My buddy, Ken, and I recently took a trip back through time.
Having grown up next door to one another in the '50's and '60's, then having attended the same college, and having remained friends ever since, we had often talked about going back to our old stompin' grounds together. In October, we finally did it. We visited the small town, Pennsylvania, street on which we grew up, and even got to tour Ken's family's house - now occupied by the son and grandson of another neighbor. We poked around in the woods behind our houses, where we had so many adventures together. Walked into town, where the buildings are the same although the stores are different. Basically walked all over town and reminisced. Remember sledding here on this hill? And the Memorial Day parades, and the pet shows up here in the center of town? Remember the fire that nearly burned my house down, and how you saved it - and me? Boy Scouts? The dentist whose name was Scull? This old tree? The one that's gone? The one that fell on both our houses during Hurricane Hazel?
So many memories we share, and the recalling of them strengthened the bonds of friendship between us.
Reflecting on what we have often thought of as our "idyllic" upbringing, I realize there is much to commend it and much to be thankful for. On the other hand, revisiting our haunts made me aware that it wasn't all great, and some of it I'd rather forget. Ken's dad was fond of saying, "Boys will be boys." I think maybe more to the point, "Boys will be sinners." Reflecting on some of our shenanigans, I was faced with the reality that sin played a big role in both our motivations and responses, and in the influences to which we subjected ourselves. I think the past wasn't so idyllic after all.
St. John had it right when he said, "Do not love the world, or the things in the world. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, are not of the Father, but of the world." I recently reviewed a verse in Ecclesiastes 5:20, "He will not much remember the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart." This made me realize that my relationship with God is to be such a "present" thing that the joy of it delivers me from idolizing a past I cannot recover, nor mourning because it is irretrievable.
The joy of the Lord's fellowship thus delivers me from both "past-worship" and from bitterness with present realities. In a sense, the present will always fall short of the past, because I tend to fantasize about the past, remembering only the best of it, and forgetting much of its pain.
It's kind of like married men who fantasize about Victoria's Secret models - people with whom they are not, nor ever will be, in touch. They can conveniently overlay all kinds of preferred personality characteristics on them, such that - in their minds - these women are always cheerful, always willing, always affiming, never tired, moody, grumpy or imperfect in any way. How can any wife hope to compete with such a fantasy?
So it is with the past. Its reality was much closer to that of the present than we'd like to admit. I believe it's all tied to our tendency to be discontented, and to focus on ourselves, rather than to be both thankful and worshipful toward God Himself - who deigns to be the center of our universe, and rightly so.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Can an Unraveling Society Be Rescued? (Part 2)
Reversing the Decay of London Undone
(Part 2)
By JONATHAN SACKS
There are large parts of Britain, Europe and even the United States where religion is a thing of the past and there is no counter-voice to the culture of buy it, spend it, wear it, flaunt it, because you're worth it. The message is that morality is passé, conscience is for wimps, and the single overriding command is "Thou shalt not be found out."
Has this happened before, and is there a way back? The answer to both questions is in the affirmative. In the 1820s, in Britain and America, a similar phenomenon occurred. People were moving from villages to cities. Families were disrupted. Young people were separated from their parents and no longer under their control. Alcohol consumption rose dramatically. So did violence. In the 1820s it was unsafe to walk the streets of London because of pickpockets by day and "unruly ruffians" by night.
What happened over the next 30 years was a massive shift in public opinion. There was an unprecedented growth in charities, friendly societies, working men's institutes, temperance groups, church and synagogue associations, Sunday schools, YMCA buildings and moral campaigns of every shape and size, fighting slavery or child labor or inhuman working conditions. The common factor was their focus on the building of moral character, self-discipline, willpower and personal responsibility. It worked. Within a single generation, crime rates came down and social order was restored. What was achieved was nothing less than the re-moralization of society—much of it driven by religion.
It was this that the young French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville saw on his visit to America in 1831. It astonished him. Tocqueville was expecting to see, in the land that had enacted the constitutional separation of church and state, a secular society. To his amazement he found something completely different: a secular state, to be sure, but also a society in which religion was, he said, the first of its political (we would now say "civil") institutions. It did three things he saw as essential. It strengthened the family. It taught morality. And it encouraged active citizenship.
Nearly 200 years later, the Tocqueville of our time, Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam, made the same discovery. Mr. Putnam is famous for his diagnosis of the breakdown of social capital he called "bowling alone." More people were going bowling, but fewer were joining teams. It was a symbol of the loss of community in an age of rampant individualism. That was the bad news.
At the end of 2010, he published the good news. Social capital, he wrote in "American Grace," has not disappeared. It is alive and well and can be found in churches, synagogues and other places of worship. Religious people, he discovered, make better neighbors and citizens. They are more likely to give to charity, volunteer, assist a homeless person, donate blood, spend time with someone feeling depressed, offer a seat to a stranger, help someone find a job and take part in local civic life. Affiliation to a religious community is the best predictor of altruism and empathy: better than education, age, income, gender or race.
Much can and must be done by governments, but they cannot of themselves change lives. Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent. Alexis de Tocqueville saw it then, Robert Putnam is saying it now. It needs religion: not as doctrine but as a shaper of behavior, a tutor in morality, an ongoing seminar in self-restraint and pursuit of the common good.
One of our great British exports to America, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, has a fascinating passage in his recent book "Civilization," in which he asks whether the West can maintain its primacy on the world stage or if it is a civilization in decline.
He quotes a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, tasked with finding out what gave the West its dominance. He said: At first we thought it was your guns. Then we thought it was your political system, democracy. Then we said it was your economic system, capitalism. But for the last 20 years, we have known that it was your religion.
It was the Judeo-Christian heritage that gave the West its restless pursuit of a tomorrow that would be better than today. The Chinese have learned the lesson. Fifty years after Chairman Mao declared China a religion-free zone, there are now more Chinese Christians than there are members of the Communist Party.
China has learned the lesson. The question is: Will we?
—Lord Sacks is the chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth.
(Part 2)
By JONATHAN SACKS
There are large parts of Britain, Europe and even the United States where religion is a thing of the past and there is no counter-voice to the culture of buy it, spend it, wear it, flaunt it, because you're worth it. The message is that morality is passé, conscience is for wimps, and the single overriding command is "Thou shalt not be found out."
Has this happened before, and is there a way back? The answer to both questions is in the affirmative. In the 1820s, in Britain and America, a similar phenomenon occurred. People were moving from villages to cities. Families were disrupted. Young people were separated from their parents and no longer under their control. Alcohol consumption rose dramatically. So did violence. In the 1820s it was unsafe to walk the streets of London because of pickpockets by day and "unruly ruffians" by night.
What happened over the next 30 years was a massive shift in public opinion. There was an unprecedented growth in charities, friendly societies, working men's institutes, temperance groups, church and synagogue associations, Sunday schools, YMCA buildings and moral campaigns of every shape and size, fighting slavery or child labor or inhuman working conditions. The common factor was their focus on the building of moral character, self-discipline, willpower and personal responsibility. It worked. Within a single generation, crime rates came down and social order was restored. What was achieved was nothing less than the re-moralization of society—much of it driven by religion.
It was this that the young French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville saw on his visit to America in 1831. It astonished him. Tocqueville was expecting to see, in the land that had enacted the constitutional separation of church and state, a secular society. To his amazement he found something completely different: a secular state, to be sure, but also a society in which religion was, he said, the first of its political (we would now say "civil") institutions. It did three things he saw as essential. It strengthened the family. It taught morality. And it encouraged active citizenship.
Nearly 200 years later, the Tocqueville of our time, Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam, made the same discovery. Mr. Putnam is famous for his diagnosis of the breakdown of social capital he called "bowling alone." More people were going bowling, but fewer were joining teams. It was a symbol of the loss of community in an age of rampant individualism. That was the bad news.
At the end of 2010, he published the good news. Social capital, he wrote in "American Grace," has not disappeared. It is alive and well and can be found in churches, synagogues and other places of worship. Religious people, he discovered, make better neighbors and citizens. They are more likely to give to charity, volunteer, assist a homeless person, donate blood, spend time with someone feeling depressed, offer a seat to a stranger, help someone find a job and take part in local civic life. Affiliation to a religious community is the best predictor of altruism and empathy: better than education, age, income, gender or race.
Much can and must be done by governments, but they cannot of themselves change lives. Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent. Alexis de Tocqueville saw it then, Robert Putnam is saying it now. It needs religion: not as doctrine but as a shaper of behavior, a tutor in morality, an ongoing seminar in self-restraint and pursuit of the common good.
One of our great British exports to America, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, has a fascinating passage in his recent book "Civilization," in which he asks whether the West can maintain its primacy on the world stage or if it is a civilization in decline.
He quotes a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, tasked with finding out what gave the West its dominance. He said: At first we thought it was your guns. Then we thought it was your political system, democracy. Then we said it was your economic system, capitalism. But for the last 20 years, we have known that it was your religion.
It was the Judeo-Christian heritage that gave the West its restless pursuit of a tomorrow that would be better than today. The Chinese have learned the lesson. Fifty years after Chairman Mao declared China a religion-free zone, there are now more Chinese Christians than there are members of the Communist Party.
China has learned the lesson. The question is: Will we?
—Lord Sacks is the chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth.
Can an Unraveling Society Be Rescued?
Like many of you, I have a longstanding interest in our parent nation. So it was with some astonishment and with huge sadness that I observed in the media the rioting in London a couple of weeks back. I suppose I should have seen it coming, but naively thought that perhaps the British were just too sophisticated and too appreciative of their heritage for such behaviors as we saw in France two years ago. This morning I read a piece by Britain's chief rabbi on the moral disintigration of England, in which he delivers some important warnings for all of us in the West. I present it for your consideration in two parts.
Reversing the Decay of London Undone
By JONATHAN SACKS
It was the same city but it might have been a different planet. At the end of April, the eyes of the world were on London as a dashing prince and a radiant princess, William and Kate, rode in a horse-drawn carriage through streets lined with cheering crowds sharing a mood of joyous celebration. Less than four months later, the world was watching London again as hooded youths ran riot down high streets, smashing windows, looting shops, setting fire to cars, attacking passersby and throwing rocks at the police.
A priest and an imam join with the local community to pray as they begin to clean up the damage in the London borough of Hackney. In the 1800s, in Britain and America, religious and community organizations 're-moralized' those countries.
It looked like a scene from Cairo, Tunis or Tripoli earlier in the year. But this was no political uprising. People were breaking into shops and making off with clothes, shoes, electronic gadgets and flat-screen televisions. It was, as someone later called it, shopping with violence, consumerism run rampage, an explosion of lawlessness made possible by mobile phones as gangs discovered that by text messaging they could bring crowds onto the streets where they became, for a while, impossible to control.
Let us be clear. The numbers involved were relatively small. The lawkeepers vastly outnumbered the lawbreakers. People stepped in to rescue those attacked. Crowds appeared each morning to clear up the wreckage of the night before. Britain remains a decent, good and gracious society.
But the damage was real. Businesses were destroyed. People lost their homes. A 68-year-old man, attacked by a mob while trying to put out a fire, died. Three young men in Birmingham were killed in a hit-and-run attack. While it lasted, it was very frightening. It took everyone by surprise. It should not have.
Britain is the latest country to pay the price for what happened half a century ago in one of the most radical transformations in the history of the West. In virtually every Western society in the 1960s there was a moral revolution, an abandonment of its entire traditional ethic of self-restraint. All you need, sang the Beatles, is love. The Judeo-Christian moral code was jettisoned. In its place came: whatever works for you. The Ten Commandments were rewritten as the Ten Creative Suggestions. Or as Allan Bloom put it in "The Closing of the American Mind": "I am the Lord Your God: Relax!"
You do not have to be a Victorian sentimentalist to realize that something has gone badly wrong since. In Britain today, more than 40% of children are born outside marriage. This has led to new forms of child poverty that serious government spending has failed to cure. In 2007, a Unicef report found that Britain's children are the unhappiest in the world. The 2011 riots are one result. But there are others.
Whole communities are growing up without fathers or male role models. Bringing up a family in the best of circumstances is not easy. To try to do it by placing the entire burden on women—91% of single-parent families in Britain are headed by the mother, according to census data—is practically absurd and morally indefensible. By the time boys are in their early teens they are physically stronger than their mothers. Having no fathers, they are socialized in gangs. No one can control them: not parents, teachers or even the local police. There are areas in Britain's major cities that have been no-go areas for years. Crime is rampant. So are drugs. It is a recipe for violence and despair.
That is the problem. At first it seemed as if the riots were almost random with no basis in class or race. As the perpetrators have come to court, a different picture has emerged. Of those charged, 60% had a previous criminal record, and 25% belonged to gangs.
This was the bursting of a dam of potential trouble that has been building for years. The collapse of families and communities leaves in its wake unsocialized young people, deprived of parental care, who on average—and yes, there are exceptions—do worse than their peers at school, are more susceptible to drug and alcohol abuse, less likely to find stable employment and more likely to land up in jail.
The truth is, it is not their fault. They are the victims of the tsunami of wishful thinking that washed across the West saying that you can have sex without the responsibility of marriage, children without the responsibility of parenthood, social order without the responsibility of citizenship, liberty without the responsibility of morality and self-esteem without the responsibility of work and earned achievement.
What has happened morally in the West is what has happened financially as well. Good and otherwise sensible people were persuaded that you could spend more than you earn, incur debt at unprecedented levels and consume the world's resources without thinking about who will pay the bill and when. It has been the culture of the free lunch in a world where there are no free lunches.
We have been spending our moral capital with the same reckless abandon that we have been spending our financial capital. Freud was right. The precondition of civilization is the ability to defer the gratification of instinct. And even Freud, who disliked religion and called it the "obsessional neurosis" of humankind, realized that it was the Judeo-Christian ethic that trained people to control their appetites.
END OF PART I
Reversing the Decay of London Undone
By JONATHAN SACKS
It was the same city but it might have been a different planet. At the end of April, the eyes of the world were on London as a dashing prince and a radiant princess, William and Kate, rode in a horse-drawn carriage through streets lined with cheering crowds sharing a mood of joyous celebration. Less than four months later, the world was watching London again as hooded youths ran riot down high streets, smashing windows, looting shops, setting fire to cars, attacking passersby and throwing rocks at the police.
A priest and an imam join with the local community to pray as they begin to clean up the damage in the London borough of Hackney. In the 1800s, in Britain and America, religious and community organizations 're-moralized' those countries.
It looked like a scene from Cairo, Tunis or Tripoli earlier in the year. But this was no political uprising. People were breaking into shops and making off with clothes, shoes, electronic gadgets and flat-screen televisions. It was, as someone later called it, shopping with violence, consumerism run rampage, an explosion of lawlessness made possible by mobile phones as gangs discovered that by text messaging they could bring crowds onto the streets where they became, for a while, impossible to control.
Let us be clear. The numbers involved were relatively small. The lawkeepers vastly outnumbered the lawbreakers. People stepped in to rescue those attacked. Crowds appeared each morning to clear up the wreckage of the night before. Britain remains a decent, good and gracious society.
But the damage was real. Businesses were destroyed. People lost their homes. A 68-year-old man, attacked by a mob while trying to put out a fire, died. Three young men in Birmingham were killed in a hit-and-run attack. While it lasted, it was very frightening. It took everyone by surprise. It should not have.
Britain is the latest country to pay the price for what happened half a century ago in one of the most radical transformations in the history of the West. In virtually every Western society in the 1960s there was a moral revolution, an abandonment of its entire traditional ethic of self-restraint. All you need, sang the Beatles, is love. The Judeo-Christian moral code was jettisoned. In its place came: whatever works for you. The Ten Commandments were rewritten as the Ten Creative Suggestions. Or as Allan Bloom put it in "The Closing of the American Mind": "I am the Lord Your God: Relax!"
You do not have to be a Victorian sentimentalist to realize that something has gone badly wrong since. In Britain today, more than 40% of children are born outside marriage. This has led to new forms of child poverty that serious government spending has failed to cure. In 2007, a Unicef report found that Britain's children are the unhappiest in the world. The 2011 riots are one result. But there are others.
Whole communities are growing up without fathers or male role models. Bringing up a family in the best of circumstances is not easy. To try to do it by placing the entire burden on women—91% of single-parent families in Britain are headed by the mother, according to census data—is practically absurd and morally indefensible. By the time boys are in their early teens they are physically stronger than their mothers. Having no fathers, they are socialized in gangs. No one can control them: not parents, teachers or even the local police. There are areas in Britain's major cities that have been no-go areas for years. Crime is rampant. So are drugs. It is a recipe for violence and despair.
That is the problem. At first it seemed as if the riots were almost random with no basis in class or race. As the perpetrators have come to court, a different picture has emerged. Of those charged, 60% had a previous criminal record, and 25% belonged to gangs.
This was the bursting of a dam of potential trouble that has been building for years. The collapse of families and communities leaves in its wake unsocialized young people, deprived of parental care, who on average—and yes, there are exceptions—do worse than their peers at school, are more susceptible to drug and alcohol abuse, less likely to find stable employment and more likely to land up in jail.
The truth is, it is not their fault. They are the victims of the tsunami of wishful thinking that washed across the West saying that you can have sex without the responsibility of marriage, children without the responsibility of parenthood, social order without the responsibility of citizenship, liberty without the responsibility of morality and self-esteem without the responsibility of work and earned achievement.
What has happened morally in the West is what has happened financially as well. Good and otherwise sensible people were persuaded that you could spend more than you earn, incur debt at unprecedented levels and consume the world's resources without thinking about who will pay the bill and when. It has been the culture of the free lunch in a world where there are no free lunches.
We have been spending our moral capital with the same reckless abandon that we have been spending our financial capital. Freud was right. The precondition of civilization is the ability to defer the gratification of instinct. And even Freud, who disliked religion and called it the "obsessional neurosis" of humankind, realized that it was the Judeo-Christian ethic that trained people to control their appetites.
END OF PART I
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
East Coast Earthquake: A Minor Shakeup with a Divine Message?
About 1:50 p.m. yesterday, I felt and heard a tremor run through the floor and walls of our house. At first I thought it was someone walking heavily on our less-than-rock-solid floor joists. Then, a few seconds later, I felt it again, this time longer and more intense. After a few more seconds passed, there was an unmistakeable and more powerful shaking which made me realize that, here in sleepy central Pennsylvania, we were indeed playing host to an uninvited natural guest.
As news of the East Coast Earthquake of 2011 spread yesterday, as friends, relatives and co-workers jammed the cell phone networks, it became obvious, to everyone's relief, that this seismic event, though widespread, was relatively mild as earthquakes go. Still, it gave news commentators something to talk about for a while, though by last evening they - and talk show hosts as well - were making jokes about it. But for those who have never experienced the heaving of the earth beneath their feet, it was a pretty scary experience. California folks are used to such things; here on the East Coast, not so much.
But today, the trains and planes, delayed yesterday for safety checks, are back on schedule, and most East-Coasters have moved on with their lives. Yet, upon closer examination, it is clear that there was indeed some residual damage, even in our nation's capital, where things are supposedly built to withstand such events. I find it curious that there was, through this relatively mild movement of tectonic plates, significant damage to two of our most treasured national symbols: the Washington Monument and the National Cathedral. And I am left wondering if God, who claims sovereign control over all creation, might have been sending us a message. If so, what message would it be that He is conveying, and was there a reason He might have put His divine crosshairs on these two symbols of things which, in our past, have always been best about America?
As a student of history, I believe I am on safe ground in saying that America has always stood for freedom. And who epitomizes our national struggle for independence more than our "founding father," for whom the 555-foot obelisk on the National Mall is named? And what place - at least in concept - more eloquently communicates by its very existence our national declaration that our freedom is both limited under the authority of our Divine Creator and Judge, and that it is also a gift from His hand, upon Whom we depend for our past, present and future success as a witness to the world of the benefits of that freedom?
Yet, lately we seem to be increasingly content to go our own way, even trivializing the essentiality of religious faith in general, and of our Christian heritage in particular. The public mention of Jesus is out of vogue, and people who would hold to biblical principles are increasingly labeled as "haters." The historic and God-ordained nature of one-man, one-woman marriages is routinely challenged, and God's notion of "family" has been so distorted in our national psyche as to allow that virtually "anything goes" in domestic arrangements. We have devalued human life - the centerpiece of His creation - to the extent that as of this posting, the blood of nearly 50 million helpless, unborn human beings is on our collective, if not individual, hands, even as we spend millions in precious dollars to preserve various animal species from encroachment. It seems clear that not only have we failed to "love the Lord our God with all our hearts, with all our minds, with all our souls, and with all our strength," but we have outright ignored - if not mocked - His prescription for living in community, and forgotten His just place in the founding and sustaining of this great nation.
If we are to put any confidence in the Bible as the expression of God's intentions for humankind, the Almighty cannot be pleased with all this. So when the earth shakes the East Coast a little, and our national symbols corrupted as a consequence, I can't help but wonder if perhaps our Sovereign is rather gently but firmly reminding us that we are not self-sufficient, that His laws are not to be ignored, nor His people oppressed, lest He shake us more violently, or even reduce us once again to servitude and humiliation. He has done it to nations in the past. Yesterday He made it clear that He can do it at will.
Just some musings this morning. I welcome your thoughts.
As news of the East Coast Earthquake of 2011 spread yesterday, as friends, relatives and co-workers jammed the cell phone networks, it became obvious, to everyone's relief, that this seismic event, though widespread, was relatively mild as earthquakes go. Still, it gave news commentators something to talk about for a while, though by last evening they - and talk show hosts as well - were making jokes about it. But for those who have never experienced the heaving of the earth beneath their feet, it was a pretty scary experience. California folks are used to such things; here on the East Coast, not so much.
But today, the trains and planes, delayed yesterday for safety checks, are back on schedule, and most East-Coasters have moved on with their lives. Yet, upon closer examination, it is clear that there was indeed some residual damage, even in our nation's capital, where things are supposedly built to withstand such events. I find it curious that there was, through this relatively mild movement of tectonic plates, significant damage to two of our most treasured national symbols: the Washington Monument and the National Cathedral. And I am left wondering if God, who claims sovereign control over all creation, might have been sending us a message. If so, what message would it be that He is conveying, and was there a reason He might have put His divine crosshairs on these two symbols of things which, in our past, have always been best about America?
As a student of history, I believe I am on safe ground in saying that America has always stood for freedom. And who epitomizes our national struggle for independence more than our "founding father," for whom the 555-foot obelisk on the National Mall is named? And what place - at least in concept - more eloquently communicates by its very existence our national declaration that our freedom is both limited under the authority of our Divine Creator and Judge, and that it is also a gift from His hand, upon Whom we depend for our past, present and future success as a witness to the world of the benefits of that freedom?
Yet, lately we seem to be increasingly content to go our own way, even trivializing the essentiality of religious faith in general, and of our Christian heritage in particular. The public mention of Jesus is out of vogue, and people who would hold to biblical principles are increasingly labeled as "haters." The historic and God-ordained nature of one-man, one-woman marriages is routinely challenged, and God's notion of "family" has been so distorted in our national psyche as to allow that virtually "anything goes" in domestic arrangements. We have devalued human life - the centerpiece of His creation - to the extent that as of this posting, the blood of nearly 50 million helpless, unborn human beings is on our collective, if not individual, hands, even as we spend millions in precious dollars to preserve various animal species from encroachment. It seems clear that not only have we failed to "love the Lord our God with all our hearts, with all our minds, with all our souls, and with all our strength," but we have outright ignored - if not mocked - His prescription for living in community, and forgotten His just place in the founding and sustaining of this great nation.
If we are to put any confidence in the Bible as the expression of God's intentions for humankind, the Almighty cannot be pleased with all this. So when the earth shakes the East Coast a little, and our national symbols corrupted as a consequence, I can't help but wonder if perhaps our Sovereign is rather gently but firmly reminding us that we are not self-sufficient, that His laws are not to be ignored, nor His people oppressed, lest He shake us more violently, or even reduce us once again to servitude and humiliation. He has done it to nations in the past. Yesterday He made it clear that He can do it at will.
Just some musings this morning. I welcome your thoughts.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Kiss the Rod?
"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted;
He rescues those whose spirits are crushed."
Ps. 34:18
It occurs to me that those moments when we grieve the most are propitious moments, because in those times of pain, God in His great care moves toward us in ways most personal and intimate. So there is in our grief great opportunity to experience the Lord in ways we cannot in times of earthly comfort. We have only to look to Him and pour out the contents of our broken hearts, and He will fly to our aid.
The previous verse says:
"The Lord hears his people when they call to him for help.
He rescues them from all their troubles."
Though He wound us, yet He as quickly comforts, like a father who lovingly disciplines his child. Hebrews 12:10 says that "he disciplines us" with this in mind, "that we may share his [very] holiness".
In earlier times, after being disciplined by the schoolmaster, children were required to "kiss the rod" in order, through discipline, to learn appreciation for even the harsher aspects of instruction. Though outward conformity does not guarantee inward submission, the hope was that wills would be broken and hearts surrendered.
Moving toward the comfort of an afflicting heavenly Father might be something like that - an act of faith which brings the reward of greater intimacy with the One who only desires our very best.
He rescues those whose spirits are crushed."
Ps. 34:18
It occurs to me that those moments when we grieve the most are propitious moments, because in those times of pain, God in His great care moves toward us in ways most personal and intimate. So there is in our grief great opportunity to experience the Lord in ways we cannot in times of earthly comfort. We have only to look to Him and pour out the contents of our broken hearts, and He will fly to our aid.
The previous verse says:
"The Lord hears his people when they call to him for help.
He rescues them from all their troubles."
Though He wound us, yet He as quickly comforts, like a father who lovingly disciplines his child. Hebrews 12:10 says that "he disciplines us" with this in mind, "that we may share his [very] holiness".
In earlier times, after being disciplined by the schoolmaster, children were required to "kiss the rod" in order, through discipline, to learn appreciation for even the harsher aspects of instruction. Though outward conformity does not guarantee inward submission, the hope was that wills would be broken and hearts surrendered.
Moving toward the comfort of an afflicting heavenly Father might be something like that - an act of faith which brings the reward of greater intimacy with the One who only desires our very best.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
The Gift of Work
My good friend, Bill, is an avid reader. One of those rare guys who finds really good stuff to read, not necessarily what's trendy, but what matters. Lately he's been reading a good book on the subject of work, entitled, "Work: The Meaning of your Life," by Lester DeKoster.
Bill shared with me one thought-provoking tidbit from the book that I thought I'd pass along:
"Work connects us with people and gives us opportunity for relationships, allowing us to come alongside others and help them discover who Jesus is, and learn to follow Him."
I couldn't agree more. Too often we view work as something we have to do in order to do the other things we want to do. Seems to me to be a pretty sad way to spend the bulk of one's waking hours. The Bible teaches us that this is just not so. Rather, the Bible presents work as a gift from God, given to mankind before Adam and Eve blew it in the garden. So the idea of work is pre-Fall, pre-judgement, and pre-curse. Work actually gives us the opportunity to operate within our design as beings created in God's own image.
For people of faith, work provides opportunity for creativity, honest labor, initiative, enterprise and satisfaction. Granted, we have all had bosses who were, shall we say, trying, but God can and does even use less-than-ideal bosses to mold and shape our responses, and to mature us. And sometimes He uses these people to redirect us toward something else He has in mind for us to do.
But most of all, work provides us opportunity to be, as Jesus said, "the salt of the earth" and "the light of the world." As people get to know us and observe our lives, those of us who claim to follow Jesus should demonstrate a winsomeness - as He did - that causes people to reexamine their own lives, their own perspectives, and their own relationships - or not - with their Creator. This, and the events that normally attend life - births, deaths, stresses, strains, relational issues, raising kids - provide opportunties for Christians to provide loving friendship and to share a bit of relevant truth.
Work is not a curse, but a blessing - not something we have to do, but something we get to do, for the glory of the One who gave it to us as a gift.
Bill shared with me one thought-provoking tidbit from the book that I thought I'd pass along:
"Work connects us with people and gives us opportunity for relationships, allowing us to come alongside others and help them discover who Jesus is, and learn to follow Him."
I couldn't agree more. Too often we view work as something we have to do in order to do the other things we want to do. Seems to me to be a pretty sad way to spend the bulk of one's waking hours. The Bible teaches us that this is just not so. Rather, the Bible presents work as a gift from God, given to mankind before Adam and Eve blew it in the garden. So the idea of work is pre-Fall, pre-judgement, and pre-curse. Work actually gives us the opportunity to operate within our design as beings created in God's own image.
For people of faith, work provides opportunity for creativity, honest labor, initiative, enterprise and satisfaction. Granted, we have all had bosses who were, shall we say, trying, but God can and does even use less-than-ideal bosses to mold and shape our responses, and to mature us. And sometimes He uses these people to redirect us toward something else He has in mind for us to do.
But most of all, work provides us opportunity to be, as Jesus said, "the salt of the earth" and "the light of the world." As people get to know us and observe our lives, those of us who claim to follow Jesus should demonstrate a winsomeness - as He did - that causes people to reexamine their own lives, their own perspectives, and their own relationships - or not - with their Creator. This, and the events that normally attend life - births, deaths, stresses, strains, relational issues, raising kids - provide opportunties for Christians to provide loving friendship and to share a bit of relevant truth.
Work is not a curse, but a blessing - not something we have to do, but something we get to do, for the glory of the One who gave it to us as a gift.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Productive Thought Or Navel-Gazing?
So now I have a Kindle. I thought for a long time that for reading to be authentic, it had to be from an actual, paper and ink book. Never thought I'd succomb to the notion of "digital ink." Then I picked up my daughter's new contraption from Amazon.com, and, sure enough, got intrigued by its light weight and enormous capacity. Since I travel a lot, the conveniences were obvious. So, when my birthday rolled around, guess what?
One of the cool things about the Kindle is all the free books you can download. However, since these books are digital, their length is not readily apparent. So, without much thought, I eagerly downloaded several classics, including Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, which I began reading. And reading. And reading...
Didn't realize this book in print is, like, 1250 pages long! And, sure enough, I've got the unabridged version! So now, Les Mis has turned into a Summer project. Having never read it before (no, it was not required of me anywhere along the way to a doctorate), I am amazed at the grand social commentary it contains. Hugo had to be one of the most educated guys on the planet by the time he wrote this book! His knowledge of world and French history, literature, culture, politics and sociology is downright astonishing. So is his vocabulary. Every page contains some word of which I've never really learned the definition, or a word I've simply never known was in the English lexicon. So I am very thankful for the built-in dictionary that comes with the Kindle. All you have to do is put the cursor on a word, and voila! You have the definition. Pretty sweet! (Rather, indispensable for Les Mis.)
Occasionally I actually understand a little of what Hugo is saying, and once in a while I find something that really sticks with me. Today, I came to VH's comparison of "thought" versus "reverie." Thought, he says, is mental work; reverie is more like day-dreaming. OK, I get that. There's a difference between mentally working out a plan, or a philosophy, a sermon, or even a blog post, versus just watching clouds go by, pondering fanciful thoughts of world peace, vanquishing imaginary foes, or vainly pursuing the lost loves of one's youth.
VH says that thought is productive, while continued reverie tends to be destructive. Thought is actual human labor, that which sets us apart from the animals, and which tends toward a purpose. Reverie is more instinctive, more like self-centered navel-gazing. It is thought that leads to progress, whether progress in personal growth, or progress of a society. Reverie, on the other hand, accomplishes nothing but to give one permission to be personally preoccupied, narcissistically obsessed, inclining toward the imaginary and the sensual. A profound difference, a critical distinction sadly lacking among a large portion of today's American society, beginning with today's American youth.
"Now there is something to think about," says I to me. Productively, I hope!
One of the cool things about the Kindle is all the free books you can download. However, since these books are digital, their length is not readily apparent. So, without much thought, I eagerly downloaded several classics, including Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, which I began reading. And reading. And reading...
Didn't realize this book in print is, like, 1250 pages long! And, sure enough, I've got the unabridged version! So now, Les Mis has turned into a Summer project. Having never read it before (no, it was not required of me anywhere along the way to a doctorate), I am amazed at the grand social commentary it contains. Hugo had to be one of the most educated guys on the planet by the time he wrote this book! His knowledge of world and French history, literature, culture, politics and sociology is downright astonishing. So is his vocabulary. Every page contains some word of which I've never really learned the definition, or a word I've simply never known was in the English lexicon. So I am very thankful for the built-in dictionary that comes with the Kindle. All you have to do is put the cursor on a word, and voila! You have the definition. Pretty sweet! (Rather, indispensable for Les Mis.)
Occasionally I actually understand a little of what Hugo is saying, and once in a while I find something that really sticks with me. Today, I came to VH's comparison of "thought" versus "reverie." Thought, he says, is mental work; reverie is more like day-dreaming. OK, I get that. There's a difference between mentally working out a plan, or a philosophy, a sermon, or even a blog post, versus just watching clouds go by, pondering fanciful thoughts of world peace, vanquishing imaginary foes, or vainly pursuing the lost loves of one's youth.
VH says that thought is productive, while continued reverie tends to be destructive. Thought is actual human labor, that which sets us apart from the animals, and which tends toward a purpose. Reverie is more instinctive, more like self-centered navel-gazing. It is thought that leads to progress, whether progress in personal growth, or progress of a society. Reverie, on the other hand, accomplishes nothing but to give one permission to be personally preoccupied, narcissistically obsessed, inclining toward the imaginary and the sensual. A profound difference, a critical distinction sadly lacking among a large portion of today's American society, beginning with today's American youth.
"Now there is something to think about," says I to me. Productively, I hope!
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Mission as an Idol???
The following article by Skye Jethani is so compelling that I wanted to post it here in its (lengthy) entirety. Kind of wish I'd written it! Please think it over.
Larry
Larry
“There is a first-rate commitment to a second-rate mission.” That is what Roger, a leader in global church planting, said as he looked at the rock climbers ascending a cliff in the Alps. Many of us called into ministry feel the same way. Rather than giving our lives to climbing a rock, building a business, or amassing a fortune, we are committed to what really matters; a first-rate mission--advancing the Gospel and the Church of Jesus Christ.
But what if we’re wrong?
Roger spent decades serving Christ and planting churches on four continents. But after reflecting on his labor for the kingdom of God, his confession surprised many of us. “I’ve given most of my energy to a second-rate mission as well,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. Church planting is great. But someday that mission will end. My first calling is to live with God. That must be my first commitment.”
What Roger articulated was a temptation that many in ministry face. To put it simply, many church leaders unknowingly replace the transcendent vitality of a life with God for the ego satisfaction they derive from a life for God. Before exploring how this shift occurs in church leaders, let me take a step or two backwards and explain how I have seen it within the Christian college students I’ve worked with in recent years.
Is impact everything?
The students I meet with often worry about what awaits them after graduation. This is a reasonable concern for any young adult, but for many of them the worry extends far beyond finding a job with benefits. They fixate, and some obsess, about “making a difference in the world.” They fear living lives of insignificance. They worry about not achieving the right things, or not enough of the right things. Behind all of this is the belief that their value is determined by what they achieve. I’ve learned that when a student asks me, “What should I do with my life?” what he or she really wants to know is, “How can I prove that I am valuable?”
When we come to believe that our faith is primarily about what we can do for God in the world, it is like throwing gasoline on our fear of insignificance. The resulting fire may be presented to others as a godly ambition, a holy desire to see God’s mission advance--the kind of drive evident in the Apostle Paul’s life. But when these flames are fueled by fear they reveal none of the peace, joy, or love displayed by Paul. Instead the relentless drive to prove our worth can quickly become destructive.
Sometimes the people who fear insignificance the most are driven to accomplish the greatest things. As a result they are highly praised within Christian communities for their good works which temporarily soothes their fear until the next goal can be achieved. But there is a dark side to this drivenness. Gordon MacDonald calls it “missionalism.” It is “the belief that the worth of one’s life is determined by the achievement of a grand objective.” He continues:
Missionalism starts slowly and gains a foothold in the leader's attitude. Before long the mission controls almost everything: time, relationships, health, spiritual depth, ethics, and convictions. In advanced stages, missionalism means doing whatever it takes to solve the problem. In its worst iteration, the end always justifies the means. The family goes; health is sacrificed; integrity is jeopardized; God-connection is limited.[1]
What I have witnessed in the lives of many college students is the early symptoms of missionalism. The virus had been introduced to them in childhood and incubated by well-intentioned churches, ministries, schools, and the wider evangelical subculture. And with graduation looming the students were feeling the pressure. It was, after all, their first opportunity to actually prove their worth through achievement.
When meeting with or counseling a struggling church leader, one of the questions I’ll ask to diagnose whether missionalism is present is: “Assuming you’re not engaged in some kind of disqualifying sin, why not?” The answer I often hear, the answer most posters have been conditioned to say, is: “I wouldn’t want to do anything to jeopardize my ministry.” That response often reveals where a leader’s true devotion is. Sadly I rarely hear a pastor say, “I wouldn’t want anything to disrupt my communion with God.” So few of us have been given a vision of a life with Christ, and instead we seek to fill the void with a vision for ministry--a vision of a life for Christ.
Phil Vischer, the creator of VeggieTales, was raised in a “life for God” environment. His experience reveals how the fear of being insignificant is implanted into young people. He said the heroes his community celebrated were “the Rockefellers of the Christian world;” those who were enterprising, effective, and who made a huge impact for God. They launched massive ministries or transformed whole nations. This led Vischer to conclude that impact was everything. “God would never call us from greater impact to lesser impact!,” he wrote. “How many kids did you invite to Sunday? How many souls have you won? How big is your church? How many people will be in heaven because of your efforts? Impact, man!”[2]
But after losing his company in 2003, Vischer began to question the validity of the “life for God” values he had inherited and which had driven his early career.
“The more I dove into Scripture, the more I realized I had been deluded. I had grown up drinking a dangerous cocktail—a mix of the gospel, the Protestant work ethic, and the American dream…. The Savior I was following seemed, in hindsight, equal parts Jesus, Ben Franklin, and Henry Ford. My eternal value was rooted in what I could accomplish”[3]
A professional crisis made Vischer pause and reexamine his posture with God, but for others the nagging discontent of a life lived for God manifests much more slowly. Consider what one pastor in his late 30s wrote: "The church is growing, and there's excitement everywhere. But personally I feel less and less good about what I'm doing. I'm restless and tired. I ask myself how long I can keep this all up. Why is my touch with God so limited? Why am I feeling guilty about where my marriage is? When did this stop being fun?"[4] This leader is not alone. Studies show that approximately 1,500 pastors leave the ministry every month due to conflict, burnout, or moral failure.[5] Others have shown how ministry rooted relentless achievement for God actually contributes to addictive behaviors. When the accolades that give pastors a sense of significance cease or never come at all, some begin to nurse secret pleasures on the side to numb their pain.
When church leaders function from this understanding of the Christian life, they invariably transfer their burden and fears to those in the pews. If a pastor’s sense of worth is linked to the impact of his or her ministry, guess what believers under that pastor’s care are told is most important? And so a new generation of people who believe their value is linked to their accomplishments is birthed. If the cycle continues long enough an institutional memory is created in which the value of achievement for God is no longer questioned. Leaders may be burning out at a rate of 1,500 per month, young people may be riddled with anxiety, and divorce rates in the church may be rising and families falling apart, but no one stops. No one asks whether this is really what God intended the Christian life to be. No one asks, at least out loud, because that might slow things down. Remember, the work must go on. Impact, man!
Mission is good, not ultimate.
You may be thinking, “But we are called to do things for God. And what’s the alternative--continuing to allow the people in our churches to be self-consumed Christians seeking only their own comfort?” That is a very fair concern. And I completely concur with the consumer posture that is choking much of the modern church both in North American and increasingly around the globe.
But the prescribed solution I hear in many ministry settings is to transform people from consumer Christians into activist Christians. The exact direction of the activism may depend on one’s theological and ecclesiological orientation. For traditional evangelicals it’s all about evangelism--getting believers to share their faith, give to overseas missions, and grow the church. For many younger evangelicals it may focus compassion and justice--digging wells and eradicating poverty. But what the traditional and younger evangelicals agree upon is that we are to live our lives for God by accomplishing his mission however we may define it.
The “life for God” view makes mission the irreducible center of the Christian life. And everything and everyone gets defined by some great goal understood to be initiated by God and carried forward by us. An individual is either on the mission, the object of the mission, an obstacle to the mission, an aid to the mission, or a fat Christian who should be on the mission.
Please don’t think I am trying to dismiss the importance of the missio dei or the church’s part within it. Like other church leaders, I greatly desire to see more Christians hear God’s call and engage in the good and life-saving work he has given us. And I am incredibly grateful for my friends in ministry who have awakened the church to the theological and practical necessity of mission in our age. But as Tim Keller has deftly observed, “An idol is a good thing made into an ultimate thing.” The temptation within activist streams of Christianity is to put the good mission of God into the place God alone should occupy. The irony is that in our desire to draw people away from the selfishness of consumer Christianity, we may simply be replacing one idol with another. This is the great danger of endlessly extolling the importance of living for God--it put can place God’s mission ahead of God himself. Paul, the most celebrated missionary in history, did not make this mistake. He understood that his calling, to be a messenger to the gentiles, was not the same as his treasure, to be united with Christ. His communion with Christ rooted and preceded his work for him.
Few passages of Scripture illustrate our present dilemma better than the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. If you recall, the young son did not value a relationship with his father but only his father’s wealth--a poignant example of the consumer Christian. He took what his father gave him, left home, and wasted the gifts on fast living. Eventually he was penniless and desperate. But when the son returned home to seek his father’s mercy and a job as a servant, he was astonished to find his father overjoyed--running to embrace him with open arms.
But that’s only half of the story. The father also had an older son who was very different than his swinging sibling. He was reliable, obedient, and lived to do his father’s bidding. But when the older son heard that his wayward brother had returned, and that his father had welcomed him and was throwing a party, he became incensed. In fact, when he heard the music and dancing in the house he refused to join the celebration. Instead he held his own pity party out in the field.
True to his character, when the father discovered that his eldest son was not home he went out to find him. There the father begged the older son to come to the party. But the son was furious. “Look, all these years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!” (Luke 15:29-30).
Notice where the older son roots his significance: “All these years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command.” The older son lived for his father. And for his service he expected a reward. In this way he really is not that different from the younger son. Neither boy was particularly interested in a relationship with the father, instead both were focused on what they might get from him. The younger son simply took what he desired while the older son, being a more patient and self-disciplined person, worked for it. Their methods were night and day, but both sons desired the same thing and in neither case was it the father. In other words, both sons sought to use their father. Both were jerks, one just happened to be of a more socially-acceptable variety.
Jesus told this parable at a gathering with Pharisees and scribes--very devoted religious leaders; men who drew a great deal of significance from their service for God. Was Jesus trying to say to them that there is something wrong with serving God or faithful obedience? Of course not. The problem comes when we find our significance and worth in it. Jesus is not diminishing the older son’s obedience, just as he is not endorsing the younger son’s immorality. Rather he is showing that both a “life from God” (the younger son) and a “life for God” (the older son) fail to capture what God truly desires for his people. Pouring our lives into a mission that we believe pleases God is not the center of the Christian life. It is not what is going to remove our fears or unbind our captivity to sin. In order to discover what God cares about most, we must look more closely at the father’s response to the older son in Jesus’ story.
“Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this brother of yours was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:31-32).
What brought the father joy was not the older son’s service, but simply his presence--having his son with him. This is what the father cares about most, not his property or which son receives more of it. While the sons are fixated on the father’s wealth, the father is fixated on his sons. This is what they both failed to understand, and it is what both Christian consumerism and Christian activism fail to grasp. God’s gifts are a blessing and his work is important, but neither can or should replace God himself as our focus.
Like the younger son, believers in our churches often build their identity around what they receive from God. Or like the older son we find our value in how we serve God. And a great deal of effort is expended in faith communities trying to transform people from younger sons into older sons. But this is a fool’s errand. Because what mattered most to the father was neither the younger son’s disobedience nor the older son’s obedience, but having his sons with him. And so it is with our Heavenly Father. Reversing the rebellion of Eden and restoring what was lost can only be accomplished when we learn that at the center of God’s heart is having his children with him.
While a vision for serving God is needed, and the desperate condition of our world cannot be ignored, there is a higher calling that is going unanswered in many Christian communities. As shepherds of God’s people, we must not allow our fears of insignificance to drive us into an unrelenting pursuit of church growth, cultural impact, or missional activism. Instead, we must model for our people a first-class commitment to a first-class purpose--living in perpetual communion with God himself. As we embrace the call to live with God, only then will we be capable of illuminating such a life for our people.
But what if we’re wrong?
Roger spent decades serving Christ and planting churches on four continents. But after reflecting on his labor for the kingdom of God, his confession surprised many of us. “I’ve given most of my energy to a second-rate mission as well,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong. Church planting is great. But someday that mission will end. My first calling is to live with God. That must be my first commitment.”
What Roger articulated was a temptation that many in ministry face. To put it simply, many church leaders unknowingly replace the transcendent vitality of a life with God for the ego satisfaction they derive from a life for God. Before exploring how this shift occurs in church leaders, let me take a step or two backwards and explain how I have seen it within the Christian college students I’ve worked with in recent years.
Is impact everything?
The students I meet with often worry about what awaits them after graduation. This is a reasonable concern for any young adult, but for many of them the worry extends far beyond finding a job with benefits. They fixate, and some obsess, about “making a difference in the world.” They fear living lives of insignificance. They worry about not achieving the right things, or not enough of the right things. Behind all of this is the belief that their value is determined by what they achieve. I’ve learned that when a student asks me, “What should I do with my life?” what he or she really wants to know is, “How can I prove that I am valuable?”
When we come to believe that our faith is primarily about what we can do for God in the world, it is like throwing gasoline on our fear of insignificance. The resulting fire may be presented to others as a godly ambition, a holy desire to see God’s mission advance--the kind of drive evident in the Apostle Paul’s life. But when these flames are fueled by fear they reveal none of the peace, joy, or love displayed by Paul. Instead the relentless drive to prove our worth can quickly become destructive.
Sometimes the people who fear insignificance the most are driven to accomplish the greatest things. As a result they are highly praised within Christian communities for their good works which temporarily soothes their fear until the next goal can be achieved. But there is a dark side to this drivenness. Gordon MacDonald calls it “missionalism.” It is “the belief that the worth of one’s life is determined by the achievement of a grand objective.” He continues:
Missionalism starts slowly and gains a foothold in the leader's attitude. Before long the mission controls almost everything: time, relationships, health, spiritual depth, ethics, and convictions. In advanced stages, missionalism means doing whatever it takes to solve the problem. In its worst iteration, the end always justifies the means. The family goes; health is sacrificed; integrity is jeopardized; God-connection is limited.[1]
What I have witnessed in the lives of many college students is the early symptoms of missionalism. The virus had been introduced to them in childhood and incubated by well-intentioned churches, ministries, schools, and the wider evangelical subculture. And with graduation looming the students were feeling the pressure. It was, after all, their first opportunity to actually prove their worth through achievement.
When meeting with or counseling a struggling church leader, one of the questions I’ll ask to diagnose whether missionalism is present is: “Assuming you’re not engaged in some kind of disqualifying sin, why not?” The answer I often hear, the answer most posters have been conditioned to say, is: “I wouldn’t want to do anything to jeopardize my ministry.” That response often reveals where a leader’s true devotion is. Sadly I rarely hear a pastor say, “I wouldn’t want anything to disrupt my communion with God.” So few of us have been given a vision of a life with Christ, and instead we seek to fill the void with a vision for ministry--a vision of a life for Christ.
Phil Vischer, the creator of VeggieTales, was raised in a “life for God” environment. His experience reveals how the fear of being insignificant is implanted into young people. He said the heroes his community celebrated were “the Rockefellers of the Christian world;” those who were enterprising, effective, and who made a huge impact for God. They launched massive ministries or transformed whole nations. This led Vischer to conclude that impact was everything. “God would never call us from greater impact to lesser impact!,” he wrote. “How many kids did you invite to Sunday? How many souls have you won? How big is your church? How many people will be in heaven because of your efforts? Impact, man!”[2]
But after losing his company in 2003, Vischer began to question the validity of the “life for God” values he had inherited and which had driven his early career.
“The more I dove into Scripture, the more I realized I had been deluded. I had grown up drinking a dangerous cocktail—a mix of the gospel, the Protestant work ethic, and the American dream…. The Savior I was following seemed, in hindsight, equal parts Jesus, Ben Franklin, and Henry Ford. My eternal value was rooted in what I could accomplish”[3]
A professional crisis made Vischer pause and reexamine his posture with God, but for others the nagging discontent of a life lived for God manifests much more slowly. Consider what one pastor in his late 30s wrote: "The church is growing, and there's excitement everywhere. But personally I feel less and less good about what I'm doing. I'm restless and tired. I ask myself how long I can keep this all up. Why is my touch with God so limited? Why am I feeling guilty about where my marriage is? When did this stop being fun?"[4] This leader is not alone. Studies show that approximately 1,500 pastors leave the ministry every month due to conflict, burnout, or moral failure.[5] Others have shown how ministry rooted relentless achievement for God actually contributes to addictive behaviors. When the accolades that give pastors a sense of significance cease or never come at all, some begin to nurse secret pleasures on the side to numb their pain.
When church leaders function from this understanding of the Christian life, they invariably transfer their burden and fears to those in the pews. If a pastor’s sense of worth is linked to the impact of his or her ministry, guess what believers under that pastor’s care are told is most important? And so a new generation of people who believe their value is linked to their accomplishments is birthed. If the cycle continues long enough an institutional memory is created in which the value of achievement for God is no longer questioned. Leaders may be burning out at a rate of 1,500 per month, young people may be riddled with anxiety, and divorce rates in the church may be rising and families falling apart, but no one stops. No one asks whether this is really what God intended the Christian life to be. No one asks, at least out loud, because that might slow things down. Remember, the work must go on. Impact, man!
Mission is good, not ultimate.
You may be thinking, “But we are called to do things for God. And what’s the alternative--continuing to allow the people in our churches to be self-consumed Christians seeking only their own comfort?” That is a very fair concern. And I completely concur with the consumer posture that is choking much of the modern church both in North American and increasingly around the globe.
But the prescribed solution I hear in many ministry settings is to transform people from consumer Christians into activist Christians. The exact direction of the activism may depend on one’s theological and ecclesiological orientation. For traditional evangelicals it’s all about evangelism--getting believers to share their faith, give to overseas missions, and grow the church. For many younger evangelicals it may focus compassion and justice--digging wells and eradicating poverty. But what the traditional and younger evangelicals agree upon is that we are to live our lives for God by accomplishing his mission however we may define it.
The “life for God” view makes mission the irreducible center of the Christian life. And everything and everyone gets defined by some great goal understood to be initiated by God and carried forward by us. An individual is either on the mission, the object of the mission, an obstacle to the mission, an aid to the mission, or a fat Christian who should be on the mission.
Please don’t think I am trying to dismiss the importance of the missio dei or the church’s part within it. Like other church leaders, I greatly desire to see more Christians hear God’s call and engage in the good and life-saving work he has given us. And I am incredibly grateful for my friends in ministry who have awakened the church to the theological and practical necessity of mission in our age. But as Tim Keller has deftly observed, “An idol is a good thing made into an ultimate thing.” The temptation within activist streams of Christianity is to put the good mission of God into the place God alone should occupy. The irony is that in our desire to draw people away from the selfishness of consumer Christianity, we may simply be replacing one idol with another. This is the great danger of endlessly extolling the importance of living for God--it put can place God’s mission ahead of God himself. Paul, the most celebrated missionary in history, did not make this mistake. He understood that his calling, to be a messenger to the gentiles, was not the same as his treasure, to be united with Christ. His communion with Christ rooted and preceded his work for him.
Few passages of Scripture illustrate our present dilemma better than the Parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. If you recall, the young son did not value a relationship with his father but only his father’s wealth--a poignant example of the consumer Christian. He took what his father gave him, left home, and wasted the gifts on fast living. Eventually he was penniless and desperate. But when the son returned home to seek his father’s mercy and a job as a servant, he was astonished to find his father overjoyed--running to embrace him with open arms.
But that’s only half of the story. The father also had an older son who was very different than his swinging sibling. He was reliable, obedient, and lived to do his father’s bidding. But when the older son heard that his wayward brother had returned, and that his father had welcomed him and was throwing a party, he became incensed. In fact, when he heard the music and dancing in the house he refused to join the celebration. Instead he held his own pity party out in the field.
True to his character, when the father discovered that his eldest son was not home he went out to find him. There the father begged the older son to come to the party. But the son was furious. “Look, all these years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!” (Luke 15:29-30).
Notice where the older son roots his significance: “All these years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command.” The older son lived for his father. And for his service he expected a reward. In this way he really is not that different from the younger son. Neither boy was particularly interested in a relationship with the father, instead both were focused on what they might get from him. The younger son simply took what he desired while the older son, being a more patient and self-disciplined person, worked for it. Their methods were night and day, but both sons desired the same thing and in neither case was it the father. In other words, both sons sought to use their father. Both were jerks, one just happened to be of a more socially-acceptable variety.
Jesus told this parable at a gathering with Pharisees and scribes--very devoted religious leaders; men who drew a great deal of significance from their service for God. Was Jesus trying to say to them that there is something wrong with serving God or faithful obedience? Of course not. The problem comes when we find our significance and worth in it. Jesus is not diminishing the older son’s obedience, just as he is not endorsing the younger son’s immorality. Rather he is showing that both a “life from God” (the younger son) and a “life for God” (the older son) fail to capture what God truly desires for his people. Pouring our lives into a mission that we believe pleases God is not the center of the Christian life. It is not what is going to remove our fears or unbind our captivity to sin. In order to discover what God cares about most, we must look more closely at the father’s response to the older son in Jesus’ story.
“Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this brother of yours was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:31-32).
What brought the father joy was not the older son’s service, but simply his presence--having his son with him. This is what the father cares about most, not his property or which son receives more of it. While the sons are fixated on the father’s wealth, the father is fixated on his sons. This is what they both failed to understand, and it is what both Christian consumerism and Christian activism fail to grasp. God’s gifts are a blessing and his work is important, but neither can or should replace God himself as our focus.
Like the younger son, believers in our churches often build their identity around what they receive from God. Or like the older son we find our value in how we serve God. And a great deal of effort is expended in faith communities trying to transform people from younger sons into older sons. But this is a fool’s errand. Because what mattered most to the father was neither the younger son’s disobedience nor the older son’s obedience, but having his sons with him. And so it is with our Heavenly Father. Reversing the rebellion of Eden and restoring what was lost can only be accomplished when we learn that at the center of God’s heart is having his children with him.
While a vision for serving God is needed, and the desperate condition of our world cannot be ignored, there is a higher calling that is going unanswered in many Christian communities. As shepherds of God’s people, we must not allow our fears of insignificance to drive us into an unrelenting pursuit of church growth, cultural impact, or missional activism. Instead, we must model for our people a first-class commitment to a first-class purpose--living in perpetual communion with God himself. As we embrace the call to live with God, only then will we be capable of illuminating such a life for our people.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
"Father, Into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit."
"Jesus called out with a loud voice, 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.' When he had said this, he breathed his last.
Luke 23:46
As we anticipate our celebration of Christ's Resurrection, I would like to suggest four important lessons from these, His final words from the cross. His words teach us that…
1. Jesus died actually.
There has been a theory proposed over the centuries, by those who reject the possibility of His resurrection, that Jesus didn't actually die on the cross, but only "swooned," or passed out. Medical scientists who are familiar with crucifixion assure us that this suggestion is entirely impossible, since physical exertion by the victim was necessary in order to continue breathing. The victim of crucifixion died primarily from suffocation, overcome by weakness and the blood loss associated with his wounds, as he became unable to push himself up on his feet in order to get the next breath. So had Christ become unconscious, He would have suffocated.
Neither was Jesus somehow rescued by angels from the cross, as others have proposed. These people suggest that Jesus was spiritually delivered prior to His death, and that He therefore only gave the appearance of having died on the cross. Of course, the evidence contradicts this theory as well.
After He died, the Roman soldier pierced His side with a spear. Blood and water poured out of the wound, satisfying them that if He wasn't dead before, He was now, or would be shortly. Blood and water do not pour forth from an apparition. Moreover, the cry, "Into your hands I commit my spirit," would have been totally unnecessary had He been somehow spiritually rescued prior to his death.
It is of utmost importance to understand that Jesus died actually, not apparently, nor symbolically. If Christ did not actually die, then the resurrection is a hoax, and you and I, and all mankind, are still in our sins.
But the clear evidence is that Jesus truly died. He died actually.
2. Jesus also died willingly.
Having given His body, Christ now willingly offered His very soul to God.
Death has been defined as the unnatural rending of the soul from the body. Death only exists as a curse from our Creator. It is the penalty for sin: the sin of our first parents, and our own sin.
However, the Holy Spirit assures us through the writer of Hebrews that Christ, though tempted in every way just as we are, never committed sin (Heb. 5:14). So He died a death that He himself did not merit. Thus, in His suffering and death, Jesus truly experienced God's righteous judgment for sin. He did this willingly, not reluctantly, not grudgingly nor under compulsion. He willingly gave up everything He had – even His own soul – in order to set free those who rightfully deserved the sentence He endured.
Hebrews 9:14 tells us that "Christ...offered Himself without blemish to God". No one took Jesus' life from Him; He died willingly...for us.
Hebrews 9:14 tells us that "Christ...offered Himself without blemish to God". No one took Jesus' life from Him; He died willingly...for us.
From Jesus' last words from the cross, it is also evident that....
3. Jesus died confidently.
Christ, who previously cried out to "Eloi, Eloi" – "my God, my God" - from whom He was, in that hour, and for the only time in all eternity, separated from fellowship, now with His final breath, addressed this same God personally as "Pater" - "Father."
The words which He shouted to His Father were from Ps. 31, in which the full text of the fifth verse reads:
"Into your hands I commit my spirit; deliver me, Lord, my faithful God."
The One to whom Jesus addressed these words is the Father about whom Jesus taught us:
"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him?" (Matt. 7:7-11).
Jesus was confident that the One to whom He now committed His very soul would care for Him even after He had "breathed His last." He knew that He would be delivered, on behalf of all those for whom He had died. He died confidently.
Not only did Jesus die actually, willingly and confidently, but…
4. Jesus died faithfully.
Everything Jesus did, He did with purpose. The manner in which Jesus surrendered his soul reveals a great deal about the meditations of his heart even in confronting the Great Terror, and the courage and tranquility of his innermost character in that moment. Jesus died – even after feeling forsaken by His Father – with a steadfast heart. Jesus' heart at His death was one of devotion and expectation. We know this because the prayer on His lips came first from the devotional diary of his earthly ancestor, David.
"Into your hands I commit my spirit; deliver me, Lord, my faithful God."
Matthew Henry observes that "Christ died with scripture on His lips." Thus He died with scripture in His heart. No resentment, no hate, no condemnation of those who had hurt and killed Him. Of this, the Apostle Peter writes:
He never sinned,
nor ever deceived anyone.
He did not retaliate when he was insulted,
nor threaten revenge when he suffered.
He left his case in the hands of God,
who always judges fairly.
He personally carried our sins
in his body on the cross
so that we can be dead to sin
and live for what is right.
By his wounds
you are healed.
nor ever deceived anyone.
He did not retaliate when he was insulted,
nor threaten revenge when he suffered.
He left his case in the hands of God,
who always judges fairly.
He personally carried our sins
in his body on the cross
so that we can be dead to sin
and live for what is right.
By his wounds
you are healed.
I Peter 2:22-24 (NLT)
Implications.
What do Jesus' last words from the cross imply for you and me?
We have no choice about this; we will die. But how we die is up to us. Willingly or humbly. Entrusting our souls to God, or tenaciously clinging to life as if this is all there is.
In a sense, when we die is up to us. We can wait until we "breathe our last," or we can consider, as the Apostle Paul said, that
My old self has been crucified with Christ.[a] It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)
Jesus said that "he who loves his life loses it, but he who hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life" (John ).
You and I can choose to live in the present as dead to ourselves, entrusting our lives to God every day, living for His purposes. As the Paul also taught us, "He died for all, that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and was raised on their behalf" (II Cor. ).
But in those final hours, what thoughts will fill minds? What words will be on our lips? I suspect it will depend greatly on the thoughts that occupied our minds the most during our lives.
So, whether we die actually is not our decision: We will die - actually.
But, when our time comes to die, will we die willingly, responding obediently to our Master's summons? Will we die confidently, knowing that the One who calls us is faithful to His promises? Will we die faithfully, resting in those promises, allowing them to minister to our souls even as we release those souls to Him? Will we also willingly, confidently and faithfully say, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit?"
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
More Than a Crutch
"Christianity is a crutch," the man said. Actually, he wanted no part of any religion, because to be religious implied that he was personally inadequate, somehow incomplete in and of himself. At least, that was his rationale for being dismissive about the subject.
There is in each of us something inherently independent. We could say that it is our culture which breeds this in us. After all, we Americans have our roots in pioneerism. We have always celebrated the lone hero, the completely capable person who is, at his core, an overcomer.
Or it could be that the hurts of life teach us to keep our distance from others, to wear the mask of confidence even when, inside, we are screaming for connection, for acceptance, for human love. Our bold exterior becomes a shell which separates us even as it seems to protect us, even while our hearts shrivel in the aloneness. In our souls we hurl stones at the ones we fear the most, even as we long for communion with them, with someone. Could it be the pain we have experienced at the hands of others is the cause of the independence that keeps us far from the things of God? Perhaps.
I think rather that it is something more innate, something that is part of the package with which we are born. It comes with being human. Call it pride, call it self-sufficiency, call it independence; the Bible calls it sin. Not sin simply as something we do which is wrong; but sin as an operative principle at the center of our being. St. Paul observed, "I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members" (Romans 7:23). There is within each of us a deep antagonism to the one who made us, an unwillingness to come under His authority. We want all His benefits, but none of His rule.
Kris Lundegaard suggests that our essential nature toward God mirrors that of Melville's Captain Ahab toward the White Whale: "He doesn't blink to forfeit his ship and every life it carries, if only he can heave his harpoon into that terrible eye" (The Enemy Within P&R Publishing: 1998, p. 43). This is hard for us to swallow, but I think Lundgaard is right. There is more that is broken about us than a crutch would suggest. "Christianity is a crutch." I think not. I think it is more like a wheelchair. Or a litter. Actually, what we need is an overhaul, starting at the innermost part of us. We need a resurrection of the heart.
"Christianity is a crutch." My answer is, "You don't know the half of it."
How far removed is such a perspective from that of the Puritan who penned this prayer:
"O Lord of Grace,
The world is before me this day, and I am weak and fearful, but I look to thee for strength;
If I venture forth alone I stumble and fall, but on the beloved's arms I am firm as the eternal hills;
If left to the treachery of my heart I shall shame thy name, but if enlightened, guided, upheld by thy Spirit, I shall bring thee glory.
Be thou my arm to support, my strength to stand, my light to see, my feet to run, my shield to protect, my sword to repel, my sun to warm.
This is Christianity! So much more than a crutch.
There is in each of us something inherently independent. We could say that it is our culture which breeds this in us. After all, we Americans have our roots in pioneerism. We have always celebrated the lone hero, the completely capable person who is, at his core, an overcomer.
Or it could be that the hurts of life teach us to keep our distance from others, to wear the mask of confidence even when, inside, we are screaming for connection, for acceptance, for human love. Our bold exterior becomes a shell which separates us even as it seems to protect us, even while our hearts shrivel in the aloneness. In our souls we hurl stones at the ones we fear the most, even as we long for communion with them, with someone. Could it be the pain we have experienced at the hands of others is the cause of the independence that keeps us far from the things of God? Perhaps.
I think rather that it is something more innate, something that is part of the package with which we are born. It comes with being human. Call it pride, call it self-sufficiency, call it independence; the Bible calls it sin. Not sin simply as something we do which is wrong; but sin as an operative principle at the center of our being. St. Paul observed, "I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members" (Romans 7:23). There is within each of us a deep antagonism to the one who made us, an unwillingness to come under His authority. We want all His benefits, but none of His rule.
Kris Lundegaard suggests that our essential nature toward God mirrors that of Melville's Captain Ahab toward the White Whale: "He doesn't blink to forfeit his ship and every life it carries, if only he can heave his harpoon into that terrible eye" (The Enemy Within P&R Publishing: 1998, p. 43). This is hard for us to swallow, but I think Lundgaard is right. There is more that is broken about us than a crutch would suggest. "Christianity is a crutch." I think not. I think it is more like a wheelchair. Or a litter. Actually, what we need is an overhaul, starting at the innermost part of us. We need a resurrection of the heart.
"Christianity is a crutch." My answer is, "You don't know the half of it."
How far removed is such a perspective from that of the Puritan who penned this prayer:
"O Lord of Grace,
The world is before me this day, and I am weak and fearful, but I look to thee for strength;
If I venture forth alone I stumble and fall, but on the beloved's arms I am firm as the eternal hills;
If left to the treachery of my heart I shall shame thy name, but if enlightened, guided, upheld by thy Spirit, I shall bring thee glory.
Be thou my arm to support, my strength to stand, my light to see, my feet to run, my shield to protect, my sword to repel, my sun to warm.
To enrich me will not diminish thy fullness;
All thy lovingkindness is in thy Son,
I bring him to thee in the arms of faith,
I urge his saving name as the one who died for me.
Accept his worthiness for my unworthiness,
His sinlessness for my transgressions,
His purity for my uncleanness,
His sincerity for my guile,
His truth for my deceits,
His meekness for my pride,
His constancy for my backslidings,
His love for my enmity,
His fullness for my emptiness,
His faithfulness for my treachery,
His obedience for my lawlessness,
His glory for my shame,
His devotedness for my waywardness,
His holy life for my unchaste ways,
His righteousness for my dead works,
His death for my life."
This is Christianity! So much more than a crutch.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
MODESTY: THE NAKED TRUTH
Having had - in a former life - a brief involvement in the dramatic arts, I have a deep concern for those in artistic professions, particularly actors. They lead their lives in a very difficult, but highly influential, environment. I am concerned for their spiritual welfare, and also for the power of their influence, not only through their craft, but also by their example.
So, each morning I pray for specific media leaders, actors, musicians and other performers, using a prayer guide produced by Master Media, a Christian ministry which takes the message of the love and redemption of Christ to media leaders.
Dr. Larry Poland is the visionary President of Master Media. In an article in Spring 2011 issue of The Mediator, Dr. Poland published an article which deserves a wide reading, especially among those who profess to be followers of Jesus. In it, he addresses an issue which I have observed as an increasing problem among the Christian community in recent years. It is entitled, "Modesty: The Naked Truth." I submit it here for your prayerful consideration:
INTRODUCTION
DESTRUCTIVE EFFECTS OF IMMODESTY
While immodesty can be a problem for both sexes, it is a greater and more common problem when expressed by women. Following are some destructive elements of immodesty among believers:
CONCLUSION
In their best-selling book, Every Man's Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation Once Victory at a Time, Stephen Arterburn, Fred Stoeker, and Mike Yorkey describe the plague of addiction to sexual temptation and impure images (a.k.a. pornography) in the Body of Christ. Not just a man's problem anymore, "lust addiction" is a growing issue with believing women.
Is it not time to make a renewed commitment to help each other conquer these temptations? Step one surely must be to do nothing which feeds sexual lust and moral sin in others.
So, each morning I pray for specific media leaders, actors, musicians and other performers, using a prayer guide produced by Master Media, a Christian ministry which takes the message of the love and redemption of Christ to media leaders.
Dr. Larry Poland is the visionary President of Master Media. In an article in Spring 2011 issue of The Mediator, Dr. Poland published an article which deserves a wide reading, especially among those who profess to be followers of Jesus. In it, he addresses an issue which I have observed as an increasing problem among the Christian community in recent years. It is entitled, "Modesty: The Naked Truth." I submit it here for your prayerful consideration:
INTRODUCTION
Modesty is a virtue that is all but lost in American society and that has become increasingly rare even in the Christian community. The pervasive influence of immodesty in society impacts Christian men and women through images in film, TV, videos, Internet, and in secular social settings.
Regardless of the above, the Bible condemns immodesty. Immodesty has a number of destructive effects on the immodest person, on those who view the immodest person, and on the Christian community.
Speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Jeremiah the prophet condemns Israel
The Apostle Paul exhorts believers to "shine like stars" on the dark backdrop of the degenerate culture around them. Surely this includes the believer's image as well as his behavior – and modesty is about both.
A simple definition of modesty is: Making sure that my external appearance accurately reflects my internal commitment to Christ and to biblical holiness – regardless of worldly fashions.
DESTRUCTIVE EFFECTS OF IMMODESTY
While immodesty can be a problem for both sexes, it is a greater and more common problem when expressed by women. Following are some destructive elements of immodesty among believers:
1. It blurs the distinction between those who know and love Christ and those who reject God and His law. Question: "Why wouldn't I want to appear to others like one who knows and loves Christ, rather than one from 'the world?'"
2. It blurs the distinction between those who are immoral by behavior from those who are moral by behavior. Question: "If I am not an immoral person, why would I want to dress like one?"
3. It detracts from the believer's true beauty, the countenance. Question: "If the light of Christ is in countenance, and He is the source of my attractiveness, why would I want to draw attention away from His countenance and true beauty by immodest dress?"
4. It tempts others to sin. Question: "If immodesty in dress tempts others to lust after or to covet me sexually, am I willing to be responsible for their struggle?"
5. It feeds the fleshly – not the spiritual – side of the immodest believer. Question: "If I dress or act immodestly in public, will it not stir within me inappropriate fleshly or sexually seductive passions?"
6. It sends messages about the immodest person that reveal their true heart attitude toward purity. Question: If, as Jesus said, 'from the overflow of the heart a person speaks, ' why would I want my apparel to 'speak' that my heart is impure or immoral, if it isn't?"
7. It contributes to temptations that lead to porn addiction, fornication, adultery, pregnancy out of marriage (and resulting abortions – my note), sexually transmitted diseases, and the impairment of sexual intimacy in the God-ordained bond of marriage. Question: "If I am not soliciting sexual advances, why would I want to dress as if I were, and, thus, risk having to deal with the potentially horrific consequences of such advances – possibly even rape?"
CONCLUSION
In their best-selling book, Every Man's Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation Once Victory at a Time, Stephen Arterburn, Fred Stoeker, and Mike Yorkey describe the plague of addiction to sexual temptation and impure images (a.k.a. pornography) in the Body of Christ. Not just a man's problem anymore, "lust addiction" is a growing issue with believing women.
Is it not time to make a renewed commitment to help each other conquer these temptations? Step one surely must be to do nothing which feeds sexual lust and moral sin in others.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Recognizing God
Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in religious law, "Is it permitted in the law to heal people on the Sabbath day, or not?" When they refused to answer, Jesus touched the sick man and healed him and sent him away. Then he turned to them and said, "Which of you doesn't work on the Sabbath? If your son or your cow falls into a pit, don't you rush to get him out?" Again they could not answer.
Luke 14:3-6
Change comes hard for most of us, particularly if the change addresses things we thought we knew for sure. Christopher Columbus had a hard time selling people on the concept of a voyage to reach the East by traveling West, because they were absolutely confident the earth was flat. Christian missionaries have often lost their lives because of their bold assertion that there is one gracious and loving God who rules over all creation, rather than a multitude of "gods" who hold people captive to sad, and frequently bizarre, superstitions. When the truth challenges our way of seeing ourselves and the world in which we and our people live, we will often cling ever more tenaciously to our beliefs, even when they are false and harmful.
The Pharisees of Jesus' day struggled enormously with Jesus' Sabbath practices. They were willing to receive His instruction only so long as His example conformed to their own practices, and those practices did not include healing the sick on the Sabbath. They were so rigid in their interpretation of the law of Moses that their hearts were hardened even to the suffering of those whose care was entrusted to them. Yet - think of it! - the person challenging their thinking was Jesus, the Son of God, the One through whom all things came into being. Here was God in the flesh, giving them instruction and showing by His example a better, more compassionate way of seeing, and they rejected His lessons.
The issue really boils down to one of authority. The Pharisees refused to recognize the authority Jesus had both to do what He did, and to teach what He taught. They rejected His authority over their world view, which included His authority to amend their incorrect beliefs and practices.
Today, there is in our culture a huge problem with the idea of authority. No one, it seems, should have the right to assert what anyone else ought to do or not do. Since truth has been relativized within our culture, the notion of authority - which is intrinsically linked with truth - has gone by the way. Any concept of truth, we are told, can only be reached by consensus, that is, by mutual consent among those who hold no objection to what is being proposed. What a dangerous position to hold! How vulnerable this makes people to the fallacies of human judgment!
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Remembering God
"...how often they rebelled against Him in the wilderness and grieved His heart in that dry wasteland. Again and again they tested God's patience and provoked the Holy One of Israel. They did not remember His power and how he rescued them from their enemies."
Psalm 78:40-43
The older I get, the more aware I become that I have an amazing ability to forget things. Truly, I am a really good "forgetter." (Just ask my wife!) I don't think it's the early onset of Alzheimer's (although having walked with my dad through the dementia of his final years, that possibility has crossed my mind more than once). The forgetfulness to which I refer is a condition which I believe is more common to all of us - it seems to be part of the human condition. Perhaps you can relate.
I find I am especially forgetful when it comes to the things of God.
God has sustained me all of my years; He has provided for my family and for me in innumerable ways. Yet the economy goes soft, and my response is to become anxious about the future. Forgetting His undeniable goodness, I worry what will happen to us if the market crashes or the government goes bankrupt (as if it's not already).
I have committed a pretty good portion of God's word - the Bible - to memory, including the part which assures me that "a soft answer turns away wrath," and that "a fool always loses his temper, but a wise person holds it back." Yet I am so quick to forget these truths in favor of lashing out when crossed by those closest to me, only to recall afterward that He observes and keeps track of all my sins: thoughts, words, and deeds.
There is a small comfort in the fact that my condition is not exclusive with me personally. Psalm 78, and many other passages in the Bible, reveal that even those who lived with God's presence in the form of a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day - were also prone to forget Him. Go figure! They had seen God's work in drowning an entire army where they, themselves, had just walked through the middle of a sea on dry land. They had seen Him produce water when they were thirsty, meat when they were hungry, bread from heaven for them to eat daily. They had possession of stone tablets inscribed with rules for life by the very finger of God. Yet they forgot.
No wonder God tells them - and us - over and over to "remember." We are to remember His words, His character, and His works. We are to pass them on to our children, teaching them carefully of God's mighty acts of provision - not just for Israel, but in our own experience as well. The regular recounting of God's good works on our behalf provides protection against the inclination to forget, and we must never grow weary of repeating those accounts.
As a student of history, it occurs to me that the greatest task of the historian is not just to examine what happened in the past, but to preserve the truth of what God did in the past. Since He is at work in all things, historians can do a great service if they will glorify Him by reminding us all of God's hand in history
- lest we forget!
Friday, April 8, 2011
Revealing God
The man was old but kindly, with a spark that shone in his eyes, now moist. His tears were not evidence of grief; rather, they were tears of joy, as he looked down at the small bundle of life in his arms. He had waited years for this moment, though he could not have known that what his eyes beheld, what his arms now enfolded, would be such a small package. Yet in the depth of his being he was sure, he was certain - yes, this was indeed the fulfillment of God's promise to him that before his life on earth was over, he would have the privilege of personally seeing Israel
Now as he tenderly cradled Mary's baby, his gratitude welled up, and words came forth, more profound than even his own joy could have expressed, words from the very heart of God:
"Sovereign Lord, now let your servant die in peace, as you have promised. I have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all people. He is a light to reveal God to the nations, and he is the glory of your people Israel
"A light to reveal God to the nations." This is how the Holy Spirit, through Simeon's mouth and the pen of St. Luke, spoke of the second Person of the Triune God, now become flesh. Jesus Himself would later say of those who became His followers:
"You are the light of the world…let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 5:14,16 ESV ).
Jesus came to reveal God to all the peoples of the world. He gave to His followers the same daunting task: to reveal God, to show to all the world what God looks like when He is manifest in human flesh. What an amazing, even overwhelming daily challenge for those of us who claim to be His disciples!
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