Remembering David Powlison (1949-2019)

Since my introduction to him in 2011, one of the most impactful teachers in my life has been Dr. David Powlison, the Executive Director of Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation (CCEF).  Back in October, David received the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and began keeping a log of his health journey. The posts and updates may still be viewed here, and while they bring tears to my eyes, they are a treasure trove of insight, tender care, and unshakeable faith in the God who provides.  Through the ups and downs of good news, bad news, deceptively positive test results, and the debilitating side-effects of chemo, David maintained an incredible testimony of trust in the Lord, compassionate care for his wife and family, and devotion to his ministry. On Friday, June 7th, David went home to be with the Lord.  Appropriately, the announcement from CCEF came with a citation of 2 Timothy 4.7: "He fought the good fight, he finished the race, he kept the faith."

Briefly, here are just a few of the more significant treasures of wisdom I've gleaned sitting under Dr. Powlison's teaching, whether it be at conferences, listening to podcasts, or simply reading any of his numerous published resources.  I've added emphases, but the words are all Dr. Powlison's.

On the true nature of God's unconditional love (taken from the book Seeing With New Eyes, a 2003 publication):

If you receive blanket acceptance, you need no repentance. You just accept it. It fills you without humbling you. It relaxes you without upsetting you about yourself -- or thrilling you about Christ. It lets you relax without reckoning with the anguish of Jesus on the cross. It is easy and undemanding. It does not insist on, or work at, changing you. It deceives you about both God and yourself. We can do better. God does not accept me just as I am; he loves me despite how I am. He loves me just as Jesus is; he loves me enough to devote my life to renewing me in the image of Jesus.

Addressing the way Christians may practically meet the needs of fallen people (from the 2011 conference on Psychiatric Disorders):

• We can always bring steady human kindness
• We can always say something that is relevant; therefore, we must speak with clarity about hardships and realities
• We can always speak to and about that Someone who is merciful and powerful -- prayer is sanity

On learning to acknowledge our deep spiritual need (from the 2012 conference on Guilt & Shame):

If you know your guilt, then you can be forgiven.  If you know your weakness, then you can be strengthened.  If you know your brokenness, you can be made whole. If you don't know these things, then they cannot be corrected.  Knowing is the first step to overcoming.  The humility of knowing our need and asking for help is the necessary principle toward restoration.

On being rightly angry but loving well (from his 2016 book, Good & Angry)

Charity does what the recipient doesn't deserve... you can fiercely disagree with a person and actively dislike what he or she is doing -- all the stuff of anger -- and yet you can still do genuine kindness. Anger grips tightly a wrong, points it out, prosecutes it, punishes it. Mercy acts generously toward a wrongdoer, rather than claiming your pound of flesh. Anger things this way: "I've been wronged, so I will deal out fair and just punishment to the malefactor." But generosity, like patience and forgiveness is "unfair." You treat with purposeful kindness someone who treated you or others badly.

On biblical sexuality (from his 2017 book, Making All Things New)

Our culture asserts that any consenting object of desire is fair game for copulation. Individual will and personal choice are the supreme values. But Christ thinks differently, and he will get last say. That's important. "Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience" (Eph 5.6). Each of the distortions makes sex too important (and makes the Maker, evaluator, and Redeemer of sex irrelevant). Sex becomes your identity, your right, your fulfillment, your need. This is moral madness.

On a very personal note, learning to face your own mortality (from his Feburary 1, 2019 blog update)

The more precarious life is, the more pertinent all that Christ is, does, and says. One particular significant encouragement came from Psalm 138:3: “On the day I called you answered me, and you made me bold in my soul with strength.” That clarity, focus, purposefulness, and inner strength has been a sweet gift of God, and a reality for which I am very grateful. Before sleep one night, Nan and I read 2 Corinthians 4–5 slowly and aloud. We are looking death in the eye, while wanting to live, and live well. This passage is utterly candid about the most profound matters of life and death, of living a purposeful life, of how to face suffering honestly and hopefully. 

My lasting impressions of David are of a man who deeply loved the Lord and who treasured the opportunity to help others love Jesus in the same way.  I know from his testimony that David was rescued by faith from a cynical, secular worldview into a new perspective. He came to see men and women as people broken by sin but supremely loved by God, in need of rescue, in need of truth, and made biblical counseling his life's work.  He was a faithful servant from the moment of his conversion, and remained a devoted husband and an exemplary follower of Jesus Christ to his homegoing.

It is my prayer that I may be to my wife and son, and to all those under my care, the type of committed, forthright, and spiritually wise man that David Powlison exemplified for me.

Living in Victory

Sometimes I get the feeling that we're all defeatists.

That's kind of ironic for pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps Americans.  But it's also inevitable for a generation that prioritizes a feelings-based model of self-identification.  Boiled down, life is a continuous series of divinely ordained pass-or-fail challenges, and in this current frame of mind, we don't so much miss the mark as fail to even show up.

Here's how the formula works: I feel, so I do, so I am.

I don't feel like going to class.  So I barely achieve.  I'm an average student. 

I don't feel like having that conversation.  So I never address that relational problem.  I'm a cloistered, independent soul who needs no one.

I hate my job and my co-workers.  So I hang out on Reddit during work hours.  I am a fun-loving slacker (and proud of it).

I feel strong romantic connection toward a member of the same sex.  So I pursue a relationship  with that person.  I'm homosexual.

I'm twenty-six, still live at my parents house, keep a retail job and play video games, and don't know what I want to do with my life.  So I wait for an undefined opportunity to come along.  I am.... ?

This is how feelings-based living works.  I allow my notions and emotions to dictate my behavior, first in the moment, then as a habit -- a practice which, in turn, supplies me my identity.  That's how we're defeatists: we allow what we feel to control us, and allow those decisions to create an identity for us.  It's not proactive living, it's self-victimization.  And the only person I can blame is myself.

I just want to state the reminder -- a reminder that I constantly I need myself -- that what we feel does not need to determine our behavior.  Peter's words on this point are so poignant, that "whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved" (2 Pet 2.19).  In other words, if the voice that I answer to is my own desire, then my desire is my master.  If the notion seizes me to do something and I obey it, then that notion is my ultimate authority.  Even if I have my doubts, I must obey that imposition.  That thing becomes my master.

And ultimately, we all have a master.  We all subject ourselves to something.

As David Powlison puts it, "Human life is exhaustively God-relational."  In other words, all of our behavior stems from what we worship.  Even an atheist practices a form of worship -- devotion to what he/she perceives to be the inherint functionality of the evolutionary system, the laws of science, and the evolution of human reason.  Worship is inevitable for human beings.  If you perceive yourself as your own authority, then you worship your own logic, the relationships that give your life meaning, the desires that compel your decisions.  These masters are cruel, dictatorial, and unforgiving.  If, on the other hand, you are a follower of God, then Jesus Christ is your master -- but He's also your benevolent Friend, your joint-heir, and He is always leading you in victory over the things that formerly enslaved you.

Being enslaved to my own inner turmoil of doubts, fears, and wants is being a defeatist.  That lifestyle comes with a deluge of obscenities and regrets that, though I might pretend otherwise, I desperately want to escape.

On the other hand, being freed from those desires to voluntarily and wholeheartedly serve a gracious and merciful Savior is to be victorious.

This year, I want to live with that constant mindset.

Paul captures this idea by way of the following imagery:

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing... (2 Cor 2.14-15)

I grew up in South Jersey going to the Pitman parade every year for Independence Day.  Compared to something like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, the Pitman 4th of July celebration is pretty dinky.  Admittedly, there's only so many times you can watch firetrucks creep past blaring their horns and "God Bless America" before the novelty wears off (or before the township tells them they can't play that kind of music anymore).

The Christian walk isn't a dinky Pitman 4th of July parade.

The Christian walk isn't even a gigantic Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

The Christian walk is a march, a massive triumphal procession with glorious fanfare and angelic escort and soaring morale and the warm, rousing harmony of unanimous victory hymns -- all with Jesus Christ leading the way.  Once, He was the humble Lamb who died in our place; now, He is the conquering King who has returned to claim what He rightfully deserves!

We realize that this vivid scene has not yet literally occurred, but Paul speaks of it in the present tense -- as if the celebration has already started.  One day, it will be brought to this kind of literal completion.  But the total victory I will taste then is still mine now, in foretaste, through Jesus.

If Christ leads me in victory now, then that means I can overcome the sin that still besets me.  Jesus gives me the power to overcome -- His power.  That means I am free from my sinful desires, no matter how strong they might appear.  Through Christ, I have total mastery over them (Rom 6.14).

For the believer, sin is a choice, not a compulsion.  Sin isn’t something I “can’t help,” but something that I wrongfully choose to pursue instead of Christ.  It's a tooth-and-nail struggle with the flesh that requires constant vigilance, certainly, but it's a battle I can win should I choose to rely on Christ's strength rather than roll over and succumb.  Whether your struggle is laziness, gossip, pornography, same-sex attraction, self-pity, or any other item in a seemingly endless list of flaws, Christ through the Holy Spirit enables us to overcome them.

Victory might take time -- time spent unraveling my own motivations and tracing my patterns of behavior back to their source and ultimately reaffirming the truths of God's righteous character in my heart -- but it is not elusive.

It is not just out of reach.

What makes it feel far away is the emphasis and focus we place upon sin itself.  Is it a big deal?  Sure.  Is it compelling and desirable?  Unquestionably.  Will we ever be fully free from its influence?  Not this side of heaven, no.  However, we do need to replace it daily -- hourly -- with a deepening love of and adoration for the person of Jesus Christ.  I can't just shut down a negative desire: I have to replace it with a positive one.

The Puritan preacher Thomas Watson is accredited with saying, “Until sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet.”  I believe strongly that his equation was backwards.  Christ must first be sweet in order for sin to be bitter.  In other words, my sin isn't going to be abhorrent to me until what I value more is my Savior's holy character, coupled with His love and mercy.  Sin doesn't become bitter on its own -- not unless I replace it with something else.  I will always want sin until I replace that desire with an ever-deepening love for something of eternal substance.

As a child of God, I have the opportunity and the responsibility to pursue righteousness.  That's a Kingdom-oriented attitude -- a focus on His Kingdom, not mine.  This means living for eternity: magnifying my Savior and minimizing the allures of this fragile, temporary existence.

That's living in victory.  That's leaving behind a lifestyle of defeat.

Praise be to the only One who makes this possible!

Faith, Confidence, and Sanity: The Christian Worldview

One of the more significant changes shaping my immediate future is the fact that my band will be headed down to Nashville in just a few short weeks to record our debut album with Jerry Guidroz of Radiant Records (the producer behind Neal Morse and Transatlantic).  Without going into too much detail, the album we're working on is very much concerned with the legitimacy of faith (specifically the Christian faith) as a worldview.  It's essentially a microcosm of the world's pursuit of knowledge: the quest for true enlightenment which explores all avenues of thought, but that can only be found  -- as we believe -- in the person of Jesus Christ.  Geoff (keys and vocals) is the frontman and primary writer of The Twenty Committee's material, but as we got into the heart of the project, he and I began partnering on the lyrics -- especially those depicting the grungy independence of man and his scorn for all things intangible, things that even include faith, love, and hope.

As I stared at the blinking cursor on my computer screen, pondering the instability of faithless existence, I found myself reminded of a simple statement made by Dr. David Powlison during the 2011 CCEF conference.  A very simple statement -- three words, unrefined, no pretense.

"Prayer is sanity."

So concise, and in its directness, so poignant.  In the grandiose Louisville ballroom in which my wife (then, not yet my fiancé) and I were sitting, surrounded by thousands of counselors-in-training, the simple phrase passed over us like a wave -- not a whitecap which crashes over a swimmer and leaves him stunned, but a warm swell which buoys him gently above the sandy ocean floor.  As I remember that moment now, and realize the echoed sentiment in the rough lyrics of our nearly completed concept album, it strikes me that arguments for faith severely underemphasize one of the most important and most beautiful elements of the Christian belief.

Faith, even as an objective principle, is one of the most misunderstood concepts of our modern age.  Portrayed as mysticism at its worst and irrational confidence at its best, faith pertaining to any religion has become antithetical to educated thinking.  To the modern scientific community -- a generation raised during the era of Wikipedia, genetic cloning, and subsequent failed Harold Camping prophecies -- faith-based living is as quaint and outdated a practice as bloodletting.  To the post-Christian society in which we live, archaic religious thinking may at best hold some worthwhile grains of truth, but ultimately remains the equivalent of retaining belief in Santa Claus as an adult.

Understandably, popular misconceptions arise from the fact that faith as a principle always incorporates some form of not-knowing.  In other words, faith necessarily requires some element of trust which supersedes understanding.  Calvin's decision to go back inside and watch TV in the unsettling face of the unknown is a perfect example: man wants concrete proof that he is not alone in the universe and cannot accept the possibility that his own eyes might not be able to observe a supernatural reality.  Furthermore, when the overlooked plights of our world are taken into consideration -- our indomitable pride, our idol of independence and our obsession with control -- it isn't surprising that the world would rather place its belief in something concrete like science which defines the universe by expressly non-theistic standards.  It's terrifying to place confidence in something external to ourselves when what we value is our own knowledge and ability.  To sacrifice that for something which is intangible, something that you know in your heart but cannot prove beyond a shadow of a doubt to anyone (not even yourself) is tantamount to declaring mental instability.  In that regard, the popular debate between faith and science -- above all else -- is an argument over control.  It is a war between man's sense of pride and his dependence upon something greater than himself.

But the fact of the matter is that faith is not simply taking a step out into nothingness.  Biblical hope retains no element of uncertainty - it is a hope that knows and trusts, and ultimately experiences true peace.  That is the truth which forms the bedrock upon which the Christian stands.  Faith is not hoping God can, it's knowing that He will, which is certainly a pithy saying worthy of a wall plaque, but it is also the truth which allows us to see the rain as a blessing and the storm as an instruction manual.  Hebrews 11 defines faith as the "assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."  In other words, while faith acknowledges that there are things we do not understand, there is so much more that we do.  In the same way that you know you have money in the bank (or don't), in the same manner that those numerals on that paycheck represent a quantifiable amount and you know you earned, despite the fact that your boss didn't hand you raw chunks of gold to carry home on the subway, faith also incorporates a trust that supersedes what we see and experience.  Invariably, this is the kind of discussion which arouses the arguments for evolution, for intelligent design, for the notion (or lack thereof) that we can't possibly know for certain what this life is about.

The issue around which all of these schools of thought circle is the problem of evidence.  Contemporary science denies the possibility of the supernatural because equations cannot calculate deity.  Intelligent design counters evolutionary claims due to the absence of transitional forms in the fossil record.  So-called agnostics simply shrug and insist that there's not enough to go by to choose one side of the court or the other.  The consistent back-and-forth banter of "Prove it's true" and "Prove it's not" is unending, because no one has the trump card which invalidates the other arguments.  Embracing a side, therefore, is inevitably a matter of faith, because regardless of what camp you find yourself in, the evidence does not conclusively add up.  Evolution ultimately boils down to the same faith-based mechanics as any other devised religion.  It has no testable hypotheses to make it a recognizable science (no, you cannot watch evolution happen), and it lacks insubstantial evidence to verify its claims.  The Christian likewise cannot point to any evidence which the scientist would not deem circumstantial or hearsay.  It is by faith that we acknowledge the universe as God's handiwork, attributing to Him authority over nature and ascribing to Him authorship of the scientific laws which govern the universe.

But frankly, I'm tired of all the talk.  I'm tired of Christian apologetics who hint at the possibility of proving God's existence through their archeological approach and their intentional use of big scientific words.  I'm tired of evolutionists who raise their noses to the notion that someone embraces a worldview which subjects science to deity, because they themselves are unable to wrap their brains around the notion that an all-powerful god (which is, by objective definition, a supernatural and supreme being) would not be limited by the clockwork regularity of the universe He created.  And I'm really tired of people misusing the "agnostic" label simply because they don't know what they believe and don't want to be labeled as an atheist, which would be too extreme.  We stand in a room crowded with stubborn debaters, all shouting to be heard, and no one is convincing anyone of anything.

This post is not an argument for equality of thought or a demand for coexistence.  It is, however, a request for greater understanding of and a respect for what the other guy thinks.  It's a call to listen more and speak less (and I'll be the first one to admit failure in that department).  We need to stop adding to the argumentative noise.  What I also want to communicate is that faith (intelligent design, Creationism, or whatever other label you'd prefer) is not an unrealistic perspective of the world.  It is not a denial of scientific research, nor is it divorced from logic, reason, or education.  It is simply a different perspective and a different order of priorities.  Faith is a legitimate worldview because it is based upon confidence in the reality and veracity of the Bible.  Yes, it certainly takes faith to believe in a God who cannot be seen or defined with scientific instruments, a God who created man and gave him a mind of his own, and then chose out of His lovingkindness to redeem that man rather than destroy him for his ungrateful independence.  However, it also takes tremendous faith to look past the gaping holes in the evolutionary theory, just like it takes faith to answer the question "If God does not exist, then what is this all for?" with some apathetic defense of nature's prerogative.

The bottom line is that, if evolution is an educated and respected school of thought, despite its uncertainties, then intelligent design must also be held in the same regard.

In all of this, in my frustration with internet forums and the conversations which take place in so-called collegiate-level classrooms, I find myself coming back to Dr. Powlison's statement, an idea which is so fundamental and so grade-school in its simplicity, and yet we constantly overlook it.  Prayer is not the spiritual equivalent of groping blindly in the dark: it is leaning into the one dependable lifeline we have in a universe which spins out of our control, out of our finite comprehension.  Prayer is sanity because of the reality, the omnipotence, of the One upon whom we depend.

To me, the most beautiful aspect of the Christian faith is the fact that despite our wickedness, we may boldly approach the throne of grace -- boldly, not with trepidation, not with uncertainty, but with absolute confidence.  I know beyond the shadow of any doubt that my Savior will one day welcome me into His open arms, and that all mysteries of life, the universe, and everything will one day finally be answered -- but not until I come into His presence.  In the meantime, I intend to live a life which celebrates that confidence, knowing that man's pursuit of knowledge and understanding begins and culminates with Christ Himself.

~*~

Psalm 18.1-3: "I love you, O LORD, my strength.  The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.  I call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised."

~*~