http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15287806/midlife-clarity
I haven’t yet been through midlife, but now I seem to be at it. Or at least approaching it, depending on how you define midlife. Some get as specific, and early, as age 41.5; others define midlife as a broad range beginning around 45, and even dragging on as late as 65.
Standing here at age 41, and looking around, I can imagine — without even considering what physiological and neurological components might be involved — why this juncture in a man’s life can be difficult.
Swirl of Complex Factors
John Piper has written about the tumults he faced at midlife, a “season [that] lasted several years,” and was most acutely confusing and difficult in his forty-first year. Writing more than thirty years later, he says, “That was a very hard season of life, and the record of it in my journals is to this day painful to read.” (For those who would like to chase that trail, Piper published some excerpts in the article “Walk with Me Through a Midlife Crisis.”)
His journal entries include self-descriptions like irritable and unlikable, and phrases like “felt like lead,” “could hardly converse,” “wanted to cry again and again,” “my emotions were dead,” “on adrenaline all day Sunday,” “incredibly cranky and so discouraged,” “so blank,” “so blind to the future,” and again “so discouraged.” He says at one point that “it seems that yesterday’s near collapse is the outcry of my body for some relief.” And perhaps most striking of all to me as a pastor is this: “I must preach on Sunday, and I can scarcely lift my head.”
In sum, Piper captures midlife as “a critical stage in life when physical changes, marital stresses, children’s challenges, vocational aspirations, and the burdens of success (or failure) create the conditions for meltdown. This perilous confluence of forces leads to a shuttering reassessment of life and the desire to be somewhere else.”
Facing Finitude and Failures
One definition of “midlife crisis” centers on a man’s growing awareness of his finitude and his failures: “a psychological crisis brought about by events that highlight a person’s growing age, inevitable mortality, and possibly lack of accomplishments in life.” One dear friend of mine, who has made it far past 41.5, and is now closing in on 60, said to me recently about his journey through midlife,
The reality of your limitations (on most fronts) become clearer. We are often forced to face who we really are instead of who we imagine we’ll be someday. Midlife is a phase where one’s psychology (in terms of self-understanding) has an opportunity to grow into one’s theology. For it’s a phase when one’s functional theology is tested by the reality of mortality.
With the ring of wisdom, that presents midlife not only as a trial to be endured, but an opportunity for Christian maturity — “to grow into one’s theology.” With that in mind, I came across Proverbs 16:1–9 recently and found that this unit of ancient wisdom speaks to an aspect of the phenomenon that I’m hoping to steady myself for. Consider at least five layers it might offer to men approaching, or in, midlife trials.
1. Our actual life is ‘from the Lord.’
The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. (Proverbs 16:1)
I suspect one conscious reason midlife can be tough is the stubborn, immovable realities of life. As young men, two decades ago, so many doors seemed open; the possibilities seemed endless. It was easy to dream, and even expect we might live out some, if not all, of those dreams.
“Rarely, if ever, do our actual lives live up to the grandeur of the great hopes we’re prone to generate in our youth.”
But midlife brings a bracing reality check. Far fewer doors are now open. Many of our secret and spoken dreams and aspirations now seem unrealistic, or impossible. What might be has crashed on the rocks of what is. Somehow it got real in the last two decades, and perhaps it took us a while to realize it. Then it dawned on us almost all at once.
Rarely, if ever, do our actual lives live up to the grandeur of the great hopes we’re prone to generate in our youth. Our youthful plans are one thing. Then, in time, comes the “answer of the tongue.” That is, what really emerges and is manifest in our lives in the years that follow, to midlife and beyond, is “from the Lord.”
2. His plans include our ‘days of trouble.’
The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble. (Proverbs 16:4)
The midlife disappointments we may feel, with ourselves and others and our circumstances, are no sign that God is distant and has lost control. In fact, just the opposite. He has his purposes for his sons in precisely those failures and letdowns and pains. Our “days of trouble,” however external or internal the obstacles, and however past or present — and the ones sure to come in the future — are lovingly sifted through his fingers for the deeper joy and final good of his sons. He has planned all our days. Even the worst ones. Especially the worst ones. And the days beyond them.
3. God matures us through humbling.
Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the Lord; be assured, he will not go unpunished. (Proverbs 16:5)
One purpose God accomplishes, among others, in our midlife disappointments is our humbling. He is, and has been, purging our hearts from the arrogance of youth and unholy ambition. How much of our youthful sky’s-the-limit wishes were not simply natural but proud? How much, in arrogance, did we presume health, wealth, and prosperity, on our terms? One of God’s great works in moving men from naive youth to mature manhood is the great humblings leading up to, and in, midlife. He moves, with severe mercy, against the arrogance of our youth.
We’ve had our dreams, and made our plans, as we should, but God’s plan is definitive, and humbling. “One can strategize about the future, to be sure,” comments Tremper Longman on Proverbs 16, “but this wise observation would lead one to acknowledge that the future can only be determined by God. Such recognition would engender a proper humility and open one up to changes” (Proverbs, 327). How often does the hard, painful midlife crash against the rocks of reality serve to “open us up to changes” of God’s leading that we’ve been long, subconsciously resisting?
4. Christ has atoned for sin.
By steadfast love and faithfulness iniquity is atoned for, and by the fear of the Lord one turns away from evil. (Proverbs 16:6)
Midlife brings awareness not only of compounding frustrations, or how we’ve been hurt or deterred by other’s sins, but also of our own iniquity. We are sinners. Midlife “crisis,” however profound it might feel, has not yet plumbed the depths if there is no awareness of our own sin — sin that does not just disappear or go away with avoidance but needs to be addressed and forgiven.
Perhaps midlife brings new awareness of bad choices and wasted time. This “crisis” is an opportunity to acknowledge that and own it, in the full confidence that God, in Christ, has made full provision for our sin. And by his Spirit, change is possible. We can pivot. Even if none of the presenting complexities seems to involve our own sin, how liberating to know that in Christ our “iniquity is atoned for,” and can fearlessly be mined for, found, and confessed, leading to our turning away from evil.
5. Our ‘lesser’ can be his ‘better.’
Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice. The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. (Proverbs 16:8–9)
To the degree we’re mourning something, or many things, that seem to be lesser in our life than we dreamed in our youth, it might be good to consider how lesser, in God’s economy, often amounts to better.
“Midlife confronts us with the limits, and errors, of our own all-too-human ways of reckoning.”
Midlife confronts us with the limits, and errors, of our own all-too-human ways of reckoning. What we have, at our seeming halfway point, may seem like so little compared to the “great revenues” we hoped. But what soul-destroying revenues might we have been spared? And how upside down might our instinctive evaluations be, without learning something of God’s vantage? And what might we, and others, discover to be true when our Father issues the last word?
Proverbs 16:9 not only echoes Proverbs 16:1, but also sums up Proverbs 16:1–8 under the banner that Derek Kidner captures as “God has not merely the last word but the soundest” (Proverbs, 119). Yes, look to him now, by faith and in patience, for his last word, and soundest word, that is coming as you endure.
Able and Faithful
Humbling ourselves, at midlife, under God’s mighty hand brings no promise of immediate relief. From beginning to end, the Scriptures promise real rescue — and exaltation — to the one who genuinely humbles himself. But when? Peter says “at the proper time” — that is, on God’s perfect timetable, not ours.
Some may see only a few discouraging days; others may struggle under debilitating weights for months, or longer. Yet all are invited, one day at a time, to roll those burdens onto the broad, omnipotent shoulders of our God, “casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).
However long, however discouraging, however debilitating the season, in Christ our heavenly Father cares, and until the sun rises again, and the air is fresh again, and our burdens are light again, and beyond, he is able to keep us. Perhaps midlife will be the time when the power of Jude’s doxology really begins to hit home:
Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy . . . (Jude 24)
God is faithful — faithful to his Son, and to his sons. He will not let us be burdened beyond what we can bear but will help us endure (1 Corinthians 10:13). He is able to “make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times,” even in this season, you may not only endure, but “abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).
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How Does the Word Produce New Preferences? 1 Thessalonians 2:13–16, Part 5
http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15464575/how-does-the-word-produce-new-preferences
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The God Who Dwarfs Big Tech
Audio Transcript
Well, this week is exciting for me. It’s the scheduled launch week for my new book: God, Technology, and the Christian Life. I have been wanting to write and publish this book for several years now. It’s a dream of mine. Back when I wrote my book 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, it proved to be harder to write than I expected. It was hard because I couldn’t find a baseline theology of technology that would orient my thinking toward the smartphone specifically. I came to see that there’s a theological gap, a lacking foundation, in how Christians think about modern-day technology — digital technology, big-tech, Silicon Valley — which surprised me.
Without that foundation, I had to build as much of it as I could myself. So, I wrote a ten-page introduction in my smartphone book. I called it “A Little Theology of Technology,” and it was published there on pages 29–39. Very little, indeed. But I knew this little theology of technology would need to become a larger theology of technology. And I knew if I could pull this off, it would serve a real need in the church.
In other words, we need to ask, What is God’s relationship to big tech? What does he think of space travel, nuclear power, and the big agricultural innovations we depend on for food every day? That’s what I’m trying to figure out, because only once we can answer this question can we figure out our relationship to tech. So, I’m thrilled to announce that my theology of technology is written, done, printed, and out. Pastor John kindly took the time to read it, and he liked it, and wanted to use this Wednesday slot in the podcast to share his thoughts with you about my book, which is a little awkward for me as the host of this podcast, but it’s super kind of him. Here’s what he had to say.
If you can see me and hear me, you are among the most technologically advanced human beings in the history of the world. Yes, you are. And probably, like me, you take that for granted, and we’ll be taking for granted very soon, probably, self-driving cars, and artificial intelligence, and robots, and human genetic engineering — all of them as if they were just as normal as an iPhone.
Penetrating Book on Big Tech
There are only a few people in the world who are asking the question, How does a big God relate to big technology? — especially Bible-saturated people. Thoughtful people. Especially also given the fact that the word big in “big tech” and “big God” are infinitely disproportionate.
“I don’t think there is a more sweeping treatment of technology so tethered to the infallible Scriptures.”
You may know the name Tony Reinke from being the host of Ask Pastor John, or you may know him as the author of 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You. Tony has written a book called God, Technology, and the Christian Life. It is a panoramic and penetrating book. I don’t think there is a more sweeping treatment of technology so tethered to the infallible Scriptures, and therefore, so realistic and so hopeful. Tony’s not anti-technology. He calls himself a “tech optimist,” in fact. He’s glad he lives in the computer age. In fact, let me read to you a quote that was amazing to me:
Our safe jets, reliable cars, intelligent phones, medical options, household appliances, streaming video, digital music, have upgraded each of us to a tech wealth beyond Rockefeller’s wildest imagination. . . . “Nearly every middle-class American today is richer than was America’s richest man a mere 100 years ago.” (150)
God Bigger Than Big Tech
But Tony’s tech optimism doesn’t flow from confidence in Elon Musk, or artificial intelligence, or human genetic engineering. It flows from the fact that in the Bible, Tony finds the reality of a sovereign, massive, glorious God of providence, infinite wisdom, and infinite knowledge that simply dwarfs all the powers of big tech. That’s what he finds. That’s where his confidence comes from.
“Is your God big enough to make the greatest technological marvel look like a first-grade arithmetic book?”
What happens when you read this book is that your theology is exposed. You discover whether or not your feelings and thinkings about the greatest technological marvels cause you to see God as vastly greater. Is your God big enough to make the greatest technological marvel look like a first-grade arithmetic book — or not? For me personally, reading this book was a worship experience, because the bigger technology became — and Tony makes it big — the more beautiful Christ became.
Tony says this: “The angels in heaven are not bowing down to the wonders of Silicon Valley. The angels in heaven are bowing down to the glories and the agonies of Jesus Christ” (278). It was a worship experience, so my prayer is that that’s what it will be for you when you read God, Technology, and the Christian Life by Tony Reinke.
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Make Your Life Count: Twelve Rules for Teens
Audio Transcript
Pop the confetti — we have arrived at episode number 2000 on the Ask Pastor John podcast. Wow! What better way to celebrate than with a question about how to make our lives count? That’s a major theme of your ministry, Pastor John — not wasting our lives. Today’s question comes from a teenager named Payton. Parents and grandparents of teens, here’s a heads-up: this is one of those episodes you may want to pass along to the teens in your life.
Here’s the question: “Pastor John, hello. My name is Payton, and I’m fifteen years old. I have listened to your sermons and to this podcast over the past year, and it has been truly very helpful in my Christian walk. As a fifteen-year-old, how can I make a difference in the world as a Christian? How can I make my life count?”
Okay, here are my twelve rules for fifteen-year-olds. Actually, twelve rules for teenagers. Most of them are applicable to girls as well, if they just make a slight twist. But Payton is a boy, so I’m thinking this way for him.
1. Honor your parents.
“Honor your father and mother” (Ephesians 6:1–2). These are ways to make your life count. “Honor your father and mother.” Never treat them with contempt or belittle them behind their back or around your friends. That is a mark of honoring them. It is a mark of maturity, and it is pleasing to the Lord.
2. Savor the Bible.
“Ransack your Bible every day, and pray for its greatest impact in your life. Don’t just read it — devour it.”
Ransack your Bible every day, and pray for its greatest impact in your life. Don’t just read it — devour it. Dig into it the way a miser searches for gold and silver. Ask God every time you open your Bible, “Show me wonderful things here, great things, life-changing things” (see Psalm 119:18). Savor it the way you savor your favorite food. When you stop reading, meditate on it day and night (Psalm 1:2). Take it with you. You’ll be “like a tree planted by streams of water” (Psalm 1:3). You won’t be like a leaf blown around by the wind.
3. Focus on character.
Don’t focus on making good grades in school. Focus on really learning all you can and using all of that learning to turn you into a man of character. The Bible clearly calls us to grow in grace, in knowledge (2 Peter 3:18). It never calls us to make good grades. Grades will take care of themselves if you really squeeze the most learning out of every course in high school that you can.
4. Choose schools wisely.
If you get to choose your school, say high school or college, don’t choose a school because of its popularity or its library or its sports teams or its size or its parties. Choose it because of the wisdom of its faculty. Choose teachers, not courses; choose teachers, not schools. Proverbs 13:20 says, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise.”
5. Date for marriage.
Save dating girls for the time when marriage is a real option. Put it off till then. The concept of dating as a kind of mere recreation in our Western culture is not wise. Our attraction to the opposite sex, built in by God — it’s a good thing. It’s designed by God to lead to the great and wonderful satisfaction of marriage. That’s what it’s for.
Do things with other boys and other girls in groups, and save the one-on-one dating till you’re ready to consider marriage seriously. I dated for the first time (with a pounding heart) when I was 20 years old, and I married her. We’re still married and happy 55 years later. It was a good choice.
6. Stay busy ‘doing.’
Number six comes from my father. He said, “Be so busy ‘doing’ that you don’t have time to ‘don’t.’” Now, that was his response to the fact that the Bible does indeed say there are a lot of “don’ts.” There are a lot of things we should not do as teenagers or adults, some because they’re outright wrong, but many just because they’re not helpful. They’re weights, not sins. It’s like wearing an overcoat when you run a marathon. That’s not against the rules; it’s just stupid.
These things, we know, don’t build our faith. They don’t keep our minds pure. So my dad’s solution was not to harp on all the things that wise Christians don’t do, but instead to fill your life with so many good and helpful things that you don’t have time for the questionable things: “Be so busy ‘doing’ that you don’t have time to ‘don’t.’” (See Galatians 6:9; 2 Thessalonians 3:13; 1 Corinthians 15:58.)
7. Be passionate, not lazy.
What your hand finds to do, do it with all your might (see Ecclesiastes 9:10). If you want your life to count, you can’t be half-hearted. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing passionately. Colossians 3:23 says, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.”
Or consider Romans 12:11: “Do not be slothful in zeal [our contemporary word for zeal is passion], be fervent in spirit [the literal translation is boiling — ‘be boiling in spirit’], serve the Lord.” So, don’t be lazy, but be zealous or passionate; not lukewarm, but fervent or boiling in the spirit. Be done with half-heartedness.
8. Offer up your gifts.
Don’t fret over gifts you don’t have, but take the few you do have and put them in the hands of Christ, like the boy with the five loaves and two fish in his hands. He put them in the hands of Jesus. Your hand shouldn’t say to your eye, “Because I’m not an eye, I’m of no use to the body.” That’s 1 Corinthians 12:21, adapted (see also 1 Corinthians 12:15–16). I regard this as one of the most important lessons I ever learned.
As I went through school, I saw more and more clearly what I was not good at. If I had focused on that, on what I’m not good at — oh my goodness. There’s a long list of things I’m not good at. I’ve never made any sports teams, for example, and I read so slowly, and my memory is so poor. On and on my weaknesses go.
If I had focused on them, I think I would have accomplished nothing. Instead, I saw two or three things I could do, and I could do them as well as others, maybe even better. And I said, “Lord, help me not to waste energy on bemoaning what I can’t do, and help me to do what I can do with all my might. Take it. Use it. Make it count.”
9. Don’t be a people-pleaser.
Don’t be a people-pleaser. Paul says in Galatians 1:10, “Am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
Now, that’s not as simple as you might think because there are other texts that say we should try to please others, like Romans 15:2: “Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.” To please others, to help them be stronger in faith, is good. It’s not about you. It’s about trusting Christ, seeing Christ, knowing Christ.
But pleasing others to pump up our ego or to avoid criticism of us or to escape suffering or hardship — that’s not good. Be mature enough to know how not to offend others, and then be utterly indifferent to other people’s praise when your own ego or your own safety is at stake. Do what’s right, and let the chips fall where they will.
10. Fail well.
Don’t be defeated by failures. If you never fail at anything, you are not trying enough things. You haven’t taken enough risks if you never fail. We all begin as failures — all of us. That’s what sin is — it’s a failure. To honor God as we ought, we all begin as “F,” and the punishment is hell. Paul says in Romans 7:15–19 that, even after he is converted, he stumbles in many ways, doing what he does not want to do.
But here is the glory of the gospel of Christ (and our lives are built on the gospel): He covered our sins. He imputed righteousness to us that we don’t have natively. Our acceptance with God is not earned. So we say with Paul in Philippians 3:13, “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind . . .” He had lots of things he needed to forget.
We all have failures. I mean, every day we don’t measure up to the way we would like to talk to people or treat people. If we are crushed by those things, we’ll never count. So don’t look back like that. “Forgetting what lies behind,” Paul says, “and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13–14). Don’t be defeated by past failures.
11. Fight sin and temptation.
“You will not be used by God for anything great if you live in compromise with sin.”
“Make no provision for the flesh.” That’s Romans 13:14. Know the things and the times and the places that lure you to sin, and avoid them. You will not be used by God for anything great if you live in compromise with sin, and one crucial way to fight sin is to head it off at the pass. Don’t put yourself in any position where sin typically gets the upper hand. That may be sexual sin or the temptation to greed, pride, anger, or whatever your typical temptation is.
12. Live to magnify Christ.
Finally, don’t live to stay alive. Live to make much of Christ. I love Acts 20:24, where Paul says, “I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus.” The point of life is not to stay alive. It’s to magnify the greatness of Jesus. As Paul puts it in Philippians 1:20, “It is my eager expectation and hope that . . . Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.”
Seek to do these twelve things, and I promise you: your life will count.
