It occurred to me while reading through 1 Peter the other night that we as Christians have not come to a consensus over what general attitude we should have in life, be it happy, frustrated, sorrowful, etc. In this post I have chosen to work through my current thinking concerning this issue.
A coworker of mine is of the rather simple vein of Christianity, thinking outside of his Pastor’s message only minimally and certainly not in an overly critical way towards the message itself. From my conversations with him come statements that stick to my mind. “There is no bad day for the believer,” is one of them. My response to his statements is to grunt or nod a bit, unaffectedly, mostly to avoid positioning myself on this notion of the ever smiling Christian.
The truth is in my Christian experience I generally hold an existential outlook where underlying melancholy bear down my indefatigably happy personality. By this i mean to say that I, as a person, generally have the ability to move through life with a smile on my face from the sheer force of my personality. When I pause to think about my life, however, a more somber wave of experience washes over my thoughts. My mother died at a young age before she saw my marriage, before she was able to watch me succeed as a man. My father has been far from the righteous exemplar I wish him to be. My own habitual sin weighs upon my soul like a battleship’s anchor on a small skiff. What do I have to be happy about?
Now, I do not need lectured about the glory of the new day, the wonder of the next breath, etc. These are things that I am aware of. I am also aware that my parents are not perfect, that my mother is in heaven, and that God saved my soul from the weight it still tries to bear. These things are reason to praise. How, on the other hand, are we to be carried through life without experiencing the sorrow of imperfection, the heartache of loss, and the pain of broken hopes? These are inherent to the human experience and do not disappear when we pray for salvation. Are we as Christians to deny these things, to ignore them and focus on the final state of sinless bliss, standing before Christ with all things made to praise he who sits on the throne? There must be room for us to experience the here and now, if for no other reason to be able to communicate with our fellow men who do not know or do not share the hope that we have. Was it not Christ himself who was said to be a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief?
The scriptures seem to be about hope, being less emphatic about suffering and grief because these need not be emphasized to humans living with suffering and grief every day. Scripture focuses on the hope that it has to give to the grief stricken race of men. However, it is of note that the vast majority of the Psalms do not focus on the hope of God but on the suffering of man, with a reminder at the end of most of them that God is still there.
So, there must be balance in the midst of it all, between the pain of the human experience and the hope of the Lord’s return. Where that balance is, that is the question.
I’m supposing it was the most recent post’s title. Since it, I’ve been getting 40+ hits a day.
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