Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 115

God’s Presence Is the Essence of Heaven

The 1998 movie What Dreams May Come portrays Heaven as beautiful but lonely, because a man’s wife isn’t there. Remarkably, someone else is entirely absent from the movie’s depiction of Heaven: God.

That movie’s viewpoint mirrors numerous contemporary approaches to Heaven which either leave God out or put him in a secondary role.

The Five People You Meet in Heaven, a best-selling novel by Mitch Albom, portrays a man who feels lonely and unimportant. He dies, goes to Heaven, and meets five people who tell him his life really mattered. He discovers forgiveness and acceptance, all without God and without Christ as the object of saving faith.

Five People portrays a Heaven that isn’t about God and our relationship with him, but only about human beings and our relationships with each other. A Heaven where humanity is the cosmic center, and God plays a supporting role. The Bible knows nothing of this pseudo-Heaven.

Numerous people claim to have gone to Heaven and seen loved ones and also Jesus, yet almost never do they react as the “beloved disciple,” the apostle John, did: “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead” (Revelation 1:17).

Surely no one who had actually been in Heaven would neglect to mention what Scripture shows is its main focus. If you had spent an evening dining with a king, you wouldn’t just talk about the place settings! When John was shown Heaven and wrote about it, he recorded the details—but first and foremost, from beginning to end, he kept talking about Jesus, the Lion and the Lamb, with infinite gravitas and beauty.

A Honeymoon without a Groom?

Jesus promised his disciples, “I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:3). For Christians, to die is to “be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8, NKJV). The apostle Paul says, “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far” (Philippians1:23). He could have said, “I desire to depart and be in Heaven,” but he didn’t—his mind was on being with Jesus.

Heaven without God would be like a honeymoon without a groom or a palace without a king. Teresa of Avila said, “Wherever God is, there is Heaven.” The corollary: Wherever God is not, there is Hell.

The presence of God is the essence of Heaven. John Milton put it, “Thy presence makes our Paradise, and where Thou art is Heaven.” Heaven will be a physical extension of God’s goodness.

Samuel Rutherford said, “O my Lord Jesus Christ, if I could be in heaven without thee, it would be a hell; and if I could be in hell, and have thee still, it would be a heaven to me, for thou art all the heaven I want.” To be with God—to know him, to see him—is the central, irreducible draw of Heaven.

Heaven’s Greatest Miracle

The best part of Heaven on the New Earth will be enjoying God’s presence. He’ll actually dwell among us (Revelation 21:3-4). Just as the Holy of Holies contained the dazzling presence of God in ancient Israel, so will the New Jerusalem contain his presence. The New Earth’s greatest miracle will be our continual, unimpeded access to the God of everlasting splendor and perpetual delight.

What is the essence of eternal life? “That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). The best part of Heaven will be knowing and enjoying God.

Sam Storms writes, “We will constantly be more amazed with God, more in love with God, and thus ever more relishing his presence and our relationship with him. Our experience of God will never reach its consummation.  …It will deepen and develop, intensify and amplify, unfold and increase, broaden and balloon.”

The Reservoir that Will Never Run Dry

Because He is beautiful beyond measure, if we knew nothing more than that Heaven was God’s dwelling place, it would be more than enough to make us long to be there.

Of course we will enjoy all the secondary gifts God gives us, but they will be derivative of God Himself, and our happiness in them will be happiness in him. Jonathan Edwards said, “The redeemed will indeed enjoy other things…but that which they shall enjoy in the angels, or each other, or in anything else whatsoever, that will yield them delight and happiness, will be what will be seen of God in them.”

“They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights. For with you is the fountain of life” (Psalm 36:8-9). This passage portrays the joy that God’s creatures find in feasting on Heaven’s abundance, and drinking deeply of his delights. Notice that this river of delights flows from and is completely dependent on its source: God. He alone is the fountain of life, and without Him there could be neither life nor abundance and delights.

The Ultimate Wonder

We may imagine we want a thousand different things, but God is the one we really long for. “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1). God’s presence brings satisfaction; his absence brings thirst and longing.

Our longing for Heaven is a longing for God—a longing that involves not only our inner beings, but also our bodies. Being with God is the heart and soul of Heaven. Every other heavenly pleasure will derive from and be secondary to his presence.

All our explorations and adventures and projects in the eternal Heaven—and I believe there will be many—will pale in comparison to the wonder of being with God and entering into his happiness. Yet everything else we do will help us to know and worship God better.

God’s greatest gift to us is now, and always will be, nothing less than himself.

For more on eternity, browse Randy’s books on Heaven.

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It Is Possible to Be a Feminist and Be Prolife

Early women’s rights advocates were prolife, not proabortion. Susan B. Anthony was a radical feminist in her day. Her newspaper, The Revolution, made this claim: “When a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is a sign that, by education or circumstances, she has been greatly wronged.”

Another leading feminist, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, commented on abortion this way: “When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we wish.”

The early feminists opposed abortion. They were followed by a new breed of feminists, such as Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, who advocated abortion as a means of sexual freedom, birth control, and eugenics.

There are feminists today who still uphold the prolife position. Feminists for Life is a very active group started in the early 1970s. FFL sup­ported the Equal Rights Amendment and has labored for other feminist goals, but is adamantly prolife. One FFL member, Mary Ann Schaefer, has labeled the attempt to marry feminism to abortion as “terrorist feminism.” In her words, it forces the feminist to be “willing to kill for the cause you believe in.” [1]

Both men and women should be free to affirm certain platforms of the femi­nist movement without affirming others. One may support some or most feminist ideals, while wholeheartedly opposing abortion because it kills children.

Recently I viewed a new documentary, Pro-Life Feminist, which powerfully dispels the myth that to be prolife you must be predictably white, conservative, Republican, or Christian.  These bright articulate women have a clear understanding of the facts about human life, and speak from a true feminist perspective. Their no-nonsense clarity about the preciousness of human life reminds us that we share basic values with many who may be very different than we are in some areas. These perspectives are a refreshing contrast to the fog of prochoice confusion that permeates our culture. I highly recommend this video.

Here’s more about it:

In this half-hour documentary, Christina Marie Bennett, Aimee Christine Murphy, and Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa bridge feminist and pro-life perspectives with candor, humor, and respect, finding more common ground than either side typically realizes. Told without a narrator, these three women share their individual journeys with vulnerability and honesty, making the film a perfect catalyst for discussion groups and anyone seeking a fresh perspective on this otherwise divisive issue.

Watch the trailer here:

Visit their site to learn more about buying the DVD or renting the video online. 

[1] Mary Ann Schaefer, quoted by Catherine and William Odell, The First Human Right (Toronto: Life Cycle Books, 1983), 39–40.

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What Does the Bible Mean When It Talks About God Hardening People’s Hearts?

Recently someone asked a great question about God hardening people’s hearts in Scripture.

Fourteen times in Scripture a statement is made that God hardens someone’s heart (15 if we count John 12:40 where the “He” may be read as a reference to God or perhaps to Isaiah –see Isaiah 6:9-10). Nine of those times are in relation to Pharaoh. [1]

In most of the cases throughout Scripture, it’s clear that God hardens hearts only after a long track record of disobedience. But when someone, such as Pharaoh, maintains their willful disobedience, then decides to let up on it in order to ease the painful consequences (e.g. to escape a plague), God may say, “No, you are not truly repenting, therefore I will harden your heart to keep you from stopping your sinful actions only to make things easier on yourself. I will not let you use me. But after giving you a lifetime of freedom to choose, I will now use you to accomplish my purposes, because I am God and you are not.”

The hardening of the heart is essentially a sort of final judgment of God that takes place before someone dies. It’s as if God considers now fixed someone’s evil heart as it has become over a lifetime. He cements the deal, so to speak, solidifying the history of their own willful sinful choices, which He now considers their definitive condition, and then forces them to act accordingly and face the consequences they would otherwise have tried to avoid.  (For more on God’s sovereignty trumping people’s plans, check out Psalm 115:3, Proverbs 16:9, Genesis 50:20, Isaiah 40:23, and 2 Chronicles  20:6.)

That’s my take on it, and here are the links that all have something unique to contribute on the meaning of God hardening hearts:

Why Does God Harden Hearts? This one covers all the references to hardened hearts, including Joshua 11.
Hardening, Hardness of Heart Provides a short overview of hardening of hearts in the Bible.
Why Did God Harden Pharaoh’s Heart? Discusses the meaning of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart, which is mentioned more often than any other.
What Are the Causes and Solutions for a Hardened Heart?
Does God Harden a Believer’s Heart? An excellent answer from my friend Tony Reinke.

[1] Why Does God Harden Hearts?

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Guidelines for Talking to Your Kids about Sex

Every child receives a sex education. The only questions are: (1) When? (2) Where? (3) From whom? Parents should be their ultimate sex educators.

Here are some guidelines parents may find helpful in teaching their children about sex:

If you don’t know the facts, don’t be embarrassed—just find them out. In this sex-saturated culture, everybody thinks we should know everything about sex. But often we don’t.

Ask your pastor and other parents you respect for advice in what to say and how and when to say it. There are many fine resources for Christian parents, including the God’s Design for Sex series, James Dobson’s Preparing for Adolescence, and Focus on the Family’s Guide to Talking with Your Kids About Sex: Honest Answers for Every Age. Also see FamilyLife Today’s series on A Biblical Approach to Sex Education.

Always teach sex in the context of values, responsibility, and marriage. When you teach your children anatomy, don’t do it as if their sex organs are parts of a car engine. Relate them to their purpose.

Sex is so much more than biology. It is a matter of ethics and morality as well. If you create a tie between sex and marriage when your children are young, they will find it hard to conceive of sex having a place outside of marriage. And that’s exactly as it should be. In contrast, sex education in the schools often isolates sex from its proper spiritual and ethical implications.

Know your child. Some children are sexually precocious; others are not. Some need to hear direct and to the point answers. Others respond better to a more subtle approach. You are the parent—no one is better qualified than you to discern what your child is ready to hear.

Answer your child’s questions honestly. This may require some forethought. It is good to anticipate some of the questions that will be coming your way.

One of the classic questions is “Where do babies come from?” or “How does a baby get inside his Mommy’s tummy?” To a younger child you might explain it this way: “Mommy and Daddy love each other, so they hold each other close, and sometimes God decides to make a baby—part from Mommy and part from Daddy.”

Tell them as much as they need to know now. A five-year-old does not need to see a diagram of sexual intercourse, nor does he need to be told “The baby’s in Mommy’s uterus, not her tummy.” Not every technical error needs to be corrected at an early age. Giving too much information too early may overwhelm a child. Discussing details of sexual intimacy can push a child to “grow up” sexually before his time (a major danger fostered by the media).

On the other hand, an eleven-year-old needs to know a great deal more than a five-year-old. If Mom and Dad don’t explain sexual intercourse to him, someone else will very soon (if they haven’t already) and probably not in the nicest way.

Still, the eleven-year-old doesn’t need to know about matters such as premature ejaculation and birth control. In fact, things such as these would be better learned very shortly before marriage.

Unfortunately, the bombardment of sexual information (and misinformation) is so great that many twelve-year-olds know a great deal about sex. Once a child—whether too young or not—has learned something about sexual relations, parents need to be sure he has the right information and the right perspective. If anyone else is teaching your children about sex, find out exactly what’s being said.

Don’t procrastinate. Too much too soon is one problem. Too little too late is another. It’s too easy to wait for the right opportunity that never comes. Sometimes our children have already been misinformed or developed irrational fears about sex, and it’s always harder to correct wrong thinking than to prevent it.

Don’t try to calculate your child’s exact date of puberty, then start telling him about sex the night before. It can be traumatic for boys to ejaculate and not understand what has happened, and even worse for girls to begin menstruating with no or only partial information. By the time some parents get around to telling their children about sex, their children know more than they do.

Remember, it’s much easier to tell a twelve-year-old about sex than do what many Christian parents have done—had their first heart-to-heart talk about sex with their pregnant fifteen-year-old.

Don’t come on too strong. It’s best to spread things out, not dump the whole load of sexual knowledge at once. It’s easy to overwhelm children not only with information but with emotions, especially negative ones. Difficult subjects like homosexuality also need to be discussed with children at the appropriate age level, which due to its visibility in our culture, is becoming younger and younger. If a child is starting to see and hear things on a sexual subject, it’s certainly time for parents to share their perspectives and be there to answer questions.

Parents should be careful not to sound threatening or angry—they should be calm and remain approachable or their children will repress and hide their sexual questions and struggles for fear of rejection.

Be positive. Some parents tell their children about sex only because they have to. But they are so uncomfortable and tentative that, without meaning to, they communicate, “This is an unpleasant and shady thing we’re talking about. I wish I was somewhere else, don’t you?”

I know one girl who learned about menstruation through a note from her mother—passed under her bedroom door. This clandestine approach made a strong negative statement about female sexuality.

Talk about how sex is God’s gift and how good sex can be inside marriage. Don’t be ashamed to talk about what God wasn’t ashamed to create!

Parents of preteens and teens might consider going through my book The Purity Principle together. I’ve also put together Guidelines for Sexual Purity, which I’ve presented to many young people and their parents over the years. When my now married daughters were teenagers, I honed it further for sharing and discussion with them and the young men who asked to date them. Passport2Purity is another resource Christian parents have used and recommended.

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Ministry to Christian Athletes and the Struggles of Fame and Fortune: An Interview with Sports Spectrum

Over the years, I’ve spoken at a number of NFL chapels with the great benefit of having Nanci, my football-loving wife, sometimes attending the chapel, and always coming with me to the games. In recent years, God has given me the opportunity to give input to and mentor a number of professional athletes, especially football players.

There are many Christ-followers in the NFL, more than most people realize. For several years, through the ministry of Pro Athletes Outreach (PAO), an organization I’ve come to love, I’ve been able to speak to and meet hundreds of them, and develop personal relationships with several dozen. I often send verses to various guys and responses to Bible questions, as well as co-lead a private online forum with 27 current and former players (who I won’t name to protect their privacy).

My heart is to encourage these young men to love and serve Jesus passionately, and to use the platform He’s given them well. I love investing in them, and seeing up close how PAO is having an impact on their lives. (Nanci has met a number of player’s wives and has recently been asked to give input on the writing of Bible studies, and she enjoys that too.)

When speaking at a Major League Baseball conference several months ago, I recorded a podcast with Sports Spectrum. Host Jason Romano (formerly with ESPN) and I talked about ministering to professional athletes, the struggles that fame and fortune can bring, the challenges of athletes adjusting to retirement, and why it’s important to find our identity in Christ and not our professions. While few of us are pro athletes, many of the principles still apply. 

Listen to the full podcast here.

After you do, take the time to explore more resources on Sports Spectrum, a national publication that has been featuring Christian athletes for 15 years, and has recently become part of Professional Athletes Outreach. I love the resources available on Sports Spectrum!

In a time where people seem increasingly skeptical of young people in general and athletes in particular, I’d encourage you to better understand and appreciate the many who are genuine followers of Jesus. Since your kids and grandkids, especially your boys, are likely to admire and listen to famous athletes, why not introduce them to those who know Jesus, giving them good role models instead of bad ones?

Finally, if you’re a sports fan, or just want to see God at work in people’s lives, check out this article by Eagles player Chris Maragos, a brother I love, followed by several links to quality faith videos featuring pro athletes. 

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Goodness in a World of Evil: Philip Hallie and the Story of Le Chambon

Philip Hallie’s marvelous book Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed tells the true story of Le Chambon, a French town where Pastor André Trocmé’s church, under the Nazi occupation, provided Jews with food, shelter, protection, and means of escape. Despite the disapproval of many, Trocmé and his church persevered in doing what they believed was right. As a result, “Le Chambon became the safest place for Jews in Europe.” [1] Over a period of about four years, the church rescued nearly twenty-five hundred Jews.

The Holocaust’s cruelty obsessed Hallie. He said he’d become “bitterly angry” and “over the years [of studying the Holocaust] I had dug myself into Hell.” Hallie speaks of a life-changing day when he discovered the stories of Christians in Le Chambon rescuing Jews, at peril of their own imprisonment and death. As he read, it surprised him to break into tears in what he called “an expression of moral praise.” Hallie later described the love of the church at Le Chambon:

It was this strenuous, this extraordinary obligation that... Trocmé expressed to the people in the big gray church. The love they preached was not simply adoration; nor was it simply a love of moral purity, of keeping one’s hands clean of evil. It was not a love of private ecstasy or a private retreat from evil. It was an active, dangerous love that brought help to those who needed it most. [2]

The day Hallie read of those flawed but loving Christians, he caught a view of God in the goodness they had done. He went home and spent a busy evening with family, then found himself in bed, weeping again over what happened in Le Chambon. Hallie wrote,

When I lay on my back in bed with my eyes closed, I saw more clearly than ever the images that had made me weep. I saw the two clumsy khaki-colored buses of the Vichy French police pull into the village square. I saw the police captain facing the pastor of the village and warning him that if he did not give up the names of the Jews they had been sheltering in the village, he and his fellow pastor, as well as the families who had been caring for the Jews, would be arrested. I saw the pastor refuse to give up these people who had been strangers in his village, even at the risk of his own destruction.

Then I saw the only Jew the police could find, sitting in an otherwise empty bus. I saw a thirteen-year-old boy, the son of the pastor, pass a piece of his precious chocolate through the window to the prisoner, while twenty gendarmes who were guarding the lone prisoner watched. And then I saw the villagers passing their little gifts through the window until there were gifts all around him—most of them food in those hungry days during the German occupation of France.

Lying there in bed, I began to weep again. I thought, Why run away from what is excellent simply because it goes through you like a spear? Lying there, I knew... a certain region of my mind contained an awareness of men and women in bloody white coats [committing unspeakable atrocities to] six- or seven- or eight-year-old Jewish children.... All of this I knew. But why not know joy?... Why must life be for me that vision of... children [hideously brutalized]? Something had happened, had happened for years in that mountain village. Why should I be afraid of it?

To the dismay of my wife, I left the bed unable to say a word, dressed, crossed the dark campus on a starless night, and read again those few pages on the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon. And to my surprise, again the spear, again the tears, again the frantic, painful pleasure that spills into the mind when a deep, deep need is being satisfied, or when a deep wound is starting to heal. [3]

Philosophy professor Eleonore Stump tells of coming to know Jesus through studying the problem of evil and suffering. Reflecting on her own experience (and Hallie’s), Stump writes,

So, in an odd sort of way, the mirror of evil can also lead us to God. A loathing focus on the evils of our world and ourselves prepares us to be the more startled by the taste of true goodness when we find it and the more determined to follow that taste until we see where it leads. And where it leads is to the truest goodness...to the sort of goodness of which the Chambonnais’s goodness is only a tepid aftertaste. The mirror of evil becomes translucent, and we can see through it to the goodness of God.... So you can come to Christ contemplating evil in a world of goodness, or contemplating goodness in a world of evil. [4]

One mother—her three children saved by the people of Le Chambon—said, “The Holocaust was storm, lightning, thunder, wind, rain, yes. And Le Chambon was the rainbow.” [5]

The history of the human race cannot be reduced to the Holocaust. There was and is considerable goodness in the world outside the Holocaust. Yet even inside it, in places like Le Chambon, a costly and beautiful goodness lives.

Excerpted from If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil.

Read more about Le Chambon from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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[1] Philip Paul Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 4.

[2] Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, 129.

[3] Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, 110–11.

[4] Eleonore Stump, “The Mirror of Evil,” in God and the Philosophers, ed. Thomas V. Morris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 235

[5] Os Guinness, Unspeakable (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2005), 227.

Dismissive and Disrespectful Attitudes toward Women Should Have No Place among Evangelicals

Recently teacher and author Beth Moore wrote an article about the prevalence of misogyny in the evangelical world.

misogyny: h atred, dislike, or mistrust of women, or prejudice against women. — Dictionary.com

Though I don’t know Beth well—I only met her briefly maybe a decade ago—my heart was broken when I read her post. While I don’t see much outright hatred of women, I do see a great deal of mistrust and prejudice. I also see disrespect and condescension toward women, especially those with leadership and speaking gifts and strong personalities (which seem to be respected in a man, but not a woman).

I really appreciate Beth’s honest thoughts, which I believe should trouble all of us. I am sad to say I believe she is right in her concerns. As I’ve told many evangelical leaders, having raised two daughters I deeply respect, having a wife I deeply respect, and working with women whom I deeply respect, I bristle at the dismissive tone toward women I hear from many male evangelical leaders. I regularly hear words of wisdom and compassion from my wife, daughters, and female co-workers that I don’t hear as frequently from many of the male leaders I know. (Thankfully, there a lot of exceptions to this, and I certainly don’t want to throw most evangelical leaders under the bus!)

I believe it is that disrespect for women that leads men in power positions to view women as objects rather than subjects. This results in using women through flirtation, seduction, and sexual abuse, which some, for now, get away with. But none of us will get away with such things, since God is watching and will judge not only our actions but also our attitudes, even those that don’t result in immoral actions. “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:13; see also Ecclesiastes 12:14 and 1 Corinthians 4:5).

I pray God will use Beth’s courageous letter to continue to touch hearts, and convict and change attitudes. (By the way, you are free to disagree with me, Beth or anyone else, but this is not the time to make comments about your criticisms of her teaching or mine or anybody’s. This is not about whether you like what anyone says; it’s about how women have been treated.)

So thanks, Beth, for speaking up. I am also grateful for my brother Thabiti Anyabwile’s honest confession and apology to Beth and other sisters in Christ. After you read Beth’s letter, I encourage you to read Thabiti’s response. I also recommend Melissa Kruger’s excellent article 4 Ways Brothers Can Encourage Sisters in Ministry.

But first, prayerfully listen to Beth, who got this conversation going.

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What About Authors Using Pen Names?

Over the years I’ve been asked my opinion about authors using pen names. My concern would be in two areas: intent and effect. If the intent is to deceive, to disguise the fact that the writer is producing three books a year (making some people leery of their quality), or to disguise the fact this is a non-fiction author venturing into fiction, or whatever, then I have problems with it. (Even if that’s not the intent, it could be an effect.)

Here’s why I’m concerned: doesn’t a reader have the right to be wary of a book’s quality if the normally non-fiction author is now writing fiction or if the writer is producing books at a rapid rate? Even if they’re wrong, why should the writer be able to take away others’ freedom to make a value judgment? As those purchasing the book, they have a right to do as they wish, based on accurate information. If a criminal, let’s say a convicted child molester, writes a book and I, as a reader, wouldn’t want to support this person, don’t I have the right to know who the person really is, and then to make my choice accordingly? When a pen name is being used, am I being deceived into buying a book, which, if I knew the author’s real name, I wouldn’t purchase?

Now, if the author’s real name is Dudley Swineburp and he wants to write historical romances, I can understand him using the pen name Anthony Romano. Even though the name change is geared to make it more likely someone will buy his books, why not use a name that won’t lose an audience you deserve to have a fair shot at, since Swineburp isn’t any more likely to write a bad book than Romano?

That’s exactly what female authors once did, when women weren’t respected in certain fields. Since they were overcoming an unfair bias against them, using men’s names was likely fine—although I suppose it could be argued that people have the right to act on the basis of their biases. Also, if good women writers don’t use their names, won’t that just perpetrate the myths and biases? That’s easy to say if you don’t need to put bread on the table—I can certainly understand why these women did what they did. Some women in Muslim countries do this today for the same reason. Likewise, a Chinese Christian writing a book may use a pen name to protect his family and his freedom. That seems perfectly reasonable.

I think the Internet culture has probably made people more immune to pen names. People can have four different names used in various circles on the internet. Still, when you use a name to convey an impression or enhance an image, rather than simply to have fun or protect your privacy, isn’t this deception or manipulation?

Motives are critical. If a female novelist writes a book in the first person involving a husband who’s an adulterous porn addict or child abuser, and fears some readers will think she is writing out of experience with her husband (whether or not that’s true), that seems a good enough reason to use a pen name. Likewise, if she shows intimate acquaintance with drug-using teenagers, she may want to protect her kids (whether or not they’ve had drug problems) from being viewed unfavorably. I have a friend who was raped and got pregnant from it, then gave up the child for adoption. I would have no problem with her telling her story using a pen name—in fact, I would advise her to. Interestingly, in her case the pen name would result in fewer sales, since she’s well known. This raises a good test for any of us—would we be willing to use a pen name if it would mean fewer books sold?

I’ve seen pen names that are designed to cash in on known authors. I suppose someone could write techno-dramas under the name Tom Clency or courtroom novels under the name John Gresham, but even if he could get away with it legally, that wouldn’t make it right.

So to me—and this is only my opinion—it really does come down to the reason, and whether that reason involves deception for the sake of personal gain, as well as whether it takes advantage of the reader/consumer. Now, if a reader discovers that the writer is actually a convicted serial killer, or a popular author who the reader has read before and didn’t like, or an author known to be guilty of plagiarism, they may have cause to feel cheated. But if they find out Romano’s real name is Swineburp, or that a woman used a different name to protect herself or her family, they won’t feel betrayed. They’d likely think, good move on adopting the pen name. So here’s another test—if you had to explain your reasons for using a pen name to those who bought your book, would they agree your reasons were valid?

So to myself and other authors I would ask these questions:

Is your conscience clear before God?
Are you doing it without the intent of misleading or deceiving readers?
If readers knew your real name, would they feel cheated?
Are you doing it to protect a loved one or friend?

These questions may be relevant. In some cases, the intent may not be to deceive, but an inadvertent effect may be deception nonetheless. So are pen names a good move? To me, in some cases, yes; in other cases no, depending on motives and results.

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Will We Have Desires in Heaven?

We’ll have many desires in Heaven, but they won’t be unholy desires. Everything we want will be good. Our desires will please God. All will be right with the world, nothing forbidden. When a father cooks steaks on the barbecue grill, he wants his family to listen to them sizzle and eagerly desire to eat them. God created our desires and every object we desire. He loves it when our mouths water for what He’s prepared for us. When we enjoy it, we’ll be enjoying him.

One of the greatest things about Heaven is that we’ll no longer have to battle our desires. They’ll always be pure, attending to their proper objects. We’ll enjoy food without gluttony and eating disorders. We’ll express admiration and affection without lust, fornication, or betrayal. Those simply won’t exist.

I tried to express that in my novel Safely Home. When one of the characters reaches Heaven, he has a conversation with the King: “I feel like I’m drinking from the Source of the Stream. Does this mean I’ll feel no more longing?” The King—the Source—replies, “You will have the sweet longing of desire that can be fulfilled and shall be, again and again and again. [Heaven] is not the absence of longing but its fulfillment. Heaven is not the absence of itches; it is the satisfying scratch for every itch.” [1]

Not long after we finish one meal, we start looking forward to the next. When a fun ride is over, we want to go on it again. Anticipation, desire, is a big part of joy. Since we’ll be resurrected people in a resurrected universe, why would that change?

Christianity is unique in its perspective of our desires, teaching that they will be sanctified and fulfilled on the New Earth. Conversely, the Buddhist concept of deliverance teaches that one day people’s desires will be eliminated. That’s radically different. Christianity teaches that Jesus takes our sins away while redeeming our desires. Desire is an essential part of humanity, a part that God built into people before sin cast its dark shadow on earth. I’m looking forward to having my desires redeemed. (Even now, as redeemed children of God, we get tastes of that, don’t we?)

Won’t it be wonderful to be free from uncertainty about our desires? We often wonder, Is it good or bad for me to want this thing or that award or his approval or her appreciation? Sometimes I don’t know which desires are right and which aren’t. I long to be released from the uncertainty and the doubt. I long to be capable of always wanting what’s good and right.

In C. S. Lewis’s The Last Battle, his characters arrive in New Narnia. Lucy says, “I’ve a feeling we’ve got to the country where everything is allowed.” [2]Augustine expressed a similar thought: “Love God and do as you please.” [3] We will love God wholeheartedly—and therefore will want to do only what pleases Him.

God placed just one restriction on Adam and Eve in Eden, and when they disregarded it, the universe unraveled. On the New Earth, that test will no longer be before us. God’s law, the expression of His attributes, will be written on our hearts (Hebrews 8:10). No rules will be needed, for our hearts will be given over to God. David said, “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). Why? Because when we delight in God and abide in Him, whatever we want will be exactly what he wants for us.

What we should do will at last be identical with what we want to do. There will be no difference between duty and joy.

Excerpted from Randy’s book Heaven.

Photo by Prudence Earl on Unsplash

[1] Randy Alcorn, Safely Home (Wheaton,Ill.: Tyndale, 2001), 377.

[2] C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: Collier Books, 1956), 137.

[3] Augustine, quoted in Michael Horton, The Agony of Deceit (Chicago: Moody, 1990), 144.

Tony Reinke on Irony, Sarcasm, Snark, and How the Simpsons Shaped a Generation

My friend Tony Reinke has written a terrific article that I think is right on target concerning sarcasm and snark and its profound effect on us, both outside and inside the church. —Randy Alcorn

My generation was raised on The Simpsons.

The popular cartoon is postmodern TV at its finest: liberated from prolonged storylines, a series of jests sprinkled in every fifteen seconds (to capture anyone who just tuned in), often self-referencial sneers, a show loaded with subtle and overt cultural references, thick with irony, sarcasm, and inside jokes — a decades-long art form good at pointing out cultural anxieties, but challenged to celebrate community, truth, or beauty.

“I think The Simpsons is important art,” novelist David Foster Wallace said in an interview. But “on the other hand, it’s also — in my opinion — relentlessly corrosive to the soul, and everything is parodied, and everything’s ridiculous. Maybe I’m old, but for my part I can be steeped in about an hour of it, and then I have to walk away and look at a flower or something.”

It wasn’t just The Simpsons, but a whole generation of entertainment given to parody and irony and sarcasm, and it leaves us with a sense of something less human, less likely to encourage us to do what Wallace did — to turn it off in favor of natural beauty.

Letterman

This postmodern sarcasm seeped into the pop sitcoms and into late-night TV, as in the case of The Late Show with David Letterman.

Wallace explored this trend in his collection of short stories (Girl with Curious Hair), in a short story to imagine an actress getting groomed by her publicist and husband before appearing on The Late Show, a cultural staple of nighttime TV between 1993 and 2015.

The key for the actress’s successful interview was bound up with her poker face. It’s best if she was a little jaded. A little distant. Bored. Not insincere, just “not-sincere.” The key: “Appear the way Letterman appears on Letterman. . . . Laugh in a way that’s somehow deadpan. Act as if you knew from birth that everything is clichéd and hyped and empty and absurd. That’s just where the fun is.” Reflect his sardonic outlook on all of life.

This observation resonates with what I know of Letterman, as well as with what I know of the postmodern American entertainment culture of my youth. The age of sarcasm is the age of the lazy-eyed, smart-aleck comedian who wants you to know he’s playing a character dumber than himself (Bill Murray and Saturday Night Live). Mockery thrived in the derisive contra-family dramas (Simpsons), in the snark-at-every-life-situation form of faux-friendships (Seinfeld), in the cynical contra-talk shows (Letterman), and then later in the mistrust-everything-I-say, contra-news programs (Colbert).

Said Wallace, the 1990s were a time of “postmodern irony, hip cynicism, a hatred that winks and nudges you and pretends it’s just kidding.”

Cynical of Cynicism

Does satire work? Does it change anything? On one side of the argument, journalist Malcolm Gladwell recently attempted to argue that the more we laugh at something, the less persuasive that thing is for changing minds (“The Satire Paradox”). Satire makes for laughs but cannot change minds, at least not for unified social change. But this conclusion seems defective.

“Letterman’s ‘irony’ was in fact a passionate response against phoniness,” writes James Poniewozik of Time Magazine. Yes — and it worked. Sarcasm was the chosen tool of a generation of entertainers to poke holes in what they perceived to be a phony, over-idealized picture of life that dominated American entertainment in the 1950s. The polished formality of the tightly scripted news, the straight-collared conversations, the seriousness, the sincerity, the wholesome TV family got capsized by a generation of sarcastic entertainment — the Lettermans, Simpsons, and SNLs.

Satire’s most potent work is in exposing phony facades. But it cannot accomplish anything more important, and there’s the problem, as Wallace explained in a 1997 radio interview: “Irony and sarcasm are fantastic for exploding hypocrisy and exposing what’s wrong in extant values. They are notably less good in erecting replacement values or coming close to the truth.”

Sarcasm is a free-swinging wrecking ball. It cannot construct.

So what happens when mocking sarcasm lives past its use and becomes the tone of a generation? Wallace explains. “What’s been passed down from the postmodern heyday is sarcasm, cynicism, a manic ennui, suspicion of all authority, suspicion of all constraints on conduct, and a terrible penchant for ironic diagnosis of unpleasantness, instead of an ambition not just to diagnose and ridicule but to redeem. You’ve got to understand that this stuff has permeated the culture. It’s become our language; we’re so in it we don’t even see that it’s one perspective, one among many possible ways of seeing. Postmodern irony’s become our environment.”

The Ghost of Sarcasm

Sarcasm is still in the groundwater of our entertainment, in every drink, and we can no longer smell its pungent stench. This is one reason why TV inherently favors political newcomers, and resists incumbents. Satire takes down authority structures and establishments. And the acerbic wit and irony that may have exposed hypocrisy in a previous generation continues living, with an undiminishing life of its own. We’re trapped in it. Sarcasm becomes a tyranny we cannot escape.

Sarcasm is ghostly. It defies all resistance. You try to push against irony and your arms flail in the mirage. Even our popular ads become satire. And as satire, they evade criticism by absorbing all criticism. So for example, LeBron James will never tell you to drink Sprite, because he knows we’re all guarded against propaganda. Satirically he makes fun of his own commercials, and by doing this, he and Sprite evade critical thought. If I message LeBron to say that Squirt is clearly superior to Sprite, he could respond and say he never said it was, and never said I should drink one or the other. And he’d be right.

There’s the irony. Any ad you cannot criticize is an ad to be received. To this end, self-satirizing ads multiply like spring rabbits. “Do you see we’re making an ad inside this ad? Get it? Get it!?”

As nauseatingly as the “inside joke” ads have become, the tactic is a brilliant invention of our admen and adwomen to disarm buyers. Advertisers say to us, “We see you seeing us try to sell you things, and let’s laugh at the whole thing together!” Sharing an inside joke is the best way to capture a defensive ad audience.

But even beyond ads, the spirit of the sarcasm age thrives in the memes of social media, in anti-institutional hashtagism that can tear away smokescreens and hypocrisy, take down authorities and demonize institutions. Witty sarcasm on social media defies criticism. Nor is it able to draw consensus and construct newer, and more stable, social structures.

Ruined for Beauty

The sarcasm culture, deadpanned in the eyes, doesn’t stop corroding society. It’s like dry rot eating away a culture’s weight bearing timber.

Unchecked, the sarcastic man’s affections become so corroded, his eyes so deadpan, so I-know-more-than-you, that those same eyes cannot weep at created beauty, let alone see it. He cannot submit himself to truth. He becomes cynical for all that is redemptive. He falls prey to the tyranny of sarcasm. He cannot criticize the tyranny of the jaded sarcasm itself.

It is true, irony is a good way to poke fun at yourself. Perhaps Christians can take some cues from Ned Flanders, the most famously satirized evangelical. Like the satirical voice from a whirlwind aimed at Job, irony has a useful place in pushing back cultural idols and evangelical presumptions. But sarcasm aimed to subvert others should be taken in small doses.

Sarcasm Culture and Redemptive Hope

In a sarcasm culture, we must renew the call for redemptive Christian sincerity. Yes, it’s easier to post wit and sarcasm and biting criticism online. The hard thing is to post sincere truth and to put yourself in a vulnerable place before the eyes of a ridicule culture.

In his longest novel, one of Wallaces’s fictional characters seeks to evade loneliness — “the great transcendent horror” — by becoming so hip and cool and cynical about life to be included among his peers. But the end result of the Simpsons and Letterman was not to foster a place of belonging or for true friendship, but isolation — a world where “hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human,” and in evading what is human, we become disingenuous, incapable of the self-disclosure required of community. We’re left with random Seinfeld-like connections with others, with zero depth and with nothing of significance to offer one another but another punchline jeer to distract each other from our troubles.

Our media shape us in one profound way that’s hard to shake. As Wallace once said, “All U.S. irony is based on an implicit ‘I don’t really mean what I’m saying.’”

And there’s the problem.

More Powerful Than Sarcasm

Nothing is more countercultural to snark-culture than sincerity. And nothing is more human than sincerity, for only with sincerity can you weep at truth and beauty. For Christians, deadpanned in the eyes is not an option. For “those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!” (Psalm 126:5).

Deep sincerity — tear-filled sincerity — is an essential marker of spiritual health and the aliveness of our affections, and critical to our gospel mission. The apostle Paul’s ministry is substantiated by its sincere love: “As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by . . . genuine love” (2 Corinthians 6:4–6). He calls us to an earnest trust in God as he celebrates Timothy’s “sincere faith” (2 Timothy 1:5). It is in this sincere faith that we all must express sincere love for others: “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5; see also Romans 12:9; 1 Peter 1:22).

And even if ridiculers turn out to hate knowledge, we live under the authority of divine truth in sincerity, as James 3:17 says, “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.”

Questions to Ask

So who are we, and who will we be in this culture? Sarcastic or sincere? Scoffers or builders? Known by our ridiculing barbs or by our redemptive hopes? Are we offering one another a deadpanned face, or do our expressions express love, interest, and self-giving sincerity?

These may seem like theoretical questions, but they are real questions, ones probably already answered in the archive of our social media feeds and in our most liked and retweeted memes.

Christians in the age of snark have beauties to relish far beyond the beauties of a single rose. We have the beautiful Rose of Sharon, the beauty of a stunning Savior who died so that we could be sincere with the world, sincere with ourselves, and sincere with one another — that is, to be fully human.

We are free in Christ to enjoy beauty, to tweet truth, and to be vulnerable, because we have died to the base things of this world and the dominant sarcasm culture of America’s media, and have been made alive with him to truth, beauty, and sincerity again.

This article originally appeared on Desiring God and is used by permission of the author.

Photo by Sven Scheuermeier on Unsplash