Author Archives: Bo Grimes

Faith Statements

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On Fresh Air, Terri Gross recently interviewed Michael Farris of Patrick Henry College. PHC make each of their faculty sign a faith statement. I don’t have a lot of problem with that faith statement in general. I do wish they would add “inerrant in all its teaching.” No one does, though. I just have a problem with faith statements in general. I was unable to volunteer with Prison Fellowship in MS because I couldn’t sign one, over the inerrancy issue.

I believe the Bible is the only infallible guide to faith and life, and I believe it is inerrant in all it teaches. However, I can’t accept that the mustard seed is the smallest seed, for example, because others have been found since that are smaller. Does it change Jesus’s teaching? Not one bit. Inerrancy isn’t a very useful word. Of course God is right, but do I understand his meaning?

Likewise they focus exclusively on only one of the four established doctrines of the Atonement, substitutionary. I agree with that view, but I don’t think it’s all there is too it. It was much to wonderful to be contained by that vessel alone. I would need a faith statement that developed Atonement more fully.

In general, I think faith statements are problematic for several reasons. First, those without integrity and those who view them as just a hoop to jump through or a formality or expediency would sign one any way to get the job, regardless of whether or not they even bothered to read it. It wouldn’t even slow down someone who wanted the job to subvert the institution. The only people who might not sign one are principled people who disagree in some small way with something not essential. These might be the very people one needs to be hiring, especially at an institution of higher learning.

I do think Christian organizations, institutions and churches need to ensure that sound doctrine and Biblical principles are upheld and maintained, but creedal orthodoxy should be sufficient. Making the holes in the sieve too small is reactionary, and this is my second problem with faith statements. They are often a reaction to societies which no longer reflect their once Christian roots, and I think we can’t be reactionary.

The first century church was founded in a hostile environment, amongst people who had just had Jesus killed and who were not receptive to His teachings, teachings which both the Jewish and Roman governments feared were subversive. God never promised us a Christian government or a moral society. If we are defined in reaction to what’s not Christian we are being defined by the world and not by our mission in it. Our commission is not to create Heaven on earth.

You can’t close Pandora’s Box, and if the 21st Century church is to survive we have to learn how to live amidst radically different worldviews and with less sure foundations. I don’t mean the Church’s One Foundation, that never changes; rather, I am talking about the philosophical and historical foundations that have been used to secure Christianity’s primacy in the West.

In his essay “The Uncertainty of Science,” Feynman writes about how uncertainty and doubt are essential to science. I think it is as true for religion. One has to be willing to extrapolate into the unknown. He writes that “to solve any problem that has never been solved before, you have to leave the door to the unknown ajar. You have to admit the possibility that you do not have it exactly right.” This is my point about inerrancy. God has it exactly right, but do I? John Robinson, Puritan minister and pastor to the Pilgrim Fathers, said “the Lord had more truth and light yet to breake forth out of his holy Word” and I agree.

The freedoms that Patrick Henry College want to preserve include the freedom to doubt, which is essential in the process of “faith seeking understanding,” as Anselm put it, and to education. Faith statements that are too precise and inflexible, that go way beyond the clear, agreed upon core truths essential to Christianity (triune nature of God, bodily resurrection of Christ, need for Atonement, etc), and that don’t allow for Christians of good will to disagree are not productive, in my opinion.

I can’t help but wonder which comes first at PHC, a Biblical worldview or fidelity to the American founding? What happens when they conflict? I think the college is probably an excellent one, and I admire and share many of their goals, and it’s excellent that such a first rate center of learning was created specifically for home schooled Christian children, but I doubt I could sign their faith statement.

Religious Freedom

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Recently this tribute to veterans came in an email from a fellow Christian. The first line is “It is the veteran, not the preacher, who has given us freedom of religion.” This bugged me, not because I don’t appreciate my freedom and those who defend it, but because it’s just another example of how our thinking is determined by and our values derived from things other than Scripture.

Where was the veteran to protect the religious freedom of the first church from the Jewish and Roman governments? Where was the veteran when Daniel defied the most powerful king of the age? Where was the veteran to protect Luther from the Holy Roman Empire and Catholic Church? The Puritans and other dissenters in England?

I admire and respect veterans; I’m married to one, one who’s been to Iraq twice, and I am deeply grateful to them and to God for their blessing, but my true freedom is only and ever given me by God through Christ Jesus.

I know the point is not that veterans give me the freedom to worship God per se, but they do help keep me from being persecuted for worshiping Him. I understand the point, and deeply value it, but persecuted or not “I will lie down and sleep in peace, for [He] alone makes me dwell in safety” (Ps 4:8), and “the nations…are but men.” (Ps 9:20) Persecuted or not my life and freedom are given and preserved by Him alone. Daniel He saved from death; Stephen He didn’t. No matter which, “Christ in me is to live and to die is gain.” (Phil 1:21)

It may sound like I’m taking this too far. “It’s just a nice tribute to those who help keep us safe,” one might say, “don’t spoil it.” It’s not my intent to try and minimize veterans as a means by which God blesses us. It’s just that it goes too far. Amazingly enough, the Spirit of God has always managed to work in and though His worshiping people without the U.S. Army, and if the sentiment in this tribute is followed to its logical conclusion it sounds a bit like Stalin when he asked Roosevelt “And how many divisions does the Pope have?” That is, it sounds as if our freedom and security is dependent upon armies of men rather than the Spirit of God.

It’s true I’m politically conservative, but I am rather dismayed by the trend in American Christianity towards seeing the problems and solutions to our times in political terms (i.e. The Leftist are destroying us and a return to true Constitutionality will save us.) A non-Christian, Gandhi, once said “You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilization to pieces, turn the world upside down, and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of good literature.” And may I add, more admired and talked about than read.

And Gandhi wasn’t talking about the US Constitution, but American Christians seem more concerned with protecting and defending the Constitution than they are living the Word of God. If we took His Word seriously and used it to establish our world-view and course of action rather than social norms, economics, how we were raised, class status, pop culture or any other value-instilling process then we’d turn the world upside down rather than rest on our laurels.

It’s sad to observe that Christians in other times less politically free, less physically safe, and less economically prosperous did more to advance the Kingdom of God than we have done with all our political freedom, physical security and economic resources.

Plateaued Churches

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Recently I read a heated discussion about Reviving a Plateaued Church Without Ticking People Off stirred up by an article by Rick Warren in which he writes:

“If your church has been plateaued for six months, it might take six months to get it going again. If it’s been plateaued a year, it might take a year. If it’s been plateaued for 20 years, you’ve got to set in for the duration! I’m saying some people are going to have to die or leave. Moses had to wander around the desert for 40 years while God killed off a million people before he let them go into the Promised Land. That may be brutally blunt, but it’s true. There may be people in your church who love God sincerely, but who will never, ever change.”

I think it’s important to ask: “What defines a plateau? Who gets to decide that a particular church has plateaued?”¯ Is the pastor alone in his view that a church has plateaued? Is he defining the plateau simply in terms of numbers? If you read the whole article, it seems Warren is talking only numbers, especially since the article is adapted from the Rick Warren resource “How to break through the 200-300 attendance barrier.”

I imagine a lot of the feedback on this quote comes from Christians in cities. I live in a large rural farming area. There will never be huge numbers at the churches out here, but the people still need to worship God. Are they worshiping God in Spirit and Truth? Do they seek His kingdom first? Are they helping the weak, serving the poor and lifting the fallen? Are they seeking to put everything in their lives under the Lordship of Christ? Are they fulfilling the Great Commission?

If the answer to these questions is yes then the numbers are irrelevant, but these issues aren’t even discussed by Warren. He talks about three things for the pastor to do when his church has plateaued: 1) Realize it will take time. 2) Love everyone but move with the movers, and 3) Be prepared for conflict. It may be telling that the only time he mentions prayer is in step one when he advises pastors to pray for patience.

Equally telling is that the “movers” he refers to are the “E. F. Huttens” of a particular church. There is one and only one real Mover of the Church. He doesn’t mention praying for the Spirit to do the moving. If the Holy Spirit isn’t doing the moving then it’s best to sit still. The fact that Warren believes that “some people are going to have to die or leave,” indicates, to me at least, that he sees church growth as something to be accomplished by people and not the Spirit.

The transformation of God’s people is one of the primary purposes for which the Spirit was sent into the world. To argue that people who “love God sincerely” (Christians specifically for who else truly loves God?) and who have received the Spirit (unlike the wandering Israelites) as all Christians have “will never, ever, change” and they “are going to have to die or leave” before any change can take place is bad theology indeed!

Numbers can, if fact, mean exactly what the quote implies is true of churches without numerical growth. Again: “There may be people in your church who love God sincerely, but who will never, ever change.” First, as I argued above, if you truly love God, there will be change, transformation. One can not come into the presence of God with a humble and broken heart and not be changed. Second, if the church is growing because of “market”¯ forces rather than the genuine transformative and reviving work of the Holy Spirit then people may be coming just so they don’t have to change. A church that’s changing on the outside but not on the inside is worse than one not changing at all for it leads even more people into a stale, shallow, nominal understanding of our Lord.

I am not opposed to large para-churches. After all, the first church added 3000 members the first day, but that was after a sermon calling them to repent and in the face of sure persecution. The Founder of that church had just been executed a few months prior and the preacher was a mere fisherman. How many people who decide to go to churches with a mime ministry, contemporary music and plasma TVs would choose to join that first church? If all, great—I don’t want to minimize any of those ministries–but if not then one has to question if that “growing,” rather than plateaued, church is not really, in fact, in a downward spiral.

I’m Reformed through and through, but one of the unfortunate effects of the Reformation is that we now have dozens of churches per square mile competing with one another for members using models of competition borrowed from economics and entertainment. If a church’s numbers come from people who want church without transformation, sacrifice and a willingness to suffer and that has been facilitated by a staff focused on numerical growth then that church is in a state far worse than a plateau.

If the church is growing in numbers but the members aren’t growing in Christ then one has to question if the numerical growth is a result of the Spirit’s work. Evangelism and outreach are extremely important, but they can only truly be accomplished by those equipped by growth in Christ. The only thing some of the people at large, hip, numerically thriving churches would be willing to change is the church they attend.

My last problem with the quote is it says a plateau can be as short as six months. There’s no way one can determine that a church has plateaued in that span. That church may be in a period of preparation, like Jesus in the wilderness or Paul in Antioch or the disciples prior to Pentecost. If one is quick to judge a six month period of no change (read: numerical growth) as a plateau then his definition of plateau is probably seriously flawed.

Friends in Strange Places

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Ad Aspera Astrada
By Striving We Can Reach the Stars

Cyberspace is filled with teenage angst. Searching for InDivIdual-ity and connection simultaneously isn’t like searching for a needle in a haystack; it’s like searching for a particular needle in a stack of needles. I am dismayed, though, at the seeming darkness and despair of teens today. The school shootings, the Goth fixation, the suicidal pleas for help are a far cry from the “trouble” of my teen years when my biggest worry was “Will dad let me use the car to go to a movie tonight?”

Of course I had my complexes and neuroses, but it turns out that those had nothing to do with being a teenager; they were just me. The things that threatened to undermine my self-esteem (“What if other people don’t like picking their noses as much as I do?”) were actually things I should have been worried about. People got quite annoyed, let me tell you, when I picked their noses.

Recently I saw the following question: “Who was your biggest source of help?” I can’t answer that question because my biggest help was the constant, consistent, day-to-day help of parents, teachers and neighbors who took it for granted that children need quantity time and role models. The fact that no one stands out like a lighthouse in a hurricane only proves that my life was filled with those who understood a simple truth: when you can’t calm the storms of life, calm the child (to rip-off a Scott Krippayne song.)

It takes more than a village to raise a teen; it takes an act of God. Sure, I had my moments of feeling misunderstood and depressed. There were times when the village just didn’t have the resources, and I had to find my own help. It was during those times that I found friends in strange places: in books, in nature, even in the stars.

From Dickens, I learned that I didn’t appreciate how good I really had things. From Donne I learned that “No man is an island.” Teens sometimes feel so alone that they try to go it alone, but in looking back we see that we were always “a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” From Dumas I learned that revenge does not heal and from science fiction in general I learned how to dream.

Seemingly so alone on this world, I dreamed of other worlds. I learned the stars and knew the night sky as well as I knew the backyard from which I gazed at them. Of course, like we so often do, when I no longer needed those friends I forsook them. It wasn’t until years later, out at night with my new son, that I remembered them. It was then I wrote the following poem.

A long time ago the stars were my friends.
I’d often lie in fields and look up at them.
It gave me a sense of wonder and awe
to see the same stars that the ancients saw.
Dreaming of the worlds that might circle those stars,
mentally exploring those planets afar,
I’d sail their seas and cross their sands,
climb their mountains, explore their lands.
Their rivers and forest were no strangers to me;
two suns would light up their skies,sometimes three.
Their moons were so bright that it seemed like day,
but then I’d wake up in fields where I lay
and realize it had all been just a dream,
and go back to my world of everyday schemes,
ambitions and strivings for fortune and fame;
I forgot my friends, even their names.
But now once again I see Vega’s bright light,
Arcturus’ splendor and Antares’ might.
I feel a peace as calm as can be
as once again I set sail over alien sea.
A long time ago the stars were my friends;
it’s good to have them back again.

The next time I venture out to greet some old friends it will be with a new hope: “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. I wish I may; I wish I might. May I have this wish tonight?”

I wish that each troubled teen will find at least one friend, no matter how strange, who will let her be herself, who will let him shout the things he feels he can only whisper, who will be as constant as the stars.

 

Of Mice and Men: The Death of the American Dream

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Steinbeck was a Depression novelist, and he saw it as his duty to “set down his time as nearly as he can understand it.”   He does so in Of Mice and Men  which portrays the corruption of the American dream during the 1930’s.

I have always thought Steinbeck tried to portray the American Dream simply as having something one could call one’s own, especially land.  In talking to Candy, in the book, Crooks says, “Everybody wants a little bit of land, not much.  Jus’ som’thin’ that was his.  Som’thin’ he could live on and there couldn’t nobody throw him off of it.”

One can see this Dream thought out American literature.  Jefferson’s replacement of Locke’s term ‘property’ for the phrase “Pursuit of happiness” is an early example.  Jefferson broadened Locke’s idea, but Jefferson once wrote that land “is the focus in which [people] keep alive that sacred fire which otherwise might expire from the face of the Earth.”  He was an agrarian who saw people who owned and labored on their own land as God’s chosen people.

One can trace this dream forward to Thoreau.  Although he did not own Walden Pond he went there for two years to live off the land.  The Transcendentalists like Emerson and Whitman and Thoreau all believed the Oversoul linked men to nature.  Property has always been seen as a sacred right in American history and it is encoded into the Constitution.

It is this same dream that is held by Lenny and George in Of Mice and Men.  It becomes the dream of everyone they tell.  When George and Lenny were talking about their dream place “Old Candy turned slowly over.  His eyes wide open.”  Candy’s dog had just been shot and he was upset, but when George dreamed out loud Candy wanted a part of it, if only vicariously through their eyes.

They all just wanted to have their “own place where [they] belonged.”  Crooks tells them that “If you…guys would want a hand to work for nothing- just his keep, why I’d come an lend a hand.”

In Of Mice and Men Steinbeck shows how this dream was corrupted and destroyed by the Great Depression.  It was during the Depression that America ran out of land.  Franklin Roosevelt wrote regarding an earlier mild depression that “Traditionally, when a depression came a new section of land was opened up in the West and even our temporary misfortune served our Manifest destiny.  At the very worst there was always the possibility of climbing into a covered wagon and moving West.”

This was no longer possible because all the land was opened up and settled.  Jefferson, as early as 1795 predicted that Americans would eventually run out of land and have to come up with other means of making a living.

America had been spoiled by prosperity.   Walt Whitman wrote that “Long, to long America, Travelling roads all even and peaceful you learn’d from joys and prosperity only.”  He recognized that America would not always prosper.  Edward Bellamy, in Looking Backward, described American economic life at the turn of the century as a carriage.  This carriage was pulled by the mass of humanity, driven by hunger, and the wealthy few rode on top.

Jefferson again sounds prophetic when he wrote that manufacturers (later industrialists) were “panders of vice , and the instrument by which the liberties of a country are overturned.”  All this isn’t to say that capitalism is bad, but people were being made industrial surfs at the same time the land was drying up, and they had to, as Jefferson said, because they had eat.

It was a high time for some, the Charlies, Lorraines and Duncans of Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited” who rode drunk on tricycles in the streets and threw hundred dollar bills to band players, but when the stock market crashed all the personal wealth and corporations crashed and so did the nation’s economy.  Without land, the people forced into industrial work had no jobs, no money and no way to get “a little piece of land.”

Steinbeck portrays all of this in Of Mice and Men.  He portrays it by letting the dream come within the men’s grasp and then it gets destroyed.  Steinbeck writes “They fell into silence.  They looked at one another, amazed.  This thing they had never really believed in was coming true.”

Even Crooks who says “I seen guys nearly crazy with loneliness for land, but ever’ time a whore house or a blackjack game took what it takes” became convinced.  It was right there in their hands.

When Curly’s wife is found dead, the first concern of Candy and George is the dream.  Candy asks George if they can still get their place and George answers “I think I knowed from the very first.  I think I knowed we’d never do her.”

In a way when George shoots Lenny he is killing his dream and realizing that life will always be the way it is for men like him.  For Lenny the dream never died, but it was an illusion he couldn’t see.  Steinbeck seems to be saying that unless one can adapt to the reality that the American dream had become an illusion he will die like Lenny.

God Is…

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 [Written 10 years and 2 less kids ago]

God is the bond of love that binds my wife and I together after ten years of marriage and brings us closer every day and still leaves the best for tomorrow.

God is the purest intentions and the fulfilled potentiality of my mother and father.

God is the absolute trust my seven year old has that I will take care of him when he is afraid, the spontaneous joy of my three year old when she awakens in the morning, and the uncorrupted laughter of my thirteen month old when she finds her foot.

God is the growth that comes through pain and the key that unlocks my chains.

God is the wisdom to know what is right and the freedom and courage to do it.

God is the Sisyphian rock that none can get ride of because God is the paradox which bends all belief systems back in upon themselves.

God is the kindness of strangers and the honesty of friends.

God is the truth that hurts and the truth that heals.

God is the strength to endure persecution and the virtue not to exact revenge.

God is the Wholly Other who fulfills our Ultimate Concern.

God is the eternity that stepped into time.

God is the patience of a Redwood tree as it gazes across the centuries of man’s folly and yet still grows straight and true.

God is the Carpenter who can build straight with the crooked timber of humanity.

God is the faith that there is hope and the hope that there is love.

Becket; or For the Honor of God

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There are some who believe that history is history and fiction is fiction and they should never mingle.  Those who think this way see no place for historical novels and movies, and they limit themselves by thinking this way.  Why?  Because good historical fiction can illuminate an age or a person in ways that are inaccessible to an historian who is strictly bound to historical evidence.  The movie “Becket” is one of the best examples of this argument.

Despite the fact that it sometimes distorts historical evidence (e.g. it makes Thomas Becket a Saxon), “Becket”, because it is fiction, can delve deeper into the possible nature of the rift between Henry II and Thomas Becket.  It seems clear, even from a brief study of the Becket affair, that Henry and Becket’s dispute was more personal in nature than one can find in the historical evidence.

This seems to be the case simply because the issues that Becket and Henry quarreled over had been argued over before, and would be argued over again throughout English history, without the drastic consequences that occurred on December 29, 1170.  But what were the personal elements to the Becket/Henry dispute?  Where historians can only speculate, the movie “Becket” asserts three motives: love, jealousy, and honor.

At first, Henry loves Becket like a brother, but the love becomes stained by jealousy and bitterness.  He is jealous that Becket can do everything from hunting to riding better than he can.  However, there is something much deeper here.  Henry is bitter that  Becket does not love him.

Oh, Becket is loyal to his duty, but duty without love is but a hollow shell of hypocrisy, and Henry knows this.  That is why he is always testing Becket’s devotion like the time he insists on taking Becket’s female friend, Gwendolyn, away from him.  (This is another example of fiction, but the movie uses it to make a point about Becket’s absence of any sense of honor prior to his appointment as Archbishop.)  Henry’s jealousy only increases when Gwendolyn commits suicide rather than stay with him.

As far as honor goes, Becket, in the movie, has none until he is appointed Archbishop.  His loyalty switches from the chancellery to the church as easily as a chameleon changes colors.  He also has no sense of honor when it comes to his friends (e.g. Gwendolyn mentioned above).  Also, and this is why the movie portrays Becket as Saxon, he has no sense of national honor.  He betrays his Saxon brothers by serving a Norman king, and this is why the Saxon monk tries to kill him in the movie.

When Becket finally does find his honor, Henry, his love almost completely replaced with jealousy, feels betrayed and becomes enraged.  To think that Becket finally found his honor and it was not the king’s honor but God’s is more than Henry can stand.  His jealousy and anger eventually take complete control; he subtly orders Becket killed; immediately his love reasserts itself; he repents, but it is to late.  Becket is murdered.

Love, jealousy, and honor, then, are the three personal reasons that the movie Becket offers to explain why the Becket controversy developed as it did.  It enhances this view by not going into any great detail with historical events such as the Constitutions of Clarendon or the criminious clergy.  To the movie these are just side issues- the context within which the personal drama is acted out.

In conclusion, by doing what historians can not do, that is, offering an  interpretation that is intuitive but not verifiable, “Becket,” adds to one’s understanding of a complex and fascinating period of history.

Embarrassing Old Post

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Back in the day I used to frequent a writer’s area on AOL. They frequently had writing contest in different categories. One humor contest had the contestants  write a short spoof review of one of Shakespeare’s works. I took a different approach. It’s a bit embarrassing to me now, but here it is:

I just finished a great book. It’s O Hello, the almost tragic story of a phone sex girl named Doesshemoana. It begins when one of her callers, a fellow who dubbed himself King Lear, offers her extra money if he can just see her. He’s the kind of guy who needs to see who he’s talking to.

She finally tells Lear: “As You Like It. I’ll meet you and let you look at me, but only if we both bring a friend.”

Arrangements are made to meet in a small Hamlet owned by The Merry Wives of Windsor. The meeting had to take place later than Lear wanted because his best friend wasn’t in town. He was returning on a ship owned by The Merchant of Venice with The Two Gentlemen from Verona.

The ship was delayed because of The Tempest raging offshore, but finally, on The Twelfth Night after they were supposed to arrive, they got there.

The meeting took place the next day on June 21st. When Lear saw Doesshemoana he could hardly contain himself. “Wow!” he exclaimed, “You’re A Midsummer Night’s Dream if I ever saw one! Measure for Measure you’re the hottest woman I ever laid eyes on!” Antony and Cleopatra, Lear and Mona’s friends, also hit it off.

Little did Lear know that one of Mona’s other callers was jealous. Macbeth had been tapping Mona’s calls for months and just then he stepped out of the woods. It looked for sure to be Love’s Labour’s Lost when Macbeth exclaimed to his henchman “Julius Caesar!” But as Julius tried to seize her the whole thing turned into A Comedy of Errors. Julius tripped on his own shoelaces, and like the Brute he was, he fell on his own sword.

The whole thing turns back into Love’s Labour’s Won as Macbeth runs away. “All Well That Ends Well and you sure do end well,” Lear proclaimed as he leered at Mona’s backside. Mona slapped him for being fresh which only excited Lear the more. “You make Much Ado About Nothing, my dear,” Lear said, ” but that will make The Taming of the Shrew all the more fun.”

Six months later they were married. There is a whole chapter on their honeymoon titled “The Winter’s Tale” which makes this book almost cross genres. Nine months after their honeymoon, Lear and Mona had twins. Their names? Romeo and Juliet, of course.

Do Good Always

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“My Father is working until now, and I am working.” (John 5:17)

As far as church seasons go, I think it’s safe to say most of us prefer any other to Lent. With all the introspection, repentance, and self-denial, we don’t often look upon Lent as a joy filled and uplifting season, but then, often times, neither is life itself.

On the 25th of January, 2006 Barbara Mann lost her five children and two nieces in a tragic car accident, and later that night her father when he died of a heart attack upon hearing the news. When witnessing the worse imaginable tragedy that could befall a person, one can only be filled with doubt, confusion, anger and deep sorrow.

Ironically, our response to deep, inexplicable suffering is often to seek explanation. We philosophize: “Everything happens for a reason,” or “All things work together for good.” In our attempt to alleviate our own suffering from doubt and confusion we often do more harm to those whose suffering we should be sharing instead.

In John 5 Jesus shows us “a more excellent way.” When faced with a man who had been suffering continuously for thirty-eight years, Jesus wasn’t philosophical. He acted. He healed him. Not only that, he healed him by commanding the man to do something the religious authorities of the day considered unlawful.

Jesus’s message to us is that it is always lawful to do good, especially when faced with the suffering of another. Not only is it lawful, it is the only correct response to suffering, including our own. Are you doubting and confused? Do good always. Are you lonely and afraid? Do good always.

God is not some cosmic utilitarian moving pawns on his teleological chessboard to optimize his end game. He is a Wounded Healer who suffers for and with us. In healing the man beside the pool in the way he did, Jesus not only healed him, he took his future suffering at the hands of the religious leaders upon himself. Instead of persecuting the man for breaking the Sabbath, they persecuted Jesus.

In this somber season of Lent when we reflect upon the suffering of a broken world, and our part in it, let us remember the lesson of the Wounded Healer to do good always and “go and do likewise.” In doing so, we may find that Lent is as joyous a season as the others, for to run from the pain of suffering and sin would only be to flee from the joy that awaits us on the other side. Avoiding Lent would mean missing Easter.

Lord, enable us to do good always, no matter the season, that we may be wounded healers in a broken world.