There’s a
stanza in the Leonard Cohen hymn, “You Want it Darker,” that goes,
Magnified, sanctified
Be the holy
name
Vilified,
crucified
In the human
frame
I have this
song in one of my playlists, partly for Mr. Cohen’s voice, partly because I fantasize
about being able to play bass guitar, but mostly for the richness of the
summary of the Christian Gospel in those four lines. Then, tragically, Mr. Cohen
reduces that life-giving truth to ashes in the next stanza:
A million
candles burning
For the love
that never came
You want it
darker
We kill the
flame
As I understand
it, Mr. Cohen wrote this song, and the album of the same name, while knowing he
was dying back in 2016. (If you’re curious and decide to listen to the song,
the word “Hineni,” is Hebrew for, “here I am”—the same phrase Abraham uses in
responding to the Lord’s calling on him to go sacrifice Isaac in Gen. 22:1.)
Part of me grieves for Mr. Cohen. He had enough of an understanding of the
Gospel to be able to articulate it, but not enough faith to trust it; he had some
knowledge of Jesus and His cross-work, but then seemingly misinterpreted Jesus’
good purpose.
The result of
Mr. Cohen’s misinterpretation and/or lack of faith in Christ is that he then decided
to snuff out the flame—the very thing that God implants in the heart of those
who look on Jesus and believe (2 Cor. 4:6). And with that move, I let out a
deep breath and wonder about the nature of faith and how it gets tested over
the course of a lifetime (see the rest of 2 Cor. 4).
Christians fully
expect our faith in God will be tested along the way. Our holy Scriptures are
honest and straightforward about this. I also remember reading John Bunyan’s, Pilgrim’s
Progress, as a child, but at the time had no idea what a “slough of despond”
was until I fell into one when I was thirty years old. Same with “doubting
castle” in my forties. As Pilgrim’s Progress
so clearly illustrates,
there are many hazards to Christian on the way to the Celestial City.
In my work as
a counselor, I get a front row seat to many of the ways people’s faith in
Christ is challenged. Back in the March edition of this newsletter (“The Speed
of God, part 2”), I observed that some people’s trust in Jesus fails when they grow
up in a Christian home where a corrupted version of the Gospel is taught. When
that child then grows up and begins to think for themselves, the incongruities
of belief and life create a crisis that some don’t survive.
Other ways I’ve
witnessed faith in God being assaulted include trials such as the unexpected
death of a loved-one, prolonged suffering, unanswered prayer, and now more
commonly, prosperity. We should also not forget Satanic or demonic attack. I’ll
also observe it’s not getting any easier for people to come to faith in Christ
and stay in the faith. Historians have well documented the rise in atheism in
the last century due in large part to the seeming absence of God in the world.
“With respect
to the question of origins, developments in biology (the theory of evolution)
and physics (such as quantum theory) furnished humankind with all that was
needed to explain, at least in principle, cosmic and human origins. God, we
might say, was out of a job—our progress in knowledge directly proportionate to
the narrowing gaps left for God to fill” (Joseph Minich, Bulwarks of
Unbelief: Atheism and Divine Absence in a Secular Age, p. 12). Minich goes
on to detail how neuroscience is now working to better understand how the brain
works, so much so that there’s a reach for scientific explanations into the
immaterial world of the mind and soul.
Minich’s
book, which I’m picking my way through, makes the case that not that many
centuries ago it would have been hard to be an atheist due to a lack of
knowledge about the inner workings and origins of the material world. Even if a
person was an atheist back then, one would have stayed in the closet for fear
of persecution. But now the tables have turned. God is no longer necessary. We
have knowledge, we have wealth, we have the technology to save ourselves. Which,
for an increasing number of people, renders the Christian Gospel both
unnecessary and uninteresting.
Take heart,
dear Christian, and regularly tend to the flame of faith in Christ which is in
you. Remember that every belief system, every worldview, require degrees of
faith or trust, and that they have their own doubts and unanswerable questions.
Further, there are other ways of knowing things that are outside the realm of
science—like history, law, sociology, and philosophy. All of these are tools to
use to grow your faith in Christ. Jesus and his resurrection, for example, are
not reproducible (scientific) but a strongly evidenced reality (historical).
I often use
music as an instrument to fan the flame of faith in Christ, so let me end this
post with another song. My wife, older son, and I returned recently from hiking
out in the Southwest desert—mostly in the circuit of the Grand Canyon, Sedona,
and Page, Arizona. After biking and hiking along the rim of the Grand Canyon,
after sitting atop a mesa in Sedona to watch the sun go down and the stars come
out, we found ourselves on Highway 89 driving up to Page when we came to
Antelope Pass Vista. It’s an overlook of a breathtakingly wide valley north of
the Grand Canyon and a place you could sit all day in reverence.
As we stood
there in quiet taking it all in, my older son spontaneously said, almost in a
whisper, “I feel small.” That’s all he said, and that’s all that needed to be
said. It was the culmination of all the stunning wonders we had seen that week.
No question, non-Christians can also experience a sense of awe and even
transcendence in such moments. But the Christian faith is not man-centered (we
don’t look within ourselves for hope and answers, and we don’t work our way
into a relationship with the divine). Christians look at moments like this as yet
another opportunity to fan the flame of faith implanted in us through the
Spirit of Jesus Christ. We look up, not in.
When we got
back in the car, I said to my wife and son, “Before we leave here, let’s listen
to this.” I synced my phone to the car’s radio and played Sara Groves’ ninety-second
version of, “For the Beauty of the Earth.” And that little breath fanned the
flame just a little stronger.
For the beauty
of the earth
For the
beauty of the skies
For the love
which from our birth
Over and around
us lies
Lord of all
to Thee we raise
This our hymn
of grateful praise
Because
ultimately, Christians are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation
ready to be revealed at any time (1 Peter 1:5).
