Tim Curry Presents a Scene from The Screwtape Letters

This Wednesday morning, April 17, Tim Curry will dramatize a scene from C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters.

Anyone is invited to come. At Redeemer. 10 AM. In the sanctuary.

"Let's not allow Satan to outwit us.  For we are not unaware of his schemes" II Cor. 2:11.

In his classic satire, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis skillfully exposes what we already know about our scheming enemy: his kingdom is crafty, ravenous, and well-organized.

This brief sequel illuminates similar ironic insights as the senior demon continues to mentor hell's minions as he addresses an unholy assembly of recent graduates of the Tempters Training College for Young Devils.

In a ten minute performance version of the piece, my hope is that God will reveal how to avoid the enemy's traps, and how to rejoice in the victory that Jesus has won for us.

Tim Curry

Adjunct Professor of Speech Commuication

Monroe County Community College

Q&A will follow.

The Prayerless Church Is the Unsalted Church

Monroe County

Imagine a prayerless church. This would be a church that believed in prayer but did not actually pray.

To believe in prayer is not the same thing as to pray. A prayerless church is a church that doesn't pray.

The prayerless church "doesn't have time to pray." It doesn't have time to pray because it doesn't believe in prayer. Practically, the prayerless church doesn't believe in God. To "believe in prayer" but not have time for it is to not believe in prayer.

Martin Luther King, Jr., found time to pray, and described prayer as a "conversation with God." If someone believed they could talk with God today, even now, wouldn't they? How could someone not have time for this? Even Jesus found time to pray.

The most powerful people in the world are the nations' presidents. If, for some crazy reason, you received a call from some country's President, right now, you would stop reading this and take the call. To make a weak analogy, if the omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, necessarily existent Creator of you and all things wanted to converse with you all day and every day, wouldn't you do this? You would gain access to Knowledge, Power, and Love. Only a person not in their right mind would refuse this.

Economically, prayer makes sense. We get to consult with the universe's Leader, at no cost. Churches could save thousands and millions yearly if they took the free offer to connect with God rather than spending money and time to create programs through which, hopefully, God mediates his presence.

Much of today's prayerlessness among professing Jesus-followers is due to unbelief. For how could anyone rationally refuse the offer of ongoing conversation with God? How does the following make sense?

1. God, Maker of heaven and earth, offers me a conversational relationship with him.
2. Therefore, I don't have time to do this.

This is a cultural observation. It won't motivate people to pray. Feelings of guilt rarely change behavior. What's needed is re-conversion.

Imagine an unbelieving church. This would be a church without wisdom, power, or love. This would be the disconnected church. The dark church. The hollow church. The church without influence. The ghettoized church. The unsalted church.

(Want to join me for Prayer Summer?)

Prayer Summer

Maumee Bay State Park, Ohio

Stanley Grenz writes: "The greatest challenge facing the church of Jesus Christ today, and therefore every local congregation, is motivating the people of God to engage in sincere, honest, fervent prayer." (Grenz, Prayer: The Cry for the Kingdom).

I am with him on this. I have been with him on this for the past 35 years. I'll be with this on my death bed, and in my last breath.

There's a whole lot of activity out there in the American church. Bunches of that activity are not prayerful. That's because most American and westernized pastors and Christian leaders don't have an actual prayer life. I estimate 80% don't, as a result of teaching about 2000 of them, to this point, in theological seminaries and conferences and retreats.

I want to be part of turning this around. I feel God has called me to be part of the turnaround.

All of our activity has not got us very far, spiritually; indeed, I think that the Activity-Based Church (aka the Entertainment Church; the Program-Based Church) has proven itself to be a relative wasteland of Jesus-spirituality. Grenz writes about this, as others have and still do like, e.g., the lone prophetic voice-in-the-consumer-wilderness Eugene Peterson.

So here I go again, and gladly so.

I'm calling for a Prayer Summer. I invite you to join. I'm praying about how to make this interactive without trying to be entertaining. Anyone want to join me in a prayer movement? I'm going for it. I don't have time not to go for it. Beware of the Jesus-tribe that actually prays.

I'm seeking God for the details.

It will cost: $0. Yay, right?!

You don't have to have money, or a lot of it, to advance the kingdom of God. The early church had none, and look what happened. As Paul once said, after being accused of being a lousy conference speaker, "All I've got is the gospel of the kingdom and signs and wonders."

In the Prayer Movement all we have is God. Is not that enough?

Pastors - I'm involving my church in this. Why not pray about involving yours in it, too?

Anyone who wants to join me in this radical, time-investment in actual praying this summer, send me an e-mail - johnpiippo@msn.com.

"If my people..."

Brennan Manning - April 27, 1934 – April 12, 2013

Many of us have been influenced by the writings of Brennan Manning.

Brennan died on Friday, April 12.

I have regularly recommended his book Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging.

Here's Brennan's obituary, on his website.

“Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement, and death will be part of your journey, but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors. No evil can resist grace forever.”
- From The Ragamuffin Gospel

Abiding in Christ Conference in New York City this Weekend

Rev. Carol Steptoe is one of my former spiritual formation students at Payne Theological Seminary. This weekend Carol is taking my spiritual formation class and teaching it to 150-200 women at a conference in New York City.

Here's the link - http://www.gracepointgospel.org/news/he-abides-womens-spring-conference

• Learn what the Bible says about abiding
• Practice the steps of daily abiding and effective prayer
• Tune your spiritual ears to discern the voice of God
• Obtain and regain God’s promise of Peace and Complete Joy in your life
• Enjoy a closer walk with God
• Be renewed and Transformed

Please pray for Carol and these women.

The Church's Greatest Challenge Today Is...

Michigan flowers

I am not only a student of prayer, praying, and pray-ers, I actually pray. Praying is at the top of my spiritual life, and is the foundation for anything good that comes out of my life. I feel called to introduce Jesus-followers to a life of prayer.

Last week I received my copy of Stanley Grenz's Prayer: The Cry for the Kingdom. Only $7 at amazon.com!

Grenz, who died in 2005, was one of our best theologians. I love the title of his book on prayer, positioning prayer within the dominion of God (the kingdom of God).

I started reading it Tuesday. I did not get past the first paragraph on p. 1. It was affirming and confirming for me. Grenz writes:

"The church of Jesus Christ faces many challenges today. Yet the greatest challenge is not what
might initially come to mind. The greatest challenge is not that of urging Christians to speak
out on the great social issues of the day…Nor is our greatest challenge that of encouraging
each other to be more fervent in evangelizing the world, even though evangelization ought to be of concern to every Christian. Rather, the greatest challenge facing the church of Jesus Christ today, and therefore every local congregation, is motivating the people of God to engage in sincere, honest, fervent prayer." (1)

Think how counterintuitive that sounds in these days of the Entertainment Church.

Reading Grenz's first paragraph gave me the answer to something I have been praying about. Should I do another "Summer of Prayer" thing at Redeemer, and offer it also online? God said, "Yes."

I am now praying about how to do this in a way that will capture people's hearts.

Coming soon: "The Summer of Prayer"
Cost: $0
Cost: Time and space (yours and mine)

(If you want to be part of this please send me an e-mail - johnpiippo@msn.com)

In Our Pursuit of Happiness We Are Drenched in Anxiety

The Great American Search for Happiness leads to unhappiness. That's what philosopher Eric Hoffer wrote years ago. Hoffer said: “The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.” 

"This obsessive, driven, relentless pursuit is a characteristically American struggle — the exhausting daily application of the Declaration of Independence. But at the same time this elusive MacGuffin is creating a nation of nervous wrecks. Despite being the richest nation on earth, the United States is, according to the World Health Organization, by a wide margin, also the most anxious, with nearly a third of Americans likely to suffer from an anxiety problem in their lifetime. America’s precocious levels of anxiety are not just happening in spite of the great national happiness rat race, but also perhaps, because of it."
- Ruth Whippman, "America the Anxious" (nytimes, September 22, 2012)

Whippman continues:

"The American approach to happiness can spur a debilitating anxiety. The initial sense of promise and hope is seductive, but it soon gives way to a nagging slow-burn feeling of inadequacy. Am I happy? Happy enough? As happy as everyone else? Could I be doing more about it? Even basic contentment feels like failure when pitched against capital-H Happiness. The goal is so elusive and hard to define, it’s impossible to pinpoint when it’s even been achieved — a recipe for neurosis."

This makes sense to me. Our age, writes Elaine Showalter in today's Chronicle of Higher Education, is an age of anxiety. 

In his just-published book How Everyone Became Depressed: The Rise and Fall of the Nervous Breakdown (Oxford University Press), medical historian Edward Shorter says that "It has not escaped many observers that today we are drenched in anxiety." Psychiatrist Jeffrey Kahn states that "commonplace anxiety and depressive disorders" affect at least 20% of Americans. That's 60 million people. In our pursuit of happiness we have become depressingly unhappy. (See Kahn, Angst: Origins of Anxiety and Depression) Woo-hoo, right?

Academics are particularly unhappy and depressed, argues University of Texas professor Ann Cvetkovich, in Depression: A Public Feeling. She writes:

Academe "breeds particular forms of panic and anxiety leading to what gets called depression—the fear that you have nothing to say, or that you can't say what you want to say, or that you have something to say but it's not important enough or smart enough."

The Jesus-idea of "happiness" is the promise of "blessedness." Blessedness is independent of material or social conditions. Blessedness is not to be pursued for its own sake, since to do so would cause it to suffer the same infelicitous fate as meets all whose life goal is "happiness." Blessedness is an indirect byproduct of the pursuit of God and the love of others, for their own sake and not for what you can get. One gives one's life away for God and others and thereby gains life. This is, precisely, anti-American in its non-consumerism. The result is a blessed life.

Facing Things that, In My Own Strength, are Impossible

Lake Michigan

Dallas Willard, in Hearing God, quotes Samuel Shoemaker's description of experiencing God communicating to us. Shoemaker writes:


"Something comes into our own energies and capacities and expands them. We are laid hold of by Something greater than ourselves. We can face things, create things, accomplish things, that in our own strength would have been impossible. . . . The Holy Spirit seems to mix and mingle His power with our own, so that what happens is both a heightening of our own powers, and a gift to us from outside. This is as real and definite as attaching an appliance to an electrical outlet, though of course such a mechanical analogy is not altogether satisfactory." (p. 126)

This is the experiential reality of Immanuel, God-with-us. God with me. I have experienced this many times, and written a number of these down in 3000+ pages of journal entries.

Today I am going to live with God. I am connecting, early in the morning. I'll carry my journal with me. When God speaks to me, I'll write it down.

If you're wondering how you might do this today, I suggest:

• Open your Bible and begin reading, slowly, John chapter 14.
• If your mind wanders, note that it wanders to something like a burden. Write it down. That is, write something like: "I am now burdened by...  " As best as you can, give this burden to God.
• Continue deburdening throughout the day, as worries and concerns come to you. If action is required, take action. Do what you can do, what God wants you to do, to address the concern. Leave the rest to God. Trust God for the things you cannot control.
• Meditate (slow-cook) on John 14. When God speaks to you, write it down.
• I find that, as I live this way, an uncluttered space opens in my soul. That is usually the place where I hear God. I can face things, accomplish things, create things, that in my own strength are impossible.

Now Listening to.... Justin Bieber 800% Slower

Justin Bieber 800% Slower

Chalmers's Zombie Argument Against Physicalism

In my MCCC Logic class tonight I'm thinking of presenting  neurophilosopher David Chalmers's philosophically famous zombie argument against physicalism. 

It will serve as an illustration of modus tollens, and hopefully will be fun and generate some discussion if I can get at least some of the students to understand it.

On "zombies" see here.

For Chalmers's argumment see here.

1. If physicalism is true, then there cannot possibly be a world that contains zombies. (That is, there cannot be a world that is a physical duplicate of ours [that is, where everything is physically like in our world], which is not a duplicate simpliciter of our world [that is, which does not contain anything more or less than what our world contains].)
2. But zombies are conceivable. (A "zombie" is a creature that is physically exactly like us, except that it lacks conscious experience.)
3. Therefore, physicalism is false.

Note: this argument depends on the idea that: If something X is conceivable, then X is possible.

The argument's logical form is modus tollens:

1. If p, then q.
2. Not-q
3. Therefore, not-p.

For some essays on the zombie argument see here.

Here's another way to express this argument:

1. If zombies are logically possible, then zombies are metaphysically possible.

2. If zombies are metaphysically possible, then physicalism is false.

3. Zombies are conceivable.

4. If zombies are conceivable, then zombies are logically possible.

5. Zombies are logically possible. (from 3 and 4, MP)

6. Zombies are metaphysically possible. (from 1 and 5, MP)

7. Physicalism is false. (from 2 and 6, MP)