They are remembered for everything they aren’t.
That is a clumsy paraphrase of an observation JI Packer once made about the Puritans. What comes to mind today with a word like ‘puritanical’ is such a long way from what the Puritans actually believed and how they lived—more than 400 years ago. A long way? From memory, Packer argued that the meanings associated with the two words were in polar opposition to each other.
One other feature of the Puritans is that they were so wordy. Their sermons, reputedly, could mention a phrase like ‘fifty-fifthly’, as the main points were enumerated. One dude spent seven (big) volumes going through Hebrews, one verse at a time. The most famous Puritan of all, John Bunyan of Pilgrim’s Progress fame, wrote an entire (big) book just on John 6.37.
Into this background, steps Dane Ortlund with Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers. It is a small book with short chapters using double-spacing on little pages! He returns to the Puritans and refreshes them around a single theme: ‘what the Bible says about the heart of Christ’ (14), starting with the ‘only place where Jesus tells us about his own heart’ (17)—in ‘perhaps the most wonderful words ever uttered by human lips’ (18):
Matthew 11.28-30 — ‘I am gentle and lowly in heart’.
It had me singing, a few times, ‘He knows our need, to our weakness he’s no stranger’—from O Holy Night.
Ortlund identifies his target audience in the second paragraph:
This book is written for the discouraged, the frustrated, the weary, the disenchanted, the cynical, the empty. Those running on fumes. Those whose Christian lives feel like constantly running up a descending escalator (13).
Conscious of it being a New Year, this past week I decided to serialise some excerpts from the book on Facebook, as a way to encourage people. Going from the ‘likes’ and ‘comments’, it seemed to be mission accomplished. Here are three of them, once again:
If Jesus hosted his own personal website, the most prominent line of the ‘About Me’ dropdown would read: gentle and lowly in heart. (21)
When you look at the glorious older saints in your church, how do you think they got there? Sound doctrine, yes. Resolute obedience, without a doubt. Suffering without becoming cynical, for sure. But maybe another reason, maybe the deepest reason, is that they have, over time, been won over in their deepest affections to a gentle Savior. Perhaps they have simply tasted, over many years, the surprises of a Christ for whom their very sins draw him in rather than push him away. Maybe they have not only known that Jesus loved them but felt it. (99-100).
Whether we have been sinned against or have sinned ourselves into misery, the Bible says God is not tightfisted with mercy but openhanded, not frugal but lavish, not poor but rich. That God is rich in mercy means that your regions of deepest shame and regret are not hotels through which divine mercy passes but homes in which divine mercy abides. It means the things about you that make you cringe most, make him hug hardest. (179-180).
I had another five quotations up my sleeve! However I wonder how many ‘likes’ there would have been if I had been up front about how the author stands in the tradition of the Puritans. Not many, I suspect. The Puritans would rue the fact that ‘puritanical’ rules—and that riles the Packers of this world!
But wait, there’s more…
A couple of other features of the book provoked me.
Two observations
His attention to the details in the biblical text. The meaning of a word here, or some grammatical detail over there. I revelled in it. Someone taking the text seriously and trying to do some proper exegesis! That was refreshing. Over the years I have pleaded with students of preaching to be pedantic about observing the details in the text, even showing them how to do it. However, increasingly, I am finding that the norm is for my pleas to be ignored. It is like they don’t think it is that important.
His determination to let God be the God revealed to us in the Bible (and in Christ)—rather than the caricature of him we tend to create. Ortlund slips in this conviction, again and again:
Our natural intuition can only give us a God like us (24).
Rewiring our vision of God as we study the Scriptures… (144).
The Bible is one long attempt to deconstruct our natural vision of who Christ actually is (149).
The Christian life, from one angle, is the long journey of letting our natural assumption about who God is, over many decades, fall away, being slowly replaced with God’s own insistence on who he is. This is hard work (151).
The message of this book is that we tend to project our natural expectations about who God is onto him instead of fighting to let the Bible surprise us into what God himself says (155).
God is something other than what we naturally believe him to be. It means the Christian life is a lifelong shedding of tepid thoughts of the goodness of God (172).
What do you think?
We can start with this understanding of what we think the God of the Bible, and the Jesus of the Gospels, should be like and then we squeeze and massage the data to fit into that understanding. We ignore the harder stuff. We are content to live with half-truths. Packer, once again—’a half-truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth’ (28).
My mind travels to the letters to the seven churches in Revelation. I am of the view that, taken together, they represent the message of Christ to churches of every age and time zone. And yet, what happens—increasingly? We play favourites. We live in two or three, while ignoring three or four. Why? Because they don’t align with what we think God and his Christ should be like. And yet, all God’s people need to say ‘ouch’…
One conclusion
I wonder if there is a similar issue lurking behind both these observations.
The last couple of generations have been shaped by the postmodern mood—and methinks ‘mood’ is one of the better nouns to use. Engaging with ancient texts is more a matter of suspicion, than submission. History is revised to give greater volume to the voices that were silenced. Power, rather than truth, becomes the concern. While these can be good things, even needed things, this is not always the case. Like when meaning is located not so much in the intent of the author, or the words on the page, but in the response rising up within the reader. Everything from Shakespeare to Disney is air-brushed. Golly gosh, I once dreamed of doing a PhD on Robin Hood, wanting to reflect on how successive generations revised a version of it for themselves—only for the outcome to become a mere reflection of themselves.
I am not so sure Dane Ortlund was expecting me to think these thoughts in response to his book, but isn’t this what lies behind both of these observations? If it is our response that is the key to meaning, then why bother with being pedantically attentive to the details in the author’s text? That is a waste of time. If we already have our revised, reduced God in mind as the answer for our generation, then why bother with living within the full biblical revelation of him? Skip the hard bits. The half-truths will be sufficient—and more palatable, more marketable.
Here is the irony.
You and I would not like our words, or our person, to be treated in this way!
But with this prevailing mood, ‘understanding has been gradually transformed into overstanding’ (Gunton). No longer is it common to ‘treat texts with the same respect we show to people’ (Vanhoozer). Whatever happened to leaning forward and listening in order to understand, rather than to respond—with God and his word? Whatever happened to remembering that we have ‘two ears and one mouth’—with God and his word? Whatever happened to getting the full picture before drawing conclusions about one part of the picture—with God and his word? Whatever happened to “Now, if I hear you correctly, you seem to be saying that… but please correct me if I am wrong”—with God and his word?
nice chatting
Paul
About Me
the art of unpacking
After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.
Recent Posts
John Stott was the first one to help me see the tension in Jesus’ teaching on salt and light. They are pictures for how his disciples are to live in society. Salt pulls them in, keeping them involved. Light holds them back, keeping them distinctive. Being light responds to ‘the danger of worldliness’, while being…
Just when I thought that it could not be possible to have another first-hand account of the impact of John Stott’s life (d. 2011), along comes this book by his close friend, John Wyatt. I am always ready to learn more about John Stott, but also about friendship. It fascinates me. It keeps coming up…
Reading stories to grandchildren over Christmas reminded me again of how powerful they can be. They are so compact and simple in presentation, and yet so clever in construction. There are just so many features at work in an effective story. It is some years since I taught narrative preaching, but when I did I’d…
