My Name is Carolyn, and I'm a Wordaholic by Carolyn Arends

You may have noticed that many of the Canadian Writers Bloggers this month have been offering (rather delightful) glimpses of their pathways to the writerly life. I have resonated with so many of their stories. It seems appropriate to share here my most recent Christianity Today column ... all about the power of words, the need for silence, and the relationship between the two.

Listen. Write. Rinse. Repeat!
Carolyn

Knowing God Means More Than Describing Him

Sometimes, our spiritual experiences can't be put into words

In the April, 2014 issue of Christianity Today

 I tackled my first English essay in college with enthusiasm, a thesaurus, and a naive disregard for page limits. The paper came back with the following comment: "Carolyn, you've made some fine points, but unfortunately they are lost in a sea of circumlocutious wordiness."

 I've always loved words. A well-turned phrase can replace chaos with cosmos. Solomon likened words aptly spoken to apples of gold in frames of silver (Prov. 25:11). When a preacher parses some Greek or Hebrew, I'm astonished at the vistas of meaning that hide within a bit of syntax. Words are teachers, Swiss Army knives, and painters' palettes. Given the right choreographer, they dance.

Yet, for all my love of language, I've been troubled by a growing sense that I need to pay more attention to wordless things. I don't mean simply that "actions speak louder than words"—although they often do, and we should all be required to balance each use of "compassion" with at least ten compassionate acts. Lately I've been wondering: Have I reduced the scope of what I can know to what I can articulate?

Occasionally, something—a strain of music, a friend's touch, a sunset, or simply a sudden sense of Presence—will "speak" to me. When that occurs, I have an overwhelming urge to put whatever's happening into language. Otherwise, it doesn't seem real. This impulse is particularly noticeable in my devotional life. Give me a prayer list or a passage to study, and I'm there. But ask me to sit silently in God's presence, and I get anxious.

Ronald Rolheiser, a Catholic writer, distinguishes between meditative and contemplative prayer. In the former, he argues, we are active and verbal. In the latter, we are passively inarticulate. When we try to perceive God, Rolheiser suggests, we're often like a fish who asks his mother, "Where is this water we hear so much about?" First, the mother might set up a projector at the bottom of the ocean to show pictures of the sea. Then, she might say, "Now that you have some idea of what water is, I want you to sit in it and let it flow through you." That difference—between thinking about water and actually attending to it—is like the difference between meditation and contemplation.

Epistemology (the study of how we know what we know) often emphasizes knowledge rendered in propositional statements: I "know" that 2 + 2 = 4. But there is also "acquaintance-knowledge," gained through direct encounter with another person, place, or thing. Many non-English languages have a distinct vocabulary to signify the profound differences between these ways of knowing. For example, the verb for knowing something factually is wissen in German and sapere in Latin, while "acquaintance-knowledge" is designated kennen (German) and cognoscere(Latin). The first kind of knowledge is general, abstract, and easily put into words. The second is individual, particular, and often hard to articulate. You find wissenin textbooks and creeds; kennen comes through relationships and experience.

One of my favourite preachers says that, by Tuesday, he must "break the back" of whatever passage he's going to teach on Sunday. In this mode he's seeking wissen—knowledge of the text that he can codify, control, and explain to his congregation.

Alternatively, one of my favorite contemplatives says that his faith only flourishes when he lets a passage break him. He uses the practice of lectio divina ("sacred reading," or dwelling on a text to listen for the Holy Spirit) in order to pursue a more direct encounter.

I believe both modes are essential. God indeed invites us to "come . . . reason together" (Isa. 1:18, ESV). He also implores us to "be still, and know" that he is God (Ps. 46:10). In the earliest Latin Bible translation, the verb for "know" in this passage appears as cognoscere—acquaintance-knowledge—not sapere.

Perhaps it's fitting that I devote my final Wrestling with Angels column to exploring the power and limits of words. We've exchanged a lot of them over the past five years, and I'm deeply grateful. Rest assured, I'm not giving up on language—you can count on my circumlocutious wordiness in future pieces for ct and, Lord willing, in songs and books to come.

Yet I hope to write without the assum­ption that everything knowable can be named in words. Our God is both the Word who became flesh (John 1) and the Spirit who "himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words" (Rom. 8:26, ESV). Let's swim not only in the sea of our own words and ideas about him, but also in his fathomless ocean of love.

 

When God Wears a Costume - Arends

Here's my newest CT column - reaching to articulate something important (I think) about using our God-given capacity to understand and use symbols. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

When God Wears a Costume

Why we need symbols in order to see him.

Carolyn Arends

[in the January/February issue of Christianity Today ]

I was a teenager trying to entertain 2-year-old Laura as she squirmed in her high chair. Thinking myself a clever babysitter, I held up her laminated placemat, which featured a photograph of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

"Is this a picture of Donald and Daisy Duck?" I asked.

"No," she giggled.

"Is it Goofy and Pluto?"

"Nuh-uh!" she squealed.

"Well, who are they?" I asked, gearing up for the inevitable right-answer celebration. But her reply caught me off guard.

"Strangers in costumes."

Laura is grown now, but I've been thinking about the pragmatism she exhibited as a toddler. Her no-nonsense take on the world (at least the world of Disney) is a perfect example of what sociologist Philip Rieff and philosopher Allan Bloom both described as a "low symbolic hedge."

I encountered this idea in The Shattered Lantern, a book by Catholic writer Ronald Rolheiser. If many Westerners have trouble perceiving God's presence in daily life, then perhaps, says Rolheiser, the problem is that our culture lacks potent symbols.

The ability to use symbols distinguishes humans from other animals. Consider eating. All animals use food for sustenance and pleasure. But humans can employ candlelight, china, toasts, and blessings to imbue a meal with significance. Through symbols, eating can embody romance, friendship, honor, or celebration.

I must confess: I usually have neither the time nor the inclination to bother with such symbols. When, for instance, I eat on the run, my symbolic hedge is low; food is just fuel, and the day is just a succession of hours to manage or endure.

But Rolheiser warns that a low symbolic hedge drains the meaning out of experience. To illustrate, he imagines a middle-aged man beset by chronic back pain.

What does this pain mean? It can mean that he has arthritis, a medical symbol; or it can mean he is undergoing some midlife crisis, a psychological symbol; or it can mean that he is undergoing the paschal mystery, that this is his cross, a religious symbol. Or it might mean all three. The symbols with which we enter and interpret our experience can be low (suffering arthritis) or high (being part of the paschal mystery!).

God's apparent absence in ordinary experience is intimately connected to the diminished height of our symbolic hedge.

I came to Rolheiser's book because two friends—a Christian and a skeptic—had confessed to longing for a sharper awareness of God's presence. Their failure to "feel" God left both women wounded.

The Shattered Lantern reminded me that sensing God's presence is not the same thing as faith. God is near whether we feel him or not. "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed," Jesus declares (John 20:29). Saint John of the Cross famously wrote of the "dark night of the soul," claiming that sometimes God withdraws his presence.

Still, John of the Cross noted that in other cases the problem has more to do with our "blindness." Given that Jesus encourages us to seek in order to find (Luke 11:9), Rolheiser would have us cultivate a contemplative receptivity to God—trusting that, in general, we can sense his presence.

In a culture of narcissism, pleasure-seeking, and restlessness, that receptivity can seem futile. A low symbolic hedge is both a cause and a symptom of our problem. Where earth once seemed, in the words of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, "crammed with heaven," it now often appears as flat as a laminated placemat. Where the poet saw "every common bush afire with God," we see only shrubs.

Our low symbolic hedge is, in part, a byproduct of the modern dogma that nature is all there is. But it's also the fruit of our Reformation heritage, with its wariness of superstition. After all, Laura was right: Mickey and Minnie really are just strangers in costumes. It's foolish to pretend otherwise.

But what about cases when there's truly more than meets the eye? When bread and wine are not just food and drink, but emblems of a body broken? When baptismal waters plunge us into death and resurrection?

The ancient Israelites were not above raising the symbolic hedge when they needed to awaken themselves to God. In 1 Samuel 7, they pour out buckets of water to express repentance, and build "ebenezers" out of rocks to memorialize God's provision and deliverance. Sometimes water is more than water, stone more than stone.

Much has been made of young evangelicals leaving "low" Protestant congregations for more liturgical churches. Maybe part of what they're seeking is a higher symbolic hedge. What would happen if our worship enveloped them with biblically grounded symbolism? Certainly, we should remain wary of counterfeit "strangers in costumes." But we must also help ourselves remember that we've been invited into the drama of a mysterious and wonderful gospel—a truth stranger (in the best possible way) than fiction.

Duct-Tape Disciples-Arends

What follows is one of my recent Christianity Today columns - about an amazing friendship, surfing, and discipleship. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Carolyn

Duct-Tape Disciples

What really sticks when leading a friend to Christ. 

Carolyn Arends [ originally posted on CT's website ]

Pascale Honore loves watching her sons tackle the Australian surf. A woman not easily intimidated, she would join her boys in the waves were it not for a 1995 car accident that left her paraplegic. Bound to a wheelchair, surfing was not an option—until one of her sons' friends had an idea.

Tyron Swan, 23, is a strong and skillful surfer. "I could duct tape you to my back and surf," he said to Pascale, 50. Pascale didn't see why he couldn't, and, armed with several rolls of tape, they set out to test their plan.

Pascale "can't find the words to explain" what it's like to move through the ocean, to feel like she's "part of the water" after years of immobility. For his part, Tyron notes that surfing with an extra 88 pounds taped to his body is "a pretty good challenge." But his nonchalance can't mask the significance of his gift. "It's changed her life in a way," he admits.

Pascale and Tyron's adventures have been chronicled in a short documentary, Duct Tape Surfing. It's the sort of clip you think would take the Internet by storm, and that's exactly what it has done. How could anyone not be moved by Pascale's courage and Tyron's tangible friendship?

If my fellow Christians are anything like me, I suspect they can't watch the footage without seeing a powerful metaphor for spiritual friendship. Is there any more vivid embodiment of "bear one another's burdens" (Gal. 6:2, ESV) than a sturdy Tyron rising up on his surfboard with a grinning Pascale on his back? Is there any richer example of the way trust can make possible things once thought impossible? When we use words like evangelism and discipleship, are we not daring to dream that we who have already experienced the waves of God's mercy might somehow lead a friend or two into the water?

I must resist the urge to reduce Pascale to a sermon illustration. But there is a detail in her story that I can't help relating to the matter of spiritual friendships. It has to do with duct tape.

Wherever the Duct Tape Surfing documentary is posted, there is space for viewers to leave comments. Several folks have asked about having a company make a professional-grade harness, eliminating the need for the reams of silver tape that Tyron cuts off with a fishing knife after every outing.

"Pascale was sent a number of harnesses to try but realized that duct tape is the best as Ty needs her in a certain position," explains Mark Tipple, the film director. "Too low, and he's off balance, or if she's too high, he can't raise his head while paddling and can't see. For now, duct tape is the best!"

Where prefabricated solutions have failed, duct tape lets Pascale and Tyron customize, adapt, and fit themselves together as needed. Here is where my mind makes the leap back to spiritual friendships. There are many evangelism and discipleship programs available, chock-full of great ideas. But I am learning, in my halting attempts at spiritual friendships, that no one believes, disbelieves, questions, or grows in exactly the same manner. There is no one way to share the faith or invite someone deeper into it. While programs give us ideas, successful spiritual friendships are built upon adaptive, responsive, trusting relationships as unique as the people who inhabit them.

As a teenager, I spent several weeks going through a life-changing discipleship program with my youth pastor's wife, Pam Mitchell. Although I'm grateful for the material we worked through, I can't remember anything about the curriculum we used. What I remember, above all, is our friendship—the way I could trust Pam completely with my hurts and hopes. As she lived out the Scriptures we were exploring, I longed to swim where she swam—to follow her as she followed Christ (1 Cor. 11:1).

There is a give and take to discipleship, a discovery of how a would-be mentor's strengths and experiences align with a friend's questions and quandaries. Spiritual friendship should be as much listening as leading, as much discovery as discourse. Forcing that friendship into preconceived patterns will almost certainly sink it.

And so, whether I am the mentor or the mentee (or, often, both), I am trying to embrace something like duct-tape discipleship. It's stickier, and messier, than some of the prefabricated solutions. But it takes an approach as adaptable—and tenacious—as duct tape to be the kind of friend who dives in deep and, like the Proverb says, "sticks closer than a brother" (18:24).

Worship Con Queso - Carolyn Arends

How sensual delights prepare us for the eternal feast
(In the September issue of Christianity Today)

There is a Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston I have visited on three occasions. Each meal has begun with chile con queso. The cheese at this particular restaurant is the most delicious food I have ever tasted.

With every bite, I have been overcome with gratitude to God for creating taste buds, cows, and human ingenuity. And that gratitude has led to praise.

Some folks understand this. Some think I'm kidding. And others are skeptical that such a carnal thing as a Tex-Mex appetizer could provoke genuine worship.

We Christians have a long history of mixed and sometimes openly hostile attitudes toward sensual pleasure. Saint Augustine is the fourth-century poster boy for our dilemma, struggling in Book X of hisConfessions to rein in each of his five senses. He attempts, for example, to "take food at mealtimes as though it were medicine" and to "fight against the pleasure in order not to be captivated by it."

Augustine is ever-vigilant that pleasure in created things never replace our desire for the Creator. His caution is well taken. But lately I've been discovering an emphatically propleasure voice in the writings of another Christian guide.

C. S. Lewis is known, of course, as a literary scholar, novelist, and apologist. He is also, consistently, a curator of pleasure. Where there is beauty to be received, music to be heard, laughter to be welcomed, and (especially) food to be eaten, Lewis attends, celebrates, scrutinizes, describes, and partakes.

In Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, Lewis argues that the pleasures derived from forest moss and sunlight, bird song, morning air, and the comfort of soft slippers are "shafts of [God's] glory as it strikes our sensibility." Our task is not to guard against sensual enjoyment, but to allow our minds to run "back up the sunbeam to the sun"—to see every pleasure as a "channel of adoration."

Lewis even argues that there is no such thing as a "bad" pleasure—only pleasures "snatched by unlawful acts." But he is not blind to the "concupiscence" (lustfulness) that so haunts Augustine. When our response to pleasure is greed instead of adoration—when we seek to grasp and possess rather than receive—our healthy cry of "This also is Thou" distorts into "the fatal word: Encore."

In his introduction to The Four Loves, Lewis distinguishes between "Need-pleasures" and "Pleasures of Appreciation." The enjoyment we feel upon receiving a Need-pleasure—water to quench thirst, for example, or the scratching of an itch—is intense but short-lived. But with Appreciation-pleasures—nonessential things that awaken us to delight, like delicious smells and tastes and scenes of beauty—the sensation intensifies over time. Greed—the repeated cry of "Encore!" to, say, rich black coffee or extra-creamy queso—may transform a Pleasure of Appreciation into a Pleasure of Need, draining out of it all the lasting enjoyment.

The answer, Lewis contends, is not to avoid pleasure but to "have" and "read" it properly: to receive it, openhanded, as both a gift and a message. "We know we are being touched by a finger of that right hand at which there are pleasures for evermore. There need be no question of thanks or praise as a separate event, something done afterwards. To experience the tiny theophany"—the small sign of God's presence—"is itself to adore."

In many respects, Augustine and Lewis are arguing two sides of the same coin. But there is a major point of divergence at the heart of their opposite orientations to pleasure. Where Augustine sees our sensuality as a liability to be managed until God "consign[s] both food and belly to destruction," Lewis views every earthly pleasure as an apprenticeship in adoration for the sort of thing that will go on forever in heaven.

Biblical writers seem irresistibly drawn to an image—part metaphor, part promise—of "the sacred meal with God." From the table prepared for the psalmist (Ps. 23:5), to Jesus' story of a great banquet (Luke 14:15–24), to the Revelation 19 vision of a wedding supper, the Scriptures are filled with the anticipation of feasting together—in the presence of God—forever. The prophet Isaiah (25:6–8) takes particular pleasure in this vision:

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
the best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever.

For Lewis, earthly meals are chances to practice the gratitude and adoration that will accompany our everlasting feast with God. Just as trials train us in patience, pleasure trains us in worship. Every sensual enjoyment (properly received) is a "tiny theophany"—a chance to "taste and see" that God is good, and a reminder that there is a whole lot more where that came from.

I rest my queso.

You Probably Won't Be Sent to Egypt - Arends

Hi All - Here is my most recent Christianity Today column, dealing with the pesky question of what to do next ... when you don't know what to do next. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Carolyn

You Probably Won't Be Sent to Egypt…

But one way or another, God will point you to the place where your gifts can serve his people.

Carolyn Arends

[ posted on Christianity Today ]

Years ago, I toured as an opening act for Rich Mullins. There was something about Rich's music that stirred up people's deepest longings. I loved overhearing conversations at the autograph table; they often turned serious and urgent.

More than once, a fan asked Rich how to discern the will of God. Rich would listen, and then offer an unexpected perspective.

"I don't think finding God's plan for you has to be complicated," he'd begin. "God's will is that you love him with all your heart and soul and mind, and also that you love your neighbor as yourself. Get busy with that, and then, if God wants you to do something unusual, he'll take care of it. Say, for example, he wants you to go to Egypt." Rich would pause for a moment before flashing his trademark grin. "If that's the case, he'll provide 11 jealous brothers, and they'll sell you into slavery."

I'm not sure whether this satisfied Rich's fans, but I suspect his advice has stayed with them in the way it's haunted me. When I find myself wrestling with life decisions, I think of Rich's Egypt Principle. It makes me laugh, and then it asks me to get down to the serious business of determining which of my options allow me to best love God and other people. Such an approach usually rules out certain possibilities, while affirming (and even creating) several others.

Sometimes, once I've narrowed down my alternatives in light of the Great Commandment, the determinative "jealous brothers" do show up. A scholarship comes through at one school and not another. A job offer is escalated or rescinded. Other times, however, I'm left standing at the junction of several seemingly reasonable pathways, miserable with uncertainty. If only Rich were around to dispatch further wisdom!

Recently, in a college music department faculty meeting, the topic of discerning God's will came up. We were discussing the decisions our students face, which often include whether to pursue a music career or enter church ministry. One teacher mentioned that he asks students to attend to their experiences of consolation and desolation. They should give special consideration to the directions that most consistently produce consolation, he said, while the avenues that create desolation should be approached cautiously.

I was skeptical. If some of our students are led into music careers, desolation (rejection, obstacles, long drives in decrepit vans) will be normative. (I imagine the desolation level in church ministry is similar.) Often, the most worthwhile undertakings are the most difficult. Christians, as people of the Cross, should understand this best. Wouldn't a paradigm of consolation and desolation lead to avoiding anything challenging or unpleasant?

While I teach at one college, I'm a graduate student at another. There, only a few weeks later, I re-encountered the consolation/desolation paradigm in some coursework on Ignatian spirituality. I began to realize that I had misunderstood these terms. Consolation is understood not as happy feelings (although they can be its byproduct), but rather as that which opens us up to God and others—and quickens our pulse for the things of the kingdom. Even difficult circumstances can lead to consolation if we sense God in them. Desolation, too, is more nuanced than I imagined. It has to do with that which distracts us from our awareness of God's presence and turns us in on ourselves (whether our immediate experience of the diversion is positive or negative).

Ignatian spiritual direction reminds us that diligent attention to the movements of consolation and desolation in our own souls can help clarify which options lie within God's will. In moments of crisis, we can base our decisions both upon how we have sensed him moving, and also upon the God-given inclinations we've discovered within ourselves.

I'm not certain whether Rich Mullins was familiar with Ignatian spirituality. But I know he paid attention to the things that opened him up to God—and the things God seemed to have wired him to love—and ran headlong toward them. That's how he ended up traveling with a ragamuffin band of friends, singing songs that made people hungry to find God's will. It's also how he wound up, toward the end of his short but ferociously lived life, on a Navajo reservation, teaching music to kids.

Maybe that's why Rich could claim that loving God and others takes care of most of our discernment questions. After all, the psalmist assures us that if we delight ourselves in the Lord, he will give us the desires of our heart (Ps. 37:4). God can be trusted to teach our hearts what to desire, and to lead us—by jealous brothers, burning bushes, or quiet inclinations—to the places where our own unique giftings meet the movements of his kingdom. There we find consolation … and joy.

www.carolynarends.com

Taste the Soup - Carolyn Arends

My most recent CT column explores my love-hate relationship with church.  Don't get me wrong.  I've been a part of some really fine churches in my day. I still am.  But sometimes I struggle.  If you can relate, let me know, and if not ... well, pray for me!

 

Taste the Soup

Sometimes understanding follows obedience.

Carolyn Arends

[ posted at CT  9/26/2012 11:18 ]

A man goes into a deli, orders the matzo ball soup, and motions the waiter back to his table.

"Taste the soup," says the man.

"Sir, is something wrong?" asks the waiter. "I can get you another bowl right away."

"Taste the soup," says the man.

"Sir, is there something you want me to tell the chef?"

"Taste the soup."

"Fine," says the waiter, exasperated. "I'll taste it. Where's the spoon?"

"Aha!" says the man.

Sometimes you have to do what's being asked of you before you understand why it's required. You have to be willing to taste the soup in order to discover the spoon is missing. In religious parlance: "Understanding follows obedience." It's an axiom every bit as true as it is vexing. Psalm 111 observes that "all who follow [God's] precepts have good understanding"—not the other way around.

Lately, for me, the command to "taste the soup" has been about attending church. Trouble is, I just haven't felt like going.

I've been sliding into pews (or modern equivalents) from infancy; my vocation has taken me to hundreds of churches around the world. I've met some of my dearest friends and endured some of my darkest betrayals in youth rooms, foyers, and sanctuaries. I've cried, sung, prayed, committed, disconnected, recommitted, scribbled sermon notes, doodled, been wounded, been healed, encountered the Mystery, and dozed off—sometimes all in the same service.

There are seasons when Sunday can't come soon enough. The gifts church has given me are too numerous to list.

But there are also stretches of disillusionment. Times when the songs that once ushered me into a profound awareness of God's presence seem suddenly schlocky and manipulative. Mornings when I can't find anyone I know during the "greeting" time, and a previously cozy ritual morphs into a caricature of superficial community. Those are the Sundays I struggle with the sermon and feel my theological earnestness hardening into elitism, discernment distorting into self-righteousness.

Like anyone who has logged serious pew time, I've got reasons to be jaded. I've seen churches split over trivia while they trivialize glaring immorality amongst their leaders. I've encountered gossip posing as prayer, and bullying masquerading as "spiritual guidance." I've watched the realignment and reduction of the gospel into a business plan for membership growth or personal improvement.

Most damaging of all, I've looked into my own heart and known that if my pew-mates are anything like me, church is composed of frail humans, each of us an unreliable, potentially dangerous mess of conflicting motives and wavering intentions.

People who complain that church is boring have no idea. Church is scary.

So I sell myself the half-truth that church is something we are rather than something we do. I stay home with my theology textbooks and Bible and enjoy a dissension-free congregation of one. I console myself with an online network of enlightened individuals who share both my convictions and my cynicisms. We satirize the excesses of organized religion, feeling cleverer than we ought about shooting the fish in our own barrels. We create a virtual but significant community. And for a while, it's enough.

There's just one problem. Beneath my rhetoric of antilegalism, enlightenment, and self-protection there remains a still, small—but increasingly insistent—voice. And it's telling me to taste the soup.

The biblical witness indicates that when God gets hold of people, they almost always work out the implications in groups. This has never been an easy process. The Israelites praise, squabble, fail, and repent together in a seemingly endless cycle. The Christians in the apostle Paul's churches alternately thrill and break their pastor's heart over and over again. But they keep at it, and with every try Paul grows more passionate about the ragtag crew of notoriously fallible humans who so thoroughly are the church that they can't help but do church together. Striving to convey the profound connection between Jesus and the people who gather in his name, Paul employs only the most intimate metaphors—we are Christ's bride, or his very body.

The triune God has always been into community. And community, I am forced to admit, ultimately requires meeting together with flesh and blood folks I cannot "block" or "unfriend" should they become annoying. It means getting close enough to hug and to arm wrestle, to build (and sometimes hold) each other up, even as we risk letting each other down.

It is important to remember that "tasting the soup" is not the same as "drinking the Kool-Aid." We are not required to unthinkingly remain in toxic or abusive environments, or even to follow a particular structure or meet on a certain day. Obedience in this area is simply intentional proximity with a group of people who love Jesus and each other. It is coming together to his table, if only because that is what he asks us to do. And it is trusting that he'll show us not only the spoons we're missing, but also the feast he has in store.

Review of Theology in Aisle Seven by Carolyn Arends (Nesdoly)

“Words are sacred, and when they are used truthfully or beautifully—best of all—incarnationally, they cause us to consider and even experience our Creator” writes Carolyn Arends in the Foreword to her book Theology in Aisle Seven: The Uncommon Grace of Everyday Spirituality. In this collection of essays previously published as columns in Christianity Today she attempts and, I would submit, succeeds at doing just that.

The book’s 25 chapters are divided into six sections. In section one (The Good God) Arends introduces us to the God of the big picture in chapters that discuss things like God’s omnipresence and His righteousness, which turns out to be His love in disguise. Section two (Life in God) has chapters that deal with faith and the church. Laughter and the arts are two topics she addresses in Part 3 (Common Things that Matter Greatly).  Part 4 (Uncommon Virtues) tackles subjects like trust, hospitality, humility, and silence. Part 5 (Into the World) has chapters on vocation and neighborliness. In the final section (Last Things) she discusses our mortality and God’s eventual victory.

Arends has a wonderful way with words. Of course she’s had lots of experience if you count her years of songwriting. However, songwriting doesn’t automatically translate into column writing according to her editor Mark Galli. In the book’s Introduction he says of her literary ability: “It’s the unusual songwriter who can become an effective magazine columnist …. Over the last few years, as I’ve read and edited column after column, I’ve discovered something Billboard Magazine puts succinctly: Carolyn is ‘one of the most affecting communicators in any genre.’”  Readers of the book will be treated to passages like:

“I suspect I have sometimes unconsciously used spiritual disciplines as smoke signals to get God’s attention” – Kindle Location 168

and

“The old cliché is true: Laughter is a medicine that reminds us that our sickness will one day be healed and we shall be whole and holy. Until then, laughter is the Elmer’s Glue that attaches us to the goodness that inhabits this world, and to the gladness that hints at the world to come” – KL 567

and

"Death unaddressed is the bogeyman in the basement; it keeps us looking over our shoulders and holds us back from entering joyously into the days we are given" - KL 1029. 

My favorite thing about Arends’ writing, however, is the way she brings her life and personal experiences into these essays, transforming what could be lofty platitudes into engaging, humorous, often self-deprecating, and always relatable epiphanies.

She tells of how losing her voice during a singing tour gave her a whole new concert experience and taught her that God could work through weakness. She draws parallels between parenting her children and being parented by God. She paints a picture of the usefulness of a power-washer, but also the damaging potential of its strength (“…he [a neighbour’s teen] felt an ant crawling on his calf. Instinctively, he turned the nozzle toward his leg, obliterating the insect—and unfortunately some layers of muscle and tissue” – KL 499) and likens it to God’s simultaneous power (shown in His zero-tolerance of sin in the Old Testament) and mercy (shown through Jesus in the New Testament).

The chapters are brief (800 words maximum), the stories captivating, but the ideas in this little book are huge. Summer would be a good time to download this weightless/weighty volume onto your e-reader for those rainy afternoons at the cottage. Then, with eyes opened, don’t be surprised when you too begin to recognize God in the ordinary things, like thunder storms, wasps at picnics, and misty lakeside mornings, that cross your path this summer. 

(Article first published as Book review: Theology in Aisle Seven by Carolyn Arends on Blogcritics.)

(Psst—of course you can get more of Carolyn's great writing here on the blog, on the post just below this one actually. Might we be getting a sneak-peek at her next book?)

This book is available only in e-book format.

Kindle

Nook

****************

Website: www.violetnesdoly.com 

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The Princess Bride and Psalm 22 - Arends

In On the Joke of the Bible

Why we can't get the New Testament without the Old.

Hi All - Here is my latest CT column.  As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Carolyn Arends | In the June 2012 issues of Christianity Today, posted online 07/02/2012

My kids finally saw The Princess Bride, a movie their dad and I have loved since our college days. There is something wonderful about watching your favorite people watch one of your favorite films. In this case, the added bonus was observing the light come into their eyes as they discovered the origin of several quirky things their parents routinely say. "Hey!" they shouted with a shock of recognition when Westley first said, "As you wish"—a line they've heard their father utter hundreds of times. Vizzini's "Inconceivable!" produced a similar response. By the time we got to the ROUS (Rodents of Unusual Size), our kids were grinning with the particular delight of cracking a previously mystifying code. They were in on the joke, and they liked it.

Language is much more than grammar and syntax. It is layer upon layer of collective memory and shared meaning, so that simple phrases like, "Houston, we have a problem," "Et tu, Brute?," "Remember the Alamo," or even "Yada, yada, yada" can carry worlds of meaning. You can't master a dialect without also learning the culture in which it is embedded.

In my quest to learn the "Gospel Language," I have often been oblivious to the shared experience assumed by the biblical writers. Jesus and his earliest followers were Jews; they held in their collective memory a particular story of a particular people, loaded with mutually understood points of reference. When I've read the New Testament only dimly aware of the symbolic world of the Old Testament, I've barely skimmed the surface of an ocean of meaning.

Certainly, I've grasped that Jesus' choice of 12 disciples has something to do with Yahweh's calling of the 12 tribes of Israel. But until recently, I remained oblivious to the way his baptism and desert temptation evoke the foundational story of the Israelite Exodus through Red Sea waters and into the wilderness. I've been duly impressed with the Lord's ability to command the stormy waters to be still (Matt. 8:26-27), but I've missed the Israelite shock at this man from Nazareth doing something that, according to the Hebrew Scriptures, only Yahweh can do. And although I've understood some of the significance of Jesus' transfiguration right before the eyes of Peter, James, and John, I've forgotten that the Israelites had been waiting since the Exile for the Shekinah—the visible glory of the Lord—to return.

Maybe the most significant reference I've missed has to do with Jesus' final words on the cross. That awful cry—My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?—has haunted my struggle to understand exactly what transpired (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34). Was Jesus, for a devastating moment, utterly alone and without hope? How that cry is processed has all sorts of implications for theology—not least for the way we conceive of the Atonement and of the relationality of God's triunity. More personally, it shapes the way I perceive my own experiences of abandonment.

I've known, in a vague way, that with his cry Jesus was quoting the beginning of Psalm 22, a passage so familiar to his friends that to utter the first line would have been tantamount to reciting the entire thing. Psalm 22 is an anguished prayer of David, spoken as a godly sufferer awaiting deliverance. It's the most frequently quoted Psalm in the New Testament. And its parallels to the Crucifixion are chilling:

A band of evil men has encircled me,
they have pierced my hands and my feet.
I can count all my bones;
people stare and gloat over me.
They divide my garments among them
And cast lots for my clothing. (vv. 16b-18, NIV 1984)

The psalm is so shot through with suffering, it's hard to imagine any more appropriate reference Jesus could have made. But it's essential to know that the only thing in Psalm 22 that runs as deeply and vividly as the speaker's pain is his unshakable hope:

You who fear the Lord, praise him! …
For he has not despised or disdained
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help. (vv. 23a, 24, NIV 1984)

Both Matthew and Mark note that some of the onlookers misunderstood Jesus' cry, mishearing the Aramaic word for "my God"—Eloi—as Elijah. I wonder if, in including that detail, they aren't cautioning us to pay attention to exactly what Jesus is saying.

The Cross is a mystery, and no human should expect to understand it fully. But if we want to be conversant in the language of the gospel, we need to be able to say at least this: At Calvary, Jesus felt the deepest level of anguish ever known, and yet he could still, in his Psalm 22 declaration, point to the presence, faithfulness, and anticipated deliverance of his Father—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God of our salvation.

Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

 

The Other Prodigal Son - Arends

My new Christianity Today column is about my empathy for the "older brother" ... and something he taught me only recently ... Here it is!

The Other Prodigal Son

The Prodigal's coming-home gala was for both sons.

 Growing up in Sunday school, I was very familiar with the Prodigal Son—at least as he was rendered in flannelgraph. I disapproved of his behavior with righteous indignation; as the first-born child of a Baptist household, I empathized with the older brother. How was it fair that the bad boy got a party and the good one didn't? It wasn't until I was much older that I realized the story was infinitely more about the father's love than the prodigal's misconduct.

Only recently, however, have I begun to discover that the older son in Jesus' story is every bit as lost as the younger one. In his book The Prodigal God, Timothy Keller points out that the two brothers represent the two basic ways people try to make life work. The younger son pursues "self-discovery"—he's on a quest to find and fulfill himself, even if a few people have to get hurt along the way. The older brother is committed to a more socially respectable way of being in the world—the way of "moral conformity." He's on a program of self-salvation, earning the approval of his community and the favor of his father; when he feels the terms of this deal are violated, his good attitude evaporates into resentment.

Kenneth Bailey is a theologian who spent 40 years living in the Middle East, striving to resituate Jesus' stories in their original Palestinian context. He points out that for Jesus' audience, respect for one's father is paramount; the younger son's request for his inheritance from a still-healthy patriarch constitutes an unthinkable offense. It amounts to saying, "I wish you were dead."

But the older son's conduct—refusing to join the party for his brother and arguing with his dad in front of the guests—is no less egregious. Hospitality was of supreme value in 1st-century Palestine. The entire village would likely have been invited to the party, and the oldest son would be expected to co-host the proceedings. His refusal is another round of humiliating rejection for the father. But the father actually goes out looking for this son, entreating him to come join the party, and Jesus leaves the story unfinished. Will the son abandon his own plan for making life work and accept the extravagant gift of his father's love and inclusion? Or will he stick to the terms of his deal and exclude himself from his place in the family?

I was discussing this story not long ago with a Bible study group made up mostly of "older brothers" and "older sisters." We'd played by the rules much of our lives, but we were beginning to see that our good behavior had been at least subconsciously a form of self-salvation—an attempt to earn God's approval and maybe even obligate him to do what we wanted. When we considered the fact that Jesus told this story to the Pharisees (older brothers if ever there were some!) in response to their outrage over his association with "sinners," we realized the parable is primarily about the father's relationship with the older son. "How did this story about two sons ever even get called 'The Prodigal Son'?" one of us asked. "An older brother must have named it!" was the answer.

As we pondered the implications, one of the women confessed, "Still, it doesn't seem fair that the father had never thrown a party for the older son." ?Several of us admitted that we, too, related to the son's complaint.

We moved on to another of Jesus' stories: the parable of the Great Banquet. I began to wonder if, from Jesus' perspective, having a feast thrown in one's honor is a blessing, but being invited to help the father host the banquet is a vastly greater gift. My husband and I love holding pool parties in our backyard. When things go well—when lots of people come and the food is tasty and there is laughter and music and good conversation—there is a particular satisfaction and intimacy we share as we debrief together over the cleanup.

Maybe the father in Jesus' story felt he could honor and bless his oldest boy more by inviting him into the deep relationship of mutual service than by merely giving him a party of his own. Maybe becoming a Christian is not only accepting Jesus into my life, but also accepting his incredible invitation to be a part of his life—to participate missionally in the triune God's cosmic plan of redemption.

As Jesus tells it, the Father is hosting a lavish banquet, and we're invited—not because of our own merit, but because he loves us. And there's more. He's invited us to help him throw the party—neither as servants nor as guests, but as family.

Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
www.carolynarends.com

Hardworking Sloths - Arends

Here is my most recent CT column:  Some uncomfortable (for me, anyway!) reflections on the way our busyness can mask our spiritual laziness or distractedness.  Let me know if you can relate.
Blessings,
Carolyn 

Hardworking Sloths
Disguising Spiritual Laziness
Carolyn Arends
(In the June issue of Christianity Today, posted online 06/13/2011)

My family used to play "Where's Waldo?" with a three-toed sloth at the zoo; eventually we'd find him suspended like a hammock from a tree branch above us. I used to think he got a bad rap as nature's laziest creature. After all, I don't have the strength to hold myself upside down on a set of monkey bars for 10 seconds. Then a zoo volunteer explained that sloths have curved claws that allow them to dig into branches and hang without effort. Our sloth, it turns out, really was as unmotivated as he looked.

I found myself thinking about that lethargic critter the other day while listening to a recorded Eugene Peterson lecture and arguing with my MP3 player.

Peterson: Pastors are highly susceptible to the sin of sloth.

Me: What are you talking about? Pastors are some of the most overworked people alive.

Peterson: Sloth is most often evidenced in busyness … in frantic running around, trying to be everything to everyone, and then having no time to listen or pray, no time to become the person who is doing these things.

Score one for Peterson.

I'm not a pastor. But I am busy, like almost everyone I know. When Peterson declares that "the pastor's primary responsibility is to keep the community attentive to God," I can readily apply that job description to my roles as wife, mother, musician, and author. The mandate can be stated even more succinctly regarding my task as a human: Pay attention to God. If I don't, I'm guilty of spiritual sloth, no matter how hard I'm working. In truth, there is an inverse relationship between how overwhelmed I am doing things and how much energy I can give to being attentive.

But did I mention I'm really busy?

Part of the problem is that spiritual receptivity requires unglamorous practices like prayer, time in Scripture, and attentiveness to what God is doing in the people around me. Telling me, "Prayer promotes spiritual growth!" has as much wow-factor as announcing, "Reducing calories leads to weight loss!" I want something new—a development that will lead to breakthrough. Peterson observes that spiritual disciplines have "not been tried and discarded because [they] didn't work, but tried and found difficult (and more than a little tedious) and so shelved in favor of something or other that could be fit into a busy [person's] schedule."

Scheduling is no small matter. Attending takes time without offering quantifiable results. It requires stillness in a culture that rewards industriousness. It's inefficient in a world that considers getting things done next to godliness. A pastor who refuses to be slothful in the areas of silence and reflection stands a good chance of getting fired.

Our emphasis on external productivity over internal fidelity goes back a long way. Consider the case of King Saul, reported in 1 Samuel 13. Early in his kingship, Saul and the prophet Samuel had an understanding: Samuel would lead the people spiritually, and Saul would lead militarily. However, holed up with his troops facing a brigade of Philistines, Saul faced a dilemma. Samuel failed to show up on time to offer the sacrifice that Saul and his men relied on to keep them in God's favor. As typically happens when things go off schedule, disorganization set in. The longer Saul waited, the more restless his men became; he was losing them.

Saul did what any good manager would do. He took action. He offered the sacrifice himself.

If I were conducting Saul's job evaluation, I'd give him a bonus. He took initiative and solved the problem, saving time and boosting morale in the process. But Samuel didn't see it that way. He told Saul he had failed to keep God's command, and thus would be deposed by an incoming king—a "man after God's own heart" better suited for the job.

God is not looking for leaders who take matters into their own hands. He values faithfulness over efficiency. It's no good to organize the whole world yet be oblivious to the God who created it and holds it together. Yes, we have practical commitments we need to take seriously. But part of being responsible is being response-able: centering our lives in such a way that we can respond to the world around us with the mind of Christ. Such response-ability is impossible if our obligations crowd out any opportunity to get to know him better.

It makes sense that the sloth is the official mascot of spiritual lethargy. I've begun to see my incessant busyness as the set of claws that keep me holding on for dear life, dug in, hanging upside down, not getting anywhere. With God's help, I want to let go, trusting him to show me how to live right side up. My job is to pay attention.

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

www.carolynarends.com

Going Down Singing - Arends

I've shared here before about my father's passing last summer and a bit of its impact on me -- my latest CT column touches on that loss and explores the idea of preparing for death in general.  Not the sunniest subject, but I've really tried to explore the link between accepting our mortality and living life abundantly.  Let me know what you think!
Thanks,
Carolyn

Going down singing
Why we should remember that we will die.

Carolyn Arends
 (In the April Issue of Christianity Today)

The day before he died, my father wore what his doctors called the "Star Wars mask"—a high-tech oxygen system that covered most of his face. Pneumonia made his breathing extremely labored, but that didn't keep him from chatting.

"Pardon?" my mom would ask patiently, trying to decipher his muffled sounds. Exasperated, he'd yank off the mask, bringing himself to the brink of respiratory arrest to ask about hockey trades or complain about the hospital food.

After several hours, he gave up on conversation. He started singing.

"What are you humming?" my mom asked. My dad repeatedly tried to answer through the mask before yanking it off again. "With Christ in the Vessel, I Can Smile at the Storm," he gasped. "Wow," murmured my mom, before singing it with him.

My dad learned "With Christ in the Vessel" at Camp Imadene in 1949, the summer he asked Jesus into his 8-year-old heart. Six decades later, hours before his death, that silly old camp song was still embedded in his soul and mind, and he was singing it at the top of his nearly-worn-out lungs.

I have never liked thinking about my own death. But I've considered it enough to know I hope I go down singing, or at least speaking or thinking, something about Jesus. 

I suppose that is why I found myself sobbing on an airplane while reading Margaret Guenther's The Practice of Prayer. In one section, Guenther discusses the Eastern Christian discipline of continuously repeating the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." She reports her own efforts to incorporate the practice into her daily life, even sizing up the logs she chops for firewood by the number of Jesus Prayers she'll likely get through before they are cut.

I love the idea of having such truth-giving words ingrained into my routine. But here's Guenther's line that really got to me: "I hope that by imprinting [the Jesus Prayer] on my subconscious, it will be with me for the rest of my life, especially at the end, when other words will perhaps be lost to me."

Guenther, a former professor at General Theological Seminary in New York, is an accomplished and educated woman. Yet she is humble and practical enough to do what she can to prepare for her own death—and for the possibility that even before her death, her mind might fade into dementia. In a culture consumed with denying mortality, here is a woman who plans for it, in a way that affects the minutiae of her life now.

Many early Christian communities encouraged believers to engage in the spiritual discipline of considering their own deaths—not in order to create morbid fear, but to put this life in the proper perspective. Memento mori, medieval monks would say to each other in the hallways. "Remember your mortality," or, more literally, "Remember you will die."

Death unaddressed is the bogeyman in the basement; it keeps us looking over our shoulders and holds us back from entering joyously into the days we are given. But death dragged out from the shadows and held up to the light of the gospel not only loses its sting, it becomes an essential reminder to wisely use the life we have.

When we remember the mortality of those around us, they become more valuable to us. Madeleine L'Engle once noted that when people die, it is the sins of omission, rather than the sins of commission, that haunt us. "If only I had called more," we lament. Remembering a loved one's death before it happens can spur us into the sort of action we won't regret later.

And remembering our own mortality helps reorder our priorities; a race toward a finish line has a different sense of purpose and urgency than a jog around the block. When a believer acknowledges that he is headed toward death (tomorrow or in 50 years), he can stop expending the tremendous energy it takes to deny his mortality and start living into his eternal destiny, here and now. And he can be intentional about investing himself in the things he wants to be with him at the end, much the way Guenther seeks to make the Jesus Prayer a permanent part of her psyche.

I don't want to romanticize death. My friend Bernie calls it "the Great Gash," and I must confess that on the six-month anniversary of my father's passing, the hole left by him is still gaping. 

But though death hurts, it is not the end. Though we mourn, we do not mourn as those who have no hope. And so I offer my dread of death to the Author of Life, asking him to help me to number my days rightly. I don't know how many I've got, but I want to use every one of them to get the truth about who Jesus is—and who I am in him—more deeply ingrained.

That's why I'm teaching my kids "With Christ in the Vessel." We sing it at the top of our lungs.

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

www.carolynarends.com
www.feedthelake.com

Satan's a Goner - Arends

My most recent CT column has gone online -- I'd love to know how it hits you.

Satan's a Goner

A lesson from a headless snake.

Carolyn Arends

As a kid, I loved Mission Sundays, when missionaries on furlough brought special reports in place of a sermon. Sometimes they wore exotic, foreign clothing; they almost always showed a tray of slides documenting their adventures. If they were from a dangerous enough land, the youth in our congregation would emerge from our Sunday stupor and listen intently.

There is one visit I've never forgotten. The missionaries were a married couple stationed in what appeared to be a particularly steamy jungle. I'm sure they gave a full report on churches planted or commitments made or translations begun. I don't remember much of that. What has always stayed with me is the story they shared about a snake.

One day, they told us, an enormous snake—much longer than a man—slithered its way right through their front door and into the kitchen of their simple home. Terrified, they ran outside and searched frantically for a local who might know what to do. A machete-wielding neighbor came to the rescue, calmly marching into their house and decapitating the snake with one clean chop.

The neighbor reemerged triumphant and assured the missionaries that the reptile had been defeated. But there was a catch, he warned: It was going to take a while for the snake to realize it was dead.

A snake's neurology and blood flow are such that it can take considerable time for it to stop moving even after decapitation. For the next several hours, the missionaries were forced to wait outside while the snake thrashed about, smashing furniture and flailing against walls and windows, wreaking havoc until its body finally understood that it no longer had a head.

Sweating in the heat, they had felt frustrated and a little sickened but also grateful that the snake's rampage wouldn't last forever. And at some point in their waiting, they told us, they had a mutual epiphany.

I leaned in with the rest of the congregation, queasy and fascinated. "Do you see it?" asked the husband. "Satan is a lot like that big old snake. He's already been defeated. He just doesn't know it yet. In the meantime, he's going to do some damage. But never forget that he's a goner."

The story captured our imaginations then because it was graphic and gory—a stark contrast to the normally genteel sermonizing we were used to receiving. But the story haunts me because I have come to believe it is an accurate picture of the universe. We are in the thrashing time, a season characterized by our pervasive capacity to do violence to each other and ourselves. The temptation is to despair. We have to remember, though, that it won't last forever. Jesus has already crushed the serpent's head.

Recently I heard a message from theologian Gary Deddo that got me thinking about that snake. Deddo challenges the tendency many of us have to be dualists—imagining God and Satan as equal foes deadlocked in mortal combat. To be certain, Deddo acknowledges, there is an immeasurable amount of evil in our world. But compared with God's love and power, all the evil in the universe doesn't cover the head of a pin. Love wins. Satan doesn't stand a chance.

Thus, though we wrestle with the brokenness that plagues the world, and ourselves, we do so not with grim resignation but with hopeful defiance. We face both our addictions and afflictions not with a faint, white-knuckled hope that someday we will be healed, but rather with an assurance that we are living slowly but surely into the healing already obtained on the Cross. There is still a waiting. In some cases the healing may not come in fullness until we are face-to-face with our Victor—but come it will. Guaranteed.

I've been trying to figure out what all of this means with respect to the way we deal with evil and injustice in our world. In linear, human time, perhaps the safest thing to do is batten down the hatches and wait somewhere secure till the thrashing is over. But one of the mysteries of living in God's time rather than our own is that, although the end of the story has already been determined, somehow he is still using us to write it. Because Jesus lives in us through his Spirit, we are called not just to anticipate the overcoming but also to be part of bringing it to fruition.

And so we are called to fight poverty, oppression, greed, and malice—in the world and in our own spirits. We are invited to live in light of the reality that greater by far is the living God who is within us than the dead snake thrashing about in this world.

Copyright © 2011 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

www.carolynarends.com
www.feedthelake.com

Can't Get No Satisfaction - Arends

Here is my latest Christianity Today column, addressing our propensity towards addiction.  Can you relate?

Can't Get No Satisfaction

Addiction is the spiritual disease of our time.

I've never met a potato chip I didn't like. Actually, I've never met a potato chip that didn't call my name from behind the pantry door until I was forced to eat it and every one of its salty companions. So when I heard the phrase "carbohydrate addiction," I knew nutritionists were on to something. It turns out there are foods that can actually increase your hunger when you consume them, creating an escalating, recurring need for the very substances that intensify the problem.

The reality of carb addiction is accepted more widely in popular culture than in scientific communities. But most people can verify anecdotally that some food only makes them hungrier.

It seems to me that this phenomenon symbolizes much of what plagues the human condition. We drink liquids that dehydrate us. We buy objects that require us to buy more objects. We make some money, ratchet up our lifestyle in response, and find we need more income to sustain us. The harder we work, the more work there is to do. And the harder we play, the more elusive the fun. Ask anyone working in Hollywood special effects, or in extreme sports, or in the sex trade industry, and all will tell you the same thing: Yesterday's thrill is today's old news. We always need more.

One of the hallmarks of addiction is "tolerance"—the experience of requiring an ever-increasing amount of a particular substance or behavior in order for it to satiate us. We recognize that dynamic indisputably in chemical dependencies. But it's harder to spot for those of us who are compulsive about work, food, approval, ministry, possessions, intimacy, social media, security, or any other number of more culturally acceptable addictions.

Gerald May was a psychiatrist whose work with chemically addicted people convinced him of two things: Addiction is, at root, a spiritual issue; and every human is addicted to some variety of substances, behaviors, and thought patterns. In his classic Addiction and Grace, May argues that each of us has a profound desire for God. When that desire is inevitably frustrated or misdirected in a fallen world, we experience pain. We deal with that pain in two ways. We repress the longing, or we attach it to something else.

According to May, attachment "bonds and enslaves the energy of desire" to certain people, things, or behaviors until we are obsessed by unworthy masters who can never truly satisfy. Tragically, our attachment to anything other than God (even to things that are not themselves bad) uses up our desire for God. It truly "wastes" us.

May calls addiction "the spiritual disease of our time," but it's not an exclusively modern phenomenon. There's a passage in Haggai that seems so shockingly current that it's hard to believe it was written over 2,500 years ago. The Israelites had returned from their Babylonian exile to find the temple in ruins. They intended to rebuild it, but had their own places to fix and fields to replant; they were too busy.

"Is it a time," God asked through the prophet, "for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin? … Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it" (Hag. 1:4-6).

Work that is unproductive, food and drink that don't fill or quench, money that doesn't last. The Israelites, to quote a much later poet, can't get no satisfaction. God tells them that life is a treadmill of diminishing returns because they have neglected the temple, and the only way to enjoy the sort of productive, satisfying existence he intends for them is to spend time in that holy place once more.

Throughout Scripture, God continually develops the concept of the temple as the place he meets with his people. By the New Testament, it's clear that the temple is now inside of us. So I read Haggai and begin to understand: Satisfaction comes only when I spend intentional time with God. It comes when that original longing for God—a desire that's been mutated into a thousand splintering directions—gets redirected back to him.

Six hundred years after the Babylonian exile, Jesus addresses every problem Haggai describes. Crops don't grow? Christ is the Vine, and we are the branches. Food and drink don't satisfy? Jesus is the Bread of Life and Living Water. Clothes don't warm? The Messiah alone can cover our sin. Wages disappear? Store up your treasures in heaven.

The desire for fullness, wellness, wholeness, productivity, security, and satisfaction turns out to be a desire for … Jesus. All substitutes, even salty, crunchy ones, only intensify the hunger.

Copyright © 2010 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

www.carolynarends.com
www.feedthelake.com