Trigger Warning

Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. – Philippians 2:14-16

The advice in these verses is good.  Questioning can also be translated as disputing or doubting.  Jesus uses the same word in Luke 24:38 when He asks the disciples why “doubts arise” in their hearts.  I have a family member who has been going through some difficulties for an extended period of time.  Someone encourages her and says that she should turn her stress and worries over to God.  She responds, “I wish it were that easy.” 

I can understand that, but it does seem strange that grumbling, complaining, and doubting come easier to me than handing the burden off to another.  I know when I am working and someone on the team says that he or she will take care of something I thought I had to do, I feel relief, usually.  The times when I don’t are those occasions when I harbor trepidations about the trustworthiness and competence of the volunteer. 

I suppose that means, if I worry about something God has offered to do, I doubt that He is really up to the job.  That’s Paul’s point in the last part of the passage.  If those he has taught and guided and admonished cannot live without fear and doubt, without whining and moaning and cowering, without worrying and fretting about every trouble that comes along, he has failed in his ministry, and he will be called to account for it. 

I have been binge-watching Band of Brothers which I have enjoyed much more than Private Ryan.  In one scene the recklessly courageous Ronald Speirs explains the “trick” to a fearful soldier.  It amounts to assuming that the worst will indeed happen and that one has no hope of coming out alive.  The way it is framed in the dramatized dialogue, Speirs’ advice doesn’t sound appealing to a Christian.  However, it struck me as very similar to something a Christian has said.  In his parody of self-help books, Lost in the Cosmos, Walker Percy suggested a cure for depression:  suicide.  If that seems rather extreme, Percy explains that once suicide is actually an option, one is free to live as an ex-suicide, concluding: 

The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o’clock on an ordinary morning:

The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future.  His breath is high in his chest.

The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs.  Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive.  It is good to be alive.  He goes to work because he doesn’t have to.

Note again, I call this book a parody.  Don’t take it too seriously, and keep in mind that to be an ex-suicide, one can’t actually pull the trigger.  As Percy says, You can elect suicide, but you decide not to.  It is a very important distinction.

Or, as Paul told the church at Philippi as few verses earlier:  For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21).  That sounds a bit more acceptable to most of us, but we should remember that to be in Christ means that we have died to self and identified with Him in His death on the Cross. 

My life is in God’s hands.  I trust my very soul and my destiny for all of eternity to Him.  What are all the troubles of this world to that?

A Worried Mind

The LORD is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him. -- Nahum 1:7

Nahum is writing about the impending destruction of the Assyrian empire and the city of Ninevah – the very people to whom the Lord sent our favorite reluctant prophet, Jonah.  The casting down of earthly empires, the desolation of nations, the rise and fall of kings and kingdoms is part of the cycle of history.  We have lived so long in power and prosperity and stability we have a tendency to think that everything will work itself out in our favor.  We are shocked by setbacks, like what happened September 11, 2001, but we are easily distracted by the cares and concerns as well as the pleasures that percolate through our lives.  Now one thing seems urgent, now another, soon memory of that terror slips from our minds displaced by the ding in the car door, the irritating boss at work, fixing the kids’ teeth, wondering if we can afford that a new gigantic flat screen like our neighbor has, or even a good cup of coffee. 

I used to be happy-go-lucky, never troubled or worried then I quit drinking and smoking dope.  I also surrounded myself with people who fret about and see the dark side of everything, also known as in-laws.  It’s contagious.  My wife’s family thought that if you weren’t certain that everybody was out to get you and disaster was lurking around every corner, you were just not paying attention, or you were stupid.  This is especially true of my wife’s older sister of whom it may well be said, she’s not happy ‘til you’re not happy. 

Life is full of scary things.  Bad news abounds and we are going to hear it, and sometimes we’re going to be terrified participants rather than merely concerned spectators.  Pretense and denial do no good.  The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it (Proverbs 22:3).  This is true, but it is equally true that apart from the Lord, all our best-laid plans and preparations can easily come to nothing.  No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the LORD (Proverbs 21:30).

The only safe place is in Christ.  I do not know what is coming to me personally, to this country, or to the world.  I know that at some point, regardless of how well I live and how careful I am, there will be things that will overwhelm me if I try to face them on my own.  The market for anti-anxiety medications, anti-depressants, and sleeping pills is thriving. 

And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth distress of nations in perplexity because of the roaring of the sea and the waves, people fainting with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world. For the powers of the heavens will be shaken (Luke 21:25-26).

Or as the KJV says, Men’s hearts failing them for fear … 

When the plagues fell upon the rebellious land of Egypt, the Israelites were living in Goshen, which is usually thought to be in the area around the Nile delta.  Throughout Egypt there was pestilence, darkness, storms, and destruction, but the land of Goshen was protected and preserved.  The Israelites lost nothing and suffered none of the disasters that fell upon their Egyptian masters. 

No matter what happens on the outside, in the world, in this country or that one, if we remain in Christ, we need not lose our peace, our abundant life in Him, or our joy.  So much of what vexes us is not all that important, and what is important is best entrusted to God's oversight.  If I am worried, my mind is on the wrong thing.

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you (Isaiah 26:3)

     

Jesus Has Not Left the Building

But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
and his righteousness to children's children,
to those who keep his covenant
and remember to do his commandments.
The Lord has established his throne in the heavens,
and his kingdom rules over all. 

-- Psalm 103:17-19

This is something that I am going to try and keep in mind as we move into a new year -- really, I think, a new era:   God is in control.   We have a King, and we are citizens of no mean city. 

In the coming weeks and months, there will be pressure on us all the time with endless fear-mongering in the news cycles.  It will be hard not to worry, at least part of the time.  The nearest thing I have to a resolution is to fret less — but I'm not going to fret about being fretless, more or less.  Instead I will try to focus on God's grace and goodness in my life and on the troubles of the day, which, as Jesus said, are sufficient in themselves.

I have a little project started that — if it works out, and that is definitely IF — I will be sharing more fully here.  In the interim, my intent is to slightly increase my posting frequency with a corresponding decrease in verbiage — a verse or quote of the day kind of thing.   

Fret Less Base

Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!  Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.  — Psalms 37:8

Psalm 37 is one of my favorites, and this verse is one that is essential to commit to memory.  Christians should not be worriers.  While I am for prudence, forethought, and positive action, fretting is a hindrance to all of those good things.  God's rule is for us to find out the best thing to do, do it, and leave the cares to Him.  As Peter tells us, [Cast] all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.  And Jesus Himself says, Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Worry is a sin in a very real sense.  It is a rejection of God's command to entrust the future to Him.  We do not know what tomorrow holds, as the song says, but we are able to rely upon the One who holds tomorrow.  Not worrying does not mean we don't can green beans in the summer.  It means we don't give needless thought to whether what we have canned will be enough.  Trusting God does not mean that we waste what we have; it does mean that we do not concern ourselves with what we have or do not have and that we are always generous with our resources.   

Let's consider another of Peter's admonitions:  The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers.

I sincerely believe that a great upheaval is at hand in the world.  I don't know that it is "the end of the world as we know it", which is likely what Peter meant — and what was indeed the case in his day — but the times are definitely a'changin'.  Now is the perfect time to stop living in conformity to the world and abiding by its dictates.  Now is the perfect time to seek the kingdom and righteousness, to simplify one's life and establish it on the firm foundation of obedience to the word of God.  There will never be a better time to reassess our priorities, to decide what is important, to separate wheat from chaff. 

For the first few years of our marriage, my wife and I moved a lot.  Moving, especially given that our money was very limited, forced us to carefully consider everything we carried along with us.  Every move was a chance to get rid of accumulations of junk that everybody tends to build up.  As our moves grew less frequent, we accrued more to move.  At this point, we have lived in the same spot for nearly nine years — our new record.  Moving all this stuff is no longer an option.  We would have to have an auction or something to trim it down to size if we had to go somewhere else.  We should look on our current times as a move out of the material and into the spiritual.  The more junk we set out at the curb, the less we will find ourselves worrying about. 

Despite the trials and tribulations of life in 20th and 21st Century America, most of us have not had it too rough.  We have been able to indulge in fretting because the neighbor has a nicer car or bigger television than we have, or because we have the better one and have to pay for it.  We are now able to worry that our smart phone isn't smart enough, that our 4G connection is too slow, or that our iPad is too heavy.

Isn't there something to this?  Is our society's very consumerism a function of its fretting?  Does not our obsessive and compulsive consumption both arise from and deepen our worry, our discontentment, and our fear?   

Materialism is the bitter root that bears the bitter fruit of worry.  A spiritual person may become distraught over failures and cry for deliverance in holy fear, but it is our old fleshy nature that feels the unholy dread of loss related to our goods, our pride, or both. 

Simple arithmetic says that the world cannot go on the way that it is.  Western civilization is consuming and contracepting itself into oblivion.  Debt will be its downfall.  Our fretting over material wealth and things has led to our destruction.  I do not think there is much we can do to correct the trajectory of nations.  Voting may help.  Praying will help.   Fretting makes it worse.  

What we can reset is our own course as individuals, families, and faith communities. 

Repent.  Don't worry.      

Kenosis

Seeing that he became sad, Jesus said, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God. For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." — Luke 18:24-25

A rich man's wealth is his fortified city — Proverbs 10:15a

My favorite really rich person is probably Scrooge McDuck. Scrooge enjoys his vast reservoir of gold coins by diving into the pile and burrowing through it. He seems to love the money for itself, but he also is in competition with others. As someone said, "Money is just the way to keep score." That attitude seems pretty common in the world as people seek status and worth by having more than their neighbors. Aside from a miserly or competitive accumulation of it, there's nothing wrong with having money. It solves a lot of problems.

I paid cash for the first new vehicle that I bought myself. It was a small, 2-wheel drive pickup with no frills. Eventually my wife, who actually had a credit score, bought a car on which we had to make payments. Once that cycle starts, it can be hard to break, but we managed to eventually catch up so we could pay cash again for the last three or four. Writing a substantial check for a large purchase like a car or a grand piano can give a person a sense of power and exhilaration, of security — like the "fortified city" of the proverb. In my case, the exhilaration evaporates rapidly when I look at what's left in the account. I'm certainly not in Uncle Scrooge's class. If I turned all my assets into gold coins, I would not require the McDuck Money Bin or even a small safe to contain them. In fact, I'm pretty sure I have a coffee cup that would hold them all.

Wealth does not make people evil nor does poverty make us good. The story goes that the day Bat Masterson died, he had written these words: There are those who argue that everything breaks even in this old dump of a world of ours. I suppose these ginks who argue that way hold that because the rich man gets ice in the summer and the poor man gets it in the winter things are breaking even for both. Maybe so, but I'll swear I can't see it that way. Wealth makes life a little easier for us. It helps keep us cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It fills in the potholes and gives us a smoother ride. It is to be expected that when a difficulty is encountered in life, we address it with the resources at hand. As the saying goes, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you have money, the temptation may be to buy your way out of a tough situation. Occasionally that is fine, but there are times when God is calling on us, when intrusions into our lives are covered with His fingerprints, when He means for us to be altered, purged, or strengthened by the trial we face.

The point Jesus makes is that money has a tendency to keep us from developing - or perhaps undeveloping, becoming again as a little child in order to enter the kingdom. God doesn't do means testing; He does test us by our means. If we trust in possessions or power rather than the Person of Christ, our door to the kingdom is shut and locked — by us. If we are not careful, we will, like the rich, young ruler, fail to open the door when we hear One knocking.

The young man's problem was not that he was a bad person. He was doing many of the right things. Jesus asked him to distribute all of his wealth, but there can be little doubt that this man, in pursuing righteousness, was already giving alms and paying his tithe at the temple. There is no indication that he was greedy. His only disqualification was that he was "very sorrowful for he was very rich". It was not that he did not have faith in God or that he did not desire to please God. If he had no inclination toward God, he would never have approached Jesus at all. His obstacle was that he trusted money more than God. He believed that it was his wealth which gave him comfort and peace of mind. Yes, he wanted to be right with God for he knew that his life was not forever. He wanted to see the kingdom. He would have done almost anything Jesus asked of him — anything except put his faith in his Father first.

The Lord challenged the rich man to embrace a voluntary self-emptying, not unlike the one the Son Himself embraced by His Incarnation. He calls on all of us to follow Him in not clinging to our worldly wealth (Philippians 2:6). He does not ask all of us to sell all we have and give it away, but He does tell us not to hang on to it for dear life. Contrast Christ's plea to the rich, young ruler with this dramatic scene from the opening verses of Mark 14: While He was at Bethany ... reclining at the table, a woman came with an alabaster jar of pure and expensive fragrant oil of nard. She broke the jar and poured it on His head. But some were expressing indignation to one another: "Why has this fragrant oil been wasted? For this oil might have been sold for more than 300 denarii and given to the poor." And they began to scold her.

Jesus, however, does not seem so concerned about the poor here. He silences the protesters and commends the woman's extravagant action as being noble and as her best effort to do what she could for Christ while He was with them. This oil was a great treasure to her, worth a year's wages — possibly it was her own "pearl of great price". Yet she breaks the container — no holding back — and lavishes it upon the Lord with joy, not sorrow.

I Know Who Holds My Hand

Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. --Philippians 4:6

You will keep in perfect peace the mind that is dependent on You, for it is trusting in You. --Isaiah 26:3

Don’t worry about anything. Pray about everything.

Consider this my Christmas blog entry. It may be my New Year’s entry as well.

There are plenty of things to worry us these days. Given the temperatures here on the Plateau, global warming is officially off my list of those things. In Psalm 37, the Psalmist says that we should not fret or “be agitated” for such a state of mind leads only to harm. Worry certainly comes naturally to most of us, and it isn’t limited to one segment of the population. The rich worry as much as the poor; believers seem to worry about as much as unbelievers.

Why do we worry? Obviously we must get some reward for fretting or we wouldn’t engage in it. We seem to think that worry somehow prepares us or gives us control over a situation. We often actually equate it with being prepared. As humans we are blessed with the ability to enter into a state of altered consciousness, narrow our focus and work through solutions to problems. We can pick up complicated objects and turn them over in our minds without ever putting our hands on them. We can make three-dimensional realities out of two-dimensional pictures. Worry is a kind of trance state where we enter into a situation that is bothering us. We are there looking for a solution, which is not bad in itself. The problem is that we do not know all the factors or what is actually going to happen. We wind up working off expectations, past experiences, or related experiences. We may create multiple scenarios and try to think how we’d deal with each one, or try to imagine how we’d get the best possible scenario to play out.

When we are dealing with concrete situations over which we have control, e.g., building a dog house, such forward thinking is useful and necessary. On the other hand if I am worrying about possible disasters, abstractions, or the uncertain future, it is worse than useless. Not only are most things beyond my individual powers, they probably won’t be even close to what I am projecting. Worry is a waste of time.

The cure for worry is prayer, with thanksgiving. If I am troubled or burdened with cares about the future, I need to pray until the burden lifts. If I am willing to pray and honestly turn my problems over to the Lord – as He desires I should do – I can have and maintain perfect peace. It may take a while to free myself from agitation, but it will be worth the time I invest.

As Paul tells us, giving thanks is a big part of this process. If I relentlessly petition God and try to harangue Him into giving me my way, then I am merely worrying in a different format. Expressing my dependence on the Lord is what will bring peace and rest to my soul. Thanksgiving means that I acknowledge God’s sovereignty, power, wisdom, mercy and grace. Giving thanks is a function of relying on the Lord to deal with the situation as it is rather than whatever I might imagine it to be.

If you are feeling some trepidation when you see 2009 dead ahead, don’t fret over it. Take your burdens to the Lord, and leave them there.