Category: Reflections

For the Sheer Joy of It

Photo by Lili Popper on Unsplash

This is the reason you shall do it. For it brings you a pleasure which is unalloyed, an unmitigated good. I don’t know what it might be for you, this thing. I can think of a handful of things for me: writing, driving (not commuting), reading a good book, going for a walk with my wife, playing with my kids until the giggles and shrieks mingle, building or fixing something with my son, and so on.

By dint of our individual natures and life experiences we will each have some set of activities which tap into some simple and primal creaturely mirth. My exhortation is: do that. It’s good. Obviously some caveats are in order, such as, don’t sin, since sin by definition does not satisfy nor is it aligned with who we were made to be. But aside from that, there is broad freedom here.

For some, there are kinds of manual work which fall into this category. Probably not shoveling – though who knows? I’m thinking of something a little bit more skilled which passes the time and brings pleasure. The pleasure should not be dependent on the accomplishment of some task or goal. The thing I have in mind is not done for the sake of productivity or efficiency; it is anti-utilitarian. It’s the kind of thing that fills in the open spaces on the hourly planner, which doesn’t really cross any items off any list, but which never feels like wasted time.

In short, it is good to do some things for the sheer joy of it, and not for any other purpose. There is something here which we share with other creatures. While animals are guided largely by instincts, they each have their own personalities and they also engage in playfulness which has no strict Darwinian logic to it, not that I am a Darwinian. Sometimes a dog just wants to run around the yard in big loops as fast as it can. There’s a pleasure inherent to the sensation of motion, balance, and even the aesthetics of a finely executed jump or swoop. See for example how the birds seem to enjoy playing in the wind, for the same reason children and child-hearted adults enjoy holding their hand out the car window on the highway, playing on the flowing air like the aileron of a jet.

If your life is so full of lists and efficiency and every-moment-scheduled activity such that there is no room for these kinds of things, or if the thought of it induces a mix of anxiety and guilt because you’re captive to an inflexible productivity mindset, I shake my finger at you, though in a friendly way.

My friend, we are human beings, not machines. We are mind, body, soul, and spirit, not algorithm, subroutine, and hydraulics. A human life, at a human pace, is one of those universal aspirations of all people everywhere (with varied manifestations of course). The French term, joie de vivre captures something of this essential joy in being. To lose this thing I’m trying to describe in any measure is to slide towards the mechanistic, robotic, slave-like inhumanity. Chesterton makes a related point in his chapter called The Maniac in the book Orthodoxy. Allow me to quote the relevant section:

The last thing that can be said of a lunatic is that his actions are causeless. If any human acts may loosely be called causeless, they are the minor acts of a healthy man; whistling as he walks; slashing the grass with a stick; kicking his heels or rubbing his hands. It is the happy man who does the useless things; the sick man is not strong enough to be idle. It is exactly such careless and causeless actions that the madman could never understand; for the madman (like the determinist) generally sees too much cause in everything. The madman would read a conspiratorial significance into those empty activities. He would think that the lopping of the grass was an attack on private property. He would think that the kicking of the heels was a signal to an accomplice. If the madman could for an instant become careless, he would become sane. Every one who has had the misfortune to talk with people in the heart or on the edge of mental disorder, knows that their most sinister quality is a horrible clarity of detail; a connecting of one thing with another in a map more elaborate than a maze. If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

I rarely read Chesterton without a smile on. His writing is so colourful, even playful. His mind jumps around between ideas and is always running here and there on the page, the reader at times struggling to keep up. And then at the end of a few paragraphs he puts the finishing touches on some zany idea and it comes into focus for the reader with a shock, like having been led into the Sistine chapel in darkness and then having someone suddenly flip on the lights. (Does the Sistine chapel have artificial lights? My metaphor depends on it.) I remember when I first read this paragraph above, how delighted I was. I had never thought of reason and madness that way before, and it gave me a new and permanent enjoyment of little ’causeless’ and ‘useless’ actions. Children are, of course, the ultimate example of this. They are playfulness incarnate, and have much to teach us in this regard.

G. K. Chesterton, the so-called prince of paradox.

Another fine example comes from the movie Chariots of Fire, where a conflict arises between the gifted runner Eric Liddell and his ministry-focused sister. She thinks he should quit running since it accomplishes nothing for the kingdom, but he sees something in the running that she cannot – some worth that is in and of itself, not dependent on some other measurable accomplishment. “When I run, I feel God’s pleasure.” But lest this attitude be taken as a being fundamentally at odds with a life lived fully for God’s glory, I want to point out that after his epic performance in the 1924 Olympics, during which his conviction to keep the Sabbath engendered no small amount of publicity, he became a missionary to China where he eventually died at the age of 43, a prisoner in a Japanese internment camp during World War 2. His love, concern, and self-sacrificing generosity towards his fellow inmates left an indelible mark on those who survived.

Eric Liddell

There is an application here for those in demanding and important vocations, perhaps especially ministry, since it concerns eternal things. There is an understandable way of thinking that says something like I can’t possibly read a novel or take up a hobby or learn a new instrument when there are people suffering and I can do something about it. This can work for a while, but I see at least three problems with it. First, this mentality is at odds with the natural rhythms of work and rest that God has designed us for. This attitude leads towards burnout. Second, there is a messiah complex, or the seeds of it, in that approach. Third, a life crammed to the ceiling with work is not a good model for others to emulate. Those in ministry especially are to be ‘an example’ to regular folks. But a life with no margin, no niches carved out for the simple pleasures described above, is not balanced or healthy. This is not to say we should not work hard, put in long hours, or have certain seasons of especially intense exertion. One can do all those things and yet preserve the kind of childlikeness, freedom to rest, and simple pleasures I’ve been trying to describe.

So to return to my opening exhortation: go ahead and do that thing for the sheer joy of it. Who knows? You may even find yourself feeling God’s pleasure in it.

Ministry & Finances – Extra Interview Question with Jeremy Pryor

Earlier this week my interview with Jeremy Pryor was published at TGC. If you haven’t seen that yet, do check it out. As I wrote in my intro to the interview, Jeremy consistently makes me think about things differently and see them from a new angle. Recently he managed to ruin a new kids’ TV show that I thought was pretty good – Bluey. Well, considering many of the alternatives, it still manages to shine, but the issues he raises about its portrayal of fatherhood and motherhood are valid. He offers some further thoughts here. My kids even noticed it: “The dad never goes to work!” While I was charmed at first with the portrayal of a fully engaged father, which is a course-correction of sorts from the absent and disengaged father, and which I try hard to be for my own kids, I also noticed a number of subtle things that didn’t sit quite right. Jeremy merely helped me put words to what those things were.

So back to the interview. At TGC we had a certain word-count that limited us from including the longest interview question and answer from our conversation. I thought I would include it here below. My question was trying to point in one particular direction, but Jeremy took things in a slightly different direction with his answer, and it gave me a lot to think about. Until recently I haven’t ever thought about the categorical difference between working for a wage and owning assets which generate income. But that’s why I read people like Jeremy who force me to examine my own assumptions.

Here is the Q & A, with some further comments afterwards:

Phil: Looking back at the history of evangelical leaders, we see quite a wide range in terms of family life. On one end we might look at John Wesley, who famously did not seem to be a stellar husband; On the other end, we can look at Jonathan Edwards and see not only a vibrant and loving family but a multigenerational family legacy. Pastors and Christian leaders today have a demanding and complex vocation that places unique stresses on their families, and I know most of them want to emulate Edwards here rather than Wesley. What is your advice to them? What do you think ministry minded Christians can miss when it comes to the family?

J.P.: I have a pretty unusual position with regards to this question. One of the things you see with Abraham is that a big part of how a man grows into fatherhood is through facing the multiple challenges of providing for his family. Working to provide for one’s family disciples a man into fatherhood; it’s a really important element. But one of the problems with ministry is that it’s a difficult vocation for that kind of discipleship to take place in appropriate ways. So you have Paul saying in 1 Timothy 3 that the people who should be overseeing the church are essentially the most successful fathers in the city — that’s how I read what he’s saying there.

This is really strange when you think about the challenges of ministry because a lot of times the ministry pathway has not properly discipled men to become the kinds of fathers who know how to manage a complex household. They can tend to live a very atomized life where they have disintegrated their spiritual lives from their ministry lives and their family life. There’s a lot of strangeness that can happen when you’re not working in a more traditional way to provide for your family.

I see it as an alternative pathway or narrative: a ministry narrative. In this narrative the driving concerns are things like what it means to grow a church, or to expand in ministry. Part of the goal of that pathway is freeing up one’s time from having to do the kinds of things that men typically do: pleasing a boss, serving clients, building assets, and doing traditional fatherhood things. In Jewish culture this is very different, and I think maybe this is one of the things we can learn as Christians. For example, most Rabbis have businesses. So I’m drawn much more to a bi-vocational approach.

One of the things I’m very concerned about for every family, whether they work in ministry or not, is what happens to the father when he’s in his 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. This is where I think the wage-earning model breaks down the worst. This is a season of life where you should be dedicated to your grandchildren and available to disciple and lead that growing and expanding household. This requires you to have access to your time in a unique way. But in the way most career paths are designed in our culture, that is the time when you reach your peak earning potential, when work responsibilities are heaviest, and so you have less access to your time. So that’s just one example of where living this disintegrated life, where your source of money is distanced from your household and how it functions, causes problems.

There’s a lot more to be said, but I do believe every family should pursue asset building at a young age, even young ministry families. Build assets. Churches should be assisting people who have a ministry calling to acquire assets and not to be endlessly dependent on the church for their income all the way into their old age. To me that’s bad family design.

It’s important to say as well that there is one group that is totally exempt from this kind of thinking and that is single people who have made a lifelong vow of singleness. I think they represent one of the most untapped resources in the church. Many if not most of the stories in the NT are of single people who are on mission who are “undivided,” as Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians 7. They have particular gifts and they’re an incredible resource to the kingdom. There’s a constant synergy happening between the single missionaries going out in teams and the households supporting them in various cities. You see this throughout the book of Acts and Jesus talks about this specifically as a strategy in Luke 10. This ministry strategy seems to have been almost completely abandoned, and so you have this epidemic of single people living like they’re married and married people that are in ministry living like singles. 

Photo by Skull Kat on Unsplash

This whole issue of the financial viability of entering full-time ministry is increasingly important in our Canadian context. With the price of living increasing year over year, especially near urban centers like Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, and the salaries of pastors being very slow to follow, what was already a very dicey prospect is becoming simply untenable. I personally know of multiple ministry families forced to live in small apartments with two or three children long after their age cohort has by and large found semi-detached or detached housing where one can have just a bit more room and a little yard for the kids to run around in.

One such family had a bit of a sweet deal in terms of the rent they were paying for their apartment. Then all of a sudden the owner announced he was selling the place and they would have to move out. There was literally nothing available in their price range, given his salary as an associate pastor. So now they are leaving that city and looking to take up a pastorate where they can afford even basic housing. In a number of these cases the churches themselves are healthy and, as far as I know, not ungenerous. But the economic realities are simply brutal.

My anecdotal observations of ministry families is that more and more of them are adopting the modern two-salary approach where both parents work. While some of this may be preference, it is also increasingly a necessity. As someone who has been considering pastoral work on and off for the last ten years (that’s a story for another day), and who has even gone through one candidating process, I can tell you that it’s really hard to make the numbers work on one salary. In fact, our conclusion was that the math simply didn’t work no matter how we sliced it. And it wasn’t like we had a penchant for expensive dining out or regular tropical vacations that made the math difficult. We stripped that budget down to the bare necessities (as the song goes) and could not find anywhere to rent or any mortgage where we’d have enough left over to live on, as in have basic food to eat, second-hand clothes to wear, and a beater of a car that I keep running through doing my own mechanical work and ordering parts on rockauto.com, which I like to do anyways.

This experience had us wondering just how the heck ministry families are making this gig work. And the answer, for many, is to have both parents working. Another avenue would be to have a generous patron, such as a grandparent who provides housing or some other significant assistance. For families who feel strongly about the wife staying home with the children, or even homeschooling them, is vocational ministry even possible? As I think of the Millennials I know currently in ministry, only two of them among more than a dozen are able to survive on the one income. And in both of those cases, they either got into the housing market before it went crazy or have free housing as part of the position.

See this Facebook post by Paul Carter, as well as the comments, for a sense of how pressing this issue is for the Canadian church. Over the years I’ve often come across the attitude that says something like “keeping the pastor poor will keep him holy.” There are other variations of it: “When I started in ministry I made $200 a month but God always provided.” For which, let me be clear, I certainly praise God. But the premise leads some to say we needn’t worry about paying pastors a fair wage on which they can support a family. Surely God’s past provision does not mean we ought to presume upon it when He has given the church the financial resources to be the vehicle of that provision.

What Jeremy Pryor describes in the answer to my question above is an interesting alternative track. By and large the modern ministry pathway follows something like the Charles Spurgeon trajectory: early identification of spiritual gifts, encouragement to take on roles of spiritual leadership, perhaps some special training like Bible College or Seminary, and then entry into full-time paid ministry in one’s early 20’s, perhaps as an associate or youth pastor, or perhaps as a lead pastor of a smaller church. The trajectory then is increasing responsibility and ministry success with increasing wages over the years. And obviously in many cases this has worked just fine.

But the alternative is interesting to consider as well. We would be mistaken to assume the sequence above is somehow the only Biblical model. A lot of it is cultural and a reflection of the forces at work in our modern society to professionalize every vocation. The bi-vocational model can be controversial. I admit that when I think of it I often picture a man pulled hard in two opposite directions, working two jobs that demand too much time and deliver not much money, so that it ends up being a kind of trap. He can’t focus enough on the ministry to grow it and make it financially viable, nor can he devote enough time to advance in the other job and earn a significantly better wage. But that is just one poor variation of it. I think it would be good if the church at large elevated multiple models providing alternative approaches to how this can be done well.

As the boomer generation retires from church leadership these matters will take on ever-increasing urgency, and I’m thankful for those who are doing their best to raise this issue. We may have to start thinking outside the box, learning from other models and adapting to the needs, while being careful to remain faithful to the clear teaching of Scripture about the qualifications for ministry.

Trees & Flames: Reweaving the Threads

The following is an excerpt from a longer work I’ve been chipping away at for a few months. It’s a mix of storytelling and reflection. My vision for this work is that it would be an ideal companion for sitting quietly and enjoying a half hour of pleasant reading; in a word: enjoyable, thoughtful, at times edifying. If this is something you’d be interested in, let me know in the comments below!

I love trees. They fascinate me, they enchant me. I can stare at a massive tree for a long time, just soaking in the size, solidity, solemnity, and sagacity of that being. I don’t believe trees are conscious like we are, but they do have life as well as a kind of wisdom. They know how to grow, how to find the sun, and how to dig roots down when they feel the wind. Did you know that trees that don’t feel any wind do not put down strong roots? Some researchers found this out when they grew trees inside a completely sealed dome. The trees grew tall but then broke and fell over under their own weight much younger than in the wild. It was discovered that the lack of wind and stress on the body of the tree meant it never put down deep roots. If that’s not a kind of wisdom, I don’t know what is.

A live oak with Spanish moss. Courtesy of David Price, Bok Tower Gardens

My family and I have traveled down to South Carolina a few times near the end of winter to get a jump start on summer. One of my very favorite things about being in the lowcountry (as they call it down there) is the massive live oaks covered in Spanish moss. These behemoth trees have sprawling branches that reach out and up in a way that our trees up here just don’t. It makes for a tree of mesmerizing size and branches with lovely whimsical shapes. The Spanish moss adds a delicate beauty as it hangs down silvery gray from those great limbs, similar to the way freshly fallen snow adorns our northern trees and makes them lovely to behold.

Photo by Ashley Knedler on Unsplash

Despite my romanticism about trees, I accept that they must be cut down for our use; and because of my romanticism, I don’t take that reality lightly. It means something to me when I put those logs of fragrant maple, solid oak, or sinewy ash into the fire. These great trees did something we cannot do: transformed CO2, sunlight, water, and ground nutrients into solid substance (and solid fuel). It’s a kind of alchemy, isn’t it? We let the familiarity of it rob us of the proper wonder. You try to take those ingredients and make something that can hold up a house for 100 years (as the logs in my basement have done) and also keep it warm and cozy.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Modern man is alienated, buffered. In our suits of technology and mass culture we are far removed from the primal realities of the wilderness from which we all came. Our ancestors knew how to make fire, or they died. They knew how to find food, or they died. They also knew the night sky. So much of our modern fiction and storytelling wrestles with this desire to reconnect with that lost world. A part of us admires the man or family who leaves all behind to live in a remote cabin; a part of us envies the blessed simplicity of the castaway’s life. We cope with this in all kinds of ways: We go camping, we put our kids into scouting or other nature programs, we watch Survivor or other similar survival-themed entertainment.

We do need technology to protect us from the elements. Clothing is the first technology; it shows up in chapter 3 of Genesis. It creates a layer of protective distance between our vulnerable bodies and the things which can harm them. Every subsequent technology adds more protection or helps to facilitate survival; but in so doing it further distances us from the raw experience of nature. And so a part of us always longs for those raw unmediated experiences of nature. As a teenager I walked to my local park in the middle of a violent thunderstorm to better see, feel, hear — to experience the raw power of that event. I wanted to feel small. At the ocean I love to feel the big waves crashing onto shore as they push and pull my body. I want to feel a little bit of the incalculable power of the waters.

Let me bring this back to chopping wood. There’s something raw and real about taking a tree, chopping it down, drying it, and then burning it to keep myself and my family from freezing to death during the long harsh winter months. Unlike electric heat, which needs massive infrastructure to produce and then deliver the energy, or heating oil, which is extracted out of some faraway hole in the ground, refined in some dystopian maze of pipes and tanks, and finally delivered to my house by a large truck, the process of producing the wood to run my woodstove doesn’t need to include anyone or anything outside my own property. And my point is that this distinction is significant, and that this is part of the reason why I — and so many others — enjoy chopping wood and heating with it.

Humans have been gathering around fires since beyond the horizon of memory. Warmth and light. Hands outstretched to thaw stiff fingers. How many endless hours did our distant ancestors spend staring silently into the dancing flames? The flickering light and unpredictable leaps and licks of flame casts a spell over us. It is a kind of hypnotism, and we fall into a trance. The conversations that take place at such a time are of a different quality. They are slower, lower in volume, punctuated by longer silences, and more confidential. It is around the fire that the previously untold chapter is revealed, that some hidden pain or secret hope is unveiled. Time passes differently when we gaze into the fire. And unlike time spent gazing at a screen, I have a hard time imagining that time spent staring into the flames was wasted; some good thing is communicated to the soul.

Photo by Vladyslav Cherkasenko on Unsplash

One of my favorite chapters in the whole Bible is John 21, the restoration of Peter. It’s a masterfully human story of failure, dejection, and doubt. Though the prose is sparse, the scene is charged with emotion. Peter, once a self-strong man, is an empty husk, gutted by his own betrayal of Jesus. The way Jesus takes him aside and gently restores him is, for me, one of the most moving episodes of the entire gospels.

But I’m getting distracted. My point is that tucked away in the first half of that chapter is a little detail which takes on a special significance in the context of this discussion. Namely, in this passage we find the only instance in the gospels of Jesus sitting around a fire. Doubtless it was an almost daily reality, given the nomadic nature of his public ministry, but here is the only time we are given a clear glimpse of the scene. We find Christ having kindled a fire on the shore and cooking some fish for breakfast. And it makes me wonder: what did he think when those first few smoky flames were lit?

Did he think back to the first blast of heat and light on that first day of creation? Did he think of the flaming sword in the hand of the cherubim at the entrance of the now-forbidden garden? Or did he think back to an astonished Moses standing before a flaming, burning bush, somehow unconsumed by the One who calls himself a consuming fire? Or how about the pillar of fire that held back the Egyptian army on the shores of the Red Sea? Perhaps for a moment he thought of that memorable day in Babylon when he (surely it was he, the fourth man in the fire?) stood in the midst of the raging fury of the king’s furnace with his three faithful followers, unscathed.

Who knows what he thought. But here was Jesus, the Lord of heaven and earth, making a fire on the quiet morning shores of Galilee, kindling flames that share their essence with every fire which came before, flames which harken back to all those sacred scenes.

Some important thread holds all those moments together in the mind of God, the architect of history. For in reality there are no unsacred places or moments at all – that is an illusion of the unbelieving mind. Meaninglessness itself is an illusion, it is alien to the world as God made it. All of us are somewhere along in the process of learning to see the world rightly, which is to say, shimmering with meaning. And part of that process, it seems to me, is learning to weave back together the separate and disconnected threads of our experience by following the master key of the Scriptures. This is re-enchantment.

So here are the few threads I’m fumbling with at the moment: God describes himself as a consuming fire. He manifests his presence as fire to Moses and the Israelites. And we all experience fire, its radiant light and warmth along with the dangers of burns and destruction. But do we make the link from the flame to the Father?

Do we, as Lewis said, run back up the sunbeam to the sun?

Do we weave back together what our fallen minds have pulled apart?

On Writing

For as long as I can remember, I have loved writing. But I have always resisted the idea that writing might be a part of my identity and calling in life. I’m not sure why. Recently that has been changing.

I realize now that my childhood home was filled with books in a way that was unusual. My parents were often to be seen reading. My older brother Alex quickly became a devoted reader, blasting through stacks of novels. All of this rubbed off on me, and things which I took to be unremarkable I now see as a foreshadowing of things to come.

I remember having two truly excellent English teachers who both left a mark on me. The first was Mr. Wiggins, who taught me in both grade 5 and grade 6. He was an extremely tall man with large glasses. For some reason I don’t remember what his voice sounded like. He was funny. He would write long sentences across the blackboard and then when he got to the end of the space he would continue writing on the walls of the classroom. To a schoolchild, even a hint of playful rebellion in an authority figure like a teacher is delightful. He got ten and eleven-year-olds to learn words like extemporaneous and calamity and vociferous. I ate it all up, the lessons and the assignments.

Once, when we were told to bring something to read quietly in class, I brought one of our treasured Calvin & Hobbes books along with a dictionary for looking up words I didn’t know. Mr. Wiggins was impressed. I still think Calvin & Hobbes is pretty brilliant and a great way to expand one’s vocabulary:

“Pathetic Peripatetics!”
I probably had to look up “transcendental.”

The other excellent English teacher that left a mark on me was a Mr. Bellamy in high school. He also was a popular teacher. He taught us to write. I don’t remember how he did it, but the end result of it was that I very badly wanted to write the most excellent pieces of creative writing in order to impress him. I worked at it diligently over that year and submitted papers I was proud of. As someone who mostly breezed through school, that level of effort was a new experience. He read those papers carefully and handed them back with copious comments and sometimes a personal conversation too. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly how, but I know for a fact that I’m a better writer today for having had Mr. Bellamy as a teacher.

Some years later, and after my spiritual rebirth at the age of 19, I wrote a short reflection on writing. I recently found it tucked away in an old file in my computer backups. I had forgotten I had ever written it, so it felt like I was reading someone else’s words:

What is writing? It is notation. But there is writing and then there is writing. And the latter sparks revolutions, both quiet and cataclysmic. Writing is communication bordering on impartation. It is a medium so broad that the loftiest ideas imaginable have room aplenty to cross the great divide between these independent entities we call minds.

I wonder, I wonder; am I a writer? Oh I can notate just fine, but can I impart? Can I, with the finesse and restraint of an artist, craft and swirl, lift and push, yes and with finality make a collection of words that imparts the ineffable? Can I sow seeds of the good without the soil’s knowledge, at least until after the fact? Can I teach the eye to see, and yes even to love, the beautiful even as it lusts for the profane? Can I in some small way affect that impenetrable centre of being, the heart, with what I can only pray will be a taste, an appetite, yes a hunger, for that essence which is sourced entirely in the threefold Spirit of the I AM?

Can I be a writer? Probably not. But can I write? Well I hope so. 

I think I wrote that in my early 20’s, about 15 years ago. What I like about that reflection above is that it expresses something I still feel deeply, namely that words have this mysterious but undeniable power to nudge us towards virtue or vice, towards God or away from Him.

Despite writing occasionally on this blog and receiving some affirmation here and there, it has only been in this last year that these lingering questions have been answered for me as doors have opened up for writing and editing in a more public way. One of those open doors has been over at TGC Canada, where I’ve been able to write a serious book review, a piece of cultural criticism, and a piece of spiritual reflection. In each case I’ve been blown away by the positive responses.

In addition, I’ve been given opportunities to do some editing by an extremely accomplished author and editor, Dr. Michael A. G. Haykin. Here is the first look at the fruit of that partnership:

Dr. Haykin is very generous with his time and advice, giving me a chance to work in the world of publishing like this. In addition to this volume on John Gill which will be published this year, we are working on two other projects.

This all has seemed too good to be true. It’s almost like I’m a writer!

Well, I guess I am. I’m just going to have to get used to the idea.

_________________________________________________________________________

As I was waiting for the Rogan piece to be published, I was rather nervous. I had worked on it for months. I had really pushed myself to weave together a narrative that was compelling, intellectually stimulating, and edifying. And as such it felt like more of a risk, and like more of my self was wrapped up in it. When it finally came out, the response was a bit overwhelming for an almost-complete novice to the online writing world. Tim Challies linked to it, and then the main TGC USA site featured it in their Around the Web links for a day. Collin Hansen tweeted it out. I got asked to do a radio interview for a Christian station in Pittsburgh.

And all this happened on the week of the 10th anniversary of my mother’s death, in early March. I tried to write about that at the time, but nothing seemed to come together. It was a strange mix, the marking of a sad milestone along with success in the sphere where my mother had the most influence on me. She was a writer and an editor too. And although I don’t remember sitting down with her to get tips on writing and editing, I know I picked up a lot of things along the way.

I noticed how hard she would work at finding just the right word, as evidenced by the scribbled and scratched-out notes covering her text. I saw how she stressed out over the regular column she had to write for the magazine she edited, yet somehow always found something to submit by the deadline.

Looking back now I guess it makes sense I would end up so involved with words. But all along the way I see how people in my life—my parents, teachers, and others—earned themselves an unpayable debt of gratitude by investing in me and giving me opportunities. Ultimately my writing and editing, like every other aspect of a Christian’s life and calling, is a stewardship of what has been given by God, and faithfulness is the call.

I have tried to write well even when only one person would ever read my words. I have tried to think and write well even when the number of readers of this blog was less than ten. In a sense, the numbers truly don’t matter, and until they don’t matter, the writing itself is tainted. That is something else I learned from Bill Watterson: to do a thing for the love of it and no other reason. (I got this from his only public speech). It is analogous to Eric Liddell’s feeling that God was pleased when he ran, for He had made him to run. My own motives are always mixed, but this is the north star I try to orient them by.

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
    indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

Psalm 16:6

Reentering the Matrix?

I’m sitting down today to put down some thoughts on my month-long absence from social media. Actually I thought today was the last day of April but—lo and behold!—’tis the first day of May. As I write this then the thought occurs to me: I could go check my Facebook right now! What juicy notifications await! But I will finish writing this first.

The simple conclusion here at month’s end is that the role of technology and social media in my life has been healthier this last month than at any time I can remember. That isn’t to say there isn’t still room for improvement—there is—but it’s been a very significant step in the right direction. As a family we have spent more time together, and I have been more present when present. I’ve also had time to read and write more than usual, although I didn’t have any great outburst of creative productivity. I guess a part of me was hoping I’d wake up two weeks into April and have a brilliant novel or short story just pouring out of me. Alas!

Twitter I did not miss at all. Even with the Elon-buying-Twitter drama playing out in real time, I don’t really feel I missed anything by my absence. The constant screeching of real (and manufactured) outrage, the preening self-righteousness, the craven virtue-signaling, the over-active users who somehow tweet a hundred times a day (but how?!), and the creeping notion that Twitter somehow is or even represents real life—good riddance to it all. The best part of Twitter for me is interacting with people I have some existing connection to and being able to share bits and pieces of my writing. But that was perhaps 10% of my time on there. The rest of it was just a yielding to the power of the algorithm.

The Algorithm knows what we like.

Facebook is a bit more complex. Of course the same addictive neuro-hijinks are at play. The reason people become enslaved to gambling machines is the same reason many of us check Facebook dozens of times a day: the delicious possibility that something amazing might be there the next time. So we need to break that stranglehold with honesty, wisdom, and self-control. The positive side that I do miss is interacting with friends and the genuine exchange of ideas that, despite everything else, does occasionally happen. l do enjoy “thinking out loud” and hearing from people who have something to say. I’m a weird guy who thinks about things most people in my life do not and so Facebook puts me in touch with other folks who are likewise interested.

But is that reason enough to step back onto Facebook?

I’m not sure.

What is clear is that it needs to stay off my phone. The role of the “phone”—a ridiculous misnomer at this point—is a key piece of this whole techno-puzzle. It would be more truthful to name them rightly, for the word “phone” does not even begin to represent honestly the role they have come to play in our lives. And “smartphone” is no better. So what shall we call them? Our glowing rectangles, our pocket super-computers, our handheld digital universe gateways, our AI-powered attention absorbers, our voluntary surveillance devices (too conspiratorial?). A bit of a mouthful, but closer to the truth. I increasingly hear the word devices used. That’s not bad—it trades a sleight-of-hand, as if phoning is what we used our phones for, for ambiguity; a device might be used for anything, as is in fact the case with these.

All this highlights the need for more and better thinking about technology. I’m thankful to be finding that many fine thinkers and writers are answering the call. I’ve written before about many of these, but let me just list them all in one place. Older writers worth revisiting: C.S. Lewis, Neil Postman, Jacques Ellul; contemporary writers who are Christians: Paul Kingsnorth, Andy Crouch, Chris Martin, Samuel D. James, Tony Reinke; and those who are not: Jonathan Haidt, Erik Hoel, Tristan Harris, and many more. Please feel free to comment with a name or two I missed.

My hope is that the collective effect of all these will be to shift the thinking of a critical mass within the church and the culture on these questions. And to correct many parents’ unthinking embrace of every new techno-gizmo for their kids. Indeed there seems to be a shift taking place, as indicated by the springing up of grassroots movements like 1000 Hours Outside (“The entire purpose of 1000 Hours Outside is to attempt to match nature time with screen time“).

As for me, I will not be stepping back into the social-media Matrix like before. I don’t want to. The challenge will be, given my personality and various weaknesses, to dip a toe back in without being pulled in entirely.

“Swim at your own risk.” Spillway from the Monticello Dam in California.

A Christian View on Psychedelics

Just a quick little post to say that my article got published on Rav Arora’s Substack, Noble Truths: Click here to read it. And I hope you will. I consider it a notable act of hospitality on his part to invite me to publicly disagree with him on this important topic and to offer my perspective.

In the process of writing and editing the piece, Rav and I have had two phone conversations as well. He asks a lot of really good and challenging questions, and forces me to think more carefully about my own positions. I appreciate that. The plan is to record a podcast where we revisit these themes and questions together.

I really didn’t plan to think and write so much about psychedelics, and I’m an unlikely candidate for the job, but here we are.

As I mentioned in a recent update post, I’m at T4G this week. We just finished the first day. It’s quite a production, let me tell you. But it’s been tremendous: encouraging, edifying, enjoyable. And the highlights are the random breakfast conversations in the hotel and reconnecting with people I haven’t seen in 10 years as much as the main sessions – which have been excellent. And I haven’t mentioned the singing or the books. Well, I can see why it’s been popular.

There’s been lots of discussion in the panels about the meaning of the current ‘moment’ in reformed evangelicalism, the conference’s role in that, and what comes next. I’ll surely have more thoughts, but for now I’m enjoying taking it all in.

Stepping Off the Tilt-A-Whirl of Social Media

I got it into my head that it would be good to take a month off social media. This decision, of which more later, came about after a few months of reading a lot about technology, media, the internet, and the massive changes causing so much upheaval in the West. There are tectonic shifts occurring under our feet in real time. Francis Fukuyama famously wrote in 1989 that we had reached The End of History, that liberalism had prevailed, and that we had entered a golden age wherein democracy would continue to spread across the world. Such a feeling was perhaps understandable, but it is no longer credible. With war in Europe once more, and liberal democracies everywhere struggling with debt, decadence, and internal decay, such illusions are dissipating. Even Fukuyama himself agrees. History has started up again.

With all this instability in the world, I felt compelled to try and understand the nature and implications of these changes. I plunged into Paul Kingsnorth’s essays about The Machine, which is shorthand for the cumulative effect of technology’s endless march onwards. I, like millions of others, watched The Social Dilemma which exposed how Social Media giants exercise massive control over their users. I learned about the movements towards decentralization, such as cryptocurrencies and homesteading, and the powerful movements from above towards ever-greater centralization, such as the dangers of Central Bank Digital Currencies. I read about how AI increasingly functions like mysterious capricious spirits; how people have been broken and undone by an addiction to technology. I read thoughtful Christians reflecting on the spiritual impact of technology in our lives.

I’ve been getting clarity on the fact that my relationship to technology is not that healthy, even in the process of learning so much about how technology so often shapes us more than we think. The words of Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman are coming back to me. The medium is the message. Each technology has an inherent logic that works itself out despite the intention of the user. As one writer pointed out in an essay titled Technology and the Soul:

Every major smartphone app, especially social media, is the interface for an artificial intelligence “algorithm” which constantly processes everything it “learns” about you, updating a virtual representation of you, testing hypotheses about it against your real behavior, and continuing to update the model. The goal is not merely to predict your patterns of behavior, but, by presenting you with customized digital stimuli, to actually shape what you do. What is commodified is not information from and about you, but your very attention and behavior.

The closest analogy is to the insidious, absurd, but dangerous manipulation of demons as described by C. S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters. Like Screwtape and Wormwood, digital technology companies observe and gather and analyze information about you, and it is not the “data” itself they seek to harvest, but your very mind and your will. Jaron Lanier, a former artificial intelligence innovator who has become a sharp critic and an evangelist for more responsible technology, clarifies that the “product” of social media is not information or attention but “the gradual, slight imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception.”

That’s helpful and sobering. So all this nudged me towards trying to do something concrete to reset and reboot the role of technology and social media in my life. But a big part of me, the addiction-prone part, didn’t want to change anything. So I posted my intention to take a month off of social media on… social media. This meant I was on the record – no backing out now.

But why exactly am I doing this? It’s important to be specific about the goals for such an undertaking. In order to answer this question, it’s worth reflecting on what negative effects technology and social media are currently having in my life. First, Facebook and Twitter can easily act as huge time-wasters. Too often I have found myself passively scrolling the endless string of content from the algorithm that was designed by expert psychologists and neuroscientists. They have chosen to use their hard-earned PhD’s to hijack the dopamine loops of countless millions, including me. Second, if I post anything to these platforms, I tend to compulsively check for engagement with that content every few hours for the next couple days. Third, daily news content & opinion comes my way via email, news websites, podcasts, and YouTube videos. My intake of these varies from day to day, but at times is excessive and unhealthy.

In addition to these effects upon me, there is also a definite negative impact on my family relationships. I am not nearly as mentally present with my wife and children if I have my phone in my hand. But even with the phone elsewhere, if I’ve filled my mind with these things to the point of saturation, I’m still not as engaged relationally as I want to be. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’ve been a complete zombie, but the difference is measurable and therefore lamentable. My wife and my family deserve the very best I have to offer, and I have too often given them far less – and for what?

So these are some of the things I am hoping to change during this coming month. I have removed Facebook and Twitter from my phone entirely, and will block access to them on my browsers. I will not watch news or current events opinions on YouTube, but take that kind of content in only through published articles. I will aim to not have any passive time on my phone, and to have nothing available on it to which I instinctively turn in those many small moments of tedium or delay throughout the day.

But what will replace all of this? You cannot create a vacuum without something filling its place. Well, more silence would be good. Silence encourages a prayerful heart, reflection, thoughtfulness. Good spiritual food is another thing I want to emphasize. Bible reading or audio is good, as is the daily prayer service of the Church of England. I would like to find a sermon series or seminary lecture series that I can dig into as well. I’m open to suggestions. It’s also a great chance to be outside more, with the weather warming up here in rural Quebec.

We moved out to the countryside a year and a half ago. A few things have been more difficult, but by and large I have loved it. The natural beauty is awesome and endless: stunning sunrises and sunsets, flocks of geese noisily settling down for the night in nearby fields, a distant train quietly moving across a winter field with a long trail of snow floating behind it, the power of the wind whipping across the landscape, and on and on. Living out here, you can’t help but recognize that, despite our modern conceits, we still need to bow to the natural forces that can so easily overwhelm and humble us. The city erases the wild; the suburb domesticates it; the countryside just barely keeps it at bay. Unplugging from ubiquitous technology allows for a deeper connection to natural beauty which, for me at least, speaks to my soul of the undomesticated Creator.

I will also aim to write more. Silence really helps me to write more, as the stillness allows my heart and mind to come up with ideas. Although I’ve been writing on and off for about 20 years, creative writing has been very intermittent. For example, after a season of reading a lot of poetry, I found myself writing some. I say it that way because it sort of bubbled up; I didn’t sit down and decide to write poetry. Recently, I noticed that I stopped writing poetry immediately upon returning to work after a season of parental leave.

I’ve long wanted to try my hand at fiction, whether through a short story or a short novel, but nothing has come yet. I recently discovered a chapter’s worth of fiction that I wrote about ten years ago, and I was very pleasantly surprised. I didn’t really remember writing it, so it felt like reading someone else’s writing – and I enjoyed it. If I could find the right idea, and then have the mental space to develop it, who knows? I might just write something worthwhile.

And of course I want to write about this specific experience of resetting my relationship to technology and social media. I’m not sure what that will look like, but it will probably include some shorter pieces on this blog, and then something like a personal reflective essay with some broader application. I am not, after all, the only one who struggles to keep technology in its place. If anything, I belong to the last generation that will have had a memory of life without technology and the internet as an ever-present reality. I suspect that in the coming years our society, and young people especially, will be desperate to reconnect with nature and the transcendent as technology leaves them empty, frazzled, and addicted.

Vaccine Passports for Churches? Part 2

Introduction

Something unusual is happening. A little over a week ago I penned an article that seemed to boil up from my heart when I first heard the Quebec government’s announcement that churches would have to implement vaccine passports, excluding the unvaccinated from their worship services. I received a large amount of feedback from all kinds of people in all kinds of places. And although my piece had to do specifically with the situation in Quebec, readers connected from all over the globe, including sizable numbers from New Zealand. I don’t know anyone in New Zealand. Clearly the topic struck a nerve.

In this follow-up, drawing on the many conversations I have had with church leaders here and there, I would like to ‘think out loud’ as a way of advocating for wisdom, courage, and balance. I don’t believe there is a one-size-fits-all option that captures biblical faithfulness for each and every church. That being said, I believe some things are out of bounds, which was the point of that first article.

What I Said, What Happened

On the question of vaccine passports in churches, I landed decidedly on “No!”. This resonated with quite a number of people, though certainly not all. One’s response to my argument against vaccine passports, it seems to me, has a lot to do with how one understands the seriousness of the health crisis and the wisdom of public health directives thus far in the pandemic. Those who reached out to me to share their disagreement generally had more to say about those matters than Biblical principles.

This gets at one of the most pernicious aspects of this whole Covid moment. For those who see it as akin to a meteor hurling towards earth, no cost is too high and no freedoms are too precious to escape this threat and live to see another day. And this makes a lot of sense if that is more or less the nature of the threat. Others see a public health and media establishment always catastrophizing and assuming the worst, and regulations being enforced which seem more like theatre than anything based in data. And the difference between these two paradigms has a lot to do with where you get your news. In my first post I purposely avoided getting into such epidemiological details, knowing that it would only distract from the main point I was seeking to make.

What was that main point, you ask? It was simply to argue that this latest regulation was categorically different than all the previous regulations imposed on houses of worship. My point was this mandate crossed a line that had not yet been crossed in this province. I sought to ground that argument in the Scriptures, as I was writing primarily to fellow Christians. If I were to write an open letter to the government I would base my argument on other grounds, of which there are plenty to choose from.

It was my hope that houses of worship across the province would unite in defying this decree, applying enough immediate pressure to cause the government to rescind it. That has not happened. It was also my hope that Christian pastors and elders would be agreed upon the conviction that to install such a system in their church would be a stain upon that church’s witness, such that whatever other options were considered, this one would be set to the side as a non-option. This has not happened either.

And so we find ourselves in a situation where we are faced with dire choices, none of which are ideal. What are we to do? How do we go about weighing these options? Many pastors and church leaders are facing decisions which may prove decisive for their future ministries and for the continued existence of their churches. The stakes have never been higher in our lifetimes.

Decisions, Decisions

Many have noted that social media tends to amplify those voices which are on the extreme ends of any given question. This has something to do with human psychology but also with the kinds of algorithms that control the dials for what gets shown to who. One of the things I have noticed in the course of this pandemic is how this dynamic has played itself out. Needless to say, rare is the social media post dealing with any of these covid-related issues that actually builds bridges between opposing sides. One of the results of this is we become reinforced in our way of thinking.

Decisions, decisions.

The temptation is to view anyone more critical of the government as extreme and divisive, and anyone more compliant to the government as cowardly and terminally compromised. When these temptations are indulged, the resulting rhetoric rolls off the tongue – or off the keyboard – with uncanny ease. It is very easy to do, and it feels good too. But I do not think that it is ultimately all that helpful for anyone.

The reality in Quebec is that there are a lot fewer evangelical churches per capita than anywhere else in North America. This means that, by and large, there is more diversity inside those churches than might be the case elsewhere. Why? Because instead of having six churches to choose from in a given town, there is one, maybe two options within reasonable driving distance. The kind of sorting according to personality types and political leanings that can happen in places with a higher density of believers has not happened here to nearly the same degree.

This diversity means that unity in the church requires constant effort. For many pastors faced with this government mandate – which, due to emergency powers, legally has the force of law – the question of unity is a critical one. In many churches where there is a wide diversity of opinion, there are two options which are guaranteed to cause a catastrophic split in their church: 1. Imposing a vaccine passport system in compliance with the mandate, or 2. Holding services without a vaccine passport system, in open defiance to the mandate. Either of those options will instantly alienate a large percentage of their members, making it impossible for them to continue worshipping there. Some zealous folks might say “Good riddance! Let us be rid of them, and separate the sheep from the goats.”

But the pastors I know facing this exact situation are good shepherds. They know that despite whatever deep differences of opinion, these are genuine believers that need to be vitally connected to a local church. They also know that some of them need much pastoral care, prayer, and counseling. And so the question inevitably becomes: Is this decision worth splitting the church? Is it really the only faithful option?

Many are choosing to avoid either of those options, which we might call the two far ends of the spectrum. Among the middle options I have heard floated are the following:

  • Close in-person gatherings and live-stream services.
  • Close in-person gatherings and live-stream services to small groups of congregants gathered in homes.
  • Practice “righteous deception” in the way of the Israelite midwives, purporting to live-stream services while actually meeting in person in a discreet location.

Nobody landing on one of these options would consider it ideal. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t much to be preferred over a permanently damaging church split. In a situation as fraught and complex as this one, it may be that the best outcome we can hope for is a course of action that nobody really loves, but that everyone can at least understand and support without violating their convictions. Such a decision will require that everyone lay aside their personal preferences. It will show that what unites us in Christ is stronger than what divides us in the flesh. And this, I believe, can be a wholesome, faithful, God-honoring path to chart for many churches.

But not all churches. There are some that have a unity of conviction among the leadership, with a congregation eager to follow their lead. Some of these are opting to openly defy the passport mandate while continuing to take all other precautions to reduce risk. Indeed, the risk they are taking is in the form of hefty fines and legal troubles. There is courage here that does not seek to offend, a gracious refusal to comply. I applaud and support these brothers and sisters in Christ. They are able to stand up to government overreach without causing violence to the unity of the body of Christ under their care.

Dangers Everywhere

One of the things I learned from reading the Puritans it that there is spiritual danger everywhere. Sin is ever-present in this broken world, and no course of action is without its own particular temptations. For those churches and leaders who have decided to openly defy the government mandate, it is important to be aware and wary of the ditch along the path. Those who have been loudest in their defiance of what they perceive as government tyranny have at times engaged in rhetoric intimating that anything short of equal defiance was compromise motivated by cowardice. In other words, this is the only faithful option.

What often went unstated however was that such judgments presupposed an interpretation of the epidemiological situation that differed greatly from the mainstream narrative. In some circles, these alternative interpretations of the pandemic were dominant. Fed largely by conservative media from the USA, as well as some other online sources, these views ranged from conspiracy theories (it’s a Plandemic!) to far more plausible ideas like ‘the public health establishment has mishandled this pandemic in a historic way.’

Whatever else we might say about such questions, they are not addressed directly in Scripture. We cannot find chapter and verse to explain to us the best practices for a modern 21st-century nation-wide response to a novel virus causing widespread sickness and death. But some of the voices decrying government actions were loudest precisely on those points where Scripture was silent, taking on at times the ethos and energy of a culture warrior or political activist rather than a pastor or Christian leader.

But still I have been quite sympathetic to such leaders. I respect their courage and the clarity of their convictions. The dangers they decry (the infringement of religious liberty and authoritarianism) are not imaginary, even if we perceive them differently. At the same time, I know my heart is not immune to cowardice. But the spiritual danger I see in such a posture is to run roughshod over those Christians who are fearful and do not know what to believe. Competing narratives seem to offer wildly different accounts of the government’s actions. For some, they are heroes making the tough calls to keep everyone safe; for others, tyrants and authoritarians gleefully stripping away civil liberties from the unwitting public. Who is right? And must it be one or the other? Is cowardice really the only possible explanation for the various paths churches have taken throughout this pandemic?

I find that kind of rhetoric to be reminiscent of the ‘fighting fundamentalists’ of the 20th-century. Certain on every minute point of doctrine, nearly every church but theirs was hopelessly compromised and deceived by Satan. Discontent with co-belligerence, they chose belligerency towards all who differed. But this bred a toxic kind of self-righteousness that was not attractive to unbelievers or spiritually healthy for believers. It led to divisions and schism where they were not at all necessary.

As church leaders face some of the toughest decisions of their ministries, many are crying out for wisdom and guidance through prayer and fasting. May God grant them such graces in abundance, both to lead well and to avoid the dangers which lie inevitably along any of the possible paths. And as friends, family members, and fellow believers choose differently, may the unity we have in Christ enable us to disagree charitably, even warmly.

Loving Our Neighbours (Jabbed or Not)

The Biblical principle most often cited to me to support the idea of vaccination passports in churches is love for one’s neighbour. The questions are perennial: What does it mean to love our neighbour in this situation? And in the words that called forth that great parable of the Good Samaritan, just who is my neighbour? Many reasonably see vaccination as an act of neighbourly love. So far, so good. From this premise many conclude that a refusal to get vaccinated is motivated by a selfishness and lack of love for others. I don’t think that’s true, but for the sake of argument let’s assume it is.

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that, in Canada as well as many other places in the world, there is a growing hostility towards the unvaccinated that has dark foreboding element to it. In its worst manifestations, the unvaxxed are treated as if they were disease-ridden, unclean, and guilty for the sufferings of others, deserving whatever comes to them. Such scapegoating and marginalization essentially make the unvaccinated a group of societal outcasts. The speed and viciousness with which large portions of our society seem to have “othered” and dehumanized the unvaccinated is one of the most troubling things I have seen in a long time.

But are they not our neighbours too? Do people cease to be our neighbours when they make choices we disagree with? Shall the church of Christ join in the mob calling for them to be shoved to the margins of society? Isn’t the church called especially to those on the margins? What does loving these neighbours look like?

Love, I am told, is patient and kind. It is not arrogant or rude, irritable or resentful. It assumes the best about others’ motivations. Love does not let the categories and divisions of the world tear apart the unity that Christ purchased with His precious blood.

Vaccine Passports for Churches?

(This is first of two posts on this topic. Part 2 can be found here.)

It is a dark day for churches in Quebec, and my heart is heavy. Word came down on the evening of December 16th that houses of worship have been mandated by the provincial government to turn away from their public services those without vaccine passports.

I do not make it a habit to get on my soapbox and declare my thoughts about public policy, but today I am making an exception. I would like to try and make the argument that this new regulation from the government is categorically different than any other regulation that has heretofore been applied to churches, and that in asking churches to do this, the government is asking churches to disobey the teaching of the Scriptures and to betray the essence of being a church.

Elders and pastors have carried a heavy burden since the very start of this pandemic. I know the weight of it, as I served as an elder for the first chaotic year of the pandemic. All the local church elders and pastors I’ve spoken to, without exception, affirmed that they have had under their shepherding care people at both ends of the spectrum (and everywhere in between) when it comes to responding to this pandemic. This government decree has, with one fell swoop, made each of their lives and leadership exponentially more difficult.

Church leaders have, by and large, done their best to thread the needle during these two tortuous years, and have repeatedly had to adapt at the last minute to ever-changing regulations, coming up with new policies for their gatherings. Each of those decisions has been stressful, demanding, and usually criticized by some for going too far and by others for not going far enough. I have immense respect and admiration for these faithful leaders.

When we were mandated to wear masks indoors, we bought masks and wore them. When we were restricted to 50, and then 25 people in the building, we mobilized volunteers and multiplied services, running three per Sunday at one point. We also bought equipment, trained volunteers, and started live-streaming services. When singing was restricted, we chafed and struggled but we sang with our hearts instead of our lips. We did all these things because, as hard as these restrictions were, they did not seem to directly go against the teaching of the Scriptures which we hold as the only ultimate authority in matters of faith and worship.

I will not pretend to be of two minds about this. The announcement from the government marks the start of something completely new. Everything that has come before has been on the scale from mildly to extremely inconvenient. To my mind, the church in Quebec now faces a test not of creativity and flexibility, or of neighbourly love and graciousness, but of conviction and principle.

To be plain: I think it unconscionable for a local church, which is a visible manifestation of the universal church of Christ on earth, to enforce this kind of discrimination. We simply cannot say in our call to worship, “This church opens wide her doors,” while at the same time having someone with a QR-Code scanner shutting those doors on the unvaccinated.

Yes, this new regulation is different. I believe it asks churches to disobey the clear teaching and principles of Scripture that we find in several passages. I will limit myself to two that come to mind, for the sake of brevity and clarity.

First, James 2. In this passage, the church is commanded to not show favoritism by seating a rich person in a good seat and telling a poor person to “Stand over there” or to sit on the floor. The passage concludes by saying to those who behave this way: “haven’t you made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” (James 2:4). The principle is simple: favoritism that makes such distinctions among the body of believers is wrong. The distinction need not be between rich and poor, but between any two groups of people within the church body who are not treated the same. More could be said, but we move on to a second passage.

In Galatians 2, Peter fell into hypocrisy by separating from one group of believers (the Gentile believers in Antioch) out of a fear of displeasing another group (legalistic Jewish believers from Jerusalem). Paul rebuked him publicly, for he saw that creating such a division in the body of Christ was tantamount to “deviating from the truth of the gospel” (Gal. 2:14). These passages do not mince words – let us heed them and consider their implications carefully.

And although the Scriptural principles are clear, perhaps an even more powerful line of argument is found in the power of symbolism.

So let’s picture the scene: In order to obey this mandate, someone will need to stand at the front door with a device that has some government application on it. And that person will need to take each arriving worshipper in turn and scan their government-provided code, at which point their device will communicate with a government database, exchange some packets of information, and find out if they are allowed to come in and worship the living God in person.  

But not so fast – a successful scan will not be enough. A photo ID will also be required to establish that the person is who they claim to be. The ecclesiastical bouncer will need to be ready to turn people away; people who are looking for hope, life-giving truth, and fellowship. Yes, that person will need to be willing to say words to this effect: “You cannot come in to this church, since you do not meet our government’s definition of ‘fully vaccinated.’ You will have to turn around, get back in your car, and go home.” Who is willing to do this work? Are you?

It is a shocking scene even to imagine, but we must imagine it and be clear about what it means. Tragically, I assume it will be a scene playing out at some houses of worship this Sunday and in coming weeks.

While different churches have responded differently thus far in the pandemic, the vast majority have made extraordinary efforts to meet and exceed the safety measures required by the government regulations, even when some of those regulations had awfully thin rationales behind them; the vast majority have sought to honor and obey the magistrates over them. But brothers and sisters, this is not one more rule among many; this is not just a new item on the list. No, this is something we cannot do. Whatever creative solutions and workarounds churches come up with – and there is surely a place for that – this is a line no church should cross.

I earnestly hope and pray that houses of worship of every type and stripe will hold firm to their convictions on these matters and present a unified front of non-compliance. I also hope and expect that those houses of worship will continue to follow all the other recommended safety guidelines even as they disobey this new rule. The posture must be one of gracious but firm refusal: We have bent over backwards, we have stretched, we have multiplied our services, we have taxed our volunteers, we have found ways to make it work, but we cannot and we will not do this thing. To do so would be to cease to be the kind of church we say we are.

The people of God are surely willing to be inconvenienced to a great extent, even to sacrifice much. But we cannot betray those principles and truths which amount to our very obedience to the One who is forever and infinitely above any provincial or national authority. We cannot turn hungry and thirsty souls away from the place where they might hear the words of life spoken to them. The heart of the gospel is the free offer of forgiving and renewing grace to any and all who would come to Jesus Christ by faith. We cannot make such an offer to people who have been turned away because the government told us to.

One feels that this moment is pregnant with meaning, and that much is at stake. The dramatic tension is high. In such a moment, dramatic words are not uncalled for. And I can’t think of any better suited to the moment than those purportedly uttered by the reformer Martin Luther (slightly adapted for our purposes). May this be the essence of the unified voice of the churches of the Lord Jesus Christ in response to this moment:

“Unless we are convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures and by clear reason, we are bound by the Scriptures. Our conscience is captive to the Word of God. We cannot and we will not enforce this mandate, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here we stand. We cannot do otherwise. God help us. Amen.”

(I think maybe even a Roman Catholic could say “Amen” to that).

I conclude with a word to church leaders, among whom are many dear friends and family members. I do not envy your position. Whatever decision you make, there will be emails, messages, and phone calls to face from those who disagree. And indeed, many churches are led by teams of elders, meaning that there is a diversity of viewpoints on all kinds of matters among them. The final decision may not be what every member (or any one member) of that group desired. And yet, for the good of the church, and the glory of God, decisions are made, policies put in place, and the work continues. I have tried to make my case as plain and clear as possible. And while I see a red line here, others may not. Even in disagreement, may we be known for a remarkable gentleness and humility. We never know all that goes into a group decision. Let us believe the best about each other and seek to preserve that precious bond of unity when all around us is division.

Ivan Ilych is Alive

One of the purposes of this blog is to help people access the world of literature. (You can pronounce it the boring way, or you can do it properly, the way Michael Caine would – “litshratshurr“). I do this through book reviews and short reflections on things that I’m reading. Not only does this help me process what I’m reading, it also hopefully gives others a taste of the benefit from engaging with this material, which often feels too distant and intimidating. One of the things that compelled me to make the effort to read “the classics” was hearing how they had such an impact on others, and observing others appreciate them.

Recently I was listening to Karen Swallor Prior in discussion with Matthew Barrett on the Credo Podcast. One of the things that came up was Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, and that discussion prompted me to re-read it. One of the nice things about this story is that it is so short. Everyone has heard of Tolstoy, but most people do not have the courage to take on some of his better-known novels such as War and Peace (1400 pages) or Anna Karenina (950 pages).

If you would like to read it, you can download it here (I’m not sure about the quality of the translation – but hey! it’s free). Note that the following reflection contains spoilers if you haven’t read the story yet.

I am struck by the power of words, ideas, and story. In only 50 pages or so, Tolstoy harnesses that power and delivers to the reader a profound encounter with truth. One of the first things that strikes me in the story is the brutal honesty of the internal dialogue. Tolstoy gets inside the mind and around the various self-deceptions we employ and reveals what is truly there in all of its ugliness. It is done in a matter-of-fact way:

Each one thought or felt, “Well, he’s dead but I’m alive!” But the more intimate of Ivan Ilych’s acquaintances, his so-called friends, could not help thinking also that they would now have to fulfill the very tiresome demands of propriety by attending the funeral service and paying a visit of condolence to the widow.

The story reveals how hard it is to come to believe something that you really don’t want to believe, something that has profound and far-reaching implications for the verdict of how you lived your life. We oppose these kinds of paradigm-shifts in many areas of our lives because re-evaluation is costly. We are invested in our way of seeing things. Within the story this is seen in everybody’s stubborn denial of their own mortality (save for the peasant Gerasim), and especially in Ivan’s wrestling with whether he has lived a good life. There were many layers to peel away before he could get to the honest core of this question. It is only at the end of a long struggle that he breaks through his own defenses to the truth:

… the question suddenly occurred to him: “What if my whole life has been wrong?” It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending. There was nothing to defend.

… he saw himself—all that for which he had lived—and saw clearly that it was not real at all, but a terrible and huge deception which had hidden both life and death.

There is another dimension to this. Just like Ivan has been living in a cocoon of self-deception, the same is true for his colleagues and his family in their own ways. As mentioned above, they are all in denial about their own inevitable death. But without the harsh and inescapable pain to shock them into a sober honesty, we do not see these characters make any progress towards escaping that deception.

At the very end, in the last two or three hours of Ivan’s life, he experiences a conversion and rebirth. He breaks through into light. Tolstoy does not name Christ, but rather describes the change of heart and makes an oblique reference to God:

At that very moment Ivan Ilych fell through and caught sight of the light, and it was revealed to him that though his life had not been what it should have been, this could still be rectified. He asked himself, “What is the right thing?” and grew still, listening. Then he felt that someone was kissing his hand. He opened his eyes, looked at his son, and felt sorry for him. His wife came up to him and he glanced at her. She was gazing at him open-mouthed, with undried tears on her nose and cheek and a despairing look on her face. He felt sorry for her too.

…He tried to add, “Forgive me,” but said “Forego” and waved his hand, knowing that He whose understanding mattered would understand.

… He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. “Where is it? What death?” There was no fear because there was no death.


In place of death there was light.


“So that’s what it is!” he suddenly exclaimed aloud. “What joy!”

Modern secular readers are probably tempted to view this as a moral reformation or a kind of epiphany, but Tolstoy clearly has something deeper in mind. It is quite common in literature for the conversion of characters to be described in ways that hint at Christ but do not explicitly name him. I’m not entirely sure of the reason for this. C.S. Lewis discusses it somewhere, commenting on the habit of medieval Christians to ‘hide’ Christ in pagan themes and deities in their fiction, something he does in his writing as well.

Nevertheless, the Christian reader can recognize many (though not all) of the elements of true conversion: conviction of sin, repentance for sin, and a changed heart with new desires. Is this fictional portrayal sufficient to point others towards faith in Christ for their salvation? No. But what good fiction (and good art generally) does is faithfully represent some part of reality, it serves as a signpost on the good road. In doing so it adds one more voice to that choir made up of countless voices, singing not the same note but a great and variegated harmony.