Dear Friends,
August is fading fast and I’ve finished up reading and writing quite a few things this week, so it’s time to wrap it up and head to the mountains with the kids for a last bit of summer R&R. So, depending on what decides to emerge from my typing fingers this morning, today’s Square Inch might be on the shorter side.
My New Favorite Book
I just wrote a few paragraphs with some observations about our political polarization, but then I deleted it. Not that it’s unimportant, but I don’t need to spill any more digital ink on that right now. It’s the end of summer, so let’s enjoy ourselves a bit!
I spent a good portion of the week reading a pre-publication version of what is probably my new favorite book: Bavinck: A Critical Biography.
I know, I know. It’s not good marketing to write about things the vast majority of people won’t be interested in. I don’t care. It’s my newsletter and I can write about what interests me.
James is a professor at the University of Edinburgh, and he and I overlapped during our postgraduate studies in Scotland. We both did our doctoral theses on Herman Bavinck, the 19th century Dutch theologian—indeed, the two of us were the only people doing research on Bavinck at the time in the United Kingdom. And our respective books (here and here) were the first academic contributions on Bavinck’s thought to appear after the English translation of his major work was completed. We were on the cusp of a new wave of interest, and our popularization efforts bore fruit because now the cool thing to do for theology students literally all over the world is to study Herman Bavinck. We were Bavinck Hipsters: into it way before it was cool.
Anyway, James has gone on to write this definitive biography of the man, and it is truly magnificent. It is a three-dimensional portrait of a truly accomplished polymath. Not only was Herman Bavinck one of the finest theologians for many hundreds of years, he was a man of philosophy, science, psychology, educational philosophy, politics (less successfully), and much more. And here’s a reason you should care:
Ever wonder what your Christian faith has to do with the rest of the big, wide, bustling world? Is it a private sentiment only, or does it somehow apply to the rest of your life? Bavinck’s work was animated by the conviction that the Lordship of Jesus Christ covers all, not some, of life, and that the gospel transforms… “every square inch” of God’s world corrupted by sin. This is important: the gospel doesn’t attack God’s world—but rather the sin that has malformed God’s world. Creation is not the problem, the stuff of life is not the problem, sin is the problem. And the gospel acts not to destroy the areas and institutions of our lives, but to restore and renew them according to their original design for the glory of God.
How often have you heard of someone, maybe thought it yourself, that “Now that I’m a Christian I need to stop…” being a musician or an artist or a farmer or a businessman or a politician or a solder or a plumber or a teacher or what have you? Suddenly, we feel the need to drop everything and become a missionary to the Third World! I need to go into “full time” ministry! Because the “ordinary” stuff seems so unimportant in light of the “extraordinary” good news of salvation. This way of thinking sees the gospel and grace of Christ as opposing the “ordinary” things of the world. Here’s some liberating news. God’s wants musicians and artists and business people and politicians and soldiers and plumbers and teachers to continue doing those things. Grace doesn’t lift us out of the ordinary world; it empowers us to renew the ordinary world for God’s glory.
I don’t expect all of you to run out and buy James’s book and suddenly become theologians (it’s got a lot of Dutch names and figures and, while I love it, it would probably bore most of you). But we can all praise God for people like Herman Bavinck and James Eglinton who do the deep work of thinking about the ways of God and helping others to connect the gospel to ordinary life.
Take Heart
This week I wrote an article on John 16:33: “Take heart! For I have overcome the world.” There’s a message relevant to today. This is the uber-fact, the fact that transcends and illumines all other facts. It is the bedrock objective truth we somehow cannot seem to remember in all our anxiety and fear. Jesus Christ has overcome the world—and in John’s gospel, that means darkness, Satan, sin, and death.
This objective fact becomes true of us. Did you know that? John tells us in 1 John 5:4 that by believing in Jesus we have overcome the world! By faith we have nothing to fear. And “faith” is not, as people nowadays imagine, just an “opinion” or an uncertain hope; no, in the Bible faith is an unshakeable conviction that what God says is true. Jesus says, “Take heart! For I have overcome the world.” John tells us that that truth includes us. He overcame that we might overcome. Paul puts it memorably himself: “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Rom. 8:37).
Seeing things in the light of that truth causes us to see all our suffering and challenges as Paul himself saw them: light and momentary troubles. In an age of anxiety and fear and anger and mistrust and hysteria, we should be liberated from fear and filled with fruits of the Spirit. If you ever had those thoughts about becoming a missionary to Papua New Guinea because you lost interest in the “ordinary” things of life, why not just try to be a person of contentment, peace, and hope in a world gripped by fear?
That would be quite the witness.
Miscellany
Sorry for the shorter newsletter today. I hope you enjoy it anyway! I’m off to join my brother and kids in the mountains, where I hope to avoid getting eaten by Grizzly bears. I hope you have a lovely end to the summer months, as well.
I’ll leave you with this video clip of actor Jamie Foxx. It stunned me!