Comma Dot Comma

Looky! Three posts in one day. Pace yourself– they have to last all week since we (yes, that’s the royal we, plus Dr. G) will be on vacation. We will be near jungles, volcanoes, reefs, and beaches. We will also be near ceviche and coffee plantations and bad roads. If you guess the location, I will bring you some cooled lava for a prize.

This post is devoted to strange yet wonderful out-of-print Christian-themed music from the 70′s. Our first entry is from a band called Daniel Amos. It’s the title song from their 1977 album, Shotgun Angel. It’s a country tune about a lonely trucker. Jesus talks to him through the CB radio and makes his truck fly through the air instead of driving on the road like regular trucks.

The second is from a family band called the 2nd Chapter of Acts. The start of their musical career is very sad– their parents died and they sang around the piano to share their grief. This song from 1975, “The Devil’s Lost Again,” ROCKS. And the women make chicken sounds repeatedly in the bridge and the fade-out.

I don’t think you’d get either of these beauties on Family Life radio today.

Shotgun Angel

The Devil’s Lost Again

Well I’ve dropped the ball a bit this week on ye olde blog. Mostly because I felt the need for a long, serious follow-up to my previous long, serious post. And that just didn’t seem fun. Some people are excellent at churning out long and serious. I need to work up to it. At the bare minimim I must march around the house with my fists to my temples shouting “A HUM INNA HUM INNA.”

Anyhoo. Got some interesting feedback on my essay. I liked Eun’s comment about not making God our “personal genie.” She also suggested a personal history of disillusionment that came through in my writing. True. I can’t complain a bit about my own life– quite the opposite in fact. Most of my sadness has come from comparing my life to others that have, in my estimation, a much harder time of it, both in this country and around the world. One’s lot in life seems so determined by an accident of birth, and that just don’t seem fair to an American girl with the whole “created equal” thing ingrained in my head. But that whole line of thinking is a maze of a journey with no answers, so I’ll just assign it to the “beyond my ken” category and leave it aside.

Speaking of which, if I got appointed Bible Editor I’d take out the “God’s deal with the devil” part of the book of Job, because it totally messes up the big showdown at the end. in which God most eloquently shuts down Job and his friends for having neither the right nor the capacity to know why things happen the way they do. It’s so funny that Job doesn’t get to know the reasons, but the anonymous omnicient narrator does.

Another friend mentioned that my point of view, while sensible, requires us to give up a “God is my buddy” perspective, which is scary. In some ways you do have to give it up (there are a few people in history who have been called friends of Jesus or God but that is not the primary relationship we have) and on the other hand, I think we can still look for evidence of divine care in other arenas without treading on God’s sovreignty. More below.

Kate wondered how prayer fits in with this hands-off view of life. An excellent question, and one that I haven’t thought much about. All I know is that we are invited and encouraged to pray as a way of participating in God’s work, entirely apart from any results. I pray for circumstances and situations quite a bit, but I don’t go so far as to say a certain outcome must be the result of my prayer. If something in a neutral or negative circumstance begins to shift inexplicably toward the positive, then I often suggest that people somewhere must be praying. Who knows how all that stuff works. Probably the real theologians have better ideas.

I’ve found some new thinking habits that help me stay out of the “unequal circumstances” maze.

1. Keep a sense of perspective. I remind myself of the many generations it often takes for God to fulfill his promises, and that He is concerned with groups as much as or more than individuals. I wrote more about this a few years ago in Salt. Also, the people who make it into the bible stories are the exceptions, not the rule. Their interactions with God are so out of the ordinary that they are worth recording for posterity.

2. Focus on the New Testament. The promises God makes in the old testament are attractive because they often include what I call “the good stuff”– family, wealth, health, and so on. But they are mostly historically particular, and tied to specific people, times, and places. It is tricky to treat them as eternally and universally applicable. I must not use them as guidelines for what to expect in my own life or the lives of those around me.

3. Practice valuing what the New Testament, especially the recorded words and acts of Jesus, values. This is harder than it sounds. There are few, if any, promises in there about getting awesome spouses, healthy children, good jobs, and excellent deals on personal property. In fact, the contrary: persecution, divided families, and giving all we have to the poor are some things I remember reading more than once. Yet what fills my mind most these days are thoughts of building my family, buying a house, and fulfillment at work. Default attitude, I value the usual ideas of “the good stuff” more than the kingdom of God.

4. Look everywhere for, and testify to, signs of Gods care according to the values and promises of the New Testament. What do Jesus and his early followers describe as signs of God’s grace and care? I’ve got no plans to do a detailed topical survey here, but the following come to mind:

The grace of salvation. Salvation, as a term, comes with a lot of baggage. And yet, the ongoing rescue and restoration of human beings to God is the most important evidence of His care.

The promise of nearness and attention. Jesus promised that he and his father would be with us always. Often, though not always, we can feel that presence and attention, especially in the community of believers. This is evidence of care, though by itself it cannot sustain me– sometimes my awareness of that presence fades or disappears altogether.

True community. Jesus founded and promised to nurture a community of people eager to serve God together in a new way, and that community is the primary way that God reveals love and care. I am a strand in a net of shared hope and love that extends backwards and forwards in time and around the world. Wherever words of encouragement and deeds that bring

The Holy Spirit. The renewing and lifegiving force that shapes my character, helps me to resist temptation, brings wisdom in decision making and interpreting situations, guides my actions, and allows me to impact others with hope and healing. This is a subjective sign as well, and not always detectable, and yet I can claim that any choice I make to do good against my strong desires is evidence of God’s care for me.

Miracles. Here defined as supernatural events in which the chemical or physical nature of something is definitively and measurably changed for the sake of a person or group of people. Like, say, changing water into wine. A headache going away wouldn’t count. There aren’t many of these anymore, but I feel safe claiming them as evidence of God’s care.

So instead of testifying to new jobs and washing machines, we testify to the times people have reached out with kindness in the name of Jesus. We testify to the still small voice that prompted us toward one moral choice instead of another. We offer thanks for the faith that entwines our lives apart from our circumstances, and for the gentle attention of a father who, though he does not always create or intervene as we would like, always sustains our souls and promises to bring them safely through. We give thanks because no moment is a wasted moment, and we live with the knowledge that even the most painful of them contains the promise of redemption and the opportunity to love.