Check out this week’s Bible study on our call to believe the promises of God.
It is not a difficult thing to discern the nature of someone else’s god. Some people carry their religion on their sleeve, advertising their spiritual commitments on bumper stickers or t-shirts. You can tell the Amish by their clothing, even as you can Hasidic Jews or even Hare Krishnas. When a man throws down a mat, faces Mecca and begins to pray, one need not guess to whom he is praying. On the other hand, the world is full of hypocrites. Self-reports about ones religious commitments may not be wholly accurate. Sometimes we fool ourselves, and sometimes we are fooled by others. A better test than what we wear, or even what we say may well be this- who is our law-giver? The “Christian” who argues that God wants him to be happy, and therefore sanctions his adultery may say he worships God. Instead he worships himself, for he is a law unto himself.
Of course in our day the most widely held and passionately affirmed creed is this- there is no true and false, no right and wrong. Everyone decides these things for themselves. And so one could argue, rightly so, that the god of this culture is this mythical creature I call “God-to-me.” Relativism means we can each define God for ourselves. We can make up our own religion because in the end we are our own god. As soon as we speak this strange god’s name, God-to-me, we are affirming not that we are God’s creatures, but god’s maker. It matters not what follows in our actual description. (Interesting to note, however, everyone’s personal god is rather similar to everyone else’s. The name usually is followed with these kinds of attributes- “God-to-me is gracious, kind, forgiving, wants us to be happy…” How come no one ever says, “God-to-me is a consuming fire, filled to the brim with His just wrath at every sin and sinner”?)
I’m afraid, however, that we are only beginning to scratch the surface of our culture’s sundry forms of idolatry. For when we begin to challenge the clear, obvious foolishness of relativism, especially as it applies to our theology, we find there is another god ready to step up in God-to-me’s defense. If we challenge this nonsense, “Well, God-to-me says your god is silly, foolish and false, and if you don’t bow down to him you will perish forever” what do we hear next? We are reminded at this point that we are in America, and in America we have freedom of religion. We have the first amendment. The truth is that here in America the first amendment trumps the first commandment.
The broader culture has come to understand the First Amendment to mean not that any and all religions are equally legal in this country but that all religions are equally valid in this country. And that is where our deeper idolatry is made known. We seem to think that the state can not only determine what is legal, but in making this determination, can determine what is right or wrong. Legality is morality. In the absence of any true transcendent source of law or revelation, we will usually find the state filling that vacuum. Because men disagree, man cannot determine right and wrong, true and false. Instead that is determined by the closest we can come to collective man- the state.
The first amendment, so understood then, creates here in America the same situation that ruled in Rome. The Roman empire, like the American empire, did not particularly care what religion those within its borders practiced. This is why they could get along with the Jewish authorities during the life of Jesus. You could worship Yahweh. You could worship Juno. You could worship your own dog for all Rome cared. They had only one ultimate requirement- that you swear absolute loyalty to Rome. You could indeed have other gods before, in the sense of being in its presence, the god of the Roman state. You just could not have any god before, in the sense of having a higher loyalty, the god of the Roman state. The Christians who went to their deaths under the Caesars went not because they didn’t have the right theology, but because they refused to confess the one great creed of that culture, Caesar is Lord.
The broader culture hates uncompromised Christians for this very reason. We are condemned as radicals, fundamentalists, extremists precisely because at the end of the day our loyalty is to the Lord of heaven and earth, because we will allow no gods before Him. We are a dangerous breed, not because we don’t share their convictions, but because we don’t share their loyalties. For us the First Commandment trumps the First Amendment. For them it is just the opposite. Two competing Gods are seeking our attention, our devotion, our worship. One is worthy, the other a pretender.
The people of the Middle Ages, to their great credit, understood that our lives are a battlefield, that spiritual warfare was an ever present reality. Wanting to do battle with the devil, and knowing that the core of his sin is grounded in pride, they determined a bit of a psy-op, some psychological warfare by presenting him neither as a great beauty nor as a dreadful specter but as a fool. This is the source of this now common image.
Now the serpent is more crafty than any of the beasts of the field. I have no idea if being mocked sent Old Scratch off to lick his wounds. I do know that he took this assault on his pride and used it to his advantage. He took that silly image designed to deny his beauty and his power and used it to deny his existence. Moderns, when they think of the devil, do not think of a great and malevolent force, but a silly cartoon. Who would be silly enough to believe in such a creature, much less be on guard against it? What’s he going to do, kick us with his hooves?
It was CS Lewis who argued, in the introduction to his masterful Screwtape Letters, that the devil vacillates between two strategies. In the one he presents himself as dreadful and omnipresent. In the other he hides himself completely. It may well be that he first shifted from the first strategy to the second just about the time we started painting him as a fool.
The devil is not a comic book character. Angels are not sweet and cuddly babies. Both, however, are real, powerful and active. Both are not to be trifled with. It is true that when we resist the devil he must flee, that He who is in us is greater than he who is against us. It is also true, however, that even the arch-angel Michael knew better than to treat the devil like a plaything (Jude 1:9). The key, it seems, is to neither walk in fear of the enemy of God whose head was crushed by the wounded heel of Jesus, nor to forget that he was the highest of all God’s creations. As long as the Father wills it to be so, Satan will be our enemy. As long as Jesus, Whose kingdom shall know no end, reigns, he will be an enemy on a leash.
C.S. Lewis, in his essay “On the Reading of Old Books,” which is found in the collection of essays, God in the Dock, argues that we are all by nature time bound. This frailty will, of necessity, give us a parochial view of the world. We tend to confuse our current circumstances with what is “normal,” that is, we think the experiences of our lives are perfectly capable judges of ultimate reality. We therefore come to reading new books with the same prejudices and unexamined presuppositions as the author, and so have difficulty stepping outside ourselves. When we read older books, on the other hand, we run into the prejudices and presuppositions of another age, revealing not only them, but our own as well. Stepping out of our time in our reading, he argues, helps us step out of our unspoken and likely unhealthy assumptions.
Our parochialism, however, is not merely along the axis of time. We have a narrow view of things geographically as well. We can, in a sense, travel to other times through reading old books. To get to other places, literal travel will often do the trick. Of course, even here we are still more comfortable the closer to home that we are. Reading a one hundred-year-old book will not challenge us the same way a one thousand-year-old book will. Taking a trip to England won’t upset our equilibrium as much as say, a trip to Burma.
Burma, now called Myanmar, is a third-world country in southeast Asia, nestled between India to its west and Thailand to its east. Eighty percent of the population is Buddhist, and the nation has been ruled by a military dictatorship for over thirty years. It is brutally poor. It is a long way from the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Yeara ago I travelled there, however, to meet with and teach a group of faithful, local Christian leaders. As we made our way from the airport to the rundown motel where we stayed, I couldn’t help but think of what a difference it would make were these good people to be given some liberty. If only, I wondered, God would bless these people the way He once blessed our country, who knows what wonders they might do?
As time went on and I got to know my hosts and witness their ministry at work in that tragic land, my perspective changed. While freedom is a good thing and a blessing, what they have is far more valuable. These are men and women who are content in God’s grace. These are men and women whom we would see as the man robbed and left for dead along the road, but who see themselves as the Samaritan. We pity them, but they serve those who are truly in need. These are men and women whose love for each other constructs an alternate nation, a holy nation. In the midst of their poverty, they are a royal priesthood. While we might be able to export Western style democracy, they are sitting on a surplus of biblical fidelity, mutual love, and true Christ-honoring freedom that we so desperately need on our shores. We don’t need to go over there and rescue them. We need them to come and rescue us.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are wonderful things, blessings from the hand of God Himself. That said, Jesus tells us that if we would gain our lives, we must first die. Jesus tells us that it is His truth, not this political party or that, not this tax burden or that, that would set us free. Jesus tells us that we ought not to be pursuing happiness, but that instead we should seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Jesus tells us what His priorities are, what His standards are. He tells us how we are to live as citizens of the kingdom we are pursuing. His economy, the way He has ordered the world, is right side up. Our way of looking at things is both upside down and backwards.
It is backward to believe that we must secure a social order wherein we enjoy the blessings of liberty so that we can then grow in grace. It is an evil wagging of the dog, on the other hand, to pursue Christ so that we might enjoy greater political liberty. Instead, we must pursue Jesus. If we would be free from intrusive government, we must first be set free from our appetites, our idolatries, our desires for the things the pagans chase after. But if we pursue Jesus and find Him, just as my friends have in Burma, then even the yoke of political oppression is easy, the burden of grinding poverty is light. If we have the pearl of great price, hidden where neither rust, nor moth, nor thieves, nor bureaucrats can get at it, then we will no longer pursue happiness. We will have found it.
Jesus did not demand His rights, but gave them up. He now rules over all men. And he calls us to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.
Though I am far from an expert on such things it’s my belief déjà vu is deeply related to our sense of smell. Smells are, at least in their subtlety, things we often pass over, ignore, set aside. What if, however, those smells are recorded in our brains and when those smells return, still unnoticed, we get that vague, “Seems like I’ve been here,” or “through this before”? That, seems to me, fits the data.
Stronger smells often produce not a vague sense of a past experience but a strong sense of past experience. If, for instance, you have little experience with barnyard substance, smelling it likely brings you right back to the first time. I cannot get a good whiff of bologna without being transported to grade school. Bologna, white bread, yellow mustard, having spent the better part of four hours in a metal lunch box with a tiny bag of fritos and a foil wrapped ho-ho sent forth a cornucopia of odors not soon forgotten. Then there were the smells wafting out of my classmates’ boxes. These take me back to the relative innocence of grade school, to kickball games, festivals and smoke drifting from chimneys.
Autumn is a season of smells- the slow decomposition of the leaves, a mug of apple cider, a steaming pot of venison stew. It is a season of falling eye candy, shimmering golds and reds. It is a season of highs and lows, Indian Summer coming out for its last hurrah and frost on the pumpkins. It is a season of sounds, geese honking on their southbound skyways and crackling bonfires. It is, ironically, finally cold enough to go outside, and when we do, we feel like we’re inside. The great outdoors becomes our great hibernation burrow, as the rising red on our ears serves as a reverse thermometer, letting us know when it’s time to move our inside inside.
I told our sons the other day the counsel I now give you- take it in. Take it all in. Keep eyes, ears, nose wide open. Like the squirrels scurrying around our back yard, hide away those sense memories. They will bring you back to your youth when you reach the very autumn of your lives. Let me also add this- do not be afraid of the nostalgia that comes with this time of year. Just remember to long for our true and first home and our true and final home, the garden city of the new Jerusalem.
History is littered with the inhuman. That is, when we seek to take an honest look at those who have gone before us, we find what we manage to think is something different from us. We look at Nazi Germany as if it were some bizarre aberration, the cultural equivalent of a snowstorm in August. Even cultures we might otherwise admire have warts we think we’ve grown beyond. Whether it was the open sexual perversion and abuse of boys that marked the ancient Greeks, or witch hunts of our Puritan forebears, the skeletons do not hide in the closet but dance across the stage. Trouble is, we miss the family resemblance.
I have argued before that to compare the German holocaust with the abortion holocaust is unfair- unfair to the Nazis. The German people had some measure of plausible deniability- you couldn’t find Buchenwald in the yellow pages. The German high court did not publicly rule that any restrictions on killing Jews in the first third of their lives were forbidden. Their holocaust in the space of less than a decade took six million lives. Ours has lasted nearly fifty years, and taken more than sixty million lives.
We take comfort in comparing ourselves with ourselves, but only because we’ve muddied up the mirrors. Those Nazis we like to demonize, they were people just like us. The same is true with the Greeks. To be certain we have built a wall of protection around our children, naming it consent. But do we really believe consent has a sufficiently solid foundation to last? Every other wall we have built has been toppled by the hunger of desire. Already this happens with the children in private. Already people are advocating for the legitimacy of this perversion. I suspect it will not be long before Epstein’s fall will be revered like Stonewall.
Of course we shouldn’t expect much from those outside the kingdom. We are excused from seeing ourselves in them because we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Just like the Puritans before us, those who drank deep of hysteria and gave substance to the expression “witch-hunt.” What was possible for them is not just possible, but likely for us. We may not be on the lookout for witches, but we still fall for hysteria, we still throw biblical principles of evidence and justice out the window, because, SOMETHING MUST BE DONE.
We have not evolved past the wickedness of our fathers. We have instead inherited it. And we in the church have not put to death the old man, but continue to struggle with him, fighting battles we too often lose. There is no wickedness in our past that is not wickedness in our present. Which brings us back to the one needful thing- repentance. We, like our fathers, are a wicked people. We believers, like our fathers, are still in ourselves, wicked people. The world, however slowly, is more and more recognizing the authority of our Lord. But it still has a long way to go. Even as we are growing in grace, but still have a long way to go. We will progress better, however, move further, the more we recognize how far we have to go. We have met the enemy, and he is us.
Pastors are human too. That means, of course, that they sin, but it also means that they have ordinary human needs. While no one joins the ministry in order to receive riches or accolades, honor or power, while shepherds are called to serve others rather than themselves, such doesn’t mean that they are not given to discouragement. Given their effectiveness for the kingdom, we shouldn’t be surprised at the devil’s assaults. Discouragement is one of hs favorite weapons.
Most of us, most of the time, love our pastor, and are grateful for him. Few of us, however, understand that he needs encouragement. What even fewer of us grasp is how we can be an encouragement to him. Here are three simple ideas.
First, pay attention to his labors. Though we do not have a duty to be at the church every time the doors are open, one thing that discourages pastors is our unwillingness to simply avail ourselves of his gifts. When the pastor labors in his study to prepare a Bible study lesson, or writes a blog post, and the sheep under his care pay no attention, it is discouraging. It says to the pastor, “I do not value what you do for me and my family. Your efforts have no effect because I won’t even be bothered to read, or to listen. I will download the sermons of celebrities that don’t know me. I will read the wisdom of those with book contracts.” It’s not that your pastor is jealous of the gifts of others. It is instead that he is jealous for you and your growth in wisdom. A less gifted man who knows and loves you is far more potent in your life than a more gifted man far, far away.
Second, speak well of him to others. When you speak well to the pastor, if he is prone to discouragement, it might not have the impact you wish it to have. Such kind words can easily be written off as kindness rather than gratitude, as flattery rather than sincerity. But if word comes back to him, and it will, that you have spoken well of him, to others in the church, or even to those in your community, he will have to take your good word to heart. It might also encourage those with whom you speak to have a deeper appreciation for your pastor, and that’s usually a good thing.
Of course the one you should be speaking to the most about your pastor is the Great Shepherd of the sheep. Pray with gratitude for the man Christ has given you, and the man will be encouraged.
Finally, pursue godliness. Because he loves you, what your pastor wants more than anything else is for you to grow in grace and wisdom, to become more like Jesus. What is most discouraging for him then isn’t how poorly he may be treated, how badly he may be honored, but how poorly his sheep are doing. He is encouraged most, however, when you are doing well. When he sees your wife’s beaming face, he knows it is because you are seeking to be a godly husband and father, and is encouraged. When he sees you turning the other cheek in your relationship with your pew neighbor, he is encouraged to know that the leaven of the kingdom is spreading among his flock. When he sees you visiting the widow and the orphan, he knows you are practicing true religion, and rejoices.
Don’t, in short, tell your pastor how smart he is, nor how brilliant his sermons are. Don’t tell him how funny he is, nor how dignified. Show him how his labor in showing you Jesus is making you more like Him. That is the desire of his heart, because that is the desire of His heart.
Six years ago today Lisa became my bride, and I her husband. For all the cultural confusion about marriage, for all the dishonor we give the institution, treating it as a revolving door, the reality is the reality. Before the God of heaven and earth, as He ordained from before all time, we made our vows, and we were made one flesh. Six years later that is still what we are, one flesh.
It is not, however, just the sexually confused that fail to grasp the astonishing nature of marriage. Hundreds of years ago our forefathers saw marriage as little more than a business venture. For the last few centuries our forefathers have seen marriage as a depository of love and romance. A pox on both their houses. I am all in favor of the family economy. When we married Lisa and I actually included the economic circumstances we brought to our marriage in our wedding vows. We both committed to this economic arrangement, “With all my earthly goods I thee endow.” I’m also a strong proponent of love and romance. Which is why I vowed to love and cherish Lisa.
That said, both views fail to get to the core of what marriage is. Like trinitarian views that zero in on attributes and callings but miss the unity and relationship, too often we miss the earth shattering reality of two becoming one flesh. We miss the covenant of marriage for the trees of the work and love of marriage. God says that in marriage the two become one flesh (Genesis 2:24). Not that the two are very close. Not that they have shared economic interests or that they share their feelings with each other. One flesh.
That means I cannot serve me without serving her. I cannot hate her and love myself. I cannot allow anything to come between us. My loyalty is to us. My calling is to protect and nurture us. My wife, my Eve, is the garden I’m commanded to dress and to keep. And it has been my privilege to do just that. It has been my blessing to have Lisa as bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. I have, in being one with Lisa become more myself. We have together become more like Jesus, the husband of us all. He is the third cord that binds us together, Him whom I daily thank for blessing me with Lisa. And the Sower leads us…
