Invictus

A movie entitled Invictus was recently released. It is an interesting title based on a compelling true story. However, my subject isn’t the movie but the famous poem to which its title refers, written by William Ernest Henley in 1875:

INVICTUS

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

It is said that Henley wrote those words in defiance of fate at the time his leg had to be amputated due to tubercular infection. He battled illness most of his life and later suffered the loss of a daughter, whose untimely death came at the age of 5. Henley died at the age of 53 and was buried in the same churchyard as his daughter.

I truly believe that this poem is a classic work of art. It’s beautiful, and I admire it for its beauty. Yet, it represents an idea that is proven time and again to be a false one. In the midst of trials in his own life, Henley tried to stand up against the forces that seemed to conspire against him and he refused to bow to anything that threatened him. He tried to see himself as invincible — which is what the title that was later given to the poem means — in the midst of life’s challenges. A brave sentiment without a doubt and, of course, he knew it wasn’t true. His poetry was more a beautiful wish than it was a statement of fact. Life was sometimes too cruel for him to avoid the ultimate truth:

However hard we try, none of us will ever be able to master our fate.

There are too many things that are completely out of our control. Henley, himself, learned it time and again and, in the end, he died as all of us do.

The Bible says, in Hebrews 9:27, that everyone is destined to die once and after that to face the judgment.

The unavoidable truth is that, no matter how hard we try to fight the inevitabilities of life and death, there are many things we simply cannot avoid. No matter how much anti-wrinkle cream we employ, age still overcomes us eventually. And, no matter how many funerals we avoid attending, our own funeral is one our bodies are not likely to avoid.

We are not the master of our fate and, if we try to be the captain of our soul, we will eventually find that we are only capable of captaining it into ultimate shipwreck. Our souls are not ultimately unconquerable because even the strongest soul cannot ultimately escape death.

I am thankful, though, that we don’t have to be lords of our own lives. There is ONE who has a plan for our lives and, if we allow HIM to be the true captain of our soul, we have the assurance of eternal life with HIM. That, of course, is the very God who made us. We are not the master of our ultimate fate, but HE is.

Let HIM pilot your soul. Let HIM take HIS rightful place in your life. If you do then, no matter how rough the seas may be along the journey, you CAN rise up in defiance of evil, pain, and even death itself because you can know that these things will NOT have the ultimate victory.

This is what the Apostle Paul said in the Bible:

“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. — 1 Corinthians 15:55-57

These words are also poetry but, in my opinion, they are even more beautiful than the words of Henley. Why? Because, unlike the false hope of Invictus, these words are also truth. Even the sting of death itself is gone when once we trust our lives into the hands of God.

The reality is that the words of Henley don’t need to be changed much to be true for the follower of Christ. Whereas his words marked defiance of the inevitable, when once we know the true Captain of our souls we can cry out very similar words in the certain hope of the eternal.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
Christ is the master of my fate:
He is the captain of my soul.

I apologize on behalf of my Christian brothers and sisters

There is a certain brand of “Christianity” I have seen which makes me very, very sad. It’s a mindset held by some within certain church circles that is about as contrary to the mindset of Christ as one can come. It’s a mentality that basically says, without going so far as to use these words, “Jesus loves everyone, but he loves me most.” Another way of referring to it is to call it what it is: sheer racism.

I saw a comment recently from one American church-person saying that we need to get the blueprints for the Berlin Wall and build our own along the Mexican-American border. For him, this idea wasn’t simply born of a desire for better security at the borders but of the thought that all Mexican people should be banned from “his” country. Another church-person, in the same conversation, blamed all of America’s problems on “foreigners” and indicated that the “Christian” cause would best be served by kicking “them” out so that America can return to its “Christian roots.”

I can’t be too blunt in saying that — if we define Christian to mean “like Christ” — these people are not Christian in any way, shape or form when they maintain such attitudes. Now, “Christian” is usually defined as someone who has asked Christ into their hearts to be their Lord and Savior, thus it is true that those who utter racist comments in the name of “Christ” might be “saved,” but there is no way that viewpoint reflects Christ or gives Him glory.

A similar breed of racist religion existed in Jesus’ day. Jews tended to look down on Gentiles as somewhat inferior and, of course, Gentiles were anyone who were not Jews. But Paul made it clear several times in the New Testament that, in Christ, there is no distinction between Jews or Gentiles. He even said this:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” — Galatians 3:28

In the world of the Jews during Jesus’ time, there was one group in particular that many of the Jewish religious people looked down on. They were called the Samaritans. Many of the Jews hated what they considered to be their false views on religion and they saw them as people who were of no real use to society. They looked down on them and refused to associate with them. As long as they stayed on “their side” of the border, there was no problem, but they did not want them in their midst.

That’s why Jesus told his story about a “good Samaritan,” because his audience found it hard to believe there could be any such thing. In his story about the man who was robbed and left at the side of the road, it was the good “religious” people who ignored him, and it was the member of his people’s hated race who rescued him. The story was specifically and unashamedly a statement against racist religiosity.

Alas, many who hold to a harsher form of Christianity appeal more to the Old Testament and feel they can justify their mindset from there. They are wrong, however, as even the Old Testament Law was very clear about God’s attitude towards people of other races. Here’s what God said to the Israelites:

“The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.” — Leviticus 19:34

That’s why I apologize right now on behalf of so many of my Christian brothers and sisters who have placed their patriotism above their faith and treated so many as second-class citizens. They may be true to God in many things, but they do NOT represent Him in their attitudes toward those of various races or backgrounds.

Following Christ is about loving God, and it’s also all about loving the people He loves. And He loves EVERYONE equally. NOBODY is better or closer to God just because they speak English or have a certain color of skin. In God’s sight, we are all equal and unless we can learn to love one another — loving “the alien in our midst” as much as the “native-born” — we cannot begin to claim we are following the ways of Christ.

If you have been hurt by church people who have treated you as somehow inferior because you are of a different race, I know that I cannot make up for the wrong they’ve done you. Yet, I do apologize on behalf of the segments of the Church who are guilty of this sin as best I can and want you to know that I KNOW that race is IRRELEVANT in God’s eyes and must be equally irrelevant in the lives of any true Christ-follower.

On the other hand, if you are a Christian who has held this racist mindset, perhaps because of the influence of your background or teachings you received in your youth, I understand how you got there. You were influenced by others and, in a way, I don’t blame you. We are all products of our environments in many ways. However, I do call your attention to the Word of God and strongly urge you to repent.

We are ALL sinful people in need of forgiveness and grace. God has given us that forgiveness and grace and, just as He has done so for us, He has called us to do for one another. That love for one another is not intended to be only for those who are “like us.” It’s equally intended for those who are different from us. After all, in reality we are all the same. We are sinners in need of grace and, until we accept those who are different from us as equals in our midst, we can never honestly claim to be channels of that grace.

Does God use doctors?

Recently, I heard someone say the following words:

“I don’t need any doctors. I go to my family physician, Jesus Christ.”

Unfortunately, there are some Christians who actually stand by this credo with a passion. They believe that going to the doctor is a sin and a sign of a lack of faith. I’ve had discussions with people who make this claim, and it frankly makes me very sad.

As we talked about in my last post, God does sometimes choose to heal miraculously. However, I am equally convinced that God often chooses to heal through the agency of people He has gifted with the special knowledge and abilities of the medical profession.

I pointed out in one debate that Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke, was a physician. One man tried to argue that Luke was a physician, but that he stopped practicing as a doctor once he became a Christian. The implied suggestion was that he repented of the sin of being a doctor once he came to know Christ.

Besides the obvious insult contained in that argument toward all the dedicated Christian doctors out there, this argument simply doesn’t hold water. For one thing, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that Luke ever changed his profession after becoming a follower of Christ. In fact, the only biblical evidence indicates the exact opposite. Toward the end of his letter to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul says the following:

Our dear friend, Luke, the doctor, and Demas send greetings. — Colossians 4:14

There is nothing in the Bible to suggest that the early Christians were against doctors. In fact, the only verses in the Bible that talk about doctors are actually quite positive.

Jesus himself used doctors as an example, and when he did so he did it in a positive way. In Matthew 9:12, he said:

It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

Some readers, by lifting this comment out of context, might argue that Jesus is referring to himself as the doctor and that, therefore, this comment strengthens the argument that he, and he alone, is the doctor we need. A look at the context, however, refutes such an argument. Let’s look at the whole passage:

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and “sinners” came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and ‘sinners’?”

On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” — Matthew 9: 10-13

The Pharisees were unhappy because Jesus was spending time with people they considered to be sinners. In their legalistic understanding of their faith, they believed that there were certain “kinds” of people they were not to associate with. Jesus was associating with those very people, and so they were offended.

When the Pharisees challenged Jesus about hanging out with “sinners,” he compared himself with a doctor. He said that healthy people don’t need a doctor, but sick people do. Then he said that he had come to sinners, not to the righteous.

In other words, he was proclaiming himself to be like a doctor of the soul, one who had come not for those who already had their lives together but for those who did not. He was not, however, using the illustration literally to talk about himself and his relationship to physical health. There are other places where we see him healing people physically, but in this case he was talking about his greater mission to those who were considered “sinners.”

Therefore, he used doctors as a positive example. Just as sick people need a doctor, sinners need a saviour.

This statement, which we’ve just read in Matthew, is also repeated in Mark and Luke. If Jesus acknowledged that sick people need a doctor, how can his followers deny the role of the medical profession in God’s plan?

Love yourself, part 2

In my last post, we began a discussion about the statements Paul made about God’s kind of love, agape love, in 1 Corinthians 13. As these statements can be applied to how God wants to teach us to love in all our relationships, we considered how each of these statements can be applied in our relationship with the one person we can never get away from…ourself. We specifically considered 3 of the statements from that chapter and now we will consider 4 more:

1. Love is not boastful or proud

   We are to love ourselves, but we are not supposed to be lovers of self. In 2 Timothy 3, Paul describes what happens when people become boastful and proud, turning into lovers of self.

   The New International Version translates the first part of verse 2 in this way:

   “People will be lovers of themselves.”

   Have you ever seen somebody who was clearly a lover of himself or herself? It’s not a pretty sight! Whenever we start to think the world revolves around “me, me, me,” we become annoying people to be around. We’re being selfish and, really, of no earthly use to those around us. That’s the result of becoming self-ish. It’s a different thing than simply loving ourselves with God’s kind of love.

   “Love is patient and kind.
   Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude.
   It does not demand its own way.
   It is not irritable,
   and it keeps no record of being wronged.
   It does not rejoice about injustice
   but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.
   Love never gives up, never loses faith,
   is always hopeful,
   and endures through every circumstance.”
   
   – 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7

2. Love is not rude

   The root meaning of the word translated as “rude” in the Greek derives from behaving indecently, improperly, disgracefully or dishonorably. When we don’t treat ourselves honourably, we disrespect the person God made us to be. We are to treat our selves with courtesy and respect.

   Have you ever been rude to yourself? I remember I once had a good friend who was always putting himself down. I often got after him when he did that. Why? Because when we put ourselves down, we are dishonouring God’s temple, dishonouring the person God made us to be. Instead of talking down on ourselves and focusing on our flaws, we need to learn to celebrate the things we can do and thank God for making us all into people whose lives have a purpose.

3. Love is not irritable

   Did you know that when we are irritable, we do ourselves no favours? We just make it hard to be around us; alienating others and making ourselves miserable. To be irritable means to be easily irritated or annoyed.

   When we’re easily irritated or annoyed by others, this is usually a strong sign that we are not at peace with ourselves.

   I remember a point in my life when I was going through a time of depression & beating up on myself as a result. I noticed I was no longer happy around people anymore either. I would lose my temper easily if I had to wait too long in line or if somebody cut me off in traffic, I was easily hurt and offended by things other people said or did. But as I came to the place of being at peace with myself again, I realized that these other minor irritations in life didn’t really matter.

   If you get upset easily at situations and other people, I suggest you take a look in the mirror. Ask yourself if the real problem is that you are irritated with yourself — not at peace with who you are, the person God made you. God wants to teach you to let go of that irritable nature and let him fill you with his love.

4. Love keeps no record of being wronged

   I think we all know if we hold a grudge against other people, we’re not honoring God. If somebody has hurt you and you keep holding on to your anger — if your tendency is to not forgive but simply say, “I won’t talk to you anymore,” you’re not operating in God’s kind of love, pure and simple.

   But did you know that the same applies toward yourself? When you beat up on yourself and refuse to forgive yourself, you’re in the flesh. To not forgive yourself, in fact, is a sin.

   “If we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” — 1 John 1:9

   When you confess your sins to Jesus, he forgives you absolutely and completely. He even washes away your wrongs so that they no longer exist. When you continue to act as if the past is still there when Jesus has already taken care of it, you are living in contempt of the blood of Jesus, refusing to accept what Christ has done for you and failing to trust him to keep his promises. Not only that but you are sinning against yourself by violating the rule of love. When you love as Christ has taught you to love, you can’t beat up on yourself. You have to keep no record of wrongs. Say “I’m sorry” where you need to say “I’m sorry,” then forget about it.

   This is only possible with God’s help yet you need only ask him to help you as he wants to set you free from the sin of unforgiveness toward yourself.

   Believe me when I tell you that I know what I’m talking about here! I’ve struggled with this myself! But then, one day I wrote down a list of things I was holding against myself and burnt it, I reminded myself that these things were gone and I was no longer meant to hold onto them.

   Too many Christians spend too much of their time in self-examination. If you stare at yourself all the time you will always find flaws you can pick on! But if you are a Christ-follower, you are not called to excessive self-examination; you’re called to God examination! Look to Him and He’ll take care of you.

These thoughts are just a few examples of how the words of 1 Corinthians might help us change the way we look at ourselves. A Christ-follower has no right to live in contempt of himself. We are meant to love what God loves and to forgive what God forgives.

What kind of relationship do you have with yourself today? Will you let God renew your mind and teach you to see yourself the way He sees you…as forgiven and loved? It’s time to learn to love YOU as God loves you! Agreed, it’s not always easy to do, but that’s one of the goals of living in God’s love and, if you’ll be patient with yourself, God can teach you to love yourself more every day.