Depression, Sin, Medication, Gospel, Community

Tim Chester writes a helpful post about the intersection of depression, sin, medication, gospel, and community.

Sleep

“Sleep!” cried Father Brown. “Sleep… Do you know what sleep is? Do you know that every man who sleeps believes in God? It is a sacrament; for it is an act of faith and it is a food.”

-G.K. Chesterton, The Complete Father Brown, p. 85, The Honour of Israel Gow

How to Change

“If you want to conquer a besetting sin, you need to stop loving it.”
-Matthew Elliott

Smarter Email

This afternoon I read through a pdf of Matt Perman’s post, How to Get Your Email Inbox to Zero Everyday. I’m going to recommend our whole church staff read this. Print out the pdf and read it when you have 15 spare minutes. It will serve you.

Pray for Santa Barbara and Westmont College

UPDATE:

• I was just sent photos of the damage at Westmont
• The Horizon (the Westmont newspaper) is providing some live blog updates
• CBS video footage

I just received news of a massive wildfire burning in Santa Barbara. The fire began a few hours ago. It has already destroyed a number of homes and has caused damage to a number of buildings at Westmont College, my alma mater. All Westmont students have been evacuated. I’m still trying to get in touch with Santa Barbara friends.

It looks like the Westmont website will provide updates…

The news updates don’t look good.

Please pray for Santa Barbara residents, the firefighters, and Westmont College.

Thinking Biblically About Facebook

UPDATE 2: I’ve turned this post into a full length essay for The Gospel & Culture Project.

UPDATE 1: Many of you have asked for the audio of this message and for information on accessing the complete Ten Topics study guide. Though we record my Sunday sermons, for a variety of reasons I don’t record my Thursday night messages. Perhaps I’ll revisit this in the future. I have now, however, posted my teaching notes at the bottom of this post (note: I don’t teach from anywhere near a full manuscript, but there’s enough there to give you the big ideas). As for ordering copies of the study guide, please contact my admin at cpeckham[AT]cpcfc.org

Continuing the Ten Topics series I’m teaching this fall, tomorrow night I’m delivering a message titled, Facebook: Technology and Relationships. This message explores technology’s impact on how we do relationships and how followers of Jesus ought to engage technology.

Because of its extreme popularity (especially where I live), I’m focusing the discussion on Facebook.

In preparation for tomorrow night, earlier this week I took a tour of Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto, a 15 minute drive from my front door. My friend/fellow church member/Facebook employee showed me around 3 of Facebook’s buildings in downtown Palo Alto. They run a slick operation.

Just like the Google campus, Facebook headquarters serves up tasty free meals to all employees and nearly every floor is set up with kitchenettes housing all the snacks and drinks you could want. They even had my favorite smoothie flavor in stock: strawberry-bannana.

More impressive than the food was the dry cleaning. Facebook offers a free dry cleaning service to all employees. And, more striking still–not a single Facebook employee has an office. All employees sit in rows or clusters of desks. Entry level administrators have desks next to high-level managers. When I walked past Facebook Founder/CEO Mark Zuckerburg, he was sitting at his little desk working away on his computer smack in a sea of other desks and employees.

Anyways, I’m looking forward to talking about the intersection of Scripture and Facebook tomorrow night.

If you’re interested, here’s the “homework” people are doing in preparation for tomorrow night:
Facebook.pdf

Facebook: Technology and Relationships. 11/13/08

The Technology Lens

• Technology (most, not all) is neutral and can be used for good or ill

• Cave paintings

• Art or war plans

• The Wheel

• Drive to church or drive-by shooting

• Internet

• Dispense truth or porn

• Approach technology with this lens: neutral, good or ill

We’ve grown up in an age of unprecedented technological development

• The 2-3 generations before us experienced significant technological change, but not to the same degree as what we’re experiencing.

• Examples…

• The technologies that have taken off during our lifetime have radically changed how we do life, relationships, family, community, work.

• How many of you could do your job without a computer?

• How many of your lives and relationships would radically change if you didn’t have a cell phone, email, and access to the internet?

• How many of you go to public places and are fully present with the people you’re with and the place you’re at, never distracted by your cell phone, ipod, etc.?

We must see our engagement with technology as a discipleship issue

• Following Jesus means letting Jesus influence all of your life, everything about how you do life

• The 2 wrong ways to react to technology: The Bear Hug & The Cold Shoulder

• The Bear Hug: unthinking use of technology

• “Everybody has an iphone, I must have one.”

• Zero thinking about the impact this technology will have on you and others

• The Cold Shoulder: ignoring, retreating from technology

• “Technology is worldly, I won’t be corrupted by it, I’ll stay away from it.”

• Escape to the hills! Amish mindset.

• Problem with this line of thinking: you’re still using technology!

• The Washing Machine vs. The Washing Board (both are technological developments)

• The 3rd way: The Side Hug–thoughtful engagement with technology

• Matthew 22:36-40

• Give a Side Hug to technology and ask it this question: How can I love God and love other people through this technology?

• Christians are called to thoughtfully engage culture as a means of loving God and loving others.

• The concept of Leveraging

• Rather than look at dozens of technologies today and how they affect relationships and how we’re to engage with them as Christians, we’re singling out Facebook because of its present popularity.

• We could do a whole message on the Microwave, Netflix, the Answering Machine, Hybrid vehicles, etc.

My Facebook History

• My Facebook 30-day experiment

9 Potentially Negative Uses/Dangers of Facebook

• 1. The trend of using status updates to complain

• Examples…

• You should be honest/authentic, but not a complainer

• 2. Measuring your worth/identity by number of Facebook friends/Facebook interactions

• Facebook measurements are opposite of gospel measurements

• 3. Greater concern over forming Facebook (virtual) friends rather than real friends

• 4. Diminishment of face-to-face time with people/enjoying and working on real relationships

• Disengaging from face-to-face time with people to check what’s going on in your Facebook world

• 5. Dual identities

• Being someone online who you’d never be in person

• 6. Hurting and excluding others (intentionally or unintentionally)

• “Favorite friends” application

• Not being invited somewhere

• Without this technology you wouldn’t have known, or at least wouldn’t have known in the same way

• Misunderstandings:

• “Is he talking about me?”

• “She wrote on her wall, but never writes on mine…”
• etc.

• 7. Facebook and online life can make you more distracted, changes how you think/attention span

• Recent research

• 8. Can tempt you away from your calling/work

• Your heart isn’t engaged in something great and big, but constantly distracted by silly little status updates (“I’m chewing gum”) and Wall writings…

• 9. Thinking about yourself more than you already do

• You weren’t created to think about and focus on yourself. Facebook can tempt you to become a more self-focused person than you already are.

6 Facebook Opportunities: 6 Ways to Love God and Love Others Through Facebook (Leveraging)

• 1. Can get back in touch with old, far-away friends in an easy way, showing them how you’ve been changed by Jesus

• My story: “You’re a pastor? What changed?”

• 2. Can use Facebook as an extension of face-to-face relationships/can be used to enhance time with people

• Get to know people better/better love and care for people when you’re with them because through Facebook you know more about who they are and what’s going on in their life

• Examples…

• 3. Can use Facebook to think about yourself less and others more

• Facebook can be a tool for getting outside of yourself/your problems

• 4. Can use Facebook to sharpen/discipline what you do with your time

• Status updates and built in accountability

• 5. Can use Facebook to quickly announce/make great things happen: events, face-to-face time

• Instead of taking 45 min. to call 10 people to come over for a spontaneous evening of fun and fellowship, use Facebook

• 6. Can use Facebook to influence other people for Jesus. Create a new culture with your status updates: use to influence, love, encourage, teach, and challenge people towards greater love for God and other people.

• Wife’s story…

• This is the single greatest change I’d like to see us make.

Closing Application

• Some of you are all jacked up (Bear Hug) and internet addicted and you just need to take a fast, or permanent break from Facebook

• Some of you are a medium-bit jacked up and need to take some time to reflect, get alone with God, and ask him how to engage this technology for his glory, your good, and the good of others. Make changes.

• Some of you are only a little-bit jacked up (Side Hug) and just need to get creative and come up with ideas for using Facebook to greater glorify God and love others.

• A few of you are “Cold Shoulder” technology people that need to engage the 21st century here in Silicon Valley

Batter My Heart

This morning I prayed one of my favorite poems, John Donne’s Holy Sonnet XIV:

Batter my heart, three-person’d God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Courage

“Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”
-Winston Churchill

Matthew Elliott, Feel

Three weeks ago I walked into Borders, eager to spend my $50 gift card. First, I picked up a book on Switzerland (I recently discovered that I’m Swiss). Next, I grabbed a biography of Genghis Kahn (for some reason I find Genghis fascinating). By my calculations I had about 10 bucks left to spend, so I sauntered into the “Christian” isle to see if anything caught my eye and, something did, a book called Feel.

This book surprised me.

Not only did I think a lot, I also felt a lot while reading Matthew Elliott’s Feel.

Apparently, several years ago this fella Matthew Elliott did doctoral research on the role of emotion in the New Testament (wish I had thought of that). That research turned into Elliott’s book Faithful Feelings, a book that examines the felt experience of Christian living, how emotion was viewed by the New Testament writers in their cultural context. That book was published in 2006. I hope to read it. John Piper calls the book, “The most thorough study on emotions in the New Testament.”

Published earlier this year, Feel seems to be a popularization/distillation/fleshing out of Elliott’s earlier work. The book is aimed at two significant errors Elliott observes in American Christianity:

1. “we have made our relationship with God more about fulfilling our duty than expressing our passion. We make our spiritual lives into a list of dos and don’ts. We pursue this list more than we actually pursue Jesus. And this leads to a life that eventually becomes tired and numb, devoid of feeling, dead.”

2. “we have become indoctrinated in the belief that emotions are unreliable, dangerous, and bad.”

From his study of Scripture, Elliott’s book builds upon several key ideas:

• “our emotions were given to us by God to drive us to our best”
• “emotions are among the most logical and dependable things in our lives”
• “emotions give us a window to see truth like nothing else”
• “the true health of our spiritual lives is measured by how we feel”

If some of those statements trouble you, note that Elliott’s writing reads like a modern day Religious Affections–Jonathan Edwards’ 1746 classic which examines the centrality of emotions in Scripture and in the Christian life. Elliott is careful to ground his ideas, proposals, and conclusions in Scripture.

I really like this book. It affected me. It convicted me. It helped me. I’m celebrating God’s providence, how he led me to peek into the “Christian” isle at Borders and spot Feel. Reading Feel has come with perfect timing. The thesis and thrust of the book hit a sanctification bullseye in me. I’ve already begun recommending this book to many of my friends.

Like with any book I deeply enjoy, I have a few quibbles with Feel. Chiefly, I wish Elliott had included a brief section near the beginning of the book that clearly articulates and unpacks the gospel message, serving those who will read this book and get
excited about its content, but fail to digest it in a well formed gospel context. But, to be fair, the heart of the gospel is sprinkled and assumed throughout the book.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from Feel:

Jesus Christ brings to each of us a new set of information about the world around us. Without him, we have reason to fear and worry. With him, our emotions have a whole new context.

What we feel–our loves–reveals what we really believe and becomes the motivation for how we live.

…emotion does what a friend does–it counsels and advises…As we are conformed to Christ, we can learn to rely on emotions as we might rely on a friend.

Our emotional response to anything is a collage of our personality, upbringing, self-image, worldview, experiences, and beliefs. What we concentrate on, what we dwell on, what we run over and over again n our heads is what we get emotional about. So we need to stop and think about what we are always telling ourselves. If it does not line up with what is true, we must cancel the download. Then we need to reboot our thought patterns with godly values and beliefs. Only then can our emotions reflect a godly perspective.

Whatever podcast you play in your head is what you will eventually believe about God, others, and yourself. It will determine your emotional starting point and the place out of which you will respond. You can spend most of your life at a single spot emotionally because you pitched your tent on one thing that you relive and rehash every day. Sometimes, you have to make yourself pack it up and move on to something new.

Yup, that last quote is especially convicting, helpful, and freeing.

Here are a few of the endorsements for Feel:

Feel is an engaging book that’s
potentially liberating. God made emotions and Jesus expressed them;
they need to be reclaimed and redeemed, not ignored or abandoned.
Matthew Elliott does a service to the church through this thoughtful
work.
-Randy Alcorn, author of Heaven and Deception

Many books today on the Christian life are
baloney. Others just repackage what is widely known, or dress up tired
platitudes with a new set of stories. This book is different. Based on
solid research, it has truly fresh insights into our feelings and how
God views them. I have been greatly helped personally by reading it,
and I can’t wait to pass it on to a bunch of other people who will
eagerly receive its wisdom too. Best of all, in chapter after chapter,
this book calls forth the godly feelings that, the author argues, God
wants us to nurture and enjoy. Readers will discover here a path to
enjoy God that they may never have glimpsed before.
-Robert Yarbrough, Ph.D., New Testament department chairman, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Communities of Grace

Tim Chester, communities of performance vs. communities of grace: