instead: “If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the LORD shall be my God.”

Provan points out the shocking disjunction between what Jacob wants and what God offers. And as I listened, I was suddenly struck by the shameful disjunction between my own paltry desires and God’s great promises.

Read the rest of this entry »

Being a “red-letter Christian” sounds like a good idea, doesn’t it? Tony Campolo, professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University, activist, pundit, and provocateur, tells us that he wants to obey the very words of Jesus, those words that in previous generations of Bible publishing were printed in red.

His comrade Jim Wallis of the Sojourners Fellowship, also known as an activist, pundit, and provocateur, shares this self-designation and thinks that such an approach to Christian discipleship will transcend the division of American political culture between the left and right, Democrat and Republican.

So isn’t being a red-letter Christian (RLC) a good thing?

Well, first, let’s agree that Christians should try to follow Jesus. No problem there. But the trouble with the RLC concept begins immediately afterward.

Read the rest of this entry »

“I wonder what would happen,” reflects author Mark Alan Powell, “if we collected the offering on Sunday morning, set the plates on the altar, and then tossed in a match, burning up everyone’s money.”

In his book Giving to God: The Bible’s Good News about Living a Generous Life (Eerdmans, 2006), Powell reminds us that most of the sacrifices in the Old Testament were consumed by fire, rather than being used to sustain the priests, or help the poor, or accomplish some other practical purpose. Like the costly perfume that could have been sold to benefit the poor, the giving to God was itself the point.

This has been a hard lesson for me to learn, and I’m still learning it.

Read the rest of this entry »