Passionate about the Trivial and Apathetic about the Vital
Practice gratitude. Thankfulness is a central part of the Christian life. But as we think about apathy and triviality, I want to highlight the subversive nature of gratitude. Paul writes in Ephesians 5:3–4: “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.” Notice that thanksgiving undermines filthy, empty, trivial, and mocking talk. We replace triviality with gratitude to God. Calling out all the good things we have from God immediately gives perspective to our daily lives.
A High Calling
As a young man, Jonathan Edwards, the 18th Century preacher and theologian, wrote seventy personal resolutions to help keep his spiritual life focused, energetic, and God-centered. His third resolution reads, “Resolved, if ever I shall fall and grow dull, so as to neglect to keep any part of these Resolutions, to repent of all I can remember, when I come to myself again.” A later resolution echoes that sentiment: “Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.”1 As a pastor who regularly taught the word of God, scaling the heights of doctrines like God’s sovereignty, heaven and hell, justification by faith, and more, he was well aware that the heart—even more than the intellect—is always the issue. He knew that those exposed to the deepest and richest Christian truths will often find themselves unresponsive to those very truths. So, he resolved that whenever he fell prey to such dullness and indifference, that he would do whatever he could to break free.
All Christians, not just Edwards, are called to live zealous lives. Paul writes, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord” (Rom. 12:11). He instructs Christians to maintain a spiritual intensity in their lives. We are to be energetically engaged in the things of God. This is a high calling, even if it is a really difficult one.
The Paradox of Apathy
Most, if not all, Christians go through periods when their passion for God wanes. But there are some of us who experience extended stretches of time when we just don’t care to engage with our faith. Nothing motivates us to pray; nothing excites us about Christ. We just feel blah and stuck. We feel apathetic.
Yet, what’s interesting about our apathy is that it only seems to take aim at meaningful things, spiritual things, things that are meant to give us life. Apathy is highly selective. In fact, one clinical expert on apathy defines typical forms of apathy as “selective apathy.”2 This term describes how relatively healthy people can dramatically lose interest in some things but not all things. And herein lies the disturbing paradox of apathy for Christians. Those of us struggling with apathy can often find ourselves able to get excited about trivial or less meaningful things. Sports or news or the latest must-see Netflix series are still able to get us moving.
The paradox of apathy is that, for the spiritually apathetic, there is an inverse relationship between the greatness of a truth and our emotional and practical response to it. The grander the truth, the less we care about it. I imagine there are a number of reasons for this, including the basic law that familiarity breeds contempt. And it’s true, many Christians are (rightly) very, very familiar with astronomically important truths. Yet, whatever the reason may be, we are bored by big things: the bigger, the more boring. We are, ironically, numbed by grandeur.
Numbed by Triviality
Cultural critic Neil Postman once wrote, “The public has adjusted to incoherence and been amused into indifference.”3 What he puts his finger on is that our apathy can sometimes derive not just from meaningful things becoming too familiar, but from being inundated by trivial things. All day long, news media or social media is vying for our attention. They foist upon us trivial thing after trivial thing—reality star break ups, a former president saying this or that, awards show snubs, and athletes tweeting whatever—and call us to treat them like they’re monumental events.
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Dear College Freshman: 5 Ways to Stay Strong in the Lord
Written by Jon D. Payne |
Wednesday, September 1, 2021
It is the glorious gospel of grace that will drive you to find a solid church home, foster a strong devotional life, establish healthy friendships, and pursue sexual purity. Good intentions, personal resolutions, and parental expectations may inspire for a time. But only by abiding in the incomparable love of Christ will you remain steadfast and immovable during your first year in college and beyond.Dear college freshman,
Ready or not here it comes: In a couple weeks you will begin classes as a college freshman. It’s no exaggeration that these next four years will be some of the most meaningful and formative of your life. For this reason, it’s vital that from the first day you set foot on campus you have the right perspective—one informed and shaped by the wisdom of God’s Word.
Perhaps you already know today’s typical college scene isn’t hospitable toward serious followers of Christ. In reality, it’s quite inhospitable, a spiritual war zone of sorts (Eph. 6:10–13). Drunkenness and sexual promiscuity are the norm, not the exception. Vulgarity is rampant. Porn is common. Academic integrity is increasingly elusive, and the winds of postmodernism blow briskly through the classroom. Consequently, the pressure on campus to conform to the world far outweighs any encouragement to live with biblical conviction.
That is why I’m writing to you—to encourage you to stand firm in the grace of God (1 Pet. 5:8–9, 12), and to let nothing come between you and Jesus during your freshman year.
Here is a five-part biblical strategy for maintaining a strong walk with God on campus.
1. Find a solid church home.
The first thing you need to do when starting your freshman year is find a good church. This is what they call a no-brainer. You need a church. Every Christian needs a church. A churchless Christian is a vulnerable Christian. Why? Because the local church is Christ’s ordained means of protecting, nourishing, equipping, and tending his blood-bought flock (John 21:15–17; Eph. 4:11–14). Jesus, the Good Shepherd, executes these tasks through spiritually qualified elders (1 Tim. 3:1–7). These undershepherds are called and set apart to faithfully proclaim the Word, administer the sacraments, pray, and watch over the souls of God’s children (1 Cor. 1:21; 11:23–26; Acts 6:4; Acts 20:28).
Therefore, dear freshman, if you neglect the ministry of the church during your college years you will be like a lost and exposed lamb in the wild, vulnerable to the evil one’s attacks (1 Pet. 5:8). Moreover, you will be impoverished of godly wisdom and accountability during a season of life when you need it most.
And not only do you need the church, but the church needs you. Christ has given you spiritual gifts to bless his body—yes, even in college. Christ’s body is healthiest when every member is doing their part. “When each part is working properly,” Paul writes, “the body grows so that it builds itself up in love” (Eph. 4:16). You are a vital member of the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:12–26).
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Heart and Mind
Written by Timothy Z. Witmer |
Wednesday, August 17, 2022
It would be a mistake to think that heart and mind are mutually exclusive or that they operate independently. The Scriptures identify the heart, the seat of affection, as the operating system for the rest. “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Prov. 4:23). The orientation of the heart affects our thinking and our actions.When you first hear the terms heart and mind, perhaps you think of the Great Commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37). Jesus is reminding His listeners that they should love the Lord with their whole being. While it sometimes seems as though these terms are used interchangeably, they can be distinguished from one another. The soul is often used to describe the entirety of one’s being that continues to exist eternally (16:26). The rest of this article will unpack the biblical nuances of the mind and the heart.
Most simply put, the mind concerns our thoughts. The heart reflects our affections, what we really care about. Concerning the Great Commandment to love the Lord with all our heart and mind, it is clear that we fall far short of this standard. In reality, we don’t even come close. The Scriptures teach that our hearts and our minds are corrupted by sin. Jeremiah teaches that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). Concerning the mind, the Bible outlines the noetic impact of the first couple’s fall. Noetic comes from the Greek word for “mind” (nous). Speaking of fallen thinking, Paul writes, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God” (Rom. 8:7).
It would be a mistake, however, to think that heart and mind are mutually exclusive or that they operate independently. The Scriptures identify the heart, the seat of affection, as the operating system for the rest. “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Prov. 4:23). The orientation of the heart affects our thinking and our actions, for that matter. Notice how the two are linked in Genesis 6:5: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” The heart is the source of wicked intentions and thoughts. Paul links the two in Ephesians 4:18: “They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart” (emphasis added). The reason for their “darkened . . . understanding” and ignorance is the hardness of their hearts.
Jesus makes the same connection when challenging His enemies on being superficial and legalistic: “The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). The connection is extended from the heart to our words and behavior.
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Jesus is Not a Proxy
If Jesus is not God, as John asserts and Jesus himself declares, and if he is not “my Lord and my God” as Thomas exclaims, then we have no hope. We have no gospel. Jesus is able to die in our place and reconcile us to the Father precisely because he is the divine Son of God, worthy to atone for the sins of all who would believe in him.
I usually don’t care to debate the theological opinions I hear on the radio. This is mostly because I believe Christian radio hosts are simply trying to love Jesus, love people, and do some encouraging things in the world. Furthermore, they do not seem to offer their opinions as though they believed they were the official teachers of the church universal.
Every now and then, however, someone says something that causes me to say, “No!” In my head, this is usually followed by a little bit of debate with whoever said what they said. In this hypothetical interaction, I often attempt to offer a bit winsome correction. To be honest, though, this is simply an exercise that helps me get my own head around why I think what I just heard is out of theological bounds.
The other day I was driving down the road and listening to a Christian radio station somewhere in Wisconsin. I do not remember what song had just played and, honestly, I do not recall much of what was going on. However, at one point the host said something along these lines:
“When we spend time with Jesus, by proxy we meet with God.”
When I heard that, I paused. I immediately knew something was off. But I wanted to be sure, so (at the next stop), I looked up the dictionary definition of proxy to see if it meant what I thought it meant. Here are the definitions of proxy via Merriam-Webster.
First, Webster provides the “essential meaning.”A person who is given the power and authority to do something (such as vote) for someone else;
Power or authority that is given to allow a person to act for someone else.Then, a fuller meaning is provided. The problematic language within the “essential meaning” and the “fuller meaning” is simply that a “proxy” acts as a “substitute…for another.” The idea of being a proxy is that the proxy represents and acts for someone else, for someone they are not. For instance, imagine if it were legal to allow your spouse to vote in your place during an election. I might give my wife the right to cast my vote if I’m unable to do so due to sickness, travel, or any other unforeseen circumstance. She acts on my behalf yet she is not me. Or, perhaps, imagine I have given power of attorney to her so that she can sign a document for me. She again acts on my behalf but she, again, is not me. We are not the same person.
If that is the meaning of proxy, then the host of the radio show has said in essence that when you meet with Jesus, you meet with God via someone who acts on God’s behalf but is not God himself. At least this is the implication of the words, even if this was not the intent. He did not say that when you meet with Jesus, you meet with the Father via proxy. There is perhaps a way we could nuance that to make it work, since the Son is not the Father, though they are one in essence. But, even there, the Son and the Father, along with the Spirit, are without division. To meet with the Son is to be with the Father and the Spirit. However we might have parsed out that idea is beside the point. The host said that when you meet with Jesus, you meet with “God via proxy.” That does not work, because to meet with Jesus is to meet with the God of the Cosmos.
The Bible is abundantly clear on the identity of Jesus Christ. He is no mere mortal. Jesus is God of very God, while also being fully human. When we talk of Jesus, we speak of the one in whom perfect deity and complete humanity are joined together without mixture or confusion.
The Gospel of John paints the picture as clear as any portion of the Bible. As soon as John opens his Gospel, the deity of Jesus flies off the page.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:1-5)
In the context of John, the Word is a reference to Jesus (John 1:14). John opens by pointing to the creation account in Genesis, letting the reader know that this Jesus, though recently born of a woman, was there when the world was created. He was with God at the start and, in fact, “was God.” Being God, he is the agent of creation and had life in himself. He was, then, the a se Word (from where we get the idea of aseity).
