For the Good of the Overall Redemptive Story Only?

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A friend told me this story:

A teenager in his small hometown had announced from an early age that she was called to missions work. So apparent was Cori’s calling, no one in that small town questioned it. Most everyone saw it operating in her life. So when Cori was old enough to go on a mission trip that would encompass nearly her entire summer, the whole town chipped in to assist her. And when the day came for Cori to leave for sub-Saharan Africa, many in that town came out to see her off. Bright and beautiful, she represented not only the ideal young woman, but the hope and dreams of that small Midwestern town.

But something went wrong.

Within a day or two of landing in Africa, Cori took ill at the mission station. A few days later, she died.

Another story:

Karl and Jen had spent years trying to conceive a child. Now into their early 40s, hope dwindling, they heard about a new fertility treatment. Folks in that church loved Karl and Jen. Jen worked in the nursery and had a real gift with babies. Karl managed the church’s financial assets. So their plight had the entire church praying for a miracle.

Thanks to that new treatment, Karl and Jen got their miracle. Baby Amanda was born.

Everyone thought Jen would be thrilled with the birth. And she was. For awhile. But postpartum depression is a tricky illness, and few people understand its effects, especially on a miracle mom. Everyone thought Jen would get over it. Then one day, she told Karl she was going to the grocers. They found her car wrapped around a tree.

Karl mourned. Taking care of Amanda became his primary duty. He stepped down from managing the church funds, and Mavis, who had ably assisted him, took over. Life, though sadder, seemed to settle down.

At Amanda’s two-year checkup, the doctor found a worrying lump on her arm. The diagnosis came back as bone cancer. Karl had never had great insurance through his workplace, and the costs to treat Amanda drained all his savings. The church put together a great fundraiser in response. Everyone was stunned when Amanda, the miracle child, failed to see her fourth birthday.

They were even more stunned to find later that Mavis, the new church financial manager, had run off with $300,000 in church funds.

One of the most well-known verses in the Bible:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
—Romans 8:28 ESV

I’ve heard a lot of sad stories in my life. Some don’t seem to have good endings.

I know that I struggle with Romans 8:28. A lot. So do many other people. We know the verse. We know that God is true. But we can’t always make life fit into that verse in a way that makes sense.

We Christians in America tend to read the Bible with one eye on the Scriptures and the other on the Bill of Rights. Nothing gets our goat more than thinking about our individual rights being infringed. Our sense of entitlement to personal happiness is enormous because it’s reinforced day in and day out by our collective American unconscious.

I’m not saying the following is the perfect exposition of Romans 8:28, but it’s something I’ve been pondering.

What if the Creator’s intention for “those who love God” isn’t primarily for the individual crushed by circumstance? What if the “those” consists of the greater mass of Christendom?

Perhaps we search in vain for Karl’s redemptive answer to his wife’s and child’s deaths. Maybe the happy ending isn’t Karl’s but another Christian’s, a doctor who hears about Karl’s story and leverages her talents from God to found a clinic for helping others diagnose and manage postpartum depression.

Perhaps answering the elusive Why? in the case of missionary Cori resolves not in her survivors’ joy, but in a next generation, when a young, local man completes that teenage missionary’s calling by establishing a missions center in that town that ends up blessing the world.Cry tears

Perhaps Mavis’s granddaughter gets a tap on the shoulder from God and starts an organization that helps churches better handle their money.

Perhaps it’s not about the happiness of the primary people hurt by life’s seeming injustices but about those who come afterward. Or even those sitting on the other side of the planet in a sub-Saharan missions HQ who decide to work toward improved health care for missionaries in their country.

Something about the Hollywood ending drives us Americans. And we always want to see it unfold in the lives of those immediately affected by life’s vicissitudes.

But what if this redemptive story that God placed us in is far greater than your happiness or mine? Do we ever look at it that way?

I’ve written many times about Hudson Taylor, the great missionary to China. His work back in the 19th century is instrumental in the faith of millions of Chinese today. The work he started continues to flare brightly, lighting the world.

Yet those who knew Taylor best claimed that the man who left for China with his family was not the same man after their burial under the earth of his adopted country. A sadness permeated his life.

Did Romans 8:28 not “work” for this renowned missionary?

Perhaps we think too much of ourselves and not enough of the collective work of God in the lives of those other “those who are called according to his purpose.” We like to believe that the verse reads solely for our own private circumstances.

But what if it doesn’t? Are we solid enough in our faith to go to our own graves happy that God’s story is greater than our own lives? And that our tears may not be dried in this life?

The Church and the Halloween Alternative Party

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Holy Pumpkin--sortaOkay, so color me one of those people who doesn’t get the Halloween Alternative Party that churches throw.

Some call it a Harvest Party/Festival, which is particularly amusing when it happens in churches in the cities or suburbs, both of which are famous for their agricultural base, right? Such references to fecundity also leave me scratching my head. How many see the connections with Christian “harvest festivals” and the various pagan festivals that also celebrate the fertility of the harvest? I mean, if we’re working that hard to distance ourselves from Halloween, enough to throw a distinct celebration, why are we linking ourselves to another pagan festival?

I’m not a fan of Halloween. That it has become big business and an opportunity for adults to wear risqué clothing only makes it worse. I mean, when I was a kid, Halloween was about as scary and wicked as Charlie Brown getting nothing but rocks during his trick or treating.

I’ll admit, though, that Halloween is more focused on shock value than it once was, and that kids are more likely to dress up as zombies with their livers hanging out than fairy princesses or “sheet ghosts,” so the trend IS downward. (Though I also will add that a downward trend marks most everything in our culture, even in the Church.)

If you’re in a particular denomination that fancies itself highly attuned to the spiritual world, you’ll likely hear church leaders offer reasons why your denomination/church eschews any association at all with “the devil’s antics” on Halloween. You’ll hear the obligatory history of Halloween. You’ll have the associations clearly drawn for you. You’ll drink the Kool-Aid. And you’ll feel the compulsion to ensure your kids avoid the pathway to hell that is Halloween.

And thus is born the Halloween Alternative Party. Like everything in modern American Christianity, the idea that we Christians might be left out of secular “fun” just doesn’t sit well with us. No one wants to be a party pooper, while at the same time that burning American Christian need to Christianize secular activities compels us.

The only problem, as I see it, is that the Halloween Alternative Party still looks and feels a lot like Halloween.

HalloweenHalloween Alternative
A fun time with othersYesYes
CandyYesYes
Tainted CandyNoNo
Other treatsYesYes
Elements of the harvest (pumpkins, etc.)CommonlyCommonly
Other themed decorationsCommonlyCommonly
Scary/evil elementsCommonly, but varies widelyLess commonly, unless the church sponsors an evangelistic “Hell House,” and then all bets are off
The majority of participants purposefully celebrating the demonicUnlikelyNo
Kids in costumesYesYes
Adults in costumesCommonlyCommonly
“Noticeable” teen or adult females wearing costumes highly noticed by teen and adult malesUnlikely outside of adult partiesOh, the stories…

So yes, I’m baffled. If there’s a genuine distinction between the two, I’m missing it. If it comes down to one being a slightly less scary version of the other, is that enough to distance ourselves from what are being sold as the genuine dangers of Halloween itself?

The comments are open. Please set me straight.

Like everything in modern American Christianity, the idea that we Christians might be left out of secular “fun” just doesn’t sit with us. No one wants to be a party pooper, while at the same time that burning American Christian need to Christianize secular activities compels us.

The Devil, You Say

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What can be said in the aftermath of the Virgina Tech slaughter? Better commenters than yours truly have offered insights I could never hope to provide. In lieu of this, I considered not saying anything at all.

But a quote from one of the survivors of the attack reminded me that some aspects of this horror have kept to the shadows. Garrett Evans, who received a gunshot wound, said of his attacker:

An evil spirit was going through that boy, I could feel it.

I don’t know anything about Evans’ religious beliefs, but I do know this: too many people in America don’t want to hear talk of evil spirits.

I don’t think a culture exists on this planet that conjures up more imagery based in the supernatural than ours. We drop spiritual allusions into almost every conversation, The devil, you say...codify curses around Biblical terminology, and talk about God, angels, demons, and what else as if God, angels, demons, and what else moved in next door.

But our context for that talk rarely strays from a Halloween-like understanding of spiritual forces of good and evil. Our post-Enlightenment rationalism outstrips any idea that realms exist outside of the one that serves up a mocha latté to die for. About as close as any American desires to get to the demonic is requesting The Exorcist from Netflix.

So we laugh and make jokes about something that’s not even remotely funny. And when the object of our derisions lashes out, we wander around asking, “How could this possibly happen?”

In truth, how could it not?

I’ve written before on the demonic (“The Chthonic Unmentionable” and “Battling Beelzebul“), so I don’t feel I need to retread that ground. Yet I wonder how many of us take the Enemy of our souls seriously. Given that so many Christians appear to live in a perpetual shadow, continually caught up in destructive behaviors or thoughts, it makes me wonder if we believe this truth from Jesus:

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
—John 10:10a

The thief took 33 lives at VT, didn’t he? He killed and he destroyed. So I find it fascinating that almost no one has taken Garrett Evans’s comment and run with it.

How do we on a daily basis confront this thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy? How much has been stolen, killed, or destroyed in your life and mine because we attributed to “coincidence” or the “fickleness of life” what should have been linked to the chthonic operating in the shadows?

Brothers and sisters, let’s not be blind to this. We have an Enemy. He may be mortally wounded, but a weekend filmfest alone should convince you that the bad guy we thought was shot dead still may stir enough to pump a few rounds of hot lead into some poor unfortunates before he expires. So it is with our ultimate Enemy.

If we want a personal revival in our own lives, we need to wake up to the fact that we weren’t taken off Satan’s hitlist the second we fled to Christ. Nor did evil up and die when Jesus said, “It is finished.” Evil’s vanquishing still awaits the final trumpet. Until that time, we can’t act as if the devil’s not there.

Because, if you listen in your spirit, you can hear him roaring.