Anhedonia

It’s amazing what happens when we try to shake things up.  I was listening to a broadcast from Focus on the Family, because it was playing while I did some dishes.  It was speaking about the condition of anhedonia, albeit speaking about it as symptomatic of pleasure overload, distraction and distortion overload.  I had to look it up, to see if it was being used correctly.  Turns out it’s the medical name for the condition of the victim of depression when they are unable to obtain normal or even abnormal joy from commonplace activities.  Now, this got me thinking about shaking things up, mostly because I’m in a sort of transition time myself.  Anhedonia does not allow for people to be shaken up.  They are melancholic and joyless, adrift in a world that seems to have nothing for them.  It’s the world’s name for spiritual depression, and it eliminates the quest and the boon of the Joy-Giver Jesus when it’s given that categorization.  I believe to the utmost that it is important to see Bible playing out in practical, real, and daily life.  So I call it spiritual depression when I detect it.

It’s hard to be told to become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know when a) you know a lot of people b) your temperament is melancholic c) You are looking for a reason for the joy you are told you should have.  Or, to rephrase, to have reason for the hope that we have.  That’s the Biblical version of what I’m saying.  I’ve been in a place of being demonstrative of all three of those…still am on many occasions.  But then it gets overcome with thanksgiving for the blessing of, for example, a beautiful day with a comparatively large amount of freedom from that which depresses.   Here’s hoping for beauty from the ashes, then.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Why I Changed The Title

This blog used to be called “TRUTH – Christ To A Post-Christian Culture (v. 3.0)”  Even before that, it was called “Seeking the Truth”.  I recently (in case you’re a new visitor or someone who spent hours wondering why the title had changed) re-titled it so it’s become “Christ To A Post-Christian Culture – Shifting Paradigms”  Because I’m casting about desperately for content since the ill-conceived H. Jackson Brown fiasco, I decided to spend this post on the very inane ‘why I changed the title’ subject.

A very pessimistic young man once wrote in his journal ‘life is change’.  In the years since I wrote it I’ve come to some pretty startling understandings about what it actually means, understandings which I hope that I can redeem from the culture that produced them and that you can receive as valid and worthwhile.

First – it qualifies nothing.  Yes, life is change, and when I was thinking about it I was also reading Dan Simmons’ Endymion, and his messiah for the human race condensed her message to two words – choose again, which probably influenced my thinking at the time.  I wanted to be concise in my understanding of the world. but that conciseness has been at the expense of a number of other things.  So to simply say ‘life is change’ is simply saying that things need not affect you, nor need you take them as formative or destructive. This opens the doors to some very strange understandings.

Second – It alleviates one from the responsibility to try and effect change, because it nullifies causality, distancing oneself from it.  Change happens, but what do you do about it?  How is it started?  Is it for the good or for the bad?

Lately, this belief has been coming back to haunt me.  But I’m going to use it for good, now.  Because life is change is also a very concise message of optimism.  You’re never anywhere, or in anything for long, and that can be very liberating.  I think of Tristran Thorne in Stardust, whose statement “I”m not a shopboy” is the rallying cry for taking the steps you need to take in order to effect that change.  And to truly believe that life is change is to truly believe that the condition in which we find ourselves is not a permanent one.

And that brings me ’round to why I changed the title.  “Paradigm’ means two things.  First, a paradigm is an example that serves as a model or standard by which to measure.  Secondly, it means a set of assumptions, concepts, values and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality.  These are very limited Wiktionary definitions, but their essence is important.  I’ve given this blog the title “Christ to a Post Christian Culture – Shifting Paradigms” for two main reasons.  First, it intimates that the message of Christ necessitates radical change.  The assumptions by which we govern the world must be altered to have as their foundation the call to take up our cross daily, to come from labour and heavy drudgery and receive rest.  The call to deny mother and father so that we might be counted worthy of Him, to count everything as loss that we might gain Christ.  Yes, even the call to suffer and rejoice that we have been counted worthy to do so in his name.  The call to do greater works than these.  The call to go out in the world and make disciples of all men.  We must demand of ourselves adherence to the new standard of Christ, by which we must measure all things.

Second, the understanding of shifting paradigms that I hold is that life is change for this reason – we are always in motion, at the physical, at the molecular, and at the spiritual levels.  We are always in the movement of sanctification, we are always changing.  But the object of that change must be Christ-likeness, and the fitting for the glory for which we hope.  Thus to bring Christ to a post-Christian culture means that we must be so different as to be intolerable to a world that already tolerates so much.  That we must be party to collapsing worldviews (even our own) and be there to preserve the hearts and minds of those who emerge afterwards.  And finally, to bring Christ to a post-Christian culture means that we need to understand that everyone else is always moving, too.  Or at least, always being moved.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Looking At “The Poverty of Love”

I’ve been receiving emails from the Christian Vision Project, and I read this article some time ago. I’ve been interested in the desert fathers for a long time…I forget how I even came across this page, but I bookmarked it and have never lost it. I think it had something to do with a search on monastic rules of conduct.  Regardless, It’s been a great source of inspiration to me.  I really do seek wisdom in conduct and in life, because of its value.  This is something I believe strongly.  But to seek it without guidance, without the conduct of grace and for its own sake is detrimental to the faith that leads to the living of a different life.  The rich blessing of Christ is that we are given guidance, we are given the Counsellor and the Helper, and privileged access to the Father as the Son’s chosen recipients of grace. This is not favour that we are worthy of, nor can we achieve it on our own, but by love we have been given it, and in love we need to exercise it.

And yet our love is clearly to small, if we find it hard to love people in all circumstances.  That, dear readers, is why it is by Christ’s love that we are enabled to show love, and by Christ’s love that we can stand.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Simplicity

H. Jackson Brown’s third suggestion for success is this:

Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.

I’m not going to write about this specifically this post, but I realized I’d forgotten to attach it to the end of my last post. So here it is.

What I am going to write about is a prequel to that particular bit of knowledge, but, strangely enough, it’s going to approach it rather obliquely. What I want to look at is simplicity of heart.

I’m not sure where the best place to start is. Certainly, one needs to bear in mind that we are all given the ability to love. We do not all choose to use it, however. And much in the world prevents us from it. But we do have that capability in us, and it is from the heart that serving others springs. And it is in simplicity of heart, truly, that the key to the gift of service is to be found.

We add complexity to the heart by launching the meditation of reason against it. As a result, we lose the simplicity of heart that gives rise to unflinchingly loving people – living in innocence. Or we find ourselves in situations where we don’t want to love people, and forget that we’re all broken. Regardless, I’ve been thinking recently that being simple in heart, as a child is, really is as important as the Bible says it is.

To recover this is not a work that we undertake often or without trepidation. But it is sometimes necessary to return the heart to something approaching innocence in order that we might be of the greatest service to others.

Something to think on, anyway.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

When Work Becomes Toil

Work at something you enjoy and that’s worthy of your time and talent.

So says suggestion 2. In the life belonging to the world, working at something you don’t enjoy because it may pay better wages is often seen as acceptable. As is choosing ‘fallback’ career paths that bear little fruit and leave one exhausted while trying to live up to the grand dreams we’ve all had. Work becomes toil for a number of reasons; but the predominant reason is that we are simply not seeing what we do in the light of bringing glory to God. It’s taken me a few years to realize this, but thank God that He’s patient enough to wait while I’ve tried to figure it out.

Ecclesiastes 1:2-11 serves as the point of introduction I’m going to use here. It reads as follows:

“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanities of vanities! All is vanity. what does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, ’see, this is new’? It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.”

A rather depressing start to a point that’s rather far from that. Ecclesiastes, if taken on its own authority, is the very personal record of a man trying different approaches to finding the meaning of life and ultimately resolving that this is the case: “The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” (Ecc. 12:13). Solomon, in all his riches, in all his wisdom, did not have the advantage of knowing that man’s chief end is to glorify, rather than to fear God. Included as a large part of that is the work we do daily.

For those who read my earlier posts on spiritual gifts, you’ll remember that I believe in the presence of spiritual gifts in the lives of believers, and I recognize the presence of these gifts – at least the natural gifts and aptitudes – in the lives of non-believers. The purpose here is to be active in ministry with these gifts, and that’s where suggestion 2 comes in – Work at something that you enjoy and that’s worthy of your time and talent. If the gifts are given as ministry aids, and if one’s job is missional and a ministry, then you are to be working at something for which you’ve been given the gifts, in order that you might more effectively honor the Lord who gave you those gifts. You will not find such employment toilsome, because you’ll be doing those things for which you’ve been fitted to do.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Service

In order to do what I intend with the 21 suggestions, I have to do some work in the Bible, finding verses and putting them together to make an entry.  This necessitates time, and time is something I haven’t had a lot of for the last number of weeks.  As much as I’d like to be doing this daily, I’ve been swamped with other things lately.  I’ve also been focused on other areas of life.  But as a sort of pre-entry entry on suggestion number 2, I’m going to talk about service.  It’s one of the most important parts of looking at the Biblical extemporization of working at something that’s worthy.  It’s also, sometimes, a trap.  Especially in a work-oriented culture, where folks try their hardest just to get ahead in what they think is important.  If you are a person who works hard, who has a heart for service, or who finds satisfaction in the offering of yourself to help and succor others, you are vulnerable to falling on the wrong side of the fine line one walks between God-given service with God-given strength and man-dictated service on your own strength.  It’s not an easy place to be, and it often leads to confusion, depression, and burnout.  It plagues the churches, too.  They become focused on service without balancing it with the Gospel, with the truth.  So the servant falls into service to service, not to Christ.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

What “The Impressive Clergyman” Had to Say

For those of you who haven’t seen The Princess Bride, do so. You will not regret it. For those of you who have, you’re going to recognize the allusion. Prince Humperdinck’s bishop was played by Peter Cook, and his speech still sends people into gales of laughter when they watch the show. Here’s the relevant point to today’s Brown post.:

“Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togevah today. Mawwiage…that dweam wivvin a dweam, that bwessed union…etc.”

I thought I’d start off on a little bit of a tongue in cheek note, because the first suggestion for success is a pretty heavy subject to get into, and some of the stuff I’m going to say is pretty controversial. It states, once again:

1. Marry the right person. This one decision will determine 90% of your happiness or misery.

It’s a true thing. It really is. I have seen marriages both successful and unsuccessful, and those who are really right for each other make it plain by their actions, by their character as others see it, and by what they highlight about each other to each other. Let me take you through some passages just to get some ground under us:

Genesis 2:18-25

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” So out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.”

So two things become clear here. First, that it is not good for man to be alone…marriage is an essential part of life. Second, that a man will leave his family to start a new one, and in doing so he is to hold fast to his wife. That is, he is to consider her worthy of any sacrifice necessary for the preservation of the marriage.

This understanding of marriage is expanded upon in the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon. In 2:7, 3:5 and 8:4, that book declares this thing:

“I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that you not stir up or awaken love until it pleases.”

The whole book is an illumination of the point and privilege of marriage. In 3:11, this is written: “Go out, O daughters of Zion, and look upon King Solomon, with the crown with which his mother crowned him on the day of his wedding, on the day of the gladness of his heart.” In 5:16b, this is written: “This is my beloved and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.” There’s more, but my time is limited in this one. Suffice it to say with regards to the aims of marriage in Song of Solomon that marriage is meant to bring delight to the bride and the bridegroom both, delight such that anything else is incomparable, that each is to be lost without the other.

What becomes clear throughout the Old Testament (and there are hundreds of illustrations regarding marriage and family) is that marriage is meant to be a source of joy and hope, not misery and despair to those privileged enough to be married. The New Testament gives illustrations of marriage in a much deeper way, likening the union of man and wife to be the closest earthly reflection of the fellowship of God to reconciled man, to pre-sinful or post-redeemed man.

Just as an aside, two of the essential reasons, I believe, why Jesus never married is to preserve Himself as the righteous Bridegroom but also to indicate that His fellowship with the Lord did not need to be reflected or found in marriage, but that His relationship with his Father was complete without it. This would be a very different can of worms, and you may see a meditation on it at some point later on.

The matters of Christ as Bridegroom are a related topic, but I can’t get into it here because it would take you far too long to read the post. There are also some gaping holes to fill, because to articulate a theology of marriage would be almost an academic paper in length. I’ll return to this topic when I get to suggestion 21, but for now, here’s the next one. You’ll see this in a few days.

2. Work at something you enjoy and that’s worthy of your time and talent.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Exercising Faith III – Emotional Shorthand

One thing that really bugs me about this new digital culture is the way in which we limit ourselves emotionally by saturating ourselves with news…BAD news.  Countless thousands of people will get up in the morning, brew their coffee, sit down at the computer and peruse the previous day’s tragedies.  We’re hit all the time with news of death, war, famine, pestilence…yes, I’ve mentioned the four horsemen of the Apocalypse specifically (They’re Biblical, and not just icons of popular understanding).  So much, in fact, that it destroys compassion and empathy.  And this is frightening.  We are deluged with so much loss and so much senselessness, and as a result we start to shut ourselves down emotionally, like circuit breakers.  We can’t bear the things we hear on our own strength, so we don’t try.  And that narrowing of the range of feelings short-changes the heart and soul of what we’ve been designed for.  In a nutshell, what happens is that we’ve designed our lives to communicate in emoticons, which I call emotional shorthand.

There’s a lot of reference in the Bible to things like fullness of joy, and there are a lot of people who don’t experience it, because of depression (spiritual or physical), distraction, delusion and division.  I kind of like the alliteration, and I’ll probably spend a post on these things a little later on.  But now, bear one thing in mind – We’re not designed as emotionless beings.  Nor are we meant to experience things like love and sorrow as brief blips on an otherwise steady ECG monitor.  We have hearts for a reason, and it’s no accident that in places like Ezekiel 11:18-21 and Ezekiel 36:25-27 the Lord expressly declares that he will give us hearts of flesh.  They are to be used for people, and to their full range…not as foolish little yellow heads to punctuate sentences.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer

Operative Grace

I’m getting more and more bowled over by the way I see the hand of the Lord in all sorts of things.  It’s amazing to see how He works in the lives of non-believers and they just seem to ignore it or are unable to see it.  But I guess that’s one of the way’s in which we can tell that He is alive in us, because we get to see it and are reduced to tears at His goodness in letting us see it.  There’s a song by Mercy Me that really describes this.  It’s called “Bring The Rain”, and here are some of the lyrics:

I can count a million times / people asking me how I / can praise You with all that I’ve gone through.  The question just amazes me / can circumstances possibly change / who I forever am in You?

The depth of feeling in these lyrics is something else.  But what it really speaks to is how a Christian experiences life as opposed to a non-Christian.  I mean, I can see how God’s at work to change the hearts and minds of people I work with, to incline them more to one another in love.  Now, it’s not the great turning towards God that still needs to come, but it’s a start.  What I find most amazing is that in learning not to take each other for granted, these people are taking small steps towards learning more about what God feels for His children.  And I have been placed in the position of being able to observe this and offer the truth of Christianity in it.  This is what’s really amazing.

Acting on that, however, is what will make the difference.  Not speculation, not thoughtful commentary.

Action.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Keeping Company With The Dead

The various records of Christ’s deliverance of the Gerasene/Gadarene demoniac(s) are the subject of this post.  You can find the accounts in Matthew 8:28-34, Mark 5:1-20, and Luke 8:26-39.  The Bible study I attend is chugging along through Matthew, currently, and the phrase arose as part of the discussion we were having last time we met.  I was struck by the passage, and immediately thought about the teaching on the new birth that’s coming out of Bethlehem Baptist, John Piper’s church, of late.  While these three accounts are too long to put in the post, I will include a relevant section of John to meditate on.  I know I’ve put this in here before, but I’m going to return briefly to it.  It’s John 3:1-15.  Longish, but good:

“Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.  This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.’  Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’  Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can a man be born when he is old?  Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.  That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.  Do not marvel that I said to you, “you must be born again.”  The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’  Nicodemus said to him ‘How can these things be?’  Jesus answered him, ‘Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?  Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.  If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?  No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven. the Son of Man.  And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.’”

I refer to John because John makes explicit reference to the necessity of being reborn in the life of a Christian.  It’s a rather inadequate metaphor for something far vaster and inexpressible; namely, the fact that there is a necessary purging from the body and the spirit of the Christian in Christ, and that such a cleansing is meant to accomplish only one thing…the raising of the dead to a new life, one freed from everything that has interfered with how God is glorified in the accomplishment of His purposes.

What has struck me with such clarity of late is the fact that the Gadarene demoniac, in his oppression, lives among the tombs.  Earthly markers of things that have passed, depending on one’s religious persuasions, into the earth or away from the earth.  These are two very different things.  But that’s a side track.  The man possessed by demons, who was called Legion, spent his life amidst charnel houses.  This is an explicit connection of the things of Satan to the things of the earth, and furthermore, an explicit connection of the work of demons to death.  I think I’ll need to look a little further into this next time.  right now I’m not properly focused.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.