“Because, as we know, almost anything can be read into any book if you are determined enough. This will be especially impressed on anyone who has written fantastic fiction. He will find reviewers, both favourable and hostile, reading into his stories all manner of allegorical meanings which he never intended. (Some of the allegories thus imposed on my own books have been so ingenious and interesting that I often wish I had thought of them myself.)”
― Reflections on the Psalms
“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . . The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”
― Reflections on the Psalms
Did Solomon Really Take an Egyptian Bride?
What we learn from the Bible and archaeology
Philip D. Stern October 24, 2023
Not Pharaoh’s Daughter. This coffin cover belonged to a woman who lived in Thebes during Egypt’s 21st Dynasty. Although her name has not been preserved, she seems to have been wealthy and belonged to the clerical class—as indicated by the style of her coffin cover. The woman lived around the same time as Solomon’s bride, the unnamed daughter of Pharaoh, would have lived.
King Solomon was famous for his wisdom and, among other things, his many marital and extramarital relationships. His harem is given at 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3)—surely an exaggeration. According to 1 Kings 11, he also took foreign wives, some of whom led him to idolatry. For example, to satisfy his Moabite wives, he built a shrine to the Moabite god Chemosh. The biblical writer trembles with indignation when reporting Solomon’s falling away.
the tide of Western secularism.
A second implication is that the church and mission must guard against Christianity itself becoming a new form of magic. Magic is based on a mechanistic view — a formula approach to reality that allows humans to control their own destiny. Worship, on the other hand, is rooted in a relational view of life. Worshipers place themselves in the power and mercy of a greater being.
The difference is not one of form, but of attitude. What begins as a prayer of request may turn into a formula or chant to force God to do one's will by saying or doing the right thing. In religion, we want the will of God for we trust in his omniscience. In magic we seek our own wills, confident that we know what is best for ourselves.
The line dividing them is a subtle one as I learned in the case of Muchintala. A week after our prayer meeting, Yellayya returned to say that the child had died. I felt thoroughly defeated. Who was I to be a missionary if I could not pray for healing and receive a positive answer? A few weeks later Yellayya returned with a sense of triumph. "How can you be so happy after the child died?" I asked. "The village would have acknowledged the power of our God had he healed the child," Yellayya said, "but they knew in the end she would have to die. When they saw in the funeral our hope of resurrection and reunion in heaven, they saw an even greater victory, over death itself, and they have begun to ask about the Christian way." In a new way I began to realize that true answers to prayer are those that bring the greatest glory to God, not those that satisfy my immediate desires. It is all too easy to make Christianity a new magic in which we as gods can make God do our bidding.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150207083930/http://www.michaelsheiser.com/UFOReligions/FlawofExcludedMiddle.pdf
Here is a new situation with a very great potential. Augustine Birrell used to say that every student should be compelled to read books with the point of which he is in complete disagreement. In Bible study a very mixed group, with widely varying points of view, is much better than a holy huddle of like-minded people. Disagreement can be the way to new discovery and is always a stimulus to thought, for we can never be sure of any position until we have defended it from attack.
Another new attitude is that people have come to see that the Bible is a book, not only to be read, but also to be studied. The old system in which a person read a chapter a day, and just read it, will no longer do. The old battle cry that the Bible is its own best interpreter is no longer acceptable. The Bible is a difficult book, written in different languages, coming from a different civilization, talking about difficult things, and every aid to study great books that must be brought to it. The Bible is like all more we bring to it, the more we will get out of it.
In this book I do not wish to persuade people to think as I do; I only wish to make them think. It is my prayer and my hope that this book will enable people to understand the Bible better, to love it more, and in it to see Jesus Christ more clearly.
Glasgow University
WILLIAM BARCLAY
“When Christians feel that they are debtors to those who have not heard of Christ, and that the blood of the perishing may be found on their skirts, when they are brought into closer sympathy with Christ, and honestly and earnestly desire the triumph of his kingdom, so that they are willing to make sacrifices to bring about that glorious result, and when they pray with faith for the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit—then, as believers in the sovereignty and faithfulness of Christ our Lord, we may look for results such as have not hitherto been witnessed.”
John Livingston Nevius
In 2003 when I was listening to Dr. Siang Yang Tan with Fuller Theological Seminary summarize this psychotherapy research I realized that Jesus knew the results of these studies long before they were conducted! Two thousand years prior to this research he was applying the wisdom that science only recently “discovered.” He is the Wonderful Counselor (Isaiah 9:6).
But can we really say that Jesus is a psychologist? He doesn’t use the jargon of current psychology. He isn’t operating in one of the popular schools of psychology. His ministry doesn’t normally look like sitting down with people and having long conversations. He doesn’t even have a license to practice psychology! Most Christians have not thought of Jesus as having the knowledge and capacities of a great psychologist. But with person after person, including many who were very difficult to deal with, we see that Jesus is “moved with compassion” (e.g., Matt. 9:36). Furthermore, “In him are hidden all treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3).I think it’s important when we listen to Jesus and watch him help people that we think of him not only as our Lord, Savior, and Teacher, but also as our Master Psychologist. Otherwise, when we have a personal or relational struggle we’re likely to consult someone else as our expert! Or if you happen to have expertise as a counselor or minister then you may look merely to yourself as the source for helping others with their problems.
Jesus understands our needs, problems, and relationships better than anyone. He knows how to help us function at the highest level. Of course, it’s wise to seek help from competent and trustworthy counselors, but to do this in submission to the leadership of Christ. The Lord Jesus is our model in each of the four factors that contribute to effective helping.
https://www.soulshepherding.org/jesus-psychotherapy-research-life-change/
I can not believe in the salvation of anyone who does not work for the salvation of others[Everyone]!
Self will come to life even in the slaying of self; But there is ever something deeper and stronger than it, which will emerge at last from the unknown abysses of the soul; will it be as a solemn gloom, burning with eyes? or a clear morning after the rain? or a smiling child, that finds itself nowhere, and everywhere.
George MacDonald
Similarly, we ourselves have a responsibility for making the gospel known. Christ’s command to his disciples, “Go . . . and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19), was spoken to them in their representative capacity; this is Christ’s command, not merely to the apostles, but to the whole Church. Evangelism is the inalienable responsibility of every Christian community, and every Christian person. We are all under orders to devote ourselves to spreading the good news, and to use all our ingenuity and enterprise to bring it to the notice of the whole world. The Christian, therefore, must constantly be searching his conscience, asking himself if he is doing all that he might be doing in this field. For this also is a responsibility that cannot be shrugged off.
It is necessary, therefore, to take the thought of human responsibility, as it affects both the preacher and the hearer of the gospel, very seriously indeed. But we must not let it drive the thought of divine sovereignty out of our minds. While we must always remember that it is our responsibility to proclaim salvation, we must never forget that it is God who saves. It is God who brings men and women under the sound of the gospel, and it is God who brings them to faith in Christ. Our evangelistic work is the instrument that he uses for this purpose, but the power that saves is not in the instrument: it is in the hand of the One who uses the instrument. We must not at any stage forget that. For if we forget that it is God’s prerogative to give results when the gospel is preached, we shall start to think that it is our responsibility to secure them. And if we forget that only God can give faith, we shall start to think that the making of converts depends, in the last analysis, not on God, but on us, and that the decisive factor is the way in which we evangelize. And this line of thought consistently followed through, will lead us far astray.
Let us work this out. If we regarded it as our job, not simply to present Christ, but actually to produce converts—to evangelize, not only faithfully, but also successfully—our approach to evangelism would become pragmatic and calculating. We should conclude that our basic equipment, both for personal dealing and for public preaching, must be twofold. We must have not merely a clear grasp of the meaning and application of the gospel but also an irresistible technique for inducing a response. We should, therefore, make it our business to try and develop such a technique. And we should evaluate all evangelism, our own and other people’s, by the criterion not only of the message preached but also of visible results. If our own efforts were not bearing fruit, we should conclude that our technique still needed improving. If they were bearing fruit, we should conclude that this justified the technique we had been using. We should regard evangelism as an activity involving a battle of wills between ourselves and those to whom we go, a battle in which victory depends on our firing off a heavy enough barrage of calculated effects. Thus our philosophy of evangelism would become terrifyingly similar to the philosophy of brainwashing. And we would no longer be able to argue, when such a similarity is asserted to be a fact, that this is not a proper conception of evangelism. 2 For it would be a proper conception of evangelism if the production of converts was really our responsibility.
This shows us the danger of forgetting the practical implications of God’s sovereignty. It is right to recognize our responsibility to engage in aggressive evangelism. It is right to desire the conversion of unbelievers. It is right to want one’s presentation of the gospel to be as clear and forcible as possible. If we preferred that converts should be few and far between, and did not care whether our proclaiming of Christ went home or not, there would be something wrong with us. But it is not right when we take it on us to do more than God has given us to do. It is not right when we regard ourselves as responsible for securing converts, and look to our own enterprise and techniques to accomplish what only God can accomplish. To do that is to intrude ourselves into the office of the Holy Spirit, and to exalt ourselves as the agents of the new birth. And the point that we must see is this: only by letting our knowledge of God’s sovereignty control the way in which we plan, and pray, and work in his service, can we avoid becoming guilty of this fault. For where we are not consciously relying on God, there we shall inevitably be found relying on ourselves. And the spirit of self-reliance is a blight on evangelism. Such, however, is the inevitable consequence of forgetting God’s sovereignty in the conversion of souls.
But there is an opposite temptation that threatens us also: namely, the temptation to an exclusive concern with divine sovereignty.
. . . .
They are, however, beset by exactly the opposite temptation to that discussed above. In their zeal to glorify God by acknowledging his sovereignty in grace, and by refusing to imagine that their own services are indispensable to him, they are tempted to lose sight of the church’s responsibility to evangelize. Their temptation is to reason thus: “Agreed, the world is ungodly; but, surely, the less we do about it, the more God will be glorified when at length he breaks in to restore the situation. The most important thing for us to do is to take care that we leave the initiative in his hands.” They are tempted, therefore, to suspect all enterprise in evangelism, whether organized or on the personal level, as if there were something essentially and inescapably man-exalting about it. They are haunted by the fear of running ahead of God, and feel that there is nothing more urgent than to guard against the possibility of doing this.
Perhaps the classic instance of this way of thinking was provided two centuries ago by the chairman of the ministers’ fraternal at which William Carey mooted the founding of a missionary society. “Sit down, young man,” said the old warrior; “when God is pleased to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid, or mine!” The idea of taking the initiative in going out to find men of all nations for Christ struck him as improper and, indeed, presumptuous.
Now, think twice before you condemn that old man. He was not entirely without understanding. He had at least grasped that it is God who saves, and that he saves according to his own purpose, and does not take orders from man in the matter. He had grasped too that we must never suppose that without our help God would be helpless. He had, in other Now, think twice before you condemn that old man. He was not entirely without understanding. He had at least grasped that it is God who saves, and that he saves according to his own purpose, and does not take orders from man in the matter. He had grasped too that we must never suppose that without our help God would be helpless. He had, in other words, learned to take the sovereignty of God perfectly seriously. His mistake was that he was not taking the church’s evangelistic responsibility with equal seriousness. He was forgetting that God’s way of saving men is to send out his servants to tell them the gospel, and that the church has been charged to go into all the world for that very purpose.
But this is something that we must not forget. Christ’s command means that we all should be devoting all our resources of ingenuity and enterprise to the task of making the gospel known in every possible way to every possible person. Unconcern and inaction with regard to evangelism are always, therefore, inexcusable. And the doctrine of divine sovereignty would be grossly misapplied if we should invoke it in such a way as to lessen the urgency, and immediacy, and priority, and binding constraint, of the evangelistic imperative. No revealed truth may be invoked to extenuate sin. God did not teach us the reality of his rule in order to give us an excuse for neglecting his orders.
We shall proceed now according to this maxim. In what follows, we shall try to take both doctrines perfectly seriously, as the Bible does, and to view them in their positive biblical relationship. We shall not oppose them to each other, for the Bible does not oppose them to each other. Nor shall we qualify, or modify, or water down, either of them in terms of the other, for this is not what the Bible does either. What the Bible does is to assert both truths side by side in the strongest and most unambiguous terms as two ultimate facts; this, therefore, is the position that we must take in our own thinking. C. H. Spurgeon was once asked if he could reconcile these two truths to each other. “I wouldn’t try,” he replied; “I never reconcile friends.” Friends?—yes, friends. This is the point that we have to grasp. In the Bible, divine sovereignty and human responsibility are not enemies. They are not uneasy neighbors; they are not in an endless state of cold war with each other. They are friends, and they work together. I hope that what I am to say now about evangelism will help to make this clear.
Integrity is the practice of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values.[1][2][3] In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one's actions. Integrity can stand in opposition to hypocrisy,[4] in that judging with the standards of integrity involves regarding internal consistency as a virtue, and suggests that parties holding within themselves apparently conflicting values should account for the discrepancy or alter their beliefs. The word integrity evolved from the Latin adjective integer, meaning whole or complete.[1] In this context, integrity is the inner sense of "wholeness" deriving from qualities such as honesty and consistency of character.[5]
Integrity is important for politicians because they are chosen, appointed, or elected to serve society.To be able to serve, politicians are given power to make, execute, or control policy. They have the power to influence something or someone, which can have important consequences. There is, however, a risk that politicians will not use this power to serve society, which opposes the notion of integrity.[9] Aristotle said that because rulers have power they will be tempted to use it for personal gain.[10]
In the book The Servant of the People, Muel Kaptein describes that integrity should start with politicians knowing what their position entails, because integrity is related to their position. Integrity also demands knowledge and compliance with both the letter and the spirit of the written and unwritten rules. Integrity is also acting consistently not only with what is generally accepted as moral, what others think, but primarily with what is ethical, what politicians should do based on reasonable arguments.[11]
Important virtues of politicians are faithfulness, humility,[11] and accountability. Furthermore, they should be authentic and a role model. Aristotle identified dignity(megalopsuchia, variously translated as proper pride, greatness of soul and magnanimity)[9] as the crown of the virtues, distinguishing it from vanity, temperance, and humility.
