The Way Home

Last summer a friend invited me to golf with him on one of the nicest courses around. He was hoping to introduce a friend of his, who was in our area to lead a weekend seminar at a large church in Indiana.

I was happy to meet his friend and learn about his work, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to put my demonstrable lack of skills on display before a couple of real golfers. Yet there I was on the first hole, teeing off with a three-wood (since my driver is hazardous to my golf game).

Wonder of wonders, the shot went long and kept rising, just like the ones the pros hit on TV. It had this nice little draw, too, and landed right in the middle of the fairway. What’s more, that kept happening, hole after hole. And every time I hit that three-wood, I thought: “Yep. That’s the kind of golfer I am: the kind who hits them long and straight.”

Sadly for me, I had to take other clubs out of my bag. Yet for some reason, when I finished four-putting the first green – and the second and the fifth – I did not think: “Yep. That’s the kind of golfer I am.” Instead I thought, “Why is this happening? I’m better than that!”

Of course I’m not better than that. I’m the kind of golfer who hits a good shot followed by two bad ones. Alright, four bad ones. I’d like to think that I am the kind of golfer I am when I’m at my best, but I’m really the kind of golfer I am when I’m at my average.

What is true on the golf course is true in life. We’d like to think we’re the kind of person we are when we’re at our best: when we give to charity, act courageously, forgive those who’ve injured us, and feel warmth and affection for those around us.

But the truth is, we are the kind of people we are when we’re at our average: sometimes we grasp instead of give; we are fearful, not courageous; we hold grudges and despise the people around us. We are not our best moments. We are not our aspirations. We are our character.

Character is the overall makeup of the self, which is revealed in our patterns of behavior over time. Just as you can’t know what kind of golfer I am from one or two shots, or even from one or two rounds, you can’t tell what kind of person I am from one or two actions. That’s why Jesus said, “By their fruit your will recognize them.”

There is, as Dallas Willard has written: “a rigorous consistency in the human self and its actions … Actions are not impositions on who we are, but are expressions of who we are.” This is, as Willard notes, “one of the things we are most inclined to deceive ourselves about.” We want to believe that we are only our best intentions and most altruistic actions.

Character forms itself around (an often unrecognized) commitment, as we repeatedly make choices to support that commitment. This lies at the very center of who we are and it is upon this commitment that we stake our wellbeing. It may be a commitment to safety, to freedom, or to youthfulness. It may be a commitment to power or prestige or to always being right. It may be – and is, for many people – a commitment to a divine being.

Our character is shaped around that commitment by the choices we make – millions and millions of them. Each and every choice is another stroke of the tool that shapes us. As such, we are artists in residence, working with and under our artistic director to create …. ourselves. This is a remarkable privilege, a dignity too great for words. It is also a solemn responsibility, for we alone are responsible for the living art that we produce.

But what if we come to the realization that the person we are fashioning is flawed and blemished – that he or she is not the person we really want to be? Is it too late to start over?

No, character can be reformed. But to do so requires that inner commitment – at the heart of who we are – to be changed. This is nothing less than a conversion experience. We cannot do it by ourselves. It requires outside assistance – what the Bible refers to as “the grace of God.”

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, March 15, 2014

The news is not all bad. Yes, we keep hearing that the percentage of people in the United States who believe in God is shrinking. And, according to census data, the number of people who self-describe as having “no religion” continues to grow. But while those figures are important, they do not tell the whole

Around the globe, Christianity is growing. There are over 2 billion Christians on earth, representing the world’s largest religious group, by far. Even in the U.S. there were 14 million more self-proclaimed adult Christians in the last census than in the previous

Recently the popular Bible search site BibleGateway.com released the results of a study they conducted in conjunction with GMI (Global Mapping International) regarding online Bible searches by country. The study found that people from 242 of the world’s 263 countries spent 76 million hours in 2013 “searching, reading, studying, comparing, and sharing the Bible in their own

This interest in the Bible may continue for a long time. According to BibleGateway the average Bible searcher around the world is between age 13 and age 34. Their pursuit of Bible knowledge is just getting

It is fascinating to see what people searched for in different countries around the world. For example, in China the two most common searches were for Matthew 1 and John 1, which suggests that Chinese searchers want to learn about Jesus, and intend to start at the beginning (chapter 1) so they don’t miss

Among the countries with the largest populations, only the United States, Russia and Brazil (all historically Christian countries) performed more searches in the New Testament than in the Old. In two of the world’s ten largest countries, not a single New Testament text figured into the top five most popular

Another intriguing fact about these searches: in countries where religious persecution is common (for example, Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh), the most common biblical search is in the Book of Psalms, which suggests people are looking for comfort and strength in times of trouble. The top searches in Pakistan (ranked eighth in the world for persecution against Christians) were in the Psalms. They include Psalm 91, where Pakistanis read, “I will say of the LORD, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’”

Contrast that to one of the top searches in the U.S. – Jeremiah 29:11: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” Pakistani believers are looking for security in the present. American believers are looking for assurance about the

When it comes to searches for specific words, the most common was for “guidance.” That was followed by “God,” “comfort,” “the word,” “hope,” “strength,” “identity,” “the beginning,” “refuge,” “mercy” and “love.” It’s clear that some people are just beginning an investigation into Christianity. They are looking Bible basics about God and about creation. Others are digging in to find the help they need in their specific circumstances.

As interesting as it is to discover what people search the Bible for when it comes to God, it is probably even more helpful to know what God searches the earth for when it comes to people. According to the Bible, “…the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.” God is looking for people who: seek him and trust him; whose worship is real and not simply ritual; who cooperate with him in his work of salvation and justice.

And guess what? He doesn’t need a search engine to find them.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 3/8/14

The author (physician, producer, director) Michael Crichton has written, “Today, everybody expects to be entertained, and they expect to be entertained all the time … In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved, or freed, or educated. But [now] they want to be entertained. The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom.”

As if in response, writer/actor Woody Allen commented on the difficulties of aging. He said, “The only thing you can do is what you did when you were 20—because you’re always walking with an abyss right under your feet … which is to distract yourself … If I wasn’t concentrated on [distractions], I’d be thinking of larger issues. And those aren’t resolvable…”

The difficulty of nurturing a spiritual life in an age of distractions has often been noted. Professor Gordon Mikoski, commenting on the Lord’s Supper, has suggested that “In the digital age, it may be the case that the classical debates about the presence of Jesus Christ in the [Lord’s Supper] have been inverted. The question with which we may have to wrestle is not ‘In what way is the Lord present in the Supper?’ Instead, the question is ‘In what way are we present?’”

And it’s not just at church that we may not be present. We can be missing in action in everyday life. Oh, we see plenty of action, but our thoughts – our mindfulness – is missing. So why is this generation so distracted?

The obvious answer is: Because we want to be. We need distractions the way an addict needs a hit. We don’t know how to live without distractions. We are living proof that T. S. Eliot was right: “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”

Consider the evidence. One study suggests that people check their smartphones every six minutes. According to a recent survey, fifty-five percent of women would rather leave home without makeup than without their cellphone. Eleven percent of people said they would rather leave home without their pants! The cellphone is a marvelous communication tool, but its more than that: it is an ever-present distraction in time of need.

We are not passive recipients of unwanted distractions; we seek them out. We don’t want to be alone with our thoughts. Silence is our enemy. We fear it. Woody Allen is not the only one dancing around the abyss to the music of distraction.

The name of that abyss is hopelessness. Many people hold down jobs, drive their kids to school, go to the movies, plan vacations – they carry on normal lives. But all the while hopelessness stalks them like a wild animal. They can feel its presence, especially when they’re tired, especially when they are still.

And so they try never to be still. They go, go, go. They shop, buy things they don’t need, go to places they don’t care about, take pictures they’ll never look at, get addicted to pain killers or porn or booze, all because they can’t stand to be still. They sense that if they stop, hopelessness will pounce. So they keep moving.

People use distraction to self-medicate. A person without hope needs distraction the way a type-one diabetic needs insulin. The more dependent a person is on distraction, the more serious his or her hope deficiency. The soul that can’t make it through a day without multiple distractions is in desperate need of a cure – is in need of hope.

But hopelessness is a disease of the soul. Distractions may provide relief early on, but it will require higher and higher doses to keep the symptoms in check. Eventually, hopelessness will become distraction-resistant, like an infection that no longer responds to antibiotics.

Distraction treats the mind, not the spirit, but hopelessness is a condition of the spirit. It can only be cured through spiritual means. What the hopeless person needs is not another distraction but another life – the spiritual kind of life God gives to those who connect to him.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 3/1/2014

Christianity has always been a thinking person’s faith, but is there a way for a person to “think christianly” (to borrow a phrase from the literary critic Harry Blamires)? Does one think christianly only when pondering religious or theological issues – the Bible, the Church or life after death, to name a few? Or can one think christianly about any number of issues, even those generally regarded as secular?

The plain answer is that one can think christianly about any topic, including ostensibly secular ones, like international trade agreements, the ballet, global warming, and many others. And one can think non-christianly about any topic, including religious ones, like the Bible, the Church and life after death.

That one can think non-christianly about religious topics is evident in our universities, where one can earn a degree in “religious studies” without at all ascribing to the truth claims of the subject matter. Indeed, to do so might actually be a hindrance to academic success.

Because of the profound influence of Christian thought in the West prior to the nineteenth century, non-Christians may sometimes think christianly without even knowing it. Because of the widespread influence of secularism in the West since then, Christians may sometimes think non-christianly without even knowing it.

How does thinking christianly differ from thinking secularly? Blamires locates the difference between the two in the Christian’s “supernatural orientation.” He or she approaches any issue with the assumption that God is the source of everything and the foundational reality. From this perspective, absolutely everything in the universe bears some relationship to God.

This is very different from the person who thinks non-christianly. He or she approaches any issue with the assumption that the material world is the source of everything and the foundational reality. As Carl Sagan famously put it, “The Cosmos is all there is, ever was or ever will be.” From this perspective, nothing in the universe – including ethics, morality and even religion – is in any way related to God.

Eliminating God from one’s thoughts on any subject makes a vast difference in the conclusions one will reach. For example, if God is removed from our thinking about human sexuality, then the historic view that humans were designed – that there exists a blueprint for humanity – is lost. If humans are not designed, then there is no standard. If there is no standard, there is no norm. If there is no norm, sexual choices are governed only by desire.

A similar pattern follows whether one is thinking about human rights, politics or the future of fossil fuels. Those who think christianly will not always reach the same conclusions on such issues, but because they operate from the same premise they will understand each other.

How can a Christian, instructed in an irreligious educational system and awash in a secularist society, make sure he is thinking christianly? He begins by thinking (to use James W. Sire’s word for it) “worldviewishly.” A worldview is, as Sire describes it, the “set of assumptions that are the foundation of all our thoughts.” The Christian learns to identify those assumptions in the thinking of others and of himself.

But thinking christianly goes beyond an awareness of our worldview assumptions. It involves searching for truth in the light of the God revealed to us in and by Jesus Christ. The Christian asks, “What does this mean” – where “this” may be anything from the minimum wage to the death of a loved one – “in a world where the God of Jesus is present?”

To think like this one must be knowledgeable about the character and nature of the God of Jesus. The acquisition of such knowledge is the prime task for all who would think christianly. Equipped with such knowledge, a person can think profitably and fearlessly about any subject.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 2/22/14

In Some Notes on Reading, Annie Dillard tells of visiting the Beijing Library with her interpreter Song Hua. Beijing Library was then home to over 11 million books and only 200 chairs. Yet, Song Hua explained, only on rare occasions would a person be allowed to take a book from the library, and then only with good reason.

Dillard asked what a good reason might be. Song Hua said, “You need the information for your work.”

Then Dillard asked, “What if you were an engineer and wanted to borrow a book of literature?”

To her surprise, her interpreter burst into laughter. The idea that an engineer would want to read a literature book was absurd. Why would anyone want to think about ideas outside the scope of his or her duties?

The communist government at the time clearly understood the danger that real thinking poses to the status quo. Fresh ideas can change individuals, communities and societies. They can overturn the established order. For that reason, the Chinese government preferred that its people not be exposed to new ideas. It didn’t want them thinking hard and deep.

Intellectual isolationism, whether involuntary, as in Communist China or – worse – voluntary, as in contemporary America, poses serious dangers. Even in the Church one sees people relying on pat answers while avoiding the world of ideas and the painstaking work of careful thinking.

Yet Christianity has always been a thinking person’s faith. It certainly started that way. Judaism, out of which the Christian faith arose, stressed the importance of thinking. The Bible relates the many invitations to thoughtful dialogue the Lord extended: “Come now, let us reason together.” “Present your case.” “Let us argue the matter together.” God doesn’t call people to mindless obedience, but to thoughtful service.

In the New Testament one finds more of the same. Much more. Jesus never asks anyone, “How you do feel?” but he frequently asks, “What do you think?” The word translated “reason” or “reckon” is used forty times in the New Testament. Other “thinking” words, variously translated as “think,” “debate,” “consider,”  “convince,” “persuade,” etc., are in constant use. The prominence given to the role of the mind is impressive.

The Bible calls people to “prepare their minds for action.” God wants thinking people on his side. Intellectual laziness, like any other kind of laziness, is a sin. As C. S. Lewis put it long ago, “God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than any other slackers.”

What does the thinking Christian think about? There is plenty of material. St. Paul writes, “[W]hatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.”

Is nothing off-limits for the Christian mind? Some things certainly are, but they might not be the things that come first to mind. The Christian can think profitably (and fearlessly) about almost any issue, as long as he thinks deeply and from a richly informed Christian worldview. Both the church and the world are well-served by Christian thinkers who contemplate the thorny issues of the day – poverty, human sexuality, global warming, racial reconciliation, international relations, and many more – from a thoroughly biblical and classically Christian perspective.

But are there not some things a Christian would do well not to think about? I know of only one. The Christian should not, St. Paul makes clear, think about how to satisfy his own sinful cravings. To do so repeatedly enslaves the mind to the service of selfish desire – and God is no slave-owner. It makes the pursuit of truth a practical impossibility.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 2/15/2014

A friend and I once met a couple of Muslim acquaintances at a restaurant. We had arranged the meeting as a chance to get to know one another and to talk about our faith commitments.

In the course of the conversation, my new Muslim friend surprised me by saying, “There is a Muslim way to do everything.” He went on to explain that there is a Muslim way to walk, a Muslim way to tie your shoes and a Muslim way to perform all one’s daily activities.

I responded by telling him that there is a Christian way to do everything too, which surprised him. I then quoted St. Paul’s instruction to the Corinthian church: “Do everything in love.”

St. Paul gave this instruction immediately after exhorting the Corinthian Christians to be on their guard, to stand firm in the faith, to be people of courage and to be strong. Or, as Eugene Peterson paraphrased it: “Keep your eyes open, hold tight to your convictions, give it all you’ve got, be resolute, and love without stopping.” The apostle Paul clearly believed that whatever a Christian is required to do, he or she can do in love.

If a Christian finds it necessary to confront a friend over his self-destructive behaviors, he will do it in a loving manner, as an act of love toward his friend. If she writes a letter to the editor, expressing her disagreement with a recent op-ed piece, she will do so with a strength inspired and characterized by love. If he chooses (or, for that matter, refuses) to participate with co-workers in a labor strike, he will do so because it seems to him the loving thing to do.

To “do everything in love” is the Christian way (though that has often been forgotten.) Christians value love as the greatest of the virtues and consider it to be the chief descriptor of the character of God. They are called to “live a life of love, just as Christ loved…”

Valentine’s Day is a Christian holiday for good reason: Christians are supposed to be recognizable by their love. But it was not romantic love that gave St. Valentine his reputation. He is remembered for his open-eyed, conviction-based, resolute, give-it-all-you’ve-got love for Jesus – a love that eventually sent him to martyrdom. How ironic that St. Valentine, who once commanded a Roman magistrate to destroy the idols of his pagan deities, is now virtually equated with a sissified version of the Roman god Cupid!

Christians celebrate romantic love, but they understand that love is more than romance. The Greek in which the Bible’s New Testament was written has four different words for love, only one of which refers to erotic love. The early Christians were so familiar with the nuances of love that one word just wouldn’t do.

They understood that there is a love that is most fully expressed in families, and they had a word for that. It is sometimes a rough and tumble kind of love, but it is fiercely loyal. It speaks its mind, but gives its all. This is the love that characterized early Christian relationships, and is constantly expressed in the familial terms they used to address each other: “brother” and “sister.”

They used another word to express the love of friendship. It appears frequently in the New Testament, and is used to describe Jesus’s love for his disciples, his disciples love for him and God’s love for his people. It is a love characterized by camaraderie. St. James goes so far as to speak of the possibility – incredible as it seems – that humans could be the friends of God.

But by far the most common word for love in the Bible is one that came into use around the time the first Christians appeared. It indicates a commitment that gives sacrificially for the good of another, and is the kind of love that best describes God himself. This unconditional love of God is what St. Valentine experienced, and then offered back to God in martyrdom. The St. Valentine’s Day tragedy is that this love – God’s love – often goes unrecognized and unrequited.

First Published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 2/8/14

When Oswald Chambers was serving as a chaplain with the British Army in Egypt during World War I, a young soldier approached him with disdain in his eyes. His words to the chaplain were almost an assault: “I can’t stand religious people,” he sneered.

In a confidential tone, Chambers responded, “Neither can I.” He then took the young soldier aside where they could speak privately and within an hour or so the anti-religious soldier had been converted to Christianity through the instrumentality of the anti-religious chaplain.

Oswald Chambers’ most famous work, “My Utmost for His Highest,” is one of the best-selling devotional books of all time. It was first published in 1924, seven years after Chambers’ death in Egypt, and has never been out of print since. It reveals throughout the perspective of the unique chaplain who admitted to a young soldier that he couldn’t stand religious people.

Chambers approaches life from a different angle than most people, sees truths that others miss, and expresses them in his own inimitable way. Many readers of “My Utmost” go through it year after year, and gain new insights each time around.

Recently a friend sent me a quote from “My Utmost” that is classic Chambers: “We are apt to think that everything that happens to us is to be turned into useful teaching; it is to be turned into something better than teaching, viz. into character. We shall find that the spheres God brings us into are not meant to teach us something but to make us something.”

Of course Chambers turned the things that happened to him into teaching – he went around the world teaching the truths that he had learned from his experiences. But he understood that teaching, if it is to be effective, must proceed from the character of the teacher, not merely from his intellect. Intellect reaches intellect; character reaches life.

Too much teaching in the modern church proceeds from intellect, rather than from character (and I do not exempt myself from the charge). The result has been a church of informed intellects but unformed character.

This is nothing new. St. Paul wrote the ancient Corinthians: “‘We all possess knowledge,’ as you say.” That’s certainly a good thing. But he goes on to warn, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” Spiritual instruction that reaches the mind but not the life bloats the intellect while leaving the character undeveloped. In other words, it produces spiritual bobbleheads.

What is character? Character is what a person is poised to do (or not do) in a given set of circumstances before he or she has time to think about it. As such, character is an instilled readiness to act in a particular way. One person may gossip when he hears about his boss’s marital problems while another may pray. Each is acting from his developed character.

Character is, to put it simply, who we really are. Understanding that helps us make sense of Jesus’s daunting admonition: “I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.” We think that our careless words should be excused, but Jesus understood that it is precisely our careless, unplanned words (and actions) that reveal who we really are – that is, that reveal our character.

How is character formed? Character is formed through repetitive actions. An experience – no matter how glorious it is – does not form character, though it may open a door to the kinds of actions that will. Some people collect experiences, the way a friend of mine collects dolls, but experiences do not transform character, even when they are genuine experiences of the divine,          Character is not only formed through repetitive actions, it can – thank God – be transformed through repetitive actions, intentionally undertaken in accordance with the truth. Perhaps this is why Jesus told would-be followers to take up their cross daily and follow him. Taking up their cross once would be an experience, but taking it up daily forms character.

First Published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, February 1, 2014

One could be excused for thinking that Christianity is in trouble. Church attendance, particularly in mainline Protestant churches, has declined. Since the heyday of the “Moral Majority,” Christian political influence has dropped dramatically. Recent data show that the percentage of people claiming no religious affiliation is growing rapidly.

The church’s moral authority has diminished. People are not turning to the church to ask what is right, they are turning to the courts to ask what is legal. The abortion and same-sex marriage issues emphatically illustrate the point.

Much has changed within a generation. Dwight Eisenhower was baptized into the Christian faith while he was in office. Jimmy Carter taught a Sunday School as often as he could, even when he was president. Bill Clinton was regularly photographed carrying a gigantic Bible as he left church services. Contrast these examples to President Obama who, in spite of ongoing criticism, does not feel it (even symbolically) important to attend church.

When, in the 1950s, Americans and Western Europeans distinguished themselves from their communist rivals they often did do so with a single word: the communists were “godless.” Americans, on the other hand, lived in the heart of Christendom.

The world has changed since then, and one man saw it coming. In the inaugural Pascal Lectures at the University of Waterloo, given in 1978, Malcom Muggeridge foretold the end of Christendom with prophetic insight.

He had long seen signs of it. They were everywhere. He saw it in the arts, in the works of Dali, Picasso and Beckett. “In the cycle of a great civilization,” he noted, “the artist begins as a priest and ends as a clown or buffoon.” He later added, “A dying civilization, Christendom, on a swiftly moving, ebbing tide, clutches at any novelty in art and literature, ready to accept and then almost at once reject whatever is new no matter how perverse or abnormal.”

Muggeridge also saw signs of Christendom’s end in the West’s systematic abandonment of Christian mores. He discerned even then that society was not moving from one set of moral values to another – from, for example, a Christian to a humanistic moral standard – but from a Christian moral standard to a moral vacuum, particularly in the areas of eroticism.

Humankind’s technological advancements have made it possible to move faster, grow richer, communicate more rapidly and even master many illnesses. But this has led, Muggeridge realized, to a “growing arrogance, a widening separation from the true nature of our being; in other words, an alienation from God.” “Christendom,” he said, “has dreamed up its own dissolution in the minds of its own intellectual elite … dismantling Christendom, depreciating and deprecating all its values.”

But the fall of Christendom does not represent the end of human history, any more than did the fall of Rome in 410 A.D. or the fall of Jerusalem nearly a millennium before that. Nor does the fall of Christendom, as Muggeridge made clear, represent the end of Christianity. Quite the contrary. “Amid the shambles of a fallen Christendom,” he said, “I feel a renewed confidence in the light of the Christian revelation with which it first began.”

Christendom may be sinking – is sinking – but Christ’s kingdom remains. While much has been lost, there is also much to gain. For example, living in Christendom made it possible for generations to suppose they were Christians when they were really only citizens. But in the fall of Christendom, only those truly committed to Christ will have any reason to bear his name.

On the other end of the spectrum, some people thought that in rejecting Christendom’s traditions they had rejected Christ. As Christendom falls, such people will find that Christ still stands and offers an attractive alternative to the kind of life the dominant culture can provide.

First published in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 1/25/14