HT: Who are you married to?

The following blog by my friend Ray Ortlund powerfully describes the miracle of our marriage to Christ. It also provides an interesting paradigm for reflection on our own marriages.

HT: Ray Ortlund, "Who are you married to?" (10.june.11)
“A married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. . . . and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another.” Romans 7:2-4 

We were married to Mr. Law. He was a good man, in his way, but he did not understand our weakness. He came home every evening and asked, “So, how was your day? Did you do what I told you to? Did you make the kids behave? Did you waste any time?” So many demands and expectations. And hard as we tried, we couldn’t be perfect. We forgot things that were important to him. We let the children misbehave. We failed in other ways. It was a miserable marriage, because Mr. Law always pointed out our failings. And his remedy was always the same: Do better tomorrow. We couldn’t. 

Mr. Law died – fortunately. And we remarried, this time to Mr. Grace. Our new husband, Jesus, comes home every evening and the house is a mess, the children are being naughty, dinner is burning on the stove, and we have even had other men in the house during the day. Still, he sweeps us into his arms and says, “I love you, I chose you, I died for you, I will never leave you nor forsake you.” And our hearts melt. We don’t understand such love. We expect him to judge us, but he treats us so well. 

Being married to Mr. Law never changed us. But being married to Mr. Grace is finally changing us deep within, and it shows.

versus a Gandhian critique

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

The premise of my last post - that Christianity is not inherently violent, it is just (mis)used for violence - opens itself to another critique: Christians failure to be like Christ.  A Christian is called to be one with Christ; what does that mean? I know that I have not - daresay cannot - live my life as perfectly as Christ no matter how much discipline I apply.  Oneness does not mean that Christians become Christ; it means that they become the bride of Christ.  


You see, Gandhi may in fact pithily and accurately highlight the church's - and my own - departure from Christ's teaching and a negligence of his service/mission.  However, if a person actually believed the first part of this statement (I like your Christ) - and not just the latter - they would want to be his bride and follow his instructions to love your neighbor and love the unlovable - even the unlovable church.  Instead, we find that there is an implied transition, an implied "but," which a wise friend once told psychologically erases anything that just came before it (e.g. "Baby, I love you but ...").  


I don't know what Gandhi meant, but those who quote him often use this position to justify not joining the church.  In this sense, a Gandhian critique is simply another iteration of illuminism - just "God and me" - with truth revealed to me privately by God and not corporately in the church, where it "would just be tainted by those jerks."  This is not an accurate assumption; rather "Christ whispers sweet words in the ear of his bride.  No matter what you think of her, He loves her.  It is hard to imagine him taking delight in your slander and rejection of her."  (Sam Storms, 4.dec.10)


I cannot simply live up to the example set for me by my Savior; that is why I need a Savior.  Our imperfection does not disqualify us from the church, but qualifies us to become his bride.  "Marriage is an unconditional commitment to an imperfect person" (Ray Ortlund, 30.april.11), and it's primary example is Christ's unconditional commitment to us.  Where I fail in perfect action, it is only greater testament to His perfect substitution:  

"The disproportion between us and the universe is a parable about the disproportion between us and God ... the point is not that it nullify us, but glorify Him."  ~ John Piper, Don't Waster Your Life (p. 34)

versus a Voltairian critique

"Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world." (Voltaire)

Voltaire sums up an age-old critique of Christianity, evidenced as far back as the Crusades, and echoing forward in such writers as Mark Twain and presently Charles Kimball.  And it's not an entirely unfair critique - there is certainly evidence that Christ's name has been slapped on violent, selfish advancement with an eye to temporal power or gain.


Recognizing this critique, I wanted to extend from yesterday's post that though Christianity requires a "wartime lifestyle," Ephesians 6:12 clarifies that, "we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but ... against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places."  In fact, I think one of the unique aspects of Christianity when compared with other world religions is that greater faith should actually make a person less violent: 

"One criticism of Christianity is that it’s intolerant, socially harmful, even violent ... People can pervert Christianity into something violent.  But you don’t have to pervert Islam, for example, to make it violent.  Just be true to Islam, and you will be violent.  And the purer your Islam, the more violent you will be.  The great message of Islam is not God dying for us, God suffering at our violent hands for our guilt to remove every barrier to his love pouring out upon his enemies.   

Secularism too has violence built into it.  Humanism looks to human potential for heaven on earth.  But it creates hell on earth.  Secularism absolutizes the human will.  There is nothing above to judge human power.  That led to the guillotine of the French Revolution.  It led to Vladimir Lenin, whose motto was “Who?  Whom?”  Who will dominate whom?  It’s the law of the jungle. 

Obviously, Islam and humanism could not be more opposite to each other in some ways.  One is religious, the other secular.  One is medieval, the other modern.  But they both unleash the fallen human heart.  

The gospel is the only alternative to human violence: “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example” (1 Peter 2:21).  We Americans need to stop beating each other up, humble ourselves, and follow Christ."  

~ Ray Ortlund, 5.june.11, commenting on 1 Peter 3:17-4:6

spiritually spartan, part ii

"Spartan" spirituality is more than "simple" or "minimalistic":

"Simplicity may have a romantic ring and a certain aesthetic appeal that is foreign to the dirty business of mercy in the dangerous places of the world.  Simplicity may also overlook the fact that in wartime, major expenses for complex weapons and troop training are needed ... Simplicity may be inwardly directed and may benefit no one else.  A wartime lifestyle implies that there is a great and worthy cause."
~ John Piper, Don't Waster Your Life (p. 113-114)

Simplicity focuses on the self, even if it is self-sacrifice; the very word "Spartan" originated from men who sacrificed for their community.  Simple living makes us monks; Spartan living makes us warriors.

HT: "tell me who you are"

"Tell me who you are." The first question I faced in an job interview recently, the question that looms over a first date, the obsession of our society: getting to know other people, and trying to know ourselves.  My friend Tim introduced me earlier this week to the idea that "psychology, as a field, has been centered on helping us in this search to answer, 'Who am I?' ... and 'What's wrong with me?'"  (David Jones, The Psychology of Jesus, p. 4)

I love this answer: 

HT: Ray Ortlund

A friend of Eric Clapton’s asked him a good question:

“Chris’s first question to me, at our very first session, was, ‘Tell me who you are,’ a very simple question you would think, but I felt the blood rush up to my face and wanted to yell at her, ‘How dare you!  Don’t you know who I am?’  Of course, I had no idea who I was, and I was ashamed to admit it.”
Eric Clapton, Clapton: The Autobiography (New York, 2007), page 257.

Who am I?  I am a man in Christ.  I am who I most truly am not by force of anything intrinsic to myself but by force of God’s mercy to me.  God has breathed into me the breath of life, and I have thus become a living being, in both creation and redemption.  I have no other reality.  I need no other.  I desire no other.

However I proudly depart from this reality, I am diminished.  As I humbly rejoice in this reality, I am vibrant with life.

running with cicadas

"We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the projects because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea." 

~ C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

About a week ago, I rolled (...er, leaped ...) out of bed to a cross between Will Smith's futuristic I Am Legend and Ancient Egypt's ten plagues.  An early morning storm had strewn trees and power lines across my neighborhood and produced hail that massacred about a quarter of the insipient cicada population, leaving juicy booby traps everywhere!

After administrators discovered that it was difficult to teach without power, students and teachers were released early, and I decided that conditions were perfect for a run.  I took off on my standard three-mile loop in awe of the damage that my mind was surveying.  I was making ridiculous time until I hit the lake, where my nose alerted me to the fact that the geese on the lake had been scared literally shitless by the same storm that found me taking part of my sleep in our bathtub.  My focus shifted to the ground and I began being a little more strategic about which angle I took on the running trail.  I became increasingly aware of the cicadas I was crushing underfoot, and began trying to avoid those too.  Eventually, I found myself not running at all but tipoeing through the cicada graveyard formerly known as Shelby Park. 

It's funny: the conditions did not change much from the first mile to the second, but my perception of them did.  As I focused down on the details, my perspective changed; an exhilirating run became a gross gauntlet. I've noticed that I do the same thing with my faith; I become focused on where I fail rather than on Christ's glory.  I'm too distracted by my own "mud pies" as Lewis says - my own "dirt."  It is impossible to keep pace this way; in fact, it becomes impossible to run.  I have to recognize that I'm not going to avoid every mess, but the faster I run towards my destination the fewer I hit.  Christianity isn't self-disciplined sin management, it's simply a shift of focus, as Hebrews 12:2 says, to "look away to Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith."