Acton’s Jordan Ballor on Abraham Kuyper

The Acton Institute in Grand Rapids has undertaken the Abraham Kuyper Common Grace Translation Project. From their press release:

In November, Christian’s Library Press is publishing Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science & Art, a new and complete translation of two sections that were inadvertently omitted from the first edition of Kuyper’s larger three-volume work on common grace. These sections were first published separately and then added in later editions of the three volume set. Kuyper’s timeless work shows us that God is not absent from the non-church areas of our common life and bestows his gifts and favor to all people.

Popular in our time for his devotional material, Kuyper’s Wisdom & Wonder displays his talents as a public theologian, focusing on his comprehensive and Reformed vision of science and art.

As evangelicals face massive cultural shifts, the question hangs in the air: How will they respond? What evangelicals believe influences how they respond and this will have significant ramifications for the future of a free society and its business, economic, and public sectors.

Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary and author of Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction, says that the appearance of this treatise in English translation “is for me the beginning of a larger dream come true. Kuyper’s writings on common grace are much needed ‘for such a time as this’ andWisdom & Wonder is a marvelous foretaste of more that is to come!”

Sometimes the way forward is found by looking back. Wisdom & Wonder provides insight for the road ahead, appearing with a foreword by Gabe Lyons and Jon Tyson and an introduction by Vincent E. Bacote, associate professor of theology at Wheaton College and author of The Spirit in Public Theology: Appropriating the Legacy of Abraham Kuyper. The volume is edited by Jordan J. Ballor and Stephen J. Grabill and translated by Nelson D. Kloosterman.

Paul spoke with Acton’s Jordan Ballor, co-editor of the first volume in the project,  on Friday, October 7, 2011:

Jordan_Ballor_on_Abraham_Kuyper.mp3

Steve Jobs: Blind Visionary

Enough will be written about Steve Jobs, and with much more eloquence than I am capable of.  Suffice it to say, Steve changed the world. He changed MY world. In all the same ways he changed yours.

Steve Jobs gained the world, but sadly he did so at the cost of his soul. This is Steve Jobs at Stanford University on June 12, 2005:

You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

And later in the same speech, this:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Steve’s philosophy of living by “your own inner voice” and following “your heart and intuition” without regard to objective truth – especially as that truth is revealed in the word of God – is humanistic and eternally fatal.

Death is not the single best invention in life. It’s an enemy. It is the consequence of the very philosophy of life which Steve encouraged those kids on a beautiful spring afternoon at Stanford to pursue: don’t listen to anyone or anything but yourself and your own heart. “As by one man (Adam) sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Adam followed his heart, and we followed Adam into death.

The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Out of the heart proceeds all manner of evil. Following your heart – unless and until it is transplanted by the Spirit and Word of God – will gain you the world but cost you your soul.

And when death comes, you haven’t merely been “cleared away,” Steve. Death is judgment – the physical consequence of the fall of Adam. And physical death releases the soul into the presence of the Creative Genius to whom we must give an account. The only way to truly live, Steve, is to live Someone else’s life. Crucified with Christ, nevertheless alive – not me – but Christ – truly living by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.

For all of his creative genius and vision, Steve Jobs was blind (it appears) to the light of the glorious gospel in the face of Jesus Christ. His vision changed the world. His blindness – his inability to truly see the only thing worth seeing – cost him his soul. Steve Jobs could see the future. A tragedy that he could not see eternity.

On Tuesday: Katie Davis, Founder of Amazima in Uganda

Paul’s interview with Katie Davis from Tuesday, October 4, 2011: Katie_Davis.mp3

From NPR:

Four years ago, Katie Davis was homecoming queen at her high school in Brentwood, Tenn. She had a yellow convertible and planned to study nursing in college.

But those plans changed just a little. Today, she’s in Uganda, sharing her home with 13 orphaned or abandoned girls, ages 2 to 15. Davis is the legal guardian or foster mother for all of them, and hopes to one day adopt them.

“I think that’s definitely something that I was made for,” said Davis, 22, a devout Christian who idolizes Mother Teresa. “God just designed me that way because he already knew that this is what the plan was for my life — even though I didn’t.”

Katie Davis joins me Tuesday, October 4 at 4:00 pm ET. Click the LIVE STREAM button at the top of the page to listen live.

Katie’s Website: Kisses from Katie