The "Mismatch" of the Pen and the Sword
From Isaiah 30 –
8
Now go, write it before them on a tablet,
And note it on a scroll,
That it may be for time to come,
Forever and ever:
9
That this is a rebellious people,
Lying children,
Children who will not hear the law of the Lord;
10
Who say to the seers, “Do not see,”
And to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us right things;
Speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits.
11
Get out of the way,
Turn aside from the path,
Cause the Holy One of Israel
To cease from before us.”
"When it comes to knowing God, many of us constitute a culture of the spiritually stunted." So confronts DA Carson in Praying with Paul. "So much of our religion," he continues with the grim diagnosis of the spirit of the age, "is packaged to address our felt needs—and these are almost uniformly anchored in our pursuit of happiness and fulfillment, without rightly understanding where true happiness and fulfillment lie."
Not surprisingly, Carson must lead us to understand that our theology is infected by our self-centeredness. "God becomes the Great Being who, potentially at least, meets our needs and fulfills our aspirations." Pointing us to Blaise Pascal's God-shaped vacuum in our hearts which is not addressed by such teaching, Carson shifts to man-manifested symptoms. "We think too little of what he is like, of his wisdom, knowledge, power, love, transcendence, mystery, and glory. We are not intoxicated by his holiness and his love; his thoughts and words capture too little of our imagination, too little of our discourse, too few of our priorities."
Of course, neither DA Carson nor Paul before him would have any difficulty admitting that this spirit of the age in fact precedes their respective ages. It is easily evident in Isaiah 30. There, God faithfully prepares His prophet for the general response he will receive from the indulgent culture around him. Spiritual sensitivity is so far gone, warns the One Who looks on man's heart individually and collectively, people actually demand out loud what they want from God and His Word.
With the obstinance and myopia one would ordinarily and indulgently ascribe to children, God Who sees cultures come and go tell that they had at the age to which he speaks reasons much like the little one who figures that the world can be changed by covering his or her own eyes. As an extension of that, those with influence in the culture tell the seers, ironically, not to see what God is showing them.
The flimsiness of the logic behind the defensiveness of the leaders of the culture is evident before they speak, evident even before God finishes verbalizing their set piece. Note the disintegration in Isaiah 30:10. If you, temporarily acknowledged prophet can't block your view and ours from God's conviction and glory, by all means, don't speak about it. If you can't help but speaking and interrupting our self-justification and entertainment, say what affirms even if it is true.
Depravity reaches the level of willing self-deception pretty quickly. The impact of the infection on the minds of individuals and cultures is that virulent. This is why I, would-be a writer and small-ripple prophet to whatever circle the Lord grants, find such comfort in the clear imperative which launches this discourse.
With aegis and arsenal at His disposal at God fully anticipates this all-fronts attack on His Truth, what is His remedy? With what weapon will He address perfidy so pervasive that His glory is to be obscured to an entire people group?
Isaiah 30:8's battle plan calls for a guy and a blog. Write my alternative before them says God Who most often and most plainly chooses to demonstrate Himself through written words. There is such sweet subversion here, especially in the visual we can summon. God is addressing Isaiah to a society which is ready to resort to renting Egypt's military might for a sense of security.
This sense of safety in the expensive and the intimidating God characterizes in Isaiah 30:11 as oppressive. It is, President Eisenhower will phrase the habit later, a trust in a military-industrial complex which will consume and conform that which it purports to protect. Just as God had on intimidating David on the spot to challenge Goliath with all of his bluster in military hardware and experience, He has the publicly offered words of one guy to whisper, comparatively, an alternative narrative.
Yes, the cannon is closed. The Bible is complete. Nothing God inspires us to write will uproot or replace that which He has already said. Yet, there remains inspired irony for Isaiah's heirs with a pen or a word processor which seems so ill matched against the noisier, more garish displays in our culture. God tells Isaiah to write before the culture before He even tells His purportedly overmatched prophet how the culture will respond. Why such a priority to him and to us?
Writing, especially first thing before we venture out into the culture, crystallizes our own thoughts. It establishes what we believe, based upon ingesting and confessing God's Word, but "preach" to ourselves in our own idiom to which we are especially impressionable. If we don't light up the like meter or attract cascading eyeballs to the counter-narrative we offer the culture, it certainly will change us and our approach to the challenges of the day.
Writing remains, God specifically tells Isaiah. If our words pulsate with His Word, we have some common share in Christ's assurance that those words will remain forever after Heaven and Earth have passed away. Armies only remain on parade for so long. They must, even if against their will, repair and reflect at some point. Written wisdom from another age, shorn of present assumptions, CS Lewis says, is particularly effective in recent ring the mind and heart.
Writing allows for individual flair in a culture where the drumbeat of conformity is loud, boring, and incessant. My words, God bless my compound sentences and grandiloquent vocabulary, are going to be different from everyone else's. They will reach some, God willing, not satisfied with a more direct approach. Others will give God the monosyllables their education and fluency make available, and, by faith, these will also not return void.
Just as God in Isaiah 30:8 tells the same prophet to write his and His message on both a tablet and a scroll, He is commissioning His own in varying words and formats to offer a lasting alternative to the pomp and pretense that seems so resurgent in each age. The books will reach some. The tweets will reach some. The texts, the podcasts, the voices on street corners, each will be used by God's grace in an assault of hope to pervasive for the enemy's domineering strongholds to withstand.
8
Now go, write it before them on a tablet,
And note it on a scroll,
That it may be for time to come,
Forever and ever:
9
That this is a rebellious people,
Lying children,
Children who will not hear the law of the Lord;
10
Who say to the seers, “Do not see,”
And to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us right things;
Speak to us smooth things, prophesy deceits.
11
Get out of the way,
Turn aside from the path,
Cause the Holy One of Israel
To cease from before us.”
"When it comes to knowing God, many of us constitute a culture of the spiritually stunted." So confronts DA Carson in Praying with Paul. "So much of our religion," he continues with the grim diagnosis of the spirit of the age, "is packaged to address our felt needs—and these are almost uniformly anchored in our pursuit of happiness and fulfillment, without rightly understanding where true happiness and fulfillment lie."
Not surprisingly, Carson must lead us to understand that our theology is infected by our self-centeredness. "God becomes the Great Being who, potentially at least, meets our needs and fulfills our aspirations." Pointing us to Blaise Pascal's God-shaped vacuum in our hearts which is not addressed by such teaching, Carson shifts to man-manifested symptoms. "We think too little of what he is like, of his wisdom, knowledge, power, love, transcendence, mystery, and glory. We are not intoxicated by his holiness and his love; his thoughts and words capture too little of our imagination, too little of our discourse, too few of our priorities."
Of course, neither DA Carson nor Paul before him would have any difficulty admitting that this spirit of the age in fact precedes their respective ages. It is easily evident in Isaiah 30. There, God faithfully prepares His prophet for the general response he will receive from the indulgent culture around him. Spiritual sensitivity is so far gone, warns the One Who looks on man's heart individually and collectively, people actually demand out loud what they want from God and His Word.
With the obstinance and myopia one would ordinarily and indulgently ascribe to children, God Who sees cultures come and go tell that they had at the age to which he speaks reasons much like the little one who figures that the world can be changed by covering his or her own eyes. As an extension of that, those with influence in the culture tell the seers, ironically, not to see what God is showing them.
The flimsiness of the logic behind the defensiveness of the leaders of the culture is evident before they speak, evident even before God finishes verbalizing their set piece. Note the disintegration in Isaiah 30:10. If you, temporarily acknowledged prophet can't block your view and ours from God's conviction and glory, by all means, don't speak about it. If you can't help but speaking and interrupting our self-justification and entertainment, say what affirms even if it is true.
Depravity reaches the level of willing self-deception pretty quickly. The impact of the infection on the minds of individuals and cultures is that virulent. This is why I, would-be a writer and small-ripple prophet to whatever circle the Lord grants, find such comfort in the clear imperative which launches this discourse.
With aegis and arsenal at His disposal at God fully anticipates this all-fronts attack on His Truth, what is His remedy? With what weapon will He address perfidy so pervasive that His glory is to be obscured to an entire people group?
Isaiah 30:8's battle plan calls for a guy and a blog. Write my alternative before them says God Who most often and most plainly chooses to demonstrate Himself through written words. There is such sweet subversion here, especially in the visual we can summon. God is addressing Isaiah to a society which is ready to resort to renting Egypt's military might for a sense of security.
This sense of safety in the expensive and the intimidating God characterizes in Isaiah 30:11 as oppressive. It is, President Eisenhower will phrase the habit later, a trust in a military-industrial complex which will consume and conform that which it purports to protect. Just as God had on intimidating David on the spot to challenge Goliath with all of his bluster in military hardware and experience, He has the publicly offered words of one guy to whisper, comparatively, an alternative narrative.
Yes, the cannon is closed. The Bible is complete. Nothing God inspires us to write will uproot or replace that which He has already said. Yet, there remains inspired irony for Isaiah's heirs with a pen or a word processor which seems so ill matched against the noisier, more garish displays in our culture. God tells Isaiah to write before the culture before He even tells His purportedly overmatched prophet how the culture will respond. Why such a priority to him and to us?
Writing, especially first thing before we venture out into the culture, crystallizes our own thoughts. It establishes what we believe, based upon ingesting and confessing God's Word, but "preach" to ourselves in our own idiom to which we are especially impressionable. If we don't light up the like meter or attract cascading eyeballs to the counter-narrative we offer the culture, it certainly will change us and our approach to the challenges of the day.
Writing remains, God specifically tells Isaiah. If our words pulsate with His Word, we have some common share in Christ's assurance that those words will remain forever after Heaven and Earth have passed away. Armies only remain on parade for so long. They must, even if against their will, repair and reflect at some point. Written wisdom from another age, shorn of present assumptions, CS Lewis says, is particularly effective in recent ring the mind and heart.
Writing allows for individual flair in a culture where the drumbeat of conformity is loud, boring, and incessant. My words, God bless my compound sentences and grandiloquent vocabulary, are going to be different from everyone else's. They will reach some, God willing, not satisfied with a more direct approach. Others will give God the monosyllables their education and fluency make available, and, by faith, these will also not return void.
Just as God in Isaiah 30:8 tells the same prophet to write his and His message on both a tablet and a scroll, He is commissioning His own in varying words and formats to offer a lasting alternative to the pomp and pretense that seems so resurgent in each age. The books will reach some. The tweets will reach some. The texts, the podcasts, the voices on street corners, each will be used by God's grace in an assault of hope to pervasive for the enemy's domineering strongholds to withstand.
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