World-Changing Faith Without World-Changing Influence

I awoke to my alarm this morning at 5:45 to attend to a bit of routine that needs to happen at the same time every morning. Most Saturdays, I go right back to sleep and allow myself to sleep later into the morning than usual. Today, however, my mind awoke quickly. I felt rested, since we’d had a relaxed evening last night and had gone to bed before 10:00. When I got out of bed at 6:15, my husband sleepily reminded me, “You know it’s Saturday, right?” Yes, I know it’s Saturday and I am so thankful for it. The weekdays are grueling right now. I’m exhausted. We’re only two weeks into the Spring semester and I feel like it’s been six. I’m going to need “a little bit of coffee and a whole lot of Jesus” to make it through. (I don’t know who started saying that phrase but I see it everywhere and I like it). Today is a “work at home” day. I have several school items that need tending to but since it’s Saturday I plan on tending to them on my couch in my lounge clothes. Right now, I’m sipping my coffee and enjoying the quietness of the early morning. 

I’ve had several things brewing in my mind lately. Harding University instituted a “Harding Read” this year. The idea is that everyone on campus will be working their way through the same book, which will in turn be the topic of discussion and growth. I’m slowly making my way through. The book this year is Amazing Grace – William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery by Eric Metaxas. I don’t remember not knowing who Wilberforce was, but I also don’t remember knowing much about him. I knew his name in the context of the abolitionist movement, and I knew that he was a devout Christian. Beyond that, I knew little but had always been curious. The “Harding Read” has given me the opportunity to pursue that curiosity, if only in the form of this one biography. 

He was an incredibly young member of Parliament, close friends with Britain’s youngest prime minister, and quite brilliant. Following his conversion to Christianity (which he refers to as The Great Change), Wilberforce remained in government and his faith drove his tireless fight for the abolition of the slave trade in England. Twenty years, he fought. People joined and left the cause. It seemed hopeless. And yet, in 1807, he was triumphant. The slave trade in the British Empire was abolished. Slavery itself persisted until the year of Wilberforce’s death in 1833, when Parliament voted to abolish slavery once and for all.

The story of Wilberforce is inspiring. As I have read I’ve felt moved to act, but how? The practice of abortion in the United States has come to my mind several times as a modern parallel. Just as slavery then, the issues surrounding abortion are complicated. And yet, it comes down to this – it should never be easy to take a human life. Additional societal ills of our time include race relations, the state of our inner cities, human trafficking, and a general apathy surrounding morality. All of these issues need champions. Champions like Wilberforce and like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The truest form of Christianity stirs its followers to act in opposition to these ills. I have felt stirred and inspired to some great thing, but I find myself in rural Arkansas with no political affiliations. The past months have been frustrating in these areas – the presidential election in the USA coincided with my reading of this book. I’ve felt caught in the crossfire between two opposing armies. Armies who both propagate the war and who seem to care very little about the collateral damage. All I hear is shouting. No one is listening. No one is calm. No one is self-examining. A Wilberforce is needed, and though I feel inspired, I also feel handicapped.

Enter the last couple of weeks. Eric Metaxas came to speak at Harding. The whole event was wonderful. There were so many things to think about. The one thing that spoke the most to me was this: Metaxas was speaking about those who are inspired by Wilberforce, and so think that they must do something great. They should enter politics or some public arena and do something great for society because of their faith. Metaxas says, “No.” He reminds us (and I’m paraphrasing) that Wilberforce was already in a position of political leadership when he became convicted about these things. He simply lived out his faith where he was. Where he was just happened to be a position in which he could slowly affect worldwide change. Metaxas reminded us that we can dream of doing great things for God but God may have us do small things, and that small things done out of faith will be greater than the great things done because we have big dreams. That spoke to me. That, I can do. I’m not in a position of power. I’m not an orator. I’m not connected to the media. I am not in a position that will change the world dramatically. But, I am in a position to change the world for the people with whom I interact. I may never participate in the March for Life, but I most certainly can provide love and support to any expectant mother with whom I come into contact. So many abortions happen because the mothers feel pressured into them, as if they have no one to support them. I can be that person. I can save that one child. I may never bust a human trafficking ring, but I can continue to teach the value of human life and dignity to my students. I may never be in a position to affect national or global race relations, but I can treat everyone with whom I come in contact with fairness and love. Those things are in my power. These things are worth doing. They may seem small, but imagine what change would come about if every person would direct themselves toward being the change they wish to see. It’s not enough to protest. It’s not enough to obstruct “the enemy”. I do believe that Christ and His love is the answer to every societal ill. It’s time for me to live like it right where I am. Will you join me?

So, How's Married Life: The Sequel

It’s been a while, and my writing’s a little rusty. With the exception of a few letters and several exams, I haven’t written anything longer than a Facebook status since the summer. I suppose I was a little burnt out, and the inspiration just wasn’t coming. I think it’s a good time to get back into it now, though. The ideas are percolating, and it’s time for a creative (or whatever you call this) outlet.

Jim and I have been married now for almost fourteen months. I blogged about the earliest days of marriage about this time last year. I’ve learned a lot of lessons since then. An embarrassing number of lessons, really. And, since I appreciate transparency in others, I’m going to let you in on some of them. 

I didn’t actually outgrow petulance.

Petulance. That tendency to be childish, to sulk, to have a bad attitude. It had been years since I had raised my voice. Occasionally, my mother would call and bear the brunt of my frustration. Overall, however, I really thought that I had outgrown the frustrating habit of being petty and unreasonable. Then I got married. And I found to my horror that it was all still there. The tendency to brood. To argue. To cry. Just a few weeks ago, I was reading Gary Thomas’ book, Sacred Marriage. In it, he quotes an essay written by Katherine Anne Porter. 

This very contemporary young woman finds herself facing the oldest and ugliest dilemma of marriage. She is dismayed, horrified, full of guilt and forebodings because she is finding out little by little that she is capable of hating her husband, whom she loves faithfully. She can hate him at times as fiercely and mysteriously, indeed in terribly much the same way, as often she hated her parents, her brothers and sisters, whom she loves, when she was a child…

She thought she had outgrown all this, but here it was again, an element in her own nature she could not control, or feared she could not. She would have to hide from her husband, if she could, the same spot in her feelings she had hidden from her parents, and for the same no doubt disreputable, selfish reason: She wants to keep his love.

Above all, she wants him to be absolutely confident that she loves him, for that is the real truth, no matter how unreasonable it sounds, and no matter how her own feelings betray them both at times. She depends recklessly on his love.

I cringed and sighed as I read it. Was this a 1940’s prophecy about me?? I am quite sure that many newly married women discover the same thing. Isn’t it frustrating?? I’d like to tell you I’m making progress in this area, and perhaps I am. Painstakingly slow progress. Petulance isn’t easily outgrown. It must be recognized, wept over, and painfully, slowly rooted out. The roots are deep, but God’s grace is deeper.

I learned to give myself some grace.

When I married, it was with some idealistic notion that I would magically be an exemplary wife. Don’t laugh. At least, not without letting me laugh with you. At the time, I was a graduate student writing a dissertation. A book. About an incredibly detailed bit of science. That I still need to have bound. But, I digress. Not only was I a busy graduate student, I was a new wife. I was learning how to share a bed and a living space and a car. I was working under the fallacious assumption that, in order to be a good wife, I had to do everything. Bacon and eggs for breakfast? I’m on it. Laundry? That’s mine too. House cleaning? Yes. I’ll do that too. Dinner? I’ll take care of that, too. I’ll pack lunches, cook meals, iron pants, make the bed, write this book, and at the end of the day, I’ll be fresh and happy for intimacy. That didn’t work. So, after a ridiculous amount of time I admitted a need for some grace. I swallowed my pride and asked my husband to help by washing the laundry, paying the bills, and taking out the trash. I agreed to serve cereal for breakfast. Yes, sugary, horrible, bad-for-you cereal – because that’s what I can do right now. I simplified lunch. One of these days, I’ll work back to some of those other things. For now, giving myself the grace to be in a learning and growing phase is working well.

I am learning to push myself to grow.

Giving myself grace shouldn’t mean excusing sinful patterns and behaviors. It shouldn’t mean stagnation. In matters of housekeeping, I’m learning to identify my weaknesses and to address them. Sometimes, the house is messy because the week was incredibly busy and other obligations took higher priority. Other times, the house is messy because I’m lazy. Identifying which is true takes an incredible amount of emotional honesty, but I find that it is crucial for real growth.

Because I have allowed myself to make dinner the one meal into which I put time and energy, I have expanded my horizons. I have discovered more frugal, nutritious, tasty meals. We’re not stuck with spaghetti three times a week, with a side of tears of guilt. The growth here will, I hope, allow me to expand my growing to our other meals and to other things.

In deeper matters – matters of relationship – the growth is so very slow. I have discovered a tendency toward bitterness, toward a need to be right, toward “score-keeping”. I find that directed prayer helps when I remember to do so. In 2017, I am making fervency, consistency, and depth in prayer a priority. I am looking for creative ways to stop myself when the frustration, hurt feelings, or anger flares. There is a lot to do here, but as I continually put on Christ I am confident that there will be less room for these sins. 

I am learning to hate sin.

I considered lumping this lesson with growth, but it deserves a category all its own. I learned a lot about myself during my years as a single woman. I learned to fight sin in loneliness, sin in discontent, sin in many ways. However, I find that marriage provides an additional vision of the destructiveness of sin. It is easy to ignore the self-destruction perpetrated by sin. It is impossible to ignore the hurt bewilderment in my husband’s eyes when I sin against him in anger. My sin no longer affects only me, and because of that I can see more clearly its horribleness. I hate it. One of my prayers in 2017 is that God will instill in me a proper hatred of sin. William Wilberforce penned these words in his journal soon after becoming convinced of the truths of Christianity:

My heart is so hard, my blindness so great, that I cannot get a due hatred of sin, though I see that I am all corrupt and blinded to the perception of spiritual things.

Chilling, isn’t it? It resonates in my consciousness. I see my own corruption, and yet I must still acquire a “due hatred of sin”. Understanding and hating the sin in my own heart is a crucial key in conquering it.

The person who understands the evil in his own heart is the only person who is useful, fruitful, and solid in his beliefs and obedience.  -- John Owen

I am learning to give grace to others.

Finally, marriage is so incredibly humbling. Sins that I thought were behind me have re-surfaced. I struggle, and the struggle reminds me that others are also burdened. In Sacred Marriage, Gary Thomas quotes William Law:

No one has of the Spirit of Christ but he that has the utmost compassion for sinners. Nor is there any greater sign of your own perfection than you find yourself all love and compassion toward them that are weak and defective. And on the other hand, you have never less reason to be pleased with yourself than when you find yourself most angry and offended at the behavior of others. All sin is certainly to be hated and abhorred where it is, but then we must set ourselves against sin as we do against sickness and diseases, by showing ourselves tender and compassionate to the sick and diseased.

The more I recognize my own sin, the more I find compassion where frustration and disappointment used to be. Specifically, I am learning to give grace to my husband. He is beset with a sinful nature, just as I am. He has many responsibilities pulling his attention, as do I. And so, I have learned the truth of these statements by Gary Thomas, again in Sacred Marriage:

We’re not married in a carefree Garden of Eden. We’re married in the midst of many responsibilities that compete for our energy.

Take time to do an inventory of your spouse’s difficulties rather than of your spouse’s shortcomings.

Contempt is conceived with expectations. Respect is conceived with expressions of gratitude. We can choose which one we will obsess over – expectations, or thanksgivings. That choice will result in a birth – and the child will be named either contempt, or respect.

Husbands, you are married to a fallen woman in a broken world. Wives, you are married to a sinful man in a sinful world. It is guaranteed that your spouse will sin against you, disappoint you, and have physical limitations that will frustrate and sadden you. He may come home with the best of intentions and still lose his temper. She may have all of the desire but none of the energy.

We live in a broken world. Sin burdens us all. Marriage allows us to see the effects of those sins so very closely. Compassion and patience are required.

And that, folks, is the end of my writing abilities for tonight. More ideas are brewing though, so check back soon.

Learning to Hug Lepers

She lay there babbling incoherently, a half-eaten pizza sitting next to her. Her clothing was worn and filthy, her hair matted with dirt. I noticed her as I returned to my hotel on San Diego Bay, where I was staying for a conference. I locked my eyes on the street corner, willing myself to look past her and the other homeless people lining the street. I walked past her without a word or a backwards look, just like hundreds of others before and after me. I returned home the next day, intrigued by an apparent “class system” among the homeless of San Diego. Bubbling under the surface of that interest, however, was the haunting feeling I had about her – the incoherent woman next to the pizza. I don’t know her name. I don’t know her story. I don’t know her. All I know is that I walked past her.

Shortly after I arrived home, my husband and I joined another couple to go to the movie theater to see Risen – a largely fictionalized account of the events between the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and His ascent into heaven. As the movie neared an end, I watched a farmer fearfully and angrily shoo away a leper. The leper’s clothing was worn and filthy, his hair matted with dirt. Jesus stood, walked deliberately to the cowering leper, knelt down, and hugged him close, soothing him. As the leper walked away, he happily discovered that he had been healed by the touch of the Savior. 

Shortly after these events, I participated in commencement downtown in the city where I live. Afterward, as my husband and I returned to our car, I smelled him before I saw him. There was a crowd around a homeless man who had collapsed. Maybe he was dead, maybe just passed out. He had lost control of his intestines, and the stench was terrible. My mind flashed back to the woman on the street in San Diego. My heart felt clad in iron. Yet, I walked on yet again.

I cannot shake the images from my mind – the woman on the street, the leper, the hug for the leper, the man lying there in his own filth. I find myself yearning for the opportunity to go back and just touch that woman’s hand, to let her know that someone loves her just because she exists and is worth loving. I find in my heart a war which threatens to rent it in two. On the one side is an awakening of love for the unlovely. On the other is a habit of repulsion. Time will tell which side will triumph in my heart in the end, but my will is on the side of love, and I choose to believe that my will is stronger than the turning of my stomach.

I am convinced that the repulsion is the result of lies – lies that I’ve told myself, lies that I’ve been told. In an effort to give truth the upper hand, my purpose now is to identify a few of those lies – and to present an alternative.

They are there by their own choice.

“They could go back home if they really wanted to.” “Most of the people living on the streets are choosing that life for themselves.”

As with every lie, there are tiny grains of truth infused throughout. It is often (although not always) true that the path to homeless hopelessness begins with a choice. A choice to pursue a life of crime. A choice to saturate one’s mind with drugs and alcohol. Here’s the catch, however. As I wrote in a recent post, our choices so often become chains. Maybe the woman on the street in San Diego had a choice at one time, but it was abundantly obvious that she no longer has that choice. She didn’t even know where she was. She will never move past her helplessness unless someone helps her. I wasn’t that person for her. I want to be that person someday, with Christ’s help.

It’s not the place of ______ to help those people.

Fill in that blank with whichever entity you want, and you’ll have heard the excuses about it. The government. The church. Whatever. The truth is, though, that whether or not it’s ever the place of an entity to create a program to help those people, it is always my place. I am responsible for loving and helping my fellow man. As long as I walk past them without a second glance, there is someone who is choosing not to do what they can. That someone is me.

I don’t have anything to give.

Let’s face it, I’ve been a student for a long time. I don’t have much in the way of finances to give, but that doesn’t mean that I have nothing. Did you know that human touch is important? I could have at least touched that woman’s hand. I could have at least reached out to remind her of her humanity. All of us have something we can give. It’s time to start. 

I am praying for the strength to choose love. To reach out and touch the filthy person on the street, to look into their eyes and give them the gift of a moment of camaraderie with another person. To extend friendship to the friendless. To embody the love of Christ to the person who feels like the dregs of humanity. A bad smell shouldn’t turn me away. There are numerous instructions in God’s Word about loving and helping those who cannot help themselves, and there is judgment waiting those who refuse to do so. God, give me the strength to hug the leper!