Jon Bloom's Blog, page 4

What Does a Faith Crisis Feel Like?

At some point, many Christians experience unsettling doubts regarding their professed beliefs. Some Christians experience this more than others.

The areas of our individual doubt struggles are as diverse and complex as our Christian faith claims. Some battle doubts about the genuineness of their conversion (“Have I truly been born again?”). Some battle doubts about the character of God (“Is God truly good?”). Some battle doubts about the validity of their theological framework (“Does Calvinism truly represent the biblical revelation of God’s nature, purposes, and actions?”). Some battle doubts about the authenticity of their spiritual experiences (“Was my remarkably fast health recovery after receiving prayer truly a divine healing?”). Some battle doubts about the veracity of the Christian faith itself (“Does God truly exist?” or “Does another religion or belief system more truly reveal the nature of ultimate reality?”). Some battle a hodgepodge of these and still other kinds of doubts.

For most Christians, the intensity of their doubts falls into the mildly to moderately troubling range. In relation to faith-health, these battles with doubt are like battling a bad cold or flu — they require care, but they are not faith-threatening. However, a minority of Christians (though I’d say a substantial minority) endure one or more seasons of doubt so intense we’ve given them a special term: faith crises.

When Doubts Become Crises

To call these experiences crises is not hyperbole. When a confluence of factors moves us to question whether our fundamental understanding of reality is indeed true, it can feel like our world is on the verge of collapse. In relation to faith-health, this kind of doubt is more like a heart attack or stroke.

I say this from experience. Like everyone, I occasionally battle some doubts that are like a cold or the flu. But more than once in my forty-year sojourn as a Christian, I’ve also endured doubts more like a heart attack. I know the oppressive spiritual darkness, the agonizing fear, the disorienting confusion, the sense of isolation.

Since I am part of the substantial minority of Christians who have (or will) experience this, I thought it might be helpful if I briefly describe the emotional and psychological state a person often is in when such a crisis hits. My goal is to increase awareness in Christians — especially those who have not experienced a faith crisis themselves — of the destabilized state someone enduring a faith crisis can be in. Such awareness can help us extend the most needed kinds of initial “crisis care” when ministering grace to beloved brothers and sisters who are reeling.

Stage 1: The Build-Up

A person’s faith crisis often appears to happen suddenly. Someone you know (perhaps you) seems to have a strong, sturdy faith. Then, all of sudden, it looks like their faith is falling apart. And you wonder, “What happened?”

Although that’s the way it often appears, rarely do such crises come out of nowhere. Almost always, destabilizing elements have been building up under the surface, even if the person wasn’t fully aware.

All of us experience and observe realities that don’t seem to make sense within our Christian worldview or our theological framework. Often, we’re able to mentally file these under Scriptural categories such as:

Proverbs 3:5: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

Or Isaiah 55:8–9: My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

But some people, over time, gradually accumulate sufficient, seemingly incoherent experiences and observations that their faith becomes destabilized, often more than they realize. Each experience or observation on its own likely causes them only mild to moderate confusion or unsettledness — it looks and feels much like the doubt common to all believers, which may be why they don’t more urgently address them prior to the crisis moment. But if enough faith-destabilizing elements build up, such people, even if they don’t consciously realize it, become vulnerable to a faith crisis, only needing the right (or wrong) catalyst to set it off.

Stage 2: The Catalyst

Sometimes a catalyst moment is a significant life event, like a betrayal or a tragedy. But often, it is an apparently and surprisingly insignificant event, like an offhanded comment someone makes in an ordinary conversation.

Whatever the catalyst event, when it occurs it ignites a kind of chain reaction. It’s as if the various destabilizing elements that have built up now psychologically fuse together into a sudden awareness that the person’s belief system — Christianity as ultimate reality — might not be true, but might instead be, like other belief systems, a human construct. This awareness produces a kind of internal explosion: a faith crisis (which nowadays some might refer to as a deconstruction).

What’s important to keep in mind when ministering to someone experiencing this, especially in the early stages of the crisis, is that the catalyst event, whether extraordinary or mundane, is frequently not what’s only, or even mainly, fueling the person’s crisis. Often, well-meaning friends coming alongside a person in faith crisis can focus too much on the catalyst and give too little attention to the doubts and experiences that built up over months or years.

The catalyst is more like a lit match dropped on an accumulated pile of tinder, or like the last Jenga block pulled that suddenly brings the weakened structure down. And when it happens, the person usually finds himself suddenly caught in a raging spiritual tempest.

Stage 3: The Storm

For those who haven’t experienced a faith crisis, it’s hard to capture in words what it feels like. As I have tried, I have found a storm to be a helpful metaphor.

The human brain is a remarkably, even incomprehensibly, powerful and complex creation. The speed at which it can process, especially in a state of alarm, is incredible. And people in the initial stages of a faith crisis are typically in a state of alarm. The brain is processing in overdrive — and not only processing the Christian claims in question, but the possible implications of those bedrock claims proving untrue. And they’re trying to resolve those overwhelming questions in a storm of anguishing emotions.

If those who have taken their faith seriously suddenly and unexpectedly experience the kind of internal faith explosion I described above, resulting in intense doubts regarding their fundamental beliefs, these are the sorts of implications crashing in on them:

That God — the Person they have most profoundly trusted, most deeply loved, most passionately worshiped, the one they believed they have experienced and been led by, the one they’ve oriented their whole life around and taught others about — might not be real. And if God’s not real, much of what they’ve found meaningful in life would either be a delusion or built on a delusion. And if they’ve been deluded, what is real? What does everything mean? They wonder, “Who am I?” And if they were to lose their faith, they’d grieve and confuse believing family members and friends they love deeply, and lose a priceless dimension of relational connection they have shared with those loved ones. And they would lose the church community that has been integral to their lives. And if they’re in vocational ministry — because pastors, missionaries, and vocational Christian workers of all kinds are not immune from faith crises — then they’d lose both the missional purpose that oriented their lives as well as gainful employment. And what would they do, or even want to do, next? And most frightening of all, if they were to lose their faith only to discover too late that their doubts had deceived them, they would be condemned to hell, and may cause others to stumble and end up there too.

Hopefully you can see why this experience is so often psychologically disorienting and emotionally distressing.

What I want to stress here is that when we are ministering to those who have recently entered a faith crisis, it’s important to get as clear a sense as possible of their state of mind before attempting to seriously engage the faith questions they’re wrestling with. Because for some, their inner turmoil, their internal storm, is overwhelming. I like to say that when a faith crisis hits, it’s like trying to think and discern clearly in a hurricane. It’s wise to assume strugglers’ anxiety and fear levels are running high, that they’re depressed, and they’re in need of rest, since this experience often robs them of sleep at night.

At this moment, what a person in faith crisis often needs most is not immediate answers, but shelter.

Providing Shelter in the Storm

Shelter is what anyone caught in raging storm seeks. A shelter doesn’t end a storm, but it does provide a storm-tossed struggler a measure of needed respite, safety, and peace.

Jude instructs us to “have mercy on those who doubt” (Jude 22). Providing merciful shelter for a Christian in the tumultuous throes of a faith crisis is one way to show mercy, and one of the most important initial ways we can extend “crisis care” to him.

But what does it mean to provide spiritual shelter for someone in this kind of spiritual storm? Like most parts in the Christian life, there’s no simple formula. People’s faith-crisis experiences are unique. Their doubts are unique, their contexts are unique, their histories are unique, their temperaments are unique, their spiritual-maturity levels are unique, and so on. Therefore, the kind of merciful shelter each person needs will be unique. Faith crises are complex, and God’s mercy is many-faceted.

But we know what people experience when they find a storm shelter: their fear reduces, they breathe easier, and they’re able to rest. In a spiritual shelter, a person can be open and honest about their doubts and fears, release pent-up emotions, and God willing, gain some much-needed, Spirit-granted perspective and guidance.

Providing this kind of merciful shelter for someone requires discernment. And discernment requires a listening ear. Which means, while God hasn’t given us a one-size-fits-all formula for how to do this, he has given us a governing principle we can apply: “Let every person [who wishes to have mercy on those who doubt] be quick to hear [and] slow to speak” (James 1:19). This is crucial because we won’t know what (or if) to speak unless we have first carefully and prayerfully heard.

So, as we seek to care for those in a faith crisis, we’re wise to remember that (1) the crisis is often the sudden explosion of doubts that have accumulated over time, (2) the crisis is often ignited by a catalyst event that may itself not be fueling their doubts, and (3) their most pressing initial need may not be our immediately addressing their doubts, but experiencing through us the sheltering mercy of Jesus, who extends this invitation to all strugglers: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

What Does ‘Deconstruction’ Even Mean?

“Deconstruction” is a term that has increasingly been used in evangelical circles, especially over the past decade. But it is a confusing term, because there’s no single or simple definition for “deconstruction.” It has different meanings in different contexts. It has technical meanings in certain academic contexts and various informal meanings when current and former evangelicals use it to describe their (or others’) faith experiences.

It’s not surprising that many are asking some form of, “What does ‘deconstruction’ even mean?” It’s an important question and needs clarifying answers — certainly more answers than I can adequately cover here. But I hope to provide something of an introductory overview.

First, we’ll examine briefly where the term, “deconstruction,” came from, so we can, second, understand the primary ways evangelicals are using the term today.

Where Did ‘Deconstruction’ Come From?

In the 1960s, a French philosopher named Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) began to advocate for a postmodern philosophy of language and its relationship to our conceptions of meaning that he called “deconstruction.” It is an abstruse philosophy and notoriously difficult (some say impossible) to summarize. In fact, Derrida himself refused to summarize deconstruction, claiming that his whole life’s work was a summary of his philosophy.

Nevertheless, I’ll take a shot at summarizing it as I currently understand it — and stick with me, because knowing something of where “deconstruction” comes from will hopefully give us insight into why some Christians have adopted and adapted it to describe their experiences — and why many find it confusing.

A fundamental assumption undergirding Derrida’s philosophy is that humans, through biological evolution, developed the capacity to impose psychological constructs of meaning upon their world as a survival mechanism. In other words, meaning — as in the ultimate meaning of things — is a human psychological creation, not a discovery or divine revelation of absolute truth.

Therefore, deconstruction asserts that human language at best communicates, not absolute truth, but how a certain individual conceives of truth at a certain moment in time, in the contexts of his cultural, political, religious, environmental, and experiential influences.

Therefore, deconstruction asserts that philosophers (or theologians) consult written works of the past in vain to discover absolute truth or meaning, since all they’re encountering are other authors’ constructs of truth or meaning. And not only that, but the more distant a reader is culturally, linguistically, and historically from an author, the less the reader will understand what the author actually had in mind when he used terms like truth, justice, good, evil, etc.

And therefore, the philosophy of deconstruction asserts that in an effort to understand as much as possible what an author actually meant by the language he used, sophisticated methods of textual criticism must be employed to deconstruct the author’s words in order to decipher the conceptual constructs that shaped that author’s understanding of truth and meaning.

Let me try to simplify it even more. If I understand Derrida correctly, deconstruction is

A literary philosophy arguing that we’re wrong to assume that by merely reading an author’s words we can understand something about absolute truth, since our conception of truth — our constructs of what everything means — will be significantly different from the author’s; and

Deconstruction is a method of literary criticism that takes apart and analyzes an author’s use of language in effort to discern his construct of meaning.

For Derrida, there is no meaning outside the text of a philosopher’s written work — no absolute truth that the writer is shedding light on for the reader. There’s only the writer’s construct of meaning, of truth, represented in the text he wrote.

Which means that there is no absolute truth inside the philosopher’s text either. Just a reflection of how the author interpreted what the world means. Which, according to Derrida, is what meaning is for all of us: a human psychological construct shaped by multiple influences.

Why Have Christians Adopted ‘Deconstruction’?

So, why have Christians adopted the term “deconstruction” from a philosophy based on principles of philosophical naturalism? I think we can make a connection from something theologian Kevin Vanhoozer has written about Derrida:

The motive behind Derrida’s strategy of undoing [deconstruction] stems from his alarm over illegitimate appeals to authority and exercises of power. The belief that one has reached the single correct Meaning (or God, or “Truth”) provides a wonderful excuse for damning those with whom one disagrees as either “fools” or “heretics.” . . . Neither Priests, who supposedly speak for God, nor Philosophers, who supposedly speak for Reason, should be trusted; this “logocentric” claim to speak from a privileged perspective (e.g., Reason, the Word of God) is a bluff that must be called, or better, “deconstructed.” (Is There a Meaning in this Text?, 21–22)

Over the decades since Derrida introduced his philosophy of deconstruction, the term has worked its way into the common vernacular where it now has come to generally mean “a critical dismantling of tradition and traditional modes of thought.”

In other words, “deconstruction” has become a kind of shorthand term that, in addition to critically questioning traditional ways of thinking, also implies a refusal to recognize as authorities those who see themselves (or are perceived to see themselves) as ones who “claim to speak from a privileged perspective” about what truth is.

In the Christian world, this translates to critically questioning traditional modes of Christian belief, and often refusing to recognize as authorities those perceived as occupying privileged Christian institutional positions who “supposedly speak for God.”

Now, because this is only a brief overview, that explanation is unavoidably reductionistic. Christian experiences of deconstruction are complex and often very painful. But viewed from 30,000 feet, these characteristics — of questioning traditional Christian beliefs and rejecting supposed Christian authorities — are, I believe, why some have adopted the term.

What Evangelicals Mean by ‘Deconstruction’

And, I believe, it’s why some evangelicals (and former evangelicals) have also adopted Derrida’s term. Perhaps we might say it like this:

Deconstruction is a critical dismantling of a person’s understanding of what it means to be an evangelical Christian, and in some cases a refusal to recognize as authorities those perceived as occupying privileged evangelical institutional positions who “supposedly speak for God.”

But this definition still leaves plenty of room for confusion because the “dismantling” can look quite different for different people. For instance, here are four primary ways I hear evangelicals applying the term deconstruction.

Dismantling Harmful Cultural Influences

A smaller group of evangelicals use deconstruction to describe ways to protect historical evangelical doctrine and healthy practices. For example, in the final episode of the podcast, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, Paul Tripp says,

We should all be deconstructing our faith — we better do it. Because our faith becomes a culture, a culture so webbed into the purity of truth that it’s hard to separate the two. And we better do some deconstructing or we’re going to find ourselves again and again in these sad places. (Aftermath, 36:57)

If you listen to Tripp’s full quote, it’s clear that what he means by “deconstruction” is a critical dismantling not of historical orthodox Christian beliefs, or rejecting the oversight of New Testament-endorsed faithful, godly, spiritual leaders (Hebrews 13:7), but of cultural influences that distort and redefine the faith in unbiblical, harmful ways.

Dismantling Doctrines

A larger group use deconstruction to describe ways they have arrived at the conviction that certain historic evangelical doctrines must be adapted or altered. For example, in his book, Deconstructing Evangelicalism, Jamin Hübner writes,

Deconstruction simply refers to the process of questioning one’s own beliefs (that were once considered unquestionable) due to new experiences, reading widely, engaging in conversations with “the other,” and interacting in a world that is now more connected and exposed to religious diversity than ever before. (Deconstructing Evangelicalism, 20)

In the full context of his book, it’s clear that what Hübner means by deconstruction is “a critical dismantling” of evangelical beliefs that experience, education, and scientific discoveries have rendered obsolete or harmful. Hübner, like many, does not reject the Christian faith altogether, but claims that evangelicals in general distort the faith. And he refuses to recognize as authorities those he considers spokesmen of the “American-evangelical-industrial-complex” (18). I believe it’s fair to say that this generally is the position of numerous former evangelicals who now identify as “progressive” Christians.

Dismantling Christianity

A significant number of those who formerly professed an evangelical faith use deconstruction to describe their departure from Christianity altogether. This is probably the most frequent way I see the term used on social media. And it’s the use I prefer the least because it tends to conflate deconstruction with deconversion.

Now, likely most people who refer to their “deconversion” from Christianity (evangelical or otherwise) as their “deconstruction” went through a process of critically dismantling their understanding of what it means to be a Christian that resulted in their abandoning the Christian faith, and that’s what why they label it as deconstruction.

But because they use deconstruction and deconversion synonymously, when some evangelicals now hear “deconstruction,” they immediately assume “deconversion.” But deconstruction is a process; deconversion is a result. And it’s only one possible result. Others go through a deconstruction process that results in a strengthened, invigorated faith.

Constructive Dismantling

In 1951, Francis Schaeffer, having recently moved his family to Switzerland to launch a new mission, suddenly found himself plunged into a spiritual crisis.

As Schaeffer contrasted the New Testament’s description of Christian love with the suspicious, angry, separatistic culture of American Protestantism he had been a part of for the previous two decades, he was “torn to pieces by the lack of reality.” He questioned whether Christianity itself was real. For agonizing months, he dismantled his beliefs and reassembled them piece by piece. As a result, Schaeffer emerged with a greater confidence in the core truth claims of Christianity and a deep, life-changing, ministry-shaping conviction that Christian truth and love are inseparable.

Schaeffer’s experience is not uncommon and so serves as a good illustration of the sort of “deconstruction” that represents the experience of many who still call themselves evangelical. However, the term most people recognize for such an experience is a faith crisis.

Responding to Deconstructing Christians

So, what does deconstruction even mean? It means different things in different contexts. It is a postmodern philosophical label that has been adopted by current and former evangelicals to sometimes mean navigating a faith crisis, to sometimes mean identifying harmful cultural influences that distort the true gospel, to sometimes mean questioning and rejecting traditional evangelical doctrines and authority figures, or to sometimes mean departing the Christian faith altogether.

How should we respond to deconstructing Christians? I hope to return in a future article to delve into this question in more detail, but the short answer is, we should respond as faithful Christians have long responded. In the typical ways evangelicals use the term, deconstruction isn’t new. Since the church’s earliest days, some have endured faith crises, some have been harmed by sinful cultural influences, some have questioned traditional doctrines and church authorities, and some have departed the faith. And to each person, whatever their struggle, we are called to extend the grace of Christ.

What does that mean? Well, the grace of Christ will have various manifestations and measures in various contexts. For as we see in the New Testament, grace comes in many forms. Sometimes it’s tender; sometimes it’s tough. We are to “give grace” in whatever way “fits the occasion” (Ephesians 4:29). Which means, what form of grace a particular struggler needs is an issue of prayerful discernment.

But it’s helpful to keep in mind that a deconstructing Christian is often someone in significant pain. Anyone, like me, who has gone through a faith crisis (or multiple ones) knows that it’s not some abstract academic exercise. Questioning our foundational beliefs and wrestling with doubts about them often feels like we’re being, in Francis Schaeffer’s words, “torn to pieces.” If you read more in-depth about Schaeffer’s faith crisis and reconstruction process, you will see how disturbing, disorienting, and frightening it can be to experience (or to watch a loved one experience).

So, as we seek to extend the grace of Christ to someone experiencing deconstruction — however passively or actively, however privately or publicly — it will be important to press in carefully, ask clarifying questions, and listen well, to inform how we do or do not respond, so that our love may “abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment” (Philippians 1:9).

The Light We Need to See: How Christ Dispels Spiritual Darkness

One recent early morning, I was reading Psalm 36 and savoring one of the sweetest doxologies in the Bible:

How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
     The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
They feast on the abundance of your house,
     and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
For with you is the fountain of life;
     in your light do we see light. (Psalm 36:7–9)

I love the way David stacks wonder upon wonder: the protection of God’s wings, the abundant feast in God’s house, the refreshing river of God’s delights, the fountain of God’s life.

But that last phrase stopped me in my tracks: “in your light do we see light.” It’s not as if I hadn’t noticed it before. I’ve loved the phrase for years. It’s as poetically beautiful as it is insightful. But that morning the profundity of it gripped me.

Just think about it for a moment: in your light do we see light. Do you know what David means? That’s what I asked myself. What is this “light”? And what is the corresponding darkness? And what light do we see in God’s light?

More than Meets the Eye

We know David is using natural sunlight as a metaphor for divine or spiritual light, an image used numerous times in Scripture — though it is also true to say that natural light is a kind of metaphorical representation of God, since he is the “true light” (John 1:9). Either way, when we ask what light is, natural or divine, we soon discover that it is not simple.

We think we know what light is until we’re forced to define it. If asked, we might be able to manage something like, “Natural light on earth is the electromagnetic radiance of the sun.” But beyond that, most of us would start stumbling about. The deeper science has delved into the nature of light, the more complexity we’ve discovered. There’s far more to light than meets the eye.

The same is true of divine light. The Bible describes it as the very radiance of God’s glory (see Revelation 21:23). If we’re asked to define this divine light, we might be able to manage (with John Piper’s help) something like, “The light of God’s glory is the radiance of ‘the infinite beauty and greatness of God’s manifold perfections.’” But again, beyond that, most of us would be hard pressed to give an articulate answer. There’s far more to God’s light than meets the spiritual “eye.”

But we know what light essentially does for us, both natural and divine.

Light and Life

In the natural realm, we depend on the sun’s light for illumination. Our physical bodies have eyes and therefore we need light to show us where we are and where we need to go. We also need it to help us see and avoid or evade the myriad dangers around us. We have good reason to have a natural fear of the dark, because it conceals those dangers. Darkness veils creatures, inanimate objects, and environments that can seriously injure or kill us. And in the dark, we don’t know the way to go.

But the sun also literally gives our bodies life. In order to survive, we eat plants that eat light, or we eat animals that eat plants that eat light. Our bodies also absorb vital nutrients directly from sunlight and would not be able to survive without the heating effect that this electromagnetic radiance produces.

So, natural light shows us the way we should go, reveals what’s true about our surroundings, and literally gives and sustains our bodily lives.

The same is true of the divine spiritual light David refers to in Psalm 36:9, the light that God is (1 John 1:5) and the light that God gives (Revelation 21:23–25) frequently described in Scripture:

Divine light shows us the way to go. “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105). Divine light reveals what’s true about our spiritual surroundings. “The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned” (Matthew 4:16). Divine light literally gives us spiritual life: “God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

It is no accident that David paired “life” and “light” together in Psalm 36:9. For spiritual light and life, like natural light and life, are woven inextricably together.

Light that Is Darkness

David doesn’t explicitly mention “darkness” in Psalm 36, the spiritual counter to God’s light. But he opens the psalm with a description of it:

Transgression speaks to the wicked
     deep in his heart;
there is no fear of God
     before his eyes.
For he flatters himself in his own eyes.
     that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated.
The words of his mouth are trouble and deceit;
     he has ceased to act wisely and do good.
He plots trouble while on his bed;
     he sets himself in a way that is not good;
     he does not reject evil. (Psalm 36:1–4)

The darkness that concerns David is the “darkened foolish heart” (Romans 1:21) of “the wicked” whose mind “the god of this world has blinded” to keep him from seeing God’s light (2 Corinthians 4:3). And it is a terrible darkness. Here’s how Jesus describes it:

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (Matthew 6:22–23)

Part of what makes this darkness terrible is that it masquerades as light. You think you know where you are and where you’re going, but you don’t. You think you see what’s true about your spiritual surroundings, but you don’t. You think you are fully alive, but you aren’t. The light in you is darkness, and in this “light,” you don’t see light.

That is a great darkness.

Light of All Worlds

However, for all those dwelling in such darkness, there is incredibly good news. For Jesus, “the true light, which gives light to everyone, [came] into the world” precisely to dispel this great darkness (John 1:9). And he says,

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. (John 8:12)

Read that again carefully. Now read this: “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). What do you see? What you’re looking at when you look at Jesus is the incarnation of Psalm 36:9: “in your light do we see light.”

Jesus is the light of life (John 8:12) and the life of light (John 1:4). He embodies all that we know spiritual light is and does. He is “the way” and shows us the way to go; he is “the truth” and reveals the truth of our spiritual surroundings; and he is “the life” and gives us life — he’s the light from which we derive our very life (John 14:6). And in his light, we not only see light, we become “light in the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8) and therefore become ourselves “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14).

Jesus is the personified, incarnated “radiance of the glory of God” (Hebrews 1:3). He is the “true light” of this world, and he will be the true light of the world to come (Revelation 21:23). Which means Jesus is the true light of all worlds.

David would not have known all this when he wrote Psalm 36:9. But he knew God. He knew God was “the true light, which gives light to everyone” who believes in him (John 1:9). He knew that the darkness was great, but that God’s “light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). He knew God was the life-giving light of the world. And so out of his faith-filled, worshiping heart flowed this beautiful, profound, poetic doxology:

For with you is the fountain of life;
     in your light do we see light.

Holy Distractions: When God Interrupts Our Productivity

The ever-growing body of literature on productivity overwhelmingly agrees with what we all know by experience: interruptions reduce our productivity. So naturally, most of the literature focuses on ways we can reduce our interruptions because they distract us from productive work.

And for good reason: many of our interruptions are distractions. But not all interruptions are distractions. Some interruptions are more important than our current productivity. The problem, however, is that we often struggle to recognize these important interruptions in the moment.

As Christians, the stakes rise when we consider that what may appear at first as a simple interruption is actually an unplanned assignment from our Lord. So, how can we discern the difference?

First, I should define what I mean by interruption, distraction, and unplanned assignment.

Interruption: An unplanned occurrence that urges you to shift your attention away from one of your responsibilities to something else.

Distraction: An unplanned occurrence that tempts you to shift your attention away from something of greater importance to something of lesser importance.

Unplanned assignment: An unplanned occurrence that calls you to shift your attention away from something you think is a good use of time as a servant of Christ to something Christ may consider a better use of the time.

Of course, God has not given us a formula we can apply to all situations. In fact, an interruption that’s an unplanned assignment on one day might be a distraction on another day. In other words, this is an issue of discernment. And discernment is learned by constant practice (Hebrews 5:14) as we are transformed in Christ by the renewal of our minds (Romans 12:2).

But the Bible does provide principles we can use in honing our discernment. Two stories provide needed help.

Apostolic Distraction

In Acts 6, a potentially explosive situation was developing in the new, rapidly growing church. “A complaint by the Hellenists [Jewish Christians from Greek-speaking nations] arose against the Hebrews [Jewish Christians native to Palestine] because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution” (Acts 6:1).

We’re not told why these vulnerable women were being neglected. But it’s clear the problem wasn’t being addressed, and frustration was spreading. The complaints carried strains of ethnic tension. As the past few years have reminded us all, such issues can quickly sour relationships, break trust, and sow suspicion. So, the situation was growing serious, and an appeal was made to the apostles to get involved.

This situation came as a potential interruption to the apostles’ work. Was it a distraction or an unplanned assignment?

After the apostles prayed and discussed this issue together, here’s what they discerned:

It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. (Acts 6:2–4)

The apostles discerned this was a distraction.

This example illustrates how much we need discernment. An interruption may initially appear (to us or others) as God’s unplanned assignment for us because the issue is important, and we might even bear responsibility to make sure it’s addressed. But it is still a distraction if our direct involvement is not more important than remaining focused on our primary callings. Christ has given this assignment to someone else.

Parabolic Assignment

In Luke 10, Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan, who, while traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, came upon a severely injured man lying in the road, a victim of robbers. This situation interrupted the Samaritan’s journey. Was it a distraction or an unplanned assignment?

Jesus’s story works as an example because all of his listeners knew it was based on real events. Jericho Road was notoriously dangerous because of robbers; real travelers came upon real injured people.

Here’s what the Samaritan man discerned:

He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, “Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.” (Luke 10:34–35)

The Samaritan man discerned this was an unplanned assignment.

This example also illustrates how much we need discernment. An interruption may initially appear to us (or others) as a distraction. The issue may be important, but it doesn’t appear to be our responsibility. And it’s going to consume precious time, and perhaps other resources, and derail or delay our plans. But it’s an unplanned assignment since our direct (and costly) involvement is more important than remaining focused on our planned work.

Discernment Principles

What principles can we distill from these two scriptural examples to help us discern what might be a distraction or an unplanned assignment? Consider three.

1. Clarify your calling.

What has God objectively called you to focus on in this season of life? It’s important to recognize what season we’re in because our callings change over time. In a different season, it was right for the twelve disciples to serve tables (remember the feeding of the five thousand). But once Jesus ascended, he left his men as specially appointed apostles, as witnesses to his life and resurrection and as his mouthpiece as teachers. Clarifying your clear (not just aspirational) calling in any given season of life can help you discern what God wants you to prioritize.

2. Seek counsel.

When you struggle to discern whether you should resist or receive an interruption that doesn’t require immediate action, seek the advice of wise, spiritually discerning counselors. The apostles had each other. Who are your trusted counselors?

3. Ask yourself, “What does love compel?”

When the Samaritan man saw the wounded man in the road, I’m sure he would have had numerous reasons to just keep going. But for the sake of love, he took up this unplanned assignment. On the other hand, it was for the sake of love that the apostles resisted the distraction of getting personally involved in making sure the widows were fed. They discerned others could address this need, but others couldn’t give themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word like they could.

Martial Art of Discernment

Most martial arts teach students how to respond in self-defense when attacked. No attack situation is ever the same, so students learn techniques that can be adapted for whatever a situation requires. And they grow in their skill by continually practicing in increasingly difficult situations.

Learning to distinguish unplanned assignments from distractions is like a martial art. No interruption situation is ever the same, so we must learn techniques we can adapt for whatever a situation requires. And our “powers of discernment [are] trained by constant practice” (Hebrews 5:14).

Rarely is it clear at first if an interruption is a distraction or an assignment. This ambiguity pushes us to pray, “What should I do, Lord?” It pushes us to embrace humility in seeking counsel from others. And it pushes us to test our hearts. Are we being governed by our love for God and neighbor or by our selfish desires? Do we see time, money, reputation, and productivity as stewardships we’ve received from our Lord to be used as seems best to him, or do we see these resources as “ours”?

Cultivate faith-filled responsiveness to God’s leading. Be willing to say no to a distraction that feels urgent to faithfully focus on your clear God-given task at hand. And be willing to say yes to an inconvenient, costly interruption to your plans to faithfully respond to a God-given, unplanned assignment.

And when in doubt, err on the choice that you discern requires you to extend the greatest love to another and exercise the greatest faith in God.

Parable of an Unhealthy Soul: Why ‘Faith’ Dies Without Action

How do works of obedience relate to the free, unmerited gift of God’s grace in the life of a Christian? This has been a recurring controversial and confusing issue since the earliest days of the church.

If we are justified by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ’s sufficient substitutionary work alone, and not by any work of ours (Romans 3:8), then why are we warned and instructed to “strive . . . for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14)? If our works don’t save us, then how can our not working (like not striving for holiness) prevent us from being saved?

Before we turn to the apostle Peter for help, hear a parable of an unhealthy soul.

Diligence Reveals Real Faith

There was a man who was forty pounds overweight. Despite knowing it was dangerous to his health, for years he had indulged in too much of the wrong kinds of foods and neglected the right kinds of exercise.

One day, his doctor told him he was in the early stages of developing type-2 diabetes. Not only that, but his vital signs also pointed to high risks of heart attack, stroke, and various cancers. If he didn’t make specific changes, his doctor warned, the man would surely die prematurely.

So, the man heeded his doctor’s warnings. He made every effort to put new systems into place that encouraged healthy habits of eating and activity and discouraged his harmful old habits, preferences, and cravings. After twelve months, the man’s health was beginning to be transformed. He had lost most of his excess weight, felt better, had more energy, and no longer lived under the chronic, depressing cloud of knowing he was living in harmful self-indulgence. When his doctor next saw him, he was very pleased and said to the man, “Well done! You are no longer at heightened risk of premature death.” The man continued in his new ways and lived well into old age.

Question: Was the man’s health restored through his faith in the gracious knowledge provided to him pertaining to life and healthiness, or was it restored through his diligent efforts to put this knowledge into practice?

How Faith Works

Do you see the problem with the question? It poses a false dichotomy. The man’s faith and his works were organically inseparable. If he didn’t have faith in what the doctor told him, he wouldn’t have heeded the doctor’s warning — there would have been no health-restoring works. If he didn’t obey the doctor’s instructions, whatever “faith” he may have claimed to have in his doctor would have been “dead faith” (James 2:26) — that faith would not have saved him from his health-destroying ways.

This parable, imperfect as it is, is a picture of the biblical teaching on sanctification. In a nutshell, the New Testament teaches that the faith that justifies us is the same faith that sanctifies us. This faith is “the gift of God, not a result of works” (Ephesians 2:8–9). It’s just that this saving faith, by its nature, perseveres, and works to make us holy.

We passively receive this gift of faith freely given to us by God. But faith, once received, does not leave a soul passive. It becomes the driving force behind our actions, the way we live. By its nature, faith believes the “precious and very great promises” of God (2 Peter 1:4), and the evidence that real faith is present in us manifests, over time, through the ways we act on those promises. The New Testament calls these actions “works of faith” (1 Thessalonians 1:3) or the “obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5). True works of faith don’t “nullify the grace of God” (Galatians 2:21); they are evidence that we have truly received the grace of God, and are themselves further expressions of grace.

Now, let me show you one place where Scripture clearly teaches this. And as I do, imagine yourself as the unhealthy soul in my parable sitting in your doctor’s office — and your doctor is the apostle Peter. Dr. Peter has just examined your spiritual health and has some serious concerns. So, as a good physician, he gives you a firm exhortation.

Escaping Through Promises

[God’s] divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. (2 Peter 1:3–4)

Dr. Peter begins by telling you that God has granted to you all things. He agrees with his colleague, Dr. Paul, that God has granted you life, breath, and everything, including the day you were born, the places you’ll live, and how long (Acts 17:25–26). God has granted you regeneration (Ephesians 2:4–5), the measure of your faith (Romans 12:3), spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12:7–11), and capacity to work hard (1 Corinthians 15:10). And God has given you his “precious and very great promises so that through them” you may escape the power of sin and be transformed into his nature.

Everything, from beginning to end, is God’s grace, since “a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven” (John 3:27).

Make Every Effort

For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. (2 Peter 1:5–7)

Notice Dr. Peter’s words: For this reason (because God has granted you everything), make every effort (act with faith in all God has promised you).

In other words, prove the reality of your profession of faith, by doing whatever it takes to actively cultivate habits of grace, that nurture the character qualities necessary to live out the “obedience of faith” through doing tangible acts of good to bless others.

What Negligence Reveals

For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. (2 Peter 1:8–9)

Dr. Peter’s prescription is clear and simple: if you cultivate these holy qualities, they will foster spiritual health and fruitfulness; if you don’t, you will experience spiritual decline and demise. Diligence will reveal genuine faith because that is how faith works: it leads to action. Negligence will reveal your lack of faith because “dead faith” doesn’t work.

Now, this is a warning, not a condemnation. Peter knows well that all disciples have seasons of setbacks and failure. But he also knows, with Paul, that some disciples “profess to know God, but they deny him by their works” (Titus 1:16) — their profession of faith is not supported by the “obedience of faith.” Peter doesn’t want you to be one of those statistics, so he ends his firm exhortation to you on a hopeful note.

Pursue Diligence by Faith

Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:10–11)

Just so you’re clear, Dr. Peter emphasizes the organic, inseparable relationship between God’s grace and your “works of faith.” He says, “Be diligent to confirm your calling and election.”

You don’t call yourself to Christ; Christ calls you by his grace (John 15:16). You don’t elect yourself to salvation; God elects you by his grace (Ephesians 1:4–6). But you do have an essential contribution to make to your eternal spiritual health. You confirm the reality of God’s saving grace in your life through diligently obeying by faith all that Jesus commands you (Matthew 28:20) — or not.

This is Dr. Peter’s prescription for your assurance of salvation: your diligent obedience through faith, your making every effort to pursue holiness, is evidence that your faith is real and that the Holy Spirit is at work in you to make you a partaker in the divine nature.

This is why Scripture commands us, “Strive for . . . the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). It’s not that our striving, our “making every effort” to obey God, somehow merits us salvation. Rather, our striving is God’s gracious, ordained means — fed by his promises and supplied by his Spirit — to make us holy as he is holy (1 Peter 1:16) and to provide us “entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”

God’s grace is no less gracious because he chooses to grant it not only apart from our works (in justification) but also through our diligent “works of faith” (in sanctification) — especially since these works are evidence that our faith is real.

A Father’s Good Pleasure

A recent experience stirred in me a desire to share a word for fathers. I have fathers of younger children particularly in mind, those on the front end of their fathering days, when a man is seeking to establish godly habits so that, by his example, his children might see the shadow of their heavenly Father. This word, however, is also relevant to fathers of teens and young adults, like me, as well as for elderly fathers whose children are well into adulthood. I hope even those in situations where a father is absent will be able to draw out applications for themselves.

But before I unpack this threefold word of biblical counsel, allow me to share my recent experience with you, since it both inspired and illustrates what I have to say.

Because I Love You

One Friday morning a few months back, I sent a text to my sixteen-year-old daughter, Moriah. Before sharing the text, let me share a bit of context.

I began giving each of my five children a weekly allowance when they were around the age of seven. Then, at different points as they grew older, I sought to help them put age-appropriate budget structures in place to equip them to handle money well. When each approached age sixteen, I let them know that their allowance would end when they were old enough to be employed.

A few days before I sent my text, Moriah began her first job, which meant it was her last allowance week. So, early that Friday morning, I transferred the funds into her account. I wasn’t at all prepared for the tears. Why was I crying? I tried to capture why in this (slightly edited) text I sent to her shortly after:

I just transferred your allowance into your account. In the little memo window, I typed “Mo’s final allowance payment,” and suddenly a wave of emotion hit me, catching me by surprise. I’m standing here at my desk, alone in the office, my eyes full of tears, swallowing down sobs. Another chapter closed, another little step in letting you go. A decade of slipping you these small provisions each week to, yes, try and teach you how to handle money (not sure how well I’ve done in that department), but also, and far more so (when it comes to this father’s heart), out of the joy of just making you happy in some small way. At bottom, that’s what it’s been for me: a weekly joy of having this small way of saying, “I love you.” I’ll miss it. Because I love you.

I still can’t read that without tearing up. I so enjoy every chance I get to give my children joy. As I stood there, trying to pull myself together, a Scripture text quickly came to mind:

Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:9–11)

And as I pondered this passage, I thought of some friends who are fathers of young children and jotted down three lessons I wanted to share with them.

Pursue Your Pleasure for God’s Sake

God means for you to taste the great pleasure it gives him to make his children happy through how much pleasure it gives you to make your children happy.

So, pursue your pleasure in making your children happy! Give them good things — things they value as good and really want. And really, authentically enjoy doing it. It has God’s endorsement, since he too takes great pleasure in giving good gifts to his children.

What’s wonderful about this pleasurable experience is that, for a Christian father, it is multidimensional: we get the joy of blessing our children and the joy of tasting our heavenly Father’s joy in blessing us. This becomes an opportunity to exercise what C.S. Lewis called “transposition” (in his essay by that name in The Weight of Glory) — we see and savor the higher, richer pleasure of God in the natural pleasure of giving pleasure to our children.

Pursue Your Children’s Pleasure

God means for your children to taste how much pleasure it gives him to make his children happy through how much pleasure it gives you to make them happy.

So, pursue your children’s pleasure in making your children happy! Become, through your joyful, affectionate generosity, an opportunity for your children to experience transposition too — to see and savor the higher, richer pleasure of God in the natural pleasure of their father giving good gifts to them.

Become a student of what gives them joy. Watch for those few opportunities during their childhood to bless them with a lifetime memory (think Ralphie’s Red Ryder BB rifle in A Christmas Story). But know that often it’s the simple, smaller good gifts in regular doses that make the biggest, longest impact. Because the most lasting impression of any of the good things you give your children will be how much you enjoyed giving it to them.

This is important, because when, out of love for them, you must discipline them or make a decision that displeases them, or some significant disagreement arises between you, and they’re tempted to doubt that you care about their happiness, your history of consistent, simple, memorable good gifts, given because you love to do them good, can remind them that even now you are pursuing their joy. It can become an echo of Jesus’s words: “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). And it will model for them that God too really does take joy in their joy, even when his discipline is “painful rather than pleasant,” since later it will yield “the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11).

If your children experience their father’s good pleasure in giving them joy, what is likely to stay with them, long after the good gifts are gone, is this: the gift you were to them. The real treasure wasn’t their father’s good things; it was their father. And in this is an invaluable parable, if our children have eyes to see.

Let Your Pleasure Speak for Itself

God means for your pleasure in giving your children pleasure to first speak for itself.

One last brief word of practical counsel. For the most part, avoid immediately turning the moments you give gifts to your kids into a teaching moment. Don’t explain right then that what you’re doing is an illustration of Matthew 7:9–11. Let your pleasure in giving them pleasure speak for itself, and allow them the magic moment when the Holy Spirit helps them make the connection.

In fact, don’t talk too much to them about your experience as such. Wait for meaningful moments, and then take them when they come. Like an early Friday morning text message to your sentimental sixteen-year-old while she’s sitting in a crowded high school classroom, forcing her to text back, “Stop! ur gonna make me cry!”

He Is, He Was, He Will Be: Adoring the Alpha and Omega

“Who is this Son of Man?” From the moment he first appeared in the world, on a desperate night in a crowded town, Jesus has provoked this question.

The shepherds must have asked it in awe when gazing upon this swaddled newborn “lying in a manger,” whom the holy herald angel said was “Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:8–20). The magi must have asked it in wonder when the star led them to the Child who was “born king of the Jews,” living in the humble dwelling of a peasant family (Matthew 2:1–12). The disciples asked it in fear when they witnessed a storm obey Jesus’s command (Luke 8:22–25). The Jewish leaders asked it in outrage when Jesus claimed authority belonging only to God (John 8:53). The crowd asked it in confusion when Jesus and his teaching did not match their messianic expectations (John 12:34).

“Who is this Son of Man?” It has become the great question of history regarding the One whose birth became the dividing point of all history.

But this question hasn’t gone unanswered. And of all the Bible’s answers to that question, one of the most glorious and mind-bending comes in the book of Revelation. Here the Father and the Son answer together, in Revelation’s first chapter and last:

First, the Father’s answer: “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty’” (Revelation 1:8). Then the Son’s answer: “Behold, I am coming soon. . . . I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:12–13).

Taken together, the Lord God and the Lord Christ provide an awesome single, twofold answer:

Like eternal Father, like eternal Son;
Spanning endless ages, two divinely one.
Alpha and Omega, both the first and last;
Eternally existing, present, future, past.

He Who Is

Like God the Father, God the Son is also one “who is and who was and who is to come.” This is to us a strange chronology — first present, then past, then future. We might wish to correct the divine self-description to say he “who was and who is and who is to come.” But this would be a mistake.

The greatest, most fundamental reality in existence is that God is. In fact, the most sacred name God revealed to his first-covenant people, his most holy self-disclosure, is the one he spoke to Moses: “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14; also 33:19; 34:6). That’s why in the divine chronology, the fact that God is comes first.

Time is a mystery to us, so it is no surprise that how God interacts with time is a mystery to us. But we can safely assume that when God speaks of time in ways we at least partly comprehend, he is graciously condescending. So, when he tells us that he “was” and he “is to come,” it is to help us time-bound creatures understand that “from everlasting to everlasting” he is God (Psalm 90:2). And it is to help us understand that Jesus, like his Father, “is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). He always is.

And yet, mystery of mysteries, the eternal Word of the Father entered the world in space and time, the world he himself had made (John 1:10) “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). In appearing among us, God the Son revealed marvelously who he is:

“I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). “I am from above” (John 8:23). “I am gentle and lowly in heart” (Matthew 11:29). “I am in the Father” (John 10:38). “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

An even more wonderful and simultaneously damning self-revelation occurred during Jesus’s trial. When asked, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” Jesus’s glorious, lethal answer was, simply, “I am” (Mark 14:61–62).

Who is this Son of Man? Like eternal Father, like eternal Son. He is the “I am.” He is the Son of the Blessed Father. He is the Lord Christ, who, like the Lord God, always is.

He Who Was

That the Son always is implies the Son always was. For some, this is the most difficult concept of God’s existence to comprehend.

The difficulty is wholly understandable. We are created beings trying to comprehend an uncreated Being, not to mention a triune uncreated Being. God is not wholly understandable to us because he is holy — nothing else in existence shares his uncreated existence.

But Jesus takes our struggle to a whole new level, when in the incarnation, the Creator becomes creature:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. . . . And the Word became flesh. (John 1:1–3, 14)

Mercifully, much like the way God revealed himself in the Old Testament, Jesus revealed this aspect of his glory progressively.

One of the first to see Jesus’s preexistent glory was John the Baptist, Jesus’s older cousin who nevertheless said, “He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me” (John 1:15).

But as the time drew near for Jesus to fulfill the redemptive purpose for which he came, he revealed more of his preexistent, always-existent nature, as he did in this famous discussion with the Jewish leaders:

“Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.” So the Jews said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:56–58)

So unique, so holy is God the Son, that his nature breaks the conventions of human grammar. He uses a present-tense verb in a past-tense context to communicate his Christological point. Later, the apostle Paul would do the same thing when he declared that Jesus “is before all things” (Colossians 1:17).

Who is this Son of Man? Like eternal Father, like eternal Son. He is the Alpha. He is the beginning. He is the one who always was.

He Who Is to Come

That Jesus always is also implies that Jesus always will be — he is the one who is to come. This he revealed with unmistakable and glorious clarity.

In describing the end of this age to his disciples, he said,

Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. (Matthew 24:30–31)

He declared this same coming to the Jewish leaders during his trial, after proclaiming himself the “I am”: “You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:62).

These Jewish listeners knew exactly what Jesus meant. He was identifying himself as the “son of man” prophesied by the prophet Daniel, whom “all peoples, nations, and languages [would] serve,” and who would receive from Almighty God “an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and [a] kingdom . . . that shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:13–14).

But Jesus wasn’t merely issuing a warning. He was expressing his great longing, the purpose of his incarnation, the culmination of history, and the reward of his suffering.

The kingdom! The time when, at last, God himself will dwell with man; the time when our waiting will be over, and God will “wipe away every tear from [our] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore”; the time when “the former things [will] have passed away”; the time when God will make “all things new” (Revelation 21:3–5).

The kingdom! The “blessed hope” of all who have loved “the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13; 2 Timothy 4:8). And of the fulfillment of this blessed hope, our great God and Savior, the prophesied Son of Man, has promised, “Behold, I am coming soon” (Revelation 22:12).

Who is this Son of Man?

Like eternal Father, like eternal Son;
Spanning endless ages, two divinely one. Alpha and Omega, both the source and sum; He who is, he who was, and he who is to come.

And so shall the great question of history receive its climactic answer when the Lord God sends the Lord Christ to bring to a close history as we’ve known it and inaugurates his everlasting kingdom. All we who wait for this blessed hope say, “Amen. Even so come, Lord Jesus.”

Our Tongues (and Fingers) of Fire: What Words Reveal About Us

In one very tense discussion with the Pharisees, Jesus uttered some of the most important words ever spoken about the importance of the words we speak:

Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. (Matthew 12:34–37)

What an unnerving thought. The words we speak (and type!), whether we think so or not, are reliable revealers of what our hearts truly value. And someday, when we stand before the “judgment seat of Christ, [to] receive what is due for what [we have] done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10), our own words — even careless ones — will be brought forth as witnesses.

What Words Reveal

When Jesus said we speak out of the “abundance” of our hearts (Matthew 12:34), what did he mean? The best way to answer this question is to look at the context.

Jesus had just delivered a man from demonic oppression. And the crowd who witnessed this wonder couldn’t help but ask if Jesus were the long-awaited Messiah, the Son of David. The Pharisees, doing everything they could to stamp this idea out, had a ready answer: “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons” (Matthew 12:24).

Jesus responded with one of his most forceful rebukes, exposing the blatant hypocrisy in the Pharisees’ accusation, warning them of the terrible danger of blaspheming the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31–32). And then he made his point about what words reveal.

Jesus turned the Pharisees’ words back on them to expose the evil power that was fueling them — the evil in their own hearts. They had chosen their words carefully and deliberately to achieve a desired end: to sway public opinion against Jesus by sowing seeds of suspicion in people’s minds through this unsubstantiated accusation. In doing so, they intentionally called evil the “good fruit” Jesus was bearing by releasing a man from demonic oppression, while not recognizing the “bad fruit” they were bearing by using dishonest means to discredit Jesus (Matthew 12:33).

The Pharisees were so blinded by their own evil pursuits that they didn’t recognize the spiritual danger they were in; they didn’t discern the demonic influence moving them to call the Holy Spirit’s power demonic. They were speaking words out of the abundance of evil treasure in their hearts.

Even Careless Words

At this point, everyone listening might have felt like taking a few steps back from the Pharisees, just in case lightning struck. But then Jesus’s warning about words suddenly broadens out to include everyone:

I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. (Matthew 12:36–37)

The Pharisees’ accusation against Jesus doesn’t seem to be an example of careless words; they crafted their accusation carefully. But Jesus wanted them — and us — to know the abundance of our hearts is revealed not only in our careful, deliberate words, but in our careless ones as well. This takes matters to a wholly different level.

“Careless” is a good translation of the Greek word argon. Careless words can be flippant, idle, off-the-cuff words. They can be words we spout off when we lose our patience or words we use to pontificate on matters we haven’t thought about much. They can be angry, crude, insulting words we say over issues we feel strongly about — whether publicly or privately. And, while far rarer for human beings, careless words can also be patient, kind, honoring, peaceable, and humble.

Jesus’s point is that all our words matter. All will be called to witness for or against us. What we say is so connected to our hearts that even our careless words are telling. And what often makes careless words revealing is that we speak them when our guard is down.

Painful Parable

A parable of the revealing power of careless words recently played out in the popular media when Jon Gruden’s remarkable and lucrative career in the National Football League suddenly ran off the rails.

In October 2021, two high-profile newspapers published exposés regarding numerous emails Gruden wrote between 2010 and 2018, prior to his becoming head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. These were words he clearly (and mistakenly) assumed would remain private. As one news site summarized, the emails revealed a “pattern of homophobic, misogynistic and sexist insults, as well as pictures of topless Washington Football Team cheerleaders.”

October 11 in particular became a day of judgment for Gruden in the court of public opinion, when he was roundly condemned by his own, as one sportswriter put it, “stupid and careless” words. And as a result, he resigned as the Raiders head coach.

This gives us a little picture of what Jesus meant when he said,

Whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops. (Luke 12:3)

Anyone facing prosecution in the U.S. court system is warned, “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.” Jesus is warning us that everything we say can and will be used for or against us when we stand before his judgment seat.

Given all we’ve said in the dark and whispered in private rooms, all the stupid and careless words we’ve spoken that could be damning witnesses against us, the wisest step we can take is to “come to terms quickly with [our] accuser” before we reach the court (Matthew 5:25), and pray with the psalmist,

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
     O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
     that you may be feared. (Psalm 130:3–4)

For our Judge is both “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26).

Bridle Your Tongue (and Fingers)

But part of repentance — in fact, evidence that repentance is real — is actively pursuing transformation in the power of the Holy Spirit. And when it comes to all our words, and perhaps especially our careless ones, repentance looks like putting a bridle on our tongues, which obviously today includes our fingers and thumbs.

I’m drawing this metaphor from the apostle James who, in his strong warning about the tongue, uses three helpful analogies: (1) a horse’s bridle, (2) a ship’s rudder, and (3) a flame (James 3:1–6). Each of these, like the tongue and fingers, is a small object with great power. The first two illustrate controls that produce great good: a small bridle controls a powerful horse, and a small rudder steers a powerful ship. But the third illustrates how the lack of control — let’s call it carelessness — can wreak great destruction: a small flame sets a whole forest ablaze.

The point is clear: words under control can do great good. They can be for others “a tree of life” (Proverbs 15:4) and “give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). But uncontrolled, foolish words can burn friendships, families, churches, and careers to the ground (James 3:9–10). The question is, What bridles are we putting on our words to control them for good?

24-Hour Rule

Let me share just one personal bridle I’ve been using: the 24-hour rule. Before responding to someone whose words stir up anger, frustration, or defensiveness in me, I wait at least a day. I’ve found most situations do not require an immediate response, even if someone wants one. And almost always, after 24 hours, the emotions most likely to ignite my heated reply have dissipated, and I’m able to respond with more measured, loving words. Not only that, I often see the person’s perspective more clearly than I initially did. This rule is very helpful for finger speech, but it works with tongues too. I know when I use this bridle as a husband and father, it invariably produces a more constructive result.

We each must find the bridles that most effectively work for us, and it’s crucial that we do. Those who are willing to do the hard work of bridling the wild horse of our words, for Jesus’s sake, demonstrate their love for him (John 14:15) and their desire to love their neighbor as themselves (Matthew 22:39). For those who don’t bridle their tongues and fingers, their words can and will be used against them on the day of judgment.

Whether or not we take Jesus’s words about our words to heart says something very important about our hearts.

Labor to Give (or Take) No Offense

Since we live in a complex, highly charged, contentious historical moment, when cultural and political issues stretch and tear not only the social fabric of a nation, but also the unity between Christians in many of our churches, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this two-sentence statement by Jesus:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34–35)

It’s an important statement to meditate upon because Jesus spoke it in a complex, highly charged, contentious historical moment. Moreover, he spoke it to his small band of closest disciples the night before he died, knowing his death and resurrection would only increase the complexity and contention of their world.

Along with these disciples, nearly every new disciple after them would live in a wide variety of complex, highly charged, contentious historical moments. In fact, it would be a rare exception when a disciple wouldn’t live in such a moment. Therefore, all disciples who would hear or read Jesus’s two-sentence statement would need to ask themselves these two questions:

What does it mean to love one another as Jesus has loved us? Do outside observers actually recognize us as Jesus’s disciples because of the distinctly Jesus-like ways we love one another?

And so, these are the questions for us to ask ourselves.

Serious About Obeying Jesus

As soon as we ask these questions, however, we realize that, though they are generally the right questions, they aren’t quite sufficient.

Asking, How do we love one another in ways that are recognizably Jesus-like? is like asking, How do we love our neighbor as ourselves? The answer is, “It depends.” There are endless possible answers. A specific answer to the question requires a specific context for the question. That’s why when a lawyer queried Jesus on neighbor-love, he answered with the Good Samaritan story to illustrate what it looks like in a specific situation (Luke 10:25–37).

This is the genius of Jesus’s two-sentence love command: it’s endlessly applicable. But it requires us to be serious enough about obeying it to press these two questions into our specific contexts.

So, what is our context? What’s causing the fabric of Christian unity in some places to stretch and tear much like the social fabric of the wider culture? Here, each disciple or local-church family of disciples must do the hard work of pressing these questions into their unique contexts, since each will have unique differences.

But still, like Jesus, who provided the lawyer an example in the Good Samaritan, it’s helpful to look at an example. One good example is Richard Sibbes.

Another Contentious Age

Richard Sibbes (1577–1635) was a prominent Puritan pastor who ministered during a time when, in England (as in all of Europe), the ecclesiastical and political ramifications of the Protestant Reformation were being worked out in tragically bloody ways. There was no separation of church and state. For reasons of mutual conviction or convenience, monarchs allied themselves with powerful Christian institutions.

This meant Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and Nonconformist Protestants were, willingly or not, entangled in high-stakes struggles for political and religious power. Especially toward the end of Sibbes’s life, how one spoke of the Lord’s Supper, the Book of Common Prayer, or apostolic succession could get one imprisoned or killed. Suffice it to say, it was a complex, culturally contentious, frequently brutal historical moment. Strife was rife. Professing Christians said and did horribly offensive things to each other.

Yet in this environment, Richard Sibbes became renowned for his compassionate care of anguishing souls and his ability to help his hearers (and readers) encounter in Scripture the tender love of Jesus, the beloved Servant who would not break “a bruised reed” (Isaiah 42:1–4; Matthew 12:18–21). Not surprisingly, that phrase became the title of his best-known book: The Bruised Reed.

And in that book, Sibbes proposed one specific way Christians living in contentious times could love one another in a recognizably Jesus-like way.

The Christian’s ‘Good Strife’

Sibbes wrote,

It were a good strife amongst Christians, one to labor to give no offense, and the other to labor to take none. The best men are severe to themselves, tender over others. (The Bruised Reed, 47)

Having witnessed much evil strife between Christians, Sibbes proposed that, if Christians are going to strive with one another, then let them strive, let them labor, let them exert great effort, let them do everything in their power to not give or take offense. Let them strive to cultivate the spiritual discipline of being hard on themselves and tender toward others — or as Jesus put it, let them address the logs in their own eyes before addressing the specks in others’ (Matthew 7:3–5).

Now, even though we live in a different day, doesn’t Sibbes’s pastoral counsel sound remarkably relevant? What sanctifying, joy-producing good would it work in our souls, what would it do for the health of our local churches, what would it say to a watching world about Jesus, if we Christians today engaged in this good strife of doing everything in our power to not give or take offense?

Put It to the Test

Sibbes’s “good strife” proposal is an example of just one specific way Christians in conflict can obey Jesus’s love command in John 13:34–35. But it is a good one. We can test it out with our two application questions from Jesus’s love command, each of us filling in the blanks with our contextual specifics.

Question 1

What does it mean for us to love one another as Jesus has loved us given our context?

Sibbes’s (and the apostle Paul’s) answer: it means we labor to give no offense and take none by doing everything in our power

to not think more highly of ourselves than we ought to think (Romans 12:3), to outdo one another in showing honor (Romans 12:10), to never be wise in our own sight (Romans 12:16), to give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all (Romans 12:17), to never repay evil for evil (Romans 12:17), to bear with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgive each other, as the Lord has forgiven us (Colossians 3:13), and to let no corrupting talk come out of our mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear (Ephesians 4:29).

Is this the expression of Jesus-like love most called for in our specific situation? If so, we have a roadmap for what obedience looks like. If not, we need to keep prayerfully pressing the question until we get a specific answer.

Question 2

Do outside observers recognize us as Jesus’s disciples because of the distinctly Jesus-like ways we love one another?

Since this second question is really an evaluation of how well we’re obeying the first, we can’t answer it until we’ve been walking in obedience for a while. But using Sibbes’s “good strife” example, there’s no question that if we as individuals and as churches become characterized by the conduct described in the bullet statements listed above, most outside observers will recognize that we really do follow Jesus’s teaching.

Which means, regardless of whether the “good strife” is the best application of Jesus’s love command in our complex, culturally contentious historical moment, it is a strife we are nonetheless called to engage in as Christians. It is part of our call to follow in the footsteps of our great Servant-Lord, the Son of God, who also lived in brutally contentious times and knew when to hold his peace that he might not break bruised reeds.

How “good and pleasant” it would be for brothers and sisters to pursue this dimension of unity (Psalm 133:1) and share together in the blessing given to the sons of God, who learn how to make peace (Matthew 5:9) by counting it a glory to overlook an offense (Proverbs 19:11).

When Darkness Veils His Lovely Face

In 587 BC, after an agonizing two-and-half-year siege, the great pagan king Nebuchadnezzar finally breached the walls of Jerusalem. Babylon’s chokehold on Jerusalem for those couple of years had devastated the city, driving its starvation-crazed inhabitants to the unimaginable point of cannibalism.

But now, the foreign military unleashed its full fury, reducing to ruins much of the holy city, “the perfection of beauty” and “the joy of all the earth” (Psalm 50:2; 48:2). And it thrust a spear into its spiritual heart by destroying the great temple Solomon had built nearly four centuries earlier (Jeremiah 52:4–14). The conquest is still felt among observant Jews, who commemorate it annually with fasting and laments on the ninth of Av, the fifth month of the Hebrew calendar (Jeremiah, Lamentations, 441).

The Bible preserves the inspired record of one saint who managed to survive the carnage. We know it in our English Bibles as Lamentations, a collection of five beautifully composed, honest, raw poems, in which the anonymous poet gives an inspired collective voice to the grieving nation of Israel.

He captures in verse the devastating and disorienting psychological, emotional, and spiritual distress suffered by those who lived and died during the darkest, most tragic chapter in Israel’s old-covenant history, when the Lord, in judgment, had “become like an enemy” to his own people (Lamentations 2:5). It is the saddest book in all of Scripture.

Which is why it is remarkable that smack-dab in the middle of this book of tears is, arguably, the Bible’s most well-known, most beloved declaration of God’s love, mercy, and faithfulness:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
     his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
     great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22–23)

Driven into Darkness

To truly appreciate this beautiful, beloved declaration, we need to keep in mind the kinds of shock this author and his people had experienced.

They had seen Jerusalem’s beloved walls, strongholds, and palaces — the structures that for centuries had been symbols of God’s strength and protection for the Jewish people (Psalm 48:12–14) — turned to rubble (Lamentations 2:5, 8–9). They had seen priests massacred in the temple and the sacred building burned to the ground (Lamentations 2:6–7, 20). They had seen infants die of starvation in the arms of their mothers (Lamentations 2:11–12), parents eat the remains of their children (Lamentations 4:10), young women brutally raped, and once-free men enslaved and humiliated (Lamentations 5:11–13). They had seen bodies of young and old, common and noble, lying in the streets where they had been slaughtered, left to become shriveled horrors (Lamentations 2:21, 4:7–8).

And they knew this was God’s doing: “The Lord has done what he has purposed; he has carried out his word, which he commanded long ago” (Lamentations 2:17). After centuries of prophetic warnings issued to his stiff-necked, disobedient people (Isaiah 1:7–9; Amos 2:4–5), God at last brought upon Israel the dreadful covenant curses Moses described in Deuteronomy 28:47–57.

The sovereignty of God over this human anguish pours out through the poet’s pen as he writes,

[The Lord] has driven and brought me
     into darkness without any light;
surely against me he turns his hand
     again and again the whole day long.

He has made my flesh and my skin waste away;
     he has broken my bones;
he has besieged and enveloped me
     with bitterness and tribulation;
he has made me dwell in darkness
     like the dead of long ago.

He has walled me about so that I cannot escape;
     he has made my chains heavy;
though I call and cry for help,
     he shuts out my prayer;
he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones;
     he has made my paths crooked. (Lamentations 3:2–9)

Therefore,

my soul is bereft of peace;
     I have forgotten what happiness is;
so I say, “My endurance has perished;
     so has my hope from the Lord.” (Lamentations 3:17–18)

We can barely fathom such multilayered darkness and suffering: afflicted by God, decimated by man, alone, with no light, no peace, no happiness, no hope.

And then.

Light in Deep Despair

Suddenly, we come to one of the most unexpected, jarring literary pivots in all of Scripture — one might even call it a resurrection of one who had been “like the dead” (Lamentations 3:6).

Nothing about the horrific circumstances of the city, the nation, or the author gives any reason for hope. By all appearances, all has been lost. God, in his righteous wrath, administered through a foreign superpower, has slain his “firstborn son” (Exodus 4:22). The tomb has effectively been sealed. All one can do now is weep beside the grave — or hide from those who had done the killing.

Then into this darkness of destruction, death, and despair comes light, and in this light hope revives. For suddenly, unexpectedly, the lamenting author breaks into this beautiful, and now beloved, declaration:

But this I call to mind,
     and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
     his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
     great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
     “therefore I will hope in him.” . . .

For the Lord will not
     cast off forever,
but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion
     according to the abundance of his steadfast love. (Lamentations 3:21–24, 31–32)

What revives the author’s dead hope? Answer: not what, but who. The very sovereign God who had brought the darkness and anguish.

‘This I Call to Mind’

Specifically, his hope revives by the word of this sovereign God that the author has stored in his heart (Psalm 119:11). And he has stored a lot of it in his heart. Read Lamentations carefully and you’ll notice many allusions to passages found throughout the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms — especially the Psalms. For example, read these excerpts from Psalm 103 and listen for their echoes in that beloved Lamentations text:

Bless the Lord, O my soul,
     and forget not all his benefits,
who forgives all your iniquity,
     who heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit,
     who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy. . . .

The Lord is merciful and gracious,
     slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
He will not always chide,
     nor will he keep his anger forever.
He does not deal with us according to our sins,
     nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
     so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
     so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
As a father shows compassion to his children,
     so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. . . .

The steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him,
     and his righteousness to children’s children (Psalm 103:2–4, 8–13, 17)

God’s word revives this grieving author’s hope. He calls Scripture to mind in this dark, desperate moment. He recalls the Lord’s promises that his steadfast love will never cease toward those who fear him, and neither will his mercies. And he remembers that God’s great faithfulness is inextricably connected to his unceasing steadfast love (Psalm 57:10).

For the author (and the saints he speaks for), passages like this become “a lamp to [his] feet and a light to [his] path” (Psalm 119:105). Even here in the darkest pit, even now when all seems lost, as he and his nation suffer the terrible consequences of sin, in God’s light, he sees light (Psalm 36:9). And this light resurrects his hope.

Darkness Will Not Overcome the Light

The anguished poet of Lamentations, recording his hope amidst grief, reminds us of God’s power to unexpectedly resurrect dead hope. And the horrific nature of his circumstances, as an expression of God’s righteous judgment on Israel, remains a potent reminder that we are never in a pit so deep, and we never endure tragedies so severe, that God cannot, with a word, bring light to our path that overcomes our darkness with hope.

I doubt this poet realized that these words — the words of “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3) — would so powerfully foreshadow Christ. Jesus knows tragic carnage and destruction, and all the darkness we experience, from the inside. That’s why he is for us the “light that shines in the darkness” (John 1:5).

It’s also why, when we are in our most hopeless pits, when our “soul is bereft of peace,” when we “have forgotten what happiness is,” when it feels like our “endurance has perished” and “so has [our] hope from the Lord” (Lamentations 3:17–18), Jesus, through his Spirit, loves to resurrect our hope by helping us call to mind God’s “living and active” word (Hebrews 4:12). And when his light shines in our darkness, “the darkness [will] not overcome it” (John 1:5).