December 26, 2009: To A Son Getting Married (Part 2)

Ben,

You must be faithful to Amy.

That seems obvious, doesn't it? You asked for marital advice, and here I say something so unprofound, so basic, so blindingly obvious that it hardly seems worth mentioning. “Of course I'll be faithful to Amy,” you say. And I'm sure you will be. But indulge me a bit as I go over this fundamental. I want to do this because I’ve been shocked and discouraged to find so many people, even Christians, forgetting the fundamentals. Many people I never imagined would ever cheat on their spouses did exactly that 10, 20 or even 30 years into their marriages. So I want to carve these words in stone now - or at least send them into cyberspace - where I cherish the hope that they will last as long as they are needed.

Ben, I think a main reason adultery is so common now is that so few people regard it as truly evil. Even the Christian radio station I listen to tends to treat it as one of those things that can happen to good people. It can’t. Adultery never happens to good people. It is something that bad people do - very bad people. Bastards. A-holes. Swine. People who cheat on their spouses (or who dump their good spouses to take another partner, which is the same thing) are swine. You, Ben, are not swine. You are a son, my son, my beloved son.

As my son, you must never regard faithfulness to your wife as a mere lifestyle choice that happens to appeal to religious conservatives like me. Nor are you to consider it a heroic achievement, a noble act of discipline practiced by good men going beyond the call of duty. No, lifelong faithfulness is simply minimal marital decency. You don’t get a medal for it. It is not even, strictly speaking, “good” – just neutral. Adultery is the abomination; fidelity is a matter of not committing it. I want you to regard adultery as an act of such unspeakably cruel hatred against your spouse that you could no more do it than you could torture a child. You could not mutilate a kid, could you? Of course not! Perish the thought! Well, let adultery be like that to you. Unthinkable. Beyond the pale. The kind of thing done only by people who deserve to die or rot in prison. Not by you. Not by a Lundquist.

Am I being extreme? Would that all were as extreme as I. The world would be a better place.

Actually I am a lot less extreme than the Bible, which in the Old Testament mandates that adulterers be killed (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22) and, in the New Testament, informs us that they go to hell. A lot of people think that the New Testament is more lenient than the Old on the matter of adultery, but they are wrong. The OT never says that adulterers get thrown into the fiery lake of burning sulfur as it does in Revelation 21:8. You may recall that I began my letter to my unrepentant adulterer brother-in-law with the words, “Hank, it is important for you to understand that you are going to hell.” I meant it. Still do.

You might perceive that I differ from most pastors regarding the strength of my convictions about adultery. Often I have seen pastors counsel forgiveness, reconciliation and restoration in a marriage where one of the partners has been unfaithful, but I do not see this pattern generally in the Bible. As I said, adultery meant death in the Old Testament and hell in the New! Jesus called it a grounds for divorce (Matthew 19:9), not a rough patch that couples have to endure. When Joseph thought Mary had cheated on him (perhaps just one time), he immediately planned to divorce her. In today’s evangelical culture I think that Joseph’s action would be considered harsh and unforgiving (“He should ask her to go to counseling with him!”), but the Bible disagrees. It calls Joseph a righteous man (Matthew 1:19).

Ben, I know that you will never cheat on Amy and Amy will never cheat on you, so this is all a moot point – but let me put it down here anyway: if you ever do cheat on her, I will advise her to divorce you, and if she ever cheats on you, I will advise you to divorce her. I will not make the mistake (which strikes me as a cruelty) of pressuring a cuckolded spouse to forgive and take back the philanderer. Nor, for that matter, will I ever be a safe haven an adulterer can run to for comfort, encouragement and support. (I will be a safe haven to the victim instead.) More than once I have seen family members “stand by their own” when a sibling or offspring trashed a spouse - and it filled me with outrage and disgust. Family loyalty will not tempt me to enable an adulterer to wreak destruction in another’s life.

Amy, I’m happy to be able to say that I have full confidence in Ben. I’m also happy to say that Ben is bequeathing to you an honorable name. No one related to us bearing the name “Lundquist” has ever cheated on or dumped a spouse, and Ben will not be the first. I like to think that we as a family have a stake in guarding the sanctity of the Lundquist name – a name rendered worthy by Ben’s grandfather Lowell, a man of integrity, love, faithfulness, grace, discipline and good cheer. Yes, Ben, it is meaningful to me that you are a Lundquist, and will always remain so. I have kept the honor of the name that I have passed on to you. I was faithful to your mother, keeping the vows I made to her even when she renounced the ones she made to me. I’m faithful to your step-mother now. To this day there are only two women I have ever slept with, kissed, or even held hands with – your mother and my wife Lisa. I do not use people – whether for one night, or a few months, or 20 years – and then toss them aside to move on to someone else. The main reason for that is because I fear God, but even if I didn’t, I am still a Lundquist, and Lundquists know the difference between right and wrong.

You are Ben Lundquist. You will be a good and faithful husband.

December 8, 2009: To A Son Getting Married

Ben,

When you got engaged a couple weeks ago you asked me if I had any advice about marriage. That was an intelligent and humble and gracious thing to ask, and I give you a lot of credit for it. Would that all sons asked their fathers the same question! (Unless of course their fathers are jerks. Then maybe they should ask someone else. Like a pastor or something. But I digress.)

I couldn’t think of anything to say at the time. (Your brother is a lot better at these impromptu speeches.) But now I have given it some thought, and am prepared to douse you with Polonial wisdom. Hearken, young Laertes, O Son Of My Right Hand.

I begin with a quiz. Whom do I love more, Ben, you or my wife Lisa? Answer: Lisa. Lisa Lisa Lisa Lisa Lisa. See how easy that was for me? I didn’t have to think twice. The answer popped into my head before I was finished saying the word “wife.” Don’t feel bad about your demotion – it is nothing personal. I still love you very much. It is just that I love Lisa more. And I won’t even qualify that with the sentimental, hair-splitting, spare-everybody’s-feelings “Son, I love you as much as a father can love his child and Lisa as much as a husband can love his wife.” No, you and I are grownups and men. We can speak plainly. I love Lisa more.

You might say (you wouldn’t actually say this - I’m putting words into your mouth for rhetorical effect), “But Dad! How could you? You’re my friggin’ father and Lisa is just somebody you met 10 months ago!” True, but she’s my wife, and that makes all the difference.

For the record, son, I love you as much as I possibly know how to. Witnessing your birth remains the most transcendent moment of my life. Nothing compares to it. Remember that terrific scene in the movie Juno where Jennifer Garner says, “I have a son”? Well, it was better than that. More moving.

A few years ago a nice person paid me the best compliment I have ever received. She said, “I’ve never met a man who loves his sons as much as you love yours.” That was probably an exaggeration, and maybe even a kindly indulgence sensitive to my yearning to be a good father – but I’ll take it.

A student speaker at a chapel service I went to about 15 years ago told us that he had a father who was so great and loving that he (the father) would go as far as to die for his son. Graciously I did not go up to the young man afterward and burst his bubble by telling him that any father would do that. In fact, it seems to me that a father who wouldn’t give his life for his son is a scum-sucking antichrist beast from the darkest depths of hell. My dad would have given his life not only for me but for a total stranger. (When he passed away from a heart attack, your grandmother said something odd. She said she had always assumed he would somehow die a hero, like maybe by running into a burning building to rescue somebody, or jumping into a lake to save a drowning person. It was the kind of thing he would have done. Not just for me but for anybody.)

Let’s see, back to my point. I love you very much. Enough to die for you, certainly – but now I guess I’ve undercut that by explaining that that really isn't such a big deal. Hmm. I think I’ll just press on ahead here. What I’m trying to say, Ben, is that as much as I love you - and it's a lot - I love Lisa more. She is my wife.

That is how you must love Amy. She is to be your wife, and you must love her more than anyone but God. You must love her more than your friends, more than your family, more even than the children you may someday have by her. From your wedding day until death parts you, your love for Amy must exceed all other human loves.

I'll try if I can to flesh that thought out over the next few weeks, and give some examples of what love looks like. I'll start with this: the measure of your love for anyone can be gauged by how much you are willing to suffer for him or her. When you love your wife, Ben, you are (among other things) handing her the power to make you suffer.

That theme is written right into the wedding vows where it says "in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for better or for worse." Ben, it is possible that someday Amy will become chronically ill, and rather than being the happy husband of a delightful and productive wife, you will be the caretaker of a woman who is depressed and bed-ridden. Love absorbs that sorrow and responds with steadfast perseverance. It does not fail. You love her whether she is healthy or sick.

Or, maybe, it will happen that as a result of her decisions and actions you will be poor - bankrupt in your 40s, embarrassed to meet old friends or invite anybody to your tiny apartment. Love her anyway. Endure poverty, if need be, for her sake.

Of course I believe that Amy will become an even more wonderful person than she is now. But I have found that I am utterly unable to predict whose personalities will sweeten and whose will sour, who will become kinder and nobler as the years pass and who will become more selfish and hostile. More men than I can count got married hoping for "better" and wound up experiencing "worse". Ben, you must continue to love Amy more than anybody else in the world even if she becomes worse as a person. This is the hardest thing that some men will ever have to do, and I pray to God that you are spared this misery.

But I believe that all men contemplating marriage should be prepared for it. Christian men have before them the perfect image of what it means to keep on loving in the face of meanness and ingratitude: Jesus himself. Have I read to you my favorite C. S. Lewis quote on the topic of marriage? It is in The Four Loves, the chapter titled "Eros". Lewis writes, "The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church. He is to love her as Christ loved the Church - read on - and give his life for her (Ephesians 5:25). This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is - in her own mere nature - least lovable."

Amy is lovable and will always remain so, so this won't be an issue for you. You won't get to be a Christ-like hero in your marriage - just as I can't be in mine, because Lisa is too good. (She has said that she wants our marriage to model the relationship between Christ and his church, but the reason that will never happen is because she's so much better than the Church. She would have to be immature and grumbling and faulty and backsliding - and I forgiving and patient and gracious and holy - in order for the two of us to mirror together the real relationship between the Church and her Lord Jesus Christ.)

But be prepared. Admire men who are faithful and courteous and gracious to bad wives. They are true heroes and worthy of your respect. I hope you never become one of them - even as I hope you never become a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. (How those men suffered to gain that prize!). I do however want you to be the kind of man who loves and loves and loves whether that love is returned or whether it is uselessly poured down a black hole of narcissistic contempt. Love Amy no matter what she is like or what she becomes.

It goes without saying that you must always be faithful to her. More about that next week.

December 1, 2009: Fencing the Table

I have attended worship services in three different faith traditions where I was not able to participate in holy communion.

One was a Roman Catholic mass. While seated in the pew I read a publication that explained in gracious terms why non Catholics must refrain from partaking of the elements, so of course I respected that.

Another was a service at a Lutheran church that my family visited. Before distributing the bread and the cup the pastor explained the doctrine of consubstantiation - the presence of Christ in, around and under the elements – and advised that only believers in this doctrine should participate. While we had to let the tray pass, my parents always spoke fondly of that church because of the kind and hospitable way everyone greeted us afterward.

Then about 15 years ago I visited a strict Reformed church where it was explained that only those who professed the real spiritual presence of Christ in communion should take the bread and wine. This position is distinct from the transubstantiation of the Catholics and the consubstantiation of the Lutherans, but nonetheless affirms that Christ is present at the Lord’s Supper in a way that he is not when - simply - two or three are gathered in his name (Matthew 18:20). I do not believe the narrow specifics of the “real presence” doctrine either, so, again, I could not eat and drink in remembrance of Christ.

My own view might be called “Zwinglian” (for the Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli), where the Lord’s Supper is understood as a symbolic remembrance feast. I believe that we partake of Christ only by faith, and that the elements of bread and wine communicate to us neither his body nor his blood nor his grace nor his presence (in any way different from the presence already promised us when we worship him). I contend that through communion we indicate our belief in Christ, our fellowship with him and with one another, our gratitude, and our wordless proclamation of his saving work.

I do not regard the holding of any of these four views as a cause for barring from participation at the Lord’s table those who hold differing views. So, if I were responsible for officiating at a communion service, a devout Catholic and a Missouri Synod Lutheran and an Orthodox Presbyterian and a Southern Baptist - each at the theological center of his tradition – would be welcomed to eat the bread and drink the cup with his brothers in Christ.

But despite what seems to be a broadly tolerant view on my part - and despite the fact that my Christian pedigree is as impeccable as Paul’s Jewish one (Philippians 3:4-6) - I do not mind being excluded from the Lord’s Table by different churches for different reasons. Why? Because I love the fact that they all take the Lord’s Supper seriously. It matters to them. They want to get it right so that God will be honored, and I respect that. No worship tradition should take communion lightly. Taking the bread and the cup is not like passing the offering plate or singing a hymn or listening to a sermon. It is an act of worship that lies at the heart of what it means to be a Christian.

There are people whom I would bar from the table of the Lord. Unbelievers must not participate. Some time ago a couple agnostic friends of mine visited a worship service I was leading. I pulled them aside beforehand and explained, in what I hope were the most gracious terms possible, that the bread and the grape juice were only to be received by Christian believers, and they should let the tray pass when it came to them. They understood. As I have sometimes said during the communion devotional: “St. Paul says that through this ‘we proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes’ (1 Corinthians 11:26). By partaking of these elements we proclaim that Jesus died in such a way as to save our souls. We are also proclaiming his resurrection, for it says that we do this ‘until he comes.’ Only those who believe that he rose from the dead can also believe that he is coming back. If you cannot in good conscience proclaim that Jesus died for your sins, that he rose from the dead and will return some day, then do not eat this bread and do not drink this cup. To do so while guarding a spirit of unbelief would be to lie, and to lie against God in this sacred assembly would be to invite his judgment. Only those who trust in Jesus Christ should participate.”

The others who must be forbidden to partake of the elements are those who say they are believers but who do not act like it. I refer to those who are undergoing church discipline, or, in older terms, have been excommunicated, or, in even older terms, have been handed over to Satan. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul tells the Corinthian church to discipline a man in their congregation who is guilty of profound sexual immorality. "Hand this man over to Satan," (verse 5) Paul writes. "Expel the wicked man from among you" (verse 13). However this expulsion is carried out, at minimum it must include a denial of a place at the table of the Lord. The reason is simple: persistence in grotesque sin, despite warnings and calls to repentance, is a sign of unbelief. See Titus 1:16: "They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him." Or 1 Timothy 5:8: "If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." It is possible to deny the faith with one's actions. Those who act like unbelievers should be treated like unbelievers, and barred from the table until they repent. The goal is to shame them into remorse and change, and bring them back to full fellowship if possible.

None of us can claim sinlessness, and holy perfection has never been (and never should be) a requirement for participating in communion. But we must nonetheless maintain the purity of the Supper in honor of the Lord who commanded us to celebrate it. The Supper is only for Christian believers who are not (rightly) undergoing the discipline of excommunication by their brothers and sisters in Christ.

November 24, 2009: Toward A Robust View of the Sovereignty Of God (Part 2): Greg Boyd And People Who Teach That God Would Never Want Something Bad To Happen To You

Last week I contended with theological giant Tim Keller; this week I just stomp on a midget, Greg Boyd. (I’m not alone. All orthodox Christians gag on Greg.)

Boyd teaches that God does not know all the future. He still claims that God is omniscient, though, because he believes that God knows everything that can be known. To Boyd, the future decisions of free moral agents are in principal unknowable, and therefore even God can’t be sure of them. So God makes his best guesses (he does have pretty good instincts) and guides us accordingly.

In his book God of the Possible Boyd explains how this insight enabled him to counsel a woman who was distraught over the breakup of her marriage. Suzanne met her husband-to-be in a Christian college where they were both preparing to be missionaries. They courted for three and a half years and prayed and attended church together. When he proposed she prayed over it, and they consulted their parents and friends and their pastor, and all agreed that the marriage was God’s will for them.

Then after they got married her husband had affairs, lost his faith, physically abused her and filed for divorce. She was pregnant at the time.

Boyd writes, “Understandably, Suzanne could not fathom how the Lord could respond to her lifelong prayers by setting her up with a man he knew would do this to her and her child.” Boyd saw three ways to understand the situation: (1) Suzanne had been mistaken about hearing God’s direction in the first place. It hadn’t been God’s will at all but Suzanne’s – and she had turned a disobedient deaf ear to the true leading of the Lord; (2) It was indeed God’s will for her to marry this man who he knew in advance would turn apostate and cruel; (3) It was God’s will for her to marry this man, but only because he didn’t know the guy would become a thug. Even God thought at the time that the marriage was a good idea. Give God a break - he’s doing the best he can. You can’t expect God to give you perfect guidance all the time when he doesn’t know how people will turn out. Boyd likes alternative (3), thinking it is theologically correct and that it is a compassionate way to sympathize with God and counsel the grieving.

Boyd is a heretic. (When my sister was involved in a woman’s group that was studying one of Boyd’s books I told her “NO! NO! Read something else!”, and when a friend told me that his pastor told him to drop out of Moody and read Boyd, I told him “Find another church - now.”) Boyd’s demeaning, condescending, biblically unorthodox view of God fails to comfort, inform, clarify or even interest.

But I am very interested in the other alternatives that Boyd gives. What do you think – did Suzanne follow the leading of our good and omniscient God when she married an antichrist, or must she have made a mistake somewhere, since God would never lead his child to marry someone bad?

I have discovered in some Christian circles that believers who would never accept Boyd’s major premise (God doesn’t know the future) nonetheless buy his minor premise (it can’t be God’s will for any of his followers to have a bad marriage.) Those who accept this minor premise tend to believe that if we pray, seek the Lord’s leading, marry only another believer, maintain our purity both before the wedding and within the marital relationship, and speak all our partner’s love languages, then God will certainly guide us into a marriage that both honors him and pleases us. How could he not?

But I’m afraid this view is simply false, has no biblical warrant, and does not reflect a robust understanding of the sovereignty of God. It stumbles over the simple question, “How could you possibly know it is God’s will for you to have a good marriage?”

Consider the biblical data. It was God’s will that the prophet Hosea marry a whore and be very unhappy about it. It was his will that Joseph be abandoned and sold into slavery and be falsely accused and languish in prison. It was his will that a sword of sorrow pierce the heart of the blessed mother of Jesus (Luke 1:35). It was his will that some “faced jeers and flogging, while others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned, they were sawed in two, they were put to death by the sword” (Hebrews 11:36). And on top of all that it was his will that his own Son be tortured to death. So why does it seem impossible to Boyd (and, I’m afraid, to many non-heretical Christians) that God could will one of his children to marry a seemingly good believer who goes bad? This really should be an easy call. If God, in his sovereign will, should determine that his Son be betrayed by a Judas, why shouldn’t he determine that you or I marry one? If you answer, “Because I can’t see any way at all that God could bring good out of that circumstance,” I would respond, “You lack imagination.”

I think that God has graciously given me an unfair advantage in perceiving this truth. You see, I am Suzanne. Not literally - but my story parallels hers in many details. Now, in the year 2009, I am by God’s sheer favor the happiest married man I know – and perhaps the happiest married man I have ever known. But this has not always been the case. For years I endured marital circumstances that became for me what C. S. Lewis called the “severe mercy” of God.

You don’t want God’s severe mercy. Trust me, you don’t. But you may need it. God in his sovereign grace may entwine into your life the cruelty of Joseph’s brothers, the whoring of Gomer, the sadism of Herod, the betrayal of Judas, and many other things besides. He knows full well what some people are going to do to you, and he leads you into their lair anyway. Why? Why would he do that? I don’t know. It would be presumptuous of me to guess. He’s God, and I cannot fathom his ways. Maybe sometimes we can see bits and pieces of what he is doing, and maybe after years we will even be able to say, “Now I know what that was about.” Maybe not. But in the meantime we trust him.

And we relinquish to him our misguided sense of control and acknowledge that his sovereign hand may lead us into some circumstances that are delightful and some that are appalling. Consider that when St. Paul wrote, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty” (Philippians 4:12) he was neither crediting his wisdom for the bounty he sometimes enjoyed nor bemoaning his foolishness for the deprivation he sometimes suffered. He had already determined to receive from the Lord both good things and bad things with the discipline of holy contentment.

Like Paul I have known both poverty and riches - though in my case they have been relational rather than economic. God's sovereign love and exact foreknowledge have guided me through both. All praise and thanks to this all-wise, ever-loving, all-knowing God.

November 18, 2009: Toward A Robust View Of God’s Sovereignty: The Fatal Flaw In Tim Keller’s Grace Narrative

I’m a big Tim Keller fan, and enjoy reading whatever the brilliant pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan writes. For a while now I’ve been recommending his book The Reason For God as the best nonfiction I’ve seen in years. But after reading a bold article by John Piper taking on C. S. Lewis (Hey! Who does Piper think he is?), I’m feeling bold myself this morning, and so will bleat a theological complaint I’ve had for a while against Keller.

I object to Keller’s grace rhetoric. Not that I am against grace – heavens no! I favor magnifying, and oppose diminishing, the role of God’s grace in the salvation of our souls. All I want to do is point out an area where grace rhetoric tends to dismiss - or perhaps just overlook - the claims of divine sovereignty.

In his essay “The Advent of Humility” in the December 22, 2008 issue of Christianity Today, Keller writes,

There are two basic narrative identities at work among professing Christians. The first is what I will call the moral-performance narrative identity. These are people who in their heart of hearts say, I obey; therefore I am accepted by God. The second is what I will call the grace narrative identity. This basic operating principle is, I am accepted by God through Christ; therefore I obey.

The problem here is that Keller ties human obedience to acceptance by God, whether as a motive (“I’ll obey so that God will accept me”) or as a reason (“I’ll obey because God has accepted me”). It seems to me that Keller sets up these alternatives as a binary choice. That is, he does not say there are three narrative identities, or fifty, but two, both of which comprehend obedience as something inextricably bound to God’s acceptance of us. It’s just a question of which comes first, or which drives the other, or which serves as the other’s foundation.

But I believe it is best to take obedience off the acceptance grid altogether, and let “acceptance by God” be irrelevant for determining either the motive for or the cause of our submission to him. God should be obeyed because he is God, because as Creator he has the sovereign right to command (and we have the corresponding obligation to obey) whether or not he accepts us, whether or not he shows us grace. I’ll call this the “sovereignty narrative identity.”

It is possible to embrace the sovereignty narrative as the ground for all of one’s moral obligations. C. S. Lewis did that before he ever became a Christian! In 1929 he reluctantly came to believe in God (though he did not yet believe in Jesus or the afterlife), and immediately recognized that he had to submit to the commands of the Absolute. He bowed the knee to the Ultimate and Personal God even though he knew nothing of grace nor approval nor reward in connection with that God.

Years later in Surprised By Joy Lewis wrote, “The commands were inexorable, but they were backed by no 'sanctions.' God was to be obeyed simply because he was God. Long since,…He had taught me how a thing can be revered not for what it can do for us but for what it is in itself…If you ask why we should obey God, in the last resort the answer is, ‘I am.’”

That is exactly correct. The answer is not “Because then I will approve of you,” nor “Because I have received you with grace,” but rather “Because I am God.” It is good that we let grace motivate our gratitude and praise and affection, but when we let it motivate our obedience we come perilously close to diminishing - if not dismissing - the divine demand for submission that knows no other foundation than the sovereign rule of God. Obey God even if he hasn’t shown you grace and never will. Obey God even if you are damned! Who are you to hope for (or respond to) some kind of approval before you’ll obey? Obedience must not concern itself with what it can get (or has already gotten) out of God.

Lewis expresses the value of the sovereignty narrative in a wonderfully provocative spiritual exercise where he writes, “I think it is well, even now, sometimes to say to ourselves, ‘God is such that if (though it’s impossible) his power could vanish and His other attributes remain, so that the supreme right were forever robbed of the supreme might, we should still owe Him precisely the same kind and degree of allegiance as we now do.’” That is right. We would have to obey God even if he couldn’t lavish upon us the benefits of his grace.

Think about it in terms of the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15 – a favorite story of Keller and other “grace narrative” preachers. (See Keller’s mostly excellent book, The Prodigal God, an extended sermon on this parable.) Imagine an alternate ending in which the son returns from his disastrous experiment in loose living and sees from afar that his father’s farm is in ruins. He is told that his father has lost everything and is in poor health. Now he knows that not only will his father not clothe him in finery and throw him a party - he won't even be able to give him a servant's job. What should the son do now?

He should proceed to the house and fall at his father’s feet and beg forgiveness anyway! Why? Because that is his father. It does not matter whether the father chooses to show him grace, or even (contra the story and contra divine reality) he is even capable of showering him with tangible signs of it. It is enough that the man is his father and that he is good. His grace and his power to manifest grace in pleasing ways are glorious things to celebrate, but they are quite beside the point when it comes to the question of why a son should submit to his father’s will.

Permit one more illustration of this idea:

Suppose we ask some men, “Why are you faithful to your wives?” One answers, “Because if I’m faithful to her, then she’ll be faithful to me.” That’s the performance narrative. I do this good thing and have a right to expect her approval and response. Another man says, “I’m faithful to her because she has already been so good to me! How could I not be faithful to someone so kind and dear?” That’s the grace narrative. It sounds a lot better, but I still don’t like it.

Most accurately, a man must be faithful to his wife simply because she’s his wife! That’s the sovereignty narrative. It understands that the institution of marriage itself holds sovereign claim over a man’s obligation to faithfulness. Neither the wife’s anticipated response nor her gracious initiative are granted any relevance in the matter. (They are relevant to a good many other things, but not as motives or inspirations for fidelity.) Thus a good man who is happily married might say, “Well it is certainly true that she is loving and kind and gracious and that she would never cheat on me in a million years. But that’s another matter, and it doesn’t answer your question. I’m faithful to her because she’s my wife. I can’t cheat on a wife.”

Be like that with God. Obey him because he is God.

November 10, 2009: But Didn’t Jesus Forgive The Unrepentant?

It sure looks like Jesus forgave unrepentant people while he hung on the cross. He prayed “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34). The first martyr, Stephen, said much the same as he was being stoned to death: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” (Acts 7:60). These may be the two most remarkable utterances ever spoken by man. Think about it: if you were a Fort Hood soldier bleeding to death on the ground last week from bullet wounds inflicted by Nadal Malik Hasan as he praised the hell-bound angel of darkness known as “Allah,” would you be saying, “Lord Jesus, forgive him”? Probably not. My instincts would not be to forgive the demon-spewing maggot but rather grab a gun so I could shoot him in the head.

But if, as his victim, I desired Hasan’s death rather than his absolution, I’d be in pretty good company with the martyred saints of Revelation 6. They pray to God saying “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the earth and avenge our blood?” (Verse 10). What an interesting prayer! If Christians are always supposed to forgive the unrepentant - if Jesus’ and Stephen’s requests are the norm and our refusal to forgive displeases God - then these saints’ petition should certainly meet with divine rebuke. But they don’t. Instead, the next verse indicates that God approves of their prayer for vengeance: “Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed.” (Verse 11).

Funny thing God doesn’t say to them, “What a shoddy bunch of saints you are! Why can’t you just forgive your killers the way my Son did, the way Stephen did? Haven’t you learned that you’re supposed to be nice to people who murder you?”

The question that intrigues me is how to reconcile Jesus’ and Stephen’s remarkable plea for forgiveness with the saints’ more natural plea for vengeance. Is there any way for both to be right?

I think a big piece of the explanation (there are probably other pieces I’m missing) concerns knowledge. Knowledge matters. It is true that Jesus said “Father forgive them,” but it is also true that he immediately gave the mitigating circumstance: for they do not know what they are doing.

These people did not know they were crucifying the Son of God. They (or at least many of them) thought they were doing a good thing: they were ridding the land of a dangerous heretic. They were ignorant. They would have done differently if they had known better. About 20 years later the Apostle Paul explained that if the rulers of this age had understood God’s wisdom, “they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” (1 Corinthians 2:8). And he could know that for sure because he himself had once been one of the ignorant! He told Timothy that though he was once a “blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man,” he was shown mercy “because I acted in ignorance and unbelief.” (1 Timothy 1:13).

But what if Paul had acted not out of “ignorance and unbelief” but with full knowledge that he was doing the devil’s work? Would he then have received preemptive grace, grace that opens the door ahead of time by crediting a possible future repentance? I don’t think so. In fact, I believe we have a biblical control that answers this thought experiment for us: Judas. People who crucified Jesus did not know what they were doing, and were pardoned, whereas Judas, who spent three years with Jesus and knew exactly what he was doing, was condemned. (Jesus even said it would have been better for him if he had never been born – Matthew 26:24.)

This theme of “He doesn’t know any better – let it pass” versus “He does know better – let him be condemned!” occurs a lot in Scripture.

For example, in Acts 17, Paul tells Gentile pagans that they shouldn’t think that “the divine being is like gold or silver or stone,” (verse 29), and that “In the past God overlooked such ignorance”. He did? God sure didn’t overlook it when the Israelites worshipped idols! That nation was judged a lot, and harshly, for worshipping gods of wood, metal and stone. But meanwhile Gentiles “got away with it” because at the time they didn’t know any better (until now: Paul continues, “but now he commands all people everywhere to repent” – verse 30).

Or consider the deliberate double standard in 1 Corinthians 5:9-11. Paul doesn’t mind it in the least if you associate with sexually immoral greedy swindling idolators – as long as they are unbelievers who don’t know any better. But if they’re Christians and behave like that, then you are supposed to shun them to the point of not even sitting at the same table with them. They should know better. They don’t get forgiven (or even tolerated) until they repent.

That same chapter tells the ugly story of a supposedly Christian Corinthian man who was sleeping with his stepmother. Paul does not command forgiveness for this unrepentant pervert but rather excommunication. It’s a last-ditch effort to try to bring him around. Those who would forgive the unrepentant fornicator would not be doing him any spiritual favor, but rather enabling a “sin unto death” (see 1 John 5:16) that would imperil the man’s soul.

In 2 Corinthians 2 Paul orders the forgiveness of a man who has been restored to fellowship after being punished. (Whether it's the same man we don't know). Paul writes, "The punishment inflicted on him by the majority is sufficient for him. Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow." (Verses 6 and 7). Whatever the circumstances of this man's punishment and restoration, it should be noted that Paul's instructions concerning him are utterly incompatible with the doctrine that we must forgive people no matter what they do, even if they don't repent. If that were true, then Paul would not be instructing the Corinthians to forgive this man, but rebuking them for not having done so already!

The forgiveness of wicked men that Jesus offered while on the cross and that Stephen uttered while being stoned to death are not normative in all circumstances. They are limited to particular ones - especially those in which ignorance plays a part. Most of the time, badness must be rebuked and turned away from before we can forgive it.

November 3, 2009: God’s Prerequisites For Forgiveness

Suppose you are a sinner and you ask some Christian pastor what you have to do to be forgiven by God. What do you think he would say?

Specific answers would vary from pastor to pastor of course. But probably all of them would talk about confessing your sin and turning from it. I think I would quote 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” I’d mention the tax collector who cried out, “God be merciful to me, a sinner!” and the crucified criminal who said to Jesus, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Both men received forgiveness from God. The God we worship stands eager to forgive all who despise their sin and confess it to him.

But imagine now a pastor who responds, “Oh, no, no, no, you misunderstand! You don’t have to do anything to be forgiven by God. You don’t have to say anything, confess anything, believe anything, turn from anything, or even think anything. That is because he has already forgiven you! It’s a terrible mistake to think you’ve got to admit fault or be sorry for what you did. And you certainly don’t have to change your behavior, or even intend to change it. In fact, you could even say to God, ‘I don’t want your forgiveness' - and he would still forgive you anyway! That is because God forgives the unrepentant. He just forgives everybody no matter what they do.”

Those of you who love the Bible would recoil in horror, because you know that that is not how God forgives. It really takes very little investigation to discern that the Bible teaches - with vigorous consistency - that the unrepentant wicked are condemned while the humbly penitent are shown grace. This theme shines on practically every page of Scripture in one form or another.

Which is why it continues to amaze me that so many Christian teachers insist that we ourselves must forgive people who sin grievously but who do not repent. A highly respected and nationally syndicated preacher said that in his sermon a couple weeks ago. I wonder if it will occur to him someday that he is unintentionally suggesting to his congregation that the way God forgives us is pretty shabby. We can do better than God! Though God insists on repentance, we should be much more loving than that.

In the March 9, 2005 issue of Christianity Today, Rev. R. T. Kendall actually said yes to the question “Can I forgive those who have betrayed me if they are not repentant?” He wrote, “If we wait for those who have hurt us to repent first, we will almost certainly wait for a long, long time.” Well, yes, we may indeed have to wait a long time – but that is exactly what God does! Sometimes he waits decades for us to come to our senses and bemoan our sin. Jesus compared his Father to the compassionate father in Luke 15 who patiently waited his prodigal son’s return, and who forgave the young man the instant he came back. Kendall, regrettably, finds such waiting inappropriate, because “We...give ourselves a justification to stay bitter the rest of our lives.” No we don’t - that’s the old sleight-of-hand I mentioned last week, the confusion that equates “forgiveness” with “releasing yourself from bitterness” (and therefore understands “not forgiving” as “choosing to remain bitter.”). But that is not what forgiveness means. Forgiveness is the act of canceling an offender’s debt regardless of how you feel about it. Just because you lack bitterness does not mean you have forgiven, and just because you still have angry feelings doesn’t mean you haven’t.

The basic template for forgiveness, divine and human, is laid down in Luke 17:3 where Jesus says, "If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him.” The second “if” in that sentence must be allowed to stand as our Lord spoke it and not edited to “whether or not.” That is, Jesus did not say – nor would it have occurred to him to say - “If your brother sins, rebuke him, and whether or not he repents, forgive him.” The proper response to sin is rebuke, just as the proper (and gracious) response to repentance is forgiveness.

That point is nailed down in the next verse, where Jesus says, “If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, 'I repent,' forgive him." While our forgiveness should be inexhaustible, just like God’s, it should also be conditioned on the offender’s repentance, just like God’s.

Should there be any other strings attached to our grace? Absolutely. That is part of the lesson of the parable that Jesus told about forgiveness in Matthew 18:31-35. There a man owed a king a million dollars and couldn’t pay it. He begged for mercy and patience, and the king kindly forgave the debt completely (but conditionally, as we find out later). Then the same man went out and throttled a servant who only owed him a hundred dollars. The servant likewise pleaded for patience and mercy, but the man didn't give it. He had the servant thrown in debtor‘s prison.

When the king heard of the matter, he rescinded the original pardon that he had given the first man. There had been a string attached to it, a string which, verbalized, would sound like “Because I forgive you when you beg mercy from me, you must now forgive others when they beg mercy from you.”

Biblical forgiveness has conditions and strings which, when ignored, leave us with emotional mush rather than true grace. When you give no-strings-attached forgiveness to unrepentant people, you have not imitated your Father in heaven but rather simply enabled more wickedness and irresponsibility. And you may also have tempted yourself to wonder why God isn’t as nice and as loving as you.

I can imagine all kinds of objections to what I have written above (“But didn’t Jesus forgive unrepentant people from the cross?”), and will be happy to address those points next week.

October 27, 2009: A Lament Over The Woeful Subjectivizing Of Forgiveness

The following paragraph appeared in last week’s newspaper. What do you think of it?

Speaking publicly for the first time about his slain parents, Garrard McClendon said Friday that he has forgiven their killers. “Yes, my parents were murdered, but I have already forgiven the perpetrators,” the CLTV host told the Tribune. “I just want them to face justice.”

I don’t want to seem cold or unfeeling, so before I analyze McClendon’s statement let me say that he appears to be a very good man. I am deeply impressed that someone who has experienced such terrible grief can say that he has forgiven his parents’ murderers. I honor McClendon, and I wish him well.

But he’s not making any sense when he says, “I forgive the perpetrators - I just want them to face justice.” That is a contradiction in terms.

When contemplating forgiveness it is good to keep in mind the image the Bible uses for it. The Bible explains forgiveness in terms of canceling a debt. So, for example, if you owe me ten dollars, and I forgive you that debt, it means you don’t have to pay me the ten dollars anymore. But if I say, “I have forgiven your debt - I just want the ten dollars back,” you would be puzzled: “Wait - I don’t understand – are you forgiving me the debt or aren’t you?”

When we truly forgive someone it means that we don’t require payment for the debt, and we don’t demand that the individual face justice. That’s what it means to forgive.

Perhaps this can best be understood if we think about what we are asking for when we beg God to forgive us. If a sinner pleads mercy from God, he would not be comforted if God said, “I have forgiven you - but you’re still going to hell. Receiving my forgiveness doesn’t mean you don’t face my justice.” The sinner might respond, “Well, Lord - excuse me for not getting this - but just what do you mean when you say, 'I have forgiven you'?" And if the Lord answered, “I mean that I don’t bear you any personal animosity. I mean that, though you are going to hell, I don’t feel bad about it. I’ve just decided to let go of all that bitterness and anger and not let it weigh me down anymore. In fact, I have a real peace about this,” then the sinner would probably fall on his knees and beg for an upgrade. “Oh Lord, could you please give me the kind of forgiveness where I don’t go to hell?”

That in fact is the kind of forgiveness God offers. It is objective - blessedly so: “Therefore there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1). God’s forgiveness is not simply a statement about God’s state of mind with regard to us. It is an objective and consequential canceling of debt, a removal of condemnation, a full satisfaction of justice. It benefits the sinner in (eternally) tangible ways, and stands as a model for how we should forgive. “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” (Matthew 6:12) "Forgive as the Lord forgave you." (Colossians 3:13).

But decades of sloppy preaching have subjectivized forgiveness to the point where, for many people, it no longer means an objective transaction where a debt is canceled or a sentence is overturned, but merely expresses the way the victim of an injustice feels.

How far this subjectivization goes may be illustrated by a sermon I heard last week by a nationally renowned preacher. He claimed that we can forgive people who are now dead. He explained that though you cannot be reconciled to a deceased person who (say) molested you when you were a child, you can still forgive him in the sense that you release him from your bitterness.

Well, ok, but the problem is that you can toss a bushelful of nonsense into that obscuring phrase “in the sense that.” I mean, I’m seven feet tall in the sense that feet are 10 inches long. I have a body fat index of 5 percent in the sense that all numbers are equal to their squares. You see how easy this is? Unless the phrase “in the sense that” legitimately connects to what follows, all it does (in theological discussions) is throw verbal cloaks over meaning shifts that rob words of their power and (eventually) doctrines of their orthodoxy.

Forgiveness is not (in any sense) a “letting go of personal bitterness.” We need to pick a different word or phrase for that (how about “letting go of personal bitterness”?). Then the word “forgive” can maintain its biblical force and magnitude. When we water down the word “forgive” to the point that, without fear of contradiction, we can speak of forgiving our debtors (but they had better pay up), forgiving our enemies (but I want them in jail), or forgiving great-granddad (though he’ll never know about it), then all we’ve done is put an inappropriately strong label on a subjective state of mind. And if we keep thinking of forgiveness in those vague, pastel terms, it won’t be long before the statement “God forgives vile sinners” loses all its wonder, glory and comfort.

Properly understood, the word “forgive” packs a wallop whose force must be protected from subjectivizing diminishment. Garrard McClendon has not forgiven his parents’ murderers – nor should he. God himself does not forgive unrepentant murderers, but sends them to hell (1 John 3:15; Revelation 21:8). We are not more righteous than God. And we can’t even theoretically forgive dead people (there are no biblical examples of this) - we can only stop thinking bitterly about them, which is a completely different thing.

When you forgive someone, you really and truly let him off the hook. It is not reflexive (you’re not letting yourself off the hook) but transitive (it’s something you do to someone else). It is not merely subjective (a spiritual task completed inside your own head) but objective as well (the offender reaps tangible benefit - like not owing you money any more, or seeing the charges against him dropped.)

And if your forgiveness is to be like God’s, it must insist on repentance, and it must be conditional. Seriously. More on that next week.

October 20, 2009: What (Or Whom) Are You Ashamed Of?

F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.” I’m sure that’s true, because you can almost define a person’s character by the things that shame him. Or that don’t shame him.

Moral degenerates aren’t ashamed of anything they do. Solomon said that the adulteress “eats and wipes her mouth and says, 'I've done nothing wrong.’” (Proverbs 30:20). Jeremiah condemned his generation in similar terms, saying, “Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush.” (Jeremiah 6:15). One indication that you have become depraved is that you can do something bad and not be embarrassed about it.

Some people are embarrassed by the wrong things. My sons went to a high school with spoiled rich kids - they told me that when a teacher suggested that students visit an Aldi’s to do an assignment on budgeting, several girls literally gasped out loud. Aldi’s? Are you kidding? What if someone saw me there? The mere appearance of poverty would plunge them into a death spiral of shame from which they would not know how to break free. I told my boys they could have piped up at that moment, “Aldi’s is where Dad buys all our food!” - and thus guaranteed themselves a safe ostracizing distance from classmates who despised the poor.

My mother always said that the person who is ashamed of being poor is the same as the person who is proud of being rich. She was right.

Speaking of mothers, I have a real hard time reconciling myself to parent shame. I don’t mean being ashamed of a parent who is a drunk or an abuser or a pervert – that shame is understandable and legitimate – I mean the embarrassment that many (especially teenagers) seem to feel over the mere fact that their parents exist and dare to occupy space. The attitude that says “Mom! You’re embarrassing me! Go over there and be invisible!” should be squashed like a bug lest we indulge our children’s temptations to violate the fifth commandment. Sometimes we just need to tell them, “Look. You will honor me - both in private when we are all by ourselves, and out in public when all the world is looking on.”

Forbidding our children to be ashamed of us despite the fact that we are desperately uncool is good training for them not to be ashamed of God. No one is less cool than God. That is why even some committed Christians are embarrassed to admit their faith publicly, or put a word for Jesus in their conversations at school or work or recreation (or on the internet). The shame of being pegged as one of those insufferable religious people is too much for some of us believers to bear. But we should get over it. Jesus said, “If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.” (Luke 9:26). Be ashamed, be very ashamed, of your sin. But don’t be ashamed of Jesus.

October 13, 2009: On Praising Spouses

I am not going to praise my spouse on this page today. I won’t. She has asked me not to, and I will honor her request. She tells me that whenever I speak highly of her it makes her uncomfortable because she does not feel worthy of my public compliments. So I’ll grant her wish and honor the petition that so clearly springs from her sweet humility and modest self-effacing character and mild feminine deference and all those other qualities of decorum and grace that make me giddy with delight and keep me praising God daily both for the raptures of matrimonial ecstasy and the calm joys of settled peace that by his favor he has brought into my life through her like she were a rushing cascade of abundant cool waters to a desert-starved and soul-weary traveler.

But praise her? No - I said I wouldn’t do that, and I won’t.

So let me instead encourage you to praise your spouse, if you have one and can scrape together a single good thing to say about him or her.

I’ll be brutally frank about the thing that brought this topic to mind: discussions that apparently take place among married women. I have never been privy to one of these discussions, obviously - but enough reports have filtered back to me over the years to make me wonder if one of the prime topics of conversation is “All The Things That Are Wrong With My Husband.” I even asked a woman the other day if she knew anyone who spoke highly of her mate. She did not say “Oh sure, lots!” but paused a while and scanned her memory until she could come up with a name. The sad thing is that it involved a Christian woman married to an unbeliever. (I think, “Dang. There’s got to be good Christian husbands out there whose wives extol their merits.”)

Some spouses, of course, are just plain losers and there is nothing good to say about them. Nabal (1 Samuel 25) was like that, and his poor wife Abigail had to run to David and say, “My husband is a jerk! Please don’t kill us!” (Nabal then did everybody a favor by falling over dead.) And Gomer (in Hosea chapters 1-3) was a filthy cheating whore, so her husband probably did not go around telling friends, “Well, at least she’s a good cook.”

Those of you who are married to Nabals or Gomers are exempt from the command to say good things about your mates. We don’t want you to lie.

For the rest of you, contemplate applying Philippians 4:8 to your marriages. It reads, “Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.”

There’s biblical precedent for praising your husbands and wives. Abraham said to Sarah, "I know what a beautiful woman you are” (Genesis 12:11). The widow of a prophet told Elisha, “You know [my husband] revered the Lord” (2 Kings 4:1). Ruth and Boaz said nice things about each other in public. Solomon and his beloved had the screaming hots for each other, and sang each other’s glories in exquisite detail (Song of Solomon). Lemuel quoted a happy husband who says, “Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all” (Proverbs 31:29).

In 1971 my mother wrote an article for the Chicago Daily News in which she praised her husband (as always, I’ll make copies available upon request). One of the things she praised him for was praising her! Among the good things he did (which she framed as “advice for husbands who have more love to offer than money”):

- Make a small production out of it when you introduce her to anyone.
- Smile and nod in agreement when she’s complimented.
- Bristle when you detect even a slight criticism of her.
- If she’s a great housekeeper and you’re a disorganized one, don’t attempt your own reformation. Just brag about her fantastic ability to all her friends.

I don’t know about that last one. I think Mom just got carried away with her own rhetoric, because it seems to me that all great housekeepers - male or female – do in fact appreciate it when their disorganized spouses attempt personal reformation. So maybe she exaggerated a little on that.

But as for the concluding observation, who among us doesn’t like having our fantastic abilities bragged about to all our friends?

October 6, 2009: A Note On The Pursuit Of Happiness

Suppose you are single and contemplating marriage, and a benevolent angel visits you and tells you that if you marry you will be exactly as happy in the future as if you had remained single. The pros and cons of your marriage will balance each other perfectly – all joys on the one side will match (but not exceed) sorrows on the other.

Do you marry?

I think a Christian would want to ask the angel, “Well, what does God want me to do?” Now the angel says, “In your case God doesn’t care. Oops – sorry - let me rephrase that. He cares about you, of course, it’s just that he’s fine with it either way, whether you marry or remain celibate. Both options are equally obedient.”

So, do you marry? Or is there anything else you would like to ask the angel?

While you think about that, let me recommend an essay by C. S. Lewis, “We Have No ‘Right To Happiness’” in his book, God in the Dock. It would give me some happiness to mail you a copy of it upon request, because it is good and will benefit you and you will be a better person if you take its lessons to heart.

Lewis writes about people who do despicable things like have affairs and leave their mates because doing so makes them happy - and happiness is a thing they regard as a sacred right. Actually, they only regard their own happiness as a sacred right. If someone slandered them, for example, they would howl in protest and not be placated if their enemy explained, “But it made me happy to tell all those lies about you!”

Lewis’ essay debunking the right to happiness is the last thing he ever wrote. He died a few days later.

Lewis was a happy man, by all accounts – jovial, courteous, laughed a lot, brightened every room he entered. All the Lewis biographies say that about him, and every written remembrance alludes to his broad generosity of spirit. But Lewis hardly ever seemed to plot a course of action merely on the basis of what would make him happy. In fact, he even got married as a favor to a friend! American author (and single mom) Joy Gresham asked him if he would marry her so that she would not be deported from England when her visa expired. Though perfectly content as a 58-year-old bachelor, Lewis agreed to the marriage-in-name-only (no rings, private civil ceremony, they lived apart) just so that she could stay in England with her boys.

Then Joy got cancer, and Lewis took her into his home. He cared for her until she died two years later. He fell deeply in love with her, and cherished her as much as one person can cherish another. Read A Grief Observed, written right after her death, and unless your heart is made of stone you’ll want to cry for him, the loss hurt so bad.

The last thing Joy said to Lewis before she passed away was “You have made me happy.”

That’s what I’d like to ask the angel about in the hypothetical situation I propose above. Regardless of whether marriage advances my happiness, what about my spouse? Will she have greater joy for having married me? If so, then by all means let’s do this! If I am to marry, please let it be to someone who can say to me on her deathbed (or when I’m on mine), “You have made me happy.”

Romans 14:7 says that none of us lives to himself alone. That is as it should be. Do good, and let the prospect of other peoples’ happiness determine the course of your actions and decisions. You might get a good share of your own happiness on the rebound. And if not, well, don’t worry about it. If you trust in Jesus Christ you’ll have a whole eternity to bathe in joys and ecstasies that will drown every sorrow you have ever known.

September 29, 2009: They Surfed The Tsunami

Last night I had dinner with an amazing missionary couple who are helping to supervise the translation of the Bible into several languages in Papua New Guinea.

Eleven years ago they were trying to get the Bible into just one language. Then a tsunami wiped out their village, killing many. (They weren’t there at the time, but their friends and co-translators were.) It seemed that their life’s work had come to an end.

If they were now atheists, you would probably point to the ’98 Tsunami as the trigger of their loss of faith. (See Pastor’s Pages January 4 and 9, 2005, for my responses to an Eric Zorn essay about the how the 2004 Great Tsunami confirmed his disbelief in God.) But John and Bonnie are still theists, still Christians, and are still putting the Bible in languages that don’t have it. They have even seen their work expand remarkably in recent years. The same God (there’s only one!) who destroyed their village and killed their friends has now led them to pioneer a technique for getting multiple translations done simultaneously. In fact, John has been asked to write a book whose working title is something like Waves of Change: How a Tsunami Furthered the Cause of Bible Translation. (My suggested title How We Help Jesus Speak Weird Languages is not being given serious consideration.)

After John and Bonnie left I told my wife that I didn’t feel worthy of them. I regard with humble awe those who, by God’s grace, turn adverse circumstances to ministerial advantage. I know that that is exactly what we servants of God are supposed to do – it’s in the manual for Christ’s sake (Philippians 1:12; James 1:2-3) - but that’s a lot harder to do than it sounds. When I was “tsunamied” by a loved one’s apostasy and desertion (on top of some other things), my outlook was less like that of St. Paul and St. James and St. John and St. Bonnie and more like that of prophetic mopes Elijah and Jonah. Look up 1 Kings 19:4 and Jonah 4:8 and you will see how those dispirited prophets basically prayed, “Lord, this isn’t working at all. What do you say you just take me home now.”

I thought about a friend who is enduring a personal tsunami. His daughter is handicapped, his wife has a disorder that leaves her unable to digest food properly and is profoundly depressed, and the economy has washed away most of his business. But he still looks to God, maker of heaven and earth, only source of comfort in life and in death. And I know that God will reward the faith he maintains even while “pinned and wriggling on the wall” like a bug in T. S. Eliot's poetic imagination. Perhaps in this life - certainly in the next – he will see how his daughter’s disability and his wife’s condition and his financial upheaval all uncovered hidden graces and resulted in ministries that would not otherwise have come about.

In 1787 John Rippon published “How Firm A Foundation”, a hymn that includes the words,

When through the deep waters I call thee to go
The rivers of sorrow shall not overflow
For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress

Not all tsunamis drown. Sometimes they lift you off your feet and tumble you end over end and deposit you miles away from the place you thought was going to be your permanent home. There – wet, bedraggled, shivering, surveying only a wasteland of destruction that stretches to the sea – you have finally arrived at the place where God has determined you can do the most good and bring him the most glory. And eventually (again, if not in this life, in the next) you will have joy.

September 22, 2009: Nothing You Can Do Can Make God Love You More?

It is possible that I offended or disturbed some people last week by suggesting there was something we could do to “get on God’s good side”. (What I suggested was building up - rather than tearing down - the assembly of believers that is called the church, the bride of Christ.)

Whom did I offend? People who have been taught to believe that there is nothing you can do to get on God’s good side, that no action on your part can have any effect on God’s love for you. This doctrine is widespread and gathering steam in North American evangelical circles. I will call it the Yancey Doctrine in honor of its most eloquent proponent, Philip Yancey. In his bestseller What’s So Amazing About Grace, Yancey writes,

Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more... And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less... Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love.

I have heard this quote several times in sermons over the past few years, and have seen it in devotional writings. Sometimes it is edited to “Nothing you can do will make God love you more; nothing you can do will make God love you less.” But I have never seen the Yancey Doctrine attached to a Scripture reference. That is because there are no Bible verses that support it! In fact, the Bible teaches the opposite with such clarity that I’m tempted to consider it a sign of biblical illiteracy that so many evangelicals regard the Yancey Doctrine as a worthy characterization of the grace and love of God.

Start with John 14:21, where Jesus says, “He who loves me will be loved by my Father.” That flatly contradicts the Yancey Doctrine. Read it again. If you want God to love you, love Jesus.

Go to John 15:10, once more from Jesus: “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love.” There is no subtlety in these words, no need to struggle hard to absorb a difficult thought. If you want to remain - stay, abide - in the love of Jesus, if you want him to keep loving you, and you don’t want him to love you any less than he does now, then obey his commands.

Now John 16:27: “The Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.” The Yancey Doctrine crashes against this verse like a balsa wood plank against the rocks of Thunder Bay. To maintain the Yancey Doctrine you would have to edit this verse to read “The Father himself loves you regardless of whether you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.” But of course Jesus’ words must be allowed to stand as spoken. He was telling his disciples that they had indeed done something that made God love them: they had loved and believed in Jesus.

For a concrete example of a man who elicited Jesus’ love by something he did, go to Mark 10:17-22. There a rich man approached Jesus and asked how he could inherit eternal life. He said he had been obedient to the 10 commandments since he was a boy, but evidently he felt he needed to do more. (It turns out he was right.) Verse 21 says “Jesus looked at him and loved him.” Why did Jesus love him? A fair reading of the text suggests it was because he really was a pretty good man (at least by human standards), and was sincerely seeking the eternal favor of God. That is good - very good! - so good that it inspired the love of Jesus. Consider this: the Bible never says that Jesus looked at scheming murderers like Caiaphas or Herod and loved them. Now, if only that wealthy seeker had gone on to the next step and parted with his money (verses 21-22), Jesus would have loved him even more.

Can you really get God to love you more by being generous? Of course you can – the Bible teaches that when it says, in 2 Corinthians 9:7, “God loves a cheerful giver.” Those five words are impossible to reconcile with the Yancey Doctrine, which teaches that God loves you exactly the same whether you give cheerfully, or grudgingly, or not at all. What rubbish. In order for it to be true that “God loves a cheerful giver”, it is necessarily true that God loves cheerful givers more, or better, or to a higher degree, or with more intensity, than he loves cheerless stingy tightwads.

Bad doctrines have bad consequences. It seems to me that the Yancey Doctrine is not simply “wrong, though harmless” but “wrong and dangerous.” It is dangerous because of the way it stimulates moral license and hinders spiritual growth. We poor fallen sinners have a hard enough time doing the right thing without someone whispering in our ear, “You know, even if you succumb to that sin, God will still love you just as much as he does now.” Oh please. I don’t know about you, but I’m so weak I need every motivation possible to help me to be good. The prospect of receiving more of God’s love is a great incentive for me, even as the prospect of losing some of it provokes righteous fear. God knew that, which is why he filled his Word with admonitions that - contrary to the Yancey Doctrine - link our obedience to his love.

September 15, 2009: How To Get On God’s Good Side

First let me tell you how to get on my good side.

You do that by being good to my wife. I have found that this works amazingly well. Ever since she and I got engaged I’ve had the repeated delight of learning about the people who have been kind to her over the years. I treasure these people like you would not believe. Lisa has often been tested with hard challenges and grievous sorrows, and everyone who stood by her, helped her and supported her will always know my lasting affection. I bet they’d be surprised to know the strength of my regard for them. I love them and can’t help loving them.

Of course it is a completely different story concerning those who have been mean to her, treated her shamefully, broken her heart, driven her to tears of anguish. Boy do I find it hard to be kindly disposed to such people. If you have been unkind to Lisa, you can’t be my friend. I’m not saying that it is right or wrong of me to feel this way – I’m just saying it is a fact about the way I am. All offenses against her are offenses against me. Halos hover around the heads of those who make her rejoice; clouds of foul stench arise from those who make her weep.

I think that these feelings of love and antipathy for the heroes and villains in her life are an echo (a distant, faint and corrupted echo – but an echo nonetheless) of our Lord’s feelings about the people who affect his bride, the Church. When Saul of Tarsus went after the Church, Jesus went after him. He knocked Saul off his donkey (assuming he was riding one), blinded him like a mole and demanded “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4). Where did the word “me” in that question come from? Thousands of preachers in thousands of sermons ever since have noted that, technically, Saul had not been persecuting Jesus (he didn’t even think Jesus was alive!), just his followers. But Jesus took it personally. He defended his beloved Church, saying, in effect, “You mistreat them, you mistreat me.”

It works the other way too. Let me put it in really crude terms: if you treat the Church well, you will get on Jesus’ good side. The Bible teaches that. In Matthew 10:42 Jesus says, “If anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple [emphasis added], I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward." Jesus likes it when you refresh his followers. And in the famous Matthew 25 passage, where Jesus says “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink” (verse 35), note that he clarifies when people did that for him: “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine [emphasis added again], you did for me” (verse 40). Though some think that “these brothers of mine” refer to anybody at all, if you look up the word “brother” in passages like Matthew 12:48-49, John 21:23, Acts 11:1 and Hebrews 2:11, you will see why scholarly commentators tend to say that the “brothers of Jesus” are his followers, the Church.

Hurt a church and it won’t go well for you. 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 teaches that when it says, “Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple.” In this passage, the temple of God’s Spirit is not the individual human body (that’s in 1 Corinthians 6:19! Different text!), but rather the local church. Paul is saying, “Wreck a church and God’ll wreck you.”

Lend your help (through attendance, tithe, prayer, participation – all that) to a local body of believers, and Jesus will like you even more than I like the people who have been good to my wife. Or sabotage a church (whether through passive neglect or active hindrance), and you will find yourself whimpering in the doghouse of the Lord. But remember, while there, that even dogs can be redeemed (see Matthew 15:26-28), and that God, in his grace, can take a church-devouring wolf like Saul and make him the greatest Church Father the world has ever known.

September 8, 2009: What If Christianity Doesn’t Help You?

I was listening to WMBI’s Midday Connection last week and a woman described the effect that unemployment had on her husband. For the first 3-6 months he was optimistic, confident that his abilities and experience would land him a good position quickly. But after 18 months of no work, she said, he was so discouraged he was wondering whether God existed.

I find it instructive to ponder reasons why people believe, keep believing, doubt, or cease believing in God. What - in your own mind - leads you to believe or disbelieve?

What I’d like to challenge is what I call “as long as” Christian faith. By that I mean the faith of people who would say - if they articulated their beliefs - “I will believe in Jesus Christ as long as I keep my job, and my house never goes into foreclosure.” Or perhaps, “I believe in Jesus as long as my spouse is not terminally ill.” Or, “I’ll be a Christian as long as my son does not commit suicide.” Or, “I’ll trust Christ as long as my daughter is not brutally murdered.” ”But ,” continues the “as-long-as” believer, “If any of those things happen to me, I’ll regard them as perfectly legitimate counterarguments to the faith I now hold dearly.”

I think it goes without saying that “as-long-as” faith is not worthy of the Christ it claims to adore, and that we who call ourselves followers of Jesus should beware lest we be found guilty of owning a faith so shallow. I also think that the temptation to adopt "as-long-as” faith should make us think hard about how we present the good news of Jesus Christ.

When I preach the gospel I am careful to discipline myself to urge people to believe Christianity because it is true. Not because it is pleasant or helpful or inspiring (though it may well be), but simply because it corresponds to the way reality is. The doctrines of orthodox Christianity are true regardless of how you feel about them. They are true when your life is sunny and pleasant; they are true when your life is dark and despairing. The circumstances of your life and the emotions of your heart have no more influence on the truth of Christianity than they do on the fact that the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter is 3.14. Do you remember your high school geometry? The value of pi does not change when you lose your job, or your spouse leaves you, or your friends betray you, or your son slashes his wrists. I know I am putting this crudely, but God is like pi. He is who he is, and our feelings about him – whether of doubt, confidence, affection or hatred – neither cause him to pass in and out of existence nor change his character in the least.

The other day I was discussing with a friend whether true conversion could only come about through a deep feeling of brokenness. I flatly deny this. No doubt many people do bow the knee to Jesus for the first time when they are passing through a season of loss, guilt, anxiety or pain. And I think God mercifully allows those things in our lives precisely so that we will be driven to him. But I also think that a crisis of brokenness is, by itself, an inadequate basis for long-term faith, and, for many people, it is not even necessary. A conviction of the truth of the gospel is, however, absolutely necessary. Many, rushing to Jesus in a moment of distress, dump him as soon as the emergency passes. Others dump him when the crisis that brought them to him is not resolved. Others dump him when a crisis of guilt has passed but a new one of, say, discouragement has arrived.

It is harder to dump him though if you have been persuaded of the truth that God omnipotent lives and reigns, and that Jesus his Son died for sinners and rose again on the third day. That I believe, and know, and preach, and, yes, even try to prove. I have noticed that when the apostles preached the gospel, they were always appealing to reason, always seeking to engage the mind. See for example:

Acts 9:22: Yet Saul grew more and more powerful… proving that Jesus is the Christ.
Acts 17:2-3: Paul…reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead.
Acts 18:28: [Apollos] vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ.

What the apostles never do is tell you that the Christian faith can give you the peace of mind you always lacked, and make you a happier, more well-rounded person. I think that perceptive people have always known that present happiness is not Christianity's "selling point" (again, putting it crudely). As C. S. Lewis said, “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.” Right. With Lewis, I only recommend Christianity because it is true. No other benefits would compel my devotion if I thought it were false; no hardships may be allowed to weaken my allegiance now that I have received it as true.

The other day I passed by a church that had put posters on its lawn asking me if life’s circumstances left my stomach tied in knots, and if I wanted to learn how to “fly above the turbulence.” And I thought, “Oh no. I sure hope they’re not preaching Jesus as a cure for anxiety.” I’ve heard that kind of preaching all my life, and have really come to despise it. Not only does it strike me as unbiblical, it also seems to set people up for crises of faith when, after 18 months of unemployment (for example), they find themselves just as anxious as ever. (“And I thought Christianity was supposed to cure this! Maybe this faith isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”)

Look, I have no idea if you come to Jesus whether you’ll be less anxious or more happy or better off or anything like that. Maybe you will, but it’s quite beside the point. And I don’t know if Jesus will “heal your brokenness.” What I do know is that he will forgive your sins. I do not know if he will give you a deep sense of purpose and fulfillment – but I do know that he will give you eternal life.

Here is truth: Turn from your sin and believe in Jesus Christ, and some day you will see God. No circumstances can ever change that, and nothing you experience should ever give you cause to doubt it.

September 1, 2009: God Bless You Please, Mrs. Lundquist

One afternoon about 20 years ago I was having a discussion with my mother about the proper etiquette for addressing names on an envelope. At one point she said, “Here’s how I like to be addressed,” and she grabbed a pen and wrote “Mrs. Lowell Lundquist”. Lowell was my dad’s name. He had died 10 years earlier. But for the remainder of Mom’s life, she honored his memory and counted it a privilege to bear the name she took on her wedding day. From that day forward whenever I wrote my mother (from Colombia where I was living) I addressed the envelope to “Mrs. Lowell Lundquist”. By that simple gesture I remembered with her the love that she felt for my father, and the joy she experienced in being known by his name.

I like to tell that story whenever I conduct a wedding where the bride takes her husband’s name. I offer a prayer for Miss Jones that it will always be a joy for her to say “I am Mrs. Smith.” And I admonish the groom, Smith, telling him that his behavior must be so noble, so exemplary, so loving, that his wife will never have cause to despise the name she bears. Let that name be to her a source of righteous pride, I tell him.

Things are different of course for older couples when they marry. My bride and I are in our 40s. At that age a woman’s professional identity may be bound to the name she has been using. None of us would know who “Joni Tada” is, but we all know Joni Eareckson Tada as that stunningly gracious and productive quadriplegic who makes us glorify God and wonder why we have not done more with our lives. And Elizabeth will always be Elliot, even though she married a couple times after Mr. Elliot gave his life to bring Jesus to the Aucas.

An older woman may also have children who share her name, and would like to keep it that way when she remarries. That makes sense too. I like the fact that my sons and I share a name, and would not want to deny that pleasure to the widowed mother of three who took my hand in marriage.

So when Lisa and I got engaged I told her to feel free to do whatever she wanted with her surname. She was happy about that, because all her job-related paperwork was in her old name, and she still had a daughter in school bearing that name. But then she said to me, “But I want to be Mrs. Lundquist!” So she worked out a compromise where she hyphenates, and now - solely for my sake, because she loves me - she endures the inconvenience of a 6-syllabled, 23-lettered name that runs off the end of the page.

I like the other name we both go by, “Christian”. It is good and short and powerful, and I’ve always preferred it to the longer and less wieldy “Protestant” or “Evangelical”. It’s an eternal name too, one that no change of status can ever alter or compromise. A mere ring can be taken off, and a tattoo removed, but “Christian” is stamped indelibly on our souls and will remain long after our mortal flesh has decayed and we are safe in the presence of God. And who could ever be ashamed of that name?

August 29, 2009: If A Man Will Not Work...

Three weeks ago I bought a couple popsicles from a Mexican street vendor in honor of my grandfather.

My grandfather – Dad’s dad, was 36 when the Great Depression hit. I had heard that he was a shoe repairman, but recently my sister corrected me: “No, that came later,” she said. “During the Depression he strapped an ice box on his back and sold ice cream cones to rich people in Lincoln Park.” I don’t know what he did for work during the winter.

Grandfather lost his wife to cancer in 1933 and was left with two boys, 12 and 6 years old, whom he raised alone until he remarried. I’m told he was not a pleasant man – he is remembered as a stern grouch - but to his eternal credit he scrambled and hustled to provide for his family during bleak economic times. I don’t think my dad ever went to bed hungry. If he did, he never mentioned it.

My mother often went to bed hungry though. Her father drank his way through the Depression and eventually died of cirrhosis of the liver. I never understood how he afforded liquor, given that he couldn’t afford to feed his family. They were on relief and took whatever the Salvation Army gave them. In later years Mom spoke with regret about how often she must have broken her mother’s heart as a child by complaining that there wasn’t enough food, and bickering with her siblings over the portion sizes (“She got more than I did!”).

Several friends of mine are un- and under-employed, and, two days after I bought the Mexican popsicles, I joined their ranks. The board chairman of the small church that I served called me to a special meeting and told me that, since the church was not doing well, I was being let go, effective immediately. (He and I have profoundly irreconcilable views on why the church has not thrived, but I’ll leave that topic alone.) My duty now is to concern myself not with things past but with things future - as St. Paul says in Philippians 3:13b: “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead”.

I’ve always wanted to set an example for people, and say with a clear conscience what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:1: “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ.” So I'll view these unforeseen and disturbing circumstances as an opportunity to do that. I am reminded of what the mother of a college friend of mine said to him as she was dying of cancer: “I have tried to show you how to live; now I must show you how to die.” Leading by example does not necessarily mean succeeding in bright circumstances - often it means coping with dark ones. So, say a prayer that I’ll do an example-setting job of illustrating the way a middle-aged, paycheck-to-paycheck but recently unemployed newlywed with a narrowly defined skill set ought to respond to the sudden loss of his livelihood.

By God’s grace I can call upon some extraordinary assets for the challenges ahead. I have a Bible to warn me: “If a man will not work, neither let him eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10); and “If a man does not provide...for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” (1 Timothy 5:8). I have a God who promises to provide - as long as I do not test his patience with laziness and vice. I have the legacy of a hard-working ice-cream vendor grandfather and radio-repairman father. (He lost his job in his fifties!). And, now, I have a bride whom the Gentleman Caller in Solomon’s Song of Songs could not love more. I think when she opens her eyes every morning she immediately asks herself, “What can I do today to please and encourage my husband?” I bet she’d even help me strap that ice box on my back so I could go sell popsicles in the park.

August 11, 2009: Imagining Heaven (Part 3)

Suppose that you and I were twin fetuses waiting to be born, and we could talk, and you got a chance to see the outside world for a while, and then returned and tried to tell me what you experienced.

What would you say? How would you describe things to me?

Keep in mind that I have never seen anything, never breathed air, never felt a mother's touch, never heard anything but muffled, indistinct sounds, never crawled, never tasted milk, never smelled anything. While accounting for all my limitations, describe to me what it is like to ride a horse galloping through a field of wildflowers while gazing at snow-capped mountains in the distance.

You can't even describe the horse! "What's a horse?" I ask. You say, "It's an animal that-" and I interrupt, "What's an animal?" You reply, "An animal is a being that breathes and eats and reproduces-" "Hold on!" I say, because now I'm really confused. "What is 'breathe'? What is 'eat'? What is 'reproduce'? And what is a 'being'?"

You quickly give up trying to describe anything to me, so I try to help you out with the simplest questions I can think of. "What kind of nutrition do we get through our umbilical cords out there? What's the temperature of the amniotic fluid that we float in? Do we float in any position at all, or only right-side up? Do we get to kick each other a bit (because that's my favorite thing in the world!)." And, of course, you find that you are not able to give a satisfactory answer even to the most basic questions that I can come up with.

I think that describing heavenly reality to earthly mortals is like that. One of the most common questions I get about heaven, for example, is whether our pets will be there. I suspect the answer is neither yes nor no, but, "That's kind of like a fetus asking about the function of his umbilical cord after he's born." The vital lifelines of our present existence - things we can't imagine doing without - will be superseded by the glorious and the unimaginable.

Speaking of glorious and unimaginable: Lisa my bride took my name on Saturday, and, like the blessed fetus above, I'm completely at a loss to express what it's like to be married to her. This is about the best I can do: have you ever been dead, and got to go to heaven, and then they revived you and brought you back here? It's like the part just before they revive you and bring you back here.

July 26, 2009: Imagining Heaven (Part 2)

When I compared Alice Sebold's and C. S. Lewis' visions of heaven last week, I wonder if any readers thought, "Why bother imagining heaven at all? Can't we just go by what the Bible says about it?" And that might seem like a simple and obvious thing to do. But the problem is that the Bible never gives a single coherent view of the blessed afterlife.

What it gives instead is a variety of images that are hard to put together in a single frame. I would go as far as to say that our finite minds cannot assemble all the images meaningfully.

Sometimes heaven is viewed as a city (Revelation 21:2). Sometimes it is a country comprised of cities (Luke 19:11-19). Sometimes the scale is reduced, and it is viewed as a many-roomed mansion (John 14:2). Sometimes it is a serene countryside (Isaiah 11:6-9). What will we be doing there? In Matthew 25:1-13 and Revelation 19:9 it looks like we're having a party in a wedding reception hall. In Revelation 4 and 5 it looks like we're worshipping in a great throne room. In Hebrews 4:1-11, I think we're just relaxing in a hammock under a shade tree.

So, which is it? Are we relaxing, dancing, or bowing? Are we in a room, or a great hall, or an open space? Are we in a city with a huge throng, or are we walking along grassy hills with a lion on our left and a lamb on our right? And is Jesus at our side speaking words of love - or is he off in the distance, seated on a throne before which we lie prostrate?

Yes.

I suppose if you wanted to insist on a literal fulfillment of all the images you could gerrymander a way to do it. Like this: on Tuesdays in heaven we exit our condo units at the mansion and walk over to the big worship center for some angel-led praise. Wednesdays we drink and dance and stuff ourselves at a party. Thursdays we tour the cities we've been assigned to govern and take care of administrative duties that have piled up during the week. Fridays we frolic with wolves and lions by a viper's pit (and give thanks they're all vegetarians now). Saturday, hammock. Sunday your choice. Then Monday is the day everybody looks forward to, because, since Matthew 22:30 says we are like genderless unmarried angels, we get to indulge in that mysterious thing God has prepared for us that we all like better than sex.

Or we can let the literalisms go and recognize that the images given to us are just that - images. They are word pictures designed to communicate the incommunicable. None of the pictures is false – they are simply inadequate for the task of conveying even a little bit of heavenly reality to us.

For a while it intrigued me (I'm not sure I could say it bothered me) that, while I preferred to see heaven as beautiful open countryside - the Rocky Mountains! - the Bible more often saw it as a city. I don't like cities, especially crowded ones. Why does the Bible give me such an inferior picture?

Then a couple things occurred to me. First, the "wilderness" known by ancient Israelites simply wasn't all that beautiful. They didn't have a Glacier National Park, or a Grand Canyon, or even Smokey Mountains. (Of course, I must confess I've never been to Israel and have not been able to evaluate the scenery there. But I have seen pictures. Meh.)

Secondly, Israelite wilderness was not a lush vacationland but a barren, hostile threat. Their wilderness was the place where you could die of thirst, find no food, maybe be set upon by thieves or foreign soldiers. It was the city, your city, where you found refuge, safety, food, comfort, fellowship. So of course, to such a people, heaven must be pictured as a city. That is the best place they knew. But I wonder, had Revelation been written in 21st century America, if urban terminology would have been used at all. To me, at least, the very word "city" conjures up no thoughts of heavenly delight but rather of crime, noise, blight, honking horns, crowded subways, unpleasantly overwhelmed senses, and the smell of car exhaust.

I think the main thing we need to understand about heaven is that we will be with Christ and we will like it. Beyond that, it's a little hard to see. Paul said once, "Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face" (1 Corinthians 13:12). And when he caught sight of heaven, he wasn't even allowed to talk about it (2 Corinthians 12:2-4). Some things about heaven will remain unseeable and unknowable until we get there.

I'm getting married in 11 days. That's pretty heavenly.