Jehovah-Jireh

I keep discovering that God is a God who provides.

I’m starting to notice a pattern.  A few years ago with summer quickly approaching, I anxiously held my breath wondering whether one of my internship opportunities was going to open up.  A meaningful internship would be an important step toward law school on my resume; another summer at McDonalds would not be.  As the hour grew late, it was looking bleak, and then I received a call from Governor Granholm’s office.  What an opportunity!  This indeed was a step toward law school.

Then on the eve of last summer.  On the one hand, it was imperative that I make some significant income for my school expenses.  On the other hand, I once again needed something that would improve my resume on my progression toward law school.  I had several leads and was disheartened as each one folded.  What’s going on God?  Why not this one?  Why not that one?  Are You going to provide?  And once again, just as things were looking bleak, an opportunity far better than the leads I had been chasing suddenly opened up:  a summer as the Tibbits assistant box office manager.

This keeps happening.  And in the last few weeks and months, through the love and generosity of family, friends, and my family in Christ both in Coldwater and at the Chapel here in Williamsburg, I see God once again providing what I need.  As this Fellows Program draws near with the sizeable financial cost that it involves, I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t quietly fretted, quietly wondered where the provision was going to come from.  What’s going on God?  I thought it was Your will that I commit to this program.  I thought this was where You wanted me to be next year.  How is this all going to work out?

Yes, I’m learning more and more that God provides all we need to do what He has purposed for us to do.  If God feeds the sparrows and clothes the lilies, surely He will provide for me.  Jesus instructs us, “ask and you will receive.”  Grammatically, this verse is more accurately rendered, “keep asking and you will receive.”  We must keep approaching the throne of grace and petitioning God.  And sometimes I wonder if I’m petitioning enough, but I know that even when we’re faithless, God is faithful.  Although I still have a ways to go to meet my financial obligations for the program, I have a sense of peace and assurance knowing that God’s blessing is with me in this.

I recall the words of a worship song that I grew up singing at the Coldwater Nazarene Church.  I didn’t understand the words then.  I’m beginning to understand them now:

Jehovah-Jireh my Provider

His grace is sufficient

For me, for me, for me

Jehovah-Jireh my Provider

His grace is sufficient for me.

My God shall supply all my needs

According to His riches in Glory

He will give His angels charge over me

Jehovah-Jireh cares for me,

For me, for me,

Jehovah-Jireh cares for me.

More Than Facebook Friends

A few years ago, Ravi Zacharias came to William & Mary to speak on campus.  Ravi was raised Hindu in India before becoming an atheist and eventually a Christian.  He has become a world renowned apologist making it his mission to argue for the validity of Christian theology against opposing belief systems such as atheism and other religions.

In reading his books and listening to him speak, he holds no punches.  He exudes self-confidence in the convictions he holds dear.  And he welcomes any objection, any question, and while he answers it with sincere love, there is an undeniable assertiveness about his demeanor.  And so when one student rose and asked a question during his campus visit, Ravi’s answer was surprisingly unexpected.  The student asked, “If you could ask God one question, what would it be?”

Ravi thought for a moment.  “I would ask Him why He made it so hard to believe in Him.”

Wait a minute.  In a moment of vulnerable honesty, the guy who was comfortably bashing atheism one moment would ask God why it is so hard to believe in Him?

Why is it so hard to believe in God sometimes?  And often believing in God isn’t so much the issue—why is it so hard to know God sometimes?  To know Him more?  And not knowing about God.  There is plenty to know about God.  From Sunday School to systematic theologies, Bible readings to sermons, it is easy to learn a lot about God, but to really know God.  There is the labor.

In our electronic, Internet age, its easy to see the difference between genuinely knowing other people and merely knowing about them.  I think I have over 500 Facebook friends, and there is absolutely no way I know 500 people on this planet.  In fact, the number of people I truly know on a deep, personal level I could probably count on my two hands.  It’s easy to accept a friend invitation on Facebook.  But if you really want to know someone, you have to be intentional.

And so sometimes I feel like God is my Facebook friend.  It’s interesting to see what His favorite hymns or famous quotes are or to see what He has listed as His political views, but then I have this yearning to go beyond all that.  I want to know who this God is and what His hopes and dreams are and what makes His heart heavy with sorrow and what gives Him joy.

And I realize in these moments that I need to be more intentional.  Text message prayers won’t do.  And I know it takes time, perhaps a lifetime, or more.  But therein lies the reward.  As I come to know the living God more and more, I realize that this isn’t some cheap Facebook status.  This is real.  This is reality at its rawest.  And the more I come to know God, the more I realize how mysterious He is, which only increases my yearning.

Cease Striving And Know That I Am God

Graduation, moving apartments, last class, homework, LSAT, wedding, full-time job, part-time job, odds and ends—it’s May and suddenly I turn around and it’s July.  What a whirlwind!

And then there is Psalm 46.  “Cease striving and know that I am God” (v. 10).  Striving and striving and striving.  There are those times in life when it seems that all it is is striving.  Sometimes we strive so much that we don’t even have time to know that He is God.  And it’s times like that that I often feel dry and parched.  I feel weak because I forget that God is my strength.  I feel vulnerable because I forget that God is my refuge, my stronghold.

Verses 4 and 5 of this beautiful psalm describe the City of God in which the Most High dwells.  The psalmist notes that God is in the city and the city will not be moved.  Charles Spurgeon asks, “How can she be moved unless her enemies move her Lord also? His presence renders all hope of capturing and demolishing the city utterly ridiculous” (Treasury of David).  If we are truly dwelling in the midst of that city, then it is illogical to fear.  So why do we so often fear, and more importantly, are we really dwelling in that city?

The psalmist has such confidence in God as to proclaim, “We will not fear, though the earth should change and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea” (v. 2).  Sometimes a mere tremor is enough to send me quaking, like the other day when I realized at work that I had left the dryer running while no one was home.  For a while, all I could think about was coming home to find a giant ash heap.  Not that it’s good to leave unattended dryers running, but that’s hardly the ocean gulping up Mt. Everest.

I find myself needing to remember that, “The Lord of hosts is with us,” or rather, the Lord of hosts is with me. 

He is with me...

He is with me...

He is with me...

Lesson 5: Coming soon!

So, my life has suddenly become exceedingly busy.  Looks like I won't be able to squeeze in my last college lesson before the month is up.  But, I did want to create this place-holder post in order to keep all my Lesson posts in the month of May.  It works better for organizational purposes.  And with that, back to the whirlwind...

Lesson 4: We Believe What We Want to Believe

In college, I always enjoyed a good philosophy class.  Such classes had this aura about them, as though I was about to gain access to some hidden, pure truth.  And then, after an hour or so of class of steeping in higher realities of being, I would go grab lunch or head to practice.  Such ideas seemed to have little applicability to the rest of my day, except for conversation fodder.

Of course, one would assume that people who sit around thinking deeply all day would have some lock on the truth, but if that were true, that sure didn’t come across during class.  All this thinking power and inference making and deductive reasoning and yet people still end up on diametrically opposite sides of various issues and questions.  Is there a God?  What is the good?  (what does that mean?)  Some philosophy professors made it completely clear which side they supported and made every effort to convince their students to agree or else feel humiliated.  Other professors brilliantly erected and demolished competing arguments just to keep their students’ heads swirling.

In my Philosophy of Law class, one of the questions my professor explored was the question of whether lawyers are morally obligated to zealously advocate for their clients even if that meant doing seemingly immoral things to win their case.  On the first day of discussing this topic, he made a rock-solid case for zealous advocacy.  Impeccable.  Brilliant.  Pure Reason!  I’m pretty sure he had us all convinced or at least feeling pretty stupid for thinking otherwise.  During the next class though, he completely laid waste to the argument he made the class before and proceeded to erect an argument for why lawyers do not have a moral obligation to zealously advocate for their clients.  Again, Impeccable, Brilliant, Pure Reason!

Wait…huh?  What’s going on here?  Which is it?

Early in my college career with my faith growing afresh, apologetics played a crucial role in my intellectual life.  I was discovering that apologetics, which is the philosophical and intellectual defense of Christianity, helped address some of the troubling questions that cropped up in the world of faith.  I would read some apologist’s argument for God’s existence, or how an all-powerful, all-knowing, good God could be compatible with a world filled with evil, and I would think to myself, “Yeah, who could possibly refute this?  Impeccable!  Brilliant!”  And then I would read some atheist’s rebuttal argument, and if I were being honest with myself, I’d think, “That troublingly sounds pretty convincing too.”  I wouldn’t use the word “brilliant,” but then again, someone without a Christian bias—an atheist bias perhaps—probably would use the word “brilliant” to describe such an argument.

So what are we supposed to believe?  Or rather, what do we believe?

It seems to me that we tend to believe what we want to believe.  We humans are pretty good at constructing arguments to support whichever position we want to take on whichever issue we’re discussing.  Whether we are willing to admit it or not, every argument starts with an assumed premise.  Even empiricism, which claims to rely totally on experience without any assumptions, relies on the assumption of its own validity.  We simply cannot escape the necessity of taking things on faith, usually a great deal for that matter—theist, atheist, Christian, Buddhist, Democrat, Republican.  In fact, it’s quite possible that the degree of certainty we feel about our beliefs and the clarity of our reason is nothing more than an illusion to aid in our survival, which, if true, would delegitimize this whole sentence, and this whole blog post.

Fortunately the futility of philosophy has not left me as a total skeptic, or a total flake; I still believe things.  But such exercises have liberated me from the bondage of having to prove some of the most important things that I believe.  I don’t feel the need to prove that my parents truly love me; I simply accept it as given.  And I don’t have to prove my Jesus and the purpose and fullness He gives my life.  I just have to choose to live in that fullness.

I’ve discovered that if we spend too much time in the ivory tower, then we won’t get around to the business of living each day to its fullness and of hoping for tomorrow.

Lesson 3: History is not what happened, history is what we say happened.

Before college, history, as I understood it, was very simple.  History was a set of objective facts compiled into official text books.  All you had to do was read the text book to find out “what happened.”

In college though, I discovered this fancy concept known as historiography, which is “the writing of history.”  Historiography is a form of history all its own.  For example, not only is the complicated and divisive American Civil War part of history, but so is the way historians have written about it.  Historians from the North wrote about the Civil War differently than historians from the south, and historians living in 1870 wrote about it differently than historians living in 1970.  No matter when or where a historian is from, they just can’t escape their own perspectives and biases and prejudices and cultural values.  And so, Civil War historiography varies considerably.  Now things like dates and the number of men in such-n-such brigade don’t elicit much debate, but questions like, “What caused the Civil War?” or “Who was to blame for such-n-such policy?” are far more complicated.

A few years ago a friend encouraged me to read a particular book on Christian church history from the first century to the present.  He said something to the effect of, “This book tells the real facts.”  Of course, with Biblical and church historians ranging from conservative fundamentalist historians to secular atheistic historians, I was a bit skeptical that this one book had successfully encapsulated all the REAL facts to the exclusion of all the biased non-facts.  But the book sounded interesting, so I opened up to the introduction.

The author of this book acknowledged the many controversies and differences of opinion that have colored Biblical and church scholarship, but he insisted that rather than mere personal opinion, his account would be objective (aka this is what REALLY happened).  I had read enough, and I placed the book back on the shelf to continue collecting dust.

What are the REAL facts anyway?  Are the real facts what the writers of primary source documents said, who of course had their own biases and prejudices, or are the real facts what scholarly writers of secondary source documents say, who also have their own biases and prejudices, or are the real facts contained in high school text books?  (I hear that Texas recently adopted the use of text books which all but completely eliminate Thomas Jefferson from its chapters on early United States history because people on some Texas educational board didn’t like Jefferson’s ideological values.  Bias and prejudice? Check.).

Everyone has biases and prejudices, from Herodotus to that really arrogant church historian; and I have biases and prejudices too.  A historian, or anyone for that matter, is far more credible when he admits what his biases are than when he pretends to be objective.

Now I’m no relativist; I believe certain things did indeed happen a certain way.  And I’m no epistemological skeptic; I believe we can access the past.  But I recognize that it is difficult and some debates just don’t go away very easily, and for good reason.  For most of human history, we simply don’t have any video type records of what happened when, where, and why.  So ultimately history is not “what happened,” rather history is “what we say happened.”  And that story is constantly evolving and being refined. 

Lesson 2: Don’t be a heretic in the truth!

In my John Milton class, we read Milton’s Areopagitica, which apparently served as a crucial inspiration for our first amendment right of freedom of the press.

Milton was a prolific English writer who lived through the 17^th century English Civil War.  Milton was a puritan, and puritans tended to butt heads with the Church of England concerning just about everything.  But, the Church of England was closely wedded to the Crown and the English government, making the puritans not simply religious dissidents, but political dissidents as well.  So, many of the puritans writings were closely scrutinized by the government before they could be published and were often censored.

And so Milton penned the Areopagitica in which he calls for a free press and an end to censorship.  He crafts a brilliant argument:

He argues that nothing should be censored and that every written piece should be allowed to stand on its own.  If a given piece contains fallacious reasoning or weak arguments, then any rational person would be able to recognize such fallacies and reject the argument accordingly.  He argues that if everything were freely published, than the truth would win out as rational people read and evaluate opposing arguments and writings.  Milton challenges the established authority.  He argues that if their positions and arguments are valid and true and his are invalid and false, then why should he not be able to publish his writings and show all of England how foolish and wrong he and his fellow puritans are.

During the revolution, the crown was overthrown, Cromwell ascended to the Protectorate, and Milton held a prominent office in the new government.  Sadly, Cromwell’s government, now the oppressor and not the oppressed, gladly censored the opposition.  Darn it Milton!  You hypocrite!

But Milton’s moral failings aside, the logic undergirding the Areopagitica still obtains.  If we are really serious about knowing and believing the truth, then we have to take Milton’s pre-hypocrisy epistemological rigor seriously.  We have to be willing to read any argument or viewpoint and let reason speak for itself.

Clearly, it’s bad to believe the wrong things for the wrong reasons, but equally unjustified according to Milton, is believing the right things for the wrong reasons.  Milton uses the example of a parishioner who adopts the attitude of “If the preacher says it, then I believe it, and that settles it.”  He argues that even if what this parishioner believes is indeed the truth, he believes it for the wrong reasons.  He hasn’t carefully considered the issue and weighed opposing arguments and evidence.  He simply is spoon fed one line of thought and as for anything that conflicts with this line of thought, he plugs his ears and says, “LA, LA, LA, NOT LISTENING! NOT LISTENING.”  In short, he is a heretic in the truth.

This sounds ridiculous, but people do this all the time.  Perhaps they merely parrot what one church’s denominational doctrine says and disregard opposing viewpoints because this one denomination or tradition, they believe, somehow succeeded in correctly understanding all of the Bible’s passages.  Perhaps they only get their news from one cable network because they figure that all the rest are biased and unreliable.  Perhaps they perfectly align themselves with their political party of choice policy-for-policy because this party is always right (or at least, always more right than the other party).

Are things true because we believe them, or do we believe things because we think they are true?  If what’s true is true irrespective of our beliefs, then we should have no qualms about reading and considering fair arguments that cast the opposing view in the best light possible.  No cable network should be off limits whether it is MSNBC or Fox News.  No book should be off limits whether it is God Delusion or the Bible.

Figuring out what is true isn’t supposed to be easy.  If it does seem easy, then there is a good chance that what we believe to be true, isn’t.  And if we did get lucky and believe the right thing by happenstance without the necessary intellectual rigor, then we’re still just heretics in the truth.

Lesson 1: Shooting the Albatross is a Good Thing

One of the more twistedly beautiful poems I read in college was “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  In the poem, a strange, old man stops an arriving wedding guest outside a church to tell him an enigmatic tale from his seafaring days.  The wedding guest doesn’t have time for a lengthy and random story, but is rendered powerless to resist the old man’s aura and oratorical cadence.

And it’s a tale indeed.  After winding up in some less-than-desirable circumstances out at sea, the mariner and his fellow sailors are visited by an albatross.  This seemingly innocent creature has little else of an agenda other than to offer company to the crew and to play about.  And yet, in an act of inexplicable cruelty, the mariner shoots the albatross with his crossbow.

What ensues is a bizarre series of ill-fortuned, illusory events that terrify the mariner beyond imagination: he finds himself floating upon a rotting, burning sea parched and starving with slimy creatures all around, haunting spirits like “Nightmare Life-In-Death,” phantoms, and a crew that dies and rises again as zombie creatures.  For part of his penance, the mariner must wear the dead body of the albatross around his neck as a reminder of the needless evil and woe that he has wrought.

After an ageless stretch of time, the mariner finally gains insight into both his deeds and his own self.  He survives these tormenting terrors and lives out his days a sadder but wiser man.

At some point that overly simplistic, childlike manner of literary interpretation kicks in and we find ourselves asking that cliché question, “What’s the moral of the story?”

Many would say, “Don’t shoot innocent albatrosses,” or perhaps, “Learn from others’ mistakes.”  After hearing out the mariner’s gruesome tale, how could one possibly think that it would be a GOOD idea to shoot the albatross?

And yet it is clear that the mariner’s harrowing life transformation would not have been possible had he not shot the bird.  Some lessons in life—deeply significant and personal lessons—just can’t be learned by heeding instruction, but rather must be learned through experience.  Some truths about life just can’t be truly understood unless you shoot the albatross.

Which reminds me of a shameful moment several years ago when I unwittingly shot the albatross of my pride to smithereens.  After an ageless stretch of time waiting at a walk-in clinic to receive an allergy shot, the nurses notified me that my serum was not in the refrigerator.  Through my mind began to race all the inconvenience and frustration that would result from this act of carelessness.  I demanded that they look again.  After another failed attempt, they suggested that I go home and look in my home refrigerator.  I was rude and short with them; I told them I would, but that it wouldn’t be there.  I knew it wasn’t in my home refrigerator.  And so I drove home just waiting to be vindicated, marched up the steps, through the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, and just as I expected…MY ALLERGY SIRUM?!?  NO!  It couldn’t be!

And there hung that dead albatross around my neck.  As I drove back to the clinic with an apology note, my serum and a half-baked idea of what I was going to say, feeling like I should be wearing a paper bag over my head, I remember smiling and thanking God that he had blown up my pride, at least for the moment.  I thought I already understood such concepts as humility, patience, personal fallibility, etc.  But some things in life simply can’t be learned or understood apart from experience.  Often in life you learn humility by first being prideful, patience through impatience, personal fallibility by making stupid choices.  I can only be thankful that the nurses were more gracious to me than I had been to them, especially considering that they were about to stick a needle in my body.

This is one of my albatross stories.  If in some way my story is instructive to others like the mariner’s possibly was, then great.  But I think that far more likely our stories are a beautiful reminder that, for our own personal development, it just may be good to shoot the albatross from time to time.

Five Lessons From My College Education

Later this month, I will mark one of life’s big mile stones: college graduation.  (Actually I’m only pretending to graduate.  I still have one class to go this Summer, and I wasn’t actually enrolled during this year’s fall and spring semesters due to collegiate athletics and career ending injuries and unexpected turns and twists, so it’s a little anticlimactic—but it is a symbolic victory with the real victory assured to come in August.)

As I reflect on the last five years of my life and how much I have changed and grown into the man that I am, in some ways it is hard to remember who I was in high school.  I suppose only the people whom I haven’t seen since high school could comment on whether I’m the same Jay Bilsborrow or a different Jay Bilsborrow, or perhaps a nuanced Jay Bilsborrow.

While at William and Mary, I was (still am?) a good ol’ fashioned liberal arts humanities major, which means other than being a better reader and writer, I am not coming away with any practical skills or knowledge (good thing I’m going to law school! Ha!).

So other than some interesting information about John Milton and the Crusades and Symbolic Logic, what did I learn from college?  While by no means an exhaustive list, I have identified the 5 Lessons I Learned in College (4 from my studies and 1 from athletics).  During May, I am going to blog on each lesson throughout the month.  Stay tuned.

Ringing the Bell

For most students, yesterday was the last day of classes here at William and Mary.  The last day is known as “Blow Out,” which probably has something to do with the fact that thousands of students blow their brains out with drunken revelry from sun-up to well into the wee hours of the night—people dancing around in the Sunken Gardens, mobs roaming to and fro.  This is about as close as W&M gets to what party schools consider normal.  I’ve never totally understood the liberation that such students feel; big kahuna final exams are always right around the corner, and so the school year is FAR from over.

For seniors, the last day of classes is extra special though; it isn’t just the close of the school year, but the close of an important part of one’s life.  All the class, all the homework, the papers, the late nights, the tests, the grades, and on this day, you can finally smell the end: a mix of pollen, pancakes, and whatever lies just up ahead and around the bend.

For decades, centuries perhaps, seniors have entered the historic Wren Building to ring the Wren bell, one by one.  It’s a way to announce to the world, “I’m about to graduate! HARK UPON THE GALE!”

There are many traditions in which I don’t take part, and the end of my undergrad experience has been a little disjointed with not having been in school this past fall or spring, working at Colonial Williamsburg, and still needing to finish one class this June.  But having my chance to ring the Wren Bell was of symbolic importance and something that my soul needed.

So during my lunch break at work, I headed over to campus.  Dressed in a shirt and tie in contrast to all the frolicking casually-dressed students, already between two chapters of my life.  A sense of eager anticipation, almost a touch of nervousness.  The weather can’t be more perfect, a slight breeze, the sun beaming into the Wren court yard as I stride up to the steps.  Amid the happy din of laughter and glee, the steady tolling keeps resounding.  I’m not sure if it is coming from the Wren or my chest.  A brief stop on the porch and then up the stairs, up, up, up.

And there is the rope…my turn.  Here it is.  What am I supposed to think right now?  What’s supposed to be streaming through my mind?  Sometimes in life you have those momentous occasions that you anticipate and think about, and then you are there, right in the midst of it, and it’s all happening so quickly.

Someone suggests that I give it a pull.  Okay.  Grab the rope.  Pull hard.  And there is my knell echoing across campus.  That’s it?

My heart is sated.  I can go back to work.  I can leave this chapter of my life and enter the next.