Things to Appreciate

1. Style: Bell’s book is written in his own unique voice, breaking up sentences as if they were poetry and seeking an aesthetic in writing which fuses theological discussion with art and conversation. While I personally don’t get a lot from this style of writing, I recognize that many people find it helpful and engaging. At the very least, Bell’s approach is a good reminder that there are many artists and other creative people who can be served by this style of book, and I wish more theologians and other Christians would speak at least occasionally to these people.

2. Identifying Problems: In Love Wins Bell does a great job of identifying the struggles and questions which many people have. He doesn’t pull any punches; when he asks “have billions of people been created only to spend eternity in conscious punishment and torment, suffering infinitely for the finite sins they committed in the few years they spent on earth,” Bell is identifying the raw, gut-level questions people truly have (p. 102). His critique of an escapist view of heaven nails the flawed picture many evangelicals have inherited (pp. 21-24). One of the greatest values of the book is that Bell unflinchingly articulates the difficult issues and questions of doubt.

3. Moments of Brilliance: There are points in Love Wins where Bell says true things beautifully. His discussion of the necessity of divine judgment would be spot-on if it wasn’t for the conclusions he goes on to draw (pp. 37-8). So are his initial few points about the sacrificial system, although even here a few flaws start to creep in (pp. 123-5). When Bell’s saying true thing he’s spot on; the problem comes with everything in between.

Areas of Concern

1. Logic/Careful Thinking: For someone who loves questions so much, it was surprising to me that Bell didn’t seem to have even a basic grasp of logical fallacies related to such questions. The book is rife with false choices (Bell dismisses the view that faith alone is needed for salvation by asking “[I]s it true that the kind of person you are doesn’t ultimately matter?” p. 6), equivocations, and excluded middles. The repeated question of chapter 4, “does God get what God wants,” is wielded like an argumentative hammer without ever stopping to define terms and consider other possibilities; Bell thinks the answer is either “yes” (and thus you buy into his arguments for universal or near-universal salvation) or “no” (and thus you hold the tradition view where God is only “sort of great” (p. 98) and “impotent” (p. 101)). This sort of shoddy argumentation is troubling, since it reflects a lack of respect and regard for the many people who disagree under the guise of benign question-asking. Another example of this shaky logic are the assertions which occur at many points in Bell’s argument. For instance, he insists that “telling a story in which billions of people spend forever…trapped in a black hole of endless torment and misery with no way out isn’t a very good story” and so dismisses the idea (p. 110). However, Bell fails to argue why it’s not a good story, seeming to think simply stating that many of us don’t like it is sufficient. I could respond “Well I think it is a good story” and we’d be at an impasse; more importantly, I could argue it’s the true story and that we need to adjust our views of goodness accordingly.

2. Exegetical Problems: I know of no other way to say it; Bell’s exegesis is atrocious. He makes aion (the Greek word for eternal) a description of “a period of intense feeling,” which is nowhere in its range of meanings (NB: aion does have many meanings, not all of which are durative, but that’s another discussion). He confuses the purpose of texts, for instance making the story of the prodigal son into an analogy about the afterlife (pp. 169-70). He even commits one of my cardinal sins of exegesis by confusing a word with an idea, noting “the phrase ‘personal relationship’ appears nowhere in the bible” (p. 10). True enough, but the idea of personal relationship is contained within the language of “knowing” biblically, and “knowing God” certainly is a biblical idea. I could multiply examples here, but suffice to say I had to stop reading several times in horror at the way texts were (mis)handled.

3. Theological Issues: While he often dances around naked assertions of his views, I think it’s pretty clear that Bell comes down in worrying places. The most obvious issue is his view of second-chance salvation after judgment, which he pretty clearly articulates. It should be noted in this regard that Bell’s attempts to claim many figures from church history for this view is painful to read. The quotes he offers by Luther, Jerome, Basil and Augustine are taken from works in which these figures reject the view Bell espouses, and to quote them the way he does is the worst sort of dishonesty (pp. 106-7). In addition, there are serious questions I have about emphases Bell stresses. For instance, he seems to view heaven and hell as primarily descriptive of this life and only secondarily of the life to come. I agree that we can have a more hellish or heavenly existence in this life, but to make that the primary focus of Scripture is to distort the bible’s own focus on God ultimately executing judgment and making creation new. Lastly, it must be noted that Bell is extremely Arminian and this book requires one to hold this view. Virtually all of Bell’s arguments fall apart if this theological position isn’t presupposed, and Love Wins nowhere argues for it, presumably dismissing those of us who disagree as not worthy of consideration.

Final Thoughts

I realize this is a pretty negative take on the book, so I want to take a moment to offer a few more thoughts. Unlike many, the thing that troubles me about Love Wins is not its conclusions. Oh, I disagree with them, but they were what I expected and I’m not one to enjoy getting apoplectic at how wrong others are. What made the book so hard for me to read was its total lack of respect and honesty.

Like Bell, I value asking questions and encouraging dialog. However, I think many modern Christian authors have confused punctuation and lack of clarity with these values. Asking leading questions to force your opinion is not a mark of charity. When you say you’re genuinely interested in discussing whether my view is wrong or I worship a monster, I have every right to feel you’ve already decided not to listen. Over an over Bell represents the discussion in this way. It’s apparent that he’s read lots of hip books about second temple Judaism and eschatology; what’s less clear is that he’s read any careful defense of the traditional views he’s rejecting. There are lots of ways of answering the questions he poses; I just wish he wouldn’t pretend like his way was the only one worth carefully articulating.

To put a point on it, I have no question that God loves me. The question I had after reading Love Wins is whether Rob Bell does.

1. Harold Camping was not a Christian. At least, not an orthodox one as far as I can tell from his teachings. His bizarre ideas included denying the trinity, telling people to leave the church, and saying that Jesus died twice. I realize that it’s tempting for those skeptical of religion to take any wingnut who purports to hold some creed as a prime example of it, but there are historical beliefs which characterize Christianity, and someone who denies many of them is probably not a great exemplar of the faith’s views.

2. The Bible is against such predictions. Jesus had some things to say about predicting the end of the world (Matthew 24:36). In my view, the person who predicts the end of the world is as representative of Christian end-times views as the open adulterer is of its sexual ethic. You can’t violate the bible and claim to be exegeting it at the same time, no matter what your “math” tells you. Incidentally, as a side note, it’s worth pointing out that many of Camping’s claims were based on the research of one Harold Camping. That “date” for Noah’s flood? Yeah, he came up with that one a couple decades ago. I know no serious bible scholar who would agree with it.

3. What rapture? This one might make some Christians angry, but I’m with the majority of the historical church in simply not buying that the bible says anything about the “rapture,” at least in the modern sense. It was invented by a guy named Darby in the 19th century as a way for his eschatology to get Christians out of the way so Jews could rule the earth. I obviously don’t have the space to go into this debate here, but let me just register that, Left Behind novels aside, many Christians today and all of them in the church’s first 1800 years saw the end times as meaning that Jesus comes back, raises the dead, judges the world, and makes all things new. That’s the whole story: no drivers disappearing form cars, no wacky politics in Palestine, no earthquakes or 666 tattoos. I think Revelation is mostly about Rome’s oppression and the time between Christ’s first and second comings, Matthew 24 is about the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., and the people “taken away” in a twinkling of an eye are taken to judgment, not harps and heavenly clouds. Now, I know some believers today disagree with this, and I don’t mean to be demeaning; I’m happy to enter into a conversation about these issues and am glad we both trust Jesus, who loves us despite our theological errors. However, for those of you tempted to reject Christianity because you find rapture hysteria ludicrous, know that lots of Christians do too.

4. God is a serious subject. As much as end-times-predicting billboards invite mockery, they have serious consequences. There are simple people whose lives and faiths have been destroyed today because a wicked man with a radio program told them lies. This saddens and angers me, and I’m on firm biblical ground saying God feels the same way. Unless he repents, Harold Camping will have the grief of thousands on his head on judgment day, whenever it is, and that’s not a position I envy. At the same time, I say this because I am deeply persuaded of the truth of Christianity. I know it can be tempting to avoid thinking about the claims of Christ because evil men misrepresent Him. However, faith is no laughing matter. Let’s agree that the May 21 rapture was ridiculous, but please don’t use that as an excuse to demonize and dismiss the God in whom very sane and careful people (whom I hope I am one of) believe. Rather, if you’re willing, I’d love to have a conversation about my resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, who will one day return and make all things new.

Rebekah is home now, for which Elizabeth and I are deeply thankful. She was marked with the covenant sign of baptism the Sunday before last and we are loving the duties of caring for her, even the middle-of-the-night awakenings and early mornings. There are so many little things I am cherishing about being able to have her home; last Sunday I sang hymns in church with tears in my eyes because I could hold her in my arms as I sang.

Rebekah does continue to have ongoing medical needs. She has issues with her esophagus and being able to swallow. We are praying they might resolve with growth, but if not she will have to undergo surgery sometime this summer to correct it. For now she is getting most of her food through her g-tube. However, she continues to grow, and is now over 11 lbs. There are also questions about whether she will experience long-term developmental issues or disabilities from some of her medical issues associated with prematurity, but this isn’t something we’ll know for some time and we are submitting to whatever the Lord will bring in this area.

We are so grateful for all of your prayers and encouraging words. Being in the hospital for almost five months has made me deeply aware of just how little I can take for granted. The fact that I get to see my daughter smile at me, the fact that she is growing and generally healthy, are great blessings on which I can never again presume. Elizabeth and I hope you will rejoice with us and continue to keep Rebekah in your prayers.

“How precious is your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.”  -Psalm 36:7 (ESV)

I often run into shocked expressions and the occasional brandishing of a holy symbol to ward off the demons when people find out that I would describe myself theologically as a Calvinist (or at least Calvin-ish). This is often the result of either misunderstanding or a past encounter with a Krazy Kalvinist ™. I’m hoping to work through the first issue a bit. As to the second, well, the sad truth is I’d be a rich man if I really owned the intellectual property to Christian nutjobs. I pray I’m not one of them, despite the voices in my head and occasional psychotic episode. I should also state up front that while I do willingly wear labels like Reformed, Calvinistic and Presbyterian, they’re not the banners I want to die under. I love Jesus and the gospel. I think the above labels summarize true assessments of some things His Word teaches us. I do my best not to confuse the two categories. I’d appreciate it if you returned the favor.

One of the strange accidents of history is that we’ve been left with an acrostic by which Calvinism is typically explained. This is unfortunate not just because the letters spell TULIP (which makes me feel like a pansy – although that’s actually a type of violet), but also because acrostics tend to have an inverse pithiness-to-clarity ratio. Still, that history is the one I find myself in, so I’m going to try working out the way I understand each of the five points, both in their original intention and their modern application. I don’t have time or space to give an in-depth biblical defense of the five points at the moment, although I’m not unwilling to. I simply think the way a lot of people I know understand them is a bit skewed, and would like to offer my corrective thoughts. As always, if you don’t think I’m a very good theologian, its because I’m not one. I’m a guy with a blog and 2/3 of a seminary degree. I’m not putting on a pointy white hat and speaking infallible truth from on high; I’m just offering my thoughts.

But without further ado: on to the first point.

Total Depravity

T in the typical five-point outline of Calvinism stands for “Total Depravity.” A cheery place to begin. The normal way people hear this is that Calvinism teaches everyone on the earth is an absolute, good-for-nothing wretch who’s never done a nice thing in his or her life and is either a pedophile, a serial killer, or would be if they weren’t just big chickens. Unfortunately, the rhetoric we in the Reformed crowd have brought to bear on this point sometimes accentuates this impression. I’ve heard enough worms-and-maggots talk that I’ve been tempted to cut myself in half and see if I’m able to reproduce that way.

More seriously, the question revolves around what’s “total” about our sinfulness. Anyone reading the bible recognizes that it teaches there is something seriously wrong with human beings – we call that depravity. We hurt people, we rebel against God, we are selfish and idolatrous and don’t give money to the people ringing Salvation Army bells at Christmas. The tension centers around what sense we understand this depravity’s totality (wow, a rhyme). The way it sounds to most people, it seems to imply that people are as rotten as they possibly could be.

The problem, of course, is that doesn’t fit with our experience of the world. Oh sure, in the isolated Fundamentalist communities they can rant against the godless pagans. Problem is, one of those godless pagans helped me get my car out of the snow yesterday, and many of them are people I would consider friends. They volunteer at homeless shelters, invite you over for dinner, and make a remarkably good show of being people who don’t seem any worse than the rest of us. It’s impossible to believe that they never do anything we would recognize as good or admirable (I think St. Paul would agree, as passages like Romans 2:14-15 seem to indicate). So if I can say that, how can I still be a Calvinist?

The simple answer is that I think we’ve misunderstood the “total” part if we take it that way. A good general rule of theology is that theological words almost never mean what we might first take them to be saying (I’m sure it’s not intentional; theologians just tend to have the rare linguistic disease of academiatis). It’s important to see total depravity as arguing against specific errors and understand it in that light. So, in what senses is our depravity as sinful human beings total?

1. Our depravity is total in that it infects every thing we do. That isn’t to say that Joe the Atheist doesn’t do wonderful and admirable things; I’ve never met him, but I hear he’s swell. Rather, it’s to say that since Joe isn’t doing these things out of love for God, they are still tainted with sin. They aren’t actions he can present to God and demand his dues.

It might seem arbitrary for us to say that good acts are still sinful if they’re done for a motive other than love, but it’s exactly the way things work in our lives. If your child gives you a hug out of sheer love for you, you feel great. If you know it’s only so they can have an extra cookie or get out of a punishment, you feel used. It’s no different with the Father. He made everything and all of us, and when we obey His law for reasons other than childlike love and affection, we’re just using Him to get our cosmic cookie.

The first reason we need to believe total depravity is that it’s the answer to the I’m-A-Decent-Bloke approach to salvation. Without our hearts set right with God, we can’t use our actions to bribe Him into giving us eternal life or any other blessing. It’s not that we haven’t done good things, its just that we’ve ultimately done those good things to manipulate and browbeat the One worthy of our humble worship – and that, however you slice it, is depraved.

2. Our depravity is also total in that it affects every part of our being. This is where the historical arguments that created the five points really laid the emphasis. It’s easy for us to blame sin on certain aspects of our humanity. Maybe we blame our physical bodies, or our sex drives, or our appendixes. We see some parts of us as fallen, and other parts as still neutral in the cosmic struggle.

Historically, it was the mind and the will which were the two hot-button issues. Some ancient writers tended to view the intellect as unaffected by sin, able to reason things out and come to a saving knowledge of the truth all on its own (this is hardly surprising, since these people tended to be the ones with the brightest minds, and hence the most to lose if the pristine perfection of the intellect was sullied). Many others, including Jacob Arminius (the guy who started the whole five-point controversy), wanted to make the will neutral, at least in matters of salvation and with some help from a conveniently-invented extra dose of divine grace.

I have to confess up front that the question of human will is a complicated one, and we’re going to talk about it in a future post. However, without diving into that shark tank, I’d still argue that this aspect of total depravity is hugely important today for two reasons. First, it demolishes out idols. The parts of ourselves we get most uptight about acknowledging as fallen are almost always the parts we use to replace God and His law. We want to make our reason, our emotion, our sexuality, our economic relationships, our political systems, or some other part our our beings or societies able to transcend the brokenness that besets creation. It is no accident that we then invest our true significance in these things. But Calvinism reminds all of us that everything we do is affected by Adam’s sin and our own, and we don’t get any exception clauses.

Second, total depravity emphasizes the greatness of God’s grace. When we partition off certain parts as sinful, we minimize the work of redemption which Christ has accomplished. We make the cross about removing a few warts instead of total reconstructive surgery. However, when we see that sin affects every part of our being, we understand that God’s gracious work in our lives is changing every part of us. His blessings are flowing as far as the curse is found.

One final note needs to be made on this point. I firmly believe all of these things are true. However, in their rush to affirm them, many of my fellow Calvinists say things like “we’re all totally depraved.” Nowhere does the bible teach this idea. Instead it tells us that without the grace of Christ we would all be in such a condition, but that by the transforming work of the gospel and the Holy Spirit believers are made into new creations. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no way saying Christians are better than the aforementioned godless heathens. However, there’s no reason we can’t be. While we’ll discuss some of this more in following posts, we need to be careful not to speak as if sin still has dominion over us. I was totally depraved, I am still a sinner saved by grace, but the power of that grace is at work in me destroying sin’s dominion. I should not indulge in self-loathing theological flagellation; rather, I should embrace the good news that God has set me free.

So much for the first point; hopefully in the next week I’ll put up a post addressing Unconditional Election – and no, that’s not what happens when the Supreme Court decides who gets to be President.

I never realized how tired I would get, how watching someone you love struggle to grow could chafe at you like a bad pair of shoes, leaving you raw and blistered without your even noticing. I never realized the anger and frustration I would feel, the way even a good report could make you want to yell because it wasn’t the report you wanted – the news that she was coming home.  I never realized how wrong the world could feel, when the question “how are you?” could never honestly be answered with “fine,” when a successful day is one you survive with your faith and hope intact.

I never realized any of this, and yet there’s something familiar about it all. It’s common in these situations for people to say “I can’t imagine what you’re going through.” This is in some sense true, of course, and is meant as a gesture of compassion. Yet the fact is that, for all these last few months have felt like repeated kicks in the teeth, they’ve only served as an acute reminder of the dull ache I’ve always had in my jaw. The weariness and frustration and wrongness have all become painfully acute these last two months, but they’ve always been there.

Tragedy isn’t a break from the usual business of life. We’re always up to our necks in a broken world; it’s just that sometimes the brokenness sloshes over our heads, rushing into our noses and making us choke. For fear of confronting the frailty of our peace we distract ourselves with the glitz and hustle of this fractured world. But the waters of life are not to be ignored, and the waves that smack us in the face are reminders of our fallen estate.

The reality of this world as Scripture presents it to us is not a pretty picture. The bible consistently forces us to remove the blinkers and open our eyes. It shows us a world where tyrants triumph, innocents die, good men do terrible things and bad men often escape justice. Creation might be good, men might bear God’s image, but this goodness and this likeness are fractured into pieces by the fall, and we often get cut on the sharp edges.

This picture has little appeal to a people in love with Kincaid paintings and stylized movies, where everything is pastoral beauty and everyone is airbrushed. Yet it is precisely this picture which we need to see. In the gospel, God goes to war with this broken world, not to destroy it but to put it back together again, even though that’s the last thing it desires. It is the great strategy of the prince of this world to keep us from joining this fight, not by defeating us, but by making us fall in love too much with the way things are and keeping us from dreaming of how they will be. The Christian response should start not with a happy lie, but with a broken heart.

I’ll be damned if I ever accept life at the hospital as the way things ought to be. As much as some would like to talk about a “new normal,” as if a few adjustments in perspective could make everything better, I’ll never believe it. Children should not be struggling to breath. They should not have wires tangled around their little bodies. Nothing is okay about it; nothing is quite right here. Yet this isn’t an expression of despair. Instead, it’s to hope for healing, for redemption.

Redemption is what the Bible holds out to us in the midst of a world ravaged by the effects of sin. Redemption from our guilt, from our bondage, from our sin-sick hearts and broken bodies. We aren’t called to be Buddhists; we aren’t meant to deny the dissatisfaction in our souls. This world is a hospital, a place for the sick and dying. Nothing is quite right here. It is only when we realize this truth that we can begin to grasp the hope of a better world, a world of life and health and peace. It is only when we realize we are deeply wounded that we can endure the cure.

Scripture Intro:

Please turn to the book of Genesis, chapter 22. Today we’re going to be considering a biblical story which is something of an oddity. On the one hand, it is incredibly familiar. Sunday school children learn it with little felt board characters. Broader culture has also made much of it, from Bob Dylan’s references in “Highway 61 Revisited” and Madonna’s “Isaac” to Soren Kierkegaard’s famous philosophical tome Fear and Trembling. Yet for all its familiarity, this story is one which often puzzles us. It is confusing, and in some ways downright disturbing. If you haven’t looked at the little headings in your bible or guessed it already, we are going to be discussing Abraham’s sacrifice of his son, Isaac.

Before we begin, I have a personal confession to make. Some of you know that recently my wife went into pre-term labor and gave birth to our first child, Rebekah Joy Tonjes. She was 2 lbs. 6 oz. at birth and 12 weeks premature. As we consider this story together, she is still in intensive care at the hospital. I had selected this text and begun work preparing the sermon before she was born, so it has been caught up in the existential realities of the last few weeks. I remember the first night asking God if he had been trying to tell me something by choosing this text, if he was going to take my child away. There were moments I hated the story. But as Elizabeth and I wrestled with trusting God in this difficulty, and I wrestled with this text, I also found great hope and comfort. I hope we can see some of this today.

Text: Genesis 22:1-19

Sermon Intro:

We don’t know what Abraham was doing when God spoke and his world fell apart. Maybe he was working in the pastures, looking up from tending his flocks to survey the land God had led him to all those years ago. Abraham had left his family for that land with nothing but a promise and hope in God’s provision. Maybe he was sitting with Sara his wife of many years, who God had blessed in her old age and given a child. They had hardly dared to believe it, but again God had given them a promise and had proved faithful to it. Maybe Abraham was playing with his son Isaac, that child of the promise and gift of God. Perhaps he was teaching him to work in the fields, or laughing at his boyish antics. We don’t know what Abraham was doing. But we know that God spoke, and his world fell apart.

Abraham was familiar with the voice of God. That is important to keep in mind, because otherwise the story makes no sense. God didn’t talk to Abraham the way some Christians today think of it. It wasn’t through some elusive feeling or rumbling in his gut. God spoke to him audibly, clearly. This boggles our minds, but we must assume that if the Creator of the universe wants to make himself known, he can certainly do so. What’s more, Abraham was familiar with God’s voice. It had spoken to him many times in the past, calling him to an unknown land and making a series of covenants – promises – with him.

So when Abraham hears God say his name, “Abraham!”, he replies simply “I’m here, Lord.” Perhaps he falls to his knees, or bows his head, or looks up to heaven. “I’m here, Lord,” he says, with no idea what God is about to ask.

God’s words must have hit like a lightning bolt. “Take your son,” He says. “Your only son” – he clarifies it, lest there be room for doubt. “Isaac” – driving it home even more, making it more personal. “Take your son, your only son Isaac, who you love” – making it not just specific, but involving Abraham’s emotions and heart in what he is about to ask him – “and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering.” With those few words God is done speaking, and with those few words Abraham’s world must have fallen apart.

The text doesn’t tell us how Abraham responded; it simply jumps to his obedience. Yet we are not misguided if we stop and realize just how devastating God’s call must have been. We need to understand what it was that God was asking of Abraham. Any child is a precious gift; to be asked to kill one’s own son would be terrible in any situation. This is especially true of Isaac – Abraham and Sara’s only child, born miraculously in their old age. But Isaac wasn’t just a child, he was also the embodiment of God’s promises to Abraham – to give him descendants, to make of him a nation through which the nations of the earth could be blessed. Isaac was so tied up in God’s promises, and in Abraham’s dreams for the future that God had given him, that it must have been as if God seemed to be yanking his blessings themselves out from under Abraham.

While this call to sacrifice Isaac may seem disturbing to many, to some of us it has the ring of familiarity. Oh, the details are different; we haven’t had audible voices calling us to human sacrifice. Yet there are moments in most of our lives when God seems to exercise His providence and cause our worlds to fall apart. Maybe its an unexpected disease or health situation; maybe it’s a loss of employment or a financial challenge; maybe it is a tragedy that catches us unawares. Whatever it is, there are moments when God seems to be stripping away all that we love, and even moments when God seems to turn away and remove his blessing presence. As we move forward with this story and see how Abraham responds, I want us to ask two questions that I think have particular pertinence when we face those times when our worlds seem to fall apart: what does it mean to have faith in the face of suffering, and was Abraham’s faith misplaced? That is, what should be the character of our faith, and what is the character of our God?

I. What was th character of Abraham’s faith?

After God speaks, the narrative immediately shifts to the next day. Abraham gets up early and goes to work to obey what God has commanded. He saddles the donkeys to carry the supplies for the journey. He summons a couple of servants and Isaac and tells them to prepare to depart. He cuts the wood, the wood he knows he is being called to burn Isaac upon, and he sets out on an agonizing three-day journey to get to the mountain God had called him to.

While the story doesn’t comment on how Abraham is feeling, I think we’re supposed to glean something from the painstaking level of detail used in describing Abraham’s preparations. These facts aren’t necessary to the overall story. Rather, they serve to make us feel the tension Abraham must have been wrestling with. They’re like the daily routine before going to the hospital or on another day of fruitless job-hunting. You brush your teeth, you put on your clothes, you eat breakfast, and every one of those familiar rituals seem laden with tragedy.

After three days of trudging beside the donkeys, perhaps watching his son skip and explore new surroundings, Abraham looks up and sees it, the brooding height in the distance, the mountain where the unthinkable must happen. He instructs the servants to stay behind, perhaps horrified at the thought of what they might see, and then he and Isaac proceed alone, slowly making their way up the rocky slopes to the heights. On Isaac’s back he carried the wood he would soon lie upon. Abraham walks beside him, carrying the knife and a torch to provide fire. One can only imagine how his hands must have shaken as he looked over at his son.

It is at this point that Isaac notices something is amiss. Familiar with sacrifices, probably having been with his father when Abraham had offered animals to God, he realizes there is a key element missing. He turns to his father and says “Dad, we’ve got the wood and the fire, but where’s the lamb we’re going to be offering?” The questions must have been gut-wrenching. Abraham looks at his son, perhaps with fear in his eyes, and says “My son, God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering.”

It is at this point where the question of the character of Abraham’s faith meets us. What does Abraham mean? He knows what God has said. The sacrifice He has called him to make is his own son. What could drive Abraham to say this?

There are some who simply want to see Abraham as deceiving Isaac, telling him an easy lie to avoid the hard truth. Yet this is hardly convincing in light of the story. In the first place, this is a narrative meant to highlight Abraham’s faith. It would make no sense in light of the rest of the story to have Abraham here forsake his faith and prefer a lie. What’s more, it is a most implausible lie. Surely if he had wanted to deceive Isaac, Abraham could have come up with something more convincing than “Umm… God will take care of it.”

Perhaps we might see Abraham instead as fantasizing. He knows what God has asked of him, but unable to confront it, he takes solace in make believe hopes. This certainly fits with the world’s way of explaining faith. It is a wish-dream clung to in the face of the hard realities of life. Yet this also doesn’t fit with the story. On the one hand, Abraham had experienced God’s providence in his life. He wasn’t trusting some distant phantasm, but the God who had led him through the wilderness, the God who had miraculously opened the womb of old, barren Sara, the God who had met him and given Abraham His promises. On the other hand, if faith were simply a wish-dream, wouldn’t this be the moment at which Abraham abandoned it? Faith was not a shelter in this moment; it was Abraham’s faith itself that was demanding the sacrifice from him. How much easier, how much more comforting, to simply decide that the voice of God was some figment of his imagination and return home with his son.

We must understand Abraham here as expressing his faith in God as trust in His character. Abraham cannot know what the coming hours will hold. However, he does know the character of the God in whom he trusts. This is the God who walked with Abraham for so many years. This is the God who passed between the halves of the sacrificial bull, taking the curses of the covenant upon Himself. Abraham knows God’s faithfulness and grace; he has experienced them on a hundred occasions. The only way to understand Abraham’s comments is to take them as the highest expression of faith. Abraham is saying, in the face of his collapsed world, “I don’t know what God is doing. But I know what sort of God I serve, and so I’m trusting in Him to work it out.”

This is what the author of Hebrews means in commending Abraham for his faith, when he notes that “[Abraham] considered that God was able even to raise Isaac from the dead.” Abraham’s faith in the face of his world falling apart was not a mask of lies he put on for others. Nor was it a wish-dream he chose to believe instead of the truth. Abraham’s faith in the midst of the pain of the last few days, in the face of the coming pain on top of the mountain, is fueled not by his desires but by his God. Abraham trusted in the goodness of God, the knowledge that God was in control and that His purposes were good.

So what does this mean for us? What does it mean for the way we should have faith when our world seems to be falling apart? The answer, simply put, is that we must have great faith like Abraham’s, faith not great because of our character or our effort, but great because of our God.

This does not mean that we should have false assurance. It’s easy to read this story and tell ourselves that Abraham’s faith made sense because we know that God does not ultimately require Isaac of him. But this is not an assurance we can have, nor one that Abraham had as he faced Mount Moriah. God is the Creator and Lord of every atom of this cosmos. He has ultimate rights to everything in it, and he had the right to take away Abraham’s son. He has the right to take our jobs, our loved ones, and our very lives. Faith is not hope that God will ask nothing of us. It is not some “get out of jail free” card that promises life will be the way we want it to be.

But it does mean that we have true assurance in the midst of our hardship. We have hope even if God asks of us what we tremble to give. The faith of Abraham, the faith we are called to have, is a faith that hopes and trusts in the character of God. It remembers His faithfulness in the past, it believes the truth He tells us in the present, and it trusts that He will continue to be faithful in the future.

I have no desire to make this sound easier than it is. We should not pretend as if the submission of faith is easy. We are not called to be Buddhists, denying our earthly desires. I think about my own struggles over these days. God does not ask me to be dispassionate at my daughter’s hospital bedside. As a father, it would be sick for me to pretend I am unbiased in her case. I have wrestled with God, argued with Him, begged and bargained with Him. I would give anything to ensure her safety. Yet I know that God could take her from me, and there is nothing I can do to change that.

We are not called to have faith because we have a guarantee about how our situation would end. Faith does not mean that we know a better job is around the corner, or that the cancer will go into remission. It might, and as creatures in relationship with God we ought to ask him for these ends. But our promise is not that we know what will happen. Instead, our promise is that no matter what happens, God is in control, and He is working more good than we could hope or imagine.

So the faith we are called to have when our worlds fall apart is a faith that trusts God, as He has revealed Himself, as its object. It is a faith empowered by the truth we know about His character. This is Abraham’s example of faith, but it leaves us with a second question, a question even more pressing than the first: is this faith put in the right place? What is the character of God in whom we are called to trust?

II. What is the character of Abraham’s God?

After the long journey, step after painful step, Abraham arrives at the top of the mountain. It is the moment of truth. What will God do? Again the details highlight every painful step. Abraham builds an altar, stone by heavy stone. He lays out the wood atop it. We might imagine he is praying the whole time, begging God to intervene, but God remains silent. Then he turns to his son and binds him. We don’t know Isaac’s response, whether he struggled or submitted. Yet either one would have been heart-rending, whether Abraham had to wrestle down his little boy or bind him as he stood obediently ready, trusting his father. Abraham picks up his son and lays him across the carefully-arranged wood. And God remains silent.

Abraham stands over his son. He reaches out his hand, wraps his fingers around the dagger’s hilt. He turns back to the altar, to his child of promise laying there. He lifts the knife, his hands trembling, tears in his eyes. He stands ready to slice it down, to slit Isaac’s neck, to do the unthinkable.

And God speaks. “ABRAHAM!”

His heart must have soared, yet there must also have been a moment of doubt. The last time God had spoken, it had torn out his heart.

“ABRAHAM!”

“Here I am, Lord,” Abraham says again.

“Do not lay a hand on Isaac,” God says. We can only imagine Abraham’s relief, the knife falling from his limp fingers. “Now I know that you fear me, because you have not withheld your only son from me.” God knows Abraham has demonstrated his faith in God. Now God responds by demonstrating His own faithfulness. Abraham looks up from his son, who must have swollen to fill his whole loving gaze, and there before him is a ram, a sheep caught in the bushes nearby. A sacrifice which the Lord has provided.

We now begin to see the answer to our second question. As much as this story is meant to teach us about Abraham’s faith, we must recognize it, like all of Scripture, has two protagonists. In this story God is revealing something of His character for His people.

It’s important to remember that Genesis was written to Israel shortly after its captivity in Egypt. As such, all of its stories are intended to help Israel to understand their history, and even more, to understand what sort of God Yahweh was. The call at the beginning of this story for Abraham to sacrifice his son to God would not have been as shocking to Israel as it is to us; they had been slaves for 400 years in a land where child sacrifice was common. What would have been shocking is the climactic moment when God reveals His true character. He does not demand sacrifices of them in order to keep him happy; rather, he provides the sacrifice so that his people can be with Him.

It is critical for us to hear this in the midst of our struggle and suffering. When our worlds fall apart, we can adopt an unhealthy view that God is either punishing us because we haven’t been good enough or demanding we pay some cosmic price by stripping us of what we love. It is impossible to have faith in the midst of suffering if this is the sort of God we serve. We’ll either keep trying to pay him off so that He’ll leave us alone, or we’ll give up and get angry at Him.

Instead, we must look at the Scriptures and see the personality of our God. It’s a strange concept, I know, but God isn’t just the author of Scripture, He is also a character in it. This is because, through the history we have of His interaction with His people, we can come to know Him. We can have faith in him, not faith that is wishing on a star, but faith like I have in my spouse or a close friend, faith because I know their character. I’ve seen it demonstrated a thousand times, and so I am confident it will remain true in the days to come.

How do we have such a faith? There are many answers to this question, but one of them is to lift our eyes from our present distress and recognize God’s past faithfulness. Abraham could trust God because God had demonstrated Himself faithful. He had led Abraham through the wilderness. He had protected Abraham from the predations of tyrannical kings. He had miraculously given Abraham and Sara a child.

We all, if we only have eyes to see, have experienced God’s providence at work in our own lives. He has protected us, He has blessed us. He has pursued us. Seeking to remember this faithfulness is critical when our world falls apart.

Yet in the mess of life, it can be hard to remember. So God gives us assurances beyond our own lives. We have the history of His people, recorded in stories like this one, to reassure us of God’s character. Most of all, we have Jesus Christ. It is impossible to miss the parallels between our story and His. God provides a ram in place of Abraham’s son. Yet God Himself willingly offers the sacrifice from which He spares Abraham. He offers His own son as a sacrifice, a spotless lamb nailed to a cross, to work our salvation. In Jesus Christ, we have the final assurance of God’s character. As Paul asks in Romans, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

Friends, in the midst of your grief, remember with the memory of faith the cross of Christ. God is no stranger to suffering. He is no distant deity who asks what He is unwilling to give. He has borne the loss of His son for our sakes. He is a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. This is the God who is sovereign over the universe, and over the afflictions of our loves – not some uncaring hand of fate, but the Father who gave Jesus for us.

This does not remove the sting of our trials. It doesn’t make that midnight phonecall, that dreaded diagnosis, that earth-shattering event cease to hurt. But in the midst of the hurt, it gives us hope. We do not know why we are suffering. We cannot peer into God’s decrees. But we do know what the answer cannot be.

It cannot be that God doesn’t care. It cannot be that he is unable to help us. It cannot be that He intends to work for anything but our good. God has proven himself faithful, to the point where it cost Him His life on the cross. In view of this demonstration of God’s character, we can face the uncertainty of tomorrow. We may not know what the future holds. But we do know the One who holds the future, and He is good.

“The Lord will provide.” This is what Abraham renames the mountain on which He offered Isaac and God instead supplied the ram. The Lord will provide. We don’t know what form His providence will take when our world falls apart. Perhaps it will be to intervene and deliver us. Perhaps it will be to meet us in our suffering and support us through it to the blessings on the other side. Yet whatever the answer is, it is the God of Abraham who holds the future, and He is a God in whom we can trust.

Conclusion:

As we draw things to a close, I hope you’ll grant me leave to speak very personally for a moment. Right now, as we have been considering God’s word, my little girl is still in the hospital. She is stable and growing, but she’s also can’t breathe on her own and has bleeding in her brain. These last weeks have been the hardest of my life. I have felt at times like some parts of this story are my own, wondered if I was unknowingly staggering towards a Mount Moriah on which I would have to offer up my child.

I cannot pretend that I am a great exemplar of faith like Abraham. I have said things, felt things and prayed things in these last weeks that I’m glad none of you will ever hear. I am not as steadfast as Abraham, but any solace, any hope I have found is because Abraham and I follow the same God.

One of the hardest things for me to deal with has been the uncertainty. Will my daughter live? If so, will there be serious issues for the rest of her life, like cerebral palsy or brain damage? Will I wake up today and get an encouraging report, or further bad news that pushes me deeper into despair?

These questions meet us in life’s hard times, but in a way, they are always there. God is not some riddle that we can unravel, peering into His secret things. We cannot know His plans. But we know Him. God is not some riddle, but He is our loving Father – mine, and yours, and my daughter’s. He is our loving Father. Though our world may fall apart, we can trust Him to provide.

It snowed yesterday, and I found myself dreaming about a year from now when I might take my little girl, all bundled up, to relish the fat flakes which drifted from the sky. Yet as I dreamed, I felt something in me recoil. It was like the guards on the bulwarks I’ve erected around my heart were calling out, warning me that I was on uncertain ground, that the enemy might strike at any moment and snatch her away. They called for me to retreat back to the safety of their walls of cynicism and fatalism. I could barely dare to hope, because at any moment I knew my hope could be taken from me.

This struggle to hope has characterized my days since Rebekah’s birth. There are beautiful moments. The first time I touched her hair, stroking it,  I wept in gratitude over her isolette. Yet those moments are hard to keep; they are quickly overwhelmed by the terror that we might receive a midnight call from the neonatal intensive care unit and I might be plunged again beneath the torrent of grief.

It’s as if scabs have been peeled back from my heart, scabs I never knew were there. Over the years, without knowing it, I’ve slowly let the scar tissue cover my heart. I understand why they formed; scabs are a defensive measure. They keep you safe when you’re bleeding, keep your from being hurt worse than you already have been. For me, the safety came from the irony and pessimism with which I so quickly regarded the world around me. They kept me safe from loss. But I never before realized the price.

I’m beginning to realize that I – and I think many of us – have felt the thrill of hope, only to feel it snatched away. As we bite our lips and suffer the sting of this loss, we decide that it hurts too much for us to bear, and so we steel ourselves. If such is the agony of hope deferred, we decide it would be better not to hope at all. We build bastions around our hearts, perhaps the jaded bastions I have erected, or perhaps fortifications of control, or respectability, or false optimism. We peer between the crenelations at the hopes and joys of life and refuse to let them through the gates for fear they might be smuggling in some tragedy beneath the hay in the beds of their wagons.

Yet for the first time, there is something beyond those walls which I cannot ignore. I am realizing that in order to keep my heart from hurt, I’ve also protected it from freely dancing, from truly laughing, from merrily surveying the merchant’s wares as he lays them out in the courtyard. I am realizing that there are things in this life that are worth loving, worth holding on to, even knowing that they might be taken away. I cannot have both my daughter and my security; I cannot hold her close and keep her at arms’ length at the same time.

Hope is a hard thing. There are those who disagree, who call it naive, a wish-dream, a crutch. Yet I wonder what it is they find so threatening about it, that they must throw themselves against it in a rage whenever it rears its head. I wonder if perhaps their skepticism and scorn aren’t really the easy way out; after all, there’s no gamble when you’re mocking the game from the sidelines. The truth is that nothing is harder than real hope. The only way it can come is as an embrace, and you cannot open your arms and keep up your guard.

Perhaps this is why in Scripture hope and faith are so closely linked. We are frail creatures, and we cannot risk the beating the world may send our way unless we trust that our Father will be their to heal our wounds. I cannot love my daughter unless I know that the One who holds her life is also the One who watches over my own. Of course, this doesn’t make it any easier. The difficult reality is that every opportunity to hope is also a test of faith. It is only through the struggle to believe that I can look to the Lord as my strong tower, and thus leave the fortress I have erected.

If hope and faith are intermingled, then so also is hope and love. I have seen many families, many marriages, many friendships with only a pretense of love. I’m sure they would be offended at this description, but the people in such relationships are still seeking above all else to be safe. They might say they are protecting their independence, or their rights, or the person they love. In truth, they are only protecting themselves. This is because true love requires freedom. It requires vulnerability. It requires a sort of sacrifice which lays your heart down to serve another, and you cannot lay your heart down without leaving it open to be stomped upon or kicked away. Hope is the only thing that could motivate us to make this sacrifice, the only way we could consider t he risk to be worth it. It is only the hope of glory which enables a love which opens one’s arms and lets them be nailed to a cross.

Hope is a hard thing. I’ve been accused on occasion of bluntness, so I won’t try to paint reality up with a pretty face. I know my daughter could die. She could be snatched away from me at any minute. She could stop breathing, and no wonder of modern medicine would bring her back. That reality terrifies me. It’s like a gun in the universe’s hands, pointed at my head, ready to fire at any minute. But I cannot take cover from it and remain at my girl’s bedside. I cannot shield myself and still h0ld her little hand. The only way I can be safe is to sacrifice my joy.

For the first time in my life, that is not a sacrifice I am willing to make. I’ve got no clever rejoinders, no wry wit to disarm the hurt. I’m doing my best to have faith, wrestling with God and trying to trust His promises. I want to love my daughter, to put her interests above my own. And because of these things, I’m praying and striving to stand in the open where the bullet could hit at any moment, facing the world with my defenses down, trying to hope.

It’s a hard thing. But its worth it.

Almighty God,

A pious saint might stand over the trembling, fragile form of his too-small daughter and sagely nod, noting that your ways are beyond searching out. But I do not believe you are a God for pious saints, but for broken human beings desperate for mending in every way. I do not know your plans, I do not know the future, but I do know who You are.

You are the great Triune God, Father, Son and Spirit. Father, I beseech you to have mercy on your tiny child. Jesus, I beg you to consider the youngest of your sisters. Spirit, I groan with desires I cannot twist through my lips, and I pray that you might intercede with me for my little girl.

You are Yahweh, Covenant Lord. You have given your promises to me and to my children. You have knit my daughter together in her mother’s womb, known her hidden form, counted her among your people. You are the God who says the kingdom belongs to little children, and I can think of few smaller than my own.

You are Yeshua, God with us. You came not in heavenly majesty but with labor pains and afterbirth. You sympathize with us in our weakness, and her hand is the size of my fingernail. You show mercy to the least of these, and she struggles to move her mouth. To work salvation you took on frail flesh and bone, and I can see her lungs laboring beneath stretched skin.

God, I know you are a king, but you are no petty tyrant who breaks men’s backs with an iron rod. You are the Servant King, the Lamb who wins the victory at the price of His own life. In this knowledge, I do not hide behind platitudes, but ask plainly. Grant my daughter protection, peace, and many years. Let me hear her speak, let me watch her grow up in faith, or at least let me hold her in my arms.

They say men pray to lift their sagging hearts, but I have no interest in self-delusion. I bow my head and lift my hands in supplication because I know You are the most real thing in this universe. Your palm holds the ocean, your voice sets the cosmos spinning, and your will includes every day of my daughter’s lift. I bend my knee because I know it is your right to take her away if that is your desire; she already belongs to you. Yet this power cuts both ways, and I ask that you would watch over my Rebekah tonight with your sovereign mercy and uphold her with your omnipotent grace.

I do not presume to approach you as one worthy of your ear. I have no more to offer you than does my premature baby. I approach instead in the name of Jesus, to whom both I and this covenant child belong. In your mercy shown us on behalf of Christ, watch over her. She is my child; she is Yours as well.

Amen.

Marc Chagall, "Abraham Slaying Isaac"

Recently, Elizabeth and I had our first childbirthing class. It was interesting; given my personality, I loved the details about biology and grimaced my way through the doula’s rants about hospitals and glowing endorsements of homeopathy. (Side note: I have no problem believing in demons, resurrection, or a dude walking on water. But homeopathy? I often wish its proponents would drink one part arsenic diluted in one million parts water – only a threat if homeopathy works.) That aside, one thing that stuck out to me in the class was a discussion of the pain that accompanies childbirth. Within the curriculum, what was stressed was that this pain wasn’t like the normal pain our culture teaches us to avoid. Rather, the pain of childbirth was good pain, a pain that was worth it.

There is a true happiness that can only be birthed through hardship – through pain. For whatever reason, this thought keeps forcing its way to the front of my mind. There seems to be two camps in the discussion of Christianity and happiness. One says that God wants you to be happy; while meaning well, these folks often end up promising you sports cars or saying you should probably abandon your less-than-perfect marriage. Hey, God might say that’s wrong, but he couldn’t mean you shouldn’t do what will make you happy. In response, other Christians insist that no, God doesn’t want you to be happy at all. They instead recommend a regimen of discipline and guilt-driven obedience suggests everything short of buying a whip and becoming a flagellant.

I’ve never been able to join either camp. The happy-Jesus crowd have no place for crosses or a faith that gets you fed to lions; the dutiful martyrs miss the earthy joys and heavenly raptures with which the heart of Scripture pulses. The real problem, I think, should be highlighted by the question “which happy?”

Not every happiness is created equal. If I maxed out our credit cards and ignored tomorrow, there are any number of things I could do that would create happiness – go on a long vacation, buy cool new toys. But this happiness is fleeting; it is trading immediate gratification for long-term loss. This is obvious in such an illustration, but it often isn’t that simple. We humans are misguided in how we balance the equations of joy – we see only what we crave, and not what it costs us.

We often also confuse happiness with economy. Here we don’t miss the cost; rather, it is what comes to dominate our field of vision. We expect the greatest joy to come from the thing easiest to attain. If something involves suffering or sacrifice, we refuse to walk that road because, hey, aren’t we supposed to be happy?

Yet many of the deeper happinesses in our world require this sort of sacrifice – the pains of labor, the discipline of self-development, the cultivation of virtue. We love to read popular biographies of athletes and performers who talk about sacrificing it all so they can slam dunk or master the guitar, and then we put down those books and kick back to watch TV or play Guitar Hero. We think it’s great that there are such giants, but we fail to see that the truth is the same for all of us – the greatest things we can aspire to have the greatest cost.

This begins to get at what we find in Scripture. Living as true humans in this world – as humans in right relation with God and what He has made – is hard. It will cost us everything. It is easy to try to build boundaries around this costliness, even when we aren’t aware of it, even when we feel we have good reasons. The ultimate result of our sacred/secular dualism, of our limited understanding of Christian duty, even of our discussions of “grace” when left undefined, is the removal of the burden of the cross we are all called to bear.

I am not here advocating sacrifice for sacrifice’s sake; there are false asceticisms which ask us to deny things God permits, and these must be opposed. However, even these asceticisms can be a way to avoid the true burden. Teetotalling can be easier than moderation, poverty can be easier than serving God with our wealth, chastity can be easier than dealing with the complexities of marriage (I’m not suggesting any of these choices are always bad; simply that they can be). If we don’t find some part of ourselves cringing at the call to follow Christ, if we don’t find ourselves tearfully on our knees begging God to tell us how He can ask this thing of us, we have probably missed the point.

Yet this isn’t to say that God wants us to be miserable. The crazy thing about the Christian message is that it teaches that true happiness lies through (and at times in the midst of) these impossible costs. It is in surrendering our dearest cravings of the flesh that we will find our truest desires satisfied.  It is in dying to the earthly man that we taste the sweet fruit of Eden which true humanity is meant to savor. It is on Mount Moria that God’s promises of blessing to Abraham reach their grandest proclamation. Happiness is not a binary equation, but rather a part of the spiral of sacrifice: we get more of it by giving it away.

This insistence on costly happiness might seem pedantic or obvious to some, but its implications are enormous. Let me offer a few:

1) Many Christians feel the bizarre need to deny that there is anything desirable in the world. They want to pretend like wealth is repulsive and an attractive member of the opposite sex is unappealing. This neurosis never ends well; either the Christian ends up teaching themselves to hate things God has made good and become a shriveled parody of a human being, or they realize there really is some measure of happiness on offer in the world and jump ship on the life of discipleship. Instead of this irrational denial, we need to recognize that the happiness found in the world, while attractive, is smaller than it first appears, and that the happiness found in Christ is far greater. It’s C.S. Lewis’s image of children making mudpies in the streets because they can’t imagine a holiday by the sea. The proper approach to the world’s pleasures is not to bury our heads in the sand. Rather, we must first deconstruct the mythology which claims they are the greatest happinesses we could find. Then we must fix our gazes on the deep joy found in Christ’s kingdom. To take a common example: we don’t need to pretend like a one night stand is unappealing. Rather, we need to recognize that, as fun as it is, it’s just an orgasm and a perpetuation of loneliness, and this can’t begin to match the richness and texture of two lives woven together in covenant union.

2) We must reclaim the costliness of Christianity. Many Christians seem to have a shallow, unremarkable Savior because they’ve never felt even a splinter of the cross he asks him to bear (and at times are instead bowed under humanly devised instruments of torture which don’t hold the promise of resurrection at the end. Remember, I’m not advocating asceticism, but discipleship.) Our calls for the world to turn from its “evils” ring hollow when all we’ve turned to is a life of comfortable self-righteousness. Our claims that it is “Christ working in us” are meaningless when its really just a judicious application of guilt and willpower.

The life of Christ-like love must be our model here. In love, Jesus sacrificed his prerogatives, power, security, dignity, and ultimately his life. He did it to move into relationship with human beings, to serve them, and ultimately to bring them to Himself. This is the shape of Christian sacrifice; it is done in relationship, in service, in treating others as more important than we are. By replacing the two great commandments of love with license or petty legalism, we have missed out on the costs. And, by missing the costs, we have also missed the glory. We have allowed ourselves to keep our comfortable idols, and it is little wonder that the grandeur of God seems diminished, because we keep confusing them with Him. We keep trying to resuscitate the old man, refusing to plant him in the ground, and so we have never seen our new humanity blossom and grow.

It is the hunger for this glory that should drive our lives as Christians. We need to start honestly asking which happiness we seek – one that is small and fleeting, or one that surpasses all we could hope or want. Yet if Christ becomes our desire, the only way to seek Him is to follow after Him, and this means walking toward the cross.