I am delighted to host Pastor Zamora at Caffeinated Thoughts.  Pastor Zamora is a missionary with 25 years of experience planting churches in Peru, Ecuador, and Chile.  He is currently establishing an institute in Peru to train Latin Americans to be missionaries as well.  He’s also the author of Walking Man: A Modern Missions Experience in Latin America.

By Narciso Zamora

I would like to share with you a little about a subject that I am often sensitive about, though I’m not sure there is any reason I should be. In my debut book, Walking Man: A Modern Missions Experience in Latin America, I dedicate about two chapters to my life before accepting Christ. I don’t go into a whole lot of detail, but there’s no doubt in the reader’s mind that I was a delinquent. For a short but sad era, I made my living from my dull wits and nothing better occurred to me than to steal and cheat my way into a meal and a place to stay.

I sometimes feel ashamed of this past, but I have seen over and over again how God has used my past to help me relate to young people today who need to be saved from a life of delinquency. I wonder often if people I meet could know what I used to be and if it would hurt my ministry. And for those who have or will read Walking Man, will a shadow of doubt be left in their minds about the kind of person I am? After all, can a leopard change his spots?

Well, no, but Christ can change us. The Apostle Paul said, “…be transformed by the renewing of your mind” Romans 12:2. And he knew as well as any other that a total and permanent life transformation is possible, but I would assert that it rarely happens overnight. When I came to know God at that tiny church in the Amazon jungle, I know that I was immediately different although God had been working on me for some months to change my desires – even though I hadn’t accepted Christ yet. However, there was much work to be done for my life to bring glory to God.

Praise God I am a different man. I try to live without regret. Every once in a while Satan will sit on my shoulder and try to make me feel inadequate because of who I was, but then God whispers to me that He has given me beauty for the ashes of my life. In my imperfection, He has created perfection.

I am glad to be able to offer advice to young people from the perspective of real-life experience. That’s not to say that someone who never went deep into moral sin can’t offer good advice. There are really two opposite scenarios: the person who has made all the right moves by accepting Christ early and staying out of trouble and the person who has come to the end of his rope, messed up royally and had to be dug out of the ditch by grace. Both have something to offer others. Both perspectives are needed. I can offer the latter, but I praise God that both my boys, who are young men now, have walked the first path I described.

I would wish the first path for all my Christian brothers and sisters.

Thank you for this opportunity to share with you. I invite your comments and suggestions on what you think about whether a person’s jaded past is a help or hindrance to their witness and their own spiritual walk. Could you attend church where the pastor was a former convict or drug addict? What about a pastor who had a violent crime on his record as a young person? Can human trust reach as far as God’s grace? Let me know what you think!

Marking a first for Caffeinated Thoughts I wanted to introduce you to our first guest blogger, Narciso Zamora.  Pastor Zamora will be joining us this week for his “Walking Man Blog Tour”.

Pastor Zamora has been a church-planting missionary for over 25 years in Peru, Ecuador, and Chile.  He is currently establishing an institute in Peru to train Latin Americans to be missionaries within their own continent.

Pastor Zamora has walked the message of Christ into the mountains, jungles, fields and forests of his native Peru and throughout Ecuador and Chile. Dreading the life of hard labor offset by nights of drunken stupor that his father modeled, Zamora ran away from home after high school. He lived a vagrant’s life, surviving through delinquency, until through the generous support of a Christian family, Zamora came to know Christ. He left the jungle to study at a seminary in Lima.

He has recently written a book called Walking Man which recounts Zamora’s winding and treacherous path, literally and figuratively, toward finding his calling in missions. Characteristic of Zamora’s more than 30 years of mission experiences is his determination to go anywhere he felt called to preach and teach - walking day and night into the jungle or trekking from valley to alpine zone and back down the other side of the mountain, just to reach an isolated village.

With half a dozen well-established congregations in place in Peru, Zamora affiliated the churches with an international denomination and later moved to Ecuador and Chile planting churches. In Chile a new trial faced the Zamora family when his wife’s kidneys started to fail. Dealing with the emotional turmoil of a chronically ill spouse wore more heavily on him than any adversity he had encountered in his ministry. Zamora became depressed and in this chapter of his life, he learned new lessons and gained new insights into what it means to carry the cross of Christ.

Anyway, I look forward to Pastor Zamora’s guest blog this week and I hope you stop by to check it out and be sure to visit the Walking Man website.

]]> http://shanevanderhart.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/meet-the-walking-man/feed/ shanevanderhart AddThis Social Bookmark Button http://shanevanderhart.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/episode-15-jesus-the-old-testament-you/ http://shanevanderhart.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/episode-15-jesus-the-old-testament-you/#comments Mon, 12 May 2008 05:44:20 +0000 Shane Vander Hart http://shanevanderhart.wordpress.com/2008/05/11/episode-15-jesus-the-old-testament-you/

Continuing on with the Sermon on the Mount series at Grace Evangelical Free Church in Indianola we look at Matthew 5:17-20 which is often misinterpreted and misunderstood.  Exactly what is Jesus’ relationship to the prophets and the law?  How does Jesus view the Old Testament?  What is the Christian’s responsibility regarding Old Testament law?

You can find out by listening online here or by downloading here (right click and choose “save as”).

To all of the mothers who read this blog - Happy Mother’s Day!  I hope that you have a wonderful day today!

Her children rise up and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her:
“Many women have done excellently,
but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
Give her of the fruit of her hands,
and let her works praise her in the gates, (Proverbs 31:28-31, ESV)

1.  Epistemic Hubris

Have you heard this from someone recently? That “WE CANNOT KNOW, with certainty, what God has revealed so anyone who thinks he does is proud? We must, rather, (they say) embrace God as mystery?”

In light of this shouldn’t we be asking the following: Is not this assertion itself a dogma with affirmations and denials? Is not this itself a statement of knowledge? Is “we cannot know with certainty” not itself an assertion of KNOWLEDGE (a dogmatic assertion) as THE WAY to look at Scripture? Whether conscious of it or not, this is what is called “double-talk” and those who believe this are doing the very thing they claim to despise, even in the very speaking of it.

Good point!

HT: Reformation Theology via Christian Striver

2.  Crisis in Swaziland

One in three Swazi women have suffered some form of sexual abuse as a child; one in four experienced physical violence, a new United Nations survey revealed.

The study by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is the first of its kind conducted in a country where anecdotal evidence suggests an alarming number of female children are victims of abuse. More disconcertingly still, the mushrooming population of orphans and vulnerable children in Swaziland provide yet more opportunities for sexual exploitation to occur.

In two years, 200,000 Swazi children will have been orphaned by AIDS - more than one-fifth of the current population, according to UNICEF. With HIV prevalence at 33.4 percent among people aged between 15 and 49, the country has the world’s highest infection rate. As a result, life expectancy has halved from nearly 60 years in the 1990s to just over 30 years today.

Source: IRIN

HT: Seth Barnes - he lists ways you can help, so check his blog post out.

3.  And just because… Love for the Ewoks - awesome tribute of these furry creatures from the Return of the Jedi.

HT: Joshua Griffin

4.  Pray for Myanmar

Source: NASA

I would encourage you to donate too - Food for the Hungry is a great organization who plans to respond to the needs there.

John Piper also lists six ways we can respond.

5.  The Federal budget crisis is explained over at SmartChristian.com.

6.  Al Mohler wrote earlier this week about the birth of Trig Paxson Van Palin on April 18.  He is the son of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin.  Palin’s son, Trig, was diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome.  It didn’t matter to the Palin’s, they chose life.

The Palins would not even consider aborting their baby. “We’ve both been very vocal about being pro-life,” Governor Palin said. “We understand that every innocent life has wonderful potential.”

She loves her baby boy and is proud of him. “I’m looking at him right now, and I see perfection,” Palin told the Associated Press. “Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking, in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?”

Some ethicists now go so far as to argue for a “duty” to abort a baby with a Down diagnosis. This is an assault upon the dignity of every human being. The fact that so few Down syndrome babies now make it to birth is a sign that America is making its own pact with the Culture of Death.

HT: Justin Taylor

7.  John Piper asks “Do People Bore You?“  He wants to encourage us to move toward people as the lack of doing just that is a barrier to personal evangelism.

8.  You can read about the history of unbelief as M.Z. Hemingway writes “Skepticism, Agnosticism and Atheism: A Brief History of Unbelief” over at Modern Reformation.

The last two years have been good for atheism. A rash of books making the case for unbelief, including Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (2006) and Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007), have sold millions of copies. Strident atheist Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, one of his atheistic tomes designed to rescue children from belief in God, was made into a movie. Even pop star Elton John got into the act, calling for a ban on religion. Leaders of the so-called New Atheism are aggressive and proselytizing. They don’t just condemn belief in God; they also condemn respect for belief in God.

But how new is the New Atheism? It is said best in Ecclesiastes 1:9: “There is nothing new under the sun.” To be sure, explicit and public atheism is a somewhat new phenomenon. But atheism, agnosticism, and good old-fashioned doubt have strong and lengthy histories worth learning. Because atheism is parasitic on theism and even more on Christianity, to learn the history of atheism is to learn the history of the church.

Take the New Atheist creed of “no heaven, no hell, just science,” which articulates the widely held division in modern thought between faith and reason. To fully understand the story of that division, it is wise to consider the creation of the world as told in Genesis. We learn from Moses that the Creator is distinct and different from the created world. Where ancient mythologies saw gods as personifications of natural phenomena such as rain and fire, ancient Israel viewed nature as separate from God and man. God created nature and man was its steward. Nature is not to be worshiped, God alone is. Nature and the natural process in and of themselves are not divine. God, apart from a few notable exceptions, doesn’t speak to his people through nature but through historic events such as deliverance from Egypt. It is wise to remember as we proceed that this separation between nature and God is a biblical precept.  (Be sure to read the rest)

HT: The Wittenberg Door

9.  Stand to Reason’s publication - Solid Ground, offers a crash course on critical thinking.

HT: Barry Carey

10.  Matthew Lee Anderson asks, “can men and women be friends?“  He doesn’t think so.

My provisional answer, which is driven largely by my experience, is that any young people seeking to find a spouse would do better (oddly) to cultivate friendships with their same sex while viewing the opposite sex through a strictly romantic lense.  Keeping the roles and relationships separate allows us to have more clarity on our own feelings and behaviors in each relationship.  I have seen many a person (guy and girl!) unwittingly become emotionally tied to someone who was “just a friend,” only to be heartbroken when they pursued someone else.

Men and women seeking to marry should not deny the role that sexuality plays in their interaction with the opposite sex.   To do so is ultimately to fall prey to a gnosticism–that is, a denial of the body–which ironically leads to a weakened ability to control the impulses of the body.  Is there any wonder why affairs often start between people who claim to be “just friends?”

I don’t agree with his position entirely, while I do recognize his concerns.  I do think platonic relationships are possible between the sexes.  Since I am a married man I exercise caution - like never meeting privately when alone… pursue relationships as a couple, not an individuals, etc.  Even in my role with Serve Our Youth Network (when I sometimes have to meet with females for recruitment/networking purposes) I do not meet with individual females even in public at night - it seems too date-like.

What do you think?

11.  Michael Patton is asked if he allows women to teach men.  I don’t agree entirely with his position, but I liked his reasoning.

12.  C.J. Mahaney did a blog series on Modesty - check it out.

13.  Tim Challies’ review of Shane Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution.  Pretty insightful, and pretty much brings to light some of the concerns that I have with Shane Claiborne while at the same time recognizing that he does rightly criticize the North American church and that is needed.

14.  Great quote from Puritan theologian John Owen which serves as a warning for pastors.

“It is not to learn the form of the doctrine of godliness, but to get the power of it implanted in our souls. And this is an eminent means of our making a progress in the knowledge of the truth. To seek after mere notions of truth, without an endeavor after an experience of its power in our hearts, is not the way to increase our understanding in spiritual things….Men may have in their study of the scripture other ends also, as the profit and edification of others; but if this conforming of their own souls unto the power of the word be not fixed in the first place in their minds, they do not strive lawfully nor will be crowned.”

HT: Irish Calvinist

15.  Joe Carter’s thoughts on the Evangelical Manifesto.

16.  Here are 12 spiritual lessons from Narnia: Prince Caspian.

17.  Christ Against the Multiculturalists by Stephen H. Web

A snippet below… read the whole thing.

Here is how the game is played: They will first try to convince you that you are a racist, a sexist, and an enemy of social justice. Then they will argue that the victims of racism, sexism, and cultural elitism have a privileged view of these issues. It is as if the victim of the crime were to be given the first, last, and only word in a trial, with no cross-examination and no other witnesses called. Your job as a student in the multicultural classroom is to grant unquestioned authority to those who come from underprivileged or marginalized backgrounds. You have to do this because, you will learn, because Western culture has exploited every other culture, and your experiences are so shaped by Western culture that you cannot question those who criticize you. And thus you will become a good cultural leftist (which is the shape liberalism takes in the academy), or, if you are not convinced by these arguments, you will learn how to fake it for the sake of getting a good grade.

All of this is profoundly anti-Christian, which is why Christian students are typically the most radical questioners of higher education. Because Christians believe in a universal human nature, they also believe they can make universal truth claims about human nature. That does not mean that every statement about human nature is true. Of course not! A central part of education is learning how to argue by testing your own ideas about human nature against the ideas found in great books and the ideas espoused by your teachers and fellow students. Christians believe, for example, that because we are created in the image of God, every single person is of infinite worth, but Christians also believe that humans are fallen creatures, in need of grace and forgiveness. Christians are thus able to appreciate both the majesty and the misery of human actions. That is a powerful framework for questioning what you read and hear. What Christians do not believe is that every culture has its own truths and that the only way to learn about another culture is to refrain from seeking the universal truth.

18.  Brett Kunkle of Stand to Reason shares that relativism is alive and well in the church.

19.  How not to be involved in your kids’ lives.  HT: Dennis Babish

20.  Here is not just a crummy, but downright heretical church sign.

HT: Suzannah Paul via Crummy Church Signs

I agree with it… so I signed it.

The introduction from the website:

An Evangelical Manifesto is an open declaration of who Evangelicals are and what they stand for. It has been drafted and published by a representative group of Evangelical leaders who do not claim to speak for all Evangelicals, but who invite all other Evangelicals to stand with them and help clarify what Evangelical means in light of “confusions within and the consternation without” the movement. As the Manifesto states, the signers are not out to attack or exclude anyone, but to rally and to call for reform.

As an open declaration, An Evangelical Manifesto addresses not only Evangelicals and other Christians but other American citizens and people of all other faiths in America, including those who say they have no faith. It therefore stands as an example of how different faith communities may address each other in public life, without any compromise of their own faith but with a clear commitment to the common good of the societies in which we all live together.

For those who are Evangelicals, the deepest purpose of the Manifesto is a serious call to reform—an urgent challenge to reaffirm Evangelical identity, to reform Evangelical behavior, to reposition Evangelicals in public life, and so rededicate ourselves to the high calling of being Evangelical followers of Jesus Christ.

Check out the website.

Read the entire 20 page document here.

Sign it here.

Tell your friends about it here.

HT: Matt Proctor

Today I want to begin a series of posts dealing with Kingdom Triangle by J.P. Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University.  The three points of the triangle are: Recover the Christian mind, renovate the soul, and restore the Spirit’s power.

Chapter 1 is entitled “The Hunger for Drama in a Thin World”

Summary

Chapter one is about our desire for drama.  We like it.  We crave it.  We desire it.  We’ll do much to have it.  Often times we fall short.  It fuels our passion for great movies, good novels and exciting sporting events (or… artsy stuff too I suppose).  We watch, read and attend, but then go back to a life that quite frankly seems boring and dull.  J.P. Moreland writes:

It is precisely this convergence of two factors - a persistent hunger for drama and a feeling of boredom with our own lives - that creates and addiction to dramatic stories, media-driven celebrities, sports, or other vicarious substitutes for our own authentic drama.  This tells us two things: We were made for greatness, but there is something about our culture that undermines both its intelligibility and achievement, (pg. 21).

Herein lies the problem - we live in what Moreland describes as a “sensate” culture in the West.  This is where people only “believe in the reality of the physical universe capable of being experienced with the five senses.”

Contrast that with an “ideational” culture which embraces not only the sensory world, but goes further and accepts the idea that an extra-empirical, immaterial reality can be know as well.  This would consist of spiritual and abstract things.

Out of this sensate culture comes the rejection of any empirical knowledge not gained by “hard sciences”.  Non-empirical claims are regulated to the level of private feelings.

Moreland also notes that there is a three-way struggle between three prevalent worldviews: ethical monotheism, postmodernism, and scientific naturalism.

Scientific naturalism takes the view that the physical cosmos studied by science is all there is.  It has two basic components - a view of reality and a view of how we know things.  Postmodernism represents a form of cultural relativism about such things as reality, truth, reason, value, linguistic meaning, and the self.  To someone who holds a postmodern view there is no such thing as objective reality.  Under the influence of naturalistic and postmodern ideals, Moreland contends, many people no longer believe that there is any meaning to life that can be known.

The pursuit of happiness becomes the focus of life, but people who live this way, who live for happiness become “empty selves.”  A question lingers when the focus is on this pursuit.  Where’s the larger purpose?  Drama is lacking.  This leads to what Moreland calls, “a thin world,” a world where there is no objective value, purpose or meaning.

The implications of this world according to Moreland are:

• Nothing is important enough to rise above the level of custom.
• Absent of objective and ultimate meaning and purpose and value there can be no real drama in a thin world.
• No objective difference between Mother Teresa and someone who devotes his life to being the best male prostitute he can be.

In contrast, a thick world is a world in which there is such a thing as objective values, purpose and meaning.  In this world some things matter and others don’t.  Some things are right and others are wrong.

There is one worldview that is true and therefore superior to all others - thick or thin - and it provides the only hope of living in a thick world, I’m speaking of a Judeo-Christian worldview - more specifically, the worldview of mere Christianity, (pg. 29).

Moreland contends the centers of power in Western culture and dominated by naturalism and postmodernism, they can not sustain the drama necessary for their own work to have the meaning they so desperately desire.  Western culture lacks the resources necessary to diagnose and properly solve the serious spiritual, economic, political, and moral problems of the age.

In a thin world, religions is not the sort of thing that can be true.  Religion is merely a cultural, social phenomenon to be analyzed by sociologists.

So understood, religion is a hobby to be subsumed under the demands of secular democracy, not something to be taken seriously, (pg. 31).

Moreland claims that the only way the we can break free of the confines of a thin world and experience the riches of the only thick world that is true is to reject naturalism and postmodernism in favor of the perspective of the Kingdom of God and the worldview of Jesus Christ and Scripture, (pg. 32).

There are five questions that Moreland states should be put to any worldview:

• What is real?
• What are the nature and limits and knowledge?
• Who is well-off?  What is the good life?
• Who is a really good person?
• How does one become a really good person?

Some Thoughts

We can see the reality of the worldview battle when we look at the origins of life debate - proponents of evolution dismiss the theory of intelligent design saying it lacks “hard sciences”.

I also have seen the reality of “empty selves” with kids that I have worked with in detention.  The pursuit of happiness, of immediate gratification, has left kids shallow, empty.  It is often at that time where they realize that there has to be more to life than this endless pursuit.  That was true of me when I was in college and realized there had to be more to life than what I was experiencing.  It was then I started looking into the claims of Jesus Christ.

Your Turn

Why do you think we crave drama?  Do you agree or disagree with Moreland when he says that true drama is impossible in a thin world?  Why?  How would you answer the five worldview questions in light of your worldview?

I  read last night a great quote by Sinclair B. Ferguson who has served as the pastor of St. George’s-Tron Church in Glasgow, Scotland and also as professor of systematic theology  at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.

He would always begin his course on the Holy Spirit like this:

The goal of theology is the worship of God.  The posture of theology is on one’s knees.  The mode of theology is repentance.

How true.  Theology should lead to us knowing God in a deeper way.  It should drive us in prayer in adoration of who He is, and it should lead us to repent as we are faced with who God is compared to who we are.

Last week had been a rough week for us.  The week before brought us some challenges, but in light of the news we received last Monday it was minor.  Cheryl’s aunt & uncle were in a car accident in northern Minnesota, they hit some ice, went off the road, rolled the car into a creek.  Cheryl’s uncle drowned.  Cheryl’s aunt was taken to Duluth and is currently recovering in an ICU.  So if you would please pray for Cheryl’s aunt Carol for healing and for comfort.  Pray for their children, grandchildren, and families.

We can rejoice that Cheryl’s uncle is now in the presence of Jesus after living a full 71-years.

This week started off well, I had the Sunday off from preaching (so no podcast this week).  I had the privilege of baptizing my youngest daughter, Lily at Valley Church.  She placed her faith and trust in Jesus when she was five, but chose to be baptized in obedience to the Lord’s command to be baptized.

Cheryl and I chose this verse to share at her baptism.

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised, (Proverbs 31:30, ESV).

Our prayer is that both of our daughters would grow in their walk with Christ and that their inner beauty because of their devotion to Christ would be far more attractive than their outer beauty.  Below is the video of Lily’s baptism.

Though more along the lines of what not to do… Thabiti Anyabwile looks at Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s latest controversial comments and shared some very important lessons for pastors to learn from Rev. Wright’s shameful conduct on the public stage.

It’s a cautionary tale for us younger pastors. Here’s a man that’s served the same congregation over thirty years, who has no doubt learned many things in that time. He’s perhaps forgotten more than I know. And yet, when he is supposed to be retired and out of the public light, seems so taken with himself and his view of the world that he’d beat the sheep rather than feed them and risk overturning perhaps the most significant bid for the presidency in American history.

The lessons are legion. Here are five from my perspective:

1. Feed the sheep, feed the sheep, feed the sheep. For the sake of argument, even if Obama was wrong in his Philadelphia comments where Wright was concerned, the appropriate response from the pastor isn’t a series of interviews but Galatians 6:1-2, gently pulling the erring brother aside. Insofar as Wright still regarded himself as the stronger brother and Obama’s pastor, he was obligated to bear with the weak (Rom. 14:1; 15:1-3) and to teach with all patience (2 Tim. 4:2). This, no doubt, is easier said than done when we’re feeling personally attacked. But our call to heal and lead the sheep trumps our “right” to self-defense.

2. Be willing to suffer reproach for doing good. Wright sees himself as a servant of the marginalized and oppressed, a role he asserts Jesus assumed. If he really believed that, he should willingly and joyfully suffer for doing good (1 Pet. 2:20-24; 3:13-17). To this we are called. While I think Wright’s theological and political commitments are wrong-headed, his life illustrates for me the importance of my being willing to suffer for what I think is right–the Lord, the gospel and the sheep.

3. Think carefully about a separation of church and state principle in my own ministry and public comments on public issues. This, I think, is a serious weakness in some quarters of American Christianity, with social gospels on the left and the right. Wright interprets the critical comments in response to his sermons as an attack on the black church. The comments fueling all of this were pretty clearly political comments, not gospel, Christian, or church-related comments. That he doesn’t see the distinction is quite alarming. Now he is in the public square assuming that his detractors at the least don’t understand the entire black church and at worst are anti-black church. Whenever or if ever I am called to speak on some public issue, I need to do the hard work of knowing where the Bible stops speaking, where my opinion begins, and where either state concerns are over-running more fundamental biblical concerns or vice-versa.

4. Seek counsel before speaking. That hardly needs any elaboration, except to say that on stages as large as this, and on a thousand smaller ones, we either help the cause of Christ by speaking well or hinder it by speaking poorly. “No man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:8). Surely we should count the costs before waging war, seek counsel before advancing plans. And beyond seeking counsel, heeding it. I can’t imagine that any godly persons advised Wright to make these appearances, or they did that Wright kept their counsel. A good rule of thumb I learned in a different context: if you seek someone’s counsel and you decide to do something other than what they counsel, at least make yourself accountable to the counselor and the counsel by advising the counselor that (a) you’re going to do something different than what was counseled, (b) the reasons why, and (b) before you act.

5. Pray and war against pride. I don’t want to judge Wright. I don’t know the man’s heart or motives in all of this. But it looks like the same kind of pride that lurks in my heart, seeking to control the assessments I make of myself, my own importance and influence, and my reaction to situations and people who don’t think more highly of me than they do themselves. It’s been said a lot. And most of us have read or heard C.J. and others on the dangers of pride. But is it not ever with us? Does it not always threaten us, our relationships, and even our ministries? Had Wright never said a word in his own defense, many people would have judged his life of ministry on a wider set of factors, some favorable and some not. But now, it seems pride may have ruined a reputation after the public ministry was completed. It can do as much and more damage in all of our lives.

Be sure to read the whole post.  I appreciate the wisdom and humility shared in his post.