Healthy Truth, Exercising Love

(By: Nick Kennicott)

Food is one of the greatest gifts from God. I love food. I love to smell it, I love when it’s put together in a way that is visually beautiful, I love to cook it and prepare it and try new things with it. Think of all the colors and textures and tastes, and the wonderful creativity that God has inspired in the hearts of mankind to come up with new and different ways to use everything so that we can have an ever-changing variety of edible options.

One of the difficulties with food is that not everything that we want to eat is particularly healthy. Cheesecake and bacon double cheeseburgers may be delicious gifts from God, but you won’t be doing much for the Kingdom after a few days if that’s all you eat! God gives us food to teach us self-control just as much as He gives it to delight and sustain us. Oftentimes, (ok, let’s be honest, most of the time) the healthiest options aren’t always the most delicious. For some reason, eating 46 loaves of bread is not the same as eating raw cauliflower or a bag of kale chips (mainly because Kale Chips aren’t actually made for human consumption). If you’re like me, it takes work to consistently eat healthily. And every medical professional will tell you not only to eat healthily but to also have a regular routine of exercise. Because what gets you out of bed more quickly in the morning than tofu and sit-ups?

Several times throughout his letters, the Apostle Paul uses the human body as an illustration of what a local church should be, and every Christian should be concerned about keeping the body healthy. If a local church is going to persevere, a healthy diet and calculated exercise are necessary, and in Ephesians 4:15-16 Paul tells us what that should look like: “Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:15–16).

The healthy diet of a local church is truth

Paul isn’t just admonishing the church to tell the truth, but is addressing the importance of holding to the truth. Quite literally the text implies that we ought to be “truthing in love.” The truth of God’s Word must be held to in every local church that strives to be healthy, and the corollary is that everything unhealthy must be rejected. This is a corrective to the ecumenical spirit of only affirming the things agreeable to those who call themselves Christian. There are false teachers who are deceitful and crafty, and an open-ended spirit that invites anything and everyone to join hands without any standards is exactly what Paul writes to protect the church from. Without discernment and understanding of what the Bible actually teaches, and the fortitude to hold to it unflinchingly, the body will break down. In most instances, it won’t be obvious right away, but little-by-little the body will take on a new shape as it makes its way to the grave, and eventually, a mere glance at an old snapshot of what the body used to be will be evidence of an unhealthy diet.

A church’s diet is greatly assisted by the historic creeds and confessions of the church. One of the greatest benefits of confessionalism is being able to hold to something that has been meticulously written, worked through, studied, and proven to be biblical throughout the centuries. A church can claim to “believe the Bible” all day long, but the real question that needs to be asked is, “What do you believe about the Bible and what it teaches?” That’s where the true diet is found. Is it all sugar and fat, or is it healthy and nutritious?

The exercise of a local church is love

Many Christians seem to think we can say whatever we want in the way we want, as long as it’s true. But truthing isn’t entirely true apart from love; Our motives matter. We can puff our chests in pride and say, “I’m telling it how it is,” but truth and love are a unit that cannot be divided. In other words, we can eat a healthy diet, but if we aren’t exercising to use that diet in a way that strengthens the body, it’s not helpful. We need exercise, and the exercise of the local church is fulfilling the two greatest commandments (Matthew 22:37-40).

Truthing in love means we are humble in all we proclaim, acknowledging our own fallibility and susceptibility to mistakes and errors. “Sometimes the truth hurts” isn’t always a biblical concept in how it’s applied. Solomon reminds us in Proverbs 18:21 that “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” Undoubtedly, our words hold tremendous power and we have a great need to be instructed to “let no corrupting talk come out of [our] mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). The truth is powerful enough on its own that it does not need an unloving delivery to strengthen it.

The Spirit of God will strengthen and unify any church body that is dieting on truth and exercising in love, and they will grow up in every way in Christ so that the gates of Hell will not prevail against them. Trim the fat by dieting and exercising well. The Lord will bless the obedience of His Church, preparing us for that great feast with the Son.

Random Musings on Christian Humanism

(By: Nick Kennicott)

I have thought a lot lately about how often I hear or read someone mocking the liberal arts. The study of humanities has fallen on hard times over the past few decades, and culturally, it shows. Education in America and Western culture, in general, has shifted away from a pursuit of the good, the true, and the beautiful, eschewing the very humanistic ideals that formed America in the first place. In return, the majority of students hear from their teachers that all they’re really doing is preparing for the next test, preparing for the next grade, and preparing to get to college.

One of my closest friends has the unenviable job of reading essays written by aspiring college students applying to the well-respected institution he works for. In a recent conversation, he told me that one of the questions the students are asked to write about is, “Why do you want to go to college?” He said at least 50% of the essays say something along the lines of wanting to get a high paying job, so as far as they can tell, the only logical next step is to go to college. Very few young people are taught how to learn, and as a result, there’s very little desire to engage with ancient literature, understand history in context, think critically about art or music, or wrestle with competing ideas about the reasons why men and women make the decisions they do. Enough with the reading and writing and debating and speeches, just show me the money. Don’t believe me? Ask ten teenagers how many books they’ve read on their own from cover-to-cover in the past twelve months, and then fasten your seatbelt to hear the answer. I’m not down on the teens… go and ask their parents the same question and try not to have a major medical emergency (don’t say I didn’t warn you). 27% of adults in a recent Pew Survey admitted to having not read a single book in an entire year. To the man or woman with a love for humanities, that’s like saying they didn’t breathe! I feel my heart nearly stop when I hear those awful words, “I hate reading!”

I’m actually quite unsurprised that many college campuses across America have turned into offense-free zones where guest speakers with ideas (usually Christians and/or conservative) that do not conform to the majority of the students and faculty on the campus are harassed, maligned, and often cancelled because the very thought of them being on the premises is too much for people to handle. I’m not surprised when graduates walk out of graduation speeches by people they don’t like, I’m not surprised when conservative professors are fired for even suggesting different ideas should have a place in university classrooms, or when entire institutions are maligned and boycotted for holding to principles that differ from their counterparts. Why would people who were never made to read and discuss and debate dissenting ideas in the first place ever think there was all the sudden a place for those ideas? How can people who think injustice is defined as being offended ever engage in civil discourse? I suggest the slow movement away from the liberal arts in western society has created the culture of division in America that is so often defined as left and right, and yet both sides are plagued with the same malady.

Too often, “liberal arts” is used as a pejorative term rather than describing a noble pursuit. I am particularly disheartened when I hear disparaging remarks from Christians about these very ideas that set the stage for the Protestant Reformation and were foundational in the thinking they most admire in many of their heroes of the faith. C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton both said they hated their studies in grammar and Latin, but also admitted it was those areas of study that made them the writers and thinkers they became. The Greek and Hebrew languages were all but lost along with most of the works of the Church Fathers throughout the middle ages, and if it weren’t for Christian humanists rediscovering and studying them, and using the printing press to distribute them, where would the church be today? I thank God for inspiring His people to reject the status quo of their day to make discoveries of the works of old and renew the ideas and methods that formed many great nations, men, and women.

I truly believe churches would be far more mature, sermons would be far more substantive, and outreach and evangelism would be far more effective if we took Christian humanism seriously–if we taught ourselves and our children how to think, how to reason, how to discuss, how to read and study. We would be far more conversant with our culture in a winsome way if we engaged with the standard Western canon of literature and if we studied and honed the arts of logic and rhetoric, even from a very early age. The church would be far more equipped to answer fools (Proverbs 26:5) and make a defense to anyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is in them with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15).

This short film (below) is a great piece that depicts something of what causes unrest in my heart (yes, I recognize the irony of including a dialogue-free film after all my blather about reading books and listening to and engaging in discourse). I appreciate the very notion being portrayed that perhaps we’re doing it all wrong! We used to have a culture that valued art and music, speech and well-crafted argument, stage productions and substantive political debate. No longer. All of life has conformed to the cookie-cutter ideals of the industrial revolution and now we think ourselves successful when we continually stamp out more of the same. God has gifted each person differently, and each different person should be given opportunities to explore and utilize their unique gifts that they might flourish in ways others don’t… it’s a humanist ideal that we’ve lost, but I hope there’s still time to see it recovered. Enjoy the film.