David Brainerd and Us
Our new pastor
started his first sermon with the story of David Brainerd, not revealing the
name of course until almost the end, leaving me to guess who he was talking
about. I figured it out before the
reveal because he mentioned Jonathan Edwards, one of my heroes despite my
learning he owned at least one slave (although she was a house servant type of
slave).
Of course, I go
to Brainerd Baptist Church, which was one of the reasons he was invoking David
Brainerd. The church is not named after
David Brainerd; it is named after the Brainerd area of Chattanooga, which is
named after the Brainerd Mission (situated near Eastgate Town Center), which
was named after David Brainerd by some of his devotees who came to East
Tennessee to minister the gospel to native Americans. David Brainerd never made it here—too far
south of course, no settlements during his life, and his life was cut short by
illness.
It was odd that
after all these years I never made the connection of the church being named Brainerd
and that being our legacy. The pastor
made available a download of a book on David Brainerd by John Piper, and I also
downloaded his diary and have begun reading it, the preface of which is written
by Edwards, who would have been his father-in-law had Brainerd lived
longer.
All that to say
that, despite the 18th century language, the diary is interesting
reading and I was taken by his struggles toward conversion. He tells of trying to do works and devotion,
religious and otherwise, that would be good enough for salvation or acceptance
by God, not achieving it, and then getting angry about it. He was not trusting grace and didn’t know
how.
“Sometimes I
used to take much pains to work it up into a good frame, an humble submissive
disposition; and hoped there was then some goodness in me. But, on a sudden,
the thoughts of the strictness of the law, or the sovereignty of God, would so
irritate the corruption of my heart, that I had so watched over, and hoped I
had brought to a good frame, that it would break over all bounds, and burst
forth on all sides, like floods of water when they break down their dam. “
In spite of the
archaic language and the doctrines of election, I don’t think his struggle is
that far from all of us. We want to
please God and try means to do so other than falling on grace; we get mad when
we can’t reach God our own way. We want
to believe in God; some atheists believe in God but are greatly angry and
disappointed at Him, which makes no sense.
Grace is harder than it sounds because it means stopping our own
dependence on our abilities and work ethic and whatever else.
Which leads me
to the topic of legalism. I still hear
people who think legalism is not engaging in certain practices. There are many good reasons not to engage in
certain practices (drinking, for example) and they have nothing to do with
legalism. If you abstain from alcohol
because of logical reasons (health; possibility of addiction, which is much
greater a possibility than the newly liberated Christians want to admit; saving
money—let’s be real, alcohol is expensive), then that is not legalism. If you abstain from alcohol because it makes
you a better class of people and believe God will love you more, that is legalism. Legalism has no more to do without specific
outside practices than spirituality does; very profligate people can be
legalistic about some things. Saul was a legalist and martyring people.
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