Tried With Fire

A bruised reed He will not break And a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish; He will faithfully bring forth justice. Isaiah 42:3 Bruised reeds aren't cool. They aren't tough and strong. They are often needy and require reassurance, support, and a listening ear. They take time. But they give something, too. They give a reason for many of the "one anothers" in the Bible. If everyone had it all together, would we need patience and compassion? How would we learn listening first and talking second if no one had any emotional needs? And what about being stretched in our love for others? How many verses would be unnecessary if we could meet the fictitious expectations of the ideal Christian life that are floating out there? And there are plenty of them. As I write this, I also hear a voice (not audible) in the back of my head saying, "But what about people taking advantage?" But there is a difference between coddling and compassion. Throwing a bruised...

We took a whirlwind 24-hour trip to see family this weekend. My dad will be celebrating his 90th birthday this year but it falls near the due date of his first great-grandchild and my daughter's commencement. My sister and brother-in-law planned a surprise party for him on Saturday night, so we flew up for the celebration and flew back the next morning. On the flight up, I started reading Troubled Minds: Mental Illness and the Church's Mission by Amy Simpson. David Murray recommended this book in the Q&A at our recent theology conference as a good resource for growing in empathy and understanding. The copy I was reading was for the church library. I need to get one for myself. When it comes to mental illness, Amy Simpson knows firsthand the struggles of a family with mental illness. Her mother's diagnosis of schizophrenia came after years of hospitalizations and medications. She renounced Christianity, pursued the occult, and went missing only to be found in a shelt...

It is hard to watch people I love going through times of suffering. It's especially hard when I haven't been through it myself, so I don't know what to say. In an effort to try to relate, I may search my experience database to see if there is any commonality, but even if that is the case, situations are so nuanced that it probably isn't wise to project my experience onto someone else. In an effort to break the silence, it's tempting to say "This reminds me of ..." which may not be helpful at all. But why is silence even a problem? Job's friends gave their best comfort when they sat quietly with him and mourned. Keeping their mouths shut would have saved him a lot of additional pain. But maybe what matters isn't about how closely I can relate or even give advice. When one member of the body suffers, we all suffer. Then isn't it enough to weep with those who weep because we love them even if we don't fully understand? A simple, "I don...

If I had lost a loved one in an airplane crash, would it be helpful to tell me that there are greater odds for dying in automobile accidents? Would that give me greater comfort knowing that my loss was not as statistically significant? Hardly. This would be callous and cruel. Then why do we trot out statistics when someone raises issues of human suffering? For example, if you bring up domestic abuse against women, someone will raise the point that men are also abused by their wives. However, pointing out abuse against women is not a denial of abuse against men. Folks, this is not a binary choice. But what ends up happening is the validity of the studies becomes the subject of debate. The discussion becomes theoretical, and people fall through the cracks. Why do we do this? Is there some numerical threshold that needs to be crossed? If I can prove that X number of people have suffered this plight, then it is worth considering? I've seen this play out in social media over a vari...

Suffering has been the latest Sunday school topic at my church. The class has been very helpful and thought-provoking. It has probably been challenging for the teacher to try to condense this weighty subject because suffering touches on the sovereignty of God, the problem of evil, justice, and ethics to name a few. But the class has been the easy part. The hard part will be applying what I have learned. Also a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Just because I've read books or have been through a class on suffering doesn't necessarily mean I will be sensitive to others in their pain. As I've been mulling over this, here are some thoughts that come to mind: Don't lump a suffering in a single category. The sorrows of life in a fallen world are not the same as evil being perpetrated by sinful people. Don't put suffering on a scale and be the judge of who is suffering more or less. Be careful of an unbalanced view of God's sovereignty such that the categ...

We don't know much about Peninnah in 1 Samuel 1:1-8, but the little we do isn't nice. Perhaps she was jealous of Elkanah's love for Hannah, but regardless, she used the family's annual visits to Shiloh to remind her rival of her childless state while surrounded by her own sons and daughters. So year after year, Peninnah rubbed salt in the wound to Hannah's great distress. The text doesn't say what went on at home, but I can't imagine it was any better.  It would be easy to say, "What an uncompassionate woman! I would never do anything like that!" Or would I? Before we condemn Peninnah too readily, we should perhaps reflect on the way public worship can indeed become a time for the raw exposure of our past sins, our failings, and even our struggles with the abnormalities of life. What should be an occasion of joy for the worshipper can become a time to be reminded of how one's life has been a series of disappointments. It is a frequent occ...

ht: Justin Taylor The video is a Q&A session with Rosaria Butterfield , author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert .   It's one of the best books I've read this year in which she relates her conversion from lesbian, atheist, feminist college professor to psalm-singing, OPC pastor's wife and homeschooling mom. If you don't have time to watch the whole Q&A, watch from around 11:00 - 15:00. Butterfield answers a question about how can the church help believers who are struggling with sexual sin. I think one could make the same application for all the sins believers still struggle with, not just the ones of the flesh. I do not believe she is advocating giving sin a pass. Rather, it probably wouldn't hurt any of us to examine our hearts to see if our prejudices and fears keep us from believing that God is able to save or if we would prefer that God save those people, whoever those people may be, in someone else's church or at least clean them...

The issues of sin and justice have been on a back burner in my mind for several years. One particular aspect is the idea of moral equivalence - where all sins are considered equal. This older post by Kevin DeYoung is worth reading, the majority of which is also in Hole in our Holiness . In the book, he references The Holiness of God where R.C. Sproul states that all sins require atonement but all sins are not equal. [I]t seems humble to act as if no sin is worse than another, but we lose the impetus for striving and the ability to hold each other accountable when we tumble down the slip-n-slide of moral equivalence... When we can no longer see the different gradations among sins and sinners and sinful nations, we have not succeeded in respecting our own badness, we've cheapened God's goodness. 1 The idea of gradations of sin is important for us to keep in mind so we understand the difference between sin and gross sin . Again, all of our sins require forgiveness. All of...