a post-hoc contribution via WhatsApp to a house church discussion I missed:
Since the prompt last Saturday (“How do we do our part in cultivating the fruit God seeks?”) was mine but I wasn’t around to help discover answers, would you permit me nine sentences in reply?
Having been thoroughly convinced of God’s lovingkindness—well, as convinced as one can be about the thoughts of a typically invisible, inaudible spirit—I find myself frequently emphasizing the value of direct effort toward the exercise of emotional and relational virtues. In other words, I tend to see God’s good fruit as habits to practice rather than virtues to receive. Just as nothing succeeds at mastering a musical instrument more than practicing the musical instrument—not reading books about music, not talking to composers—nothing will succeed at developing love, joy, peace, patience, and the rest of them more than trying to think, speak, and act in love, joy, peace, patience, and the rest at every possible juncture.
Direct effort is better and more powerful than any other spiritual discipline toward the goal of bearing good fruit. And I mean this very situational, down-to-earth, “if this, then that,” habit-building sort of way.
At the same time, I know I’ll fail at this. The trick here is to keep trying—“a righteous person falls seven times and rises again” (Proverbs 24:16)—and not grow discouraged. Even just trying to think and act better is good, and as Bruce highlighted a couple of weeks ago, “Don’t become discouraged in doing good, for in due time we will reap, if we do not become weary“ (Galatians 6:9).
When I am tempted to beat myself up for such failure, I call upon this quotation from Brother Lawrence (without going so far as to completely absolve myself of responsibility):
“When an occasion arose which required some virtue, he said to God, ‘Lord, I cannot do this unless You allow me.’ […] When he had failed in his duty, he simply confessed his fault, saying to God, ‘I could not possibly do otherwise, if You leave me to myself. It is You who must correct my failing, and mend what is amiss.‘ And after this, he gave himself no further uneasiness about his mistake.”
“Since all his visits were beneficial, his step or holler through a doorway got a bright welcome“ (Toni Morrison, of her character Stamp Paid in Beloved).
I’m very rarely Stamp Paid with Sullivan. I need to change.
Remember: Jon Levenson says that the controlling metaphor in the Hebrew Bible for the relationship between Israel and YHWH is that of a suzerain and vassal or a king and subject and that love from the Israel side is therefore primarily expressed as glad, grateful obedience. When we say we’re going to love the Lord our God with our all hearts, minds, souls, and strengths, what we’re saying is we’re going to gladly obey Him with all of ourselves.
“Communication is love,” as I just wrote a few weeks ago, is a problem for relating with those people for whom communication is not the only thing they want to do.
Living unanxiously mindful of your own certain death is probably salutary. Living unanxiously mindful of the certain death of those you love might be even more so.
Communication is love. If I’m involved, at least, if there’s any ambiguity at all, it must be squashed. Love demands it. However, I think one person’s ambiguity that needs to be squashed is another person’s opportunity for the exercise of commonsense intuition.
Love itself is the prime spiritual discipline. All others, including Bible study and prayer, are good only insofar as they serve to empower, amplify, or inform love.
Pianists don’t cultivate their skill and musicianship by reading books on the history of piano music or by talking with composers, as enriching and obliquely helpful as that might be. They improve by playing piano.
Similarly, the way you get better and more consistent at loving is by trying to love.
My reflections on excerpts from Do We Need the New Testament?: Letting the Old Testament Speak for Itself (2015) by John Goldingay:
A novel summary of the Gospel in light of the Old Testament:
In a sense God did nothing new in Jesus. God was simply taking to its logical and ultimate extreme the activity in which he had been involved throughout the First Testament story.
[…]
One might almost say that God had to provoke humanity into its ultimate act of rebellion in order to have the opportunity to act in a way that refused to let this ultimate act of rebellion have the last word.
[…]
My argument is that the execution and the resurrection were indeed the logical end term of a stance that God had been taking through First Testament times, so that the First Testament story does give an entirely adequate account of who God is and of the basis for relating to God. Because of who God has always been, God was already able to be in relationship with his people, despite their rebellion. God has always been able and willing to carry their waywardness. And on the basis of that story, Israel has always been able to respond to God and to be in relationship with God. In this sense the gospel did not open up any new possibilities to people; those possibilities were always there.
In which Goldingay delivers big “ouch“ for the church that seems like it’s also a knock on God as a strategist:
God’s strategy was that his people would be the magnet that attracts people to him. Israel was not very good at being such a magnet, and the church continues to have this problem.
In which I hear, “Zing!”:
Once people know about eternal life, they often stop taking this life really seriously. The history of Christian attitudes provides evidence for this speculation. We need the New Testament to give us hope for resurrection life, but we need the First Testament to remind us of the importance of this life, and to give us hope for this life.
In a comment about our action in relation to God’s kingdom that echoes (by a period of days) something I was trying to get across to a friend in an email correspondence:
In none of the Gospels does Jesus tell his disciples to extend the kingdom, work for the kingdom, build up the kingdom, or further the kingdom.
To which I can only say wow:
Further, the First Testament is under no illusion about whether implementing the Torah has the potential to achieve God’s purpose for Israel’s life. There is no direct link between seeking to restrain injustice in society and the giving implementing of God’s reign. Implementing God’s reign is fortunately God’s business. We have noted that the New Testament does not talk about human beings furthering or spreading or building up or working for God’s reign. Human efforts to achieve social justice are not destined to be successful. “Our responsibility is not to save the world. We are not required to transform This Age.” The problem about human society is too deep. As human beings living in God’s world, our vocation is to do what we can to restrain disorder in society, in light of what the Scriptures tell us about God’s creation purpose, but not to be overly optimistic about what we can do to bring in the kingdom.
In connection with our life in the world, then, do we need the New Testament? From it we get a further articulation of God’s creation ideals. Jesus does not need to give us any new truths or to issue new divine expectations in this connection, though he does provide a fresh prophetic articulation of God’s truth and God’s expectations. More important is the fact that from his story we know how God’s self-giving came to a climax in him as he let himself be martyred. We learn how that self-giving issued in the promise of resurrection and eternal life that extends to the whole world. It is what Jesus did that crucially matters. We could not do without that.
Important for me to remember:
The person and activity of God’s Spirit are objective realities separate from any sense of them that we may have.
Here’s the bit about the recurring theme I found so remarkable:
The prophets characteristically announce an event that sounds as if it will be the ultimate fulfillment of God’s ultimate purpose, and it is characteristic of the New Testament to talk as if that fulfillment has happened. That perspective applies to [Joel 2:30-32]. These declarations look like a description fo cataclysmic events at the End, of the kind that are also described in a passage such as Luke 21. Acts 2 sees these declarations, too, as fulfilled at Pentecost, which reflects that fact that Pentecost is itself indeed a partial realization of the End.
Yet is is only a partial realization, as is also characteristic of the fulfillment of prophecy. When a prophet announces the End (with positive or native implications), we have noted that an end does come, but it turns out not to be the End. The indication that Pentecost was not the End is the way history continues to unfold, with further withdrawing of the Spirit as well as further outpourings. Given that two thousand more years have passed (three or four times as long as passed from Joel to Pentecost), it seems Pickwickian even to call Pentecost the beginning of the End, though theologically there is a basis for speaking in these terms. It is rather the most magnificent instance of a pattern that runs through the First Testament and continues to run through the church’s story, and it is part of the guarantee (as Paul emphasizes) that the End will come. It is also a basis of praying and hoping that we may see more instantiations of the pattern, if we do not see the end itself.
An uncomfortable truth about the Holy Spirit is that we cannot control its coming and operation, as we cannot bring in or further or work for God’s reign. We can hurt or grieve the Holy Spirit and forfeit any right to the involvement of God’s spirit with us. But in ordinary human experience we cannot make another person fall in love with us or want to spend time with us, and neither can we take action that will ensure that God pours out his spirit on us. Our relationship with God is not contractual, so that we could fulfill the right conditions and it would have the desired results, as if our relationship with God resembled putting coins in a vending machine. It is a personal relationship, and such relationships involve freedom on both sides.
Isn’t the following what Deuteronomy actually says?:
It was the must that was the problem. There were circumstances in which Paul was happy to observe rules in the Torah, in connection with taking and keeping a vow or with circumcision. But the must implied that observing the rules in the Torah was the make-or-break factor in a relationship with God.
A curious take on the role of the Law that I’d like to look further into:
Elsewhere, Paul describes the Law as designed to increase transgression (Rom 5:20), perhaps in the sense that it designated as transgression offenses such as coveting that we might not otherwise have seen as sinful (e.g., Rom 4:15; 5:13; 7:7).
I love his refusal to disguise the Bible:
The Bible is not a lover letter to us from God; it does not focus on a personal relationship between God and the invidious. Nor does it focus on a challenge to work for peace and justice or on adherence to a body of doctrinal beliefs. Nor does it focus on faith itself: “The Gospel is not primary concerned with faith” but with “that upon which the faith reposes,” with the object of faith, “the kerygma that arouses faith.” It suggests a grand narrative about a project that God initiated and will bring to completion. Human communities and individuals gain their significance through being drawn into that project.
On the way the Scriptures use the Scriptures:
To put it more paradoxically, the hermeneutical guidance that the New Testament offers us is that we should not be looking to it for hermeneutical guidance, unless the guidance is an invitation to be imaginative in seeking to see how First Testament texts speak to our concerns.
Is this true? I think not, at least not exclusively. There’s a lot about the people talking.
The worship the Psalms commend and model is one that focuses on God.
This is a great spiritual strategy:
Intercession implies interposing between two parties so as to bring them together. It entails identifying with one party and representing it to another. For a prophet, intercessory prayer involved identifying with people and representing them before God, so that one speaks as “we” or “I,” not as “they” or “he” or “she.” I realized that the apparent absence of intercessory prayers from the Psalter might mean that actually the “I” and “we” psalms could be used as intercessions as well as supplications. Perhaps Israel used them that way; certainly we might do so. In praying protest psalms, one need not be praying for oneself. Specifically, in praying the prayers in the Psalms that speak out of oppression, affliction, persecution and tyranny, we pray not directly for ourselves but for people who experience oppression, affliction, persecution and tyranny, with whom we identify. We pray for God to put down tyrants and oppressors.
Not so fast:
Christians commonly justify their opposition to the use of such psalms by suggesting that these psalms are out of keeping with the New Testament, but it is not so. While the New Testament doesn’t quote Psalm 137, it does utilize imprecatory parts of Psalm 69 (e.g., Jn 2:17; Acts 1:20), which as a whole is more extensively imprecatory. Further, we noted in the introduction to this volume that Revelation 6:10 reports an imprecatory prayer on the part of the martyrs, who ask, “How long, Lord, holy and true, will you not judge and take redress for our blood from earth’s inhabitants?” God’s response is not to point out that such a prayer is inappropriate in light of Jesus’ exhortation to forgive enemies; it is to promise them that the time will soon come. Since it has not done so, perhaps this promise provides further reason for praying in imprecatory fashion, or further reason for us Westerners to avoid doing so if we allow for the possibility that we will be its victims.
A nice way of viewing the Bible:
“From a theological perspective, the Bible is the revelation of what God selected to be remembered and forgotten of God’s relationship to Israel and to the world” and of “God’s own character and configuration.”
What?!:
There is no basis in Scripture for the conviction that the narrative of history is moving toward the kingdom of God.
Again, something to think about:
Jesus did not reveal something new about God. What he did was embody God.
C’mon, preach it!:
I am not sure what would be the unfortunate result of interpretive programs that assume an autonomous Old Testament. Our actual problem is that of subsuming the First Testament under our understanding of what is Christian, so that this strategy enables us to sidestep parts of the First Testament that we want to avoid. By sleight of hand, aspects of what the First Testament says about God are filtered out in the name of christocentric interpretation. But the real problem is that we don’t like these aspects of the Scriptures. Christocentric interpretation makes it harder for the Scriptures to confront us when we need to be confronted. It is not the case that what was hidden in the Old is revealed in the New. Rather, there are many things revealed in the First Testament that the church has hidden by its interpretive strategy, obscuring the nature of scriptural faith.
This is to completely discount the idea that we can hold it up as an example to be spiritualized. Nope.:
the positive way the New Testament speaks in Acts 7:45 about Joshua’s taking the land and in Hebrews 11 about Israel conquering kingdoms, becoming faithful in battle and routing foreign armies suggests that it did not feel any of the unease about such First Testament narratives that is characteristic of modern Christians, as it does not feel any unease about the kind of praying that occurs in Psalm 137.24
In its entirety, worth the price of admission:
So do we need the New Testament? Or rather, what’s new about the New Testament? Christians commonly operate with the working hypothesis that Jesus brought a revelation from God that went significantly beyond the revelation in the First Testament. My thesis in this volume has been that the chief significance of Jesus does not lie in any new revelation that he brought. It lies in who he was, what he did and what happened to him, and what he will do. He did not reveal new truths about what it means to be God except the fact that God is more complicated than people would previously have thought (“three persons and one God”). He did not reveal new truths about what it means to be human but (like a prophet) brought into sharper focus some of the truths that people ought to have known.
Thus their reaction to him was not, “Wow, we never knew that.” It was more something along the lines of, “I wish you hadn’t reminded us of that,” and of, “What right have you got to be associating yourself with God so closely?” He did bring a concrete embodiment of who God had already told Israel that he was and had shown Israel that he was. In this sense Paul indeed implicitly thinks in terms of “a revelation which began with creation but which now has been brought into sharper focus in Christ.” Jesus provoked Jews and Gentiles to an ultimate rejection of God that God turned into the ultimate means whereby his relationship with his people could be affirmed, healed and restored. He also thus opened the way for the news about what he had done to be shared with the Gentile world as something that could bring it the same blessing, in keeping with God’s original intention. And he established his own authority to be the person who would ultimately judge the world as a whole.
In the course of telling his story and working out its implications, the New Testament does make some affirmations that supplement what people could know from the First Testament. One is the fact that Sheol is not the end for humanity. At the end, all humanity is going to be raised from death in order to enjoy resurrection life or to go to hell. Thus people in the First Testament “did not receive what was promised. God had planned something better for us, so that they would not be brought to completion without us” (Heb 11:39-40). Paul pushes the argument further in connection with affirming that all God’s people will be raised or will meet the Lord together (1 Thess 4:13-18). We do not go to heaven when we die; the entire people of God will reach completion together. Alongside this truth is the way the New Testament assumes the existence of Satan. While the First Testament presupposes the existence of an embodiment of resistance to God, the New Testament puts more emphasis on this motif.
It is appropriate that the truths about resurrection, hell and Satan should be associated with the story of Jesus’ dying and rising. It was Jesus’ dying and rising that made resurrection possible. It was these events that brought to a climax the conflict between God and the power that resists God. And it was these events that made hell necessary for people who turn their back on what God did in Jesus and insist on maintaining their resistant stance. Oddly, these truths were all part of Jewish thinking in Jesus’ day, so that even they are not new revelations that Jesus brings. It is almost as if the people of God knew they needed to affirm these beliefs even though they couldn’t quite know why or on what basis they might do so. It is Jesus who gives us reason to believe things that it would be nice to believe (at least some of them are nice to believe). He rescues us from just whistling in the dark and invites us to trust in him.
As I’ve left the penal substitutionary atonement understanding of things, I’ve come to believe that God’s forgiveness was present before the Cross and that the blood of Jesus was not legally necessary for God to forgive sins: It was necessary for us to understand it. Because of this, I don’t see forgiveness in legal terms, but rather in terms of relationship: We simply return to Him, which was available pre-Christ as well.
Yet there are many troubling passages which allude to a legal understanding, as in “If you do this, then legally you’re out of mercy.” Among them Hebrews 10:
> For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there is no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has ignored the Law of Moses is put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severe punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has regarded as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge His people.” It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God (vv. 26-31).
What do you do with passages like this? And how do you see the work of the Cross? I feel like I have to keep going around this tree to understand the PSA theory and there are certainly a lot of scriptures that affirm that understanding of things.
me:
My short answer to any question about the New Testament’s talk of Jesus’ blood, sacrifice, and the resulting cleansing from sin: What’s wrong with a little metaphor?
Of course, it’s not all metaphor. Jesus really did make a sacrifice, viz., a relinquishment of something to gain a greater good. And it really was bloody. And it really does have an effect on sin. But don’t completely literalize the reference to the Levitical system, especially in a book that’s explicit that God doesn’t want that kind of sacrifice.
It also helps to always keep the following two and a half facts in mind:
Who killed Jesus? People, not God (although Jesus did relinquish his life willingly).
Could God forgive without the Cross? As you’ve already said, yes.
Now, the beginning of my long answer to your specific question goes like this: For my part, I don’t see a legal understanding in the passage you cite. But in it I do see most of your paraphrase—“If you do this, then … you’re out of mercy.” And you’re right that this idea isn’t unique to Hebrews. You’ll find it in:
2 Peter 2:20-22,
James 2:13, and
Matthew 6:14-15,
along with echoes of it in any passage implying an only conditional, potentially temporary efficacy of salvation (Mark 4:16-19, 1 Corinthians 15:1-2, 1 John 2:24, 2 John 1:8, Revelation 3:1-5; see also Matthew 7:21-23, Luke 9:62, and John 8:11).
So, how does Jesus once-for-all sacrifice (Hebrews 7:27, 9:12, 10:10; Romans 6:10) have its good effect on our sin? And, understanding that effect, how can it be that it can be nullified?
More than a few books have been written to answer the first question. And I think you’ve done a lot of thinking on the subject yourself that will help you interpret the second. Here’s the tip of the iceberg of my response, based mostly on Hebrews itself:
Note the very first way the writer of Hebrews says we are saved. It’s been one of your favorite biblical phrases of late: “Since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, so that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives” (Hebrews 2:14-15, emphasis mine). Two sentences later, this very liberation is put into terms closer to those of chapter ten: “Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every way. This was so that he could become a merciful and faithful high priest in things relating to God, in order to wipe away the sins of the people” (v. 17, CEB). The two concepts—removal of sins and freedom from the fear of death—are related.
And now I’ve got to go to work. More later. Hopefully we can boil this stuff down when we’re done.
me again:
Lemme see if I can finish this now. Perhaps a dose of hurry-up-you’ve-got-to-go-to-work will get this stuff out faster.
God doesn’t need blood sacrifice to forgive sins. God instituted (or allowed the Israelites to believe that He instituted) various blood sacrifices because that’s what they could comprehend as the way to be reconciled to God. And indeed, it’s worthwhile to see that sin and estrangement from God cost something. But God Himself doesn’t need it.
It’s no different with Jesus. God didn’t need Jesus’ sacrifice to forgive sins. Israel may have needed to see it that way for a time for them to have any chance of a crucified messiah making any sense to them. But more to the root of things, God has always been in business of, for our good and as an expression of His essential character, subjecting Himself to human misconstrual and resistance and not being overcome by it, defeated by it, or cowed into giving up on going for His rightful, very loving, very beneficent reign among us. On the Cross, God goes as far as He can go in doing that by allowing humanity to do its very worst to Him and then overcoming it. He overcomes it by utterly refusing to retaliate—indeed, by offering forgiveness and “times of refreshing” (Acts 3:19)!—and by raising Jesus from the dead.
Thus, He has proven that He is not a “hard man” (Matthew 25:24). He really is slow to anger—the only thing that makes Him mad are things that keep people from Him and from flourishing—and abounding in mercy, as the Old Testament always said.
And thus, He has shown that we are not to fear death—neither as annihilation nor as the doorway to unjust, unkind divine judgement.
So if you sin willfully after learning this stuff, the “sacrifice for sins” goes away for you in Hebrews 10:26 because there’s nothing more God can do this side of heaven to convince You that He is not like you thought, that life’s not a bitch and then you die, and that therefore sin, which hurts other people and rejects God’s loving kingship, is not worthwhile. Was the Incarnation not enough? Was Jesus’ ministry not enough? Was His subjection to gruesome, unjust execution at the hand of your fellow men not enough? Was His resurrection not enough? Was His refusal to retaliate upon His resurrection not enough? Well then nothing will be enough. You’re trampling underfoot the Son of God, regarding His sacrifice as unclean, and insulting the Spirit of grace (i.e., gift). There will be terrifying judgment for that, and as long as you hold that view, you are by definition in outer darkness.
By the way, given its very nature, the sacrifice for sins doesn’t actually cease to exist in some ontological sense. It only becomes unavailable, in an epistemic sense, if you sin willfully. And read 1 John 1:7–2:2 and Luke 17:3-4 and tell me the sacrifice doesn’t become immediately available to us again upon confession and repentance.
So none of this is legalese. It is utter, self-sacrificial Gift from the king of the cosmos and its refusal. Think of how you’d feel if you went all out, liquidating all your net worth so you could buy [your wife] a gift that cost that much—and then her not believing that you love her and acting against your wishes and hurting herself and others and spurning you. Would’t you be a little angry? Wouldn’t you be righteous in calling her ungrateful? Might you not cast her out of your house for a time?
Of course, we’re judged in light of what we know. If we haven’t fully received a knowledge of the truth, which is the prerequisite for Hebrews 10:26ff to take effect, then God will not judge us as harshly. If [your wife] couldn’t or didn’t know how much you paid, failed to see why you gave her the gift in the first place, couldn’t grasp what good it accomplished, or, say, didn’t know who you were, you wouldn’t be harsh at all. It’s only those who have received a knowledge of the truth and then sin willfully who will have to face a severe judgment.
“Fathers, don’t exasperate your children, but nourish them in the Lord’s paideia and instruction” (Ephesians 6:4, mine).
“But love your enemies and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil people. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned. Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure—pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return” (Luke 6:35-38).
“A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (Proverbs 15:1).
“I give you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, so you also must love each other. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples, when you love each other” (John 13:35, CEB).
“While Jesus and his disciples were traveling, Jesus entered a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him as a guest. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his message. By contrast, Martha was preoccupied with getting everything ready for their meal. So Martha came to him and said, ‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to prepare the table all by myself? Tell her to help me.’ The Lord answered, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things. One thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the better part. It won’t be taken away from her’” (Luke 10:38-42).
“He who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently” (Proverbs 13:24).
“Be glad in the Lord always! Again I say, be glad! Let your graciousness show in your treatment of all people. The Lord is near. Don’t be anxious about anything; rather, bring up all of your requests to God in your prayers and petitions, along with giving thanks. Then the peace of God that exceeds all understanding will keep your hearts and minds safe in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:4-7).
“…[Jesus] in [me] and [the Father] in [Jesus], that [we] may be perfected in unity, so that [we] may be perfected in unity, so that the [kids] may know that [the Father] sent [Jesus], and [the Father] loved me, just as [the Father] loved [Jesus]” (John 17:23).
All of the above except for the Martha and Mary bit, the excerpt from Philippians, and the substitution-heavy quotation from John came to me last night on a walk I took up and down Balmoral Way by myself just after a similar walk Carla and I took in which I was grumpy and we discussed, seemingly to little good, how it is that I feel so frustrated with the kids sometimes and speak them accordingly. It was seemingly to little good because Carla took it as another opportunity to insist that I see a counselor. Perhaps more helpfully, she did say that she thinks I expect too much of the kids and out of the kids.
But Lord, You are a wonderful counselor Yourself, and you proved it yet again last night.
The fact is, I’ve been worried about Sullivan and Éa. I worry that our relationships don’t look like the kindred feeling I have with, say, Ethan. They’re not enthusiastic about the same things about which I’m enthusiastic—namely, You. They’re wrapped up in television shows, Minecraft, and carbohydrate-heavy foods. I’m worried I’m going to leave them without a spiritual legacy because I didn’t lead them correctly to You.
But what is it I really want of them? I want them to be loved and know it, both as an end in itself and that they may love You and others in turn. The only way to inculcate that is to quit wringing my hands over their performance and demonstrate the Love! Monkey see, monkey do! Right now, the only good they seem to know of me am to them is as a provider. They need to know it’s more than that: That I joyfully care about and care for them and caringly enjoy them. They’ll know where I get the Love if I love them. The greatest apologetic argument is a life lived abiding in Jesus.
I’ve already grown more gentle this morning as a result of Your input, and their response and responsiveness to me have already improved.
So don’t worry about them. Don’t worry about anything. Be gentle. Be patient. Don’t fret their salvation. Just love them. What kind of education and instruction is Jesus’? Think about that? How would Jesus treat Éa and Sullivan?
As for life more generally, I asked You whether I should abandon my scheduled approach to life. You said no, my structure is good. But I should just listen for Me all the while. Hold on loosely to your plans. Don’t be greedy or anxious about accomplishment or checking off boxes. Dismiss the oughts and act in grateful, joyful love only. Sullivan and Éa will feed on that easygoing, lighthearted life in Love, in Jesus.
My dubiousness about people using the names of the people they’re talking with, which Dale Carnegie suggests in his book as a key to winning friends and influencing people, is sound—times have changed since Carnegie’s book—except, huzzah, when you use the name in exclamations of thanksgiving, co-elation, or congratulation. In those contexts, it is pure simpatico, building the relationship 100%.
What I really want in this instance, as George MacDonald taught me, isn’t the forgiveness for the consequences of my sins (e.g., the wrath of God) but freedom from my actual sins. I’d like to become the father that doesn’t snap at his son. I don’t want an imputed purity. I actually want to be, myself, pure.
On the subject of the solo satisfaction of biological and psychological drives (e.g., eating, masturbating, sightseeing): As long as they are not harmful and they are undertaken with thanksgiving, they are done in love, and are thus good.
The death of a spouse after a long and fulfilling marriage in quite a different thing. Perhaps I have never felt more closely the strength of God’s presence than I did during the months of my husband’s dying and after his death. It did not wipe away the grief. The death of a beloved is an amputation. But when two people marry, each one has to accept that one of them will die before the other (xii–xiii).
Such insightful and poetic words from Madeleine L’Engle. It is true: Either Carla or I will predecease the other, and that will feel like an amputation.
Reading A Grief Observed during my own grief made me understand that each experience of grief is unique (xiii).
I must remember that as I age and my friends’ spouses die.
Like Lewis, I, too, kept a journal, continuing a habit started when I was eight. It is all right to wallow in one’s journal; it is a way of getting rid of self-pity and self-indulgence and self-centeredness. What we work out in our journals we don’t take out on family and friends (xiv).
I appreciate her recognition that, as Carla has taught me, it is important to vent so that we don’t hurt those around us.
I am grateful, too, to Lewis for having the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God with angry violence. This is part of healthy grief not often encouraged. It is helpful indeed that C. S. Lewis, who has been such a successful apologist for Christianity, should have the courage to admit doubt about what he has so superbly proclaimed. It gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own angers and anguishes, and to know that they are part of the soul’s growth (xvi).
Geez. Had I only known people were so comfortable with their own doubts about God and Jesus and the whole shebang when I was going through my throes of existential doubt!
And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job—where the machine seems to run on much as usual—I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much. Even shaving. What does it matter now whether my cheek is rough or smooth? (5)
Warning! When Carla dies, still take your walks. Call people to hang out. Do your work. Unless you want to just die, too.
The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything. (11)
Lewis is not outshone in poetry by his formidable foreword writer. I am certain Carla’s death will seem just like he describes. It will (dis)color everything.
But her voice is still vivid. The remembered voice—that can turn me at any moment into a whimpering child. (16)
Again, I suspect the same will be true of me when Carla dies.
‘Because she is in God’s hands.’ But if so, she was in God’s hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here. Do they suddenly become gentler to us the moment we are out of the body? And if so, why? (27)
The poor Calvinist!
Sometimes it is hard not to say, ‘God forgive God.’ Sometimes it is hard to say so much. But if our faith is true, He didn’t. He crucified Him. (28)
Wrong.
Come, what do we gain by evasions? We are under the harrow and can’t escape. Reality, looked at steadily, is unbearable. (28)
No, it’s not.
Doesn’t all the prima facie evidence suggest exactly the opposite [of God being good]? (29)
No.
Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead. From the rational point of view, what new factor has H.’s death introduced into the problem of the universe? What grounds has it given me for doubting all that I believe? I knew already that these things, and worse, happened daily. I would have said that I had taken them into account. I had been warned—I had warned myself—not to reckon on worldly happiness. We were even promised sufferings. They were part of the programme. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accepted it. I’ve got nothing I haven’t bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not in imagination. Yes; but should it, for a sane man, make quite such a difference as this? No, And it wouldn’t for a man whose faith had been real faith and whose concern for other people’s sorrows had been real concern. The case is too plain. If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards (36–37).
Crucial, both for those who know they are doubting because of the problem of evil and for those who think they aren’t.
In which sense may it be a house of cards? Because the things I am believing are only a dream, our because I only dream that I believe them? (39)
That’s an important distinction of which I’d never thought.
They call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn’t Lazarus the rawer deal? (41)
An excellent one-liner. Ah, but it was Lazarus’ experience that brought us the Gospel according to “John”!
A sinful woman married to a sinful man; two of God’s patients, not yet cured. I know there are not only tears to be dried but stains to be scoured. The sword will be made brighter (42).
Who knew belief in purgatory existed among Protestants? Certainly not I. But now I do: Richard Beck, Jerry Walls, C.S. Lewis, Brad Jersak—heck, all the universalists, I suppose. Thinking of the afterlife makes so much more sense with a purgatorial hell.
What do people mean when they say, ‘I am not afraid of God because I know He is good’? Have they never been to a dentist? 43
I love it when Lewis zings.
You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately; anyway, you can’t get the best out of it. ‘Now! Let’s have a real good talk’ reduces everyone to silence. ‘I must get a good sleep tonight’ ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain, that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum when think about our dead? (45)
I remember those October laps around the Holiday Inn in Orlando.
For a good wife contains so many persons in herself. What was H. not to me? She was my daughter and my mother, my pupil and my teacher, my subject and my sovereign; and always, holding all these in solution, my trusty comrade, friend, shipmate, fellow-soldier. My mistress, but at the same time all that any man friend (and I have good ones) has ever been to me. :perhaps more. (47–48)
This is how I view Carla, and I told her so.
Getting over it so soon? But the words are ambiguous. To say the patient is getting over it after an operation for appendicitis in one thing; after he’s had his leg off is quite another. After that operation either the wounded stump heals or the man dies. If it heals, the fierce, continuous pain will stop. Presently he’ll get back his strength and be able to stump about on his wooden leg. He has ‘got over it.’ But he will probably have recurrent pains in the stump all his life, and perhaps pretty bad ones; and he will always be a one-legged man. There will be hardly any moment when he forgets it. Bathing, dressing, sitting down and getting up again, even lying in bed, will all be different. His whole way of life will be changed. All sorts of pleasures and activities that he once took for granted will have to be simply written off. Duties too. At present I am learning to get about on crutches. Perhaps I shall presently be given a wooden leg. But I shall never be a biped again. (52-53)
My, but does his man has a knack for finding the right metaphors to explain his thoughts! L’Engle and Lewis agree: Losing a spouse to death is an amputation.
The notes have been about myself, and about H., and about God. In that order. The order and the proportions exactly what they ought not have been. And I see that I have nowhere fallen into that mode of thinking about either which we call praising them. Yet that would have been best for me. (62)
God, You equipped me to not repeat Lewis’ mistake here. Thank You.
An incurable abstract intellect
Excuse me, Mr. Lewis. Did you call me?
To me, however, their danger is more obvious. Images of the Holy easily become holy images—sacrosanct. My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence? (66)
Sure seems like it.
And now that I come to think of it, there’s no practical problem before me at all. I know the two great commandments, and I’d better get on with them. (69–70)
Amen, preach it, Brother.
To make an organism which is also a spirit; to make that terrible oxymoron, a ‘spiritual animal.’ To take a poor primate, a beast with never-endings all over it, a creature with a stomach that wants to be filled, a breeding animal that wants its mate, and say, ‘Now get on with it. Become a god’ (72)
Indeed. Thanks a bundle, God. No really, I mean it: It’s absurd and exactly what I want at the same time.
My overall takeaway: It scares me a little that I have read this and Dementia in the same year. Carla may very well predecease me, and I appear to be attempting to get ready for that contingency.
The main way to be ready: Remember to continue to live after she dies! But remember to grieve ferociously in order to do that!
“…[w]ith humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves…” (Paul). This is a crucial verse for me if I’m going to bear the fruit of love. It’s this regard of others as more important than myself that is going to turn up my inner hearth of love for others. Without that phrase, my love risks being too mechanical, too principled. If I can honestly regard others as more important than myself, I will fulfill the second Great Commandment.