How Christians Ought to Suffer

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of practical, helpful guides to going through pain and difficulty in a Christ-centered, God-honouring way.

Now, I want to say right off the bat that the sustaining grace and power of God the Holy Spirit is the only reason that I’m not only still alive, but still retain any measure of sanity. I won’t bore you with the details, but let it suffice for the moment to say that, to quote a former co-worker, “this ain’t my first rodeo, bruh.”

I’d like to begin by quoting the U.S. Army survival manual. It lists three ways to strengthen your ability to withstand pain.

Recognise that pain serves a purpose.
Realize that pain is temporary.
Take pride in your ability to withstand pain.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on them one by one.

First, pain exists for a reason. It exists to alert you to a condition that is harmful to your life, safety, and well-being. A police or fire siren is piercing and shrill. It hurts your ears, even from far away. But it gets your attention, and alerts you to take action, whether that’s to pull off to the side of the road, get your loved ones away from a dangerous area, or to lend a hand during an emergency.

Author and Apologist Ravi Zacharias once told a story about a man with leprosy. He lost all feeling in his limbs. One morning, he awoke to find that to his shock and horror, his hand had been eaten away by vermin. “If only I had been able to feel pain,” he said, “I would still be whole.”

Use pain. Let it get your attention. Let it focus you on what’s important- your relationship with the Lord, good stewardship of His temple (your body), your family, and your community.

Second, pain is temporary. The siren eventually fall silent once peace and order are restored. Even for those who suffer chronic pain from injury, illness, or PTSD, there are days when things are less painful than normal. Suffering gives you tunnel vision, since all the energy that you would normally put into planning for the future, caring for loved ones, and enjoying life are now being diverted to enduring the present torment. You must always remember that all pain is temporary. There may well be painful new realities to which you must adjust, but the human body- and the human spirit- were created by God, and possess a resilience that is nothing short of astounding. You will adjust, you will improve, and you will come through.
I was hospitalized for cancer treatment in September of 2012. I laid in bed for twelve days while I got biopsies, lung tests, and, finally, chemotherapy. There was a lead-up of several months during which we didn’t know what was going wrong, and one of the symptoms was a severe insomnia, so I was at my breaking point. I had an attitude of resignation.  “Well, I’ve had a good run, but I’ve got nothing left. I’ll get to rest, and see the Lord soon.” One day I was reading in the Psalms, and I ran across this passage:


“I remain confident of this:
    I will see the goodness of the Lord
    in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
    be strong and take heart
    and wait for the Lord.”

Psalm 27:13-14 (NIV)

The Holy Spirit used that scripture to renew my failing strength. I began to feel a deep sense of peace about the outcome, and a quiet confidence that I would live. From then on, though the dull, drawn-out misery of chemotherapy lay ahead, my heart found rest in that wonderful promise. “Be strong, take heart, and wait for the Lord.”

Third, and last, take pride in your ability to take it.

Christian missionary Amy Carmichael, writing at the turn of the twentieth century, put it this way:

“Manliness is not mere courage; it is the quality of soul which frankly accepts all conditions in human life, and makes it a point of honor not to be dismayed or wearied by them.”

Don’t get hung up on the gender, because I think it applies to both sexes- there is something about someone who endures hardship with patience that serves as an inspiration to the people around them in ways that they themselves don’t always notice. Whether you are at the start of a difficult journey or nearing it’s end, there will always come a day when you can look back and marvel at the things that you’ve been able to endure. And that looking back will begin to form in you that wonderful quality, so readily apparent to everyone around- the quiet dignity of the veteran.

St. Paul tells us that “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

Do you see? For we Christians, no suffering is pointless. Our example to others, our faithful obedience in the midst of heartache and pain, and the sculpting of our souls under the chisel and hammer of our older Brother will produce in us the capacity to reflect His radiant glory, not only to a broken and dying world now, but in the new heavens and the new earth, the home of righteousness.

Will you stand with St. Stephen the martyr and hear of his stoning, or St. Paul with his beheading, or St. Andrew with his crooked cross, and have nothing to add but a few parking tickets and a rained-out ballgame?

There’s an old hymn:

“By and by when I look on His face,
Beautiful face, thorn-shadowed face,
By and by when I look on His face,
I’ll wish I had given Him more.”

Beloved, whatever you’re going through, whatever you’re experiencing, you can take it. You’ve already withstood so much. If you’re reading this, you’ve already learned how to make twenty-six squiggly lines into literally every word in the English language. Don’t you remember? That took months- years- and now you can’t even remember what it’s like to not be able to read and write. There is a light at the end of this tunnel, guys, and you will not only be proud at what you’ve endured, but humbled by the lengths to which our Lord has gone to protect and sustain you.

“Wait for the Lord. Be strong, take heart, and wait for the Lord.”

Encouragement for Christians in Distress

The Holy Spirit of the Living God dwells within your heart.

You have a glorious destiny.

You are full of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit. That is your birthright as an heir to the Kingdom of God. Will you not boldly claim it, in prayer before the throne?

The Holy Spirit of the Living God is transforming you every day. He is using the hopes and fears of all to years to conform you to the image of Christ.

"Success is the progressive realization of worthwhile goals."

-Dan Miller

If you are more like Christ today than you were yesterday, then you were a success today.

Life is not but a walking shadow. Life is a vast and tattered musical brocade. You can peer through the tears to see the glory beyond, and take heart.

Linguistics

I heard an interesting paper today read by Dr. Doug Moo, a leader in the field of biblical translation and New Testament studies. I heard a term I'd never heard before- "computational linguistics."

It means the process of using search engines to see what sorts of words and phrases are in common usage, what they mean, and how those meanings have evolved over time. Search Google for a word's meaning to see an example- it'll have a chart showing the word's usage over the last two hundred years.

I was also gratified personally to hear such a distinguished scholar express a view that I've held privately for a while now- namely, that linguistics is a descriptive enterprise, rather than a prescriptive one.

My education came, primarily, at the hands of prescriptivists, who, I think, suspect any decoupling of words and meaning as leading to the postmodern morass of subjectivity that any sane person rightly fears. However, language is an ever-changing thing because it's practiced by living, breathing people, and "proper English" is always elusive. Whose English is proper?

My dad ran an inner city ministry, and as a result I grew up hearing and occasionally speaking what I've come to know as African American Vernacular English. While recognizing that it's grammar and syntax differed from the English I learned in school, sometimes significantly, I could also recognize, even as a kid, that it's grammar and syntax were internally consistent. And that seemed to me to dispel the notion that it was "bad English." Rather, it was English that played by different rules- but rules there were.

Then as I got older and studied German in college, I began to realize that the German spoken in my house by my parents was decidedly Hessian in accent and pronunciation. German speakers can place me around Frankfurt am Main pretty quickly, the way someone could identify a Texan or Jersey Shore resident here.

These two experiences have led me to take a descriptivist view of language.

Now, This sort of thing can sound downright Continental, and therefore heretical, in some precincts. After all, the last generation of intellectuals witnessed firsthand the depredations by the krauts of Scripture (Boltmann, et al) and of art and morality by the frogs (Derrida, Foucault, etc). But I hope to dispel that notion by saying that objective meaning obviously exists. It is, in my view, a priori, or as Dr. Plantinga would say, "properly basic." And that objective reality can be known and communicated.

It's my belief that our amazing ability to take the language that we receive, both formally through school and informally by swimming through this melting pot of ours, and add to it shades and layers of meaning heretofore unknown, is a reflection of the Imago Dei within us.

After all, what determines the brilliance of a diamond is its ability to reflect light. What reflects the light of our Creator better than weaving a tapestry of words that we'll continue to enjoy and offer up for all eternity?

God's Word is so comprehensive and beautiful that He exists as a person within the Holy Trinity. As bearers of the divine image, our language also possesses the quality of dynamic personhood.

As we create and discard words and phrases through the process of interacting with people and the world, we would do well to remember the words of the apostle-

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."

And of the psalmist-

"May the words of my mouth,
And the meditations of my heart,
Be acceptable in your sight, O Lord,
My strength and my redeemer."

Review of Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen

This book is simply outstanding. Please read it. 

The theological controversies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries sundered the church, in many ways irreparably. Just as it has been noted that Western Philosophy is merely a series of footnotes on Plato, it could well be said that the history of the American church in the 20th and early 21st centuries is but a series of footnotes on the Modernism/Christianity debate. 

The main question of Modernism/Liberalism is this: How can Christianity continue in the face of the destruction of its core assumptions by the discoveries of modern science? The answer it gives is by re-tooling the Christian message to exclude or render into metaphor any reference to the supernatural, and reduce Jesus of Nazareth to a faith healer and moral teacher on the level of Confucius, the Buddha, or Lao Tzu. Jesus showed us the way to live our lives in such a way as to foster more empathy, concern, and zeal for social improvement of those less fortunate, a schema he called the "Kingdom of Heaven." We don't need to believe in something as implausible as virgin birth, or vicarious atonement, or supernatural resurrection, in order to lean in to living the life that Jesus advocated. 

But, just as Pierre Bosquet, an observer of the charge of the Light Brigade, is said to have quipped: 
C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre: c'est de la folie ("It is magnificent, but it is not war: it is madness"), and Richard Bentley, referring to Alexander Pope's lyrical translation of the Iliad, told him that "it is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope; but you must not call it Homer," Modernism/Liberalism might be, to some, a brilliant compromise between the consolations of faith and the findings of science, but we mustn't be snookered into calling it Christianity. It most emphatically isn't. 

Machen makes this point definitively, and to my knowledge it hasn't been refuted in the 94 years since. Going point by point, he compares and contrasts Christianity and Liberalism and refutes the notion that they are the same. He doesn't argue against the truth of Liberalism, he just argues, successfully in my opinion, that when Liberalism claims to be Christianity it misspeaks. 

The sad part is that people who don't know the difference probably can't be bothered to read this book.

The prose of the early 20th century retained the formality that gave elegance to the writings of the 18th and 19th centuries, but remains imminently readable. 

I started seeing Liberalism behind every bush for a little while after I finished this, but there have been new developments since then, which led me to a study of Neo-Orthodoxy and the mid-20th century. I'm now exploring Barth, Tillich, Van Til, and RC Sproul, and as things approach the present day, the context and perspective I'm getting is really helping me understand the present controversies. Even the verbage that Evangelicals use is carefully crafted to avoid the heresies of the last hundred years. 

It's fun to see where we came from. As my dad always told us growing up: "The people who know, know."

Reflections on Christian Duties

The things that Christians are called to be and do in the world have a number of useful parallels in everyday life. 

The Christian evangelist is not unlike a sheriffs deputy tasked with serving a judicial summons. 

He is also, however, not unlike a postman, carrying a love letter from God to a wayward humanity. 

Just as a policeman is a relief for someone in trouble but a terror to someone in the middle of a crime, so the Christian, and the risen Lord whom he represents, is a comfort to those who soul thirsts after God, but a hateful reminder of the severe justice that faces evil to those whose hearts remain enslaved to sin.

Members of all three emergency services – ambulance, fire crews, and law-enforcement- respond to the scene of an accident. So also the Christian must carry with them at all times God's tender mercy to the sick and wounded, God's power over the raging elements both within and without, and God's justice.

In our system, EMT crews treat everyone, regardless of their guilt or innocence. 

Fire crews rescue everyone regardless of their fault in starting the fire.

It is the policeman who is tasked with proclaiming and enforcing the law, but he does not himself execute judgment – that is for a higher court.

It's the same for us. We bear witness to a higher law, even as we are engaged with the task of rescuing those in trouble and binding up their wounds.