Marriage in the Second Half

Jane and I were married in West Point , Virginia 32 years ago today. It’s conceivable that I will be alive at age 91. If I actually survive until then (along with my bride) then we’ve not yet entered the second half. But it’s a safe bet we’re more than half done already. Some of our wedding guests expected to tour the Military Academy . Whether any were serious or not I couldn’t tell . There’s that other West Point in New York where Lee and Macarthur studied. There were some present then not with us now. Most sorely missed are our two dads. We flew to London for the honeymoon. First because my father offered to pay and, secondly, because we thought we would never have the chance to cross the ocean again on a minister’s salary. A baggage handler’s strike at Heathrow compounded the trans-Atlantic exhaustion. Our driver couldn’t find the hotel. It snowed the day we arrived as it snowed in Budapest this morning. I had no coat.
Southerners eventually learn.
I wish everyone I know were as blessed in marriage as I. I want to talk about it more often but am always afraid 1) It will sound like boasting 2) It will make those formerly married or unhappily married uncomfortable. My happiness in marriage is due to Jesus and Jane --in that order,
Jesus launched His ministry of miraculous signs at a wedding. After His baptism He stood where Adam fell by resisting the devil in the wilderness. Adam and Eve did not eat the fruit because they were hungry. They were not hungry. They could eat from any tree in the Garden save one. They ate the fruit because they believed a lie about God. Adam sinned on a full stomach. The Second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ refused to turn stones into bread even though He was starving. When we track the chronology of the Gospels we see that Jesus was baptized in Matthew 3, tempted in Matthew 4, walked back to the scene of His baptism in John 1 then walked toward Cana into John 2.So He traveled from the wilderness to the wedding In the wilderness He refused Himself bread though He was starving. At the wedding He gave others wine though they had drunk. Bread is a necessity. Wine is a luxury. He granted luxury to others while denying necessity to Himself Surely this is the model for every husband. Surely Jesus is the perfect Bridegroom (John 3:29) .After He rehabilitated the moral possibilities for Man by succeeding where Adam failed He set out on a rescue mission for marriage. When Adam and Eve sinned marriage fell with the rest of Creation. There was shame and there was blame. Shame and blame would have been imminent in Cana once the wine was gone.
The wine can run out in any marriage if we are left to our own resources. That’s a place God never intended to leave us. Jesus was invited to Cana . And when He is invited into marriage He makes Himself available to meet every legitimate need. Sometimes we ask and He appears to delay. When Mary declared they’d run out of wine I can only trace a “no” in His response. Somehow Mary heard a “yes”. At that moment she gives the servants the greatest counsel ever uttered in the history of the world. “Do everything He tells you” she says.Could there be any greater counsel than that?
Ours is to apply, obey and wait, even when the wait is agonizingly long (though those first century guests didn’t wait long). His part is to bless and provide.
Jane and I have reaped the benefits of His unfailing presence and undeserved blessing for a very short 32 years.
The headwaiter marveled that the best wine was saved for last.
That’s a precedent for joy in the second half.

Atheism and One Frail Presumption

I find it possible to sympathize with the agnostic (though not with agnosticism). How can you argue with a man who says he doesn’t know? You can only agree and ask for the privilege of helping. One beggar telling another where he has found bread. Of course there are two kinds of agnostics. There is the tentative agnosticism of indecision which confesses merely “I don’t know.” Then there is the dogmatic agnosticism of arrogance which declares that the fact of God’s existence cannot be known. The second is, of course, but atheism thinly disguised. And for atheism we have no sympathy. The atheist we may regard. But to his views we offer no quarter. Let us consider one of the bedrock arguments which issues from that school.
The most obvious problem with atheism is that it accounts for nothing. How intellectually engaged people can be attracted to a system which can account for nothing at all escapes me, but there it is. Sartre, himself an atheist, had the courage to admit that the greatest philosophical problem is why there is something rather than nothing. You bet that’s a problem for atheism .And how. And an insoluble one at that. But the objection is deftly countered by proponents of the New Atheism Chic. Led by the likes of Professor Dawkins they respond:
“Of course we cannot account for the existence of the material universe. But neither can theists account for the existence of God. So the problems are equivalent. We are stymied then, and the score is a tie.”
But the score is not tied. The two “problems” -as a moment’s reflection will demonstrate - are manifestly not equivalent.
It was Aristotle (no evangelical he) who insisted that mind was much more likely to produce non-mind (or lesser minds) than non-mind was likely to produce mind. And Aristotle was absolutely right.
Dawkins’ difficulty (which he freely admits) is that he is not able to conceptualize God. He simply cannot imagine an uncreated Creator. And he begs that we not believe in God for that very reason viz. that he, Professor Dawkins, cannot imagine God. Forgive me if I don’t find that a compelling reason for unbelief.
Is it necessary for lesser creatures to comprehend the superior qualities in a higher creature (in this case the Creator) for those qualities to be validated? A dog may not be able to comprehend a good deal about a man: e.g. how a man can ride a bicycle, play a piano or read a newspaper? Is it rational to argue that the incomprehensibility of those capacities at a lower level of creation in any way vitiates their reality? That would be foolish in the extreme would it not? But it is exactly that kind of foolishness which Professor Dawkins asks us to base our convictions about ultimate questions upon.
To illustrate let us return to Aristotle’s principle.
The atheist asks us to believe that by a kind of spontaneous auto-generation the inanimate components of the universe appeared (this is so obviously far-fetched that the atheist sometimes pleads the eternal existence of matter- a proposition itself just as unlikely).These inanimate components SOMEHOW randomly combine to produce –Voila! - entities infinitely complex: quasars and neurons and ganglia and peacocks and other phenomena wondrous to behold. And we are asked to believe that such a thing is ACTUALLY MORE LIKELY than the alternative that a supernatural Creator is at the back of everything. Now let us break the argument down analogically and test its plausibility.
Consider for a moment Michelangelo and the ‘David’, the sculptor and his sculpture. There are certain inanimate components in the art. There is stone and color. There are certain animate components in the artist. There is brain and blood. Which is more likely, that the components in the art produced the artist or that the components in the artist produced the art? If you protest that the analogy is not proximate I maintain that this is PRECISELY the argument the atheist proffers.
And the argument is arrant nonsense.
The problems are not equivalent.
The score is not tied.
There is intelligence in the universe because there is a Mind behind it all.
There are extant components of personality because a personal God created what is there.
Love suffuses our being because love was the motive for Creation.
A marvelous patient love which is willing to endure even the most contemptible assaults on the reality of the Lover.
But we are told that even divine endurance has limits.

Little Things that Happen

Patrick O’Brien
1914-2000
It snowed in the ancient Hungarian capital today. No accumulation-- just a warning against the premature assumption of Spring.
We had another death in our wider Missionary Community last Saturday, Someone I first met in Romania during the days of Ceausescu, someone whose wedding I performed in 1989, someone agonizingly young. Partially to put off something painful, partially because I wrote about death in the last blog, I will postpone the eulogy until later. Today as a kind of defense mechanism, apropos of nothing in particular, I retreat to the trivial.
A few years ago I was reading the auto-biographical note by Philip Ryken on the Tenth Presbyterian Church Philadelphia website. James Montgomery Boice was secure enough to have a Pastor of Preaching on his staff at Tenth Pres, and he landed a great one when he recruited Philip Ryken while he was finishing up graduate work at Oxford. When Jim Boice died in 2000 he was succeeded by PR, one of the best preachers in America. In the bio Dr. Ryken registers extravagant interest in the historical novels of Patrick O’Brien—an author I’d never heard of though I learned later that the film ‘Master and Commander’ was made from one of his books. I was intrigued by the enthusiastic endorsement but not enough to do anything about it. Sometime later I discovered that a colleague in Budapest who reads and cares about the life of the mind was just as enthusiastic about the novels as Philip Ryken. I was again intrigued but, again, not enough to be goaded into action.
On February 1rst I arrived at the Budapest airport to board a flight to Moscow. The departure lounge at my gate was full so I took a seat in a deserted area next to another gate where all the passengers had just boarded. Prominent among the empty seats was a derelict volume, perhaps intentionally discarded, more likely accidentally forgotten. The flight was gone. The owner was likely gaining altitude already. But I waited a decent interval anyway before I touched the book. I wanted to satisfy my own ethical standards (regretfully never as high as, say, the Apostle Paul’s) before I exercised the old Finders Keepers prerogative - an option found nowhere in Holy Scripture. I tried not to view the acquisition as appropriating something which did not belong to me but more as providing a good home for an orphan. Oh yes, I almost forgot. I really ought to tell you the title:
Maritius Command by Patrick O’Brien the fourth of the twenty books in the Aubrey/Maturin series.
The Times of London calls O’Brien the greatest historical novelist of all time. Lavish praise that.
I’ve taken the hint.
And I’ve begun the book.
I feel guided by an unmistakable Providence.
I regard free books as a kind of sign.
Though we live in a decaying post-literary age--
Maybe I will become hopeful yet.

The Great Thing and The Greater

Garrison Keillor signs off The Writer’s Almanac by saying : “Be well, do good work, and stay in touch.” I’ve not been well. I’ve done hardly any work. And I’ve not been in touch. We were in the US for Missions Conferences Feb. 10- March 5. When I boarded the plane to return I was ill. I am still ill, and only now ready to write something.
Our itinerary on the ground didn’t go as planned. Neither Virginia nor Texas was on the schedule but I flew to Dallas and Jane joined me in the drive to Virginia. The visits were necessary because someone died. The visits were unscheduled because the deaths were unforeseen.
Rachel was a friend who entered eternity at age twenty-four. She was tall, lovely, athletic and a believer. While studying in Vienna she visited us in Budapest . Deaths like hers make people ask “Why?” while others caution: “Don’t ask why.” I don’t ask the question. Neither do I caution. Neither can I answer the question though I sometimes try. Christians don’t often know “why”; they always know “Who.” Rachel’s grandmother is named Ruth. I once told Rachel her grandmother was the greatest Christian I’d ever known. I believed that because of Ruth’s stewardship of suffering. I imagine that earlier suffering is slight compared to losing Rachel. We drove to Virginia to hug Ruth’s neck and tell her how much we love her. We found her clinging to the God of Israel, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Her faith is deeper than her powers of articulation, deeper than death. Such is our God; such are His servants.
A few days after Rachel went home my Professor in Dallas died. He too visited us in Budapest. Harold Hoehner was a Cambridge PhD who published the definitive work on Ephesians in his generation. No seventy-four year old needs a great reason to die. But there was no warning. He came in from a run. Exhale on earth, inhale in heaven as one of his eulogists said. Three of my Professor’s four children have been missionaries to Russia and the fourth walks with God. I envy him that more than the Cambridge doctorate (though his college was King’s!) or the Ephesians commentary.
While he lay dying Henry James said “So the great thing comes.” They were reputed to have been his last words. Death is a great thing: inevitable, inexorable, and unrelenting. But there is a greater thing. That’s why we become missionaries, to tell the world about that greater thing. For those who die without Gospel Hope death is a permanent tragedy. The Cross has rendered death a temporary inconvenience. Savage but temporary.
I like to think my friends Harold Hoehner and Rachel Menkel have met by now in a land that is fairer than day.
Met among the shining ones.
Met before the Throne.
I know that I too will meet them there one day.
I guarantee you I will.