When the Holidays Hurt

Photo by gleangenie at Morguefile.com

As an avid C.S. Lewis fan, I've stored up gems of wisdom from this most quotable author. But as 2017 draws to an end and I prepare to close the cover on this chapter of my life, no great quote comes to mind. Instead, I'm tempted to follow Lewis's example and write in the margin NA, an abbreviation he reserved for books that he intended to read Never Again.

Many of my friends have lost loved ones this past year. They don't complain, but there is no hiding the pain in their eyes. They swallow hard to keep the tears from choking their voice, and they bravely face a holiday season that I'm sure they wish to skip.

Other friends are dealing with serious illnesses, suffering from a failed marriage, or feeling numb like me from the busyness of the season and endless responsibilities. Has the Christmas spirit passed us by? I don't think so. Our pain and helplessness don't drown out Christmas—they draw us into the true heart of Christmas.

On that very first Christmas, Jesus didn't gaze down from heaven at lights and tinsel on trees. He didn't smell the aroma of perfectly baked cookies and say, "That looks like a nice place to live. I think I'll go there."

No, He saw the pain of broken relationships, bitter hearts and selfish attitudes, religious leaders who were too proud to care for the poor, and the downtrodden who knew they were powerless to help themselves. Jesus saw the darkness and pain. He shuddered at the evil, then whispered to listening hearts, "Don't be afraid. I am coming."

If sorrow engulfs your heart this Christmas, if tears roll unbidden down your cheeks, you haven't missed out on Christmas. Your pain is the reason Jesus came. We may not feel His presence, but He asks us to reach out in feeble faith and trust Him. He promises never to leave us. Never Alone.

"Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel (which means, God with us)." Matthew 1:23 (ESV)

Arguing with Myself

I have an irritating habit of arguing with myself. Sometimes I can't complete a single sentence because halfway through my statement, I think of a counterargument, at which point I feel compelled to stop and complete the mental debate before restarting my sentence. For my family members who have to wait through these silent altercations, this is maddening.

I suffered from one of these interior disputes for a couple days after my last blog post. Part of me thought I had properly answered the question I set forth, "What does the 500th anniversary of the Reformation mean to non-Lutherans and non-Christians?" The other part of me said I missed the mark. I wrote an entire post about the Reformation without mentioning the Bible once.

The heartbeat of the Reformation was Sola scriptura, Scripture alone. How could I leave this out? But if I said all the answers are in the Bible, would I alienate my non-Christian friends? Some of my best spiritual discussions have been with my agnostic and atheist friends. I don't want them to leave the conversation when I declare, "Scripture alone."

This inner debate raged until an image appeared before my eyes of two friends walking along a road and arriving at a fork. One insisted, "I feel we should go to the left." The other said, "No, I feel the correct direction is right." They were at a standstill because there was no way to arbitrate their feelings.

Then the picture morphed, and I saw one friend held a map. "The map says left," he declared. The other friend might agree, or maybe he'd disagree. He could argue the map really indicates going right would take them to their destination, or he could argue that the map was inaccurate, possibly printed before the road's existence. Either way a discussion has started because their statements left the realm of feelings and entered the world of evidence and rational thought.

Should Sola scriptura end all conversation with friends who oppose my belief in the inerrancy of Scripture? No, it opens the door. Since the Bible is a collection of historical documents, of primary sources, we can discuss it whether or not we agree on inerrancy. If you think I am misunderstanding the document, please share your view on its interpretation. If you consider the Bible corrupt beyond all usefulness, tell me why. I welcome conversation because I hold a map in my hand, and my spirituality is grounded in the arena of reason.

Today I join Luther in inviting my friends to the conversation, but I differ from him in one great way. When no one showed up for his debate, he walked home. I, on the other hand, will hang around and debate myself.

Photo by DodgertonSkillhause at Morguefile.com

When No One Shows Up

The November air nipped at the custodian’s fingers as he pasted a paper to the church door, its Latin lines indecipherable to him and most of the other people who would walk through the door—some kind of academic stuff that theologians worried about.

Not the typical picture of Luther nailing his Ninety-five Theses to the Castle Church door, but probably closer to the truth. We don’t actually know what happened five hundred years ago. We’re not certain the theses were posted on October 31, 1517, or that a nail was used or even that Luther posted them himself. We do know it wasn’t the act of defiance many history books imply.

In posting the theses, Luther was inviting fellow theologians to debate a doctrinal issue raised by the traveling preacher, Tetzel, who was an old-fashioned version of a televangelist. “Could dropping a coin in the coffer free a soul from purgatory, or was this a scam unauthorized by the Church?” Luther asked.

However, on the day appointed for the debate, no one showed up. No one to debate. No one to observe. How long Luther sat there, alone, waiting, we do not know. How he felt as he trudged back to his residence is an equal mystery.

The debate had failed, but the Ninety-Five Theses hadn't, because Luther did one other boring act. He mailed copies to a couple friends for input. When Christopher Scheurl, a printer in Nuremberg, saw the theses, he printed them. Within a few months they were translated into German, and a fire spread throughout Europe.

As the 500th anniversary of this event approaches, my image of it has changed. I no longer see a bold Luther nailing his challenge to the church door. I envision a lonely Luther sitting in a cold room, wondering why no other theologian cared enough about the souls of his parishioners to discuss the way to heaven. But I also sense the invisible hand of God moving through events to begin a dialogue that continues to this day.

I don’t intend this post as a statement for or against Lutheran doctrine. In fact, I started my personal contemplation of the Reformation with the question, “What does this anniversary mean to non-Lutherans and even non-Christians?” My conclusion is that truth matters. Dialogues with friends help us progress toward the truth; but once we find the truth, we need courage to live for it and leave the results to God.

 

Truth Crucified

A curtain of darkness descended over the midday sky as the One who said, “I am the truth,” hung on a tree.

Jesus knew this would happen – the religious leaders had long before rejected the truth. When Jesus cleansed the temple, they demanded of Him, “Who gave You the authority to do this?”

“I’ll tell you,” He promised, “if you answer My question first. ‘Was John’s baptism from heaven or of men?’”

The leaders conferred, but not to discover the truth, only to find a politically expedient answer. “If we say ‘from heaven,’ He’ll ask us why we didn’t believe. But if we say, ‘of men,’ the people will stone us because they’re sure John was a prophet.”

“We cannot tell You,” they responded.

“Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things,” Jesus replied, and the curtain descended over their hearts.

But when darkness engulfs us, we seldom find comfort in walking away. The leaders couldn’t just turn their backs on the truth – they had to kill it. They had to kill Him so they nailed Truth to the tree.

Did truth die that day? No. God died so truth wouldn’t have to. God couldn’t close His eyes and pretend the evil in the world wasn’t so bad. God told the truth: evil was killing us. Then He died for us, taking the full weight of our sin on Himself so that we would no longer need to carry it.

The world may look black today, but when we peer through the curtain, we know there is hope. The story doesn’t end on Good Friday.

The Power of Our Words

I stood at the door of the second-grade classroom and called my next piano student. I called again. Where was she in that mass of students?

Soon I saw a girl hurrying toward me, not the student I needed, just one who wanted to say hi. She threw her arms around me and said, “You look pretty today.”

Little did she know that I had barely finished cleaning the bathroom on time to get to work. I had exchanged my black knit pants for a skirt, put in earrings, and rushed out the door. No, none of this mattered to the child who saw me as pretty and made my day.

May I be as wise with my words as she is.

The Purpose of a Dog and the Purpose of Me

My knowledge of movies and pop culture is laughable due to a bad habit of burying myself in music that is three hundred years old. My students occasionally try to pull me back into the twenty-first century, like this week when they told me about the soon-to-be-released movie, A Dog’s Purpose.

I asked one student, “What is the purpose of a dog?” and I was pleased with her articulate answer, but then I followed up with, “What do you think our purpose is?”

“That’s a tough question,” she replied.

How do I respond to that? Is there anything more important than knowing our purpose in life? Vince Vitale put it well when he compared life to an athletic competition: “Imagine being thrown into a game without knowing when it started, when it will finish, what the objective of the game is, or what the rules are.”

But how could I approach this topic without getting religious? Am I here by accident with no purpose at all? Is there a God who created me? If so, who is He, and why did He make me?

None of these questions fit the purpose of a violin lesson so I steered the conversation back to music theory and intonation, but the interchange stuck with me.

These topics might not be appropriate for casual conversation with a violin student, but they are always appropriate within my friendships. If I were thrown into a basketball game with no idea of the rules or what to do with the ball, I would expect my friends to tell me those important details. Shouldn’t we be just as open with each other when searching for the right direction of our lives?