Don't Miss the Forest!

Last week, I woke up a little before 3 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. There are times you know sleep’s just not coming back, and this was one of those times. Since my alarm was set for 5 anyway, I decided to get up and make the most of a quiet house.

I sat down in my dining room to get some work done. This summer, I’m working on a Bible study on the book of Genesis. I spent those two hours editing, writing, editing some more, and ending up pretty pleased with the paragraphs that appeared. (This particular lesson was on Genesis 17 and the introduction of circumcision. It takes a lot to be pleased with paragraphs on circumcision.) It wasn’t until much later in the morning when I realized I had spent two hours writing about God without actually talking to Him. Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees.

Imagine if I were writing about a key moment in my mom’s life, and she was right there in the room with me.  But instead of talking to her about it, what if I just ignored her and busied myself with putting her story in my own fine words? That would be arrogant, foolish, and just plain weird. I would never do that. I would ask a million questions and check with her on the sensitive wording. I would read everything back to her to make sure I was accurately representing her. Telling another person’s story is a privilege, and I work hard to honor that person. This should be especially true when the Person is God. 

When I started my new job writing and editing Bible studies back in the spring, my prayer life kicked into overdrive. Working with sacred material kept me in regular conversation with the real Author. There were days when I felt dependent on Him for every single word. But as so often happens, I got comfortable. The sacred became familiar. And all of a sudden I had handled His Word for two hours without even acknowledging Him.

There’s a risk for those of us who work for God to earn a living. Over time, the holy can become ordinary. The trees can consume our vision, until the forest—the grand, magnificent, awe-inspiring forest—is blurred. Distant. Corporate. Ugh.

God, please keep my eyes on the big picture. Do the same for the many, many friends I have in ministry. Remind us that we are on holy ground doing holy work for a most holy Master, even if it looks like a spreadsheet or a Word document. You are good and loving and near, but, oh, you are much too big to become ordinary. 

The Forgotten Grandest Thing

In 1899, Orison Swett Marden wrote a popular manual called Character: The Grandest Thing in the World. Marden knew his audience well. At that time, public life centered on the farm, being neighborly, relating with extended family members, and proving oneself a contributing part of the community. Character was grand, and it was essential if you wanted to have a decent life.

Marden wrote another book in 1920, also well received. This one was called Masterful Personality. Everything had changed.

I learned this from Susan Cain’s book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking. I actually learned many things from the book, but the transition from a Culture of Character (prior to 1900) to a Culture of Personality has really got me thinking. I got the book to help me understand my introverted husband and oldest daughter. It shed light on them, but also on my son, who revels in public speaking and can convince almost anyone he’s right about almost everything. What I also got from the book was a history lesson on how our culture became a place where image and salesmanship are everything. Or, as Cain writes, “a culture in which every American was to become a performing self . . . a salesman, a social operator, someone with a ready smile and a masterful handshake, and the ability to get along with colleagues while simultaneously outshining them.”

Cain cites the results of a study that counted the words appearing most frequently in “self-help” manuals of the early twentieth century versus those from the nineteenth century. In the 1800s, it was common to find words like citizenship, duty, work, honor, reputation, morals, manners, and integrity. But a cultural switch—triggered by mass industrialization, consumerism, and advertising—led to words like magnetic, fascinating, stunning, attractive, dominant, forceful, and energetic. It seems the kinder, gentler United States had vanished, replaced by a culture fueled by competition, popularity, and impressing others at all costs. Shaving cream ads that once just presented the facts about the shaving cream now used lines like these: “All around you people are judging you silently” or “Critical eyes are sizing you up right now.”

And we wonder why we’re all neurotic!

Cain limited her discussion to in-person personality, but we have ample evidence of how this plays out on the internet. What is social media if not a global exercise in the Culture of Personality? Except you get to pick your personality. A shy, timid teenager can be the life of the virtual party. If he’s clever and deceptive enough, the 63-year-old recluse can hang out with the cool kids. He may even get a 16-year-old girlfriend out of the deal. We can all impress our friends with our “stunning” and “attractive” lives online, while conveniently hiding the stuff that’s not so stunning or attractive.

That’s not to say there’s no authentic relating on the internet. There is. Relationships can be renewed and restored online, and that’s a very good thing. Other mass media broadcast stories of do-gooders around the globe that can motivate the rest of us. But I can’t help but lament what was lost in the shift from character to personality. We so quickly reward those with over-the-top personalities (the Kardashians come to mind) instead of those who help their neighbors or forgive those who hurt them or simply love their children well. Who at the water cooler is talking about humility and chastity? Do we even look for noble character in our leaders and politicians, or are we more interested in how entertaining they are in tweets or on late-night TV?

Orison Marden got it right the first time, back in 1899. Character is the grandest thing in the world. If only we lived like we believe it.   

O, Death

Last night, the Happy Chicken Egg Farmers (my family) buried our first happy chicken. Her name was Buffy. We raised her from the little ball of fluff she was 16 months ago. Buffy was always the overachiever of our chicks—the first to flap her wigs and scoot across the pen, the first to roost, and one of the first to lay an egg. I suppose it's fitting that she was the first to die. Except who knew you could get so attached to a chicken? The irony of it all, when my freezer is full of dead chicken. But I suspect those chickens didn't have names. They didn't have little girls telling them each night, "I love you, Buff." And at the end of their lives, they weren't cradled on the front lawn by a weeping 12-year-old who did genuinely love them. 

Who knew that raising chickens wasn't for the faint of heart? I look at our 14 who remain and think, "Ugh, 14 more times we've got to do this?" Maybe it will get easier, but maybe not. I'm not sure that "death" and "easy" can coexist in the same sentence, let alone in real life. 

We get our kids pets so they can practice loving and caring, but also so they can practice losing. We tell them that death is a part of life and that they need to make peace with it. I've said those words myself. Yet something in me recoils from that. Deep down within me, I know I'm not supposed to make peace with death. This is not the way it's supposed to be. God did not create us for death. He created us for life! Death is our consequence, but it's also our enemy—1 Corinthians 15:26 says it will be the last enemy to be destroyed when Jesus returns.

I try to imagine death through the eyes of the incarnate Christ. Did He love and lose a pet as a little boy? Did He think, "Wait a minute! That's not how we designed it"? I wonder if He was right there, watching His grandparents grow old and die, or maybe Joseph, His earthly father? How unnatural it must have seemed. We know that He wept over the death of his friend Lazarus. Perhaps He was crying as much about death itself as He was about Lazarus. And then to experience death Himself--how alien, foreign, and completely at odds with Himself that was. Can we even imagine it?  

I don't fear death, not for myself anyway. It's my gateway to Jesus, and I'll do anything to get to live with Him and know Him face to face. But I cannot make peace with death. I can't tell my children, "This is natural." Everything in me knows that's not true. When you see a beautifully alive creature wither, struggle, and die right before your very eyes, you can't say it's natural. Common, yes, but not natural. I've seen it happen to people I loved, and nothing about it was natural or peaceful.

My kids are learning that we must expect and accept death as part of life in a fallen world. But I also want them to fiercely believe—more than they believe anything else in the world—that death doesn't get the last word. All of creation may be groaning with the pains from this world (Romans 8:22), but it's not a hopeless groan. It's an expectant groan. 

I hate you, death. I cannot wait for your defeat, and I know that it's coming.

"When our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled:

'Death is swallowed up in victory.

O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting? . . . 

Thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Corinthians 15:54-56)