Retaining Our Humanness

Lake Shore Clouds
[Photo By: KPA]

Via The Thinking Housewife:

The Good Things About the COVID World

Whatever the science and politics of Covid and of what the World Economic Forum chillingly refers to as “The Great Reset,” whatever you believe and whatever is true, the tremendous good that can come in the aftermath of this worldwide series of events is undeniable and staring us right in the face.

Continue reading.

To Reach the Invisible God Through Our Own Visible Means

Sistine Chapel

There is a fascinating dialogue going on at The Orthosphere, Becoming a reactionary is only the beginning of thought, where the writer Bonald quotes from Chesterton's What we think about:

“What can [the thinking Catholic] be thinking about, if he is not thinking about the Mistakes of Moses, as discovered by Mr. Miggles of Pudsey, or boldly defying all the terrors of the Inquisition which existed two hundred years ago in Spain?”

He continues to say, quoting from his own post:

Some time ago, I wrote that rejecting the Enlightenment is only the beginning of thought.

One way that the Enlightenment controls the minds of billions, locking them into a degrading and absurd mental slavery, is by making people imagine they know what’s on the other side. “Without the social contract…tyranny! Without separation of Church and state…religious warfare! Without feminism…rape! Without capitalism…communism! Without cosmopolitanism…Nazis! So love your chains, and repeat the slogans like a good boy.” You know how it goes.

[T]hose blinded by the Enlightenment have no idea what is on the other side. How could they, with such a narrow, unimaginative, and parochial worldview? In fact, the world of alternatives is vast, so vast that anyone beginning to step outside Enlightenment strictures should be warned that the greatest intellectual challenge is still ahead…

His point, I believe is to stop thinking in (impossible) negatives and to think in positives. Why not? Why not be cheery and optimistic? Why not believe that the world can be a better place and in fact is a good place!

Of course this requires two things - in my humble (and clearly unenlightened) opinion:

1. This is God's world. To destroy and discard it is sacrilegious. As we stand by God, he will guide us and show us the good way.

2. We need more than just the ephemera of ideas. The world of ideas should become something concrete. We are beings of flesh and blood and therefore so should be the world we create - emitted and ejected from our "thoughts."

From that we should discern that we are social beings. And the most sincere and sturdy manifestation of our "socialness" is through geography, with concrete land. Our countries!

And where else can we build that goodness so that it lasts, so that it is of Godly use for this (our) and future generations?

For example: we need to worship God not (only) through ephemeral thoughts but through clear actions. Our imaginations become something tangible.

We build churches for this reason, where the sights (the stained glass windows) the smells (the incense) and the sounds (the lovely choral and organ music) allow that we may concretely perceive God; that we are sure he is there, next to us, using all our senses to convince us of His presence.

But a French church is different from an English church as of course manifested even by the words used to praise God. As is an Ethiopian church from a Mexican one.

To reach the invisible God, we must search for Him through our own visible means: our own language, our own musical compositions, our own artistic creations.

By glorifying God thus, we also glorify our selves, our lands, our attachments, our solid bases.

Imagination is a necessary start (as all artists will tell you). We NEED to imagine God. But left on its own, imagination becomes like a beautiful flicker on a cinematographic screen. As we reach out to it, we can never attain it, and are left frustrated and bewildered. And bitter at this god who we feel with all our hurt, and heart, has abandoned us.

But we just got the strategy wrong. We listened to the wrong "experts."

Bonald writes:

It is no doubt a great thing to free oneself from the cloud of humbug into which we are all born. However, clearing one’s vision is only the start of seeing; next we must actually look around. One way that the Enlightenment controls the minds of billions, locking them into a degrading and absurd mental slavery, is by making people imagine they know what’s on the other side. “Without the social contract…tyranny! Without separation of Church and state…religious warfare! Without feminism…rape! Without capitalism…communism! Without cosmopolitanism…Nazis! So love your chains, and repeat the slogans like a good boy.” You know how it goes. You heard it, and you remember how it kept you bound for a long time after you realized that you didn’t particularly like what they were pushing…It is not true that conservatism or reaction needs to postulate any kind of ideal time in the past, but the Enlightened must commit themselves to the belief that the past was an utter horror.

And continues:

However, those blinded by the Enlightenment have no idea what is on the other side. How could they, with such a narrow, unimaginative, and parochial worldview? In fact, the world of alternatives is vast, so vast that anyone beginning to step outside Enlightenment strictures should be warned that the greatest intellectual challenge is still ahead…

Three (Godly) Reasons to Get Some Sleep

Three Reasons to Get Some Sleep
By Jonathan Parnell
Pastor, Minneapolis, Minnesota

[Full article below]

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Life is short. Stay awake for it.

So goes the tagline for the second largest coffee franchise in America. It’s catchy and practical. Drink our coffee, it suggests, not merely for its taste, but for its benefits, that is, to be awake to life. And the reason being — here comes the resonating connection — life is short. The clock is ticking. Our days are numbered. And we Christians agree (Psalm 90:10; 103:15–16; James 4:14).

Life is too short to sleep all the time.

But life is also too short not to sleep a large part of the time.

The fact is humans need sleep, between 7–8 hours a day. But most of us aren’t getting it. According to studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sleep deprivation is epidemic. In the last week articles and infographs have been circulating the web with convincing evidence that this is the real deal.

In addition to that content, here are three reasons why you should get some sleep.

1. God created you to require sleep for a healthy life

In a sense, this highlights the most intuitive reason why we need sleep: to survive. Most of us (not all of us) know from experience that going without ample sleep has drastic effects on us physically and emotionally. The latest study claims that going just one night with less than six hours of sleep may alter our genes and cause several side effects — from a higher chance of catching a cold to the loss of brain tissue.

But perhaps the most shared result is that without enough sleep we’re “more likely to get emotional.” Now we know how to fill in that generic term. Without enough sleep, we are more easily stressed and frustrated. Our capacity for patience dissipates. Lack of sleep is a sucker-punch to our ability to listen and think creatively, and therefore be productive.

Personally, one of the toughest things during my time in seminary was sleeplessness (and I think I got more than most guys). David Mathis and I don’t mention sleep in our little book How to Stay Christian in Seminary, but it could easily merit its own chapter. Days that followed only a few hours of shut-eye often meant the Hebrew was harder and our home was unhappy. But a good night of sleep was like its own mini-vacation, and it still is.

God created us this way. Just like oxygen and food, we need sleep to work right. It won’t look the same for everyone, and some are in situations where their care for others inhibits a solid snooze, but know for sure that we need sleep. It was God’s idea.

2. Sleep is the midwife of humility

Humility is a heart-virtue that gestates. It matures over time, born by truth and practice. We believe facts about reality (we’re needy creatures, not autonomous beings), and we act in step with those facts.

Next to prayer, sleep may be the most central practice that lines up with the truth of who we are. Sleep is that necessary moment that comes every single day when our bodies go slow and our minds start dragging. They witness to our fragility. And eventually, we will surrender. Our problem, as the studies suggest, is that we don’t surrender soon enough. Oftentimes we push back. The invitation gets handed to us with generous terms, but we resist until we’re wrestled down.

To be sure, some people have trouble falling asleep. One report says 40 million Americans suffer from 70 different sleep disorders. It’s serious, and deserves treatment, which could be simply adopting new habits. But the concern here is the heart of the matter. Whether we fall asleep quickly or not, we can welcome sleep for what it is. We can choose to bow out of the action, to know that the world will be fine without us for a while. We can welcome that segment of the day when we make ourselves most vulnerable, when we exit consciousness and are forced to, in the right sense, “let go, and let God.” Whether we actually say it or not, going to bed prays, at least in practice: “Now I lay me down to sleep. Lord, I pray my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, Lord, I pray my soul to take.”

Sleep is intrinsically a humble thing to do.

3. Sleep is distinctively Christian

Really, there is something remarkably Christian about sleep. We see this first in the Psalms and then fulfilled in the life of Jesus.

We read in Psalm 3:5–6, “I lay down a slept and woke again, for the Lᴏʀᴅ sustained me. I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.” Then we read in Psalm 4:8, “In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lᴏʀᴅ, make me dwell in safety.”

It’s Saying Something

Two things are happening here. First, David is making sleep an act of faith in the Lord’s protection. Enemies surround him, and they want to destroy him. But he sleeps. He knows the Lord sustains him and guards him. But why? How does he know this? Here’s the second thing to see: David trusts in God’s protection because of what God says in Psalm 2.

In Psalm 2 we see that the Lord’s King — who is also a Son — will reign. He will have the nations as his heritage and the ends of the earth his possession (Psalm 2:7–8). The Lord exalts him and issues the warning of his supremacy: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you perish in the way. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” (Psalm 2:12). This is an endorsement that carries throughout the entire Psalter. The Lord is committed to his King, his Son, his Anointed — and David knows it.

David is God’s anointed king, but he mirrors the true and better Anointed King that will descend from his lineage (2 Samuel 7:16). David’s faith in God’s protection, displayed by his sleep, points us to the Son of David who also knew how to sleep — which we see in Mark 4.

Why Jesus Slept

This scene of Mark 4 shows us Jesus and his disciples out at sea when a windstorm arises. The waves are so intense that they’re breaking into the boat, filling it with water (Mark 4:37). The disciples are terrified. This is a shipwreck in the works. But where is Jesus? He is in the stern of the boat asleep on a cushion (verse 38). He wakes up to stop the storm by his word and the disciples are awed. But we as readers — disciples with a canonical conscience — see him sleeping and we’re awed.

Jesus slept for the same reason David did. He knew that his Father would protect him. Based upon what God had promised to his King, to David, to Moses, to Abraham, to Adam — Jesus knew God would keep his Anointed. Sleep was the symbol of faith in that promise. It was for Jesus and for David and for us.

The Same Spirit of Faith

When we sleep we are saying — in that same spirit of faith — that God will protect his Anointed and all those anointed in him (2 Corinthians 1:21). We are saying that no matter how many thousand enemies surround our soul, because of the Father’s commitment to his Son, we will not be destroyed. We will not be condemned. Nothing will ever be able to snatch us out of his hand (John 10:28). Nothing will ever separate us from his love (Romans 8:38–39). When we go to bed, we are saying that.

Christian, life is short. You should get some sleep.

Jonathan Parnell (@jonathanparnell) is the lead pastor of Cities Church in Minneapolis/St. Paul, where he lives with his wife, Melissa, and their five children. He is co-editor of Designed for Joy: How the Gospel Impacts Men and Women, Identity and Practice.