The Mad Hatter by Charles Robinson, Wikimedia Commons

These two views are as different as whisky and chicken broth. In a flatly materialist world, do prayer and fasting make any kind of sense? What about worship, or asceticism, or charity, or defending the unborn, or loving your enemy, or laying down your life for your neighbor? No, a gospel ethic is at best eccentric in a materialist world. At worst, it’s sheer lunacy.

The tendency in our day to ameliorate and downplay the folly of Christianity is understandable. Who wants to look foolish?

Paul, for one, had no problem with it. “We are fools for Christ’s sake,” he boasts in 1 Corinthians 4.

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing,” he says earlier in the same letter, “but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. . . . Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.”

This is the same sort of topsy-turvy that we find in Mary’s Magnificat, a prophetic pronouncement showing God’s saving activity upending the world as we know it. The powerful, rich, and wise find their assets broken, worthless, and dumb.

“The God of all,” said Theodoret of Cyrus, “overcame the learned through the unlearned, and the rich through the poor, and through fishermen he snared the world.”

Are we on board with that program? It’s not like it’s over. Christians are to take on the mind of Christ. How much of our sanctification is unlearning the wisdom of the world, abandoning its values, dropping its agendas? Christians have different pursuits than unbelievers. We weigh life differently. We value time and goods and people in a manner unlike the world.

And it looks odd from one point of view. To walk counter to the world is to be a fool in the world’s eyes. But who cares?

“[R]eal folly is . . . absence of faith,” said Theodoret. The godless wisdom of the world is, as Paul said, foolish. That’s where the materialist finds himself, whether he knows it or not. And that’s not the kind of fool I want to be.

Steve Snodgrass, Flickr

Here’s one way to think about these situations.

If you’ve ever worked at refinishing a cabinet or chair or some other item, you know that to make new paint stick you might need to apply some sandpaper and elbow grease. You need to rough up the surface to ensure the paint adheres, all those tiny grooves creating surface area for the paint to find purchase.

I think that’s sometimes what God is doing for us. Sanctification is like a refurb project, and the experiences that seem so abrasive and hurtful are God’s way of ensuring grace adheres. God roughs up our surfaces to make his grace stick.

The fifth-century Egyptian ascetic known as Mark the Monk put it this way: “Look to the end of every involuntary suffering, and you will find in it removal of sins.” We endure pain and wrongs and hardship to find that God has used them to purify us, to transform us.

James tells us, “Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (1.2-4).

Question for reflection: How does it change your experience of hardship to know that God is using and directing all things, even the painful ones, for our good (Rom 8.28)?

SurFeRGiRL30, Flickr

I’ve always been fascinated by the 1960s. These were wild and momentous years, populated by colorful and absurd characters whose impact far outstripped their usefulness. But drop the whole psychedelic mess into the period of the Great Fast and a compelling comparison of cultures emerges, one that might change how we see ourselves.

Self-indulgence and self-actualization characterized hippie culture, values perhaps best exemplified by the advocacy of free love and psychedelic drugs. Any behavior that promised to fulfill or advance these twin virtues was permitted and promoted. Odd and even destructive modes of behavior and lifestyle unsurprisingly flourished as a result.

This hippie approach to life stands in stark contrast to a Christian approach. The Christian is not so much interested in self-actualization. The Christian is rather interested in a sort of self-marginalization. We say with John the Baptist that Christ must increase while we decrease.

If the hippie represents sixties’ culture and values, the monk serves as his Christian counterpart. The monk lives a life of self-denial for the purpose of growing in union with God and laying down his life for the world, for which he ceaselessly prays. He promotes the needs of others, not his own.

But it’s not just the monk. The true ascetic comes draped in a million different robes. The spouse who denies his or her needs for the good of the family, the independent teenager who patiently obeys his parents, the coworker who helps a colleague — these are all pictures at variance with the culture of indulgence and endless self-actualization.

And that variance reflects the life we’re called to.

We are created in the image of God, but God desires that we grow evermore into the likeness of Christ. None of us bears that likeness fully or perfectly. We all have shortcomings and failures and places to improve. That means we have a job of perpetual growth and maturation. This requires us to lay down our lives and take up Jesus.

This laying down stands counter to the culture of indulgence and appears to many like an empty exercise in self-denial. Not really. It’s inescapably a denial of self because it involves pursuing Christ’s interests rather than our own: We must decrease so that he can increase. But it goes one step beyond mere denial.

Ultimately, the daily acts of renunciation — which are heightened in the Lenten season — that characterize the Christian life are acts of affirmation. We deny the world and its lusts to become more like our truest self, the Lord Christ.

Question for reflection: Is it important to distinguish between the Christian view of laying down one’s life and the world’s view of self-actualization? Does it change the way you look at personal growth?

Matthew and Mary. Film.com.

In time Mary must — spoiler alert! — admit her wrong to Matthew, who then asks if she loved Pamuk. Mary dismisses the passion as if it didn’t matter. She answers that it was only lust or the need for excitement.

Now, see yourself in Mary for a moment. Isn’t that like life? In one moment lust is an overpowering emotion; in the next it’s nothing. But if it is nothing, does it have any power to begin with? Or is the reality that lust and our other passions only possess whatever power we ascribe to them? They are only as strong as we allow.

The power of seduction

Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was known as il duce, which means “the leader.” The word is the same that forms the root of our word seduction. To be seduced means to be led or even dominated. Our culture portrays seduction as prelude to romance, but in reality it’s a power negotiation in which one person surrenders control to another.

The dynamic that plays out between people works in our own divided selves. Who will lead (to use the Apostle Paul’s language) the Old Man or the New? We want what’s right, but we sometimes — maybe oftentimes — succumb to our passions nonetheless. We play Mary to many Pamuks.

It’s a copout to say the temptation is too strong. Aside from the scriptural witness that God does not test beyond our abilities (1 Cor 10.13), we cannot discover the real strength of our passions if we simply succumb to them. “Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is,” writes C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. “A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. . . . We never find out the strength of an evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it. . . .” And so we must determine, whatever the trouble or cost, to kick Pamuk out of our room.

Evasive maneuvers

At the most basic level resistance starts with distancing ourselves from tempting stimuli, just as Joseph did when he ran away from Potiphar’s wife. Don’t think it wasn’t a struggle. Scripture gives us no window into his mind, but work from your own impulses and desires. Without sounding needlessly crass, here’s a young man in his prime offered sex by “the loose woman” who promises “adventuress with her smooth words” (Prov 7.5). You can easily imagine Joseph’s internal battle. He only prevailed by running the other direction.

Benedict of Nursia was tormented by lustful thoughts so powerful “he could scarcely endure the fire,” as his biographer Gregory the Great said. To quench it, Benedict distracted his troubled mind with the medieval equivalent of a cold shower: he jumped naked into a thorn bush (The Life of St. Benedict 2.1-2).

Joseph and Benedict model Paul’s admonition in Romans 13 to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” Leaping into a briar patch may not be the ticket for most of us, but we can consider finding accountability groups, unfriending people on Facebook, installing filtering software on the computer, and so on. Rather than succumb to their passions, desert monks were known to stay up all night in prayer. Don’t rule out that option. Our sin is no less serious than theirs. Whatever the approach, the point is to intentionally deprive the flesh, to discount its desires.

Our denial of fleshly provision can be as varied as our passions. But whether it’s gluttony or gossip or pride or anger or all of the above, it’s up to us to employ evasive maneuvers when encountering tempting stimuli. We need to find what works and use it.

And then we need to deal with why we find certain sins stimulating in the first place.

What’s tempting about temptation?

The short answer is that we are out of whack. We fall for Pamuk and linger with Potiphar’s wife because our desires do not match God’s design. That misalignment is not permanent. It can be changed over time by prayer and fasting, almsgiving and worship, psalmody and scripture-reading, cultivating silence and other penitent and ascetical efforts.

Repentance realigns us, though not instantaneously. Years and even decades knowingly or unknowingly cultivating bad thoughts and behaviors make it hard to throw them off in a moment. When we resist our passions, we find out just how resistant they are, particularly the habitual ones. Some of them are monsters, but take heart: Goliath was big, too.

When contemplating the challenge, I find these words from John Climacus encouraging:

Do not be surprised if you fall every day; do not give up, but stand your ground courageously. And assuredly, the angel who guards you will honor your patience. While a wound is still fresh and warm, it is easy to heal; but old, neglected, and festering ones are hard to cure, and require for their care much treatment, cutting, plastering, and cauterization. Many from long neglect become incurable, but with God all things are possible. (The Ladder of Divine Ascent 5.30)

We need Jesus

“With God” is key. We cannot conquer our passions on our own. It takes Christ’s help to succeed, which is why Paul prefaces his admonition by telling us to put on Christ. The phrase hearkens back to our baptism, the moment when we sacramentally put on Christ and are taken up into his life (Gal 3.27). Participation in the life of (and in) Christ is prerequisite to defeating our passions in any meaningful way.

If our passions draw their strength from our ascription, then we deny them power as we ascribe more importance to our relationship with Jesus and his church.

'Christ healing the Paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda' by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. Wikimedia Commons.

We’ve all encountered this view, and probably have believed it in one way or another ourselves. Sometimes it’s a very active belief, and we can marshal the arguments and proof texts with the best of them. Other times its more passive; perhaps we don’t even realize that we believe it, but our actions (or inactions) betray the true positions of our hearts.

When thinking on this subject my mind goes to the story of the paralytic by the pool, recounted by John in chapter five of his Gospel.

A disabled man waited by a pool in Bethesda where an angel was known to descend and stir the waters. The infirm gathered around its edge with expectation because the first person in the pool after the angel had troubled its placid mirror would see himself healed. But the miracle would restore only one person–the first person in–and the paralytic in question had been passed over countless times. The text says that he had waited for nearly forty years.

Then came Jesus. The Lord, seeing this man, walked up to him and asked, “Do you want to be made well?” The man didn’t answer yes. Instead, he deflected. “Sir,” he said, “I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Rather than address the comment or seek again for the answer to his question, Jesus simply healed the man, who then walked away well. But fix on Jesus’ question and the man’s response for a moment.

Do you want to be healed? Jesus is reaching into the man’s heart to find out his disposition, his real desire. Jesus could see that he’d been waiting by the pool unhealed for a very long time. Surely he could have managed to get down to the water’s edge once in the last four decades, right? But the man is defeated and down. He blames others for his plight. He sees himself as a victim, someone unable to help his circumstances.

The merciful Christ immediately took away his infirmity, but when he next sees the man in the Temple Jesus also takes away his excuses. “See, you have been made well,” says Jesus. “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” This is a reality-check moment. Something is suddenly expected of the man. Jesus gives the him some responsibility to shoulder, possibly for the first time in his life. He can no longer only wait for God to move, like a spectator in his own life. Jesus thrust him into the role of active participant, someone who must now cooperate with the grace that Christ has given.

There are many lessons to learn from this story, but one has to be that God expects our engagement. We wait upon the Lord, yes, but the Lord expects us to act as well. Isn’t this what Paul is getting at in 2 Corinthians 6.1, “We then, as workers together [co-laborers] with Him also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain”? Or Philippians 2.12, “[W]ork out your own salvation with fear and trembling”?

We are co-laborers who work with the grace we’re given. If we don’t take it seriously, we risk receiving it in vain. This not a gospel of the Lord helps them who helps themselves. But the message is clear enough that who the Lord helps he expects to act. Perhaps the most compelling and stirring picture of this expectation is the Eucharist through which we commune with God himself. The Lord provides grain and grapes. We return bread and wine with thanks for his grace and mercy. Bread and wine do not make themselves.

Sitting by the pool blaming others is unacceptable. We are responsible to labor with God, alongside the merciful Lord who sovereignly enables and providentially empowers our action.

Elise Wormuth, Flickr

God clearly promises blessings in Scripture, even material ones, but if these are our focus we’ve narrowed in on the smallest part of his love and grace to us. It also says something about our shallow understanding of suffering and its place in our spirituality.

Nobody likes suffering, but if Christ himself learned obedience through the things he suffered (Heb 5.8), how much more do we stand to learn? Christ only comes with a cross. His crown only comes with thorns. Accessing his life only comes with dying — dying to sin, dying to self, dying to delusion, dying to vain ambitions, dying to anything that distracts from a life of witness to Christ.

Suffering is not alien to the Christian experience. It is a key component of the Christian experience. To say otherwise is to ignore endless passages of Scripture (e.g., two thirds of the psalter) and deny the testimonies of our brothers and sisters throughout the entire history of the church, and even those living today outside the so-called developed world.

Visit rural Uganda and tell me with straight face that God wants us to experience a life of ease and wealth, that he’s concerned about what kind of car we drive. It’s offensive to contemplate. More offensive to contemplate: say it in the face of the martyrs’ families in Nigeria who don’t even pray that their persecutors would stop, only that they would be able stand when their time comes. We’re not even worthy to suffer for Christ like that.

Our life in Christ is not about ease. It’s not about comfort or security or the trappings of wealth. God may bless some with those things. Praise him for it. But God is far more concerned about whether we love him and our neighbor in whatever station we may be. He’s concerned about a life lived in witness to his love.

Any theology that leaves little room for suffering is a suspect theology. If Jesus himself experienced pain, loneliness, frustration, etc., then we should be ready for the same. If the apostles and the early Christians were willing to lay down their lives, certainly we should not expect uninterrupted peace and tranquility.

The disruption may in fact be central to our sanctification. What if, for instance, you struggle with a sin over which you can’t seem to get victory: greed, lust, anxiety, anger, doubt? That’s your cross to bear. And a good theology will illumine the struggle; it will sanctify the suffering so that we can see it as God’s tool to shape us into the image of his Son. Rather than fleeing suffering, (preaching to myself here) we should welcome the chance to grow because that’s why God permits and even sends it. Our best life includes our current struggles and setbacks, and God wouldn’t have it any other way.

There’s pathology afoot in any other view. A theology with no room for suffering forces us to hide our failures and our faults, even from ourselves, maybe even from God. Of course such a maneuver is bound to fail as well, and then we stand alone with our sin, condemned by our very existence.

Instead we should remember that God uses our sufferings to sanctify and save. We stand in the arms of a loving, forgiving savior who helps us bear the weight and keep going.