May 13, 2007: Salvation Is Enough

Is salvation enough for you?

I mean, if God does nothing more for you than save your soul, will you love him for that? Will you worship him for that? Will you submit to his will and remain steadfast if he does nothing more for you than save your soul from hell and give you eternal life?

Here is why I ask. I get the impression from some sermons I've heard and Christian books I've read that our faith is sometimes "sold" as a solution to problems that go way beyond the fundamental horror of separation from God. Many sincere believers seem to have absorbed this padded teaching without realizing it. It is as though they have been taught to be discontent with mere salvation. They take that for granted, and feel they have a right to expect a lot of other things too - things that God never promised them.

Miraculous healing, for example. I just read a missionary's report about a Nigerian medicine man who abandoned Christianity because, as the missionary reported, "his primary interest was in spiritual power. And if there was no greater power among the Christians than he already possessed, then why join them?" Why indeed. Perhaps to get saved? Is salvation such a shabby, pale, pathetic thing that it cannot compare with the gold treasure of being able to stun people with miracle power? Coming to Christ pleases God and brings forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Isn't that good enough? (It wasn't enough for Simon the Sorcerer, who in Acts 8:9-20 likewise expressed a "primary interest in spiritual power." Peter told him to go to hell.)

What angered me, what had me ready to fling the missionary's book against the wall, was the fact that he sympathized with the medicine man! He agreed that Christianity was pretty pointless if it wasn't miraculously powerful. He wrote, "The Nigerians 'knew' that whatever power Christianity brought it wasn't adequate to deal with such things as tragedy, infertility, relational breakdowns, and troublesome weather. It didn't meet many of their deepest spiritual needs...Though we talked a great deal about spiritual things, the Nigerians understood most aspects of spirituality much better than we did." Oh no, no, no, no. Missionary, you're the one who has the gospel of Jesus Christ, you're the one who understands that the "aspect of
spirituality" that matters is our alienation from God and the reconciliation he has provided through his Son. As for the other four things you mentioned, you would have been wiser to say: "Tragedy? Expect it! The New Testament is the story of one tragedy after another befalling the people of God. Infertility? Some of you will be
childless. Relational breakdowns? Some of you will be evicted from your families for following Christ, others will find yourselves married to beasts who molest your children or give you AIDS. Troublesome weather? Jesus did calm a storm once, but St. Paul couldn't (Acts 27:14-27) - and though Agabus could predict a famine (Acts 11:28), he could not stop it, and neither can we. The rain falls at God's mercy. Whether it falls or not, whether you eat or starve, you must serve God and believe in his Son."

That is the kind of faith we're after - one that trusts God when the mountain of trouble doesn't go away. We must stay on message: Jesus Christ and him crucified, the hope of eternal salvation. Salvation even when it is accompanied by nothing is still a great gift - glorious, undeserved - and anything given us beyond that is grace upon grace. To expect more is dangerous; to demand more is folly. And to teach prospective believers that they will also have health or success or inner peace or better family relationships or a greater circle of influence is to tempt them to renounce Christ when it turns out that they don't get those things, and they conclude that Christianity "isn't all it's cracked up to be."

Be content with your salvation. Feeling you have a right to more than that is like saying, "Hmmph. 'Eternal undeserved bliss in presence of God.' Big deal. Is that all I get?"

May 6, 2007: A Little Self Pity Is OK

Ten years ago the movie GI Jane brought to popular attention the
short poem "Self Pity" by D H Lawrence. As I recall, Navy SEAL trainer
Viggo Mortensen quoted it to Demi Moore in an effort to get her to
toughen up:

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

The poem is an effective rebuke to whining as long as you don't think
too hard about it. I suppose it is true that no wild thing ever felt
sorry for itself, but that is because it never felt sorry for anything. A bird lacks self pity because it lacks pity in general. If we imitated the stoic bird we might face our trials heroically - but at the cost of being callously indifferent to the sufferings of others too.

The Christian attitude is more nuanced. I believe it is ok to bemoan
one's sad condition as long as that creates rather than uses up space
to pity others. Jesus felt sorry for himself on the eve of his
crucifixion. The Bible says that his sweat was like drops of blood on
the ground, that his soul was in agony, and that he pleaded with his
disciples to stay up with him. There was no stoic dismissal of pain,
no "I'm-tough-enough-for-this" rhetoric. Unlike the bird that drops
frozen dead without a peep of complaint, our Lord cried out, "Father!
Let this cup pass from me!"

But Christ's pity for himself assured his pity for us. "For we do not
have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are -
yet was without sin." (Hebrews 4:15)

A couple weeks ago on the heels of bittersweet experience a wave of
self-pity washed over me, and I followed it up with a slap of
self-rebuke. "Who am I to feel bad about my circumstances tonight?" I
thought. I am not an AIDS-orphaned child in Africa. I do not come home to find that a drunk wife has abused my kids. My legs work, my
cupboard is full, I am not in pain. Shame on me for feeling sorry for
myself! D H Lawrence's frozen little bird would denounce me as a wimp!

Yes, but it would denounce everybody as a wimp.

My heroes are all people who have experienced pain, and didn't like
it, but who managed then to navigate between the pitiless rocks of
hard indifference and the soft shoals of whiny indulgence. Be like
them: tough, but not too tough. Shed your tears, and then, having
dried them, be kind to others.