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Midweekly
Reality Check:
Meditations on the
Mountain
Archives IV
Oct-Nov
2005
A
Confessional Book Review
November 29, 2005
This review, of sorts, of HUMILITY: True Greatness, by C. J. Mahaney has
been penned by perhaps the most prideful person you know. If you want to
read a proper review of this book read
this one
by a pro, Tim Challies—it convinced me to buy the book—or
this one
by theologian Al Mohler or
a handful of them
at Diet of Bookworms. I am an authority, born of vast experience, on what
humility is not. Ask my wife, who considers her life’s work to be
keeping her husband humble. She has thus far failed, though not for want of
trying for thirty-nine years, but, when I calm down, I shudder to think what
my condition would have been if God had not put her in my life. I stand
convicted—guilty as charged by Rev. C. J. Mahaney.
Here’s the bottom line of this review at the top: Buy this book. If you
fancy yourself a man’s man, run, don’t walk, to the nearest Christian book
store and buy this book. If you have sons, buy as many books as you have
sons and don’t wait for Christmas to give them out. If you are a church
leader, go and do likewise for your co-leaders. Give one to each—it’s only
$12.99 a copy—so that those who need it most do not feel singled out. Do it
now. I have witnessed a church split asunder and marriages ruined because
of pride. History is replete with nations that committed suicide because of
pride. Absent God’s grace, pride always goes before a fall (Proverbs
16:18).
As a supremely self-assured young fighter pilot, who took arrogance as an
art form to new levels in a culture never known for humility, I serve as a
truly great bad example. Half-a-lifetime of accumulated evidence later, if
you visited my office in a corner room of our gatekeeper’s cottage at Ridge
Haven, you would have confronted four “I love me” walls. They were
completely filled with framed memorials of my literary and flying
accomplishments, none of which will be worth a widow’s mite on judgment day,
and only an infinitesimal fraction more in the present world. While there
you might have heard me try to justify my four-walled altar to ego by
telling you that the freelance writing business is so filled with rejection
that I need constant reminders that I can hack it to stay motivated in this
crazy business. And in the process I was just bragging about hacking it
without telling you how undistinguished my scribbling has been…or how many
dumpster loads of demoralizing rejection letters I’ve received.
Your eyes may also have been attracted to the bright colors of a
Distinguished Flying Cross with the citation framed below it. If so, I
politely, with fraudulent modesty, would have quit talking while you read
about my “heroics,” but nowhere within that frame did you read how terrified
I was, or how the resultant ham-fisted flying, by all the laws of physics
and probability, should have left nothing to put in the body bag, but for
the miraculous amazing grace of a merciful God.
I belong to a veterans’ group called the
Red River Valley Fighter
Pilots Association—River Rats, for short—that, among many
other good works, put
my MIA, then presumed KIA
wingman’s children through college. You will notice, on
the home page of their website the following words: “If you don’t know who
the world’s greatest fighter pilot is…it ain’t you.” Now that we’re older
and wiser and still have a pulse, I think that’s more tongue-in-cheek than
when we were serving as airborne bulls eyes for enemy weapons systems (the
prerequisite for membership) and saying it with such self-deluded passion.
It was a confidence thing that helped keep us alive then, subjugated to the
grace of God. But these days I’m just grateful I can still function with 1
“g” of stress, and I’m prepared to give it a rest at last. I have much to
be modest about, but I still camouflage it with pride, the first of
the seven deadly sins, the foundation for all the rest. This is no
non-essential…the opposite, in fact.
C. J. Mahaney quotes John Stott: “[pride] is the essence of all sin.” Here
is the tip of the spear that pierced my heart in this book (page 30):
Indeed, from God’s perspective, pride seems to be the most serious
sin. From my study, I’m convinced there’s nothing God hates more than
this. God righteously hates all sin, of course, but biblical evidence
abounds for the conclusion that there’s no sin more offensive to Him than
pride.
One could not find a more unequivocal proof text than the “personified
wisdom of God” in Proverbs 8:13: Pride and arrogance…I hate. In
Proverbs 16:5, God spells out the implications of that divine hatred.
Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the LORD; be assured,
he will not go unpunished. And here is the reason for God’s hatred, in
Mahaney’s wise words: “Pride is when sinful human beings aspire to the
status and position of God and refuse to acknowledge their dependence upon
Him.” Lucifer tried that early on and got swiftly booted into hell.
Mahaney quotes Winston Churchill referring to
his political foe, Clement Atlee: “He
is a modest little man who has a good deal to be modest about.”
In his gleeful
gotcha, I doubt the master wordsmith realized how profound his theology
was. He spoke of everyman, not just the hapless Atlee.
Pride is a mutant code from Adam’s DNA—a clear
denunciation of the Darwinists’ theory that mutations improve the
species. The culture lionizes those who successfully apply Sinatra’s
pompous paean—“I did it my way”—but as a salvation solution it’s a
prescription for perdition. I have heard myself say, on more that one
occasion, “He’s a proud man, but he’s earned it.” WRONG. I will never say
that again. Pride is most pernicious when God blesses our endeavors with
success. I know a number of successful church men, and nearly all of them
are effected to some degree by pride, including many of the best Bible
expositors who preach at Ridge Haven. Yet God uses them in a mighty way in
spite of their obvious struggles with the sin of pride—grace indeed.
Scripture is crystal clear on this point: What do you have that you did
not receive [from God]? If then you received it, why do you boast as
if you did not receive it (1 Cor. 4:7b). Puritan commentator Matthew
Henry said, “…all that we have, or are, or do, that is good, is owing to the
free and rich grace of God. Boasting is forever excluded.”
So why, when a Christian is confronted with so much clear biblical teaching
on the sin of pride, does he persist in it? Pride is the last idol to
vacate a born-again heart. You can’t blame it on the devil—he’s “no more
than a bad dog on a chain,” as Martin Luther says. The answer can be found
in
Romans 7:15-25.
It’s not pretty. C. H. Spurgeon explains it best: “A new man is two men,
there is warfare within.”
At age 57 I left the corporate battlefield to take a Brother Lawrence-type
part-time job in a remote Presbyterian retreat in a
Wilderness Cathedral
in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina. My objective was not to
learn humility, though I think I have made some small progress (Have I just
negated my whole premise???) My gatekeeper’s cottage and the work are
several social strata below my corporate status, and far below what I had
spent too much of my life aspiring to.
What a risk my boss, a pastor, took, hiring me. There are at least a couple
preachers in this world who think it is divine justice that the
strong-willed elder who made life so miserable for them now has a preacher
for a boss. The driver of the moving van, who knew me for only a few hours,
gave me his business card when he finished unloading his truck, and said,
“Call me when you’re ready to come back.” For a year after my arrival,
people incredulously asked me, “Are you happy here?” Four-and-a-half years
later, I can sincerely say it has been the most joyful, fulfilling “work”
I’ve ever known, laboring at the bottom rung of the ladder in the Lord’s
vineyard.
One of many humbling tasks I do is wield a plumber’s helper when necessary,
after-hours and on weekends. But, incorrigible kid in a codger’s body that
I am, I even bragged about that. I cut notches in the wooden handle of my
plunger and pointed out my gunslinger prowess to all who saw it in
action…till God took it away from me when I had accumulated 77 notches. It
fell out of the vehicle on a dark night at the Greenville, SC, airport, I
think, never to be found. My new helper has a notch-proof plastic handle,
but I’m not cured yet. When I’m introduced to guests as “the man with the
plunger,” I still feel my jaws torque behind a forced smile—God’s way of
telling me I still have much humility to learn.
I can name the truly humble men I have known in my life on one hand, with a
thumb and finger left over, and none of them are famous. They are my baby
brother, my current boss, and my current pastor, godly men all. Winnie
would probably say they have much to be modest about, laboring in
comparative oblivion in the world’s eyes, but they are giants in my view.
God has been gracious to put such role models so close to me, an egomaniac
in desperate need of grace and mentors.
Then, as if Mahaney’s excellent scriptural exegesis alone hadn’t made the
case for humility, in God’s providence, shortly after I finished the book, I
read my morning mentor, Spurgeon, in his Devotional Bible commentary on 2
Corinthians 12:7 (page 699),: “To be proud is the worst of calamities….” I
was shamed into action.
Humility must be real. Fake humility fails every time. Sometimes it
doesn’t even fool the man in the mirror. It must be heartfelt and soul
deep. That takes a kingdom disciple’s grace-filled heart, and that is my
prayer. In an admittedly painful effort to “pour
contempt on all my pride,” I’ve hauled $1000 worth of
custom framing to the basement storeroom. As I write these words I’m
staring at a four barren walls with multiple blemishes. They’re a graphic
metaphor of my merit before the throne of grace without Christ’s amazing
atoning grace. Perhaps better evidence of progress will be my application
of one of Mahaney’s best remedies, my
presence in an
accountability group of Christian brothers, contritely nodding in the
affirmative, with no bulging cranial veins or throbbing carotids, while my
friends patiently point out my latest pomposity. I’m not there yet, and
don’t hold your breath, but God is gracious. He has promised to complete
every overhaul he starts (Philippians
1:6).
He
has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you,
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and
to walk humbly with your God?
(Micah 6:8)
Thanksgiving for the truth of the
“glorious eighth of Romans.”
November 22, 2005
My wife and I have been immensely blessed
this year by our daily reading of C. H. Spurgeon’s Devotional Bible (our
edition “reprinted 1964, 1974, 1975 by Baker Book House”), an out-of-print
rare gem (try eBay), a fount of wisdom and interpretation of Holy Scripture
by one of Christianity’s most devoted, most gifted, most widely published
Bible expositors. Spurgeon wrote this daily devotional in the same manner
that he read scripture in his worship services in 19th century
London, inserting brief commentary as he read to his congregation. His
scripture readings were mini-sermons in themselves.
I consider him one of my literary and
theological mentors. His Morning and Evening and Faith’s Checkbook
Devotionals are in my
email every morning.
A vast amount of his great work is
available at my fingertips
whenever I need him (God willing, the
proprietor,
Phil Johnson will one day get
the Spurgeon Devotional Bible posted there as well.).
The Devotional Bible reading for the morning
of November 17 could not be more appropriate for this Thanksgiving Day.
I have substituted the
ESV translation
of the Bible for what I think is the 1611 King James version in the book (no
explanation given on the copyright page) and copied Spurgeon’s commentary in
italics as it appears in the original. May it guide your thoughts and
thanksgiving on this designated day of national gratitude.
We
will now read the concluding verse of that
glorious eighth of Romans.
Romans 8:26-39
26
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.
For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself
intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. (Our ignorance shows
itself in prayer, and is our great infirmity. We cannot tell what blessing
we most require. What a mercy it is that the Holy Spirit knows all things,
and moves us to ask for what is best. Before we pray we should wait upon
the Spirit for his guidance, and then we shall go into the King with an
acceptable petition.) 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is
the mind of the Spirit, because the
Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (So that
he inclines our hearts to request the very blessings which the Father has
determined to give, and hence our prayers are but the transcripts of the
divine decrees.) 28 And we know that for those who love God all
things work together for good, for
those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he
foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in
order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And
those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also
justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. (Like links in
a golden chain, each one of the blessings of grace draws on another. The
central links are within our view, and if we know them to be ours, we may be
sure that the others which belong to the past are securely fastened to them.
He who is called is most assuredly predestinated, and shall, beyond all
question, be in due time glorified.)
31 What
then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against
us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all,
how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (This is the
master argument of prayer. If we understand its force we shall not be
afraid of asking too much.) 33 Who shall bring any charge against
God's elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ
Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right
hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation,
or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?
(All these have been tried.) 36 As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as
sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No,
in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
(So far from being divided from the love of Jesus, the saints were in
persecuting times driven closer to their Lord, so that they had yet sweeter
communion with him. No earthly trial can make Jesus forget souls for whom
he has died; he changes not in the purpose of his mind or the affection of
his heart.) 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor
angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor
height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to
separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (The apostle
began with NO CONDEMNATION and he ends with NO SEPARATION, filling up the
space between with priceless covenant blessings. No chapter of the Bible is
more crowded with sublime and consoling teaching. Lord, grant us to know and
enjoy all the inestimable privileges which it reveals.)
I have much to be thankful for this
Thanksgiving Day. At the top of the list, by a wide margin, is a loving,
merciful God who chose me before the morning stars sang at creation,
irresistibly called, freely justified and will assuredly glorify me in
heaven according to his plan. He works ALL things for my good and promises
to let NO ONE and NOTHING separate me from His love in Christ and eternal
bliss in His presence.
What amazing love for a mutt like me,
tethered with a golden chain to the throne of grace by the only true God of
all creation! Priceless, yes! Sublime, indeed! Were the whole world mine,
it would be less than dust in the scales weighed against this gracious gift
from my LORD. If there were 365 Thanksgiving Days a year, it would be
inadequate gratitude, yet will I endeavor to live as if there were.
Water and the Spirit
Nov. 15, 2005
The following appeared
Nov. 7, 2003 in PCANews.com, the precursor of
byFaithOnline,
the Presbyterian Church in America’s online magazine.
This is not a codger’s lament—life at sixty is far better than I anticipated
at twenty. At
Ridge Haven I have found the Rare Jewel
of Christian Contentment that Puritan divine Jeremiah Burroughs wrote of
so eloquently. I sleep the sleep of saints, in spite of my unworthiness,
wake up early feeling like a new man born again with the dawn, 99% pain-free
99% of the time. I find more joy and fulfillment in my “deacon’s work” here
than I thought possible this side of the river.
I celebrated my new elder status in the company of my bride of 37 years,
who’s aging better than I, with a 4.4 mile hike on a new trail (for us) to a
spectacular waterfall, just over the South Carolina line, called Raven Cliff
Falls. The abundant waterfalls in these Blue Ridge Mountains speak to my
soul—they are a poignant audio/visual metaphor of God’s grace, the primary
cause of my contentment.
Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God
unless he is born of water and the Spirit (John 3:5). In Paul’s words
to Titus, God in his mercy “…saved us through the washing of rebirth and
renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through
Christ Jesus our Savior” (Titus 3:5-6). As Calvin points out in his
Institutes, all of nature reflects the glory of God, and I see that glory
stunningly manifested in waterfalls. But I also see a soul-stirring sign of
God’s covenant of baptism—his gracious promise to wash away the sin of his
elect and credit us with the righteousness of His Son, not by the act
itself, but what it signifies—His gift of faith in the Son. His grace is
generously and continually poured out on his children through Christ like
the sparkling pure water that pours over Raven Cliff, washing and smoothing
and polishing the boulders over which it flows.
The first indication that we were approaching holy ground was a sound like a
heavenly host of angel wings—the hushed percussion of falling water filtered
through dense woods. A steep descent into a deep, wooded gorge led to a
small clearing still several hundred feet from the bottom. There, across
the chasm, less than a quarter mile away, in all its glory, was the
waterfall, surging over a divinely sculpted massive rock face, splitting
into two falls two-thirds of the way down. It nearly overwhelmed my
senses. Yet that unceasing flow of pure sparkling water pouring over the
craggy cliff is but a stagnant drop in the ocean compared to the pure grace
God pours out on his elect through the blood of his Son, Jesus Christ.
Falling water also makes me think of time passing and the brevity of earthly
life—the water goes over the fall but once and rushes on, just as we pass
this way but once. By God’s grace, one glad morning time will no longer be
a dimension. There will no yesterday and no tomorrow, only the eternal now
in the presence of infinite love—bliss beyond words.
It is not my works that led me to that magnificent rock and water monument
to God’s grace. He gave me the strength, worked in me the will to press on
toward the goal and provided the markers along the narrow way in the same
manner that he has called me heavenward in Christ.
Hiking back to the trailhead from that glimpse of eternity, through lush
forested mountains painted in fluorescent fall colors on a clear, crisp,
autumn day, I was aware as never before that I am in the fall of my life.
Unlike the trees, the human life cycle has but one fall season. The thought
has a wonderful way of focusing the mind on one’s destiny. For all its
breathtaking beauty and sacred symbolism, Raven Cliff Falls is but a dim
reflection of the real paradise that awaits those who love the Lord, where
“…the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flow[s] from the
throne of God…” (Rev. 22:1).
To know that by his unmerited favor I have been reborn by water and the
Spirit, and that God’s love cannot be separated from me by height or depth
or anything else in all creation is to know that I am more than just a
conqueror of the mountain, more than just a healthy hiker smugly admiring
his Creator’s handiwork, but a child of God secure in his palm for all
eternity. One day water will cease to cascade over Raven Cliff, but God’s
love…and my consequent contentment…endures forever (Psalm 136).
“Thirty Years On My Wrist”
November 8, 2005
Regular readers know I’m a Vietnam vet—268 combat missions in an
F-100. I have eight friends whose names are engraved for the ages
on that black granite Memorial Wall in Washington DC. One of them is
Robert V. (“Vince”) Willett, a soul brother/wingman I watched crash on
the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, in a haunting, massive fireball during a
post-midnight gunfight. The crash site has never been found, so he was
MIA for years, then “MIA, presumed KIA.” Recently I received the
following email from a kind stranger, an amazing lady named Colleen Neumann.
The last sentence in the second paragraph blew me away.
Dear Mr.
Wetterling,
In the early 1970's, I purchased a POW/MIA bracelet bearing the name of
Capt. Robert Willett, Jr. This past year, I had the honor of bringing
my children to the traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall in our local park.
There I found Major Willett's name and took a rubbing. For the last
six months it's been pinned to the bulletin board over my desk, and
yesterday it became clear I needed to write a story about Panel 27W, Line
103.
During my research, I found your name and [Los Angeles Times] article, “God,
Country, and Forgiveness.” My heart broke as I read of Major
Willett's last mission, and I wept with the young man who returned after
watching his friend lose his life. I also found the e-mail address of
Major Willett's cousin, Peggy. She is searching for bracelets to give
her sons. After 30 years on my wrist, I am sending her mine.
I'm just beginning my story about visiting the wall…. I wanted to let
you know that you, and your love for your friend, inspired me. My hope
is that the few words I have to offer in his memory, will inspire others to
remember the courage, sacrifice, and devotion to duty that all soldiers
offer our country.
God Bless, sir.
Sincerely, Colleen Neumann
When I recovered my composure I sent Colleen a heartfelt thank-you and
asked her to please send me a copy of her story when she finished it.
She did. On this least celebrated holiday of the year, I post her
award winning words here. Colleen has my undying appreciation and
gratitude for her great, godly, patriotic heart. God bless her and her
family.
Panel 27 West, Line 103
by
Colleen Neumann
The inscription on the bracelet lists him as Captain. A gentle-voiced, older
woman searches the pages, and tells me there are two with the same given
name. The gentleman I seek, his middle name is Vincent, named after his dad,
I guess, because he’s a junior. A Major now, she explains; maybe he was
promoted posthumously. I take a small yellow pencil. She hands me white
paper. Under the words, “Today We Remember...”, she has written his name,
and Panel 27 West, Line 103.
Weightless after more than thirty years around my wrist, the silver feels
icy as I walk through the midsummer mist, across the wet ramp, past roses, a
sunflower in a bottle of Bud, old concert tickets, a picture of a proud
family with their son in dress blues, and flags. Stories swirl around,
disjointed yet interconnected as I pass panel after panel. It’s hard to
breathe. Why can’t it be sunny? Would it make this easier?
My eyes meet those of a bearded, older gentleman with a kind, serene face.
His smile pierces my heart. He knows the loss. I nod, unable to speak, and
continue down the walkway to find my silver friend, forever young, etched in
black granite. I think about the date on my bracelet: 1969, the movies,
music, books, and wonder if he would prefer “The Wild Bunch” or “Midnight
Cowboy”; Jimi Hendrix or Simon and Garfunkel; “The Godfather” or
“Slaughterhouse-Five”. Would he have cheered the Mets to their World Series
victory? Would he have had children who loved “Sesame Street”?
A boy sits with his mother who is weeping silently as she clutches a
yellowed picture. An elderly couple, hand-in-hand, rub a name and delicately
place the paper between Bible pages. I listen to two women visiting with a
neighborhood boy from high school. A gentleman touches a name and whispers,
“Hi big brother.” These people are the war, decades after the last mission.
Those who never saw the battle field, but field the battle with their
hearts. Shiny stone displays their faces, pain co-mingling with the names.
I find my silver friend of three decades, a constant companion of whom I
know nothing except that he gave his life. I reach up to touch the letters,
and recite Kaddish. Surely he changed those around him, not only by dying,
but also by living. I took my bracelet off when I found my silver friend’s
family. They wanted the small token of the life taken from them. Later, I
will bring my children with me to visit The Wall so they might remember a
time when hope seemed far away, but remained essential.
I came to The Wall one woman and left another. Today, I remember. For all my
tomorrows, I will never forget.
To this
Vietnam Vet, who has more battle scars from revisionist historians than he
got in air combat, one Colleen Neumann is worth more than all the vitriolic
draft dodgers and Winter Soldiers who ever walked. She affirms, with
her extraordinary three-decade witness, that fighting and dying for one’s
country is “Still
the Noblest Calling” (WSJ, May 26, 1996). I pray that her message,
God willing, comforts the aching hearts of all families who have made the
ultimate sacrifice for the cause of freedom, especially those 2000 whose
grief and pain is still new and raw this Veterans Day.
Greater love has no man than this…(John 15:13).
Rene Schmidt, Soldier of the
Cross
November 1, 2005
I am blessed with some godly
friends from the age of giants—WW II—a grace that always moves
me to give thanks to God as America’s least celebrated holiday,
Veterans Day, November 11, approaches.
My friend, Rene (the final ‘e’
is silent), was present with General Eisenhower in the above
picture on this famous day, standing near the photographer,
across from his friend Billy Hayes (hatless, chin on Ike's
thumb) and platoon leader Walter Strobel (tall guy in front of
Ike). The
picture hangs on the wall of Rene’s den, in the mountain home
near me at
Ridge Haven, that this octogenarian widower shares with his
three dogs. He remembers that moment vividly, as he does seeing
Ike, standing illuminated by his car headlights half-way down
the runway, saluting as the C-47’s full of paratroopers took off
before dawn on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Ike was there perhaps
because airborne troops were expected to suffer the heaviest
losses in the long awaited storming of the beaches of
Normandy—advance estimates ran as high as 80% casualties for the
paratroopers in the high winds, nasty weather and heavily
fortified enemy troops they faced.
With the humility and expository
economy of a gospel writer, Rene told me of his World War II
heroics (a term that he would never use and is sure to embarrass
him) as a paratrooper dropped with the 101st Airborne
at night behind enemy lines on D-Day. A rough opening of his
parachute amid heavy anti-aircraft fire and a rougher landing in
a tree in the dark left him with only his knife as a weapon.
But Rene had long ago learned resourcefulness as he overcame
government policy to become a front line soldier, even though he
was a first-generation German immigrant fighting against
Germany.
Like a Michelangelo with words,
he painted a vivid scene of the massive Allied invasion armada
as it filled the western horizon of the English Channel at dawn,
viewed from his hiding place on a rise behind the enemy dug in
on Utah Beach. With equal economy he told of viewing the Statue
of Liberty with his mom as their ship sailed into New York
Harbor in August, 1921, when he was a fatherless 5-year-old
immigrant, and sailing out as a Private First Class with the
101st Airborne. Left unsaid was how he rose to the highest
enlisted rank in the Army, an exalted position reserved for only
the best of the best, the toughest soldiers the world’s greatest
military can produce—sergeant-major.
Then, in a reverent voice this
curmudgeonly old vet explained how, in his mid-40’s, God broke
his heart and remade it, filled with love and the Holy Spirit
and a passion for winning lost souls. He briefly alluded to the
evangelistic ministry he and his wife, Virginia, founded in
their home in Ft. Lauderdale, shortly after two Christian
strangers knocked on their door and efficaciously presented the
Gospel. It became a 25-year golden harvest of souls for God’s
kingdom called The Green House (HIS TENDER GRAPES, ISBN
#0-877841-00-3), that by grace helped build
Coral Ridge Presbyterian in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, into a
megachurch, where he then served as an Elder for many years
under Dr. D. James Kennedy.
As usual, this ageless
evangelist spent the bulk of our conversation on a heartfelt
presentation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, even though he knew
he was speaking to a member of the choir. Coming from him it was
still profoundly moving—the greatest story ever told.
Rene spoke for every senior
Christian alive when he said, while leading a recent Sunday
School class at our church, “I don’t understand a lot of this
world today, but when it comes to the things of God, there is a
clarity….” And he pointed mutely at his head.
I
know I am but a single molecule of a great cloud of witnesses
grateful to God for bringing Rene Schmidt into my life. It is
my prayer, this Veterans Day, that our Lord will give him many
more years of winning Christian warfare before calling this
decorated veteran to the greatest award ceremony he’ll ever
attend.
A
Luther-Lantern for Halloween
October 25, 2005
There’s a carved pumpkin in front of my gatekeeper’s cottage this season,
but it's no pagan icon. It honors a backwoods monk from sixteenth century
Saxony who, in God’s providence, changed the world on what the culture now
calls Halloween. It was on that day in 1517 that thirty-seven-year-old monk
and University of Wittenberg theology professor, Martin Luther, nailed a
challenge to the church authorities on the bulletin board—the church door—to
debate ninety-five points of Scripture and church custom.
It set in
motion a chain of earthshaking events over the next three-and-a-half years
that led to what British historian Thomas Carlyle called “The greatest
moment in the modern history of man”—Luther before the Diet of Worms on
April 18, 1521. We know it as the Reformation.
On that day in 1521, Dr. Luther stood before the assembled heads of state of
the known world. It was standing room only at the Diet of Worms, with the
Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V, an awesome collection of lesser
provincial kings, princes, nobles, prelates, burghers, and two high-powered
representatives of Pope Leo X. The room was so crowded with spectators that
the blue bloods could hardly get to their seats. It would be like a meeting
of the United Nations today; only this group had real power.
Johann Eck, the pope's envoy, after an exchange of viewpoints that was going
nowhere fast, said in Latin:
Martinus, your
plea to be heard from Scripture is the one always made by heretics. You do
nothing but renew the errors of Wyclif and Huss...How can you assume that
you are the only one to understand the sense of Scripture? Would you put
your judgment above that of so many famous men and claim that you know more
than all of them? You have no right to call into question the most holy
orthodox faith, instituted by Christ the perfect Lawgiver, proclaimed
throughout the world by the Apostles, sealed by the red blood of martyrs,
confirmed by the sacred councils, and defined by the church...and which we
are forbidden by the Pope and the Emperor to discuss, lest there be no end
to debate. I ask you, Martinus, answer candidly and without distinctions, do
you or do you not repudiate your books and the errors they contain?
The air in the room was electric with tension. Luther knew the fate of the
Bohemian John Huss 111 years earlier—no doubt Eck mentioned his name on
purpose. Huss’s beliefs were similar to Luther’s and he was burned at the
stake.
It was never Luther’s desire to create such a ruckus. Neither he nor his
family planned that he should even be a monk. It was one of the least
regarded professions of the day. There was a widely held suspicion that
monastic vows were a copout—an excuse for a man to secure a pleasant,
comfortable life without having to work or worry about where his next meal
was coming from.
Corruption abounded in the church, and monasteries and nunneries were known
for their sexual promiscuity and drunken excesses. It is reported that the
highest-ranking church official in England had six illegitimate children in
spite of his vows of abstinence.
But Luther's life was forever changed, at age 21, while riding a horse with
a friend through the woods during a violent storm. In the midst of a series
of lightening bolts that killed his friend he cried in mortal fear, "Help,
St. Anne, I will become a monk."
Two weeks later, on July 17, 1505, he said good-bye to an appalled father,
had a wild farewell party with his friends, and told them at the door of the
Augustinian monastery in Wittenberg, “You see me today and never again.” But
God had other plans. In his later years he said of that moment, “To the
world I had died, till God thought it was time.”
Martin Luther took his vows very seriously. He was driven by his desire to
find the merciful God. He said, “In the monastery I did not think about
women, money, or possessions; instead my heart trembled and fidgeted about
whether God would bestow his grace on me. For I had strayed from faith and
could not but imagine that I had angered God, whom I in turn had to appease
by doing good works.”
Luther worked so hard at fasting and prayer that he was sometimes found
unconscious in his austere little cubicle. He was obsessed that he would die
with some unknown sin that would condemn him. In spite of fasting, detailed
self-examination, even scourging, and every form of self-discipline that
existed in the already strict order he had joined, he was utterly without
peace of mind. The awful consciousness of the majesty and holiness of God,
which had almost crushed him as he celebrated his first mass, never
completely left him. He was tormented by the recognition of his own sin, and
by the question, “Have I fasted, watched, prayed and confessed enough?”
It was one day in 1508 or 1509 that the Holy Spirit opened Martin Luther's
eyes. He had been a monk for three or four years when, while reading the
first chapter of Romans, he was struck by verse 17: The just shall live
by faith. It was as if “…the door of heaven had been thrown open wide.”
It was to become the heart of Luther's theology, the truth that he would be
willing to die for: “justification by faith offered to us freely in the
gospel of Jesus Christ.” All of his writings, which were encyclopedic by any
human measure in any era, and for which he never took one cent while making
his publisher wealthy, were nothing but an expansion of those six words—the
just shall live by faith.
Those words did not remotely describe the Christian practice of his day, and
the unlikely monk began to write and preach his way, as a professor and
pastor of the Castle Church of Wittenberg, toward the collision with the
Church of Rome that changed history. He knew eternity was in the balance
every time he preached to his Saxon congregation and he knew the truth by
which God had enlightened him was unpopular and objectionable to some, but
he could do no less for the immortal souls entrusted to his care.
Most historians skim over the Reformation as an argument over indulgences
that financed all manner of escapades by a corrupt pope. Church members were
enticed to purchase them by the pope’s pronouncements that such would buy
their deceased relatives out of purgatory and into heaven—a blasphemous idea
and one of Luther’s ninety-five debating points.
But the real issue of the Reformation, “the hinge,” as Luther called it, was
justification by faith alone. Luther believed that justification by works as
practiced by the Catholic Church was not what God had revealed in the
Scriptures and was in fact under condemnation. He shared Augustine’s
conviction, stated over a thousand years earlier, and of course the apostle
Paul, that salvation was by grace alone (Romans 1:17, Ephesians 2:8-9).
As Luther stood before his accusers at the Diet of Worms he was the picture
of godly calm, but the day before, April 17th, the first day of his trial
had been a different story. He had ridden proudly into Worms at the head of
a massive entourage of his followers. When a friend advised him enroute by
letter not to enter Worms, he replied by letter in his usual bombastic way,
“Though there were as many devils in Worms as there are tiles on the roofs,
I will go there.”
Yet he was gravely ill enroute, probably from the stress. A crowd of 2000
people gathered around his carriage when he arrived in Worms at a guesthouse
of his King, Frederick the Wise of Saxony. He had been given safe passage by
the pope, but so had John Huss a century earlier, and virtually no one
thought it meant anything this time either. People were more anxious to see
Luther than the Emperor Charles V himself, a fact that must been hard on the
ego of the twenty-one-year-old emperor.
The first day of his trial Luther responded like a scared, almost crazy
person to Eck's demand to repudiate his writings. He bobbed his head up and
down and wrung his hands and asked in a barely audible voice for more time
to consider. They gave him overnight—most assuredly the longest night in his
life. It was up to him to decide whether to recant and live...or die in the
most hideous manner society of the Middle Ages could devise.
Some members of the Diet, as well as many others, actually came to him that
night and encouraged him to stick to his guns. Most secular rulers were sick
and tired of the Church of Rome siphoning off all the money of their
subjects. It left nothing for them to tax and their lifestyle suffered, but
they did not have the nerve themselves to defy the Church of Rome.
Some of them were very excited about the possibility of the separation of
church and state for the first time, and in Luther they saw the
possibilities for that to become a reality...and it did. Hence, Carlyle's
comment that it was the greatest moment in modern history. Distraught
Brother Martin prayed and prayed. He said, "Amen," then prayed some more.
“Help me, God. Help me, God. Amen. Help me, God. Help me, God.”
The next day, April 18th, was his last chance, and Eck repeated his question
in Latin, "Martinus, do you or do you not repudiate your books and the
errors they contain?"
Martin Luther, standing behind a table piled high with his writings, replied
in German rather than Latin, the mother tongue of all scholars and church
officials. His response was short and concluded with:
Unless I am convicted by the testimony of
Sacred Scripture or by evident reason...my conscience is captive to the word
of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against my conscience
is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I can do no other.
God help me. Amen.
Emperor Charles V was shaken. He foresaw the very foundations of the
existing social order crumbling if Luther was allowed to go unpunished and
his ideas proliferate...and he was right.
Luther went unpunished by the church in spite of their best efforts, because
his king, Frederick the Wise, arranged to have him "kidnapped" on his way
home from Worms. Martin was taken to one of the king’s cloud-shrouded
mountaintop castles where he dressed in knight’s clothes and went by the
moniker, Junker Georg.
That long year might as well been spent in prison as far as Luther was
concerned. His health suffered mightily there. He blamed it on bad beer
(probably a correct assumption, but water was not safe to drink) and the
devil. Luther had a highly developed sense of the devil and demons. He kept
a bucket of walnuts by his bed at night to throw at demons in that cold,
spooky old castle.
All of Europe was in such turmoil that Luther threw caution to the winds and
came down off the mountaintop. Thus the reluctant monk from Saxony who loved
life, loved to socialize with friends, sing and play the lute, was used by
God to change the world. He was bombastic, as were his writings and he was
usually his own worst enemy when it came to debate, but his sermons, hymns
and prodigious literary output electrified his age and every age since. And
his theme was the heart of the gospel: “…the just shall live by faith” in
Jesus Christ alone, the Son of God who paid for my sins.
Every Maundy Thursday as long as he lived—28 more tumultuous years—Luther
was number one on the pope’s published excommunication list. Even on his
deathbed, at age fifty-seven, an emissary of the pope was with Luther,
asking him to his last breath if he would repent.
It is in honor of Martin Luther, man of God, that my October pumpkin is
carved not with a ghoulish smile, but with the cross of my Savior, Jesus
Christ, who died to give this unworthy eternal life, and has graciously
given me the gift of faith in Him for its attainment. And it burns
incongruously among the jack-o-lanterns of the night to tell the world that,
by faith alone, here I stand at its foot. I can do no other.
PROXIMATE EVIL AND
ULTIMATE GOOD: AN ALLEGORY
October 18, 2005
My lexicon defines
allegory as a work of art in which a deeper meaning underlies the
superficial meaning. This story is an allegory—only God and I know which
parts are factualized fiction and which are fictionalized facts. It conveys
eternal verities about the effects of sin on an incorrigible country boy
before God’s saving grace got hold of him.
The most dangerous season
in my youthful years was Halloween—the tricks were much more fun than the
treats—and the mother of all mischief in those pre-indoor plumbing days was
upsetting outhouses. The day has pagan origins, and I can't think of
anything more pagan than upsetting thy neighbor's outhouse. Like most sins,
it was adrenalin-charged—no other caper matched the testosterone rush so
crucial to male adolescent development.
The most memorable sortie
of all my Halloween campaigns was the night we laid Gobbler Hollis's big
three-holer on its back. There were four of us: Stick, Face, Neg, and me.
“Neg” was short for negative, an allusion to his IQ. The other two names had
prurient connotations and are best left unexplained.
Gobbler farmed 240
flat-as-a-tabletop acres five miles south of Stronghurst, a village of 950
souls in western Illinois. His outhouse was behind a large coal shed located
in the back yard. Both structures, made of wood, were about fifty yards from
the back door of the big old two-story farmhouse and twenty feet in front of
the barnyard fence.
We had a full moon that
night, which was good and bad. It allowed us to see what we were doing, but
it was so bright that it also kept Gobbler's attack rooster awake and
crowing at the moon. The rooster, with his 100-hen harem, had the run of the
barnyard. Our strategy called for a semi-circular approach though the
pasture, over a couple of woven wire fences and across the barnyard to the
outhouse—out of shotgun range from the back door of the house—but that cocky
rooster considered any moving thing inside the barnyard fence a major threat
to his masculinity. (He had such a prodigious libido that Gobbler's wife,
Glennis, short and beamy, always had plenty of what she called “egg money”
tucked in her cleavage. She had room for a lot of egg money.)
We were forced to double
back around and make an assault through the front and side yard of Gobbler's
house. It was Indian summer, the windows were open and we could hear Gobbler
snoring as we sneaked by the side of the house. Gobbler was not a little
guy; he had height and awesome girth. If his shoelaces ever got tied, it was
because Glennis tied them. He bore an uncanny resemblance to his namesake,
both in form and movement. It was his size and terrible temper that had kept
his outhouse upright in Halloweens past.
There were several
obstacles in the yard to circumvent and remember. Remembering was important
because, unlike ingress, which was slow and stealthy, egress would be at top
speed and maximum panic.
Once past the side yard
we had to traverse the rhubarb patch, which was well above knee high, and
six rows of popcorn still standing right behind the rhubarb. Both should
have been harvested by now, but Gobbler never got in a hurry about such
things. Folks said that with ten kids he had other priorities.
The clothesline,
consisting of two strands of number nine wire, Adam's apple high, stretched
the width of the back yard. Its only break was midway, where the boardwalk,
one plank wide, led from the back door of the house to the outhouse.
Staying in the deepest
shadows, we arrived safely at our target hidden behind the coal shed. The
hen house was nearby, just ten feet beyond the barnyard fence. In the still
of the night we could hear the hens fluttering and intermittently
pluck-plucking their way through the night. The rooster stood frozen at the
door of his castle, head cocked, watching our every move.
Then we got a second bad
break. A cloud floated by and hid the moon. It got dark as the inside of a
cow as four adolescent heart rates approached their anaerobic limits. We
were panting like pups as we felt our way around the outhouse. The night air
was warm and humid, making it a noxious, eye-watering experience.
For all the heavy traffic
it had to handle, it was not a sturdy structure. There was only one way to
tip it over and that was backwards. The door was in the middle front, facing
the coal shed, and opened inward, leaving precious little solid wall for
four teenaged vandals to push against, and the coal shed was so close it
allowed a very poor angle of attack.
The trick was to
carefully tilt the outhouse past the point where it would fall backwards on
its own. Anyone who's ever done it, and there are probably very few of us
vets still around, knows that to reach that point, especially on those big
multi-holers, you had to lean well out across that odoriferous abyss. It
can't be a slam-bang kind of thing, like Nagurski slanting off-tackle, or
you'll end up face-down at the bottom of the pit. And if you're really
having a bad day the unit will settle back down where it came from and there
you are without a paddle.
Well, Neg was so scared
he asked if it would be okay if he used the facility before we upset it. We
said, “Yeah, but make it quick,” and he opened the creaking door and went on
in. The sound of him tearing pages out of the Sears catalogue seemed
sufficient to wake the dead. When he rejoined us we went over our escape
routes one last time. It would be four different directions approximately
thirty degrees apart. Twelve-gauge birdshot probably wouldn't kill anybody,
but the pattern of one shell with split wads would be wide enough to put
welts on the backsides of four boys running side by side.
Midnight. Zero hour. We
took up our positions and four shoulders leaned against the outhouse wall.
Slowly, amid grunts and heavy breathing, it began to tilt until we got it to
the balance point. Stick, the shortest one of the bunch, was stretched out
so far his whole body was trembling. On a whispered count of three we gave
it the last tweak it needed to come under gravity's spell. At the same
instant the moon came out from behind the cloud, and that macho rooster
began to crow.
The rest is just a muddle
of sounds and sights overlaid with heart-stopping fright. I remember the
deafening sound of crashing lumber as the outhouse disintegrated on contact,
followed by the siren sound of Glennis' call to battle. Boy, did she have a
set of lungs. I vaguely recall a noise like a hog in a mud wallow. That
would have been Stick. (We made him ride in the back of the pick-up all the
way back to town.) I'll never forget hearing what sounded like the roar of
a distraught bull, followed by someone going through a door without
bothering to open it, and followed by heavy artillery at close range. There
were the sounds of kids crying and screaming, chickens carrying on like
there was a skunk in the hen house, and the yowl of a cat in pain. I decided
later, judging from the scratches on my leg, that I must have stepped on the
cat during my egress. The only other sound was the dull thud of someone
landing hard on the ground. It occurred to me, as I legged it through the
night at Mach I, overdosed on adrenaline, that maybe Gobbler was firing deer
slugs and somebody was dead, but we learned later that it was just Face
trying to decapitate himself on the clothesline.
By grace alone we all
escaped with only superficial battle damage. Ultimate good came from that
proximate evil (Genesis 50:20): Gobbler got indoor plumbing and, of far
greater importance to my immortal soul, I repented, forsook my felonious
ways and God forgave the iniquity of my sin (Psalm 32:5).
Counting Butterflies
October 11, 2005
Boy, if the guys in the fighter squadron could see me now…up a tree counting
butterflies—52 in 31 minutes, to be exact. But not just any old
butterflies. I discovered my tree house sits just 25 feet off one of the
3,000 mile (one-way) migration flight paths of the king of the long-haul
migratory butterflies, the regal Danaus plexippus, otherwise known as
the monarch. No other butterflies and few birds come close to such a
journey. It’s a newsworthy seasonal event in western North Carolina, ever
since they used to darken the sky over the early settlers. Up on the Blue
Ridge Parkway, at the Cherry Cove Overlook near milepost 416, there’s a sign
telling visitors that it is on the monarch migratory route, and we’ve made
the 35-minute trek up there in late September to see them. Henceforth they
will come to us. At 12 miles per hour with no headwind, that means, by my
topo software, the monarch that cruised past my tree house crossed the Blue
Ridge Parkway an hour and twenty minutes earlier, on a heading of 190
degrees, and they’ve been doing it for millennia. Every monarch I saw was
within 12.5 feet of the airway centerline—that’s better navigation than I
ever claimed on my best stick-and-rudder day. And here is perhaps the most
amazing part of all. That butterfly has never been this way before. His
grandfather came by, southbound, last season but he probably did not live
long enough to get this far on the northbound trip in the spring. This
year’s monarch is headed for the same tree, 10,000 feet up in the
Sierra Madre mountains of central Mexico, that grandpa stayed in last
winter. Curiously, the migrating generation lives about nine months, while
those born in the summer live only 2-5 weeks. I’d like to hear Darwin’s
devotees describe the preposterous combination of time and chance that
caused this amazing creature’s navigation system to “evolve” in a segment of
a brain the size of a pinhead…or sprout wings that are, in humans terms, 25
feet long, then flap them all day long for 3000 miles. It is more likely
10³º blind men could simultaneously solve a Rubik’s cube, as Britain’s Sir
Fred Hoyle put it.
I noticed that they all follow the same cruising altitude of six feet above
obstacles, as if on terrain following radar, climbing over tall trees, not
going around, and then descending to maintain a ground hugging altitude
above the forest. Some plow along head down in a straight line, others
dodge and feint, zig and zag. And a few fly in a most unique two-butterfly
formation, dosey-do-ing along like young lovers, greatly increasing their
mileage but exuding a happiness in the journey.
 The picture of a male monarch, by my wife, Karen, was taken at Butterfly
World, in Florida. The ones that cruised by my tree house stopped for
nothing. Their distinctive black-bordered orange color lead the early
American settlers to name them after William the III, monarch of England,
also known as William of Orange. The color also keeps the predatory birds
away—they know that color butterfly is poison to them.
I feel an affinity with that butterfly. He knows exactly where he’s going,
even though he’s never been there before. He’s headed for a specific tree
in the Sierra Madre and I’m headed for heaven. The same Creator who made
those billions of beautiful butterflies with the incredibly navigation
system built into their genes also predestined my journey before I was born
(Romans 8:29-30).
Of all the butterflies headed south, many won’t make it. Likewise, of all
humans who claim to be Christians, some worship a god of their own
imagination and won’t make it (Matthew 7:22) to their intended destination.
Many hazards plague butterflies enroute, the biggest being weather and
microbial predators. A few winters ago a severe cold snap killed many
millions of monarchs in Mexico. In the same manner the Christian voyage is
a hazardous trip through a fallen world of hurricanes, earthquakes and
satanic predators. My favorite book to read to my grandchildren is an
illustrated version of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, entitled Dangerous
Journey. A distressing number of pompous pagan truth-benders today think
Christians are poison to the culture, but, like those merry monarchs, no one
can take away my joy in the journey (John 16:22).
The greatest most mind-boggling truth of all, that had me hanging on to my
tree house for dear life, was the realization that those magnificent
monarchs and I are both guided by the same sovereign God (Matthew 10:29-31,
Luke 12:6-7), but how much more me, His child, made in His image (Genesis
1:26), infinitely loved, and eternally secure in the palm of His hand (John
10:28)? I have been His since before the morning stars sang at creation
(Ephesians 1:4, Job 38:4-7).
Oh LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth (Psalm 8:1)!
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