Wisdom vs. Optimism

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For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.
—Revelation 3:17 ESV

Jollyblogger is one of my favorite blogs, since David routinely writes on topics too often ignored in the Church. He’s recently read a book called Learned Optimism and discusses how faith and optimism go hand-in-hand.

Tragedy & ComedyWhile I appreciate David’s view, I believe that, in and of itself, optimism does not equal faith. Instead, optimism and it’s darker sibling, pessimism, are both essential to living a life of wisdom.

We Americans are the quintessential optimists. Our country is founded on ideals that say that every man has a chance to succeed and success is out there for anyone willing to work hard enough to achieve it. This idealism has permeated our church, too. We’ve hitched the wagon of our Christian beliefs to the draft horse of optimism and let it carry us wherever it will.

The rage over the television program American Idol is the essence of American optimism. Any poor waitress or cab driver could be the next pop star, singing before packed stadiums of people who have paid inflated amounts to hear the newly-crowned king or queen of the recording studio belt a few live tunes. And sometimes we even laud the runner-up, as Clay Aiken can attest.

But as much as we love the rags-to-riches story, we also have a revulsion for those who cannot see that their time has come and gone. There is no more American movie than Sunset Boulevard in which an aging silent film star is driven to madness by her optimism that her adoring public will clamor for her to make another blockbuster. Those who understand know that if Gloria Swanson’s faded star had been blessed with a little more pessimism to balance out her burden of optimistic glee, William Holden wouldn’t be floating face down in her pool.

American Idol also serves as a wake-up call when we get glimpses of the similarly deluded optimists who believe they are blessed with a set of pipes that would make Streisand or Pavarotti weep for joy. They “bless” us with their performance and we don’t know whether to laugh or cringe. Their optimism and faith has become a snare. These are the people who may never have a happy life simply for want of a little pessimism to balance out their optimistic dreams.

The Bible cautions us:

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.
—Romans 12:3 ESV

A few days ago, I wrote on the book of Ecclesiastes and its message to us (“On Becoming Ecclesiastical.”) For many Christians, if there is a book in the Bible that can be called “pessimistic” the “vanity, vanity, all is vanity” lament of Ecclesiastes makes a good case. I’ve heard well-meaning believers call the book “dour.” Yet, I would contend that this book isn’t pessimistic, but the accumulated faithful wisdom of a godly man who has seen

…that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.
—Ecclesiastes 9:11b ESV

Many true football afficianados will tell you that the greatest quarterback to ever play the game was Greg Cook. He had the size, the smarts, and a well-aimed howitzer for an arm. Cook was a first-round draft pick and the Hall of Fame was sure thing.

But time and chance happened to Greg Cook. Suffering a career-ending injury only a couple months into his pro career, he was the great one who never truly materialized. Just a month ago I heard a radio program talking about how phenomenal he was and how sad that he never got a chance to live up to his billing. Cook could’ve tried comeback after comeback, but he was no eternal optimist. Instead he dealt with the hand that was dealt him and went on to other things.

Optimism is what starts us on the journey. Pessimism is what informs us that perhaps a better way can be found along that journey. Optimism gets us started and keeps us going. Pessimism allows us to deal with the vagaries that life throws our way.

Anyone who reads enough of this blog knows that it exists to help the Church find its way back to the heart of the first century Church. And while American Christians want to be found faithful, too often we are merely found to be overly optimistic in a time that calls for more sober thinking. What else but misplaced optimism can account for our inability to interpret the times? We keep on going with bright, cheery faces, when we should be brought low by our refusal to repent of our optimism-inspired self-righteousness. Or as Ecclesiastes again says:

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools.
—Ecclesiastes 7:2-5 ESV

We in the American Church of 2005 need to hear what the Lord says to the Church of Laodicea at the beginning of this post. Is the Lord being pessimistic here? Or is He calling for wisdom in the face of self-deceiving optimism? We ought not to think more highly of our position than we should. We should not call the days good when the Lord says they are evil.

Faith walks in wisdom and wisdom, like so many other components of Christian discipleship, is a narrow way that proceeds between two extremes. For us Christians, true faith is found in that narrow road that winds its way between optimism and pessimism, a hope in our perfect Savior and a knowledge of our own sinfulness. Only in this is true wisdom.

Let’s Play “Spot the Heretic!”

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Balaam's Ass by RembrandtThis is the post wherein I make my secret confession before you all.

I've been a Christian for nearly thirty years. I've read a lot of books by a whole host of authors. And despite the fact that I'm fairly intelligent, graduated with high honors from probably the toughest Christian college in the country, and can use seven-syllable words with abandon, I don't read today's Christian writers much anymore.

Now I'm not speaking of Christian novels about young, chaste teachers coming of age on the Kansas prairie of 1880—aren't all Christian novels about that?—I'm talking about the non-fiction works of everyone from N.T. Wright to Brian McLaren.

If I were a proud man, I would attribute this to the lofty theological edifice I have constructed from bare rubble through my hard-won Christian discipleship. But I'm not a proud man; I'm simply a person like you who finds himself progressively confused by what passes for Biblical scholarship and discipleship lately.

Now with the Christian blogosphere filled from one end to the other with wild-eyed apologists, "remnant watchers," bell-ringers, deconstructionists, and self-christened "apostles for a time such as this," I've come to the conclusion that I simply can't parse it all. Yeah, this guy may be right and then he might not. She's got a good point, but arrived at it through a highly tortuous route that deviated through "Suspect City" to get there. And that guy in the corner always cries "Heretic!" over any idea that isn't his.

Sadly, there just isn't enough time in the day, so my only recourse is to ignore the vast majority of it. If it comes down to a case of discernment, perhaps the best discernment that a Christian in the 21st century can achieve is to always assume something's wrong unless it's been tested by time.

So that's my stance.

I used to help manage a Christian bookstore. I was the Bible and book buyer. Once you're in a position like that, you quickly attune your sense of smell to the stench of one lousy book after another grappling for bestseller status. I got adept at finding the stinkers before they found us. I attribute this to the Holy Spirit and to the spirit of our age.

The "spirit of our age" as I use it here is the quality of a book or set of thoughts that smacks of everything that is trending one way or another at this moment in time. Doesn't matter if it's right or wrong; in the end it simply won't last. Twenty years from now, no one will be referencing it for anything. It was dead on arrival, but the readers simply couldn't tell because the hype machine and word of mouth drowned out the naysayers.

Honestly, I think the Lord understands the dilemma of most earnest Christians today as they attempt to trudge through the mountains of half-baked theology and pseudo-spiritual tripe that get served to us on a sizzling hot platter—every single day. I believe that He knows it is far worse than in His own day when He battled the superstitions and mindless obeisance to the prevailing ethic of the land that relentlessly fought for the minds of His own disciples.

What is my out? Well, I'm hopelessly behind the times. I've said here before that most of the authors I read are dead. And that's my out. They're dead, no one is making big bucks off 'em, and yet their words last from one generation to the next. One set of Christians a hundred years ago read this stuff and found it spoke to the soul. And now another set today is reading it still because someone continues to be blessed. It won't crack the top ten on the bestseller list, or even the top ten thousand, but the words on those pages live. They give life and will do so until the day the Lord comes back—if, on that glorious and awful Day, He still manages to find enough people who take those old words to heart.

So I don't keep up with "New Think" for the most part. If I do mention a new book from time to time here, or mention a new blog that seems to have "it," then it's only because every reference in it goes back to someone from fifty years ago who could be trusted. I can tell you right now that Tozer, Ravenhill, Schaeffer, and a few like them can be trusted. Time's imprimatur has shown they can stand up and still speak the truth to a day and age where truth is so easily warped to be untruth that even the best of us can't always spot the mistakes.

I just can't filter it all; too much comes in. And while ninety-nine and forty-four one hundredths pure is good enough for soap, it's not good enough for the Gospel. As for me, I'm simply not smart enough or spiritually adept enough to mercilessly spot the 0.56% impurity that exists in today's writings.

Are you?

{Image: Detail of Rembrandt van Rijn's "Balaam's Ass" (1626)}

The Reason the Church Exists

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Helping hands

For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe. He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.
—Deuteronomy 10:17-18 ESV

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 ESV

Recently, as I’ve sat at home and healed up from the numerous illnesses that have hit our family since Easter, I’ve had plenty of time to think about some of the comments I’ve seen left on various Christian blogs. One comment that repeatedly raises its ugly head goes something like this:

The reason this happened to you is that you didn’t trust God to provide for your needs.

On another blog, I left a comment that received this exact response. It wasn’t directed at me in particular, but was aimed at all those people who found themselves in dire straits and after much prayer, sought their own solutions, often through means that “aren’t Christian”—at least by the measure of the person leaving the comment.

I used to be one of those “faith bombers” who love to quote Scripture for the express purpose of making people feel bad about their solutions to tough problems. In many cases, a faith bomber proves his or her point by relaying a miraculous story of a specific answer to prayer that came about through direct intervention of God. The victims of the bombing are left to drown in the fact that the reason they did not receive a miracle was because they did not exhibit the same heaven-opening faith that the faith bomber did.

So there.

This post is an answer to faith bombers everywhere. It’s a wake-up call and a re-examination of how God works. It’s a message for every person who was ever tempted to bring a holier-than-thou attitude into the painful circumstances of someone in desperate need.

There have always been widows and orphans. The Bible repeatedly uses widows and orphans as a litmus test of need. To God, there is no one more needy than the woman who has lost her husband or the child who has lost one or both parents. God’s heart is always for them. Always.

Yet, we also know of orphans who die forgotten and neglected. We read stories of widows who live alone, who forget to pay the electric bill, then freeze to death in the emptiness of their little ranch house when the electric company turns off their power for non-payment. Just last year I read such a story of a woman who had been a Sunday School teacher for more than fifty years, described as a wonderful Christian woman who loved many, yet her fate was hypothermia and a lonely death in the darkness of her own home.

How can this be reconciled with a loving God whose heart is for the widow and the orphan?

Philosophers will argue for or against the existence of God. Some will scream about divine watchmakers who cast their creations onto beaches to be found and marveled at by the curious. For others, it is a question of evil and why it exists.

But what of this?

But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
—1 Corinthians 12:24b-26 ESV

The suffering of fellow members of the Body of Christ is my suffering. It is your suffering. It is not just the suffering of those who were unfortunate enough to be receive it.

And here is where the great truth exists: God made the Church to be His means of delivering grace. As the Body of Christ we are to be the Lord to all people around us, no matter how deplorable their condition.

Can God feed the widow and orphan supernaturally by reinstituting manna that falls from heaven right into their hands? No doubt He could, but with His founding of the Church, we are the ones to feed them. It is our duty as the hands of God to deliver them food. This is the wisdom of God. This is religion that is pure and undefiled: that we look after widows and orphans and be the hands of God working to meet their need in the midst of their desolation.

My wife and I support a ministry called Voice of the Children. It started when one man walked into the sewers of Russia and brought the light of Christ to the scores of abandoned children that lived in the dank, black, disease-ridden bowels of his country. He understood that unless he, as a child of God, walked into that filth, children no one wanted would live and die there without hope. God enlightened his eyes to see that his hands were His hands.

To the so-called “Christian” who wounds the already wounded with the shrill words, “It’s because of your lack of faith…,” I say, “Heed your own words because it is you, and you alone, who have failed your brother.” All day long the Lord cries out for His people to be the instruments of grace to others that He has called them to be. He beseeches us to be that miracle in the life of someone who has lost hope and has no solutions. How long before those of us who ignore this calling fall prey to the vicissitudes of life and suffer this fate:

Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.
—Proverbs 21:13 ESV

Shame on us! Shame on every person who thinks they are exempt from being the solution, instead tossing that miracle back to God, saying with the words of Cain, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” And the reply of God, the one so few are willing to hear is, “Yes. Yes, you are.”