Another Free Audiobook

John Piper just tweeted that another of his books this month is being offered by christianaudio.com. Let The Nations Be Glad is one of his most well known books and one of the best contemporary works on the subjects of missions. I have read (or rather listened) to this one already, it really is excellent.

NOTE: to get this for free rather than at the regular price you need to use the coupon GLAD11 to get it for free. I’m not sure how long this offer is on, so don’t delay

Free Audio Book

The free audio book on Christian Audio is a treat this month. John Piper’s book think. Having read or listened to several of Piper’s works, I can wholly recommend giving anything he writes a read. And hear is a free audiobook, so whatdya waitin’ for?

180 Movie–Watch It Today

As many of you are aware, yesterday Living Waters, Ray Comfort’s ministry released a movie called 180. To describe the film as fascinating is to say the very least. You can watch the whole thing below, or at their request, rather go onto their site to watch it. Want to know how to defeat abortion in seconds, go to 180movie.com

Views

Yay just hit 2000 views, three little words:

Soli Deo gloria

The Church’s One Foundation

I though I’d start the week by quoting one of my favourite hymns in its entirety for your consideration. There are one or two verses in here that we don’t normally sing, probably cause it’ll make the song go on for ages (not that that’s a bad thing in my estimation). Nevertheless this is a most excellent summary of ecclesiology, that is, the theology of the church. It’s first two lines that have the biggest bang. If you get these two lines only you will have gotten an excellent nugget of truth about the church. The picture on the left is actually a little inaccurate in depicting the church, as you will find out as you read the hymn.

The Church’s one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord,
She is His new creation
By water and the Word.
From heaven He came and sought her
To be His holy bride;
With His own blood He bought her
And for her life He died.

She is from every nation,
Yet one o’er all the earth;
Her charter of salvation,
One Lord, one faith, one birth;
One holy Name she blesses,
Partakes one holy food,
And to one hope she presses,
With every grace endued.

The Church shall never perish!
Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide, sustain, and cherish,
Is with her to the end:
Though there be those who hate her,
And false sons in her pale,
Against both foe or traitor
She ever shall prevail.

Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed:
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song!

’Mid toil and tribulation,
And tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation
Of peace forevermore;
Till, with the vision glorious,
Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious
Shall be the Church at rest.

Yet she on earth hath union
With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won,
With all her sons and daughters
Who, by the Master’s hand
Led through the deathly waters,
Repose in Eden land.

O happy ones and holy!
Lord, give us grace that we
Like them, the meek and lowly,
On high may dwell with Thee:
There, past the border mountains,
Where in sweet vales the Bride
With Thee by living fountains
Forever shall abide!

Worldview? How You See The World

There is a lot of talk these days about worldviews, Christian worldview, secular worldview, biblical worldview, evolutionary worldview and so on. But what does this little phase mean and why is it important? Or is it even important? The answer to the last question is a resounding YES. Lets first look at the word itself:

The word ‘worldview’ comes from a German word Weltanschauung which when broken up means ‘world’ and ‘view’. Its a concept that comes mainly out of 19th century German philosophy. Basically a worldview is a person’s philosophical view of reality. According to merriam-webster.com  Weltanschauung means: ‘a comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world especially from a specific standpoint'’. A good working definition of ‘worldview’. The next thing to say is that everyone has one. there is not a person on the earth who has not perceived reality in some way, and once you have done that, you have a worldview. Even if you are a day old baby, your worldview is sleep, cry, drink milk, sleep. Our worldview is the key factor is deciding our biases.

For example, I would choose a Coke over a Pepsi every time because I like the taste of Coke more. But lets go through the process of making the choice. I choose coke because I’m biased towards the taste of Coke being better. My bias is informed by preferences which have been filtered either consciously or unconsciously through my worldview. Now lets say that my worldview stated that only pure water was safe to drink, I would probably never touch Coke or Pepsi, and I would say my favourite drink is water. Do you see how my bias comes out of my worldview.

Another example: why do I go to church, and in point of fact would go to church at all costs? The answer is: because I have a biblical worldview, which says to me that the bible is inspired, inerrant and infallible. That means that I have to believe all that it teaches and obey what it instructs me to do. Now the bible instructs that we (Christians) should not forsake the assembly of the saints (Heb 10:25) so that we can stir each other up to love and good works (Heb 10:24). Now my church does this by meeting together on Sunday mornings and evenings. So, according to my worldview, I go to church, and at all costs.

Developing A Christian Worldview

Firstly, why would we want to develop a Christian and biblical worldview? The answer is simple and I quote the Westminster shorter catechism “Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever”. A Christian worldview is the means to this end. I formulate a Christian worldview for this purpose, to maximise my glorification of God and my enjoyment of Him forever.

For me personally, it was very hard for me to consciously develop a biblical worldview. Like many my age I had grown up with parents who did not believe (and therefore did not teach) the bible and went to a school that tried its best to teach me a secular humanist worldview. It took me a fair amount of bible study before the penny dropped in my head that there is a complete contradiction between what the bible taught about creation (God created, 6 days, young earth) and evolution (no creator, millions of years) and that the differences were as much theological as they were about truth, and what actually happened. Theological in the sense that, if evolution is true, that means that there was death before sin, which means that God’s entire plan of redemption and restoration is false, thus eliminating the bible as any kind of source of truth, because it would then be filled with lies.

But a Christian worldview plays itself out in a variety of ways. For example, when I see a scenic view or a sunset, I immediately thank God for creating me and allowing me to see this sight. When I think about the incredible intricacy of some of our natural wonders I don’t think to myself (as I used to) “amazing what evolution can do” but rather I think “amazing what God can do, Glory to Him” And when faced with an ethical dilemma, my worldview informs me that the bible is my source of instruction through all moral and ethical problems. I then consult the bible and make the right decision. Now if all that sounds too good to be true it is. We are still sinful by nature and there are still many times when my flesh overrides my worldview and I sin.

For this reason it is important to be purposeful in formulating our worldview, according to the bible. “But hang on” I hear you say, “don’t we get our view of the bible from our worldview?” Yes, but it also works the other way. Our worldview tells us how we view the bible and if we are a Christian, our bible informs our worldview, it doesn’t usually if a person is not a Christian, because one of the things that happen at conversion is a person begins to formulate a Christian worldview.

This picture brings us nicely to our first danger when talking about a worldview. Many people, especially some of my lecturers, would claim that each arrow is equal or more often, that our worldview informing how we see the bible is more important than the bible transforming and informing our worldview. THIS IS FALSE. If our worldview is different to that of the bible, then we change our worldview, not how we view the bible. This doesn’t mean we don’t have any biases when reading the bible, but we should be aware of them and avoid them if possible.

The other danger I’ve seen is people these days see Christianity as merely a worldview, rather than a life transforming relationship with Jesus Christ. It is popular these days to do just that, to limit yourself to seeing the world christianly rather than being reconciled to Jesus Christ through His atoning work. May it never be…

That’s all for now, I need to flesh this out more at a later date. In the mean time, I recommend the resource linked below. Its a Christian Radio station called The Christian Worldview

John Piper On Abortion

I would appreciate it if you watched this rather power except from a John Piper sermon about abortion. Just listen to it, please.