"Reflections on the Church in Great Britain"

Unless he was aiming for a British sense of sarcasm, it appears Mark Driscoll recently took the British to task for their lack of celebrity pastors: "Let's just say this: right now, name for me the one young, good Bible teacher that is known across Great Britain. You don't have one – that's the problem. There are a bunch of cowards who aren't telling the truth."

On the plus side, I guess Northern Ireland pastors are aite in Driscoll's book.

Anyway, D.A. Carson responds (with a good measure of wit, to boot) to his good friend in a post titled "Reflections on the Church in Great Britain."

While we're on the topic, Carson's article "Observations of a Friend" (1995) on the Anglican Communion is likewise helpful to read. Although it should be noted there have been significant developments within Anglicanism since the article was published (e.g. GAFCON, St. John's Vancouver aka J.I. Packer's church leaving the Anglican Church of Canada).

It should also be said there are several fine British pastors and teachers in the United States. I'm thinking of men like Alistair Begg, Sinclair Ferguson, Liam Goligher, Mark Johnston, Robert Norris, Derek Thomas, and Carl Trueman. By the way, one of my favorite 9Marks interviews features Norris.

A poker tell

From Carl Trueman:

I see Mark Driscoll has had a go at my old country. Well, not really. Only foreigners really talk of 'Brits.' Those of us from the UK never think of ourselves in those terms: we are English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish, especially during the Six Nations. To have a go at the old country, you have to be a bit more specific, I am afraid.

I am surprised at the offence his comments have apparently caused. I cannot speak for the Celts, but the English take a certain pleasure in being hated and rubbished by everyone else. The nation -- like the man -- who has no enemies has, after all, no honour. Nevertheless, there is one quotation which is worth noting:

"Let's just say this: right now, name for me the one young, good Bible teacher that is known across Great Britain. You don't have one - that's the problem."

Notice the three important elements of this sentence: the definite article, 'young' and 'known across Britain.' The Great Man, youth and fame: not high on the list of Paul's priorities; and three basic elements of celebrity culture.

A bit of a poker tell, is it not?

Preaching as a dying man to dying men

The post "Christmas and the faith and courage to live - or die" by Carl Trueman is worth reading.

In addition Trueman's post brings to mind this portion from C.S. Lewis' "Learning in War-time":

War threatens us with death and pain. No man - and specially no Christian who remembers Gethsemane - need try to attain a stoic indifference about these things: but we can guard against the illusions of the imagination.

We think of the streets of Warsaw and contrast the deaths there suffered with an abstraction called Life. But there is no question of death or life for any of us; only a question of this death or of that - of a machine gun bullet now or a cancer forty years later.

What does war do to death? It certainly does not make it more frequent; 100 percent of us die, and the percentage cannot be increased.

It puts several deaths earlier; but I hardly suppose that that is what we fear. Certainly when the moment comes, it will make little difference how many years we have behind us.

Does it increase our chance of a painful death? I doubt it. As far as I can find out, what we call natural death is usually preceded by suffering; and a battlefield is one of the very few places where one has a reasonable prospect of dying with no pain at all.

Does it decrease our chances of dying at peace with God? I cannot believe it. If active service does not persuade a man to prepare for death, what conceivable concatenation of circumstance would?

Yet war does do something to death. It forces us to remember it. The only reason why the cancer at sixty or the paralysis at seventy-five do not bother us is that we forget them. War makes death real to us: and that would have been regarded as one of its blessings by most of the great Christians of the past. They thought it good for us to be always aware of our mortality. I am inclined to think they were right.

All the animal life in us, all schemes of happiness that centered in this world, were always doomed to a final frustration. In ordinary times only a wise man can realize it. Now the stupidest of us know.

We see unmistakable the sort of universe in which we have all along been living, and must come to terms with it.