In Romans 2:5 St. Paul writes, “Because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.”

Fear of future judgment has moved many people to repentance and faith. Christianity spread across the globe in partnership with a variety of physical coercive forces, both positive and negative. In some cases, it was “convert or die,” in others there were clear benefits to aligning with the new masters.

In a world where few people fear for their eternal destiny, and where there are no material advantages in faith, and significant disadvantages, can faith survive? Is there something inherently attractive and compelling about following Jesus Christ without coercion without recourse to threats or secondary rewards? Is it worth significant suffering and loss?

Clearly not everyone wants to be a Christian. Some people are antagonistic, but most are just indifferent. Not interested. Why would they want to alter their lifestyle, disrupt their social lives, lose friends, and risk their jobs? For what?

I think we will find out the answer to these questions in the days ahead. Indeed, we already are. How might we share the Gospel without relying on any coercion? Would you be a Christian if there were no Heaven or Hell? How often has someone asked us, “What’s your secret? I want what you’ve got.”

I was raised to believe that all persons are born with a God-shaped vacuum, a great aching longing that would never be satisfied apart from Him. Or, as Augustine put it, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Many testimonies support this portrayal. And there is no doubt that people in the developed world are more restless, unhappy, unsatisfied, depressed, angry, hopeless, and lonely than ever. But few imagine that an encounter with God would give them any relief. In fact, it is more likely to make things worse. So they imagine.

Of course, very likely the god whom they’ve imagined is not the true God, revealed in Jesus Christ, and known through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, in loving community. How many Christians do you know who are truly enjoying their faith? I hope quite a few. But I don’t think the majority of those who bear the name of Christ are living in abundance of delight these days–real delight in their present ordinary experience of their faith, apart from whatever benefits may await them in the future. ”Today, right now, it is a marvelous thing to be a Christ-follower. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

For a long time, Christianity has been viewed as a costly and often painful road to Heaven (or away from Hell). We pay the price during our earthly life for the benefits we believe we will receive after we die. The price is usually the foregoing of carnal pleasures, wealth, prestige, and freedom. A Christian friend once said to me, “I think you can sum up the Christian life in the 1972 Fram oil filter commercial, ‘You can pay me now, or pay me later.'”

For whatever reasons, many, perhaps most, non-Christians simply do not want to consider Christ. They see nothing attractive in the Christian life as they know it. In response many well-meaning souls have made it their mission to demonstrate that being a Christian can be “fun” and that Christians can be “cool.” Billy Graham crusades often featured professional athletes and Miss Americas on the platform as proof.

“Geezers” are still trying to “connect” and “reach” young people. But by now everyone under 40 has seen through these stratagems. They are savvy consumers and know when they are being sold.

The Gospel should speak for itself, in the lives of Christ-followers. It’s not difficult to tell if a person is happy and truly enjoying a fulfilling life, an abundant life. It’s not hard to see if they have something more substantial than circumstances sustaining their well-being. 

The Psalms are full of affirmations of delight in God, and longing for more of Him. I’ve noticed that Orthodox Jews still seem to really love being Jewish. I mean they really love it! What do they have that most Christians these days seem to lack.

Can you say that you love being a Christ-follower, that you really enjoy your religion, that He is the delight of your heart? That becoming a Christ-follower is the greatest thing that ever happened to you? That nothing compares to the joy of being His? That even all the good and wonderful pleasures of life are distant seconds to Him? How do you feel about going to church? Do you look forward to it? Do you delight to worship God, to thank Him, praise Him, receive Him in the Sacraments, share the company of others who are on the same road?

For far too long I could have only answered those questions with an honest, “Not really.” How about you? Wouldn’t you like to have a religion that you actually enjoyed?

Over the years, I’ve invested a lot of energy in argument and explanation to “prove” the truth of Christianity. In certain seasons it helped me hold on to faith. But I don’t think I ever brought anyone to conversion through it. Delight and gratitude; freedom from entitlement, defensiveness and irritability; good humor, humility, sincere interest in others, compassion and generosity will speak more persuasively in a world that no longer cares about gimmicks, or even truth.

Love is at the heart of Christianity. St. Paul makes it clear in 1 Cor 13. The absence of love nullifies everything. Jesus said that the first and greatest commandment is to love God with all you are.

Later Jesus says these penetrating words in John 14, verse 15, “If you love me you will keep my commandments.”

What are we to make of this connection between love and obedience? Is Jesus making a simple statement of fact, or is he using a technique that is at least as old as Delilah in Judges 16, where she pleads with Sampson, “If you really loved me you would tell me the secret of your great strength.”

For a long time that is how I read this statement of Jesus, “Oh, you say that you love me. But if you really loved me you would keep my commandments (which you plainly aren’t).” I would feel appropriately shamed, reaffirm my love, and vow to do better.

I might have said, “You know, Lord, I guess you are right. I am not obeying you. And you have a good point. As much as I hate to admit it, I guess I don’t love you.” This is difficult to say because we know we should love Jesus. What kind of a Christian doesn’t love Jesus, after all He has done for us? More shame.

Further in John 14, verse 23, Jesus says the same thing, but in a more direct manner, “If a man loves me, he will keep my word.” Here there is no coercive aspect, not even an implicit command, just a statement of cause and effect. This is how it works. “This is what you can expect, when you love me,” Jesus seems to be saying.

Is this a promise or a warning? How do you see it?

We all know that love can make people do strange things. Dangerous things. Love can make a man abandon his career, leave his boats and nets to follow Jesus. Give away money. Welcome a martyr’s death. Stand up to ridicule. Lose friends. Take vows of celibacy.

In Luke 14 Jesus gives a series of sobering warnings about just becoming His disciple. Coming to love Him is more dangerous still–to the individual lover, to the typical church, and if it ever reached critical mass, to society as we know it.

We decoupled sex from babies

From Life

Marriage

Community

Commitment

Love Kindness Respect

From you

Free at last!

Free to couple sex

To me

To power and competition and comparison

Autonomy

Anonymity

To monetizing markets

To mirrors and screens

To degrading cruelty and abuse — “Oh, come on! They like it rough.”

To all linkages and blends

To self-loathing isolation, sadness and fatigue

To Death

Although the word “salvation” covers a lot of ground, most people generally associate it with going to Heaven when they die. Is it possible for every Christian to be peacefully certain that Heaven is in fact is their eternal destiny? If so, how? On what basis?

Near the close of his first epistle St. John writes these words:

These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life (1 John 5:13).

John believed it was possible to know and he says plainly that he wrote the epistle for that purpose. It’s enough to make you want to go back and read it again with that in mind.

At St. Peter’s we agree with St. John that a deep assurance of our eternal destiny is the privilege of every child of God.

We are also with St. Paul when he states in Romans 8:16: The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

Sometimes adopted children need extra affirmation, and loving adoptive parents shower them with it, making as sure as they can that the child never has any reason to doubt their belonging. This is what Paul says the Holy Spirit provides, deep in our hearts, Spirit to spirit.

We have articulated this conviction in the second article of our “Vision of Life Together” document, as follows:

We believe that through the saving work of Christ for us, and by the ministry of the Holy Spirit working in us, God has made it possible for every member of St. Peter’s Anglican Church:

2) To live each day in peaceful and grateful assurance that we have been delivered from the “domain of darkness” (Col 1:13-14) and have received forgiveness and new life in Jesus Christ. This assurance enables us to face both death and life – and all its challenges – in peace and confidence.

It would be the greatest cruelty to tease a child, adopted or biological, about the security of his place in the family.

We see this in one of the sub-plots of the classic Western, “Lonesome Dove.” Captain Woodrow Call refuses to admit that Newt is his son. In the face of Gus’s insistent demands, Woodrow remains stubbornly silent.

Gus tries to convince Newt that Woodrow is his father, but Newt aches to hear it directly from his dad. “Why won’t he say it?” he asks through tears.

Woodrow gives Newt his watch and his horse, tokens and symbols of some kind of bond, but he stops short of the actual words of assurance. Though we admire Woodrow in many ways, we can’t help but hate him for that.  It would have cost him nothing, yet he refuses.

It is impossible to imagine a loving Father wanting His children to live in insecurity and uncertainty about the core of their identity and destiny.  In fact, He is not withholding His declaration of Fatherhood. He is eager for us to know it and bask it in 24-7.

I want every member of St. Peter’s who is not living in this assurance currently to come into the blessed reality in the next year.  I’m going to be talking more about it.

Stephen R Covey followed his best-selling, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, with the Eighth Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness. It was not as popular, but its central message is widely proclaimed in the domains of management and self-help: “Finding Your Voice.”

Many people feel they have something to say, but somehow it remains stuck inside. Or when they try to express it, no one seems to hear. This is painful and frustrating. My Mom used to say, “Impression without expression leads to depression.” Everyone has something to say, but many have a hard time finding their voice.

Not me. I’ve been talking for a living since I left college. For someone with deep self-consciousness and a crippling fear of public speaking this might not seem likely. My intense desire to express myself overcame these impediments. My ninth grade English teacher nicknamed me “the oracle”. I have repressed all memories of the 14-year-old boy that earned that nickname.

I am now well into the second half of life chronologically, but always the late-bloomer, I am just beginning to sample some of the good changes that can come with elderhood. One of the reasons we resist these changes is that with them we get glimpses of our earlier selves, which can be almost unbearable.

I see now how much of my teaching and preaching have been aimed at changing and correcting others, “helping” them to see things my way, the right way, to abandon their flawed perspectives and come on into the light, with me.

Believe it or not this can be done with a depth of naivete that never questions the purity of one’s motives and intentions. So, I shared, talked, taught and preached, explained, argued, wrote, passed along links, and ordered books.

Two ears, two eyes, one mouth! Was the Creator trying to tell us something in that design?

Part of me envies the Trappist monks. But I still have to do some talking. I just hope whatever I say and write will come increasingly out of a place of silence.

Spiritual formation pioneer and author, Richard Foster, wrote:

“Silence frees us from the need to control others. One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so helpless. We are accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. A frantic stream of words flows from us in an attempt to straighten others out. We want so desperately for them to agree with us, to see things our way. We evaluate people, judge people, condemn people. We devour people with our words. Silence is one of the deepest Disciplines of the Spirit simply because it puts the stopper on that.”

I realize that I haven’t been driven as much by a need to be right, though that has been present too, but mostly by deep loneliness. My sister calls this the desire for a “me too.” If I couldn’t find a community of like-minded soulmates, perhaps I could make one. It’s not much fun to be on the receiving end of such efforts.

In silence, and through silence, I am coming to see the value of others just as they are, beautiful ends in themselves, not as potential means to comfort my loneliness or validate my views.

When I used to travel internationally, I always appreciated the vigilance of the KLM security personnel checking documents and looking into the eyes of travelers.

We should be just as vigilant with adjectives. Let a bad adjective on board your consciousness and it can ruin, or at least distort and severely limit your life.

“Good morning, Mr. Adjective. May I please see your assumptions and implications.”

For years I thought I had distilled the essence of life into a simple mantra. I’ve shared it hundreds of times and never once received any push-back. Here it is:

“We are vulnerable creatures in a dangerous world.”

“Vulnerable” and “Dangerous.” Very popular fellows these days. The world constantly affirms them. “You are vulnerable, so take all these precautions.” “The world is dangerous. You’d be well advised to keep vigilant and be careful.”

There is a tone of concern and even kindness in these words. We often express affection and regard by telling our friends to “Take care” or “Be careful.” Nothing wrong with being concerned about those we love or even ourselves.

I’m not trying to take those phrases away, or the kind sentiments behind them. Just checking my adjectives.

Let’s just poke around a little in their carry-ons . . . .

“Vulnerable”? Compared to what? What are we actually trying to describe with that word?

Isn’t it just another way of talking about our many experiences of pain, often pain that we did not expect or tried to avoid but couldn’t? We also experience mental and emotional suffering that we do not want and can’t seem to prevent. Isn’t all that a pretty good definition of what it means to be “vulnerable?”

But what about all those times when we were strong and smart and planned well, and things turned out, or we got “lucky”? What about those times when we took the blow, got sick, recovered and found ourselves stronger, not nearly as vulnerable as we thought, smarter and wiser, more confident?

Does “vulnerable” describe the whole of who I am? No! And how would I feel if someone said, “Mark, you are vulnerable”? Is that a blessing or a curse? “Mark, this world is strong and mean, and you are weak.”

No thanks!

But who can argue with “dangerous” world? Look around!

OK. I look. What do I see? A world where sometimes things that hurt me happen. But I also see a world of great beauty, full of pleasures and delights from the simple and mundane to the ecstatic. Why focus on “dangerous?” Dangerous compared to what?

Humans have a tendency to work a formula that goes like this:

“I experience _____, therefore, the world is _______.

Or, therefore, I am ______.

God is _______.

People are_______.”

So, for example: “I experience unexpected or unavoidable pain, therefore I must be vulnerable, or the world must be dangerous, or God must be unjust, or . . . .”

Why do we have such a hard time just describing our experience and leaving it at that without making broad pronouncements about the way things are?

“That hurt!” “I didn’t see that one coming!” “I love this!” “I’m afraid of that.” “I ate too much.” “I drank too much.” “I did it again.” “I regret that.” “I’m feeling strong.” “I’m feeling tired.” “That dog bit me.” “I’ve got cancer.” “The baby got well.” “The baby died.” “I wonder what will happen to me now.”

Why not just stop before the “therefore”?

“I experience _______.” “I feel _______.” “It’s not who I am; it is just a tiny part of this whole big world that I am experiencing right now.” Observe it, describe it if you like, and let it be.

Funny, we seldom question our “therefores”. They just feel so right.

Nor do we question our qualifications to make such pronouncements. Could they possibly be a little above our pay grade?

Would we ever say out loud, “I have had an experience, or set of experiences, and this now qualifies me to define and label the world, or God, or you, or myself”? Yet, that is exactly what we do without a second thought.

When we make statements like, “We are vulnerable people in a dangerous world,” instead of nodding sympathetically, someone ought to ask us at least this: “Are you sure about that? How do you know?”

Or, “How does that statement benefit you, or make you feel better?”

Or, “How does that statement affect the way you look at life, how you relate to people, to God, to yourself?”

“Do you like the results of taking those adjectives on board your plane?”

“You know it’s optional, right?”

So here is my modified, adjective-free mantra:

“I am a vulnerable creature in a dangerous world.”

Anything beyond that I hold loosely and with caution.

I’m learning not to let adjectives on-board my consciousness without a closer look in their eyes.

Now, we might want to interview another popular fellow. His boarding pass says: “Broken”. He’s looking a little shifty. Check his passport again and make sure you want to fly with him.

His cousin, “Addict” — that one over there with the oversized, red duffle — he is also worth a closer look. He’s a sneaky one; he comes disguised as a noun.

This sheds new light on Romans 7:15: “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ”

Leave aside for now whether St. Paul was describing his current experience or what it’s like for anyone to live under the law without the power of the Holy Spirit.

Whatever else is there, I wonder if the passage may also speak to something subtler, namely the natural human tendency to imagine ourselves more virtuous at heart than we are: “Oh, I try so hard to resist temptation, but I’m only human, like St. Paul.”

When a temptation first comes, we feel the conflict between the attraction and what we know is right. If we give in to the temptation, we may feel remorse immediately after, conflict within, even self-loathing (“O, wretched man that I am!”). But in the very moment when we choose to give in, we are choosing what we want.

I support this idea from my own experience and scripture. See what you think.

In 1 Cor 10:13 St Paul tells us that “The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure.”

If I am honest with myself, I know there is a moment when I reject the grace available to endure. It’s hard to admit but rejecting that grace and giving in was exactly what I wanted to do — not before, and not afterwards, but in that moment.

The pre-sin struggle may be long or short, but the decision happens in a moment. It can happen in a nanosecond, the time it takes to think of rude rebuttal, to think, “No!” then “Yes!” and let it fly.

When we choose, we choose what we want not what we don’t want, at that moment, between the options we believe are available.

The presence of grace creates options for us, and not all of them are welcome. Grace lays the responsibility right where we don’t want it and challenges our victim status.

The issue is not the battle between doing what we want and don’t want — we always do what we want in the moment — but coming to want, indeed, to love, with all our hearts, what pleases our Lord.

Not long ago I made a resolution that I would only do exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life.  No one I shared it with thought I was serious. But I am.

Here is my line of thought. Our life comes to us moment by moment. In each moment there is a range of possibilities and options. With varying degrees of awareness we make choices among those options. And we choose the options that we want.

As I sit at my desk, I have the option of standing up.  I choose to stay seated and typing because that is what I want to do. In fact, of all the things I could actually do at this moment, this is exactly what I want to do.

Note, I am not choosing between all the things I can imagine or visualize or dream up, but only the options that are before me right now.  Though I might want to go the beach this morning, that is not a real option for me at this moment.

Now I could pause to fantasize about the beach, search up some Air B and B options, watch a few Youtubes, or I could indulge in resentment that I am stuck here at my desk. But I actually don’t want to do any of those things. However, if I did choose to do one of them, it would be because I wanted to. And I would still be doing exactly what I want, given the options at hand.

So, I can say with confidence that I will only do exactly what I want to do for the rest of my life, because that is what I have already been doing all of my conscious life. 

I’ve been conducting a mental experiment recently and have discovered something surprising. “Want” is stronger than “ought.”

Imagine someone tells you that you ought to do something. Inside, a little voice says, “I don’t want to.” The same thing happens when we tell ourselves that we ought to do something or stop doing something.

But what happens when we stop and ask ourselves “What do you want to do?” Or, better, “what do you really want to do?” When feeling a craving for an unhealthy snack, or to click for one more “informative” Youtube, or to criticize that “idiot” who has done it again, just pause and ask yourself, “What do you want to do?”

We know what we should do, and we resist it. When we give ourselves half a second to consider what do we really want to do, we might surprise ourselves and discover that our smarter self actually wants to do what we should do. And suddenly it’s a whole lot easier.

No matter how that conversation ends, and whatever we end up doing, at least we will have recognized an important truth, namely, that we are making a choice.