Isaiah expresses God’s message in stark but beautiful and often poetic language. If you’re a reader at heart and you love poetry, and — most importantly — you have a heart open to the message God had and has through the prophet Isaiah, what an exhilarating  and Spirit-infused experience reading this biblical book is! But that said, when you come to it “cold” it can be tough sledding (pardon the punning illusion). What does it all mean?  Much of the meaning of its 66 chapters seems awfully complicated, and many of the ancient references of this 5000-or-so-year-old book are likely to strike the average Bible reader as not only complicatedly remote but somewhat irrelevant to us self-regarding sophisticated human beings in the 21st century (if he or she is entirely honest). 

My own reaction was frustration when in the past I would try to read through Isaiah . I would start out fine and then get bogged down, knowing there was much I was missing and not understanding. I would usually quit before I finished the book, or I’d start skipping around to familiar or easier-to-understand passages. Short of being in a church where an insightful pastor was preaching  through the entire book (don’t I wish!) I had to do something about that.

So a few years ago I went on a quest to look for a guide to help me: a commentary or other resource whose author I could trust to interpret the book  a holistic manner which sees context, uses Scripture to interpret Scripture and sees that all of the Bible is “living and active” Word of God, and therefore never irrelevant and always speaking to those who have ears to hear (what I would call a Reformed approach to reading Scripture). What ended my search and what I decided to buy was The NIV Application Commentary on Isaiah by John N. Oswalt, published by Zondervan, as is the NIV Bible (New International Version).

 The commentary is set up like this: First you’ll read the biblical text of the section of Isaiah covered in that particular commentary chapter (a great feature so that you can read Isaiah itself and the commentary from this one hefty book); then a section on “Original Meaning”; a section called “Bridging Contexts”; and a final “Contemporary Significance.” Each commentary chapter covers a specific “chunk” of Isaiah. The breaks are based on its content, not necessarily on the ends of the biblical chapters. Oswalt begins the whole effort with a lengthy and very helpful introduction which presents the historical setting of Isaiah, what was going on in Israel and Judah at the time, and in the surrounding pagan nations. He addresses Isaiah’s authorship and date.  Then he lays out what he convincingly argues are the book’s central themes: Judgment and Hope, Servanthood and Kingdom, Trust and Rebellion, Arrogance and Humiliation, The Uniqueness of Yahweh, The Nations, Righteousness. He ties those in again when he addresses “The Relevance of the Book of Isaiah Today.”  There’s also an outline of Isaiah so you can see at a glance how and when those themes are interwoven into the biblical book.

If all that sounds just as complicated as reading Isaiah on your own can be, it’s not. Not at all. Oswalt writes in an easy style. And remember: this is an application commentary: its purpose is to better help you and me understand the Bible, not just to present biblical scholarship for other scholars, and  which may or may not get read outside of academia and may or may not have relevance to Christians in general.  (Not incidentally, many, perhaps even most biblical scholars today are not Christians, and some number are actually atheists.) To put it mildly, this hardcover commentary is well worth the $20-$25 it will cost you at amazon.com. In periodic future posts I’ll speak to some of the specifics that have particularly hit me — and how utterly relevant they are to our own time.

It seems to me that an integral part of our “hours-and-days-and-years-and-ages” nature (as New Year’s hymn #443 in the Christian Reformed Church’s Psalter Hymnal puts it) involves a year’s end/year’s beginning reflection on where we’ve been and where we’re going.

That’s what I feel the urge to do; and the common notion of New Year’s resolutions tells me that my reaction is part of a universal human impulse. The fact that the hymn I quoted was written in the 18^th century by a Dutchman, to a Moravian tune, is another clue to the universality of an annual urge to reflect, accompanied by a yearning for renewal.

For us Christians such thoughts must surely include re-evaluating the state of our faith: Where am I on the road to sanctification? Have I, asking God’s help, moved further down that road in the last year? Am I trusting him more and more, in and for all things? And are all of us Christ-believers communally doing the same?

I find that I tend to carry on such reflection throughout all of January — which is why I’m posting this here on Jan. 17. It may, and often does, take the whole month to get my thinking re-ordered and to relinquish bad habits and attitudes, and even to readjust my worldview so that it remains (or becomes) as biblical as possible. The Lord knows I can be a stubborn case!

It strikes me that the first act resulting from our reflection should be repentance. Another New Year’s hymn acknowledges that: “Greet the swiftly changing year with joy and penitence sincere” (Ps. H. # 444, 16^th c. Slovak text). Though redeemed, we are a fallen people living in a fallen world and disobedience to God comes all too naturally to us (cf. St. Paul’s “the good that I want to do I do not do…” Romans 7:14). It is instructive that this hymn phrase links joy and repentance. Repenting of sin is a Spirit-prompted reaching out to be put right with God, and God always welcomes and re-welcomes us with open arms when we plead for his mercy. What could bring us greater joy?

Exceeding the volume of our needs

Both of the hymns cited relay other biblical truths. Part of our penitential joy comes from reflecting on how Christ shed his blood for us, says the Slovak hymn. His broken body reveals his profound, description-defying love for us. In short: Jesus came to “end sin’s war” – granting us peace. If we had somehow forgotten, the hymn prompts us to recall that such love “far exceeds the volume of a whole year’s needs.” Did we have a prosperous year or did we lose a job or even our home? In any circumstance, if the Lord is leading us “what need we fear in earth or space in this new year of grace”?

There are more deeply biblical elements in this hymn. It urges both exultation and thankfulness.

Whether in joy or sorrow, prosperity or want, with every stanza we agree to “Rejoice! With thanks embrace another year of grace.” And then, acknowledging again that the new year is ours because of his grace, we give God the glory that is rightly his (echoing the angels’ song), and we ask his blessing as Triune God on our new year.

Despite God’s grace surrounding us and upholding us moment by moment, it is not hard, given our “old nature” of sin, to fear what is to come in a new year. If that is true in our personal lives it is certainly more true when we look at the increasing dangers for, and persecution of, Christians in the greater world. But the author of “Hours and Days and Years and Ages” reminds us that despite danger threatening to overwhelm us, despite raging sorrow, despite the ages moving swiftly as shadows and our own lives dissolving into “fleeting pages,” despite evil circumstances that seem to clamp us in their grasp, and even “though all friends on earth forsake us and our troubles still increase,” time’s marching on will not – cannot – “decide our end.” We know who does decide our end (and beginning, and middle, and every second of each year he gives us till we draw our last breath): “God our Father will remain, always changeless, come what may.”

St. Paul puts it this way:

In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither life nor death, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate use from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:37-38).

So: “Rejoice! With thanks embrace another year of grace”!

A slightly altered version on this meditation will appear as a column in Christian Courier, Jan. 23, 2012. 

Are you the same person you were five or 10 years ago? 20 years ago? I’m not. I do have the same basic traits – the ones I inherited from my parents and from family lines stretching back several centuries into the Netherlands and Germany. My musical and writing abilities are gifts from my father’s family. My stubbornness comes from both sides. (I like to call it being principled!) Intractability, it seems, may be a characteristic of more than one ethnic group. My husband, of Irish descent, likes to quip that the Dutch are stubborn but the Irish are resolute. Whatever it’s called, adding to it, we joke, is the fact that we each had German mothers.

Some people don’t change much over their lives, in personality or in thinking. Others change immensely. My husband, who had polio as a child and who now has post-polio syndrome, has been thoroughly shaped by that presence in his life (it is like a presence). Of course I don’t know exactly what he would have been like had God had not given him such a handicap, but I do know that he accepted his circumstances with grace (divine) and graciousness (human) and developed into a gentle soul who is never self-pitying, and a model for others with such wounds.

Over the decades my own chronic illness has, I hope, also changed me for the better. I pray it has made me more patient, more compassionate of those who suffer, more understanding of those who struggle.

Sin is the deadly inherited human-family trait that we cannot change or eradicate through experience or self-will. At base we all need radical change from some other source. Only Christ’s blood – divine genetics – will do.

‘In the cross of Christ I glory’

In the church year we’re currently halfway through Lent. Many Reformed Christians don’t think about Lent. When I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, Lent was still entirely Roman Catholic to us. My minister dismissed it out of hand; my dad shuddered.

But like people, churches change. The church is its people, after all. And as long as following a new path doesn’t involve a relinquishing of the Gospel, the new road can improve our view. Observing Lent is a beneficial tradition, I think. Many Reformed churches now agree. But Lent skeptics may ask: isn’t it a bit much to wallow for at least five weeks in thoughts about Christ’s death (think crucifix, not empty cross)? I think not, especially in our current era. In fact, contemplating Christ’s suffering for an extended time is a much needed antidote to the self-satisfaction and superficiality of our modern world.  And of course we “glory in” the cross of Christ, as the hymn says, because we see the Light at the end of the tunnel – at the door of the empty tomb.

It’s all too easy in our time to be infected by the secular attitude that we’re actually pretty good people. We’re kind to our neighbors, we give to charity when we can, we live and let live. Who needs “salvation,” anyway? (And why does Jesus have sole claim on saving us? That’s awfully exclusive, isn’t it? It’s so distastefully un-Canadian.) We’ve come a long way from the barbaric practices of centuries ago, or even of 50 years ago. Humankind is smart, enlightened, the measure of all things.

I’ve encountered more than a few people who think along those lines. Apart from the working of the Spirit of Christ in their lives there’s no way that I or anyone will convince them that they – like all of us – deserve God’s wrath, and that apart from God in Christ we all perish. Lenten observation from Ash Wednesday (March 9 this year) through Good Friday (April 22) is both communal and highly personal. It forces us as congregations, as individuals, to think deeply and carefully about why and how Christ died for us; for me. The natural outgrowth is renewed repentance and a marveling at such undeserved Love. Repentance then allows for conversion, the ultimate change in any person’s life.

My song is love unknown,
My Savior’s love to me;
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I, that for my sake
My Lord should take, frail flesh and die?

He came from His blest throne
Salvation to bestow;
But men made strange, and none
The longed for Christ would know:
But O! my Friend, my Friend indeed,
Who at my need His life did spend.

Sometimes they strew His way,
And His sweet praises sing;
Resounding all the day
Hosannas to their King:
Then “Crucify!” is all their breath,
And for His death they thirst and cry.

Why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
He gave the blind their sight,
Sweet injuries! Yet they at these
Themselves displease, and ’gainst Him rise.

They rise and needs will have
My dear Lord made away;
A murderer they saved,
The Prince of life they slay,
Yet cheerful He to suffering goes,
That He His foes from thence might free.

In life, no house, no home
My Lord on earth might have;
In death no friendly tomb
But what a stranger gave.
What may I say? Heav’n was His home;
But mine the tomb wherein He lay.

Here might I stay and sing,
No story so divine;
Never was love, dear King!
Never was grief like Thine.
This is my Friend, in Whose sweet praise
I all my days could gladly spend.

Samuel Crossman, c. 1624-1683, “My Song is Love Unknown”

After reviewing the rise of the modern age, the Italian literary critic Piero Camporesi commented, “We can now confirm that hell is finished, that the great theatre of torments is closed for an indeterminate period, and that after 2000 years of horrifying performances the play will not be repeated. The long triumphal season has come to an end.” Like a play with a good run, the curtain has finally come down, and for millions around the world, the biblical doctrine of hell is but a distant memory. For so many persons in this postmodern world, the biblical doctrine of hell has become simply unthinkable. Have postmodern westerners just decided that hell is no more? Can we really just think the doctrine away? Os Guinness notes that western societies “have reached the state of pluralization where choice is not just a state of affairs, it is a state of mind. Choice has become a value in itself, even a priority. To be modern is to be addicted to choice and change. Change becomes the very essence of life.” Personal choice becomes the urgency; what sociologist Peter Berger called the “heretical imperative.” In such a context, theology undergoes rapid and repeated transformation driven by cultural currents. For millions of persons in the postmodern age, truth is a matter of personal choice –- not divine revelation. Clearly, we moderns do not choose for hell to exist. This process of change is often invisible to those experiencing it and denied by those promoting it. As David F. Wells comments, “The stream of historic orthodoxy that once watered the evangelical soul is now dammed by a worldliness that many fail to recognize as worldliness because of the cultural innocence with which it presents itself.” He continued: “To be sure, this orthodoxy never was infallible, nor was it without its blemishes and foibles, but I am far from persuaded that the emancipation from its theological core that much of evangelicalism is effecting has resulted in greater biblical fidelity. In fact, the result is just the opposite. We now have less biblical fidelity, less interest in truth, less seriousness, less depth, and less capacity to speak the Word of God to our own generation in a way that offers an alternative to what it already thinks….”

Mohler’s piece in entirety, and information about his book Hell Under Fire, can be found  at www.albertmohler.com

I am extremely uneasy with that approach. It’s not real justice — the kind of justice God requires of us . It too easily leads to both apathy and tyranny, as the situations in numerous countries have shown and are still showing. It doesn’t work.  And it far too easily allows each of us as citizens to abrogate our personal responsibility to give our “cups of cold water in Jesus’s name,” including, and especially, financially. In the Bible God reveals his deep concern that the poor not be oppressed, that they be treated fairly.  That is  stated often in and in various ways, as any biblically literate person knows.  The corollary to that, however, is not an obligatory despising of the rich or their wealth (or, in our time, the corporations that may have created that wealth), as many “progressive” Christians seem to think. (Remember Abraham? Jacob? Job?) Yes, Jesus does say that it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than fora rich man to enter the Kingdom of heaven. And he told the parable of the rich man who built bigger and bigger barns but was oblivious to the state of his soul and to the fact that he would be called to account for his life and priorities that very night. It’s clear that Jesus’s point in both cases relates to our attitudes toward their wealth: ”You cannot serve God and money.”  Christians must be very careful that their wealth (whether moderate or extravagant) is used — like all things — for God’s glory and to promote his Kingdom, not our own empires. Biblical justice for the poor does not involve favoritism of the poor, however (as many Christians seem to believe), nor absolving them from the same kind of personal responsibility that all of us have to properly and wisely use every gift, small or great, that God gives us. (Nor should we fawn over the rich, of course.) That kind of onesidedness, says the Bible, even if for the threadbare underdog, is actually a perversion of justice: “‘Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly” (Lev. 19:15).  ”The rich are not to give more than a half shekel and the poor are not to give less when you make the offering to the LORD to atone for your lives,” says Exodus 30:15. In ancient Israel the poor were not exempt from bringing offerings to the Lord because they were poor.  The acceptable offerings were, rather, adjusted to their meagre income level.  Even at the time of Jesus’s birth that continued. Joseph and Mary, being poor, brought the appropriate offering — but not no offering  — when they presented Jesus in the temple at eight days old.

That brings me to Government-sponsored healthcare. Do I care that there are poor Americans who, if they get sick, become overwhelmed with medical costs? Of course I do. But here’s my sticking point: Should that dilemma be solved by the tax monies of fellow citizens (via the government) with no strings attached? Is it the Government’s  responsibility to pay for healthcare — not only for the poor but for everyone — because healthcare is a “basic human right”?  I’m still thinking carefully about that one because a Yes answer is not nearly so clear to me as it apparently is to many Christians (especially Canadians).  I would ask this: if that’s so, what other “quality-of-life” needs are, or should be, “basic human rights” in our modern world? Housing? Food? Clothing? Transportation? Internet access and/or a television (lest one be isolated from the world)?  Should a poor person expect the government to take care of all of those things because in North America they are necessary in order to have a reasonably decent life, the kind of life that with more money have? I’m not being facetious. Statistics show that a very large percentage of the poor in North America believe that they can’t live a decent life without owning at least one television.  I myself, while traveling through my own state and other states have frequently seen virtual shacks adorned with satellite dishes for TV reception. That’s the choice the presumably poor residents of those shacks make. Yet the chances are high that a good percentage of such people live on welfare, food stamps or both, and that when they’re sick they go to the local hospital emergency room (which by law cannot turn them away) because they don’t have health insurance.  Some of them may not qualify for it due to “pre-existing conditions” (a problem in our healthcare system that does need fixing — but not, I believe, in the way that the new healthcare law attempts to do so). Others of those people have simply chosen not to buy health insurance. They’d rather spend that amount of money on a TV and  getting good reception for it. And they know they can do that without penalty because nothing is expected of them in terms of paying at least a little of their own way. That’s not justice — not for them and not for those better off whose tax money is supporting them. The number of uninsured people is often cited as 46 million (45.7), about 15% of the population. While I’m very concerned for those who are poor and cannot get insurance (and that surely needs to be “fixed”), that number is grossly misleading. Some 6-1/2  million of those are on Medicaid but nevertheless tell pollsters and Census workers they’re uninsured; another 4.3 million are elligible for Medicaid but haven’t bothered to apply for it. Some 9 million are illegal immigrants. (Whether they deserve to be elligible for Medicaid or Medicare is an issue of its own, and a contentious one .)  Another 10 million don’t fit those categories but have an income of more than three times the poverty level. Of the remaining 15.6 million uninured, 5 million are between 18 and 34, have no children and don’t buy health insurance. That leaves 10.6 million Americans — roughly 3% of the population — who are U.S. citizens, have an income below 300% of poverty, are not on or eligible for a taxpayer-subsidized health insurance program, and are not a childless adult between age 18 and 34.  Still a problem, of course, but nothing like the kind of problem many assume it is. (Data comes from a 2007 Census data survey.)

We need a healthcare system — as other social systems — that requires at least something of everyone, no matter their income level. Nobody should be getting something for nothing. Not even those whose entire income comes from the Government (i.e., their fellow citizens).  Nobody should not be paying taxes (even though on the low-income end the actual amount will be minimal. A flat tax as percentage of income would be, I think, probably the fairest possible taxation system, not to mention the simplest and easiest todeal with). Anything less than everyone contributing something to their own lives and wellbeing breeds complacency and a sense of entitlement, and wreaks havoc on one’s values, emotional and spiritual health. We’re still currently in bad economic times and jobs are hard to come by in many areas of the country (which I also I know from personal experience). But all able-bodied people must also be encouraged to work to help pay their own way. St. Paul laid down a rule for the church in Thessolonica :” For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat’” (II Thess. 3:10). What he’s telling the church sounds shocking to a lot of us: Don’t feed people, not even your fellow Christians, who don’t want to work.  To the church at Ephesus he says this: “Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need” (Eph.4:28). Paul sees a cycle of working  and making money so that you can give some of it away to those who need it, and that applies even at the bottom of the food chain, so to speak. Everyone, no matter their own circumstances, is able, and must be willing, to help someone else in need.

In the months before the new healthcare bill was signed, President Obama and the then Democratic Congressional leadership made clear (then denied) that their ultimate goal in passing the kind of bill they did was to move the country eventually to a single payer system run by the Government. That was balked at by a majority of Americans (thus the denials). Besides giving far too much power to government (including the hiring of several thousand new IRS workers to make sure everybody’s complying with every jot and tittle of this very complicated law), the problem I have with it   is that while being monstrously expensive it doesn’t truly solve the few real issues needing solving in the current system (including tort reform, which it doesn’t even address at all).  There could have been a serious bipartisan effort to address the handful of real issues that need solving in our healthcare system (which, not incidentally, the majority of Americans are satisfied with in terms of quality of care).  But that was avoided (and it wasn’t the Republicans doing the avoiding in this case) because the solutions being suggested were incompatible with Obama’s vision of an ultimately government-run system. Therefore, I’m with those who believe the law has to struck down, revamped and a new law passed. That would be kindest and fairest to all of us, poor and rich.

‘Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord’

I love the country of my birth – the United States – and in which God again placed me in 1990 after a long hiatus in Canada. I’ve been a political junky ever since I was old enough to know what was going on in the world.

At the same time I was fortunate to have spent 17 years in the True North and 10 more years continuing to work in Ontario after returning to live in the U.S. I was only 21 when I moved to Canada and my time in Ontario was formative. I developed friendships that I will cherish for the rest of my life. But love of homeland runs deep, the more so when it mingles with profound gratitude to God for the freedoms that enable living out one’s faith and calling as his child in that land, unmolested (though “unmolested” is no longer always so). I follow politics with both avid interest and acute concern. I fear for my country; for any country whose people – and leaders, far more so – make a god of themselves, their name and their power.

In the last decade it has become clear that the national Democratic Party whose candidates I usually voted for has moved to a leftward extremism that has ever less use for any faith (except their own) that impinges on public life. So I became what New York calls a “non-affiliated voter” – one of those independents upon whom the fortunes of Democrats, Republicans (and Tea Partiers) hang. And I am deeply thankful for the results of the recent mid-term elections here. Why it that?

Lady Justice loses her blindfold

Being Reformed, I recognize worldviews behind political acts. The worldview dominant in the White House and in much of federal politics is not one to which I as a biblical Christian can assent, despite the progressive-Democratic self-diagnosis of standing for economic and social justice for the underdog. I don’t buy it. Evidence shows that much of the Obama federal government’s justice is anything but blind (impartial). More than three-quarters of Americans are worried that our country is hurtling down a deadly track that, without a course correction, will end in fiscal and social bankruptcy and substantial loss of freedom.

There is no doubt that the election of more than 60 new fiscal and social conservatives and moderates in the House, six new Senators and numerous governors is a repudiation of the course down which Mr. Obama has pushed the country with lightning speed. Understandably, he doesn’t want to believe that he grossly misinterpreted the “mandate” he received when elected President. (Nor do much of the supposedly impartial press.)

Rather, the man who promised “hope and change,” “post-racial” politics and the end of the Red state/Blue state divide is cynical, self-obsessed and calculatingly devisive. His urging of an Hispanic audience to vote on Nov. 2 so that they could “punish [their] enemies” (i.e., Republicans who oppose illegal immigration) is but a recent example. The tactics used to get the highly unpopular healthcare “reforms” passed were despicable, not to mention the repetition of straight-faced lies about what is and is not actually in that massive bill. Nor is the irony lost on us that while the nations of Europe are backing away from the destructive, innervating results of their post-World War II decades of government control of all of life, our own president is systematically embracing that course.

President Obama’s philosophical-political attitudes were shaped in the 1960s by both the anti-colonial socialism of his father and (ironically) the radical anti-Americanism of his academic friends. That the President of the United States should often seem to not much like the United States he was elected to govern (and that he makes decisions accordingly) is both baffling and troubling to much of the population.

Barely a fifth of Americans see themselves in Obama’s left corner. The main problem with that corner is that – Obama’s purported “personal faith” aside – there is scant room for God in it, and in fact most of its inhabitants are atheists, philosophically, practically or both. That is not true of most Americans, however, and that offers hope. A striking number of the newly elected public servants are evangelical Christians or Catholics. Will that make a difference? I pray it will. (A notable number of them are also members of minorities: black, Hispanic, Cuban, Indian, and many women – not a reality that critics on the left associate with the “racist” Republican Party.)

Despite the hammering home of the “fact” that there must be a vast chasm between church and state (our Constitution doesn’t say that), interpreted to mean that faith has no place in the public-political square, millions of Americans still realize that “blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD.” And so we will continue to pray for a revival, on all levels.

*******************************

Time passed. Then a Christian Courier reader, Hans Katerberg, wrote this in the Feb. 14 issue, which was given the headline ‘One nation, under God’:

After reading Marian Van Til’s column … I was expecting some response from readers. Seeing none, I would like to raise some questions.

When Obama had just become president, we read that Van Til was not thrilled but gave him the bvenefit of the doubt [I said that in a post-presidential election column]. Has Obama so quickly become a great danger to her beloved nation? It seems that trying to get health care for everyone is his biggest mistake. How can a sincere Christian seem satisfied with so many poor people uninsured? How can she be so eager to get rid of Obama that it does not seem to matter how? Why does it seem like there is no concern that the gap between rich and poor becomes wider? Does the writer still believe in the American Dream?

The articles from Marian are always worthwhile for me to read; I feel one in faith with her. That is maybe the reason that I was so disappointed.

Tomorrow I’ll respond to Mr. Katerberg (or start to!).

I excepted some negative feedback since my CC audience is primarily Canadian and many Canadians are great fans of Obama’s, and also since Canadians have long had a government-run system of national healthcare — of which, not incidentally, I have much first-hand experience, having Crohn’s disease and having lived in Ontario for 16+ years, where I had my two Crohn’s surgeries. But I got only one response, and that came just the other day as a CC letter-to-the-editor.

The writer, Hans Katerberg of Gowanstown, Ontario — who, I’m happy to say, says he usually feels one in faith with me — possibly thinks I have little or no compassion for the poor. He raised several other important issues, which, given CC’s tightened control on divying out space these days, cannot really be addressed in that paper.  So I’m going to post that Nov. 22 column here, will quote from Mr. Katerberg’s response (with the blessing of the current CC editor) and will then respond myself to Katerberg’s concerns. I hope that others will also respond, and I invite you to do so.  Look for that column, et al, tomorrow.

Untitled

I have been told that I’m hard to impress. If one can say such a thing about oneself, I’d agree. Kindly, my observers didn’t say that the cause of that characteristic may be curmudgeonliness. Or that I’m just too, too picky for my own good; and theirs.

My father’s side of the family exhibits that trait. While it can result in being virtually alone in expressing certain opinions, I hope I’m not deluded in believing that it isn’t an entirely negative quality.

My dad taught his five children to think critically, both in regards to philosophies and goings-on in the secular world and in faith-related matters ̶ including potent biblical-theological critiques of the sermons we heard twice a Sunday, week after week, from a minister who was in our church from my fourth birthday until I was 20.

Now one might surmise that critical thinking and skepticism are natural partners. And sometimes they are. But for my dad, his numerous siblings and their own father, such skepticism never expressed itself as doubts about God. Nor has it for me.

Having lived through the ’60s when it first (first in my lifetime, anyway) became fashionable to question all the “Establishment” did, said or thought, I sometimes wondered whether my lack of doubt regarding God, his Word, his faithful promises and actions as revealed in Scripture was, well, kosher. Shouldn’t every intelligent, educated Christian go through periods of serious doubt about the faith he or she was taught at home, Sunday school, church and Christian school? Why then, even in my darkest hours, was I not truly doubting? Was I just naïve? Did I lack imagination?

Doubt full-grown bears apostasy

I asked myself such questions over the years, usually after I’d read a heartfelt article in The Banner, CC or another Christian publication whose author agonized over tragedy in his or her life, asking whether God is really there, or if he is, whether he is really a good and loving God. I don’t want to minimize real spiritual wrestling. Doubting whether God is to be trusted or if there is meaning in life at all must be terrifying. It is then that the distressed need to be assured of the support and fervent prayers of their fellow Christians on their behalf.

Yet for some Christians I’ve encountered personally and whose stories or books I’ve read, Doubt, capital D, seems to be a badge of honour, part of young Christians’ rites of passage into adulthood and de rigeur even for older, worldly-wise Christians in our skeptical, secular era. That I didn’t buy; and I still don’t.

In considering doubt, Scripture should be our guide (as always). I asked myself: Are there examples of Bible personages for whom doubt was a routine, even beneficial part of faith?

I didn’t find any. Of course the Old Testament Israelites constantly jilted God and went off after “divine” lovers of their own making. Then, between generations of shunning God, they’d repent for a while, having been subject to God’s hard discipline to bring them back to him. (Yet God never abandoned  them.) Their dire unbelief always began with doubts and complaints about God’s faithfulness and manner of acting, and the final result was not pretty.

There’s nothing in Scripture to indicate that Doubt in itself is a positive thing, no matter how dark the circumstances with which God may test us. Doubt full-grown bears apostasy, a slap at the gracious face of the God who is Lord and Creator of the Universe and who simultaneously yearns to be our most intimate friend and Redeemer.

At breakfast this morning I read Psalm 91. Its assurances uncannily speak to my topic. (Funny how God has a way of leading us like that!) He profoundly understands our best of times and worst of times, and invites us to wholeheartedly believe that

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High

Will rest in the shadow of the Almighty….

Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare

and from the deadly pestilence.

He will cover you with his feathers,

and under his wings you will find refuge;

his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

You will not fear the terror of night,

nor the arrow that flies by day,

nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,

nor the plague that destroys at midday….

“Because he loves me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue him;

I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.

He will call upon me, and I will answer him;

I will be with him in trouble,

I will deliver him and honor him….

There’s another, final phase of census work, and despite the negatives, I’ve volunteered to continue to work during that phase. I’ll know this week what that’s about and whether I will be continuing to work (they say, but they change their minds frequently) . In the meantime, I’m not thinking — don’t feel very capable of thinking — many lofty thoughts, so I will leave that to others here for a bit. There is some good stuff by Harry Antonides that I should have been posting here and have not done. My apologies to him, and I will try to reform. And soon.

In October I wrote:

“I’ve written here several times about my and my husband’s cats.  While I believe that a biblically Reformed worldview encompasses all of life — including the antics and quirks of that wondrous creature of God, the cat — I want to get back to more serious revelry here.

“So I started another blog where I will wax on  (eloquently or not is for you to decide) about things feline: www.confessionsofacataholic.wordpress.com. That blog is appearing in connection with my second book, which is also just appearing, and for which the official release date is Oct. 31 (Reformation Day, of course). The book, as the blog, is called Confessions of a Cataholic. I invite you to go there and take a look. And if you are a cat lover, I invite you (even implore, perhaps) to buy the book; and if you aren’t, to buy it for someone who is! (See www.wordpowerpublishing.com)”

[The book has now been out two months, is doing well and is getting very good responses from readers. (Its makes an excellent gift book for cat lovers, they say; and of course I concur!)  We're now beginning to focus on much broader marketing, so it can do even better.]

“The Cataholic blog will allow me to use this space for getting back to our more serious revelry, as I call it. And an important part of that is a series of reflections on the Belhar Confession by a friend of mine, Dr. John Bolt. John is a theology professor at Calvin Seminary in Grand Rapids, Mich. He’s a  interesting and insightful guy, so it’s no surprise that he is also an interesting and insightful writer (and professor).

“He’s got important things to say about the Belhar, a new confession adopted this past summer by the Christian Reformed Church (CRC). John has qualms about the CRC adopting this statement and giving it the status of a confession, on par with the historic teachings of the Reformed churches. So do I. But I’m not sharing this space just because I essentially agree with him.  He raises points about this “confession” that anyone with even remote connections to the CRC should think about carefully.”

John’s thoughts on the Belhar are now on their own page.

The Reveler (aka Marian Van Til)