Some reactions are just not the reactions you want.
My wife and I rather (in)famously recall one time that she cut my hair. It was two days before I was due to preach at a wedding for the first time. I just wanted it all neatened up a bit.
Anyway, as she's going up the back of my head with the clippers, I hear the words you never want to hear from the person cutting your hair: 'Oh no.' It turns out she had forgotten to attach a clipper piece at all! And so she had effectively been shaving a strip of hair from the back of my head. She'd only realised once the clippers were high enough up the back of my head that she could see below her hands to what was happening. Hence, the 'oh no.'
Needless to say that was one of the most tense nights in our married life!
Today, though, it was something quite different. My annual check-up at the dentist. The teeth are all fine, which is nice. But then she asks for a new implement, and starts poking around on my palate. It's a bit tender, but hey, she's sticking something sharp(ish) up into the roof of my mouth. But then she says the words: 'Let me just get someone else to have a look at this ...'.
Another dentist comes in. He agrees that it doesn't look quite right. Maybe it should be checked out. She asks to see me again in two weeks. If it's not different then, she'll send me off to one of her 'esteemed colleagues' for a biopsy.
Of course, we're all trying to be very casual about it. She's trying not to freak me out, although it's obvious that she thinks there is something there that needs sorting. I'm also trying to remain calm. But somewhere along the line, she makes mention of other patients who have had 'mouth cancer'. I think her point is that whatever my mouth is doing, it doesn't look the same as these other cases, and so she's just being careful. But by this stage, I'm finding it hard to hear any other words.
I innocuously ask if there's anything I should read to educate myself. She emphatically declares 'no'. At least, not from the internet!
So I go out to make the payment and book my next appointment. I don't really notice a lot of what the receptionist says. Internally, my mind and heart are racing. I can feel an instant jolt of fear. I want to tell Sarah, but her Bible study group is about to start meeting and I don't want to put her off the ministry she is about to do.
It's strange, though, to see this whole reaction well up so quickly. At one level, I mustn't get ahead of things. Nothing has been found, except for something different that needs checking. It may turn out to be nothing! But even if it turns out that there is something bad happening inside my mouth, why is it having such a big effect on me?
As a Christian I've thought about the idea of our mortality so many times. Surely it shouldn't be having this effect on me. It just comes up constantly in the Scriptures. The wages of sin is death. Man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment. There is more wisdom in the home of the grieving than the home of the rejoicing, for death is the destiny of all men and the living should take it to heart. Pastorally, these are such key issues to help people think about.
And of course, I've taken funerals and sat with the bereaved. I've watched Christians grieve up close, though not like the rest of men who have no hope. I've seen non-Christians grieve without hope. One of those stories is better by far. There is so much courage in it. So much hope. So much faith. Great sadness, but little despair.
I've thought about the idea of my own mortality so many times, too. For a long time, I have hoped to think that I would be courageous in faith, rather than fearful and anxious. I have hoped to think my confidence in Christ, and in the certainty of his bodily resurrection, would triumph over all my fears concerning death.
I have longed that my final words, my final thoughts, might be of Christ. I want to say, with Wesley ...
Happy, if with my dying breathI may but grasp his Name,Preach him to all and cry in death,'Behold, behold the Lamb!'
I want to look ahead with Toplady ...
When I soar through realms unknown, bow before your judgment throne,hide me then my Saviour beRock of Ages, cleft for me.
Naturally, I'm sure there would be all sorts of thoughts for Sarah and the boys. But I hope, too, that my final words to them would be as a Christian more than as a husband or father.
All these thoughts are already fairly well formed. Their path has been walked down many, many times in my mind. And yet even after so few words from the dentist, I'm amazed at how dis-ordered my thoughts are, and the stabbing fear in my heart.
Our mortality is, on one hand, the most natural thing in the world. It happens to every one of us. There's no surprises here. Yet, if I'm honest, it's also a great fear. For it is the opposite of the life that God made us for. And it brings an end to the relationships we have with loved ones that we hold so dear. There's nothing good in death. It robs us of all that is good in life.
But thanks be to God that even in the face of our fears, the promise of eternal life that comes through Christ is certain and sure! Whatever happens in two weeks time, may God help me to grow in this confidence, without fear.
Soli Deo Gloria
There's a lot of talk in the media at the moment about sex, gender and gender identity. In lots of ways this is to be welcomed, for our sexuality is an immensely important part of what it means to be human. Sadly, though, in a lot of places there's as much confusion as there is talk.
Take this article that appeared recently in The Atlantic about the gender stereotyping that exists in the world of children's toys. Broadly, the point is fair enough: despite the fact that in many quarters, the equal treatment of sexes is making steady (if slow) progress, the world of children's toys looks like a notable exception. Toys are more directed to gender stereotypes then they've ever been - trucks for boys and dolls for girls. And this is often reflected to quite bewildering levels in toys stores, which are almost entirely segregated by gender according to colour: blue for boys, pink for girls.
This bifurcation certainly does represent an overly simple, and not terribly helpful, view of gender. To that degree, we should welcome the call for change. And yet sometimes, as in the article noted above, the proposed replacement is a view of children (and people more generally) as somehow genderless, gender-neutral. And actually this is just as simplistic and unhelpful as the problem that exists at the moment.
The simple reality of things is that the distinction between sexes is unavoidable. There are boys and there are girls, men and women. More than that, though, to acknowledge this is actually good for us, since it is an essential part of what it means that we are human. To deny it denies something basic to who we are.
Two propositions must be held together here. First, to uphold a binary view of sex does not necessitate us holding on to unhelpfully rigid views of gender stereotypes. Second, to put off unhelpfully rigid views of gender stereotypes does not require us to abandon the observational reality of some gender stereotypes, and it certainly should not lead us to abandoning a binary view of sex.
I see this at work in our family, which is sexually quite imbalanced: we have five males (myself and four sons) and one female (my wife). Two of the boys are in high school; two are still in primary school. No one could really doubt their boy-ness. And yet they fit the gender stereotype of boys as much as most other boys do, which is to say generally. For example, they all show the classic physicality of boys, even though they all have my (fairly underwhelming!) muscular physique. Their rib cages are like the bars on a xylophone, and they can still suck their tummies in to make the massive 'tummy cave'. They think farts are hilarious and burps are something to be proud of. They love to arm-wrestle each other and perform other amazing feats of strength. They'll come up to you and flex their arms saying things like: 'feel how strong I am.' They are naturally competitive; some might even say aggressive. In conflict mode, they are far more likely to hit or kick than to use words. When they do use words, it's more often angry yelling rather than calm assertiveness. They love Nerf guns and love to have 'Nerf-wars'. They are boisterous and fidgety. They do a lot of sport. Two of them have been diagnosed with ADHD.
And yet for each of them, there are instances where they clearly buck the boy stereotype! For example, one of our older boys still likes soft toys, and carries them around with him often. Three of them are great 'snuggle-bugs' - always in for a cuddle in bed or on the couch. One of them is excellent at words and writing. One of them will spend hours by himself drawing. They like playing with little kids, and it always amazes me how gentle they are with them. They're fascinated by babies. When one of them at school got to care for some baby chickens, the teacher reported they'd never seen a student more careful or gentle in handling the chicks. I love the fact that when we're on holidays, one of their favourite activities is to go to a bookstore!
Unsurprisingly (I hope!), the same patterns of general conformity and specific non-conformity to the stereotypes are there for my wife and I. My wife, for example, is unambiguously feminine - in her looks, in the way she dresses, in how she relates to people. She quilts, and loves to do all kinds of crafty stuff. In the past she has enjoyed a season of serious scrapbooking. She loves looking after babies and little children. She still has the soft toys she had as a little girl. She loves having her hair combed. She plays the flute and piccolo. Her favourite colours are pink and purple. She shows a beautiful attention to tiny details when doing things for other people.
And yet there are other ways that she is not classically feminine. I've seen her wear make-up three times ever - on our wedding day, and twice when she's been a bridesmaid. She wears virtually no jewellery. She's never owned a handbag in her life. She would much rather wear pants than a dress - some of her friends remarked on our wedding day that it was the first time they'd seen her in one! She hates shopping for clothes and finds it enormously stressful - one of the four times I've ever seen her cry was when she was shopping for jeans and felt pressured by the sales assistant. Generally, she is far less adept at words and talking about feelings and emotions than I am. When she's been away for weekend women's conferences with our church, when most of the ladies go out for a coffee catch-up during free time, she prefers to go out and run 15kms. She is far more sporty than I am, and is more responsible than me for our boys' love of running.
Stereotypes, you see, are just that: they're stereotypes. Generalisations, not absolutes. Trends. Bulk-of-the-bell-curve kind of things. They can have some use when we're talking in broad brush. They're of very limited use, however we're talking about real individuals, real people.
Our family would be greatly diminished if we let gender stereotypes control and limit the ways that my wife shows her female-ness or that our sons and I display our male-ness. It's not that stereotypes aren't real or that they don't exist. But they describe only some things, not everything.
Equally, our family life would be greatly damaged if we tried to obliterate the fact of my wife's female-ness or the fact of our sons and my male-ness. She is different to us. We are different to her. That is to be understood, celebrated, cultivated and enjoyed.
In other words, sex is binary. But stereotypes are just stereotypes and individuals remain always individuals.
In my experience, most Christians struggle to make regular, disciplined prayer a part of their daily life. That's terrible news, because all of us desperately need God's help for whatever we do.
But with this in mind, I've taken a lot of help recently from Psalm 5, comparing the problems that we think we have in praying with the problems that God says we have in praying. In understanding this, God's Word then shows us the glorious truth which makes it possible for us to pray at all.
Psalm 5 is one of David's prayers. It is for flutes no less, as opposed to the string instruments that were called on in Psalm 4! David is clearly in a time of hardship - he mentions 'sighing' in v1, and his 'cry for help' in v2. In vv8-10, there is a description of his enemies. The fact that his prayers are laid out before God 'in the morning' suggests that this Psalm may be a counterpart to Psalms 3 and 4, which testify to God's protection of David in the midst of his flight from Absalom, and especially in the dark of night as he lays down to sleep (Psalm 3:5; Psalm 4:8). But in the midst of his troubles, David speaks clearly of his sense of expectation that God will answer him (v3).
As we think about the problems and possibilities of prayer, however, v4 is where this Psalm becomes really significant. Three questions uncover my flow of thought ...
1. What makes prayer difficult?
Most Christians will have no difficulty testifying to the myriad issues that make prayer difficult.
Busyness. Distraction. A hesitation that comes from our sense of our unworthiness. A complete lack of structure for organising our praying. The failure to set aside time for prayer. Uncertainty about who to pray for. Uncertainty about what to pray for them. The sense of being overwhelmed by how many people and how many concerns we should pray for. The struggle to move our prayers beyond a 'shopping list' of quite worldly concerns.
The list goes on. Notice, however, that most of these issues have to do with problems on our end of the prayer equation. In other words, they are issues that we find difficult to overcome. But they're not actually the real heart of our problem with prayer. For that we need to ask a second question.
2. What makes prayer impossible?
This is by far a more important issue to get at, for it lifts our minds to consider the God to whom we pray, and to consider ourselves in that light. It gets us thinking about what prayer is, ultimately, and about whether we even have the 'right' to bring our requests to God in prayer.
Psalm 4:4-6 state the problem very succinctly.
You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil; with you the wicked cannot dwell. The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; you hate all who do wrong. You destroy those who tell lies; bloodthirsty and deceitful men the Lord abhors.
It is sometimes said that 'God hates the sin but loves the sinner'. There's something very understandable in this statement, but actually, the sin and the sinner cannot be so easily separated. The God who is perfectly holy hates them both. It is not just the wrong-doing that he is against, but also the wrong-doer.
And ultimately, this is our big problem with prayer. As rebellious sinners, in and of ourselves, we have no basis upon which we can approach God with our requests. We are not in fellowship with him. We are objects of his wrath, of his settled opposition to both sin and sinners.
3. What makes prayer possible?
Having identified this problem, however, in v7 David declares about himself what is the only hope for every one of us:
But I, by your great mercy, will come into your house; in reverence will I bow down toward your holy temple.
In other words, the combination of God's holiness and our sinfulness makes prayer impossible. But God's holiness is not the only reality about God that must be considered. Wonderfully, there is also his great mercy. And this is what makes prayer possible, even for rebellious sinners. This is why later in the Psalm (vv11-12), David encourages all who take refuge in God to be glad and to sing for joy; he calls on God to spread his protection over everyone who loves his name, so that they might rejoice in him; he declares that God blesses the righteous - those who take refuge in him (cf. Psalm 2:12) - and surrounds them with his favour as with a shield.
Of course, if even David knew that his approach to God depended completely on God's great mercy, how much more should we know this, who have seen so much more of God's mercy than David did. For we have the son of David, Jesus the Son of God, as our great high priest who has gone through the heavens. And it is on the basis of this that we approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need ((Hebrews 4:14-16).