The One Talent Guy

I just finished reading The Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila and although it got a little too Roman Catholic for me in the sixth and seventh mansions I was still enriched by the experience. One of the things that I've found very edifying while reading The Interior Castle, The Imitation of Christ, and The Confessions has been the incredible humility that these books enjoin on the reader. Consider the 12th paragraph of the 3rd chapter in the fifth mansions:

Beg our Lord to grant you perfect love for your neighbour, and leave the rest to Him. He will give you more than you know how to desire if you constrain yourselves and strive with all your power to gain it, forcing your will as far as it is possible to comply in all things with your sisters' wishes although you may sometimes forfeit your own rights by so doing.

This is not un-biblical:

Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
(Philippians 2:3)

I've found the repeated exhortations to humility very un-21st-century-American and it refreshes me, and I'm thankful for that.

Another passage in The Interior Castle that I found very useful was this one near the end of the seventh mansions:

I told you elsewhere how the devil frequently fills our thoughts with great schemes, so that instead of putting our hands to what work we can do to serve our Lord, we may rest satisfied with wishing to perform impossibilities.

This is one of those great nuggets of truth. I lived like this for so long - always "satisfying" myself "with wishing to perform impossibilities" so that I did nothing at all for God. It has only been in the past year that I decided that I could do so little but at least I could do that. This is the reason I blog - because it is one of the few things I find within my ability and will to do. In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30) it encourages me that there is somebody given only one talent (when the other two people in the parable are given 5 and 2 talents). It encourages me even though in the parable the poor fellow just buries his one talent in the ground and is clearly the example of what not to do. But that is just it, isn't it? See, I'm that one talent guy and I'm determined to make the most of it, not bury it in the ground happy with just wishing I was the five talent guy. Let's not rest satisfied with wishing to perform impossibilities but rather put our hands to what work we can do to serve our Lord.

So Little that is New

Lately I've been reading old books.  I started in on The Confessions of Augustine on my last trip and I'm amazed by how similar to me he is.  I suppose that this is a common reaction to The Confessions since it is even mentioned in the Preface of the book but it is amazing how little is new since he lived.  The book was written about 1600 years ago in Italy and although I am unable to fathom that amount of time I find that the book speaks to me as though Augustine just lived around the corner here in town.

I love the way that Augustine puts things sometimes.  Like, for example when he talks about his boyhood and going to school and says:

But whereas the frivolous pursuits of grown-up people are called "business," children are punished for behaving in the same fashion, and no one is sorry for either the children or the adults; so are we to assume that any sound judge of the matter would think it right for me to be beaten because I played ball as a boy, and was hindered by my game from more rapid progress in studies which would only equip me to play an uglier game later?  Moreover, was the master who flogged me any better himself?  If he had been worsted by a fellow-scholar in some pedantic dispute, would he not have been racked by even more bitter jealousy than I was when my opponent in a game of ball got the better of me?

He is absolutely correct!  I just came from taking my oldest daughter to a chess tournament and the adults who are there smile and shake their heads at all of the kids who are so vexed by losing to one of their peers, but yet most adults are only above such behavior not because of their own greater maturity but rather because they simply don't care about that particular game.  In their own games (meetings at work, for example, where I see this on display all of the time) they are just as vexed as those kids are, and maybe more so, by having one of their peers be proven correct about something after some heated discussion (thus: worsted by a fellow-scholar in some pedantic dispute, as Augustine puts it).  It is pitiful, really.  It is more pitiful that Augustine knew this 1600 years ago.  But one of the gifts of reading The Confessions is an enhanced appreciation for Ecclesiastes:

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.  (Ecclesiastes 1:2-8)

The fact that we don't read Augustine in school and the fact that I am shocked at how similar he is to me when I discover him makes me think of just a few verses later in Ecclesiastes:

There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.  (Ecclesiastes 1:11)

Does this mean that there is no hope for humanity to progress out of a constant repetition of past mistakes?  Unfortunately I think that it must be so.  We know that we can progress if we follow the Bible:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil.  (Proverbs 3:5-7)

But Jesus himself tells us to"Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.  (Matthew 7:13-14)"  We require a lamp (Psalm 119:105) and therefore how can we find our way in the darkness without it?  If the majority of the world is to remain in darkness then what hope is there fore the honest spiritual progression of the bulk of mankind?  Across the world there are so many who deny that progression of the soul requires the light of the Bible.  Some say that the light comes from a different book or a different leader and others say that it comes from human knowledge, but this book that I am reading from 1600 years ago speaks of philosophies and ideas we are taught today are new (what Augustine calls the Academics, for example - those who believe that truth cannot be known for certain, and the fact that the Manichees stated that the New Testament writings had "been falsified by unknown persons bent on interpolating the Christian faith with elements of the Jewish law"), and so the Bible which has always reassured me that in such matters humanity does not progress on its own but rather precesses is all the more sweet to me for the truth that it contains.

Congealed Despair

I didn't grow up thinking too much about Easter beyond candy and hiding eggs since we didn't celebrate the liturgical calendar beyond the usual American cultural observances, but for some reason this year I find myself thinking a lot about the time that Jesus was gone from the earth prior to his resurrection.

As I try to think about what it must have been like for the disciples I can only draw upon the inadequate personal experience that we almost all have of losing someone dear to us. I say that this is inadequate, though, because since Jesus is the Son of God his impact on the lives of those around him was that much more intense. Oddly enough, although he warned them repeatedly that he came to die and be raised again (Matt. 16:21; Mark 9:31) they did not understand (Mark 9:32) and so it came as a shock to them when he did die and they were confused by his resurrection (Luke 24:5-8). To have been so near to the Son of God and then to have seen him brutally killed; to have helped in his burial and to have known what all humans know, that even though there may be a life to come after this one death means never seeing that person here again must have brought about a feeling of such utter despair like we have whenever we lose anyone, but amplified an untold amount by the fact that Jesus was not just anyone. As the Son of God he had demanded a permanent change in their lives, and they had complied (Luke 5:11). Now, then, how do they go back to what was before? Now that they have seen him die, what do they do with the lives that they had given to him? On the day of the crucifixion they were clearly worried most about their own safety (Matt. 26:56) and perhaps they didn't even sleep that first night (I mean, could you?) but when they finally did sleep and wake up the next day and he was still gone, what then? Where do you go when your despair starts to congeal and the sense of loss hardens into the certainty that all you thought was right was proven wrong in front of your very eyes by the most irreversible of all the events known to us in this world? The bottom, of course, was the day before he rose again. How could it not be?  I have always believed with all of my heart that the Christian religion would have died there with that man on the cross if he had died there and stayed dead. If he was just another liar with an agenda to bilk his disciples of all their hard-earned cash then where would it have gone once he was gone?

But of course it didn't end there. Christianity became an indestructible religion powered by peasants that confused the great powers of the day by persisting even to the point of death in their strange belief about a man rising again after being nailed to a cross. And why would they do this? Because they saw him. They knew the day when their despair was turned to victory because they saw him and believed.