Pure Religion

 “This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. Yet such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere." —J.R.R. Tolkien

 

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world" (James 1:27).

 “.

Great acts of virtue come rarely, and rarely are they hard to do. They have their own reward: the rush and recognition we get from virtue signaling; the accolades we draw by going along with the crowd. It’s much harder to give ourselves to small, unheralded acts that no one sees. But these are the greatest deeds of all, the elements of which are found in Jesus, but in no other ethical system. 

 

True acts of mercy have to with the small stuff of life—doing good things in secret and in silence. This is pure religion, James says, “to look after orphans and widows in their distress.” Pure religion does what most people are unwilling to do. It “exaggerates what the world neglects,” G. K. Chesterton said.

 

Quiet, unpretentious deeds, done out of the way and in quietness, attack our pride, our hunger for power and prestige, our desire for recognition and approval, our determination to be relevant. Unseen acts train us in the practice of humility, which is the essence of godly behavior.

 

One way to test the authenticity of our social concern is to ask ourselves: “Do we align ourselves with the woke crowd  because it’s the admirable thing to do? Or are we willing to follow Jesus, though he takes us down paths that lead us away from the crowd. 

 

We can if we’re waiting for his “Well done!”—alone.  

David Roper

5.15.21

Conflict

“The sole cause of wars and revolutions and battles is nothing other than desire.”

 —Plato

 

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatra greatered towards God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. Or do you think Scripture says without reason that the spirit he caused to live in us envies intensely? But he gives a greater grace (James 4:1-8).

 

What causes fights and quarrels—border disputes, racial tension, family squabbles, marital spats, sibling rivalry, church splits? Why can’t we get along?

Conflict stems from “desire,” James insists, a Greek word from which we get our word “hedonism.” Hedonism is the philosophy that what is pleasant or has pleasant consequences is the highest good. Taken to its extreme it’s the relentless and ruthless pursuit of personal pleasure without regard for others.

Trouble comes when the pursuit of pleasure puts us in conflict with another human being similarly inclined. Two people desire a pleasurable thing, but both cannot have it at once. (Two drivers converging on the last parking space at a crowded mall comes to mind.) One or the other is thwarted in his desire, a frustration that can soon escalate into anger, blows and lethal rage. “You want something, but don’t get it, (so) you kill.” 

Killl? Really? It’s a fact: most homicides are not premeditated acts, but “crimes of passion (desire),” prompted by frustration and deeply regretted after the fact. The unguarded pursuit of pleasure can lead to terrifying violence. James does well to warn us.

Evill springs from frustrated desire. “It is insatiable desires which overturn not only individual men, but whole families, and will even bring down the state. From desire there spring hatred, schisms, discords, seditions and wars,” wrote Cicero, the Roman statesman.

James’ solution is profoundly simple: when you desire something—ask God for it. When in the pursuit of any passion you collide with someone pursuing his or her passion, rather than insist that your will be done—ask God. He is the giver of every good and perfect gift. It delights him to give. 

But there is one proviso: we must ask with a quiet and submitted will. We cannot dictate the time or terms of our satisfaction. It may be that God will give us what we desire, but give it to us later than we would like to have it. It may be that he will not give us what we want at all, but rather the satisfaction we seek from the thing desired. Satisfaction is an effect quite apart from natural cause. Its source is God alone. 

What this means is that we must give our deepest desires to God and let him satisfy us hisway. The alternative—taking matters into our own hands, is “adultery”—a very apt metaphor. When we seek satisfaction on our own will apart from God’s will we are unfaithful to the lover of our souls who longs to satisfy every desire of our heart.

Bernard of Clairvaux wrote long ago, “What will you do if your needs are not met? Will you look to God to meet your needs? God promises that those who seek first the kingdom and his righteousness will have all things added to them. God promises that to those who restrict themselves and give to their neighbor he will give whatever is necessary. Seeking first the kingdom means to prefer to bear the yoke of modesty and restraint rather than allow sin to reign in your mortal body” (from On the Love of God).

Asking God to meet our needs is much better than getting what we want our own way, for, as James put it, God gives a “greater grace” (4:6)—greater than anything we could ever get on our own

 

David Roper

5.13.21

 

Sweetness

 “When their leaders fall into a hand of stone, they will hear my words, that they are sweet”—Psalm. 141:6

Admittedly a difficult verse, but I would suggest that those whose “leaders fall,” are the elders of the Kingdom of Israel, who aligned themselves with Saul against David and the Kingdom of Judah. “Hand of stone” is an idiom signifying the application of an irresistible force—God’s “hand” that brought about the collapse of Saul’s kingdom.

 

For twelve years Saul hounded David and sought his death. David steadfastly refused to speak against Saul, but took his complaints straight to the Lord with the confident assurance that He, in due time, would set things right. Throughout David’s long ordeal, his words to and about Saul were gracious. And when Saul was killed in battle and the northern kingdom went into decline David did not gloat. Even then his words were “sweet”: He honored Saul and upon hearing of his death rendered a most tender elegy (2 Samuel 1:17-27).

 

“Sweetness” hardly accords with David’s rough exterior—though Walter Peyton pulled it off—but David was making a point: His words to and about Saul were gracious and good.

 

Perhaps, David muses, when the dust has settled, Saul’s followers will remember my words and the two nations will be reconciled—a reunion of North and South that actually occurred somewhat later at the instigation of David’s former enemies: “So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the LORD, and they anointed David king over (all) Israel” (2 Samuel 5:1-3).

 

Sweetness keeps the door wide open. Bitterness keeps us apart.

 

David Roper

5.4.21

 

Servants of God

 "As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance...through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise..." (2Corinthians 6:4,8).

After twenty-four years of faithful service to his church in Northampton, Massachusetts, Jonathan Edwards, America’s premier pastor-theologian, was honored by an all expense-paid, month-long sabbatical in the Hamptons. 

No, actually he was fired, the victim of a vicious slander, a marvelous example of the old adage: No good deeds go unpunished. 

Those who observed Edwards’ behavior in the days that followed were amazed at his equanimity: he was calm and quiet and showed no displeasure toward those who demanded his dismissal. As one biographer put it, "His happiness was out of the reach of his enemies" (Iain Murray). 

How can any of us maintain our composure in the face of egregious injustice? Paul answers: By knowing that we are "servants of God."

Years ago, a friend told me about a board meeting in which he was cruelly maligned. At one point one of his elders shouted, "Don't forget, son, you work for us!" My friend absorbed the rebuke quietly and replied. "Yes sir," he said. "You pay my salary, but I don't work for you. I'm a servant of Jesus Christ." 

I wasn't present on that occasion, but his words have indelibly marked my own thoughts about the work that we do: We don't work for anyone but Jesus.

That doesn't mean we can be cavalier about our employment, but it does free us from worrying too much about what others think of us, say about us, or do to us. We can endure dishonor and slander, knowing that we will receive our reward from the Lord. For we serve the Lord Christ (Colossians 3:24). 

David Roper

4.3.21

Paregoric

“These are my only fellow workers for the kingdom of God... they have been a comfort to me” (Colossians 4:11)

Paul’s  noun “comfort” is a word that occurs only here in the New Testament. It's a medical term that he may have borrowed from his companion, Dr. Luke. 

In Paul's day it meant “a potion that soothes or alleviates pain.” We get the archaic term “paregoric” from it, a word my mother applied to a mysterious and wonder-working, elixir in our medicine chest that was said to cure most of what ailed us. 

Paregoric contained opium, a controlled substance these days, but it was the best anodyne that patent medicine could offer at the time, and a welcome relief from pain. 

We can thank God for modern analgesics and the relief they bring us, but a greater blessing are those brothers and sisters who comfort us in our distress. 

They come to listen and to pray; they show up to help—they don’t need to be asked—to lift burdens too heavy for us to bear. 

There are folks like that—God bless them. “They have been a comfort to me.” 

David H. Roper

4.27.21

A Reminder

“That I may be simple, humble, and thoughtful as I listen to others and help them come to faith in the One who has given us life.”—Dallas Willard's credo

 

“Remind them (the Christians in Crete) to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work: to speak evil of no one, to be peaceable, gentle, showing all humility to all men. For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, that He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:1-7). 

 

Titus’ obligation, as a minister of the gospel, was to remind his flock that our work, vis-a-vis the world, is to show God’s kindness and unfathomable love, and by that love to draw men and women to Him that they may experience “the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, that He poured out abundantly…through Jesus Christ our Savior.” This is to the end that they might have eternal life. 

 

In this way we continue the primary work of self-revelation and salvation that God began in and through Jesus. Every other work is secondary and derivative.

But we know that, don’t we? Jesus made our mission very clear (Matthew 28:18-20). We just need a reminder.

David Roper

3.24.21

Entitlement

For several years Carolyn and I, like Job, sat in a N-ash heap—a 1959, porcelain-white, Nash Rambler station wagon that looked for all the world like an inverted bathtub on wheels. Once, I suggested to Carolyn that we could turn it upside down, hang an outboard motor on the rear bumper and run it in the annual Nanaimo Bathtub Race. We drove it until it fell apart. Literally. 

 

I remember the day we began visiting car lots to replace it. We looked at a number of shiny new and used cars and finally decided on a purchase. Unfortunately, the payments were more than we could afford.

 

We dickered with the salesman—our price and his price—but concluded that the twain would never meet and so made our departure. On the way out of his office, the salesman gave it one last shot: “Hey, you guys deserve this car,” he shouted. My flesh responded: “Indeed we do.” 

 

Entitlement is a soft spot for me. “I’ve been a fair–to–middling person,” I say to myself. My accomplishments deserve unending praise.” It’s only right. That’s why I can get my nose out of joint when I don’t get the praise and glory I so richly deserve. 

 

I was reading the other day about the Lord’s word to Zechariah: Go find a shepherd, he said, who will be dedicated to the good of his people, who will bring justice, encourage peace, prosperity, tranquility and harmony in the land. 

 

Not only would the shepherd be unappreciated; he would be despised, underscoring the axiom that no good deed goes unpunished. What were his wages? “Thirty pieces of silver” (Zechariah 11:12), the derisory price they placed on an elderly slave—the price they placed on our Lord (Matthew 26:15). Should I expect more? 

 

Mercy begets mercy, or so they say. We receive what we’ve given, but not necessarily from those to whom we’ve given it. Most of it will come from our Lord, who, after receiving us into his presence, will shout aloud before the assembled hosts of Heaven, “Well done!”

 

Edward Benson prayed with great wisdom, “Teach me, Lord, not to gather encouragement from appreciation by others, lest it should interfere with purity of motive. Not to seek for praise, respect, gratitude, or regard from superiors, or equals on account of age or past service” (from Prayers, Public and Private). 

 

May praise come from our Lord Jesus alone. 

 

David Roper

4.20.21