Growing up, we spent many of our summers visiting my grandmother who lived in a small Arkansas town that may have contained about 500 people max. Yet, it wasn’t too far from civilization where there were shopping malls and some semblance of metropolitan normalcy. What I distinctly remember is that amidst her humble accommodations, she had cable TV (a big deal in the 80’s mind you)…and more specifically MTV, a luxury we never enjoyed despite the many amenities we did have. For the first time in my life, I could finally watch the famed television network that had begun its popularity only a few years prior. This was 1988 and in my grandmother’s cramped day room, I had discovered…80s hard rock. I can remember binging on videos like Paradise City by Guns N Roses; Def Lepard’s Pour Some Sugar on Me; and the Bon Jovi classic, Lay Your Hands on Me. Even as I am recounting these titles, I’m recognizing the redemptive implications therein: pour something on me, i.e. anoint me – language invoking the imagery of the high priest laying his hands on the sacrificial offering. Perhaps content for another post, haha. One particular song caught my attention though and when I could, I rushed to buy the 45 record, Nothing But a Good Time by Poison. I can remember sitting in the back of the school bus in camaraderie with my peers as in unison, we bellowed out the chorus, “...Don’t need nothin but a good time/How Can I resist?/Ain’t lookin for nothin’ but a good time/It don’t get better than this… ” At 10 years old, I’m quite sure the ‘good time’ Poison was intimating was not exactly relatable…or appropriate for me and my preadolescent classmates to emulate. Nonetheless, the quest for the ‘good life’ here and now is an intuition that remains endemic to all of us…
Oddly enough, this song’s refrain indirectly came to bear on a situation I went through recently. Not too long ago, I experienced a setback in my career and professional life. The details aren’t really important, but suffice it to say, there was an opportunity I was waiting for that did not come through for me…and needless to say, It was a bit of a death blow. As I tried to process the unexpected news of yet another closed door, I found it difficult to focus, concentrate or have much joy throughout the day. In short, I was in a funk and anything I tried to do to get myself out of the proverbial ditch proved to be in vain. As I evaluated the situation, the rational part of me was trying to list and weigh out the objective analysis. My self-talk consisted of, “Let’s try to focus on the positives, here. At least you still have ‘this, this, and this’ in your favor.” Or, “at least ‘this, this, and this’ didn’t happen…” or “perhaps, this was a blessing in disguise…” Well, can the blessing please remove its mask so I can get some relief!?
It occurred to me that when we experience the thorns and thistles of daily life, the part of us that feels the proverbial sting isn’t necessarily the intellectual part, which tends to remain unfazed in such situations. Rather, it’s the heart that feels the weight of our burdens. While the heart and mind cannot always be neatly distinguished, the part of us that can be spontaneously motivated to joyful animation, productivity and creativity…can also easily be crippled. I think about the contrast Paul describes in 2 Corinthians where he writes, “when I came to Troas to preach Christ’s gospel, and a door was opened to me by the Lord, I had no rest in my spirit, because I did not find Titus my brother…” In recounting this anecdote, Paul on the one hand, insinuates a door of grace being opened, implying sentiments he had previously expressed about the promises of God being Yes and Amen in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20)…yet, this passage also portrays the dissonance we experience in this life…Yes, we have all the promises of God in Christ; God’s door is always open; His favor is always upon us, or as Paul also notes, “He always leads us in triumphal procession”… but there’s that human, emotional part of us that isn’t impervious to pain and viscerally feels the afflictions of this life. Having a ministerial door opened for him to walk in his calling somehow didn’t insulate Paul from the discomfort he felt at being separated from the companionship of his dear friend, Titus. We, who have the seal of the Spirit and fullness of Christ are not precluded either from feeling overwhelmed and defeated by life at times. Indeed, a mysterious tension persists between two warring aspects of who we are.
As I continued to process my grief, I even tried to imitate David, who in the midst of a traumatic experience, had to “encourage himself in the Lord” (1 Samuel 30) – an exhortation I have heard from many a ‘well meaning’ minister during different seasons of my walk. Yet, such casually dispensed advice tends to neglect passages like Proverbs 25:20 which indicates, “Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.” Or what about the grief Jacob experienced when he thought he had lost his son, Joseph? The Scriptures inform us that even the faithful patriarch refused to be comforted, preferring the solace afforded by engaging with his sorrow. Apparently, the best advice we have to give people consists of religious cliches when what they really need is to hear good news. While in the religious world, we may throw out the usual catch phrases like, God is sovereign…All things work together, the irreligious world insists that we ‘look on the bright side’ or worse yet, ‘Don’t worry, be happy’. None of these adages however, speak to ‘where we are’ when we’re hurting. Ultimately, getting out of that ditch happens only in God’s timing and we’re not in control of that.
So, what does 80s hair metal have to do with all this? As I consider the anthemic nature of Nothin But a Good Time, I hear therein all the principles of hedonistic living distilled into a 4 minute song – serving as a manifesto for the primacy of the ‘self-life’. While such a credo reflects the world’s ambitions and its limited scope of life’s priorities, grace provides us a counterintuitive hope that doesn’t always appear like hope…at least not initially. It’s not so much that life doesn’t get any better than ‘this’ (as the song alludes to wine, women, fun, etc.)…after all, even ‘this’ kind of living gets old after a while (just ask the Preacher in Ecclesiastes). It doesn’t get any better than that experience of being in and out of despair and hope. To expect that life can qualitatively be better than this is unrealistic as Paul implies when he writes to the Corinthians, “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied”. Here, Paul argues that the sufferings he has endured in the name of fulfilling his apostolic ministry make no sense if there is no hope of the resurrection. In making this appeal, he ardently denies the possibility of having our ‘best life now’ in this age. Yet, we tend to want there to be some semblance thereof (or at least I do). I wish the Christian life consisted of this even keel of uninterrupted spiritual victories over sin and a grace empowered disposition of unperturbed joy despite the circumstances. I mean, we’re supposed to ‘count it all joy when we fall into various trials’, aren’t we? Yet, I have found such a response the exception rather than the rule when I have encountered the storms of life. The best we can expect is to vacillate between grief and solace, to fluctuate between the feeling of “I’m in a rut” and “my senses have finally returned…” The best we can hope for here is to perpetually contend with an inescapable tension that we wish would go away. Yet such a tension is the Divinely appointed means by which the Lord works for us an exceeding and eternal weight of glory – a precious hope to be sure, but one which we cannot enjoy the fullness thereof just yet…hence our constant frustration.
As the day wore on, my senses eventually returned to me, at which point, the objective things about the situation that are in fact positives came into focus. The ‘wisdom’ part of me that can think clearly began to reign again and I had peace of mind. When we’re in the ditch, facts and data can do nothing to heal the wound or give us the relief we desperately crave…all we can functionally hear is what the wound itself is telling us and how that wound views reality, even though its perception is often irrational. In 1 Peter, the Apostle reminds his hearers (and us) that “after you have suffered a little while, [God] will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.” Indeed, grace comes to us in the “afterward” – after the ephemeral glory of the law-in-life fades. Our initial engagement with life in this age is effervescent and transient, whether we’re talking about grievous trials that wear us out or “the passing pleasures of sin” that can easily deceive us. Once this glory wears off, that’s when there’s hope for real wisdom to set in.
One of the best illustrations I have heard concerning this ironically comes from a sermon I heard years ago that bore a moralistic overtone, yet retained some profound insights. The preacher was considering the account of David’s sin with Bathsheba as recorded in 2 Samuel 11 through 12. As may be familiar, one of the consequences of David’s sin was that the child born from their adulterous affair died. Once David discovered the child was dead, he ended his 7 day fast, got up, changed his clothes, washed and went to the house of the Lord to worship (note the baptismal foreshadowing). In other words, once he realized the situation was dead (literally), he reasoned there was nothing more he could do, as he informed one of his concerned attendants, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept. I thought, ‘Who knows? The Lord may be gracious to me and let the child live.’ But now that he is dead, why should I go on fasting? Can I bring him back again?…” While the main thrust of the sermon concerned learning how to move past regret, loss, and failure, there was a particular point the preacher emphasized that in retrospect makes sense to me though I had initially dismissed it as moralistic eisegesis. After David accepted the fallout of his indiscretions and received the Lord’s discipline, God blessed him with another son…Solomon, who represents ‘Wisdom’. The preacher stressed that after we ‘go through’, God is consequently able to birth some wisdom into our circumstances.
This makes sense to me especially when I consider David’s Psalm of repentance (Psalm 51) in which he writes, “You desire truth in the inward parts, And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom”. As he continues to grieve over his sin, he asks God to “let the bones you have crushed rejoice…” He recognizes that if he is going to get any relief from himself, God alone will have to deliver him. It is only in such a place of utter despair that we can finally recognize, “Nothing good dwells in my flesh”, and thereby find freedom from this hopeless body of death. This is the prelude to receiving a righteousness that is imputed – i.e. this is the place where Another’s righteousness becomes ours. This is where we find true peace, joy and solace. David asked for his broken bones to be restored, yet our hope is in One whose bones were not broken, yet who was pierced for our iniquities and chastised so we could have peace – the peace of God that is infinitely better than merely having ‘a good time’. In light of such good news, how can we resist?
Law, Grace, & Daily Living 