another dead guy named John

After nearly a year, I finally finished Overcoming Sin and Temptation.  The book.  Unfortunately not the actual overcoming of sin and temptation.  That would have been way more awesome. You see the complete ripoff of the book is that you don't actually overcome anything.  In fact, in the last few pages of the book he says that when the law exposes the indwelling sinful nature (see Romans 7), that sin

...finding its rule disturbed, it grows more outrageously oppressive and doubles the bondage of their souls.... yea - It is so far from being conquered that it is only enraged.  The whole work of the law does not only provoke and enrage sin, and cause it, as it has opportunity, to put out its strength with more power, and vigor, and force than formerly.  

So you get through the whole freaking book before he drops the bomb.  Oh by the way, if you try to be holy, you're just going to anger your sinful nature and it's going to lash out like an enraged heroin addict intent only one satisfying his unquenchable lust for more.  Lovely.  The book should come with a warning label acknowledging what you're getting yourself into because that kind of crazy redoubled psychotic attack is not what I signed up for.

I've always read Romans 7: 8-11 with some bewilderment.

For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from the law, sin was dead.  Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.  I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.  For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.

It's like when I watch the news giving every detail of how a terrorist attack or school shooting happened, and I'm thinking, "awesome, you've just told a bunch of angry, imbalanced crazy people out there how to carry out their psychotic impulses and become famous."  In a similar manner, it's like the law is an instruction manual on how to sin, and as I read it my sinful nature says, "Oh, wow, I hadn't thought of that yet.  That sounds like a great idea."  And off it runs with even more enthusiasm than before.

Moreover, Owen points out that any attempts to suppress the sinful nature through our own power simply restrain certain types of violent eruptions of sin, diverting the flow of sin to other outlets while leaving the root of sin intact and flourishing.  Not so encouraging really.  Then you get all inspired because there is this great passage about how only grace can change the heart and remove the poison and fierceness put there by the sinful nature.  And then the book ends, and I'm like, "Um. Excuse me, but you can't just end there. That is completely unacceptable."  But apparently he didn't listen to me.

Because how does that grace thing work?  ACK!

Good thing I picked up a copy of The Letters of John Newton.  After following one of those random Facebook rabbit trails (don't judge, you know you do it too), I happened across a mention of Newton's Letters as a great collection of writings on personal holiness.  John Newton, most famous for authoring the hymn Amazing Grace, was a key figure in the Great Awakening in England during the 18th century.  He saw his letter writing as one of his greatest ministries.  I haven't even started the letters, and I'm already hooked by the introduction:

...true Evangelical religion produces intense exercise of soul.  Where the life of God has been implanted in the soul, a warfare begins between the good and the evil, between the new nature and the old.  If there is one thing outstanding in Newton's letters, it is, perhaps, the happy combination between spiritual mourning and spiritual rejoicing...  The purpose of God in showing believers the evil of their own hearts is to make them prize more highly the grace and all-sufficiency of Jesus.  In this way they go through life "sorrowful yet always rejoicing."

Wow.  It couldn't be more perfect.  Somehow the mix of mourning and rejoicing, of sin and holiness, works together for my sanctification.  I'm excited about embarking on this strange quest.  Even though I have no idea where it is headed, I can hear a voice calling my name.  I know that voice, and I'm both terrified and thrilled to follow it.  So here's to eavesdropping on the centuries-old conversations of another dead guy named John.

fatness

I'm stuck on an idea I came across in John Owen recently (not surprised at all are you?).  One of his arguments about the power of indwelling sin is that, as trees planted by streams of water, we as believers should be growing fat on the goodness and mercies of God.  We should be fruitful, joyful, and exuberantly filled with the richness of Christ.  That we are not so is the strongest evidence that indwelling sin is our most formidable enemy.  Instead of living lives characterized by this fatness, we live live out a hollow, emasculated, talking faith.  Rather than lives overflowing with the fruit of deep communion with God, we live in shallow platitudes that show up as rules about how to eat, vote, or school our children.

...but to see men living under and enjoying all the means of spiritual thriving, yet to decay, not to be fat and flourishing, but rather daily to pine and wither, this argues some secret, powerful distemper, whose poisonous and noxious qualities hinder the virtue and efficacy of the means they enjoy.  This is indwelling sin.  So wonderfully powerful, so effectually poisonous it is, that it can bring leanness on the souls of men in the midst of all the precious means of growth and flourishing.  It may well make us tremble, to see men live under and in the use of the means of the gospel, preaching, praying, administration of sacraments, and yet to grow colder every day than others in zeal for God, more selfish and worldly even habitually to decline as to the degree of holiness which they had attained unto. 

He wrote that nearly four hundred years ago, and it is the same story today.  Indwelling sin reduces the fulness of life in Christ to a weary trudging mess that leaves us even less holy than when we first sought our savior's love.

About a year ago I felt like I should start memorizing Psalm 119, but given how long it is and how slow I am and how powerful my sinful nature is, I finally just started a week ago.  Judging by past experience, I expect I will finish in about three years if I don't give up by the fourteenth verse.  I've been mystified by verse 7: "I will praise you with an upright heart, as I learn your righteous laws."  It reminds me of Hebrews 10:14: "because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy."

Upright but still learning, perfect but not yet made holy.  There is some crazy tension about living in the fatness of Christ while still a sinner.  How to drink deep of his abundant renewing mercy in such a way as to overflow with the fruit of the Spirit while living in a state of continual confession and repentance.  Trying to live in this tension makes me feel like I've been chasing my tail so long I'm about to pass out.  Or like when I tried to roll down this giant hill with Quinn a few years back, and ended up having to sit with my head between my legs for ten minutes trying not to throw up because I forgot I was too old to roll down giant hills, or really any hills for that matter.  In fact, I would say the past few weeks I have been passed out spiritually, dizzy from too much reeling.  I just read the opening of Psalm 119 over and over and let the Spirit cry out on my behalf as I lay mystified, unable to form two coherent sentences about God.

But this picture of fatness is what I've been praying for.  How's that for a totally un-chic prayer?  Obviously I'm not hipster enough, and yet I can't helping thinking that the sleek, sophisticated trappings we use to modernize our religion and convince ourselves we've somehow progressed merely cover a festering heap of sin and shame, just like they did four hundred years ago.  So I've been praying for fatness, for the belly laugh of a portly gentlemen who has just pushed himself back from a feast and finds himself so overcome with joy he has to hold that giant, quivering bulk to keep himself from falling right over with merriment.  Because maybe, just maybe our souls are a little too skinny for our own good these days.

caught up

There's a fine line between honesty and self-indulgent whining.  Sometimes, I'm not sure which side of that line I'm on.  But since I write to process rather than impress, I don't suppose you have to read this.

I think I have a form of emotional bulemia.  seriously.

I've still been reading John Owen (because I'm the slowest reader in the world, apparently), and studying how the sinful nature captures your affections, mind, and will to accomplish its purposes.  I think I need to stop reading though, because as it took me weeks to wade through these pages my sinful nature was using the very same tricks I was reading about to take over.  You'd think I'd be a little smarter, since I was reading about it, but apparently not.  So grief and shame built up over the course of those weeks until I was finally able to purge them a few days ago during a sweet time of confession.

Since then I've felt... well... empty would probably be the best way to describe it.  Like I vomited out all my filth, and although I'm feeling cleansed by Christ, I'm not feeling filled by him, either.  I keep recalling that example Jesus gave about the man who was cleansed of one demon, and when the demon returned, he brought seven others with him.  I'm desperately not wanting to binge on sin again yet I find all the quiet in my head makes temptation all the more difficult to fight.

As the school year dies down I'm trying to acclimate myself to free time again.  My moments outside work are so scripted throughout the school year that I get to May and have to teach myself how to live slowly, without an immediate agenda.  Unfortunately at this same time of year I also approach the anniversary of Emmett's death.  Last year I felt the anticipation of a difficult season looming on the horizon.  This year I find myself feeling an immense relief to have survived the year relatively sane and unscarred mingled with a quiet simmering panic that won't seem to go away.  I've been trying to pray through the origins of the panic and how best to deal with it, but it still baffles me.

I attended my first official hootenanny this past weekend with a friend at a local farm.  I listened to the music and watched the bumble bees drill their holes as the sawdust drifted down through the fading light. And I felt a deep wave of grief, the likes of which I haven't felt in a long time.  I'm not sure why, perhaps it's that I have time and space in my life to feel again.  Perhaps it's another approaching anniversary.  Perhaps I'm just nuts.  Whatever the reason, I find myself unexpectedly caught up again, and I'm nervous about making it out intact.

honest mess

When Emmett got sick a few years ago and I started blogging, I largely gave up writing in my journal that I've kept since seventh grade because it seemed redundant.  Every now and then, though, I pull it back out because I can't bring myself to open my computer and be completely honest.  I haven't pulled that journal out in over a year, but this morning I was halfway through an entry when I thought, "oh, crap, you're going to make me post this aren't you?"  So here is what I wrote in all its honest mess....

...This morning I find I need to tuck myself away in a closet of private confession. Oh Lord, I have cherished sin in my heart.  I - who professes to love you, who rejoices in praising your name among your people, who delights in your tender, compassionate love - I have been secretly feeding a thousand cherished lusts and self-indulgences.

I have lusted after relationships and food and material things.  I have indulged in spending, eating, and gossip.  I have been impatient, ungracious, boastful and malicious.  Even when these sins were unnoticed or comparatively small, I enjoyed them, welcomed them, planned them, and sought to continue in them like I was the whore of Babylon.  I can list specific instances where you hemmed me in or pinned me down to keep me from sin, and I responded by squirming and trying to get around you.

Yet you have laid your hand upon me.  You have brought me into the sanctuary and shown me truth.  I know better, and still I have let sin wriggle into my heart and chain up my soul.  I have driven nail upon nail into the heart of Christ every day and dragged others down with me in my sin.

I have been tempted to compensate for my sin by setting up rigorous laws, an elaborate series of self-deprivations and self-imposed humiliations.  I am tempted to make myself feel better by some elaborate and rigid system of ordering my life to impose the outward appearance of holiness to compensate for the inward decay of my heart.  There was a time when I would have done these things with a desperate desire to earn your love, frantic to bribe you to love me, eager to make myself worthy.

But this time is different, I weep because I am confident that you love me, despite my sin.  I never expected to have this kind of confidence, to have no desire to cover my self-indulgent sinful nature with a more self-righteous version.  I no longer want rules to take away my freedom because I'm not strong enough to walk rightly.  I don't want to give up indulging in sinful pleasures merely so I can indulge in self-righteous condescension.

I want your Spirit that sets me free to run in the paths of your commands.  I want to get a little angry with you because that Spirit is so hard to hear and then have you laugh at me because my sinful nature fabricates that excuse to trick me into sinning.  I want to wrestle with you and lose.  I want to live in freedom, knowing and accepting the risks of falling down.  I want to teach these crippled legs to run instead of confining them to a wheelchair because I'm afraid of being found out as a sinner.

But today my soul is weary with the sorrow of my own sin, so strengthen me according to your word, not according to mine.

sucking chest wound

In high school some friends and I got to be part of a disaster preparedness drill for a local children's hospital.  We were each assigned a trauma injury, rolled in on gurneys, and the doctors had to deal with all of us at once.  I had the "sucking chest wound," you know, the kid they're supposed to give up on because she has minutes to live anyway, and they're more likely to save someone else.  So a lot of doctors came by and left quickly, but I thoroughly milked every moment of gurgling and gasping like the quintessential melodramatic teenage hollywood wannabe who got to replay her death scene over and over.  It was fabulous.

nerd moment.

So when a tornado passes over your house, it isn't that the wind is so strong that it sucks your roof off.  The speed of the wind causes the pressure to drop and difference in pressure causes the air inside your house to push upwards on the roof.  It's more like the air inside the house is trying to rush out to fill the void outside.

the synthesis?

I have these moments where I tangibly feel that same sucking chest wound. The difference in pressure between my outside and inside is so intense I feel like I have my mouth stuck on the suction end of a vacuum hose and and I'm being turned inside out because of the negative pressure.

I had one of these moments recently and all I could do was sit in my car and sob.  At some point though, I've come to realize that the fundamental nature of these moments is longing.  The anticipation of something like marriage, or heaven, or children, or spring, or anything good is so arousing that if you  drift away from or even lose the focus of your longing, then the void left is overwhelming.  I'm not being trite when I say that I completely understand why people drink or have sex or do drugs or become workaholics - anything to feed the black hole created by the longing.

I love cooking, and no, I'm not changing the subject.  Someone once asked me if I were a good cook.  I find that a strange question.  I love to eat what I make, but I suspect I'm a terrible cook.  What I love about cooking, though is how much it teaches me about the art of waiting on God.  Emmett's grandfather taught me how to make jam, and I spent hours in his kitchen learning how to wait for just the right moment.  Too soon and it never gels, too long and turns out unpleasantly firm.    I'm a rusher though, and without proper training (sometimes even despite my proper training), all my jams would be a runny mess.

I have the same problem in life.  If I have a question, then I want an answer and then the conversation is over.  It isn't that I don't care about people, so much as I don't know how to go about the art of building relationship.  Emmett was wonderful at this.  We would have a question we needed answered, something as simple as 'when are you arriving.'  Emmett would make a call and an hour later we would have our answer.  I would get so frustrated, and he would look at me like I was nuts because for him, you can't just ask a question.  It has to be just right.

In cooking, as in life, I'm really bad at sensing the 'just rights.'  Too many plans here, too little self-control there, a little over-indulgnece here, a smattering of conceit just then, a missed social cue, or a preoccupation with my own agenda, and before you know it, my longings have become so blurry that the same old sucking chest wound appears out of nowhere.  A gradual buildup of missed cues and 'just rights' becomes a landslide of unfulfilled longing set loose by a single pebble.  Not enough time to wash my hair or being tired or feeling inadequate next to someone more beautiful/talented/hip/funny/etc - any of these pebbles can trigger an overwhelming rush of emotion.

I find myself learning the art of longing, of waiting, of seeing the 'just rights.'  Balancing the promise of a new creation with the reality of sin is an art that escapes me.  How to live in the tangible joy of the promises of Christ without feeding that insatiable sucking chest wound is not an art I've mastered.

champagne for breakfast again - well of course!

Part of getting used to living in the post-Easter world -- part of getting used to letting Easter change your life, your attitudes, your thinking, your behavior -- is getting used to the cosmology that is now unveiled.  Heaven and earth, I repeat, are made for each other, and at certain points they intersect and interlock.  Jesus is the ultimate such point.  We as Christians are meant to be such points, derived from him. The Spirit, the sacraments, and the scriptures are given so that the double life of Jesus, both heavenly and earthly, can become ours as well, already in the present...

...The message of Easter, then, is neither that God once did a spectacular miracle but then decided not to do many others nor that there is a blissful life after death to look forward to.  The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it.  And precisely because the resurrection was and is bodily, albeit with a transformed body, the power of Easter to transform and heal the present world must be put into effect both at the macrolevel, in applying the gospel to the major problems of the world... and to the intimate details of our daily lives.  Christian holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good but of learning to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world we publicly entered in our baptism.  There are many parts of this world we can't do anything about except pray.  But there is one part of the world, one part of physical reality, that we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us calls "myself." Personal holiness and global holiness belong together.  Those who wake up to the one may well find themselves called to wake up to the other as well...     Surprised by Hope N.T. Wright

Two currents of thought are radically changing my life right now; a deeper understanding of the inner workings of my sinful nature thanks to the writings of John Owen that I have often quoted on this blog, and a radical shift in my understanding of the resurrection, thanks to the book quoted above.  It is no coincidence that I have come across these books and find myself working through them concurrently.  Owen says that proportionate to our understanding of sin will be our desire for grace, and I find that my desire for grace creates a desperate need to rightly understand the resurrection of Christ.

I have, like most other Christians these past few months, been overwhelmed by the sins of the world coming to light in stories of murder, blindness, and manipulation.  I mostly marvel, though, that we are surprised by these stories.  Because apart from Christ, I could justify any one of these actions.  In grieving the world I've noticed a terrible temptation to judge myself in comparison to the the world only, without respect to Christ.  To lash out in judgement, thinly veiled as righteous horror, is my first impulse, but the deeper I go into Christ the more I am aware of my own sinful nature and need for grace, and the more I realize that apart from grace I would do these exact same things.  Then I find myself caught up in grief and prayer in strange new ways and I find answers I never quite expected.  Consider this:

But Easter week itself ought not to be the time when all the clergy sigh with relief and go on holiday.  It ought to be an eight-day festival, with champagne served after morning prayer or even before, with lots of alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems.  Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we can't throw our hats in the air?  Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection if we don't do it exuberantly in our liturgies? Is it any wonder the world doesn't take much notice if Easter is celebrated as simply the one-day happy ending tacked on to forty days of fasting and gloom?  It's long overdue that we took a hard look at how we keep Easter in the church, at home, in our personal lives, right through the system. And if it means rethinking some cherished habits, well, maybe it's time to wake up.  That always comes as a surprise...

...But we should be taking steps to celebrate Easter in creative new ways: in art, literature, children's games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts, anything that comes to mind.  This is our greatest festival.  Take away Christmas, and in biblical terms you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else.  Take Easter away, and you don't have a New Testament; you don't have a Christianity; as Paul says, you are still in your sins....

...In particular, if Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things up.  Champagne for breakfast again -- well, of course. Christian holiness was never meant to be merely negative.... Easter is the time to sow new seeds and to plant out a few cuttings.  If Calvary means putting to death things in your life that need killing off if you are to flourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean planting, watering, and training up things in your life (personal and corporate) that ought to be blooming, filling the garden with color and perfume, and in due course, bearing fruit...

I was tempted to quote the whole book, but I'll stop there.  Do you get it?  Do you get that the deep griefs of this world are answered completely by the resurrection, the promise of forgiveness and a new creation.  Therein lies a deep, hopeful, and wildly joyful cause for dancing and kissing and champagne for breakfast!

I have tried these past few years to travel my own road of grief with an open hand.  The temptation to bury grief under activities or false idols or work or alcohol or sex or any other distraction is overwhelming at times.  But I have found that real grief, rightly experienced with Christ, coexists with a joy beyond my ability to express in words.

As I walked the Ganier trail at Radnor lake yesterday, I was met at the top by a furious barrage of wind that nearly blew me over. I laughed and wanted to shout hallelujahs and shake my fist and say, "do your worst because I know who made you and he loves me!"

But of all the things in Wright's book, one small side note haunts me more than any other.  In his discussion on how the resurrection works itself into our pursuit of justice, he mentions offhandedly that at the center of the peaceful dismantling of apartheid was a black African archbishop who spent the first three hours every day in devout, fervent prayer.  Thirty years prior, no one could imagine the peaceful dismantling of apartheid, and yet it happened.  I'm not sure why this example stood out among so many other examples he gave, but I am convicted that as believers we don't shout hallelujahs and raise our fist to the wind and go on our way in personal triumph, otherwise unchanged.

Deep grief and wild joy are made for each other.  Because I shake my fist at that same wind by bowing my knees in prayer and asking him to change me and bring healing to this broken world.  I cannot meet the brokenness of the world until I've deeply reveled in the knowledge of my redemption and new life.  So this morning I'm raising a toast to the creator and bowing my head in grief all at the same time, all while gaping in wonder at the mystery of this whole crazy mess.

groaning

I don't visit my backyard very frequently in winter, so this time of year, I'm often surprised by the difference a few days can make.  Walking out to the compost this evening I saw the peach tree in full bloom, and my breath caught in my chest.  Spring has been a long time coming this year, and I am keenly aware of its delay in both body and spirit.  The explosion of blossoms caught me off guard, and I finally felt the promises of Easter stirring in my heart.

Recently I've been bogged down in the twenty-something-eth chapters of Leviticus.  Just imagine that sucking sound your galoshes make when you pull out of the mud.  Yup.  That's where I am.  But there mired in the directions on which animal to use and which parts of it to burn and who can eat it and who you're not supposed to sleep with and how many years you're not supposed to eat the fruit from a tree you just planted (I'm totally not making that one up!), there when you least expect it God says over and over to be holy because I am holy or because I am the one who makes them holy.

And then I'm reminded by John Owen that holiness is not just an action, but it's also the intention and thought underlying the action, as well as the manner in which we carry out the action.  Seriously.  I'm already drowning just trying to do the right things sometimes.  If I have to analyze my attitude, then I just might as well sit in a corner and give up.

This morning I read in Romans 8 about all creation groaning as in the pains of childbirth along with us, longing for the new creation.  I think I've groaned with longing for that new creation so much these past few years some people might mistake me for a zombie.  I get stuck in the great mystery of Romans 7, being caught up in the middle of that epic struggle between the old creation and the new creation, the reason for so much of the groaning mentioned in Romans 8.  I get so stuck in that struggle that I forget the promise of Easter and a new creation.  I forget that my groaning is a sign of Christ's victory.  I forget that the promises are real.

And all my forgetting is why I need spring so desperately this year, to remember the promise that all things will be made new, that the present creation is groaning with me in similar anticipation of being made new, and that this kind of groaning is the song of the redeemed right now.  But groaning won't be our song forever.  One day I'll step outside of this body and into a new creation, and my breath will catch in my chest because everything will be exploding with new life.  I will find that I have a new song that was somehow mysteriously forged through all this groaning.  That will be a glorious day indeed, and I'm thankful for that reminder from the peach blossoms this evening.