In The Wrong

David Fay, Executive Director of USGA (regarding the US Open at Pebble Beach 2010): "I think two players used the word ‘awful’ on Thursday. Phil (Mickelson) said he putted awful. Tiger (Woods) said the greens were awful” (Sports Illustrated).

Theologians use two terms to describe the human condition: total depravity and original sin.

Total depravity means that sin and selfishness touch the totality of our being. If sin were blue, some would be bluer than others, but all of us would be some shade of blue all over.

Original sin doesn’t mean that we sin in innovative ways. (Most of my sins are dull and unimaginative.) It means that we’re sinful in our origins. As David put it, “I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5). We are thrown into the world like a baseball with a hard spin on it and in due time we break down and away.

Sin, thus, is both extensive and intensive: We are, as Luther said, “dust and ashes and full of sin.”

I find that hard fact to be most useful when I’m in conflict with a brother. No matter what my friend has done or has not done, I have, in one way or another, contributed to the problem. The first step toward reconciliation, therefore, is repentance for, given the human condition, to some extent, I am always in the wrong.[1]

I came across a psalm the other day that underscores that notion: David begins his prayer with a complaint against his detractors: “Those who hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head; they are mighty who would destroy me, being my enemies wrongfully” (“I did nothing wrong!), but he quickly changes his tune: “O God, You know my foolishness; and my sins^[2] are not hidden from You” (69:4,5).

This is how prayer works, or so it seems to me: We begin by justifying ourselves before God and blaming others and are led by God’s Spirit to examine our own conscience. We acknowledge the beam in our eye—“I putted awful”—the first step toward reconciliation with others (see Matthew 7:3-5). This is what Christian theologians regard as the “paradoxically auspicious (promising) nature of sin,” for only when I became aware of my true and unworthy self, can other, better possibilities emerge.

David Roper

3/17/13

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[1] This is what T.S. Eliot called “an enduring sense of sin.”  But coupled with this is the enduring knowledge that we are fully and freely forgiven in Christ. "When a man or woman repents and humbles himself, there is (God) to lift them up and that higher than they ever stood afore!" (Old Souter in MacDonald's Salted With Fire. It’s the fact of eternal, preemptive forgiveness on the basis of the cross that enables us to freely admit our sins.

^[2] Hebrew: ’asma (guilt)

A Beautiful Mind

And soon, too soon, the wintry hour

Of man’s maturer age

Will shake the soul with sorrow’s power,

And stormy passion’s rage.

—Bishop Reginald Heber (1783-1826)

We pray that we may serve God “in holiness and righteousness all the days of our lives” (Luke 1:74,75), but things go wrong with us as we age and we may descend into dementia and darkness. Recently I read of a home for retired missionaries in which an elderly gentleman, long known for his saintly character, now in his final years, sits in his wheelchair and shouts obscenities at those who pass by. What shall we do with this absurdity, this cruel caricature of good old age?

Why our loved ones must suffer in this way is mystery, but we know that in time all things will be set right. Ruined intellects will be discarded and left behind. So Bunyan writes of Mr. Feeble-mind who, after long enduring his affliction, was told that his Master had need of him. “Then Mr. Feeble-mind called for his friends, and said: ‘As for my feeble mind, I will leave it behind me, for I shall have no need of it in the place to which I go: therefore, when I am gone, I desire that you, would bury it in a dunghill.’ This done...he went over to the other side” (John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress). “

So then, though we sorrow, we wait with love and large hope for what awaits our loved ones “on the other side.” There, they will be made better than ever before, with minds restored in stunning brilliance and beauty. There, “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well” (Julian of Norwich).

DHR

3/12/13

Taken In

    There’s a natural watershed in our lives. We reach the top and stand for a moment and then we’re over the hill. Everything is downhill from that moment on. But no matter: I’m headed for home.
    Home! That’s where my heart is. (Sometimes I wonder if it’s ever been anywhere else.) “I have come home at last!” shouted C. S. Lewis’ heaven–struck unicorn, as he stamped his right fore-foot on the ground. “I have come here at last! This is my real country!  I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.”
    It’s not that heaven is somewhat like home. It is home. Our earthly homes are mere signs or reflections—primitive symbols of warmth, love, togetherness and familiarity. The ultimate reality is our Father’s house—where there is a father who never dies; who makes a home for the lonely; who treats us like family; where real love awaits us; where we’re included—“taken in.”
    We hear about Odysseus, the Flying Dutchman, Frodo and E.T. and we too want to go home—to that place where everything is impervious to change, where God will wipe every tear from our eyes, where we can cease “to break our wings against the faultiness of things,” where everyone has a friend, where love will never end, where everything finally works out for good.
    Everything goes wrong here; nothing will go wrong there. Nothing gets lost; nothing is missing; nothing falls apart; nothing goes down the drain. Heaven is God’s answer to Murphy’s Law.
    There’s no complete healing here. We are born with broken hearts and some sense of that brokenness stays with with throughout our days on earth. There will always be some measure of inner pain that co-exists with joy, some vague longing, some “homesickness” that will linger until we get home. We are may be somewhat satisfied here, but we’re never quite content.
    One of these days we’ll go home and then everything will be complete. Think of a world where there is no suffering, no sorrow, no quarrels, no threats, no abandonment, no insecurity, no struggling with sagging self-worth. Heaven is where everything that makes us sad will be banished. We will be delivered from everything that has defiled or disrupted our lives.
    It’s disturbing to look ahead and see the same impossible road stretching out in front of us, going on indefinitely. We’re driven to despair or rebellion when we think there’s no point to our misery and no end to it. That’s why we find comfort in the realization that it will not go on forever.  One day, everything that God has been doing in us and through us will be done. He will come for us and we will go home. We will live in our Father’s house forever.
    Ancient people took to analogy much better than we. One of the most convincing figures is that of God himself “taking us in.”
    The thought occurs in the biblical story of the Enoch, who walked with God for 300 years and then “was no more, because God took him in” (Genesis 5:24). It’s as though Enoch and God took a walk one day and got too far from his earthly home. The old patriarch was too weary to walk all the way back so God took him home to be with him.
    One of Israel’s singers saw himself and others as “destined for the grave,” but as he goes on to say, “God will redeem my soul from the grave; he will surely take me to himself” (Ps. 49:15).
    And then there’s that poet who learned God’s presence from his peril: “I am always with you,” he concluded. For now, “you hold me by my right hand; you guide me with your counsel and afterward you will take me into glory” (Psalm 73:23–26).
    “Taken in.” I like that way of looking at my terminus ad quem. It reminds me of something Jesus said, “I am going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:2,3).
    That’s the fundamental revelation of heaven in the scriptures: “being taken in.”
    We can be left out. As C. S. Lewis said, “We can be left utterly and absolutely outside—repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored….” If men and women do not want the love that brought them into the world, that sustains them every day and is offered to them eternally, God will let them have their way, though it would not be his choice. In an odd sort of way,  hell, thus, is a provision of God’s love: If we do not want his presence he will not foist it on us. He loves us enough to leave us alone.
    But we must understand what that means: Imagine God appearing and offering this arrangement: “I will give you whatever you want—anything and everything you ask for in this world. Nothing will be forbidden, nothing will be impossible; nothing will be denied (Pascal's Wager)—but you will never see my face again.” Not one of us has ever tasted such loneliness.
    Imagine, if you can, a world without a single friend, where there is no art, no culture, no civilization, no law, no love, no laughter, and nothing else that makes life worthwhile. God is the giver of every good and perfect gift and the source of everything good and true and beautiful. His absence means the absence of everything that gives meaning to our existence. If that’s what hell is, then, as C. S. Lewis has said, hell is exactly the right name for what it would be.
    We can start our own hell here on earth and preserve it for all eternity or we can be united with God now and forever. Through Jesus we can be welcomed, acknowledged, received, embraced, included. To those who have been “taken in” death is not bitter frustration, but culmination and transition into a larger and more permanent love—a love undisturbed by time, un-menaced by evil, unbroken by fear, unclouded by doubt, where “all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well” (Julian of Norwich).
    All God’s idylls end favorably; all God’s children “live happily forever after.” That’s the most cherished article of my creed.

Never again will they hunger
    never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat upon them
    nor the scorching heat.
For the lamb at the center of the throne will be their Shepherd
    he will lead them to springs of living water
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes”
            Rev. 7:16,17

DHR 

Hyperseeing

“When he [Jesus] shall appear, we shall be like him;” (1 John 3:2).

There is a term sculptors use to describe the ability to look at a rough piece of stone and see it in its final, perfected form. It is called “hyperseeing.”

Gutzon Borglum’s housekeeper captured the concept in her own quaint way when Borglum took her to Mt. Rushmore for the first time and she gazed up at the massive faces of the four presidents he had sculpted there: “Mr. Borglum,” she gasped, “How did you know Mr. Lincoln was in that rock?”

That quality—hyperseeing—is found first in God. He sees all that we are and more: He sees what we shall be when he has completed his work and we stand before him, holy and without blemish: the “splitting image” of Jesus.[i] The God who started this great work in you “will keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Jesus Christ appears!” [ii]

God will not be denied! He has such a longing for our perfection that nothing can or will remain an obstacle until he has finished the work he began long ago...

If only we will put ourselves in his hands.

Doubt whispers, ‘Thou art such a blot;

He cannot love poor thee.’

If what I am He lovest not,

He loves what I shall be.

—George MacDonald

 DHR

The Golden Rule

“Therefore whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” —Matthew 7:7-12.

Roman Catholic theologian and philosopher Hans Küng coined the phrase “Global Ethic” to refer to moral principles held in common by all religions. The essence of these principles, he concludes, is the Law of Reciprocity: “Treat others as you would like to be treated,” otherwise known as the Golden Rule. Put another way, it is the command to love your neighbor as yourself.

C. S. Lewis adds, “The first thing to get clear about Christian morality between man and man is that in this department Christ did not come to preach any brand new morality. The Golden Rule of the New Testament (Do as you would be done by) is a summing up of what every one, at bottom, had always known to be right” (Mere Christianity).

What then makes Jesus’ version of the saying exceptional?

It’s uniqueness lies in a conjunction, “Therefore,” that suggests a conclusion based on a premise. The premise, in this case, is the generosity of our heavenly Father: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you, for everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! Therefore whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” (Matthew 7:7-12).

Here is the motive for the Golden Rule: We have a loving, giving father who set aside his own self-interest to reveal the full measure of his love. We love and give because he first loved us. N.T. Wright has put it this way: “Jesus was neither the first nor the last great moral teacher to offer this so-called ‘Golden Rule’, and it sums up a good deal of his teaching. What distinguishes him from the many others who have said similar things is that underneath the moral lesson is the love of the heavenly father. What should distinguish his followers, but alas frequently doesn’t, is that, knowing this love, they should find themselves able to obey this rule, and the other rules that follow from it, gladly and freely. They should then discover that they are able to reflect God’s love and light into the world” (The New Testament for Everyone).

Secondly, God’s generosity is the dynamic by which we keep the Golden Rule. He gives not merely guidance, as all moral teachers do, but the resources for compliance as well. He provides more than understanding; he supplies the ability to act upon that understanding. He asks for performance but gives his power and love to carry it out.

God does not promise to give us every thing we ask for (an S-Class Mercedes-Benz comes to mind), but he does promise that he will answer every plea for goodness. It will take time to bring our requests to fruition for we’re all very hard cases, but he has promised and he cannot lie.

So what do you need this day to love your neighbor as yourself? Do you lack patience? Mercy? Forgiveness? Hope? Call on your Father and ask for it by name. Keep asking and it will be given to you. Keep seeking and it will be found. Keep knocking and it will be opened to you—in time.

DHR 

It’s About Time

"High notions of oneself are annihilated by a glance in the mirror."

—Nobel Poet, Czeslaw Milosz

A Botox cosmetic ad appears on our television screen that features a stunningly beautiful young model who smiles at the camera and murmurs, “It’s about time.” Exactly!

Time is the enemy. We invest in vitamin supplements, serums, tightening concentrates, firming creams, cellulite removers—a plethora of pills and potions—in an effort to stave off the effects of free-radical damage and try to stay alive, or at least look alive, as long as possible. We battle every age spot, blemish, and bulge, but nothing works very well, or for very long. The hours “fill our brow with lines and wrinkles,” Shakespeare lamented. The Greek god Chronis devoured his children, it was said, a sad reminder that time destroys all things. Time eventually catches up with us. We look our age and it’s not a pretty sight to see.

Jeremy Taylor, writing in the seventeenth century, put his finger on the issue. “First, age takes those parts that serve for ornamentation.” Thus, “every day calls for a reparation of that portion which death fed on all night.” Each morning we have to repair the damage that was done the night before. As an old friend of mine says: “A little powder, a little paint, makes a girl what she ain’t.”

And don’t think for a minute that men are immune to this compulsion. We too are appalled by what we see in the mirror, and each morning must give ourselves to restoration. But no matter what we do, the trend is down. It’s about time.

We, however, are not about time. We have been called to eternal glory! (1 Peter 5:10). Because Jesus died and rose again, our bodies will be rescued from the tyranny of decay, and—if we believe him—we shall share in the glory that belongs to us as the children of God and will be revealed in everlasting splendor. If we could but see ourselves today as we shall be then, we would be left speechless in awe and wonder. (I must add, however, that we’ll not be self-conscious then, but consumed with admiration for the beauty we see in others.)

In the meantime, though the outward person is perishing, we can invest in inward loveliness. The more we center on inner beauty, the less preoccupied we’ll be with an external glory that is fading away.

Here’s the thing: What I hold in my mind will, in time, show up in my face, for as George MacDonald once pointed out, the face is “the surface of the mind.” If I cling to bitterness and resentment, if I tenaciously hold a grudge, if I fail to forgive, my countenance will begin to reflect those moods. My mother used to tell me that an angry look might someday freeze on my face. She was wiser than she knew.

But in the same way, a generous and charitable heart, one filled with grace and forgiveness, will find its way to the surface—for goodness cannot be hidden—and show itself in kind eyes and a face that is gentle and wise.

So my task is not to try to fix my face and make it good (that would be hypocrisy), but to set about killing the ugly things that come out of my heart—“so ugly that they make the very face over them ugly also” (MacDonald). Yet I know my heart—how hard it is, how disinclined to change. No one but God can drive its sullen self-centeredness away. So I must ask Him by His power to fulfill every desire for goodness. Then, someday, my face may reflect the holiness He has put into my heart.

I have a friend, a Catholic priest, who served as Mother Teresa’s translator when she was in the United States to address the United Nations. I was in his study one day and spied a picture of the two of them standing together on the streets of New York. I marveled again at her ancient, wrinkled, leathered, lined face, utterly unadorned. Wisdom and character had drawn their lines. Gazing at those marks of courage and kindness, I thought: Is there anyone more homely—or more beautiful?

Hers was the beauty of holiness. May it be ours as well.

DHR

Authorial Intent

Augustine, in his Confessions supplies a list of interpretations of Genesis 1 that were “bandied about” in his day. He concludes that any of them will do as long as it is true to the truth: “What harm is there if a reader holds an opinion which you (God), the light of all truthful minds, show to be true, even though it is not what was intended by the author, who himself meant something true, but not exactly that” (XII.18.27).

Augustine’s hermeneutic seems odd to those of us who were taught E. D. Hirsch’s theory that a text has only one meaning: the meaning its author intended. Augustine accepts the idea of authorial intent, but goes beyond critical theory to state that “the author’s (ultimate) intent must be sought in charity.”

He writes, "Having listened to all these divergent opinions (interpretations of Genesis 1) and weighed them, I do not wish to bandy words, for that serves no purpose except to ruin those who listen (2 Timothy 2:14). The law is an excellent thing for building us up provided we use it lawfully, because its object is to promote the charity which springs from a pure heart, a good conscience and unfeigned faith (1 Timothy 1:4,5–8), and I know what were the twin precepts on which our Master made the whole law and the prophets depend (Matthew 22:40)."

In other words, when I expound a text I need to ask myself, “To what extent does the meaning I assign to this text promote love for God and my neighbor?” This, according to Augustine, is the only “lawful” use of scripture. Paul would agree: “the goal of the commandment is love…” (1 Timothy 1:5).

DHR