The Hard Words of Jesus

by David Faulkner

            Most of us find real comfort in Jesus’ words.  Just think about some of the famous “I am” sayings in John.  “I am the gate for the sheep,” (John 10:7), assures us that those who belong to Jesus can, “come in and go out and find pasture,” (v. 9).  “I am the Good Shepherd,” who, “lays down his life for the sheep,” (John 10:11).  “I am the Light of the World,” (John 8:12), so we need never walk in darkness.  “I am the vine, you are the branches,” (John 15:1), which assures us that life-giving nourishment flows into our spirits from Him.

            But some words of Jesus aren’t so comforting.  He speaks some “hard words” as well, that challenge our ordinary ways of thinking and acting.  My favorite is Luke 17:10; “So you also, when you have done all that you were told to do, should say, `We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’” Our natural inclination, once we’ve done a few of the things we were told to do, is to say, “Look at the wonderful thing I did.”  We do this even though all we’ve done is obeyed one of Christ’s commands once in a while.  We were told to love each other as much as Jesus loved us (John 15:9-17) and His love led Him to a cross.  I recall sharing Luke 17:10 with one of my sisters-in-law. “Thanks a lot,” she said,“you just ruined my whole day.”  She is now an ex-sister-in-law, largely because the command to do all she was told to do was too hard for her.

            Another of my favorite “hard words” is found in Luke 9:57-62; “As they were walking along the road a man said to him, `I will follow you wherever you go.’ Jesus replied, `Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’ He said to another man,`Follow me.’ But the man replied, `Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’ Jesus said, `Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.’ Still another said, `I will follow you, Lord, but first let me go back and say good-by to my family.’ Jesus replied, `No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.’” Is Jesus being unduly hard on these guys?  On us?  Let’s look a bit closer.

            All He is saying to the first is, “Count the cost.”  As a college student I worked with Campus Crusade for Christ.  So I memorized the four spiritual laws.  I still can recite them almost verbatim.  The first is, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.”  The second and third tell us how God bridged the gap between Himself and sinful humanity, and the fourth talks about accepting Christ by faith.  There’s no call there to count the cost.  The potential convert is told that all he has to do to start living God’s wonderful plan is to believe in Jesus and have his sins forgiven.

            But suppose the:”wonderful plan” for the potential convert’s life involves spending years serving as pastor to small, unresponsive, ungrateful churches?  I can tell you from experience that doing that isn’t so wonderful.  Or suppose it involves the kind of service rendered to the poor by people such as Mother Teresa and her nuns.  It’s a long way from Calcutta to Cedar Point.  Or suppose, like the man who actually wrote the book The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that plan involves martyrdom.  Can we fault Jesus for telling this man the truth?  Or is our problem that we want all the “wonderful” ourselves and hope somebody else has to go to Africa and do the costly stuff?  I can’t help but wonder whether, if we were honest with people about the will of God, we might see fewer converts, but one who did accept the offer might well hang in there a lot better when times get tough.

            Then there’s the second guy.  His father was neither dead nor dying.  “Bury my father,” is a euphemism.  Dr. Ken Bailey, who lived 60 years in the Middle East, says he has heard many young people in that part of the world discussing with friends their decision to emigrate to the West.  Inevitably he will be asked, “Do you intend to bury your father first?”  The question means, “Are you going to stay until your father dies or leave now?”  The father of the man Jesus called might live on for years yet.  But Jesus’ time with us was limited and running out, so if this man wanted to follow him, he needed to start that minute.  So to, “Consider the cost,” Jesus adds, “Don’t put it off.”

            Urgency also lies behind what Jesus says to the third man.  His advice to him is, “Don’t look back.”  Saying good-by to one’s family could be a long and very formal thing in that culture and Jesus’ time, as we said, was short, measured in weeks rather than years.  If the person wants to learn from Jesus, he had better come now.  But the command not to look back has broader implications.  For those of us who were raised in Christian homes and have been believers since childhood it is a reminder not to look back with regret on all the “fun” things our unbelieving or converted friends do or did in the world.  Don’t ever regret avoiding the drunken parties or “sleeping around.”  Thank God you were saved from all that.  And for those who have come to Christ after doing some of those things, it is a reminder that, having counted the cost and come when God called, it is a reminder not to look back on their former life with longing.

            As the term wraps up and you prepare for a summer of work and service, or a summer of vacation and fun, remember the hard words of Jesus.  If your summer is to be one of work, whether in a job somewhere in commerce or in Christian ministry, whether in this country or another, I pray you will all learn something about the cost of following Jesus–though I doubt any of you will face the extreme danger some Christians endure.  And if yours is to be a summer of fun and relaxation, remember that you’re a disciple wherever you go and you must not let the glitter and glitz of this world cause you to look back with regret because you are no longer really a part of all that.  Have a blessed summer.  I’ll be writing a book about Job.  Now there’s a man who knew about the cost of believing in God.  Maybe I’ll share a bit of it with you as I go.

Also available from The College Commitment:

Playing With a Thunderstorm

The Toughest Test

Those Puzzled Athenians-and Us

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The Truth: Do Your Best By Jonathan David Faulkner

A Chosen Generation (1 Peter 2:9) Mediocre Christianity By Angel Edwards 

Symphony Theologica: God and Time By David Tank

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Those Puzzled Athenians-and Us

by David Faulkner

            The philosophers of Athens were puzzled.  A strange Jew had wandered in from the hills to the north and been abandoned by his friends.  After wandering around their city for awhile he had the audacity to start preaching some new religion on their streets.  They thought they knew all about Jews and their belief in one God.  But this strange Jew actually seemed to be preaching two gods.  At least there were two words or names that he seemed to use all the time.  The first was a Jewish name, Jesus, which he tended to pronounce yeshua.  The second was a Greek word they had never heard used the way this Jew used it; Anastasis.  Was it another god,, or was it something he was claiming Jesus had done and that all Jesus’ followers would do?

            All the philosophies of the ancient world had been proclaimed at some time in Athens and there were various systems of thought present there at the time the strange Jew arrived.  But the most important “schools” were the Stoics and the Epicureans.  One day a mixed group of them happened to catch a bit of the strange Jew’s sermon.  “Do you Epicureans know what this babbler is talking about?” asked a Stoics.  “Not at all,” replied the Epicurean.  “We’re more confused than you are, since we were out partying all last night.”  So they talked it over and agreed that as soon as the Epicureans had recovered from their hangovers, they would all meet at the usual place for philosophical discussions, on top of Mars Hill, and invite the babbler to explain himself.  He might just get a few laughs, even from the Stoics.

            So they assembled their council, the Areopagus, and invited the babbler to come address them.  They explained the reason for the gathering, then asked the strange Jew to expound his unusual philosophy.  The babbler was, of course, the apostle Paul and he was very glad of the chance to speak.  He’d been walking around taking notes in Athens.  It was an impressive city, full of statues and temples.  The Athenians wanted to have all the religious bases covered.  But in case they had overlooked anybody in the deities department, they had put up an altar to, “An Unknown God.”  It wasn’t two gods Paul was preaching but one, and so he seized upon their odd compulsion not to leave any gods out to explain about the God they didn’t know.

            You can read this story in Acts 17:17-34.  Paul made it clear that he was a true follower of the Jewish God.  This God did not dwell atop some distant mountain.  No, He was near to everyone.  Desiring to be even nearer He had come as a man in the person of Jesus Christ, died for our sins, and risen again.  At this point the philosophers of Athens had hard enough.  They adjourned their meeting, declaring that they would hear more of this stuff later.  The very notion of anastasis seems to have unsettled them.  Whoever heard of anyone rising from the dead? What would such an idea do to all their carefully nurtured, discussed and debated philosophy?

            If we learn nothing else from Paul’s experience in Athens, we should learn how important the idea of resurrection (anastasis) was to the early Christians.  They were Easter people.  The resurrection of Jesus was so important to them that they even changed the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday to show their commitment to a risen Savior.  But their belief in resurrection looked not only back to that of Jesus Christ, but forward to their own.  That is the point of Paul’s great treatise on the subject, found in I Corinthians 15.

            In I Corinthians 15, Paul shows that all Christianity hangs on  one central fact: Jesus rose from the dead.  He says some astounding things about it.  He says that if Jesus hasn’t risen, “Our preaching is vain and so is your faith,” (v. 14), “we [apostles] are shown to be false witnesses,” (v. 15), “those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost,” and finally, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.”  But the most important statement is in verse 17; “If Christ has not been raised your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.”

            Why is this so?  Because by raising Jesus from the dead God did more than simply proclaim that Jesus was the Son of God with power (Romans 1:4).  He also showed that the sacrifice for sin Jesus made was acceptable to Him.  Had there been no Easter, the death of Jesus would have been no more than another in the long series of unjust judicial murders perpetrated by an unbelieving establishment.  But when He raised Jesus God showed us that He has accepted what Jesus did as full atonement for our sins.  The events of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter form the parts of one whole, the individual acts of one drama, all of which had to be completed for our salvation to be achieved.

            Resurrection was the major hope for believers living during and just after Jesus’ time.  When Jesus told Martha, “Your brother will rise again,” she replied, “I know he will rise at the last day,” (John 11:23, 24).  Paul’s comment mentioned above, that if Jesus gives us hope for this life alone we are of all people most to be pitied, shows how vital resurrection was to the early Church.  These days many of us seem to have lost that hope.  I think this is because we get so much more pleasure from this life than did they.  Pain, disease, suffering–these were the common lot for people in those days.  Things were a long time getting better.  None of us will have to put up with the annoyance George Washington must have experienced because of his wooden teeth.  When we comfort the grieving, we usually say that the deceased has “gone home to be with the Lord,” or that his/her spirit is now in Heaven.  We usually wouldn’t say, “Your brother will rise again.”  Even those who believe that the resurrection (rapture) comes before the Great Tribulation (I am not one of them) move quickly past resurrection to the part where God fries all the wicked unbelievers.

            It is true, there are some Christians who have cause to hope in the resurrection.  I look forward to being able to see everything perfectly and to finding out what this “depth perception” thing you all keep talking about really is.  Those, like my friend Stephen, who has never walked, and my friend David, who is blind, surely have something to look forward to in the resurrection– or at least that’s the way many of the rest of ou see it.  Perhaps once you get really elderly you’ll feel a bit differently.  But the truth is, you should feel differently about it now.  If there’s no hope of our resurrection, indeed if our being raised again isn’t central to our faith, then what is the point of faith at all.  God doesn’t just redeem our spirits.  He saves us body and soul, and whatever eternal life may be, and whatever the state of the soul after death, it is incomplete and less than God intends until we are resurrected in body.  God’s purpose is to redeem creation, not destroy it (Romans 8:20-23).  Our bodies are a part of that creation and we ought never to forget that there is a resurrection in store for us.  The “blessed hope” of the early Church should be as real for us as it was for them, and we should proclaim it as faithfully and enthusiastically as Paul did in Pagan Athens.  You think you’re young and strong now, but it’s nothing compared to what you will be then.

Also Available from Rev. David Faulkner

The Toughest Test

Playing With A Thunderstorm

Hawthorne Vs. Christianity

Also available from 10:31 Life Ministries

A Chosen Generation: Called Beyond Societies Standards by Angel Edwards

The Truth: The Word that Speaks by Jonathan Faulkner

Con. of a College Freshmen: On Buying Groceries...by Amy Faulkner

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The Toughest Test

By Rev. David Faulkner

            Dr. Pat Humphrey was brilliant. She taught Biology at Ohio University and belonged to  Mensa, which only allows very smart people to join.  Pat was a world traveler. She had hiked the length of the Appalachian Trail.  She was also a Presbyterian elder.  I recall her once saying, “I don’t want to sing hymns with lines like, `Search me and try me Master today.’  I don’t want to face such testing.” But she had to anyway.  A couple years after she retired she developed a rare disease which progresses a littlelike Alzheimer’s, but more quickly.  As her mental faculties rapidly failed Pat found she had nothing to hang on to but her faith, which was indeed tested.      I’m sure we’d all agree with Pat that none of us wants to be tried or tested in ways that threaten our health or challenge our faith.  But we are now in that season of the Church Year called Lent.  So this is a good time to look at Paul’s words in II Corinthians 13:5, 6; “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith: test yourselves. Do you not know that Christ Jesus is in you–unless, of course, you fail the test. And I trust that you will discover that we have not failed the test.”  We may think testing is OK in school, but it’s not a thing we want to face in life.  But if we don’t test ourselves, how will we know we’ll survive when some trial enters our lives? At least we should agree with Socrates, who said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

            It seems to me there are two main kinds of tests Christians face; tests of our resolve and tests of our faith.  Temptations are tests of our resolve just as surely as Jesus’ temptation in the desert was a test of His resolve to work salvation for us in God’s way, no matter the cost.  Would he put physical hunger ahead of spiritual purpose?  Would he test God’s promises and by doing so put on a spectacular show?  Would he take the easy road to authority by worshiping the devil rather than the hard road through Calvary? (Luke 4:1-13) These were all tests of Jesus’ resolve to do what God sent him to do.  If we mean to live as Christians, temptations of all sorts will arise to test our resolve..

            Then there are the tests of faith, which can involve serious illness or the death of a loved one or some other crisis.  No doubt many of those killed or hurt in the recent tornadoes are asking, or left behind folks who are asking, “Why?” or are questioning the love and goodness of God.  We all either have or will face some form of that test.  The issue of how we respond when it comes is so important it’s the first thing James mentions in his letter.  In James 1:2-4, he says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work, so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”  Like it or not, these kinds of tests of faith will come to us all so we must be ready to persevere in faith through the pain. Jesus states the obvious when He says, in John 16:33, “In this world you will have trouble.”  Yet he went on, “But take heart for I have overcome the world.”

            If we don’t like temptation or faith tests, there is one kind of test we don’t mind at all.  That involves putting others to the test.  We do it all the time.  We learn it as children when we want to find out just how far we can push our parents before they lose it.  Most of us outgrow that kind of thing, or if we don’t we go into politics.  Most adults put others to the test by forcing them to measure up to an impossible standard that they can’t even meet themselves.  We set up standards, many of them based on the Bible, which is OK, then expect others to adhere to them.  When they don’t we call them hypocrites.  Notice that there was only one person in the Bible who ever called anyone a hypocrite, and that was Jesus.  That’s because He is the only person who ever lived who had the right to call someone a hypocrite because He is the only person ever who wasn’t a hypocrite Himself.  None of us live up to the standards we set for ourselves and we all know it.  So nobody else can live up to those standards either.  I’m convinced that one of the greatest problems we have in the church today is that we are all trying so hard to hide who and what we really are from other folks in the church, while at the same time we’re more concerned with the faults of others than with our own shortcomings and failures.

            Now, here’s a really curious thing.  Paul actually says it’s OK for us to put other people to the test.  It’s OK for us to look to see if others measure up.  He invites the Corinthians to look at him and see if he measures up.  But he says it’s only OK if they have already done the same thing for themselves.  In other words, if we’re going to test others to see if they measure up it’s OK, so long as we’ve already taken a good look at ourselves to see if we measure up–and few of us do that.  That’s why the first command Paul gives the Corinthians in II Corinthians 13:5 is, “Test yourselves.: Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith.”  Christians ought to examine themselves as to the condition of their faith first.

            So during Lent I want you to do two things.  First of all, examine your life.  Obey Paul’s command and test yourself to see whether you really are in the faith.  Ask yourself questions like: Do I really believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sins or am I only going to church because I was taught to do so?  Do I trust God to do what is best for me, even if it hurts?  Do I forgive in myself what I condemn in others?  How important is my Christian faith to me?  Do I intend to die a Christian or will I abandon the faith should something that looks like a better offer comes along?  You can probably think of a good many others.  So put your faith to the test before something comes along to test it for you.  The second thing to do is this: every time you are tempted to fault someone else for a shortcoming, look at yourself and consider how many times you may have been guilty of the same kind of failure.  Commit yourself to doing that with everyone you meet.  Then, even if you must say something about the matter to them or to somebody else, you will do it with humility, not as the all-righteous judge but as the fellow-sufferer and fellow-sinner in need of God’s grace to overcome your own faults.

About the Author: Rev. David R. Faulkner has been a pastor in the PCUSA for over 30 years. He recieved his Bachlors in History from Michigan State University, His Masters of Divinity from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary and Did Graduate Work at Ohio University. He is currently preaching at The Harrisonville Presbyterian Church in Harrisonville Ohio. He is also married and has four kids

Also Available from Rev. David Faulkner's College Commitment
Hawthorne Vs. Christianity
Playing With a Thunderstorm

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A Chosen Generation: Devoured, Withered, Choked and...Alive? By Angel Edwards
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God's Heart For Those By Jonathan Faulkner


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Playing With A Thunderstorm!

February 11, 2012

By David Faulkner

            Following Aslan’s resurrection in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, there occurs what Lewis describes as a “romp” on the hilltop.  The three characters involved are Aslan and the girls, Susan and Lucy (who had witnessed Aslan’s execution).  Lewis says the girls could never explain very well what this romp was like, except to say that it was, “a little like playing with a kitten and a little like playing with a thunderstorm.”   In that simple phrase Lewis captured what may well be the greatest paradox in God, one that we must understand if we are truly to know Him through His Son and Spirit.

            I’ve never been much of a cat fancier, but there are few things as entertaining as playing with a kitten or two.  I once spent a night at my brother’s house.  He and his wife had two milk white, green-eyed kittens they had rescued when their mother got hit by a car.  Those kittens would have played all night with the ball of string I had.  Indeed they did try to keep me up all night.  Whether running after the string or pouncing on each other they were a joy to watch.  And with no claws yet they couldn’t hurt me or each other.  They were a riot.

            Not so playing with a thunderstorm.  When we lived in Nebraska we got real nasty ones.  I recall running inside to escape a black wall of blowing dirt as one approached, and cowering in the basement when a tornado went over our town.  There’s not much fun to be had playing with a thunderstorm.  Indeed I know several people who have been struck by lightning and survived, though in varying states of health; some just fine, some with lifelong disabilities.

            There needs to be a balance in our understanding between the kitten and the thunder-storm.  I have met a lot of people who like very much the idea of God as a kitten.  Even if they don’t necessarily think of God as being playful they focus on such divine attributes as love, mercy, kindness and gentleness, often to the exclusion of anything else.  I know a pastor in a nearby church whose God is a kind of warm, fuzzy kitten.  To him, that there should be justice or judgment in God is anathema.  As we have discussed in an earlier edition of this column, if that is all there is to God, then do as you please because nothing you do has any meaning anyway.

            I also know people who approach God with a kind of entitlement mentality.  We live in an entitlement culture.  Most Americans think the government owes them not only protection, but also a job, a guaranteed income, medical care (we often hear people talk as though state-sponsored medical care will guarantee health!), an education or any number of other things.  I recall hearing, back in 2008, a lady from Chicago proclaim confidently that if her candidate for president were elected, he would make her house payment for her.  Too ofteh we approach God with the same mentality.  Many today preach that, if you just have enough faith, God owes you health or a big house or any number of other good things.  Paul’s question, “Who has ever given anything to Him that God should repay him?” (Romans 11:35) gets lost in the cacophony of all those preachers telling the entitlement church all the things God has to give to them.

            Spring used to bring many things to the campus of Ohio University when I was a graduate student there.  One of them was a guy who called himself “Brother Jed.”  He would stand on the college green and harangue the students passing by about the dangers of hell and the horror of the punishment that awaited them because of the heinous sins he assumed they were regularly committing.  There was no gentle kitten in Brother Jed’s God: He was all thunderstorm.  He was a vengeful, condemning, guilt-sowing, vindictive deity who hated those sinful students.  Brother Jed actually thought he had attained personal perfection and so had the right to preach in such a way to the students.  His God was not al all gracious, patient or appealing.

            Paul wrote, “But because of His great love for us God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive again in Christ Jesus–it is by grace you have been saved.” (Ephesians 2:4, 5).  Hebrews 10:28, 29 says, “Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and has insulted the Spirit of grace?”  Both texts are true.  If we just had the first, then nothing we believe or do is really that important: God’s love will compel Him to save all of us, a thing the Bible decidedly does not teach.  On the other hand, if we just had the second, all we would have is a God who threatens and condemns, and so we’d have no hope.

            C. S. Lewis had it right: a kitten and a thunderstorm, not one without the other but both.  Any lesser conception of God is totally inadequate.

            One other thing needs to be said.  Look at who Hebrews 10:29 threatens with jugment  It is not that famous bugbear, ”those who have never heard the gospel.”  Instead it is those who have willfully, deliberately, determinedly “trampled under foot the Son of God,” treated Christ’s blood as common, and called “liar” the Spirit who testifies to God’s gracious salvation.  The people the writer of Hebrews is talking about here are those who have heard, yet rejected, God’s truth, and in America today that’s a lot of people.

            The God who has done all the things for us that the Bible says He has done deserves to be the very center of our lives. If we put other things ahead of Him, or if we think we can have God-and-money, God-and-learning, God-and-sports, God-and-health, God-and-family, or God-and-anything else as equally or more important than just God Himself, are we really sure we too are not trampling God’s Son under foot?  Is anything in your life equal to or more important than Jesus?  If I met you, how long would we have to talk for me to find out what it is?  If the God of the Bible isn’t the center of your life, are you sure you’re not playing with a thunderstorm?

About the Author: Rev. David R. Faulkner has been a pastor in the PCUSA for over 30 years. He recieved his Bachlors in History from Michigan State University, His Masters of Divinity from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary and Did Graduate Work at Ohio University. He is currently preaching at The Harrisonville Presbyterian Church in Harrisonville Ohio. He is also married and has four kid

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Hawthorne VS Christianity

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Hawthorne VS Christianity

by David Faulkner

            No doubt most of us have, at some time in our school experience, been compelled to read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.  I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who, having read that novel, desired to read any more Hawthorne.  It’s not that it’s a bad story: it’s a very good one.  But like many 19^th century novels, it doesn’t move very fast.  Psychological novels seldom do, especially if they are the product of a slower, more leisurely time.

            Further, as Christians, we are made vaguely uneasy by Hawthorne’s picture of New England Puritanism.  Perhaps our teachers told us Hawthorne was criticizing Christianity in his novel.  The truth is that Hawthorne found much to admire in Puritanism, as well as a good deal to criticize about the form Christianity had taken in the New England of his own day.  Nowhere is this criticism better expressed than in a very amusing short story.  Titled, “The Celestial Railroad,” Hawthorne wrote it in 1838.

            The story is a re-telling of the Puritan classic, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.  But while Bunyan’s Pilgrim was forced to walk all the way from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, the people of Hawthorne’s tale have constructed a railroad to carry travelers there.  They have made other improvements to make the trip easier, to ease the pain and lessen the danger of travel, and to add to the comfort of those on the journey.

            The railroad was a new form of conveyance in 1838 and, like many of his compatriots, Hawthorne didn’t seem to like it very much.  But it is clear that he reserved most of his contempt for the modernizing clergy of his day.  The story is told in the form of a dream.  Early in the dream the narrator meets a very helpful man, a “Mr. Smooth-it-away,” who is one of the directors of the railroad company.

            In Bunyan’s book Pilgrim’s first obstacle was the Slough of Despond.  Hawthorne’s narrator learns that a bridge has been built across this dangerous place, and he crosses the bridge in a coach with Mr. Smooth-it-away.  Hawthorne’s dislike of some of the pastors of his day is evident in his description of the material used to fill in the slough and give a foundation for the bridge; “books of morality, volumes of French philosophy and German rationalism, tracts, sermons and essays of modern clergy, extracts from Plato, Confucius and various Hindoo sages, together with a few ingenious commentaries upon texts of Scripture.”  How good was this foundation?  “[T]he bridge vibrated and heaved up and down in a very formidable manner; and, spite of Mr. Smooth-it-away’s testimony to the stability of its foundation, I should be loth to cross it in a crowded omnibus, especially if each passenger were encumbered with as heavy baggage as that gentleman and myself.”  In Bunyan’s tale Pilgrim lost his heavy baggage at the foot of the cross.  In Hawthorne’s it all went on board the train.

            The traveler discovers there have been other innovations.  Most frighteningly, Pilgrim’s old enemy, Apollyon, has been hired as engineer!  Numerous scenes follow in which the narrator is told how things are better for pilgrims now, but in which the reality contradicts such claims.  Finally the train rolls into one of the places where Pilgrim faced the greatest danger, the city of Vanity Fair.  This place offers all the temptations of the world, and churches had been forbidden there.  But even this problem has been rectified and Hawthorne resumes his attack on modernist clergy by describing the important preachers of Vanity Fair; “the Rev. Mr. Shallow-deep, the Rev. Mr. Stumble-at-truth, that fine old clerical character the Rev. Mr. This-today, who expects shortly to resign his position to the Rev. Mr. That-tomorrow, together with the Rev. Mr. Bewilderment, the Rev. Mr. Clog-the-spirit; and last and greatest, the Rev. Dr. Wind-of-doctrine.”  It is no surprise, after all this, that the narrator finds himself arriving at the end of his journey not at the Celestial City, but at a place he doesn’t want to visit at all.

            Could Hawthorne come back to walk our streets and visit our churches he would see just how well the clergy of Vanity Fair have done their work.  Billy Graham has described American Christianity as, “Twenty miles wide and an inch deep.”  It may look deep, but it isn’t.  So many of our churches and pastors have stumbled at truth that we now have whole denominations most of whose members and pastors don’t believe there really is any such thing as absolute truth.  The church is caught up in every trend and movement of the culture with hardly a pause to reflect on the origins or effects of those trends.  Some wag has even described the liberal wing of the church as nothing more than the “Cause of the month club.”  But conservatives, evangelicals and fundamentalists are not immune.  Some of us hardly know what to believe while others go after any new teaching, refusing to heed those Christians with the gift of discernment who warn them not to go.  The winds of doctrine blow, our spirits are clogged and fogged, and the truths that inspired first Bunyan, then Hawthorne, to write as they did are all but forgotten.

            How confused are we?  I just watched a viral video whose author/producer tries to pit Jesus against something he calls “religion.”  Forgetting that both James (1:26, 27) and Paul (I Timothy 5:4) commend religion rightly practiced, not knowing that religion is no more than the daily practice of our faith in Jesus, Christians have watched this video, gotten all excited about it and sent it to their friends.  It doesn’t take much spiritual depth to see what is wrong with this video, but far too few of us seem to have noticed.  Hawthorne saw us on this road to shallowness, trendiness, and spiritual confusion.  So while I don’t think he would be surprised about the way things are, I suspect he’d be disappointed more of us who haven’t heeded his warning.

                                            

            All quotations are from Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches, Copyright 1982; The Library of America.

About the Author: Rev. David R. Faulkner has been a pastor in the PCUSA for over 30 years. He recieved his Bachlors in History from Michigan State University, His Masters of Divinity from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary and Did Graduate Work at Ohio University. He is currently preaching at The Harrisonville Presbyterian Church in Harrisonville Ohio. He is also married and has four kids

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