If you missed it recently, Packers QB Aaron Rodgers was interviewed by his girlfriend Danica Patrick for her podcast, and told his tale of leaving behind the Christian faith.

In the five minute segment I saw, Rodgers spoke of his upbringing in the church and delight in attending Young Life during high school, but how that early faith was pushed aside during college days as he met new folks (to include eventually the Dalai Lama) and found himself moving away from the simple “binary” faith of Christianity. You know, Christian and non-Christian, Heaven and Hell, light and dark, etc.

If the “binary” term is new to you, you should know that Rodgers (undoubtedly no intellectual slouch) was espousing postmodern theory. Postmodernists hold that binaries are exclusive (“Us four, no more”, “I’m in, you’re out”), and therefore bad…though that is a somewhat binary way to sum up their thinking, and therein lies the problem.

For all his attempts to be open and non-judgmental, it was hard to miss that Rodgers was nicely declaring his old faith passé, a fine point to make if it’s what you believe, but a little disingenuous if you are at the same time saying you are against binary thinking.

As Terry Eagleton writes in The Illusions of Postmodernism,

“For all its vaunted openness to the Other, postmodernism can be quite as exclusive and censorious as the orthodoxies it opposes…It is a thoroughly orthodox heterodoxy, which like any imaginary form of identity needs its bogeymen and straw targets in order to stay in business.”

Against being Against?

To put it plainly, there is a certain nonsense in declaring, as Rodgers did, that you are against being against things.

And Jesus (that guy who was either risen from the dead…or not) had no problem at all with binary thinking:

“Whoever believes in (Me) is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. John 3:18, 19 (ESV)

The Real Reason Rodgers Left…

Uncomfortably binary, I know, yet our Lord points to what is likely the real reason Aaron left behind his faith; and so, as for me, I’m praying that his thinking off the field will become as clear and lucid as it usually is…on.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/aaron-rodgers-opens-religion-danica-200501823.html

Lord that made the dragon, grant me thy peace,

But say not that I should give up the gold,

Nor move, nor die. Others would have the gold.

Kill rather, Lord, the Men and the other dragons;

Then I can sleep; go when I will to drink.

– C.S. Lewis, ‘The Dragon Speaks’, Poems

I woke up this morning a tad anxious. It happens occasionally to me, and usually passes after I am fully awake. So later, I prayed for peace in my time with God.

And then, in the delightful C.S. Lewis anthology I am reading (A Mind Awake), I ran across the poem above. It was good meditation for me.

You see, Lewis’ dragon also prayed for peace, though he was unwilling to give up his stolen loot. Nor was he willing to change, to die to self. So his prayer was not that God would deal with him so that sleep would come, but rather, that God would deal with others.

Sometimes our prayer for peace should be a prayer of repentance. Not always, but sometimes.

That may or may not be the case for me. I do know that later I prayed another poem, this one from King David:

Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way.

-Psalm 139:23-24 (NASB)

Old Testament prophet Jonah has always been a strange one to me.

First of all, if I were called to preach to the capital of a wicked kingdom like Assyria, I might be a little nervous about the reception I would receive, but I think I would be fired up. You know, the chance to be used by God, to see him move mightily, etc. Yet Jonah receives a call to preach in Nineveh, and famously turns the other way. Strange.

We find out why as we read the short book. Jonah is ticked off that God would even consider forgiving this wicked, war-faring people. Even at the end of the book, Jonah is still mad at God for being merciful. And Yahweh is still reasoning with him…

“Should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left…?” Jonah 4:11 (ESV)

Jonah’s behavior seems strange to us in the west, but I imagine many of his fellow Israelites would have patted him on the back for at least trying to get away from such a “horrible” mission.

You see, Jonah’s problem is our problem: culture. We imagine we know how God should be, but our picture of him is too easily derived from our culture. Jonah was middle-eastern, and in the culture of the Ancient Near East, forgiving your enemies was a particularly hard pill to swallow.

Rob Bell, modern day Jonah…in reverse

Which brings us to Rob Bell, a modern day Jonah…in reverse. In rejecting Hell, Mr. Bell has discerned exactly how God should be, yet his picture of God is not derived from the Scriptures, though he captures some unwitting folks by talking a lot about being a disciple of Jesus and throwing a Bible verse in here and there. But in fact, nobody spoke more about Hell in the Bible than Jesus, and Rob Bell’s picture of God is direct from modern-day western culture.

So where Jonah speaks to God of a wicked people, “I can’t believe you would forgive them,” Rob Bell says, “I can’t believe you wouldn’t.” Either way, it’s the same basic error – a refusal to accept God as he is in his word.

The Lesson

The application for us is simple: don’t trust your gut. When Scripture speaks, trust it instead. Otherwise you will end up with a god of your own making, and the relationship you think you have with the true God will be a mirage. For the Scriptures tell us that Yahweh is indeed a forgiving God; his forgiveness, however, comes at a price, which he paid for Old and New Testament saints…at Calvary.

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5 (ESV)

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” Luke 10:38-42 (ESV)

Busy. Distracted….with a cluttered life full of activities that are not of ultimate importance. It’s easy to find ourselves in this situation, especially at Christmas, but the cluttered life happens all year round. Just ask Martha.

Jesus taught that there was one thing necessary in life, because if this one thing happens, everything else falls into place. Mary chose “the good portion”, undistracted time sitting at Jesus’ feet. Martha chose…something else.

We’re always choosing in life. It’s one decision after another, and sadly, C.S. Lewis said that many people will come to the end of life and say, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.”

Sitting at Jesus’ feet day after day guarantees that these mournful words will not be our last.

So, a New Year approaches to sit at his feet and hear his voice. I hope you won’t wait for January 1; enjoy him in his word today, but New Year’s Day is a fine time to begin a new Bible reading program. To that end, here are some options…

This is the classic Navigator through-the-Bible reading plan – only 25 days of each month have a reading, giving you plenty of mulligans all year long…

The Navigator’s Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan

The next is very popular; it’s also for the ambitious who want to do the Old Testament once and the Psalms and New Testament twice. My old seminary professor D.A. Carson has written a couple of devotionals to go along with it…

Robert Murray M‘Cheyne’s Bible Reading Plan

Finally, if you’re just getting started, consider a plan that will simply take you through the New Testament next year. The Navigators come through for us again with this one…

Read the New Testament Plan

Lastly, a tried and true method is to open your Bible and work through a book at a time, marking off chapters you have read. It’s simple…but not time sensitive and it gives you the freedom to go at your own pace and study what you like.

Whatever plan you choose, you will be, like Mary, walking in the words of our Heavenly Father: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” Matthew 17:5 (ESV)

“What I am coming to understand is that this impulse to pull the lever of a random slot machine of viral content is the age-old tactic of Satan. C.S. Lewis called it the ‘Nothing’ strategy in his Screwtape Letters. It is the strategy that eventually leaves a man at the end of his life looking back in lament: ‘I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.’”

“This ‘Nothing’ strategy is ‘very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years, not in sweet sins, but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them . .  .’ Reinke, Tony. 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You (p. 191). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

This past weekend at Edgewood we offered the third in our series, Uncluttered: Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room…and we talked about what it means to be uncluttered in our use of phones and computers, etc. As a follow-up, I thought it would be good to offer some tools to think through your smart phone/computer/social media habits. Tony Reinke compiles a few different lists of questions to ask yourself or others for just this purpose.

So…if you like, using these lists, take an hour or so before God to think about this area of your life. How are you doing? What, if anything, should change? You might pray the prayer of David in Psalm 139:

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! Psalm 139:23-24 (ESV)

If you have students in your home with smart phones, consider scheduling an hour together to talk about computer and phone usage.

May God protect us from Satan’s “nothing” strategy, from saying at the end of our lives: “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.”

12 Smartphone boundaries to consider…

1.   Turn off all nonessential push notifications.

2.   Delete expired, nonessential, and time-wasting apps.

3.   At night, keep your phone out of the bedroom.

4.   Use a real alarm clock, not your phone alarm, to keep the phone out of your hands in the morning.

5.   Guard your morning disciplines and evening sleep patterns by using phone settings to mute notifications between one hour before bedtime to a time when you can reasonably expect to be finished with personal disciplines in the morning (9 p.m. to 7 a.m. for me).

6.   Use self-restricting apps to help limit your smartphone functions and the amount of time you invest in various platforms.

7.   Recognize that much of what you respond to quickly can wait. Respond at a later, more convenient time.

8.   Even if you need to read emails on your smartphone, use strategic points during the day to respond to emails at a computer (thirty minutes each at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. for me).

9.   Invite your spouse, your friends, and your family members to offer feedback on your phone habits (more than 70 percent of Christians in my survey said nobody else knew how much time they spent online).

10.   When eating with your family members or friends, leave your phone out of sight.

11.   When spending time with family members or friends, or when you are at church, leave your phone in a drawer or in your car, or simply power it off.

12.   At strategic moments in life, digitally detox your life and recalibrate your ultimate priorities. Step away from social media for frequent strategic stoppages (each morning), digital Sabbaths (one day offline each week), and digital sabbaticals (two two-week stoppages each year).

Reinke, Tony. 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You (p. 200). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

10 diagnostic questions to ask in the digital age…

1.   Do my smartphone habits expose an underlying addiction to untimely amusements?

2.   Do my smartphone habits reveal a compulsive desire to be seen and affirmed?

3.   Do my smartphone habits distract me from genuine communion with God?

4.   Do my smartphone habits provide an easy escape from sobered thinking about my death, the return of Christ, and eternal realities?

5.   Do my smartphone habits preoccupy me with the pursuit of worldly success?

6.   Do my smartphone habits mute the sporadic leading of God’s Spirit in my life?

7.   Do my smartphone habits preoccupy me with dating and romance?

8.   Do my smartphone habits build up Christians and my local church?

9.   Do my smartphone habits center on what is necessary to me and beneficial to others?

10.   Do my smartphone habits disengage me from the needs of the neighbors God has placed right in front of me?

Reinke, Tony. 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You (p. 52). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

Questions to ask before you post…

• Will this ultimately glorify me or God?
• Will this stir or muffle healthy affections for Christ?
• Will this merely document that I know something that others don’t?
• Will this misrepresent me or is it authentic?
• Will this potentially breed jealousy in others?
• Will this fortify unity or stir up unnecessary division?
• Will this build up or tear down? Will this heap guilt or relieve it?
• Will this fuel lust for sin or warn against it?
• Will this overpromise and instill false hopes in others?

Reinke, Tony. 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You (p. 107). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

After writing The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the late great life management guru Stephen Covey also wrote a book entitled, First Things First. Covey was an expert at helping others put first things first, managing their time by dividing the activities of life into four quadrants:

• Quadrant I: Important and Urgent (Your house is on fire)
• Quadrant II: Important and Not Urgent (Praying, Reading Scripture, Exercise, Eating well)
• Quadrant III: Urgent and Not Important (Interruptions, some email, some phone calls)
• Quadrant IV: Not Urgent and Not Important (Television)

Not surprisingly, Covey urged people to give themselves to “Quadrant II living”, that is focusing most of life on activities that are extremely important, and yet, not urgent. For instance, when you wake up each day, you don’t need to exercise, and in a sense, you certainly don’t need to read the Word of God, but if you live day by day like that, you will be in great trouble. Quadrant II is a great model for living when you ponder it. Of course, we all have to do things that are in Quadrant I, important and urgent, but giving ourselves to items in quadrant II slowly reduces what is in Quadrant I, and limits what is in III and IV too.

So I was thinking about the ultimate item in Quadrant II, centering your life around the Cross of Christ. Paul mentioned the importance of this…

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures. 1 Corinthians 15:3 (ESV)

First importance – that’s what Paul said about the cross. And yet it’s not urgent. You will get by fine tomorrow if you don’t think much about the cross, but you will need to deal with that email from your boss or your newborn’s diaper. So many urgent and important things in life that you just might miss what is important and yet not urgent – the gospel.