For the past decade, doctors and psychologists have been taking notice of the health benefits of reflective writing. They note that wrestling with words to put your deepest thoughts into writing can lift your mind from depression, uncover wisdom within your experiences, provide insight and foster self-awareness. From autobiography to blogging to the increasingly popular genre of memoir, writers similarly laud the benefits of writing. Whether publically, anonymously, or privately, confessional writing can free the writer “to explore the depths of the emotional junkyard,” as one describes. In my own experience, writing has no doubt been a helpful way to sift through the junkyard, though perhaps most effectively when exploring in good faith and not merely reveling in the messes.

Writing is helpful because the eye of a writer seeks the transcendent—a moment where the extraordinary is beheld in the ordinary, a glimpse of clarity within the chaos, beauty in a world of contrasts. When Jesus stooped over the crumbled girl at his feet and wrote something in the sand, the written word spoke more powerfully than the anger of the Pharisees and well beyond any shame of the young woman. For those of us looking on through story, his words remain unknown but no less powerful. Writing is a tool with which we learn to see ourselves more clearly, a catalyst for which we can learn to see thankfully beyond ourselves.

In the C.S. Lewis novel, Till We Have Faces, the main character, Orual, has taken mental notes throughout her life, carefully building what she refers to as her “case” against the gods. Finally choosing to put her case in writing, she describes each instance where she feels she has been grievously wronged. It is only after Orual has finished writing that she soberly recognizes her great mistake. To have heard herself making the complaint was to be answered. She now sees the importance of uttering the speech at the center of one’s soul and profoundly observes that the gods used her own pen to probe the wounds. With sharpened insight Orual explains, “Till the words can be dug out of us, why should [the gods] hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”(1)

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I shut my eyes in order to see, said French painter, sculptor, and artist Paul Gauguin. As a little girl, though completely unaware of this insightful quote on imagination, I lived this maxim. Nothing was more exhilarating to me than closing my eyes in order to imagine far away exotic lands, a handsome prince, or climbing down a deep enough hole leading straight to China!

In fact, like many, imagination fueled my young heart and mind. After reading C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, I would walk into dark closets filled with warm winter coats fully expecting to be transported like the Pevensie children into strange and wonderful land. Charlotte’s Web took me to a farm where I could talk to my dog, like Fern talked to Wilbur, or to the spiders that hung from intricate webs in my garage. Pictures on the wall came to life and danced before me; ordinary objects became extraordinary tools enabling me to defeat all those imaginary giants and inspiring me toward powerful possibilities fueled by vivid imagination.

Sadly, as happens to many adults, my imagination has changed. I don’t often view my closet as a doorway to unseen worlds, nor do I pretend that my dogs understand one word of my verbalizing towards them. Pictures don’t come to life, and I no-longer pretend my garden rake or broom is a secret weapon against fantastical foes. Often, I feel that my imagination has become nothing more than wishful thinking. Rather than thinking creatively about the life I’ve been given, I day-dream about what my life might be like if… I lived in Holland, for example, or could back-pack across Europe, or lived on a kibbutz, or was a famous actress, or a world-renowned tennis player, or any number of alternative lives to the one I currently occupy.

Sadly, the imagination so vital in my youth doesn’t usually infuse my life with creative possibility, but rather leads me only to wonder if the grass is greener on the other side. Mid-life regrets reduce imagination to restlessness and shrivel creative thinking to nothing more than unsettled daydreams. Rather than allowing my imagination to be animated with creative ideas about living in my life now, I allow it to be tethered to worldly dreams of more, or better, or simply other.

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To fully understand C.S. Lewis’ love for the imaginary—indeed, to understand the man himself—something must be said about the distinctively English world Faery. The world of Faery, which has its roots in Celtic culture, is not so easily categorized. It is not at all the land of delicate fairies that Walt Disney would have us imagine. Nor is it simply imaginary, a story altogether detached and unrelated to the world before us. Faery is, first, a place. It is lush and green like gentle British landscapes and ancient English forests, but forests untamed, willful, and enchanted—”a world, that sometimes overlaps with Britain but is fundamentally Other than it.”(1) Biographer Alan Jacobs hints at the importance of Faery on the imagination of Lewis, and in particular, this “old idea that Faery overlaps our world—that one can, unwillingly and unwittingly, pass from one into the other.”(2) Faery is both beautiful and dangerous, its boundaries unclear. The encounter with Faery and its tales, the “horns of Elfland faintly blowing,” was one that haunted Lewis throughout much of his life.(3)

For Lewis, “the horns of Elfland” were heard and followed and dear, like arrows of Joy shot at him from childhood—through the death of his mother at the fragile age of nine, through the horrid years at boarding school, through the doubt and dismissal of faith and God, through the metaphysical pessimism and the deep layers of secular ice, through a dejected and reluctant conversion, to Narnia, and to the Joy itself.

Of course, this is not to say that the imaginative world in which Lewis lived was one fueled in any sense by Christianity or faith; nor were the imaginary worlds he loved anything one might necessarily call Christian. But it was an imagination nonetheless that shaped the way he viewed the world—until he saw fit to abandon it all. Among other reasons for the distancing of his imagination, a new intellectual movement in psychology was becoming increasingly influential. As Lewis writes, “What we were most concerned about was ‘Fantasy’ or ‘wishful thinking.’… [W]hat, I asked myself, were all my delectable mountains and western gardens but sheer Fantasies?… With the confidence of a boy I decided I had done with all that… And I was never going to be taken in again.”(4) For a long line of atheists like Lewis at this time, the Christian imagination’s possession of beauty and hope could be explained only as wish fulfillment, which lied at the very heart of the Christian religion—even if it was, as some contended, a beautiful, imaginative delusion.

Continue reading Ravi Zacharias Ministry – Whence Came the Wish →

The Apostle Peter must have felt a touch saintly when he approached Jesus asking, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Equally likely, given the manner in which he framed the question, Peter was anticipating a characteristically outlandish response from the Lord. But Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.”

This dominical injunction—to forgive seventy times seven—is usually taken to be a hyperbolic response, in effect meaning, as often as the offender repents, forgive without limit. Such interpretations are not incorrect. But when one traces the ‘echoes’ of Jesus’s words in the rest of Scripture, one finds that the command means more—much more.

The depth of these particular words by the Lord can be determined through, at least, three scriptural soundings. New Testament scholars have long since perceived that Jesus understood himself to be proclaiming the Jubilee Year, notably in the so-called “Nazareth Manifesto.”(2) The Jubilee was the “seven-times-seventh year” when the guilty, the debtors, the trapped, and the handicapped were set free. The Greek word for “deliverance,” “release,” or “liberty” is also the same word for “forgiveness.”(3)

The language that Jesus uses, both in the Manifesto and in his response to Peter’s question, to forgive “seventy times seven,” reveals how he understood forgiveness to be the central operative principle and practice of the Jubilee. Jesus is in effect saying that, with him, the Jubilee has come, and that his followers are to be a Jubilee-celebrating people, both receiving and giving the gracious and gratuitous gift of the Jubilee: namely, forgiveness.

The reach of the echo, however, goes further back to the primeval history of humankind. In Genesis chapter 4, Lamech, a descendant of Cain’s, is found reciting (perhaps, even singing) to his wives a rather unromantic poem: “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech listen to what I say: I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold.”(4) After Cain murdered his brother Abel, God put a mark on Cain in order to prevent the avenging of Abel’s slaying, warning that anyone who killed Cain would be avenged sevenfold. God is here not so much prescribing as God is predicting this sevenfold “law of revenge.” Lamech’s poem reveals that, within a few generations after Cain, violence and counter-violence has compounded and escalated frighteningly—seventy-sevenfold.

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On a routine trip through well-worn streets, I found myself pulled out of the fragmented consciousness of a mind captive to the day’s worries with the jarring lyrics of a song. Up until that point, the song itself was much like the familiar patterns of scenery, an external factor impervious to the siege of my own fears; I was seeing but not seeing, hearing but not really hearing. But then I suddenly took in the artist’s abrupt words: Hoping to God on high is like clinging to straws while drowning.(1)

The stark image of clinging to straw while desperately trying to stay afloat cleared everything else from my mind. It also set me thinking about the descriptive words of a friend hours earlier. Encouraging me in the midst of a difficult place, a friend simply reminded me that I was not alone. She was intending to assure me of her friendship and support, but I also knew she was assuring me that I was not aimlessly floundering on my own, with God no where to be found. “The LORD is near to all who call on him,” declares the psalmist; and I needed to hear it.

Christians take comfort in the thought that God is among us, comforting our fears, quieting our cries of distress, standing near those who call, moving in lives and history that we might discover the God who is there. As a follower of Jesus, knowing that he is with me as a fellow human in struggle and darkness is one of the only reasons I don’t completely surrender to my fears and stop moving forward. Knowing that there is a God of grace, beauty, truth, and mystery, which the Spirit is constantly at work lifting me toward, is the hope I remember when I fear death, my console when I fear uncertainty, the picture that somehow makes sense of a strand of DNA and quiets my fear of being uncared for and alone. I can relate to the resolution of the psalmist in a world of many and distant gods: “But as for me, it is good to be near God. I have made the Sovereign LORD my refuge” (73:28).

But what good is it if there is indeed a throne but it is empty, a kingdom without a king, a god who may be close but is like straw? Who is it who is near us? If god is an impersonal force, or a tyrant, or a distant, semi-interested being, then neither God nor God’s kingdom is any sort of refuge. If the hope we cling to is like straw that cannot actually save us from drowning then we have good reason to live in fear, “huddled,” as the musician later describes, “afraid if we dance we might die.”

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The announcement this past week that the pop/rock musician Prince died from an overdose of fentanyl confirmed what had been suspected since his untimely death in April 2016. Prince had become addicted to prescription opiate painkillers. Sadly, his was a very public face to what many are calling an epidemic. Though a devoted Jehovah’s Witness and by all reports fastidious about his health, his attempt to alleviate chronic pain morphed into an addiction that eventually took his life.

Over the past two years, there has hardly been a week without a headline or sobering story concerning the record number of deaths from opiate overdose in the United States. A New York Times article announced an unexpected rise in the death rate for the United States. Death rates—the number of deaths per hundred thousand people—have been in decline for many years, the article noted. Yet a sharp rise has occurred, in part, because of the prescription drug epidemic. If the rise continues, the researchers noted, it could be a signal of distress in the overall health of the nation.(1)

The struggle with chronic pain and the difficult and complex task for professionals who treat it made me wonder about how societies deal with pain in general. In a recent article from The Economist called “The Problem of Pain,” global treatment and attitudes toward pain were explored in light of the U.S. epidemic of opiate prescriptions and overdose. The author notes that when illness strikes, patients in poorer countries expect to suffer. Even when the tumor on his hip grew to the size of a football, Mato Samaile, a frail 50 year-old Nigerian cattle farmer, was reluctant to go to the hospital. “When I found the lump I said to my son: ‘We can’t leave the farm. We should stay until after the rain falls.’” Amina Ibrahim, a surgeon at the hospital where Mato was eventually admitted, notes, “People are brought up to tolerate pain. If you don’t you are a coward. That is just our culture. So even doctors are not liberal on painkillers.”(2)

Of course, in many parts of the world, there is little or no access to any kind of palliative care or pain management. The Economist reported a story about a young boy with cancer in rural India. He had visited several clinics nearer to his home in search of pain relief before stumbling into a Hyderabad hospital, ragged and short of breath. It had taken him more than 12 hours to get there, and he died soon afterwards.(3)

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Traveling through the fields of her own country in the midst of a great famine, a young woman named Ruth became a widow. Yet though her family would have been nearby to help, she chose to follow her mother-in-law to another land. And thus, to her already diminished role as widow, she added the disparaging status of “foreigner.”

I have not spent much of my life as a foreigner, though my short bouts with being a cultural outsider remind me of the difficulty and frustration of always feeling on the outside of the circle. Just as the distance between outside and inside seems to be closing, something happens or something is said and you are reminded again that you don’t really belong. It can be both humbling and humiliating to always carry with you the sober thought: I am out of place.

This story from the book of Ruth scarcely neglects an opportunity to point out this reality for Ruth. Long after hearers of the story are well acquainted with who Ruth is and where she is from, long after she is living in the land of Judah, she is still referred to as “Ruth the Moabite” or even merely “the Moabite woman.” Her perpetual status as an outsider brings to mind the vision of Keats, and the “song that found a path/ through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home/ She stood in tears amid the alien corn.” She stood in strange and foreign fields and was forever being reminded that she was the stranger.

And yet, while she was undoubtedly as aware of being a foreigner as much as those around her were aware of it, Ruth did nothing to suggest a longing to return to Moab. Her words and actions in Judah are as steadfast as her initial vow to her mother-in-law, Naomi: “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.”(1)

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“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26).

I shared these words of Jesus with the father of my oldest friend.(1) Chris’s father, Joe, was suffering from a brain tumor, and the doctors had given him only weeks left to live.

When I walked in to see Joe, I didn’t know if he would want to talk about his approaching death. Joe had always been strong and capable. He had a voice so deep that no matter what he was speaking about, it resounded with confidence and authority, leaving little room for vulnerability.

But as soon as Joe saw me he said, “Hey Vince. Good, I’m glad you’re here. I told Chris I wanted to talk to you.” Joe went on to tell me that although he had always been confident that God exists in some way, he was finding himself increasingly scared about what comes next.

As we spoke, what became clear to me was that Joe’s understanding of the central message of Christianity was that you should try to do more good than bad in your life, and then just hope that in the end your good deeds will outweigh your bad deeds. If they do, something wonderful awaits. But if they don’t, you’re in trouble. And as Joe reflected back over his life, he recognized that if that was the case, then he had reason to fear.

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The passion narrative of John, the writer’s witness to the events leading up to the cross, often seems like something of a game of push and shove. The push and pull of an honor and shame culture, where all behavior and interaction either furthers one’s vital position of shame or honor in society, is unquestionably at work here: both in the various characters of stories Jesus tells and in the minds of the audience John is addressing. John offers repeated scenes in his narrative that comparably seem to suggest the coming reversal of honor and shame, with Jesus hinting among the poor and the powerful that power may not be all they believe it to be.

Yet Jesus himself is still clearly shamed, and shamed profoundly. Shame in such a culture included public rejection, abandonment, humiliation, and victimization—all of which factor heavily in the passion narrative, and John doesn’t want us to miss it. Shaming also occurs when blood is intentionally spilled, when one is beaten, especially in public, there being no higher shame than being killed; and the shame of death on a Roman cross is the vilest of all. All of this is the passion of Jesus. While there are undoubtedly scenes where he seems to take himself out of these systems of honor and shame, suggesting a different system entirely, Jesus is just as often, and profoundly so, on the losing end when the theme is in play.

In something of a parabolic push and shove of words, there always seems much going on under the surface of John’s passion narrative. Consider, for instance:

“Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon. And Pilate said to the Jews, ‘Here is your King!’”

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Have you ever been in this plight before—commissioned to pick up an international guest at the Mumbai airport at 2 a.m.? It’s not so much the time that I want you to empathize with me about, but the sheer task of spotting a face that you have never seen before, especially when you are myopic like me. You might well be thinking: why not simply use one of those good old placards? Well I did have one, an A4 sized, Times New Roman, uppercase, bold, 56 font sized “Guest Name.”

Even so, this was a guest whom I know not and who knows me not, a guest whom I’ve seen not and who’s seen me not, a guest whom I’ve heard not and who’s heard me not!

And if that doesn’t quite impress you, here’s one more detail that might surely be helpful: I take my missions quite seriously and could wait forever for my guest to arrive. And this I did, my eyes glued to that single exit door for a full three hours standing with placard in hand.

I did more.

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Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? …

When the morning stars sang in chorus, and all the sons of

God shouted for joy?

These are just two of the long list of questions asked of the ancient character Job. God’s interrogation bursts forth like thunder, breaking God’s long, unnerving silence with a clap that seems to drown out Job’s outpour of grief. I can read them as a harsh sting, as a silencing gavel to Job’s anguish and objections, akin to the response of an exasperated parent putting an end to the child’s inquisitive clamoring with the trump card of a louder, final sovereignty: Because I’m the parent, that’s why. It is God as Creator imagined something more like God as tyrant.

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God has been in the news a lot lately. From Christian prayers in council meetings, to statements from the highest echelons of the Royal Family and the government, discussion of the place of God and in particular the role of Christianity in Britain today has been in the news on a daily basis. Professor Richard Dawkins continues to argue that religion has no place in the 21st century and debates over his anecdotes continue to capture the twittersphere. It seems it is now acceptable to discuss the Christian faith and belief in God in public. From radio studios to the school gate I have enjoyed being a part of this. The role of God in Britain is being discussed up and down the country in government, education, legislation, and community life in a way that I can’t remember in recent history.

While secularism insists that nothing good comes from religion, isn’t it actually the case that it is a Christian heritage that actually provides us with this free and open society—encouraging people to question and reason for themselves? For many, religious faith is a process, a journey of discovery on the basis of evidence, reason, and personal experience. Christianity has provided the foundation in Britain for an open and tolerant society. It was the great Christian leader Augustine who coined the phrase tolerare malus. He claimed that political structure influenced by the Christian faith must tolerate that which it disagreed with and perceived as wrong for the greater good of freedom.

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Public radio program This American Life ran a special report on a certain sub-culture of people whose prize possessions are their car stereos. They are called “decibel drag racers” and people flock across international borders to join them in competition. Like actual drag racing, cars line up across the track, except in this competition they will not be going anywhere. The winner is the owner of the car stereo that can play at the loudest possible decibel. Oddly enough (that is, more odd than the fact that these systems are too powerful to play music), most of the cars that win this competition are not even drivable. The world record holder at the time of this interview had 900 pounds of concrete poured into the floor of his van. Wind shields usually only make it through three competitions before cracking (and these are not normal windshields). Yet one competitor still seems to entirely miss the irony that there is no longer any room for himself in his car. “We need more batteries,” he laments. “But that’s all the room we have.”(1)

To anyone outside of this extreme audio sport world, “irony” is perhaps a generous word to describe the phenomenon. The TAL reporter was far more articulate: “Everybody wants to be the king of a hill,” he concluded. “But the number of aspiring kings always dwarfs the number of available hills, so in this country we build more hills.”(2) I’m not sure there is a better way to describe it.

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