It is Great Gain to Die!

Paul says in Philippians 1:21, ‘For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.’ (RSV)  It would seem a very strange and pathological thing to say!  But for the Christian, it is good to ponder death.  Piper believes that ‘we should live well that we might die well.  Part of living well is learning why death is gain.’

I just read one of John Piper’s weekly articles on this specific topic.  I really encourage you to have a look too.  It will leave you longing for death…(there’s a phrase you don’t see often!).

You can find it at: http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/TasteAndSee/ByTitle/4066_It_Is_Great_Gain_to_Die/

The Miniature Earth

Isaiah 10:1-3: ‘Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right,that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey! What will you do on the day of punishment, in the ruin that will come from afar? To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth?’

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The three ‘S’s are nearly extinct

I was listening to another lecture on C. S. Lewis yesterday, given by Knox Chamblin from the Reformed Theological Seminary, and he was speaking about Lewis’ grief over our modern view of reality.  Lewis urges us back to a Middle Ages view of reality, one where man is not at the top of dark chaos, but at the bottom with a sovereign light above.  He reasons that our problem is that we consider reality only as what can be seen, taped and measured.  And sadly, this understanding of reality is due to our increasing snobbery.  There is nothing, according to C. S. Lewis, that has contributed to our chronological snobbery as much as the advances of technology.  In other words, the birth of machines pulls our further away from God.  Where we once lived, NOT in ignorance, but in the knowledge that there is a greater source of knowledge, we now live in a time where we deny that there is such a source that knows more than us, and try to explain what we don’t know as just chaotic coincidences and accidents.  And we turn and call those in the Middle Ages ignorant, naive, simple and backward.

Chamblin argues that there is a great paradox underlying all this, which the devil delights in.  He quotes a book (I can’t remember the name of the actual book, but it’s a new take on C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters): ‘they [humans] need leisure as much as they need work so we’ve [the devil and his followers] been at work abolishing leisure from their land through all the time-saving devices of modern technology.’.  What a sad, sad truth.  We pride ourselves in the invention and use of email, the internet, email for the mobile phone, etc. etc. so that we might save time and thus use it for leisure, but we become enslaved to the very thing that we sought to free ourselves from: work.  As a result, we neglect and thus consider as unworthy of our time three important things: silence, solitude and simplicity.  No longer do we put time out to sit at the park and admire a bird perched on the tree before us, or just waste time talking to God.  Or we feel that each day of our lives must be filled with activity, or else it would be unproductive.  I felt really rebuked by that; one thing that I’ve realised about myself these uni holidays is how much I dislike having no schedule.  And more than that, how little I treasure those three ‘S’s.  I’m always thinking about how long I’m spending at doing something, even when I don’t have anything planned.  It definitely brings a lot of shame thinking about how I pray as well.  I don’t think I’ve ever just sat there and talked to God without a care for what I might do next.  I’m praying that God would help me to treasure silence, solitude and simplicity in my life, and I pray that He might move you to do the same.

The Paradoxical God

I was reading Psalm 39 a few days ago and I’ve been chewing over it still.  Here is the psalm:

Psalm 39

What Is the Measure of My Days?

To the choirmaster: to Jeduthun. A Psalm of David.

¹I said, “I will guard my ways,
that I may not sin with my tongue;
I will guard my mouth with a muzzle,
so long as the wicked are in my presence.”
²I was mute and silent;
I held my peace to no avail,
and my distress grew worse.
³My heart became hot within me.
As I mused, the fire burned;
then I spoke with my tongue:

⁴“O LORD, make me know my end
and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting I am!
⁵Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths,
and my lifetime is as nothing before you.
Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!
Selah

⁶Surely a man goes about as a shadow!
Surely for nothing they are in turmoil;
man heaps up wealth and does not know who will gather!

⁷“And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?
My hope is in you.
⁸Deliver me from all my transgressions.
Do not make me the scorn of the fool!
⁹ I am mute; I do not open my mouth,
for it is you who have done it.
¹⁰ Remove your stroke from me;
I am spent by the hostility of your hand.
¹¹When you discipline a man
with rebukes for sin,
you consume like a moth what is dear to him;
surely all mankind is a mere breath!
Selah

¹² “Hear my prayer, O LORD,
and give ear to my cry;
hold not your peace at my tears!
For I am a sojourner with you,
a guest, like all my fathers.
¹³ Look away from me, that I may smile again,
before I depart and am no more!”

It sounds like King David is in a really bad diplomatic situation – that somehow his enemies are making him talk, and as much as he refuses, it is costing him to do so.  But I think the more interesting thing is the way he thinks about God, and consequently his attitude towards his situation.

David begs God to remind him of his nothingness, of the fleeting-ness of his life and, more importantly, that God himself has made it so (vv. 4-6).  I think that would be a pretty strange thing to ask God to do at a time like his!  I know that if it were me, I’d probably be asking God to help prolong the little of life that I have left and to remind me that he cares for me and I am loved!  But what David asks God to do makes a lot of sense when you read what he is convicted by in the next verse: “And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?  My hope is in you.” (v. 7)  David doesn’t really care whether his life is prolonged or not, whether his enemies abuse him further or let him go, because his hope is not in that.  His hope is in the one who makes us, determines the length of our days and who is the ultimate and only Judge that we should fear.  But at the same time, as Judge, he is therefore the only one who we can find hope and grace and mercy in!  And I think that’s why David prays to God to “deliver [him] from all [his] transgressions” (v.8) and “remove [God’s] stroke from [him]’ (v. 10a).  But he also knows that when God disciplines us, as a loving Father would his son, he will “consume like a moth what is dear to him [us]” (v. 11).

I think there’s great comfort in this song/poem that David writes.  There’s the wonderful truth that God is a God who does forgive us our transgressions when we ask that of him, and also, paradoxically, that he is Judge and the only one we should fear.  But at the same time, I was challenged to remember that when we do ask forgiveness, there is an implied and ready willingness to be ready for God to transform us, through discipline, which might mean a taking-away of what is dear to us.  I think the hard bit is feeling the conviction that this taking-away is good and gracious of him, rather than unfair and mean and selfish of him.  My hope and prayer, if you are reading this, is that we’d be like David in our attitude towards God, fearing, in reverence, of his awesomeness and judgement, but delighting in it also because he is Good.  I pray that we might be perfectly happy to surrender the clutter that we hold dear to ourselves so that he might show us what’s the best to hold dear.