The Value of the Unapplied

My home church, Redemption Tempe, does a very good job of applying faith to all areas of life. Over the past few months, they've gone so far as to interview a different individual every week during the service about their vocation and how they seek to behave in that vocation in light of their faith. We've had people representing occupations from fields such as athletics, medicine, education, and construction, and it's been very interesting and thought-provoking! One thing I have noticed, however, is that most of the people interviewed work directly with or for the good of other people: even the researcher interviewed a few weeks ago was an MD studying pediatric cancer, and there have been no artists of any type interviewed. While I know (from other events and from speaking with the pastors) that Redemption believes any vocation can be used for the glory of God and has intrinsic value, I have seen in other Christian circles a definite desire to justify any vocation or endeavor by directly linking it to some application for the good of humanity or the spread of the gospel.
For example, in this paradigm, the study of literature or history might be perceived as having value only insofar as the lessons derived from that study enabled one to better serve others or impact society. Music and the arts might be considered worthwhile only if centered on explicitly Christian themes, intended for use in church, or used for healing or comforting. In my own vocational sphere, science is often seen as "good" only when it is clearly bound to some clinical application or environmental good. The broader Christian community smiles upon things like diagnostic lab sciences; research into different diseases and their detection, treatment, and prevention; evaluation of food and water pollution; research into cleaner technologies; and projects to make clinically and environmentally relevant discoveries and tools available to underprivileged areas. The so-called "pure sciences," on the other hand - research simply for the sake of knowledge and discovery - are ignored or seen as less valuable, along with what I'll call pure art - art for the sake of beauty, truth, and creation.
It is not incredibly difficult to understand this way of thinking. People in the church believe (correctly) that our primary call in life, regardless of our vocation and talents, is to love God and to love others. It can be hard for them to see how reading a classic novel, painting a portrait, or studying the social habits of bees manages to accomplish either of those things, and so they consider them to be of lesser value. With some impressive mental gymnastics and a good imagination they might be able to find some connection between those occupations and practical relevant service to others or to God, but the link will always seem slightly tenuous and unreliable, casting a shadow of doubt on those activities and the people who pursue them vocationally.
Is this an appropriate way to view different callings and careers? When choosing a vocational path, should we be careful to select something with at least the potential for that sort of practical application in service to others? I have at least one friend who consciously made that a part of his career choice planning, and I went through a lot of soul-searching along these lines myself, trying to force myself to fit into a medical profession simply because of its potential to benefit others and open avenues for sharing Christ. Since then, though, I've come to believe that this is an incomplete way to evaluate vocation, and that what it ultimately amounts to is Christian utilitarianism.
What do I mean by that? Well, in secular philosophical utilitarianism, things or activities gain worth or moral standing in direct proportion to the quantifiable good or happiness they produce. This can be construed in terms of either personal happiness or social good (which is essentially the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest amount of people). Christian utilitarianism in its popular and loosely defined manifestations eschews personal happiness and satisfaction as a justifying end, but embraces the social good as a justifying end, adding to the definition of the social good things like freedom of religion, access to the Bible, and faith in God. Sometimes this social good is elevated to the primary end, even eclipsing what the catechism says is the chief end of man: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Maybe this happens because the social good is a much more visible and quantifiable pursuit - I don't know. In any case, it can be very frustrating for someone who works in a more abstract field, whose vocation does not tangibly or directly impact issues of physical/emotional well being, poverty, social justice, education, missions, and so on, to try to justify their vocation and find lasting meaning in it, because of the strength and prevalence of this paradigm within the church.
What utilitarianism excludes is the concept that things are or can be "good-in-themselves" - that is, things do not necessarily require a justifying end to be valuable and worthwhile. Or, to put it another way, the joy of exploring and discovering more of God's creation is a good thing whether or not any clinically or agriculturally relevant application is ever made because of it. A piece of music or work of art is worth creating and delighting in because of its innate beauty or the truth it represents, whether or not it is explicitly Christian, or whether or not a lesson or parable can be drawn from it, and even whether or not it is ever shared. These things are not "less than" because they do not have a justifying end planned as part of their purpose and execution. They are simply good because of what they are: good because in pursuing them we reflect God's joy in creating beauty and order and glorify Him by probing the depths of that beauty and rejoicing in Him in it. That may be all. But it is more than enough.
I want to encourage the church to remember what the chief end of man truly is, to reflect on the woman in the Gospels whose sacrifice of worship was praised by Jesus as a beautiful act even though she could have used those resources to provide for the poor, to dwell on the countless unnecessary but wonderful things God Himself created. It is a good thing to devote our lives to the service of others, and I believe it should be our posture towards others in general even if it is not specifically related to our vocation. But it is not the only worthwhile thing, or even the greatest thing. The greatest thing is to glorify God, and one way we can do that is through immersing ourselves in the beauties of His creation, learning more about it, meditating on its complexities, imaging His creativity in our own art and invention. Our vocations may not be acts of service, but they can still be acts of worship, beautiful, valuable, and worthy of the time and diligence we invest in them.

Made in the Image of God

Before having a baby, I didn't think that much about my body. I wasn't particularly bothered by any aspect of it but I didn't really love it either... I just kind of used it and tried to keep it healthy and otherwise ignored it. After having a baby, my body jumped up on center stage and started screaming for my attention in a way it never had before, even during the tumultuous changes of adolescence. Suddenly my belly looked different, my breasts were bigger, I was producing milk, another human being (albeit a tiny one) was visibly and tangibly depending on my body for his very life, I hurt in unexpected places, and a line across my abdomen was raised and numb. Every time I changed, or took a shower, or went to the bathroom, or nursed my baby (so essentially all the time), the changes in my body stood out to me, and I didn't like them.

At first it was really hard. I wanted my old body back, and I wanted to have it to myself again. No more stretch marks, loose muscles, or scars; no more semi-continuous physical touch; no more worrying about "overdoing it" in the simple everyday activities of life; no more struggling to balance my baby's and my husband's needs for physical closeness. I would try on my old pre-pregnancy jeans and get depressed, or catch a glimpse of myself wandering the house in pajamas and feel ugly and inadequate.

But as time went by, something surprising began to happen. The negative feelings were born of the difficulty of the transition from a pre-pregnant body, through pregnancy, to a post-pregnant body, and they were natural. Change can be hard, and it takes time to adjust. And because those feelings were simply a product of the transition, they didn't stick around forever.

One day I looked at the dark web of lines on my abdomen and thought, I am a life-giver.

I looked at my lopsided, leaking breasts and thought, I am a life-sustainer.

I looked at my weary arms after rocking my baby to sleep and thought, I am a comforter.

I looked at the curves of my body curled around my baby as he nursed away his tears and thought, I am a safe haven and a place of rest.

In the blurred-together days and endless nights of those first few weeks, my body had somehow, in all its raw and rough reality, began to take on the image of God as it never had before, and in so doing, reminded me how God is all those things to me: the giver and sustainer of my life, my comforter when I am sorrowful or discouraged, my refuge from the fears and toils of life. How can I look at my body and think it is ugly, when it is a witness to me of the goodness and faithfulness of God? It is beautiful, when it shows me His image, because He is beautiful. We read in Genesis that we are made in the image of God, but I think we forget that this includes our physical bodies just as much as our spiritual, emotional and rational capacities. I know I had never thought of it that way before, anyway. God has left testimonies of Himself in the smallest, most physical and material details of our lives, so that we don't need to be deep and profound thinkers to see His presence and be reminded of His character, and if we open our eyes to those glimpses of Him, I think, our lives will be more beautiful. The things we take for granted, the things we hardly think about, even the things that we dislike - they are worth looking at a second time, with new eyes, to see if we can find a picture of God within them.

Marriage in the Church

An acquaintance of mine recently remarried. She's a friend of mine on Facebook because I know her family well, but I'm not particularly close with her. She and her new husband look incredibly happy together, and all of our mutual friends were congratulating her on her wedding. But I didn't. Honestly, I'm confused by the whole situation. I don't know why she divorced her first husband (or even if she initiated the divorce). I do know that she still seems passionate about following and serving God, and probably is a lot better at those things than I am. It just gnaws away inside me that this is her second husband, that the vows she made the first time around have been broken, and that the community around her - the church community, the Christian community - spoke no words of sorrow or rebuke over the brokenness and is now publicly rejoicing in her new marriage. I don't know her story, and knowing her family I doubt that this divorce was entered into lightly, so I don't want to judge her specifically. For all I know, her first husband was abusive and unfaithful. But it makes me think. And in general, I see the church rejoicing at the beginning of marriages (which is all well and good) but sitting back silently when those marriages falter and fail.

Marriage is not strengthened when divorce is accepted.

The institution of marriage is a good thing, a God-ordained thing, meant to bring joy and sanctification to the participants and designed to represent the relationship between Christ and the church. So it is both natural and fitting that the church community should (in general) rejoice and celebrate the coming together of two people in marriage! But the intent and design of marriage necessitate boundaries and limitations to it. We would not rejoice if a father tried to marry his daughter, or if a man tried to marry multiple women, or if a friend tried to marry someone we knew to be abusive; those of us with more strictly Biblical views would also not rejoice if a man tried to marry another man, or if a Christian tried to marry an unbeliever. Some of those marriages act against the first purpose of marriage by destroying the spouses' joy or by making it more difficult for them to walk with God and grow in their faith; others work against the second purpose by twisting that imagery and distorting our understanding of the relationship between God and us as the church. Seeing the immediate and temporal happiness of the individuals entering into one of those skewed marriages might make it natural for us to want to rejoice in their coming together - but it might not be fitting if the relationship is inherently flawed.

One could respond that all relationships are flawed to some degree, and that no marriage adequately represents the relationship of Christ to the church, and I would of course agree. My own sin puts strain on my own marriage every day, eats away at my joy and my husband's joy, and dims our marital reflection of Christ. But incest, polygamy, and homosexuality are insurmountable obstacles to accurately reflecting the relationship between Christ and the church, no matter how happy and committed the individuals may be. On the other hand, a mismatched marriage would have the essence and character needed to reflect that relationship, and thus not be inherently flawed, but it may be unwise for a myriad of reasons. So I think the church should be firm about rejecting the first type of relationship (those which are in essence unable to reflect the full Biblical imagery of marriage) and should counsel against the second type but provide as much support as possible to those already in the midst of one (so that a bad situation might possibly redeemed, and the significant sin or area of discord used as a catalyst for sanctification and increased faith).

Divorce is difficult for me, however, because I'm often unsure of which category it falls into. Clearly, it destroys entirely the Christological imagery of marriage. Christ will not "divorce" or abandon His church, and our lack of faithfulness will not tear apart the relationship either. But I know that after a divorce people can go on to do great things and become great men and women of faith, and that God will even use the divorce to draw them to Himself. And the church should play a role in that redemptive work. Our judgment of the sin should not push the sinner farther away from Christ; rather, we should seek to respond in a way that pulls the sinner deep into the love whose depth and length and width and height are said to be beyond comprehension. The challenge is to do this well without compromising the truth that divorce hurts individuals, families, and society, Christians and unbelievers alike, by twisting our understanding of Christ's commitment and love for us.

So should I rejoice in a remarriage following divorce? I have, once, when the man remarrying had been abandoned by his wife in middle age for no reason other than her own feelings and whims. But even then I wondered if he should have let her go or if he should have continued to pursue her in love as long as possible, like Christ pursues us when we turn to our idols of comfort or power or respect. It's not a black and white issue, and I think culturally we are inclined to prioritize happiness over commitment. We might say that we value redemption more than atonement... we encourage people to simply move on and start over instead of taking the time to wrestle with and repent of the past. When someone vows before God to be committed to another person for a lifetime, and shoulders the mantle of reflecting God in one particular relationship just as he or she has endeavored to reflect Him as an individual, it is a serious matter. It is not to be entered into frivolously. That is why the whole church stands together (or should, at any rate) in witness to and support of the couple making those vows. It is an equally serious matter when those vows are broken, and yet the church does nothing. We rejoice when the oath-breaker stands a second time to make those same promises to a different person than before - but do we provide the counsel and support needed to make sure that this time the promises will be kept through the hard times once the swell of romantic love has ebbed away?

It breaks my heart to see so many marriages foundering on the shoals of life, to see the church dimming its warning lighthouse beacon, to see her members laboring on the shore to pick up the pieces instead of helping steer the ship to safer seas, or throwing together hasty and poorly-built boats instead of taking the time to construct sea-worthy vessels before sending them out from port. Should we be there to help people rebuild after a divorce? Of course. But we should be working even harder to keep that shipwreck from happening in the first place, instead of just counting on the skills of the rescue team. Our marriages are not simply private contracts that only hurt or help the individuals directly involved; they are also public statements of the nature of Christ and His relationship to His people, and we as the church need to fight for them, stand beside them, and give them the supplies and guidance they need to sail safely across the ocean of time.

Tradition, Truth, and Advent

I understand why so many people have disliked tradition and ritual. It's so easy for people to become caught up in the actions and symbols, forgetting the truth that they represent, that one might easily think those actions and symbols are more of a danger and a distraction than they're worth. After all, one can pray genuinely without kneeling or lighting a candle, and one can rejoice in the coming of Christ without sharing gifts or decorating trees. But, despite all the potential dangers of symbol and ritual (and despite all the personality books that say I ought to dislike traditions in general), I find great meaning and significance in them.

You see, the human mind does not remain at a level. We fight to raise it by reminding it of the truths we believe and by dwelling on the beauties and wonders of the world; if we neglect these duties, we slip back downwards into mental confusion, apathy, ingratitude, and joylessness. Like the forces of Gondor ever watchful against the enemy in Mordor, in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, a failure in our vigilance could mean the loss of a bridge or the desolation of a beautiful land - and the fight to regain and restore what was lost will almost certainly be harder and more bitter than the original fight to preserve what was already there would have been. So, paraphrasing Lewis, it is incredibly important to set before ourselves everyday some reminder of the essential core truth of our faith - to give us the eyes to see clearly the spiritual realities around us, to inspire us to live in the beauty and joy whose fulfillment we hope for in Christ, and to strengthen us with grace for the daily and hourly fight.

I would argue that tradition - if the reason behind it is remembered - can be an excellent way of setting before ourselves those truths that we most need to hear. Because we did not create the traditions, they often remind of us of those aspects of our faith that make us most uncomfortable, or that we would be most apt to forget, as well as those that seem most natural and pleasant to us. Because they have endured through the years, they have (often, at any rate) been honed and improved by generations of people striving to obey and know Christ more fully. Because they are inextricably intertwined with the physical world, they help us engage our bodies in our worship and faith; because they repeat every day or every year as time passes on, they help link eternal truth and beauty with the temporal world in which we live.

I have to admit that, despite my theoretical interest in and appreciation for the traditions of the faith, I don't actually put that many of them into practice (the side effect of growing up Protestant, probably). Every Sunday I go to church and partake of Communion (can I say in passing how much I love that particular tradition? To have weekly such a tangible and powerful reminder of Christ's sacrifice and love is such a blessing), and every Christmas season I light the candles of Advent - but that's really all I do. I don't want to add in more traditions just for the sake of doing them, of course, but if there are others that will give me the same encouragement, redirection, and hope as the traditions of Advent, then I would like to make them traditions in my heart and home as well. We'll see how things go. But for now, Advent is here! The season of hope and expectation, of remembering that God Himself has come to dwell among us, of longing for His return and the restoration of all things, has begun! Lift up your eyes to the heavens and see, with the eyes of memory or with the eyes of hope, the Light coming to the world to cast away our darkness.

How to care about things (without being overwhelmed)

In one of the many film retellings of the classic story of Cinderella, Ever After, the formerly apathetic, self-centered, and purposeless prince says, "I used to think, if I cared about anything, I'd have to care about everything, and I'd go stark raving mad!" So he chose instead, for years, to care about nothing.

I wonder if that's how most Americans are today. We are constantly presented with so many causes and needs - with starving refugees in Africa, sex slavery in Southeast Asia, human rights abuses in China, environmentally destructive practices in the US, and countless natural disasters like the earthquake in Haiti or Hurricane Sandy in New York, not to mention the myriad of social and political issues on both sides of the worldview split. The sheer quantity and magnitude of the problems overwhelms us, and so we bury our heads in the sand and seek our own personal happiness while closing our eyes and ears to the needs all around us. Now, it makes sense that we feel overwhelmed. There really are more problems (and problems of larger scope) than we could ever hope to fully address with our limited time, skills, and resources - and how could we ever hope even to figure out which problem most deserves the time and resources we could give it? If we help to rehabilitate former prisoners in our local communities, do we need to feel guilty that we are not also helping to train and restore former sex slaves in Thailand? If we donate to food programs in refugee camps around the world, do we need to feel guilty that we are not donating to our local food banks? It's not difficult to picture ourselves suddenly snapping from the weight of it all and, in the words of the aforementioned prince, going "stark raving mad!"

But this madness is not by any means a necessary or unavoidable consequence of beginning to care about one problem or another. We just need to give ourselves the permission to accept our limitations and the command to work within them to best of our abilities. Acknowledging that we are fallible and limited simply by nature of being human allows us to truly care about one specific problem - and devote ourselves to its correction - without feeling guilty about all the other problems we don't have the time or skills to adequately handle. And once we truly care about something, it will be a joy, a source of meaning and purpose, to throw ourselves towards its resolution. I think all the half-hearted efforts we make in life stem from the absence of this genuine concern about the problem and the concomitant desire to see it resolved; that they are, in essence, the output of a guilty conscience prodding an apathetic will into temporary action. But if we let ourselves deeply and genuinely care about one or two problems (that we are capable of acting upon in tangible, relevant ways), and allow ourselves to dispense with guilt about all the other hundreds of problems in the world, we can start to act with our whole hearts, with a motivated will, and with real purpose.

And I have a suspicion that we just might find our capacity for caring and acting increased as we go about the process of living with purpose instead of apathy, until we have touched more lives and brought about more good than we ever imagined possible.

An Introvert Looks at Community

Community seems like a beautiful concept, when thought about in the abstract - having people to love and be loved by, to know and be known by, to be able to mourn together and rejoice together, to cut through the deadening fog of isolation we've constructed. Even the tensions, conflicts, and hurts that accompany community seem welcome, if only we can have - even for a single moment - true connection of minds and true fellowship between hearts. To be known and valued - to have a place where one belongs - that is the climax of community and the prize for which everyone strives.

But most experiences of community fall incredibly short of this ideal. It's not that people have issues and those issues can make relationships messy and difficult; rather, it's that we attempt to artificially induce community in various ways and rarely (if ever) succeed in re-creating the matrix of shared life necessary for the opening of doors and the tearing down of walls. We meet with a group of randomly selected people once or twice a week and call them our "community," but never feel comfortable enough to share our deepest fears and dreams or expose our genuine personality - or, worse, realize after we've made ourselves vulnerable that (because of their own fears or self-defenses or lack of support) no one really cares about our sorrows and our hopes. So we fall back into our silences or our postures and regret that we ever revealed our real selves; we go on participating in our "community" for the sake of appearances or because of fun activities without engaging or investing in a deep and meaningful way.

Our churches, which ought to resemble that most closely-knit community, the family, are not exempt from this sort of artificiality, with its corresponding hypocrisy and superficiality. People greet each other in a scripted way, when the pastor or worship leader directs them to do so, and sigh with relief when the awkward moment is past so they can retreat back to themselves and the few friends they already know. When the sermon is over, the church empties as fast as possible, except for a few cliques who've managed to stay connected internally while remaining separate from the rest of the church body. In small groups, people share carefully selected prayer requests - small specific needs or vague and generalized issues, neither of which leaves them vulnerable before the rest of the group - or discuss the activities of their weeks without a word for the passions, emotions, and ideas churning inside them or the beauty and darkness of God speaking and sin acting in their worlds. There is always a fear of judgment; there is always a suspicion that the group is not bound together by an authentic-enough love to handle such dialogue and revelation.

I am sure that the solution to all of this is not to further separate and isolate ourselves - to give up on community because it has failed us so many times. But what, then, is the solution? What steps can we take toward genuine love in community?

Coming back...

It's becoming cool for people to act as though words (or rhetoric, or books, etc.) don't matter - as though they are merely distractions from the all-important task of living in the now (or, in Christian circles, living out God's calling in the present moment). I have to admit that sometimes people can get lost in the sound of the words themselves, and stop striving to live them out, becoming merely a sponge to soak up information or a megaphone to blast it out at other people. But without time spent dwelling in words of truth and beauty, where is the challenge to godliness, the inspiration for greatness, or even one's sense of purpose and calling going to come from? From the changing winds of one's own emotions? From the shifting sand of circumstances, relationships, or politics? All too frequently, yes. So we live like weather-vanes and wonder why we accomplish nothing lasting and our communities and nations are going nowhere. We ignore the words passed down through the generations - words of wisdom gathered from the experience of the ages - so that we can be relevant in the moment, and wonder why our philosophies fail to satisfy us and why our future feels so hopeless or shallow. We think we can understand God without the words of knowledge and godly interpretation that the church has given us, and wonder why He feels so distant or why so many cults and extreme doctrines are rising up.

People, God chose to describe Himself as the Word. The Word of truth and beauty, the Word that was from before the beginning of time and will endure forever, and yet which is never irrelevant to the present moment. Maybe instead of abandoning words as so much noise and static, in favor of pure action, we should strive to make our words emulate the Word, and to fill our minds and hearts with other words that reflect Him and His purposes. And maybe then, when words of value and meaning have had the opportunity to strengthen, equip, and challenge us, our actions will also have more meaning and more lasting value, instead of floating wherever the waves suggest.

So yes, I'm back blogging, because I do believe that words have power and value, and because I want to use my words to express beauty and truth, just in case someone is listening and the one ultimate Word chooses to display Himself in my small, stained mirrors.

A brief blogging sabbatical

I do apologize for suddenly going silent on the blog this past week or so. Honestly, I had no desire to write for the first half of the time, and no desire to publicly share what I wrote for the second half. I've been wondering about why I write on this blog, what its purpose is in my life, and what its purpose ought to be, and I haven't arrived at conclusive answers to any of those queries. When I started the blog, I just wanted a way to share all the thoughts that were always bubbling up in my mind - but now I find that it's putting incredible pressure on me, and becoming less of a joy and outlet and more of a burden and obligation (the tipping point might have been trying to establish a schedule of future posts for myself with the whole Psalms project...). So for the time being I'm going to take a break, write in my journal instead of online for a while, and try to get back to the point where sharing my thoughts is a joy. I do love blogging - I just can't handle the pressure I allowed it to have over me, and now I need to do a kind of detox before I can really get back into it. I'm not thinking it'll take too long, so don't worry :) Thank you for reading all my random thoughts over the past year! Hopefully I'll see you here again soon!

He has not forsaken us

One of the deepest emotional pains that one can feel, I believe, is the fear or belief that God is not love, or that one is not loved by God, or that God's grace is not sufficient to cover one's sins, or that God is distant and displeased (they are all permutations of the same feeling, I think). When one has known and seen God, and experienced His love and mercy, He becomes the deepest desire of one's heart; He overwhelms us with the torrents of His love, and we respond with adoration. So at any point after that, if we begin to fear that we have lost that love through some sin we have committed or righteousness we have left undone, the pain of that fear will penetrate to the depths of our heart like a dagger that stabs and a club that crushes.

Unfortunately, the emotional nature of this fear makes it incredibly difficult to counter! Reminding ourselves of the truth of God's love, going back to the cross and remembering the pain He suffered on our behalf, and repeating the assurances of His grace to ourselves time and again are all good things to do, and they can help restore a soul to joy and confidence in Christ - but I think it is also good to cry to God in the midst of our fear, as the author of Psalm 6 does. For an emotional pain there must be an emotion outlet and an emotional healing.

"O Lord, do not rebuke me in Your anger,
Nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure.
Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak;
O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled.
My soul also is greatly troubled;
But You, O Lord - how long?
Return, O Lord, deliver me!
Oh, save me for Your mercies' sake!
For in death there is no remembrance of You;
In the grave who will give You thanks?" - Psalm 6:1-5

The truth that he knows - God's mercy and deliverance of His people, His righteousness and healing power - is interspersed with what he feels and fears - that God is angry with him, and has forsaken him, and is abandoning him to death; the desperate plea of v3 captures it perfectly: "But You, O Lord - how long?" In his head, he knows that in God is deliverance and salvation; he knows that God will rescue him and not abandon him. But in his heart, he feels that God has already forsaken him - that the pain and the trials have continued longer than he can bear already, and that God is not with him in them. It's a place we've all been in, I think, particularly if a specific trial or struggle (read: external problem or internal sin issue) has lingered with us for any length of time. You said You would sanctify me, Lord! Why do I still struggle and fail so much with this one temptation? And You said You would be with me always and work all things for good, Lord! Why is my life such a wreck of circumstances, then? Why do my endeavors wither and die instead of prospering when I'm trying to follow You?

But there is beauty even in that emotional plea, twisted as it is by the lies the world has spun about the impermanence of love and the impossibility of grace, because he is trying desperately to feel and believe the truth that he knows - and because, at the end, there is hope. Our cries to God do not have to be perfect or sinless for Him to hear us; He hears our weeping and our supplication, no matter how weak and frail and faithless we are, and He will receive our prayers. He has not forsaken us, and He never will; His love has not failed us and His grace will endure through all eternity.

A God of mercy

If it is true that God takes no pleasure in wickedness - that He "hate[s] all workers of iniquity" and "abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man," as Psalm 5:4-6 says - than it is a problem of incredible concern and importance for each and every one of us. I wouldn't say I was bloodthirsty (far from it, in fact!), but when I see the bitterness, hatred, and resentment my heart holds on to and even takes pleasure in, I can't deny that there is wickedness and sin inside me. And the general consensus of the rest of humanity, and the doctrine of Christianity, is that I am not alone in this deep internal sinfulness: for "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." (Rom. 3:23)

What do we do, then? What is the next step to take, when we see the sin inside us, when the weight of it breaks our hearts and leads us to the edge of despair, because all our efforts cannot eradicate it completely from our lives? I think the same psalm that described the righteous position of a holy God towards wickedness describes equally well the only beneficial next step for us to take:

"But as for me, I will come into Your house in the multitude of Your mercy;
In fear of You I will worship toward Your holy temple." - Psalm 5:7-8

Continuing to try to perfect myself will never succeed; the only option that can bring life, joy, and contentment is to come to God riding the waves of His mercy, carried in the arms of His mercy, lifted on the wings of His mercy: forgiven and reconciled by His mercy. Striving to lift myself to heaven or to give myself worth and value, to earn the respect and adulation of others and even of God, can only lead to the empty and cold triumph of pride that is more failure than victory even in its highest moment; but coming to God with reverence and humility, to lift unto Him the worship and adoration of a heart in love to a God worthy of praise - that is the key to peace and fulfillment, the one thing necessary to find meaning and freedom.

It is indeed true that God takes no pleasure in wickedness, but it is also true that He is a God of mercy, and because He is a God of mercy we can be a people of hope. We can cry to our God in our trouble, even when our trouble is brought on by our own sin, and we can wait eagerly, watching as for the morning, for His answer to our prayer. Because we have put our trust in Him, we can rejoice in the surety of His faithfulness, and let the burdens and pains of this life and of our sin be carried for us by the God who defends us with strength unassailable.

You have put gladness in my heart

Sometimes it seems that we are alone in our pursuit of truth - or rather, because the plural "we" gives a different feel to the word "alone", sometimes it seems to each one of us that he or she as a single individual is alone in his or her pursuit of God, that there are no fellow-companions fighting the same battles, seeking the same good, or walking the same path. In Psalm 4, I think, we see someone feeling just that way: someone who is attempting to follow God and who desires to live in righteousness and truth, but who sees all around him people seeking after the lies of this world and setting their hearts' love on worthless and insignificant things. And it is discouraging, for the psalmist and for any of us, to feel that way. When the psalmist says in verse 5 to "offer the sacrifices of righteousness," I think that persevering through this kind of loneliness and discouragement by faith is one of the sacrifices that he might have had in mind (another one, from v4, would seem to be controlling our anger and frustration with those who are pursuing sinful or temporal things and perhaps scorning our pursuit of goodness and truth). For righteousness does require sacrifice, and the denial of our pride and self-centeredness, on at least a daily level.

But sacrifice is not the end of the story, and the psalmist, fittingly, doesn't end there. When temporal things fade or fail, as they invariably must, or when worldly expectations or human relationships disappoint, if we have made those things the goal of our life then we will be left asking, in hard times, "who will show us any good?" (v6) - but if our heart's desire is to know and follow God, then even in those hard times we will know His joy and be filled with His peace. The joy that comes from knowing God surpasses even the greatest happiness that temporal prosperity can bring. It can be hard to believe that sometimes - when the harvest is coming in with its abundance of riches and rejoicing, and it seems as if no joy could ever be more complete, or when the world is falling apart into tattered gray rags and it feels as though no happiness could ever break through into that dismal half-light. But the joy that God can put in our hearts - the gladness that comes from the Lord of eternity - can endure through the dark times and shine brighter in the good than even the sun himself at his zenith.

Appearances and realities

So many of the psalms are like Psalm 3 - a cry to God for help and a testimony to His love and faithfulness. But what stands out to me as unique in this psalm is the end of verse 2: "Many are they who say of me, 'There is no help for him in God.'" Despite all that the psalmist knows to be true of God, the thoughts and words of those around him still have an impact on his life; like Job's wife, they make it harder, by their lack of faith, for him to remain faithful.

God is our salvation and our shield, our glory and our comfort, through any and all circumstances, as the rest of Psalm 3 goes on to say with beauty and power, but it doesn't always appear that way on the outside, to other people. To them, when we are going through some sorrow or trial, it may seem as if God has forsaken us or does not hear our cries. And even though we know that God is faithful, and that He has some good purpose for what we're going through, the naysayers around us can make it even more difficult for us to endure with faith and hope than it would have been in any case. When that is the case (and hopefully, if one is in a good community of believers, it is not often the case!), I think the example of the psalmist here is a good one: he reminds himself of God's power and past faithfulness, holding onto God - clinging to God with all his might - when all the world around him is trying to tear him apart or to make it seem that God is not who He has declared Himself to be. He finds strength for the present trial in the memory of the love and goodness of God he has seen revealed time and time again, and he refuses to let the feelings of the moment defeat the eternal truth that he knows, no matter how many voices weigh in on the side of those feelings.

The power that underlies grace

In Psalm 2, the rule of God - rightful and almighty authority - is contrasted with the rule of man - proud and greedy grasping for power and autonomy. We see the kings and rulers of the earth attempting to free themselves from what they perceive to be the bonds and chains of God over their lives, and God responding with derision because their attempt is so incredibly futile and with wrath because it is idolatrous rebellion and sin. But to be honest, the way the psalm is written has always been confusing to me, because it seems to paint God in a very negative light: as a wrathful God who delights in carrying out judgment on rebellious creatures, who desires to rule with an iron fist as a complete dictator, and before whom we come as cowering, terror-stricken subjects hoping that He will not be angry with us this time.

And this picture is so utterly the opposite of God as He has revealed Himself in the rest of Scripture that for a long time I've skirted around this psalm, bracketing it off in my mind as one of those parts of the Bible and Christianity that I just don't understand yet (which I think is often a healthy and helpful thing to do, because after all we are limited by nature and our understanding is furthermore hampered by sin, and there are a lot of things we don't understand now and may never understand at all in this life.) What I think I'm coming to understand, however, is that the focus of this psalm isn't on God's anger so much as it is on God's rightful and legitimate power and authority - and in our culture, we tend not to dwell much on that power and authority. A God of enduring faithfulness and unending love, without earth-shattering power or the authority of a judge and king, is a comfortable God, a God we can safely ignore when we want to but who will be there for us when we need Him. But the God who created the universe, without whose sustaining power our lives would not last a second, and whose innate holiness defines a moral law we can't even come close to living up to, is not a comfortable God. The God who seeks to reconquer our rebellious hearts with His grace and lovingkindness is also the God who will utterly destroy us in His righteous judgment if we refuse to surrender. And I think, if we lose our understanding of God's power and authority in judgment - if we cease to see God as the rightful and righteous King and Judge - we will also lose our understanding of the depths of His love and the riches of His grace. He is indeed a terrible and powerful God; the whisper of His wrath would utterly destroy us. But we do not need to be afraid or cower before Him without hope, awaiting the inevitable judgment, because He is also a God of love, who extends salvation to His people, and "blessed are all those who put their trust in Him."

The Seat of the Scornful

In Psalm 1, the blessed man is described as one who does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly, stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scornful; that last phrase is one that has often confused me and given me cause to think and ponder. What I'm coming to think is that the scornful, or the mockers, are those who practice the soul-destroying art of flippancy in the Screwtapian sense. They are those who look upon good, noble, and virtuous things with a cynical and contemptuous gaze, or with open disregard for what they would call the foolishness and futility of those things. And to sit in their seat is to look at life from their vantage point and through their eyes. In some way I feel that this attitude of scorn toward life is one of the most dangerous and destructive things in the world, both for the individual who holds it and for the society around that individual, but it is incredibly difficult for me to express this importance with words of enough meaning and strength.

There are things in this world that are of primary and utmost importance, things that characterize our humanity and serve as the rich soil for our roots or the sky which healthy growth strives to reach. Some of these things are the innocent and fundamental aspects of physical and temporal life in the midst of all God's creation - things like hard work, marriage, babies, beauty in a flower or a mountain or the face of a woman, strength in the arms of a man, and the fellowship of believers worshiping God together. Others are the good and glorious principles and virtues that stretch through eternity and underlie all that is worthwhile in temporality - things like the love and grace of God, justice, righteousness, honesty, compassion, holiness, and judgment; the high praises of God in the mouths of His saints as they wield the two-edged sword of His word; all that is lovely, pure, noble, praiseworthy, and of good report.

But the destroyers of civilization - no, let us call them the destroyers of humanity - attempt to cut away at the reverence and value we ascribe to these things, and they do so with mockery, scorn, contempt, and the overriding derision of elite and enlightened opinion, first, and then of public opinion more broadly. If we cast away those things, however - if we trade in laziness and entitlement for diligence and hard work, for instance, or falsehoods and manipulation for honesty and faithfulness - what will we have left? There will be nothing left worth living for; there will be nothing left that is characteristically human in the majestic and beautiful sense of humanity for which we were all created, which we may one day hope to see, and which we as of yet can still see occasional glimpses here and now. By making those good and virtuous things objects of mocker and scorn, we lose both the rich soil of a godly and honorable temporal life and the high and glorious heavens that soar in the eternal visions and aspirations of one who seeks to know and follow God. Stunted and weakened, we wither inwards in petty sins and quiet despair, having barred the door of our hearts to both life and joy.

A Few Days Late...

Monday was our first anniversary! If we can make it through the first year, we can make it through all the rest, right? Honestly, though, it has been an amazing year, being married to a man as wonderful as Paul :) It's had its share of tension, uncertainty, and conflict, but I've found that mutual love and commitment go a long, long way in setting those things right and providing endurance through them while they last.

I don't know where God will lead us from here, except that I know He will keep calling and drawing us nearer to Himself, deeper into the oceans of His love, higher onto the mountains of His righteousness. That's what He does for His children! And what matters most is not how much money we make, or where we work, or how many children we have, or where we live, or any of the other myriad uncertainties of our temporal life, but whether or not we choose to follow that one great, eternal call towards God. So I have cause to give thanks, every day, that I have a husband whose heart's desire is to follow that call, and thus one in whom my heart can safely rest.

Unbelonging

Psalm 107 is one of the most beautiful of all the psalms, and also one that illustrates God's love for and involvement in the lives of His people. Every time I read it, a different aspect or picture stands out to me. Today, what caught my attention was the first descriptive stanza, verses 4-9:

"They wandered in the wilderness in a desolate way;
They found no city to dwell in.
Hungry and thirsty,
Their soul fainted in them.
Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,
And He delivered them out of their distresses.
And He led them forth by the right way,
That they might go to a city for a dwelling place.
Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for His goodness,
And for His wonderful works to the children of men!
For He satisfies the longing soul,
And fills the hungry soul with goodness."

It is a picture of loneliness and unbelonging, of souls who wander alone and unfruitful through barren desert places, trudging through the wilderness with empty hearts. To them, life must seem both meaningless and hopeless, as they long from the depths of their being for the joy and abundance they can neither find nor create. Yet though their sorrows lead them to the point of breaking, they do not stumble into the pit of Despair, for they remember in their desolation, despite the seeming futility of life, to cry to God who does not scorn the tears of a lost and broken soul.

When they so cry, out of the pain and the bitter empty ache of their hearts, He hears them not with condemnation or contempt, but with kindness and compassion. He hears them, and hearing them, He responds with action, entering their lives and changing its course. He leads them to a place where they can dwell: He gives them a home and a place to belong, and a community in which they can find both fellowship and purpose - where they can have their own needs met and also come to know joy and find meaning through serving and loving the people around them. In essence, He saves them from the barrenness of a life alone and loveless by restoring them to the human fellowship for which we were designed.

All too often, even here in an actual city, there is no community. Souls wander by in the wilderness of their isolation and loneliness, longing for love but unable to find it, looking for a place to belong, but turned away by the indifference of those who fail to even notice them. The deep, throbbing ache for a place and a people to belong to becomes the steady undercurrent of our existence, however we try to silence or ignore it. Oh, that God would bring the goodness of community and loving fellowship to our lives, here and now! Deliver us from the distress of our aloneness and unbelonging, Lord, and lead us by the right way, and satisfy this longing of our souls!

A flower in blossom

Sometimes I think we don't actually desire God quite as much as we think we do - or at least, I think co-existent with our desire to know Him and be near to Him is a desire to pull back, to withdraw, to refuse the vulnerability and surrender which necessarily come with knowing anyone intimately, but especially God. You can see the same push-and-pull of warring desires quite frequently in romantic relationships, to give a more accessible example: each person loves the other, and wants to trust and know (and be trusted and known by) the other, but there is an undercurrent of what can most simply be called fear that holds them back from fully letting go into mutual trust, vulnerability, knowing, and nearness. Each can be so desperate to earn and keep the other's love that they refuse to fully open themselves to the other (for fear of rejection), and as a result close themselves off to the love they most deeply crave. It is bitterly ironic that the direct consequence of the actions taken in search of love, in the striving to deserve love, is the construction of a barricade against the full force of that love when it finally comes.

And if it is such a bitter irony in the context of human relationships, is it not even more bitter when it occurs in the relationship between man and God? In a relationship with another person, the fallibility and imperfection of humanity can be used as a rationalization for the fear of vulnerability and genuine love, but with God that excuse falls short. The fear is exposed. Why do we hold back from the actions that would draw us nearer to God? Why is any flimsy excuse or distraction allowed to pull us away from our prayers or prevent us from meditating on Him throughout the day? It is not - it cannot be - that we fear He will reject us. If anything, our lack of devotion and piety would be greater reason for Him to reject us. More importantly, however, we know that His love is unfailing and enduring; we saw that He was willing even to suffer and die because of that love. No! - it is the love itself that we fear. It is too great, too high, too mighty; it is too far beyond our comprehension, and we fear it because its bounds are unknown - and, we have heard, unknowable.

A love without reason or end, a love that endures the scorn or indifference we show to it, a love that perseveres unchanging despite our fickle attention and attempts at returning it, a love that forgives, a love that knows us completely and does not let go, a love that is determined to hold on to us no matter how much we fight to be rid of it, a love that refuses to be angry no matter how we yell and storm and try to hurt it - that is the love God has for us, and that is the thing we fear most and yet most deeply desire and need. If we could but open ourselves up to it - open up our hearts not caring if it killed us with the strength and glory of its torrents - I think we would find that all the tense, angry, self-conscious, anxious striving in our hearts would be washed away, and that our souls would relax and unfold like the petals of a flower in blossom under the light of the sun.

Acknowledging need

"It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realise for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us. Surely we must have a little - however little - native luminosity? Surely we can't be quite creatures?
"For this tangled absurdity of a Need, even a Need-love, which never fully acknowledges its own neediness, Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our Need, a joy in total dependence. We become 'jolly beggars.' The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his Need. He is not entirely sorry for the fresh Need they have produced. And he is not sorry at all for the innocent Need that is inherent in his creaturely condition. For all the time this illusion to which nature clings as her last treasure, this pretence that we have anything of our own or could for one hour retain by our own strength any goodness that God may pour into us, has kept us from being happy. We have been like bathers who want to keep their feet - or one foot - or one toe - on the bottom, when to lose that foothold would be to surrender themselves to a glorious tumble in the surf. The consequences of parting with our last claim to intrinsic freedom, power, or worth, are real freedom, power and worth, really ours just because God gives them and because we know them to be (in another sense) not 'ours.'" - C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

This is not the way I naturally think, and I don't think it's the way most other people think either.We are ashamed of our Need, even our Need for God; we wish to be independent beings, possessing something utterly our own which we can then give to God and to other people. In fact, we don't want to admit that we are dependent on God, not just because of our sin, but because we are His creatures, the things He has made and whose life He sustains. I love the analogy in the first paragraph above: we want to have some light of our own, to shine bright with the goodness of our own being, instead of simply reflecting the light of God. But since we are His creatures, even if light did shine forth directly from us, it would still be His light that He put within us in the first place.There is nothing we can offer Him that He did not give to us, and because we are fallen we tend to need His help and encouragement even in that act of giving. And that is hard to accept, so I tend to fight it - I try to prove to myself, through continued efforts to be perfect, through the accumulated praises of people around me, through my own self-assessment in every situation, that I am a being who can live without Need and give freely of what is inherently my own to God and others: in other words, that I am a being like God in that I am my own self-sufficient person characterized by Gift-love rather than by Need-love.

But of course this is not true! So the fight becomes a lesson in failure and discouragement, or in self-righteousness and pride, depending on how the battles of the moment are progressing. In either case, there is no true delight, freedom, or consciousness of value. How could there be, when I am trying to live outside the constraints of reality? As Lewis wrote above, the false belief that we are self-sufficient, independent beings is what bars us from experiencing happiness. It imprisons us in continual striving for inherent personal perfection, in lies (believed in the heart if not spoken), in competition even with those we love the most, in the desperate fortress of pride faced with defeat. Having proclaimed to ourselves that we are Need-less - without Need of any sort, and particularly without that Need of God that infiltrates our whole being - we begin to feel that we are needless - meaningless beings without any greater purpose or worth. The One whom we need even to be truly ourselves is the same One who has made us able to meet the needs of people around us, given us a purpose and a meaning for our lives, and thus bestowed upon us greater worth than we could have ever made for ourselves. The One before whom we are utterly powerless, and upon whom we are dependent for life itself, gives to us His power, that we might live by His strength and do greater things that we could ever have imagined for ourselves. And the One who is a fountain of joy and love, apart from whom we are dark and hate-filled little creatures, will, if we will let Him, cause that fountain to spring up in glory within our very hearts, giving to us that which we could never earn or make for ourselves, but in the act of giving making it truly ours in Him.

Apologies

I'm sorry I've had another lull in posting! My mental state this week can be aptly illustrated by the fact that I completely forgot - until my mom called and reminded me last night - that a very good friend was getting married today and that I thus needed to leave work early (fortunately I have a very accommodating and flexible boss!) I've had a lot of thoughts, but most of them have been scattered and fleeting, and the ones I've dwelt on more deeply are rather too personal for a blog. So! I offer you my apologies, and also my promise that I am attempting to return to a more regular schedule soon.

Building love upon knowledge and joy upon truth

From The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence:

"That we ought to make a great difference between the acts of the understanding and those of the will: that the first were comparatively of little value, and the others, all. That our only business was to love and delight ourselves in God."

Note first that he does not say acts of the understanding are of no value. In attempting to correct one error, we have a tendency to swing to the other extreme - to say that, because we have previously strayed (or seen others stray) by valuing and seeking intellectual knowledge without the corresponding practice of virtue and devotion, we must completely abandon the pursuit of knowledge and simply attempt to live ethically and with love. But what we see taught here is that the acts of the understanding do still have value for the Christian. And when we think about it, we see that it must be so, for the acts of the understanding create for us a compass of truth, giving direction and guidance to the acts of the will. Without that compass, our will would be adrift in the chaos of ever-changing opinion, confused, "tossed to and fro and carried about by every wave of doctrine" (Eph. 4:14), without direction or purpose, never attaining to the great and glorious end for which God has created us.

However, it is equally clear that to stop here, having obtained a working compass, would be insufficient. Simply knowing the direction we ought to travel will not lead to the completion of the voyage! This is why the acts of the will are of such great value: it is by them, by choosing to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Mt. 22:37) and to find in Him our soul's true pleasure and delight, that the ship actually sails. By the acts of our will we show whether we are following the direction our understanding has established, or ignoring it in favor of some other course; by them also - and only by them - we advance towards the destination of our voyage: full holiness and true unity with God.