Sweat, tears, and hope

Journalism in its traditional form may be dying, and I may have spent (some would say "wasted") my youth pursuing it. But my favorite cope has always been that there are a tremendous number of experiences and lessons that continue to bear fruit long after I sent my last newspaper to the presses. It is, after all, not a common pursuit among the folks among whom I grew up. 

In fact, my journalism profession tended to stick out for good or ill. Whenever I told someone I was a newspaperman, the responses always included raised eye brows, accompanied by a range of verbal utterances that uniformly indicated surprise, yet different levels of understanding and approval. Some showed interest and fascination. These people were often ignorant of the declining state of the trade and assumed it must be a satisfying and generally stable livelihood. Some paired their surprise with the general contempt that they had for journalists -- damaged public trust manifesting at the interpersonal level. Still others knew a thing or two about the economics of newspapers and would ask pointed questions in tones that were better suited for an adult chiding a teenager in the aftermath of some poor decisions. Their words may have been "That's an interesting career," but their expressions were more akin to "What the hell were you thinking?"

Now that I'm 40 years old and my seven years of newspaper wanderings are long behind me, I've had time to meditate on the lessons of my subsequent careers. I've discovered, above all things, that every occupation is a crucible of learning, a natural outworking of the toiling human condition. Every challenging moment is an arrow pointing to who we are as humans. And every attempt to improve our work and ourselves in general is an attempt to wrestle against our fallen humanity. 

By faith, we do it out of love, gratitude, and hope.

Heroes and Zeros

Last night I was remembering my first week in sales. I had joined an incredibly toxic company -- the sickness there would only be revealed slowly over the next two years. During my week-long sales training, I ended up working closely with another new hire, a seasoned sales professional in his 60s. Cliff was charming and witty -- almost entirely without guile. One day, the trainer had us paired together for role-play, leaving it up to each of us to build challenging sales scenarios. One of the scenarios I built for him was not really that realistic. He rolled his eyes, earning some mild scolding from the trainer for not fully investing in it. In retrospect, I think I had been instinctively sucking up to the trainer, becoming a bit of a "teacher's pet" all week without even realizing it. It wasn't fair to Cliff at all but he didn't hold it against me.

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God is worthy of praise

Some days I am convinced that the single most important shift in thinking that a Christian can undergo is to glorify and praise God for who he is, and not merely for how he has dealt with us. In other words, God in all of his attributes and perfections, ought to be always before our eyes and exalted in our prayers. Yes our covenant God's “steadfast love endures forever” and we are the prime beneficiaries. But this is praiseworthy not just because we benefit, but because of this perfection in itself. There is rarely space to talk about it but it genuinely irks me when people ascribe all kinds of praise to God for something that works out to their liking (read earthly benefit), saying “it was a God thing,” as if they are the central reason that certain things have come to pass in God’s providence.

 

And yet, we know so little of God’s purposes, except for his promise that he does, in fact, order all things to certain ends, which includes the good of his children. Yet, we only have a passing, surface-level understanding of what is good for us! None of our epiphanies about God’s providence and provision for us are comparable to what shall finally be plain once the fog of this world has lifted and our faith is sight. But I digress. My point is that our praises should be big enough to acknowledge that ALL of him is praiseworthy, not just his works, much less the works that we understand, much less the works that we understand and are happy about in the moment. What better way to keep this in mind than to meditate first and foremost on who God is, not just a small sliver of what he does?

In light of this, it’s shocking that sinful therapeutically-minded humans demand unconditional love “for who I am,” while somehow demanding that God — in all his perfections and excellencies — first give us a reason to love him.

A death worth remembering

Every time our fallen veterans are honored in our land of peace and plenty, it strikes me that we aren’t just blessed to have had them fight for our earthly peace. We are also blessed to still be here to remember them. We all instinctively want our lives to matter, so we honor those who died serving our nation and fighting our enemies as we would want to be honored and remembered ourselves. 

But it’s safe to say that this remembering isn’t normative to the human experience. For one thing, the victors are the only soldiers guaranteed that space and opportunity. The conquered face extinction of their earthly identity — the framework out of which that privilege would have arisen. It’s safe to say that more soldiers have died in defeat than in victory, and shrewd conquerors know that allowing a people to honor those that died fighting them is only to foment discontent and rebellion.

 

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Bring out your idols

The last month of progressive restrictions on life due to COVID-19 has produced an anguish that can  succinctly be described as mourning. Every day our expectations in every sphere of life are dashed upon the rocks of difficult new circumstances. The most frustrated among us feel like we are behind a slow-moving vehicle at a yellow light -- impatient and ready to lash out. We feel righteous if we are able to keep up a facade of calm in public, but inwardly we seethe and seek to lay blame at the feet of some enemy. That enemy often takes a predictable face, depending on our ideological predisposition: a political party, the CDC, a president, a congress, a governor, the media, the Chinese, the bureaucracy, the deep state, big pharma -- it's an endless list of convenient enemies from which to choose!

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A test of our zeal

Now that we are forced to stay home due to an outbreak, I've seen a few people asking questions along these lines: What is the worth of the instituted church? Unfortunately some don't understand the implications of what they are asking and how drastically the earth may be shifting under our feet at this very moment. 

Answering this question will be a culling for Christians. If we already understand how fundamental the instituted church is to our kingdom identity, then this time of "distance" will induce fervent yearnings to be gathered and physically numbered with fellow saints. Indeed, zeal for God's house is consuming us at this very moment. If we don't understand or apprehend the church, then this time is a two-edged sword: It will normalize and seal our habit of neglecting God's house and the means of grace, leading to greater working ignorance, selfishness, and idolatry. However, it may be that some will have their eyes opened and they will begin to treasure what they have lost.

We've all heard the numbers -- Church attendance is down, generation over generation. Each successive decade features an even steeper drop than the last.
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An observed vanity

There are processes at work in your body right now that will, in time, claim your life. If the only purpose you have is to use your breath to achieve some fleeting success or pleasure, how empty that success will be when your chest rises and falls for the last time on this earth.

This truth, when acknowledged, leads inexorably to either hope or despair, with nothing in between. It is unsurprising that when the least blind among the blind realize how little control they have over their destiny, they often choose to end their own lives as both an act of final rebellion and a futile exercise in control. They can’t abide the thought of having terms dictated to them by death, so they choose the “best” death they can dream up — never dreaming, as they should, that despair is completely unnecessary, given we were created to bear God’s image and to bring glory to him; that, in Christ, each and every one of our limited supply of breaths are sanctified to bring glory to Him; that, in Christ, all of the sting and pain of death has itself become empty and vain.

Willing to be fooled

Now, you're looking for the secret. But you won't find it because, of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out.

You want to be fooled.

I was reading this article from my friend over at Reformed Perspective and I was reminded of the above quote from The Prestige, one of my favorite movies. The quote is focused on the way a magician fools his audience -- I'm willing to bet this is not unlike our affinity, in any age, to be willfully fooled by hoax after hoax no matter what the medium.
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