I’ve been preaching a new series on prayer at Lockwood Community Church in Coldwater, Michigan. It began on June 26, and you can hear that first message (titled, “Who Do You Think You’re Talking To?”) at http://lockwoodchurch.org/media
Others in the series include, Who’s Asking? (Parts 1 and 2) and Prayer as a Way of Life and Life as a Way of Prayer.
When I was in school, English teachers all seemed to be cut from the same cloth – at least the younger ones. They must have all minored in psychology because they were always asking questions that were meant to get us in touch with our feelings. I preferred the old-school type of teacher who read Beowulf in Old English and knew Shakespeare as if she had been his contemporary – and, by the looks of her, might have been.
The younger teachers asked questions like, “How does this make you feel?” In one such “express your feelings” class, we were divided up and made to sit at tables with other class members. We drew cards that asked questions about our thoughts and feelings. The girl on my right (who was voted “Best Legs” by the senior class) was asked to state what she thought of the person sitting on her left (me). She said bluntly, “I don’t think of him.” Ouch.
When I was a senior, days away from graduation, another teacher asked us, “Do you know who you are and what you are going to do with your life?” I remember answering yes on both counts. I knew who I was and I knew what I was going to do. I was mistaken on both counts.
It’s been more than four decades since then and I’m still finding out who I am. That’s the thing about people: we are bigger than we realize. We are more than the sum of our material parts. An individual is deeper and higher and more expansive than anyone but God realizes. A life is really a “lifescape,” a Promised Land to be explored and subdued, cultivated and preserved.
In the course of living in this lifescape, I have sometimes crossed the same ground (perhaps a fear or an unrecognized talent) numerous times. It was too messy the first time I came across it, so I skirted it and let it be. But years later, I came upon it again, and at that time started cleaning it up. Now, years later, I’ve wandered into the same place, and have begun to cultivate it so that something useful can come of it.
This idea of a lifescape has been helpful to me, but many ancient religious leaders preferred the image of a spiritual ladder or staircase, ascending to heaven and to fulfillment. That image has the advantage of expressing the sense of progress conveyed in St. Paul’s words: “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
If we imagine life to be a staircase ascending to heaven, it might be helpful to think of it as a spiral staircase. Even after making significant progress in life, we circle through the same issues. We cross, as it were, the same vertical plane. The problems we encountered at 20 are still present in some form at 40 and 60 and 80, giving us the opportunity, which we don’t always appreciate, of dealing with them again from another angle.
And it’s not just problems we encounter, but opportunities. Perhaps we failed to recognize an opportunity when we were 20, still didn’t know what to do with it when we were 40, but now at 60 are ready to take hold of it. At 80 we may actually understand the opportunity more clearly, appreciate it more fully and use it more effectively.
In life we don’t get do-overs, but we do get do-agains, though usually from a different position in the lifescape. It occurs to me that even nations may get this opportunity. For example, as a country we have circled back around to the race issues we dealt with (or failed to deal with) in the 1960s. Things left undone can once again be attempted. Opportunities missed can still be seized.
Whether we (as individuals or as a nation) utilize those opportunities depends on our openness to change and our willingness to receive God’s grace and rely on his help. Our willingness is often in doubt. Thankfully, God’s grace is not.
First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter
Religious liberty in the United States is in peril. Many of the people empowered to decide which behaviors merit civil protections and which do not are not religious people. They fail to understand religious liberty because they do not understand the religious life.
That they do not understand the religious life is clear from the message that is repeated among federal and state legislatures, courts and executives: religion is fine as long as it is private. What you do in your home and church, synagogue and mosque, is up to you. But when you step into the public square, your religious protections are no longer guaranteed.
This is to misunderstand the religious life, which ceases to be a life and becomes a mere hobby whenever it is confined to home and church. By its very nature, the religious life extends to everything a person does: prayer, yes, but also work, recreation, entertainment, socialization, education, and politics, to name a few. As early as St. Paul, the watchword was, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” The Founding Fathers – even the irreligious one – understood this to be the nature of the religious life.
In the early years of the republic, the protection of religious liberties was at the top of the American agenda. The very first amendment to the constitution, adopted in 1791, was about protecting religious liberty. In those days, the conversation about gender and sexual freedoms had not been joined. Sex was private, religion was public. But in many ways, the opposite is true today: sex is public and religion is private. Sex is increasingly protected in the public square while religion is only safe in the home and the sanctuary.
There are reasons for this change. The general loss of a creation theology, the ascendancy of tolerance as the chief of virtues, and the replacement of the church by the school as the provider of moral education have all contributed to the current indifference toward religious liberty. Then there were the events of 9/11, which moved some people from indifference to mistrust and even hatred of religion. The results of this ideological shift are now becoming apparent.
Consider the course taken by the Iowa Civil Rights Commission. Its public policy states that all places of public accommodation must acquiesce to state laws regarding gender and sexual orientation. If a church is deemed a place of public accommodation, it must open its restrooms to people based on their chosen gender identity rather than their sex at birth.
The policy statement includes a list of questions meant to clarify the purpose and extent of the law. It specifically asks, “Does This Law Apply To Churches?” It answers that religious institutions are exempt with respect “to a bona fide religious purpose.” However, it subsequently states that if an institution “offers some services, facilities, or goods to the general public, it will be treated as a public accommodation for those services.”
Does this mean that churches that house the homeless, that allow non-members to use their facilities for weddings or funerals, or that host community meetings are in violation of Iowa law? And what if churches allow non-members to attend concerts or worship services (as they all do)? Do they become a “public accommodation,” and thereby lose their protection as a religious organization?
Let’s admit that the restroom dispute has bordered on hysteria. Further, let’s grant that the state has an obligation to protect the rights of all its citizens. Nevertheless, the Iowa policy is a sign that the freedom accorded religious expression is currently valued below the freedom granted to other forms of expression, particularly ones related to sexuality.
It’s likely that the furor over gender identity and restroom use will die away in the months and years to come. The sooner the better. One only hopes that religious liberty won’t die along with it.
First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 7/9/2016
Early Morning Mist
My wife and I are just back from a week on a large lake in Quebec. We left our car in a gravel lot that was slowly surrendering its borders to the encroaching wilderness, loaded our gear on a boat and were carried off to a cabin a few miles away.
It was our first time on this 70,000 acre lake, and as we made our way to the cabin I tried to store the shoreline and islands in memory. It’s surprising how hard that is to do. One pine tree looks pretty much like the next, and each rocky island is virtually interchangeable with every other one. It’s an easy place to lose your bearings.
A strong front came through the night we arrived and high winds kept us off the lake the following day. The fishing was slow the day after that, so I determined to get up early the next morning to see if I could do any better at first light.
Morning Mist
There was enough light to see by 4:30 the next morning. I got up, made some coffee and was in the boat around 5:00. I knew where I wanted to fish: in a bay that ran a mile or so to the north, and lay on the other side of a nearby point, just east of our cabin. As I pulled away from the dock, the clouds began to break up. Steam was rising all around me from the water’s surface. A loon was calling from somewhere in the fog.
As I drove the boat, I felt I must take some pictures of the fog rising against the now-glowing sky. So without stopping the boat, I retrieved my camera from its case and tried to take pictures, then check the display to see if I was capturing the scene. I was disappointed with the results, but I kept trying. I turned the boat further north as I rounded the point on the way to my destination, but stopped dead in the water a few moments later. I didn’t recognize anything. This was not the bay I meant to enter. I had missed a turn. I had been distracted.
Just Before Sunrise
Even on a remote Canadian lake, I couldn’t escape distraction. That’s because we carry our distractions with us. We are the distracted generation. The word “distract” comes from the Latin participle “distractus,” meaning “drawing in different directions.” We are being pulled apart, which is pretty much the story of life in the twenty-first century.
Our work draws us away from our families, while our cell phones draw us away from our work. We divide our attention between our spouses and the television, our children and the tablet. We lack focus. Our brains are partitioned into sectors, and we try to operate from all the sectors at once.
There has been a major campaign in recent years to raise awareness of the danger posed by distracted driving. I suspect that many of us who see the ads or listen to the presentations are too distracted to receive much benefit. And that brings us to the core problem: the distractions are not just “out there,” singing their siren call to us. They are “in here.” If there were no cell phones, no iPads, no tweets or Facebook’s posts, we would invent our own distractions.
Why is that? Why is it so hard to live in the moment? Why can’t we listen to the birds singing and watch the sun go down without checking our Facebook page? What is it about humans that always draws us in a different direction from the one we’re facing?
The answer is that we lack integration. Our hearts and minds are divided. We are what St. James once called “double-souled people, unstable in all they do.” Humans are Humpty Dumptys who need to be put together again. That was the prayer of the ancient songwriter: “Put me together, one heart and mind; then, undivided, I’ll worship in joyful fear.”
First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 7/2/2016
We have heard more talk about immigrants and immigration policy this election season than any in memory, and the conversation has been highly charged. Since the issue is so prominent just now, it might be helpful to have a sketch of biblical attitudes toward immigrants.
For the sake of full disclosure, I should say where I come down on the issue of U.S. immigration. I think we should endeavor to have both the most compassionate immigration policy and the most secure border in the world. But I am not here advocating a particular view on immigration, which is a discussion for another time. I’m advocating a particular attitude toward immigrants.
My views have been shaped by experience. One of my closest friends is a naturalized citizen who was born in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Another was born in Ecuador. The U.S. is a better place because it counts them as its own.
But my views are also shaped by the Bible, which says a great deal about immigrants. There are many direct statements regarding their treatment. A few will suffice to represent the tenor of Scripture.
Following Israel’s escape from political oppression, God gave these instructions: “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt.”
Likewise, Scripture teaches, “The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born.” Further, “…you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt.”
In matters of law, God’s people were warned: “Do not deprive the alien or the fatherless of justice.” Judges were to make sure that immigrants, who were vulnerable because of their lack of political power and representation, were treated justly. This meant that “You are to have the same law for the alien and the native-born.”
Immigrants were granted equal access to services as the native-born. This included special food distributions and work opportunities. At the national celebration known as “First-fruits,” immigrants were specifically listed among the aid recipients.
Beyond the many specific instructions regarding aliens, there are numerous examples of interactions between the chosen people and the immigrants within their borders. Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, constantly interacted with such people. They considered him a “prince among us” and scripture calls him “the father of many nations” – that is, of many ethnic peoples (the Greek word is ethnos) – and his wife “the mother of many nations.”
The people of Israel were fierce in war, but for their day they were unusually considerate of immigrants. King David employed skilled foreign-born labor in the construction of the great temple and accepted immigrants into military service. The prophets continually urged that foreigners be treated with justice, as when Malachi writes that the Lord Almighty will be against “those who…deprive aliens of justice.”
The idea that immigration is evil and that immigrants are enemies is not sanctioned by the Bible. Disdain for immigrants is repeatedly condemned by the biblical writers and prophets. They insist that justice be done for the vulnerable, and include in that number those who do not have citizenship.
Now immigration in ancient times and immigration today are two different things. The Bible does not provide any kind of blueprint for immigration policy. Rather it urges us to adopt a compassionate attitude toward immigrants. Were this biblical model to inform our policies, it’s not clear how immigration in America would change. There would still be trials and deportations, but our attitude would be different. We would be a light to the world.
But we are not that light today. The current debate has degenerated into a shameless brawl between liberals and conservatives over votes. Both sides need to go beyond what is politically expedient to ask what is right. Yes, good people will answer that question differently, but whatever answer the Christian gives, it needs to be consistent with the biblical command to “love those who are aliens.”
First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 6/25/2016
It is common among academics, particularly those whose discipline is anthropology, to think of religion and magic as closely related expressions of the human desire to control one’s environment. Indeed, not just closely related but inextricably bound.
There is certainly something to be said for that viewpoint. Many religious people display a significant degree of magical thinking, but it is at least possible that their magical thinking is not the result of religious belief but of confused thinking. That’s a danger for all of us, even anthropologists.
When anthropologists compare religion to magic, they find similarities that suggest (to their minds) equivalence. One area of comparison focuses on the goals of practitioners, which turn out to be strikingly similar. It turns out that both religious people and sorcerers desire healthy children, safety and prosperity. But couldn’t the same be said of almost everyone, including professors of anthropology?
Religion and magic are frequently compared in terms of the elements of their respective practices, including ritual and the recitation of formulas or creeds. But even the U.S. Senate has its rituals (daily prayer, a special gavel carried in a special box, and of course lunchtime bean soup in the Senate dining hall) and there is certainly no magic in the Senate these days – and not much religion either.
A contrast anthropologists have noted between religion and magic is that religionists serve a higher power while magicians try to force a higher power to serve them. Another is that religion involves corporate acts while magic involves private ones. But the tendency among academics is to minimize the differences and amplify the similarities, seeing magic as a subset of religion.
I understand why they see it that way. As a pastor, I have known religious people whose faith has been little more than magical thinking. For example, some people imagine that adding certain ritual words to a prayer will make it effective, quite apart from the meaning of the words. That is magic. It changes prayer from communication to incantation.
There is an aspect of magical thinking in the prosperity gospel movement, seen most clearly in the “name it / claim it” component of prosperity teaching. Leaders in the movement tell their followers that if they affirm what they want and claim it as their own, it will be theirs. Further, some of them teach (as do Wiccans and other practitioners of magic) that if people verbalize what they don’t want – “I’m so afraid it might be cancer!” – that too will be theirs.
It is superstition; it’s magic. It assumes that power resides in the words themselves or in the manner in which they are said rather than in the God who hears them. Such an approach is closely related to that of the magician. He tries to force unseen powers to do his bidding by the use of carefully spoken charms and spells, but he’d better not mispronounce them or he might turn himself into a toad!
Religious legalism also involves magical thinking. The idea that keeping certain rules in certain prescribed manners – irrespective of motive – will bring about blessing assumes some kind of magical influence. It ignores the real personal connections between people and between people and God. It substitutes ritual behavior for understanding, faith and love.
The Christian faith is not magic, and the Christian should never believe it is. Christian faith operates within an understanding that the universe exists in meaningful relationships: relationships within creation and relationships between creation and Creator. Prayers are not magical formulas but meaningful conversations and requests. Rituals are formative disciplines, not magical rites.
I don’t believe in magic. I believe in something even more powerful: in relationships; in communication; in God, as Jesus made him known.
First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 6/4/2016
In the past, to be called “discriminating” was high praise. We rarely hear the adjective used that way (or used at all) anymore, but the noun and verb are everywhere. News stories about discrimination are an almost daily occurrence. It stands as one of the main points on the contemporary moral compass.
In the sixties and seventies, when the subject of discrimination came up, it was usually in the context of race or gender. In the eighties, it was often in conversation about physical disabilities. Today, it is typically in the context of sexual orientation or gender identity. Who’s next? What group will be the target of discrimination in the coming years?
There is at least some reason to believe it will be religious people, and especially religious conservatives. In the future, people who acknowledge an authority that transcends cultural norms, like Catholics and Evangelicals, may be the ones most likely to face discrimination.
Prejudice against people of faith is of course nothing new. When T. S. Eliot, arguably the most famous English poet of the twentieth century, converted to Christianity, he immediately became the object of derision and exclusion. The Times Literary Supplement labeled him a traitor. When Virginia Woolf, the de facto leader of the influential Bloomsbury Group, of which Eliot was a member, learned of his Christian faith, she was shocked and disgusted. She wrote to a fellow group member,
“I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with dear Tom Eliot, who may be called dead to us all from this day forward. He has become an Anglo-Catholic believer in God and immortality, and he goes to church. I was shocked. A corpse would seem more credible than he is. I mean, there’s something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God.”
If Woolf’s response seems over the top, consider the responses that New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, a self-identified progressive, received after complaining of academia’s bias against conservatives. One respondent defended the discrimination, claiming that “Much of the ‘conservative’ worldview consists of ideas that are known empirically to be false.” Another said matter-of-factly, “Truth has a liberal slant.” A third sarcastically added, “How about we make faculties more diverse by hiring idiots?”
This is how many liberals think of conservatives, and especially religious conservatives. Kristof quotes the sociologist George Yancey, who is a black Evangelical:
“Outside of academia, I faced more problems as a black. But inside academia I face more problems as a Christian, and it is not even close.”
If Yancey’s story is at all representative, it raises a provocative question: had Martin Luther King, Jr. come onto the scene now instead of in the 1950s, would he have faced greater hostility and discrimination because of his faith or because of his race? The bus would stop for him, but would the university pass him by?
Bias against Evangelicals on the university campus is indisputable. Kristoff points out that 59 percent of anthropologists and 53 percent of English professors say they would be less likely to hire a person if they discovered he or she was an Evangelical. This in spite of the fact that many Evangelicals are every bit as qualified as their irreligious peers. With all their praise of tolerance, irreligious progressives don’t even try to hide their intolerance of religious peers, particularly religious conservatives.
Jesus repeatedly warned his first followers to expect hostility and discrimination. He didn’t pull any punches: “Everyone will hate you because of me.” But he also instructed them to respond to such treatment with love instead of lawsuits. That’s a huge shift away from society’s current response to discrimination, but it has worked in the past and there is reason to hope it will do so again.
Kudos to Nicholas Kristof – not for standing up for conservatives but for standing up for reason and clear thinking. And let conservatives take notice: Kristof is a liberal who actually listens to people with whom he disagrees, and believes that they have something to add to the conversation. It’s a good example for us all – conservative, liberal or whatever else we might be – to follow.
First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 5/21/2016
According to a popular (and probably apocryphal) story, a man once came to Martin Luther and asked the great reformer what he could do to serve God. Luther asked him what he was currently doing for work, and he replied that he was a cobbler. Luther surprised him by saying, “Then make good shoes and sell them at a fair price.”
We might expect a minister of the gospel to urge such a man to become an evangelist or a pastor, but a person can serve God in any kind of employment, as long as he works for love of God and neighbor. If that story does go back to Luther, one can be sure his advice was based on the fact that making good shoes and selling them at a fair price is a way to love one’s neighbor.
Whether or not the story originated with Luther, its point is relevant to our situation: what a person does for employment is important to God, to neighbor and to one’s self. People partition life into segments. God does not. He intends human life to be much more holistic.
We live grapefruit lives. There’s a section for everything: work, leisure, education, spiritual development, social life and more. The people we think of as “religious” are the ones who devote more than one section – sometimes two or three – to church, personal piety and public service.
But this is to distort the way God made people. He is not satisfied with one or two or even three sections of a person’s life; he wants the person. He wants the person to love him and to love his or her neighbor in every part of life. He does not want people to be divided and conflicted, but whole and intact, whether they are in the nave of a church, the bow of a boat or the machine shop of a factory.
God wants our nine-to-five. He wants to be invited into the workplace, but not in a showy or pushy way, and certainly not in a way that compromises the worker’s productivity (like those people who try to evangelize when they ought to be working.) People of faith invite God into the workplace not as a topic of conversation (or at least not primarily as a topic of conversation) but as a boss. As the boss.
This is consonant with biblical teaching. The worker recognizes the employer’s authority and, if at all possible, does what he or she says. But the Christian worker remains cognizant of the fact that he or she is responsible to a higher authority. Even in the office or the factory, he or she knows “It is the Lord Christ [they] are serving.”
Going to work with the intention of serving Christ can change the atmosphere of an office or shop. After urging Christians to do their work “as to the Lord,” St. Paul adds: “because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do.” Sometimes people get the idea that God only rewards people for the religious exercises (prayer, charitable giving, Bible reading) they do, but the apostle clearly states that God rewards people for whatever good they do, and in the context he’s talking about their work on the job site.
Working for Christ can free a person from slavery to the heartless tyrant money. The people who do their job only for money are almost always miserable at work. Doing a job for Christ makes people happier, better employees, and more cheerful coworkers.
But it is not just workers who needs to invite Christ into the workplace; the boss needs to do so too. Christian teaching sees bosses as both in and under authority. Just as their employees must answer to them, they must answer to Christ. Philipps paraphrases this way: “Remember, then, you employers, that your responsibility is to be fair and just towards those whom you employ, never forgetting that you yourselves have a heavenly employer.”
First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 5/14/2016
Risk assessment is the science of determining two things: the likelihood of a given occurrence and the degree of potential loss. Let’s say I want to do a risk assessment of the likelihood that my pregnant daughter-in-law will be bitten by a mosquito this summer. I would look at past incidents, rainfall amounts, temperature data, and conclude that the likelihood that she will be bitten is about one hundred percent.
So the likelihood of occurrence is extremely high. Then I look at the potential loss from such an event. It is not very significant: a few minutes of irritation, some itching—but that’s about it. However, if she were visiting a Caribbean nation, the potential loss from a mosquito bite would be much greater because of the possibility of contracting the Zika virus, which has been linked to birth defects.
From Risk Assessment one moves to Risk Management. Given the likelihood of occurrence and the potential for loss, one takes steps to lower the risk. These might include stocking up on insect repellant and staying indoors during the hours around dusk and dawn.
That’s Risk Assessment and Management 101. Could it be applied to raising children? Yes. It would first require an awareness of possible risks, something most parents have from the moment their child is born, and even before that. They know that things can go wrong in utero or during delivery. The risks start before children are born, and they never stop.
Parents have lots of fears. They worry about birth defects, SIDS, bicycle accidents and car crashes. And they try to manage the risks: mothers have periodic ultrasounds, parents lay their newborns on their backs, put their babies in car seats and make their grade-schoolers wear bicycle helmets.
As children get older new risks emerge. Will they be accepted? Will they get into college? And what about dating? There are no crash helmets for dating (though if you invent one, you’ll make a fortune). The risks now include rejection and heartbreak and social isolation.
Parents worry that their kids will break bones, crack their skulls, and suffer broken hearts. There is risk everywhere, and parents want to save their kids from it. They want to take it away.
It’s for that reason that some people turn to God. They see him as a cosmic risk remover, a kind of supernatural car seat or crash helmet. “Don’t leave home without him,” they say. And why? Because life is risky.
But here’s the reality: God is many things – savior and Lord, leader and even friend – but he is not a car seat or a crash helmet. He is God. We cannot beg or bargain him into removing risk from our children’s lives, though we can pray for him to use it in their development. Our broken world is a risky place to live. We must acknowledge that and manage risk as best we can.
But we can only manage risks wisely if we assess them correctly. Many parents wrongly assess what constitutes the greatest risk to their children. They protect their children from one danger, but leave them exposed to another, even greater danger.
The biggest risk a child faces, the one that carries the greatest potential for loss, is not physical or social, but spiritual. This is not to downplay the importance of physical health and social relations, but to recognize the primacy of the spiritual life. As Jesus asked, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”
A successful career and a comfortable living will never compensate for the loss of a soul. Assessing a child’s risk in terms of social, academic and athletic success while ignoring spiritual concerns is like making sure a child takes a daily vitamin while subjecting him to second-hand smoke.
First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 5/7/2016
In Christian circles there is a high degree of suspicion towards people whose beliefs are constantly changing. We applaud Luther for his “Here I stand; I can do no other” attitude but we deplore Bunyan’s Mr. Pliable. Luther stands strong in the face of opposition while Pliable is blown this way and that by “every wind of new teaching.”
It is right to be critical of Mr. or Ms. Pliable, or any other spiritual Gumby who bends over backwards to avoid conflict or debate. He or she takes the path of least resistance, not because it is true but because it is easy. He or she is not convinced by facts but guided by the moral and intellectual fashions du jour.
A spiritual Gumby keeps an eye on the latest trends, eager to stay on society’s good side. When things gets tough, the spiritually tough (like Luther) stand firm, but the Gumby folds.
No one wants to be a spiritual Gumby, but one mustn’t mistake being stubborn for being strong. Obstinacy is not a sign of spiritual muscle. At first glance, some people look firm, but it’s only because spiritual rigor mortis has set in.
It is necessary to remain unbending before injustice and immorality, but the virtue does not lie in being unbending but in acting justly and morally. Too often people see inflexibility itself as a virtue. It is nothing of the sort.
A person who thinks inflexibility is itself a virtue is already on the way to becoming rigid. That person, to his or her credit, may not yield to the pressure of unjust or immoral cultural demands, but when the time comes to yield to God, he or she may not be limber enough to do that either. A Christian’s life is characterized, as St. Paul tells us, by transformation into the likeness of Jesus. But to the unyielding, transformation can only be a painful ordeal.
The biblical term for a follower of Jesus is “disciple.” A moment’s thought makes clear that an unyielding disciple is a contradiction in terms. Since a disciple is first and foremost a learner, the person who thinks she knows everything already cannot be a disciple. An unwillingness to learn and change puts discipleship to Jesus at risk.
The Bible has a term for the unwillingness to learn or change: “stiff-necked.” It was a word early Bible readers understood well. When an ancient farmer plowed his field, he would use a long pole with a sharp iron tooth to prick an ox’s neck on the left of right to get it to turn. But a “stiff-necked” ox would not feel the jab and would continue on its way.
Likewise, a stiff-necked person is insensitive to the jab of divine persuasion. He or she continues down the same path, even though it leads to trouble. It is therefore necessary to remain soft enough to feel and pliable enough to change.
Why do people get spiritually stiff? There are a number of reasons. Lack of exercise – they’ve sat too long without testing their intellectual and spiritual muscles. Or they have suffered an injury, spiritually speaking, which has twisted their beliefs. Or they are afraid. Fear – of loss or injury – will cause a person to tense up, and unremitting fear can make him or her stiff.
How does one stay spiritually limber? Start with stretches, including hearing those with whom one disagrees and thinking through their arguments. But that’s just a warm-up. There is nothing that will stretch a person like actually doing what Jesus instructs his disciples to do. Thinking abstractly about Jesus’s words is good, but doing them will have the extraordinary effect of training a person to be pliable to God and inflexible to cultural pressure at the same time.
First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 4/30/2016
The Way Home 