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Weight of the World :: Readers’ Choice

Readers’ Choice (originally published October 10, 2014)

“This is my favorite Park Forum of all time.” — Mark

Psalm 95:3-4
For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. 

It may be partially as survival mechanism, but urbanites find near-perverse delight in the idiosyncrasies of city life. Pastor Taylor Field of Graffiti Church in Manhattan recently shared one of his favorite urban contrasts, found in a 7 ton bronze statue of the god Atlas. Although immense, and depicted with defined muscle, the figure of Atlas strains under the weight of the world, which rests on his shoulders.

Because it is placed outside one of the entrances to Rockefeller Center, the 45 foot tall statue seems dwarfed by the scale of the buildings which surround it. Writing for The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik observes, “The tall building is the symbol of all that we hope for — height, reach, power, and a revolving restaurant with a long wine list — and all that we cower beneath.”Gopnik explains the ornate design of Rockefeller Center and its impressive artwork: “It was not that Rockefeller, in a burst of civic generosity, decided to go all out. It was that everyone then was expected to go all out… All the things that make Rockefeller Center immediately winning–the statues of Prometheus and Atlas, the molded glass bas-reliefs–were just part of what you were expected to do.” Expectations can be immensely heavy. We often find ourselves, like Atlas, crushed by the weight of the world.

Tucked humbly behind the alter inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral — just a few hundred feet from Rockefeller’s statue of Atlas on Fifth Avenue — is a significantly smaller statue of Jesus. The Christ stands, but a child, effortlessly holding the world in the palm of his hand.

The Psalmist writes, “In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. …Oh come, let us worship and bow down.” The best reason to find ourselves kneeling is not because we’re buckling under the weight of the world, but because we’re falling in worship and submission to the one who holds it effortlessly in his hands.

Prayer
Father, we confess the pride that leads us try and live with burdens for which we were not designed to carry. Truly our lives, and everything in them, are yours. We are stunned, Father, by the gentle embrace of your grace. Our lives are restored by your kindness that leads us to repentance. May we grow in trust as we respond to your love for us.

Daily Reading
1 Samuel 11 (Listen – 2:43)
Romans 9 (Listen – 5:15)

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The Pain of Being Forgotten :: Readers’ Choice

Readers’ Choice (originally published February 18, 2015)

“It is refreshing, in a world where people and relationships change so often, that we serve a God who never forgets us — a God who always pursues us.” — Emily

Exodus 1.8-10
Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them.”

It’s intensely painful to be forgotten. When we’re forgotten professionally it costs the accolade of others, the promotion we hope for, or the compensation we’ve earned.

In friendship and dating, it launches a restless search for a reason. 

In divorce, it cuts to the deepest parts of the soul.

In disease, like Alzheimers or dementia, it destroys dreams, lives, and families. 

The book of Exodus begins in the darkness of being forgotten. In a matter of a few generations, Israel went from saving Egypt to being enslaved by them. Now they toil and suffer because pharaoh has forgotten.

Being forgotten is a fruit of the fall. It’s a condition of a broken world that people can cease to be mindful of others who are made in the image of God. It’s no wonder God’s words to Moses are the words of someone who remembers — who holds close — the cry of his people. “I have seen… I have heard… I know… I have come to deliver…”

When the authors of scripture say God remembers someone they are not contrasting it to God’s forgetfulness, but the world’s. The book of Exodus chronicles God’s remembrance of Israel alongside their pain of being forgotten by Egypt.

Evil has no regard for our well being in the world. Yet God remembers. It was the Son of God’s hands which were nailed to the cross because God refused to forget us — even in our sin. It was his body that was bruised and broken so that we could be known.

The true and greater exodus is found in God’s redemption of his people. The forgetfulness of the world may wound us deeply, but it cannot diminish, in the least, the vibrant life and work of Christ in our lives. In him we are remembered. In him we are restored. In him we are loved and known in a way that the forgetfulness of this world cannot take away.

Prayer
Father, you know the numbers of hairs on our heads. Our names are etched in your hand. While we were yet sinners you gave your life for us. Thank you for not abandoning us — for sacrificing so profoundly for us. May our lives be fundamentally reoriented by the love you have shown us.

Daily Reading
1 Samuel 10 (Listen – 4:34)
Romans 8 (Listen – 6:22)

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The Object of Our Faith :: Readers’ Choice

Readers’ Choice (originally published July 21, 2015)

“I was reading Humans of New York’s Facebook page and a woman commented that she grew up with organized religion but once she moved to NYC, she was liberated from thinking what others told her to think. Christianity is more about falling in love, an adventure, and an achievement than about organized religion.” — JoAnn

Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. —Acts 8.35

Coming to belief in Christ is a mysterious and wonderful thing. As Augustine explained, “To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek Him the greatest adventure; to find Him, the greatest human achievement.”

Acts 8-9 recounts the stories of salvation among the least likely of subjects: a racially oppressed group, a mystic, a pagan leader, and ultimately a radical extremist who had dedicated the first half of his life to terrorizing the early Christians.

What each held in common was their willingness to forfeit their previous systems of belief as a response to the glorious grace set before them. Because the stories move so quickly from one to another it’s easy to miss the struggle each would have faced in yielding their worldview to an outside source.

This struggle has not diminished today. Timothy Keller recounts the story Duke University professor Stanley Hauerwas tells of his philosophy students and their assumption that modern individuals must determine truth for themselves.

The professor explains that “Every religion and culture was different, but every culture before our culture said, ‘Right and wrong is determined by something outside the self, and it’s the job of the self to harmonize with it.’ We are the first culture, Hauerwas says, that is marked by “expressive individualism.”

“Expressive individualism is the view that right and wrong is not determined by outside the self, but right and wrong is determined by what you find in your own consciousness.”

Hauerwas challenges his students with this; “‘I’m not going to argue which of these views is right. All I’m going to tell you is this: When an American says you have to think and determine truth for yourself, you are not thinking for yourself at all. You are adopting a particular way of thinking, a particular view of truth and spiritual reality. It is a Western, almost tribal, white European way of thinking based on the Enlightenment, based on Romanticism, those European movements, and you’re believing it not because you’re thinking for yourself, but because your culture has told you to do it.’”

Responding to Christ challenges our assumptions, pride, and illusion of self-sufficiency. The alternative, assimilating God into our personal worldview, is just as much an act of faith, but one rooted in selfishness. Augustine put it another way, “If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”

Today’s Readings
1 Samuel 9 (Listen – 4:42)
Romans 7 (Listen – 4:09)

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Sin and Worldly Saints :: The Weekend Reading List

“Louis C.K.’s comedy argues that, at times, we are all laughably weak-willed and self-deceptive. Our ideals can be sublime, but our fat, failing bodies betray us; and this condition begins at birth,” writes Jonathan Malesic in a wonderful piece on Augustine and the “theology of Louis C.K.”

The comedian is known equally for his vulgarity and brute honesty of the human condition. Malesic explores how the two work together to paint a picture of sin in the modern secular world:

The comedy of Louis C.K. plunges into moral depravity in order to discover its illogic. By contrast, George Carlin’s comedy understood sin only on a third-grade level, as an action that breaks the (to him, absurd) rules. In Louis C.K.’s comedy, sin is perverse desire. It is a profound Augustinian thread. Following it leads to some of Louis C.K.’s best insights but also to his darkest and most questionable material.

Yet an understanding of sin without an acceptance of the gospel leads to despair and futility. “Louis C.K.’s comedic universe does not include supernatural grace or a city of God,” Malesic concludes. In an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air C.K. summarizes his understanding of religion through the words he remembers his priest telling him during confession, “Try — try harder.”

Augustine, in his work City of God condemned this way of thinking as a “marvelous shallowness.” It is another way, the theologian said, in which humans try to find their chief blessedness “in this life and in themselves.”

Augustine saw a way out of sin, of course. His rigorous examination of conscience leads to his awareness of a need for God’s grace. And knowing that God has already bestowed that grace is a cause for joy.

The theologian leads us to Christ, the comedian causes us to ask how we interact with the modern world on a daily basis. Can we enjoy the things of the world while relentlessly pursuing Christ?

In his book Becoming Worldly Saints Michael Wittmer explores “God’s enthusiastic embrace of the material world.” Wittmer acknowledges the ongoing tension of loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind and enjoying the world God created. “If we ever stop feeling the pull between creation and redemption, that can only mean we’ve fallen off one side or the other.” Christianity Today summarizes:

While Wittmer affirms a worldly faith that embraces earth, he is also careful to emphasize the priority of heaven—and the purposes of redemption. He warns against finding ultimate satisfaction and meaning in the things of this world. “The pleasures of creation must not lull us to sleep. We are at war, and we must never forget our heavenly calling.” To love the temporal world is good; to love eternity is best.

Left to ourselves this tension leads us in a circle. It is only when we pursue the transcendent truth and goodness of God as our chief end that we find both hope in this broken world and grace for our own sin. Or, as Augustine says,

“The just lives by faith,” for we do not as yet see our good, and must therefore live by faith; neither have we in ourselves power to live rightly, but can do so only if He who has given us faith to believe in His help do help us when we believe and pray.

Today’s Reading
1 Samuel 4 (Listen – 3:56)
Romans 4 (Listen – 4:08)

This Weekend’s Readings
Saturday: 1 Samuel 5-6 (Listen – 6:03); Romans 5 (Listen – 3:53)
Sunday: 1 Samuel 7-8 (Listen – 5:34); Romans 6 (Listen – 3:28)

Weekend Reading List

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How Can We Find Spiritual Rest? :: Readers’ Choice

Readers’ Choice (originally published June 16, 2015)

“I love lists. This list has more important stuff in it than any of mine do. Sabbath rest, rest from the hamster wheel, rest from the rest of life…we all need it but few of us even realize that it’s the missing piece in our busyness.” — Sam

Psalm 109.1, 4
Be not silent, O God of my praise! .. I give myself to prayer. 

How Can We Find Spiritual Rest? | by Samuel Annesley (c. 1620–1696)

How can we live with a conscience that is pacified by the blood of Christ? Christians, be persuaded to practice these:

1. Take heed of every sin, count no sin small.

2. Set upon the healing duty of repentance.

3. Compose thyself to live as under God. You cannot deceive him, for he is Infinite Wisdom; you cannot fly from him, for he is everywhere; you cannot bribe him, for he is Righteousness itself.

4. Be serious and frequent in the examination of your heart and life. This is so necessary to the getting and keeping of a right and peaceable conscience, that it is impossible to have either without it. 

5. Be much in prayer, in all manner of prayer, but especially in private prayer. 

6. Let your whole life be a preparation for heaven. Strip yourself of all encumbrances, that thou mayest attend unto piety. Pleasures may tickle you for a while; but they have an heart-aching farewell. You may call your riches good; but within a few days, what good will they do you? Men may flatter you for your greatness; but with God your account will be the greater. 

7. Live more upon Christ than upon inherent grace. Do not venture upon sin because Christ hath purchased a pardon; that is a most horrible and impious abuse of Christ. 

8. Be, every way, nothing in your own eyes. It is the humble soul that thrives exceedingly. “And, alas! what have we to be proud of?

9. Entertain good thoughts of God. We never arrive to any considerable holiness or peace till we lose ourselves in Deity;

10. Do all you do out of love to God. Spiritual love-sickness is the soul’s most healthy constitution. When love to God is the cause, means, motive, and end of all our activity then the soul takes flight towards rest.

O my soul, you are so little, why won’t you open all your little doors; why wont you extend your utmost capacity, that you mayest be wholly possessed, wholly satiated, wholly ravished with the sweetness of so great love? 

O, therefore, my most loving God, I beseech thee, tell me what may most effectually draw out my love to thee, considering what prevention of love, what privative, positive good things I receive from thee, infinite in greatness, infinite in multitude!

*Today’s devotional is abridged from, “How May We Be Universally and Exactly Conscientious?”

Daily Reading
1 Samuel 3 (Listen – 3:03)
Romans 3 (Listen – 4:30)