I was reading in Bill Gilhams’s book What God Wishes Christians Knew About Christianity, a lengthy title to a stellar read (so far), and he was hammering away at his premise, the main premise of this book and the other one I read Lifetime Guarantee: that Jesus offers us not only salvation and redemption, but an actual life; that the life he lived qualified him for the death he died, and the death he died qualifies us for the life he lives, that he gave his life for us, to give his life to us, to live his life through us. And he was talking about the literal indwelling of Christ in us, that we are to offer our bodies as living sacrifices in the most basic sense, namely, that as long as we live we are to sacrifice ourselves to Jesus on a continual and unstoppable basis. And in the Spirit of that Ian Thomas quote, I was mulling over how Jesus can live through me at this particular point in my life.
Here I am, at loose ends, struggling with a cornucopia of difficulties ranging from my health and prospectus for future health, to my job and prospectus for future vocation, to my complete lack of a social life and the bleak prospectus of ever finding a woman who could stand me. Oh, yes. I forgot my lack of self esteem. Thank you for pointing that out.
So I was pondering this and thinking about what my life would look like if Christ was actually living through me. That is, how it would affect me on a daily basis. How would it affect my job hunt, the various teaching jobs I would like. And how would it affect how I deal with my roommate, the relationship with whom no small amount of tension has accumulated. And how it would affect my teaching abilities and the way I handle my class, in particular one student whom I can only describe as willfully ignorant and stubborn and refuses to follow the simplest of directions or to put forth a bare minimum of effort. And how it would affect my desire and determination (lack thereof) to lose weight and become a healthier person. And I suppose I must also consider how it would affect my pleasures, the sort of things I watch on TV, the amount of TV I watch, the books I read and how much, the movies I rent, the time I spend frivolously playing Hearts during the day, and the obsession I have with the game of golf. Not, as you might understand, how Christ in me would affect my spiritual stance on these matters per se, though certainly the spirit is inextricably linked to the mind and body, and can therefore affect our behavior. This is a universal truth; otherwise the promise Gilham and Thomas and my dad harp on, the message of liberation and abundant life they derive from the Gospel and the New Testament, would be meaningless since our spiritual resurrection would have no bearing on our mortal lives. And this misapprehension is the very thing they are railing against. No, I was pondering how Christ living through me would affect these things on a practical, real, measurable way. How that spiritual transformation, the evidence of Christ in me, would help me find a job or a girl or drop twenty pounds.
This is by no means a new revelation to me. But it struck me that Jesus spent 30 years on Earth (as far as we know) before he embarked on his mission. So I was wondering: Did Jesus ever get frustrated with the wait? Did he ever wonder what exactly the Father was going to do with him and through him for the people of Israel? Did he listen to his father’s clients or the local priests rant about the Romans and wonder whether he would drive them out? Did he ever lose faith or doubt about his purpose, if only for a moment? Did he ever wonder, What is God’s plan for my life?
By these questions I don’t mean to throw into question the divinity of Christ. But I do think that he gave up his absolute knowledge of time when he became a man. Did he retain the course of his own life, seeing the miracles he would perform, the people he would encounter, the betrayals he would suffer, the death and torment he would endure, and the resurrection he would undergo? Or did the Father reveal things only when Jesus needed to know them, as He seems to do with us? Jesus walked in complete reliance on the Father, he claimed, doing nothing he didn’t see his Father do. And we are to live the life of Jesus! We are to do the things Jesus did! Isn’t that what it means that Jesus lives through us? Or at least, potentially what it might mean? Not that we will walk on water and calm angry seas with a word, necessarily, but that we might? Jesus did, and he wants to live his life through us, so it might be on the table, no?
More to the point, however, I was meditating on the mentality of Jesus as he passed his twenties, as he saw his contemporaries settle down, marry, start families, begin to ascend the social ladder. Did he rebuff other families’ advances to marry him off to their daughters? Did his parents try to persuade him to embrace his trade? Did they know even then that his would be a life lived out of joint with the rest of the world, that he would never call Nazareth home or marry or become a member of society? And did he ever sit in his room after the seventeenth marriage proposal he turned down, coming on his twenty-ninth birthday, and wonder, When will my purpose begin to take place? When will my true Father begin to use me? When will I fulfill my destiny?
I want to know, because it says somewhere that he can sympathize with us because he went through the things we go through. Hebrews I think. Anyway, sometimes Jesus seems as far away as the Father. Like a perfect son who always pleases his father and meets expectations naturally arouses jealousy in his brothers for a multiplicity of reasons, not the least of which that they know he’s doing things right and thereby convicting them of all the things they’re doing wrong. I was the good son, well-behaved and conscientious to my parents, and so my sisters regarded me as our parents’ favorites for the simple fact that the parents berated and punished me less than them (my sisters). The nail(s) that stick up get hammered down, and I realized early on the benefits of the path of least resistance. Not out of any altruistic desire to please my parents and by proxy God, but rather to avoid spankings. I let my sisters battle each other, and learned to play the peacemaker, another gold star in my column of self-worth. And they resented me for it. They still do, to one degree or another. And so I was apart from them in their eyes. I couldn’t commiserate when they got treated harshly and (in their eyes) unfairly. And I think I regard Jesus in such a light at times. How could he know how hard it is to overcome temptation? He never sinned! He was God! He started out without the seed of Adam in him. Head start! No fair! Yeah, sure, Jesus, easy for you to say “be perfect like how I am perfect,” don’t you know how infuriating that sounds? Like it's easy, you just have to want it? Like perfection is a choice I can make and everything else will be gravy? All the more frustrating when I fail, and that constant reminder of my failure is what can drive a wedge between me and Jesus. How could he possibly understand what it’s like to be tossed in the gale winds of life, struggling toward the promise of light and shelter, not knowing if the directions scratched in the dirt are even correct or if I’m even following them right, if I understood them in the first place?
Did Jesus ever have to go job hunting? Did he worry about his health or looks? You get the idea. As you can tell, my faith needs some work. Or maybe not. After all, I’m not going to abandon it, I’m going to persevere, and that’s what Jesus wants, right? But does he want dogged effort or helpless surrender? And if surrender then how can I be sure that he…
O wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of sin and death?
Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
But you see my predicament.
Don't you?
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Childish
Childish
I saw a child today
She in constant motion
Jumping up and down
As if the world were her springboard.
She looked out a window
Then surveyed the restaurant
Searching for distraction
A way to sensible the world.
I found myself melancholy
Wishing I were a child.
Pure and inquisitive
Selfish and unaware
Dependent and awestruck
Rambunctious and recalcitrant.
Was I ever so childish?
When did I lose my wonder?
When did I stop looking out windows
For the vistas they contained?
When did I cease to jump
With the quivering excitement,
The joy of experience,
The springboard of life,
To dive into horizons,
To ignore myself
Because the world was more
Interesting?
Would I surrender my wealth
Of experience for a chance
To return to the days of Halcyon?
She looked at me as she left.
I lowered my eyes
As I would in the presence
Of a higher order of being,
Ashamed of my tepid
Nibbling on the edges
Of life’s broad smorgasbord
Of wonder.
My hunger sated, I still
Felt strangely empty.
Drained,
Like a leaky bucket.
She looked satisfied.
And I envied her.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Book Review: Peace Like a River
I have long been troubled by what I have perceived to be a sad lack of good fiction from a Christian perspective. At least, modern fiction. I’ve read a great many novels written since the turn of the century (19th , that is) and most come off as sermons, allegories, or fairy tales. Do not misunderstand me. I am not degrading great works of Christian fiction whole-cloth. I return to the works of C. S. Lewis with the same love and devotion of a pampered pet to its loving master, fully confident of quality and Christ in the details. There are other wonderful examples I could name, and even some of the contemporary works aren’t bad, per se. But not a work that doesn’t invoke angels and demons, where the forces of God and Lucifer square off over some poor soul’s plight or some critical issue and event upon which the fates of nations or multitudes turn. Or, a lush and tender return to pastoral times involving figures of Biblical or Christian traditions. The works of Orson Scott Card come to mind. And though I’ve not yet read them, I imagine George MacDonald’s forays into this kind of thing are much the same.
As is becoming painfully apparent to you, my experiences and therefore authority to make such a sweeping judgement on the state of contemporary Christian fiction is woefully inadequate. However, it is true that having read works like Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, or Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, or sundry Hemmingway or Orwell, Borges or Gracia Marquez, a powerful and poignant portrait of life as told by a Christian never crossed my path. I would finish a masterpiece like Steinbeck’s, my spirit heavy with the tragedy of life, only marginally buoyed by whatever scraps of hope could be found in the “indomitable spirit of Man,” and bemoan that such events would take place even in fiction without the acknowledgment of God other than as an absent landlord or obtuse puppeteer. When, O Lord, will someone write such a story with You in it? I’d wonder. Well, if no one else is going to, I’ll take up the task.
I have long regarded it as my job to write such a novel that smacks of verisimilitude, that an atheist lit professor could have their students read in class and not bat an eyelash about the God parts. In short, a tale of real events that happened in which the Lord plays a part. The lack demanded redress, and I’d have to do it. And the Lord has once again set me straight, because it’s already been written. It’s by Leif Enger and it’s called Peace Like A River.
And it’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read.
And it’s even better because of the God parts.
I won’t go into the details, because then why would you have to read it, right? Suffice to say it’s about a family in North Dakota in the 1960’s. And it’s a dandy of a read. The narrative is tight, the prose is flowery the same way flowers are (that is, their blossoms stretch to the sky delighting the eye with their beauty while their roots remain firmly in the earth; not incidentally, the better the earth the more healthy and glorious the flower. I think that’s a pretty standard condition for anything in life); the events are at times hilarious, hateful, heartwrenching, hopeful, and heartwarming. The characters are wonderfully flawed and real and dense (their characteristics, not their intelligence). Good things happen to bad people, bad things to good people, and nothing happens without reason even if that reason isn’t ever explained. There are periods of stillness and sorrow, of adventure and action, of pathos and pain, of anxiety and uncertainty, of hope and despair. All this to say, it’s just like Life. Which the best fiction is.
While I was reading it, devouring it too quickly as I do with every good thing the Lord blesses me with, I was reminded of a novel called One Hundred Years of Solitude by Garbiel Garcia Marquez which I read for my Latin American Lit class in grad school. That book has become the standard for a particular study of literature known as Magical Realism, which basically means there are events in the story that are beyond the realm of physical possibility, yet no one seems too put out by it. “These things happen,” would be the characters’ reply to inquiries about the viability of such events, like a rivulet of blood flowing around street corners and up stair steps to bring news of a murder. The person receiving the message isn’t concerned with how such a thing could happen as much as that someone has been murdered. It sounds like sloppy storytelling, I know, but it’s intentional (mostly), though what the intention is is anyone’s guess.
Things happen in Peace Like A River that contradict reality. However, they are attributed to God as miracles of faith rather than just What Happens. Does this change their character? Would they be considered Magical Realism in a literary sense? As a Christian I believe in miracles, that God does do things that can’t happen without His direct intervention. Now, obviously this is a work of fiction; the things in here didn’t really happen (as far as I know; the author makes no such claim). But they could happen, if you believe in God, the God of the Bible. So does that make them not Magical Realism, because they could happen. Whereas in Magical Realism, it’s understood that the author isn’t positing the events as being theoretically possible under the right circumstances. Then again, most of them don’t involve God in any big way, so it’s understandable.
Wait, you may be saying, You LIAR! You led off this longwinded review by saying you were looking for a story that didn’t rely on the supernatural in the narrative! You’ve been leading us down the primrose path (an expression I’m curious about. Where is this primrose path and what exactly lies at the end of it? What other path is one supposed to take? How did this expression come to be? Does it go back to Testament times and the straight, narrow, and tough road that leads to Salvation vs. the wide, smooth, and easy road leading to Destruction? Hmmm…). Where was I? Right, the indignation. Well, yes, that was a complaint of mine, and I’ve thought about it. And the thing about this novel is that the miraculous does occur, and sometimes it’s beneficial to the protagonists, but more often than not it isn’t, at least, not directly. It’s more of an expression of the Lord working through people. And this, again, is what life in Christ is supposed to be like, right? Not always casting out demons or healing a terminal cancer patient, but miracles that don’t always benefit us or even appear miraculous, that sometimes seem downright pernicious and perplexing! God thwarts our desire for our good, and He uses us against our wishes more often than not, simply because our wishes and His aren’t in harmony. And 80% of the time we don’t even realize when God’s hand is directing us overtly because we’re too focused on ourselves to see it. And when the results aren’t to our liking, we sulk and pout and snarl at God for not giving us what we want. And miss what He’s doing to us and through us and for us. This is real life. How many miracles I’ve missed over the reason would probably floor me. But you rejoice when the Lord reveals them to you and humbly say Thank you and vow not to be so mulish in the future. Which lasts all of a day.
Also, there’s a smattering of poetry in here, of an archaic and delightful flavor that brings a smile to my face. And the context of it is wonderful too.
There are so many things about this book that I love. I can’t go into further detail because then I’d be rehashing the book and you’d enjoy it more when Enger tells it. So just read it.
A friend and classmate of mine named Jim Wentworth once consoled me in a bar not to be too impatient about my writing. He told me you have to live and build up experiences before you can write about them, which made an awful lot of sense to me. In a way, a writer is always doing research since he writes from his own experience. My problem is my reticence to experience much. But I’m learning patience, a lesson which by its very nature takes a while and like most skills is basically acquired by practicing it. You learn to be patient by being patient, and it’s always tough at first when learning anything. I’m also learning boldness, though that lesson isn’t going as well as I’d like. All this to say that I feel like the narrator quite a lot at times, even though he writes about his experiences as an eleven-year-old. What does that say about me, eh?
I really cannot recommend this book highly enough. If you like to read, if you like Jesus, if you like to experience a good story, if you’re just looking for something to kill time, you can’t go wrong with this book. I have to thank Mr. Enger for writing such a wonderful novel. I have to thank my big sister Abigail for insisting that I read it. And I have to thank the Lord for inspiring such a wonderful book. And for everything else. Like the concept of reading and literature in the first place.
As is becoming painfully apparent to you, my experiences and therefore authority to make such a sweeping judgement on the state of contemporary Christian fiction is woefully inadequate. However, it is true that having read works like Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, or Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, or sundry Hemmingway or Orwell, Borges or Gracia Marquez, a powerful and poignant portrait of life as told by a Christian never crossed my path. I would finish a masterpiece like Steinbeck’s, my spirit heavy with the tragedy of life, only marginally buoyed by whatever scraps of hope could be found in the “indomitable spirit of Man,” and bemoan that such events would take place even in fiction without the acknowledgment of God other than as an absent landlord or obtuse puppeteer. When, O Lord, will someone write such a story with You in it? I’d wonder. Well, if no one else is going to, I’ll take up the task.
I have long regarded it as my job to write such a novel that smacks of verisimilitude, that an atheist lit professor could have their students read in class and not bat an eyelash about the God parts. In short, a tale of real events that happened in which the Lord plays a part. The lack demanded redress, and I’d have to do it. And the Lord has once again set me straight, because it’s already been written. It’s by Leif Enger and it’s called Peace Like A River.
And it’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read.
And it’s even better because of the God parts.
I won’t go into the details, because then why would you have to read it, right? Suffice to say it’s about a family in North Dakota in the 1960’s. And it’s a dandy of a read. The narrative is tight, the prose is flowery the same way flowers are (that is, their blossoms stretch to the sky delighting the eye with their beauty while their roots remain firmly in the earth; not incidentally, the better the earth the more healthy and glorious the flower. I think that’s a pretty standard condition for anything in life); the events are at times hilarious, hateful, heartwrenching, hopeful, and heartwarming. The characters are wonderfully flawed and real and dense (their characteristics, not their intelligence). Good things happen to bad people, bad things to good people, and nothing happens without reason even if that reason isn’t ever explained. There are periods of stillness and sorrow, of adventure and action, of pathos and pain, of anxiety and uncertainty, of hope and despair. All this to say, it’s just like Life. Which the best fiction is.
While I was reading it, devouring it too quickly as I do with every good thing the Lord blesses me with, I was reminded of a novel called One Hundred Years of Solitude by Garbiel Garcia Marquez which I read for my Latin American Lit class in grad school. That book has become the standard for a particular study of literature known as Magical Realism, which basically means there are events in the story that are beyond the realm of physical possibility, yet no one seems too put out by it. “These things happen,” would be the characters’ reply to inquiries about the viability of such events, like a rivulet of blood flowing around street corners and up stair steps to bring news of a murder. The person receiving the message isn’t concerned with how such a thing could happen as much as that someone has been murdered. It sounds like sloppy storytelling, I know, but it’s intentional (mostly), though what the intention is is anyone’s guess.
Things happen in Peace Like A River that contradict reality. However, they are attributed to God as miracles of faith rather than just What Happens. Does this change their character? Would they be considered Magical Realism in a literary sense? As a Christian I believe in miracles, that God does do things that can’t happen without His direct intervention. Now, obviously this is a work of fiction; the things in here didn’t really happen (as far as I know; the author makes no such claim). But they could happen, if you believe in God, the God of the Bible. So does that make them not Magical Realism, because they could happen. Whereas in Magical Realism, it’s understood that the author isn’t positing the events as being theoretically possible under the right circumstances. Then again, most of them don’t involve God in any big way, so it’s understandable.
Wait, you may be saying, You LIAR! You led off this longwinded review by saying you were looking for a story that didn’t rely on the supernatural in the narrative! You’ve been leading us down the primrose path (an expression I’m curious about. Where is this primrose path and what exactly lies at the end of it? What other path is one supposed to take? How did this expression come to be? Does it go back to Testament times and the straight, narrow, and tough road that leads to Salvation vs. the wide, smooth, and easy road leading to Destruction? Hmmm…). Where was I? Right, the indignation. Well, yes, that was a complaint of mine, and I’ve thought about it. And the thing about this novel is that the miraculous does occur, and sometimes it’s beneficial to the protagonists, but more often than not it isn’t, at least, not directly. It’s more of an expression of the Lord working through people. And this, again, is what life in Christ is supposed to be like, right? Not always casting out demons or healing a terminal cancer patient, but miracles that don’t always benefit us or even appear miraculous, that sometimes seem downright pernicious and perplexing! God thwarts our desire for our good, and He uses us against our wishes more often than not, simply because our wishes and His aren’t in harmony. And 80% of the time we don’t even realize when God’s hand is directing us overtly because we’re too focused on ourselves to see it. And when the results aren’t to our liking, we sulk and pout and snarl at God for not giving us what we want. And miss what He’s doing to us and through us and for us. This is real life. How many miracles I’ve missed over the reason would probably floor me. But you rejoice when the Lord reveals them to you and humbly say Thank you and vow not to be so mulish in the future. Which lasts all of a day.
Also, there’s a smattering of poetry in here, of an archaic and delightful flavor that brings a smile to my face. And the context of it is wonderful too.
There are so many things about this book that I love. I can’t go into further detail because then I’d be rehashing the book and you’d enjoy it more when Enger tells it. So just read it.
A friend and classmate of mine named Jim Wentworth once consoled me in a bar not to be too impatient about my writing. He told me you have to live and build up experiences before you can write about them, which made an awful lot of sense to me. In a way, a writer is always doing research since he writes from his own experience. My problem is my reticence to experience much. But I’m learning patience, a lesson which by its very nature takes a while and like most skills is basically acquired by practicing it. You learn to be patient by being patient, and it’s always tough at first when learning anything. I’m also learning boldness, though that lesson isn’t going as well as I’d like. All this to say that I feel like the narrator quite a lot at times, even though he writes about his experiences as an eleven-year-old. What does that say about me, eh?
I really cannot recommend this book highly enough. If you like to read, if you like Jesus, if you like to experience a good story, if you’re just looking for something to kill time, you can’t go wrong with this book. I have to thank Mr. Enger for writing such a wonderful novel. I have to thank my big sister Abigail for insisting that I read it. And I have to thank the Lord for inspiring such a wonderful book. And for everything else. Like the concept of reading and literature in the first place.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Take a Walk on the Golf Course with God
Here are a few reasons why I love golf. First, it’s outside and I enjoy being outside in natural settings. Even if you’re in the middle of town, even though the land has been scaped (why isn’t that a legit usage of the term?) you’re still walking on grass mostly, hitting around trees and over ponds, stomping and slashing in sand, searching and cursing in bushes and weeds. Much better than being inside, by and large, wouldn’t you agree? Second, I’m rather vain as a person, and golf enables me to feed my vanity even while “humbling” me. Don’t get me wrong, it does humble me a little; the same way I am currently feeling humbled by losing my 70th consecutive game of Settlers of Catan. But it’s the kind of humility that only makes me more driven to assert my authority and superiority. So in that sense it’s a demonic humility since its only purpose is to facilitate pride.
But the best reason why I love golf is the abundant and wonderful analogies to Life it lends itself to, particularly the Christian life. Though it really can apply quite well to a secular life also; I just tend to approach things like worldviews from a Christian perspective, or at least, as Christian a perspective as I am presently capable of applying. Which isn’t any great shakes, I might add; at least, not in respect to a true Christian perspective. Doubtless it would seem very Christian to a non-Christian not familiar with true Christianity. But for anyone who examines the life of Jesus on earth, or really any of the New Testament, or who has read Mere Christianity, my shortcomings in maintaining and even creating a Christ-like perspective will be glaringly apparent.
That, however, is beside the point I’m laboriously trying to make. I am reading Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf by Ben Hogan and Herbert Warren, illustrations by Anthony Ravielli. (Which is an ironic title since it was written in 1957; Hogan refers to old timers like Harry Vardon and Walter Hagen, whereas now we refer to old timers like, well, Ben Hogan.) Regardless, I finished the first chapter, the first fundamental, which is, in fact, rather fundamental: the Grip. Here’s how he ends the chapter:
As he improves, the average golfer will enjoy the game more and more, for a correct swing will enable him to rediscover golf—in fact, discover golf for the first time. He will have the necessary equipment, the full “vocabulary” for golf. He’s going to see a different game entirely…When he hits a poor shot and leaves himself with a difficult recovery, he’ll respond to the challenge of having to play a difficult shot extra well in order to make up for his error…He will feel this way about golf because he will know he has an essentially correct, repeating swing and that he can, with moderate concentration, produce the shot that is called for. He will make errors, of course, because he is human, but he will be a golfer and the game will be a source of ever-increasing pleasure for him. (35-36).
What struck me about this was the spiritual application that immediately leaped out of the page. As anyone who has come within shouting distance of me knows, I am going through a rather rough patch at the moment, with no full-time job, not enough money to pay the rent and bills, no prospect of what I’m going to do once my lease here is up, etc. And the Lord has been working me over pretty good with all this, speaking to me through the various books I’ve been reading (48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller, Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning), the sermons at my church, the small group I’ve been attending, the experiences I’ve had like constant, repeated rejection, and my own inner turmoil. He has been trying to correct my spiritual grip, the fundamentals of my walk with Him, how I approach Him and how I approach my life. And this concept that Hogan explains in relation to golf, how having the basic Grip down and CORRECT is going to be vital in how the rest of the golf game, and the rest of the lessons, function. Once you have the essentials of any skill or method down, you can build on it, you can create variations on the original theme. But even more essential, you will have the confidence in yourself because you have the fundamentals down and you know that you can reproduce the same results consistently. Any golfer can hit a great shot by accident; what separates the pros from the joes is that the pros can reproduce the same swing, the same shot whenever they want. Because they know what the fundamentals of the shot are and have practiced them to the point where it’s second nature. Hogan has been hammering this point repeatedly in the introduction and first chapter.
So what the Lord has been doing to me is to correct some of the mistakes in my spiritual grip, to demonstrate what I’m doing wrong and how to solve it. Take, for example, money. If He had blessed me with a great fortune a year ago, it is very probable that the wealth would have gone to my head. I would have come to depend upon myself, to regard God as caretaker of my spirit and soul, while I handle the corporeal life until it ends. “No, Lord, you work on my struggles with Lust and Arrogance, I’ll just handle the finances. Money is so tawdry and materialistic; I don’t want someone as holy as You to concern yourself with such matters. It’s beneath You.” (Imagine this with a semi-haughty tone, worldly and hoity-toity. Shouldn’t be too hard; we all have that voice in our repertoire.) Well, after this little crisis, I’m not going to be so cavalier about money. When you’re on the brink of financial ruin for an extended period of time, some misapprehensions and misconceptions get shelved pretty quickly. Things like, “Oh, if I just have a college degree, I can always find a job,” or “God won’t ever let me get into too bad a financial straight, not if I’m honestly seeking Him.” Guess what, boobala? That’s exactly why He’s letting me go through this, because I’m seeking him. If I was content to remain a spiritual infant, and assuming God didn’t mind me staying that way, He might wipe His hands and let me sit in spiritual atrophy. Of course, He loves me too much to let me dwindle into spiritual torpor, like any parent who takes away a security blanket so their child learns to do without it. They may scream and bawl for a while, but eventually they’ll learn to make do, and find they didn’t really need that security blanket to begin with.
And don’t misunderstand me; I’m not saying I’m totally cured of greed and can now become a billionaire without any problems. Au contraire, mon fraire! Like any vice and virtue in this earthly journey, I’ll never fully arrive at perfection until God strips off the last vestiges of the flesh and I am given a new body. However, I have a new appreciation for money and for my own ability to generate it. All money comes at the pleasure of God; that job you have that you think is due to your modest talents and skills, you could lose tomorrow. That fat bank account you rely on for retirement or a nice vacation this summer could be wiped out in a second. Or in a year, like mine, not through reckless spending but simply because you’re paying bills and not making money. Which leads us to jobs and the like, which is again out of your control. What is in your control, the only thing in your control, is your relationship with the Lord. God’s attitude toward you (and by “attitude” I mean stance; think of how a golfer addresses the ball) is unchanging. What changes is our attitude toward Him; and by attitude I mean stance, but our stance can be affected by our circumstances, which affect our feelings or “attitude” in the more traditional sense of the word. And this is the fundamental, the Grip. Because once we get into the proper attitude towards God and regarding ourselves, everything else follows from it. Like the Grip in golf, a proper starting point will allow us to build upon the foundation, will enable us to create new opportunities and ways of interacting with the Lord and with others. And this will actually lead to better results in us, in our relationships with others, and in our walk with God. (Not incidentally, improved relationships with others can lead to improvements in feelings, finances…you know, all those things we think of as being the “fundamentals” of life.) Like the Grip fixing that tendency to slice our tee shots without directly addressing it, the right relationship with God can fix our marriages, create opportunities to witness to unbelievers, enhance our professional status, and increase our overall enjoyment of life. But getting the Grip right comes first.
In the quote Hogan claims that the golfer will “rediscover golf—in fact, discover golf for the first time.” This means that what the person has been doing, that is supposedly Golf in their mind, has in fact been something not quite Golf. Just like you can be singing a song that you think you know, but if you don’t know the right words, you’re not really singing that particular song. There is an objective reality to things even if we don’t know what it is, or even can’t know it for whatever reason. But the point here is that Golf as it is and not as you think it is will follow from a proper grasp of the fundamentals. And this means that you’re not playing Golf until you do. In the same way, Life, the Christian life, is an objective reality. And I (for I shall use myself as the example; feel free to draw analogies to your own lot as you see fit) have not been living Life with God. Oh, I’ve been a Christian for quite some time now, just as I have been playing “golf” since the age of 20. But like the erroneous perception of the Grip, I haven’t really been living the Christian life, as God defines it. This is evidenced in the simple fact that I still fail, and that I’m undergoing a process of refining, of purification, breaking down the tough lump of clay to the point where it can be shaped into the Master’s vision. A proper clay jar doesn’t need to be broken into pieces to be made into a proper clay jar; it’s already a clay jar! This may seem like an foolish tautology, but I’m sure it’s sound. A properly working machine doesn’t need to be taken apart to be fixed because it’s working properly. It may seem too simple. But the machine that is Me, my spiritual life, is not fixed. It’s sputtering along, wheezing and meandering all over the place. The Lord has to pull me over to the side of the road and start taking out parts, replacing the incorrect or broken ones, and cleaning the clogged hoses. This means some deconstruction, some major overhauls, and that takes time and inconvenience. But the result is that the machine of my spiritual life will eventually run like a top. Or so I assume.
Hogan mentions earlier in the chapter that a grip too tight will cause all sorts of problems, and is as detrimental to a grip too loose. If you strangle the club, it will strangle your game. If you keep a firm yet easy grasp, your game improves. As with life. If I try too hard to obey God, to take the initiative, I can foil His attempts to teach me things. I’m certainly not walking in dependence upon Him, which is the essence of the Christian walk Jesus modeled on earth. Conversely, a too laissez-faire approach to life, to let God do all the work, is no more effective and fulfilling than a stranglehold. Different problems arise, but they well equally foil your communion with the Lord. That balance one must strike is key, and devilishly difficult to find, even harder to maintain. But the more you seek it, the oftener you find it, and the easier it is to regain and retain that balance. Likewise, as your familiarity with the proper grip increases, you can quickly, effortlessly, and instinctually duplicate it for every shot.
“He will make errors, of course, because he is human, but he will be a golfer and the game will be a source of ever-increasing pleasure for him.” Like all initiates, the fresh-faced greenhorn quickly learns what he doesn’t know, how he doesn’t meet the bill, where he doesn’t make the grade. Nowhere is this more readily apparent than in Christian life. For nowhere are the stakes higher and the transformation more radical. A golfer may have the most horrendous grip imaginable, one that makes an instructor pale in horror at the sheer ignorance and fallibility of such a grip. “You swing that club like a baseball bat,” he may wail, “and you hold it like a rake!” But no matter how erroneous a grip the beginner has on the club, it is still not more than a nanometer away from the correct grip compared to the light years separating an earthly walk from a truly Christ-like one. Easier to teach a fish to climb trees than to teach a dead man how to be alive. So we start at a disadvantage, though the word isn’t even a beginning on explaining the true state of affairs. Yet, the novice golfer will begin to make strides; as he plays more and more, reads literature about proper stance and grip, takes lessons from pros and partners and the guy they paired him with, as experience teaches him how to play bunker shots and knock-downs, he begins to resemble that which he is, a golfer. Even great players like Hogan or Nicklaus or Tiger Woods didn’t swing a perfect stroke the first time they gripped a club, and they all practiced like fiends to hone their craft, to add more shots and more confidence in their game, to gain another five yards of distance or another five percent backspin, knowing that the difference between victory and defeat may be their ability to put a drive twenty feet beyond their competitor and spin their ball four inches closer to the hole. But they are golfers whether they win or lose, shoot a 62 or an 84, play for a green jacket or a cool one at the clubhouse. They are golfers because of who they are and what they do, not because of how well they play. I am a golfer because I love to play and I play whenever I can.
Likewise, I am not a Christian because I walk a perfect line with Christ, utterly dependent on the Holy Spirit, completely unified with the Father, never lusting, envying, fearing, doubting, snarling, gossiping, failing. I may never conquer all my sins in this life, in fact, that’s a safe bet. But I am a Christian because of who I am, because of what I choose to be, how I choose to live and move and have my being, and what therefore the Lord has done to me, through me, and for me. “Christian” doesn’t mean “perfect”; it means “desiring to walk with God, relying on Jesus to save me from the brink, trusting in the Holy Spirit to remake me despite myself.”
And as I grow in my knowledge and understanding of golf, of how to hit shots, what irons do what, how to chip and putt, my love and respect for the game grows and feeds my desire to return to it again, to discover new challenges and experience new joys. And as I progress in surrendering to Christ, in yielding to the refining process of the Father, to the metamorphosis of the Spirit, and as that translates into actions and behavior and emotion in my life, my understanding of who God is ever deepens and draws me back to Him more and more. The addiction spirals down the more you feed it, but not all addictions are bad. (And no, I’m not saying my addiction to golf is good.) So how addicted to Jesus are you?
But the best reason why I love golf is the abundant and wonderful analogies to Life it lends itself to, particularly the Christian life. Though it really can apply quite well to a secular life also; I just tend to approach things like worldviews from a Christian perspective, or at least, as Christian a perspective as I am presently capable of applying. Which isn’t any great shakes, I might add; at least, not in respect to a true Christian perspective. Doubtless it would seem very Christian to a non-Christian not familiar with true Christianity. But for anyone who examines the life of Jesus on earth, or really any of the New Testament, or who has read Mere Christianity, my shortcomings in maintaining and even creating a Christ-like perspective will be glaringly apparent.
That, however, is beside the point I’m laboriously trying to make. I am reading Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf by Ben Hogan and Herbert Warren, illustrations by Anthony Ravielli. (Which is an ironic title since it was written in 1957; Hogan refers to old timers like Harry Vardon and Walter Hagen, whereas now we refer to old timers like, well, Ben Hogan.) Regardless, I finished the first chapter, the first fundamental, which is, in fact, rather fundamental: the Grip. Here’s how he ends the chapter:
As he improves, the average golfer will enjoy the game more and more, for a correct swing will enable him to rediscover golf—in fact, discover golf for the first time. He will have the necessary equipment, the full “vocabulary” for golf. He’s going to see a different game entirely…When he hits a poor shot and leaves himself with a difficult recovery, he’ll respond to the challenge of having to play a difficult shot extra well in order to make up for his error…He will feel this way about golf because he will know he has an essentially correct, repeating swing and that he can, with moderate concentration, produce the shot that is called for. He will make errors, of course, because he is human, but he will be a golfer and the game will be a source of ever-increasing pleasure for him. (35-36).
What struck me about this was the spiritual application that immediately leaped out of the page. As anyone who has come within shouting distance of me knows, I am going through a rather rough patch at the moment, with no full-time job, not enough money to pay the rent and bills, no prospect of what I’m going to do once my lease here is up, etc. And the Lord has been working me over pretty good with all this, speaking to me through the various books I’ve been reading (48 Days to the Work You Love by Dan Miller, Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning), the sermons at my church, the small group I’ve been attending, the experiences I’ve had like constant, repeated rejection, and my own inner turmoil. He has been trying to correct my spiritual grip, the fundamentals of my walk with Him, how I approach Him and how I approach my life. And this concept that Hogan explains in relation to golf, how having the basic Grip down and CORRECT is going to be vital in how the rest of the golf game, and the rest of the lessons, function. Once you have the essentials of any skill or method down, you can build on it, you can create variations on the original theme. But even more essential, you will have the confidence in yourself because you have the fundamentals down and you know that you can reproduce the same results consistently. Any golfer can hit a great shot by accident; what separates the pros from the joes is that the pros can reproduce the same swing, the same shot whenever they want. Because they know what the fundamentals of the shot are and have practiced them to the point where it’s second nature. Hogan has been hammering this point repeatedly in the introduction and first chapter.
So what the Lord has been doing to me is to correct some of the mistakes in my spiritual grip, to demonstrate what I’m doing wrong and how to solve it. Take, for example, money. If He had blessed me with a great fortune a year ago, it is very probable that the wealth would have gone to my head. I would have come to depend upon myself, to regard God as caretaker of my spirit and soul, while I handle the corporeal life until it ends. “No, Lord, you work on my struggles with Lust and Arrogance, I’ll just handle the finances. Money is so tawdry and materialistic; I don’t want someone as holy as You to concern yourself with such matters. It’s beneath You.” (Imagine this with a semi-haughty tone, worldly and hoity-toity. Shouldn’t be too hard; we all have that voice in our repertoire.) Well, after this little crisis, I’m not going to be so cavalier about money. When you’re on the brink of financial ruin for an extended period of time, some misapprehensions and misconceptions get shelved pretty quickly. Things like, “Oh, if I just have a college degree, I can always find a job,” or “God won’t ever let me get into too bad a financial straight, not if I’m honestly seeking Him.” Guess what, boobala? That’s exactly why He’s letting me go through this, because I’m seeking him. If I was content to remain a spiritual infant, and assuming God didn’t mind me staying that way, He might wipe His hands and let me sit in spiritual atrophy. Of course, He loves me too much to let me dwindle into spiritual torpor, like any parent who takes away a security blanket so their child learns to do without it. They may scream and bawl for a while, but eventually they’ll learn to make do, and find they didn’t really need that security blanket to begin with.
And don’t misunderstand me; I’m not saying I’m totally cured of greed and can now become a billionaire without any problems. Au contraire, mon fraire! Like any vice and virtue in this earthly journey, I’ll never fully arrive at perfection until God strips off the last vestiges of the flesh and I am given a new body. However, I have a new appreciation for money and for my own ability to generate it. All money comes at the pleasure of God; that job you have that you think is due to your modest talents and skills, you could lose tomorrow. That fat bank account you rely on for retirement or a nice vacation this summer could be wiped out in a second. Or in a year, like mine, not through reckless spending but simply because you’re paying bills and not making money. Which leads us to jobs and the like, which is again out of your control. What is in your control, the only thing in your control, is your relationship with the Lord. God’s attitude toward you (and by “attitude” I mean stance; think of how a golfer addresses the ball) is unchanging. What changes is our attitude toward Him; and by attitude I mean stance, but our stance can be affected by our circumstances, which affect our feelings or “attitude” in the more traditional sense of the word. And this is the fundamental, the Grip. Because once we get into the proper attitude towards God and regarding ourselves, everything else follows from it. Like the Grip in golf, a proper starting point will allow us to build upon the foundation, will enable us to create new opportunities and ways of interacting with the Lord and with others. And this will actually lead to better results in us, in our relationships with others, and in our walk with God. (Not incidentally, improved relationships with others can lead to improvements in feelings, finances…you know, all those things we think of as being the “fundamentals” of life.) Like the Grip fixing that tendency to slice our tee shots without directly addressing it, the right relationship with God can fix our marriages, create opportunities to witness to unbelievers, enhance our professional status, and increase our overall enjoyment of life. But getting the Grip right comes first.
In the quote Hogan claims that the golfer will “rediscover golf—in fact, discover golf for the first time.” This means that what the person has been doing, that is supposedly Golf in their mind, has in fact been something not quite Golf. Just like you can be singing a song that you think you know, but if you don’t know the right words, you’re not really singing that particular song. There is an objective reality to things even if we don’t know what it is, or even can’t know it for whatever reason. But the point here is that Golf as it is and not as you think it is will follow from a proper grasp of the fundamentals. And this means that you’re not playing Golf until you do. In the same way, Life, the Christian life, is an objective reality. And I (for I shall use myself as the example; feel free to draw analogies to your own lot as you see fit) have not been living Life with God. Oh, I’ve been a Christian for quite some time now, just as I have been playing “golf” since the age of 20. But like the erroneous perception of the Grip, I haven’t really been living the Christian life, as God defines it. This is evidenced in the simple fact that I still fail, and that I’m undergoing a process of refining, of purification, breaking down the tough lump of clay to the point where it can be shaped into the Master’s vision. A proper clay jar doesn’t need to be broken into pieces to be made into a proper clay jar; it’s already a clay jar! This may seem like an foolish tautology, but I’m sure it’s sound. A properly working machine doesn’t need to be taken apart to be fixed because it’s working properly. It may seem too simple. But the machine that is Me, my spiritual life, is not fixed. It’s sputtering along, wheezing and meandering all over the place. The Lord has to pull me over to the side of the road and start taking out parts, replacing the incorrect or broken ones, and cleaning the clogged hoses. This means some deconstruction, some major overhauls, and that takes time and inconvenience. But the result is that the machine of my spiritual life will eventually run like a top. Or so I assume.
Hogan mentions earlier in the chapter that a grip too tight will cause all sorts of problems, and is as detrimental to a grip too loose. If you strangle the club, it will strangle your game. If you keep a firm yet easy grasp, your game improves. As with life. If I try too hard to obey God, to take the initiative, I can foil His attempts to teach me things. I’m certainly not walking in dependence upon Him, which is the essence of the Christian walk Jesus modeled on earth. Conversely, a too laissez-faire approach to life, to let God do all the work, is no more effective and fulfilling than a stranglehold. Different problems arise, but they well equally foil your communion with the Lord. That balance one must strike is key, and devilishly difficult to find, even harder to maintain. But the more you seek it, the oftener you find it, and the easier it is to regain and retain that balance. Likewise, as your familiarity with the proper grip increases, you can quickly, effortlessly, and instinctually duplicate it for every shot.
“He will make errors, of course, because he is human, but he will be a golfer and the game will be a source of ever-increasing pleasure for him.” Like all initiates, the fresh-faced greenhorn quickly learns what he doesn’t know, how he doesn’t meet the bill, where he doesn’t make the grade. Nowhere is this more readily apparent than in Christian life. For nowhere are the stakes higher and the transformation more radical. A golfer may have the most horrendous grip imaginable, one that makes an instructor pale in horror at the sheer ignorance and fallibility of such a grip. “You swing that club like a baseball bat,” he may wail, “and you hold it like a rake!” But no matter how erroneous a grip the beginner has on the club, it is still not more than a nanometer away from the correct grip compared to the light years separating an earthly walk from a truly Christ-like one. Easier to teach a fish to climb trees than to teach a dead man how to be alive. So we start at a disadvantage, though the word isn’t even a beginning on explaining the true state of affairs. Yet, the novice golfer will begin to make strides; as he plays more and more, reads literature about proper stance and grip, takes lessons from pros and partners and the guy they paired him with, as experience teaches him how to play bunker shots and knock-downs, he begins to resemble that which he is, a golfer. Even great players like Hogan or Nicklaus or Tiger Woods didn’t swing a perfect stroke the first time they gripped a club, and they all practiced like fiends to hone their craft, to add more shots and more confidence in their game, to gain another five yards of distance or another five percent backspin, knowing that the difference between victory and defeat may be their ability to put a drive twenty feet beyond their competitor and spin their ball four inches closer to the hole. But they are golfers whether they win or lose, shoot a 62 or an 84, play for a green jacket or a cool one at the clubhouse. They are golfers because of who they are and what they do, not because of how well they play. I am a golfer because I love to play and I play whenever I can.
Likewise, I am not a Christian because I walk a perfect line with Christ, utterly dependent on the Holy Spirit, completely unified with the Father, never lusting, envying, fearing, doubting, snarling, gossiping, failing. I may never conquer all my sins in this life, in fact, that’s a safe bet. But I am a Christian because of who I am, because of what I choose to be, how I choose to live and move and have my being, and what therefore the Lord has done to me, through me, and for me. “Christian” doesn’t mean “perfect”; it means “desiring to walk with God, relying on Jesus to save me from the brink, trusting in the Holy Spirit to remake me despite myself.”
And as I grow in my knowledge and understanding of golf, of how to hit shots, what irons do what, how to chip and putt, my love and respect for the game grows and feeds my desire to return to it again, to discover new challenges and experience new joys. And as I progress in surrendering to Christ, in yielding to the refining process of the Father, to the metamorphosis of the Spirit, and as that translates into actions and behavior and emotion in my life, my understanding of who God is ever deepens and draws me back to Him more and more. The addiction spirals down the more you feed it, but not all addictions are bad. (And no, I’m not saying my addiction to golf is good.) So how addicted to Jesus are you?
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