The Most Important Thing

In a day when many face, at the least, financial insecurity, and, at most, financial ruin; when many are scraping the bottom of their life savings to pay the electric bill and wonder what will happen in January after there are no more unemployment checks arriving and there's no job in sight; when thousands are occupying cities all over the world to protest the things they don't have, Jesus teaches us in the gospel of John what is most important. So many of the people he encountered felt like the people today: "If only I had this or that or the other thing, life would be good. I could truly live."

And so when the wine at the wedding party runs out, Jesus' mother comes to him with the crisis, and he provides high quality wine in abundance. Problem solved, party saved. Except that the party wine will eventually run out, and the wedding guests probably don't realize that the true source of joy and gladness that will never run out was among them as a guest.

A woman carries her water jar to the town well in the heat of the day. She dreads this daily chore. It's hard work carrying the heavy water jar back home, and her difficulty is increased because she carries out the chore when the sun is the hottest so she can avoid the scathing glares, the whispers of the other women of the town. So when the man at the well offers her his water, the water that will make her never thirst again, she wants it. Problem solved. She will never have to come to the dreaded well to draw water again.

A man sick for thirty-eight years laid by the pool of Bethesda. If he could only get into the pool when an angel stirred the water, he would be well, and his problems would be solved. So when a stranger approaches him and tells him to take up his bed and walk, he does. Problem solved. Except the stranger's question--"Do you want to be well?"--is about something much deeper, much more necessary than the ability to walk.

And there are the five thousand on the hillside, following Jesus around because of the things they see he can do. He looks like someone who could save them from their rulers, the Romans. But their need is much more basic at the moment. They're hungry, and there is no place to get food close by. He provides all five thousand of them, and their wives and children, with what they think is most important--bread--so much that there are twelve baskets left over. Problem solved. He reminds, them, though, that their fathers in the wilderness were also given bread, and they died. Only he is the bread of life, the bread that will stop all hungering and provide true life.

It's not that we don't need water or bread or wine or physical health. All of these things are important--for now. And paychecks, electricity, and affordable college tuition are all important too. But they aren't the most important things. We can have all of those things in quantities greater than we could ever need, and we'll still die, having never truly lived. No, our true needs are truly satisfied when we realize, like Simon Peter, the source of our life, the most important thing: "Lord,  to whom [or what] shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God." Problem solved.

Something to Think About

I've done it. You've done it too. We've all done it: Just don't tell anyone else . . .

Life, Learning, and a Letter

Back in 1983, a group of young men--some still college students and some recent graduates--wanted to pay tribute to a teacher who had profoundly impacted their lives. They knew him then as Mr. Grier, and he was the stuff of academic legend for these students who were discovering what it was to think truly, deeply, and Christianly. Mr. Grier himself had studied at Westminster Philadelphia with Van Til, and now he passed on to these young men what he had learned about how to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ in the discipline of philosophy. But after many years of teaching at Cedarville College, Mr. Grier accepted a position at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, and his students were grieved to see him go.

How could these young men thank a professor who had helped them to understand what it was to think biblically in ways they had never understood before? They thanked Mr. Grier in the way any teacher can best be thanked--by offering up a magnum opus of thought that pulled together everything they had learned about their academic specialties and wrote a volume titled Essays on the Christian World View. They dedicated it to "James M. Grier, professor and friend." They wrote about heady subjects like epistemology, apologetics, anthropology, exegesis, economics, history, politics, and science. It was quite an accomplishment for a group of young men who were busy with their own studies, but they did it. And the one who pulled it  altogether--even to securing the necessary funding--was the editor, Jonathan Selden.

While I wasn't an integral part of this effort, I was there. In fact, I resented the project a little because it distracted Jon, who was then my fiance, from paying as much attention to me as I wanted him to. An English major, I proofread. I also helped collate, walking around tables piled high with pages for hours on end. I sat at  the book table during lunchtime and sold books myself. Such a huge undertaking for a young man who hadn't even finished college yet--to edit a book, to author two chapters himself. But it was a good thing he took on projects like this then, because his life ended early, at age thirty-five. Not many of us can say that we've edited a book of essays before we have graduated from college, but Jon needed to because his time was so short.

Fast forward nearly thirty years to last week. It was like Christmas at the seminary where the offices of Reformation Heritage Books are, where I work. The hallway was filled with long tables loaded with books--commentaries, Bibles, books on theology, philosophy, history. Students pored over the tables, looking for treasures to fill their libraries. The reluctant Santa, now Dr. Grier, is moving to a smaller home and has had to downsize. This teacher of so many, for so many years, donated his personal library, the tools of his trade, to the Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary Library. The librarian had pulled what she wanted from the collection, and now the rest were for sale.

It occurred to me that it would be nice to have a book from the library of this teacher who had had such a profound effect on my thought, even though I had taken only one class from him. So I spent some time digging through the piles, not exactly sure what I was looking for but positive that I would know it when I found it. The elevator doors opened, and a couple of students came out with the last few boxes and started to load the books onto the table. 

I smiled as I recognized three or four copies of Essays on the Christian World View, with its stark blue cover and black plastic coil binding it all together. I thought how pleased Jon would be to know that his books had been a part of Dr. Grier's library for all these years, and now they were being placed on a table to be sold, perhaps, to students. I picked one up and felt sadness for a brilliant young man whose life ended so early, for other young men who had once been passionate for God but had long ago fallen away. And then I noticed the letter.

I knew right away what it was. Mr. Grier had moved to Grand Rapids before the books had been finished, and Jon had mailed copies to him. I was shaking as I opened it and read a letter that had most likely been typed on my electric typewriter back in June 1983:

Dear Mr. Grier, . . .

The years at Cedarville for me and for most of my friends have come and gone. However, we have endeavored to leave behind a legacy, a witness to the truth that has been taught us. This witness we have embodied in a collection of writings, Essays on the Christian World View.

Because you have been so influential in each of our lives and in our academic careers we have chosen to recognize this fact by dedicating this book to you . . .

On behalf of each of the contributors may I ask you to accept this, the first volume printed, as a token of our thanks and appreciation.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Selden

How amazing that a letter that once rested in my typewriter nearly thirty years ago should find its way back to me--through distance and time, through one man's library to a seminary library to a book table. It is a legacy--a witness to the truth--indeed. 

Diversity

I first encountered the issues of diversity a lifetime ago, it seems, when I was a single mom looking for a career that would enable me to support myself and my two children. There was a brief period when I considered being a teacher, and I took a few classes at a local university to get certification, until I decided that I didn't have the financial or emotional resources and just plain didn't want to be a teacher badly enough to put myself through several years of education in courses that seemed fairly irrelevant, especially since I had a master's degree in English and several years' teaching experience in private schools.

The class that made me decide my career in education was finished was on diversity in the classroom, in which we prospective teachers were taught how to manage a classroom where there were students of different races, learning abilities, socio-economic backgrounds, and even sexual orientations. I, a white, middle-class girl from a small town in northwestern Ohio with above-average intelligence, came into the class thinking that as a Christian, I should treat all people with dignity, respect, and charity--regardless of color and intellectual ability, whether they were rich or poor, gay or straight--because they were made in the image of God, and this is what I was called to do.

But this was the wrong approach. It wasn't enough to acknowledge that there were differences and respect others in spite of them. It was necessary to understand the differences, to somehow enter into the experiences of others; it would be possible to respect them only if we could understand their holidays, eat their foods, feel whatever it felt like to be female/male; Hispanic/African American/Chinese American/etc.; wheelchair bound/deaf/blind; ADHD/dyslexic; and on and on. The class met one evening a week for a couple of hours for a semester. After spending two entire class sessions listening to the miserable plight of a young gay man who grew up in a Christian home here in Grand Rapids, I decided that this approach wasn't working for me. It was easier for me to be charitable and respectful toward him when I just thought of him as another person made in God's image and didn't have to walk through the details of what it was like to be a young gay man growing up in a Christian home in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

One Christian workplace addressed the matter of diversity by offering training that focused on white racism in American history and then divided employees up into committees that considered the diversity that exists among different sexes, people of different religious denominations, people who worked in the office and people who worked in the plant, and, of course, people of different races. Again, I wonder whether it was really necessary to spend so much time exploring differences. The workers all professed to be Christians, and shouldn't they be focusing on what bound them together rather than on what made them different from each other? As humans, we all fall prey to the sin of insensitivity sometimes, and we might be guilty of saying or doing something that could hurt another, but were committees devoting hours of work time exploring the differences really the solution?

And now I work in a truly unique environment where the issue of diversity is a non-issue. The offices of Reformation Heritage Books are housed in the Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary building, so I have the unique privilege of watching as people of different colors and traditions, with varying academic abilities, of different religious denominations, some with very little of this world's possessions and some with more, and even different sexes live and study together. I overhear a conversation between two men, one from Brazil and one from the Netherlands, talking about their wives and how they're adjusting to this strange, but warm place. I watch as a young man from Scotland helps an older brother from Malawi study his Hebrew. Students and their families from Ethiopia, Mexico, the Philippines, South Africa, Canada, and America--elect from every nation, it seems--gather here without regard for language and cultural differences and live together in various apartment complexes near the seminary. I hear the students who have been here longer say to the new ones, "We're in 226. Come by if you need anything. We'll get together soon."  People refer to others as brothers and sisters here, and they really mean it. And the interesting thing is that this all happens without committees, without training, without sessions that make us all aware of one another's experiences and traditions. It happens because the bonds of Christ that unite are far more powerful than the things that can divide--languages, traditions, foods, wealth, poverty, male or female.

And I am confident that there will be no diversity training in heaven. 

Where Have I Been?

If you want to see what our family has been up to, you need to visit Katie's photography blog. It will leave you humming "Kiss de Girl" from The Little Mermaid.


And on another subject, may I highly recommend some fantastic summer reading to you? I just finished Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, a book I had wanted to read for some time, and it did not disappoint. In fact, it exceeded my expectations. A romance story between a retired British army major and the local Pakistani shop keeper, Mrs. Ali--both senior citizens. It does not sound like a page turner, does it? Ah, but it is. One of my favorite passages. The Major and Mrs. Pettigrew encounter a young Indian woman and her son in the park, and another person in the park has been telling the little boy that he may not play with his ball there. The mother is incensed and wants to tell "the old cow" off. But the wise Mrs. Ali steps in:

" 'The world is full of small ignorances,' said a quiet voice. Mrs. Ali appeared . . . and gave the young woman a stern look. 'We must do our best to ignore them and thereby keep them small, don't you think?' "