Category: Fredzone

  • The Trenches

    We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end,
    so that what you hope for may be fully realized.
    Hebrews 6:11

    A story is told about an artist who was famous for his simple but exquisite sketches of roses. One day a man came into his studio and told the artist that he had long admired his work and would like to commission a sketch as a gift for his wife on their anniversary. The artist placed a fresh sheet of paper on his easel and, with a few confident gestures, rendered a beautiful image of a rose. The man was delighted. It was exactly what he had wanted. But when the artist informed him of the steep price, the man blanched. “That’s outrageous!” he cried. “It took you only moments to finish!” The artist sighed and led the man through a door into a large room. The walls were covered with thousands of sheets of paper. Upon the floor towered stacks upon stacks of canvases. On each sheet and canvas was a meticulously wrought sketch of a rose. “This,” said the artist quietly, “is where I have labored to perfect my art.” He gazed kindly at the astonished man. “The rose I created for you has taken me a lifetime.”

    Stephen Curry is one of the best professional basketball players of all time. He lights up the court with his ball handling and shooting skills. Curry is a four-time NBA champion, a two-time NBA Most Valuable Player, an NBA Finals MVP, a two-time NBA All-Star Game MVP, and he’s the first player in NBA history with 4000 career 3-pointers. The apparent ease with which he razzle-dazzles fans and players alike is misleading. Curry practices hard. “I take hundreds of shots in a single workout,” he reveals. “It’s about muscle memory and consistency.” His ball handling drills include figure 8s, behind-the-back crosses, and one-hand behind-the-back movements up and down the court, over and over and over. On Mondays he works his chest (push-ups, nautilus presses). Tuesday is back day (pull-ups, seated rows). Wednesdays he focuses on his shoulders (Arnold presses, lateral raises). On Thursdays he works his arms (bicep curls, tricep press-downs). His practice sessions run anywhere from 90 minutes to three hours, day after day. What the fans see is a game-time superstar putting on a show.

    That’s the way of it. Whether it’s success in the arts, in sports, in business, or even in the kitchen, most of us see only the finished product. We wonder at a Michelangelo, cheer a Muhammad Ali, admire a Steve Jobs, or rave about Mom’s apple pie. What we do not see, however, are the hours or days or years that it took to make it happen. It is true that many who are at the top of their various fields have special gifts. No matter how hard we might try, we will probably never out-Mozart Mozart. Even so, rarely is the gift alone enough. (The road to success is littered with the failed husks of the gifted.) As the parable of the talents teaches us, the wise know that they must invest their gifts if they hope for a return. There is no guarantee that the investment will bring the desired results—Stephen Curry does have a bad game from time to time— but disappointment is indeed certain if the gifted do not put their gifts to work. Without guts there is no glory.

    For over 25 years I have headed up a small nonprofit organization called Burning Bush Ministries. Whenever I am asked what it is we do, I usually reply that our primary role is teaching church leaders but that we also support Christian missionaries and aid community development around the world. This answer usually suffices. If they are interested, I can relate tales of dramatic visitations of God or unnerving manifestations of evil. I can show photos of me preaching in India and Africa and Brazil or wading through monsoons in Bangladesh or trudging through the Russian snow. These are the exploits that we showcase in our newsletters, emails, and campaigns, the highlight reels that I hope will justify my vocation.

    Every so often, though, a curious someone presses further and asks what I actually do during a typical day. I hate that question. It’s not that I don’t know the answer; it’s that I’m actually kind of embarrassed by it, mostly because, for many people, it would appear that I don’t do much of anything. And so before I answer, I consider who is doing the asking. If it is an unbeliever, I will say that each morning I have a meeting with the CEO of my organization. That meeting, I tell them, may last an hour, the morning, or even the whole day. After that I will attend to the projects at hand, whether it is studying, writing, or planning. They tend to nod with understanding, and I’m generally off the hook.

    But if the curious questioner happens to be a passionate follower of Jesus, one who is acquainted with the dynamics of the heavenly realms and the alien mechanics of the Kingdom of God, if I deem that person a kindred spirit and faithful servant of our common Lord, I may tell him the undisguised truth: what I do is pray. For over a decade prayer has been my primary daily activity. It is ground zero for everything else I do. When I am in prayer I am at the center of all things and all times. In prayer I reach across oceans, lift up the weary, bring down the proud, demolish lies and pretensions, hold back the tide of wickedness, and establish sanctuaries of grace and peace. In prayer I carry my brother’s burden, believe for him when he cannot, and clear a path for his steps. In prayer I take up the great cause of righteousness. I cry out for mercy, for justice, and for truth. In prayer I am advocate, ambassador, and avenging angel.

    The real work happens there, in the trenches. All else is razzle-dazzle.

  • The Contextification of the Gospel

    Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
    Reinhold Niebuhr

    One of the hallmarks of social media is its impressive ability to highjack things out of context. If something can be yanked from the ground of original meaning and repurposed, the agents of the internet can—and usually do—do it. Whether it’s a freeze-frame innuendo, a proof-text aspersion, or a clipped video defamation, the maestros of the media can sound-bite a fact out of all truthfulness.

    Taking things out of context is not a new thing, of course. Perhaps the most notable target for misappropriation is the Bible. The scriptures have long been plundered and employed to justify all manner of ambition, agenda, and unrighteousness. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me becomes a mantra for personal achievement. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” becomes the guarantee of a piece of the American pie. And the current favorite, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged” becomes a shield for blatant immorality and perversion. Another favorite is the apostle Paul, who is excised from the kingdom of God and vilified as an enemy of the very grace that he championed. Jesus himself is extracted from his life and message to serve as a firebrand or a free ticket. The gospel can be whatever you want it to be, and Jesus is the all-purpose poster boy.

    But decontextualizing scripture isn’t the only way to repurpose it. Pundits and pastors have mastered another art less overtly propagandistic. Rather than lifting Bible passages out of context (which is easier to spot, at least by the biblically literate) they instead disarm and redirect these verses by interposing a light-warping contextual lens between the scriptures and their audience. By heaping historical, cultural, and textual qualifications upon the text, these scholars purport to uncover its true intentions. What the text actually says, they claim, is not what it means. This practice is what I call the contextification of the gospel, and it can be as misleading as a gospel cut loose from context altogether.

    To provide examples of contextification would not be very helpful, since there are as many possibilities as there are Bible verses. Not only that, a single verse can be contextified in different ways depending on the underlying agenda. There are, however, tell-tale signs by which efforts to contextify the scriptures can be recognized.

    In his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul writes, We know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. Paul recognizes that the working of the true gospel does not rest in eloquent words or plausible explanations but is manifest by deep conviction through the power of the Holy Spirit. This, then, is the lens through which we can perceive attempts to contextify the gospel.

    One of the signs of contextification is the effort to lessen the scripture’s impact and implications. The goal of legitimate contextualization is to magnify the original sense; contextification, on the other hand, seeks to minimize or subvert the original sense. Legitimate context enhances what the text actually says in order that we might frame a proper perspective. Contextification, by contrast, starts with a perspective and works to align the scripture accordingly.

    Another sign of contextification is the muting of Spirit-prompted conviction, especially a conviction that demands repentance. Both John the Baptist and Jesus heralded the kingdom of God with the call to repent and believe. Contextification often lessens or even eliminates the gospel’s demand for real repentance by redefining what it means to be a sinner. The biblical “acts that lead to death” are now culturally determined, and a  contextified righteousness draws its substance from the patterns of approved social practice. A contextified gospel rarely requires genuine repentance.

    Ultimately, contextification of the gospel erodes the authority of the scriptures themselves. The received text, it is assumed, is archaic and unintelligible, and it must be qualified, modified, or even dismissed where it cannot be reconciled with modern sensibilities. If the gospel is to remain relevant, say many, it must be reinterpreted for our times. In 1999, John Shelby Spong, then the Episcopal Bishop of Newark, published his provocative manifesto Why Christianity Must Change or Die. Contextification is the attempt to rescue Christianity from the grip of Holy Writ by telling us, as did Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

    Then, again, what if it does?

  • The Thrill of No Options

    Whom have I in heaven but you?
    Psalm 73:25

    In the final scene of the movie Thelma and Louise, the titular characters, who are running from the law, drive their 1966 Thunderbird convertible to the rim of the Grand Canyon. As they admire the magnificent view, they are suddenly cornered by an army of law enforcement vehicles. Faced with the certainty of being captured or gunned down, they decide to “keep going” and gun it toward the edge of the canyon. The last shot shows the Thunderbird rocket over the rim and soar gracefully into the air.

    The scene’s impact does not come from the car’s dramatic launch, however. What gives this final scene its punch is the poignant exchange between the characters just before their last act. Realizing that they’ve run out of other options, they confront the only one that remains. The stark reality of their situation unnerves and then thrills them. They surrender to the absurdity of what they are about to do and with grim euphoria charge headlong into the valley of no return.

    One of the cornerstones of the good life, so we are taught, is the availability of alternatives. The greater number of options from which to choose, the better. Long gone are the days of Henry Ford who, describing his new Model T, is purported to have declared, “Any color the customer wants, as long as it’s black.” We now expect selection—and selection we get. Ford alone currently produces an estimated 28 different models, and their flagship F-150 pickup comes in eleven colors. The proliferation of options isn’t limited to automobiles themselves. Each state now offers multiple license plate designs to appeal to any taste. Maryland has the most plate designs of any state at 989, nearly twice as many as runner-up Texas at 476.

    Modern consumers are drowning in options, whether at the retail store or the ivory tower. There are roughly 5,000 different types of breakfast cereal to choose from. The US hosts more than 2,500 apple varieties. (The UK has a staggering 1,750.) It’s not just food products either. In 2023, Nike offered 773 different footwear products, including 342 men’s shoe styles. Need a new refrigerator? Among multiple other brands, Home Depot offers 52 Frigidaire models. And then there’s the tech market. In 2024, over 1.8 million apps were available in Apple’s App Store and over 3.9 million Android apps on Google Play. Need a little higher education? There are some 5,916 colleges and universities in the United States to choose from. What to study? Penn State offers more than 275 undergraduate major programs; the University of Minnesota offers nearly 300. Can’t afford to pay up front? Chase offers 32 iterations of its Visa card. Speculators might be interested in a few of the 1,900-plus cryptocurrencies currently busking in the digital marketplace. Looking for a spiritual uplift? By some estimates, in the US there are over 200 Christian denominations and about 370,000 religious congregations to satisfy the most esoteric itch. Whether it’s cereal, shoes, or salvation, there’s an orgy of options out there.

    Yet rather than deliver the producer-promised contentment, this plethora of possibilities often results in confusion, second-guessing, and dissatisfaction. Cognitive psychologist George A. Miller of Harvard University’s Department of Psychology asserted in 1956 that the number of objects an average human can hold in short-term memory is about seven. “Miller’s Law” suggests that lists much longer than that become significantly harder to remember and process. Nelson Cowan, a cognitive scientist at the University of Missouri, has demonstrated that when a number of objects are flashed briefly, their number can be determined very quickly, at a glance, when the number does not exceed four objects. As the number of considerations increases, the ability to process decreases. What may seem beneficial for decision making can quickly become counterproductive to making informed choices. There can indeed be too much of a good thing.

    The serpent insisted that unless our first parents chose other than what their creator desired for them they were not free at all. A careful reading of the account reveals that he was not advocating for the right to choose per se (humanity had already been granted that right). The wily serpent was actually arguing for a specific choice, and until the serpent’s pitch, it would seem that Eve hadn’t considered that disobedience was an option. The assumption (which persists) is that something cannot be freely chosen if it is the only option available. This, in turn, leads to a most egregious supposition—that choice itself is of greater value than anything that might be chosen.

    An obvious manifestation is our culture’s objection to a Christianity which insists that Jesus Christ is the only one through whom humanity can have a relationship with God. Most unbelievers have little problem with Jesus as one of many, or even as the best of many; but they take issue with Jesus as the one of one. This objection is rarely aimed at the actual biblical testimony (of which most are either ignorant or dismissive) but is instead leveled at Christians as though they are the problem, not Jesus himself. To insist that Jesus is the only option leading to eternal life is to blaspheme against the great god Option whose temple is Choice and whose archenemy is the Chosen.

    Christians like options too. We church shop and swap congregations whenever we hanker for a vibe change, or maybe we opt out of organized gatherings altogether. Above all, we don’t accept any real spiritual authority over us. Sermons are suggestions; constraint is cultish; discipline is dead. Even the Bible is more inspiration than imperative. Devotion can take any form that appeals to us. We allow no one to drain the pool of available options. For Western Christians, submission is just another word for nothing left to choose.

    So what happens when God pulls a Henry Ford? What if he nullifies all options but one? What if he grants you the right to choose only what he wants? What if the God father makes you an offer you can’t refuse? He’s done it before. When Israel continues in her unfaithfulness, God declares through the prophet Hosea:

    “I will block her path with thorn bushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.’”

    If the subject is particularly resistant to instruction, God generally employs one of two strategies. Either he gives the reprobate over to his wayward desires to reap what he sows (definitely not what you want), or he will narrow the aperture of possibility to expose the futility of carrying on as usual and to provoke a return, even if a half-hearted one. But waywardness isn’t always sinful. Sometimes God blocks the way simply because we are lousy cartographers

    God also eliminates options for those whom he calls to important work. Paul’s Damascus experience is a textbook case. First God aborts Paul’s mission to destroy the fledgling church by striking him blind. God then orders Ananias to go to Paul: “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.” Note the imperative he must suffer for my name. When God chooses you, you have little choice, no matter what your pet definition of freedom is. If Jonah teaches us anything, it’s that the call of God cordons off the exit ramps.

    It’s not that he won’t give you an out. Even Jesus could have bailed if he had wanted to. (Remember those twelve legions of angels?) But if you’re especially slow in the revelation department, God will keep throwing roadblocks in front of you until you hang-dog the only road back home. As an uncharacteristically meek Simon Peter once told Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Ardent devotion can be fickle. Sometimes you just need to be herded like a dumb sheep to the green pasture.

    So enjoy the scenic routes when you can. But remember, O chosen one of God, “What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.” And when you find that the only road left to you leads off the precipice, put the pedal to the metal. You’re not coming back from this one—and that’s the thrill of it.

  • For the One Who Tried

    Success is counted sweetest
    By those who ne’er succeed.
    Emily Dickinson

    This is for the one who tried, really tried. This is for the one who gave it his best shot and still came up short, for the one who applied himself with all his mind and heart and strength but in the end reaped no glad harvest. This is for the one who chose the good way but stumbled upon the stones of its rigorous demands. This is for the one who, more than anything, longed for righteousness, bright and clean, but who was not able attain to it. This is for the one who sought the noble, the excellent, the praiseworthy, but instead found defeat, disappointment, and despair. This is for the soul for whom the oil of gladness failed, for whom the early and latter rains did not come, the one for whom the promised land of milk and honey is but a grief and taunt.

    This is not what you were told it is supposed to be. You cried out for deliverance that did not come. You beseeched the heavens for an intelligible gesture, but the skies remained detached and blank. You searched but did not find. You knocked but the door was not opened. You asked but it was not given. You are stranded, bereft as dust, in the valley of dry bones.

    Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down!

    You prayed to be changed, prayed so hard, but you remain in the cell of the same self. Those wonderful words which had led you to your knees are now flavorless husks, brittle sticks that prick and scratch but do not bud. In spite of the sacred admonitions, you are bone weary of fighting the good fight and, seeing no other option, have made disconsolate peace with the enemies of your soul. It seems that you must cohabitate with them, and so you sketch out their sovereign regions, each to each, the boundaries illusory and porous. The temple of cards yet stands in the center, but only by your sheer will. It is the sole remaining testament to an elusive sanctuary.

    Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?
    Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

    Come, let us sit together, you and I, here in this lonely place, the wails of the doomed rising from the abyss on the one side, the joyous shouts of the blessed cascading from the holy mountain on the other. It is enough. I will not be like Job’s friends who offered true but empty consolations. I will stay silent, my tongue abashed and still, except, perhaps, to say, and only once to say,

    “Yes. I know.”

  • Ignorance is This

    All I know is just what I read in the papers,
    and that’s an alibi for my ignorance.
    Will Rogers

    Ignorance is never is short supply. In fact, it appears to be the quintessential quality of the human race. For every example of human insight, there are a thousand that demonstrate our astonishing lack of understanding. What we discover we desecrate; what we enhance becomes a tool to enslave; what we raise, we raze. In spite of our achievements, Homo sapiens have proven over and over that we are not so sapient as we suppose. As Albert Einstein remarked, “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”

    Discerning readers might wish to point out that, technically, ignorance and stupidity are different things. Ignorance is a lack of information, whereas stupidity is a lack of intelligence. An intelligent person may be ignorant about certain things—and often is aware that he is. The stupid person has no such self-awareness. The intelligent person can recognize his ignorance. The stupid person cannot recognize his stupidity. An intelligent person is certainly not above being stupid, but the stupid person can be nothing but.

    More often than not, however, ignorance and stupidity go hand in hand. Ignorance frequently produces stupidity, and stupidity always reinforces ignorance. I will let the reader provide his own examples from the abundance of options. (Note: If most of the examples which come to mind serve to illuminate the abject stupidity of others, the reader may want to revisit his assumptions.) Suffice it to say that ignorance and stupidity go together like Laurel and Hardy, nuts and bolts, or diaper and rash.

    The scriptures identify ignorance as a fundamental condition of humanity. It is now the default setting in our relationship with God and the world. According to Paul, this ignorance was born when humankind exchanged the truth of God for a lie, thus forfeiting true knowledge. Importantly, this decisive lack of information is the result of humankind’s rejection of the truth. Ignorance did not prompt the first rebellion against God, although the serpent successfully leveraged the idea. On the contrary, it is rebellion that led to human ignorance, and this ignorance is nothing less than of truth itself.

    Even so, the oracles of the Enlightenment and their progeny argue that human reason escaped the full impact of the Fall, that we are still able to discover truth if we only apply ourselves. Thus, the veneration for intellectual, scientific, and rational spiritual pursuits. But this not the biblical perspective. One of the consequences of abandoning the truth is a profound corruption of the mind. Human thinking became futile and our foolish hearts were darkened. We are always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth. Humans not only lack vital information, we also lack intelligence. Paul sums it up this way:

    They did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God [ignorance] so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done [stupidity].

    In other words, humankind is by default both ignorant and stupid.

    This pitiable condition is inescapable, even for the passionately moral or religious. Paul, that ardent Hebrew of Hebrews, insists that even the Jews, who possess the articulated covenant of God, are still captive to ignorance. For I can testify about them, he writes, that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. (The Christian, too, is susceptible; resistance to the Holy Spirit is an act of blatant ignorance.) But uninformed faith is not simply a matter of benign misdirection. The proverb bluntly warns that zeal without knowledge is not good. The prophet Hosea laments, My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Ignorance is lethal. And not just for the unfortunate practitioner. When an ignorant humanity embraces a moral or religious creed, it’s time to head for the hills. As Martin Luther King, Jr. observed, “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” (Again, the reader is free to offer his own evidence.) No matter the form of implementation, whether secular or sacred, ignorance and stupidity always bear fruit according to their kinds.

    The Gospel of the New Testament proclaims the one antidote to humankind’s systemic ignorance. It is to know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. The greatest offense to a fallen humanity happens to be its salvation. The one true knowledge, which our first parents deemed not worth retaining, is now returned to us in the Son of God. In him the ignorance born of rebellion is vanquished. As Paul declared to the citizens of Athens,

    “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

    If ignorance is the fruit of rebellion, then only obedience can restore true knowledge. Christ submitted to his Father’s will and gained access for us, and through him the knowledge leading to life is now available to all. “Repent and believe,” Jesus preached. “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Wisdom, indeed.

    For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
    For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.
    Isaiah 55:8-9

  • Freaking Out

    Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
    Philippians 4:6

    I’ve discovered that the tendency to freak out is inversely proportional to the time spent in prayer. Less prayer, more freak; more prayer, less freak.

    But once again I get ahead of myself.

    In the midst of crisis, a supernal calm can be maddening to those who equate it with denial or delinquency. When the sky is falling, only the blind and irresponsible sit down for a picnic. Given the information at hand, Chicken Little’s panic is entirely warranted. We are amused only because we know the real situation; the guileless chicken did not. If the hapless Henny Penny had been right, anything but a full-on scream-your-bloody-head-off Paul Revere warning ride would have been unforgivable. We’re talking fried chicken.

    These are days of chronic crisis. If it’s not immigrants pouring over the border, it’s the latest asteroid hurtling toward the planet. There’s tumult in the Middle East, war in Ukraine, geopolitical destabilization, accelerating climate change, emerging infectious diseases, political polarization, economic inequality, hemorrhaging healthcare, disquieting advances in artificial intelligence, Beyoncé as a cowgirl. As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.” When it comes to delightful dilemmas and disasters to die from, we have an embarrassment of riches.

    Of course, it’s always been this way. Wars are a staple of human history. Everlasting civilizations collapsed like clockwork. Volcanos erupted and earthquakes quaked. Populations were frequently decimated by famines, plagues, and the whims of unscrupulous tyrants. Slavery was a matter of course, and human sacrifice had long been the haute cuisine among the fashionable gods. Until 1500, human life-expectancy was only thirty years. And if all this wasn’t bad enough, the poor sods had to slog through without smartphones, Starbucks, or Spotify. Unimaginable.

    It is not surprising, then, that freaking out has also been a favorite human pastime. People have wrung their hands about the end of the world for as long as there have been ends of the world to wring hands about. And one of these days it will be the End—or at least the end of Part One, if the users Immanuel is correct. I actually believe that the freakers among us are right; it is all going to hell in a hand basket—and perhaps even sooner than any of us might think. And so it might seem suspect that I am decidedly not in freak mode.

    One of the best scenes in The Princess Bride movie is of a sword fight between the lovable rapscallion, Inigo Montoya, and Westley, who is disguised as the “Dread Pirate Roberts.” Their southpaw swordplay enthralls as it appears that they are equally skilled. At one point, Westley gains the advantage and presses Inigo to the edge of the cliff where he notices something on the face of his opponent. “Why are you smiling?” asks Westley, to which Inigo replies, “Because I know something you don’t know. I am not left-handed.” Inigo flips his sword to his right hand and the tables are turned—that is until Westley reveals that he isn’t left-handed either. Even when you know it’s coming, the joke never fails to delight.

    The scriptures relate many examples of inside intel and holy chill in the face of imminent calamity. In one well-known case, a pagan king, enraged at the prophet Elisha, sent his armies to surround the little town where Elisha and his servant were staying. According to the record,

    When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. “Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?” the servant asked. “Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

    And then there’s the famous account of Jesus and his disciples caught in a furious storm while they were crossing a lake. Waves swept over the boat and the disciples were terrified of drowning. Jesus, however, was sound asleep. (I Am what I Ambien?) As Matthew records it, the disciples went and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” He replied, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. That demonstration, we are told, really freaked out the boys in the boat. Pick your poison.

    Yes. Things are crazy out there, and it’s not going to get better as long as humans are in charge. But freak out? I suppose—if you have nothing better to do.

  • Thinking

    “If I look confused, it is because I am thinking.”
    Samuel Goldwyn

    The unexamined life is not worth living, said Socrates. One of the most important distinctions between humans and other animals is our ability to reflect upon our own existence. The famous dictum is literally translated the unexamined life is not lived by man. Socrates believed that to live without contemplation is not to live as a human at all. Absent deliberate thoughtfulness, we are but base creatures of instinct or, according to the psalmist, brutish and ignorant like a beast. Our capacity for higher thought is what sets us apart in the material world. As Blaise Pascal has noted, Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed. We may be dust in the wind, but we are dust with minds. To invert René Descartes: I am, therefore I think.

    For many, thinking is mostly a means to an end. Reason is the ability to solve problems, and once a problem is solved there is nothing left to think about except the next problem in line. Human life is comprised of a series of challenges to be addressed and overcome. There may be a few collateral perks along the way, like the Mona Lisa or Mozart or macaroons, but human existence is essentially a string of “if X then Y” propositions. The answer to “Why?” is always “X.” This suffices.

    Unfortunately, such reduction can lead to a rather disenchanted journey, even for a theist. For the Christian, it can take the form of a very un-Socratic axiom: “The Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it.” Inquiry is seen as a form of doubt, or at least an impious waste of time. This perspective, however, can be seen as a kind of intellectual laziness—or even cowardice—and has led many, including the famous 20th century philosopher and futurist, Buckminster Fuller, to conclude: Belief is when someone else does the thinking. Intellects far greater than Fuller’s would take exception to that, but it is true that many saints seem indifferent to anything beyond practical, how-to Christianity.

    Over the years I have heard believers proclaim many things about God. They have testified that God is good, that God is holy, that God is powerful, that God is gracious, that God is wise. I have heard them proclaim that he is righteous, merciful, and just. But in all those years, I have never heard someone boldly declare that God is interesting. Among the believing rank and file there seems to be a strange lack of actual curiosity about God. I have found zeal for service; I have found passion for worship; I have found affection for the church; I have found reverence for the scriptures. What I have rarely found in the average layman, however, is a genuine inquisitiveness that compels someone to explore, for exploration’s sake, the astonishing nature and work of God.

    When Jesus was asked which was the most important commandment, he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” We’re familiar with the heart aspect of love; the heart is the seat of the emotions. Loving God involves an emotive response. A purely intellectual ascent to his greatness is not love; it is theory. Soul simply means life, the individual’s being. As the poetic King James renders man’s creation: The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Soul is an umbrella term under which all the aspects of life are housed. To love God with all our souls is to surrender without reserve our whole selves to him. And to love God with all our strength means, as Paul has it, to honor God with your bodies. Heart, soul, and strength are concepts easily grasped.

    To love God with all our minds is not so easy to parse. The best most can offer is that it means to think about God a lot. It’s hard to argue with that, but it’s not very enlightening. Jesus’ answer implies that we are to love God with all the conscious capacities of the mind. Those capacities are reasoning, memory, and imagination. We have already alluded to the mind’s ability to reason things out. To love God with our minds does indeed involve a deliberate seeking, sorting, and solving. This is how the devout scientists of old understood their mandate. This is also the motivation for theology, what thinkers of the High Middle Ages used to refer to as the Queen of the Sciences. Scientists searched out the how; theologians explored the why. Both thought of their vocations as a form of divine adoration. For Christians especially, grappling with unanswered questions, whether terrestrial or heavenly, is an expression of love for the God who made all things.

    To love God with our minds also employs memory. The mind’s capacity to retain information is fundamental. As the heartbreaking reality of dementia underscores, memory is essential for personhood; we are the sum of our experiences. An individual is who he remembers himself to be. That is one reason why the scriptures so often exhort the Hebrews to store up in their minds the decrees of God. Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; Moses commanded. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Jesus informs his disciples that the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. To commit to memory who God is and what he has said, and to recount his blessings and faithfulness, is not only to express love for him but to remember whom he has made us to be.

    With regard to love for God, the least appreciated capacity of the mind is imagination. The word itself reveals its meaning. To imagine is to create a mental image. Such an image is not limited to real world experiences. The mind is able to create powerful experiences of its own. Some can be terrifying like forebodings or nightmares; others can be uplifting or frothily delightful (think: unicorns). The capacity to imagine things beyond the natural order seems less frivolous when we recognize its crucial role in our relationship with God. The mind’s ability to travel beyond the provincial earthly realm enables us to spy what worldly eyes cannot. Through the imagination vision becomes visionary. The mind can see what the eye cannot, and this can prompt wonderment and worship. To love God with all our minds means entertaining glories only apparent (at least for now) to the mind’s eye.

    I am not advocating for so-called mystical contemplations of the divine. I am speaking of the joys of thinking itself. Even the psalmist wasn’t locked into a rigid religious rubric; he often let his mind wander among the universe’s countless marvels: I will ponder all your work and meditate on your mighty deeds. Sometimes it is good to set aside all the practical and religious demands of daily life and just ponder, not to solve problems or satisfy vague obligations, but simply to explore—to think for thinking’s sake. It may not produce a winning argument or great invention, but as playwright Arthur Miller cautioned, “Don’t be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.”

    Think about that.

    “There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.”
    Hannah Arendt

  • Checking the Obits

    Like everyone else who makes the mistake of getting older,
    I begin each day with coffee and obituaries.
    Bill Cosby

    One day, some twenty or more years ago, my 85-year old dad and I were working on something in his yard in the little town of Deering, North Dakota. It was a bright, windy day, so typical of summer on the northern prairies. Out of the blue he paused and looked at me. “I don’t know how I ended up an old man,” he said. “On the inside I feel the same, but on the outside I’ve gotten old.” That was it; he did not elaborate. We returned to our task and he never mentioned it again.

    He’s gone now and sleeps in a small, hardscrabble cemetery outside the little hometown he loved. But that moment remains as clear and crisp as a North Dakota day. My dad was surprised by what others before him had likewise discovered. As Emily Dickinson noted, Old age comes on suddenly and not gradually as is thought. Aging can often seem more of an ambush than a devolution.

    I confess that for some time now I have regularly checked the obituaries of my hometown newspaper. I’ve noticed that the birth years of the deceased are steadily creeping toward my own. The death of former classmates, whether I knew them well or not, always inflicts a quiet stab of loss. There is something poignant to me about the passing even of those I do not know. Formal portraits, photographed decades ago, show young faces glowing fresh and vibrant. Casual snapshots, barely usable for publication, hint at the last-minute scramble of loved ones caught unprepared by so abrupt a departure. And, of course, there are the expected faces, photos taken at a 90th birthday party or drawn from a church directory. Every entry is the record of a life lived, a brief argument against the long forgetfulness of the grave.

    Awareness of mortality does not necessarily mean morbidity. Confronting the stark reality of death can serve to magnify the exquisite value and joy of life. This is especially true for those whose ultimate hope lies beyond the circles of the world. Years ago, before I had attained to that vague milestone known as middle age—an achievement which I have, arguably, already left behind—I was moved to pray this verse from the Psalms: Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. The insight seemed simple enough; acknowledging that I had a limited engagement was a pillar of wisdom. What I did not anticipate was the answer to that prayer. Ever since, I have heard the ticking of the clock. I admit that at times it has disturbed me like the watch in Poe’s story The Tell-tale Heart. It can seep into even the most delightful moments. But strangely, and more often than not, this sober intrusion also infuses a transcendent glow, lifting the moment out of the moment to reveal an elusive beauty that makes the heart ache with longing.

    In Frank Capra’s beloved movie It’s a Wonderful Life a man on a porch berates young George Bailey who is reluctant to surrender his affections to 18-year old Mary Hatch:

    Man: Why don’t you kiss her instead of talking her to death?
    George: You want me to kiss her, huh?
    Man: Ah, youth is wasted on the wrong people!

    Here is enacted the age-old conundrum. The young have life but little wisdom; the old have wisdom but little life. Perhaps that’s what the psalmist seeks to address. The sooner I recognize that life is fleeting, the sooner I can embrace a truly wonderful life.

    The ticking of the clock is also a reminder that time does not stand still. Each passing moment is a moment forever gone. God may have access to the past, but we do not. Wisdom learns from the past but is not trapped by it. The Apostle Paul strives to make the most of every opportunity—forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead. He knows that meaning is not sourced from the past but from what is yet to come. He exhorts the Corinthians: Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. A meaningful life is not a matter of duration but of purpose. Even so, it’s the tick tick tick that gives the journey its urgency.

    King David was once the ruddy, youthful darling among Jesse’s sons. But he too knew what it meant to age. I was young and now I am old, he wrote and referred to his once robust body as this leaning wall, this tottering fence. Such is the fate of all who are born into the world. As Isaiah cries: All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. Learning to number our days does not alter that. What it does do is charge our days with significance. Life is not a generality; it is manifest moment by moment—and only in the moment. There is no future, only the coming now.

    Echoing King David, the poet William Butler Yeats wrote that an aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick. Those who know the aches and pains of growing old might concur. There is no escaping the stubborn realities of aging. But the end of our days need not be gloomy. The proverb declares that the gray hair of the righteous is a crown of splendor. And even though it is appointed for man to die once, there is great peace for those who have learned true wisdom. As William Wordsworth writes, An old age serene and bright, and lovely as a Lapland night, shall lead thee to thy grave. Serene and bright and lovely? Yes, please.

    Live so that when the final summons comes you will leave something more behind you than an epitaph on a tombstone or an obituary in a newspaper.
    Billy Sunday

  • A World Without Nuance

    “We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance;
    we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.”
    Matthew 11:17

    nu·ance noun

    1. a subtle difference or distinction
    2. sensibility to variations (of meaning, tone, or value)

    The gospel is as binary as it gets. Jesus doesn’t leave much wiggle room when it comes to God. “No one comes to the Father except through me,” he tells his disciples. Peter reiterates when he is questioned by a hostile tribunal of Jewish leaders: “Salvation is found in no one else,” he proclaims. “For there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” Those who flinch at the exclusivist claims of Christianity have only its founder to blame—though shooting the messenger continues to be a popular sport. And those who soft-pedal the gospel in order to lessen its offense and widen the narrow way know little of Jesus and even less about road construction.

    So it might seem odd that I, a die-hard devotee of definitive doctrine, should decry the dearth of delicate discernment in these dehumanizing digital days. (Sorry. I got carried away.) But it is indeed the case. Our engagements with the world—politics, the arts, religion, sex—are being reduced to surfaces and stark polarities. Ideas atrophy into ideology. Sublimity sinks to sensuality. Values devolve to volume. Meaning mummifies into meme. There is no mistaking it: nuance is dying—and I mourn its demise.

    If it were a matter of cultural deprivation alone, it would be lamentable enough. Inhabiting the current landscape can make some of us feel like three-dimensional beings trapped in a two-dimensional world. We take refuge in old-school literature or classical music and with these fragments shore against the advancing ruins of the wasteland. We have learned to keep our condemnable opinions to ourselves, having experienced the quick-draw, blunt instrument wrath of the new enlightenment. We comfort ourselves with the words of the Spartan commander when his small band of warriors faced an overwhelming Persian army: “They have the numbers; we, the heights.” We fortify our courage, even though we well know how that ancient battle ended.

    As I say, if it were merely a matter of cultural privation, we might hunker down with a good book and quietly hope that the barbarian hordes will leave us to ourselves. But it is not merely a cultural issue. The end of nuance also means a stunted spiritual imagination; that is, a shrunken capacity to perceive spiritual realities—and this has dire consequences for both believer and nonbeliever alike.

    The generation of Christ’s own time also suffered for want of spiritual imagination. The Jews were zealous guardians of divine law, but they could not grasp the reality that it spelled out; they could perceive only the flat facts of the world. They could read the law of Moses but not the writing on the wall. “You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky,” Jesus tells them, “but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” The implications of this imaginative poverty were devastating. Jesus wept over Jerusalem:

    “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”

    Our own generation is increasingly handicapped by an evaporating capacity for both nuance and spiritual imagination. The roots of the problem aren’t difficult to identify. That humankind exchanged the truth of God for a lie is, of course, the primal seed which, as Milton decants it, brought death into the world, and all our woe. But from this has lately sprung a garden of noxious seedlings—substandard education, pervasive digital media, relentless social indoctrination, and biblical illiteracy, to name a few. These creep like invasive vines into the mind and suck all but a husk of lower functions and instinct.

    The result is a culture that cannot make connections. Nuance employs allusion, and allusions require a meaningful shelf life. In a world of instants there can be no allusions, for there is nothing to allude to. Experience is caught in its own echo chamber, amplifying itself out of all context. There is only this/now which is blind and deaf to all but itself. Nuance also demands discrimination. Discrimination is a learned ability that is developed by practice. The multiplicity championed by the culture is, in fact, monolithic, a many-faced facelessness that only erodes true discernment. Above all, nuance requires margins where reflection can occur. Velocity is the enemy of contemplation. The relentless onslaught of information and images floods the mind and the senses, leaving no refuge for contemplation, no vantage point to behold anything beyond everything.

    Good medicine, it seems to me, is to purposefully nurture a capacity for nuance. Reading is a good start. Making time for prayer is also profitable as it offers you a wider vista. Conversation—without added entertainments like games or movies—enhances attention and feeds the soul. Our culture may lack for nuance, but we don’t have to. The capacity for nuance clarifies and enriches, and—very importantly—can save us from the fouler snares.

  • What Ricky Gervais, Jesus Christ, and the Apostle Paul Have in Common

    Fear of man will prove to be a snare,
    but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe.
    Proverbs 29:25

    Ricky Gervais is an English comedian who is well known as the creator of the BBC comedy series, The Office. Gervais has won seven BAFTA (British TV) Awards, five British Comedy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards. His standup performances draw large crowds and he has produced comedy specials for Netflix. He is one of the most prolific and successful comedic performers of the past twenty years. He also happens to be an avowed atheist.

    Gervais is perhaps best known, however, for his ruthless skewering of Hollywood elites as the five-time host of the Golden Globe Awards. As he opened the 77th annual show, he warned his glamorous (and nervous) audience: “You’ll be pleased to know this is the last time I’m hosting the Golden Globe Awards. I don’t care anymore.” He added, “I’m joking. I never did.” True to his word, he ripped into the assembled glitterati with his signature show-no-mercy humor. Nothing was off the table, to the camera-caught distress of many in the audience. After an especially devastating barb, he would respond to the audible gasps with “Shut up. Shut up. I don’t care. I don’t care.” It was a must-watch, made-for-television massacre.

    Disregard for his audience’s indignation is central to Gervais’ comedy. “I’m a scientist at heart,” he explains, “so I know how important the truth is. However inconvenient, however unattractive, however embarrassing, however shocking, the truth is the truth, and wanting it not to be true doesn’t change things.” Gervais is not about to pander to those who find his material offensive. “Someone not liking my work doesn’t mean I have to give the awards or the money back. People who don’t like your work have no effect on you.” On the contrary, Gervais sees outrage as an expected reaction to truth-telling. “Offense is the collateral damage of free speech.” His comedic sensibilities have won a huge following, although there are no doubt many who will not miss his face during awards season.

    Jesus isn’t generally known as a comedian. His brand of humor is more of the cosmic kind: the long set up, the apparent defeat, the turn-about punch line. (Nobody pulls off a resurrection like Jesus.) He could fire off a zinger when he wanted to, but he was more into the slow burn. As an entertainer, Jesus was unparalleled. Thousands would gather to watch him perform, especially if refreshments were served. People loved his earthy stories—and the potential for free healthcare. Unlike Gervais, Jesus was a full-on theist.

    Yet, like Gervais, Jesus could ruffle a few feathers. His audience didn’t always appreciate it when he aimed too close for comfort, and his disciples sometimes felt the need to point that out. On one occasion, Jesus delivered a trademark line to upend a common assumption: “What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.” The Jewish religious leaders in the crowd didn’t think it was very funny. Afterward the disciples came to him. “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard this?” Jesus replied, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots.” For Jesus, offense wasn’t merely the “collateral damage of free speech.” Sometimes it was the whole point.

    Jesus was not cowed by the tyranny of public opinion like so many in his audience were. Many even among the Jewish leaders believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they would not openly acknowledge their faith. As John writes it: They loved human praise more than praise from God. Jesus confronted this issue directly. “How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” Even the noteworthy Nicodemus succumbed and kept his fledgling faith under cover of night. For Jesus, on the other hand, public approval or disapproval meant nothing. “I do not accept glory from men,” he flatly declared. John put it in a nutshell: While Jesus was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in a man. This disregard for public opinion eventually got him killed—or shall we say cancelled. But that, of course, was part of the joke.

    For many the Apostle Paul is one of the most offensive performers of all. To the culturally enlightened, he’s the Andrew Dice Clay of Christian dogma whose takes on women, homosexuality, and slavery are regressive at best. Paul was an equal opportunity offender. Even his staunchest allies admitted that his material often got him into a lot of trouble. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, noted Peter, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures. To say that Paul was a funny guy might be pushing it a bit, but his short-fuse, in-your-face persona was every bit as controversial as Gervais and Jesus. He was not inclined to tip-toe on eggshells; his mantra was straightforward: Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. Paul would have been a prime candidate to host the Golden Globes.

    Like Gervais and Jesus, Paul had little concern for public opinion. I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court, he asserted. Indeed, I do not even judge myself. Paul saw disregard for public opinion as a requisite for his very mission. If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. He understood that Christians can face some tough crowds, but that’s just the way it goes. He exhorted young Timothy, Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God. Believers are not to be kowtowed, as he reminded Timothy: God has not given us a spirit of timidity. Ultimately, Paul shared Gervais’ conviction that “the truth is the truth.” For this reason, he proclaimed, I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes. For his audacity Paul ended up in chains, but for him prison was just another stop on the tour.

    Considering the company he keeps, Ricky might want to reconsider his theological perspective.