The Tension of Ages

My family and I went out for a fall hike at Stinchfield Woods in Pinckney today. It was a beautiful hike (most of my excursions to Stinchfield have been) though my daughter’s little legs only lasted about two miles. As I drove home through downtown Dexter I passed a cemetery where sporadic, elegant maples towered above the manicured lawns and gravesites. The peak of autumn colors was still about a week or so away so only the slightest hints of their future glory shone in the afternoon sunlight. I marveled at height and breadth of the towering sentinels and wondered how many years it had taken for them to attain such heights. How many decades of drivers passed by or mourners wept in their shade?

The contrast for me was stark: here these stalwart organisms grew, towering up toward the sun outpacing their floral competition while beneath their boughs generations of humans lay buried beneath the good earth. It spoke to me of the transitory nature of man. Though long-lived for mammals, humans pale in comparison to other created things. Everything that encompasses this earthly life exists within the realm of our transitory nature. Our glories dissipate as we breathe our last (if not before) and the things we have accumulated pass into other hands, their meanings slowly lost over the years. We have little hope of any true, lasting impact even among those who we have loved. Eventually, monuments and memories fail and even the most world-shifting impacts become footnotes to history before they too are forgotten to the ages.

As morbid and futile as all this sounds, there is freedom in our transitory state too. All of the trials we struggle with are a breeze that blows but for a moment. All of the strife of this world will pass. The earth-shaking decisions and choices are mere bumps in the road of redemptive history. For those who trust in Christ, even the eventuality of the cessation of life is not final. For us, the comfort that comes in knowing the frailty and ephemerality of man outpaces the momentary troubles of the day, for we will rise.

As we in America struggle with the uncertainty and outright disgust of another presidential election, there remains a joy in knowing that these troubles, as mighty and desperate as they seem, will pass. History will continue. New crises will arise, new joys will be known. As we struggle with the pain and scars that are born from the innate sinfulness of man (there is no real denying that in our current age is there?) there comfort arises when we realize that no moment of time escapes the sight of God and that our history is bound to Christs’. One day, at the closing of our eyes or from the glimmer in the heavens, this age will pass away; our sorrows will be borne and we will experience the freedom and knowledge that comes in the presence of Christ. This, in no way, trivializes our time on this earth, in fact, it is the only way affecting change, calling out sin, or improving the human condition. Yet, it is not in our hands that history is laid.

Moses wrote of the temporal nature of man in Psalm 90:

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You return man to dust and say, “Return, O children of man!” For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night…

The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away…

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Return, O Lord! How long? Have pity on your servants! Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all of our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil.

Our fleeting nature reminds us that the only change or victory comes from the hands of the Lord. My heart longs to pray with the patriarch as he cries out: “Return, O Lord!”, “Have pity on your servants!”, and “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love.” This is the joy we can take from our frailty. This is the song we can sing knowing that our days are few. Help us to understand that we are dust and to dust shall return. While we tread the rocks and briars of this earth, satisfy us, and hear us as we rejoice in you; in that we shall forever be satisfied by you.

I Am Prejudiced

I’ve been doing a great deal of thinking about prejudice, racism, and its place in our country and the world. Numerous public incidents have rightly brought the issue to the forefront of our cultural conversation. I have come to the belief that we are coming to the wrong conclusion. We have traded the noble quest for justice for one of finding scapegoats. In our discussions on the matter we have rightly sought to root out injustice but our means to do so is by labelling people as “racist” or creating racist monsters. In the age of social media and instant new feeds it has become par for the course to scour a persons’ tweets, public statements, or Facebook posts for instances of prejudice. When we find them, we label that person a “racist” or the crime a “hate crime.” In doing so, we do not accurately address the problem. Instead of addressing the issue we instead create an “other” that allows us to shift the focus off ourselves. A celebrity with a twitter post becomes a “racist”. A police officer who allows his biases to affect his actions becomes a “racist.”

The reality is that we are all prejudiced. All of us. Racism is not something “other people” are. Each of us comes into people and situations with preconceived notions about others whether that is due to race, gender, age, socioeconomic statues, or what have you. When we walk into a convenience store, or a library, or an opera house, we all make judgements about the people we see there. Racism is merely one form of prejudice. The problem is when we let our prejudices outweigh logic and our command to love our neighbor. All crime is hate crime because we are asserting that our needs or beliefs outweigh the rights of others. When we turn our God-given desire for justice into a witch-hunt to find “those racist people” we do not accurately understand the problem. The problem is in us as much as it is in the neo-Nazi, or the abusive cop, or the militaristic regime. Throwing the term “racist” about like a grenade may be the easy way of addressing the issue but it will be ultimately unsuccessful. Until we admit that we are all biased, we can never have a real conversation about how to remedy it. Until we admit that we are all biased, we can never truly fulfill Christ’s command to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. The only cure for prejudices is found in admitting that we have them. I fear that we are becoming a society in which it is not safe to admit this. Just as the addict cannot hope to have victory until he turns the mirror upon himself and sees the truth of his addiction, we cannot hope to address the injustice of systematic prejudice until we see it within ourselves. Only then can we start down the path of allowing logic and real experiences to outweigh the prejudice.

Speaking to the prejudice of his day, Paul wrote: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus, then who are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to the promise”.

It is only when we turn the mirror upon ourselves and our own prejudices can we (as a society) ever hope to understand the unity in Christ that Paul was writing about. Unconfessed sin sickens the heart and is loathsome to the Lord. Let us come together and confess that we are influenced by our prejudices. Only then can light ever shine into the darkness.

Yes, I am prejudiced. Yes, I have let those prejudices lead me to sin. I am sorry. Let’s talk about this.