The Way Home

A businessman friend of mine was in a restaurant in a large city to meet a prospective employee. As he waited his arrival, a family passed by on their way to be seated. He hardly noticed them, until the husband – a total stranger – turned around. He looked my friend in the eye and said, “You are going to have a spectacular year.”

My friend was speechless. The only thing he could think to say was “Thank you.” The enigmatic prophet then added, “The Lord wanted me to tell you that,” and continued on into the dining area. When my friend got to his table, he looked for the man, but couldn’t find him.

One wonders how most people would feel if some prophet told them what was going to happen in their lives during the coming year. Would they rather hear that everything in life was about to change or that everything was going to stay about the same?

Unless things are going badly, most of us would probably prefer the status quo over the experience of significant change. We have learned – sometimes the hard way – how to act and think in our present situation, and correctly perceive that a change, for good or ill, will require us to change with it. And, frankly, that is not something we’re sure we want.

This reluctance is understandable and normal. Even the political progressive likes to have his dinner at the same time each night, takes her coffee the same way year after year, and reads the paper each evening in his or her favorite chair. People have spent a lifetime digging the rut they are in and feel they have earned the right to enjoy it.

We may want to decorate our rut, make it more comfortable and secure, but please don’t force us out of it. We want to feel differently – happier and more peaceful, less angry and greedy – but we want that to happen without having to change our routine.

People often resolve to change things about themselves at the beginning of the New Year. They want to weigh less, but they don’t want to change their eating habits. They want to become more spiritual, but they don’t want to get up early to pray or meditate on Scripture. They want to resolve conflicts, but they do not want to go to a counselor or sit down with their adversary. So nothing changes. The disinclination to encounter new (and potentially uncomfortable) experiences prevents us from making positive, life-enhancing changes.

Over the years I have asked hundreds of people about the conditions in which they have experienced the most spiritual growth. Nearly all have reported that they have grown most in times of hardship and conflict. Having heard that same report again and again, I came to believe that difficulty was essential to spiritual growth. Now I’m not so sure.

Perhaps the necessary condition for spiritual growth is not hardship, but change. The status quo is the enemy of progress. We won’t grow spiritually until we get out of our rut.

Hardship – illness, conflict, bereavement, unemployment, etc. – change the situation in which we operate and, in so doing, create space for personal and spiritual growth. But space for personal and spiritual growth can be created in other (more exciting and less painful) ways as well: by acts of generosity, changes in routine, new friendships and exploits of faith.

I’ve often seen people experience rich personal growth when they first begin going to church. I’d like to attribute this to the preaching, but I don’t think that is the case. Rather, their change of routine – prompted by faith – has created room for spiritual growth. New activities result in a “disequilibrium,” as Mark Scandrette puts it, “that can create space for change.”

Perhaps our number one New Year’s resolution should be: “Create space for change.” We can do that by volunteering time to help the homeless or feed the hungry, by taking a class or attending church – there must be a million ways. But one thing is for sure: we’ll find little space for change – and little room for growth – until we do something to climb out of our rut.

First published in the Coldwater Daily Reporter, 12/28/13

Finally: Take a deep breath and slow down. Enter into Christmas with poise. Ask Jesus to come again, this time into your life, but be sure that you are collected enough to notice when he does. Most people in Bethlehem missed him the first time he came and, if you are not careful, you’ll do the same. Jesus can come to a person at any time, in the guise of someone in need or in the generous love of a friend. When he does, don’t miss him.

On 12/10 I sent a letter to the editor of The Coldwater Daily Reporter, responding to an op-ed piece by the night desk editor, Chris Worst (see: http://www.thedailyreporter.com/article/20131206/NEWS/131209491/1007/OPINION). I carbon-copied Mr. Worst as a courtesy and have since communicated with him by email. He says that he disagrees with my letter on many point, but was respectful. I am hoping that he and I can have coffee together soon and get to know each other better.

Mr. Worst did express appreciation for the respectful tone of my letter, and mentioned that his paper had received other letters that were negative in tone. I urge Christians, who are to love even their enemies (that is, the people who are enemies toward them) to show respect and kindness even when disagreeing with the views of others. If we do not follow our Master’s instructions in this, we may win a battle or two over some moral issue, but we will surely lose the culture war – and our own joy and peace in the process.

Response to Chris Worst

To the Editor:

            Chris Worst, the night desk editor for The Daily Reporter, wrote an op-ed piece in the December 6^th issue titled, “Marriage Equality Is Inevitable.” I have appreciated Mr. Worst’s work, but would like to respond to what I believe are inaccuracies or misrepresentations in the piece. I do not believe these were intentional – Mr. Worst was relaying the talking points that the advocates of gay marriage have developed over the past few years – but they are, I believe, misleading.

            First, Mr. Worst raises what he terms “the most common argument against gay marriage, that of it going against the Bible.” He admits that gay marriage contradicts Jewish and Christian scriptures, and quotes as evidence Leviticus 18:22, which forbids sexual relations between men. He does not try to argue that this particular command is no longer applicable but that the Bible itself cannot be considered a reliable guide to moral behavior in our day and age.

            He does this by comparing the prohibition against homosexuality to a command that comes later in the book of Leviticus: “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard” (Leviticus 19:27, KJV). He makes the point that “… you don’t see Christian zealots protesting at funerals over shaving, do you?”

            But this is one of those misunderstandings. The prohibition against cutting off hair or beard made perfect sense in the culture to which it was given. It sits along co-texts on divination and the cultic practice of cutting one’s body in necromancy. Many ancient cultures used hair cut from the head or beard in sorcery and divination, which is what is being prohibited. It is hermeneutical malpractice to compare the two prohibitions without considering their contexts.

            Further, Mr. Worst suggests that the “Defense of Marriage Act” is a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” But it is hard to see how the Defense of Marriage Act established religion. It rather was intended to maintain an established tradition that has been practiced by peoples of various religions (and of no religion at all) around the world and across time. I found the comparison to “Sharia law” to be way over the top.

            Next Mr. Worst uses what has become the most common argument for gay marriage: that two people who love each other should be able to be married. In other words, marriage is really all about our feelings and desires. But marriage has always been about much more than that. The Book of Common Prayer, first published in 1549, states “The union of husband and wife in heart, body and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God’s will, for the procreation of children and their nurture in the knowledge and love of the Lord.”

            The fact is that homosexual behavior has been present throughout history. Some cultures, like the ancient Romans, openly practiced pedastry for centuries. But no culture in the history of the world, until very recently, ever considered homosexual relationships to be the same thing as marriage. This was not a religious view – the people involved were from many different religions and some held no religion at all – it was the view of history.

            Though I disagree with Mr. Worst on the advisability of gay marriage, I do agree with him on some points: divorce is more damaging to the institution of marriage than the legalization of gay marriage. I also agree – though I wish I didn’t – that the legalization of gay marriage is inevitable. Our culture is (after a propaganda campaign of several decades) moving faster and faster in that direction. Its momentum will likely carry it to fulfillment.

            One final thing: I sense from Mr. Worst’s tone that he has encountered “Christian zealots” who, like the people from Westboro Baptist Church, approach the issue with anger and contempt, and with no desire to understand the opinions of others. I have no desire to be one of those zealots. In fact, I, like many other Christians, find it every bit as offensive as does Mr. Worst.

            This year Americans celebrated Thanksgiving by spending about 30 billion dollars on meals, travel and ancillary expenses (not including Black Friday spending). Approximately 45 million turkeys were purchased and cooked. And, according to AAA, approximately 43 million Americans traveled over 50 miles to spend Thanksgiving with friends and family.

            Americans give their money and time to celebrate Thanksgiving Day. They give their afternoon to watch the Detroit Lions. They give their diets a reprieve. The one thing they might not give on Thanksgiving Day is thanks. It’s the missing ingredient in our celebration.

            And that’s a shame, according to Dr. Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, because giving thanks is good for a person – really good. Emmons has done ground-breaking research into the causes and effects of gratitude. His findings suggest that it is simply unhealthy – physically and emotionally – to lack gratitude.

            Dr. Emmons has written that there “are reasons to believe that experiences of gratitude might be associated – perhaps even in a causal fashion – with happiness and well being. Researchers, writers, and practitioners have all speculated that gratitude possesses happiness-bestowing properties.”

            Emmons’s research found that grateful people make better neighbors. They were more likely than others to help someone with a personal problem or to offer emotional support to another.

            His research also suggests that there are physical benefits associated with giving thanks. People who regularly focus on their reasons for gratitude get more sleep and enjoy better sleep quality. They even experience fewer symptoms of physical illnesses.

            Giving thanks is emotionally healthy as well. Those who do so regularly report a greater sense of optimism and a more profound connectedness to others. They feel less lonely. The bottom line is that thankful people are happier and healthier than their unthankful peers.

            So what does it take to be a more thankful person? Apparently it does not take better or more comfortable circumstances. Emmons randomly divided students into three subject groups. One was to keep a journal of gratitude-inducing experiences, another a journal of irritants and the third a journal of events that affected their lives during the week. It is statistically unlikely that those in the gratitude group experienced more positive circumstances than the others, yet they were happier and healthier than their peers in the other two groups.

            This strongly suggests that gratitude is not dependent upon one’s circumstances but on one’s determined choice to reflect on the positive aspects of his or her circumstances. The person who is intentional about counting blessings is almost certain to find more blessings to count than the person who is not, and will be in a much better place to do so when life gets tough.

            And since, as Dr. Emmons puts it, gratefulness is “anchored in spirituality”; and since “a secular perspective is going to tend to erode that sense of gratefulness”; it is important to strengthen one’s spiritual life. Many find reading the Bible, praying and joining with a church enormously helpful to this end.

One staple of the spiritual life is the prayer of gratitude. St. Paul, when instructing his readers on the life of prayer, says: “…in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Pray about everything, he says, but do so with thanksgiving.

            Another way to become more thankful is to act thankful. Expressing gratitude – even when one does not feel it – can trigger a gratitude response. When a person can’t think himself into a new way of acting he can often act himself into a new way of thinking.

            It turns out that giving thanks is not just a religious duty. It’s good sense.

First published in the Coldwater Daily Reporter, Saturday, November 30, 2013

Christians have over the centuries used differing, and sometimes even contradictory, terminology to describe conversion. How does a person begin the Christian life? What are the initial experiences that evidence a person’s salvation?

Catholics and some Protestants have sometimes suggested that the Christian life begins with baptism. This accords well with biblical texts like St. Peter’s invitation to “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” St. Paul, likewise, said: “Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.”

But many Christians challenge the idea that baptism has a causal role in conversion. They particularly disparage the practice of infant baptism, which they claim lacks biblical warrant. They argue that baptism is a sign, not a cause, of the inward experience of the grace that comes to a person through faith.

Some Christians, particularly Evangelicals, use the term “born again” to describe one’s entrance into the Christian life. This language has the imprimatur of Jesus himself, who coined the term when he told a respected religious leader that he “must be born again,” for one cannot otherwise “see the kingdom of heaven.” Evangelicals understand a person to be born again by an act of God that in some way corresponds with a person’s faith in Jesus.

Descriptions such as those given above are grossly oversimplified and cannot be understood apart from the theological milieu from which they come. It’s clear that differences exist, but it may be possible to harmonize some of these perspectives, since the vocabulary of conversion, as it is used in the various theological camps, is not necessarily mutually exclusive.

However, in discussions of conversion, insufficient attention has been given to the word itself. In theological parlance, “conversion” is commonly used to describe the moment of entry into the Christian life. But the Scriptures rarely, perhaps never, use the term in this way. In Scripture, conversion is something that happens to a person, which begins to turn him or her into something he or she had never been before. As such, conversion is more than a starting point.

Conversion changes a person’s identity, not merely his or her destination. Usually when the subject of conversion is discussed, the underlying assumption is that the whole point of conversion is to alter one’s destination from hell to heaven. But the biblical passages about conversion lack a strong emphasis on destination. Rather, the emphasis is placed on the change a person experiences, a change that brings healing and forgiveness and a new kind of life.

It is regrettable, but in some parts of the Church the emphasis on a person’s introduction to the Christian life – call it conversion, if you will – is emphasized to the neglect of almost everything that follows. The Christian gospel is reduced to an invitation to the afterlife and, as such, has little bearing on the way a person lives in the present.

Where such views are held, the broad biblical term “salvation” is used synonymously with much narrower terms, like “forgiveness” or “justification.” But this is something the biblical writers do not do. The confusion of these terms results in a truncated gospel, in which the good news is about nothing other than getting into heaven when one dies.

To be fair, some who hold this view go on to say that a person who has responded to the good news ought to obey God, as a way of expressing appreciation to him. But this hardly does justice to biblical teaching or personal experience. The Bible does not speak of people being saved into heaven but into a kingdom and a life – a life that starts now and continues forever.

If the moment of conversion is what Christianity is all about, then faith will, of necessity, seem irrelevant to daily life. But conversion is to a qualitatively different, transformed kind of life. It begins now, not at some future date, and is relevant to everything a person is and does.

Published first in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, November 23, 2013

Our culture is swimming in an ocean of contempt. And we’re drowning.

Politics, which has for the better part of two decades majored in the science of smear, is a major source of this social pollution. Liberals call conservatives stupid and conservatives call liberals un-American. Campaigns are organized around opportunities for disdain and mockery. In recent years, political commentators have openly called their opponents “idiots,” “liars and murderers” and, in one notable case, even called the president of the United States a “jackass.”

The inevitable result of such contempt is more contempt. And with it, resentment, bitterness, hostility and gridlock. While Americans complain about Congress’s inability to get things done, they have taken the contempt of Congress – and within Congress – for granted. But how are people supposed to work together after they’ve just called each other idiots?

Contempt is destructive to communal life and wellbeing. According to Princeton Professor (and Rabbi) Uri Cohen, ancient Judaism prohibited the use of mockery, except when it expressed contempt for idolatry. In all other cases it was forbidden. Likewise, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus strongly warned his followers against using contemptuous language.

Contempt eats away at any social institution, whether political, ecclesiastical or familial. In a paper titled, “Ridicule as a Weapon,” Professor J. Michael Waller quotes the Czech novelist Milan Kundera as saying, “No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled, because laughter is the rust that corrodes everything.”

But the rust of contempt not only corrodes great movements, it eats away at families and churches and communities. Contempt is a social cancer.

In the bestseller, “Blink,” Malcom Gladwell relates the research of Professor John Gottman, from the University of Washington. Gottman has been able to identify couples who will experience relationship failure with an accuracy that is unmatched by marital therapists, marital researchers and pastoral counselors.

His secret? Professor Gottman watches couples for the four key signs that predict serious marital discord: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism and contempt. When he sees such behavior, he knows that a couple is highly likely to split up.

But even among these four negative behaviors, one is worse than all the rest: contempt. Contempt, Gottman says, “is qualitatively different from” these other behaviors and “far more damaging.” Contempt, according to research, can even predict the number of colds a husband or wife gets – it is so stressful that it affects the immune system’s ability to fight off infection.

Contempt is used to reject and exclude others from community – even when it is a community of two in a marriage, or of four in a family. And with contempt, what goes around comes around. It is a communicable disease. It spreads from person to person through insult, sarcasm, mockery and body language (rolling eyes and scornful facial expressions).

Jesus, who understood better than anyone the dynamics of social interaction, saw contempt as devastating to a life well lived. In his famous “Sermon on the Mount,” he begins his teaching on true inner goodness with a warning against anger and contempt.

Anger is usually, in our experience, wrapped up with a sense of self-righteousness and carries with it a component of malice. “But,” as Dallas Willard once put it, “contempt is a greater evil than anger… it is a kind of studied degradation of another . . . It is never justifiable or good.”

The instruments of contempt – profanity, mockery, insult, and the like – have no place in family life or national conversation. Jesus warned in the most vigorous language possible that those who use contempt will pay a dreadful price for it. In America, we are already making payments, and the interest rates are skyrocketing.

According to Nicholas Eberhardt, writing in the Wall Street Journal, entitlement transfers from the government to individuals have grown by 72 percent since 1960, and that is after adjusting for inflation and population growth.

Entitlement spending now comprises two-thirds of the federal budget. Half of all American households currently receive income from the government in entitlement payouts. The government owes, in the form of its entitlement commitments, approximately $7,200 for every man, woman and child living in the United States.

But it would be a mistake to think that the poor and the elderly – the recipients of Medicaid and Medicare, of welfare benefits and Social Security checks – necessarily have an “entitlement complex.” It would be an even bigger mistake to think they were the only ones.

Entitlement thinking is pervasive in our culture. Both corporate CEOs and the Occupy Wall Street protestors who despise them are vulnerable to its infection. The entitlement mentality has poisoned middle-class trade unions. It has corrupted IRS officials. Our nation’s entitlement obligations threaten to disable the economy, but that’s not the worst of it (in spite of what fiscal conservatives say). It’s the mindset of entitlement that’s killing us. And we’re all tainted by it.

And not just us. Entitlement thinking is found on the other side of the Atlantic too. So the Most Reverend Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, speaks of “a culture of entitlement” in London. And his is just one of many voices sounding the alarm in the West.

Let me add my voice to that chorus, though I will leave others to address the economic impact of entitlements and point the way out of the fiscal morass in which we find ourselves. My concern is with the debilitating spiritual consequences of entitlement thinking.

For one thing, it makes entering the spiritual life problematic. A rich spiritual life is predicated upon God’s grace, not upon my rights. The very idea that I deserve salvation makes it impossible for me to receive it. In Jesus’ story, it is the publican (not the “Republican,” just to be clear) who goes home justified. Unlike the Pharisee, who looks down on him, he knows he doesn’t deserve God’s favor. Yet he’s the one who receives it.

The entitlement mindset makes gratitude, which is such a vital part of the spiritual life, impossible. There is no spiritual health apart from gratitude, but there is no gratitude in the entitlement mindset. How can I be grateful for what I believe is mine by right? Moses long ago warned: “When you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down … and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God.” That is how the entitlement mindset works.

Entitlement thinking also leaves a person unprepared for the difficulties of life. Jesus warned, “In this world, you will have trouble.” It is guaranteed. Yet when a person who feels entitled to comfort, health or happiness encounters hardship, it threatens to undo him. Adversity leaves him angry and disillusioned, but it cannot make him strong, for the entitled are not capable of perseverance.

The entitlement mindset discourages personal effort, without which there is no spiritual growth. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote that a rich spiritual life is only found in “vigorous, universal obedience … in watchfulness and painfulness, in denying ourselves, and taking up our cross daily; as well as in earnest prayer…”

Spiritual joy is found in sacrifice, but that is not a place the entitlement mindset cares to go. A person who feels entitled stands ready to sacrifice others to his cause – even his spiritual cause – but he will not sacrifice himself. Yet, ironically, apart from such sacrifice spiritual growth and joy are not possible.

Published first in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, Saturday, October26, 2013

I was out before dawn one morning this week. There were patches of fog along the ground, but the stars were magnificent against a moonless ebony sky. I climbed into the car and set out to meet fellow pastors at a prayer retreat about an hour away.

I drove west on the state route, setting my cruise control at the speed limit and enjoying a Bach harpsichord concerto, followed by a Michael Gungor Band album. I took pleasure in juxtaposing their very different musical styles – would they be able to enjoy each other?

It wasn’t long before I had a car following hard on my back bumper – someone, I suppose, hurrying to work in the next town. Then it was two cars, then three. Soon I was leading a parade. It wasn’t long before a pickup from somewhere in the back of the line came flying around us. Almost immediately another car followed his example.

It’s not like I wasn’t driving the speed limit. Even so, some cars passed through the fog while others formed an impatient procession behind me, probably cursing the dotard at the front of the line, who was going to make them all late for work.

I thought about the people following me and wondered why they were in such a rush. Some probably left too late to get to a job they despise but can’t afford to lose. After staying up the night before to watch a show they didn’t care about, they set their alarms for the last possible moment, and woke to the hurry and dash. And tomorrow they’ll do it all over again.

In reading through the Gospels I’ve noticed something worth contemplating: though Jesus was on a mission to save the world, he never seemed to be in a hurry. There was a rhythm to his life, and he lived within it, and even the emergencies of life could not force him out of it.

Various religious traditions, as well as contemporary non-religious self-help programs, speak of the possibility of living in the moment in ways that free a person from anxiety and enable him to enjoy and appreciate life. But to live in the moment one must be anchored to the eternal, just as, for the musician, to improvise well one must be grounded in the score.

Again, Jesus provides an excellent example of this. He handled both emergencies and opportunities – not to mention the daily grind – from a position of stability, firmly balanced between eternity and the present moment. He could fully experience the joys and sorrows of the present without anxiety because he was firmly connected to the eternal. He was rooted.

This is precisely what most of us in contemporary society lack. We are not rooted in eternity or even in the past; we are instead carried along by the social fads of the day or the urgent demands of personal desire. Our modern economy is, in fact, conditioned on this sad reality.

In such a state we are easily manipulated by the demands of other people’s desires as well as our own. We are vulnerable to deception and easily swallow the false advertising of the day. St. Paul described people in this condition as spiritual “infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.”

Paradoxically, we can only live fully in the moment when we are connected to something outside the moment. Until we know we are being held, we will never really be able to let go and experience life in its abundance. Not knowing that, we rush through life, grasping at anything that promises – even falsely – to meet our needs.

Carl Jung said, “Hurry is not of the devil; it is the devil.” I’m not sure I understand what he meant by that, but I suppose Jung saw hurry as injurious to the spirit. Yet perhaps it is not just that hurry injures the spirit, but that an injured spirit cannot help but hurry. If that is so, help will not come merely from slowing down, but from reaching up and connecting to the eternal.

Published first in the Coldwater Daily Reporter, 10/12/2013

Though Billy Graham was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1992, he kept up a rigorous schedule through the next decade. But since his final evangelistic crusade in 2005 he has been keeping a low profile. He retired to his home in the mountains of western North Carolina and has made few public appearances since his wife Ruth died in 2007.

Now at almost 95 years of age, the “Pastor to Presidents” is out with a new book titled, “The Reason for My Hope.” Graham recently spoke about himself and his book in an interview with Christianity Today, the evangelical magazine that he founded sixty years ago.

            When asked about the title of his book, Graham responded that he felt burdened to write a book that addressed the issue of ‘easy believism,’ which he described as an “epidemic.” It’s an interesting subject for the evangelist to address, and especially since critics have argued that Graham himself has contributed to the problem. The data suggest that most of the people who respond to the invitation at a Billy Graham crusade do not go on to participate in a local church.

            But Graham denounces any kind of faith that doesn’t impact one’s life. “It should not be surprising,” he writes, “if people believe easily in a God who makes no demands, but this is not the God of the Bible.”

            Likewise, “Satan has cleverly misled people by whispering that they can believe in Jesus Christ without being changed, but this is the Devil’s lie.”

            Graham hopes that people reading his book will “comprehend the privilege and responsibility of living the Christian life.” He writes, “When Jesus becomes our Master, we set aside our way and walk his way. It is not always easy but enormously productive and challenging, because those who follow him become shining lights in a very dark world.”

            Mr. Graham is surely right to warn his readers against “easy believism.” When it comes to any matter that requires faith – whether Christianity, another religion or atheism itself – “easy believism” is frequently a mere preliminary to “easy leavism.”

            One might object that belief is never easy, but that probably depends on whether one is thinking of the unbeliever’s initial entrance into belief or the believer’s intention to continue in it.

            For some people, entering into faith does not seem difficult. They already have profound respect for people – parents, friends and teachers, among others – who believe. They admire the quality of their intellects and trust their judgments. “If he believes it,” they say, “so do I.”

            For other people, belief is a challenge. They know and respect intelligent and thoughtful people who believe, but they know equally intelligent and thoughtful people who do not. They realize that a completely objective assessment of the data is not possible and, since belief has not forced itself on them, they know they must choose what to believe.

            But however easy one finds entry into belief, sustaining belief is another matter. As C. S. Lewis once pointed out, it is a mistake to assume “that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it shows up.” This, he notes, would be so only if “the human mind is completely ruled by reason,” which, of course, it is not.

            In “Mere Christianity” Lewis notes that even after becoming a Christian, there are times when “the whole thing looks very improbable.” But he also admits that when he was an atheist, there were times when Christianity “looked terribly probable.” Faith, he concluded, “is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of changing moods.”

            But “holding on” requires more than mere intellectual assent to a proposition. Intellectual assent will fail unless one acts in a manner that is consistent with the proposition. Another way of putting it – in the wise words of the old gospel song – is that one must “trust and obey.”

Published first in the Coldwater Daily Reporter, 10/19/2013

A recent analysis of data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that the suicide rate in the U.S. increased dramatically from 2008 to 2010. CBS news reports that the rate has jumped by almost 50 percent for people in their fifties since 1999. During the same time period there was a sixty percent rise for women between ages 60 and 64.

This comes at a time when the suicide rate among current and former military personnel has skyrocketed, prompting President Obama to describe it as an “epidemic.” CNN reported in September that as many as 22 veterans take their lives every day.

As disturbing as these statistics are, the reality is probably worse than they suggest. Julie Phillips, an associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University who has published research on rising suicide rates, has publicly stated that the statistics are “vastly underreported.”

Experts point to the 2008 economic downturn to explain this disturbing trend. But while there certainly seems to be a correlation, people do not take their lives because they’ve lost a job or even because they’ve lost their retirement savings. They take their lives because they’ve lost their hope. We are in the midst of an epidemic of hopelessness.

Hopelessness is not primarily an economic condition. It is a spiritual one. It is not caused by instability in the stock market but by despair in the soul. And the conditions are right for hopelessness to spread across Western Society.

Aldous Huxley, best known for his novel “Brave New World,” once wrote, “Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape . . . is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul.” Seeing the same reality, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy, after achieving enormous popularity and amassing great wealth, went through a long period of despair. He asked, “Why do I live?” The answer he got, while lacking the technical terms employed by today’s specialists in the physical sciences, is for all intents and purposes the same answer: “In infinite space, in infinite time, infinitely small particles change their forms in infinite complexity, and when you have understood the laws of those mutations of form you will understand why you live on the earth.”

The world Tolstoy described – the same world described in updated language by Stephen Hawking and others – is a purely material world, a world void of spirit and therefore void of God. In such a world hopelessness is pandemic for its residents are, as St. Paul put it, “without hope and without God in the world.”

In a world like this – where meaning is not resident but transient – hopelessness spreads faster than a cold virus in a kindergarten classroom. People who don’t even know they’ve caught it nevertheless suffer its devastating consequences. It’s true they don’t say to themselves, “I live in an existentially meaningless world.” What they say is, “I just can’t take it anymore.”

A significant reversal of the trend toward despair will not happen because of an upturn in the economy but because of a return to God and a realistically spiritual worldview. For if we are spiritual beings – as Jesus taught and the great religious teachers and philosophers believed – then ignoring the spiritual will have serious consequences, chief of which is despair.

Recognizing and accepting the fact that we are spiritual beings living in a spiritual world is the only lasting cure for hopelessness. Life must have meaning; slogans and catchphrases, which are the currency of communication in a meaningless world, will never do.

Jesus invited us into a world ruled by a good and loving God, and is prepared to help us learn how to live and thrive in it. We enter this world through our confidence in him, which the Bible calls faith. And those who enter it leave hopelessness at the door.

Published first in The Coldwater Daily Reporter, 10/5/2013