On Profanity

One of the drastic social changes I've noticed over the course of my life--and I suspect this is even more evident to those a generation above me--is the prevalence of profanity as accepted everyday speech. Even further: as expected everyday speech, to the point where lack of profanity is sometimes more noticeable than its presence. It has crept into countless texting abbreviations and communication shorthand on social media, becoming the commonplace backdrop of online interaction. If you're not swearing, it is now rather more difficult than it used to be to convey, in informal writing, that you feel emotionally invested in a topic. Words that a generation or two still functioned as vehicles of shock and offense have now become mere markers of emotional authenticity. There's a certain irony to this, of course: profanity's main linguistic role lies in its shock value, so I have a prophetic suspicion that there may be some new swear words coming in the future, since the old ones have now become so humdrum.

But it's worth backing up a step and asking what it says about us, as a culture, that profanity has become so prevalent. It sometimes seems that one can't click on a single "reel" or "short" without seeing people swearing on the sidewalk at each other. Profanity has become, quite frankly, boring and pedestrian. Even more: it is yet another sign that we're far more inept at using our own native language than most of the generations that preceded us. I recall reading a C. S. Lewis extract that said that the use of italics (as a way of implying a stress) was the sign of a poor writer; a good writer should be able to evoke the feeling he intends without recourse to such devices. In a way, profanity has become the italics of our culture; it's now just a sign that people are failures at communication. We've been blessed with a language that has the most robust and vibrant vocabulary of any language ever, and yet many people can't seem to convey the emotional tenor of their speech without drawing on the lazy man's arsenal of swear words. They could at least, one might hope, do as Shakespeare did, and create elegantly foul-mouthed insults that show some spark of creativity and reason. 

But that objection is a mere trifle. I can't expect every sidewalk barbarian to insult me like the Bard. There's something deeper in the issue of profanity, which I'd like to probe for a moment. If I were to imagine what my profane fellow citizens thought of my reaction--how I felt when I heard them swear--I think they'd probably guess that I felt shocked or offended. Because I'm a pastor, sometimes people who know that try to curb their speech, and it's clear they do it because they don't want to offend me. Some, of course, may find some casual pleasure in the idea of shocking a devout person by lobbing a few f-bombs here and there. But I don't think any of them would actually guess what I really feel. It's not offense.

I feel pity. I feel sorry for them. And that's honest, sincere sorrow--I'm not saying that in a judgmental sense. I'm not looking down my nose at them, nor am I shocked or offended. Rather, I grieve for them. Yes, I think perhaps that's the right word--I grieve for them, and for what they're missing. They are blind to wonders that they don't even know are there. And so it saddens me--not for my sake, but for theirs.

Where does that grief come from? It arises from seeing what profanity really is, and it's right there in the name itself. Profanity is a reference to that which is profane--i.e., the opposite of holy, the antonym of sacred. Sometimes swear words are references to things that are coarse or dirty by definition, but many times they are coarse references to holy things. I would honestly feel better about our culture if profanity was still shocking and offensive, because it should be. Anything that blasphemes the sacred should be utterly shocking. And that's what our swear words were meant to do: in English, swearing is often a direct reference to theological truths, to sex, or to the dignity of our fellow human beings: all among the highest and holiest things our God has seen fit to give us. So why do these terms no longer shock and offend? Because our culture, by and large, has decided that these things are not sacred. The awe-inducing, soul-satisfying weight of holiness is now a complete unknown. Our culture has no point of reference anymore for how to encounter that which is truly sacred, and so even the highest and holiest things are simply accepted as trivial, or trash, or targets for mockery.

Only those things that are held as inviolably precious still have the power to shock and offend. There are only a few English words for which that's still the case, and it shows what is seen as sacred in this culture: namely, markers of personal identity. If you use a coarse word to identify someone else's race, gender, or orientation, then you have stepped over one of the last inviolable lines in our culture, and society will hold you accountable. But they're the only ones--none of the old unspeakable words, that spoke coarsely of theological mysteries or sexual union, retain their power now. Such words are now so devoid of power that they run off the tongue like mere space-fillers. 

One can only get to that place--where holy things are spoken of as worthless--if one has not experienced the weight of holiness, has never understood the unimaginable splendor of the sacred. And it's not just Christianity that used to understand such things--it was the common experience of humanity at large to pause in awe before the sacred and the numinous, and to cut short one's words in the presence of holy things. So those who no longer have that capacity are not just missing the glories of the gospel, as eternally tragic as that is--they are also missing a profound and deep aspect of what it is to be truly human. They are like people who have plucked out their eyes to make themselves intentionally blind, or burned off their hands so they cannot feel the exquisite textures of the world around them. Their spiritual senses have become so dulled by the mockery and cynicism of profane things that they have lost a fundamental human capacity. It's not simply that nothing is holy to them anymore; it's that nothing can ever be holy to them in that condition.

Profanity may feel like a small and casual vice, but on a societal level, it points to something far more worrying: a creeping darkness that has cut off our ability to perceive the wonder and glory of the most precious things in life. In the face of such a darkness, let us pray for the light to dawn anew, and in the meantime, we shall grieve what we have lost.

On Writing Poetry (or, Am I Really a Poet at All?)

("Florentine Poet," by Alexandre Cabanel, 1861)

(Update - after writing this tortured confessional essay on my lack of poetic genius--see below--I discovered that I had written essentially the exact same thing, but as a poem, a decade or so ago. Guess I haven't made much progress. 😉 You can read the poem version here.)

I have a curious confession to make. Despite the fact that I have a major work of poetry about to be published by a large-scale, reputable publisher—a work I consider perhaps my most significant project to date—I hesitate to call myself a poet. And the nearer I get to publication, the more that hesitation curdles into something closer to nerves. It is a fairly safe thing to write poems in the quiet of your own study, where no one but you and God is in any position to judge them (or to post them on a blog that offers no avenue for leaving comments). It is another thing entirely to send them out into the world and wait to find out what the world thinks they are worth.

What makes someone a poet? I’ve been writing poetry for most of my life, but it has always been a side pursuit, and only intermittently. It has never been my main vocation, and maybe that’s part of my hesitation. It’s not the thing that comes first to mind when people think of me (those few who do!). I imagine most think of me primarily as a pastor, which I primarily am. A few rare souls might think of me as a theologian, a historian, a missiologist, or an author. But a poet? No. Robert Frost was known for his poetry; he was a poet. Edna St. Vincent Millay was known for her poetry; she was a poet. I don’t think the same is true of me.

But there’s a bigger reason why I hesitate to call myself a poet. It’s because it feels a little bit like I’m an outsider claiming an insider’s stake. I’ve never felt at home in the sensibilities of the literary world. Despite all my background in writing, I tended to avoid writing classes in college, and I never submitted poetry to the student journals in my day. The kind of poetry that poetry-inclined people appreciated was dark, raw, moody, and disjointed. It felt edgy and experimental in an artsy sort of way. My poetry was exactly the opposite: clear, articulate, and aiming at soaring grandeur. Even when I would write free verse, my poems would often end up leaning toward rhyme and meter, as if they were aspiring to ascend to a higher plane. To many literary-minded readers, I expect, this carried an air of not-quite-getting-it: rather like wandering through a modern art gallery and running into an artist still trying to sell 19^th-century landscapes.

There was something in the modern world of poetry that I just wasn’t getting. And yet, I also noticed that there was a curious dichotomy emerging—while I felt rather distant from the ethos of the literary world and the forms it valued, quite a few ordinary people seemed to enjoy my sort of poems. My art, whatever its deficiencies, was seen as accessible and useful. Though I hadn’t formally published any poems while in college, I was nevertheless called upon to write the responsive litany for our graduation service. The poetical aspects of liturgy and congregational song called to my gifts, and I was able to set them to good use there. Yet while quite a number of people have come to think my poetry charming and useful, there still remains a missing bridge of understanding yet to be built across the chasm between myself and the literati.

Given these things, when I write and publish my poems, there’s a secret fear that the people who really know poetry will think it’s not very good. Rhymed and metered poems have often been seen as passé, or at the very least sequestered to a few narrow niches (specifically, songwriting and children’s books). Poems of that sort can be wildly popular—looking at you, Dr. Seuss—but if Dr. Seuss tried to do the same with serious, literary poems, his works would likely have sat, dusty and ignored, in the “rejection” tray on an editor’s desk. Rhymed and metered poems, because of their current association with children’s verse, now sound childish to many people, despite the fact that many of the best poets in history employed the very same forms. And it’s true that such poems, when done poorly, feel cringingly amateurish. But when done well—think Shakespeare, Tennyson, and Longfellow—those carefully-structured poems rise to heights of elegance that nothing else can match. I don’t say this to claim that my own poems belong in that company; only that the form itself was never the disqualifying feature so many now assume it to be. But, regardless, the majority sensibility of the poetry world has moved on. My poems might have done well enough two centuries ago, but it’s not the early 1800s anymore. I just have to hold onto hope—and there are a few encouraging signs in this regard—that the pendulum may be starting to swing back the other way.

But why don’t I try to write edgy, experimental poems? Or poems that break open the ordinary container of form and pour themselves out into new and unexpected shapes? I can’t. It just isn’t in me.

But here I have to be careful, because there are two different objections tangled up in that question, and I don’t want to be found guilty of the one I don’t actually hold. It isn’t really the newness of the form that troubles me. Poets have always been breaking open old vessels to pour out new wine—Whitman did it in his own way, Hopkins did it in his own stranger and holier way, and for that matter so did the psalmists. The spirit that animates a poem can clothe itself in a great many forms, and I don’t doubt that it has, in hands more skilled than mine, found a true home in free verse and broken lines and all the rest.

What troubles me is something underneath the form: an atomized individualism that has made the poet’s own fractured experience the first and final subject of the poem, with no redemption offered and, all too often, none even sought. It isn’t the shape of the container I object to; it’s what so often fills it. A poem can be formless and still be full of grace, the way the Spirit moved over the formless waters before the world had any shape at all. And a poem can be perfectly metered and still be as empty as a whitewashed tomb. So when I say I can’t write the poems the literati prize, I don’t mean I’m unable to write in their forms—forms are just forms, and I’ve dabbled in more of them than I let on. I mean I can’t write from inside a posture that treats human brokenness as the final word, with no window left open for anything to come in from outside it. That might be the real distance between us.

Now, that sense of distance likely also owes a good deal to my own deficiencies in perception. But I think there’s something bigger at work here too, something that more than a few people have noticed in modern art galleries: there’s a note of anxious despair that has crept into the art world. There’s an emptiness there, a sad soullessness that only those who have experienced the fullness of grace can perhaps still recognize as such. The worlds of art and poesy, by and large, have lost something that once lay at the center of our highest works, and the lack of that something often makes the whole enterprise ring desperately hollow.

The great art of a Christian civilization—our paintings, music, architecture, and poetry—was not merely “original” in the way that modern art insists on atomistic originality. It was equally original and imitative, and it produced great works because what it was imitating was far grander than anything that any individual artist could produce. The refrain of the grace of God, full and vibrant and earth-shaking, echoed through every new wave of art and writing, pushing up cathedrals from the broad green fields of Europe, filling the halls of princes with unimagined symphonies, and setting forth words that danced, aflame with eternity, through the minds of readers. But then, when the modern world collectively decided to set the limitations of our own experience as the keystone of authentic art, our works gradually became a carnival hall of mirrors, reflecting back our brokenness in ever more distorted forms. (I’m painting with a broad brush here, and no doubt there are exceptions—but the overall sense of this portrait, I think, is recognizable to many.) For any who know the sweet fullness of grace, it’s hard to step fully inside those explorations of brokenness, at least not without a significant tinge of sadness—and not the sadness the artist intended to convey, but something deeper and more troubling: a lament for a civilization that cannot remember where beauty comes from, nor summon it back again.

All that to say: I can’t write those kinds of poems. Even poems about my own brokenness always end up throwing the windows open so that the grace of God can come streaming back in. Like David in the Psalms, I can’t bring myself to just quit the scene in the midst of all the wreckage without at least pointing toward the rising pathway that lies beyond. Why? To borrow the modern artist’s own language for a moment: because that’s actually what feels real to me. That’s my experience, unfiltered and authentic. Grace has the final word. But that, I think, may be part of the reason why my poetry, beyond all its other imperfections, will not be hailed as great. To those who have not shared my experience of grace, my tendency to include a perpetual shift toward redemption, toward seeking the resolution of a brighter ending beyond the chaos, will be seen as a weakness of my verse, not a strength.

So having addressed the spirit of the age, let me come back now to the question of form. I’ve gravitated ever more toward rhyme and meter for my own part, because when done well it bears an inherent movement and aspiration that echoes something far beyond its lines. To write a rhymed and metered poem is an act of faith that the world is intentionally structured, meticulously ordered, and beautiful in its design. Its cadence stirs something in us, reminds us of the intricate arrangement that forms the framework of our lives. I don’t say this to claim that rhyme and meter are the only forms capable of bearing such witness—clearly they aren’t, since Scripture itself sings in cadences our ears can barely track, and many poets have found other ways to make the shape of a poem preach its own small sermon. I say only that, for whatever reason of temperament or gift, rhyme and meter are the forms in which I feel the pull of that order most directly. Rhyme and meter call attention, gently and subtly, to the patterns by which the great Poet himself has written the story of our lives.

So it comes to this: I don’t hold out great expectations that my poetry will be appreciated as poetry, at least not by those whose business it is to judge such things professionally. And I say that not only because the values by which poems are judged are not always the values I choose to write toward, but because my poetry is quite probably not good enough, considered on its own, to make a masterpiece. If I’m honest, the comparison that keeps coming to mind these days isn’t Frost or Millay at all, but Thomas Kinkade—a painter beloved in a great many living rooms and almost nowhere in the galleries that decide what painting means. His canvases will probably never hang beside the ones the critics call great. But his paintings still light up a lot of ordinary rooms with a warmth their owners are glad to come home to, brightening the plain and honest hours of real people’s lives. I would be more than content if my poems did something like that: to hang, however modestly, on the wall of someone’s ordinary evening. I do hope (quite honestly and sincerely for all my self-doubting) that at least some people will find in my verse a deep and refreshing plunge into the heart of reality. I hope it will echo through hearts and minds not as something that calls my artistry to mind, but as something that orients the beholder toward the one true Artist.

So am I a poet? I suppose I could call myself that, nerves and all. But more important than the label is this: I am an apprentice in the Artist’s workshop. His is the true art, and mine the imitation—an imitation that, on its best days, draws attention back to him.

Holidays and Pagan Roots - Should We Celebrate Christmas?

Holidays and Pagan Roots (Full Handout)

Here's the video and a link to the handout for this week's Q & A study at my church. Unlike other weeks, where I've provided the handout text in the blog post itself, this time I'm just posting a link to the entire thing. The reason is that I went a little overboard, and the thing is 14 pages long. It not only breaks down the arguments around Christmas traditions, but it goes into Easter and Halloween too for good measure. A good resource, hopefully, but a little long for a blog post. Clicking the link should bring you to the document, where you can save a copy for yourself if you like.

The Radical Danger of Christian Celebrity

I'm going to begin this piece with a thesis that will sound perhaps a little radical:

- Any person in a public-facing Christian vocation should hope that they do not reach large-scale success or acclaim.

Musical artists? Give thanks for poor sales on your recent projects and at the difficulty of building any momentum in the touring industry. Pastors? Give thanks that your church does not grow to megachurch proportions (or even anything approaching that). Authors? Give thanks that your books sell poorly and that the publishing industry is stacked against you from the outset (I have a little personal experience of my own with that one).

A little radical, no? So much so, probably, that many people have already clicked away from this article because it sounds so off-kilter. "Why would I hope not to have success? Doesn't my success mean that more people are hearing about Jesus?" Well, maybe, but only in a very limited sense. Think of it this way: if you weren't successful, doesn't God have other means and other people by which he could also make the gospel known (1 Kings 19:14, 18)? Doesn't God have even greater resources for doing that than you have? If you fall short of celebrity status, it does not mean that the Kingdom of God has fallen short of its potential for growth.

My thesis is put in striking terms to make a point, but it's not really that different from the apostle Paul's counsel: "Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life" (1 Thess. 4:11). And with regard to giving thanks for a lack of success? - "Give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thess. 5:16). Nor is this thesis different from the actual practice of our Lord Jesus, who based his ministry in what was essentially a rural backwater province and who invariably slipped away from the crowds whenever the specter of celebrity raised its head; in one instance he even seems intent on whittling his core of followers down in numbers, not building it up (John 6:60-66). The picture of ministry that emerges from the New Testament is small, communal, and local. This is true even in the exciting days after Pentecost--the church of Jerusalem, from what we can discern, was not today what we would call a megachurch, but seems to have operated on a flexible model as a network of house churches (see Acts 2:46). Further, the "celebrity" leaders of the early church lived lives more marked by persecution, imprisonment, and martyrdom than by any kind of popular acclaim. Indeed, that seems to be more along the lines of what Jesus expects a "successful" ministry to look like, rather than high sales and surging crowds. 

With that thesis in place, let's go back to what prompted this train of thought. Why am I up on this particular soap box right now? This week has seen another grievous set of revelations from the contemporary Christian music world (CCM)--Michael Tait, the frontman for the Newsboys (and former member of DC Talk), has been outed for a long-running double life while on tour, a story marked with drug abuse, alcohol-fueled parties, and sex abuse. A few other voices who know the CCM world well have spoken up to say that this was something of an open secret and a pattern that is not infrequent in the industry. This news hits hard to someone of my generation, who grew up loving Christian music in the '90s and early 2000s, when the Newsboys and DC Talk were at the forefront of it all. But is it surprising? No, it's not.

CCM has consistently shown itself to be a remarkably poor subculture for promoting spiritual maturity. This should have been obvious all along: to take musically gifted young men and women and dump obscene levels of popularity and acclaim on their heads, set them in front of roaring crowds, interview them as if they have deep personal insights on Christian living, put them on tour where they are disconnected from their own families and churches for large chunks of the year--this is a recipe for almost certain failure. We are uprooting them from their support networks and surrounding them with pitfalls and temptations. It is not a favor we do them by making them celebrities; it is an act of thrusting them into grave spiritual danger. I grieve for them, and I regularly remind myself and others that these are among the last people we should look to for teaching on the gospel or wisdom about the Christian life. They are in a place of dangerous prominence, both for themselves and others.

And it's not just Michael Tait; this is a story we've seen played out several times. Another of my favorite bands, NeedtoBreathe, has also been pierced by accusations of sex abuse and betrayal. Other prominent Christian musicians have gone apostate, either leaving the Christian faith entirely or "deconstructing" their faith--Hawk Nelson, Kevin Max (another DC Talk member), a Hillsong frontman, Audrey Assad, and others. Now, that's not to say that every CCM artist or band falls in this category--the majority, by all appearances, are well-rooted enough and put enough safeguards in the practice of their vocation so as to handle it well. But the dangers are very real, and we should be aware of them.

We can go further, and say that it's also not just a CCM problem. It's a pastor problem, too. This is especially the case in megachurches, but it really applies anywhere, even in small churches, if a pastor is surrounded by people who prefer to pretend he's not a sinner. Every Christian communion deals with this issue at some level--it's something we saw in the shockingly public outing of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy (and the continuing echoes of it, both in their communion and those of other denominations, from the Eastern Orthodox to the Southern Baptists). It's something we see even in small ministries, where too much trust is given to fallible, broken, sinful human beings (a category which includes all of us). And it's something we see in a grossly inflated form in evangelical megachurches (the list of megachurch leaders and celebrity pastors that have fallen from grace for sexual misconduct, abusive leadership practices, financial crimes, and other reasons would run for pages). 

Megachurches are perhaps the easiest target for this critique. And I'll say up front that I don't mean to imply that God doesn't use megachurches to accomplish great good--He certainly does, just as he's used CCM artists to do the same. But the leaders in these ministries must always be aware that they are walking through valleys where temptation is going to be on every side, temptations that have mastered and overpowered better Christians than they themselves are. They need to resolve to live radically self-effacing lives, to reject celebrity status with their words and their deeds, and to surround themselves with strong networks of support and rigorous accountability. Otherwise, they are very likely to find themselves in the category of those who have gained the whole world and lost their own soul. I know a man whose side-ministry was, for decades, to serve as a pastoral counselor to megachurch pastors in crisis, many of whom were still in active ministry, and his conclusion is that megachurches are bad for the spiritual health of pastors, period. 

And I include myself in this critique too, by the way. Praise the Lord, I live in an area which, demographically speaking, is unlikely to produce a megachurch. My church draws attendance at a higher percentage of the population of my city (about 3.5%) than most megachurches do of their cities, and yet we're just a bit above 100 on a good day. I honestly wouldn't want to be in another context; bigger churches have come courting on occasion and I've turned them down. If it sounds like I'm wagging my finger at megachurch pastors, it's actually much more of a sense of "There but for the grace of God go I"--I sincerely thank God that he has put me in a place where I can't become a celebrity, because it would probably be my downfall, too.

But the issue isn't just a problem with the size of the church, either. There are dangers associated with the levels of money and elite status-brokering which come with the celebrity life. We don't take seriously enough just how frequently an attachment to money is presented as a tremendous spiritual danger in the gospels. Having more money than you need is perilous for the soul. Even if you can handle it well, living a life of simplicity and generosity, just having it there keeps alive its cancerous potential to befoul the spiritual growth of your children and grandchildren (and I actually know a few Christian families for whom, sadly, that has been the story). As for the status-brokering--getting into social circles with other influential people--our culture has decided to call this "networking" as if it's something good rather than an amplification of the dangers involved, most frequently leading to the sin of pride and a sense of apathy regarding one's own perilous spiritual condition. Remember that we follow a Lord who networked with the ones that nobody else even bothered to care about, and shunned the company of influential people.

Further, the whole nature of evangelical church life has, unfortunately, set up the pastorate as a vocation founded not on spiritual maturity, but on the exercise of natural gifts. A charismatic communicator can draw thousands, even if he is in a wretched spiritual state. Evangelical worship, unfortunately, has degenerated to the place where many people come to church to enjoy the exercise of natural talents--primarily, musical abilities and public speaking--and not to encounter the living presence of the Lord in their midst. I'm not suggesting this is an easy problem to solve; it's not. The exercise of natural gifts is part of this vocation, and one that God has ordained. But there is a danger involved which we must always be aware of--are the people coming to hear me, or to meet with God? That ought to be a conscience-striking question for any pastor with gifted communication skills. 

As I said, I don't have easy answers, other than to say we need two things: a way of grounding our worship services less in the natural gifts of those up front, and more in the presence of God; and a way of seriously ensuring that we are cultivating deep-rooted spiritual maturity for anyone placed in a position of leadership or trust. For me, a lover of the early church, I would say we should bring back the Eucharist as a celebration of our weekly participation in Christ the Great High Priest's eternal presentation of his sacrifice in heaven (thus putting the focus squarely on him), and we should make prospective Christian leaders spend significant seasons before their ministries (and probably during their ministries, too) in places of complete self-renunciation, like a monastery. But I acknowledge that probably won't work for everyone.

My guess is that, in the end, our celebrity culture in American Christianity has almost no grounding in reality. When we look back at this age of the church, viewing it from the perspective of eternity, almost all of the true giants of God's Kingdom will be names we won't recognize at all. I expect that megachurch pastors and Christian music artists will be very poorly represented, except for those few who were able to survive the dangers of their vocations by a sustained practice of humble self-renunciation. The saints who knew God best and were of greatest use to his Kingdom will be, in large part, ordinary people that were unknown beyond their own hometowns, people whose examples of virtue rang out so loudly in the courts of heaven that their smallest, most unnoticed acts will resound through eternity. Those ranks will be especially filled with workers for the Kingdom who labored in almost complete anonymity from the world's gaze, people serving the Lord in places of persecution and suffering, living lives marked by the quiet, patient work of planting seeds in the darkness. I've known a few in my travels, and I did not deserve to stand in their presence. Those are the ones who deserve the acclaim, and one day they will get it, and we who received too much acclaim here on earth will probably just make it to the other side "as one passing through the flames" (1 Cor. 3:15). 

A Change in the Wind

"And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time."

- T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding," Four Quartets

Most of my adult life, I've been praying for a transformation that I sincerely doubted I would ever see. Call it what you will: revival, a Great Awakening, a return of the West to its Christian foundations. I came of age in a highly secular corner of the US at the turn of the millennium, and there was a palpable sense of anxiety in the air among Christians. It was becoming clear that our society, like Christian Europe before us, was entering a long, downward spiral into the abandonment of faith. The first two decades of this century were rife with bleak news for anyone who cares about Christianity in the West: it was attacked on all sides by both "the New Atheists" and a resurgent global wave of Islam's rising tide, it was swamped out of the cultural consciousness of the young by the advent of addictive, all-consuming technologies, and it was marked by growing movements of "nones" and "exvangelicals" and former Christians intent on "deconstructing" their faith. Much of this was the cultural harvest of decades upon decades of institutional atheism in academic circles, which exercised a serious trickle-down effect on society at large. It was common knowledge in Christian circles that to go to a secular university (unless you lived in a Bible belt) was an act of entering territory that was uniquely hostile to one's faith. Those trends had played out in public life to devastating effect, and with the loss of faith, the fundamental stability of many parts of society began to crumble. In short, it looked like all the momentum was going in one direction, and there was no way out. The West had become "post-Christian." And although I prayed and hoped and longed for a swing of the pendulum back the other way, the signs were all so evident that I dared not really believe it to be possible--I found that my heart couldn't bear the anguish of disappointed expectations.

Despite what I'm about to tell you, all of those worrying signs are still all around us. In much of western Europe, secular people now far outnumber religious believers. The "nones" still hold a significant share of our population here in the US. On my pilgrimage in England last year, the effects of the loss of faith on British society were poignant and painful. While I walked around the unimaginably beautiful heritage of the faith of ages past, there was a touch of sorrow to it. These beautiful churches were mostly empty. Those that still held services were either evangelical (where some life remains) or tiny groups that were simply holding on while deaths of old age gradually reduced their numbers. Many expressed surprise that someone as young as I was (and I'm not young anymore) had such an interest in the faith. Those churches that were full were full of tourists, not worshipers, and several cathedrals had gone a good way toward turning their naves into exhibit halls for community events or the celebration of woke-ist values. There was a painful disenchantment to it all.

But there is a change in the wind. It's discernible now; something is happening. It's still small, still just "the size of a man's hand" (see 1 Kings 18:44), but it's coming. This week, I read the testimony of another major public intellectual who has just announced his conversion to faith in Christ (Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia). Over the past five years, this has been happening with increasing frequency. Public intellectuals like historian Tom Holland and psychologist/influencer Jordan Peterson sparked open dialogues about their growing appreciation for the Christian faith. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim-turned-atheist (author of the book Infidel, published during the days of the New Atheists), has become a Christian. Paul Kingsnorth, a major literary figure, found the end of his religious journey through atheism and Wicca by becoming an Eastern Orthodox Christian. Even the agnostic Elon Musk and the world's leading atheist voice, Richard Dawkins, have recently gone on record that they are essentially "cultural Christians." It's not just intellectuals, either: leading figures in media and the arts are coming to faith, from movie stars like Russell Brand and Shia LaBeouf to Youtubers like Ryan Trahan. The uber-popular podcast host Joe Rogan has begun sprinkling an openness to faith into his shows, catching attention especially for one simple line: "We need Jesus."

And it's not just happening at the upper levels of society; there's also a growing groundswell rising up under the radar of public perception. Some events--like the revival at Asbury University last year--broke out onto the public consciousness. But it wasn't a one-off event; college students are showing a marked new openness to the gospel. In the US, there's a particularly noticeable shift of young people moving toward the traditionally orthodox denominations of ancient-rooted Christianity: Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, high-church Anglicanism. Some Eastern Orthodox churches in the US are seeing new catechumenate classes that are, at times, as large as the rest of the congregation put together. In Catholicism, the young people coming to faith are leaving behind the diluted expressions of worship that came into vogue among the previous generation, and are expressing a longing to go back to the rich heritage of older practices. Whereas my generation--the so-called "Millennials"--is probably the most faithless generation America has ever seen, the generations rising behind us, as they come of age, are starting to look like they're not on the same track. My children's generation is much more open to the Christian faith and much more skeptical of the self-centered secularism that dictated public consciousness in earlier decades. 

Every time I come across the evidence of this shift, I still find it surprising. I know I shouldn't; after all, I was writing articles years ago on this blog about how we were already seeing a slow shift back toward theism in academic philosophy. But I am always surprised. I find myself shocked, with wonder and delight, that it might really be happening. 

Back in 2019, I felt led of the Lord to commit to a year of praying every day for revival in our society. I initially took it as a personal call, but during an unplanned moment in the middle of a sermon, I let it slip to my congregation, and some of them took up the call with gusto. (At first I regretted that slip, because then all the pressure of public expectations came to bear upon it, as if people were expecting the call to be a prophecy of what would certainly happen if they prayed.) Rather ironically, the end of that year of praying coincided exactly with a major Covid outbreak in our congregation, one of the first in our state. It resulted in us closing down for several months and ending up in the hostile spotlight of regional news media--not exactly a revival. One could say, however, that it was perhaps not a coincidence that God had led us through a year of concerted prayer immediately before what was probably the most difficult period in the long history of our congregation. But on a larger scale, it's now possible to trace out the lines of another connection. That period, beginning around 2019-20, was the beginning of the recent surge of public conversions. Justin Brierly, host of the podcast "The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God," marks the turnaround to right around that time. That's not to say, of course, that it was our prayers that made it happen. But it's heartening to see the connection nonetheless. So, people of God: keep praying. We may find that rather than staring into the darkness of a falling twilight, we are in fact on the threshold of an entirely new dawn, and even now the brilliant colors of a fresh awakening are dancing on the horizon. 

Is It OK to Call Easter "Easter"?

Within certain Christian circles, there's an undercurrent of debate as to what we should call the annual celebration of Jesus' resurrection. Should it be "Easter" or "Resurrection Sunday"? Most English-speakers have always called it Easter, and still do. But there are some Christians who make the case that we should only call it "Resurrection Sunday" (or some similar name) because "Easter" is derived from a pagan festival honoring the Germanic fertility goddess Eostre. The historical claim being made there is, as you'll come to see, highly debatable. This post is mostly written for the benefit of people who have always called it "Easter" and are wondering if they can still do so in good conscience. If, however, you're the sort who wants to call it "Resurrection Sunday" just for the sake of clarity and not out of a burdensome sense of anti-pagan legalism, well, that's fine too.

But I'm going to start things off by tipping my hand a bit. I'm more a fan of grace than I am of legalism, so my feeling is that unless you're actually spending the day performing acts of worship for an ancient fertility goddess, you're probably OK. (It's similar to my feelings on Halloween, which you can read about here and here.) Now let's assess the case made against Easter:

Eostre, who has apparently mistimed her jump and is about to crush her tiny worshipers

- First, let's start by assuming the "Eostre" etymology is correct (a notion that we'll debunk a bit later on). Even if that were the case, the use of the name would not be problematic for Christians, especially since it comes out of early-medieval Christianity, which had a fairly robust theology of Christ's triumph over pagan culture. You see, the use of the name has never implied any doctrinal relativism. That is to say, as far back as we can see in the historical record, there has never been a case of Christians calling this holiday "Easter" because they're actually using it to secretly celebrate a pagan goddess instead of celebrating the resurrection of Christ. Rather, the name appears from some Germanic origin (again, we'll discuss the etymology arguments below), and people go on worshiping Jesus on that day. Regardless of what name it is called by, this holiday, in its Christian context, has always and exclusively been a celebration of Christ's resurrection from the dead. In a very similar manner, I can call the day of this writing "Thursday" and still do all my regular Thursday things without ever once worshiping the pagan god Thor. The early medieval church actually liked to take over old pagan stuff and use it for Christian purposes, partly as an expression of the triumph of Christ over the old pagan order. They would intentionally take the foundations of pagan temples and build churches on them. Why? Because Jesus triumphed over the demonic powers behind all false gods when he died on the cross and rose again, so we can build monuments to his victory right on top of every pagan tradition we find. I'm rather a fan of this outlook, far more than of our modern-Christian practice of eschewing anything associated with other religions just because they haven't always been exclusively Christian symbols. As Paul said, "We take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ!" If Easter really did come from Eostre, it's possible that early Germanic Christians kept the name of the holiday so that they could taunt the vanquished goddess by turning her day over to the celebration of Christ's victory over her.

Freya, showing here a good use for cats that for some reason has fallen out of practice

- And if we're going to get nitpicky about it, then the "Resurrection Sunday" folks have to stop using "Sunday" (and really, all names for the days of the week), because it relates to the Greco-Roman practice of honoring the sun, moon, and planets, which were also reverenced as gods. Further, they can't call Good Friday by that name, because it alludes to the Norse goddess Freya. (I guess they could just call it "Good Day," but that could get confusing in places like Australia.) And to make it even worse, if you really wanted to be consistent on this issue, you'd have to stop calling God "God," because that comes from the old pagan Germanic word for deity. So, if you're not going to do "Easter," you at least have to drop the "Sunday" reference too, and just go with "Resurrection Day" or the traditional "Pascha" (the latter option is one I actually like). Or you could make up your own name, perhaps by following the "Christmas" pattern, and call it "Risemas." Anyway, the point here is that the argument against Easter is a little bit too nitpicky on cultural grounds, and not really very compelling on theological grounds. 

- Now, the historical argument: does the name "Easter" actually come from "Eostre"? Possibly, but there's plenty of room for doubt. The first suggestion of this comes from a great historian of the early-medieval church, the Venerable Bede, who throws Eostre out as a possible etymology. However, this association strikes a lot of historians as actually being pretty unlikely (and Bede, by his own admission, was sometimes fond of making guesses to fill in the gaps in his stories). Some make the case that a stronger association can be found in the early Germanic word for "east," which is very similar to "Easter" and "Eostre." Just as we still do today, ancient Christians often celebrated Easter Sunday with early-morning services oriented toward the rising sun (in fact, all churches used to be oriented toward the east simply as a matter of tradition and symbolism). If this latter theory is correct, then Easter got its name simply because it was the day that Christians got up early, faced east, and had a sunrise service. 

Ishtar, tragically frozen in carbonite, Han Solo-style, for the past four thousand years

- Let's disabuse ourselves of a few other ridiculous Easter-myths while we're at it. If you poke around the open cesspool of the Internet for awhile, you might run across the theory that Easter has something to do with the pagan Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar. As far as any serious historians know, there's no direct link whatsoever between the two. Such arguments are usually just trying to make the case that the resurrection story itself was foreshadowed by ancient myths that bore some vanishingly vague similarities--i.e., a goddess dies and then somehow comes back--but such myths are clearly myths, none of them even pretending to be read within a real historical context, as the account of Jesus' resurrection is. To associate Easter with the Ishtar myth is a little bit like saying that the Gospels must have been George Lucas' main inspiration in having his devilish villain Darth Maul come back into the Star Wars story (in the cartoon series) even after his apparent death in The Phantom Menace.

Easter bunnies on their way to a nefarious pagan ritual

- What about eggs and bunnies? So, it's actually true that eggs and bunnies were pagan symbols once upon a time. That's also true of the sun, moon, stars, trees, flowers, clouds, wind, water, fire, mountains, valleys, rocks, and basically every species of animal you can think of. (Check out Dr. Boli's satirical list of pagan Easter associations here.) But, again: to my knowledge, no "Easter worshipers" (to use an apparently up-and-coming PC term for Christians) are currently using bunnies and eggs in pagan fertility rituals, so it seems like their pagan significance is a little moot at this point in history.  Eggs, for their part, actually do have a plausible Christian connection to Easter celebrations--since the time of the early church, the egg has been a Christian symbol of both new life and eternity. In fact, an egg is one of the symbolic foods regularly present at Jewish Passover feasts (that is, the feast that corresponds with our Easter), and some scholars have suggested that its presence in the Passover liturgy actually hails back to the influence of early Jewish Christian practice in the first and second centuries AD. Bunnies, as far as I can tell, have no connection to Christian symbolism, other than the fact that God made them. (One could stretch the argument and say that the way bunnies hop in and out of holes in the ground is a reminder of Jesus popping out of the tomb, but we're getting a little ridiculous at that point.) Anyway, to my mind, there's a legitimate Christian association with the egg at Easter, but not the bunny. I don't have anything against bunnies as a cultural symbol at Eastertime (except where they're used as a substitute for the actual meaning of Easter), but I don't have much use for bunny-symbolism in Christian celebrations of the holiday.

- The bottom line is this: Easter is a day for celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You can call it whatever you like, as long as that's its meaning. However, if you find yourself amongst a group of Christians who are nervous that Eostre might somehow reclaim the day for herself, then go along with them and call it Resurrection Sunday, or Risemas, or go early-church on them and call it Pascha. As the Apostle Paul taught us, minor disputes like these are not worth endangering the unity of the Body: if you find yourself in that situation, go along with the restrictions practiced by the weaker brother, so as not to offend his sensibilities regarding the faith. But aside from that situation, as long as you're celebrating Jesus' resurrection, then you can call it both "Easter" and "Sunday" (two possible pagan references in one!) to commemorate Jesus' triumph over Eostre, Sol Invictus, and all the powers of false gods everywhere. And you can still do that Easter egg hunt, too.

How to Be Miserable in Your Christian Life

The essays linked below are not entirely serious--they are written in the style of a satirical self-help book, somewhat in the tradition of C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, and they offer insight and encouragement in the life of Christian holiness by having my fictional narrator, who wants to adhere to the most popular form of Christian practice, advise the opposite.

 

Introduction

Chapter One (Section One)

Chapter One (Section Two)

Chapter One (Section Three)

Chapter Two (Section One)

Chapter Two (Section Two)

Chapter Two (Section Three)

Chapter Three (Section One)

Chapter Three (Section Two)

Chapter Three (Section Three)

Chapter Three (Section Four)

Chapter Three (Section Five) 

A Petulant Screed (on English Grammar)

Note: I'll try to get back to my "Glimpses of Grace" series shortly; they just take a little more time to compose, and I've been rather short on time the past few weeks.

I have two pet peeves when it comes to grammar--first, people who intentionally flout the actual rules by which our beautiful language operates; and second, people who flaunt arbitrary, made-up rules, and then try to force everyone else to follow them. Unfortunately, most English speakers fall into one or both of these categories.

Here's a quick background to anyone who might be wondering, "Who is this guy to tell us how to use our own language?" I'm an author who has been published multiple times, a professional whose main weekly work revolves around verbal compositions, and I hold a degree in linguistics. I've also been inventing lots of my own stylistic quirks for years and years, and I resent anyone telling me that I'm wrong to use them. So with that in place, now I'm going to tell you why the grammar you've been using is wrong.

You see, grammar is a discipline that describes how a language operates--the internal logic of its pieces, one might say. And all languages have very specific rules by which they operate. The only trouble is that, a few generations back, some enterprising grammarians decided that they were going to invent their own rules for English, not based on what the language actually does, but based rather on what they thought the language ought to do. And this system of prescriptive rules (rather than descriptive rules) is what most of us came to learn as "grammar" from the hands of our instructors.

Now, there really are rules that can't be broken in English. I'm not saying that anything and everything is OK as far as grammar goes, not even given the distinctions between formal and informal speech, dialects and idiolects, and so on. No, there are rules you really shouldn't be breaking. For instance, there's one very popular Christian song on the radio these days that makes an obvious and egregious error in grammar. Its central line declares (in a poor quotation of Eph. 1:19-20): "The same power that rose Jesus from the grave is in us!" It's a powerful song, and I would love it...if only it didn't make a glaringly basic grammatical mistake. It takes a situation where a transitive verb is called for, and uses an intransitive verb instead. Here's what I mean: the line should read, "The same power that raised Jesus from the grave is in us." But instead, it says rose. The only trouble is that that word doesn't do what it's being asked to do here. The verb to rise (of which rose is the past tense) cannot take a direct object; it is intransitive. That is, you can't say, "I'm going to rise this book onto the shelf." You must say, "I'm going to raise this book onto the shelf." To raise is a transitive verb, taking a direct object. God's mighty power raised Jesus from the grave. You may say, "Jesus rose from the dead," but you may not say, "God rose Jesus from the dead." It's simply the wrong word, and it doesn't function in the way it's being asked to. So there are rules that simply can't be broken. But there are other "rules" (like one I broke just two sentences ago) which are totally fine to break.

The one I just broke was the rule that says, "You may not end a sentence with a preposition, lest I rap you across the knuckles with my ruler!" Now, this is a "rule" that is sometimes still advisable to follow, depending on where you are: if you're speaking or writing in a very formal setting, to snobbish, elitist sorts, it's probably best not to end a sentence with a preposition. Or, if you just want to sound wicked smart and elitist yourself, you can follow this made-up rule, and say, "It doesn't function in the way in which it's being asked," or, to be even more abstruse and redundant, "It doesn't function in the way it's being asked to function."

This is an example of a made-up rule. English usually works perfectly well when you end sentences with prepositions, and the resulting sentences come across with an easy, colloquial charm, and no loss of clarity or understanding. Sometimes the people who like these arbitrary rules trip themselves up because they don't even realize that in English, the words we call "prepositions" are sometimes used as parts of independent syntactic phrases, and not as prepositions at all. For instance, in the example I cited above, the "to" at the end of my sentence was, properly speaking, not even functioning as a preposition: rather, it was part of the infinitive verbal phrase "to function," and the "function" had been dropped because it was contextually understood from the first part of the sentence. Similarly, I was recently flagged in a paper for ending a clause with this phrase, "the construction went on," because my professor thought I was ending the sentence with a preposition. But that's not correct. In this instance, "on" is not a preposition; it is part of the verbal phrase "to go on," which is a very useful verb, in that it presents an active aspect to the idea of "happening." For instance, no one would object to ending the sentence "What's going on?" with the word "on," because it's clear that it's not a preposition, but actually a part of the verbal phrase. Even without this often misconstrued exception, it's still usually fine to use prepositions. So go out there and ask your friends, "Who were you hanging out with?" (unless, of course, you want to sound elitist, in which case it's also fine to say, in a snobbishly affected tone, "Out with whom were you hanging?")

Here's a few other rules that it's fine to break unless you're being forced to unnecessary formality:

- Don't begin a sentence with a conjunction like "and" or "but."  Observe this rule in formal writing, because it was made up by the people who hold the power in formal settings, but otherwise don't bother with it. It's unnecessarily stuffy, and colloquial English makes broad and powerful use of opening conjunctions.

- Don't use a split verbal phrase, and especially not a split infinitive. This rule has an odd history: like a few of our arbitrary rules, it's actually a rule derived from another language (Latin, where verbs always stay together, mostly because they're one word) that some self-appointed genius once thought it would be fitting to introduce into a totally different language (English, in which verbal phrases are often constituted of multiple words). But in English, you can, unless you overdo it, throw an adverbial modifier here or there in the middle of a verbal phrase (as I just did in the previous parenthetical clause). The truth is, it just sounds better to say "I was duly appointed to carry out this task" than to say "I was appointed duly to carry out this task." Also, don't pay any attention to people who tell you not to split infinitives (unless they're your poor, benighted professor, and you're trying to get an A), because this is another Latin-esque rule. As Star Trek in its radiant wisdom long ago realized, it sounds way cooler when you say "To boldly go where no man has gone before!" than to say "boldly to go" or "to go boldly." The cadence and flow of the Star Trek line is better than the ostensibly proper alternatives, and no clarity is lost. So go ahead and split those infinitives. (With one exception: I'm not wild about throwing negative particles into the middle of infinitives: that is, I've found that it does sound better to say, "I would prefer not to go," than to say, "I would prefer to not go.")

- Avoid the passive voice. This is a rule which, thankfully, is swiftly falling out of fashion, though you'll still find a few particularly fastidious professors who will insist upon it. Now, clearly the passive voice can be overused or used in a clumsy and inelegant way; but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be used at all. As my immediately preceding sentence (which was all in the passive voice) demonstrates, passive constructions can be used easily and well. There's a reason why pretty much every language in the world has a passive voice: it's tremendously useful. It's a great way to highlight the object of an action, especially in cases where the subject of that action is understood by context, or is unimportant to the point of the sentence. For instance, you simply can't take the famous aphorism "Rome wasn't built in a day" and improve it by putting it in the active voice. You'd have to go for some clunky arrangement like "The Romans didn't build Rome in a day," which sounds redundant and stupid, and which would never have caught on as an aphorism. As Kate Turabian (one of the leading teachers of proper academic style) advises, passive voice can be preferable to active voice in situations where it keeps the subject of the sentence simple and clear.

Those are just a few examples, but there are many more. Grammarians have a long history of taking rules from Latin or from arbitrary methods of personal style, and then turning them into the inscrutable edicts of the next generation's classrooms. Their power is crumbling now. And while the evaporation of their fantasy will likely result in a lot of atrocious writing from people who don't follow any grammatical rules at all (even the real rules), at least we'll get a little breath of fresh air from the pretentious nonsense of prescriptive grammar.

How to Be Miserable in Your Christian Life: Reading the Bible through a Political Filter

(Please note: the following is not entirely serious--it is written in the style of a satirical self-help book, somewhat in the tradition of C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, that offers insight and encouragement in the life of Christian holiness by having my fictional narrator, who wants to adhere to the most popular form of Christian practice, advise the opposite.)

How to Be Miserable in Your Christian Life

Introduction

Chapter One (Section One)

Chapter One (Section Two)

Chapter One (Section Three)

Chapter Two (Section One)

Chapter Two (Section Two)

Chapter Two: How to Deal with the Bible

(Section Three: Reading the Bible through a Political Filter)

Now a quick look at political filters. Like most steps to Christian misery, this is pretty easy. In our hyper-politicized world, most of us already think in political terms about any issue that might arise. We can classify anything that confronts us as “liberal” or “conservative,” “left” or “right.” This easy categorization is a great and helpful trait, because it enables us to see everything in the harsh light of black-and-white terms. And the wonderful thing about seeing things in black and white is that you can be absolutely certain that you are right, and that everyone else is wrong. And there’s something comforting to that.

This politicization can even extend to Christian theology. In some circles, even the slightest hint of doubt about the most debated and peripheral of doctrines can immediately (and helpfully!) label someone as “too liberal.” Meanwhile, in other circles, even toeing the line of suggesting that a person’s identity might not be entirely definable by their own whims is enough to handily classify someone as being “too conservative.”

            It’s pretty easy to do this to the Bible, too. Let me throw out a random list of doctrines, any one of which might claim some kind of biblical support (to a greater or lesser degree), and let’s see if you can correctly identify them as liberal or conservative. Just try to imagine which one of the major parties you might hear plugging each of the following principles. (Please note: the author makes no claim to believe or disbelieve any of the following; I simply use them here to illustrate how easy it is for someone to liberalize or conservativize the Bible, according to their taste. Obviously, I only believe the doctrines below that are truly biblical and sensible, just like you.)

(1)   One of our main jobs as human beings is to tend to the environment and care for God’s created order, so environmentalism should be a major concern of Christian political activity (Gen. 2:15).

(2)   The unborn are living human beings, each one intentionally created by a loving God, so abortion should not be legal (Psalm 139:13-16).

(3)   You should love all immigrants, treat them like native-born citizens, and actively offer all the help and resources they might require (Lev. 19:33-34; Deut. 10:18-19; 14:28-29).

(4)   Marriage is a sacred institution originally intended for the union of a man and a woman, and so it is not within the purview of human governments to rewrite the meaning of marriage (Gen. 2:22-24).

(5)   Redistributive socialism is an acceptable method of organizing a Christian society (Acts 2:44-45).

(6)   Government’s rightful place is in securing order and justice, but it has overstepped its bounds if its legislation impinges on an individual’s freedom to obey God (Rom. 13:1-7, Acts 4:18-20).

(7)   God cares deeply about the plight of the poor, so the alleviation of poverty ought to be one of the leading concerns of Christians’ engagement in political life (Psalm 12:5, James 2:5).

(8)   Homosexuality is a symptom of the deep way that human society has been affected by our common sinfulness, and is not something to be celebrated (Rom. 1:21-2:1).

(9)   Christians should love their enemies, and are commanded not even to resist an evil person through the use of force, so they should not make the right to possess weapons a part of their political platform (Matt. 5:39).

(10)   Appropriate sexual behavior is a matter of divine law, not personal taste, social convention, or human legal traditions (1 Cor. 6:12-20).

Pretty easy, right? In our current American political climate, all the odd numbered teachings are usually trumpeted by one political camp, and all the evens by another. You’ll find some crossover here and there, but the main talking-points of the parties generally fall squarely along those odd/even lines. As I’m sure you must have realized as you worked through the list, the set of numbers that you already agree with are clearly the correct interpretations of Scripture, which means that the other set of numbers must be spurious readings of the holy text. After all, who would be wild enough to suggest that all of these biblical-political assertions might have some claim to validity? That would render our black-and-white political platforms ridiculous. And one thing we can be sure of is that our American political life is never shortsighted, narrow, or ridiculous.

Since we’re already so good at sorting everything we see into political categories and ignoring the parts we don’t agree with, this kind of political filter is one of the most helpful ways of reading the Bible. It prevents Scripture from challenging our preconceived ideas and settled positions, ensuring that we can remain safely ensconced in our cocoon of happy moral certainty.

Ironically, this will actually maximize your Christian misery. This is because, by using this method, you are essentially muting the possibility of the Holy Spirit speaking to you about areas where you could grow, where you could deepen your faith, understanding, and love for those with differing opinions. Such growth in compassion and depth of perception has, in my humble experience, led to a diminishment in the experience of the miserable life.

However, if you end up going down the dark road toward letting Scripture shape your politics (rather than the reverse), you can sometimes still save your misery by giving up in the name of relativism. This helpful tactic, unlike the black-and-white perspective we talked about earlier, is unwilling to see any gradations or context at all, and insists on seeing all issues in a uniform shade of gray.

Perhaps, as you looked over the list of possible biblical doctrines above, you wanted to throw up your hands and say, “Well, then if all of this is in the Bible, then we can’t know anything for sure! Let’s just throw in the towel on politics and biblical certainty!” If that was your impulse, then run with it. If you can convince yourself that everything is relative, and that nothing is certain, then you have once again found an easy way to slip into that sweet spot of not having to stretch your spiritual and intellectual imagination in ways that might tend towards personal growth.

Whatever you do, absolutely do not enter into dialogue with Christians who may have differing perspectives from you. It’s just a bad idea. You already know that you have everything right; so you don’t need to listen to them. The more you can keep yourself in the comfort zone of absolute moral certainty (or, if you’re so inclined, absolute moral relativism), the more you’ll be able to gloss over things in Scripture that you might not want to think about, and the more you’ll be able to tune out the nagging voice of the Holy Spirit. On the road of Christian misery, that’s the fast lane to success.

A Final (but Dangerous) Method

            If all of the above strategies for limiting the Bible’s capacity to affect your misery end up not working for you, there’s one last recourse. It’s simple, but not many people can do it successfully: you could study the Bible in all of its depth, and then just not do what it asks you to do. It takes some perseverance, but that road will definitely maximize your Christian misery. Knowing the will of God, and then willfully ignoring it—it takes a good deal of guts and a fundamental absence of wisdom—but if you can do it, you’ll be miserable for sure.