Happy Easter! He is risen!
I hope everyone had a blessed Easter. Here in Hong Kong, even though we are part of China and ruled by a Communist Party that professes atheism, we still enjoy public holidays on Good Friday, Easter, the First Monday after Easter and—a first this year!—the first Tuesday after Easter.
I am sharing a short story of mine that was just published in Everyday Fiction. Based on a true story. Enjoy!
A friend of mine is dying from Parkinson’s disease. He was diagnosed 15 years ago, when he was at the peak of his career. At that time he was the president of a big company, had a house overlooking the Pacific Ocean and lots of money. As his body succumbed to the disease, my friend became reflective, humble and thoughtful–considerably different than he had been during his rise to the top. He accepted his fate with minimal anger or self-pity, although he was occasionally prone to moments of despair.
Recently I reflected on what my friend would have done if he were offered this choice: he could experience the great personal and professional accomplishments of his life, but with the knowledge that his body and mind would slowly waste away before he turned 65–or he could accept a simpler, less ‘successful’ life, but one in which he would remain healthy and content until he died in his sleep at the age of 80.
I never got the chance to propose this hypothetical question to my friend. He is no longer capable of conversation and has advanced dementia. What do you think? Do we expect that athletes who win gold in the Olympics would choose the consequences of a sudden, early death instead of a life of mediocrity and anonymity? What would James Dean’s answer have been before he was killed in a terrible accident at the age of 24? Would he have chosen to die young but exist forever as an American icon instead of living a long, healthy life as a happy but insignificant citizen?
But is the only variable in this fictional equation the choice of long life or success? Many people don’t wish to be famous or succeed on the world’s terms. A percentage of those people will also die prematurely from Parkinson’s or some other fate. It is a truism that the most important thing is not how long you live but how well you live. Does the expectation (or hope) that they will live a long time allow a person to indulge their impulses and ignore their imperfections? In my friend’s case, he was often vain and insensitive when his career was ascending. In the years after he left his job to receive treatment he became reflective and gentle.
I am presently focused on achieving things: publishing a book, writing articles. Of course I try to be a good person, etc etc. Jesus said “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Treasures can come in many types and sizes. I wouldn’t have wanted my friend’s job in a big company, but I want other things. Am I ignoring what really counts because I’m acting as if I will live forever? What if my choice was to ignore the passions that motivate me and focus more on serving God and my fellow brothers and sisters? I hear you say ‘why not do both?’ Perhaps I could. It’s a question of treasure.
I write freelance articles for Christianity Today. My ‘beat’ is Hong Kong, where I have lived for more than 35 years. As you can imagine, things have changed a lot over that time. Two of the news organisations I worked for are now closed. Activities and speech that used to be commonplace are now prohibited. This makes for a lot of interesting potential stories. One of the articles I wrote for Christianity Today explored how different churches were responding to the recent political and societal changes. Here’s the story.
Pastors and church leaders I interviewed were very careful in their comments, although many expressed optimism that nothing would change in the coming years and religious freedom would remain intact. The common phrase was “we’re not political. Our purpose is to share the Gospel.” Things got a bit more complicated when I tried to do a story on churches and Christian organisations that were evangelising newcomers from Mainland China. Hundreds of thousands of Mainland Chinese have moved to Hong Kong in recent years, and many are curious about Christianity. Most had no religious affiliation in China, where the government regulates the five official religions. Hong Kong has complete religious freedom, and yet, when I tried to interview church leaders and Christian organisations about their outreach to the newcomers, the most common response was a polite refusal to discuss the issue. No one wanted to go on the record with details about their glowing success in bringing Mainland Chinese to Christ.
This is the current atmosphere in Hong Kong, where most people play it safe, refrain from doing or saying anything that they think the government wouldn’t like or that might “poke the panda.” None of these churches and organisations are doing anything illegal. Unlike in China, it is lawful in Hong Kong to evangelise in any setting, and to share the Gospel with children. Christian organisations were willing to talk about their outreach to newcomers in the context of teaching them Cantonese or helping them find a school for their children, but wouldn’t go on the record about their success in sharing the Good News with those same families.
I can tell you that many people who have migrated across the border from Hong Kong are exploring the Christian faith and responding positively to Christian outreach. I just couldn’t get anyone to talk about it for attribution. Several organisations actively involved in evangelising Mainlanders simply refused to discuss it. Too sensitive. Not worth the risk. So that’s one story that won’t be appearing in Christianity Today.
You don’t hear much about the Sermon on the Mount these days, and Jesus’ admonitions not to resist an evil person, pray for your enemies, etc. aren’t at the front of Conservative Christian thought, at least not in America. There is a fair amount of attention paid to gender issues and “traditional” morals.
But when it comes to the teaching of Jesus–the stuff he actually stressed while he was on Earth–most of it is treated as idealistic and frankly, not something anyone is actually supposed to go and do. Are you worried that it really is more likely that a camel could make it through the eye of a needle than a rich person could make it into heaven? I don’t think you are. And I don’t think that you and I feel we need to give to anyone who asks, or let our opponents hit us twice (the ‘turn the other cheek’ thing). Many times it seems smarter to hit the opponent first, and certainly we would be fools to deliberately let him take another shot.
The Sermon on the Mount and the verses that follow it are clear, but they are radical and against our basic natures. They aren’t practical. We treat them the same way we treat Jesus’ comment that you should cut off your hand if it causes you to sin. It’s hyperbole, a metaphor.
Okay, throwing away your eyeball/cutting off your hand is deliberately extreme, in order to make a point, but the message of Chapter 5 in the Gospel according to Matthew is not. It is a prescription for the way God’s people should live on Earth. And it is achievable–but only when we acknowledge that the Kingdom of God is “at hand”–it is here and readily available.
Jesus comes across as a weakling because he has all the power in the world–power that is available to those who enter this Kingdom. If he was some random itinerant preacher making these statements, he is a fool. If he is God, then he can back them up. That’s why he can instruct us to be overly generous, submissive and non-confrontational. That’s what life in the Kingdom is like when an all-powerful ruler is in charge and his people can feel free to be kind, generous and accepting.
A certain brand of Christianity ignores these words. Many people want a muscular brand of religion and a warrior messiah. Maybe they like the imagery of Revelation–but that book doesn’t pertain to how we are supposed to live our lives in the here-and-now. Jesus gave us the prescription, and we can trust him that if we actually behave as he instructed us to behave, not only do we have a place in heaven, but he will be with us as we live our lives as he clearly told us to.
My mother attended a small church in South Carolina, where the Sunday service began promptly at 11 a.m. and ended precisely an hour later. If the pastor was overwhelmed by the Spirit and his sermon began to run long, parishioners would fidget in their seats and glance at their watches. They joked that they loved the Lord, but they loved NASCAR, too, and they needed to get home, have lunch and get settled in front of the tube to watch the races.
NASCAR races are typically run on Sundays, and are most often held in states that contain a large proportion of Bible-believing folks. Texas, for example, hosts a stop on the NASCAR circuit and recently passed a law requiring that every public school classroom must display the Ten Commandments. The law is set to take effect in the coming school year.
The Ten Commandments are viewed as the bedrock of Judeo-Christian values. It’s easy even for non-Christians to get behind most of the commands: don’t murder, don’t steal. Even “honour your father and mother” seems like a healthy concept. No doubt legislators in Texas, Louisiana and other states that are preparing similar laws are committed to ensuring that the precepts contained in the Commandments are impressed on the youth of the nation. As Moses, who brought the Commandments down from Mt. Sinai, told the Israelites, “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children.”
Christians believe that their salvation comes from grace, not from the Law. The Jews had 613 clear commandments in the Old Testament that prescribed correct behavior and clearly defined unacceptable acts. Jesus didn’t abolish all those laws or say that they no longer mattered. But modern Christians don’t feel obligated to follow ancient laws regarding unclean food, how to deal with mildew or the correct way to sacrifice a goat. Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and New Testament teaching show that belief in Christ’s atoning death is essential–not a series of laws.
So what do we do with those Ten Commandments? They are a prescription for ideal moral behavior, except for maybe a couple of items that seem a bit out of place in the 21st century. One is the prohibition on making graven images. This was important to the Israelites 3,000 years ago, when they were surrounded by other religions that fashioned their gods out of wood and stone. The other confounding commandment pertains to the Sabbath. That’s the 7th day of the week, a day of rest. The Lord was very clear on its importance. Indeed, in Exodus 35:2 Moses says “Whoever does any work on it is to be put to death.” Serious stuff.
So what are the children in Texas or Louisiana or Arkansas to make of this? Stores everywhere are open on Sundays, millions of Americans work on the seventh day of the week. Moses told his people that they couldn’t even light a fire in their homes on the Sabbath. And yet, in May the Texas House of Representatives passed the Ten Commandments bill on the Jewish Sabbath. Maybe that didn’t count, since most of them were Christians and honor the Lord on Sundays. Sunday is also the day that the Texas Motor Speedway held the NASCAR cup series. But nowhere in America is it described as a mandatory day of rest. It might be the day when most Christians go to church, but a lot of them go to work on that day.
Do we get to choose which of the Commandments we follow? Just the most obvious ones, like not murdering someone? How exactly do we honor our parents? And what about “misusing the name of the Lord?”–or what the King James Version of the Bible referred to as ‘taking the Lord’s name in vain’. In recent decades that commandment has primarily been interpreted merely as a ban on swearing, as opposed to a to a mandate to respect and revere the Lord. If the Ten Commandments are so important that they should be placed in a fourth grade classroom, shouldn’t the people who advocate this also abide by them? At the very least, they might want to go a little beyond the pious action of posting a Biblical treatise on the wall and devote time to exploring what is really meant when the Lord says “you should have no other gods before me.”
Jesus reserved his most pointed criticism for the Pharisees, who were the religious leaders of his day, the people who told others how to act and judged their behavior. The Pharisees believed that laws equalled piety. They were all about the rules. They were wrong.
You are driving down a winding mountain road, enjoying the scenery. Suddenly you notice in your rearview mirror a car coming up rapidly behind you. The driver is weaving wildly, honking his horn and attempting to pass you on dangerous curves. Dismayed and angry, you try to avoid being run off the road. Finally, the motorist darts past you on a blind curve and zooms on ahead.
“Jerk,” you mutter–or worse–and keep on driving at your previous sane pace.
A couple of miles further on, you round a turn to see the crazy driver has run off the road and crashed into a tree. Because you are a good person, you grudgingly stop to see if he requires assistance. As you approach, the driver appears to be okay: you can see him sitting up straight in his seat, then opening the door to get out. At this point you feel free to give him a piece of your mind.
As you begin your “serves you right” speech, the man turns to look at you. It is your brother.
Suddenly the situation is completely different. This is no longer an unknown human, one defined only by his unsafe driving habits whom you can easily label a jerk (or worse). Now, you might not like your brother, and maybe you would still launch into the “serves you right” speech. But you suddenly must relate to him in a different way.
Why is that humans enjoy judging others based on the narrowest of experiences? And why do we act differently to people just because we know them–even vaguely? Let’s say you’re in a traffic jam, and some guy wants to cut in front of you. You’re about to offer a rude gesture to him (or at least prevent him from edging ahead of you), but then you notice it’s your next door neighbour. What do you do?
You let him in, don’t you? Might even smile. And that hand that was about to offer the hostile gesture now waves him on ahead. And that’s even if you don’t have a particularly close relationship with your neighbour. You can substitute many other types: your child’s science teacher, the clerk you always see at 7-Eleven. Pretty much anyone with whom you have developed a nodding acquaintance.
But for a complete stranger? That person can be classified, instantly stereotyped and reviled or reduced to a simple characterization. Conflicts can grow when we are put in situations with strangers whom we actually know nothing about: their background, family lives or even their intentions. Yes, there are real dangers out there, and reasonable precautions that must be taken in certain situations. But I’m talking about the reflexive tendency to draw negative conclusions about an individual based on the most fleeting of experience–and our preference to instantly pass negative judgements on others. Conversely, we are often willing to accommodate other people with whom we have only the slightest acquaintance.
We don’t know the situation of the man in the car. Perhaps he was in a frantic hurry to reach a hospital after learning that his wife was suddenly critically ill. Perhaps he could use your help. Perhaps he really is a jerk. He is also your brother. Or to use the relevant language in the Bible, he is your “neighbour.” One time an “expert in the Law” quizzed Jesus about the definition of “neighbour.” Jesus agreed with this man’s statement that the two greatest commandments are to:
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.”
So far, so good, but in the story, the legal expert couldn’t stop there. He then asked “And who is my neighbour?”
30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’
Jesus asked the expert “Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”
The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
You are prudent if you carefully assess the scene after you find the reckless driver crashed into a tree. But can you love him? Or do we prefer to judge strangers, foreigners and outsiders?
Luke 10: 29-35
petermaize 