At the end of the year it is common to have a host of charities come knocking at one's mailbox or email address, seeking donations in support of their cause. Some of these are very beneficial, others can be little more than scams with very little going to the people they are purporting to help. At such times it is important to remember what the giving of charity should be about. The real purpose of charity is to see that a person doesn't need charity, or only needs it for a short period of time. Too often this principle is violated, especially so by the largess of governments who seem to prefer to foster dependency as a way of legitimizing their continued power. When was the last time a governmental program was cancelled because it was no longer needed?
Thursday, January 6, 2022
Saturday, June 29, 2013
The Joy of Being a Burden
Recently I have
been coming upon articles and books which speak of burdensomeness. It’s not a concept we like to hear. One frequently hears the view expressed among
the infirm elderly “I don’t want to be a burden to anybody”. It is difficult for us to admit that we need
help. We don’t want to be a bother to
others.
We live in a
world that is enamored with power and strength. With the evolutionary model of
the survival of the fittest before our eyes, we hesitate to admit weakness,
believing that it shows us in a bad light.
Our society is glamorized by self independence, evidenced by all of the
self-help manuals on the market. We are
programmed by our society to avoid being dependent on others. Unfortunately, holding this attitude has had
a devastating effect on the family and the church. It makes us afraid to admit our own weaknesses. Deep inside our hearts we know we have them. Since no one talks about them, it becomes
very easy to think that we alone have such problems. This leads to discouragement, and can even
lead us away from faith.
But in both church and family, weakness is
essential if we are to live in community.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his book Life Together says that “not
only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without
the weak”. He further adds that it is
only the weak that prevent the death of a fellowship. The Anglican theologian and pastor, John
Stott, near the end of his long life wrote in his book The Radical Disciple that
dependence is one of the most neglected areas of discipleship, concluding that
“we are all designed to be a burden to others”.
In his mid eighties, while preparing for a sermon he was to preach, he
fell, breaking a hip. Lying there,
unable to move, he was totally dependent on others. As he reflected on this event a couple of
years later, he concluded that total dependence is a place where radical
disciples need to be from time to time.
The film Driving Miss Daisy focuses on the tension between
dependence and independence. At its
beginning, fiercely independent Miss Daisy refuses to accept any help, not
wanting to be dependent on anyone. By
the end of the movie, ninety-seven year old Miss Daisy graciously accepts being
fed by her former chauffer.
Gilbert
Meilaender goes so far as to claim that “Is this not in large measure what it
means to belong to a family: to burden each other – and to find, almost miraculously,
that others are willing, even happy, to carry such burdens?” He adds that when we reject this, we cease to
live in a moral community which deserves to be called family. God has designed the life of the family, both
our nuclear and church families, to be one of “mutual burdensomeness”. We are to carry each other’s burdens. The
nuclear family which refuses to accept this role will cease to function as a
family. Likewise, the church which
refuses to bear each others burdens will cease to function as the church was
created to be.
Mutual sharing
of burdens allows us to care for each other. It also gives life giving freedom
to those who are suffering, enabling them to in turn care for others. We have two questions before us that we must
answer. Are we willing to carry another’s burden? Are we also willing to be a burden to
others? The answers may tell us a lot
about our faith.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
The Basic of Survival
The Jewish Rabbi, Abraham Heschel,
raises the question of how Judaism survived the assaults and challenges it has
faced through the centuries. Throughout
their history the Jewish people have again and again seen the decay of civilization,
have lived through persecutions and have been scorned with contempt. He notes that they kept their integrity alive
through “a commitment of heart and soul, love that goes with character and
conviction.” He alludes to the idea
that the focal point of Jewish survival is the belief that “God, Israel ,
and Torah are one.” He concludes that commitment
to these three inseparable, interdependent realities must be based on love to
be successful. Without a commitment to all three, faith becomes a two-legged
tripod which will soon collapse and die.
The same can be said for
Christianity as well. Our foundation
must be based on a commitment of love towards God, His word, and the Church. At a time when Christianity is considered
contemptible in the eyes of secular society, when we are being persecuted and
ostracized for our beliefs, having a balanced approach to all three is
crucial. If we discount one of them,
favoring the other two, we will eventually find ourselves in dire straits.
Without a strong faith in God, the
pressures surmounting us will eventually become overwhelming, leading us into
discouragement. This can lead us to
doubt God’s power and control over the forces that assail us. It then becomes much more difficult to
maintain a position of integrity in our culture. As fatalism makes its headway into our lives,
we experience paralysis, believing that this is just the way things are. Our moral outrage at evil begins to
disappear.
Without the strong presence of the
Word, we have little sense of God’s love and His expectations for us. Becoming biblically illiterate, we lose sight
of the fact that God is a relationship building God who deeply cares for us and
wants us to live incarnational lives.
Without an understanding of the nature of God’s gracious love for us,
without knowledge of his character our relationship with him becomes
diminished. As a result, we are unable
to represent Christ to the world.
It is also essential to be
connected to His Church. There are many
today who desire to follow Christ without identifying with the Church. But the Church is an adhesive, binding us
together in love as the body of Christ.
Without a strong identification with the Church we lose a connection
with his body that helps sustain us in the difficult times of our lives, and
gives us purpose in serving and ministering to others.
Triangles
are the strongest geometrical structures.
Unlike other geometrical figures, such as quadrilaterals, which can be
deformed easily, a triangle will hold its shape. The equilateral triangle, which may well be
the strongest because all three sides and angles are equal, is the type most
used in structural design. .
Just as it’s shape keeps it from
being deformed, the internal forces on all sides begin equal, so also a life
based equally on faith in God, immersion in His word, and identification with
His Church will be able to stand against the wiles of the roaring lion
devil. This three strand cord approach
to faith helps us stand firm as we live out our daily lives Because it is very
easy to get out of kilter, it is well worth asking ourselves from time to time
“How well balanced is the triangle of my life of faith in God?” “Do I have a love relationship with God, His
Word, and the Church?”
Sunday, January 27, 2013
The Entanglement of Right
The ancient
Greek king, Agamemnon, is most known for his role in the destruction of Troy
during the Trojan War. Less well known
are the dynamics in his family history which make him a tragic figure. The ancient Greek playwright, Aeschylus,
tells Agamemnon’s story in the three tragedies known as the Oresteia. Agamemnon and his brother Menelaus come to
their thrones largely through the atrocities committed by their father against
their uncle and cousins. When Menelaus’
wife, Helen, is seduced and taken to Troy ,
the brothers seek to punish the Trojans for the act. Like his father, Agamemnon
also commits atrocities. He sacrifices
his daughter in order to incur the favor of the gods in the war. Instead of merely punishing Helen’s lover, he
destroys the entire city. While he is
away, the one remaining cousin whom his father hadn’t killed seduces his wife
and gains control of his throne. Upon
Agamemnon’s return, his wife murders him along with the mistress he brought
back with him from the war. In turn
their son avenges his father’s death by killing his mother and Agamemnon’s
cousin. Each atrocity is justified as
the just punishment for the previous act.
The author of an introduction to Aeschylus’ work concludes that he is
not describing right versus wrong, but right versus right. But although each person defends his actions
as being appropriate for the situation, although each claims to be in the
right, things escalate and get out of hand.
They are caught up in entanglements.
In the end “Every correction is a blood-bath which calls for new
correction.” The Oresteia points out the
folly of accepting the viewpoint that the end justifies the means.
Today we
live in a world which is much like Agamemnon’s world. Our society is also caught up in
entanglements. We focus upon rights to a
large degree. We use them to justify our
actions. We falsely assume that actions
performed for the right reasons are acceptable, even if they are morally wrong;
whether it was the bombing of ROTC centers on campuses by anti war protestors
in the Vietnam era of the 1960s, or the bombing of abortion centers by anti
abortionists in the 1980s and 1990s, or the shady practices committed by our
political parties in most elections. Similar
to the actions described by the Greek playwright, basing our actions on the
philosophy that the end justifies the means is wrong.
As we have
moved into the twenty-first century, society’s focus on narcissistic rights has
come to the forefront, whether it is women’s rights, gay rights, illegal
alien’s rights, animal rights, etc. While
the issues involving rights are complex, and some of the concerns are
legitimate, many of the proffered solutions are troublesome. They have many of the same problems that
Aeschylus describes in his plays. We can
become so caught up in our own rights that we attempt to legitimize all of our
actions, moral or not.
Self
legitimization is dangerous precisely because it feeds upon the view that the
end justifies the means. When we accept this
view, it becomes easy to believe that as long as our purposes are achieved, it
makes no difference whether our actions are morally right or wrong.
It is also tragic when this
viewpoint occurs in the church, for it destroys Christ’s body. Sin is legitimatized if it has achieved the
desired end. In each case the desired
end has been used to justify the means used to achieve it. It is important to remember that in God’s
eyes the end never justifies the means.
Do you find yourself in agreement?
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Our Flirtation with Paganism
Over the
past fifty years we have been sliding down a slope into paganism. Over time the slope has appeared to become
steeper, the slide more rapid, and the descent more difficult to halt and
reverse. Its cessation requires a robust
faith, concentrated effort, and a strong voice countering evil. Whether as a society we any longer have the
will and the strength to reverse the slide is questionable.
The sad
fact is that we do not even know that we have adopted various forms of
paganism. But like the wolf in sheep’s
clothing we have too often become pagans in religious garb, namely by embracing
one of paganism’s most cherished tenets – fatalism.
Fatalism
holds to the belief that the God who created and sustains the universe has
become impotent, unable to contend against the societal forces arrayed against
him. As his power lessens, that of
paganism ascends. Our slide into
paganism is illustrative of the problem facing Christianity today. As mankind has become more self centered, as
we surrender ourselves to the way things are, as we become less shocked and
more complacent concerning the many facets of evil around us, our view of God
as active in all parts of the universe and particularly in the affairs of
history, diminishes. We become
accustomed to evil. When we lose our
moral outrage towards evil, believing that its practice in society is
inevitable, we fall prey to helplessness and despair. When we abandon the crime infested areas of
our inner cities as irredeemable places we conclude that God has limited power
to change things. The fatalistic
viewpoint that this is just the way things now are, and that we must learn to
live with it, comes straight out of paganism.
The
biblical picture is vastly different.
Nowhere in the pages of Scripture do we find fatalism advocated. We are constantly told that we have a choice:
“Choose life, not death!” “Choose whom
you will serve”. Instead of callousness
towards evil, which paganism embraces, we are called to moral indignation. But unless we have an all encompassing belief
in a God who acts, in a God who controls the affairs of history, we will find
ourselves grasping hold of paganism more than of God.
The early
church father, Tertullian, living in the days of pagan Rome ,
called for Christians to become the “soul” of the culture in which they
lived. He believed that the Church could
transform society in this way. He was
well aware that in so doing, he was calling Christians to a life of sacrifice,
even to the point of death. The Church
heeded his exhortation. It was a mere
century after his death that the Roman emperor Constantine converted to
Christianity.
The culture
in which we live is quite similar to that of Tertullian. Both cultures have experienced wide-spread
corruption and disregard for the sanctity of life. The early Christians, rejecting fatalism,
believed that God was calling them to redeem their culture. They took a stand for God, willing to risk
everything. Choosing God’s way always
requires risk, and it is in the area of risk where we often will discover where
our true allegiance lies. The acceptance
of risk requires faith. The question
before all of us is this: “Am I willing to step out in faith, much as Abraham
did when he left Ur of the Chaldees
for an unknown land, risking everything to stand against the evil in the
society around me?” To answer “No”
suggests we have transferred our allegiance to paganism, believing that it is
more powerful than God.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Spiritual Tranquilizer
Thomas Merton, reflecting on the 1958 Christmas Address of
Pope John XXIII noted that
“Christ our Lord did not come to bring peace
to the world as a kind of spiritual tranquilizer. He brought to His disciples a vocation and a
task, to struggle in the world of violence to establish His peace, not only in
their own hearts but in society itself.
This was to be done not by wishing and fair words but by a total
interior revolution in which we abandoned the human prudence that is subordinated
to the quest for power, and followed the higher wisdom of love and of the
Cross.”
Although his words were written during the height of the
Cold War, they are as relevant today as they were then. We are still living in a world of
violence. We see the effects of
terrorism all around the world. We still
seek to obtain power, whether as religious right or left, as conservative or
liberal, or Republican or Democrat. We
are often asked to compromise our convictions.
We still find comfort in pursuing a tranquilizing peace that never quite
solves the problems we face. It doesn’t
appear that much has changed in the past fifty years.
The role of
a tranquilizer is to soothe over issues and reduce tension. While it covers over problems, it never
solves the basic issues. Merton’s
statement leads us to a probing question. To what extent do we seek peace as a
spiritual tranquilizer? If we do, we will
find ourselves eventually willing to accept “peace at any price”. And this leads us down the slippery slope
which ends up in a compromise with error and evil. Unfortunately it is all too easy to justify
this in the name of peace. The Old
Testament prophets excoriated the religious leaders who preached “peace, peace
when there was no peace”. We saw what occurred
when world leaders sought to appease Hitler during the 1930s. Many church leaders of his day also fell
under his charismatic leadership, refusing to take a stand against the Third
Reich as it became more and more evil.
But true
Christianity never makes compromise with evil in order to achieve peace. We see this in the life of Jesus. Even though it eventually cost Him his life, He
refused to go along with the religious leaders of His day whose teachings had
distorted God’s intent. We see the same
in the lives of His disciples when they declared “Which is right in God’s eyes: to listen to you, or to him? You be the judges!” (Acts 4:19b). And we also see it in the lives of the
Christian martyrs as they peacefully faced the wild animals and gladiators in
the arenas before the taunting on-looking crowds Refusing to worship the emperor and live in
peace, they gladly accepted death.
In the
spiritual realm, peaceful coexistence never seems to work. Those on the side of evil will almost always
come out ahead in the exchange. Despite
our vain attempts to coexist with the world, Satan will never play fair, always
manipulating things to his advantage. He
simply cannot be trusted.
As Merton
eloquently notes, God requires an interior revolution or transformation that
totally changes our character and our lives. This alone brings true peace, even
in the midst of violence, for it is an interior peace that only comes from a
total allegiance to and complete trust in God.
It relies upon complete dependence on Him. What kind of peace are we willing to live
with? Is it a tranquilized peace that lasts only for the moment?
Community Spirit
During the 19th century and first half of the 20th
century community spirit was much in vogue.
It was common for neighbors to help neighbors during times of need,
especially in rural America . Growing up during the latter years of this
period, before the radical shift to individualism occurred, I was fortunate
enough to witness this phenomenon. While
still a young boy, I had the privilege of attending a barn raising where
farmers from twenty miles around came together to help a neighbor to build a
new barn. As part of a threshing ring,
our family along with several others bought a threshing machine to harvest
grain. During the harvesting season, the
entire group would move from farm to farm, harvesting each farmer’s grain, the
men and boys working in the fields, the wives and girls cooking the meals. I have always felt privileged to have been
old enough to participate in this activity prior to its cessation from American
life. One spring, when my father was ill
and unable to prepare our fields for planting, several neighbors showed up one
Saturday morning with their tractors and plows to prepare the fields. These types of activities were common during
my youth.
Moving into
the latter half of the 20th century things radically changed with the rise of
both industrialization and individualism.
The urban flight to suburbia with its protected yards and garage door
openers, the vast increase in mechanized equipment on the farms, the shift in
attitude towards “doing one’s own thing” and “I’ve got to be me” all led us
away from community. Front porches, with
neighbors sitting on them and conversing, were replaced with decks in backyards,
resulting in further loss of community. Churches,
by en large, also succumbed to this loss, as, with better roads and faster
automobiles, coupled with the thrill of individualism, the concept of local
community churches disappeared. It is
not uncommon today for people to live thirty or more miles away from the church
where they worship. This makes community
life much more difficult.
The
emphasis upon individualism which began in the 1960s, moving through modernism
into the postmodern era has increasingly fractured society, with many today
feeling alone, aloof and disenfranchised.
The void that individualism brings can only be filled by community
because God, being triune, is in community, and expressed our need for human
community when he said “It is not good for man to be alone.” In constituting the church, God has chosen
the symbol of the body to illustrate its communal nature. We are called together, with the
understanding that we need each other to function properly.
The church,
because of its body structure, is poised to overturn the aloneness and
abandonment of our current individualistic society. As a caring community, it can reach out to
the world, meeting the needs we find there.
But community does not occur by osmosis.
It requires intentionality. It
will not occur without deliberate effort. To be successful, it will require men
and women coming together with the conviction that God has called them to such
an endeavor.
God calls
each of us to be a part of His redeeming community. He calls us to reach out to the alienated
world around us and draw them into His community, the church. But it will not happen unless we are willing
to abandon our own individualistic ways of living. It is only by our active involvement as the
body of Christ that others will find the Christian community attractive and
seek to enter. Are you willing to make
the effort?
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