This keeps coming up lately! The caricature of John Calvin that we live with today is that of a cold, calculating person with a pointy head and zero passion. The truth is far from that. Once you actually start reading the Institutes you find out that Calvin was passionate about God. The Institutes at times read like devotions. Good devotions.

The other thing that people say about Calvin is that he wasn’t interested in missions. I mean, how could anyone who believed that God had predestined who would be saved actually believe in mission? I’ve posted a few comments on Calvin and missions, a brief one recently. As it turns out, there is an article in the Founders Journal on Calvin and missions.

Since these resources seem to be accumulating, I’m going to create a page to keep track of them all. Go read the Founders Journal article and watch for a special Calvin and Missions page.

We’re approaching Reformation Day, and so you’d expect some chatter in the blogosphere about that fateful event. Was it good and inevitable or bad and inevitable? I found the internetmonk’s observations interesting. He is not condemning the Reformation but looking at it perhaps a bit more honestly than we Reformed types generally do. I wasn’t going to comment on his comments but I have to.

I no longer believe the Reformation, as it’s commonly described by Protestants, is the distinct event we’ve made it out to be. – I’m not exactly sure what he means by “distinct” but I think I agree. There had been a few hundred years worth of church reform efforts before Luther came along. What was different about Luther was that he went beyond ethical reforms to doctrinal reformes and didn’t get burned for it. Tyndall and Hus were in the same trajectory as Luther but the Church burned them for their efforts. So, yea, the Reformation didn’t spring out of nothing.

I do not believe true Christianity was restored or rediscovered in the Reformation. – Oh yeah, that isn’t what happened or we’re Latter Day Saints in that the church disappears for a period of time. No, Protestant and Roman Catholic were one and the same prior to the Reformation. It is wrong and unfair to point to the ills in Church history prior to the Reformation and say “those rotten Catholics!” That was us folks, the good and the bad. The church was in need of reformation but it still existed.

I’m convinced that it didn’t take long for Protestantism to accumulate enough problems of its own to justify another reformation or two. – Amen. Hence, semper reformanda. This is why I’m a Reformed Baptist in theology.

I believe that a lot of Protestants say sola scriptura when they mean solo scriptura or nuda scriptura or something I don’t believe at all. – An entire blog post could be spent on this. A book needs to be written on what sola scriptura is and is not.  But an error on this today does not mean that the Reformation was good or bad, just that we’re bone heads.

I believe the Reformation was very secular, political and, eventually, quite violent. To act as if it was mostly a spiritual revival movement is naive. – Don’t you hate it when sinners are involved in this stuff? Just get them out of the Church and we’d all be much better off. I don’t think anyone acts like the Reformation didn’t have it’s bad parts. The violence perpertrated on the Anabaptists and Papists isn’t denied by anyone. The Reformers were people of the Sixteenth Centruy and behaved as such. That doesn’t detract from what they did accomplish spiritually. Rich Barcellos makes some brief, helpful comments to this end.

I can see huge omissions from the work of the reformers, such as a theology of cross-cultural missions and much more. – Well, sort of, at least on the missions thing. Three comments here: 1) They were a product of the Sixteenth Century and the prevelent method of mission didn’t look like the Modern Missions Movement of the Ninteenth Centruy. 2) They were busy reclaiming the gospel of grace. You kind of have to do that before you can carry the gospel to the ends of the earth. 3) They did too.

I believe it is embarrassing to turn the Reformers into icons. Calvin on a t-shirt should win an award for irony. – I totally disagree and am deeply offended. :)

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

So I’ve been Mr. Mom this week while Lisa is out of town. The last time I did this, all of the kids were little and homeschooled and it was insane. Now with one child away in college, another home and in college and one homeschooled, it hasn’t been as crazy. Turns out I can cook more than Ramin and have done a couple of soups but I’m cooking too much. We have leftovers for days and even I get tired of eating them. :)

Admittedly,  many of the things Lisa was doing prior to her trip ended and I’m not doing all the things she normally does so I’m not saying that she has it easy. I’ve been keeping up, that’s all. And she set me up for success with the school work. On top of that, I grabbed a copy of her brain before she took off; I scanned this month’s calendar from her dayplanner. That and the house isn’t quite as clean as Lisa would keep it, but hey, I’m comfortable.

And there is a “Mr.” component to this too. I’m redoing both the bathrooms. Painting, replacing fixtures, touching up. The fixtures that were in there were the cheapest and poorly installed. When our previous landlord had the house painted, the painters did minimal preparation so I’m filling holes and sanding and wiping down walls before we begin painting. I’m pretty sure Lisa will like the results when she gets back. She gets to pick out the things that will come with us when we move so she’ll have her input too.

At the same time, I’m teaching Sunday school this Sunday and next and I’m leading our Growth Group. Fortunately, I taught this class last term so I’m pretty much done and the Growth Group is going through the Becoming a Contagious Christian series so it requires little preparation on my part. Next week will take some getting ready but this week we have an important congregational meeting so no Growth Group.

There is some excellent stuff going on at work and I’m sorry I’m not there for it. I’ll be working an overnight at my old store on Monday so I can get my fix then I guess.The report I’ve gotten from Lisa is that things are going well so I’m happy.

Man, was that a boring blog post. :) 

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Your eye is the lamp of your body. – Luke 11:34

I always had a hard time understanding this. I suppose it is because of the children’s song, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna’ let it shine.” Maybe it is a cop out to blame it on a song, but I always assumed the light was to shine outward. What is in us must shine out. That kind of thing. To be fair, that is what is going on in the next section, Jesus is telling the Pharisees that what’s inside them is what needs to be washed.

At any rate, this section always gave me problems in interpretation. But this week I spent time reading and reflecting on it and praying over it and I think I’ve finally found my error. The lamp of the eye doesn’t shine outward like the headlamp on your car, it shines inward. I don’t know how I could have missed that, the rest of verse 34 is clear, “When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness.” Duh.

Being a disciple is more than learning doctrine. It is doing the doctrine.So what does that mean then? In the preceding section, Jesus is talking about signs. He compares himself to Jonah and says he’s greater. Same thing with Solomon. Then he compares the generation before him to Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba and says that things will go better for them on the last day. They had lesser signs and they sought out the lesser sign (Sheba) and repented (Nineveh). But the generation before Jesus has greater signs and they’re asking for more. So what is happening in the section on the eye as a lamp is that Jesus is telling people to perceive what is before them. “Open your eyes!” he’s telling them. That is what that part about hiding a lamp under a basket or in the cellar in verse 33 is about. Open them eyes and recognize what is before you. If you do, you will be filled with light, not darkness.

That advise applies to us today as much as it did to the generation standing before Jesus. We can too easily not see what is plainly before us. In modern terms, we are tempted to draw the curtains over the windows of our eyes, curtains of entertainment or money or comfort or expediency and miss the truth. Sure, Jesus isn’t physically standing before us, berating us for not catching on, but he has sent his witnesses to us. The Church is on mission to preach the gospel to the lost, to strengthen the believer and to comfort those in distress.

For most of us, we’re in the ‘believer’ category and I think many of us in that category have our eye-lamp uncovered and are taking in the truth. There are some of us in that category, however, who might think we’re getting it but we may not be. We can be learning but not gaining knowledge. What we need to be doing is putting that doctrine to use. To not just learn but to obey. Do we tend to the other categories I’ve listed? Do we evangelize and care for the weak and sick and poor? I know I score myself very low in those categories to my own shame. Perhaps the curtains are half drawn in my case. Maybe the lamp is not under the basket but neither is it on the stand. Being a disciple is more than learning doctrine. It is doing the doctrine. May the Lord help me be a better disciple. It is too easy to be a poor one.