Soul Dialogue #4

I’m getting ready for a 30-minute interview on the NPR program “To the Best of Our Knowledge,” and so I thought I’d have this week's post take the form of a radio interview. 

Radio interviewer: I'm here with Greg Cootsona, author of C.S. Lewis and and the Crisis of Christian, as well as his latest book Mere Science and Christian Faith. I want to start right off with this: We all see, Greg—don’t we?—that there’s no real search, like in the good old days, for what they used to call "the Christian mind."

GSC: “The Christian mind”—I haven’t heard that phrase for a while. But it does sound something like “we take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5)—not exactly what Paul was saying, but probably a reasonable extension of it.

Interviewer: Yes, you can describe it in a number of ways. And here’s another one: there’s no one seeking some overarching Christian philosophy—a worldview, perhaps—that puts it all together.

GSC: Yes, you’re spot on! (As they say in England..) It seems like my college students have become such skilled manipulators of information that they don’t have a unifying thread for all of it.

Interviewer: What do you mean?

GSC: Today’s twentysomething is a digital native, a person who always lived with the panoply of digital devices—and especially smart phones—at their fingertips. They also know the explosion of options that’s represented in the fact that today there are almost 1.5 billion websites.

Interviewer: So, Greg, you’re saying that many people today live in contradictory ways? Now that makes sense to me, but do you have any evidence?

GSC: Yes, and I’ll start with an anecdote from one of my interviews with college students—it was the hardcore chemistry major who told me,

“I’m very science heavy. I would love to have faith, but I need to have the facts… hard data.” And yet she continued, “I prayed, and the prayer worked. So I keep praying even if I don’t believe there’s anything beyond the material world.”

Interviewer: Do Christians do the same thing?

GSC: Absolutely. I'm continually surprised by the various incompatible spiritualities, philosophies, and political ideologies that I hear from Christian students.

Interviewer: In light of this contradictory pluralism running through our brains, is there a way a Christian mind can help?

GSC: It strikes me that one key is emotions, to which we attach ourselves in incompatible ideas. But our emotions change quite quickly. And so we need to create the Christian mind to help us moderate all those vicissitudes.

Interviewer: “Vicissitudes”—that’s quite a word! Impressive... At any rate, are you asserting that it’s simply getting your head in the right space—and that will solve everything?

GSC: No, certainly not. What I am saying will make a difference is directing all of us toward the love of God. Or as Jesus phrased it so well, 

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Jesus (Matthew 22:37)

He’s saying it’s not just the mind, but that we shouldn’t forget it either.

a Trinitarian-looking coat hook?

Interviewer: You’ve also got to complete the passage! Jesus adds this (and I'm going to emphasize one phrase): 

“This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The Law and the Prophets all hang on these two commandments.” Jesus (Matthew 22:38-40)

GSC: Why is “all hang on” so important?

Interviewer: Because Christians today don’t have anywhere to hang all their ideas, feelings, intuitions, emotions, notions, impulses, sensations, and concepts. And that’s a major loss. But Jesus tells us that love of God and one another is what we need.

GSC: Wow! Next time let me be the interviewer!

Investment in our Yeses

Jesus presented a compelling connection:

“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21)      

When I’ve heard this passage taught, preached, and commented on, usually—almost always—people declare, “Jesus is telling us that our internal world is the most important thing. When we have a heart for what matters, then we will give our money. Let’s be sure we change from the inside.”

      

This thought may be comforting, or even challenging, in many ways. But it’s not what Jesus said. Notice the order: It’s not “where your heart is, there will your treasure be also.” Instead: where our treasure is (first), there our heart will be also (second). Our heart follows our dollars. Not the other way around.

            

Our call in life is to say yes to what’s truly important. And what's one way to do that? The answer sounds slightly odd at first: By investing our money in it. (And I would be willing to add our time and our talents, but I’ll keep it focused for now.)

            

It’s actually commonsense. If I bought a sweet mountain bike (which I did), I’m going to take care of my Trek—I’ll make sure it’s clean, that the derailleur is adjusted precisely, the tires are pumped to the perfect psi, and that it’s appropriately locked at night and insured. That’s at least what I’m doing. Especially the latter… Because a bike of mine was stolen out of my garage a few years ago while I peacefully slept. And so again, I digress….

            

Whatever we invest our money in will be the place where our heart goes. Dollars lead the heart. And “heart” is the center of our lives—not just our emotions, but more so the will, the attitude, the way our lives are directed.

            

In order to deepen our yeses, we have to invest money in what’s important. As I’ve written before, we find our yeses where our passions meet God’s mission. That means that we put dollars into God’s mission, which Jesus defined as the poor, the marginal, the ones that society leaves aside because they are interesting and alluring. That requires giving to our local homeless mission, to overseas water projects, and to agencies that fight AIDS and waterborne diseases worldwide.

            

As we’ve learned to define our yeses, we know even more where that money should go. If we’ve completed and know the three words that define our personal branding—or at least that’s one way to do it—we learn to invest in these things. Want to be a great percussionist? Buy a good drum set. Invest in lessons. Download music that you’ll practice with. It’s not a guarantee that you’ll get better. But when you pay those bills, when you see that drum kit, you’ll be reminded. When you start playing that beautiful new Yamaha recording custom set, you’ll sound better. (And you’ll look cooler.) And that will make you want to play more.

            

And one hopes—at least I do for my life—that these yeses (even ones as innocuous as enjoying drums) may serve God’s mission (perhaps by leading worship, maybe by creating beautiful music or playing in the studio with a friend). Or because I enjoy it, these may simply make me more of who God calls me to be. As the great, ancient Christian writer, Irenaeus, phrased it so well, 

“The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” Irenaeus

 When we invest our treasure so that our hearts follow—if we’ve done this in the right way—we become fully alive. And in that yes, God is glorified.

An Invitation to Lent

“You must submit to supreme suffering in order to discover the completion of joy.” - John Calvin

If you’re not familiar with Lent, it comes from the word “to lengthen”—in other words, during these weeks the days begin to lengthen with the coming light of spring. The period of Lent is
 40 days of fasting before the celebration of Easter. Traditionally, Christians have fasted—given up certain foods or other things— during Lent as a sign of repentance, faith, and preparation for Easter. Lent does not include Sundays because in the history of the Christian church, those are “feast" days, in which we celebrated the Resurrection, and not “fast” days. In total, there are 46 days during this season (not including Easter), but we fast for 40 of those.

As the community of Christians worldwide, we now enter into the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday, particularly the call to repentance. 

“Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing.”
Joel 2:12-13

A few years ago, when I looked back over my life, I realized that I couldn’t go forward simply by pressing on faster—instead I needed “to turn around” and slow down. This insight from C. S. Lewis spoke to me,

"We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man."

Progress is the result of “turning around” around fast, as long as we realize that “turning around” is the root meaning of repentance and that in Lent, we fast (give up certain pleasures or necessities)
in order to slow down and get on the right track. 

Why it’s called Ash Wednesday? Because ashes are a sign that we are making a U turn, that we are repenting. As a sign of repentance, the Bible speaks of using ashes. Consider these two verses:

Joel 2:12-13 says, “Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.” 

In Matthew 11:20-21, Jesus calls two towns in Galilee to repent in sackcloth and ashes: 

“Then he began to reproach the cities in which most of his deeds of power had been done, because they did not repent. ‘Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.’”

So, Ash Wednesday—whether we literally use ashes or not— initiates a time of repenting or seeking to turn our life around in the places we are heading away from God. That way we we turn back to God, at the center of our life.

What do I need to repent from? God, search me and help me to find out.