Honoring Vows (August 29, 2004)
Reflecting upon Rosita's faithful care of her incapacitated husband from his stroke in 1993 until his death last week has called to mind some thoughts about wedding vows.
I was startled by the words of the pastor who conducted the wedding for my friends Doug and Linda. He talked about their vows with a forthrightness you seldom hear. He said, "You are committed to one another 'for richer or poorer, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.' Doug, there may come a time when Linda gets very sick. You must care for her. Linda, there may come a time when Doug is worse as a person than he is now. You must remain with him."
Thankfully that pastor's words have not proven prophetic - Linda has stayed healthy and Doug has only gotten more Christlike. But the pastor put his finger on something that young people in the thrall of love seldom think about. Things can get worse in unpredictable ways. Your beautiful wife may succumb to Multiple Sclerosis, or Parkinson's, or dementia, or become a quadriplegic - and you will become her caretaker. Your devoted husband may turn into an irritable, contemptuous, self-absorbed jerk - and you'll be stuck with an unhappiness that no counseling can alleviate. But it is just for cases like these that we recite vows in the first place, promising before God and witnesses to keep loving each other till death parts us. No one would need to promise that if love always remained easy.
The pastor who spoke those compelling words to Doug and Linda got divorced sometime later. So did the Reverend who married my Linda and me. I don't know why - never heard the details of either case. I do know that some terrible sin must have been committed, because either adultery or abandonment led to a biblically warranted divorce (Matthew 19:9 and 1 Corinthians 7:15), or because someone dissolved the marriage in contempt of the God before whom they recited their vows. There is no such thing as a no-fault divorce. Divorce always involves sin. That is not to say that those who get divorced have sinned. I like to say that divorce is sin just as murder is sin. A killer and his victim are both "involved in" a murder, but they do not share equal blame. Same thing with rape - it is a gross cruelty to lump together those who commit such a crime with those who are victims of it. It is wrong to assume that all divorcees are marital sinners. Remember that but for an angel's intervention, the most blessed woman who ever lived would have been a divorcee (Matthew 1:19).
You cannot control what your spouse does, becomes, or falls victim to. You can control what promises you make and whether you will fulfill them. If you are single, then do not take wedding vows unless you plan to abide by them. Look around at failed marriages, and determine that "as far as it depends on you" (Romans 12:18), you will not fail. Consider those who became sick and could not (or bad and would not) respond to their spouse's love. If you are ever on the painful side of such deprivation, will you still love? If not, then marry not.
And if you are already married, then "take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you" (Philippians 3:17) and imitate them. Imitate Rosita's steadfast devotion whenever it is your turn to do so. God bless your marriage. God bless the faithful fulfillment of all your vows.
Sunday, August 29, 2004
Sunday, August 22, 2004
When You Are Tired Of Doing Good (August 22, 2004)
A prayer I like to say for people who are serving the Lord is that they "not grow weary in doing good" (Galatians 6:9).
Many a servant of God has grown weary and cynical - just plain sick and tired of seeing his good efforts come to naught. Or sometimes worse than naught. "Naught" means zero, but sometimes our labors actually seem to result in a net loss. When the kind-hearted soul sees a bad result springing from his good deed he is tempted to say, "Why did I bother? It would have been better if I had done nothing!"
Remember the boy who handed his lunch to Jesus and saw him multiply it to feed a crowd of thousands? I like to think that that event inspired him to be generous for the rest of his life. See what miracles happen when you give! But suppose the next time he gave his lunch he watched bullies use it as ammunition in a food fight. After an experience like that he might decide afterward to hold his lunch bag a little tighter and say, "This is mine. Go get your own."
It is important to draw a distinction here. A bad result to a kind deed may indicate that the good intentions were not wisely channeled. For example, if a man finds that his efforts to evangelize the lost are alienating people, it may be because he has been disobeying Jesus' command to move on when rejected (Luke 9:5), and he has not been following Jesus' example to leave uninterested people alone (Luke 8:37). A generous giver finds that he has been funding laziness because he was not making the poor work for it (Leviticus 19:9--10), and was not taking their worthiness into account (1 Timothy 5:9-10). A faithful wife winds up with a sexually transmitted disease and an abused daughter because she mistakenly forgave her pervert husband without insisting first on his repentance as a condition of reconciliation. (Luke 17:3). In all such cases, the foolish saint must learn from his mistakes and others'. Many disasters result from good intentions feeding unwise practice.
But sometimes the practice is wise and the intention is holy and the result is still bad. This is when the best of men can "grow weary in doing good" - just too spiritually tired to keep doing the right thing. Have you never known a servant of the Lord who got burned in a ministry, or in a marriage, or in a profession, or in a church - and then just gave up trying? I have. I myself have borne the burden of soul-weariness more than once, and will regret till the Lord wipes my memory clean the sin of not having tried again, or tried harder.
I take courage in the example of a heroine of mine, my sister Grace Washburn. A couple weeks ago, at my niece's funeral, my nephew David said that he had wondered why, in 1988, his parents adopted yet another child after all that they had suffered with previous adoptees and foster children. Grace and her husband Ron specialized in taking in abused and abandoned kids, wards of the state. Many of these proved to be "black holes" of love, unable or unwilling to give back any of the kindness shown them. Some committed crimes - against the Washburns and others - and wound up in prison. David asked, "After all the love that my parents gave to them and they threw it all away, why would they do it again?"
They did it again because God called them to care for needy children, and they would do so without growing weary until God said stop. Sixteen years ago, their efforts were rewarded with little Annie, a sick, Down Syndrome girl whose skin was as black as coal but whose spirit was bright as a fireworks display. Annie received love, and gave it back, and we were all privileged to watch love multiply around her like the fish and loaves that multiplied around Jesus. Annie is with the Lord now - her heart finally gave out. But her life and the love that surrounded her stand as a testimony to the value of refusing to grow weary in doing good. The rest of Galatians 6:9 reads, "Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."
Never give up doing what you know to be right.
A prayer I like to say for people who are serving the Lord is that they "not grow weary in doing good" (Galatians 6:9).
Many a servant of God has grown weary and cynical - just plain sick and tired of seeing his good efforts come to naught. Or sometimes worse than naught. "Naught" means zero, but sometimes our labors actually seem to result in a net loss. When the kind-hearted soul sees a bad result springing from his good deed he is tempted to say, "Why did I bother? It would have been better if I had done nothing!"
Remember the boy who handed his lunch to Jesus and saw him multiply it to feed a crowd of thousands? I like to think that that event inspired him to be generous for the rest of his life. See what miracles happen when you give! But suppose the next time he gave his lunch he watched bullies use it as ammunition in a food fight. After an experience like that he might decide afterward to hold his lunch bag a little tighter and say, "This is mine. Go get your own."
It is important to draw a distinction here. A bad result to a kind deed may indicate that the good intentions were not wisely channeled. For example, if a man finds that his efforts to evangelize the lost are alienating people, it may be because he has been disobeying Jesus' command to move on when rejected (Luke 9:5), and he has not been following Jesus' example to leave uninterested people alone (Luke 8:37). A generous giver finds that he has been funding laziness because he was not making the poor work for it (Leviticus 19:9--10), and was not taking their worthiness into account (1 Timothy 5:9-10). A faithful wife winds up with a sexually transmitted disease and an abused daughter because she mistakenly forgave her pervert husband without insisting first on his repentance as a condition of reconciliation. (Luke 17:3). In all such cases, the foolish saint must learn from his mistakes and others'. Many disasters result from good intentions feeding unwise practice.
But sometimes the practice is wise and the intention is holy and the result is still bad. This is when the best of men can "grow weary in doing good" - just too spiritually tired to keep doing the right thing. Have you never known a servant of the Lord who got burned in a ministry, or in a marriage, or in a profession, or in a church - and then just gave up trying? I have. I myself have borne the burden of soul-weariness more than once, and will regret till the Lord wipes my memory clean the sin of not having tried again, or tried harder.
I take courage in the example of a heroine of mine, my sister Grace Washburn. A couple weeks ago, at my niece's funeral, my nephew David said that he had wondered why, in 1988, his parents adopted yet another child after all that they had suffered with previous adoptees and foster children. Grace and her husband Ron specialized in taking in abused and abandoned kids, wards of the state. Many of these proved to be "black holes" of love, unable or unwilling to give back any of the kindness shown them. Some committed crimes - against the Washburns and others - and wound up in prison. David asked, "After all the love that my parents gave to them and they threw it all away, why would they do it again?"
They did it again because God called them to care for needy children, and they would do so without growing weary until God said stop. Sixteen years ago, their efforts were rewarded with little Annie, a sick, Down Syndrome girl whose skin was as black as coal but whose spirit was bright as a fireworks display. Annie received love, and gave it back, and we were all privileged to watch love multiply around her like the fish and loaves that multiplied around Jesus. Annie is with the Lord now - her heart finally gave out. But her life and the love that surrounded her stand as a testimony to the value of refusing to grow weary in doing good. The rest of Galatians 6:9 reads, "Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."
Never give up doing what you know to be right.
Sunday, August 15, 2004
The Godly Duty Of Inducing Guilt (August 15, 2004)
It is necessary that sinners feel miserable in the presence of God and his saints.
In his book, What's So Amazing About Grace? Philip Yancey writes about a prostitute who came to visit a friend of his who works with down-and-outers in Chicago. The woman was "unable to buy food" for her two-year-old daughter. Through tears she explained that she had been renting out her toddler by the hour for kinky sex with perverts in order to get money for drugs. (She couldn't buy food, but she could sell her daughter to get high.) When Yancey's friend asked if she ever thought of going to church, she said, "Church! Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They'd just make me feel worse."
Yancey believes this woman's avoidance of church is an indictment of it. He writes, "What struck me about my friend's story is that women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift?"
What? Now wait just a minute. First of all, is it really accurate to say that "women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus"? Maybe a few exceptional ones did, but it is likely that the vast majority kept plying their trade, steering well clear of the Preacher who was so stern about sexual sin that he would equate mere lust with adultery. The woman caught in the act in John 8 did not "flee toward Jesus" - she was dragged unwillingly before him. (And - a point often missed - he never said it was wrong to stone her. That is, after all, what God had commanded. The problem, as Jesus pointed out, was that all the judges had disqualified themselves.) The five-husbanded fornicator in John 4 never fled toward Jesus - she only talked to him because he happened to strike up a conversation with her (a conversation where he quickly dug up the root of her iniquity). I think it is fair to say that the only prostitutes who fled toward Jesus were the ones who were willing to feel terrible in his presence, like the sinful woman in Luke 7 who cried enough tears on his feet to wash them clean.
Secondly, just what is wrong about "being made to feel worse" in church? The apostle Paul speaks of this not as a danger to be avoided but as a goal to be pursued! 1 Corinthians 14:24-25: "If an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, "God is really among you!" This is a good thing. A sinner in church should not feel warmed and blessed, but convicted and ashamed. In 2 Corinthians 7:8-9 Paul speaks of his joy over the results of his efforts to induce this shame: "Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it - I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while - yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us."
Sorrow as God intended does no harm. Our problem today is not that prostitutes might feel bad in our churches, but that sinners in general feel so good in them. When Isaiah (presumably a decent man by our standards) came into the presence of God, he cried, "Woe is me!" When righteous Job heard God, he said, "I despise myself." When Peter saw Jesus' power, he said, "Depart from me, I am a sinful man." When the tax collector approached the temple he said, "God be merciful to me, the sinner." When Paul the Persecutor saw Jesus, he refused food and water for three days.
But today we who speak for God wring our hands before the sinner and say, "I’m so sorry! Did I make you feel bad?"
I cannot for the life of me see how the Church in North America has "lost the gift" of attracting evildoers. What it has lost, rather, is the will to confront them, and the gracious courage to stir up godly guilt in them. God have mercy on us if unrepentant souls leave our worship services saying, "That was great! I just felt so uplifted today."
It is necessary that sinners feel miserable in the presence of God and his saints.
In his book, What's So Amazing About Grace? Philip Yancey writes about a prostitute who came to visit a friend of his who works with down-and-outers in Chicago. The woman was "unable to buy food" for her two-year-old daughter. Through tears she explained that she had been renting out her toddler by the hour for kinky sex with perverts in order to get money for drugs. (She couldn't buy food, but she could sell her daughter to get high.) When Yancey's friend asked if she ever thought of going to church, she said, "Church! Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They'd just make me feel worse."
Yancey believes this woman's avoidance of church is an indictment of it. He writes, "What struck me about my friend's story is that women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift?"
What? Now wait just a minute. First of all, is it really accurate to say that "women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus"? Maybe a few exceptional ones did, but it is likely that the vast majority kept plying their trade, steering well clear of the Preacher who was so stern about sexual sin that he would equate mere lust with adultery. The woman caught in the act in John 8 did not "flee toward Jesus" - she was dragged unwillingly before him. (And - a point often missed - he never said it was wrong to stone her. That is, after all, what God had commanded. The problem, as Jesus pointed out, was that all the judges had disqualified themselves.) The five-husbanded fornicator in John 4 never fled toward Jesus - she only talked to him because he happened to strike up a conversation with her (a conversation where he quickly dug up the root of her iniquity). I think it is fair to say that the only prostitutes who fled toward Jesus were the ones who were willing to feel terrible in his presence, like the sinful woman in Luke 7 who cried enough tears on his feet to wash them clean.
Secondly, just what is wrong about "being made to feel worse" in church? The apostle Paul speaks of this not as a danger to be avoided but as a goal to be pursued! 1 Corinthians 14:24-25: "If an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, "God is really among you!" This is a good thing. A sinner in church should not feel warmed and blessed, but convicted and ashamed. In 2 Corinthians 7:8-9 Paul speaks of his joy over the results of his efforts to induce this shame: "Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it - I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while - yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us."
Sorrow as God intended does no harm. Our problem today is not that prostitutes might feel bad in our churches, but that sinners in general feel so good in them. When Isaiah (presumably a decent man by our standards) came into the presence of God, he cried, "Woe is me!" When righteous Job heard God, he said, "I despise myself." When Peter saw Jesus' power, he said, "Depart from me, I am a sinful man." When the tax collector approached the temple he said, "God be merciful to me, the sinner." When Paul the Persecutor saw Jesus, he refused food and water for three days.
But today we who speak for God wring our hands before the sinner and say, "I’m so sorry! Did I make you feel bad?"
I cannot for the life of me see how the Church in North America has "lost the gift" of attracting evildoers. What it has lost, rather, is the will to confront them, and the gracious courage to stir up godly guilt in them. God have mercy on us if unrepentant souls leave our worship services saying, "That was great! I just felt so uplifted today."
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