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.

A Bad Morning for Worms.

It was a bad morning for worms.

I learned this as I looked out my bedroom’s picture window at birds flitting down onto the grass and plucking up their food.

I watched from my knees. I gazed out into my yard as I prayed.

I'm back to praying on my knees. I had gotten out of that habit. But then I was reading the book of Daniel; Daniel prayed on his knees, and Daniel was a great and beloved prophet. I read the book of Acts. Paul prayed on his knees, and Paul was a mighty apostle.

If a prophet and an apostle prayed on their knees, why shouldn’t I?

I had read long ago that your posture while you pray shapes your attitude in prayer. Kneeling humbles. And God is a great army, an irresistible force; it’s best to be humble and make peace with him while he’s on his way.

So I prayed on my knees, with my elbows on my bed, looking out at the birds getting their food free from God.

Some people pray as they drive. Or as they work. Sometimes that’s me. Kneeling isn’t an option. But such prayer is a blessing. Time on the road is better spent in prayer than in listening to some political pundit’s rant-of-the-day. Prayer is better than many of the businesses of life.

I pray in the mornings. Sometimes I rush through prayer, so to speak, because I have to start work by a certain time. Prayer on those days is a little like a checklist, with me remembering the people I have a habit of praying for:
- my kin
- my church (pastors and members)
- the unemployed
- the sick
- my clients in custody
- my clients generally
- people including my parents and grandparents who have died
- leaders in California and the nation
- judges in California and on the United States Supreme Court
- friends and colleagues
- and others.

Maybe one day, Jesus will answer all of my prayers; maybe he will be say that he’s pleased with the time I spent praying for others and for myself. In the meantime, some of my friends will think that all of this is silly. But as John Wimber used to say, "I’m a fool for Christ; who’s fool are you?"

Today I didn’t rush throgh prayers. This morning, I have no appointments or court appearances, so I could tarry. I could reflect on the people I prayed for; I could craft unique prayer-petitions. Maybe God helped me formulate these prayers.

And I could pause between petitions, and I could look with happiness and thanksgiving into the nature happening in my back yard. This may have been the gladdest, best time of my day today. Prayer is a blessing.

I have prayed for a friend of mine who is out of work. I recently learned that after thirteen months he found a job. So my prayer of petition turned into a prayer of thanksgiving.

As I prayed, I remembered how grandiose I was as a young man, filled with hope of a brilliant career. I still have grandiose fantasies; I try to keep them in check. Today I prayed that I might have a life, small in scope, in which God does good through me every day. If that happens, I have reason to be grateful beyond measure. After all, didn’t Paul say that God’s power is made perfect in weakness?

Before I prayed, I read the Bible. This morning it was Hosea. I’m making my way through the Bible again. Sometimes what I read before I pray shapes my prayers.

Tonight I will read in 1^st Corinthians before I pray. Night is dicey. Sometimes I fall asleep as I read the Bible, and it doesn’t necessarily matter what time I start to read. Sometimes I’m too tired to pray. So morning prayer is important, because I don’t have those problems in the morning.

I’m off to get some exercise now, and then to work. While I work out, and during the day, I may talk to God. This also is a blessing and a gift. It’s God’s grace to me, for which I need always to be grateful.

Why I Pray

1. Without hope.

For over a decade, I believed that I was lost to God. I won’t describe the whole reason for that. But one sliver of the reason was that a voice without a body told me that I was going to hell.

I’ve had a history of hearing voices, and in past decades I was hospitalized for a disorder of the mind that relates to hearing voices. But now that I’m in my right mind, one of the puzzles of my life has been to sort my experiences from when I was homeless and fleeing a vast satanic conspiracy. I put my supernatural experiences from that time into piles. I try to discern what was from God, what was from madness, and what was from evil.

Even as that voice shattered me, I didn’t believe that it came from God; I believed that it was demonic. But I believed that voice because what it said mirrored the upheaval that I had at that moment experienced for weeks and months, and it matched what I saw about myself as I looked back at my life.

In the years after I heard that demonic voice, I would sometimes dream that God had forgiven me, and that he had welcomed me into his good grace. In those dreams I was overjoyed. Nothing else in my life has made me that happy. But then I would wake up, and I would not believe the dream. I groaned under the weight of that hopelessness.

For most of this decade-plus of heaviness, I could not bear to read the Bible in any depth. I could not bear to step inside a church. I could not pray; prayer felt like trespassing.

2. Hopeful.

Within the last two years, I’ve taken steps back to hope. The journey back started with loneliness: I wanted to date. My computer dating service seemed to match me up with Christians. This was a problem. One beautiful woman rejected me after I explained to her my dismal beliefs about myself. I had to confess them to her. I couldn’t build a relationship on pretense about who I was.

I started going to a church so that at least I wouldn’t have to explain to these Christian women why I was un-churched. The teaching at that church was almost always very good, and it got me re-interested in scripture. At first, my reading was topical – I would search the Bible on a topic when the teaching had provoked my curiosity about it. Eventually, I started reading the Bible more methodically. I started reading it to read every book from Genesis to Revelation, as I’d done several times when I was young.

In the meantime, I changed churches. The change came with a blessing.

In my new church, which is Episcopalian, we celebrate communion every Sunday. For months, I didn’t take communion. This was because I remembered reading that it is a poor idea to take communion when you aren’t right with God. And I still felt outside of God’s grace.

But that changed. The story of the prodigal son affected me. I came to believe that I was the prodigal son. I was a man who had squandered God’s blessings and God’s gifts, but, like the prodigal, I came to my senses and made the long journey home. I believed that I could be welcomed back like the prodigal.

One Sunday, I went forward to take communion. When I returned to my pew, I had something like a vision. Looking up at the architecture of the church, I had a sense of its alive-ness – its alive-ness through generations of believers who had worshiped there and in the wider Episcopalian church, of whom I was now a part. I strain to put into words a vision-like experience that came without words.

I’ve described the moment when I heard a voice that convinced me that I was lost. The lead-up to that voice was long, and it came like pronouncement of guilt and sentence after trial. The lead-up to my vision-like experience that caused me to believe in God’s mercy toward me also was long. But it was like a verdict of acquittal.

3.  Hope, not assurance.

I don’t believe that my salvation is a sure thing. I accept what the apostle Peter says, that salvation is something that we grow into. (1 Peter 2:2.) This is not the teaching of my former church; it is not mainstream in modern America. But it accords with my reading of the Bible, and it’s supported by other reasons personal to me.

4. The fruit of hope.

Sometimes I marvel that I don’t rejoice more for having the belief in sure damnation lifted from me. And it’s true that, intellectually, I realize that any trauma that I might suffer will be more bearable because of my new hope. This has yet to be tested by adversity.

But my spiritual life now flows as if a dam has burst. I have zeal in my spiritual life – the zeal of someone who thought that he was lost to God, but who has discovered unexpectedly that that isn’t so.

I study the Bible at length. I read, generally, twelve chapters a day.

And I pray. I think that I pray a lot by most standards.

When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God is an excellent study of the admirable Vineyard Christian Fellowship Church. Author and anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann tells that Vineyard members are encouraged to pray for at least half-an-hour every day. Some do, some don’t. Some pray more. Prof. Luhrmann describes a woman who is admired for her ability in prayer; that woman prays for three hours a day.

At first, I would interleave my prayer with my Bible study: read a chapter, then pray for five minutes or so, then read another chapter, etc.

Now I study the Bible and pray in discrete chunks of time. I read three chapters in the morning, and then pray for half-an-hour. I read nine chapters at night, and then pray for an hour to an hour-and-a-half. My evening goal is an hour; usually I go longer.

This hasn’t been going on for very long, but already I sense changes.

Some changes are physical. At first, I prayed largely in my chair. I couldn’t bear to kneel for the whole time of prayer. My legs couldn’t take it. They can now. Part of the reason for that is that I’ve learned to shift kneeling positions. Another reason is that my knees and ligaments and ankles have better stamina from practice.

Some changes are changes to how I pray. I’m learning. I used to check my watch often to see how long I had prayed and how long I had left to reach my goal. (And I said "sorry" to God for watching the clock in the middle of this manifestation of his grace to me – the fact that I could pray.) I watch the clock much less now. (Sometimes I still apologize when I do.)

I learned about ACTS from Prof. Luhrmann’s book. ACTS stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. Some teachers teach that those are the four components of prayer. At one time, I tried to divide my time of prayer into four chunks devoted to each of those categories. I still use ACTS, but flexibly. I go among those elements in my time of prayer.

Lately, the C in ACTS has also meant Conversation. I talk to God about things that happened during the day and about parts of the Bible that I don’t get.

Sometimes, the S stands for Silence. I wait in silence for some guidance from God about what to pray for and how to pray. This time of silence is normally brief.

Sometimes I remember hymns in my heart as I pay. Sometimes I sing them out loud.

Sometimes, I pray the same prayers that I have prayed before, pretty much in the same way. More recently, I worship God and pray in new ways for my church, my president, my relatives, my friends, my clients, strangers, enemies, and myself. I pray for the living and the dead.

Bible study is important to my prayers. The Bible gives me ideas about what to pray and how to pray.

5. Gratitude.

I’ve been blessed. I’ve known hopelessness; this new hope is God’s grace, and it is a wonder.

I can look back on my lost years and see God’s grace in them. They have made me more grateful and they have grown my faith and my knowledge of God.

James 4:8 says "Come near to God and he will come near to you." (NIV) In Sunday worship and in my private devotions, I strive to come near to God, trusting that he will come near to me.

To Know God Better

There are five parts to any good plan to replace the god of the imagination with the God That Is.

I mean this essay to elaborate on this promise:

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. [Matthew 7:7-8 (NIV).]

1. Humility.

God is vast. The first step to know him better is to know that there is more that we don’t know than what we do know. If we know that we are largely ignorant, then hubris won’t stop the flow of knowledge of God into our hearts and minds.

If we don’t know how incomplete our knowledge is, then we need to just assume that our knowledge is incomplete and proceed. As we gather more knowledge, we become aware of our prior ignorance. That will help us know that we need to build upon our knowledge of God.

It’s like a wilderness hiker who sees a peak in the distance. Every time the hiker advances on a peak, the hiker discovers a new peak behind the one that appeared before. In time, the hiker comes to assume that the farther he or she hikes, the more he or she will discover.

2. Effort.

A lot can be learned without much effort. It takes little effort to use bare hands to stick naked wires into an electrical socket. But that exercise will cause learning.

And sometimes knowledge of God comes with little conscious effort. Sometimes it comes as inspiration while we are thinking about something else. Maybe your love for your children teaches you about the love of God. C.S. Lewis wrote of a military pilot who flew across the desert at night and encountered a sense of the mystery of God.

But many of our greatest skills come from deliberate learning. We learned to read in school, and it took many years to achieve our present skill at reading. The same is true of writing and math. And I think that there is no job that doesn’t have a learning curve. A seasoned worker is almost always superior to a novice.

Knowledge of God is like that. Knowledge of God is improved through effort. That effort can be reading the Bible with a curious mind. Or hearing sermons by mature Christians. Or listening to hymns. (I have a strong preference for the old hymns; I’m old-fashioned that way.)

Effort can be reading books by spiritual giants, or at least by persons further along in knowledge of God than we are. It can be taking time to meditate on the nature of God. It can be talking about God with our friends.

Michael Phelps is a champion swimmer. Some have called him the greatest swimmer who ever lived. He has vast natural talent. But that natural talent wouldn’t have made him the most winning athlete in Olympic history if he hadn’t driven himself to swim countless laps with great effort. That effort rewarded him.

We might never be the spiritual equivalent of Michael Phelps. But it’s probably also true that we will benefit from every effort that we make to better know God.

3. Persistence.

Michael Phelps probably had times when felt like not going to workout. If he had worked out for a few years but then quit or took it easier, he might have benefitted from that, but he wouldn’t have become the athletic phenomenon that he became. Persistence pays off in the pursuit of knowledge of God, too.

But there’s a difference between Michael Phelps’s pursuit of athletic victory and our pursuit of knowledge of God. Athletes have a relatively small window in which to be Olympic heroes. Dara Torres has lasted longer than most. But now that she’s in her forties, her Olympic time is over.

But as long as we have healthy minds, nothing holds us back from learning more about God. To study about him for a year is good. To study about him for a decade is better. To study about him for a lifetime is best.

4. Grace.

What I just said is almost true. Let me take a little of it back.

The Westboro Baptist Church puzzles me. That’s the church that pickets the funerals of American soldiers who have died in war.

I’ve looked at their website. I’ve listened to a sermon by their pastor. They lack neither knowledge of the Bible nor zeal. But their message is a message of hate, and that makes me doubt their knowledge of God.

So even with zeal and effort and persistence, we might make grave errors about the nature of God. Zeal and effort and persistence can make us proud, which is the opposite of humility, which is necessary for knowledge of God.

So we need to persist in prayers for ourselves and for our friends and loved ones that our zeal and our effort and our persistence won’t be wasted. And hopefully the grace of God will be with us.

5. Love.

Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. [1 John 4:7-8.]

Again to speak of Westboro Baptist Church, I hazard a guess that love is the quality that they lack that makes them bray instead of sing to the glory of God.

I love imperfectly. That limits my ability to speak about it. But I picture it as the roof on the four walls of knowledge of God: humility, effort, persistence, and grace.

I’m not a carpenter, so it’s probably dangerous for me to use a carpentry metaphor. But it seems to me that you can start with a roof and raise walls under it. Or you can build the walls and then install the roof over them. But, like I say, I’m not a carpenter.

I envy the person who is filled with love to build knowledge of God on. But if we don’t feel love, we can do acts of love, and the feeling will come by the grace of God.

And if we love, as John said, we will know God.

Does God Have an Immigration Policy?

"Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping?" – Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

We have a disconnect between how we judge others, and how we hope God will judge us.

1. The never-ending debate.

I have friendly debates with friends about illegal immigrants. From my point of view, people have assumptions about illegal immigration, and these assumptions don’t hold up. For example, people assume that there are a limited number of jobs, so that every job taken by an illegal immigrant is a job lost to a citizen.

This assumption doesn’t hold up when it’s studied by economists. Economists find that illegal immigrants create as many jobs as they take. Money doesn't go to illegal immigrants and stop. They spend it. That spending creates jobs. So illegal immigrants don’t just eat the pie; they make more pies. They make pies as fast as they eat them.              .

So I don't think that the facts are on the side of my debate partners. But sooner or later in my friendly debates, the argument becomes a moral argument. Sooner or later, my friends resort to this argument: people shouldn’t come to the country and break the law. And by coming to the country, illegal immigrants are breaking the law.

It’s a fine argument. After all, people should obey the law. Who can endorse law-breaking?

Who wants to be on the side of law-breakers?

2. God and grace.

Well, Jesus.

Yeah, him.

The guy who said:

But go and learn what this means: "I desire compassion, and not sacrifice," for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners. [Matthew 9:13; NASB.]

To know God and to know yourself is to know that "[B]y grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." (Ephesians 2:7-9; NASB).

We need grace when we stand before God so that our own too-scrupulous words don’t return to judge us when we crave mercy. I would not want to be judged by the parable of the slave who’s debt was forgiven by his king, who then threw into prison a debtor who could not pay a debt to him. (Matthew 18:23-35.)

"On Earth as it is in Heaven" means that we must strive to be like Christ.

3. On Earth as it is in Heaven?

That doesn’t mean that we lock up the Penal Code instead of locking up law-breakers. It does mean we pray for the grace to know that we need grace. It does mean we pray for the grace to know when we should confer grace, and when we should withhold it. It does mean we think hard about these things.

When I was a relatively new Christian, I worked at a law firm and had a secretary who undermined me in every way she could. Yet I knew that Christians had to forgive, so I tried and tried to forgive her and to return good for evil. All I ever got back was evil. I finally decided that if it was alright with God for me to hold that job, it was alright with God for me to try to get that secretary fired. Which I did. That is, I tried. In fact, she wasn’t fired until the day I quit the firm.

The point is that I know that it’s hard to model God’s grace; sometimes, it’s impossible. For me, that’s true.

But it’s more possible than a lot of people think.

At the very least, we should not necessarily demand strict obedience to laws, when no harm actually is being done. We should understand that judging others in legalistic strictness is not the righteous, unanswerable argument that it seems to be.

4. Obama, immigration, and grace.

The Obama administration is coming under predictable attack for extending grace to good kids – kids who came to the country illegally as children, who have stayed out of trouble, who want to go to college or join the military. The Obama administration has decided not to bring deportation proceedings against these good kids. Instead, the Obama administration wants to use more resources to eject illegal immigrants who commit crimes and harm our country.

I think that’s a sensible policy. I’m proud of the president for it.

I prefer the president’s plan to the attitude of my friends.

5. My hypocrisy.

But I’m a hypocrite. I pretend to be gracious, but I’m not, because I judge my friends. I act like they are hypocrites, who rely upon grace but are not gracious. Well, they are human, so that’s probably true. But it’s true of me, too, every day.

Maybe they just calibrate grace differently than I do.

But that’s the debate: it’s not law-breaking versus not-law-breaking. It’s lawbreakers learning by grace how much law-breaking we should tolerate, especially when that lawbreaking does no harm.

And it’s knowing that we're not born citizens of Heaven. We don’t earn citizenship. If we enter Heaven, we enter by grace, and by grace alone.

____________________________________

The Obama Administration policy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/us/19immig.html?scp=2&sq=illegal%20immigrants&st=cse

A paper on the net effects of illegal immigration:

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2010/09_immigration_greenstone_looney/09_immigration.pdf

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.