John Piper: Not Fasting From Speaking Engagements

You may recall Piper saying recently the following:

"How do I apologize to you, not for a specific deed, but for ongoing character flaws, and their effects on everybody? I’ll say it now, and no doubt will say it again, I’m sorry. Since I don’t have just one deed to point to, I simply ask for a spirit of forgiveness; and I give you as much assurance as I can that I am not making peace, but war, with my own sins. " ~ Source

And:

Quote:

I want to say to Noël that she is precious to me. And I believe that at this point in our 41-year pilgrimage together the best way to say it is by stepping back for a season from virtually all public commitments....

In this leave, I intend to let go of all of it. No book-writing. No sermon preparation. No preaching. No blogging. No Twitter. No articles. No reports. No papers. And no speaking engagements—with a very few exceptions that you can read about online on Sunday afternoon....

You could view this as a kind of fasting from public ministry. One of the goals in this kind of fasting is to discern levels of addiction. Or, as Paul Tripp or Tim Keller might say, levels of idolatry. The reality check is: What will happen in my soul and in my marriage when, to use the phrase of one precious brother on staff, there will be no “prideful sipping from the poisonous cup of international fame and notoriety”?

End quote. ~Source

Now his wife Noel says he is covering for her, being her protector: "And I hope you noticed that he spoke and wrote as if all the need for this time away lay in his own shortcomings. I hope you are wise enough to know that things are never that simple. He loved me by covering for me–by being my protector. We’re in this together."

As I say, time will bring to light what was done in darkness.

In regard to Piper's "fasting" from public engagements, he said he'll keep one stateside speaking engagement and three international ones Noel said he should keep.

Let's take a look at this "fasting" from public ministry, where he will "let it all go":

From Desiring-I-Don't-Know-What-Kind-of-God website:

April 13-15 2010 at Louisville KY "Together For the Gospel"
April 29, 2010 Minneapolis "Christian Alliance For Orphans Summit"
June 3-6 2010 Santo Domingo, DR "The Glory of God and the Experience of the Cross"
June 23-25, 2010 London, "Proc Trust Evangelical Ministry Assembly"
Oct. 1-3, 2010 Minneapolois,"Desiring God National Conference"
Oct. 12-27, 2010 Cape Town, SA "The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism" (More on Lausanne later--this is VERY ecumenical)

What is missing in that list above is that during the week of the Lausanne conference, he'll also be at:

Oct. 14, 2010, Pretoria, ZA for the Rezolution conference
October 15-17, 2010 Johannesburg, South Africa at the Sandton Convention Center, REZOLUTION Conference

So instead of the three-in-one stateside speaking engagement, he really has three, and instead of three international speaking engagements he has five. Seven speaking engagements? How is this "letting it all go"? How is this "fasting"? (Note: he's reinventing defintions for words again...this time for "fasting" last time for "hedonism"). He implies an addiction. Yet he keeps feeding it.

Piper is a walking contradiction. He has no integrity. By his own admission he has "character flaws" that affect "everyone". On top of all this, just a week or two after his mia culpa, he shows his pride again by defiantly defending bringing in the wolf, Rick Warren. He's feeding the "addiction" and monster he claims he's out to wage war with. Is this this waging war??