The Gospel Coalition

Unity matters. Christ prayed his church would be marked by it. Yet disunity among Christians abounds, and it’s not always civil in tone. With the Bible’s clear admonitions about foolish controversies and quarreling, how can we know when a fight is worth having? Jen Wilkin offers a framework for diagnosing how to pick your battles and how to conduct yourself when a battle is worth the fight. Watch the full episode below or listen in the TGC Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.

In Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot called poetry “a raid on the inarticulate.” I’ve always liked the phrase. It implies the chaotic mess of life in a postlapsarian world is mimicked in language’s fragmentary nature. It also implies poets can do something about it, diving into the deep as they find treasure and nourishment. Having found them, they can offer them for our benefit. There’s something clandestine about the whole operation—a raid—reminiscent of the Promethean theft of fire. If Eliot is right, and if the metaphor holds, we have a record of the greatest of such attempts in Charles Taylor’s new book Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment. What gold has surfaced? What nourishment is on offer? And how do we reconcile any of this with the God who is himself the Word, the logic, the order underlying everything? Taylor phrases it like this: “Romantic art as a response to the loss of cosmic order begets the aspiration to reconnect” (89). People feel a loss of connection in many dimensions: between one another, between themselves and nature, between themselves and the past. They feel, at least some of them, that poetry is a vehicle for mending that disconnect. Taylor’s animating question in this new volume is how this reconnection happens. Why does reading another human’s artful language momentarily alleviate the dislocation from reality many modern people feel?

Time is fleeting, or so I’ve heard from the woman at the checkout line. I can’t remember which store or which woman because there’ve been too many to count. The adage suffocates the air we all breathe. College students hear the call not to waste their youth; the newly married couple is told, “These are some of your best years”; even the empty nesters feel the pull not to waste their newfound freedom. We grieve these words because they’re true. Kids do grow up fast. Our situations change. The child, spouse, parent, sister, or friend we have today will be different tomorrow. He or she will be one day older, one day stronger, or even worse—one day weaker. Each turn of the sun pushes us out of a past we can never reclaim. No wonder we grip tight to these moments as if their passing marks a thousand deaths.

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other." - John 15:9-17 (ESV)

Nietzsche wrote in his book The Anti-Christ, “What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.” This is a poignant example of what Augustine termed “the city of man” and “love of self, even to the point of contempt for God,” which is in stark contrast to “love of God, even to the point of contempt for self, [which] made the heavenly city.” Indeed, Nietzsche knew he was presenting an opposing vision for humanity and society, hence the title of his book. While Augustine’s vision for a society shaped by the city of heaven still influences both the left and right of America’s political spectrum, we have in significant ways become more and more children of Nietzsche. He has become our teacher. Here are three dynamics of Nietzsche’s philosophy influencing our politics today and some suggestions for how those living for the heavenly city might respond to a political world so influenced by him.

We’ve all felt wounded or taken advantage of by the way another person has treated us. It can be hard to know how to respond, especially when this is a pattern. Some relationships are more challenging than others, some seasons are more full, and some people require a great deal of effort to be in relationship with. According to common wisdom, establishing boundaries to prevent burnout is necessary, and this makes sense on the surface. But as a Christ-follower, how does it fit with Jesus’s instruction to take up your cross (Matt. 16:24)? To save your life by losing it (v. 25)? To be a servant (Mark 10:42–45)?

I’m fascinated by church-as-refuge scenes in apocalyptic films like the recent ‘A Quiet Place: Day One’ and the 2009 adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s ‘The Road.’ When the world falls apart, the church will remain. My latest for The Gospel Coalition:

I’m at The Gospel Coalition today, reviewing John Andrew Bryant’s “A Quiet Mind to Suffer With”, with some notes on mental health, trauma and just a little bit of reflection on theological memoir. https://lnkd.in/gbpp7NG6

Don Carson teaches on the importance of obedience to God and his Word as a true demonstration of knowing him, as emphasized in 1 John 2:3–27. Central to the Christian life is having and displaying a genuine love for others, which Carson highlights as a key indicator of living in the light of Christ. He contrasts those who merely talk about faith with those who act on it and discusses the dangers of worldliness versus godliness. Carson also explores the cultural differences in expressing faith through his observations of diverse groups at Cambridge. He addresses the concept of antichrists and the end times in 1 John 2, urging believers to persevere in their faith and remember their hope in Christ. Listen to The Carson Center Podcast wherever you get your podcasts, on our website, or read the full sermon transcript below.

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, about one in five Americans deals with some kind of mental illness, and about one in 20 Americans has a mental illness so severe that it seriously affects their lives. What Christians ought to make of this and how we ought to respond to the idea of “mental illness” in the first place have both been open points of debate for decades. John Andrew Bryant’s theological memoir A Quiet Mind to Suffer With: Mental Illness, Trauma, and the Death of Christ doesn’t engage with those debates directly. Instead, Bryant—a writer and part-time street pastor—narrates his experience of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), including his time in a psych ward and his recovery from the worst of that OCD. He weaves his theological reflections throughout the narrative.