Tag: Growth

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Why So Little Joy and Peace in Believers?

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

What a beautiful vision of the Christian life, a life filled with all joy and peace as we trust in Him. It’s a great aspiration.

In a series of talks John Ortberg did with Dallas Willard just before Willard’s death, he recounted a conversation that he had with Dallas about churches:

During one of the first times Dallas and I talked, I asked about the churches. Some churches are great at music and worship. Some churches are effective at evangelism or reaching folks outside of them. Other churches are teaching factories. Others are great at assimilating people. And still others are good at acts of justice and compassion. But, I asked Dallas, where are the churches that are producing abnormally loving and joyful, patient, courageous people in inexplicably high percentages?

It’s a great question. Why don’t we see more joyful, hopeful, and patient Christians? Is it even possible to see Christians who are “abnormally loving and joyful”? Continue reading “Why So Little Joy and Peace in Believers?”

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Getting the Church on Track

Why do we do church? For some, church is a habit. For others, it makes them feel good. For many, it is a refuge from the world. For still others, the word “church” brings bad memories of hurt.

But what is God’s design? What did He make it for? In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul lays out the basic message of Christianity. Human beings are created by God but forgiven freely by grace through faith. Those who believe are being transformed into the likeness of the truest human, Jesus. The letter to Romans is a marvelous explanation of these truths. Martin Luther said, “It is the chief part of the New Testament and the perfect gospel . . . the absolute epitome of the gospel.” And John Calvin said, “When anyone understands this Epistle, he has a passage opened to him to the understanding of the whole Scripture.”

Near the end of the book of Romans, the Apostle gives two benedictions or declarations of blessing that indicate his desired result in the life of the Roman church. I believe that they encapsulate the purpose of the church. These benedictions are: “May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. . . May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:5-6, 13).

In this passage and the surrounding verses, I believe that Paul sets forth four key purposes for the church: to connect people to God, to help them grow in character, to connect people to one another, and to equip people to make an impact in the world.

First, he wants it to be a place that helps people connect with God. This may seem obvious, but it’s probably so obvious we can miss it. Everything the church does exists to make sure that people are living daily and moment by moment in a relationship of faith and love with the Triune God. The call of the church is always, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles; let all the peoples extol him” (Psalm 117:1).

How are we doing on that? Good questions to ask on this goal are: are we helping people who are not connected to God connect with God? Do we see people living more of their lives in the presence of God? Can we and do we share stories of people connecting with God better because of the work of our church?

Second, he wants it to be a place where people are growing in their character. He wants Christians to become more and more a people who are trusting in God and expecting Him to do good things (hope). He wants us to be filled joy and peace. Romans 15:13 describes beautifully what the results of the Gospel should be for human beings: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

In a series of talks John Ortberg did with Dallas Willard just before Willard’s death, he recounted a conversation that he had with Dallas about churches.

During one of the first times Dallas and I talked, I asked about the churches. Some churches are great at music and worship. Some churches are effective at evangelism or reaching folks outside of them. Other churches are teaching factories. Others are great at assimilating people. And still others are good at acts of justice and compassion. But, I asked Dallas, where are the churches that are producing abnormally loving and joyful, patient, courageous people in inexplicably high percentages?

It’s a great question. Are we seeing people grow in their character? Are we seeing people develop these virtues? Do we see transformation over time in the people who attend? Can we tell stories about it? This is one of the great purposes of the church, to aid in that process.

Third, Paul wants the church to be a place where people can build relationships that will help them connect with God and grow spiritually. He wants it to be a place where people connect with each other, accept each other, help each other grow, and build community.

One thing about churches is that they are in fact built on community. There are strong relationships, or the church probably wouldn’t exist. But there are a couple of ways we need to challenge the church on this point. How easy is it for newcomers to connect (hint: probably not as easy as you think)? Are people building new relationships and connecting across generations? Are the relationships that are built helping people grow in their character and relationship with God or are they merely social?

Fourth, the goal of the church is to send people out to make an impact in the world. The goal of the church is not the church. It is that the people in the church would take what they receive and bring it into their homes, schools, neighborhoods, and workplace and make an impact that will further God’s purposes in creation and redemption.

So, we should ask, is our church making a difference in the world? Are people interacting differently in their homes, schools, and workplace because of what they are receiving in the church? Can we share stories about what God is doing outside the church as a result of the work in the church?

If we cannot answer a lot of these questions in the affirmative, we need to get the church back on track. And once we get on track, we will need to immediately get it back on track. The law of entropy applies to organizations and individuals just as much as to the physical world. Renewal needs to be a way of life, as the theologian Richard Lovelace put it.

What this means is that we need to not only do the activities of the church. We need to do them with purpose. We need to be deliberately looking for results. Now, these results are only partly the result of our work. God is the one who gives the increase. But that means that we need to pray for these results as well as laboring for them.

Once we start looking for these results, we will realize that they are already happening to some degree. This reminds us that it is first and foremost God who builds the church. He has been working at it a long time, and He invites us to be a part of what He is doing. But we certainly should not rest with what has been done in the past. As the Apostle Paul said elsewhere, I want your love to abound more and more! (1 Thessalonians 4:9-10).

It is a mistake to think that simply because God is the primary builder of His Church that we have no part to play. We are co-workers, workers under Him. We have our part to play, and we have our responsibility. Our part is to discern what God is doing with the church and lean into it. Our part is to align our activities, hearts, and minds with what God is doing. When we do so, we can expect that we will see Him do great things through us and in us. He is the God of hope!

My encouragement to you is to think clearly about what the church is for. Don’t just let it be something that is vague. Think through it clearly and put all your labor and prayers into moving it in His direction. That is how we align ourselves with God and His work. That is how we bring renewal. That is how we get and keep the church on track.

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Scipio Africanus

Many people know the great Carthaginian General Hannibal. He took his elephants across the Alps from Spain to invade Rome and Italy during the 2nd Punic War (218–201 BC, the Punic Wars were a series of three wars between Rome and Carthage). This famous act memorializes Hannibal’s military prowess.

But less have heard of the man who defeated Hannibal: Scipio Africanus, Publius Cornelius Scipio (236–183). Scipio not only defeated Hannibal, he never lost a battle. He was Rome’s greatest general.

Seeing that Scipio’s rise was connected with the threat of Hannibal, it made me wonder, would there have been a Scipio without a Hannibal?

I tied that question into a larger question I had been pondering related to the Roman Empire. Carthage was Rome’s most formidable enemy. It was a vibrant and wealthy empire that controlled much of the Western Mediterranean outside of Italy. It’s easy to speculate, what would have happened if Carthage had won the war? Would there have been a Roman Empire?

But my question was a little bit different. It was this: without Carthage, would there have been a Roman Empire? Without this powerful opponent, would Rome have remained content as a land power in Italy?

Military historian Richard A. Gabriel’s book Scipio Africanus demonstrates that these two questions are interrelated to a much greater degree than I would have initially expected. According to Gabriel, Hannibal’s success allowed Scipio to arise, and it was Scipio who developed the idea of an empire as away of solving the long-term security threat posed by Carthage.

Here’s how it happened.

Hannibal was a great general, but Carthage had great generals. They had well-developed tactics, and they knew how to use their diverse armies as a tool of their will. Hannibal was simply the most capable and daring of these generals.

Hannibal dealt Rome its greatest defeat at the Battle of Cannae. There, Rome lost 80% of the soldiers who participated in that battle. However, this was merely one of many defeats that Hannibal inflicted on Rome. Hannibal remained in Italy as a threat to Rome for 14 years!

Rome could not defeat Hannibal in pitched battle, so several Roman strategists believed that the way to defeat him was to attack his base in Africa. Scipio is credited with this strategy, but he was not the only one to think of it. He was, however, the one who actually successfully carried it out.

When the 2nd Punic War started, Scipio was a junior cavalry officer. He did come from a prominent Roman family, but he advanced quickly because he actually survived and lived and so many of the officers above him died. Scipio’s own father was commander of the Roman forces in Spain, and he died fighting Hannibal’s brother Hasdrubal at Battle of the Upper Baetis.

Scipio was chosen to replace his own father as commander of the Roman forces in Spain. Scipio eventually defeated the Carthaginian forces in Spain and began planning the invasion of Africa. Beyond that, he began working to implement a broader vision. As Gabriel explains:

Scipio’s grand strategic vision was based in the new Roman class that looked to overseas expansion and commerce for Rome’s future. In Scipio’s view, Carthage’s predations in Spain and Sicily were forcing Rome to become a world power for it was the only way in which its legitimate security interests could be satisfied (140).

But he first had to defeat Carthage.

Scipio’s Africa strategy worked. The threat to the city of Carthage led to Hannibal’s recall. At the Battle of Zama, Scipio defeated Hannibal and quickly brought an end to the 2nd Punic War.

Following the war, Rome established its rule over Spain and other areas of the Western Mediterranean. Scipio established the first of Rome’s overseas colony cities: Italica. It was the first of the many Roman colonies that would spread throughout the Mediterranean world. From this one city came three emperors: Trajan, Hadrian, and Theodosius the Great (Gabriel, 138). Even though Rome was a republic at this time, this was the real beginning of Roman empire.

So, why does all this matter? When we consider large and difficult challenges, it’s easy to get discouraged. However, these sometimes scary things test us and enable us to grow. We should not seek out powerful enemies, but when we face them, we should be less daunted. Big challenges can defeat us, but they also present the biggest opportunities for growth.

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Jordan B. Peterson on How to Change Society

Over the past year, a surprising number of people have asked me, “What do you think of Jordan B. Peterson?” He’s made quite a stir.

A few weeks ago, I took some time to listen to some of his podcasts. You can get a good summary of his views (2.5 hours worth!) in his interview with Dr. Oz. If you like thinking deeply about ideas and how to implement them in the world, you will enjoy this podcast, probably irrespective of your view of Peterson.

I’m sure that I’ll have some critiques of Peterson later, but, for now, I’m trying to understand what he’s saying and learn what I can from him. Here’s what I heard.

Peterson’s greatest concern is how do we keep the world from turning into an awful, soul-crushing tyranny like the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany? He spent a lot of time thinking through this problem. He tried to analyze it from a political and economic perspective, but he did not believe that it gave an adequate explanation of why these societies became hell on earth.

His analysis led him to believe that the problem existed on an individual level. It wasn’t just a problem with the system. It was a problem with individuals taking responsibility for themselves and for doing good in their society.

Thus, in Peterson’s mind, the place to attack the problem of making society better is at the level of the individual. Each individual needs to take responsibility for him or herself and for doing good in their own area. That’s the best strategy for making society better.

At one point, Dr. Oz asked Peterson why he thought his ideas had resonated so much with the public. Peterson explained that taking responsibility is not easy. When you seek to take responsibility for yourself and to be better, it involves suffering and challenges. To confront our own demons and make ourselves better is daunting. Things will not be handed to you on a silver platter. You will have to work at them, and it will not be easy. Suffering is part of life.

Peterson observes that people know in the depths of their being that life is hard. When you tell them that it is, they can face reality more squarely. They can see that the difficulties they have faced are not some problem with them but the inherent challenge of living in this world. In an ironic way, this is an encouraging message as well as a helpful one.

If changing ourselves is important and difficult, how do we do it? Peterson suggests that we need to figure out what we want to be. We need to tell ourselves a story about what we could be and should be. Then, we need to develop a story of what life would be like if we don’t become what we could be and should be or even let our own pathology run amok. For example, if we work on developing skills, we will have a future self that can make a contribution. If we devote ourselves to drinking alcohol, we will not only not accomplish things but ruin our lives and our families and waste a bunch of money. We need the positive reinforcement of getting closer to our goals as well as the fear of what life could be like if it went the wrong way to motivate us to move beyond simply enjoying ourselves in the moment.

Once we have a clear vision of where we want to be, we must ask, what are the things I can do to help me get there? What do we need to do each day and week in order to move us toward our vision?

Here’s one way this has helped me think a bit better about about my goals. I took guitar lessons when I was in junior high. I have often wanted to pick the guitar back up, but I have often gotten discouraged at how much work or time it would take to get where I’d like to be. If I begin, however, by asking, what kind of guitarist can I be if I work on it 3-4 times a week over the course of 5 years, then the work is not so daunting. So, I’ve been doing that, and I can see that I’ve made progress since I took the guitar back up a couple of months ago. The long-term vision helps sustain us through the work that has to take place week by week, which is still far from our goals. One of my favorite quotes from Peterson is, “Don’t compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday.”

In attempting to fulfill a vision for our lives, we will find that things are stacked up against us and that many things are unfair. At one point, Peterson compares life to a poker game. The cards are dealt, and it is not fair. You just have to play your own hand because that’s the only strategy you have. You can’t manufacture another life in which things will be fairer or easier than they are for you.

This does not mean that Peterson does not believe that there are structural inequities in what he calls the “hierarchies” of society. There are. Hierarchies dispossess people. It’s just that changing hierarchies is not the most significant aspect of societal change. The individual is.

Peterson also does not reject efforts to make the hierarchies more equitable. However, he suggests that in regard to systems, when you change them, you should be aware that changing them will result in unintended consequences. So, it takes tremendous wisdom and patience to change the structures of society. That’s why Peterson proposes that if you want to change the structures of society, have at it, but you might want to devote your life to careful thought about it and recognize that the progress will be very slow.

In contrast, working on yourself is relatively easy and much more effective. That’s why the individual is the focus for changing society.

It’s easy to see why Peterson’s ideas are compelling to so many. Peterson has a forceful and clear presentation that challenges the irresponsibility of our age and speaks truth about the difficulties of life. He also presents hope for society because each person can work on that over which they have the most control, their selves.

Obviously, an evangelical Christian will have issues with Peterson, but there is much to learn from him. There is also much more to explore in his thought. I have not even touched on his approach to literature or the Bible, which is something I want to explore and think about. In thinking about society, however, his emphasis on individual transformation is an encouraging one that is worth considering. Even if it is more necessary to change societal structures than Peterson suggests, the course of action he suggests for an individual would still have many positive benefits for the individual and those in contact with that individual.

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Talk About Death

“Talk About Death” says chapter heading 41 in Irvin D. Yalom’s The Gift of Therapy.

Why does Yalom say this? Consideration of death provides us an opportunity for growth.

This conclusion arises from two observations. First, he says that behind many of our problems is the subconscious awareness of death. Concerns about the transitions of life are often about the shortness of life. Instead of letting it be an undercurrent, we can make it explicit and gain wisdom by considering the shortness of our lives.

Second, he observed that those who were facing death often made the greatest progress in therapy. He did therapy with cancer patients who were facing death, and he was amazed at how quickly insights about life would come to them in contrast to other patients who took so much longer to really confront key issues in their lives.

One explanation for why this is the case is what the philosopher Martin Heidegger called two modes of existence: the everyday mode and the ontological mode. In the every day mode, we consider the events of our everyday life. In the ontological mode, we ask questions about being itself. Growth occurs when we step into the ontological mode.

I might re-phrase it this way: our normal way of thinking is to look at the small picture. In order to grow, we need to look at the big picture and ask questions like: why am I here? What is my purpose? What really matters? What is my relationship to God?

The specter of death has a way of helping us move into the ontological or big picture mode. This is where growth occurs.

So, do we need to wait until we are dying to ask big picture questions? Of course, we do not, but it’s hard for us to move out of the small picture, every day mode. So, how can we move into the big picture mode? How do we help others do the same?

Yalom notes that there are many events in our lives that present opportunities for considering the bigger picture: the death of a spouse, children leaving home, retirement, a move to another place. These things have a way of stripping away temporary things that we rely on and opening the possibility for deeper questions. Though these events can be sad or challenging, we can also see them as opportunities.

Yalom did a study that illustrates this point. He studied a number of spouses who had lost a spouse to death. He found that many of them went beyond returning to their pre-loss emotional levels. A fourth to a third of them went on to greater levels of maturity and growth.

This reminds me of the advice of King Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes: “It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart” (7:2).

Not only the therapist, but the minister, the Christian, and anyone trying to make their way through the world should not avoid the subject but talk about death.

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