In Peter we see the Christian who has been raised in the church. Peter has no dramatic conversion experience, no abrupt shift from darkness to light; rather, he has spent a long time in the company of those who follow the Lord, and he has come to know that Jesus is the Messiah, the Anointed One of God. Peter’s faith is not dramatic, but it is solid – so much so that our Lord declares that the faith he shows, the acknowledgement that Jesus is the Christ, will be the rock upon which he will build the Church.

Not that the path has always been straight – definitely not! For only moments after he declares his faith, he tries to dissuade Jesus from the way of the Cross, only to be sternly rebuked. And though his protestations of eternal loyalty are loud, he fails Jesus in the end, and as our Lord goes to his death on the cross, Peter denies that he even knows him.

Peter follows, and stumbles, but he gets back up again, always with his eyes on our Lord. Better than any of the saints, perhaps, he knows the full experience of Christ’s forgiving grace.

I have friends who are almost wistful about not having a dramatic “conversion story.” Their journey seems almost boring: lots of ordinary faithfulness, mixed in with falling away and coming back, and carrying on. But wait! St Peter shows us that this “ordinary faithfulness” is anything but ordinary. It is to Peter that Jesus gives the great task of ministry: “Feed my sheep.”

In Paul we see those Christians who had a “Damascus Road” experience. Perhaps they were rebels against God, or contemptuous or hateful toward Christians (like me), embracing atheism with the zeal that Paul persecuted the early Christians. Or perhaps they were simply mired in indifference and apathy – until the season in their life when everything changed. Like Paul, headed to Damascus with other plans, until our Lord made an appearance and everything, absolutely everything changed.

Paul’s conversion is so sudden that the other Christians don’t even trust him at first; isn’t this the guy who was ordering us to be thrown into jail, or killed? But the same zeal that made him the greatest enemy of the faith also, when re-oriented by our Lord, made him its greatest missionary and theologian.

When it comes to the way that we came to our faith, each of us is either a Peter or a Paul… which makes me appreciate the wisdom of the Church in honoring these two saints equally. Their key moments of faith – the Confession of St Peter, and the Conversion of St Paul – are celebrated a week apart, on January 18 and January 25, respectively.

If we look ahead a little bit in the Church calendar, we are reminded of another great truth about these two aspects of the Christian life.

There is no separate day for St Peter and a different one for St Paul. Instead, June 29th is the combined Feast of St Peter and St Paul – always together, the two sides of the coin.

Because we are, all of us, both Peter and Paul.

Even a Peter, who has grown up in a Christian family and gone to church from the very beginning, must at some point make a conscious decision to accept Christ. No one inherits Christian faith; it is a personal choice. Do I follow Christ, or do I follow my own will? That moment is a Paul moment.

Even a Paul, who has made a clear, dramatic choice to follow Christ, must then learn what it means to actually live that out. The Damascus Road moment is just that – a moment. Following that is a lifetime of listening, learning, praying, obeying – making mistakes, repenting, being forgiven. Every Christian life is Peter’s life.

I am a Paul – learning how to be a Peter, with God’s help.

For years I kept this to myself, considering it a kind of guilty secret akin to watching daytime television or being a wrestling fan. But one day while visiting a priest friend many years my senior, I noticed a stack of murder mysteries by the door waiting to be returned to the library. Here was a kindred spirit, I realized, in more than matters of religion. “Why do we love these stories?” I asked him. And when he told me, the answer was so compelling and simple that I was embarrassed at having had to ask.

The mystery novel can fool us. Its characters and plots, while entertaining and interesting, frequently seem unreal. I’ve often wondered what a real Private Eye makes of Philip Marlowe or Amos Walker. Yet underneath the fiction and fantasy, there is reality and truth.

The mystery novel, most particularly the “murder mystery,” is built on a firm understanding and acknowledgement of the reality and immutability of the moral order. The reader understands that a transgression of the law, the moral law above all, has occurred and that the malefactor must be discovered and brought to justice. I should point out that some murder mysteries are among the very greatest literary works of all time. F. Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment is an excellent example.

No murder mystery, no good one anyway, can be written by a moral relativist. The moral relativists are busy writing fiction, truly fiction because built on a lie.

Flannery O’Connor, one of my favorite people in literature and a Christian who understood the immutability of the moral law, and whose characters regularly transgressed it to their everlasting shame and detriment, wrote to a friend, “Truth doesn’t change according to our ability to stomach it.” The moral law can be broken, ignored or denied, which always has consequences, but it can never be suspended. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” (Matt. 25:35) That’s the truth our culture can no longer stomach.

In the Bible, the book of truth and reality, and just as in the murder mystery, the form in which the truth is conveyed can conceal as well as reveal. Just as the form of the mystery novel can conceal the rock of reality on which it’s built, so the literary forms by which the Lord God reveals the truth of things can conceal as well as reveal that truth.

The parables are a primary example of this. In Matthew 13:1-9, the Lord proclaims the Parable of the Sower. I might add that he didn’t just proclaim it to the “great crowds gathered about him by the sea,” he lives and he has just proclaimed it to us, today through the vocal cords of our deacon who read the Gospel passage. The framers of the lectionary, however, in their selection chose to leave out eight verses that follow this proclamation. In private the disciples asked the Lord, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” And he said to them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to him who has will more be given and he will have abundance, but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand… But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears for they hear… Hear then the parable of the sower.” And then we have verses 18-23, the explanation that concludes today’s reading from St Matthew.

Here is truth for all who have ears to hear, that is, all who can stomach it. To be a disciple of the Lord matters, it makes a difference, all the difference in the world. “Those who believe and are baptized shall be saved. Those who do not believe will be condemned.” So saith the Lord. Those who follow the Lord and listen to him are blessed in ways that those who will not listen to him are not. Those who have ears but do not hear do not receive “the secrets of the kingdom of heaven.” This is true whether we like it or not, whether it disturbs, or whether it strikes us as “unfair,” which is why I suspect the framers of the lectionary left those words out, editing the word of God so as to make it easier for us to digest.

But there’s more here. The parable of the sower describes what is. It is a revelation of reality even though clothed in the language of the parable. Every parish priest and pastor lives with this reality throughout his ministry. People appear and become filled with zeal for the Lord. They receive instruction with enthusiasm and become active members of the church… and then disappear. What happened, we ask? Where are they and why aren’t they here? If we learn anything, we rarely ever learn the truth. What we do learn is that all that love for the Lord and his Temple the Church has become indifference and sometimes even hostility.

Next May I’ll mark the 40^th anniversary of my graduation from seminary and I recently received word that there would be a reunion of my class. I called my best friend from seminary to tell him I’d be there and hoped he would too. Most of my classmates are from the East Coast, as I am, and remained there. I told my friend how much I’d like to see everyone after a separation of forty years. He told me that he also hoped many would attend but it wasn’t likely since so many had demitted the ministry. You see, it’s not just parishioners who abandon the Lord. I wonder how many of my devout and fervent seminary classmates who have walked away from their altars and the people entrusted to their care, have also walked away from the Lord himself and have found something more interesting to do on Sunday morning than praise the Glory of the Father in union with the Son and whose who belong to him. Our Lord experienced this himself. If you doubt that, read the sixth chapter of the St. John. And always remember Judas, a member of the inner circle of the Lord’s disciples.

It would be easy to say, ‘Okay, I get it.” The parable of the sower explains what we all see. It would be easy, that is, to make the parable into a word explaining the behavior of others while failing to hear it as a cautionary word addressed to each of us. The risen and exalted Lord says, “Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life.” Fidelity to the Lord is forth life and each of us must be vigilant so that nothing can take the “word of the kingdom” from us. The “word of the kingdom” is our Lord in his own person and to become separated from him for any reason whatsoever is to lose the most important of all the important things of life. That’s the truth concealed under the quaint imagery.

After the concert they all gathered around that clarinetist. “How come you were willing to play that section when all the rest of us weren’t going to try it?” He answered simply, “Well, I realized, somebody’s got to do it!”

The world is a mess. As I write this, North Africa and the Middle East are going through something more than their usual turmoil and the media, and not only the media, appear to be creating a panic over radiation from the damaged Japanese nuclear plants. And to add to all that, a gallon of regular is once again four dollars. The grace of living long is to know that it’s all business as usual. I always hate to be the one to say it, but as soon as these crises pass into history, new and totally unforeseen crises will appear.

We are the people who should not be at all surprised, even if we are troubled and disappointed. The world is a fallen place.

In his beautiful book For the Life of the World, the Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann put it this way:

“In this world Christ was rejected. He was the perfect expression of life as God intended it. The fragmentary life of the world was gathered into His life; He was the heart beat of the world and the world killed Him. But in that murder the world itself died. It lost its last chance to become the paradise God created it to be. We can go on developing new and better material things. We can build a more humane society which may even keep us from annihilating each other. But when Christ, the true life of the world, was rejected, it was the beginning of the end. That rejection had a finality about it.” (pg. 23)

I suppose I’d call this observation so fundamental to a Christian understanding of the world that it goes without saying, but the truth needs to be repeated over and over again.

The reason for Christian joy is this. Despite the world’s hostility to its creator and its rejection of the one “through whom and for whom all things were made,” God loves the world and has made the crucifixion of his only begotten and beloved Son the sign and means of life, the life he created us to live.

“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” This is a prediction of the Lord’s Passion. When the Lord refers to being “lifted up” he is speaking of his crucifixion. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son (on the cross) that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world. The world has condemned itself. During the past several years I’ve noticed a growing desperation in the world. You and I, who were once exhorted to make the world place, are now being exhorted to “save the planet.” Yes, I drive a Prius and recycle but as for saving the planet, I’m just not up to the task.

The savior of the world has been rejected but the savior has not rejected the world. “To all who receive him, who believe in his name, he gives power to become children of God; who are born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” Or as our Lord put it in his conversation with Nicodemus, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” And so that neither you, nor I, nor Nicodemus can misunderstand, he says, “…unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” Or, as he said after his resurrection, “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved.”

There is no savior other than our Lord Jesus Christ and no salvation apart from him. Apart from him and his cross we have, to quote St. Paul, no hope and are without God in the world. Yet from the cross of rejection he calls out to everyone, everywhere, inviting everyone to share in his kingdom and endless life. This is the Good News!

Since the world rejected Christ, it does not want to hear this word of life which we have received and which has been entrusted to us, but we need to proclaim it in every way we can. We need to proclaim it with our lives, because we’ve been born again as children of God and inheritors of eternal life.

The temptation is to entrust this proclamation to the great and good, to scholars and theologians, to bishops and archbishops, to popes and patriarchs, but it doesn’t seem to be happening, and I more and more suspect that we’re in the position of that clarinetist in the Goldman Band who realized he had to do what the great and virtuous weren’t going to do, because somebody has to do it.

We’ll start with an interesting reflection on the value of college sports for Christian spiritual growth. I am convinced that sports can be of tremendous value for emotional and social growth, and indeed for spiritual growth as well, when guided by coaches who have the right priorities. What I found particularly interesting in this article was almost a side note. The Wheaton College athletic director interviewed here commented that some people question whether it’s right for Christian athletes to try to defeat their opponents. She challenges that assumption, saying:

“We compete within a set of rules and we need to be fair in that, but we also need to not be afraid to honor God by being really good. I don’t think it does us or the name of the Lord any good to be less than excellent. So our competitiveness is driven to really be all that we can be for the glory of God. We are out there representing him, and to be less than excellent is not a positive thing.”

Sometimes I think we are afraid to strive to do our best work (and I don’t think that’s limited to Christians.) If I try my absolute best, and do whatever I do with full energy, attention, drive, and passion – all sorts of vulnerabilities appear. What if people think I’m too… [fill in the blank]? Too smart, too nerdy, too intense… (Incidentally, getting a PhD and doing one’s dissertation on fantasy novels, combined with having an affection for Monty Python and Star Trek, is akin to getting the Lifetime Gold Pass into the Geek Alliance. I embraced my destiny a long time ago… and discovered that the company in here is exceedingly fun and interesting.)

Striving to excel also means facing the reality that even the greatest talent has limitations. What if I try my very, very best at something that truly matters to me, and I fail?

But failure can perhaps teach far more than success. Here is an interesting bit from a NYT article well worth reading:

The most critical missing piece [in American education today], Randolph [a headmaster of a private school] explained as we sat in his office last fall, is character — those essential traits of mind and habit that were drilled into him at boarding school in England and that also have deep roots in American history. “Whether it’s the pioneer in the Conestoga wagon or someone coming here in the 1920s from southern Italy, there was this idea in America that if you worked hard and you showed real grit, that you could be successful,” he said. “Strangely, we’ve now forgotten that. People who have an easy time of things, who get 800s on their SAT’s, I worry that those people get feedback that everything they’re doing is great. And I think as a result, we are actually setting them up for long-term failure. When that person suddenly has to face up to a difficult moment, then I think they’re screwed, to be honest. I don’t think they’ve grown the capacities to be able to handle that.”

Failure is painful. It’s safer to not quite try so hard… then I can pass off failure as not-really-failure.

Fencing taught me that playing it safe wasn’t an acceptable option, and taught me also that there is no shame in failure when the attempt is honest. I remember once, upon getting knocked out of a National Championship event, weeping and saying “I should have won that bout!” My coach said: “No, you shouldn’t have. She was better than you.” And, as my coach put it another time, in words I’ll never forget: “Look disappointment in the eye. Then move on.”

Lastly, I want to close with a different view of courage – one that is like a deep breath of fresh air.

Kelly Belmonte reminds us in “Taking Stock” at All Nine Muses of how hard we can be on ourselves (certainly I can be very hard on myself – I can say that for sure), and how things can look quite different if we shift perspective (as she helps us to do). She reminds us that “It takes courage to be generous… [to] say, ‘I am rich.  I have surplus.  I have something to give.’”

Be courageous, friends.

As I bring this series to a close I suppose I should address the “elephant” that has been in the room since this series started. Where am I in my search? The deflecting response I offered in the first post is the most honest response given my history and circumstances. So what that question really entails is some kind of prediction, some kind of deeper spiritual insight. Perhaps something like, “God is leading me to…”

If you have been reading carefully, you can probably predict my response, or lack thereof. However, I will offer another list of three, more to the point than what I offered in the fourth post. First, I am highly motivated to study Christian apologetics, especially as it relates to science and modern culture. Second, there’s tremendous need and interest in this subject that does not seem to be shared by most of the church. Witness the growth in apologetic programs all over the country. Ministries like Stand To Reason, Reasons To Believe, and the nascent Ratio Christi are just some of the ever-growing list of para-church ministries in this field. Third, given the first two, I can’t quit. Am I “gifted” for this type of ministry? Who knows? My history and current lack of prospects could be caused by any of the following. (1) I am not suited to this ministry. (2) I am not YET suited to this ministry. (3) Avenues of ministry are rare because much of the church has not awakened to the need.

So I must simply continue. Studying, reading, listening, and waiting. If I ever get a chance to serve, then I will know the wait and process was worth it. If I never do, then everything I’ve written and studied will simply have been God’s means for keeping me close and grounded. Either way, I can’t lose. The future might hold more disappointment, but I will make bold prediction: I will not lose my faith and I will not stop growing closer to my Savior.

In this penultimate post, I would like to offer five examples from what I have learned. As I cautioned in the first installment, I am not offering advice, just sharing my experiences. Some of what follows might seem obvious, profound or even strange. Some of it has taken years to become part of my thinking. Some of it I am still working on. Finally, some things have still more painful anecdotes where I have, spiritually speaking, been beaten senseless before I realized what was wrong.

It Takes Years of Work.
I want to “teach” Christians all the reasons they can be supremely confident in the truth of historic Christianity. I am convinced that tackling such a role cannot be self-taught. There is far too much to be gained from the challenges from peers and professors to explain and defend what you think. As a Physicist and software engineer, I had almost no liberal arts background to prepare me to study these disciplines. After my 4 years, and 36 units from Biola, I will be merely primed to become a student of these fields, to continue my studies indefinitely.

As an example, consider someone like Greg Koukl. He has been my “virtual” mentor for almost two years now. If you haven’t been exposed to Stand To Reason you should check it out. Greg’s intellect, character, and ability to communicate are truly unique. As unique and gifted as he obviously is, he has two masters degrees and has been developing his gifts and talents for over 20 years.

That word “teach” needs to be considered as well. What does that mean? Perhaps we could simply agree to the idea of communicating something important to others. In that vein writing is a foundational skill, habit, and passion that make not only learning but also teaching possible. Being a neophyte to this discipline, I am not sure if this observation is not veering into more of a warning. If you don’t like to write, or you know that is a weakness of yours, be forewarned that will need to change. Biola, like many institutions attracting professionals back to academia, is on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, all of your output as a student is the written word. On the other, many of the students they attract are inexperienced as writers. Dr. Clay Jones teaches a writing class that is probably the most difficult and valuable class Biola offers.

Eventually, I would hope to also speak as part of the teaching process. There are some avenues to develop that discipline, but the hardest and most important will be whatever opportunities I am provided.

One sort of backhanded way that I believe I am called to this field is that I (still) love the process of studying. I suspect that no matter what happens, the ratio of time spent in ministry versus time preparing for it will always be an infinitesimally small number.

Be Worthy of the Role.
This phrase jumped out at me last summer. It came to mind in the context of the priorities in my life after completing my first semester and first residency at Biola. It was quite clear to me that Biola was going to develop my mind, my intellect to serve, but what was I doing about my soul, my day-to-day, moment-to-moment contact with God?

This humbling realization brought a new urgency to the time I spend in prayer. Since I am not expert or even a journeyman when it comes to spiritual disciplines, I will not offer anything from my life as a to how one might approach this topic. It is simply my contention that one must put daily effort into their spiritual life. The consequences of focusing only on the intellect can be seen in the following passages.

Chapter 3 of James, which addresses the power for of the tongue for good and evil opens with a warning that not everyone should be a teacher because, “we who teach will be judged more strictly.” The responsibility for someone who wants to teach is not only to be well informed and humble in their role, but to also be aware of the organ you may use the most, your tongue.

The opening verses of First Corinthians 13 are significant in that knowledge and spiritual gifts are meaningless if one does not have love. It is my prayer that whatever knowledge or communication skills I gain would always be used to proclaim truth. Saving someone from the consequences of a lie is, I believe, the highest calling to which anyone can aspire.

Find a Community.
This is perhaps the strongest reason, and yet is still not the primary one, for enrolling in post-graduate education as part of your search for a calling. At the risk of seeming maudlin, the relationships I have cultivated through Biola are the most significant friendships I have ever known. They have been an invaluable source of encouragement and accountability.

A Common Goal is not enough.
Almost any ministry is going to require more than one person. Unless you are striking out completely on your own, you may be tempted to join an existing enterprise. No matter how laudable, important, or significant that goal is you cannot just jump in and expect everything to work.

On two different occasions (one over ten years ago the other recently) I have fallen into this blunder. Simply put, you can’t jump into a group of people you don’t know simply because you agree with what (you think) they are about. Some time must be spent finding how this ministry works. How do the people think? What are their priorities? How do they like to get things done? Etc. etc.

Propriety (and a little bit of vanity) precludes me from getting into more details about either incident in my own life. If you know what I am talking about you have been warned or found a kindred spirit of your own mistakes. If this makes no sense, just read on.

I will belabor the connection between this topic and the previous. Advice from within your community can help you find a good place to plug in and avoid something for which you are not suited. I hasten to add; next time I will heed the warnings.

Location does not make the ministry.
There is a famous quote, I’ve found attributed to Chesterton.
“Just going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in your garage makes you a car.”

To apply this to myself, taking classes does not make me an apologist or a teacher. It is certainly a necessary condition, but it is not a sufficient one. For those who are fond of the philosophical terminology, you could summarize this series as “My search for a set sufficient conditions to be in ministry.”

Another way at looking at this last subject is in terms of experimentation. I have tried several different ministries within the Church. To strain the analogy, and risk contradicting one of the above comments, “you may to spend some time in a garage to decide if you like cars.”

In my next and final post I will answer the question, “Where am I in my search?”

St Peter addressed the teacher and said, “What was the name of the ship that crashed into the iceberg? A movie was made about it.”

The teacher answered quickly, “That would be the Titanic.”

St Peter let him through the gate.

St Peter turned to the garbage man and, figuring Heaven didn’t really need all the odors that this guy would bring with him, decided to make the question a little harder: “How many people died on the ship?”

Fortunately for him, the trash man had just seen the movie. “1,228,” he answered.

“That’s right! You may enter.”

St Peter turned to the lawyer. “Name them.”

Stories of St Peter and the Pearly Gates have been exalted into their own genre of jokes. This beloved genre has impressed into the cultural mind a picture of St Peter, sitting at the gates of heaven like the guy at the movie theatre waiting to take your ticket: granting or denying access in a somewhat indiscriminate, albeit highly entertaining, manner.

This caricature of St Peter and his role as gatekeeper of heaven is the result of a very loose read of a passage from Matthew 16.

But if we take a closer look at the Scriptures, we see just how off base this picture really is.

Matthew 16 is not about St Peter, the Pearly Gates, or our entrance into heaven when we die; it is about Christ and his Church, and our participation in the Kingdom of Heaven here and now!

First and foremost, this passage is about the identity of Jesus.

When Jesus asks, “Who do others say I am?” the disciples throw out all the various answers they’ve heard around town. “John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets.” There is no shortage of opinions about who Jesus is. (This is just as true today as it was back then.) But there has only ever been one correct answer. Jesus first flushes out all of the wrong answers, before asking the question directly to his disciples.

“Who do you say that I am?”

St Peter confesses, “You are the Christ [the anointed one, the Messiah], the Son of the Living God.”

St Peter confesses Jesus’ true identity, but his confession is not something he figured out all by himself.

Jesus’ identity as the Son of the Living God is not something conjured up by the human imagination, or St Peter’s creative thinking, or a bunch of men sitting around the camp fire discussing how they might create a new religion.

“Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah,” Jesus says to Peter, “for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”

The truth that Jesus is the Son of God is itself a revelation. Jesus’ identity is not deduced or conjured up by Peter – or any other man – God Himself reveals it.

This Truth is from God.

And this Truth is the very rock, the very foundation of our faith. The confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, is the foundation upon which the Church is built.

“On this rock,” Jesus says, “I will build my Church.”

This is the first, and one of the only, times that the word ‘Church’ is used in the New Testament. It comes from the lips of Our Lord, who is not only the founder but also the builder of his Church.

“Upon this rock, I will build my church.”

The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ Our Lord.

In the jokes, St Peter is always hanging out at the Pearly Gates, which are taken to mean the entrance into heaven. But if we look closely at Matthew 16, there is only one set of gates, and they aren’t heavenly ones. They are actually the gates of hell. Where our translation reads “the powers of death,” most translations read “the gates of hell.”

Jesus says, “On this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death [or the gates of hell] shall not prevail against it.”

Now it is quite true that the devil loves to tempt us, and in that sense to “attack” us: to try and get us to sin. But gates don’t attack. Gates are constructed to either keep something out, or to keep something in. And many times a gate does both.

The gates of hell really are the powers of death. There was a time when these gates – when this power – was binding: when death was the final word for all creation. But Our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified. He died, and was buried. He descended into hell. And on the third day he rose from the dead, and broke through the power of death once and for all. Death no longer has dominion over him. Nor does it have power to constrain Christ’s church in its proclamation of salvation.

The gates in this passage are not the Pearly Gates. They are the gates of hell. And these gates shall not prevail against Christ’s church, because he himself has burst through them once, and for all people.

No doubt St Peter is usually depicted at the Pearly Gates because of the Keys which Jesus gives to him in this passage: the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. This is where the idea comes from that when we die, we go to the Pearly Gates and St Peter can decide whether or not to open them for us or not – because he’s got the keys.

But the function of these keys is not to grant us access to heaven when we die. These keys are the means by which we might enter into the Kingdom of Heaven right here and right now! Our life in the Kingdom begins on earth, in Christ, through his body the Church!

Jesus says to Peter, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

Do you see the connection between earth and heaven?

This binding and loosing is a reference primarily to the authority “to absolve sins,” but there is more to it than that.

If there is only one Kingdom, why are there so many keys? This reference to keys points to the breadth of the Church’s role in ushering the Kingdom of Heaven into this broken world. The keys include all the teaching, sacramental, and administrative authority given by Christ to his Church. This authority was given not only to Peter, but to all the apostles after Our Lord’s resurrection. It was transmitted to the bishops of the Church and continues in effect to this day.

We experience a foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven through Christ’s Church here on earth.

The Keys are the connection points; they are the access to God’s amazing grace through the sacramental life of the Church.

There is no need to wonder what St Peter will do with us at the Pearly Gates when we die. Our role is here and now. Who do we say that Jesus is?

Let us confess with St Peter that he is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Let us lay claim to his victory over the powers of death. And let us be instruments for the spread of his Kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven.

Choices – in some ways, a canker at the heart of our culture. In the last Miscellany, I wrote about the terrible consequences of treating children as objects of consumption: if one can decide how, when, and where to bear a child, the decision of whether to kill off unwanted siblings seems to be on the table as well.

Today I was struck by an advice letter in Dear Sugar on The Rumpus. A man writes in to ask: how can I decide if I really want to have a child? Sugar, in her reply, gives about the best possible answer from a non-Christian perspective. It’s quite a thoughtful and sensitive reply, so let me quote a bit of it before I say more:

What don’t you know? Make a list. Write down everything you don’t know about your future life—which is everything, of course—but use your imagination. [...] Write down “same life” and “son or daughter” and underneath each make another list of the things you think those experiences would give to and take from you and then ponder which entries on your list might cancel each other out….

So there you are on the floor, your gigantic white piece of paper with things written all over it like a ship’s sail, and maybe you don’t have clarity still, maybe you don’t know what to do, but you feel something, don’t you? The sketches of your real life and your sister life are right there before you and you get to decide what to do. One is the life you’ll have, the other is the one you won’t. Switch them around in your head and see how it feels. Which affects you on a visceral level? Which won’t let you go? Which is ruled by fear? Which is ruled by desire? Which makes you want to close your eyes and jump and which makes you want to turn and run?

At one time in my life, before I was a Christian, I would have agreed wholeheartedly with this approach to deciding whether or not to have a child. Many of my friends now, who are Christian, would still agree wholeheartedly.

But as I read today, I realized that I profoundly disagree – and the reason that I disagree, as well as the reason I think it’s worth writing about here, has to do with the question I put in the title: What is marriage, anyway?

Marriage is not just a contract with some fringe benefits.

Marriage is not just about the feeling of being in love.

Marriage is a sacrament – and over the last few years, as I’ve realized how central the sacrament of the Eucharist is to my own life of faith, I’ve been struck by the deep connection between those two sacraments. Marriage is an icon of the relationship between Christ and his Bride, the Church. It is about love in the deepest sense: putting the welfare of the other above your own. And it is about life: becoming “one flesh” not merely in the marital union, but in the children of that union.

Children, then, are not optional lifestyle accessories.

Their value is not utilitarian – and so it is entirely beside the point to weigh questions like “will children make me happy?”

Today’s Scripture reading, selected for the day honoring William Tyndale, was from the Letter of James, in which the apostle tells us not to be hearers of the word only, but doers who act.

What we believe must change how we live, or it means nothing at all.

I know exactly when I realized the implications of my belief about the sacrament of marriage. Two years ago, I realized (somewhat to my surprise at the time) that I longed for children of my own. What to do? It occurred to me that, although marriage involved factors entirely out of my control, if I wanted a child I could have one whenever I wanted. Several of my friends encouraged me to adopt.

I thought about it, quite seriously. And I realized that this idea ran counter to what I now believed about marriage. Never mind the logistical challenges of being a single mother. Choosing a child outside of marriage was simply wrong; it treated children as a commodity that I could acquire, and it side-stepped entirely the sacramental reality that children are not things to be chosen, but new life that comes out of the marriage union of a man and a woman.

This idea is a radical turn-around. I am part of the generation of women who grew up being told we could have it all: careers, relationships, children, men, whatever we chose, whatever we wanted. It doesn’t actually work that way – but if we don’t have another vision of the world, then it’s all up to us, and making the right choice becomes increasingly, and desperately, important. Children become just one more choice – and at far, far too great a cost. No.

The other piece that helped bring me to this understanding was poetry. (What a surprise, right?)

I listened to Malcolm Guite’s lecture on Edmund Spenser’s love poetry (listen to the whole thing here: Christ and the Cambridge Poets – Edmund Spenser and the Insights of Love). I was unprepared for its effect on me; I knew the Faerie Queene but had not read any of the love poetry. Spenser’s “Epithalamion,” a long and beautiful celebration of a wedding, moved me deeply: a vision of the sacramental reality of marriage, in all its richness, with its joyful openness to new life. It was painfully beautiful, showing me in imagination as well as understanding that one cannot get God’s blessings by halves, nor by one’s own choice, unilaterally acted upon. One trusts, or one does not.

And so I had to say: I put this in Your hands, Lord. And that’s been part of what I’ve learned, these past few years, about trusting Him. I have to trust Him with the things that actually matter, not just the “no big deal either way” issues. He knows. And I trust Him.

It’s not enough to say “No” to where our culture goes wrong – we must also have a vision of the profound Yes that our Triune God has given us. The sacramental understanding of marriage and children is a powerful Yes, a rich and beautiful Yes, a Yes that challenges the way the world thinks and offers a bracing alternative to the world’s confused attempts to make life just the way we want it; it is a Yes that carries the Cross with it, and runs counter to all our desires for power, and control, and our own choices. Let us shout it from the housetops, let us live it out in our own lives and celebrate it in the lives of others.

In a previous post I described, praying that the desire to teach would be removed from my life. Like many prayers in the Christian life, owing to my own ignorance or something else God may have in mind, the answer I received was “not quite yet.” Thus at two different churches over the past 20 years I have sought out elders and teachers in the hope that I could be mentored. That I could learn what I needed to know, or learn more directly why I was ill suited to the role of teaching. The net result of those observations has led me to the following conclusion: when it comes to certain roles the (evangelical protestant) churches I’ve attended are social cliques. They are not about cultivating and nurturing the laity to serve.

Putting aside arguments why the church could benefit from developing teachers from a variety of disciplines, I want to draw a comparison from career as a software engineer. I have worked for seven different companies. At some level each of these strived to be a meritocracy. Demonstrate some ability and reason to be trusted and you will be given more. Find something you really enjoy and you may be “rewarded” (with work and responsibility) ten-fold. Every domain where people interact is driven by social dynamics, however those considerations should not trump other priorities.

Back in Part 2, I described discovering the possibility of an old Earth view being compatible with Biblical inerrancy. As my reading expanded, I still held on to the lessons of my past. No matter how transformative this seemed to me, I did not believe this new perspective on my faith would extend much beyond my immediate circle (of family and co-workers).

Then in the summer of 2009 I heard Greg Koukl interview Mary Jo Sharp about, among other things, her experience in the Master of Arts in Christian Apologetics program at Biola University. The quality of the program and the capacity to do most of the work online stuck with me the rest of the summer. In the fall, I finally went to the Biola site I found out about the Science and Religion program. All I can say, looking back two years later, is that I felt compelled to sign up. I did not, at that time, have a “calling” to enter into some specific ministry. I was simply certain that it was something I wanted to do.

The journey that began in January 2010 with my first classes has been, please forgive the cliché, transformative. I am more certain of my faith than ever and don’t know what to do about it. I recently found a quote defining apologetics as: “You’ve got reasons for what you believe, and you’re ready to talk to anyone who’s got questions.” (Mikel del Rosario, on Apologetics 315). I would take that sentiment a step further and argue there are many in the church that don’t even know there are questions, let alone answers.

Given the experiences I have described in this series, I have all but abandoned serving in my local church. As I have become more aware of the wider community of people studying, aspiring to teach and actually teaching apologetics, I have found this to be all too common a reaction.

So now what? For the moment I still have no idea, but three things motivate me. First, I believe God has given every believer something they can use for the kingdom. Second, I do not want to be the idiot who buried his talent in the ground (Matthew 25:14-29). Third, I believe we are wired to be passionate about what we are intended to do for the Kingdom.

In my next post I would like to offer the lessons I have learned through my struggle to find a calling.

When I was a new Christian I heard a sermon on the radio (back when the messages of many well known pastors were broadcast on radio, what people used to listen to before iPods). The topic was discerning God’s will for your life. The advice was deceptively simple. First get as close to Jesus as you can (via spiritual disciplines) and then do what you want to do. The perfectly valid assumption being that a disciple of Christ would not do anything against what He taught. However, when it came to serving in the church, especially if any kind of spiritual gift was involved, then it should be “confirmed” by the church. Unfortunately, the pastor never elaborated on that last bit. I have always taken it to mean encouragement or invitation to continue. Perhaps a more blunt way to put it would mean that failure would indicate you’ve chosen the wrong type of service.

As I mentioned in the previous post, as a new Christian I was immersed in many types of study, growth and discipleship. I attended Bible Study Fellowship for five years, was a voracious reader of materials on apologetics. At that time my church was starting small groups for fellowship and Bible study. The easiest way to be in a small group was to simply lead one.

After a particular meeting of my small group someone commented that I should teach on Sunday mornings in the young adult class that a few of us attended. That prompted me to ask my pastor if such an opportunity was possible. That led to my speaking on two occasions as part of book studies. On another occasion I spoke on systematic theology using the catch phrase, “What God cannot do.” I discovered two things about myself I did not expect. First, I was one of those people who, rather than fear public speaking, I actually enjoyed it. Second, the process of study, preparation, and presentation of truth about God inspired me like nothing I had ever experienced.

The feedback I received from friends and peers was, as well as I remember, positive. One individual who visited the day I spoke on systematic theology actually asked me if I was a recent seminary graduate. It was around this time I sought specific feedback and advice from my pastor. I told him that I wanted to do more of this, and I asked him what I should do to get better at it. His response was that I should try teaching a class in children’s church, for example the third grade boys.

At the time, this seemed like complete rejection and failure. This created a dissonance in my spiritual life from which I have not completely recovered. In the short time I had been teaching, the process of preparing and studying had energized my spiritual life in a tremendous way. When my “delusion” of being gifted to teach was shattered my desire to study the Bible was taken as well. The connection between teaching and studying made the latter a painful reminder of my disappointment. Since I am being completely candid, I even prayed for a long time for the desire to teach taken away from me.

I have had my share of trials and difficulties as a Christian. One of the most difficult was watching brain cancer take the communication faculties of my father in less than a day. I saw that and other struggles as being evidence of evil. I don’t know why, but I have never struggled with presence of evil alongside the character and attributes of God. However, the struggle I had with teaching left scars I am almost ashamed to admit. I could not grasp how such a passion could be ignited in my life only to be told it was an illusion, something I had no business pursuing.

While it took a very long time to accept, I put aside the idea of pursuing any kind of teaching ministry. I met a tremendous Christian woman who has been in my life for over 20 years. We have a wonderful teenage daughter and all three of us are blessed in so many ways. In hindsight, my idea of serving God became focused on my roles as a husband and father. To the extent that I still served at Church it was almost always with my wife: from teaching a two-year-olds class to automating the church library. My family and career have given me purpose and joy for which I have always thanked God.

However, that is not the end of my story. Apparently, years of family and career are not enough to snuff out something as powerful as my interest in scholarship and teaching. In my next post I will offer some observations about the church and what has dragged me back into the search for ministry.