There are any number of dangers of a steady pop culture diet. To catch our attention Hollywood must increase the tension. The struggle must get more and more dramatic; the stakes must increase. We don’t merely hope the good guys catch the bank robber. Now they are chasing down a serial killer. It is no longer the cavalry taking on a rogue band of Indians. Now cowboys do battle with aliens intent on world conquest. In order for our heroes to be more heroic than the last hero he must face a nemesis more evil, more deadly, more grasping than the old nemesis.
Some fear that as we watch these increasingly global battles that we are increasingly desensitized to mayhem. A constant stream of explosions and stabbings and gun battles, some say, will make us blind to the horror of violence. They may be right.
My fear, however, is rather different. I’m afraid all our celluloid enemies will cause us to miss the genuine evil in our midst. I’m afraid that the monsters that are all too real miss how monstrous we are, because we so little resemble the monsters on our screens. Universe colonizing aliens are not real. Serial killers are exceedingly rare. If we looked at the world through the lens of the Bible we would know how to spot real monsters- we’d look in the mirror. One all too common form of evil is men who leave their wives and children, wives who leave their husbands and children. Real heroes put their pants on one leg at a time. Real villains take their pants off one leg at a time.
I’ve been to the crime scenes. I’ve seen the tear stained faces of their victims. I have listened to the heaving sobs of the abandoned. Those who are called to the role of hero here are not white-hatted cowboys. They are not grizzled detectives. They are not spandex wearing supers. They are the shepherds of the local church. And I have watched countless such men of Ephraim turn back in the day of battle. At best they ring their hands, wishing there were something they could do. At worst they baptize the evil in their midst with blasphemous talk of a “grace” that is not at the expense of Christ, but the expense of the spouse and children left behind.
Christ has given the church the power of the keys not because it is less potent than the sword, but because it is more potent. Virtually every “church” in America refuses to wield this great weapon, while those that will wield it all too often are clumsy or intentionally ignorant, firing at random and washing their hands. This isn’t mere theological folly. It isn’t merely another alarming trend toward worldliness to write learned articles about. It is silence in the face of evil, which is evil in itself. Boys were made to protect girls, and shepherds were made to protect families.
Rise up men of God. The day of battle is here. Selfish evil people, who know all the right answers to all the trendy theological debates of the day, are dropping bombs on their own homes. Spouses and children are being torn to pieces. Man your stations. Play the man. No army, not even the Lord’s, can survive without discipline.
My mother-in-law passed away this week. She was in no way the quintessential mother-in-law of pop culture. She was gracious, loving and gentle. She had faced many challenges in her life, but did so with grace. She was always loved by her daughter and son. She in turn, always loved them. As those who knew her consider her passing it is understandable that so many would find the same silver lining in death’s dark cloud- that she is no longer suffering from any of the ailments that afflicted her. That is good news indeed, and something to be celebrated, something to give thanks to Jesus for. It is not, however, the first thing I will be grateful for when my time comes, nor the second.
The greatest thing, of course, about passing on to glory is the glory. That is, when a believer dies he receives the beatific vision, the blessed sight of beholding the glory of God. That joy will expose every earthly joy for what it was, a pale shadow, a faint whisper of the true Source. This is His exceedingly great reward, given to us by His grace.
Relief from physical sufferings might come in third on my list, especially when I’m in the grip of a kidney stone attack. But even then, something far more important, far more shocking would be second on the list- a whole other kind of healing. Sharon, beloved mother of my beloved Lisa, has been healed in her soul. Every internal pain, every internal weakness, every internal blemish, every festering sore in her spirit is now gone. She’s not going to know sin any more. Though the stone of sin’s guilt fell from her back the moment He gifted her with faith, the phantom weight of guilt that she, like the rest of us, felt while walking in this sin weary world, disappeared. Though sin’s power was broken when the Spirit entered her body, sin’s presence ended when her spirit left her body. “Free at last,” Sharon cried that morning she beheld the dawning of the Son, “free at last. Thank God almighty, I’m free at last.” She now stands straight and tall, even as she bows in humility before the throne of her King.
We do not take death seriously enough. We wrongly scold mourners, reminding them when we gather that we are there to “celebrate a life.” We gloss over the destruction wrought by sin, when we ought to enter in. When we have done so, however, then we may enter into the victory. One of the blessings of death is that the sorrow it brings to we the living drives us to count the blessings of the gospel, to yearn for all His promises. Sharon walked through her days like Isaiah, a woman of unclean lips dwelling in a land of unclean lips. She, however, was cleansed by the blood of the Lamb. Declared righteous then she has now been made righteous. Declared His daughter then she is now held in His arms. I give thanks for her life, and dwell daily with her precious daughter, one of the two great blessings she left behind. She gives thanks for her death, for it brought her to life.
If you desire to be a help with Sharon’s end of life expenses you can do so here.
What should I do when feeling completely overwhelmed, with a “to do” list as long as the Matterhorn is high, while wanting only to pull the bed covers over my head?
Three things. The first is to give thanks. Like most clichés, this one became a cliché because it is a powerful and pithy truth- I cried for having no shoes, until I met a man with no legs. This does not mean that all of us should find one person who is having a harder time than we are, and all of us, save one, the winner of the Job of the Moment award, would perk up. And when the winner loses his title for some other Job, he can begin to cheer up. Rather it reminds us that we all have much for which we should be grateful. Being joyful for what we have doesn’t tempt us to rest on our laurels, but motivates us to act, to get up and fulfill our calling. If we are in Christ and are ungrateful, we are being blinded.
Which brings us to the second thing we ought to do- repent and believe the gospel. We should in fact be ashamed when we are overcome with that “pull the sheets over our head” feeling. Jesus told us that His yoke is easy, His burden light. When we are feeling overwhelmed we are calling Him a liar. Having faced our failure, having entered into our shame, however, we move quickly to believing the gospel. Jesus died for our shameful feelings, the ones we all struggle against. He died for our calling Him a liar. And He not only forgives us, but loves us with an everlasting love. He knows everything there is to know about us, including those sins we can’t even face ourselves, and still, He loves us. This, of course, brings us back to step one. That is, as we believe the gospel, we once again must give thanks.
The last step is as simple and easy as the first two-I must do the first thing on my list. When it is done, I must do the next thing on my list. Of course, when we give thanks, when we repent and believe the gospel, we notice a few things about our list. It begins to shrink. What we discover is that the more we are persuaded that we have all that we could ever want or imagine in Christ Jesus we discover we don’t need to do this or do that to try to satisfy our souls.
All that ought to remain on our list is loving our neighbors. That may mean doing dishes, or folding laundry, but when we do these chores we are actually loving our neighbors. We are serving them. In serving them, we are reminded we are not men without shoes looking at others without legs. We are instead the richest people in the world, because we have been given the Pearl of Great Price, and are joint heirs with Him. Give thanks. Repent. Believe the gospel. And get to work.
Some things we never quite leave behind this side of the veil. Try as we might to mature and to grow beyond this peculiar brand of foolishness, I’m afraid that at heart we are still junior high girls. Our problem isn’t, I trust, that we talk on the telephone too long, or that we go through life still having a crush on David Cassidy or some Back Street Boy. No, our problem is we think ourselves masters of motives. You remember either saying, or hearing someone say, “I was at the mall, and Susie was walking the other way. So then I smiled and waved and said, ‘Hey Susie,’ and she wouldn’t even look at me. She just walked on by. She is just so stuck-up.” We, I hope, wouldn’t say this anymore, but we still practice the same kind of foolishness.
We conclude, for instance, that such and such a family never comes to pot-luck suppers because they think they’re better than us. We conclude that this other family bought a new car because the husband works too hard or charges too much for the work he does. We think the pastor preached the sermon he preached because he has assumed the worst about us, when he doesn’t even really know our situation.
The root of this isn’t simply immaturity, but pride. The pride has at least two conduits through which it flows. First, we think ourselves far too clever. What we actually know is that family A doesn’t come to pot-luck suppers, family B has a new car and pastor C preached a sermon. There are equally plausible explanations for each of these events. Perhaps family A has one child with horrible food allergies, another child who will fall into a tailspin if he doesn’t get a nap, and a third child that doesn’t need an excuse to fall into a tailspin. Maybe family A, rather than thinking they are better than others, is actually ashamed of their family’s behavior in this kind of setting. Maybe they don’t come because they don’t think they measure up. Perhaps family B was given the new car by friends or family. Perhaps it’s a company car. Perhaps some other business cheated them, and with the settlement money they bought a car. Perhaps, and don’t let this shock you, God has prospered family B, and they bought a new car. As for the pastor, maybe he was preaching the next text, and in God’s providence it hit a sin you think others might perceive in you.
There is a second way this folly flows from pride. Not only are these sinless explanations plausible, but it is likewise probable that these plausible answers have nothing to do with you. That is, we fall for junior high girl syndrome only when we begin to think the world revolves around us. We’re so vain, I bet we think this post is about us, don’t we, don’t we?
God is not surprised by the existence of junior high girls. He has given us the antidote. The antidote is love. Love, God tells us, suffers long and is kind. It does not envy, nor does it parade itself. It is not puffed up, and does not behave rudely. Now these are all great things about love. But they are only tangentially related to our concern. But then comes these three- love does not seek its own, is not provoked, and thinks no evil. This first, does not seek its own, is rather more sophisticated than not wrestling for the television remote. It means spending less time thinking on how our loved ones have hurt us, and more time thinking through how we might help our loved ones. “Is not provoked” doesn’t mean that we take our emotions and clamp them down to avoid a reaction. We do not, because so far we haven’t said anything about the record of wrongs we are keeping, pat ourselves on the back. We instead keep no record at all. We avoid being provoked simply by following the next injunction, thinking no evil. That is, if we practice a judgment of charity, which is rather easy to do once we have died to self, then it takes no effort to keep cool.
It’s true enough that we are to be wise as serpents. There are bad guys out there who want our money, and will cheat to get it, who want to borrow our reputation, and will manipulate to get it. But it may just be that the path to getting beyond junior high girls is to become elementary school girls. What we need is an innocence that simply believes that others love us, and want what’s best for us. What we need is an innocent trust that God will protect us and take care of us. May He give us the grace to grow younger as we grow closer.
Thesis 38- We must model for and teach our children to be hard-working and diligent.
A recent poll asked parents what one thing they believed was the most important to provide for their children. Those outside the church gave as their top answer, a good education. Those inside the church gave as their answer, a good education. We have been taught to believe that a good education is what will cure whatever ails us. It will persuade us not to smoke. It will persuade us not to do drugs. It will teach us how to eat properly. And it will, in the end, be the very key to our future prosperity. Get a good education, and get a good, high paying job. Get a good high paying job, and you will have a good life.
The Bible offers no such calculus. It does not suggest that getting a good education is the key to prosperity, far less that it is the key to having a good life. Our problem, according to the Bible, isn’t that we don’t know the truth, but that we will not submit to it (see Romans 1). Our problem is rebellion, not ignorance.
The Bible does call us to diligent labor, from God’s command in the garden to the call to do our work “as unto the Lord.” In turn it suggests that one of the great blessings in this world is to eat of the fruit of our labors in peace. It explains that we will prosper as we consume less than we produce, and we will fall into hardship as we consume more than we produce. The Bible, in turn, commands that we look to it for all of our answers (II Timothy 3:16).
For the good of our own families, and for the good of the families of our children then, we must model for them what it means to be diligent in our labors. They will learn to do an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay as we demonstrate the same to them, not from lectures from us. We must also expect the same from them. We live in a culture driven toward recreation. We work for the weekend, rather than resting that we might work. We can overcome this cultural drift as we delay gratification, as we work now and play later. We can push back against this folly as we rejoice in a job well done. When we collapse into bed at the end of the day exhausted we tend to think something must be wrong. Being tired at the end of the day is a sign of blessing, not curse.
Our children learn by watching us. Our work in teaching them then is never through. As we labor diligently, God will bless us. He will bless us first in our own homes. But He will in turn teach our children to do the same, and when the time comes, bless their own homes as well. Hard work and sound saving is the path to prosperity. It always has been, and always will be. Shortcuts lead only to disaster.
