How To Read 200 Books a Year

Reading requires desire and discipline.  Even the most educated individuals never read a book after college.  What a tragedy.  How to read more from James White . . . .

Want conviction? Try the title of this article: “In the time you spend on social media each year you could read 200 books.”

 

Ouch.

 

But is it true?

 

Yes, I believe for most people, it is. Here’s the four step process:

 

1. Do not quit before you start.

 

Many will hear “200 books” and immediately say, “I can’t!” or, “It’s just not possible.” All that does is guarantee that (for you) you won’t and it is.

 

2. Do the math.

 

As author Charles Chu notes, the average American reads 200-400 words per minute. The typical non-fiction book has 50,000 words.

 

Here’s the math: 200 books at 50,000 words per book equals 10 million words. Ten million words at 400 words per minute equals 25,000 minutes. 25,000 minutes equals 417 hours.

 

I know, you’re thinking: “417 hours?! No one has that kind of time.”

 

Which just means you’re now ready for the third step.

 

3. Find the time.

 

It was the famed business author Jim Collins who first challenged me about finding time for what matters most. He said that most of us don’t need more “to do” lists, but “stop doing” lists. That the war against something like reading isn’t that we don’t have time, but that we are filling our time with things other than reading.

 

Now to Chu’s point. The average American spends 609 hours a year on social media and 1,642 hours on TV. Once again, let’s do the math. That’s 2,250 hours a year. If you took all of those hours and spent them reading, you wouldn’t read 200 books a year. You would read more than 1,000 books a year.

 

So we have the time. Lots of it. In excess.

 

So why don’t we do it?

 

We don’t take the fourth step.

 

4. Execute.

 

In my book A Mind for God, I have an entire section on how to read more. It includes practical steps like turning off the TV or shutting down your phone. It involves carrying reading material with you wherever you go so that you can take advantage of empty pockets of time in waiting rooms or lines. It means putting books around your home and office so that they are always there, reminding you and encouraging you to pick up and read.

 

And perhaps most of all, it means setting aside a time – ideally when you are mentally fresh – to read a certain amount every day. And it matters on so many fronts. As Chu writes, “Books gave me role models and heroes and meaning in a world where I had none.” Or as I wrote in A Mind for God:

 

From reading alone could I gain a sense of the currents shaping the world; from reading alone could I understand the prevailing worldviews from which Christianity was being assailed; from reading alone could I place myself in the vanguard of taking the Word of God to the word of the world. For it would be reading that would fill my mind with virtually limitless knowledge, instruction, and insight. It would be reading that would exercise my mind and force it to break through barriers of stagnancy.

 

Little wonder that a monk in Normandy penned these words in 1170: “A monastery without a library [sine armario] is like a castle without an armory [sine armamentario]. Our library is our armory.” This was certainly the conviction of the apostle Paul who, even from his prison cell in Rome, implored Timothy to be sure to bring him his books (II Timothy 4:13).

 

So, 200 books a year? You don’t have to give up social media and TV altogether. Just take one hour out of every four you’re spending on them,

 

… and read.

 

James Emery White

 

 

Sources

 

Charles Chu, “In the Time You Spend on Social Media Each Year, You Could Read 200 Books,” Quartz, January 29, 2017, read online.

 

  

About the Author

 

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where he also served as their fourth president. His latest book, Meet Generation Z: Understanding and Reaching the New Post-Christian World, is available on Amazon. To enjoy a free subscription to the Church & Culture blog, visit ChurchAndCulture.org, where you can view past blogs in our archive and read the latest church and culture news from around the world. Follow Dr. White on twitter @JamesEmeryWhite.

Wanting It Enough

From Tim Challies . . . .

I want to have 10 percent body fat. I set that goal a while ago and even managed to get really close to reaching it. But eventually I found out that I want to have 10 percent body fat just a bit less than I want to have 13 percent. There’s a key difference between the two: While 13 percent requires moderate effort to gain and retain, 10 percent requires strict discipline. I soon learned I just didn’t want the goal enough to put in the effort to achieve it. I didn’t meet my desire with discipline.

Most of us can think of a long list of dreams and goals we haven’t ever reached and desires we haven’t ever realized. Sometimes circumstances intervened to keep us from them, but more often than not, an honest assessment shows we simply didn’t want those things enough to put in the effort to have them. We dreamed of serving the church by playing piano, but the dream wasn’t strong enough to compel us to actually put in the necessary practice. We wanted to start a blog to serve other Christians but not enough to discipline ourselves to write day after day and week after week. We felt a desire to get better at cooking or learn a language or operate a camera in manual mode. The first few lessons were exciting, but we quickly got busy and distracted and never went back to it. All of life is a battle of desire against desire. It’s a battle to prove our dreams and desires with habits and disciplines.

I have a deep desire to be godly. This is the one thing in life I long for the most. At least, I think it is. But I wonder what my habits tell me. Do they prove or disprove my desire? Am I actually disciplining myself to achieve what I claim to want? Or is it possible that I’m settling for a mere 13 percent just because it’s that much easier?

I often consider the people I’ve known who set an example of unusual godliness. I think of well-known Christian men who lived godly lives in the public eye and who carried out unblemished ministries. I think of unknown and unnoticed women who lived equally godly lives far outside the public eye. What did they have in common? What was the key to their holiness? I believe it was their discipline. They disciplined themselves for the highest godliness. They were spiritual athletes who ensured their highest desires supplanted their baser desires. They achieved godliness because they aimed at godliness.

Yet it was not doing great deeds that led them to walk closely with God. It was not some mystical flash of spiritual insight or miraculous dispensation of divine wisdom. It was far simpler than that, far more attainable. They gained godliness by relationship with God. Their godliness was a gift of God he dispensed as they pursued relationship with him. They committed themselves to the Word and prayer. They disciplined themselves to spend time with God daily, reading his Word and diligently meditating on it. They disciplined themselves to pray earnestly and fast regularly. Whatever else these godly people did, they pursued God. Whatever else these people knew, they knew God. Their noble desire motivated conscientious discipline.

And it’s right here where I wonder: Am I meeting desire with discipline?

I feel a deep desire to be godly. I feel a deep appreciation for those I see and know who are unusually godly. I want to be like them. But when I really search my heart and examine my life, I see that I’d like to have the end without the means. I want to have what they have but don’t want to do what they do. I want their godliness without their discipline, their fellowship with God without their commitment to God. I want to be really godly, but not as much as I want to be kind of godly. I want the 10 percent, but not quite as much as I want the 13 percent. I want to achieve the goal a little bit less than I want to put in the effort necessary to have it.

10 Disciplines of a Godly Pastor

Good reminders from a seasoned veteran from the Crossway blog . . .

This post is adapted from a contribution by R. Kent Hughes to the ESV Pastor's Bible.

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1. Discipline of Purity

Sensuality is the biggest obstacle to godliness among Christian leaders. The fall of King David should not only instruct us but also scare the sensuality right out of us! Fill yourself with God’s Word—memorize passages like 1 Thessalonians 4:3–8; Job 31:1; Proverbs 6:27; Ephesians 5:3–7; and 2 Timothy 2:22. Find someone who will help you keep your soul faithful to God. Develop the divine awareness that sustained Joseph: “How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” (Gen. 39:9).

2. Discipline of Relationships

To be all God wants you to be, put some holy sweat into your relationships! If you are married, you need to live out Ephesians 5:25–31. For those who are fathers, God provides a workout in one pungent sentence: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). Relationships are not optional (Heb. 10:25); they enable us both to develop into what God wants us to be and to most effectively learn and live God’s truth.

3. Discipline of Mind

The potential of possessing the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16) introduces the scandal of today’s church—pastors who do not think Christianly, leaving their minds undisciplined. The apostle Paul understood this well: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil. 4:8). You can never have a Christian mind without reading the Scriptures regularly, for you cannot be influenced by that which you do not know.

4. Discipline of Devotion

Reading God’s Word is essential, but meditation internalizes the Word and responds, “I delight to do your will, O my God” (Ps. 40:8). Beyond obedience to instructions such as those found in Ephesians 6:18–20, there are two additional great reasons to pray. First, the more we expose our lives to the -hot sun of Christ’s righteous life, the more his image will be burned into our character. Second, prayer bends our wills to God’s will. Many pastors never have an effective devotional life because they never plan for it; they never expose their lives to his pure light.

5. Discipline of Integrity

We can hardly overstate the importance of integrity to a generation of Christian leaders so much like the world in ethical conduct. Integrity’s benefits—character, a clear conscience, deep intimacy with God—argue its importance. We must let God’s Word dictate our conduct. Our speech and actions must be intentionally true (Prov. 12:22; Eph. 4:15), backed by the courage to keep our word and stand up for our convictions (Ps. 15:4).

6. Discipline of Tongue

The true test of a preacher’s spirituality is not his ability to speak but rather his ability to bridle his tongue (James 1:26). Offered to God on the altar, the tongue has awesome power for good. There must be an ongoing prayerfulness and resolve to discipline our tongues.

7. Discipline of Work

We meet God, the Creator, as a worker in Genesis 1:1–2:2. Since “God created man in his own image” (1:27), the way we work will reveal how much we allow the image of God to develop in us. There is no secular/sacred distinction; all honest work ought to be done to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). We must recover the biblical truth that our pastoral vocation is a divine calling and thus be liberated to do it for the glory of God.

8. Discipline of Perseverance

Hebrews 12:1–3 presents a picture of perseverance in four commands.

• Divest! “Lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely” (v. 1a).
• Run! “. . . with endurance the race that is set before us” (v. 1b).
• Focus! “Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (v. 2).
• Consider! Our life is to be spent considering how Jesus lived (v. 3).

9. Discipline of Church

You do not have to go to church to be a Christian; you do not have to go home to be married. But in both cases, if you do not, you will have a very poor relationship! As pastors we need to remind our flock that they will never attain spiritual maturity without commitment to the local church. We need to encourage Christians to join the church and participate wholeheartedly, giving their time, talent, and treasure to God.

10. Discipline of Giving

We escape the power of materialism by giving from a heart overflowing with God’s grace, like the believers in Macedonia who “gave themselves first to the Lord” (2 Cor. 8:5). Pastor, make sure you are giving to your local church, to missions, and to those in need! Giving disarms the power of money and reaps the spiritual blessings of God. As Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

Only by God’s Grace

As we sweat out the disciplines of a godly pastor, remember, with Paul, what energizes us to live them out: “not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Cor. 15:10).

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R. Kent Hughes (DMin, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is senior pastor emeritus of College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, and visiting professor of practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hughes is also a founder of the Charles Simeon Trust, which conducts expository preaching conferences throughout North America and worldwide. He serves as the series editor for the Preaching the Word commentary series and is the author or coauthor of many books. He and his wife, Barbara, live in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, and have four children and an ever-increasing number of grandchildren.

Three Purposes God's Disciplines his Chidlren

There are basically three reasons for the chastisements of God; one is retributive; David experienced that after his sin with Bathsheba. God said, the sword shall never depart from thy house. Then there is preventive chastisement and Paul speaks about the thorn in the flesh, and he said God gave him the thorn and the flesh that he might not boast himself too much. That is to curb his pride. That’s one of the reasons that we suffer the discipline of God, too.

But probably most often we suffer the discipline of God for purposes of education. Job experienced that. He said he had heard of the God by the hearing of the ear, but now his eyes seeth God, wherefore he repented in dust and ashes. The psalmist, speaking about the way in which God seems to treat the wicked, they are prosperous, they have a good life, and on the other hand the saints were suffering, and unable to understand, went into the sanctuary of God and asked the Lord about it. He said this was a great problem to him until he went in the sanctuary and then he learned what God was really doing in the lives of individuals and he learned, and after he learned, he speaks those wonderful words about the future that God has for those who have truly trusted him. ~ S Lewis Johnson

22 Mistakes Pastors Make in Practicing Church Discipline

Church discipline is often ugly and difficult.  In my own ministry, it has been about a positive and fruitful experience about 50% of the time.  I have not always done it well and I find it very difficult to do in our culture.  Here is a great post from Andy Naselli. 

Pastors sometimes make the following mistakes regarding formal church discipline.

1. They fail to teach their congregation what church discipline is and why they should practice it.

2. They fail to practice meaningful membership, which includes (1) teaching people what membership entails before they join; (2) encouraging casual attenders to join; (3) carefully interviewing everyone who wants to join; (4) giving regular oversight to all the flock; and (5) maintaining an up-to-date membership list that accurately reflects who is present at the weekly gathering.

3. They fail to teach their congregation about biblical conversion, especially the need for repentance.

4. They fail to teach new members as they enter the church about the possibility of church discipline, and that preemptive resignations don’t work.

5. They fail to ensure that the church’s public documents (bylaws, constitution, articles of incorporation, etc.) address the procedures of church discipline, thereby exposing the church to legal risk.

6. They fail to follow the steps of Matthew 18 or 1 Corinthians 5, depending on the circumstance. In a Matthew 18 situation, for instance, they fail to begin the process by confronting sin privately.

7. They misjudge how quickly to move toward formal discipline, either by dragging their feet or by rushing into judgment.

8. They fail to adequately teach and explain to a congregation why a particular act of discipline is necessary.

9. They tell the congregation too many details about a particular sin for which they are recommending discipline, embarrassing family members and causing weaker sheep to stumble.

10. They treat the processes of church discipline entirely as a legal process with little consideration for shepherding the unrepentant individual’s heart.

11. They give little attention to the differences between kinds of sinners and how that might affect how long a church should bear with a pattern of sin before proceeding to subsequent stages of discipline (see 1 Thess. 5:14).

12. They forget that they too live by the gospel’s provision of mercy, and therefore prosecute the discipline from a posture of self-righteousness. Other mistakes follow from this wrong posture, such as an overly severe tone and standoffishness.

13. They fail to truly love the sinner . . . by not begging the Lord for his or her repentance.

14. They demand too much from a smoldering wick or bruised reed. In other words, their stipulations for repentance are too high for someone who has been deeply enslaved in sin’s grip.

15. They fail to properly instruct the congregation on how to interact with the unrepentant sinner, such as how to relate to him or her in social situations and how to pursue his or her repentance.

16. They fail to invite the disciplined individual to continue attending services of the church so that he or she might continue to hear God’s Word (assuming there is no threat of criminal harm). Also, they fail to inform the church that everyone should hope for the disciplined individual to continue attending.

17. They put the responsibility for leading the discipline process entirely on the shoulders of one man, the senior pastor, thereby tempting individuals in the church to accuse the senior pastor of being personally vindictive.

18. They fail to have sufficient elder involvement in the congregation’s life, such that the elders are unaware of the state of the sheep. This failure of formative discipline will inevitably weaken the church’s ability to do corrective discipline well.

19. They fail to teach God’s Word on a weekly basis.

20. They allow the congregation to approach a case of discipline with a wrongful spirit of retribution, rather than with the loving desire to warn the unrepentant sinner about God’s ultimate retribution to come.

21. They pursue discipline on nonbiblical grounds (playing cards, dancing, etc.).

22. They pursue discipline for any reason other than for the good of the individual, the good of the church, the good of the onlooking community, and the glory of Christ.

Toolbox for Skillful Shepherding

Great insights from a post by Andy Naselli on church discipline.

Andrew M. Davis, “The Practical Issues of Church Discipline,” in Those Who Must Give an Account: A Study of Church Membership and Church Discipline, ed. John S. Hammett and Benjamin L. Merkle (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2012), 172:

How Should Parents Discipline Their Children?

Parenting or lack of it is one of the great challenges of the church.  Here is helpful insight from a thoughtful guy, Andy Naselli.

The latest issue of Southern Seminary’s The Journal of Discipleship and Family Ministry just released.

My contribution, “Training Children for Their Good,” addresses parental discipline. This is a lightly edited manuscript from a sermon I preached on June 3, 2012.

Here’s the outline:

1. Seven Propositions about Discipline from Hebrews 12:4–11

1. God disciplines his children (Heb 12:5–7, 10).
2. God disciplines all his children (Heb 12:6, 8).
3. God disciplines only his children (Heb 12:6–8).
4. Discipline is training: God disciplines his children for their good (Heb 12:10–11).
5. Discipline seems unpleasant and painful (Heb 12:11).
6. God’s children should endure God’s discipline (Heb 12:5, 7, 9).
7. God’s disciplining his children compares to human parents’ disciplining their children (Heb 12:5, 7–10).

2. Levels of Discipline in the Book of Proverbs

• Level 1. Teach
• Level 2. Warn
• Leve 3. Enforce
  • Does “the rod” represent discipline but exclude physical discipline (Prov 13:24; 22:15; 23:13–14; 29:15)?
  • Is spanking a form of physical and psychological child abuse?
  • Do the proverbs about using the rod refer to young men rather than children?
  • Is spanking an obsolete part of the Mosaic law-covenant in the Old Testament?
  • Is spanking antithetical to the gospel?

3. Concluding Application

1. Pray for your children.
2. Evangelize your children.
3. Use multiple levels of discipline.
4. Love your children, and tell them and show them that you love them.
5. Beware of two extremes: (a) not disciplining and (b) over-disciplining.
6. Fathers, take the lead in discipline.
7. Learn how to discipline each of your children most effectively.
8. Distinguish between family rules and the Bible.
9. Be humble about parental discipline; don’t be proud and judgmental.
10. Persevere with a long-term view that trusts God’s word.

4. Recommended Resources

• Baugham, Brad. “Gospel-centered Parenting: Our Greatest Challenge—Discipline.” Sermon preached to Emmanuel Bible Church in Mauldin, SC. March 1, 2009.
• Farley, William P. Gospel-Powered Parenting: How the Gospel Shapes and Transforms Parenting. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2009. See chs. 8–9 (pp. 145–74).
• Fitzpatrick, Elyse, and Jessica Thompson. Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus. Wheaton: Crossway, 2011. See chs. 5–6 (pp. 81–110). [Cf. the review my wife and I wrote.]
• Grudem, Wayne. Politics—According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010. See “Discipline of Children and Spanking” (pp. 256–60). [Cf. the review my Dad and I wrote.]
• Köstenberger, Andreas J. God, Marriage, and Family: Rebuilding the Biblical Foundation. 2nd ed. Wheaton: Crossway, 2010. See “Physical Discipline” (pp. 142–46, 341–43).
• Schreiner, Thomas R. Review of William J. Webb, Corporal Punishment in the Bible. The Gospel Coalition Book Reviews, September 12, 2011.
• Wegner, Paul D. “Discipline in the Book of Proverbs: ‘To Spank or Not to Spank?’” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 48 (2005): 715–32.

Related:

1. Endnote 8 in the article: I preached on Hebrews 12:3–17 on March 3, 2013 to Sovereign Grace Church in Greenville, South Carolina, and I only briefly mentioned parental discipline because that is not the passage’s primary point.
2. Ask Pastor John: “How Do I Know If I’m Being Disciplined by God?“
   
   

How Do We Know If God Is Disciplining Us?

Found this on Gospel Coalition site here.  Anything Carson writes is wroth reading and considering.  

Connor S. from Crystal Lake, Illinois, asks:

Hebrews 12:6-7 reads: "For those whom the Lord loves he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?"

Does this mean that hardships, sickness, disease, and the like happen because God is disciplining his children? (Moreover, what about hardships that happen to unbelievers? If this is not God's discipline in their lives, then why do these events happen? Is it God's punishment?) Does this mean every bad thing (or only some bad things) that happens to Christians, happens because God is disciplining us? If a Christian gets the flu, or a cold, or cancer, or gets in a car crash, or loses a job — should these hardships be seen as God's discipline? Of course God is sovereign over all things--but when bad things happen to Christians, should these happenings be seen as God's discipline, or God's soverign use of evil for our good, or results of sin and the Fall, or all of the above?

We posed this question to D. A. Carson, professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and author of many books, including How Long, O Lord? Reflections on Suffering and Evil. Carson is the co-founder and president of The Gospel Coalition.

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It is easy to think of passages in which God sends catastrophic judgment in a purely retributive way, without an ounce of cleansing discipline (e.g., the destruction and death of Saul, for whom Samuel was ordered to cease praying). It is easy to think of passages in which a human being experiences years of suffering entirely unconnected to any immediate human sin (e.g., the man born blind in John 9) — and in this case one must assume, on the one hand, that the blindness was part of living in a fallen world (he would not have been born blind had Genesis 3 never occurred), and, on the other, that in God's providence the suffering, according to Jesus, provided an occasion for God to be glorified through the display of Jesus' miraculous power. It is easy to think of passages in which long-term suffering (e.g., the man paralyzed for 38 years, John 5) and even death (1 Cor 11) is the direct result, not of the entailments of the Fall, but of particular sins. In the first of these two cases, the paralysis leads to Jesus' healing miracle, and Jesus' subsequent instruction to stop sinning lest a worst thing befall the man suggests there was a disciplining function; in the second of these two cases, so far as the record goes, we do not know how many of the Corinthians heeded Paul's warnings and repented, but for some it was clearly too late (they had already "fallen asleep").

It is easy to think of passages where suffering is clearly not deserved for any direct offense, and where the only "explanation" given is not so much an explanation as a powerful appeal to trust the living God whose power and knowledge are infinitely greater than ours (Job). It would be easy to list other passages with variations on these themes. It is easy to remember that in the Old Testament God declares that he is the Lord, the Healer (Exod 15:26), while in the New Testament Jesus is disclosed as the great Physician — but of course we must remember that God is also the sovereign Judge who deploys the cruel Assyrians to punish his covenant people (Isa 10:5ff), and the Apocalypse warns us to flee the wrath of the Lamb.

Pastoral Implications

From such diverse passages, we should draw at least three important inferences with substantial pastoral implications.

First, we are likely to make exegetical and theological mistakes when we take any one of these passages and treat it as if it explains all suffering. The biblical account of Job does not nicely explain why people were falling ill and dying in Corinth because of their unworthy approach to the Lord's Supper. Jesus' exhortation to the healed paralytic in John 5 cannot be repeated to the man born blind in John 9. Examples could easily be multiplied. Just as wise pastors will not formulate church practice on, say, divorce and remarriage, based on only one passage, but will instead attempt a responsible integration, so also wise pastors will not fasten on a "one size fits all" passage about suffering and interpret all suffering through that one lens. A Christian would be foolish to think that every instance of suffering he or she undergoes must necessarily be the result of God's disciplining hand arising out of a particular sin — just as a Christian would be foolish to overlook the possibility that God may be inflicting suffering in a disciplinary fashion.

Second, in any suffering, or in any other event for that matter, God is doubtless doing many things, perhaps thousands of things, millions of things, even if we can only detect two or three or a handful. A godly woman in her middle years is diagnosed with stage-four breast cancer. What is God doing? My little brain can imagine several possibilities. At one level, he may be providentially allowing the effluents of the Fall to take their course, a constant reminder that it is appointed to all of us to die, and then face judgment (Heb 9). He may be preparing her for eternity: it is a great grace to know when you are going to die, and prepare for it. He may be shocking her 20-something son, who is living his life indifferent to the gospel, to prod him into self-examination and repentance. He may use her testimony about the joy of the Lord even in the midst of suffering to call another of her children into vocational ministry. He may be using her as a way to teach people in her church what it looks like to "die well," anticipating several other deaths in the next two years. He may be teaching her minister-husband to slow down and care about his family, and in principle other people, instead of being endlessly busy with "the ministry." He may be sparing her from living long enough to witness the moral destruction of her daughter. Her funeral may be the means by which several of her unconverted relatives, for whom she has been praying, will come to faith — conversions for which she would happily give her life. Perhaps one of those converts will become a Christian pastor of rare gift whose ministry of proclamation will touch thousands. Perhaps she is hiding some deep bitterness and hate in her life, and God is using this means to confront her.

I've barely started a list of possible things God may be doing, and I have a small brain. What does the omniscient God think he is doing? In other words, sometimes we have to cover our mouths and confess, in faith, that we cannot possibly grasp all that God is doing when someone suffers. So why should we think in antithetical terms about how God must be doing this but not that, when in reality he may be doing this and that and that, and that and. . . ? But he is trustworthy; we know that, for he sent his Son to suffer on our behalf.

Third, it follows that when we face suffering of any kind, we should use the occasion for self-examination. God may be speaking to us in the language of a wise heavenly Father who chastens those he loves. Such chastening may be God's response to specific sins in our lives; it may be a more general way of toughening us up in this broken world so we will stop thinking that God owes us good health, or that our clean living and organic food guarantees us long and robust life. Or it may be that God has a bet going on with Satan himself: think Job. So our self-examination ought to be honest, and any repentance should be forthright — but we should not whip ourselves into thinking that the crippling accident we just endured was a function of our sin. Even if it were, the remedy is always the same: flee to the Cross, and trust our good and gracious and holy God. And it's not inconceivable that we may conclude, with Job, that this suffering cannot be God's punishment for specific sins in our lives.

We sometimes observe that hard cases make bad theology. But easy, formulaic answers to questions of suffering are invariably reductionistic — and they make bad theology, too.

Don Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and co-founder (with Tim Keller) of The Gospel Coalition.