Detecting The Aroma Of Christ (June 25, 2006)

"You must be believers!"

It was a bold guess on the part of my friend and colleague, Haitian minister Franco Valdemar. He had been eating lunch in a Chinese buffet when he walked up to a booth of four gentleman and told them that he figured they had to be Christians. I asked Franco if it was because he had overheard them talking about the Lord, and he said no. It was just the way they interacted with each other.

It turns out he was right, of course. One of the men was a minister, and he eventually invited Franco to his church to talk about his work in Haiti.

Franco's good guess reminded me of the time I walked into a barber shop and the barber immediately asked me (kind of loudly), "Are you a minister?" I said yes, and asked how he knew. He said, "Felt the Spirit!"

Of course there are natural explanations for ESPOCP (Extra Sensory Perception Of Christian Presence). Maybe Franco actually had heard the four lunch-eaters mention Jesus but did not consciously realize it. Maybe that barber asked every stranger with a tie who walked into his shop during work hours the same question he asked me.

But I suspect you could cull enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that there really exists a spiritually detectable "fragrance of Christ" (2 Corinthians 2:15-16). I asked Franco if strangers ever pegged him as a Christian, and he said "All the time." A colleague of mine in Florida, who wears no ministerial dress whatsoever, once asked, "Do I wear a sign around my neck that says 'Pastor' or something? How do they know?"

My favorite of these stories involves a friend of a friend who walked into a cabin in Alaska where a motley crew were gathered. A man there said to him, "As you came through that door I perceived that you had no pretensions or guile. That means one of two things. Either you've done a lot of acid or you're a born-again Christian." He had not done any acid.

The other day I saw a bust of Lenin. Look at any picture of him and you can't miss the "frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command" that Shelley's traveler saw in Ozymandias. If I had never heard of Lenin, I think I could just look at his face and say, "Whoever that is, I'll bet you he doesn't love Jesus."

Here's praying that your love for Jesus creates within you a holy joy that practically oozes out your pores, and provokes the occasional question, "Are you a Christian or something?"

“Unconditional Love” Is Unbiblical Nonsense (June 11, 2006)

An article in Sunday's Chicago Tribune says that Jane Adams' philosophy of social engagement "was rooted in her commitment to the message of unconditional love in the teachings of Jesus."

What message of unconditional love in the teachings of Jesus?

I can't find "unconditional love" in the words of Jesus or anywhere
else in the Bible. But that phrase has become so entrenched in
religious vocabulary that just about everyone, Christian and
non-Christian alike, assumes it is biblical. It isn't. Jesus taught
that God's love is conditional, and he himself exemplified conditional
love in his dealings with men.

In John 16:27 he said to his disciples, "The Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God." If the Father's love were unconditional, this statement would be meaningless or false. The doctrine of unconditional love would have to remove the "because" from that verse and make it read, "The Father himself loves you whether or not you have loved me and have believed that I came from God."

In John 15:10 Jesus said, "If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love." This is straightforward. Remaining in the love of Christ is conditioned on obedience to his commands. That's what the word "if" means! The word "if" introduces a condition. If (now there's a condition for you) our Lord's love were unconditional, he would have said "Whether or not you obey my commands, you will remain in my love.

In John 14:21 Jesus said, "He who loves me will be loved by my Father." If God's love were unconditional, that statement would read, "He who loves/hates/ignores/whatevers me will be loved by my Father." Again, the words of Jesus, as given, are as transparently conditional as they can be.

Jesus said, "Whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven" (Matthew 10:33). I cannot see how being disowned by Jesus is consistent with being loved by him. If someone were to say, "But this too is love! When Jesus banishes eternally from the presence of God those who disown him, that too - if we could only understand it - is just one more tender act of his unconditional love," I would answer with C. S. Lewis' memorable line, "Don't talk damn nonsense."

When Jesus calls Herod a fox (I.e., "rat", "weasel" - Luke 13:32), when he calls hypocrites children of the devil (John 8:44), when he denounces the Pharisees with scathing woes (Matthew 23:13-33), when he blows off his own family(!) - Luke 8:19-21 - he is not loving them. Love is when he calls his obedient disciples his friends (John 15:15). Love is when he washes their feet (John 13:5).

More than once I have received kind comments from people who thanked me for preaching God's unconditional love, and I don't know how to respond. I don't correct them. They're being nice. In fact, they probably understood me just fine - the problem really lies in the fact that they don't know what the word "unconditional" means.

So why do I make such a fuss about the dictionary definition of this word? Don't I have better things to do than play semantic games, and insist on the proper usage of the word "unconditional"?

I'll tell you why I fret about this word. Words condition thoughts. Careless words distort truth. Words that are used imprecisely by one generation are taken literally and at face value by the next, with devastating consequences.

I believe one possible result of this relentless jabbering about God's "unconditional love" will be more sin - and hence, less of God's love. Already I'm getting tired of sinners who defy God's commands but who still believe that he loves them anyway. Given today's homiletic unclarity, why shouldn't they believe that? They have been absorbing that sound-bite about God's unconditional love into their bloodstream like a nicotine patch. It has taken the edge off their natural craving
to be loved by him. Why yearn for that? Why adjust behavior in order to obtain it? The preachers have been telling them that God's love is already theirs, in abundance, and nothing they can do or fail to do will add to or detract from it.

I would rather they hear again and again the fearsome but biblical admonition, "Stop sinning, or God won't love you."

Brag About Your Kids (June 4, 2006)

I like it when people brag about their kids.

I know that such bragging provokes rolled eyes and bitter backlash from those who find it unseemly. I wouldn't say that they're jealous, but I do think that they are too sophisticated for their own (or anybody's) good. If people consider you insufferable for going on about what a great thing your kid did, nuts to them. When Johnny gets sent to a juvenile detention center, share it quietly at prayer meeting - but when he wins the city-wide violin contest, tell everybody! I'll be happy for you.

I got an email from a friend saying that his teenage son "hit his fifth out-of-the-park home run on Saturday, in addition to nailing two base stealers at second and third (while playing catcher) AND he was the game-saving pitcher who set up an unassisted double-play to end the contest." Wow! Wish I could have been there. That must have been great.

I bragged back about my son Peter, who hasn't a single athletic accomplishment lurking anywhere in his body, but who can read upside down. When he was in first grade I noticed that when he read, it did not seem to matter at all to him how the page was situated. I tested him on this ability the other day, handing him (upside down) some unfamiliar reading material with big words in it. He read it fast and clean and without a pause. Dang! (Now if they only gave out college scholarships for that.)

St. Paul bragged about his "son" Timothy ("I have no one else like him, who takes a genuine interest in your welfare" - Philippians 2:20), and God bragged about Job ("Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil" - Job 1:8). The best thing to brag about concerning your children or protégés is their righteousness. Hopefully they'll give you lots of opportunities to talk them up that way. Then, when my friend's son attracts the attention of professional baseball scouts, and my son blows the lid off the SAT, you will be able to trump us both by saying, "My son is kind." That wins.

Thank You For Attending Church (May 28, 2006)

I just want to say thank you to everybody who went to church this past Sunday.

You didn’t go as a favor to me, or for the pastor of whatever church you attend. That’s fine - thank you anyway.

Some of you had to overcome real obstacles to go to church. Maybe you worked 60 hours last week, and Sunday morning was when you really wanted to rest. Maybe your pastor preaches long, slow-paced sermons that bore the drool out of you. Maybe you can’t stand the music - they sing old hymns but you like contemporary, or vice versa. Maybe your family makes it hard for you to get away on Sunday (that is when they schedule their brunches!). Maybe, heaven forbid, some demon with the title “Reverend” abused you years ago and you never wanted to step foot in a church again.

You had lots of reasons not to go, but you went, and I thank you. May I tell you a good thing that your attendance accomplished?

It encouraged a minister. On the afternoon of Sunday, May 21, someone asked me how my day had gone. I said, “OK,” but then listed by name about a dozen people who for whatever reason were not in church that morning, and said that I would have felt a lot better if they had been there. The next Sunday evening, May 28, someone else asked me the same question and I said, “Real good! Sunday School and the Worship service were about as full as they get.”

Did you know that you rejoiced a minister’s heart when you attended? If not, know it now. I think I can speak for all ministers in this. Every warm body in the pew is a sentry against a demoralizing spirit that seeks to incapacitate a man of God.

I must be careful here. I don’t want people to go to church to please me (or any pastor), or because they fear a clergyman’s disapproval if they don’t go. If I induce guilt in those who neglect worship because they discourage me (or “reward” attenders with assurances that they delight me), then I have taken dangerous a step toward spiritual corruption. Church is not about me. Forget me, forget all ministers.
Go to church because you love God. Go because you want to express that love by obeying his command to “neglect not the assembling of yourselves together” (Hebrews 10:25). Go because you fear God, and fear the consequences of denying him your part of the collective worship that is his due.

And for my very small, insignificant part, thank you.

Corrupt Evangelists? Maybe They Don’t Believe In God (May 21, 2006)

“I think they’re atheists.”

That was my mother’s succinct appraisal of televangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert in light of their disgraceful behavior that became known in the late 1980s. Bakker and Swaggert funded lavish and decadent lifestyles by swindling pious people out of their money. And they were moral deviates: Swaggert hired prostitutes; Bakker slept with a secretary and then paid her a six-figure sum of hush money. (She didn’t hush.)

Of all the analyses of Bakker’s and Swaggert’s corruption (to which we can add that of Benny Hinn, Reverend Jesse Jackson, and all the pedophile priests), my mother’s brutal observation made the most sense to me. When she discerned that these men were atheists, she was not insulting them with a carelessly derogatory label. She was not saying, “Atheists are bad, so anybody who does something bad must also be an atheist.” She knew, and I have known, quite a few atheists who were kind and genteel and restrained and respectful.

What she was saying was that no man who actually believed in God could possibly do what Bakker and Swaggert did. The distance between their verbal profession of faith and their physical transgression of deed was too great a span for reason to tread. Look at it this way: If a man says, “I am a pacifist - I hate all use of violent force,” we could still understand it and grant him a pass if, when mugged, he kicks and struggles and swings away in the passion of self defense. But if while claiming to be a pacifist he trains with Michigan militia groups, and hordes automatic weapons in a basement whose walls are adorned with posters of Paul Wolfowitz that hang over stacks of “Soldier of Fortune” magazines, then we’d be fully justified in saying, “I don’t think you’re a pacifist at all.” If he responded, “Yes I am! Though, I must admit, there may be a little inconsistency between my belief and my practice,” we might say, “A little?”

1 John 3:3 says, “Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself,even as he [Christ] is pure.” In context, “this hope” refers to the expectation of seeing Jesus in the afterlife and being like him. That contemplation is a purifying one because it both scares us away from sin and attracts us to the delight of everlasting fellowship with Christ. But when a man loses (or has not) the faith that he will see
Christ or answer to God, it should not surprise us at all to find him defrauding widows and mating with whores. Why not? What is there to stop him - conscience? Most men have little trouble overpowering that shabby little resister when there is no fear of God to give it substance.

Acting Holy When You Don’t Feel Like It (May 14, 2006)

"If you act normal, they'll never know!"

My mother discovered this secret early in life, and passed it along to her children as a coping mechanism for the eccentric. Mom wasn't crazy, but she was unique - Christopher Walken on a good day - and she knew that wearing weirdness on your sleeve was not always the best way to make comfortable the people around you. So, like a foreigner keeping quiet to mask an accent, Mom conscientiously did what she could to blend in.

It did not always work. For some reason she thought it was funny to pretend to be dumb as box of socks, and more than once we said to her, "Uh, Mom, I don't think anybody knows you're kidding." Her deadpan delivery was a little too disciplined at times - as though she felt a wink might spoil the joke.

But mostly she blended in, and I appreciate that. Surely it was an effort at times. But why shouldn't it have been? I have come to believe that resisting some natural currents in our personality is part of what it means to be human, and much of what it means to be holy. Those who simply give in to every impulse and instinct are rude
and dangerous and crazy. They are like animals, and no fun to be around.

Mom's dictum, "If you act normal, they'll never know [that you're nuts]" has a natural analogue in, "If you act holy, they'll never know [that you're evil]." I do not advocate hypocrisy - wearing a façade of holiness while you bury murder victims in your basement - but I do urge the discipline of doing what is right even when your nature rebels against it.

That is when holiness counts most, I think. Holiness is most pure precisely when it is an act - a conscious decision, a violation of our nature, a self-thwarting of preference. You don't have to command me to enjoy General Tso's chicken - I can't do otherwise! But you do have to command me to be kind and pure and diligent. For those virtues I have no choice but to "get into character" like a stage actor who has struggled to learn his lines.

It is not wrong for weirdos to observe normal people and try to imitate them as best they can. Nor is it wrong (far from it!) for sinners to observe Christ and try hard as they can to be like him.

Loneliness Stinks (May 7, 2006)

Some years ago I was asked to fill out a survey that was part of somebody's research project on loneliness. I had no idea how to answer most of the questions, because they seemed to assume that loneliness was a thing we all experienced occasionally. (E.g. "When I feel lonely, I am more likely to (A) eat food, (B) phone a friend.") How do you answer that when you have never been lonely?

A friend of mine once said, "Being alone does not mean you are lonely" - and that pretty much said it for me. I never regarded solitude as a burden, and often sought it deliberately.

But I am older now, and things change, and once-welcomed solitary interludes have become dreaded spells of inactive longing. Only now do I understand from the inside something C. S. Lewis wrote about in A Grief Observed. After his wife died he said that he wanted people to be around him but not especially paying attention to him. "Just let me be here while you go about your business." Lewis had been a bachelor until well into his 50s, and had always treasured his solitude and made magnificent use of it, until it was thrust unbidden upon him. Then it was hard, and he needed the comfort of company.

Today as I write this I have a sense of settled joy because both my sons are home and sleeping in their beds. They are not doing anything at all, except maybe snoring, but it is good just that they are there. Peter should be in school; when I got him up this morning he said he didn't feel well and wanted to stay home. He's not sick. Normally I'd kick him out the door and tell him to get his lazy butt to school - but this time I relented and called in for him. He's exhausted today because he stayed up all night talking to his older brother who I picked up from college yesterday for spring break. Fair enough. Just for today, stay. Sleep it off and we'll do something together this afternoon.

On the ride home from college Ben mentioned that he sometimes found it hard to have meaningful conversations with people who had never experienced trouble. (And he is only 18 - little does he know how much more trouble awaits him!) I know what he means. It is so hard, probably impossible, for a sheltered person to gain the kind of depth that makes him a worthy partner for discussion. In reflecting on this I realized that, in years past, if someone had told me about his or her loneliness I suppose I could have slammed the discussion shut with "I actually like to be alone." While true, that would have been neither empathetic nor helpful.

But I can do better than that now, I think. Having felt for the first time the scars of loneliness I cannot jest at their wounds. It is good to be around people. And it is not good - as God said after making Adam, and as I can affirm from experience - it is not good to be alone.