Author Archives: Rob Harrison

Pray for Zimbabwe; please, pray for Zimbabwe

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One of the deep joys of my years in Colorado was the time I spent as a member of the Partnership Committee of the Partnership of Zimbabwe and Denver Presbyteries. The Presbytery of Denver had ended up involved in ministry in Zimbabwe through the work of a couple in one of its churches, and decided in consequence to establish and build a presbytery-to-presbytery relationship with the Presbytery of Zimbabwe, which is part of the Uniting Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa (UPCSA). I was never able to travel to Zimbabwe (though I would have been offered the chance if we hadn’t been leaving), which I regret, but I did have opportunities to meet a few of our partners on their visits to Colorado, and there are a couple whom I consider dearly-loved friends.

Which is why my heart breaks, and has been breaking, for the country of Zimbabwe. I could give you a long list of links about what Robert Mugabe has done to his nation over the last eight years—he was a good leader before that, as long as people kept voting for him, but once the voters began to tire of him, he turned on them; whether he rules well or ill, all that matters to him is keeping power—but I think Peter Godwin summed up the story well enough in the Los Angeles Times, at least for starters. Godwin, who dubbed Mugabe “Zimbabwe’s Ahab,” knows whereof he speaks, as a native Zimbabwean; he’s written several books, including the memoirs Mukiwa: A White Boy in Africa and When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa, and still laments what was lost.

The presidential election is this Saturday, and there are those who have hope that maybe this time, the opposition and the international community will prevail, and the election will bring about the end of the Mugabe government. Please pray that it is so, and with a minimum of bloodshed. Please pray for the peace of Zimbabwe.

Revelation 7 multiculturalism

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One of the more interestingly problematic characters in contemporary SF is John Ringo. As the blogger over at Aliens in This World put it, “John Ringo is an odd bird, even by comparison to the normal oddness of science fiction writers. Ringo can write really really good, bad, and creepily-unwholesome-I-need-a-shower books. Often inside the same cover.” That captures it quite well, I think—particularly the way Ringo so often juxtaposes things I really appreciate with things I really don’t. He has in some ways a very perceptive eye, but a deeply flawed worldview underlying it, which makes him one of the few people I’ve run across (along with Ann Coulter) who can articulate conservative conclusions in such a way as to make me react like a liberal. This all is probably why the only books of Ringo’s I really like are the Prince Roger/Empire of Man series he’s co-writing with David Weber. (IMHO, they fill in each other’s weaknesses quite nicely.)As I say, though, he does have a good eye, and little tolerance for nonsense (he’d use a much more pungent word there, of course, having a rather rough tongue), virtues which are often promiscuously on display in his work—along with his pronounced animus against received pieties of any kind. That animus can color and distort his perception, but at times, it can also inform and strengthen it; when it does, the attacks he unleashes can be devastating.One good example comes from the fifth chapter of his latest project, a novel titled The Last Centurion, in which he takes a swing at multiculturalism. The novel is set in the future, but the examples on which he draws are from this decade, including this one:

Group in one of the most pre-Plague diverse neighborhoods in the U.S. wanted to build a play-area for their kids in the local park. They’d established a “multicultural neighborhood committee” of “the entire rainbow.” . . . There were, indeed, little brown brothers and yellow and black. But . . . Sikhs and Moslems can barely bring themselves to spit on each other much less work side by side singing “Kumbaya.” . . .The Hindus were willing to contribute some suggestions and a little money, but the other Hindus would have to do the work. What other Hindus? Oh, those people. And they would have to hand the money to the kumbaya guys both because handing it to the other Hindus would be defiling and because, of course, it would just disappear. . . .When they actually got to work, finally, there were some little black brothers helping. Then a different group of little black brothers turned out and sat on the sidelines shouting suggestions until the first group left. Then the “help” left as well. Christian animists might soil their hands for a community project but not if they’re getting [flak] from Islamics.

Now, maybe that sounds unfair to you; but if so, check out this piece (among others) by Theodore Dalrymple, based on his extensive experience working as a doctor in one of Britain’s immigrant slums. I won’t cite any of his stories—you can read them yourself; be warned, they aren’t pleasant—but I can tell you the conclusion to which they’ve led him:

Not all cultural values are compatible or can be reconciled by the enunciation of platitudes. The idea that we can all rub along together, without the law having to discriminate in favor of one set of cultural values rather than another, is worse than merely false: it makes no sense whatever.

The problem here is the unexamined assumption that “the intolerance against which [multiculturalism] is supposedly the sovereign remedy is a characteristic only of the host society,” and thus that if those of us who belong to the dominant culture would just set aside our idea of our own superiority, then all the problems would go away. Unfortunately, life isn’t like that. For one thing, this rests on the essentially racist assumption that all “those people who are different from us” are really all alike and thus all on the same side; but it ain’t necessarily so. To be sure, this assumption isn’t only made by white folks. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assumed that Hispanic immigrants would ally themselves with American blacks, and thus supported loosening immigration laws; Jesse Jackson assumed the same, which is why he proclaimed the “Rainbow Coalition.” As Stephen Malanga writes, though, it hasn’t worked out that way.More seriously, it isn’t only Western culture that is plagued by intolerance, hatred, violence, and other forms of human evil; other cultures have their own problems, too. As Dalrymple writes, “many aspects of the cultures which they are trying to preserve are incompatible not only with the mores of a liberal democracy but with its juridical and philosophical foundations. No amount of hand-wringing or euphemism can alter this fact.” Nor will any number of appeals to the better angels of our nature; human sin is a cross-cultural reality.Does this mean multiculturalism is hopeless? No, but it means it cannot be accomplished politically. If the divisions between people, and between groups of people, are to be healed, there must be another way; and by the grace of God, there is. It’s the way incarnated in the ministry of the Church of All Nations, a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation in Minneapolis which is founded and pastored by the Rev. Jin S. Kim. It’s the way that says that our divisions cannot be erased by human effort, but only by the work of the Spirit of God—and that we as Christians have to be committed to giving ourselves to that work. We can’t make it happen, but we need to do our part to be open to God making it happen. This is the vision God has given us to live toward:“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number,
from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages,
standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes,
with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice,
‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’
And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders
and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne
and worshiped God, saying, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving
and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.’”—Revelation 7:9-12 (ESV)

Untameable Christ, irreducible Easter

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There was a remarkable little essay in Slate last week on “Why Easter stubbornly resists the commercialism that swallowed Christmas”; I think the author, James Martin, overstates his case somewhat, since there are commercial traditions around the holiday (Easter baskets full of candy, Easter eggs and the kits they sell to dye them, all courtesy of the Easter bunny), but his point holds: Easter is still primarily a Christian holiday, not a “consumerist nightmare,” as he describes Christmas. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but there’s good reason for that—neither the crucifixion nor the Resurrection are commercial-friendly:

Despite the awesome theological implications (Christians believe that the infant lying in the manger is the son of God), the Christmas story is easily reduced to pablum. How pleasant it is in mid-December to open a Christmas card with a pretty picture of Mary and Joseph gazing beatifically at their son, with the shepherds and the angels beaming in delight. The Christmas story, with its friendly resonances of marriage, family, babies, animals, angels, and—thanks to the wise men—gifts, is eminently marketable to popular culture. . . . The Easter story is relentlessly disconcerting and, in a way, is the antithesis of the Christmas story. No matter how much you try to water down its particulars, Easter retains some of the shock it had for those who first participated in the events during the first century. The man who spent the final three years of his life preaching a message of love and forgiveness (and, along the way, healing the sick and raising the dead) is betrayed by one of his closest friends, turned over to the representatives of a brutal occupying power, and is tortured, mocked, and executed in the manner that Rome reserved for the worst of its criminals. . . .Even the resurrection, the joyful end of the Easter story, resists domestication as it resists banalization. Unlike Christmas, it also resists a noncommittal response. . . . It’s hard for a non-Christian believer to say, “Yes, I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified, died, was buried, and rose from the dead.” That’s not something you can believe without some serious ramifications: If you believe that Jesus rose from the dead, this has profound implications for your spiritual and religious life—really, for your whole life. If you believe the story, then you believe that Jesus is God, or at least God’s son. What he says about the world and the way we live in that world then has a real claim on you. Easter is an event that demands a “yes” or a “no.” There is no “whatever.” . . . What does the world do with a person who has been raised from the dead? Christians have been meditating on that for two millenniums. [sic] But despite the eggs, the baskets, and the bunnies, one thing we haven’t been able to do is to tame that person, tame his message, and, moreover, tame what happened to him in Jerusalem all those years ago.

Amen.

Hymn for Easter

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Alleluia, Alleluia!Alleluia, alleluia! Hearts to heaven and voices raise:
Sing to God a hymn of gladness, sing to God a hymn of praise;
He who on the cross a victim for the world’s salvation bled—
Jesus Christ, the King of Glory, now is risen from the dead.

Alleluia, Christ is risen! Death at last has met defeat:
See the ancient powers of evil in confusion and retreat;
Once he died, and once was buried: now he lives forever more,
Jesus Christ, the world’s Redeemer, whom we worship and adore.

Christ is risen, we are risen! Set your hearts on things above;
There in all the Father’s glory lives and reigns our King of love;
Hear the word of peace he brings us, see his wounded hands and side!
Now let every wrong be ended, every sin be crucified.

Alleluia, alleluia! Glory be to God on high:
Alleluia to the Savior who has gained the victory;
Alleluia to the Spirit, fount of love and sanctity!
Alleluia, alleluia to the Triune Majesty!Words: Christopher Wordsworth; vv. 2-3 alt. Jubilate Hymns
Music: Ludwig van Beethoven, adapt. Edward Hodges
HYMN TO JOY, 8.7.8.7.D

Still Rolls the Stone

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(Psalm 117; Mark 16:1-8, Romans 6:1-11)

I saw a quote a while back from an older pastor, his spirit clearly broken, who had come to believe that funerals were the only worthwhile thing he did. He said, “The first couple I married is now divorced; the first person I led to Christ has left the church. But the first person I buried is still dead.” My first thought when I read that was, “How sad!” That’s someone who’s lost faith. There’s no resurrection there, no Easter hope, only the wisdom of the modern world: people die, and they stay dead, and that’s it. That’s why you see cars with the bumper sticker, “The one who dies with the most toys wins”—because what’s to play for except to make life as fun as you can while it lasts? That’s why you see T-shirts that say, “No one gets out of here alive,” or, “Life is a terminal condition.” For many people, the future fact of death overshadows the present fact of life, and anything that can be done to stave it off or deny its approach is worth doing.

However people choose to deal with death, most agree that it’s one of only two certain things in life: when someone’s dead, they’re dead, and that’s it. The great Christian writer G. K. Chesterton has one of his characters, a Prussian general, say this to explain why he had ordered the execution of a poet: “Highness, . . . he would be deified, but he would be dead. Whatever he means to do, he would never do it. Whatever he is doing, he would do no more. Death is the fact of all facts; and I am rather fond of facts.” And because it is the fact of all facts, the fact which can silence all other facts, it’s the fact to which tyrants and brutes have always resorted in order to keep the upper hand. If someone becomes too much of a problem, you can always kill them; and then whatever they are doing, they will do no more.

And so the Pharisees saw the crowds following Jesus, then looked at each other and said, “This isn’t doing any good—see, the whole world has gone after him.” But they had one more hammer to use; and a few days later, they and the chief priests had manipulated the Roman who ruled Israel into sentencing Jesus to death. Whatever Jesus meant to do, he would not do it; what he was doing, he would do no more. Death was the fact of all facts; and they were very fond of facts.

Along with that fact came a few more. Jesus was buried in a rich man’s tomb; the stone used to close that tomb was a giant disc, a great stone wheel, perhaps six feet across and a foot or two thick. Once the body was inside, the stone was rolled down into a slot in front of the door that held it firmly in place against the rock wall of the tomb. You can imagine the horrible grinding noise that must have made, a sound like the death of all hopes; you can imagine how that sound must have echoed in the ears of Mary, Mary Magdalene, Joseph of Arimathea, and the others gathered there, and how they must have felt it in their very souls, as if the stone were rolling within them, crushing their hearts.

Still, there was nothing to do but go on, somehow; and as Jesus’ burial had been hurried, his body had not been properly anointed, so that needed to be done. That was something they could still do for Jesus, small as it was. And so after sundown brought the Sabbath to an end, they went out and bought the spices, and early the next morning, Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Salome went down to the tomb. They left home while it was still dark, so they could be sure to arrive at the tomb at first light. As they walked, they fretted about the stone; after all, it weighed thousands of pounds, and would have to be rolled uphill to get it out of the way, and it all seemed too much for them to do. Plus there were those Roman soldiers set around the mouth of the tomb, who might be willing to help, or—not . . . you never could tell with Romans.

When they got there, though, they found the stone already rolled away, and no one there except an angel sitting in the tomb. Mark doesn’t use the word “angel,” but that’s what he means; you can tell from the clothes that shone white in the dark tomb, and from the women’s reaction: they were terrified. We have this Victorian image of angels in the back of our minds, of pretty young men and women in soft focus with beautiful golden wings and gentle expressions on their faces, but real angels aren’t like that. God’s angels live in his presence, they’re saturated in his glory and his holiness, and when they show up undisguised, they radiate that glory; it’s as if a small sun suddenly started burning right here in this sanctuary. Their presence is stunning, blinding, awe-inspiring, overpowering . . . terrifying. God is not safe, he isn’t tame, he isn’t comfortable, and neither are his servants. That’s why the first thing angels always say is, “Don’t be afraid.”

If the angel’s appearance is staggering, however, that’s nothing compared to his message. He tells them, “You’re looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He’s been raised; he isn’t here. Look, there’s the place where they laid him. Go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.” And how do the women respond? They run. They’re beside themselves with some crazy combination of fear, and joy, and disbelief, and awe; this is just too big, too much, too far beyond their experience for them to handle. Their emotions overwhelm them, and they run; they don’t know what else to do.

And here, Mark stops, creating incredible heartburn for generations of Christians, including the writer of the extended ending you have there in your Bibles. He doesn’t give us a resurrection appearance, he doesn’t show the women telling the disciples Jesus had risen, he doesn’t give us any of that; instead, he leaves us with the women running away in fear, saying nothing at all. Mark knows that they did in fact tell the disciples, that the word did get out; why doesn’t he tell that story, too? Why stop here?

It’s hard to say for sure, but it seems to me that this ending does something important: it drops the whole question in our laps. The other gospels end with Jesus appearing to his disciples and teaching them, and those accounts are important; but in wrapping up the story, bringing it to a conclusion, they allow us to stay outside it, if we choose. When Mark leaves us hanging, with no resolution, with the command to go tell the others still unfulfilled, it pulls us in and leaves us to finish the story. We don’t know, from Mark, what the women make of what has just happened to them, or what they’re going to do with it; as we wrestle with that fact, it brings us smack up against the question of what we make of it, what we’re going to do with it.

Which, for our lives, is the question that matters. I’ve known people who believed intellectually that the stone was rolled away and Jesus rose from the dead—they considered it to be the only historically plausible conclusion—but it didn’t matter to them; they saw it as just another odd historical fact that had nothing at all to do with their lives. And that’s not the Resurrection the Scriptures proclaim. Yes, they teach the Resurrection as an historical fact—Jesus physically died, then physically came back to life, got up, left the tomb, and went on about his work—but not only as an historical fact. It’s not just that the stone was rolled away from the tomb, but that the stone is still rolling; it’s not just that one man who was God came back from the dead, but that because he rose from the dead, so we, too, have risen from the dead and will rise from the dead.

The question is, do you believe that? Do you believe that this is your resurrection? Do you believe that in Jesus, you have risen from spiritual death to new life in Christ? Paul tells us that “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death . . . so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” In other words, our old selves, enslaved to sin, under the power of death, died on the cross, and in Christ we have been given new life—his life—the life which triumphed over sin and broke the power of death. We are free from sin, free to live for God, free to be the people we were meant to be. Do you believe that? Do you live like your chains have been broken?

And do you believe that in Jesus, death is not the end? Do you know in your gut that just as you have risen from the dead spiritually, so you will rise from the dead physically? Yes, in this broken creation, on this marred earth, death is still a reality, and people who die do usually stay dead—yesterday when we buried my wife’s grandmother, it was something like the sixth funeral in her extended family in the last six months, and they’re all definitely still dead—but that’s not the end of the story, because Jesus Christ has shattered the power of death. As Paul says, “If we have been united with him in his death, we will certainly be united with him in his resurrection.” Death is only temporary. Funerals are only temporary. When Jesus returns, all his faithful ones who have died will be raised from the dead just as he was raised—in resurrection bodies, perfected bodies, free from sin and all its effects, free from the power of death, free from all the things that go wrong—and we will live with him forever in the new heavens and the new earth. “See,” Revelation 21 declares, “the home of God is among human beings. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”

What matters is that we understand, not just that there was a resurrection in a tomb outside Jerusalem nearly 2000 years ago, but that there is a resurrection for us. Yes, in this world, we suffer death, and pain, and grief, and loss, but there’s a new world coming; if you are in Christ, then you have the promise of God that pain doesn’t have the last word, sin doesn’t have the last word, grief doesn’t have the last word, loss doesn’t have the last word, even death itself doesn’t have the last word, because there is a resurrection. If your hopes have failed and your plans gone awry, there is a resurrection. If you’re grieving the death of someone you love, there is a resurrection. If you’re suffering, if you’re in pain, there is a resurrection. If you’re worn down and beaten down by guilt for something you’ve done, there is a resurrection. If you’re alone and lonely, there is a resurrection. If those you love have hurt you and let you down, there is a resurrection. Whatever this world has done to you, whatever is wrong in your life, take heart, for there is a resurrection. In Jesus’ death, we died; in his resurrection, we are risen; in his kingdom, we will live forever with him and with each other.

Meditation on Holy Saturday and Easter

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The day after Jesus’ crucifixion must, in some ways, have been the hardest day of the disciples’ lives. For the rest of Jerusalem, the world was back to normal after the commotion of the three crucifixions; their fellow Jews would be getting up and going to the synagogue to observe the Sabbath, some of them probably with a sense of satisfaction that that Galilean gadfly was out of the way. For Jesus’ disciples, however, the reality and enormity of their loss was just beginning to sink in, and the world would never be back to normal; it would never be right again. Oh, they would adjust in time, learn to go on—but life would never be the same. Saturday was an empty day, all the color in life faded to a drab, dingy, depressing grey.

As such, I think Holy Saturday is a particularly important holiday for our culture, whether we pay any attention to it or not, because this is where many people in this country live. Why else is depression reaching epidemic status in America, especially among those of the younger generations? Why else could Elizabeth Wurtzel call her memoir Prozac Nation—and why else would that book have been a bestseller? Why else are our suicide rates so high? We live in a world that’s just getting by, most of the time, a world of people trying to cope with broken marriages, abusive parents, drug-addicted children, broken dreams, evaporated hopes, one failure after another . . .

I used to believe that most people sailed through life with no major hurts or disappointments, but three decades have taught me that’s an illusion; there are very few people like that, and most of those are fakes. Rather, there are a great many people in this world this morning who are standing exactly where Peter stood that Saturday: someone just pulled the rug out from under them, and they aren’t sure there’s a floor beneath their feet.

And it’s at this point, into this moment, that Easter comes. After the darkest nights in human history, in the dirty grey light of not-quite-morning, the Son of God, lying dead on a stone slab, got up; and as the Christian singer-songwriter Andrew Peterson put it, “the sound of the fiery blast of Death exploding shook the firmament.” The entire world, all of creation, lurched sideways, and the chains holding it down snapped; the grey of the day shattered in a million pieces as the Light of God blazed forth from that tomb. Hope conquered hopelessness; life overcame death; love broke the power of sin; God had the last word; and indeed, nothing would ever be the same again.

But if Easter is a light to crack the sky and blind the very stars, it’s still a light that far too many people don’t see. Perhaps they haven’t heard the message; perhaps they have only heard a distorted version of it that hides the light; but whatever the reason, they walk on in shadow. C. S. Lewis described Narnia under the reign of the White Witch as a land where it was always winter and never Christmas; for many in this world, it’s always Saturday and never Easter.

And so we see people carrying on as best they can, seeking out scraps of meaning to paper over their doubts, snaring bits of hope to give themselves a reason to keep going, snatching fragments of answers to ward off the questions that haunt and torment them; and from our cities and our towns we hear the wail of grief and the shriek of rage, the moan of pain and the cry of fear, and running through them all the sad whisper of loneliness, isolation, and alienation.

As human beings, at some deep level we need answers to the questions of why we are here and what our lives are worth, and we need the promise that someone loves us no matter what; and apart from God, this world can’t provide those. It can’t offer any resolution to the discordant voices of grief and pain, rage and fear. But over and above the discord, the thunder unleashed that first Easter continues to sound, the blast front of that explosion continues to roll over us; as Peterson says, “Throughout the wail and shudder, over the shriek and moan of man, the thunder has sounded and sung, and it is both the answer and the promise. It sings still, and you can hear what it says if you listen: love never dies.”

Early returns on Obama’s speech

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On the practical question—did it work?—the answer appears to be: yes and no. Yes, as regards the Democratic primary; Hillary Clinton’s campaign is still trying to leverage the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright Jr. against Sen. Obama, trying to convince superdelegates to line up behind her and throw the nomination her way, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen—Bill Richardson, former Clinton cabinet official and current governor of New Mexico, just endorsed Sen. Obama. It’s a pretty powerful indicator, as PowerLine’s Scott Johnson notes, that the Democratic Party establishment really wants to put the Clintons behind them; Sen. Obama just needed to do enough to allay their concerns to get enough support to put him over the top. He’s been hurt by this whole situation, and he hasn’t really repaired all the damage, but at least he’s avoided derailment.

As regards the general election, though, that’s another matter; and based on the current poll average, where he remains slightly behind John McCain (and significantly behind in certain battleground states) and isn’t regaining ground—if anything, he’s losing a little—it doesn’t look like the speech helped him, at least to this point. Part of the problem is that his name remains tied to the Rev. Dr. Wright’s in many people’s minds; perhaps a bigger problem is that where he was trying to rise above the issue of race, to offer the American people a different bargain, that has collapsed; what Bill Clinton tried to do in South Carolina—to make Sen. Obama “the black candidate”—Sen. Obama has now effectively done to himself. Instead of “come transcend race with me,” his pitch now is, “come talk more about race and about what whites have to do to make things right with blacks.” That will work just fine in winning Democratic votes, but when it comes to attracting Republicans and independents . . . not so much.

This is only reinforced by the sense I’m getting that a lot of people are having the same reaction I am to Sen. Obama’s speech: the more we think about it, the less well certain things sit with us—Sen. Obama throwing his grandmother under the bus, his offering justifications for the Rev. Dr. Wright’s hateful language at the same time as he condemned it, and, fundamentally, the fact that he dodged the fundamental question: if you’re really about what you say you’re about, Senator, why attend that church? Why stay? As Charles Krauthammer asks,

If Wright is a man of the past, why would you expose your children to his vitriolic divisiveness? . . . Why did you give $22,500 just two years ago to a church run by a man of the past who infects the younger generation with precisely the racial attitudes and animus you say you have come unto us to transcend?

So far, only the crickets have answered; and that’s just not good enough.

Hymn for Good Friday

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Go to Dark GethsemaneGo to dark Gethsemane,
You that feel the tempter’s power;
Your Redeemer’s conflict see,
Watch with him one bitter hour:
Turn not from his griefs away—
Learn of Jesus Christ to pray.

Follow to the judgment hall;
View the Lord of life arraigned.
O the wormwood and the gall!
O the pangs his soul sustained!
Shun not suffering, shame, or loss—
Learn of him to bear the cross.

Calvary’s mournful mountain climb;
There, adoring, at his feet,
Mark that miracle of time,
God’s own sacrifice complete:
“It is finished!” hear him cry;
Learn of Jesus Christ to die.Words: James Montgomery, alt.
Music: Richard Redhead
REDHEAD, 7.7.7.7.7.7.

The heart of the matter

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For the bedtime reading for our two older girls, we’re in the process of working our way through the Chronicles of Narnia; right now, we’re six chapters in on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which is and always has been my favorite of the books. (Hey, I’m male, and the son of a sailor to boot, and it’s the most classically adventurish of the lot.) This evening, I was reading ahead a bit, and in chapter seven I was struck by an exchange I’d completely forgotten about:

“I think you’ve seen Aslan,” said Edmund.

“Aslan!” said Eustace. “I’ve heard that name mentioned several times since we joined the Dawn Treader. . . . But who is Aslan? Do you know him?”

“Well—he knows me,” said Edmund.”

Well—he knows me. Most of the time, it seems our focus is on whether we know God, or whether other people know God; but Jesus makes it clear that there are plenty of people who “know God” but God doesn’t know them. As my friend the Rev. Tryg Johnson has put it, if we go up to the White House and ask to be let in because we know President Bush, we can talk all day and it won’t get us anywhere; but if President Bush comes out and says, “It’s all right—I know them, they’re friends of mine,” that’s quite another matter. That we know God, if we truly do, is an important thing, yes; but the truly important question is, does God know us? And if we can say, in all honesty and assurance, that we are known by God . . . everything else is secondary to that.