Jesus' Victory

Jesus’ victory alone – is it enough?  To even ask the question is to acknowledge that life feels like defeat at times.  If we were fulfilled and had all we desired, why would we search for any other victory than what we already have in him?  

 

It seems to me that the biblical faith stakes everything on a victory that comes in the midst of what looks like defeat.  We gain our life by losing it.  To the one who toils at this ground, the one who strives to obey without too much regard for more worldly measures of success, a victory comes that is not one’s own, but which belongs to Christ.  This person has a chance to share in Christ’s victory and to be satisfied. 

 

Jesus’ victory is not staked upon his rhetorical skill or upon his gifts for healing.  His victory is established by his comprehensive life and the positive force of his obedience and of his love.  The obedient life lived toward God looks so passive and dependent from the world’s perspective, but it is the most forceful, wise, positive decision to be made with one’s life – for to give one’s life to God is to gain it back again, even if it is lost. 

 

And Christ’s death is not for himself alone.  By the grace of God, it is vicarious, whereby the benefits of his life and of his death and of his new life are shared generously.  His status as God’s Beloved Son is unique by nature, but whatever else we could want or need by way of adoption is provided to us by grace.  Only that Jesus Christ be received as Jesus Christ, all else will suffice for us, far beyond what we could know or expect. 

 

This is the good news for our secular, post-modern era and its unique challenges: that although we consider everything outside our own emotions and our own heads with suspicion with regard to forming our personal identity, Jesus gives the gift of finding ourselves, the gift of a true identity and the gift of a solid basis for reality outside of ourselves. For even the darkest night, Jesus’ gifts are enough light to fill the sky. 

 

For the most downtrodden of us, the most self-pitying of us, his gift is the sort that comforts and satisfies, not least because this comfort is rooted in our own pain and sin-sick sorrow.  We were right to feel as we did.  It was all true.  But through this weakness comes strength.  Strength over and against the allegiance-claiming world and also for the sake of this same world, which God loves.  We are not orphans or beholden to any other lord.  Christ’s love frees us from all tyranny – even the tyranny of our own selves – and deputizes us for love and service in his name, as his ambassadors. 

 

And though all burdens are equally manageable to him in his glory, that is not so for us. Some hours weigh heavily.  Some days crush us. The early morning burden may take one hour to give him.  The late afternoon burden may take one minute.  With Christ, we should expect comfort.  And we should wrestle until we get it.  We should dig through the mess of our lives in prayer until we find the cross of Jesus Christ. Where else would we find victory?  What other victory is there?  His pain is solidarity.  But for all the work to get there, it is worth it.  Only when we find him at his cross do we find the reminder that we never skip straight to hope or to resurrection in our lives.  Only when we find him at his cross are we immediately flooded with transcendent and prevailing hope of a great victory.  This hope is one step away, but the only one who can say this, and the only who can make such a step is the one who finds Christ at his cross.  That is the great overview of the world, the lookout on the universe.  We can only overcome the world because, at a point in time, Christ overcame the world. 

Living for Others

Jesus frees us from the need to live for others so that we can live for the sake of others.  It is a confusing idea because this formula suggests that others are both our problem, and also that others are our destiny.  How can this be?  The only solution is that what Jesus is engaged in is new creation.  Our new loyalty is to Christ alone, as our Savior and Lord.  He reserves the right to re-establish the grounds of our relation to the world.  If we know others, it is through knowing him.  If others know us, it is in knowing him.  Paul’s gospel is ours: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal. 2:20) 

 

Our tribulations and trials are now seen through the lens of the cross of Jesus Christ, for his experience is now the closest to us.  As Americans, this is surprising because normally training gives way at some point to full responsibility.  At some point, the boss stops doing your job for you and expects you as a fully trained employee to do the work all by yourself.  But maturity always corresponds to deeper resemblance to the life of God rather than cohering to some cultural norm of our society.  The life of God is mutuality, inter-dependence, creative collaboration, and endless love.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are co-authors of a work of creation, and also of a work of redemption.  Jesus leads us not only to himself, but to a new relationship with his Father which is fashioned after his own relationship.  The Holy Spirit likewise points us to himself, and also beyond himself, to Jesus.  Our center of gravity is not in ourselves but in God, and his whole story as we find it unveiled to us in Scripture. 

 

This is the source of our identity, and its fruit is this: that we each become less brittle, less prone to wilt beneath the burdens of loving one another well.  Christ has established our lives so firmly in himself that we no longer need to manipulate one another, coerce one another, or compete with one another for exclusive prizes and elite recognition.  Nor do we discover what we shall become by looking at menus provided by marketers skilled in catering to the sovereign self.  Instead, we look to Christ, who does not cater to us, does not recognize our own selves as sovereign, and does not relate to us as a vendor happy to have our business. 

 

He has saved us from the other stories which threaten to overwhelm the story that he tells about us: that we are sheep, and that he is our shepherd.  He is the one who loves us, who knows our needs better than we do, and prepares for our future better than we can worry about it.  He turns nuisances, threats, and enemies into neighbors.  He frees us from the need to serve others so that we can freely live to serve others.

Knowing Christ Everyday

Knowing Christ everyday is vastly superior to knowing Christ once in awhile.  I was with a friend earlier today in the context of a Bible study who said that he was thankful that we could have a chance to be with the Lord together during the week.  There was agreement around the table.  To know Christ is always refreshing. 

 

Why do we resist him so frequently?  How is it that we can commune with him with such joy on a Sunday and manage to stay away from anything religious throughout the week?  Christ’s cross makes us so safe from all harm that we are able to finally see the truth – that we prefer our own ways to his, that we would rather be distracted with trifling novelties than to seek meaning from him.  He saves us from having to go too long on our own strength.  On our own strength, things fall through our fingers which, with him, will not be lost.  He frees us to love our neighbors more than ourselves, to embrace life with joy, to see immense value in those who aren’t well regarded in the world. 

 

Knowing Christ once in awhile is better than not knowing him at all.  I’ve known the sheer pleasure of being reminded of his grace when I hadn’t tended to him in weeks.  But knowing Christ every now and again leads to a lot of faking.  We fake-forgive.  We fake-love.  We fake-listen.  We pretend to be working harder than we are.  Knowing Christ everyday frees us from the feared consequences of the choices we make in this life.  Our bosses aren’t our lord.  Our parents aren’t our lord.  Jesus has freed us from other lords so that he can be our Lord in everything. 

 

And he is a good lord to have because he knows us.  He knows our ways.  He knows how little interest we have in being good subjects of his kingdom.  He has given us not only himself, but he has restored our wills.  We can be active participants in what God is doing right now.  We forget this because by the end of the day, we feel the weight of our sin – our egos are bruised, our tails are between our legs.  We know full well we aren’t the supermen or superwomen we thought we were once we’d had our morning cup of coffee.  But the Lordship of Christ is gentle and refreshing, so refreshing that he has allowed us to know his unsurpassable strength even when we are at our weakest. 

 

For every prayer I give to him, I find the strangest most comforting assurances – that by simply telling the simple truth without embellishment, that God may well renew the hope of those around me.  Confiding my dreads to him, I find that the all-powerful God wants goodness and love to arise from the circumstances of my life just as much as I do.

Focused on the Cross in all Circumstances

Staying focused on Christ and his cross is an essential in hard times.  When the world presses in on us, we have a refuge.  At the cross, our greatest sin is forgiven.  We are restored to the image of Jesus Christ.  We are reminded that Christ has overcome the world. 

 

In the same way that the world was lost through a bite of fruit, the world was won through one man’s death and resurrection.  Jesus carried all sin and death into the grave with him and buried it there.  Whatever guilt or shame we bear is merely a reminder of the truth that we are sinners and is meant only to drive us to claim again the truth that Jesus is a great Savior. 

 

It strikes me how often I flee to other comforts.  The comfort of a good home.  The comfort of a family who love me.  The comfort of health.  The comfort of gifts and talents.  The comfort of stability.  But when one of these seems to have shaky foundations, it becomes apparent that these things can’t save me.  They are idols, and a poor replacement for the wonderful salvation we have in Christ.  They can’t promise what he can.  They can’t deliver what he can.  But when all the other options have been tried, when I finally run out of answers, Christ is there. 

 

And he does satisfy with his grace, covering over my sin, suffering punishment on my behalf.  He also satisfies with his goodness.  He is a wonderful person, who carefully yet naturally avoided the clumping cliques of humanity, speaking easily for God and against every faction and special interest group.  Jesus alone speaks entirely with and for God.  Thus, he frustrates us when he does things we love, and then something we don’t understand and won’t conform to our expectations.  But we also love him for this.  “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.” Says Isaiah 55:8. 

 

We learn to appreciate this when we wrestle long enough with our God-resentments and wrestle over them with God in prayer.  We appreciate it because although God wrestles with us, God uses the encounter to teach us what it means to actually wrestle with him and not another human being like ourselves.  Who do we think we are, to wrestle with God this way?  And yet, we come away simultaneously weaker and stronger – weaker, for we see the truth about who we are compared to God – but also, stronger, because God drew near to us.  We saw him.  We heard his voice. 

 

We come to love the God for who he is, not for who we’d sometimes like him to be.  We come to appreciate that God doesn’t cater to our whims, fancies, and desires, and we see that it is fitting that we should instead conform ourselves to him.  Rather than grudgingly accept this, we embrace it because our sin has been punished in him.  He is the one with the wounds in his wrists, wounds which say our name, and continually plead before God the Father in solidarity with us.  It is such good news – we are part of the life of God through Jesus Christ.

The Hidden Door and the Little People

Alex went out in the quiet night.  In the middle of town one night, he stepped on a hollow spot.  “How could that be?” he said.  “This is the normal ground.”  He touched it with his hand, and his fingers curled around a latch…as in a latch for a door.  He opened it and found a stairway descending.  He went down this stairway.

Inside, he could see very small men and women and children.  They were like the men, women, and children in the real world, only you had to look hard for them.  What made them stand out was their singing.  He heard the women singing a song which cast a good spell over him.  Their voices gracefully moved from note to note.  He didn’t even know what they were singing about.  He had never heard women sing before.  Their song entranced him.  He couldn’t believe he was there.  He must have sat there all night.  In fact, he sat there and listened to the music for days and days.  He was warned not to tell anyone about the place when he returned.  Up above, the bakery where he worked continued on without him.  When he reappeared, he continued to work.   A woman named Anna who worked at the same bakery wondered where he had gone.

Alex found a room in the back of the bakery where he could go.  In the silence of this room, he could still hear the song that the women would sing.  He would close his eyes.  He could hear their voices, gliding up to high notes, how differently a woman’s voice sounded from a man’s voice, even when they would speak.  It filled him with such longing, and he thought he could listen forever.  Anna would see him in this room.  She was so puzzled after weeks of this that she decided to keep an eye on his home at night, and see what he did.  She saw him go to the middle of town.  She hid behind one of the buildings and saw that he pulled the latch.  “There’s a hidden door in the middle of the town!” she thought.  When he had been down there for a few minutes, she also pulled the latch of the door, found the stairs and went down them. 

Inside, she could see very small men and women and children.  Like Alex, she thought they resembled those in the real world, yet they didn’t seem as special somehow.  She also found that what made them stand out was their singing.  She heard the men singing a song which cast a good spell over her.  They sang with robust passion with great feeling.  There was great meaning to what they sang, and there was also a jubilant, joyous sound.  She had never heard men sing before.  She didn’t know what they were singing about, but she found it very intriguing.  Their song entranced her.  She left before Alex could see her because she was embarrassed.  Alex would have loved for someone to have been there.  In fact, he would have loved for Anna to have been there, but he didn’t know.  And neither did she.

Soon enough they both would sit and enjoy the silence in the back of the bakery.  Alex didn’t feel strange because Anna seemed to like the silence as he did.  Sometimes when his eyes were closed, hearing the song, he would open his eyes and look at Anna.  He felt that even though he still didn’t know what the womens’ song was about, and even though he’d heard her sing before and she didn’t sing well, he thought she would enjoy singing this song.  And sometimes when Anna’s eyes were closed, hearing the song, she would open her eyes and look at Alex.  She felt that even though she still didn’t know what the mens’ song was about, and even though she’d heard Alex sing before, and he had a terrible voice, she thought he might enjoy singing this song.  Yet still they said nothing.

The owner of the bakery was a crocodile.  He was a wicked creature.  He had long since begun to wonder about all this, and saw them both sneak into the hidden door at different times.  Filled with surprised fury, he went down some time after Anna and he had the same experience.  He hated the music.  He hated the sound of mens’ voices.  And he hated the sound of the womens’ voices.  He hated the way they sang together.  He knew that when Alex and Anna were in the back room of the bakery they were listening to the song they heard from the hidden door.  The next time they sat there, he filled the room with squealing pigs so that they couldn’t hear the voices. 

The next day, the crocodile thought he would continue to fill the room with noise, but there came such a loud singing of mens and womens voices that the pigs all ran squealing from the room.  Alex and Anna recognized the song, but couldn’t see the people as they had before.  Then there came a voice.  “We are smaller when we are in your world.  But we are also louder.”

The crocodile sold them the bakery and never came back.  Alex and Anna sang this song at their wedding with all the little people present and they continued to sing it, living happily ever after.

Very Bad People

Literature professor Anthony Esolen has written a delightful and funny book about inspiring the imagination of the young.  He wants to do this of course.  But he has chosen to write this book satirically.  Thus, the title: Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child.


He doesn't actually want to do this, of course.  And the feel of the book ultimately is that of lament because he fears he is expressing intentionally what our educational landscape in the U.S. does unintentionally.  He laments that there are many ways to destroy the imagination, and that a lot of them are being done well.


Here's a paragraph about how history becomes exciting or boring: "Or consider this piece of apparently harmless trivia: "The Normans conquered Sicily in the eleventh century."  Ah, who cares about that?  Nobody, so long as you have not made the mistake of introducing your student to geographical facts to boot.  For if he knows where Normandy and Sicily are on the globe, he may ask the obvious question, "How did the Normans get down there?  Did they go overland, or did they sail?"  And that might lead him to investigate the construction of their boats, or who was in control of Sicily before they arrived.  He might eventually find out that Viking raiders and traders had long been in contact with Constantinople, and that the Byzantine rulers there requested the help of the now Christian Normans in ousting their enemies, the Muslim Arabs, from Sicily.  How did Vikings end up in Byzantium?  It appears they trekked overland to the River Don in Russia, and then sailed down it to the Black Sea and Constantinople.  It would be better if the student could not tell Sicily from Saskatchewan, and knew only that Vikings were Very Bad People with funny hats who sailed a lot." (Esolen, 7)

Mysteries

A friend was talking to me today about some of his current reading.  He mentioned that he'd been reading murder mysteries.  He wondered if I liked reading mystery novels.  "Sure," I said, even as I struggled to think of one I'd picked up lately.


I was reminded that Eugene Peterson had written an appreciative passage on mysteries for his book Take and Read.  In the book, he recommends books across a vast swath of genre - all of which pertain to living the spiritual life well.  One of the chapters - perhaps the most unlikely of all the chapters - is "mysteries."


I found one particular passage quite intriguing:


"Gabriel Marcel always insisted that we have to choose whether we will treat life as a problem to be solved or as a mystery to be entered.  Why then do so many of the men and women who choose to enter the mystery slip aside from time to time to read mysteries that aren't mysteries at all, but problems that always get solved by the last page?  I think one reason may be that right and wrong, so often obscured in the ambiguities of everyday living, are cleanly delineated in the murder mystery.  The story gives us moral and intellectual breathing room when we are about to be suffocated in the hot air and heavy panting of relativism and subjectivism." (Peterson, Take and Read, 73)


First, I think the Marcel quote seems to imply that the audience will be nodding after the part about mystery.  The audience is shaking their head after the part about life being a problem to be solved, but are nodding in agreement about it being a mystery to be entered.  That appeals to us.  Life is messy.  Questions pile up before many satisfying answers do.  Taking into account that reality is not based on us, but upon God, we can say something similar: Living by the power of the Holy Spirit, through the life of Jesus Christ given for us, and for our Father with whom we are re-united - we live at the dictates of a holy, loving being who is not us.  Thus, we live mysteriously. 


But Peterson is also saying that this isn't enough for us.  We turn aside from the mystery to "mysteries" or "thrillers" which are actually more like "problems" because they get solved by the last page.  He thinks the reason we do this is because in a world that deliberately keeps the truth fuzzy, where to say something with great feeling must mean that it is real, that the delight a person experiences in the truth coming out at the end of a mystery thriller is comparable to the experience of breathing easy after suffocating in great humidity.  It is a slight reminder of all the ways that we hunger for truth.


So, since Peterson recommended some old mystery writers, here's the oldest one:


G.K. Chesterton, The Father Brown Stories (1929).  The mild and soft-spoken Father Brown, unassuming and unobtrusive, always took people by surprise when he solved a crime.  They didn't realize that a lifetime of hearing confessions was as good a training as one could ask for in crime detection.  W.H. Auden, confessed Christian and self-confessed detective story addict, wrote, "Father Brown solved his cases, not by approaching them objectively like a scientist or a policeman, but by subjectively imagining himself to be the murderer, a process which is good not only for the murderer but for Father Brown himself because, as he said, 'it gives a man his remorse beforehand'" (from Auden's The Dyer's Hand). (Peterson, 74)

Why the Westminster Delegates are Keeping their Heads Down

Chapter one of the Westminster Confession of Faith places the human being within a world that suggests God, hints at God but doesn't show us his true character, nor how we would relate to him.  God's revealed character, and what he means for the world, intends it to be, what he created it for - these are all things which come from God's revelation, or unveiling of himself in his Word.  Is this the written Word, or the one referred to in John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word?"  Probably both, but in Westminster organization of Christian teaching, the written Word, the Bible is the exclusive authority on God and this authority rests on God alone, not on our ability to read it well.   


I explored briefly in my last post the objections to Westminster beginning this way.  In summary these arguments ask, "Who begins our journey in the Christian faith?" 


"Jesus." we answer. 


"And if we grow in our faith, how did that come about?" 


"Because all of faith is fellowship with God through Christ, we say again - Jesus is how we grow in our faith." 


"And when we at last come to the completion of our journey of faith, what do we expect to see or find?"


"Because all of eternal life consists in a full fellowship with God that will no longer be by faith, but by sight, we say again - Jesus is our destination."


"Then, if Jesus is the beginning, middle, and end of all our journeying toward God, why does the Westminster Confession begin with teaching about Holy Scripture?"


And here we would agree.  What good reason would Westminster Confession of Faith have for beginning with Scripture rather than with God?  The complaint comes to mind of people who love their Bibles so much that they think they'll be reading them in heaven.  Is that what we're dealing with here?  A case of excessive biblio-philia?  Should we want to lift the Westminster delegates' bearded heads up from their Bibles so that they can actually see God?


Robert Letham finds three reasons why the Westminster folks are keeping their heads down in their Bibles.  The first and third reasons have to do with other documents such as the influential-at-the-time Irish Articles, and also with the development of textual criticism of written sources including the Bible.  The second reason is this: the Bible is how we come to know about God.  He writes: "Epistemologically, it is the best starting point, while a beginning with God would have given a more ontological focus.  It was a matter of judgment." (121)


Epistemology and ontology, as word choices, drone a bit.  They sound academic and they intimidate.  But they happen everytime we learn anything.  You are in front of a group of people.  You are teaching them how to make a spinach and feta cheese omelet.  How do you begin?  You could begin with the reason we're all there and talk about the omelet.  Show a picture of it.  Describe how it tastes.  That's why we're really there.  But then you might think - "these people know what an omelet is.  They know how it tastes.  That's why they're here.  They don't want me to talk about the omelet.  They want me to talk about the bowl, the egg-beater, the stove-pan, the spatula, how long it cooks, how much salt to use, whether to cook the feta or just toss it on top.  They want to engage with me about the steps I take, the process I go through to get from having no omelet to the place where I can finally sit down with the omelet and enjoy it."


That's a fairly ridiculous illustration and you can tell I'm not really a foodie, but our teacher has moved from an ontological approach to teaching to an epistemological approach.  Instead of focusing on what the omelet is, the teacher focuses on the way to get to the omelet.  Both approaches are important.  The ontological approach is more beautiful.  It holds the object itself up before you.  "This is an omelet."  Seeing an omelet has a motivating quality to make one, especially if you're hungry.  Ontology draws us in.  Epistemology helps us to set up our home.  Ontology shows us the nature of the omelet, motivates us to make it, and epistemology shows us how to make one anytime we'd like.  Education has happened.  And your life is no longer omelet-less.


That the Westminster Confession of Faith chose to begin with epistemology would suggest to us that the confession is very practical.  Most wouldn't think so by looking through it.  That the Westminster Confession of Faith chose to begin with epistemology would suggest to us that the confession is very human-centered.  Yet this is also not apparently the case, for few documents are so God-centered.  So which is it?  Is the Westminster Confession of Faith human-centered - a bunch of folks who are too busy in their Bibles to look up and see God?  Or if it's God-centered, how ironic that it begins not with God, but with the way we know God - the Bible.


The Westminster Confession of Faith describes the Bible as very comprehensive with regard to things of God that we need to know: "The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture..." (1.6)  The Confession will go on very quickly to become much more God-centered.  Beginning with Scripture is the Confession's way of teaching us that of all God is up to in the whole universe, he is chiefly concerned with us.  It is saying "you want to know God.  That is where you want to be.  That is where the Bible will not lead you astray.  God has given it a hallowed place to show us who God really is, and also who we really are.  And this is the key to everything to come.  We begin here, because only if we begin here, will we see what God is really like."  So the Westminster Confession of Faith begins in a human-centered way precisely so that it can center itself in God.    


  

Westminster Confession of Faith and the 'light of nature'

The Westminster Confession of Faith begins this way:


"Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence, do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation..."


Why does the Westminster Confession of Faith begin with 'the light of nature?'  Thomas Torrance wonders why, pointing to older catechisms from the 1500s which focused upon the person and work of Jesus Christ from the start.  Instead of focusing upon Christ from the start, Westminster is focused upon the way man appropriates this salvation.  The light of nature, creation, and providence would have sufficed, but because of sin we can't see this.


Torrance wants Westminster to proceed more from God than from man: "Ultimately the main content of these Catechisms is concerned with man's action, man's obedience, man's duty toward God, man's duty to his neighbor, and man's religion, although undoubtedly all that is directed upward in a most astonishing way to the glory of God." (xviii).  Furthermore, where and how do we discuss obedience?  More Torrance: "In the older Catechisms man's obedience was regarded as part of his thanksgiving, but in the later it is schematized to the moral law as something that is partly revealed by "the law of nature." (xix)  Is it a grateful act in response to Christ's work, or something we are all dimly aware of through the law of nature?  Or both?  These are Torrance's queries.  And according to Torrance, it all depends on how you 'schematize'.


A scheme is an outline, a way of organizing beliefs.  To use Kevin Vanhoozer's term, doctrine are never just abstract beliefs, but drama.  They tell a story.  Stories convey drama, and they have the power by their format to present order to day-to-day events.  To borrow a phrase from Alisdair McIntyre, we don't know how to act meaningfully or morally until we know what kind of story we are living.  This makes doctrine paramount in importance, because it means we always live doctrinally, according to some story.  It is just a question of which story, which scheme we will live by.  A scheme is a way to organize these beliefs so that the story is coherent.  Torrance thinks the scheme of Westminster establishes itself in an objective belief in a stable and fixed 'law of nature' and reason, where there was an opportunity and perhaps, to his way of thinking, a missed opportunity to establish the scheme objectively in the person and work of Christ as the way we know God. 


How does the Christian begin the doctrinal story?  Per Torrance, is there really any other way into this story than through the knowledge of Jesus Christ in all that he is?



For to see all the drama of doctrine begin and end with Christ is to keep doctrine rooted in Christ in a way that continues to speak freshly through the centuries.  Various Scottish theologians love the catechisms of the 1500s more than those of the Westminster era of the 1700s.  Horatius Bonar, the great hymn-writer, wrote: "Our Scottish catechisms though grey with the antiquity of three centuries, are not yet out of date.  They still read well, both as to style and substance; it would be hard to amend them, or to substitute something better in their place.  Like some of our old church bells, they have retained for centuries their sweetness and amplitude of tone unimpaired." (Torrance, xvii)


Perhaps, as Bonar and Torrance would say, it is because of the lawyer-ly, relentlessly logical quality of Westminster which makes it difficult to get at the sweetness.  Perhaps.  Yet, we will undertake this pursuit of sweetness in a series of posts here.

Pokemon Go and Re-Enchantment

Alissa Wilkinson writes about Pokémon Go for Christianity Today:






"Players find Pokémon hidden in the world they occupy every day.  (A certain Christianity Today editor located one on a copier in our office last week, then promptly posted a photo to Facebook.)  Who doesn't want to chase down presences on their block, or in their school?  Who wouldn't delight in the serendipity of "capturing" a presence that isn't "really" there but might as well be?"






In her exploration of Pokémon Go and also the TV show "Stranger Things" and the movie "Midnight Special", Wilkinson talks about the joy of enchantment:






"What we're after is joy - the serendipity of discovery, the thrill of mystery, the feeling of excitement lurking around the corner.  Modern science brought many great things with it, and many scientists seem to testify that they find wonder and enchantment in their work."






But she says that too much explanation disenchants the world:






"But when this study purports to "explain" why we act as we do, or that (a) set of principles or guidelines proclaims that if we only follow them, we'll be right with ourselves or God - well, doesn't some of the light seem to have gone out of the world?" (Wilkinson, "How Stranger Things Re-Enchants the World", Christianitytoday.com)  






In other words, disenchantment drives us to re-enchant.  This is why there's always a market for Pokémon Go or for any number of TV shows or movies like Blair Witch Project, Conjuring, Stranger Things, or Walking Dead which attempt to explore hidden presences or the supernatural because they re-enchant the world with ghosts, zombies, and demons - and yes, Pikachu - and other such things which modern science disenchanted long ago.




'Disenchantment' is a key term for Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor's exploration of our secular age.  James K.A. Smith writes about it here:




"It is a mainstay of secularization theory that modernity "disenchants" the world - evacuates it of spirits and various ghosts in the machine.  Diseases are not demonic, mental illness is no longer possession, the body is no longer ensouled.  Generally disenchantment is taken to simply be a matter of naturalization: the magical "spiritual" world is dissolved and we are left with the machinations of matter.  But Taylor's account of disenchantment has a different accent, suggesting that this is primarily a shift in the location of meaning, moving it from "the world" into "the mind." 


Significance no longer inheres in things; rather, meaning and significance are a property of minds who perceive meaning internally." (Smith, How (Not) to be Secular, 28-29)


Disenchantment is not only a matter of evacuating, or subtracting the "spirits" or "ghosts" of premodern eras.  Taylor's point is that disenchantment is a relocation of meaning from the world to the mind.  To return again to the way Wilkinson puts it, we have to work harder in a disenchanted, secular world to invest "discovery", "mystery", and "excitement" in things of the world.  Restaurants, churches, and homes can also become Pokestops.

Sin is a Dominion

Sin is not just a verb.  It isn't merely something people act out or do.  This would imply that we could merely stop doing so much of it and it would be fine.  Episcopalian priest Fleming Rutledge seeks to demonstrate in her book The Crucifixion that sin is a verb and also a dominion under which humanity exists.  Sin is "all-inclusive."  It is an "alien power" and "there is nowhere to look within this world order for deliverance." (Rutledge, 189).


To illustrate this, she quotes a 1996 response letter to a New York magazine article about cosmetic surgery: "While reading your cover article I began to wonder what our society would be like if kind hearts and strong minds were respected, revered, and a turn-on.  Obsessing about beauty and thinness is a luxury that only wealthy countries can afford.  We worship the media and the false idols they provide us while in our own cities and elsewhere in the world people are starving.  Yet we are the slaves.  Vanity is a disease, and we Americans are infected." (Rutledge, 190).  The reader's point seems to be that this sort of thing must be stopped, but to stop it, we must understand it.  How do you tell someone to stop obsessing over beauty and thinness, particularly if it is more like a disease.  How do you tell a disease to stop?


Rutledge's point is that sin is more than naughty actions.  Sin is "an infectious disease." (190)  In other words, it is a dominion that we are all under.

Should politicians be trusted?

Barton Swaim has written a book about his time as a speechwriter under disgraced-former-governor-now-congressman of South Carolina Mark Sanford.  He concludes with a reflection on trusting politicians:


"Why do we trust men who have sought and attained high office by innumerable acts of vanity and self-will?  When a work colleague makes a habit of insisting on his own competence and virtue, we may tolerate him, we may even admire his work, but his vanity is not an inducement to trust him.  Why, then, do we trust the men who make careers of persuading us of their goodness and greatness, and who compete for our votes?  Catherine Zuckert makes this point powerfully in an essay on Tom Sawyer.  Tom, remember, is brave and clever and has a firm sense of the right thing to do, but he is animated mainly by a hunger for glory.  He is, in short, the essence of an able politician.  "People like Tom Sawyer serve others not for the sake of others," writes Zuckert.  "They serve because they glory in receiving glory...We should reward such people with the fame they so desire - if and when they perform real public services.  But we should not trust them."  I feel the force of that last sentence now: we go badly wrong when we trust them.  Indeed much of the hand-wringing commentary about the loss of trust in government resulting from Vietnam and Watergate is simply, I now think, a failure to appreciate the simple truth that politicians should never have been trusted in the first place.  They may be lauded when they're right and venerated when they're dead, but they should never be trusted." (Swaim, The Speechwriter, 198-199)


In other words, even if a politician be good or noble or virtuous, Swaim seems to locate a core vanity and hunger for glory that is a stumbling block to trustworthiness.

Longing for Beauty in the Midst of Sorrow and Death

Joseph Loconte explores the role George MacDonald's book Phantastes played in C.S. Lewis' conversion to Christianity.  What is Phantastes about?  "Phantastes explores what at first seems to be a young man's search for feminine beauty, but turns out to be a quest for something much more profound."  The hero's quest encounters various frustrations and sufferings, and what he seems to be pursuing turns out to be not so much a destination as it is a sign pointing beyond itself to something transcendently beautiful.


As Loconte writes, Christianity was very far from Lewis' mind at the time.  But the close of World War I had disposed him to be open to something beyond his generation's commonplace thoughts about progress, patriotism, and religion.


MacDonald wasn't looking for Lewis.  Lewis wasn't looking for MacDonald.  But book and reader found one another, and in Phantastes, Lewis found something important.  In a materialist world, where the material is all there is, none of us point beyond ourselves.  But in a world of signs, the world and all that is within it point beyond themselves.  There is such a thing as false beauty.  But true beauty in this world tells the truth.  It is a sign.  It points to the author of beauty.


This isn't otherworldly and escapist.  In fact, it gave Lewis the strength to see beauty in the midst of death and darkness without ignoring evil.  Loconte writes: "In April 1918, while he was serving as a second lieutenant on the Western Front, Lewis's regiment engaged in a firefight at Riez du Vinage.  A shell exploded close by, killing his sergeant and injuring him with shrapnel in the hand, leg and chest.  Lewis was sent by train to a hospital in London.  The pleasure of the English countryside - set against the suffering and horror of war - seemed to quicken his belief in a transcendent source of natural beauty.


'"Can you imagine how I enjoyed my journey to London?"  Lewis wrote to a friend from his bed at Endsleigh Palace Hospital.  "First of all the sight and smell of the sea, that I have missed for so many long and weary months, and then the beautiful green country seen from the train...You see the conviction is gaining ground on me that after all Spirit does exist.  I fancy there is Something right outside time and place, which did not create matter, as the Christians say, but is matter's great enemy." (Loconte, Books and Culture vol 22, number 4, pg. 5)


In the midst of real sorrow and death, Lewis found his longing for beauty strengthened.  What Lewis is encountering here - what is also drenched in MacDonald's books - is what many Christians over the centuries have described as a "sacramental" understanding of the world - that it points beyond itself to the one who made it.

A Story of Power, Knowledge, and Love

There were three young adults.  One was named Goliath. He was powerful. His muscles were tight and strong.  He never had to persuade anyone to do anything because everyone was always eager to please him anyway.  When he daydreamed, he daydreamed about conferences with heads of state.  Work-out enthusiasts, biker gangs, and car aficionados and military folks everywhere revered Goliath.  Goliath was the sort of person who inspired tremendous courage and others would willingly follow him into battle.  The second was named Solomon.  He understood what everyone really wanted out of life.  He could sell anything because he knew what everyone wanted to hear.  He could negotiate his way out of any situation.  Men and women alike loved knowing he was around because he knew so much.  His interests were so varied, and he understood human nature so well that he was incredibly witty, humorous, with great insights about agriculture, vitamins, spices.  He understood the world of finance, and could speak with great sophistication on any subject.  Anyone who spoke with him felt that he truly did understand what it was like to be them.  And he did.  His is the single most downloaded TED talk ever given.  The third was named Jane.  She loved a little kid named Ty.  She was his foster mother for the early part of his life.  And though this was just a portion of his life, it was her life’s work.  She knew exactly how much sugar he liked in his tea.  She woke him up.  She put him to sleep.  She told him stories in the evening when the sunlight was low with shadowpuppets on the wall.  Sometimes Ty would insult her because it was clear he had the power to hurt her.  And it did hurt her.  Others thought she was too emotional.  Others thought she was frivolous.  Taking walks with her took forever because she would notice things like butterflies.  She laughed a lot.  Some thought she wasn’t serious enough.

Now there was a fairy who lived in Jane’s neighborhood who would occasionally help Jane out with little chores and cooking.  One day another fairy with an official looking uniform appeared.  “I’ve come from the council”, he said.  “We have looked into the heart of what is to come, and it seems Ty must prepare to become a great leader of humanity.”  But the official fairy was very unimpressed with Jane, who seemed very weak, clingy, and vulnerable.  So he went to work.  Jane’s fairy defended her, but he wouldn’t listen.

As Ty grew up, he enlisted in the military.  The commander of his unit was Goliath.  Ty quickly became Goliath’s star pupil.  But even as he became more powerful, confident, and skilled in getting his way, he only made others afraid.  They were in awe of him, but they didn’t love him.  Like most small things around him, Jane vanished in his eyes.  He never came by.  When he did see her, he always hurt her feelings somehow.  The official fairy was disappointed.  Power had seemed to alienate Ty from people.

The fairy saw to it that Ty ended up as a PhD candidate under Solomon where Solomon did some adjunct professorial work.  This led to a spot on the board of Solomon’s media company which oversaw cultural journals, book reviews, TV network, and a global conference for technological and financial elites.  Ty became Solomon’s star pupil.  He was constantly acknowledged in a wide variety of books, and his schedule became filled with all sorts of cocktail parties.  But even as he became very knowledgeable about influence, success, management, and more, he was more and more motivated by predicting trends and staying current, discovering untapped talent, that even though he thought he was selfless, the truth was all too apparent to the fairy from his metrics that Ty wasn’t so much of a leader as a star with countless planets revolving around him.  Jane’s letters that she was praying for him were answered with embarrassed, sophisticated, condescension which Ty took for being sweet.

When Jane died, her family asked Ty to make contributions to her obituary.  As he took some time one morning to try to organize some words around Jane’s life, he felt strangely moved that he could not capture Jane’s life in words.  Her life was so simple and so dedicated to him that it came across small in such a way that embarrassed him, for how she had dedicated herself to him.  For vast periods of stillness, he simply held her before his eyes.  He began to wonder if she were not the most loving person he had ever met.  What truly began to move him was that he could see this in her when he had never seen it before.  He began to wonder for the first time in his life whether he might be a good person because he could see this in her.  As his mind moved through thoughts like these, he felt as though he were being given what he most deeply longed for in that very moment.

Words cannot describe what Ty went on to do.  But the fairy, when he reclined with his fairy beverage at the end of the day, he would think about this moment, when Jane’s life of selfless love filled his being.  He didn’t think about the power that Ty went on to wield with such dignity and valor.  He didn’t think about the knowledge which Ty held with such kindness.  He thought about that one moment when Ty was so filled with wonder at Jane’s love for him that all he had ever done  or ever hoped to do seemed as nothing to him compared with even one single tear that had fallen from Jane’s cheek on his account. 

In those days the word of the LORD was rare

1 Samuel 3:1-19 plays a central role in the early part of the book of 1 Samuel.  David Dorsey maps the book out as follows:


a  introduction: Samuel's birth and lifelong dedication to Yahweh (1:1-2:11)
               b  Eli's wicked sons show contempt for Yahweh at the tabernacle (2:12-26)
                             c  prophecy that Eli's sons will be killed on one day (2:27-3:1a)
                                           d  TURNING POINT: Samuel's call (3:1b-4:1a)
                             c'  prophecy about Eli's sons comes true: their deaths (4:1b-22)
               b'  travels of the ark; Philistines show respect for Yahweh's ark (5:1-7:1)
a'  conclusion: Samuel's victory and lifelong rule over Israel (7:2-17)


The passage begins with a general comment on God's word.  "In those days the word of the LORD was rare; there were not many visions." (3:1)


Then, in the subsequent passage, young Samuel repeatedly hears the LORD calling to him.  The fact that Samuel confuses the voice calling him for the priest Eli seems to underscore that the LORD has spoken to Samuel four different times in one night.  He keeps calling.


The passage's central role in the first seven chapters shows that power is being taken away from Eli and his wicked sons and given to Samuel.  The cause of this has been Eli's disregard for God's word.  But Eli knows God has spoken to Samuel, and his disregard turns to intense concern for what God has said: "What was it he said to you?"  Eli asked.  "Do not hide it from me.  May God deal with you, be it ever so severely, if you hide from me anything he told you." (3:17)


The passage ends with a note about Samuel's words: "The LORD was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of Samuel's words fall to the ground."  For a passage so focused on the dignity and gravity of God's words, it is fitting that the one he favors, Samuel, would have his words blessed as well.

When Do Differences Create Enmity and Anger?

When do differences create enmity and anger?


This is what Socrates asks Euthyphro.  First, Socrates considers whether differences about numbers lead to enmity: "Suppose for example that you and I, my good friend, differ about a number; do differences of this sort make us enemies and set us at variance with one another?  Do we not go at once to arithmetic, and put an end to them by sum?" (Plato, 388)


We do, answers Euthyphro.


Socrates considers some other possibilities: differences about measurements, or how much something weighs?


Euthyphro agrees that we also have means by which to resolve these disagreements with one another.


Socrates continues: "But what differences are there which cannot be thus decided, and which therefore make us angry and set us at enmity with one another?  I dare say the answer does not occur to you at the moment, and therefore I will suggest that these enmities arise when the matters of difference are the just and unjust, good and evil, honourable and dishonourable.  Are not these the points about which men differ, and about which when we are unable satisfactorily to decide our differences, you and I and all of us quarrel, when we do quarrel?" (388)


In other words, human beings will be reasonable and work out agreements about many things.  They don't set out to make enemies where they can press on together.  But about matters of what is just or unjust, they will struggle to find means to "satisfactorily" decide the differences.  Being satisfied is key here.  Deciding that someone else's measurement is more accurate is a much easier step than renouncing one's sense of good and evil in favor of another's.  We hold very close to our heart what we deem to be good and just. 

A Shattering Experience

Scottish theologian Thomas Torrance writes about the importance of teaching Christian doctrine to children: "One of the great tragedies of modern life is that the neglect of doctrinal teaching to children at an early age, has meant that their powers in other areas of intellectual life are often developed out of all proportion to their powers in Christian and spiritual understanding..." (School of Faith, 39)


In other words, Torrance sees a parallel process in learning a basic grammar of doctrine alongside our other early learning endeavors.


Lack of balance here causes problems later down the road in life.  What sort of problems might this cause?  Torrance writes: "Conversion in the psychological sense takes place when, as a result of such an unbalanced development and the radical dichotomy it involves, adaptation to the truth can only be a shattering experience.  But that need not happen if Christian instruction and learning have been properly fulfilled." (39)


Torrance's choice of metaphor is interesting here - "a shattering experience."  We understand what it means for a conversion to be painful or difficult.  Family and friends don't understand.  Jobs are relinquished.  But shattering?  What exactly shatters?


Presumably, a conversion shatters when reconciliation and growth in the life of faith come at a point when many other habits or traits of thought or life have become fully ingrained that then have to be given up or unlearned.  It is shattering psychologically.  It feels like we are in pieces.


'Shattering' conversions are certainly still conversions.  Indeed, even if we are not shattered by the experience, we feel some pressure of the significance of it, don't we?  Shouldn't we?  Yet, as Torrance says, the one who has had a shattering conversion may truly yearn for an alternate reality in which he or she had learned doctrine as a child as with other building blocks of life. 

Two Wonders

A great salvation suggests a great fall.  The two go hand in hand.  There is room in the Christian life for a deep consideration of both.  Having only the great salvation and not the great fall wouldn't be the Christian gospel.  Perhaps this is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace."  It doesn't cost much.


A stanza from Elizabeth Clephane's hymn reads thus: "Upon the cross of Jesus/mine eye at times can see/the very dying form of One/who suffered there for me:/and from my stricken heart with tears/two wonders I confess,/the wonders of redeeming love/and my own worthlessness. (Trott, A Sacrifice of Praise, 558).  She calls them two wonders.  They surprise us.  It is their nature to be deeper and more mysterious than we expect to understand fully.


P.T. Forsyth reflects on how we might proceed with our two wondrous wonders: "It is for the redeemed to magnify the cost, the preciousness, of redeeming grace.  It is not for the Redeemer.  It would be ungracious in Him to do so.  He brought the grace to us, and brought it as grace, not as cost; He offered it as a finished thing, rich and ripe, in its fullness and freeness of beauty, love, sorrow, and searching power.  For Him to dwell on the cost, who paid it, and to do so while paying it would have been to rob grace of its graciousness, to impair its wonder, amplitude, and spell.  But would it not have been just as ungracious, as much of a reflection on grace, if it had made no apostle or saint leap forward, to go behind the constraining liberating, re-creating charm of grace, and to draw out for our worship the cost of it - what holy Fatherhood paid in forgiving and what He was too generous to obtrude, till it pricked the conscience and woke the wonder of the forgiven?" (The Holy Father, 18-19)  To use Clephane's terminology to interpret Forsyth, the first wonder of redeeming love is pure gift - the life of Christ given for us.  The second wonder of "my own worthlessness" happens second, when I look at the gift that has been given, and find myself, in Forsyth's delightful paradoxical phrase, 'leaping forward to go behind' the gift to find the cost of it.  And this draws out my worship.


The charm of grace sends me searching for the cost of it.

Unawakened

How do we learn?  Pagan thought considered that all learning is recollection: we already know it.  It just has to be drawn out of us.  Socrates says as much to Meno - "the soul, then, as being immortal, and having been born again many times, and having seen all things that exist, whether in this world or in the world below, has knowledge of them all...for all enquiry and all learning is but recollection."  Meno asks Socrates to explain this: "what do you mean by saying that we do not learn?"  Socrates gets mad at Meno for trying to trick him: "I told you, Meno, just now that you were a rogue, and now you ask whether I can teach you, when I am saying that there is no teaching, but only recollection; and thus you imagine that you will involve me in a contradiction."  In other words, Meno must think Socrates is a pretty big fool to ask him to give him new information about how human beings can't learn new information.  Shame on you, Meno. (Plato, trans. Jowett, 361)


Socrates goes on through a lengthy demonstration to seek to prove his point, asking only questions.  Not giving new information, but deriving information from the pupil.  The boy's knowledge is elicited.  It is not new, it is a recovery.


From a more Christian perspective, Glenn Clark reflects on the love of a friend: "Do you love the spirit of your friend, or do you just love the outside of him?  If you love his clear complexion, his baritone voice, his straight Greek profile, his splendid figure, and stop there - then your love is not the true penetrating heavenly love.  But if you love the deep wells of quietness, deep, deep down inside of him, if you love the Christlike quality of his compassion, or his yet unawakened capacity for intelligence, for endurance, for heroism, then you are beginning to get to the roots of him." (Benson, Disciplines for the Inner Life, 107)  This reflects more of a Christian understanding of spiritual gifts: the Holy Spirit comes to live in the Christian.  There is something real and powerful there, but it may be asleep, unawakened, and the Christian friend seeks to awaken it.


Finally, P.T. Forsyth explores Jesus' seeming messianic modesty: "Christ never told His disciples He was Messiah till it was borne in on them by contact with Him.  He never told them till, by the working of the actual Messiahship upon them, they found it out.  Revelation came home to them as discovery.  It burst from experience.  So gracious is God with His revelation that He actually lets it come home to us as if we had discovered it.  That is His fine manner - so to give as if we had found.  His shining may even be forgotten in our seeing." (The Holy Father, 17)  What is it about our learning that feels new?  It feels like we didn't know it before.  Socrates suspected we forgot we knew it.  Forsyth suspects that our Father graciously lets us "discover things" that he already has for us.

5/15/16 Sermon - More than Trying Harder

I resonated with the way Jenn described what we're ultimately yearning for.  It's easier to describe what it's not than what it actually is.  "It's more than trying harder."




Whatever it is, it definitely isn't just about trying harder.


All the wisdom and all the knowledge and truth and beauty were laid in a package at a man's doorstep.  He wasn't sure where any of it had come from.  He looked around and didn't see anybody.  He shouted out, "OK, I'll try harder."


How do we respond when we've been shown the beauty of our families, the gift of life itself, the fragility of the present moment which is always passing away?


We don't just try harder.  We pay attention.


Who is around you right now that could use an anonymous gift, an encouraging note, or a gift that can't be repaid?


I went home after the sermon and my 7 month old fell asleep in the car on the way home and Jessica was at a meeting.  I decided to sit down and watch some of the 2011 film The Tree of Life.  Everyone should watch this film one to thirteen or fourteen times in their life.


Jenn conveyed to us that "it's more than trying harder."  As she put it, we do better to turn what we're doing over to God.  I like the prayer she gave us: "Let my life not be about my life."


Obedience begins with prayer.  Your response to God today is waiting for you in your prayer.  "Let my life not be about my life today."  "God, let your name be hallowed in my life today."  Things will happen even as you speak those words to God.  Images will come.  People will pop into your head.  You'll think of things and people and duties that you wish you hadn't.  "Surely not that, Lord!"  When that happens, pray again.  "Lord, give me courage."  Park the car by the side of the road.  Make the call.  Fire off the email.


Paul's life wasn't about his life: "For two whole years Paul stayed there in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him.  He proclaimed the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ - with all boldness and without hindrance." (Acts 28:30-31)


Paul died in Rome while he was doing just this sort of thing.  What is the thing you could spend two whole years doing, that you would do for another 40 years uninterrupted if need be if God allowed you the time?


All the wisdom and all the knowledge and truth and beauty were laid in a package at a woman's doorstep.  She wasn't sure where any of it had come from.  She looked around and didn't see anybody.  She opened it.




 

A New Beginning for New Beginnings

After what looks to me like more than a year, I'm going to tend to this blog regularly again.


The blog will be much more exploratory than before.  Some will consist of responses to reading.  Others will be attempts to communicate about a certain subject in a way that could ultimately become curriculum.  I will reflect regularly on sermons. 


What will this mean for the actual posts?  I expect that they'll be shorter and also more frequent.  The Word of God and the Gospel are the constant guide.  If any readers wish to see more regular devotions on just Scripture, I understand completely : - ).  Email me at ckonker@mandarinpres.com and I'll get you signed up to get the MPC Bible-Reading Devotions which are posted twice a week from members of MPC.  Those were so exciting to me as we got them started that they largely took up the energy that I put into this blog.