Category: Blog

I am thankful for the midwives who helped us bring our children into the world. They didn’t create our kids or magically pull them out of thin air. They coached my wife and me as my wife took deep breaths and pushed them into the world while I held my breath, praying to Jesus all the way.

So many people today look at Jesus as a midwife, not God incarnate. Even those who view him as an incarnation don’t view him as the one and only incarnation of God. None of this is new. Søren Kierkegaard observed this trend in his own day. Kierkegaard spoke of this trend as “the Socratic view,” which he witnessed in aspects of Hegelian thought. On this account, Jesus is a midwife, like Socrates, helping humanity bring forth what has always been there within it, albeit implicitly, namely, its own participation in the divine nature. I shared Kierkegaard’s argument on this subject today in my theology class. You should have seen the looks on people’s faces, as they were giving birth to thought.

Kierkegaard says of “the Socratic view” that “Every human being is himself the midpoint, and the whole world focuses only on him because his self-knowledge is God-knowledge.”[1] From this Socratic perspective, as Kierkegaard reflects upon it, knowledge of the eternal is latent within humanity, needing to be awakened from its dormant state. On the Platonic view, reflected in Socrates, eternal truth lies within the human self, whose soul is eternal and which was eternally cognizant of the eternal forms prior to (but not since) birth.

In contrast to this perspective, Kierkegaard claims that we must look beyond ourselves for truth, for within ourselves we will only discover “untruth,” “for the learner is indeed untruth.”[2]  In contrast to the midwife who serves as an occasion for the awakening of truth or really untruth within ourselves, and not truth itself, Kierkegaard writes of the teacher who is not simply a teacher, but who is “the god himself.”[3] This teacher reveals truth and provides the basis for understanding, transforming the student in the process. The teacher—Jesus—is for Kierkegaard “savior,” “deliverer,” “reconciler,” “judge.”[4] This Jesus is the sole wisdom of God, but foolishness to the Greeks and their descendants. As much as I like midwives, Jesus is no midwife. The biblical Jesus is the Savior of the world.

This piece is cross-posted at Patheos and The Christian Post. Comments made here are not monitored. To join the conversation, please comment on this post at Patheos.

I remember Dr. John M. Perkins once saying, “There’s no such thing as a sophisticated Christian.” I have never forgotten those words. Dr. Perkins wasn’t saying that people should be simplistic or unskilled in their work. What I think he was saying is that people should be simple and pure in their devotion to Christ and other people.

My father was a simple man. In contrast, I grew up wanting to be sophisticated, and I wished my dad were that as well. How I longed to be marked by near-omniscience and hailed as a sage by my peers! While I have never received such accolades, one person was convinced early on that my father was one of the brightest men who ever lived: one of my nieces once boasted as a child to those at school that her grandfather (my dad) knew so many languages. She had witnessed as a little girl how he would strike up conversations with people from different countries. This impressed her. But she didn’t seem to know at that time that Dad knew only a few words in each of those languages, and that he was out of his depths once they responded. It gave my dad great joy to speak a few words of Japanese or Polish, for example, and watch Japanese and Polish people’s faces light up when they heard him speak to them. My dad had a way with a few simple words of greeting and with making people’s days brighter wherever he went.

On Father’s Day, I am thankful for Dad’s profound relational simplicity: he loved people, really loved them. As I grow older, I hope to be more and more like my late dad—not fixated with being sophisticated, but relationally pure and simple.

This piece is cross-posted at Patheos and The Christian Post. Comments made here are not monitored. To join the conversation, please comment on this post at Patheos.

I was going through a very difficult time in ministry and was facing some overt persecution. In sharing some of my angst with one of my closest friends and ministry partners, he referred me to Jeremiah’s lament recorded in Jeremiah 12 and God’s response recorded in verse 5:  “If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses?” Jeremiah had gone through an intense time of suffering and persecution on account of bearing witness to God’s Word in calling the people of Jerusalem and Judah to repentance. God responded by saying that harsher battles awaited Jeremiah. I believe God desired for his servant Jeremiah to view his present persecution as testing ground for greater spiritual warfare which was to come.

I don’t know if Jeremiah got frustrated with God for challenging him in this way. All I can say is that my friend often frustrated me when he lovingly challenged me to have greater confidence in God in the midst of my sufferings in and for the faith. The problem was not with my friend, but with my thick head and cold heart. For whatever reason, though, this time his words broke through and made total sense and led me to trust God in the midst of my very painful circumstances. My friend encouraged me to see my own sufferings as preparation for future challenges in taking on bigger prophetic assignments in response to God’s leading, if I would respond in faith and trust in the midst of my suffering in the present. While I may never experience the kind of persecution that Jeremiah faced for obeying and sharing God’s Word, I can have confidence that God will meet me in my hour of need.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a modern day prophetic voice who suffered greatly for calling a nation and church to repentance for its sins associated with racism. At a time of unreal suffering, King cried out to God. God comforted King and gave him the supernatural courage to go on, assuring him that he would never leave or forsake him, as he did God’s will (Listen here). As a result, King did not simply run with men; he ran with horses.

Most likely you and I will never experience the kind of suffering that Jeremiah and King did, but we can experience the mercies of God who will strengthen us to meet any challenge he places before us. Don’t settle for running simply with men. Run with horses.

This piece is cross-posted at Patheos and The Christian Post. Comments made here are not monitored. To join the conversation, please comment on this post at Patheos.

I have joked that I am leading a Demon track, not DMin (Doctor of Ministry) track at the seminary where I teach. This is no reflection on my students, but on me. In fact, as I will share, there is hope for my track because of my students!

Perhaps the DMin Director’s little boy has picked up on the banter his father and I have engaged in regarding the wording DMin and demon in various settings. Regardless of where he picked up on “demon,” his Dad shared on Facebook about how his child was troubled over the fact that he was messing around with the dark side. My colleague had to assure his son that it was not demons he was working with, but people getting doctorates in ministry.

Those of us in ministry have to be on guard against being demons unleashed on the world to lash out and inflict pain. Those of us pursuing advanced degrees in theology and ministry must ask ourselves why we are doing it. As I have written elsewhere, while I have benefited greatly from getting a Master of Divinity degree, I will benefit all the more from being mastered by Divinity. The former does not necessarily lead to the latter. Nothing is spiritually guaranteed either with acquiring PhDs in theology (I fear that at times the abbreviation does not convey doctorate in philosophy/theology, but as someone once remarked “Pile it high and deep”) and DMins.

There is reason for hope for teachers like myself who across North America and beyond have students like the ones I do. My colleagues at my seminary have remarked about how impressed they are with their students as well. Numerous impressions have been made so far by my students in my D.Min. cohort in Cultural Engagement. I will share three of them.

First, they are committed to honing their ministry skill sets, not hyping their expertise. Whether one is in the first year of seminary or last, the last thing the church and world needs is for degree getters to present themselves as having arrived to get the job done, to fix people and solve all their problems. No doubt, there are problems to solve, but we will only be able to do that relationally and in community. As I have observed my students, I am sensing that the needs of the people far outweigh their own self-concerns, reminding me of what one leadership book remarked about good leaders.

Second, they have been engaged in ministry for quite some time and have had the stuffing and wind knocked out of them quite a few times. As a result of releasing all that hot air, they have come to realize that they are in great need of being filled with the Spirit of Jesus Christ. They are not their people’s relational solution. He truly is. My fellow travelers in this Doctor of Ministry track sense how great their need is for Jesus to show up as they engage culture in their various settings. Otherwise, they might as well shut it all down. In other words, they don’t take themselves too seriously, but the Lord Jesus extremely seriously.

Third, these students are learning how to be creative in their suffering. One of the students said about our cohort that it really is a co-hurt made up of pastors, chaplains, social workers and community activists who are coming together to be made whole by Christ. They see their vocation as inviting others to experience Christ’s healing as well, and in a variety of ways.

My students, these new colleagues, are encouraging and inspiring me. I am finding that Christ is continuing to heal my wounds from the hurts of life in ministry through engaging these D.Min. students, who are also my teachers. It is my hope that as we are unleashed on the world it won’t be as demons who unload a world of hurt on others, but whose skills are honed to bear witness to Christ’s healing broken people in a broken world and the loving hope one finds in his embrace.

This piece is cross-posted at Patheos and The Christian Post. Comments made here are not monitored. To join the conversation, please comment on this post at Patheos.