On Becoming

Life changes us. Some people get better, some get worse, but nobody remains unchanged. At least, that’s the conclusion I’m coming to. Either my memory is failing me — a possibility I won’t completely discount — or my old friends and acquaintances are different people than they were in their teens, twenties and thirties. Time and circumstances have either refined or greatly eroded their characters, depending on how they responded to what life has served up.

That can be a scary thing to witness up close.

Blinkered Ideological Fury

It’s impossible not to notice that many of the unsaved heroes of my youth have become cartoonish self-parodies. Back in the eighties, twenty-something singer-songwriter Mike Scott was rhapsodizing about the wisdom of C.S. Lewis and penning lyrics that sounded quasi-Christian. Sixty-something Mike Scott is a bitter old man who would rather rewrite the words to somebody else’s song than take the name of Jesus on his lips. Twenty-something Graham Parker wrote a brutally honest ballad about abortion that became the most memorable in his lengthy catalog, made National Review’s Conservative Top 50 and probably managed to scare a few young men out of leaving unwanted babies behind them when they traveled. Sixty-something Graham Parker wrote a lyric about abortion full of vapid clichés and leftist straw-manning. Reviewer Matthew Franck describes “Coathangers” as “blinkered ideological fury and hardheartedness. Also, really bad music.” Yes to all of the above.

How does life turn subtle, searching, intelligent youth into cranky, impotent misery? It all depends how you process its lessons, doesn’t it. Resist wisdom, conscience and Christ long enough, and they will leave you to your own devices.

Dumb and Dumber

The friends and acquaintances of my youth are all going through the same process. Those who walked with Christ for the last 35 years are humbler, wiser and more loving today than I would ever have imagined back then. Those who preferred to go their own way are harder, sadder and, yes, sometimes dumber. I’m not kidding. It’s like refusing to see the obvious over decades either makes you stupid when you weren’t, or else manifests the insensate stubbornness that once lay hidden for all the world to see.

Hardheartedness can be bone-stupid. I think of Pharaoh, who probably had sound economic and political reasons in the beginning to reject the demands of Moses and Aaron to let God’s people go. By the eighth plague, hardheartedness dulled his perceptions of reality to the point where his servants asked, “Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?” Everybody but Pharaoh could see what his actions had produced, and still he doubled down on a losing hand.

Fit Companions

An older Christian acquaintance from up north called me last year to inquire about an unsaved relative we are both praying for. He confessed he finds it increasingly difficult to pray for the same lost people he prayed for in his youth. It seems as if they have rejected more opportunities to repent than anyone has a right to expect. It’s not that the Lord can’t be trusted to graciously continue his work in their lives. It’s just that every year makes men and women more invested in the path they have chosen and less likely to repudiate it at the last.

Nobody gets anywhere by running in place. I’m not sure it’s even possible over the course of a lifetime. We are all in the process of becoming something better or worse, becoming fit companions for Christ in eternity or else fit companions for the devil and his angels.

That’s not a choice to make lightly.