Shame and Its Uses

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! [Luke 13:34 (NRSV).]

1. Looking in.

Christians are mocked for "feeling guilty about being human." Thanks for that. I am human. And I am guilty.

Some things about me shame me. Some are things I do or have done; some are things I don’t do or haven’t done. I'm unhappy with some of my thoughts. Sometimes I find an attitude that I don’t know about until something happens that makes it rise to my awareness. It’s like kicking over a rock and finding a creepy, scaley thing.

Not that I want to play King of the Hill, grappling with all challengers to be Most Lowly. I know there's good in me. But this essay focusses on the blessing of knowing the other parts. Since mine is the only life I've lived, I use own my life for illustration.

Shame isn't popular, nor guilt. But if a thrifty hunter uses all parts of a deer, why should heaven waste any part of our common human experience?

2. Faith Jenga.

Faith is a game of Jenga. That’s the game with a small tower of stacked blocks of wood. The object is not to be the last one to pull out a piece of wood before the tower collapses. Stay with me. I’ll tie this in.

Some Christians won’t pull out a single block. Every part of the Bible, and every story in it, is historic and accurate in all its parts. Fine.

Other Christians pull out so many blocks that it’s a marvel that their faith-tower stands at all. OK.

I’m somewhere in between. But when the Bible says that God rewards those who seek him, I believe that. That's part of my Jenga faith-tower.

3. Gaining the image of God.

Maybe it’s a cliché  to say that God is not found on a mountain top, but in our hearts. So seeking God is the journey to grow into the image of God.

In a way, it’s like a pilot overhearing nuances in the conversation of another pilot and knowing from those signs of shared knowledge that they share an occupation. Those signs might go over the heads of people who don't fly. Likewise, as we grow into the likeness of Christ, we recognize Jesus, and he recognizes us.

Not that we become perfect in this world. And not that we can advance without God’s grace. That’s true of believer and non-believer alike.

And not that gaining God’s image is all internal and detached from what we do. It isn’t. What we do, how we treat people, how we serve them, is the essence of godliness.

But part of becoming more perfect is wanting to. And that’s where I began this essay, looking inside and feeling shame. I read an online newspaper, and I had a negative reaction to a person I read about because of his high merit and his race. My reaction shamed me. I feel shame as I write this. I did not know that that was in me, but God did. Now I know, and I can start to purge it, with God’s help, with all possible speed.

Humility has value.

4. Rebellion.

The point is, I suppose, that God blesses us by showing us what he sees but we don’t. He gives us eyes to look inward.

Not long ago, I wrote an essay (Sowing with Tears) in which I associated youthful disobedience to God with the collapse of my life. To use the Jenga metaphor in a different way, I pulled out too many elements of faithfulness, and the tower came down.

That’s a plausible explanation but maybe not the right one, and certainly not the only one.

5. No catastrophe wasted.

It may be that God gave me directions, not because he expected me to do what he said or seemed to say, but so as not to waste the catastrophe that I was headed into. I had an unrealistically high opinion of myself (weirdly fused with fear and un-confidence). If I had not refused to do what I thought I should do, I would not have realized that I was like Jerusalem in the quotation at the beginning of this piece. God wanted to protect me from what he knew was coming. My arrogance kept me from getting under his wing. I did not board the ark as the clouds gathered.

My un-rightness was known to God. God, in his mercy, made it known to me. But it took everything going to hell for me to realize it.

After everything went to hell, for years I lived with the belief that salvation was lost to me. My prior unconscious sense that heaven was inevitable was stripped away like a grizzly strips bark from a tree. My pre-catastrophe confidence in the inevitability of heaven defied much of scripture. Now, I do not bet against the mercy of God, but I do not take it for granted, I hope. And I think that puts me in a better place than I was before.

6.  Yes, but.

But scripture supports a possibility apart from my life's collapse as the discipline of the Lord or a teachable moment. That's the possibility expressed by the book of Job, Psalm 44, and John 9:1-7 (esp., “'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  Jesus answered, 'Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.'" (NRSV).)

Sometimes, stuff just happens.

As to my history, I think the truth lies in the first two possibilities. There was a supernatural part to the collapse of my life. Much of my interpretation of the experience came from that part of it. In the years afterward, I've tried to put those parts into piles labeled "From God", "From Evil", and "From Illness".  My understanding is imperfect. The sorting continues.

Maybe as time goes by the sorting becomes less important, and I'm left with the blessing of humility in greater measure than I had before. I'm left with a gladness for the belated restoration of hope. Both of those are, to me, a kind of rebirth.

7. Prayer (Psalm 139:1-6 (NRSV).)

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
   you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
   and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
   O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
   and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
   it is so high that I cannot attain it.

Believers and Unbelievers

What?! Apparently, not everybody in America is a Christian. And some of these so-called "non-Christians" have strong opinions. This takes my breath away, but did you know that sometimes they express these opinions? In the media and in courtrooms! And they get away with that!

Thankfully, Fox News is on the story. They published a piece about it on Christmas Eve. It’s called Beyond the War on Christmas.

1. I wish all of my friends were believers.

But seriously, to my non-Christian friends: I wish that you were believers. I do. Since I believe in God and I believe in heaven and in hell, I believe that it would be better if you knew God and he knew you.

2. When unbelief is better than belief.

But, here’s a little walk-back. I would rather that you didn’t believe than that you believed and harmed children. I would rather that you didn’t believe than that you believed and were hateful to your parents. I would rather that you didn’t believe than that you believed and loudly rejoiced about dead American soldiers and murdered children in Connecticut.

Because I believe that then to God your belief would make little or no difference. And your behavior would disgrace the Lord.

3. The perfect logic of unbelief.

And let’s be clear: if you don’t believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God, that’s not fainting-spell illogical.

Jesus’s own family tried to restrain him because the crowds were saying that he was crazy. (Mark 3:21.) And those who knew him as he grew up and as a young man were generally unimpressed. ("‘Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?’ And they took offense at him." (Matthew 13:55-57 (NRSV).)

As the gospels point out, those who knew Jesus as he grew up and as a young man saw nothing that to them said God-is-with-us. (Although young Jesus was well thought of. (Luke 2:52).)

Yet you, my non-Christian friends, didn’t know Jesus before his ministry, so you don’t have that excuse to be unimpressed. But you might have a better excuse: you know us, your Christian friends.

4. We Christians are unimpressive to your detriment.

The hand in the glove of my wishing that my non-Christian friends believed is that I wish that my Christian friends were more Godly. (Not that any of them do the vile things that I talked about earlier.) I wish also that I were more Godly. Like, I wish I weren’t so selfish.

It’s true: Christians make rude, single-fingered gestures at other Christians on the freeway. We take advantage of others. We look out for ourselves, and we resent having to look out for others, especially if it’s not family, and sometimes even if it is. Our compassion fails. If I meet someone and he calls me "brother", my guard goes up.

Not to say that I have no tenderness toward my fellow believers. In my church, we have a custom in each service of greeting each other and blessing each other with the peace of God. I enjoy this ritual and feel blessed by it.

But of course, these people that I shake hands with, bless, and am blessed by are, for the most part, people who value their religion enough to attend worship every week. I’m grateful to worship in their company. They certainly aren’t Chreasters (folks who show up in church only on Christmas and Easter).

Still, weekly church attendance and gripes when someone says "happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" don’t necessarily show that someone has more than a twisty, winded walk with God.

So I concede this: you unbelievers might have some logic and some facts on your side when you’re unimpressed with Jesus because you’re unimpressed with we Christians. And that’s because often we Christian ain’t all that impressive.

5. A pious defense, and its rebuttal.

Now, here I could say something pious like, "We’re not perfect, we’re just forgiven." But I suppose you’d have at least two retorts to that.

First retort: "Not perfect? Try [rude plural noun]!" And that’s right. The news is full of failed and predatory and too-falsely-pious Christians.

Second retort: "Not perfect? Why the hell not?" Fair enough. If Jesus is all that he’s supposed to be, why aren’t we all paragons?

6. Marines: a metaphor.

This issue reminds me of being young and with a young friend. We saw a group of three young, uniformed Marines. They were skinny. My friend said something like, "Those are Marines? I’m not impressed!"

Yet we didn’t know those Marines. We didn’t know their past. We didn’t know how the Marine Corps had shaped them for the better. We didn’t know their present. Just by looking at them, we didn’t know what they knew, what they were capable of. We didn’t know their future. We didn’t know what they would become, which most certainly was more than they were at the moment that my friend and I squinted at their physiques.

And we judged the whole Marine Corps by the three specimens in front of us. Certainly if we had studied Marine Corps heroes, or the history of the Marine Corps, or even if we had seen an example of a Marine who had excelled and thrived in his profession – that would have impressed us.

7. Marine Corps: standards.

Yet among Christians, there usually is less rigor than in the Marine Corps.

Because in the Marine Corps all recruits famously go through boot camp. They get a new vocabulary. They exercise. They learn skills like close combat, how to shoot. They learn all about their weapons. I haven’t gone through boot camp, but by wide reputation I know that it’s hard.

8. Christianity: flab.

But anybody can call himself a Christian who feels like it. By far most churches take whoever walks through the door and finds a seat.

And Christian discipleship isn’t very much. The Bible is our book, but few Christians have read it from cover to cover – never mind more than once. I suspect that our prayer-life is often weak, and so are other exercises through which God might shape us.

Our deliberate building of a relationship with God might be so lackadaisical that it’s a wonder that God has built what he has built in us. If our discipleship is lackadaisical, we might or might not hold onto these gains when trouble comes. Scripture is pessimistic about this.

And modern American Christianity teaches that entry into heaven is easy for all who confess Christ. This tends to sooth believers into a flabby Christianity. If we gain heaven with no effort, why make effort?

This teaching is a historically-recent blight on American Christianity. In a pastoral class I took, the professor told us about a wealthy businessman who was kicked out of the Presbyterian Church at the beginning of the 20^th Century. He was kicked out because he claimed assurance of his salvation. The then-prevailing theology was that we may hope in our salvation, but heaven is not assured. I think that that’s the right way to think about salvation

Knowing the love of God is good and needful. But having no fire under us, so to speak, we Christians often let only our upbringing and the happenstance of life shape us – like almost everyone else.

9. Paragons show what’s possible with God.

The results of leisurely Christianity are what they are. But don’t judge God by leisurely Christians. Judge God by the more-than-mediocre Christians.

Judge God by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was a German pastor and theologian. He was a pacifist. But he did not cling to his pacifism in the face of his anguish over the crimes of the Third Reich. He joined the plot to kill Hitler. The plot failed. He was arrested, imprisoned, and hanged.

Judge God by St. Francis of Assisi. He rejected his advantaged life as a wealthy heir. He lived in poverty to the glory of God, and he taught others to do the same. He founded the Franciscan order.

Judge God by Corrie ten Boom. Her father and her sister and she were Dutch under the Third Reich occupation of their country. They hid Jews in their home. There was a little Jewish baby who cried. No other rescuer would take the baby because he cried so much that there was great danger of discovery. Corrie ten Boom’s father considered it an honor to risk his life and the life of his daughters for the welfare of a Jewish baby who cried too much. Sadly, before the war ended, they were discovered. Of her small family, only Corrie lived to leave the concentration camp. She spent the rest of her time on the earth spreading the gospel.

Judge God by Sister Margaret McBride. She was excommunicated because, as a member of a hospital ethics committee, she and others approved the abortion that saved the life of a mother of four.

Judge God by Sister Rachele Fassera. In 1996 the raping, torturing, murdering Kony’s army kidnaped 139 Ugandan schoolgirls. Sister Rachele pursued them through the jungle on foot, caught up with them, and convinced the 200 cutthroats to release the great majority of the girls.

Few Christians are Dietrich Bonhoeffer or St. Francis or Corrie ten Boom or Sister Margaret McBride or Sister Rachele Fassera. But some that you’d meet in ordinary churches in ordinary places are impressive in their faith and in their walk with God. Or they’re on the way to being impressive in their faith and in their walk with God. I can’t say how many these are, or what percentage these are among believers. But they are there.

10. Realistic possibilities: a swimming metaphor.

Few people who think about swimming to get fit really expect to end up dolphining across the pool with the speed and grace of an Olympic champion. But that doesn’t keep people from swimming for fitness.

And you wouldn’t judge swimming, either, by the guy who jumps in the pool, swims a couple of lazy laps, strikes up a long conversation with another wall-hanger, swims another couple of lazy laps, and calls that a workout. You would judge it by the person who, even if they started out that way, kept at it until they could swim serious workouts on a regular basis with visible results.

Knowing God takes effort and grace. So look for a Christian who makes serious effort and gets visible results. Judge Christianity and its potential by those who strive and who have about them a penumbra of grace.

And when you become such a person yourself, pray for the rest of us.

Christians, Nut Up.

We Christians are wont to hiss like punctured air hoses when we are criticized by outsiders. We cast a baleful eye at celebrated mockers like Bill Mahar, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens. We resent films like Religulous and books like The God Delusion and God is Not Great. Books and films like these make us ache for the quick return of the Lord, so that these Christian-mocking miscreants speedily will be separated from their smug sense of superiority. "Amen", we say.

1. Placing the blame.

But these architects of anti-faith have powerful allies. Their allies are us. Jesus said,

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men. [Matthew 5:13 (ASV)]

The simple, sorry truth is that when enemies of faith tread on people of faith, it is because we have lost our saltiness. The would-be debunkers aren’t to blame; we are. When our adversaries tread us under foot, they only prove that Jesus was right.

2. Knowing our natures.

I think this places blame where it belongs. We are soiled. Increasingly, I nod grimly when I think of the biblical prophet Isaiah saying, "I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips . . .." (Isaiah 6:5 (ASV).) Lies are commonplace in our culture, from bottom to top.

And we love our money and our comfort. We live without qualm to the limit of our means, or beyond it. We buy cars big enough to host hockey games in; now that America is retreating from vehicular behemoths, it is not religious restraint that drums retreat, but the high price of gasoline. We squeeze into the pews of churches that assure us that God wants us to be rich.

Our love of money and comfort crowds out our love of God because we are rich.  In America, the rich don’t repose only in Bel Air; compared to people in biblical times, virtually any resident of Colton, California is rich.  And among nations, America is a rich nation. 

Therefore it is dangerous for us to ignore how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven. But we don't worry; we clamber upon our camels and amble toward the eye of the needle that stands between us and the kingdom. (Mark 10:25.)

We don't know the Bible as we once did. Instead, we draw our principles from what we put in front of ourselves. We learn ethics from eight seasons of the television series "24", rather than from an equal number of seasons with the Bible.

The Bible instructs that:

[W]hoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me: But whoso shall cause one of these little ones that believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the sea. [Matthew 18:5-6 (ASV).]

But the Catholic Church had to take costly instruction from secular courts about protecting children in their care. This is only the most dramatic religious scandal in a society that grows accustomed to religious scandals, or accustomed to scandals of the pious.

3. Changing our thinking.

Reckless before chasm-sized topics, I suggest, as a start, three modifications of modern American theology.

First, we need to reevaluate our understanding of God’s grace. We seem to believe that salvation is like buying software online, putting a checkmark in the box next to "I agree". So easy.

Here’s a bleaker simile: we are like diners satiating ourselves at the table of sin, and when the grim reaper presents the tariff, we jerk our thumbs over our shoulders and say, "Give that to that guy over there, dying on the cross."

Theologian Dietrich Bohnhoeffer surveyed the doctrine of grace in his native Germany before the outbreak of World War II. He saw a country like ours, awash in belief in cheap grace. We all know how that turned out then: Christianity in Germany did not resist the war, and it did not resist the mass murder of the Jews.

Bohnhoeffer wrote a study of grace called The Cost of Discipleship. It’s no light read; it requires much time and close attention. But it rewards the reading of it.

Second, we must learn to fear God. This is so biblical that it cries out from the pages of scripture. For example, "[Jehovah] will fulfil the desire of them that fear him; He also will hear their cry and will save them." (Psalms 145:19 (ASV).) And "Jehovah taketh pleasure in them that fear him, In those that hope in his lovingkindness." (Psalms 147:11 (ASV).) And "The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge . . .." (Proverbs 1:7 (ASV).)  And  "[B]e not afraid of them that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28 (ASV).)

Some mornings as I go into the courthouse, I hear lay preachers preaching hellfire and brimstone to the people lined up to go through the metal detectors. I confess, I groan inwardly. This is partly my reaction to the indecency of forcing a biblical harangue upon a captive audience. But it’s also partly that I don’t think that these lay preachers really fear God; they reveal more condescension than love and trembling. Fear of God must be more than lip service; it must be a holy dread.

Third, we would do well to have less confidence in our own salvation. This walks against the wind of popular "assurance of salvation." And yet I find nothing in scripture that establishes assurance of salvation. Instead, I read of a mere remnant of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob returning to their homeland from Babylonian captivity. I read of many disciples abandoning Jesus when he teaches hard things. (John 6:26-66.) I read Matthew 7:21-23:

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out demons, and by thy name do many mighty works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. [ASV]

Acts 2:21 superficially seems to contradict Matthew 7:21-23:

And it shall be, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

In light of Acts 2:21, what of those of Matthew 7:22 who prophesied, cast out demons, did mighty works "by thy name", and were not saved? On the day of judgment, they could only say "Lord, Lord" (Matthew 7:22), not the name of the Lord (Acts 2:21). The reconciliation of these two passages is this: not all who claim Jesus in their lives on Earth will be permitted to call on the name of the Lord on the day of judgment.

4. Practicing the spiritual disciplines.

Those are suggestions about how to think about our God and ourselves. What then do we do? This is another mountain, one that I’ll try to scale in two paragraphs.

When a flight attendant gives instructions about emergencies, she tells the passengers to put the oxygen cup over their own air passages before helping other passengers. That’s probably pretty good advice for spiritual growth.

Therefore study. Learn. Grow. This, like almost everything else I have touched on so far, is a huge subject, not exhaustible in a blog post. So I’ll just say where to get direction. Aside from the Bible, I recommend three books. Richard Foster wrote a modern classic called Celebration of Discipline. One great thing about Foster’s book is that he lists other resources. I also recommend Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines. Don Postema’s Space for God is good for group study.

5. Conclusion.

I have said grim things. Maybe I’m a crank. But I urge an antidote to the free, easy, empty Christianity of our time. Who wants to spend a lifetime in church and an eternity apart from God? I fear that too many of us will be mocked in Gehenna for our unfinished towers. (Luke 14:28-30.)

John the Baptist said to the multitudes who came to him to be baptized, "Ye offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" (Luke 3:7 (ASV).) Forget who warned us; let's be warned.

I started out this post by mentioning our dislike of criticism by professional skeptics and others.  But here is a saying: "Take care of your character, and your reputation will take care of itself."  This should be the Christians' response to our critics.

Note:

I cite books, from the rank to the sublime, in the text. Where I cite a book, I usually provide a link to that book on Amazon.com. I provide the link only for your convenience. If you want the book, great; but it doesn’t matter to me where you get it.