Jacob’s Limp

One night, Jacob wrestled with a figure who was not quite a man.

Jacob had been away from the land of his fathers for twenty years after cheating his brother out of his birthright and blessing by deceiving their blind father, Isaac. Fleeing to Mesopotamia, he encountered his uncle Laban, a wealthy herdsman with even less guile than Jacob. Jacob married Laban’s daughters, Leah and Rachel, and after being double-crossed one too many times, decided he would fare better facing his brother Esau’s wrath than living any longer near his conniving father-in-law.

As he neared Canaan, Jacob couldn’t shake a sense of impending doom. He regretted deceiving his brother. Esau had become a powerful warlord in Edom, a territory Jacob had to cross on his way home. They would certainly meet, and Jacob did not anticipate a happy reunion.

The evening before meeting Esau, Jacob separated from his family and clans and spent the night beside the Jabbok River, a place where heaven and earth seemed to converge. Jacob had seen angels earlier that day and declared, “This is God's camp!”  (Genesis 32:1-2).

During the night he was attacked by a mysterious assailant. They wrestled until the breaking of the day. When his opponent saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket and put it out of joint. Still, Jacob would not let him go.

The dark rival became concerned that Jacob might see his face in the light of the rising sun. “Let me go,” he said, “for the day has broken.”

During the struggle, Jacob sensed he was not dealing with an ordinary man. This was someone greater than he, someone divine. “I will not let you go,” he said, “unless you bless me.”

The man agreed. It was as if this had been his purpose all along. “Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed.” Jacob’s name meant “he takes by the heel,” a designation that pointed not only to the unusual circumstances of his birth but also his deceitful nature.[1] The unknown being offered him a new identity, “Israel,” meaning “he strives with God.” It dawned on Jacob that he'd been wrestling with God.

“Please tell me your name,” he asked.

His rival evaded the question, saying cryptically, “Why is it that you ask my name?”

In the morning, as the sun rose on him, Jacob left the valley limping because of his hip (Genesis 32:31).

That night, Jacob was forever changed. Up to this point in his life, he had been a conniving, negotiating, lying traitor. He was “Jacob,” the deceiver. But on the night he wrestled with God, he was blessed with a new identity, one that carried him forward as the father of God's treasured nation.

Not only did God give Jacob a new name, but he also left him with a limp, a perpetual reminder of their encounter at the Jabbok River. For the remainder of his life, when he rose from his chair or walked across the room, the pain and immobility reminded him of that night. He had been changed but humbled.

Furthermore, Jacob's descendants commemorated this injury by abstaining from eating the sinew of the thigh, as Moses noted, “Therefore to this day the people of Israel do not eat the sinew of the thigh that is in the hip socket, because he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip on the sinew of the thigh” (Genesis 32:32).

Life takes a toll, leaving us with scars. Cormac McCarthy said, “Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real. The events that cause them can never be forgotten.…”[2] As if memory wasn't enough, we have our scars. Our bodies are maps in which we read our past.

Then there are the scars we cannot see. People understand an amputated limb or a burn. They have a more difficult time understanding why a woman will not leave her home or why a man is angry all the time. There are psychological wounds that will not heal—hurt, fear, guilt, regret. We carry these burdens, too.

There are numerous possible responses to the scars, marks, and limps afflicting our bodies. Some of us want to hide. We don't want to tell the story. We don't want to stick out, feel different. We don't want anyone’s pity.

I've had Parkinson's disease for over a decade. As the disease progressed, it became impossible to hide it. I've become accustomed to the way someone's eye catches my trembling hand, the unusual kick of my leg, the difficulty performing a simple task. A shadow passes over his face as he wonders what's wrong with me. “Is he on drugs?” “Does he have a neurological condition?” “What is happening to him?” The discomfort on a person’s face, the pity, is palpable. Many of you can sympathize in other ways. Our injuries expose us. If you are a private person, the social anxiety can be crippling.

Why are we self-conscious? Why do we imagine these things about us in other people's minds? We don't know what they're thinking. Our self-consciousness says more about us than them. Maybe we have been judging others by appearances, sizing them up according to their injuries, comparing ourselves, looking for imperfections to make ourselves feel strong and young. Our projections on others mirror our souls. We are often guilty of the very things we accuse them of.

Some turn bitter, like Ahab in Hermen Melville’s Moby Dick. The infamous white whale had taken his leg, driving poor Ahab into an insatiable desire for revenge. When Ishmael sees the captain for the first time, he is struck by the false appendage.

So powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Ahab affect me, and the livid brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly noted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the barbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come to me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished bone of the sperm whale's jaw.[3]

Ahab’s vengeance boils, becoming self-destructive.

…it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye," he shouted with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken moose; "Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!" Then tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations he shouted out: "Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out. What say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do look brave."[4]

Ishmael realizes the captain had defined his profession, his life, and even his very soul by his injury.

Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung….All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.[5]

Illness and injury are circumstantial—they happen to us; they don't define us. Unfortunately, sometimes we expect too much out of our bodies. We interweave them with our identities until we don't know one from the other. The body cannot hold up to these expectations. When a person who has attached his entire life to the fate of his outer shell inevitably succumbs to physical weakness, he no longer knows who he is, unless he is in his essence as broken and worthless as his body. He did not choose to break down; he believes he has suffered an injustice. The natural response is to seethe like Ahab and seek revenge. But how do you strike at an illness? How do you fight a chronic injury? The battle is as futile as Ahab’s ruinous quest for Moby Dick and just as tragic.

Life is give and take. Gains and losses. Addition and subtraction. There is an equilibrium that cannot be upset. Homeostasis, the doctors call it. In relationships we sacrifice time, energy, and selfish desires for companionship and love. In business, we understand that you cannot make money unless you invest it. Spiritual growth requires study, sacrifice, faith.

Life comes with a price. We gain experience. We pay for it with scars.

What are you going to do about it? You can pity yourself, mope about, feel self-conscious, try to hide. You can rage against the faceless enemy and fight the unwinnable war against illness and death. You can look at what a disease or an accident has taken from you.

Or you could look at what it has given you. There is a reason we heal with scars. Scars remind us where we've been, and we can't understand where we are unless we are able to trace the road we came on back to its origins.

God does not want us to be haunted by history. He paid for our salvation in blood so that we will not have to be defined by our regrets. In the Psalms he describes forgiveness as removing our transgressions “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12). The cross replaces our sins with Christ's righteousness, an exchange we do not deserve, yet by grace it is ours (2 Corinthians 5:21).

The new covenant promise is, “I will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12). However, if we believe this involves a forsaking of God's omniscience, some erasure from his mind, a miraculous amnesia, we misunderstand his meaning. Yes, he treats us as if he no longer remembers our sins, but sadly, they cannot be wiped from our past. We are counted as righteous, but we will never be like the Son of Man who never sinned (Romans 4:5). We will forever be indebted to the one who never sinned and died in our place. With Paul, we say, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:15). Far from being a repudiation of the gospel, this confession confirms it. If we forget where we came from, we lose the ability to be grateful. So let us always give thanks by remembering that without Christ, we would be utterly lost in sin.

Jacob limped so that he never forgot who he was before and how he came to be the father of God's nation. We hobble along behind him, heading for glory despite our sins, thanking God we don't have to be who we were.

[1] Jacob was a twin born clutching his older brother's heel. The significance of “Jacob” as “deceiver” may be explained by the idea of someone slipping up from behind an enemy to catch him by surprise. Another possible connection may lie in the idea of tripping someone's feet.

[2]Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group: Kindle Edition), 135.

[3] Melville, Herman. Moby Dick: or, the White Whale (p. 90). Kindle Edition.

[4] Ibid., 116.

[5] Ibid., 128.

The Body

It’s tempting to make sense of illness by denigrating the body: “Everyone gets sick, suffers injuries, and eventually dies, so the body must not really matter. What’s important must be the immaterial part of us that lives beyond the grave.” We’re inclined to treat our bodies like those old tools in the garage—always broken and taking up space, so you might as well throw them away.

Body shaming has always existed, but the Greeks were the first to give it philosophical clout. For Plato, the body was an illusion, a flickering shadow in a cave, as evidenced by its transitory nature. Reality was purely spiritual and transcended matter.

After Plato, a Stoic named Epictetus wrote,

Inasmuch as these two elements were comingled in our begetting, on the one hand the body, which we have in common with the brutes, and, on the other, reason and intelligence, which we have in common with the gods, some of us incline toward the former relationship, which is unblessed by fortune and is mortal, and only a few toward that which is divine and blessed.

True freedom, according to Plato and Epictetus, comes from splitting our bodies from our spirits. But only magician’s assistants survive getting sawn in two. What about the rest of us?

I knew a man who suffered from diabetes. His case was so severe that he had to endure numerous amputations. He left this earth, literally, a piece at a time. He was a man of faith and faced his trials with great courage. When doctors removed a finger or a hand or a part of his leg, he smiled with resignation and said, “It's just dirt.”

I've always felt uncomfortable with the way he dealt with his disease. His apparent disregard for his body was unsettling to me.

But my friend had a point. When the Lord created Adam, he formed him from dust (Genesis 2:7), and after Adam sinned, God said, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return (Genesis 3:19). Looking back on these accounts, Paul compared our physical bodies to Adam’s, calling us “those who are of the dust” (1 Corinthians 15:48).

Our bodies are dust.

But that is not all.

The full account of Adam's creation reads, “Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Genesis 2:7).

It's what's between the particles of dust that makes us special. If our bodies were just dirt, there would be no difference between them and a plowed field. The full truth of our bodies is that God formed them (that is, he distinguished the dust comprising our bodies from the dust of the ground by shaping them in his image) and breathed into them nephesh, the Hebrew word referring to the life essence animating our bodies.

Nephesh, often translated “soul,” is not to be confused with “spirit,” which is expressed using a different Hebrew word in the Old Testament (ruah). Only humans have spirits that survive physical death, but the Bible speaks of animals as having nephesh. Still, nephesh should not be taken for granted. Without it, our bodies would be nothing but dirt. With it, they are a wonder of God.

^^^

Matthew describes the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, saying,

And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures, and paralytics, and he healed them. (4:23-24)

Jesus’ miraculous power identified him as the Messiah the world had been waiting for. No one could deny his supernatural abilities. But could there have been an additional purpose behind his healing the sick? Jesus was omnipotent. He could have performed any miracle imaginable. His healings in Galilee attracted a lot of attention, but the reports were limited to a small geographical area. I have no doubt that had he chosen to do so, he could have attracted the world all at once, by shifting the continents on their tectonic plates, for example, or appearing to every inhabitant on earth in a dream.

Why healings? Matthew says the miracles accompanied his proclamation of “the gospel of the kingdom.” By healing the sick, Jesus somehow demonstrated the nature of his kingdom.

He forgave sins, but he also healed bodies.

And let's not forget that he, too, came in a body. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Not only that, but he died in a body. He was raised in a body, and he ascended in a body. Before his birth, he existed in a purely spiritual state, but when he came to earth to redeem man, he became an embodied human being, and now, even in his glorified state, he retains a body (Philippians 2:6-8; 1 Timothy 2:5).

Contrary to Greek philosophy, which viewed the body as an evil encumbrance we should shed as soon as possible, Jesus’ incarnation and miraculous activity encourages a positive attitude toward our own bodies. In that respect we find sympathy for those who are dealing with chronic illness, age, injury, and death.

^^^

“Ascetism” is bodily deprivation for religious purposes. Think of the extreme fasting of Tibetan monks or the flagellants of the Middle Ages. Frustrated with the flesh and its weaknesses, certain religious people have punished their bodies, thinking self-harm earns extra credit in heaven.

When Paul encountered this attitude in Colossae, he condemned it, saying,

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—“Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. (Colossians 2:20-23)

Teachers influenced by dualistic Greek philosophy had come to Colossae, declaring the evils of the body with words like, “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch.” Paul calls these “human precepts and teachings.” Asceticism with its pain and discipline may seem to be righteous, but it “has no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.”

In fact, restrictiveness may fan the flames of the lusts of the flesh. The more forbidden we make something, the more attractive it becomes. Some young people brought up in stringent homes grow up and run to the other extreme of indulgence. Once they get their rumspringa, they don't know what to do with themselves because they've never been taught how to live in the bodies God gave them.

^^^

Corinth had a different take on Greek dualism. In Colossae it led to asceticism, but in Corinth, the home of the temple of Aphrodite, goddess of love, it led to sexual license.

In Corinth they reasoned that since the body was irredeemably bad, there was no use in trying to curtail its vices. Let the body do what it has to do, it was thought. This spirit, which will soon be freed from its fleshly prison, is so distinct from the body that it cannot be hurt.

Paul disagrees. In 1 Corinthians 6 he builds a case against sexual immorality by emphasizing the importance of the body.

He cites a slogan repeated in Corinth, the city whose streets teemed with prostitutes: “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food” (v. 13a). “Food” stands for any bodily urge, including sex. The average Corinthian believed sex was strictly a physical function, having nothing to do with the spiritual part of our being. The same attitude lies behind casual sex and pornography in our age.

Paul counters, “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (v. 13b). He reminds his readers that, as Christians, they are married to Christ. As Moses wrote, “The two will become one flesh.” One cannot take his body, which belongs to Christ, and join it to another through sexual immorality. It’s a “sin against your own body,” Paul says (v. 18).

Besides, Christians’ bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. God isn’t waiting for the Second Coming. He dwells in us now! This was made possible by the costly price of Jesus’ blood. “So,” Paul says, “glorify God in your body” (vv. 19-20; cf. Romans 12:1).

^^^

I skipped one of the apostle’s arguments in 1 Corinthians 6 so that I could come back to it here. In verse 14 he says, “And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.” Jesus’ death isn’t the end of the gospel. After three days in Joseph’s tomb, his body—not some ghostly apparition—was raised! (Luke 24:39).

Just as Jesus’ healings functioned on different levels, his resurrection not only confirmed his claims to be the Son of God, but it also foreshadowed our own bodily resurrection. In this connection Paul calls Christ “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20). Our bodies, which will return to the dust when we die, will be reconstituted when Christ returns, just as his was. Not only that, but our resurrected bodies will be glorified, no longer subject to sickness, pain, and death! (Philippians 3:20; Revelation 21:4).

If our lives are on a trajectory headed toward repaired and glorified bodies in the resurrection, how should we treat the physical vessels that now temporarily hold our immortal spirits? To mistreat them would be a rejection of the gospel, which gives meaning to every Christians life. Caring for our own bodies, nurturing the sick, sympathizing with the afflicted, and prolonging life are practices that not only show compassion, which is part of our calling, but also demonstrate our hope in the resurrection.

You have been bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.

You Better Watch Out

I had just loaded the last Christmas presents into the trunk of our 98 Buick when I saw him—white-haired, old, long beard, glasses, rosy cheeks, heavyset. He was wearing a gray, wool cardigan sweater and khaki pants. He sat on a bench at a busy intersection where a lot of shoppers were coming and going, watching the people as they passed by.

Nothing wrong with that. People watching is one of my favorite pastimes.

But this guy was watching people with a little more than a passing interest. He was staring at them, like he was peering into their souls. And that wasn’t all. It wasn’t just how he was watching but who he was watching that bothered me. He seemed to be paying careful attention to the kids.

I know I am not mistaken. One guy with a blue mohawk and a dog collar around his neck walked right by him, and he didn’t even blink.

But then a woman accompanied by a teenage girl strolled by. The girl’s ears were plugged with little white sticks, and she gazed downward into the glassy pool of her phone, like a twenty-first century Narcissus. The old man squinted at the girl, his puzzled stare following her until she and her mother turned the corner, as if he had never seen anything like this in his entire life. Boy, did he give me the creeps. I closed the trunk of the car and watched him for a minute from where I was standing.

The old man kept staring at children. He was an equal opportunity offender. Any kid who passed by got his attention—babies, school children, teenagers, boys, girls. It didn’t matter. If they were born within the last two decades, he was interested.

If any other old man were doing this, I would have been concerned. Maybe I would have alerted the police. But there was something different about this one. I don’t know how to put it. There was an innocence about him you don’t see much these days.

I kept studying him. He watched the people, I watched him. I was in no danger of getting caught staring at him. He was so wrapped up in his people-watching that he hardly noticed anything else going on around him.

I wasn’t busy, so I decided to talk to him. The man looked harmless enough, so I walked up and said, “How’s it going?”

 “Huh? Oh, how d’you do?”

 “Fine. I just finished my shopping. Don’t you hate Christmas shopping? It’s so stressful. I never know what to get the people on my list. Everybody’s already got more than they need anyway. You know what I mean?”

 The old man appeared to be lost in thought. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose.”

 “Mind if I sit down? My dogs are barking.”

A look of concern darkened the old man’s face, and he glanced around my legs for a moment, looking for something, and then looked back up at me, confused. I waited for an invitation to sit down, but he just kept giving me a spaced-out look. I sat down next to him anyway and introduced myself.

“Sam Jensen.”

“Nick,” he said tersely.

“So, Nick, how do you find time to kick back on a park bench at such a busy time as this?”

“Kick back? Who’s kicking back?” he asked, offended. “I’m working.”

“Working?” I asked. “Does it pay well? I’d like to get in on that racket myself, getting paid for sitting around on benches, watching people all day.”

“It’s not as easy as it looks,” he said defensively. “Do you think I want to be sitting out here? I’d much rather be at home, resting up for the big night, lounging on the couch with a big mug of hot chocolate and one arm around the missus. To tell you the truth, that’s what I’m usually doing this time of the year. It’s only one week until Christmas, you know.”

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” I chimed.

“Yes, well, I decided to try something different this year.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that,” I asked.

Nick looked around and then leaned toward me so that he could speak in a lower voice into my ear. His breath smelled like peppermint candy. “Research,” he said.

“Research? What kind of research?”

“You’ve heard of the naughty list, haven’t you?”

Then it hit me—hot chocolate with the missus, the big night, Nick! This guy thinks he’s Santa Claus!

I had to know more. “Yes,” I prodded, “the naughty list. What about it?”

“Do you want to know a secret?” He leaned even closer, as if he were guarding the most important secret in the world. “There is no naughty list. It’s a myth. Hokum. Complete fiction. I don’t even know where it came from. Somewhere along the way, somebody just made it up.”

“Is that why you’re studying those kids? To see who’s naughty and who’s nice?” I asked.

“Exactly. I think it’s time I do it right for a change. All these centuries, I’ve put presents under trees indiscriminately on Christmas Eve to every living child all over the world, giving who knows how many naughty little children the false impression that they’ve been good all year long!”

“Well, that explains a lot,” I said. “I’ve got a couple of little ingrates back home, two boys, William and Tom, and they never miss a Christmas.”

Nick gave me a nod of familiarity.

“They’re always fighting. I swear sometimes I’m afraid they’re going to tear the whole house down. We’ve spoiled them, I know. It’s our fault. We just can’t say no. Their rooms are full of junk. They’ve got every new thing that comes out, and they don’t have to wait until Christmas. No sir, if they want it, we buy it, right then and there! Then when Christmas comes, we don’t have any idea what to get them. What does it matter anyway? All they really want to do is veg out in front of the PS5.”

“Do you think they might have benefitted from being on the naughty list?” asked Nick.

“What do I know? Maybe. Hey, listen to this—my wife used to do this thing when the little devils were small and out of control. She’d pick up the phone and tell them, ‘If you don’t behave, I’m calling Santa and telling him not to bring any Christmas presents this year.’ If that didn’t get their attention, she’d make the call, you know what I mean? She had this whole act: ‘Hello, Santa? Yes, this is Marcy Jensen from Jonestown, William and Tom’s mommy? Yes, that’s right. Well, I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you not to come this year. The boys have not been very good this year.’” I laughed hysterically and slapped my knee. “Boy, I wish you could have seen the looks on their faces.”

“I don’t remember getting a call like that from Marcy.”

“No, of course you didn’t. It was a trick, you see? She didn’t actually make a call. She was just pretending to call Santa…er, you.”

Nick was starting to catch on. “Oh, I see! So what did you do Christmas morning? Did you hide the presents I put under the tree? A little coal in their stockings, maybe?”

“Well, no,” I admitted. “The fake call was in early fall, or something like that, and by Christmas we had forgotten about the whole thing. We weren’t really going to take their Christmas away. It was a bluff.”

“Did it work?”

“Um, no. It didn’t.”

“You see!” said Nick, “I’m too soft. The threat of the naughty list isn’t enough. If I don’t actually make a list, check it twice, and pass over a few houses on Christmas Eve, the children will never learn.”

“Look, Nick, I think you’re being too hard on yourself,” I said.

“Too hard on myself?” he repeated, getting flustered. “Do you realize how much responsibility rests upon my shoulders? For hundreds of years, people have counted on me to sort out the naughty children from the nice ones, so that the world can be a good and peaceful place. But I don’t have a list. I’m a fake! Not only that, I may be responsible for a lot of heartache, betrayal, lawbreaking, and evil happening all over the world! Half the world’s prison population might have turned their lives around if I had only been firmer!” Big tears welled up in Nick’s eyes. He looked like he was about to have a nervous breakdown.

“Now, don’t say that.” I put my arm around him, trying to comfort him.

“It’s true!” he cried. “Have you heard of Jack the Ripper? Adolf Hitler? Joseph Stalin? Jeffrey Dahmer? Bernie Madoff? All of them had presents under the tree!” Nick started weeping. Tears rolled down his red cheeks. His bottom lip stuck out. He looked a lot different than the jolly old St. Nick in the Coca Cola ads.

“You mustn’t be so hard on yourself,” I said. “You were only doing what you thought was best.”

“It’s those stupid songs!” he said, suddenly angry. “I never endorsed any Christmas music! They’re all so biographical, trying to flesh out what I’m doing all year long at the North Pole.” He began singing in a bitter, mocking tone:

You better watch out, you better not cry,
You better not pout, I’m tellin’ you why:
Santa Claus is coming to town.

He had worked himself into a froth, and people were starting to notice. Embarrassed, I tried to calm him down, but he kept singing in a nasally, mocking tone.

He knows when you are sleeping.
He knows when you’re awake.
He knows if you’ve been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake.

 Big, bitter tears rolled down his cheeks and burrowed into the downy curls of his beard. He looked absurd, sitting there with his arms crossed, pouting like that.

“Listen, you’ve got to calm down,” I said. “People are staring at you. Aren’t you supposed to keep a low profile?”

“Oh, I don’t think we have to worry about anyone recognizing me” he sniffed. “How can people spot Santa when he’s not the Santa they grew up believing in?” He sobbed.

I tried to change the subject. “Let me see what you’ve got there.” He had some sheets of brown, brittle paper inscribed with curly lettering in his lap. I read what he had written:

BILLY WATKINS: NAUGHTY NICE?
SUSIE HOLLAND: NICE
JENNIFER COLLINS: NAUGHTY (PULLED HER BROTHER’S HAIR)
MICHAEL COLLINS: NAUGHTY (PROVOKED HIS SISTER, RESULTING IN HER PULLING HIS HAIR)

“That’s quite a dubious list,” I said. “You don’t seem too certain about which side of the column the names should fall on. Is this all you’ve got?”

“It’s just this morning’s work,” he said.

“It’s 1 PM,” I said.

“Well, how am I supposed to judge a child’s character from a snapshot of one day out shopping, when I’m unable to evaluate them the rest of the year?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “I guess I thought it was magic, like coming down the chimney or driving a flying sled led by eight reindeer.”

“Poppycock!” he shouted. “Fiction! It’s those songs. They’ve got me peering into children’s windows like a Peeping Tom while they’re sleeping and keeping my eye on all the children in the world at once. I can’t do that!”

“To be honest with you, I’m a little relieved to hear that,” I said. “I always thought that was kinda creepy.”

“It’s just impossible to make a fair evaluation. I can’t be everywhere at once.” Nick hung his head in resignation and stared at his black, shiny boots.

“And then there are the extenuating circumstances,” I said sympathetically. “I’m sure you have thought about that.”

“What do you mean?” He looked bewildered.

“You know, extenuating circumstances, like some kids just aren’t responsible for their behavior. Special needs. They’ve got problems they can’t help.”

Nick looked confused.

“You know, problems, like ADHD.”

“Eighty how many?”

“No, it’s not a number. ADHD.”

“Spell it.”

“Spell it? I can’t. It’s an acronym. Look, never mind. All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. You’ve got enough on your hands delivering presents to the whole world without also having to fill out an annual report on the moral character of every boy and girl.”

Something I said struck a chord somewhere deep inside that troubled old man. He smiled for the first time since I met him and put his fat, woolen tube of an arm around my shoulder. A surprising musk confronted my nostrils, like the odor of an average, heavyset man wearing clothes too warm for the occasion on a park bench on a sunny day. “Thank you, Sam,” he said. “It’s nice to feel appreciated.”

“Dad?” A woman’s voice interrupted the moment we were having. She sounded frantic. “We’ve been looking all over for you!” A man and a woman in their mid-forties came in front of us and crouched in front of Nick, completely ignoring me. They were carrying a bundle of shopping bags. “Where have you been?”

“I’ve been right here, doing my work,” said Nick.

The man gave the woman a look. “Let’s go home, Dad.” Without saying a word to me, they led him away like a disruptive child being led to the principal’s office.

“Nice to meet you!” I called. Nick cast a docile look over his shoulder. A lamb to the slaughter.

By the time I got home, it was getting late. The smell of Marcy’s vegetable soup lured me into the kitchen. She was ladling it into bowls and setting the table.

“Hi honey,” she said. “Did you get the shopping done?”

“All done,” I said.

“Do me a favor and call the boys to the table,” she said. “I know you’re tired, but we promised the Parkers we’d go Christmas caroling with them tonight. We’d better hurry if we’re going to be on time.”

I went to the boys’ room and found them right where I expected to find them – sitting in front of the TV, playing Fortnite. “Time for supper,” I said.

No response.

“Boys!” I shouted. “Time for supper, now!”

“We heard ya, dad,” said Tom. Then he and William tackled me. I used to be able to take them, but they’ve gotten big enough to pin me down when they’re working together. We wrestled around a little bit and then joined Marcy in the kitchen to wolf down our supper so we wouldn’t be late.

After supper, we met up with the Parkers to go caroling. The first house we came to was Mrs. Farley’s. Her husband died from cancer three years earlier, and she lived alone. Her children wanted her to move in with them, but she didn’t want to leave the house she had lived in for the last thirty-eight years. Her health was okay, so they allowed her to stay for the time being. We met her at church, and from time to time, we’d go by the house and check on her.

I took a deep breath and tried to ground myself there on Mrs. Farley’s front porch. Soak it all in. I looked at my boys. Were they naughty? Of course they were. And they were nice too, really nice. And Marcy was nice. Christmas was nice. And life was nice too.

“Let’s sing, ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,’” suggested Tom.

“No,” I said, “let’s not sing that one. Not this time.”

“Then what, Dad?” asked William.

“Anything,” I said, “as long as it’s nice.”

Life, Death, and Beauty

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Rom. 5:1-5)

Romans 5 speaks of transformation and the role suffering plays in our growth as Christians. We rejoice in suffering because through suffering we gain endurance which leads to character which leads to hope, and all this will work out because of the love of God which has been poured into our hearts through the Spirit.

A few chapters later, Paul gives a name to this transformation. In Greek it’s metamorphosis, a word we associate with the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly.

When my kids were small, my mother-in-law would send them caterpillar gardens, little tents where you could watch caterpillars build cocoons. After the gestation period was over, they'd emerge from their self-spun coffins as beautiful butterflies. Every spring we’d release the butterflies and watch them fly away.

I always wondered what happened in the cocoon. I imagined something similar to the transformation of a werewolf in the movies—lumps bubbling all over the caterpillar’s body, the caterpillar writhing in pain, legs beginning to form, tiny humps emerging on their backs that will eventually become wings.

One day, I was listening to the radio and heard about a study that answered my question.

The experiment was simple. You might even say, barbaric. Researchers waited until the caterpillars spun their cocoons around themselves and then sliced them open to see what was happening inside. When the researchers cut open the chrysalis all they found was pale, yellow goo. The caterpillar had liquified, its organs dissolved, and its muscles melted. It had become a soup of cells.

It gets stranger. The scientists wanted to see if there was any continuity from caterpillar to butterfly, to see if the butterfly was the same “person” as the caterpillar that had spun the chrysalis from which it hatched. So they put caterpillars in a box and gassed them with a distinct smell while simultaneously zapping them with an electrical charge for ten seconds. As you would expect, the caterpillars came to hate that smell because in their little insect minds, they connected it to the feeling of being zapped. When butterflies emerged from their cocoons, they were gassed with the same smell and were immediately repelled by it. Despite the “death” that occurred in the chrysalis, the butterflies retained memories of being shocked as caterpillars. In other words, the caterpillar and the butterfly were the same insect; the caterpillar had just transformed into something unbelievably beautiful.

The metamorphosis of the butterfly reflects a familiar pattern, one of life, death, and beauty.

It appears in other areas of nature: a plant drops a seed to the ground, it dies, and comes up as a new flowering plant.

Life, death, and beauty.

We see it in the progression of covenants: life in the Garden of Eden, death through the law, beauty through the new covenant.

The Bible is full of stories that operate on this pattern. Joseph was Jacob’s favorite son. But his brothers were jealous and sold him to a band of Ishmaelites. They faked his death. Joseph really did die a death of sorts. Down into the depths he went, into slavery, into false accusations, into prison. The old Joseph was dead and buried and gone. Nothing left but a pile of goo. But that is not the end of his story. Through an amazing turn of events which cannot be explained by coincidence, he rose to the highest rank in Egypt, second only to pharaoh, and became powerful and wealthy. He saw his father again, was reconciled with his brothers, and led his people to safety in Egypt.

Life, death, and beauty.

The pattern sits in the heart of the gospel: Jesus was born as a man, he died on the cross, and he was raised in glory.

Life, death, and beauty.

It’s the outline of every conversion: living soul, death to sin, and new life through the blood of Christ. Every baptism is a reenactment of the pattern. Romans, where our metamorphosis is discussed the most, contains this description: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:3-4).

Life, death, and beauty.

We anticipate our own resurrection, another example of this pattern: we are born to a life destined to end in death, but we will arise one day with glorious bodies.

Life, death, and beauty.

Seven years ago I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Parkinson's is a movement disorder caused by the loss of dopamine receptors in your brain. No one knows the cause and there is no cure. Some have counted 40 or more symptoms that go along with P.D. The most prominent is a tremor that presents on one side of the body. It's progressive, meaning it gets worse with time. Because of my age, it took four years to get a diagnosis so I've been dealing with the disease for 11 years, since I was 37.

I found myself entering my 40s, a time that was supposed to be the prime of my life, dealing with a disease that has no cure and that only old people are supposed to have.

I remember the first day a neurologist dropped the P-bomb on me. I drove home angry with him for even suggesting such a ridiculous idea. I changed neurologists. When the second one told me the same thing, I went to a third. When the fourth one agreed with his colleagues, I had no choice but to accept that I would be dealing with a movement disorder for the rest of my life.

I had so many questions. Most of them were aimed at God: “Why did you allow me to be afflicted with this disease? I'm a minister. Why would you slow me down like this? Why do others seem to go through life so smoothly? Why me?”

Of course, the self-pity wasn't doing me any good. I needed to look at it from another angle.

I heard about that study involving the caterpillars around the time of my diagnosis. I thought about those worms reduced to a soup of cells and how God could bring them out of the ashes into beauty.

I decided to quit looking at what Parkinson's sent taken away from me and turned to what it had given me.

For one thing, I learned to take one day at a time. I used to worry about the future, focusing on things that probably would never happen. My fixation on what may never be took away from what was right under my nose. I learned to live in the present, to be where my feet were.

I learned how short life is. I had been deferring my own dreams. I decided to stop procrastinating. I learned not to bank on future days. Now is the only time that I have.

I learned how rich I was in relationships. My wife, my kids, my family, my church, my friends. So many people rallied around me. I was bathed in love.

I made a lot of new friends. Many of them are warriors fighting the same disease. Some of them are very close. We were introduced through Parkinson's.

I'm stronger because I lean on God more. I learned the truth Paul received from his thorn in the flesh: “…I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me….For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9-10). My whole life I've been trying to rely on my own limited strength when I could have been relying on the limitless resource of God's power.

I was having lunch with an older friend who said to me, “Drew, if I could, I would take this from you. I'd trade places with you.” I told him I wouldn't give it to him if I could. I think about how much I would lose if I rewound the tape, And I couldn't bear to live without these things.

Life is going to turn you into a yellow soup. There's no getting around it. We may suffer in different ways, but we will all suffer.

There are two ways to look at this, each beautifully given a voice through poetry.

The first way is to respond with rage. It all seems so unfair. I may have to go down, but I will go down fighting. This was the option given by Dylan Thomas when his father lay dying:

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The second is suggested by lesser-known poem by W.S. Merwin called “Thanks.” It ends saying,

thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is

The advice is counterintuitive. Who continues to say “thank you” as it’s growing dark? We don't learn this poem in school because it requires faith, and suffering tests our faith.

But God has proven time and again why we can be grateful for the hardship and the pain. He does it every spring. He demonstrated it in the life of Joseph and his father Jacob. He proved it when Jesus came out of the tomb. He has done it in my life, and he has done it in yours.

And because he’s shown us this pattern of life, death, and beauty over and over again, we do not have to be afraid of death. When it's coming at us like a freight train, we need do nothing more than fold our hands calmly, look up to the heavens with peace in our hearts, wave a farewell to our loved ones and say thank you.

Dark though it is.

Pray Some More

There is an elusive species I’ve been searching for in the Bible—a chimera we want to believe in, a beautiful, rare cherub. A spiritual missing link.

Now I’m sure you’re all intrigued. Just what am I looking for?

I’m looking for a person who hears the voice of God. A holy fool. That purehearted person who has the answers. You know who I’m talking about. The person we’re all supposed to be, at least those of us who are believers.

But I can’t find that person.

Please don’t tell me about those celebrity pastors. How many of them have to be exposed before we accept that you can’t believe everything you see on tv?

Maybe some of you have spotted this blessed creature in the mirror.

I haven’t.

Like I said. I’ve been looking in the Bible. And I’ve found a few examples, but it’s complicated.

What about David? No, David complained, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (Ps. 13:1).

Job maybe? No, it was Job who said, “I go forward, but he is not there, and backward, but I do not perceive him; on the left hand when he is working, I do not behold him; he turns to the right hand, but I do not see him” (Job 23:8-9). At the end of the story, God does speak, but he leaves Job with more questions. No answers.

“You’ve forgotten the prophets,” you say. You mean, like, Habakkuk? The prophet who demanded to know, “Why do you idly look at wrong?” (Hab. 1:3). He was a prophet.

“Who’s Habakkuk?” You ask. “Wasn’t he one of the minor prophets? What about one of the big guys?” You mean, like Jeremiah? The prophet who once accused God of lying to him? (Jer. 20:7).

“Abraham! No one can deny he had God’s ear.” It’s true Abraham’s spiritual antennae were tuned to the Lord, but the messages he received confounded him…

“Leave home. Where are you going? I’ll tell you later.”

“You’ll have a son. When? I’ll tell you later.”

“Abraham? You still there? I’ve got that answer you wanted. He’ll be born when you’re 100.”

“That son I gave you? Kill him.”

I’m still looking…

I pray to God. Maybe you do too. I bring him all these problems, matters only he can solve. After all, it’s his idea. He calls himself my Father and invites me to ask, to seek, to knock.

I’m knocking. Why doesn’t it seem like he’s opening the door?

We've all heard the preacher-answer: “God speaks to us through his word. If you want to hear his voice, read the Bible.” Before you dismiss it, consider that that's the answer Abraham gives the rich man when he wanted to send Lazarus from the dead to warn his brothers: “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them” (Luke 16:29). I look for answers in God’s word, and it's helpful. Very helpful. But I have some very specific issues that don't seem to be addressed in the Bible. I'm looking for direction. But I'm hearing nothing. What am I doing wrong?

I’ve had people tell me God speaks to them. Don’t get me wrong. I know they’re sincere, but it’s never worked that way for me, and that kind of “go here, do that” communication from God just doesn’t happen much in the Bible. I’ve followed God all my life. I pray. I'm not perfect, but who is? He's never whispered in my ear. If he speaks to others, why not me? Am I doing something wrong? Am I praying the wrong words, using the wrong posture, praying too long, too short? What have they got that I don't?

I go back to the Bible and read about those heroes of faith who were frustrated by the silence of God. These were no minor characters—Job, David, Habakkuk, Jeremiah, Abraham.

Even Jesus experienced the silence. During his most desperate hour, when his heart was pumping blood out of a thousand holes in his body, and a crowd he never hurt jeered at him, he cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Although it was the middle of the day, it got dark. So dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Maybe the darkness was a sign of that forsakenness, the beloved Son unable to hear his Father’s voice.

Is God not there? He has to be. If he wasn't there, where did this world come from? Why do we feel suffering? Why do we demand justice, as if the world should be different than it is? What makes us think it could be any other way? How do we know the difference between right and wrong? If there is no God, there is no good or evil, so what are we so mad about, and who are we mad at?

You can't get mad at God if he doesn't exist, now, can you?

Is he evil, like a kid who catches flies and pulls off their wings? Did he create us to be his playthings? If that were true, where did good come from? Why is there so much love in my world, so much redemption? When I look around there are so many blessings. Looking back, so many answered prayers.

But there's so much distance between my prayers and the answers. And the answers are sometimes so hard to see.

I have noticed something. If I keep praying, my prayers evolve. As I beg God to change, I start changing. When the silence stops me in my tracks, I have nothing more to do but return to his word. Read it and read it again. Go back to see if I was missing something. Every time I return, I find something new, something I missed. I realize I didn't know God as well as I thought I did. I keep praying, and I reconsider my petitions. Maybe I'm asking for something that will harm me. I think it was Oscar Wilde who said God often punishes us by granting our prayers.

I wait. And after a while I find he has used his silence to draw me nearer to him.

God used all that silence on Golgotha to draw his Son to himself. “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Jesus trusted that even in the silence, God would draw him in.

And as he was drawn to the Father in that terrible peace, he drew us in as well. “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”

Don't quit praying. Silence is part of the process. Get used to the quiet, however awful it is, and wait. And like Beethoven with his ear on his piano, you will find the vibrations of heaven are more felt than heard. By that I mean, there is something in our souls that drives us closer to God in the silence that falls around us after we say amen. Don't fear that silence. Sit in it. Embrace it. Wait.

And then pray some more.

The Reason Why

When people ask me how I got Parkinson’s, I tell them about the summer of ‘94.

I was 19 and just finished my freshman year of college. Back home in Texas for the summer, I needed a job, so I answered an ad in the paper posted by a golf course looking for manual laborers. I’d be working outside, mowing grass, weedeating, watering greens. I figured it would be better for my health than flipping burgers. I could work in the open air, get a little exercise.

I didn’t think about the chemicals used to keep golf courses green. You don’t get those beautifully striped fairways and carpeted greens by letting nature take its course. Anybody who has a lawn knows that.

We used some pretty potent fertilizers and pesticides on golf courses in the nineties. Four to seven times more than the average amount used in agriculture. Chlorpyrifos (which has been banned for use on crops), paraquat, Roundup, 2, 4-D (one of the ingredients in Agent Orange).

I remember standing beside a big tank someone was filling with a hose. When he finished, he pulled the hose out of the tank and accidentally sprayed the chemicals across my chest. In seconds, a new bleached line decorated the front of my shirt.

To remove the unwanted thatch from the sod in the fairways, we used a process called “verticutting.” It removes the dead grass and allows the turf to breath better. It’s effective, but when you’re done, dead stems and roots litter the fairways, leaving an awful mess. I was running the mower that summer after we verticut the fairways, and the thatch was jamming up my reels. As a solution, the superintendent drove beside me on a tractor rigged with a huge commercial blower on the back to keep the thatch from clogging up the blades. Every day for two weeks he blew soil, grass, and roots saturated with pesticides and chemical fertilizers all over me. I didn’t wear any protection, not even a pair of goggles. We laughed at how nasty I was at the end of every day.

I try not to, but sometimes I obsess over what caused me to get Parkinson’s. When I search for answers, I go back to that summer.

In the evenings I watched the Rangers play in Arlington, and during the day I took baths in poison chemicals.

At least that’s how I choose to remember it when I can’t stop my mind from searching for answers.

Is Parkinson’s caused by pesticides? It’s complicated. Maybe. We really don’t know. The running theory is that the chemicals we spray on our golf courses, crops, and lawns are safe for most people, but they make some of us sick because of a genetic predisposition. Like I said, it’s complicated. We’re still searching for answers.

I’m guessing you know what it’s like to obsess over reasons. “Why did I get sick?” “Why can’t I find a job?” “What’s wrong with me?” “Why is life so hard?” “Why can’t I be happy?” “Why did she have to die?”

Finding an answer may help you sleep at night. Or it might keep you up.

But sooner or later, the answer’s not going to be good enough. Because life’s complicated, and we’ll never get to the bottom of it. One day I realized that pointing my finger at that summer in ‘94 was like throwing darts while wearing a blindfold. I don’t really know why I got sick, and I may never find out.

So let me share with you two answers that may help as you wrestle to find reasons for your experience, whatever it is.

It’s not your fault.

You know why we obsess over explanations? Why our minds ruminate again and again over the past, trying to figure out what went wrong? It’s because deep down we blame ourselves. If we found an explanation, we could let ourselves off the hook.

It’s a routine as old as the book of Job. Job gets sick. His friends visit. They say, “Job, your must have really messed up! You wouldn’t be suffering like this if you were a good person. C’mon! Fess up! Tell us what you did!”

Miserable comforters.

Job wasn’t much better. He demands a hearing before God, wants a chance to show him he doesn’t deserve this. He made the same mistake as his friends. He believed the world operated by an equation that says all suffering is the direct result of wrongdoing.

It’s more complicated than that. Life is just hard. Bad things happen to good people. Life itself is a chronic illness. Jim Morrison was right: “No one here gets out alive.”

Stop blaming yourself. It’s not your fault.

It is your fault.

Like I said, it’s complicated.

The world wasn’t supposed to be this way. Car wrecks, cancer, divorce, unemployment, and poverty weren’t a part of the original plan. What happened? Somewhere along the line, we messed everything up. Sin wrecked the whole system. Then came the thorns and thistles. Suffering. Crime. Poverty. Disease. Death.

And, yes, I said we messed up because we all have sinned. I have sinned. You have too. You may not be the direct cause of your problems, but you have participated in the system that creates the pain.

I guess you could consider the part you played in your own misery and say, “At least there’s some justice in the world. I’m getting what I deserve. I’m such a miserable wretch.”

Maybe that’s where you should start, but I don’t recommend landing there.

You’re failing to consider the whole picture until you consider love. I believe suffering is more than blind justice. It’s a way to understand God’s love.

The greatest love is more than attraction. Love isn’t just some fond feeling. Love values the unworthy, shows mercy to the undeserving, and rescues the contemptible. Christ didn’t die for the innocent. He died for the ungodly.

God knows everything about you. You are part of the reason why. And he loves you anyway.

Believing in love releases you from the oppression of causes. Love sets a new course. Opens new doors. Creates possibilities. You can move forward. Follow God’s example. Start forgiving.

The question “why” is helpful only when we let it lead to love.

Whatever the reason, there is always love.

Laugh

Parkinson’s Disease is funny.

I mean, knee-slapping, ribs hurting, tears rolling down your cheeks hilarious.

It’s also terrifying. But what am I going to do? Hide? Let’s face it. I can’t outrun this monster. So instead I stop in my tracks, turn to face it, point my finger in its mealy face, and laugh.

Kurt Vonnegut said, “Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”

I hate cleaning up messes, so I laugh.

Aren’t laughter and tears both responses to the incongruity of life? Melpomene and Thalia came from the same father. All of us stagger in a world where the equilibrium has been upset. You can pout about it, or you can smile.

Studies have shown that either reaction can help you cope with the situation. Laughter and crying release chemicals in your body to restore the equilibrium emotionally. But generally speaking, people don’t like hanging around someone who is throwing a 24-7 pity-party, so I laugh.

When I hear a knocking sound and look around, only to find it’s my wedding ring tapping the desk involuntarily, I have to chuckle. When someone suggests I deliver them a hot cup of coffee, it’s funny. When my friend, who is a schoolteacher, explains to his students at the beginning of the schoolyear that he’s shaking because of Parkinson’s and responds to their stunned faces by quipping dryly, “Don’t worry. It’s not contagious,” I crack up.

Make jokes. It’s fine.

Besides, I’m so much stronger now that I have Parkinson’s. I’m aware of the fragility of life, so I procrastinate less. I have so many wonderful friends whom I never would have met if I did not have this disease. I can feel the love around me so much more strongly. My friends. My family. My church. My kids. My wife.

With Paul I can say, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” Because of my illness, I lean on God more. My prayers have changed from babyish pleadings that ignore the piles of good things around my feet to prayers for strength, understanding, dependance, and endurance.

Also, I’m grateful. I’m grateful that I can still minister to a wonderful church, write sermons and stories, play with my kids, and enjoy every experience with a kind, beautiful, intelligent woman who laughs with me.

And she has the greatest laugh.

Sometimes I cry. I try not to, but it happens. There are a few pages in everyone’s story that are damp with tears. But good stories don’t end in tragedy. Evil doesn’t win in the end. That’s absurd. The night is not the end, just a preamble to dawn’s hopeful light.

I know the world’s messed up. I don’t take that lightly. We should do what we can to fix it. I just prefer to try to face my challenges wearing a smile. It eases the load I’m carrying, and I hope it lightens the burdens borne by my fellow travelers.

Life, as they say, is funny that way.

The Unknown

The Unknown.

It’s the scariest thing in the world, and it’s not even a thing.

During the four years leading up my diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease, I wrestled daily with the Unknown. I couldn’t escape it. It haunted me, a hellhound following my scent. Sleep was my only escape, a respite from my conscious mind. The Unknown knew this and kept me awake with ruminations. When that didn’t work it tried to invade my dreams.

My body wasn’t acting right. At first it was a pain on the left side of my lower back. Then my left leg would drag about a mile into a run. Then came the tremor.

I was in my thirties. Thought it might be a pinched nerve, a young man’s injury caused by physical activity. When the symptoms wouldn’t go away on their own, I sought help from the professionals. I consulted my general practitioner. I visited two chiropractors, a massage therapist, an acupuncturist, a rheumatologist, and a holistic dentist. I endured two rounds of physical therapy. I visited orthopedic specialists and surgeons, who scanned me from head to toe. And I reluctantly visited four different neurologists.

I say “reluctantly” because neurologists deal with scary diseases. Brain tumors, MS, ALS, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s. I went to four different neurologists because when one told me what I didn’t want to hear, I’d seek out another specialist. But they were all saying the same thing.

They said it might be Parkinson’s, but they couldn’t be sure.

There’s no test for Parkinson’s (at least not one my insurance would pay for). The only way to diagnose the disease is to see how the patient responds to the medications. Also, early-onset Parkinson’s is notoriously difficult to diagnose. However, the disease is progressive. If you have it, just wait. It will get worse.

For four years I lived in denial, and my denial was the door that let in the Unknown.

But in January 2016 one of those four neurologists put his hand on my shoulder and said, “There’s no denying it. You have Parkinson’s Disease.”

My reaction surprised me. I wasn’t shocked. I wasn’t devastated. I was relieved.

The day of my diagnosis was the best day I’d had in a long time because in a flash the enemy I’d been fighting unsuccessfully for four years vanished into thin air. I could stop worrying about the Unknown and focus on treatment, therapy, medicine, exercise, support. No more misdirects, no more what ifs.

You know what? It wasn’t really the Unknown I feared. I was afraid of knowing. But much to my surprise, I found the knowledge empowering.

If you’re wrestling with the Unknown, let me encourage you to seek the truth.

Those symptoms are not going away on their own. They’re pointing to a problem, and it’s only going to get worse until you confront it.

The depression, the anxiety, you’re feeling could be signs of a chemical imbalance. Or there may be trauma in your past that you need to deal with. It’s not going away on its own. Get help. Talk to your doctor. See a counselor. Reach out to a friend.

Your marriage may not just be hitting a “rough patch.” Years of denial may be tearing you and your spouse apart. Stop going through the motions. Talk to each other. Go to a seminar. See a marriage therapist.

That addiction isn’t normal. The drugs. The alcohol. The porn. The gambling. It will consume you. You’re already hooked. There’s no denying it. Tell a friend. Get it out in the open. Enroll in a twelve-step program that will teach you how empowering it is to admit, “I am an addict.”

Whatever it is, stop battling the Unknown. It’s an unworthy opponent. It has no business being in the ring with you. It doesn’t fight fair.

I’ve had Parkinson’s now for eleven years, the first four of which I was fighting the Unknown. My symptoms weren’t as bad then, but life was harder. Since my diagnosis, I am gradually learning to accept reality, and although it’s getting harder to move around, the acceptance has made my life better.

You don’t have to fear the Unknown. Its power is granted by its victims. Confront reality and conquer the Unknown. The knowledge is empowering.

We Shall Be Like Him

Death, according to the Bible, is not the end. When we die, life continues beyond the grave in a spiritual realm called “Sheol” in the Old Testament (Job 14:13; Ps. 16:10; 139:8) and “Hades” in the New Testament (Luke 16:23; Acts 2:27, 31; Rev. 1:18). Our spirits continue in this intermediary realm while our bodies return to the dust from which they came (Ecc. 12:7). Sadly, many Christians stop thinking about the afterlife here, as if God plans for us to remain in a ghostly, disembodied state for eternity. However, there’s more! When Christ returns, there will be a resurrection of the dead. All will rise—the righteous and the wicked—for judgment (John 5:28-29; Acts 24:15).

Of course, we'd all like to know about these resurrected bodies. What will they look like? Will we recognize one another? In what ways will they be different from our present bodies, and will they feel pain, hunger, pleasure, or fatigue? The Bible doesn't answer all our questions, but it does scatter out a few hints. For now, I will limit my thoughts to the nature of the resurrected bodies of the righteous. There is much to say about the resurrection of the wicked, but I will reserve those comments for another article at another time.

            Let’s start with the idea that in the resurrection, we will be like Christ.

The apostle Paul wrote,

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep….Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.  But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual.  The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven.  As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.  Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:20, 45-49)

In a much briefer passage, Paul says, “[Christ] will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” (Phil. 3:21).

Here is how John put it:

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure. (1 John 3:2-3)

Okay, so we will be like him.  What does that mean? Here there is a divergence of opinions taking two basic interpretations. The first view assumes the promise points to Jesus’ body after his ascension. According to those who hold this position, Jesus was resurrected in a transitional body and appeared to his disciples in this condition before ascending to heaven and then, either during the ascension or afterwards, the glorification of his body was completed so that he could inhabit the heavenly realm. The second view, which I will argue, holds that the promise refers to Jesus’ post-resurrection body which appeared to his disciples during the forty days he was on earth after his resurrection, before he ascended. According to this view, Jesus ascended in that same body, and nothing has changed about it since. Therefore, the form sitting at the right hand of God is the same form that appeared to Mary Magdalene at the tomb and the disciples in the upper room.  As we have seen, the New Testament writers believed our resurrected bodies will resemble his current condition. He is the “firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” If Jesus’ body was the same when he appeared to the disciples as it is now, we can look at the post-resurrection appearances in the gospel accounts and gather hints about our own resurrected bodies, although the information is incomplete and may not answer all our questions.

The issue is by no means settled, and it is with great caution that I approach the subject. The New Testament is not overly concerned with explaining every detail of the resurrected body to those who will one day inhabit it. It is more occupied with the task of instilling a hope in life after death and faith in the one who was first resurrected to life because all our hope is based on him. What follows are the conclusions drawn by a Bible student with limited understanding and many unanswered questions.

Those who deny that we can draw conclusions about our resurrected bodies through the post-resurrection accounts of Christ understand John's statement that “what we will be has not yet appeared” (1 John 3:2) to mean no eye has yet seen the resurrection body. That is certainly one way of looking at John's commentary, but the context seems to favor another interpretation. We are accustomed to the New Testament’s description of Jesus’ return as a parousia, translated “coming,” but John uses a rarer word here, the verb phaneroo, translated “appear.” So when he says, “what we will be has not yet appeared,” he's referring to the Second Coming. He is not arguing that we have never seen a resurrected body before, or that no account has ever been made of such a phenomenon. Rather, he reminds his readers that they are waiting for Jesus to appear and encouraging them to believe that when he does, they will rise in bodies like his.

Another concern surrounds Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 15:50, part of a lengthy discussion about the nature of the resurrected body, where he reveals that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” Paul has been contrasting the earthly body with the heavenly body of the resurrection, which he calls a “spiritual body” (v. 44). No one can say exactly what a spiritual body is, but the statement in verse 50 does tell us what it isn’t—a form characterized by flesh and blood. Paul clarifies this claim, saying, “nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (v. 50). His point is that the resurrection body will have to be different from earthly bodies to inhabit the eternal realm. A perishable body—one characterized by flesh and blood—cannot dwell forever with God in heaven.

A word concerning linguistics may be helpful here. The New Testament was written in Koine Greek. Greek is a beautiful and precise language. It’s highly structured and easier to learn than English. It gives some concepts a wide array of expression. Take “love,” for example, which in English is limited to one word while Greek gives us no fewer than four. But Greek, like all tongues, has limitations, one being that it lacks a word denoting matter. Therefore, in order to call attention to physical or material objects, Greek speakers had to rely upon metaphor and symbolism, falling back on phrases like “flesh and blood.”[1]

Critics of the idea of a tangible resurrected body compare Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 15:50 with Jesus’ words to his disciples in Luke 24:39: “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39). He had just appeared out of thin air and stood among them while they were praying in an upper room in Jerusalem on the Sunday morning of his resurrection. Still doubtful and grieving, they at first thought they were seeing a ghost (v. 37, NIV). He reassured them that he was not an apparition, inviting them to touch him.[2] Observing their reluctance to accept the visual and tactile evidence before them (“they still disbelieved for joy,” v. 41), Jesus called for something to eat and consumed a piece of broiled fish (vv. 42-43). These words and demonstrations were given to the disciples to prove that the phenomenon they witnessed was Jesus in his body, not a vision, not a ghost—Jesus, their Savior who died on the cross just three days before.

Does Jesus’ “flesh and bones” claim force us to deduce he was in some transitional form during the forty days between his resurrection and ascension and that his body somehow spiritized on his way to heaven? I don’t think so. The Bible is very clear about the continuity of his resurrected form. First of all, the word “resurrection” implies a connection between what has died and been buried and that which has risen to life. If we will experience the afterlife in some airy, shapeless existence, why speak of resurrection? Why mention bodies? Yes, the resurrected body will be changed, but the change must not be so severe that it will no longer be “resurrected” nor a “body.” The Bible’s hopeful language limits how formless our future state might be.

Secondly, consider the angels’ message during Christ’s ascension. As the disciples gazed at his body when it was taken up, two men in white robes appeared and said, “…why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). Granted, they could have been speaking of the manner of his return rather than the form in which he would appear, but would they have said he would return “in the same way” if his body had changed significantly from the one they watched ascend to heaven?

Furthermore, inspiration reveals that the Jesus who returned to glory exists in a different form than the one he possessed in his pre-fleshly state. In Philippians 2:6-7, Paul declares that Jesus, although he was in the “form of God[3]…made himself nothing,[4] taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” “Form” is as close as we can get in English to rendering the Greek word morphe, which expresses more than a shape or the appearance of something, as opposed to reality. If Paul meant Jesus merely looked like God or superficially became a human being, he would have used the word schema. He isn’t arguing that Jesus became human on the outside and remained God on the inside. He employs a term expressing “that which truly characterizes a given reality.” We would be wrong to draw the conclusion that he ceased being God upon becoming human. In his human form, he made numerous claims to divinity (John 8:58; Mark 2:5-12; Matt. 26:63-65). When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, he became human without shedding his divine nature. For thirty odd years he dwelled on earth in that form, and he remains in that form. Otherwise, Paul could not have said, “[T]here is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man (anthropos) Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5). The risen Christ who is seated at the right hand of God in heaven is both human and divine. This truth is essential to Christian faith. John demands absolute uniformity on this point, writing, “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already” (1 John 4:2-3).[5] Furthermore, in his second epistle he asserts, “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist” (2 John 7).[6]

That still leaves the apparent contradiction between Paul’s assertion that “flesh and blood” cannot inherit the kingdom of God” and Jesus’ statement that he was “flesh and bones.” A careful reader will notice that while these phrases are similar, they are not identical. Those arguing Jesus uttered these words while in a transitional state think it’s not important to make a distinction between “blood” and “bones.” However, there is reason to believe that Jesus purposely stayed away from the common “flesh and blood” metaphor for physical life and opted for a skeletal metaphor to explain to the disciples that the phenomenon before them was really their friend and not a ghost.

The Law of Moses claimed that biological life in animals and humans was represented by blood. After he emerged from the ark, Noah was told, “But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood” (Gen. 9:4; cf. Acts 15:20, 29). Also, Leviticus 17:11 reads, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood” (cf. v. 14; Deut. 12:16, 23). That is why blood was required to atone for sin. “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Therefore, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Heb. 9:22). Jesus and his disciples would have been well aware of these concepts, not only because they were law-abiding Jews, but also because Jesus shed his blood on the cross to redeem the sins of humanity (1 Pet. 1:18-19). If Jesus had risen in a spiritual body not amenable to biological processes but rather animated by the Spirit, he might have purposely avoided a word so closely linked to the essence of mortal life on earth.

He did not, however, reach for an original or uncommon figure of speech. Both “flesh and blood” and “flesh and bones” occur frequently in Scripture. But they seem to have different connotations in their contexts. Most of the time, “flesh and blood” is used to distinguish physical life as opposed to the spirit. When Peter confessed that Jesus was the Son of God, the Lord commended him, saying, “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you” (Matt. 16:17). Also, John said those who became children of God through Christ “were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). Wanting to describe the spiritual nature of Christian warfare, Paul wrote, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:11).[7] The writer of Hebrews explains the incarnation, saying, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things…” (Heb. 2:14). In all four of these examples, the writers use “flesh and blood” as a metaphor for biological life and as a contrast to the spiritual realm.

On the other hand, “flesh and bones” most often indicates genetic kinship. After Adam named the animals, not finding a helper fit for him, God created Eve and presented her to the man, who then exclaimed, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh…” (Gen. 2:23). When Jacob found his uncle in Paddam-aram, Laban said, “Surely you are my bone and my flesh!” (Gen. 29:14). The illegitimate son of Gideon told the people of Shechem, “Remember also that I am your bone and your flesh” (Judges 9:2). At David's coronation at Hebron, Israel said, “Behold, we are your bone and flesh” (2 Sam. 5:1; 1 Chron. 11:1). Also, David reasoned with the elders of Judah, “You are my brothers; You are my bone and my flesh” (2 Sam. 19:12-13). The phrase is uncommon in the New Testament, Jesus’ post-resurrection claim being the only example. The only passage in which “flesh and bones” could parallel “flesh and blood” is in Satan’s statement concerning Job: “Stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face” (Job 2:5). Jesus’ dialogue, expressed in language lacking words denoting matter and physical forms, reached for an expression that would not be confused with physical life driven by biological processes but one that could encompass a glorified, spiritual body like the one Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 15.

Therefore, the Lord's “flesh and bones” description in Luke 24:39 is not parallel to Paul's exclusion of the “flesh and blood” body in 1 Corinthians 15:50. With this problem settled, we return to the promises of a resurrection in which we shall be like him and find glimpses of the nature of the resurrection body in the post-resurrection accounts of Jesus. In that body, he broke laws that bind our present, perishable bodies. That body maintained the appearance of the Jesus the disciples knew before his death. It moved like him, spoke like him, and looked like him. It was not ghostly but touchable (Matt. 27:9; John 20:17, 27).[8] It bore the marks of crucifixion (Luke 24:40; John 20:27). It could change appearance (Luke 24:16, 31; John 20:14). It could vanish and reappear (Luke 24:31, 36; John 20:19, 26). And the last time it was seen, it was ascending into heaven (Mark 16:19; Luke 24:51; Acts 1:9). Combined with other passages, such as Paul's lengthy explanation in 1 Corinthians 15 and his shorter description in Philippians 3:21, Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances inform our hope by giving us a glimpse of the “eternal weight of glory” that awaits us (2 Cor. 4:17).

[1] For example, the word “physical” appears only once in the ESV, translated from sarx, which literally means “flesh” (Rom. 2:28). The word “material” is used in the sense of “that which is tangible” only twice, translated from a related adjective, which literally means “fleshy” (Rom. 15:27; 1 Cor. 9:11). In these passages, Paul contrasts financial support with spiritual blessings, a discussion ill-suited to the concept of literal flesh.

[2] A week later he would let Thomas the straggler feel the scars on his hands and side (John 20:27).

[3] “Being in very nature God” (NIV).

[4] Literally, “emptied himself” (heauton ekenosen).

[5] The perfect active participle “has come” denotes and action that began in the past and continues into the present (Simon J. Kistemaker, James, Epistles of John, Peter and Jude (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), 325).

[6] “The perfect tense, come (eleluthota) compared with the present tense in 2 John 7 (erchomenon), seems to emphasize that the flesh assumed by the Son of God in the incarnation has become his permanent possession” (John R.W. Stott, The Epistles of John (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1960), 154).

[7] The four categories Paul uses to describe the Christians foes likely refer to spiritual forces of evil. Michael Heiser explains: “[Paul] understood and presumed the Deuteronomy 32 worldview: “rulers” (archontōn or archōn); “principalities” (archē); “powers”/“authorities” (exousia); “powers” (dynamis); “dominions”/“lords” (kyrios); “thrones” (thronos); “world rulers” (kosmokratōr). These lemmas have something in common—they were used both in the New Testament and other Greek literature to denote geographical domain authority. At times these terms are used of humans, but several instances demonstrate that Paul had spiritual beings in mind” (Michael S. Heiser, Angels: What the Bible Really Says About God’s Heavenly Host (Lexham Press. Kindle Edition), 128.

[8] Some argue that Christ’s body was intangible or off limits to human touch because he instructed Mary not to “cling” to him (John 20:17). But these instructions were given in his haste to notify all the disciples about his resurrection. After Mary notified the others, they “took hold of his feet” (Matthew 27:9), and he invited Thomas to touch the scars on his hands and side (John 20:27).

Writing About God

Every one of my stories is about God, but very few of them mention him explicitly. A character might word a frustrated prayer or wonder where God is, but aside from that God remains in the background, watching the events unfold from behind the bushes. No voices from heaven. No burning bushes. No pillars of fire.

In this regard, my model for writing about God is the book of Esther. Although it is part of the Old Testament canon, God is not mentioned a single time. However, there can be no doubt that he was involved providentially in Esther’s story. As Matthew Henry put it, “If the name of God is not here, his finger is.”

Most of us have heard more sermons than we can count in which God has been out in front and described in granular detail. When these descriptions correspond with his self-revelation in the Bible, they are helpful, but sometimes our overt explanations of the divine cloud rather than illuminate the mystery. It would be better for us not to mention him at all than for us to present a God of our own making.

As one who preaches two or more sermons a week, I think I can say that I see the value in trying to present God in all his glory, but I also believe that he ought to be discussed in more subtle ways. For example, through stories.

For one thing, God doesn't appear to us in epiphanies today. We don't live in a world where the seas dry up for armies to cross and axe heads float on top of the water. When we read our Bibles, it may seem as if the world should work that way, but if we were to examine the history, we would find that even by biblical standards, most of the time God has run the world by the laws he set in place at creation and has communicated through his word while aiding his children using the mysterious instrument of providence. Stories in which he whispers in a still small voice instead of thundering from the mountain are truer to our experience and for that reason, more helpful.

Furthermore, do we dare speak of God in overt language when he is so beyond our infinite minds? Psalm 65 begins in the ESV, “Praise is due to you, O God,” but it might be better translated, “To you silence is praise, God” (Alter). The suggestion may be that God’s greatness is beyond what language can express, so silence alone suffices for praise.

Two difficulties face us as we try to express God’s majesty. The first is the limitations of language. Poet Tony Hoagland said language “will stretch just so much and no farther…there are some holes it will not cover up.” Even a master wordsmith falters as he tries to describe an infinite God.

The second difficulty has to do with the price a worshiper pays for daring to express the bold truth about God. Mark Strand questions whether his poetry, which is far less significant and controversial in subject matter than God, is worth the sacrifice, saying, “Perhaps we should be silent, tell no one and the airs will pass, pass without knowledge of themselves, never having been termed….” It is a good question: which is better for me? Keeping my mouth shut for the sake of peace, or expressing the truth in my heart, no matter what the cost?

David decides to break the silence in praise, regardless of the consequences. First, he speaks to God, “O you who hear prayer” (v. 2). Then his tongue is loosed in fervent praise. The limits of human language are upon him, but his words beautifully honor the Creator. And by the end of the psalm, even the land is singing: “The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy, the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with corn, they shout and sing together for joy.”

My stories pale by comparison to David’s psalms, but at least they are imbued with a similar respect for the majesty of God and the inability of language to look at him directly.

We have heard the ancient tale of Medusa, whose stare turned those who looked at her directly into stone. Perseus outsmarted her by spying her reflection in the mirror of his shield. No one knows where this terror of direct vision came from, but I suspect it emerged from a dormant knowledge of the goodness and severity of God. Good stories are mirrors through which we may glimpse him. We may never see him until eternity, and even then it may be too much to expect to behold his glory, but when it comes to a being as infinite as God, a look in a dingy mirror is enough.

Tell It Slant: Sarcasm, Duplicity and Trickery in the Old Testament

My readers have been a little surprised by the old man who recurs in many of my stories, namely by his way of delivering truth by turning it on its head in the form of deceit.

In “The Worst of All Lies,” he sits at a table at the market claiming to sell, first, the finest beef in all of Israel, then, venison hunted in the Negeb. In reality, he’s peddling rotten flesh from one of his donkeys, Joanna, who had sadly passed away the day before. When Amos asks him to account for his behavior, the old man shrugs off his concerns and explains that he has to tell “obvious lies” to get people’s attention.

In “The Helpless Man,” the wily old prophet is at it again, this time misleading a group of men he meets in a tavern by giving them the impression that the rest of his party has been murdered by a strange man he encountered on the Sheba pass. Moments later, the men are astonished when the old man’s former traveling companions burst through the door, alive and well, and confiscate him angrily.

Readers want to know why the old man is so duplicitous. If he is a prophet, which he seems to be, why does he tell lies? Aren’t men of God devoted to the truth? If he speaks deceit, is he not a false prophet and therefore unfit to be one of God’s messengers?

The same readers may be surprised to find similar ambiguities from the prophets of the Old Testament. Rarely did they use straight language to reach their audiences. The people were too far gone down the road of indulgence and rebellion to hear lectures and sermons. The Old Testament prophets relied upon strange object lessons, poetry, sarcasm, and cunning to cut through deaf ears dulled by sin and selfishness.

Their approach could be described by the following lines from Emily Dickinson:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

By “telling it slant,” the prophets broke through the prejudices, assumptions, and thought patterns of their audiences to bring truth against all odds to a people that had grown too dull-witted to hear it delivered in a straightforward manner.

Sarcasm

Oscar Wilde once called sarcasm the lowest form of wit, which in itself may have been sarcastic, seeing as how Wilde was known for his biting irony.

The word “sarcasm” comes from a Greek term (sarkazo) meaning “to tear flesh” and refers to a cutting, often ironic remark intended to wound those who are within its range.

Elijah poked fun at the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel (1 Kgs. 18:27), and Isaiah shined a light on the truth about idols, mocking the ironsmiths and carpenters who constructed idols from raw materials, burned the leftovers for fuel, and fell down to worship the work of their own hands (Is. 44:12-17).

Even Jesus was known to use irony. Who could forget his saying about the man with a beam in his eye trying to help someone else who was afflicted with nothing more than a splinter? (Mt. 7:3-5).

Perhaps no one used sarcasm more than the apostle Paul. Notice how he addresses the pride of some of his converts in this excerpt from 1 Corinthians:

Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! (4:8).

Paul then begins to describe the sacrifices he and the other apostles had made on behalf of Christians like those in Corinth. While they had assumed a position of wisdom and strength and honor, the ones who had brought them to Christ had undergone great sacrifices and had been treated as second-class citizens. Paul ends this tirade, saying, “We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things” (1 Cor. 4:14).

Duplicity

When Israel and Judah prepared for war against Syria, their respective kings gathered about 400 prophets to inquire for the word of the Lord on their behalf. When the prophets returned with a unanimous word that the kings should prepare for battle, Jehoshaphat, the king of Judah, sensed a problem. It was too easy. “Is there not here another prophet of the Lord of whom we may inquire?” he asked.

Ahab, the evil king of Israel, answered that there was one other, Micaiah, but he hated him because he never prophesied good concerning him, but evil.

At Jehoshaphat’s insistence, Micaiah was called, and when the kings asked whether they should go to battle against the Syrians, the prophet said, “Go up and triumph; the Lord will give it into the hand of the king” (1 Kings 22:15).

On the surface, it might have seemed that Micaiah was playing along with the other prophets, but we read a subtler message in Ahab’s reaction: “How many times shall I make you swear that you speak to me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord?” Then he turned to Jehoshaphat and said, “Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil?”

Micaiah said one thing with his words, but he delivered a very different message through subtleties – his demeanor, the look on his face, his past record of prophecy. Ahab knew full well that the prophet was being duplicitous, which made an even more striking impression upon the wicked king.

Trickery

Jacob’s name literally meant “one who takes by the heel” because he entered the world clutching his twin brother’s heel at birth. However, it became a fitting name for his character because Jacob was known as one who would “trip” others up through cunning and deceit. His craftiness was not always commended. (Who can forget the callous way he deceived his blind father by impersonating his brother Esau?) But it was Jacob in the end who received the birthright and blessing of Abraham’s family and became the father of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Direct communication is not always the best way to deliver truth. In “The Worst of All Lies,” the old man explains to Amos,

Some people lie to deceive. I lie to wake the sleeping masses. I tell the obvious lies….The truth is always there right in front of us. We just don’t see it because we are focused on other things. So truth sometimes has to stand on its head to get our attention.

Any characterization of the prophet who tells everything straight is not only unfaithful to the examples of the prophets in the Old Testament, it’s boring.

Besides, is deceit a lie if it’s obvious? I’m not sure what the answer is. We could get into a discussion of the degrees of lies, white lies, harmful untruths, jokes, flattery, etc.

But the bottom line is that sometimes uncertainty is the only tool a prophet has left to shake the nodding heads of a slumbering audience. If a lie is the only thing that will wake them up to the truth, should he not tell it?

Prophecy as a Burden

I have had my fair share of conversations with sincere but misguided individuals who claim that God has whispered his private counsel into their ears, and I’m always troubled by these claims.

For one thing, they make it impossible to engage the other person in reasonable conversation. If you happen to disagree with them, or have experienced life differently, debate, reasonable or otherwise, is impossible. You are arguing with a prophet after all, a mouthpiece of God, and when you debate omniscience, you always lose.

 Secondly, I’m uncomfortable with these enthusiastic modern-day seers because they are so different from their biblical counterparts. Anyone eager to receive a prophecy has not carefully examined the life of Ezekiel, who was required to restrain his grief after the death of his wife, or Jeremiah, who was placed in the stocks for delivering his prophecies and vowed to quit, or Balaam, who wanted to profit (no pun intended) from delivering oracles against Israel but couldn’t.

Biblical prophets, for the most part, were devoted mouthpieces for the Lord, but they did not relish their gifts. This is evident in the very language they used to describe the miracle of prophecy. One of the most frequently used Hebrew terms for prophecy (massa), appearing twenty-seven times in the Old Testament, literally means “burden.” Most modern translations obscure the literal meaning of the word, opting for “prophecy” or “oracle,” but the King James Version renders it literally, prefacing the words of the prophets with a word signifying a heavy load to be born.

Gesenius argues the word is sometimes used in positive contexts, but Harris, Archer, and Waltke in the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament demonstrate convincingly that it denotes “prophetical speech of a threatening character… The contents of these prophecies consist exclusively of threatenings.” Shackleford explains that it conveys “a painful message.” Indeed, in every place, the word prefaces woes, threats, and corrections (cf. Isa. 13:1; 15:1; Nah. 1:1; Hab. 1:1; Lam. 2:14; et al.). Often, however, these oracles of dread are reserved for Israel’s enemies, so they could be looked at not so much as an announcement of doom upon the nations as a message of salvation to Israel.

Jeremiah uses the two senses of massa in an interesting wordplay in Jeremiah 23:33. He tells the people that when one of the prophets or priests critical of his prophecies mock him, asking, “What is the burden of the Lord?” they should respond, “You are the burden, and I will cast you off, declares the Lord.” In other words, Jeremiah’s bad news wasn’t the real burden; they were, and the Lord was ready to relieve himself of the unnecessary, cumbersome load.

Only Jesus through the gospel could turn the burden of the Lord on its head. “Come to me,” he said, “all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28-30). His way does involve commands, but they are commands to receive, to trust, to feast, to inherit. In the words of Bernhard Rothmann, “What can be lighter than a burden which unburdens us and a yoke which bears its bearer?”

Simon gives us the perfect picture of the nature of the burden of the gospel. As Christ collapsed under the weight of the instrument of his own execution, the Roman soldiers forced a bystander, Simon of Cyrene, to carry the Savior’s load. Simon had no plan that day to bear a cross; the prospect at first must have seemed at best inconvenient, more likely, despicable. But on top of the hill where he dropped his burden so the soldiers could nail Jesus to it, he discovered that the burden he bore was the greatest blessing he would ever know.

It is not in our nature to pray for burdens. God blesses us with the ones we need, and we find, to our surprise and delight, that they are lighter than any pleasure we might have chosen for ourselves.

I do not call my stories “burdens” because they compare to any degree with the prophecies of the Bible. They are obviously not inspired, nor have they been received by a miracle of divine revelation. But I’m interested in the lives of true prophets, men and women whose lives were complicated not in spite of, but because, God intervened. Their lives were complicated in beautiful ways so that their burdens became blessings, sorrow was turned into joy, and pain gave birth to redemption and new life. I humbly submit my stories to my readers with the hope that they might provide a small ray of light to lighten the load, maybe by sheer entertainment, maybe by insight, or, perhaps—dare I say it?—by bestowing on them peace and joy.