This comes from John Piper’s 12.13.06 Taste & See email entitled “Christmas, Truth, Christ and the Mile-Long Buffet of Worldviews” on 12.13.06.
…when Noël and I went to Barnes & Noble on Monday to buy a birthday present, I had my usual coldwater bath of awareness that there are thousands of voices competing to be heard by the world. Miles, it seems, of shelves with every imaginable worldview, all clamoring for the mind and the heart (and many other parts of the human body and soul). The God Delusion, You on a Diet, Jim Cramer’s Mad Money: Watch TV Get Rich, He-motions: Even Strong Men Struggle; The Machines of War—a tidal wave of titles.
So as we walked out, I said to Noël that makes me want to work around the clock for the rest of my life to spread the truth. Jesus was born for this. “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth.†Let’s join him in it. Let’s make Bethlehem a living truth-spreading organism. And remember: We know no truth aright, if we do not know and love Christ himself as the ground of it and the goal of it and the way it looks in true life. So we exist to spread a passion for Christ, not just ideas about Christ. That’s more, not less.
He was born to bear witness to the truth.
Devoted to spreading the Truth, with you,
Pastor John
Amen!
- Author: Brad
- Filed under: Bible study, Christian season, Christianity, humor, media, missiology, music, news, religion, sports, technology, the 7, worship
- Date: Dec 26,2006
Here is this week’s edition of “The Rearview Mirror,” where we peruse the past week’s best of the best in the blogosphere. Enjoy!
1. Online video becomes a real business. What does this mean for the church?
2. Missional churches, Epiphany, and squatters.
3. The history of religion in 90 seconds. Intriguing…
4. UNC-Wilmington criminology professor, Mike Adams, gives one of his students a lesson in integrity.
5. The ESV blog helps us visualize one-year Bible reading plans. Who knew there were this many ways to read the Scriptures?
6. Pamela Durso, associate executive director of the Baptist History and Heritage Society, writes on what we can learn from the long history of Baptist worship wars.
7. The recent Knicks/Nuggets brawl at Madison Square Garden was no doubt a black eye for the NBA. But ESPN Page 2′s Jemele Hill says don’t blame “thugs.” Blame false bravado, machismo and stupidity.
8. Get Religion’s Terry Mattingly voices his thoughts on the little semi-story The Greenville (S.C.) News missed last week and if experience matters when it comes to writing for the religion beat of a major newspaper.
9. The German Opera’s controversial production of Mozart’s Idomeneo went on in Berlin last week without incident, although it was two months late and with more than 100 German cops on hand. Paul O’Donnell of Beliefnet.com’s Idol Chatter discusses that though there is a controversial scene that is a protest against “any form of organized religion or its founders,” opera and organized religion face many of the same challenges…
10. It’s hard to believe that Mary was just a teenager [anywhere from 12 to 17 on who you talk to] when Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit in her womb. Scot McKnight “pushes back” Marko on the adolescent implications that Mary might have faced [or not faced].
11. The untold story of Southern Baptist Clarence Jordan via iMonk and the Bible Belt Blogger.
12. London, the new Jerusalem via Jonny Baker.
13. Moby tries to tells us the real meaning of Christmas. Nice try Mr. Hall, but there’s more to the Story: redemption of sin.
14. Shaun Groves lets us in on what happens when CPAs and artists breed together…hilarious!
