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Ask the Kids: The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkein
In the Closet: Friend, Move Up to a Better Place
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In the Closet: Keeping Secrets with God in a not-so-secret world
Essay 10: Friend, Move Up to a Better Place
Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more than they are doing now.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I deleted my personal Instagram account several months ago. I could be ashamed to say it, I guess, but I’m not: It was a pretty big deal.
I’d gotten too wrapped up in it, had too many fresh leads, potential opportunities. It was second nature to me, like opening my refrigerator when I’m hungry.
I’d been eagle-eyeing the networking–that modern, holy grail of finding my people. After all, I was just a mom waking up from the sleepy toddler-raising years, a bit hungry for a creative writing outlet and any sign that my identity as a grownup was still intact. It was entry-level stuff, wading in ankle-deep, and I was pleasantly surprised to find what anyone might describe as community–the gathering of like-minded folk who shared my love of written words. The lovely connections and support, the simple, attractive photos with insightful, 200-word count musings, witty comments, banter with and encouragement from successful writers. In other words, I was beginning to belong somewhere. And bonus points: it was only a matter of time until I realized some mediocre fame.
It was about then I came across a post of a popular Christian influencer whose words jarred and bumped around inside my heart. My reckoning had arrived by way of too-late nights thumbing my phone, a bright screen illuminating my tightly-held, unspoken hope that I, too, had a dream to fulfill. I suddenly, finally got an uneasy feeling I was getting too comfortable with living in this old Babylon.
The influencer said something to the effect of,
In the comments below, brag about yourself! If you don’t believe in your dreams enough to let the whole world know, why would anyone else believe in you?
Hundreds of comments were posted, links leading to websites, books, podcasts, portfolios. You name it, every dream was drawn up and justified. Cheap, easy self-advertisement–pull up a chair to the table and grab a bite before the cake is gone.
I think I shook my head in disbelief, finally becoming aware of all the elbows, the relentless, grabby, manifest destiny greed on the interwebs. We weren’t all here to “encourage one another”–and if we thought we were, it became crystal clear in that moment for me–no one naturally gave a hoot about anyone’s dream but their own.
At the time I was reading a best seller book where another popular self-help guru wrote,
I’m here to tell you it doesn’t matter what society thinks about you or your dreams…All that really matters is how badly you want those dreams and what you’re willing to do to make them happen.
(Girl, Stop Apologizing, Rachel Hollis)
Effectively, dang right it is up to you! There’s one path, one destiny. Go claim it!
This thought is outrageous in its opposition to the Gospel, but the push to self-promote is fundamental in the realm of internet influencers. It isn’t given a second thought. The world says if you don’t promote yourself, who will?
Somehow–thankfully–the scales fell off my eyes, and I was able to see–and understand–the damage caused by, as Bonhoeffer said, adjusting [myself] far too easily to the worship of power, or the Instagram ball and chain.
Our humble savior, Jesus, gave a parable of a feast to which many people were invited. First, take note: Jesus wasn’t against parties. He wasn’t a joy-killer, pious and pristine. He said when you are invited to a wedding party–clearly not condemning celebrations. It was an expected part of life, even as it is today, and the Lord assumed it, as He spoke, as a common fact.
But He quickly condemned the common approach of partygoers and the arrogant, thoughtless practice of assuming one’s seat at the table. I wonder if it doesn’t venture into social media territory today, this being our favorite method of interaction and “partying”, if you will.
Jesus said,
When you are invited to a wedding banquet, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Luke 14:8-11
Jesus made the point that a person should take the lowest place at the table and wait for the host to promote him to a higher position. After all, who is to say someone more important might not come sit down and bump you out of your seat? How embarrassing would that be?
Francis Shaeffer wrote,
Jesus commands Christians to seek consciously the lowest room. All of us…are tempted to say, “I will take the larger place because it will give me more influence for Jesus Christ.” Both individual Christians and Christian organizations fall prey to the temptation of rationalizing this way as we build bigger and bigger empires. But according to the Scripture this is backwards: we should consciously take the lowest place unless the Lord Himself extrudes us into a greater one.
The word extrude is important here. To be extruded is to be forced out under pressure into a desired shape. Picture a huge press jamming soft metal at high pressure through a die, so that the metal comes out in a certain shape. This is the way of the Christian: he should choose the lesser place until God extrudes him into a position of more responsibility and authority.
No Little People, Francis Shaeffer
This is fascinating to me, though shouldn’t my heart already know it by now? Why should I ever walk bold-faced into any arena, internet or otherwise, and force my presence there?
What gives me the right?
Without exception, we are to begin in the lowest place and simply wait for Jesus to elevate our position. Doesn’t that sound like some kind advice? Wait. Just wait. Hang out here at the end of the table.
As Jesus put it– “so that you will not be humiliated when someone more distinguished than you arrives”.
The good Shepherd inserted a clause to protect us fools who might otherwise think we were just the main guest at the party. The Potter doesn’t let the clay decide what He is making; the clay only has the right to warm up in the Potter’s hands. And so, while we are given the option to play loud or quiet, the wisdom of Jesus promises that when we wait, honor will always follow.
Schaeffer says,
...We should seek the lowest place because there it is easier to be quiet before the face of the Lord. I did not say easy; in no place, no matter how small or humble, is it easy to be quiet before God. But it is certainly easier in some places than in others. And the little places, where I can more easily be close to God, should be my preference. I am not saying that it is impossible to be quiet before God in a greater place, but God must be allowed to choose when a Christian is ready to be extruded into such a place, for only He knows when a person will be able to have some quietness before Him in the midst of increased pressure and responsibility.
Quietness and peace before God are more important than any influence a position may seem to give, for we must stay in step with God to have the power of the Holy Spirit. If by taking a bigger place our quietness with God is lost, then to that extent our fellowship with Him is broken and we are living in the flesh, and the final result will not be as great, no matter how important the larger place may look in the eyes of other men or in our own eyes.
…So we must not go out beyond our depth. Take the smaller place so you have quietness before God.
(No Little People, Francis Shaeffer, pg.12, c.1974)
Listen, friends: It is God’s place to promote. And why? To shut up us pesky little humans? Of course not.
It is for the Shepherd to prepare the better pasture for us, for the Potter to mold us into the perfect pot. It is to ensure the power of His Holy Spirit isn’t quenched inside us by our own impatient dousing. The fire burns brightest where the Living God breathes–may we never promote ourselves away from His presence! May we resist the idolatry of the world that encourages self-centeredness and prominence. May we refute the lie that success only comes if we name it and claim it.
Quietness is simply an attitude–a hands-open posture–of trusting Him, instead of oneself, to make things happen, because He makes things happen better.
Think of it this way: We are training our ears to listen for His command. One day, whether by wind, will, word, or whisper, He will say it to each of us who has been patient enough to hear:
Friend, move up to a better place.
When He says it, it will come with a measure of honor, not with grappling and elbow-throwing chaos. We might be surprised it looks different than we expected, or maybe even that we had been wrong all along about what it was we were seeking. We might know ourselves better, might find that the disciplined life is rather a refreshing one.
He will say to us, Friend, move up to a better place.
And all our waiting will have been worth it.
At Home Ed 123-127
In the Closet: Death by Personality
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In the Closet: Keeping Secrets with God in a not-so-secret world
Essay 9: Death by Personality
The Christian is to resist the spirit of the world. But when we say this we must understand that the world-spirit does not always take the same form. So the Christian must resist the spirit of the world in the form it takes in his own generation. If he does not do this he is not resisting the spirit of the world at all. This is especially so for our generation, as the forces at work against us are of such a total nature.
Francis Shaeffer, The God Who is There
Once upon a time in our own country, virtuous, upright living was seen as a noble goal. The quiet life was a grand ambition, free of fetters. One’s highest hope, two-hundred some years ago, was to stake out a tranquil future of domesticity, raising children and putting food on the table.
Our forefathers were not agreeable on many terms of governing, but they did agree on one thing: an American has the birthright to make his own choices. Living peaceably and morally upright (there were plenty of Puritans on those ships, after all)–that quiet life–was high on their list of priorities.
The first coins put into circulation in our nascent country, the fugio cent, was designed by Ben Franklin. At the bottom was stamped the phrase, Mind Your Business.
How American! And how ironically funny, since there are many folk today who would like to banish our current motto of In God We Trust. However, who in this present day, who has the gumption to return to the days of Mind Your Business? How in the world have we made the leap from mind your business to mind everyone’s business?
In her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain cites Warren Susman’s idea of cultural evolution over the last hundred years or so. Prior to the change, our society could be labeled a “Culture of Character”. According to Susman, we have shifted to a “Culture of Personality”.
Cain says,
“In the Culture of Character, the ideal self was serious, disciplined, and honorable. What counted was not so much the impression one made in public as how one behaved in private. The word personality didn’t exist in English until the eighteenth century, and the idea of “having a good personality” was not widespread until the twentieth.
But when they embraced the Culture of Personality, Americans started to focus on how others perceived them. They became captivated by people who were bold and entertaining. “The social role demanded of all in the new Culture of Personality was that of a performer,” Susman famously wrote. “Every American was to become a performing self.”
Somewhere around the time of Dale Carnegie and his suave book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, our nation began to lose integrity, bit by bit. Indeed, it is important to watch closely the things we say and how we say them, but did Carnegie foresee an age, ninety years post-publishing, where every respectful boundary in communication would be shamelessly torn down on something called the “internet”?
I think not.
Is it possible he caused more damage in the long run by preaching this gospel:
Say to yourself over and over: “My popularity, my happiness and sense of worth depend to no small extent upon my skill in dealing with people.” ?
He is half right, of course, but he is also a hundred percent wrong. We actually weren’t made to live lives dependent on our charming manipulations, only to satisfy our own desires. Carnegie promoted this preliminary notion of self-help to a nation mid-Great Depression. And like a child in front of a bowl of candy, the American people snatched it up without once considering what effect it might have down the line.
Today, the stakes are even higher. Our eyes are trained to read a crowd, to know our audience, to put our best foot forward. Cal Newport, author of Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World describes “how tech companies encourage behavioural addiction: intermittent positive reinforcement and the drive for social approval.” We’ve taken Grandpa Carnegie’s words and embroidered them to our heart; a pulsing, pounding rhythm–our lifeblood, dependent on the performing self.
We are surrounded by folks who cannot put their phones down. We cannot pass up a photo opportunity, we cannot pass up the chance to bring up our kids, our vacation, our job perks, our feelings, our leanings.
To win friends and influence people. It is difficult to tease out what exactly smells fishy–because it honestly doesn’t sound too bad, or even wrong.
Over time, our American M.O. has become less and less about living a noble life and more and more about selling ourselves as the ideal human, as attractive and magnetic as possible. I think it might horrify our predecessors, who sat down two hundred some years ago to “ensure domestic tranquility”. What could this possibly mean for our future, if our fundamental goal is no longer virtuous living, but looking pretty? How can we even be honest with ourselves when climbing a social ladder is basically an addiction to virtual reality?
In Quiet, Cain speaks of high schoolers who
“Inhabit a world in which status, income, and self-esteem depend more than ever on the ability to meet the demands of the Culture of Personality. The pressure to entertain, to sell ourselves, and never to be visibly anxious keeps ratcheting up.”
We see it, we acknowledge the ruin and mental instability it causes, and yet we keep participating in this toxic culture of personality. We raise a glass to the challenge, we set our jaw and throw in our two cents to play. Then we press a weary palm to our forehead and declare we need to see a counselor or take some pills to reduce our anxiety and depression. Quit the game? Never. It doesn’t even occur to us. It’s the way we communicate, the way we advertise. We are enmeshed with our culture and we will receive the blows it offers, because we are still more comfortable playing the game than not.
It paints a sobering picture of the future; we know it isn’t manageable. We cannot ingest more. We cannot produce more. We are saturated and overwhelmed. We are miserable, but we still favor the flashy. Gaining friends and influencing people takes a massive toll. The cracks are beginning to show.
Edwin Arlington Robinson published a poem in 1897 titled, Richard Cory:
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
“Good morning,”
And he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich–yes, richer than a king–
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Trust me: If he can manage it, Satan will always, always lead us to the hole dug by our Culture of Personality. It will feel like the most natural of progressions, because there are people we love, wallowing in the mud, beckoning us to join them. We were born close to the pit, and the Carnegies of our world will tell us it is just fine to work the crowd.
But there are Richard Corys, too–the ones who glitter–and you’d never know it by their picture on Facebook. They suffer to the end; they never make it out alive.
Where do you stand, then, when it comes to winning friends and influencing people? How many more Richard Corys must there be? Can one help another out of the muddy hole if we all refuse to look for a ladder?
So the Christian must resist the spirit of the world in the form it takes in his own generation. If he does not do this he is not resisting the spirit of the world at all.
Francis Schaeffer
At Home Ed 119-122
In the Closet: Babylon
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In the Closet: Keeping Secrets with God in a not-so-secret world
Essay 8: Babylon
“The fact that our humanity was routed by these tools over the past decade should come as no surprise…We’ve been engaging in a lopsided arms race in which the technologies encroaching on our autonomy were preying with increasing precision on deep-seated vulnerabilities in our brains, while we still naively believed that we were just fiddling with fun gifts handed down from the nerd gods.”
Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
Digital Babylon is the term coined by David Kinnaman in his book, Faith for Exiles. Referring back to the Old Testament story of Daniel, Babylon was the city to which the youngest, brightest, most handsome exiles of the Jewish nation were brought. The famous king, Nebuchadnezzar, turned these young men into eunuchs and subjected them to severe training and academics. As the story goes, Daniel and his friends knew well to refuse the treatment, as much as it was up to them to decide. They came to the point of outright refusing to eat the rich fare of the palace, and proved to the king that their way of living was actually superior to the other exiles.
Daniel, in his bold purity, represents the man who stands for God and refutes godless living even in a godless land. He stands, throughout his life, as an example of what a person can prove by not falling into the habits and ways of the majority. A man of character in a culture of personality. A light in a dark world.
Kinnaman says,
“Digital Babylon is not a place. It is the pagan, but spiritual, hyperstimulated, multicultural, imperial crossroads that is the virtual home of every person with wi-fi, a data plan, or for most of us, both.”
We Christians, believers in a God who didn’t spare His Son but put Him to death for our sins, are not to ride the waves of a personality cultural revolution. We aren’t made for the palace fare and fellowship with our phones. We are to remember we are the captives in this story, brought to Babylon against our will and well aware of the dangers of assimilating. Yet we walk right into Digital Babylon and belly up to the bar, thrilled to dine on the food and chat up the crowd. We push in all our chips, like it is some sort of game: we are here to play, and we are here to win.
It doesn’t help that in Digital Babylon, the radio is always turned on.
I remember watching a documentary on North Korea. Each room in every house had a radio speaker which broadcasted, every minute of every day, governmental propaganda. There was no volume button to shut the darn thing off, and so people listened day and night to the words pipe into their kitchens and living rooms.
It sounds awful to be deprived of any sort of solitude, but such is the manner of folks who push propaganda. A constant stream of ideas and words that are not your own, steadily put in your ears until you see no way around it, no way to fight it or disagree.
We subject ourselves to this same droning, never an arm’s length away from our phones or computers. It is the prerogative of the companies that buy and sell our information, cell phones, media platforms–to make us feel important and engaged by asking what’s on your mind? And popping up little red circles and hearts on our screens.
The world will always encourage us to capitalize on our burgeoning popularity–to take our waxed, shiny personalities out for a spin and see who will buy it.
We are welcomed into this culture on constant engagement and begin to perceive it as the realist possibility, the most possible reality. We stoically deny we are strangers in this land. The very pleasure sensors in our brains wait anxiously to light up. We are being noticed, we are being liked. We are addicted. Perhaps we were not captives. Perhaps we have always belonged.
We forget it is a form of slavery to enter these rhythms, to bow before other gods.
We assume we will be fine, dipping our toes in and out of the water, splashing here and there, not quite getting totally wet.
It isn’t that we refuse to acknowledge we live in Babylon–we do. But the believer refuses to align herself with the notion of becoming comfortable there. We refuse to make it our home, because our passport says it is elsewhere.
Paul frequently had to remind his beloved friends of this very notion–we don’t belong here. It is so, so easy to forget:
I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ…
Philippians 3:18-20
John echoes Paul’s urgency:
Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world…the world is passing away, and also its lusts, but the one who does the will of God abides forever.
1 John 2:15-17
You and I–we must wash ourselves again and again in this truth, because the world is so persuasive. Even our daily coffee habit seems to testify to our citizenship down here–our stomach, a god in and of itself. No one dares to deny me my morning java, my scrolling text messages at the traffic light, my anxiety over remote learning with kids during Covid. I have every right to express my disgust over politics–
I belong here.
It is the spirit of the world that pulls us into these cycles of lust, materialism, self-indulgence, shameless pride and flattery. The spin we put on Paul’s “becoming all things to all people” might just be a tricky way of justifying our leisure pursuits as Christians into Digital Babylon, if we care to be honest.
Don’t be fooled: if you love anything in this world, the love of the Father is not in you.
Maybe this is why Daniel found himself scooting to his room in Babylon three times a day to pray–it was a lifelong habit–from the time he was a teenager–of removing himself and reminding himself of his true home. He was pleading with God to help him remain devoted, unentangled by propaganda and culture.
Do not love the world. Do not love it, John pleads.
Leave it to the commoners in Babylon. Let them bow down to their idols from the “nerd gods”. Let them think they belong, let them be fools.
Our citizenship is in heaven.