After John Wesley returned from his disasterous trip to the colony of Georgia, he was invited to a meeting on Aldersgate Street. With a downcast spirit and a feeling of total abandonment and faithlessness, Wesley went, and experienced a move of God that would change his life forever. In his journal, Wesley wrote: "In the evening, I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."
While I have had several "heart-warming" experiences in my life, I would have to say that my fondest memory of one such experience was the first time I attended a Promise Keepers event. Just like Wesley, I was rather "unwilling" to go to this. At the time, Promise Keepers was a relatively new movement. It was receiving a lot of controversy and complaints from both those inside and outside the church. Christian talk shows expressed concerns over the founder's Catholic upbringing and encouraged avoidance because Promise Keepers was supporting non-biblical and Catholic teachings as part of their programs. Secular groups protested the men's-only aspect, citing that the group was designed to subjugate women and would lead to spousal abuse or worse. I listened to all of this and had no desire to go, but a friend of mine at work convinced me to go with him. "We've got a group from my church going. You'll have a good time." So, I reluctantly agreed.
The day before the Promise Keepers event, my friend had an emergency come up and said, "I'm not going." And, to make matters worse, because of his situation, he had been unable to hook me up with his church group. So, if I was to go, I had to go alone. "Unwillingly" was an understatement -- at least Wesley knew people at Aldersgate. After going back and forth on this all the next day, planning to go one moment and then deciding it was stupid the next, I finally decided to go. After all, I had already paid almost $100 to go, and, at the time, this was a considerable expense to our family. I felt I needed to go just to experience it and so I could honestly say that I had not wasted the money. My plan was to go for the Friday night event, and if it turned out as I expected, I just wouldn't go back on Saturday.
Driving to Knoxville, I was met with a deluge of biblical proportions. Severe thunderstorms. Torrential rain. But, I was committed at this point and pressed on, making my way into the stadium. And there, in a crowd of 40,000 strangers, in the midst of a driving rainstorm, my heart was strangely warmed as I heard and experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit. My doubts were washed away with the rain, as my voice joined with 40,000 brothers lifting up God in praise. I heard teachings that night and experienced worship that convicted me, that changed me, that convinced me that I was a child of God. No, it convinced me that I was a man of God, and I needed to quit playing at Christianity and start living it as a man. I left that Friday night event different, planning on being the first one back the next morning, because an amazing thing had happened -- I had met God again, and He knew me, and I knew I needed Him.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Monday, July 06, 2009
The Lost Generation
Just finished reading Ernest Hemingway's, "The Sun Also Rises." I was utterly amazed at how much I could relate to this book, although it was written over 80 years ago. I guess that's one mark of great literature.
This first novel of Hemingway concerns the "Lost Generation," a term coined by Getrude Stein to describe the disillusionment and general sense of belonging and hopelessness that characterized the generation that lived through World War I. It was this disillusionment that led so many Americans to become expatriates living in communal settings in Paris and other European countries. They had lost their way as everything they had thought they believed in was shown to be a facade, and so they left, seeking something that would provide value and meaning to a meaningless life.
In Hemingway's novel, the characters live out their lives flitting from party to party, from experience to experience, always seeking but never finding what they long for in their heart of hearts. Men have lost their masculinity and have forgotten what it means to be a man. Women have lost their roles and seek to acquire position and prestige through their beauty and their bodies. These people have no foundation, and instead find themselves standing on sinking sand.
In contrast to this lost generation stands two men, an older aristocrat who belongs to the former generation with a firm moral foundation, and Pedro Romero, a young star bullfighter who demonstrates with his actions the picture of masculinity missing in the others, who knows where he stands and what he stands against.
Reading this book is reading the story of our lives. I work a lot with young people, high school and college aged, and I see the struggles in their lives, the distrust of established religion that has failed them more than once, the disillusionment with a government that promised change but is costing them their future. I watch them flit from party to party, giving themselves over to others sexually and mentally and emotionally with no thought of the consequences just as the characters in Hemingway's novel. They are the "new" lost generation, seeking a foundation, seeking stability, seeking absolutes in a world of relativity.
With every party, with every sexual encounter, with every wasted moment, they are asking the question, "Where is the hope?" Hemingway searched, but couldn't find the answer. Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, and Porter searched in vain, as well. Their generation plunged into hopelessness and despair exemplified in the Great Depression that followed just three years after the publishing of "The Sun Also Rises."
Where is the hope? Where is the foundation of life? Where can the answers be found? The same place as they always have -- in the person of Christ Jesus. The answer to the disillusionment, to the loss of hope, to the despair suffered by the first lost generation and being experienced in our new lost generation is the good news of Christ's death and resurrection, in His ability to make the old new, to create beauty from ashes. Christ is the only answer, the only foundation, that can stand in this climate and environment that we face.
Hemingway and his compatriates were lost, not only emotionally and physically, but spiritually. And, this new lost generation is the same way. It is our responsibility, as people who take the name of Christ, who proclaim to be His body in this world today, to point this lost generation to the Source of life they have been searching for. Christianity was originally known as "The Way" for a reason. We know the path to life. Now, let's show it to those who are so desperately seeking it.
This first novel of Hemingway concerns the "Lost Generation," a term coined by Getrude Stein to describe the disillusionment and general sense of belonging and hopelessness that characterized the generation that lived through World War I. It was this disillusionment that led so many Americans to become expatriates living in communal settings in Paris and other European countries. They had lost their way as everything they had thought they believed in was shown to be a facade, and so they left, seeking something that would provide value and meaning to a meaningless life.
In Hemingway's novel, the characters live out their lives flitting from party to party, from experience to experience, always seeking but never finding what they long for in their heart of hearts. Men have lost their masculinity and have forgotten what it means to be a man. Women have lost their roles and seek to acquire position and prestige through their beauty and their bodies. These people have no foundation, and instead find themselves standing on sinking sand.
In contrast to this lost generation stands two men, an older aristocrat who belongs to the former generation with a firm moral foundation, and Pedro Romero, a young star bullfighter who demonstrates with his actions the picture of masculinity missing in the others, who knows where he stands and what he stands against.
Reading this book is reading the story of our lives. I work a lot with young people, high school and college aged, and I see the struggles in their lives, the distrust of established religion that has failed them more than once, the disillusionment with a government that promised change but is costing them their future. I watch them flit from party to party, giving themselves over to others sexually and mentally and emotionally with no thought of the consequences just as the characters in Hemingway's novel. They are the "new" lost generation, seeking a foundation, seeking stability, seeking absolutes in a world of relativity.
With every party, with every sexual encounter, with every wasted moment, they are asking the question, "Where is the hope?" Hemingway searched, but couldn't find the answer. Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, and Porter searched in vain, as well. Their generation plunged into hopelessness and despair exemplified in the Great Depression that followed just three years after the publishing of "The Sun Also Rises."
Where is the hope? Where is the foundation of life? Where can the answers be found? The same place as they always have -- in the person of Christ Jesus. The answer to the disillusionment, to the loss of hope, to the despair suffered by the first lost generation and being experienced in our new lost generation is the good news of Christ's death and resurrection, in His ability to make the old new, to create beauty from ashes. Christ is the only answer, the only foundation, that can stand in this climate and environment that we face.
Hemingway and his compatriates were lost, not only emotionally and physically, but spiritually. And, this new lost generation is the same way. It is our responsibility, as people who take the name of Christ, who proclaim to be His body in this world today, to point this lost generation to the Source of life they have been searching for. Christianity was originally known as "The Way" for a reason. We know the path to life. Now, let's show it to those who are so desperately seeking it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)