Nonsensical Ramblings of Mark

John MacArthur died yesterday. I have benefitted greatly from his books, interviews with Larry King, and other media that he has produced and that I have consumed. I read an article about him entitled  Died: John MacArthur, Reformed Expositor with Worldwide Reach—and Tainted Legacy and that led me to reflect on my own public and private lives. You know, the one people see and the ones that God sees. If Christ is to be believed, and he is, he has made the pronouncement over my life and even the life of someone as accomplished as MacArthur: “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone." (Mark 10:18) I am not a good man, nor am I a good father. I am not a good spouse nor a good employee. I am not good because, frankly, I am not God. That should not be a surprise to anyone. Any superlatives that may be directed to me while I am living or after I have died should have an asterisk after them for: Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down ...

There are so many things to which I can give myself. So many things that I can contemplate, so much I can chase after. It is so strange, this freedom I have, to literally do what I want. Of course, the freedom I choose results in a corresponding slavery and there's the rub. I have found a freedom that frustrates, kills, and separates. It's ugly and painful. It has consequences that lead to death. This freedom is sweet for a minute until it stings. Its pain lasts. I forget about that and chase the minute sweetness again. It doesn't satisfy and I am restless under its control. Up down, up down, up down - unsettling is its wake and in my lucidity I see the effects of its poison. I was listening to a podcast in preparation of me teaching the context and outline of the book of Jonah and I felt something that I had not felt since Sunday (it's Wednesday!). When the speaker talked about the compassion of God toward Jonah and the Ninevites something stirred in me. Something deep...

I am just now getting over the flu that I have had for the better part of a week. I am actually now able to concentrate and get some substantial professional and personal work done.   I hate being sick. So much of it is so frustrating because there is so much I want to do, so much of what I want to be, and I am not able to do and be that when I am ill. I know I need to embrace it when it comes. At the very least it illustrates to me life in this fallen world and brings into sharper focus the spousal purpose of my body. You see, I long to give of myself to my wife. That self gift, that love gift, is made manifest through my body. My invisible desires are now visible. There is a myriad of ways that this self gift is expressed to her - from folding laundry to holding her hand when she is sad. And yet I acutely feel my limitations of my expression of the love gift my body is purposed to be when I am sick. It is not merely a feeling of uselessness, but a frustration of the purpose ...

I am continuing my journey through Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body and I had never realized how body-focused the 2nd and 3rd chapters of Genesis truly are.  But then it all makes so much more sense when it was brought to my attention that the body we have been given in a manifestation of me, or to put it another way, the "I". And it goes beyond that still. Not only does it reveal me, but my body also reveals, in no small measure, the image of God. That is not to say that God is made of flesh like me as is depicted in so many Renaissance paintings. The old man in the sky is nothing like the God as revealed in the Bible. However, the love that God is, the holiness that he is, the justice he is, the righteousness that he is...all of it is shown to the world through my body. In a very real way, my body allows for others, and for me, to participate in the mystery (the hiddenness) of the image of God. That is by design; from the beginning.  If God is revealed in nature...

I am reading A Theology of the Body by Pope John Paul II. It is a thick book that may take me the better part of a year to get through. Last night, I came across a passage in the book that stopped me. In this part of the book the Pope is ruminating on the initial solitude of man and the implications that has on the body. As he does he makes this statement: "The...text never speaks directly about the body; even when it says 'the Lord God formed man with dust of the ground,' it speaks about man and not the body."   Now I was never explicitly taught that the body, and the body alone, came from the ground. However, I was somehow under the mistaken impression that the body was formed and waited around for the soul. Maybe I thought that when God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being"  was the point at which he was given a soul, but that is not the best reading of the text.  Now, Augustine helps me out a little bit here w...

  His Word shall live forever. The Word is a sword that pierces the heart And its truth is a light that cuts through the dark Of this world. Nations shall rise and nations shall fall But nothing shall stand in the way Of the Word.  - Iona I was young and now I am much older and there is one thing that I am more convinced of than ever. God's Word, the Bible, is the only truth that cuts through all of the darkness that this world offers me. Time-bound kingdoms, the ones that ruled over large swaths of this planet and even the one that currently commands the sons and daughters of disobedience cannot stand in its way.  The Word is sufficient in the ultimate and proximate sense as there is nothing of which it does not speak nor conquer. It's light, almost blinding at times, cannot be dimmed. Revelation after revelation, promise after promise, peace upon peace - it's all there and as it marches on it smashes the wisdom of the wise confounding the schemes of the clever.  Wh...