Above The Line (of Despair)

Sudan field report: 'I do envy the fullness of their faith as a result of their suffering'

Last year I posted a missions report from Africa written by my good friend Lauren D'Avolio. Lauren and I both have been involved in Gegrapha, a fellowship of Christian journalists who work in the secular media. Lauren recently returned from another Africa trip -- Sudan, this time -- and has some edifying and challenging insights to share. This is her report. Enjoy. -- Huntley Paton

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I returned from Sudan in mid-June and have spent the past five weeks sifting through my experience. My conclusion: Many Sudanese people are blessed beyond measure in very unexpected ways. Through my time in Africa - including the weeks I helped run a Bible camp for AIDS orphans and other vulnerable children in Zambia last year - God has given me an inner peace so unshakable that it makes much of the rest of my life seem tedious and shallow.

To recap our Sudan trip: Ten other members of my church and I worked with an indigenous Sudanese church, the head of which is Bishop Elias Taban. Since Sudan’s peace treaty was signed in 2005, which effectively ended its 21-year civil war in northern and southern Sudan, he and his Evangelical Presbyterian Church have opened the two orphanages where we Americans volunteered.

Each orphanage is home to about 100 kids and employs a dozen African widows, all of whom have lost their families to waterborne illness, civil war, genocide or AIDS. Most everyone we met was a professing follower of Christ, but we took the chances we had to share the Gospel – the creation of the world, sin’s entrance and Christ’s birth, death and resurrection so that all who believe and repent would inherit the Kingdom. We cooked, cleaned and played with the kids. We also pampered the widows with pedicures, but mainly did so because Jesus instructed Christians to wash others’ feet, literally and figuratively.

It was this experience that forced me to once again confront my own inherently sinful nature and depravity in light of God’s grace and forgiveness. I didn’t understand much of my self-righteousness until I physically made myself lower than a Sudanese widow. Sadly, I realized I thought I was better than she was. I’m grateful God mercifully opened my eyes to this prideful attitude.

On the indescribably bumpy dirt roads, we passed patrols from the Ugandan military on tanks with four mounted machine guns apiece and Sudanese People’s Liberation Army soldiers, who helped liberate the south in 2005. They’re keeping the southern Sudanese safe from rebels such as the Lord’s Resistance Army, or the LRA, who still routinely attack and kill civilians.

Our group drove over and near stretches of dirt road that double as tops of mass graves. Locals know when they’ve been worn thin because bits of clothing and bone begin sticking through. We saw bombed out shells of abandoned tanks and huge craters in the earth created by land mines. The north planted land mines throughout the south during the war, many of which are still being found. Main roads are clear, but the United Nations is actively clearing minefields alongside them. At the first orphanage, we met a sweet young man, John, who lost his legs and lips to a land mine. His family disowned him shortly thereafter, telling him he was too ugly for them to keep around.

At the orphanage that day, I had a mind-blowing conversation with a man named Robert, who said he’d been able to forgive the north for the decades of genocide and war. But how?

“We are Christians. We read the Bible and we forgive.”

That left me wondering, “Are we reading the same Bible?”

If they knew the kinds of trivial things with which I’ve burdened myself, it would never compute.

During our time at the second orphanage, the kids prepared a song for us that cites a parable Jesus told at the end of the Gospel of Matthew. He says, in part, “What you have done for the least of my brothers you have done for me.” It was a profound and crushing moment, when I realized that, no matter how much I wanted to believe those Sudanese orphans and widows were the least of us all, it was the Americans who were “the least.” Let me explain.

Since I arrived in Sudan, I’ve struggled with the notion of suffering; why God allows it, what purpose it serves. There was even a pub in the center of the city where we stayed, Yei, named “Sufferers’ Tavern.” These are people who know how hard they have it.

Jesus promises in the Sermon on the Mount that those who mourn will be comforted, the hungry will be filled, the pure will see God. Grief in Zambia and Sudan is overwhelming, but I cling to God’s promise that those who mourn will find comfort. I often shortchange the incredible power of God’s Word, which resonates with the destitute in Sudan just as it does in American or Zambia or anywhere else. I trust that God is molding something good and holy out of a world that includes suffering on a massive scale in Africa. In fact, the book of Hebrews says Jesus learned how to help those who suffered because of how he suffered. Hebrews also tells us Christ was made perfect through suffering. The book of James insists we count it all joy when we encounter trials, because it produces perseverance and mature faith.

For all the agony the Sudanese endure, many of them are rich in faith because of their suffering. While I do not envy the tragic and heartbreaking lives many of them have led, I do envy the fullness of their faith as a result of their suffering. That’s the kind of wealth that matters.

During our two-day layover in Uganda at the end of our trip, we visited a huge, beautiful mosque. It was built by Muammar al-Gaddafi, Libya's leader. Yours truly donned a hijab, wrap-around skirt and bare feet as we toured. God gave me the opportunity to learn a lot about Islam and the Qur’an on this trip, and even to share the Gospel with a few Muslims. It was a powerful time of God, which led me to buy and study the Qur’an in Dallas.

Some of the people who love me most in this world have told me, in no uncertain terms, that they believe I’m a religious fundamentalist who’s been indoctrinated by the Bible Belt. They say this no matter of how many times I tell them I was converted from atheism during my junior year of college Upstate New York. I loved Jesus – and Country music – long before I moved to Texas. (They’re both in Upstate New York, in case you’ve never been.) The Gospel has become the lens through which I see the world – sometimes at the expense of important relationships and the way I’m viewed socially. I’m OK with that. We all have the same need for forgiveness. We all will have a day of reckoning. We all have the same God-shaped void that will never be filled by anything else, no matter how hard we try.

Every believer in Christ -- or potential believer -- has been offered eternal life and infinite joy. For some, that joy on Earth is counterintuitively found in the absence of showers, proper nutrition and decent nights’ sleep. Christians endure some hardships because we know this life is transient, and eternal life is just that – eternal. Christ came so that we could have life, and life more abundantly. He came so we would pursue God and not our temporal selves by helping the poor, the needy and the hurting in every nation on Earth. Praise God that he doesn’t need us to do his work, but that all believers, from Sudan to Zambia to America and beyond, are more than conquerors through him who loves us.

Best to you and yours,
Lauren

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Julie Lyons' "Holy Roller" documents the transforming power of the Gospel

 A few years back, I was pondering leaving the newspaper biz, no longer sure it was where I should be. Then, by Grace, I found a group called Gegrapha, which is a fellowship of Christian journalists who work in the secular media. The group helped me realize that God places his people where he pleases, and that he has his remnant in the media, even if they feel alone much of the time. This perspective turned things around for me on many levels. The group holds to the Nicene Creed as its statement of faith, which is exacting enough to insist on orthodoxy yet broad enough to include serious Christians from many denominations. Oftentimes our differences are significant, but as a Gegrapha member, I have enjoyed real fellowship with Christ-worshiping Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Pentecostals, etc. Some of the most intelligent, fascinating Christians I know I have met through Gegrapha.

One of them is Julie Lyons. Julie was the long-time editor of the Dallas Observer, the alternative weekly owned by Village Voice Media. When I say that God has a remnant in even the most secular elements of media, Julie is exhibit A. I was surprised to learn that the top journalist at the Observer was a committed Christian. The Observer is popular for its arts coverage and conducts some outstanding investigative journalism, but it is not exactly the Saturday Evening Post. 

Julie impressed me right away for the depth, seriousness and maturity of her faith.  As I got to know her better at Gegrapha meetings, I became very grateful for her passionate eloquence concerning the transforming power of the Gospel and her insistence that Christianity was not merely intellectual agreement with God, but the radical changing of one's entire life and character by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Tim Keller's 'Prodigal God' sharpens perspective on the 'reckless extravagance' of the Gospel

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Tim Keller, the brilliant and brainy pastor from Manhattan (all good things!), has a new book out entitled, "The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith." It's a short book -- a one- or two-sitting read -- and is more like a superb sermon than a book, if you get right down to it.

"Prodigal God" is full of "aha" moments, but it really achieves two critical things:

1. It offers the truth about our character
2. It offers the truth about God's character

Catholics sever ties to ACORN

There is a big story breaking today that the long-standing, big-money relationship between the Catholic Church and ACORN, the scandal-ridden left-wing community-organization group, may be over. The Catholics donated well over $7 million to ACORN in recent years, according to news reports. Read more here and here.

Now an embezzlement scandal and concerns over improper election activities by ACORN have caused the Catholic Church to wake up and stop funding corruption. This is fabulous news. -- Huntley Paton Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

'The Happening' -- pagan horror for the Al Gore Age

M. Night Shyamalan's film "The Happening" is a perfect horror movie for the Al Gore Age -- hysterical, implausible and shot through with a debased view of humanity. And it presents an excellent opportunity for Christians to discuss God's redemptive plan for people and nature alike.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Shayamalan, who also made "The Sixth Sense" and "The Village," among others movies, is regarded by some as the new Alfred Hitchcock. As one of the world's leading filmmakers, his work reflects and/or influences the modern culture.

The plot of "The Happening," while presented with skillful mystery, is straightforward: The earth, or more specifically, plants, have had it with people. So they release a toxin that makes people commit suicide.

Why would plants do this? "We are a threat to this planet!" one character scolds. Ah, of course. Plants do this because we deserve it.

Jesus Christ will not grow tired

 

Are you worn out? No one could blame you. The world is being turned upside down right now, with the financial meltdown, bankruptcies, reorganizations, layoffs, and bigger workloads for those left behind. Even without that turmoil, burnout is a threat. Being a Christian seems to offer no immunity: Our energy wanes, our enthusiasm evaporates, our anxiety percolates. Our creativity is shot. We get depressed.

 

It can be tough for anyone to admit to feelings of depression. Christians are supposed to be joyful, and we feel guilty when we aren’t. But the truth is, sometimes we’re tapped out, and we dread tomorrow.

 

The late D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, who was minister at Westminster Chapel in

England, became so concerned about downcast believers that he once preached on it 26 consecutive Sundays. Those sermons later were compiled in the 1964 classic book, “Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cure.”

 

Lloyd-Jones said the “greatest need of the hour is a revived and joyful Church,” and he believed that  “unhappy Christians are, to say the least, a poor recommendation for the Christian faith and there can be little doubt but that the exuberant joy of the early Christians was one of the most potent factors in the spread of Christianity.”

Food for thought before the 08 elections

"If we are not governed by God, then we will be ruled by tyrants."

-- William Penn 

"A republic once equally poised must either preserve its virtue or lose its liberty."

-- John Witherspoon, Presbyterian pastor, president of Princeton, signer of the Declaration of Independence

"We are Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity."

-- James Kent, New York Supreme Court Justice, in an official court ruling, 1811

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"I propose that secularism militates against religious liberty, and indeed against personal freedoms generally, for two reasons: first, the familiar fact that secularism does not recognize the existence of the "higher law"; second, because, that being so, secularism tends toward decisions based on the  pragmatic public policy of the moment and inevitably tends to resist the submitting of these policies to the "higher" criteria of a constitution."

-- William Bentley Ball, constitutional lawyer and author of Mere Creatures of the State-A View from the Courtroom and In Search of a National Morality

Wall Street, derivatives and the most absurd 'leap of faith'

The phrase "leap of faith" is one that typically is applied to religious people in general and Christians in particular. The idea is that people sometimes choose to believe in a god, or that Jesus was raised from the dead, or what have you, even though it's not very rational to believe it. This is even touted as a virtue in some Christian circles, as if the willingness to ignore reality is something Christ commands of us.

The truth is that all of reality is God's reality. In fact, as John 1 makes plain, God invented reality. Belief in Him and His word is logical and rational. To deny Him is illogical, a "leap of faith" into the abyss.

People, however, do take all sorts of irrational leaps of faith. And it looks like our global economy may be based on the most absurd one ever. It is called the derivatives market.

The damning of Mr. Arbitrage

Life would be simpler if everyone on Wall Street was a cartoonish, soulless monster like Gordon Gekko -- then we could comfortably blame them for everything. Wall Street has indeed placed our economy in a precarious position. But people on Wall Street are real flesh-and-blood creations of God, and even if we regard them as enemies, or especially if we do, Christ calls us to a particular response: Pray for them.

With the financial markets falling down around our ears last week, and the federal government scrambling to provide a massive Wall Street bailout this week, the new "most hated" people in America, the new "Them," are The Wall Street Fat Cats.

The rips are coming from the Right (presidential nominee John McCain) and the Left (the Huffington Post) and everywhere in between, and the message is pretty much the same: Wall Street is full of bad guys who are destroying America.

Leaving alone for now what or who is really to blame for the financial meltdown -- and it's a long list that includes mortgage lenders, home buyers, politicians, bankers, investment bankers, etc. (and sure, a lot of them do work on Wall Street) -- it's unnerving to see an entire class of people demonized.

The redemption of Mike Farris

Today in Huntersville, N.C., I had the privilege of hearing the music and testimony of Mike Farris, one of this country's great blues-rock musicians. Farris played at all three morning services at Lake Forest Church, where my wife and I have attended since moving to North Carolina late last year.

Farris has an incredible story -- coming from a broken home, he became addicted to drugs at an early age, was thrown out of high school and ended up homeless. Hitting rock bottom with a near-fatal overdose at 21, he gave his life to Christ, then moved in with his father for a while. Up to that point, Farris said, he had never played, or tried to play, music, but his father "had a guitar sitting in the corner" and the youngster discovered he had a natural gift. Within months, he was writing songs and landed a record deal.

The message of Jesus Christ: "Nikokwanda!"

Few institutions in our society are as hard-bitten and skeptical as the journalism profession, something I can attest to personally after working 22 years (so far) in the field.

But Jesus Christ is doing wondrous things in and through believing journalists all over the world. One outstanding organization, Gegrapha, is a fellowship of Christian journalists who happen to work in the secular media.

In recent years, I have made numerous dear friends through my association with Gegrapha, and one of them is Lauren D'Avolio, a young reporter from Buffalo, N.Y., who now resides in Texas. Lauren just returned from a mission trip to Zambia, and it has been life-changing for her. In an email exchange last week, Lauren told me, "The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is add seven hours and ponder what the people I came to love there might be doing. I can't concentrate on anything other than them. It's all-consuming. People told me this would wear off, but it's still as vivid today as it was three weeks ago."

Water balloons and God

It’s only meant to sell soda water. But it showcases the power and beauty of God’s creative touch.

This 90-second Schweppes commercial (with a wonderful, mood-setting soundtrack from the band Cinematic Orchestra) features various shots of exploding water balloons, filmed in extreme slow motion. It literally allows you to “see” with new eyes, in detail you would never otherwise discern or appreciate.

This beautiful piece of film is a visual version of the “stop-and-smell-the-roses” principle. That is, the people in the commercial are enjoying simple pleasures, and we are slowing down (literally) to appreciate it.

Just look at how things move, how they look, in ways we don’t typically notice. Look at the faces and the light. Think about molecules, where they come from, how they behave, how gravity behaves, how people at play behave.

Think about time, how it flies by, how it never comes back, how you wish you could slow it down sometimes.

Look at the motion and, just as powerfully, the things that don’t move at all: A water balloon explodes high in the treeline of a thick forest while a man jumps in the air for joy. The water explodes slowly, the man, in midair, seems barely to move at all, and the massive trunks of God’s trees most assuredly do not move one bit.

I like the joy and satisfaction on all the faces. Watch a few times and see how marvelous a creator God is – look at those faces, young and old, wry and serene, exuberant and utterly unique. He crafted every one of those faces, every hand, every toe. No two alike.

The Apostle Paul wrote that “what can be known about God is evident … From the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen … through what He has made.” But sometimes we just aren’t very observant.

These marvelous things – people, water, physics, energy, emotion -- are not cosmic accidents. Life isn’t brute chance. The theologian R.C. Sproul has famously said that “if there is one maverick molecule, it would mean that God is not sovereign. If God is not sovereign, then God is not God.”

This Schweppes commercial shows me that God not only controls every molecule, he makes them dance.

-- Huntley Paton

 

Grit and Grace: Can Lucinda Williams get an Amen?

One in a series on popular music’s inevitable collision with the Gospel

If contemporary-worship churches were really on the ball, they’d have Lucinda Williams in heavy rotation on Sundays.
The 55-year-old Williams, a Louisiana-born alt-country singer with a beautifully scratchy, worldly voice, will never be confused with Point of Grace, and she is more likely to croon about a “Drunken Angel” than the heavenly kind. But being Southern, she knows how to take it to church, so to speak, with raw gospel-style tunes that confess sin, ask searing questions and portray real spiritual yearning.
“I would risk the serpent's bite,” she sang a few years back, “I would dance around with seven/I would kiss the diamond back/If I knew it would get me to heaven/'Cause I want to get right with God/Yes, you know you got to get right with God.”
The gospel according to Lucinda always yearns, but never finds. So it’s not Gospel music in the true sense, because it doesn’t exalt Christ, and it doesn’t understand grace. It doesn’t tell the Good News.
But Williams is devastatingly good at describing the God-shaped hole in her heart, and that perspective would play well on Sundays anywhere Christ is worshipped.
On the song “Unsuffer Me,” from her latest album, West, Williams gives an agonized cry for a savior.
“Come into my world/of loneliness/and wickedness/and bitterness,” she sings at a dirge’s pace, blues riffs screeching behind her.
Maybe you can’t imagine your congregation singing those words, but why not?
I love modern music and have no problem with churches embracing that style. Unfortunately, so many of the “praise songs” we hear are syrupy, theologically lightweight tunes that essentially portray Jesus as boyfriend.
Let’s get real. The Gospel is raw, powerful, a bloody cross, an offense. Our need for Christ is urgent business, isn’t it?
Well, then, short of the scriptures themselves, you won’t hear anyone express it better than this:
“Unsuffer me,” Williams sings with heart-rending sincerity. “Take away the pain/Unbruise/Unbloody/Wash away the stain/Anoint my head/With your sweet kiss/My joy is dead/I long for bliss/I long for knowledge/Whisper in my ear/Undo my logic, undo my fear/Unsuffer me.”
Wow, talk about the sinner’s prayer.
Of course, the song doesn’t mention Jesus, but who else could respond to such a crying out? No one.
Indeed, Williams herself seems to understand that no human can do for her what she asks in “Unsuffer Me.” On the same album, another haunting tune called “Rescue” broods on the limitations of earthly relationships:
“He can't rescue you/Can't pull the demons from your head/ …He can't protect you
From the powers that will be/The hours of insanity/ …He can't carry you/Past the door of every danger/Every foe and every stranger/ …He can't save you/From the plain and simple truth/The waning winters of your youth/ …He can't fix you/Your tears will always leave their mark/From fears that stay inside the dark/ …What can he do/But tie some ribbons in your hair/And show you that he'll always care/That’s all he can do.”
As Christians, we know Christ is our rescuer. He protects us, saves us, fixes us. So our hearts, and most of our music, should be full of joy and praise for what He has done. But on more than one occasion, the Bible describes the beneficiaries of God's grace as “burning sticks, snatched from fire.”
That illustrates how helpless, how powerless we are to save ourselves. The graphic illustration of the burning stick also reminds that the unsaved life is, in essence, agony. “Unsuffer Me“ is the sound of a tender conscience in agony. I wish all contemporary Christian songs were as authentic.

-- Huntley Paton

Thanksgiving: Reverential, or Merely Presidential?

In late 1777, when the outcome of the Revolutionary War was anything but certain, the U.S. Continental Congress publicly proclaimed that there was an “indispensable duty of all men.” What was that duty? Was it to pursue liberty? Oppose British oppression? Join the Continental Army?

No, the “indispensable duty” was “to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God.” So stated the U.S. government’s first-ever Thanksgiving proclamation.

And our founding fathers were just getting warmed up. In that same document, they urged all Americans to “join the penitent confession of their manifold sins, whereby they had forfeited every favor; and their humble and earnest supplication that it may please God through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance …” Congress also beseeched Americans to pray for “righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.”
That very first proclamation was the high-water mark for Christianity in American government in that it was the only official act of Congress I know of that explicitly proclaimed each Person of the Trinity by name.
The history of American Thanksgiving proclamations is interesting. The Continental Congress issued one eight years in a row during the war, but then no proclamations were made for four years until George Washington issued his famous 1789 proclamation. He wrote only one more during his two terms.  John Adams wrote two, but Thomas Jefferson wrote none, and the tradition died until James Madison revived it during the War of 1812.
Indeed, presidents in peacetime seemed to have little use for Thanksgiving proclamations. After 1815, not a one was issued, until Lincoln penned one in 1862 as the Civil War raged. Lincoln actually wrote TWO Thanksgiving proclamations in 1863, and their darkly poetic strains are, in some respects, every bit as memorable as his Gettysburg Address, written that same year.
After Lincoln, the Thanksgiving proclamation became a tradition in war or peace, and no president has skipped the duty since. Some are great. Washington and Lincoln’s proclamations were drenched with God talk and Christian overtones, and even Andrew Johnson urged Americans to “make confession of our national sins.” (Man, no wonder they impeached him.)
Wartime proclamations are especially good – Woodrow Wilson pondered World War I and urged, “let us pray Almighty God that in all humbleness of spirit we may look always to Him for guidance.” FDR, approaching the one-year anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, used his 1942 proclamation to cite the entire 23rd Psalm and “solemnly express our dependence upon Almighty God.” And George W. Bush, less than two months after 9/11, issued a long, God-centered proclamation that concluded, “May Almighty God, who is our refuge and our strength in this time of trouble, watch over our homeland, protect us, and grant us patience, resolve, and wisdom in all that is to come.”

Generally, though, since World War II, proclamations have become more secular, focusing on the virtues of freedom, diversity and material wealth. The annual message from the Commander in Chief is as much a part of Thanksgiving as the Macy’s parade – and just as trivial, in some cases.
Thanksgiving, in the pens of modern presidents of both parties, has become primarily the Tradition of Thanksgiving, relying time and again on a hackneyed retelling of the Pilgrims’ first feast, without ever mentioning their fierce passion for Christ, which had caused them cross the ocean in the first place. (For a far-better retelling of that tale, read Nathaniel Philbrick’s compelling “Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War,” or better yet, go straight to the source -- William Bradford’s seminal American diary, “Of Plymouth Plantation.”)

In modern proclamations, God always gets a mention or two, but there’s never anything about praying for forgiveness of sins or seeking the Holy Spirit. Indeed, LBJ got downright humanistic in 1964, stating that there was an “instinctive impulse” to give thanks for “our humanitarian instincts” and “our confidence in our ability to meet the challenges of today and of the future.”  In other words, we were giving thanks for ourselves. Gone was the “indispensable duty of all men” to adore God, replaced by an almost Darwinian “instinctive impulse” – instinctive like a twitch, perhaps? And of course, the sinful nature of man noted by Lincoln and others was replaced by LBJ with our noble “humanitarian instincts.”
When possible, modern presidents of both parties also like to do a little political bragging in their proclamations. One example: Bill Clinton did some legacy-polishing on his way out of office in 2000, noting, “Our dynamic economy continues to generate millions of new jobs, and, as wages rise and unemployment falls to its lowest level in more than a generation, millions of American families are sharing in the bounty of this great land for the first time.” Clinton likewise expressed optimism in the achievements of man rather than God.  “The remarkable growth in human knowledge and technological innovation offers real hope for defeating the age-old enemies of humanity: poverty, famine, and disease,” he wrote.

Obviously, the history of American Thanksgiving proclamations reflects the dramatic changes in American government and public life over the generations. One can only imagine how the ACLU would respond if this year’s proclamation paid homage to the merits of Jesus Christ, the sinfulness of man, the joy of the Holy Spirit, or even dared to mention the 23rd Psalm, much less quote it from beginning to end.
But the main reason I find all of this so interesting is that, even as I mock the political-correctness of modern presidents, it makes me question my own mindset when it comes to giving thanks. Do I place faith in the goodness of man and the achievements of modern society? Am I smug in my material prosperity? Do I stiff-arm God’s sovereignty and instead ask Him to sign off on my own selfish desires for my life and the future of the world? Do I, like some American presidents, ignore Him until I’m surrounded by trouble? Fact is, I do all those things, at least at times, and that’s not thanksgiving, that’s sin.

Authentic, Biblical thanksgiving, on the other hand, is all-out worship of God, an acknowledgement that He controls all things, created all things, and owns all things. A beautiful Old Testament example of this is found in 1 Samuel, chapter 2. Hannah gave thanks for her son, not by taking pride in herself or the child, but by dedicating him back to the Lord, acknowledging that God was the source of, well, everything. Today, we call her prayer Hannah's Song of Thanksgiving:

Then Hannah prayed and said,
         "My heart exults in the LORD;
         My horn is exalted in the LORD,
         My mouth speaks boldly against my enemies,
         Because I rejoice in Your salvation.
      There is no one holy like the LORD,
         Indeed, there is no one besides You,
        Nor is there any rock like our God.
      "Boast no more so very proudly,
        Do not let arrogance come out of your mouth;
         For the LORD is a God of knowledge,
         And with Him actions are weighed.
      The bows of the mighty are shattered,
        But the feeble gird on strength.
      "Those who were full hire themselves out for bread,
         But those who were hungry cease to hunger.
         Even the barren gives birth to seven,
         But she who has many children languishes.
      The LORD kills and makes alive;
         He brings down to Sheol and raises up.
      The LORD makes poor and rich;
         He brings low, He also exalts.
      He raises the poor from the dust,
         He lifts the needy from the ash heap
         To make them sit with nobles,
         And inherit a seat of honor;
         For the pillars of the earth are the LORD'S,
         And He set the world on them.
      He keeps the feet of His godly ones,
         But the wicked ones are silenced in darkness;
        For not by might shall a man prevail.
      Those who contend with the LORD will be shattered;
         Against them He will thunder in the heavens,
         The LORD will judge the ends of the earth;
         And He will give strength to His king,
         And will exalt the horn of His anointed."

So this year, I pray that God will help me get it right: It is the indispensable duty of all people, presidents included, to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God, just as our founding fathers said, and just as Hannah did.
Anything less is just hot air in a Macy’s Thanksgiving parade.

-- Huntley Paton

Grit and Grace: Frank Black and the Search for Joy

One in a series on popular music’s inevitable collision with the Gospel

“Oh, listen to me,” Frank Black laments on his 2005 album Honeycomb, “I’m a desperate boy.”
There is integrity in that statement, and the song, “Sing for Joy,” is an example of how popular music often gets the Gospel half right, diagnosing the problem, but not the solution.
A mournful country tune wrapped up in melancholy coils of lonely saloon piano, strumming guitars and day-of-reckoning, gospel-style humming, “Sing for Joy” is haunting in its weariness. Black sings in a flat, gravelly whisper that is nothing like the shrieking that made him a punk icon in the late 1980s, when he fronted the influential rock band The Pixies. In a few brief verses, he sings about alcoholism, rehab, depression, murder, suicide, family strife, wounded childhood, rootlessness, lust, love grown cold, divorce and regret.
He punctuates all that with the chorus: “Sing for joy/Sing for laughs/Sing for joy/If nothing else/Sing for joy.”
The song is depressing, but to write it off as merely one entry in the never-ending sweepstakes for “most depressing country tune” would be a mistake. Black, though rarely achieving mainstream success, is nothing if not genuine. He doesn’t write tunes about girls and cars to get on the radio (which is good, because radio never plays him).
He does, however, write eccentric songs about yearning to be accepted by truckers, and about UFOs, mathematics, sea monkeys, natural disasters, the video game Pong, physics, avant-garde filmmakers, God, science fiction writers, American history, Greek mythology, the Three Stooges, The Ramones, the Apocalypse, and other odd topics, including, yes, girls, love and fun. In popular music today, no one is more consistently inventive and interesting than Frank Black.
Black has distinct periods, just as painters like Van Gogh and Picasso had their distinct phases, which were driven by events in their own lives, not marketing campaigns.  His first artistic phase was wildly innovative punk rock that inspired the grunge-music wave (though none of those later bands were half as good as The Pixies). As a solo artist, Black has experimented with various styles with enviable aplomb, establishing himself as a highly prolific writer whose songs (even the ear-melting screamers, which are legion) are unforgettably tuneful. He is, to me, a kind of punk Brian Wilson, unrivaled in his songwriting ability, and grossly underappreciated for it.
His more recent phase is marked by Americana-style music with steel guitars and introspective lyrics about serious topics, such as addiction, death and his own divorce.
In other words, something is going on with Frank Black, and to my ears, “what’s going on” is that Christ is cornering him.
Christians should listen to songs like “Sing for Joy,” because some artists like Black are testifying honestly about their worldviews and their spiritual struggles.  If they can’t quite embrace answers we hold sacred – namely, Christ is the only answer – we should remember that we couldn’t grasp it either until God opened our eyes in a pure act of grace.  We can’t just say, “Let the heathens cry in their bong water” as we drive to church listening to “safe, family-friendly radio.”
Black is not, as far as I have been able to learn, a practicing Christian – though raised Pentacostal, he said in one interview that he doesn’t subscribe to any religious view. But he could be fairly described as artistically preoccupied with Christian themes of prayer, sin, redemption and more.
One of his earliest Pixies songs, “Levitate Me,” alluded to the Rapture and included the line, “Come on, pilgrim, you know He loves you,” which was a common exhortation from Christian rocker Larry Norman, whom Black grew up listening to and enjoying. In fact, Black later recorded a scorching country/punk cover of Norman’s “The Band Played 666,” about the Anti-Christ (“I’m sick of his lies and his tricks”).
Many of Black’s own compositions dwell on Biblical themes: “Jesus Was Right” (turning the other cheek), “Golden Shore” (heaven), “My Terrible Ways” (the eternal price of sin) and “Old Black Dawning” (end times).  Oftentimes the themes are dealt with ambiguously: “Doggone,” which starts with the line, “I could not pray/I felt so doggone,” supposedly was written for his wife after the death of a pet, and Black says it’s about a meteor hitting earth and wiping out all life (and thus, pain), but lyrically, it sounds an awful lot like the second coming of Christ (“the news is gonna break that I am here/and your noose is gonna break when I am there.”); And “California Bound” seems to be about the Spanish Missionaries who came to California in the 1500s, but unlike Neal Young, who wrote about “Cortez the Killer,” Black betrays no condemnation for the padres (“I know that you are lost/but you’ll be found … I will never hate you/I just want to show you the one truth/and spread God’s love all around/God willing, we are Caifornia bound”).
Certainly, it’s possible that Black is merely writing about such things “objectively” without embracing them at all, and I’m not so naïve as to overlook the possibility that he is in fact writing about Christianity in a sardonic, critical way. (Early in his career, he wrote about Old Testament accounts of incest with juvenile glee.)
Nowhere does Black literally sing that he is a Christian or loves Jesus. But to say that Christ is not under Black’s skin would be even more naïve. In fact, any honest listener can hear it. In one online review of the 1998 album Frank Black & The Catholics, a fan who described himself as a “Satanist” griped about what he perceived to be Black’s “anguished lyrical obsession with Christian faith.”
I think Black’s obsessed with it too, except I’m glad about it. To me, whether he knows it or means to, Black frequently strikes at the heart of man’s need for Christ in a truer, more convincing manner than some pastors and certainly the majority of contemporary Christian music artists. And to me, that makes his music moving and edifying.
In particular, his quieter country and blues songs of recent years lay bare the human condition in a way that is arresting, and necessary. No one can be saved who doesn’t understand he needs to be saved – and the stark emptiness of the lives of some of the characters populating Black’s songs makes the need very clear.
On “Sad Old World,” he sings, “Don’t tell me it’s gonna be alright/I know something about sickness/I know something about that now/there’s nothing you can do except witness/no, there’s nothing you can do.” On “Fitzgerald,” he sings of a childhood mentor who sinks into booze-soaked squalor, and Black is so heartbroken by it, all he can do is moan “Oh Fitzy, Oh Fitzy” at the end of the tune. And on “Don’t Cry That Way,” the booze soils his own life (“I let a river pour”) and marriage (“I saw her standing there/our last parking lot/cuz we didn’t have a prayer/liquid roses/trying to confess/don’t cry that way/I feel so helpless”). Here, friends, is true brokenness. No wonder radio won’t play it.
Which brings us back, full circle, to “Sing For Joy.” The song is so dark and non-commercial that it necessarily proves its own point – Black must have written it for his own therapy, because he’s not going to make much money from it. But Christ said he came to heal the sick, and on this tune, there is a ward full of them, Black included.
In verse one, we get the friend who beats alcoholism only to be shot by his girlfriend, who could not beat hers. In verse two, we get the singer’s childhood family in a joyless, nomadic malaise (“We had to wander seven years out West/it wasn’t exactly a wilderness/but I felt like an Israelite”) that ends in Dad’s death and Mom’s perpetual, self-imposed refugee status. In verse three, we get the singer’s own marriage on the rocks and a confession of lust for just about any woman who moves (“I know a girl who lives on a hill/I don’t know if her sister will/but I was thinking about her best friend”).
At that point, Black sings, “Oh listen to me, I’m a desperate boy,” and tells his estranged wife, “I’m sorry for the love/I’m sorry for the pain/I’ll say I’m sorry baby, again and again/I’m sorry we’re joining the stats.”
And we have the refrain, which numbs like successive shots of whiskey: “Sing for joy/Sing for laughs/Sing for joy/If nothing else/Sing for joy.”
This song takes you right to your knees, but to what effect? Music certainly can be medicinal, but here, Black’s music and chorus mantra is just a substitute for Christ, and a poor one at that.
Frank Black sings for joy, instead of singing in joy, as the psalmists did. The Old Testament poets didn’t say “if nothing else.” They said there is nothing else – nothing that compares to the joy of the Lord.
Psalm 71 says, “In you, O LORD, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame. Rescue me and deliver me in your righteousness; turn your ear to me and save me.” And it concludes, “My lips will shout for joy when I sing praise to you -- I, whom you have redeemed.”
The redeemed know why they sing, and they know the source of their joy. Frank Black may not yet be one of them, but I pray that he keeps wrestling with God. Christians will spend all eternity singing Christ’s praises, and with all my heart, I want Black in the house band.

-- Huntley Paton

“Dead men’s bones”

There won’t be any fakers standing with the Elect on Judgment Day, so why would we want to fool ourselves right now?

In the terrific 1996 French film “Capitaine Conan,” a young soldier convicted of treason and cowardice at the end of World War I gets an unexpected last chance for redemption. He is sitting in the brig when his military outpost comes under attack. An officer releases all the court-martialed prisoners and tells them to join the battle. “Beats the firing squad!” he urges them.

We see the young soldier, Jean Erlane, pensively running down the hill with the others, a petrified look on his face, while shells burst all around and violent chaos ensues. Erlane runs into a cloud of smoke and the camera cuts away. We see the attackers repelled in brutal hand-to-hand combat. Then an officer walks back slowly, past corpses everywhere. He stops at the body of Erlane, who is obviously dead, but without a visible wound.

“He got it in the back of the neck,” says a nearby wounded soldier. The officer reaches behind Erlane’s neck, pulls his hand back, covered in blood.  The way the corpse lies, it’s not clear which way the young man was facing when shot – a brilliant ambiguity on the part of the film’s award-winning director,  Bertrand Tavernier. The implication is that young Erlane died running away one more time – but we don’t know for sure.

No matter. The officer writes a letter to the boy’s mother, telling her, “And thus Jean Erlane met his death, facing the enemy, redeeming his past behavior with heroic conduct.” The mother is comforted. The scandal is erased. The boy is publicly redeemed. That becomes the official version of events.

Most of us have attended funerals that followed the same script. It may be that the deceased was a kind-hearted religious skeptic, or a  prominent church member whose actual faith and beliefs were never quite clear, or any one of a million other variations on an ambiguously lived life. At the funeral, none of that matters. The official conclusion is that the deceased is in a “better place.” We are comforted.

Of course, the important thing about heaven isn’t to have human beings say that’s where I am after I die. The key is to have Jesus Christ say so. 

Most of us can discern truth from spin. We recognize when someone is dissembling. Generally, we know the difference between a question answered and a question dodged.

The omniscient God we worship knows the difference too. And Judgment Day will be the ultimate no-spin zone.

In Matthew 23:27-28, Jesus warned, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

In 1 Thessalonians 1:4-5, Paul clearly stated that evidence of true salvation should be, well, clear. “For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you,” Paul wrote, “because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction.”

If I am a new creature in Christ, if he has given me a new heart and resurrected me from spiritual death, I should respond to him with power and deep conviction indeed. I believe in assurance, because it is amply promised in scripture, but I also have to believe in taking a long, hard look at myself, because scripture commands that repeatedly. 

I remember hearing men’s pastor and author Steve Farrar drive that point home in a talk a couple years ago. God, he said, can’t be tricked, will not be mocked, and cannot be opposed. “You’d better check the color of your jersey and make sure you’re on the right team,” he said.

It’s worth noting, I think, that Farrar wasn’t evangelizing, per se, when he made those comments. He was addressing a group of Christian men in a Bible study. He was giving us the same advice as Philippians 2:12-13, which commands, “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.”

If I belong to Christ, it should show. No one should have to guess. When I fall for the final time, no one should have to wonder which direction I was facing.

--    Huntley Paton

Patti Smith, Calvinist?

Far-left web site www.counterpunch.org throws a couple jabs at Jesus just in time for Easter, using none other than punk poetess Patti Smith as its theological muse.

Writer Ron Jacobs, a one-time Catholic alter boy, surmises that “hypocrites of American Christianity look forward to their Easter sunrise services while their soldiers rampage.”

His theory: Christians figure Jesus forgives everything they do, so they feel free commit evil acts. “By simply stating that Jesus died for one's sins, one can kill and pillage at will safe with the knowledge that Jesus took care of it already when he died on that cross,” Jacobs writes. “Wars can be waged and nations destroyed all because that crucifixion made it okay.”

Jacobs praises Patti Smith, who sang, “Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine. My sins my own, they belong to me." Smith, he notes, truly takes responsibility for her own actions.

So she does. Actually, Smith is not off base, biblically. In fact, her doctrine lines up very well with Calvinism, the driving theology behind the Reformation, which holds that Christ died for the sins of the elect, not the sins of all people.

Knowingly or not, Smith is touching on the doctrine of “limited atonement,” the idea that the blood of Christ ransomed only those whom God predestined to salvation before time began. (Limited atonement is the “L” in the Calvinist acronym “T.U.L.I.P.”)

Yes, let's praise Smith for her honesty and guts. Let's also pray that God will yet place his irresistible grace (that’s the “I” in T.U.L.I.P.) on her. It would be truly awesome to hear what she would sing about after that happens.

Back to Jacobs and his argument that grace gives obscene license. Obviously, his broad indictment is rank bigotry, but there’s no doubt that Christians do at times fall into that error. In fact, Paul explicitly warned against it his letter to the Romans. Here, scripture refutes Jacobs, and any believer who is tempted to sin because he can “get away with it.” And in Romans chapter 6, we see the true meaning of Easter:

  ^“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.  Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.”

There is no license to sin, Ron. Not for Patti Smith. And certainly not for any follower of Jesus Christ.

-- Huntley Paton

"You just don't want a boss."

This being Easter week, it’s time for the annual dose of religious skepticism from mainstream media. This year, Newsweek refrained from trying to debunk Jesus in a cover story during the most holy week of the Christian year, but its latest issue does include a piece entitled “Is God Real?”

(I can’t help but notice that Newsweek doesn’t do an annual debunking of Mohammed during Ramadan, but that’s a topic for another day.)

As part of the package, Newsweek features an intriguing debate between Rick Warren, of Purpose Driven Life fame, and Sam Harris, a hot-list atheist author. It is worthwhile reading. Click here to check it out: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17889148/site/newsweek/

Warren presents his case fairly well. His best moment comes when he discerns that Harris may not be as much of an atheist as he claims. “You just don’t want a boss,” Warren tells him.

Harris has a brilliant mind, but many of his arguments make no sense. For example, he says that even though he is an atheist, he doesn’t think that morality is relative. He says he thinks there can still be an absolute standard of right and wrong, but when pressed on the source of that standard, he has no good answer.

Warren points out that such a standard can only come from God. If there is no God, no judgment day, then in the end, nothing matters. Harris’ insistence that you can you can create meaning from a meaningless universe just doesn’t compute.

-- Huntley Paton

Grit and Grace: Spiritual Warfare in the Secular World of Popular Music

  Nothing has had a bigger influence on my generation than rock and roll and other forms of pop music. The Christian documentary "Hell's Bells 2" does an excellent job (over six hours, no less) exposing much of this music as godless and worse.

Most Christians still love all kinds of popular music, though, so we have to ask: Is there any value in it, or is listening to it simply a sin?

I think much of it does have value and often tells us much about the human condition. Theologian Francis Schaeffer once famouslly noted that the punk rockers of the 1970s -- the Sex Pistols who sang "No Future" and others like them who took the darkest possible view of humanity and society -- were not wrong in their conclusions, not if what they had been taught in school was correct, which was, of course, that the universe was created by chance and there was no divine being guiding human history. 

In their lyrics, artists often correctly identify the problems of the world and even frequently ask the right questions. It's just that they rarely propose the right solution -- Christ.

This marks the first of a series of entries on popular music and its unavoidable collision with the Gospel.

Almost three decades ago, singer Bob Dylan released the album “Slow Train Coming” and instantly earned the enmity of a pop-culture establishment that had long lionized him.
Dylan, the so-called “spokesperson for a generation” of rebellious youth in the 1960s, had become a born-again Christian, and his new album left no doubt about it. Songs like “Gotta Serve Somebody,” “I Believe in You” and “When He Returns” were explicit in their Christology. Gone was Dylan’s trademark inscrutability: The lyrics were plain -- and plainly evangelical.
“Slow Train Coming” is a powerful work and probably rates as the best-ever religious statement by a mainstream rock artist (granted, there may not be a lot of competition for that prize), but it was treated by the rock-and-roll world as a betrayal.
Dylan was booed viciously by his old fans (even as he was enthusiastically embraced by new ones) when he tried to sing his new Christian material in concerts, and media reviews were equally hostile, at least to the philosophies expressed in the songs, if not the music itself.
In 1979, when the album was released, I was a 16-year-old high school sophomore in Littleton, Colo. As someone who had accepted Christ at age nine, but who now was sorely tempted by all the world had to offer, who in fact already was giving in completely to those temptations, I remember being fascinated as I read an article in Newsweek about Dylan’s conversion. Here was a man who had gloried in all the temptations I was facing, and who now seemed to be rejecting that lifestyle in favor of Christ. That gave me pause, and I recall feeling encouraged and excited that this famous singer believed, as I did, that Jesus Christ was God incarnate.
As a Christian timid in my faith, always anxious that I would be laughed at or rejected for my beliefs (and therefore almost always utterly silent about them), I also read carefully the words about Dylan getting booed, about his being ridiculed, about his friends turning their backs on him. That too gave me pause. This is what happens, I realized, if you stand up for Jesus.
That, plus you can’t get drunk, hit on girls, or engage in general teenage mayhem, all habits I was falling into and enjoying. All things, by the way, that one might have reasonably and guiltlessly engaged in at a Bob Dylan concert, at least before he started touring with a gospel choir and urging crowds to “surrender your crown on this blood-stained ground.” Not a message the Me Generation wants to hear, especially from the guy who was supposed to be the pied-piper of rebellion.
Bob Dylan was a killjoy, and he was getting ripped for it.
I wasn’t willing to make the same mistake.

Nearly 30 years later, covered now in years of God’s mercy, I am hard struck anew by the power of “Slow Train Coming,” especially the title track, a relentless blues-and-soul number with Dire Staits’ Mark Knopfler on guitar and a horn section punctuating Dylan’s apocalyptic verses. The other day, while commuting to work, I so was taken by power of the tune, so convicted by its insights, so in awe of the invincibility of the God who spun Dylan’s life around like Saul on the road to Damascus, that I played the song eight or nine times in a row.
What, you might ask, is so inspiring about a song with a raspy singer who, in the opening line, snarls: “Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted”?
To be sure, “Slow Train” is an angry song, with Dylan reflecting on the state of the world and drawing negative conclusions. This was nothing new for him – he had gained fame as a protest singer, eviscerating everything from war and government oppression to greed and societal hypocrisy. For this, he was anointed by the ‘60s culture as righteous -- and, on occasion, he was. He also was, on the whole, self-righteous, as are, by definition, all people who reject the authority of God.
“Slow Train” is righteous – that is the one word I would use to describe it, if you only gave me one word, and I would shout the word as a fan at a baseball game would shout upon watching someone hit a home run into the upper deck. It is righteous, though, not on the singer’s merit, but on the merit of a singer who is seeing the world through God’s eyes for the first time.
Dylan sings about his friends  -- “are they lost or are they found?” -- and offers his lament for “all the earthly principles they’re going to have to abandon.” That is the pretext for all that follows – the commentary is not just on the state of the world, but on the state of humanity’s soul, and the point is not to gain celebrity by ruthlessly criticizing what is wrong – Dylan had already brilliantly achieved that cheap feat earlier in life -- but rather to admonish and save. Judgment, Dylan sings, is coming: “There’s a slow train coming/up around the bend.”
A quarter century-plus down the track, I’m amazed at how piercing Dylan’s critique is, and how little things have changed. He blasts “all that foreign oil, controlling American soil” and sees powerful enemies “deciding America’s future from Amsterdam and to Paris.” Sound familiar?
Dylan rolls across a wide landscape of sins and follies that separate us from God – drugs, wild living, greed, charlatanism, ambition, rejection of authority, hatred.
“People starving and thirsting,” he sings, “grain elevators are bursting/Oh, you know it costs more to store the food than it does to give it/They say lose your inhibitions, follow your own ambitions/They talk about a life of brotherly love/show me someone who knows how to live it.” 
Dylan’s conviction is searing. To my ears, he sings “show me” not with cynicism, but desperation, like the weeping prophet. He doesn’t want surface commitment (in fact, he condemns “false healers … talking in the name of religion”) but rather authentic brotherhood, the kind modeled by Christ, the kind possible in us only through the atoning work of Christ and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

Truly, it's a great song. But what about Dylan himself? After a handful of explicitly Christian albums, his bold testimony stopped. For a time, it seemed he had turned his back on Christianity and returned to Judaism. Since then, it's not clear what Dylan thinks, and he certainly isn't saying. He's back to being inscrutable.

Debating whether Dylan is "still Christian" is a popular sport on internet chat sites, and the Biblical teachings on assurance and false conversions both come into play. Bottom line is, I don't know where Dylan stands, but I will say this. He already stood up for Christ more – and took more persecution for it – than most of us have ever dared or will be asked to face.

So the question is not simply whether Bob Dylan is still a Christian; the real question is, what do you and I say about Christ? What do we believe about Him? And is that making a difference in our lives – any difference at all? Are we committed to becoming true Disciples of Jesus, or are we just American “Christians” snoozing on our tanning beds until judgment day?

No matter how we answer any of those questions, God is still God. Christ is his Son. And there is a slow train coming, whether we believe it or not.

-- Huntley Paton

What's the benefit?

I have been teaching Sunday school to elementary-school kids at my church for a number of years, most recently to 5th graders. The lessons we are given to teach are solid, Biblical and wide-ranging. But I'm starting to realize that we are losing the battle for these kids to some extent. Probably because we lose the battle ourselves.

Christianity seems to be very limited in terms of its relevance to the culture these kids live in. They know it is important, but the distractions of the world around them seem more real, insurmountable and perhaps even more interesting than what they are learning on Sundays.

A few weeks ago in class we were discussing WHY someone should become a Christian. The kids answered that if you don't, you don't get to be with God when you die, you go to hell instead. Everyone seemed to agree with that (as do I!). But what about right now? I asked. Are there any benefits to being a Christian
right now, while you are still alive? The kids blinked at me and looked at one another, but no one had an answer. Not one. Remember, these are 5th graders, professing Christian kids, many of whom can quote a decent amount of scripture and so on. None of them want to go to hell. But if there's a benefit to being a Christian right now, as a young, energetic, healthy American kid in 2007, they haven't figured it out yet.

I was stunned and depressed. But I also realized that many Christian adults would have that same blank, stumped expression on their faces if asked the same question. And I confess that I sometimes live as if I can't see the benefits either. Begging the question: Are we really living Christian lives? Or are we just trying to avoid hell?

Author Dallas Willard, in his book "The Divine Conspiracy," probes that question brilliantly. He notes that many Christians, when asked to describe Jesus, say all kinds of nice things, but almost never describe him as "smart." People tend not to see Jesus' teachings as relevant to their every-day lives, even if they view him as their savior. In short, Willard wrote, even though Jesus is God and "the smartest man who ever lived," people don't take him seriously.

No wonder we're so messed up.

The idea for this blog, inspired by Francis Schaeffer's writings, is that we should strive to live "above the line of despair" in every way -- that is, to see this as God's world, in every respect. When we live "above the line," it's like looking at the world from above the water line, instead of below. When we're under water, we can't see far. Things are murky. We don't see, or don't consider, God's hand or purposes in our minute-to-minute living. That's a natural perspective for someone who believes that life came about by accident, perhaps, but it's a lame way for a Christian to go about life. If we have a truly Christian world view, it affects how we live and think about everything. We see the teachings of Christ as entirely practical and exciting, not as some sort of impossible platitudes from a doe-eyed mystic.

Put another way: "Above the line" means that once we were blind, but now we see. Doesn't it stand to reason that sighted people would go about their days differently than blind people?

So when you see future entries on this blog about music, books, TV, current affairs, whatever the topic, the challenge for the authors is to see it through the lense of unfolding, redemptive history

And part of what we should see is that, because of what Christ has done for us, we not only can have eternal life with Him, but also an incredible life right here, right now. (By incredibe, I don't mean rich and loved by all -- you won't find any of that Prosperity Theology nonsense here. To me, an "incredible" life would be one that is actually lined up with God's will, whatever the outcome.)

Back to the 5th graders: We talked about the New Testament promises and how many of them apply to the here and now: We, as Christians, are God's co-workers (1 Cor. 3:9), an incredible privilege and responsibility. When we consider our sick, broken, out-of-control culture, we should remember Paul's words in 2 Timothy 1:7: "God gave us a spirit of not of fear but of power and love and self-control."

The benefit of being a Christian? We never again need flirt with wallowing below the line of despair.

-- Huntley Paton