In which I explore Living as a Christian Archives

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

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.

When the City of Light Goes Dark. Finding Hope in an Age of Terrorism

By Anita Mathias

Friday the 13^th is particularly unlucky, according to superstition, —and, well, for many, Friday the 13^th November 2015 was.

We woke to news of the extra-judicial killing of Mohammed Emwasi, Jihadi John, through a US-led drone strike in Raqqa. Though I am viscerally pacifist, I believe taking out one man who beheaded many with psychopathic calm is defensible.

MI5 feared terrorist attacks in retaliation, and by the evening, they came. Multiple attacks in Paris at a football game, a concert, a restaurant… leaving 129 dead.

* * *

I felt particularly stunned because we had spent a week in Paris a fortnight ago. What a gorgeous city, we thought, as we wandered again through the Luxembourg Gardens, the Bois de Boulogne, and the Jardin de Bagatelle. Explored the Cathedral at St. Denis, near the Stade de France. Explored Chartres, where one of the terrorists lived. Dreamed around iconic Paris, where scores of innocent people were suddenly maimed or murdered while savouring la belle vie, sports, music, gastronomy.

Rattled and upset, I started praying, “So, Lord, how should I think and feel about this? How do you?”

For intelligence counts for nothing, really. What matters is spirit-breathed intelligence, in other words, wisdom; wisdom to think correctly, in the way God thinks, to feel in the way God feels.

* * *

So what might God say to his church, in a time of shaking, when the nations are in uproar.

“Let your soul be at peace. Let nothing disturb you. Fly to me, hide yourself in me. “For she who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will sing in the shadow of the Almighty. She will say of God, ‘My refuge, and my fortress. My God in whom I trust.’” (Psalm 91).

* * *

What might God be saying to his beautiful church in an age of terrorism?

“Have hope. My kingdom began inauspiciously, in failure, shame and disgrace, but it grew and grew. And it is continuing to grow. Be full of hope.”

* * *

Bill Hybels famously said, “The local church is the hope of the world,” and church leaders love quoting that. However, the quote has no scriptural justification. Local churches are not the hope of the world–they get off-track; can have toxic, wolvish, controlling leaders; can lose all spiritual fervour in church politics. They can die on their feet, and who doesn’t know churches like that? A really bad local church, sadly, can cause as much pain as good.

The hope of the world is Jesus Christ, the good news Jesus taught, the Gospel.

* * *

Revenge for revenge locks us into an endless cycle of escalating evil. ISIS attacks Paris in revenge for French airstrikes in Syria. Francois Hollande vows to retaliate “mercilessly.” Yeah, we woke Monday morning to news of 30 airstrikes overnight on Raqqa, in Syria, at least 20 bombs dropped.

I felt no rejoicing. Airstrikes are not precision instruments. Among those killed will be those who had nothing to do with the Paris attacks. Among those killed will be someone’s son, someone’s daughter, someone’s father, someone’s sister, fully as innocent as the Parisians who were murdered on Friday 13^th, 2015.

Will these airstrikes be effective? Western interventions in Islamic nations have historically been ineffective; look at Iraq and Afghanistan today! Western invasions of Muslim nations have sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind for invader and invader alike. Despite losing thousands of fighters every month, ISIS was able to cause utter mayhem in Paris with just eight jihadists. Perhaps the French response will crush ISIS. If it is hugely disproportionate, however, it will raise up more fanatical men and women willing to die to avenge innocent loved ones who died in the airstrikes.

* * *

My father told me the plot of The Merchant of Venice when I was a child, and I was fascinated. Shylock, the immigrant, scorned and mocked by the Venetians, dare not deny a loan to Antonio, the merchant of Venice. However, he demands a pound of flesh if Antonio can’t repay it on time—and Antonio can’t. Shylock gleefully sharpens his knives. Finally, Portia invents a quibble: Shylock was allowed a pound of flesh all right, but if he took one drop of blood, yeah, or an extra ounce, even the weight of a single hair, his life and goods were forfeit to Venice for scheming against the natives.

Revenge can never be exact. It will always include blood and hair, with the flesh. The victims will always feel the revenge was disproportionate and will seek flesh, blood and hair of their own to balance the scales, take too much, setting themselves up for counter-revenge.

Against this zero-sum game of tit-for-tat, the words of Jesus come like mercy showers, like gentle rain from heaven. Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who persecute you. Taking out your enemies by goodness is the only way out of the endless circle of tit for tat, mercilessly ratcheting in intensity.

Of course, doing good to your enemies does not succeed in neutralising every enemy…but then neither do airstrikes. Neither does bombing.

Revenge causes sadness, stress, mental and physical illness in our personal lives. And revenge is just as devastating in the life of nations.

The way of Jesus–to enjoy peace with God, to enjoy God’s gifts of joy and quietness, to seek God, and to love one another…it’s the only hope in a world blinded by hatred.

* * *

Missionaries were traditionally motivated by the desire to save people from hell.

But following the way of Jesus–so gentle, so kind, so powerful, like a nuclear bomb in a velvet glove– is the best way to live. Definitely worth introducing people to.

One quarter of the world’s population is Muslim. Nine out of ten Muslims have never met a follower of Jesus, it is estimated. When I think of how knowing Jesus, and knowing the followers of Jesus has sweetened my life, the very thought of that makes me very sad.

Reaching the Muslim world with the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ is one of the greatest things we can do for world peace. One of the best things for the future of the world in which we will live, and which our beloved children and, God willing, grandchildren will inhabit.

* * *

So what can I personally do? What can you.

For me: I will give. I have set up a monthly direct debit to Frontiers, which sends workers to the Muslim world. (If you know of other organizations which do this, let me know in the comments.)

* * *

Secondly, and I mean this seriously, not as a what-Christians-say-instead-of-doing-things comment.

I will pray.

I went to a conference in central London this weekend. The organizers told us not to drive since there was no parking anywhere near the conference. Roy and I drove anyway (in our motorhome, in fact!!) since I could rest between the conference and the conference dinner to which I was invited, and during the drive. I prayed for favour–which is what I now do when I need to park where parking is impossible. We drove up; we asked the guards to help us find parking; they opened up the courtyard of the conference venue to us, and we parked there, a minute from the front door of the conference. In Central London. For free!

Roy reminded me of the times I had prayed and found parking just outside the Vatican, outside the Tate Gallery, outside the Natural History Museum in Kensington, London, and in Oxford…just as miraculous.

“Maybe you should begin praying for favour in things other than parking, Anita,” Roy said. And so I will.

What works in the micro-level works on the macro-level. If prayer works when we pray for our finances, for our children, for their university admissions, for our safety, or for a parking spot outside the Sistine Chapel, it will work too when we pray for the conversion to Christ of the fierce fighters of ISIS. As our prayer for our daily bread is heard, so too will our prayers for the coming of Christ once again to the Muslim lands, not so very far from the land where once upon a beautiful time, Jesus came to earth.

In my German-run boarding school in India, in the seventies, the nuns had us pray, “Bring Russia back home again.” Russia had then been atheist for 70 years. Who could tell that in a decade the Iron Curtain would have collapsed beneath its own weight?

Prayer for Christ to reveal himself to the Muslim world is as powerful as any other kind of prayer. I will pray, and give.

* * *

Thirdly, I will keep my spirit pure. I will do my best to keep negativity and hatred out of it. I know, from examining my own spirit, that anger, judgement, condemnation, and religious intolerance are visceral responses at such a time.

We must not give way to racism or hatred. We must replace our natural anger with prayer for the attackers and for our world, as Jesus commanded us. Anger, racism, hatred, judgement, negativity: these are Group 1 carcinogens for the spirit, spreading, and spreading, sapping our strength, stealing our joy, purity, light and focus, eventually darkening our spirits. We must avoid these as rigorously as we avoid other Group 1 carcinogens (asbestos, cigarettes, arsenic, ham, bacon and sausages). We must rigorously work to replace our natural negative reactions with prayer for our enemies, with prayer for the Spirit, and with love.

Thanks for reading, friends.

Tweetables

The gentle way of Jesus is the only hope in a world blinded by hatred. NEW from @AnitaMathias1

Reaching the Muslim world with the Gospel might be our greatest contribution to world peace. NEW from @AnitaMathias1

Prayer is as effective on the macro-level of world events as on the personal micro-level. NEW from @AnitaMathias1

Revenge & hatred cause stress & illness in our lives. They’re as devastating in world affairs NEW from @AnitaMathias1

Image credit–Getty Images

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

On a striking example of Christian leadership NEW from @anitamathias1

On increasing our love for Jesus, who is the point of the whole Christian enterprise NEW from @anitamathias1

On sowing secret seeds of the Kingdom for the love of Jesus. NEW from @anitamathias1

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 had another daughter, Irene, and am now 16 pounds heavier than when I gave birth to Zoe (despite lost 21 pounds recently!)

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 chocolate 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 a month perhaps; three to six months, if one’s busy. Many struggle with this for decades, all their lives.

Most people could lose their surplus weight in a year or two 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 reorganized 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 enchanting 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 fruit and 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; chocolate 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.

Living in a Story Still Being Written

By Anita Mathias

It can take ten thousand years for the light from the most distant stars in our galaxy to reach us.

And if the speed of light can be so slow, if its story unravels so glacially, why are we astonished when we fail to immediately understand the story of our lives?

* * *

Joseph, in the well, abandoned, betrayed.

All his dreams of glory—had come to this.

It seemed utterly meaningless–because the next chapter had not yet to be written.

* * *

Joseph in charge of Potiphar’s household.

The shepherd boy becomes the head butler in an Egyptian country house.

Was that the meaning of the well, and the humiliations of slavery at the hands of the hairy Ishmaelites?

Only part of it. The story was still being written. He was a character in a story someone else was writing. How could he understand his own story in medias res?

* * *

The dungeon, punishment for righteousness.

“But, Lord, I thought I understood the plot you were writing. Now WHAT are you doing?”

Utterly forsaken.

* * *

But the dungeon was the way for the butler of a small manor to meet royalty.

Again, God blessed Joseph. Again, he rose to the top. And once again, apparent failure and humiliation were the means of Joseph’s elevation to an entirely different social, economic and political circle.

Let no one underestimate the creativity of the Master Craftsman of the Universe.

* * *

We cannot understand the story of our lives while we are living them.

We do not understand the significance of each plot element yet. They seem random, inexplicable, and cruel. It takes the retrospective glance to understand.

* * *

And my story? It has foolishness in it, ah so much—money and opportunity and years and talents squandered.

It has sin in it, my sin, and sins against me. It has apparent dead ends, missed opportunities, wastage, stupidity and heartbreak.

* * *

And because a master artist is still working on it, still writing it, it has gold in it, infinite possibilities for redemption.

I do not yet know how God will weave all the plot elements together into an eternal beautiful story, and make it all the apparent red herrings and random plot twists work out for good, but I know he will. He’s that smart.

And I trust him.