My hero, E. Stanley Jones

One of my heroes is E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973) a graduate of my alma mater, Asbury College (now Asbury University), a missionary to India for fifty-five years, a close friend of Mahatma Gandhi and the Nehru family, and a respected conversationalist with the Hindu elite of his day, and a confidant to President Franklin Roosevelt leading-up to and during the second world war. Over the span of his remarkable life, he wrote thirty books out of his life's experience in India. His last book is one of my favorites, The Divine Yes, published in 1975. In this last work, dictated from his bed in his last days, Jones encourages us to go forward, to take next steps knowing that we are accompanied by God at every step, that He is present, and we go forward together with Him.

Jones is my hero for a number of reasons:

1) Over the 88 years of his life, he wrote more than 30 books of practical value to the Christian journey, books like Christ of the Indian Road, Christ of the American Road, Christ of Every Road.  He was superb on sharing insights for the journey.  Other books included The Word Became Flesh, a practical daily devotional reader introducing the reader to the person of Christ, Victorious Living, and How to Be a Transformed Person.  E. Stanley Jones wrote out of his life's experiences in a way that was very accessible to the everyday reader.  His insights and convictions were preserved for future generations due to the discipline of his writings.

2) E. Stanley Jones was principled and took the high road in the most controversial of times.  In Christ of the American Road, he took to task the American Church in the late thirties and early forties for its racism concerning African Americans.  In so doing, he had a profound impact on a young divinity student at Boston University School of Theology in the 1950's who later went on to rock the world of civil rights, Dr. Martin Luther King.

3) E. Stanley Jones kept his focus on Christ and the Kingdom.  Whatever the matter or issue at the time, he wrote and spoke in a way that was eternal because he kept the main thing the main thing, Jesus Christ and the Coming Kingdom.  This theme permeated his thinking, writing, and speaking and as a result he was a means of grace by which Christ himself spoke into the lives and circumstances of millions, including his intimate friend, Mahatma Gandhi.

Jones is a reminder that one life given completely to Christ can make a tremendous  difference, that a call to be a world ambassador for Christ is a noble calling,  that capturing one's thought in the less perishable form of writing preserves a legacy for future generations, and that keeping the light on Christ and His Kingdom is the ultimate way to live out one's faith.  It gives me great joy that his legacy is preserved at Asbury Theological Seminary today in the form of the E. Stanley Jones School of Missions.  One life can make a difference to the glory of God!

The Sacramental Life in Christ

The Christian life is more than an intellectual ascent to spiritual propositions even if those propositions are derived from the God's Word, the Bible, and occasions belief, straight thinking, or what theologians call Christian orthodoxy.  The Christian life is to be lived-out consistent with what is read and understood from scripture.  It is the practice of belief, Christianity in action, straight living, Christian orthopraxy.  Yet even with straight thought and straight living, there can be a big hole characterizing an incomplete life.  It is a matter of the heart.  Orthopathy.  Scripture says "The love of Christ compells me."  The song writer expresses it this way -

          Unless I am moved with compassion, 
               how dwelleth thy Spirit in me?  
          In word and in deed, burning love is my need. 
               I know I can find this in thee.

 Christ's Great Commandment engages the heart to love the Lord and to love one's neighbor with everything (mind, heart, strength, soul).  It does not leave out the intellect, or one's strength, and for sure it includes the heart, a complete response.

In the poetry of Albert Orsborn we find the heart of the matter of living the
Christian life fully -

My life must be Christ's broken bread, My love his outpoured wine,
A cup o'erfilled, a table spread beneath his name and sign,
That other souls, refreshed and fed, may share his life through mine.

This is the sacramental  life in Christ to its fullest.  The enlightened intellect of belief, the outward act of service, the matter of a heart fully surrendered to the will of God, obediently seeking to love and  please him.

The Potter's Hands

Do you remember the first time you grabbed and squeezed a ball of play dough, or took a good size, wet lump of clay and shaped it into something beautiful and useful?  Perhaps you've even shaped some clay into a work of art on a potter's wheel.  I have a work of art in my office shaped on a potter's wheel, a small lovely vase.  It is nearly thirty years old and special to me.  I received it as a gift the first time I traveled to China in 1984.  It now sits on the book shelf in my office where it reminds me of the gracious reception I first received back then from my Chinese hosts in Beijing.

When a vase or other work of art is made, the potter starts to shape the clay on the potter's wheel with the idea of the vase in mind.  He or she has a plan, a vision of what the lump of clay is to become.  Like the potter, God has an idea of who you are to become.  In the Bible (Jeremiah 29:11), Gods says "I know the plans I have for you, plans for your peace and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope."  And elsewhere (Isaiah 43:19), God says "For I am about to do something new.  See, I have begun already." God has already begun doing something new for you.  He has begun to get his hands on the clay of your life and mine, shaping our lives, transforming us into people who are even more and ever more beautiful, useful, and effective and into his moral likeness.

In Isaiah 64:8 we read - "But now, O Lord, you are our Father; We are the clay, and you our potter; And all we are the work of your hand."  Quite often God shapes our lives with his hands through others.  His means of grace shaping us into his likeness are other people who come along side of us and are engaged by God for our benefit.  He uses human agency for our good.

In the book of Jeremiah (18:1-6) it says - "The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord  . . . 'Arise and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause you to hear my words.'  Then I went down to the potter's house, and there he was, making something at the wheel.  And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make.  Then the word of the Lord came to me saying: . . ."can I not do with you as this potter . . . Look, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand . . ."

We can sing with confidence and thanksgiving - 

I'm in his hands, I'm in his hands, 

   What e'er the future holds, I'm in his hands.  

The days I can not see have all be planned for me.  

   His way is best you see.  I'm in his hands.

Continue the journey. See How The Plan Unfolds!

As a kid growing up in the greater Boston area, my hero was not Red Sox home run wonder, Ted Williams.  Rather, I was quite taken with the naturalist and founder of the US Park System, John Muir.  As a result, my dream of a career in the future was to be a forest ranger.  What today is called "ecosystems" did not have a name back in the fifties and early sixties.  At least I had never heard the word, but I did think of forests in that way with all the variety of habitations and inhabitants.  The idea of a forest and all its dynamic life forms was captivating.  To think that I could be a caretaker and steward of all that went on in a forest was the greatest vision of oneself in the future that I could imagine at age ten.  Teen years in Scouting reinforced the dream and I had decided that I would go on to what I believed was the nation's number one forestry program at the time, Syracuse University.  Actually none of that happened!  That dream ended abruptly in the spring of my last year of high school.



Instead, my father intervened.  He said, "You go to Syracuse, you're on your own.  But, if you go to a small, Christian college in Kentucky, I will help you."  By this he meant Asbury College just outside of Lexington, Ky.   By "help," he did not mean cash.  He meant help filling out the applications for admission, loans, financial aid, and student employment.  As a Salvation Army officer with six kids and little income, what else could he have meant?  This is something that occurred to me years later.  As it turned out, today I am the chief  caretaker and steward of a marvellous "ecosystem", a remarkable Christian university in Canada, Trinity Western University.

Looking back, I now see that God had planted in me a love for creation and for the integrated, complexity of natural, ecological systems.  Throughout my life, God has been teaching me about ecologies from forests, to families, summer camps, and health delivery systems, colleges, universities, and other kinds of social contexts.  Most exciting of all, my journey with God brought a deeper understanding of spiritual ecosystems and a special way of reading the Bible through social, spiritual lenses of ecology.

Today I find myself immersed in the interactive dynamic of individuals (students, faculty, staff, others) within the social/spiritual context of the university community. The pinnacle of discovery is that underneath everything is the personal and corporate dynamics of our relationship with each other and with God the Father, Christ the Son and Saviour, and the Holy Spirit.  By God we were created, live, and have our being in his social and spiritual likeness.  We are immersed in the spiritual ecology of his presence.

Looking back from childhood to the present, that well known verse in the Bible (Jeremiah 29:11) rings true: "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.  Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future and a hope."  As just a boy, the Lord planted in my heart a dream and a hope.  I thought I knew the plan and that it was to serve the Lord and others as a forest ranger.  As it turned out, the seed of that early ecosystem idea was to be expressed as a university president serving the Lord and others.  I was not to be a forest ranger, but in a very different way nevertheless, the dream and hope came true.  A university is  a very dynamic ecosystem that is a special part of God's Kingdom plan.  What a blessing is mine and joy as well to look back to see a journey that started in childhood has come this far and this way.

My dear wife, Irene, and I are fond of the saying, "If you want to make God laugh, make a plan."  To that I would add, "If you want to give God joy, continue the journey with him and see how his plan unfolds!"

The Love That Comes First!

Will Rogers once said "I never met a man I didn't like."  I remember in my earliest years the campaign button for President Dwight Eisenhower simply said, "I like Ike."  Apparently the majority of those who voted Ike into office agreed with the button. In this run-up to the elections in the USA, both presidential  candidates seem to be liked or vilified almost equally across the electorate.  The prognosticators are probably right in saying that nearly all voters are settled in their minds for whom they will vote.  The election of the next President of the USA will be determined by a very small number of swing votes.  So what will swing those voters one way or another?  How are we attracted to one candidate or another and what will be the determining factors or antecedents of attraction?  What moves us from first impressions to all out love for the other?

When both of my children were in their mid-twenties and not yet married, but longing to meet "the one", I said to both of them them, at different times and more than once, "It will happen.  There are key determinants of interpersonal attraction, and they are . . ."  That was the parent speaking as social psychologist.  Nevertheless, it is true.  The key factors that move people from first being aware of the other to intimacy with the other are well researched and fall into six categories:

Proximity:  We like/love those who are physically close to us.

Familiarity: We like/love those  with whom we have frequent contact.

Similarity:  We like/love others who share our attitudes, values, and other characteristics.

Reinforcements: We like/love those who reward us with all kinds of rewards (starting with smiles).

Complementarity:  We like/love others who have opposite traits that support our needs.

Physical attractiveness: We like/love those who meet cultural standards of beauty.

                - from Tedeschi, Lindskold & Rosenfeld, Intro. to Social Psychology, 1985.

The stages from first impressions to love and intimacy are generally the same around the world:

1.  Don't know the other.  No knowledge of their existence.  Unknown.

2.  Knowledge of . . . Known from a distance.  Known about.

3.  Mutually acquainted - Friendship formed by the six factors noted above.

4. Love and intimacy together - with an increasingly closer sense of oneness.

So, how does it works with us?  Think about it.  It resonates with our personal experience.  But we can only say as much for how humanity makes the journey from first impressions to intimacy.  It is actually different with God. Here the Bible and contemporary social psychology are complementary. We see in the great Biblical narrative over time  that it is not a mutual acquaintance process.  With God, he's  known us completely and loved us from the start, before conception, and in our mother's womb.  In spite of our warts and blemishes, God thinks we are beautiful.  After all, he made us in his image.  He sees us as we are, and as we can be, and loves us.  Moreover, he is a God who reveals himself to us, makes his very self known, and seeks to be discovered.  He loves to give good gifts to his children,  seeks frequent contact, wishes to be so close as to inhabit and in-fill our lives, wants to share his attitudes and values with us, support our needs, and transform us into his beautiful likeness.  He desires to be intimate and have deep fellowship.  In short, he's done all the work pouring out his grace and holy love.  He only asks that we be open to his love and respond.

Sometimes the acquaintance process with each other is awkward and difficult, full of anxiety and worry over acceptance and rejection.  With God, it could not be easier.  It just takes faith that God is present, that he is who he is, and that we see him most clearly in the life, death, resurrection, and ongoing life of Jesus by his Spirit, and that he truly loves us.  To paraphrase Will Rogers, the Lord never created a person he did not love!  "O, how he loves you and me . . ."  His is the love that comes first!

Why just settle for less!

Why settle for what's good when you could have what's excellent?  Who starts to bake a cake knowing one has only half the ingredients?  Who sets out to run a race and only wears one shoe?  Who pays admission to a movie and settles for only half the show?  What major league rookie gets up to the plate with only a little league bat?  Who goes golfing with only a putter and a five iron?  These are silly questions, but you get my drift.  Why settle for just being in the game, when you could be a true contender?  Why settle for something less when you can have the best?

Two scenarios come to mind of enormous importance and magnitude:  Faith and Education!  First, faith. Too many Christians, followers of Christ, settle for far less than "fullness in Christ" (Colossians 2: 10; Ephesians 3:19) even though it is clearly available as a gift from God, the promise of the infilling of God himself as the Holy Spirit. Why is this so?  Why do we settle for less?  The question begs an answer and perhaps this is a good question to pose the next time you are with very good Christian friends.  Candidly, we all struggle with this reality.  The Christian life, following Christ and acting on the fact of his patient presence, is not consistent.  Our attention to this most sacred of relationships ebbs and flows, but too often ebbs.  Raise the question. Pursue the collective wisdom of friends you know to have a relatively strong, active walk with Christ Jesus.  I am confident you will be better in pursuing God's excellence for engaging in the pursuit of answers.

Second, education.  Why is it that so many Christian parents actively push their children to enrol in large secular universities where the likelihood is great that they will not receive a complete education?  Even more so, in the large secular universities their faith will be deconstructed with few or no one to come alongside and help them reconstruct their faith in Christ.  In the attempt to be associated with a brand name school, they settle for second best.  They miss the big idea that there is higher education (post-secondary) and then there is higher higher education where the complete person has the freedom and the community support to develop the fullness mentioned above.  Here's another good topic for discussion among your Christian friends.  In many faith communities there are parents whose children have attended large, secular universities and others whose children have enrolled in Christian universities.  Engage them in the question: "What in the end were the benefits and challenges?"  "What did the social/spiritual eco-system of each kind of setting do to  make disciples of their children. How did each setting help them become active, engaged, Godly followers of Christ.?"  I am confident of the answer and hope to hear from you on both questions.  The answers are related when all truth is God's truth.  Faith may inform and be informed by a higher education.  Why settle for good or for less when you can have the best!

Just Being Ourselves

I confess:  I am many things all at once and therefore somewhat complex and not fully integrated, just like you I might add.  As for me, I am a husband of more then 42 years, a father for nearly 32 years, a professor for38 years, a committed follower of Jesus Christ, and a devoted fan of Trinity Western University Spartan athletic teams and of the University of Kentucky Wildcat basketball national champions.  That's just for starters.  Most importantly, I am a child of God made in his likeness.  It's the word likeness I'd like to dwell on for a few moments.  I read in my Bible that  God said in Genesis 1:26  "Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness."  Wow! Hold on here!  What's going on?  "Let us . . . in Our image. . .Our likeness"?  To whom is the Almighty talking?  It sounds like more than one person is being addressed.  Such a statement suggests a social context of discourse.  If you answered the the question with "The Trinity," your embracing Christian orthodoxy.  Ortho = straight or correct; doxy = thinking: othodoxy = straight, correct thinking.  This block buster of a verse did not grab my attention until I was getting older and longer in the tooth.  The implications are amazing and delightful! God's essence, His nature is social.  God is a social being who seeks relationship, community, communion.  Moreover, I am made in his social image.  Relationships are important to me.  I need community.  I prosper when I am in communion, some form of common union with others and with God.

So, I must confess a little more:  I love exploring social, relational realities.  It is why I sought a formal education in social/cross-cultural psychology.  Open any social psychology textbook and you will find a treasure trove of topics researched over the past sixty years on topics ranging from interpersonal attraction (from first impressions to intimate relationships) to prosocial and antisocial behavior (why people help and/or hurt each other).  It is of increasing interest to me that the major themes found in a social psychology text may be found already in the Bible written thousands of years ago. I would suggest that is because the Bible is God's living Word, a gift to us today.  It is the story of his relationship as the triune God to humankind, the God who continues to seek to make himself known and the have intimate relationship with us.

In the next few blogs, I hope to visit some of the big themes that tie the behavioral science of social psychology to the long standing truths of the Bible.  I'll do so with the conviction that "all truth is God's truth" and the sciences ultimately are aligned with Scripture confirming what God has already revealed.  In the big picture, God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, revealed in The Bible, is a social being.  He seeks intimacy of relationship. He created us in His image and likeness as social beings.  His Great Commandment is to love him and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:37-39).  He just wants us to be who we were created to be in the beginning, in short, to just be ourselves in his likeness.