Perseverence

"Time is my Ally in proving Your love to be true."

Although it is in time, and through the endurance of hardship over time, that we are tested and tire and sometimes flail about on the brink of despair, we must keep fighting to believe and experience this reality: time will only ever prove God's faithfulness and love towards us, never the opposite.

"All things work to the good of those who love God, who are called according to His will." (Romans 8:28).

All things. All times.

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The Proliferation of Paradox

I'd like to spend a number of blog entries exploring what I've named the "proliferation of paradox," that is, the reality that paradox is an intimate part of our life in Christ.

Paradox as a concept has drawn and fascinated me ever since I was presented with John Donne's poetry. It's difficult for me not to do a double-take when I read lines like, "Death, thou shalt die" (Holy Sonnet X) and "Nor ever chaste except You ravish me" (HS XIV) and "Therefore that He may raise, the Lord throws down" (Hymn to God, my God, in my sickness).

Paradox was brought to my mind again today as I marked a number of student paper proposals, and I was flooded with a tide of arguments that were predicated on the idea that although a woman (in this case the Anglo-Saxon heroine, Judith) may side-step social gender roles when empowered by God, she really isn't exhibiting feminist resistance because she is actually still submitting to and being domineered by a male authority figure (this said figure being God). Again and again I read these outcries. Alas God, how you bind us women! These are the moments when it is very difficult being constrained by the roles of the institution and contract I have signed; O! how every ounce of me wants to burst into an explanation and hymn of the glories of God, and not simply write, "Consider how you might complicate this argument. Is it a simple dichotomy of either/or?"

To most of my students, there is no paradox present. Only religious patriarchal oppression. But as I was out walking today, I was overwhelmed by the preciousness of the paradox: indeed, Donne captures this particular one when he exclaims, "Take me to You, imprison me, for I/Except You enthrall me, never shall be free" (HS XIV). It is absolutely incredible that our freedom is inextricable from our captivity to the Lord. O how utter submission and abandon to the lordship of Jesus Christ is beyond comparison the most freeing and enlivening place to be!

As I meditated on this, I realized just how tightly paradox is woven into the Christian life. Why, I wondered?

As a cross-section in my learning this week, God has also been teaching me about the necessity of suffering for His name, and that this must be built upon a passion for His glory. I picked up The Pleasures of God and was confronted with the fact that the gospel is "the good news of the glory of the happy God" (Piper 25). I realized (O that I might REALize it more!) that my fear of suffering, my shame at not being bold in sharing my faith, my desire for comfort and my preoccupation with trying to control and plan out my life stems from my refusal to pursue and seek to enjoy what God enjoys: Himself. (It's an excellent book thus far, and I've heard nothing but good reviews - check it out if you're interested!). But how does this intersect with my discussion of paradox? Simply put: paradox is but a word that describes the reality that God is gloriously God, and we are not, and yet God wants to share Himself with us. Paradox must result when we, who are not God, encounter He who is God. And thus the Paradox is an expression of the deep, deep joy that is ours in God!

It is utterly beyond me how enduring suffering can be the path that God demands we follow in order to enter into His joy. At least, this is how I feel as I write. Prior to suffering, I am in trepidation of suffering; and potentially while I'm going through suffering, experiencing suffering, I will be in bewilderment and confusion. But as I've been listening to people share from their hearts about their suffering, I've seen that when they bear witness to God's grace, they have far more joy and confidence than I. I think about the apostle Paul - who was this man to be able to urge, exhort, command the Philippian Christians to "rejoice always!"? Only a man who had been stoned, beaten, attacked, slandered, and left for dead. Only a man who pleaded with God to take away a source of suffering in his life, to which God replied, "My grace is sufficient for You, for power is perfected in weakness." Talk about paradox.

And then we read: "Jesus...who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of God" (Heb.12:2b).

This paradox of suffering and joy is one that I cannot humanly understood. But everywhere that I see the presence of God, I see the reality of it. O how I want it! I really, desperately want it! I'm terrified of the suffering - and yet - O let this be true!! - I'm more terrified of missing out on the joy!

I close. The proliferation of paradox, as I have just defined it, is then a nuanced re-proclamation of the ultimate goal that guides my life in Christ. The refrain: the glory of God.

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Inklings (various slightly related thoughts meandering towards the best)

A few thoughts of varying consequence have flitted through the wax tablet that is my mind.

First of all, I had dinner and beer with one of the Anglo-Saxon arena's most preeminent scholars. I had a headache the next day because of the beer, but came away with much invaluable insight, and a story to boast about, so it was of course much more than worth it.

Second of nothing, I won a coffee with Roll up the Rim, and when I picked up my free coffee, I promptly won a donut. However, this was rather to my disappointment because it was neither the laptop I was hoping for, nor the self-perpetuating opportunity for this said laptop (in other words, another free coffee would have been preferable, if only for the rim to roll again).

Thirdly (and to include a third point is a standard rhetorical technique meant to instill a sense of weight and gravity to what I am saying), I have realized this past week just how much I enjoy the so-called 'dead' languages (and if we realized how much they impact our current speech and thought, we might not so impertinently label them so). I know that life is short and I need to be wise about what I devote myself to, but I genuinely think that a moderate commitment to Old English, Middle English, Anglo-Norman, koine/classical Greek, and Latin will be worth it. At some point in time, when the end-of-term papers are less pressing, I will lay out my reasons for thinking so.

And left as the tag-line, the last thought, that inconsequential 'p.s.' which often in fact carries the most force of emotion and conviction, that which we panic over as we close our letters because we fear we may have been misunderstood or left out the most important, that is this:

When I started graduate studies, I had this horrible fear that I was running ahead of God, that I had not waited for His leading and that He was therefore disappointed or angry at me. Believing this, I left Him out of my academic life, feeling that He didn't want to be included and indeed, would not help me even if I asked Him. I will leave it to your imagination as to what the consequences were of such a belief my first semester.

After He showed me that He more cared that I glorify Him wherever I am, and that He is more concerned with me seeking His face in whatever situation I place myself in, I began wrestling with my own tendencies to worry about my inadequacies as a student (and, of course, as a person). In this vein, there were weeks when I was in the tedious 'depths of despair' and ready to leave my studies for a multitude of possible reasons: I am too tired! I have perpetual writer's block! I have no one here who understands me! I can't understand anything I'm reading! This is keeping me from the glories of serving Him in overt ministry positions! Of course, the practical inconvenience of going through giving up and dropping out has, I'm sure, kept many a grad student in grad school. These times would fluctuate and with feathered wings the sun would rise and shine over other, cheerier weeks, when I would be excited about what I was learning, excited to be getting to know my grad cohort, excited to be teaching, excited to be challenged and stretched as a student (and, of course, as a person).

Yesterday, He whispered something to me, something that I don't think I've thought about for a very long time. If you will allow me to translate the Spirit's movement into cyber-text English, He said, "All that is good in Anglo-Saxon studies is Mine."

O my God, I thought, what have I been doing?! Do You wait beside me and sigh, because here I am, pleading, begging, sobbing that You would just help me get by? When all the time, You own it? It's Yours: every good aspect of it belongs to and is an expression of You.

As I thought about this, the commandment, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for men" hit home for me more than ever. Before, I was approaching my studies as if they were gods threatening to tear me from Him, as if this was their primary relation to me. And truly, how often have I struggled with depending on achieving good grades, as well as my professors' and peers' approval, for my own self-assurance and significance. How often I have lamented that my schooling requires me to spend much more time reading texts and articles than meditating on His life-expressing Word? And yet, my primary relationship to my studies is not of my studies as potential temptation. What a subtle, sneaky, suffocating snippet of a lie I have been swallowing! Rather, it is my studies as potential glory.

You may say, what's the difference? Aren't these simply two sides of the same coin: either you give glory to God or you give in to temptation, giving glory to other gods? But I think there is a profound difference. It is all about our position, our orientation. It is true that life is a battle, that there is a war waged over souls, and that we struggle against the spiritual authorities in the spiritual realms. And yet. And yet. And yet we are not on neutral ground. It is not as if we stand on the narrow plank of a fence and with every step must either tilt to the temptation or tilt to God. Why do I say this? Because the Spirit of God abides deep, deep within me, deeper than I can conceive. That there is a narrow neutral fence plank is an illusion. My starting place is this: His Spirit is already at work in me, sustaining me and empowering me to live to His glory each day. It is true that I may be tempted and I may start worshiping my damned gods at any given minute - but I do not have to. That is not who I am.

Here it is, my thesis: I am doing my studies because He is in them in the most intimate and ultimate way, and I want to enjoy Him in them and glorify Him in them with all people as witnesses to His glory.

O, I'm so familiar with the distortion that permeates life. But I want to increasingly see the face of God everywhere I look! And believe Him (I originally wrote "me" there, but it certainly isn't me), the reality is that every place we go, every circumstance we find ourselves oppressed or delighted by, we Christians experience in Christ. Therefore, when I go to class tomorrow, my primary position in relation to that experience is not my own internal/external/may-feel-like-eternal struggle against sin and death, but rather my primary position in relation to that experience is that Jesus owns me in it, and Jesus owns it, and Jesus says, "Come, follow me."

Yes, He tells me to pick up my cross, to count the cost. But based on my very limited experience and on the Bible's binding authority, as we do this, as we follow Him, as we keep crying out for Him and thirsting after Him - as we rest in Him, we become enamored with Him and increasingly experience and realize that we are actually in Him.

And He is glorious beyond all memory and imagination.

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and the most eager to win fame

The Beowulf poet (or the collective that laced the threads together, of which the sole remaining manuscript is only one permutation) may be correct in his theme. Not merely the angsty, bloody battle-driven warrior cult of the Anglo-Saxons, this obsession for fame proves wedged deeply within the most tedious individual sitting at a microfilm machine making photocopies for five hours.

I keep finding this desire for fame swimming uneasily around the more self-conscious parts of my mind these days. What I mean is that all the different occupations and preoccupations that I have been giving myself to, those by which I frequently define myself, have this desire within them.
 
School. And this is not so surprising, seeing as the catalyst for actually doing the paperwork to get in was the simple phrase, "You look like someone who has the Master's glint in their eye." (And lest this come across in a spiritual sense, Master's in no way refers to my most awesome Master). But it is never enough to just think, or to even just write, or even - o even - to just enjoy! No. It must be that I am known.

Home. Why is it so easy to imagine taking the bus with my [future] children, the perfect little images I have made them to be, and to see only myself in every corner of the vision? My aspirations. My perfections. My good discipleship. My boast to holiness. My gift(s) to the world. My bus ticket the crucial one.

Love. There are moments when I seriously doubt that I have ever grasped even the slightest shiver of what it means to be possessed by the all-powerful constraints of Love. "For the love of myself constrains me!" The most well-worn path down which my mind, emotions and body travels is that which ends in "What about me?" Truly, it is so easy to think, "But you should not be treating me like this! But you should know what I want! But you should be Christ-like and forget yourself and just focus on me." (I'm aware of the misunderstanding in this last one. But then, it is at the core. Christ humbled himself, remembered me, gave himself for me - but he did not forget 'himself,' did not give himself purely for me. The greater glory: He went to the cross for the joy set before him, that joy which was indeed the redemption of a people for Himself, but there! For Himself. For the glory of the Father. To the glorification of the Son. His very purpose - how could my very purpose be any less? Why do I keep Christ in a bracket? O self, o self, o self! The love of myself constrains me! Let me out! Let me decrease; let him increase! Out of the brackets in the paragraph that is my existence, my life, my being).

A poet once described the humbling: "...still enough to finally tremble..."

O may our bodies wait, still enough in the presence of the Almighty, that we may start to tremble in the presence of the Almighty, his power pulsing through our bodies as the love of Christ sustains us so as to constrain us.

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