The Reincarnation of Jesus Christ

I wrote a piece for my other shared blog:
http://bibleglasses.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/reincarnation-of-jesus-christ/

Good Sorrow

Tonight I said goodbye to Ingrid, who has become one of my dearest friends. We’ll just leave it at that. As I struggled to contain my tears, I was struck by a revelation that I shall attempt to elucidate here. 

There are two kinds of sorrow in this life: good and bad. The bad kind of sorrow is what most people think of when they begin to grope for reasons to disbelieve in God; loved ones dying of cancer, senseless crimes like rape or murder or hate-fueled evil, natural disasters, the wickedness of people who corrupt other people or companies or governments or whatever other resource they can for the purposes of their own selfishness. This kind of sorrow is “bad” because it doesn’t seem to coincide with the way we think the world should work: children starving in Africa or sold as sex slaves around the world is wrong, and what, after all, have such innocents done to deserve the sorrow and torment they endure? And how could a kind and merciful God tolerate such wickedness and stand aside from intervening in the midst of such suffering? Disputing this canard is not the point of my blog, so I shall merely point out that the only redeeming value of such sorrow is that others might be moved to action to intervene upon the sufferer’s behalf, to save them. This is a symbol of what Christ did for us, and an opportunity for us to embody Christ to the world. But the sorrow itself is bad, coming as it does because of the existence of pain and evil, sin, necessitating its correction or termination and ultimately the salvation of Jesus Christ.

The other kind of sorrow is that which I now struggle with, and this sorrow is good. I would like to explain this sorrow and then postulate on its meaning as regards the Christian’s walk with the Lord and understanding of who He is and why He does the things He does. A modest goal; we shall see.

Now, at this point you may be wondering, how can any sorrow ever be good? My friend is leaving Waco to enroll at Purdue in Indiana for her doctorate program, which is a step up for her in relation to her desire to specialize in medieval literature. The program’s reputation is better than Baylor’s, she’ll be working with some of the best scholars in this field, and they’re giving her a sweet ride as far as fellowships go, better certainly than Baylor. Lest you think that she was motivated solely by such calculations, allow me to disabuse you of such notions. She had made many friends down here, she is well-liked and respected by the English faculty as a whole, and could easily have stayed down here as received a good education with decent prospects. She brought the decision before the Lord and I believe that her departure is in accordance with His will. 

I’ve gotten to know her quite well over the year we had together. We worked in the same writing center, giving us ample time to discover who the other was and how our personalities interacted. There was a great sense of camaraderie in that writing center among all of us, for various reasons both good and bad, and she and I and Daniel had a particularly jovial time riffing during the down times there. We watched movies together, had dinners and dances, had a class together as well, and just shared our lives. My attachment to her might have been greater than hers to me but even so we had a wonderful friendship. Even more important, ultimately, is her devotion to the Lord and her amazing capacity to love others and pour out her life for others. Her interactions and attitudes were a constant and firm (albeit gentle) rebuke and reminder to me to pursue the Lord even more wholeheartedly. Rare indeed is the person who emanates such a sweet aroma of the Spirit, and I was very blessed and humbled to spend time with her and watch her dedicate her life to God. 

So this evening was that much more difficult to endure. Ever since she announced her decision I’d been trying to prepare myself for today, sometimes steeling myself, sometimes sinking in grief, at the prospect of losing such a wonderful person from my life. This goodbye was in some ways as difficult as it was saying goodbye to my friend Caleb from Kansas City, though not in the same way since we were of different genders which limits the depths to which unmarried people can unclasp their hearts. Regardless, I quickly began to blub as we prayed, and that set her off, so we both ended up a bit teary. Afterwards, I began to reflect on this idea of sorrow as a good sorrow.

The sorrow that we felt at being parted was due to the love and friendship we shared and the fact that it was coming to an end, at least for now. God alone knows what the future holds, but we will never have what we have had and quite possibly will never share our lives again this side of eternity. And I was heartbroken. Still am. But I believe that this sorrow is a good sorrow, because it’s the sorrow of Love, the love for Jesus that bound us even closer than normal colleagues and friends, a love that may only be surpassed on earth by that between spouses and parents-children. This love is the kind of love that should exist among every Christian, and when it does, it baffles the world even as it incites in their hearts an indescribable longing that can only be satisfied by Christ. 

Moreover, the sorrow I feel at her departure is untainted by selfishness and bitterness. The months leading up to this gave me ample time to give up any sentiment of resentment or despair that lapped up against my heart, and which I might have indulged in as a younger man. But I had directed my heart and will to rejoice in her opportunity, to enjoy her company while I still could, and to thank the Lord for the time we spent together. So the sorrow is as pure an expression of love as I am capable of in this world. And herein lies the crux of the matter: sorrow, good sorrow, is another form of love. The sorrow we feel for a loved one on their death bed is mixed with the hope in the promise that they are soon to be fully and finally united with God and that in just a little while we too will join them in that union, and our love will reach even greater heights than humans can imagine as it is completely expressed through the Lord. 

Furthermore, the experience of forming a friendship with those in Kansas City, particularly Caleb, helped me to realize the power and preciousness of fellowship with others, and the sorrow I felt leaving them behind enlarged my capacity to love others and to form new friendships in Waco. So too I imagine the sorrow of losing Ingrid’s fellowship, as piercing as it feels at the moment, will reap harvests of new friendships and relationships as this experience enlarges my ability and desire to find new people to love, and to love those I already love more fully and authentically, especially the Lord.

And so, even though I’ve broken down a few times as I have written this, and even though my world is dimmer than it has been, I can embrace the sorrow and rejoice in the sadness that I feel, for it testifies that I can love and that God is remaking me in His own image, for He is love and I will never face a parting from Him. And though my will shall have to drag my heart through times of grief and nostalgia, the Lord has promised to heal my heart, to restore my joy, and to bring new friends and new fellowships as I continue to pursue Him. For His very nature is love which requires other persons to love, and so our reflection of His image must be comprised primarily of love for Him and for each other. And sorrow is the price we pay here on earth. I pay it gladly.

Sinful Despair and Loving Obedience

The past few weeks have been rough. After an exhausting semester in which I produced around 250 pages of writing for my classes while working for peanuts at a job whereat the administration treated me and my fellow GAs with hostility, I finished the semester with less than stellar efforts in my papers. Additionally, familial drama and physical distress added to my load, followed by a presentation in Boston last week that was received with some disapprobation. On top of which is the imminent departure of a friend who has become rather dear to me this summer, plus my extreme poverty and inability to find gainful employment which may necessitate withdrawing my 401k or taking a student loan just to pay the bills until I start work again in the fall. Finally, my lack of self-discipline in my eating habits continues to sabotage my earnest efforts to lose weight.

This past week I’ve struggled in my weaknesses of the flesh and consequently in my walk with the Lord. Yesterday I gave up, as I have done many times. I concluded that I was a hopeless failure, fit to quit, utterly irredeemable and a thoroughgoing reprobate (look up the meaning). In essence I said to the Lord, “I renounce any hope of making progress in curbing my appetites, in seeing advancement in walking with You as You deserve, of pleasing You with my life beyond the sheer desperation that will keep me forever penitent and desperately clinging to the promise of transformation beyond the grave. Lord, I can never offer anything other than complete and utter depravity and failure in this life, even in my walk with You, so I hope You can handle that. Furthermore, no woman could ever stomach to hitch her wagon to me, nor do I deserve or would I wish my own calamitous character upon any woman, so I shall remain a confirmed bachelor for the rest of my days and thus spare any unfortunate woman from being stuck with me. Not that any women are lining up for the ‘privilege’ anyway, which is ultimately for the best.”

Now, mind you, I wasn’t giving up on Christianity, on the work of Christ on the cross and in the garden. No, I was merely giving up on expressing and progressing in Christianity beyond the shattered wretch who throws himself at the feet of Christ crying “Have mercy upon me, O Lord, a sinner!” 

After helping a friend move today and making my customary self-denigrating remarks in crude attempts at humor, I felt compelled to pick up a book I’d been reading called Telling Yourself the Truth by William Backus and Marie Chapman. It’s written by Christian councilors and psychologists and details the lies we tell ourselves that imprison us in sinful and destructive behavioral cycles, along with ways to combat such lies with the truth about ourselves as outlined by the Bible and relevant psychological theories. The chapter I opened to was about Self-Hate, and I read the following passage:

When Jesus said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends,” He prepared the way for us to be able to love ourselves in the purest sense. Condemnation, guilt, despair, self-degradation, shame and self-hate have all been nailed to the cross in His body. By his taking our sin on the cross with Him, we are set free to live healthy and abundant lives with wholesome, pure, swept-clean attitudes. When our lives are really beautiful in the eyes of God, they are pure and clean in the holiest sense. When do we please Him but when we are right before Him, living as He has shown us to live? If we lay down our lives out of guilt and self-hate, we are not fulfilling the very meaning of the above verse…

Another verse popped into my head: “If you love Me, keep My commandments.”

I realized, once I read that passage, that I was laying down my life “out of guilt and self-hate” instead of love and adoration and worship and gratitude for what Jesus accomplished for me. He doesn’t hate me, nor despise me for my many and continuous sins, for my constant failures and poor self-image and self-talk. As Ian Thomas proclaims, God never planned to take my sinful nature and clean it up; rather, He wants to kill it and replace it with His Spirit. Redemption requires the removal or the transformation of my heart and soul and mind and body through the ministration of the Holy Spirit. So when my sinful flesh sins again, it’s no surprise to Him and in no way reflects upon His Incarnation or my new identity in Him.

When I come to God out of sheer despair and self-loathing for having failed, I am ignoring or degrading the purpose for which Jesus suffered and died and rose again, namely, to bring abundant life and transformation to all who believe in Him. We are to follow Jesus and obey His word out of love for Him, not fear of Him or hatred of ourselves. This was God’s gentle rebuke of my attitude.

I will not detail all the ways God has blessed me this past year, in my friendships, studies, etc. except to say that He certainly has provided for me. My friend promised to pray that He will, and asserted confidence in His provision.

It’s actually rather stupid to be depressed over being depressed, to despair over despairing. Nothing makes the Devil and his minions more delighted and entertained when Christians engage in such practices. “Hell, we don’t even need to do very much! Just wind him up and watch him go! He flagellates himself with such gusto and despair we barely need to step in. This is so easy and hilarious that he’s doing it to himself!” Read the Screwtape Letters for this perspective; I truly believe Lewis was on to something. 

The Christian life is so simple and so hard simultaneously. All I have to do is walk every moment of every day in complete surrender to the Spirit within me, and He will accomplish His will as I make myself available to Him. Sin, depression, self-hatred, anxiety, and so forth will be ice cubes in the Sahara as I focus my eyes upon Jesus, instead of being icebergs that sink my progress continually.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus / Look full in His wonderful face; / And the things of earth will grow strangely dim / In the light of His glory and grace.

Amen.

What does God think of Actors?

Recently I attended an opera titled Dialogues of the Carmelites. The setting was France on the cusp of the Revolution and the Reign of Terror. A young woman entered a convent out of fear of the onrushing tumult and chaos, thinking to find shelter and peace of mind among the devout. Needless to say, she finds a temporary reprieve, but witnesses the Mother Superior dying a drawn-out and painful death, questioning her faith in God and His goodness or power, that she should die such an awful death. The citizens disband the convent and forbid the nuns to continue their observances; they defy the injunction and find themselves in prison, facing the guillotine, while the young girl has fled. The end of the play finds the women, one by one, slain for their devotion, including the girl who joins the procession of death at the end, finding her courage and faith and solidarity with her sisters. 

Now, I learned since that the performers were Baylor students, and I must say that I was impressed by their performance. Baylor being a Baptist college, the probability that they are Christians to some degree is rather greater than it would be at other universities or performance houses. Still, my musing that followed the spectacle still holds. And it is this: what does God think about people constantly invoking His name, as the numerous women acting as devout nuns did? Or the actress who has to transform from a Mother Superior spouting ecumenical platitudes to a dying woman railing against God and questioning His will?

Now, obviously, God is quite aware of the true state of their hearts, and their beliefs. Additionally, they are merely performing, pretending so to speak lines of piety. This begat the question in my mind of what God thinks of actors who are continuously and repeatedly mouthing lines that sound and seem worshipful and genuine, yet could be coming from the lips of people who are completely opposed to, or have no faith in, what they’re saying. 

I would like to differentiate between actors in movies and actors in plays. Some actors portray a genuine believer in a film, spending months enacting a character with faith. Ian Charleston comes to mind, who depicted Eric Liddel in Chariots of Fire so brilliantly. The actor was a homosexual who died of AIDS in the 1980s, so it seems likely that he was not a professing Christian; usually, homosexuals are quite antipathetic towards Christianity, and that is more the Church’s fault than theirs, but that’s a different matter. However, once the filming was done and the scenes completed, the actors could discard their roles and pretenses. They might film the same scene a dozen times, but not for different audiences, nor for alternating purposes.

Contrast that with actors in plays or operas who have to portray the same characters over and over again, with a newness and intensity requisite for each performance. They might perform the same scene fifty times if the play runs for six months, and of course innumerable more times should the piece succeed. What does God think of such people who attempt to evoke complex feelings of faith and doubt over and over again? Does this displease Him? Is it any worse than a hypocritical churchgoer who espouses the tenets of Christianity but doesn’t live them? Or someone who attends out of duty, social decorum, or habit, without any true devotion? He certainly does not condone hypocrites, but do actors pretending to be believers count as hypocrites? I truly have no idea what He makes of them, though I know what Augustine would say. But Augustine was prejudiced against the theater because of his upbringing and profession; besides, he probably saw few if any performances that presented a Christian character in any sincerity or realism.

Flight of Fancy:Comparing Tragedies

About a month ago, I watched the movie Flight. Starring Denzel Washington as the protagonist, it charted the stories of an airline pilot who abuses drugs and alcohol, and then climbs into the cockpit and flies commercial airliners. I am not the sort of person who reacts to such premises with horror or outrage; fiction is fiction, after all, and it is a rare film or novel that hits me at an emotional level. 

As I said, Washington portrays an addict who is taciturn and vicious in his treatment of others when sober. The catalyst of the plot involves the crash of the plane he’s piloting. Though drugs and alcohol still course through his veins, he manages to perform a miraculous landing saving virtually all those on board. The ensuing investigation, though, forms the narrative structure by which his deep flaws are revealed.

I watched this movie about 2 weeks before I boarded a plane to fly to the Pacific coast for holidays. At no point did that vivid depiction of the actual crash bother me on an emotional level, nor instill apprehension regarding my upcoming voyage. Again, fiction is fiction.

Recently, I was reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, which explores the topic of what causes extreme or unusual instances of success or failure. Why do some people become fantastically wealthy and accomplished at their chosen profession or field, and others don’t? What makes something stand apart and break the norm? A fascinating topic; I heartily recommend the book. Anyway, the chapter I was reading today involved the curious case of Korean airline crashes, which happened at an alarmingly regular pace during the 80s and 90s. I believe Gladwell noted that their rate of crashes was 17 times that of the US average or perhaps the world average. I have not finished the chapter, but I have read the book several years before, and know roughly what the conclusion will be. Essentially, cultural prohibitions regarding a subordinate challenging his superior prevented the secondary pilot from taking steps or pointing out information to the captain that might have averted the tragedies that were piling up.

In order to demonstrate the lack of communication and exchange of information within the cockpit, he transcribed several examples of the recordings of the black boxes from the crash. Perhaps my overactive imagination is to blame, but I could imagine the rising panic and frustration in the situation; in one case, the plane crashed because it ran out of gas, yet the exact amount of fuel remaining was never communicated to the air traffic controller.

As I read this, and even as I summon it from my memory right now, an odd clenching, a vague nausea stirs within my belly. The thought This is rather ghoulish skittered across my mind as I read, and I could almost feel my blood pressure start to rise. These were crashes that occurred 20, some even 30, years ago, and yet the thought of them, reading the terse or frantic communiques from the pilots in plain letters on a page while attempting to understand the reason why, caused, and causes, me anxiety. Contrast this with the graphic images of a plane crash plastered across a 30 foot movie screen while the noise bombards my ears, yet I am in no way apprehensive or disturbed, even with the prospect of an upcoming flight lingering.

I find it amazing how the mind works. Because if anything, the visceral experience of the movie should have impacted me far greater than the cold, dispassionate description of the passages. In the movie we saw characters die, women and children screaming and flailing upside down, and battered and bruised bodies afterward. There are no graphic descriptions in the book of body parts or the actual wreckage that investigators found; the point of Gladwell’s book isn’t to rehash the entire experience but to explore the reason for it, so descriptions of the aftermath are unnecessary. And yet, my mind knows that what it experienced with the senses (namely the movie) wasn’t real, while the scenes from the book actually happened. People died, and some of their final words are recorded. And my mind can distinguish the difference without a conscious imperative from me. I didn’t think to myself, Wow, this really happened. I’m not just reading about a fictional event; this will probably disturb me. On the contrary, I read about other tragedies and atrocities without having such a reaction. My emotions upon hearing about Sandy Hook or Aurora were sorrow and anger, but it didn’t disturb me.

Perhaps this is why. With those other occurrences, or like 9/11, there was active agency behind the tragedies. Some body chose to act in heinous ways and the results were hideous to contemplate. But they make sense, and even though media members and politicians are quick to say otherwise, probably could not have been avoided for the most part. A gunman who is intent upon shooting up a school may have this evil deed facilitated by the availability of weapons in his parents’ house; but if he is determined enough, he will find a way to procure them even if they aren’t as readily available.  Evil exists, and nothing humans can do will ever eradicate or completely prevent it.

Well, what about natural disasters? The tsunamis in South Asia or Japan, the earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy—do they disturb me as well? Not in the same fashion, I must confess. For this reason: there really isn’t much humans can do to prevent such catastrophes, no matter what climate change alarmists (oh the hubris!) would have us think. We may rail against God, but no one else can bear any responsibility. Not, mind you, that I blame God for natural disasters, but I understand the impulse among theists or deists to do so.

What bothers me, as I consider it, about the events from the book is that they were needless, they could have been prevented. The plane that tried to land and had to abort, which eventually crashed because it ran out of fuel, never informed the tower that it had only ten minutes of fuel left. The copilot never turned to the captain and confronted him on his questionable decisions. The copilot took the terse communications with harried New Yorker air traffic controllers as veiled insults and signs of agitation, and consequently mitigated the situation on the plane instead of stating plainly the dire circumstances. All minor things that led to more major problems that eventually led to tragedy. All human, all preventable. If a plane crashed because the avionics failed or, like in the death of golfer Payne Stewart, the cabin decompressed and killed everyone aboard hours before the fuel ran out, I am saddened and horrified. But the situations in the book sickened me and angered me. The needless loss of life! The senseless tragedy!

Because, thanks to my overactive imagination, I tend to project myself into scenarios in stories I read, and I would have been incensed and confounded at the laisse faire attitude of a copilot who refuses to use the word “emergency” when the plane I’m flying only has 10 minutes left of fuel and we’re being put at the back of the landing queue. Unfathomable! I would be shouting in the face of the pilot, screaming into the microphone. I would say clearly over the radio, “You had better tell all other planes to clear off, because I’m coming in to land right now! Otherwise we’re all going to die! Deal with it!” That’s the difference between natural disasters, crimes, and tragedies.