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 Little on Seeing and Believing

Now without faith it is impossible to please God, for the one who draws near Him must believe He exists and rewards those who seek Him. – Hebrews 11:6

For as sight is only seeing, faith is only believing. – Hannah Whitehall Smith

When Thomas doubted the resurrection of the Lord, demanding to see the holes in His hands and the wound in His side, the disciple did not really lack faith. He believed that he had seen Jesus die, which was true. Jesus died. Thomas believed that dead men generally stay dead, which they do. Facts and experience supported Thomas’ faith that his fellow disciples were wrong. The only thing Thomas doubted was the testimony of his best friends, not because they were liars -- for the most part, but because their statements ran counter to what he knew as facts, despite having himself witnessed many events that were inexplicable to him. The others were emotionally distraught. Perhaps he thought one or two of the remaining ten had been hitting the wine a little too hard. John was so young and easily influenced. Peter, well, he may have been overwhelmed by the guilt of his cowardice. Andrew and James were usually pretty stable, but they might just be going along with the crowd.

People have faith. Quite often it’s not called faith. Sometimes it is called consensus. Sometimes it is referred to as “relying on expert opinion”. Sometimes it is called common sense.

You know what, common sense – which in reality is not so common, as Will Rogers long ago observed – has failed many times. Consensus is just going along with the crowd, sometimes for monetary gain. Experts are right almost as often as they are wrong.

We will read horoscopes, play the lottery, draw to an inside straight, listen to economists, meteorologists, and all the little cronkites that read the news on television. Cronkite used to be the most trusted man in America. People had faith in Cronkite, who was about as unbiased and truthful as Bill Clinton at a Jenny Craig meeting. American soldiers did not lose any battles in Vietnam, only the propaganda war on the six o’clock news. Our military has never met defeat on the field in Iraq or Afghanistan. They can only be beaten by the verbal barrage coming from the seditious spawn of Max Headroom contaminating the 24 hour news channels.

I have no faith in them. They are right only because they constantly change their opinions to match the data. A comprehensive list of groups and individuals I don’t believe would be pretty extensive. I am from Missouri. I’d as soon believe the loving affirmations of a crack whore as a publishing professor, a scientist hooked on government grant money, or a politician trolling for votes.

Sometime back my daughter got on the Da Vinci code stuff, and how Constantine had gotten involved with Christianity wanting to use it for his own purposes. Didn’t I think, she asked, that the “real” documents and manuscripts might have gotten corrupted? She was surprised – knowing that I am skeptical and analytical – when I did not even hesitate in saying, No.

You could show me irrefutable proof that the entire New Testament had been written by dolphin-like aliens with opposable thumbs from the Pleiades as a satire of their own religion, and it wouldn’t really make any difference to my acceptance of its revelation. Once a person really believes God, that is, believes that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him, all the other stuff – the biological and historical accidents, the little twists that have to occur to make human life, consciousness, and revelation possible are seen as His work.

Constantine and everyone else are merely the instruments in God’s hand. Through the prophets, the Lord said the same thing about the pagan nations of Assyria and Babylon, about Greece, about the pharaohs of Egypt, and Caesar in Rome. Pick up a modern copy of the Bible, hold it in your hand and think about how it got to you. Even if you consider it in the most humanistic way possible, is it not something of a miracle? If you have a map of the world, or a globe, find the Middle East, look at the word “Israel”. How could such a place exist?

Like sight, faith is only as worthy as its object. To look on squalor and ugliness and horror is to regret the gift of vision. To believe in emptiness, meaninglessness, and the absence of truth is to regret faith – or it should be.

I believe the truth.