How Should We Then Live? Episode 1 – VIDEO

HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Episode 1

Madge and I, during our morning devotional, after praying, reading from Psalms, Proverbs and the New Testament, read aloud from whatever Christian philosophy/ideology book we happen to be going through at the time! We are now reading:

How Should We Then Live: The Rise and Decline of Western Culture, by Francis Schaeffer, a prominent Evangelical theologian, who wrote extensively about the need for the Church to be the Church and for us as Christians to live out loud a demonstrably, culture-seasoning life!

The Answer to the title and question of his book, “How Should We Then Live,” could, I think, be answered from the book of 1 John 2:6:

NLT version, where the Apostle, who Jesus loved, wrote, “Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did!”

In the ESV, it states, “Whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk as Jesus walked!”

Truly a high calling and admonition for fallen mankind, yet…we seem to be commissioned…to walk as Jesus walked, and probably not like the 80’s musical group the Bangles sang, “Like an Egyptian!” Cool song though!

One of the great 20th century philosophers, GK Chesterton, who you might know about if you ever watch British TV; he wrote the acclaimed Father Brown series, but he also was a journalist, novelist, poet and essayist, who influenced CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, of Lord of the Rings!

He wrote 80 books, hundreds of poems, 200 or so short stories and over 4,000 essays!

With all that immense brain power and prolific output, my favorite Chesterton quote is as follows, “The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.”

The ordinary truly becomes extraordinary when we live a life pleasing to God! If no one else recognizes the extraordinary in the ordinary that is dedicated and pleasing to God, God does!

Chuck Colson, Nixon’s former hatchet man, who willingly went to prison for his association with Watergate, and, who is probably my favorite, now deceased, yet contemporary author on Christian culture, in his book, “Kingdoms in Conflict,” he noted that it’s really small platoons of faithful people striving to do good where planted and placed; where they make a difference in the lives of others, and for God’s glory!

Schaeffer wrote, “People are unique in the inner life of the mind—what they are in their thought world determines how they act!”

I want to briefly compare the life of two famous/infamous men, who lived at the same time, yet walked very different paths and lived very different lives: what sparked this comparison was a recent Christmas essay I read by a man named John Coleman.

One was extraordinary: Ceasar Augustus…the other One rather ordinary, in appearance and setting—Jesus, who did the extraordinary!

Augustus was born Gaius Octavius, the maternal nephew of Julius Caesar, who adopted Octavius as a child.

His Uncle Julius had begun the process of converting the Roman Republic into an empire with him as the emperor, when he was assassinated in 44 BC, when Octavius was around 18 years of age.

Octavius completed the transition to empire by deifying his Uncle and renaming himself Caesar Augustus. We have a month named after him and August means: majestic, exalted, regal, grand, magnificent! Had a rather lofty opinion of himself.

He was supposedly brilliant yet ruthless, but he did usher in about a 200-year era of peace across the extensive Roman Empire, known as the Pax Romana—Roman peace.

Into this, God brought forth His eternal son, born to an outcast, likely teenager, and her carpenter husband, in a dirty stable in a small, know-nothing town, amidst no fanfare or notice…except for the Heavenly Host of Angels and a few lowly shepherds!

This child of an unwed mother and working-class carpenter would be hunted, pursued, and thousands slaughtered by the regional king.

His family would flee to Egypt to protect him from the jealous ruler, until God told them it was safe to return to the Holy Land.

This child would essentially grow up in obscurity plying his earthly father’s trade. Only his last three years would be what is documented…

He died penniless, thought of as a criminal, an apostate, in league with the devil.

The prophet Isaiah prophesied in the Old Testament, around 700 years before the birth of Jesus:

“He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him”

Yet, every detail of the life and times of Augustus’s remarkable, memorable life was written down for posterity’s sake.

For all his pomp and ceremony and gilded life with regional and worldwide influence, Caesar Augustus is nominally a footnote in a couple verses in a Bible story.

Jesus, would and still does inspire billions worldwide to live a life of consecration and True Peace.

Augustus’s Uncle Julius famously recorded after a victory in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey, the following in Latin: VENI, VIDI, VICI: “I came, I saw, I conquered!

One could say Jesus did the opposite: VENI, VIDI, DEDI: “I came, I saw, I surrendered.”

To borrow an aphorism from the poet Robert Frost, “He took the road less traveled, and that has made all the difference.”

Israel was substantially looking for a conquering Messiah to free them from the Roman yoke, not a surrendering Messiah, who in essence came to free them from the yoke of their/our own sin.

And therein lies the paradox that songwriter Michael Card sang about in his song , Blessed Paradox, “How God became a man and he was nothing like we planned…”

The seemingly ordinary did the extraordinary and taught us, the ordinary, “How We Should Then Live!”

Our testimony and walk matters. We are saved by Grace (yet not a cheap Grace), and we are commissioned to walk in Grace and extend Grace to a graceless world in dire need of understanding and Grace!

I’ll leave you with some words by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the martyred, German pastor, who dared admonish Hitler and the compromised German Church (great movie by the way):

BYW: the General Conference of the United Methodist Church, which does not enumerate saints, officially recognized Bonhoeffer as a “modern-day martyr”. He was the first martyr to be so recognized who lived after the Reformation and is one of only two as of 2017.

“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. […]

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.

It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son!

He writes “only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes”.

So, Let’s work out our Faith as the Apostle Paul admonishes: “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”

In closing, as we often say at the end of a Recovery meeting, in what’s known as the Third step prayer, (It’s applicable here):

“Many of us have said, take our will and our lives, guide in our Recovery, show us how to live…clean…” Keep coming back, it works if you work!”

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