{"id":1577,"date":"2013-07-05T00:00:20","date_gmt":"2013-07-05T05:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=1577"},"modified":"2013-07-04T11:58:43","modified_gmt":"2013-07-04T16:58:43","slug":"go-slow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=1577","title":{"rendered":"GO SLOW!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I had a guest post yesterday over at “Kingdom People.”(http:\/\/thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/trevinwax\/<\/a>)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here it is:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bunyan\u2019s understanding of progress is not at all like our modern version.\u00a0 Progress for Bunyan was anchored to ancient traditions which have stood the test of time.\u00a0 Wise people believe these ancient paths are the only ones which offer \u201crest for the soul.\u201d (Jer. 6:16)[1]<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Fools in the modern age blithely discard the old for the new.\u00a0 Of course, the new never stays new so the discarding never stops.\u00a0 It is why people in the modern age not only flit from one fad to another; it is also why we feel the compulsion to keep reinventing ourselves.\u00a0 Even we are getting old (a very bad thing in our culture) and the only way we have for dealing with it is to try some newfangled gimmick which gives the impression that we are not so old after all.\u00a0 It is why cosmetics, plastic surgery, and adultery with more youthful partners are big in America.\u00a0 And it is why suicide, depression, and various addictions also exist.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We modern folk view progress as anything which helps us do a task faster and more efficiently.\u00a0 This is the only way<\/i> \u201cforward.\u201d\u00a0 Bunyan believed the way forward might be slow at times.\u00a0 He also knew it could be fraught with all kinds of challenges which need ample time for preparation.\u00a0 Going too fast may cause one to make serious mistakes.\u00a0 Our fast-paced culture typically finds such methodical preparation a liability.\u00a0 Joe Sobran said, \u201cIf termites could talk, they would call what they do to a huge house \u201cprogress.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

When I was ministering to college students at Stanford University,[3]<\/a> I greatly desired to start a Bible study in the Sigma Chi fraternity house. \u00a0\u00a0The problem was that I couldn\u2019t get anything going.\u00a0 After trying in vain for over a year, my \u201cGod-given opportunity disguised as a hassle\u201d happened one day\u2014a day I will never forget.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was a beautiful spring day and I was driven to get to the campus post office before hordes of students converged on it after the last morning class period.\u00a0 As I made my way across the plaza en route to the post office, I heard a traveling evangelist on the free-speech platform.\u00a0 He was one of those \u201cevangelists\u201d who points out specific sins in people\u2019s lives he has never met.\u00a0 Equally audacious was his own claim of being free from sin.\u00a0 To say the least, my spirit was provoked.\u00a0 I believed God was telling me to go over and ask some questions.\u00a0 I reminded God that this did not \u201cfit\u201d into my priority of getting the packages mailed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

After arguing with God for about five minutes, I finally caved in.\u00a0 I went over and engaged this evangelist on various issues related to the gospel.\u00a0 A crowd of several hundred students soon gathered to listen.\u00a0 After my give and take with the evangelist, a student came towards me and inquired about the possibility of us doing a formal debate.\u00a0 Guess who he was?\u00a0 The president of the Sigma Chi fraternity house!\u00a0 I did not need to pray about it.\u00a0 After the debate was over, several members of the Sigma Chi house approached me and rather sheepishly asked if I would ever consider leading a Bible study in their fraternity house!<\/strong><\/p>\n

We started at 11 p.m. and finished promptly at midnight so the guys could finish their studies.\u00a0 It was not unusual for me to get home near 2 a.m. because some of these young men wanted to talk more.\u00a0 From that study at least two men went on to become medical doctors.\u00a0 At the beginning of the Bible study neither were convinced abortion was wrong, but both eventually came to see that position as biblically indefensible.\u00a0 That\u2019s just some of the fruit which came from the Bible study.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Back to my packages that got mailed a couple of days late.\u00a0 Was I upset that my agenda got thwarted?\u00a0 Not at all.\u00a0 In fact, I don\u2019t even remember what I was mailing or to whom they were being sent!<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is a daily battle to fight against thinking that simply getting lots of stuff done is success.\u00a0 We swim in the assumptions of modern-day culture, and therefore need to think through how biblical these assumptions truly are.\u00a0\u00a0 One wise cultural commentator invites us to consider how subjective our modern notions are of progress:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Is progress greater human happiness?\u00a0 Greater comfort?\u00a0 Greater speed in personal transportation and communication?\u00a0 The reduction of human suffering?\u00a0 Longer life span?…If progress is human happiness, has anyone shown that 20th_<\/sup>century people are happier than 19th<\/sup>-century people?[4]<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

It is instructive to see how the \u201chearth\u201d was used in pre-technological homes.\u00a0 Andy Crouch, in his terrific piece on Albert Borgmann, reflects accordingly:<\/strong><\/p>\n

A hearth was typically at the center of a home\u2014the Latin for hearth<\/i> is focus<\/i>\u2014and, true to its Latin name, was the center of various household activities.\u00a0 But furnaces are typically located as far out of the way as possible,\u00a0 and as they become more advanced they have become, quite on purpose, ever more marginal to household life.[5]<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

These kinds of examples of \u201cprogress\u201d could be multiplied many times over.\u00a0 They should cause us to slow down and reconsider what we might be missing in our thoroughly modern notions of progress.\u00a0 Bunyan is a great guide in this regard.<\/strong><\/p>\n


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[1]<\/a>One cultural historian says giving up long-standing categories of right and wrong has led to \u201cinarticulate dread.\u201d\u00a0 See Andrew Delbanco, The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil<\/i> (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1995), 9.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[2]<\/a>Accessed on www.dougwils.com<\/a>, Dec. 8, 2008.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[3]<\/a>Excerpted from David George Moore, Confident Living: How to Discover God\u2019s Will for Your Life<\/i> (Austin, TX: Two Cities Ministries, 2000), 19-21.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[4]<\/a>Alan Lightman, \u201cRethinking Progress,\u201d Inc. Technology<\/i>, 3 (Sept. 1995): 25-26.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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[5]<\/a>Andy Crouch, \u201cEating the Supper of the Lamb in a Cool Whip Society,\u201d Books & Culture<\/i>, 10 (Jan\/Feb 2004): 26.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a guest post yesterday over at “Kingdom People.”(http:\/\/thegospelcoalition.org\/blogs\/trevinwax\/) Here it is: Bunyan\u2019s understanding of progress is not at all like our modern version.\u00a0 Progress for Bunyan was anchored to ancient traditions which have stood the test of time.\u00a0 Wise people believe these ancient paths are the only ones which offer \u201crest for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,43,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bunyan","category-christianity","category-spiritual-life"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1577"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1582,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1577\/revisions\/1582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}