Darkness and Light

Let’s face it, Christianity has never been a major attraction for the cool kids. These days, some churches have no kids attending at all. Young people from Christian homes who continue to accompany their parents to church throughout their teens and early twenties often find themselves with a very short list of prospective candidates for dating or marriage. It is increasingly common for these young people to head off to college and come back for Christmas or Thanksgiving with an unbelieving boyfriend or girlfriend. Absent a successful intervention from fellow believers, we all know where that path ends.

Why does this happen so often? Surely not because the scriptures are unclear.

Anonymous Asks (224)

“Is it wrong to marry someone who is much older/younger?”

The Bible teaches Christians to marry heterosexually and in Christ. These are the issues with which every believer seeking a life partner should be most concerned. Further, sprinkled throughout scripture are clear indications of character qualities that make for happy marriages. A believer is wise to look for such attributes in a prospective spouse.

Beyond that? There are few moral limitations I can think of with respect to a partner, but that doesn’t mean there are no practical considerations.

Time and Chance (52)

Just this week, a friend of mine took his three-and-half-year-old grandson hiking through a local terraced cemetery. As they climbed, they stopped to read a gravestone together at every level. Recognizing the shape of the recurring word forms, the little boy soon began to repeat phrases like “In loving memory” and “beloved wife”.

When the two returned home to tell Grandma what they had been up to, her agitated response was, “I hope you didn’t tell him what the numbers mean.”

Yeah, those numbers …

Time and Chance (51)

Ah, vanity. That expression again.

As I have mentioned on more than one occasion during our study of Ecclesiastes, the list of things its writer characterizes as “vanity” in his thesis is lengthy. Over thirty different features of human existence are so described, a partial list of which you can find here, from hedonism to workaholism to discontentment and entropy.

When Our Number Is Up

“Then Israel summoned his strength and sat up in bed.”

The book of Hebrews tells us that when Jacob rallied his strength to bless Joseph’s children, it was an act of faith; and not only an act of faith, but one worthy of mention alongside Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac, the crossing of the Red Sea and the fall of the walls of Jericho.

I’m not quite sure how to picture this scene, but it is the last act of a very old man who has come a very long way with God. At the beginning of chapter 48, Israel summons his strength and sits up on his deathbed to give his benediction. Probably he swings his legs down to the floor, sitting on the edge of the bed. When he finishes, at the end of chapter 49, he pulls his legs back into bed and breathes his last.

Job done. Quite the way to go, when you think about it.

How Not to Crash and Burn (35)

I’m writing at the office today, so it’s time for an office-themed post.

Our Bible’s Solomonic proverbs are roughly 3,000 years old. The ones the king of Israel preserved from other sources are even older. Still, many remain surprisingly useful and informative — even when we attempt to apply them to the goings-on in a modern commercial office building.

Here are three that still work. Mostly.

Hobbits In a Land of Dragons

We are hobbits in a land of dragons.

(Properly, I suppose, we should say, “in the land of THE dragon,” but since Satan has innumerable minions doing his bidding, we would not be out of line to assume they are of similar character.)

It’s impossible to know precisely how much of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth was intended to allegorize the Christian experience, and in the end the answer is unimportant. Tolkien’s faith, like that of any believing writer, informed both the plot of his epic fantasy and his imaginary characters, intentionally or otherwise. At least in part he wrote what he knew, and it seems to me that one of the things he knew best was salt-of-the-earth, slightly out-of-touch, decent, ordinary men and women going about their business without ruffling a lot of feathers.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.