Don’t Ask: Why Some Questions Are Better Left Unanswered

When I was a college professor, students often asked me questions. Some began by saying, “This may be a stupid question.” For many years, my stock response was, “There are no stupid questions.” But after a while, it dawned on me that I was wrong about this. There are stupid questions. There are also disingenuous questions. Some are traps, and many are merely dead ends. We are better off leaving some questions unanswered. Others should not even be raised. Satan deconstructed Eve’s faith with a question. According to Genesis 3:1, he said, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

On the surface, it sounds reasonable. Did or did not God say such a thing? Theologian Geerhardus Vos notes that the process of Satan’s temptation of Eve unfolds in two stages. “In both the central purpose of the tempter is the injection of doubt into the woman’s mind,” he explains. “But the doubt suggested in the first stage is of an apparently innocent kind, a doubt as to the question of fact.”[1]

In a way, it is a wonder that Satan would even ask such a question of Eve. Normally, paying attention to what God has said is the first step in avoiding sin. However, this innocent-sounding question was a weapon fueled by malice and barbed with slanderous innuendo against God. Eve sensed the challenge implied in Satan’s query, and her initial response was defensive. She pointed out that the boundaries set by God were generous, with the restriction limited to only one tree. “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” she said, “but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die’” (Gen. 3:3).

Many commentators believe she unnecessarily exaggerated God’s command by adding the stipulation, “you must not touch it.”[2] It is possible that these words accurately reflect the prohibitive force of God’s command. If the fruit was dangerous to eat, it was dangerous to touch. What other reason would one have for touching the fruit but to consume it? In her case, touching was the first concrete action on the path of disobedience. In Leviticus, prohibitions against eating unclean foods were sometimes strengthened by a parallel warning not to touch (Lev. 7:21; 11:8, 24, 26, 27, 31).

After Eve had clarified the boundaries God set, Satan threw off the veiled cloak of innuendo. The hidden accusation of his question came into full view. “‘You will not certainly die,’ the serpent said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’” (Gen. 3:4-5). The bait was cast and the hook set. Instead of dismissing Satan outright, Eve concentrated her full attention on what was forbidden. Genesis 3:6 says that she “saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom.”

What’s So Good About It?

This summary echoes the litany the writer has used after each creative act. “God saw that it was good” (Gen. 1:10, 12, 18, 21). That assertion was strengthened further when the Lord placed his imprimatur on the whole. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). That the forbidden tree was included in this “all” is something of a shock. Would God really create something that is appealing, but whose ultimate effect is destruction, and then call it good? Scripture says that he did.

What did the Lord mean by good? “‘Goodness’ has something to do with the realization of God’s will and intentions,” Michelle Knight has observed.[3] Knight points out that God’s evaluation is more than a statement; it is a perception. God “saw” that it was good.[4] The forbidden tree was good, but for what? “God’s express directive (2:16-17) clarified, at minimum, that this tree was not good for humans to eat,” Knight explains further. “Eve’s transgression was to make a judgment about the tree’s purposes and benefits according to her own perspective and counter to YHWH’s.”[5]

The mere fact that the tree was visually appealing did not mean that its fruit was “good for food.” It was good for testing. Eve agreed with God’s overall assessment that the tree was good. Unfortunately, Satan’s bald-faced lie about the consequences of eating had distorted her perception. Eve was not ignorant, but she was deceived. She knew that the tree was forbidden and had been warned that eating its fruit would be deadly. Nevertheless, she rejected what she knew and chose to believe a different narrative because she preferred the lie.

Naked Self-Interest

It may seem as if I am laying all the blame for the fall of humanity upon Eve. This is not the case. The apostle does call Eve a “sinner” or “transgressor” in 1 Timothy 2:14, but he uses the same word in Romans 5:14 to speak of Adam’s disobedience. The main difference was that Eve had been blinded by deceit, while Adam sinned with his eyes wide open. If anything, Adam’s culpability was greater, since sin entered the world through him (Rom. 5:12).

Satan had promised that Adam and Eve would “be like God” (Gen. 3:7). Instead, “they realized they were naked” (Gen. 3:8). Far from obtaining transcendent knowledge, they discovered shame. They made coverings for themselves and hid among the trees. According to Genesis 3:9, the Lord called out to Adam, saying, “Where are you?” Adam’s reply seems childishly simple. “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid” (Gen. 3:10).

The Lord’s next two questions follow in quick succession, as the second provides the answer to the first. “Who told you that you were naked?” the Lord demands. “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” Adam’s defense begins to lay bare the damage that has been done. Eating the forbidden fruit made him self-conscious in the presence of God. It has also created a rift between Adam and his wife. Adam had called Eve “bone of my bone” and “flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:22). Now he refers to her as “the woman you put here with me” (Gen. 3:12). It sounds as though she were, if not an intruder, at least an imposition.

Questions That Hurt & Heal

Not every question is a good one, but they are not all bad either. Questions can heal as well as hurt. The Lord approached Adam with a question. Douglas Estes has called the ability to ask questions a distinctly human trait. Estes notes that animals can signal, gesture, and vocalize, “But animals lack the metacognition to question.”[6] Those who have tried to stare down their pet dog might challenge this. But when Estes speaks of a question, he is not talking about mere puzzlement or even appeal. “My cat, Sitka, can tell me he needs food (‘meow’), and command me to get him food (‘meow, meow, meow), but he cannot ask me what food is,” Estes explains. Questioning involves abstract thought that explores possibilities and the ability to think about thinking.[7]

Divine questions are prominent throughout Scripture. They do more than seek information. In the Genesis account, both Satan and the Lord ask questions whose answers they already know. Yet, with radically different aims. Satan’s question was meant to drive a wedge into Eve’s faith and undermine her confidence in God.

The Lord, on the other hand, asked a string of questions for a markedly different reason. His first question sounds like he is seeking information. But its real purpose was to draw Adam and Eve out of hiding. It amounts to an invitation. The questions that followed this were designed to elicit confession, the first step in closing the distance. The Lord did not use questions to drive Adam and Eve away. But to draw them in and redeem.

Jesus the Interrogator

Jesus employed questions to instruct his followers and foil his enemies. This method of speaking was part of a larger pattern of communication that Bruce Reichenbach describes as “ambiguous rhetoric.”[8] It included double meaning, irony, riddles, sarcasm, symbols, and unanswered questions. Jesus raised questions that he did not answer (at least directly). He also asked questions that his hearers were unable or unwilling to answer. The purpose of his questions often depended upon the situation and the recipient.

Still, there are some questions that it is better not to ask. These are often questions that arise within our own hearts. Satan’s ultimate aim in questioning Eve was not to elicit an answer. He meant to sow doubts that would prompt her to ask the wrong question. Satan’s goal was to deconstruct her faith.

Lately, it has become rather fashionable to describe oneself as a deconstructionist. Many people of faith do not feel equipped to defend against deconstructionism. They have not read the works of Hegel, Heidegger, or Nietzsche. Even if they did, they are not confident that they would understand them. Deconstruction is an ethos as much as an argument. Its fundamental question is the same one that was posed to Eve: “Did God really say…?”

Positive Deconstruction

Yet deconstruction does have a place. In most cases, the gospel tears down before it builds up. “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ,” the apostle Paul declared in 2 Corinthians 10:5.

In this context, he makes it clear that there is both spiritual and intellectual work involved in this task. There are forces in play as well as ideas. “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world,” he points out. “On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4). Paul’s words are a sharp reminder that all Scripture truth reflects a fundamental binary. It is the one we find already under attack in Eden. God has said this and not that. He means this and not that. God expects this from us, not that.

Ask Better Questions

If we deconstruct Satan’s question, we find a better question. What, exactly, has God said? This is the cornerstone of all biblical understanding. Once posed, this question invites three others. To whom did God say it? Why did he record this? And, finally, what implication does this have for me?

Together, these four questions form the boundaries of interpretation. Each is expansive. Other questions arise out of them. Not all ancillary questions are worth answering. Some questions are vain. They lead to unprofitable tangents and seek answers that are impossible to know. Others are evasions that distract us from unwelcome truths. Quite a few are premature. We have not yet understood the text enough to raise them.

The observation C. S. Lewis made about those passing moods that tend toward doubt also holds true for some of our questions.[9] Very often we need to tell our questions “where they get off.” Not every question is a good one. There really is such a thing as a stupid question. There are also disingenuous questions. Some are traps, and many are merely dead ends. Some questions do not deserve an answer, and others should not even be asked. Most think that wisdom is a matter of knowing the answers. But any true sage can tell you that the real key is knowing what to ask.

[1] Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 35.

[2] For example, Old Testament scholar Derek Kidner has called this an over-correction “magnifying God’s strictness.” Derek Kidner, Genesis (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1967), 68.

[3] Michelle E. Knight, “‘God Saw That It Was Tov’: Divine Assessment and the Goodness of Creation,” Trinity Journal, 44, no. 1 (2023): 5.

[4] Ibid., 6.

[5] Ibid., 8.

[6] Douglas Estes, “The Linguistic Origins of the Question: Why God Asks Questions and Humans Do Too,” Christianity Today 61, no. 7 (2017): 65.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Bruce R. Reichenbach, “Why Does Jesus Use Ambiguous Rhetoric?” Bibliotheca Sacra 180, no. 718 (2023): 179–201.

[9] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, ), 141.

Simon the Bold

Simon Peter said and did some foolish things but that did not make him a fool. Picture of Simon telling Jesus to depart from him.

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ 1 Comment

Most sermons that I have heard, including some that I have preached myself, that focus on Simon Peter tend to portray him as something of a buffoon. They present Simon Peter as a boaster and a blowhard. Peter, as the Gospels admit, said and did some foolish things. But that did not make him a fool.

John’s Gospel describes how Jesus gave Simon a new name. John 1:42 says, “When Jesus saw him, He said, ‘You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Cephas’ (which when translated is Peter).” Cephas is a transliteration of the Aramaic word for rock. “It was far more than a statement of fact and a prophecy,” theologian and New Testament scholar E. F. Harrison observed. “It was an appraisal and promise.”[1]

If Simon recognized an inconsistency between the label and his personality, he did not acknowledge it. According to Luke 5:8, it was only later, after Jesus schooled him on the art of fishing, that Simon said to Jesus: “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”

Simon’s extremes appear to have been extremes of personality. Jesus called James and John the Sons of Thunder, yet it is Simon who comes across in Scripture as the brash and impulsive talker of the group. He is like that student who the class depends on to ask the question they have all wondered about, but are afraid to voice. He also seems like a natural leader. And, of course, we all know how Simon promised that he would never disown Jesus, even if it meant death.

Simon’s Failure

Was this merely an empty promise? I suppose it depends on what we mean by empty. His words certainly proved to be false. He fled from the garden, along with the rest, but not without first putting up a fight. Simon tried to make good on his promise. He drew a sword and struck a blow. It was only after Jesus told him to put away his sword and surrendered, saying, “It must happen in this way,” that Simon fled (Matt. 26:54).

Even then, Simon was still a follower of sorts. According to Mark 14:54, “Peter followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest. There he sat with the guards and warmed himself at the fire.” But it was here that Peter, the rock, crumbled when one of the high priest’s servant girls saw him and declared, “You also were with that Nazarene, Jesus!”

Simon flatly denied it, saying, “I don’t know or understand what you’re talking about.” He stood up and moved to stand by the gate, hoping to avoid further scrutiny. But the girl would not let the matter go. She continued to peer at him, pointing him out to the guards seated by the fire. Simon denied it again.

It didn’t take long before everyone was staring at him. “Surely you are one of them, for you are a Galilean,” one of the bystanders said. Simon began to call down curses and swear. This is not the sort of speech we usually think of when we talk about swearing in our day. Simon did not resort to vulgar language in a desperate attempt to prove that he was not the sort of person who would follow Jesus. Even if he had, it is unlikely that such a strategy would have thrown them off scent. After all, one of the criticisms leveled against Jesus by the religious leaders was that he was friendly with sinners (Matt. 11:19; Luke 7:34).

Simon’s Curses

Simon’s curses were far worse than mere potty language. He swore a vow and called down curses upon himself if he were lying. This language reinforced Simon’s emphatic declaration: “I don’t know this man you’re talking about” (Mark 14:71). One way to look at his failure is as a threefold denial. It was that, of course, just as Jesus had foretold (Luke 22:34). But the other side of this is that Simon also had three opportunities to make good on his bold promise. “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you,” Simon had said. And all the other disciples had made the same claim (Mark 14:31).

It cannot be denied that Simon failed to make good on what he had promised Jesus. Yet, it would be a mistake to brand him as a coward. “It ill becomes prudent and safety-seeking men to criticize Peter for falling to a temptation which would never, in the same circumstances, have come to them at all,” the commentator William Barclay cautions. Simon stumbled into his great failure after a night of what Barclay describes as “fantastically reckless courage.”[2]

In other words, we cannot repudiate Simon without condemning ourselves in the process. Yet, I think this is just where we go wrong in our reckoning of Simon—especially those of us who preach and teach. We use his story as a platform to stand on and teach a negative moral lesson. “This is Simon,” we say. “He said he would be faithful and was not. Don’t be Simon.”

This is Simon Peter

Such a message is certainly preachable. It’s easy to follow and liable to provoke a reaction. It will cause the audience to nod in agreement or hang their heads in shame. But it is not the gospel. I suppose one could argue that it is law and, therefore, could serve as a preamble to the gospel. But if this negative assertion is all we can learn from Simon’s failure, I am afraid it offers little real help. After all, if a person like Simon (whose access to Jesus’ words and actions was far more direct than any of us has experienced) could suffer such a spectacular failure, why should we expect better from ourselves? We often feel as if we follow Jesus at an even greater distance.

But what if the lesson is not “Don’t be Simon” but the opposite? Suppose that it is, instead, “This is Simon Peter. He said he would be faithful, but he was not. We are all like him sometimes.” After all, there is a reason that Mark goes out of his way in his Gospel to make sure we know that “all the others said the same” (Mark 14:31). Simon is no coward. He is Simon the Bold, who follows Jesus right into the heart of the enemy’s stronghold, even if it is at a distance. But Simon is also no hero.

I am convinced that Simon meant what he said. But Simon’s commitment, though sincere, was ill-informed. Sincerity is a good start when it comes to obedience, but it is no guarantee of performance. He failed to understand both his own weakness and what God was actually doing. “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation,” Jesus had told him in Gethsemane. “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38). I suppose if Simon had prayed better, it might have preserved him from the shame of denial, but it would not have kept Jesus from the cross. Jesus is the hero of the Gospels. He alone overcomes all temptation.

Simon’s Boldest Act

We are inclined to view Simon of the Gospels as a person who is defined by big words and even bigger failure. We feel a certain affection for his buffoonery. But when we reduce Simon to a caricature, we miss the essence of his character. Simon Peter turns out to be more of a mirror than a cautionary tale. Despite his denial, he proved to be a genuine follower of Jesus, even at a distance. The difference between Simon and Judas is that Simon came back. I think this was where his true boldness lay. Not the confidence of assertion or the flash of his sword, but in his unwillingness to finally walk away from Christ.

Sometimes the believer’s boldest act is to draw near to God despite our failures. Simon’s failure is not a license to dismiss our spiritual stumbling as insignificant. But it is a warrant to turn again and follow, despite the shame we feel. In 1 Timothy 1:15-16, the apostle Paul writes, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life.” I don’t know whether Simon Peter ever read those words. But he surely could have written them.

[1] Everett Falconer Harrison, “The Son of God among the Sons of Men 3 Jesus and Simon Peter,” Bibliotheca Sacra 102, no. 407 (1945): 301.

[2] William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), 352-353.

Blue Christmas: The Cure for Christmas Melancholy

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I imagine everyone has something that epitomizes their Christmas experience. It’s often a song or a movie. For me, it’s that moment in A Charlie Brown Christmas when Linus and Charlie Brown are discussing the meaning of Christmas. “Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy,” Charlie Brown complains. “I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel. I just don’t understand Christmas, I guess.” A little later, after Charlie Brown selects a scrawny little Christmas tree that drops its needles for the pageant, he laments, “Everything I do turns into a disaster. I guess I don’t really know what Christmas is all about.”

I first saw A Charlie Brown Christmas on television in 1965, when it aired on CBS. I was twelve years old at the time, and it captivated me. I loved everything about it: the music, the animation, the storyline. But most of all, I loved its honesty, because even at that young age, I had already noticed a connection between Christmas and melancholia.

A famous song, performed by just about every musical artist who has ever released a holiday album, describes Christmas as “the most wonderful time of the year” and the “hap-happiest season of all.” But many people have a different experience. Theirs is more like Charlie Brown’s. Like him, they wonder why they don’t feel the way they are supposed to feel. Their Christmas experience is tinged with longing and sadness, and they blame themselves. Or the universe. Or maybe God.

I notice it in myself, and I’ve concluded that Charlie Brown is asking the wrong question. Instead of wondering why we don’t feel the way we are supposed to feel, we ought to ask what it is about Christmas that causes us to expect to feel something remarkable to begin with. The answer to this question is more complex than you might expect. It’s not just one thing—this feeling of seasonal melancholia springs from multiple sources.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

One reason our feelings tend to fall short is that we expect Christmas to match our memory. This expectation is infused with nostalgia. I don’t think that it is an accident that the first spirit that visits Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol comes to remind him of his past:

“Who and what are you?” Scrooge demanded. “I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.” “Long Past?” inquired Scrooge observant of its dwarfish stature. “No. Your past.”[1]

This is Dickens at his best, functioning as the master psychologist. He understands that what we are is the sum of what we have been. This does not mean that we cannot change. The possibility of change is the promise that lies at the heart of his story. But the fact that the first Spirit to appear to Scrooge is the ghost of his past is a signal that change is unlikely to occur before we have understood the forces that have shaped us.

Take a careful look at your Christmas tree, and you will find that it probably says as much about your past as it does Christmas. If your tree is like mine, it is as layered as an archeological dig. Most of us aren’t just celebrating the arrival of a new holiday; we are celebrating the past. What is more, it isn’t some biblical past that moves us but our own. As Christmas draws near, the collective weight of every Christmas we have ever known bears down upon us like a demanding parent with impossible expectations. We aren’t merely trying to celebrate something; our aim is to recreate.

This is a vain hope for two reasons. First, because the conditions that made Christmas Past have dissipated. Time has moved on. The children have grown. People have moved. Some have died. Even the same ingredients, after we have measured them with meticulous accuracy, take on a slightly different flavor. Try as you might, you will only be able to reproduce an echo of what you think you remember.

All these things point to the second reason for our failure. The Christmas you recall is probably not the one you experienced. What you are feeling is nostalgia, not memory. The term comes from a compound word formed by joining the Greek noun meaning “return” with the noun meaning “pain”. In other words, to the ancient mind, nostalgia is the pain of longing to return. It is an acute case of homesickness.

Unfortunately, the vision of the past that nostalgia provides is one that has been enhanced by distance. It is a picture of our experience with the sharp edges worn down by time and forgetfulness. I am not exactly saying that it is a lie. But it is not exactly the truth either. It is a softer version. As if this version of our reality had been reproduced by that artist who called himself the “painter of light.” I don’t mean Rembrandt or Turner.

Days of Future Past

What we experience as a longing for our past actually has to do with the future. It is what C. S. Lewis has called, in The Weight of Glory, a “desire for our own far off country” and “a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience.”[2] As James K. A. Smith similarly puts it, “We are always on the way; the Christian life is a ‘refugee spirituality,’ because we are longing for a home we’ve never been to.”[3]

As Lewis and Smith describe nostalgia, the feeling is not quite a distortion. It is more of an anticipation of the life to come. We experience the ache of nostalgia as a kind of pleasant grief, the sorrow for a bygone age that will never return. But what if it is the opposite? Is it possible that this longing springs from a desire for what is yet to come? If this is the case, then our orientation is all wrong. Instead of looking backward and trying to recreate the past, the purpose of this ache is to help us face forward. It was the disposition of the patriarchs, who the writer of Hebrews says were “still living by faith when they died.” According to Hebrews 11:13: “They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.”

During the holiday season, we feel obliged to be happy. I am not talking about the kind of happiness one sometimes feels in the ordinary course of events. What I am describing is more extreme. It is a sense that it is our Christian duty to have a transcendent experience at Christmas. When I became a serious follower of Jesus shortly after I turned 19, I can recall wondering how that would change my experience of Christmas. The honest answer was that it diminished it to some degree. Learning the truth about the Nativity of Christ stripped Christmas of its gaudier aspects. The things I loved most about the holiday season had nothing at all to do with the event it is supposed to celebrate.

The Myth of Christmas Magic

Christmas cards, carols, and just about every holiday movie we have ever seen have told us that the Christmas season is supposed to be magical and transforming. Scripture does, in fact, portray the Nativity and the incarnation of Christ as something miraculous and transformative. The birth of Christ was a singular event with cosmic significance, not only for “all the people,” but for creation itself. Yet describing it as magical is something quite different.

But the effects of Christ’s Nativity are not linked to a particular season, if by “season” we mean a specific month of the year. The idea of sacred time does not originate with the church. It was an essential part of the religious landscape of the Old Testament from which the gospel sprang. Yet the arrival of Christ so altered that landscape that the apostle Paul would later call those things: “a shadow of the things that were to come” and tell the Colossians their reality is found in Christ (Col. 2:17). The Nativity was a sacred event. Christmas, as we know and celebrate it–not so much.

Christmas as a season does not have the power to suspend the regular order (or disorder) of the fallen world. It does not possess magical powers to make all things whole. We see the evidence of this in the Scriptural accounts of Christ’s birth. Miraculous events do take place. There are signs and wonders. But, simultaneously with these remarkable events, we see that all the ordinary functions of the world, along with its failings, are also in full view in the Nativity story. Taxes must be paid. Governments rule inequitably. Joseph works away at his carpentry. The inn is so full that there is no room. The religious leaders who ought to know what has happened are puzzled. The world is indeed invested, but not with magic. It is visited by God, who has come in the form of a child. Creation itself will eventually be remade as a result, but that has not yet happened. Then, as now, “everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation” (2 Pet. 3:4).

The Great Reversal

It may sound as if my message is the gospel of “lower your expectations.” But what I have to say is really the opposite. The great hope of Christmas is that at the incarnation, God entered the broken world in human form. As a result of this act, a series of events was put into motion that have fundamentally changed us and which will remake the world. The miracle of this event was not only that God became flesh but that he also subjected himself to the brokenness of the world he entered. Jesus “humbled himself by becoming obedient to death” (Phil. 2:8). This is what C. S. Lewis calls “the deeper magic” in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

It is a kind of unraveling and drawing in. The curse of sin is reversed and for the believer, its consequences are drawn into the sphere of grace. To quote from The Great Divorce, another work by C. S. Lewis, it is what he calls the “retrospective” power of redemption. Lewis writes: “The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven; the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say ‘We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,” and the Lost, ‘We were always in Hell.’ And both will speak truly.”[4]

Of course, when Lewis speaks of “the good man,” he is not talking about goodness as an achievement. This is a goodness that comes to us as a gift. The theological words for this are grace and redemption. They are words that describe the great reversal that the preacher Phillips Brooks writes about in the carol O Little Town of Bethlehem:

O holy Child of Bethlehem,
descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin, and enter in,
be born in us today.

I think we sometimes misunderstand the preacher’s intent with these words. It is not Christ who is born in us. It is we who are born in Christ. To use the language of Jesus himself, we are “born again” (John 3:3, 7; See 1 Pet. 1:27). The Nativity of Christ was a singular and unrepeatable event. It may be reenacted in the Christmas pageant each season, but it can never be repeated. The new life that comes to us as a result of that act of God is something else. It is our repeated experience, but it has no season. The life we celebrate at Christmas is something that we draw upon every day and which is reproduced in others through the preaching of the gospel.

The cure for Christmas melancholia is not, as another song tells us, that we “need a little Christmas right now.” Nor is it necessarily Puritan austerity or renunciation of all observance of Christmas. The cure, strange as it may seem, is good theology. We should not expect from Christmas what Christ alone can supply. It is not a sin to look back, but we can become trapped there.

We need not fear Christmas melancholy. I think we ought to view it as a kind of signpost that points away from that which is not God and toward a life yet to come. It says, “This, not that,” and “Then, not now.” It ought to prompt us to say, “Even so, Come, Lord Jesus.”

[1] Charles Dickens, The Christmas Books, Vol. 1 (New York: Penguin, 1982), 69.

[2] C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperCollins, 1976), 29-30.

[3] James K. A. Smith, Jennifer Abe, John Swinton, Brandon Rickabaugh, and Michael Vincient Di Fuccia, “How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now” Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care 16, no. 1 (2023): 90.

[4] C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: HarperOne, 1980), 69.

Mary’s Lullaby: The Savior of the World

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For many, it is now officially time to begin preparing for Christmas. Commercials are running on television. Inflatables are showing up on lawns. The city is putting up lights. The snowplow has already been out once, clearing the roads in the town where I live. It won’t be long before we start hearing Christmas carols on the radio. But I started thinking about Christmas in July because I was working on a new Christmas book. It was a little daunting to think about Christmas when the temperatures soared into the 80s and 90s.

I doubt I will get much sympathy (or praise) from my friends who live in warmer climates. Or from Mary and Joseph, for that matter. One of my favorite Christmas carols claims that Jesus was born in “the bleak Mid-winter” when “frosty wind made moan.” But the climate in Bethlehem was closer to San Francisco’s than to the Midwest’s.

I decided that the best way to deal with the challenge was to start listening to Christmas carols right away. I worried that it would feel artificial. Like visiting one of those Christmas-themed stores that stay open all year. Or tuning into one of those all-Christmas-all-the-time cable channels. I wondered how much of my sense of Christmas is merely atmosphere. The honest answer is that there is often more ambiance than ethos to our notion of the Christmas spirit. Much of what makes Christmas feel like Christmas is a combination of atmosphere, environment, and trimming.

Nevertheless, I felt something happen in my heart as I listened. It wasn’t just the air conditioning. It was undoubtedly the music. I am not saying that I was suddenly transformed, and like Scrooge, began to radiate benevolence towards everyone I encountered. Yet as I listened to carols, I was struck by the reality and the importance of Jesus’ Nativity. This was especially true of A Savior from on High. A lullaby carol by Stephen Paulus, based on a text by the Elizabethan composer William Ballet.

It’s not as though I had never given the incarnation or the Virgin birth any thought before. They are fundamental elements of the redemption story. Yet I was a little surprised by my reaction to this particular song. I had always viewed lullaby carols as somewhat odd. Why place so much emphasis on the baby Jesus? This song worked on my imagination.

Lullaby carols highlight the humanity of Christ. They remind us that he was so fragile and vulnerable that he had to be fed and carried. He needed protection from his enemies. Their lyrics underscore the duality of his nature. They contrast the irony of his real identity with the humbleness of his position. Jesus was the infant king who had come to give us life, but for whom death awaited. Lullaby carols also help us see Jesus through Mary’s eyes. He was Mary’s joy as well as her sorrow. As Gillian Leslie has put it, “the gentle charm of such songs conceals the sword of Simeon” (see Luke 2:35).[1]

I see something of what Leslie describes in A Savior from on High. As the piece begins, the female voices in the chorus sing the opening phrase. The men join in, and the first statement resolves on a slightly discordant note. It is both pleasing and a little unsettling. There is an edge of sorrow in the melody. I was surprised to hear the male voices take the lead in singing the actual lullaby for the first time. I suppose I am reading too much into it. It may only have been a practical result of the song’s performance by a mixed choir. Maybe it was a simple matter of balance. But I’d like to think that this is a subtle nod to the fact that Jesus came for all people. As the angel declared to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people” (Luke 2:10).

After the opening lullaby, the voices share the burden of the song’s chief message. They remind us that this child is also a Savior. They share the lullaby until the end of the piece, when a single, female voice rises hauntingly above the rest. It is the voice of Mary, rocking her child to sleep. The child is hers and, in a way, he is not. He is her “sweet babe.” But he is also the Savior, “given from on high to visit us that were forlorn.”

The Mary pictured in this song is not the icon that most of us know. It is Mary, the peasant mother, who is little more than a child in her teens. She knows the babe’s true identity. Mary knows something about what he has come to do. He has come, as the song’s title proclaims, to be the Savior of the world. But at this point, she doesn’t know how he will accomplish his task. This is Mary, the mother, quietly rocking her baby to sleep like so many other women before her. This is Mary before she has heard Simeon’s mixed blessing that will cut her heart: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:34-35).

The day will come when Mary will watch as her son bleeds out on the cross. She will hear as Jesus points out the beloved disciple John. He will say, “Woman, here is your son.” He will tell John, “Here is your mother” (John 19:26-27). These words are not a disowning. Far from it. But they do reflect a kind of distance. It is not unlike what every mother feels when she must share her child with someone else. What mother hasn’t felt a stab of grief while watching their child recede from view? They move out of the house or go off to college. When they walk the aisle at the wedding, the tears are not all tears of joy. The difference, here, is that Mary must share her child with the whole world. For that is why he has come.

Mary must have realized what every mother eventually does. The sweet babe in her arms, although her son, was not really hers to possess. At the same time, the words the angel first spoke in annunciation proved to be true for Mary. God did indeed show her favor in a way that no other woman has experienced or will again. For the briefest time, a matter of months only, Mary was a kind of tabernacle. One that contained the glory of God in bodily form.

This, it seems to me, is the lesson of the best lullaby carols. They do not exalt Mary. They celebrate the honor that God granted to her by enabling her to serve Christ in this singular way. Such carols are also a demonstration of Christ’s humility in submitting to this service. He was born of a woman and born under the law^“to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship” (Gal. 4:4-5).

I admit that these thoughts did not come to me all at once upon my first hearing of Mary’s lullaby. It was something that I had to dwell on. I listened repeatedly during the steaming months of July and August, then into the chillier winds of fall. I am still thinking about it. Perhaps I would still have seen all this if I had waited until December to listen. But by then, I wonder if it would have merely seemed like background music to me.

I am afraid that what we call Christmas spirit is hardly more than atmosphere. I realize that Christmas lullabies are not everyone’s taste. As my father used to say when I grumbled about the music he liked, “De gustibus non disputandum est.” It means, “In matters of taste, there can be no disputes.” Most of us are not in the mood for Christmas carols in July. The Nativity of our Lord, on the other hand, is something else. Ambiance is merely manufactured. String the lights, light the candles, and maybe we can celebrate Christmas in July after all. But the truth of the Nativity of Christ is something more. We ought to meditate on it throughout the year. It is theological, not seasonal, and our salvation depends upon it.

[1] Gillian Leslie, “At the Heart of Christmas: A Theology of The Christmas Carol,” The Living Pulpit 4, no. 4 (December 31, 1995): 9.

Insatiable Desire & World Weariness: Signs We Were Made for Eternity

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ 3 Comments

Back in the day, we used to sing, “Heaven is a wonderful place, filled with glory and grace.” But eternity is a long time. For some, the few pictures of heavenly activity that we have in the Bible are insufficient to convince us that this is truly the case. I have heard more than one Christian express reservations about what we can look forward to in the age to come.

It is tempting to blame this anxiety on the nature of the descriptions themselves. It is certainly true that the Bible is remarkably spare in its details about such matters. We know a little about Heaven, but not as much as we would like. What is more, the few depictions that we do have are either so strange that we cannot relate to them or so familiar that they fail to capture our imagination.

The Bible’s visions of crowns, thrones, and four-faced cherubim may be of some interest. Yet, for most people, this is not the kind of landscape that would inspire us to pack our bags and move. As a result, many believers are puzzled about what their heavenly experience will be like, and some are anxious.

Signs and Wondering

Theologian Josef Pieper’s observation about Scriptural imagery offers a helpful starting point for considering such matters. Pieper warns that “one must clearly distinguish the images that are meant to make the essence of the matter visible to the imagination from the essence of the matter itself.”¹ Pieper is actually talking about Hell, but his point is equally applicable to Heaven.

We should not think so narrowly about the imagery that the Bible uses that we miss the essence of what it is intended to signify. There is more to heaven than white robes, fantastic creatures, and glass seas. The reality to which these signs point is more expansive than the pictures the Bible uses to convey it. The whole truth of what is coming to the believer cannot be contained in the images alone.

However, we also need to guard against a view of heaven that is so abstract that its reality becomes completely obscured from our sight. The symbols that Scripture uses to speak of Heaven are concrete enough to suggest the old Sunday school song was right. Heaven is a wonderful place. It is more than a philosophy, moral rule, or spiritual principle. Heaven is a true location.

Heaven is where Jesus “came down from” and was “taken up into” (John 3:13; Luke 24:51). Whatever is intended by this directional language, we can at least say that heaven must be a place that is substantial enough to receive the human body of the resurrected Christ (Luke 24:39). Furthermore, our heavenly experience is personal, conscious and human. In the life to come, our humanity does not dissolve. We are not absorbed into the Godhead. We do not turn into ghosts or lose all memory of our earthly life. As the patriarch Job declared, after our skin has been destroyed, we will see our redeemer with our own eyes (Job 19:26-27).

These earthly descriptions are signposts more than they are windows. They are intended to spark recognition and enable us to make correlations. They are not meant to show us the features of heaven in photographic detail. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to dismiss the literalistic language that the Bible employs to speak of Heaven as a kind of baby talk that says less than the words themselves convey. These familiar images are used precisely because they imply more than the images themselves.

Hungering for Heaven

The song the children used to sing is correct on two points. Heaven is indeed a place, and it is wonderful. Such an assertion begs an obvious question. Is there anything so wonderful that we can enjoy it for eternity? On the one hand, human beings possess a capacious desire that the earth does not seem to have the ability to satisfy. “All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it, the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing,” Solomon complains in Ecclesiastes 1:8.

Is our problem that we want too much? It may seem so when we read Hebrews 13:5, which urges us to “be content with what you have because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’” Yet the point of this verse is just the opposite. Our difficulty is that we want too little. As theologian Josef Pieper observes, the real difficulty is “that every fulfillment this side of Heaven instantly reveals its inadequacy.”²

Nevertheless, there is a corollary truth in Solomon’s complaint. The weakness he speaks of is not only in the objects themselves; there is also weakness in us. The dissatisfaction that Solomon laments is the result of a weariness which suggests that, as much as we might desire eternity, we are not yet suited for it. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun,” Solomon complains (Eccl. 1:9).

Mark Twain seems to intuit this in one of his last tales when a fictional resident of Heaven observes that eternal rest may sound comforting from the pulpit, but “you try it once, and see how heavy time will hang on your hands.”³ Eternal existence without a corresponding change in our nature would not be a blessing but an intolerable burden.

We Shall Be Changed

This intuitive sense that no pleasure we now know would be expansive enough to occupy our attention for all eternity is a sign that we must be changed before we can enjoy heavenly experience. All Christian traditions acknowledge this, but focus primarily on the moral side of this dilemma. Without the perfection of holiness, “no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14).

C. S. Lewis takes it a step further by speculating that believers must also be strengthened before they can truly enjoy and even endure the beauties and pleasures of the heavenly realm. Perfection in holiness is certainly part of this transformation. But there must also be a corresponding strengthening of our humanity as well. Lewis pictures Heaven as a place that is so substantial, we are mere ghosts by comparison. This is the solid country, a reality whose flowers are diamond hard, its grass rock solid, and the drops of rain that fall upon those petals as sharp as a bullet.⁴ He is not trying to be literal, but neither is he speaking allegorically.⁵

The world as we know it is not enough to make a heaven. No earthly pleasure can be sustained for an eternity. The distracted search for fulfillment that Solomon laments is a clue that we were designed for something more, something higher. Correspondingly, we are not yet substantial enough to endure the eternal joy that we crave. Just as the world must be remade before its pleasures can truly satisfy, so also must we.

Infinite Possibility

Scripture is deliberately ambiguous when it compares this life to that which is to come. This indefiniteness is born of infinite possibility. “‘What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived’ the things God has prepared for those who love him—these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit,” the apostle declares in 1 Corinthians 2:9-10.

The things we look for in the world to come are both promised and beyond words. Heaven is real, not only because it is literal, but because the life it brings is even more substantial than the one we are living now. Like our spiritual forefather Abraham, we are “looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10). The world to come is one with an. entirely different kind of gravity than the world we now inhabit. Its name is glory.

In the Greek text of 2 Corinthians 4:17, the apostle speaks of an eternal “weight” (baros) of glory. The word is missing from the NIV, possibly because translators considered it redundant. Its absence is unfortunate because it causes us to miss Paul’s startling juxtaposition of light and weight.

Lewis seems to have got it right after all, with the more substantial light, grass, and flowers of his heaven in the Great Divorce, as well as the “solid people” who inhabit it. This is the lesson behind all our unfulfilled desires. This is the sacred reminder embedded not only in our delight but also in our hunger and our disappointment. We were meant for more. We were made for eternity.

Josef Pieper, The Concept of Sin, (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2001), 90. ↩︎
Josef Pieper, Happiness & Contemplation, (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 1979), 16-17. ↩︎
Mark Twain, Excerpt From Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, (Amherst: Prometheus, 2002), 41. ↩︎
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, (New York: Macmillan, 1946), 28,47, 57. ↩︎
Ibid., 8. ↩︎

Slow Faith: Lessons About Belief from the Disciples

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ 5 Comments

There are times when it’s easy for me to be impatient with the slow faith of Christ’s first disciples. Sometimes, it’s hard to understand why faith was such a struggle for them. From where I sit, they appear to have had all the advantages that I lack. They knew Jesus face to face. They spent night and day with him for the three years of his earthly ministry. They saw him die and were among the first to speak with him after he had risen from the dead.

In other words, they experienced what I have often wished for myself. As John later wrote, the proof offered to them consisted of evidence that they saw, heard, and touched (1 John 1:1). Acts 1:3 says that after his resurrection, Jesus “appeared to them over forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.” Luke also says that during this period, Jesus not only taught them, “he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive.”

A Slow and Uncertain Faith

So it comes as something of a shock to find in Matthew 28:17 that when Jesus appeared to the disciples once more at the end of all this, “some doubted.” Matthew doesn’t say who these doubters are. I wish that he had. I’d like to know if they were the traditional heroes of faith that come to mind, like Peter, James, and John. Or a small handful of marginal disciples who lurked on the fringes. A part of me hopes it is the former rather than the latter because I think I recognize their slow faith.

Doubt, even at this late stage, is consistent with the picture we have of the disciples throughout the gospels. They come to complete faith but not easily. Their belief develops in stages and seems to falter at several points, sometimes in the most surprising circumstances (Matt. 14:31; 16:14; Mark 4:4). Even during the final hours of Jesus’ earthly ministry, they are still struggling to grasp the details of the storyline.

The epigram that I think best describes Christ’s disciples’ struggle to believe, at least until the Holy Spirit descends at Pentecost, is the phrase that Jesus uses to describe the two disciples to whom he appears on the Emmaus road. He calls them “slow to believe” (Matt. 24:25). There are several reasons for this slowness.

In an encounter that feels almost parabolic, Luke tells us that Jesus drew near to two unnamed disciples who were traveling from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus, listening as they puzzled over the events that had taken place earlier that Sunday morning. He reveals that although Jesus himself walked with them, they were “kept” from recognizing him” (Luke 24:16). This was a supernatural veiling intended to drive home the reality of Christ’s resurrection to them.

I think there is an underlying grace note of humor, indeed even playfulness, in Jesus’ interaction with them. Imagine the risen savior listening to these two disciples as they give their account of the things that he has just experienced. They speak of Jesus’ words and deeds, his crucifixion, and the reports of his resurrection on the third day. They also express sorrow over the failure of their own expectations, saying, “We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel” (v. 21). I can’t help imagining Jesus suppressing a smile as he listens to them.

I Want to Believe

Their questions seem understandable. Jesus had only just risen that morning. He had appeared to a few of his followers but not yet to everyone. These two disciples were trying to piece together the information that they currently had. Their doubts don’t seem to reflect an outright refusal to believe but are more of a lag in faith caused by a combination of incomplete information and their attempt to reconcile what had happened with what they had expected to take place.

Like the slogan on the old X-Files poster, these disciples wanted to believe. ButThey had expected the story to unfold quite differently. They were indeed looking for someone to “redeem” Israel. But the nature of that redemption and the mode in which Jesus accomplished it came as a surprise. They couldn’t see it because they were looking for something else.

This goes a long way in explaining the disciples’ struggle to believe all through the Gospels. It also helps us to understand our own doubts. I think there is a difference between being slow to believe and a stubborn refusal to believe. Like the first disciples, we may be confident that God is doing something but with preconceived ideas about how God’s plan should unfold. We have a kind of faith, but it is faith with an agenda. When God ignores the agenda we have set for him, as he almost always does, we become disillusioned. Instead of questioning our initial assumptions, like our first parents in the Garden of Eden, we begin to question God’s wisdom, goodness, and perhaps even his existence.

Also, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, our questioning usually springs from incomplete information. We don’t understand why God allows the circumstances that provoke our questions because we are unable to see how they fit into his larger plan. The concerns that challenge our faith are personal and are often narrowly focused on the limited sphere of our own lives and circumstances. What God is doing is much larger. Because we are on this side of eternity, it’s not yet clear how the little threads of our personal experience fit into the larger tapestry of God’s kingdom interests. If our faith suffers as a result, it’s usually because of the assumptions we have made about what God should be doing as much as it is about what he has done.

Irrefutable Evidence

The language that Luke uses in Acts 1:3 to describe Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances emphasizes their persuasive nature. He calls those proofs “convincing,” using a Greek term other writers employed to speak of irrefutable evidence. In the medical realm (Luke’s own field), the term was used to refer to symptoms. Given the context, which is the bodily resurrection of Christ, perhaps this is intended to underscore the physical nature of this proof. Luke’s main point is that the evidence Jesus offered to his disciples was not only concrete, it was indisputable. However, I think that Luke’s description implies another equally important fact about the disciples themselves that is less obvious. It means that they needed persuading, even at this late point in the redemption story.

That they came to believe is clear both from their subsequent testimony and the tenor of their lives. As Peter would later put it, “. . . we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty” (2 Pet. 1:16). The apostles eventually came to full conviction, a belief that was strong enough to withstand the threat of certain death. But they were not quick about it. Or, at least, not as quick as we might think they should have been, given the advantages that were theirs as eyewitnesses of Christ’s majesty both before and after the resurrection.

This slowness is a blunt reminder that the faith Christ demands of us relies on something besides physical proof. When Jesus criticized the doubters on the Emmaus road for being slow to believe, he might have urged them to pay attention to the evidence that was in front of their own eyes. He might have told them to heed what their own senses now told them was true. Instead, the risen Lord rebuked them for ignoring old promises. According to Luke 24:25–27: “He said to them, ‘How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

Believing is Seeing

An old cliché says that seeing is believing. However, the slow faith of the disciples who beheld the risen Christ tells us that it is the other way around. It is faith that opens our eyes to see Jesus as he truly is. What is more, the faith that Jesus demands is faith in a word. This faith is a matter of believing the word of promise uttered long ago through the Scriptures. It is also faith in the word of the apostles, a testimony that is rooted in history and confirmed by the fact of the resurrection.

When Jairus, the synagogue leader, was told that his daughter had died and there was no longer any reason to trouble the master, Jesus replied, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.” (Mark 5:36). The adjective “just” or “only” in Jesus’ answer captivates me. It’s a word with limiting force, as if Jesus has simplified everything by saying this. All Jairus has to do is believe. Yet “only” faith is not necessarily “easy” faith. Slow faith is not synonymous with unbelief. The repeated testimony of Scripture regarding the disciples’ experience confirms this. Faith came to them, but it did not come easily. When it did come, it did not come merely as a result of external proof.

With this command, Jesus isn’t focusing on the ease of what he tells Jairus to do but on its singular nature. In this moment of need, there was only one path forward for Jairus, and it led through Christ. The only way forward was to believe and, more particularly, to concentrate that belief on the person of Christ. The one option that was open to Jairus was to lean into Christ. This is the essence of faith. Faith does not look inward in the hope of finding some hidden reserve of confidence. It focuses its attention on Christ, who is not only our help but our only hope.

Philosophers and theologians have puzzled over the question of faith and its origin for millennia. Their conclusions seem to diverge into two primary streams of thought. One leans into human reason and emphasizes evidence. The other leans in the opposite direction by viewing faith as a supernatural result of the work of God. Each of these views seems to cancel out the other.

The position that Jesus takes, on the other hand, seems to be a more mysterious middle ground between the two. The faith that Jesus demands from his disciples is not without evidence. Most of Jesus’ dealings with his disciples, especially when it comes to the miraculous, seem to presume that they struggle with slow faith. He builds an irrefutable case for his claims about himself. He doesn’t expect them to believe without substantial proof. Yet their story shows that strong evidence is not sufficient to elicit faith. They saw Jesus perform miracles and even raise the dead. They had healed the sick and even cast out demons in Jesus’ name. Jesus told them point-blank that he would be crucified and rise again. Yet after Jesus appeared to them in the flesh, allowed them to touch him, and spoke at length about what was to come, “some doubted.”

Although our slowness to believe is nothing to boast about, we can at least take some measure of comfort from the fact that we are not the only ones to wrestle with this problem of slow faith. The Bible is full of similar examples. All of this suggests that slow faith is often normal faith.

But neither should we trust our doubt. We are those that Jesus described to Thomas, those who are blessed because they believe without seeing. We also stand with Jairus, whose only viable option was the path of faith. And if we find ourselves faltering, then we stand with Peter, who, in his sinking faith, knew enough at least to grasp the hand that Christ held out to him.

What is Heaven Like? Discovering the Undiscovered Country

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ 1 Comment

What happens when we die? When my oldest son, Drew, was just a toddler, we had the conversation that parents dread. No, not that conversation. The other one. Something had happened that prompted him to ask us about death. We tried to answer as gently as possible, in terms a small child could understand. We shared the good news of the gospel with him. Along with it, we talked about the hope of heaven. We told him that if he died, he would be with Jesus. But his reaction was not what we expected. Rather than being reassured, he burst into tears. He wailed in sorrow. “Where will you be?” he asked. “Who will take care of me?” It was sweet, in a way. It was also a little unnerving because I could identify with his anxiety.

Much of what the Bible has to say about what heaven is like seems ambiguous. It’s almost as if Scripture speaks in code about this subject. It is, at least, expressing itself by way of images that are both strange and familiar simultaneously. We take comfort from the sight of things we know, but their juxtaposition with the strange is often unsettling. Saints cry out from under the altar. There are rivers and trees, or at least one river and one tree. The old heaven and earth pass away and are replaced by the new.

Shakespeare called death “the undiscovered country.” More precisely, Shakespeare’s Hamlet describes death as “The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns . . .” Most who travel to the undiscovered country do not come back, which is Hamlet’s point. But there have been some, like Samuel, Moses, Elijah, and Lazarus, to name a few. However, they don’t tell us what happens after death. Then, of course, there is Jesus, the one that Revelation 1:5 calls “the firstborn from the dead.” Yet, even he did not describe that place to us in the kind of detail that most of us would prefer.

In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet seems to speak more of ordinary experience than these extraordinary cases. He has just seen a ghost, and he questions his senses. Or perhaps it is that he is pondering what might lie beyond the senses. Hamlet goes on to assert, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” This is certainly true when it comes to heavenly reality.

On the one hand, the apostle Paul quotes Isaiah 64:4 when he describes the life to come and speaks of “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived,” calling them “the things God has prepared for those who love him.” Then, with his next breath, he claims, “these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:9–10). What things does Paul mean? They are what the apostle elsewhere characterizes as “things above,” which he also urges us to set our hearts on, seek, and set our minds upon (Col. 3:1–2).

It’s hard to think about things we don’t know. It’s even harder to set our hearts on something that seems to be at odds with everything we have always known and experienced. This is one of the problems we face when it comes to thinking about heaven. My son couldn’t imagine being happy in a world without the people he already knew who loved and cared for him, even if it was God who was taking their place. He knew his mother. He did not know God, at least not in the same way.

“Heaven is rhetorically anti-world,” Baylor University professor of theological ethics Jonathan Tran has observed. “Whatever we don’t like about this world, heaven promises the opposite.”[1] But our difficulty isn’t just that we have been taught to expect the opposite of all we hate about the present world in the life to come. It’s the impression we have that heaven stands against all that we know and love. While this is certainly true when it comes to sin, we have come to believe that it is also true of the more concrete aspects of earthly life that we know. To many, heaven is an amorphous realm of spirits, clouds, and gossamer wings. It is too indistinct to describe and too immaterial to look forward to.

Mark Twain, a religious skeptic, lampooned the popular stereotype of heavenly bliss by characterizing it as a place where the newly arrived expect to be fitted out with a harp, a halo, a wreath, and a hymnbook. If, as Paul declares in 1 Corinthians 15:50, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, why does the Christian message place so much emphasis on bodily resurrection?

The heaven of Scripture is not a fantasy or a philosophy. Neither is it merely a projection of our personality, style, and individual tastes into eternity. Heaven is not an invention of the church meant to serve as the carrot that motivates its members to toe the line on this side of death. It is a real location where an embodied and resurrected Christ is seated at the right hand of God (Col. 3:1). Heaven is also an order or rule that intrudes into our earthly experience even now and will one day control it entirely.

The landscape of the undiscovered country is not as alien as we thought. Nor do we have to wait until we pass through the gates of death to catch a glimpse of its powers. In fact, if we take Scripture at its word, all those who are in Christ are already in residence there in some mysterious sense. At the same time, “we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells” (2 Pet. 3:11). What is more, those same passages that speak of the believer’s dual residency on earth and in heaven, also promise that we have begun to experience the righteousness that is characteristic of the new heaven and earth even now.

The discomfort that some Christians feel when speculating about what is to come is often not due to uncertainty about their ultimate destination but rather anxiety about what that transition will be like. After Adam’s fall, the Lord warned that the first stage of life’s journey would be marked by discomfort. God told the woman, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children” (Gen. 3:16). It is the hope of new life that enables those who suffer such pain to bear with it.

Although the Lord doesn’t mention it there, subsequent human experience showed that the final stage of life’s journey would also often be accompanied by discomfort. Perhaps Paul is alluding to this when he writes about bodily resurrection and admits that “while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Cor. 5:7). The apostle goes on to say that God has “fashioned us for this very purpose” (v. 8). God designed us for bodily life. That is what the future holds for us. One of the first confessions of faith recorded in Scripture, at least in terms of chronology, was that of Job, who declared:

“I know that my redeemerlives,
    and that in the end he will stand on the earth.
And after my skin has been destroyed,
    yetin my flesh I will see God;
I myself will see him
    with my own eyes—I, and not another.
    How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25–27)

Shakespeare was right. The country for which we yearn is still undiscovered by us. But it is not as unfamiliar as we thought. There is far more to the Christian’s heavenly hope than harps, halos, and hymnals. In fact, none of these seems to figure in it at all. The hope of the Christian is the hope of things above. That same hope is also the secret to holy living in the here and now. We are going there. But the real secret is that we have already arrived.

To learn more about John Koessler’s new book, On Things Above: The Earthly Importance of Heavenly Reality, watch the video below or click here.

[1] Jonathan Tran, “Looking to Heaven Without Looking Past Earth,” The Christian Century, September 2022, 36.

Full of Days: The Five Blessings of Old Age

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Several years ago, I sent a letter to Eugene Peterson, one of my favorite authors, inviting him to write a foreword to a book I had just written. A few weeks later, I received a note from him which gently declined the invitation. “I am fast becoming an old man; the strength diminishes; I’m unable to do what I used to take on effortlessly,” he explained. Then, in true Eugene Peterson form, he added a line from a Wendell Berry poem: “I am an old man / but I don’t think of myself as an old man / but as a young man with disabilities . . .” Lately, I have been thinking a lot about what Peterson wrote. I probably crossed the line from “fast-becoming” into full-blown old age when I turned 70 a year and a half ago. I didn’t think about it much at the time. Like Wendell Berry, I could still think of myself as a young man, at least on the inside, if it weren’t for the old man who peered back at me every time I looked in the mirror. Lately, however, something has changed. I don’t feel young anymore. I feel my age more than I used to, and not just physically. I find myself wondering what the spiritual implications of aging might be.

Tarnish on the Golden Years

As a rule, our common perception of aging tends to be a negative one. We may stereotype this stage of life as our “golden years,” but many, if not most, people see aging through a negative filter. They view it as a time of loss and debilitation. Health declines, and friends die, leaving us isolated. There may also be a feeling that we have been set aside and marginalized. Some of this comes from within. When we are younger, our work is a major contributor to our sense of identity. It also occupies most of our energies. When that disappears, it can be traumatic. We aren’t sure who we are anymore.

I believe this loss of a sense of self is aggravated further by an underlying suspicion that the idea of retirement is unbiblical. Christians, we have been told, should burn out rather than rust out. When I announced my retirement, the question I was asked most often was, “What are you going to do with your time?” People seemed anxious for me. One of my colleagues reproved me for even considering the idea. “You can’t just do nothing!” they said.

One negative consequence of this anti-retirement theology is guilt by association with the old sin of sloth. It also suggests that our value is determined by how busy we are. For some, it may lead to a general perception that older saints are either unproductive dead weights in the church or that they are a drain on its attention and resources. Having a congregation that primarily consists of older people is seen as a problem, not a strength. For the elderly, this anti-retirement rhetoric can be a source of false guilt and produce in them a sense that God no longer values them.

Perhaps the greatest challenge faced by those who enter the last stage of their journey is the wrestling match with one’s past that often ensues. The latter years are a season of remembering and reflection. “I’m in my anecdotage,” congresswoman and journalist Clare Boothe Luce said when she was 78. It is not an accident that older people speak so much about the past. One reason is that there has been a shift in the focus of our attention. There is much more road behind us than in front. What lies before us is shrouded in mystery. We cannot make reservations, create itineraries, or even nurture ambition. What is certain is known only in broad strokes.

The final stage of life is a processing space. Our latter years are years of reflection that can turn into a downward spiral into the depths of regret. These regrets are not always for ourselves. They are often directed toward God as our focus on what took place in the past inevitably leads us to ask why. We cannot always find a satisfactory answer. At least, not one that we find compelling enough to assuage the disappointment we may feel.

The Five Blessings of Old Age

The truth is that the Bible’s general perspective when it comes to aging is a positive one. Old age is spoken of as a blessing. When Scripture tells us that Job lived to be “an old man, and full of days,” it is emblematic of blessing. In fact, in Job’s case, it is a sign of restoration (Job 42:16). In the book of Proverbs, old age is portrayed as a kind of arrival. “The glory of young men is their strength, gray hair the splendor of the old,” Proverbs 20:29 says. What strength is to the young, age is to the old. Age is an asset, not a liability.

But for the old, there is also a hint of loss in this verse. The strength that is the glory of the young is no longer the possession of the old. What do they get in its place? Gray hair? Really? Is the benefit merely cosmetic? I was hoping for more. What is it that age brings to the table?

First of all, and this is no small thing, old age brings length of days. In general, Scripture portrays the prolongation of life as a blessing and not a curse (Gen. 15:15; Deut. 4:40; 5;33; 22:7; Isa. 53:10). More time is more opportunity. But to do what?

Old age is associated with fruitfulness in the Bible, but a specific kind. The Psalmist says that those who are planted in house of God will flourish. According to Psalm 92:14–15: “They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green, proclaiming, “The Lord is upright; he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.” What the Psalmist describes might be characterized as an extended vision of God. Age leads to insight when God is our primary reference point.

Consequently, there is often an association between age and wisdom in Scripture. It is no accident that counselors and advisers in the Bible often held the title of elder. But it isn’t the case that age automatically conveys wisdom. Older doesn’t always mean wiser. Ecclesiastes 4:13 observes, “Better a poor but wise youth than an old but foolish king who no longer knows how to heed a warning.” The downside of aging is that it can produce a rigidity in thinking that leads to stubbornness and an unwillingness to receive correction. Those who are used to giving advice often find it hard to take it. However, the general principle is that time and perspective go together. The more extended our days, the more expansive our perspective. The biblical word for that perspective is wisdom.

Age is the repository of memory. “Remember the days of old; consider the generations long past,” Deuteronomy 32:7 admonishes. “Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you.” Ironically, the stereotype of aging that we have usually focuses on memory loss. Perhaps this is the anxiety that proves the point. Maybe we know by instinct that memory is a treasure. This is lived memory interpreted through personal experience. The biblical word for it is witness.

Friendship with God is the ultimate gift that age has to offer. Genesis 48:2 describes how, at the end of his life, Jacob sat up in bed, and blessed Joseph’s sons. In many ways, Jacob had lived a hard life that included several disappointments, discord within his family, and great sorrow. Indeed, this was so much the case that when Pharaoh asked Jacob how old he was upon his first arrival in Egypt, the patriarch answered: “My years have been few and difficult, and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers” (Gen. 47:9). But on his deathbed, sick and nearly blind, Jacob pronounced a blessing over Joseph’s sons with these words:

“May the God before whom my fathers
    Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully,
the God who has been my shepherd
    all my life to this day,
the Angel who has delivered me from all harm
    —may he bless these boys.
May they be called by my name
    and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
and may they increase greatly on the earth” (Gen. 48:15–16).

The End of the Matter

That being said, any older person can tell you that if aging is a blessing, it is a mixed blessing. The Bible does not dismiss or sentimentalize the challenges that come with aging. If anything, it is uncomfortably frank about the subject. “Remember your Creator, in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, ‘I find no pleasure in them,’ Ecclesiastes 12:1 warns. The same Bible that portrays length of days as a blessing also calls them “days of trouble.”

Scripture does indeed say that Job died old and full of days. He died on the upswing with fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. He had seven sons and three beautiful daughters, and every one of them was rich. Job lived to be 140 years old and saw his children’s children to the fourth generation. But I can’t help wondering if there were nights when that old patriarch closed his eyes and dreamt of the children he had lost. Did his heart leap with surprise to see their faces again? And when he awoke in the morning light, were his eyes wet with tears for the days he had missed with them?

We don’t have to deny the very real changes and challenges that come with age. We don’t even have to like them. But I think we do ourselves a disservice if they are the only things we associate with the last stage of our lives. Aging does involve loss. Our capacity does indeed change. Eugene Peterson was right. Strength diminishes, interests change, and we are unable (or unwilling) to do some of the things we once did. We may find ourselves shaken by the years and haunted by the losses that have accumulated.

I appreciate the counterpoint that I find in Jacob’s testimony to Pharaoh about his own experience. He is no Pollyanna. His words are born out of 130 years of lived experience. He is honest enough not to hide from the reality of the sorrow he has experienced. Yet Jacob’s last words confirm what the author of Hebrews says was true of him and of all who are like him. Like many others, Jacob died in not yet having “received what had been promised” (Heb. 11:39). Yet Jacob died believing that the God who made these promises had been a shepherd to him all his life. Right up to the day of his death.

I have often said that the primary work of the last stage of life is to let go and prepare for death. There is some truth in this. I suspect one of God’s purposes for the rigors and losses that accompany old age is to pry our hands away from the life we have known so that we hold them open to the life to come. But in saying this, I think I overlooked another even more important truth. The greatest gift that aging has to offer is the opportunity to trace the hand of God in what has gone before. It is the gift of piecing together the mosaic of all that has happened and recognizing in it the hand of a shepherd.

Entertaining the Strange: Conversation as an Act of Hospitality

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During this past presidential election, Joe Rogan attempted to sit down with Kamala Harris for an interview. When they were unable to come to terms, the host of the Joe Rogan Experience, often described as the world’s most successful podcaster, expressed disappointment. “I hope she does,” Rogan said. “I will talk to her like a human being. I would try to have a conversation with her.”

Whatever you may think of Rogan, he was correct in describing conversation as the art of talking to someone like a human being. Other creatures can communicate. Dogs bark. Cats yowl. Even bees dance to signal to other bees where they can find food. But humans converse. James Como has called the ability to have a conversation “the most concrete, palpable, frequent and important act of human being.”[1]

More Than Messaging

There is more to conversation than talk. The word converse comes from a Latin verb that means to dwell or keep company with. We can still find a vestige of this sense in the old King James Version, which uses the term conversation to translate a Greek word that means “way of life” (cf. Gal. 1:13). But in our day, conversation usually refers to casual communication with someone. Still, it is not the atmosphere, or what some might describe as a “chill vibe,” that transforms ordinary speech into conversation. To converse is to turn toward someone. It is to open the door and invite others to share their thoughts with us. When we converse, we entertain ideas that we might not otherwise consider. They may be notions that seem strange to us, opposed to our own, and perhaps even offensive.

Conversation is an act of hospitality. In modern parlance, hospitality is a particular form of socializing. If you invite a friend over to your house for dinner, you are showing them hospitality. Its industrial sense adds another dimension. If you work in a hotel or a motel, or even if you rent your house out to weekenders for vacation, you are a part of the hospitality industry. All of these ideas have echoes of the ancient exercise of hospitality. But in the ancient world, hospitality was something much more serious.

Three Pillars of Hospitality

Traditionally, hospitality was something extended to an outsider. By it, one offered the comfort, safety, and privileges of family to someone who was not normally a part of the household. The ancient practice of hospitality was grounded on three foundational assumptions:

In order to be genuine hospitality, that which was granted must be the actual possession of the one who offers it. This idea is reflected in the adjective Philos, the first half of φιλόξενος (philoxenos), the Greek word for hospitality. As Mary Scott explains, “Philos is used of people or things which belong to one, and with which one should be able to feel relaxed in that one is not in competition with them; so that philon is used of things or actions which are not alien, which are natural to one’s character or mood at the time.”[2] Hospitality happens when we temporarily extend the boundaries of what is ours by inviting an outsider (literally a stranger) into our circle and treating them as if they were friends or family.

Even though hospitality was widely regarded as a cultural obligation, the one to whom it was extended did not have an inherent right to what they received. The ancients did not think of hospitality as the utopian practice of an egalitarian world where everyone was free to use the possessions of another. Nor was their vision that of a possessionless society. It was instead the opposite. The virtuousness of hospitality arose from an awareness that we live in a competitive and often hostile world where others might attempt to take what is ours. But this virtue is also energized by the potential for reciprocal benefit. As Mary Scott observes further, “The relationship of xenia, hospitality or guest-friendship, is basically self-seeking.”[3] One of its aims was to create a circle of cooperative relationships. As Scott explains, “To travel in his own country and in other countries, the agathos needs a network of xenoi, guest-friends, who will provide him with the basic necessities of life.”[4] For the early church, hospitality was a means of spreading the gospel and disseminating Christian doctrine (1 Cor. 16:3; 2 Cor. 3:1).

Hospitality established boundaries that enabled those who would otherwise be competitors and enemies to relate to one another as if they were friends. These did not automatically make their differences (or even their mutual antipathy) disappear. Hospitality is a social convention, not an emotion. It imposes obligations and maintains boundaries, which result in a temporary cessation of hostilities between parties that might otherwise relate to each other as enemies. The exercise of hospitality created a temporary social structure that allowed those with strong differences to interact and perhaps even begin to understand one another better. For the ancients, hospitality was a unique category of friendship that assigned the status of ξένος to both. Consequently, in ancient Greek, the word could describe either the guest or the host since they were both strangers to one another.

Strange Conversations

All three assumptions have parallels in the practice of conversation. For example, conversation involves a kind of extension of one’s intellectual boundaries that allows us to entertain strange and perhaps even disagreeable ideas. It differs from proclaiming, which is one-sided. The gospel can still be proclaimed in a conversational mode, but when this happens, its message is expressed within a framework where there is a mutual exchange of ideas.

In the turning toward another that is at the heart of conversation, one opens the door to the thoughts, ideas, and feelings of others. Conversation implies mutual consideration. However, it does not automatically follow that one who converses abandons their convictions and positions in the process or even temporarily puts them “on the shelf.” Conversation belongs to the family of speech known as dialogue. A dialogue is a kind of encounter that involves mutual exploration and exposure. To dialogue is to talk with someone, not just at them. It is an activity that involves discussion, an exchange of reasoning, and even argument. Those who discuss do not necessarily agree. Where there are opposing ideas in play, any agreement is highly unlikely without some form of dialogue. Nor should we assume that this kind of exchange is dispassionate. Dialogue can be heated. When some came down to Antioch from Jerusalem and began to teach that it was necessary to be circumcised according to the custom of Moses to be saved, Acts 15:2 observes that this “brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them.” Dialogue was part of the toolbox of the church’s earliest evangelists. They also employed discussion and debate to refine their own understanding of the church’s doctrine. Conversation creates a safe space where new ideas can be proposed, explored, and tested. This does not mean, however, that the first messengers of the Christian faith treated everyone’s ideas as if they were as credible as their own. Rather, they employed questions, debate, and discussion in order to challenge the false thinking of their age.

In order for conversation to occur, words must be spoken and ideas exchanged. This much is clear. But what seems less obvious is that conversation also involves shared silence. As Ann Berthoff observed, “If dialogue is at the heart of conversation, at the heart of dialogue is silence.”[5] Berthoff points out that silence is necessary for the act of speech itself. As anyone who has tried to decipher a mumbled or run-on sentence can tell you, the words we say are made discernable by the spaces that the silence between words creates for them. Berthoff explains, “The polar opposition of silence is the necessary condition of speech: when we talk, the sounds are shaped and differentiated by means of silence.”[6] But it is not enough to simply hear the words or even to know their definition. Conversation is an interpretative art, and Berthoff uses the phrase “homiletical silence” to speak of the intellectual space that enables the listener to do this. Berthoff’s analogy draws on the sermonic tradition, which is also a kind of conversation between the preacher and the listener.

In the context of a sermon, homiletical silence is a three-dimensional discipline that involves listening, patient reflection, and understanding. Since most sermons take the form of a monologue, the burden for a conversational element rests primarily upon the shoulders of the preacher, who must practice a kind of “priestly advocacy.” The preacher stands between the text and the congregation and listens to the Word of God on their behalf.[7] In ordinary conversation, however, this burden is shared along with the accompanying silence, rendering the silence of conversation more than the pause that waits until it is my turn to speak. In that silent space, we entertain the strange, seeking to understand even though we may already know that it is likely that we will still be at odds when the conversation ends. After all has been said, we may remain strangers and perhaps even opponents.

Protected Spaces

Hospitality does have limits, as Jael’s story in the book of Judges bluntly reminds us (Judges 4:17–24). In the same way, some intellectual spaces are meant to be protected, especially within the confines of the church. Not all ideas should be entertained (cf. 1 Tim. 4:7). Nor is everyone allowed to give voice to their views. In 1 Timothy 1:3-4, the apostle urged Timothy to “charge some that they teach no other doctrine, nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith.” Not every idea is a good idea. There are times when it is necessary to do battle with our words and, like Jael, drive a stake through the temple of an opposing argument.

The context, of course, always makes a difference. When it comes to the essential truths of the Christian faith, Scripture teaches us to set boundaries. Within the precincts of the church, the words of false teachers are not meant to have free reign. Their ideas are to be challenged and their voices silenced. Outside the church, however, it is a different matter. There, in the marketplace, anyone may say their piece. The public sphere is the realm of debate and public discourse. It is also the sphere where the art of conversation is most needed. But if the last election has taught us anything, it has reminded us that the human art of conversation is not as easy as it looks. It is not enough to open one’s mouth and let the words pour out, especially when those who engage with each other have serious differences. These are often differences not only about our views but also about the rules of engagement when talking about them.

Scripture does not provide a simple strategy to make this task easier for us. It does, however, offer a foundational rule that can create a hospitable space for those who wish to make an attempt at conversation. It is the rule of life expressed in James 1:19–20: “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” The hospitality of conversation offers the combined grace of silent listening and acceptance to those whose thinking is strange to us. It is a discipline that is essential to the peace of any society where diverse and mutually exclusive world views coexist. But its practice is even more crucial for those whose aim is persuasion. Because before anyone can be persuaded that they are wrong, they must first believe that they have honestly been heard and correctly understood.

[1] James Como, “The Salon: Restoring Conversation,” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, 22, no. 1 (2014), 33.

[2] Mary Scott, “PHILOS, PHILOTĒS AND XENIA,” Acta Classica 25 (1982): 3.

[3] Ibid., 6.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ann E. Berthoff, “Homiletic Silence and the Revival of Conversation,” The Sewanee Review 122, no. 4, (2014): 587.

[6] Ibid., 588.

[7] John Koessler, Folly, Grace, and Power: The Mysterious Act of Preaching, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 96.

Job and the Divine Game: Faith Amidst Suffering

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In a letter discussing the infant theory of quantum mechanics, Albert Einstein famously observed that God “does not play dice.” Perhaps, but sometimes, it feels as if God does play games with us. At least, Martin Luther seems to have thought so. After studying the Old Testament patriarchs, Luther concluded that God is a Ludus Deus, a God who plays and often engages with us in a ludus divinus, or divine game. In modern vernacular, we might be tempted to paraphrase this by saying that God is “messing with us.”

This divine game is a kind of adversarial love, often reflected in circumstances that cause us to echo Jacob’s complaint recorded in Genesis 42:36: “Everything is against me!” What we really mean when we think this is that God is against us. In the divine game that Luther describes, God relates to us as if he were our enemy in order to make himself our friend. He judges in order to bless. He rejects so that he may eventually accept.

The nature of this adverse love is captured in the line from William Cowper’s hymn God Moves in a Mysterious Way which urges:

“Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace;

behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.”

Luther’s thinking about this is part of a larger theological framework called Theologia Crucis, or the theology of the cross. This is, in part, a theology of suffering. Vincent Kam summarizes Luther’s theology of the cross this way: “God’s grace is hidden under his wrath, and his salvation is hidden under the cross.”[1]

What Luther describes is a sort of masquerade. This is not a pretense so much as a one-sided display that paves the way for grace. We find several instances of this in the Old Testament. One prominent example was the Lord’s expressed intent to destroy Israel after they sinned with the golden calf. “I have seen these people,” the Lord told Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation” (Exod. 32:9–10). Despite this offer, Moses argued with God, appealing to his nature and citing the promises made to the patriarchs (Exod. 32:11–14).

Moses did not really talk God out of doing anything. Rather, it was the opposite. By implying that Moses stood in his way, the Lord invited him to intercede. Moses stood between God and judgment once again when the people were on the threshold of Canaan and refused to go into the Land of Promise. As before, Moses reminded the Lord of what he had already revealed about himself, quoting God’s own words back to him and basing his appeal on the mercy that had been shown to Israel in the past (Num. 14:17–19).

Although he describes God’s anger as a kind of mask, Luther does not seem to have meant that it is merely feigned. Divine wrath is both real and dangerous to its objects. The thought of God’s anger is genuinely terrifying, even to those who are safe from it. Luther compared this divine game to “a cat’s game which means death to the mouse.”[2] In 2 Corinthians 5:11, the apostle Paul similarly observes: “Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others.” Yet, this fear was not the only driving force behind Paul’s ministry. Indeed, it quickly becomes apparent that it is not even the main driver. In verse 14, the apostle goes on to add, “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.”

Paul’s language in these verses echoes his conversion experience on the Damascus road, where a blazing encounter with the glory of Christ left the future apostle face down in the dirt (cf. Acts 9:4–19; 22:6–21). Although Paul’s fear was both real and warranted, it was not the reason Christ appeared to him in this way. The endgame was not to terrify but to commission. From this moment on, Paul’s relationship with Christ fundamentally changed along with his mission. The persecutor of Christ became an apostle, Christ’s ambassador, and a messenger of God’s reconciling love (2 Cor. 5:18–21).

Fear and love, like wrath and reconciliation, do not seem like they should be compatible with one another. Scripture seems to say as much. “There is no fear in love,” 1 John 4:18 asserts. “But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” Yet John’s statement about the two mirrors not only Paul’s experience but reflects a kind of order of priority. The experience of fear serves the agenda of divine love.

There is probably no one in Scripture whose experience exemplifies Luther’s concept of ludus divinus more than the Old Testament patriarch Job. According to the first chapter of the book that bears his name, Job’s great trial is set in motion when God draws Satan’s attention to him. “Have you considered my servant Job?” the Lord asks. “There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil” (Job 1:8). Job is offered for consideration in a way that seems to portray him as God’s champion, without a peer among the Lord’s servants. The assertion itself appears as if it’s designed to invite a challenge. The God who already knows the answer to every question that he asks is playing a game.

Satan takes the bait and outlines the general terms of the contest in Job 1:10–11. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land,” Satan declares. “But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face” (Job 1:10–11). God grants Satan’s terms. But the fact that he sets limits is an indication of who is really in control. “Very well, then, everything he has is in your power,” the Lord told him, “but on the man himself do not lay a finger” (Job 1:12).

If this is a game, or at least a contest, what is Job’s role in it? Is he a player? Or is he being played with? All of this takes place out of Job’s hearing. He has no say in how the contest should take place. Neither does he have any idea that his life is the board upon which it is about to be played or that his children, his possessions, and even his health are its pieces. One is given the impression that the real contest that is about to unfold is between God and Satan. The fact that the Lord surrenders so easily to Satan’s conditions makes it clear that God is not only playing with Satan, he is playing him. The game is rigged in God’s favor, but Satan doesn’t realize it.

Job, on the other hand, does. It’s remarkable that despite the assortment of things that trigger his great suffering (the Sabeans, fire that falls from the sky, the Chaldeans, hurricane-force winds, festering sores on his skin, and even Satan himself), the only agent that Job really concerns himself with is God (Job 9:33–35). Job doesn’t exactly call God a bully, but the emotional tone of all his complaints can be roughly summarized as: “Pick on someone your own size” (cf. Job 9:1-12; 23:13–17). Yet, as unhappy as he is with his situation or with God, Job clings to faith. He expresses remarkable confidence in how God would dispose of his case if he were to be granted an audience with him. “Would He prosecute me forcefully?” Job speculates. “No, He will certainly pay attention to me. Then an upright man could reason with Him, and I would escape from my Judge forever” (Job 23:6–7).

Job had an intuitive sense that there was more behind these things than he was able to see. If this was some game, Job’s faith convinced him that he would prove the winner in the end. Yet Job also knew that this victory would not be due to his own strength or even his righteousness, which Scripture assures us was real (Job 1:1, 8). Job may be the hero of this story, but he is not the champion. The unexpected resilience of Job’s faith is ultimately traceable to his hope in another. Job was convinced that he was not to blame for the things that happened to him. But his trust was in a redeemer (Job 19:25).

What Job saw, though only through a cloud, we now understand with the kind of clarity that the incarnation of Jesus Christ alone can provide. Long after Job’s tortured bones had turned to dust, another player stepped onto the board. As Christopher Boyd Brown has observed, “When God plays his game with his saints, he does not simply set up a game for them to play (and lose) against terrible opponents—sin, death, and hell. Rather, God himself is in the game, in the incarnation. To play God’s game is to play with God, the incarnate God.”[3] Job might also add, to play God’s game is to be played by God and win.

[1] Vincent Kam, “Luther on God’s Play with His Saints,” Lutheran Quarterly, 34 no. 2 (2020), 139.

[2] Christopher Boyd Brown, “Deus Ludens: God at Play in Luther’s Theology,” Concordia Theological Quarterly, 81 no. 1–2 (January–April 2017), 163.

[3] Christopher Boyd Brown, Ibid., 166.