How to Get Up When You’d Rather Not
Anyone walking through a season of suffering, particularly mental affliction, will benefit from this book. Noble puts into words what many of us already know but desperately need to be reminded of. The book is both a comfort in trials and an encouragement to choose to go on living.
Alan Noble describes an experience many of us have but don’t want to talk about: the struggle to go on living life amid deep suffering. Some of us experience quiet anguish simply from the demands of continuing to exist.
That’s not to say all of us, each and every day, have to drag ourselves out of bed to keep moving forward. But we all go through seasons of what Noble calls “mental affliction”: the deep, powerful weight that calls into question life itself and dampens the drive to keep on living.
Noble is associate professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University. He has previously written on ways modernity distorts our understanding of the world. On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living draws from his own experience with depression and anxiety to help readers find a way to continue to be faithful despite their struggles.
As Noble points out, we often assume when we see a smiling face or a productive adult that all must be right with his or her life. I’d venture that many of us could say of ourselves: on the outside everything looks fine, but inside it’s a different story.
For some, the struggle is due to an underlying illness or inexplicable chronic pain. For others, it’s more generally due to the ups and downs of life in a broken world. But no struggle is simple.
We aren’t always honest about how difficult normal human life is.
In this deeply personal essay, Alan Noble considers the unique burden of everyday life in the modern world. Sometimes, he writes, the choice to carry on amid great suffering—to simply get out of bed—is itself a powerful witness to the goodness of life, and of God.
Choices in Mental Suffering
At the beginning of the book, Noble reveals he used to believe anyone who struggled with mental affliction, in its many forms, did something to bring it about. They made choices and were reaping consequences. Before I entered my own season of suffering several years back, I operated out of the same framework. I may not have articulated it in that way, but, even as a counselor, that was my view of suffering.
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The War for the Soul of the World
The torch now passes to us, the revived company of Christ’s End Times army. Having been lavished with incomparable blessings and equipped with Heaven’s full authority, it is our charge to carry His unstoppable advance into every sphere of society. Through the weapons of the Church, the means of grace, faithful evangelism, and multiplying discipleship, we push forward Christ’s Kingdom invasion into territories still held captive. Brothers and sisters, the war for the world’s soul rages on! Will you take your place among the ranks of this fearless battalion? The Commander calls us to urgent duty—to see every enemy of God rendered helpless at the throne of Christ as the knowledge of His glory overspreads the Earth like waters covering the sea.
Introduction
From the most humble of beginnings, Jesus launched an unstoppable invasion of Satan’s realm that would shake the foundations of the world and wrestle back control from the prince and power of the air. With just twelve unlikely men, this peasant Rabbi from Nazareth set in motion a spiritual tsunami sweeping over Jerusalem, flooding through Judea and Samaria, and eventually inundating the entire Roman empire – toppling history’s greatest superpower from within.
What started as a fringe rabble of outcasts and nobodies exploded into a global force that now totals over 2.5 billion worshipers, with no signs of slowing. This was no accident in human history. This is not the story of a band of losers who bumble along in a world getting rotten until their Savior tractor beams them back home to the mothership. This was always the Creator’s intent – that His image-bearing people would multiply and fill the Earth with true worshipers who willingly obey His reign (Genesis 1:28). Though sin brought devastation and ruin, Jesus, the greater Adam, has restored humanity to her purpose. He has forgiven us of our sins and re-invested us with our original Adamic authority to advance God’s Kingdom to all peoples and places, leading the Church to bring God’s blessings to every family and ethnicity on Earth (Genesis 12:1-3). Just as Jacob prophesied, the nations will one day rally under Judah’s scepter of righteousness, rendering complete allegiance to Shiloh, who is Christ the King (Genesis 49:10). From that tiniest mustard seed, a revolution was unleashed that cannot be stopped until it has brought the entire world under the shade of its branches. This is the kind of unstoppable Kingdom that Jesus is building.
Beyond the book of Genesis, we looked at how the Exodus and the story of Israel prove the doctrine of Postmillennialism. We saw how the era of the kings collapsed in fantastic failure but looked forward to a true and better King who would make good on all of these promises. We saw how God gave the people of Israel Postmillennial anthems to sing in the book of Psalms. And how He gave them postmillennial hopes and promises throughout the prophets. Last week, we examined how the Gospel of Matthew proves a postmillennial eschatology, where Christ’s Kingdom progressively grows and expands, filling the entire Earth before His return. Through Jesus’ parables, teachings, proclamations, and the Lord’s Prayer itself, Matthew paints a stunning portrait of how this Kingdom will take over the world like Georgia Kudzu.
And that is what we are going to be talking about today. We will show how the Kingdom landed on the shores of Earth like the Americans upon the beaches of Normandy. We will show how Jesus eradicated the fiercest enemy of His Kingdom, which is the devil and His demons, along with the unlikely loyalists who aligned themselves with His vision. In conclusion, from the Gospels, we will see how this Kingdom that put down its enemies in the first century will build and grow throughout all centuries until there is nothing left for it to conquer.
Phase 1: The Arrival of the Kingdom
For centuries, the prophets strained to glimpse through the veil, longing for the day when Heaven’s invading force would storm the sin-stained beaches of this embattled world. Isaiah foretold a light shattering the darkness (Isaiah 9:2), a Son given who would bear endless peace upon His shoulders (Isaiah 9:6-7). The Prophet Malachi proclaimed the Lord was coming, but who could endure the day of His arrival (Malachi 3:1-2)?
At last, with the coming of Christ, the longships of God’s Kingdom were sighted on the horizon. As the prophesied Dayspring from on high (Luke 1:78), Jesus marched through the dusty paths of Palestine, sounding the trumpet blasts that the long-awaited invasion was now imminent – “The Kingdom of God is at hand!” (Mark 1:15) John the Baptist’s voice echoed from the wilderness – prepare, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near (Matthew 3:2)!
This was no temporary skirmish but the beginning of an unstoppable, eternal occupation. As the angel decreed, Christ’s Kingdom would know no end, unlike the fragile, fading dynasties of mere earthly kings (Luke 1:33). The joyous shouts of the people greeted the Messiah’s advent into Jerusalem – “Blessed is the coming Kingdom of our father David!” (Mark 11:10) They recognized in this humble rabbi the Conquering King who would reestablish David’s throne forever.
Jesus was the D-Day of the ages, the point-man of Heaven’s liberating army who had burst upon the world’s beaches to re-subjugate the planet to its rightful Ruler. His very presence revealed that the ancient prophecies had found their fulfillment – the Kingdom Moses foretold was no longer a vision but a tangible reality unfolding before their eyes (Luke 10:9). This was no political coup achieved through human strength, but an unstoppable invasion from the realm of untainted holiness and omnipotent authority (John 18:36).
As Christ’s feet hit the embattled shores, every ritual, tradition, and earthly pretension was exposed as a hollow symbol that must now submit before the unveiled reality. He was the true Temple, the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, the Feast of Heaven’s own deliverance. The old order lay obsolete before this invading Sovereign who had come to pitch His beachhead into the human heart and raise His flag of willing allegiance over all people and nations.
This spearheaded an advancing occupation – not to timidly coexist alongside the capitals of sin and death but to utterly displace them. What began as a small force would grow into an ever-increasing onslaught until the entirety of enemy territory was liberated and reclaimed for God’s eternal dominion (Mark 4:30-32). This mustard seed of a regiment would become an overwhelming surge, unfurling its banner of freedom outward until filling the whole Earth.
Satan’s blitzkrieg of deception and oppression had now met its match in the infinite reserves of the invading Kingdom. The beachhead had been secured. The Kingdom had landed on Earth’s bloodied shores. From its foothold in the Galilean hills, this invasion force would now relentlessly push its liberating march into every sphere of human existence until the entire global theater fell in resignation before the undisputed reign of God. The remaining resistance pockets of darkness could either concede and be emancipated into restoration or face the decisive overthrow the prophets foretold. This invading Kingdom would not cease its march until all enemies, foreign and domestic, were expelled and the Earth was filled with the glory of Christ the King.
Phase 2: The Battle Between Heaven and Hell
As Jesus landed upon the shores of this fallen world, being born of a virgin, He was not greeted with celebratory fanfare. In His earliest years, Satan tried to kill him through the mentally depraved puppet king named Herod, and this was just the beginning of the war efforts from hell that would be leveled on Christ. Satan and his demonic forces recognized the dire threat Jesus posed. They knew Jesus had not come to Earth to affirm their right to rule. He had come to dispel the spiritual squatters who had been living in God’s world, ruining His good Earth for far too long, which means His arrival signaled their demise. This is why Satan and the demons come out in a full-on military assault on Jesus all throughout the Gospels. This was their last stand before surrendering the world back into the hands of Christ (Matthew 28:18).
From the wilderness, where the serpent once slithered into the garden and brought deception to the line of men, Satan comes out to meet his Creator in the earliest part of Jesus’ ministry. After baptism and 40 days of fasting, Jesus was in a state of profound physical vulnerability when the enemy struck like the Luftwaffe over Poland. Wielding his age-old weapons of temptation and lies, Satan hurled his fiery darts upon our Lord, hoping to corrupt Him in the same way he had corrupted Adam. Yet, as we know, Christ deflected every assault and succeeded where Adam had failed.
With each repelled advance, the path was cleared for Jesus to launch an overwhelming counteroffensive on the powers of hell. Armed not with swords but with the word of God as His blade, the Lord engaged hellish minions all throughout Judea and Galilee.
Like surgical drone strikes levied against strategic targets, Christ precisely aimed His ministry at the forces of hell to liberate those held captive by unclean spirits. In the Capernaum synagogue, a man possessed by a demon cried out at the sight of Jesus, sensing his doom had arrived. With a single authoritative command from the Lord’s lips, the evil Spirit was silenced and expelled, powerless to disobey. Later in the Gerasene region, Jesus encountered a man invaded by a horde of demonic spirits who called themselves “Legion.” These foul entities pleaded not to be cast into the abyss. Yet with a single word from Christ, they were driven howling from their human host into a herd of pigs that then drowned themselves in the sea.
So thorough was this rout of demonic forces that the war-torn people of Galilee flooded to Jesus, bringing “all who were oppressed by the devil” to be liberated by Him. Like napalm torching an enemy-infested forest, the Lord’s commands incinerated the stranglehold the enemy had on the region, restoring those in captivity to freedom. Even the disciples were trained by Jesus to make war with the devils, exercising them and bringing deliverance to the captives, which became a hallmark sign that Jesus had shared His authority with them.
The final conquest, however, was reserved for Jesus alone. He dealt the crippling blow to Satan’s operations by binding “the strong man” through His sacrificial death. Rising triumphant over sin and death’s tyranny, Christ forever stripped the dark powers of their weapons, parading them as spoils of war in His wake as the conquering King.
The aftermath of this Heaven-sent D-Day left liberated multitudes in its wake, stunned casualties of divine grace, who encountered a love much more potent than any of their chains of oppression. In those days, Jesus launched much more than a few pop shots and guerilla skirmishes, but a full-on invasion. He came to the capital of Satanic oppression, where the enemy had centralized His power, and He threw down their strongholds and stranglehold over the people of God once and for all. That work began in Judah and Galilee; hell’s gates are still falling down as we faithful advance His Kingdom today.
Phase 3: Judgment Poured Out on Wicked Judah
While Jesus was engaged in warfare against the spiritual forces of wickedness, it became increasingly clear that the first-century Jewish people were not allies of God’s Kingdom. At every turn, they opposed Jesus, leading the Savior to expose them bluntly, declaring that they were not true descendants of Abraham but rather children of Satan who loved darkness and whose deeds were evil (John 8:44, John 3:19). This opposition is why Jesus also trained His sights on them in the spiritual battle.
In the incarnation, the long-awaited invasion force of God’s Kingdom was sighted on the horizon, and the powers of hell were not its only target. As the Lord Himself marched through the dusty paths of Palestine, entering town after town like Joshua conquering Canaan, He sounded the trumpet blast that the long-prophesied Kingdom of God had finally arrived, proclaiming, “The Kingdom of God is at hand!” (Mark 1:15). For those willing to repent and turn to Jesus, this was glorious news of liberation. But for those who remained stubbornly opposed to Him and His Kingdom, they would be overwhelmed by the fury of its triumphant advance.
This was not merely a peaceful Kingdom endeavor but the outbreak of a spiritual war. For centuries, Israel had been God’s strategic outpost on Earth, the staging ground where His Kingdom forces could grow strong to eventually push outward in all directions. However, due to repeated disobedience, they allowed foreign oppression and influence to overrun the holy land. By the New Testament era, malign spiritual forces had been welcomed in through disobedience, revealing the destructive spiritual landscape the Jewish leaders had created. Their calling was to be a conduit of God’s blessing to all peoples, yet they had summoned His curses by breaking the covenant with Him.
In their blindness, the Jewish people obstructed and rejected their only hope of rescue, continually working to subvert Jesus’ mission at every turn. As His Kingdom invasion advanced, Jesus encountered the fiercest resistance from His own covenant people. The religious leaders arose as hostile insurgents – a militia in the service of hell itself – implacably opposing the Messiah. Like the Nazis seeking to exterminate God’s purposes in the 20th century, these hardened Jewish sects became entrenched pockets of opposition dedicated to destroying the Deliverer they should have embraced.
Despite witnessing Christ’s miraculous credentials and supernatural wisdom, they stubbornly rejected His rightful authority to rule. Their rejection metastasized into treacherous plots to murder the Prince of Peace Himself.
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Aidan of Lindisfarne – A Seventh-Century Door-to-Door Missionary
Aidan is however most famous for his missionary work. Aidan worked many miles every day, going from house to house and talking “to any whomsoever he saw, whether rich or poor, and call upon them, if infidels, to receive the mystery of the faith, or, if they were believers, strengthen them in the faith, and stir them up by words and actions to giving of alms and the performance of good works.”[7] Probably, walking allowed him more time with the people.
Thanks to the literary mastery of the Venerable Bede, the history of the Christianization of England is filled with memorable stories of valiant kings, praying queens, and wonder-working saints. But it’s also studded with lesser-known characters who simply persisted day after day in spreading the gospel. One of these is Aidan of Lindisfarne.
A Field White to Harvest
Christianity first arrived in England, as in other parts of the known world, through the personal testimony of Christian travelers, merchants, and soldiers. This work of personal evangelization was so effective that, in the second century, Tertullian could say that Christianity had reached even “the haunts of the Britons – inaccessible to the Romans, but subjugated to Christ.”[1]
Yet, as in other nations, Christianity in Britain spread slowly, often mixed with traditional religions and recent heresies. The main impetus for the establishment of missions in that region came from Pope Gregory the Great. According to Bede, Gregory was so struck by the looks of some Anglo-Saxon slave boys that he determined (with a famous play-on-words) that the Angles looked like angels, therefore fitting “to be coheirs with the angels m heaven.”[2]
Following the common practice of evangelizing rulers (who could mandate the observance of Christianity in their regions), in 596 Gregory sent a first team of missionaries, led by Augustine of Canterbury, to Kent, where King Ethelberg had already been primed by his Merovingian wife Bertha.[3]
Faced with the pope’s exhortation to accept Christianity, Ethelberg shared the same concerns of most kings of his day: Is the Christian God really the only true God? If so, will my people accept my conversion or rise against me for exchanging the security of our traditional religion for a gospel that, although good, is still news?
Many kings replied yes to the first question after some personal victories in battle. Ethelbert, instead, observed the missionaries until their message and example and the reception of his own people allowed him to answer affirmatively to both questions.
The conversion of other British kings followed. Ethelbert influenced King Edwin of Northumbria by giving him his daughter Ethelburga in marriage. Edwin accepted Christianity in 628 but, when he died in battle five years later, his kingdom reverted into paganism.
Aidan’s Calling
This is where Aidan came in. He was an Irish monk living in a monastery on the Scottish island of Iona – a man, according to Bede, “of singular gentleness, piety, and moderation.”[4] Founded in 563 by Columbanus, the monastery had been a lively center of Christianity. In the early days of Edwin’s rule, it had also become a refuge for the royal brothers Oswald and Oswiu, who did the safest thing for most noblemen in line for the throne – they fled from a king who might choose to eliminate competition.
During their twenty years at the monastery, the brothers were converted to Christianity. Then, after Edwin died, Oswald returned to Northumbria to take over the throne. Seeing how quickly the people were returning to their idols, Oswald asked the monastery in Iona to send him a missionary to bring back the gospel message.
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First Comes Love. Then Comes Sterilization.
It used to be that people wanted to make babies. Women, especially, but also men. That was a healthy young person’s default position, and our existence depended on it. We wanted to do other things, of course, and the great post-feminist challenge was how to have it all…But now, for an increasing number, the question isn’t how to have it all. It’s: why do it at all?
Rachel Diamond looks like most of the moms at the Park Slope café where we meet. She’s wearing a green t-shirt under a black corduroy jumper, sensible shoes and carries a smart, leather bag. She sips a four dollar iced chai. Except the 31-year-old isn’t a mom. And she never will be. “You know,” Diamond says cheerily, “I never expected to be the poster child of sterilization.”
On the aspiring actor’s TikTok, one finds short funny videos about Diamond’s job working the register at a cafe near Union Square and updates on her rescue pitbull, Rue, who has anemia. Mixed in are the clips extolling her child-free life. They have titles like “Sterilization Attempt #3” and “Being Childfree: We DO Know What We’re Missing.” It’s been five months since she had her fallopian tubes cut—not tied—and she has 64,000 followers.
Growing up near Hershey, Penn., Diamond always assumed she’d have a family of her own. Then came college at Arcadia University; her political awakening, away from her conservative roots, and towards progressivism; and a therapist who she found online a few months after graduation who made her realize that being spanked as a child was deeply traumatic, and that it made her fear authority figures like her father. She decided that she never wanted to be one herself. Never ever ever.
“Looking back, I never pretended that my American Girl dolls were children, they were always my sisters,” she says. “There were little things showing that I wasn’t preparing myself for motherhood. I think for me, it’s as innate as saying, ‘I’ve always wanted to be a mom.’”
Diamond is hardly an outlier. Americans are making fewer babies than we’ve made since we started keeping track in the 1930s. And some women, like Diamond, are not just putting off pregnancy but eliminating the possibility of it altogether.
Last year, the number of deaths exceeded that of births in 25 states—up from five the year before. The marriage rate is also at an all-time low, at 6.5 marriages per 1,000 people. Millennials are the first generation where a majority are unmarried (about 56%). They are also more likely to live with their own parents, according to Pew, than previous generations were in their twenties and thirties.
They also aren’t having sex. The number of young men (ages 18 to 30) who admit they have had no sex in the past year tripled between 2008 and 2018. Cities like New York, where young, secular Americans flock to to build their lives, are increasingly childless. In San Francisco, there are more dogs than children.
It used to be that people wanted to make babies. Women, especially, but also men. That was a healthy young person’s default position, and our existence depended on it. We wanted to do other things, of course, and the great post-feminist challenge was how to have it all—the proper work-life balance, the career and the baby, the supportive husband and the adventurous life.
But now, for an increasing number, the question isn’t how to have it all. It’s: why do it at all?
This psychological reversal didn’t just happen. It took place inside the hurricane of spiritual, cultural and environmental forces swirling around us. But the message from this young cohort is clear: Life is already exhausting enough. And the world is broken and burning. Who would want to bring new, innocent life into a criminally unequal society situated on a planet with catastrophically rising sea levels?
The Rapture—sorry, the end—is upon us, and this is no time for onesies. So says The New Yorker and NPR and AOC. According to a new poll, 39% of Gen Zers are hesitant to procreate for fear of the climate apocalypse. A nationally representative study of adults in Michigan found that over a quarter of adults there are child-free by choice. And new research by the Institute of Family Studies found that the desire to have a child among adults decreased by 17% since the onset of the pandemic.
“I think it’s morally wrong to bring a child into the world,” said Isabel, 28, a self proclaimed anti-natalist who lives in southwestern Texas and did not want her last name in print. “No matter how good someone has it, they will suffer.”
Texas’s new, highly restrictive abortion law has led her to take action sooner instead of later. “I was going to wait until I was thirty to get the procedure done,” Isabel said, “but, with the Heartbeat Bill in place, I can’t take the risk of getting pregnant and not being able to abort.”
Last week, she was approved for The Operation—aka laparoscopic bilateral salpingectomy. (Many surgeons won’t sterilize young, childless women because studies indicate high rates of regret, so it can take time to lock one down.) During the procedure, which she hopes will take place in the next few months depending on Covid and the hospital’s capacity to perform elective surgeries, Isabel’s surgeon will make three incisions: two near her abdomen and one just above her belly button. This will allow the surgeon to insert cameras and then remove her fallopian tubes.
Isabel is planning a “sterilization celebration” at a local sushi joint. There will be lots of booze, a smattering of friends, and her brother and his husband, who are also child-free. “I don’t want to work my life away,” says Isabel, who hopes to retire in her fifties or earlier.
Darlene Nickell, 31, in Denver, Colo., had her tubes removed eight months ago. “My generation is very aware of the ways that our parents traumatized us,” she tells me. “My mom smoked a lot of weed and did her own thing, and my dad was away a lot for work.” She says her parents’ marriage improved after they became empty nesters.
She first set out to get sterilized at the age of 21 and was told by her doctor that she needed written consent from her male partner or to have already had two kids. Meantime, her childless male friend from high school had successfully gotten his vasectomy a year before. “That felt like an attack on me.”
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