A Few Thoughts on the Penn State Scandal

I can’t say what’s saddened me most about the sex abuse scandal at Penn State: The alleged actions of Jerry Sandusky or the obvious inaction of officials at the university. All that’s come to light in the past week has been a sobering reminder that, as Edmund Burke supposedly said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men to do nothing.”

Something that puzzled me about this whole situation was how surprised everyone seemed that someone like Joe Paterno could screw up so badly. Although it should certainly sadden us, sin should not surprise believers; for all of us are “so corrupt that we are totally unable to do any good and are prone to do all evil” (Heidelberg Catechism, Question 8). We are all, as Melville said, “dreadfully cracked about the head and desperately in need of mending.” No person can outgrow his or her need for grace. And no amount of good deeds can make us good. God alone is the molder of men: “It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30).

Another thing that stood out to me was how certain many of the commentators were that they would have handled the situation much more appropriately had they been in JoePa’s shoes. Attribution theory in social psychology shoots a lot of holes in self-serving statements like these; but suffice it to say that we are often much more optimistic than realistic about our own moral capabilities. As much as I would like to say for sure that I would have done things differently if I were Paterno, I’m not naive enough to think that I’m incapable of even greater evil than his sin of omission. “[My] heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9a). And so, as they say in recovery, “There but for the grace go I.” And sometimes, even despite of the grace of God go I.

President Obama is right. This scandal should move us to do some real “soul searching.” We should pray, like David, that God would search our souls “… and see if there be any grievous way in [us], and lead [us] in the way everlasting (Ps. 139).

On Child Abuse Reporting

It’s important for everyone to understand a couple things about child abuse reporting. First, the primary purpose for reporting suspected child abuse is protective, not punitive. It’s intended mainly to keep kids safe, not to punish those who endanger them, though punishment necessarily follows. Second, simply suspecting that a child might have been abused in some way is reason enough to file a report. The consequences of a mistaken report are far less than those of abuse that’s never reported, as was seen in the mess at Penn State. Go here to find out about the reporting laws and procedures in your state.

Christian Fellowship

Our Sunday school class has devoted the month of November to reflecting on relationships and how the gospel restores our fellowship with God and each other. Here are the notes from Week 1, A Few Marks of Distinctively Christian Fellowship.

And here are a few resources for further study that deal with Christian fellowship in particular and/or the nature of the church in general:

• Life Together by Bonhoeffer
• Becoming a True Spiritual Community by Crabb
• The Wisdom of Each Other by Peterson
• The Church by Clowney
• Nine Marks of a Healthy Church by Dever
• Stop Dating the Church! by Harris
• Vintage Church by Driscoll & Breshears

A Little Halloween Humor

Classic Horror and the Christian Gospel

This Halloween Turner Classic Movies aired a special documentary that featured acclaimed author Stephen King commenting on the horror films that have influenced his work the most. What really impressed me about King was the extent to which he appealed to morality in his analysis of the horror genre. Good horror stories, he said, are moral. They resonate with our moral sentiment–our sense of good and evil, right and wrong, and impulse toward justice. They compel us to look away when blood spills and hope for an ending that finds the villain–vampire, zombie, demon, or ghost–destroyed by a hero.

King was very critical of the slasher films that capitalize on gore at the expense of substantive story and likened these types of films to pornography. He also called out filmmakers who objectify women by failing to even attempt any kind of character development. In a lot of these films, women are little more than embodied targets for sexual and physical violence. King said that there’s a problem–specifically, a moral problem–if the draw of horror films becomes the amount of explicit content rather than the ability of the story to reflect the terrible reality of evil as well as the hope of a ending which sees evil overcome by good.

By capturing our imagination in a way that fills us with fear as well as a sense of hope, horror films might actually help us to cope with real-life horror. As Steven D. Greydanus wrote, “The simple fact is that we occupy a fallen world, and stories that reflect this reality in imaginatively compelling ways help us with the business of living in it.” He then went on to quote a passage from King’s book Danse Macabre:

Horror movies do not love death, as some have suggested; they love life. They do not celebrate deformity, but by dwelling on deformity they sing of health and energy. By showing us the miseries of the damned they help us rediscover the smaller joys of our own lives. They are the barber’s leeches of the psyche, drawing not bad blood but anxiety … for a little while anyway.

This is essentially the same point that Alasdair MacIntyre made in talking about children’s fairy tales that often contain particularly dark elements. He wrote in After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory that,

It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children, good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world and eldest sons who waste their inheritance on riotous living and go into exile to live with the swine that children learn or mislearn both what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the drama into which they have been born and what the ways of the world are. Deprive children of stories and you leave them unscripted, anxious stutterers in their actions as in their words.

Life may indeed be stranger than fiction, but fiction can help us come to terms with that strangeness–scary as it may be at times. Even the horror genre, in as much as it honestly reflects life, can help us see something of God’s redemptive work in the world; for all horror–even death itself has been “swallowed up in victory … through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:54c, 57b).

 

 

God Moves in a Mysterious Way

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds you so much dread,
Are big with mercy and will break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs
And works his sovereign will.

Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan his work in vain;
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.

–William Cowper

John of the Cross and Dark Night of the Soul

“Suffering is not a question that demands a answer. It is not a problem that demands a solution. It is a mystery that demands a presence.” John Wyatt, Matters of Life & Death

In his exposition of the life and writing of St. John of the Cross, Fr. Iain Matthew presents a rich theology that describes the way in which God revealed himself to John in an unexpected way. All that John had known of God, by way of his written Word, was galvanized by his encounter with God, through his Incarnate Word, in the midst of a very dark season of life. John’s suffering, especially his horrific imprisonment in Toledo, was redemptive in that it created space in John’s heart for Christ to fill with his presence. It stripped away all of John’s preconceived notions about how God blesses his people and led him to rediscover his Savior as a blessed gift in himself.Realizing that God continued to initiate contact with him, even if his divine movement could not be felt, was a resurrection reality that gave John hope in the midst of an unsettling experience. But John did not view hope as a kind of theological construct. Rather, hope was the product of his union with God. It was relational. He even went so far as to describe belief in the gospel—the basis for Christian hope—as a personal encounter in which Jesus’ eyes meet another’s.

Only within the context of relationship was John able to see and respond to the mysterious blessing of his dark night. In that darkness, when John relinquished control of his life, he was able to more fully open his heart to God’s. All of the wounds that afflicted his soul became “spaces through which grace [could] enter” (p. 57). Although God could have easily turned John’s dark night into a bright day, he instead chose to do a deeper work. Rather than realigning temporal circumstances in such a way as to put an end to John’s suffering, God entered into it alongside him and was present with him in the midst of it, consoling him both immanently as a sympathetic companion and transcendentally as holy Lord.

During his dark night, aside from his fellowship with God, John lost all the security and comforts he previously knew. His self-sufficiency was obliterated. No longer surrounded by the trappings of the gospel that vied for his trust, he was swept up by the gospel itself and brought more fully into holy friendship with the Father, Son, and Spirit. Ironically, it was when he felt most forsaken by God that he was actually closest to him. John’s dark night was an expression of God’s grace because it was part of his divine work to cultivate relational intimacy, gospel gratitude, and resurrection hope in his beloved child. It was a grace that John was better able to apprehend in prayerful contemplation than comprehend in careful study.

John was led to the end of himself in order to encounter Christ who alone satisfies every longing of the human heart. And following in the example of Christ, John experienced God’s greatest love in the season of his greatest need. It was in darkness that John’s dependence on God was most evident. And it was in faith that John responded to the Spirit’s initiative and put his trust in the One who not only “shared the night” (p. 152), but overcame it on Easter morning.

Perhaps the thing that struck me most while reading about St. John was his awareness of Christ as gift. He knew Jesus himself to be the prize of faith and therefore his union with Christ was of preeminent importance. He was more attuned to fellowship with the King than access to his kingdom. He was careful not to raise the blessings of Christ above the blessing that is Christ. And this explains why, on his deathbed, John asked for passages from the Song of Songs to be read. No other book in Bible captures the relational intimacy along with the mystery of the gospel quite like this one. It’s clear that John was eagerly anticipating the words he knew he would soon hear: the passionate call of a bridegroom calling his beloved home.

Drug Use in American Culture

Here’s the truth about drug use in our culture:

“People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.”

–Wendell Berry, “Racism and the Economy” in The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry

 

The Good Old Days & the Good Days to Come

In 1719 Isaac Watts wrote a hymn called “Blest is the Man Whose Bowels Move.”

Blessed, indeed!

But Watts, of course, was referring to the person who was moved by compassion upon seeing others in need. But because of the unfortunate double-meaning of the song’s title, it was later changed to “Blest Be the Man Whose Heart is Moved.” This was probably a wise editorial move. I can only imagine a typical congregation’s response to hearing anything that resembles potty-talk being belted out from the choir on an otherwise sleepy Sunday morning. I remember the contagious grins that would spread across the faces of my friends in children’s church whenever we sang about “asses” at Christmas time. Yes, I think Watts would approve of the change; after all, if he knew the kind of connotation his hymn would have nowadays he’d be rolling over in his nonconformist grave in Bunhill Fields.

Meanings of words change over time. I was reminded of this the other day when I heard Tim McGraw reminisce on the radio about “Back when a hoe was a hoe/Coke was a coke/And crack’s what you were doing when you were cracking jokes” and how much he misses those times. This nostalgic longing for the past–for the so called “good old days”–is a very familiar theme in country music.

 

But what makes the good old days so good? Were they really that much better than these days? Jay Kesler, President Emeritus of Taylor University, always said that “What makes the ‘good old days’ so good is a bad memory.” Or maybe it’s a selective memory. Many seem to find it easy to remember the wholesome societal values of the 1950s, but forget that “separate but equal” was a part of that same value system until the middle part of the decade. If we had left it to Beaver, African Americans may still have to sit at the back of the bus.

Why does nostalgia capture us like it does–even to the extent that we resort to imaginative optimism when we look into the rear-view mirror of life? Were those bygone days really any better than today? Or do we just hope so? Russel Moore wrote that, “Our warm memories, of times we have known or of times we wish we’d known, point us to a deep longing within us for a world made right.”

Our world today isn’t much different than it was 60, 600, or 6000 years ago. Whether the wheel, the printing press, or the iPad, we keep inventing things. Whether the Peloponnesian, Revolutionary, or Vietnam, we keep on having big wars. Whether bowels being moved or screws being screws, language will continue to mutate–for better or worse. Although the times may be a-changin’ to some, to me, they seem to be staying pretty much the same.

But realizing this shouldn’t necessarily diminish those feelings of nostalgia we feel for times gone by. Nostalgia is good for us–not to point us toward our past; but rather, to point us toward our future. In our culture of cynicism and negativity, nostalgia can help us believe in a hope-filled future–for “a world made right” and for a world that actually is much better than anything that came before. We have this sense of heaven built into us; it just seems that we keep looking in the wrong direction for it to come to us here on earth.

Isaac Watts’ heart was moved by the thought of heaven. The last two stanzas in his hymn speak more about the man whose heart is blessed. They go like this:

His soul shall live secure on earth,
With secret blessings on his head,
When drought, and pestilence, and dearth
Around him multiply their dead.

Or if he languish on his couch,
God will pronounce his sins forgiven;
Will save him with a healing touch,
Or take his willing soul to heaven.

Update

For a great example of the illusion of nostalgia, check out Woody Allen’s most recent film Midnight in Paris.

 

A Word for Christian Teachers

Well, it’s that time of year again. As teachers head back to school, they’d do well to take the words of Richard Baxter to heart:

“Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator: single letters, and syllables uncomposed, are no better than nonsense. He who overlooketh him who is the ‘Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,’ and seeth not him in all who is the All of all, doth see nothing at all. All creatures, as such, are broken syllables; they signify nothing as separated from God. Were they separated actually, they would cease to be, and the separation would be annhiliation; and when we separate them in our fancies, we make nothing of them to ourselves. It is one thing to know the creatures as Aristotle, and another thing to know them as a Christian. None but a Christian can read one line of his Physics so as to understand it rightly. It is a high and excellent study, and of greater use than many apprehend; but it is the smallest part of it that Aristotle can teach us.

Again, therefore, I address myself to all who have the charge of the education of youth … You, that are schoolmasters and tutors, begin and end with the things of God. Speak daily to the hearts of your scholars those things that must be wrought into their hearts, or else they are undone. Let some piercing words fall frequently from your mouths, of God, and the state of their souls, and the life to come.”

Last year around back-to-school time I quoted John Wesley and proposed a kind of pre-test for Christian teachers.

 

 

 

A Wedding Sermon

Congratulations to Bucky and Karen McLean! They’re two friends of mine from Taylor who tied the knot yesterday in a beautiful, but humid, evening ceremony in South Carolina. I had the special privilege of presiding over their wedding. Given the temperature, and that I was wearing a suit coat, I tried to keep my comments brief.

The Scripture reading was from 1 John 4:7-19:

⁷Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, andwhoever loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸Anyone who does not love does not know God, becauseGod is love. ⁹In this the love of God was made manifest among us, thatGod sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. ¹⁰In this is love,not that we have loved Godbut that he loved us and sent his Son to bethe propitiation for our sins. ¹¹Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹²No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us andhis love is perfected in us.

¹³By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴Andwe have seen and testify thatthe Father has sent his Son to be the Savior ofthe world. ¹⁵Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. ¹⁶Sowe have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. ¹⁷By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, becauseas he is so also are we in this world. ¹⁸There is no fear in love, butperfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has notbeen perfected in love. ¹⁹We love because he first loved us.

Here’s what I said:

Darren and Karen, you’ve chosen a wonderful passage of Scripture to mark your wedding day. These verses from 1 John are, to my mind, some of the most beautiful in the entire Bible. As a friend who cares for both of you, I’m grateful to God and deeply encouraged that you see clearly and understand fully that his love is the foundation for yours and that only by abiding in him will you be able to love each other in the way that he wills.

I’ve known you both for a while now and have fond memories of times we’ve spent together: With Darren, I think of all-night movie marathons, surprise visits to my dorm room for coffee or Ale-8-One, and that crazy trip we took to Detroit to see the Red Sox play; With Karen, I can’t help but think of our Introduction to Spanish class and how much we hated that class and how the only reason I went a lot of days was because I knew that you’d be there too and we’d endure it together. I’ve come to know you both as fun, creative, thoughtful, and very caring people. And seeing you come together in this way will no doubt stand out as my fondest memory of all our times together.

In John’s letter, part of which was just read, the disciple also remembers fondly when God’s love was most clearly revealed to the world: In and through the work of Christ. “In this is love,” John says, “[That] God sent his Son into the world so that we might live through him.” Again, the disciple states: “In this is love …That [God] loved us and sent his son to [stand in judgment in our place]” so that our relationship with God could be made right.

Here we learn that Christ’s coming into the world and his sacrifice to bring about the redemption of the world was motivated out of love. And, in turn, our love and our sacrifice for each other is how we respond to and carry-on that very same love. That’s how we participate in God’s love and even, as John says, “perfect it.”

This is how the two of you will extend the love of God to each other as you live life together as husband and wife. Following in the way of Christ—“walking as he walked”—when you sacrifice for each other you live out your redemption. In this way, your marriage won’t simply be your “love story” but rather, it will be God’s “gospel story” put on display by your sacrificial love for one another.

Although, as John says, “No one has ever seen God” we realize that when you love one another sacrificially you make the invisible God visible.  When you consider the needs of each other before your own, when you forgive one another, when you exchange a hug instead of a harsh word—your marriage will serve like a mirror to the very heart of God, reflecting his character; for God is love.

And because of your confession of faith in him through Christ, you’ve been born of God and have his spirit in you to help you and provide you with assurance that you are his—individually and, now, as a married, on-flesh couple. Together, you’re called to live out your faith and display this Spirit-led love on a daily basis.

This passage tells us that the reason we’re here tonight celebrating the love you have for one another is because of God. It’s because of him—and only because of him—that you are able to look one another in the eye and promise to love each other no matter what; it’s because that’s the same promise God has made to you and to all of us: “I’ll love you no matter what.”And the only reason that the two of you can say to each other, “I’ll love you sacrificially” is because God loved us enough to sacrifice his son so that you and all of us could be reconciled to him and to each other.

That you are loved by God and have put your faith in Christ is what allows you to love each other with a love that never fails—a love that bears, believes, hopes, and endures all things. This kind of love isn’t something that we generate ourselves; it’s something that we receive from God alone and then extend to those he’s placed in our lives.

Darren and Karen, God has placed you in each other’s lives for these reasons: to love each other without condition, hesitation, or limit; to sacrifice and to serve; to forgive as you’ve been forgiven, to extend the grace that’s been extended to you, to perfect the love of God in Christ.

Align your heats to abide in the Lord, open yourselves to receive his love, and empty yourselves in giving that love to one another. In doing this, you will perfect the love of God and faithfully live out your calling as children of God, and as husband and wife.