"To Him be glory forever": October 2022

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

A Better Choice

About ten days ago I stumbled across an article online with the interesting title of The Five Most Common Life Regrets (As Told By People Who Are Dying). Being a pastor a title like that just catches my attention. I’ve been on three trips away from home this month and so I set that article aside until I had some time to read it. Now having done so I want to share a few thoughts on the regret that was identified as the top one, “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, and not the life others expected of me.”

First, I get the basic idea that is expressed in this regret. It is the idea of coming to the end of one’s life and seeing what perhaps could have been, had it not been for setting those desires aside in order to pursue what others felt one’s life should be. Desiring “A” but turning from it to pursue “B”.

Second, the regret notes that the primary reason the “true life” was not pursued was a lack of courage to challenge or refuse the idea that the life desired by others was the way to go. I may be reading something into this that isn’t present but I expect that the reason a person desires one life but pursues a different one has a great variety of things involved besides simply the courage to say “no” or to step out on one’s own path. Courage, yes, but also determination, desire, aptitude, and judgement, to name a few other factors.

Third, the stated regret is framed as if there were only two choices, a life true to oneself or the life expected by others. I want to suggest a third choice. A better choice. A life pleasing to God.

The problem with being true to oneself is that we humans are, by nature, rabidly in pursuit of the wrong things, all of the time. The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah wrote:

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; Who can understand it?”

John Calvin’s spin on the same basic human weakness is this: “…man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.”[1]

Ouch!

There was a time in my life when I would have thought the sentiments of Jeremiah and Calvin were nonsense. Now, praise God, I understand the truth of their words a bit more clearly everyday.

So what does my proposed third way look like? How does one live a life pleasing to God? For that I don’t think there is any more clear and concise answer than the one given in the first question-and-answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism:

Q.1. What is the chief end of man?

A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.

If I make the purpose of my life to glorify God then it will be hard to go wrong in the details, and as I see the end draw near I won’t be looking back at what could have been nearly as much as I’ll be looking forward at what is yet to come. To enjoy God in His glory, forever. Amen.

[1] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.11.8.

Photo credit: File:Diagram of the human heart (cropped).svg - Wikimedia Commons

Saturday, October 1, 2022

Short and To The Point

I am at the point in my calling as a pastor when the end of my calling is much closer than the beginning. This isn’t to say I’m planning to retire soon but merely a recognition that at age 65 the number of years that, at this point, I see myself continuing to pastor a church can likely be counted on one hand.

One consequence of that truth is that I am not really trying to actively build my personal library anymore. I was talking about this with my mom this afternoon and mentioned to her I have a list of five books that I was hoping would be published soon and added to my library. Given what I already have, both read and unread, I plan to think long and hard before acquiring something outside of that list. I get many emails of this and that new book that are marketed as being “essential” for the pastor but the simple truth is that a publisher’s idea of essential and mine are quite different.

Among those five books is a three-volume work in ethics, which is being translated from Dutch. Volume one came out a few years ago and volume two came out perhaps a year ago. When volume three comes out I can buy the whole thing at a discount and be in business. They were written about a 100 years ago by a pastor and professor whose other works have been a great blessing to me, both as a Christian and a pastor. I anticipate a similar blessing in reading his writing on the discipline of ethics.

Ethics. Here is my off-the-cuff definition: The ways in which Christians live in their day-to-day lives that are pleasing to God. Francis Shaeffer wrote an excellent book titled How Then Should We Live? Ethics answers that always relevant question.

All I have written so far in this post serves as an introduction to something Robin and I read tonight, from Deuteronomy 19:9, which includes this phrase:

“…by loving the Lord your God and by walking ever in His ways…”

That is ethics in a nutshell. The person, the era, the situation may vary, be it any biblical person, such as Adam, Eve, Noah, Moses, Saul, David, Jonah, Paul, or Peter, or any non-biblical person and their circumstances and place in history, such as Polycarp, Augustine, Tyndale, Spurgeon or Jim Elliot. No matter the person or situation the fundamental principle to guide life is the same. Love the Lord and walk in His ways. Short and to the point.

I have no doubts that the three-volumes, translated from Dutch to English, will be very, very good. But I am also quite certain that the principle that will underlie the entire work will be the idea that Moses gives in Deuteronomy, a principle repeated in other words and in other places in the Bible. Love the Lord your God and walk in His ways. May that be the principle that sticks in my head and guides me for however many more days the Lord grants to my life, and may that principle guide you as well. Amen.