A Stream Flowing in a Field

So different, this man
And this woman:
A stream flowing
In a field.

~Wm. Carlos Williams

Bailing on a long relationship seldom happens suddenly, severe mental instabilities notwithstanding. They die very slow deaths more often than not. I sometimes hear stories where people are shocked when the leaver finally leaves, but I've usually chalked that up to their stubborn unwillingness to be honest with themselves and their shared past with the other.

In seeming contradiction, there's this thing called "ghosting." Because ghosting is now a thing (but really it's nothing new; it just takes a unique form in our digital dating culture), research is being conducted on it. Psychologists and relationship coaches tell us that ultimately it stems from fear—fear of conflict, which leads to avoidance of confrontation, of difficult conversations, and of hurting someone's feelings.

I get that. I really do. Because I hate conflict, and I'll do almost anything to not hurt someone's feelings. (On second thought, maybe I'll do almost anything to not feel the way I feel after I've hurt someone's feelings.)

But it should come as no surprise that all that avoidance actually increases anxiety and conflict, sometimes from the one being ghosted, and often from the lingering guilt that comes with taking the wrong kind of exit from a relationship. Such anxiety can end up ruling you. I know this. I spent most of my early-to-mid 30s suffering from it, because my life was one big ball of avoidance—particularly with my now ex-wife. I had tried open communication early in our marriage, but I'm sure I wasn't doing it right: I was impatient and unkind. At times I was condescending and angry and overbearing. Because I didn't get anywhere with that communication (no surprise, looking back), I shut down ("ghosted") and became avoidant (incommensurate withdrawal or slamming the door on someone is the same thing as ghosting, only perhaps more painful because it occurs in the midst of an actual long-term relationship). So our communication occurred only out of mounting frustration. Never was there resolution. I avoided confrontation (and so did my ex), and my anxiety grew, and depression crept in. And then one day, I woke up, and my marriage was over, kicking off years of mere cohabitation. That's when the seething bitterness made its home in my heart. And I walked the earth with furrowed brow and heaving, heavy shoulders, dragging around black clouds wherever I went.

Then came the day when those clouds parted. My marriage was still over, this time legally. Sadness set in, but almost immediately so did growth and awareness and vitality and friendship. And, yes, even love. Whether reciprocal or rebounded or unrequited, I realized I could actually feel something in my guts, something better than what I had been feeling for so long. Integral to that growth has been not avoiding conflict, not avoiding doing the hard thing. Caring for the surplus of meaning inherent in the symbol of the holy, the other, the I-Thou.

If only symbols were empty, irrelevant things that aren't inextricably bound to each of us, bringing to world new relations, binding each of us anew to the discreet places they reveal. If only. Then we could dash them against the rocks without consequence. The idols would quietly go into the twilight, and the marketplace would open the next morning without any sense of loss, of meaninglessness. Take heed: symbols gather, symbols world nothing into something. It is for this reason they are to be revered—broken only as a last resort. And yet, a demolished symbol gathers another kind of world, sometimes in Elysian fields, sometimes in the abyss.

Walk, then, with fear and trembling. Guard the symbol with your life. Protect but whisper those unsaid things that cannot as yet survive in this world on their own (like little birds). Become the place—the field-stream—of peace and respite for the weary.

It's like she ceased being Thou, fully human,
With her own despair and desires.
Now she's become a symbol,
A signature of abandonment, a seal of longing.
Toward the Emerald Isle, dizzy in lofty flight.
Ghosted away: This is the dust we carry.

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Saving Your Marriage Isn't the Goal

Remember that I warned you about how deeply existential and one-sided my thoughts on divorce would be. I only expect that to continue.

In my last post, I intended to grope toward and commend the viability of letting go. When someone has turned the corner, it's better to realize that finality sooner rather than later. Of course, there are always exceptions to this principle, and you will find the interwebs offering up a great many stories to that end, and many of them come with expansive and detailed—if not manipulative—formulas to help them materialize in your life. They will give you hope. For a time.

But then you should come to realize that many of the suggestions and practical steps only you can take to save your marriage do pay off—whether or not you end up staying married. Because in the final analysis, avoiding apostasy, rather than saving your marriage, is the goal. While it's true that there are fates worse than death (and, at least initially, divorce as I experienced it was one of them), it's also true that there are fates worse than divorce.

When facing the inevitable death of your marriage, after all the disbelief that it's happening, all the negotiating with God and your partner, you will eventually need to get on with acceptance. It starts with truly repenting and owning up to your part in the dissolution. This can be a sensitive and touchy subject for many, not least for those who have suffered from some form of abuse at the hands of their former spouse. I cannot pretend to speak to those particular victims, except to plead that they run from that relationship, and take every legal measure at their disposal to make it so.

I also learned quickly that "emotional abuse" is a very real thing, with very real and negative consequences for all parties involved (even if a notion like "mental cruelty" as a ground for divorce is I suspect more often than not a thinly veiled attempt to justify an unjustifiable no-fault divorce, or worse, to perform character assassination in a child custody case). Facing the grounds with which I was strapped at first, I dove deeply into the subject, not least out of fear in light of my life and actions. Did I actually provide legal (not to mention biblical) grounds for this divorce?

If you have a modicum of humility, when you're world is unraveling, and you're an emotional wreck, you are far more susceptible to believe everything being thrown at you, to take on far more blame than the situation warrants. Guard yourself. Do not walk alone during this time. Find an honest friend who knows you for real and who can respond to certain allegations about you with a more reasonable and objective clarity than you'll be able to muster. It also helps tremendously if he or she doesn't let you drink alone.

The truth is, even though it felt like I was being ripped apart at the (ontological) seams, I had given up on my marriage well before my ex initiated. There was a time after that but before her initiation that I tried to turn it all around, but if I'm being honest I think I had intuited it was too late, and so it was a last-ditch effort with no real hope of success.

So, if you're like me, which is to say an oddball interested in literature, history and theology, and if you find yourself in a similar predicament as me, you may find yourself looking for similar resources to help you walk through and eventually accept what's happening to you (and I don't mean that in a passive sense—for you brought this upon yourself as much as your partner did). Such resources involve digging into the scriptures, reading theologians of the church on issues revolving around marriage and divorce, swallowing tomes of angsty Gothic poetry and spinning multitudinous records of 80s ballad music (and some outlaw country, for good measure).

In order to help me make sense both of my failures (which I came to readily accept and confess—and of course I still have a ways to go in discerning all of them), my former spouse's failures (which I had to impute, never having had the luxury of receiving a mutual confession) and my need, given my oddball interests, to find some guidance within the historic church to my dilemma, I unsurprisingly found myself sitting at the feet of one Martin Bucer.

In my next post, I'll unpack what I learned from him. Maybe it'll help someone else out there.

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Status Symbol Land

FEAR—especially the fear of losing control—serves as the impetus for an awful lot of art. It also, of course, serves as the catalyst for an unhealthy dose of insomnia, depression, anxiety, fatigue, and death (either of the silent or walking variety).

Motivated by Alan Noble's "Why Christians Should Read Disturbing, Dark, and Secular Fiction," I thought that since I have read and am now again reading a good bit of it that I'd do well to put some thoughts down on a piece that I've read recently. (This is a bit like pulling the winner out of a hat; I'm working through an anthology of American short stories and there are too many from which to choose. I decided against O'Connor's terrifyingly bizarre "Good Country People" because (1) she's not exactly "secular"; and (2) apparently she's now a Christian-hipster favorite, and I'm like light years ahead of those people.)

So, John Cheever's "The Swimmer" it is (originally published in The New Yorker on 18 July 1964). Summary of the plot:

“The Swimmer” begins with suburbanites gathered around a backyard pool, nursing their respective hangovers from the previous night's cocktail party. The hero of the tale is a youthfully middle-aged, athletic, and affluent denizen of suburbia. His desire to rise above complacently takes the form of an odd, comical quest: He decides to swim home, fifteen pools to the south. The narrative follows his journey from pool to pool, from his initial exhilaration to subsequent exhaustion, from bright and sunny to darker and colder, to unprepared and exposed. After crossing a highway, he descends into a public pool—hell to his social class. But even here he is excluded after failing to provide the proper identification. The journey is further corrupted when he finds his mistress has replaced him with a new lover, and a couple he has previously dismissed socially denies him. Finally, when he is alienated from what he knows to be true, and dispossessed of his comfortable reality, he arrives home to a dark, empty, and locked house.

Truly, I envied the swimmer Neddy Merrill's excursion. It sounded fun. Even in the rain. The absurdity part of it only becomes apparent during the last few dips, and especially when he arrives "home." The fun of swimming across several pools in a couple of neighborhoods looks pathetic indeed when Neddy reaches his now foreclosed destination. And the enthusiasm with which Neddy is greeted at first is subverted by the tale's end: all those drinks and smiles look more like pity than friendship. Status symbols are, we must admit, everything to this crowd (our collective crowd in these United States), and Neddy's loss of them feeds a fear that grips him to the point of extreme denial, acting out the absurd.

How poignant is the climax of the story today? Neddy swims "home" to an abandoned and decrepit structure. How many of those have we seen walking the neighborhood these past few years? Ah, home ownership, a grand American institution. It looks to be only a vestige of its former glory.

Speaking of American social institutions, what about the extramarital affair? Neddy’s inability to cope with his situation caused him to shut down and retreat from reality, ultimately hurting all the people in his life that he ever cared about. The same could be said about any one of the other poor choices he has apparently made (in response to a financial misfortune).

Neddy’s swimming pool journey effectively parallels our false lives, our swimming through life with eyes half closed, choosing not to acknowledge behaviors that are significant and detrimental to those we love the most. Extramarital affairs, alcoholism, gambling, and debt—all these activities gradually eat away at relationships every day. Of course, these are all symptoms of a much deeper problem: "Who can understand the human heart? There is nothing else so deceitful."

The mix of realism and surrealism, concrete rootedness and absurdity, the lack of a single vision holding reality together, the rusty linings of every cloud, are a few of the reasons I so enjoy this era of literature (roughly described as "postwar"). Yet in spite of all the aforementioned disturbing darkness, we still pine after love and understanding, and thus we must face the vertigo of absurdity with practical action—like Candide tending his garden forevermore.

So, then, "have reverence for God, and obey his commands, because this is all that we were created for." Or, put somewhat differently, love thy neighbor as thyself.


Listen to Cheever read "The Swimmer" here.

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When the Ice Melts

© Chema Madoz

THE LAST TIME I ever thought about touching that deadly rock happened while sitting in an apartment without furniture, watching a group of addicts huddled in the center of the "dying" room, like scavengers hovering over a carcass, snarling at each other to pass the pipe, to not take so big a hit the next time.

That memory haunts me still.

Nothing smells or tastes like crack cocaine. I don't type this lightly. In fact, it's a horrific and embarrassing thing to admit. I don't do so merely to bring attention to myself. I do so because at times I smell it and taste it—not as if I'm tempted to partake in that particular activity, but because it still trips me out. Like a shadowy ghoul perched on my shoulder, I'm reminded of sensory experiences that I cannot shake.

When the ice melts (perhaps over a bowl of ash), what will you leave behind? What will you have left?

###

I posted this about a year ago and then took it down. It seemed a bit too self-absorbed, even for me. I know not many, if any, former crackheads (I was not one, being more of a "generalist") read this blog. So what purpose would this post serve? On the other hand, I'm sure lots of folks out there often feel like they have little control over the events in their lives. And it keeps piling on, forcing you to fix your gaze only on the temporal, which causes fear, anxiety, depression—basically all the stuff that gets you screaming for some quiet.

I'm still shaken and mesmerized by how a piece of rock melts beneath its flame. Its alchemy. And that thirty-second high. There's little competition out there for how high it actually is.

Unfortunately, I've learned time and again that the troubles I walked away from in that scene described above have followed me in different forms these past (almost) twenty years. Starting to take the Christian faith seriously (i.e., practicing it), which is how I'm describing conversion (or perhaps a return of sorts), as anyone knows who has been at it for any length of time, means many years of painful refining, often commensurate with how deeply the evil one's way has become one's own. Sanctification, too, is by grace through faith.

One the reasons my spiritual journey is comprised of a series of rejections of modern evangelicalism (how's that for a non sequitur?) is its obsession with salvation through change—the personal amending of one's life. "Clean up your life and become a Christian!" If we can just stop doing this or that, acting this way or that way, then God will pay it all off with his grace.

On the contrary, the cart of reformation indeed comes. But it's pulled by the workhorse of a restoration wrought by an irruptive grace.

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Closer to Fine

IF SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHIES disgust or madden or bore you, then you'll want to visit here another time. I usually don't read them, so I understand. It's well-nigh narcissistic to think others would want to read these kinds of details about one's own life.

Life. Nice segue. I'm trying to tell you something about my life / Maybe give me insight between black and white.

During that angst-ridden era of flannels, Camels, and Reality Bites, I found myself barely hanging on to some semblance of spirituality. This guy Jesus really existed a long time ago, but we couldn't be much surer about anything else. It took a few years after my "conversion experience" to get to this place, but it had been moving in that direction since the very night I wept at the end of the aisle. (The reason being, overemphasis on the experience of conversion by nature sets people up for failure—unless you're on the road to Damascus, I suppose.)

If I could put my finger on one particular moment I began noticeably to unravel, it was after saturating myself with the Renaissance humanists. Or, rather, it was after misconstruing the entire movement that we now call Christian humanism. In short, my puerile understanding and attempt to put into practice the ideals of this movement quickly devolved: the Christian part fell by the wayside and I was left with the humanist part alone. But the wages of humanism is death. (In a moment of perfect confluence, "Imagine" just came on the radio as I write this.)

Literature and music. Both play a key role in my spiritual development, which gets me to the point of this post.

During my early-to-mid 20s, the liner notes to Moby's Everything Is Wrong (Mute, 1995) became my manifesto. It had all the right mix of disdain for the Christian Right, support for environmentalist causes, social justice (for the poor and hungry), universalism, and syndicalism. This was the kind of stuff that preached to me. I rarely rolled out of bed on the Lord's Day. Music and literature, especially that which employed biblical allusions, remained my primary source of inspiration and discipleship.

Enter the Indigo Girls. While I haven't kept up with them that much since, nor did I rush out to buy everything they ever produced at the time, one particular album remained my daily bread in the mid 90s: the self-titled Indigo Girls (Epic Records, 1989).

Each track, in some way or another, seemed to describe my journey: "Secure Yourself"—choose your identity wisely, this world is dark, and the journey is long; "Kid Fears"—the juxtaposition of normal childhood fears versus those tragedies we sometimes hear about on the news; "Prince of Darkness"—a testament to family, friends and support systems in the face of diabolical forces that threaten to pull you under; "Blood and Fire"—all about the obsessive-compulsive, and thus dangerous, kind of love; "Tried to Be True"—faithfulness and compromise in the little choices you make everyday; "Love's Recovery"—the redemptive power of selfless love; "Land of Canaan"—the shame and pain and loneliness of unrequited love; "Center Stage"—through several allusions to historic nursery rhymes, we are given the exhortation to make our actions sure and to accept the consequences; and "History of Us"—a double entendre: make certain your story tells the tale of one who was present in every moment, who entered into the often pain-filled messiness of other's lives, who answered the call of the living God, before time makes history of you.

How did they do it? How did they sound so naturally a part of my world? Come to find out later that Amy Ray graduated Emory with a degree in English and religion, and Emily Saliers, who also went to Emory, is the daughter of Don Saliers, professor emeritus of theology and worship at Candler School.

My favorite was the album's opening song, "Closer to Fine" (read the lyrics). It struck all the right chords. It also became a favorite cover for the folk band I started (as a ploy to get my now wife to fall in love with me). In the first line (quoted in the second paragraph above), the singer sets the tone: seeing the world in blacks and whites alone avoids the issue. She needs help to see all the shades of gray (in order to realize that the answer lies in the seeking), and coming to grips with this leads "me [to] take my life less seriously" because "it's only life after all." In other words, relax. You're not expected to find all the answers.

Analyzing every lyric from this tune would turn this already long blog post into an unbearably long one. But at its core, this song sings of gaining stability through the awareness of instability—becoming "closer to fine"—in the face of the vertigo-like symptoms that result from the apparent relativity and confusion of life that appears in response to the search for something definitive, something black and white, from one source. Add to this the realization that that search is couched in an everyday life clearly dependent on its social construction, and seeking "solace in a bottle or possibly a friend" sounds about right.

These days, I've learned to be more critical—less gullible—when listening or reading. And I've certainly learned to cling to God's Word (enfleshed and spoken/written/tasted in the bread and wine and passed through in the waters of baptism) and thus seek more from this "source for some definitive." Nevertheless, I'm still a recovering progressive; I'm still a humanist ever-seeking for the Christian to gain ground. I'm still walking that "crooked line."

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On the Pathological Reliance on Medicine

I witnessed a convergence of ideas the other day when reading Rob Moll’s The Art of Dying: Living Fully in to the Life to Come. (A book, incidentally, that I think ought to be read, along with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' classic On Death and Dying.)

A few months ago I came across (again) Gilbert Meilaender's brief article "I Want to Burden My Loved Ones" (first published in 1991 in First Things—back when it was less of a rag). Moll then brought it up in The Art of Dying and unpacks it a bit: 

"Meilander gently argues against the application of living wills or advance directives as the modern fix-all to the tendency of doctors to rely too heavily on medicine. We say we don't want to burden our families with making difficult choices when we cannot make medical decisions on our own, so we turn to legal documents that outline what we would and would not want should we ever be unable to tell a doctor ourselves. . . .

[But] this appeal to a piece of paper overturns what families are supposed to do—carry each other's burdens. When we allow someone else to care for us, make decisions for us, Meilander says, we most often discover that they are willing and eager to pick up our burdens." (p. 90)

Advance directives are, of course, not inherently wrong, but "it is best when a range of people . . . are part of the conversation about what medical care a patient desires." The main benefit of advance directives is getting the conversation started.

Moll also writes early on in the book about what he alludes to in the above quote—relying too heavily on modern medicine. "Our hope in medicine can lead to an unrealistic expection that medicine can cure whatever disease we or our loved ones might have. Such expectations tempt us to believe we need not contemplate and prepare for our death or that of our family members." He goes on: "Aggressive medical care may always be our first option, but by pursuing powerful medicine until there is 'nothing left to do' we likely forgo time with loved ones, final pursuits or perhaps a spiritual deepening in anticipation of life with God" (p. 35). Such is the irony of certain Christians' proclivities toward being "so pro-life [that] we're anti-death" (in the words of one Christian gerontologist, p. 33).

Then along came Hauerwas. In "America's God Is Dying," he writes (among other things that are actually the piece's focus):

"The fear of death is necessary to insure a level of cooperation between people who otherwise share nothing in common. In other words, they share nothing in common other than the presumption that death is to be avoided at all costs.

That is why in America hospitals have become our cathedrals and physicians are our priests. I'd even argue that America's almost pathological reliance on medicine is but a domestic manifestation of its foreign policy. America is a culture of death because Americans cannot conceive of how life is possible in the face of death. And thus 'freedom' comes to stand for the attempt to live as though we will not die."

The point about foreign policy aside, think how this same culture (of triumphalism and glory) has gripped the American church—the very place where the cross ought to be rooted. Christians here cannot conceive of how life is possible in the face of death. And so American Christians, just as much if not more than non-Christians, die poorly, precisely because they have forgotten how to die well, which means they've forgotten how to live. 

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Ancient Wisdom

A certain sage-like professor once quipped: “Would you, after having obtained a one-hundred dollar bill, proceed to throw away the fifty crumpled up in your pocket?” The rhetorical question was aimed at the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. To put it another way, would we, after having received Christ, “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24), proceed to relegate the biblical books of wisdom to the shelf, never to be utilized again?

Unfortunately, nothing less has happened within the church. The fact that they are neglected (especially Proverbs and Ecclesiastes) reveals a few problems many of us have with them. We Christians know the oft-repeated phrase, “Fear the Lord,” but do we understand it? Also, there are times when portions of the Proverbs leave us with a sneaking suspicion that they are trite, even wrong, at times. Does health, wealth, and prosperity always meet the righteous? Moreover, the very values we Americans disdain, biblical wisdom exalts — age and tradition.

Why not throw the fifty away? Because many of the words of wisdom testify to Jesus the Christ (see Luke 24:27). Furthermore, “the word of our God will stand forever” (Isa. 40:8b), and the whole of Scripture is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). The apostles themselves directly quote or allude to approximately sixty Proverbs — not to mention the other wisdom books. They saw that only truth is unchangeable, despite the many ways those truths have been interpreted by people throughout the ages. The wisdom literature of the Old Testament expresses such truth — truth that transcends every situation — and thus it can be applied to many of life’s circumstances.

One such transcendent truth found in biblical wisdom is that well-known expression: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps. 11:10; Prov. 9:10; see also Job 28:28; Eccl. 12:13). But what kind of “fear” serves as the prerequisite for the attainment of wisdom?

To begin with, to “fear” the Lord (or to have the “fear of God”) involves three aspects: First, the most obvious is that of emotional awe — to have faith, love, and trust in a holy God. Second, to fear God simply means that we must humble ourselves before the unchanging revelation of who he is in his Word. Third, fearing the Lord is a transcendent truth that can be instructed and committed to memory or pondered in the heart. This last point is important if for no other reason than to show us that no matter how many people do not fear God, it nonetheless endures. Thus, “fear of the Lord” refers to God’s eternal word, and it is this ageless inspiration from which wisdom flows. “Fear,” therefore, has little to do with pacifying an angry God; rather, it has to do with an expressive response of humility, trust, and love — this last effect, we are reminded by Jesus in Matthew 22:40, being that upon which “all the Law and the Prophets” depend. Again, biblical “fear” does not entail a robotic response to the legalist’s laws; it is humility and awe of the one who set before us “life and good, death and evil” (Deut. 30:15). Using Jesus as the ultimate example, the fear of the Lord is the Son’s loving adoration that manifested itself in humble and meticulous obedience to his Father’s will. If we do this, then God-pleasing wisdom will follow. But of what exactly does this “wisdom” consist?

Wisdom (Heb., hokma) ordinarily means “skill,” “shrewdness,” “prudence,” “expertise,” or “masterful understanding.” Throughout Scripture, such wisdom often refers to the art of war, of governing, diplomacy, or discernment. Generally speaking, this wisdom is accessible to anyone. It comes not by miraculous visions but by careful observation of everyday life, as well as deference to tradition. Wisdom is that which enables the individual to manage his or her life, to achieve solutions against insurmountable odds. Compare this to 1 Corinthians 1:24 cited above, and the connection becomes clear: Christ is now our wisdom, and through him, we can meet anything (Phil. 4:13). Finally, wisdom is not neutral. The wisdom described in the Old Testament is God-centered, which makes God-pleasing wisdom, in the end, inaccessible but by God’s grace. Fearing God, therefore, brings a certain kind of clarity to life — both moral and mental — and makes possible the use of godly insight and understanding.

Biblical wisdom not only teaches us how to live, it also teaches us how to die. That is, it teaches us about what it means to face the inevitability of death in faith. Many of us (myself included), find talk about death less than exciting — even terrifying at times. But God’s wisdom gives us a sober reflection, not blind naïveté: “He who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion” (Eccl. 9:4). This is true, is it not? So long as we live (and many of us still love life), do we not have high hopes? But alas, this hope, according to the Preacher, enables us to see that “the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing …” (Eccl. 9:5). Why does the wisdom of God jar us from the joy of life and hope, sunsets and love, to the sober thought of death and silence? The answer is too easy, and too easily overlooked — especially by the successful church of the Western world: Forgetting that life is not about being as comfortable as possible, we have forgotten how to die, and thus we have forgotten how to live.

{This originally appeared in Tabletalk 29.1 (January 2005): 48–49}

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The Freedom of Fear

Cain offered grain faithlessly, and his sacrifice was meant to appease (see Gen. 4:1–6; Heb. 11:4). His concern was to placate the demands of his creator. Homage was a trivial thing to him, a mere formality to be dispensed with so he could get back to his daily routine. He gave his grain out of fear, and fear alone. His duty lacked love and delight.

Yet, fear is not a bad thing. To fear God is to begin on wisdom’s journey (Ps. 11:10; Prov. 9:10). Sometimes groveling is an appropriate reaction — especially for Christians. But maybe like Cain, we struggle to believe in the superabundant grace of God? Even though we seem to ignore the fact that we can displease him (Heb. 12:3–11), more often than not we seem to be suspicious of the bounty of God’s grace. We, too, attempt to secure the favor of God.

This must not be confused, however, with pleasing God, for that is a worthy cause indeed (see Rom. 12:1; 14:17–19; 1 Tim. 5:4). No, the kind of appeasement we fall into is the kind that seeks to block God’s view of our sin. Maybe if we give money to the church regularly, buy a pew for the new chapel, offer time and resources to the youth program, teach a Bible study, or speak of our faith to others, then possibly God will overlook our sin. Maybe he will see that we are not so bad, all things considered. Now, such things in themselves are good and right to do, but we grieve God when we adopt the appeasement mentality and disbelieve his grace (yes, we can grieve God; see Eph. 4:30).

In John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, a fellow by the name of Honest relates a story about one Mr. Fearing. Christiana, wife of the famed pilgrim Christian, sat close by, listening intently. Summarizing Mr. Fearing’s character, Honest said, “Difficulties, lions, or Vanity Fair, he feared not at all; it was only sin, death, and hell, that were to him a terror, because he had some doubts about his interest in that celestial country.” Strikingly, this redeemed individual was said to have no fear regarding physical calamities, but every fear about the life hereafter. What can assuage such fear?

There are those rare moments for many of us whose lives reflect the holiness and image of the living Savior. But at the exact moment we look to that fruit as a sign of our salvation, we are faced with the fear of having in reality no interest whatsoever in the city of God. After all, some of the world’s most virtuous philanthropists are self-avowed atheists.

For me, this happens at the table of celebration during Holy Communion. Any good work I may have accomplished the week prior utterly melts away. At the table, I become Mr. Fearing.

I ask God: Have I no interest in that celestial city? Have I been duped these many years, confusing the blessings of the church with the blessings of personal faith? Even worse than Mr. Fearing, I am anxious-ridden about life’s difficulties, lions, and Vanity Fair. In the end, my outward faith is a far cry from that of Mr. Fearing.

Then it hits me. This is what the gospel is all about. We have absolutely nothing to bring to the table of this new covenant. And it is precisely at this moment when we are to come, eat, and rest. Faithful obedience and confession, to be sure, are essential to the Christian pilgrimage, but we dare not bring those as payments or appeasements with which God will let us partake of his Son’s body and blood. Through faith we are not only declared “not guilty,” we are transformed, albeit imperfectly in the present, into the faithful nation of God.

Nonetheless, anxiety like Mr. Fearing’s cripples most of us at least once in life. In such a world as this, believing in God’s grace is truly a hope against all hope. Even our heroes succumbed to it, though we often prefer the caricatures over against the reality. We want the Luther who stood against Rome, noble and staunch, but forget about the Luther who wrote in 1527 that “for more than a week I was close to the gates of death and hell. I trembled in all my members. Christ was wholly lost. I was shaken by desperation and blasphemy of God.” We prize the Calvin of Geneva, that great reformer and teacher, and too often overlook the brooding anxiety that drove him to describe the world as an unsettling place in which “we cannot be otherwise than constantly anxious and confused.” We are, in short, bored and suspicious of God’s superabundant grace.

But essential to the health of our Christian lives is the faith through which we come to know that we are free, the faith to know where we stand with the Lord of all. Liberty such as this scares some people. But it never scared the apostle Paul. He wrote that now there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:1–2). That old, yet holy, law (of Moses [Rom. 5:20], which judges all who are in Adam) can no longer condemn those who, through baptism, have entered into Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection (Rom. 6:3–5). This is good news indeed. “For one who has died [in union with Jesus] has been set free from sin” (Rom. 6:7). What kind of court would pronounce a verdict of “not guilty” and still refuse to let the pardoned person leave the prison? Yet this is exactly what we do when we deem suspect God’s abounding grace. There are enough people in the world that desire nothing less than to bind our consciences to their own. We need not add to it; rather, we need to champion the gospel of grace and cripple the crippling anxiety of Mr. Fearing.

{This originally appeared in Tabletalk 28.9 (September 2004): 23–24}

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