Emerging Scholars Blog

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spirituality

Devotions: Beatitudes (6) — Pure in Heart

Sermon on the Mount

You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world. — Matthew 5:8 (The Message)

Notice that God does NOT say, “Blessed are the perfect.” Purity of heart, that is, the inner life, is not the same thing as perfection. This beatitude is for normal people who mess up, who fail, who sin, who don’t have it together, who think less of themselves than they should. “Purity” means those who seek and serve God in accordance with the truth in his Word and in the power and presence of the Spirit of God. It is not merely being sincere or honest. It is being sincere and honest before God. And such purity indicates a loving relationship with God that is both ongoing and transformative. Jesus once said that the problem with being clean or pure is not what is on the outside, but what is on the inside:

But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander (Matthew 15:18,19).

As the inside world is made clean by the forgiveness one receives from God through Jesus Christ, he or she is made “pure.” [Read more…] about Devotions: Beatitudes (6) — Pure in Heart

Review: An Unhurried Life

An Unhurried Life: Following Jesus’ Rhythms of Work and Rest by Alan Fadling (InterVarsity Press, 2013).

In An Unhurried Life: Following Jesus’ Rhythms of Work and Rest Alan Fadling contends many of us are suffering from hurry sickness, and that it is not only detrimental to our bodies but also to our souls. We are going too fast to hear God, too fast to grow deeply, too fast to discern the temptations that lead us astray.

He begins by painting a picture of the frenetic life that characterizes modern life. He contrasts this with the idea of apprenticeship with Jesus, the unhurried learning with him. He argues from the life of Jesus that unhurry isn’t laziness and that there is no such thing as holy hurry, only holy unhurry. Unhurry enables us to resist temptations, which often come in the form of pressure to take shortcuts to some seemingly good thing. Unhurry gives us time to stop and care, to stop and pray. Sabbath is the gift of unhurried rest for God’s people. The next chapters (8 and 9) were most significant for me. He talks about suffering and how it can stop us in our tracks and take us into a place of unhurry where we meet God. And he talks about maturity, which if it is to happen well and deeply, cannot happen fast. [Read more…] about Review: An Unhurried Life

“Finding Our Calcutta” on Campus

Mary Poplin presents for a Veritas Forum gathering of Pittsburgh academics. 30 in attendance. Excellent leadership provided by InterVarsity Graduate & Faculty Ministry staff Robin Capcara and Michael Gehrling.

Over the past several days in venue after venue across Pittsburgh and South Central PA, I heard Mary Poplin, Professor of Education at Claremont Graduate University, share not only her testimony, but also the cost of following Christ in higher education. As you may remember from The Unlikely Conversion of a Radical Scholar and Appendix A of Finding Calcutta: What Mother Teresa Taught Me About Meaningful Work and Service, Mary considers it part of her call/Calcutta to challenge the gods of our age as they reign on campus. In brief, she seizes opportunities to respond to the insufficient challenges which

  • Scientific Naturalism levies against God
  • Secular Humanism levies against the Son
  • Pantheism/Spirituality levies against the Holy Spirit

What are some of Mary Poplin’s most helpful responses to the gods of our age and how does she reach out even to atheists, who the Missionaries of Charity place among the poorest of the poor?

  • Telling Mother Teresa’s story. “Mother Teresa is completely incomprehensible from the major worldviews of the university.”
  • Underscoring how spiritual transactions such as her own and Mother Teresa’s cannot be explained by scientific naturalism and/or secular humanism. If you have not already read Mary’s stirring testimony, take a few minutes to soak in Along the Way: The Unlikely Conversion of a Radical Scholar.
  • Debunking the broad nature of pantheism/spirituality by positing the necessity of leaning upon Jesus and the Holy Spirit in our daily walk.
Mary Poplin meets with Heather

During her time in Pittsburgh, Mary and I visited a Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) alum who can’t shake the campus. Heather’s father is a CMU professor and Heather is now married to a CMU researcher (another CMU alum back at CMU after acquiring his PhD at MIT). Heather immensely enjoyed this opportunity to learn from and be encouraged by Mary, a Christian Scholar who offers a word of advice to those willing to listen. Follow the links below to Heather’s personal blogposts about her conversation with Mary.

[Read more…] about “Finding Our Calcutta” on Campus