Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Monday, October 1, 2012
Alone - Part Two
Alone – Part Two
Bob Rakestraw
October 1, 2012
This is the second half of my previous piece on being alone.
Part One was posted on September 5, 2012. In the first part I considered the
fact that, even though we very much need people in our lives to live well, each
of us must learn to walk through life alone.
This then, still leaves us with the question of what it
means to walk alone in this world. To me, it means that when the realities of
life face me I need to know what it is, within my own mind and spirit, to
consciously, obediently and confidently trust in the perfect power, love,
compassion and wisdom of our merciful Lord.
It means that when you lie on your sick bed, pray for your
lost child or friend, ask God for wisdom to make the coming difficult decision,
seek to recover from the painful news you just received, or face a future that
looks to your natural self as only bleak, bleaker and bleakest, you are in
harmony with your indwelling Counselor, resting quietly in his very personal
concern to do or allow only those things that are for your eternal benefit. It
also means that, with the confidence described above, you go about your
responsibilities, one at a time, doing what you are able to do each day and
leaving the rest in God’s hands.
The lines above present a glowing picture of the soul at
rest in God. I believe earnestly that such a life is both desirable and
attainable for every child of God. I believe just as earnestly, by experience
(mine, that of others I’ve known, and that of biblical characters and other
historical figures), that such godly composure and trust is not easily
attained. In fact, it is impossible to live this way by our own strength and
will power.
Furthermore, no one else on earth can give you the necessary
moral courage you will need, no matter how much others pray for you, read
scripture to you, hold you, play music for you, or assist you in essential
ways. All of these helps are important—very much so—yet no one but God himself
can infuse into your total being the assurance that he does all things well for
you, and always will, even as you walk confidently over the hills and through
the valleys of life.
Why is it, then, that some of God’s children face their
aloneness with a deep trust in God (although they may experience great
suffering and tears), while others literally worry themselves sick. The latter
may wave their arms and yell in panic or anger, searching for someone to blame
or demanding that someone solve the problem for them. Why the difference?
Perhaps my brief account will be helpful. In my mid-fifties
I was struggling with both serious heart difficulties and personal career
concerns. In the midst of these trials it came to me: “I am alone; no one can
solve these problems for me; no one can fully understand me nor really feel my
pain.” I had to face the realities, try to understand the factors involved,
accept my situation, and turn my concerns over to God every day, sometimes many
times a day. I had plenty of friends, and had never (in my memory) felt lonely,
but this sense of aloneness (which is, of course, different from loneliness)
added a major new dimension to my life.
In addition to putting one foot in front of the other and
doing my daily work as best I could, I tried to keep in mind three of my
favorite scripture passages. If I was able to (sometimes I was not) I called
these to mind deliberately and recited them to myself, with an attitude of trust,
hope, and obedience to what God was saying to my heart through these remarkable
words.
One text is from the prophet Isaiah: “You will keep in
perfect peace the one whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you”
(26:3).
The second is in Philippians, where the apostle Paul wrote
from prison: “I can do all things through him [Christ] who strengthens me” (4:3).
The third portion states that God “will not let you be tested beyond what you can bear. But when you are tested he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it” (I Corinthians 10:13).
I trust that, for all of us, the stark truth of our human
aloneness in this world will lead us to a quiet confidence and peace as we live
our lives in this world, resting in the very being of God and supported by the
presence of even one or two fellow pilgrims, because Jesus said he will be
there—in our very midst (Matthew 18:20).
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Alone – Part One
Alone – Part One
Bob Rakestraw
September 5, 2012
“The Benediction
Project”
I am a strong believer in people being with people and
people helping people. To live in this world we need one another almost as much
as we need food and water. We especially need groups, whether they be local
church congregations, study groups, book clubs, or support groups for those
grieving, for addicts or for new parents. Groups of seven or under where the
common desire is to know and follow God totally, are particularly beneficial to
the participants. Even two or three people can constitute a strong life-giving
support group.
I do not like to think of where I would be today if it were
not for the many small groups, especially prayer groups, of which I have been a
part during the nearly half-century of my Christian life. The picture would not
be pretty. I am fairly sure that, without these groups in my life, if I still
called myself a Christian, I would be a self-centered, prideful, opinionated,
self-deceived, lonely and critical person, looking down on most people (and
churches) and having little or no compassion toward the poor, the sick, the
blind, the deaf, the lame, the mentally ill, the immigrant, the hungry, the
jobless, the abused, and those who do not know Jesus Christ. I might have a
strong interest in the Bible and certain theological issues and beliefs, but I
would likely avoid (or be so blind as not to notice) the great amount of
scripture that points Christ’s followers toward a holistic love of God and
neighbor.
Having said all this, however, I firmly believe that each of
us must learn to walk through life alone. Christian or non-Christian, strong
believer or merely religious, everyone must journey alone on this path called
life.
This sounds, I realize, like the complete opposite of what I
just wrote about people needing people. But as I have lived my life I have
learned that these are not polar opposites but complementary facets of one’s
existence. Each is a vital truth that must be faced, understood accepted and
embraced.
The apostle Paul brings these two aspects of life together
nicely in his letter to the Galatians, chapter six. In the King James Version
we first read, “bear ye one another’s burdens” (v. 2), but three verses later, “every
man shall bear his own burden” (v. 5). At first reading it appears that Paul is
contradicting himself, but this learned rabbi, a specialist in both the Hebrew
and Greek languages, would surely not contradict himself in such a brief,
tightly argued section of his letter.
It is helpful to know that Paul is not using the same Greek
word for “burden” in these two verses, although their meanings are similar and
overlapping. The word in verse two (baros),
is used of “the burden and heat of the day” (Matthew 20:12) and other figurative
kinds of the pressures of life. It refers to a heavy and oppressive weight, and
here in Galatians it is referring to the weight of temptation and spiritual
failure. Paul exhorts the spiritual believer in the community to restore gently
those struggling with these issues.
The word in verse 5 (phortion)
has a similar but not identical sense. While it is used to speak of “burdens grievous
to be borne” (Luke 11:46) and the crushing weight imposed by the legalistic
teachers and Pharisees (Matthew 23:4), it also has the sense of a lighter load,
like a shoulder-pack, as a porter, peddler or marching soldier might carry. It
is this word Jesus used when he said, “my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30). Even
though we all must carry our own backpack, Jesus says it is light. When Jesus says “my burden is light” he is teaching that even though we must carry it, if he packs our load and places it on our
backs it will be light.
In the context of Galatians 6, then, Paul instructs us to
bear one another’s burdens when their spiritual weaknesses are evident, but to
be very careful not to consider ourselves superior to the fallen. We are to
concentrate on our own lives and work, and in this sense we must carry our load
alone.
I remember when, well into mid-life, the truth of my
aloneness struck me. As far as I can recall it did not come from something I
heard, some article I read or something from any human source, although I had
thought about Galatians 6:5 many times over the years. At first this reality
stunned me, saddened me and even frightened me. Even though I had a wonderful
wife, two delightful daughters and their families, and great friends, there was
not a single person on earth who could fully understand me nor resolve my
deepest issues and concerns. These constituted my burden, even though the burden was given to me by Jesus. There
was no one who could really meet my needs. Yet it is no exaggeration to say
that this truth is one of the most valuable insights I have ever received from
the Lord about living life successfully.
If you love me, you will obey what
I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor
[or Comforter] to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. … Because I live,
you also will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and
you are in me, and I am in you (John 14:15-20, NIV; see also I John 4:12-16).
God willing, I will complete this essay in my next posting.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
As Close As It Gets
As Close As It Gets
Books That Have Shaped Me – Part Thirteen
Bob Rakestraw
August 1, 2012
“The Benediction
Project”
15. Rose from
Briar, by Amy Carmichael (Christian Literature Crusade, 1973), 200 pp.
First Published 1933.
The final book in the series is Rose from Briar by Amy Carmichael. The title may sound familiar to you because in the five years I have been writing this blog I have considered Carmichael’s remarkable little book twice before (April 30, 2010 and February 26, 2011).
I wrote in my posting
of April 30, 2010, that this has to be one of the top five books in my entire
life, from the standpoint of helping me live well. It was written over 75 years
ago, but I read it only within the past several years while I was experiencing
an extended, intense period of suffering. It is not an easy work to read, not
only because of the tight, sometimes turgid English (British) but because of
the depth—true profundity—of the author’s understanding of suffering. If I had
read this book in my earlier or middle years, even though I have suffered
frequent piercing headache pain all through those years, I suspect I would not
have benefited from it very much. But with the chronic health trials since my
heart transplant in 2003, and with the growing realization that I was getting
steadily worse, not better, I developed a much deeper need and longing to be
understood and guided by one who had traveled this way before me.
Amy Carmichael lived from 1867 to 1951, most of her adult
life (55 years) as a missionary to the Donhavur region of South India. In 1901 she began a home for little girls who
were taken and trained as dancing-girls for the Hindu temples, which meant a
life of evil for them. Boys were also rescued from moral danger and taken into
the home.
In 1931 Amy Carmichael had a serious fall and ended up as an
invalid for the last 20 years of her life. She came to know God intimately
through her sufferings, and she expresses the most helpful thoughts about
physical, emotional and spiritual suffering I have ever read. Ruth Bell Graham,
deceased wife of the famous evangelist Billy Graham, said, “By far the best I
have found” on the subject of living with serious illness. Many books and
tracts written to the ill are written by the well. This work is written to the
ill by one who understands by personal experience the depths of illness. I keep
this book close by my bedside.
The most powerful impact Rose
from Briar has had on me (and thus has shaped me) is twofold. First, the
author’s descriptions and analyses of her sufferings, both physical and
(especially) mental-spiritual, are closer to those concerning my own sufferings
of recent years than anything I have ever read. This is the basis for the title
of this posting. I knew (and know) that someone actually understood the way I
feel, and, to a person living with a serious chronic illness, this (other than
immediate relief for excruciating pain) is the sufferer’s greatest need. At
least in my case it has been, and continues to be. I deeply long to be
understood, even though I know that no one but God can fully understand me.
Carmichael “gets it,” however, and I am held captive by every page of her book.
The second way this work has impacted me flows directly from
the first. Not only does the author describe and analyze her suffering (and
mine) with greater depth than I have ever seen, but she offers—gently and by
way of her own experiences—the most helpful thoughts about how to live with
one’s sufferings. And not only live, but live triumphantly. I have no doubt
that I will read Rose from Briar for
the rest of my life, over and over as long as God allows me to read. I will do
as I have been doing, reading one page or one brief chapter at a time,
regularly but not necessarily every day, until I come to the end of the book,
at which point I will start over. And so on, and so on.
I will close with one of many selections from the book that
has strengthened me greatly.
“Those who have had that peculiarly piercing pain which is
as though a nail were driven through the palm know how close it can draw the
heart into a tender fellowship with Him whose two hands were pierced, not ‘as
though,’ but in awful fact, by very nails of iron. There is a kind of solemn
joy in coming in the flesh anywhere near the suffering flesh of our Lord. As a
child I remember the thought of His Divinity so far overwhelmed the thought of
His humanity that it was impossible to realize that He suffered being tempted.
… The holy, pure and beautiful spirit of our Saviour suffered so much more than
we can understand that words fall off, afraid to touch so profound a mystery;
but there was also the sensitive flesh born of a woman. There cannot be a pang
in our flesh that was not, and sharper far, in that sacred Body on the Tree.
And so in a new way, as we newly understand even only a little more of what He
bore for us, we draw near to Him.
“Sometimes in Donhavur we, who dearly love the little children
about us (and the older ones too), have looked up from some engrossing work to
see a child beside us, waiting quietly. And when, with a welcoming hand held
out, to the Tamil ‘I have come,’ we have asked ‘For what?’ thinking, perhaps,
of something to be confessed, or wanted, the answer has come back, ‘Just to
love you.’ So do we come, Lord Jesus; we have no service to offer now; we do
not come to ask for anything, not even for guidance. We come just to love You”
(pp. 118-119).
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Monday, July 2, 2012
Just War, Pacifism and Nonviolent Resistance
Books That Have Shaped Me – Part Twelve
Bob Rakestraw
July 2, 2012
During the fall of 1982 I was serving as a T.A. (teaching assistant) for the dean of Drew Theological Seminary, Dr. Thomas Ogletree. I was a doctoral student in the graduate school of Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, and I appreciated the opportunity to work with this highly regarded Christian ethicist.
Part of my service as one of the dean’s two T.A.’s during
that fall semester was to attend his lectures on Christian Ethics and then meet
with the seminary students (half of the class of 50 or so) twice a week to lead
them in discussion and cooperative work on a project concerning disarmament.
This was during the “cold war,” and the
politics of deterrence, arms control and disarmament (especially nuclear
disarmament) was all the rage—among the intellectuals at least. With these
issues in mind I bought a copy of Nuclear
Holocaust and Christian Hope for my personal study.
There are 4 sections in the book.
First: “The Threat of Nuclear War.” Second: “Biblical-Theological Perspectives.”
Third: “What to Do: Concrete Steps Toward Peace.” Fourth: “Biblical Faith and
National Defense.”
While I had some familiarity with
issues of war and peace from a Christian perspective, I accepted the “just war”
tradition because I grew up with it and never considered any other approach to
war. This view holds that war, while always tragic, is justifiable and even
necessary when an enemy nation sets out to harm and/or conquer our nation or
some other nation/nations our country decides to protect. Our military,
however, should follow certain criteria concerning when to go to war, as well
as how to conduct the war once it has begun. In both respects the war must be
“just.”
One very prominent advocate of
the just war position is Arthur F. Holmes. He writes, “War is evil. … To call
war anything less than evil would be self-deception. … [However], could
participation in war perhaps be a lesser evil than allowing aggression and
terror to go unchecked and unpunished?” Holmes continues, “not all evil can be avoided” (italics his). “We are trapped in
moral dilemmas…such that whatever we do involves us in evil of some sort.” The
early church father Augustine “advises the Christian who goes to war to repent
in advance, because the ambiguities of the situation confuse moral issues and
because passions confuse the moral intention.” (War: Four Christian Views, edited by Robert G. Clouse, 1981, pp.
117-118, 128.)
In opposition to the just war
position, Sider and Taylor advocate a pacifist view. This is not the only
pacifist position, however. The highly esteemed Mennonite scholar John Howard
Yoder presents 29 (that’s right) varieties of religious pacifism in his book, Nevertheless (1992). The just war
approach, while not monolithic, is a much more unified position than pacifism.
For the purposes of this brief
article we may define Christian pacifism as the view that it is always morally
wrong for a follower of Christ to participate in war in any way. Such Bible
believing pacifists do not deny the ugly realities of evil (including the
cruelty of violent and sadistic rulers), but they believe they are morally
bound to follow the nonviolent life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Actually,
Christ’s life is every bit as important for Christian pacifists as are his
teachings (see 1 Peter 2:21-23).
Some pacifists call their
position “nonviolent resistance,” meaning that they seek to actively resist
evil in this world, but without the use of violence. They are not afraid to
fight for truth and righteousness. In fact, they consider themselves obligated
to do so. But, even if they and other innocent people will be killed, they—like
the thousands of early Christian martyrs—will fight not by the sword but by prayer,
praise, trust in the blood of the Lamb, the word of their testimony, and not
loving their lives so much as to shrink from death” (Revelation 12:11). In addition, those who
hold to nonviolent resistance often participate in large demonstrations,
strikes and boycotts that sometimes, largely or totally without weapons, lead
to the downfall of entire corrupt regimes. The fall of communism in the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe is the most striking example in my lifetime, and there
are numerous other accounts of similar nonviolent triumphs in Non Violence: The Invincible Weapon? by
Sider, 1989.
There are many arguments against
Christian pacifism, two of the most common being that God used warfare in the
Old Testament and Jesus used a whip to cleanse the temple. Sider and Taylor
address these and other objections, especially in section two.
I had never read anything like
the material in this book. I had never considered other perspectives than my
own. But this book profoundly shaped my life
(not only my intellectual arguments) and my whole attitude about how, in my
view, Christ desires to advance his kingdom of peace and righteousness in this
world today.
I realize that this is an
extremely sensitive topic and book. My purpose here is not to push a certain
view but to show briefly how the arguments (and facts) affected me. I would
like, however, all Bible-believing Christians, the great majority of whom (I
assume) probably accept the prevailing just war view, to read, think and pray
about the serious biblical and historical case for nonviolence made by devout
people of God over the centuries. Thousands of early Christians martyrs
understood clearly why they held firmly to their views, and knew very well
where their convictions might lead. It would be good for all of us and our
children to understand the minds and hearts of these early nonviolent
believers.
I have chosen the way of the
cross which, in my (admittedly fallible) view, includes a life of nonviolence.
Many other servants of Christ have chosen the way of the cross also, and to
them this may mean serving actively in the military and following orders to
participate in warfare as their leaders direct. In either case, neither should
in any way look down upon their brothers and sisters in Christ for their
choice, or consider themselves more “spiritual” than those with whom they
disagree. The arguments pro and con are far more complex than most Christians
realize, and total objectivity on the part of either side is simply not
possible in this fallen world.
Let us love our God completely,
love our neighbors as ourselves, and love our enemies sincerely no matter how
we think on these issues. And may each of us, whatever our views at present, be
open to further illumination from the Spirit. We may change from one view to
another, stay the same, or simply declare, “I don’t know.”
God, however, does know. He knows
our hearts and understands us better than we know ourselves (1 John 3:18-24).
Saturday, June 9, 2012
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