The Enemy Within

Have ya' read the latest "Layman" (August, 2010) and its "Letters to the editor"?

The anger runs deep.

And I'm sympathetic ... there have been times in my life, more than I like to admit, when anger, self-righteous anger (which, of course, all anger is, right?), ruled the day, and the night as well, violating the advice of Scripture, to not allow the sun to go down on one's anger.

The problem with long-standing anger is that it's never accurate in its assessment of the situation. Anger, like a magnifying glass, focuses the heat of a legitimate concern into a white-hot beam that destroys.

The letters in this issue reveal a loss of control. Anger has simply taken over mind and heart.

The enemy, the PCUSA, is all wrong. Which, of course, in even the worst of all times, wouldn't be true - after all, even a broken watch is right twice a day.

I feel for the letter-writers. They've painted themselves into a corner, and there's no way out for them right now. So the corner becomes home, and though the corner is always an uncomfortable place in which to live, it's defended with growing intensity, until all the corner-dwellers have convinced themselves they're living in theological luxury.

There would be a way out, if they could rise above their anger and temper their opinion with the simple reality that the "enemy" is more within them than anywhere else.

And a good dose of humility. But corner-dwellers cannot afford humility, because humility requires some sense of appreciation for the very people being vilified, and a sense of personal incompleteness - that whatever the opinion, the judgment, the theological point of view, no one has a full and complete grasp of God's truth and God's Kingdom.

We are what we are. Fully human and deeply sinful. And all the creeds in the world, and all our protestations to the contrary, our frailty and our fault remain.

Self-righteousness, amplified by limited conversation with other corner-dwellers, exits on all sides of any given question.

The challenge for any of us is this: how to hold an opinion (and that's what it all is, after all) firmly and faithfully, without drifting into ideology (always the danger, and let's just call it idolatry).

My heart goes out to the letter-writers. They're profoundly unhappy, and if they're pastors, my heart goes out, as well, to their congregations. That kind of anger walks into the pulpit most Sundays, for sure, and spills out into the pews, tainting the gospel with the aroma of rot.

So be it.

Church history is the story of our fightings with one another. I guess such will be the case until the final trumpet is sounded.

But until then, does not the gospel call us to something other than merely being angry with one another?

Is there not the Holy Spirit upon whom we can call, and whose influence might temper our restless hearts?

After all, said Paul, our enemies are not flesh and blood, but spiritual powers and principalities.

I think there comes a time when God walks away from a persistently angry person or organization. As in Paul's letter to the Romans, God abandons us to "shameful lusts," and there is no greater lust than the lust to be right, and no greater shame than the willful condemnation of one another.

The Promise, So I'll Stay

Been thinking a bit … always slightly dangerous …

Sure, we have our ills, who doesn’t?

Been reading 2 Samuel … who doesn’t have their ills?

But it’s the promise of God …

To be faithful … faithful to the likes of us … Joabs and Davids and

Absaloms and Bathshebas and Uriahs and lusters and lovers and

Killers and plotters and avengers and women and men who still

Somehow, are after God’s own heart, because God is steadfast in faith.

That’s what counts … that’s the story … that’s the gospel.

God.

And, sure, we have our ills.

But it’s the promise that sustains us.

We can’t build it.

We can’t kill it.

We don’t get there.

It comes to us!

The promise.

Glad to be a Presbyterian … we have some of that promise-sturdiness in our gut …

Something of that hope, because God is greater …

And maybe it’s God who’s shrinking us …

Like reducing a good sauce, to intensify it’s flavor ..

And teaching us to weep.

Some would quit and walk away to their own peculiar brand of ills.

But I’ll stay, and I’ll weep, and I’ll hope and work and stay the course.

Because of the promise.

It comes to us.

Again!

Just Read the Layman

 I just put down the latest issue of the Layman (January, 2009) ... a tour de force of dissatisfaction.

I have some sympathy for them ... there was a time in my life when dissatisfaction sat on both of my shoulders, but with the passage of time, I've either grown addled or I've grown! Obviously, some would say addled. But I like my peaceable stance; I’d like to think that I’ve grown.

If the current Layman reflects where a good many of our brothers and sisters are living right now, it's pretty far from where I live.

Wish I had some answers - I don't.

With the turn of every page, I saw a determined Layman creating two camps with an absolute chasm between them - an unbridgeable gulf growing wider by the day. Again and again, churches leaving were lifted up and celebrated, along with all the numbers. On every page: the supposed failures of the PCUSA – our emptiness and our unfaithfulness, our desertion of the gospel and our abandonment of the historic Reformed faith, and so on.

Part of me is burdened with sadness – because the two camps are never so clearly delineated – there are folks with sympathies and sentiments rooted in both and on all sides of the questions.

Part of me is resigned to the darkening mood of the conversation, or what’s left of it.

Part of me is simply frustrated – how can the conversation be enlarged?

Part of me is hopeful, too. If Jesus’ ministry were judged on the basis of numbers and popularity, we’d all have to agree that his work was largely a failure. Only in the aftermath of the resurrection and subsequent missional expansion does the work of Jesus take on a larger significance.

So, who’s to say?

Church history is replete with times of God shaking things out. Our own history – often fatally flawed with our incessant desire to write it all down and then test one another’s orthodoxy or orthopraxy – has seen countless moments of division and reconciliation, off-shoots and new denominations. So who knows exactly where the power of resurrection will manifest itself? But we believe and trust: “God gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4:17).

As some of our brothers and sisters pack their bags and move to a new town, I can only wish them well. I’d love to see them stay a little while longer, but their discontent only grows stronger – a discontent resolved only by living in a new neighborhood with less irksome neighbors.

I suspect they’ll find, however, as all folks do who move, that a good deal of the discontent is a spiritual inclination always in need of someone or something against which to express itself anew. Dissatisfaction, like some primordial hunger, is never assuaged; it will only find new reasons to live.

I am happier than ever in being a Presbyterian – our faithfulness to the gospel is expressed in a willingness to constantly explore the boundary regions of love. Jesus is a boundary crosser, and so are we. There’s always some risk in such ventures of faith, but risk is part of it.

When all is said and done, our immediate family may be a little smaller, but so was Gideon’s army, and those 300 were more than enough to win the day!