May 20, 2008: Imaginative Works Where Holiness Dwells
In a sermon I recommended finding exemplars of holiness in great works of fiction. For men there is Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird and Jeremiah Land in Peace Like A River. For women: Jane Bennet in Pride and Prejudice and Desdemona in Othello. For children: Lucy Pevensie in The Chronicles of Narnia and Charlie Bucket in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. For the imaginative: Reepicheep the Mouse and Puddleglum the Marshwiggle in Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair respectively.
Recently I found to my delight what I think might be an example of virtuous life imitating virtuous art. Just before the great battle scene in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis has the Christ figure Aslan give the following order: "Those who are good with their noses must come in the front with us lions to smell out where the battle is." The other lion in the scene, the merely mortal one, is exultant. He "kept running about everywhere pretending to be very busy but really in order to say to everyone he met, 'Did you hear what he said? Us lions. That means him and me. Us lions. That's what I like about Aslan. No side, no stand-off-ishness. Us lions. That meant him and me.'"
Lewis wrote that in 1949. In May of 1955 he was writing one of his many letters to Mary Shelburne, a neurotic American who constantly complained to him about illnesses and money troubles and all the injustices that others had inflicted on her. She also wrote bad poetry. Out of the blue, Lewis dropped the following:
Between ourselves, as one rhymester to another, it is a great pity that the word "world", such a good important word and often so emphatically demanding to come at the end of a line, has so few rhymes in English.
One rhymester to another! Goodness. Lewis should have been poet laureate of England, whereas Shelburne (bless her heart) was an irritating fool. When she got this letter, did she go around to her friends and say to them, "Do you see what Lewis wrote? One rhymester to another. That means him and me. One rhymester to another."
I'm reminded of the hymn Oh What Matchless Condescension the Eternal God Displays, and the Bible verse that says that Jesus "is not ashamed to call them brothers" (Hebrews 2:11). This is that gracious, unpatronizing virtue found in noble kings who treat mere peasants like fellow royalty - or themselves like mere peasants. Could the grace of Lewis's Aslan have been in the back of his mind when he stooped to Shelburne's level, or raised her up to his?
Jesus liked to use fictional stories (The Good Samaritan, The Prodigal Son) to inspire good behavior in real life. With holiness in the real world so rare, fiction is a great place to find it. Read Pride and Prejudice (or watch the A&E miniseries), and in some situation you may soon be asking yourself, "What would Jane Bennet do?"
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
May 13, 2008: The Privacy Of Darkness And The Innocent Plea For Light
Three cheers for Wheaton College firing Professor Kent Gramm for refusing to talk about his divorce.
He's not getting fired for divorcing his wife, or being divorced by her. He's being fired for refusing to divulge details to college administrators. Wheaton has a policy that professors sign saying that they will abide by certain standards of Christian conduct, including
marital conduct. You can divorce your spouse if you have biblical justification for it - but you have to explain yourself. Gramm refuses to explain himself. He believes he should not be held accountable to the conduct code that he signed, and that the college has no business asking him about it. Now he has taken his case to the media. "I think it's wrong to have to discuss your personal life with your employer," he told the Chicago Tribune. He even dares to frame his case as an example for his students: "I feel that it's important for [the students] to know that they're not somehow rejected by God for having more or less normal lives and for having lives that didn't work out the way they intended them to turn out," he said.
Hey Gramm, got news for you. Christians aren't supposed to lead "more or less normal lives." We're supposed to be holy (1 Peter 1:16). Divorce isn't holy. God says he hates it (Malachi 2:16).
As a divorced man myself, I am blessed with an inside perspective here. When my wife renounced her faith and left me and divorced me against my will, I was eager for the spotlight of investigation. I made plain to all (and still do): "Ask me anything. And don't take my word for anything - here's her phone number and email and address; ask her anything about me. Ask my children about me. I have nothing to hide. I despise this putrid monstrosity of divorce - even as I despise rape and torture and genocide and all manner of evils that provoke the wrath of the Almighty. I have no part in this sin."
When charged, the innocent welcome investigation to clear their name while the guilty hide in the darkness of privacy. Jesus said, "[M]en loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed." (John 3:19-20). Wickedness fears exposure even as innocence longs for vindication.
Suppose for example we find out that a man was present at a Nazi concentration camp, but it is unclear whether he was one of the guards who incinerated bodies or one of the Jews who struggled to survive. So we ask him about it. He responds, "I think that's a personal question. It is really none of your business. Look, Auschwitz was messy and unfortunate and sometimes life just does not turn out the way you expect. The important thing is that God loves us all no matter what." That is not what a victim says. The persecuted Jew rolls up his sleeve and shows you the number tattooed on his arm.
We should look at divorce the way we do a dead body hanging from a noose. It is ugly and awful and we hope we never see it. But if we do see a hanged corpse, and have no other information, we can only conclude that a terrible sin has been committed. We don't necessarily know what it is or who committed it. Maybe the dead man was guilty of evil and justly hanged by duly appointed authorities. Maybe he was innocent but set upon by murderous thugs. Maybe he was guilty but hanged by a lynch mob contemptuous of due process, so there was wrongdoing on both sides. Maybe he committed suicide. There are all kinds of possibilities, ranging from 0 to 100 percent guilt on the part of the hanged man. While we don't know where the guilt lies or to what degree, we do know that somewhere, somehow, a moral outrage has been committed.
The one thing that passersby may not say when observing that body twisting in the wind is, "Well, that's certainly none of my business. These things happen. We live in a fallen world. Let's all agree not to talk about it. (Hey, I might want to lynch somebody myself some day, and the last thing I want is nosy people asking me questions about it.)" And if a possibly suspicious character near the body tries to shoo us away saying, "Move along! There's nothing to see here. This has nothing to do with you," then we have a duty to stand right there unmoved and insist, "I'm not going anywhere. I've got some questions first."
Three cheers for Wheaton College firing Professor Kent Gramm for refusing to talk about his divorce.
He's not getting fired for divorcing his wife, or being divorced by her. He's being fired for refusing to divulge details to college administrators. Wheaton has a policy that professors sign saying that they will abide by certain standards of Christian conduct, including
marital conduct. You can divorce your spouse if you have biblical justification for it - but you have to explain yourself. Gramm refuses to explain himself. He believes he should not be held accountable to the conduct code that he signed, and that the college has no business asking him about it. Now he has taken his case to the media. "I think it's wrong to have to discuss your personal life with your employer," he told the Chicago Tribune. He even dares to frame his case as an example for his students: "I feel that it's important for [the students] to know that they're not somehow rejected by God for having more or less normal lives and for having lives that didn't work out the way they intended them to turn out," he said.
Hey Gramm, got news for you. Christians aren't supposed to lead "more or less normal lives." We're supposed to be holy (1 Peter 1:16). Divorce isn't holy. God says he hates it (Malachi 2:16).
As a divorced man myself, I am blessed with an inside perspective here. When my wife renounced her faith and left me and divorced me against my will, I was eager for the spotlight of investigation. I made plain to all (and still do): "Ask me anything. And don't take my word for anything - here's her phone number and email and address; ask her anything about me. Ask my children about me. I have nothing to hide. I despise this putrid monstrosity of divorce - even as I despise rape and torture and genocide and all manner of evils that provoke the wrath of the Almighty. I have no part in this sin."
When charged, the innocent welcome investigation to clear their name while the guilty hide in the darkness of privacy. Jesus said, "[M]en loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed." (John 3:19-20). Wickedness fears exposure even as innocence longs for vindication.
Suppose for example we find out that a man was present at a Nazi concentration camp, but it is unclear whether he was one of the guards who incinerated bodies or one of the Jews who struggled to survive. So we ask him about it. He responds, "I think that's a personal question. It is really none of your business. Look, Auschwitz was messy and unfortunate and sometimes life just does not turn out the way you expect. The important thing is that God loves us all no matter what." That is not what a victim says. The persecuted Jew rolls up his sleeve and shows you the number tattooed on his arm.
We should look at divorce the way we do a dead body hanging from a noose. It is ugly and awful and we hope we never see it. But if we do see a hanged corpse, and have no other information, we can only conclude that a terrible sin has been committed. We don't necessarily know what it is or who committed it. Maybe the dead man was guilty of evil and justly hanged by duly appointed authorities. Maybe he was innocent but set upon by murderous thugs. Maybe he was guilty but hanged by a lynch mob contemptuous of due process, so there was wrongdoing on both sides. Maybe he committed suicide. There are all kinds of possibilities, ranging from 0 to 100 percent guilt on the part of the hanged man. While we don't know where the guilt lies or to what degree, we do know that somewhere, somehow, a moral outrage has been committed.
The one thing that passersby may not say when observing that body twisting in the wind is, "Well, that's certainly none of my business. These things happen. We live in a fallen world. Let's all agree not to talk about it. (Hey, I might want to lynch somebody myself some day, and the last thing I want is nosy people asking me questions about it.)" And if a possibly suspicious character near the body tries to shoo us away saying, "Move along! There's nothing to see here. This has nothing to do with you," then we have a duty to stand right there unmoved and insist, "I'm not going anywhere. I've got some questions first."
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
May 6, 2008: Can You Gauge Your Spiritual Progress?
"How are you doing spiritually? Do you feel you are making spiritual progress?"
These were the questions that my pastor would ask during a yearly home visit when I was young, and they would always annoy my mother. She never knew how to answer. How do you gauge your spiritual progress, and is it appropriate to do so? Do you respond, "Well, last year I prayed about 15 minutes a day but now I pray 20; and there were some occasions when I resisted my husband's leadership, but recently I haven't done that, so I'd say that while I used to be a 7, spiritually speaking, now I'm about an 8"? Mom found the practice of grading yourself in the things of the Lord to be distasteful.
All saints do. Their focus is on Christ, not on themselves and how well they are following Christ.
I have learned to distrust self-evaluation, having seen good people bemoan their depravity and bad people pat themselves on their spiritual backs. Forty-one years ago my father saw the church that we were attending utterly fail to respond in a godly way to a crisis in its midst, and he said, "This church will die." He was right, it did. He could perceive the spiritual decay, but the decaying ones could not see it in themselves. They were like the ghosts in M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense: they did not know they were dead.
Those who are spiritually alive, on the other hand, may be only vaguely aware of that life. The less aware the better. It is like playing basketball. A point guard who thinks, "I'm playing well now! Seven assists and two steals and even a blocked shot!" is more likely to commit a turnover in the next minute than the one who is simply focused on his job running the offense and listening to his coach's instructions.
Having carried with me all these years my mother's suspicion about the value of grading one's walk with God, imagine my delight the other day on finding the same thought beautifully expressed in a letter by C. S. Lewis. He wrote to his young friend and protégé Walter Hooper:
We should, I believe, distrust states of mind which turn our attention upon ourselves. Even at our sins we should look no longer than is necessary to know and to repent them: and our virtues or progress (if any) are certainly a dangerous object of contemplation. When the sun is vertically above a man he casts no shadow: similarly when we have come to the Divine meridian our spiritual shadow (that is, our consciousness of self) will vanish. One will thus in a sense be almost nothing: a room to be filled by God and our blessed fellow creatures, who in their turn are rooms we help to fill. But how far one is from this at present!
Indeed, we are far from this at present. But maybe, by looking to Christ and not ourselves, we'll inch ever closer to it.
"How are you doing spiritually? Do you feel you are making spiritual progress?"
These were the questions that my pastor would ask during a yearly home visit when I was young, and they would always annoy my mother. She never knew how to answer. How do you gauge your spiritual progress, and is it appropriate to do so? Do you respond, "Well, last year I prayed about 15 minutes a day but now I pray 20; and there were some occasions when I resisted my husband's leadership, but recently I haven't done that, so I'd say that while I used to be a 7, spiritually speaking, now I'm about an 8"? Mom found the practice of grading yourself in the things of the Lord to be distasteful.
All saints do. Their focus is on Christ, not on themselves and how well they are following Christ.
I have learned to distrust self-evaluation, having seen good people bemoan their depravity and bad people pat themselves on their spiritual backs. Forty-one years ago my father saw the church that we were attending utterly fail to respond in a godly way to a crisis in its midst, and he said, "This church will die." He was right, it did. He could perceive the spiritual decay, but the decaying ones could not see it in themselves. They were like the ghosts in M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense: they did not know they were dead.
Those who are spiritually alive, on the other hand, may be only vaguely aware of that life. The less aware the better. It is like playing basketball. A point guard who thinks, "I'm playing well now! Seven assists and two steals and even a blocked shot!" is more likely to commit a turnover in the next minute than the one who is simply focused on his job running the offense and listening to his coach's instructions.
Having carried with me all these years my mother's suspicion about the value of grading one's walk with God, imagine my delight the other day on finding the same thought beautifully expressed in a letter by C. S. Lewis. He wrote to his young friend and protégé Walter Hooper:
We should, I believe, distrust states of mind which turn our attention upon ourselves. Even at our sins we should look no longer than is necessary to know and to repent them: and our virtues or progress (if any) are certainly a dangerous object of contemplation. When the sun is vertically above a man he casts no shadow: similarly when we have come to the Divine meridian our spiritual shadow (that is, our consciousness of self) will vanish. One will thus in a sense be almost nothing: a room to be filled by God and our blessed fellow creatures, who in their turn are rooms we help to fill. But how far one is from this at present!
Indeed, we are far from this at present. But maybe, by looking to Christ and not ourselves, we'll inch ever closer to it.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
April 29, 2008: Was His Death The Judgment Of God?
Recently I received the following question from a ministry colleague:
I lead a small DivorceCare group. In my group there is a sweet, godly woman (Anne) who leads a preschool program at a Baptist Church. She divorced her philandering husband after twenty years while he was in his fourth affair. He has a PhD in Psychology but is an arrogant bully. She receives relatively little support and only has the kids half the time. She read and liked my book The Prayer of Revenge, and has been confident that God would accomplish justice on her behalf.
I just found out that the bed-hopping 40-something ex-husband dropped dead last night - somehow related to diabetes. The kids heard a crash in his bedroom, but ignored it, and found him this morning.
She's probably going to ask me: was this an act of God's judgment?
How would you answer her?
And here is my answer.
Interesting!
My short answer is no.
I think that unless we are prophets legitimately claiming inspiration from God, it is simply too difficult to make the connections between "misfortune" (including illness, suffering, poverty, death) and behavior. Job was good but had it bad while the evildoers of Psalm 73 enjoyed all the good luck in the world. Righteous Jim Elliot died at 28; the evangelist of atheism (and serial adulterer) Bertrand Russell lived to 99. (For that matter, Hugh Hefner is still going strong in his 80s! Why on earth doesn't he get judged?)
I gave up long ago trying to figure out what God is doing or what message he is sending when he grants long or short lifespans to people. A few weeks after we arrived in Colombia we were told point-blank by an Ika leader that the tribe would never accept our translating the Bible: we could stay there only if we never translated. Within a year this man was kidnapped by paramilitares, tortured and killed. I thought at the time that God was clearing away the obstacles so that his Word could reach the Ika people. But then this leader was replaced by another who was even more adamantly opposed to our mission! My prophetic guesswork about God's judgment was proven false.
Jesus said that the Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices, and the 18 who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them, were not worse sinners than any others (Luke 13:1-4). My opinion is that the 40-something bed-hopper was probably no worse than millions of other bed-hoppers who have all gone where bed-hoppers go (see Revelation 21:8: "the sexually immoral... - their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur"). Ironically, the philanderer's early demise may actually have been a mercy from God, because he was by death prevented from piling on another 50 years or so of sin which would only have raised the temperature of his personal hell.
I have a serious practical concern for those who are inclined to draw connections between things like death (or any other seeming misfortune) and the judgment of God. My fear is that they'll become very discouraged - or even doubt their faith - when things turn out the opposite of what they were led to expect. Painful as it might be for someone like Anne to hear, it must be said at some point: There is nothing in our understanding of God that would make it impossible for Anne to be the one who drops dead in her 40s (or worse, comes down with paralysis or a degenerative nerve disease), while her son-of-hell ex-husband lives a long healthy happy life! It is not till the life after this one when all wrongs will be set right, and justice (tempered with mercy) will be done, and many of the last shall be first and the first last. This requires perseverance on the part of the saints.
At the same time, I'm very happy for Anne (assuming the recent events are not disturbing to her!), and if you would, please pass along my greetings and best wishes. I don't know what her state of mind is, but I know a Christian man who confided in me, "If my ex-wife passed away now I don't think I'd feel any grief. All my grieving went on during the years she became a denier of God and a hater of me." A painful sentiment, but an understandable one. My prayers will be with Anne as she (perhaps very quietly) rejoices, even as her children grieve, and as she figures out how to manage with them on her own.
Recently I received the following question from a ministry colleague:
I lead a small DivorceCare group. In my group there is a sweet, godly woman (Anne) who leads a preschool program at a Baptist Church. She divorced her philandering husband after twenty years while he was in his fourth affair. He has a PhD in Psychology but is an arrogant bully. She receives relatively little support and only has the kids half the time. She read and liked my book The Prayer of Revenge, and has been confident that God would accomplish justice on her behalf.
I just found out that the bed-hopping 40-something ex-husband dropped dead last night - somehow related to diabetes. The kids heard a crash in his bedroom, but ignored it, and found him this morning.
She's probably going to ask me: was this an act of God's judgment?
How would you answer her?
And here is my answer.
Interesting!
My short answer is no.
I think that unless we are prophets legitimately claiming inspiration from God, it is simply too difficult to make the connections between "misfortune" (including illness, suffering, poverty, death) and behavior. Job was good but had it bad while the evildoers of Psalm 73 enjoyed all the good luck in the world. Righteous Jim Elliot died at 28; the evangelist of atheism (and serial adulterer) Bertrand Russell lived to 99. (For that matter, Hugh Hefner is still going strong in his 80s! Why on earth doesn't he get judged?)
I gave up long ago trying to figure out what God is doing or what message he is sending when he grants long or short lifespans to people. A few weeks after we arrived in Colombia we were told point-blank by an Ika leader that the tribe would never accept our translating the Bible: we could stay there only if we never translated. Within a year this man was kidnapped by paramilitares, tortured and killed. I thought at the time that God was clearing away the obstacles so that his Word could reach the Ika people. But then this leader was replaced by another who was even more adamantly opposed to our mission! My prophetic guesswork about God's judgment was proven false.
Jesus said that the Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices, and the 18 who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them, were not worse sinners than any others (Luke 13:1-4). My opinion is that the 40-something bed-hopper was probably no worse than millions of other bed-hoppers who have all gone where bed-hoppers go (see Revelation 21:8: "the sexually immoral... - their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur"). Ironically, the philanderer's early demise may actually have been a mercy from God, because he was by death prevented from piling on another 50 years or so of sin which would only have raised the temperature of his personal hell.
I have a serious practical concern for those who are inclined to draw connections between things like death (or any other seeming misfortune) and the judgment of God. My fear is that they'll become very discouraged - or even doubt their faith - when things turn out the opposite of what they were led to expect. Painful as it might be for someone like Anne to hear, it must be said at some point: There is nothing in our understanding of God that would make it impossible for Anne to be the one who drops dead in her 40s (or worse, comes down with paralysis or a degenerative nerve disease), while her son-of-hell ex-husband lives a long healthy happy life! It is not till the life after this one when all wrongs will be set right, and justice (tempered with mercy) will be done, and many of the last shall be first and the first last. This requires perseverance on the part of the saints.
At the same time, I'm very happy for Anne (assuming the recent events are not disturbing to her!), and if you would, please pass along my greetings and best wishes. I don't know what her state of mind is, but I know a Christian man who confided in me, "If my ex-wife passed away now I don't think I'd feel any grief. All my grieving went on during the years she became a denier of God and a hater of me." A painful sentiment, but an understandable one. My prayers will be with Anne as she (perhaps very quietly) rejoices, even as her children grieve, and as she figures out how to manage with them on her own.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
May 13, 2007: Salvation Is Enough
Is salvation enough for you?
I mean, if God does nothing more for you than save your soul, will you love him for that? Will you worship him for that? Will you submit to his will and remain steadfast if he does nothing more for you than save your soul from hell and give you eternal life?
Here is why I ask. I get the impression from some sermons I've heard and Christian books I've read that our faith is sometimes "sold" as a solution to problems that go way beyond the fundamental horror of separation from God. Many sincere believers seem to have absorbed this padded teaching without realizing it. It is as though they have been taught to be discontent with mere salvation. They take that for granted, and feel they have a right to expect a lot of other things too - things that God never promised them.
Miraculous healing, for example. I just read a missionary's report about a Nigerian medicine man who abandoned Christianity because, as the missionary reported, "his primary interest was in spiritual power. And if there was no greater power among the Christians than he already possessed, then why join them?" Why indeed. Perhaps to get saved? Is salvation such a shabby, pale, pathetic thing that it cannot compare with the gold treasure of being able to stun people with miracle power? Coming to Christ pleases God and brings forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Isn't that good enough? (It wasn't enough for Simon the Sorcerer, who in Acts 8:9-20 likewise expressed a "primary interest in spiritual power." Peter told him to go to hell.)
What angered me, what had me ready to fling the missionary's book against the wall, was the fact that he sympathized with the medicine man! He agreed that Christianity was pretty pointless if it wasn't miraculously powerful. He wrote, "The Nigerians 'knew' that whatever power Christianity brought it wasn't adequate to deal with such things as tragedy, infertility, relational breakdowns, and troublesome weather. It didn't meet many of their deepest spiritual needs...Though we talked a great deal about spiritual things, the Nigerians understood most aspects of spirituality much better than we did." Oh no, no, no, no. Missionary, you're the one who has the gospel of Jesus Christ, you're the one who understands that the "aspect of
spirituality" that matters is our alienation from God and the reconciliation he has provided through his Son. As for the other four things you mentioned, you would have been wiser to say: "Tragedy? Expect it! The New Testament is the story of one tragedy after another befalling the people of God. Infertility? Some of you will be
childless. Relational breakdowns? Some of you will be evicted from your families for following Christ, others will find yourselves married to beasts who molest your children or give you AIDS. Troublesome weather? Jesus did calm a storm once, but St. Paul couldn't (Acts 27:14-27) - and though Agabus could predict a famine (Acts 11:28), he could not stop it, and neither can we. The rain falls at God's mercy. Whether it falls or not, whether you eat or starve, you must serve God and believe in his Son."
That is the kind of faith we're after - one that trusts God when the mountain of trouble doesn't go away. We must stay on message: Jesus Christ and him crucified, the hope of eternal salvation. Salvation even when it is accompanied by nothing is still a great gift - glorious, undeserved - and anything given us beyond that is grace upon grace. To expect more is dangerous; to demand more is folly. And to teach prospective believers that they will also have health or success or inner peace or better family relationships or a greater circle of influence is to tempt them to renounce Christ when it turns out that they don't get those things, and they conclude that Christianity "isn't all it's cracked up to be."
Be content with your salvation. Feeling you have a right to more than that is like saying, "Hmmph. 'Eternal undeserved bliss in presence of God.' Big deal. Is that all I get?"
Is salvation enough for you?
I mean, if God does nothing more for you than save your soul, will you love him for that? Will you worship him for that? Will you submit to his will and remain steadfast if he does nothing more for you than save your soul from hell and give you eternal life?
Here is why I ask. I get the impression from some sermons I've heard and Christian books I've read that our faith is sometimes "sold" as a solution to problems that go way beyond the fundamental horror of separation from God. Many sincere believers seem to have absorbed this padded teaching without realizing it. It is as though they have been taught to be discontent with mere salvation. They take that for granted, and feel they have a right to expect a lot of other things too - things that God never promised them.
Miraculous healing, for example. I just read a missionary's report about a Nigerian medicine man who abandoned Christianity because, as the missionary reported, "his primary interest was in spiritual power. And if there was no greater power among the Christians than he already possessed, then why join them?" Why indeed. Perhaps to get saved? Is salvation such a shabby, pale, pathetic thing that it cannot compare with the gold treasure of being able to stun people with miracle power? Coming to Christ pleases God and brings forgiveness of sins and eternal life. Isn't that good enough? (It wasn't enough for Simon the Sorcerer, who in Acts 8:9-20 likewise expressed a "primary interest in spiritual power." Peter told him to go to hell.)
What angered me, what had me ready to fling the missionary's book against the wall, was the fact that he sympathized with the medicine man! He agreed that Christianity was pretty pointless if it wasn't miraculously powerful. He wrote, "The Nigerians 'knew' that whatever power Christianity brought it wasn't adequate to deal with such things as tragedy, infertility, relational breakdowns, and troublesome weather. It didn't meet many of their deepest spiritual needs...Though we talked a great deal about spiritual things, the Nigerians understood most aspects of spirituality much better than we did." Oh no, no, no, no. Missionary, you're the one who has the gospel of Jesus Christ, you're the one who understands that the "aspect of
spirituality" that matters is our alienation from God and the reconciliation he has provided through his Son. As for the other four things you mentioned, you would have been wiser to say: "Tragedy? Expect it! The New Testament is the story of one tragedy after another befalling the people of God. Infertility? Some of you will be
childless. Relational breakdowns? Some of you will be evicted from your families for following Christ, others will find yourselves married to beasts who molest your children or give you AIDS. Troublesome weather? Jesus did calm a storm once, but St. Paul couldn't (Acts 27:14-27) - and though Agabus could predict a famine (Acts 11:28), he could not stop it, and neither can we. The rain falls at God's mercy. Whether it falls or not, whether you eat or starve, you must serve God and believe in his Son."
That is the kind of faith we're after - one that trusts God when the mountain of trouble doesn't go away. We must stay on message: Jesus Christ and him crucified, the hope of eternal salvation. Salvation even when it is accompanied by nothing is still a great gift - glorious, undeserved - and anything given us beyond that is grace upon grace. To expect more is dangerous; to demand more is folly. And to teach prospective believers that they will also have health or success or inner peace or better family relationships or a greater circle of influence is to tempt them to renounce Christ when it turns out that they don't get those things, and they conclude that Christianity "isn't all it's cracked up to be."
Be content with your salvation. Feeling you have a right to more than that is like saying, "Hmmph. 'Eternal undeserved bliss in presence of God.' Big deal. Is that all I get?"
Sunday, May 13, 2007
May 6, 2007: A Little Self Pity Is OK
Ten years ago the movie GI Jane brought to popular attention the
short poem "Self Pity" by D H Lawrence. As I recall, Navy SEAL trainer
Viggo Mortensen quoted it to Demi Moore in an effort to get her to
toughen up:
I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.
The poem is an effective rebuke to whining as long as you don't think
too hard about it. I suppose it is true that no wild thing ever felt
sorry for itself, but that is because it never felt sorry for anything. A bird lacks self pity because it lacks pity in general. If we imitated the stoic bird we might face our trials heroically - but at the cost of being callously indifferent to the sufferings of others too.
The Christian attitude is more nuanced. I believe it is ok to bemoan
one's sad condition as long as that creates rather than uses up space
to pity others. Jesus felt sorry for himself on the eve of his
crucifixion. The Bible says that his sweat was like drops of blood on
the ground, that his soul was in agony, and that he pleaded with his
disciples to stay up with him. There was no stoic dismissal of pain,
no "I'm-tough-enough-for-this" rhetoric. Unlike the bird that drops
frozen dead without a peep of complaint, our Lord cried out, "Father!
Let this cup pass from me!"
But Christ's pity for himself assured his pity for us. "For we do not
have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are -
yet was without sin." (Hebrews 4:15)
A couple weeks ago on the heels of bittersweet experience a wave of
self-pity washed over me, and I followed it up with a slap of
self-rebuke. "Who am I to feel bad about my circumstances tonight?" I
thought. I am not an AIDS-orphaned child in Africa. I do not come home to find that a drunk wife has abused my kids. My legs work, my
cupboard is full, I am not in pain. Shame on me for feeling sorry for
myself! D H Lawrence's frozen little bird would denounce me as a wimp!
Yes, but it would denounce everybody as a wimp.
My heroes are all people who have experienced pain, and didn't like
it, but who managed then to navigate between the pitiless rocks of
hard indifference and the soft shoals of whiny indulgence. Be like
them: tough, but not too tough. Shed your tears, and then, having
dried them, be kind to others.
Ten years ago the movie GI Jane brought to popular attention the
short poem "Self Pity" by D H Lawrence. As I recall, Navy SEAL trainer
Viggo Mortensen quoted it to Demi Moore in an effort to get her to
toughen up:
I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.
The poem is an effective rebuke to whining as long as you don't think
too hard about it. I suppose it is true that no wild thing ever felt
sorry for itself, but that is because it never felt sorry for anything. A bird lacks self pity because it lacks pity in general. If we imitated the stoic bird we might face our trials heroically - but at the cost of being callously indifferent to the sufferings of others too.
The Christian attitude is more nuanced. I believe it is ok to bemoan
one's sad condition as long as that creates rather than uses up space
to pity others. Jesus felt sorry for himself on the eve of his
crucifixion. The Bible says that his sweat was like drops of blood on
the ground, that his soul was in agony, and that he pleaded with his
disciples to stay up with him. There was no stoic dismissal of pain,
no "I'm-tough-enough-for-this" rhetoric. Unlike the bird that drops
frozen dead without a peep of complaint, our Lord cried out, "Father!
Let this cup pass from me!"
But Christ's pity for himself assured his pity for us. "For we do not
have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses,
but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are -
yet was without sin." (Hebrews 4:15)
A couple weeks ago on the heels of bittersweet experience a wave of
self-pity washed over me, and I followed it up with a slap of
self-rebuke. "Who am I to feel bad about my circumstances tonight?" I
thought. I am not an AIDS-orphaned child in Africa. I do not come home to find that a drunk wife has abused my kids. My legs work, my
cupboard is full, I am not in pain. Shame on me for feeling sorry for
myself! D H Lawrence's frozen little bird would denounce me as a wimp!
Yes, but it would denounce everybody as a wimp.
My heroes are all people who have experienced pain, and didn't like
it, but who managed then to navigate between the pitiless rocks of
hard indifference and the soft shoals of whiny indulgence. Be like
them: tough, but not too tough. Shed your tears, and then, having
dried them, be kind to others.
Monday, April 30, 2007
April 29, 2007: Does God Speak Today?
A war of words erupted recently in Christianity Today concerning whether God still speaks to us. In an article titled "My Conversation with God," an anonymous professor of a Christian university wrote about "hearing" God tell him to write a book and donate its royalties to a needy seminary student. Pastor and theologian John Piper responded with "The Morning I Heard God's Voice," where he countered that we hear God every time we read the Bible.
Piper doesn't deny that God gave the professor a special communication. He writes, "What makes me sad about the article is not that it isn't true or didn't happen. What's sad is that it really does give the impression that extra-biblical communication with God is surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening. All the while, the supremely glorious communication of the living God that personally and powerfully and transformingly explodes in the receptive heart through the Bible everyday is passed over in silence."
Well, Piper has a point that every-day communication from God in the Bible should not be "passed over in silence." God speaks through Scripture, a fact which renders inexcusable our neglect of it. As I conduct a baptism class for young people, one of the things I repeat to them is that they need to start reading the Bible on their own (if they haven't started already). Get the Bible in your bones, and you will know the voice of the Lord.
But in addition to that, could God still speak a word to us and not others, and, contra Piper, would it be a sad thing if we found that extra-biblical communication "surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening"?
My mother read the Bible countless times, and had it so well in mind that she could spout quips such as a sarcastic dismissal of the jogging fad ("The wicked flee when none pursueth") or a playful resistance to her husband's wake-up call ("A little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to rest"). But her knowledge of Scripture and constant dependence on it did not keep her from valuing one "surpassingly wonderful" occasion when God spoke a couple words directly to her.
She was 57. Her husband, my father, had passed away suddenly a couple years before. Having spent 33 years as a homemaker raising 5 children, mom suddenly had to brush up on her office skills, and she managed to find a job as a secretary at Continental Bank in downtown Chicago. Her health was marginal. She was exhausted, and it required more energy than she had to commute on the train and walk 4 blocks each way and work 8 hours. Once while trudging back to the train station on a bitterly cold winter evening she prayed, "Oh Lord, please, deliver me from this job."
And the Lord said to her, "Deliver yourself." She testified later that though the words were not audible, they might as well have been. The message was as clear, simple, stunning and forthright as could be. And she knew it was the Lord.
She put in her notice to quit that job - not knowing where she would find another. But she did find one right away: immediately the Lord provided low-pressure, easy employment nearby working as a maid and cook at the manse of a Catholic parish. That job was as much a Godsend as the message to quit the first one.
Mom was no charismatic. She had little patience for those imaginative and gullible souls who carry on dialogues in their head and label one of the voices "God." The way she put it was, "God speaks, but not in complete sentences." Of course, technically, "Deliver yourself" is a complete sentence, but her idea was that if God is going to say something to us that isn't in the Bible, it will probably be short and sweet and to the point. Something like, "Step to the side" a moment before a piano crashes down from above onto that very spot of the pavement where we had just been standing. I think mom was right.
A war of words erupted recently in Christianity Today concerning whether God still speaks to us. In an article titled "My Conversation with God," an anonymous professor of a Christian university wrote about "hearing" God tell him to write a book and donate its royalties to a needy seminary student. Pastor and theologian John Piper responded with "The Morning I Heard God's Voice," where he countered that we hear God every time we read the Bible.
Piper doesn't deny that God gave the professor a special communication. He writes, "What makes me sad about the article is not that it isn't true or didn't happen. What's sad is that it really does give the impression that extra-biblical communication with God is surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening. All the while, the supremely glorious communication of the living God that personally and powerfully and transformingly explodes in the receptive heart through the Bible everyday is passed over in silence."
Well, Piper has a point that every-day communication from God in the Bible should not be "passed over in silence." God speaks through Scripture, a fact which renders inexcusable our neglect of it. As I conduct a baptism class for young people, one of the things I repeat to them is that they need to start reading the Bible on their own (if they haven't started already). Get the Bible in your bones, and you will know the voice of the Lord.
But in addition to that, could God still speak a word to us and not others, and, contra Piper, would it be a sad thing if we found that extra-biblical communication "surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening"?
My mother read the Bible countless times, and had it so well in mind that she could spout quips such as a sarcastic dismissal of the jogging fad ("The wicked flee when none pursueth") or a playful resistance to her husband's wake-up call ("A little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to rest"). But her knowledge of Scripture and constant dependence on it did not keep her from valuing one "surpassingly wonderful" occasion when God spoke a couple words directly to her.
She was 57. Her husband, my father, had passed away suddenly a couple years before. Having spent 33 years as a homemaker raising 5 children, mom suddenly had to brush up on her office skills, and she managed to find a job as a secretary at Continental Bank in downtown Chicago. Her health was marginal. She was exhausted, and it required more energy than she had to commute on the train and walk 4 blocks each way and work 8 hours. Once while trudging back to the train station on a bitterly cold winter evening she prayed, "Oh Lord, please, deliver me from this job."
And the Lord said to her, "Deliver yourself." She testified later that though the words were not audible, they might as well have been. The message was as clear, simple, stunning and forthright as could be. And she knew it was the Lord.
She put in her notice to quit that job - not knowing where she would find another. But she did find one right away: immediately the Lord provided low-pressure, easy employment nearby working as a maid and cook at the manse of a Catholic parish. That job was as much a Godsend as the message to quit the first one.
Mom was no charismatic. She had little patience for those imaginative and gullible souls who carry on dialogues in their head and label one of the voices "God." The way she put it was, "God speaks, but not in complete sentences." Of course, technically, "Deliver yourself" is a complete sentence, but her idea was that if God is going to say something to us that isn't in the Bible, it will probably be short and sweet and to the point. Something like, "Step to the side" a moment before a piano crashes down from above onto that very spot of the pavement where we had just been standing. I think mom was right.
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