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Last 90 Days Most Popular Posts (31 March 2022)

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Thanks again for visiting and reading. Here are the most popular posts this year so far. Which means we’re almost a quarter of the way through 2022!

As usual, these are in chronological order, the most popular post in bold. I probably won’t be doing this as often in the future, unless I really pump up the number of posts in general. But for this month, here you go!

My Kids Are (and were) Awesome.

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There’s a bit of a light debate in cross-cultural missions regarding the status of young children growing up on the field. We all want to consider the whole family “missionaries”. But of course children are where their parents are because of a family choice. And they would have had varying degrees of input into that choice (depending on age and so on).

Nathanael and Hannah in 2010.
2010

Many children grow up and choose to go into cross-cultural missionary work themselves. Others go on to serve the Lord in other ways. Sadly, some reject the faith.

The other day Shari and I were going through some boxes of old textbooks and notebooks, mostly from school. And I was reminded of two things.

First, there were some major challenges for our kids in school. I’m not talking about being cross-cultural, or learning a second language, or the work load (although that last one was a killer at times!). And in the case of our children, Mexican schools were the only schools they knew – they hadn’t been old enough to attend school in Canada.

The challenges I’m talking about are simply the challenges of going to a “secular” school. A school that sometimes promotes anti-Christian views.

“Oh, you have no idea what it’s like now, for my kids”, you may say, if you have young kids in elementary school now. Well, I’m a little more removed from that phase of childhood now, but I do know some of what’s going on. And your point is well taken – things have progressed significantly, and generally in the wrong direction. I would venture the opinion that school is a lot more harmful for children now than it was.

But much of what is so common now was already in the schools back then, in Mexico as well as in other countries.

So I’m proud of my kids for going through what they did. They faced a lot of challenges in elementary school.

Second, I am thankful for children who were (and are still!) involved in service to the Lord. Yes, they often helped with events and served in the local church. But they also reached out on their own, using their creativity and energy to share Christ in their own way. And without going into personal details, there were things in the boxes of books and paper that reminded me of that too.

So I’m thankful for my children, and proud of them. For what they did back then, and what they’re doing now. Way to go!

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Responsible.

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(The continuation of the Biblical Anthropology series.)

Whatever Became of Sin? by Karl Menninger

We met Psychiatrist Karl Menninger in the post Does Sin Even Exist?. Dr. Menninger’s answer, in his 1930 book, was basically, “Of course not, don’t be silly.”

But his opinion changed.

Over 40 years after his interview, where he tried to understand mental illness while denying the reality of sin, he admitted he had been wrong. In fact, he wrote a book titled Whatever Became of Sin?. And now he said, yes, sin exists. In fact, it is the very root of mental illness. You simply can’t deny it. We are responsible for our sin, and responsible to change.

This is what he wrote at the end of his book:

If we believe in sin—as I do—we believe in our personal responsibility for trying to correct it, and thereby saving ourselves and our world.

Dr. Karl Menninger

Using the simple terminology of Dr. Menninger, we are responsible.

In the last post I had a little box with some of the ways we justify our sin. Don’t miss it. One of the arguments was this: “Sin is something apart from the ‘real me’, the ‘authentic me’.” But the Bible teaches that the “authentic me” (without Christ) is actually evil. That’s hard for anyone to swallow.

But this is the reality: We are responsible for our sin. We are responsible to change.

But Dr. Menninger didn’t seem to understand that simply trying to change will never lead to salvation, not of ourselves, nor of the world.

Trying to change never leads to salvation.

We talked about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn right at the beginning of this section. In his book The Gulag Archipelago, he documents some of the incredible injustices of the Soviet Union. Reading it, one finds it hard to even believe that men and women are even capable of such evil. And how is it that these things are still happening in the world today? And yes, they are still happening in the world today.

Why is there so much evil in the world, and how can we stop it? It happens in wars and persecution and in our own homes.

Perhaps we need more education. And yet, the modern education in Nazi Germany didn’t seem to solve the problem. What if we eliminate need and poverty? Well, do we believe that the rich do no evil? That “equals” never sin against one another?

Well, what if we could simply eliminate the evil people? Communist societies and others have tried to do just that.

But in his book, Solzhenitsyn writes about the tyranny of the “blue caps”, that is the KGB, the secret police. And he asks this terrifying question. If my circumstances had been different, would I have become one of those men? It’s possible. Even probable. And he concludes with this:

If only it were all so simple. If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us, and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956)

This is a difficult topic. But as Christians, we know that there is grace, forgiveness, and hope in Jesus Christ. But … only in Jesus Christ. Christ or chaos.

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

Acts 4:12

That is, the name of Jesus of Nazareth.

We must stop trusting in our own actions, our own goodness, because there is no salvation in my name or yours. There is only salvation in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And when we put our full confidence – our true faith – in Him, we find salvation, because He is the only Saviour.

We follow Him as Saviour, we honour Him as Lord in our hearts, because we know that the only other option is chaos.

Resources

This is the end of the second section. I only have one resource for you this time – one for kids. For a great re-telling of the story of Adam and Eve, check out Mrs. G’s “Adam and Eve”, available for download in mp3 format. As we continue, it’s so important to think deeply about the early chapters of Genesis.

Retro: Hockey and Spinning Tops (video)

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10 years ago this month (the first video is from the 14th of March, the second is the 4th), I took some random video of Hannah and Nathanael playing with some other kids. The first segment has both Hannah and Nathanael playing street hockey (no, not at all common here!). The second segment much more Mexican, as Nathanael plays spinning tops (called trompos) with some friends.

The Great Universal Project of Humanity

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Last time we talked about what the Bible says about sin. The reality of sin is what leads to The Great Universal Project of Humanity. (By the way, to help you know where we are in the series, I’ve started an index of all the posts so far, right here – Biblical Anthropology.)

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. The Great Universal Project is justifying ourselves. We must demonstrate that we are not evil. Sin simply is not what God says it is – or maybe it doesn’t exist at all.

Pastor Phil Johnson, director of Grace To You in the United States, once said:

Our culture used psychology to do away with the concepts of evil and profanity and morality and sin, and then resurrected the terminology of sin in order to call evil good and good evil.

Phil Johnson

This shouldn’t be a surprise to us, because, as Paul says in Romans:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

Romans 1:18

There it is – the Great Universal Project of Humanity – suppress, ignore, avoid, and hide, the reality of sin in our own hearts.

But evil shall come upon you, which you will not know how to charm away; disaster shall fall upon you, for which you will not be able to atone; and ruin shall come upon you suddenly, of which you know nothing.

Isaiah 47:11

Let’s go back to Genesis 3 for a moment. These same kinds of temptations are still with us today. When Genesis 3 says, “when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate”, 1 John 2:16 says, “For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh” (“good for food”) “and the desires of the eyes” (“a delight to the eyes”) “and pride of life” (“to be desired to make one wise”) “—is not from the Father but is from the world.”

But let’s see how our ancestors tried to suppress and hide the truth. This is an activity you can do at home. 🙂 Read through Genesis 3:7-13, and mark down every time that they tried to suppress or hide the truth, starting with the easy one – “they sewed…”.

And that is how humanity’s Great Universal Project began. Justifying ourselves.

Sin is someone else’s fault. Sin is just a negative feeling, a negative vibe. Sin is something apart from the “real me”, the “authentic me”. Sin is just in “the system”. Sin is only weakness. Sin isn’t that bad. Sin is simply human nature, it’s the way I am. Sin is not what God says it is, sin is what we say that it is. Sin is a religious construct, “invented” to protect power. Sin doesn’t exist. “Sin” is actually independence and boldness. Sin is justified. Sin is good.

Is it really? What’s God’s response to all our clever explanations?

The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”
And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘you shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Genesis 3:14-19

We won’t take the time here to analyze all of that. But sin brought several types of death that day – spiritual, relational, and physical. The man and the women died that day, in more ways than one. And all of creation fell into chaos. Love became man fighting with woman and woman with man. Abundance became a fight with creation just to survive. A loving relationship with God became war with God, a war which would only end one way – in our punishment and death.

graveyard

And so God threw our ancestors out of the Garden. They no longer had access to the Tree of Life. Death became the reality of their present and their future – our present, and our future.

In chapter 4, envy led to murder and murder to judgement. And in chapter 5 we hear the sober drumbeat of all of our ancestors – “and he died” … “and he died” … “and he died” … “and he died” … “and he died” … “and he died” …

And as we look at various topics in the months ahead, we’ll see how the world tries to suppress the truth about sin, reverse the reality of death, and ignore God Himself.

But before we go on to the next topic, we’ll stop and take one more look at the sobering reality that none of us really want to face, not only through the eyes of Scripture but also a couple of more modern writers that we have already talked about.

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