Month: July 2018

In my previous post I wrote about my recent heart catheterization. As I reported, the test revealed my heart was fine, for which I am very grateful. If you haven’t yet read that post, I encourage you to do so, as you may enjoy some of the more humorous aspects of that experience.

At the close of the article, I listed several Bible verses which speak about “the heart.” While appropriate for my theme, “You gotta have heart,” the kind of heart spoken of in those verses, and throughout the Bible, is not the kind that pumps blood or undergoes a heart catheterization. Rather, when the Bible speaks of the heart, it almost always refers to a person’s will, thoughts, feelings, desires, and so on. We use the word the same way in English, too, as in “You gotta have heart” (courage, desire), or “That person has a good heart” (attitude, character), or “I heart my wife” (love). Our use of heart is so similar to the way the Bible uses it that we usually know immediately what the Bible is talking about when it says, “heart.” In fact, our use of heart likely comes from the biblical usage of the term.

Given that understanding, we turn to what Jesus said when asked about which of God’s commandments was the greatest. Matthew 22:34-40 records what happened:

But when the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered themselves together. One of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

There’s a lot we could talk about in this passage, such as the attitude of the Pharisees in asking the question; the division of the Ten Commandments into two tables – one dealing with the love of God (Commandments 1-3) – and the other with the love of neighbor (Commandments 4-10); what it means to love God (a feeling, an attitude, or actions?); and what it means to love our neighbor (again: a feeling, an attitude, or actions?). But the point I want to focus on is this: Jesus said to love the Lord our God “with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” What is that all about? It’s about much more than just saying, “I heart God.” The word used for love in this passage is from the Greek word, agape, which transcends feelings to express commitment, devotion, and selfless action. But according to Jesus, it goes even further.

Jesus calls us to love God whole-heartedly. We are to love God without reservation, without conditions, without exception. God wants all of us, and all of each of us. He wants us to recognize him as Lord with our whole being, and to obey him in all he has commanded us. What does that look like? Does it mean we all become monks and nuns (or more properly, monks or nuns) and spend 24 hours a day in the church sanctuary in worship and prayer? Or give all our possessions away and fast every day? Or give our life on the mission field? Maybe . . . As the 20th Century Lutheran pastor and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, put it, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Talk about following Christ without conditions!

To better understand what it means to love God “wholeheartedly,” let’s look at the opposite, and consider some of the many “holes” in people’s love which show they only love God “hole-heartedly“:

1. The Time Hole: “Okay, so I went to church yesterday. I gave God his due, and now I’m off the clock. As the beer commercial once said, ‘It’s Miller time!'” What’s wrong with this picture? I mean, besides the fact I don’t drink beer? Our relationship with God is not one of many things we schedule or allocate time to. If we truly love God, we love him all the time, not just when the calendar and clock call us to worship. All the time we have is a gift from God, so why do we try to divide it into “his time” and “our time,” as if he didn’t matter during our time? The important point here is not that we spend 24/7 attending religious services in a church building; what’s important is knowing God is with us and present every second of our lifetime. There is no time or place when we are away from him, and there is no time when God does not love us nor want us to love him. Wherever we are, we can keep God in our thoughts and prayers, and honor him with our lips and actions.
2. The Money Hole: Jesus ran into this problem when he encountered a rich, young ruler who wanted to follow Jesus, but wasn’t willing to sell all he had and give it to the poor – “for he was extremely rich” (Luke 18:23). Jesus went on to say that it was difficult for the wealthy to enter heaven because their riches became their priority – the hole in what otherwise could have been fervent love for God. Any time we put money and material possessions before God, we are not loving him completely; when we realize that all we “own” still belongs to God and we are but his managers of that wealth, then we begin to make all our financial decisions according to what we believe God wants them to be. That shows our love for him and trust in him that he will graciously provide all our needs.
3. The Social Media Hole: In previous years I might have called this “peer pressure” or “social pressure,” but just to show I’m hip to current trends, I’m calling this the “social media hole.” Whatever we call it, it refers to people wanting to be accepted by other people, especially by those they like. They don’t want to be mocked or laughed at; they don’t want to seem like a religious fanatic, they don’t want to be excluded; so they go along with even anti-Christian bias in social and public media, leaving God out of the discussion or even dissing him. If you really love someone, you stand up for them, and won’t let them be insulted, even by your friends; but for many there’s a hole in their love for God because they let him be denied or insulted freely.
4. The Plan B Hole: Here the person likes the Christian message, but decides to hedge his or her bets just in case it’s not completely true. Maybe it’s another formal religion, or maybe a philosophy built around science, or maybe they depend on some sense of personal spirituality and mystical experiences. Whatever the “other” plan might be, the person reveals his or her lack of faith in the God of the Bible, and therefore a lack of love. If people truly love God wholeheartedly, then they have no fall-back plan; they so live and trust God that if Jesus is not the way to heaven, then they will be totally lost forever. Are you willing to live under that commitment?
5. The Pride Hole: “Sure we love God, but don’t we have to love ourselves as well? Doesn’t God want me to perform for him, to show him I’m worthy of his love? If I love God, don’t I have to prove it by being religious and holy? God saved me, but didn’t I have something to do with that – something in me that God saw as worthy and lovable?” This is actually a very subtle flaw, in that it sounds good to want to please God; the problem is that by believing I had anything to do with my salvation I actually am despising Christ and his sacrifice. Why did he need to die if I could have been good enough for God without it? Loving God is accepting fully his gift of grace and not trying to make it depend on my cooperation. The song, “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” (1991 by The Temptations), refers to love between people, not the love God has for us.
6. The Feelings Hole: “I really want to love God more, but I just don’t feel it. I try but I don’t have any deep emotional experience when I pray or attend worship services. If only I felt “my heart strangely warmed” as did John Wesley before he founded Methodism, or felt a “burning in my bosom” as the Mormons say I should, or wept and shook and dropped on the floor like my Pentecostal friends do, then I would feel closer to God.” You can see the error in this thinking. Is my faith and love for God dependent on my fickle and changing emotions (“He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me . . .) or on his promises which find their “yes” in the atoning sacrifice of his Son, Jesus Christ for me? Romans 5:8 should give us all the “feeling” we need to love God: “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
7. The Knowledge Hole: Maybe we don’t love God fully because we just don’t know him. We have not read his Word enough to know what we need to know about him. We don’t understand the depth of his love for us, the lengths he went to in order to save us, and his bountiful provision of all our needs, including life itself. This ignorance is our fault, especially in this country where we have unlimited access to a hundred different Bibles in every format in our language. For some, the ignorance is willful, because they fear reading about their moral and religious obligations; ignorance of God’s Law is bliss . . . but the Bible says people perish out of their ignorance: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). The remedy is to spend more time in God’s Word, where you will find good news of God’s love that frees us from the judgment of the Law.
8. The Lock-Box Hole: Do you keep secrets from the ones you love? Maybe you’re embarrassed about something you said or did, or maybe you just want your own private area to keep separate. In marriage, it might be a “man-cave” where a guy has and does what he wants in a certain space. Little kids might have a clubhouse with “No girls allowed!” or “Boys keep out!” posted. Adults may keep a lock box to hold their most precious and secret possessions. The problem comes when people treat God like that, trying to keep an area of their life secret from God (as if they could). They’re willing to turn over most areas of their lives, but not everything;
9. The Black Hole: Okay, at first, I listed this just because of the name; I thought it would be cool to include it as a joke. But the more I thought about it, I realized it actually does describe one of the reasons that many people fail to love God fully. These people attribute Creation to natural processes, such as the “Big Bang” and black holes. They divide science from religion, and look to science for the answers regarding the physical reality, and to religion for “spiritual” matters. In doing so they are robbing God of his creative genius and power, and of his ownership over all reality, both “seen and unseen” (Nicene Creed). They are falling into the trap warned against by the Apostle Paul, who wrote in Romans 1: “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” (There’s that “heart” reference again.) To attribute the origin of anything God created to some impersonal process apart from him, robs him of the glory due him and diminishes our love for him.

How many of these are playing a part in your affections toward God? Are there “holes” in your heart by which you are holding back on your complete love for our Creator and Redeemer? Are you willing to search out these holes and fill them with true worship and love for God?

Christ gave us Law that day, and it sounds scary. How is it possible to love God so deeply and completely that we can say “with all our heart?” Of course, we can’t. It is an impossible standard. We can strive for it but never obtain it fully. Knowing this, we properly despair at our shortfall. How can we love God? We stand condemned by our failure.

But that’s where grace comes in. 1 John 4:19 tells us, “We love because he first loved us.” Our love is a response to God’s love; Christ came into the world not to condemn us, but to seek and to save the lost (all of us!); and while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. We fulfill God’s commandments, including the greatest commandment – to love God with our whole heart – by believing in the One he sent – his only Son, Jesus Christ. May that knowledge richly bless you, and may your love for our Lord and Savior increase constantly. May you love him, “Wholeheartedly”!

May the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Read: Romans 1:18-32, 1 John 4:7-21

 

“You’ve gotta have heart, All you really need is heart. When the odds are sayin’ you’ll never win, That’s when the grin should start. . .” (From the musical, “Darn* Yankees” by Jerry Ross and Richard Adler, 1955**). I thought of attaching an audio file to this blog of me singing that song, but then I realized it would be heartless of me to do so.

Last week, I had a heart procedure. Technically, it was a heart catheterization (cath), in which a tube was inserted into my wrist and threaded up into one of my cardiac arteries to see if it had any blockages. I had not suffered any heart failure, chest pains, or any other symptoms indicating a heart problem, but the doctors required the test before giving me clearance to have some long-awaited corrective foot surgery. The procedure went very well: the cardiologist announced that the artery was clear and there was no problem. That was great news, and hopefully this was the last hurdle before fixing my foot.

Strangely, I had no fear of either the procedure or any negative results they might have found. Partly, I felt fine and thought of the procedure as “overkill” (maybe not the best term to use when considering someone threading a tube into your heart). Also, I was confident that God would protect me and use the procedure to reveal either my health or my need for some corrective action, either of which would be a good result. Therefore, all through the prepping and recovery periods (which took much more time than the actual procedure), I found myself in a good mood. So much so, that I began finding humor in various aspects of the experience. Like the above-mentioned song says, “That’s when the grin should start. . .”

My first grin was when I registered at the Patient desk. That was right off the street on the ground level, which made sense. But then, to go to the heart cath clinic, you had to walk about a block away, up to the next floor in a different building. I wondered how many patients they lose between registration and the clinic, since all the patients they send up there have heart issues! Maybe, if you make it all the way to the clinic without having a heart attack, they release you as being healthy! Fortunately, due to my foot issue, I had arranged for a wheel chair and attendant to push me to the clinic. Karen and our friend Peg had to walk behind (as usual).

Next came the arrival at the clinic, where I was ushered into a curtained-off room where I would be prepped. Of course, I had to change into a hospital gown, which was missing a tie on the “backside,” (not that there was a backside to be tied!) My wife Karen was in the room with me, and she asked for a better gown for me They brought me one that was twice the size of the other; it was warmer and had two ties, but they were both up by my neck, so the backside coverage was not much better than the first one.

Fortunately, I lay on my back almost the entire time. Except when I had to use the bathroom. I tried to postpone that trip, and at first thought I didn’t have to go. But then, the videos on the large-screen monitor in the room changed. The pictures on the video loop were intended to calm and relax the patients: beautiful scenes of mountains and prairies, desert flowers, fields of colorful blooms, and baby animals frolicking in the grass. So cute. So restful. Until the scenes changed. It started innocently at first – just some trees after a rainstorm, dripping water off their leaves. Then the drips increased to little rivulets, pouring into puddles. I tried to look away. I tried to think of the desert scenes again. But then came the streams and rivers, then mighty waterfalls, and by the time the scenery changed to huge waves crashing into the shore, I was on my button asking the nurse to get me to the bathroom. Later, after the procedure, they brought me back to the same room – and the same evil video. This time, they wouldn’t let me get up to go, so I learned how to use a plastic gallon jug in a reclining position.

I had great nurses. One female nurse complimented my smooth, soft wrist; I corrected her to use the word “rugged” instead. Then a male nurse came in. He looked so old – thinning gray hair, unsteady walk, hunched over with what used to be called a “dowager’s hump.” Then I found out he was 11 years younger than me! He had had a kidney transplant after 10 years on dialysis. And he said he had the heart of a 20-year old – literally – having received a heart transplant from a 20-year old girl who died of head injuries while skateboarding at Yosemite. Ironically, while he told me about her, the monitor behind him was showing peaceful mountain scenes of – you guessed it – Yosemite. I did not call his attention to it.

One of the female nurses was being trained for the unit, and as she read my vitals, I asked her if I were her first patient. She chuckled and said no, that she had been a nurse for many years, and was just new in this unit. I liked her response, so when the cardiologist came in to make his pre-op visit, I asked him the same question, “Is this your first heart cath?” To which he replied, “No. I’ve done 15,000 of them.” No chuckle. No smile. No humor. No way I’m ever going to ask that again of any doctor before operating on me.

According to my chart, I slept during the heart cath, though I don’t remember dozing off at all. I thought I had been awake the whole time, but was surprised how quickly the procedure went. So likely, I had slept some from the sedatives they had administered to me. The following Sunday, I ran into Don, one of our church members, who was going in for a heart cath the next day. I wanted to encourage and calm him with how smoothly mine had gone, so I told him, “Yeah, I guess I actually slept during the process without even knowing it.” To which he instantly replied, “Sort of like us during one of your sermons.” Ouch! That hurt worse than the cath itself!

So, a week has gone by since my heart procedure. I feel fine, and am relieved that the results were so good. I am thankful to God for my heart health, for protection during the surgery, for the good medical staff (even the one who wouldn’t smile), for a sense of humor, and for the faith which welcomed any result as God’s will for me. On the way to church Sunday I thought about the praise song, “Give Thanks,” by Don Moen, and felt how appropriate it would be to sing it for this experience; I was not surprised when I got to church to find that “golden oldie” was one of the worship songs for our service:

“Give thanks, with a grateful heart. . . “

A grateful heart, indeed!

And now may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Read:

• Psalm 9:1 “I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.”
• Psalm 10:17 “O Lord, you hear the desire of the afflicted; you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear.”
• Psalm 13:5 “But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.”
• Psalm 19:14 “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”
• Psalm 28:7 “The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.”
• Psalm 51:10 “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”
• Psalm 57:7 “My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast! I will sing and make melody!”
• Romans 10:9-10 “because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”

 

*Not the actual title, but this is a family blog . . .

** No, I did not watch the musical when it came out. At that time I was busy watching Romper Room, Soupy Sales, Sagebrush Shorty, and Looney Tunes cartoons. I’m not that old.

“The Myth of Independence.” A strange title for a blog the day before our July 4th celebration of Independence Day! Actually, I toned down the title a little; it was going to be called, “The Independence Delusion,” but I didn’t want any of my readers to think I was calling them delusional. (Of course, some of you may think that the description applies to the author of this blog . . . )

Calling the idea of independence a myth is not a political statement. It is not a slam against the holiday nor against our nation’s history or sovereignty. I do not long for those days of yesteryear when we were English colonies ruled by King George the Something. No, my comment about the mythical nature of our ideas of independence is much broader than that.

My position is two-fold. First, that none of us is independent in our personal or social lives. We need other people. Even the most “self-made man” (as we used to call a successful person) depended on others to get where he is. And second, that’s the way God desired and designed us to be – dependent on each other, and ultimately, on him.

We are truly dependent on each other and on God, and that’s the way God intended us to be.

Let’s look briefly at each point, since I know you’d rather get out and grill something and watch fireworks and celebrate Independence Day than read some guy’s blog. So here goes:

First: we are dependent on each other from the start of our lives to the very end. We are born not on our own, but we were conceived, gestated, born, nursed, fed, sheltered, and clothed all by the loving acts of our parents (or other guardians if something happens to them). We are taught and acculturated by family, school teachers, books and other media produced by others. The languages we speak were created and passed on by others: I don’t speak Richeddyese; I speak English and smatterings of other languages developed and taught to me by other people.

Then it comes to our material needs, which are met by things produced by other people. I could survive for a while eating grubs and berries and tasty insects, but all the food I eat was grown or raised and processed by others. (As Luther said, it’s good we have farmers, because if we were all pastors we would starve without anyone to grow us our food!) We even depend on others for the water we drink: not that they created it, but they filter, purify, and pump it into our homes and workplaces. And some people bottle that water and sell it to us at high prices! And how do we buy that and other products? With money and a monetary system created and regulated by others.

And what about our clothes, our homes, our cars, our computers and phones, our TVs and radios – for all these things we depend on others to create, manufacture, distribute, and repair. Sure, we could sew fig leaves together for clothing (that was tried once) but given my luck, I’d probably grab poison ivy or stinging nettle by mistake.

Then we get into categories like medicine, medications, medical equipment and instruments, physicians, other skilled health care workers, and care-givers. And what about police, firefighters and rescue workers, armed forces to defend our country, and government services to protect us and help us in case of personal need or social tragedies.

Even the most successful billionaire who thinks he or she has done it all and doesn’t need anyone else is delusional: they only got to where they were by the help of others, including lenders, partners, employees, and customers – or wealthy parents or a rich uncle.

I thought about the myth of independence when I first heard Hank Williams, Jr.’s song, “Country Boy Can Survive.” I like the song’s tune, Hank’s voice, and the pride in self-reliance it proclaims, but it’s that last thing, self-reliance where I also have an issue. The main point of the song is that “country folks” know how to take care of themselves from living close to the land with old-fashioned values. One verse goes like this:

I live in the back woods you see, A woman and the kids and a dog and me. I got a shotgun, a rifle, and a 4-wheel drive. And a country boy can survive; Country folks can survive.

What bothered me about the song was not the skills that country folks have (which can be awesome) , but Hank’s mention of some of the tools of their self-reliance: shotgun, rifle, and 4-wheel drive truck. Where did they get those things? Did they make them themselves? No. Or were they manufactured by city folks somewhere? What about the ammo for their shotgun and rifle? Did they make that? What happens when they run out of bullets? Sure, they can load their own ammo – but where do they get the gunpowder, brass casings, slugs, etc. to load more rounds? And as for the 4-wheeler, did they manufacture that themselves? And what about the gasoline to run it? (Okay, maybe they could use moonshine instead.)

Our need for each other extends to basic social interactions as well. We need human contact for our mental health, and even to be fully human. Children left abandoned or unheld as babies can become feral or emotionally ill; this was the case in Romania where infants were warehoused in large orphanages without human touch; they failed to develop physically, mentally, and emotionally. In prisons, one of the hardest punishments is to be put in solitary confinement, away from most interactions. Studies show serious physical and mental effects on prisoners, such as migraines, digestive problems, anxiety, hallucinations, heart palpitations, and paranoia, to name just a few.

Let me illustrate how hard isolation can be: in 1951, McGill University conducted a study of volunteers who were to spend six weeks in isolation. They all quit after just one week, unable to take it any longer.

We are truly dependent on each other – as John Donne famously wrote in 1624, “No man is an island.” But is that a weakness? An aberration? Are we just not tough enough to make it on our own, socially, mentally, and materially when we should be able to? No, the fact is that our need for others, our mutual dependence, is hard-wired into us. It is an essential trait of being human.

Second: that is because God designed us that way. This is a point that is worthy of its own book, let alone a complete blog article, but I think I can lay out enough evidence here to justify my claim. God designed us to be dependent in two ways: on each other, and on him.

Regarding our dependence on other people, we can go right back to the creation. The very act of creating us male and female and commanding us to reproduce requires some social interaction (actually of the most intimate kind), provision, and protection. In that day of creation, after God made Adam, he pronounced, “It is not good for the man to be alone,” which right there shows God’s intent for us to need each other. So he created Eve – who was dependent on Adam’s rib for her existence. He proclaimed in Genesis 3 that the woman’s desire would be for her husband, again showing interpersonal need. God’s judgment of Cain in Genesis 4 showed the falsity of Cain’s attempt to deny his responsibility to care for his brother (let alone not to murder him!). Even the fact that of all animals, we are the most helpless at birth, born needing others to provide and care for us, is proof that God intended us to be dependent on each other.

Psalm 133:1 proclaims, “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!” and Proverbs 18:22 says, “He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.” Christ, the all-powerful Creator of the world, surrounded himself with disciples to join in his work of proclaiming the kingdom of God. And as he hung dying on the cross, Jesus made sure his mother would be cared for by his disciple, John. These are just hints of God’s design for humanity.

But our ultimate, hard-wired and essential dependence is on God. At the most basic level, neither we nor the earth itself would exist apart from God (Psalm 8 and Genesis 1 and 2). We would cease to exist if God ever withdrew his sustaining power: Acts 17:28 proclaims, “In him we live and move and have our being,” and Colossians 1:16-17 tells us that Christ is our Creator, who made us “and in him all things hold together.” Psalm 145:15 tells of our need for God’s provision, “The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season.”

We affirm this dependence on God in the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread,” which we know from the Small catechism includes much more than bread, extending to all our material needs. And note that our dependence is a daily thing: our prayer asks him to give us our needs this day; tomorrow is a new day and our dependence is new once again (it actually never goes away).

Our dependence on God finds its final and complete fulfillment in Jesus Christ, who by his love and grace did what no “self-made man (or woman)” could ever do, and that is to reconcile us to God through his death and resurrection. We depend totally on Christ for our forgiveness and for eternal life; recognizing that dependence and knowing that Christ meets that need for us is the very definition of faith.

So, let’s not perpetuate the “myth of independence,” for we are truly dependent on each other and on God, and that’s the way God intended us to be. And have a great 4th of July celebration!

And now may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Read: Psalm 8, Colossians 1:15-20