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.

Waiting in unknowing inaction

Sometimes beauty and peace come from waiting, from hidden times of refining and maturing, from taking the long road through desolate places - from passing through the darkness and the pain instead of skirting around it. On the other side, one finds that there has grown within him a new depth and strength of character, a patience and endurance he never had before, and with that endurance new reserves of hope and faith.

We never want to wait. The months of engagement before a wedding, though full of joy and excitement, can be almost tortuous at times because of the heights of anticipation, the constant pushing forward as though by sheer will power the days can be made to go past more quickly. When we have had an interview for a job or a school or a scholarship, the time spent waiting to know what the decision will be is charged with impatience and anxiety - as we say, we can't wait to hear back. Whether we want something or fear something, the time before we obtain our desire or before the dreaded moment arrives seems unendurable. Even if it ends with bad news, we want it to be over, so we don't have to wait any longer, so we don't have to wrestle with worries and dreams, hopes and fears: so we can know what is to be, and act accordingly.

Waiting feels like inaction. Passivity, helplessness, lack of control, inefficiency - all these words describe how it feels to be forced to sit back and wait. There is no more preparation to be done, no more actions to take; all that is left is to wait. And so we wait fitfully and uncomfortably, even angrily, chafing at the bit. But maybe waiting can be a blessing and a gift, despite its unwelcome appearance. Because waiting demands inaction, a cessation of all our frantic planning and activity, it offers us a chance to rest. Because it holds us captive in a state of unknowing, it gives us an opportunity to learn to trust the God who does know what the future holds. We can choose to wear ourselves down with worry, or we can choose to wait with patience, to endure the pain of not knowing and not being able to do anything about it, and in so waiting to deepen our trust and strengthen our character and our faith.

Eternal hope

"... sagacity says, 'Surely one must not kill hope.' 'You hypocrite,' replies the eternal, 'why do you talk so equivocally; of course there is a hope that should be killed, just as there is a lust, a craving, and a longing that should be killed - the earthly hope should be killed, because not until then is one rescued by the true hope, and that is why the sufferer should not even want to "accept release" (Hebrews 11:35) on temporality's terms.'" - Soren Kierkegaard, Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits


Earthly hope is very pleasant to the mind and the heart, even when it so improbable as to be more of a desperate wish than a hope, because it fills the imagination with beautiful pictures of everything temporal healed and set right - of health and wealth and happiness, of the fulfillment of life's "little dreams" (like a house in the country with a wrap-around porch, or a home full of children, or a long and loving marriage, or recognition and respect). But to make those hopes the great desire of one's heart - to think of "the temporal as the highest and the eternal as a kind of desperate standby" (Kierkegaard again) - is in the end to lose these hopes themselves, and their fulfillment, or even if one does experience the happiness of their fulfillment in a temporal sense, it is still in the end to lose the highest hope of all: that which is eternal.

So it is better not to hope for those things at all - to kill them when they appear - that one may set one's heart on the greatest and highest hope without distraction or reservation. Is there a sense of loss, at the thought of killing these hopes and thus not pursuing their fulfillment and obtaining their promised happinesses? Yes, there is; but it is a better loss than the alternative, which is to never become alive in the eternal hope, to never pursue that eternal fulfillment and obtain eternal happiness.

The power that gives strength to hope

Thus far during this first week of Advent one theme that keeps recurring over and over - even in completely unrelated settings - is the greatness of God's power. It's not something I've often thought about before, at least in any depth, and yet I am finding that it is essential to fully understanding His other characteristics as well as the blessings He bestows on us and the path on which He calls us to walk.

For example, we have in Christ a hope for our future - a hope of glory, of the restoration of all things beautiful and good, of peace and justice in the world - and it is in the light of this hope that we can find encouragement to endure through the darkness and the sorrows that beset our world now. But if we don't grasp the totality of God's power, then there will always be an element of doubt and anxiety in our embrace of this hope, and our obedience and endurance in faith will be more shaky as a result.

Our God is the One who spoke and the worlds came into being, in the richness of their beauty and complexity. He is the One who even clothed in human weakness defeated death itself and returned to life. He is the One before whom Satan fell from heaven like lightning, and the One who freed people from the snares of Satan's minions with a word. And this God dwells within us, and loves us, and hears our prayers! Hope is not a desperate wish for a future good, when our almighty God stands behind it and backs it with His promises - it is an assurance and an eager expectation, for which we wait and persevere.

Candle of hope, candle of promise

This first week of Advent we light each night the candle of hope, to remember that we have an enduring hope in Christ in the midst of a broken world. On this first Sunday we remember specifically how God made the world good and very good from the beginning; all things were beautiful in their design and blameless in their function, and there was peace on the earth between animal and animal, and love between human and human. Shame had not yet shown its face, nor fear either, and men walked with God in the world He had created.

Into that beauty came a whispering voice of temptation and deception, and hard on its heels came sin and all the consequences of sin that we know too well, so that Adam and Eve hid themselves from God, and blamed each other for their disobedience, and were exiled from the garden with a curse that covered all creation with them. But in the middle of the curse came a promise, for our God is a God whose love is greater than our sin:

"And I will put enmityBetween you and the woman,And between your seed and her Seed;He shall bruise your head,And you shall bruise His heel.
[...] And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living." - Gen. 3:15, 20

Even in the despair of their exile and in the midst of the terrible curses of pain and hardship and social disunion, Adam could place his hope in this promise of God, and trust that through Eve would come one bringing life to destroy the seed of evil and the bonds of death.

They hoped for Christ's coming; today we both remember that hope and its fulfillment in His Incarnation, and still continue to hope for His final coming and the ultimate fulfillment of His promises. The perfection and peace that creation once enjoyed is not merely a pleasant memory but is also a living hope, for it will be restored and delivered with us in Christ when our adoption is completed and our bodies are made new. This is why we hope so eagerly for His return, because only then will all the physical world He has made be renewed and redeemed as our spiritual selves are already, and His kingdom will be restored on the earth, and the groaning and sorrow of this earth will be replaced with joy. So we hope, and we persevere in our hope through all the doubts and troubles that accost us, considering His promises a worthy thing to hold on to.

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." - Rom. 8:18

Searching for home; yearning to belong

In this life, as Christians, we necessarily experience a degree of tension because we are at the same time part of this world and yet not part of it. We are called and commanded in so many ways to be intimately bound up with this life, invested and engaged in our communities, laboring for the good of the earth and the people in the earth - to live with the "this-worldliness" that Bonhoeffer wrote of. We're supposed to honor, submit to, and pray for those in authority over us in a worldly sense (1 Peter 2:13,17; Romans 13:1-7); to work to provide for ourselves and our families (2 Thess. 3:10-12, Eph. 4:28, 1 Tim. 5:8); to serve the poor and needy, and to live with generosity and hospitality towards others (1 Tim. 5:10, Mat. 25:37-40). And to do all of that well, our minds have to be in the world, wrapped up in the affairs of the world and of other people, to truly be aware of the needs we can meet, and our strength needs to be used in the midst of the world to put forth enough effort to actually make a difference in the lives of other people.

And yet at the same time we are reminded that we are not of this world, though we are still in it. In a crucial way we have been pulled out and set apart, and given a new home. Peter, in his first letter, prefaces his exhortation about how to live in the world by reminding us that we are "sojourners and pilgrims" in this world. The Apostle Paul agonizes over the choice between living on and continuing his work, or dying and going to be with Christ, "which is far better." There is a sense that even though we are in this world and ought to be living wholeheartedly in this world addressing its needs and problems with the talents God has given us, we still do not fully belong here. Some of the most beautiful hymns capture this feeling of unbelonging with their music as much as with their lyrics, crying out the longing of the heart to live in the courts of the Lord instead of on this cursed and sin-filled earth, yearning with the sons of Korah in Psalm 84 for a place that we can truly call home.

How can we reconcile these two threads of being that run through our lives as Christians? Tension can be a good thing, but it can also be paralyzing or bewildering, and if the tension can be brought to harmony - if the two themes can run the course of faith together instead of pulling in opposition - that would be an even better thing. One way I have thought of involves considering the issue differently: instead of feeling like we do not belong in the world, and thus tending to ignore it or wish to be rid of it, we could perhaps feel like the world does not yet belong with us. We have been redeemed and are being restored; it has not yet reached that point. But instead of leaving it in its sin, we can choose to take part in its restoration. It does not yet belong in the glorious halls of holiness, but by the grace of God it will, and it is our privilege to work and hope for its redemption. Creation was indeed "subjected to futility", but we have this hope and assurance that it "also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." (Romans 8:21). Having been called out to God in advance, so to speak, by the work of Christ in a place where He truly did not "belong," we can now labor in this world in His likeness and in His same work of reconciliation and redemption, to bring all things to Him who makes all things new. And someday, when the creation is brought forth into our liberty through our adoption by God, we will finally have a genuine and everlasting home, a place where we can truly belong.

Hope in the darkness

I've been struggling to write about anything lately, partly because I've been reading too much too quickly without enough accompanying rumination (and partly because what I have been ruminating about isn't in line with what I try to write about here). I do apologize for that!

With that said, today I still do not have a specific thought or topic in mind, but I do have a general feeling or mood. I've been reading about the state of the DRC, about the Occupy Wall Street movement, about the aftereffects of feminism, about famine and disease across the world, and about finance and economics here in the US, and honestly it's been rather depressing. Everywhere one turns, it seems, the world is rife with sin - really horrifying sin in some places, and in every place sin that is entrenched and unchallenged - and filled with pain. If death is the payment for sin, pain must be the benefits that accompany the salary. In the face of all those problems, especially knowing that they will necessarily become worse if the world follows its current course, it can be hard to remain hopeful about the future. What is there to be hopeful for? Will the DRC, along with other struggling nations in Africa and elsewhere in the world, find healing and restoration? Most likely not, at least in the near future, without a dramatic intervention by God. Will people in the US learn to take responsibility for themselves and the consequences of their choices, and rebuild a stable society? Perhaps, but it seems like at least half of the population is bent on destroying any long-term society in the name of short-term peace and prosperity, so I wouldn't count on it.

Everywhere I look, people are pointing out the problems in the world, and finding someone or some group or some ideology to blame those problems on. Problems in Africa? Blame the blacks (not linking the article I read here as it was really hateful), or Western interference, or the environment! Problems between the sexes? Blame the women who live for their own pleasure and "fulfillment" at the expense of their husbands and children - or blame the men who live with their parents and play video games and overall refuse to "man up"! Problems with the economy? Blame the ones who make irresponsible choices and don't want to live with the struggles they've made for themselves - or blame the ones who sit in power and wealth and increase their gain with corruption and greed! While the articles I linked tend to be courteous and respectful about their arguments (I picked ones I liked, for the most part), there is a lot of blaming going on elsewhere, and the general atmosphere of it is hard to escape. Even when I agree with a point or an argument the net effect is incredibly disheartening (and my recent reading list hasn't even included directly political issues, religious issues, or education issues, which I know from past experience can be even more discouraging to me).

My friends, if we want to change the world, we have to start on our knees. Anyone who chooses to open their eyes can see that there are problems, and anyone born with a sin nature knows the incredible strength of the human desire to follow our own lusts and emotions regardless of the consequences for ourselves or for other people. Problems aren't going to be solved by pointing them out to the people responsible because, all too often, they simply don't care. They have chosen that path, they have seen the consequences, and they have continued to walk down it. The world might go to hell in a handbasket, but at least they did what they wanted as it went. We cannot look to other people for hope, because the basis for hope is not found in humanity but in God.

This is where the dark mood of this post begins to change: in God. While we are not capable of redeeming and restoring the world through our own efforts (witness many generations of attempts and many billions of dollars spent towards these ends throughout history), God is capable of that task. He begins in the heart of each individual and works up from there to restore society, to create beauty, to build stability, and to renew love in community. Looking at the state of our world, it is obvious that this will not be a quick or easy fix - but the Lord of all the Universe has already given His own Son towards the work and we can be sure that He will not fail at what He has begun. There will be restoration, and all things will be new! If we hold on through the darkness to the hope we have received through Christ, we will see that hope fulfilled.

"For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will also be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors together with birth pangs until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees?" - Romans 8:18-24

I urge you (as one weak and easily discouraged herself, and much in need of her own advice) not to become disheartened and discouraged as you see the world falling apart around you. It has been falling apart ever since man fell first, and only the common grace of God is keeping it together now, and only His saving grace can fully restore and make it right. That is why it is so important, if we truly want things to change, to pray about those things, to lift up those needs and that darkness to the Lord! For we have this promise, in which we hope: that He will accomplish that end and that, in Him, one day, the earth shall be full of joy and love and glory as it is now full of sorrow and bitterness and cruelty. That hope is reason to smile even when faced with the darkness and sin of the world, because we know it will not last and cannot conquer.

The Kingdom comes

I am filled with sadness over the way the world goes, and where it goes, and how it hastens toward evil in the name of good. It's hard to write when there seems to be so little hope.

The problem doesn't lie in a single law, or even in the multiplicity of laws and policies that have accumulated through the years. At one moment the government is regulating adoption in a way that has caused several faith-based agencies to close down rather than go against their consciences; at another they are mandating "free" contraception (including morning-after pills) in a way that will similarly affect those Christian hospitals that desire to serve and provide health-care in accordance with their moral standards. The root of the problem is not in those policies, but rather in the worldview that birthed them, in the ideas and beliefs held by so many people in our nation. Those ideas - that children are an inconvenience rather than a gift; that marriage is a convenient manmade institution rather than a sacrament designed by God; that personal pleasure and convenience are higher goals than self-sacrifice, submission, humility, and love - those ideas have consequences, and we are beginning to see and understand what those consequences will be.

So what ought we to do? Well, first of all, we pray. We pray without ceasing for the hearts and minds and souls of the people of our nation, our city, and our community. More mundanely, we continue to pay the taxes that are required of us, because we are to render to Caesar what is Caesar's, even if those taxes are used for something we disagree with. No one supports the use of their taxes 100% (one could argue that this was particularly true for the people to whom Jesus was speaking). And finally, because we are in a country where we can lift our voices to try to change things, we should not be silent, and because we have a free will and a conscience we ought to make the choice to do what we believe is right, no matter the cost. Just as someone could be a conscientious objector to a war, so we can object on conscience to abortion and contraception. If we are mocked and misunderstood, so be it. Many through history have suffered ridicule and mistreatment for causes far less worthy.

On those issues and on others which have come up before and will arise again, it so often seems that there is nothing that can be done but quietly resist, and suffer in the resistance for the sake of Christ, if God so deems us worthy. It may not seem like things will ever change, or that the world will ever get better. But still we can endure because we know that the victory is already won, hidden though it may be by the fogs and black mists of this world of sin. We cannot often see clearly here, but we can trust with a faith that goes beyond sight. In that faith lies the hope that we will need to cling to when all seems dark and desperate.

In the words of an old children's book, Tales of the Kingdom (as best as I can remember them):

"How goes the world?"

"The world goes not well. But the Kingdom comes!"