Why?

In one of Madeline L'Engle's books, a young person asks why God did (or didn't do) thus and such. An older friend doesn't answer the question, but makes the observation that "When I ask God 'why', what I usually mean is 'I want you to do it my way.'" I guess that's usually what I mean, too. Sometimes, though, I just wonder how it was that I got so lucky. I guess the correct word is "blessed" but in any case, I have eyes that see, a body that moves, a loving family, satisfying and meaningful work to do, food to eat, a sense of who I am and what I'm doing here, and when I die, the promise of sharing eternity with a loving living God. How did it happen? Why did this come to me? It's certainly not because I deserve it.

But most of the time, for me and for most of us, "Why" means we're not satisfied with how God is running the world.

For the past several days, the Old Testament readings in the One Year Bible have included some chapters from Job. The book of Job has magnificent poetry and beautiful imagery. It also has some ugly, pious-sounding nonsense from Job's three friends, who basically blame Job for his suffering. Job wants to meet God face to face to make his complaints. Then Elihu speaks up and tells Job this is impossible: "Now no one can look at the sun" (Job 37.21)

Elihu says a little more, and then in chapter 38, God appears:

"Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.

"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? ..."

Job 38.2-5

So I guess the point is that we are not qualified to judge how God is running things because we don't even understand the physical universe; it's not under our control.

We understand a lot more about the universe today than we did, say, in the 1970s, and technology has advanced astonishingly. But we are still impotent in the face of earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricanes. We like to think that we're in control, master of our own fates, captains of our own souls. But this is, as Henry Ford said, "bunk."

Which is a humbling thing. I want to feel like I know where I'm going, and why I think and feel the way I do.

In fact I don't know any of that, but I do know someone who does. Not only does he know, he also cares deeply. And, like the song says, "He's got the whole world in his hands."

And that's good news for me today.

Mixed motives; ideals

This morning, I missed my train by about 15 seconds. That is, if the car in front of me had gotten to the intersection 15 seconds earlier, it would not have stopped for the crossing-gate arm (is that what we call "kai-satsu guchi" in Japan, or was that the word for "wicket"?) and I would have boarded the earlier train. Instead, I had a few extra minutes to pick up the paper (hey, my letter to the editor was printed this morning!) and write a few extra paragraphs here.

Today's reading in 2 Corinthians 4 has this great verse, which I have a hard time implementing consistently in my life:

We do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. (2 Corinthians 4.5)

If you know me and think I'm a helpful and generous guy, you might be surprised by this confession. So yeah, I want to be helpful and generous, I want to serve, I want to give glory to God. But I also want to be liked and respected, I want to be seen as being helpful and generous and spiritual, and so on.

Because I have mixed motives, it's sometimes hard for me to tell why I'm doing any particular thing. It may actually be impossible in the general case, because my motives are probably mixed most if not all of the time.

What can I do about it? Try to follow God, I guess, and ask him to help me to do the right things for the right reasons.

A couple of verses later, Paul gives us the "clay pot" analogy. I think Ray Stedman preached a sermon on this passage titled "Your Pot - His Power" or something like this. The treasure he's talking about here is the light of God shining in our hearts:

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. (2 Corinthians 4.7-10)

A few days ago I wrote about the idea of rejoicing always, and always abounding in the Lord's work (both are quotes from Paul by the way), etc. How can we combine those ideas with the reality described here? Haven't you felt like this at times -- hard pressed, perplexed, etc.?

So here's a thought. I don't know if it's right, and I hope this doesn't get me excommunicated or burned at the stake or whatever. I think that when Paul says "Rejoice in the Lord always" I think he's giving us something to aim for. By aiming at it, we'll get closer than if we didn't aim at it.

This brings to mind something Jim Fallows said in More Like Us: that in the US we have myths: racial equality, fairness and integrity of the court system, anybody can grow up to become President, this sort of thing. And that because we think these should be true, these are closer to actually being true than they would be otherwise. And maybe these are closer to being true here in the US than they are anywhere in the world.

But unlike American myths, the ideal Paul describes here has a guarantee behind it. From chapter 1:

Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. (2 Corinthians 1.21-22)

A guarantee from God himself. I like it.

Transformation - sounds good!

Today's reading, from 2 Corinthians 3, is a great promise for those of us who belong to Jesus. Paul has just described how, in spite of disappointments, he is "the fragrance of life" among those being saved, and that the lives and hearts of the Corinthians are in effect "a letter from Christ," showing the results of Paul's ministry to them. Sounds pretty bold, doesn't it?

Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant--not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

2 Corinthians 3.4-6

The bold claim, in other words, is because the power of God has made him competent (or "adequate" as another translation puts it) for his role, his position in the kingdom.

Paul also talks about "the letter" i.e., the letter of the law. Paul was an expert in the minutiae of the Jewish Law. He had spent his life studying it and becoming an authority on all those details. And yet in Acts 9 we saw how he made a complete turnaround, which I think is a wonderful thing. Although there can be great resistance to changing one's path in life -- after such a huge investment! -- there is yet the possibility that God will overcome that resistance and work a miracle. Some people find Christ, or rather are found by him, in their 70s or later. And that's very good news.

And what's this about the letter killing? Here is what I think it means. If I focus my attention on minutiae, on following this or that practice exactly, there'll be a great temptation to feel good about myself -- and to think that God loves and approves of me -- just because of the accuracy, the completeness of my adherence "to the letter." And if I think God approves of me based on that sort of action, well, there's a kind of death in that. My ability to respond with mercy could be impaired; I'll be somewhat deadened (if not dead altogether) to compassion and kindness, because of obsessing on the letter.

This is something that we have to watch out for even today. If I feel good about myself, if I believe God thinks I'm OK because I read the Bible regularly, or pray or whatever, then I'm indulging in deathly thoughts, killing thoughts.

When he says that the Spirit gives life, what does that mean but that the Spirit gives us the antidote to this deadly way of thinking? The Spirit is himself the antidote because he lives inside us, and the Spirit also tells us when we need to think differently.

So, do we forget about studying the Bible and just listen to the Spirit? How do we know we're not just listening to our own thoughts, or to some other spirit?

The answers are No; and It's hard to tell.

The problem isn't in studying the Bible -- even the Law. The problem rather is in focusing on procedures and minutiae. So if as we study the Bible, we keep in view the thought that God wants to transform us, and that any actions are only tools in service of that goal, then I think we'll do well. And we can ask the Spirit to help us stay on track, to show us how God wants to transform us, and to remind us that it's all about how God transforms and uses me, not about how I earn something.

As far as how we know we're not just listening to our own thoughts -- well, a good first step would be to check out what we think we hear vs what the Bible says - hence we need at least some knowledge of the Bible. I hesitate to mention this, because it seems so obvious -- yet I have heard of people who say the Spirit told them to get a divorce and move to another city to pursue a better career, and who went ahead and did it!

So we need some knowledge of the Bible, but we mustn't think we're better than someone else if we know more about it (or vice versa). We need to be transformed by God, and some of that is through the Bible and through the Spirit. And when we turn to the Lord (3.16) things become clearer and we can get closer to God.

Sounds pretty good to me! Amen?

Sotware

You know how once in a while you see a typo that may contain a bit of truth - Freudian in other words? Well, here's one from the cover of Communications of the ACM. ACM is the Association for Computing Machinery.



I sent a short letter to the ACM folks, including this paragraph:

It brought to mind the thought that some users may curse software developers, calling them a bunch of drunken addled sots (to which some might reply, "I am NOT addled!"), [but] I have to think this was unintentional....

Well, you already knew I was a smart-aleck, didn't you?

Paul's feelings aren't mathematical...

When you think of the Apostle Paul, what words come to mind? Zeal? Authority? Energy? That's what usually comes to my mind. But how about "love"?

In a seminar I attended some years ago, the speaker said that Paul was the apostle characterized by his great love. Or something like that. That came to mind when I read this from 2 Corinthians this morning:

Now when I went to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ and found that the Lord had opened a door for me, I still had no peace of mind, because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I said good-by to them and went on to Macedonia.

2 Corinthians 2.12-13

Does that strike you as surprising? Here's the great preacher of the gospel, coming into Troas to preach the gospel.

He finds that "the Lord had opened a door" for him.

Then he takes off for Macedonia! But why? Because he can't find his buddy Titus!

Why didn't he just entrust Titus to God, and take advantage of the door the Lord had opened? Doesn't he know that these people need to hear about Jesus? Is this the same guy who wrote "But how will they hear unless someone preaches to them"?

Here's what I think: Paul was a human being, not a gospel-preaching machine. He had feelings -- real feelings, not just feelings he put on in order to convince people to to be reconciled to Christ. And those feelings weren't mathematical; just because there were hundreds here versus thousands there, that didn't mean that he would necessarily feel more about the thousands.

In this case, we have hundreds or thousands in Troas, versus "my brother Titus", and his desire to find Titus won out.

Is this bad? I don't think so.

Feelings aren't mathematical. Somehow I get the feeling God isn't mathematical in this way either.

But that doesn't mean the verse is wrong....

Interpreting the Bible is, as my friend Carl says, "not for sissies." (He was talking about something else at the time, but I loved his phrase so I stole it.) Today's reading from the Proverbs gives us, well, an interesting example. Chapter 22, verse 6 reads:

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.

About this time last year, a conference speaker asked us "How many of you know of a child that was trained up in the way he should go, but who did depart from it?" It wasn't just a few hands that went up.

I heard of a couple who raised her children in the church, and they didn't turn out as hoped. This doesn't mean the verse is wrong. The first thing of course is that this is a proverb, not a theorem. It's not mathematical; it describes some general principles that work out to be true a lot of the time. In other words, the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that is the smart way to bet. So this is a general principle or trend, not an iron-clad guarantee.

The other thing is: how were the kids raised, really? Were they raised to glorify God and enjoy him forever, as the Westminster shorter catechism says? Was this modeled for them? In other words, did the parents' lives reflect that? Did they have generous spirits like Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 9? Did they rejoice in God's abundant goodness as so many characters in the Bible did? Did they smile at the future like the wife of noble character in Proverbs 31? Did they abound in the work of the Lord (1 Corinthians 15)?

I know, I know, nobody does that 100% of the time, but what were they like most of the time?

Well, this line of thinking was completely alien to them. They lived through the great depression, which profoundly affected their views about money. Their vocabulary was about duty and prudence, rather than about abundance and joy.

Do I blame them for being that way? Well, a little. And I empathize with their perplexity about how their offspring turned out.

But I can't say the outcome was surprising.

... and something from my past

Another verse from today's reading (and I've been writing almost an hour now so I'm going to make this short): Job 23.12. "I have not departed from the command of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my necessary food."

At one point, inspired by this verse and by the example of a guy who discipled me, I decided that I should read the Bible before eating breakfast. Now the verse doesn't command that; it probably doesn't even mean that. But deciding to read before eating could be one way of applying it.

Some time later, I changed my mind about this. These days, in fact, I usually eat before reading. If I ride my bicycle to the train station, then it's a pain to eat breakfast on the train. But it's no problem to read on the train and write a few notes in my journal.

So I hope you don't think I'm a complete apostate for eating breakfast before reading the Bible, but that's what I do these days. It works well for me.

"the sentence of death": to be avoided?

So the Apostle Paul writes about tough times in 2 Corinthians.

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.

2 Corinthians 1.8-9

When I read this passage, I have two thoughts. One is that it's really good to rely on God rather than ourselves. Don't the proverbs say, He who trusts in himself is a fool?

But the other one is this: for Paul and Timothy (see 1.1) to make this change - viz., from relying on themselves to relying upon God instead - they had to suffer hardships. And I'm not really into hardships. I mean, this "sentence of death" thing doesn't sound so good. I don't like the sound of "far beyond our ability to endure," and "despaired even of life." Where do I opt out of that?

OK, I'm not 100% serious. I mean, given the choice of a long, meaningless life where I fade into oblivion, versus a shorter life, albeit one filled with adventure and learning and greatness -- it's obvious which is the better option, isn't it?

Or is it? How do I arrange my life? I have car insurance, life insurance, homeowners insurance, earthquake insurance, a 401(k) account, an IRA, 529 college savings accounts for the kids. Our cars have airbags and we always wear our seatbelts.

As you can tell, I have some cognitive dissonance between what I say I think is important versus how I live. I'm a little concerned about this. I don't feel in dire straits, though, because we serve and give and pray and worship and fellowship.

It's a hard thing to figure out, because at my age I often feel that lifestyle is all about sustainability. Some guys work out 30-60-90 minutes... and quit after a month. So I swim once a week, ride my bike sometimes, and work out 10 minutes 2-3 times a week. It's not as much as some people say we should do, but I can keep on doing this for years.

Because I don't want to quit. In the words of the song,

O let me never never
Outlive my love for thee

from O Sacred Head, now Wounded

Many have quit over the years -- starting at least in John 6, as Dr. Dan writes on his site http://journeywithjesus.net/

So it's not easy. I don't think it's totally silly to think in terms of sustainable discipleship, but I don't want to end up pursuing the "long but meaningless" life I mentioned above.