Clarity Through Pain

(M. Bartosch - FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

If money has the ability to stupify us, to blind us from thinking about deeper more profound and lasting truths, pain has the opposite impact.  Pain has the ability to clarify our deepest values.  While few of us would actively choose to pursure a pain-inducing situation, most of us could probably agree that in hindsight, pain helps us to push the frivilous to the side.  Why is this?

First, I'd offer than pain is a powerful reminder of our frailty and our ultimate end.  I can recall years ago when I was visiting friends in Maine and I had what seemed like intense stomach cramps.  Eventually they passed and I thought that I was out of the woods.  A few months later, the pain came back and after a visit to the hostpital emergency room, the doctors discovered that I had an infected gall bladder.  While I would never estimate what it's like to give birth, some women have said that for men it's the closest experience to labor and delivery.  In that brief (a few days) of intense pain, I was reminded about how frail the human body is, and I was reminded that even when the doctors took out my gall bladder, one day my body would fail.  Pain has that unique ability to remind us that from the moment of our birth, we are all terminal.

Secondly, pain clarifies for us what we want our legacy to be.  When we think about the things in which we invest our time from day to day, we can be so consumed in producing and checking of items from our lists that we miss an opportunity to not just ask "Is it done" but instead "Should I even spend time doing this?"    In pain, we are often challenged to think about how we are using our time, talents, and treasure.

Thirdly, I find that pain has the ability to bring about a thankful heart.  While not always the case, pain allows us to reflect on how much we have or are blessed with.  Just yesterday after shoveling the driveway for the third time in less than a week, my knee was aching.  At first I was slightly concerned that I had done something serious to it, but even as I felt my body communicating to me "rest", I was thankful that I had the ability to shovel, to walk, to live such a normal and pain-free life for the vast majority of my waking hours.  Pain, if we let it, allows us to be thanksful.

Lastly, pain reminds us to Whom we belong.  On this very day, I sat through a funeral of a co-worker's daughter.  Not even 30, she died of complications from cystic fibrosis, but it was alone in a hospital room at sixteen that she opened up a Bible and read of God's love for her and how she was truly His.  Pain presses us toward the things that matter in this life, the things that will last beyond this life, and to the One who from Whom all of life flows.

As we think about the topic of life and deeper meaning, we will next look at what it is that gives life coherent meaning.

- tC

The Challenge of Money

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One of the challenges we face in the world today is our access to money, and for many, it is our access to a great deal of it.  I was just speaking with someone the other day who expressed his lack of need for much religion at all because he felt like he really had all that he needed.  This is a major challenge to us finding a deeper purpose in life and a challenge to believing that this place is not truly our home.

The danger of money is that it titillates.  When we have money, we have the ability to always look into or purchase the latest novelty, and thus we can distract ourselves from the deeper questions of life.  As I reflect back on my travels around the U.S., I'm struck by the relationship I've seen between those who are in great need financially and their understanding and thinking about the things of God.  While not a 1:1 correlation, my experience is that those who have little have little to be distracted with and in turn, they think of eternal and philosophical things more often.  Money gives us the ability to self-blind - we surround ourselves with so many toys that we can't see out to look at the real world.

Another danger for those of us who lives in more affluent countries or cultures is that money can give us the feeling of control.  When we have the resources, we can begin to believe that all we have to do when a crisis strikes is to spend.  A car breaks down - we purchase a new one.  A bill for college comes in - we send a check off in the mail.  But the danger of this money-shield (if you will) is the false sense of security it brings.  We are constantly in need of God's grace.  If you doubt this, face a life-threatening disease and see how little money can do for you.  Yes, having means is certainly correlated with better health care, but there is a point at which money can't stop a devastating cancer.

The challenge of money is that it can enrapture us with what it offers and then, on the last day of our lives, we look around to see that we've been playing with toys instead of considering why we are even here in the first place.  Secondly, money can make us feel like we don't need God, like we can make it on our own when in reality, we should acknowledge the common grace shed upon us all. 

In our next post, we will consider how pain gives us clarity on our purpose and home.

- tC

First World, Other World

With Christmas just recently past, I can't help but reflect on the consumerism that's really a central feature of what it means to be American.  I sometimes wonder about what it means to be a "third world" country, versus what it means to be in the United States, a (if not the) first world country.  Even as some read this, I know the reaction already - "Don't you appreciate all that America has to offer, all the freedoms you are given?"  Yes I do, but what I want to do is challenge is all to think about purpose and what our true home is.  Over the next several posts, we will look at what it means to live for something bigger than ourselves, something bigger than the American dream even.  To do so, let's start by watching this video from Switchfoot called "Company Car".  As noted in the song - what is it about being young that gives us the freedom to dream about something more than just "making it", and why do we choose to lose that dream?



-tC

Part 6: The Exclusivity of Christ - Why Does God Not Make People Choose Christ

 (homebits.co.uk)

A very legitimate response to the issue of Christ's exclusivity has been raised by skeptic and believer alike: Why not just have God force people to choose Christ, or have Him orchestrate their lives in such a way that they will eventually inevitably choose to commit to Christ?

Philosophers have dealt with this question by stepping back to think about 4 different worlds that might exist, 4 worlds that could have been created by God.

World #1 - no world at all.  God decides to not create anything at all, there is no world.  This obviously deals with the issue at hand but it also brings up a myriad of other issues, the primary being that no one ever exists.  So we move on.


World #2 - a world with no right or wrong.  In this world, there is no right or wrong and it is a place where all religions are essentially the same, they are all right, and the exclusive claims of Christ are no more exclusive than a person who creates his or her own religion.  The issue with this option is that it flies in the face of logic and in the face of the nature of God.  God is a rational being, a logical being, and a truthful being.  That being the case, and it also being the case that truth is exclusive, God cannot create a world where truth does not matter, where right/wrong (or even correct/incorrect) do not exist.  It is irrational and impossible.

World #3 - a world where people are obligated, forced to choose to follow and love Christ.  The issue here is that of love. We read in the Scriptures that God's greatest command is to love Him with all we have, but coerced love is no love at all.  No one would want to be loved by a robot merely because it was programmed to love.  Likewise, most people would be offended if they found out that their spouse or significant other was "loving " him/her out of obligation versus loving by choice.  That leads us to our fourth option.

World #4 - a world where people are given the dignity and freedom to choose to love and follow Christ.  In this world, people can freely choose to commit to Christ, but of course that rationally means that people must therefore also have the option to not love Christ, and to choose to reject Him.  This world maintains the dignity of the individual and holds to all the rational issues where the other worlds cannot.

The idea of obliging people to commit to Christ seems, at first, to deal with the issue of those who would otherwise reject Him, but as we can see it brings up even more fundamental issues thereby compounding the problem.  The conclusion: the only way the love may remain intact and exist is if there is true freedom given to follow or reject Christ.

-tC

Part 6: The Exclusivity of Christ - Those Who Never Heard

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One of the primary concerns for people when it comes to the exclusivity of Christ is about those who never heard the Gospel message.  Of course, this issue brings to mind many sub-topics that need to be addressed: the justice of God, the love of God, and the list goes on.  However, the Scriptures do speak to this issue.  In Romans Chapter 1, Paul writes that there are characteristics of God that are knowable because of the created world.  The two that Paul lists are God's eternal power and His divine nature (v. 20).  We go on to read in Chapter 2 of Romans how Paul might respond to the question of those who never knew about Christ.   In verses 12-16, Paul essentially states the following - keeping the law is what matters, not just reading about it.  And thus there are people who have never read or heard what God's standards are and yet they sense/know that there is a standard and that apart from God's mercy and grace they cannot keep that standard.  Thus, Paul seems to be writing that there are people who have never "heard the message of Christ" but by seeing the created world and understanding (through conscience) who they are (fallen/broken people), they grasp that they are to live rightly and ask for forgiveness and help from God when they fail to do so. 

That being said, Paul ends this passage by saying that one day, Christ will judge all people's secrets (the intents and beliefs of their soul), and thus, we leave it up to Him to know the true state of a person's soul before his or her Creator.  That being said, the argument can be made that it is possible to live in such an isolated world that one cannot or did not likely hear the Gospel message and yet he or she could still be in a relationship with God. 

Let me close this post by sharing a short story shared with me by a friend in graduate school.  She told me of a missionary who for years had desired to go to a certain people group hidden in an isolated jungle.  After quite some time, this missionary finally arrived to meet this group and the leader of this people group approached him and eventually communicated, "You are the man who The God told me would come.  He told me you would come with a book from Him."  Oftentimes our westernized version of faith eliminates the possibility for the miraculous and in doing so, we fail to remember that no one in unreachable by God - He has all means at His disposal and sometimes He chooses to use humans while other times He makes a more spectacular visit.

-tC