Perseverance

Rights, Oppression, and the Death of the Shared Societal Script

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12 Years a Slave won Best Picture at the 2014 Academy Awards.

I did not see the film. In fact, in a stunning case of cultural cluelessness, I’d not even heard of it before it won.

That said, I’m not surprised at its win. In fact, it may not have been possible for any other film to take home Oscar.

I wish I could find the link to the article, but several months ago I read an enlightening post concerning Hollywood’s rather banal decent into repetitive storylines. Slate had an insightful look at the Save the Cat phenomenon and how it has rendered all plots the same (“Save the Movie!“), but this gone-missing article struck a bigger nerve.

The contention is that movies today lack a touchstone for the American script—not a movie script, but the ongoing dialog we Americans maintain that defines our core beliefs as Americans.

Core beliefs? Can you even HAVE core beliefs today?

The article contended we were at a point in our history as a nation that we can no longer agree on shared values and core beliefs beyond some very general ones, milquetoast values that make for boring movies. We saw Man of Steel at the box office this summer, but what we didn’t see was much truth, justice, and the American Way on display. Wouldn’t want someone watching to get riled that a pro-America Superman places the Man of Steel into the imperialistic oppressor category.

Let’s be frank here: About the only shared value we Americans have left is a distaste for oppression. While in an earlier age that might have meant us fighting some tyrannical, overseas dictator or championing the cause of the poor, today it means something less noble: Don’t oppress me by questioning whatever it is I want to do to gratify myself.

OppressionBy choosing a film about slavery as Best Picture, the Academy recasts the worst of oppressions and shoehorns it into the modern expression. I mean, what kind of barbarian could possibly endorse the oppression of a fellow human being as expressed in Civil War-era American slavery? Now fast-forward that to America 2014 and witness how easily we slide from championing freedom from slavery to demanding freedom from all moral constraints.

Who is the new oppressor? The one who questions same-sex marriage. The one who questions abortion. The one who questions…

See, to be an oppressor today, to be the villain in a modern movie plotline, all one must do is question another person’s desire (now called “a right”) to do ____________.

The questions the supposed oppressor is asking may be worthwhile on the surface, but their worth is now trumped by any implications of inherent oppression. Carte blanche has never been more acceptable, at least when the self-satisfiers are in charge.

Movies are boring today because we have seen our American script became a one-note message. Worse, even that one-note message of opposing oppression lacks the depth and wisdom it once possessed. Today, it is all about self-gratification. Any constraint that prevents self-gratification has been deemed oppression. And we all know who the new oppressors are—at least as they’ve been tagged by the ones making up the new definitions.

So, if you’re reading this and nodding your head, how does it feel to be the new oppressor?

“Alright, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

We Need a Whole Lot More Grace

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Grace of GodSometimes, I think we don’t have any idea what grace is.

This seems unbelievable to me, given that grace is one of the bedrock distinctives of the Christian faith. When we talk about freeing people from their locked chains, grace is the key in that lock.

But beyond the grace that God gives that allows us entrance to eternal life when we die, what does grace look like in the everyday life of the Christian and the Church?

Grace can’t be for the future alone. What does grace look like now?

I confess that I remain unclear on grace for the present. Part of that is because I see the American Church continuing to add to people’s burdens. The great hope of the Christian faith that we we used to sing about in our old hymns was how grace allowed us to lay our burdens down. But today, I wonder if what we do is substitute a different set of burdens. What grace is there for the mom who is juggling four young kids and a job and yet her pastor says she’s not doing enough for the Kingdom because she can’t find a way to squeeze in teaching Sunday School or going out to feed the poor?

Jesus said this:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
—Matthew 11:28-30 ESV

What does that look like in the life of the average American Christian today? Are we living by grace? Or are we simply finding ways to sanctify burdens?

In addressing another aspect of grace, I wonder what grace today looks like in the lives of Christians who fail. And not just for moral failures but for people who fail in other ways. What grace exist for the student who went to college, found it harder than expected, and dropped out? What grace exists for the person who is bad with household finances? Where is the grace for the businessman who starts his dream business (or dream ministry), only to watch it fail?

One of the strange trends I see in Christian nonfiction books is an over-reliance on stories of success, as if these stories are always reproducible, even if the underlying conditions that made them possible don’t exist elsewhere. More than anything, I’d like to read real stories of real Christians who failed, how they received grace in the aftermath, and how their churches channeled that grace to them. Don’t we all need to know how grace works when we fail in those ways too?

What are your thoughts on grace, its availability, and what it should look like in the everyday life of the Church?

The End of the Cult of Suffering?

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One of the strangest phenomena I’ve witnessed in contemporary Christianity has been the rise of what I call the Cult of Suffering. Young Christians (under 40), usually with allegiances to the Young, Restless, and Reformed movement, glamorize suffering without relief as some sort of spiritual badge of honor, something they want to hold in high regard as a means to be more godly.

I first noticed this “cult” more than a decade years ago. What struck me as most bizarre is that most self-proclaimed members had never truly suffered even once in their lives, yet they wrote online missives proclaiming the joys of suffering.

Here’s the thing: Suffering isn’t wonderful. In fact, suffering because of the human condition sucks. The depths to which such suffering can go are nearly limitless in some cases. No one should wish that on themselves.

Fast forward a few years. Now many of those most entrenched in the Cult of Suffering are experiencing something new.

What? Genuine suffering. Some from becoming pastors and getting involved in the messier side of ministry. Some from having true suffering finally hit closer to home.

There’s something about getting older that changes the tint of rose-colored glasses. Those pro-suffering folks have now added a few years. They’ve buried parents who died after excruciating battles with cancer or some other pain-filled, debilitating disease. They’ve seen young children cut down. They’ve had to counsel people with serious mental illness. They’ve had to plunge into the septic tank of life. Suffering no longer affects someone else. It has come home to roost.

The result? Many of those in the Cult of Suffering have backed off their previous adoration of human suffering.

I think part of the problem is that too many of those folks conflated suffering for Christ with general human suffering due to sin.

I don’t see those sufferings as the same.

Jesus routinely praised people who came to Him because they were not content to suffer. Jesus regularly called those people faithful because they sought Him out as a way out of their suffering.

The hemorrhaging women who spent 12 years looking for a cure.

Bind Bartimaeus, who would not stop shouting for Jesus to heal him even when others told him to shut up.

The Samaritan woman with the possessed daughter who would not take Jesus’ rebuff for an answer.

And on and on.

FAITHFUL because they were NOT content to suffer or see those they loved suffer.

The Bible says this about Jesus:

That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.”
—Matthew 8:16-17 ESV

What did Jesus say about His reason for coming?

And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
—Luke 4:17-21 ESV

And John writes this about Jesus’ purpose:

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
—1 John 3:8b ESV

The Kingdom of God does not have a place for such suffering. Jesus came to deal with it.

So why does Jesus say his followers will suffer? Because they seek to be like Him.

Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted…
—2 Timothy 3:12 ESV

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
—Matthew 5:10-12 ESV

There’s the difference between types of suffering.

Jesus wasn’t of two minds on this issue because He understood the distinction between leprosy, barrenness, and demon possession and being persecuted for faith in Him.

The Cult of Suffering never made that distinction. Now they have come face to face with disease, misery, and death, and it doesn’t seem so wonderful. Sadly, some are even questioning their faith or the goodness of God because of their mistaken notions about suffering. I know, because I keep stumbling across their recent confessions online.

It didn’t have to come to that.

Suffering because of the human condition outright sucks. Jesus came to address it.

Never make peace with the kind of suffering the Enemy brings. Never. The Bible tells us how we should respond:

And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.'” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
—Luke 18:1-8 ESV

“Give me justice against my adversary” indeed.

I find it interesting that Jesus concludes that story by asking if He will find faith when He returns. What kind of faith is He referring to? The kind that never gives up and is never content to suffer from the human condition. The kind of faith displayed by the hemorrhaging woman who would not be content with sickness, even after 12 years with no relief. The kind of faith displayed by a Samaritan woman who would not take no for an answer, even when it was from the lips of her Maker. And the kind of faith displayed by a man who did not want to continue to suffer from blindness, so he would not let anyone quiet him when he saw his opportunity to be free from suffering. The kind that relentlessly demands vindication against an enemy who sows suffering—the Enemy.

THAT kind of faithful.

“But Dan, what about Paul’s thorn in the flesh?”

This is the the typical response from people who simply don’t want to deal with a Biblical response to suffering, who somehow want to make peace with misery.

Never give upIf God comes to you and explicitly says that your suffering has a purpose to keep your pride from possibly disqualifying you from His glory, then yes, be content. Otherwise, don’t be. And I can tell you right now that God is not using suffering in most people to keep them from being disqualified from His glory, or else He would have said the same thing to that hemorrhaging woman, that blind man, and that Samaritan woman, and all those other great men and women of the faith who were called faithful because they weren’t content to suffer.

In other words, never stop seeking God for relief from suffering unless you get a clear revelation from Him that explicitly states otherwise.

Never give up seeking God for relief from suffering. Never!

And to those former members of the Cult of Suffering who are questioning everything now that genuine suffering is theirs, I say the same.