Ben Zornes

Living and Dying to Show the Preciousness of Christ

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Holiday Humility

Holiday Humility

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The higher you are, the lower you can bend. The archangel can bend low to converse with a lowly maiden. A man can stoop to remove a thorn from the paw of his dog. But the dog cannot stoop to free the mouse from the trap. What took place in Bethlehem reminds us that God stoops low, precisely because He is the Most High. The Highest became the Humblest.

Christ humbled himself, taking on the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men (Phi. 2:7). The conception of Christ as a human baby, in a human mother’s womb, was the commencement of His earthly humiliation. His life, remember, is our life. His righteous obedience, is ours. His example is our call to follow. His life is the taproot from which our life is to spring. As the great devotional writer Andrew Murray put it, “The life of God which in the incarnation entered human nature, is the root in which we are to stand and grow; it is the same almighty power that worked there, and thence onward to the resurrection, which works daily in us.” He’s quite right.

There’s a flurry of activity this time of year, in case you hadn’t noticed. Along with all the holiday hubbub comes many temptations to pride. Pride that you can buy such lavish gifts. Pride that you at least are above all this materialism. Pride that snaps at rambunctious kids. Pride that snarks on Facebook. Pride that stews over old offenses. Pride that lies in wait for new reasons to be offended.

If you are in Christ, however, His humility is yours. He’s the root from which the fruit of true humility springs. Patience towards others. Confession of wrongs done. Forgiveness for sins against you. So, how low have you stooped? It’ll only be as low as you are holy. 

The Shapeshifting Fear of Man

The Shapeshifting Fear of Man

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Fear of man is a shapeshifter. It may take the form of braggadocios cockiness; the sort of guy that–– while walking down the street––flexes in the shop windows to admire the ripple of his own muscles. It may take the form of a dietary regimen disguised as “health-consciousness,” but in reality is a lust-filled pursuit of a beauty standard derived from air-brushed Instagram models. It may take the form of talking too much, and it may take the form of talking to little. It may speak up when it should shut up, and keep quiet when it should speak up. It may sit when it should stand, and stand when it should sit. It may look like confidence or it may look like insecurity. It may seem like timidity or like bombast. In some people the fear of man turns them into a quaking leaf, in others it turns them into a raging bull.

But the Word rebukes pride in all its forms. The promise is that pride will fall. Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall (Pr. 16:18). Here’s why pride––in all its guises––always falls: it is raw unbelief.

Pride thinks self is sufficient for righteousness and salvation. It thinks it can be good enough. Conversely, if it takes the façade of self-loathing, it talks itself into believing that it hates itself more than God hates its sin; and thus, it thinks it can punish the sinner more effectively and with fiercer wrath that the Holy Judge of the universe. Pride appropriates to man what only God is capable of. You will never loathe your sin as much as God. You will never be as good as God’s law requires. You will never deliver yourself. Pride will always fall.

Which is why the fear of God is the antidote to the unbelieving pride of the fear of man. It opens our eyes to the sheer glory of God’s holiness, the ugliness of our sin, and the preciousness of the Gospel. The glorious Gospel delivers us from all our sin––in all its insidious faces––and clothes us with righteousness of Christ, so that God looks on us and sees the face of Jesus.

Two Tables

Two Tables

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When we come to this point in our worship service we must not take the furniture for granted. This is a table, not an altar. We are here to feast, not watch; to remember Christ’s sacrifice, not reenact it. It is Christ who is our mediator and has brought us into communion; thus, this is His table at which He presides, and He passes the plate around.

We sit on the shadowlands side of the table, while our brothers and sisters of the faith who have already died are seated on the high countries side.Here we are, a family of saints, gathered around a table. We should think of it as a really big table with our Lord Jesus sitting at the head saying grace. We sit on the shadowlands side of the table, while our brothers and sisters of the faith who have already died are seated on the high countries side. As the plate is passed, since we are His body, when your neighbor hands the plate to you, it is also Christ handing the plate to you. We are a family, God is our Father, Christ is our brother, and the Spirit unites us together as one.

There is a warning though. Some sit at this table every week, then go out and look an awful lot like they would rather be in the family of Satan. Friendship with the world, is enmity with God. God’s family feasts, laughs, and loves. Satan’s family bites, devours, and kills. At this table there is joy, there is glory, there is an eternal fountainhead of love. At Satan’s table you come to feed, and instead you are devoured. If you insist on feasting upon your selfish lusts and prides, you will find in the end that they have eaten you instead.

But at this table God serves us Himself. He is all joy, all glory, all delight, all goodness, all nourishment, and all life. In Him is no shadow of sorrow, only joy: a boundless, limitless, eternal joy. He has prepared for us a most sumptuous feast of the richest and most satisfying fare. He gives us the best, because He is that which is best.

 

The Soggy Reasoning of Crunchy Mamas

The Soggy Reasoning of Crunchy Mamas

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Let me get straight to the point, your lifestyle of healthy-eating is killing you. You were not made to worship at the altar of food, and the health-food industry has bewitched you. The idol of “healthy-eating” is a cult that particularly ensnares and entices women. This is a false gospel that Christian women are being led away by, and the men in their lives are doing precious little to halt the slide.

You were not made to worship at the altar of food, and the health-food industry has bewitched you. Let me make some generalizations. A crunchy mama often talks about her healthy eating “journey”, or her quest to feed her family with “real” food. She does her shopping at those stores where they don’t have plastic bags, and regularly spends twice as much money on half as much food. She posts about how sugar is as bad as cocaine, the flour in your pantry isn’t really grain, and shares the discoveries of her “research” into how bad MSG & GMO’s are for you and how great she and her family has felt since 86ing them from their diet.

Here’s the rub, your “quest to eat healthy” never ends until you have bought in to an entire “ecosystem” of products. It is interesting to note that many fear Monsanto and big farm lobbyists and their control of our food supply, but neglect the fact that the all-organic industry (and its ilk) is just as eager to sell you on something you may not really need. You are being advertised to, and it is surprising how little resistance is put up by many well-intentioned housewives.

Crunchy Mama’s quest starts as simply eliminating “junk foods” (chips, soda, candy); but it soon turns into buying pesticide-free foods, then a gluten intolerance, followed by GMO-free toothpaste and BPA-free toothbrushes, Himalayan salt lamps to combat EMFs, expensive vitamin supplements, powders, and drinks, essential oils, and an insistence on grinding your own spelt flour so that you can eat “like they used to.” This devotion to healthy eating will obsess you until it controls every facet of your life. It will also successfully cut you off from Christians who don’t eat like you. In effect, you will have recreated a dietary code that more closely resembles Jewish Pharisaism than it does Christian feasting. You will have erected a barrier to fellowship and liberty that inhibits your enjoyment of God’s good gifts, and stumbles weak consciences.

This soggy reasoning leads many crunchy mamas to forget that pleasure in foods is not evil. Your brain releasing dopamine after biting into a fresh KrispyKreme donut, or munching on a handful of potato chips, or sipping southern sweet tea, a beer, or soda is not a sign that something is going wrong. Rather, God fashioned our tongues to send signals of pleasure to our brains in response to such flavors. Sugar is a gift from God, not a curse from evil corporations. Can gifts be misused? Of course. But the problem, then, isn’t in the gift it is in the heart. Self-control must certainly be advocated for in regards to our eating, but it strikes me that many women who crusade against sugar, flour, etc. want artificial control (i.e. no “bad food” in the house) to take the place of self-control.This soggy reasoning leads to many crunchy mamas to forget that pleasure in foods is not evil.

The other problem I wish to address is your “lifestyle” choice is rarely left unvocalized. Instead it is talked about ad nauseum. Think about the many women who have been lured into the sins of insecurity and envy because you keep prattling on about your health food choices. She is left running through her cupboard, measuring herself against you and finding herself lacking. She becomes convinced that she is not caring for her family as well as you are, and so she begins her own quest to eat “truly” healthy. The tendency here is to think, “I’m grateful I do not eat like other men!” Those with weaker consciences are left to grapple with whether they are doing something wrong, because all the crunchy mamas told them that you shoudn’t buy bread from the store.

My question is: “truly healthy” by what standard and at what cost? MSG has been shown to be harmless. However, that didn’t stop one Christian lady from asking a hostess of a fellowship meal I attended if the chips had MSG in them. The look on the hostess’ face was one I won’t soon forget as she blushed in shame that she hadn’t lived up to this other woman’s dietary standards. She meekly apologized, and the other woman pronounced she would just skip out on the chips. Surely it would have been better if the first woman had simply eaten the chips in gratitude!

Or another woman who wondered aloud whether God even intended us to eat grain, and if He did, He certainly didn’t mean our modern “produced” grain. Now living in the Inland Northwest, we grow enough wheat around here to feed nations. Further, while they “used to” eat stone ground wheat, they also used to hope that they’d have enough food to make it through the winter. We take it for granted that we can get a loaf of bread (made from wheat from around here more than likely) anytime of the year. Surely this is a better arrangement than hoping there’d be enough to last until next year’s harvest!

If you’ve read thus far, well done! I know that many in my readership probably fall on this spectrum of healthy-eating. I don’t wish to offend unnecessarily, but I do hope to jar you enough to help you spot the gluttony that is often found at the heart of healthy-eating. It obsesses over food. It stresses over what “poisonous, cancer causing ingredient” might I accidentally be feeding my family! The focus is often not on glorifying God, enjoying His gifts (such as refined sugar, manufactured wheat, and even MSG), and encouraging Christian hospitality. Ask yourself if perhaps you’ve been suckered into being a willing costumer of the “organic food” industry. Ask if you have been subtly converted to the school of thought which teaches certain foods are “better for you.” Christ is Lord of the earth and history. That means refined sugar wasn’t somehow outside of His foreknowledge and He is now scrambling to figure out which angel leaked the secret directions for processing sugar cane into that (clearly wicked) white powder.

After all, at some point in history, some guy put a rock in his mouth and discovered salt. Does that mean we should eat rocks by the fistful? Nope. It does mean that God has placed us here to discover the many uses of the blessings he’s filled the earth with. Should we use wisdom and self-control? Of course. Should we insist that the sawdust flavored flourless flour is actually “better for you?” Um. Negative. Gut health is not as important as some clever marketer would have you believe. In essence, your smugness in not drinking a 64oz Big Gulp of Mountain Dew will do far more harm to your soul than it will to the body of the fellow who chugs three a day. There is obviously not enough space here to go into all the details of these many issues, and I’m sure this raises many questions, which I will gladly answer in the comment section and, if necessary, in follow up posts. Let the discussion commence…

Pride: A Hand Grenade to Christian Fellowship

Pride: A Hand Grenade to Christian Fellowship

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Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time.
1 Peter 5:6

One thing that is a hand grenade to healthy Christian fellowship is pride. This is why, throughout Peter’s epistle, he exhorts the different groups of Christians (husbands & wives in 1 Pt. 3:1-7, servants & masters 1 Pt. 2:18, citizens & magistrates 1 Pt. 2:12-17, elders & the flock 1 Pt.5:1-5) to humility, submission, deference.

He commands the “younger” to submit unto the elders, and he tells all the congregation (elders included) to be clothed with humility (1 Pt. 5:5). Then follows this wonderful phrase to “humble yourself”, but notice that this humbling is not just to earthly relationships which have been discussed throughout, but it is “under the mighty hand of God”. This humbling is to be done continually, and it is commanded (i.e. not optional).

Pride refuses to confess shortcomings, blindspots, failures, offenses, and thus breeds resentment, bitterness, and subsequently more pride and thus more and more sin. Humility is, in a sense, love in action, covering a multitude of sins (1 Pt. 4:8). But we must not miss that all of this is submission to God’s authority, in order that we might be raised up and exalted in due time.

Humility is not easy, and goes against the grain of our self-preserving instincts. Which is why he follows this command with an allusion from Psalm 55:22: “Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.” Humility makes one vulnerable to others scorn, which is cause for concern; but confessing our sins means we are repenting of them and willing to bear the responsibility for them, which is cause to cast ourselves upon the sustaining grace of God, because He cares for his children and will exalt the humble in due time.

God will cast down the haughty from their high tower (Pro. 16:18 & Jas. 4:6); but He will  sustain and preserve his saints, and this is especially important because, as Peter then warns, our enemy is a prowling lion seeking to destroy us that we are to resist (1 Pet. 5:8).

Do me a favor, share with your friends…a little goes a long way!

Ain’t No Shortcut to Sanctification

Ain’t No Shortcut to Sanctification

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A History of Worshipping History

It is no secret that I have an affinity for history, so much so that I pursued a major in the “less than lucrative” field of history! I believe this love for history has been largely fueled by the Christian biographies which my parents made me read as a youngster, and those old stories fascinated and inspired me to live a life worthy of a story.

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed a tendency amongst sincere Christians to veer from the plain path of truth by being allured to paths that look older and present themselves as shortcuts to sanctification. This is an unavoidable temptation for us as Christians, and though it takes many forms, all such paths are dangerous tangents, and not shortcuts.

The Christian faith, after all, has 2000 years of history & controversy and we are built upon 4000 years of Jewish history; thus there will always be a desire to have the faith be “like it once was”. But, as my Grandpa Christie would say, “The shortcut is the way you know.” Meaning, be wary of the temptation to take an untested path for the simple fact that it might prove shorter, easier, or more direct. The narrow way is the harder way, but it is still the right way.

Old Don’t Equal True

Common sense should make it clear that loving ancient things only for the sake of their sense of antiquity, rather than their veracity and truth is just plain foolish, silly, and is hoity-toity snobbery. We should take great care to study the history of Church and of Israel, we must remain faithful to orthodox teaching. However, it seems to me that many are making the case that you’re not truly faithful unless you do and say “old” things.

I have many acquaintances who have been drawn into Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, or (on the other end of the spectrum but with the same issue at heart) Hebrew Roots. These folks want to return to something that seems and sounds ancient, and therefore offers a sense of spiritual maturity. But a sense of spiritual maturity and actual spiritual maturity are two different things. Despite all my admiration for the Reformers and Puritans, I must take great care to follow their example and avoid their vices. This can only be done by the indwelling Spirit of the Living God, not through a form, creed, liturgy, or correctly pronouncing Jesus name (which apparently is Yahushua).

All these “paths” offer a semblance of holiness, but it is only through conformity to their rituals, rules, and self-righteous practices. Furthermore–and this could be developed more fully some other time–but at the bottom of the desire to align oneself with “ancient things”, is a lust for secret/hidden knowledge. I believe it is a form of gnosticism, pulling many Christians to seek their sanctification in doing and saying old things.

The Ancient of Days

Protestant Christianity says something profoundly different: you are saved not by what you do, but by what Christ has done. Do we hold to creeds and confessions, and are we wise to do so? Yes and yes. We have 6000 years of tradition in worshipping the God of Heaven and Earth. We must not think that truth can evolve based on the era. But to forsake Christ and His Word in an effort to achieve the sanctification that only His Spirit can produce, is certainly either unbelief or outright rebellion. The Word of God has rebuked errors throughout history (first the Jews, then the Eastern Church, then Rome). We should take heed that we don’t return to errors which our forefathers shed their blood to correct.

We serve the Ancient of Days, and His eternality should indicate to us that time is subservient to His “timelessness”. Our faith looks back to and rests on His mighty works in ages past (i.e. creation, covenants, and most of all Christ’s life, death, and resurrection), it looks forward to the consummation of His redemptive purpose, and it does so in the “now“. You’re reading this on a screen, which is communicating with a piece of metal outside the world, which is fetching these words from a server somewhere, after I pressed “publish”. It is in this “now” in which God intends us to trust and obey Him, looking forward to when faith becomes sight, prayer becomes praise.

More should be said about these, and Lord willing, I’ll get to it in due time.

Like what you just read (and how couldn’t you)? Please share it & comment your thoughts down below!

Also, you might also read:

Worshiping the Bridesmaid

Beware Erasmus

 

 

Dietary Self-righteousness

Dietary Self-righteousness

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This is my 200th blogpost! Thanks for all your support over the years! Here’s to the next 200!

I have a habit of making my thoughts and opinions known. Thus far I haven’t got in too much trouble for this habit, although I have caused a ruckus or two along the way, but no one was seriously injured. Some folks, have recently poked inquiringly at my views of the entire organic, gluten-free, “GMO-free”, free range, whole (stone ground) wheat, food craze, fad, diet, “lifestyle”. Now, this is certainly not intended to be any sort of professional perspective, nor is my expertise in nutrition. However, as mentioned earlier, I have this habit of making my thoughts and opinions known…so here goes.

First, in thinking about the “theology of what we put in our mouth and swaller”, we as Christians must be guided by the Bible. We are taught in Scripture to be good stewards (Mt. 25:14-30); that our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. 6:19), and although Paul is specifically addressing sexual fornication, the principle of using this body for God’s glory holds true for every arena of life; and when Paul tells us elsewhere to glorify God in everything we do he bakes it down (pun-intended) most specifically to our eating and drinking (1 Cor. 10:31). I take this to mean that how and what we eat does matter to God, since we will be made to give an account not only of what sort of food we ate, but how we ate it!

So, let us proceed with this as the foundation, and begin to address some of the particulars. We are responsible for what we do with this body; you are free to eat rocks if you please, or MSG-free foods, or Mountain Dew by the gallon. What we need to be wary of as Christians is taking this mandate to be responsible for our bodies and set up a little shrine to the organic food gods, who if we follow their blogs we are certain to find everlasting life and the cure for every malady. Which, by the way, is apparently coconut oil; however, next month it may be soy milk, followed by sawdust flour. My gravest concern here is the location of our hope of eternal life; we must guard ourselves against placing our hope in organic foods as the source of endless life without malady, sickness, or intolerances.

The man who eats McDonalds every day, washed down with a sugary beverage is going to die; so is the vegan, yoga-pants-wearing, Whole Foods shopping mom whose children are all on a strict gluten-free diet. Sorry to break the news to ya, but “we all gonna die.” Some sooner than others, and all of us regardless of how much or how little processed foods we digested.

What we consume matters, yes. But so does how we eat it. This is the prevailing theme when Paul is dealing with the issue of meat sacrificed to idols. Some Christians felt it was wrong to eat it, others felt it was fine and dandy; and as a result those who didn’t eat were stumbled by those who were, and vise versa. So Paul admonishes them that “every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving (1Ti 4:4).”

Yes we should go out of our way to keep our brothers from stumbling, but we should also raise them in maturity. We need to remember that God made both the cow in the stockyard eating Monsanto’s GMO-corn pumped full of antibiotics as well as the free range cow grazing in the pasture. We should remember that this slab of steak on our plate is called “good” by God, and we ought to give cheerful, mouth-watering thanks regardless of where the cow came from or what it was eating. God is after thankful hearts, not Christians who only eat GMO-free food.

Let us venture onward a little further, if I may. The biggest concern I have with all this is the consequences that I see in regards to Christian fellowship. Imagine “Family A” invites “Family B” over for dinner, and “Mom B” calls to tell “Mom A” that “I’m on a gluten-free, dairy-free diet, and little Sally has a wheat sensitivity, Johnny is allergic to lemons (I really have heard this) and a few other citrus fruits, and my husband gets severe headaches from MSG…can’t wait to see you all tonight!” These “sensitivities” immediately prove a stumbling block for “Family A” who may not have any of these issues. Now, being a good Christian woman, “Mom A” will certainly be happy to serve. But this tends to create an inhibition to Christian fellowship.

Furthermore, it is paramount that should one family decide to regulate their diet to eat “all natural”, they need to take great caution that they are not propping up an extra-biblical moral standard. This food snobbery is nothing more than self-righteousness disguised as eating habits, and it is about as flavorful as Kale chips. All natural or organic or paleo diets have a logically fallacy in their assumptions, namely, the assumption that technology has no place in the development of food, and that God frowns upon any attempts to “engineer” food. This seems to me like a rather difficult case to make from Scripture. We ought to be good stewards, but we are also called to take dominion of this world, and I would assert that that includes being able to discover ways of growing more food faster.

Will there be kinks in the process? Most certainly! But should that inhibit our endeavor to subdue this world to the glory of God? Most certainly not.

If you’re interested in reading more on this topic, I’d recommend this article here.

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Ben Zornes