Randy Booth's Blog

One year ago today one of my best friends stepped out of this world and into the next world. It was sudden and unexpected. We all know the bridge is out up ahead of us, and some of us get a sense that it’s near, but with Steve it was abrupt, an otherwise ordinary day. For his wife, Becky, their children, and other family, it was a hard blow. For friends and for the church he served as a deacon, it was arresting. Being older than Steve I always assumed that I would go ahead of him, but of course, it doesn’t work that way. Life is not sequential. We know this and yet we’re still surprised. We all seek to understand the reasons why.

If God had not revealed Himself in Scripture, we could never have any answers to such questions because our limited knowledge keeps us in the dark. While I can’t know all that God knows, I can know the parts that He has revealed (Dt. 29:29). I don’t know why He called Steve home last year, but I do know that He is good, powerful and wise, and that He loved Steve and Steve’s family. I know that God has a perfect plan:

Since his (a man’s) days are determined,

The number of his months is with You;

You have appointed his limits, so that he cannot pass.

―Job 14:5

All my questions are not answered, but some important ones are. In fact, those answers give me great comfort every day, not just regarding things like Steve’s death, but also in granting faith and courage to live each day, knowing that our lives are completely in His hands.

Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.

And in Your book they all were written,

The days fashioned for me,

When as yet there were none of them.

―Psalm 139:16

In a world without God, Steve’s death, my death, everyone’s death, indeed, everyone’s life, means nothing. We got here by chance, and we will vanish the same way we came, and death will take all meaning with it. In that world the cosmos was an accident and so were each of us. As one scientist put it: “From this tiny speck of dust we continuously strive to understand other specks of dust in the endless cloud of dust we call the universe.” Follow the science!

I knew Steve Ramsey, and he was no speck of dust; he was God-like, because he was made in the image of God. He was full of value; He was a glorious gift. And while he was broken (like the rest of us), God was at work in Steve to restore him. He began that work in Steve many years ago in Jesus Christ, and a year ago today the Lord took Steve to the next level of glory. God lets you and me read ahead to see how the story ends. This is something else we can know with certainty.

We are all still sad because Steve is not present with us in the flesh (though his memory, love and wisdom remain). Nevertheless, Steve is not sad at all. Like little children who think Christmas day is always a long way off, we perceive our reunions are a long way off as well. Steve, however, sees it from the other side―he has a more mature perspective―he knows we’re right behind him.

4     “Lord, make me to know my end,

And what is the measure of my days,

That I may know how frail I am.

5     Indeed, You have made my days as handbreadths,

And my age is as nothing before You;

Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor.

―Psalm 39:4-5

Born: Dec. 23, 1956; Died: Dec. 9, 2020

“To come to Thee is to come home from exile, to come to land out of the raging storm, to come to rest after long labour, to come to the goal of my desires and the summit of my wishes.” ―Charles Spurgeon

Old friends are the best friends. I know it seems to be a contradiction but I’m blessed to have several BFFs. Steve Ramsey was one of them. A week ago I spent a few hours on his front porch on Sunday afternoon; not an uncommon thing for us to do (fixing everything that’s wrong with the world takes some time). On Monday we exchanged text messages. On Tuesday we visited at the church over some remodeling matters. On Wednesday morning I received a text from his wife (Becky) asking me to come right away because she thought he was dead. She was right. A sudden, unexpected heart attack interrupted our 30 years of friendship. I know that this is nothing compared to what his death means for his loving wife of 40 years and his four grown children. I know Steve had a host of friends, some of whom have been his friend for much longer than he was mine. I’m certain each of them now has a gaping hole in their lives that’s bigger than mine, but for me the void is enormous!

I was his pastor for nearly 20 of those 30 years in two different churches. I’m certain that Steve has pastored me at least as much as I have pastored him. He made me better than I would have been; that’s what real friends do. We have talked things to death, we’ve prayed, cried and laughed (laughing way more than crying). We have worked together, eaten together, partied together, camped together, and worshiped together. We’ve been mad at each other, sinned against each other, and forgiven each other. I’ve wanted to strangle him and hug him, sometimes both in the same day.

Steve and I knew we were in line to checkout of this world, but I always thought I was ahead of him but somehow he cut in line and he arrived in glory before me. Today I buried my dear friend in a casket I had built for myself. I can build another casket but I can’t ever have another friend like Steve. In a curious twist, Steve and Becky have burial plots next me and Marinell in a little county cemetery. In time we’ll all rest beside one another as we await the glorious resurrection day. Then the eternal phase of our friendship (without the nuisance of sin) will get started.

I could write for a very long time describing what this man has meant to me but for now I think I’ll just ponder this amazing gift and cherish our time together. I’m still in the check-out line and will catch up with Steve very soon. He is at peace because he knows we’re all right behind him. I look forward to that ecstatic meeting with this great friend. Rest in peace my dear brother.

I do not endorse all the theology expressed in this piece, however, Lewis’s prophetic warnings are powerful. In light of our current political swirl, his clear-headed evaluation and admonitions are worth hearing again. He answers the old question: “If I were the devil, what would I do?” -RB

A Satirical Epistolary Short Story

In the form of an after dinner address given by the veteran demon Screwtape at a graduation of the Tempters Training College.

SCREWTAPE PROPOSES A TOAST

By C. S. Lewis

Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, Oxford University, 1925–1954. Professor of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University (Magdalene College), 1954–1963.

Based on a character appearing in the Screwtape Letters. Screwtape Proposes a Toast was first published in The Saturday Evening Post on December 19, 1959. It has since appeared in the collection of essays, The World’s Last Night.

(The scene is in Hell at the annual dinner of the Tempters’ Training College for young devils. The principal, Dr. Slubgob, has just proposed the health of the guests. Screwtape, a very experienced Devil, who is the guest of honour, rises to reply:)

Mr. Principal, your Immincence, your Disgraces, my Thorns, Shadies, and Gentledevils:

It is customary on these occasions for the speaker to address himself chiefly to those among you who have just graduated and who will very soon be posted to official Tempterships on Earth. It is a custom I willingly obey. I well remember with what trepidation I awaited my own first appointment. I hope, and believe, that each one of you has the same uneasiness tonight. Your career is before you. Hell expects and demands that it should be — as mine was — one of unbroken success. If it is not, you know what awaits you.

I have no wish to reduce the wholesome and realistic element of terror, the unremitting anxiety, which must act as the lash and spur to your endeavours. How often you will envy the humans their faculty of sleep! Yet at the same time I would wish to put before you a moderately encouraging view of the strategical situation as a whole.

Your dreaded Principal has included in a speech full of points something like an apology for the banquet which he has set before us. Well, gentledevils, no one blames him. But it would be in vain to deny that the human souls on whose anguish we have been feasting tonight were of pretty poor quality. Not all the most skillful cookery of our tormentors could make them better than insipid.

Oh, to get one’s teeth again into a Farinata, a Henry VIII, or even a Hitler! There was real crackling there; something to crunch; a rage, an egotism, a cruelty only just less robust than our own. It put up a delicious resistance to being devoured. It warmed your inwards when you’d got it down.

Instead of this, what have we had tonight? There was a municipal authority with Graft sauce. But personally I could not detect in him the flavour of a really passionate and brutal avarice such as delighted one in the great tycoons of the last century. Was he not unmistakably a Little Man — a creature of the petty rake-off pocketed with a petty joke in private and denied with the stalest platitudes in his public utterances — a grubby little nonentity who had drifted into corruption, only just realizing that he was corrupt, and chiefly because everyone else did it? Then there was the lukewarm Casserole of Adulterers. Could you find in it any trace of a fully inflamed, defiant, rebellious, insatiable lust? I couldn’t. They all tasted to me like undersexed morons who had blundered or trickled into the wrong beds in automatic response to sexy advertisements, or to make themselves feel modern and emancipated, or to reassure themselves about their virility or their “normalcy,” or even because they had nothing else to do. Frankly, to me who have tasted Messalina and Cassanova, they were nauseating. The Trade Unionist stuffed with sedition was perhaps a shade better. He had done some real harm. He had, not quite unknowingly, worked for bloodshed, famine, and the extinction of liberty. Yes, in a way. But what a way! He thought of those ultimate objectives so little. Toeing the party line, self-importance, and above all mere routine, were what really dominated his life.

But now comes the point. Gastronomically, all this is deplorable. But I hope none of us puts gastronomy first. Is it not, in another and far more serious way, full of hope and promise?

Consider, first, the mere quantity. The quality may be wretched; but we never had souls (of a sort) in more abundance.

And then the triumph. We are tempted to say that such souls — or such residual puddles of what once was soul — are hardly worth damning. Yes, but the Enemy (for whatever inscrutable and perverse reason) thought them worth trying to save. Believe me, He did. You youngsters who have not yet been on active duty have no idea with what labour, with what delicate skill, each of these miserable creatures was finally captured.

The difficulty lay in their very smallness and flabbiness. Here were vermin so muddled in mind, so passively responsive to environment, that it was very hard to raise them to that level of clarity and deliberateness at which mortal sin becomes possible. To raise them just enough; but not that fatal millimetre of “too much.” For then, of course, all would possibly have been lost. They might have seen; they might have repented. On the other hand, if they had been raised too little, they would very possibly have qualified for Limbo, as creatures suitable neither for Heaven nor for Hell; things that, having failed to make the grade, are allowed to sink into a more or less contented subhumanity forever.

In each individual choice of what the Enemy would call the “wrong” turning, such creatures are at first hardly, if at all, in a state of full spiritual responsibility. They do not understand either the source or the real character of the prohibitions they are breaking. Their consciousness hardly exists apart from the social atmosphere that surrounds them. And of course we have contrived that their very language should be all smudge and blur; what would be a bribe in someone else’s profession is a tip or a present in theirs. The job of their Tempters was first, or course, to harden these choices of the Hellward roads into a habit by steady repetition. But then (and this was all-important) to turn the habit into a principle — a principle the creature is prepared to defend. After that, all will go well. Conformity to the social environment, at first merely instinctive or even mechanical — how should a jelly not conform? — now becomes an unacknowledged creed or ideal of Togetherness or Being Like Folks. Mere ignorance of the law they break now turns into a vague theory about it — remember, they know no history — a theory expressed by calling it conventional or Puritan or bourgeois “morality.” Thus gradually there comes to exist at the center of the creature a hard, tight, settled core of resolution to go on being what it is, and even to resist moods that might tend to alter it. It is a very small core; not at all reflective (they are too ignorant) nor defiant (their emotional and imaginative poverty excludes that); almost, in its own way, prim and demure; like a pebble, or a very young cancer. But it will serve our turn. Here at last is a real and deliberate, though not fully articulate, rejection of what the Enemy calls Grace.

These, then, are two welcome phenomena. First, the abundance of our captures: however tasteless our fare, we are in no danger of famine. And secondly, the triumph: the skill of our Tempters has never stood higher. But the third moral, which I have not yet drawn, is the most important of all.

The sort of souls on whose despair and ruin we have — well, I won’t say feasted, but at any rate subsisted — tonight are increasing in numbers and will continue to increase. Our advices from Lower Command assure us that this is so; our directives warn us to orient all our tactics in view of this situation. The “great” sinners, those in whom vivid and genial passions have been pushed beyond the bounds and in whom an immense concentration of will has been devoted to objects which the Enemy abhors, will not disappear. But they will grow rarer. Our catches will be ever more numerous; but they will consist increasingly of trash — trash which we should once have thrown to Cerberus and the hellhounds as unfit for diabolical consumption. And there are two things I want you to understand about this: First, that however depressing it might seem, it is really a change for the better. And secondly, I would draw your attention to the means by which it has been brought about.

It is a change for the better. The great (and toothsome) sinners are made out of the very same material as those horrible phenomena the great Saints. The virtual disappearance of such material may mean insipid meals for us. But is it not utter frustration and famine for the Enemy? He did not create the humans — He did not become one of them and die among them by torture — in order to produce candidates for Limbo, “failed” humans. He wanted to make them Saints; gods; things like Himself. Is the dullness of your present fare not a very small price to pay for the delicious knowledge that His whole great experiment is petering out? But not only that. As the great sinners grow fewer, and the majority lose all individuality, the great sinners become far more effective agents for us. Every dictator or even demagogue — almost every film star or [rock star] — can now draw tens of thousands of the human sheep with him. They give themselves (what there is of them) to him; in him, to us. There may come a time when we shall have no need to bother about individual temptation at all, except for the few. Catch the bellwether, and his whole flock comes after him.

But do you realize how we have succeeded in reducing so many of the human race to the level of ciphers? This has not come about by accident. It has been our answer — and a magnificent answer it is — to one of the most serious challenges we ever had to face.

Let me recall to your minds what the human situation was in the latter half of the nineteenth century — the period at which I ceased to be a practising Tempter and was rewarded with an administrative post. The great movement toward liberty and equality among men had by then borne solid fruits and grown mature. Slavery had been abolished. The American War of Independence had been won. The French Revolution had succeeded. In that movement there had originally been many elements which were in our favour. Much Atheism, much Anticlericalism, much envy and thirst for revenge, even some (rather absurd) attempts to revive Paganism, were mixed in it. It was not easy to determine what our own attitude should be. On the one hand it was a bitter blow to us — it still is — that any sort of men who had been hungry should be fed or any who had long worn chains should have them struck off. But on the other hand, there was in the movement so much rejection of faith, so much materialism, secularism, and hatred, that we felt we were bound to encourage it.

But by the latter part of the century the situation was much simpler, and also much more ominous. In the English sector (where I saw most of my front-line service) a horrible thing had happened. The Enemy, with His usual sleight of hand, had largely appropriated this progressive or liberalizing movement and perverted it to His own ends. Very little of its old anti-Christianity remained. The dangerous phenomenon called Christian Socialism was rampant. Factory owners of the good old type who grew rich on sweated labor, instead of being assassinated by their workpeople — we could have used that — were being frowned upon by their own class. The rich were increasingly giving up their powers, not in the face of revolution and compulsion, but in obedience to their own consciences. As for the poor who benefited by this, they were behaving in a most disappointing fashion. Instead of using their new liberties — as we reasonably hoped and expected — for massacre, rape, and looting, or even for perpetual intoxication, they were perversely engaged in becoming cleaner, more orderly, more thrifty, better educated, and even more virtuous. Believe me, gentledevils, the threat of something like a really healthy state of society seemed then perfectly serious.

Thanks to Our Father Below, the threat was averted. Our counterattack was on two levels. On the deepest level our leaders contrived to call into full life an element which had been implicit in the movement from its earliest days. Hidden in the heart of this striving for Liberty there was also a deep hatred of personal freedom. That invaluable man Rousseau first revealed it. In his perfect democracy, only the state religion is permitted, slavery is restored, and the individual is told that he has really willed (though he didn’t know it) whatever the Government tells him to do. From that starting point, via Hegel (another indispensable propagandist on our side), we easily contrived both the Nazi and the Communist state. Even in England we were pretty successful. I heard the other day that in that country a man could not, without a permit, cut down his own tree with his own axe, make it into planks with his own saw, and use the planks to build a toolshed in his own garden.

Such was our counterattack on one level. You, who are mere beginners, will not be entrusted with work of that kind. You will be attached as Tempters to private persons. Against them, or through them, our counterattack takes a different form.

Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose. The good work which our philological experts have already done in the corruption of human language makes it unnecessary to warn you that they should never be allowed to give this word a clear and definable meaning. They won’t. It will never occur to them that democracy is properly the name of a political system, even a system of voting, and that this has only the most remote and tenuous connection with what you are trying to sell them. Nor of course must they ever be allowed to raise Aristotle’s question: whether “democratic behaviour” means the behaviour that democracies like or the behaviour that will preserve a democracy. For if they did, it could hardly fail to occur to them that these need not be the same.

You are to use the word purely as an incantation; if you like, purely for its selling power. It is a name they venerate. And of course it is connected with the political ideal that men should be equally treated. You then make a stealthy transition in their minds from this political ideal to a factual belief that all men are equal. Especially the man you are working on. As a result you can use the word democracy to sanction in his thought the most degrading (and also the least enjoyable) of human feelings. You can get him to practise, not only without shame but with a positive glow of self-approval, conduct which, if undefended by the magic word, would be universally derided.

The feeling I mean is of course that which prompts a man to say I’m as good as you.

The first and most obvious advantage is that you thus induce him to enthrone at the centre of his life a good, solid, resounding lie. I don’t mean merely that his statement is false in fact, that he is no more equal to everyone he meets in kindness, honesty, and good sense than in height or waist measurement. I mean that he does not believe it himself. No man who says I’m as good as you believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.

And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners, recreations, choice of food: “Here is someone who speaks English rather more clearly and euphoniously than I — it must be a vile, upstage, la-di-da affectation. Here’s a fellow who says he doesn’t like hot dogs — thinks himself too good for them, no doubt. Here’s a man who hasn’t turned on the jukebox — he’s one of those goddamn highbrows and is doing it to show off. If they were honest-to-God all-right Joes they’d be like me. They’ve no business to be different. It’s undemocratic.”

Now, this useful phenomenon is in itself by no means new. Under the name of Envy it has been known to humans for thousands of years. But hitherto they always regarded it as the most odious, and also the most comical, of vices. Those who were aware of feeling it felt it with shame; those who were not gave it no quarter in others. The delightful novelty of the present situation is that you can sanction it — make it respectable and even laudable — by the incantatory use of the word democratic.

Under the influence of this incantation those who are in any or every way inferior can labour more wholeheartedly and successfully than ever before to pull down everyone else to their own level. But that is not all. Under the same influence, those who come, or could come, nearer to a full humanity, actually draw back from fear of being undemocratic. I am credibly informed that young humans now sometimes suppress an incipient taste for classical music or good literature because it might prevent their Being Like Folks; that people who would really wish to be — and are offered the Grace which would enable them to be — honest, chaste, or temperate refuse it. To accept might make them Different, might offend against the Way of Life, take them out of Togetherness, impair their Integration with the Group. They might (horror of horrors!) become individuals.

All is summed up in the prayer which a young female human is said to have uttered recently: “O God, make me a normal twentieth century girl!” Thanks to our labours, this will mean increasingly: “Make me a minx, a moron, and a parasite.”

Meanwhile, as a delightful by-product, the few (fewer every day) who will not be made Normal or Regular and Like Folks and Integrated increasingly become in reality the prigs and cranks which the rabble would in any case have believed them to be. For suspicion often creates what it expects. (“Since, whatever I do, the neighbors are going to think me a witch, or a Communist agent, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and become one in reality.”) As a result we now have an intelligentsia which, though very small, is very useful to the cause of Hell.

But that is a mere by-product. What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence – moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how “democracy” (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them “tyrants” then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of grain, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no preeminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser or better or more famous or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level: all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, “democracy.” But now “democracy” can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks.

I have said that to secure the damnation of these little souls, these creatures that have almost ceased to be individual, is a laborious and tricky work. But if proper pains and skill are expended, you can be fairly confident of the result. The great sinners seem easier to catch. But then they are incalculable. After you have played them for seventy years, the Enemy may snatch them from your claws in the seventy-first. They are capable, you see, of real repentance. They are conscious of real guilt. They are, if things take the wrong turn, as ready to defy the social pressures around them for the Enemy’s sake as they were to defy them for ours. It is in some ways more troublesome to track and swat an evasive wasp than to shoot, at close range, a wild elephant. But the elephant is more troublesome if you miss.

My own experience, as I have said, was mainly on the English sector, and I still get more news from it than from any other. It may be said that what I am now going to say will not apply so fully to the sectors in which some of you may be operating. But you can make the necessary adjustments when you get there. Some application it will almost certainly have. If it has too little, you must labor to make the country you are dealing with more like what England already is.

In that promising land the spirit of I’m as good as you has already begun something more than a generally social influence. It begins to work itself into their educational system. How far its operations there have gone at the present moment, I should not like to say with certainty. Nor does it matter. Once you have grasped the tendency, you can easily predict its future developments; especially as we ourselves will play our part in the developing. The basic principle of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be “undemocratic.” These differences between pupils – for they are obviously and nakedly individual differences – must be disguised. This can be done at various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing things that children used to do in their spare time. Let, them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have – I believe the English already use the phrase – “parity of esteem.” An even more drastic scheme is not possible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma — Beelzebub, what a useful word! – by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval’s attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT.

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I’m as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers – or should I say, nurses? – will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.

Of course, this would not follow unless all education became state education. But it will. That is part of the same movement. Penal taxes, designed for that purpose, are liquidating the Middle Class, the class who were prepared to save and spend and make sacrifices in order to have their children privately educated. The removal of this class, besides linking up with the abolition of education, is, fortunately, an inevitable effect of the spirit that says I’m as good as you. This was, after all, the social group which gave to the humans the overwhelming majority of their scientists, physicians, philosophers, theologians, poets, artists, composers, architects, jurists, and administrators. If ever there were a bunch of stalks that needed their tops knocked off, it was surely they. As an English politician remarked not long ago, “A democracy does not want great men.”

It would be idle to ask of such a creature whether by want it meant “need” or “like.” But you had better be clear. For here Aristotle’s question comes up again.

We, in Hell, would welcome the disappearance of democracy in the strict sense of that word, the political arrangement so called. Like all forms of government, it often works to our advantage, but on the whole less often than other forms. And what we must realize is that “democracy” in the diabolical sense (I’m as good as you, Being Like Folks, Togetherness) is the fittest instrument we could possibly have for extirpating political democracies from the face of the earth.

For “democracy” or the “democratic spirit” (diabolical sense) leads to a nation without great men, a nation mainly of subliterates, full of the cocksureness which flattery breeds on ignorance, and quick to snarl or whimper at the first sign of criticism. And that is what Hell wishes every democratic people to be. For when such a nation meets in conflict a nation where children have been made to work at school, where talent is placed in high posts, and where the ignorant mass are allowed no say at all in public affairs, only one result is possible.

The democracies were surprised lately when they found that Russia had got ahead of them in science. What a delicious specimen of human blindness! If the whole tendency of their society is opposed to every sort of excellence, why did they expect their scientists to excel?

It is our function to encourage the behaviour, the manners, the whole attitude of mind, which democracies naturally like and enjoy, because these are the very things which, if unchecked, will destroy democracy. You would almost wonder that even humans don’t see it themselves. Even if they don’t read Aristotle (that would be undemocratic) you would have thought the French Revolution would have taught them that the behaviour aristocrats naturally like is not the behaviour that preserves aristocracy. They might then have applied the same principle to all forms of government.

But I would not end on that note. I would not – Hell forbid! Encourage in your own minds that delusion which you must carefully foster in the minds of your human victims. I mean the delusion that the fate of nations is in itself more important than that of individual souls. The overthrow of free peoples and the multiplication of slave states are for us a means (besides, of course, being fun); but the real end is the destruction of individuals. For only individuals can be saved or damned, can become sons of the Enemy or food for us. The ultimate value, for us, of any revolution, war, or famine lies in the individual anguish, treachery, hatred, rage, and despair which it may produce. I’m as good as you is a useful means for the destruction of democratic societies. But it has a far deeper value as an end in itself, as a state of mind which, necessarily excluding humility, charity, contentment, and all the pleasures of gratitude or admiration, turns a human being away from almost every road which might finally lead him to Heaven.

But now for the pleasantest part of my duty. It falls to my lot to propose on behalf of the guests the health of Principal Slubgob and the Tempters’ Training College. Fill your glasses. What is this I see? What is this delicious bouquet I inhale? Can it be? Mr. Principal, I unsay all my hard words about the dinner. I see, and smell, that even under wartime conditions the College cellar still has a few dozen of sound old vintage Well, well, well. This is like old times. Hold it beneath your noses for a moment, gentledevils. Hold it up to the light. Look at those fiery streaks that writhe and tangle in its dark heart, as if they were contending. And so they are. You know how this wine is blended? Different types of Pharisee have been harvested, trodden, and fermented together to produce its subtle flavour. Types that were most antagonistic to one another on Earth. Some were all rules and relics and rosaries; others were all drab clothes, long faces, and petty traditional abstinences from wine or cards or the theatre. Both had in common their self-righteousness and an almost infinite distance between their actual outlook and anything the Enemy really is or commands. The wickedness of other religions was the really live doctrine in the religion of each; slander was its gospel and denigration its litany. How they hated each other up where the sun shone! How much more they hate each other now that they are forever conjoined but not reconciled. Their astonishment, their resentment, at the combination, the festering of their eternally impenitent spite, passing into our spiritual digestion, will work like fire. Dark fire. All said and done, my friends, it will be an ill day for us if what most humans mean by “Religion” ever vanishes from the Earth. It can still send us the truly delicious sins. Nowhere do we tempt so successfully as on the very steps of the altar.

Your Imminence, your Disgraces, my Thorns, Shadies, and Gentledevils: I give you the toast of — Principal Slubgob and the College!

Philippians 3:7-14

But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. 8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; 10 that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

12 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. 13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

I have come to think of Easter and the resurrection, not only as history or even as a future promise, but also as something that dramatically impacts the present. We’re not simply “going to heaven,” but rather, Jesus has brought heaven to us and has begun His resurrecting work in us now. We live between the resurrection of Jesus and our future, bodily resurrection. The ultimate destination is the new heaven and new earth—Paradise restored. And so, we have a lot to celebrate, and the celebration should begin now.

As we have often said, the church celebrates the resurrection every Sunday. In fact, this is why we meet on the first day of the week to commemorate and celebrate. The resurrection is not incidental to other things we do on Sunday e.g., prayer, communion, teaching, baptism, fellowship, confession. Rather, all that is done in worship springs from the reality of our Lord’s resurrection. Easter Sunday is a good day to remind us of what we’re doing on all the other Sunday’s of the year. As such, we need to know more particularly what it is we’re celebrating. The implications of the resurrection of Jesus Christ should quicken our hearts and fill us with joy.

How did an obscure band of the disciples of Jesus overthrow and transform the world? What drove them? What empowered and enabled them? And not just them, but Christians through the centuries have transformed entire cultures. Francis Schaeffer observed that a hundred years after Christ was nailed to the cross and He rose from the dead, the gospel spread throughout the whole earth. Individual men and women were changed. Marriages and families were changed. In the first few centuries, an obscure, minority, illegal sect changed the world! The Christian faith swept in a new worldview to replace a pagan worldview. All over the Roman Empire people began to abandon their cyclical, self-contained worldview to embrace the gospel. The intellectual reversal was enormous. This is what Easter does. He chose the weak to confound the mighty and to glorify Himself. God loves to use little men and women who have great faith. He makes the dead live!

Sometimes, when we hear about what “God used to do,” we might be tempted to think, “Oh, that was a long time ago.” We imagine that ancient history is somehow different from our own times. We can believe any story, no matter how big, how mighty, how amazing, as long as it happened long, long ago—even a resurrection. Things are different now.  Indeed, things are different, but what does that have to do with God’s ability to act?  Has God changed?  Is He not the same, yesterday, today and forever? Not only can God do today and in the future what He has done in the past, I would suggest that what He has done in the past is a clear indication of what He intends to do in the present and the future. The resurrection of Jairus’ daughter, of Lazarus, and also the many saints at the time of the crucifixion were precursors of the great resurrection of Jesus, and then, there’s the promise of our own resurrections. As Jesus said to Martha, after raising Lazarus:

I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. 26 And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this? —John 11:25-26

The doctrine of Christ’s resurrection is not merely the central doctrine of Christianity. Perhaps its most significant feature is that it constitutes the transforming power of Christianity itself. Christ’s resurrection inaugurates His universal Lordship, and Christians must press His claims in all areas of life and thought. The old evangelical maxim, “If Jesus Christ is not Lord of all, He is not Lord at all” is emphatically true. By recovering the resurrection as the central doctrine of our Faith, we can reverse our spiritually dull and defeated lives and the church can recover its victorious, sin-defeating, world-conquering vision. The vision that once turned the world upside down and gradually, but decisively, brought the Roman Empire to its knees; this vision can vanquish our present secular culture today. N.T. Wright wrote:

…left to ourselves we lapse into a kind of collusion with entropy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there’s nothing much we can do about them. And we are wrong. Our task in the present…is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second….

N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope, p. 30. This book helped my perspective on the resurrection and this blog post is a reflection of some of what I learned from it.

The day after the crucifixion and the day before the resurrection, Jesus was dead. He was cut off from the land of the living. Death doesn’t mean that we cease to exist, but it does mean that we are, in some way, separated, either from God or man, or both. Communion is broken, spiritually, physically or both. “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2). The physical death of Jesus left Him and His disciple separated.

Most of us know what it means for death to separate us from a loved one. We grieve their loss (actually, our loss), and we long to see, hear, touch and smell their presence; we want to commune with them. So, on the day after the beaten, limp and lifeless body of Jesus was removed from the cross and placed in the tomb, all hopes were dashed and the force of fear set in. Not only was the presumptive king dead, the disciples’ own lives were also in peril. This Sabbath had no rest at all.

The Roman political juggernaut used crucifixion as means of utter humiliation; placing on public display any who would challenge their power. It would be hard to imagine a defeat any greater or more thorough. On this Saturday we contemplate a cold, dead Jesus in the grave, just like all of us will be some day; the abrupt end to communion. Joy is utterly engulfed by grief. The ultimate, great enemy has gained the advantage. This same enemy relentlessly pursues us all.

We can spend a lifetime pretending and distracting ourselves, but we too will have a “day after,” when we step out of this life and into the grave. All that we relied upon in this world will suddenly be gone. Communion will end. We should think about this on Holy Saturday. Is this the last chapter of a meaningless book? The disciples of Jesus had to wonder. Is our death the last chapter of our meaningless book, or is there more? Some sober thought is called for. To contemplate Jesus’ body in that tomb, is to look our own death in the face. This Saturday is a dark day. If the story ends today, then all we have left is to trudge on until we’re each added to the body count. But perhaps this isn’t the end of the story. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see what come next…

Psalm 30

1     I will extol You, O Lord, for You have lifted me up,

And have not let my foes rejoice over me.

2     O Lord my God, I cried out to You,

And You healed me.

3     O Lord, You brought my soul up from the grave;

You have kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.

4     Sing praise to the Lord, you saints of His,

And give thanks at the remembrance of His holy name.

5     For His anger is but for a moment,

His favor is for life;

Weeping may endure for a night,

But joy comes in the morning.

6     Now in my prosperity I said,

“I shall never be moved.”

7     Lord, by Your favor You have made my mountain stand strong;

You hid Your face, and I was troubled.

8     I cried out to You, O Lord;

And to the Lord I made supplication:

9     “What profit is there in my blood,

When I go down to the pit?

Will the dust praise You?

Will it declare Your truth?

10   Hear, O Lord, and have mercy on me;

Lord, be my helper!”

11   You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;

You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness,

12   To the end that my glory may sing praise to You and not be silent.

O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever.

For about 30 years or so I’ve had an interest in, and have worked (off and on), on my family history. Genealogy is an endless study because it takes a long time to get back to Adam and Eve. Nevertheless, the journey offers fascinating discoveries. Sometimes we stumble over the famous or heroic ancestor but mostly we just find ordinary people. However, in the pursuit of history, whether personal or national, we also find the skeletons; the dark corners, the sad and ugly stories of sin and suffering; sometimes unimaginable sorrow and suffering. It turns out that sin is just as bad as God said it was and our trails are strewn with heartache and destruction. We discover that our ancestors were a lot like us and that the “good o’l days” were not always so good.

Sometimes people say we should just leave well-enough alone, but I’ve found that a story without conflict is boring. Darkness and light; evil and good; death and resurrection stand in stark contrast to one another. Victory is always the sweetest when snatched from the jaws of defeat. I am, perhaps, disappointed but never surprised to learn that I come from a long line of sinners who have often made a mess of things. The “wages of sin is death,” and so far, most of my ancestors have died. Even the “good ones” were not sinless. Perhaps they were good compared to some other sinners, but every last one of them fell short of the glory of God, and I’m certainly keeping up the family tradition.

One of the things I enjoy the most about researching my family history is to see where the grace of God and the gospel broke into the stories and changed everything for the better. The interruption of the cross was sometimes subtle, sometimes abrupt, and sometimes surprising, but if you follow it all the way out, it’s always dramatic in its impact. And before we lament the difficulties, we should remember that it was often those hard parts of the story that led to the redemptive twist in the plot. Its good news was made all the more glorious by the darkness of the backdrop. Right when you thought, “this is a tragedy,” God intervened and turned the tragedy into a comedy. When all seemed hopeless; when we were “without strength,” at just the right time, Christ came to the rescue. The course of the river was turned and generations were saved.

This story has been played out thousands and thousands of times over the last 2,000 years, and even longer. In the book of Genesis, we remember the long and sordid tale of Joseph and how his brothers betrayed him and he was falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife, and how he wound up in prison, and was even forgotten in prison, but God was attending to Joseph along the way, and when we come to the end of the story, Joseph delivers the lesson to his brothers: Joseph said to them:

Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God? 20 But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive. 21 Now therefore, do not be afraid; I will provide for you and your little ones.” And he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.

—Genesis 50:19-21

God’s plan for the world, and God’s plan for you and me, is being executed in the right way and at the right time.

It would be hard to think of a better verse in the Bible than Romans 3:6: “For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” This is the very picture of love, which is another angle or exposition of John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” This is not about our love for Him, but about His love for us, which is the foundation of our assurance. If it depends on us, then there can be no assurance. Our salvation is grounded 100% on the unchanging love of God. While it was the Son who did the work, nevertheless, it was the Father who sent the Son to do it.

So, as we think about the sins of our ancestors (all the way back to Adam), and when we think about our own sins, we should be reminded that “the wrath of God is against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” But Paul doesn’t stop there. He goes on to say that the same God sent forth His Son as a propitiation for our sins. God has a holy hatred of sin but also an everlasting and eternal love to the sinner. There’s no inconsistency between these two things. In fact, we can’t really begin to comprehend the love of God until we begin to see what sin is in the sight of this holy God. As the reality of our sinfulness sets in, we’re overwhelmed and left without strength; hopeless and helpless. And then we read: “For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”

Here we are on “Good Friday.” We call it “good” because by His death, Jesus became the final and complete sacrifice for our sins.  We can’t erase our guilt, nor can we overcome our sins by our good deeds, but Christ did what we could never do for ourselves, by dying for us on that first Good Friday. So let’s think a bit more about what this supreme act of love means. God purposed, before the foundations of the world, that at Calvary, His only begotten Son would voluntarily sacrifice Himself; and “being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross (Phil. 2:8). He did it because He loved you, and it was completely gratuitous, flowing out of His mercy, grace, and compassion. He didn’t do this for good and loving people. Notice that the Apostle Paul says three things about us: we were without strength, we were ungodly and we were sinners.

In C.S. Lewis’ book, Miracles, he has a chapter in the book entitled “The Grand Miracle,” and in that chapter he draws some rich analogies for us by which we can view what it meant for Christ to come for us:

In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down, down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity, down further still, down to the very roots and sea bed of the nature He had created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift. He must also disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders. Or one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness then glancing in midair, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay. Then up again, back to color and light, his lungs almost bursting till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping precious thing that he went down to recover. He and it are both colored now that they have come up into the light. Down below where it lay colorless in the dark, he lost his color, too.

This overwhelming demonstration and proof of the love of God provides the most profound assurance of salvation that we could ever have. If God did all that He did for us while we were without strength, ungodly sinners, how much more will He do for us now that we have been reconciled to Him, adopted by Him, and have become His friends? N.T. Wright observes:

If God has done the difficult thing, how much more is he likely to complete the job by doing the easy bit. If someone has struggled up a sheer rock face, against all the odds, to get to the top of the mountain, they are not likely to give up when, at the top of the vertical wall, they are faced with an easy stroll on a grassy path to get to the summit itself. If someone has driven to the other end of the country, through rain and snow and freezing fog, to see a friend in need, they are not going to abandon their quest when they arrive at the house, the skies clear, the sun comes out, and all they have to do is walk up the garden path and ring the doorbell.

The solution to our family tree problem is to become part of another tree; to leave the first Adam’s tree and be grafted or adopted into the second Adam’s tree. It turns out that the water of baptism is thicker than blood. God’s rescuing, adopting love came by way of the cross of Christ.

For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. —Romans 5:6-8

John 13

So, when he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. 32 If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and glorify Him immediately. 33 Little children, I shall be with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come,’ so now I say to you. 34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.

The Thursday before Easter is known as “Maundy Thursday,” which is a term that is derived from the Latin word for “command.” This is a reference to Jesus’ commandment to the disciples to “Love one another as I have loved you.” Maundy Thursday also commemorates the Last Supper, wherein Jesus instituted the sacrament of communion. This day is also associated with foot-washing, because Jesus washed the feet of His disciples and at this last meal Jesus foretells His death, saying He will not eat until the kingdom of God is fulfilled.

Jesus is about to be physically separated from His disciples and He wants them to remember that they are still in covenant with Him and with one another. The communion meal signified what was true regardless of their physical proximity. The disciples were to continually commune with Christ and with one another, even if physically separated. The command to eat, to remember, and to love, along with the instruction to serve (foot washing), were all part of what it meant to be united to Christ. This common union was to be regularly commemorated with bread and wine, and it was to be lived out on a daily basis through love and service to one another.

In the year of our Lord, 2020, the church has been presented with challenging circumstances which have, in many cases, separated us physically. There are other circumstances in life that can cause separation, such as sickness, persecution, war, death, etc. While we desire to be present with one another, sometime we can’t be. We desire to be present with the Lord, but until He calls us we can’t be. Nevertheless, Jesus said “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” We remain united to Him—in communion; and we remain united to one another as the Body of Christ. We’re temporarily unable to enjoy a common meal together, but nothing can stop us from loving one another and serving one another. Moreover, we’re united as the Body of Christ to represent Him to the world; to show them our love for Christ by our love for one another, and by our love for our neighbors.

Right now we’re fasting from our communion meal, as a husband and wife may be forced to fast from physical communion due to sickness or travel. However, the substantial communion abides and continues until we meet again.

I am currently rereading Friedrich Hayek’s classic, The Road to Serfdom, which opens with these words:

Contemporary events differ from history in that we do not know the results they will produce. Looking back, we can assess the significance of past occurrences and trace the consequences they have brought in their train. But while history runs its course, it is not history to us. It leads us into an unknown land, and but rarely can we get a glimpse of what lies ahead. It would be different if it were given to us to live a second time through the same events with all the knowledge of what we have seen before. How different would things appear to us; how important and often alarming would changes seem that we now scarcely notice! It is probably fortunate that man can never have this experience and knows of no laws which history must obey.1

In our current swirl of events the fog of war blurs our vision, and in a health crisis our personal safety, or the safety of loved ones and friends, has most of our attention. While we can’t know with certainty the particular outcomes of these contemporary events, there are some things we can know and must not forget. Political forces never sit idly by; they’re always scheming; looking for any and every opportunity to exploit the situation. Every crisis can be parlayed into a grab for power and offers an opportunity to bludgeon an opponent and to advance a cause. It would be hard to think of an issue that could not, in some way—directly or indirectly—be connected to the COVID-19 pandemic. Foreign policy, domestic policy, welfare, taxation, race, gender, economics, education, business, etc., will all be affected but nothing is more threatened than liberty. As David Hume stated, “It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.”2

So then, be on the lookout at every turn. The finger-pointing has started in earnest and will only intensify. The back-room deals of politicians of every stripe have already begun to milk this crisis and the treasury for all she’s worth. Fear always opens the gate for those promising relief. They only want to help you, but beware, Trojan horses are not limited to ancient history. This virus may turn out to be a larger Trojan horse than the original. The church should be especially watchful as the forces who seek to diminish religious liberty have been at work long before this current crisis, and you can be assured that this opportunity to advance their cause will not be overlooked.

With that said, I find my comfort, not in the promises or power-grabs of politicians, but in knowing that “He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall hold them in derision” (Psalm 2:4). This was said in reference to the kings and rulers of the earth (i.e., the politicians). Hayek said, man “knows of no laws which history must obey.” I must disagree at this one point. There is a law that history must obey. History’s dust bin is full for a reason.

Psalm 46

God the Refuge of His People and Conqueror of the Nations

1     God is our refuge and strength,

A very present help in trouble.

2     Therefore we will not fear,

Even though the earth be removed,

And though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

3     Though its waters roar and be troubled,

Though the mountains shake with its swelling.

4     There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God,

The holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High.

5     God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved;

God shall help her, just at the break of dawn.

6     The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved;

He uttered His voice, the earth melted.

7     The Lord of hosts is with us;

The God of Jacob is our refuge.

8     Come, behold the works of the Lord,

Who has made desolations in the earth.

9     He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;

He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two;

He burns the chariot in the fire.

10   Be still, and know that I am God;

I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth!

11   The Lord of hosts is with us;

The God of Jacob is our refuge.

Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1944), p. 1
Ibid., p. ii

Holy Week is a truncated march toward the cross; a time intended to focus the mind and heart on the significance of the most monumental event in human history. Again, Christ is either “everything,” or He is “nothing.” Everyone must choose between the two—it’s a binary choice. Nevertheless, Jesus is presented to us in curious ways that force us to pause and consider. It’s both deep and simple. A hasty look at Him will inevitably cause us to miss the point. There is, of course, always mystery with an infinite God. Moreover, there is also a great deal of paradox with which we must contend. G. K. Chesterton described a paradox as “truth standing on its head to gain attention.” So, God the Father starts the paradoxical challenge of Christ by sending His Son, the second person of the Godhead, into the world. So who is He? Is Christ God, or man? Chesterton writes,

For orthodox theology has specially insisted that Christ was not a being apart from God and man, like an elf, nor yet a being half human and half not, like a centaur, but both things at once and both things thoroughly, very man and very God.1

The truth is that Christ was the God-Man, fully God and fully man. A great mystery, but who could worship a God who wasn’t full of mystery? He will, necessarily, have to reveal Himself, which HE has done in the God-man, Jesus Christ. Dr. J. Gresham Machen elaborates:

How can we discover whether there is a God at all? I have something rather simple to say about that question at the very start. It is something that seems to me to be rather obvious, and yet it is something that is quite generally ignored. It is simply this—that if we are really to know anything about God it will probably be because God has chosen to tell it to us. Many persons seem to go on a very different assumption. They seem to think that if they are to know anything about God they must discover God for themselves. That assumption seems to me to be extremely unlikely. Just supposing for the sake of argument that there is a being of such a kind as that He may with any propriety be called “God,” it does seem antecedently very improbable that weak and limited creatures of a day, such as we are, should discover Him by our own efforts without any will on His part to make Himself known to us. At least, I think we can say that a god who could be discovered in that way would hardly be worth discovering. A mere passive subject of human investigation is certainly not a living God who can satisfy the longing of our souls… A divine being that could be discovered by my efforts, apart from His gracious will to reveal Himself to me and to others, would be either a mere name for a certain aspect of man’s own nature, a God that we could find within us, or else at best a mere passive thing that would be subject to investigation like the substances that are analyzed in a laboratory. I think we ought to stick to that principle rather firmly. I think we ought to be rather sure that we cannot know God unless God has been pleased to reveal Himself to us.2

When we’re confronted with this wondrous mystery, the only appropriate response is bow and not to arch our backs.

Darrow Miller writes of another example of the great paradox of Christ, which is the cross. “God is both righteousness and love. God’s righteousness means that man’s sinfulness must be punished. God’s love means that God will take that punishment on Himself. It is the cross where God’s love and justice meet…. Chesterton captures this when he writes that life demands the maintenance of a tension between God’s righteousness and His love. Each is a bright color that needs to be manifest in all its glory. And the ultimate glory is the cross.”3

[The church] has kept [seeming paradoxes] side by side like two strong colours, red and white, like the red and white upon the shield of St. George. It has always had a healthy hatred of pink. It hates that combination of two colours which is the feeble expedient of the philosophers. It hates that evolution of black into white which is tantamount to a dirty grey … All that I am urging here can be expressed by saying that Christianity sought in most of these cases to keep two colours co-existent but pure. It is not a mixture like russet or purple; it is rather like a shot silk, for a shot silk is always at right angles, and is in the pattern of the cross.4

The beauty of the shot silk is in the two colors being vivid and pure in themselves and woven together in right angles, producing a beautiful and iridescent appearance.

Here’s one more example of the paradox of Christ, which Chesterton draws to our attention:

The sin and the sinner – Christianity came in here as before. It came in startlingly with a sword, and clove one thing from another. It divided the crime from the criminal. The criminal we must forgive unto seventy times seven. The crime we must not forgive at all … We must be much more angry with theft than before, and yet much kinder to thieves than before. There was room for wrath and love to run wild. And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.5

The primary “good thing” is the gospel, which is the good news! Mystery and paradox point to Christ and His saving work. He is everything!

HYMN: Come, Behold the Wondrous Mystery6

Come, behold the wondrous myst’ry, in the dawning of the King;

He the theme of heaven’s praises, robed in frail humanity.

In our longing, in our darkness, now the light of life has come;

Look to Christ, who condescended, took on flesh to ransom us.

Come, behold the wondrous myst’ry, He the perfect Son of Man;

In His living, in His suff’ring never trace nor stain of sin.

See the true and better Adam, come to save the hell-bound man;

Christ, the great and sure fulfillment of the law, in Him we stand.

Come, behold the wondrous myst’ry, Christ the Lord upon the tree,

In the stead of ruined sinners, hangs the Lamb in victory.

See the price of our redemption, see the Father’s plan unfold;

Bringing many sons to glory, grace unmeasured, love untold.

Come, behold the wondrous myst’ry, slain by death the God of life;

But no grave could e’er re strain Him. Praise the Lord, He is alive!

What a foretaste of deliv’rance, how unwavering our hope;

Christ in power resurrected, as we will be, when He comes.

Chesterton, G. K. K. Chesterton Collection 40 Works: Innocence of Father Brown, Wisdom of Father Brown, The Ball and the Cross, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Crimes of England, The Man Who Was Thursday, and MORE! (Kindle Locations 47225-47227). Doma Publishing House. Kindle Edition.
Machen, Gresham, The Christian Faith in the Modern World, 1936.
Miller, Darrow, “Chesterton, Paradox and Truth,” (http://darrowmillerandfriends.com/2019/03/14/chesterton-paradox-truth/) This blog post is drawn from this article.
Chesterton, Ibid: Kindle Locations 47312-47318.
Chesterton, Ibid: Kindle Locations 47280-47285.
Come, Behold the Wondrous Mystery, Words and Music: Matt Papa, Matt Boswell and Michael Bleecker. 2013 McKinney Music. Inc. (Admin. by Music Services. Inc.) Love Your Enemies Publishing. The Village Church. All rights reserved.

 

As we remember the week leading up to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, we can only imagine the darkness, dread and uncertainty the disciples of Jesus must have felt. They were going to be turned upside-down before they turned the world upside-down. Describing Jesus as He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Bible says: “And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44).

Gaining the right perspective during a crisis or a trial is essential. How we look a thing determines our reaction to. Are we anxious or at peace? Are we discouraged or encouraged? Are we depressed or joyful? Jesus looked beyond the current circumstance and even beyond what lay immediately ahead. We’re told that “for the joy that was set before Him [He] endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2). Our uncertainties (left to themselves) always produce anxiety, but when we see a sovereign God ruling over what is uncertain to us but certain to Him, our perspective changes. So, the Apostle Paul instructs us:

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. —Philippians 4:6-7

This is how James can call for us to have joy when we face various trials (James 1:2). Of course, if all we have is ourselves, and a very limited perspective, then we’re like little children who can become very distressed over something like the arm coming off of a doll, or the accidental release of a helium balloon. As adults, we reach down to comfort them because we have a different perspective and can instruct them and help them to grow in their understanding. As they come to trust us, and see that we seek their good, our comforting words are powerful to help them through their immediate crisis even if they don’t fully understand it all.

This Savior, who came into the world to save sinners, sees us and our situation from a much bigger and better perspective. As a result, part of His salvation is to comfort us in our weakness and to give us help, along with a new perspective on life.

Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. —Hebrews 4:14-16

Jesus walked through the agonizing valley of the shadow of death and experienced the promise of Psalm 23:4, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.” Now we too can walk that dark valley, but not alone.

For Jesus Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” 6 So we may boldly say: “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?” (Heb. 13:5-6). Capturing this greater perspective, the hymn, Comfort, Comfort Ye My People was originally written as a German versification of the text Isaiah 40: 1-5. The text of this hymn was meant to show the promise of better days to come with the coming of the Messiah.1

Comfort, comfort ye My people,

Speak ye peace, thus saith our God;

Comfort those who sit in darkness,

Mourning ‘neath their sorrow’s load;

Speak ye to Jerusalem

Of the peace that waits for them;

Tell her that her sins I cover,

And her warfare now is over.

For the herald’s voice is crying

In the desert far and near,

Bidding all men to repentance,

Since the kingdom now is here.

O that warning cry obey!

Now prepare for God a way!

Let the valleys rise to meet Him,

And the hills bow down to greet Him.

Blotting out each dark misdeed;

All that well deserved His anger

He will no more see nor heed.

She has suffered many a day,

Now her griefs have passed away,

God will change her pining sadness

Into ever springing gladness.

Make ye straight what long was crooked,

Make the rougher places plain:

Let your hearts be true and humble,

As befits His holy reign,

For the glory of the Lord

O’er the earth is shed abroad,

And all flesh shall see the token

That His Word is never broken.

1. Words: Johann Olearius (Oelschlaeger), 1671. Translated by Catherine Winkworth, 1862. Music: ‘Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele’ from Trente Quatre Pseaumes de David, Geneva, 1551. http://etymologyofhymns.blogspot.com/2012/12/comfort-comfort-ye-my-people.html