Archive for the ‘Suffering’ Category
Metábasis eis állo génos (2-27)
I reflected last week on suffering as a special mission. Gene Wolfe’s great short story “Westwind” is a wonderful picture of this. In fact, in Wolfe’s story, you could say that some kind of suffering or deformity is the special mark of all of God’s secret agents. It is their admission ticket to all the places.
I’m still lagging behind on podcasts. My employer promises that we will be back in the office on September 7 but hasn’t announced protocols. I’m not inspired to any kind of optimism by the ridiculous protocols that are in force right now. But although I remain behind in other podcasts, I am caught up on the Theology Pugcast. Recent episodes prompted me to think:
- There is a natural analogy between the mimesis:poeisis spectrum and grammar:dialectic:rhetoric, and also priest:king:prophet.
- Late modernism professes the old and outworn idea that Christianity is an old and outworn idea. Because of the activity of the Holy Spirit, we know that Christianity is neither exclusively old, nor outworn, nor merely an idea.
Doug Wilson confirms my hunch that he is not opposed to blasphemy law, only its hasty introduction.
God’s rating system is a twelve-star system:
Then he dreamed still another dream and told it to his brothers, and said, “Look, I have dreamed another dream. And this time, the sun, the moon, and the eleven stars bowed down to me.” (Genesis 37:9, NKJV)
Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars. (Revelation 12:1, NKJV)
Speaking of twelve, it appears twice in Mark 5:
Now a certain woman had a flow of blood for twelve years . . . Immediately the girl arose and walked, for she was twelve years of age. (NKJV)
As Mark Horne suggests, there is clearly meant to be a link between these women. Twelve years must also be significant, though I’m not sure how, other than to say that there is a deadness in Israel, in the old twelve.
In Mark 12, the Sadducees try to entrap Jesus:
Then some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him; and they asked Him, saying: “Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man’s brother dies, and leaves his wife behind, and leaves no children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife; and dying, he left no offspring. And the second took her, and he died; nor did he leave any offspring. And the third likewise. So the seven had her and left no offspring. Last of all the woman died also. Therefore, in the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as wife.” (Mark 12:18–23, NKJV)
It never occurred to me until now to read this in a corporate–covenantal register. Since pastor–shepherds are levirs, we could read this as a subtle jockeying for heavenly status as the disciples themselves did in chapter 10. Jesus’s response then is consistent with what we see elsewhere in scripture (e.g., 1 Corinthians 6, Ephesians 1, Revelation) in that man is elevated to a position in God’s heavenly court.
Jesus answered and said to them, “Are you not therefore mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. But concerning the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’ ? He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. You are therefore greatly mistaken.” (Mark 12:24–27, NKJV)
Metábasis eis állo génos (2-26)
Mark Horne reflects on how Job’s suffering and vindication is applicable for us, concluding that:
Staying loyal while suffering is subduing the earth and taking dominion over it. Job had faithfully maintained his own integrity [so] God could entrust him with more.
Mark’s reflections on suffering have led me to frame the idea that suffering is a kind of “special mission” for sons who are otherwise free (Matthew 17:26, Ezra 7:24). Certain kinds of suffering are even honored with a special office in the kingdom (James 5:14).
René Girard likes to talk about how Jesus changed the scapegoating process forever. But Mark’s reflections on Job make me think that there are lesser ways that all other scapegoating—and suffering—transforms human suffering forever, because it opens our eyes to God’s ways and fuels our faith. (Contra the way Girard sometimes speaks, Jesus was not the first scapegoat to deny his guilt, though he is still the perfect scapegoat.)
Jesus suffered in a particular way so that we would never have to suffer in that way, if we receive the gift of his suffering. But so did Jacob. And so did Job. And so did David, and Paul, and a glorious company of such witnesses who are all our brothers in arms. Likewise any suffering we experience is a gift to our brothers and sisters and neighbors and children, so that they will not suffer in that particular way either, if they receive the gift of our suffering.
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy likewise speaks of the hoary head and how God intends for it to be identified by a surplus of attachment. With wisdom and experience and suffering come the ability to give, to love, to protect, to attach to others with no expectation of giving or love or attachment in return. We have of course all seen examples of the hoary head that has grown bitter by life’s suffering and is unable to give and love freely and generously. But God intends for us to transform our life and suffering into the ability to give and love so freely as he himself has done for us. I think of Shasta’s experience and how this is meant not just to carry us to old age, but to characterize our old age:
Shasta’s heart fainted at these words for he felt he had no strength left. And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one. (C. S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy)
Re-baptizers are the real ones who treat baptism as sacerdotal magic. Think of it: what other human rituals require a sprinkling of the magical fairy dust of deepest earnest self-reflection and sincerity to activate them? Re-baptizers clearly think that baptism “works,” and are dead set on getting the magic right.
Of course, it is important to be obedient in the matter of covenant signs.
And the uncircumcised male child, who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant.” (Genesis 17:14, NKJV)
A year of weekly bricolage in the hopper!
Mission
My favorite quotes from Peter Leithart’s Theopolitan Mission:
The principle of ministry in the church is simple: “Let all things be done for edification” (1 Cor 14:26). This is the rule: Do everything you do to complete Christ’s body. (39)
Macedonians make a koinonia contribution to poor saints in Jerusalem (Rom 15:26). As Paul sees it, they don’t throw money at a problem from a distance. Rather, their generous gifts overcome distance, joining Macedonian Gentiles and Jerusalem Jews in one fellowship of the Spirit. Material gifts have a quasi-sacramental power to join the members of the church into one body. (50)
A church isn’t carrying out the mission of Jesus if it doesn’t gather on the Lord’s Day at a common table. (54)
Conflict is no accident, nor is it avoidable. Suffering is the only path into the kingdom, an inevitable part of mission. (71)
Like the ark, the church receives and preserves the treasures of the world (Rev 21:24) so they can be purged, transfigured, and brought out again to adorn creation. As worlds collapse, the world’s riches are kept safe in the ark of the church. All things are gathered into the church so that all things can disembark into a new creation. Noah performs this magic only once, but Jesus does it continuously. Treasures flow continuously into the ark of Christendom. The church has received the treasures of Greek and Roman art, philosophy, and politics, to purify them and bring them to fulfillment. It will plunder the gold of China, Japan, and India, of the Masai and Zulu, of Arabia and Iraq and Afghanistan. Treasures from the city of man enter the city of God so they can return to the city of man, renewed. The city of man enters the ark of God so it can become more perfectly what it’s supposed to be, more perfectly an image of heavenly Jerusalem.
The church pilots the world. What happens in the holy church guides what happens outside. If the church is unfaithful, leaves her first love, and turns to false teachers, Jesus will move the lampstand and abandon the house (Rev 2-3). If the church keeps her lamps burning, continuously supplied by the oil of the Spirit, the world will be full of light. (79)
I wonder sometimes if any of my international colleagues are secret brothers and sisters.
Transformed by the Eucharist, our making is freed from pure utility and functionality. Utility is good. A woodworker makes tables for meals, weavers make cloth for clothing, metalworkers make wires for electricity and rebar to strengthen walls. All these forms of making have practical ends. But when we make in order to offer our fruit to God in praise, we transcend mere usefulness. The cobbler doesn’t just cover bare feet; he cobbles for the glory of God. At the same time, the sanctuary frees us from the sterile circularity of making for its own sake, the effete snobbery of “art for art’s sake.” Making Eucharistically, a craftsman makes for God. “Art for art’s sake” is a sign of decadence. It’s a symptom of the decay of liturgy. (88-89)
A flood is coming. It’s already sweeping away the world as we know it. The world we know will be submerged as the Lord turns the world upside down and gives it a sharp shake (Hag 2:6-7).
It’s not the end of everything. Creation will survive, and civilization will be reborn. Jesus will steer the ark of his church through the storm. As the clouds gather, as the thunder begins to roll, as the deluge crashes down, we’re called to continue the often-imperceptible work of building the ark of Jesus. With our lives scripted by the Scriptures that reveal the Christ, we cling to the apostolic gospel, gather to break bread, share our material and Spiritual gifts, offer a continuous sacrifice of prayer and song. We preach the good news in false churches and public squares, endure the rage of the mob, suffer with Jesus so we may share His glory. We confront idols and demons and call all men from darkness to light, from Satan to the living God (Acts 26:18). In the Last Adam, we’re made right-makers, grateful makers whose making is an act of worship. Some will slip, lizard-like, into palaces (Prov 30:28) and gain a hearing before Prime Ministers and Presidents.
As we do these things, we preserve the treasures of the past and, by the alchemy of the Spirit, transfigure ancient treasures into new. When the storm is over and the flood waters recede, we’ll have and be the seeds of a new creation. We’ll flow like living water to fertilize the wasteland.
If you’re a Christian, that’s what you’re doing. Your life may not look like a big deal. You’re kind to your neighbors, serve your brothers and sisters in church, gather each week to receive God’s Word and God’s Bread. You train and teach your children as disciples; you love your husband or wife. You’re an honest and productive employee, an attentive employer, an entrepreneur or bureaucrat in a well-established institution. You do and make, but no one notices. . . .
You feel invisible, but that’s an optical illusion. You’re participating in the biggest project imaginable. You’re joining with millions of others to build the self-building ark of Jesus. Through your witness and labor, a new world is taking form. You’re fighting the battle of the ages. You’re constructing the city of God among the cities of men in order to transform the cities of men to become more like the city of God. Nothing is small in the kingdom of Jesus.
There’s nothing to fear. We live in joy and expectant hope. Jesus is in the boat, and He calms the seas. The Carpenter of Nazareth will pilot his ark until it rests on a new Ararat, a new Eden, the garden-city where the river of life flows. (100-101)
In step with the truth of the gospel
We have seen that Christian love shapes our Christian freedom so that it may never be used to injure or trample a brother (far from that, it must be used to serve our brothers); but also that the gospel shapes our Christian love so that it may never be used to bind a brother. This pair of principles explains why Paul circumcised Timothy and refused to circumcise Titus; it is why in this current moment I will hug Joe and stand six feet away from Tom, in each other’s presence. This is hardly a tightrope walk, though; it is a simple expression of my genuine brotherly love for both of them.
We speak too in this moment of the church’s witness to the world. Just as there are different opinions on the wisdom of my hugging Joe, there are different opinions on what and how the church should be witnessing, and all of them look to Christian love as their basis. How then shall we live?
By way of Greek, our words witness and martyr are the same. This reminds us that our witness may draw favor from some but attack from others. Our faithful witness of the good news that Jesus has all power and authority requires us to resist the tyranny of worldly opinion. This does not mean that we cannot seek the good opinion of our neighbor as we seek his good, but we rightly order our witness by seeking the good opinion of God first. The church’s faithful witness-martyrdom is a powerful statement of whom or what we fear. Wisdom begins with such properly ordered fear (Proverbs 1, 9). With this fear and wisdom, we receive life; without it, only death (Proverbs 8).
All good parents know that there is a species of chasing after our children’s opinion and even their salvation that will end up losing them rather than gaining them. Likewise, there is a way in which proper Christian care and concern for the world contains within it a kind of loving regard and disregard for the world’s perceived fears and felt needs. We have the gift of knowing the world’s true need, which no focus group would ever discover or approve. This loving disregard actually is an effective witness, because the gospel call is an invitation to join us in a rightly ordered fear. Such fear is truly attractive and compelling because of the joy and peace and freedom from fear that it brings. To the degree we fear the disapproval of the world, we lose our gospel savor.
Thus, in love we might wear a mask to deliver food to our neighbor, and warmly welcome our neighbor to church if he wears a mask or wishes to stand at a distance. We may in no wise despise him. But we also do not fear a bad report in the news if, as the church gathers, there are hugs and handshakes among those who have counted the cost.
The world seeks to obtain justification for its guilty conscience by scapegoating others, including and especially the church. Against this, the church faithfully witnesses that justification can only be found in the one true Scapegoat. This empowers us to laugh together with God at the world’s scheming (Psalm 2) and scapegoating and even martyrdom if it comes. There is a sense in which the church, in union with Jesus, holds the world in derision. We certainly do not fear false accusations that Jesus and his church are lacking in love; we have been brought to know and serve love himself. The world’s loves, as well as its fears, are disordered, and in their greatest extremes are all attempts to hide from God. (Let him who abhors abortion cast the first stone at Christ’s precious, precious body.)
There is a kind of catering to public opinion that will compromise our faithful and prophetic witness. By bowing to public opinion, governments and businesses and even some churches are slowly spinning a rope that fickle public opinion will use to hang them tomorrow. Everything the church says and does is in some sense political; we are the heavenly polis breaking into time and the terminal land. In this polis, the one Scapegoat sits enthroned with all power and authority. All other scapegoating is not only vain but evil. By not fearing or giving way to this scapegoating, we empty it of its power. We defeat it by our laughter and worship and joy and feasting. May we be emboldened by the Spirit to witness in the fear of God alone!
Alive
Yes, and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. (Philippians 1:18b–21 ESV)
The Bible does not assume that you need to be healthy, or even alive, to be happy and to glorify God. . . Death is a temporary trouble. (Michael Stalker)
Sacrifice
This is the problem of Christianity, gentlemen. The whole honor of Christ is that He came when the times were fulfilled. And that is the new element of the Christian religion, compared to all other religions. That in Christianity, the criterion of righteousness is that by one man heeding the catastrophe in time, the catastrophe which is inevitable can be turned from a terrible thing into a blessing. The catastrophe, per se, gentlemen, is just terrible and inevitable. By human sacrifice, the catastrophe which is terrible and inevitable can be turned into a blessing. . . . The Christian problem is to recognize which catastrophe is indispensable, and then to go into it by voluntarily stripping yourself of the privileges of the old order, which make the break so much harder if the privileges still stand up.
Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Comparative Religion, 1954
Good Timber
Douglas Malloch, HT: Michael Foster
The tree that never had to fight
For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
But lived and died a scrubby thing.
The man who never had to toil
To gain and farm his patch of soil,
Who never had to win his share
Of sun and sky and light and air,
Never became a manly man
But lived and died as he began.
Good timber does not grow with ease:
The stronger wind, the stronger trees;
The further sky, the greater length;
The more the storm, the more the strength.
By sun and cold, by rain and snow,
In trees and men good timbers grow.
Where thickest lies the forest growth,
We find the patriarchs of both.
And they hold counsel with the stars
Whose broken branches show the scars
Of many winds and much of strife.
This is the common law of life.
Otherwise
A young man who only asks for painlessness, gentlemen, cannot grow up. To grow up means to have pain. And very heavy pain. There is no other way for life. Have you ever seen a child born? Have you? You should, because then you would know how costly it is to be born, that your mother has a travail. That’s a terrible pain. And that has to be so, because otherwise your life won’t be good.
Life struggles against death, and the heavier, more passionately it struggles, the more life it is. . . . A painless life, gentlemen, is no life. It’s worse than death. Can neither live nor die. (Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Comparative Religion, 1954)
Joyful
Naw, I don’t think life is a tragedy. Tragedy is something that can be explained by the professors. Life is the will of God and this cannot be defined by the professors; for which all thanksgiving. I think it is impossible to live and not to grieve but I am always suspicious of my own grief lest it be self-pity in sheeps [sic] clothing. And the worst thing is to grieve for the wrong reason, for the wrong loss. Altogether it is better to pray than to grieve; and it is greater to be joyful than to grieve. But it takes more grace to be joyful than any but the greatest have. (Flannery O’Connor, Collected Works, quoted in Ralph Wood, Flannery O’Connor and the Christ–Haunted South, 214-215)
I gotta have my orange juice. 
Metábasis eis állo génos (8)
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A week at the beach with cousins:
This afforded some time for Solzhenitsyn:
I haven’t found a video with all three verses, but isn’t this deeply wonderful:
Thanks to Uri Brito for the find. I must say, this is far better than Toto’s version, which unfortunately is making the rounds of my household.
Isn’t it interesting that we love the beginning of Psalm 139 but not so much the end?
Something is out of balance if we struggle to find appropriate objects for this prayer, or, worse, struggle to see it as appropriate at all. Somewhat related, I was reflecting on Ruth this week:
Isn’t it remarkable that conversion and loyalty to God is inseparable from conversion and loyalty to God’s people? Ruth and Naomi remind me as well of of Jacob’s blessing Pharaoh in spite of the few and evil days of his life. Isn’t it equally remarkable that these testimonies of God’s faithfulness and purpose in suffering would result in robust conversion?
Sadly, in days when suffering and sacrifice are rare, a husband is not always a protection against this:
Fascinating: the lost colony was never lost, just not found.
Way too many good tweets this week to do a practical roundup. You should follow: Hans Fiene, Michael Foster, Andrew Isker, Alex Berenson.
If a church sees new visitors during this season of rona, is it really wise to encourage them to return to their original home when it is all over? Why would you encourage someone to return to shepherds who practically abandoned them? Related, I wonder if the church is experiencing a rise in separations and divorces in this year of spiritual distancing. Body must body!
Also related, it seems to me that we have developed today a functional theology of the “real absence” of Jesus at his covenant meal. The Lord’s supper is no longer seen as an entry into the heavenly marriage supper, nor even a joyful and eucharistic foretaste of it. This explains why the supper is often so bland and solemn and infrequent. But it also explains how we have arrived at the conclusion that our own absence at that meal is a matter of little consequence.
Considering also how we arrive at the supper, I’m intrigued by the fact that the Lord’s prayer does not open with an early confession of sin. In fact, its appeal for forgiveness does not even really constitute a confession. Although repentance is a way of life for the Christian, and is liturgically appropriate, repentance is not the fundamental flavor of that festive life.
Speaking of the marriage supper, last week I mentioned Galileo. Considering the book of Revelation, and both our present worship and eternity, it is clear that in the most important sense of the word, the earth is the center of the universe.
Written by Scott Moonen
August 21, 2020 at 9:09 pm
Posted in Commentary, Miscellany, Quotations, Suffering, Union with Christ, Worship