Author: Silva

I recently spoke to a distraught Mom. From when she was a little girl she wanted to be a wife and a mother. By God’s grace, He gave her that wish. Along the way she had several children–girls and boys. Circumstances developed that home-schooling became the best option for educating them. So this Mom spent more than a decade diligently home schooling the children including weaving in Christian discipleship along the way. She was a stellar example of faithful prayer, sound education and godly discipline to her children such that they each knew the Lord and made professions to follow Him. With her husband, she also saw to it that the family was part of a thriving church that valued the Bible, community and living for the Lord.

But then God’s providence caused them to make a series of drastic life changes including moving and sending all the children still at home to public school. This Mom and her husband knew the pressure this change would have on the children. They also suspected to be out of the “bubble” of home schooling, vibrant youth group and established friendships would be costly. 

The Mom was not surprised but not really prepared for what happened.

Slowly, the children drifted away from an interest in church, in the Bible or in living for the Lord. Previous, well established habits like personal devotions and regular conversations became things of the past. Bad influences and drugs entered into the picture. More and more, Mom stopped recognizing the children she had poured her life into and they stopped recognizing her. One by one they left the house to pursue worldliness and none included the Lord or His church in their lives.

Of course, this caused the Mom to redouble her efforts in prayer but a crack developed in her heart: these were her children for whom she sacrificed everything and the result? Disinterest in the Lord, selfishness and distance. Mom knew the Scriptures herself and so rested in God’s goodness and His providential plan–on her good days. But mostly, sadness settled around her as she saw her mission field yielding no fruit but overgrown with weeds. Thoughts of failure and wasted life, the realization of aging and little to show for her efforts, the nagging question of a child to her Father-God, “I did all this, Lord, as You instructed and led, and look what’s happened.”

I asked the Mom about missionaries that go into new fields, work for many years and either die on the field or leave it having seen no fruit. Were those wasted lives? Was that wasted effort? In 1958, four missionaries were murdered in Ecuador leaving wives and children and no fruit of their labors. Was that wasted effort? If you know the story of Jim Eliot and his companions, you know the answer is “No!” Still, Moms are missionaries and sometimes their fields lay waste even after years of hard, hard labor. It is hard to believe those are not wasted years, yet faith must prevail over fear: the fruit will appear in His time.

Moms, you are missionaries and you are not alone on the field. The seeds you sow are the Word of the Lord, the tears you shed water those fields, the weeds you rake up make room for the seeds to grow; the field’s Owner is watching. God has told us His word doesn’t return empty (Isaiah 55:11) but He hasn’t told us what or when that fullness will appear. Take heart: He can be trusted.

“I am weak, frail, sinful and ignorant.”  I wonder if that confession might save a lot of grief.  It isn’t an easy series of predicates, to be sure.  Few things in my upbringing (and our culture) promoted such an outlook on life.  But surely those things are true even if few admit it.

What a 23 year old can do at the gym, a 53 year old can’t.  What lingers in our genetic history only needs a certain provocation before its ugliness is revealed.  And is there a moment when I’m not either swimming in sin or drying off from it?  And, what do I really know?  I’ve been a life-long student even attaining to a doctorate but do I know the end from the beginning, the “alpha and the omega” of my life to say nothing of a stranger’s?  No.  Like it or not I am weak, frail, sinful and ignorant—and so is every single person who ever lived (save one).

But then what happens?  If we’re paying attention to the instruction God gave Noah—to build ordered societies out of families—then people like me make associations, organizations or denominations with others.  And, in those associations good things do happen.  Yet even with the best of intentions, we still cannot shake the things that will always be true of us: weakness, frailty, sinfulness and ignorance.  

Here’s why I think a confession like the one above will save us a lot of grief: institutional failure in inevitable.  By that I mean, we will fail to be who we are supposed to be and others will fail us as well.  Our churches, our schools, our parents, our mentors, our heroes—each will reveal its flaw(s).  And how will we deal with it then?  Do we give grace as we hope to receive in our moment of failure? 

These days not really.  Enter into common parlance, “deconstruction.”  An insidious once-literary conception has now been adopted culturally to guide us when we are let down, sinned against or offended.  You see, instead of holding fast to inherent human weakness, frailty, sinfulness and ignorance, we presume that all institutions should be flawless.  Or worse, that I deserve to have nothing arrayed against me.  

So then, when a pastor preaches something we don’t understand or don’t agree with or a spiritual mentor reveals he drinks to excess at times or the traditional marriage we grew up in seems “bigoted” or “stifling” instead of questioning our own perspective, we “deconstruct.”  We assume we’ve been duped or hoodwinked and we work to tear the whole thing down—we become cultural Marxists in our own souls!

It’s actually quite arrogant when we stop and think about it.  In some of its forms, we mock and scoff and demean the preacher, church or institution thinking we know best,  “I must cast off the bigoted notions of the Bible: how could a loving God condemn to hell?  Bah!  I’m done with God.”  In other forms, we were wrongly taught, erroneous (or sinfully led) and so we automatically assume it’s all wrong.  But the response is still the same, “I will not give charity or investigate; I will simply assume it is shot through with corruption and burn it down.”

Whatever happen to doubt?  I don’t mean skepticism or cynicism but rather the humble acknowledgement that I am weak, frail, sinful and arrogant.  We assume we don’t know.  We recognize bias is possible.  We leave room for (unfortunately) sin.  We adopt a real and abiding recognition that things just are not what they are supposed to be—including me.  

Sinners do sinful and destructive things, it’s true.  We cannot be naïve and expect all is always well.  We must doubt or, rather, question.  But deconstruction is predicated upon omniscience, right?  “I know what’s best and this isn’t it.”  That is as sad as it is arrogant.  Life is hard and we aren’t the Lord.  It’s high time those who claim to follow Christ act like it.