The Moment of Redemption

Redemption is a funny thing. It does not work like you would imagine. In El Paso, a hiking trail that takes you to the top of North Franklin Peak goes past a little area called Cottonwood Springs. Surrounded by dozens of square miles of desert—nothing but cacti, yucca, and various other inhospitable plants—a solitary cottonwood tree stands like a beacon. The best time of the year is the spring when there is moisture. The tree turns a magnificent green. I can count a number of cottonwood trees from where I am sitting right now, at my desk in Kansas. They are all green, as are the elms, sycamores, the oaks, and the grass in my lawn. We have been inundated with moisture lately and everything is bursting with green. When I run on the trails by the river I am overwhelmed by green. In El Paso it works differently. Green is precious and rare. Here it is plentiful and means humidity.

The most interesting thing to me about that lone cottonwood in the Franklin Mountains, though, is how well it represents spiritual truths. For life often functions a bit like the Franklin Mountains. It is sharp and inhospitable. A dry and weary land where there is no water. But this cottonwood always redeemed the seemingly unmitigated harshness of the landscape in my eyes. One single tree, one brilliant spark of green and life, in a sea of brown and death. And this is a bit how grace begins to work in our lives. One small moment, one moment’s turn of the life toward God and away from the world of sin and death. And the bleakness, the harshness, the inhospitability, is redeemed. That is amazing to me.

This truth impressed itself upon me freshly the other night as I took a walk along our verdant river. I was by myself and wrestling with God. The nature of the dispute is immaterial for our purposes here, but let’s just assume I was the one in the wrong. All day I had felt oppressed by this burden. I left to walk and my mind was in a cloud. I was angry and bitter and doing one of my favorite things, wallowing in pity. I was walking at a furious pace. A biker came up behind me and didn’t call out what side he wanted to pass me on and almost ran into me and I had the inclination to run him down and knock him off his bike. He was at least my dad’s age, maybe older. Not one of my finer moments. I came to an area along the trail called Fair’s Grove, the river on one side and a grove of cottonwoods and elms on the other. I was walking through, furious already and madder still that the walk was not appearing to help, when I slowed for a minute. I caught a glimpse of the way the falling light was moving through the leaves of the tree right above me. It was exquisite. I stood and looked up through the leaves at the light and felt transfixed, felt like a poet or a painter. I muttered audibly to God, asking him for help. Nothing eloquent, nothing poetic, merely the first nod toward my own fallibility and toward his great grace. And in that single, simple moment standing under a tree the day was redeemed. A day where from first to last I lacked trust and clarity and devotion. I walked on in confidence.

Redemption is almost scandalous, how simply it can come. Marriage has taught me this. A day or an evening of fighting is undone in a single gesture or kind word or loving smile. True friendship also works this way. But I have learned this reality most assuredly from the way God has loved me and provided redemption for me. I spent my life opposed to him, willfully sinning and choosing my own way, yet he redeemed my life from the pit and gave me salvation through the death of his Son. And now still, day by day, I choose sin and my own way over his perfect and pleasing will, yet in a moment when I turn my heart back toward him in supplication and penitence, he forgives and redeems that day. And that, now, is our model for interaction with others. And it is somehow possible.

Theological Anachronism

Woe to you! For you build the tombs of the prophets whom your fathers killed.  Jesus, Luke 11:47

There is a tendency everywhere to treat the dead with reverence we would never have accorded them had they been alive at our own time. Time heals all wounds, it seems, and also deadens the impact of thought or actions that would damn someone were we watching the outcome of such actions on the evening news or reading the damnable words on a book fresh off the press. We see this perhaps most often in politics. Already, George W. Bush’s lamentable political career is being reconsidered; certain Republicans are pining for the Clinton years; and Reagan’s beatification into the Church of Capitalism is steaming along nicely. The former two gentleman are still alive; angst over them could not even last until the good-spirit engendered by death.

For the most part, I am perfectly fine with this. Bush was not the monster the caricaturists of the left made him out to be during his presidential tenure; the same follows for Clinton from the opposite side of the aisle. Both were men who had a position of authority the scope of which few of us can even imagine who were forced by their various times to make difficult choices. That most of us now regret the eight year engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, does not mean that Bush was the nefarious and greedy tool of corporate interests that 9/11 conspiracy theorists and MSNBC talking heads made him out to be. Likewise, while few would exalt Clinton as a standard of morality, few can deny that he managed our country quite well during his tenure. It is part of the particular virulence of politics that prevents people from conceding that the opposing party has ever in their entire history made one decision that was not completely terrible. However, charity and nuance when evaluating another human being is not a sign of weakness but of grace.

This strikes me too as I consider the theological landscape of America today. We are becoming quite the partisans in this field as well. We have New Calvinists, and emergent postmoderns, and the old guard evangelical right. The New Calvinists (amongst whom I would have to place myself) abhor the paucity of scriptural reliance of the emergent postmoderns and the overdependence on politics as means of kingdom building of the religious right. The emergent feel the Bible to be a worthy document but unsuitable for answering the host of complications latent in contemporary society which the Bible could never have foreseen and therefore find the New Calvinists altogether too bleak and naïve, and they make no attempt to disguise their contempt for the religious right (many of whom are their parents). The religious right is for the most part Arminian and therefore denies the bleaker picture of human society/capability promoted by the New Calvinists in favor of an overtly political aim, and are wondering, as it concerns the emergents, how they could ever have strayed so far from the fold.

While I think one must hold theological convictions and protect them vigorously at times, I also feel that too often we can become so focused on condemning someone else that we forget to stand for something ourselves. Moreover, I believe that some of the people we contend against today will be seen in a much kinder light by our children and grandchildren.

One of the primary reasons I believe such a thing is because of the example of one of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis. If Lewis were alive today he would be lambasted from certain corners of the internet and pulpit by people detesting his theological vision. Indeed, there is much I disagree with concerning Lewis’s theology. One prime example is at the conclusion of the final book of the Narnia series, The Last Battle, wherein a servant of the false god, Tash, is let into heaven by Aslan because Aslan understands that in all of this man’s striving after Tash he was actually striving after Aslan. Because he had never heard of Aslan, his religious conviction toward Tash gets him in through the backdoor to Aslan’s kingdom. Lewis is basically saying that all roads, followed diligently enough and with the proper amount of ignorance, will in the end lead the faithful of all stripes to Christ. Belief, to borrow a phrase from contemporary spiritual discourse, is all that matters. The actual substance of belief is less important. To me this is absolutely flabby theology and nowhere backed up by scripture. Furthermore, it is dangerous theology. The only way the Bible says that people will be set right before God is through professing Jesus as their Lord. To suggest that there is another way undercuts this fundamental mission of the church to bring all people to Christ. I do not like that.

Yet I love C.S. Lewis. Reading him is a delight to my soul. Right now I am working through the concluding book of the Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength. I love it. I laugh out loud at times and it turns my mind over at others. Many of the same people who get red in the face today about the newest controversial book being released or rant and rave about this pastor or that philosopher, likewise read Lewis with delight and learn much from him.

Perhaps we cannot extend that charity to our contemporaries. Perhaps we are not supposed to. If I lived during Lewis’s time I suppose I would more directly have to voice my concerns over his theology. Maybe that is the right thing to do when the person is living and there can be hope for correction. But always, we must give grace. And we must bear in mind that we can read people with whom we disagree not only to become confirmed in our disagreement and more clearly demarcate the battle lines, but also to learn something.

First Year Down

One year down, one-ish to go. My brain is slowly recovering from the past few weeks. In the past nine days I have turned in around 65 pages of written material for three different courses: one paper on John Donne and the fashioning of his soul at the time of his conversion from his native Catholicism to the Reformed faith; one on the kinship between Charles Dickens and the man who performed for Dublin what Dickens performed for London, James Joyce; and one on a Marxist reading of John Milton’s political document, The Second Defense of the English People, which defended the English people (imagine that) in the wake of the execution of the English monarch, Charles I, who was killed in the Puritan revolution.

Since these three things are almost entirely unrelated to each other, I feel like my brain was like a rotor with three spokes that at each end represented my term papers and I was constantly rotating between them. And there was no escape. I even dreamed about writing papers. But it is over now. I am looking forward to the summer—I am most likely going to be doing some landscaping for a company in Manhattan and preparing to be a father. Clara is getting big and is without a doubt the most beautiful pregnant woman in this world. 

Another beautiful feature of the summer is that I get to read whatever I want. In a sense. Part of my reading will be preparation for next year’s thesis project, but I am also enjoying a long, narrative novel right now. I took a course this semester on British Modernism, a form of writing which focuses on technique over content and individual consciousness over linear narrative. Most of the books we read were amazing and enjoyable, but after four months of feeling trapped inside another person’s mind, I am looking forward to reading stories for a bit.

Right now I am in El Paso, visiting old friends for a few days. I had a friend driving from Michigan to El Paso who was stopping for a night with us in Kansas. I decided to hop in with him for the second half of his trip. When we got in late Tuesday night there was a windstorm blowing dust against our vehicle at about 50 miles per hour. That’s my El Paso. That same day there was a mountain lion loose in town that a trigger happy cop shot while he was trapped inside a garage. I did not find out about this until after my trail run in the mountains that morning. It is great to be back for a few days and run the old trails and play Ultimate with my old team, and have conversations and meals with far too many calories with old friends. I am also enjoying a brief reprieve from the Kansas summer that started a few days before I left. I forgot how oppressive mid-90s and humidity can feel.

We have a couple of weddings in Colorado that warrant some trips out there this summer so we are looking forward to that. But, of course, the summer will be dominated by the arrival of our first child, Owen ____ Coffman. We are indecisive on the middle name at this point. It seems like every time we discuss the options we add another name to the list. 

I guess that will do it for now. I am looking forward to doing some less intense writing this summer on subjects of my own choosing. Those should be seen here soon.

Justice

Well, I am breaking radio silence. What a story. Sixty-one years to the day that Hitler killed himself in an underground hideout lest he face American justice, Osama Bin Laden faces that justice.

You know how everyone can tell you where they were when they first heard about 9/11? Hopefully we will never forget this moment either. I was home last night working on one of my term papers due in the next week, when I checked cnn.com for a mental health break when I saw the news. Not that I am particularly proud of this, but my first thought was one of joy. Frankly, I was happy we got the bastard.

My facebook news feed quickly filled up with people reacting to the news. Most were jubilant and thanked our troops and asked for God to bless America. Others were more reserved. Some expressed distaste at the way people were reacting, seeing exulting over another human being’s death as classless and uncharitable: God loves all so how can we celebrate death. Some people quoted Exodus 33:11 which states that God does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked.

I sympathize with this latter position. It seems tasteless for a Christian to delight in a man being shot in the head. However, Paul tells us in Romans that “rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer” (13:4 ESV). It is our government’s job to protect its citizens. It is their job to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. This man they killed was responsible for the murder of thousands and the devastation of millions.

I therefore do not celebrate bin Laden's death, but justice. There is a difference between the two, to be clear. Our same God who is a God of love is also a God of justice. We must not forget this. Justice is a fearful thing, sometimes a consuming fire, but imagine a world where no justice existed at all, where the death of thousands inspired more compassion for the killer and hand-wringing over his death than delight in temporal justice which is but an echo of the justice to come.