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Devotions: Beatitudes (2) — Joyful Mourning

You’re blessed that when truly broken, God gives you what you need the most. – Matthew 5:4

Mourning

This is the second of a series of nine Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12) in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has been laying down the ethics of an “upside down” kingdom in these short, pithy but profound declarations. Rather than focusing on how we feel or the way we operate our lives, or on our distinctive personalities or preferences, Jesus forces us to go much deeper and much broader at the same time. These are characteristics of the NORMAL Christian, not the special Christian, or the trained Christian, or the mature Christian, or the Christian professional. They are qualities for all who have been made, in the words of the Bible, a “new creation” in Christ Jesus, and in whom God the Holy Spirit, is producing his fruit of grace, love, joy and peace. As John Piper has well said, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”

Joyful mourning. Sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it, like the “living dead,” or “bitter sweet” or “accidentally on purpose” or “pretty ugly.” Shakespeare strings them together in the play, Romeo and Juliet – “O heavy lightness! Serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!” Who are those who mourn? They are people who have a gut-level sense of anguish and sorrow. It may be over personal or corporate tragedy or disaster. It may be deep grief over both sins we commit and those sins committed outside of us that deeply touch us. “Contrition” would be the old word here. But this is sorrow without gloominess or moodiness, and seriousness without sullenness. [Read more…] about Devotions: Beatitudes (2) — Joyful Mourning

Reasons: Why I am a Christian Part 2

Theresa Ginder Grosh watching over Tom and Theresa’s first child Elise Faith. Elise Faith lived eight days after being born at 23 weeks.(1)

Every year, the translator at our pediatric hospital asks this question:

What are the four hardest words to translate?

He will pause for a moment and then say,

Your child is dead.

Every time I hear it, I wonder how many times he has had to say that phrase. Every year, I think the tally must be a little higher.

Fixed in every medical provider’s mind are similar moments of unsettling and stunning grief. Death, crippling injury, and disability rarely happen in the dramatic TV show ways. They are ordinary and commonplace. A car accident left one child with a few scratches but instantly killed his sibling. The seasoned pediatric surgeon who told me the story was visibly distraught by it; he said, “Go home and hug your kids tight tonight. I will.”

A two year old drowns in the kiddie pool in the backyard. A newborn has brain cancer. A girl with Down Syndrome develops leukemia. “What are the odds that these tragedies can happen?” you may wonder. I can tell you. [Read more…] about Reasons: Why I am a Christian Part 2

Reasons: Why I am a Christian

“U Illinois arrays, by contrast, use the traditional semiconductor gallium arsenide (GaAs) and conventional metals for diodes and detectors.” — Coxworth, Ben. Flexible, Biocompatible LEDs Could Light the Way for next Gen Biomedicine. Gizmag, 22 Oct. 2010. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.

“How can you believe in God and science at the same time?”  

Even though I am rarely asked this question so plainly, it is often implied in conversation.  Many atheistic advocates think that there is a conflict between the two. They may suspect that a belief in the supernatural is used primarily to explain the physical world with non-physical means and to “fill in the gaps” for conundrums for which there is no better or more reasonable determination. They may believe that beliefs are driven by a search for meaning and cohesion, and that this persistent pursuit of Reasons may mistakenly (and somewhat ironically) lead people to become more irrational. They may believe that science, as the ultimate paradigm in methodically inductive, deductive, and reductive Reasoning, is consequently the most obvious arbiter of truth. They may then believe that the willful denial and rejection of conclusions arrived at by science is therefore illogical, irrational, and subsequently idiotic. It is therefore reasonable to see why people would automatically consider those who believe in the supernatural to be willfully ignorant, regarding them with suspicion, condescension, and/or frustration.

I grew up saturated in both religion and science. My father is an electrical engineer, well accomplished and respected in his field. As a child, I was surrounded by gizmos and textbooks, not understanding what “GaAs Semiconductors” were but curious to find out. His approach to the world has always had the paradigm of a scientist: always thinking, observing, and making his own private conclusions. He had a very strong moral sense, but it was strongly grounded in a Confucian sense of discipline, orderliness, and character virtue. He was not a Christian at the time and he generally took an agnostic and aloof stance towards religion, seeing it as a generally positive force in shaping his family’s sensibilities but still regarding it cautiously. It was almost as if he was wary towards the existence and significance of a God who seemed to be a relatively benign but otherwise untested hypothesis.

My mother is a firm Christian and a nurse, nearly opposite to my father in temperament and belief.   [Read more…] about Reasons: Why I am a Christian

Success, Failure and the Protestant Work Ethic

Reflecting upon one's call.
Reflecting upon On The Tenure Track

Not long ago I wrote an Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) blog post about my experiences on the tenure track, sharing my concerns about whether I would get tenure and contemplating my priorities. I wanted to think through whether tenure even should be my primary goal, and what I would give up to achieve it. It was encouraging to me to see that I’m not alone, and that others feel some of the same pressures I do. Thank you to those who commented.

Looking back, though, I realized that I made some generalizations that I probably should have qualified, and that my tone at times came across as both arrogant and whiny. In my essay, I suggested that as a Christian, it’s hard to meet the university’s standards, since my values don’t always correspond to the expectations of my institution. I also expressed my frustration with the pressure I have felt in Christian circles that view excellent work as part of my Christian duty. But this isn’t the whole story. In many ways—dare I say most?—my faith has helped me to do better work than I may have done otherwise. [Read more…] about Success, Failure and the Protestant Work Ethic

Why I’m (Still) A Christian — Part II

Last time around, I wrote about some conditions which I would consider necessary to a Christian faith, but that are not sufficient for me to be satisfied with one. If you’re not familiar with the notion of necessary and sufficient conditions, let’s think about what you need to start a campfire. Generally speaking, kindling and firewood are both necessary elements; it’s very hard to start a fire by lighting firewood directly, and kindling alone won’t burn long enough. However, those two things alone are not sufficient for a campfire. You also need a spark as from a flint, or something to heat the kindling, or something that spontaneously combusts like a match. Any one of those is sufficient to start the fire, but none are strictly necessary because one of the others can substitute.

campfire
The flames of our faith may get lit in different ways, but we can all enjoy the S’mores of the soul. Photo by Bobby Mikul (Public domain)

With that distinction hopefully clearer, I’ll return to the topic of faith. It’s rare that anyone becomes a Christian without some exposure to other Christians and without a mind that is receptive to belief, so I consider those factors to be necessary. However, the additional factors that are sufficient to lead someone to accept a Biblical faith are likely to be more specific to each individual. I am not arguing that the following are the only right reasons to be a Christian, merely that they work for me. Nevertheless, I suspect there may be some value in discussing them because others may have similar kinds of questions or a similar mindset to mine.

[Read more…] about Why I’m (Still) A Christian — Part II