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Mar 1 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
God wants us to see the Giver behind the gifts, even the gifts of salvation. Until we have come to realize that He is the greatest gift of the #Gospel, we will never really understand it or Him.
Our hearts will never be melted by God's love if we do not look to Him as THE GIFT.

We can so easily domesticate him with our expectations merely getting what we want, including "escaping hell." This really misses the heart of the Gospel and still sees God as tyrannical.
This is a very Augustinian movement that ultimately God wants us to see the Giver and not just the gifts, even of salvation.

Augustine would even say that we can be so idolatrous that we end up using 'salvation' as a means of distancing ourselves from God and hiding from him.
We deal with the ‘Gospel’ but are never confronted with God and the ecstasy of His love and so remain cold and unchanged and unloving. Our hearts are never melted by His love because we domesticate Him with right doctrine.
The problem of pursuing right doctrine as an end in itself, apart from pursuing God and His ecstatic love, leads to a deadened and hardened soul that misses the heart of God and runs from him.
Being consumed with being right or being “Gospel-centered” or confessional is a tangible way of running from God. This can include the obsession with being truly Reformed or conservative or "pristine" in some social, political thought.
This is something that I have definitely been guilty of that really is “having a form of godliness but denying its power.” It’s a constant battle we all must face - one that can only be overcome by God's ecstatic, Trinitarian love.
This is a Reformation principle that is deeply rooted in how they viewed knowledge and the pursuit of theology. One that we desperately need to recover...

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More from @word_water_wine

Timothy Massaro Profile picture
Feb 11
Lessons Learned after seeing a decade of #SpiritualAbuse and #Racism #Threads

Heres's the story.
Public sin needs public repentance and restitution for the sin in particular.

No one in the church has authority in and of themselves:

Read 21 tweets
Timothy Massaro Profile picture
Feb 9
Bavinck against Capitalism

"Today's Christianity is narrow-minded & selfish. One evil day it enlisted in the service of wealth and power, thus positioning itself over against the sick and the weak. The altar today serves only to protect the throne.
The priest has lowered himself to be an accomplice of the monarch, & the church has become a mainstay of capitalism. But original Christianity had an entirely different purpose. It opposed all competition btwn social classes. It wanted community & cooperation of its members.
It recommended harmony and love such as exist between members of the same body. If the Christian religion of today wants to regain its lost influence and become a blessing to society, its attitude will have to change radically.
Read 5 tweets
Timothy Massaro Profile picture
Feb 4
Spiritual Abuse and #Racism at the @WhiteHorseInn @Core_Christ @MichaelHorton_ and the URCNA.

I wanted to share part of my story and the #spiritualabuse that I experienced in seminary @wscal, in a confessional Reformed church, and in working for a Reformed non-profit.
Between listening to the podcast on the fall of Mars Hill, seeing the abuse around John Piper and his school, the doubling down of institutional support in many corners of Reformed Evangelicalism, and the continued retrenchment of white
supremacy in Christian culture, I’m so quickly reminded of the spiritual abuse and racism that I saw in my time in the URCNA (United Reformed Churches in North America) and at WSCAL and the White Horse Inn with Michael Horton.
Read 94 tweets
Timothy Massaro Profile picture
Nov 16, 2021
Sadly, “service to the Lord” in American church culture often means taking on unreasonable expectations & duties for the church.

This often leads to sacrificing one’s family on the altar of the ministry, and this can happen very accidentally.
To quote Arcade Fire, ministry today often means “working for the church while your family dies.”
But this is not a godly sacrifice but a lack of boundaries that causes one to emotionally abandon oneself & one’s family.

The lack of emotional self-awareness in ministry can be devastating to one’s family and can lead to a real emotional abandonment on many levels.
Read 16 tweets
Timothy Massaro Profile picture
Nov 15, 2021
What’s the common thread and theme that holds Evangelicals together in America? It’s the adoption of a political ontology of power that holds on to the American dream of Empire — whether they are baptist or charismatic or non-denom or confessional Reformed— that’s the linchpin.
The folks that stand out against this tradition are the anomalies, not the borders or keepers of this movement. Only those who have a distinct political ontology can withstand the pressures to fall in line with that. But not many have offered a different metaphysic robust enough.
Many pastors and teachers who have opposed this American imperialism thought that they could opt for a kind of “political neutrality”. In the end, this leaves congregants at the mercy of what news channel they listen to.
Read 7 tweets
Timothy Massaro Profile picture
Sep 20, 2021
We need to understand the social contexts of *why* we choose to have abusive leaders & why are they are so appealing if we are to create healthier cultures & systems of power. We need to understand this dynamic if we are to root out why our Christian cultures are often so blind.
Why are we addicted to toxic, abusive leaders in the church and in society? Why do we so readily put up with them?
I think ultimately we do so out of fear. We fear the social breakdown that we see all around us.

We cannot control the forces of politics, nature, religion that seem to steal away the good life we want so desperately so we turn to the "powerful."
Read 13 tweets

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