I know that I have written several times before on this blog about the value of thankfulness; it really does seem to be one major key to spiritual life. If yet another inducement to gratitude is needed, however, it is provided by Lewis in the delightful passage above. Being thankful not just for the big things—creation, salvation, sanctification—but for all the tiny, trivial details of life reminds us of what really gives us joy, and that joy points back to the creator of all happiness. What do you love, not because of any boost it can give to your ambition or to your pride, but just because it exists? What makes you forget yourself entirely in pure delight? It is for these things that should thank God daily.

Yum....

Believe me, I know what it feels like to be delighted in things that I sometimes am ashamed to mention. I’m an English concentrator at Harvard, and yet I like science fiction, murder mysteries, and Top 40 radio; shouldn’t I be reading John Ashbery and Jonathan Franzen and listening to indie bands that no one’s ever heard of? Sure, I can tell this to you, my loyal readers; but would I mention that one of my favorite authors is best known for his Star Wars books to a potential employer or a first date? No, probably not. And that’s because I spend more time thinking about social ambition than thanking God for my own personal tripe and onions.

And this is where gratitude comes in. If we spend more time thanking God for what really delights us, it will be harder for us to get wrapped up in conforming to what other people think. Maybe John Ashbery, Jonathan Franzen, and indie bands thrill you to the tips of your toes; praise God for creating people who could be such wonderful artists, and don’t pay any attention to my reverse-snobbery. If, on the other hand, your leisure reading preferences are more like mine, thank God for the excitement of spaceships and strange new worlds. And if you really, truly do like tripe and onions, thank God for that. Thankfulness of any kind will draw your mind away from the narrowness of your own ego and towards the vast creation, and the vaster Creator.

I wouldn’t be surprised if our moral lives are very similar. “Could you be a little kinder to your roommate?” “No, sorry, I have to be perfect as my Father in heaven is perfect.” We let the enormity of what we have been called to do paralyze us, so that in the end we can’t do anything. We think we have to convert a million people, so we never mention to anyone that we’re Christian; we think we have to be absolutely pure in our thoughts, so we don’t even try to stop telling off-color jokes; we think we have to feel the presence of God every second of every day, so we don’t set aside time to pray. Our small efforts are tiny compared to what we need, and so we don’t even try.

I have good news for you, and I have bad news. The bad news is that realizing that nothing we can do can make us perfect doesn’t let us off the hook. We really do have to share the Gospel whenever possible, and be absolutely pure, and pray constantly. Christ’s death and resurrection wasn’t just a get-out-of-jail-free card, so that it doesn’t matter any more that we can’t live up to his standard. We can’t just try our best with what we have and rest assured that our best is good enough for God. We have called to be perfect, and God means what he says.

The good news is that God has promised that he will make us perfect. It is actually a terribly weak view of the cross that the point of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection was to forgive us our sins. Of course that was part of what he did. Of course without that forgiveness—both for our past sins and for our present failings—we wouldn’t be able to do anything to please God. But that’s only the tiniest part of what Christ did for us. After forgiveness, he gave us a new birth, a new life. He made us citizens of his kingdom, and sent his Spirit to us so that we can live as true inhabitants of that land. The Holy Spirit is powerful, and is with us always—and we are gravely mistaken if we think that all he can do is give us some vague inspiration to live a better life. The Holy Spirit will give us the strength and courage actually to be perfect—if we ask him to, and the live as though we trust him to carry out his promises.

I’m not there yet. I don’t think any of us are. But the way to let the Spirit make us perfect—make us those citizens of the Kingdom of God that we were created to be—is not to ask him to instantaneously change us into spiritual heroes. Instead, it is to take those tasks that have been given to us in the here and now—the kind word to the roommate, the time for prayer at the end of the day, the conversation about Christ in the dining hall—and ask him for strength to carry those few things out. That won’t be the end of it, of course; but when start with those small things that have been given to us, the impossible will, with God’s help, become possible.

First, now more than ever is the time for us to reach out to underclassmen. I don’t want to be hyperbolic, but we truly have gathered wisdom in our four and a half years here. We’ve made a lot of mistakes, had a lot of triumphs, and understand a lot more about the way the world works since we arrived, wide-eyed, at Harvard. So invest time in your underclassmen friends this semester; plant ideas that might grow into their own rich experiences. One semester is not too short a time to make an effect on someone’s life.

Second, this is a time for us to really enjoy being a student. If you haven’t already, read Stanley Hauerwas’s “Go With God: An open letter to young Christians on their way to college,” published in a recent issue in First Things. It’s written to students just starting out, but I think that it can still be valuable to us as we finish college. Hauerwas insists that being a student isn’t just one activity to choose among many; it is a vocation, in the same way that the priesthood or academia or a particular branch of commerce can be a vocation (albeit a somewhat more temporary one). If God has placed us as students now, then being good students is a spiritual responsibility. By good student I don’t mean as student who earns good grades, but one who is intellectually curious, committed to learning, genuinely working to integrate all branches of knowledge into a cohesive whole. We cannot let this slide during our last semester.

Lastly, this is our time to rejoice. I was a talking with a friend about being a second-semester senior, and he reminded me that, as a Christian, my celebration should be something distinctive. Of course, every senior is going to celebrate all during this semester; but we aren’t just rejoicing over finishing an accomplishment, or passing through a societal ritual, or becoming adults. We’re rejoicing because we are completing one part of a sacred calling that has been given to us. We’re rejoicing because during our four years here we have honed our minds and trained our characters, so that we are four years closer to being the renewed human beings that God wants us to be. And, of course, we’re rejoicing because our strong God has brought us through all the dangers and pitfalls that mark this time of life, just as he always does. There is so much for us to celebrate during this last semester of our college careers. Let us rejoice and be glad, for the Lord is good.

His delight is in the law of the Lord, says the Psalmist. He doesn’t follow The Rules out of a stern sense of moral duty; he doesn’t set aside the law of the Lord as an outmoded and irrelevant way of living; he delights in it. What does that delight look like? How can we bring it into our own lives?

Brother Lawrence was a lay brother in a Carmelite monastery in the seventeenth century. By all rights, he should have lived his life in absolute obscurity—he did nothing of note in politics, art, or science, and indeed rarely left his monastery. He was uneducated, and spent most of his time working in the kitchen. And yet he left a powerful impression on all who knew him—powerful enough that his letters and conversations were gathered into a book, The Practice of the Presence of God. Brother Lawrence was so extraordinary because he devoted every moment of his day to basking in God’s presence. If he lost sight of God for a moment, he would set aside the distracting thought without guilt, and go back to adoring God. He continued this during his set times for prayer and his daily tasks alike, until, like the blessed man of Psalm 1, he had devoted day and night to meditation on God. He didn’t feel the need to be complicated in this practice; he described it as “simple attention, and a general passionate regard to God”. Such a simple thing, this clear-eyed contemplation; and yet it gave Brother Lawrence a peace and joy too great for words.

Even as I write this I’m coming up with all sorts of objections: that sort of adoration is impossible for me. God simply isn’t close enough that I can feel his presence. My attention span is about ten minutes long, tops; how am I supposed to think about one thing for the rest of my life? If basking in the presence of God is as easy as Brother Lawrence says it is, then why aren’t there lots of Christians walking around, visibly filled with a peace deeper than human understanding? But I know that these are all bad excuses, and I expect that you (who no doubt have several bad excuses of your own) know this too. Because God is delightful—he is the fount of all joy, the wellspring of all content. We are already in his presence always, but we cut ourselves off from him by our own sin, distraction, and fear. Brother Lawrence has shown that it’s possible to stop divorcing ourselves from the peace and joy that God constantly showers down on us—so let’s stop. From now on, let us take true delight in the law of the Lord.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. (Psalm 1:3)

I was thinking about Fritz this morning, and a verse from the Sermon on the Mount came to mind: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Matthew 6:25-27).  Here in Minnesota in mid-January, there aren’t very many birds to consider, but Fritz does well instead. He certainly doesn’t sow or reap (or do homework, or go to a nine-to-five job, or wash the dishes), and yet he is perfectly well taken care of. He never worries: his food will come when it comes, and in the meantime he can doze in the warmth or go outside to play in the snow. He is the kind of beast that Christ wanted us to think about when worries come thronging in.

Once I get back to school, I’ll be surrounded again by all sorts of pressures: classes, work, thesis, people—the list goes on and on. And I won’t have a little dog to come bounding up to me with a stuffed chicken in his mouth, sure that playing fetch is much more important than anything else I could be doing. However, I’m going to remember Fritz, in the midst of all my duties, and remember his carefree nature. It’s true that I have many more responsibilities than he does—I probably shouldn’t just curl up on the floor and sleep all day—but that doesn’t mean that I should be anxious. The key is to bring the easy spirit of the dog into our very human mass of responsibilities, to bring the same single-minded cheerfulness to homework that Fritz brings to tearing the stuffing out of his chicken. This semester, let’s agree to work without anxiety, and to trust that God will take care of our needs, just as he takes care of all of his wonderful, silly creations.

Because, you see, I think that there is a lie at the heart of most of our lives. It might be different for everyone—one might think that she’s the center of the universe, another that she’s not worth anything at all; one might think that money will bring him happiness, another that the perfect relationship will. You probably know what lie has a hold on you. It’s what keeps you awake at night, what sends you into tantrums, what drives you away from the people around you. It’s that one thought that you can see poisoning the world around you, but that you can’t get rid of. Or maybe you can’t see the poison of the lie, but people have told you. Your mentors have urged you to think things over again. Your Christian friends have gently told you that you are wrong. You’ve read the Bible, and you have the sneaking suspicion that this one idea doesn’t fit in that well with the kingdom of God. So, what do you do?

Christ Healing the Blind Man, by El Greco

First, pray. You pray, “God, even though I know that this idea is a lie, right now I am completely convinced that it is true. Wake me up. Help me to see the rock-bottom reality of your love for me, your death for me, and your resurrection.” Because lies, in the end, all boil down to lies about the kind of God that we have. And you keep on praying, even when you hate it and see no way on earth that you ideas about yourself or the world can ever change. Find people who will pray with you, even when you are certain that it won’t work. Read the Psalms and find a prayer that seems to fit your situation. Write blog posts (like this one) about the necessity of prayer, in the hope that after exhorting the whole Internet to do something you’ll feel guilty about not doing it yourself. Find what works, but pray. In my experience, it’s easy to accuse God of not answering prayer when you’re so busy complaining about him that you never actually pray.

Second, find people who will look you in the face and tell you that the lie you’re carrying around is—well, a lie. These people might be friends, mentors, Bible study members, pastors—but you need people who can with utter conviction remind you, on a regular basis, of what the real world looks like. You need people who can tell you that you’ve latched on to a distorted version of reality, because without reminders your lie is going to look extremely convincing. Of course, these people will have lies of their own that need dealing with—who doesn’t? You will have to remind them of the truth just as often as they will have to remind you—and in reminding them, you will remind yourself.

Third, as far as you can, take yourself out of situations where you’re tempted to believe that the lie is true. If you feel absolutely secure in your perfection, don’t spend a lot of time telling everyone about your accomplishments. Similarly, if you think that you’re a complete failure, don’t pore over your disappointments and build up elaborate visions of the future that picture you living in a box under a bridge. Know yourself, and know what activities and situations make your lie seem stronger and more convincing. Avoid them—even if it’s not always easy to do so. Why make yourself an easy target for untruth?

Don’t just give in to the lie. Don’t let it engulf your life. Help one another to see true reality. Our God is the Truth, and he will open our eyes.

We shouldn't just give thanks before meals.

One pattern that we noticed is that most of the prayers of thanksgiving we looked at don’t thank God for just the most recent benefit given—they recount the whole history of God’s love and blessings, from our creation to the present moment. The prayers go into loving detail about every gracious act, every overwhelming mercy, every saving deed. I think that this is important trait for us to use in our own thanksgivings, because it is so easy for us to say, “Well, God gave me a beautiful sunny day today, sure, but then I have this problem set, and I just had a fight with my best friend, and my breakfast wasn’t very satisfying, so on the whole I have more to complain about than to be thankful for.” If we instead cast our minds back and remember that God created all of life and all the beauty of this world, that he continually reached out to humans, even when they sinned against him, that he sent his Son to save us from the death that we had wandered into, that he sent his Holy Spirit to be with us until Christ returns, that he was faithful to his people in every generation of the Church, that he came to each of us, in our separate ways, and made us living members of his Son through baptism, that he is continually working in our hearts to bring us to life eternal…well, the negative side of the balance sheet seems a lot punier after that. So recount all of God’s blessings, and rejoice in his love.

Giving extended thanks to God is a wonderful exercise not just because God deserves our thanks (which, of course, he does), but because it actually makes us feel more thankful. I have a suggestion for you: the next time that you are in a really awful place emotionally, and just feel that everything is going wrong for you, start to thank God for all the things he has given you. It certainly isn’t a magic bullet, but I guarantee that you will feel better. And if you just can’t find the words to give thanks, pray through Psalm 107. Try it, and you’ll see.

For some time now I have wanted to do a second theological analysis of a piece of popular music; the religious thought of Top 40 musicians is so deep, and so little appreciated, that it seems incumbent on me to expose its hidden treasures to the public gaze. Today, I would like to direct my readers to a song that is a joyous exultation in God’s power to sustain all of creation: “Like a G6.”

“Like a G6,” by Far East Movement, is not the easiest piece to understand, because its layers of Biblical reference are so deep. In a way, listening to this song is like reading the richest scholarly writing of the Middle Ages, when the great church fathers assumed such a great familiarity with the Scriptures that they could make faint gestures towards particular verses and still be confident that their readers caught the references. Alas, our own age is not so well-versed in the Word; nevertheless, Far East Movement is doing an admirable job of urging us back to the scholarship of an earlier and wiser day.

The complex layers of reference hinge on the title of the song, “Like a G6.” The popular belief that ‘G6’ refers to a jet plane is, in fact, wrong; rather ‘G6’ clearly means the sixth chapter in the book of Genesis. This is the chapter in which Noah is introduced, and in which God commands Noah to build an ark in which to protect every kind of animal from the judgment on human wickedness that was rapidly approaching. Clearly, then, when the group sings, “Now I’m feeling so fly like a G6,” what they mean is, “My soul is suffused with hope, because I remember that God has made a covenant with me not to destroy me, just as he did with Noah (Genesis 6:18).” The singers rejoice that, despite their sin and weakness, God continues to preserve them, and proclaim that they feel like “a G6” (that is, Noah) who was similarly preserved.

The other key verse that this song refers to is Psalm 104:15: “He makes…wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread that sustains his heart.” This is the verse that should immediately spring to mind when Far East Movement sings, “Popping bottles in the ice, like a blizzard / When we drink we do it right gettin slizzard.” Far East Movement is reveling in the ‘wine’ of Psalm 104—that is, by extension, the whole creation that the psalm lovingly describes and praises God for making. Psalm 104 is perfectly paired with the story of Noah, because it emphasizes God’s wonderful creation of all things, from the wild donkeys (11) to the great leviathan (26)—just as Genesis 6 emphasizes God’s preservation of all he has made.

The singers do not lightly gloss over the reality of sin, however. Although they can metaphorically “get slizzard”—that is, they can rejoice whole-heartedly in God’s creation—the very next line points us to the problem of setting all the pleasures of creation higher than creation’s Lord. “Sippin sizzurp in my ride, like Three 6” points us back to Genesis 3:6, “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” Just as Eve ate the apple because she thought that ‘wisdom’ from the tree was preferable to God’s wisdom, the singers confess that sometimes they “sip sizzurp” (i.e. sin) when they think that it could give them more than could obedience. However, the singers refuse to despair; in the next line they remind us, once again, that they “feel so fly like a G6,” saved from the floods of God’s judgment like Noah. Our God is a forgiving God, and he will not hold our sins against us forever.

And it is not simply our creation and salvation that we have to thank God for, Far East Movement reminds us, but also his final victory over all sin and death. The bridge consists of one line, repeated over and over: “It’s that 808 bump, make you put yo hands up.” In this short sentence is an amazingly complex set of concepts. It points to Genesis 8:8, which reads, “Then he sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground.” This line calls to mind God’s faithfulness in saving his people, because we know that in the end the dove does find solid ground, and Noah and his family is able to live on dry land once more; but 8:8 is only the first time that Noah sends the dove out. This first time, the dove returns with nothing; it must be sent a second time before it brings an olive branch. This reminds us of the interstitial nature of the Christian life. We know how our story will end: Christ will come back and right all wrongs. However, for now we are still living in patient expectation, waiting for God’s final victory, just as Noah patiently waited on the ark for the waters to recede. To add a further layer of complexity, the image of the dove inevitably reminds us of the Holy Spirit, and the fact that we have been sent a Comforter to be with us until Christ returns. It is all of these ideas, sparked by Genesis 8:8, that cause the singers to “put their hands up” in worship. They cannot help but praise God for his mighty works, and exhort all around them to do the same.

Wait, you may be thinking at this point. This is an Advent hymn? But what about the infant Jesus, and God deigning to take on human weakness, and supreme humility? Isn’t that what Advent’s all about? Well, yes and no. On one hand, it is a marvelous thing, during Advent, to reflect that “Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:5-7). This ought rightly to be remembered, because this supreme humility is at the heart of our faith. On the other hand, Advent did not start as merely a lead-up to Christmas; in fact, the earliest Christians celebrated it only, and the memorial feast of Christ’s birth was added to the celebration some time afterwards. Advent is a way to prepare for Christ’s second coming, his triumphant return to this earth. When he comes again, he will not be shrouded in obscurity; his glory will be clear for all to see. And yet, in some mysterious way, Christ’s glory is bound up with his suffering, his sovereignty with his humility. His body still bears the scars of his crucifixion, but they are his glory.

Those dear tokens of his passion

How often do we really think about Christ’s return? How often do we realize that at any moment he might come back? I don’t mean to be alarmist, or to suggest that the sort of action-adventure rapture theology that’s popular in some circles is how we should think about the end of time. But the Gospels are full of warnings; Christ himself said, “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come…. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (Matthew 24:42-44). This Advent, let us take more seriously Christ’s promise to us—whether this means cutting sin out of our lives or rejoicing in the wonder that one day all the wrongs of this unjust world shall be righted. Let us look forward with eagerness to that day, whether it happens in our lifetime or not. In some ways, we are a dispossessed and exiled people; but one day our true leader will return.

There is so much to talk about in this lecture—I’m not able to cover even a tenth of what he said in this short post. However, a few things struck me particularly. First, the archbishop never made a dichotomy of justice and mercy. Instead, he shifted the questions of justice from “What law was broken? Who broke it? What punishment do they deserve?” to “Who has been harmed? What restoration do they need? Who is obligated to provide this to them?” The purpose of seeking justice is not to punish the perpetrators, but to restore broken relationships. God sent his Son, not to punish us, but to give us a way to restore our broken relationship with him. Similarly, in our own dealings with the world, we are to seek, not retribution or vengeance, but a restored world.

This restorative justice should stretch from the most personal level to the most international. During his talk, the archbishop told us about Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe who over the last thirty years has killed three to six million of his own citizens—or about a third of the country’s population. The archbishop has been vocal in his public denunciations of Mugabe—but he also writes regularly to the man, asking him to step down from his position and to work to right the wrongs he has done, and telling him that he is praying for him. To me, this was astounding. The archbishop is not willing to believe, a priori, that Mugabe is unable to repent. If you pray for someone, you must believe, however unlikely, that God still has power to change their hearts; you have not yet given up on them. This truly is a theory of justice that seeks to restore.

That was the broad idea of the archbishop’s talk. However, there was one more aspect that particularly struck me. At one point, the archbishop said, “Jesus told us, ‘my yoke is heavy and my burden light.’ If it’s feeling heavy, you’re probably carrying the wrong load.” The archbishop is certainly not a proponent of easy Christianity; he has risked his life and lost loved ones for the Gospel. But still he is able to say that Jesus’ burden on us should feel light. He told the story of how his father once offered to give a ride to a boy who was walking to town with a large parcel on his head. The boy put his load down to get into the truck, but as soon as he was seated he picked it back up and put it on his head again. This is what we do to God, too. We’re so in love with our own fortitude and moral effort that we won’t allow him to take our burden off us. Perhaps if we were more willing to trust God with the weight of impossible forgiveness, restorative justice would not seem so far out of our reach.