What books have you been reading lately?
I have been reading some amazing not-yet-published manuscripts that will be coming out soon:
• Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Crossway, coming out in the fall)
• Jani Ortlund’s Help! I’m Married to my Pastor! (Crossway, coming out in the fall—I think!)
• Vaneetha Rendall Risner’s memoir, Walking Through’s Fire: A Memoir of Loss and Redemption (Thomas Nelson, coming out next year)
I am also reading some current books on women’s roles in the church…to prepare for the book that I am writing this year and to better understand the neo-egalitarian movement. I find these books faulty in their logic and unconvincing, so I won’t mention their titles here.
I am re-reading Jeremiah Burroughs’ The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. Canon Press has an outstanding new edition. The language is the same, but the print is much more readable for my aging eyes!
And I am also reading books that I will be teaching this fall: Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables and Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations.
In The Gospel Comes with a House Key, you say, “those who live out radically ordinary hospitality see their homes not as theirs at all but as God’s gift to use for the furtherance of his kingdom. They open doors; they seek out the underprivileged.” How do you see ways for us to seek out the underprivileged in this unusual and challenging year?
Durham, N.C. is anticipating up to 20,000 evictions starting July 31, 2020, when the grace period for non-rental payment terminates. This current situation, brought about by pandemic, economic shut downs, and job loss, is looming heavily over our community as I write this. Really, this is all just daunting.
Our family and church works with Safe Families for Children. We are hoping to mobilize other local churches and Christian families in the mission of hosting children and supporting families displaced by these evictions. Of course, asking people to share their homes with strangers during a pandemic is a big ask. But this is what we need right now. The sheer number of children and families who will be homeless will overwhelm the shelters and the welfare state.
At the same time, this provides an opportunity for churches to rise up and help. During the 1527 Black Death, Martin Luther wrote an essay addressing why Christians should not flee the plague. Luther’s reasons were clear: Christians are called to provide hands-on care and gospel witness.
God has allowed COVID-19 to explode through six out of seven continents, and He has a purpose for this. God is good, just, and holy, and He is good, just, and holy all of the time. His purposes in allowing affliction are for His glory and our good. Christians are to walk into the dead center of need, and during times like these, where need is plentiful, Christians are given many and diverse opportunities to love God and neighbor. This is not for the faint of heart: we will lose some skin in this game.
How do you feel about all of the conferences and camps being on hold or canceled this year? Is it a bit of a relief for you?
Large Christian conferences—along with their supporting social media—have, over the years, caused me more and more concern. Without intending to do this, they feed into a Christian culture that elevates para-church ministries and minimizes or even denigrates the church. Speakers work out theological debates on Twitter or “discernment blogs,” where careless words and hurtful innuendos are re-tweeted or twisted as gospel truth.
When people look to Twitter or discernment blogs to settle theological disputes instead of the courts of the church, this tarnishes the local church and defeats the cause of Christ. So yes, I am relieved that the Lord has brought all of this to a stop. The means of grace are far more valuable and powerful than any Christian conference.
And, in addition to many Christian conferences being either cancelled or moved to Zoom, very importantly, so too were gay pride marches. This is the first time in fifty years that the U.S. did not have a national gay pride march somewhere. We need to take note of this and thank God for this. Sexual identities require social affirmation, and the denial of social affirmation is itself a great thing.
Charles Taylor refers to the power of the “social imaginary”—the values, institutions, laws, and symbols that combine to create a public social identity. The absence of a public gay pride march denies a gay identity with the outside affirmation it requires. In contrast to a sexual identity, a Christian identity requires the resurrected Christ and its resulting union with Christ, which is our eternal and irreplaceable inheritance. So Christians likely gained greater sanctification as we dug more deeply into our Bible reading and prayer and love for God and neighbor during this season where we were un-distracted by Christian conferences. For all of this, I am grateful.
How do you talk to your children about what is going on around them right now?
Christians are called to live life with our eyes wide open. Kent and I have always been transparent and honest with our children, and our discussions about race, racism, Black Lives Matter (BLM), etc., are no different.
Kent leads our family in family devotions every night, and it has become a time to have heartfelt conversations and seasons of prayer for our nation and our neighborhood. Because we are a family made by adoption of many different races, we sometimes feel on display during seasons like this one.
We believe that the sentence “Black Lives Matter” makes sense. We grieve with our nation as we face the deadly consequence of racism (and anything else that denies the dignity of people who are all made in the image of God). But the solutions that the world offers are as bad as the problems it confronts. The BLM website boasts “we disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure….We foster a queer-affirming network…with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.” This is the fruit of intersectionality, not the fruit of the gospel. So, we pray and we listen and we proclaim the gospel.
We believe that only the gospel can bring racial healing. And we fear for the way that too many of us are being seduced by a false gospel.
I have appreciated the way that WORLD magazine has worked through these issues and the way that WORLDteen has broken them down for our younger children.
Crown & Covenant Publications is hosting a “Virtual Conference Bookstore” event for July 27–31 on their Facebook page. Visit the page to watch special livestream videos: Authors may read a chapter from their new book, talk about a new project, or offer a short educational talk.