I don't usually post links, but here is an article about a Campus Crusade Spring Break Trip to Daytona Beach through the eyes of a skeptic who followed along.
I spent two spring breaks during college on similar evangelical trips to Panama City Beach, Florida, and had some comparable experiences and thoughts with the author. I've talked to some Christians who have read the article posted above, and they've without exception had one of two reactions: either they found the article unhelpful because it discouraged them from evangelism, or they found the article disturbingly accurate, discouraging them from evangelism.
The first mistake you could make in reading an account like the aforementioned is to make it interchangeable with evangelism in general, or even initiative evangelism (the type of evangelism that involves spiritual conversation with people you haven't yet met). There is no doubt that Christian evangelism has been what God has used to spread His gospel for centuries to great effect. The same holds true for initiative evangelism. In Acts 8, the Spirit of the Lord tells Philip point-blank to run up and approach an Ethiopian eunuch who was riding by on the road. So there's no use getting discouraged about evangelism or even initiative evangelism because of one singular report of failure in a specific instance; we already know that by God's grace and our obedience, evangelism works. Making this story representative of evangelical outreach at large makes as much sense as dismissing the Baptism of Christ from a bad experience at a Baptist church, and yet people do it all the time.
But the first gain you could take from this account are some pointed examples of what not to do. My experience is that a lot of Christians go to Big Break and other spring break outreaches because they believe sincerely in the cause of Christ's gospel and they want to be obedient to do something about it, and Big Break appears to be the only foreseeable way to reconcile the first two impetuses. So it makes sense that a lot of people would be pretty hesitant to dismiss anything that Big Break does on the rationale of "Well, what do you suggest we do instead?" But sometimes that's a restricting way of thinking. I understand that God is bigger and smarter than we are and that oftentimes we can't foresee the fruits of our labor, but a lot of times, it's better to do nothing than to do things that take backward steps and hope for the best.
And from what I saw, we did a lot that set back the gospel of Christ. The speaker at the conference preached 100% Success Evangelism, which meant that as long as you made an effort to communicate the gospel, God would bless that effort. There's some theological basis for that, but in practice, a lot of students translated 100% Success Evangelism into a really aggressive, pushy approach. I remember I was trying to connect with a guy on the beach and we were conversing about his experience with the church growing up when my evangelism partner sailed out of nowhere with the grace and delicacy of a battering ram. She physically pushed me aside and yelled in a loud voice, "Hey! I have two questions for you! If you were to die today, do you think you would go to heaven?" I tried to wriggle back into the discussion, but she physically blocked me and continued, "...And question two, on a scale of 1 to 10, how sure are you of your answer?"
A lot of people probably don't stop to think about the intellectual set-up necessary for that sort of question to mean anything. To ask whether I believed I would go to heaven would require that I believed in a lot of other fundamental ideas: that there is a God, that there is a heaven, that said heaven is accessible for me, that she is in fact asking about the Christian heaven, that whether I believe I am going to heaven actually reflects whether I am going there or not, and that I actually would want to go to heaven if I believed in such a place. When you think about it, it's pretty galling to assume blindly that a person is in such a place spiritually and intellectually, which makes that a pretty terrible one-two punch as far as introductions go.
For me, the most convicting excerpt of the article was this paragraph:
"The issue of post-salvation behavior is an interesting one. I thought, when Scott was teaching us to evangelize, that we'd be told to do some sort of follow-up with successful converts, if we had any -- guide them to a local church, maybe, or at least take their contact information. But there's no such procedure. If Jason had decided to get saved (he didn't), Martina would have led him through the Sinner's Prayer ("Jesus, I am a sinner, come into my heart and be my Lord and Savior" or some variant thereof), she would have let him know he was saved, perhaps given him some Bible verses to read, and they never would have seen each other again. Cold-turkey evangelism provides the shortest, most non-committal conversion offer of any Western religion -- which, I suspect, is part of the appeal."
In my two spring breaks there, I always did my best to establish contact information and be handy with follow-up advice or a listening ear. It's not easy for an experienced Christian to follow Christ on his or her own; how much harder for a fledgling believer in the middle of a drunken spring break event on a beach? What the author is pointing out is that something about the approach is short-termed, impersonal, and non-committal.
Two conclusions to walk away with from that paragraph. The first is that as negative as this feedback is, it's extremely helpful for us as Christian evangelists. I've always thought it would be a good idea to meet someone and say, "Hey, what were your thoughts on the way we've approached you with the message of the gospel? What were some things you found appealing and what did you find disingenuous? I want to know because the message of Jesus is important to me, and I really think it's the best news you'll ever hear, and I want to see if the way we communicate stands in the way of that, and fix it if I can." And in effect, the author and his article provided exactly that feedback. But the goal is not to be better salesmen with better tricks; the goal is to be better ambassadors of the true good news of Christ.
The second takeaway is that it's important to remember that Jesus is not a cookie-cutter, four-step process.
On we go.
One of the principal observations of the article was that Christians seemed to be in their own sheltered, naive world. And just as Paul became all things to all people, we should understand the importance of cultural relevance and context in connecting with others. But Christians are citizens of a different kingdom. We don't belong to the world; we belong to God. Our ways are not the same, our thoughts are not the same, our habits are not the same. To the author of the article, it was dubious whether all that effort and money was worth it for one more Christian, but to Jesus, it was worth everything to find that one lost lamb, and it was worth His life to give you and me a chance. So I think that in some sense, the frustration with the inability to relate with Daytona Beach Spring Break is finally a sign that they were doing something right. The closer students draw to God's holiness and righteousness, the more the prospect of drunken, concupiscent revelry should seem like something alien and terrible (of course, the same could be true if students were coming from an isolationist Christianized culture, rather than a true pursuit of godliness). And especially in some environment, it makes perfect sense that you'd find a lot of people who are completely uninterested in the gospel. Jesus gave His disciples the command to shake the dust off their feet and move on from such places. So to note that the entirety of Daytona Beach did not become a beacon of godliness overnight is not to say that the project was a failure. In one respect, it shows the need for Christ in more real way than most Christians are used to.
And Panama City Beach also saw a lot of success. Some student groups saw entire baseball teams give their hearts to Christ and every night, students gave testimonies in awe of what God had done that day through their witness. A cynical reflex is to say, "Well, how many of those were real salvation," but there's no answering that, so shut up. And there was something great in seeing the body of Christ, a small part of it, yes, and flawed, yes, but still laboring in the harvest of God's fields of humanity.
The Daytona Beach project has some undeniable flaws, it's true. But in my estimation, the spring break beach project is not fundamentally flawed. I have a lot of concrete ideas for how to make it a better, more genuine experience for both the Christian students and the kids who are just there to party.
For me, those two spring breaks were great learning experiences. I learned everything I just wrote down above, I learned a lot about what I think does and doesn't work in communicating the gospel, and I very vividly remember what a relief it was after a weary day in the world to return to God's people and worship together each night of the conference. To have spent the day wrestling with doubts from other people and doubts from yourself makes the return to God's realm so much sweeter.
It's been a year to the day since I started this blog, and apparently I'm just as long-winded as ever.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Eric's Song
As someone who really liked Slumdog Millionaire, I've been keeping up with the news of what's been happening to the child actors who portrayed young Jamal, Salim, and Latika. A little research for yourself will show that the director and producers picked them up out of the slums of Mumbai, filmed them for the movie, and took them around Hollywood and Disneyland for the week of the Oscars. One week later, the kids are back in the corrugated tin shanties of Mumbai, going from the clean sheets of the Hilton to sleeping on the dirt floors again. There are some really sad details, like the fact that they stubbornly insist on wearing their Oscar night tuxedo and gown and that director Danny Boyle gave one of the boys a Nintendo DS that he won't be able to play after the batteries run out because he has no electricity.
It's an intriguing ethical scenario. (Should I feel bad for reducing their real-life dilemma to a case study?) The director and the producer compensated the kids for their work on the film, paid their tuition to a private school, and set up a large establishment fund to be released to them when they turn 18 and want to begin their adult careers. But the kids' paychecks for the film have already gone to pay for their parents' considerable medical expenses, and the interested public are aghast that these kids have been used to make millions for Slumdog Millionaire and subsequently returned to poverty. The director and producers are not trained social workers and have not become adoptive parents; they are specialists in the entertainment industry. How much responsibility have they accrued in hiring these kids? To their credit, they have also hired Indian social workers who have a better working knowledge and skill set to attend the case.
But I was struck by what the producer said about the situation. He said that the easiest thing for them would be to throw money at the problem, but that would not be the ethical approach.
I was driving up the Gold Star Highway a few days ago, and I passed a man standing in the esplanade, across from the Oh Boy! Diner, holding a sign that read, "Homeless, please help." I drove on, but it bothered me to pass him by, as it usually does to pass anyone like that by. It occurred to me that Jesus had the salvation of the world on His schedule and He took time for children and beggars. I had literally nothing to do that day. Was my time too important for this man?
I parked my car at Walmart and thought about it. I didn't want to just give him money: the expedient solution that would've annulled my guilt and let me go on with my day. What would be best for the man? Ask him. So I jogged across the highway and stuck out my hand and asked what his name was. And the man said Eric. I asked if he was hungry and if I could buy him lunch, and he said that he was, but if I was going to get him food, he asked that I bring it to him because his collecting money on the highway might literally be the difference between his having a roof over his head or not that night. Like I said, what else did I have to do that day that was more important? So I jogged over to Oh Boy! Diner, ordered a BLT and sweet potato fries to go, and brought it back to Eric.
I asked Eric where he was staying, and he replied that there was an elderly gentleman in Groton who was renting out his upstairs for $30 a night. Said that he had worked for over two decades at a machinery shop but came back after a weekend to find that the owners had closed the business and left for the Bahamas. Elaborated that every time he went to file for unemployment benefits, he was asked to show proof of prior employment and he couldn't manage to procure those documents. I asked Eric how much he made standing by the Gold Star Highway with a sign. It's a good question to ask because people always base their decision to give or not give on some impression that either homeless people don't get anything or they con hundreds of dollars a day off of hapless do-gooders. "It fluctuates wildly," Eric said. "Some days, I stand out here for four hours and end up with ten dollars, and some days, I stand out for two and end up with a hundred and fifty."
Eric only needed $4 more for the day, so I gave him the $3 I had in my wallet and wished him good luck. By the time I had jogged back over to the Walmart parking lot and pulled out to the turn, Eric had made his dollar and was gone. But another lady with another sign had already taken his place.
One of the lessons Jesus was really keen on was the relative unimportance of money. He preached against the hypocrisy and selfishness of the rich and lead a life of humility, simplicity, and service. It's true that He spent a lot of time helping the poor and disenfranchised, but if you step back, it's more true that He spent a lot of time helping the needy, rich or poor.
In a day-to-day sense, people like Eric need money to sustain themselves, but in an ultimate sense, they need to be known and loved. I am no Billy Dee Williams and Eric is no James Caan, but as best as I can write it, here is Eric's song.
It's an intriguing ethical scenario. (Should I feel bad for reducing their real-life dilemma to a case study?) The director and the producer compensated the kids for their work on the film, paid their tuition to a private school, and set up a large establishment fund to be released to them when they turn 18 and want to begin their adult careers. But the kids' paychecks for the film have already gone to pay for their parents' considerable medical expenses, and the interested public are aghast that these kids have been used to make millions for Slumdog Millionaire and subsequently returned to poverty. The director and producers are not trained social workers and have not become adoptive parents; they are specialists in the entertainment industry. How much responsibility have they accrued in hiring these kids? To their credit, they have also hired Indian social workers who have a better working knowledge and skill set to attend the case.
But I was struck by what the producer said about the situation. He said that the easiest thing for them would be to throw money at the problem, but that would not be the ethical approach.
I was driving up the Gold Star Highway a few days ago, and I passed a man standing in the esplanade, across from the Oh Boy! Diner, holding a sign that read, "Homeless, please help." I drove on, but it bothered me to pass him by, as it usually does to pass anyone like that by. It occurred to me that Jesus had the salvation of the world on His schedule and He took time for children and beggars. I had literally nothing to do that day. Was my time too important for this man?
I parked my car at Walmart and thought about it. I didn't want to just give him money: the expedient solution that would've annulled my guilt and let me go on with my day. What would be best for the man? Ask him. So I jogged across the highway and stuck out my hand and asked what his name was. And the man said Eric. I asked if he was hungry and if I could buy him lunch, and he said that he was, but if I was going to get him food, he asked that I bring it to him because his collecting money on the highway might literally be the difference between his having a roof over his head or not that night. Like I said, what else did I have to do that day that was more important? So I jogged over to Oh Boy! Diner, ordered a BLT and sweet potato fries to go, and brought it back to Eric.
I asked Eric where he was staying, and he replied that there was an elderly gentleman in Groton who was renting out his upstairs for $30 a night. Said that he had worked for over two decades at a machinery shop but came back after a weekend to find that the owners had closed the business and left for the Bahamas. Elaborated that every time he went to file for unemployment benefits, he was asked to show proof of prior employment and he couldn't manage to procure those documents. I asked Eric how much he made standing by the Gold Star Highway with a sign. It's a good question to ask because people always base their decision to give or not give on some impression that either homeless people don't get anything or they con hundreds of dollars a day off of hapless do-gooders. "It fluctuates wildly," Eric said. "Some days, I stand out here for four hours and end up with ten dollars, and some days, I stand out for two and end up with a hundred and fifty."
Eric only needed $4 more for the day, so I gave him the $3 I had in my wallet and wished him good luck. By the time I had jogged back over to the Walmart parking lot and pulled out to the turn, Eric had made his dollar and was gone. But another lady with another sign had already taken his place.
One of the lessons Jesus was really keen on was the relative unimportance of money. He preached against the hypocrisy and selfishness of the rich and lead a life of humility, simplicity, and service. It's true that He spent a lot of time helping the poor and disenfranchised, but if you step back, it's more true that He spent a lot of time helping the needy, rich or poor.
In a day-to-day sense, people like Eric need money to sustain themselves, but in an ultimate sense, they need to be known and loved. I am no Billy Dee Williams and Eric is no James Caan, but as best as I can write it, here is Eric's song.
Monday, March 9, 2009
John 8
Commentary on John 8 in Sequential Order:
Verses 1-11
One conclusion the casual reader could draw from the story of the adulterous woman is that by letting the woman go, Jesus is abrogating the Law of Moses that condemns her to death for the sin of adultery. But it's important to note the context of her condemnation. God's Torah, as given to Moses, was for Israel to understand what is holy and what is not holy, what is of God and what is not, and in that very black and white context, adulterers were condemned to be stoned. And yet here, what we see is not the Pharisees upholding God's Law in holiness. There is no presence of "two or three witnesses" or judicial authority, just a mob with a lot of stones and a clear intent to test Jesus. So it's decidedly not a case of Jesus overturning the faithful execution of the Torah: it's a case of a bunch of mobsters challenging Jesus and awaiting His response.
Moreover, Jesus's response, "He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first," is a very specific reproach. The general interpretation could align with the true message that we shouldn't be judgmental of other people's sins in light of our own sinful natures, which is consistent with planks and specks in people's eyes from Matthew 7. But context again plays a role here: Jesus has called this culture an "evil and adulterous generation." (Matthew 12:39) I think the better reading of this story is that Jesus knew the hearts of the Pharisees and knew that they were largely a group of adulterers, and that He was dealing with a case of blatant hypocrisy: the secret adulterers gunning after the adulteress who was caught "in the very act."
Verses 12-20
Jesus addresses His authority in the context of the Law that God gave to Israel. Where the Law states that legitimate judicial authority is established "by the mouth of two or three," (Deut 17:6, 19:15) Jesus notes that His judgment is established by the dual witness of Himself and the Father. In this way, He puts Himself both in line with and above the Law.
It's interesting how the idea of two people's witness legitimizing a claim has manifested itself. In Albert Camus's The Fall, there is an excerpt that explores the idea that truth is founded in the witness of two people seeing a unicorn. If one person sees a unicorn, he won't believe it because it's crazy to have seen a unicorn and nobody else saw it. If two people see it, then it's true that the unicorn was there. If three or more people claim to have seen the uniform, then the idea of groupthink comes into play, where some might have influenced or persuaded others to think that they might've seen a unicorn.
Verses 21-59
In verses 21-24, Jesus notes that He is from above and that people are from beneath, putting it almost in geographic terms. He says that anyone who "does not believe will die in their sins," and it's almost implied that they remain in their sins down beneath. The up and down metaphor is very reminiscent of the illustrations that you'd find on tracts, with God up above and humanity down below with an uncrossable chasm in between, for which Jesus provides a bridge or ladder.
One apparent paradox is that in verse 30-31, the passage states that Jesus is speaking to the "many" who both "believed in Him" and "believed Him," which would indicate that He is speaking to seekers, believers, and followers. Yet as Jesus continues to speak, He calls them slaves of sin and children of the devil, and they in turn accuse Him of being a demon-possessed Samaritan, and then when Jesus pulls the big reveal and tells them, "Before Abraham was, I AM," they furiously try to stone Him. It's puzzling to discern who the audience really is in this passage.
It's also a very dramatic scene to visualize unfolding. The exchange begins when the Jews ask Jesus, "Who are you?" Jesus tells them, "Just as I have been saying to you from the beginning." And then the discussion heats as Jesus talks of His Father and Their relationship. Jesus calls Himself the offspring of God and calls them the offspring of the devil, the spawn of lies. The temperature in an already-scorching Israeli afternoon ratchets up several notches. And then they again demand, "Who are you?" and Jesus replies, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad," and the Jews again ask, "Who are you?" and Jesus declares in a thunderously outrageous statement, "Before Abraham was, I AM." That Name of God that was too sacred to even say, to the extent that Jews knew God as HaShem, "The Name," and only dared to spell out the four letters YHVH as an abbreviation on sacred scrolls. For Jesus to say that Name out loud in reference to Himself -- the impact doesn't come across in the New King James Version, where all the translator had to do was hit Caps Lock. I don't think we can fully understand; our culture doesn't hold anything with that sort of reverence these days.
And then Jesus disappears and walks through the crowd, which would be a really neat party trick and probably exactly what I would've done if they were about to throw rocks at me.
Verses 1-11
One conclusion the casual reader could draw from the story of the adulterous woman is that by letting the woman go, Jesus is abrogating the Law of Moses that condemns her to death for the sin of adultery. But it's important to note the context of her condemnation. God's Torah, as given to Moses, was for Israel to understand what is holy and what is not holy, what is of God and what is not, and in that very black and white context, adulterers were condemned to be stoned. And yet here, what we see is not the Pharisees upholding God's Law in holiness. There is no presence of "two or three witnesses" or judicial authority, just a mob with a lot of stones and a clear intent to test Jesus. So it's decidedly not a case of Jesus overturning the faithful execution of the Torah: it's a case of a bunch of mobsters challenging Jesus and awaiting His response.
Moreover, Jesus's response, "He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first," is a very specific reproach. The general interpretation could align with the true message that we shouldn't be judgmental of other people's sins in light of our own sinful natures, which is consistent with planks and specks in people's eyes from Matthew 7. But context again plays a role here: Jesus has called this culture an "evil and adulterous generation." (Matthew 12:39) I think the better reading of this story is that Jesus knew the hearts of the Pharisees and knew that they were largely a group of adulterers, and that He was dealing with a case of blatant hypocrisy: the secret adulterers gunning after the adulteress who was caught "in the very act."
Verses 12-20
Jesus addresses His authority in the context of the Law that God gave to Israel. Where the Law states that legitimate judicial authority is established "by the mouth of two or three," (Deut 17:6, 19:15) Jesus notes that His judgment is established by the dual witness of Himself and the Father. In this way, He puts Himself both in line with and above the Law.
It's interesting how the idea of two people's witness legitimizing a claim has manifested itself. In Albert Camus's The Fall, there is an excerpt that explores the idea that truth is founded in the witness of two people seeing a unicorn. If one person sees a unicorn, he won't believe it because it's crazy to have seen a unicorn and nobody else saw it. If two people see it, then it's true that the unicorn was there. If three or more people claim to have seen the uniform, then the idea of groupthink comes into play, where some might have influenced or persuaded others to think that they might've seen a unicorn.
Verses 21-59
In verses 21-24, Jesus notes that He is from above and that people are from beneath, putting it almost in geographic terms. He says that anyone who "does not believe will die in their sins," and it's almost implied that they remain in their sins down beneath. The up and down metaphor is very reminiscent of the illustrations that you'd find on tracts, with God up above and humanity down below with an uncrossable chasm in between, for which Jesus provides a bridge or ladder.
One apparent paradox is that in verse 30-31, the passage states that Jesus is speaking to the "many" who both "believed in Him" and "believed Him," which would indicate that He is speaking to seekers, believers, and followers. Yet as Jesus continues to speak, He calls them slaves of sin and children of the devil, and they in turn accuse Him of being a demon-possessed Samaritan, and then when Jesus pulls the big reveal and tells them, "Before Abraham was, I AM," they furiously try to stone Him. It's puzzling to discern who the audience really is in this passage.
It's also a very dramatic scene to visualize unfolding. The exchange begins when the Jews ask Jesus, "Who are you?" Jesus tells them, "Just as I have been saying to you from the beginning." And then the discussion heats as Jesus talks of His Father and Their relationship. Jesus calls Himself the offspring of God and calls them the offspring of the devil, the spawn of lies. The temperature in an already-scorching Israeli afternoon ratchets up several notches. And then they again demand, "Who are you?" and Jesus replies, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad," and the Jews again ask, "Who are you?" and Jesus declares in a thunderously outrageous statement, "Before Abraham was, I AM." That Name of God that was too sacred to even say, to the extent that Jews knew God as HaShem, "The Name," and only dared to spell out the four letters YHVH as an abbreviation on sacred scrolls. For Jesus to say that Name out loud in reference to Himself -- the impact doesn't come across in the New King James Version, where all the translator had to do was hit Caps Lock. I don't think we can fully understand; our culture doesn't hold anything with that sort of reverence these days.
And then Jesus disappears and walks through the crowd, which would be a really neat party trick and probably exactly what I would've done if they were about to throw rocks at me.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Sickness
It's a bizarre thing, but when I get sick, I seem to lose completely the capacity for spiritual thought or exercise. It takes an extreme effort to focus on anything spiritual or divine. My head and my heart are nowhere near pursuing God, going to church, reading the Word, connecting with other people. All I want to do is shut down my life until my body recovers.
Why is that?
Desultory thoughts:
1. Our bodies were made in God's image. When God's creation fell to sin and imperfection, so did our bodies. You'll note that there's not supposed to be any sickness or death in the perfection of the coming eternity. (Revelation 21:4. On a side note, there's also no crying in heaven, just like there's no crying in baseball. What will girls do with their time?) I think that our bodies are meant to be a physical means of experiencing spiritual realities. That's not to say that when you're hungry, you're necessarily not being filled with the Spirit at that time, but it is to say that when you're hungry, you know what it's like not be filled and nourished. When your body is impassioned, you know what it is to yearn for communion with another person or being. These sensations you can translate to a spiritual plane pretty easily. Likewise, when you're sick, you know what it is to feel the opposite of alive -- a foreshadowing of death, the experience of being apart from God and eternal life.
2. In a certain sense, being sick doesn't make sense to me because if I'm in a bad place, shouldn't my first thought be a fervent plea for God to come and heal me, in the style of Jeremiah 17:14? The whole cycle of the Old Testament shows that when the Israelites got into trouble, their response was to repent and turn to the Lord and pray for healing and forgiveness, and then the Lord returned and made things right. Yet when I'm sick with the flu or somesuch, it takes considerable effort for me to even think of praying for healing or seeking the Lord, in favor of popping some Tylenol and going to sleep. Is there something wrong with me, or is there something counter-intuitive about this whole sickness process?
3. Which is easier to say to the paralytic? "Your sins are forgiven you," or "arise, take your bed and walk"? Physical healing can very well be a sign from God that He makes us well in all respects.
4. Maybe I'm grasping at straws, and there is no over-arching abstruse spiritual convention behind sickness, other than the fact that we have fallen bodies and it sucks to get sick.
But what a reminder of the dire mortality of our present existence. Do you know how much time I've spent at the gym in the past few months? We spend so much time on our bodies: working out, eating right, putting on suntan lotion, taking vitamins, bundling up in the winter, as if we were gods who could run forever on an infinite plane, and getting sick is a little slap-in-the-face from the reality of the temporary and transient nature of our present condition.
2 Corinthians 4:18: "Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day."
Why is that?
Desultory thoughts:
1. Our bodies were made in God's image. When God's creation fell to sin and imperfection, so did our bodies. You'll note that there's not supposed to be any sickness or death in the perfection of the coming eternity. (Revelation 21:4. On a side note, there's also no crying in heaven, just like there's no crying in baseball. What will girls do with their time?) I think that our bodies are meant to be a physical means of experiencing spiritual realities. That's not to say that when you're hungry, you're necessarily not being filled with the Spirit at that time, but it is to say that when you're hungry, you know what it's like not be filled and nourished. When your body is impassioned, you know what it is to yearn for communion with another person or being. These sensations you can translate to a spiritual plane pretty easily. Likewise, when you're sick, you know what it is to feel the opposite of alive -- a foreshadowing of death, the experience of being apart from God and eternal life.
2. In a certain sense, being sick doesn't make sense to me because if I'm in a bad place, shouldn't my first thought be a fervent plea for God to come and heal me, in the style of Jeremiah 17:14? The whole cycle of the Old Testament shows that when the Israelites got into trouble, their response was to repent and turn to the Lord and pray for healing and forgiveness, and then the Lord returned and made things right. Yet when I'm sick with the flu or somesuch, it takes considerable effort for me to even think of praying for healing or seeking the Lord, in favor of popping some Tylenol and going to sleep. Is there something wrong with me, or is there something counter-intuitive about this whole sickness process?
3. Which is easier to say to the paralytic? "Your sins are forgiven you," or "arise, take your bed and walk"? Physical healing can very well be a sign from God that He makes us well in all respects.
4. Maybe I'm grasping at straws, and there is no over-arching abstruse spiritual convention behind sickness, other than the fact that we have fallen bodies and it sucks to get sick.
But what a reminder of the dire mortality of our present existence. Do you know how much time I've spent at the gym in the past few months? We spend so much time on our bodies: working out, eating right, putting on suntan lotion, taking vitamins, bundling up in the winter, as if we were gods who could run forever on an infinite plane, and getting sick is a little slap-in-the-face from the reality of the temporary and transient nature of our present condition.
2 Corinthians 4:18: "Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
