In which I explore Living as a Christian | Dreaming Beneath the Spires

On the amazing Baptism in the Holy Spirit–and its limits!

John the Baptist’s preaching caused a revival, of sorts. “The whole Judaean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him.” (Mark 1:5)

This explosion of popularity did not throw him off course. He did not try to maintain his momentum or his platform. He stayed focused on the Message-giver, and his message was one of utter simplicity: “There is one greater than I. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.”

That simple promise of John still speaks to us today, whose experience of the Spirit in our daily lives resembles the occasional sip of champagne rather the wisdom and peace that comes from a steady abiding.

John’s message is one of hope: There is one more powerful than I who will baptise me with the Holy Spirit.

Ever now and then, Christians traditionally take stock of their lives and plan to revise them.

And the best way is with the power of the Spirit, with the power of Jesus, not with the power of our weak and fickle wills.

Let’s take a peek at some of my New Year’s goals, which, sigh, I have made before.

I would like to sleep early, and wake early.

I would like to be more active, and eat healthily, and be physically fit.

I would like to be tidier and more organised.

I would like to be more productive, and finish the book.

I think I omitted an important element in New Year’s resolution making. Instead of focusing on my struggles with discipline in early rising, healthy eating, exercise, housekeeping, and productivity, I should ask for Jesus to baptise me with the Holy Spirit as I tackle discipline, and then do things with the power of the Holy Spirit.

The baptism in the Holy Spirit comes in all the forms and shapes and variety of God himself. For me, it was a seismic, once in a life-time event. But what I rely on more is a daily filling.

A good father does not give the son who asks for bread and fish snakes and scorpions, Jesus says, so if we ask for the Holy Spirit, for help us, he will give it to us. (Luke 11: 11-12). Fresh bread, sufficient for the day. Tomorrow we will be hungry, and we must ask again.

I need to focus on Jesus, clothed in light, who breathed on the disciples, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” and they were transformed. Ask for his interventions in my little struggles with disciplines, things you can’t go over, you can’t go under, you have to go through.

I’d rather read than declutter, but I should declutter significantly because I hope to move… There is one greater than I who will baptise me with the Holy Spirit, and with the power to do what I have to do. Come, Holy Spirit.

I’d rather eat comfort food, and surf the net rather than eat nutritious food and exercise. But there is power, there is one more powerful than I, who will baptise me with his Spirit again, and give me power to do what I must do. Come, Holy Spirit.

I want to stay up late, reading or surfing. It’s more appealing to sleep in, or read newspapers or magazines or Facebook than to finish my book. But there is power to do the right thing, there is one more powerful than I, who will baptise me with the Spirit, and who will help me. Come, Holy Spirit.

The place of helplessness is the ironic place of power, because we need to really, truly come to it to lean on the one stronger than ourselves.

* * *

Besides, all these tedious old resolutions are part of the idols of our age. Clean eating. 10,000 steps. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Productivity.

But Jesus said nothing about them in his long great sermons on record, The Sermon on the Mount, and the Upper Room Discourse, or in any of his red letter teachings.

His focus was on the heart and spirit, the secret thoughts and emotions which no one else guesses at. The ways we disobey the teachings of Jesus in our innermost thoughts affect the course of our lives, and our peace and happiness far more than the habits of health and productivity.

If Jesus were to help us make New Year resolutions, he might say, “Stop judging!! Stay in your own lane. Turn that judging energy into improving the speed and elegance of your own race. Ask me for help in seeing yourself clearly, and when you have seen the beam in your own eyes, ask my help in removing it. When you want to judge others, ask me instead how you can follow me more closely.” He might say, “Do unto your family and friends what you would they do unto you.” He might say “Give,” or “Forgive. Cut the tangled fishing line of grievances, and see how much lighter you feel.”

And these things my wonderful Jesus might say are infinitely harder than New Year resolutions–Wake earlier. Eat healthily. Write more. Be tidier. And, as we follow where Jesus leads, step by step in the minutiae of our daily lives…(I love the German word for discipleship, Nachfolge, follow after)…these things fall into place.

* * *

So, will you and I then go to our graves as perfect human beings, without all these weaknesses and limps and thorns in our flesh that keep us humble?

I have two stories…

The powerful, brilliant, spiritually gifted, dynamic St. Paul, he who heard the voice of Jesus, who had a vision of heaven, was beset by an annoying “thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass” him. His weakness could have been physical, emotional, or spiritual… He emphasises, however, that it came from Satan, not God. He is also clear that God could deliver him from it, in an instant, with “one touch from the King.”

Three times he asks God to free him from it, and Christ refuses to. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness,” Christ replies.

In his neediness, Paul will have to learn to rely on Christ’s power, which he would not need if he was self-powered, Paul-powered.

Paul concludes that he will delight in his weaknesses and hassles which will teach him to rest on Christ’s power, “for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Sometimes God lets our struggles, difficulties and problems linger, so that we learn to trust him, discover his power, and learn to pray constantly out of necessity. Or merely to keep us humble. To keep us walking, instead of running, and collapsing in burnout.

* * *

And sometimes the weaknesses we lament are just part of our make-up, the way God created us, the shadow side, the necessary adjunct of our strengths. The awkwardness and extreme introversion Donald Miller, whose memoir A Million Miles in a Thousand Years I am listening to on audio in the car, mentions in Blue Like Jazz, his highly original memoir, perhaps provided the necessary space for his independent thinking on faith, love and “how then should we live.”

A last story. All his life, the great Christian and lexicographer Samuel Johnson struggled with sleeping early and waking early. He wanted to wake at 6 a.m., he would have been content to wake at 8 a.m; he often woke up at 2 p.m.

1738: He wrote, “Oh Lord, enable me to redeem the time which I have spent in sloth.”

1757: (19 years later) “Oh mighty God, enable me to shake off sloth and redeem the time misspent in idleness and sin by diligent application of the days yet remaining.”

1759: (2 years later) “Enable me to shake off idleness and sloth.”

1761: “I have resolved until I have resolved that I am afraid to resolve again.”

1764: “My indolence since my last reception of the sacrament has sunk into grossest sluggishness. My purpose is from this time to avoid idleness and to rise early.”

1764: (5 months later) He resolves to rise early, “not later than 6 if I can.”

1765: “I purpose to rise at 8 because, though, I shall not rise early it will be much earlier than I now rise for I often lie until 2.”

1769: “I am not yet in a state to form any resolutions. I purpose and hope to rise early in the morning, by 8, and by degrees, at 6.”

1775: “When I look back upon resolution of improvement and amendments which have, year after year, been made and broken, why do I yet try to resolve again? I try because reformation is necessary and despair is criminal.” He resolves again to rise at 8.

1781: (3 years before his death) “I will not despair, help me, help me, oh my God.” He resolves to rise at 8 or sooner to avoid idleness.”

Johnson spent much of the night in taverns where he enthralled an audience with his encyclopaedic knowledge, and his quick and ready wit. He was the best thing that ever happened to the young Scot James Boswell, who wrote one of classics of English Literature: The Life of Johnson. Boswell, an early fan-boy, surreptitiously recorded everything that Johnson said, and there was his book.

Sir, a woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all, Johnson quipped to Boswell. (Yeah, yeah, perhaps he should have gone to bed a bit earlier after all).

But genetically, Johnson was a night-owl. In trying to rise early, he was fighting against his chronotype, his biology. (I’ve read that night owls may be evolutionary descendants of the Paleolithic night watchmen who sat at edges of the encampment, protecting the people, telling stories and singing songs to keep themselves awake. Creative, intelligent, resourceful types). Many creative people are night owls, are messy, are sedentary, or fight addictions…. These things are often the shadow side of creativity.

Perhaps Samuel Johnson was just the way God meant him to be, a brilliant night owl who sparkled after the sun set. Perhaps his struggles with early rising taught him humility; taught him a gentleness with others who struggle; taught him his need for God. If not for his late hours as recorded by Boswell, his wit and wisdom and life experience would have long vanished, he would be one of the 99.99% of humanity who are long forgotten, and lie in unvisited graves.

Dr. Jack Miller (who catalogued Johnson’s failures I just quoted in his own great Sonship talks) mocks him, saying he struggled because he did not know the power of the Spirit. But I think every human being goes to his grave with weaknesses, blind spots, and even sins…so that they continually feel the need for God,

God determines our chronotype, lark or owl. God determines our body type, ectomorph, mesomorph or endomorph, and there are limits to how much we can change it. God determines our IQ, our physical attractiveness, our talents. He knows exactly the role he has planned for us to play in this our life—Hamlet, or Ophelia, Lear or Cordelia– though we can decide whether we will play it well, badly, or not at all.

Our weaknesses are as much a part of God’s plan for our lives as our strengths. Both guide us into our vocation, suggest what we should undertake, and what we should not. And sometimes, of course, what we see as our weaknesses are just the shadow side of our strengths. I am a distracted housekeeper because I spend so much time reading. I am not an early riser because I read into the early hours! I carry extra weight because I spend more hours reading than exercising…

So while we try to change, we should also treat ourselves with the affection and amused tenderness that God feels towards us; we should treat ourselves as tenderly and indulgently as we would treat a beloved toddler who announces she’s going to run the London Marathon…tomorrow!

Image Credit: Tolle et Lege, Alighieri Press

PS: Slowly blogging through the Book of Mark!

The Things Worth Doing Badly

By Anita Mathias

A tyrannical statement we’ve heard as children, and said as exasperated parents: If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.

Which means we might never learn or do new things, for who has margin for one additional thing?

In fact, the opposite is true…anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

* * *

I discovered this while learning German over the last three years. The pace at the beginning was too fast, so I did not master the absolutely essential foundational grammar, which meant that, for the first two years, I was staggering and stumbling through lessons, which were making me sad. But I prayed about it after each year, and felt clearly, for unclear reasons, that I should continue–and now, in my third year of the six year course, I have a gifted, intelligent teacher who loves language, who speaks slowly, clearly, expressively, and, most importantly, interestingly—and, when I understand her anecdotes, I experience that flash of pure joy as when, after careening and tottering, you are off, skating on ice effortlessly, a joy that would not exist if learning had not been so hard.

When I was an undergraduate at Oxford, I remember the critic Hugh Kenner saying that there was no point in learning foreign languages since we would never learn them well enough to understand the poetry. Well, he’s wrong! It enhances travel to know enough of the language to understand the conversations around you, to communicate in, to be able to read the newspapers, absorbing a different viewpoint, and world-view. There is joy in reading, speaking, and understanding a little German, or Hindi, or French, or English to name some of my languages, or Greek, which I have a reading knowledge of. I listen to an episode of an interesting German podcast every day, Slow German, and, oddly enough, it is among the most enjoyable things in my day.

* * *

In fact, the only way we can begin to shift our lives, and to change the multiple short stories our lives are telling, is to begin doing the good things we want to do…even if badly. “Whatever you want to do or dream you can, begin it,” Goethe. Just five minutes a day of it, if necessary.

I love the Japanese strategy of Kaizen—making major life changes through infinitesimal adjustments. Want to read more. Read a little before you sleep. A little with your morning coffee. A little after dinner. See how long you take to read that book. Set a goal to finish the next book in one day less (which, with the dint of another mini reading or listening session, you can) and so on, until you are reading, say, 52 books a year, which will change your thinking, inner life, and appreciation of life. It’s better to read a little—for the magic carpet ride, interior thinking space, and quiet that it gives you than not to read at all.

* * *

After I had an evil illness, and declined chemotherapy three years ago, I read that walking four miles a day would change one’s life, and perhaps save it. Well, I almost built up to that a couple of times, but not quite. However, a short walk is better than no walk; a few yoga stretches is better than the one hour of yoga I aspire to (but never do, except in a class); lifting a few weights is not as good as the recommended 20 minutes of weights, but better than nothing. “Do not despise the day of small things.” I am not physically strong, sadly, but am committed to becoming stronger and fitter for that greatly increases my enjoyment of life.

Gardening brings me a good deal of joy, aesthetic pleasure, serenity, and thinking time, and also keeps me more flexible and limber. Every year, however, I return from our long summer holiday of two or three weeks, and find that my large garden of an acre and a half is a wilderness, and the pruning and dead-heading and weeding seems so overwhelming that I barely go out again until spring, when nature itself wants to drag you out, and then it’s so much work, and we wonder why we hadn’t put our garden to bed. I’ve decided to do a little and often rather than an hour spring and summer… and then nothing.

* * *

I would love to have a zen interior, a decluttered house, which I am closer to by dint of putting everything I don’t need in the garage, or barn, or detached study, which are now getting cluttered. It feels too soul-killing to take a whole hour to declutter, so I am doing it in tiny increments, 15 minutes a day, which doesn’t seem enough, but a whole lot better than not doing it at all. I’ve read that people hesitate to embark on minimalism because they think they’ll have to shed their most precious thing…which is a poor reason for not shedding your most junky thing.

* * *

The ultimate thing that’s worth doing badly, of course, is being a Christian, and pretty much everyone who’s not Jesus, does it imperfectly (some more imperfectly than others!)

However, it is an honour even to limp in the ways of the brilliant and astonishing Jesus. Because we think we fear doing the hardest thing for us–loving that dark, critical demanding person we find impossible; giving of our time to everyone who demands it of us–does not mean we should not continually travel towards the light, and attempt to conform our lives to Jesus’ teaching in micro-increments.

Following Christ (badly!!) has been the greatest honour and excitement of my life. When I am in a funk, when I feel confused, or angry, or out of sorts, or a teeny bit crazy, I pick up a Gospel, and read it fast, and his counter-intuitive words speak to me. Take up my cross, accept the difficulties of growth, or I am not worthy of him. The democratic life of continual prayer is open to everyone. Trust. “Don’t worry about anything at all.” Jesus’s teachings are like a diamond; there are always new glints.

I am invariably energised again by the call to follow Christ. In tiny steps, for this five minutes, this hour, this day. To think not only of myself, but of the others in my life, and of Him.

The Gospels: treasure you pick up when you are lost, a golden compass, guiding you to the right path, and since your trajectory is more important than where you are, it is better to take a few steps towards Christ, to crawl on the journey than never begin it, but drift towards the dark and hopeless regions of the Slough of Despondency, Doubting Castle, and Vanity Fair.

* * *

And HAPPY NEW YEAR, friends,

Love,

Anita

Image Credit: The wonderful Edward Knippers, on wrestling towards the light

Hope for Limping Christians. Changing your Character is both an Act of Will and an Act of Grace

By Anita Mathias

Neuroscientist James Fallon was (interestingly!) studying the brains of murderous psychopaths, using brain scans of his family as a control group of the healthy. He suddenly noticed the unmistakable brain scan of a psychopath among his family’s scans. Puzzled, certain it has been misfiled, he has the technician break the code. The brain of the psychopath? It was his own.

I found that I happened to have a series of genetic alleles, “warrior genes,” that had to do with serotonin and were thought to be at risk for aggression, violence, and low emotional and interpersonal empathy, Fallon writes.

Can someone whose brain chemistry predisposes them to aggression and low empathy ever change? Fallon decides to try.

“For myself, I decided to try to treat my wife and other loved ones with more care. Each time I’m about to interact with them, I pause for a moment and asked “what would a good person do here?” My wife started noticing this and after two months said “what has come over you?” When I told her that I was trying against all odds, overcome my psychopathy, she said she appreciated the effort even though I was not sincere…

Even though my wife, my sister, and my mother have always been close to me, I don’t treat them all that well. They said, “I give you everything. I give you all this love and you really don’t give it back.” They all said it, and that sure bothered me. So I wanted to see if I could change. I don’t believe it, but I’m going to try.

In order to do that, every time I started to do something, I had to think about it, look at it, and go: No. Don’t do the selfish thing or the self-serving thing. Step-by-step, that’s what I’ve been doing for about a year and a half and they all like it. Their basic response is: We know you don’t really mean it, but we still like it.

I told them, “You’ve got to be kidding me. You accept this? It’s phony!” And they said, “No, it’s okay. If you treat people better it means you care enough to try.”

What Fallon is doing is behaving like a Christian, playing the game of “Let’s Pretend,” which C. S. Lewis says is essential to developing the character of Jesus.

* * *

I was mentored by a Christian who taught himself to love. He writes about it in Love Walked Among Us.

I enjoy being cheap. The amount of money is not crucial—it just feels good to save. I am the same with efficiency. I’ve caught myself spending ten minutes figuring out how to do something more efficiently when the task only takes five minutes.

Paul watched his daughter Ashley play hard; she asked for a Coke at half-time. His reaction was “to point her to the free iced water for players. Cheap and efficient.

“But then I put myself in Ashley’s shoes,” he continues. “She’s tired. She’s played a hard game, and she wants a soda, not a glass of water. I could do that. I have money in my pocket. I could spend that money.” I even stuck a hand in my pocket and felt my change. “I could walk over to the soda machine several hundred yards away and get a soda for Ashley. Paul, this won’t kill you.” This is truly what went through my mind. I envisoned how Ashley’s face would brighten when I handed her the soda.”

* * *

I find this helpful, this left-brain figuring out how to be kind and thoughtful. If I have said something biting, or am planning to say it, it helps me to ask myself how I would feel if that were said to me. If I am annoyed with someone, I try to imaginatively enter their world, and then, usually, I instantly have more empathy.

The core of following Christ, of being a Christian, is love—love for God, Father, Jesus and Spirit; love for our fellow humans.

And yet, unfairly, love is more difficult for some than for others. I am naturally friendly, warm, empathetic and affectionate, for warm relationships come easily to me. Agape love, on the other hand, does not come easily to me. Does it come easily to anyone? I don’t know.

Someone wrapped in love from childhood, with loving parents, supportive teachers, good friends, and a sunny temperament finds being kind and loving easier. Those who have experienced trauma in their nuclear family, at school, in marriage—for them, behaving like a follower of Christ is more difficult.

* * *

In a brilliant chapter, “Nice People or New Men,” in Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis writes,

“If you have sound nerves and intelligence and health and popularity and a good upbringing, you are likely to be quite satisfied with your character as it is. A certain level of good conduct comes fairly easily to you. You are not one of those wretched creatures who are always being tripped up by sex, or dipsomania, or nervousness, or bad temper. Everyone says you are a nice chap and (between ourselves) you agree with them.

It is very different for the nasty people, the little, low, timid, warped, thin-blooded, lonely people, or the passionate, sensual, unbalanced people. If they make any attempt at goodness at all, they learn, in double quick time, that they need help. It is Christ or nothing for them.

But if you are a poor creature, poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels, saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion, nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends, do not despair.

He knows all about it. You are one of the poor whom He blessed. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Keep on. Do what you can. One day (perhaps in another world, but perhaps far sooner than that) he will fling it on the scrap-heap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all, not least yourself: for you have learned your driving in a hard school. (Some of the last will be first and some of the first will be last.)

It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature. Of course, once it has got its wings, it will soar over fences which could never have been jumped and thus beat the natural horse at its own game. But there may be a period, while the wings are just beginning to grow, when it cannot do so: and at that stage the lumps on the shoulders, no one could tell by looking at them that they are going to be wings may even give it an awkward appearance.

* * *

Some battles are fought where no banners are flying, They are fought within.

When I was 17, I wanted to join Mother Teresa and become a nun. Not surprisingly, I struggled with the many and varied rules; in its minute control, the convent was a bit like a cult.

And so, each day, I failed, and when I did, I tearfully identified with this Jim Reeves song,

“The chimes of time ring out the news,

Another day is through.

Someone slipped and fell

Was that someone you?

Perhaps you longed for added strength

Your courage to renew

Do not be disheartened

I have news for you.

It is no secret,

What God can do,

What he’s done for others,

He’ll do for you.”

* * *

We do change. After a year of increasing physical exercise, I am so much more energetic that I often barely recognise myself. So too, spiritually and with our characters… After gradual exposure to the sunshine of God’s love, and to the tonic of God’s word, for years, for decades, we do change so that we barely recognise ourselves.

For some relative virtue comes easily. Others fight for gentleness, kindness, and equanimity.

But God sees; he knows.

A caterpillar may look at a hummingbird and envy her flight. Flight may seem impossible to the caterpillar, but one day, one day, after the trauma, darkness, and near-death of the chrysalis, she too shall fly.

Keep looking at Jesus, you who find following him difficult, keep holding his hand as you walk upon the waters; one day, perhaps sooner than you think, he shall take you to the heights.

Books I’ve referred to

The Psychopath Inside: A Neuroscientist’s Personal Journey into the Dark Side of the Brain on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

Love Walked Among Us on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

Mere Christianity on Amazon.com and on Amazon.co.uk

You’ll find my account of working with Mother Teresa in Wandering Between Two Worlds, available on Amazon.com

and on Amazon.co.uk

In which I am Against (Most) Military Interventions, & Musing on Invisible Weapons of the Spirit

By Anita Mathias

My church, St. Andrew’s, Oxford, is experimenting with a café church format; a couple of worship songs, and then a brief sermon which we we discuss in small groups. Around Remembrance Day, November 11, we discussed war, and Christians in the military.

In the Sermon on the Mount (which the pacifist Anabaptists, precursors of the Amish and Mennonites considered their Bible within the Bible), Jesus makes his thoughts absolutely clear.

Do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5)

So the question is “Do these words, these teachings of Jesus have any relevance in the 21^st century?”

Was Jesus smart? Was Jesus wise? Did he actually have an inside track on how to live well?

* * *

Now Christ will call some men and women who follow him into the military so that they can be salt and light, sweetness and wisdom, in that environment.

I believe however, that without a specific call, a Christ-follower should not enter the military (except in a non-combatant role, such as a chaplain or medic).

It would be wiser to choose a profession, and to steer one’s children towards professions, which are more of an unequivocal blessing to people, more likely to build up all God’s children, without the risk of having to kill your fellow human beings because your Commander-in-chief decides that this is in your nation’s interests.

A career in the military can be morally and spiritually problematic for a Christian.

You may be called to attack and bomb another nation in the course of complicated geo-politics. Your nation’s need for oil. An oilman as President. A false suspicion that the enemy nation harbours a famous terrorist or has weapons of mass destruction. The striving of your nation for pre-eminence and power might send you to fight thousands of miles away to contain another superpower. The allies of your nation might demand your nation’s cooperation in a war that’s none of your business. A democratically elected leader might declare war to distract people from the economy, or to strengthen his position for the next election.

Joining the military means you must kill and cause untold devastation to other families at the behest of the elected rulers of your country, who ordered you to for their own purposes, including holding onto power–and, besides, who knows if they are wise men or foolish.

2. Modern warfare is not clean; the use of drones causes distressing collateral damage amongst civilians.

The terrible things soldiers have seen and perhaps done leave them at far greater risk of post-traumatic stress disorder than the general population, besides risking depression, substance abuse, and suicide.

3. The long periods of separation are hard on family life, on spouses and children, and, just as hard on the soldier.

* * *

The US spends a staggering 23.9 % of the Federal Budget on Defense. (The UK, in contrast, spends 6%).

Would diverting some of the spending on the military to health, education, the arts, and scientific research leave a nation defenceless against its enemies? Or would it, oddly, make it stronger?

And on a micro-level, would doing what Jesus tells us to do put us at risk?

* * *

Interestingly, two of the most spectacular military defeats sustained by the strongest armies of their time, were not accomplished by might or power, but by exogenous events, “acts of God,” i.e. the Russian winter.

In June 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia with 650,000 soldiers to the 200,000 soldiers of the Russian army. The Russians passively retreated, abandoning Vilna, abandoning and burning Vitebsk and Smolensk, the peasants burning their crops, leaving no food for the men and horses of the Grande Armée. After a one day engagement at Borodino, they withdrew again, leaving the road open to Moscow. Which Napoleon found engulfed in flames, no food but lots of hard liquour, a city populated by the prisoners just released from the jails, while the rest of the city’s inhabitants had fled with the food.

Finally, the Grande Armée straggled back, starving, freezing, losing thousands of men and horses on icy nights, harassed by the Russians, having lost to the Russian winter, to exogenous events, to acts of God.

Ironically, this defeat was repeated by Hitler at Stalingrad in 1942, though he had studied Napoleon’s disastrous defeat. The Germans ultimately lost The Battle of Stalingrad, the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare, largely because of a lack of food and fuel…that, and the Russian winter.

Or to go back 5000 thousand years, the tide of battles in the Old Testament often hinges on exogenous events…a boy handy with a slingshot killing a giant. Marching, shouting and shofars bringing down the city of Jericho. Tidal waves submerging the pursing Egyptian armies in Exodus. Torches and trumpets at night deceiving and routing the Midianite armies in the time of Gideon.

The way of might and power has its limitations. Who would have thought? The way of Spirit, the way of the creator–that works.

* * *

As Dallas Willard writes in The Divine Conspiracy, Jesus was the most brilliant person who has ever lived. He gives us the most practical, realistic, up-to-date advice on living. His way works, which is why it has remained compelling through the centuries.

If you feel as helpless faced with the giant obstacles in your life as the Russian army faced by the Grande Armée three times its size…if you take your eyes off Jesus, and see people succeed through manipulation, through flattery, through deceit, through what Wordsworth calls greetings where no kindness is–stuff you instinctively feel you cannot engage in as a follower of Jesus–be of good cheer.

Though we cannot see God with our physical eyes, though we cannot see the weapons of the spirit–like prayer and goodness and obedience–they are no less powerful than the natural forces whose presence we cannot see until they strike: the Russian winter, or what insurance companies term “acts of God,” hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis.

Do the work. Trust in God. Work with integrity and gentleness. Listen to the Spirit for the strategy you need for the next step. Be aware of the way the Spirit is working in your life and in the world. Remember nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few.

When you see those around you use the weapons of the world—flattery, manipulation, deceit–and win, do not be dismayed. Continue to rely on weapons of the spirit–prayer, integrity, and the wisdom and strategy that come from above. Wait for the Lord’s time, and for his blessing. The mighty walled city of Jericho brought down by marching seven times around it with trumpets. Who would have guessed?

Let faith rise.

On Planting Secret Seeds for the Kingdom and for the Love of Jesus. And on a Role Model of Christian Leadership

By Anita Mathias

I am fascinated by the Moravians founded by the reformer Jan Huss, remarkable for their 24/7 prayer which led to a worldwide burst of missionary activity, remarkable for sacrificial exploits like selling themselves into slavery to be able to credibly preach the Gospel to slaves.

Comenius, a Moravian Bishop (selected by Life magazine as one of 100 most influential people of the last millennium) turned down an invitation to participate in Swedish educational reform, to plant a “hidden seed” of the Moravian simple love of Christ, so that the kingdom of Jesus would grow in future generations. The “hidden seeds” he had to plant in the face of bitter persecution came to life when Count Zinzendorf invited the persecuted Moravians to his now-famous estate, Herrnhut.

* * *

The talk among Christian writers and bloggers often drifts to agents, advances, Amazon sales ranks, platform, Twitter followers, Facebook likes, comparison and subtle showing off. I hear the preoccupation with building mini-kingdoms, building platforms, fame and glory and wealth, and it sometimes seems as if the simple love of the Lord Jesus that made us want to be Christ-followers in the first place gets squeezed out (and sometimes the simple love of writing gets squeezed out too) in the pursuit of success, fame and money.

So when I hear of someone unfocused on fame, platform, recognition and money who quietly sows secret seeds for the kingdom, I am deeply and inexplicably moved, to the point of tears.

* * *

When I was an undergraduate at Oxford University, the Rector of the largest Anglican Church in town, St Aldate’s, was a man called Michael Green (who now, incidentally, attends the church I attend, St. Andrew’s, Oxford.)

I wasn’t a Christian as an undergraduate. I was on a six year break from following Christ, which was most foolish of me, because, you see, I knew Jesus as a teenager, really knew him.

And so the Christian Union at my college, Somerville, used to pray for me, and students from my college and from other colleges used to invite me to St. Aldate’s with them, and I would go when I felt distressed and overwhelmed, and listen to Michael Green intently, and with pleasure.

But of course, being a Christian is all about surrender, moving into the invisible kingdom so that you are no longer belong to yourself but to Him, and without that surrender, it’s just nice ideas–and that surrender I did not make then.

* * *

My daughter Zoe is now an undergraduate reading Theology at Oxford University, and is leading her college’s Christian Union. The Christian Union has a retreat before term, and Rev. Canon Dr Michael Green, now 85 years old, spoke at each of the two retreats—this distinguished writer, apologist and pastor humbly spending a few days with 25 young students.

Zoe was as impressed with the character of the man as with what he said. The subsidized retreat was £22 per head for the weekend, and Michael lined up and insisted on paying his £22, though he was the speaker everyone had come to hear. He signed up for his slots of washing up and spiffying up. If he came too late to get an armchair, he, aged 85, sat on the floor with the students: “No, you came first. You keep the sofa.” He took meticulous notes as the young speakers spoke!!

We were impressed to hear this. Roy said, “Perhaps he is teaching these young leaders what it is to be a Christian leader.” Non-entitled. Willing to serve. Humble. Not self-seeking.

* * *

It was a splendid retreat, my daughter said, and Michael preached it not for money, not for fame, not for his career, or enhancing his platform, but for the love of Jesus. He may not see the fruit of his teaching in these young people’s lives, but he is planting seeds, secret seeds, for love of God, for the Kingdom.

I am a gardener, and I have had a life-threatening illness, and the thought of sowing without knowing if I will ever see the harvest…it’s tough. So I was particularly inspired by how Michael Green sowed seeds whose fruits he might never see for the love of Jesus, sowed spiritual seeds of the love of Jesus, sowing into the foundations of the great and invisible Kingdom which grows and grows, and which shall never pass away.

I heard the awe and respect in Zoe’s voice at observing Michael Green’s humble, exemplary behaviour, an example that will linger long after she has forgotten everything he said. Following Jesus is something that is caught not taught, it is often said. Words are forgotten, but meeting someone whom Jesus has transformed, that one does not easily forget.

I thought of Michael Green pouring everything into teaching 25 young students, and I prayed, “Oh Lord Jesus, do I love you enough? I do not yet. Lord Jesus, increase my love for you.”

* * *

During this summer, I heard Rolland Baker who has taken in thousands of orphans in Mozambique talk with simple intensity about the love of Jesus. I jotted down notes as spoke:

“Following Jesus is putting all your eggs in one basket, one person. There’s only one person you trust, only one you go to.

The point of following Jesus is not that he will make your life work a little bit better, accelerate your path to wealth, health, success, fame… Jesus is the point.

He is not the one who gives you what you want; he is what you want. Jesus himself is the treasure, not the means to treasure.

Jesus is how God gives us the desires of our heart. Everything you need is in Jesus.

Miracles, signs and wonders and the things we tend to seek Jesus for go with the territory. We don’t chase miracles, we chase Jesus and miracles chase us. When we follow Jesus, he follows us. He finds us.

Never chase joy, wealth, fame, health by itself–you will never get it. Chase Him. The rest comes with the territory.

If you base your joy on anything but Jesus, your laughter will turn to grief.

Jesus’ emphasis was himself. He is the treasure in the field.
When you are in love with God, everything that happens is enjoyable because He gives us joy.”

* * *

I listened, and wondered if I loved Jesus enough.

What is the point of being a Christian if we do not love the Lord Jesus? And, oddly enough, we cannot quite create love for Jesus within ourselves.

We increase it within ourselves in only way I know to do difficult things. We put in the work (in this case, reading the Gospels and meditating on them). And we pray to–love Jesus more.

We reach out our hands and hearts, and ask Jesus to fill them with love for Him so that we might be totally turned into fire.

Tweetables

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A Spiritual Late Bloomer, I Learn from Failure in my Messy Beautiful Life

By Anita Mathias

When my daughter Zoe was born, twenty-one years ago, frazzled between nursing, and impractical plans of still writing, I made a mental prayer list to pray through as I pushed her stroller round our neighbourhood.

And blush: All those items are still on my prayer list.

1 Losing Weight. I still have 12 pounds more to lose of the 20 pounds I gained when pregnant with Zoe. Another pregnancy, with Irene, didn’t help, though that weight I have lost!

2 Running an orderly house. Well, we are now doing so, though, alas, there’s still clutter. I am doing the hopeful 365 Less Things project—a concrete way of getting rid of things by shedding one thing a day–and am hopeful that I will eventually have nothing in my house that is not both beautiful and useful.

3 I wanted to wake up at 5 a.m. because I have romantic associations with 5 a.m., and am still trying! I now go to bed around 9.35 p.m. so waking earlier will gradually becoming easier

4 I wanted to write a big beautiful book—and I still do!! And though I now write pretty much every day, having so organised my life that I feel sad and uncomfortable on the days that I don’t write : that book, ah!—I work on it in fits and starts.

Ouch! Same goals, 21 years later.

* * *

That’s what life is like for an ordinary Christian.

Oswald Chambers (of My Utmost for His Highest), aged 27; Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, and Bill Wilson, Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, absolutely surrendered themselves to God, once and for all.

Jack Miller made fun of Samuel Johnson’s continual efforts to wake early, saying that that was because Dr. Johnson had not learnt to rely on the power of the Holy Spirit.

And Priscilla Shirer writes that a failed diet is “a direct sign that we have not submitted ourselves completely to the Lord.”

Yup, that’s me. Just learning how to lean on the Holy Spirit. I have surrendered myself to Jesus, but then indiscipline gets the better of me, or grumpiness, or laziness, or… most of the deadly seven!

* * *

However, there are many ways of being a Christian, many concentric circles of discipleship. There is John, the beloved disciple who leans on Jesus during the Last Supper, hearing all the secrets of the universe.

There are Peter, James and John whom Jesus took with him at the Mount of Transfiguration, when they saw his glory, and at Gethsemane, when he wanted moral support. Then there were the twelve apostles, the seventy-two, the hundred and twenty, the five hundred and, of course, the 5000 men, in addition to women and children, who listened spellbound to the Sermon on the Mount.

It is possible to walk through the Sinai desert in ten days, I’ve read. It took the Israelites forty years, as they wandered in circles, grumbling, dispirited, losing their bearings. They are ordinary believers. They are our grandfathers and grandmothers in the faith.

* * *

Wandering in circles: That’s true of things people struggle with for forty years.

One could get one’s house decluttered and organised in six months Marie Kondo says; 9 months according to Joshua Becker. Many struggle with this for decades, all their lives.

Most people could lose their surplus weight in a year through healthy eating and exercise. I could do so myself! Yet, many battle with this for decades, or for all their lives.

One could write a book in a couple of years, at 250 words a day. But many…the blushing, flushing woman you see is me!

Mark Batterson writes in his brilliant book, The Circle-Maker, that the biggest factor in spiritual and occupational success is waking early. We all know it’s better to be awake from 6-8 a.m. than from 10 to 12 p.m. Yet, many struggle with staying up too late, and sleeping in too late all their lives. And I am still grasping at 5 a.m.

* * *

There! I now feel thoroughly downcast over issues I have battled with for two decades when perhaps I could have had them sorted in a year.

What beauty could there be in this mess? What gold among the shards?

1) It’s given me patience, compassion and understanding of my own and other people’s struggles.

Two steps forward, 1.9 backwards is progress. Slow, but definite.

It’s made me realistic about how hard it can be to follow Jesus. And he was realistic about it. Think about his metaphor. Carry your cross and follow him. Walk the narrow path into life.

We are not all fire like Beth Moore or Billy Graham who go for Christ, 100 %, though I’d like to be!

Some of us have feeble arms and weak knees. But we are still in the fight.

2) I have learned the limits of my will, my resolve. Trying to do life on my own and failing has taught me that I need Jesus. It has taught me that it is hard for me to accomplish my goals without the power of the Holy Spirit.

Becoming a Christian for me was, initially, and for many years, an intellectual decision. I was—and am!!—convinced that Jesus was God, and the Bible inspired, and reorganised my life accordingly. Sweeping changes: tithing, prayer, Bible study, church attendance, trying to obey what Jesus taught, implementing the wisdom of Proverbs in my life, that sort of thing.

The true magic of being a Christian is now rose-tinting everything, like sunrise. I am moving from grammar to poetry, from chords to the symphony. The magic: That I can ask Jesus to change my heart. To make me love vegetables. To love to walk and run. To love to sleep early and wake early. To love order. To love the discipline it takes to write.

3) We value virtue through experiencing the opposite. The beauty of domestic order through knowing chaos. The endorphin glow after a run through knowing the misery of physical sluggishness. The joy of writing through knowing the misery of not creating.

4) My failures have given me an increased awareness of the love of God. I have had successes. I opened a letter saying I had been admitted to Oxford University to read English. Opened a letter saying that I had won $20, 000 from the National Endowment for the Arts for my writing!

But I am most conscious of the love of God when I lean into it in failure and low spirits and realise that he loves me anyway. Who knows, perhaps he loves me more fiercely because of my failures and weaknesses, as we fiercely love our toddlers, puppies and old dogs!

5) I note that I have partially failed in all those goals I had as a woozy young mum, pushing my stroller around the neighbourhood, and wryly smile.

Because failure has lost its sting for me. Honestly! My failures make me wryly smile.

Because they are not final.

They are a way of learning. Who I am. What works for me. What does not work. How to pick myself up and go on after “failure.”

I have rarely stumbled on something which has worked for me at the first attempt. It takes trial and error.

And failure has taught me to answer a question of the catechism: Where is God?

God is not over there somewhere, experienced by the perfect and prayerful and good, but right here, in middle of failures; food instead of prayer; newspapers instead of writing; coat dropped on the living room floor; hello, snooze button.

God is not only encountered in prayer and Bible study. He appears, like the beneficent beings of fairy tale, when I most need him. In the trenches of struggle.

* * *

Yes, taking a lick at a dragon, desultory sword thrust by sword thrust, instead of cutting off his head as I might have done were I St. George or a better girl has taught me many things.

Humility for I am not as A type as I imagine. Mercy with others who struggle. The importance of persisting and continuing looking for solutions.

I see the road out of the messy beautiful desert, and I walk down its zigzag paving stones, less conceited than had I achieved my goals quickly; with more to teach, perhaps; with more inspiration to offer such as I who wander in circles until they find the straight path, but finally leave the desert, radiant, leaning on their beloved.

Carry on, Warrior.

Never be Shamed or Humiliated by How Other People Treat You

By Anita Mathias

Malala

Tarquin rapes the innocent Lucretia. Lucretia kills herself.

She becomes the prototype of people who feel shamed because of things done to them, shamed to the point of death, as we read in media account of Indian girls or their fathers who commit suicide after gang-rape.

Listen up: I tell myself, and I would wish to tell them if I dared intrude upon this grief-unto-death: Never allow yourself to feel shame for what is done to you. For how you are treated.

It is legitimate to feel ashamed of our own shameful actions—and, sadly, we all have our share of them.

But for that, there is forgiveness in God. Always has been. For that we revere him.

* * *

My first time in therapy, in America, the therapist asked, “Have you ever experienced racism?”

Well, I’ve lived in lovely sophisticated cities, Oxford, Minneapolis, Williamsburg, Virginia. So I answered, “Well, I have experienced rudeness, of course. But I can never be sure if it was because of my honey-coloured skin or because they were jerks.”

“I decided that if rudeness did not affect me, it was their problem. If, however, it affected me—I was denied something I wanted or needed or justice—then it was my problem, and I would have to figure out what I could do about it.

He thought about it, nodded, and said, “That’s a good answer.”

* * *

Internalizing the shame of another’s evil–shame after rape is not confined to Asian women, of course. A contemporary of mine at Somerville College, Oxford was raped in a dark Oxford street past midnight, and the trauma froze her. I know two writers, both American, who write and write and write their way to healing, years after the horrors of rape.

* * *

Here are lengthy excerpts from an amazing account of surviving rape, by an Indian Muslim woman, Sohaila Abdulali. I love her title.

I Was Wounded; My Honor Wasn’t

THIRTY-TWO years ago, when I was 17 and living in Bombay, I was gang raped and nearly killed.

At 17, I was just a child. Life rewarded me richly for surviving. I stumbled home, wounded and traumatized, to a fabulous family. With them on my side, so much came my way. I found true love. I wrote books. I saw a kangaroo in the wild. I caught buses and missed trains. I had a shining child. The century changed. My first gray hair appeared.

Too many others will never experience that. They will not see that it gets better, that the day comes when one incident is no longer the central focus of your life. One day you find you are no longer looking behind you, expecting every group of men to attack. One day you wind a scarf around your throat without having a flashback to being choked. One day you are not frightened anymore.

Rape is horrible. But it is not horrible for all the reasons that have been drilled into the heads of Indian women. It is horrible because you are violated, you are scared, someone else takes control of your body and hurts you in the most intimate way. It is not horrible because you lose your “virtue.” It is not horrible because your father and your brother are dishonored. I reject the notion that my virtue is located in my vagina, just as I reject the notion that men’s brains are in their genitals.

If we take honor out of the equation, rape will still be horrible, but it will be a personal, and not a societal, horror. We will be able to give women who have been assaulted what they truly need: not a load of rubbish about how they should feel guilty or ashamed, but empathy for going through a terrible trauma.

The week after I was attacked, I heard the story of a woman who was raped in a nearby suburb. She came home, went into the kitchen, set herself on fire and died. The person who told me the story was full of admiration for her selflessness in preserving her husband’s honor. Thanks to my parents, I never did understand this.

The law has to provide real penalties for rapists and protection for victims, but only families and communities can provide this empathy and support. How will a teenager participate in the prosecution of her rapist if her family isn’t behind her? How will a wife charge her assailant if her husband thinks the attack was more of an affront to him than a violation of her?

At 17, I thought the scariest thing that could happen in my life was being hurt and humiliated in such a painful way. At 49, I know I was wrong: the scariest thing is imagining my 11-year-old child being hurt and humiliated. Not because of my family’s honor, but because she trusts the world and it is infinitely painful to think of her losing that trust. When I look back, it is not the 17-year-old me I want to comfort, but my parents. They had the job of picking up the pieces.

This is where our work lies, with those of us who are raising the next generation. It lies in teaching our sons and daughters to become liberated, respectful adults who know that men who hurt women are making a choice, and will be punished.

When I was 17, I could not have imagined thousands of people marching against rape in India, as we have seen these past few weeks. And yet there is still work to be done.

We have spent generations constructing elaborate systems of patriarchy, caste and social and sexual inequality that allow abuse to flourish.

But rape is not inevitable, like the weather. We need to shelve all the gibberish about honor and virtue and did-she-lead-him-on and could-he-help-himself. We need to put responsibility where it lies: on men who violate women, and on all of us who let them get away with it while we point accusing fingers at their victims.

Sohaila Abdulali is the author of the novel “Year of the Tiger.”

When the Risky Word of the Lord Came to the Lonely Prophets

By Anita Mathias

Elisha and Joash (William Dyce)

I am listening to the Bible in a year while walking country trails. Listening to a whole book in a long walk or two, helps me see “the big picture” of Scripture and its themes.

The Prophets have grabbed me. You just don’t mess with those Prophets, because God is with them.

And yet, it’s a lonely vocation. They are second-guessed, feared, hated, threatened like Elijah, or beaten up and imprisoned like Jeremiah. On the edge of society–menaces, who say what is terribly unpopular, and terribly true.

Their single strength—this mysterious thing that keeps happening to them: And the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah… or Isaiah… or Elijah.

And they have heard that Word before, and it has never let them down. They recognise it from long experience, and so they trust it.

Even when no one else does.

How can they convince anyone else of this essentially private revelation? They can’t. They are ultimately believed because of all the other times the words they heard (or overheard, Is. 6:8) and repeated were absolutely true.

* * *

Some reformed bloggers submit their blogs to pastoral oversight or to a committee.

There was no way the prophets could have done this. Their committee would have said, “Don’t say that—the King won’t like it; the priests won’t like it. The people won’t like. The army won’t like it. X, Y, and Z will think you mean them, and be hurt. And ‘fess up, you do mean them, don’t you?

Why should we trust you a layman rather than the professional priesthood? God has never said that before. It’s too weird. Too impossible. Are you sure you heard the Lord say this?”

* * *

The advantages of a committee of trusted readers: One does not want to reinvent the wheel theologically—to write with dewy-eyed naivete on a subject on which thought has evolved far beyond your first wonderings. And one doesn’t want to write a blog post asserting something which is simply stupid, or factually or theologically incorrect, which an astute reader can instantly point out.

However, Theology-by-committee will give you safe, don’t-rock-the-boat theology. It probably will not be able to capture where the wind of the spirit is blowing.

Throughout Scripture, when God speaks to men, he generally speaks to individuals, not groups.

The prophets could never, would never have submitted the Word of the Lord to other people’s judgements. Just as well, because the words were so strange, so risky, so unverifiable, that few would have approved them. They had a direct, unmediated relationship with God.

* * *

Throughout Church history, dominant theologies have been quite simply wrong, though backed up with proof texts and Scripture verses.

As Brian McLaren writes, the Western church had been wrong on slavery, wrong on colonialism, wrong on environmental plunder, wrong on subordinating women, wrong on segregation and apartheid (all of which it justified biblically) and wrong on homosexuality.

John Piper, the influential Reformed writer, writes extremely honestly of his racist past, “ I was, in those years, manifestly racist.”

At the great Urbana Missions Conference in December 1967, Piper writes, “Warren Webster, missionary to Pakistan, answered a student’s question: What if your daughter falls in love with a Pakistani while you’re on the mission field and wants to marry him?

The question was clearly asked from a standpoint that this would be a racial or ethnic dilemma for Webster. (This was four months before Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.) With great forcefulness, Webster said something like: “Better a Christian Pakistani than a godless white American!”

From that moment, I knew I had a lot of homework to do.

The perceived wrongness of interracial marriage had been for me one of the unshakeable reasons why segregation was right.”

* * *

I was fascinated and appalled by Piper’s humble, honest and contrite essay on his racist past, racism which he and other Christians in the American South (Christian and theological colleges in the South did not accept blacks) backed up with Scripture verses.

Wow, powerful theologians can honestly believe things, and back them up with scripture—and they can be wrong!!

That’s why it’s important to return to the spring of living waters, to the quietness of God’s presence in his throne room, and hear what He is saying for yourself.

* * *

There are dangers to this, of course. Yeah, private pipelines to God could lead to weirdness and evil like David Koresh, Jim Jones and the Guyana suicides, and the Twelve Tribes, a repressive, economically exploitative, weird cult which uses child labour, and requires long working hours, 80-100 hours weekly, of its members, while its leaders lead plush, privileged lives. (My brother-in-law, Dr. David Mathias, a medical doctor, joined them in 1992, and has worked at both medical and manual work from early in the morning till (often) past midnight for twenty years, contributing all his earnings to the cult–and leaders.)

So how does one keep hearing the word of God, without either falling into the weirdness of cults like Twelve Tribes, or accepting airless, airtight theologies without the wind of the Holy Spirit?

* * *

I suppose the way the prophets did? Though the word of the Lord came to them in solitude, it was never for them alone.

The word of the Lord always led them to the King, to the council, to the community, where they were reviled by the many, and revered by the few.

And then, the final test: God validates them. Things turns out just as they predicted. And so people begin to believe them when they say, “Thus says the Lord.”

* * *

It’s interesting, isn’t it, that in Scripture, God rarely speaks to groups or committees (there are some exceptions in Acts). He speaks to individuals, giving them words of enough force and power, ratified by events, for them to influence the crowd.

Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah. Nobody would have had the heart to encourage them on their dangerous paths. Or would have had the heart to take on the responsibility of encouraging them in their risky prophecies. They just had to go it alone.

And though it was a lonely job, and we see Elijah and Jeremiah grow emotionally overwhelmed and skirt the edges of depression and burn-out, the word of the Lord was never for them alone but also for their community. And in the community, though often rejected and beaten up, they found sanity, grounding, and even, occasionally, comfort and friendship.