Jitterbugging for Jesus

“I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. . . . having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”

— Philippians 1:6, 11

If you’re truly a “self-made” success, raise your hand so we can worship you.

One of the most pervasive of American myths is the notion of “self-made man.”

I once ministered in hospital chaplaincy to a patient in his mid-forties who told me that it took his recovering from a life-threatening wreck for him to get over his “self-made” image.

This successful businessman confided,  “I’ve always bragged and bragged about being ‘a self-made man.’ How foolish is that?”

The patient’s story was right out of Horatio Alger–the inspiring yarn of a man who rose from “rags to riches.”

The first time I saw him he was fighting for his life in the E.R. after a head-on crash. I ministered to his family throughout the night; then he and his loved ones turned out to be one of those families I ministered to for months as he survived multiple surgeries and a long recovery in Intensive Care.

As commonly happens in these cases, his leaving the cheerless hospital and going home after a grueling recovery was bittersweet. He and his family were joyous about the liberation. But they were sad about leaving all the doctors, nurses and caregivers who had made this “self-made man” new  with so much physical and spiritual care. And as happy as we were for them, we the caregivers were a little sad to see them go.

Thanksgiving is a good time to remember we can’t possibly be “self-made” or “self -maintained.”

All our meaningful gifts are communal. Whatever success I’ve had in two careers–journalism and ministry–and whatever happiness and joy I’ve taken from the wonderful, fulfilling life I’ve enjoyed springs from what others have done for me as much as what I’ve done for myself. Maybe more.

Here’s a Thanksgiving Season thought: We can’t thankful to God and others enough that we’re not “self-made.”

There’s no making it through a day, much less a life, without care, support and maintenance from others.

But, in case you happen to be the exception, raise your hand so that I and everybody else can bow down and worship you.

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Where is this supposedly good God today?

These are such disorienting times that a devout Christian might be excused for doubting the Good News in the wake the god-awful news of madness and mayhem in “the real world.”

If Jesus ushered in the Kingdom of God on earth and gave us a foretaste of the heavenly kingdom yet to come, one might be forgiven for thinking that Heaven must be over-rated.

One might be forgiven for wondering with the atheist what’s so loving and good about a God who allows so much suffering.

But we have the bible, which quotes many a believer who shakes a fist in anger and doubt at a God who seems to have given up and gone into some kind of cosmic retreat from us all.

Doubt is OK. Doubt is good. It’s a far better thing to live in the tension between certainty and doubt than to live in such certainty that you slaughter people in the name of whatever God you’ve created in your mind.

The eternal God to whom we sometimes doubting Christians remain faithful is the God who never promised that this living, breathing world would be safe and secure. The Son of God himself reminded us that we would have severe trials and tribulations on this side of the heavenly realm.

But the Son of God himself incarnated the God who is with us in our suffering. That’s always been the divine promise, that God is ever so close to us as to suffer what we suffer.

In his terrifying but powerful little book Night, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel offers up this response to the age-old question of where God is in the midst of misery:

“Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving: the child, too light, was still breathing…And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes.
“And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished.

“Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’
“And from within me, I heard a voice answer:
“‘Where He is? This is where–hanging here from this gallows…'”

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Back in poetry study in my school days a hundred years, we studied Rudyard Kipling’s classic “If.”

I hope it’s still taught to young students. I hope it hasn’t been banned from curriculums by the stiff-minded dimwits in the p.c. posses who dismiss the whole meaning of it because they’ve deemed it sexist. It’s (somewhat) about being a man, after all–and in some circles today the worst thing you can be is a man, my daughter.

The times never stop changing, but good and serious literature speaks to every new age with the vigor of wisdom renewed. Kipling’s simple but profound poem in the voice of a loving father is about keeping your head and living a life of integrity. It’s as fresh and relevant today for all of us, as sons and daughters, as it was when Kipling wrote it 120 years ago.
If

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run –
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

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